unSeminary Podcast

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Lane Lowery, Executive Pastor of Warren Church in South Carolina and Georgia. Founded in 1898, Warren is one of the fastest-growing churches in America, with over 7,000 members across its campuses. Known for its Southern hospitality, Bible teaching, and focus on whole-person ministry, Warren has also launched a Hope Women’s Center and is preparing to open a Hope Mental Wellness Center. Is your church wrestling with how to scale leadership and maintain unity as you grow? Tune in as Lane shares how Warren Church transitioned to a global leadership model, developed essential staff practices, and keeps the large church personal and relational. From single-site to multi-site. // When Lane first arrived at Warren Church it was a single-campus church of around 3,000 members. Today, with multiple campuses and ministries, the church has grown to nearly 7,000 members and employs 270 staff. Lane notes that what worked for one or two campuses no longer fit once the church expanded to six ministry expressions. The global leadership model. // To address challenges of scale, Warren implemented a global leadership structure. Eight global ministry teams oversee preschool, next gen, discipleship, missions, worship, communications, counseling, and the Hope Women’s Center. Each leader is a “player-coach,” serving in a campus role while also providing oversight across all locations. This ensures alignment while keeping leaders grounded in local ministry. Why unity matters. // Before adopting the global model, Warren found itself with competing ministry silos—at one point even running three different discipleship models across campuses. The new structure promotes collaboration, vision-sharing, and consistency, ensuring that ministries move together rather than in competition. The player-coach advantage. // Asking leaders to both manage a local ministry and oversee their area globally is demanding, but it builds credibility. Leaders bring ideas from real ministry experience and share them across campuses. To prevent burnout, Warren Church emphasizes intentional rhythms, regular meetings, and clear communication. Eight Essential Practices. // To embed culture, Warren Church developed a set of eight essential practices guiding staff behavior. These are celebrated in staff communications, reinforced during onboarding, and reviewed biannually. Practices like “Connect with People” and “Leverage Change to Move the Mission” ensure values don’t stay on the wall but shape daily ministry. Keeping it personal. // Even as a large church, Warren prioritizes personal touches. Each location has a paid staff member who oversees the First Impressions Team at that campus, and every first-time guest receives a personal call within the week. With about 70 new guests each Sunday across campuses, that’s more than 3,500 calls annually. Hospital visits, prayer before surgeries, and care for shut-ins also remain a priority, modeling shepherding from the senior pastor down. When it’s time to change. // Lane encourages leaders to admit when structures aren’t working, secure leadership buy-in, research and learn from other churches, engage stakeholders early, and clearly communicate the “why” behind changes. Transitioning Warren’s model took about a year of planning, listening, and implementation—but the results have unified and strengthened the church. Visit warren.church to learn more about Warren Church and reach out to Lane here. Plus, download the Eight Essential Practices document that Lane talks about. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it! Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. You are going to be rewarded for tuning in. Thanks for being here. I think we’ve got one of the oldest churches on the hat we’ve ever had on an episode. Warren Church, founded in 1898, is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, which I love that because so many times I think we think of fast growing churches and like there they’re like celebrate their fifth year and they’re so excited for how long they’ve been around.Rich Birch — But this church has been around for a long time. They’ve got four campuses in South Carolina and Georgia. Southern hospitality, generosity, strong Bible teaching, and a passion for making disciples and multiplying disciple makers have been a heart of Warren from the very beginning and behind all they do. They also have a sports and fitness center programs that really try to minister to the whole person. Lane Lowery is with us today. He is the executive pastor. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here, Lane.Lane Lowery — Thank you so much, Rich. I am grateful to be a part of this.Rich Birch — This is going be a good conversation. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit. That’s kind of the bio of who the church is. Tell us about the church. Kind of give us the flavor and tell us a little bit about when you say executive pastor. I know as an XP, it’s like every XP looks a little different. Tell us about your role.Lane Lowery — Sure, sure. Well, as you said, Warren is about 127 year old church. We are multi-site and it’s happened just incredible. We launched our first multi-site campus, Grovetown, right at 11 years ago. Rich Birch — Nice. Lane Lowery — And then within the last five years, we’ve adopted two other churches. Rich Birch — Wow.Lane Lowery — So we did a church plant, if you will, which you know but was our first multi-site. And then the the Lord brought us two other churches and it’s been incredible. Lane Lowery — We also have a Hope Women’s Center, which is a crisis pregnancy center that we oversee. And we are just about to launch what we’re calling the Hope Mental Wellness Center um that will open the doors of that in January. And so we’ve already had a counseling ministry going on here, but we’ve expanded that. And we’re really excited about about that.Lane Lowery — We’ve got a large church staff here and I get to serve as executive pastor. We have another executive pastor as well, which I’ll talk about later on, who is just a phenomenal leader. And and so just grateful that the the Lord allows us to participate in this together. And we’ve got an incredible leader, Dr. David McKinley is our senior pastor. He’s been with us 17 years… Rich Birch — That’s great. Lane Lowery — …and the and the Lord has just done ah an incredible work here. As you said, we are in the in the deep South and it is it’s ah it’s a fantastic ministry. I’m grateful that that the Lord has allowed me to be here. I’ve been here 19 years. And I’ve seen a lot of change. I’ve had a front row seat to some exponential growth. And it’s been a lot of fun ah to to be a part of that.Rich Birch — Why don’t we talk a little bit of metrics there in the time from when you came 19 years ago to today? What does that look like from a growth point of view? Just to give people, I know you’re not like, ah you’re you not a bragging kind of guy. Lane Lowery — Sure.Rich Birch — you don’t want to brag about it, but talk us through that. That helps give a little bit of context for the conversation we’re having.Lane Lowery — Great. Well, when I came here 19 years ago, we were Warren Church, Augusta. That was it. And, um and since then we’ve planted three other churches and we’ve launched a Hope Women’s Center. Like I said, the crisis pregnancy center, and we are in the process of launching a Hope Mental Wellness Center.Lane Lowery — So we’ve, when I got here, we were, um probably around 3000 members total. We’re over almost 7,000 now. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Lane Lowery — Um, like I said, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve been able to adopt some churches and, and we’ve been able to, just really engage our community in just an incredible way.Lane Lowery — Obviously, you know, staff is growing. I remember when I got here, our full staff, we could meet in a, in a, in a, like a life group classroom. Now we have to meet in a large, you know, we’re up to 270 employees at this point… Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Yep. Lane Lowery — …on our, our six campuses, if you will. So we’ve just seen incredible, like said, we just seen the Lord do incredible things over the last 19 years.Rich Birch — Yeah. Well, I’d love to talk about that, particularly the kind of leadership structure stuff. I know as we, it’s like, everyone sounds great. Let’s add a bunch of staff. Let’s grow that side.Lane Lowery — Yeah.Rich Birch — But that does come with some tension. um I’m sure, I’m sure you’ve bumped into things along there that have been a little bit tricky. Talk us through what, what does that look like as the kind of, as your structure has changed over these years?Lane Lowery — You know, it’s kind of like going from, you know, having no kids to a child and then having two child, you know, two children. And then if you have multiples after that, you you’ve just got to change the way you parent.Lane Lowery — And, and as our church has gone from one site location to really six now… Rich Birch — Right. Lane Lowery — …as as we when you you know think about the other campuses, we just came to a place where we realized a single church model of leadership no longer worked for where we were. You know going from one to two was was was a stretch, but going from two to six, has been a huge stretch.Lane Lowery — And so as I shared with you, you know we’ve had ah exponential growth, especially over the past five years, Rich, you know adding the the additional campuses and and the additional, you know the the Hope Women’s Center and Hope Mental Wellness Center. You know, so going from two campuses to six campuses, we realized that our single single church yeah and then our dual church model, leadership model was no longer, it just wasn’t effective.Lane Lowery — It became evident that Dr. McKinley and myself, that we couldn’t effectively oversee the operations and staff on each of our campuses. you know we’ve got incredibly gifted campus pastors and we had to equip and empower them to lead with vision, not just give them tasks, but give them vision and responsibility.Lane Lowery — So the key tipping point that really caused us to to to regroup and to implement a new leadership structure was when we realized at one point we looked up and we had three different discipleship models going on at our four campuses.Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness.Lane Lowery — Yeah, yeah. And as we we we noticed that that that just that’s just not to work. Rich Birch — No, absolutely. Lane Lowery — And so we also noticed that our former leadership structure didn’t promote, it didn’t promote the the unity and the and the collaboration that we really wanted from our staff team.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Lane Lowery — You know, it felt like our ministry teams, Rich, were in competition with one another rather than really working together as a team. We always use a statement, we’re better together. We really believe that. Rich Birch — Yep.Lane Lowery — But the way our our leadership model was structured, it didn’t promote unity. It didn’t promote um it collaboration. And we needed more team collaboration.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. So yeah, just kind of stepping back statistically, 50% or around 50% of multi-site churches don’t get beyond, still are not getting beyond three locations. And I’m convinced a part of the reason why that is, is because of these issues that this, even just the structure stuff and how we interact with each other, it’s like, it’s working against what we’re trying to do. It’s it’s working against the mission that God’s called us to. So let’s get a little bit practical there. Lane Lowery — Sure.Rich Birch — Define in concrete terms. What do you mean? What are the roles? How does that all fit together? How do you, what’s the like, two minute explanation of how you talk about how you stuff gets done at Warren. What’s that look like?Lane Lowery — Sure. So we we developed this, we call it a global leadership structure. And basically our global leadership team is it’s led by Pastor Andrew Bryan, who’s our executive pastor of ministries and leadership development. One of the best young leaders I’ve ever been around. And this team consists of the following ministry areas. So we have eight global ministry teams. Lane Lowery — Our preschool and children’s team is led by Carol Young. Our next gen, which is our middle and high school team is led by Pastor Shane Padgett. Our spiritual formation and discipleship team is led by Pastor Corey Baxter. We have a local and and and global missions team, which is led by Pastor Mark Claiborne. We have a global worship team led by Pastor Joseph McKinley. We have a global communications and connections team led by Pastor Drew Robinson, a counseling and support group team led by Pastor Brett Legge. Then our Hope Women’s Center is led by Dr. Jacqueline Hyder. Lane Lowery — Each of these people are player coaches. They’re overseeing an area of ministry on one of our campuses, but then they’re also overseeing the the greater, the overall ministry for all of the campuses.Lane Lowery — For example, example Pastor Corey Baxter oversees our spiritual formation and discipleship. That’s our our life group ministry, our Sunday school ministry, if you will, and our discipleship groups and all of our discipleship ministry.Lane Lowery — So Pastor Corey, he’s on our Grovetown campus and he is the day to day operations for that. But then he also kind of rises up to the 30,000 foot view and he oversees the discipleship and and spiritual formation ministry for all of our campuses. Which is why, we like I said, we got to a point where we looked up one day and we realized we had three different discipleship models going on you know within you know three of our our church campuses.Lane Lowery — We thought this isn’t this isn’t right. This isn’t working well. So we thought let’s go to a global leadership model so that we have input and someone kind of overseeing over watching that for all of our campuses. Lane Lowery — Like I said, these guys and girls are our player coaches. They’re they’re on boots on the ground on a campus, but then they rise up and lead the greater ministry of Warren as well.Rich Birch — So like I’d love to double click on the player coach. That sounds like a conviction that you’ve had. Lane Lowery — Yes, sir. Rich Birch — That that’s like something, hey, we want to make sure we don’t just have like the head office people… Lane Lowery — Yeah. Rich Birch — …who like are like their whole job is head office. We want them grounded in local ministry. Talk us through that decision. What’s been maybe some of the upside of that, but then also some of the challenge of the player coach model.Lane Lowery — Well, the the the challenge is it’s it’s a lot more to do. Rich Birch — Right. Lane Lowery — You know, they’ve got plenty to say grace over. Just like Pastor Corey, you know, our Grovetown church, they’re running over 2,000 every Sunday… Rich Birch — Right, right. Lane Lowery — …or about 1,500 every Sunday, about 1,500, excuse me, and And so he’s got plenty to say grace over just dealing with his own stuff with, with you know, we we believe that every person needs to be in a life group. You know we, you know, we believe every person needs to be in a discipleship relationship. So the challenge is saying, now hey, Pastor Corey, you’re doing a great job, but I’m going to add more to your more to your your your your table, you know.Rich Birch — Yes. You’re so good at your job, we’re going to give you more.Lane Lowery — Isn’t that how it works? Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely.Lane Lowery — You know find the busiest guy and give them more. But the good thing is we do have high capacity leaders, Rich. I mean, these, these folks are, so we’ve got to be careful not to, to overdo it and not to, you know, meet them to death. But you know, as well as I do, you got to have meetings. I mean, you have to.Lane Lowery — And and so, so the, the, the, the stretch was, are we giving them too much? But they’ve risen to the, to the, to the challenge and they’ve done a great job. I’m so proud of our team. They’ve done such a great job. And they’re continuing to. So I think it’s a good thing that they’re still in, know, they’re still doing the work of the ministry because it to me, it brings credibility when they come to the table with an idea. Rich Birch — Right.Lane Lowery — They’re doing it. Rich Birch — Right.Lane Lowery — And so the down the only downfall we found is just that I got to be careful that I don’t burn my burn my folks out.Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Okay, that’s good. Well, walk us through kind of the decision matrix. This is my language, not your your language, but oftentimes there’s like a global versus campus. There’s like, okay, where who gets to own what? What about local expression versus we’re doing this together as a church? What decisions are campus level by default? What’s get what’s get escalated across the entire church? Talk us through what that looks like.Lane Lowery — Sure, sure. Well, we we have an executive leadership team and it consists of our senior pastor, Dr. McKinley. It consists of our our Grovetown, each of our campus pastors. ah Pastor Joseph Humphreys is on our Grovetown campus. Pastor Steven Newman is on our Belvedere campus. Pastor Andrew Skelton is on our Crossbridge campus. And then, of course, Andrew Bryan, our other executive pastor. So every Monday we we meet together and everything is funneled through that.Lane Lowery — So we are constantly every Monday at two. We’re going we’re going to meet every Monday at two o’clock. And, um, and, and so therefore, you know, everything runs through that filter whenever, whenever we’re together. Our senior pastor and executive lead team that they set the vision. We set the vision for the church and the ministry and, you know, an easy example of ah of a global decision and how it translates to the campus level is like our life group ministry, Sunday school, if you will, our life group ministry.Lane Lowery — We believe that, that biblical community is essential. And we expect every church campus to have a strategy to offer and promote promote life group ministry. You know, when a life group happens to determine, you know, it’s happened to determine at the campus level, you know, like, for example, Grovetown, all of their life groups meet off campus because they don’t have education space throughout the week.Rich Birch — Okay.Lane Lowery — So they all of their life groups are in homes during the week. Our other three campuses, we have a hybrid model where we have some groups on campus and some groups off campus. But at the end of the day, we’re going to do life group. We believe that’s a stack pole ministry, just like we’re going to have worship on Sunday morning. We are going to offer life groups. You can offer them on Sunday morning or you can offer them in in homes during the week. But we are going to offer life groups.Lane Lowery — So that’s kind of one of those big picture things that that we are that we make sure is happening on each of our campuses that we’re intentional about that. We are intentionally trying to get people from the pew into the life group.Lane Lowery — It’s a little bit more difficult when you take them from um you know being on campus versus in homes. You’ve got to be a little more intentional about it. But to me, that’s that’s one of those big picture items that that we you know we’re pretty hard, hard pressed. So we’re going to to have life groups.Rich Birch — So again, I’m I’m trying, cause I know there’s people that are listening in that, that are living in the tension of this and they’re trying to sort this out. Talk me through the kind of, in other contexts, we’ve talked about the dotted line, solid line responsibility. So like, who is the first mover? So there’s something, using your example, there’s something happening in a campus like, hey, we’re not seeing, you know, maybe enough people are experiencing that kind of life group, biblical community. That’s not happening ah well in one campus. Which team is that is going to be the team that’s going to be like, okay, we got to solve this. Is it the global leadership team or the executive team or both, or a combo of both? Or how does that, how does that work together?Lane Lowery — Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m counting on our global leads having their finger on the pulse of what’s going on with each of their areas of ministry. Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Lane Lowery — You know, singly as as well as globally. Obviously as an executive team, we, we look at statistics every Monday.Rich Birch — Yep.Lane Lowery — I’ve got our, I get, I bring a report to that meeting every Monday on attendance on, you know, worship attendance, life group attendance, all of that. So you know, we’re, we’re seeing it as well, but, but I’m counting on my global leads to, to, to, that’s why it’s important that they’re also in the mix, not just leading… Rich Birch — Right. Lane Lowery — …but they’re also in the mix with it. So I’m counting on them to, to bring to us any issues or problems they may be facing or any hurdles that they need to try to get over. And then we can speak into that and help them do that. But that’s why we can’t be all places at all times, but, but that’s why we have teams that are doing that. So that’s really, has really helped.Lane Lowery — And, and also going to this global leadership model, it’s it’s allowed us to employ more people into ministry who, like i said, aren’t just task people. They’re casting vision, said leading, and and so we’re counting on them to do that.Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. That’s good. How do you, um, kind of an adjacent issue, the global leadership team is the expectation that they’re getting out and seeing other campuses, like actually getting onto other locations on Sundays. What does that, what’s the rhythm look like on that front?Lane Lowery — Yeah, that’s fantastic. Honestly, yes, Rich, they we need them to. And what we’ve challenged our staff to do, and it’s hard because like I said, you got enough to say grace over in your own on your own campus on a Sunday morning… Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Lane Lowery — …but we’ve challenged all of our staff to try to get to another campus at least one time during the year. That’s all staff people. That’s not just the global leads. That’s, you know, that’s a you know Beth Power, our our our Augusta preschool director, I’d love for Beth to be able to put her eyes on each of our campuses at least one time during during during the year. And they’re doing that. Rich Birch — Right.Lane Lowery — And when they do, it it brings greater you know unity. And she sees ideas. Every time I go to a new one of our other campuses, I see them doing something new. It’s so cool to see. Like I said, we’ve got incredibly gifted leaders and they’re smart and they’re doing great stuff. But I would never know about it if I didn’t go get on one of their campuses. Lane Lowery — But we got to be intentional about it. It doesn’t just happen. Like I said, on Sunday morning, my home base, if you would be, is on the Augusta campus. But I’ve got to make myself say, no, I’m going to I’m going not be signed up for any new duties that this Sunday. I’m going to go to the Crossbridge campus this Sunday. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Lane Lowery — But it’s got to be an intentional. It’s like putting it on your calendar. I’ve got to do that or it won’t happen.Rich Birch — Yeah, you got to plan for it. Yeah, absolutely.Lane Lowery — So we constantly talk to our staff about doing that, especially for our global leads. I have to have them doing that.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Pivoting in a kind of a slightly different direction, but talking about obviously these same issues, um you had passed along a document that caught my attention, the eight essential practices document that really defines, talks through, you you know the behaviors really of your team. Talk us through how has this these eight essential practices, how have they helped really take this kind of thing from being like, those are nice ideas sitting on a wall somewhere… Lane Lowery — Yeah. Rich Birch — …to like actually making a difference in the way you operate. Talk us through this and we’ll put it, we’ll link to this in the show notes for folks that are listening in.Lane Lowery — Sure, sure. Well, what you said is exactly what we didn’t want to happen. This came out of a strategic leadership meeting that our executive team went on almost two years ago now. And that’s what we, you know, you’ve done this too. You know, you’re an XP.Lane Lowery — You go to a conference, something you get some great stuff and you and you bring it back. And next thing you know, it’s in a folder or it’s up on your shelf. We didn’t want to do that. So what we do, this is, so we constantly celebrate it. When we see somebody doing it, we celebrate it. Every person who is hired during the onboarding process, this is part of the onboarding process. They get a copy of this and their leader, their supervisor reviews it with them.Lane Lowery — We do biannual reviews. We have review in March and in April, excuse me, September and and in April. And our September review is literally, they are reviewed on how they are um working through the eight essential practices. Rich Birch — That’s great.Lane Lowery — Each of these are on that review and we walk through that with them and we talk through that with them. You know, so, so we, like I said, so we make sure that that that we are, it but it’s becoming a part of our DNA. It’s only two years old, but it really is now becoming our DNA.Lane Lowery — We send out a a monthly email um staff email, because again, you’ve got so much going on try to keeping trying to keep everyone informed of what’s going on, upcoming events. We celebrate birthdays and and you know staff anniversaries. And we always highlight a an eight essential, somebody who who’s done the eight essential practices.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.Lane Lowery — Plus there’s always a link in that, Rich, that if you see somebody doing that, you can click on that link and type up a little synopsis, you know sharing some information, how they saw so-and-so, you know, exhibiting one of these practices. So we’re really trying to push this in, making it part of our DNA. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love it. It’s so good. One of the ones that caught me, there’s a lot of—friends, I would encourage you to check out this document and go and do likewise. You know, don’t rip off their stuff, but come up with your your own on this. But one of the ones that caught my attention was ah connect with people.Rich Birch — So one of the misnomers about very large churches like yours is that people aren’t connected, that it’s just everybody coming to the show. That’s actually statistically not true. Churches over 2,000 have a higher percentage of people connected to small groups and in volunteering opportunities than a church under 200. What specific behaviors do you expect from your staff to keep the ministry as high touch as possibly can as a large church?Rich Birch — And how do you, how does it measure that? What’s that actually look like?Lane Lowery — Sure. Great question, man. That’s a great question. We always use the word, in order to grow bigger, we got to grow smaller. Obviously, we got to get people in life groups and in that small group community. But we place a high value on our First Impressions Team ministry. And therefore, we have paid. We have a paid person who oversees our F.I.T. ministry—First Impressions Team—on each of our campuses because it’s so important, especially on a large church.Lane Lowery — You know, we’ll have over 2000 people on the Augusta campus on Sunday morning. We want people to be seen and known and welcomed. And so we call every first time guest. Now, on typical Sunday, we’ll have 70 first time guest guests across our our four campuses, but they will get a personal phone call within that week. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.Lane Lowery — We we make sure that that it’s happening within that week. And our Connections Pastor helps facilitate that. So we have, you know, first time you know guest calls. If you’re a first time guest on a campus, we give you a gift and we we want to engage with them. We still visit people in the hospitals. Rich Birch — Love it.Lane Lowery — We place a high priority on that, Rich. We you know we’ve got hospital lists from each of our campuses and we we have a person we have you know pastors on staff who go visit folks in hospitals. We pray with people before surgeries. We visit our shut-in our shut-in members. And so we we really do place a high value on that. Lane Lowery — One of the best things is our senior pastor has a gift of shepherding. He’s a pastor shepherd. And so he exhibits that behavior as well. But it is a high value for us. And we spend time talking about it and we invest money in it.Rich Birch — That’s so good. I love that. Friends, I want to underline something. You blew over it really quick, but I want to underline something here. You talked about 70, you know, guests a week, all getting personal calls. Rich Birch — I’ve said this in other contexts. You know, we’ve talked about that kind of thing being a best practice. Like, hey, we’ve got to reach out to people. We can’t just send them an email. We got to try to connect. So friends, that’s over 3,500 calls a year that this church is doing. That’s a commitment to, I’ve had churches much smaller than your church say, there’s no way we can organize to call five people a week, 10 people a week.Rich Birch — Friends, you got to do that kind of thing. That’s what a great inspiration for us. Another one of these, again, friends, check the link below that really caught my eye was, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in a change document quite, or like a culture document like, like this.Rich Birch — You said leverage change to move the mission. It talks about the idea of how flexibility and kind of looking for what’s going to you know need to be adapted in the future is embedded in your staff culture. So what did you stop doing? What’s that look like? How are you simplifying?Lane Lowery — Yeah.Rich Birch — I love that that’s embedded right in your staff essentials. Love that.Lane Lowery — Well, I mean, something immediately came to mind is we changed our worship times, you know, um and and that’s no, I mean, that’s a…Rich Birch — It’s a big deal.Lane Lowery — …pretty big deal, but we changed our worship times on all four of our campuses. And two of our campuses, we added more time between the worship services so that they could onload and offload their campuses. Because of, so you know, praise God. I mean, it’s a winner’s problem, you know, because so many people are coming.Rich Birch — Yes.Lane Lowery — So at the end of the day, we said, you know, the we loved our our original times, but we we had to do something different to help with the with the growth situation. So we changed our worship times and you know and went through that whole process of doing that across. And we even allowed ourselves to allow different campuses to to to to set up times that’s bet that best fits them.Lane Lowery — You know i’m saying? We’re not like, well, bless God, everybody’s going to do it at this time, at that time. We’re saying, look, what what works best in your individual context? So we you know that’s what we did. We just that that was the thing that came to my mind immediately. That’s something we just did within the last year was change those worship times. And it made sense. Because we were setting away how we did it for many, many years, but it’s worked really well.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Well, I love how, you know, what you’re hearing, friends that are listening in, you’re hearing, here’s a church that took some bold steps to try to change their structure, to try to better have their structure better serve where they were as a church and looking to the future, which is fantastic. I think inspiration for lots of us as we’re thinking about those kinds of issues.Rich Birch — Yeah, I want to leverage you as a coach. Let’s say there’s a church listening in today who knows, maybe it’s an XP of a church of 1500. And they’re like, gosh, we know that maybe our structure not working. We’re at that, you know we’ve launched a couple locations. We’re trying to stretch to three or four. We’ve got vision for that.Rich Birch — What would be some first steps, maybe 30 day, 60 day, 90 day steps that you would suggest that a church leader would take based on where you’ve gone through as you’ve kind of, um you know, reoriented your structure, tried to get better on this front. Help us think about that.Lane Lowery — That’s a great question, Rich. First, I think you got to be willing to admit your structure is outdated or it’s not working. Rich Birch — That’s good.Lane Lowery — You know, change is hard and and and, you know, not a whole lot of people like change, but it’s one of our essentials. So we’ve we’ve got to be able to embrace it and be willing to to look at things differently. Lane Lowery — Second, I think your leadership um has to be willing to change. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Lane Lowery — You know, you you know, if if one guy on the staff wants to do it but no one else does. Well, that’s that’s gonna be tough. Third, you you need to identify where you currently are and where you want to go and the why behind It’s kind of like the old statement where you start with the end in mind.Lane Lowery — You know, don’t, I don’t think you need to change just for this you know to change, but if something’s not working, and and you need to you need to know the why. If this it’s not, then you got to be willing to embrace it and and work to make the change. Lane Lowery — Next, I think you got to develop a new leadership structure that’ll help you accomplish your desired outcome. Look at what you’re doing. I called a number of churches before we did this. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.Lane Lowery — I mean, I really cut and looked and I saw some things that were happening. I tell you, Family Church down in for yeah down in West Palm is doing a great job. And honestly, I modeled our ministry after what they’re doing.Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.Lane Lowery — It fits us, our context.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Lane Lowery — But they had it figured out, man. And I’m not afraid to go find out you know what other people are doing. That’s that’s winning.Rich Birch — 100%.Lane Lowery — Then seek buy-in from your key leaders and stakeholders. What we did was was once we started, you know, developing this structure, I went to those those those team leads that we had identified. And I sat down and myself and Andrew Bryan, our other executive pastor, sat down and had conversation with them. And we really shared with them the why, because guess what? We’re getting ready to add a bunch of stuff to their plate. And and and they had to I had to have their buy in before it to work. And praise the Lord, they all bought in, man. They saw their they saw the need for it. They felt the pain of not doing it.Lane Lowery — So, you know, so we we met with we took the time to have hour long meetings with all of those key stakeholders and they got and got their buy-in. And finally, we made the change. You know, we just finally had to jump and do it.Rich Birch — What was the timeline, you know, in your from like, hey, I think we need to make a change through research phase all the way through to adoption? How long did that process take?Lane Lowery — I’m embarrassed to tell you about a year. I would figure it’s something like that. Rich Birch — No, that’s not unreal.Lane Lowery — Yeah.Rich Birch — I say that because it’s like, it doesn’t it it can’t happen overnight if you’re going to do it well. Lane Lowery — Yeah. Rich Birch — You know and and you’ve got to walk people through it. That does that makes sense. So about a year, that that’s good. What part of it was the longest piece of the the puzzle?Lane Lowery — Figuring out exactly how it would work in our context. You know, I saw what Family Church was doing there. Now no they’re, I think they’re up to 15 campuses or something like that.Rich Birch — Right.Lane Lowery — But I saw, you know, and so seeing what they were doing as well as some other churches and then saying, OK, how can this really work for Warren Church? How can it really? And so really figuring that out and then presenting that to our our our senior pastor and our our global pastors. Because at the end of the day, their people are are are going to have to take on more responsibility and do some things. And so getting getting there buy-in. And the cool thing, that was a pretty quick buy-in on their part.Lane Lowery — And then implementing it. So just developing that whole structure and showing the need for it and then implementing it was about about about a year.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That that you know that doesn’t surprise me at all. I think it takes time to work it through. I love the idea of listening to other churches. Obviously, that’s actually at the core of why we started this podcast was you know we’re 800 and some odd episodes in. I really do think, man, there’s ah we should be working together as a body of Christ… Lane Lowery — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and somebody else has faced most of the problems that we face as a church. Let’s go find them, talk with them, ask those questions. Rich Birch — So this has been fantastic. As we come to kind of land today’s episode, anything else you’d love to share? Any kind of final words or encouragements that people might be listening in today?Lane Lowery — Yeah, I think, Rich, I think that the biggest thing is communication, you know, amongst our staff. Rich Birch — That’s good.Lane Lowery — You know, we we we’ve grown so much, which has been incredible. And we’ve added so many more staff members. And and I know a lot of people don’t like meetings and I don’t like to have meetings for the sake of meeting. That’s why I encourage every person if you’re gonna have a meeting, make sure you have an agenda, make sure you have a set time, but but you gotta get together. Lane Lowery — And and so I think the biggest thing that’s helped us to make for this move to be successful. And it has been successful. I’m really encouraged by that is, is we have an executive leadership meeting every Monday at two o’clock.Lane Lowery — Our global leaders meet twice a month. Our global leaders meet with their teams twice a month.Rich Birch — That’s so good.Lane Lowery — Every campus has a Tuesday at two o’clock staff meeting every week. And and that’s for some people go, my gosh, that’s that’s six meetings. But yeah, it it is. But they’re meetings with purpose. Rich Birch — Yep, that’s good. Lane Lowery — And and they’re not, you know, three and a half hour meetings there, you know, 45 minutes to an hour um with with an agenda, with action steps. When the meeting’s over, people walk out of there knowing what the next thing with what the next thing is.Rich Birch — That’s good. Lane Lowery — But being willing to do that and seeing that that it really is important because there’s so many moving parts. And if we’re not all on the same page, something’s going to break down.Rich Birch — 100%.Lane Lowery — But it it takes getting together face-to-face, you know, email when you when you need to, but those face-to-face meetings are really important.Rich Birch — Yeah, I agree. Totally. And well And even the way you’re thinking about it there, I think is critical for folks to lean in on is thinking clearly on kind of what the system of meetings is, like when is the best time to have the right meeting? I love the idea of like, hey, all are the thing like you’ve said, hey, our campus teams all have a Tuesday at two meeting. It’s like predictable. We know exactly.Rich Birch — We’ve got to make this we’ve got to make the rhythm of what we do the weekly. Hey, every weekend so it comes, whether we like it or not… Lane Lowery — Yes, sir. Rich Birch — …use that rhythm to help us push the culture forward rather than being kind of overwhelmed by it. Rich Birch — Well, Lane, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you investing time in us today. If people want to connect with you or connect with the church, where do we want to send them online?Lane Lowery — Yeah, just go to Warren.Church, and that that’s our website. And you connect with me right there my on the staff page. My email address LaneL at Warren.Church.Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Lane. Appreciate being here today, sir.Lane Lowery — Blessings to you, Rich. Thank you. 

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Dr. Chris Vaught, lead pastor of Connection Point Church (CPC) in Missouri. Under his leadership, CPC has grown from 300 people in 2011 to over 2,500 today across multiple campuses. With a passion for raising up the next generation of kingdom leaders, Chris has built a leadership development pipeline and launched the Connection Point Leadership College to multiply impact far beyond the church walls. Is your church struggling to develop leaders and sustain growth? In this episode, Chris shares how the church equips volunteers, creates leadership pathways, and empowers everyday people to lead with clarity and purpose. Raise the bar for volunteers. // At Connection Point, volunteers aren’t just an extra set of hands—they are recognized as unpaid staff. Each role comes with a written job description outlining time commitments, responsibilities, and cultural values. This kind of intentionality elevates ownership, raises expectations, and ultimately increases the sense of purpose among those serving. Volunteers rise to the challenge when treated with dignity and entrusted with meaningful responsibility. Find your Timothy. // Each staff member should develop a “Timothy”—a person they’re investing in who could step into their role if needed. This mindset of multiplication ensures continuity and creates a built-in culture of mentorship. By identifying and pouring into potential leaders, churches develop stronger teams and deeper bench strength over time. Four-Step Discipleship Path. // Chris and his team designed a clear discipleship and leadership journey: Starting Point (intro to church/DNA), Life Groups (discipleship) or Serve Teams (leadership development), Equip Workshops (10-week leadership training), and the Leadership College (10 month internship program). This structured progression gives people consistent next steps for growth. Connection Point Leadership College. // At the top of CPC’s leadership pipeline is its 10-month internship program, designed for both future church leaders and marketplace leaders. Full-time interns spend two days a week in intensive theology and leadership training, alongside hands-on departmental experience. A hybrid model allows working adults to participate online. In partnership with Evangel University, graduates earn 12 college credit hours. Marketplace and ministry. // The Leadership College trains vocational leaders, but marketplace discipleship is equally critical. Leadership competencies are meant to extend into schools, businesses, sports teams, and families. This mobilizes the congregation to carry out ministry wherever they live and work, not just inside the church. Identify leadership types. // Drawing from Larry Osborne, Chris distinguishes between “big L leaders,” who drive growth and innovation, and “shepherds,” who nurture and care for people. Both are vital to church health. Place leaders strategically based on these traits to maximize impact and sustainability. Develop a leadership pathway. // The number one gift to give your Timothy is an investment in them. Sit down with them and talk. Ask how you can pray for them and care for them. Then give a quick update of what is going on and teach them some leadership competency. Help them build confidence in their leadership and celebrate with them. To learn more about Connection Point Church and their Leadership College, visit yourcpc.church Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: SermonDone Hey friends, Sunday is coming… is your Sermon Done?Pastor, you don’t need more pressure—you need support. That’s why you need to check out SermonDone—the premium AI assistant built exclusivelyfor pastors. SermonDone helps you handle the heavy lifting: deep sermon research, series planning, and even a theologically aligned first draft—in your voice—because it actually trains on up to 15 of your past sermons. But it doesn’t stop there. With just a click, you can instantly turn your message into small group guides, discussion questions, and even kids curriculum. It’s like adding a research assistant, a writing partner, and a discipleship team—all in one. Try it free for 5 days. Head over to www.SermonDone.com and use promo code Rich20 for 20% off today! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation. I know I say that lots, but I really mean it today. We’re talking about an area that I think, frankly, lots of our churches should be leaning in on and learning more about and asking the question, how can we improve this area? Excited to have Dr. Chris Vaught with us. We got a doctor on the episode today.Rich Birch — He’s the lead pastor of Connection Point Church. This is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And if I’m counting correctly, Currently two campuses in Missouri. They have a passion for raising up the next generation of kingdom leaders and they’ve developed the Connection Point Leadership College. Super excited to have you on the show today, Chris. Thanks for being here.Chris Vaught — Hey, I’m excited, Rich. So excited to be here and get to share a little bit about what God’s doing with us. And of course, we’re constantly learning from you and all the other great hosts or leaders you have on your podcast with you and just excited and humbled to be to be able to share a little bit of our story. So thanks.Rich Birch — Well, yeah, I’m, I’m excited to have you and to have, you know, I really do think this is going to be an area. I know a lot of us are wrestling with how do we do this well? How do we develop leaders? And, but, but kind of, you know, tell us a bit of the story, kind of set the table for us. Tell us about Connection and you know, what, you know, if what, if we were to come this weekend, what would we experience? Give us a kind of a flavor of the church. Talk us through that a little bit.Chris Vaught — Yeah, so Connection Point Church, we’re located in Jackson, Missouri. We’re about two hours south of St. Louis, down toward the Boot Hill, is what the area calls it, right. Just outside of Cape Girardeau. So there’s, between Cape Girardeau and Jackson, total driving distance around the church, you know, 20 minutes. We’ll probably lean in to around 70,000 people. Jackson itself is a small town of 15,000. Rich Birch — Okay.Chris Vaught — But it’s ah it’s very it’s it’s a very fast growing area as far as young families moving in. The school systems are excellent. Sports teams, Southeast Missouri University is over in Cape Girardeau. And so um so there’s a lot of energy in the area.Chris Vaught — And so for CPC, we’ve actually kind of designed all our ministries to fit the mode of this area. I’m a firm believer we should bloom where we’re planted, right? And so how can we get into this community? And over over the ah the past 14 years, that’s been our goal. Chris Vaught — We came here in 2011 and church was running about 300 the time. We had a traditional service and a contemporary service and was just trying the church was just trying to feel that piece out and what that looked like and how to get into the community.Chris Vaught — And God just began to put the pieces together in 2012. We we changed our name to Connection Point because we wanted the people in the community to know what our church was about. I mean, there’s churches, you know, on every corner in our area. And so what set this church apart? What is our niche? And we wanted it to be about connections. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — Number one, a connected relationship with Christ. And then, relationships with people. So ah throughout the past 14 years, that’s become our emphasis, right? Getting out in the community, making those connections, and then making sure that the relationship with Christ is real and personal, not just religion.Chris Vaught — We’re a very religious area. So we wanted really to build off of the relationship aspect. So from that, okay, so by 2019, we had bought 28 acres across town, built a new campus, and we moved into this campus with about 800 people in 2019. Rich Birch — Yeah. Absolutely.Chris Vaught — So we we made a lot of transitions from 2011 to 2019, and we’d grown from 300 to about 800. Of course, we all know what happened with 2020 and and covid. That all came four months after we built this brand new campus.Rich Birch — Oh no. Perfect timing. Perfect timing.Chris Vaught — I was literally teaching the membership class. We call it Starting Point…Rich Birch — Yeah.Chris Vaught — …to get new people connected to the church, when the phone call came into the church…Rich Birch — Yes.Chris Vaught — …that the government, the governing leaders of Missouri was asking the churches to stop meeting in public because of COVID.Rich Birch — Wow. Right.Chris Vaught — And I was teaching the membership class when that night, when that came in. I mean, I was teaching and my staff was in the back waving me down, said, hey, we just got a message.Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.Chris Vaught — I was like, are you kidding me?Rich Birch — Wow. You’re giving me a little PTSD here. That’s those are those are dark days, man. That was, you know, hard to look back on.Chris Vaught — They were, man. But you know what? Our income jumped 18% over the four months that we were shut down because our our people just built this building.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — They were scared we were going to lose it.Rich Birch — Right. Wow. They leaned in nothing like adverse advert. Uh, can’t say that word adverity to draw people in. That’s amazing.Chris Vaught — Yeah, they they jumped in, man. That was incredible. Came back. We came back actually, I think Father’s Day weekend or right after Father’s Day that June to back in-person services. When we came back, we came back with 600 people.Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.Chris Vaught — So building back on that foundation of 600, what God did next was absolutely phenomenal to us. So from 2021, we’d gotten back up to 1100. From 2022 to 2024, we doubled in size.Rich Birch — Wow.Chris Vaught — And today, if you came here this weekend, there’ll be there’ll be a little over 2500 people on the campus.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. Praise God.Chris Vaught — And three services, and then we have about 30 miles away, 10 months ago, we launched our first multisite campus. Chris Vaught — And I have to tell you, Rich, about this campus. It’s 30 miles away. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — It’s in the second poorest county of our state.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.Chris Vaught — It’s in a town of 1,700 people, a county of 10,000 people. And God has blessed that little campusRich Birch — Wow.  Chris Vaught — And it’s been the largest church in the county since day one.Rich Birch — Wow.Chris Vaught — And they’re running about 350 in a town of 1700.Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s incredible.Chris Vaught — So we have this motto.Rich Birch — Praise God.Chris Vaught — We want see God do something only he can get the credit for. Rich Birch — Yep.Chris Vaught — And to be honest, right now, that’s that’s what you that’s what we’re seeing. But that’s the atmosphere you feel if you were to come on the campus this weekend. There’s just that anticipation.Rich Birch — Wow. Well, that’s incredible to hear. And, you know, it’s, it does seem like that kind of post COVID. I know it’s like, I don’t know at what point we’re going to stop saying that kind of thing, but like, it’s a big deal obviously. And, and it’s like an inflection point we all went through. And it does seem like post COVID there was like, they at one point they were talking about the K recovery that there was like, some churches have come out not doing well. They’re struggling. And there are churches like Connection Point that are accelerating. Rich Birch — And in like an odd sort of way, we look back and are like thankful for that time. We say something happened there that focused us. And we came back with, you know, even more, you know, drive and and all of that, which is amazing to hear. But I can imagine in the midst of all that kind of getting to where we’re we’re talking about today, talk, you know, developing leaders, trying to scale up. Every church has a problem finding leaders. How do i get people to actually take the ministry and run with it?Rich Birch — You’ve made some changes on this front that, you know, have really helped, I think, accelerate some of this growth. But why don’t you talk us through when what’s that look like for you in the last couple of years?Chris Vaught — Yeah, so coming in right just before COVID, we knew as we were growing, we just could sense, you know, hey, this is picking up. God’s given some good opportunities. We have to spread this out. we’re We’re in Southeast Missouri. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — This is not a hotbed for people who don’t move here to take on a position. We started thinking through and looking at the New Testament, too. You can only hire out so much, right? Because even though our church has grown fast, budget always comes up last. So you have to look at other avenues other than just, oh, I’ll hire another position. So we started looking in the congregation. We began to develop our own leadership pathway or pipeline to develop, not only volunteers, but our future staff. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — We knew we grew really fast, we need to hire from within, but we still couldn’t hire every position.Rich Birch — Yep. Right.Chris Vaught — So we started looking at our volunteers as almost as non-paid staff positions. And so creating an atmosphere of expectation of roles and responsibilities, and also the value of what they’re doing.Rich Birch — So true.Chris Vaught — That the kingdom is dependent upon all of us using our gifts and talents. And so we started this pathway. And at first it was simply a challenge to every staff member. You go find your Timothy, you go find one other person that you can invest yourself into—a volunteer—so that if on Saturday night, and here was kind of the criteria for us, if on Saturday night, something were to happen and you catch ah COVID, okay, we’re at that time period or the flu, could this ministry run the next day because of the person you have personally equipped to hold the ministry?Rich Birch — I love that clarity. Yeah, that’s so good.Chris Vaught — And we began putting those little pieces says together.Rich Birch — I love that. So sorry. That’s right. Sorry, you go ahead. I cut you off there. That’s so good.Chris Vaught — No, no, no. I was just saying that’s this so’s what we began. We began this pipeline, and that’s that was really the basic level at first. Every staff member finding that one Timothy, if you will, if you want to use that terminology, that could run that ministry if you were out.Rich Birch — I love there’s a lot of clarity there. I love that. Even just the practicality of like, hey, on Saturday night, somebody calls. Who can take this? Who can take your piece? I think that’s that’s so good. Break up a mindset for us. You talk about kind of, you know, use the phrase non-paid staff members. You’re setting a high bar for volunteers, like a high, high calling. Rich Birch — I think there’s a lot of staff in our churches who are like, oh, like I can’t ask that of a volunteer. I can’t that they’re not, they’re like paid to do other things. And like, man, they either, they are not good enough is the mindset problem. There’s no way they could do it. Or that’s way too much for me to put on them. Break that mindset up for me.Chris Vaught — Yeah, because we’ve tackled that mindset over and over and over again. Bob Russell, who who I consider to be a mentor in my life, he challenged me years ago, early on in this process. When you’re hiring staff, he would tell his staff at Southeast, if I hire you to to develop and to coach others to do, if I catch you doing, you’re fired, right? I mean, it was that kind of mindset.Rich Birch — Yes.Chris Vaught — And getting that across, first of all, to your staff. That it doesn’t have to be 100% of your ability. That our ministry, according to Ephesians 4, is to raise up the congregation to go do the ministry.Chris Vaught — And now let’s paint a bigger picture of why that’s important. If we have a church of 150 and you’ve got two staff members, you’ve actually got 150 priests of God.Rich Birch —Right. Yeah, I love it.Chris Vaught — A royal priesthood. You can do more if they all do 30% of what you can do, spread out over the multitudes, then you can give all week long. And guess what? You don’t have to ruin your marriage or your health in the process. We spread this out.Rich Birch — Love it.Chris Vaught — It’s tackling that perfect mindset. The other issues we had to tackle, and you mentioned it, is this, well, I don’t want to ask them to do this. People will rise up to the level of expectation.Rich Birch — So true.Chris Vaught — So what we began doing was, is we actually created job descriptions for every volunteer row. And in that job description, it may say, this will require you on a weekly basis, X amount of time. Here’s how you prepare. Here’s who you report to. Here’s what’s expected. And here are the values we want you to conduct yourself with. People respond well to that.Rich Birch — 100%.Chris Vaught — People need clarity. People need to know, okay, if I’m gonna serve on the usher team or the parking team or the worship team, here is the level of expectation. They know whether or not they can get into it. Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — It clears up a lot of miscommunication. It makes people feel valued and you can do it in the right way with positivity and motivation.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love the clarity of job descriptions, getting it all written down. I think is is incredible. So, you know, what that it started with this simple idea, a simple idea, hard to execute. I feel like, hey, you find a Timothy, Ephesians 4. But it’s more robust today. When you say pipeline, give me like a simple definition of that. How do you explain that to like somebody who maybe is struggling with it? Maybe a staff member, elder, leader type person. When you say, you know, leadership pipeline, what does that mean? What’s that mental model for you?Chris Vaught — Yeah, for us, we tell them we’re putting them on a pathway.Rich Birch — Okay. Love it.Chris Vaught — You’re here, but we want to put you on a pathway to help mature you and grow you and develop you and your skills that God has already given you, because that’s where you’re going to find fulfillment.Chris Vaught — That’s where you’re going to find the energy and the motivation to go long term. But this is this is a process of development.Chris Vaught — ah You know, we come to faith in Christ and we often talk about our salvation like it’s a done deal at one moment, one little prayer, one baptism, you know, now it’s done.Chris Vaught — Yes, we may be instantly brought into the family of God, but there’s a whole life of sanctification and discipleship and development.Rich Birch — That’s so true.Chris Vaught — And so painted is a picture of this exciting pathway that we’re going to be on. And these are just this is a part of your path. We call it the discipleship path. And we kind of just draw it out for our people. We show them, hey, we’re getting ready to take you on a journey. And it’s a lifelong journey.Chris Vaught — We got I got the concept from the Jewish concept of a disciple to a rabbi called a Talmud.Rich Birch — Okay.Chris Vaught — And one of the cool definitions that learned years ago on what is a Talmud, one of the definitions is a Talmud is the shadow of their rabbi.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — In the in the Middle East, they would actually say a disciple knew they had arrived when they were mistaken for their rabbi out in the community.Rich Birch — Oh, I love that. That’s so good.Chris Vaught — So think about we are to become like Christ. We should be mistaken for his character, his heart, his attitude, right? But in a much smaller sense, part of that process comes into how we operate in and through the church, how we use our gift sets. The church’s responsibility is to help put them on a path…Rich Birch — Yep.Chris Vaught — …to begin to develop what that shadow looks like.Rich Birch — How do you, so I love that. It’s a very vivid metaphor. What does that look like practically going from metaphor to like, okay, that sounds like the kind of thing I want to be a part of. I want to be a shadow. I want to I want to you know grow. How are you structuring that and and doing that at scale? I think it makes sense in the kind of rabbi, you know, a follower kind of thing. But you know, you’re you’re talking about, you guys have grown by hundreds, thousands of people in the last few years. How have you been able to, to make those two things work? A relational, you know, discipleship experience that is, that is deep, but it has some sort of structure to it. What’s that look like?Chris Vaught — Yeah, so so the structure is going to be as people are coming into church, are new here, are next steps, so we’re always pushing them to that very first next step, which for us is Starting Point. Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Chris Vaught — There they’re learning the DNA and we actually talk this language to them at that introductory night of us explaining, here’s who we are at CPC, here’s our DNA. And we give them that next step. What does that look like?Chris Vaught — For one, it’s maybe just joining a serve team. Now, not everybody’s ready to join something on a Sunday, but that’s a starting point. And we begin to teach these leadership competencies and explain to them, hey, there’s a path that we want to put you on.Chris Vaught — Then included with that serve team is something we call Equip Workshops.Rich Birch — Okay.Chris Vaught — These are about 10 week workshops. We do two to three times a year where people we market it to the congregation, to our serve teams. They sign up. We’re going to teach you about your circle of influence. How Replicate gave us this concept, um Replicate Ministries, and it’s helping them find their kingdom circle, right? Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — Because everyone has a circle of in influence. And what does that look like as you use your gift sets to serve?Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — And so our goal of then is to not only get involved in Sunday Sunday morning or so or weekly serving opportunities here, we want it to stretch beyond. If we’re going to reach our community, I need them and taking the same competencies onto their job. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — I need them to take the same competencies to the traveling sports teams, right, wherever they’re living their life out. Then the next step we introduce them to is our leadership college, Connection Point Leadership College, CPLC. And that’s a 10-month internship program where it is it is straight on leadership, skill, competencies. We tell them, we’re going to teach you as if you’re going into vocational ministry. But we invite people who don’t feel a call to vocational ministry because we tell them, we need disciples living out their gift sets in the secular world, not just inside the church.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — And so there’s two ways of coming into that college, which is one step of it. There is the on-campus intern, where you’re actually taking classes and practical ministry, shadowing, being involved in the ministries here on campus.Chris Vaught — But then we have a hybrid edition, which is online. And that’s for those who have to work a full-time job, can’t come on the campus, and maybe they’re wanting to learn the biblical leadership competencies, and apply them to the secular world.Rich Birch — That’s fascinating. I want to come back to the leadership college in a minute. I want to put a bookmark in that, but taking a step back to the serve team and Equip Workshops, talk to me about, like, I think some churches would come to the moment of, like, when they’re trying to get people in connection and connected and into some sort of discipleship relationship, and they would actually push more towards groups, you know, rather than teams.Rich Birch — Now, I’m not trying to I’m not trying to pick a fight here. Obviously, we want people to do both, but talk to me about that decision around, hey, we’re going to kind of go the team’s route and then add Equip. Because I think it’s a really interesting model of like, then add these workshops, which kind of drives some of that depth discipleship stuff to people who are serving, I’m assuming, but talk us through that.Chris Vaught — Yeah, so just for clarification, we do we do do life groups as well. But if it’s more for leadership development, we push them toward the serving.Rich Birch — Yep, that makes sense. Yep, that makes sense.Chris Vaught — Kind of like two different pockets, if you will. Rich Birch — Yep.Chris Vaught — And some are going to switch over to both.Rich Birch — Yep.Chris Vaught — Some will start and serve and eventually lead into a life group.Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense.Chris Vaught — Others may start a life group and come over to a serve team. Life groups are going to be a lot more discipleship based while serve teams is discipleship with an emphasis on leadership competencies. Just because the faster we grow, the more we have to make sure we’re developing leaders not just attenders if you will. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — And discipleship carrying on that serving aspect. So if you looked at if if I drew my pathway out for you on this journey of course you go to Starting Point the next one is either join a life group or a serve team. Rich Birch — Yeah, OK. Yep. Chris Vaught — But then if you go into the serve team we’re going to really push you to these kingdom circles and circles of influence and then to the leadership college, if that makes sense.Rich Birch — That makes total sense. Yep. That makes total sense. Well, let’s talk about the leadership college. Like give me a bit more kind of framework for what that looks like. Is it literally like full-time internship, 10 months, 40 hours a week? Talk us through that.Chris Vaught — Yeah. So um first of all, we don’t make it easy to attend our leadership college.Rich Birch — I love it. We’re not going to make it easy. We’re not putting the cookies on the bottom shelf. Love it.Chris Vaught — We didn’t. And we say it up front.Rich Birch — Yeah.Chris Vaught — So if you go into this, you’re going into it with intentionality.Chris Vaught — One of the things I teach from day one is I can teach you competencies. I can’t teach you initiative. And so from the get go, this has got to be something you’re after, you’re coming after, right?Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — Because this is the highest level of our training. So it is a full time intern is 10 months. You’re serving every weekend. You for the first six weeks of the internship, you get to go through a discovery phase where we’ll put you in every ministry department for a certain amount of time, let you get exposure. We believe you need exposure. After that, you got to pick a direction, right? Chris Vaught — And so from then on, you’re here every Tuesday and Wednesday all day. Rich Birch — Wow. Chris Vaught — And that those are very in-depth biblical, theological, as well as practical leadership courses. Every morning up until lunchtime in the afternoons, you’re in the department in which you’ve chosen. That’s the avenue that I’m feeling led toward. And you’re going to be working under the leadership of that department. You’re going to learn the skills of that department. You’re going to go to their meetings, their departmental meetings. You’re going involved in activities. And that’s probably where you’re going to serve on the weekends. Rich Birch — Right. Chris Vaught — Or through the midweek, depending on what it is.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — So now one of the beautiful things we partner with Evangel University outside of Spring… or in Springfield, Missouri. Rich Birch — Yep. They actually looked at our program and said, anyone that wants to come to school here or take online classes, if they go through that leadership program, we’ll give them 12 credit hours of of college.Rich Birch — Oh, wow.Chris Vaught — So there’s a bit there for the ones who are looking for more formal education. And we have students who will do that. We have many that just want the leadership competencies here.Chris Vaught — Some of them are going into vocational ministry and others, as I said, they’re they’re wanting to take it into the secular world. And part of our goal throughout the year is we tell them, we’re not here to convince you what your calling is. We’re here to equip you for whatever God calls you to do.Rich Birch — Wow. Give me a profile of the a kind of person or a couple, maybe there’s a couple different profiles of people that take that step into the the leadership college. Like is, is that, yeah, like give me a sense of some of the characters that you find in that, ah in that experience, if you know what I mean.Chris Vaught — You know, this is year number four for us. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — And it’s so interesting that it’s grown every year.Rich Birch — Yeah.Chris Vaught — Oh, and by the way, one thing I left out, I told you we don’t make it easy. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — They pay us $500 to join.Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Cover the cost. Or not really. Chris Vaught — So they don’t get paid for this internship and they get all that back and resources.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.Chris Vaught — It’s just a commitment, right?Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.Chris Vaught — But last year, it was primarily high school graduates or college age kids that were in our internship program. And we don’t know what the Holy Spirit’s doing. Chris Vaught — This year, we doubled enrollment. And half of the group, more than half of the group are non-traditional. They’re like, we have a husband and a wife who are both working side jobs on Mondays and Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays, so they can do the internship together because they’re both seeking what God’s will is for them. So they’re taking a financial hit. And they’ve got children. I mean, they’re having to get childcare so they can be here all day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.Chris Vaught — We’ve got others that are in their mid thirties up into their forties coming to the school. So we’re really watching God do something pretty unique because the the idea, this concept of growing and stretching… Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — …is now reaching beyond just the college age. and we’re And we’re getting into really all age groups. The oldest intern right now that we’ve had was in 56.Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s incredible.Chris Vaught — And he was so phenomenal, we hired him on staff after he graduated.Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, and we’ve seen this in other, you know, echoes of this in other prevailing churches like Connection Point where um there’s like a high bar and there’s like, and we’re really calling people to say, hey, why don’t you come join the mission? And people respond to that. And, you know, the ripple out impact of that is huge. It’s almost like, you know, there are churches that are struggling and they’re just trying to like, well, we’re just going to make it as easy as we possibly can.Rich Birch — And there’s something about that that actually repels people, ironically. Or maybe maybe attracts the right people or the wrong people, you know. And this idea of like, hey, we’re going to do something big for you. Like, it’s a lot of work what you’re talking about, pulling that internship together. But it also it’s ah it’s requires a lot from people. That’s ah you know that’s that’s incredible. Rich Birch — How do you identify like and call out…I get that it’s like, you know, people have to make that choice, but what are, what are, what are you doing? What’s your team doing to identify leaders to kind of help them take steps next in their, you know, in their leadership development, or is it mostly just kind of driven by them? They’re raising their hand.Chris Vaught — No, I mean, actually you apply for it. You have to go through an interview process.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — And and once we interview you then we kind of help navigate. Yeah, we believe you have the commitment level. You have the spiritual maturity for what you’re about to come into. You know we’re looking at your personality skills. You’re, you know, doing an assessment. And just to make sure, because it is a a commitment, right? And you don’t want to start, not finish. And and we will make sure you got the character for this. Rich Birch — Yep. Chris Vaught — Because when you come into a leadership school like this, everyone know, you know, everyone knows that’s one of our interns.Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Chris Vaught — The your personal disciplines, your character, competencies has to be at a certain level. So we even start there with an interview process. Then beyond that, once you’re in the system, and we learned this from Larry Osborne, there are two primary sides of leadership in every person, right? You’re either going either going to be that what he calls a big L leader, that one that lead the charge, and you know they’re going to drive a ministry or an avenue. Or you’ve got the shepherd.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — And both are needed in the church. And one’s not better than the other, right?Chris Vaught — Your big L leader, they’re the ones that make things grow. There are two criterias to look for for that big L leader. One, can they make things grow? Everything they touch takes off. Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — You know, they’re able to grow it. The second piece is, well, I love how Larry Osborne says, it says it’s the Tom Sawyer effect. And you know the story of Tom Sawyer. Can they can they make people paint the fence for them and thank them for it when they’re done? Rich Birch — I love that. That’s great.Chris Vaught — Can they motivate the people around them? Well, if they are, and we recognize that kind of skill, that then gives us direction on how to craft their experience.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — Where we want to emphasize them to be able really maximize those skills to be a big L leader. They’re going to lead a ministry. They may be potential future staff. They may go in a secular world, but they could really make an impact. They’re an entrepreneur, right? Chris Vaught — The shepherd, if we see that they have the caring gifts, that they’re not the big old leader. They need a system. They need the structure. They’re not going to create themselves, but everybody wants to be around them. They have a heart. They have a care. They’re loving. They’re prayerful. They’re very spiritually deep. That helps us be able to craft their experience in the leadership college.Chris Vaught — Because again, it’s not about us getting them to do something. It’s them to learn the competencies to be the best of what God has called them to be. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Chris Vaught — And so we kind of kind of keep our eye on that and watch those metrics. Some of that comes through how they respond in classes. It’s how they serve on the weekends. It’s just what a lot of observation pieces as they go through the process.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool. So kind of related issue, but more, maybe less of the this the art part part of it, more the science. When you think of metrics or mile markers around this whole area, what are some of the the numbers that kind of come to the fore? Things that you think about like, oh, we got to make sure we’re hitting this. If it’s, this feels, or I know this is healthy when that’s happening. Do you have kind of metrics that you think about on this front?Chris Vaught — Mainly for us, it’s as as far as any kind of metrics is we’re watching as if the people are taking ownership and are they self-recruiting others, right?Rich Birch — Sure. Okay.Chris Vaught — If I have a ministry that’s self-recruiting, constantly growing, like for us, ever since COVID, our media outreach department exploded. We went from an average of 800 unique views on the weekend to now over 6,000 on the weekend.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Wow. Yep.Chris Vaught — So all of sudden we’re like, okay, we’ve really got to keep our eye on the digital marketing media aspect of our church, right? So we judge health by it. How big has that volunteer base grown? Are they replicating, right? I think right now we have 50 volunteers in that ministry. Rich Birch — Wow. Chris Vaught — Where they, with a full-time staff of three people, four people, four people. And so, you know, I can’t hire 50 people, but I got to have that kind of a base.Rich Birch — Right. No.Chris Vaught — Our kids ministry, you know, our church age dropped dramatically after COVID. It’s all these young families. So our kids numbers are through the roof. So can we, so what’s our volunteer ratio look like there? And are they replicating? Some of the metrics we look at is the volunteer ministry large enough that people can serve one and sit and worship in another. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — If the same volunteers are working every single weekend and they have no time to come and get fed themselves. Rich Birch — That’s a problem. Chris Vaught — And and even the ministry department leads, if they can never break away and come into a worship service and get fed themselves, that ministry is not healthy.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.Chris Vaught — They need more volunteers and the department heads need to be able to train their team lead who’s underneath them well enough to run a ministry for one service once a month to come into a worship service and get fed themselves. You know that’s just an example.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. So good. Well, this is a great conversation. There’s a ton we could talk about here, but just as we’re we’re wrapping up, if you were to coach, a maybe there’s a leader that’s listening in today and they’re like, gosh, like I know we’re at the place where we got to take that first step. We got to take the, hey, who’s your Timothy?Rich Birch — What would be some some advice you’d love to give? Maybe it’s like a pothole to avoid or like, here’s something, you know, that kind of early advice I would give you to to get as you’re getting the ball rolling on, you know, on trying to develop a leadership pathway.Chris Vaught — Yeah, straight up early on, whoever your staff is or your key volunteer leaders are, when they find that Timothy, tell them the number one gift they can give that person is time investment.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — Sit down with them, spend some time with them, and then lead into a competency. And it could be 15 minutes. We do this with our volunteer bases on the weekends. So they gather together for a huddle 15 minutes before their serving opportunity actually begins. And there’s only three pieces that you have to talk about there. One is caring for them. Hey, how can I pray for you? How can I care for you? Because remember, volunteers, it’s not just a job, though you give them responsibility to job, but you’re also a congregation. You’ve got pastoral care. Hey, how can I pray for you? Chris Vaught — Then a quick update of here’s some things going on. Just keep communication going. Here’s what we need to know for the day. But that third piece that I’m so big on, and you can do this sitting around coffee. It doesn’t have to be a Sunday morning huddle. It could be as you’re building the program. Just but then teach them some leadership competency. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — You don’t have to preach a sermon. It’s just bring that little competency to help them develop and build some confidence. So if you came to one of our huddles like this weekend for 15 minutes, they’re going check up on you. They’re going to share a win. Hey, here’s what God’s doing. Celebrate with them. They’re going to give them a quick little update.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — And then they’re going to share something like, hey, this weekend, our whole theme is we want to create hospitality. So whatever we do today, let’s just all be hospitable.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — And they’ll talk just quick minute about that, right? So as you’re building your teams, as you’re building your pipeline, that’s really all you’re going to want to replicate. Then however large you get, you just keep adding layers to it. But it’s really the same simple structure.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. That’s so clear. This has been great conversation, Chris. I really, really appreciate it. I feel like there’s a bunch more, even just there around huddles, we could jump in on maybe a future podcast. We’ll have you back on or your team back on to talk through ah that piece of the puzzle. Because I think there’s even that alone. I think that’s the thing so many of us, we’ve got to do a better job on or just got to do a better job on.Rich Birch — Well, Chris, I really appreciate you being here today. As we land the plane, if people want to get in touch with you or get in touch with the church, kind of track with your story, where do we want to send them online?Chris Vaught — Yeah, you want to send them to yourcpc.church. You can send a message to us just simply by email and info@yourcpc.church. course, you can catch us with that same handle on any social media site, and you can send some direct messages straight our way.Rich Birch — Love it. It’s great. Thanks so much. Appreciate you being here today, sir.Chris Vaught — Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thank you so much for the honor.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Ashley Lentz from Lutheran Church of Hope in Iowa. As the Connections Pastor at one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in the country, Ashley brings a wealth of practical insight into creating personal connection in a growing church. Struggling to connect new guests and help them take meaningful next steps at your church? Tune in as Ashley unpacks how her team prioritizes clarity, simplifies the path forward, and builds systems that still feel personal—without overwhelming people or staff. Offer more than one pathway. // At a large church like Lutheran Church of Hope, it’s easy for people to feel lost in the crowd. A website can’t be the only entry point. While it’s useful, relying solely on digital tools can confuse guests. People often want a conversation—not a scavenger hunt. Churches must create multiple, intuitive connection points beyond online portals. Four paths of the Hope Circle. // Lutheran Church of Hope staff uses an internal tool called The Hope Circle to identify where people are in their discipleship journey and help them take next steps. The circle starts with Seekers, for people who are exploring what Jesus is about. Next are Believers, identified as people who have heard the message and are into Jesus, but don’t know what to believe or do next. Followers have been transformed by Christ and wanting to actively live out their faith. Finally is a Servant Leader – a mature believer leading and serving others through their transformed life. Start with Alpha. // Ashley recommends Alpha as a go-to starting point for anyone in the Seeker, Believer, or Follower stage. For Seekers, it provides the foundational answers they need. Believers benefit from a supportive community. And Followers get a refresher and grow more confident in sharing their faith. This simple, effective course has proven to be a unifying tool across spiritual stages. Personal relationships at scale. // Despite its size, Hope prioritizes personal touches. The “New to Hope” area is centrally located, staffed with volunteers in bright orange vests, and offers a free t-shirt to first-time guests. Visitors fill out a connection card (paper or digital) and are invited into further conversation, tours, or ministry introductions. Automated systems send follow-up emails and texts, but staff personally respond to replies to ensure people feel seen and valued. The power of serving. // Serving is one of Hope’s primary pathways to connection. Volunteer opportunities—such as hospitality, communion, or the café—allow people to engage while they’re already attending worship. Serving builds natural community, makes a large church feel smaller, and creates discipleship opportunities in the context of teams. Ashley notes that service can be a more accessible first step than joining a class, particularly for busy families. Clarity is kindness. // One of Ashley’s key takeaways is that clarity is crucial. Large churches can easily overwhelm people with too many programs. Recently, Hope streamlined its discipleship offerings, moving some content online and focusing attention on core pathways like Alpha, Foundations, and Tuesday night programming. By simplifying options and communicating them consistently, Hope has made it easier for people to know what to do next. Metrics and insights. // Ashley has observed consistent patterns: from sign-up to actual attendance, about 20% drop off; and from week one to week four of a class, roughly 40% of participants fall away. To address this, Hope emphasizes shorter class cycles and practical on-ramps. These metrics help them refine offerings while staying realistic about engagement. Learn more about Lutheran Church of Hope at www.lutheranchurchofhope.org and email Ashley. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe Do you feel like your church’s or school’s facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at Risepointe.com and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I’m super excited for today. We’ve got a church that I’ve been tracking for quite a while and excited to have a leader from there on. But then I know this is an area that so many of our churches are struggling with, and it’s kind of like an area that you might not be aware that you’re struggling with. And so I’m hoping that we open up a discussion today to help that will move you to really make some changes that will ultimately see your church help people get connected to it. Rich Birch — Today we have ah Ashley Lentz. She’s the Connections Pastor at Lutheran Church of Hope. It’s one of the fastest growing in the churches yeah churches in the country with, I believe, seven campuses, if I’m counting correctly, in Central Iowa.Ashley Lentz — Yeah.Rich Birch — Iowa. Sorry, it’s early in the morning, getting my lips going here, friends, ah multiple smaller local sites and opportunities to join online. They actively partner with and support other churches through their Hope Network. Super excited to have you on the episode today, Ashley. Welcome.Ashley Lentz — Thanks, Rich. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here and help in whatever ways I can and just share, share what we learn.Rich Birch — Nice. Why don’t, for people that don’t know, kind of paint a picture of Hope today, kind of tell us a little bit about the church and your role as a Connections Pastor.Ashley Lentz — Yes, you described Hope beautifully. We are located in the metro Des Moines area of Iowa. Rich Birch — Love it.Ashley Lentz — So Des Moines is our capital for those who don’t know. And like you said, we have seven campuses and a whole bunch of local sites, is what we call them, and partner with churches all around the country to simply help them do ministry and meet them where they are. Ashley Lentz — And so ah Hope is, we would call it a multi-site megachurch, right? But it very much feels like I’ve grown up in the Hope, what I would call the Hope system, the Hope Network. I did our middle school and high school ministry here and came back to be a pastor here. Ashley Lentz — And so um I think we do a really beautiful job of reaching people where they are and inviting them into ah something deeper, but also meeting them where they are and saying like, if this is where you’re at, like we will, we will meet you there and walk alongside you and wherever you are in your faith journeys.Ashley Lentz — So my role as a Connections Pastor is just that. I get to meet people where they are and help them navigate ah what is next in their faith journey. We worship at our campus, the larger campus here in West Des Moines. We worship about 7,000 in person weekly. And my favorite way to meet them as a Connections Pastor is truly to have one-on-one conversations.Ashley Lentz — And sometimes that happens you know during weekend worship. Sometimes it happens during the week at other things. um But that’s what I love doing is getting to know people, helping them find the next best step for them in their faith journey and making a really large church seem intimate, seem like a ah community that is for them and finding a place where they can really feel like they belong… Rich Birch — So good. Ashley Lentz — …not just fit in, but where they can belong here.Rich Birch — Well, for friends that have been tracking with for with me for a while, they know this is like a passion area for me. I’m super excited to learn from you, clearly an expert in the field. And you mentioned it, you know, one of your campuses is 7,000, multiple thousands in the other locations.Rich Birch — It’s a large church by all, you know, all, you know, metrics, probably the top 0.2 to 5% of churches in the country. ah And, you know, when a church like yours is attracting thousands of people coming through the doors every single weekend, you know, helping them take the next step can be difficult. And one of the misnomers that I, that bug me is I know that a church like yours is very good at connecting people. That is a part of the reason why you’re the size you are. But there are challenges that you run into trying to connect with people at scale. I love that you started with, I love to connect one-on-one. I’m like, how do you do that at a so church that size. But what are some of those challenges? Talk me through why is it so hard at scale to connect with people?Ashley Lentz — For sure. We do not do this perfectly. I’ll be the first to say that. And it’s important that anybody listening knows we do not have this completely figured out.Rich Birch — Sure.Ashley Lentz — I will just tell you where we’ve been and some of the challenges we faced and what we do in the midst of those challenges to just navigate them as best we can, because we’re still figuring things out too.Ashley Lentz — One of the biggest struggles that we have is communicating effectively. When you have the the size of staff that we have, and by no means do we have a massive staff. I think many of our staff, people would tell you we’re probably understaffed. We could always use more. But we have so much programming. A lot of it is volunteer led. I help lead our women’s ministry and I have women facilitators leading those classes.Ashley Lentz — But we have things happening every day of the week in every ministry area. So it is hard to effectively communicate where I want people to plug in. Because it’s easy to say, hey, check out the website. Everything is listed on there. But really quickly, people get overwhelmed by that. Rich Birch — So true.Ashley Lentz — And that’s one of, again, that’s one of the things that love is I tell people, come talk to me. Some people love that. They’re like, yeah, would love to sit in chat. And other people are like, no, let me just navigate the website and figure it out on my own.Rich Birch — Love it. Yes.Ashley Lentz — But when you have so many things, they’re all great. It is hard to effectively communicate. Here’s what we find most important. Here’s what we would say. Start here and then do these kinds of things.Ashley Lentz — Prescribing a discipleship journey is really hard. And probably not effective because everybody’s on a different journey. Rich Birch — Right. Ashley Lentz — So we do like to offer, like we just have different offerings and I get to help people navigate season of faith, season of life, and what might meet them where they are right now and be an effective discipleship pathway for them. Yep.Rich Birch — Okay. I’d love to unpack that a little bit more. You talk about, and there’s a great description. We’ve got lots of different things going on, lots of different ministries, ah and but we’ve got to simplify it. You didn’t quite least say that. You said, we got to start here. We have to you know make it kind of really obvious or have pathways. What does that look like in practice? Help us understand how you’re doing that. Ashley Lentz — Yes. One of the tools that we use, and it is very much an internal tool is what I would call it. We call it the Hope circle. And it is what I would call a discipleship tool or discipleship pathway. And if I were to say that to our congregation members, they would really have no idea what I’m talking about. It is very internal. But it’s helpful to identify where people are on this Hope circle. Ashley Lentz — And so the circle starts with being a seeker. At a church our size, we have people every weekend who have zero idea what the church thing is about. They’ve maybe never been introduced to Jesus. Someone just invited them to church. They maybe knew they needed church and walked in the door, but have no idea what to expect. And so they are seeking something that has been missing in their life. And so ah helping people identify if that’s where you are, here are kind of the very preliminary places that would be helpful for you to start plugging in.Ashley Lentz — As we move around that circle, we get to believers, people who are like, okay, I’m bought into the Jesus thing. I’ve heard the message. I believe. Now what? Like, I I want to understand this better. Like, I believe in Jesus. I believe in God. Like, I’m here for it, but I don’t really know the things. So where do we go from there and how do we help them then move into like being super excited about Jesus? Like, I don’t just believe like I’m on fire for Jesus. I’m a follower, right? Like I am, I am all in my life looks different. I’ve been transformed. How do I follow him? And then how do you serve people in that arena too? Because that’s going to look different than somebody who’s come in as a seeker looking for Jesus and somebody who’s on fire for Jesus. So how do we move them around the circle?Ashley Lentz — So it’s seeker, believer, follower, and then kind of the last part of our circle is servant leader. How do we move them then into serving and letting the transformed nature of the gospel pour out of them into the world around us?Ashley Lentz — And I would say our secret sauce here at Hope is we love volunteers. Like as we move people around the Hope circle, I and my colleagues, we want to equip people to lead. Rich Birch — That’s good.Ashley Lentz — So being a servant leader inside these walls, but also outside these walls is really like, that’s what’s attractional to people is is letting them know like you’re on fire for Jesus. Go tell everyone about it and serve in the arena you find yourself in, whether in the church or outside the church.Rich Birch — That’s good. So how do you, how do you help people self-identify that? What’s that practically look like for folks that are at the church? How do you help them? And um folks, we’ll, we’ll put the Hope circle in the show notes. You can look down there. You can see it there if you’re, if you want to see that as a tool to kind of visualize that. But how do you help folks self-identify where they might be in that process? Or is it purely, they got to talk to somebody?Ashley Lentz — No, it’s not. I would love to say, please just talk to me, but you’re right.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes.Ashley Lentz — With 7,000 people worshiping on a weekend, there’s no way.Rich Birch — Yeah, I can’t do that.Ashley Lentz — Even if if everybody on staff talked to some people. We, I’ll talk about this as kind of like on ramps or pathways.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.Ashley Lentz — One of the best places for people to start as a seeker, a believer, even a follower is the Alpha course. I’m sure you’re familiar with Alpha course.Rich Birch — Absolutely. Yep.Ashley Lentz — We love Alpha here at Hope. And Alpha does such a beautiful job of if you are a seeker, it gives you the foundation that you need to step into what’s next.Ashley Lentz — If you’re a believer, it’s going to connect you to community, which is a really important part of discipleship. If you are a follower, like you are bought in and you are learning the things, we tell people Alpha is a great place to brush up on the basics, but also get plugged into community. So would say one of our biggest on-ramps is Alpha. Ashley Lentz — And then from there, this is kind of like my bread and butter in my role, is taking people as they finish Alpha and helping them self-identify what’s next. Coming out of Alpha, am I ready to serve? Is that like, am I on fire? Am I ready to come back and host Alpha or step into a different service opportunity? Do I need more basics? Did Alpha spark in me like, oh, maybe I don’t know as much about the Bible as I want to. Do we direct them back to a Bible class and learning like the foundations of a Bible.Ashley Lentz — This fall, we’re trying something new called Foundations. it’s a three-week class. The first class is, what’s my Bible? How do I read it? Second class is, how do I pray? And the third class is identity, like what God says about you. Rich Birch — That’s cool.Ashley Lentz — And so there’ll be people who come out of Alpha, yeah, who we say, maybe Foundations is next for you. Like, let’s Let’s really get some of these foundational pieces put together. up We also have a ton of just general classes, right? Like if you want to study ah spiritual disciplines, we have a class for that.Ashley Lentz — If you want to really dive into the narrative of scripture from Genesis to Revelation, what is the story that’s being told? We have a class for that. We also outsource resources. So I’m always always directing people to BibleProject.com and other things that do a really good job of walking people through some of these basic parts of discipleship, Bible knowledge, prayer knowledge. How, how do I get plugged into community? These are the questions we continue to ask. Ashley Lentz — And people can self-identify. I like, I do like directing people to the website. If you’re excited about community or getting plugged into a small group, check the website. There’s a page for small groups. Like we will help you with that.Rich Birch — Right.Ashley Lentz — By far and away, the best way we have found to get people connected is personal invites and personal relationships. I can’t personally do all of that. It is our congregation that does that for one another. And that is super beautiful to equip people who are on fire for Jesus to invite their neighbors and their colleagues, and to help them to share their story and say, here was here’s what my discipleship journey looked like. And I’d invite you to check out Alpha or this class or come join our small group and see what it’s like.Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, I love that you’re, you know, stressing that. I think there might be people that are surprised who are listening who would say, you know, here’s a person talking, you know, a large church, really stressing personal relationships. Unpack that a little more a little bit more. How do you practically cultivate those personal touches at scale? How do you encourage that beyond, you know, just, you know, you doing that or a small group of people doing that?Ashley Lentz — Yes, ah we build teams. And everything that we do, we build volunteer teams. So if you walk into Hope on a weekend, and this is true of any of our campuses, there will be a New to Hope area with volunteers who are clearly marked. They they wear bright orange vests here at our West Des Moines campus. You can’t miss them. The vests say: “New to Hope?” And we clearly tell people, if you are new, we love to connect with you. Ashley Lentz — They can fill out an online form. They can fill out a paper form. They can have a conversation with a real person. But those people every week are being followed up with personally um by staff members, by volunteers. They are being checked in with because we so deeply believe in personal relationship and personal invitation. Ashley Lentz — Same thing with people who are just getting involved.They might not be new to Hope, but the fall is a great example of getting connected, right? Like rally weekend is coming up for us this weekend where all of our fall programming kick kicks off. So we have a ministry fair where we will have tables in our atrium and invite people to stop by the tables and really get to know the leaders leading those ministries or the volunteers involved in those ministries and ask your questions. Rich Birch — That’s great.Ashley Lentz — Some people, again, some people won’t stop, right? Like they like, I don’t want to have a conversation with anybody, which is why a website’s a great tool. We have clearly marked women’s ministry, men’s ministry, general adult classes, everything’s on there. But if you are excited about what’s next and making a large place feel small, the best way you’re going to do that is by a conversation with someone or an email correspondence.Rich Birch — Love it.Ashley Lentz — But yeah, really having pointed conversations about where you’re at in your faith life and what you’re looking for.Rich Birch — Okay, let’s deep dive on that. You talked about some stuff there that I’d love to double click on and hear a little bit more about.Ashley Lentz — Yeah.Rich Birch — So talk us through, if I’m if I’m a guest that comes, um talk us through, I arrive at the New to Hope, I see. So like, give me a sense of like, how many people are there? What happens when I arrive there? What are they going to ask me to do? How do they get me connected? I’m assuming I fill something out. Maybe I get a gift. Then what happens? You know, kind of talk us through what the the experience of someone who chooses to self-identify, you know, through the New to Hope experience, what’s that look like?Ashley Lentz — Yes. Yes, I love this. Our New to Hope area is in the middle of our atrium. So we have our building is kind of, the worship center is obviously like big and there’s it’s kind of the main part of our building. But the atrium is very clearly when you come into the building, you are in the atrium. And so it’s a big old signs, bright orange. When you see that, you will see very friendly volunteer faces – usually like three or four and probably a couple of staff people lingering in that general area every single weekend, every single service. Ashley Lentz — And it’s really funny, Rich, just this weekend, I was walking around the building and I saw a family. And it was a young adult woman and her parents. And they walk into our building. And you can tell when people are new because they just kind of stop and look around.Rich Birch — A hundred percent. A hundred percent.Ashley Lentz — Like they don’t know where to go, right?Rich Birch — Yes.Ashley Lentz — So I walked up to them and I said, hey, can I help you find anything? And they’re like, we’re brand new. We have no idea what we’re doing. And I so I introduced myself. And I said, here here’s where we’ll start. We’ll start at New to Hope. And so I had her fill out a connection card. We have paper connection cards, like a postcard. And it is name, address, email address, phone number. People can follow it as much or as little as they want. But I tell them, if you want us to get in touch with you, I need you to write your email and I need you to write it legibly. Rich Birch — Love it.Ashley Lentz — And then they can opt in for our weekly newsletter, right? Like that’s and then there’s a blank space that says, what are you interested in? What do you want more information about? Some people fill that out, some people don’t. But that’s, they can fill it out virtually. We have little tablets at the New to Hope or they can fill it out on paper. And then what we do, we give them a free Hope t-shirt and we tell people in announcements, like if you’re new, stop by the New to Hope area. We’d love to gift to you with a free Hope t-shirt as a way of saying thanks for being our guest today. Ashley Lentz — So they get a free Hope t-shirt. And then I always ask them, can I help you find anything? Would you like a tour of the building? Like, I personally walked around this family this weekend. She was a young adult woman who had just moved here. And she said, like, where would I do young adult things? You have young adult ministry. And I said, yes. And I said, it’s not in the worship center. It’s in this, it’s in our chapel. Let me walk you around and orient you. Rich Birch — So good.Ashley Lentz — So when you get here on a Thursday night for, for that, then you know where you’re going.Ashley Lentz — That’s what our volunteers will do for people too. We, I want people to feel seen, right? As It’s a large church. You don’t want people to walk in without being seen or walk out without being seen.Rich Birch — So good.Ashley Lentz — So yes, we I say hi to everybody that crosses my path. And some people purposely put their head down and don’t want to be said hi to. And it’s like, you’re in church…Rich Birch — That’s okay. Yeah.Ashley Lentz — …you don’t have to say hi back.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.Ashley Lentz — But if you cross my path on a Sunday morning, I’m going to say hi to you because I’m truly glad that people are here and I want them to know that.Rich Birch — Yes. Okay, that’s that’s fantastic. When So let’s say I come, I fill out, let’s say i’m I seem eager, maybe like that family, I fill out all the information. I give you my my mailing address, my email, my phone number, the whole thing. What then happens from there? What’s my experience? Do I get certain amount of follow-up? So what all happens at that point?Ashley Lentz — Yes, our we have a team that that does follow-ups.Rich Birch — Yep.Ashley Lentz — So those all go, we have, I would call it a track. They’re going to get an email right away. If they fill out a card on Sunday, they’re going to get an email on Monday that says, thanks for stopping by New to Hope.Rich Birch — Love it.Ashley Lentz — And generally that’s a generic email. It will have their name in it, right? So it seems like it’s personal. And it comes from ah Pat Quaid, one of our pastors here. um He’s been on staff for like 20 plus years. He’s incredible. Ashley Lentz — And so Pat will say, you know, we’re glad. Thanks for stopping by New to Hope. And generally here’s some information. If people put on the card that they want specific information, he will put that in the email as well.Rich Birch — Okay, yep.Ashley Lentz — Then I believe there are a couple other follow-up steps past that. We can send text messages. And so if people have put in their put their phone number down, they’ll get a text message later in the week that simply invites them back to worship.Ashley Lentz — It just says, hey, hey, Rich, this is Ashley from Hope. I just want to say I’d love to see at worship again this weekend. Reminder service times are…, or something like that. So they get a couple follow ups past that to know like we actually care.Ashley Lentz — While it’s automated, it also comes from real people. Rich Birch — Right. Ashley Lentz — So the system is in place because we’re such a large church.Rich Birch — Yep.Ashley Lentz — But if people text back, like I get those text messages back through an app, right?Rich Birch — Right. Right.Ashley Lentz — Like I’m, I have good healthy boundaries. ah Nobody has, you know, like I’m not texting 7,000 people at a time. Rich Birch — Yeah. Ashley Lentz — But we can personally respond to these people and answer questions that they might have.Rich Birch — Yeah Yeah. I love that. So friends, I want to underline a bunch of things that Ashley said there, because this is best in class practice that we’ve seen in in other contexts. You know, the idea that the, you know, New to Hope is like in the middle of the atrium, it’s super obvious. It’s that orange. You’ve got lots of, you know, volunteers and staff there. The t-shirt I love, the free gift. People, you know, ah too many churches will say like, if you want to get connected, drop by the connection kiosk. That’s like way too, people are not interested in getting connected yet.Rich Birch — They’re like just ah new. And so, but they will stop by and get a free T-shirt. It’s fantastic. I love that there’s multiple follow-ups. You wouldn’t imagine how many churches drop the ball there. they go They do everything else, but then they only follow up once or they, because they don’t want to bother people. I’m like, we’re talking about trying to get people connected to the kingdom of Christ. We’ve got to follow up with them. Ashley Lentz — Yes.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s, that’s so good. There’s so much, so much good there. Rich Birch — Okay, pivoting in a different direction. So, there’s a dichotomy, false dichotomy of in the church world around, we want to get people connected to teams or to groups. You know, we, we, and ultimately want to see them connect to both. And I think that’s the best practice. We want to get them there eventually, but it’s hard to point them towards both. What’s your thoughts on that? How do we, if if you were trying to kind of move people in an ideal direction, teams or groups, what’s that look like? What’s your experience been like when you’re trying to get people connected?Ashley Lentz — Yep. I would tell you, we ask often around here, what does it look like for someone to be engaged? What is an engaged church member? Like, how do you define that? Rich Birch — Yep.Ashley Lentz — And I’m not going to quote the research because I can’t remember if it was Barna or Gallup, but it was one of the two. A few years ago released that a highly engaged church person, the research is that they attend church once a month. That’s a highly engaged church person… Rich Birch — It’s true. It’s true. Ashley Lentz — …in our society. And so to to engage them, like the task of discipleship is so interesting because to say like, if I’m highly engaged, that means I’m coming to church once a month. To ask them to do anything beyond that means you’re like a super duper, highly, highly, highly engaged person, right?Rich Birch — Right. True.Ashley Lentz — So one of, I call this maybe ah another secret sauce, secret weapon, is I love to invite people into service opportunities as their kind of pathway to getting more connected. What people undermine in service opportunities, and by service opportunity, volunteer opportunity, I mean like our hospitality team or our communion serving team or the kitchen team.Ashley Lentz — We have a cafe where 100% of the proceeds go to missions. Somebody’s got to make that coffee, right? Like I invite them into these teams because I know that they will already be here for some of some of that time, right? Like if you’re coming to worship and I can get you on a team that greets before worship, I’m capitalizing on you’re already coming to worship.Ashley Lentz — But number two, you are going to be in community. Rich Birch — So true.Ashley Lentz — You will start to have great conversations with these people in community. You’ll start to get to know faces, right? Again, large place will start to seem smaller. Discipleship will happen in the context of volunteer teams without me ever teaching a class. It will just happen naturally.Rich Birch — Yep.Ashley Lentz — And so I think we forget that that’s a really great place to get people plugged in. Rich Birch — It’s so true.Ashley Lentz — And then is it is an on-ramp to anybody who shows up in the in this space and says, I just want to meet people. I want to get connected. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.Ashley Lentz — They might be in a season where they want a class, but I’m a young mom, right? Like I got two little kids. It’s hard for me to get here on a weeknight for six or eight weeks to do a class. A really good invitation might be, well, if you want to get connected, get to know people, you love greeting. Like you love talking to people. Why don’t you be on our greeting team? You’re already coming to service. Your whole family can do it.Ashley Lentz — And discipleship will happen in that context in such a beautiful way… Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. Ashley Lentz — …that that I love introducing people to volunteer opportunities.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I would say that for sure we’ve seen that as a trend in lots of prevailing churches like yours. You know, I would say particularly post-COVID, I think there has been a stronger emphasis or emphasis, depending on how you say it, to, you know, move people towards serving opportunities as like, a you didn’t say it this way. I’m saying it, but like as a primary path. Or like a let’s let’s take a first step there ah because of all the stuff you talked about. You know, we can get people on a schedule. We can yeah you know, there’s there’s something about the kind of envisioning we do in teams where we’re like pouring in like, hey, this is what Hope’s about. This is what Hope’s about that doesn’t necessarily happen in in in groups. So yeah, that’s that’s great. Rich Birch — Curveball question. We didn’t talk about ahead of time. Hopefully you can take a curveball, Ashley. I’m sure you can. You’re an incredibly smart person. What are the metrics that you think about in this area? Like, are there numbers that you reflect on that you like come back to you time and again that somebody asks you about regularly? What what would be some of those metrics that you think about?Ashley Lentz — What a good curveball question. Yes. Here’s what is fascinating to me, as somebody who does discipleship and gets people connected. I know, and this is specific to our context because these are numbers that I have crunched.Rich Birch — Yep, yep.Ashley Lentz — We can have really good intentions with groups and classes, but I will tell you that from sign up to show up, right? So if you’re promoting a class, amount of people who sign up versus the amount of people who show up just automatically will drop 20%. Because people have really good intentions.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s true.Ashley Lentz — But when it comes to coming to class, you’re going to lose about 20%.Rich Birch — Yeah. It sounded so good at church on Sunday to sign up for that class, but I did not actually come in. Yeah.Ashley Lentz — Yes, so that being said, the people who show up to your class, you’re already looking at 80% of people who are gonna come. But we’ll we’ll call that 100% of people who are showing up.Rich Birch — Yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah.Ashley Lentz — From week one to week three or four, you will drop 40% by week four.Rich Birch — Oh, wow.Ashley Lentz — I see this consistency, consistently across discipleship at Hope and and the groups that we do.Ashley Lentz — And so we have also tried to build Alpha. I would tell you is probably the only exception. Alpha, we do Alpha in nine weeks here at Hope. But everything else we have tried to build in three or four week chunks because we just know that by week four, you’re gonna lose half your class or so about about anyway, right?Rich Birch — Oh, that’s a good insight.Ashley Lentz — So we have great intentions with six or eight week classes. And I love to teach the Bible in six or eight weeks. I also know that for people’s schedules, they see a six or eight week class and that’s daunting. So to do things in three or four week chunks is really, really helpful. And those are some of the metrics that I keep in the back of my mind.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. And you could see that, right? It’s like better to have two three-week classes than one six-week class. You know, you kind of re-up like this is part one, part two, how do we move people along? You know, that’s, you know, that’s fantastic.Rich Birch — Well, let’s say you’re at a conference and someone is, you know, pulls you aside and they’re like, Ashley, oh, you’re the connections person from Hope – you guys do such a great job. What’s the one thing that you think I should do to make it easier? I’m sure you give out like common advice to somebody, to churches, church leaders around like, Hey, here’s the thing you could do to make it easier for people to get plugged in.Ashley Lentz — I would tell them clarity is kindness. Rich Birch — That’s good. Ashley Lentz — Be clear about what you’re asking people to do or or where you want them to get plugged in.Rich Birch — That’s good.Ashley Lentz — Yep. If that’s a conversation, be clear that like step one is a conversation. If it’s Alpha, be clear that Alpha is like the thing you want people to do. Clarity is kindness. Make sure your website is clear. We’re not perfect at any of these things by any means, but…Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.Ashley Lentz — …the more clear we can be about where we want people to go, what we want them to do, what we know works. That’s a really loving thing to do for people is just be clear.Rich Birch — It’s so true. And, and I know that’s like an, that’s like a journey, not a destination. Like we’re clarity is something we keep working on. We have to keep refining, keep making it easier. I think even in this, that’s part of why I was double clicking on theNew to Hope kind of process. Cause I’ve, in other contexts I’ve talked about that, that, that piece of that. I think every six months you got to look at it again. Okay. What can we do to make this easier?Ashley Lentz — Yes.Rich Birch — How do we make it easier for people to connect? Can you think of some areas where you’ve had to gain more clarity? Where like we thought it was clear but then, no, it wasn’t clear – we had to change it and and make it a little more clear.Ashley Lentz — For sure, I will tell you, we kind of touched on this at the very beginning. We offer so many things as far as adult discipleship goes here at Hope, specifically even just our West Des Moines campus, ah that it’s kind of unclear where to even start.Ashley Lentz — So one of the things that we have done in the last year is really kind of cleaned up what our fall and winter adult discipleship schedule looks like. So that when people say, okay, I’ve already done Alpha and maybe I already took that class, that we kind of have a very clear trajectory for them depending on where they find themselves in their season of faith, season of life. Ashley Lentz — So we, Foundations is a good example. That will happen each semester. It’s kind of the foundational course. Here’s where you start. Then it’s Alpha. Then we then there are Bible classes and prayer classes, if that’s what you’re looking for next. Small groups. We always have a small group kind of class to help launch small groups. Ashley Lentz — But we cleaned up a lot of what I would call white noise around that. So people say, like, what do I do? As a team, we clearly know: this, that, and the next thing, if you’re looking for a prescriptive track. Otherwise, iI got a million women’s groups meeting. There’s a million men’s groups meeting. I can point you in that direction too. Rich Birch — Right. Ashley Lentz — But we’ve cleaned up a lot of that white noise to say, generally, this is what we’re offering. It’s going to continue to happen in kind of a cycle, a semester cycle. And so it just makes sense.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I know so many, so many models, you know, churches, every seems like every five years, it somebody comes out with some new approach to cleanliness and clarity.Rich Birch — And people are like, Oh, this is like the, you know, it’s Highlands’, you know, step one, step two, or, you know, 101, 201, 301. Or it’s like, you know, Saddleback’s run the bases. Or, you know, but the, the foundation of all of that is we’ve got to be super clear. We’ve got to make it as clean as possible. I feel like we cleaned up our schedule is like Des Moines nice for like, we cut a bunch of stuff or like, what did we do? Like that cleaned up. What does that mean? Like you, you are still doing everything, but we’re focusing people’s attention on just a few things? Is that what that means?Ashley Lentz — Yes, we did get rid of some things and it’s not because they weren’t good.Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.Ashley Lentz — We actually moved some of them online. We said people can take this online at their own pace. It will always exist. It’s good stuff. Rich Birch — Yeah.Ashley Lentz — But let’s be really clear about what we want people to jump into in the fall… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Ashley Lentz — …and in the winter and in the spring. And so we just kind of moved some of those things.Rich Birch — Yeah.Ashley Lentz — And then, yes, communicated it more clearly. A lot of our stuff happens on Tuesday nights. And so we have told our congregation, come on Tuesday nights. Men’s thing, women’s thing, general classes, dinner, stuff for your kids, right? Like we’ve also tried to make it super accessible. So it’s like, if you don’t know where to start, just show up on a Tuesday night and we’ll help you kind of a thing.Rich Birch — Right. Right. That’s so good. Well, this has been an incredible conversation, Ashley. I feel like I’ve got a page of notes here that is super helpful for me. There’s lots of other stuff I’d love to talk about, but I know you got other things to get to. So we’re going let you go. Just as we wrap up, any final word you’d have to say for us or anything you’d like to say just as we close today’s episode?Ashley Lentz — I would just encourage listeners, like what you’re doing is great and continue ask to ask yourself and the people that you’re around, like what are they looking forward to? So many times we try to do things, like I live in church world, right? Like this is my frame of reference. It’s really when I start listening to the needs of other people that we really start gaining some traction, right?Ashley Lentz — So I would just encourage them, like what you’re doing is great. Keep going… Rich Birch — So good. Ashley Lentz — …and ask your congregation what what they need and and what they want. And then just clarify that for them.Rich Birch — So good. Well, thanks so much. If people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?Ashley Lentz — Yes, LutheranChurchOfHope.org is our like landing page website.Rich Birch — Perfect.Ashley Lentz — From there, you can find our West Des Moines campus. You can find all of our other campuses. You can find out what you need to know at LutheranChurchOfHope.org. And I’ll be on our staff page and happy to connect with anybody further. My email, I think will be in the notes, but Ashley.Lentz L-E-N-T-Z at HopeWDM.org.Rich Birch — Perfect. Thanks so much, Ashley. Appreciate you being here today.Ashley Lentz — Thanks, Rich!

Dave Miller, leader of Leadership Pathway and an advocate for young church leaders, discusses the importance of developing future ministers through two-year residency programs. He emphasizes that Gen Z is distinct and must be treated as an 'unreached people group,' requiring a fresh approach to leadership. The conversation highlights the need for churches to slow down and prioritize meaningful relationships over productivity. With a focus on nurturing young talent, Dave shares insights on innovative leadership development and the transformative impact of investing in Gen Z.

In this special rushed episode of the unSeminary Podcast, Rich unpacks the biggest nonfiction book launch in history: Alex Hormozi’s $100M Book Launch. Alex didn’t rely on TikTok trends, billboards, or mass media. Instead, he orchestrated a carefully choreographed campaign that leaned heavily on email — sometimes sending seven to nine emails in a single day! So what can your church learn from this? I pull out three big lessons that every church leader should pay attention to: Campaigns, Not AnnouncementsMost churches think one announcement is enough. It’s not. Hormozi’s strategy shows us the power of multi-phase campaigns that build intrigue, reveal value, and lead to action. Over-Communication Beats Under-CommunicationChurches often fear “sending too much.” But Hormozi proved that variety and frequency cut through noise. Different voices, tones, and urgency hooks kept his audience leaning in — something we can apply to big days like Christmas or Easter. Compete in the Attention EconomyIn today’s distracted world, you can’t whisper and hope people will hear. Novelty, mystery, surprise — even Guinness World Record-style stunts — keep people engaged. Your church can adapt this mindset to make invite moments more compelling. I hope this episode helps translate these lessons into practical steps for your church, so you can strengthen your communication, deepen your invite culture, and move more people toward Jesus. A Next Step for You If you’re ready to sharpen one of the most important five minutes in your weekend service, don’t miss the Hosting Coaching Clinic … a six-week training designed to dramatically improve your service hosting. Each week includes actionable video lessons, best-in-class hosting examples, and tools to eliminate awkward moments, refine your “ask,” and boost engagement. Use the code ALEX at checkout to get 50% off. This is the perfect next step to put these communication lessons into action. Click here to enroll today IMAGE NOTE: No, I haven’t met Alex. The banner image is AI-generated and intended to serve as a pattern interrupt, following Hormozi’s style.

Taylor Scott-Reimer, a writer and advocate for women's voices in the church, shares her insights on creating inclusive spiritual communities. She discusses the importance of asking for women's perspectives and the quiet struggles they often endure. Taylor presents a three-step framework for reclaiming women's voices in church: reframing narratives, restoring practices, and rediscovering their significance. This engaging conversation encourages churches to embrace women's stories and facilitate open discussions to foster genuine inclusivity.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Zenzo Matoga, Senior Pastor of Impact Church in Boston, Massachusetts. Originally from Malawi, Africa, Zenzo brings a passion for evangelism shaped by the revival crusades of Reinhard Bonnke. Under Zenzo’s leadership, Impact Church has become one of the fastest-growing churches in America, thriving in one of the nation’s most unchurched cities. Is your church struggling to move evangelism from a program to a culture? Zenzo shares practical strategies and spiritual insights that have helped Impact Church ignite revival in a spiritually dry place, equipping believers to impact one person at a time. Finding your city’s key. // Every city has a spiritual “key” that unlocks its people, and every church has a unique calling. For Boston, Zenzo identified young professionals as a primary audience. By fostering authenticity and sharing real-life stories, Impact created an atmosphere where unchurched people feel welcomed and understood. Zenzo stresses that pastors must seek God for the specific key to their city rather than copy other churches’ models. The power of authenticity. // Millennials and Gen Z are drawn to honesty and transparency. At Impact, leaders openly share personal stories—including struggles in marriage or faith—so that people see church as a place of grace, not perfection. This culture of authenticity empowers members to share their testimonies, creating an environment where evangelism feels natural and accessible. Impact One. // Zenzo’s book “Impact One: The Epic Prayer That Transforms Friends and Family” grew out of a desire to help every believer reach their unchurched loved ones. The book teaches a simple four-step process: First, gain a burden for the lost—pray for God to break your heart for what breaks His. Pray for one—write down three names of people far from God and pray for them. Practice friendship evangelism—become a genuine friend with no agenda. And finally, seal the deal—when the time is right, share your faith boldly. This framework equips everyday believers to live as “producers” of disciples rather than passive attenders. Embedding evangelism in the culture. // At Impact, evangelism isn’t a program—it’s woven into weekly practices. Every Sunday, the church prays the “Impact One prayer”: God, please give me one person to impact with your love and invite to church. Testimonies of changed lives are shared regularly, reinforcing a culture of outreach. Members are even encouraged to ask one another, “Who did you impact this week?”—keeping evangelism front and center. Practical systems for connection. // Impact Church uses two creative tools to make disciples. “F15” stands for the first 15 minutes after service, when members are encouraged to treat the lobby like a mission field, seeking out new people rather than gravitating toward friends. The “C.L.O.N.E.” model—Chronology, Location, Occupation, Number, Encouragement—gives members a practical framework for conversations that lead to authentic connections and ongoing discipleship. Radical worship as evangelism. // Zenzo bridges his background as a worship leader with his passion for evangelism. He believes radical, joy-filled worship breaks spiritual strongholds and attracts unbelievers seeking something beyond what the world offers. In a city defined by intellectualism and materialism, Impact’s passionate worship embodies the presence of God in a way that draws people to conviction and freedom. From evangelism to discipleship. // Impact emphasizes that inviting someone to church is only the beginning. Members are encouraged to disciple those they bring—offering rides, inviting them to small groups, and walking with them through life. This relational approach ensures that evangelism naturally flows into discipleship. To learn more about Impact Church and Pastor Zenzo’s resources, visit impactpeople.org. His book Impact One: The Epic Prayer That Transforms Friends and Family is available on Amazon and other online retailers. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: SermonDone Hey friends, Sunday is coming… is your Sermon Done?Pastor, you don’t need more pressure—you need support. That’s why you need to check out SermonDone—the premium AI assistant built exclusivelyfor pastors. SermonDone helps you handle the heavy lifting: deep sermon research, series planning, and even a theologically aligned first draft—in your voice—because it actually trains on up to 15 of your past sermons. But it doesn’t stop there. With just a click, you can instantly turn your message into small group guides, discussion questions, and even kids curriculum. It’s like adding a research assistant, a writing partner, and a discipleship team—all in one. Try it free for 5 days. Head over to www.SermonDone.com and use promo code Rich20 for 20% off today! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation, an opportunity to dive in on a conversation that really all of our churches should be wrestling with.Rich Birch — Honored, privileged to have Zenzo Matoga with us. He is the senior pastor at a church called Impact Church that has, if I’m counting correctly, two locations in Massachusetts. They’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country. He’s also a seasoned worship leader. And I think this is a first for our podcast, a Dove Award nominated songwriter and author. So excited to have you on this the show today, Zenzo. Thank you for being here.Zenzo Matoga — Thank you so much for having me, Rich. It’s such an honor to be here with you.Rich Birch — This is wonderful. Impact has experienced you know incredible growth in these last number of years. And I’d love for you to kind of tell us a little bit about the church, bring us up on the journey and and tell us what God’s doing in your church these days.Zenzo Matoga — Yes, so this next month here in September we’re going to be celebrating 10 years. So it’s been 10 years of ministry and we are in Boston, Massachusetts of all the places in the world.Rich Birch — Love it.Zenzo Matoga — It’s been named the fifth most unchurched city in all of America. And so um you know people told me Boston is a very dry place and I thought to myself last time I checked dry places catch on fire faster than any other place it’s so so that… Rich Birch — Oh, I like that. I like that. Nothing like a a cemetery for if you want a resurrection, right? Same thing. Zenzo Matoga — There you go. There you go. That got us excited, you know, but it’s been an honor you know to do ministry here, you know, 10 years of incredible ministry. I’m originally from Malawi, AfricaRich Birch — Oh, nice. Okay.Zenzo Matoga — Very, very small country. So it’s humbling to be in this nation and preaching the gospel. Yes, I’m a worship leader first. So I started leading worship in what we call the African revivals that were led by a man called Reinhard Bonnke, who literally saw 79 million salvations in those crusades. And so I just adopted this passion for evangelism, this this passion for evangelism. Rich Birch — Love it. Zenzo Matoga — Except back then it used to happen through crusades, big crusades. And when I moved to America the Lord said teach the Americans how to win their unchurched loved ones. Rich Birch — Love it. Zenzo Matoga — That’s gonna be the key to evangelism. So in a nutshell, we’ve built Impact Church on that, you know, the Great Commission. That’s why we named the church Impact Church. It says, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit.Zenzo Matoga — And so, yeah, make disciples. Who make disciples? Who make disciples? Who make disciples? And that’s church growth. That’s revival. It was never meant to be rocket science, if you’re making disciples, not converts.Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, I’m looking forward to digging in and learning from you today and and the good just the good stories, the good things that are happening at Impact.Rich Birch — You know, many pastors want a vibrant evangelism and discipleship culture at their church, but it really is can be really challenging for many churches to create that. Why do you think that is? What are some of the obstacles that you’ve seen other churches face, you know, why why do you think this is? It’s like so core to who we’re supposed to be, but why is it why is it so tough so so so many times?Zenzo Matoga — Yeah. Well, number one, I believe that the very art of making disciples was never meant to be too easy. There are challenges there, but there are beautiful challenges. So if you’re facing challenges, hey, welcome to the club. You’re heading in the right direction. Don’t be discouraged.Rich Birch — Yes.Zenzo Matoga — I also feel that many pastors and churches and leaders, they they copy from other churches, you know. And it’s okay to learn from others, right? But when you’re copying something and you don’t receive it by revelation, because listen, to Moses, he said, use a stick. To Joshua, he said, march around the city. The power was not in walking around and the power was definitely not in the stick. The power was in the instruction, you know.Rich Birch — Right.Zenzo Matoga — And so I think it’s good to to pray, study your city. There’s a key that unlocks every city. You got to find that key. Whoever finds that key will unlock that city.Zenzo Matoga — And so, and I think, ah and you can learn what others are doing, right? But sometimes people copy things, but then they just, they don’t follow through, or they start and they stop and they try something else, and then they try something else and then they go to that conference, pick up something else and try. Because most of these strategies, you got to, you got to see them through and you got to be patient. Rich Birch — That’s so good.Zenzo Matoga — You got to be patient for them to produce, you know. It’s like, you know, revival sometimes is like pounding the ground so that you can build a spring or rather you can break ground so that there can be a spring that gushes out. But you can’t just do that. You can’t do that for two days. You can’t do that for one day, you know. And sometimes you encounter rocks and you’ve got to break through that and keep going. And so I feel like sometimes people start and stop, start and stop. There has to be a long-term commitment to the strategy that the Lord gives you. Yeah.Rich Birch — Well, there’s a lot there I’d love to unpack. You talk about ah you know every seat every city has a key that to unlock you know that and and leaders are part of our job is to find that. Unpack that a bit more. Tell me a little bit about that. What has that looked like for you at Impact as you’ve considered? I do think as, ah ah I think there’s an interesting advantage that you have as someone from outside the culture coming in to to see the culture. I actually think that’s a huge strategic advantage that God’s given you. So help us understand that. Unpack that a little bit more.Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, for sure. You know, every city has a key. Whoever has that key and will unlock it, you know.Zenzo Matoga — And so, yeah, I think it’s good to study your city. And also every church has a calling, right? I don’t think I don’t think our churches are supposed to reach everybody. I think you have to know who you’re called to reach, you know. And then find the key that unlocks those type of people. For us here in Boston, We wanted to reach you know young professionals. And amazingly, in doing that, they brought their parents and later on grandparents, you know.Rich Birch — Right.Zenzo Matoga — But we wanted to focus on those. And so one, I wanted to create a welcoming a welcoming atmosphere, welcoming environment. I wanted to create a culture that was authentic because Millennials, Gen Zs, Gen Alphas, you know, you can’t reach them if you’re not authentic.Zenzo Matoga — So from the get, I knew that I was going to use personal stories. It was going to be self-duplicating stories, but with integrity, right? Like the like the young people say, not forcing anything, but just really telling them here’s a story. I started talking about the issues my wife and I had um at the beginning of our marriage. I mean we’ve been married 19 years and always say we’ve had the best 16 years of our lives you know because the first three, first three was very rough. Rich Birch — Okay. Zenzo Matoga — She’s she’s Italian American. I’m African and I quickly found out that the the jungle spirit in me did not agree with the mafia spirit in our you know so we almost started World War III, you know. Rich Birch — Wow. Zenzo Matoga — But we we we were going to tell our stories, we were going to utilize humor, we were going to be honest, and we were going to train the young people to also be authentic. Tell your story. One the best things you can ever do is tell your story, you know.Zenzo Matoga — We overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony. you know And they did not love their lives to shrink back from death. Sometimes people are afraid to share their story, your powerful testimony. Let people know what God has done. It creates an atmosphere where where there’s a culture of grace where people are not afraid of church people and they think like they’re better than us, you know, or I’ll never be like them.Zenzo Matoga — I’ll never, you know, I’m drinking right now and I’m smoking and I’m doing this. I’ll probably never be like them. Well, a bunch of us used to do that, you know. So if you can tell your story, share your testimony, create an authentic environment.Zenzo Matoga — I don’t know how much to share now, but also, you know, from from the book Impact One, let me just jump in that. I wanted to teach our church members how to reach their unchurched loved ones. To me, the key to Boston was if I can teach a typical churchgoer how to reach your unchurched loved ones, if I can teach you to just impact one, right?Zenzo Matoga — In the next three months, if I can just teach you to impact one person, bring them into the house of God, and then, you know, some people can impact three, some can maybe do five, but every year, every believer has to be a producing believer, not a barren producer. I mean, not a barren believer. And so yeah, I wrote that book. I wrote that book just for the members of our church. Rich Birch — Right.Zenzo Matoga — It’s a small book, four chapters only. Rich Birch — Right.Zenzo Matoga — Chapter one is ah is is just get the burden for the lost. Ask God to break you with what breaks his heart concerning the lost. Start weeping again for the lost. You know, number two, pray for the one. So right just write three names down of people you want to win for Jesus, right?Rich Birch — I love that.Zenzo Matoga — Those people you’re eating Thanksgiving dinner with, you know, write write a few of those names. The people the the person who’s always next to you in the gym working out, right you know, write their name down.Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.Zenzo Matoga — And then chapter three was simple. Just become a good friend. Friendship evangelism. Just become a good friend. Billy Graham, before he passed away, he said he believes after doing all the crusades that this present day of America, that the best form of evangelism is friendship evangelism.Zenzo Matoga — Sometimes Christians are not good friends. Just learn how to be a good friend.Rich Birch — Sure.Zenzo Matoga — You know and we we taught our church just be a good friend for a season with no strings attached. Just really show interest in those people. Zenzo Matoga — And then number four is seal the deal. You know, sealing the deal means wait for the right moment. You know, they will ask you, they will ask you, where does your joy come from? You know, why are you not shaking about this? You talk about this church thing all the time. Tell me about that. Rich Birch — Right. Right.Zenzo Matoga — You know, a door open, then you seal the deal, you know. But ride the waves.Rich Birch — Step in.Zenzo Matoga — Ride the waves of the Holy Spirit like surfing. You know. And so let the opportunity be created. So to us, that was I think that was the key you know in a nutshell… Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Zenzo Matoga — …creating a welcoming atmosphere where there was authenticity and a culture of grace and then teaching these young people you know how to win Jesus.Zenzo Matoga — And I think the final thing for me being a worshiper was we wanted to create an atmosphere where there was radical worship, radical worship. I’m in Boston. You know, it’s the mecca of education.Rich Birch — Yes.Zenzo Matoga — We have a quarter a million students. We have the most students than any other city in the world. We have Harvard University, MIT. And I felt a bit insecure, if I can be honest, ah Rich.Zenzo Matoga — I was like, OK, I’m an African kid. I come from the third poorest country in the world. And I got no college degree, you know. Because I went into music route I wanted to go to school for music I couldn’t afford it… Rich Birch — Right. Zenzo Matoga — …and I just dove straight into music and the Lord blessed that, but I felt insecure. And the Lord said hey one of the keys to Boston is the foolishness of worship. I will confound the wisdom of the wise with the foolishness of radical worship and joy. Radical worship and joy, you know. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zenzo Matoga — And so we worship radically and I found that people are looking you know for for for…Rich Birch — That’s so good.Zenzo Matoga — …a radical version of believers again, You know, people are not looking for ah nice alternative of what they’re already doing. No, they’re looking for something vibrant, something that’s embedded in revival and radical worship… Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Zenzo Matoga — …and joy, joy, joy, joy. Yeah.Rich Birch — I love that. I’d love to, we’re I’m going to put a a bookmark in that. I want to come back to that in a minute, but yeah I want to loop back on something you said earlier. You know, my sense is that one of the things you’ve been able to do at Impact is really see evangelism as a culture. It’s not a, it’s not a program. It’s not like a, hey, here’s a, you know, do this thing. It’s like a part of who we are. Talk us through how that um works itself out at Impact. What how are you ensuring that reaching out to unchurched folks in Boston, Bostonians, is a culture of impact rather than just a program? What’s that look like?Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, Rich, I believe that’s the that’s the key, is that sometimes we go on this journey of making evangelism or discipleship these systems and classes. And and nothing wrong with that to supplement and complement what you have. But I believe that evangelism and discipleship has to be embedded in the culture of the church. Rich Birch — Yep.Zenzo Matoga — On our worst Sunday, we’re evangelistic and we’re making disciples. And so what what does that mean? For us, it’s simple. You know, yet again, for me, it kind of goes back to that book because I wrote that book to release that evangelism culture you know for our church.Zenzo Matoga — I think, one, it begins a prayer. Are we praying for the lost? Are we earnestly praying for lost? But before we pray for the lost, are we broken with what breaks the heart of God concerning our city, the burden to see them? You know, are we do we want them saved just because we want our churches to grow, or do we sincerely want them to know God and not go to hell, right? That simple.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.Zenzo Matoga — And so I think it starts there. And then after that, you know, we’ve started making it a culture. So every single Sunday, we pray this prayer, God, please give me one person to impact with your love and invite church.Rich Birch — So good.Zenzo Matoga — We pray that in our services every single Sunday. And then after that, Rich, we we show stories of people who have been impacted.Rich Birch — That’s good.Zenzo Matoga — Because yet again, testimonies are so powerful. Last Sunday, we showed the story of Teddy. You know, Teddy was coming to Impact Church because a family friend invited him to church. Remember the prayer, God, please give me one person to impact with your love and invite church. So somebody prayed that prayer, and then invited Teddy to church. That was, he was their impact one prayer. And there are times when we pray that prayer, remember, we write three names down, practical. We write three names down. So somebody had Teddy as one of their…Rich Birch — Right. Yes.Zenzo Matoga — …and then invited him to church. He started coming to church, you know, kind of still drinking and doing other things, you know, and then kind of started coming to church and started dating this young lady.Zenzo Matoga — And, you know, she got pregnant out of wedlock. But we continued to disciple them because it has to transition from evangelism to discipleship. We started reaching out to them one-on-one and some of our pastors and group leaders just discipling them. Long story short, those two are married now. They’ve got a child. And Teddy now leads our men’s groups, man.Rich Birch — So good.Zenzo Matoga — This young man is shepherding and caring for young men in our church, just men in general. And those groups have they’ve multiplied over and over and over and over, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Zenzo Matoga — And this summer we’re believing God for another 20 or so just, you know and he’s he’s the coach over that. So so yet again after the prayer you write the names down, we show the story so that people see it in real time of a life that has been changed, you know. And then after that in service we have this 60 seconds, social seconds, where we tell people to go greet one another. And they ask each other the question, who did you impact this week? You know, so you you’ve prayed the impact one prayer and you’ve seen the impact story.Rich Birch — Right.Zenzo Matoga — We call them stories of impact. You’ve seen an impact story. And then you have the chance to walk around, greet somebody and ask them, and hold them accountable. Who did you impact this week? Rich Birch — That’s cool. Zenzo Matoga — If they didn’t impact anybody, hey, come back next Sunday with the story of who you impacted, you know?Rich Birch — Right. I love that.Zenzo Matoga — And then that’s what’s happening in the service, right? So that that’s the evangelistic portions in the service, you know? And then I take ah take once a year and and in our series, and I do a whole series on how to win the lost.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great.Zenzo Matoga — But then also in all my messages, there’s going to be a portion somewhere in all my messages where I’m talking about evangelism.Zenzo Matoga — And then like was all this is happening inside the auditorium. Now, outside the auditorium, God gave us something called F15, and I wrote it in the book. So F15 is a code, you know, and it’s funny because when we got F15, I said, yeah, I think we officially code. That’s a joke, by the way.Rich Birch — That’s funny. Zenzo Matoga — But F15 simply stands for the first 15 minutes after church. Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.Zenzo Matoga — Don’t go to your cliques in the lobby.Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.Zenzo Matoga — Don’t run to your cliques. Don’t run to the people you already know. We treat during F15 during the first 15 minutes of service being over we treat our lobbies like a mission field. You sacrifice wanting to run to Jimmy because you’re buddies, you probably know Jimmy’s phone number and you probably can hang out and go to lunch later. But we’re going to sacrifice the first 15 minutes after service to look in… Rich Birch — Yeah. Zenzo Matoga — …our lobbies and parking lot for somebody who looks like they’re new to church, you know. And we’re going to and impact them, you know.Rich Birch — That’s cool.Zenzo Matoga — And how do we impact them? God gave us something as well called C.L.O.N.E., right?Rich Birch — Yeah.Zenzo Matoga — Because the Lord said, go make disciples. So go clone yourself, essentially.Zenzo Matoga — So so C.L.O.N.E., the C stands for chronology. So during the F15, you walk to somebody, ah chronology, and you say, hey, how long have you been coming to Impact Church?Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.Zenzo Matoga — And they’ll tell you five months, six months. Or today is my first day. And the L is location. Hey where do you live? Where do you live? Rich Birch — Oh, so good. Zenzo Matoga — And the O is occupation, you know – hey so what do you do for a living? And the N stands for number or mode of communication, you know. And I hear these days you don’t ask for phone numbers, so hey stands for DM’s as well – hey what’s your DM? You know. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. What’s your Instagram handle? What’s your, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zenzo Matoga — Yes, there you go, there you go. What’s your Instagram handle, how can I find you? And what’s remaining? The E. The E is encouragement. Hey, I’m so glad you came to Impact Church. I can’t wait to see you next Sunday. Do you have a ride? We can come pick you up. You can sit with our crew. We can hang out together.Zenzo Matoga — I’ll see you right here, the same place next Sunday. And so I share with you all the stuff that are happening in the auditorium every single Sunday.Rich Birch — Yes.Zenzo Matoga — By the way, I’m giving you our secret sauce here, man.Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, it’s good. It’s good. Love it.Zenzo Matoga — We need to give this because we need to win America for Jesus. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.Zenzo Matoga — And then these are things that are happening outside the lobby, you know.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. And are you…Zenzo Matoga — And then part of the encouragement…Rich Birch — Where are you talking about F15? Like, are you, how often are you, because I love that. I think practically training our people on, hey, this exactly what you should do at the end of the service. Man, I think that’s transformational. Are you talking about that in that once a year series? Are you regularly kind of encouraging people? Hey, remember after the service today, we’re cloning, get a chance to talk to someone. What’s that look like?Zenzo Matoga — Yes, I’m talking about that to the whole church when I do that that series in the year. But I’m telling Vision Sunday, I drop it again, Vision Sunday. Because I’m talking about our vision of the Impact Church. Our vision is to impact you so you can impact your world. To me, that’s the definition of discipleship.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s so good.Zenzo Matoga — I’m not just impacting you to become a convert who comes, sit down.Zenzo Matoga — I’m impacting you so you can impact your world. What’s your world? Your world is your business, your family, your workplace, and all those people. So we’re talking about that, yes, from the pulpit.Zenzo Matoga — But in our leadership trainings, right, in our leadership orientations, in our growth tracks, next steps, classes, all that stuff, we’re talking about that. If you’re becoming a member of the church, if you’re getting assimilated into our church, we are putting this burden here, this beautiful, we call it the beautiful burden on you to be able to do that.Rich Birch — Love it.Zenzo Matoga — And not only are we talking about it, yet again, Rich, we’re doing it every Sunday. I’m praying the impact one prayer every Sunday after worship. We’re sharing the impact story. And then people are going to one another and asking, who have you impacted this week? Rich Birch — Love it.Zenzo Matoga — And then I’m doing I’m doing the series and teaching people, get the burden, you know, pray for the one, you know, write the names down. And and friendship evangelism, how do you become a good friend? How do you do that? How, you know, Jesus became a friend to Zacchaeus, you know. And then he waited for the conviction.Zenzo Matoga — You know, it wasn’t Jesus who was like, change your life, do this. He just became a good friend. And the conviction came and then he sealed the deal. You know. So you teach the people how to seal the deal boldly with boldness. Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.Zenzo Matoga — You know, when somebody tells you, I’m struggling with this, don’t don’t don’t you bash, don’t don’t you become bashful. And you seal that deal with boldness. So I release the gift of faith over the people. I pray over them. And I during our impact one prayer, I tell them, hey, I pray and I’m believing God that before, you know, right now we’re in August.Zenzo Matoga — So I’m telling them before the close of this year, I am believing that every member of this church will be responsible for at least one soul coming to the saving knowledge of Jesus. And we release the gift of faith and the burden, youRich Birch — Love it.Zenzo Matoga — Yeah. And then part of the E. Rich Birch — Sorry. Go ahead. Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, I got to say this part of the E in encouragement in the clone, right, is also, hey, you can be a part of our small group. Rich Birch — Love it.Zenzo Matoga — So that E there is the final piece that transition you from evangelism to discipleship. If you invite somebody to church, you are responsible for also discipling them. So you’re responsible to not only bring them into the house of God, but you’re also responsible to invite them to your crew, invite them to your small group, give them a ride and see them through and just walk with them.Zenzo Matoga — You know, and so that’s what creates evangelism and discipleship as a culture versus making announcements on a Sunday morning for people to attend some class.Rich Birch — Yes.Zenzo Matoga — That’s supplementary, man. We have that stuff too, but it’s supplemental. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahZenzo Matoga — Yeah.Rich Birch — It’s so good. I love, well, first of all, I want to underline, I think it’s great how practical you’ve made this. You’ve you’ve given really clear next steps. I love that you’re training your people around this. I want to loop back because I said I was going to, and I’m intrigued to hear your thoughts on this around radical worship.Rich Birch — I you know, I love that your background, you obviously are a passionate evangelist and you obviously are a passionate worship leader. And I think there can be a false dichotomy in a lot of churches that like those, that you can’t be a church that’s focused on reaching unchurched people at the same time as being a passionate worship environment. We sometimes see those as opposed to each other.Rich Birch — Unpack that for me. How do those two work? Cause I would agree with you. I think, one of the changes I’ve seen in unchurched people over the time I’ve served is I do think what you’re talking about there is true. I think people are coming to church looking for something different than they were 20, 30 years ago. They and I think worship is a part of that. So unpack that. Talk me through the connection between radical worship and reaching unchurched people. How do those two things work together in your mind or and how are they working themselves out at Impact?Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, and Rich, it’s Acts chapter 16, right? Paul and Silas ended up in the jail cell, and they were in there. What were they doing? Prayer and worship.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Zenzo Matoga — It was so radical the other jailers heard them. It says to me it was loud and it was radical. Because because it’s loud in jail. Rich Birch — Yeah.Zenzo Matoga — But people heard them. People heard them. And it was so radical it caused an earthquake, man.Rich Birch — Love it.Zenzo Matoga — And what happened? Chains broke. It wasn’t just the chains of the two people who were singing. It was the chains of everybody who was exposed to the worship… Rich Birch — Right. Zenzo Matoga — …and the and the radical environment. Zenzo Matoga — And what amazes me is that at the end of that, it says when the jailer saw that all the prisoners had ran away, right, he ran to them and and and they found him almost killing himself. He was almost committing suicide. You know, and they say to him, man, my guy, chill out, man. We’re good. You know, ah and then he says to him, what should I do? What should I do, you know, to be saved? You know, paraphrasing.Zenzo Matoga — There was, so two things happened because of radical worship. Chains broke and there was a conviction. There was a conviction for someone who was lost, you know. And I just believe that’s what happens, you know. And I may we be set free from gimmicks because the Jesus we serve is powerful enough to get the job done. If we can just bring him down. He says, if I be lifted up, he says, I will draw men to myself.Zenzo Matoga — And so don’t believe me. Believe the scripture. If we lift him up and if we praise him, I believe there’s a shaking. There’s a spiritual earthquake that comes to us to our regions and our cities. That’s that’s what people are looking for. I mean look at Boston, yet again the fifth most unchurched city. There are spirits of intellectualism here. There’s spirits of humanism here. Spirits of materialism and secularism, every ism you can ever think about, you know. Things are birthed here and then they go to, I always say that the truth is things are birthed in Boston, you know, and then they’re marketed, they’re marketed in in New York markets them, you know, and then California, you know, makes a movie out of them. But they’re really birthed here.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. No, it’s true. Yeah, that’s very true.Zenzo Matoga — And those those those are those are spirits, man, that are holding our cities. And so we you’ve got to pray and the worship, you know, it’s like when Saul would start to have these these tormenting spirits and and David would come and start playing and worship, and these things would be removed. And I think there are things in our cities that need to be removed and when that happens, you know bible says what is this is this, help me out, is this 1 Corinthians 4:4 or 2 Corinthians 4:4 somewhere say it says the god of the god of this age, you know, has has blinded people’s eyes. You know that blindness spiritual blindness has to be removed. And it’s radical worship, it’s a radical worship… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good Zenzo Matoga — It’s childlike joy. Rich Birch — Right. Zenzo Matoga — You know, the bible says the joy of Lord is my strength. The bible will also says you know for the spirit of heaviness I’ll give you it says the oil of joy every time you see oil that represents an anointing… Rich Birch — Yep. Zenzo Matoga — …a yoke breaking power. And so when you lose your joy, you don’t just lose joy. You lose strength and you lose power. You lose this anointing. And so there’s something about this radical joy. You know, when you go to Fenway Park here in Boston, my goodness, there’s joy there.Rich Birch — Yes, yes.Zenzo Matoga — When you go to ah the Boston Celtics, man, come on. We were champions before Oklahoma OKC took us off, you know. We got the New England Patriots. We had the days of ah Brady here.Rich Birch — Yes.Zenzo Matoga — You know, it’s you go there and it’s a religion. It’s worship. It’s joy.Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.Zenzo Matoga — It’s a radical joy. they They don’t bash away from being radical. Man, they take their shirts off. They cuss up a storm. They it’s radical. And the church of Jesus Christ is not going to be outdone by the world… Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Zenzo Matoga — …because we invented this joy, man. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Zenzo Matoga — We invented this radical behavior, you know, and it can be done well. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.Zenzo Matoga — So don’t hold back. Don’t hold back.Rich Birch — I love that. That’s so good. I love I love your thinking and your leadership there. That’s that’s fantastic. Now, I want to point people towards your book. It’s again, it’s “Impact One, The Epic Prayer That Transforms Friends friends and Family”.Rich Birch — I do think this could be a helpful resource for people. I think it’d be kind of thing that church leaders could check out and would help them frame this conversation. Where do where do where can people pick up a copy of that if they want to grab a copy or copies of that? Where do we want to send them to to do that?Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, copies on Amazon, everywhere online.Rich Birch — Yep.Zenzo Matoga — Right now it’s just online.Rich Birch — Yep.Zenzo Matoga — Yet again, I wrote this church just to teach our church, so it’s out there.Rich Birch — Yep. That’s wonderful. Yeah. Love it.Zenzo Matoga — But three times, Rich, churches have reached out to us, and we literally provided books to the whole congregation. And I partnered with the pastor to do to do a series around that and just equip the churches on how to, you know, how to win the loss. And man, I’m telling you, in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, in Providence, Rhode Island, sorry, not Massachusetts, Providence, Rhode Island, man, we helped a church that was averaging about 130 people.Zenzo Matoga — And just this last Easter, man, they saw over a thousand, you know. Rich Birch — That’s great. Zenzo Matoga — And and every single Sunday, they’re now averaging about 300. And we, it was a joy… Rich Birch — So good. Zenzo Matoga — …to to go through this book, yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, Zenzo, this has been an incredible conversation, super encouraging today. I’m just so thankful for what you’re doing at Impact and the the impact you’re having in a part of the country, like you said, that is is considered spiritually dry. I love that. I love what, you know, I just want to honor you for, you know, for that. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online just as we wrap up today’s episode?Zenzo Matoga — Yes, I love the church. I love the church so much. If a pastor wants to reach out, one of my greatest joys is to just stand with other pastors. You know we give God all the glory because what’s happening here, only God could have done that. But many others have helped us along the way, so would gladly do that. And my email address is simple, pastorzenzo at impactpeople.org. Rich Birch — Love it. Easy.Zenzo Matoga — Pastorzenzo at impactpeople.org. And our website is the same, very easy, impactpeople.org. That’s it.Rich Birch — Love it. Well, thanks so much, Zenzo. I appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you for for serving us and for what you’re doing at Impact.Zenzo Matoga — Man, to God be of the glory. Thank you so much for what you’re doing. And I’m humbled and honored to to do this with you. Thanks again, Rich.Rich Birch — Thank you so much.

In a captivating discussion, Robert Watson, Teaching Pastor at Sun Valley Community Church, shares his passion for helping new believers embrace uncomplicated faith. He discusses how churches can remove barriers for newcomers by simplifying biblical concepts and fostering an inclusive atmosphere. Robert highlights the importance of mentorship and relationships in spiritual growth and reframes early discipleship as an inviting journey. With practical insights, he encourages churches to create clear next steps for those stepping into faith.

Diana Rush, Senior Director of Build Community at Eastside Christian Church, and Ryan Hartwig, co-author of Teams That Thrive, delve into the art of effective church leadership. They discuss the power of shared leadership and collaboration, noting that many teams struggle with clarity about their roles. Rush emphasizes the significance of solid onboarding practices to integrate new staff into church culture. The conversation also touches on mid-level management dynamics, stressing the need for mutual trust and open communication to cultivate thriving teams.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Steece Hayes, a bi-vocational pastor and account manager at Higher Ground Managed IT, part of the ACS Technologies family. Is your ministry struggling with unreliable tech, security risks, or outdated systems—and you’re not even sure where to begin fixing it? Tune in as Steece brings practical insights to help churches focus on ministry—not troubleshooting printers or battling cyber threats. Understanding the scope of IT. // IT infrastructure includes tangible devices like computers, servers, printers, routers, phones, and Wi-Fi networks. It doesn’t cover production gear like sound, video, or media systems—though those systems rely on strong IT infrastructure. Higher Ground Managed IT helps churches get their networks and devices talking to each other efficiently, reliably, and securely. Top IT pain points in churches. // Many churches operate with outdated or underpowered equipment—especially phones and computers. Phone systems are commonly antiquated, difficult to manage, and lack proper support. Churches also often rely on cheap, consumer-grade devices not designed for larger environments, which creates more issues as they grow. C.A.R.E. Framework. // To address these challenges, Higher Ground uses a four-step approach: Clarify, Architect, Reinforce, and Evolve. The process begins with an assessment to clarify a church’s current technology infrastructure, identifying equipment, systems, and security risks. Next, the Architect phase helps design a tailored IT solution that meets the church’s size, budget, and future goals—this can include options for full-service management or co-management with existing staff or volunteers. The Reinforce phase implements the recommended systems and ensures everything is operational and secure. Finally, the Evolve phase focuses on strategic planning for future upgrades, budgeting, and reducing long-term vulnerabilities. This gradual improvement ensures churches can move from a “band-aid” approach to a sustainable, well-managed IT environment. When to ask for help. // If your church has five or more computers and your staff or volunteers struggle to manage IT, it’s time to call Higher Ground. Often, tech responsibilities fall to youth or children’s pastors simply because they’re “young” or know how to use equipment. Higher Ground comes alongside those overwhelmed staff or volunteers to lighten the load and offer scalable support. Cybersecurity is a very real problem. // Phishing—emails or texts designed to trick users into handing over sensitive info—is the #1 threat churches face. Higher Ground proactively trains church teams using simulated phishing attacks and real-time coaching. Other key vulnerabilities include unpatched servers, open Wi-Fi networks, and the absence of proper firewalls. The risk of network intrusion. // Churches are increasingly targeted by cybercriminals due to lax security practices. Some cases have involved hackers sabotaging worship services by penetrating a church’s network. Steece emphasizes the importance of treating your inbox as “hostile territory” and taking preventive steps before tragedy strikes. Better than hiring full time IT staff. // For growing churches, partnering with Higher Ground is often far more cost-effective than hiring an in-house IT manager. The support allows churches to redirect funds toward ministry roles like youth pastors—without sacrificing operational excellence. Learn more about Higher Ground IT and schedule a free call with Steece to walk through your concerns at www.highergroundit.com. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it! Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, our tagline here at unSeminary is stuff you wish they taught in seminary. And today’s podcast, I can guarantee you is one of those things that you wish they taught you in seminary because they don’t teach this stuff in seminary.Rich Birch — And so today we brought an expert on, you’re gonna wanna lean in because I know this is an area that you have had frustration and could actually be holding your ministry back and it shouldn’t. And there’s people out there that want to help you. Rich Birch — Super excited to have Steece Hayes with us. He’s a bi-vocational pastor, is also an account manager at an organization called Higher Ground Managed IT. They’re a part of the ACS Technologies family and they founded with a really simple mission they want to help churches focus on ministry and not troubleshooting or fixing technology. He has a doctoral degree in church revitalization and wants to help churches or struggling churches; this really is a passion of his. Steece, welcome to the showSteece Hayes — Thanks, man. Glad to be here.Rich Birch — Honored that you have taken some time. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? You sit in it you know an interesting vantage point, being both a bi-vocational pastor and working with in kind of helping IT solutions in churches. Tell us a little bit of your journey. How did you end up here? Talk us through all of that.Steece Hayes — Well, it’s kind of an interesting story. It’s a little bit part of my testimony. Actually, I was not really living as a Christian whenever I first started working at ACS Technologies. Uh, uh, shortly thereafter I got married to my wife, who had been at ACS for several years prior to me. Rich Birch — Oh nice.Steece Hayes — And she, and I’m sure there’s a lot of other guys out there who have the same story. She grabbed me by the nap of the neck and dragged me into church and said, you’re going to sit here and listen. And and, you know, so I did. And you know being at ACS, surrounded by other Christian brothers and sisters and working with churches, and then, of course, the influence of my wife and church, I really started feeling the call to ministry. And I was encouraged by my pastor at the time and just started down that road of learning, being engulfed in what it means to be a follower of Christ. And then also being able to, in a professional sense, work with churches every day and helping them with their ministries.Steece Hayes — And originally I was working with our our software and the the software side of things. And so, you know, several, about 10 years ago or so, did that. Just went to seminary, branched out, started pastoring small churches and have just continued that to this day. So I have a passion for the smaller church.Steece Hayes — Although we work with a lot of very large churches. You know, the small church is the majority. And so I love helping them, especially with IT, because they really struggle in that that regard. Even the bigger ones struggle with it as well. So ACS and and the church and me being a pastor are all kind of intertwined into one big story.Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, let’s define terms ah even before we begin. Because I know even IT, information technology, that can be like a buzzword that people aren’t really sure, like, what does that actually mean? Like when you say IT, what does that cover? What is that kind of the spectrum ah you know for a church leader that might be listening in?Steece Hayes — Yeah, really, IT is going to be the network infrastructure, meaning the actual devices, the things, right? The computers, the servers, if you have any switches, which you may or may not even know what that is. But, you know, all the actual devices, the wireless in the building, the things that are tangible that you can touch.Rich Birch — The printers! Why can’t we get the printer to print?Steece Hayes — Yes.Steece Hayes — Yeah. And why my computer talked to that printer yesterday and it doesn’t talk to it today.Rich Birch — Yeah.Steece Hayes — Why?Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes.Steece Hayes — Yeah.Rich Birch — They’ll never fix that. They’ll never fix that problem. That’s like a, you know, that my son and I were joking about that. My son just started kind of at his first full-time big person job. And we were joking about that. Like, listen, listen, I’m a few years older. It’s never, going back to dot matrix this has been a problem. Rich Birch — So, sorry, I’m already explaining some of my pain to you as an IT professional. So it’s all the devices. It’s the things. It’s the network. It’s the switches, the laptops, the desktops, all of that. That’s, when when we say IT, that’s that’s the kind of scope of what we’re talking about?Steece Hayes — Yeah, yeah, it’s keeping all that stuff intertwined, working together, talking with each other, efficient, effective, those sort of things. Now, I will say that what it it does not include is going to be production, media, sound, video, all that. That that’s while they’re very related and the media side, the production side of a church, depends very heavily on the IT infrastructure, we’re not sound engineers and mics and and video and that sort of thing.Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.Steece Hayes — So that’s a little more specialized. Now we’ve worked with those folks quite a bit in churches. But we talk IT, we’re not getting to that point.Rich Birch — Okay. That’s good. Okay. That makes sense. So most churches obviously don’t have a full-time person who thinks about these things. This just isn’t, this is not, you know, and in fact it, it’s, you know, it may maybe be a rare exception of churches that have someone who they can call up to help with this kind of thing. What are some of the common problems, tech problems that you see churches struggling with? Maybe what are some of the pain points that bring them to even reach out to you guys? What’s that look like?Steece Hayes — Yeah, there’s several. And actually one we didn’t mention a second ago, but phone systems, we we help a lot of churches with phones.Rich Birch — Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah, of course.Steece Hayes — Phones are a big one because churches are outdated. I mean, they’re they’re just antiquated with their phone system because most of us are in the mind that we go to the Bell, right? We go to Southern Bell or AT&T or one of the the legacy phone companies. Or nowadays, even the cable company will go to them for their phone system.Rich Birch — Right.Steece Hayes — Generally speaking, they’re not great. Customer support is terrible.Rich Birch — Right.Steece Hayes — The phones are outdated. They don’t work. We don’t know how to change the voicemail. You know, how do I transfer calls?Rich Birch — Okay.Steece Hayes — All these sort of things. So phones are a big thing right now. We’re seeing a huge shift in churches getting away from using personal phones, personal cell phones and stuff like that, and start to incorporate that into a more of a corporate idea or a church phone system. Rich Birch — Okay. Steece Hayes — So that now when you call the pastor, instead of calling his personal number, you’re calling him on the church’s number and it just rings directly to him. And he answers it on his cell phone, even if he’s you know… Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — …making a visit at the hospital or whatever. But it’s kind of bringing all of this. So so phone is a big area that we see a lot of churches really struggling with. Another one, which is sort of related, is outdated equipment. You know, when was the last time they updated their computers in the office or, you know, their switches or just the wireless, the Wi-Fi in the building? I mean, you know, we put that thing in 10 years ago and it’s sort of working, but we’ve been band-aiding it the whole time. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good.Steece Hayes — So, you know, that’s another one. Underpowered equipment, they they’ve grown, but they never updated their IT. They never updated their network.Rich Birch — That’s so good.Steece Hayes — And then I think probably the biggest one is security. They’re just not secure. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Steece Hayes — Churches are very insecure when it comes to cybersecurity. And we’re seeing a pretty huge trend of cyber criminals attacking churches because they see them as low hanging fruit, because honestly, they are.Rich Birch — Yeah.Steece Hayes — So I would say those are the big ones.Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s we’re gonna put a pin in that. I do wanna come back and ask you specifically on the security question, because that’s an area wanna highlight a little bit. In fact, that might be like a whole other conversation, but well, I wanna highlight that. We’ll come back to that.Rich Birch — But talk to us about, um just because we’re getting a sense of the scope here, there there’s also this like um underpowered, overpowered thing where I don’t know whether this has been your experience, but my experience has been, you know, so all the churches I’ve worked for have been fairly large churches, like statistically a thousand plus, thousand to 5,000. There’s not a lot of those out there, but even in a church like that, it’s, it seems like the squeaky wheels get the get get the best computers. Yeah.Rich Birch — Like, it’s like you have some people have these like killer systems that feel like we could send someone to Mars with them. And then somebody who might actually, maybe they’re a graphic designer or they might actually need like a really a computer that does a lot, but they’re just like friendly. And so they don’t get the most powerful computer. They’re maybe are underpowered. Do you see that where there’s like an imbalance of like tool to meet task? Is that an issue that you bump into?Steece Hayes — Yeah, that and generally speaking, with in your scenario, it’s going to be the media guys, right? Rich Birch — Right. They’ve got the $5,000 supercomputer that they’re using to run production… Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — …and and the soundboard and they’re they’re doing all these things. Rich Birch — Yep.Steece Hayes — They’ve got all this equipment that’s really, really expensive. And yet the, you know, the ministry assistant or the secretary is using a Windows 7 computer that’s 35 years old. you know So we we do see that quite often. We that that’s a thing. Rich Birch — Yeah.Steece Hayes — What more specifically of what I’m referring to about underpower and overpower is things like wifi. You know, people don’t understand. And what most people, when they think of computers and technology, they think more power is better. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Steece Hayes — You know, let’s get more. And actually that can be counterintuitive. We’ve we’ve been in several churches where they had wifi in the building, but all their antennas or the, what we call access points are set to 11, right? They’re, they’re, they’re at max level.Steece Hayes — And what happens is, is that the signals are bouncing off of each other and the signals terrible in the building because everything’s turned up to the max. Or the other way is we’ve had churches that, you know, they they have 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 people, and they’re using equipment that they bought from Best Buy. Rich Birch — Yeah.Steece Hayes — And it’s like, that’s just not, that’s intended for your house. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Steece Hayes — That’s not great for this environment. Rich Birch — Right.Steece Hayes — And Wi-Fi is just an easy one to pick on, but that’s kind of an idea of…Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Steece Hayes — …you know, churches will go down to Best Buy or order something off Amazon all the time that will, you know, kind of scratch the itch they have…Rich Birch — Right.Steece Hayes — …but it’s not really designed for what we would call an enterprise application.Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Totally makes sense. Okay. So yeah I know that you guys have something called the care framework for churches. Help us kind of unpack that a little bit. Talk us through what does that look like and how does it help us be effective on this front to think through how we manage our IT well? Because frankly, to be honest, this is one of those areas where I see churches stumble. Rich Birch — Like it’s like, this is, man, if like, it would be a sin for our computers to hold us back. Like we just, we should fix this. There’s people out there that can actually solve these problems. So how do you help them? What’s that look like? Talk us through that framework.Steece Hayes — Yeah, and kind of with that idea and what you had said earlier, you know IT generally, in a lot of churches, is a very, very bottom of the barrel budget item. Most churches don’t spend a lot of money on them. Most churches don’t even have an IT budget. And if they do, it’s very underpowered, to use that same phrase. So what we do is is we have care, and that simply means clarify, architect, reinforce, and evolve.Steece Hayes — So clarify would be our first engagement with a church, would be to understand what they have. You know, what devices do you have? What computers do you have? Are they up to date? Are they not? What are your security issues? Are you secure? Are you not secure? Kind of talk through educating them – basically getting a good understanding of what their IT system and situation currently is. So that would be the clarify side of it.Steece Hayes — Then we get into architect. That would be the A. And so architect would be starting to design and build out what should your IT look like for the church. And so that may be, do you need servers or do you not need servers? That’s a big conversation a lot of churches are having today. How do we want to work with you? Do we want to manage the entire thing for you and you are hands off? Many of our churches choose that because they don’t have anybody that knows how to do it anyway. So they allow us just to handle it all. Steece Hayes — Some of the larger churches are like, hey, we will co-manage with you. So in other words, they are still involved. They’re doing a lot of work, but we are are there sort of as an umbrella to help them, to guide them, to do a lot of the minutia that they don’t have time for. But it’s also sort of putting everything in place, making sure the reporting is there, making sure all the devices are hooked up, everything’s working, everybody’s there. So we build that architect for them and then show that to them.Steece Hayes — And then once they decide that we’re we’re a good fit for them, we implement it. So we put all those in place, all the workflows, the automations, making sure that all the tools are in place, helping them with any kind of remote workforce stuff that they may do, because a lot of people work remotely nowadays.Steece Hayes — But basically getting all that set up and running. And then they’re in good they’re in a good shape. And then the last would be evolve. And so evolve would be, okay, we’re we’re managing it. Everything’s working. Life is happy. Everything’s going well. Now let’s start looking at the next step. So back to those devices and that equipment, you know, how many of your computers are out of date? How many of your switches are 10 years old? All right. We decided in the whole process that you probably didn’t need that server after all. Remember servers are $6000-$10,000 to replace. Oftentimes, and in today’s cloud world they’re just not needed a whole lot. Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — So maybe know after we’ve gotten everything set up and running, now we look at, okay, let’s start simplifying some of these things. Let’s put in a budget and a plan for replacing a few switches over the next year or two years. Let’s get you out of that server um you’ve got a handful of computers that are just out of date. What’s our plan for for doing that. So all of that is working with the church on budgeting. Churches don’t have unlimited funds, as we all know. How can we do this in steps? We triage it, what’s the most important. And over the next you know couple of years, we will evolve them from being a band-aid shop to really state-of-the-art, but inside of their budget.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s great.Steece Hayes — So that’ that’s sort of the evolve.Rich Birch — Yeah.Steece Hayes — So clarify, architect, reinforce, evolve. And there’s a lot of little small steps in all of that.Rich Birch — Sure. Of course. Steece Hayes — But it’s trying to get them from where they are today to where they really need to be.Rich Birch — Yep.Steece Hayes — And we work with large and small churches. So that varies a little bit depending on their size and scope.Rich Birch — Yeah. What’s the kind of, what’s the sweet spot? Obviously, like, you know, you’ll work with, with anybody obviously, but what is the kind of sweet spot of a church that you would say, Hey, here’s a church where you probably should bring us in. I’m assuming if it’s like, even if you have just two staff, cause already you’re like, you’ve got some sort of network, you’re printing some stuff. You’ve got a couple of computers. You got to get them to talk well together, but what would that look like? What does it give us a sense of the size question?Steece Hayes — It varies a little bit, but I would say once a church, well, first of all, if a church finds themselves needing IT help, they they are struggling with it. Maybe they have some volunteers that are kind of helping with it. Volunteers are wonderful. We love volunteers, even corporate. I mean, we just, we love that the church has those volunteers and we never want to take the volunteer out of the equation because that may be their giftedness, right? That may be their way of serving the kingdom. So we don’t want to take them out. Steece Hayes — But oftentimes volunteers are limited in their time and their scope and what they can… And also volunteers tend to lot of times be limited in their understanding. They don’t know all of this.Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. They’re not thinking about it all day long. Yeah.Steece Hayes — They’re not. And so really, once you get up, I would say probably five computers. Rich Birch — Yep. Okay. Steece Hayes — And you’re you’re working with a staff that is not knowledgeable, the staff is busy… Rich Birch — Yep. Steece Hayes — …and you you see your IT starting to kind of go backwards a little bit, we’re having problems. And we’re having to call the local IT shop down the street to come in and fix things. Generally speaking, that’s when we would like to have that engagement. So that five, maybe on the small end to 10, although we’ve got some clients that have two computers.Rich Birch — Right, right.Steece Hayes — But that 5 to 10 computer size, and everything is being run by by volunteers or staff that… and here’s what we’ll see a lot of times in churches is the youth pastor is usually the one that’s assigned to it because he’s the young guy. Rich Birch — There’s some stereotypes that just are true.Steece Hayes — Yeah [inaudible] it’s either the the youth or the children’s guy or or lady… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steece Hayes — …and they’ll tap them because hey you’re in your 30s, you know what this you know this technology stuff is. Rich Birch — Yes. You seem to know how to use your cell phone. You can fix this. Yeah. Steece Hayes — Sure, you know how to do all this stuff. And so they’re over their head and this isn’t their job. Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. Steece Hayes — And so that’s where we come in and we kind of take that burden off of them. Rich Birch — Yeah.Steece Hayes — And for the volunteers, we still use them quite often. You know, we’ll we’ll help. They’ll do some stuff around the church. They’re still involved in the process. But, you know, we’re taking all the heavy lifting and we’re doing all the minutiae and we’re there to to back them up and support them.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, and I can imagine if I, and this may not be the kind of thing you’re thinking about, but if you’re thinking, you know, in the next couple of years, I can imagine us hiring a few more people, that this would be like something you want to get done on the front end. Rich Birch — It’s like, Hey, I’m envisioning a season of hiring. Hey, we should bring somebody in now and kind of get this set up right. Get it kind of clearly aligned before. So that by the time those staff land, man, things are are set up and and well. Rich Birch — I want to go back to the cybersecurity question. This is ah is a real issue, obviously. I don’t want to be like fear mongering to people, but I do also want to be really clear. What are some real risks that that we that frankly some leaders might not be aware of and that really we should be taking some steps towards? I know a friend of mine, they had their organization had a security breach that was like tragic, like it’s very bad for the organization. And so I don’t want people to live through that. So help help us understand what are some of those risks. Without a fear mongering kind of thing, what are some real things we should be thinking about on this front?Steece Hayes — Yeah, cybersecurity is a hard conversation to have with now without coming out sounding fear-mongering… Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Crazy. Yeah. Steece Hayes — …because it’s a it’s a very real problem and it’s a very real threat. So ah the the number one threat out there today is phishing. Rich Birch — Yep. Steece Hayes — So for for those of your audience that may not be familiar with phishing, although I think most people are today, it’s those emails. And and we even have smishing, which would be SMS, same idea. And it’s some bad actor out there, a bad guy has sent you an email with the idea that they want you to click on something or interact with it in some way. Right? Steece Hayes — And when you do interact with it, they are stealing information, whether it’s credentials or something they’re getting from you that they can then turn around and penetrate your network, penetrate your system, do something, do some bad act with it. And so it usually comes through an email or through an SMS or something like that. Steece Hayes — That’s number one. That is hitting everybody across the board. So one of the things that we do is that we engage the church with phishing. So we phish them. We have on staff what I call white hat hackers. I mean, these are really scary guys who are very good at that. Rich Birch — Sure.Steece Hayes — And but but they’re good guys, right? And they’re they’re serving the church. And they will use what’s called social engineering means they’ll go to your website. They’ll look around, they’ll see some events and things like this. And they will then send an email to the church saying, Hey, we see you’ve got this event coming up next week. Click here to enter in a, get an offering or not an offering, but a… Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — …a raffle or something we’re going to have at the event you can enter here. And so they’ll click on that button because it sounds innocent.Rich Birch — Right.Steece Hayes — And the bad guy, if it were truly a bad guy, has them. So we’ll do that. And then we follow that up with training. And, hey, here’s what you look for. Here’s how to recognize it. Here’s how to avoid it. Rich Birch — That’s good.Steece Hayes — And our risk manager here at ACS, you know, his his whole mantra is your inbox is hostile territory. Just assume everything that comes in is bad.Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah, it’s true. Be very suspicious.Steece Hayes — Oh, 100%. And it’s not only true for you know your professional world at the church or your job or wherever you are. It’s true in your personal life. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s very true.Steece Hayes — You know that this is is a big problem. So phishing is a big one. That’s a huge problem today.Rich Birch — Yeah.Steece Hayes — The next next one would just be network intrusion in general. That would be having vulnerabilities in your network, having servers that’s not patched, not having a firewall, you know having your Wi-Fi that’s open to the whole universe and anybody can just come in and have access to it and they’re in your network. So those are the two big ones.Rich Birch — Yeah. And and friends, this the interesting thing about this whole area is I think for some reason, there’s like shame or like embarrassment out there around when this stuff actually happens and people don’t talk about it. And so, you know, this stuff actually happens in organizations. It actually happens in churches. And it happened in my organization. My finance person got an email from me saying—and this is a really common one—saying, hey, could you get five ah gift cards online from for these volunteers? And um I’m just in between meetings – can you can you book them, and just send me back the codes and sent a link to it or whatever.Rich Birch — And she almost took action on it. She almost took the step. And she’s an incredibly smart person. Like this is this is not she’s but then she she gave me a ring and she said, hey, I just want to double check on these gift cards. Well, that’s the first time I heard about that. And then as she was talking to me, she was like, oh, of of course this was not true. But it was socially engineered close enough. That’s just outside of something I would do. Like it was it was like not that strange. Hey, we want to thank these volunteers. We you know, we and wouldn’t be crazy for me to say, let’s get gift cards and give to them like that’s not like a crazy thing.Rich Birch — But it, you know, smart enough. And another, and I’m just saying this friends, not to freak you out, but again, to make you aware: church I know, I’ve done some work with, church of a couple thousand people, they have, and all of their systems are super automated. They have a lot of production stuff that’s super automated. And um they were having repeated technical problems, like repeated technical problems. Like stuff in their audio, stuff in their lighting, stuff on their phone you know their phones, like all this over weeks and could not figure it out.Rich Birch — And finally came to the end of it and realized, oh, they have someone who’s intruded their system and is it’s just they’re just a vandal. Like they’re in, you know, destroying their lighting system, in destroying you know audio, at like during services, like canning stuff and like. So they had to go through a significant thing like, hey, we’re changing it all. We got to go back. Everybody, you know, two factor authentication, all that stuff again. Again, and this was this is a smart church. They’re doing good work. These people are not knuckle draggers. They’re smart people. But there’s like an embarrassment out there to even talk about this stuff. But it happens, friends. You want someone like you. Rich Birch — So how how do you, let’s pivot and talk a little bit more specifically about the services that you provide. Give us a sense of how does this all fit together? How does Higher Ground or ACS, how do how do they actually help a church in this area? What does a typical engagement look like?Steece Hayes — Well, it would be the care would be sort of the the overall framework… Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Steece Hayes — …but but it would basically be to talk to the church and find out, you know, where are you? You know, what what’s your current IT situation? And then trying to to raise them up a level. Like we want them to level up in what they’re doing. There’s almost no way that we’re going to 127 percent prevent all cyber crimes. Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — I mean, unfortunately, the days of the Nigerian prince emails are gone.Rich Birch — Right. No, it’s true.Steece Hayes — Today, the cyber criminals are way sophisticated. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Steece Hayes — And so what what we want to do is is is really twofold is one, make them as secure as possible. So we want to take them from being really low hanging fruit to being a little further up on the tree. So if something, if a bad guy is out there kind of shotgunning, looking around for vulnerabilities, your church isn’t going to be one of those he’s going to find, because you’re going to be a lot more difficult, a lot more fortified for the bad guy. So that’s going to be one of the things we’re going to look at. Steece Hayes — And the other thing is, is just internal efficiency. What do you guys, I mean, the number of churches that we run into that have both Microsoft 365 and Google workspaces, it’s like you guys aren’t efficient. Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s good.Steece Hayes — You know, they’re they’re not backing up their data. Rich Birch — That’s good.Steece Hayes — They’re like, hey, we we’ve got all our stuff is in Microsoft 365. Yeah, guess what? Microsoft doesn’t back that stuff up. If one day it goes away, you’ve just lost it. And so how do we back up your data? How do we keep your data safe, right? And secure and accessible.Rich Birch — That’s good.Steece Hayes — So, I mean, there’s a ton of different things and ways that we engage with the church. It really is what does that church need today? And then that evolve part, of course, would be what are you going to need tomorrow and the next day and going so forth.Steece Hayes — But I want to hit on something you said earlier about looking to grow and add staff and things like that.Rich Birch — Yep. For sure.Steece Hayes — Generally speaking, working with a managed service provider like Higher Ground, we’re going to be significantly less expensive than hiring a full-time person.Rich Birch — Right, right.Steece Hayes — A lot less expensive. Rich Birch — For sure. Steece Hayes — And so if a church is looking to grow and you’re wanting to expand and things like that, we, I personally, would rather you spend that money in hiring a youth pastor or a children’s minister or growing the ministry… Rich Birch — That’s good. Steece Hayes — …and not spend a whole lot of money in your IT staff. Again, some churches need it because they’re a large church and they need to have an IT person there. But we can do a lot of the work that a full-time person would would do and you don’t necessarily need to to add staff for that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Steece Hayes — Yeah, those those are all the different areas that that we look at.Rich Birch — So good. Now, this I didn’t we didn’t talk about this ahead of time, but let’s picture I’m a church of like a thousand people and I let’s say I’m an executive pastor and I’m like, I just have this niggling feeling that we’re not performing well on this front. Like this is an area that, you know, we, we have the kid who is like, I’m not sure whether they’re any good at this stuff or not doing it. And I’m like, I don’t know. Do you guys provide a service or is there a way for you to come in and kind of do like an audit, help us understand, even get clarity? Will you do like the first step and be like, Hey, just help us understand that kind of see where are we at? Is that, is that the kind of thing that you, you provide? Is there ah an opportunity for that?Steece Hayes — Yeah, yeah, yeah. We actually have. And we we can provide a security assessment for them.Rich Birch — Okay, nice.Steece Hayes — What it is, is basically we we would send to them this assessment and they would go through it. It’s a series of questions, lots of different questions, and they would answer the questions. And at the end of it, it will give them a score where they scored on their assessment. And as you may imagine, the vast majority, and I would say probably 80 to 90% of, of every church has ever taken this assessment score at 50% or below, which is really bad.Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is not like golf where you want a low low score.Steece Hayes — No, no, no.Rich Birch — But I’m also thinking more than just the kind of security stuff.Rich Birch — What about IT in general? Like, I feel like I’ve got problems on, you know, it’s maybe not on the security side, but it is in the like, I man, like we got problems with, in order to get that printer to work, we have to like, you have to stand on one foot and, you know, shake your hand a certain way to get it to work. Those kinds of problems. Can you help us audit that too?Steece Hayes — Yeah, I mean, that’s part of sort of the clarify is when we have that conversation is… Rich Birch — Yes. Part of that service. Yeah. Steece Hayes — …you know, come to us and say, hey here’s our problem. Rich Birch — Yes. Steece Hayes — And these conversations don’t cost the church anything. Rich Birch — Right.Steece Hayes — I mean I, you know, I do this every day. Rich Birch — Right.Steece Hayes — And this is, you know, here’s our problems. These are the things we’re running into. And then we can guide you. And I’ve worked with many churches where we never charge them. Imean, they never bought any of our services, but we had conversations just to help them.Rich Birch — Right. It’s not a great business. Just kidding.Steece Hayes — But at the end of the day, I mean, we still want to help the church. I mean, this is a ministry… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. Steece Hayes — …even though it’s a business, it’s still a ministry. And so we can talk them through some steps on things that they can do. For instance, you know, having a password manager. You know, a password manager is a really inexpensive way for the church to control and to make all their passwords all in one place. They can keep them. They can make their passwords complex. They don’t need to spend a whole lot of money on that. It’s a pretty inexpensive, cheap way of doing that.Steece Hayes — The phishing awareness training and everything I was talking about earlier, they can do that up front day one, and it’s really cheap. I mean, it’s really inexpensive to do that. And we will even walk through, you know, what are your computers? When was the last time they were updated? Are you patching them? Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good. Steece Hayes — You know, things like that. So, you know, we have a lot of conversations with with churches about easy things that they can fix without spending a lot of money on. But that’s that conversation. We just need to talk to them and find out what what problems they’re having.Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. I noticed, so friends, you want to go to highergroundit.com, top right-hand corner. There’s a “schedule a call” button. You can do that literally while we are on that while we’re wrapping up this episode. You could do that today.Rich Birch — If I go and click on that “schedule a call” button, what happens? Who do I talk to? Reduce some anxiety around that being like, oh, they’re just going to try to sell me on something. Tell tell me about how you can help me. Because what I hear you saying is, hey, you want to help churches, which I know that’s what you want to do. Obviously, I’m paying a little of the devil’s like a advocate here, but help us understand a little bit of, of, of what would that look like if I was to do that today?Steece Hayes — Yeah, and that would be it. I mean, we would just simply talk about your your system, where you are, what your struggles are, what your pain point, what you’re concerned with, your worries. And we simply talk through that.Steece Hayes — And again, I am perfectly happy with us having a conversation and getting off the phone and you never buying anything, but you feel better.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. That’s good.Steece Hayes — And you’re going to go do a few of these easy, easy fixes, right? I’m perfectly happy with that. But for many folks, they’re like, hey, we need this and we need it every day. We need it 24/7. We need you guys to help us be a part of the solution. And so in that case, we’ll we’ll have a longer engagement and work with the church to to make them better.Rich Birch — That’s great. So again, ah you want to go to highergroundit.com and click on that schedule a call button. That would be a great way to kind of get the ball rolling today. Anything else you’d like to share with us, Steece, just as today as we kind of wrap up today’s episode?Steece Hayes — I would say for all the churches out there, small, medium, or large, IT needs to be something you’re thinking about. Rich Birch — That’s good.Steece Hayes — It needs to be something that that’s important to you. Many churches don’t even have an IT budget. Have that conversation. Figure out where your budget needs to be. Steece Hayes — And I will say, for all those out there that are weren’t running anything outside of Windows 11, Microsoft ends their support of Windows 10 coming up in Nov or in October. So as of October, if you are not using a Windows 11 computer… Rich Birch — That’s good. Steece Hayes — …it is no longer supported, which means security is going to be a major problem for you. That’s a big tip there.Rich Birch — No, that’s good. That’s really good. So ah again, if you don’t know what that is, you can click the “schedule a call” button. He’d even help you understand if you’re using Windows 10, that might save you right there. So, or you maybe send an email. Maybe that might be an easier way ah to to do that.Steece Hayes — That’s right.Rich Birch — Well, this has been fantastic, Steece. I really appreciate highergroundit.com. Anywhere else we want to send people online to kind of track with you guys?Steece Hayes — That’s the main area. And all of those inquiries will come to me. Rich Birch — Great. Steece Hayes — I’ll be the one that that will field those and we’ll have the conversations. We’ll help them out. So looking forward to talking to folks.Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much for being here today.Steece Hayes — Thanks, man.