unSeminary Podcast

Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Greg Curtis and Tommy Carreras. Greg is the Pastor of Guest Engagement at Eastside Christian Church, a multisite church in California, Nevada, and Minnesota. He’s also founder of Climbing the Assimalayas, a website focused on helping churches design an engagement pathway that fosters connection, enables discipleship and accelerates church growth. Tommy is the Head Sherpa at Climbing the Assimilayas. Since Covid, the majority of churches are struggling even more to live on mission. The breakdown of community over the last several decades translates to a lack of connection, without which we can’t make disciples. Greg and Tommy are here to offer free coaching around building an effective connection strategy for your church to combat the decline in volunteerism and other engagement issues. Connection precedes discipleship. // No one makes a disciple out of a disconnected person. Jesus told people to follow Him first and then developed disciples. Without connection, it is impossible to make disciples. Therefore, having a clear assimilation system or engagement pathway is crucial for churches. This pathway should help guests become connected serving church family members, involved in small groups or other community activities, and use their gifts to serve and grow. Volunteer drought. // There is a volunteer drought in many churches after COVID. Think about it and correctly understand the reasons for the volunteer shortage in your church. The four main reasons aren’t because of a fear of COVID now. Rather, people got out of the habit of going to church, they have switched churches, they have dual citizenship between online and in-person services, or a church’s leaders aren’t viewing volunteerism as part of discipleship. Addressing the volunteer shortage. // To address the deficit, Greg suggests taking a look at the volunteer positions and changing commitment levels. Combine and cross-train among teams such as greeters, first-time guest hosts, and guest central teams. Do an all church recruitment from the stage. Each staff can identify positions they need help with and set goals for recruitment. Develop a volunteer engagement cycle. Volunteer engagement cycle. // At Eastside they created a volunteer engagement cycle which addresses volunteers recruiting volunteers and volunteer retention as well. It starts with a huddle that includes a meal where staff can communicate vision and changes, plus do training. At the end is a call to action for the church’s leadership development program. After the five weeks of leadership training, participants either do something fun, like a potluck, or they receive a gift from the church. Creating a flywheel for volunteer engagement addresses the “how” questions around recruitment, retention, appreciation and vision casting. Resources for an engagement pathway. // Greg and Tommy offer a Climbing the Assimilayas online video course to walk church leaders through the process of creating an effective engagement pathway. This six-session program focuses on spiritual formation, assimilation, metrics, processes, and the essential 4 P’s (one place, one program, two placements, two processes). It’s full of downloadable resources and templates that users can plug in and use. And they have also created a community space where participants can ask questions, share ideas, and learn from each other. Learn more about Eastside’s volunteer engagement cycle at eastside.com/people-development. Find out more about the Climbing the Assimilayas video course and get 20% off at www.assimilayas.com/unseminary. Click here to learn more about the Video Course. 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 — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am super pumped for today’s conversation. And let me just tell you right up front this reason why. You might not know—I was telling our guests this just as we were getting launched—I do coaching, consulting with churches, and end up on a weekend, you know, at a different church somewhere else, talking about how we can help their churches grow. And oftentimes I find myself parroting what my friend today is says when I’m out and so talking with other churches. Because I think what they have to say to churches is so critically important. And so today I wanted to get them on and really try to wrestle some free coaching and consulting out of them for you in this next half an hour. So you’re going to want to listen because you’re going to have high value. This half an hour is going to really help you. Rich Birch — So super honored to have my friend, longtime friend, multiple time guest, Greg Curtis, with us, and a new friend, his head Sherpa, Tommy Carreras. Now, for folks that don’t know, Greg is the Pastor of Guest Engagement at an incredible church in California called Eastside. Well, not just in California, but Eastside Christian Church. There are multi-site church with six campuses in California, Nevada and Minnesota, plus online. That’s a whole story in and of itself. It was founded in 1962, and it’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country, and I would argue because of the great work that they do on assimilation. Tommy is Greg’s head sherpa at Assimilays, Climbing the Assimilayas, which is a ministry and website that that helps and really shares learnings on how to really help build an effective engagement pathway that ultimately accelerate church churches growth. So Tommy is the lead head Sherpa on this or the head Sherpa on all this stuff, and he’s a great leader that you’re going to get to want to get a chance to learn from. Welcome to the show, guys. So glad you’re here. Thanks for being here today. Greg Curtis — Awesome. It is so great to be here, and it’s great to have Tommy with us too. Tommy Carreras — It is. Thanks for the invite. Rich Birch — I’m glad you’re here. Greg, why don’t we start with you? Kind of fill in the picture there. Tell us a little bit about your background and then tell us about how Climbing the Assimilayas, which I love, it’s a great title, how that all fits together. Tell us a little bit about the story for folks that haven’t listened to the past episodes. Greg Curtis — Yeah, well, when, you know, I grew up at Eastside, was pastor of a church at launch for 27 years, re-merged the churches in 2012 and when I did, I took on this role and got kind of a blank canvas. Just was prayerful and just trying to to design a strategy that, for what I didn’t realize, was going to be for a church that would become the second fastest growing church in the country during the next few years.Greg Curtis — When we combined churches, we were 3200. Seven years later, we were 12,000. So we still have stretch marks on the church from that kind of quick growth. And I was just chasing it with a connection strategy. When we put it together after the first year, we had a little less than 2000 guests identify themselves. And after that first year we had one out of four come into a small group. One out of seven become a volunteer. One out of fourteen cross a border on an international compassion trip. One out of 20 become a leader. And one of the coolest stats was one out of three got baptized. And… Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Greg Curtis — …nobody was more surprised than myself and Gene Appel, our senior pastor. But we just continued working and developing really the principles of assimilation that uh, resulted in when people heard about the growth, they would call Gene: Gene, how are you getting people there? And call me: Greg, how are you keeping them there? And it forced me to start thinking more critically about what are the what are the the facets or components of an assimilation system or an engagement pathway, as it’s starting to be called more often now. Greg Curtis — What are the facets that transcend scale and culture? In other words, it doesn’t matter what size church you are or where in the world it is, what are the common things? And I, I realized it was what I call the four P’s… Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — …that there’s one program. I’m sorry I said it. Four P’s. It’s one place you send your guests to, one place only to be welcomed. And exchange may be a welcome gift for their contact info so, you can build the relationship. One place leads to one program, which is a special environment that you create where people can connect and by virtue of just coming, they are automatically in two processes. That’s the third piece, two processes, which is a volunteer placement process and a small group placement process. And that lands them, finally, in two placements. So it’s one place to one program that gets you in two processes that land you in two placements. A small group. And a ministry team. Small group says, I have friends, which means I’m wanted at the church. And a ministry team says, I have a job, which means I’m needed at the church. And being wanted and needed are two sides of the same belonging coin. Greg Curtis — So the weird thing is I was using Prezi back then to report on this to the staff, that moving thing, and it had a template of Mount Everest with the summit being your goal. And then you shared all those stats like I shared earlier on the way up and I made a dad joke that just said: So basically we’re all Sherpas helping people climb the Assimilayas so that they can connect with God in community. And it got kind of a laugh bigger than it deserved, but it stuck. Rich Birch — Yeah. Greg Curtis — And and I started really thinking how every church feels like it’s a coast… Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — …to connect with them because they’re a friendly church, which really means they’re friendly to each other. And we had to realize that it’s not a coast for people to connect to a new community. It’s always a climb. And every one of them deserves a Sherpa to kind of put a ladder over the chasms and to direct them to the best path for them so that they can reach that summit, a full connection with God in community. Greg Curtis — So that’s that’s kind of how I ended up because of so many churches literally around the world that I’ve been able to help and and and contextualize, and even learn from them about how the four P’s work in their scale and culture. And so it’s just become something to help churches with so that they’re great at connecting the people God’s bringing to them every weekend. Rich Birch — Yeah. So good. And Tommy, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background. Give us your story and how do you how did you and Greg get connected? How did that how did that magic happen? How did that peanut butter and chocolate thing happen? And you guys are working together. How’s that? How’s that working? Tommy Carreras — Yeah, yeah. You chose my favorite combination there. Peanut butter and chocolate. Back in 2013, I showed up in Ventura, California, as a worship arts resident, which doesn’t really lead to assimilation, you would think, but oh, it did. So I showed up two year old church plant and just had the time of my life – my wife and I both. She ended up leading the kids ministry and I stayed on not in worship anymore. I realized I loved, I loved the 15, 20 minutes on Sunday, and the rest of it I can’t lead a musician to save my life. And that was fine, but I got to stay also. And so we stayed long term and a couple of years later I had moved into groups and then moved into like I couldn’t get anybody into groups and realized I had to own the part that was before that. So I took over the event that was our assimilation process at the time. It was very standard, very small, not very well thought out yet, but it was something. And I said, can I can I run that? Because I think I need to if I ever want people to do this. And I jumped into that. And then I have no idea how I found Greg, but I heard that there was this thing… No, you know what? It was Chaz Robbins, shout out to Chaz Robbins, I think… Rich Birch — Ok. Nice. Tommy Carreras — …might have been. But he told me, Hey, there’s this thing and I’m going to be somewhere near you, going to, you know, Eastside to do this thing on assimilation. I was like, Hey, I run assimilation now; I should go to that. And so I went to it and it was Greg’s very first base camp where he hung out for two days with like 15 of us, maybe from sort of the region. And, well, you know, the guy that told me was from Chicago. So… Greg Curtis — [inaudible] Tommy Carreras — Totally. Yeah. So it was a good crowd and we had a blast. And it was the first time, I think, that you were kind of workshopping these things for a church all at once, like the big download. And I realized—a couple of years ago I transitioned away and I’m in Franklin, Tennessee now doing a couple different things—but I started to realize over the course of time that almost every single thing I did, I was quoting Greg somewhere in my explanation for it… Rich Birch — Love it. Tommy Carreras — …even if it was totally unrelated to assimilation. It was just something that I carried with. Rich Birch — Right. Tommy Carreras — And so we just stayed friends the whole time. And I kind of boldly one day approached him and said, Hey, can I think Assimilayas is on fire in a good way, but I want to throw gas on it. And I got the space and time and desire, so could we try that together? Rich Birch — Love it. Tommy Carreras — And that’s kind of where it’s been so far. Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Well, there’s a lot to unpack here. And I particularly wanted to get you guys on, if I can be honest, I joked about this in the intro. I often find myself talking to churches where I am just, you know, I’ve talked about the four P’s. I’ve pointed people towards your video course. I’ve said, Hey, you know, you really should talk with with Greg and Tommy. They’re they really know this stuff. But, you know, the thing I want to describe here is, I think sometimes we think about assimilation. It’s like it’s like marketing. It’s like it’s like a term that maybe is like it’s a cold term. It’s like, is that is that really what we’re trying to do here? Isn’t it something deeper? And you caught my attention, Greg, when you said, you know, Assimilation, really, it’s about discipleship. It’s about how do we help people ultimately connect with their relationship with Jesus. And it’s as core as that. It’s not it’s not like some kind of, you know, gimmick. It’s at the core of our discipleship process. Unpack that for me. Why why is that true? Why isn’t it just this is just something that big churches should be worrying about? It’s like something that, you know, it’s a it’s a it’s a process that needs to run in the background. But but challenge us on that. Help us think about this from a discipleship point of view. Greg Curtis — Well, you know, something Carey Nieuwhof often says is that Covid was an accelerator. It just accelerated everything that was already happening. And what was already happening pre-COVID, was that churches were we’re just getting less and less effective at their mission of making disciples. Rich Birch — Yeah. Greg Curtis — Majority of churches were shrinking and those that were there, it wasn’t really about growing as a follower of Jesus and representing him to the world on mission. It was kind of preserving their brand or their heritage, or or just their their community and relationships. And so what Covid did was accelerate that to such a point is that now the churches that were doing well before are even doing better. But the majority of churches are struggling even more on mission, you know, making a disciple. And here’s here’s the wild thing is that we were already seeing prior to Covid that the, you know, the the world, the stickiness of community had, especially in western culture and especially in the States and especially where I live in SoCal, right? …has broken down to like the average stay in our community in the same house is two and a half years. Rich Birch — Wow. Greg Curtis — And so what used to be taken for granted, which is connection and community where everybody grew up in a town where everybody knew each other’s aunts and uncles and grandparents and all that heritage. And, you know, you could take connection for granted a lot in generations past. Well, that day has been long gone. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — And so when there’s not connection, what does that mean for discipleship? Well, here’s what it means. No one has ever made a disciple of an unconnected person. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah. Yeah. Greg Curtis — Normally connection precedes discipleship. That is why Jesus said, Follow me. Brought people into connection. And he had concentric circles. The one that we think about the most is the 12. But they didn’t even figure out who he was or begin that journey till about a year and a half into being in that circle. In other words, the connection preceded the discipleship as we know it. There is no discipleship apart from connection. Greg Curtis — And so if you if your church does not have an assimilation system or an engagement pathway, whatever you want to call it that is really clear, and in my view, based on these four P’s, that that expresses these four P’s in some way, it looks unique, it’s called different things even. You know, there could be a program that is different links one week, four weeks, seven weeks, you know, whatever. They can call their welcome center, whatever they want. They can have, as many of them are one of them or, you know, give away this or that or whatever. But it’s it expresses this in some ways – these the one place, one program, two processes, two placements. Greg Curtis — The definition of assimilation is the journey of a person God has led to your church as a first time guess for them becoming a connected serving member. And connected means in a small group. Or if you’re a traditional church, maybe a Sunday school class or Bible class. Or if you’re a seeker church, maybe a Wednesday believer service. Whatever is your community, that’s that, so it’s measurable. And serving means they’re serving. They’re a volunteer at your church and they’re using their gifts and what God has given them to that growth. But the big thing that I don’t think people have seen maybe assimilation or connection or doing better at that as kind of a side dish when we just be a little bit more effective if we could do that or make time for it. I’m about ready to say you won’t be effective at all unless you do it. Rich Birch — Wow. Greg Curtis — Because connection precedes discipleship. Rich Birch — Yeah, that is so good. Tommy Carreras — [inaudible]…all the wrong things. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That that idea, that connection, well it’s true, that idea, that connection precedes discipleship, you know, I think so many times one of the misnomers of large churches, you know, people will say like, oh, like a small I just feel so connected in a small church. That’s just actually not true. That large churches typically do not become large until they nail this thing, until they figure out how do we get people connected, how do we get them to build relationships? And so actually there’s this weird inverse thing – at least this has been my experience. You can feel very connected in a large church because they’ve they’ve had to build an intentional engagement pathway. Rich Birch — What do you have to think about that? Tommy, kind of expand that a little more, pull that apart. Tommy Carreras — You know, it’s so interesting too when you say that about big and small. I had a terrible moment, it was a great moment, but looking back created a lot more stress for me. But it was the right stress. We were in a staff meeting at some point and we were experiencing that same kind of rapid growth. I mean, really every year that I was at Mission, we grew 20%… Rich Birch — Wow. Tommy Carreras —…give or take 1%. And it was just you create a system and then it breaks in half. Rich Birch — Right. Tommy Carreras — And it was great. I like new things. So it was a lot of fun, but it was stressful. And we were talking about some of this and at one point I just said in a staff meeting, Look, I know, I know we’re trying to keep up and I know it’s hard and I know we’re trying to get more efficient and all that. But look, I just think that we’re going to get it all wrong if we don’t get more personal as we get bigger. And everybody kind of looked at me, I was like, they were like, But but that seems opposite. I said, I know. We have to account for the bigness by getting better at this. Rich Birch — Sure. Tommy Carreras — And then I had to go live that out and take charge of it, which was the hard part. But that was that was the right stress to have. And you’re right, bigger the church like often it just means everybody’s working that much harder at helping somebody find their niche. I was in a church recently, to answer your question and frame this up a little bit, I was at a church recently in Baltimore helping them launch a groups ministry, and they were really keyed in on this idea of an engagement pathway. And we had the upside down, you know, the funnel, the upside down triangle picture, and it was on a whiteboard. And we were talking about where these groups fit into that funnel. I said, Hey, you could put groups all the way up top and if you do them right, or you could put them way down here, if you do them right – it’s up to you. Tommy Carreras — And they said, Well, we’re stressed about and they’re trying to lead a multicultural church. It’s Baltimore. It’s like really, really, really diverse area. And they’re trying to bring all of that together and lead a really healthy multicultural movement. We had this great conversation. And we were talking about how the steps for different types of people, and especially in different cultures, are different at the top of the funnel. And they were worried that like, well, what if people get the wrong view of Jesus and it’s not hard enough? What if Jesus isn’t challenging enough at the top of the funnel? And I sat for a second thought, Well, you’re right. Jesus isn’t challenging enough. He’s not stretching your worldview. He’s not pushing you out of your comfort zone. Tommy Carreras — And I went up and I drew a regular triangle. So the inverse of the engagement pathway and I said, I think it usually works like this. And at the top where the funnel is the largest, it was the smallest, narrowest view of Jesus, and that’s fine. And it was Jesus comes all the way to where I am. And that’s a really good thing to learn right out of the gate. That’s massive, right? Jesus shows up in the place you don’t expect him. That’s the story of Jesus everywhere. But then as you get more securely entrenched and rooted in the family, because that’s what this is, right? If the church is the body of Christ and it’s the family of God, as you get more secure in the family, then your view of Jesus can get wider and wider because the risk of following Jesus requires the relationship of the church. And if we can get that right and challenge more and expand their view of Jesus, then it’s at the bottom of that triangle. They’re going, I can go anywhere. I can be with any type of person, I can do anything and I’ll find Jesus there. Whereas at the top it was Jesus comes to where I am. It’s so easy. He finds me. Yes, he does. And then he says, Why don’t you go over there where you would least expect me, and I guarantee you’ll find me there too. But you need the relationship in the church. You need these fully, like relationally secure experience. And that’s why I think it’s so important because, again, we’ll never get the broader, more expansive, more beautiful view of Jesus if we don’t have the firm rooted belonging inside of the church.Greg Curtis — And speaking of relationships and small church and big church, like you were saying, Rich. People have to get out of their mind that has nothing to do with the size of the church. It’s about the culture. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — Because I had a friend go to a church three weeks in a row of 40 people. 40 people. Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Greg Curtis — No one spoke to him. Rich Birch — Wow, that’s terrible. Greg Curtis — Small churches can be cliquey and impossible to break into… Rich Birch — Right, right. Greg Curtis — …and that’s that one certainly was. I had somebody meet us at our guest central angry. It was a woman and and her son. They came to visit for the first time. She said, I vowed I would never, ever visit or attend a megachurch. Why do I feel at home my first Sunday? And she said it that way in that tone.Rich Birch — So angry.Greg Curtis — Why do I feel at home? Like I want to know what is it?Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Greg Curtis — At the end of the day, it’s not a you know, you can be anonymous in a big church and on the outside of a clique at a small one… Rich Birch — Yeah. Greg Curtis — …or you can slide into both of them very easy. And what it is is culture. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — And if you want to change culture, mobilize your volunteers gifting towards the people that God is bringing to your church to help them connect using your unique expression of these four P’s. And I’m telling you, that’s the culture changer. Rich Birch — Okay, let’s pivot in a different direction. Obviously, same, same conversation helped me with some of my some of my church friends. So I’ll paint a picture for you, Greg, and kind of help me wrestle through what kind of advice, what kind of coaching would you give them. Rich Birch — So we survived Covid. That was great. We’re still here. The thing is still running. Like, you know, we’re taking in revenue. We have people attending, small groups are going. But like we, you know, when we came back from Covid, it was like we kind of had to tell everybody, hey, can you can you take up more spots on the team? You know, because we had less people come back. And originally it was because, well, people were freaked out about the virus. But we’ve never really been able to refill our teams. We have a volunteer drought. Gosh, I am not sure how to break that. And now we’ve just been running like this. It’s been here we are a year, year and a half later, and we are it’s the same people and they’re burnt out. I’m not sure what to to, how can an effective engagement pathway help me or what help me diagnose what I should be doing? Help me wrestle through that. Talk me through what we should be thinking about. Greg Curtis — Totally. And by the way, at my church, which historically this has been a real strength of it, we are feeling that same pain. Pre-COVID, 40% of our auditorium attendance every weekend was a volunteer. Rich Birch — Wow. Greg Curtis — 40%. Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Greg Curtis — Coming out of Covid, through the beginning and first half of this year, 15%. Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Wow. Yeah. Greg Curtis — Okay. So I am speaking… Rich Birch — It’s a huge spread. Yeah. Greg Curtis — Oh, my gosh. Huge. So I’m speaking from the pain point along with all your listeners for sure. I think it’s the first thing to talk about is just to correctly understand the reasons for the volunteer shortage. And it’s no longer because people are afraid of Covid and all that kind of stuff. That we’ve gone past that. The four main reasons are that a lot of your core people got out of the habit of going to church during that time and they haven’t redeveloped it. They just got out of the habit. The second is some of them and they know, switched churches because, you know, everything got polarized and they saw your church going the way that they weren’t and so they went to another church. Greg Curtis — But one of the big ones is dual citizenship. They are now a dual citizen of your online campus and your physical campus. And because they’re dual citizens, what they do is they they got used to attending church online. So now that that they like coming back, people who were three out of four weeks coming to your physical church or better per month, three out of four, they’re now one out of four. Right? Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — Because anything that happens. Okay, let’s just watch it at home. Now we can do that. We’ve got used to it. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — So they flick back and forth so there’s not that consistency and they don’t want to sign up for for their old volunteer role that makes them, you know, they’re on that regular interval. And another thing in general is that people aren’t seeing the leaders, the staff of the church at large, aren’t seeing volunteerism as discipleship. Back to that topic. Um Jesus brought them into a group and then sent them out and they still were figuring out who he was, you know, sent them out to serve. I am on this podcast with you right now because in fifth grade somebody invited me to play piano for children’s church. Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Greg Curtis — I am also, once I came to Eastside when I was 14, I got invited to be in the high school band and to co-teach fifth grade boys with the pastor’s son. The only reason I am a pastor today or talking to you now is because somebody invited me into the game. Because volunteerism isn’t an elite add-on to your discipleship with the idea that discipleship is just about Bible knowledge. Volunteerism is one of the steps in becoming a disciple. Rich Birch — Right, right. Greg Curtis — And so we have to see that and cast that vision so that people don’t feel like they’re experiencing following Jesus, just sitting in a pew or staying at home and watching it on TV, per se. So once you’ve kind of outlined those, some of those reasons and you get that paradigm in your head, there are some solutions that we have tried that we’re seeing some results from, and I’m coaching other churches to to participate with me and they’re seeing results from. Greg Curtis — So here’s here’s just four off the top of my head. Some are simple, some are more, more, more elegant. But the first is you can look at your volunteer positions and change some commitment levels. Not you know, it used to be that a lot of volunteer commitments was an every week deal and you just let them know when you’re on vacation. Is it possible that certain ones would do a lot better and you’d get more people signing up if there was a wider rotation? And so we’ve done some of that. Greg Curtis — Another thing is, and I love this one, combining and cross training. Is that, for instance, in my world guest services, but this could apply to anybody in any department, volunteers. We have a team called first time guest hosts who meet people ahead of the services, give them a tour, do all that kind of stuff. We have Guest Central, which after the service they get their welcome gift and share their contact info. We have a parking lot team. We have greeters, we have info counter, all this kind of stuff, ushers, all that kind of stuff. We we realized, and I’ll give Amy Dickinson, she’s my Anaheim campus Guest Service Director, she came up with this and we all took note and when it went across campus on it. She said, you know, the greeters, the first time guest host, and the guest central people all have the same shape for ministry. You know, their [inaudible] whatever. Let’s cross train them so they know how to do each other’s job. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Greg Curtis — And instead of booking 18 people for service, I can book eight. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — And they’ll do it before and after the service. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — That changed the game. That that took a lot of steam and hardship and burnout out of the equation by just combining the team. She combined those three, for instance, into one new team called the Welcome Team. Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — And even though they still have their individual functions, when she schedules them on Planning Center, she can schedule who’s available for which job she needs because they all know each other’s job and they can serve before and after the service instead of just one time because they were just on that one unique team before. I think that that’s a great tactic. Greg Curtis — Another thing we just did, the third of four, is an all church recruitment, because if you’re suffering like we we have been and like most churches, I talked to post-COVID in the volunteer realm, this is a church wide issue, so it deserves a church-wide response. Rich Birch — Right. Ok, good. Greg Curtis — In other words, it’s more than just one department or leave it to the departments. Go recruit more people. You’re on your own. This is a church-wide thing. So the church staff from senior pastor, executive pastor, everybody down to everybody is going to be involved. So every staff identifies which positions they need the most help in and sets goals for the all church recruitment. And you set it up so that everybody that you can publicly say from the stage that you will get a response in 24 hours. Rich Birch — Wow. Great. Greg Curtis — When you make sure that we’re all set up to do that. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — Jake Barker, our Anaheim campus… Rich Birch — Even the youth pastor guys, even the youth team, they got to respond within 24 hours? Greg Curtis — Yes, sir. Rich Birch — That’s impossible, Greg. Greg Curtis — But if you have the right database… Rich Birch — Sure. Greg Curtis — …you can automate some of the follow up. But it’s got to all be, you know, everybody’s got to be engaged and ready. And so Jake Barker, our Anaheim campus pastor, did a sermon series for 2 or 3 weeks called The Goat, which is The Greatest Of All Time… Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — …tying it to when Jesus said, the greatest among you will be your servant. And calling people post-Covid that listen, you were created for this and life is better when you take off the bib and put on the apron. And he did that for two weeks. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Greg Curtis — And when it was done, you could take a card and drop it in a box about what area you want to get, you know, trying to to get plugged in. And we had stations for personal conversations where people on iPads could talk with you about where to get started. Now, we got we added under a little under 300 in like two weekends. And 24% of them were placed in two weeks in their role, fully. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Greg Curtis — The goal is to get at least 50%. It was less than a month ago and our goal is to get 50% by that month. And you might say, Greg, why only 50%? When you do an all church recruitment, you get people motivated in the moment… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Greg Curtis — …but may not be following. So if you get half of them plugged in, that’s awesome. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s huge. Greg Curtis — But the last thing has to do with volunteers recruiting volunteers and volunteers being retained as well. And that is developing a volunteer engagement cycle. I do a lot of coaching on this now, but in short, the idea of it is, and it’s really a flywheel, to use your word, Rich. And that’s one word I borrow from you a lot that you planted in my head. So back, back to… Rich Birch — I’ll let you take it. It’s fine. Greg Curtis — …I’m big on automating things… Rich Birch — Yes. Greg Curtis — …so that I don’t have to think about it. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — And so we created a volunteer engagement cycle that starts off with a huddle surrounding a meal where you envision, communicate changes, do some training. You can even have breakouts. And then at the end of it we always ask the same question: Who wants to grow in leadership? And then whatever your church’s leadership development program is… if you go to my church—eastside.com/peopledevelopment—you’ll see a four minute video that explains it and see all of our prep mods for for every level of leadership, every department. Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — So you can take a look at those. But we just invite people to those prep months and then it’s a five week thing for whatever level of leadership that they signed up for. And then at the end of the cycle, we have leaders take their teams on a potluck or do something fun to build community. Or we pass out a gift every year for appreciation. And so what we do is we go through that cycle every six months. So the one that ends in summer is the one where you have like a social gathering with your team. And the one that ends around Christmas, that’s when we, through our leaders, pass out a gift that the church bought for all the volunteers to just say, we love you. Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — But by doing that cycle of a huddle, leadership prep mods, and then a a hangout or an appreciation gift, go through that in two six-month cycles, we never have to ask the question, how do we envision our volunteers? Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Greg Curtis — How do we get our volunteers to recruit their friends? How do we get them to know about this change? How do we we show appreciation to them? How do we, how do we, how do we, how do we. And I’m telling you, it’s all built in because those dates we always do the same dates, the same month, same week of the same month every year. And it’s just a powerful, powerful way of creating not just a place to serve, but a community to belong in that people will invite other people into because they love it so much. Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — And they take they take care of each other. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. I’m glad you mentioned the prep mods and the people development site. That’s a fantastic resource and we’ll link to it in the in the show notes. Like that alone is gold. Like man, I don’t know, churches, it’s simple, it’s straightforward. It’s not not rocket science, but man, if you could pull that kind of thing together, that would be fantastic. That is, that is so good. Rich Birch — So I want to just lean in on one thing you said, which so you’ve given some examples of this, but just pull it apart a little bit more, which is this whole idea of volunteerism being key to the discipleship process. And you know that we sometimes don’t see it that way. We see it as like it’s we it’s like we think, man, if we could just not have volunteers, the church would be so much better. Like we see it as just like it’s like a sideline thing. How are churches, how can we make the volunteer experience, the serving experience, a more enhanced discipleship experience, Not just people show up and we get something from them. We get free labor from them. How do we make it so it’s a developmental discipleship experience? How do we how can we inject that? You know, Greg, why don’t you give us just another example, maybe another peek into that thinking a little bit? Greg Curtis — Well, one of the things I do in my video course, and we do it with our guests at church, we actually have a video that they watch. It explains um, their journey, spiritual formation in terms of these kind of milestones which they start longing for God, they start relating with someone who knows Him that God puts in their path. They start hearing their issues put in biblical spiritual terms. And by virtue that they start professing a faith even when they don’t know it’s that’s what they’re doing. They get immersed in it, many times baptized. They start connecting the dots and connecting with new community. And then they’re invited to serve. It’s like when a kid in a family says, Dad, can I help you fix the car? And he hands him a wrench. And what they feel like when they realize they can contribute and then they start before they know it becoming a leader, meaning influencer. So they’re the person now who’s relating with the person who was longing at the beginning, you know. And then they start seeing Jesus reproduced just through those relationships, through their lives, and then they become more and more like Jesus, and then they get disillusioned and broken. And then the cycle begins again with a new arena. Greg Curtis — But but what’s awesome about that is that literally when somebody becomes like Jesus, Jesus, one of his main things he said, the greatest among you will be your servant. So how can anyone grow to be like Jesus, who said I came not, you know, not to lord over anybody, but to serve? How can we call it discipleship if service—if we know service is part of your journey when any of us talk about it as far as our own spiritual formation—but if if Jesus said the greatest among you will be your servant and I came to serve, how can we even call ourselves a follower of Jesus, much less any disciple at all, if serving (which is is a the church was a volunteer enterprise in the first century)… Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis —…you know, if we’re not doing that, it’s we’re not being a disciple. We’re not being disciple, period. Rich Birch — Right, Right. Okay. This has been fantastic. Listen, I we like to try to keep these episodes somewhere around half an hour. We’re going long because it’s super important. But I want to push even further. And there’s so much we could talk about. There’s so many different ways that there’s so much we could do on this front. I’m shooting from the hip here, Greg. What percentage of churches do you think in America should improve their engagement pathway? Like is it is this a problem that’s like, you know, maybe 10% of churches? Or do you think it’s like the vast majority of churches? What, just just round numbers – what what do you think? How many out there, you know, that if you were to walk in and say, hey, we could offer you some help, what percentage of those do you think you could offer help to? Greg Curtis — At least 99%. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. That’s a that’s amazing. Which would agree. This is one of those areas. Unpack that a little bit more. What do you think about that? Greg Curtis — The average church prior to Covid—I don’t have a current stat, but I bet it’s much worse—was connecting only one out of 19 people who showed up at their church. Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Greg Curtis — You know, we’re it’s always goes in and out of being a challenge for us, and we really put a lot of prayer and intentionality into our… Rich Birch — Yes. Greg Curtis — …you know, system and our pathway. So the gold standard to me comes from the parable of the soils. Not everybody is going to be equally receptive, but we should at the end of the day, it should average out to connecting one out of four. Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Wow. Which is amazing. Greg Curtis — I don’t know a church, including my own, that regularly or in many cases even comes close to that that vision. Tommy Carreras — That’s how, you know, it’s a real gold standard when the one touting the gold standard is actively saying, and we don’t have that right now. Rich Birch — And we’re not there yet. Yeah, yeah. Tommy Carreras — And we’ve got to keep the pressure on. I think the reality is that it’s really that 100%, because if we’re not pushing it a little bit further than we’re actually drifting away from it. Rich Birch — Right. Tommy Carreras — And if it really is a discipleship goal and what we’re doing is creating capacity for discipleship, because engagement really is creating space for discipleship to happen. If we’re not doing that, then we’re just either saying no to people or we’re saying no to the people that we have. Like nah, you just can’t have more of this. We’re not going to help you get any further. And that doesn’t seem like what we’re trying to do. And it’s not a set it and forget it kind of thing. Rich Birch — Right. Tommy Carreras — I think volunteering, especially the idea of volunteer recruitment, is as such a crucial piece of this. Often it feels like, okay, we dialed in the roles… until like, you know, two weeks from now when maybe you should change something. Probably not that often, but it just always deserves changes. Greg Curtis — Including the standards by which somebody can serve, because you need to have a minimum of 20% of your volunteer positions that somebody who doesn’t even believe in Jesus can do. Tommy Carreras — Yeah. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis —And would be invited to do. Rich Birch — Right. Tommy Carreras — Because well, even…Yeah. And values are more caught than taught. We all know that because we all tell our kids to do what we say and not what we do. But realistically, if we want to teach people about Jesus, we should get them serving like Jesus before we try and tell them how to believe about Jesus. Rich Birch — Right. Belong before… Tommy Carreras — Because yeah, you’ll actually you’ll actually start understanding him better and putting words to the character of Jesus. If you’re already acting like him and being taught to act like. And that’s how we teach kids too. We tell them to do certain things and then we actually fill in the details later. And flipping that, getting people serving before they’re ready, before they’re equipped, it actually puts the pressure on us to make sure they’re ready and equip them, but it also lets us teach them about Jesus in an active way, not just an informational way. Rich Birch — Yeah. Because they’re never going to get the picture if it’s all informational. Rich Birch — Right. Okay, I’d love to pivot in this direction. So there are 4- or 5000 people listening in. If 90% of them need to improve, which is or 99% of them need to improve, man, that’s a huge number. And and they all need to jump on it. And there’s only 52 weekends in the year. There’s only two of you. So you could maybe talk to 100 churches a year. But you guys have gone to the effort of putting together a great video course that I really do hope that, you know, all those 4000 leaders, or at least the churches they’re a part of, buy and engage with. I can’t believe how inexpensive this thing is for the amount of effort that you’ve put in on it. I can’t believe how much value you’ve packed into this thing. I have…and I’ve, you know, they know this. This is one of those things I’ve recommended to other people when they’re not on the podcast. I just I really do think it makes a huge difference. Tommy, unpack, you guys have recently made some changes to the the online course. You’ve kind of improved it, made some differences to it. Kind of walk that through, talk us through what have you changed about the the course? Greg Curtis — And real quick before Tommy shares the changes because he was really instrumental in that. Just what it is… Tommy Carreras — Yes. Greg Curtis — …it’s a six session, 30 to 40 minute session, but with discussion questions to bring with your staff or your volunteer team. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — You know, in six sessions, almost like a small group, you can do that or you can make it a retreat for your staff, whatever. But it covers it’s in six sessions session. One is the role of spiritual formation and assimilation, and the four P’s. Session two is metrics and and processes and how to do that. Then each one is one of the four P’s. One on on your one place, your one program, your your volunteer placement process, and the last one on your small group placement process. Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — And it ties in with our free giveaway that anybody to to our website Assimilayas.com will get a checklist for each of those four P’s and that’s free and it coincides with that. So literally you can hand pages of that out to different people who are doing the course with you. What we’ve been doing it that way for a few years, but then Tommy came and added value like incredibly so. Tommy, tell them, tell them what’s attached to it. Tommy Carreras — Yeah, well, you know, one of the first things that Greg told me was happening was that everybody that was doing the video course was moving so fast toward implementation, because that’s what it’s all about. What I’ve loved about it is that it’s not like, here’s all the theories and here’s all the hypotheticals and here’s all the concepts. It is if you want to implement this thing, here’s the game plan. And that’s what I love about it. And so it’s it’s so strategic and down to earth and all that and it’s easily, easily implementable that he was having all these conversations with people, not to clarify things, not to, you know, fill out information that wasn’t there. But people would say, hey, okay, so I’m doing this thing. We’re launching it in two weeks, but I got to get some eyes on it. Or what did you do for this? Because I’m all the way into the weeds now because we’re doing this thing. So like, can you check this for me? Or can you send me that document? Or can I just need an example… Rich Birch — Right. Tommy Carreras — …I got to convince somebody, but show me the example. And it was all this in the weeds talk. And so what we kind of wanted to do was create some more opportunity for in the weeds talk. But also the people doing these things are amazing. And they’re teaching me stuff that I didn’t know, they’re teaching Greg stuff that he didn’t know about his own system, because they’re just putting it into action in totally new context and just… RIch Birch — Right, different context for sharing it. Tommy Carreras — …rocking it, and it’s amazing. So we wanted to create a space for people to share that kind of stuff and learn from each other, and where we could so easily engage not just with a person at a time, but therefore with anybody at a time. So we created a community space alongside the course that you get access to. And then that is where people can chime in, ask questions, we’re on there, and they’re swapping ideas back and forth. And it’s a really fun and and more and more active place now that we started it. And then we also just changed out the course so that it was full of all those things that Greg kept sharing on Google Drive with anybody that asked. I was like, Hey, let’s just let’s skip that step and just put it all there. Rich Birch — Right. Tommy Carreras — And so like there’s 20-something downloadable resources and we just wanted to flesh it out with all the in the weeds stuff because everybody was getting to the weeds pretty quickly… Rich Birch — Yep. Tommy Carreras — …because it’s all built for implementing as soon as possible. Greg Curtis — Yeah. And to bullet point that, I mean he added 20 plus documents, templates, resources like job description, you know, all of this stuff that people ask us for when they’re done with the course. Well, now it’s just there for, for you to use. Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — Three months free access to that Sherpa coaching community and people are taking advantage of that and that’s awesome. We also throw in a free one-on-one coaching session for their team. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Greg Curtis — And yeah, so we added a lot of value to it. So I’m pretty excited about all the new people this year since we’ve rereleased it that are just jumping on it, using it, and just sharing the… I just get emails that I cannot believe if my heart wants to burst at what what people are saying it’s doing for their church Rich Birch — It’s so great. Again, I think this is a great tool. I love everything that you’ve added to it. I think, you know, I have friends, churches that I’ve worked with that are engaging with you guys and they’ve said the same thing, Man, this is so helpful. And it’s not fluff. It’s not just like big ideas. It’s like super practical , put into place. You know, the people who are quick to apply who say, Hey, I want to just like take this stuff and make a difference in my church, you’ve given them what they need, which is is fantastic, on an area that we all need to improve upon. So I just think this is fantastic. We’d love people to go and pick to purchase it, to join, get their teams plugged in. Where do we want to send them online to actually purchase the course? It’s just at your website? Where is that? Tommy Carreras — Yeah. Well, I mean. Well, let’s let’s make a we’ll make a page on the website just for unSeminary listeners. And I’m pretty sure Greg’s okay with this, but we’ll do 20% coupon just to… Greg Curtis — 20%. Rich Birch — Wow. Tommy Carreras — He’s usually okay with generosity. Rich Birch — Come on. Tommy Carreras — Just because we want to make it want to make it really simple. Now I now have to pay him the 20%. Rich Birch — Yeah, exactly. Tommy Carreras — No, but we’ll make a page. I’m sure you can link it, but it’ll be assimilayas.com/unseminary. We’ll put the coupon code there, and your face and a really nice quote, Rich. And you know… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. We’ll definitely do that for sure. That’s great. We’ll link to that. So if you just look down, you know, in this show notes, you’ll see the link there. Just click on that and, you know, take action, friends. Like it’s, you know, it’s a great course. You know, you’ve you’ve lasted this long in the conversation. You’re definitely interested in it. We would love for you to to pick this up and what a generous offer. Thank you so much for that – 20% just for listening in. And friends, you’re making money on the podcast today. You know, that definitely costs you more than what it what it cost you to get on that to listen to it today. So what a great a great thing for that. And all those extra resources. I know for me when I purchase online courses, that’s the stuff I love is the like let’s jump in on the templates, give me the stuff that I can apply right away. You know, just put it right. It just, you know, find and replace, put my name on it, put my, you know, my church’s name right in there. Super helpful. That’s fantastic. Rich Birch — Well, this has been a great conversation. Again, Greg, this is I think you’re definitely you’re right up there with Warren Bird, with the repeat guest. You’ve come on many times and every time you come, you just always have so many good things to say. So let’s have you have the last word. Any last word is we kind of wrap up today’s episode? What would you say to folks that are listening and that are thinking about these issues? Greg Curtis — Just to remember that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And uh you won’t grow your church—and I say this from detailed data and experience in traveling the world of every size church—that you’re not going to grow your church through your next outreach event or whatever. You’ll have those, and a lot of people may come, but your church isn’t going to grow necessarily from that. A very, like one out of 17 churches actually see growth from their outreach strategies if they’re doing four outreach strategies or events per year. Okay? It’s amazing what those are the birds out in the bush that we always try to get. Greg Curtis — But the one that’s that’s worth more is the one in your hand. That’s the guest that God has led to your church this Sunday, last Sunday, and is going to again this Sunday. That’s the one to connect. And when you connect all of those, your church will grow in number. And and if you see this as part of the disciple-making process, it will grow in depth as well. Rich Birch — So good. Well, I appreciate you guys being here today. Tommy, give us that website again where we want to send people and we’ll we’ll wrap up today’s call. Tommy Carreras — Yeah, we’ll make it assimilayas.com/unseminary. Rich Birch — Thanks, guys. I really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for taking time to to help our listeners. Greg Curtis — You’re welcome. Tommy Carreras — Thanks, Rich. 

Karen Berge serves as the Executive Pastor of Ministry at Flatirons Community Church, a rapidly growing church in Colorado. She discusses how to transform an overwhelmed church culture into a thriving one, emphasizing the importance of trust and alignment among team members. Karen shares insights on navigating the complexities of multi-site ministry and the reflections required for intentional cultural shifts. She highlights the significance of fostering a positive staff culture to better serve communities and meet diverse congregational needs.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today’s podcast is the second of a two-part series (you can listen to part one of the podcast here) with Kenny Jahng, an expert when it comes to using AI in the church, and the founder of Big Click Syndicate. In today’s episode we’re delving into the implications of AI, the fears surrounding it, and how it can be harnessed to help you in ministry. Using AI. // AI has been with us for a long time, used in places such as Google auto-complete, Amazon, and Netflix recommendations. It’s recently gained attention with the emergence of generative AI which works with people to create new things instead of just analyzing and manipulating existing things. Getting past FOLO. // Because it’s so pervasive in terms of its potential application, there are many questions and issues that using artificial intelligence brings up. Most notably there is a fear of looming obsolescence (FOLO) and that it will take over jobs. So in ministry there is the question of what is our responsibility to our staff in terms needing to up-skill or re-skill them to protect their jobs in a way to make them sustainable. Depending too much on technology? // Another concern that comes up is overdependence on technology and its impact on problem-solving abilities and mental health. Are we really putting meaning into what we do, or depending too much on the technology to get it done? What are humans’ purpose in life if AI machines can do everything for us better than we can? Lastly, there are moral and ethical implications of AI and the potential for misuse. Multi-modal in communication. // In spite of these questions and concerns, churches and ministries can learn to leverage AI technology effectively. There are four general buckets to think about where AI can help in your ministry. The first is communications. It may be better emails, social media, newsletters, bulletin inserts, and so on. AI is now multi-modal and does video generation, image generation, and audio generation, so anything having to do with communications is an easy place to envision AI helping. Research, analyze, organize, produce, and improve. // The second part to think about is research. AI can help you brainstorm, come up with topic suggestions, summarize contents, or gather information. The third bucket is analyzing and organizing information. AI is great with taking unstructured data, extracting the core concepts, and organizing it all. The last area is improvement. Because AI understands best practices and pattern recognition, it can help you produce and improve something like discussion questions. Or it can reframe content you’ve created so that it resonates better with different audiences. Train it so it can learn. // Kenny suggests we think of AI as a seminary student intern rather than a push-button solution. It’s intelligent and has a heart to serve, but won’t get things right all the time. Through conversation and redirection, you can train it so that it can learn. Don’t fall behind. // While AI is still in the early adopter phase, it is becoming increasingly pervasive and relevant in various industries, and it can revolutionize ministry too. It’s up to us as the church to not be left behind. The future of AI will accelerate and will provide opportunities for those who adopt, but drag those who don’t. Experiment with free tools. // Try out AI through free tools such as ChatGPT or Claude.ai. Copy and paste something you’ve written and ask it what you’re trying to get across and how it would improve it. Kenny also offers the AI for Church Leaders platform and FaceBook group, which offers learning resources, training, and workshops for church leaders interested in leveraging AI for ministry. You can learn more about using AI in your church through the resources at www.aiforchurchleaders.com. You can also join them on FaceBook to see how people at other churches are using AI in their ministries. 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. This is the second part of a 2 part mega mega episode. We’re talking to Kenny twice in one month which is so good. If you missed our first episode, you need to go back and listen to that. If you’re trying to understand who Kenny is, he’s a good friend, ah, he is one of the smartest people I know, and he is a real expert on particularly artificial intelligence as it comes to the church. Um, and you know he’s a communications expert. He’s got lots to offer. But today we want to focus particularly on artificial intelligence and what what should we thinking about, how should how should that fit into our our our mix. But why don’t we start, Kenny, with AI – kind of help us at a high level. Let’s kind of define some terms. What do we mean by AI? What is that? You know when when we hear that word out there, what does that look like? What is what are some of those kind of at a high level? And then we’ll dig into what what it means to us as a church. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, absolutely. So AI has been the I feel like the media darling of the year. Rich Birch — Oh absolutely. Kenny Jahng — Everybody’s talking about it. Um, it came onto the scene at mass media in November of this past year because this thing called ChatGPT came out from a company called Open AI. Now we need to, you know, reverse ah the the screen a little bit because um, AI has been with us for a long time. AI is baked in everywhere. Whether you use um basic GPS is AI driven… Rich Birch — Yeah. Kenny Jahng — …or Google auto complete, or your Netflix recommendation queue or um, everything that pops up on Amazon. I mean there’s so many places that AI is used on a daily basis that we already know and accept. Um and now there’s this thing called generative AI, this version of generative AI that’s come out. And I think the reason why it’s different um, it feels different or has captured the creative imagination of the general public is it is basically, if you think of it from like a Cliff Notes point of view, um, it’s this machine learning, right? Like all the brainiac things that we associate with algorithms and computers and predictions and all that, you know, crunching data, the machine learning AI, on top of that is layered this thing called natural language processing, right? So these are um, you know, new technology techniques that help computers understand interpret and then generate the results in human language. Kenny Jahng — So you don’t need to understand how to, you know, have you know nerdy glasses and a computer, and a lab code, and be a scientist to figure out how to actually interact with the AI. Now it’s accessible to you, me, and everybody else. And I think that’s one of the reasons why. And because generative AI creates new things instead of just analyzing and manipulating ah existing things um, and it has all started in a text basis, anything that is in the realm of text and language, which is pretty much anything and everything… Rich Birch — Yes. Kenny Jahng — …that’s why it’s applicable to every single industry every single niche… Rich Birch — Right. Kenny Jahng — …every single level of seniority in an organization, whether you’re entry level or all the way up to the head boss, um, it’s applicable to everybody. And I think that’s why it’s taken the world by storm in the last year or so. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. I love ah The Economist, read that pretty regularly, and they had an article about six months ago that made a really good point about AI and that stuck with me. They said we stopped calling it AI once it becomes a normative part of our lives. And so all those things you talked about, GPS, you know even I remember I remember Google autocomplete when it first came out there in like 2010. And I remember being blown away by that. I’m like this is unbelievable. Like it is guessing my next words and getting it right. But but we just take that for granted now now that’s like baked into, like I would be so annoyed if my phone didn’t do that, right? If I didn’t, you know, when you’re typing it’s like I got to type a whole sentence out? Come on. This is I don’t want to do that. Ah, pretty amazing. Rich Birch — Now when we think about AI, what I’d love to do is kind of break this conversation into two parts. One um, you know, what is the impact that AI is having on our people? You know what kind of pastorally what should we be thinking about? And then the second part, how could we leverage this for you know, really what we do as a church, as we think about this? You know, I would think everybody who is in a knowledge working role of any kind, or maybe just a role in general is thinking about AI. We hear this all the time in the press. Like hey it’s it’s impacting it’s ah, part of the writers strike, you know, out in the west coast. And you know you know there’s lots of people are thinking about it. What how should we pastorally be thinking about AI? Kind of what is what is our, you know, the heart of of a pastoral leader?What should we be wrestling with when we think about AI and its impact on our people? Kenny Jahng — Um, there are, again, because it’s so pervasive in terms of its potential application, I think there’s so many questions and issues that AI brings up, especially from a pastor’s point of view. Rich Birch — Right. Kenny Jahng — So I think you know number one is the thing that is driven by fear, right? I like to say there’s a lot of folo in our life. Fomo used to be the word of the year for you know a couple years ago… Rich Birch — Yes. Kenny Jahng — …for social media. Now the word of the year is folo – fear of looming obsolescence, right? Rich Birch — Oooh wow. Kenny Jahng — So we all know the storylines in Hollywood and and and what AI is it’s it’s the terminator. It’s, you know, it’s going to take over the world. And on a real practical basis there’s a lot of fear right now that it’s going to take over people’s jobs. And so job displacement I think is a real concern to our people, um, both our own staff as well as the people in our congregations about their own livelihoods. And so I think there’s a lot of questions there of what is the responsibility of a ministry versus a Wall Street company, right? A Wall Street company will just cut because it’s all transactional. Um, but we look at our own staff and people as humans, and it’s very different than just a bottom line P and L statement. So is is there a responsibility to up-skill them, re-skill, um to protect their jobs in a way that makes it sustainable? So there’s all these questions there. I think that’s one of those big issues. Kenny Jahng — I think another one is um, psychological concerns, dependent overdependence on technology. Um, there is um, is it the movie WALL-E? What was the movie where um, it depict the animated movie that depicted our society where we just become lazy butts… Rich Birch — Yes [laughs]. Kenny Jahng — …and just watching TV… Rich Birch — Yes. Kenny Jahng — …24/7 with [inaudible] the air… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Kenny Jahng — …and just sipping you know, sugar field sodas all day and um. Rich Birch — Yes. Kenny Jahng — So right there’s there’s this sense of over-reliance on technology and AI specifically can you know basically plummet our own problem solving abilities, cognitive skills. And you know and then that leads to our own identity and self worth if you’re not actually doing stuff and and creating meaning and you’re just relying on everything, you’re just coasting along. What does that mean for that and mental health? I think that’s an issue. Kenny Jahng — Um I think there’s spiritual concerns. Um, you know, what what does that mean, um, you know, in terms of our purpose as humanity in life? Do we actually have purpose beyond that? If if AI and the machines can do anything and everything we’re supposed to do better, right? Everything from um, tending the garden, right? Like um I just saw a ah video of an AI robot that can literally go in and clean restrooms um much more efficiently and much more spotless than a human being. Um you know, and so and then there’s morality and ethics and there’s all these things that I think come into play there. Kenny Jahng — Um, and then I think there’s, you know, there’s other concerns that we have in terms of bad actors in our society being able to take this and the sinful nature of it and how that temptation… Rich Birch — Yeah. Kenny Jahng — …will creep into almost every aspect of our life. It’s simple things where um if you’re able to employ AI to do the stuff of your work, um, do you take credit for it, or is there attribution? And you take all the shortcuts um and just submit it as is where you really know that it’s not your best work? Um, that there probably needs to be some you know human oversight or human interaction with the content that you produce, etc. So those are some of the issues. I think there’s plenty plenty more that we can nerd out on if we want to. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting that the bad actors one is it is a fascinating thing to think about. Because I think you know I generally we have been I’ve been a fairly pro-tech person. Like I’m like I think technology on balance has helped humanity. I think… Kenny Jahng — Yeah. Rich Birch — …you know, the last thirty years of development has been um, you know it’s that whole thing, right? It raised people out of poverty. You know, it has it has helped in a ton of ways. But there are bad actors out there who will leverage technology and will leverage this round of technology. And I think there’s a creeping sense of, man, like maybe it wasn’t ah, great idea to hand social media to ah, you know, kids and like the the negative impact that it’s had on them. You know, I have friends in their twenties who are ditching their iPhones and getting flip phones because they’re so frustrated with what’s happened with Instagram to them, and what it’s done to them. And that’s like and that’s not a few people. I know, you know, handfuls of people who are doing that and I you know can see that for sure. Rich Birch — Well, let’s let’s pivot and and think now about what we should be thinking about on how do we leverage this technology? So I’m going to I’m going to leverage you as a consultant, a coach – I know this is the kind of thing you’re helping people all across the country think about this. And um, let’s say I’m a church I’m an executive pastor of a church maybe 1500, 2000. I’ve got a staff team of 15 or 20 people. And I’m thinking how can I leverage AI? What should I be thinking about today? Like like this quarter, you know, I know there’s there’s stuff coming in the future, but what should I be thinking about like even today around how we should leverage it? How should I be coaching my team to think about it? Kenny Jahng — Yeah I think there’s four general buckets that you could think of in terms of where AI can actually help in your ministry workflows. Rich Birch — Okay. Kenny Jahng — One is because it’s all language-based at first it’s ah communications, whether it’s helping you write better emails, social media, newsletters, bulletin inserts—right?—ads. All anything to do with language communications I think is is a good one. Um, we are now seeing AI go um—here’s a nerdy word—multi-modal. And Multi-modal just means… Rich Birch — Love it! Kenny Jahng — …it just means different form factors, different way different outputs. So instead of just text um AI is now you’re going to see a lot more tools, you know, image generation, video generation, audio generation. And so anything that to do with communications is definitely an easy place that you can envision AI helping. Kenny Jahng — Second one I think is actually a ah much bigger benefit and that’s research, whether it’s helping your brainstorm, summarize contents, come up with topic suggestions. Um, you know finding topics that you’re not um, fully versed on but you want to get up to speak quickly and you know get quick teachings on that topic. Rich Birch — No, that’s great. Kenny Jahng — Um, a third bucket is analyzing things and organizing thing. It’s great with data manipulation, taking unstructured data, make it structured, extracting core concepts, reorganizing things, even planning. Recently I just used AI to plan a project. Kenny Jahng — Um and the last one I would say is just improvement. Because AI this generative AI thing that we have right now is basically trained on millions and millions of examples of content that is just consumed, it understands best practices, pattern recognition of all the best things out there. So it can help you improve things like content logic, the logic of your arguments. Um, it could actually help you take it and produce discussion questions and and clarify those questions so it aligns with what you’re trying to message. Um or reframe reframing the content that you have so that it actually um, resonates better with different segments or audiences. So those are I think four interesting ways that you can actually think of it. And at the end of the day I think here’s the one tip I I would say is, you should think of it as not a push button like one button push button candy machine and you know you push the button and out pops out a nice shiny wrapper that you just open up and consume as is. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Kenny Jahng — You really need to think of it as a seminary student intern… Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Kenny Jahng — …thinking that it’s it it’s pretty intelligent… Rich Birch — Yep. Kenny Jahng — …it’s open minded, it’s has a heart to serve but it doesn’t know everything. And as with an intern you’re going to assign it the task. It’s the comeback and it’s not going to get it right every single time. In fact, most of the times it won’t get it perfect. But through conversation and through redirection you are able to train it to go back and do it again and again and again. And here’s the difference versus a irl intern, in real life intern, and and an AI intern has a perfect attitude. No matter how much tasks you throw at it, it just says, thank you. My pleasure. How do I do more, right? And so this is a great way to think of it I think… Rich Birch — Totally. Kenny Jahng — …in terms of having a conversation, develop that relationship with the AI where it’s a seminary student intern in your office. Rich Birch — Yeah that’s so good. I know I’ve had a couple really great interactions where I’m like oh my goodness this is so helpful. One of them was exactly we talk about unstructured data. We had a number of um, feedback on a thing we did. So it was like a forum we sent out to people and it was like give us your comments. And there’s there’s obviously the, you know, we had lots of like rate at 1 to 5, all that kind of stuff, but then there was open comments. And you know, this this can be somewhat unruly because it’s like what do we do with all this? So what what we did was literally took took all that, copied and pasted it it, dumped it into ChatGPT. It informs chatbot chip, very similar to what you’re saying, informed it like hey I’d like you to think like you are you know going to read through all this information and and try to draw out some insightful insights from this. And you know it it started to generate we asked at for statistical, what kind of things we was talking about. What, you know, what were the, you know, what were some of our learnings that we could pull out of it. Now we ultimately went back in and pulled out and tried to find um, you know, which was amazing. It was incredible. Super helpful, very quick. Um and was able to verify, and it was, you know, cut back—I don’t know—hours probably 8 hours of work it would have taken to do that. Um, and to be honest, what would have happened is we wouldn’t have done it. Like you know, we wouldn’t have actually looked at all that customer feedback, or in this case, you know this kind of guest feedback. We just wouldn’t have. Rich Birch — Another one we did we have a program where very similar kind of thing um where we ask we we send kids to camp and um we provide financial resources for them. And a part of what we do is we give them like ah a form to fill out and we ask them to write, we don’t tell them, we asked them if they could write like a little descriptor of their story. So similarly I asked I asked ChatGPT to think like a fundraising expert and I said, here’s a whole bunch of stories from people. Can you pull out the five most salient stories that will motivate and then I gave a description of the donor that I was trying to communicate with. And, man, it pulled out these great stories and then we manipulated them and kind of, you know, massaged them to make them anonymous. It did all that work for us. Again, I could have done that work that would have taken a day, ended up took take maybe 90 minutes to do what would have taken a day. So I think there’s lots of stuff like that if we start to think creatively around how we can help. Rich Birch — Now let me be the the devil’s advocate which is maybe the wrong thing to say as a church leader, but you know there’s something like 20%—I think you told me this—20% of churches don’t have a website. Like they… which is crazy to me. Ah so why should we be moving on to AI like is this is this as foundational as the web? Is this as important as, you know, as that at this point, or are we still kind of in the early adopter phase. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, we are so we are definitely in the early adopter phase of this thing, much earlier than any other technology that’s been released to the public, right? So think about ChatGPT and all these chatbots. Um, it actually doesn’t work if you think about it, right? It it it hallucinates, basically gives you false facts. Um, it actually sends back wonky answers sometimes. It’s not something that Apple would release to the public as is. Rich Birch — No, no. Kenny Jahng — There’s a lot more development that would happen, right? Steve Jobs would kick it back to the engineers and say, you guys have to pull an all nighter and continue to work on this thing. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Kenny Jahng — So we are at the very very beginning. And recently there was a survey I think only 17, 17% of um of adults in America have tried ChatGPT so it isn’t it it hasn’t hit in terms of mass usage. Rich Birch — Which is a lot of people but not a lot of people, right? Kenny Jahng — Yeah, it’s a lot of people, but not a lot. Um, so I think we are at the very beginning. But I do think that this is something that is definitely, again, It’s not VR goggles. It’s not Blockchain. Rich Birch — Yes. Kenny Jahng — We went through those new cycles of fads. And sure there’s definite definite really good use cases for each one of those. But to have this massive penetration across the entire landscape of society, I don’t know if those are ready yet. Um, but I do think that right now we we are in a position, and again you’re seeing it in the headlines, Fortune 1000 companies are adopting this today. If you don’t have something to say about AI to your stakeholders and shareholders in any corporation today, you’re behind. Um and I think that’s really a sentiment of what’s going on. This is here to stay and it’s going to become much more pervasive than we even think. And I do think, you know, I think you said it correctly, at some point it’s going to be normalized. So like all this fad news coverage is going to die down, but it is going to continue to be pervasive in its reach and I think it’s it’s up to us as the church not to be left behind. Because again this isn’t like, Oh you didn’t hop on the VR goggle train, you’re in trouble. No, it’s not like that. This is this is a lot more serious. Um, the future of AI is pervasive, it’s personalized, and it really is going to be something that is going to accelerate and provide opportunities for those that adopt. But it also is going to really drag the people that don’t in my opinion. Rich Birch — Yeah I would totally agree. You and I are men of a certain age. We’ll we’ll say it that way. And I know for me, it feels very much like the early days of the web. Like I can distinctly remember like ’95, ’96 being like oh my goodness. Like this is a huge deal. Like the the idea of being able to organize the world’s information and have it at a click away, you know, when it still felt like you would click on something and you would go to like I’m in Germany now. You felt like you were you know on some server somewhere in, you know, ah some other part of the world. Um, when you look back at what the internet was at that point, it was wonky it was it didn’t work. It was broken. There was no good way to access the information. There was no centralized way to it was an organized well um, but man it made a huge difference. I personally I would I totally agree with you that I think it’s in that this is at that same kind of level of of um… Kenny Jahng — Yeah. Rich Birch — …you know, of importance. I know sometimes, Kenny, because this is what I love about you as a friend, Kenny, you’re such a good early adopter on so many things, and like I remember you were like a Google glasses ah you know early adopter. And you were like, this is revolutionizing! And I’m like they’re goofy. This is they’re terrible. No one’s ever going to wear those. And what I don’t want people to do is to is to put this in that category because it’s not. It is this is not that kind of thing. Um, it’s ah it’s a massive deal that we need to be… You know, you don’t need to be thinking about it all day long, but it should occupy a small part of your brain and think how can I what how can I leverage that? Kenny Jahng — Oh absolutely. Yeah. Rich Birch — I think in the same ah, in the same way that church’s progressive growing churches that are making a difference would not operate without a database, you would never think like oh we wouldn’t have a church management system, the same is going to be true for AI. You’re going to have some sort of interface that’s going to help you engage with your people both from a communications and a connection point of view that’s going to be AI, you know, driven for sure. 100% that, you know, and I can say that without, you know, without you know any hesitation for sure. I think it can be hugely important. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, and I think here’s the difference. Ah between this and other “technologies”: um AI isn’t just about tech. Rich Birch — Right. Kenny Jahng — It’s more about building a culture of learning and adaptability, right? It’s more about having a growth mindset and really asking that innovation question of how might we take the best of AI to apply to what our mission and objectives are and what we do in our work? You don’t have to be a techie to leverage AI; you just need to be a problem solver. Rich Birch — Right. Kenny Jahng — Right? And so again, if you go back to that seminary intern type of thing like if you had a team of robust interns to be able to do a lot of, you know, ah work for you at your disposal, what else could you get done in your ministry? And I think that’s a little bit of the sentiment that people have to have here. Rich Birch — Totally true. That’s so good, dude. Well anything else, you’d like to say as we kind of round the corner here and and and close this bad boy down? Anything else you’d love to that we should be thinking about or wrestling with as we think about AI? Kenny Jahng — Um, yeah, I just I just hope that everyone takes that first step of trying it out. There’s so many naysayers. Back in the day when I was a church online pastor, right? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. It’s it feels there’s it feels very similar where there are a lot of darts being thrown at you if you are an advocate for AI in the church. Rich Birch — Sure. Kenny Jahng — Um, and what’s interesting then and the interesting now is there are a lot of people that actually haven’t tried the actual thing that they are objecting to. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kenny Jahng — And I would just say go out and try it and there’s a lot of free tools out there like ChatGPT there’s Claude.ai and I think you’ll be pretty amazed. I think a really small step that you could take is literally copy paste something that you’ve written. Maybe it’s an email to somebody or um, part of your sermon that you’ve written, or just some content. Take copy paste some content put it in there. And just ask it a couple of questions. Um, tell me what I’m trying would you share with me and summarize what I’m on trying to get across in this piece of communication, and how might I improve it to bring more clarity, more um, you know, compelling call to action? Um, how might I actually um make it more understandable? Just ask some basic questions and see what it comes back with, and have a conversation. They’re called conversational chat bots for a reason have a conversation about that thing you just copy pasted into. Just just one simple step. And I think that will give you a lot more understanding and hopefully inspiration in terms of how to actually potentially use this for more things that you might have thought it could be used for. Rich Birch — So good. Well, Kenny, I really appreciate this. I we didn’t talk about this before he came on but I do want to send people to aiforchurchleaders.com. This is a was a conference an online conference that you put together. Tell me about this. Ah you know what this was amazing. What an incredible resource for people. I think this could be a great starting point for people who are listening in saying, hey, here I could kind of dive deep dive and kind of get up to speed quickly. Tell me what what is aiforchurchleaders.com? Kenny Jahng — Yeah, so we, you’re right. We kicked it off with a um, a large event with thousands of church leaders. But it has turned into a ongoing learning platform. It’s a place to actually get regular learning, training, etc for you and your staff. So if you want to learn how to leverage area for a ministry, whether it’s specific tools like ChatGPT, or Jasper, or Midjourney or any of these geeky platforms that you’ve heard of um, there’s some really accessible training in there as well as advanced stuff. And then we have monthly workshops and webinars to do that. And I think one of the best sections inside AI for Church Leaders is section that deals with leadership topics regarding AI adoption. So if you’re really early on this AI adoption curve and you have some basic questions, that’s the that’s the place that I would start with inside that says you know as ah as a church leader should I trust AI? Um, you know is it something that I could use for my volunteers and my staff? Um, what are the ethics surrounded? What’s the future of it? You know what are some of the questions that a pastor should be asking? Things about AI policies, all those leadership topics is a great way to start. That’s not the nerdy, nerdy stuff um, that actually I think would be helpful for any church leader that’s listening in today. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. So again, friends, Kenny is ah a real expert in this area. He is, as we’ve been joking, the bishop of AI. He’s really on the forefront helping us understand and piecing this together. It’s a bit of the Wild West, but it’s going to make an impact on, you know, so many people so many, you know, ministries. It’s going to help us reach more people. I know there’s so many church leaders that are listening in or saying, listen I want to lead a kind of ministry that makes a difference, that sees more people get connected with Jesus and sees those people grow closer, and I do think that AI is going to help us do that. And you know I don’t think we should be afraid of it I don’t think it’s like oh it’s going to It’s the end of the world or whatever. Um, you know we know how the story ends and He still sits on the throne. And so let’s use all this technology. Let’s find a way to say, hey, we can use this to you know to to reach more people see them grow closer to Jesus. So thanks so much, Kenny. Where else do we want to send people if they want to track with you online? Ah how else do we want people to connect with you ah, just as we wrap up this two-part episode. So good! Kenny Jahng — Absolutely. I’m I’m available on socials if you Google me, it’s ah it’s not hard to find me. um the other invitation I would say is join our FaceBook group. We have a FaceBook group under the same name… Rich Birch — Yeah. Kenny Jahng — …AI for Church Leaders FaceBook group. Um, we’re growing rapidly. We crossed 4000 last month… Rich Birch — Yes. Kenny Jahng — …likely we’ll I think we’re going to reach 5000 members this month. And it’s just a it’s a hyperactive group. And it’s a place for people, again, people that have never even tried AI if you just want to lurk and listen and see what people other churches are doing, I think that’s one of the best places to learn about AI from ministry. Because in the news you hear about how AI is being used for lawyers, and manufacturing, etc. But here in that group you’ve literally got thousands of peers learning together. Rich Birch — Right. Kenny Jahng — And so the AI for Church Leaders FaceBook group I think is a great place as a next step. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks for being here, Kenny. Appreciate you, appreciate your friendship, appreciate all the ways that you help so many people. Thanks for for being on the show today. Kenny Jahng — Thanks, Rich.

Kenny Jahng, founder of Big Click Syndicate, shares insights on how churches can make the most of the last 45 days of the year for charitable giving. Giving as a spiritual discipline, overcoming obstacles, and leveraging churches' regular interactions with donors are discussed.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Scott Freeman, the Pastor of Community at Grace Church in South Carolina. As a church expands, there is a constant tension to manage between growth and deep community. Grace Church has experienced significant growth over the years with ten campuses and over 250 community groups. Today Scott shares about their discipleship-driven model of groups, and how they train leaders while creating environments conducive to life change. Discipleship-driven. // When asked about what Biblical community looks like at Grace Church, Scott explains the community groups at the church are for covenant members only and are based primarily on location with a heterogeneous mix of people of different ages and life stages. Being discipleship-driven means they don’t only study the Bible, but also incorporate activities such as prayer, service, fellowship, and exploring how to live out the core values of the church. Groups are campus specific. // There is a benefit to worshiping on Sundays alongside people that you’re in a group with during the week. The staff is intentional about putting groups together based on factors like area of town and shared experiences and gives a lot of thought to which people would work well together and learn from each other. Check in every three years. // Grace has discovered that having community groups meet for about a three year life cycle is a good timeframe for groups to develop vulnerability and allow individuals to get to know each other. When the group winds down after three years, it also allows new leaders to emerge and step up to lead groups of their own. Making changes every few years in the groups brings in new ways of thinking and keeps people from becoming too comfortable. Ministries in addition to groups. // As the church has grown, Grace has added other forms of Biblical community besides groups which offer special levels of care and work to complement the community groups. Some of these programs include Re|engage to support marriages, Re|generation recovery ministry, divorce care, and grief share to help individuals with specific needs. Rather than competing with community groups, these ministries have enhanced the personal growth and vulnerability of members and the community groups have benefitted from it. Group life pastors. // Each of Grace’s ten campuses has one or more group life pastors who are responsible for a certain number of groups at their respective campus. The group life pastors work with the group leaders to equip them, offer support, and share best practices. Keep groups engaging. // Curriculum for the groups includes sermon questions, reflection on past teachings, and a look ahead to the upcoming teaching. The church also encourage groups to serve together and provides access to additional curriculum through a church subscription to RightNow Media. The church works to keep the format fresh and different to encourage engagement, allowing group leaders to try different approaches so the groups don’t become predictable week after week. Train group leaders. // Grace’s community group leaders are trained through an onboarding class called Equip. It asks in-depth questions about their lives to assess the leaders’ willingness to be vulnerable and share their own struggles. The church believes that if leaders pretend to have it all together, it hinders transparency within the group. In addition, Scott hosts a monthly podcast for leaders, covering various topics related to leading groups. You can find out more about Grace Church at www.gracechurchsc.org. Plus, explore various training links and documents below: Equip Hub // Contains resources Grace Church uses to train leaders and disciple people in their church. Shepherding Values Hub // Contains relevant resources to equip community group leaders in shepherding effectively in their role. Shepherding Values Overview // A review of the five guiding principles for discipleship at Grace for group leaders. 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. Man, it’s going to be a great conversation today. Really excited for this discussion – we’ve been looking forward to it for a while. We’ve got Scott Freeman with us. He’s a part of the leadership of a church called Grace Church in South Carolina. This is a ten campus church. There’s fantastic, they’re doing all kinds of amazing things that we’re going to get into dive into today. They exist to make mature followers of Jesus Christ there. It’s really a family of congregations in the upstate region if I’m reading my geography right. So, Scott, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Scott Freeman — Great. Thank you, Rich! Good to be here. Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you fill in the picture? Kind of tell us a little bit of the Grace Church story, kind of help me understand more about the church. Scott Freeman — Sure. Yeah. The the church was planted in 1995 so we are coming up on 30 years. I actually moved to the Greenville area in 2000, and became a member. I actually am not seminary trained. I was teacher and a coach previously. And so I attended the church as a member from 2000 until 2008, and then came on staff in 2008. So I’ve been on staff now in a variety of roles. All kind of in the world of biblical community for 15 years. Rich Birch — Love it. There’s been a lot of change, you know, over that time frame particularly in this area. Scott Freeman — Yeah. Rich Birch — Why don’t you kind of give us a sense of that? Scott Freeman — Sure. Rich Birch — What’s what’s changed and evolved since, you know, that when you started even. It’s kind of interesting. Scott Freeman — Yeah, when I when I first started attending Grace in 2000 there were probably 200, 300 attendees on Sunday mornings. Rich Birch — Yep. Scott Freeman — I think there may have been 10 community groups total. Um by 2008 when I was asked to come on staff, we had grown—it was still just one campus but—we had about 60 community groups… Rich Birch — Wow. Scott Freeman — …and one pastor was overseeing all of those. Rich Birch — Wow. Scott Freeman — And obviously he was feeling spread very thin. Rich Birch — Yes. Scott Freeman — And the decision by our elders was to add three group pastors to kind of work underneath him and take 20 groups each so that we could equip those leaders to then disciple their group members. And so so in 2008 we’re at 60 groups and one campus and now fifteen years later we are at 10 campuses across the upstate and we have over 250 community groups. Rich Birch — Wow. Scott Freeman — So we’ve definitely grown significantly since since 2008. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. This I’m really looking forward to this conversation because um Grace is one of these churches that is an outlier in a lot of cases. You know, we’re still seeing two thirds of multisite churches aren’t getting beyond three locations. Ah, and it’s it’s less than 1% get beyond ah six. So you know you you are in the rare, you know, rare air on that front. And then the same on the community groups thing, like is you know wide penetration. That’s I’m really looking forward to learning from that. But why don’t we start with kind of… Scott Freeman — I sent you… Rich Birch — Yeah sorry, go ahead. Scott Freeman — It is interesting you say that with the with the three to four. Um I would say that was probably the hardest jump, was and and I was part of that on the biblical community side. I was not ah necessarily in in a lot of the decision making on that, but that was probably the the fork in the road where it was the most difficult. Going from 7 to 8, 8 to 9, 9 to 10 has not been nearly as difficult as that um, when really a central staff became necessary and the 3 to 4 was probably ah, a difficult jump. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. You ah at that phase you go from being a church with campuses to a church of campuses. Scott Freeman — Mmm-hmm. Rich Birch — Like you have to really you you can kind of fake it for a while there and like just everybody work harder. Ah, but that doesn’t scale. You know to 4, 5, 6, 7 locations for sure. So why don’t we start with um maybe we’ll start at the granular level. So when you ah when you define um, like a ah biblical community, what does that look like, what what are kind of the group’s experience look like? Help us understand that. Scott Freeman — Sure. Um, most of our groups are made up of—and I will say our groups are covenant members only—um and a lot of the kind of the way we structure groups works for us. I would, you know, not say it’s right for everyone. I don’t think it’s a right/wrong thing but we choose to make our groups primarily discipleship-driven. Not necessarily outreach and trying to allow, you know, new folks to come in through groups. So with that being in mind it is for covenant members only. Ah, typically it is a heterogeneous mixture. We do have some kind of life stage specificific situations in different groups. But for the most part it’s a mix of marrieds and singles. It’s a mix of different stages of life. Scott Freeman — Groups meet typically for about a 3-year life cycle. And um, they do a mix ah curriculum wise of questions that we provide from the from the teaching, weekly teaching. And um, we ah we asked that groups not just be a bible study where the group leader ah re-teaches the weekly teaching, but that they pray together. They serve together. There is fellowship. There’s bible study. Um, they talk about how to be generous with their time and their resources together. It’s all of our core values hopefully focused on as equally as possible during that group meeting. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I’d I’d love to dig into a couple of those things. You know, the the whole um, you know, heterogeneous/homogenous group question. Why has Grace fallen down on the like, Okay we’re going to… so so are the groups then more kind of based on the region that you’re in? It’s kind of more, you know, like hey we’re in this part of town kind of thing? Is that is that what they look like? Scott Freeman — Right. Yeah, yeah, um, you know, we do group our groups are based on the campus you attend. So rarely would there be someone from our downtown campus in a community group with someone from our Pelham campus. It is campus specific because we do feel like there is benefit to worshiping alongside folks, you know, on the weekends that you’re in group with. And then there are some just logistical challenges, night of the week, that people are able to meet, um area of town. We are very intentional though about placing groups together. Um, you know, we pray through that process. We do we are strategic and think this couple would be great with this couple. Ah, but there are a lot of times where we make placements and we have folks come and say, man, that was so awesome that y’all knew I needed someone who had also lost their mom because I’d lost mine. And we had and we had no idea. You know and it was just… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s God’s grace, right? Scott Freeman — Absolutely, absolutely. Rich Birch — That’s yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s cool. Scott Freeman — So um, so we are intentional about that. And there are some again logistical things. But for the most part it is area of town because we do want people in community with folks they’re going to run into during the week… and Rich Birch — Yeah. Scott Freeman — …and be on PTA with, and and see in the grocery store… Rich Birch — Love it. Scott Freeman — …and those type things. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Um, now the 3-year life cycle that stood out to me. What do you mean by that? Kind of pull that apart. Scott Freeman — Sure. Rich Birch — When you’re when you’re talking about that with people, what do you say? Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, now I will say that is not written in stone. It’s not, you know, an absolute. Rich Birch — Okay, sure. Scott Freeman — Um, we have kind of found that groups need long enough to obviously get vulnerable and transparent with each other, ah, get to know each other. If you um, you know, break up a group sooner than three years, it may not have time for that to happen. We’ve also learned that at typically around the three year mark um, things start to get a little comfortable, maybe a little bit stale. And often there are folks in that group that need to be leading their own group. And unless you kind of kick them out of the nest, it’s it’s not going to happen. Scott Freeman — And so we’ve kind of, you know, found that 3 year sweet spot of starting to have conversation with the leaders um to say, hey you know, you’re nearing the end of year 3; you probably have some folks in your group that could lead their own now. We’re not going to scatter that group in 8 different directions. Typically it would split in half, maybe split into thirds. But um, the the 3 year change up does kind of, you know, give people a restart. Scott Freeman — Um, I know we had a group that had been together for 4 years and when I first came on staff. Ah my boss was like you know I really feel like you’ve got some people in your group that need to lead. It’s probably time to to break it up. And and I understood the rationale behind it. My my wife was not happy when I got home and told her that these folks that we’ve been doing life with for for 4 years, we need to kind of go in different directions. But I did realize when we ended that group and started a new one just how predictable. I knew who was going to make the joke. I knew who was going to answer. I knew who was going to say what. And it challenged me as a leader and it gave us the new ways of thinking. And some folks went out from that group and um and led their own when they when they really needed to. And so they would have just stayed comfortable had we not have we not ended it. Scott Freeman — Um and and we’re still friends with those folks we we haven’t lost community with them. Rich Birch — Sure. Scott Freeman — Um, so you know so again, 3 years is kind of when we start to have that conversation. There have been groups so we’ve ended after 2, just because it wasn’t going well. Rich Birch — Sure. Scott Freeman — There have been some that really started to get traction at that 3 year mark and we let it go 4, and maybe even 5 or 6. So it’s it’s not a hard and fast rule. But that’s kind of our our standard. Rich Birch — Yeah rule of thumb. It’s kind of like that. That’s interesting. That’s interesting. Scott Freeman — Right. Rich Birch — That the other thing I heard you say… did I did I hear you say that groups are 14 to 18? You start up… that seems a little large, that’s larger than what I hear in kind of, you know, when you read a book on how to run a groups ministry… Scott Freeman — Right. Rich Birch — …you know, they they won’t say that. Scott Freeman — Yeah. Rich Birch — So is what did I hear that right? Scott Freeman — Well if I said, if if I could create the ideal group, I would say it’s probably 12. Rich Birch — Oh yeah, okay, great. Scott Freeman — Um and but A, we run short on leaders… Rich Birch — Yeah. Scott Freeman — …and so spaces are at a premium and we have to you know expand. There’s also just the we our community especially you know the city of Greenville, lot of industry, a lot of people coming and going. There’s a lot of folks that ah, you know, um are coming in and out. And so there is some attrition in groups. And so we know that if we launch them at 16 to 18 they probably settle in at 12 to 14. So we do probably we launch them a little bigger than we want them to end up, just knowing that in a lot of cases that will happen. Rich Birch — Smart. Yeah, that’s smart. That’s that’s ah that’s a great idea. That’s that’s compelling for sure. I totally get that. Um, now talk about, so the church as a whole has experienced tremendous growth over these years. And ah there can often be this tension of it’s the like get big, go deep. You know how can you really? I know, you know, this but like, you know, can can people develop actual community in a fast-growing church? Talk me through how the group structure has tried to support that. You know, the growth that’s been happening kind of in the church as a whole. Scott Freeman — Yeah, I I will say and I’m speaking on behalf of our governing elders here… Rich Birch — Sure. Scott Freeman — …who make the decisions on when to launch campuses and that kind of thing. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Scott Freeman — I think one mindset on adding campuses that has been very helpful is that we don’t ah see an area and think, man, we’d really love to have a church in Spartanburg. Or we’d really love to have a church in Anderson. We have a group of people who are driving 30 minutes to one of our campuses from one of those spots, and it is a no-brainer to say, well let’s find a location and provide a campus in this community where people are already coming… Rich Birch — Yes. Scott Freeman — …you know, to to our church. And so it’s really um, giving them the opportunity to worship locally and invite their friends versus them having to commute to church on the weekend. And so I think that has helped. Um and then, you know, when you do have 10 campuses, you have 10 growth centers of people going out and sharing in their community about life change that’s happening. And um, it’s really, that’s where you kind of see the exponential growth instead of um, you know one site you’ve got 10 smaller sites that are growing at the same time. Scott Freeman — And so that has that has really helped. But there has to be depth there and there has to be real life change or it’s not going to be sustainable. And I think people see that um, you know, we’re intentional about teaching the bible. We’re intentional about discipling people and helping them no matter where they are in their christian faith when they first come to Grace, helping them grow in that and grow deeper. And I think people respect that and want to be a part of that. Rich Birch — Love it. Um, do you guys do any other, you know, things that might look like one of these groups but aren’t really one of these groups, like classes, or you know other types of biblical community? Scott Freeman — We do. And that change, it really was a mindset shift for us probably 6 or 7 years ago. Community group was the answer for everything in in our minds. Rich Birch — Yep. Scott Freeman — You know, if you’ve you’ve got marriage issues, well, you know, get in a community group. You having financial struggles? Well, get in a community group so people can know you and help you work through that. Parenting issues? Community group. And we started to realize that there were and are specific issues that people need real intense focused help in a certain area. And so I guess the first idea or thing we launched was Re-engage which we got from Watermark in Dallas. And we launched that as a marriage ministry. In some cases people did that alongside community group, but in a lot lot of cases it was kind of a off-ramp from community group to really focus on their marriage for a season, get healthy, and then come back into a community group. Rich Birch — Right. Scott Freeman — Um, and that went really well. We have since added Re-generation Recovery Ministry. We have divorce care. We have grief share. We have a number of different care and recovery forms of biblical community. And we’ve really had to communicate while community group is the most common and probably the um the form of community that a big big percentage of our members are in, it is not the normal, or the the right form and all these others are are lesser. Um, you know in fact, ah in a lot of cases. People are getting very vulnerable and growing tremendously in Re-gen and then they’re bringing that to their community group after the fact, and our groups are getting better as a result of these other ministries. So we’ve we’ve had to view it as not a competing thing, but as the complementary form of Biblical community. Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. And you know, I think that is addresses a practical concern, particularly at school, you know you know, as are as as [inaudible] not as school, as they scale you know as they grow you end up, you know by just by the sheer number of people, it’s like man we’ve got a giant number of people who are going through a marriage issue, are going through you know, recovery. And and so um, you know, if we were a smaller church we could maybe have ah a person in one of those scenarios in a group and kind of um, you know, just deal with it. But at scale you’re like, man, we got to figure out how to how to do that. That makes total sense. I love that. That’s that’s good. Can you… Scott Freeman — Yeah, and and when when a couple is struggling, say in their marriage or someone is dealing with an addiction or you know any any felt need like that, and it’s week after week after week, not only does it they don’t feel like they’re getting what they need from the group, or the group feels like they’re monopolizing the time, and it really kind of shuts down. You know my wife and I might be on the way to group and have a minor conflict and think, you know, that’s something we should probably bring up to the group, but I mean it it would seem silly compared to what that other couple is going through. So we’re just going to stuff it and stay quiet. And so it can really kind of derail um, what the group wants and needs to accomplish to disciple everyone. So um I think those are the cases where some of these alternate forms of Biblical community become really effective and appropriate. Rich Birch — Yeah, could you talk me through what what the staff structure looks like. So I think you said you had 250 plus community groups. Scott Freeman — Right. Rich Birch — How are you supporting those from ah ah, you know, what’s the staff structure look that provides care and, you know, direction for those groups? Scott Freeman — Right. Um, every every member every covenant member at our church has a responsible pastor. Rich Birch — Okay, wow. Scott Freeman — And so um, they and they know they know who that is. And so um, at our smaller campuses there um is a campus pastor and a groups pastor. And so those um you know our smaller campuses may have 12 or 15 of those community groups. And so that one groups pastor spends a majority of his time working with those um leaders over those community groups. And then ah really his his main job is to equip those leaders to then do ministry within their group. He will get in involved and meet directly with members of those groups at times, but really to replicate himself and to um equip those leaders is is the primary focus. Scott Freeman — And then so on some of our larger campuses, our Pelham campus is is our largest, we have four group life pastors um, who again still have 20 groups or so that they’re responsible for and they cover those eighty groups at that campus in that same way. So every group leader has a pastor that they have his cell phone number. They can call him any time a day. We have group life women’s ministers who are able to care for the female leaders. All of our groups right now are, because they are heterogeneous, they’re led by couples. Um, and so you know the men are meeting with with the men, the women are meeting with women, and that our staff is there to support those leaders as well.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s ah, that’s cool. Love love that. Um, when you thinking about you know the curriculum. How so you said it’s a mixture of sermon based and then and then are groups do like then picking other curriculum, you have like a set of other things that they can do? Is that what that looks like? Maybe unpack that a little bit. Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, we encourage groups to, again, find times to serve together. So there are weeks where they’re completely outside the home and they’re going and and serving somewhere in the community. We do provide sermon questions every week. And and we do that uniquely. We have a couple of reflection questions on the teaching that they’ve just heard and then we have the passage that is going to be taught the upcoming week with a few look ahead questions to that. And so it really kind of creates some anticipation of what’s to come. Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool. Scott Freeman — And it really kind of minimizes the group leader’s desire or a tendency to maybe try to reteach what, you know, you’ve just heard. Rich Birch — Yes. Scott Freeman — So it’s a little bit of a look back and a look forward. It gets people involved with the reading plan, and hopefully create some questions that they may have coming into next week’s teaching, and they come ready to to learn. Um, we do ah, you know, we ask if they’re going to do a book or something kind of outside of the norm that they run it by us just to um, you know, make sure we’re okay with it. But you know if we’ve got somebody in a leadership position, 99% of time when they bring something up, it’s it’s great. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, totally. Scott Freeman — Um, we have we have a church subscription to Right Now Media. So um, we we have group leaders that use curriculum from that at times. Um, we do encourage our leaders, you know, if there’s anything that you are um so dependent on, like we should forget to do the sermon questions one week and not it not be a tragedy. You know… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Scott Freeman — …leaders ought to be able to move on and because things are going to happen. Um, and so we tell leaders, if you’ve done the sermon questions every single week for the last two years, you need to take a season and just stop. Rich Birch — Right. That’s a good insight. Scott Freeman — So the main the main thing… Yeah, the main thing is keeping it fresh, not getting locked in on one one way of doing it. We also encourage groups to just change just the group dynamic. So one week ah, you know, come together as a group but then have the guys go in one room and the ladies go in another. Another week maybe just break up into small groups of four. Because the more you can change the the environment, change the people that folks are around, you never know which setting is going to allow someone to confess something, to bring up something that they’ve been scared to bring up. And so we just want to create as many different environments as possible so that life change can happen through that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s cool. I love that. There’s obviously, you know, I love the direct connection, you know, that every group leader or couple has, you know, some people that they can interact with. Love that; I think that’s fantastic. Obviously a really great support in the background from that that point of view. But what other training, if I’m a community group leader, what other training am I getting kind of ongoing ah throughout the three years that I’m journeying that maybe like, do you do classes for them… Scott Freeman — Right. Rich Birch — …or you know, what does what does that look like? Scott Freeman — Yeah, we have a group we have ah ah, an onboarding class called Equip and it’s as much vetting as it is training. Rich Birch — Right. Scott Freeman — We we have very um in-depth questions, I kind of icebreakers that are asking, um you you know, hey what’s the biggest challenge you’ve had in your marriage in the last year? What is your biggest failure as a parent? And we just want to see are you willing to share, are you willing to be honest about your own struggles? Because we don’t want you to go into a group as a leader and act like you have it all together, because you don’t. Rich Birch — Right. Scott Freeman — And that’s not gonna promote, you know, transparency in the people that are in your group as well. Um, you know we even asked leaders, hey imagine that a year from now you’re disqualified from ministry. What sin pattern would it be that that got you there? Rich Birch — Wow. Scott Freeman — And just make people think through um those type real, you know, struggles and questions. So we do um, a lot of that a lot of, you know, shepherding ideas. We use a lot of Paul Tripp material with ah Love-Know-Speak-Do um. Ah so we train them um, before we launch them as leaders with material like that. And then once they are leading I do a monthly podcast about just a um, a topic related to leading groups. It might be struggling with you know your group struggling with attendance. It might be how to lead the singles in your groups well. It might be um, you know, ideas of service projects that you can do, different things. Um, so just each month I put something out like that. It goes to all 250 leaders. And then our group pastors are in constant communication with those leaders, whether it’s a quick conversation on a Sunday morning between services, or a huddle where the pastor gets 5 or 6 group leaders together and they just share, hey here’s a challenge I’ve got. How would you handle that? You know, and just sharing best practices and ideas. So um, we we definitely don’t want to train them and say, all right call us if you have any issues, and not be proactive about continuing… Rich Birch — Ah, good luck. Scott Freeman — Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, you’re ready – go for it. Rich Birch — Ah we’ll see in 3 years. Scott Freeman — Yeah, that’s right. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, okay. That’s cool. That’s really cool. Now when you look to the future, what are some questions that are on the horizon for you – stuff that you’re wrestling with, thinking through, hmm like I wonder, you know, maybe some things that you’re, you know, thinking about – do we… should we change up, that kind of thing? Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, you know, I think we’ve had tension on um, how much freedom to give leaders and then how much to legislate. Um you know, I think if we if we give too much direction and “you have to do this, you have to do this, you have to do this”, then our more capable leaders feel stifled and are kind of like, you know, you really you could get anybody to do that. Rich Birch — Yeah, you don’t need me. Scott Freeman — I’ve just become, you know…that’s right. Um, but then some of our our newer leaders who might need more support. Um, and so I think finding that balance of providing enough direction and support for them without stifling the leaders. You know, we’ve got a lot of leaders who are CEOs during the week in their company, and then telling them how they have to take attendance, or how they have to do this. And and giving them some freedom in that and just, you know, releasing some of that to them and say, hey you’re a leader. We trust you we want to come alongside you and help you do that. But I would say that’s a challenge that um that we’re wrestling with. And then just constantly trying to keep the leadership pipeline going and making sure that we have enough leaders. If we do, you know, if God continues to bless us and we do continue to grow in the way that we have, that we have enough leaders to to lead those folks that that God brings to us in the in the years to come. Rich Birch — Love it. Do you guys do like um like mult… like kind of entry points during the year like groups are starting kind of in seasons or are they just starting all the time. Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, we do start I guess there are two main, you know, beginning of the spring, beginning of the fall. Rich Birch — Yep. Scott Freeman — Our smaller campuses have a little bit more flexibility because the membership class or the entry point might have 4 or 6 or 10 people coming at a time versus a bigger campus that has, you know dozens coming at a time. And so there is some flexibility and our smaller campuses may launch a little bit more often. Um, we have we’ve tried events, like we did ah a group launch… Rich Birch — Yep. Scott Freeman — …um which started to feel a lot like rushed or speed dating… Rich Birch — Okay, yes, yes. Scott Freeman — …I heard some people call it. Um, and so we’ve we’ve tried to not make it feel like that, but also be intentional and help people find a group as quickly as possible. Um I think we we felt more tension when community group was the only form of biblical community to get people in quickly. Whereas now that we have men’s and women’s ministry, and we have Re-engage, and we have Re-gen, there are a lot of ways that folks can get connected ah in the window of time between them arriving at the church and then actually getting placed in a community group. You know, even if they show up in February and we’re not launching groups until August, there are plenty of ways to get connected to get them involved and and disciple them before they get into a community group in August so. Rich Birch — Interesting. This is this been fantastic. It’s like been a great, I got a page of notes here. Look it’s like looking up under the hood of everything that’s going on at your church. I love that. Just as we’re kind of coming to the end here, is there anything else you love to share to kind of give us a sense of what’s going on in your, you know, Biblical community at the church? Scott Freeman — Um, I mean I would just say all the ideas and things that we used or most of it we’ve we’ve stolen from other people, you know. Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah for sure. Scott Freeman — Especially in the early in the early days we we met with a ton of other folks to figure out what it looked like to um, to do groups. And and some of that stuff we’ve held onto, some stuff we’ve changed. Um I will I will share some documents with you that we can, you know, include… Rich Birch — Oh great. Scott Freeman — …include in the show notes that folks can um you know use and take and change and do whatever they want to with. Rich Birch — Love it. Scott Freeman — But ah you know, if we can pay that forward and and help folks um I know when we first went to Watermark and saw the scale that they were doing Re-gen and Re-engage, I kind of thought there’s no way we’ll ever do it at this scale. And I know that there are people that look at our church and think the same thing. And I would just say you really you can scale any of these ideas to whatever size you’re at currently and it can um it can still work. So. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. What what would be some of the documents or maybe talk us through what those would be because so people could, we’ll put them in the show notes, friends, we’ll link there. Scott Freeman — Yeah. Rich Birch — But give us a sense of what some of those are, or or you know one that’s particularly helpful you think oh this could be really good for church leaders. Scott Freeman — Sure, the um the Equip class that we use for onboarding leaders and training them, I can include kind of what we do for that. Rich Birch — Love it. Scott Freeman — We did take those Paul Tripp ideas and expand them into just some shepherding values that we want our leaders to um, you know, to love their groups, um, you know to know them thoroughly, to love them patiently, to speak wisely and direct biblically, and um, you know, to pray throughout all of that. Um, and so there are some ah things that we’ve created around that idea that I can put in there. Rich Birch — Love it. Scott Freeman — And um, yeah, just just a lot of you know again things that we’ve stolen from other churches through the years… Rich Birch — Yes, love it. Scott Freeman — …and kind of tweak to make our own. So. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good; that that’s so helpful. I really appreciate that, Scott. That’ll be that’ll be a great resource for for folks to take a look at. And you know, I know we’re always looking to kind of learn from each other and that’s a great a great way to do that. So thank you. Well, I really appreciate you being on the show today. If we want to send people somewhere online to track with you, track with the church, where do we want to send them to do that? Scott Freeman — Yeah, our website is gracechurchsc.org – sc as in South Carolina and yeah I would encourage we have you know teaching on there. We have a lot of our curriculum from our men’s roundtable, from our Ezer women’s ministry that ah, that might be of help. And um and all of our staff I know that one of my favorite things is meeting with folks from other churches and… Rich Birch — Totally. Scott Freeman — …and sharing ideas because we we learn as much as we um share, probably more. So um, ah feel free to to reach out and email and we’re we’re here to help any way we can. Rich Birch — That’s wonderful. Thanks so much for being on the show today, Scott. Really appreciate you. Thanks for being here, man. Scott Freeman — Yeah, thank you. Thanks for what you do.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week I’m excited to be talking with Stephen Moore, the Director of WinShape Camps for Communities. WinShape, an organization started in 1985 by Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, started as a college program and has since grown into five different ministries, with focuses on professional development, marriages, foster care, college discipleship, and summer camps. WinShape Camps for Communities is a traveling day camp program that partners with churches to bring camps to communities all over the US while spreading the gospel of Jesus. Are you looking for a fun and engaging way to reach more families in your community with the gospel? Want to create opportunities for college-age kids to gain ministry experience while developing their leadership? Listen in as Stephen talks about the importance of children’s ministry in shaping the future of the church as well as the transformative power of camps for campers, their families, and the summer staff. Children are the future. // Children’s ministry is more than just a place to keep kids occupied during services. The future of the church is children; the gospel is for them too. WinShape Camps for Communities wants to help build local, engaged church members from a young age in the places they visit. They don’t water down the gospel at the camps so the kids who attend can come to a knowing relationship with Christ. Engaging kids. // The mission statement of WinShape Camps for Communities is to glorify God by creating experiences that transform campers and families with the message of Christ. Don’t just entertain kids by showing videos in your kids ministry, but invest in discipleship and be intentional to engage them as they learn about Jesus. Form a bond. // WinShape Camps for Communities is about embracing all-out-fun and all-out-faith. By spending time with the kids at camp and investing with them in the activities they enjoy, the staffers build trust and form a bond them. Then when the time comes for the WinShape staff to share the gospel, the kids are ready to open up and listen. Camp is a setting where the gospel can come alive in a way that it doesn’t in day-to-day life at home. Bringing camp to you. // Not everyone can afford or feels comfortable sending their children to overnight camps. WinShape Camps for Communities partners with churches and local businesses to bring camp to a community. The traveling camps provide a safe and fun environment for children during the summer, while also incorporating the gospel and faith into the activities which range from sports and crafts to science experiments. Work with others in your community. // WinShape Camp for Communities is for local churches in a community, not just one church by itself. WinShape hosts a big event every January and invites host churches for a rally in Atlanta. There is a three-day event with guest speakers to teach and empower church leaders. They are also invited to bring up to eight people from different churches with them. When they go back home, these churches are given information on how to engage with other businesses and churches to invite them to partner with the traveling camp. WinShape brings everything. // The churches partnering with WinShape don’t have to provide anything other than volunteers to help connect with the kids. WinShape Camps for Communities bring everything with them, including all the necessary equipment and resources for the activities. Everything they do ties back to the gospel, including flag football, where they take breaks for short devotionals. By providing volunteers from the local churches to work with the kids, the kids will see familiar faces if their family decides to attend services at the church. An opportunity for young adults. // Working as summer staff at camps is an invaluable experience for college-age kids as well. Regardless of a young person’s area of study in college, working at a camp contributes to their personal and spiritual growth as well as helping develop their leadership skills. Plus, the impact of working with kids and families to make a difference in their lives is priceless. You can find out more about WinShape Camps for Communities at www.winshapecamp.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! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody; welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today. You know it’s summertime and you know when you think of summer you think of camps, and so today ah we’ve brought you a bit of a different look on leadership on something that all of us I really do think should be reflecting with. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today will be absolutely no exception to that. Super excited to have Stephen Moore with us. He serves as the Director of WinShapes Camps for Communities, a traveling day camp program that brings camps ah to churches all over the country. Ah where he’s ah he’s served with WinShape camps for over sixteen years. Stephen has recruited literally thousands of summer staff to bring the gospel of Jesus and even more more ah to even more campers and families. Super excited for ah Stephen to be on the show. He’s he’s also excited for the local church. And we’re looking forward to learning more from him today. Thanks for being here today, Stephen. Stephen Moore — Happy to be here, Rich. Thank you for having me and excited to engage with you about camp and about what we’re talking about this morning. Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you kind of ah tell what did I miss about WinShape, tell us about WinShape folks that don’t know about about you guys or your mission, kind of talk us through that a little bit. Stephen Moore — Yeah I’d love to. Um, WinShape was started in 1985. It was ah founded and started by the founder of Chick-Fil-A, Truett Cathy um, and it originally started with the college program at Barry College in Rome, Georgia, and then soon after a overnight camps for boys was added. Then the next summer an overnight camp for girls was added. And so about forty years ago WinShape got its start and today it has grown into five different unique ministries. So we focus on professional development. We focus on marriages, focus on homes, we focus on college discipleship. And specifically where I work we focus on summer camps. Stephen Moore — So we have five overnight summer camps in North Georgia. We we have teams in Costa Rica and Brazil right now doing summer camps in those countries. And then we do traveling day camps all over the entire United States as you mentioned a little bit ago, and that’s what I have the opportunity to specifically work with – our traveling day camps. Rich Birch — Love it. This is so good. And we were just before we got recorded, today we’re recording this literally on like the opening day. And so the fact that Stephen is sitting down with us for a half an hour is pretty amazing. So we really appreciate uh your time with us. I know you’re passionate about this. Rich Birch — And, you know, I was about a month ago just maybe over a month ago I saw an interesting article entitled “Pastors, Children’s Ministry is More Than a Place to Keep Kids Occupied.” And I sat up and I was like, Ooo, that is so true and resonates with so much we talk about here at unSeminary. And so I wanted to get Stephen on to talk about that. That’s a bold title ah, because you know you’re saying maybe there are churches that are just keeping kids occupied. Ah what’s the opportunity that maybe some churches are missing by just kind of having a lower view of kids ministry? Talk us through that. Stephen Moore — Yeah. I mean I think we see it even in scripture in Mark when Jesus says hey let the little children come to me. You know, the disciples and others are trying to stop that and he he sees and he knows that, hey no, the gospel is also for for children. It’s for everybody. And so we see it in scripture and we believe that at WinShape. Um, we often say at WinShape, we are not the local church but we are for and support the local church. So if you’re a pastor listening to this, we thank you for the ministry you’re doing, and we want to come alongside and support you in that. Stephen Moore — Um, I think the sad reality is there are people leaving the church. Um, and we’re seeing that and so we want to focus on them and we want to engage them. But we um also know the future of the church is children. You know, seven year olds today are going to be twenty-seven year olds in 20 years. And we want them to be plugged in and invested in their local church. So what we want to create and help build are local engaged church members. And we think doing that at a young age is important. So we do not water down the gospel at Winshape Camps. No, we boldly preach and teach the gospel. And we want kids to come to a ah knowing relationship with Christ um, while at camp and then while in their local church. So, a way that we do that is is through our mission statement. We glorify God by creating experiences that transform campers and families with the message of Jesus Christ. And so we would hope that churches do that with their children’s ministries. Hey, don’t just engage them. Don’t just entertain them. Don’t just throw on Youtube videos and have fun. No, engage them with the message of Jesus Christ and let church be a place where they are able to hear and learn about Him, and ultimately hopefully grow in a relationship with him. Rich Birch — I love that. And you know one of the things we’ve seen about growing churches that are making an impact is they are next generation obsessed. They’re thinking about kids. This is a key piece of the puzzle that you can’t just kind of phone this in. You’ve got to, you know, think about it strategically, you have to invest in it. You’ve got to ah, give great resources towards that. Why do you think you know maybe some churches struggle with this. Maybe it’s the you know more the investment, the finding people. What is the what’s the sticking point there that maybe holds ah you know, churches back, or the churches that you’ve maybe engaged with or seen out there that have, you know, maybe struggle with this? Stephen Moore — Yeah. I think um I think some of them is the resources and the volunteers. You know, in order to have a ah thriving children’s ministry you need to have folks volunteer and engage with that. And so I know that that’s that’s something even at WinShape we’ve struggled the last few years and engaging and hiring our summer staffers. Um, there’s so many options for people. Um, and we think working at camp, I mean any camp not just WinShape, is one of the best ways you can spend your college summers. I did it for four summers and I grew so much in that. So I think that’s one reason. Stephen Moore — And I think too ah, it is work. You know, I think there is an element of oh well, we could just make children’s ministry or our children’s program really simple and entertaining and it won’t take as much like discipleship and investment. But what we do at camp is work. It’s tough work but it’s so rewarding. And it’s so life changing that it’s worth that additional investment in going that, what we would say WinShape, that second mile. I’m going that second mile second to be able to engage with people and invest um within them in a deeper, not just entertaining, but in a life-changing way. Rich Birch — I love that. Well WinShape, ah you know, your reputation as an organization is just so positive. You know, high quality. Um, you know, people that engage with WinShape are just like, Man, they do just do such great stuff. And one of the things that um I’ve heard people say and then when I was doing a little bit of research I see you actually talked about it, or I read on your website, you talk about all-out-fun and all-out-faith, which I just love that. I love this idea of, hey, our our ministry is both of those things. Can you talk us through that? What does that look like, because man, I think that’s something our churches could learn. How how can we have all-out-fun and all-out-faith at the same time? Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s that’s a great ah great question. I think what we do and what we try to do is we try to build trust with children. We try to allow them to, you know, play soccer or flag football, or go to gymnastics or painting or crafts or fast food or wacky science. Those are just some of our our skill offerings. We go out out of the rec field and play games, and we listen to what the children are interested in because we know if they are able to engage with that counselor, if they’re able to engage with the volunteer, there’s going to be a trust built. In over 3 or 4 days um then when that staffer wants to sit down and and tell them about the gospel, that kid’s going to be more engaged to listen because they know that that staffer or that volunteer cares about them. Stephen Moore — Um, and so I remember sitting down with a dad last year he came and he told me he said, thank you for the ministry you do. It’s so meaningful because we teach our kids these things in the home each and every day. But when they hear it from a 22 year old college student that cares about them, that invest in them, that wants to engage with them in whatever that activity is they hear it in a different way. It’s a reinforcement of what it’s taught at home and so that child is more open and receptive to the gospel in that setting because they’re a place they’re they’re doing activities they’re not normally doing. And they’re engaging in fun in a way they normally don’t. And so their faith can grow while at camp. Thats at any sort of camp – at our overnight camps, center day camps. There’s a lot of great Christian camps across America. We we think WinShapes one, but there are other ones too that I think it’s a camp is a setting where the gospel can come alive in a way that maybe doesn’t in ah in a day-to-day activity at home. Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve I’ve joked and now you didn’t say this; I’ve said this. So don’t this is don’t don’t take this in a negative way. But I’ve joked in other settings because I’m a huge camp booster. I think it’s really important for for families to engage with. I think it’s really important for, like you say, young leaders – it’s an incredible place to work, whether it’s WinShape or other places. But I’ve joked in other contexts I said, you know, like in a lot of churches ah Jesus has like a bit of a moldy basement and and maybe like ah some you know flannel board or something like that. But when you go to camp, Jesus there, man, he’s like super engaging. He’s got all kinds of fun activities. He’s going to, you know, it’s bright and sunny out and you’re running around outdoors, doing something amazing. What an incredible context for the message of Jesus to ah, you know, to resonate. Just incredible. I just think that’s it’s one of the things that makes camp ministry just so important, I think for kids particularly. Rich Birch — What what does it look like? So I have to be honest until I engaged with you on this, I did not know that WinShape did day camps. So this is like a learning experience for me. What does that look like when you, you know, you end up partnering with a place, and what kind of activities – how does that all work? Give us a sense of what that kind of looks like. Stephen Moore — Yeah, of course. And and you mentioned a few minutes ago camp started this morning so yesterday… Rich Birch — Yes. Stephen Moore — …our five overnight camps kicked off. So parents were dropping off yesterday afternoon, and they’re on day two.Day camp started this morning at 8am in ten different communities across the US. Rich Birch — Wow. Stephen Moore — So um, we have 10 different teams and those teams we just finished two weeks of training together. Rich Birch — Okay. Stephen Moore — So we brought all our WinShape summer staffers together. We professionally and intentionally trained them in their activities, in safety, in gospel presentation, and we send them on the road. Um. Stephen Moore — And so we what we understand is not everyone can afford an overnight camp experience, nor are parents comfortable. You know some parents might say, hey, I’m not ready to send my first grader away for a week or two, but I do want them to experience camp. So what we said is, well, let’s take camp on the road. Stephen Moore — Parents are also looking for things to do with their children while not in school during the summer. And a safe and a fun environment is important to them. We agree, but let’s put the gospel and faith in it as well. Rich Birch — Love it. Stephen Moore — Um, and so that’s what we do. Um so we partner with local businesses. We partner with local churches. And I think if even Florence, South Carolina we’re doing camp there in a few weeks. 25 different churches come together and send kids to camp there. Rich Birch — Wow, wow! Stephen Moore — It’s not just one church. It’s WinShape Camps for Communities. We want to be for that whole community. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good. Stephen Moore — Um, and so we’re doing camp… yeah… in Texas and Florida and Illinois, all the way out to California and New Mexico and Oklahoma and everywhere in between. So um, we come in, we we set up on Sunday we go to church, we attend church at that local church. We set up all day Sunday and then Monday morning through Thursday camps from 8 to 5 and then Fridays our big Friday family fun day. So we we bring in all the parents, all the cousins, and the grandparents, and we feed them lunch. And then our day wraps up, our team packs up, and they go to the next location. Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Love it. Stephen Moore — But I want to focus real quick on… Um, yeah, it’s it’s a fun… Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s clearly university, college students doing that. That’s a grinder. What an incredible summer though. That’s so fun being on the road. Sorry didn’t mean to cut you off there. Stephen Moore — Yeah, no, you’re good. You’re good. We um, we want our staffers to build really intentional relationships with the campers and invest in them. But more importantly, we want local church volunteers there as well. Because we know on Friday we’re packing up and we’re headed to the next town. We we intentionally ask the church to provide a volunteer for every 10 campers. Rich Birch — Okay. Stephen Moore — So if there’s going to be 380 campers one week, we want 38 volunteers. Because on Sunday morning when that kid maybe comes back to church for the first time, which happens so often because the parents are like, Man, my child had such a fun week. We don’t go to church. Maybe we should try this place out on Sunday morning. They come on Sunday morning. They’re going to see familiar faces because there’s 38 volunteers that were with us all week are going to be there on Sunday so that child is going to immediately feel that safety and that comfort. And they’re going to even want to be more involved there. So that’s something we also do. That that volunteer component is really important to us. Rich Birch — Can you give me a sense of the like the scale, the scope of a kind of typical WinShape Day Camp? Like is this, like you mentioned you know, almost 400, 380 kids – is that kind of typical, is that what that is typically looking like, or are they larger smaller? Stephen Moore — Yeah, well… Rich Birch — What, you know… Stephen Moore — Yeah, we’re… Rich Birch — I know they’re all different, I get that. Stephen Moore — No, that’s a good question. We um, our average camp size is usually around 250 to 280 campers… Rich Birch — Yep, okay. Stephen Moore — …um per per our day camps. Our community camps um we will have some that are going to be closer to 550 campers… Rich Birch — Wow. Stephen Moore — …and then we’ll have some that are closer to 175. So um we bring in either a team of 20 to 25 people, or if it’s a really large camp. We’ll actually send two teams to one location. Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense. Stephen Moore — So this week we have ten unique locations. Next week we might have a really large location so we’ll send two teams there. So we’ll have nine unique communities. So this summer we’re doing 84 weeks of camp over the next nine weeks. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. And um, that’s incredible. It’s so cool. What when at the kind of community level. So is that I talk me through how churches are working together on this. I love that idea of like, hey, maybe there’s a group of churches that are trying to leverage this kind of opportunity. What what does that look like maybe maybe if you could have your like perfect hey this would be amazing if we did this everywhere that would be incredible. What does that kind of look like? Stephen Moore — Yeah, you know it kind of goes back to our name WinShape Camps for Communities. We are for communities and for the local churches in that community, not just one church. So what we we do a big event every January where we bring in a lot of our host churches. We call it Host Rally. We fly them in um, to Atlanta we do a very like 3-day training. We bring in speakers, guests. We want to enrich and empower them. We know church leaders and pastors can sometimes, it’s a struggle. And so we want it to be ah a very faith-fi like encouraging weekend but we also want to equip them to do camp. Stephen Moore — So we invite them to bring up to up to 8 people, if they want, from different churche and a leadership team. And so it’s not just First Baptist Church or whatever church. It might be 3 or 4 churches coming to that event. And when we when we send them back home, we encourage them, we help them, we resource them: Hey, this is how you can go engage with other businesses and other churches and invite them to come to camp. Um that that church I mentioned a few days ago or a few minutes ago, 25 different churches from that community. That community had over 80 families attend camp that don’t regularly attend church. Rich Birch — Wow, interesting. Stephen Moore — So there might have been 120 families that do. There’s 80 families right there that don’t attend or engage with the church that sent their child to a church for five days during a week. So they’re gonna be so much more likely to say, hey, I want to get plugged in because my child had an awesome experience at camp. They came back changed. We hear that so many times from parents – the child I dropped off on Monday isn’t the same child that I picked up on Friday afternoon; something changed this week. And what we think is, it’s the gospel. We think it’s Jesus. They were introduced to him and engaged it with him in a way they’ve never had before. And so then that parent’s like, you know what? I want to try that out. So we think camp is such a great tool to help local churches connect with people in their community that they normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to do with. Rich Birch — Love it. How, at the kind of participant or at the camper level, how do WinShape Camps for Communities differentiate against other… like what kind of activities are you doing and what is that like? So again, I can picture your overnight camp experience and I’m trying to picture how do you get that into the back of a bus and move it. Stephen Moore — Yeah. Rich Birch — Um, you know what does that look like? Stephen Moore — Yeah, sometimes people are like… Rich Birch — You can’t bring those nice hills in Georgia; you can’t move those nice hills in Georgia you can’t, you know, to everywhere across the country, you know. Stephen Moore — That’s right, we’ll figure out a way to do that. Um, so I think some people are like, is it just VBS on steroids? And we’re like no, it’s it’s more than that. So you know, we just sent our teams out. They travel in two 15-passenger vans, two 26-foot moving trucks, and an additional pickup truck. So that’s what’s great for these churches. You don’t have to provide anything; just provide us some volunteers and some space to do it. Rich Birch — Wow. Stephen Moore — We bring everything with us. We bring our sound and our tech equipment. We bring LED walls. We bring an incredible, impressive set with us. Um we bring in 18 different skill offerings from flag football to soccer, to wacky science to archery. You know, we bring in targets and bows and arrows, because we think these campers maybe don’t get an experience this every day. So Let’s do something new for them. We haven’t quite figured out how to bring the horses on the road with us. So horseback riding’s just at our overnight camps. But rocketry – that’s something we bring in… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so fun. Stephen Moore — …little kids get to shoot off rockets into the air at camp in that skill. So um and again camp is from 8 to 5, and we often hear parents tell us—and the reason this is fresh on my mind is because I just let a session at this at staff training a few days ago—that it’s their child’s favorite and best week of the summer every single year… Rich Birch — Sure. Stephen Moore — …and they can’t wait for us to come back to the next year. And we know that’s not just unique to WinShape camps. We know that that that’s just camp in general. It’s such a special unique thing, but we want to be really intentional about what we do at camp and have it tie back to the Gospel. So if we’re taking flag football, we’re in that skill for 50 minutes, we’re taking a water break at 15 minutes in, we’re going to sit down and do a short devo. And we’re going to just, hey, for the next three minutes let’s have a water break and let’s look at a piece of scripture and how that ties into the rest of the day.So we’re intentionally trying to do that through each and everything we do at camp. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that That’s so good. Again this is fantastic. Love what you guys are up to. If there’s churches out there like that are thinking maybe this is the kind of thing I want to pursue, um are there kind of some characteristics or something you’re looking for in churches that would you’d love to partner with? I’m assuming you’re interested in partnering with new churches because you’re talking on this thing. Ah, but you know you might be looking, and obviously not for this summer but for following summers. But yeah, what what would you, you know, who are the kind of churches you’re looking for, what are some of the traits, what does that look like? Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, so you might disagree with this and that’s okay. Rich Birch — Sure. Stephen Moore — We’re not looking for a camp to just come do camp for the kids in your children’s ministry. Rich Birch — Yes, great. Love it. Stephen Moore — We think those kids are very, very important. We think those kids need to hear the gospel and we want those kids at camp. Absolutely we want them there. But we want you to be interested in hosting camp to reach kids outside of your doors… Rich Birch — Love it. Stephen Moore — …to reach your community. That is really important to us and that’s one of the main characteristics we’re looking for in our churches. Are you someone that wants to get outside your walls, meet people in the community. And sometimes that’s difficult and challenging. Sometimes you know people might step into your door on Sunday morning that don’t look or, you know, act like the rest of your church, but those people need the gospel. The kids in your children’s ministry need the gospel, the kids at the church, you know, three blocks down the street need it. So we want it to be a community church that’s trying to engage with other areas and people in the community that aren’t typically in your doors on a Sunday morning. That’s really important to us. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. I love that. And I love the you know the check they’re around that sounds like the kind of thing like most churches are going to agree with that. But you got to ask the second question, do you really? Ah because, you know, we want to see that happen in our ministries, but then when it happens and the complexity that can come there… Stephen Moore — Yeah. Rich Birch — …um, you know we have to be ready for that for sure. So I love that. Do you, um you know, in in the actual programming, do break up into small groups at any point and kind of help kids wrestle with, is there… you talked about like video walls and all that, is there like worship experiences? Give give us a sense of those kinds of that that kind of part of the program. Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s yeah I can give you just a quick flyover of our day. So we get there… Rich Birch — That’s perfect. Stephen Moore — …kids come, they’re jumping on inflatables. As kids arrive, we call it, you know, kind of arrival village training. So um, and then there’s put in different villages. So we have ocean, safari and alpine. And these are funny terms, I know, bu you know we break it down to kindergarten and first grade is 1one age. Second and third grade is another age. And fourth, fifth and some communities sixth grade is our next age. And they’re going to small groups with kids their specific age. Stephen Moore — Um, we design our camper curriculum, that’s age specific. So ah, first grader is going to have a camper book and a camper guide that looks different than fifth graders. Um, because we want it to we want to engage in with them with the gospel in an age appropriate way. Um, they’re going to three different auditorium elements a day. and in these auditorium elements we have a worship leader that’s leading different songs and different activities. We have a theme director that’s delivering what we would call Christ-centerered truths. In our theme of the day this summer we’re going on a road trip through the life of David. Rich Birch — Love it. Stephen Moore — So we’re looking at a different story and a different example of the life of David every day. And we’re just tying it back on Wednesday with our gospel message on what it looks like to to be adopted as a son and daughter of Christ. And so we’re teaching that um each and every day at camp. But then we’re also kids get to sign up for four different skills. So we have, you know, so anywhere between 15 and 20 different skill offerings. And kids get to go to four of those throughout the week of camp, and those they get to choose. Um, we do rec every day, and then we do team time twice a day. And in that team time setting, that’s more of the small group bible study setting where they’re diving deeper with maybe you know 12 to 14 other kids on what the message is that day. So, it’s a fun-filled day, and they go home tired. Rich Birch — I love it. Stephen Moore — Um, but it’s incredible. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Stephen Moore — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. And I think the transferable, listen you might be listening in and saying, listen, we’re not going to run this at our our church, which is okay. But the thing I do want you to think about is man how can you inject some fun, some intentionality, some um, you know, some thoughtful process – you can hear even in just how Steven’s unpacking that. Man, there’s there’s a lot of thinking around how all of that fits together, so that it speaks the language, that it appeals to kids, obviously parents love it. They’re like this is a great. this is a great thing and want to partner with that. It’s intentionally, outward focus intentionally, saying hey we want to reach people in our community. Just love that. I hope that inspires you as you’re listening in today. Kind of as we come to wrap up, anything you’d love to, you know, so you know, say as we kind of wrap up today’s conversation? Stephen Moore —Yeah, Rich, you just used some some words that we use often at camp. We call it the WinShapeCamps recipe. So right now we’re doing 17 different camps as we speak. Those 17 camps are 10 community camps in the US, a community camp in Brazil, and a community there are a community camp in Costa Rica, and 5 overnight camps. What we want is we want to be cooking the WinShape Camps recipe wherever we’re doing camp. Rich Birch — Love it. Stephen Moore — And that keeps us in line. And I’ll just quickly do a flyover those recipe ingredients… Rich Birch — Yes, let’s do it. Stephen Moore — …and you know, I would invite any church to do those. Um so resource stewardship – we want to use our resources and take care of the things God’s entrusted to us – um, equipment stewardship. I mean um, sorry we’ve we’ve changed some of these names. Rich Birch — Yes. Stephen Moore — So Christ-centered truths is another one. So we want we want everything we do to have, you know, Christ as a part of it. Intentional culture. We want to be intentional about the little things we do. So a camper, they’re no longer just stepping foot into you know a local school or local church. They’re stepping foot into the Safari village where they’re a lion and they get to be with their other lions. So we’re gonna be doing cheers and we’re be doing games throughout the day. Stephen Moore — Want to be people-first. We care about our people. We care about our summer staffers. We care about our volunteers. We care about our our campers. And engaging fun is our last one. We think everything we do, if fun’s involved, kids are going to be more receptive and understanding to hear, hear about Jesus. So um, that’s kind of our WinShape Camps recipe. And so any… Rich Birch — Love it. Stephen Moore — …church could do that. just like it doesn’t have to be that. But as you do children’s ministry. How can those elements be a part of what you do? Rich Birch — Yeah that’s so good. I love that. I love how those hang together to really create a compelling ministry for, you know, for kids. And I know there’s people are listening in today that have found that, you know, just super helpful. So ah, really appreciate that. Well as we wrap up, if if people want to track with you or track with WinShape, where do we want to send them online? How do we want to, you know, get them connected with you? Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s that’s a great question – winshapecamps.org – you’ll be able to choose our overnight camps or our day camps is one it’s going to be your first dropdown option. So that’s one way to get connected. I think my email’s on there. But if it’s not, it’s smoore@winshape.org – um, so S-M-O-O-R-E um and so you could do that. Another thing I didn’t hit on yet, Rich… Rich Birch — Yeah. Stephen Moore — …but I just want to real quick before we leave… Rich Birch — Absolutely. Stephen Moore — …um is we want to engage with campers and we think it’s really important, but also I think working as summer as a summer staffer is an unbelievable value experience a valuable experience. I have 3 kids of my my own. They’re 2, 2, and 5, and I genuinely think the practical summer examples I had while working camp were very helpful for me, and they translate to any and every job out there. You could be studying chemistry and working camps still going to be a good beneficial thing for you to do during the summer. So if you know anyone of that college age, you know, 18 to 25 that you think could work camp or would be a good fit for WinShape, send them to us as well because we would love to be able to have them spend a summer with us to grow and be able to share their faith. Rich Birch — Totally. I heartily endorse that. Ah you know, I do think like I said earlier I think the camp experience is fantastic for kids. It’s a great kind of thing to be a part of, but I really think to be honest, the sweet spot where the the place where God seems to have his ah, uses these experiences I think particularly as on that staff age transition as as young leaders. You know, man, it’s just something amazing happens ah when a young leader dedicates their summer, or like you say, all four you know summers of theirs, you know, college summers kind of thing. Man I just love that. That’s so good. Rich Birch — Well I appreciate you coming on the show today, Stephen. I hope the rest of the summer, I know it will be fantastic, but we’re cheering for you. Thanks for giving us some time today. Stephen Moore — Yes, Rich. I appreciate it, and thanks for the time.

Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Kyle Isabelli, the lead pastor of Avenue Christian Church in the western suburbs of Chicago. Wondering how to connect with hurting people in your community who might not venture through your church’s doors? In today’s episode Kyle and I have a fantastic conversation about the church’s community outreach efforts using the He Gets Us campaign and the Gloo platform. Listen in to hear how you can use these free digital tools to connect with and care for your community. Gloo and He Gets Us. // Since COVID, Avenue Christian Church has utilized resources that Gloo and Barna offer to churches. In addition to church health and spiritual health assessments, Kyle and his team began to explore the He Gets Us campaign and the connection that Gloo provides to it. The He Gets Us campaign invites people to get to know the real Jesus. It communicates that Jesus understands them and that whatever people are experiencing, Jesus faced it too. He Gets Us became more widely known after two of their ads aired during the Super Bowl in 2023. In addition to being on TV, their ads are also online and on billboards. The local church partnership. // The He Gets Us campaign messaging engages people in areas where they are struggling and invites them to reach out for help via text. When someone reaches out with a question or a need, the Gloo platform then forwards the messages to local partnering churches. As a partner in the campaign, Avenue Christian Church receives messages from people in their area code seeking help or encouragement so they can respond with practical care. The response. // As a He Gets Us partner, Avenue gets an average of two to three messages per week forwarded to them. They then respond to the person, letting them know who they are, the church they are from, and that they are available to talk. When they reach out, they have a 50% response rate, with about half of those interactions leading to phone conversations or connecting individuals to the church through attending a service or coming to a small group.  Behind the scenes platform. // Gloo has an online platform that your church can sign up for where all of the contact data is stored. You can send a text message or make a phone call through Gloo and track when you were last in touch with your contacts. If the contacts have opted in to receive communications from your church, you can also export the data to Excel and use it in your church management software. In addition, Gloo offers a host of other high quality resources including prayer prompts, sermon tools, reading plans, discussion guides and more. Less promotion, more care. // Working with Gloo has helped remind Avenue Christian Church that their digital strategy has to be less about self-promotion and more about how to provide care for people in the community, listen to what their going through, and meet their needs while sharing the gospel. You can find out more about Gloo at gloo.us and how to partner with the He Gets Us campaign at hegetsuspartners.com. To learn more about Avenue Christian Church visit www.avenuechristian.com and connect with Kyle at www.kyleisabelli.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, I’m really looking for to today’s conversation. In fact it’s been probably six months in the making; really been looking forward to today’s call. You’re going to want to lean in for this one. We’ve got Kyle Isabelli – he is at Avenue Christian Church. It’s a multi-generational church that represents the western suburbs of Chicago as they ah help people live their best life with Jesus in charge. Kyle, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here today. Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, thanks Rich. I’m excited to have this conversation with you today. Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you fill in the picture about Avenue? What is tell us a little bit more; give us a kind of a flavor, a sense of the church. Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, Avenue is a church that has been in the western suburbs for over 60 years. It was originally started in suburbs a little bit closer to the city. And then the mid 60s it it made its way out to Clarendon Hills which is, some people may not know, it’s Downers Grove, Hinsdale for about 30 minutes outside of the city. And they’ve had a heart to really reach the the community, and really be a light in the community. And I’ve been the senior pastor here now since January 2020. And prior to that I was here as a youth pastor, started in 2017. So I’ve been here six years. And it’s been cool to be a part of a church that really is multigenerational, that we have new, younger families that are here, but you also have people here at our church that have been here longer than I’ve been alive, you know. So it’s it’s such a blessing to be able to lead in this context and to see God work and move in really helping more and more people find new life in Christ. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. This um, so today what we want you… we got connected on Carey Nieuwhof’s online community called The Art of Leadership Academy. And you posted in there about your church’s participation in the He Gets Us campaign. If people remember this Super Bowl 2023 a big ad on that, a whole campaign built around that by our friends or powered by our friends at Gloo and, you know, associated other folks. And so today we’re going to dive in this is kind of we’re going to open up the hood take a look at what happened at Avenue understand ah you know, kind of lessons learned, that sort of thing. But why don’t we start with, you know, what led you to say, hey this is the kind of thing we want to be a part of? What kind of got you to that? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, our our church throughout covid had been utilizing a lot of the resources that Barna and Gloo had been sharing with churches. We used a lot of the church health assessments. And the Summer 2022 we had our entire church take kind of like a spiritual survey to gauge their spiritual health as as well as like ways that we as leaders in the church can do a better job of caring for our church. So we’ve been utilizing Gloo for quite some time, Barna quite some time. Kyle Isabelli — And so we began to hear about the He Gets Us ads which actually launched in March of 2022 during the and NCAA college tournament, the basketball tournament. And so you see a few of these ads coming out, you’re like what’s all this about? And so Gloo then begins to share how these ads are posted on social media, and if people text in saying oh that resonates with me, or I have a question about that, or something speaks to me in that way, they text in. And what Gloo does is then sends those text messages to local churches. Kyle Isabelli — So for instance, if someone has an area code that is close by our church—so here in the western suburbs it’s a 630, a 708 or an 815 area code—um our church then would receive that text message. So for instance, someone struggle with anxiety, and they see the ad about anxiousness and they want some help or encouragement with it, they’ll they’ll text in: hey, I need help with this; I’m feeling anxious. And we get that message to our platform through Gloo. And so then we’re able to start a conversation with them. We’re starting to text them and and be able to, you know, engage in conversation. And this has been so incredibly helpful because over these last few years in our polarized society um churches and pastors especially our credibility just within society has kind of decreased. I think leadership in general… Rich Birch — True. Kyle Isabelli — …our credibility has gone down for better or for worse… Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Kyle Isabelli — …whether we did that to ourselves or we’re just a byproduct of being a leader or a pastor or church. Um that’s just the reality of where we’re at. One of the things in Barna, ah Glenn Packiam in his book about being a resilient pastor, he shares that like 55% of people have little to no trust in pastors and church leadership. They don’t they don’t view them as a credible source. Kyle Isabelli — And so now to overcome that um, people are able to, you know, get connected with the pastor or church with that. They probably wouldn’t have thought of before, but they’re willing to have a conversation about what they’re struggling with it. And it opens up this this gateway to, hey this is I’m a pastor um, from this church. Can we let’s just talk about your anxiety. Let’s just talk about whatever is going on. And so it’s allowed us to kind of reach into our community even more despite people not having the best thoughts or feelings about a church whether for better or for worse. Rich Birch — That’s interesting. Can can you give me a sense, so we’ll start with the kind of anecdotal story like you know, maybe somebody that you’ve ended up connecting with as a church and the impact the kind of positive impact either through He Gets Us or pre-, you know, He Gets Us with the other work you’ve done with Gloo. Kyle Isabelli — Yeah. I mean for instance I met with a guy a few weeks ago. He texted, he said he was having marriage problems, he was on a second separation. And so I texted, said, hey, you know I’m really sorry to hear that. Would you be willing to come in and like have a conversation with me? I’m not a marriage counselor, but I can least have this initial conversation with you. And so he came in. We began to talk and um, you know, shared the gospel with him. And said, you know, I I hope your marriage can be restored and there’s some things that you definitely have to work on. But like I want you to know what’s really going to make a change in your life and hopefully from that spiritual change in your heart then you can see changes in other parts of your life. And he’s like he’s like, I went to church growin’ up. No one’s ever told me about Jesus in this way; I don’t read my bible. And so I gave him a bible here at our church. I said, hey start reading through this. Kyle Isabelli — And um, so now for these last couple weeks I’ve met with him once or twice, we talked through, he’s attended one of our church services. Um, still working through his separation, working with the details of that, but um, just trying to help people out. And I would have never… Rich Birch — Right. Kyle Isabelli — …had that conversation with him apart from him clicking on an ad from He Gets Us on, I think it was on Tiktok. Rich Birch — Right. Kyle Isabelli — I dunno which ad it was… Rich Birch — Sure. Kyle Isabelli — …but he clicked on it. We got the message. And the conversation and the relationship really started because of that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. So this is what I love about our friends at Gloo. Like they’re, you know, they’re empowering churches. They’ve developed tools. You know, there’s a number of things that they’ve tried to do to help people, um you know, help church leaders connect with their community. And there is often, you know, a lot of their solutions are built around this idea of providing actual care for people, which I think is amazing, is fantastic. So what about on the kind of, I’m sure there’s people that are listening in that are like, what about so how many, is that like the one conversation you’ve had? You know, what’s that look like? Or do you have a you know a phone center now, you got 25 people all day long texting people back. What’s that look like? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, so where we’re at um at our church, we started in October of 2022. Rich Birch — Yep. Kyle Isabelli — So now we’ve been doing this for about—today’s June 1st—we’ve been doing it, you know, eight, nine months. Um we average about 2 to 3 messages per week. Some weeks it’s less, some weeks it’s more. And out of those messages we get about a 50% response rate. So… Rich Birch — Okay. Kyle Isabelli — …if we text back right away saying, hey, this is who I am. I’m a pastor here in the western suburbs of Chicago. I’m a partner with He Gets Us. Thanks for reaching out. I hear this is what’s going on your life. Would you like to share more? We leave it at that. On the bottom of it it says like, hey this message comes from Avenue Christian Church., You can you can, you know, text n… Rich Birch — Check them out or you… Kyle Isabelli — …or text no to get out of opted out or whatever. And so about 50% of people do engage with us, um at least over texting. And I would say out of that 50% probably another half we’ve been able to have phone conversations, get connected in our church and have them start coming to some of our, you know, life groups or small groups at our church. Get them… Some people I’ve had to refer them to counseling, you know, and say, hey, let’s we have some we have some counseling services that we partner with in the area. This is something that’s probably above my pay grade… Rich Birch — Yes. Kyle Isabelli — …but let me let me help you out. It’s above my training, let me help you out and point you in the right direction. Rich Birch — Yep. Kyle Isabelli — So you know some people would look at that and say oh only 50% of people respond back to you. But these are people we would have never connected with in a million years had it not been for being a partner with Gloo and being ah a He Gets Us a partner. Rich Birch — Um, and then how how is that working, so like you talked about the six is it 630 area code? Um… Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, there’s three different area codes that kind of are generally within the Chicagoland area where we’re at… Rich Birch — Yep. Kyle Isabelli — …that we’ll we’ll get those coming to our feed I guess. Rich Birch — And so obviously on the backend there’s a little bit of like ah like there’s obviously multiple churches in 630 or in those areas that are engaged. They’re doing something to root calls to, you know, various different churches. You have a sense of how that looks? And and is that are they scaling it based on the size of your church or how does that work? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I don’t know how they scale it. My my guess from from my initial conversations and then also talking with a couple other churches in the past six months that are in this area is that it’s almost like a checklist. Rich Birch — Sure. So it’s just like all right, we sent this one to Avenue today and… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kyle Isabelli — …and like I know Community Christian is another one and they, you know, they get the next one that comes up. And then the next one that comes up. and so I think it might just go on to rotation. I’m not 100% sure, but we’ve never myself and another staff person handle these initial contacts, and it’s never been like this overwhelming thing where like you said, there’s a call center now… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Kyle Isabelli — …there’s 25 people, you know, time of thing. So um, yeah, so all I know is it’s based on area code. Rich Birch — Yep. Kyle Isabelli — It’s based on where they’re coming from. And and like getting capturing people’s information, you know, you get ah in a church setting to capture a first time visitor’s information is so hard some days, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so… Kyle Isabelli — It takes them like six weeks… Rich Birch — Oh, yeah, yeah. Kyle Isabelli — …to finally a write down their email, you know? And now it’s like we get their phone number and email immediately before even having a conversation with them. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Like so if, you know, doing the math quickly, you know, there’ve been somewhere around 200 contacts, which is amazing. Like that’s if you if, you know, eight months a couple and a half, you know, two and a half a week um… Kyle Isabelli — Yep. Rich Birch — …you know, 50% of those you actually hear back from. So there’s like a hundred legit kind of conversations. They’re all legit… Kyle Isabelli — Yeah. Rich Birch — …but a hundred conversations you’ve been engaged with. And then, you know, some some people that you’ve actually and then other 50%, so you maybe moved 40, 50 people to actual phone conversations, which is you know, pretty amazing. Tell me what’s the size of your church? Like what’s the I’ve tried to get a sense of scale for people that are listening in. Kyle Isabelli — Yeah. Rich Birch — Because it would to your point to even even if you whittle it down to that 50, even if you say okay, the 50 who kind of followed the bottom of the the funnel, for a lack of better word. The people that you you know, actually end up getting on the phone, man a lot of churches would do a lot of work to get 50 contacts… Kyle Isabelli — Yeah. Rich Birch — …like that would be a tremendous amount. So yeah, give us a sense of that. Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I mean we’re we’re a church of about 400 on Sunday. Rich Birch — Yep. Kyle Isabelli — And you know, with you know people come in once or twice a month… Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Kyle Isabelli — …you know, probably more would call Avenue their home. But that’s our average attendance. So we’re a mid-sized church. So to to your point to have 50, 40 to 50 contexts, you know, 10 to 15% of our weekly attendance that we’re able to engage with people in the community, like I don’t know an outreach strategy, a digital outreach strategy that has that type of return on investment, if you want to put it in those terms. Like it’s it’s pretty remarkable. Um, and and such a blessing for for us to be a partner with them. So it it to me the the numbers, the math as we kind of broke it down, it just it makes a lot of sense. Especially because it’s something that they give to churches for free. Like that doesn’t cost us… Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, you can’t beat the price. Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, you can’t beat the price of that. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, and how much does all this cost? Well they give it to you. Kyle Isabelli — Yes. Rich Birch — So yeah, absolutely. Just to put that all in context context, friends. So a church of 400 people, you know, the industry average, the kind of ah thing that we would typically would love to see us driving towards from a first time guest contact information, that would average 8 a week. Like we should be seeing somewhere in that range typically. And I don’t know where where you guys are at, but when you even put it in that context, if you think three contacts a week are coming in on average through through the the internet that are above and beyond that, that’s a robust number, again, considering all the work that it does you have to do to to gather contact information from people who attend on a regular basis. That’s that’s incredible. So when you know the interesting thing, so did you see as the actual Super Bowl went through a spike? Did that was there a lot that week? Has it been pretty consistent? Yeah, give me a sense of, you know, as as it’s trickled on do you still get contacts? How’s that going? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I would say Super Bowl saw a little bit of a spike. Um you know in Chicago in particular for most of the fall and then now this new baseball season ah, the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox they consistently have He Gets Us ads in their ballpark. So in Chicagoland it’s probably been more prevalent. I don’t know how that is compared to the rest of the country. So we didn’t see too much of a spike for Super Bowl and the weeks after because it had kind of been a part of everything we’re doing. Um, but I will say that um I just think about the dollar amount that goes into creating these ads. Rich Birch — Oh yeah, that’s huge. Kyle Isabelli — Like as ah as a church our size like we would never have the millions upon millions of dollars to to create these amazing amazing digital ads, get them advertised in multiple platforms. Like we don’t have the the team, the resources, we can’t do any of that. And so to have that type of resource and for your church just to be a benefit, ah it’s huge. And so it just it makes sense for any church anywhere to utilize it because people are on social media, people are on the internet, people are streaming, and these He Gets Us ads are everywhere. And so it’s it’s such a blessing to be a part of it. So yeah, so not too much of a spike when the two big ads did show. Um, but we, like I said, being in the area that we’re in we I think it’s been more consistent because it’s been here a lot longer. Rich Birch — Interesting. Yeah, I think Chicagoland is one of Gloo’s—I’d have to look, but—one of their focus communities. Like they have a number of communities across the country that they’ve ah they’ve said hey we’re going to put disproportionate effort in, for sure, which makes sense. Yeah, that’s that’s fascinating. All right so. Kyle Isabelli — Um, yeah. Rich Birch — when you now are you able to, ah so you get the text and email you get their phone and email which is amazing. Um, have you put those into another follow-up sequence? Are you allowed to do that? What are the restrictions around that? Can you continue to, you know, be proactive? Obviously if Ppeople opt out then, you know, obviously you can’t keep going. But if if what what does all that look like? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, so Gloo, the the nice thing about Gloo is that um there is an actual online platform that you can utilize that your church signs up for. So all of their data is is stored in there. So if we want to do a phone call or send a text message, we can do it through Gloo obviously. But if we have something else going on in our church and they’ve opted into communicating with Avenue Christian Church, we’ll send that to them. You know, we can ask them, hey, we we send out a weekly email of our church… because some people even do um have reached out because He Gets Us started a campaign of saying like, hey, it’s time for you to come back to church. Pandemic’s over; start coming back to church. Do you need to find new church home? So we’ve had quite a few people have responded “looking for a church home”. That’s been their kind of one sentence prop. So um, we’ll we’ll put them in our database, you know. Kyle Isabelli — And and Gloo ah, you can export it through Excel. So we can load it to our database which is you know CCB, Community Church Builder. And everything’s very seamless. If we want to use more of that data we can import it into our own database, but Gloo has a great online platform that makes it very simple to see everything, all the contacts, when’s the last time you’ve connected with them, what’s the last message that you’ve had with them, so on and so forth. So it it really is a one stop shop – their online platform. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. So what would be your advice, so I’m sure there’s church leaders that are listening in that are like, man, we’re missing the boat here. We should get involved. What would be ah, you know, beyond—and we’ll get to links and all that in a bit but—like what’ll be your advice for a church that’s maybe just starting? Or is there a piece of this that you wish you know back eight months ago, oh we should have done this differently when we got the ball rolling? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I think um I think there are probably many churches like ours that coming out of the Super Bowl ad um, did a series based on like the He Gets Us ads. And that’s another um thing about the online platform is they have sermons and discussion questions that go with some of their ads. So for our Easter series, and it started palm Sunday went through Mother’s Day, we would show one of the He Gets Us ads as a as a bumper video, and then we would you know teach on that topic about Jesus and how it relates. And there are sermon outlines, guidelines that if, you know, you need to use you can utilize them. Kyle Isabelli — So I think many churches probably started there and just kind of left it, like oh this is a cool thing. Let’s talk about it. Whereas I wish we would have done that in October so that by Christmas of 2022 we would have been really honing into saying like, here’s our promotion, here’s what we’re talking about and then a month later in February it just it continues on. You know, so it’s it’s continuing on people’s minds in our community. It’s on the mind of our church for them to say, oh yeah, our church was talking about this this this Christmas and this fall. And we’re starting to engage with people and and they’re sharing it on their social media and stuff like that. So I wish we would have done that before, but even still connecting with our Easter services, connecting it with some of our big, you know, Palm Sundays and Mother’s Day, continually following up with people in that regard. Kyle Isabelli — We did a stations of the cross like prayer experience where we tied in the last week of Jesus to different those different videos and and different, you know, scriptures and different reflection questions that came from Gloo, like you can make it your own. But I wish we’ve just done that a little bit earlier. But it’s it’s not too late. Like you can still do it. He Gets Us is continuing to put out more ads and and they’re creating new things and more people are donating, so it’s still free. So I would say jump on and try to figure out how it can help your church’s community outreach moving forward. Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. If you log on, again you just can can go to Gloo.us if you’re if you’re um, a church, you just log on create an account. It’s super easy. Super fast to do. But you’ll see in there in the He Gets Us resources there’s prayer prompts, sermon resources, reading plans, discussion guides – all kinds of content that even if you were not thinking about like even you’re like, I don’t know do I want to have somebody answering text messages. Even if you weren’t interested in that, man, there’s a great opportunity to leverage those resources. They’re well done, high quality. Um, yeah, that could be really really helpful. Kyle Isabelli — Yep. Rich Birch — So as you look to the future, how do you think this will shape your, you know, your church’s approach? You’re kind of, you know, where you go from here? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I think it has reminded us of our need to engage in some of these tough conversations with people, to really get over the fact that maybe the church doesn’t have the best reputation overall. Kyle Isabelli — And say, you know what, we’re gonna be a church that creates our own reputation in our community. And we’re gonna do that by caring for people’s needs, listening to them, helping them where they’re at. Um and through the through our conversations, through showing them the love of Christ like their hearts will be open to the gospel. Their hearts will be open to attending a church service, or coming to a program, or you know taking their next steps in their faith journey. Whatever it is this is getting us outside of our walls um and helping us understand and see even our own personal digital strategy has to be less about promotion of, hey this is what’s happening at our church, and here’s what we’re teaching on! And it needs to be more about like how are we helping people in our community meet their needs… Rich Birch — Right. Kyle Isabelli — …and and hit their pain points and and talk through the things that they’re going through. So it’s it’s really kind of flipped the script for us in a couple different ways and I think that’s going to continue to drive some of our outreach strategies moving forward. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. This has been just a really, you know, great conversation. Is there any part of this that you look at or like yeah that just actually hasn’t been that great? Or it maybe hasn’t met your expectations or you know it kind of just is like maybe more not negative, but just a little, you know, maybe it just hasn’t been as fantastic as it sounds on this box, you know, kind of thing? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, um, the platform is easier to use on a phone than it is ah than it is on a computer or laptop. Rich Birch — Okay, yeah. Kyle Isabelli — Um, which is that that’s a small thing. And for me… Rich Birch — Fascinating. Kyle Isabelli — …as I was sharing earlier with with you, Rich, is that I’m not I don’t like being on like social media as much. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kyle Isabelli — I’m not really into like having the apps on my phone; I would rather do it on a desktop. Um and just kind of put my phone away a lot of times, until the fact that it really is a lot easier to communicate with people on the phone versus the desktop. It’s a downside. If you’re fine using your phone, um, go for it. It’s not a big issue. But for me, there’s some kinks in there when it comes to the desktop version. So but that’s you know it’s such a minor detail. Otherwise it’s like ah, you know, I would say one more thing. Kyle Isabelli — Some of the ads, you know they’re not always my favorite ads all right? Maybe I don’t fully agree with the message, or I don’t really like how they talked about Jesus in this way. Like sure that’s that’s going to happen. But that’s not the point of it. The point of it is that it’s connecting with someone who doesn’t know Jesus, or is far from Christ and it’s given you an opportunity to talk with them. So it doesn’t matter if I don’t fully agree or fully like the ad. Or you know you see a lot of hate that’s on social media over these last few months about He Gets Us. Like there’s so much more good and redemption that can come out of it, even if you don’t one ah hundred percent like the ad. So. Rich Birch — Right. Kyle Isabelli — I would those are two small things that’s like, oh could be a little bit better, but otherwise it’s it’s been such a great blessing for our church. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, I wonder if um, there was you know there has been pushback on that side on the messaging side. And since you brought it up, I didn’t bring it up, um, you know, maybe just go into that a little bit more. Like it it it has been, you know, it’s an interesting time in our culture where, you know, the way I read that is, you know, if if this was 20, 30 years ago and ah Billy Graham was coming to town, they used to do a lot a lot of ads Billy Graham would, you know, they would do all kinds of ads to, you know, advertise. And you know, I I put it in that category of like you may not love all those ads; you might not love all of that, but at the end of the day you’re like, yeah, it’s Billy Graham though. It’s going to be okay, like it’ll all work out in the end. Um, that’s kind of how I read it was I was I’m like, yeah, I not sure I would have you know you know, but but but it doesn’t seem we live in such a polarized era that it’s like people get so worked up over stuff. Kyle Isabelli — Yep. Rich Birch — Um, yeah, maybe talk through that a little bit more. Is there anything else on that front that you know, kind of sticks out to you… Kyle Isabelli — Absolutely. Rich Birch — …um, you know, as you think about the, you know, at the at the actual messaging itself? Kyle Isabelli — I would say that, you know, even in our church after we we shared about it and talked about it and then did the series, you had some people like, I didn’t really like that ad; I don’t agree with it. And or I don’t I’ll just be frank – I don’t like that certain companies are donating to Gloo and funding some of it. Rich Birch — Right. Kyle Isabelli — And I don’t like where their money’s coming from. And I don’t agree with their political stance on this company. Rich Birch — Right. Kyle Isabelli — And so it’s like I get it. And you can go down that rabbit trail with any type of nonprofit. You can go down that rabbit trail with any type of corporation that’s trying to do good in society. And so I said just look at how it benefits the local church, look at how it benefits the mission of of making disciples. We would never have these conversations with these people. They wouldn’t they wouldn’t give church a chance in million years apart from seeing an ad, sometimes at like one o’clock in the morning… Rich Birch — Yes, yeah. Kyle Isabelli — …because they’re discouraged and depressed and they don’t know what to do with their life. And this random ad showed up as they’re scrolling through social media. And now we get to have a conversation with them. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Kyle Isabelli — Like we don’t get that we don’t get that if they didn’t see that He Gets Us ad. So let’s, you know, at our church we like to say—and I can’t remember who’s the, if it’s Francis of Assissi or someone else, but—our mantra is in the essentials we want to have unity, in the nonessentials liberty, and in all things love. And so our digitals outreach strategy to reach people in our community to me is a nonnessential. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kyle Isabelli — So let’s have liberty. Let’s show grace to one another, and in all things let us show love to one another. So that, yes, I I get the point, but the the pros so much outweigh the benefits… Rich Birch — Right. Kyle Isabelli — …and we’re not forsaking the gospel message. We’re not watering down the gospel message. In fact, we’re getting an opportunity to clearly articulate the gospel… Rich Birch — Yes. Kyle Isabelli — …to these people who are in need. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah. And yeah, that’s very well said. And you know, the other piece I would add to that is, you know, you got to look at the form. These are these are quick spots. They’re, you know, you talk about a Tiktok ad. Kyle Isabelli — Yep. Rich Birch — Like, man, I feel bad for people who are saying, hey we’re going to try to make a thing that’s like in 4 seconds it’s going to get people’s attention. Like good luck with that, dear pastors. I’m like you know you know, could you if you were restricted to ah to a sixty second thing on a Sunday morning ah, how would what would you do with it? You know, how would you do that? And so, you know, I think on balance, all the stuff I’ve seen, I haven’t watched it all but all the stuff I’ve seen and been like, man, that’s clever. It’s interesting it. And it does it it does what it’s supposed to do, which is move people to do exactly what you said is, hey, I’m struggling with my marriage. I’m, you know, I’m I got this issue, this is this is bugging me, and to reach out. And really then the ball’s in our court is to say, hey, we’re going to pick this ball up and and run with it. So yeah, love that. This has been fantastic. Anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, once again, Rich, thanks for for having me on. And and I would just once again, encourage pastors and in churches go to Gloo.us G-L-O-O dot U-S and sign up. And become a free partner and start getting connected with people in your community who are hurting, who are in need, who are looking for hope, who are looking for healing. Like you have an opportunity to to take a step forward and reaching more people in community. So don’t waste the opportunity. Yeah. Rich Birch — So good. Yeah, love it. Well this has been fantastic. Where do we want to send people online to track with the church or with you? Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, our church’s website is avenuechristian.com. And then if people want more about me and my family and my life and my journey kyleisabelli.com that’s I-S-A-B-E-L-L-I. Rich Birch — Love it. This has been fantastic. Thanks for being here today. Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, thanks, Rich. Appreciate it.

Fr. Peter Wojcik, pastor at Saint Clement Parish in Chicago, shares strategies for engaging Gen Z in the church. Recognize Gen Z's longing for spirituality, community, and contribution. Prioritize their preferences and create openings for their involvement. Discusses 'chosen' program for discipleship and community service efforts.

Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Evan Courtney, the Executive Pastor at The Fields Church in central Illinois. Have you ever experienced decline in your church or felt like everything was going wrong? Don’t miss this encouraging conversation as Evan testifies to the power of perseverance, overcoming obstacles that lead to new opportunities, and remaining faithful to God’s call. The launch and decline. // When they launched their second campus, The Fields Church wanted the attendance at that location to be over 200, but that didn’t happen. They struggled to create an engaging Sunday experience and lacked strong leadership for the worship team. Then when COVID hit, they then lost their rental space. By the time the campus had found a temporary place to meet on Sunday nights, attendance had dwindled to 40 people who were essentially the volunteers handling the portable campus setup. Finding leadership and a facility. // One of the things The Fields needed to put the campus on the right track was strong leadership to infuse their culture and DNA. Evan stepped in as campus pastor for eight months to be a consistent presence and help the campus move forward. Another thing the church needed was a facility that let them get back to meeting together on Sunday mornings. Adjusting expectations. // It was still during the pandemic when The Fields began looking for a new location for their second campus. The expectations for finding a facility were a lot lower than the original launch of the multisite location. They no longer focused on needing a parking lot of a certain size or a certain amount of seating. Instead they focused simply on finding a building in which they could meet that had the minimum amount of space they needed for their Sunday morning service. Eventually they found an office building on a back road and converted it into a meeting space in about a week. Relaunching the second campus. // Even though their second campus was on the verge of shutting down, the core group of people attending were committed to seeing the location succeed. They focused on inviting new people and saw growth from 40 to 200 people within a few months. Their growth was not due to any special strategies or magic bullet. They simply showed up, had services, and continued their regular activities in addition to training and motivating their members to invite their friends. Breakthrough for the second campus. // During the pandemic, another local church approached The Fields about merging. After eight months of conversations, they decided to join forces. The merger brought in more people and a facility located on a busy street. As a result, their second campus saw significant growth, with 400 people attending Easter services and an average of over 200 people on Sundays. Determine what you need in a campus pastor. // It’s hard to hire someone from a highly metropolitan area to move to a highly rural area, or vice versa. The Fields Church decided to hire someone from within rather than seek someone from outside the area. Campus pastors need to embody the mission of their church, have a heart for the community, and understand the culture and life in an area. Three limiting factors. // As they look to the future, there are three limiting factors to growth that The Fields Church considers: Will the auditorium space, kids’ space, or parking at their current locations limit future growth? What would a launch and services in a new community look like for a third location? You can find out more about The Fields Church at www.thefields.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! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am so glad that you have tuned in today. Ah you know every week we try to bring you a leader who will inspire and equip you and today I’m super excited to have my friend, Evan Courtney, with us. He is executive pastor at a church that you should be tracking with. It’s called The Fields Church. Started nearly 100 years ago, it’s a multi-site church with two campuses in Central Illinois, plus church online. They really have a desire to be influential in Coles County, the county they’re in, also across all of Central Illinois, and then eventually be a valuable resources for other rural countries across the midwest or other other rural churches across the midwest. And they’re just fantastic people. Evan, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today. Evan Courtney — Hey thank you, Rich. I appreciate the resources that you always provide to other churches and inspiration that you’ve given us over the years. Rich Birch — I, yeah, this is a fun one. I was I was joking with Evan ahead ahead of time because like we actually know each other where sometimes I have to like pretend like I know people on the podcast, but Evan and I actually know each other and have been journeying together for a while, and I wanted to bring this story to you and you’re going to you’re going to love it today. Rich Birch — But, why don’t you fill out the picture? Kind of tell us a bit more about The Fields, kind of you know what did I miss there as we kind of got this thing rolling today? Evan Courtney — Yeah, so we are, like you said, we’re 100 year old church that probably for about 20 years all throughout the 80s and 90s was us was really kind of ah stagnant in attendance. So we averaged ah an attendance of about 150 for about 20 years. Evan Courtney — Um, that wasn’t necessarily negative. What happened was leadership came in and was able to kind of clean and straighten up and kind of balance some things out, and kind of outlast some people. And so that was all that was all really healthy. Um, and so actually our lead pastor now, that was his father-in-law was here for 20 years. And then 2008 transitioned, he retired which was really good during that season. He realized that he was kind of at the cusp of, you know what, maybe he was downward trending as a leader. And so said instead of taking it, continuing to lead the organization down, he’s like you know what? I think I’m going to go ahead and pass this off. Evan Courtney — And so we passed it off to our new lead pastor ,Travis Spencer. And since 2008 we took about two or three years to kind of look at our schedule and look at what the rhythm of the things that we were doing and we transitioned from being a church of ministries, of events, and we transitioned to being a church of a pathway a discipleship pathway that took about 2 years to do. And during that time attendance flat, which was okay, um, for us. And then coming out of that couple years you know 2010, since then we’ve just seen incremental, not explosive growth, but over the last thirteen years we’ve seen 5, 8, 10% growth every single year. Rich Birch — Yeah. Evan Courtney — And so that’s kind of where we have been. Rich Birch — Love it. And this is the kind of story I love because, you know, that kind of growth over an extended period of time, man, it really starts to snowball eventually. And it is um I don’t want to say easier but it is um, you know, it maybe is easier to get your hands around from a let’s serve people and integrate them. If all of those people, if you had 500 people all show up in one year, most churches would would you know wouldn’t be able to handle it. And so the fact that over these years you’ve seen that growth is is pretty amazing. Now we we connected a couple years ago when you guys were thinking about going multisite and ultimately that landed in ah The Fields launching a campus at another ah community ah, just kind of about the year before covid. Tell me that story, what, you know, kind of talk through what was the launch like and all that. Evan Courtney — Yeah, so we actually weren’t even thinking about going into multisite. We were thinking about building a bigger building. Because we are running out of space and in the middle of conversations with the design build company, like the ones that we’re paying to build us million dollar building, they said to us, well have you guys, instead of building a building, if you want to reach people wouldn’t it be less expensive to just plant another location next to this neighboring community? Rich Birch — Love it. Evan Courtney — And it was interesting because it was coming from it as they essentially lost themselves business… Rich Birch — Yes. Evan Courtney — …by telling us, you don’t need to build million dollar building, you need to just launch into this other community. Rich Birch — Love it. Evan Courtney — And for us what it is there’s this community next to us that’s ten miles away. And so we launched the second location ten miles away. But because we’re in rural context, it’s a rival community. And so people from one community don’t travel to the other community, whether it’s sports, restaurants, they don’t do it. And so what we saw, we kind of looked at our data and we saw that we had 70 individuals that were attending our location from this other community. But all of those individuals, none of them were born and raised for that other community. They were all transplants. We had nobody coming, nobody serving, nobody giving, that was from, born and raised, in that community. And so that’s what we did was [inaudible] to gather your these people say, hey you know what? Let’s launch a location in your community. We know it’s ten miles away but there’s this invisible line that people aren’t willing to cross. And so we had a little bit of fear of if we launch a church that close, is it just going to take our attendance and just split in half? Evan Courtney — Um, but what we have seen is that it really just is a whole different group of people. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s pretty amazing. Evan Courtney — And so is new growth, not just dividing ourselves up. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So the thing one of the things to underline here, friends, when we’re thinking about multisite is, you know, there’s like the stuff that’s on the map, like you can draw it out and it’s like the physical things. But then there are these like emotional, cultural, social, you know you know, lines on the map that don’t show up that really you only know when you’ve been journeying in a community together ah for a while. And you know there might be opportunity there that’s not that far away. 10 miles is not that far ah, but can be way too far for people to attend church. Rich Birch — Now I want to kind of fast forward a little bit and um, you know, so the campus launched ah, you know, rah rah, we’re excited for that. But then at some point during kind of, you know, obviously you know we I had the first year anniversary, and then we ended up into covid, and there was like this this kind of sign that, Okay, maybe this isn’t going well. I don’t want to you know that’s me saying that. You know you’re you’re not saying that. But you know you came to the point where like, oh gosh this isn’t… can you describe what were some of the points when you look back and you say, oh this is evidence that maybe maybe things were not working, that you know we were we were struggling more in this this new campus than you would have envisioned. You know, we all do these things and envision them just exploding overnight, but that doesn’t always happen. What were some of those kind of points that brought you to the point where like, okay, this isn’t going well. Evan Courtney — Yeah, so we is so when we launch, we didn’t launch at a higher number than we we thought. Like when we launched we wanted to our average attendance to be over 200 kind of be over that cusp. That didn’t happen. We don’t know why. I mean we had huge numbers at launch. But kind of looking back the the weeks and the months after that, one of the pain points that we had was we didn’t have great worship. And we kind of just pushed it out like, hey it’s okay, but really worship hurt us because we were doing video which was already, you know, is a little bit, is a lot different than live teaching. So the engagement’s a little bit different. And then our worship was really bad. We didn’t have a strong kind of a leader taking that. And in honestly a lot of it had to do with we couldn’t find a drummer. Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — And so I just remember we’re piping in drums on a soundtrack… Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — …and everybody in that room knows… Rich Birch — You could tell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Evan Courtney — …there’s no drums but I can hear the drums. And it just, you know what, it just like the the experiential of the worship was just a very low. And kind of it just it wasn’t a bang of a service every single week. So we knew that was a tension point. And then we were then right when we ran into Covid we lost that space, that the rental space that was at a school, and so we lost that space and now we’re online. And when here where we were out in Illinois, like we were only online for about two months, and then it was starting to ramp back up for us to be able to meet in person. And when we got ready to do that, I think just the amount of energy and the amount of work was going to take more to relaunch to launch. Evan Courtney — And so what we what happened was we lost some leadership during that transition. And so now we had no facility, um, we had no leader, and so we’re trying to rally who do we have left? Like we didn’t know who we had left because we’re doing online. Rich Birch — Oh man. Evan Courtney — And we just and so we called every single church in the community and said, Do you have a timeframe that we could do a service? One out of 40 churches that we called and said, yeah you can use our space… Rich Birch — Wow. Evan Courtney — …on a on a Sunday night. And so we did learn during this time that Sunday night services don’t work when you’re portable. So we were bringing in port… so we had people show up 90 minutes before service, set up portable gear, ran service on video… Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — …from the morning service that they could have watched online that morning on you know Facebook and Youtube… Rich Birch — Right, right. Evan Courtney — …and then tear down and so people are getting there at 3:30… Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — …watching the video message of the person that was actually in the room, the lead pastor was in the room too because he had to help set up. Rich Birch — Right. Oh gosh. Oh my goodness. Evan Courtney — And they’re like, why is he not speaking? He’s in the back of the room, I can see him. But we wanted we were just in that rhythm like, Nope we said we were doing video. Rich Birch — We’re doing this. We’re gonna do it. Evan Courtney — And so that’s what we learned was like Sunday nights in our community didn’t work. Nobody wanted to be there. We had 40 individuals that were coming to service. And a majority of them were in their dream team their volunteer shirts and we’re like the only people we have is volunteers. So it was bad worship. We were forcing video teaching. And we had a bad time slot. And we we had 40 people. Rich Birch — Okay, so friends, they’re just a bunch there. Like I think this idea of and sometimes this stuff is is clear in hindsight, understanding what is it that makes your experience, you know, understanding like, you know, we we launch these things and we try like, hey we’re going to try what we can on the music front. And ah but, man, it just didn’t live up ah to that. You know, we’ve got to think really carefully about those things, and sometimes they’re a bigger deal than actually we even know. They’re, you know, we we thought like oh we can make that work and it it doesn’t necessarily. Rich Birch — So now there would be lots of churches I think at this point that, you know, so you’re down to 40 people, you know, video teaching, we got Travis showing up to set this thing up, mostly volunteers. Um, you know at that point there would be a lot of churches that would say, hey we’re just going to throw in the towel here. Like that’s you know that’s not going to happen. Well, you know friends, the reason why we have this on is obviously because they didn’t throw in the towel, and we continued. So walk us through what were some of what you know the milestones as you came out of covid that you look back on now and say, wow this was a linchpin decision change that led us to where now, friends, and we’ll get to where we’re at today. But things are way better today than than those 40 people. But kind of what were some of those linchpins kind of across the the the months you know after that? Evan Courtney — Yeah, so the big one was leadership. We had to get somebody. We had to get our culture and our DNA back into that into that church, of being online, somebody else’s building, we were losing some of that. So we had to get a leader in there. And I actually jumped in and and let it for about eight months. We just needed somebody on our team that was consistent, a face that they had seen, a voice that they had heard over the years. So that was one was the leadership. Evan Courtney — The second one is facility. We knew we had to get back to Sunday mornings. And so we had to do whatever it took to get back to Sunday mornings. So the third one was for us to do that, we had to find a facility. And so our expectations of a facility on, for what we called was our relaunch of relaunching this church, the expectations were a lot lower than the launch. Rich Birch — Interesting. Evan Courtney — Like the launch we had this we we needed a preschool room, we needed an elementary room, we needed a lobby, we needed an auditorium that at least I had 300 seats. We need to have parking for those, you know, we needed a hundred parking spaces. All of a sudden we just kind of threw that out the door and said, you know, we just need to find a space. If we don’t find a space we’re done. Rich Birch — Right, right. Evan Courtney — So those are the 3, the 3 main things. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, so on the facility piece, I love that idea of you actually lowered your expectations. You know, I think that’s that’s a keen insight. As you what what kind of did the minimum bar become as you were like okay, we’ve you know we we need to find something. Sunday morning obviously is the primary was you know the primary idea, but was it what else was in that mix of that conversation? Evan Courtney — Yeah, we we just needed we needed to find us ah somebody that would rent to us during that time of covid. Coming out of covid there wasn’t a lot of spaces. We needed to find an auditorium that it could at least, or a space, that could at least hold a hundred people. A hundred adults. Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — And then two rooms for kids. Rich Birch — Okay, that’s amazing… Evan Courtney — We didn’t care about parking. We could figure that out, right? Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — Like most those places are gonna have some sort of parking. And we didn’t we didn’t worry about a lobby. Rich Birch — Okay, so did you… Evan Courtney — We thought: adult space, two kids’ spaces. Rich Birch — Right. And so then did you go back to the 40 churches? What what happened next? Evan Courtney — No, so what we did is ah we actually we just, somebody caught we we kind of pushed out to our team and said you know what, just pray. Let’s ask God to open places. When we first initially launched ah two years before that we had already looked at all the places that were available. We we knew everything. And so somebody reached out to our team and said, hey what about this office space out on this back road. I just passed it; I saw there’s a “for rent” sign. What do you think? So we showed up to it and it was just an open office. And so we looked at it, walked in, and and they said hey do you want this? And we’re like yeah, there’s nothing else. There was maybe 25 parking spots… Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — …open office and 2 break rooms. And so we converted that. We took a week and converted it. Rich Birch — Oh my… turned it around. Evan Courtney — We took all of our portable stuff. Rich Birch — Got all [inaudible] paint out in way we went. Yeah. Evan Courtney — Yep, got to… yeah, got, we it was it paint, and then we had all over our portable gear. We just we just went from portable… Rich Birch — Wow. Evan Courtney — …and installed all that stuff as permanent. Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — And so we used spandex to that we were using on hallways to to cover up stuff and we just created hallways out of the spandex. Used all of our portable chairs that we were using in elementary spaces and we just set those up. Um, it just gave us, we had to have a place for the people to go to that said, you know what? This is our church. And we actually ended up in a part of a neighborhood in this community that there wasn’t a church within a mile. Rich Birch — How interesting. Evan Courtney — And all of a sudden we put a sign up and people started coming and attending. And we’re like how did you, like how did you hear about us? We’re on this back country road. Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — And they said, we saw the sign. Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Wow. Evan Courtney — That’s it? Rich Birch — That’s it. Evan Courtney — And so we started getting people from that neighborhood saved… Rich Birch — No fancy Facebook campaign. No, you know… Evan Courtney — No, no. And it was ah it was a marquee sign. Rich Birch — Oh wow. Evan Courtney — Right. So I mean I was just sliding the letters in there, a service 10 am… Rich Birch — Wow. Evan Courtney — …and then just put our decal up. So. Rich Birch — Wow. So the but you know part to underline there is I know there are a lot of churches that are portable. You know that this has been a challenging number of years. And I’ve said to multiple churches because they’re like we’ve tried everything we… there is no opportunity. And you know my pushback has been well, if the place you’re renting from today that’s substandard, if they called you tomorrow and said you can’t meet here anymore, you would you would get desperate and figure something out, right? You would figure out some sort of space. But because if you’re in this space that’s kind of almost working, like the Sunday night service was. It’s like it’s working but not really, you’ll just keep rolling until you draw a line in the sand and say no no, we we’re done. We have to find, you know, something else. So so then what happened next from there? So people start to show up. Ah you know things are looking a little you know, better. There’s like an uptick in excitement Evan Courtney — Right. Rich Birch — You’re still campus you’re still the campus pastor there. Ah you know what went on next? Evan Courtney — Yeah, and so a couple of the other things to note real quick about the facility that we had to um, got were hard “yeses” before that became “it didn’t matter” was like ceiling height. It had it it had a nine foot ceiling. It was tile ceiling, and because of that we couldn’t do video anymore. Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Evan Courtney — Because you couldn’t get a big enough video screen. And so we flipped to live teaching out of the necessity of this thing is gonna die and we had to get it… It’s kind of like being in the ah ER. Ah, you’re just giving this thing, I see you’re giving this thing all the different hoses – the oxygen, the IV – and so we just said, hey if video is going to hurt this thing, let’s do live. Evan Courtney — And so we started to do all those. And so what it was was we just Sunday morning continued to do Sunday morning, continue because of now you have your own building and it took work to create things into the building. We just saw an uptick of volunteers because they’re like, hey like they had their blood, and sweat, and their work equity into this building. So now is all of a sudden it became theirs. They became their identity where before they were at this rented school, they were at this borrowed church. All of a sudden it was like there ah an identity of, man, this is our place. And it didn’t matter that it was ah a bad looking building. It was actually the day that we put our sign up, the city called us and said, Evan, you can’t have church there. That’s ah, that’s zoned for high industrial. Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Evan Courtney — And I said, well I didn’t I didn’t have a clue, like we were having this church and the church is dying. So what do you want us to do? And they’re like well you need to go through all this code paper. I’m like great, how long’s that going to last? And they’re like it probably takes three to four months. I’m like, well we’ve gotta meet. And he goes if you guys continue to meet, we’d have to shut you down, but that wouldn’t look good on the city if we shut down a church. Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Evan Courtney — And I said, understood. And so we just continue to push forward… Rich Birch — Wow Wow. Wow. Evan Courtney — …and that’s kind of the momentum of people just continue to show. And they because they saw we only had 40 people, our church looked at each other and said if we don’t invite people, we’re done. Rich Birch — So good. Evan Courtney — And so that’s what it kind of was it like it was all these new people because they had all of a sudden they felt like like no, no, no, no, we launched this church. We’re not going to give up on this. And so it just began to invite people out of the woodwork. Rich Birch — Wow. Evan Courtney — And so we saw growth up to 200 people from that Oct…that September when we relaunched with forty, that easter we had 200 people. Rich Birch — Wow. Evan Courtney — And it was just it was it was I look at it now was it was we did average things over a considerable amount of time and it turned into above average results. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. What would be some of those average things when you look back in that period that you you know really helped reach people? Evan Courtney — Yeah, so the the average things was like, every parade in our neighborhood or our area that was in our city we got into. Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — Just so they could see our name. Like that it was we we didn’t do anything spectacular – hay bales, throwing candy out, like nothing spectacular. We did that. Sunday mornings, no matter what, we’re having service. It doesn’t matter if there’s 20 people or 25 people – we’re having these teams, we’re having these monthly meetings. And so we just kind of went back to the grind that we were doing before just all these kind of ah small ah small events that we were doing. Evan Courtney — We did a you know we do a halloween events that we typically did that was huge, and so we just scaled that back and said what can we do? Same with Christmas and Easter. We had to scale those back. But we just continued to do what we had always done before, and the kind of that just created those results and created those momentums. Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You’re speaking my love language. I know you know that, but you know like we have to just keep we have to keep doing these things. Keep keep pushing our people, you know we we talked about this so many times that churches that grow, they train, they equip, they motivate their people to invite their friends. And a part of that means as church leaders, we’ve got to keep thinking about it. What are we doing? What’s coming up that our people could invite their friends to? And you know all of those kinds of things are you know a piece of the puzzle. Rich Birch — Okay, so now I know there was a significant “C” change here kind of as you continued. So you’re you know you’re at you know, kind of a weird place with the town. Things are like, okay, you got to get out. What happened next? Evan Courtney — Yeah, so during this whole process of right before Covid and during Covid, a local church had actually reached out to us. They were in the middle of their pastor was retiring and they had conversations with us that they knew that either they were going to have to go and do a pastoral search during the middle of Covid to try to find a pastor… Rich Birch — Wow. Evan Courtney — …to hire a pastor that they wouldn’t really know anything about. Um or they knew there was an opportunity they can merge with The Fields Church who they didn’t like everything about, but they knew everything, you know, they they knew us. And they knew the goods and they knew the bads. And so we were in the middle of covid having this conversation. They knew we were at a weak point too at this office building that we had renovated. And so they kind of but they knew overall the growth of The Fields Church and the excitement and and they wanted kind of really hitch themselves to us and become a part of what we were doing. Rich Birch — Love it. Evan Courtney — And so we went through a timeframe about eight months of conversations with them of them joining into our congregation. Rich Birch — Love it. Evan Courtney — So you take us just continuing to do the path every single week and meeting, doing the average every single week. Them coming along and saying, you know what, we want to join you. And so a part of that was they had a facility… Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — …that was across from Walmart, which is the busiest street in town. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Evan Courtney — They wanted to gift that to us, plus all of their people, to give those people to us. And so we were already on this high and already riding this momentum, and then they came in added to that. And so both of those things added together just created a greater impact. It just launched us years ahead of where we would be. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. You know, the the thing to underline there that we’ve seen time and again is typically in these you know merger or rebirth scenarios, like with this other church, um, you know they typically have been engaged in some kinds of other activity. They’ve been thinking about something else and this is like in the mix of it, right? And they’re you know they were obviously trying to wrestle through what do we do with and the the lead pastor issue is all is usually ah or is a significant catalyst. It’s like okay, either someone’s retiring or they’d like to retire. Or they, you know, they’ve been looking for a long time and can’t find someone. Um and you know, friends, I’m hoping you’re listening today and you’re like you may be pushing against one of these walls and you can take inspiration from The Fields to say, man, we just maybe we just have to keep going, just keep walking in this in the in the right direction. Rich Birch — Okay, so bring us up to date today. So you know you end up moving into that location. They end up giving you the building, all of that stuff. So what does it look like today? Here we are you know summer 2023 you know what’s that what’s that campus look like? What’s kind of what’s happening there now? Evan Courtney — Yeah, absolutely. So they merged with us, joined together. We launched huge with them, remodeled their facility. And so today this past easter we saw 400 people… Rich Birch — That’s crazy. Evan Courtney — …came out to easter and we are averaging over 200 people um, on a Sunday which is huge, huge for us… Rich Birch — Yep. Evan Courtney — …in the community, probably the second largest church in that community. Rich Birch — Yep. Evan Courtney — And we’re beginning to see an influx of people that are coming from… so that location to the west of it is where our our our other location is, the location that’s 100 years old. And so on the opposite spectrum, on the east side is all of these people that are coming. Rich Birch — That’s great. Evan Courtney — And so we’re just seeing an influx of new people, of people getting saved. But we’re not doing anything different. Like there’s no throughout this whole process, Rich, there’s no there’s no magic bullet. Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — Like there was no oh like we unlock this special thing that nobody else knows about. I think it’s just like we’re showing up. Like we’re we’re showing up and having services, we’re doing Growth Track. We do growth track every single Sunday. You know, if it’s you know if it’s a on Mother’s Day, we’re doing Growth Track if somebody signs up for Growth Track. And where I think we’re doing less and we’re just continuing to do it, and kind of continuing to do our rhythm. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Evan Courtney — Um, and so that’s kind of what we’re seeing. Rich Birch — Now it’s somewhere in there you ended up hiring Campus Pastor Mark – great guy – ah what how did you find that individual? I know I’ve heard you in other contexts like cheer for Mark, man, he’s been just such a critical piece of the puzzle. Talk us through that transition because you you know you listed leadership as number one reason, hey we got to fix that. You stepped in but then eventually we made a more permanent change there. Evan Courtney — Yeah, so we’ve had… the the hard thing is we’ve had four campus pastors in the last in the since the launch of the location… Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Evan Courtney — …in the last 3, 3-4 years. Some of that is covid, just you know we jumped in for a little bit. We had another leader that was their first season. And so I think what we’ve learned is that when we hired Pastor Mark, no pastoral experience. Um he had Fields Church experience, had been on staff doing creative ah creative ministries, had done facilities. But what he had was culture. Like he he knew the ins and outs of The Fields Church and loved the ins and outs of The Fields Church. Like he loved everything about The Fields Church. And we’re like well we can… and had the call to pastor, but had not ever been educated that way… Rich Birch — That’s huge. Evan Courtney — …or never had gone that season in their life. Had done military and was working at ah, a car dealership. Um, but who was volunteering and serving at The Fields. And we’re like, you know what? There’s something inside of him. He’s got the culture. He’s got the willingness to learn. And so we said, you know what, we can’t, it’s hard to hire somebody outside to move… I mean regardless, it’s hard to hire anybody right now, but to move to the midwest into a community, you know, that’s 2 hours away from any metropolitan area is very difficult. Um, so we were like we’ve got to look internal, hired internal. Um, and we don’t have the culture and the DNA push. Like nobody’s pushing against that of like I really don’t think we should be doing this. It’s more of a sense of like, okay I want to do this. How do I do? That’s a lot easier for us to lead as as executive leaders for somebody trying to push their own kind of agenda that sort of thing. Rich Birch — Absolutely. Talk us through that um, kind of at a high level when you think about the percentages of… so I hear what you’re saying on the culture piece. Don’t miss that, friends. You know we’ve talked about that in other context that like campus pastors need to, you know, they need to bleed the church. They need to be like wow these people are fully they’re onboard. They love the mission. But then the other piece of this in this case, you know, Charleston’s the name of this community. They need to be Charleston people. They need to have the like kind of vibe of the community. If if you were going to be like 51/49, you know, 51% they need to be like Fields people type people, 49% Charleston type people or the locations you’re in or, you know, how would you kind of grade those two, or is it they just need to be both of those? Talk us through when you think about, you know, this this the kind of intangible side of campus leadership. Evan Courtney — Yeah, so ours we would probably tip more towards the size of that community. Rich Birch — Yep. Of like they’ve got to they’ve got to have that feel. They’ve got to they’ve got to love living here. Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — It’s not a horrible area. But I mean they just, like anywhere, they’ve got to love they want to be able to envision them growing their family and their kids up into this area. If they can’t do that, nothing else is going to work. Like we even when we hire people that’s the first thing is like hey do you feel like you can fit in here? I had an interview once with a guy that was from Houston. And within the first couple minutes we had a conversation like, hey do you think you’d be able to move here and live here? And he asked me this – he goes, would I need to buy a jacket for the winters? Rich Birch — Ah, yes, you… at least one, at least need least one. Evan Courtney — Yeah, yeah. And so I’m like you know what, that was our last conversation. I go I don’t think this is this isn’t going to work. Rich Birch — Yeah. Evan Courtney — It doesn’t matter how great of leader you are… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Evan Courtney — …if if if you’re not able to adapt, or or to know or to feel or to love the place that you’re going to live is, you know, that’s that’s the big piece for us. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a huge deal. And you know I think helping us and our, you know, our people get through those questions and understand that and to have the conviction around, you know, what what is it that makes leaders work in this part of the world. You know, I remember when I was serving in New Jersey, you know, very similar issues. You know, they looked a little different, but the same kind of thing. Man, you’ve got to like this kind of that in that case, it’s like northeast grind, you got to like the, like people here really do think that they’re like the most important people in the world and you kind of can’t fight them on that. Like if you’re from Georgia you can’t be up here and be like, well, you know people up here aren’t as cool as they are in Georgia. That doesn’t work. They’ll get shut down real quickly. And you know the thing is that’s a transferable principle regardless of where we are in the country. Every part of the country has that kind of cultural stuff that we’ve got to be aware of. And every part of the country—and I’ve I’ve joked with you about this before—every part of the country believes that they’re the hardest part of the country to hire people in. Rich Birch — Like I you know I was with with some friends in Southern California and they were like, this is like really tough place to hire people. I’m like I don’t if yeah, that’s not true. Like you know, there’s lots, every every place has this. We all have this and, you know, I think it is true where where you are you know I’ve been in the communities you’re you’re in, and but it’s also true in lots of places. You know and and we and we sometimes, I think particularly if we’ve been in this community forever, it might be hard for us to get our head around how just how difficult that is. Rich Birch — Okay, when we think about the future, so you look up over the horizon, either in this campus in Charleston, or future campuses or even in Mattoon, you know, what what what’s the future have for you? What’ll be some of the questions you’re asking, or things you’re thinking about as you look to future campuses, future locations, growth all that kind of stuff? Evan Courtney — Yeah, so growth pinpoints that we’re looking at right now is facility, and becoming a concern. Three limiting factors that we look at: facilities, is is there a limit in our auditorium space? Is there limit in our kids space? And is there a limit in our parking space? And if we have a limit in one of those three, then the rest kind of falls apart. And so that’s one of the things that we’re looking at both of our locations right now is what are what’s limiting us from growth? Evan Courtney — The second one is is what is this we know how hard it is and difficult it is to do the third location, and the majority people stop at that second, so we’re looking at what does that look like. And for us it is a lot different than us doing the second because the second one we were able to look at this we already had this mass group of people in this inside community and and it was easy to get, you know, 75, 100 people to launch. Now we’re looking at a community next to us and we don’t hardly have anybody. Rich Birch — Right. Evan Courtney — And so we’re having to kind of reframe and think, okay, what does that look like? Does that look like us doing popup services for major holidays? Does that look at us starting small groups? You know does it look at us during outreach events? What does that kind of look like? So those are the two main things is that the facility and then and how do we launch this third location. Evan Courtney — Because I feel like once we can get that third, the fourth is going to come easier. It’s going the third is going to help our our structure of our leadership and it’s not going to be of us versus them with the two locations, and the smaller and the bigger, but it’s going to kind of change the whole thing. Rich Birch — I love it. So good. Well there’s… listen, friends, there’s so much we could talk about at The Fields. Um, you know we’ve focused in on this one story but there’s so many other things. I love what you guys do. The pumpkin fest thing I think is amazing. You know I’ve pointed people in that direction. I’m just going to leave that out there, friends – you’ll have to follow them to figure out what you know that’s all about. I think I think that your whole passion for and obviously it’s kind of been in the subtext of this conversation, but passion for these rural communities, I think there’s a lot of people who are wondering the same thing. Like man, there are, you know, none of the name brand big, very large multisite churches are going to plant a church in Charleston. It’s just not going to happen, right? And so the question is who’s going to say, we’ll take that. That’s ah our us. We’ll figure out how to do that. I love that your, you know, doing – there’s lots of stories we could we could tell there. But as we’re wrapping up today, any kind of final you know advice or anything you like to say to people as we wrap up today’s conversation? Evan Courtney — Yeah, so if we as we look at this I think the thing is is to to not give up on really what you feel like called God has called you to do. And that you are gonna run into hurdles; you are gonna run into roadblocks. But if it is God giving you this call, and he’s going to work it out, and you’re gonna be stronger than where you were going to be before. If we wouldn’t have ran into these roadblocks, we wouldn’t have the loss of pastoral staff and leadership, we wouldn’t be where we are today with Pastor Mark, with this merge… Rich Birch — So true. Evan Courtney — …or with this building across the street from Walmart. So just continue to to push forward because you’re gonna run into roadblocks and just sometimes you go around them, sometimes you jump over them, sometimes you just just blast through it. Rich Birch — Love it. Well I mean this has been fantastic. If people want to track along with you or with the church where do we want to send them online? Evan Courtney — Yep. The easiest place is just to go to the website: thefields.church and then all the socials are on there and you can find out information, email us, all of that information’s there. Rich Birch — Love it. Really appreciate you being on today’s episode – thanks so much, man. Evan Courtney — Thank you, sir.

Thanks for tuning into today’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Mike Mantel, the CEO of Living Water International. They are a faith-based global humanitarian organization that links arms with churches around the world to serve thirsty communities through access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene. What if the church of Jesus Christ could end the water crisis as it pursues the great commission? Listen to today’s conversation as Mike explains how. Working with local churches. // Living Water International (LWI) started as a ministry focused on drilling water wells but soon realized that the involvement of the local church was key to engaging the communities where they were working. Now LWI equips local churches to address the basic needs of their communities, such as access to clean water. The church is the center of decision-making, bringing together the community to address these needs. This involvement not only provides physical resources but also attracts people in the community to the church and the gospel. WASH program. // Living Water International is currently working in 18 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia. In each country they work in they identify a “WASH program area” – WASH is an acronym for Water Access, Sanitation, and Hygiene. These designated areas include about 50,000-100,000 people and are 50-100km across in the lowest income, neediest environments. LWI does a baseline analysis of who is there, how many churches exist, how they engage, what is the community’s water access, how healthy people are, and what is their hygiene. Then LWI invests in this location for 5-7 years with churches so that everyone has clean water, and sanitation and hygiene have been transformed. Genius of One. // To foster unity and collaboration among churches, Living Water International organizes the “Genius of One” conferences. These conferences bring together churches at the local, district, and national levels, inviting them to work together across racial, economic, urban/rural, tribal, and denominational lines. The goal is to promote unity and reconciliation, emphasizing the prayer of Jesus for believers to be one. Churches come away with a vision for what they might be able to do together for their communities. Three pillars. // Mike and his team introduce churches in the United States to what churches around the world are accomplishing through WASH. They do that by focusing on three pillars: growing in our knowledge, expanding our experience, and co-investing for impact. Growing, expanding, and co-investing. // Growing in knowledge includes educating church members about the extent of the water crisis and the impact it has on communities. Expanding our experience is encouraging churches to go on mission trips and engage in hands-on activities related to water and sanitation projects. These experiences open people’s hearts and minds to God’s work and create lasting change. Then the more people invest their minds, space, time, and money in ministries that change the spiritual and physical reality of others, the more we want to experience and learn and invest. Finding Adventure. // Mike’s book, Thirsting for Living Water: Finding Adventure and Purpose in God’s Redemption Story, started as a personal journey to rediscover God’s presence when Mike found himself in a dark night of the soul. Over time it developed into 12 stories of God’s faithfulness intended to encourage and inspire the reader. The book also serves as a ministry, with all proceeds going towards the work of Living Water International.  You can learn more and connect with Living Water International, as well as pick up Mike’s book, at www.water.cc 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: 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 — Well hey everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation – um, this is going to be a great one with my friend Mike Mantel. He is the CEO of an organization called Living Water International. If you don’t know Living Water, they’re a faith-based global humanitarian organization, and they link arms with churches around the world to serve thirsty communities through access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene. You know they really are an incredible organization. I’ve had a chance to travel abroad with them and Mike’s a great guy. We’ve had a chance to interact over the years. Prior to his time at LWI he spent 17 years working for a little organization called World Vision—maybe you’ve heard of them—and nine years in the marketplace. Ah, he’s also authored a recently authored a book that we’re get a chance to talk about today. But Mike, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Mike Mantel — Rich, what a delight – thanks for inviting me on the show, and it was great to see you a couple weeks ago at the XP Conference. Rich Birch — Yeah, that was such a fun time. We were down there. It was yeah, such a good time XPS. It was so good. Glad to glad to hang out a little bit there too. Why don’t we why don’t you kind of fill in the picture there either your picture, or you know Living Water International. What did I miss? Kind of bring us up to speed. Mike Mantel — Living Water International has been around for 33 years. The impact that the Lord has made through Living Water and the church has been significant. We believe that about 7.3 million people are drinking safe water today… Rich Birch — Wow! Mike Mantel — …have experienced the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we’re currently working in 18 countries. We have about 340 staff, most of which are national staff leading the countries in which they serve. And we got a global team in the United States, centered in Houston Texas, but we got folks around the country. Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so so cool. This is ah this is a fantastic organization, and like I said I had a chance to travel a number of times actually to some some Living Water projects. And I remember years ago, like one of the things you talk about it, and we want to really drive into that today, is this idea of linking arms with churches, having churches, you know, linking arms with existing churches. And I remember I was on the field, we were in Haiti and I was speaking to one of those national workers, and ah and it was like a dawning moment. And you know this idea this epiphany that struck me they were talking about we were in a very poor community, um an open ah, open sewers which is a you know a polite way to say feces in the streets. Um, you know this a tough community. Um and probably the poorest community one of the poorest communities I’d ever been in. And I remember this worker we were talking about you know, just even the strategy of how Living Water does what you do. And they said something that really struck me. They said, you know, if you you look around here, there’s no one else here. The government is not here. You know, there’s there’s no other infrastructure here. There’s no businesses here. The only people the only kind of organization that’s here is the local church. And so obviously you want to work with the local church because you’re a Christian organization. But even if that wasn’t your aim, man that that is such a there there’s such a strategically important organization to work with. I’d love to unpack that. Help me understand how does, and how has, LWI work with churches ah, on the on the field in the 18 countries that you are currently serving in? Mike Mantel — Well, it’s been an evolution for us. When we started, like most startup ministries, the organization of Living Water wanted to help people access water in the name of Jesus. It was a is a group of drillers, construction guys, church leaders and they they wanted to drill a water well wherever they could, acquire ah a few resources, some volunteers, some drilling equipment, and then move on to the next place where people desperately needed water. Rich Birch — Yep. Mike Mantel — But over the years we discovered that the church of Jesus Christ at that local level preceded us. They ah they were active, engaged in their communities. They they had networks of volunteers. They had a vision to love the the thirsty, to love the hungry. Um, they were honorable. And they would be there after we left. Rich Birch — Right, right. Mike Mantel — And so we began to say, Wow, you know, the church as a institution. It’s more like ah a network of ah, bodies of believers – that church proceeds, engages, and then succeeds us as as we move. And then we said, you know, what we really need to do as an organization is commit long term to a broader geographical area, and let’s discover who’s in that footprint. You know we discovered churches. We discovered municipal leaders. We discovered other nonprofits. But always at the center of this work was the church. And we said, let’s just invite all the churches to link arms and engage with each other and become visible. And become relevant to address a basic need of that community. And the church showed up. Rich Birch — Amazing. Mike Mantel — It began to organize its brothers and sisters and other churches. It began to link with community leaders. It it it it went to training ah sessions to learn about church envisioning. How do you communicate the gospel through simple stories? What sanitation and hygiene are all about and what’s their roots in the gospels and in the bible as a whole? And and so the church became central. Mike Mantel — And so fast forward in the last ten years of our existence we identify and work through the collective body of Christ in that local community, which is really a ah complex institution. It’s it’s multi-denominational. It’s multi-ethic. There’s multi-languages engaged, but what holds us together is the spirit of Jesus Christ. And then we equip that church to be the salt and light with the most fundamental intervention in human development, which is water. And so living water the physical and the spiritual living water together is what the church is now able to bring as ah as a unit within these low income communities. It’s absolutely amazing. What the church is doing around the world. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s incredible on the ground to see, you know, like you’ll be in a village and um, you know you’ve partnered, there’s been a bunch of work that’s been done there. And you know when you think about it at that level here’s a community that that hasn’t had access to clean drinking water. They they maybe they haven’t had a you know sanitation and hygiene program running there. And the church takes the lead on that. Man, what a powerful witness in that local community. Like man, what they become even more so the center of the community. Maybe kind of talk about it at that level like what what kind of impact does that make ah, you know to that church, to the community, you know, when the church is in the middle of this? And why is that better than maybe I don’t know like a business running it or somebody else alternatives to the church running it. Mike Mantel — Well for the the community they see their aunts and uncles and cousins, their neighbors at the center of the decision-making where will this water access point be drilled. How is the education training delivered? Who represents the community you know within a broader dialogue with the municipal leaders with other NGOs. The the church just becomes visible. And in many places in the world, our churches often see their role as inviting people to follow Christ but to remain distinct from the world. You know, that we’re all working our way towards heaven, but you know, let’s not roll up our sleeves together and address the issues in the world. Rich Birch — Okay, sure. Mike Mantel — But but but what happens when the church embraces that water produces health, healthy kids are in school, educated kids can begin to develop their economies. When the church provides those resources, that encouragement, people become attracted to the church. And so it’s it’s the action and love of Jesus Christ that helps that church grow. Mike Mantel — So a church I was on maybe the outskirts of a social community now moves to the center of that social security. Rich Birch — So good. Mike Mantel — And by meeting the most basic needs in that community then the church becomes attractive. And relationships can develop, conversations can be had, and that’s where life comes and that that church begins to grow. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that That’s so good. And you know to see that on the ground. It’s just it’s amazing. It’s amazing to see that ah roll out. Now when you’re thinking about there’s this idea of churches partnering together in a region, you know, in a community. Can you talk to me about what that looks like, you know, in the countries that you’re working in, and I’d love to talk about it on a state side as well. But let’s start with, you know, in the countries that you’re working in. How how are they working together? What is that… I kind of understand that at one level like in a a particular community. But what does that look like across say a region? Mike Mantel — So we start with a country definition. So we work in the 18 countries you mentioned in latin America, the Caribbean, in Africa, and in South Asia. Within that country we identify something we called a WASH program area. And WASH is an acronym—Water Access Sanitation Hygiene—a WASH program area, which is about 50- to 100,000 people 50 to 100 kilometers across. It’s it’s the lowest income, most needy environments. And we commit to stay in that footprint for 5 to 7 years. Mike Mantel — We go in and we do a baseline analysis. Who’s in this footprint? How many churches? How are they engaging? What’s the water access? How healthy are people? What are their hygiene and sanitation practices? And then we systematically organize and invest in that footprint for 5 to 7 years so that everyone has water, all practices around sanitation and hygiene have been transformed, kids are healthy. Rich Birch — Sure. Mike Mantel — And then the church begins to ah be more visible and engaged. So it’s really how is the church perceived in its community. So then what does that look like is we start now with ah what we call the Genius of One conference. And that’s usually coordinated by a national association of, let’s say evangelicals in Zimbabwe, with the great talent from ah The Crossing Church in St Louis. Actually we’ve had 25 of these Genius of One conferences… Rich Birch — Ok. Mike Mantel — …where ah Greg and his team ah, engage with our team and the evangelical networks. And we put on a two and a half day conference. And we invite all the churches at the local level, the district level, and the national level and usually we get about 200 to maybe a thousand churches that come together. Rich Birch — Wow. Mike Mantel — And it’s and it’s a powerful invitation to link arms across the lines that divide us – our our racial lines, our economic lines, our urban/rural lines, our tribal lines, denominational lines. And let’s begin to think about um the prayer that Jesus made right before his arrest and crucifixion that we might be one… Rich Birch — Yeah, unified. Love it. Mike Mantel — …so that the so that Jesus becomes visible. And so there’s ah Greg and his team and and local moderators do this powerful ah presentation on the unity of the body of Christ.Nobody has to give up their tribal distinctions, or their denominational traditions, but they can begin to see that the crisis calling us to be unified. Mike Mantel — Secondly we talk about reconciliation and forgiveness or really forgiveness and reconciliation. We talk about the poison of gossip and there’s there’s a number of fantastic ah sessions where pastors, who many don’t know each other… Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — …many don’t trust each other, begin to talk about the things that are most important to them from a scriptural basis. Every time, you know across 14 countries I think we’ve been in front of maybe 3700 pastors, every time the Spirit of the Lord moves, people are repenting across the aisles and they begin to get a vision for what they might do together. Because one thing we learned is that churches of different traditions and perspectives have a difficult time being together unless they’re working together. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Mike Mantel — And if they’re working together in a community that desperately needs, in our case, water, that’s that’s a place in which they can intersect. Rich Birch — Because they can agree on that. Hey, this is an issue we all know in our community, in this particular WASH area, using your definition. Hey, this is, man, if we could get this to people in our communities, the whole community’d be better. Mike Mantel — That’s exactly it. So no, nobody needs to change their perspectives. They just say as followers of Jesus Christ let’s work together. And and so once ah, an agreement is made, Yeah, let’s consider this. And then we invite pastors to an envisioning workshop. What might that look like from a water/sanitation/hygiene perspective? And does that resonate with you? And does it resonate with you as a collective around this table? And if so, let’s organize. Let’s create some… Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — …ah additional training sessions. Let’s go a little bit deeper in how your church might engage with others in training sanitation and hygiene, or sharing the gospel through oral discipling means, bible story and or or what it might look like to continue to maintain this water point? Because once you drill a water point, but for the ownership within that community, a supply chain to that community, local repair possibilities linked to that community, and ongoing resources to so to support that project. Unless there’s an enabling environment that water project will not continue. Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — When the water project continues, there’s a platform for the church to continue to engage across our lines that divide us and become visible within the communities. The result is the church grows. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s amazing. Yeah, I love this. So friends, if you don’t know water is kind of the foundational developmental, you know, step. Like you can’t, it’s the thing if a community doesn’t have access to clean drinking water, it’s very difficult, if I understand correctly, it’s very difficult to move on to anything else. Education, you know, whatever other things you you might be interested in. So that’s why it’s so and critically critically important. I love this focus of, you know, sustainability. I love even the history, you kind of hinted to this, like when LWI started, it was… at least this is my impression of the stories I’ve heard of the early days. It was like, you know, a bunch of entrepreneurial type guys from Texas, hey let’s let’s buy a rig and go somewhere you know punch a bunch of holes in the earth. But but there’s if there’s nothing, the only thing worse than not having access to drink clean drinking water in a community is having access to clean drinking water and then having it go away. You know that it was we had it for a season, but we weren’t able to sustain it. Rich Birch — And I love your focus on long-term, the like, hey we’re going to try to do this over, you know, many years, but then we’re going to back out and ultimately, you know, the communities are going to have to take care of it. Do you have an example of one of the WASH programs that has kind of gone through its entire cycle. That you know, you’ve been able to step out of that you could kind of talk us through what that looks like? Mike Mantel — Absolutely, and and you really understand this process, Rich. And it’s it’s true that the intervention starts long before… Rich Birch — Yep. Mike Mantel — …the water well is drilled, or the pipes are are connected to a spring, long before. In building ownership, in organizing teams, in envisioning what the community might do together, long before. And then long after. You know, unless we’re committed to space and partnering with the institution that remains, the church, it’s impossible… Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — …to produce health long term… Rich Birch — Yep. Mike Mantel — …because healthy water allows kids to be healthy, to stay in school and develop their economies. So unless that happens um the water well will break in the first nine months, there’ll be a major intervention that’s required in the first two years. Rich Birch — Okay. Mike Mantel — And if if people don’t have access to those resources, human resources, you’re right – they’ll lose their water source. Rich Birch — Right, right. Mike Mantel — Secondly, is if they only have one clean water source—let’s say at school—but they don’t have one at home or at the hospital, health doesn’t accrue. You you need to have water across that community… Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — …safe water across that community. And if someone has clean water and they don’t wash their hands, or segment human waste, it… health still doesn’t accrue. Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — But to get to your question, we’ve now engaged in about 18 of these WASH program areas. It was a flyer ten years ago. We said, how do we sustain this work and how do we engage with the church and how do we really see results? And we we thought about this WASH program area and and a significant supporter a Christian family said we’ll back you on this. Let’s see if it works. Rich Birch — Nice. Mike Mantel — And so we we did our first one in Uganda – I guess it’s been about twelve years ago. We did a second one in another location in Uganda and then we did a new set in Zambia .and then we crossed the pond back to Nicaragua and now we’re about 65% of all of our work is in a WASH program area. Rich Birch — Love it. Mike Mantel — And so there’s a there’s a half a dozen that have been completed where we we we go in and that baseline study might say, you know, there’s a 36% access to safe water maybe 20% of the people are using appropriate sanitation and hygiene. The church is really not engaged physically, but it’s somewhat engaged spiritually, to 5 to 7 years later, 100% access to safe water Rich Birch — Wow, wow. Mike Mantel — …or let’s just say 85 to 95% access to safe water. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yes, yes. Mike Mantel — You know, nearly 100% hygiene practices transformed. And the church is perceived as being an active player in the health and vitality of that community, and is growing. And so ah, there are many examples. It’s a big investment… Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s an incredible. Mike Mantel — …big investment. Rich Birch — Yes, right. And that’s why you have a job; that’s job security for you. You know trying to helping, you know, motivate that. You know, when we first got when I first got um, connected with Living Water, it was when I was at Liquid Church in New Jersey fantastic church – love, love Liquid. I’m not there anymore, but just you know love their mission. And you know I saw it from my side as a as a pastor in a local church, you know, state side where this is a very understandable problem. Like there is not um, you can explain it. It’s clear. It’s it’s not um, and it’s not really debatable like it’s a very open thing to talk about as a church. Like you know people aren’t going to disagree with hey we want to help people on the other side of the world, or you know on our side of the world, get access to clean drinking water. And I saw time and again I saw our people get engaged. You know they were like wow. They just got fired up. I know that continues to be the case you know at ah at Liquid. But let’s talk about that you know on the the state side. How how do you engage with churches? You mentioned ah Greg you know, are there what does that look like? How how are churches kind of saying yeah we want to be a part of this? What’s that look like ah, here? Mike Mantel — Rich, again, there’s there’s there’s an evolution. When we started we asked churches and members of churches to help fund a water well and bring life in the name of Jesus to a thirsty community. It was ah it was a funding relationship. Over the years what became clearer and clearer is that by engaging in important global issues that the the donor becomes an advocate. The advocate becomes a disciple in what our our mind began to shift a little bit from helping Living Water fund a project to introducing churches in the United States to what churches around the world are accomplishing through WASH, and join what God is doing globally. So it it kind of shifted from help Living Water with some money so that we might change the world, to the church is changing the world. Help.… Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — Let’s work together to introduce the body to the body. Rich Birch — Love it. That’s beautiful. Mike Mantel — And so so that’s what we’re doing. So like in these WASH program areas. We’re organizing at the at the community level, aligning strategy with church denominational bodies at the district and national level. And then we’re trying to introduce the church in the United States to what that church is doing, and we’re we’re doing that through ah 3 pillars over the course of 3 years. Mike Mantel — So we’re saying all right, my dear friends at Liquid or Crossing or Grace Presbyterian Church, your church body is involved in building disciples at home and pursuing the great commission at home and abroad. Let’s join in what God is doing, and let’s do so by growing in our knowledge, expanding our experience, and co-investing for impact. Rich Birch — Love it. Mike Mantel — Going back to your first point, growing a knowledge. Yeah I I used to work with a colleague, Bob, at World Vision. He said if people knew better, they’d do better. The the fact the fact is few people know… Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — …that 771 million people are drinking out of puddles, and that they’ll never get healthy. And that 2 billion people don’t have an ongoing source to safe water. People just don’t know. And they don’t know about the multiplier effect that if if if people had safe water consistently and sustainably that they’d get healthy. They would. Their kids would have a chance to learn and develop their communities. We call that the multiplier effect. People don’t know that. And when the church is at the center of that intervention, the church is able to evangelize and disciple in ways that they’d never imagine possible. People don’t know. So what we want to do is is grow in our knowledge together through ah introductions and resources on the water crisis. The solvability of the water crisis the interplay of water and sanitation and the role of the church. Let’s grow in knowledge. Mike Mantel — And then the second is expand our experience together. Everybody I know that’s an activist in the world has crossed some dividing line. A geographical dividing line – we call that a mission trip. A ah racial dividing line, an economic dividing line, ah some philosophical dividing line – because when we move outside of our comfort zone somehow we’re more open to God’s whispers. Rich Birch — It’s true. Mike Mantel — We’re more open to reflection. You know we’re going to go back into the buzz of every day, but when when we’re on the other side of that line, we’re a little bit more open. And so all activists, all tremendous leaders that I’ve met have had that experience – many of which are ah going. Some of it is organizing. So expanding our experience. We we do water walks together. We do, you know, it’s ah marathons and mountain climbing together. We do vacation bible school together. We take trips together. And we do take trips to ah, implement a project, to drill a water well, to put in a pipe system, to teach sanitation and hygiene. But it’s really a part of the discipling experience for the goer. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Mike Mantel — It’s a opening up of the heart of the mind of the goer, and then you can’t shake it. I mean the newspaper comes alive. Rich Birch — Yeah. Mike Mantel — You’re you’re talking about it with your spouse. You’re praying about, you know, what you’ve learned. And sooner or later, sooner or later you’re going to move more deeply into that discipleship journey. But but it’s because of experience. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Mike Mantel — The third pillar’s co-investing. Mind, space, time, and money. When we start investing around ministries that are making a difference, that change both the physical and spiritual reality of of people, the more we invest, the more we learn, the more we want to experience, the more we learn and experience, the more we want to invest. Rich Birch — Yeah, yep. Mike Mantel — We tell our friends. Let’s let’s get engaged. And and so we we see those 3 pillars as a way for churches in the United States that perhaps structure a component of their discipleship program their missions program. And and don’t be in a hurry. You know, let’s just learn together. Let’s experience it. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah – that’s great. I love it. Mike Mantel — And and I’m beginning to see what what’s been fun these last nine months is, you know, talking to pastors—lead pastors, executive pastors—and they say well how do we how do we start? I said well if you got a missions program, where’s your map. Let’s look at the map. And then let’s take Living Water’s map and put it right over the top, and maybe there’s a geographical intersection. Rich Birch — Yeah, overlap. Yep. Mike Mantel — When there’s an overlap we can align resources. And then let’s grow in knowledge, let’s expand our experience, let’s co-invest. And and a part of that is let’s go. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mike Mantel — You know, coming out of Covid, everybody was frozen, right? Lot of people change your jobs. There’s a lot of new people. A new new position. But we’re all frozen. Rich Birch — Yep. Mike Mantel — And we want to get back on mission. We want to get back engaged with people. We want to, you know, be in the same room. We want to adventure. We want to travel. And but it’s hard to get over that lump or that hump. So I’m just saying, let’s just go. Rich Birch — Right. Nice. Love it. Love it. Mike Mantel — Let’s just go. Rich Birch — So good. Well and I yeah I’ve had a privilege of being on a number of LWI trips over the years in a number of countries. And one of the things I appreciate about the on the ground experience, and it’s been years since I’ve been on one, but you know I I know there are folks, and I have been one of those in the past, that are like I would say skeptical of the kind of mission trip experience. Let’s take 12 Americans and go somewhere. Like are we really making a difference? Like what’s that actually look like? Um but the thing I love about an LWI experience is you’re getting a chance to see right up close a you know a WASH program in action. You’re getting a chance to see ah a ah, well being drilled, and you’re you know you’re a part of that experience. Um, and at the end of that you’re changed because you’ve been up close. You’ve seen these leaders. You’ve seen the church doing its good. You’ve kicked a football or soccer ball around with kids. Um. And your heart has been changed. Rich Birch — One of the trips I was on, we um, you know, our our well was not going well. It was a tough week and it was not happening, and ironically that that’s the one that bubbles to the top of my mind. And, you know we made a decision as a group. It was like well we could you know a lot of these trips are always like the fun day we go and do something you know, kind of enjoy the culture, I think cultural day or whatever. And so we made the decision hey we’re not going to do that. We’re going to stay here and you know the the dynamic shifted from us doing a lot of work, to like the experts, the people that actually know what they’re doing. But man we were praying and we were you know and to see that actually to see us actually complete that project was amazing. It was incredible. Transformational. Um and man I’d love more people to have that kind of experience. That’s a hard thing to um, you know to to shake. It it just gets inside of you. Rich Birch — The other thing I love from ah a pastor’s point of view, from a leader’s point of view is this is an exciting issue to be a part of because we’re seeing progress, like there is actual progress happening on, you know, this issue. When we first first started talking about this we used to always say 1.1 billion people don’t have access. Now, it’s, like you said, 771 million. That’s that’s incredible to see. Um which there are lots of issues that don’t have that. Now I know the next you know the next 250 million are going to be harder. And the 250 million after that and the 250 million after that are going to be even harder. But but, man, what ah what an exciting time for churches to get involved. Rich Birch — When you think about… now you wrote a book. Actually I want to talk about this because I think a practical way on that first kind of getting exposure to this could be church leaders to pick up this. It’s called Thirsting for Living Water: Finding Adventure and Purpose in God’s Redemptive Story. Ah talk me through why you wrote this book. There’s a lot of work. You’ve got lots of other things to do. Ah, you’re busy person. Why did you, you know, pull this this resource together for church leaders? Mike Mantel — Well you and all of those that write stuff know that it is a heavy lift, and why I initially started thinking about writing it, to how I endured writing it, to the impact that it’s having has shifted a little bit. So initially, yeah, four years, ago five years ago, when I started thinking about the church, I said the church in the United States really needs to see how active and how life-giving the church is. You know the church was getting a lot of bad press. You know the church is shrinking. You know it’s no longer relevant to young people. Um, it’s boring. Um I don’t really need to go. Yeah and then it’s kind of like I can watch online at my leisure. You know like and I was thinking, you know, that’s not been my experience. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Mike Mantel — So what I wanted to do was just say, hey that’s not not been my experience. Where I’ve seen churches alive and active is when… Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — …they are identifying what God is doing and they’re participating in that. So that’s where I started, like let’s ah, let’s talk about what’s right with the church. So then I’m in I’m in the game, right? So then I’m writing, I’m thinking you know we’re collecting stories, we’re talking as a team. And and then ah it was a very difficult period of time, and that became the chassis of telling this story of the church, is my my father died, my wife got cancer, Hurricane Harvey wiped out our town, we had economic challenges. And and and so then I started enduring ah this writing process in the middle of what really became a dark night of my soul. Rich Birch — Wow. When I was younger I was absolutely convinced thatGod was the master strategist inviting us into his work. And I experienced 30 years of miracles, mind-blowing God shows up and doing great stuff. In my dark night which is really you know over a few years of the writing process, I began to doubt that. Rich Birch — Oh wow. Mike Mantel — You know, is God the master strategist? Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Mike Mantel — Is he showing up? Can I um, confidently move forward and lead an organization when things just don’t feel good, and I’m not really hearing the Lord as clearly, and the results aren’t there? So then it it became well a discovery of the stories in my life, and other people’s life that sustained me through that dark night. And and it shifted the book shifted to being a series of 12 reflections recalling God’s faithfulness. And when when things got really really hard and in you know the hard lift and the emotional lift um in my personal prayer time what sustained me was just what I felt was a divine whisper: tell people of my faithfulness. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Mike Mantel — Tell stories of my faithfulness. Because you know how often does God tell us through scriptures, remember. Remember the Savior of your youth. Remember the Lord that took you out of Egypt. Remember. And as I remember the stories while constructing this book, I began to see glimmers of hope, and I began to reengage emotionally, and mentally, spiritually with the Lord. And I developed a rock solid certainty that God is in fact, the master strategist calling us to join him in what he is doing as he redeems and reconciles the world. And it’s a great adventure. Rich Birch — Yes, love it. Mike Mantel — You can find purpose and adventure. Rich Birch — Love it. Mike Mantel — And so that’s where it concluded where, along the way, we talk about strategy. Rich Birch — Right. Mike Mantel — Along the way we talk about ah leadership. Along the way we talk about what God is doing through his church in Latin America, in Africa, in South Asia, in the United States. And my hope is that when people pick up the book and read it that ah they will be encouraged And they will have practical tools to move through their dark night, develop their strategy, and determine their approach to missions. And and so the book itself became a ministry. So it’s all proceeds, you know, go to the work of Living Water organizing churches… Rich Birch — Oh love it. Yeah. Love it. Mike Mantel — …and it’s found some it’s found some connection to pastors. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well yeah, this to me I think would be a great ah well two things, friends, if you’re listening in and you’ve made it this far in, you really should consider connecting with Living Water International. Like they’re they’re incredible people. They’re doing great work. Ah, Mike and his team, every time I interact with a different person at LWI I’m always like these are amazing people, like and they you know love the Lord, and they’re they’re smart and they’re trying to make a difference, and they’re being good stewards, are thinking long-term – all that. So yeah I would strongly endorse, you should talk with them. Rich Birch — You know a practical next step could be, hey this why don’t you buy 10 of these books and read them as your as your staff team. Maybe it’s like ah one of those book study things you do ah you know in this this next year. And it may not be that hey you and your conclusion is well therefore we’re going to, like you say give a piece of our kind of missions expression to that. But maybe it inspires you in some other way, which is wonderful. That’s that’s great. I know Mike’s a big enough guy doesn’t you know he really is concerned about the big “C” church. And so ah that I think would be a great next step for you. Rich Birch — Well just kind of as we’re coming to land as we’re landing the plane, um anything else, you’d like to say, kind of final thoughts for folks as their listening in? Mike Mantel — Well the the big thought I have is that the church of Jesus Christ can end the water crisis… Rich Birch — Amen. Mike Mantel — …as it pursues the great commission. Rich Birch — Love it. Mike Mantel — That they’re not separate. They’re integrated. They’re integral. They’re they’re the two sides of one coin. That as the church comes together in a unified expression of love and action, a doubting world will see that unity, will see that love, will see that action, and millions will come to follow Jesus. And, you know, when we talk about the multiplier impact of water, sanitation, hygiene with them through the church I see a multiple multiplier impact of working together. And solving a solvable problem that is the most fundamental challenge facing the world today, and in the future. Rich Birch — Love it. Mike Mantel — And so as we link arms, solving the water crisis we will pursue the great commission. And that’s worth doing. That’s a life worth spent. And so I just encourage people to consider that. And as Rich said, I am happy if you pursue your mission through micro-enterprise, through food, through justice, through um trafficking it, as long as you’re crossing a line that divides us and God is inviting you into doing that. But if water seems to be the thing that God is whispering in your ears, let’s just link arms together. Let’s do it together because I am convinced that we can solve this problem as we pursue the great commission. Rich Birch — So good. Mike Mantel everybody. So good. Mike, where do we want to send people online to connect with you or to connect with Living Water International? Where do we want to make sure they they they head to? Mike Mantel — Water.cc Rich Birch — Easy. Mike Mantel — Water.cc – come online, all of our resources are there. They’re open-handed, public-sourced, whoever wants to utilize them are free to utilize them. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love it. Mike Mantel — Reach out to us on our church page. We’d ah, be delighted to follow up with you to do something custom together to link arms, to grow in knowledge, expand our experience, invest for impact. If you know you can buy this book on Amazon.com; if you don’t have any money just email me and I’ll send you one. Rich Birch — Okay, that’s great. Mike Mantel — Yeah, it’s it’s a it’s a ministry. Rich Birch — Love it. Yes, love it. Yeah I was going to ask you that. We obviously can get the book at Amazon, you know, anywhere else we want to send people online? I love that – email find is you’re going to have to dig around on the on the website find but—you can find it—find his email address and and reach out, but anywhere else we want to send them to pick up copies of the book? Mike Mantel — You know, but you could always go to thirstingforlivingwater.com… Rich Birch — Okay, great. Mike Mantel — …and you know or michaeljmantel.com – either one of those. That’ll give you all kinds of resources um, all kinds of information as it relates to this book. But the easiest thing that is just water.cc and you can find me. And like I’m serious if if you don’t have any money you want to read this book if God’s putting up on your heart I’d be delighted to send it to you. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Well thanks so much, Mike. I appreciate you being here today. You’ve just been just a blessing to us. I really appreciate you spending time. Thanks so much. Mike Mantel — Rich, thanks for everything you do. You are a good man.