unSeminary Podcast

Shift your focus from measuring success by Christmas attendance to the increase in attendance in January. Strategies include incorporating a strong hook in the Christmas message, using compelling video clips during announcements, and giving attendees return gifts. After Christmas, enhance the experience with attention-grabbing exit signage, thank-you emails with shareable content, and gathering feedback through surveys. Capitalize on Christmas momentum by making announcements, offering return gifts, providing exit signage, and utilizing various communication forms.

Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re happy to be talking with Stan Jantz today, the Chief Executive Officer of The Come and See Foundation. In partnership with ministries around the world, Come and See is on a mission to share the authentic Jesus with 1 billion people worldwide. Throughout history, followers of Christ have used any means possible to take the good news out into the world. From Roman roads, to the Gutenberg Press, and now “The Chosen”, technology is being leveraged in exciting ways to spread the Gospel. Stan is with us today to discuss the impact of the TV series “The Chosen,” the role of technology in spreading the Gospel, and how churches can use this series as a tool for evangelism and discipleship. A tool for the Gospel. // Stan believes that “The Chosen”, a multi-episodic, multi-season portrayal of Jesus and his chosen, is the greatest publishing event in his lifetime. With a goal to distribute all seven seasons in 600 languages, with 100 of them dubbed, Come and See is working to make the show accessible for free to anyone, anywhere, leveraging the potential of reaching billions of people through digital devices. They are currently on track for the first three seasons to be translated into 50 languages by the end of the year. Watching the series can entice people into exploring the scriptures to see if the things they’ve watched really happened. Help with translations. // While AI may be used in the translation process, Stan stresses the need for human subject matter experts to ensure accuracy and nuance in the translations. The Come and See Foundation works with a subject matter expert in each of the languages and cultures to which they are translating. This expert can be a theologian or pastor who will take the translation and ensure that it is maintaining the integrity of the message, even if it’s not scripture. They also ensure that the correct words are used in the translations. It takes creativity and human understanding to make a final work that is not only clear, but also correct. Partnering to spread the word. // Come and See has partnered with Gloo, which helps churches obtain free licenses to access segments of “The Chosen” along with suggested outlines for use. In addition to being useful for sermon series or broadcast events, “The Chosen” can function as a discipleship tool in small groups alongside study guides offered on the TV series’ website. It’s also a great evangelistic tool for seekers and raises compelling questions, driving viewers to the Scriptures. Reaching Gen Z. // In particular, Stan believes there is a significant opportunity here to bring young people, especially Gen Z, back to the church. Each generation has a gateway question that reveals what they value which they will ask when exploring something. For example, a boomer will ask, is it true? Gen X will ask, is it authentic? A Millennial will ask, is it good, for me and for the world? But Gen Z asks, is it beautiful? The approach “The Chosen” has to the Good News resonates with younger generations because of the beautiful, intimate story it portrays. The wonderful thing is it is also a true story. Go to them. // Whether it’s for outreach, discipleship, missions or more, don’t wait for people to come to you, go to them. Use the free tools and resources available on The Come and See website to create opportunities for sharing the Gospel. Students are hungry to get involved in something meaningful; collaborate with Christian colleges and student ministries to unleash the next generation to use “The Chosen” in powerful ways in their communities. Explore the resources available from The Come and See Foundation at www.comeandseefoundation.org. 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: The Giving Church As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching. Visit thegivingchurch.com/unseminary for a FREE PDF, 5 Ways To Grow Your Church Giving. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will inspire and equip you, and today is no exception. I’m really excited privileged to have Stan Jantz with us. He is the chief executive ah Chief Executive Officer of The Come and See Foundation. And they have this incredible mission. I love this—a mission that really draws us out—is a big idea to try to share the authentic Jesus with a billion people. You might be familiar with The Chosen. Well they’re on a mission to try to get this ah message out to remote villages, prisons, halfway houses, and beyond and they’re in in the middle of all of this incredible translation work. I’m super excited—and Stan’s in the middle of all that—so super excited to have Stan with us. Welcome to the show, Stan, so glad you’re here. Stan Jantz — Thank you, Rich, appreciate it. And love being on your show, and love what you do. Thank you. Rich Birch — Love it. Why don’t you fill out the picture there a little bit. Tell us a little bit about yourself, give us more your background. I know you’ve been involved on, you know, you know, the publishing side. Ah but tell us a little bit about yourself and about The Come and See Foundation for folks that are unaware. Stan Jantz — Well I have been my whole life about Christian content. So it started with Christian bookstores. My family owned a chain of Christian retail bookstores in California. I grew up in that. I was around all the books. I was around the media, which back in the old days was sixteen millimeter films, I went to video… Rich Birch —Love it. Stan Jantz — So all that stuff, you know, [inaudible] and all that kind of thing. And went to Biola University and got my degree there. I got married, got went back in the family business. And we actually sold that in the late 90s, not because we were so smart knew Amazon was going to change retail, but it’s just something, another chapter. Stan Jantz — So I started writing books. And I wrote with a partner who is a lawyer and we’ve written about about 50 or so books together… Rich Birch — Love it. Stan Jantz — …mostly around kind of taking theology and putting on the lower shelves. We did a Christianity 101 series with Harvest House. And most recently I’ve done a couple of solo projects – one is called “Fire and Wind” about the Holy Spirit and then “The Healing Power of God”. And this from a guy and went to Biola where the trinity was Father, Son, Holy Bible, right? So I’ve kind of… Rich Birch — Love it. Stan Jantz — …had this this new discovery, and by the way, Biola too has has embraced the Holy Spirit. There’s a center there for the Holy Spirit. So. Rich Birch — So good. Stan Jantz — But it is the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. so I I cherish the word of God, I’ve love it, I’ve taught just on, you know, in my own life, my wife and I in terms of you know classes and that kind of thing – just love it. I love taking people through discipleship journeys. Stan Jantz — And so you know as I was kind of going along and worked in the publishing world as well and led the evangelical Christian Publishers Association, which is a trade group that represents Christian publishers worldwide, and so I just I just love published simply means to make public. Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — We associate it with books but it’s really any kind of media. In fact, the angels who came about Christmas time, the angels when they came to announce to the shepherd… Rich Birch — First publishers! Stan Jantz — …they published glad tidings… Rich Birch — Yes, love it. Love it. Yeah. Stan Jantz — …as said in the King James. so it just means to make known, especially with the good news. Rich Birch — Yeah. Stan Jantz — And there’s been this huge, you know, effort through history to use any means possible to take the good news out into the world. And so um, you know I am just so thrilled to be a part of what I think is perhaps the greatest publishing event that, in my lifetime maybe even longer, is The Chosen… Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s amazing. Stan Jantz — …this multi-episodic, multi-season portrayal of Jesus and his his chosen. And they just the experience that we’ve all read about in the gospels. And and it just it just has presented this intimate, what I guess we call authentic portrayal of Jesus in a way that’s so vivid, and and and and accurate, and it’s just people are just compelled, as I was too when I first saw it. Stan Jantz — So the foundation exists to really to make it possible for all 7 seasons. That’s the map. That’s what’s coming. There’ve been there have been 3, number 4 is coming in the first of 2024 to make it possible for all 7 seasons to be distributed around the world. And we’re going to depend on ministry partners like YouVersion and Bible Project and One Hope. The Chosen is working with commercial distribution so coordinate those together to get into places, for us especially, where the commercial enterprises aren’t going to go. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — So make sure that everybody has a chance to see it, and then the translation as you mentioned into what we’re kind of shooting as a goal of 600 languages… Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Stan Jantz — …that would be subtitled, but 100 would be dubbed. And we can talk about that later because that’s an extraordinary goal. And then to keep it free so anybody can watch anytime on their device. And and you probably know this, Rich, but I just learned this recently – there are 8 billion people in the world; 6 there are 6 billion smartphones. I mean I just… Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, that’s astonishing. Stan Jantz — …it’s just amazing. I mean, yeah, and so you think, well it’s just kind of a western technology. No they’re all over the world. Rich Birch — No, yep. Stan Jantz — And The Chosen is something that is being then distributed through these devices. And of course there’s streaming services, theatrical, all that, but the key is for free that anybody anywhere can watch it anytime and not have to pay for it. So, those are our goals, and it’s it’s a long, you know, many year plan because the seasons obviously haven’t been finished yet. But we think even beyond when they finish the final season in 2027 that we’ll still be reaching the world, that we want to say the first billion, right, because it is a billion. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Stan Jantz — But there’s 8 billion people so we want to keep going after that. Rich Birch — We got a long ways to go. Stan Jantz — We do. Rich Birch — Well I love that. I I love that. And I, you know, I love the the big vision. I love, you know, I love what the The Chosen has done. You know, my own kind of I think there’s a lot of people share this kind of experience. I I was a late comer, I was a sleeper on The Chosen. I was, you know, I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve been in vocational ministry for so long. I’m like, man, do we really need another Christian thing? And I and my I remember my wife she was like, no, this you got to watch this. And I remember the first couple episodes I was just sucked right in. And it’s been amazing to watch time and again it’s like people who are brand new to faith, sucked in, and are like wow they you know, go back to scripture want to want to read the real story. Or then longtime, who I would count myself in that, longtime Christ’s followers seeing the bible in a new way, and like it bringing the the story to life. And so I just want to honor you, honor the team, honor you know you know, obviously Dallas and his whole team, what they’re doing on The Chosen side ah to to actually make this happen. So honored to have you on. Rich Birch — But I’d love to talk about some of your goals here. This is crazy six hundred languages, a hundred dubs – that is there anybody doing anything at that scale? That to me seems, as an outsider to this industry, that seems like massive like that’s ah, that’s a huge goal. Stan Jantz — No, you are right. I mean typically, and this is really what drew, you know, the folks in ah, you know, probably the Mark Green the the Green family. Rich Birch — Yup. Stan Jantz — They’ve been such huge supporters of bible translation. And so translation was kind of the heart and they knew and they they saw this show, and said man this this is this is something the world needs to see. But if it’s just on the commercial side they’re only going to do 40 languages, maybe 50 tops. and I think the record they they in the Guinness Book of World Records the show the tv show that’s been translated the most is Baywatch. Now isn’t that isn’t that quite a record. Rich Birch — Really!? That’s crazy! Stan Jantz — Yeah, it’s like it’s like 46 languages. Rich Birch — Wow. Stan Jantz — And otherwise they kind of stop, you know… Rich Birch — Yeah. Stan Jantz — …or it could stop. It’s not commercially viable to go much beyond that. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — So for us to set this goal up 600 and 100 dubbed… And so right now we’re on track, Rich, for the first 3 seasons to be translated, not all dubbed, but translated into 50 languages by the end of this year. Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing. Stan Jantz — And then as we work toward because the dubbing is is something that it still requires a hands-on…it’s a voice actor who is… Rich Birch — Yep Stan Jantz — …they want to find a voice that matches the original, you know, that’s in the, you know, the first version of that the English version. And to capture so it looks it looks credible and that you’re not distracted because the sync is off and that kind of thing. So it’s it’s a it’s an art form… Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Stan Jantz — …and when you go then from languages 51 to 100 it starts, Okay which ones? Because some of those, and we’ll talk maybe a little bit later about what happened to Madagascar, you know, and there’s some of these languages that are are important, but they don’t fit into that top 50 or even you know top 25. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — And yet what what an opportunity that people can experience the gospel as portrayed through this through this media portrayal in their own heart language. Same thing with scripture. And as you said, then to drive people or to entice people who then look at the scriptures. And for a lot of us, I look at it and said, did that that really happen? Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — And so I want to go back and look at it. You know and read that passage. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stan Jantz — But I’ll tell you for people who have never read the bible, it is it is we we see that. It is encouraging and I would just say driving people to want to look at the scriptures. Rich Birch — Yeah. Stan Jantz — And there’s been no pretense that The Chosen is inspired. It’s a show about Jesus. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Stan Jantz — The word of God is inspired. That’s where we want people to go… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Stan Jantz — …where they will meet the Holy Spirit, you know, working in their heart as they to help them understand what they’re reading. And if if you know that means then too a life-changing experience of coming to Jesus through that, absolutely. So that translation work is really really key. Stan Jantz — And then to go from 101 to 600, now it hits that would hit 95% of the of the world’s population… Rich Birch — Wow, wow. Okay. Stan Jantz — …that can understand. And now doesn’t mean it could be that you your first language is Swahili, but you understand English. Rich Birch — Right? right. Stan Jantz — And it’s like you’re so… people would be able to but we’ll hit obviously Swahili and Telugu and qnd Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Portuguese Portuguese, and all these major languages. And in fact, right now we’re working on translations into Arabic, which is I’m sure you’ve had on on your show people who are tracking what’s happening in in… Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — …in Iran. I mean we’re we’re really nervous about Iran. But, you know, but one of the greatest per capita people coming to Jesus, the greatest number right now, percentage-wise, is happening in Iran. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. It’s amazing. Stan Jantz — And Jesus meets them in different ways than we’re, you know, we would… Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — …experience here in the west, through dreams… Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — …and through those kinds of things. And so we think it’s so important. And so right now there are three Arabic dialects: there’s classic Arabic, Syrian Arabic, and Egyptian Arabic, and we’re working on those, and it’s not easy, especially with what’s going on there. But it’s so important to bring this message to people that are so hungry for it. They don’t know it yet, perhaps… Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. Stan Jantz — …but they’re hungry for hope, hungry for something that gives them their life meaning, and and helps in this world we’re we’re living in. And obviously for eternity. So we have a great point we have someone who’s leading that for us – I’ll tell you about him in a second. But just how God’s brought this team together is is pretty amazing because you bring, as you’ve experienced too, people who… he doesn’t just kind of start you from scratch. He’s using everything you’ve done… Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — …you’ve worked with, you’ve trained for, for this moment, right, for what you’re doing right now. Rich Birch — Right, right. Stan Jantz — And I’m sure you could say the true same thing in your life too. It’s ah… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Stan Jantz — …no waste, right? Yeah, so. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Well, and I love, so obviously love um, you know, the Green family what they’ve done in a lot of different places, a lot of different ah segments of the Christian world. They, man, have really stepped in and with some pretty innovative like, hey let’s try to see this happen. And I love what’s happening here with come and see they’ve obviously been ah, critical piece of, Mark’s been a critical piece of this, you know, of this thing. Rich Birch — Let’s get under the hood a little bit, and talk about, so I love the technology solution here, like trying to leverage kind of up-to-date they even that that whole thing around smartphones and like, man, let’s let’s be smartphone first and how do we get this app available. How do we do that? Um, challenge us help us kind of stretch our minds a little bit around what how you guys are thinking, how you see that as kind of a tool for the gospel? You know this is this is as old as time, going back to Paul leveraging Roman roads to send letters to each other. You know, this is there’s lots of examples of this, but help us think through you know, how how did you pick the first 50 languages? What’s that look like? Help us wrestle through those things. Stan Jantz — Yeah, well I’m glad I’m glad you brought up the Roman roads because I’m just going to say this: God loves technology. He uses it for His purpose. Rich Birch — Yes, true! Yes! Stan Jantz — You know, now now the Christians didn’t build the Roman roads, right? Rich Birch — No. Stan Jantz — It was built by Romans. Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — And they didn’t use it for the gospel. They used for for commerce and and [inaudible] you know, and to keep the peace and the in the in the empire. Rich Birch — Yeah. Stan Jantz — But Christians then took that and could go out and take that Gospel, was already… Rich Birch — Yes, yep. Stan Jantz — …the way was paved, literally. And then you have another great one was Gutenberg, the Gutenberg press. And you know we say the first by first book to be printed was the bible. But then it was really kind of a, you know, it was an artistic achievement and a cultural achievement. And it blossomed the whole world. But God used it to get the word out. And that’s when the big translation boom happened was after the printing press, you know. Suddenly we realized, oh I can afford a bible now, you know, because it’s not copied. And well I need it in my language. So people like John Wycliffe and Tyndale and others started translating, and it just became the spread. Now you have this, I would call it, this third innovation in the last two thousand years that just massive and that’s the that’s the internet. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Stan Jantz — That’s that’s the you know the digital age. And let’s use it. It’s a tool and it’s like God is saying, there it is. It’s like the Roman roads of our day. Here you go; you can take it out and it’s going to go everywhere. And you can. It’s portable and it’s it’s possible about any it’s just you know the innovation of its set of this information superhighway is just incredible. So why and we have been using it, obviously, but the beauty of this is you’ve got this visual representations, visual story… Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — …that people…we’re we’re in a visual age, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — People are, I mean if it’s YouTube or whatever it is, we’re getting so much more information now by looking at a phone, or at at a streaming service or whatever to get that information. So the timing is just right for this. Rich Birch — Yeah. Stan Jantz — And but how do we use it so it becomes a tool and not a master. And I think you you mentioned earlier about AI and I think a lot of people are concerned, and rightly so. I mean there are some ethics that are so important. And it it goes everywhere from what the big, you know, [inaudible] has been, some of that is about image and likeness. You know what are you going to do with that? Rich Birch — Yeah. Stan Jantz — Or you know doing first draft script writing, but you could just you know use Chat GTP, GPT excuse me. Rich Birch — Yeah, yep. Stan Jantz — But even you know colleges we’ve had this discussion at Biola University about this, you know, at the board level about how do you use it? But make it a tool; don’t let it master you. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — So so yes the the idea of how you choose those languages, and in your right, Rich, once you get past past fifty, there’s not a lot of precedent for some of these, especially when you get into dramatic, you know, voice actors, that kind of thing. And I’m not saying we would use AI to do everything, but it’s certainly going to help in the translation process. And there already are missionally-minded technology companies that are focused on this. There’s one you can look it up lilt L-I-L-T dot com. Rich Birch — Okay. Stan Jantz — And we were introduced to them. There was ah there was an AI missional conference in Orlando this earlier this year – they’re going to do another one in April. Again, leveraging this technology for for the purpose of getting the good news out to the world. And so they’ve been working with us and we’re just kind of how do you create efficiencies. It’s kind of like I somebody explained to me. It’s like nobody does long division anymore. Rich Birch — Right, right. Stan Jantz — We have calculators that do it. And now our phone is the calculator. So we don’t have to do that. But it used to take a lot of work. Or Excel helps us organize numbers in a spreadsheet. So you know AI is to words what excel is to numbers. It’s a tool to help us take some of that that effort that would you spend endless hours trying to get to that point where you can now take the content you have and turn it into something. Rich Birch — Yep. Stan Jantz — And that’s where AI can really be helpful especially in language translation. So and to answer your question of how you choose it, well there had been some wonderful precedents already. I mean the Jesus film is in 1500 languages. Rich Birch — Oh wow. Stan Jantz — And you’ve got the you’ve got the LUMO project that one that One Hope does which is a narrative of the story of Christ. Alpha, you know, has done wonderful translation for their purposes. So we’re we’re looking at what’s the priority that you’ve used Alpha or YouVersion or some of these partners… Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — …that we have, and then kind of start then taking those, you know, literally one at a time to then get to that that 600. But getting to the hundred will be the next goal. Rich Birch — That’s the next major milestone kind of thing. Stan Jantz — And then beyond that. Yeah, exactly. Rich Birch — Yeah. Stan Jantz — Once we hit this 50. And then of course the season are the seasons won’t be finished till 2027. Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Stan Jantz — For season 7 and so we’ve you know we’ve got 8 seasons. And it’s it’s ah it’s more complicated because, versus a narrative of the story of Jesus, these are actors multiple actors doing multiple lines of dialogue, and so that creates more challenges for translation. That’s just one one voice narrating it, so to speak. And and then capturing the nuance and all of that. But we we want to use it as a tool, but here’s the key, absolute key. Rich Birch — Yep. Stan Jantz — We have ah, we work with in each language, so each culture, a what’s called a subject matter expert. Someone who’s either a theologian, a pastor that takes this translation, you know, whether it was done by human. Now again, we’re so far humans are doing the translation so that we haven’t used AI for that yet. Rich Birch — Yep. Stan Jantz — But once it does, and they it’s like you vet that. Okay number one, we want to see is that… Rich Birch — Does that… yep, right. Stan Jantz — …translation not just after it, but does it show the the nuance of the theology and the meaning of of that, even if it’s not scripture. You know, lot of scripture’s quoted because Jesus when he talks often he’s quote quoting from or he’s talking the line that was given in scripture. But that the same meaning and the same understanding can come from that. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — And so we rely on these subject matter experts. We call them “Smee’s”. Now for those of you who are anybody who’s a Disney fan, there was a character in Peter Pan named Smee – he was [inaudible] a little little a little flunky, you know? Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah, yeah – Hook’s sidekick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Stan Jantz — Yeah, yeah, sidekick. Now here’s what so here’s what’s funny about that. So the person who’s working to lead our team is a retired Disney executive. Rich Birch — Oh funny. Stan Jantz — And he worked he worked for 35 years as heading up their translation and localization… Rich Birch — Oh wow. Wow. Stan Jantz — …department for Disney films and animation all that. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — So he has vast experience in terms of how this dubbing is done, how the translating works, but that’s where we kind of kid him around that what Smee is you kind of know about Smee because that’s from Disney. Rich Birch — Yes, brought that in. Stan Jantz — Yeah, exactly so so these subject matter experts are really key… Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — …because we don’t want miss because of a word a certain word the way it’s translated, or a phrase that kind of changes the meaning and and freaks people out. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — We just we want it’s so it’s so important to vet that and it’s ,you know what, that’s true of anybody [inaudible]… Rich Birch — That’s laborious work. That’s… yeah. Stan Jantz — It is. But you have to have it. And that’s where the creative part comes in. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — Because it’s not but it takes a human, it takes creative understanding, and then of course knowing your subject. That’s you know a subject matter expert. I I know this subject and and working together so that the final product is one that is not just clear, but it’s correct. You know? Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah. Stan Jantz — And not vear off from that as well. So. Rich Birch — Love it. Well I love I love the front footed nature of this. I love your approach to saying like, hey you know there’s a technology there’s technology out there. How can we leverage that? What can we do to try to say. hey maybe there’s a way we could use this to reach people. It’s opportunistic to say hey… Stan Jantz — Right. Rich Birch — …we want to take advantage of what’s there, but not saying that there’s no downside but like, hey maybe there’s an opportunity. Maybe there’s an upside to it in the same way the Roman roads they were not all upsides not not not everything that printed was a great thing. Not everything that ended up in film was a great film. Ah, but man, what could we use it for. Have you seen have you, just as you’ve been kind of journeying with Come and See, have you heard of any churches that have used The Chosen in any kind of innovative ways that has helped them in their mission. Is there anything that maybe as we’re thinking and maybe there’s a way we could leverage this in in what we’re up to? Stan Jantz — And I would yeah, yes that it it has. We one of our partners is Gloo G-L-O-O. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah. Stan Jantz — They are a resource for churches. So if you go to the the comeandseefoundationation.org website you’ll see a place called resources, and you can kind of scroll down. And then there is actually, you have to get a get a license to show it, but anybody can show; it doesn’t cost anything. And there are segments that have been pulled along with like suggested outline that you can use it for. They’ve done this for He Gets Us, the He Gets Us campaign, if you’ve seen that. They have the resources… Rich Birch — Um, absolutely. Stan Jantz — …we can show the commercial and then talk about it. And this we actually have clips and those clips have been selected. And that’s going to be throughout the 7 seasons. But right now we’ve got you know they’ve got seasons 1 through 3. And I expect, Rich, that there will be… we just met with the folks from Bible Project. And that is such a creative innovative innovation. Rich Birch — Yeah, they’re great. Yeah, totally. Stan Jantz — Those guys are on fire. And so they they want to, so again, create resources and materials for different segments. And of course integrated into their style, what they’re doing. And I’ll give you another example. I mentioned the Jesus film, and ah they they have done extraordinary work and we we are working together. We’re collaborating. And right now they’re doing a test at now the this is CRU which is the kind of a parent ministry of the Jesus film. CRU has been running tests on college campuses in the U.S. about 20, I think, 15 to 20. And where they say, okay, free food and a movie. And so students show up and… Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool. Yep. Stan Jantz — …and they show them, you know, an episode or two of The Chosen, and then they have a little study guide they’ve come up with… Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — …to then talk to the kids about. And they actually have seen some extraordinary results. In just one I’ll just tell you it happened at Columbia University, which is New York City, I mean it’s ah it’s a very, you know, kind of and I don’t know it’s an IV league but it’s it’s pretty close. And there was a young woman, Iranian woman who had been coming to the to the meetings. And when she saw, that was like that was the kind of the tipping point for her and she prayed to receive Christ. I mean it was like, wow, this is… Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Praise God. That’s great. Stan Jantz — …you know, because yeah people are on a journey. So now that’s not going to happen with everybody, but there’s still there’s a there’s a great hunger among Gen Z. There’s a in fact, there’s a there’s a special ah documentary that was produced by The Chosen called Unfiltered. And yeah your your listeners can go to just go to YouTube, The Chosen Unfiltered. And it’s a documentary about nine GenZ adults who were brought in blind to to say we’re going to show you a movie. They didn’t know what they were seeing. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — And they pulled them from different, you know, ran… I don’t know if it was random, but they chose these these young people, these these young adults. And then they respond to it, interview them. It’s ah it’s a very, very powerful thing to watch. And here’s my take on this, Rich, and this is not this is not original to me, I I picked it up from Walter Kim, who is the president of the National Association of Evangelical he was quoting James Choug C H O U N G who wrote a book called “True Story”. And in that book he talks about that each generation has a gateway question… Rich Birch — Oh good. Stan Jantz — …meaning that this is the question that you would ask about something. And anyway so let’s as as a Christian, I’m a boomer. So my gateway question to open up a conversation is, well is it true? That’s what I would value. A Gen X will ask, well is it real? Is it authentic? A millennial will ask, is it good? Is there goodness in this for me, for the world? Okay, here’s what Gen Z asks: is it beautiful? Stan Jantz — Now notice you got truth, goodness, and beauty, with the authenticity thrown in there. But truth, these three values, they’re all important. We’ve been leading with truth pretty much as a church. And I think rightly so. But then you have to look at the generation that’s coming up and yeah, truth’s important, but what they, what they value more than anything is beauty. Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Stan Jantz — And I think what’s happening with this particular approach to the to the good news to telling it. We’re telling this beautiful, intimate story and it’s drawing people in. Now you get to the truth eventually; if it’s not true, then it’s just a story, and it doesn’t really matter. Rich Birch — Right, right. Stan Jantz — But this is a true story, and guess what? It’s also really good. It really is good for…we’ve seen it in culture how it’s good for the world… Rich Birch — Yes, yeah. Stan Jantz — …to when when when people come to Christ their their life has changed for the benefit of of others as well. So so that’s what I love about is that this beautiful, beautiful story and Dallas give him all the credit for the way he’s telling this… Rich Birch — Yeah. Stan Jantz — …and the the way he’s using close ups, and and how he directs these actors. And oh my goodness it’s it’s really it draws people in like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Rich Birch — It does, it does. And and it’s you know there are and this is a part of what I love about it, he makes some risky choices. Like it is not a safe portrayal, but but that’s great because Jesus is not safe, right? He’s he’s good, right? It’s the CS Lewis thing. Is he you know is he good? Stan Jantz — Right. Rich Birch — Of course he’s good, but he’s not safe, right? Stan Jantz — Yeah. Rich Birch — And and I love what what Dallas has done; I totally agree with that now. The interesting thing I wonder if you could shed a light on on what Come and See has done or kind of the broader Chosen movement. Man, it really, it’s one of those few places, which I think is a wonderful thing, it’s one of those few places that seems to be a gathering point for Christians of a lot of different stripes. A lot of different backgrounds have been able to kind of connect with this. And I was saying to a friend, I was saying, oh I’m really looking forward to this conversation later this week. And I said, you know, I I’ve been in ministry for a lot of years, 20, 30 years. And was when I started Billy Graham was kind of in his later days. And but he was still out doing festivals and that sort of thing. And there really hasn’t been, I don’t think, a gathering point like that in a number of years, until this has come along. And there there seems to be like a coalition building thing that you’re doing that I don’t see a lot of people doing. Help us understand, so am I right, am I reading that correctly? And then help me understand how you’re able to do that, because that is I say I would say is pushing against kind of the the flow of what’s happening in the church. It seems like we’re fracturing [inaudible] I think it’s having a huge detriment to us. But how are you doing that? How is that working? What’s what’s happening there um with the foundation. Stan Jantz — Um, that’s a very good observation, Rich. I really appreciate that and I think that’s where working with these partners. You know, that that part of that I said we we’re making it possible for the show to to be completed, to be translated and distributed. That distribution portion is what’s really key because um, you know those that’s the boots on the ground like the CRU already have students coming or you have, you know, what YouVersion is is doing in different parts of the world. And ministries like One Hope ah, which is God’s word for every child is their goal. It’s an international ministry. So how do we provide a tool that they can then use. And they’re going to create these resources that then people can use and gather together. And the thing about it is there they so they did this with season 3, a theatrical release. Remember they did that with the first two episodes? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yep, yep yep. Stan Jantz — And then the last two episodes that Jesus walking in the water scene which it concluded was dramatic. And they’re going to do that with season 4. And I think it gets people together and I think, Rich, to your point about churches I didn’t quite finish my your answering your question about how do we you know work with churches. That’s going to be a real key. And the resources not just for and certainly, yes, for a pastor if they want to show a clip and illustrate a sermon with a particular, you know, scene from The Chosen. But also to create, you know, I I’m just going to say like a watch party or something. I mean I told you that we were, when I grew up in the Christian bookstore seeing we had these big sixteen millimeter film – I mean big they really were they big reels of acetate film. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Stan Jantz — And churches used to do what they call watch party, especially like around holidays, like New Year’s Eve. And people would come in, watch a movie, or they would call binge watch them maybe put in two or three. Stan Jantz — And I think where you get people together and then talk about it when you’re done. That’s the really… We, just on a small scale, my wife and I are taking another couple who are pretty new to the faith through kind of a discipleship journey showing episodes of The Chosen and then talking about it. And The Chosen has produced, Amanda, Dallas’s wife, has written these study guides for each season. And it really drives you to scripture and asks compelling questions. And I’ll tell you this couple is growing like I can’t believe. And it’s because and what’s great about it… Rich Birch — It’s true. Stan Jantz — …because they’re going to the bible. They want to know more. What is the bible telling me about this? And so I think there’s an opportunity for The Chosen to be that gathering point, as you said, bringing people together. And it’s always, hey if we can’t gather by Jesus, what are we going to gather about, you know? Rich Birch — Right, right. Stan Jantz — And I think it’s the it’s going to unify where we can get sidetracked on different issues, whether it’s politics, or culture, or whatever’s going on. And and this brings us together and I think helps us see how he dealt with these issues too. And because he especially starting with season 4, the opposition is going to grow. You know we think, you know, we’re dealing with some tough things. aAnd yes in many parts of the world it’s really tough to be ah, be a Christian. Well it was tough in the first century. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Stan Jantz — And and we see that opposition starting to build and I think he he’s been through as the scripture says, he’s experienced everything we have yet without sin. He knows the pressures, he knows what loneliness, he knows rejection, and you see it. And and what I find interesting, Rich, when you when you read the but the scriptures. Ah, and you real, you kind of especially get into John where the you know as the things get a little more intimate. It’s like these guys don’t get it, these followers. They keep asking him, so what do you have to do? You’re going to do what? Rich Birch — It’s so true. Stan Jantz — You know, he he he was real plain about it: I’ve got to die and [inaudible] come back. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Stan Jantz — What what do you mean? You know, I mean, huh? Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — And so it’s like and so for us to realize, yeah it takes we have to kind of keep keep reading it and keep experiencing it. But realize that’s that’s been the issue with Jesus is that people don’t always right away understand it, but you have to keep stick with him. And then and then it’s it’s like, oh it’s like the the blinding flash of the obvious. Oh that’s what it meant but he said he come back, you know? And I I really I think that again, but the visual part, that beauty part is such a gateway for people to experience and then to be drawn to the Word. Rich Birch — Yep. Stan Jantz — Ah, to really encounter what God’s message for us is, you know, as as his people here. Rich Birch — It’s great. That’s super good insights, and it’s good stuff for us to think about, and wrestle with as we think in our our context. So kind of as we’re coming to land today’s episode, you’ve got a few thousand, 3-, 4000 ah church leaders listening in. What would you say to them? What would your kind of message be to them to be thinking about from from your seat at, you know, at Come and See? Is there something we can do to help? How can we, you know, I think so many of us are you know we’re we’re cheering for The Chosen and we see the impact it’s had. We have very similar, you know, stories. Rich Birch — I’m, you know, I lead stuff obviously, but I volunteer as a Alpha Leader in my church. And there’s a woman in my Alpha group doesn’t know him and, you know, doesn’t she’s I’m just like some guy to her, which is wonderful. And you know she’s talked about same thing. How like, I watch this show called The Chosen and, man, it’s like just drawn her to the bible. Stan Jantz — Yeah. Rich Birch — And I’m like Praise God – Like that’s amazing. I want to see that replicated. So what would you say to church leaders that are listening in today… Stan Jantz — Yeah, well… Rich Birch — …just kind of today as we as we land this episode? Stan Jantz — Yeah, first of all, thank you for all that you do, and the the creative things that we’re seeing that I’m seeing personally. Rich, we mentioned before we start chatting the church I’m involved with a network of churches called Bayside in California. And just they’re using innovation and just reaching into places where churches, we’re not waiting for the church people to come to us. Let’s go to where they are. Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — So whether it’s a business gathering, or a student gathering, or whatever it might be. And so I would just encourage we we would love to hear your ideas. We this is available to you. It’s it’s it’s free for you to use. And tell us you’re going to use it so we can you know we want to be able to ah, keep track of who’s doing what. So there’s a licensing form on our website. But just shoot shoot an email to us and you can do that. Say, hey, we’d like to do this or the other. And it could be it could be a weekend, I know one person came up with a thought… by the way in Christian colleges I think are really key to this too. Students, and I had this experience at Biola when I actually sought for the first time at Biola University. They sponsored ah kind of ah… Rich Birch — Okay. Stan Jantz — …a showing and 2500 people came. Rich Birch — Wow. Stan Jantz — And and The Chosen was was there. They represented with some of the actors and and some of their key people. And there were students and there was faculty, and people from the community, and it was extremely… showed outside on the big screen. And it’s it’s inspiring to young creatives. Don’t don’t you think, Rich, We need this generation coming up of young creatives… Rich Birch — That’s so true. Stan Jantz — …and direct them and use their talent, as you said this innovation, by telling beautiful stories and the church to embrace that. Stan Jantz — And whether it’s in a home group, or or the a church service itself, to be able to be able to show this the story. So I would say we’d love to hear from you. But the the show is available and and we just, you know, want to work. And again as I mentioned Gloo has already done some things, excuse me, with a resource page and they’ve done wonderful work in a lot of ways with churches. They’re now working with Outreach Magazine. And so there’s there’s some, I think we’re going to see these resources and we we’re not out to create them, but we want to partner with churches, with organizations to help you if you want to create resources or derivative material. You know, let us know, and let’s work together to how we can make that work. Stan Jantz — And a lot of churches with their missions program, they have connections overseas and other countries and let’s think of resourcing. You know, yes, we’ve been blessed in the west with great churches and great organizations. But most of the Christians in the world live, used to be called the global south, now they call it the majority world, if you especially if you throw China into that. I think it’s that 60 to 70% of all the believers on earth live in South America, Africa, or Asia. And it’s it’s, you know, and maybe it’s the difficulty. Stan Jantz — I mean the church in the early church grew because of pressure right? It was something about that. And I think that that’s in many places it’s not easy to be a Christian, but how can we resource and churches that have missions programs, that kind of thing, we’d love to work with you and where we we see this as an international um you know tool to be used. That’s why the language translation is so key. So again I just encourage you, leaders, that this is a tool to use. And let’s be creative in how we can use it. But the story is going to get really interesting as we go into see said 4, 5 and 6. Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — We they had an event called Chosen Con… Rich Birch — Yes. Stan Jantz — …that ran three weeks ago in Dallas. And you know they had these panels with actors like they do and those kinds of events. And they had ah they had one panel with all the the actors who play the the followers, you know, the disciples, including Jonathan, and he happened to be sitting next to the active plays Judas. That was kind of interesting to watch them interact with each other. Rich Birch — That’s fun. Yes. Stan Jantz — Yeah, so but they said that this season 4 was harder than season 3. Up till season 3… Rich Birch — Wow. Stan Jantz — …it’s been fairly, not light, but it’s been like the wedding at Cana, and these different… Rich Birch — Yeah. Stan Jantz — …[inaudible] things. And now season 4, it starts to get and this is this is not a spoiler alert… Rich Birch — No. …but it’s John the Baptist his thing happens right? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Stan Jantz — And the raising of Lazarus and we know that was a wonderful thing, but we know from scripture that ignited opposition. Rich Birch — Yep. Stan Jantz — That got really intense. Aand so some of those things and then Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus, said I had to learn a lot of lines and they’re all scripture. So they’re bringing, you know, because you’re getting into where you know again, the Gospel and John, which has so much dialogue, that you’ve got this this happening and it’s like boy. And so only you can imagine then seasons 5 6 and 7 which will in holy week, crucifixion, and resurrection. So it’s so so pray for the and pray for for Dallas and and the cast. This is I’ll just be real frank, the enemy isn’t happy with this proclaiming the name of Jesus the way it is… Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Yeah, you can imagine that. Yep. Stan Jantz — Yeah so and and nobody’s afraid, but we’re aware, and and needing to pray against that and that God would bring, you know, not just clarity but also strength, you know, to kind of carry this through. And all ministries are facing this. I mean it’s it’s a it’s crazy. Rich Birch — Sure. Stan Jantz — You know, Chosen is not unique, Come and See is not unique. All ministries are facing this. And it’s like, you know, it’s almost like the devil knows, hey things are cranking up. I got to do what I can, you know? And and he and he focuses on things that are effective, I think, that’s which is if we learn anything from CS Lewis you know with Screwtape Letters, and say go go for the where the work is really being done. So but we have, you know, we have such great [inaudible] working together. And the media you’re doing, let’s use all the media. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Stan Jantz — Because people listen to podcasts, people watch movies… Rich Birch — Yep. Stan Jantz — …people go to events, I mean let’s get it all to working together. And I think too one of the things I’m learning, Rich, is ah collaboration. We could do more together than we could do individually, you know? Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Stan Jantz — And and the business schools used to call that collective impact, right? So let’s work together whether it’s in your community, with other organizations and ministries and churches, or regionally, or internationally, you know. And so I think that is is a key and when you find a tool that will help draw people and draw them but draw them to Jesus… Rich Birch — Yep. Stan Jantz — Somebody asked Dallas at this Chosen Con in a Q and A from the audience, what’s the heart of The Chosen? He did not hesitate and he said: it’s Jesus. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — It’s not a show about Jesus. It’s not this production we’re doing. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — It’s not all the plans we have. It’s Jesus – that’s the heart, you know. And I think when we when you make him the focus as we as we always should, lives will be changed. Because people are drawn today as they were in the first century, people were drawn to him. And he has a words to give life, you know. And he still does. He’s still real, and speaks, and prays for us, and is drawing people to himself and that’s all about Jesus. So that’s what I, folks, that’s for me as as kind of a a place when I’m doing from publishing to everything else, this is really exciting and and I’m I’m honored and humbled to actually be a part of it. So yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, Stan, I really appreciate you being here. We want to send people to comeandseefoundation.org if they want to learn more. I love that challenge of like, hey how’s your church using it? Why don’t you try something, you know, set up the licensing and try some ah, you know, maybe something innovative, something that hasn’t been trying, maybe partner with some other churches in town. Maybe it could fit into your ah you know into a series or do something, you know, to try to leverage this tool. I appreciate your openhandedness of, you know, and The Chosen’s openhandedness to try to say, hey let’s try to do this in a way ah, where we can see more people ultimately pointed to Jesus. Ah Stan, I really appreciate you being here today – is there anywhere else online we want to send people to connect with you, or to connect, you know, with with Come and See? Stan Jantz — That’s the one. You can and you can send in fact I just you know I probably shouldn’t do this, but Bob Goff puts his phone number in all this books. So I’ll just tell you my emails, my emails real simple but just stan at comeandseefoundation.org, so… Rich Birch — Great. Stan Jantz — …if anybody’s got you know feel free to reach out or just go to the website. There’s other points of contact. But, you know, I love I love what church are doing. We were talking offline, Rich, about the the church we’re involved with here in California, and you know the church, and it’s ah it’s just extraordinary the work that churches are doing. And not just. I mean yes proclaim the gospel, but to reach out to the community and to bring hope and healing, right? And it is ultimately about Jesus, but there’s on entry points to get there. And I just I think churches are doing remarkable work. And I think we’re seeing young people being drawn back to the church. Ah, a lot of people have left. There’s you probably have if you haven’t had them on but the book The Great De-churching or The De-churching I think is – those guys have did the study on that I think 40 million people have left the church in the last twenty years. Rich Birch — Yep, yes, yes. Stan Jantz — And what’s going to bring them back? And I think for the for the church, there’s a huge opportunity, especially among Gen Z – I’m really convinced about that. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Stan Jantz — And if you have a Christian college in your in your area, work together with their student ministry leaders, Christian college students, and there’s a lot of on secular campuses too, so it’s not just Christian colleges. But work with CRU or Intervarsity. These students are hungry to get involved in something meaningful. Rich Birch — Right. Stan Jantz — Let’s unleash students, you know, to do something that, you know, could could take this out and to work through your church organization in extraordinary ways. Rich Birch — Love it. Stan Jantz — Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, well I really appreciate being on, Stan. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Cheering for you and the Foundation. Thanks so much, man. Stan Jantz — Thank you, Rich. God bless.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Brittany Crimmel, a Production Director at Saddleback Church in California. There is a leadership crisis in the local church with so many churches struggling to know how to find and develop people. However, by participating in internships and residencies, churches can contribute to developing the next generation of leaders. Listen as Brittany shares how her experiences as a resident helped to grow the leadership and people skills critical for her current role. Internships vs. Residencies. // While an intern at a church is usually around for a summer or a semester, a resident is around for one or two years. Residents are a long-term investment in leadership development where there is a leader who is invested in the resident as a person, as a Jesus-follower, and a kingdom worker, so they are not left on their own wondering what to do. Invest in growth. // In addition to receiving mentorship, residents are given opportunities to lead projects, preparing them for future roles. Residencies are also a critical time to help future church leaders develop soft leadership skills, such as how to communicate with people in different positions in the organization, or how to win volunteers to a cause. All of this preparation is to set the next gen leader up for success when they go to their first ministry job. Set expectations. // Clarity is critical in working with residents and interns. Remember that residencies and internships are seasonal and they have a hard start and end date. Make the duration and content of these programs clear to help both the church and the participants understand the expectations and prevent confusion. It’s important not to promise people a job at the end of their residency or internship. A partnership may come at the end of the residency if you decide to offer a job, but to protect feelings and expectations, don’t promise it at the beginning. Set your pride aside. // People may be tempted to develop a resident for selfish reasons, wanting to keep them at their own church. However, leadership development is operating in kingdom currency; it doesn’t matter if the resident or intern stays at your church. It requires us to set aside our pride and embrace a mindset of abundance, focusing on developing leaders who can make a difference anywhere. Supporting and championing the growth of these future leaders benefits the global church as a whole. A heart for people. // In the production world, technical skills and people skills tend to be in tension. As a production director at Saddleback, Brittany values people skills and system skills more than technical skills. Technical skills can be taught, but having a heart for people and the local church is crucial. If someone has a heart for ministry, they will be teachable and can be paired with more experienced team members until they learn the role. Show appreciation. // In Brittany’s experience, she’s found that production teams usually get the short end of the stick. As church leaders we need to show appreciation and value the work of our technical teams, as well as offer support so they can do their jobs well. Many times they don’t want to be called out during the service, so instead stop by afterwards to thank them personally. Offer your help with set-up or tear-down. Lavish value on them as sons and daughters of God and members of your church family. You can learn more about Saddleback Church at www.saddleback.com and find Brittany on Instagram. 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 facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We have got Brittany Crimmel with us. She is a Production Manager at a little church in California you maybe have heard of, Saddleback. Ah, if you’re not familiar, Saddleback was planted ah back at their first public service in 1980 was planted by Pastor Rick and Kay Warren. They now have, if I’m counting correctly, 14 locations in California, Mandarin ah venue, 5 locations internationally, and a robust online community. We’ve had a couple different team members from Saddleback in the past. But super excited, been really looking forward to getting Brittany on the show. Ah, welcome. So glad you’re here. Brittany Crimmel — Thank you! I’m excited to be here. Rich Birch — Okay, so tell us about your role first. If people were to say like what is a production manager? Give us a sense of kind of what what do you do there, give us a sense of that that kind of thing. Brittany Crimmel — That’s a great question. Um a production director at Saddleback really just gets to work with our audio teams, our lighting teams, video teams, our worship team, our teaching pastors, our hosts here at our broadcast campus, gets to work with all sorts of people to help make the weekend experience ah, really seamless. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I um today we want to drill in specifically to kind of your leadership journey and how you ended up where you’re at. I was referencing talking about you behind your back recently and we were talking about Saddleback. We’re talking about kind of succession situations in general. And I said, well you know the good there’s lots of good things going on at churches all over the country, and I said, including Saddleback and I thought of you and your leadership there. But kind of tell us a little bit of how did you end up landing where you are today. What was kind of your journey to Saddleback like? Brittany Crimmel — That’s a great question. Um, so I went to a really tiny bible college out in Nebraska. And I remember asking our department head, hey I want to do these kinds of things. I want to sit in a seat between worship and production. Is there anybody who’s kind of done that journey before? And he said, well you should go work for my friend at a church in Baltimore. And so I did that. I was her resident, um got to be there for ah 3 years. They ended up hiring me on staff and it was awesome, a really great growth opportunity. And then during covid at the end of 2020 had a great conversation with Dennis Choi, who I get to work with now at Saddleback, about coming out here to be the production manager. Um, so it has been a whirlwind, but such a joy. Rich Birch — Okay, so use the term there resident. Help define that. What, there’s, you know, you sometimes hear like resident, intern… Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — You might hear different kind of terms. Help us pull apart what does that, how what’s your understanding of the of that? What what what does it mean to be a resident? Brittany Crimmel — Totally. Everybody has their own descriptions. I think resident is most helpful when you think of a long-term investment, right? Interns tend to be spring semester, fall semester, summer interns. Residents are typically around for 1 to 2 years. You’re getting not just the, let me introduce you to people. But, let me introduce you to people and then pass you off and you will lead projects. So you’re a longtime investment. Rich Birch — I love this. And you know, let’s pull that apart a little bit, Talk us through what that experience was like. How is being a resident in that first church in Baltimore, how is that different than just being like, okay I’m a team member here? I’m just, you know, go and take this area and run with it. Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, I really appreciated my residency opportunity because I had somebody that had gone before me, right? There are not a lot of people who sit at the intersection of worship and production that are female church leaders, and so I happen to get to work for one of those. And she was awesome. And so she had already walked ahead of me. And so as we were going through, you know, opening a campus when I first got there, she talked me through, here is you know, the things you need to be aware of with this. Here’s why we chose to do it this way instead of just being like, Okay, yeah, you’re a warm body. Go, you know, push buttons, or do this or whatever that would be. So a lot of investment, a lot of talking through why those things mattered, understanding the why behind the what instead of just doing stuff for her. Rich Birch — I love this, and you know I think we all know that there’s a leadership crisis I would say in the local church… Brittany Crimmel — Totally. Rich Birch — …that you know so many churches we’re struggling with how do we find people? Where do we find them? How do we develop them? Um and you know there’s a unique thing, there’s lots of people that are listening in from churches of a few thousand people, 1-, 2-, 3000 people, and there are these super unique roles that that you you can’t really just like pull with somebody off the shelf and say like, okay, you know, come do this. There isn’t like ah a specific kind of program that ultimately teaches, hey how do I be a production manager. That… Brittany Crimmel — Right. Rich Birch — …that is it is a unique thing to the local church. Um, would you say, or or help me understand how the residency prepared you even for what you’re doing today. What did that what did that look like? Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, I think residency, because you’re right – there are a lot of specific skilled roles in church world. And so finding somebody that fits your specific skilled role is really challenging. But if you go back to leadership basics and development, there are soft skills that everybody needs that everybody can learn in residency. And that was a lot of a large part of my beginning time in that residency, was talking about understanding um communication systems for large organizations. That’s something that is still helpful for me today. Ah, how do I communicate to people who um, are above me, below me, beside me – how do I do that? How do I make sure I’m clear and kind, how do I win volunteers to a cause – all of those things are soft skills that I I wouldn’t be able to do what I do now without them. Rich Birch — Interesting. So I love this. You know if I um can speak ah, um, you know, maybe with a little candor. Yeah I think sometimes organizations, we struggle with folks in their first role. It’s like they come out of school and it’s like man, how ah, we struggle with, because it’s some of that just normal like how to have a job sort of thing… Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — That is difficult. Talk about that. How did that, you know, kind of making a step into residency rather than jumping directly into maybe a role somewhere. Did that help you through that transition? What… because from my seat, I would say, man, it would seem like it accelerated your leadership. It accelerated good things that were already happening. But how, obviously, you can’t you didn’t live ah two worlds where you went into a job and then you went into residency. Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — But how do you think that might help, either you specifically, or as because you currently engage with residents… Brittany Crimmel — Right. Rich Birch — …you know, at Saddleback, so help me talk that through that, some of those initial, you know, years of work. How does it help that situation? Brittany Crimmel — Totally. I think when you jump into your first job, it’s a lot of like, “I’m learning how to become an adult.” Rich Birch — True. Brittany Crimmel — And so you have that on top of, “I’m learning how to become a church leader.” Rich Birch — Yep. Brittany Crimmel — And that can be a really rough transition for people, right? You’re holding things you’re not used to holding. You’re leading at a level you’re not used to leading. Things are being asked of you mentally, emotionally, spiritually that are just beyond what you’re able to handle. Brittany Crimmel — And the beautiful part about residency is there’s a leader who is invested in you as a person, you as a Jesus follower, you as a kingdom worker, and so you’re not left to your own devices to figure out: what is what am I supposed to do? You have this person who is caring for you, shepherding you, pastoring you, developing you, so that when you go out to your first job, or your whatever your next seat on the bus is, you’re not set up for failure. You’re set up for success. Rich Birch — Very good, very good. Well let’s take a step back. Now you’re in a role where you’re leading. You know you’re you’re managing lots of things, lots of moving parts. When you think about developing leaders now in your area, how has your experience shaped that? What, you know, what has how has kind of the journey you’ve been on personally, where has that brought you to, how has that helped you when you think about ah you know developing the leaders around you? Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. I would not be able to lead at the level I lead at without having developed other leaders. Like I just got my first intern this summer… Rich Birch — Love it. Brittany Crimmel — …and we had so much fun and it was so, so wonderful to get to develop her in that way, um and get to just run alongside her, cheer her on, champion her. And part of what allowed me to do that was I had developed leaders in volunteer spaces, and so it freed up a lot of my time to not worry about them because they could lead themselves and run themselves. And so I had more time for an intern who needed more of my time, because you’re walking with them in such a deep way. Um, leadership development is just it’s so important in every facet and it tends to be the I think the intersection of evangelism and discipleship, if you really want to go down that road. Rich Birch — Oh tell me about that. That’s interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s hear about that. Tell me about that. Brittany Crimmel — I I think what we do is way too important to leave it to just mediocre leadership, right? Rich Birch — So good. Brittany Crimmel — When you are talking about Jesus and the hope of heaven… Rich Birch — Yeah. Brittany Crimmel — …leaving it to meh-schmeh. It’s fine. Like it’s not. It’s way too important. There are people who will spend eternity apart from Jesus because we did not put our best effort into developing leaders who would go radically change the communities they serve. Brittany Crimmel — It also disciples people, and discipled people disciple people, disciple people. And so leadership development tends to just be, I think, a beautiful intersection there, and really allows us to champion the gospel in ways maybe we hadn’t thought of before. Rich Birch — Um, that’s so good. When you think about from your seat um, as a resident who then ended up transitioning into ah you know, ah a full time career, and then now as intern maybe a resident at some point here in the future, you know, there’s a number of things that we’ve got to be very clear with our with our people that we’re leading that we’re trying to develop in this intentional way. Brittany Crimmel — Yes. Rich Birch — What would be some of those areas where you have, you know, found it either it was good for you to receive that clarity, or man, I wish I would have had more clarity. Ah, you know, talk us through that. What what give us that some of that insight. Brittany Crimmel — Yes. I think it’s really helpful to remember that residencies and internships are seasonal. And seasons have a hard start date and they have an end date. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Brittany Crimmel — And so they don’t just go on forever. And I think sometimes in the church world we allow things to get really fuzzy. When when it comes to people, we need to make it really clear. So when you think about a two-year-long internship, right, you’d start in August of one year and then two years later by that end of July, we’re done. Everybody knows that going into it, so that that that resident isn’t going, I’m here for, you know, maybe forever. Or I’m here for maybe six months. They go, I know what the next two years look like; this is where God has me. And should something change towards the end and you go, it’s a mutual agreement between a church and a resident that go, you know, I think we want to partner together in kingdom work here. That’s great. But it’s because we know there’s a hard end date. Not just we’re not floundering around. Um so clarity is a huge, huge win when it comes to residents and interns. Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s stick with there for a minute around um, you know, where we would develop residences. There’s really two—I always think of these things, well there’s lots of different ways to think about—but, two things that come up often when I think about residents, is we want to be involved in developing leaders because we think that’s the right thing to do for the kingdom. It’s important for us to develop leaders. And then there’s the, frankly, selfish side of it which is, as an organization we’re trying to develop people who may eventually end up on our team… Brittany Crimmel — Yes. Rich Birch — …but not necessarily. And that that feels like one of those areas that could be very spongy and end up like, you know, misunderstanding or lack of clarity. Um, give us some coaching or thinking around that. You know, assuming hey we maybe we have maybe we’re a church of couple thousand people, we have 3 residents, and we don’t intend on hiring three people at the end of this. We might hire some. Help us think through how could we approach that… Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — …to be the most clear, the most kind to the people that we’re working with. Brittany Crimmel — Right. Um, we have a great internship and residency director here at Saddleback and one of the things she first told me when I was in my internship supervisor training was she said it’s really, really important that we don’t promise people a job at the end of this. Rich Birch — Yes, so good. Brittany Crimmel — It’s really, really important that we protect their expectations, their feelings, our expectations, our feelings. We may love them and if it becomes time where we are actually offering them a job, that’s a totally different ballgame. Rich Birch — Right. Brittany Crimmel — But we we don’t lead with the, but one day you could work here or whatever. Rich Birch — Yeah. Brittany Crimmel — We say, this is an internship and a residency and we are so glad to partner with you for this season. And I think that is really helpful, right? We’re all on the same page that way. The other thing with churches, and really just because it’s a run human-run organization, is you have to set your pride aside to supervise an intern, or residency, or a resident, right? There are a lot of people you talked about who can get into the like, I want to develop you so you will be on my staff, or so you will think like us, lead like us, be like us… when leadership development is operating in kingdom currency, which means it’s abundance mentality. Rich Birch — Oh so good. Brittany Crimmel — It does not matter if that intern, that resident stays here, right? Rich Birch — Right. Brittany Crimmel — If they go to lead at another church and they radically change the spiritual landscape of a different town, we are cheering for them. We are championing that cause. Just because they don’t stay with us is not a loss for us. It is a win for the global church. And that is way too important to just white knuckle our pride when it comes to interns and residents. Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good. I love that encouragement of like, hey it’s not, you know, we’re not just going to do this because we’re trying to, you know, it’s it’s not just a potential, you know, hiring pipeline. It’s it’s an opportunity for us to develop leaders who could be used anywhere and we’ll have these people, you know, for a season, ensure that we’re um, you know we can care for them and see them grow in the season that we’re with us… Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and and we’ll see what happens from there. Is there any other areas that would be that we need to be thinking about around trying to drive to more clarity. So totally understand this whole thing around hiring. Definitely you need to think about that. But but there are other areas that you’d say, hey here’s a potential pitfall to avoid um, you know, around clarity? Brittany Crimmel — That’s great. I think every church is different. Um and so being really clear about the expectations of what are the opportunities, options, resources, available at your particular church, right? I was at a church where um I never saw my supervisor. And that was really challenging because I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, where I was supposed to be developing. Um I felt really far apart from the church because there was no one to help me get plugged in. Um and I’ve been at a church where I had an amazing supervisor, and I talked to them daily. They help me get plugged into the church in a small group. Um, they helped leverage opportunities of skills I needed to develop, things I was already really good at. Brittany Crimmel — And so being really clear about the expectations – will you get to talk to a church leader a lot, um or at a at us pace that makes sense, right? Frequent, consistent, clear communication. Um, what are the leadership available opportunities, right? Maybe you’re there for summer camps. And so will you get to lead a summer camp, or are you there just to run games? Or are you leading groups, are you leading a devotional? Whatever that may be for your specific area, being really clear about what the opportunities are. And then being really clear to the rest of the staff. Rich Birch — Good. Brittany Crimmel — There are some churches that tolerate interns and residents, right? Because it’s an inconvenience. It truly is. Rich Birch — Sure, right. Brittany Crimmel — Leadership development is an inconvenience to us because it asks us, it costs us something mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, churches financially. It is inconvenient to do this, but it is way too important to not do this. And so being really clear with your staff teammates about here here’s how we’re going to treat our interns. Here are the opportunities they are allowed for. Here is how we coach them. So you don’t critique them in the hallway; you talk to their supervisor, their supervisor talks to them. Whatever those boundaries may be, that clarity is so so important for for everyone being set up for success. Otherwise both parties just end up frustrated. Rich Birch — So good. I love that. Um you know, I think when we think about the kind of day-to-day or week-to-week management of a resident, I know ah we got connected through Leadership Pathway… Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — …an organization that helps churches ah, you know, with these. And a part of what they do is provide coaching to people who are going to have a resident… Brittany Crimmel — Totally. Rich Birch — …around even just what to talk about, like here’s a conversation or two. When you think back to that phase as a resident, were there any conversations that you had that were particularly prescient, could have been the kind of things we’ve talked about here that were particularly helpful for you as you were serving that were like, oh man, that was like a light bulb moment, did not think about that before ah, you know, we got in on that? Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, I think both emotional intelligence and conflict management skills… Rich Birch — Oh so good. Brittany Crimmel — …were huge soft skills um, that I was equipped with, right? My supervisor had to receive those materials and was ready to help me walk through them. Because it’s not if you run into a situation where you are managing conflict, it’s when. Rich Birch — Yes. Brittany Crimmel — And so as a you know 19 year old I was like I am not going to go fight with that worship leader or jump into conflict there. No thank you. And so having my supervisor kind of walk me through like, conflict is not the problem. The problem is when we are take things personally, or we get aggressive… Rich Birch — So good. Brittany Crimmel — …and it’s not the other person’s best interest at heart. And so that has served me very well um, as a leader today, both in that time now and in the future. I’m really grateful for that. Rich Birch — So good. Okay, so pivoting in a slightly different direction. So as a production director manager in in your church, there’s like the hard skill side of what you do, which is making it’s the ministry to machines making the things happen. You know, it’s the you know the scheduling all that kind of stuff. Brittany Crimmel — Yes. Rich Birch — And then there’s the soft skill… Brittany Crimmel — Right. Rich Birch — …all the things we were just talking about, there interacting with people, how do we care for them, building a kind of culture where you know an attractional culture people want to be a part of, all that kind of stuff. Um, talk me through, in your your current role at at Saddleback, talk me through how those interact with each other. And you know how how as you lead are they you know which of those do you worry more about, how do you think about them, you know because I think the kind of role. We all have that in our we all have these less technical side of what we do… Brittany Crimmel — Right. Rich Birch — …and then we have the soft skill side of what we do. Um, and how do they intersect in your current your current role. Brittany Crimmel — Oooo. That’s a tough one. Um, especially in the production world. The technical skills versus people skills seem to always be in tension. Um I think part of the way I am wired is I value the people skills and the system skills higher than technical skills. We can teach you technical skills, but if you don’t have a heart for people or the local church… Rich Birch — Right. Brittany Crimmel — …that’s going to be a huge problem. Rich Birch — Yes. Brittany Crimmel — Um, and so I tend to value those. I also get to support our technical teams and so I am pairing people up with people who are very gifted, very technical. They are the experts in their field. And so there’s no lack of resources. That is not true at every church. Rich Birch — Right. Brittany Crimmel — Um, there are definitely some things where you have awesome volunteers and it’s just this one guy named Joe and he runs sound every week for you. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Brittany Crimmel — And so developing somebody in that space is really hard. But if you can teach um somebody who has a heart for ministry, if you can teach them, here is how you schedule people and planning center. And it matters because we’re clear and it means we’re stewarding them and their time and their gifts well. Rich Birch — That’s good. Brittany Crimmel — That will set them up for success far and above anything else, because you can still teach the technical skills. You don’t have to know that. There are plenty of resources and systems and other churches in your area who are operating in kingdom mentality, which means we are sharing everything. There are plenty of resources online. If you go oh I really need to know how to do this. Great! We’ll just Google it. Rich Birch — Right. Yes, exactly. You’d be amazed what you can find on YouTube. Yeah. Brittany Crimmel — You’d be amazed. Yeah. So I definitely think you know they can be somewhat even and we want you to be highly competent and a great culture fit. But I think that those people skills have to win out, especially when it comes to kingdom work, right? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Because we’re people helpers. So it matters way more that you can sit with someone who comes to the booth sobbing than whether or not you are Dante certified. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. I’m not even sure what that means but it sounds fancy. Um, so so give us a little coaching here. I’m going to take advantage of the fact that you’re here and you’re an expert in this area. So ah, picture this, this is a very theoretical situation. Brittany Crimmel — Of course. Rich Birch — You know, church of maybe a thousand people and yeah, we have that Fred or Joe, we have that like tech person and maybe we have a few of them even. And um, they’ve become prickly pears. These people are, you know, they’re very good at what they do, and they are not um they’re they’re not like begrudging doing it. But it’s like the worship people don’t want to talk to them. The the pastor kind of they see them walk in the room and they walk the other way. You know like they’re kind of avoiding interacting with these people. How do we win these folks back? What can we do to try to create a culture? How would you help us maybe diagnose that situation, help… Again, very theoretical – I know you cannot imagine technical leaders… Brittany Crimmel — No, never. Rich Birch — …that struggle with those kind of things. Brittany Crimmel — Um, well first there is a we have a great friend. His name is Todd Elliot. He runs the FILO community, which is first in last out for production teams around the world. And that that really is his heartbeat. So if you need a deep dive into that I would point you to all of Todd’s resources. Um I would also think about the fact that production people usually get the short end of the stick. Um, in that… Rich Birch — So true. Brittany Crimmel — …who is emailing them at, you know, 8:55am when there’s a 9am service. It’s usually a lead pastor going, I actually want these slides instead. Or ah… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Brittany Crimmel — Not that that ever happens. No. Rich Birch — No, theoretically, theoretically. Brittany Crimmel — Theoretically in theory that never happens. Rich Birch — Yes. Brittany Crimmel — Or you know, a worship leader who goes, well those lyrics aren’t right. And then you realize well actually the lyrics you provided me were incorrect. I’m happy to change them. But the resource wasn’t right from the start. Rich Birch — Yep. Brittany Crimmel — Or your community gets a power surge. Well whose problem does that become? Your volunteers. Rich Birch — Yeah. Brittany Crimmel — It’s your production teams. And that’s not usually something they know how to deal with. Rich Birch — Yes. Brittany Crimmel — And so there they are catching a lot of things and they get um, ah really the raw end of the deal most of the time. It, when you’re talking about winning them back, I think about just really the words a lot of them are introverted people. And so they do not want the wow we’ve an amazing production team. Let me call them out. That is their nightmare. Don’t do that to them. Rich Birch — Yes. Brittany Crimmel — They think more about you stopping by after service and saying, thank you so much for what you did today. I know it cost you something, but it matters. Rich Birch — Right, right. Brittany Crimmel — Or when they are flipping the stage, coming and going, I have two hands and I am just here to help. Rich Birch — Yes. Brittany Crimmel — You tell me whatever you need and I’ll do that, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, point me in the direction of stuff to move. Yes. Brittany Crimmel — Right. If you are wrapping cables, don’t wrap it around your elbow. They’ll show you; I promise. Um, but things like that ask… Rich Birch — And even if you have to ask it 12 times in a row, what’s the right way again? Brittany Crimmel — Yes, yeah, right. Rich Birch — They will appreciate that you’re, you know. Yeah, absolutely, that’s good. Brittany Crimmel — People don’t want to feel alone. The production people being bitter and resentful, tending to, right, in theory be bitter and resentful is a people problem, right? Rich Birch — Yeah. Brittany Crimmel — They become undervalued and underpaid because a lot of them are volunteers. And so if you can lavish value on them as both as sons and daughters of God, but also valued members of your church. I mean that that will speak volumes, and you’ll see a significant shift in your culture. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And you know, I think going like you’re saying encouraging us to go out of our way to communicate their worth. And I think sometimes these folks, unfortunately they’re like they understand that they’re ah, you know, a bottleneck… Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — and they don’t and they they feel that as a ah real weight… Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. RIch Birch — …and they’re like you know they they love the Lord dearly. They love the church. And so they’re like I better show up and make all this stuff happen. Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — But someone coming alongside, first to show appreciation, and then hey how can we help build some more people around you. Um, you know they they might not have the ah, you know they may not have the ability to do that. And so us helping them with that can be, you know, a huge huge deal. That’s super… Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, and reminding them. It’s not it’s not about what we want from you. It’s about what we want for you. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Brittany Crimmel — Like if that and that also asks a lot of your pride to be set aside, right? Do I actually value this person as a person instead of being the person that can run lyrics for me. That’s a huge deal. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah, that’s great. Yeah, and there is a weird thing there, isn’t that true? Like again I we’ve been joking about the theoretical thing, but there is ah there’s a common trope there… Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — …of technical people that are driven, you know, overridden by teaching pastors or by, you know, demanding worship leaders or whatever. And some of us, particularly folks that are in executive seats that oversee all of those people or have the ability to push back with that teaching person, like it’s our job to create the culture… Brittany Crimmel — Yes. Rich Birch — …of respect for those people and to come in and advocate and be an ally and say, hey like you know, when we have emailed these people, you know, use an example used, for the last four weeks at 8:15am, I want to help us not do that this week. Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — How can what can what system can I help get in place so that we give this to them at an appropriate time? Brittany Crimmel — Yes. Rich Birch — I think that’s a part of our job. Brittany Crimmel — I will never forget building um teaching graphics during a run through for months straight for a lead pastor. He would just send in his slides um later in the day then I would ah prefer, but that’s ok. And I will never forget our executive pastor telling him like, hey this is really challenging because then I’m not available for other things. And him going, Okay I’ll I’ll talk to our lead pastor about that. Let me go fight that battle for you, and then seeing a shift. That that was such a meaningful moment to me, and made me believe a lot in his leadership more. Rich Birch — Yeah, I was talking to an executive pastor just recently in the last week or so where there was like a bit of a train wreck on a Sunday. It was one of those like, hey how’s, I was having the like hey how’s it going conversations. And they were explaining, you know, all of this, you know, kind of stuff that was that happened. It was one of those Sundays where it was like a series of dominoes that fell. Brittany Crimmel — Yes. Rich Birch — And and they were and this executive pastor was like reflecting on it, this is not even my area like I understand obviously all of it is my area. I’m supposed to oversee all these things, but I’m not the expert on this. Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — Um, but I was really encouraging them. I was like man good for you stepping in to say, hey what can we do? How can we create… how do we make this a better? You know, how do we try to, you know, inject some care in the midst of this tricky situation? Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. That’s really our job in the midst of all that. So yeah, that’s interesting. Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. Rich Birch — It’s cool. Well, I really appreciate this conversation. This has been fantastic to get to know you a little bit better and to hear a bit of your story. As you think to the future, you think about residency, you think about internships, um, what do you think about in the future in this area? Is there would there be some kind of coaching or advice you’d give us? Or or as you think about and leading in your area, are there things that you as you look up over the over the horizon that you would that you’re kind of looking forward to in this area? Brittany Crimmel — I am definitely looking forward to more interns and residents. I email our director all the time, and I go, hey when is your next whatever? Because I just want to know what the odds are that I could get, you know, an intern or resident. Brittany Crimmel — She always goes, well Brittany, you know, when God aligns both the right people in the right time, of course, that we’ll do that. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Brittany Crimmel — So she so kindly reminds me. Um I am just so looking forward to more people caring about interns and residents. In the last year we’ve seen so much fruit come of that both for our church and then other churches, and it has fueled my heart to go like, man, the church is in such good hands and such a good trajectory if we can keep going. Because we need need, need, more leaders who are good leaders, not just leaders. And who are good leaders who are here for a long time. Rich Birch — So good. Well, Brittany, I really appreciate you being here today. You know, cheering for you as you lead at Saddleback and, you know, influence things there. I’m really honored that you would be on the show today. If people want to track with you, ah, where do we want to send them if want to track with the church, where do we want to send them online? Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, um I mean you can find me at Instagram it’s just @brittanycrimmel. It’s nothing crazy. Um, and you can follow all that God is doing through Saddleback at saddleback.com and we would love to let you in on that. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Brittany. Really appreciate you being here today. Brittany Crimmel — Of course, thank you so much, Rich.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Ian Borkent from C3 Rivers Church in the Netherlands. Ian also started the ministry Grow a Healthy Soul to help church leaders take care of their souls. Church leaders often focus on metrics such as attendance, salvations and finances to gauge the health of their church, but there are other health metrics to look at as well. The health of an organization often reflects the health of the leader. Tune in as Ian talks about his journey from burnout to recovery, and how uncovering emotions and subconscious thought processes can prevent burnout down the road. Driven to burnout. // There are typically two types of people – those who run ahead of God and those who run behind God. People who are driven and tend to run ahead of God can be more prone to burnout because they do too much in their own strength while ignoring healthy, God-given limits. Slow down and be present. // It’s good to be an achiever and allow God to use that gift, but we also need to learn to be content with imperfect things around us. Ian said that while he believed in the principle of the Sabbath—having one day where he could delight in God, enjoy his family and just slow down—he didn’t put it into practice. Like so many people, he didn’t notice the signs of burnout until he was too far gone and in need of an extended break. Step back for rest. // One of the huge warning signs Ian experienced was back pain so severe that it impacted his sleep and daily life for months. Despite initial beliefs that his pain was physical or spiritual, he discovered that the root cause was emotional, specifically deep suppressed anger. The lack of sleep eventually broke Ian down and he took a step back from the church while hiring a coach to help him work through his burnout. During this time he focused on resting and becoming more aware of how his subconscious thinking was affecting him. Ian also went through marriage therapy with his wife. He took ten months of sick leave to rest and work deeply on his emotional health before returning to work. Deal with the root issues. // People who burn out can fall into a second or third burnout when returning to work because they didn’t apply lessons during recovery. People burn out because they have deep convictions that are based on lies, or ambitions that are based on an identity that’s not rooted enough in Christ. While you are in the valley, take time to apply the lessons you are learning. Work on the root system of your wrong beliefs to keep yourself from falling into the same traps. Be a new you. // God put limits on everything in creation, including us. Embrace the limits God has given you. Consciously make the decision to be in the moment. When returning to work, it’s important to stay with the new you. People may have to get used to limits on your availability or new boundaries you set. Teach people who you are now. Community transformation. // Impacted by Ian’s journey through burnout, C3 Rivers Church underwent a transformation from an organizational/business structure to a more family-oriented model. The leadership removed titles and focused on the function of each individual within the body of Christ. This change eliminated the hierarchy that had been present before. Now instead of the leader dictating the plans and direction, they seek to discover what God’s vision is for the church as a whole. This has led to individuals taking the initiative to start ministries without being asked or rallied by the leader. Grow a Healthy Soul. // If you’re on the way to burnout, slow down and talk to someone. Through his Grow a Healthy Soul ministry, Ian has provided a free PDF to download that has questions you can ask yourself to uncover some of your subconscious thought processes and how they affect you. To explore more resources from Grow a Healthy Soul, visit www.growahealthysoul.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! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation. We’re going international today, friends. Normally we have guests from across the States, but today super honored to have a guest from the Netherlands, Ian Borkent. He leads C3 Rivers Church. This is a fantastic church and I’m really looking forward to hearing more of his story, particularly as he talks about his own journey to health. He founded a coaching ministry called Grow a Healthy Soul after his own experience with really just terrible burnout. They offer resources and we want to make sure that you get plugged in with them today. Ian, welcome to the show. So glad that you’re here.Ian Borkent — Good to be here Rich.Rich Birch — Well, I’m glad that you’ve that you’re on and that we can connect across such great distance. Tell us about C3 Rivers Church. Give us a sense of the kind of the climate. What’s it like to serve in the Netherlands? Yeah, tell me a little bit about that.Ian Borkent — Yeah. We are a church in Arnhem, which is a city of about 170,000 people in the east of the Netherlands, close to the German border. We have a lot of international students, a lot of young people. And yeah, there’s quite a few modern churches here. Also very traditional churches, reformed churches. We are more in the modern Pentecostal area of of church life.Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Now is it true, is this… I remember talking to a friend, I think it was in Netherlands where we were talking about like donor stuff and all this, and there’s like the state church gets like taxes or something like that, but then you guys don’t. Or how does all that work? There’s like a, you know, there isn’t there like a state church in the Netherlands. Is that true? Am I thinking about that right? Or am I not not thinking about that clearly?Ian Borkent — No, I don’t think that that’s true. It was true.Rich Birch — It was true years ago.Ian Borkent — Yeah, like definitely a century ago so. But no, that’s not the case. It might work differently with tax deductibility. Rich Birch — Oh, right. Ian Borkent — I think in the Netherlands, for example, when people give to the church, then they can deduct taxes. And in some places, like the UK, the church itself can deduct taxes. So that those are some differences.Rich Birch — Okay cool. And give us a sense of the spiritual climate. I’m not sure why my brain like went sideways on money stuff. I don’t sure why I jumped there right away. But tell me about, you know, the the spiritual climate of the Netherlands. What what must that be like? My assumption is that the Netherlands is a post-Christian kind of more, maybe even pre-Christian kind of community, not the kind of place that people go to church all the time. A tough place to serve. Give us a bit of the history of of C3, how you’ve been serving there, and talk to us a little bit about that. Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, the Netherlands is very secular, has become very secular place, you know, with a lot of secular ideologies and very similar, I think in that case to, to America. Also there’s a lot of things happening politically with new parties rising up. And and so there is, however, more openness, especially amongst young people towards Christianity. Rich Birch — Love it. Ian Borkent — Because for them it’s not so loaded anymore, like their parents generation. You know, the parents were used to more religion and they might have left the church because of religion. And the younger generation is more, definitely more open towards it.Rich Birch — Hmm. Okay, cool, cool. Well, let’s talk a little bit about I know ultimately today we want to talk about your own journey to health and, you know, some kind of a tough season that you went through. But why don’t we take a step back. Tell us your kind of personal journey there. So what led you to the place where, like, hey, you even realized maybe I wasn’t in a healthy spot? You know what, talk us through that a little bit. What was what kind of precipitated that? What came before that?Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, naturally, I’m a very driven person. And what you often see with people that get burnouts, they have a certain personality type, you know, the type T person, like with T stands for tension and or D, which stands for driven. And so you got two kind of people. George Meyer is always saying like you have people running ahead of God, or people running behind God. And I was in the first category. And you know, and that’s all fine and good if you keep that up for a few years. But what about if some crisis hit you, or if there’s a layer, or stacking, of multiple, multiple challenges. Then, you know, I was just doing too much in my own strength and not living within healthy limits, God-given limits, enough. Ian Borkent — And then I think the final straw was the Corona Crisis, where many people, they said like, oh, this is quite nice to slow down, you know, and be in the home a lot, and do a lot of reading. But for me, leading a church was just very, very challenging… Rich Birch — Yes. Ian Borkent — …with all the different opinions like about masking or not masking, vaccinating or not vaccinating. And it’s like whichever position we chose, there was always someone not agreeing. Rich Birch — Yes. Ian Borkent — And so that yeah, that I think that was the final straw. But I went through it on adrenaline. And adrenaline, it’s it’s a chemical thing. It keeps you going for so long until it basically runs out. Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — And then you collapse. And that’s what happened in my case.Rich Birch — Yeah. I, you know, it’s funny, one of my very distinct memories during Corona was I was on a video call and I remember this, and I was feeling exactly what you were feeling the like, gosh, we are like running in a million directions here. We are pushing hard. We’re trying to figure out how do we reach people. And I remember this other church leader said, you know, maybe this is the Lord’s season for us to take a rest, and to slow down and to relax. And I was I remember thinking inside of me, I was like, what? Like what is happening? Like what? Who are you? Like what how can you say that? It’s crazy to think back to that. Rich Birch — You know, you said something there running ahead of God. That’s an interesting statement. Tell me, what were some of those signs when you look back on that, that you would say, oh, I was running ahead of God. And, you know, because there might be people that are listening in today, or I know there’s people that are listening in today, they would say, no, I’m not running ahead of God. I’m just driven. I just the Lord’s just he’s got a lot of plans. We want to push forward. Help us understand what did it look like when you look back now and say, oh, I was running ahead of God.Ian Borkent — Yeah, I think it’s good to be an achiever. And, you know, God definitely works through people. And sometimes God is waiting for us to do something. But if you are an achiever, and in my case, also perfectionistic, then what you want to do. You just want to always improve things, even at the detriment of your own health, or your own merits, or the raising of your kids. For example, in preaching, I was always trying to improve my sermon preparation and then thinking of some other example on Saturday and trying to add that in, and really supposed to be around the family table, but not really being present. I mean, I was sitting there in my body, but my mind was somewhere else. And just never really being content. And I had to learn to be content and to press the pause button or the stop button on Friday evening and just let the Sabbath be the Sabbath. You know, for me, I’m not religious about the Saturday having to be the Sabbath, but I do believe in the principle of of having one day where you can delight in God and and enjoy your family and just slow down. But it was very, I knew it in theory, but in practice I didn’t do it.Rich Birch — Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, so bring us back. We’re we’re in the middle of the Corona Crisis, and, you know, things are are, you know, tough. It seems like every answer is not the right answer. Was there a particular breaking moment where you said, oh, okay, like this I have stepped on it here. Something has gone sideways. It’s just a moment or a series of things that you look back on and, you know, kind of indicated something’s in an unhealthy spot. I need to change what’s happening here.Ian Borkent — Oh, yeah. Like as often is the case with burnout, is that people tend to not notice the signals until they’ve, you know, they’re too far gone. And when you’re too far gone, it becomes suddenly really obvious to yourself and to those around you. Like, for example, I remember I started crying out of nowhere for seemingly small, small matters. You know, like I developed back pain, which at first I thought was physical, but it turned out not to be physical, but emotional. It had an emotional cause. And, you know, eventually I couldn’t think straight anymore. I couldn’t even make small decisions about church life anymore. And so it became apparent to myself and to those around me that I needed a serious break, you know? Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — And to just rest first and recover and then to work on the underlying issues. Because there’s always underlying issues that that are there, but that you’ve kind of covered over with working hard or just trying to ignore things. And but it’s like, you know, it’s like a leak in your roof. If you’re trying to ignore it and put tape over it, well, eventually it will just grow bigger. And you will you will start seeing the flooding of of the rainwater come in.Rich Birch — Wow. You know, those are interesting kind of, you know, signs in your own life. You know, I’ve heard people say similar on the emotions issue. It’s almost like the opposite end of that same spectrum where it’s like you, I’ve heard people who have gone through a similar experience say, you know, I stopped feeling anything. Where it’s like I would be at a funeral and of a dear friend and didn’t feel anything. It just was like, this was another day. You know, it’s the opposite of crying at everything. But it was having some sort of an emotional.You know, the back pain – that one’s interesting. Talk us through that a little bit. A physiological response to an emotional, spiritual pressure that you were feeling. Talk us through that.Ian Borkent — Yeah. You know, in hindsight, I’m so happy and glad with how God has designed us as a triune being, you know, body, soul and spirit. RIch Birch — Right. Yeah. Ian Borkent — I never really saw the connection because I, I compartmentalize things too much in terms of, for example, the body. I thought if I have back pain, it must have a physical cause because I can feel it in my body. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Ian Borkent — You know, and as I went to the hospital and we did X-rays and blood tests and the works. And basically they said, well, you have normal abnormalities with… yeah, because they said if we scan a 45 year old, like if we scan 100 people that are 45 years of age, then 33% of them or something will have these kind of abnormalities.Rich Birch — Okay, okay. Right.Ian Borkent — But it doesn’t explain the severity of your back pain. The thing is, I had such severe back pain that I could not walk for longer than ten minutes without having to sit down. Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Ian Borkent — I could not lie in bed without waking up from the pain. I had lots of nights where I just had hardly any sleep because I was in pain all the time. I, when I was sitting down, I had to stand up again after ten minutes. So it’s like when they what they say to people with back pain, what is the best position, the next position. So there’s always trying to find the next position. Rich Birch — Interesting. Ian Borkent — And everything in my mind was convinced this is a physical problem, right? Rich Birch — Right, right. Ian Borkent — Or it could be spiritual, maybe is demonic or something. You know, like I’ve learned that in the spiritual realm there can be things that cause you physical pain or sicknesses. Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Ian Borkent — And so I was focusing on these two areas. So either going to a doctor or asking for prayer, you know, and doing spiritual battle.Ian Borkent — What I had never considered was that the cause for my physical pain could be found in my soul. And that my body is simply expressing a pain. My body is like a prophet. I think Pete Scazzero says your body is a major prophet. So you know, my body knows first what my mind knows later. Oh that’s good. Ian Borkent — And and so I had to discover that my body was just giving me pain because I was having a lot of anger inside of me, to be honest. But I did not allow myself to feel that anger. Because being a good Christian, you cannot possibly be angry with friends or family about certain issues. You cannot possibly be angry. So I had hidden in a way and my body started to express it.Rich Birch — Hmm. Interesting. Well, you went into rest and recovery. So what did that look like? How what were some of those? Was there a breaking point that led you to that? Or you know what, how did you, you know, how did you how did it come to you know, that you understood, Oh, like, hey, I’ve, I’ve got to make some changes here.Ian Borkent — Yeah. You know, eventually I broke down because of lack of sleep. Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Ian Borkent — The the pain was so severe that I did not sleep well for months in a row. And that, you know, if you if if you sleep not well for a few nights, that’s one thing. But if it’s months in a row, all the while staying busy with work and family life and everything, then eventually it just had such a negative effect on my marriage. My wife found it very difficult to deal with me. I did not know how to deal with me. And so it just became apparent, you know what? I need a break.Rich Birch — Hmm, interesting. Okay, so what did that early rest in recovery look like? How do you how do you how does someone who goes from, Hey, I’m running ahead of God. You know, I’m an achiever. I’m a person who wants to get things done. I’m asking for a friend. How does a person like that rest and recover? How do you take a pause and say, hey, I need to slow down. What that look like?Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, in that case, I am an all or nothing type of person, so that did help me. Either I’m doing everything or I’m doing nothing. So I would just, Yeah, I just announced to to the team and the church like we need a break. And fortunately we were in a church movement, which is really like a family to us. Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — So we have a lot of people around us that that could help us or pray with us or, you know, just be there for me. And and so I laid down my responsibilities and, and we focused on just resting and working on things in our merits and working on things in my soul. So I hired a coach in Australia. So I had online Zoom coaching… Rich Birch — Yeah. Ian Borkent — …but honestly, it was like we were sitting in the same room. It was just incredible.Rich Birch — It’s amazing.Ian Borkent — And eventually I’ve also stumbled upon a book by a Dr. Sarno about healing back pain. And how you can get physical healing by working through emotional issues. And that that helped me incredibly to, yeah, to work on my emotional self. So to just basically become more self aware of how I’m thinking subconsciously. Because a lot of things are happening in the subconscious, but we need to uncover what’s happening there. And well, basically took ten months to to rest… Rich Birch — Wow. Ian Borkent — …and then to work on some things and, and and eventually I yeah, my back pain disappeared completely. And I knew where things came from. And we had some marriage therapy as well. And you know, we we could start afresh.Rich Birch — Fascinating. You know, there’s, there’s a lot we can unpack there. But I know, you know, just even in my own life. You know, there I will have its upper back pain or kind of in the, you know, when I’m stressed out, I can you can physiologically feel it. You can feel the kind of tension. And it makes sense that if you hold that for a long period of time, the impact it’s going to have on us. When you say, you know, there was a ten month period there. So like, were you out of doing church stuff for that, that length. Or did you take a break or how did that look like, would that look like?Ian Borkent — Yeah, well, I was in like on staff full time and, but I went on full time sickness leave. Rich Birch — Okay. Ian Borkent — And so yeah, I said we spoke with the board and they were really understanding. Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. Ian Borkent — And we have a great board that they said, look, you know, your health is is the most important thing. Rich Birch — Yeah, yes. Ian Borkent — And we also have great associate pastors who said, look, we will look after the church during your absence. And and so I’m really, really glad with with these people. Yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. What a what a gift to you. And and, you know, that’s an encouragement I think to leaders who are listening in. I sometimes think we we don’t, it’s like we underestimate how much people want to care. You know, the people that are around us who are will rally in a moment like that and say, yeah, like, I, I, you know, they love you dearly and they want to support you. They want to, in this case, you know, you had a group around you, Ian, that wanted to say, hey, we’ll, you know, we’ll help. That’s. Yeah. That’s great. Ian Borkent — Exactly. Rich Birch — So, so then how did you, you know, you come through this experience, obviously there’s a there’s rest. I love that you you know and there’s a lot we could talk there around the back stuff. And you start finding a place of, of health and, you know, in a better spot. Well, you can’t just jump back into how things were before. You know, you have to you have to change. And the way you serve has to change. Can you talk us through what that look like?Ian Borkent — Yeah, I think it’s really important to take the time in the valley to eat all the grass that’s growing there.Rich Birch — Oh that’s good, I love it.Ian Borkent — You know, as driven people, even in a burnout, driven people can still be driven. Why? Because they want to get out of the burnout, you know? And they they want to get going again. But my coach, he shared something with me that’s really helped me. He said his estimate is that one third of the people that he’s been coaching, they they have trouble, after working again, and they can fall back into a second or third burnout. Rich Birch — Wow. Ian Borkent — And he didn’t say this to say how bad of a coach he was. But as a warning, he said, as a warning, he said, you need to really apply the lessons that you are learning here in the valley. And you need to take the time as long as it takes, to get them deeply ingrained of you. Because it comes from a deep place. The reason why you burned out, it comes from a deep place of some convictions that are based on lies, some ambitions that are based on, on, on, you know, on an identity that’s not rooted in Christ enough. And so you have to work on the root system, and take the time to do that, because otherwise, once you start working again, it’s very easy to fall in the same traps or old tracks.Rich Birch — Interesting. Interesting. Okay, so we’re in that phase, when you weren’t just kind of jumping to let’s look at what’s next, but you were taking time to try to examine, were there any particular learnings for you, or any convictions that came through, even extending that and continuing to say, hey, I want to I don’t want to just jump; I want to make sure that we’re, you know, I’m stepping in a healthy way into what’s next.Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, one area I can mention is, is embracing limits. And that God has actually put limits in everything in creation. You know, the oceans have limits. The day has a limit. Everything is limited. We are limited by time and space, and and so, and energy. So just embracing how God has has wired us I think that’s just that’s just key. It’s just very important. And then, to live like that, and consciously make a decision, I’m going to be present in the moment. Now some people, they are a moment people, so they can be really there in the moment. And other people, they’re always like, especially visionaries, I think, they’re always looking at the next moment.Rich Birch — Yes.Ian Borkent — So for me, as a visionary, I, I had to just learn to enjoy the moment. So, for example, during a meal time with my family and my children, I am there. I’m not somewhere else. I’m not with other people or I’m not at tomorrow’s meeting. I’m sitting here right now with my wife, with my children, and we’re going to have a great meal and a great conversation.Rich Birch — That’s really cool. Love that. Love that insight and love, you know, I think so many of us could learn that, you know, and do that more even in this, you know, in these days. Well, what what changes ended up shifting in on the church front? How did you obviously your you know, you’re still leading the church. You came through this this is the part that I’m you know, I you know, I’m excited about. Sometimes people go through these experiences and their conclusion at the end is, hey, I just shouldn’t be leading in the church. Like I, you know, I should do something different. And that’s okay. That’s a, you know, that’s not a that’s not a criticism. But we need leaders like you who have been able to go through that and then come back to the end of those things and say, oh, no, I’d like to continue to serve here. So talk to us about what what changes have happened on that front. How have you now been able to structure your life and the church’s life in a way that maybe is more conducive to health going forward? Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, you know, I understand it likewise. Like you were saying, if some people they they make a different choice, and I think it’s always looking at, you know, walking it through with God and praying about these things. Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — You need to know that you know that you know that you’re still called for this time and place. Rich Birch — That’s good. Ian Borkent — But you know, at the same time, when you’re starting again, it’s really, really important to stay with the new you, and and to live out of that new you. Rich Birch — That’s good. Ian Borkent — And that means that some people, they will have to get used to that, and the church will have to get used to that. Because in the past you might have been more accessible, but you went across your own boundaries too much. So you need to actually teach people who you are now. Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — And that means that you’re making some shifts in your availability. And then that also means just letting the body of Christ be the body of Christ. So it’s very, very important that we involve the fivefold ministry. You know, I’m more of an apostolic type person. But I’m I discovered, for example, during my burnout, that I’m not a shepherd, but I’m called pastor. Well, that’s confusing in people’s minds.Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah.Ian Borkent — And so we had to look at the fivefold ministry and appoint people as a pastor so that the church knows, this is a pastor, and you can expect shepherding from them. And and this person here is an apostolic visionary, and this person is a prophet. And so those things really helped the church, I think, to understand who is who.Rich Birch — Love that. And so that that’s really super practical. Any other kind of shifts when you as you got clearer around the fivefold kind of approach to ministry that, you know, that that impacted—obviously we’re talking about Ephesians 4—you know, that it changed just even how you operate as a leadership team?Ian Borkent — Yeah. Yeah. We we look at leadership now quite differently. I think we come from, we came from a church culture which was quite hierarchical, and with a lot of organization – I think too much organi,ation. So we started to look more like a company or a factory and less like a family. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.Ian Borkent — Well, when I look at the scriptures you see that whole language of of family, you know, we’re called each other’s brothers and sisters, and God is our father. And so there’s more family language in the scriptures, I think, than organizational language. But we were just functioning like an organization. And we had too much distance between leadership and church members. And so we actually went through quite a transformation in discovering afresh what does the Bible say about the the body of Christ? So we’re moving now from a vision of being a house of God to being a body of Christ, where there is less distance between leader and church member. And there’s more that can also create more team transparency, where everyone, including the leader or leaders, can be vulnerable. And I think that’s very important in this day and age, where you see just so many leaders on a pedestal… Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — …and then, you know, they cannot live possibly up to people’s expectations. So what they do is they then have some hidden sin or whatever to try to cope. And then the thing collapses, you know. And there’s just too many church scandals, and I think it can have to do with, with this aspect.Rich Birch — Yeah. Priesthood of all believers, I love it. This is this is great. I’d love to unpack that – what that’s kind of look like. And I agree, I think there’s an interesting thing, you know, in the in the Protestant church and the broadly Protestant church, you know, evangelical world, you know, charismatic world. We, you know, we you know, I’m we’re historically we corrected against what some of our Catholic brothers and sisters, some of their, you know, their worlds. But then what has happened is one of the weird trickle downs from that is instead of having a Pope somewhere, we have a whole bunch of mini-popes who are people who we look at as if they have some sort of completely different connection to God than the rest of us.Rich Birch — We, you know, we look at them as, and that could be a lead pastor, could be a teaching pastor, we look at them in this kind of like they’re different than everyone else, which is not a very biblical view and has all kinds of negative outcomes in people’s lives. So let’s unpack that. What does that look like to be less like a factory—I like that —less like a factory, more like a family. Let’s talk about what some of those changes have looked like at C3 for you.Ian Borkent — Well, one thing that we did, and I’m not saying every church needs to do this, but we felt God saying that to us was to remove titles and the use of titles. So, you know, we called everyone who had a serious leadership position in our church, we called them a pastor, you know? Rich Birch — Yep. Ian Borkent — So we we had a worship pastor, kids pastor, youth pastor, et cetera. Even though they might not even be a pastor, as in, they might not be a shepherd, but they might be prophetic or or something else. But somehow we call everyone a pastor. And then that created a distance between church members and these pastors. And so we said, look, what we need to do we need to focus on function and not on title. And we need to realize that everybody has a very important function in the body of Christ, whether you are the liver or the right toe or the eye or the nose.Rich Birch — Love it.Ian Borkent — So we’re we all have a different function and no one is more important than any other people. So you can just call me Ian. You know, I’m Ian, and I happen to have an apostolic function in this body. And some people are afraid that that, you know, that the culture of honor disappears if you do that and everything. But, you know, the Bible says that we need to honor one another. So I think if I as a leader, if I honor other people, then they will be honoring me. And so, you know, so I don’t think we have to be afraid of that. And I think it creates more health overall in the body of Christ.Rich Birch — Interesting. Yeah, I love that. I love, you know, clarifying. Did you, what about your experiences, that kind of weekend experience? You know, there are um, in the way we craft what we do regularly that can sometimes reinforce values that we actually don’t believe. Like we actually, if we were to step back and say, what does this communicate? We, that doesn’t actually communicate what we think. And it sounds like you’ve gone through a season where you’ve thought carefully about that. Have you made any changes to what you do, even on a regular basis?Ian Borkent — Yeah, we have made very, very significant changes. Because we used to have church services that tick like clockwork, where everything was planned on the minute through different run sheets, and they were like three people basically on stage determining the content of those 90 minutes. And, and we felt God challenging us to lay that down. With God, saying to us, look, if you want to experience what the body of Christ is like, then you need to let the body be the body. And that means that you need to get more people to participate… Rich Birch — Wow. Ian Borkent — …even spontaneously, you know? And I was I was at first I was like, whoa, you know, but God, what if they will say crazy things? Or what if, you know what? We have, we have actually laid things down. And we have said to people that they can participate in bringing a testimony or a prayer. And I have seen, we have seen the Holy Spirit at work, and people encouraging one another. And if something if someone says something weird and someone else has, has gently corrected it, or, you know, we have seen that the Holy Spirit is perfectly okay when we involve more people in a church gathering. And so now we have what we what we call open gatherings, where, yeah, where there is I mean, there is someone who opens the meeting and, and sets the tone. But then we, we basically say, look, let’s pray. And if God brings something on your heart, then we can pray for that right away. And it’s just been amazing to see what’s been happening there.Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s cool. I love that. Like the Holy Spirit’s not nervous about what’s going to happen. Like I love it. Ian Borkent — Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s it doesn’t freak him out. He’s he’s okay. He’s good. He’s good. Ian Borkent — Yeah. Rich Birch — Now, so what’s the impact been on the community? Like love those changes. It reminds me early on when I was first a Christian, I was a part of, in this part of the world, it’s called the Plymouth Brethren movement. And they’re to this day, this still very much it’s like you go to the breaking of bread service, they would call it. And it’s, you know, they wait in silence at the beginning and, and and then, you know, as the Spirit moves, different people are sharing scripture and maybe giving a word, you know, that kind of thing. Beautiful, a beautiful experience. If you if you haven’t experienced that and you’re only, only experience is the run sheet world, man, you’re missing out on something. But what impact has that had on the church? You know, from an, you know, reaching people point of view, all that kind of thing? What what’s the, you know, or or maybe even ask the wrong question. But you know what what’s that been like in the life of the church?Ian Borkent — Um, well, at first people had to get used to it… Rich Birch — Sure. Ian Borkent — …because, you know, we come from 12 years of the leader saying where we are going. Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — And, you know, so people have been kind of waiting for me as the leader to say, we are going to do plan A… Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — …and then they’re going to rally behind it. But now I’ve said, look, what is God giving as vision? What is God, yeah, what is he giving as a vision to this body? Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — So basically we allow for more initiative to come from the community. And so that is taking some time, you know… Rich Birch — Yeah. Ian Borkent — …to for people to grasp that, like, hey, I can actually run with something that… And for example, what we’ve seen happen is that someone has said, look, I have a ministry in the prophetic, so I’m going to train other people how to prophesy over each other. And so I haven’t asked them to do that. It’s not been something that I have been rallying people for, but they have started that out of the own accord.Rich Birch — Wow – that’s great.Ian Borkent — Yeah. And so those are the things we want to see happen. Of course, you know, within the values that we have as a church community, but not with a lot of control or a lot of top-down leadership or instruction, but rather the other way around, a bottom-up grassroots movement. As I think the church is supposed to be, which is the priesthood of all believers stepping into their God zone. Rich Birch — Interesting. That’s cool. I love that. That’s, you know, so fun to hear. And there’s a lot we could unpack here. I know that there’s a there’s a ton here. The the idea of moving from, you know, a factory to a family. And, you know, there’s a lot we could unpack on that for sure. Rich Birch — What would you say to a leader who’s listening in today who would say, you know, kind of pivoting back to the individual who say, hey, you know, I’m I might be burnt out. I’m, you know, I might be in that situation where I don’t know that I know yet, but I could be heading there. Ian Borkent — Right. Rich Birch — What would you say to them? What would be some of those initial steps that they should be thinking about or, or steps they should be taking? Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, definitely to slow down. Then to talk to someone. You know, a trusted friend or or a coach or someone that is recommended to them, and become more aware of their inner world. So their subconscious world. So I think I sent you some, some questions with this…Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. We’ve got that PDF – we can put it we’ll share it in the show notes. I was going to ask you about that, but let’s walk through that.Ian Borkent — In that download, if people just look at those questions and they sit down and they take the time to honestly ask themselves these questions, that can uncover some subconscious processes. Because a lot of our actions in life are subconsciously driven. And so you need to slow down to get to that point. And, and then you will know why you do things. And that’s often more important than what you do.Rich Birch — Yeah. There’s… friends, I would encourage you to look on your show notes. Click that, download that. This is a great resource that you’ve provided. I really appreciate this. There’s, as I was preparing looking at some of these questions, I was like, oh, these are good questions that I think all of us should slow down. And like you say here, quality, not quantity. Like, let’s actually let’s actually answer the question. Think about it. Love that, love that. Rich Birch — All right. Well, as we’re kind of wrapping up and landing the plane here, you this is you’ve ended up pivoting and launching a ministry to help people. Why don’t you talk to us about that? What does Grow a Healthy Soul look like? Give us a sense of of how that how that ministry helps people.Ian Borkent — Yeah, well, I just have a heart for leaders – leaders in the church world, but also in the, you know, in the secular world. And Grow a Healthy Soul is about the soul of the leader. And it’s my own story, of course, getting in touch with my soul and with who I really am, and uncovering emotions and subconscious processes. And I see so many leaders, they look at certain metrics in their life, like church attendance, salvations, finances. And I think we can look at other health metrics. And I believe that the health of the organization comes after the health of the leader. And so of course, they’re connected as well. Rich Birch — That’s so true. Yeah.Ian Borkent — So we need to talk about these things. And prevention is better than cure. So if people check out my website – growahealthysoul.com – they will see some tools. They will see podcasts, mostly in the English language, but there are also Dutch episodes in between. And and that is there just to help them grow a healthy soul.Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. I would encourage people to to drop by, take a look. Again, we’ll link to that in the show notes. But it’s just growahealthysoul.com. You know I love your heart there around, Hey we don’t it doesn’t, it seems like every leader I talked to goes through a season like this. And that doesn’t need to be the case. Like we could proactively, and I’ve seen this particularly with young leaders, who, you know, are proactively working ahead to say, hey, how do we ask these questions, pace our lives? Sure, still having impact, still leaning in and asking, hey, how can we reach people with the message of Jesus? But you know, there was a previous generation that it feels like it was all about like, you know, burning out for Jesus. And we don’t need to be like that. We can, there’s a different path. And so, Ian, I really appreciate that you are, you know, clearly pacing that out for us. Any kind of final words as we wrap up today’s episode, anything you’d like to say to us just as we wrap up today?Ian Borkent — I think it’s important to talk about it to people, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Ian Borkent — So sometimes we as leaders, we tend to feel maybe embarrassed or ashamed. But I think people respect us more if we are actually open about the things that bother us. And what’s important is we need to look at the person behind the pastor, and at the life behind the leader. And so I’m a person before I am a pastor or a leader. And and we need to basically demystify leadership and make it more personable. So just be a person and talk to another person and, and share the things that that you want to share.Rich Birch — So good, so good. Ian, I appreciate you being here today.Rich Birch — Thank you so much for caring for us, and for taking time to help us today. If we want to send people online, where do we want to send them? You know, give us the website for the church and, you know, growing a healthy soul. Any place on social media, those kind of things where we could be following along, tracking with your story?Ian Borkent — Yep. My website is growahealthysoul.com and my Instagram handle is my surname Borkent – B-O-R-K-E-N-T and then G-A-H-S, which stands for Grow Healthy Soul.Rich Birch — Love it, love it. So good. Thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate you being here today, Sir. Ian Borkent — Pleasure. 

Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking again with William Vanderbloemen, the founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group, an organization that helps identify executive talent and matches value-based organizations with like-minded people. When it comes to hiring the best people, what factors cause them to shine? How can you learn to identify these qualities in a potential hire? Tune in as William shares some common traits found in exceptional hires based on interviews with 30,000 leaders. Twelve habits among the successful. // In the last 15 years, Vanderbloemen Search Group has interviewed over 30,000 leaders. By studying the best of the best from this group, William sought to discover what these people had in common. He debunked the notion that exceptional individuals possess some innate quality or talent. Instead, he identified twelve habits common in these highly ranked leaders—referred to as “unicorns”—habits that are completely teachable and coachable. The Fast. // One of the most counterintuitive habits he discovered was the importance of being responsive. One study showed that the speed of response, for example to an email or web form, correlates with the likelihood of having a meaningful conversation or connection. People are terrible at getting back to each other, but these unicorns in the church world are quick to respond which makes them stand out. Follow up. // Responsiveness is not just crucial in personal interactions, but it also plays a significant role in organizations. William notes that a big study on giving found that the current best way to follow up with a first time donor is for the lead pastor or preaching pastor to text that donor the afternoon of the day that they gave. Following up means the likelihood of that donor giving again goes up by three times. Train to be more responsive with boundaries. // Creating a culture of responsiveness within a team requires clear boundaries and expectations for communication. At Vanderbloemen Search Group, they respond to emails within 24 hours and treat Slack messages after hours as more urgent. However, it’s also important to respect employees’ work-life boundaries. You can train your people to be more responsive, but it’s up to you as the executive pastor to create boundaries where people aren’t afraid. Defining communication commitments annually as an organization also helps reinforce responsiveness. Train both senders and receivers of messages to use the appropriate channels for what is high priority and what isn’t. The Curious. // Another common habit of unicorns found in the study is called “The Curious.” Leadership requires curiosity. Most people accept the status quo and don’t ask why. The people who really shine in their work learn to ask great questions. Be the Unicorn // You can read about all twelve of the habits that William identified from his research in the book “Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest”. People problems are one of the things that slows down the church and this book is a fantastic tool for personal and team development. Take advantage of the roughly 4000 free resources at Vanderbloemen Search Group and grab William’s book “Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest” at the website www.vanderbloemen.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: CDF Capital Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple: we lend money to churches. CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Man, we’re really looking forward to today’s conversation, a repeat guest, which you know when we have repeat guests, that means they’ve got something good to say. We want to bring him back to the table, hear what they have to say. Super excited to have William Vanderbloemen – he’s the founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group. This is a firm well-known to folks that are listening in, they’re really known all over the world for excellence in identifying executive talent and really matching values-based organizations with likeminded or with org… with likeminded people. (I think that makes sense.) Ah, super excited to have William on the the call. He’s also a sought-after thought leader in really company culture, talent retention, ai and future work trends. William, so glad you’re here. Thanks for being here today. William Vanderbloemen — Thanks I’m feeling bad about my seating. I’m just sitting at my desk in my office and then I realize I actually have a seminary degree on the wall and this is the wrong podcast to have that hammer shot. So. Rich Birch — Ah, love it. Love it. It’s true. That’s that’s good. Why do you fill out the picture a little bit the William Vanderbloemen picture, tell us a little bit of your story. Give us the fill out the picture a little bit for us. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, yeah, well I’ll I’ll try and keep you short. I’ll tell people I’m a recovering preacher so we go on and on. I know there are a lot of exec pastors listening. You’re like oh my gosh I thought we were getting out on time, but now no. But ah I, you know, I think, Rich, I probably was born with some malformed gene that’s made me a bit of a serial entrepreneur. And ah you know I was the kid that you know was a paper boy but but bought out the paper routes around me and redistributed them and made it mine more dense and sold off what I didn’t need just kind of. It’s ah it’s a dysfunction. I should probably be in counseling. But ah, and and honestly it’s what made me not want to go into ministry is I wanted to go do something where you’re building something where you’re… Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — And I grew up in a Presbyterian Church, very quiet, great church, but mainline custodial sort of setting, you know. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Just is it what it was. I thought go in a ministry and you stand around, I guess you wear the robe all week? Or do you can you wear that to a grocery store, or do you like… Rich Birch — Love it. William Vanderbloemen — And you sit with people at the hospital and try not to make too many people mad and preach a good message, you know. And that was like uh-uh. But but God has a way of winning wrestling matches. Rich Birch — Love it. William Vanderbloemen — And ah and and we wrestled and he won. And so I went into, you know, Presbyterian Church Ministry, and then I got hold of one of my profs gave me a Lyle Schaller book. Great church growth guy who’s with Jesus now. But one of the the lines in his book that my professor had highlighted was “Jesus called us to be fishers of men, not keepers of an aquarium.” Rich Birch — Oh good. Love it. William Vanderbloemen — And ah it was like light bulb moment for me and that’s right when Willow and Saddleback were sort of hitting their stride. Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — And it’s like, wow you can be a kingdom entrepreneur. I mean like I can say it cleaner now. I think I was like wow we could overpopulate heaven – that would be so cool. Rich Birch — I love it. So good. William Vanderbloemen — And um, so off I went, probably changed too much too quick at a lot of places, but had gracious people around me. And ah, pastored mostly as a senior pastor in the Presbyterian Church. Always had an odd group of friends though, you know, the Willows, the Saddlebacks, the non-denoms. And that was all very threatening. Um, but God was good and then after a divorce, which I would not recommend by the way…um… Rich Birch — Sure. Okay. William Vanderbloemen — You know, um I’ve found myself as a single dad with four kids, and in no shape to take care of anybody spiritually. Ah, the church had been very gracious to me. And I ended up taking a job um at an oil and gas company. Try new career, you know. Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — I’m like I don’t know that. And they said well you know people so we’ll start you in the ah HR department and a rotation, and then we’ll move you somewhere else, and when we rotate you around you can have a nice career here. First year I’m there, by the way I hated it. Rich Birch — Okay. William Vanderbloemen — I was not made for it. They were good people. Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — They were doing good work, they paid well, there were a lot of believers in the company, including the very top people in the company. Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah. William Vanderbloemen — So no knock on them. But it was just not what I was wired to do. Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — And man it can be 15 years of search work to realize just because someone’s talented doesn’t mean they’re right for the job… Rich Birch — Oh nice. Okay, good. Yes. William Vanderbloemen — …at all. Rich Birch — Interesting, right. William Vanderbloemen — So and that was me I just you know… And so the CEO said um I’ve been here nine years. (I didn’t realize that’s like a lifetime for a fortune 200 company which is what we were.) Rich Birch — Right? Yes, yes. William Vanderbloemen — And so they hired a search firm to find a new CEO, ninety days later they had the new CEO. William Vanderbloemen — First Presbyterian Houston, where I’d been serving, which is a fantastic church, and within the little world presbyterianism honestly, one of the best ones. Rich Birch — Yep. William Vanderbloemen — It took them 3 years to find me. Rich Birch — Wow, right. William Vanderbloemen — I was there not quite 6. Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — It took them almost three years to find my successor. Rich Birch — Wow. William Vanderbloemen — So they had a twelve year run… Rich Birch — Wow. William Vanderbloemen — …with half of it in search mode and half of it with a pastor. Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — And here’s an oil and gas company, now I live in Texas so we don’t believe this, but most of the world believes that the oil and gas world is the death star of the evil galactic empire, and like is the worst thing in the world. Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — So why in the world, you know, [inaudible] me off with with what, you know, an old mentor of mine would have called a holy discontent. And and I I can say it now like cleanly, yeah hindsight gives you clarity. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, 20/20. Yeah. William Vanderbloemen — Why does the business world have a better solution than the bride? That’s just… Rich Birch — Right. Oh good. Yes, yes. William Vanderbloemen — I went home, Adrienne and I just got married. We blended our families with 6 kids. We had a new house that we could barely afford; we didn’t have any money. And I said Adrienne I think I’m supposed to quit my job and start something new for churches. And she looked at me and she said, oh yeah, that’s because churches love new ideas, right? Rich Birch — [laughs] They’re good with that. They like innovation and trying new things that we’ve never done before. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah [inaudible] he ended up nailed to wood. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, yes. William Vanderbloemen — Anyway… long story short…Oh and and the kicker is it was the fall of 2008. Now if you’re not old, like… Rich Birch — Right. Great time. Perfect time. William Vanderbloemen — Well okay, then you know. I mean if you’re too young to know of, just Google 2008 economy. It was not good. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, yes. William Vanderbloemen — So that was then. You know I got some mentoring from a really great guy. I learned as I went. I had very ah patient clients in the early years. And now fifteen years later we’ve completed 3000 searches um, you know, we’ve just we’ve we’ve gotten to work with some of the best people on the planet. You guys, your team being one of them back in the day. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. William Vanderbloemen —Um I’m just very, very grateful for what what doors God has opened. Rich Birch — No, that’s great. Love hearing that story and and hearing your heart behind that. And yeah, this a part of what I like about you, William, is you ah, you, you are, you know, in the church’s corner. You want to help churches and you want to serve and you’ve built, I think, a great organization that does that consistently, which is is fantastic. I’m so glad to have you on today because I want to take advantage of that vant that kind of vantage point that you have over seeing so many different leaders in so many different contexts. And recently I heard that you did this study of, was it 30,000 leaders? That’s a crazy number. William Vanderbloemen — It is crazy. Rich Birch — Tell us about this. What what was this thing that you—I want to unearth this—what was this this study that you guys set out to do? William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, right, right. Well I think I think most massive projects like that, or a book, or anything come from [inaudible]. Rich Birch — Good. William Vanderbloemen — You know it’s not because what research project can I do today? It’s usually like I got a question I got to know the answer to. Rich Birch — Yes, got to dig that out. William Vanderbloemen — And I don’t know, Rich, have you ever have you ever have you ever like been in a meeting—it’s only happened to me a handful of times outside of my job now—but you’re in a meeting, or maybe at a social function, or a church, or whatever. You meet somebody and within 5 minutes you’re like: winner. Absolute winner. Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah. True. William Vanderbloemen — This one’s different. Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — I mean I don’t know if you’ve done, had that happen. Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Totally. William Vanderbloemen — I think most people have. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. William Vanderbloemen — And I have [inaudible] for the longest time, I mean I’ve got a lot to learn, but I’m not super gullible. So why in the world does this person win me over in 5 minutes? Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — What is it about them, you know? And when I was younger I used to just hire ’em all, and that’s dumb because back to the point of, you know, I was an idiot. I knew everything because I was 31 and that’s what you do when you’re 31… Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — …you do everything right. I would try and hire them and they weren’t a fit for for the company. A lot of times they weren’t even as talented as I thought, they just reminded me of me and I like me, you know. Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — So and then then there are other times where I’d I’d meet great people and not realize I was in the middle of a great conversation. My first conversation with Chris Hodges, he was getting ready to plant his church. John Maxwell introduced the two of us – we were on a golf course. And he said, this is my friend Chris, getting ready to plant, he’s at Church of the Highlands… Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, monster [inaudible] absolutely. William Vanderbloemen — …which is arguably one of the best churches in North America. And I’m like you you know anybody in Alabama? He’s like, nope, I don’t know anybody. I’m like well good luck buddy. You know? Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, it’s I was an idiot. I missed it. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. William Vanderbloemen — So the question in my mind is, what is it that causes these really special people to shine, and could you find a way to identify really special people when you miss it, right? Rich Birch — Right, right. William Vanderbloemen — For for 14 of our 15 years we’ve just have been very blessed with a lot of growth. And you’ve been in a growing church. Your listeners are hopefully in a growing church. If they’re not they ought to hire you to help them grow. Well they should. Rich Birch — Yeah. William Vanderbloemen — And ah you know growth doesn’t leave a lot of time. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yes. William Vanderbloemen — You know, yeah it it’s yeah, it’s more fun than not growing, but it’s not like this it’s like people talk about the luxury life of travel. Only until you’ve traveled… Rich Birch — Yes, yes, absolutely. William Vanderbloemen — But um in the pandemic, every one of our clients closed… Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — …um indefinitely, which by the way, my religion and philosophy degree did not teach me much about P and Ls, but if all of your clients close indefinitely, it will change your balance sheet, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Exactly. Things are going to change. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. William Vanderbloemen — So, it also it also ah freed up our calendar. And so we realized, so when we do a search like we do a search for your camp or whatever the thing is that we’re doing virtual, and maybe there are 1500 people that could be considered. Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — And then you get serious about it and it gets down to maybe there’s 150. Rich Birch — Yep. William Vanderbloemen — And if you’re an exec pastor, you’ve done this, you do your initial phone calls, you do research, and down down down down down. When we get down to the final, call it 8 or 10 somewhere in there, ah really really talented people, they get a an in-person, face-to-face interview with us. And we realized in the pandemic, you know what we’ve done 30,000 of these now. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. William Vanderbloemen — And that was three years ago so I don’t even know what the number is. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s more now. William Vanderbloemen — And the good thing is I quit hiring people like me. I hire people that are not like me, that are detail-oriented and they’ve kept track of all those people. Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — And we have records of the interviews, and we have… Rich Birch — Love it. William Vanderbloemen — …so we were able to say like, okay 30,000 – can we figure out who the best of those are? Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — Like the best of the best? Yep, we figured out who got the job, who kept it, who got promoted, who brought multiplication and growth, who brought discipleship to things. Rich Birch — Oh love it, love it. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah. Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense. William Vanderbloemen — So so then okay, we got the best of the best. We know who they are. Then the question was do you have anything in common? Rich Birch — Right. What is what’s what’s the commonality? Who was what are the things that these people have what are the traits that they have in common? William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — Interesting. William Vanderbloemen — And and the answer was yes. And the answer was nothing I’d expected. It was… Rich Birch — Really? Interesting. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah. I would have thought, like for instance I would have thought um maybe they all have a high IQ. Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — Ah maybe they all got to go to really good schools where they received some degree of finishing, you know, like interpersonal skills. And… Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — Nope, nope. Maybe they’re all one type of job position. No, it’s not that. Like you know… Rich Birch — Fascinating. William Vanderbloemen — …ah you executive pastors, you know how long it takes to interview a pastoral care candidate, like they just want to sit and take care of you. I’m like oh my gosh, much prefer interviewing executive pastors. They get it done quickly. Rich Birch — Yes, love it. William Vanderbloemen — Well, they do. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. William Vanderbloemen — So it was none of these qualities. What we did find was there were twelve habits… Rich Birch — Okay. William Vanderbloemen — …that overwhelmingly were common among these, we call them, unicorns, right. Rich Birch — Yep. William Vanderbloemen — And the coolest part was we didn’t see this coming. We were frankly doing a very selfish study to figure out how do we identify these people and not miss them when you have something like my interaction with Pastor Chris. And the cool byproduct of the study was every one of these 12 habits is completely coachable, completely teachable. Rich Birch — Love it. William Vanderbloemen — So now instead of spending my day saying, I know how to spot a unicorn. We’re actually able to say, I know how to teach you or help you teach your team how to become unicorns. Rich Birch — I love that. William Vanderbloemen — And man, in in a day where the church is is, a lot of people would say, losing relevance, or it’s noisy, or people aren’t coming, and there’s a lot of pessimism, I’m not quite as pessimistic… But how cool would it be if instead of having one person on your staff that’s like that, you had a whole team. And then when a visitor comes within 5 minutes they’re like, these people are like unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Rich Birch — Love. William Vanderbloemen — And ah so it it led, you know, what was a research project led to okay, let’s make it a resource available to people. Let’s make it a book. And I’ll I’ve spent a lot of my year working on that. Rich Birch — Right. Yes, love it. William Vanderbloemen — Fortunately I’ve got a great team that does all our search work. But yeah… Rich Birch — Well I’d love to you know, unpack that a little bit more. first of all I love the you know the insight. You didn’t quite say it like this, but as you were saying that it it, you know, I got thinking about what your firm does, what you do. There’s a part of it where you’re trying, what I what I hear in this project, this “Be the Unicorn” book, is really trying to demystify what can be kind of a mysterious thing. You’re talking to candidates, you’re talking to leaders, you’re trying to figure out, and is it like some sort of magic that you know we’re looking for, or should I be looking for habits, or should I be developing them in my people? I love that. Well why don’t we talk about is there a habit or two that you found the most surprising that are like the most kind of counterintuitive in the 12 um, that are like, hmm that’s that maybe pushes in a different direction. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah. Rich Birch — Is there something there that we could unpack a little bit? William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, there a few, there are a few. Honestly if somebody’d given me the chapter list, like just the table of content this book, I’d say duh. Everybody should try and do all those things. That’s easy. What idiot wrote this? Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Yes. William Vanderbloemen — Ah the difference is this is not William’s 12 opinions. This is actually data-driven. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. William Vanderbloemen — Like this is evidence based research that hopefully comes out really simple. Like you listen to Tim Lucas preach, and it sounds like the simplest thing for him to do. It sounds easy. And the only reason it sounds that way is because he’s practiced it 9,000,000 times. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, he’s worked on it. William Vanderbloemen — So they’re they’re not a lot of I would call um ah plot twists in the 12 habits. Rich Birch — Sure, sure. William Vanderbloemen — But but one that um that I never would have seen coming had I not started our business is we call it “the fast”, but I probably should have titled it “the responsive”. Very few people… and and every one of these 12 habits was incredibly common among the unicorns and incredibly uncommon among the rest of us. Rich Birch — Oh okay, okay. William Vanderbloemen — People are terrible at getting back to one another. They’re just horrible at it. Rich Birch — It’s so true. Yep. William Vanderbloemen — Well I mean I I can walk you through study after study. We looked at like inbound marketing for instance, you know, where you use a HubSpot, or an Infusionsoft, or or Church Community Builder, whatever it is, to have somebody fill out a form and say please send me more information or have someone call me. Rich Birch — Yes, yes William Vanderbloemen — Car dealers use it, [inaudible], inbound Marketing. Rich Birch — People respond to those things? This is the problem. William Vanderbloemen — There was a massive so so there was a massive massive study done… Rich Birch — Yeah. William Vanderbloemen — …of tens of thousands of companies that pay for inbound software. And the question was how what’s the correlation between how quickly you respond to those forms when they come in and how likely you are to actually have a conversation with the person that wrote in. Make sense? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. William Vanderbloemen — So so the study showed some really interesting stats. Like for instance, somebody writes and then fills out a form. If they get a human response, not a chat bot, not an ai, but a human response within 60 seconds, there’s a 98% chance that you’re going to have a conversation with that potential customer, visitor, whatever the thing is. Rich Birch — Wow, Wow Wow. William Vanderbloemen — 98%. Slam dunk, no problem. You wait 20 minutes, it drops to 60%. Rich Birch — Wow. Amazing. William Vanderbloemen — You wait 24 hours, it’s less than 1%. Rich Birch — Oh that’s convicting. William Vanderbloemen — Now now now the real punchline is they went on to figure out of all these companies that did the survey what’s your average response time when someone writes in on your company form? Average response time for these people who are paying all this money for this software? 42 hours. Rich Birch — Wow. Crazy, crazy. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, we contacted the people at eHarmony which is like ah OG of of Tinder or you know… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. [Inaudible] dating apps… William Vanderbloemen — …whatever the… Yeah. And we asked them like, what’s the response time when people have a potential match? Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — You’re talking about it a website that is full of lonely people that are trying very hard to meet other people. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. William Vanderbloemen — You know, the response time is terrible. The unicorns respond quickly… Rich Birch — Quickly interesting. William Vanderbloemen — …and and it makes all the difference. William Vanderbloemen — I stumbled into this when we started the business and I had six kids in the house and no money and all that. Man, if you wrote me in said, can we talk about you finding this for me? It didn’t matter if it was a dogcatcher, I was calling you right away because I needed to go buy groceries, you know? Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. William Vanderbloemen — But I kept hearing you got back to us! Nobody gets back to us. Well research shows exactly that. So for instance, XPs, I just read a big study on giving. And ah one of the things that found was guess what the the current best way to follow up with a first time donor is? And the answer is lead pastor or the preaching pastor of the day texts that donor that afternoon… Rich Birch — Yes, love it. Love it. William Vanderbloemen — …that Sunday or whatever day your services are. Rich Birch — Yeah, yep, yep. William Vanderbloemen —The likelihood of that donor giving again goes up by like 3X if that happens. Rich Birch — Yep. Love it. William Vanderbloemen — And it’s the same sort of thing. It’s just responsiveness. Rich Birch —Well yes. I I love that. So, you know, I so I this idea, let’s stick with this idea of responsiveness. You know this is true. You can think, from an organization point of view I can name on one hand the organizations that I would say are responsive—your organization’s one of them—where like hey you, you know, those people actually get back to you quickly. There’s another one where I know if I email that guy, he’s going to call me in 30 seconds. Like it is you know there and I’m just a little bit of like are they just sitting around waiting for me to to email? But you know, as ah as a client I love that. I’m like because I know when I’m if I’m going to take action on that, they’re they’re ready for me. They can they can handle that, which is fantastic. How do we inculcate that as in our team. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, carefully, carefully. Rich Birch — So how do we, you know, it seems like we’re struggling to get people to respond in a day to emails, you know… William Vanderbloemen — Yeah. Rich Birch — …but how do we how do we try to help that in our cultures? William Vanderbloemen — I think super carefully. Now the the cool thing um our study did turn into a book and each chapter is on one of the habits. And so then here’s what we’ve learned and like the data. Here’s what unicorns are saying about how to implement this. And then here’s some tangible steps that you can do. So it’s a very almost like a workbook type book. Ah so so there’s some great examples in there, but I would say um, what’s not as much in the book about responsiveness is how do you build guardrails where you don’t kill your people’s work/life balance. So, yes, respond. But can we have some house rules for what that actually means within a team? When we were 3 or 4 people as a company, you know, whatever. Yeah we were we’re all in each other’s business. We’re in one room where I could hear everything. Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s a hunger, there’s a hunger, there’s a hunger there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, and we were all together all the time so it didn’t matter. We got almost 50 people now – that’s a whole different thing, right? Rich Birch — Right, right. William Vanderbloemen — So for us, for instance, inside the office um, it’s it’s known that for our communication if you email me after work hours, I am the message you’re sending me is please get back to me within 24 hours. Rich Birch — Yes, yep. No problem. Okay, um if you slack me, which is our interoffice messaging platform, if you send me a slack after hours, okay, now we’re at like DEFCON 3. Like now we’re at I don’t know what Canada’s DEFCON is but that’s… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s high. William Vanderbloemen — So okay, this is kind of important where I’m having dinner with the kids now, but I’m not I’ll deal with it once I get a quiet minute, right? Rich Birch — Yep, yep. William Vanderbloemen — If you text me after hours as coworker, that’s DEFCON 2 and I need an answer pretty dang quick. Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — And if it’s if it’s a phone call after hours, you pick up. Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep, yep. William Vanderbloemen — And that requires a whole lot of boundary management. Rich Birch — Yep. William Vanderbloemen — Like I really miss our text string during Game of Thrones – that was kind of fun, but… Rich Birch — Sure sure. But you know you can’t do… So I would just say you know you can train your people to be more responsive, but I think if you’re the Exec Pastor particularly it’s on you to create some boundaries where people don’t aren’t afraid… Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — …of that. I I just wrote an article on this or actually I was interviewed ah for this by ah The Business Insider. Do you know this magazine? Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. William Vanderbloemen — So they said, are you okay, if we kind of make this a little bit of a clickbait title? I said as long as you tell the whole story. Rich Birch — Sure. William Vanderbloemen — Because not every job requires this level of responsiveness. Rich Birch — Right, right. William Vanderbloemen — A controller? Whatever. Rich Birch — Yes, Yes. William Vanderbloemen — You know, ah a kids pastor? Maybe. Rich Birch — Yep, yeah. William Vanderbloemen — But like first time visitor person? Absolute response needed, right? Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, you need to jump on it right away. William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, yeah, yeah. In our world like… Rich Birch — I think a part of that is what you’ve done there is is even defining for people. We do that annually as an organization. We we go through exactly that same thing. Hey let’s just talk about our communication commitments again as an organization. And we have very similar – email within a day, you know text within an hour, call please pick up. Um, and, you know, and it’s training on both sides. It’s saying, hey if I’m sending you a message I’ve got multiple channels I can send it through. William Vanderbloemen — That’s right. Rich Birch — Each, don’t send the message that I don’t need to know until next week. Don’t text me or call me, send me ah send me an email about that. Or you know vice versa, if I’m calling you, hey there’s something that I need an answer for right now. Um, please don’t send me to voicemail because I’m just going to call you again. You know, so how do we communicate that that’s good. What are the… William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, yeah, well and and what I’m trying to learn is how do I encourage the entire team to be responsive, realizing not everyone has to get back in 60 seconds, you know? Rich Birch — Right. William Vanderbloemen — They’re different departments of your church, or your camp, or your school, or my company that just don’t requires immediate response. But my my EA, Brian, that requires immediate response… Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — …cause I’m probably not gonna be you’re not gonna reach me, but you’ll reach him and he’s gonna make you so happy that you heard from him right away. Rich Birch — Right, right, right. William Vanderbloemen — And like that’s so he… So like if I’m interviewing for that position, or a sales marketing position, I borderline entrapment. Rich Birch — Sure. William Vanderbloemen — I’ll I’ll send a text I will I’ll send a text at 10 pm or I’ll have someone from the company that Brian doesn’t know text him at 10pm said, I heard you were interviewing with us – sorry I missed you today. I’d love to catch up sometime. Rich Birch — And see what happens. William Vanderbloemen — And let’s just see how it goes. And if he didn’t respond right away, whatever. It’s not the end of the world. But if he happens to respond right away. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, there’s something here. William Vanderbloemen — Oh he’s got the same kind of dysfunction we have. That’s good. Rich Birch — Love it. So you know, there’s so there’s a whole bunch of these, friends. And we want to encourage you to pick up a copy of the book. You can get Amazon. We can we’ll give you all those links in a minute. One of the ones that stood out to me was the curious. So number 8 the curious tell us a little bit about this. Ah curiosity as I think it might be as I age I realize, man, this is like a it’s a secret weapon in um, in leading, but talk to us about what did you find about the curious. William Vanderbloemen — Most people aren’t curious. Most people accept status quo, most people just do the same thing every day, most people don’t ask why. Oh there’s a wonderful talk. It’s been viewed a bajillion times with Simon Sinek. And he said the minute my career changed was when I started asking people questions. And then I started talking about my beliefs rather than what I do. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. William Vanderbloemen — And it just changes everything because very few people go to that place. It’s like the start with why. That’s such a game changer, right? Rich Birch — Right, right. William Vanderbloemen — But very few people do. The people that stand out are the ones that ask really great questions. In fact, I don’t do a lot of search work anymore. There are a few here and there if it’s in longtime friend, or if it’s a really complex issue or something like that. If I’m involved in a search, my team will take it most of the way home, and when we get down to the finalist, I’ll have an interview with him. And it’s for good or bad. It’s the interview with the guy whose name is on the door so people are all, oooh what am I going to get asked? Rich Birch — Sure. William Vanderbloemen — I I kind of only ask one question: hey Rich, you’ve already gone through the life story, and personality, and job history with the rest of my team. You don’t need to tell me all that again. That’s fine. I think the best way we can use this time I know the client you’re wanting to land a job with or interview with. I know I’m really well. Ask me anything. I’ll give you the real answer. Rich Birch — Fascinating. William Vanderbloemen — And that’s the interview. Rich Birch — Yes I love it. Love it. So good. William Vanderbloemen — Because the really great candidates ask amazing questions. Rich Birch — Yes. Right. Super insightful. They’ve you know they give you a sense of they know the organization, they’re they’re you know they’re they’re looking the 201, 301, dig a bit deeper, hey what’s actually happening, you know. That’s cool. Love that. William Vanderbloemen — How many times in scripture was Jesus asked a question and he turned around and answered it by asking another question? Rich Birch — Yeah, all the time. Yeah, all the time. William Vanderbloemen — All the time. All the time. He did it more than he did answer the question. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, infuriatingly so. William Vanderbloemen — Right. So you know, the the answers are often within you if you just ask the right questions. And I’m finding very few people ask the why. Very few people go underneath what’s just asked to say… You gotta be careful with that. You might get a renegade. He asks great questions – why are we doing it that way? Why can’t we do it this way? Why can’t… You know, two year olds say why a lot. That’s often not appealing. I don’t know if you remember your kids being two, but like will you quit asking me why. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. William Vanderbloemen — But but ah, your listeners are smart. How can you interview in a way that allows a candidate the chance to show whether or not they ask good questions? Rich Birch — Love it. William Vanderbloemen — Because for me you you can train your team to get better at all these things but it’s far easier to build a team that’s already good at these things. Rich Birch — Right, right. William Vanderbloemen — So so yes, this is a training tool but it’s also like a matrix for how I interview as an exec pastor for this next sound engineer or whatever thing it is that you’re looking for. Rich Birch — Love it. Well I want to I want to encourage people to pick this up. When I saw this I thought, man, this would be a great tool. We’re coming to that time of year where it’s like you know, maybe we buy copies of this for our team. Maybe it’s a Christmas book, or it’s ah hey let’s work on this together. You know, let’s go through through this as a team – that kind of thing. That’s what really struck me, you can obviously get it at Amazon. You can you know drop by your your website. Ah so it’s the book’s called “Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest”. What are you hoping, what’s the kind of seismic shift that you’re hoping happens? You know you spend a lot of time writing a book. You spend a lot of effort trying to promote it. You do that because you want to see something change, something what what kind of change are you hoping for in the organizations that really take this in and and and chew on it? William Vanderbloemen — Ah I still want to overpopulate heaven, Rich. Rich Birch — Love it. William Vanderbloemen — I still want to overpopulate heaven. I want to I want to have to have a conversation with Jesus about we gotta have a building program and build a little more heaven because you guys have introduced too many people to me. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. William Vanderbloemen — That that is what I would like to see happen and so if if if we can help the church go farther and faster toward knocking down the gates of hell… Rich Birch — So good. So good. William Vanderbloemen — …then that’s the shift. And I don’t know anything that slows the church down more than people problems. Rich Birch — That’s good. William Vanderbloemen — So if if this book can help solve some people problems, help your team get a little better, that’s going to help introduce more people to Jesus and move us toward overpopulation. Rich Birch — So good. That’s great. Well, William,I really appreciate you I appreciate your you’re one of those leaders in my life that we haven’t interacted a ton over the years, but that every time we are together you say something that sticks in the back of my brain, and and it comes up time and again. And I’m sure that that’ll be the case with this book. It’ll be the kind of thing that as people read ah it’ll be super helpful for folks as they’re they’re leading. so again friends that’s “Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest”. I appreciate you being here today. Anything else you want to say just as we wrap up today’s episode? William Vanderbloemen — No, ah, just that after 15 years we’ve been writing free content forever. And if your listeners haven’t gone to our site, there are about 4000 completely free resources there… Rich Birch — Yes. William Vanderbloemen — …on building and running and keeping a team. And some of you guys and gals have been through business training and you know how to do this. A lot of people don’t. So if we can help close that gap for you. It’s kind of like what you’re doing: stuff they didn’t teach me at that seminary with that degree back there. Rich Birch — Yes, true. William Vanderbloemen — So it’s there for the taking. Please use it, go do the best you can, and thanks for your service. Rich Birch — Love it, and the great thing about the name Vanderbloemen you don’t just spell it somewhere close enough and ah or at Google will will figure it out. It’s a great little hack there of SEO. William, I appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for what you’re doing to serve the church and lots of organizations. Ah, thank you for being here today. William Vanderbloemen — Thanks Rich! Always a joy.

Mark Briggs, EVP of Ministry Lending at CDF Capital, shares insider advice for growing churches. Start early to set yourself up for success. Transparency and trust between churches and lenders are crucial. Discover the benefits of reaching out to CDF Capital for church needs.

Aaron Stanski, founder and CEO of Risepointe, discusses the challenges of church buildings and the importance of creating guest-friendly environments. He highlights the need to align a church's facility with its mission and vision. The podcast also explores ways to update older church buildings and provides resources for addressing building issues.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Phil Ling, a renowned expert on generosity in the church and founder of The Giving Church. Did you know that in the average church in North America, 45% of the people that give a church money give less than $200 in a year? Listen in as Phil offers help on how to do an analysis of your giving, and coaches churches on how to cast vision to increase generosity. Take a deeper look. // In addition to a significant portion of churchgoers contributing very little financially, churches typically experience an 18% turnover in giving units each year. That means they constantly need to attract new givers. A lot of churches think they did well during COVID, but Phil suggests that you take a look at where your money came from, rather than how much money came in, to see if those givers are still around. Do an analysis. // Do an analysis of your giving to see what percentage of your money comes from what group of givers. Break giving down into categories by looking at givers of $0-$200, $200-$1000, $1000-$5000, $5000-$10,000, and $10,000 and up. Take a look at where you’re strong, where the challenges are, and where the churn rate is. Cast vision in three rooms. // When casting vision, Phil advises that pastors need to communicate in three different rooms: the large room (Sunday services), medium-sized rooms (like-minded groups within the church), and small rooms (leaders and influencers). The large room is best for communicating the idea of participation. But Phil warns against relying solely on the large room to solve financial challenges. Instead, engage with your key stakeholders to fuel generosity and support the church’s vision. Celebrate when people become part of your vision. Take the time. // Remember that the bigger your project, the more time you’ll need. This includes taking time for analysis, determining if your giving is below capacity, and where you’re trending. Before you build, count the cost. Do research and take time to lay the foundation. Talk to banks about financing before bringing in architects. Make sure you take time to vision cast to the three rooms. Lead the leaders. // There are certain roles that will always belong to the senior church leader and that is casting vision and leading leaders. Small room conversations are particularly critical because a church’s leaders and influencers want to be treated as partners in ministry rather than just donors. Give them the opportunity to ask questions and learn about initiatives before they happen. Download the free resource 5 Ways to Grow Your Church Giving and learn more about how The Giving Church can help you by clicking here. 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 facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Today’s a super special episode. We have got a real expert on. You know every week we try to bring you someone who will inspire and equip. Ah, but today we are particularly honored. We have somebody who has worked with nearly a thousand churches in over 40 different denominations. And and they have the issue that they have helped with has been transformative to so many of them. We’re so honored to have Phil Ling with us today. He was a church planter, business entrepreneur, and a sixth generational ministry leader, if I’m counting correct, which is amazing. Ah, he’s got a great leader and really is helping churches on the whole generosity side through his organization, The Giving Church and The Ling Group. Super excited to have you here today. And this is the thing they have helped—this is an incredible number—raised over $1,000,000,000 for the purpose of helping church’s fuel ministry. And execute their visions. This is incredible. Phil, we are so glad to have you here. Thanks for being on the show – we’re we’re honored that you take some time to be with us today. Phil Ling — Honored to hang out with you, and to see you even if it’s just on a screen. Rich Birch — Ah, yeah, that’s great. Always good to see you. Um, fill out the picture a little bit. Tell us the Phil story, kind of, you know, fill that in a little bit just from the bio. Ah tell us a little bit about yourself. Phil Ling — The how great I am stuff, you know. That’s that’s ah… yeah. Rich Birch — Sure. Phil Ling — So ah, grew up in Ohio, Dad was ah, not only a pastor but a church planter so that was kind of my life experience. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — So I went off to college and then felt that you know the best church jobs are if you to start your own, so planted. And got a call to go to Seattle, Washington. Was on the north end of Seattle and spent 10 years out there planting a church, hanging out. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — …doing, just having a ball, an amazing place it is. You know, there’s a lot of great churches now. I’m the old dude. So when I was out there, it was planting before it was cool. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — And and now there’s some some early great churches. But it’s still very unchurched area. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — But where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. God blessed us, grew, lots of people – all that junk. And became acquaintanced with a guy named, John Maxwell. John and I became friends. He gave me the opportunity to work with him. I became Executive Vice President of Injoy, his group. And spent 8 years running around a country with John and working with some really cool people. Got to live on a little farm in central Kentucky, which is where my wife is from… Rich Birch — Love it. Phil Ling — …while I [inaudible] on because I got on airplanes. And then he did a weird thing, which is really weird looking back now because the dude’s like the ever run ever ready bunny, he won’t quit. But when he was sixty years old he wanted to downsize and I didn’t want to work for anybody else. So I slid over and became Vice President of Billy Graham Association. That’s a whole story in itself. Ah, they had just relocated from Minneapolis to Charlotte, built the Billy Graham library, all that stuff. But their donor base had aged. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — And so part of the reason I was brought in was to work with that because Billy had gotten old, and everybody else gotten old. It’s still a huge ministry. Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — So they they were kind enough also to allow me to throw out my shingle and start working with folks. And had a separate agreement with them to do that. So commuted, got on airplanes on Monday, flew to Charlotte, home on Thursdays, and helping them out, and then doing my own thing. So we put out our shingle. Phil Ling — We’re boutique. Ah, we work with 90% probably referrals and references people just saying, hey, you know, call Phil and and talk to those guys. Rich Birch — Yeah, Phil will help you. Phil Ling — Ah yeah, exactly, exactly. So I um you you rattled off the numbers – crazy. I told my wife yesterday – I said, here’s here’s my claim to fame. Here’s my claim to fame. More than anything else, I literally—and I don’t I challenge, I’ve not met one person that can say, yeah, I did that too. I literally have been in over a thousand church board meetings. Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah, that’s incredible. Phil Ling — Now think about a thousand different churches. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — Yeah, yeah. I’d say. And you said 40 different denominations. I didn’t know there were that many. I mean I mean it’s yeah, it’s crazy. Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Phil Ling — And it’s so and and all over the spectrum. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — But they all have the same challenges… Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — …ah leader cast vision, but generosity fuels vision. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So if you have great dreams, aspirations, and vision, it still can run out of gas on the side of the road. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — It’s like, Okay, how do we pay for this? Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — And so my early on I said, you know that’s the part, pastors don’t like talk about money. The ones that do go to jail. [laughs] You know it’s not… Rich Birch — Okay, that’s funny. Phil Ling — Okay. So that. So that’s what we’ve done. So we’ve fast forwarded. Ah, we’ve been up and running for over 14 years, like you said. Work with a zillion places. Literally all… We are international. Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — This will let you know because we’re in Canada a little bit so okay. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Yeah, that’s great. Well, that’s that’s so good. And you know, I’ve got a chance to get to know you a little bit. And um ah the thing I love about you Phil is you have a heart for helping the church. Like there’s, you know, particularly in this area. You know, you made the joke about the pastors that like talking about money end up in jail. Sometimes folks on this side of the equation, it’s like they just see the church as like another market. And the thing I love about you is you’re you’re really trying to approach this from like, hey, how do we help? How do we come alongside support? Um, you know you’ve got a vision. We want to help. Let’s let’s work through some of that stuff. And and and even the fact that you come on today is amazing. Because we want to take advantage of kind of your place in the in the community and the body of Christ. You see a lot of churches. You kind of see what’s happening. Bring us up to speed on kind of generosity in the broader, you know, body of Christ. What are kind of the trends? What are you seeing? What are, you know, what’s what’s happening out there that that we should be thinking about, particularly on this side of of what we do? Phil Ling — Okay, so it’s my favorite subject right now to talk on. Coming out of Covid, especially. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — And and I I say coming out of Covid. Anybody thinks we’re out of all that crap is is stupid. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Phil Ling — Because we’re… it’s it’s going to be a long time get that toothpaste all back in the tube. Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — And it’s affected churches… you got to understand that for 3 years at least we have been told by a lot of folks in the world that church was a nonessential institute. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — It was a nonessential place. So you know, bars were essential. Down here in the US, strip clubs were essential. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Crazy. Phil Ling — But churches not so much. Rich Birch — Not churches. Yes. Phil Ling — And that’s kind of and that creeps into a church that I would have said, say up to like 2019, that the church, North American church overall, if you look at 360,000 churches, there were on a decline. There were always bright spots. There’s always aberrations. There’s always these these tent pole churches that are doing well. But overall, if you looked at average church attendance, all that kind of junk, were were declining, especially within a lot of the the mainline denominations. Then you go into the covid situation. Phil Ling — And we we released a ah book that we did ourselves—not trying to make money, just try to get information out there—before covid that talked about the coming giving tsunami that, how the changing giving patterns in in North America are affecting church. And that was before all this stuff happened. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Now if you read it looks like we actually were prophetic. You know, like hey those guys are brilliant, you know. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — Because what here’s here’s a few of the stats that I saw before coming into covid that I’m seeing now exacerbated. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — So in the average church in North America, 45% of the people that give that church money, give less than $200 in a year. So 45% of the people sitting in that building that give you money give less than $200 in a year. It’s not because they’re broke. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — That’s a very low threshold. It’s just that they’re not that connected or whatever. Rich Birch — Yes, yep. Phil Ling — [inaudible] God, all that stuff. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — We’re a safe place to hear a dangerous message. We’re the only club that exists for nonmembers. So I get all that. I’m not I’m not trying to say we got to get our averages up. I’m just trying to understand, its the blameless autopsy. Rich Birch — What’s actually happening. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Phil Ling — So if you looked at that whole 45% given less $200. That collectively only gives about 1.5% of the income. Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — So it’s it’s negligible. And we can’t track people that don’t give. You know if you don’t give I don’t even know you’re there. So don’t even know those folks. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So over half the people walking in your halls really don’t contribute financially. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling. You just have to understand that’s how it’s designed. That’s how it works. Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — …is on top of this piece, and I’m not a stats guy. I’ve hired stats guys because they’re smart; I’m not. They’re no fun at a party, but they’re really smart. In the average church, you lose about 18% in your giving units every year. And you replace them with somebody else. So average church, you lose 18% of your giving units. If I’ve got 45% giving less $200 a year and I’m losing 18% of my units every year in the average church—that’s a growing church; that’s not a bad church. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Yes. Phil Ling — That’s just average shift [inaudible]. So every 3 years you got to stand up as a pastor and introduce yourself because that half doesn’t even know who you are. Yeah think of that. Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Right, right. Phil Ling — And and yet as leaders we often talk to everybody like they all have the same tribal history. Like they all have the same tribal [inaudible]. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Phil Ling — They all sat around a campfire and heard the stories. and they didn’t. Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — So I say all that. Then we go into the Covid situation, we have lockdowns. It’s different. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — I mean we’ve got clients just about everywhere so they all experience it differently, depending where they were. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Phil Ling — You know, some always middle in Nebraska they’re saying, what’s covid? Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. That was a blip 3 days in March 2020. Yeah. Phil Ling — Yeah, exactly yeah, but then you know Long Island, New York, Pasadena, California – those are all different experiences. So what what one of the things that I’m seeing that al that’s ah, a preamble. One of the things that I’m seeing coming out of this and coming out of all this experience is I think a lot of churches are kind of fat, dumb and happy. They said, you know, what we we did pretty good financially during all those tough times for a couple of years in covid, and our people were faithful and all that kind of stuff. I’m saying yeah, it’s good. Look to see where your money came from, not how much money came in. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Phil Ling — And what you’re going to find, I think in my humble but accurate opinions—that’s what I tell my son—my humble but accurate opinion, I think what you’re going to find is that your 18% churn rate was actually grew. And the number of new folks that normally come in in a given year was really shrunk. It’s with the front door was not nearly as active as it used to be. Phil Ling — So the reason you did okay financially is the people that love you and are there are holding on really tight and have white knuckles from pressing down. Rich Birch — Yes, right. Phil Ling — But you’re going to eventually and what I’ve been saying all along, and I know this is doom and gloom and I don’t mean it to be, but the last quarter of this year is really going to be the test. Rich Birch — Yes, right. Phil Ling — It’s now that all kind of the dust settles and it’s like, okay this is who we are. So I got to get away from thinking how what do we look like three years ago, two years ago? Let’s get back to that. No no, this is who we are. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Phil Ling — And who I have here who’s contributing, who’s supporting. How many new folks are coming in? How many people are moving away? My observation looking forward, and I got actual anecdotal evidence, but observation looking forward is that we’re going to continue to see really cool churches grow and do cool things and do some amazing amazing things. But overall, the average church is going to speed up the decline. Um, so I I can tell you one denomination that we work with in Pennsylvania, greater Philly area, that in a district there they identified 26 of their churches that closed during covid and never reopened. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — And I know that’s it’s easy to watch and say, well, what was the denomination, and are they struggling, and all that stuff. That’s true. But I think you’re going to see that, and for the first time and I’ll say this [inaudible], for the first time we’re going to see churches that still have people in them, but don’t have a lot of money. Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — And they’re wondering, why do we keep having to struggle with the budget even though our people are there. We’re used to dying churches that there’s nobody left… Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — …but not ones that attendance not that far off, but the money is. part of the reason largest transfer wealth in the history of the world’s taking place right now. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — First time in history we have 4 generations alive. And the people that are receiving that wealth are more consumers of your product than stewards to your ministry. Rich Birch — Oh That’s good. That’s good. Man. Okay, there’s so much there. That, I love that. You know and I that I think is a good segue. A good kind of reminder for us as we think about this season we’re in as being kind of the, okay, this is who’s here? The people that are here are who is here. Um, it’s a good time for us to look at those numbers. And what you’ve said there I’ve heard from multiple churches. It was like, yeah, when you look at what happened during Covid, it was like our core people leaned in more. They gave more, but but that seems to be ending. You know, that that seems to be ah running out. So now so now what do we do? So how do we? Maybe we’re at a church of, you know, let’s say or a church of a thousand people. Maybe I’m executive pastor listening in and I’m thinking, yeah that that could be us. What would you suggest as, you know, as the as the trusted friend along the road? What what should we be doing in this season to kind of look at that more closely, stare into those issues, take some steps towards, you know, trying to rectify that, trying to grow that that revenue side? Phil Ling — Yeah I um, you know, hope so is not a strategy. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — You know, churches that sit at the last quarter of the year and say, I hope we get budget. You know, hope so’s not a strategy. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — You count what counts so you have to have metrics. Like I said, I’m not a stat guy. I live in the world of numbers, but I’m not a stat guy. I’m a vision I like vision stuff more. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — Um, but there I think in order to talk intelligently and cast vision intelligently, you need to know a little bit analytically. So the first thing I would do is an analysis of the giving of where your money comes from. We developed one years ago, hired a really smart guy with a degree in statistics, and we looked at 4000 churches from a whole bunch of denominations and said okay, where does the money come from? Rich Birch — Yep, yeah. Phil Ling — And break it down into some simple pieces. It’s not it’s not like this huge spreadsheet. But this simple pieces. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — And as I tell churches every time we go through one, they’re your numbers. You know your numbers. I’m going to hopefully tell you what some of them mean. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — So let’s look at A, if if the average church gives ah 45% give less than $200, where are we in that? Maybe we’re not average. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah. Phil Ling — So let’s let’s look at that. Second, if the average church churns giving units 18% a year, where are we in that? Let’s can see what our churn rate. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — Like then I break it down in the categories of of the giving, and this is every church. I don’t care 30,000 people on the weekend or or 150. Um we’re going to look at 0 to $200 how many folks do we have two hundred to a thousand dollars giving units. How many folks we have? A thousand to five thousand, five thousand to ten, and ten plus. That’s it. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Phil Ling — Those are the categories. And then we want to look say, okay, where are we strong? Where are challenges? Maybe we’re really top heavy. Maybe we’re really strong at the bottom two groups, you know, whatever it is. And where does the churn take place? Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So if I looked at it and said, you know what? Our churn rate’s really high between a 200 to a thousand dollars giving rate group. And my response would be okay, that’s not all bad. That means they’re at least attached to you. They’re still kind of kicking the tires and checking you out. I would expect movement there. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — If I looked at the top two groups and there was a lot of churn I’d say, okay, you got some issues. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So a you’re changing. Maybe you’ve been changing philosophical direction in your ministry and maybe you change key staff people and have some bumps in the road with that. You know, there are some reasons. Or you happen to be in a place like Toronto or Dallas or something where there’s a lot of management movement. People come in with their companies for a while, there a couple of years, they move on. Rich Birch — Right, right. People coming and going. Phil Ling — Or your near military base with huge churn. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Phil Ling — You know, so it doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy. It’s just like understand it. So first, understand this is where our money comes from. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — This is where we’re strong. These are the challenge areas. And then I would roll over, and and this is the key piece. And if any time you ever hear me get on a soapbox I talk about this stuff. I said a leader casts vision, generosity fuels vision. How you cast that vision and what room you do is the huge piece. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So I coach folks that you need to constantly being communicating be communicating in 3 rooms. Rich Birch — Okay. Phil Ling — A large room with Sunday mornings online, all those kind of things, large room. Medium size rooms which are like-minded groups within your group, like-minded groups within your group. What are my medium-size rooms? And in small rooms. These are my leaders and influencers. How am I getting front of my leaders and influencers and casting vision? The problem a lot of churches do is they want the big room to solve all their problems. Rich Birch — Yeah, so true, dude. Phil Ling — [inaudible] platform driven and smoke mirrors. Ah I am the old guy. Rich Birch — That is so true. Like I so this is I’m not I’ve been in that you know executive pastor seat, you know, on the leadership team but not in that lead seat. And I would say one of the ongoing conversations I’ve had with lead pastors over the years is so many times lead pastors, which makes sense when you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail. You know it’s like if if we’ve got an issue, in this case talking about giving, their knee-jerk reaction is let me preach about it. Like we’re going to do a three week series. We’re going to preach on it. And I’m like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa like that’s the last step. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get there, but I love that you know small rooms, medium rooms, ah, large rooms. And you know I’ve seen even those you know guys that are amazing or people that are amazing communicators. It’s like they don’t want to do those other 2 steps. Or they’re reticent to do those other you know those other rooms. But man there’s there’s huge power in that. Phil Ling — Well Okay, so. Well, Okay, so here here’s deal. First of all, where I come from personally, I never take off the fact that I used to be the church planter. I used to have hair. Rich Birch — Yeah, yes. Phil Ling — You know it’s a price you pay for ministry. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Phil Ling — Ah, and so I’m the practitioner guy. I look at it as like I sat on that side of the table. So I understand that Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — I’m not just the little expert dude, came in and said tell let me tell you how to do your job. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — But you have to understand if you’re the if you’re the lead vision caster, lead… Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — …the lead vision caster in an effective church, you have a vision caster that casts vision and you have others at different levels that echo the vision. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — So everybody’s echoing the same vision. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — But the big room, and you have to understand what the the purpose is. In the big room, the best thing I can accomplish in a big room is get across the idea of participation. So when I talk about generosity, money, those kind of things in the big room, it’s because I want to stress everybody gets in the car. That if it’s a family vacation, we don’t leave somebody out and leave them sit in the driveway. And we all get in the car with. So we celebrate, we we analyze. I’ve got a church right now that could tell you they just celebrated crossing one thousand five hundred families that have given to their project. Rich Birch — Wow, Wow. Yeah. Phil Ling — How much money? Yeah, it’s a lot of money. Who the heck cares. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — Anything that costs more than the price of my house is a number I don’t understand. Rich Birch — That’s great. Phil Ling — So and the number the dollar thing is, yeah okay, we can throw that out. But the number of families… Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — …I want to be one of the 1500. So participation. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — Medium size rooms those those what I call target audiences, those those like-minded groups. They all are listening to your vision differently based upon who they’re with. So if I’m an empty nester, all right, I’m much more motivated by how if you’re raising money how it helps us pass a baton of faith to the next generation then I am what it’s going to give me. Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — You know, I always talk about buildings. Buildings are great, but the older I get because I’m now I’m the old dude—my son’s a you know, long haired musician in Boston—I’m the old dude now. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Phil Ling — So the older I get, the less I need out of your building. Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — So that didn’t move me. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So medium sizers, who are who are those medium size rooms. What’s their unique question about what we’re doing? Who are the early adopters in those groups? All that junk. But then the third, and this is this is where I love to to jump on this this thing with with lead lead pastors. Phil Ling — Look at your job, if you’re at a church of 2000 people and your lead pastor, if your church doubles in size, what will you still do? What will you not do? Because if church doubles in size you’ll have staff, programming, all those kind of things and some responsibilities will slip and go somewhere else. But two things: you’re always the lead vision caster. So you don’t give that up. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — You don’t advocate that. You’re always vision casting. In my opinion, my humble but accurate opinion, you always lead leaders. Always lead leaders. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — So small room. It is the number one thing you do. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — Is like okay, how do I orchestrate getting in front of leaders and influencers on a regular basis so I can vision cast. And catch me, I hope you’re hearing this. The reason you do it is you give them a safe place to ask you a question. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. That’s good. Phil Ling — And it is the one time when you get in front of them that’s not driven by crisis. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — Most of the time lead pastor sits down with a leader or influencer in his churches because their family’s fallen apart, the kids driving them nuts, they lost their job. There’s something going on. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — This is not. Its vision. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — It’s like hey let me… and it has to happen first because leaders here, they answer the bell so they should hear things first. Rich Birch — Right, right. Love it. So good. That’s great. Um, now I want to loop back on just one thing you said. You talked about these four different categories and kind of an analysis that you would recommend. Hey let’s get this numbers out; let’s look at people in these categories. I love that analytical approach of understanding, Okay, like let’s look at even this churn rate. Is are we above and below that 18% in each one of those. um that feels like the kind of thing if I was embarking on a capital campaign that I would do. And I’m sure you could help with that. But is that the kind of thing even a church that’s not in that kind of season, should they be looking at that? Is this kind of thing they should be looking at even in this season like, hey getting a clear sense of where that as a regular practice? Phil Ling — Yeah, so yeah, this is my self-serving answers. Rich Birch — Sure. Okay, sure. Phil Ling — Yeah, so so if we sit down with a client or a potential client that we’re talking to, and I’ve got one I just did this week. And cast two him – I said, yeah, you could hire us to work with you, and that’d be great, and we’d love it. Blah, blah. But… Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — …I really think you should just bite off an analysis piece. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — Doesn’t cost a bunch. Do it first. And what I tell churches going forward and as is clients and past clients is what we’re going to show you, it’s not hard to do. And once we show you how to do it, you should do it every every year for the rest of your life. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — It’s like you always, because if you don’t here’s what happens in church. We all, if I ask every pastor on a Monday say hey, how was this weekend? I guarantee they’re gonna say hey it felt pretty good. Like what’s that mean? Rich Birch — Felt pretty good. Phil Ling — What’s pretty good? Rich Birch — Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Phil Ling — So people went out and hugged you and said, you did great. I mean so there’s got to be some kind of benchmark. It’s like, all right, how do we judge? If you have a McDonald’s franchise… Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — …those guys have been so analytical for so long they can say, hey, you know what on this day last year at eleven o’clock in the morning, this is how much we sold. Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — And measure that crap. So… Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — …we need to have some things that we measure. And so what what I like to do in the analysis is like, okay, let’s measure number one, where’s our money come from? Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — What areas does it come from? When we lose folks and they move on as somebody else comes in where do that where does that take place? Because that there’s two things I’m always looking for. In an analysis um, looking at the numbers and say what does capacity look like for this church? Are we operating below capacity? We really have the ability to do a lot more. Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — General fund, capital, whatever it happens to be. We’re we’re below capacity. Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — And trends where are we trending? Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — And so if you don’t have a benchmark, how do you measure? Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — You remember when you’re growing up as a little kid and they put you against the wall and put a little pencil mark above your head and said, Phil was this high… Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Phil Ling — …you know, in in 1979 or whatever it was. So we got to have those as well. I know the numbers represent people. Don’t over-spiritualritize me; I get that too. But if you don’t count something then you delude yourself. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. You just you just go on feelings or instincts or… And that that flows both ways. Like I think there are times where you know you’ll talk to a ah pastor who’s kind of down because they looked out on Sunday and it was like, man I think we were down 20% this one weekend. And it’s like, okay, well that’s just one weekend dude. Like you know, like don’t get so caught up on exactly what happened seven days ago or five days ago. Like where is where is the entire thing going. That’s that’s good advice. Rich Birch — Well, let’s talk specifically on the the kind of capital campaign. You know I’m as sure there’s people that are listening in that are thinking, Okay, we’ve come out of covid they have that feeling of, okay this is the new community. That’s here you know there’s a number of churches I coach that are have either just launched or are launching a third service. And I always joke on the church growth side, the coaching I do, there I always say the third service, if you’re going with a third Sunday morning service all your, it’s a stopgap decision. You’re saying we’re going to do this and then quickly after that you’re going to have to make some other decision. And that is like build a new building, launch a campus, do something else. Because you go from one of your services one of your 50% of your services being done optimal times to two thirds of your services being non-optimal times. It’s not like you get this great, you know, it’s not it’s not a great solution. So I’m sure there’s churches that are thinking we we might have something a year from now, 2 years from now. We need to be working on that. If I’m at a church in that shoes thinking, man, like we’ve got a bunch of people there. You know we we’ve got needs. What what should I be thinking today, obviously outside of going to thegivingchurch.com, but what would, you know, what what what should I be thinking today? What kind of questions should I be asking um, you know in those early phases? Phil Ling — Okay, so yeah I always try to answer if I’m if I’m that church, what would I be doing? Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Phil Ling — Um one is sooner rather than later, so have your your conversations about working with somebody that give you some help and some guidance along that way long early. It doesn’t cost you anymore to have a guide with you longer. So [inaudible]… Rich Birch — Right. Oh that’s good. Phil Ling — … because it’s not I hate it where this like, hey, we spend a bunch of money on architects. We to spend a bunch of money on all kinds of stuff, and then it’s like now we need to raise money. Rich Birch — Yeah, where were you… Phil Ling — It’s like, well that’s kind of backwards. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — You know it’s a first in the analogy I use, and I know I won’t take God out of it. I can tell you some God-stories. But then I can tell you what God does on average. So here’s here’s the average. Ah if I’m going to move to Toronto, and I say I would like to go live in Toronto. Let’s get Zillow and let’s look for a great house in Toronto. And I just type in Toronto, great house, with no parameters. It’ll show me some great things probably that I cannot afford. So instead it’s like why don’t we do a little, you know, crunch it down a little bit and say how about houses in Toronto within this price range. Rich Birch — Yes, good. Oh that’s good. Phil Ling — You know, the analysis is the first thing to me to sit down, so as a church starts a dream and cast vision, it’s like what do we have capacity to do? Yeah, God can do more than that. I got it. That’s cool. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — But nobody builds a tower without counting the cost. Let’s do a little research. Let’s look at what that that capacity looks like. And I need more time. The bigger the plane, the longer the runway. Rich Birch — Oh good, good, good. Phil Ling — So the bigger the project, the more time that I need. I’ve got churches that we’ve worked with for a year nobody knows we’re doing anything. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Phil Ling — And it’s because you’re you’re laying a foundation for a big plane. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Phil Ling — So, start early. Get some analysis so you got you have some ah reality that you’re dealing with. Talk to banks early if you’re going to have short term financing things like that. We have all kinds of relationships we can aim you to. We don’t get any kickbacks or anything. We just try to find good people. Ah but don’t wait. I see too many churches wait. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Phil Ling — Ah, churches are designed not to make decisions. Rich Birch — True. True. That’s true. There’s way too many people that can say no than can say yes. Yeah, right. Yeah, interesting. Well, that’s yeah, that’s good advice even, hey, if we’re even if you’re on the out side edge of thinking, hmmm, we might be a couple years out from needing to, you know, build more space, launch another campus, whatever. Ah, the the joke I’ve made on the multi-site side – very similar – I’ve said, you know, no one’s ever come to me when their campuses aren’t working and said, you know, we just took too long in the planning phase. We just we took took too long and in and getting this thing ready before we launched. It’s it’s always the opposite. Rich Birch — It’s like, Hey, we’re going to push this thing out the door in three months. And and that’s when you run into all kinds of problems. The same would be true on these kind of initiatives. You’ve got to take time. And particularly related to early what you said earlier those small rooms or small groups, those conversations, that takes time. Like that that that the reason we’re drawn to large rooms is because I can stand up this weekend, get in front of a thousand, two thousand people quickly. Ah and it feels good because we’ve kind of done that but it doesn’t necessarily actually penetrate and get you know deeper into you know the actual conversations we need to be getting into. That’s that’s good. Phil Ling — Um, and the deeper the deeper your, here’s the reason I go back to to lead pastors and everybody doesn’t want… You know, sometimes you get into the rockstar pastor mentality. It’s like I just gotta stay in the green room. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So it’s like oh no no – gotta get outta the green room. And the small room leadership conversations, the deeper your need, the deeper my questions. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — Deeper your need, deeper my questions. Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — So if you’re trying to raise a lot of money for a project, then your leaders have questions they wouldn’t have for just something inspiring on Sunday, take up an offering, and and raise a little bit of money. Rich Birch — Yeah, and by definition every kind of capital campaign, like where you’re you’re you’re making a significant gift, or you’re asking for significant gifts, you know when you’re you’re asking people to give out of illiquid access access assets or out of their their wealth rather than just their income. That, you know, if if you’re asking me that, if you’re saying, hey, can you sell some stocks or get rid of that you know investment property and give that money to us? Man, I’m I’m going to have some serious questions right? I’m going to I’m going to slow down and want to get a clear idea. And that’s fine. And then to actually execute on that to actually make that this isn’t they can’t. That kind of money just isn’t instantly available. It’s illiquid by definition. And so it takes a while to for that to happen. Yeah, that’s great. Super helpful. Rich Birch — Now I want to draw, I saw this great resource on your website that I want to make sure people get. And so this is at thegivingchurch.com, there’s ah big button there. It says “5 Ways to Grow Your Church Giving” – it’s a pdf. I want to send people over there. Make sure they pick that up. Do you want to tell us a little bit about this. This is a I can’t believe it’s free, but it’s a great resource for people to pick up. Tell us a little bit about that. Phil Ling — It’s a lot about what I’ve been talking about, breaking down the three rooms, how we communicate vision casting, all those kind of things. Tried… ah my big deal is I’m I’ve done this long enough, like I said I’m the old dude now, so I’ve done this long enough I want to see fruit grow in a lot of different trees. I want to put good information out there. I think it’s a category that people don’t talk about on how to fuel their ministries. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So we produced this. It’s cookies on the bottom shelf. This is not, you know, [inaudible] stuff. This is very practical steps. This is what you can do. I guarantee if you download that, read that, talk about it as a leader, you’ll get good stuff that you can use, whether you ever work with us or not. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, love it. So good. Well I want again, that’s just thegivingchurch.com ah look for that link there. We’ll also put a link in the show notes. So you go over there. Make sure you pick up a copy of that. Just as we come to land, Phil, anything else you’ve said? This has been super helpful. Anything else, you’d you’d love to talk about or anything else we want to make sure we cover today before we wrap wrap up today’s conversation? Phil Ling — I just want to hit the hammer one more time because you said you know you got a hammer and a nail thing. Ah talking because a lot of your listeners are are senior leaders in their churches. And there are a lot of things you can delegate, a lot of things you can give to other folks to do. Leaders lead leaders. Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — Um, so your job is to lead leaders. And and when I talk to senior pastors especially, you’re the leaders and influencers in your church, and I I divide leaders into this: we’re positional leaders – some people have positions. They’re tribal leaders. They got groups of people that follow them, whether they have a position or not. And financial leaders. So put those three together – that’s your job; lead those folks. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Phil Ling — And the reason you take the time have sit down have a cup of coffee and share with them, you treat them as partners in your ministry, not donors to your ministry. Partners talk about stuff before it happens. Donors just say let me show you the glossy brochure and ask you for money. Rich Birch — Oh so good. Phil Ling — Your leaders want to be treated as partners. So. Rich Birch — Oh so good. Oh I love that, Phil. I that’s I think that’s a great insight. I’d love to have you come back on in the future and and maybe we even just talk about that specific, let’s get into that even more deeply. And let’s drill into how do we have those conversations and how, you know. And because I’ve seen this in my own church. I worked with a lead pastor who was resistant, not in a not in a like I don’t ever want to do that, but just didn’t know what to say. And how do I have those conversations? And you know, and it doesn’t take a lot, it’s like a little bit of coaching ah, could be really helpful. So maybe in the future we have you back on and we could drill into that issue specifically because I think that would be hugely helpful for folks. Phil Ling — I would love to, I will love too, Rich, because here’s the last thing I’ll say and I know I’m I’m babbling on. Rich Birch — All good. Phil Ling — With leaders, your job not to get in the room and ask them for money. Nobody – that’s why nobody wants to do it. You’re not selling ’em vacuum cleaners. Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — Your job is to get in and cast vision. Let them ask you questions. Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Phil Ling — Because good people ask questions privately. Others ask questions in front of groups because they want an audience. Not an answer. We’re not giving audiences but we do give answers. Rich Birch — So good. Again, so much there. That’s that’s fantastic. Folks that stayed till the end they got a ah good little nugget there at the end to chew on for this week. Well friends, I would love for you to to track with Phil, to track with thegivingchurch.com, you know, to reach out if if you guys are looking for to do one of these analysis. Now is a great time to do that. If you’re thinking about a campaign, take Phil’s advice, you know, don’t talk to an architect or think about drawings before you talk about the financial piece. Ah you know, let… reach out to them. They would be ah would love to help with that. So thanks so much, Phil, appreciate you being here. Ah, where where do we want to send people online, one more time, before we wrap up. Phil Ling — thegivingchurch.com, thegivingchurch.com and we, ask us questions, get the pdf, anything, we’ll we’ll respond – this is what we love to do. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Phil. Appreciate you being here, Sir. Phil Ling — Thank you.

Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Ronee de Leon, the Director of Executive Project Management from Grace Fellowship, a multisite church in Ohio. Many churches have some sort of church management software and mountains of data. But figuring out how to make it actionable so you’re connecting with your congregation is a different story. Listen as Ronee shares how you can make your data actionable and track people’s engagement in order to better shepherd and disciple individuals in your flock. Making data actionable. // Like many other churches, Grace Fellowship had a wealth of data from their congregants but struggled to know who to reach out to and when. To address this, they developed PATH Engagement Software, an add-on to their church management software. PATH is compatible with both Church Community Builder and Planning Center and provides user-friendly, holistic reports, such as an engagement index to track an individual’s engagement over time.  The Engagement Index. // PATH Engagement Software currently offers five modules including an Engagement Index. Through this program, a church can track both the long-term and short-term engagement of an individual. The long-term engagement lets you track a person’s engagement over time whereas the short-term report helps you understand as people disengage. And because the software refreshes multiple times a day, churches can access the trend report in real-time. Understanding disengagement. // Many times, there are care issues related to disengagement. By helping to identify disengagement, a church can reach out to individuals and families in order to provide pastoral care and support where needed. The short-term report provides the names of those who are disengaging and the staff that is closest to them can then reach out. Seeing these reports gives churches more clarity so they can come alongside as well as shepherd and disciple people who are disengaging. Cast vision. // As a church grows, people can start to fall through the cracks, but acquiring good data can help close the gap. It can be difficult to get people to engage with attendance tracking systems so it’s important to communicate the heart and the why behind it. Ronee stresses that every data point represents a soul and churches will be able to better come alongside individuals on their faith journeys if they are gathering good data. Talk about these things consistently with your staff and lay leaders. Enforce the vision to make sure the right data is being collected at all levels of the organization. Unique Individual Engagement Report. // Another report that PATH supplies is called the Unique Individual Engagement Report. It tracks each individual person that your ministry touches over a period of time so that you can understand the reach of your ministry beyond weekend services. PATH is seeing that through groups or other ministries and activities over and above weekend services, healthy, growing churches are typically serving an additional 35-40% more people than what attendance numbers show at weekend services alone. Pastoral shepherding. // At PATH they’ve also discovered that the most fruitful discipleship conversations are happening with people who are mid-range engaged. People who are highly engaged and disengage for a time often find their way back on their own. People who are nominally engaged are much harder to win over. But people who are mid-range engaged in the church are very responsive to pastoral shepherding when they begin to disengage. Leverage your data. // Leveraging data also helps with having effective pastoral conversations. However, staff members or lay leaders need to have the skills and training to engage congregants. PATH Engagement Software offers a free resource called “Shepherding Tips and Ideas,” which provides practical guidance on starting and deepening these conversations.  You can learn more about Grace Fellowship at www.gracefellowship.cc and PATH Engagement Software at pathengagement.com/UnSeminary. Plus, click here to download Shepherding Tips and Ideas to understand how to start a shepherding conversation and dig deeper with people at your 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! 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: The Giving Church As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching. Visit thegivingchurch.com/unseminary for a FREE PDF, 5 Ways To Grow Your Church Giving. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation because we’re talking about one of those things that I know, listen we got a lot of executive pastors, a lot of people who lead in those kinds of areas at a church, and I know that today we’re talking about a problem that is near and dear to our heart. In fact I would say that today’s issue is one of the things that I bet you earlier this week you were in a conversation about, and we’re going to get a chance to help you take some steps in a practical direction today. Super excited to have Ronee de Leon. She is from Grace Fellowship and PATH Engagement Software. So Grace Fellowship, if you don’t know, it’s a multisite church in Ohio with five physical campuses, if I’m counting correctly, and church online. PATH Engagement, which is what we’re going to talk about today, is a solution that works really hand-in-hand with your church database, if I understand correctly, and applies some logic to really help ah, you understand and move people towards deeper engagement. This is what we’re trying to do, friends. We’re trying to get people engaged, and Ronee is going to help us with that. Welcome to the show, Ronee. So glad you’re here today. Ronee de Leon — Thanks Rich! It’s a privilege to have this conversation with you today. Rich Birch — Yeah, so honored that you would take some time to be here. Why don’t you kind of tell us give us the kind of Grace story. And then how does that connect to PATH, kind of how do all those things fit together? Ronee de Leon — Yeah, well, Grace Fellowship is a church that is always pursuing forward movement. We want to help people meet, follow, and share Jesus. And we’re we’re willing to do everything we can to make that happen. Rich Birch — Love it. Ronee de Leon — And so like a lot of other churches, we have a church management software and we have mountains of data, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Ronee de Leon — But making that data actionable and figuring out how we can know who to reach out to and when in a timely manner, it was a struggle for us. And so we started building a solution that would make our data actionable and just give us reports that were easy to use, user-friendly, holistic, and making us as a staff more efficient as we wanted to chase people. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So good. Well one of my um so I’m excited for this on multiple levels. But one of my convictions is, gosh, like so many of us are sitting on so much data, but we’re really not sure what to do with it. It’s like how do we, how do we figure out how to move people? Like how do we figure out how to identify people and then where you know, kind of what their next steps are? Let’s can you kind of give us a bit of an insight into PATH specifically? So talk us through how does your solution actually help us do that with the data that we have already? Ronee de Leon — Yeah, PATH is an add-on to your church management software. We’re currently compatible with Church Community Builder and Planning Center. Rich Birch — Ok. Ronee de Leon — And what it does is it takes the data you already have and puts it in really user-friendly reports that quickly let you know who to reach out to and when. So that it’s kind of built around this measure that we created called the engagement index, and that’s a measure of people’s engagement. There’s two different pieces to that: a long-term one and a short-term one. And the long-term engagement really helps us watch people as they increase their engagement over time and the short term one helps us understand as people disengage. It’s It’s really reactive and like I said just gives us really actionable data, so that we know who to reach out to to shepherd and disciple them as they’re disengaging from the programs and activities of our church. Rich Birch — I love that. Let’s talk about that one first, this short-term disengagement. Um, what does that functionally look like in churches? Are they generating… so I understand get a sense of what what your what your solution does. But are you running this like on a weekly basis, monthly basis, and then you’re pulling people together in a team or like in a meeting? What’s that look like? Ronee de Leon — PATH refreshes multiple times a day… Rich Birch — Okay. Ronee de Leon — …and so you’ve got the downward trend report live in real time at all times. And so the way that a lot of the churches that we work with are using it is at least weekly they’re looking at that downward trend report and that’s that short term report telling us. Somebody’s engagement has changed in the last eight weeks versus their prior eight weeks. So it’s really timely and just really clearly gives you the list of names of people to go chase. And and the way that a lot of churches that we work with do that is based on the team, right? Who on staff is most closely connected to that individual who’s been missing, and how do we reach out to them and encourage them to to come back. Or a lot of times—Rich, you know this—there are care issues related to disengagement. You know, how how can we come alongside and care for as well as shepherd and disciple people who are disengaging? Rich Birch — Yeah, and how are you actually measuring disengagement? Like what does that what’s that look like? How are you able to ah, you know, because what I understand you’re saying is, hey we’ve got the data already. You’re just helping us see it in a different way that gives us clarity around disengagement or or increased engagement, either way. Um what data points are you actually, how are you able to discern that from from the piles of data? Ronee de Leon — It’s based on the age group of the individual that we’re looking at. So we’ve we’ve got different indicators. A lot of churches, you know, kids are checking in on the weekend services. Rich Birch — Right. Ronee de Leon — So we’ve got that indicator to look at for them depending on what programs a church has for middle school students whether it’s groups and a weekend service or just groups. Adults then we’re looking at grouping, giving, and volunteering. And so we can we can see over all of their engagement that holistic level of involvement and we’re able to see as the attendances decrease based on their personal pattern, historically. Rich Birch — Okay, so oh so that’s clever. So like I I might be the kind of person that comes 3 times a month. And and over the last three months I’ve only come twice a month or once a month and that would then flag oh hey, something has shifted. But it’s not just a raw report around who’s all the people that have only come once a month, because maybe I only come once a month and that you know that isn’t actually a change. Um or you know, is is that the kind of thing we’re we’re trying to pull apart? Ronee de Leon — That’s exactly what we’re doing. Rich Birch — That’s very cool. I love that. Now, so we all know at scale. In fact, recently I was talking with a church that’s that’s trying to break the the 2000 barrier. That’s what I do with coaching, help churches do that. And um, help me with this – I’m going to gonna steal your brain here to help you in this coaching relationship. One of the things I’ve said intuitively is it seems like a lot of times church is less than 1000, there’s like somebody in the church that feels like they they feel like it’s their job to know everyone. And they and there’s a guy at this church particularly, standing out, you know, be standing up in front of the church and it’s like literally everybody that comes in they know them. They know them. They know them. Well that actually can be, I’ve said, that can actually be a lid to your growth. Because you can only ah you can only accommodate so many people in your brain. But what we want to do is actually have our database do that work for us actually ah, you know, retain all those people. Talk us through how um how we can leverage data to to really close those gaps those places where, you know, people might fall through the cracks and ultimately not feel known. Um, what would be some of those kind of key moments maybe in their journey where they could fall through and we just miss them? Ronee de Leon — Yeah, what’s true, Rich, as a church grows, people do start falling through the cracks. You’re you’re unable to know everybody and see if everybody’s been around every weekend. And so as we’re able to take the mountain of data that we have and make it actionable, viewable ah, we know as people disengage in a way that maybe we wouldn’t be able to if we didn’t have the data that we were looking at. So as people are disengaging and we’re reaching out to them, we’re getting the flags. It’s really clear and concise for us. So we’re able to do that. You know, we’re we’re not reaching out and saying, hey your engagement, ah, it’s falling off. Rich Birch — Your engagement score has gone down. Ronee de Leon — Right! Rich Birch — This is the engagement police calling. Ronee de Leon — Ah, we’re we’re really genuinely going at it. You know we believe that every data point represents a soul. And so… Rich Birch — That’s good. Ronee de Leon — Yeah, every data point truly represents a soul and we’re talking about real people on faith journeys. And if we’re taking full advantage of the information we have, we can help them as they’re in this journey of meeting, following, and sharing Jesus. And so when we reach out, there’s there’s a story we have recently. One of our campus pastors got a flag on one of these reports about an individual who had disengaged from group. And ah you know his his campus is around 500 people. There’s no way he can see everybody, but because of the report he got to reach out to this individual. And so he calls him and finds out that he had recently lost a job, was battling some depression. And so his disengagement really represented one of those pivotal moments that matter in people’s lives, and we have the opportunity to come alongside him and support him through that that difficult season. Rich Birch — Yeah, I can I can see that. That’s very clear to me for sure. Now a part of this is, you know, your solution can only deal with the quality of data that you have. And so if I’m assuming, you know, there’s got to be some best practices on getting attendance in groups like that. Or getting you know trying to get the right data in the front end. Coach us a little bit around those issues because that that to me seems like a problem I know in the churches I’ve served in. Man, can we just get people to click on the “yes they were here” buttons on our systems. That… talk us through what what’s some best practices on that that we should be thinking of. I know that’s outside of the scope of PATH. You’re just dealing with the the, okay, the data that’s in there, but man that’s critical piece of the puzzle. Ronee de Leon — It absolutely is and and some of the churches that we work with are asking that question. You know, we really see the value in this. We really want to have the data, but we can’t get our group leaders to take attendance. We can’t get our staff to prioritize making sure that kids or volunteers check in. And so it it really is a cultural shift, Rich. Everybody has to be bought in. But I believe that it’s easy to get people to buy in when they understand the heart and the why of it. Rich Birch — Right. Ronee de Leon — You know when you put in front of people, ah when you help them understand the real life change, the real shepherding opportunities that we have because we have the data and are able to to understand where they’re at and their engagement, it’s easy to win people over, but it is something that needs to be consistently brought up. The vision behind that needs to be enforced, and and we need to be making sure that that’s happening at all levels of the organization. But it but it matters. It really really matters. And again, when when people understand what you’re able to do once you have that data… Rich Birch — Yeah. Ronee de Leon — …it’s much easier to get buy-in from your staff and your your volunteer leaders. Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, totally. Ah um, let’s pivot in a different direction. I feel like so many of us as church leaders, we’re feeling people. We’re people people. We like it’s like, a lot of intuitive leadership. And then that only goes so far, and then eventually we have to actually come up against like real-world data. Talk us through how your tool helps us add real-world information into our leadership as we’re making, particularly making decisions. What how are teams using it? Was is there maybe a story about of an effective use of, you know, of this this tool or this approach? Talk us through that, you know, this kind of feelings versus data. How do we, how do we use those together, or how do we use more data? Ronee de Leon — A lot of times you feel like you haven’t seen somebody around for a while. You’ve got a couple people on staff who are in the lobby looking for people and maybe they’ll on Monday morning get together and ask, you know, have you seen this family, have you seen this individual? And a lot of times we’re we’re working on feelings. The data helps confirm those feelings and really gives your staff the confidence to reach out, knowing that it it really there really has been a disengagement of some sort for the individual or family. You also mentioned decision-making. We really believe that facts are our friends. Some people will see truth and in the data and and they’re afraid of it, or they don’t like what the data tells them. But facts are our friends and data drives decisions. You know this is true in other industries and it and it works. So why wouldn’t we apply that to our decision-making in church world as well? Rich Birch — Um, have you seen um, any… so I feel like post covid, all of us are asking this question like people are attending less. It seems like that it, feels like that. Um you know, is that really true though? Who knows? Um you know, have you seen any trends with the churches that you’re working with in the last couple years that are say different than ah than pre-covid? Any any kind of conversation around that? Ronee de Leon — Yeah, what you’re saying definitely seems true across the board. You know, people who pre-covid were maybe 80% attenders feel like they’re now 60% attenders. And so ah, you, you it’s hard to measure the reach of your ministry. You know, your average weekend service attendance is just a portion of the people that are connected to your ministry. And so one of the reports that we provide in PATH is called a unique individual engagement report. And what that report does which is track each individual person that your ministry touches over a period of time. And we’re only counting them once so that you can really measure and understand the reach of your ministry. Ronee de Leon — And across the board what we’re seeing is healthy, growing churches have a unique individual engagement number that’s about 135, or 140% what their average weekend service attendance is. So if you’re serving 100 people in your average weekend service attendance that you’re seeing attend every weekend, you’re probably actually serving that week around 135 to 140 people, whether that’s through groups or or other ministries, activities outside of that weekend service attendance. Rich Birch — That’s interesting. So that number, so just so I’m totally clear on that because that’s an interesting number. So what you’re saying is if I’m, yeah, if I’m a church of it staying with a hundred because that’s an easy number, then in other things that are non-Sunday oriented I’m picking up an additional 35, 40% in groups or in, you know… How does that relate to the multiplier number? Because there’s like people will say this thing, which it bugs me, where they’ll be like, oh so we have a…(sticking with the hundred number). It’s like we have a hundred people on average attend, but we know people only attend one every three weeks, so we’re a church of 300. I hear pastors say that kind of thing all the time – nutty language. You know it’s like, well we’re, you know, and course it’s none of the people that listen to this podcast say that. They’re, none of them would say that. Ronee de Leon — Of course not. Rich Birch — But ah, other kinds of church leaders say that. But what how does that relate, like this idea of churn and like I’m not, you know, we’re seeing people come through. Do you have any kind of insights on what’s happening on that front? Ronee de Leon — To be honest, Rich, I think you can assume based on your average weekend service attendance that that’s happening, but until you have real data to to support that, you you really can’t say that. Rich Birch — No. Yeah. Ronee de Leon — Based on the unique individual engagement number, that again doesn’t include doesn’t include ah, individual attendance for adults sitting in a weekend in service because most churches are not taking individual attendance for adults in that space. Ah, but until you’ve got data to say that, it feels like a little bit of a stretch to assume that that’s the size of your church. Rich Birch — Right. Ronee de Leon — And that’s why the unique individual engagement number is so unique. A lot of churches are chasing this and wanting to understand this. You know, even leadership is looking at it saying, okay are we staffed appropriately, you know? If if we think this many people are in our our ministry pond, if you will, but really it’s 30 to 40% larger, ah you know, should we be staffing differently? Should we be adding activities outside of the weekend services if people are engaging outside of that space more often? There’s a lot of questions to be had, conversations to to have… Rich Birch — Yeah. Ronee de Leon — …around that number and understanding the real size your ministry. Rich Birch — Yeah, the thing that’s interesting about that to that number that 135 to, you know, 140% number is interesting because um there’s this benchmark that’s often used that like a healthy church staff size is 1 to 100 so one staff member for every hundred attendees. But the irony of that 1 to 100 number is like I don’t know any churches that are actually at that 1 to 100 number. There… unless you’re very large, like unless you’re above 5000, 10,000 then they typically get that kind of, you know, economies of scale. But, you know, when you do an audit and say, okay, well let’s look at the staff. Where where are they actually spending their time? Like, you know, oftentimes we’re like we’re maybe a little bit overstaffed here but it doesn’t feel dramatically less. It doesn’t feel like or dramatically more. It doesn’t feel like, oh gosh, we have like we’re swimming in staff. It’s like we could always add more. But that 135 to 140 might be a part of the reason why. Because hey we’re serving a bit of a larger community. Ronee de Leon — Right. Rich Birch — That’s ah that’s interesting. Any other kind of insights like that that are interesting um, you know, kind of benchmarky type things that that you guys have noticed across, again leveraging the fact that you see multiple churches through PATH. Ronee de Leon — Yeah I would say a few things that we’re noticing in an ongoing manner – it’s just true across a lot of the churches that that we’ve seen. Most fruitful discipleship conversations the most fruitful discipleship conversations are happening with people who long-term are sort of mid-range engaged. So people who are highly engaged over a long period of time, if they fall away for a season, they’re often finding their way back on their own. People who are nominally engaged, it’s it’s a little tougher to win them over. Ronee de Leon — But people who, you know, attend your church maybe once a month – that’s 12 times a year. They go to group maybe once or twice a month. They fall in that midrange level of engagement. When they start disengaging, they’re really responsive to the pastoral shepherding conversation when we reach out to them. And so that’s been really encouraging to understand who is most responsive to that conversation, and and how to get the most fruit out of making these pastoral calls. Um, yeah, it’s it’s been really helpful. Rich Birch — Um, that’s a fascinating insight. So if just let me reflect that back to you. What you’re seeing is if we put people on a scale and there are people who are highly engaged, if they start to kind of slip away, chances are they’re going to reengage over time. People that are mid-range, if they start to become disengaged, they they respond maybe even better or more they’re more likely to become more engaged ah than, you know, then maybe obviously low-engaged people or high-engaged people. So there’s there’s an interesting target there around, hey these people that are kind of mid-range engaged, let’s go after them, figure out a way to connect with them. Are churches, is that true is that am I understanding that correctly? Ronee de Leon — That’s correct. Yep. Rich Birch — Okay, so how are churches following up? Like is this following is this so let’s ah, let’s just say again. I’m going to use you for coaching. Let’s say you’re a church of a thousand people. You know, they’re listening in. They’ve got you know I’ve got a number of staff on my team. I’m an executive pastor, I use your tool, and I see those mid-range people. Is the coaching to have like staff follow up with those people, or should I be building a volunteer team? Who is actually doing those? You know, and then we’ll talk next about what’s that call or those engagements actually look like because I’m intrigued on what that is. But let’s first talk about the who who should be following up with these people. Ronee de Leon — Yeah, there are a couple different ways that you can approach that. Um again I think we said earlier that the staff member closest to the individual who’s disengaging is somebody is one approach you could take. Somebody who would reach out to them somebody that it means something that they’re connecting with them and notice that they were gone. Ronee de Leon — Another approach you could take is having lay elders or, or some churches are calling it navigators, so these are highly bought-in people, mature Christians who love reaching out to people who love engaging. They’re kind of ah an add on to your pastoral staff, but it’s a volunteer role that’s really high capacity that you are giving the names of the individuals to follow up with to this group of people and they’re they’re somewhat of an extension of your pastoral staff. We’ve also seen that be really fruitful in some churches. Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool. Love it. Even that’s a great takeaway, friends, like if I could see this kind of working itself out. We have somebody who’s like a data person who’s going to get these reports pulled them together. They’re going to pull the conversations together say, hey, here’s some people either on a weekly or monthly basis, Hey let’s have these… You know we were doing these quarterly based on on ah just on giving data. I was we would look at like who are the people that are giving less, and we would pull people to get we’d pull our campus pastors together and say, okay, who’s slipping behind trend? And and they’re again not doing collections calls or not like, hey, you’re giving less money. Ah, but and usually what would happen is you would unearth like all the time we were unearthing, yeah, stuff’s going on in our family where, you know, my wife’s… Ronee de Leon — That’s right. Rich Birch — …dad died. Or you know, that kind of stuff, which was which was great, but man, having a more holistic view even better. Let’s talk about the actual engagement point. So I’m I’m a staff member. I’ve been engaged to follow up with someone and you’ve actually got a practical resource to kind of help us with that. Why don’t you talk us through that as well. Like how do we actually make this, how do I engage with somebody? What are some best practices there? Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I’m glad you asked this question because you can have all the data in the world and check on as many people that you’d like, but at the end of the day leveraging your data is only as effective as you are and your staff is having the pastoral conversation. Ah, many churches have staff members who aren’t pastors who haven’t gone to seminary that are required to make these calls and sometimes they’re they’re difficult. They’re challenging conversations. And some of them haven’t been equipped to have that conversation. You know, we we have found that some church staff are having the conversation without having the conversation. Rich Birch — Yes. Ronee de Leon — They’re reaching out and someone is saying, you know, well soccer’s busy and and the staff member says, oh okay, we understand; great – have a good day. You know, how do you push beyond that and have the conversation… Rich Birch — Right. Ronee de Leon — …and say, you know, I understand it’s a busy season, but when you and your family was highly engaged in our church, what were the benefits of that? Why did you do that? You know, and they’re going to get into ah parenting support, and community, and ah the the kids learning about Christ, you know. Rich Birch — So good. Ronee de Leon — That that doesn’t matter now? You know, and and pushing back on that a little bit. How can we help you reengage… Rich Birch — Yes. Ronee de Leon — …because that still really matters for your family. you know and even maybe being a source of accountability for them. You know, soccer ends in three weeks. Great. Rich Birch — Yeah. Ronee de Leon — I’m going to text you. I’m putting it on my calendar in three weeks. Rich Birch — Love it. Ronee de Leon — Can I text you and reach back out and help you do that? So you have to be careful that you’re actually having that pastoral and shepherding conversation. Rich Birch — So good. Ronee de Leon — And we believe that this matters so much that we’d like to provide a gift to the listeners. Um. Rich Birch — Love it. Ronee de Leon — It’s it’s a resource called we call it we’re calling it Shepherding Tips and Ideas. It’s just a little bit of content. It’s a quick 2 pager for any level of staff. It’ll be helpful for them to to understand how to start a shepherding conversation and then really dig deeper and have the conversation. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love this. So friends, we’re going to put a link to this in the show notes. You you should pick it up. And um I could say even if you’re not gonna… this isn’t this alone is like gold. It’s only two pages, but having read through this, I’m like, man, there’s some great coaching on here that’s just super practical. This is like right down the zone of unSeminary, which I love. It’s like just take this ball and run with it. Some great conversation starters. Um you know, my my wife is a people person. She’s like one of these people she’s like this very high bandwidth for caring for folks. And she is um, like lots of people think that they’re her best friend because she just has just that kind of person. Um and she’s very good naturally at that. I’m more of a systems guy. I’m more of a like build a checklist and, you know, all. I’m friendly, but this kind of resource super helpful. Like man, some good conversation starters. So I would encourage you, friends, check out that. Ah, that in the show notes. So ah so good. Rich Birch — This has been a this been a great conversation. Now as we’re thinking about the future when you think of kind of the future of PATH and the tool, where’s all this going? Like where you need to look up over the horizon, what are you guys hoping for, how are you hoping this will help churches? How are you hoping it’ll, you know, any kind of changes in the future or that kind of thing to help make this even better for, you know, for us as we’re thinking about these issues? Ronee de Leon — Well we always have ideas for future development. We’re listening to churches or getting ideas and… Rich Birch — Sure. Ronee de Leon — …and we continue building out the program. Currently, there are five modules in the program. It’s connection statistics reporting. Rich Birch — Yep. Ronee de Leon — It’s attendance reporting because everybody has that giant spreadsheet like 15 staff members have access to and there are multiple versions of the truth. And we’re not we’re not going to do that anymore. We’ve we’ve got attendance reporting. The engagement index and those trends that we talked about earlier. There’s some financial reporting and some executive reporting which includes that unique individual engagement number. So there’s there’s a lot in the program right now. But to be honest, Rich, our goal our hope is to help churches pursue people. We we are passionate about the success of the churches that we’re working with. And we want to help them leverage their mountains of data to help people meet, follow and share Jesus. And so right now we’re working towards sharing the tool with as many churches as we can because it’s making the staff more efficient. It’s reporting holistic data really user in a user-friendly way. And we’re we’re seeing real fruit from having these shepherding and discipleship conversations with people. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Any kind of last words just as we wrap up today’s episode any last nuggets you want to make sure that we, and then we’ll make sure we get people to connect with you guys online. But where any other kind of last pieces you want to talk about? Ronee de Leon — Yeah I know, Rich, that there are some people that are skeptical about data and leveraging data and they’re they’re afraid that somehow you’re going to become obsessed with numbers and and forget the people. But I just think it’s important for church leadership to remember what we said earlier: every data point represents a soul. And when people deprioritze activities and programs at your church that were once a priority to them, they’re going through something whether it’s doubt in their faith, depression, divorce, diagnosis, economic duress. There’s there’s something going on in their life that we as the church have the opportunity to to reach out and care for them. Ronee de Leon — We we think about Matthew 25 and the parable of the talents. You know, the the one who brought five more talents heard “well done good and faithful servant.” And we as the church really need to make sure that we are stewarding the the people that Christ has entrusted us with well. And we we’re doing everything possible, including leveraging data, to make sure that that we’re able to tell the Lord that we did everything we could to to steward well the flock that he gave us. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. This has been, what a encouraging conversation. And friends, we’re just scratched the surface here. There’s a ton more we could talk about. Ah but I want to encourage people to to drop by your website to learn more. Where do we want to send them online to learn more about PATH and to take step. I’d really encourage people. I know there’s church leaders that are listening in that are like, hey, we should let’s just take the next step and learn more about this. Where do we want to send them online? Ronee de Leon — Yeah, to learn more about the tool they can go to pathengagement.com. To get the resources we talked about earlier, it’s pathengagement.com/unseminary – we’ve got that free download. And we’re going to do a deep dive on November sixth at 1 PM that we want to invite people to. We’re going to look at PATH, really get into the nuts and bolts of the engagement index and the trends, what these reports look like. Um, and if anybody has questions or or wants to reach out to me personally they can find me at ronee.deleon@pathengagement.com. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Ronee. I really appreciate you being here today. Ronee de Leon — It’s my pleasure. Rich Birch — Thank you for being a part of this. Take care. Ronee de Leon — Great. Thank you, Rich. You too.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Nathan Nelson, Pastor of Mission and Outreach at Bethany Community Church in the Seattle, Washington region. Do you ever feel like short-term missions trips actually push against creating deep, lasting change in the communities you serve? Tune in as Nathan shares how to move beyond the trip itself to building lasting relationships with partnerships to make a meaningful, long-term impact. Long-term partnerships. // Rather than engaging in short-term missions trips, Bethany Community Church has chosen to invest in three global strategic partnerships: Agros International in Nicaragua, Roblealto Child Care Association in Costa Rica, and World Relief in Rwanda. These partnerships are rooted in the principals of long term relationships, indigenous leadership, and mutual transformation. Ineffective short-term missions trips. // When considering short-term missions, we have to recognize that they are for a limited amount of time. Often the focus is on the experience rather than the relationships built with a partner organization, so the trip alone doesn’t make much difference. But with the right approach, these trips can be transformative for both the volunteers and the communities they serve. More harm than good. // Nathan shares his experience working with an orphanage at the US-Mexico border where despite well-intentioned support from various church teams over the years, the orphanage’s conditions were decrepit, and there were multiple attempts by children to escape. These children felt trapped and were not prepared for life outside the orphanage. 20% of churches around the United States support some amount of work happening in an orphanage or residential care facility. However, these systems are often broken and short-term missions trips do more harm than good toward these vulnerable children. Family-based care. // God’s design was for children to grow up in the context of the family. Seeking to develop long-term partnerships with organizations that focus on a family-based care model with a goal to reconnect vulnerable children with biological family members have led to beautiful transformations. This requires churches to shift away from the mindset of supporting orphanages and towards empowering families to care for their children. Churches need to be part of God’s work in providing support to families, whether it’s in Rwanda, Seattle, or any other community. Tool kit from Faith to Action. // If your church is ready to find a long-term partnership helping vulnerable children, the Faith to Action Initiative has great resources to help you find organizations that are embodying these best practices. They also offer a tool kit called Short-Term Missions: Guidance to Support Orphans and Vulnerable Children that instructs how to shape a short-term mission trip so that it is effectively doing good. Strategic visits. // Bethany offers strategic visits which are intended to build a long-term relationship with a partner. During these visits, the partner is the one doing the work on the ground and the volunteers offer encouragement and support the ongoing work of the partner organization. Trips range from 7 to 12 days with teams of 5-12 people annually. Teams spend 3-6 months training before they leave to help set their hearts and minds around the core objectives, the most important being to encourage the staff of the partner organization. After they return, the team has a follow-up meeting once a month for six months. The end goal is to summarize what they experienced into a core discipleship theme and communicate the work that God is doing in the partner organization to the rest of the church. You can learn more about Bethany Community Church at www.churchbcc.org. Plus download the PDF Short-Term Missions: Guidance to Support Orphans and Vulnerable Children from the Faith to Action Initiative and pick up the book, Reimagining Short-Term Missions, here. 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 facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. I think this will be one of those ones that’ll be challenging. I know it’s a heart place for so many of us who have served in the church for a long time, but I’m really looking forward to leaning in. I’m going to ask you to lean in on today’s conversation. We’re privileged to have Nathan Nelson with us. He is the Pastor of Mission and Outreach with a fantastic church in Washington called Bethany Christian Church. They’ve got 6 campuses, if I can count correctly, from ah the Seattle region. I love talking to church leaders in parts of the country like Seattle where like, frankly, people lots of people don’t wake up in the morning and say, hey I should go to church today. And we’ve got a lot we can learn from you today, Nathan. So glad that you’re here; welcome to the show. Nathan Nelson — Thanks so much for having me. It’s a privilege. Rich Birch — Ah yeah, I’m honored that you would take some time to be with us. Why don’t we start with you kind of telling us a little bit about the church. Kind of fill in the picture there. Help us understand about the church, and then tell us about your role there at Bethany. Nathan Nelson — Yeah, Bethany Community Church is a 6 location church, at the present moment, here in Seattle, Washington. We have a history of over 100 years in the city. Bethany began as a mission if you will to the indigenous people of Seattle way way back when in a slightly different neighborhood than the one we find ourselves in now. Um, we’ll be talking about mission today so we can assume that some of what was done and some of what wasn’t was not necessarily the best back in those days. Rich Birch — Sure. Nathan Nelson — We’ve been reconciling our roots a bit.Um, but fast forward to the present day. Um under the leadership of our former senior pastor, Richard Dahlstrom, the church grew rapidly. And so going from about 200, 300 people to over a couple thousand in just a few years. And so in that time we had a space issue. Ah, and that presented missional opportunity where we said rather than having satellite campuses that would stream one person, one personality, we planted local contextual relational ministry sites, we call them, from the various places that people were commuting in from. Nathan Nelson — So in our 6 different neighborhoods where we now have locations ranging in size from 50 to 1500, we really seek to be ah the presence of Christ in the neighborhood. And that presents real opportunities for us missionally at a local level, but then over the course of time we’ve developed a pretty robust global mission program. And so that’s where I am privileged to serve. Nathan Nelson — I oversee all that we do missionally in the church both globally and locally. And have an army of laypeople and other staff that help make the magic happen as well. But um, yeah, we have three global partnerships in different parts of the world um, that range from about 8 to 15 years that we’ve been serving together… Rich Birch — Wow, that’s great. Nathan Nelson — …in these different places. And um I’ll talk more about that but a value of ours is this long-term partnership. So I started as a layperson who was in the pews, inspired by the teaching of the church. I went on to become an intern and for my predecessor. And after a season away serving in another capacity, I came back and I’ve been on staff now as the Pastor of Mission and Outreach for about 7 years. Rich Birch — Very cool. Well we’re going to talk primarily – there’s a lot we could unpack there and there’s like you know there’s a lot even and maybe we’ll have you on in the future to talk about local mission at some point. But today we want to kind of focus the conversation particularly on global, although there’s there’s lots of principles we can apply locally as well. Why don’t you talk to us about ah those partnerships. What do they what do they look like? Kind of how does the what is the framework of those? How does those how does the relationship work with those organizations? Talk us through what that looks like. Nathan Nelson — Yeah, absolutely. So like many churches, Bethany has ah a history I would say about twenty years ago we did an a self-evaluation, and my predecessor did a lot of the hard work here who now serves that Faith to Action, an organization that we’ll be talking more about today. Um, but Ellie Oswald is her name and she ah took an evaluation. The church and said where is all this money where is all this funding going? And we discovered there was everything from $50 to $5000 um going to different people, organizations, missionaries serving in all different places around the world. If you wrote a letter to the church and asked for money you probably got it at some point. But there was no sort of ongoing relationship of any kind. Rich Birch — Oh interesting. Nathan Nelson — And so there was a huge sort of cleaning house process where we had to say, okay, God, what is it that you would uniquely do through Bethany in a strategic sense for the really deep lasting change of communities around the world? And so ah, our partnerships began um, with an initiative that in Uganda that was amazing um, through Living Water. That partnership has come and gone. And now we have these three: one with Agros International in Nicaragua, another one with Roblealto Child Care Association in Costa Rica, and then a third one, World Relief in Rwanda. Nathan Nelson — And these partnerships are rooted in this principle of long-term relationship. That we lean into the partner organization to be the expert on the ground. It’s of the utmost importance that that organization is led by indigenous people to that region. Um, it’s also super important to us that the shared value above all is mutual transformation. So we’re looking for a long-term relationship with lasting change in the community that has an impact, not only for the community that the organization serves in that we support, but also for our community back home. And so we send teams. We do short-term mission ah like many churches around the world. But it’s our ah, highest value that those trips are simply a means by which we can continue to grow this mutually transformative relationship internationally. Nathan Nelson — So the way that we do our trips is probably very different than many others around the ah country. And that’s in part because we really seek to take this approach of standing in the back. We want to go and see what God is doing. We want to participate and use our gifts as well in in what Christ is doing in that place. But we really seek to take a posture as learners and enable the local people to show us what God has been up to… Rich Birch — So good. Nathan Nelson — …and will continue to be up to in that place. Yeah, so we call all of our our goers and returners ambassadors. They’re ambassadors of Bethany Community Church when they go visit our partners internationally. And then they’re ambassadors to that partnership when they return. And so they spend six months in preparation and six months um following up intentionally as a group before and after their trip um, integrating those themes into their life and communicating them to the rest of the church about what God is doing in that place. Rich Birch — I love this. Well, there’s a lot there to unpack, which is good. This is why you’ll see, friends, why we’ve we’re honored to have Nathan with us on today’s podcast. You know, one of the things you said you talked about deep lasting change and that ultimately that is what you’re attempting, you know these partners that you’re you’re working with, that’s what you’re driving for. But you know my experience has been, and let me be the devil’s advocates, probably the wrong word to say on this podcast but the, you know, person may be providing a bit of pushback. My experience is sometimes this idea of short-term teams can really push against deep lasting change. It’s almost like the framework, the the method pushes against what we’re trying to do. Am I wrong on that? Pull that apart for me; help me understand, you know, why is that? Why what’s what’s some of the problems that we might have traditionally with this kind of short term missions approach? Nathan Nelson — Well you named it. A short-term trip with long-term lasting change. Rich Birch — Yeah. Nathan Nelson — That’s a bit of an oxymoron in and of itself, right? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Nathan Nelson — Absolutely, absolutely it is. You know, I think one of the things about short-term missions that we have to recognize is that it’s short. It’s for a specific term of time. And we put this word missions on it. That’s a huge word. To me, mission… Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s a loaded term, right? Yeah. Nathan Nelson — Yes, mission in the church means participating with what Christ is doing to redeem all of the world. So we have a short-term trip with that notion in mind, and generally speaking as churches, we kind of entrust the youth pastor, or maybe even a layperson who spent some time abroad with the task of leading a group of volunteers to go and do this thing in another place. And I know this is the unSeminary podcast. I’ve served, before my time at Bethany, at a short-term mission organization for years, came to Bethany… I’ve been doing short-term mission trips since I was sixteen years old. And ah I can tell you not one class I took in seminary talked about the logistics… Rich Birch — Yeah. Nathan Nelson — …behind how to do a mission trip effectively. Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Nathan Nelson — Not only that, ah you know we we want to believe that these trips matter. But if we look at the trip alone—I hate to say this; I don’t want to burst people’s, you know, bubble here—but they don’t matter. Rich Birch — Oh wow. Yeah. Nathan Nelson — A trip in and of itself, if only done for the sake of a mission trip, will do far more harm than good. This is why at Bethany it’s so important that any short-term mission trip that we do is done in the context of long-term relationship with a with a partner. Rich Birch — Right. Absolutely. Nathan Nelson — The partner is the one who’s doing the work on the ground. A trip has an opportunity to come in and do something unique, do something special that leverages, contributes to the work of that partner ongoing. But it’s not the work in and of itself. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Nathan Nelson — It is not a work in and of itself. So we really have to um, if if rooted in a long-term partner, all of a sudden now I’m willing to talk about short-term mission um, um, being about the mission of God right? I really I really think that that can happen. But it has to be in the context of a long-term partnership. And it has to be done in such a way that we are envisioning the limits of what a short-term trip can do, um, being honest about that, and that our training and our activities for the time that we’re in the ground and our debrief is all built around helping the people that participate in the trip have lasting change that impacts their lives ongoing. So what we’ve seen is that people actually are better as a result of their time going on one of these trips, but it doesn’t happen by accident. Rich Birch — Um, let’s we’re gonna we’re gonna get there. I really do want to unpack, Okay, what you’re doing that’s different. But let’s just take a pause a bit longer there. Ah you know, I think sometimes one of the criticisms of experiences like this is it can feel like subsidized adventure travel. It’s like we go to people and we say, hey, can you give us money because I’d like to go somewhere that normally you don’t go. This isn’t Orlando; this is not New York city – it’s some exotic location. And then we kind of baptize it in this kind of Christian-y thing. And and I think, you know, and there’s it’s… obviously I’m I’m using loaded language there. Obviously I think that’s bad. But you put an even more finer point on it. You said, man, that could actually do more harm than good. Give me some examples of what that looks like. Because, man, I don’t think anybody that even if even if they just see it at that level of like, hey, I want to have this kind of fun experience. They’re they’re probably not processing it at the level of, man, I might actually be doing damage in the community I’m I’m going to. Talk me through what some of that harm can can look like if not done well. Nathan Nelson — Yeah, absolutely. I want to give two quick examples. And then ah but I want to preface it by saying, as a church one of the things that we’ve been mindful of especially in our global work is that anything that you’re doing internationally as a church often is in the space of what the industry calls orphans and vulnerable children. Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Nelson — You are working with kids who are very, very vulnerable in their lives, and often are put in situations where if a team comes for a short period of time, we can unintentionally perpetuate the vulnerability of these children. And so I’ll give you two examples. One, um back when I worked in a short-term mission organization I spent ah several weeks receiving mission teams at the border of the United States and Mexico. There was an orphanage there which we would call a “residential care facility”. And so kids were living on site here. There was a small school on site. Most of their life took place on the grounds of this orphanage. I can tell you that the buildings were decrepit. There were tarantulas crawling all over us at night as we’re sleeping in this place. Um, it’s out in the desert. It’s remote. It’s disconnected from the rest of society. And there was a group of young men who’d grown up there. Nathan Nelson — And in the time that I was there—this was maybe a month receiving 3 or 4 different teams, um, all well intentioned, all supporting this orphanage for many many years. Um some of the people from these churches had gone and they were working as teachers in the school and that kind of thing over the years. These churches are telling their congregations that this is what God called them to do and that God is doing great work here for decades. I know it. I’m sure of it. And it’s and I don’t mean to shame them, Rich Birch — No. Nathan Nelson — The reality on the ground is this: there were three separate attempts in just the month that I was there of kids trying to escape the orphanage. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Nathan Nelson — Kids come back their tail tucked between their legs. I had no I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t know how to exist outside of here. I don’t know how to survive for myself. Ah, kids were not prepared for the real world. And what they were a part of wasn’t working. Rich Birch — Okay. Nathan Nelson — They didn’t want to be there. Rich Birch — Right, right. Nathan Nelson — They wanted to escape this place. Rich Birch — Trapped. Yeah, yeah. Nathan Nelson — They felt trapped but they did They couldn’t exist outside of it. Heartbreaking situation. Rich Birch — Heartbreaking. Yep. Absolutely. Nathan Nelson — I witnessed that at a young age. I was maybe 19 at the time. I said there’s got to be a better way. Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Nelson — There has to be that way. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Nathan Nelson — So I want to contrast that with another ah story. I ah one of the organizations we partner with as a church is Roblealto in a Child Care Association in Costa Rica. They’re based in San Jose, the capital city. And Roblealto has been around for over eighty years. And they do what I would consider some of the best work in the care for orphans and vulnerable children. Nathan Nelson — They have a residential care facility. Um, very very different than the one that I just described. Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Nelson — But it is it is only used in the most extreme cases where it is no longer safe for a child to be present in their home and they have to be removed. But they will only admit children in those contexts if the families are willing to commit to the work that it’s going to take to get them back on track. And then they seek to reconcile the family. That that they call that the Bible Home. Um, the Bible Home for Roblealto boasts over a 95% reintegration rate… Rich Birch — Wow, That’s amazing. Nathan Nelson — …of children to their biological families. There is no other organization in the world that’s even close. Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Nathan Nelson — It’s really really amazing the work that they do in the… And at the end of the day, it’s not rocket science. It is a sold out commitment to the reality that kids grow up better in the context of a family. And they believe the best people for these children are actually their biological family members. It’s an absolute crazy statistic but 80% of children who are in residential care facilities have a biological parent who’s still living. It’s a matter of of belief that that person can be restored. That that person or people can indeed take up their God given calling to care for the child that is their own. Nathan Nelson — And so the rest of Roblealto is so convicted about this that they have a series of what they call child care centers. And the child care centers um, one of which we’ve supported from the beginning for about a decade now, um are designed as before- and after-school programs that have an interdisciplinary team of child psychologists, social workers and the like… Rich Birch — Wow. Nathan Nelson — …who work with the child and with the family who are at the point of kind of breaking, where the typical family would say you know what I’m going to just drop my kid off at an orphanage because they’re probably better there. Um, instead Roblealto intervenes and they say mom, dad, you can go to work. We’ll take care of him before and after school. In Costa Rica, like many other countries around the world, there’s not the capacity to have kids in school all day. So kids go to school half the day and then they’re left in the streets to wander and get into all kinds of trouble the rest of the day if mom or dad goes to work. Or, mom or dad doesn’t go to work… Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Nelson — …because they don’t know how to care for their kid otherwise. Rich Birch — Right, right. Nathan Nelson — And so they’re breaking cycles of economic poverty of relational poverty all with this model of of taking care of kids and and intentionally investing in families to help them get on track, to help them get jobs and the things they need to do. And these families are proven to stay together. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Nathan Nelson — So we can talk in a moment about what it looks like for us as a church who supports to send a team, a short-term team. But I introduced that model to say while it’s this… the churches back home are playing videos on Sunday to highlight the work that’s happening. If you’re just sort of a commoner and you’re watching this thing, there’s a way you can tell the first story I told, and the second story, and people will go, job well done. We’re doing it. Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Nathan Nelson — We cannot do that. We have to tell the truth about what’s happening. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, well there’s, yeah again, so much there, you know, there’s an unseemly part of particularly the short term experience that, you know, when it comes to orphans, vulnerable children, um, you know it can it can feel like, particularly like in an Instagram world, it can feel like a very strange like why are you really here? Like are you here just to take pictures with kids that don’t look like you? You know as opposed to try to make a difference? So how does a church… So, you know, listen you’ve done a very good job clarifying for us, Okay there’s some real issues here. How do we as church leaders really even think about long-term partnership? How do we how do we investigate or do, you know you know, there’s a lot here. How do we unpack this? What would be some of the initial steps that we would try to figure out best practices. Maybe let’s stay in the kind of orphaned, vulnerable children’s sector. Let’s kind of talk about that. There’s obviously lots of different types of organizations internationally, but let’s kind of keep there. How would we think about that; what does that look like? Nathan Nelson — Yeah, wonderful question. So Faith to Action, whom I mentioned earlier, has really great resources to help you identify organizations that are embodying these best practices. They have a whole list of organizations that they would recommend to you. In addition to that ah, they have toolkits for how to shape a trip, a short-term mission trip that is doing more good and mitigating a lot of the harm that I’ve sort of alluded to that can happen through trips like this to contexts where there are orphans and vulnerable children being taken care of. So um, that I commend to you all as resources. Nathan Nelson — But I’ll say for my personal experience um, the reality is there’s about 20% of churches around the United States support some amount of work happening in a residential care facility. And residential care facility, ie. orphanage, is what I would like to um, just kind of say hard stop. Not the ideal. It’s not God’s design. God’s design was for kids to grow up in the context of the family. And so the work that we desire to move ever more towards is to shift that 20% of support towards family-based care solutions that are really seeking to empower the family to be all that it can be for God-given God’s given call to raise and nourish a child to become all that God created that child to become. And so with that in mind, for us World Relief in Rwanda, Roblealto in Costa Rica, are two organizations that work directly with orphans and vulnerable children. However, their approach is very different. I’ve talked about Roblealto. Nathan Nelson — Ah, one of the things that World Relief has done and we’ve done this in partnership together, actually, is we identified some of the work that was happening on the ground at the time we started was more in support of residential care facilities. And so um, they adapted a curriculum from World Vision ah called ah, Channels of Hope Child Protection. And that curriculum has become integrated as the standard for what they do across all of their work internationally now. And that is all about ah empowering family-based care. Nathan Nelson — And so I can tell you a quick anecdote from our time in Rwanda the way that this looks. It’s very different than in Costa Rica um but equally is is impactful. There’s a young girl that we met who was a child growing up with AIDS and had been ostracized by the community and so the channels of hope child protection curriculum um, that was implemented seeks to empower local church members in their community to imagine who are the who are those ostracized children? And it’s your responsibility to take them in. And so that shift alone in a cultural context in which AIDS would put someone like a leper on the outside actually go, No, we’re called to go and seek that person out and to bring them in. Nathan Nelson — So we met this girl in a home. She had a relative—I believe it was her aunt—who who knew of her and she said, Okay, I can be that biological family caregiver for this child. And so she took her in she gave her responsibility. She was raised – the girl was raising chickens at the time, and she said I contribute to my family because I have my chickens and they lay eggs and my family sells the eggs and they’re better because of it. And so this child went from literally not attending school… Rich Birch — Wow. Nathan Nelson — …was ah, found in the ditch um to now a child who has a role in a family that loves her. And she’s going to school. And you know has the support that she needs to overcome these insurmountable hurdles in her life. Rich Birch — Incredible. Nathan Nelson — So I share that with you to say that’s just another example of this mindset shift that we need its churches internationally to shift our mindset from, Okay I can get my head around an orphanage, right? Rich Birch — Yeah. Nathan Nelson — We give money, people… hundreds of kids come. They’re being fed. They’re being taken care of. And those are the statistics we report back home. To shift that mindset and go, Okay, it’s way messier, way more complicated. Not exactly sure how to tell the story ah here. But that’s equipping and empowering families to go and reclaim their God-given role to care for the children in their lives. And and you can share stories like the one that I just shared with you in Rwanda. It’s a beautiful story, but we have to have that mindset shift. Nathan Nelson — It’s also true that in communities around the world, even at home, believe me at home here in Seattle we have a homelessness crisis that’s just exploding. And you have so many kids who are orphaned, who are vulnerable. And so many parents who are sitting around who would want nothing more than to be able to care for their child. But they’ve been disenfranchised and they don’t have people believing in them that they can do it. And so we need to, as churches, be a part of what I believe is God’s work in the world, whether it’s in Rwanda, in Seattle or whatever you call home, to shift a mindset both on our own behalf and on behalf of the disenfranchised parents we’re talking about that they can care for their kids Rich Birch — Um, love it. Yeah so good. Nathan Nelson — And invest in that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love the the focus on family-based care. I think is is critical. I think that’s, you know, you’ve helped us understand that. Let’s loop back to when you talk about then how does… so um, this is probably the prob… or one of the problems with orphanage-based or residential-based care is it’s like easy to get your head around how do we… or it’s easier to get your head around how do how could a short-term experience fit into that? You know how can we… we can feed kids we can do things we can fix walls that are broken. We can paint buildings – all that kind of stuff. Um, So what does a kind of short-term experience look, you know, what does… I liked your language around standing in the back, trying to find mutual transformational experiences. Pull that apart. Help us understand what does that look like for you at Bethany? Nathan Nelson — Yeah, would love to. It’s been a journey, my friends, let me tell you. Rich Birch — Love it. Nathan Nelson — But I’m super super proud of the work that we’ve been able to do. And I will say everything I’m about to say is not ah, something I personally claim. It’s not something that I think our church can claim. It has been a collaborative effort between other churches like us who’ve been asking the questions we’re asking today. Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Nelson — It’s been a collaborative work with our partner organizations for sure. Um, but we’ve landed on ah what we call strategic visits to our global partners. We’ve intentionally rebranded short-term missions for this purpose. In part we want to be honest and clear about what it is. Short-term mission trip is loaded language. People come with so much baggage around and expectations honestly about what that should or shouldn’t be. So we say our trips are strategic. We go for a reason. It’s a visit. We are going to be there for a little bit and then we’re going to leave. It is a visit. Rich Birch — Right. Yes, love it. Love it. Nathan Nelson — And then to our global partners. So we center our partnership in the name that we use, right? Rich Birch — So good. Nathan Nelson — So strategic visits to our global partner. All of our trips like most short-term mission trips range from about a week to ten, twelve days. Rich Birch — Okay. Nathan Nelson — Um, all of our teams are much smaller. We’re not sending 50 people to the border to you know, paint a house or build something in four days or whatever. We send teams of 5 to 12 people um, annually to our global partners. We’ve found that less is more. Um, this is the right number of people to accomplish the goals that we have. Um otherwise it’s very easy, especially as foreigners, to be an elephant in the China shop. Um, and it’s hard to be learners, to be present in a community, to really um see what God is doing if you’re walking around like an elephant in a China shop. So 5 to 12 people’s been good. Nathan Nelson — Um, and in the time that we well I should preface by saying we spend about um, 3 to 6 months ah on the front end training our teams preparing them. We use books like When Helping Hurts. I’ve also contributed to a book called Reimagining Short-Term Missions. We use that in our time together. And really what this is about is setting our our hearts and our minds around our core objectives for the trip. And our core objectives, chief among them is to support and encourage the staff of the organization and the ongoing work that they’re doing. Um one of our objectives as well is to leverage the unique gifts and assets of our teams—and this is important—in alignment with the ongoing work of the organization. So I can give some illustrations of how this this may fit. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Nathan Nelson — But um and then and then we spend our time in country and then we spend six months meeting once a month after our return. Rich Birch — Wow. Nathan Nelson — There’s a couple key events that we do as a church um, that the teams are integral in communicating—I mentioned this notion of ambassadors—about communicating the work that God is doing in Rwanda or in Costa Rica um to the rest of the church. And we asked them to boil that down and say, why does this matter to everyone in the body at Bethany who will never go to this place? Why does it matter? And so they they distill their experience into a kind of a core discipleship theme, and we allow the global church—Rwanda, the church in Costa Rica—to to be our teacher as a whole church and receive this core message, this core theme. And and we frame a church service around it. Rich Birch — Hmm, that’s cool. Nathan Nelson — So that’s some of what they do when they return. But our time in country… So you know, ah let me use Rwanda as an example. Rich Birch — Okay. Nathan Nelson — When we when we go on our strategic visit to world relief in Rwanda, we are going to do a lot of time spent in the field, we call it. So what we support are church empowerment zones. A church apartment zone essentially is a geographic region in which local churches have been identified and are committed to um, learning from World Relief for how they can impact their local community. Nathan Nelson — So for World Relief, the local church is literally the means by which community development happens. They are not… they’re a very small staffed organization. They have just enough people on the ground to train pastors and their laity to be the ones who do the work. So they have a holistic approach to development that includes everything from agriculture to orphans and vulnerable children. Ah you know and the whole swath – sanitation, all of those things. But it’s the laity and pastors who are trained to do the work themselves. Nathan Nelson — So so churches get united around this purpose. Churches who, if you know the story of Rwanda, were literally killing each other in 1994 and the genocide. And now they’re rebuilding their communities together. It’s beautiful. So when we go, we get to bear witness to that. Um and the United States, I don’t know about you, but um, we have something to learn maybe about unity. Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Nelson — Ah the idea of churches actually working together is pretty radical. Rich Birch — Yep. Nathan Nelson — And so um, one of the things that we do is is we sort of imagine our teams when they go into the field—um, the region that we partner in is called Musanze—is we get to go and witness all the different programs that World Relief is doing through these local churches. So they have savings groups. We’ll go and we’ll sit and will watch. We’ll participate and we come as Bethany Community Church – the church that supports World Relief that’s supporting you and the work that you’re doing. And we tell that to everybody that we meet. And as soon as we build those bridges they go, Okay, you’re from a church too. You’re supporting this work here. We actually know about you. Because World Relief is very honoring to the people who who donate and and are supporting their work. Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Nelson — And we get to hear stories. How has this work impacted you. What was the challenges? What’s the success stories of what’s happening now? We pray together, we celebrate what God is doing. And our teams are sort of taking notes. They’re taking photos. They’re doing video. These different things to sort of capture the stories as they go. Um. Rich Birch — Love it. Nathan Nelson — So we do a lot of that with the different programs with the orphans and vulnerable children programming they have on the ground. And there’s some like after school groups of children that meet together. They learn songs that are about sanitation or, you know, how to prevent malaria and that Jesus loves you, and they’re all sort of mixed and integrated together, and they learn these songs and they’re practical and they’re theological and they’re good. And you know so when we go into it in a context like that, our goal is not to go and you know say okay hey we brought a VBS! Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Nelson — We’re going to put it on. It’s going to be awesome. Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Nelson — We go and we say, we stand in the back and we say, you know, hey we we support this work. We’re so happy to be here. Thank you for welcoming us. We just would love to meet you and hear a little bit from you and just see kind of how you guys do this thing that you do. And so the kids, they get to tell stories. The staff, they get to be encouraged because because we’re sitting there saying, man, amazing! You guys do this every day of the week; are you kidding me? That’s awesome! Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. So good. Nathan Nelson — You know? And we pray together. So it’s that, and and what we’re not doing is picking up a kid and asking someone to take my photo with them, right? Um, yeah, one… Rich Birch — That’s so good. Nathan Nelson — …one ah last little piece I’ll mention about that… Rich Birch — Sure. Nathan Nelson — …is in in terms of of of leveraging the unique gifts and assets of teams, one of the things with World Relief that we noticed is over about the course of I would say the first seven years that we were partnering together, um doing trips like how I just described, World Relief eventually said—and their staff in Rwanda is all Rwandese—they said, hey, the way that you guys do trips is so different and we really appreciate it. Our staff’s feedback is actually they can’t wait until Bethany comes. Nathan Nelson — Conversely, there’s a lot of churches that go on mission trips, and I hate to tell you, friends, the organization that you’re going through, they’re not looking forward to you being there. Rich Birch — Yeah, they’re wincing. Oh no. Nathan Nelson — [inaudible] work. It’s stressful. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Nathan Nelson — They have to mitigate some of the harm that’s happened after you leave. So for World Relief to say so it was super encouraging. And what they said is hey why don’t you guys, your focus has been on our staff. We have a staff retreat every year. Would you want to come and participate? Rich Birch — That’s cool. Nathan Nelson — That has become a staple of what we do in our trips every year since. Rich Birch — That’s so cool. Nathan Nelson — It’s become so popular that other churches who are supporting them in other regions say, hey we want to do that too. So I’ve been able to train and equip other churches like Bethany to go and get to be a part of this staff retreat experience. And in that time is where you really are building that mutually transformative relationship in a deeper way with the same people year in and year out who are exhausted, and called, and passionate about the work that they do. And man, those friendships and relationships, relationship is core but you’re not going to build that kind of relationship in in an hour… Rich Birch — Right, right. Nathan Nelson — …or in a day with a vulnerable kid. Right? That’s not the point. And so that does matter. But it’s right sizing our expectations, putting it in the correct context, and that enables us then um to have had these experiences, which they’ve changed my life. They’ve changed – I know it’s been a huge impact. So anyway I commend that to you all as just a little bit of ah anecdote towards that idea of what it would look like to stand in the back to support and encourage staff of the organization and the ongoing work they are doing on the ground in the context of a long-term partnership. Rich Birch — So good. This has been great. Um, you’ve actually shared with us, which we’re going to link to in our show notes, a ah resource from Faith to Action Initiative called “Short-Term Missions: Guidance to Support Orphans and Vulnerable Children”. I know there are folks that are listening in that are like, gosh we are we’re scratching the surface here. We’re just…this will let you kind of help you take the next step. Talk to us about this resource. What is it? Who would it be good for? I feel like this is the kind of thing that could be hey this would be a good resource to kind of share with our leadership team. Hey let’s talk about this together. Let’s think about what we’re doing on this front. To me one of the things that stood out today from today’s conversation was this idea that 20% of US churches support residential, you know, kids care. That’s 70,000 churches that are potentially funding something that’s harmful for kids, and man, we want to think differently about that. And so help us understand this PDF – how can it help us? Give us a sense of that. Nathan Nelson — Yeah, you know, this this PDF just seeks to consolidate what is a huge breadth of work… Rich Birch — Yep. Nathan Nelson — …around both giving people resources on the frontend, and a toolkit who might say, man, we’ve been supporting a certain kind of care for a long time and we’re interested in at least exploring what it would look like to transition um to something more sustainable. And so with that what I would love to do is commend to you, yes, this PDF and really the organization Faith to Action. They will consult with you as a church. They’ll consult with you as an organization if you want to transition towards supporting family-based care. Rich Birch — Right, right. Nathan Nelson — Um, and I will tell you, offer myself as a resource. in the short-term mission world. You know the work that we support at Bethany is both with orphans and vulnerable children, and really a whole swath of other Christian community development practices. And with that I mentioned the book that I contributed to Reimagining Short-Term Missions. It’s really in alignment with other books like Toxic Charity and When Helping Hurts. And what we’re seeking to do is in the space of [inaudible] orphans and vulnerable children where the stakes are so high, and so so many others that we support in our international kind of mission work as faith-based institutions is bring short-term mission, redeem the opportunity that it can in fact, be hugely transformative. Hugely transformative. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. Rich Birch — Right, right. Nathan Nelson — But we need to do it totally differently. And so that’s the point of the book Reimagining Short-Term Missions. Can we reimagine this in such a way that it is nothing less than a tool ah by the Lord to further his kingdom work in the world. May it be so. Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s amazing. Great. I love the vision you’ve pitched for us today. You’ve really helped us think about this differently. I really really appreciate that. we’ll link to the book as well in our show notes, friends, so you can just scroll down on your phone there and click on that and pick up 10 copies and read it with your team this ah, this fall. You know, I know lots of this is the time of year where we’re thinking about, well what’s going on this winter with our trips and all that. Or if we’re going away in a few months, this would be a great resource for you as you’re thinking differently, you want to think differently about those experiences. Ah well, Nathan, I really appreciate you being here. aAppreciate you being on today’s episode taking time to be with us, opening our eyes a little bit. If people want to get in touch with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online? Nathan Nelson — Yeah, man look me up. You can find us at churchbcc.org and just drop me a note directly. My email ah nathann@churchbcc.org – I would love to interface with anybody. I do kind of it’s it’s it’s not formal, but I do consulting with churches and organizations all the time on their short-term mission practices… Rich Birch — Love it. Nathan Nelson — …and I’d be more than willing to offer myself as a resource to you. Rich Birch — So good. That’s really generous of you. I really appreciate you doing that, giving out your email address and offering to help. Thanks so much, Nathan, I really appreciate being on today’s episode. Thanks for being here today. Nathan Nelson — Yeah.