unSeminary Podcast

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Dennis Allen today, a former fighter pilot who became a six-time Turnaround CEO and now helps churches rethink discipleship. The vast majority of younger people who were raised in the church are leaving at alarming rates. 80% of the people sitting in our churches are spiritually inert and disengaged. What’s the problem? Tune in as Dennis explores the symptoms and root causes of the disciple dilemma in our churches and how to move forward. The dilemma in the pews. // Many people sitting in our churches today aren’t fully engaged in the mission. About 65% of millennials (age 45 and under) and 70-80% of Gen Z (age 25 and under) who were raised in the church are walking out because they say the church is intolerant, irrelevant, immoral, and irrational. In addition, 93% of evangelicals believe that talking about Jesus is not their job, it’s the pastor’s responsibility. 80% listen to sermons but have no small group, prayer, or bible study in their lives. Mission versus institution. // The church, while being the body of Christ, is also an institution. Institutions, by nature, tend to prioritize the urgent over the important, often losing sight of their mission. This phenomenon, which Dennis refers to as “churchianity,” can lead to a focus on maintaining the organization rather than making disciples. If everything we do isn’t driven by the mission of our churches, the mission will slowly be subsumed by the institution. Recognize the root causes. // Once you’ve identified the symptoms of a discipleship problem, it’s time to dig deeper and address the root causes. In his book The Disciple Dilemma, Dennis lays out six very old traditions that are not right, good, or biblical, but they’ve been around so long they are seen as normal and may be hindering true discipleship. The second half of The Disciple Dilemma lays out a path for how to biblically go after the problem. The dynamic of power. // One of the root causes of disciple issues is the dynamic of power that began with Constantine. Modern Western Christianity thinks about power as a means to achieve the end of serving God. Because of our fallen nature, power infects the system and it becomes about dominating and being in control. Churches and the people who occupy them want their agendas to be picked up. However what we see in Jesus, and in discipleship, is a servant who connects with people in humility and builds relationships. Discipleship over growth. // Dennis challenges the notion that numerical growth is the sole indicator of a healthy church. Growth is good, but when you start packing growth into the pews at a rate that exceeds your ability to disciple, you’ll have a problem. Assess whether your programs are fostering genuine discipleship or merely attracting attendees. Encourage personal relationships and mentorship within the church community. Discipleship at the top. // One of the tell-tale signs of whether churches are discipling well is looking at the leadership team and asking if they have actually been discipled and who is walking alongside them right now. Church leaders must be actively involved in discipleship, modeling it for the congregation. Is the leadership doing what it wants the rest of the church to do? Is the church launching other churches? Does it have a structure that allows one-on-ones and one-on-twos of disciples on disciples to develop? Help from The Disciple Dilemma. // By understanding the scale of the disciple problem, diagnosing the symptoms, and addressing the root causes, church leaders can cultivate a culture of discipleship that prioritizes the mission over mere institutional growth. For those interested in diving deeper into this topic, Dennis is offering a dozen free downloads of his book, The Disciple Dilemma. You can enter to win a free copy of the e-book here or pick up a physical copy. Learn more about The Disciple Dilemma at thediscipledilemma.com and enter to win a free copy of the e-book. Twelve entries will be chosen at random on July 11, 2024. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’re so honored that you’ve decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will inspire, equip you, and today I’m excited to have Dennis Allen with us. New friend, he’s a six-time turnaround CEO. That alone should get your attention. But he also would like flew fighter pilot was a fighter pilot at one point in life and has helped all kinds of you know people across the country, and has got a real passion for discipleship, and we’re really looking forward to diving in on this conversation. Dennis, welcome to the show today. Dennis Allen — Rich, amped to be with you on unSeminary. Rich Birch — This is going to be good. Fill in the picture, kind of give us the story, the Dennis Allen story. I know that’s hard to do, but kind of tell us a little bit about your background. Dennis Allen — Yeah, well my background looks like an attention deficit disorder nightmare, if you take a look at my resume, right? Rich Birch — Love it. Dennis Allen — I’m just kind of tracking through. Um so I was raised in a Christian home. At the age of 8 my parents, exasperated with me, decided to drag me down to the pastor’s office to try to understand who Jesus really is and how broken my life really was. I became a believer at that point and then I went inert. That’s a conversation I’d like to carry on a little further today when we talk about discipleship. Off into the military, got to fly airplanes. That was crazy, wild ride. Um the Lord had some really interesting issues to throw out at me there which was basically I was told my heart is got the same problem that Pistol Pete Maravich’s heart had on the Boston Celtics… Rich Birch — Oh no. Dennis Allen — …and you’re going to die in a couple of years. Rich Birch — Okay. Dennis Allen — That didn’t happen but I couldn’t fly anymore… Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — …and that sent me reeling off into the business world. The business world I’m working on turning around companies that are either underperforming, struggling, or in just disaster mode. And along the way my bride, Karen, and I are living in lots of different places, and we’re in different churches as members, and we’re getting a chance to watch discipleship live, full and free. And that led me to think a lot about it. And then as I mentioned to you, we were chatting before the podcast, a bunch of theological thugs at gunpoint made me write a book, and that was The Disciple Dilemma. So, here we are. Rich Birch — Ah, ah well one of those thugs was Os Guinness. Dennis Allen — Yeah. Rich Birch — And listen, when his recommendation on your book, like anybody who knows him, obviously is giant, has had so much influence. It’s definitely one of those quotes you want to lean forward and be like, ooh I should probably pay attention to what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about the disciple dilemma. And man, there are so many people, you talked about this inert people that are sitting in our pews or in our seats that are not engaged fully in the mission. They’re, you know, they’re kind of floating through life. But then you’ve got, you know, so many nones in our cultures, ex-evangelicals, deconverted, all that. But help us understand the problem, the scale of this problem. You’ve obviously seen it as a person in a lot of different churches across the country and are now obviously thinking about it. But let’s unpack that problem a little bit. What’s what’s actually happening here with discipleship, or and maybe not happening with discipleship across the country? Dennis Allen — That’s a great way to set it up, Rich. So here’s here’s kind of the framework of this. I’m gonna I’m gonna lean to some statistics for a couple of minutes. And I’ll start with some of the more recent ones. If your folks are probably familiar with The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis, Michael Graham’s book. There’s work with Pew, there’s Barna, IPPR. Even The Humanist Society of the UK. And let me just lay some numbers out… Rich Birch — Okay. Dennis Allen — …so pastors can go, hey this really isn’t my fault; this really is going on all around us, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Dennis Allen — So what’s what’s happening in the world? About 65% of millennials, think sort of 45 down, and about 70 to 80% of Gen Z’s, think now 25 and down, who were raised in the church are walking out. They’re saying, this isn’t for me. The church is intolerant, irrelevant, immoral, irrational. I’m not a part of this anymore. I can be a part of a running club or whatever and go do that. So they’re walking out. Those people exit the church. That’s one problem. Dennis Allen — Second problem that you face in the pews today: 93% of evangelicals would tell you that talking about Jesus is not my job – that belongs to, Rich, the pastor, the guy in the pulpit. He’s supposed to do the heavy lifts on this sort of thing. 80% of the people in those pews are spiritually inert. They have no bible study. They have no prayer life. They have no small group. They have nothing more than 1.7 times a month going to a sermon series. That’s Protestant, mainstream… Rich Birch — Yep. Dennis Allen — …and the evangelical traffic altogether. So when we think about the people walking out and the folks that we’ve got in the pews, the question that began to taunt me is, do we have a problem? And if so… Rich Birch — That’s good. Dennis Allen — …what’s the symptom and what’s the root cause? What’s going on here? That’s kind of the setup. Rich Birch — Okay, that’s good. I love that. I you know, I know I wondered for a while, you know, if when we the the average church in the country is 75 people. That’s you know that number is super sticky. And you know, ah the the irony of that and, listen, we’re all friends here that are listening in, just a couple of friends sitting around having a coffee. You know, the irony of that in that number to me in other contexts I’ve wondered, I’d love for you to get your thoughts on this, 75 people is about the number of people that you need in a church to pay for one pastor. Um, and that may sound like a really cynical thing but I wonder if so many of our systems in the church really are kind of reinforcing the system, rather than making disciples, rather than making people who ultimately follow Jesus. We’re really, it’s like we’re building organizations. Ah, react to that. Am I just way too cynical? Is that too dark of a thought? Talk to me about that. Dennis Allen — I love the way you’re setting this up, Rch. So when you think about the world of a church, I’m going to say some things that some of the people in the pews that would get really mad about. Rich Birch — Sure. Dennis Allen — But if you really really get angry and upset about this, it’s Rich’ a’s fault for let me on not mine. So. Rich Birch — Sure, yes. Dennis Allen — So here’s kind of the setup. The setup is that we have the body of Christ. We have the community of believers that gathers together to worship. But the flip side of that exact same entity is an organization. And when you have an organization, you have an institution. Now here’s where we get into the tension that you’re facing as a pastor and executive pastor. Institutions always want to strip away mission. Institution wants tyranny in the urgent, Charlie Hummel’s book, to take over. You need to fire fight, you need to work the crises, you need to work the budget, you need to work the PowerPoint decks that make all the elders or the board of directors or whoever really happy. You’ve got to churn out administrative, you got to crank out great sermons, you got to take care of the kids on Sundays, bury the in-laws, you got to do all this sort of stuff. That’s the institutional side of the church. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Dennis Allen — And as a CEO in the turnaround space. What’s always killing businesses is they get lost in institutional world, in our terminology we might say churchianity. You get lost in the churchianity and you lose the Christianity. There’s a mission statement and if everything we’re doing doesn’t drive by the mission, the mission doesn’t drive everything we’re doing from the flavor of the donuts at the coffee break to the sermons that we’re teaching and the way we’re interacting with human beings. The mission will slowly be subsumed by the institution. And that’s something that in seminary I bet you don’t have a lot of conversations about. Rich Birch — Yeah, that that is a that’s a really fresh idea there that you know institutions drive towards the tyranny of the urgent, that you know at the end of the day we we ignore the long-term is is the mission is why are we here? Why are we kind of driving, you know, why why are we doing all these things? And how are we aligning towards that. That’s that’s ah, that’s a bold idea. Rich Birch — Well, let’s unpack this at a local level. How how does a church leader when, let’s say we’re looking around and it’s like you, you know, you go into a room and it’s like I feel like there’s like a piece of rotten, you know, tomato under the table and you can kind of smell it, but you’re not sure where that smell’s coming from. Let’s assume that we know we have a sense that something’s wrong, but how do we diagnose that? How do we find the root cause? What do we, in our own church, what do we how do we figure that out for us? Dennis Allen — Well, the first thing that I would want to say is it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Dennis Allen — If you’re a pastor. It’s not your fault. This problem ranges back, arguably 1800 years and more deep into the church. Rich Birch — Wow, wow. Dennis Allen — And in our book, The Disciple Dilemma, we tried to lay out six very, very old traditions that have been around us for so long we think of them as good, right, and normal, but they are not good. They are not right. They’re not biblical. They’re not normal. And so, shall I toss one or two out for fun? Rich Birch — Yeah I was going to say, that’s a you we’ve got to unpack that. Because I feel like we often hear that like, oh things were so much better. But we talk about like that was like thirty years ago. You’re you’re saying we got an 1800 year old problem here. Let’s talk about those good, right things that are not actually good or right. Dennis Allen — Let me start with the thing that we were just conversing about. It’s the sixth root cause that we talk about that kills discipleship. And we call it in the book “the not main thing”. It’s we’re chasing stuff, but it’s not the mission. It’s the stuff that’s on fire, screaming and yelling for attention. Dennis Allen — And as you think about some of your churches that you were just setting up. You know we’ve got churches that are very small, churches that are very large. The dynamics of the urgent in a megachurch can be quite different from the poor, lonely pastor who doesn’t even have enough cash to keep the lights on in a church. However, comma, “the not main thing” is to fail in what Christ called us to be as leaders making disciples, to go after the symptoms instead of chasing the symptoms hoping that eliminates the problem, which it never ever does. So “the not main thing” is one. Let me let me park that one on the table. Let me put one other one on the table, just as ah as an example. Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s have it. Dennis Allen — It’s the dynamic of power. Modern Western Christianity thinks about power as a means to achieve the end of serving God. In other words, for Christendom’s sake, for the nationalists sake, for the ability to dominate the world for the Lord, I’m going to go out and conquer these people and beat them down and bring them into subjugation so that they will either by my logic, or by our social influence, surrender. They’ll fall; they’re gonna say oh, you beat me up, you’re right. I give up. I want to be a Jesus person. That power dynamic actually began with Constantine. It began with Constantine because Christianity used to be 5, 6, 7, 8 people meeting in a little barn somewhere and hoping that the soldiers didn’t come in and take them out and kill them or throw them in the arena. Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — Constantine switched that to a power dynamic that said, hey, it’s legit; I’m on board with it, and you better get on board with it too. Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — Now I’m all for leaders saying, I’m a believer and I’m really into this. However, there’s a problem. When you start packing growth into those pews at a rate that exceeds your ability to disciple, you’re about to have a problem, whether it’s a commercial business or a church. Growth can kill you. Rich Birch — Um, okay, let’s talk about that. This is one of the the oddities of and this goes back to when I was school in school. It’s like we have lots of historical examples of when the the gospel, the good things of Jesus, the good news are fused with political power, like it’s not good long term. Like it’s like we got tons of examples of that. This is not good for the message of Jesus, but I feel like we just keep reliving that as as a movement. We keep coming back to this. We keep coming back to this place right back to Constantine. Ah, why is that why? What’s driving that? Dennis Allen — Well I’d reach in first to Francis Schaefer and “the manishness of men”. It’s kind of in our recipe. You know we’re broken. We’re fallen and we like power. We want to be in control, and hey I love it when I walk into a room and I say, thus speaketh Dennis, here is my wisdom, and everybody goes, oh that is so cool. Oh that’s so profound. Rich Birch — Yes. Dennis Allen — Okay, that’s a little cynical. But the flip side of it is, churches and the people that occupy them want their agenda to be picked up. Some for the most noble of reasons: I’m following Jesus I want people to get to know Jesus. Some for some darker angel’s reasons which might be the idea of, I just want to get rid of those people over there. If we get them out of the way we have a lovely nation. We have a lovely government. We have a lovely church. Power is always infesting the system. And what we see in the Lord, in discipleship, is a servant who is connecting with people in humility, and reason, but building relationships. This this is that ethos. But power has told us you got to have a brand, you got to have a venue, you got to have growth, you got to have cash flow, you got to have people in the seats, you got to have baptisms… Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Dennis Allen — You got to have great programs. We stole that from the commercial marketplace, Rich, and interestingly, they stole it from Constantine. So we’re in a “do” loop. Rich Birch — Right, right. Okay. Now let’s kind of similar area but pivot to slightly different conversations. So you know, I think so many times when we when we hear the word “discipleship,” we think of like programs and products and um, like the, you know, the latest system or like some, you know, do these 12 steps, that that sort of thing. That’s not what you’re talking about, is it? Dennis Allen — Not at all, not at all. Let me let me set this on the table and you can um if you could just have somebody tell me I’m irrational and stupid and ridiculous. I can quit doing this and go back to the regular stuff I do in life. Rich Birch — Sure. Dennis Allen — Um, we tend to think of discipleship in the truncated view of the Old Testament. What I mean by that is the the Old Testament and the New Testament and Jesus’s model of discipleship showed three phases of a disciple’s life. Rich Birch — Okay. Dennis Allen — And here’s some terms I’ll be familiar to some of you guys, this, I’m talking to a bunch of theologians so I know you guys will get it… Rich Birch — Sure. Dennis Allen — …but let me just throw this out. There is the Bet Sefer S-E-F-E-R, the Bet Sefer which is kind of elementary school. Typically it was children learning about the Torah. It was children learning about being in synagogue. It was children learning about the community of believers they were around. That’s the Bet Sefer. And actually in the west we do that quite well. We have fantastic preaching. We have wonderful resources online, ministries like unSeminary. We’ve got these magnificent things going on in the Bet Sefer stage. The problem that we find statistically, Rich, is that most people don’t get part 2 and part 3. Dennis Allen — Part 2, Bet Midrash. Think of that as vocational school for disciples. You know you might have a vo-tech school that’s going to teach you how to weld to repair cars or cook. Jesus’s model, the New Testament’s model, the Old Testament’s model was you’re going to come alongside a Rich and you’re going to learn how Rich thinks and how he talks and you’re going to start actually imitating him, using his phrases, using his style. And it may not ultimately and forever work for you. But you begin with the basis of somebody showing you the pragmatics in a laboratory environment. That is the Bet Midrash, that is this middle vo-tech phase that is so very rare. Statistics say 90% of your people have never been through this. Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — 80% of pastors have never been through this, so go the surveys. Rich Birch — Right, right. Dennis Allen — Then we get to the third phase, which is the Bet Talmud. And the Bet Talmud, T-A-L-M-U-D, Talmud, is where you become a practitioner. Now you’re walking out with your mentor, Rich, into the public square, into life. It might be at work. It might be in your community. It might be in recreation. It might be in church. You’re walking out amongst other people. And you’re watching Rich for a little while, but all of a sudden you notice Rich is a little quieter and you’re talking a little bit more. And pretty soon you’re looking around and Rich isn’t even there anymore, and he slid somebody up alongside you who needs to start learning how to imitate you. This is not a small group of 10, or a congregation of 75 or a 1000 or 10,000. This is one on one, maybe arguably one on two. Deep, infinite, transparent, intimate walking alongside somebody else. How’s that for a start? Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great. I love what you’re pointing towards here. Um, because I I think ultimately I think within your bang on is that discipleship is ultimately about a culture. It’s about how, you know, there there isn’t it’s not step 1, step 2, step 3 – that can be a part of it. But it’s ah, really about how are we helping people transform their entire lives, to reform their entire lives in the way of Jesus, ultimately. Rich Birch — The thing I find interesting is there is like a years ago, maybe 2, 3 years ago, I heard the CEO um, of a large company. They somebody asked them, it’s like off the top of their head. They said, hey, what are the three things you worry about all the time as a CEO? And I was a little struck by this. They said without hesitation they were revenue, culture, and vision. They said, you know, I I I’m the chief salesperson’s, it’s a big company, chief salesperson. Um, but then the other two culture and vision, I’m worrying about how we’re interacting with each other. And then I’m worrying about the vision, are we staying aligned to what we’re called to as an organization. I thought, man, there’s a lot of churches that aren’t doing that. There’s, you know, we’re not worrying about how we’re cultivating the culture. Talk to us more of on the culture side, maybe bringing in some of that CEO turnaround stuff. How does all that fit together in this thinking around the disciples dilemma? Dennis Allen — Well, I mean I’m going to really tee up on what you just said because it’s really important. And the question that I want to ask everybody just to pause for a moment and think about is, what is the fungible currency, the revenue of the church of the most high God. And the answer to this actually is, I’m gonna I’m let you just pause on that for a second, just think about it. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good question. Dennis Allen — But the answer to this is really quite fascinating. Rich Birch — Yeah. Dennis Allen — I’m going to tell you that the fungible currency of the church of the most high God is not what’s in the offering plate. What it actually is, is it’s disciples who make disciples who make disciples. That’s capital formation. That’s the kind of stuff CEOs are really thinking about when they talk about revenue, they’re talking about how do I form capital at my bottom line after all my costs have been paid so that I can move forward more powerfully, more strongly, more… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Dennis Allen — …more deeply into the market to do more of what I do. Rich Birch — That’s good. Dennis Allen — That’s that’s the currency of disciples who make disciples who make disciples. Now, you brought up the idea of culture, which is so incredibly important. And a lot of people don’t get culture. And I bet your seminaries don’t talk an awful lot about church culture… Rich Birch — No, no, no. Dennis Allen — …other than you know, yeah you got to have one. Rich Birch — Yeah. Dennis Allen — I find that all of my turnarounds, it’s a common script. Number one, nobody knows why they’re there. They know they build widgets or they sell stuff, but they really don’t know why they’re there. Rich Birch — That’s good. Dennis Allen — If you want a Millennial or a Gen Z to get excited, tell them why. That amps people up when they know the why. My generation, it was a little different. It was like, tell Dennis to go do this, the what and the how. Don’t don’t talk to him about the why, we don’t have time to do that. Go out and produce stuff, right? But what we see in this generation today, and I suspect many of your exec pastors are in this role is, our people in the pews, and I don’t mean this to be an insult, but perhaps a lot of people in leadership don’t know the why that they’re actually there. Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — And I’m going to say that the mission of the, here’s where here’s where you can burn me at the stake, right – send your cards letters and ethanol to Dennis. And the mission of every single believer is the same mission as the church. It is to be and make disciples. That’s what a church is. It’s disciples. And that’s what we do as a church. And when you have disciples, as Jesus defined those disciples, the symptoms are worship, praise, ministries, missions, passion, evangelism, conversations, relationships, statesmanship in political dynamics and in civic spheres, this stuff goes wild when you really get what Jesus was doing with discipleship. That’s the kind of culture that we’re trying to build inside a church. If the mission is actually discipleship, if that’s really the mission and Matthew 28 got this assert if that assertion is right, that everything else we hear Jesus talking about is saying, disciples do these things, all these other things, then we’ve got this preeminent statement before us. Dennis Allen — Leaders you got to go first. You got to eat your own dog food. You’ve got to disciple someone else, even if you’ve never been discipled… Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — …so that people can see you doing that and then you can turn around and say, and now my expectation, the culture, the atmosphere, the DNA of this community of believers, is we make disciples. Rich Birch — Right? Yeah, I love that. So good. You know so you wrote this book, The Disciple Dilemma; let’s pivot and talk about it. You know, specifically to give people a bit of sense of that. Tell us a little bit about the story. What drove you to this point? What you know you got lots of other fish to fry in your life. What what got you to like, okay, I want to spend some time effort and energy you know pulling this together? Dennis Allen — I kept noticing in churches, even when I wasn’t in leadership roles, I just kept looking around and seeing families going, my kids don’t believe. My kids are angry. My kids are walking out. My kids think we’re hypocrites. My kids have become X, Y, or Z other faiths, no faith, whatever. And of course as we all knows he mentioned a few minutes ago, we’re seeing the nones, the dones, the deconverts, the ex-vangelicals, the spiritually but not religious people, on and on it goes. And I’m watching this and I’m going this is interesting and it echoes in a way my commercial world. I walk into broken companies and people are leaving because they don’t know why they’re there. Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — There’s no purpose to it, right? We sing songs and we speak words up into the air and hope that somebody or something hears us, and then we have this TED Talk and, you know the music is awesome, but it’s not exactly doing anything for me. And so I’m watching these people leave, and I’m going, that’s fascinating. What’s what’s the root cause underneath this? What’s going on? And… Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — …it drove it drove me to start giving some talks about this. And eventually I gave the talk in the wrong place and a bunch of theological thugs made me write a book about it. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. What what are you hoping for? What’s the kind of target that you’re like when I, so taking a look at the book, getting a sense a little bit about it, to me it strikes me as this would be a great conversation with my leadership team. Like let’s let’s pull this together, read this book maybe over the summertime, and you know and really try to you know, reflect on, Okay, how do what should we shift about what we do our own behavior based on this. But what were you kind of hoping for, what kind of church were you hoping to impact, that sort of thing. Dennis Allen — The goal that we set when we got the book out was we’re going for 3000 churches to actually scrimmage this issue. Now there’s 300,000 protestant churches-ish… Rich Birch — Yeah. Dennis Allen — …in the in sort of the North American space of which, you know, if you if you look at the numbers you can you can kind of debate how the the people of the world all flow into. But about half the people that go to church go to a megachurch. And the rest go to the 75 that you were just talking about that’s kind of sort of the starkness of this thing. I wanted 3000 churches—small ones, mid-size, large, and megas—I wanted them to start look at this and go like we do have a problem. Maybe we don’t have their problems, but we have problems. What’s going on here? And is it really at the root a discipleship problem, or is it just we need to preach harder, teach better, have more programs, which I think statistically and historically have proven, they don’t work. You could just keep plowing them and you get one generation of a disciple and then they leave or they quit and then it’s done. Dennis Allen — So the book is really trying to say, there’s a deeper root cause, a historical set of root causes, and you’ve got to evaluate which of those six belong to you. And then start scrimmaging as a leadership team. Do you want to take the second half of the book which says here’s how you take a path forward out of this, biblically, to go after the problem. That’s really what we were aiming for with with the book. Rich Birch — That’s cool. When you think about churches ah that are doing this well that is like our, you know, beacons of hope for you. What are some of the telltale signs of that that are like, oh here’s here’s a church that’s actually discipling, kind of regardless of size and all that. What is what does that look like for you? What are some of those kind of like oh that that’s when it’s actually working well? Dennis Allen — Well some of the first symptoms that you can pick up on is when you look at the leadership team and you ask the question, have you ever been discipled, and who’s walking alongside you right now as a follower Christ in your life? I don’t mean like the amazed student who’s looking up and going, Oh gosh you know, Rich, you’re so awesome, so cool. But who actually can look at you and go, you’re not doing very well, Rich. I’m looking at you. Or Rich, it looks like things are going really well. I know you really well, that’s that’s sort of piece one for me as I walk in as a turnaround guy and I look at an organization. Ah is the leadership actually doing what the leadership wants the people to do. Dennis Allen — The second thing, which are interesting symptoms, is not growth. Growth is a really poorly understood concept and the church tends to run for it saying growth, growth, growth. If you’re not growing, we need to fire the pastor and find somebody else. And heavens, how many pastors I’ve interviewed that are in despair over the way they’re being banged about because you haven’t delivered the numbers, like some stockholders report, right? Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — So challenging. So the second piece that I look at is is this a church which is launching other churches and has structure that allows one on ones and one on twos to develop. Small groups are wonderful. Big worship is wonderful. And we need all that and we want all that and God encourages to have all that. But do we see disciples on disciples… Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — …moving and working together? And so that gets to be a much narrower slice of our “market”. When you start saying leadership is in it, and the people in this world, some percentage of them, are actually engaged dynamically in disciples. Living as disciples who make disciples who make disciples. Rich Birch — Okay, let’s talk about that growth thing. You’ve cut you you’ve tapped that a couple times. So one of the one of the I think ah personally I think it’s a false dichotomy is that there’s like a you know real churches that we comfort ourselves with like, oh real churches that are really discipling people, like they don’t worry about growth at all. Like you know that’s not, you know, there if we really were doing what we would we do and it doesn’t matter whether we grow, which I know is not what you’re saying. But unpack that a little bit more. You know, you know you talk about growth being poorly understood, a poorly understood dynamic in the church. Talk to us about that a little bit. Dennis Allen — One of the quickest ways you can wreck a business is to grow it too fast. Rich Birch — okay. Dennis Allen — You’re not prepared to take on either the client load or the production load or the marketing load. Growth kills businesses and it kills it rapidly, if you think about it. 75% of all businesses at startup die in the first five years because they overgrew. Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — Churches are equally susceptible to that because there is an organization there. And as people begin to load up, one, you have to ask yourself the dynamic is this a cash rich area that I’m living in so I’ll have plenty of cash resources. It can build lots of buildings… Rich Birch — Yep. Dennis Allen — …hire lots of staff. Or am I in a cash poor region where I don’t have enough resource to be able to build and scale on this sort of thing and and get running with that. But I would wager that the growth paradigm is pitched both in seminary and I’ve talked to the seminary professors about this. I’ve had a lot of pastor talk about this. If you ain’t growing, you ain’t going. And that’s the falsity. What’s actually true, I think biblically, is if you ain’t discipling the rest of it doesn’t matter. But if you are discipling, some of you are going to grow numerically. Some of you are going to spin off numerically, launch other ventures… Rich Birch — Right. Dennis Allen — …and some of you aren’t going to grow an awful lot for a long time but you’re going to start replicating disciples and your growth’s coming. It may take you years, but your growth is coming. And then you got to decide how you allocate that capital formation we were talking about, the revenue of disciples who make disciples who make disciples. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I… Dennis Allen — We are looking at ah there’s there’s a book called the great evangelical recession. And the great evangelical recession is an economist theologian who is saying today that by the year 2040 30% percent of our churches in North America will not be able to afford the facilities that they’re in. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, absolutely. Dennis Allen — Growth has its lovely side and it has its challenges. Growth’s not a strategy. Rich Birch — Yeah, no I get that. You know there’s some stats of there that show that 94% of the churches in the country are losing ground against the growth of the communities they’re in. So there you know there’s there’s the more encouraging statistic that 80% of churches are plateaued are in decline. But actually there’s a whole percentage of churches that are growing that aren’t growing as quickly as their communities. So the problem with that long term is we’re losing influence. Now I agree with you that um you know there’s we have a there’s a discipleship sublayer for sure in this issue that we’re not actually converting people to actually follow Christ. We’re just making more you know Christianitians and not necessarily Christians, you know people who are followers of our organizations, but not necessarily followers of Jesus. Rich Birch — Yeah, this has been this has been a great conversation. Well where do we want to send people if they’re if they want to pick up copies of The Disciple Dilemma. This is Rethinking and Reforming How the Church Does Discipleship. Where do we want to send them to pick those up? Dennis Allen — Well, all the usual places. If you want to pick them up and if if it’s at all worthwhile to you, Rich, I’d be happy to toss 25 copies of Kindle, Ebook, Nook codes out for people to get a free download if you got folks who would like that. Um. Rich Birch — Oh that’d be great. Yeah, that’d be amazing. Yeah, that’d be great. Dennis Allen — So you can find all that stuff. You can also check us out at www.thediscipledilemma.com… Rich Birch — Love it. Dennis Allen — …or Youtube or Linkedin or Instagram or Rumbly or Facebook – we’re out there @thediscipledilemma. Rich Birch — All that stuff. That’s great. Good stuff. Well, Dennis, this has been a great conversation I really appreciate you being on today, and and love your book. And I really would encourage you listeners to pick up a copy I think. A great time of year to be thinking about you know staff training that sort of thing and I think Dennis’s work here would really help us think about and ultimately take some new steps as a church. So Dennis, thank you for being here sir appreciate being on the show today. Dennis Allen — Thanks for your ministry, Rich.

Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with generosity expert Phil Ling today. He offers strategic and energetic leadership to The Giving Church consulting team, helping churches fuel their ministries. The largest transfer of wealth in the world is going on right now. With four generations alive at the same time, churches must adapt their strategies to cater to diverse age groups and their distinct giving behaviors. Tune in as Phil offers help on creating a culture of generosity, understanding giving metrics, and executing successful vision campaigns. Increase participation. // 45% of the people in the average church give less than $200 a year. While there’s no silver bullet to fixing this problem, it’s important to remember that God built His church around intentional generosity. Every year churches lose 18% of their people. Even when you grow in attendance, more people don’t necessarily solve your money problems. Instead, your number one goal should be how to raise participation while building intentional generosity. Offer more to the community. // Some churches tackle fundraising by creating multiple revenue streams. Think about a way your church can serve the community you’re in. For one church that looked like building a state-of-the-art event center attached to their location, creating a steady income stream. Instead of constructing a church building, another church transformed an Anheuser-Busch distribution center into an athletic training facility, attracting 500,000 paying visitors annually. Then their portable church meets in the facility on Sundays. You can use something your community needs to both draw people to your church and increase revenue. Pay attention to giving metrics. // Your job as the pastor of a church is to lead by example, cast a compelling vision, and raise the generosity quotient. People aren’t giving to the church like they did in the past. If you want to change that, it’s crucial that you understand and analyze your giving metrics in order to gauge the church’s financial health. Celebrate giving. // Vision campaigns create an opportunity for people to feel a sense of urgency to take steps to participate. Ask yourself how do you encourage someone to give money for the first time? What is your strategy? How do you celebrate and communicate about people doing that? How much an individual gives isn’t important, but celebrating the fact that they contributed to the mission is. Communicate the impact of generosity and provide multiple, convenient ways for people to give. Fuel vision. // If you’re going to do a vision campaign, you need to measure mobilization. How many people will get attached to your vision? Leaders cast vision, but generosity fuels vision. Churches must build a track record of transparency and accountability to gain the congregation’s trust. This involves providing regular updates on the campaign’s progress and financial status, and celebrating key milestones and achievements to keep the congregation motivated and engaged. Financial analysis. // Phil advises churches to conduct a thorough financial analysis before embarking on major projects. This involves examining giving data over time to understand income sources, giving patterns, and capacity for funding projects. Use The Giving Church’s financial analysis as a tool for discipleship and stewardship. By categorizing giving units based on their trends (above pace, on pace, falling down, or in the watch category), churches can proactively engage with members facing challenges and provide support. You can learn more about how The Giving Church can help increase your generosity, and download the free PDF 5 Ways to Grow Your Giving at www.thegivingchurch.com. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it! Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, every once in a while I get to have somebody on the podcast who um, you know, I know in real life, have had an a chance to interact offline, and today’s one of those days. Excited to have Phil Ling back on the podcast. Ah, he provides both strategic and energetic leadership and direction to The Ling Group and The Giving Church consulting team. They’ve worked with nearly a thousand churches of all sizes and over 40 different denominations, if we’re counting correctly. And this is the number I say all the time, I said you know you know that Phil Ling guy? He’s helped churches raise a billion dollars that’s with a “B” – that’s incredible. So he’s amazing guy, been in this for quite a while, worked with friends like the Billy Graham association, Franklin Graham, um Injoy with John Maxwell, great great guy. Phil, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Welcome back to the show. Phil Ling — Honored to hang out with you. Rich Birch — Thanks for being here. This is going to be good. Well fill in the picture, you know, there are people who would have listened but kind of give us the the 2 minute Phil Ling story, fill in that picture a little bit, tell us a little bit about ah yourself before we jump into today’s conversations Phil Ling — I call it the “how great I am” part. This is the “how great I am” speech. Ah so yes, when you’re trying to sell something. It’s like let me tell you how great I am. So first I am ah I grew up in a pastor’s house. My dad was a church planter and planted a church in Ohio. And so I grew up there and he never moved so I was one of those preacher’s kids that never moved. And then when I came out of college I planted a church in Seattle in the Seattle area and hung out there for 10 years. God blessed us, did a lot of cool stuff, got to help start school. Phil Ling — And change gears, ah, did some radio talk show stuff with Salem radio that’s across all across the country. But that introduced me to a guy named John Maxwell. Ah I became executive president of John’s company and for 8 years ran around the country with John and which was ah a hoot. Phil Ling — And whenever the phone rang and at Linda that meant John that was his assistant and that meant it was fun either I was in trouble or something fun to do. And that was cool ah, but at long story short he wanted to downsize some things and I didn’t want to work for anybody else because he’s too good. And I slid over to become vice president Billy Graham Association. And they were going through a huge change. They had just moved the headquarters from Minneapolis where it had been for 50 years to Charlotte, North Carolina. If you fly into North Carolina and Charlotte and the airport you’re on Billy Graham Parkway. And so that’s right where they are. Address, I think, is number 1 Billy Graham Parkway. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Phil Ling — And they built the library and all kinds of cool stuff. I got to fly in on Mondays, home on Thursdays for a period of time and helped them build ah a revenue stream that was more twenty first century. Because they had invented direct mail basically in the 50s. They were the kings. And now direct mail is different and everybody’s aging and how do we do that and embrace technology and all that kind of stuff. So they were gracious, but they also opened the door for me to have my shingle and work with folks and so I did both. And eventually transitioned. Phil Ling — So we’ve got two little worlds. The Giving Church – we work with churches. The Ling Group – we work with faith-based nonprofits. Those those are our two little worlds. We’re a boutique group, relationships, all that stuff. I love church planters because I used to have hair and I used to be a church planter. Rich Birch — Love it. Phil Ling — And that is our deal and I here I this is longer than the two minutes you asked for. Why do I still do what I do? Rich Birch — It’s all good. It’s good. Phil Ling — I’ve got I got two and a half million Delta miles just so that registers – all domestic. Not not international. Those guys cheat they go really long trips. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Phil Ling — I do national. So the reason I still get on planes and do that stuff. I know that if I show up at a church or a organization and say, hey what are you guys really dealing with right now? It’s going to be usually facilities, finance, um facilities, finance and personnel. It’s one of the three areas. And all those relate back to money. And it’s like Okay, how do we pay for that stuff? Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — What are we gonna do? How are we gonna do it? And most leaders… I always tease, the only guys that like to ask for money go to jail. Most leaders aren’t well aren’t comfortable with that stuff. And they haven’t had a lot of training in that stuff. Rich Birch — Yes. Yep. Phil Ling — And they haven’t really the people that they’re helping with it often have never sat in their chair. And so I’ve got those scars and sat in that chair. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — And so that’s where I come from. It’s like how do we raise leaders attached on the vision?How do we build intentional generosity? And how do we do that in 2024? Rich Birch — So good. Yeah, so good. Well Phil was ah part of ah a retreat we did with… We do this we have a small cohort called the Church Growth Incubator and Phil was with us for a couple days and it was it was incredible. I we were joking beforehand. We did a feedback at the end of that survey with everybody that we surveyed everybody that came. And you know all the different parts of the event and all the stuff we did, and Phil was the only thing that was 5 out of 5 of in the thing. People just could not believe how much value he dropped in. And so I’m honored to have him on the podcast today to try to extract some of that. Obviously we can’t get into everything but there’s really kind of a couple conversations. I wanted to take advantage of the fact that you’re coaching and leading churches all across the country around, you know this whole you know how do we help raise more money raise generosity in our church. Rich Birch —So a couple different questions. First, you know we’re feeling pressure points. Ah you know the the idea of raising money and creating kind of multiple revenue streams. How do we do that as a church? Is you know it it feels like you know how does that connect to creating a culture of generosity? What’s that actually what is that looking like in the here and now today you know, not you know, not fifty years ago? That’s a part of what I love about you. You’re on the cutting edge of you know helping churches in the real world today. When we’re thinking about, particularly multiple revenue streams, help us think that through. What’s that look what is that looking like for in churches today that you you’re working with, that you’re seeing out there? Phil Ling — Okay, so first of all, it’s a subject I love and I got some great examples I can share with you. But what I always warn everybody: be careful, don’t look for silver silver bullets. There’s there’s not a silver bullet. There’s this to all kinds of little bullets. There’s all kinds of things that we have to do. Rich Birch — Good. Yep. Phil Ling — And and one of them is understand understand the landscape today of church, especially North America, of church. So largest wealth transfer in the history of the world going on right now. For the first time in the history of our world. We have four generations alive at the same time. It’s never happened before. So a lot of the folks that have kept your church going as they age and die are transferring their wealth to their heirs. The people that are receiving that are much more consumers of church than stewards of church. Rich Birch — Okay. Phil Ling — They sample, they like certain stuff, they move around. Okay, it is what it is. It’s the blameless autopsy. That’s the patient and in the average church in America—and this is less stat that I’ll throw out just because I know nothing about stats except for what smart people do for us—45% of the people in the average church give less than $200 a year. 45% of the people in the average church give less than $200 a year. Rich Birch — Wow. Phil Ling — So they’re they’re pre-donors. They’re really not donors. Collectively that whole 45% so nearly after your people give about 1% of your income. Rich Birch — Wow. Phil Ling — So you have a couple of different issues. One when I talk about alternate revenue streams, they are important, but they’re they’re not the stable they’re not that, Okay, this is what I need to do. Rich Birch — Okay, yep, yep. Phil Ling — It does not take the place it does not take the place of God’s design for his church. So hear that piece. Rich Birch — Okay, good, good. Phil Ling — So I believe God designed his his church around intentional generosity. Rich Birch — Okay. Phil Ling — So how do we build intentional generosity? And a reason I I shared those stats first because I think why you’re building your intentional generosity, your number one goal in that world is: how do I raise participation? How do I get more people to do it? Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — It’s not how do I squeeze and dry. It’s not how do I shake them upside down. It’s like how do I broaden that participation. Because one other stat I’ll throw in there: in the average church in North America, you lose 18% of your giving units every year. Every year 18% are gone or replaced by somebody else. That’s a churn. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — So those new people coming in are gonna give less than the people that left because they haven’t been there very long. So you’re ah, more people attending doesn’t necessarily solve all your your money problems just because you grew in attendance. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, so true. Phil Ling — So it’s like okay, that’s that piece. The revenue piece I think there’s I can probably go into a lot of sociological stuff. But what I’ve seen from some of our clients are some really interesting ways to use how people think today to help fund God’s church. So I’ll give you an example. So I have I have a church in the midwest that they, and they’re a large growing church, and God’s blessed them. Um I think they had ah a big baptism they recently and had like 700 baptisms or something crazy. So you know, they’re they’re they’re a cool church. Ah they… Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, that’s amazing. Phil Ling — …they said, you know, if you’re an unchurched person, if you’re a secular person, when do you when are you more open to spiritual thoughts? And they said well one there’s couple of times in your life that often happens. One is when you’re thinking about getting married and when somebody dies and you need to [inaudible]. And so like many at our contemporary churches, they were kind of a big box church. You know it’s really utilitarian, but it’s not necessarily pretty. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Phil Ling — And they said what if we built a a section of our facility, really went face forward into it, and built a really nice state-of-the-art event center kind of a thing that would be fantastic for weddings, fantastic for funerals, and some other stuff like that. And why don’t we do that as a separate org that’s owned by the church so it could actually generate revenue. And then push those funds back. Phil Ling — Um, and so I started working with them at conception early on. So they’re they’re like a ten year client, and worked all through those those issues. Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — We raise money. I think we raised like $8,000,000 ah to get the thing off the ground. Rich Birch — Wow. Phil Ling — I was able I’ve been back multiple times, going back next month, but to celebrate with their leaders when the 8,000,000 came in and when the facility was actually finished, and so forth. Rich Birch — Wow. Phil Ling — Today they have that facility; it’s called The Reverie. It and I’m not you know my my son’s already married so I don’t have to worry about wedding crap. But in that world if you’re studying do wedding you get on and you look you look at Knot. That used to be like Knot Magazine. Knot everything, deal with Knot. Rich Birch — Yes, yep, yep yep, tie the knot. Phil Ling — So they’re the number one Knot wedding venue in the state of Ohio. Number one rated two years in a row. Rich Birch — Wow. Yep. Phil Ling — They, it is fantastically thought out from how the kitchen works to how they do events. They’ve got over two hundred events scheduled there this year. Some weddings, funerals, those kind of things of course… Rich Birch — Wow. Phil Ling — …but they do corporate events. They worked out deals with hospitals for ongoing education. This is fantastic and they worked out the security how that part of the building can be separated from the other part when it needs to be. All that. And fast forwarding… Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — …it now throws back positive cash to the church. And ah… Rich Birch — Wow! Phil Ling — …and in they pass the million million dollar mark very quickly. Ah so I don’t… Rich Birch — Huh, fascinating. Phil Ling — …when I share those stories and it’s really cool and I take people through it say, hey come visit. We’ll walk you through and show you how they’re doing this stuff. It’s not say, hey do this so you don’t have to ask your people to be generous. That is not how it works. But it is an opportunity using understanding of our society, it says you know what? People expect to pay for these things. And they want to do them in a really cool and nice environment, and hook to ah a healthy church… Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — …is a good thing. It gets unchurched people walking into your building… Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Phil Ling — …looking around and say, well this is not the freaky thing I thought it might be. You know this looks really cool. This is nice. Maybe I should come back? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Yeah. Phil Ling — And then they’ve got great stories. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — Now because it’s been up and operational for a couple of years they got great stories now of people that first came to event, first had a wedding there, ends up coming back to church, accepting Christ, getting involved. They have volunteers that work in The Reverie that came through The Reverie. And now they’re circled back around. The coolest story recently is they had… Rich Birch — That’s cool. Phil Ling — …a couple that got married there had their first child and they named the child Reverie. So I thought that was hilarious. Ah so there’s one one story. Phil Ling — Ah I’ve got a another client that went a different angle. They bought an Anheuser-Busch distribution center. So this thing is huge. You could pull your semi-truck in, unload all the eggs… Rich Birch — Wow! Phil Ling — …and wash it before it went out the other side. Monster. Rich Birch — Yeah, huge thing. Yeah. Phil Ling — They were a church that had it been they’ve been in existence in a school bouncing around, even though they’re a good sized church, bouncing around for like 15 years. Never had their own space until they bought this. But when they bought it, they did not build a church. Phil Ling — They built a state-of-the-art athletic training facility. Indoor soccer fields, basketball, anything you can imagine, and they have church in it. So when you go, I’m I’m honored to preach there every fall, and they’ve got this one one section of it that’s for basketball is 3 high school sized gymnasiums all in one big room. And they set it all up. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — Put carpet squares down, pull out the chairs, all that kind of stuff for their 3 services because they do church in this facility that invites unchurched people to come. They have 500,000 paying people a year come through it. Do the math. Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing. Do the math. So and then… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. That’s cool. Phil Ling — …their motivation was they live in a very secular city of our country… Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — …that were not receptive to big churches coming in and building big red buildings with steeples Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — And said, what if how do we build something that the community might view as a positive income see… Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — …and at the same time it creates revenue. It’s ah it’s a revenue stream. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Yes. Phil Ling — So I loved doing the revenue stream stuff got other stories… Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — …but I always say this is not in place of generosity. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s good. The um, yeah, that’s something for us to be thinking about I think as we look to the future. I’ve heard this in multiple conversations as you know churches are looking to the future realize, hey we need to kind of stretch our thinking, be thinking you know thinking about a bit outside the box, color a little bit outside the lines, to think about what are some different ways we can engage with the community, and you know how does that kind of work from a ah, revenue model point of view. You talked about something earlier. I love that idea. And we’ll kind of loop back into kind of more traditional kind of the generosity side. Rich Birch — Um, you talked about increasing participation that, hey that should be our goal that there’s you know where we’re when we’re trying to think about the kind of mass of our church, the people who are are disengaged or aren’t giving or are giving less than $200 a year, talk us through that a little bit. Unpack that – what does that look like? How do we do that? How do we increase participation? What are churches seeing? Because I think we often just think about like the other end of the spectrum when we think about generosity. It’s like I got to engage with high net worth individuals to try to extract more cash out of them. But this is kind of the opposite end of the the spectrum. How do we what does that look like? Phil Ling — So first of all, this is my soapbox. So you know if you can shut me up on I just keep going rambling on. This is my soapbox. This is nothing. It’s jacked up. I’m jacked up on Mountain Dew. Ah, the I think this is a if you look at what your job is as the pastor of a church, leading leaders never goes away regardless of how large your church gets. You always lead leaders. You always cast vision. You want a vision castor and a lot of echoes of vision. So it’s all clear, clear and it’s all the same vision. And you’re always raising that generosity quotient. Well one of the things in order to do the race to generosity quotient, because I’ve already painted the picture. Society’s changing. People don’t just hang out in your church and decide to tithe. That ain’t happening. And we’re going to have more and more of our church’s crater in the next ten years that still have people in them. Phil Ling — So we we were used to churches dying where there’s 5 cars. There’s one down from my house. But I see every Sunday when I drive by and I it usually has 9 cars and it’s a cute little church, probably been there 130 years. And it’s got 9 cars. So we’re used to that. Okay everybody has died. It’s it’s dying. What we’re not used to is, well attendance isn’t that much isn’t that far off what it was a year ago, but we keep going down financially. Because the people that are there are consuming your product, not necessarily stewards like their moms and their grandmothers were. So all that’s changed. So all right, if you’re going to change that paradigm, one is you have to to actually pay attention to what’s real. What are the metrics? Phil Ling — And I’m not a huge numbers person. Hired a guy with a degree in statistics years ago. We studied 4000 churches and how they give money. And we came up with an analysis that we use with our our clients. And it’s it’s what I call and I said I think I said it earlier the blameless autopsy. This is the patient. Let’s look at the patient. Phil Ling — So number of giving units – at what levels do those those units give you dollars? How many are below that $200 ah year threshold we talked about? We’re 45% usually or below that – let’s see about your church. And then we break it down 200 to 1000, 1000 to 5000, 5- to 10,000, 10,000+. Those are the categories for every church in America – big ones, little ones, doesn’t matter, all those. So you want to see where are you in those categories. Phil Ling — When we talked about the churn rate – 18% of the your giving units leave in a year. All right. Are you different than that? Maybe you’re higher. Maybe you’re lower. Let’s see what that looks like. Those are things you have… If you don’t know this, and I like I say I’m not a numbers guy, but if you don’t know this then you’re what you do is every year when somebody says, how’s church doing? You go by emotion. Well, it feels good. Feels really good. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — …[inaudible] on Sunday? How things? Oh felt great. People told me it was a great message. It felt great. But if you don’t have some kind of a metric to say, all right, how many new people are coming in? You know, I I come from a a background of churches that that really stressed baptism, water baptism. And one old pastor you say are you getting your arms wet? You know, are you getting your arms wet? So it’s like, all right. Let’s let’s [inaudible]. Rich Birch — I love that. Yeah, yeah. I love that. Phil Ling — One of the things you want to count is, how many people give us money? So it’s not just, did we hit budget? Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — Where the money? Did we bring in the money… Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — …that keeps this place operational? But how many and how many are we losing and how many are we gaining in the year… Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — …and then break it down and say, are they moving up as they’re here? So if I’m in your church… Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Phil Ling — …and I love what you’re doing and I feel called to your vision, then the longer I’m here I’m probably feeling more and more comfortable and I’m growing in my generosity. If you don’t look at that measure, you don’t know that. So A, you got to do that. You gotta do that. Phil Ling — I still, and I know I’m the old guy yelling “get off my lawn”, and I’m I’m that old guy. But I still believe in initiatives. We call them campaigns. Rich Birch — Okay. Phil Ling — I know that’s not sexy. We call them vision campaigns not capital… Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — …because it’s not always capital, it’s not always buildings, but it’s still an initiative where you create an opportunity for people to feel a sense of urgency to take a step to participate. So I’ll give you an example. We had a church recently—a good church, growing church, all this stuff, and and strong financial—but they did a a an initiative and a project. And we stressed participation in entry; people that really weren’t participating before getting involved. 39% of the $5,000,000, 39% – they raised $5,000,000 – 39% of the people that gave that $5,000,000 had never given to the church before. They were there… Rich Birch — Wow, wow! Phil Ling — …but they were below the $200 a year. Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Yeah, that’s amazing. Phil Ling — And so it’s the reason you do it is not it’s not like for sermons on generosity and tithing. It’s not, you know it’s got to be ah… Rich Birch — Vision. Phil Ling — …a whole process ah of building a culture generosity that celebrates how many people are doing it. You know, my big thing with pastors… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — …is that never talk about money upfront unless you talk about how many people did something. Because it’s it’s the number of participants… Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Phil Ling — …that actually get involved. You your number one message in the big room on Sunday is we want everybody to get in the car and go on the trip or we don’t go. That participation… Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s good. That’s good. Phil Ling — …is how we’ve used this, how many people did something. That’s why I don’t jump up and down say, hey, Bob gave a million bucks. Well Bless Bob’s pea-picking heart. I would love to have Bob give a million dollars, but I’d also like to have 500 Marys and Bobs and Joes and Johns all give a thousand bucks or something too. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — So it’s like I have to celebrate that. So you when we’re hanging out out west, you heard me do my small, medium, large room stage. You know it’s like the rooms we communicate in. So the big room is participation. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yep. Yeah, and so when we’re trying to encourage participation in that in that big room is that so part of it is not stressing that you know it’s not about like, like you say, Bob gave a million dollars. It’s more like, hey we’re all we’re all in we all want to be engaged in this. We all should be engaged in this. This is ah kind of an all skate. Everybody’s in. What are what are some things that churches are doing to try to increase that participation that are trying to encourage that um, you know that aren’t thermometers hanging on the wall. What is what is that? You know how how do we do that? Phil Ling — Ah, okay, so in in my world when you talk about generosity in church. You’re always trying to get people to do one of three things. Rich Birch — Okay. Phil Ling — Why three? Because I used to be a preacher and everything’s in three. You know, you got to have three. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — So number one, how do I win the first gift? So how am I encouraging somebody to give us money for the very first time? What’s my strategy? Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — How do I celebrate, how do I communicate and talk about how many people are doing? Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — That that can be a very simple thing. I’ve got churches that really buy into it and get it and there’s one in Delaware that we work with. And they might get up on a Sunday and say, man I am so excited we just talked to our financial secretary and they let us know that we had 27 families last month give money to our ministry for the very first time. How much they gave is not important. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yep. Phil Ling — It’s just that we’re going to celebrate that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Yep. Phil Ling — So talk about the appropriate things and talk to rooms. The big room which is the most diverse audience. Rich Birch — Yeah. People don’t know God, people been walking with God… Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — …all over the place in the big room. So what am I doing in the big room? It’s the same. I’m always stressing participation. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — I’m talking about what that looks like. I’m celebrating those numbers. I’m telling the stories of people that do things for the first time. That’s big room conversation. Phil Ling — Medium size rooms are like-minded groups. How do they look at things? How we’re going to identify the likeminded groups and what their key questions are? And then small room conversation are are my leaders. My high capacity those folks. It’s like I have to keep my leaders a safe place to ask me a question. That’s why you have small room talks. Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — Biggest checks come from [inaudible] smallest room. And they’re the only people that ask questions in groups, want audiences more than answers. But that doesn’t mean the question [inaudible]. So like give me a safe place to ask my question. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Phil Ling — So so my long-winded answer to you on that… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Phil Ling — …is understand which room you’re communicating in. What is your what is your goal in that room’s communication for the next twelve months? Rich Birch — Yeah, what’s the goal there. Yeah, that’s good. Phil Ling — And then how are you going to actually measure it to see if it’s working? So if I’m trying to win a first time gift, like I said one, of our strategies, well then I can measure that. How many first time gifts did we get this year? You know that’s ah that’s a win. Second is I’m trying to lift… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Phil Ling — …people that that give us funds. Well, that’s that’s maturation. So can I kind of look down say you know what we had 83 families last year give month ah give more than they did the year before. How much is not important. That’s growth. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So that is that lift. And then third… Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s good. Phil Ling — …how am I keeping my donors? And keeping is just the care and feeding, is how am I showing love and appreciation and gratitude to those people that that financially drive our ministry? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well so you you mentioned it, you know they’re not capital campaigns, their vision campaigns. Do people still do these things? Like you know, I feel like the interesting thing about folks in this particular kind of slice of the Christian world is I feel like like they… I’ll sometimes hear people who do similar work to you and and um I feel like they spend a lot of time trying to convince us that we shouldn’t it’s almost like, well don’t do capital campaigns, like they’re terrible. You know, which is kind of weird. It’s like isn’t isn’t that what you do? But to be but I do that does it still work? Do is this still a strategy we should be thinking about, you know, or is that just like something that’s like when I… Listen, I talk a lot about church growth and the joke I make there is I know when I say church growth what you think of as a guy standing with a you know ah a folder of cassette tapes from the 80s. I get that. Rich Birch — Um, is this the same kind of thing? Like the capital campaigns that that vision campaigns, that all went out with the Carter administration? Or where where are we at here? Phil Ling — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, like I say, I’m the old dude. So I as a church planter I had 18 years as a lead church planter that was never a year when I was not in a project or campaign. Because you’re when you’re planting, you don’t have anything… Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — …so you’re always raising money, or doing something. And then now for the last twenty years you know I’ve been running all over… Rich Birch — Yep, sure. Phil Ling — …the country working with folks. And you said I’ve worked with a thousand churches. So here’s the deal. Um I don’t try to be clever. I don’t try to call things different names so that it sounds different so I can sell you a product that was probably the same thing, but you think it’s different and new, improved, like toothpaste. Rich Birch — Right? yep. Phil Ling — You know it’s like it’s like no. What I describe to you, you can call it whatever you want to call it, and you don’t have to do it, but you need to do something just like it. It it it is what is because if you’re going to do a vision campaign—that’s just what I call it; you don’t have to call it that—the vision campaign. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Phil Ling — It is all about what are we gonna measure? We’re gonna measure mobilization. How many people did we get attached to our vision? Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — Unanswered questions are stumbling blocks to my participation. You’ve got a great idea, a great vision. If you cannot answer my questions, I don’t participate or I don’t participate very deeply. And that’s why if you just get up on Sunday and say, let’s talk about this cool thing we want to do, and you haven’t done the hard work behind the scenes, you’re might not going to be very successful. So what is my mobilization strategy, my participation strategy? How are we going to measure that? And how are we going to have those conversations in those three rooms? Leaders cast vision; generosity fuels vision. Now think about this. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Phil Ling — So when I was a young pup, you know, I grew up in churches where you walked in in the auditorium had a ah, number are a little board up front with little black numbers. They’d slide in what the offering was last week. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Phil Ling — And then might even have a [inaudible] off, you know, or or budget need… Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — …you know this is how much we need. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — And so everybody’s gonna watch see what it is. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Phil Ling — Those worlds that that’s over. That day’s over. A lot of the folks wandering in your in your building, it’s not that they don’t want to give to God. They don’t know if they should give to you. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Phil Ling — If you will get money to people, not projects. So your trust level. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — Do you do what you say you’re going to do? Rich Birch — Yep. Rich Birch — The first time you ever raise money. You do it on a promise. If you give me money I promise to do this. From then on, it’s a track record. And you can’t outrun bad track records. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So all that to tell you, do campaigns still work? If if they’re well run with a clear purpose, they’re hugely successful. The best thing I can say is after all the years I’ve done this thing, half of the people that we work with every year, we’ve already worked with in the past. So… Rich Birch — No, that’s good. That’s good. Phil Ling — …that to me is the endorsement. We’ve got some that we’ve literally… Rich Birch — Yeah, that tells you for sure. Phil Ling — …um, 3, 4, 5 projects with. Why are you doing them? It’s not to get the people that give you money just to give you a little more. That’s the problem with fundraising. I hate that term. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Phil Ling — You have to increase the participation. That has to be an intentional plan. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — So now if you can do all that without doing a campaign plan, fine and fantastic – do whatever you’re going to do. But you got to still measure and accomplish the same things. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Phil Ling — I’ve not found anything better. They’re they’re they’re fads that come and go, and and all that kind of junk. And that I get that and that’s fine. Um I think that there is in this my last 2 seconds on the on the campaign. I believe in my heart that the people in your church have different pockets with money that they give. And so their ongoing gift and participation in your ministry is one pocket. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — A specific project, appeal, vision to do something unique is another proj… or another pocket. So every so often you create those… Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — …because that second pocket could actually be the first pocket for a lot of your new people. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s so good. Phil, that’s fantastic. So here we are in the spring, I know oftentimes and maybe it’s just me but I feel like a lot of churches think about this stuff in the fall. It’s like you know I know I’ve had that as an executive pastor. It’s like I’m looking at, man, we are running behind. We’re like. Or there’s some new thing we want to do next year and I start thinking about in the fall. But you know should we get started now? Is is spring/summer a good time to you know, even engage with you, start the conversation, start working on things? Are there things we could be working on now to kind of set us up good, either for the the fourth quarter this year, or even into next year if we’re thinking, man, we might need to raise some additional funds in 2025. Talk to us through that. Phil Ling — Okay, so first of all, all my answers are self-serving. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — So of course, Rich. Yes, you’ve got to. Rich Birch — Love it. Yes, of course now’s the time. Phil Ling — Okay here here here’s here’s the world I work on. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — Number 1, the bigger the plane you have, the longer the runway you need. So if I’ve got… Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — …I’m just trying to raise a little bit of money for a bite size project, well I can run with my face on fire for a few weeks and maybe you do that. But if I’ve got to raise a ah, a large amount of money and participation for a large project, well then of course I need more time. Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — You always want to start earlier, doesn’t cost you anymore to start early start earlier. We selfishly like being at the table early because the first thing we’re going to do with you is that financial analysis I talked about. Which is to me, it’s kind of like preapproved before you go shopping for your house. It’s scary accurate it. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — There’s capacity and giving trends in your church. So then when we sit down with you and and this happens all the time, and you know I’ll sit down with the church and they’ll say, hey we don’t want to go into debt. We want to do this and and cash flow with this project, and we would like to do $10,000,000 project, which is a huge project – $10,000,000. And so I come in… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Phil Ling — …and do the analysis and say okay, that’s great. I think you can safely raise 5 to six million bucks. Rich Birch — Wow, yes. Phil Ling — I think that that is within your capacity based upon what I the analysis. Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — And and you know then it’s like, well what we think God could could do more. And I said I know God I can do more. I can tell you those stories. But I can also tell you what he does on average. So let me let me just know that what the problem… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s good. Yeah, talk to us a little bit more about the…Oh sorry. Nope go ahead. Sorry. Phil Ling — Ah well the problem is where far down the road on saying this is what we want to do before you come back and say, well how how do we know what our capacity looks like? So so that’s why my my argument bring somebody like us to the table earlier, so we can do an analysis with you. It doesn’t limit God. But it says, all right look the blameless autopsy number of giving units. Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — At what levels they give… Rich Birch — Yep. Phil Ling — …how often you gain a new one. That paints the picture forensically of what people will do. Now there can be outliers. Rich Birch — Yeah. Phil Ling — You can have, you know, Edith decides to give you two million bucks and and historically she gives about $20,000 a year. Okay, that’s cool. That’s an outlier. That’s fantastic. That’s great. But do that. Phil Ling — As far as seasonal, um you want to raise money because we’re going for participation so we want most of our people to be here. So in most churches that’s spring and fall projects. So it’s like all right if we want money for the fall of 2024, then right now in the spring we should be building this machine. If we want money in the spring of 2025 and it’s a good big plane that’s got to get off the ground, and we still want to start about now. So pick when and then back up and say, okay, do we have enough time? I won’t be a lightning rod for your failure. I will stand on the table if you don’t have enough time. I say you’re you’re, you’re smoking dope; that this is too much this is too short a window. Um, ah… Rich Birch — Right. Yes, too fast or whatever… Phil Ling — Yeah. Rich Birch — …you got to push it back. We got to push it back a season or something like that. Yeah. Phil Ling — Correct, correct. So so let somebody like us help you figure that out as far as when you want to do that as far as scope of project. But that means you start earlier have these conversations early summer goes dead so you want to get a lot of stuff in figured out in the spring before you get into a dull time in the summer. And then what’s that fall look like. Fall windows are different for different churches in different parts of the world. People like you up in Canada have a little snow sometimes in the winter. Not much where I live. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Phil Ling — So so go ahead I interrupt. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Well and I think that you know and it probably goes without saying but I would strongly suggest you reach out to Phil um, before like if you’re thinking about a building project, like to get to super tactical, if you’re thinking about like we’re you know we got a new campus or we’re trying to build something, man in the same way that you’d be crazy to you know to start shopping houses before you looked at the mortgage, you know you know, this is the same thing. You really should talk with Phil before you even really get too far down that process. This should be the first step. Not the second or third step. Not after you’ve talked to some architect who’s drawn some pretty paper. It’s like no, let’s let’s have this conversation early on. The size, having been through a number of these, the size and scoping is so important on the frontend financially and will save you so many hassles, you know, down the road. Um, you know that’s that’s a great, you know, that’s a great thing. Rich Birch — Um, talk to us a little bit about the financial analysis. We’re kind of wrap up here. I think this is a great practical step. You know I’ve said to multiple church leaders, you should just hire Phil’s guys to do the financial analysis. This is what a great tool. You know your numbers better. Talk to us about the financial analysis a little bit more detail. What is that? How do I access that? All that kind of stuff. Phil Ling — So it’s great. Honestly, if somebody reaches out and tries to hire us to do something, most of the time I’ll say, hey, slow down you know before you you hire the the whole enchilada, buy this little piece. I’ve never had anybody buy this little piece in all these years and complain that it wasn’t worth the money, because it’s it’s worth it. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — So the analysis, like I said, we’ve analyzed a whole bunch of churches to try to figure out what churches should look like on paper. And then we look at yours. We’ll go back a couple of years and you’re you’re giving and we use everybody’s databases. We can figure it all out. Sometimes we just get backdoors to their processes and and pull those numbers. What I tell churches, they’re your numbers. So when I sit down with the church board, it’s like some of you guys, know these numbers, and gals. You know these numbers. I’m going to tell you what they mean. Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — So when I look at it and say, all right, your church brings in $2,000,000 a year. It’s like, all right, where does it come from? Well it comes from this many units. And they come in these categories. So we have this percentage in this category, this category, this category. Every one of those things means something about you going forward. So what does your capacity look like? So you say well we like to do a project that this size. All right. Well that that’s within your capacity. Phil Ling — If if God has laid something on your heart that’s bigger than what I see, that doesn’t mean you don’t do it. It’s just that means, Okay, how are we going to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — It doesn’t mean that we’re going to say no to the vision. It’s like we just want to be prudent… Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — …about don’t build a tower without counting the cost right. Rich Birch — That’s good. Phil Ling — The analysis in my humble but accurate opinion, (that’s what I tell my son: my humble but accurate opinion), analysis… Rich Birch — Yes. Phil Ling — …is something that you do every year for the rest of your life. Once we do it for you and show you how to do it, it’s like here, this is how you pull your numbers, run them through. You can have us do it or you can try to do it yourself. That’s fine. And it it will it’s a discipleship tool. So this one little caveat, one little caveat. We’re going to break down your giving units and put on in four categories. So if Phil and Georgia Ling, if my family is in your church, and Phil and Georgia were there in 2023, and they were there in 2024—so both years—how much did they given 23? How much they given 24? Phil Ling — All right, what we’re going to look at is that are they above pace where they were the year before? Are they kind of about on pace of where they were the year before? Were they a little off pace or falling down a [inaudible] percentage is falling down. And then the fourth category is what I call watch. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — The watch category says Phil and George are giving less than half the year before, or they quit giving completely. Here’s what I know. People quit giving you money before they physically walk out your door. And so it’s one of your disciples opportunities… Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Phil Ling — …where they’re waving their hand and saying I’ve got a crisis; something’s going on in my life. It’s usually not that they’re mad at you. Pastors always think everybody’s mad at and that’s why they left. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just stuff happened. Rich Birch — Right, right. Phil Ling — And so now what if you had a list and you printed it off and said, hey you know what? There’s 32 families here in the watch category. Are they physically still here? Are their kids checked into our children’s ministry? What’s going on in their lives? Are they in any of our small groups? It’s a discipleship tool for you. So that’s why I say you need to do that every year for the rest of your life. Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. That’s good. Well friends, I would encourage you, I’ve said that off the podcast, I’ve said that to lots of church leaders. This is a super helpful first step, great way to kind of begin ah the conversation. And you know, Phil, you’re just just a wealth of knowledge as I’ve been taking pages of notes here today. Again I really appreciate that. If let’s, as we wrap up today’s conversation, if people want to track with you ah or with the organization, where do we want to send them online? I know we’ve got a ah resource that we want to download. Talk to us all about that. Phil Ling — So go to our website is thegivingchurch.com, thegivingchurch.com and there’s some things there you can download for free. There’s ah a pdf that’s “5 Ways to Grow Your Giving” and it’s worth it. Of course it’s free. Of course it’s worth it. But it has value. There’s a book on there that we wrote a few years back that talks about the changing giving patterns in North America. It’s The coming tsunami. So that’s a little bit of a horror show on things that are happening. Phil Ling — So covid was a wake up call. Covid and the pandemic… Rich Birch — Man, so true. Phil Ling — …and and shutting down churches was a wake up call. We were told by society that we’re not an essential institution. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s crazy. Right. Phil Ling — And it’s like okay so strip clubs are essential, bars were essential, liquor stores were essential. We weren’t essential. I don’t blame the world. I’m not a person who screams at the world. I think that’s our fault that we weren’t essential. Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Phil Ling — So what are we doing to be healthier going forward. If all you try to do is hope your offering is good every week so you can pull off next Sunday, eventually you’re going to have something crater. Ah, it’s just the patterns are changed. So what is your intentional plans? We try to give you some values. Rich Birch — Right. Phil Ling — Go and get the “5 Ways to Grow Your Giving” PDF – it’s free – thegivingchurch.com Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, we’ll put links to that in the show notes as well. Phil, I really appreciate you being here. Thanks so much for all that you’re doing to help so many different churches. Appreciate being on the show today. Thank you, sir. Phil Ling — Honored to be here. Thanks, man.

Join Lauren Bercarich, Digital Director at Liquid Church, as she discusses the strategic launch of the church's app, emphasizing digital as the front door to continuous discipleship beyond Sundays. The app fosters spiritual connections with daily habits, prayer requests, devotionals, and community engagement. Explore the importance of leadership buy-in, avoiding pitfalls in digital ministry, and future app features to enhance church growth and engagement.

Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with two Aarons—Aaron Stanski, CEO and Founder of Risepointe, and Aaron Mora, the Alma Campus Pastor of Community Church in north central Michigan. If your church is growing, chances are you’ve wrestled with questions about your location or building meeting your ministry needs. Tune in to hear the story of Community Church’s growth and how Risepointe walked alongside them as they tried to find a suitable location for their Alma campus. The Needs Analysis. // Like Community Church, most of the churches that reach out to Risepointe go through The Needs Analysis process. This information helps Risepointe understand who they are as a church, problems they’re trying to solve, their unique ministry DNA, and who they’re trying to reach. For Community Church, not only did The Needs Analysis answer many of their questions, Aaron Mora recognizes it was critical to helping Risepointe get to know them and design what they wanted and needed. Take the next step. // A building project is a step of faith. Anxiety and fear that might keep you from moving forward. Aaron Mora admits that while it’s tempting to stay comfortable, Community Church sensed God leading them in this direction. He recognizes that God provided Risepointe and their wealth of experience to offer the encouragement and expertise Community Church needed to move forward with confidence. Set the guardrails. // As Aaron Stanski notes, buildings aren’t going to do ministry, people are. Risepointe is aware that they are handing over a tool to church leaders so they can further grow their ministry. As a result, Risepointe approaches a project with a church by measuring kingdom impact and how to unleash it in the area. Laying out a clear budget and cash flow positive plan that lines up with giving in the early phase is critical. Set guardrails in place regarding what is needed and what the budget is so you can drive the project toward success.  Don’t let doubt creep in. // Expect that people will have opinions on what’s being done in a building project, but don’t receive it all as negative. Recognize that change will be hard for a lot of people; don’t let the comments cause you to doubt your decisions. Renovating vs building new. // When considering a building project, it’s important to understand how you’re using your buildings. Be really intentional with the decisions you’re making and examine the pros and cons of building new versus renovating an existing space. Risepointe walks their clients through a decision making matrix to help them understand how they want to develop their sites. Aaron Stanski explains that, in general, you’ll spend about twice as much money building new as you would doing a renovation. Follow God’s calling. // If you’re trying to decide whether to move forward with building or renovating a location versus portable church, ask yourself, is this what God is calling you to do? God leads us to different strategies in different seasons. Walking through The Needs Analysis with Risepointe doesn’t obligate you to a building project, but rather can help clarify the direction that’s best for your church in your current season of ministry. You can learn more about Community Church at www.communitymi.org. Visit Risepointe’s website at www.risepointe.com to schedule a free call, walk through The Needs Analysis, or explore recent projects. 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. Man, I’m really looking forward to having you tune into today’s conversation. You know every once in a while we have a conversation where I’m like man I wish that you know thousands of leaders could tune in because I feel like I’m having this conversation time and again and today is one of those conversations. Really excited to have Aaron Mora with us. He’s the Campus Pastor of church called Community Church. It’s a large multisite church in North Central Michigan. Ah he leads the Alma campus and today we’re talking about their transition from portable to a permanent location. Rich Birch — But we’re this is the two for one Aaron show today because we’re also joined by our friend Aaron Stanski, friend of the podcast. He is the CEO and founder of Risepointe and with fifteen plus years of really helping churches design you know and launch, project manage incredible projects at churches but not just churches also schools and nonprofits all across the country. He’s an expert in this area. Super excited to have both Aarons on welcome. So glad you’re both here today. Thanks for being here. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Aaron Mora — Yeah, thanks. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, thanks, Rich. Happy to do it. Rich Birch — This is going to be good. Now I’m going to use your last names ah because you know I don’t want people to get lost. Um, you know so hopefully we’re like friends it’s like friends on a baseball team or something. Ah, but so Mora why don’t we start with you tell us about what was going on. Give us the kind of the the 50,000 foot view of Community Church. Tell us a bit of the story. What’s what was happening at the Alma campus here? Aaron Mora — Yeah, and so um, Community Church initial campus in Mount Pleasant, Michigan – right in the heart of the mitten, if you’re a a Michigan familiar… Rich Birch — Love it. Yes. Aaron Mora — …and ah church was growing. And so actually a number of years. I’ve been on on staff about 14 years, you know, do you build a bigger building in Mount Pleasant and ah, an increasing radius of people that were driving. And so good things, you know growth, and so like many churches we we kind of walk down the road of multisite as an option of being able to grow. And so the Alma campus launched in a January of 2020 which in our Rich Birch — Perfect, perfect timing. Aaron Stanski — Strategy. Aaron Mora — yeah, all of our strategy planning, ah pandemic was not part of it. But we launched about 20 minutes down the road in a town called Alma… Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Mora — …our first multi-site location. And ended up it was actually a launch with a good core, about 150 people who were already from that community plugged into the church And we started portable. And so we met in a Youth for Christ building. Great ministry partners of ours. Had thirteen weeks before the pandemic actually hit. But you know still through that you know praise God navigated, still still growth, still momentum. Aaron Mora — And um and so ah, probably a year, two in – probably ’21, end of ’21, start of ’22 – we were starting talking about, you know what is that permanent location. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — And um, yeah, so that that kind of a quick snapshot of what what connected us initially with Risepointe. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well I’m going to give away the punchline. So amazing thing, you guys launched here in ah right at the end of last year, 2023, in your permanent facility. And and here we are kind of end of April. Give us the punchline where are you at today. This is astonishing. I just love this. Where are you at from a growth point of view? Aaron Mora — It’s it’s ah it’s been incredible. In fact, um, you know through through the good portion of last year, 2023, was the project. In fact I think we were doing demolition in the the spring of 2023. Opened Christmas Eve 2023, and the average attendance over the last three or four months since we’ve launched I mean almost ah it’s been about 80% growth. Rich Birch — Wow, wow! Aaron Mora — So almost double which… Rich Birch — That’s crazy. Aaron Mora — …which praise God has exceeded our expectations. Those that are walking through the doors, it’s been lots of people who have have ah a category we’ve called de-churched. You know they haven’t been attending church for a number of years. And um and so to have a I think a beautiful, contemporary facility, you know a vibrant church, there’s just been God’s been using it powerfully. And so it’s it’s exceeded I think my my greatest expectations in a way that you know can only be I think something God’s doing. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Well I’d love to kind of pick apart that process a little bit. I’m I’m sure I know there are leaders that are listening in today that are you know they’re they’re portable in a location and they’re thinking about this. They’re wondering about this. And I want to kind of pick apart that story. So Aaron Stanski, do you remember when you first got connected with Community and kind of what what did that some of those initial contacts look like? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean I I remember some phone conversations, Aaron. I think I think we might have even hopped on a quick Zoom. I know you guys were you know trying to figure some things out. We might have even popped up on a Google search or something… Rich Birch — Nice. Aaron Stanski — …ah, that you were doing. And so connected with them. We talked on the phone and then I think initially we were already over in your area like working on a different project or something. So we went ahead and swung by and I remembered zigzagging all over Alma, Michigan. I remember ah, looking at ah there was a weird abandoned hotel. Do you remember this? Aaron Mora — I do remember this. Rich Birch — Oh fun. Aaron Stanski — It was like it had been abandoned for like five or six years. It’d be perfect for a haunted house or something. So we looked at some farm fields. Aaron Stanski — And and we looked at ah yeah, a few buildings and stuff. We’re just trying to imagine… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — …what a permanent facility would look like for for them, which was great. Rich Birch — Nice. Aaron Mora — Yeah, that and and so it going back to that initial look, um and and and, Rich, I think this this ties so well into what you were talking about. It’s our first time doing a building project for most of us on staff at at the church. And so we’d done a building building projects, you know, thirty years ago but it was before… Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Mora — …most of us were there. Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Mora — And so in that was it was ah absolutely a Google search. It was jumping online… Rich Birch — Love it. Aaron Mora — …saying you know, who do we look up? And and so I think I had ah I had a list of like 8 or and and then campus pastor Aaron, and they’re like, Aaron go find somebody. Rich Birch — Wow. Aaron Mora — Um, and so I I went line some architects. Um, you know so from from both the church world and and also just ones that just came up that did great designs that we saw we we tried to get some referrals. And I think initially for Risepointe it was a sense of a design and build, so not just designing but also you know, walking through the building project. And then even some of the other pieces that were there I think that initial conversation, and Aaron alluded to it already, was just so like, oh you’re telling me all the things I wanted to know are are here. You’re you’re talking about you know, planning and and more than just the build of having a great building. What do you need. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — And so it was ah it was an easy fit to where you know we’ve we’ve vetted through and end up going with Risepointe. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well the thing you know, Aaron Stanski’s a friend. I love him, and I literally all the time we were saying this before we get started, I feel like I’m consistently saying to church leaders, like have you talked with the guys over at Risepointe? Like they’re they’re so helpful. And um now I think you you do this thing called Needs Analysis, right? Aaron Stanski — Ssure. Rich Birch — That what what that sounds fancy, but what what is that, Mr. Stanski. Tell us about what is the ah you know the is that this zigzagging across the you know the Alma thing you did? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean The Needs Analysis for us, and it’s a process that most of the churches ah like Community that reach out to us go through. And so it’s a process for us at Risepointe to really learn who are they as a church? What are some of the problems they’re trying to solve? Like what is their unique ministry DNA? Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — Who are they trying to reach? Um and so The Needs Analysis is a process where we spend an extended period of time, usually an entire day, ah walking the the team and the staff through a series of exercises and questions and really getting to know them. And and then it’s asking and answering some specific questions around facility and saying okay, how do we solve these problems? So ah, if Alma already had a campus and they were already up and running we would probably be asking the question, How do we maximize ministry on site? Ah, how do we know when we have to expand or add on? What’s some low hanging fruit that just some some things that we think would be helpful for them to consider with their facility that we might have learned from other churches? Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — And then the last thing is like, man, what’s it all going to cost, right? And so if we can answer those questions and present that back in ah in a format that’s clear to understand, and we’re um and it’s answering those questions, then it gives church leaders a lot of times the what they need to kind of move forward and make some decisions. Aaron Stanski — And so for Alma campus it was not only those things, it was like what what options exist for a building, right? I mean they could have bought a field and built new. They could have you know they could have you know bought some of these other properties. And so we sort of laid that framework out for them. And then they ended up you know, just finding a gem of a property a ah just a ah, really spectacular looking JCPenny building. And I I say that sarcastically. Ah just this JCPenny building that had been sitting there vacant – it was like five or six years right? Aaron Mora — It had been a but been a while. Aaron Stanski —Like it wasn’t it wasn’t occupied, right, Aaron? Aaron Mora — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — And so, ah for them, it was like man, Okay, here’s this huge JCPenny building. Aaron Stanski — Ah, it’s for sale. Ah, do we want to buy it? Ah, do we want to buy some of it, or all of it? Ah, and when we renovate it, how much do we want to renovate? What’s it going to cost? And so we walk them through a Needs Analysis to help them figure those things out. Rich Birch — Right? yeah. Rich Birch — Okay so ah, just sticking with The Needs Analysis there for a second. So the thing I’ve said to other people—correct me if I’m wrong on this—is man, I would call Risepointe early in the process, like as you know even when you’re in the like we’re not even sure really the questions we’re asking. Is that true? Because the thing I’ve said behind your back, Aaron Stanski, is like if you call them early, you’re going to leverage all their thinking on some of those early foundational questions that could save you huge dollars and time. And you know sure, you could come and say, ah this is the building. We’ve got this building already; help us renovate it. But man, is it better to call earlier, you know, Aaron Stanski? Aaron Stanski — Um, yeah I mean the earlier the better. Rich Birch — Right, okay. Aaron Stanski — If you feel like you’re getting to a point where you’re either running out of space… Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Stanski — …or if you’re getting to the point where you feel like man, we’re not meeting the needs of the community. We’re not able to say yes to some of the the requests that we’re getting. Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — Or we feel like the facility just isn’t working as well as we think it should. Then definitely reach out. Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — Ah for a lot of churches like yeah, it’s time to go. It’s time to raise money and stuff. And for a lot of them. It’s like oh these are the things we need to be thinking about… Rich Birch — Thinking about this stuff. Yeah. Aaron Stanski — …as we manage our largest capital asset, right? Our our building. So. Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. And I know you’ll even just book it on a ah call. Which I think is crazy. Like I’m like you’re not even charging for those first kind of discovery call kind of things, which is crazy to me. I’m like that’s nuts, but people should take advantage of that. Aaron Stanski — Right. Rich Birch — Well, Aaron Mora, let’s talk about maybe some surprises in that in those early, the early phases. As you were thinking about the project, what was something that you know, kind of bubbled up in the process that was like, oh here’s some you know some kind of thing that I didn’t anticipate or didn’t really see um, through this that you know maybe was a bit surprising? Aaron Mora — Sure, and and even going back to that Needs Analysis, um, and um I imagine those listening there’s probably a few out there that are similar to me – we’re pretty cheap, you know frugal. Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Mora — Like trying to say you know how how can we get through this spending the least amount of money… Rich Birch —Yes. Aaron Mora — …at least not spending needlessly. Rich Birch —Yep. Aaron Mora — And so for a Needs Analysis, I think in that first call was a sense of, you know, is this something that we really need? You know we we know we need a building, so is that something that that’s worth the time? And I think I think um on on one hand um, quick quickly walking through it, that process is first of all gold for us. I think there were a lot of answers that we came to that we wouldn’t have otherwise. But then also I think it was also so helpful for Risepointe to really get to know us as part of the the process of getting to that design, so they were able to design something that just fit what we were wanting to do. Aaron Mora — And so yeah, that initial kind of drive around exploring the community getting to know the community. That particular hotel that that Stanski was was talking about, I think that their their response was you know, maybe buy it and bulldoze it. Like that’s not that’s not worth going into. But even that sense of like, I I don’t know is that just options that we’re looking around at um. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Aaron Mora — One one of the pieces even even related to the the space that we landed on which was a JCPenny, ah it was the JCPenny itself was about 60,000 square feet. Rich Birch — Okay. Aaron Mora — It’s right on the main drag going through… Alma’s ah, a small Michigan town of maybe 20,000 people. And so the the main kind of line through town where all the Walmarts and Meijers and everything’s at, ah this JCPenny was right there. So beautiful location. And the initial thought was oh well, let’s buy the whole thing. Um, and so the the thinking though is if you buy 60,000 square feet based on even with some significant growth, what we’d actually need going back to even that budget question of you know what can you afford for for the congregation? You know what do you need it to to do? And I remember us going through you know. feeling this, like well if we don’t buy it now and you know will we regret it in the future? And Risepointe was instrumental to say you know based on your current attendance, based on growth, this is the square footage that you need. Aaron Mora — And actually made ah something that would have kept me up at night, just a major decision—like do we buy all of it, do we buy part part of it… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — …was saying you can do everything you want to in this footprint that you buy. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — So we ended up buying about 30,000 square feet. That’s great. Aaron Mora — And in that we we initially built in this phase about 22-, 23,000 square feet of that. Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Aaron Mora — And it and it’s ah it’s for right us right now ah, a perfect footprint of what we’re in. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Aaron Mora — And so even walking through those types of decisions, I think it was a sense of saying I don’t know if I don’t think I could have Googled an answer to that solution. Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Mora — I think there there was a part of this process that kind of walked us through um in that. And that didn’t that didn’t finish through the design. I think that Risepointe also being a firm that walked all the way through the project, um like Aaron and then ah Chris, one of the the chief architect on the on the project, were just a constant connection, which not every not every organization does, not every designer does. Rich Birch — Right, right. Aaron Mora — Um and it it really was a relationship. Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. Well and I love that, you know, we and when you come to a key decision like that, like there’s one thing you can’t sure you can Google you can find some sort of calculator online. But man, you want to talk to somebody who’s been through this a bunch and has done a bunch of projects. And you know Aaron and the team you know over Risepointe can do that. Rich Birch — Talk to us from a kind of a campus pastor, pastoral care, you know the kind of spiritual dynamics that that you went through as a church. There’s a part of this that’s you know 20,000 square feet – it’s colors, it’s color swatches, it’s you know, picking chairs, all that stuff. But what what was some of that kind of internal transformation that you went through as a team? How did that, you know, it’s not just about buildings, obviously. What, talk to us about that. Aaron Mora — No I think that anytime you’re like a building project is a step of faith. Like you’re probably stepping out into the sense of will will the money come in? You know will will people step in? Will people show up? Is it is it going to be something where you put all this money into something and you don’t grow? And so there is a faith aspect of saying um you know, God we’re we’re we’re we’re sensing you leading us this direction. And that started you know before that even even before we got to multisite. And so there’s there’s a bit of you know, anxiety or fear could keep you in this place of saying, well let’s not do anything. You know, we’re comfortable. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Aaron Mora — And um and so I think that the part of the relationship with Risepointe could be the sense of someone who’s there giving you confidence beyond, you know, the Holy Spirit, beyond God. But even this this sense of saying, God using, you know, a firm to be able to to walk alongside and encourage and say, oh nope, we’ve seen this done before. You know other people have walked this road. Different problems or things that we bumped in during the project, even say hey we’ve we’ve seen this in other spots. You know, we we can show up at a town town meeting conversation zoning thing, talk the language. I think all of that was incredibly helpful. Aaron Mora — And I think in that was this this sense of ah the stress didn’t necessarily go away because a building project, there’s lots of different moving pieces and decisions and and things going through there. But I do think having a good relationship with your designer, um with with the architect allows you to be able to navigate that. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — And that was incredibly helpful for us. Rich Birch – Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah, there’s that Proverbs 12:15 right, the the way of the fool is right in his own eyes. But the wise listens to counsel. And you know I think this is one of those examples of that. Rich Birch — Well, Aaron Stanski, talk us through when you you know you approach ah ah, church like this comes to you and is like, hey we’re we’re thinking about this kind of thing, give us some of the steps that your or some of the questions those kind of early kind of decision-making points. How are you helping guide them through you know, this decision making process? How do you come alongside them and kind of integrate with their leadership development, or their leadership not leadership development their leadership process for making decisions? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean I think at Risepointe like we’re we’re constantly measuring kingdom impact, right? Rich Birch — Good. Aaron Stanski — And so we want to figure out, man, how do we unleash kingdom impact ah in Alma, Michigan? And so we know buildings aren’t going to do ministry, people are. And so like as we as we grow this thing and build it and stuff like as architects, sure, like 60,000 square feet sounds twice as big and twice as much stuff. Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Stanski — And if it was about us and like you know putting projects on our website that would be one thing. But we know we have to hand over a tool ah, to Aaron Mora and his staff and his team that they’re going to use and continue to grow. Ah so yeah, that one big piece that like we’re always trying to you know, develop a plan, a budget plan, a cash flow plan ah, that’s going to set us up for success. So. Aaron Stanski — Um, you know when we sat down with their leadership and we were looking at their options like the ability to say, no, we can we can only buy half of the building. And then we’re not even going to build all of it out. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — But we’re going to design it in a really unique way with a phase two in mind so that they do have options to grow. Um, and we’re going to create an entrance that looks really cool ah in sort of the corner of this JCPenney building and we’re just going to bring it back to life, you know. And so being able to lay out a really clear ah budget and cash, you know, cash flow positive plan that we feel like ah lines up with um, you know giving and all of those things is really critical in the early phases. Because if we can if we can set set those parameters in place, if we can get the guardrails in place, and say okay we we need this many seats, we need this type of a tool when we’re done, and this is the budgets and you know sort of the things that we feel like God has given us from a resources standpoint, ah then as as Christians and as designers and as partners with the church, we can say, all right, this is the highway we’re on and we can drive that project toward success. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Yeah you you brought up the money question. I appreciate you bringing that up Aaron Stanski. Um Aaron Mora, talk to us about that piece of it. I’m sure there’s lots of churches out there that are portable right now… Aaron Mora — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and they would say, yeah, we’d love to get into a permanent location, but man we just there’s no way, we we can’t afford that. And maybe they haven’t even looked into it. Talk to us through what kind of how did that piece of the conversation – whatever you feel comfortable sharing um, you know on that front. Aaron Mora — Um, yeah, well and and I think it was ah it definitely was part part of that that part of that step of faith was we’re rural central Michigan. There’s not necessarily deep deep pockets. And not that that you know and every church I think that probably is an aspect of trying to gauge, you know, what is a step of of faith. But for us there really hadn’t been this sense of, you know, ah you know certain individuals that could give write a check… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — …you know, and build a building type type thing. And so in that was a sense of you know what is what is responsible? What’s reasonable? You know what are we able to to walk into? Aaron Mora — Um, and so ah and with that having Also you know a faithful foundation that’s within the church. But absolutely it was a sense of how do we get into this to get an amazing building for for the least amount to be good stewards. And you know even going back to the initial thought of looking at fields. There was this thought of you know if you build it from scratch, you get exactly what you want. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — But you know you know what what would it take to make something that right now is an empty box, ah former store, into something that’s incredible. And and I think that ah, this was also helpful in that none of some of those initial conversations just looking at Risepointe’s portfolio and saying oh this is actually stuff that we’ve done in other spaces, in other places. And you can kind of see, okay, that that gives you an example of you know what could be done. Aaron Mora — Um I I also appreciated I think that Risepointe former projects that they had done, they were able to also talk to ah builders, construction firms in Michigan, and be like hey can you give us right now like you know you just did a project last year, what’s the cost per square foot that you can expect? Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good. Aaron Mora — And then even beyond the construction, looking at FF&E and you know furniture, fixtures, and all those extra pieces. And those were all things that probably wasn’t on our initial list… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — …but part of that part of that strategic that that ah that initial plan was to say, okay, here’s here’s looking at the whole picture to get into the building. And so it gave us ah a sense of confidence and a plan. Um and praise God I think also a congregation that was saying, but you know let’s keep going; we feel like this is where this is where we’re heading. This is the next step. And so we had you know a lot of unity on that as well. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Aaron Stanski — I love that you threw out just FF and E Aaron Mora — That’s right and learning the jargon. Aaron Stanski — That’s right. Like you’ve you’ve learned… Rich Birch — Yes, that yeah that tells you’ve just come through a project. Yeah, yeah, when you’re saying FF and E. Yeah. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, you’ve learned a lot on the construction and design side through this whole thing. Aaron Mora — Well and even so even going back to the heart of you know your your ministry, Rich. Like like even going to the heart of of unSeminary. I did not, when I went through seminary, went to reform theological seminary, there was not a class on building projects and… Rich Birch — Right, right. Aaron Mora — And I I think in that there I mean what a what a great topic to say there is a lot of it. I remember one of the that initial Needs Analysis, ah the term FF&E was thrown out and I had to Google it on my phone under the table because I had no idea that and no idea what that meant. Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Mora — Ah, but it is It is amazing to see like through that um, yeah, it is kind of a ah learn as you go. And you want wise people around you to help you figure it out. Rich Birch — Okay, so talk to us about, so you’re you know four or five months into the building. Have you had any experiences now that you’re up and running and you’re like, oh, we should have done this different, or we should have done this different. Is there anything like that that’s kind of, you know, you you pass on, because I’m hoping you’re gonna do for your other campuses you’re gonna do more buildings. Aaron Mora — Yeah. Rich Birch — So you know what you what what lessons are you learning? Aaron Mora — I think one of the biggest lessons actually is before before you get to anything that we’re like I wish I would have done this differently, is um I felt like I was talking to my staff, and also talking to some of my key leaders to say, change is hard. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Aaron Mora — And even if it’s a good change, even if it’s a exciting change, we’re moving into a new building, all this thing, there are some people where change is just hard. Um I want to go back. I want to go you know to you know I liked it, you know, the old way. And so in that to say, you know, people giving comments or responses, A- expect it. It’s going to come. People are going to have opinions about the color. People are going to have opinions about the sound system PA. People and have opinions about everything. Um, expect it. And then also don’t take it just as negative. And I think that was very helpful… Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Aaron Mora — …as I was talking to my staff because you just get this barrage of people saying things. And it would be easy to have this negative mindset of saying, oh man did did we did we mess up or something? Or you are all these mistakes. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — And I think it’s a sense of of you have overwhelming change with things like a building project moving in. We fortunately have a ah I think amazing congregation. Um, but you know through a lot of the design process we kind of kept a certain number of select leaders in that because you didn’t want everyone’s input… Rich Birch — Right right. Aaron Mora — …into a lot of those, you know, decisions that are going through. But that being said I think that ah you know, expecting that change is going to be a little bit hard for people. Aaron Mora — And then there are going to be so there’s ah, there’s a short list of saying, oh yeah I you know I might have changed, I might have done it differently. Nothing overwhelming, but even you know, one small example that I’ve I’ve been going back and forth with Risepointe a little bit is, in our our lobby we have this beautiful lobby as you enter into the building. None of our other campuses have such an intentional space Rich Birch — Love it. Aaron Mora — And but sound treatment. So like in that space, it’s a little echoey. Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Mora —And we really didn’t know until you had 200 bodies in there. Rich Birch — Yeah, so you actually run it. Yeah, yeah, totally. Aaron Mora —You know what’s it what’s it going to sound like. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — And and then even Risepointe ah Chris who was kind of our our primary connect with saying you know some people love that, you know, kind of the ambient noise echo going through. Um, sometimes it can also be a little overwhelming. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — Um, and so that’s one thing we’re like we got to figure something out, but that’s not so not something we need to figure out today. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — You know in the meantime we have an amazing space that we’re in. Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Mora — Um, other other small things I think that there were there were things that we figured out getting into it that now that we’re now that you’re in the building, you’re kind of living with it, but nothing that was like a complete miss. I think they’re all small tweaks and changes that you expect… Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Mora — …when you’re moving into a new space. Rich Birch — Well that, good for you. Like I we opened um I’ve opened a bunch of buildings over the years, and this was not a Risepointe project. Another with another outfit and we opened 107-, 8000 square foots of big, giant building. Aaron Mora — That’s huge. Rich Birch — And literally on opening weekend I’m standing watching. We we have the one side we had like this big ramp and all this to get you know help people get in because it was on we was a renovated building as well. And um, I’m standing watching moms pick up their strollers and come up this set of staircase. We put the ramp on the wrong side of the building. Aaron Mora — Oh no. Rich Birch — I literally opening opening weekend I’m standing there looking and I was like, oh my word. Like we got all the kids ministries here, but the ramps on the other side. Why did we? Ah! You know so good for you that the fact that you don’t that’s like a pain point for me in my life. And it’s still to this day that project’s 20 years old and that ramp’s never been fixed. So it’s ah it’s a funny, a funny project. But and again not a Risepointe project. So you cannot blame our our Risepointe friends for that. Aaron Mora — Yeah, there you go. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, see there, you go. Rich Birch — Stanski talked to us about just going back to that decision point around green field versus renovating a box. Talk to us at kind of a principles level around that because I think there’s something there for us to kind of think through a little bit if we’re early on in a project if other people are wrestling through that. Talk to us through just in general maybe not specifically this project.. Aaron Stanski — Yeah I mean in general, ah I mean we have to be really intentional with the decisions that we’re making and understanding how we’re using our buildings and how we’re leveraging those things. Ah so you know for churches that are looking at, for churches that are multisites or ah, you know, or trying to understand how they’re developing their campuses and their sites, like there’s a whole decision make making matrix that we kind of walk through. Ah but in general I mean you’re gonna be so you’re gonna spend about twice as much money building new as you would renovating. Now there’s… Rich Birch — Okay, wow. Aaron Stanski — …there’s a little bit there’s a cost, right? You have to buy the renovated building and so you have to add that in just like, and it’s going to be more expensive than buying flat land. But in general, it’s about twice as much to build new. And so ah in in situations where you know churches have, you know, they’ve already, you know, planted or sent multisites out several times, and they no longer have the option of sending out 150, you know, folks to launch the next campus or places where they’re completely landlocked, or may or may not have an open JCPenny, it’s certainly an option to take a look at what does building new look like and and how do we get there. But yeah, if you can if you can find ah a space that’s ah that works for assembly and is going to meet code and do all of those things, ah, it can be an option to you know to buy an existing space and you’ll definitely save some money there. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. We’ve done we’ve done multiple of of those. In fact, I don’t think any of the projects I’ve done have ever been from a green field. But the the thing about a renovating I found as just a leader renovating a space, in a weird way if the church is looking and you’re actively kind of like paying attention to the market. Um, we can move faster in some cases we can move faster than other people can, which on the people that are selling these properties can actually be really positive. Rich Birch — And so we we had one of our our campuses was exactly that. It was a it was a company that was they were shutting down this particular operation. They were literally and it came down to like there was a guy from Texas who was still running this project, and he was like I want to go back to Texas and like they were done. They had already written off all their their loss as ah as a corporation. And it literally was like, if you guys can move fast enough, we’ll sell it to you. And it was like a significant discount – 30% under under market. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — Because they were just like, hey you know we’re done. And so we were like, let’s jump on it… Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and see if we can make it happen. That’s so… Aaron Stanski — Now what you have to do with existing buildings though is have more contingency… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Aaron Stanski — …because you’re going to run into things that you don’t expect. And ah… Rich Birch — Yes. You open up a wall and that did not anticipate there was that there. Aaron Stanski — Now we did we did open up a wall on the Community Church project after we had done all of the inspections to make sure there was no asbestos anywhere, and we were good to go. Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Stanski — And we went and opened up the first wall—do you remember this, ah Aaron Mora… Aaron Mora — Yeah, it was on the the outside facade. Aaron Stanski — …and here’s the first wall… Aaron Mora — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — …and it was spray painted ah asbestos. Do not do not demo. Rich Birch — Ah, oh my goodness. Oh gosh. Aaron Stanski — And so that was that was a stinger right at the very beginning of the project, right? You’re like shoot. Rich Birch — Ouch. Yeah, yeah, totally. Aaron Mora — Hard hard to ignore it when they they write it on. But and that was I think that some of that some of thats that you expect walking into it. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — And I think rolling with the punches like I feel like my skin’s a little thicker after walking through… Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Mora — …even just a sense of expecting some of those surprises as they come through. Um, but overall I think that you you you can just keep persevering and you get to the finish line. Rich Birch — Yup. I kind of liked frankly the the constraint of an existing box to fit the thing into. We’re we’re going through a building project right now. It sounds similar size 20,000 square feet. And and I like I walk in there and I’m like this is fantastic, like it’s great. And a part of it is because it’s like we’re not thinking about how big the box is. We’re trying to figure out what we can do to get it into this box. Aaron Mora — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — Mmm-hmm. Rich Birch — And all the creativity’s around that which is is fantastic. Well Aaron Mora, talk to us you know, there’s leaders that are listening in who are hesitating on even maybe starting this kind of project. They’re like ah, you know, I’m not this feels like they get indigestion just thinking about it. Talk to that leader who, and I want to push them over the edge to say, hey let’s let’s actually get the ball rolling. Aaron Mora — Um, yeah. Rich Birch — What would you say to somebody now on this end, you know you’re a couple years in. You know you now have actually opened. Talk to us what you’ve learned, how what what kind of words of encouragement would you say to them? Aaron Mora — Yeah, I think even thinking back to our initial steps. Um I think that you have to say is is this what we’re called to? Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Mora — You know because I think that there is different strategy for different times. And honestly I think that if God if we felt like God was saying, hey stay portable. I think I think we we hope that we would have responded to that well. Because sometimes you can just chase growth for growth’s sake, and I don’t know if that is always good. One of the things that allowed us to even I think land with Risepointe was I think one of the lines Aaron I think you you shared with me one of our first conversations is like, we know churches. We talk church language. Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Mora — You know, even as we’re getting into some of those kind of Needs Analysis. It’s also this it’s this faith component of saying, is this something that A, God is leading us towards? And then B, is feasible? And I think that those should correlate, right, between the the two of them. But even just a sense of saying um ah A Needs Analysis didn’t obligate us to break ground… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — …or to to get into a building. Rich Birch — No. Aaron Mora — It also you know is part of that that discerning part of that figuring out you know where are we sitting? Um, and then I think in all of it like for us um I think that we we felt pretty confident that even as a portable campus, permanency, having a permanent location was going to was gonna also communicate to the community that hey we’re not just trying this. Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Mora — We’re not, we’re not you know as the maybe the bigger church that’s up the road in another town. We’re not just trying to you know, kind of see if we can fleece you know people coming in or whatever else. Um I think that permanency also communicates a sense of, hey we’re part of this community. Aaron Mora — Um there was also even just some being portable some challenge of ah of even being associated with the the wonderful ministry that we were meeting in. But sometimes that could even create some confusion… Oh sure. Aaron Mora — …around like well is is it a church or is it h it is it this Youth Ministry thing… Rich Birch — Is that a YFC thing? Or yeah, yeah, yeah. Aaron Mora — …and is it YFC thing? And I think that’s just inevitable just from, again, not not being visibly there. And so walking through the whole thing I think there was a sense of permanency did bring a certain level of hey we’re we’re here to stay. And then surprisingly you can do all the social media advertising you want, all the word of mouth, but just having ah a big old building with ah with a sign on the main drag, I had no idea you guys existed. And so I think there’s also just a sense… Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Mora — …of you know, if you build they will come. Um, we built a auditorium that was actually a pretty big step of faith, and I think that was going through Needs Analysis saying you know what what size auditorium could we build? It was built with a stage that can actually expand to be slightly larger, which is which was wise, and you know thinking about a potential phase two down the road. But we are already at at two services ah close to, I mean we’re we’re at 90 were 95% full in first service last week… Aaron Stanski — Wow. Aaron Mora — …which is significant. And then in our other service, it’s a little more open but it’s you know, 70% full. Most metrics I’ve seen is 80% tends to be when you’re feeling kind of… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Mora — …ah too full on Sundays. And so we’re already looking at a third service which makes me also say, man, my faith should have been bigger. Like why why didn’t we build this bigger? Rich Birch — Where’s that expansion with with here’s those other 8000 square feet – let’s go! Aaron Mora — But but in but in that is a sense also also the sense of saying though, you know, we couldn’t have known. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Aaron Mora — And I think that um and not every situation is going to be that way. There’s been other areas of growth where we’ve not seen that same automatic return. So it’s not even like you know that we did something right. But for whatever reason I feel like God is using this, this project and saying, hey like you you just see people walking in who I mentioned before a lot of them walked away from church… Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Aaron Mora — …five years ago at the start of the pandemic, or they walked away from church. They just stopped attending years ago. Lots of wonderful churches but very traditional churches in this area. Not many that are that are, you know, more contemporary in in Mid-Michigan. Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Mora — And so even just that, this sense of coming in and hearing the gospel. Um, ah those who are far from God and you think, man, God’s using this to reach all these people who had disconnected from the the body of Christ. And and I’m like man that was that was worth it because you know there there were a lot of months last year that were a little stressful, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, oh for sure. Aaron Mora — Yeah that were, you know, kind of ah long hours working through different things. But seeing the fruit of it causes me to say, man, that was that was so worth it. I’ll do that again in a heartbeat… Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Mora — …if that’s something that leads to this this sense of you know, expanding ah, God’s reach through this local church. Rich Birch — I love that. That’s such a great encouragement. And and I’m ah I’m a big fan of portable. This is not like an anti portable conversation. I think there’s a good developmental step for lots of churches. Aaron Mora — Absolutely. Rich Birch — I think it’s a great way to get rolling. And but there is I would echo what you’re saying. Um, I’ve said this in other contexts there is a tangible intangibility that about going permanent that is it’s hard to get onto a spreadsheet. It’s hard to know like how does that how does that fit? Um, you know what I do know is if I was to walk around Alma, Michigan today and say, Hey tell me about a good church in town. Where is a good church? And I just talked to people on the street they’re going to point at buildings. They’re going to point at, now we know that the body of Christ and the church is the collected body of believers – that it’s it’s a group of people. It’s not a physical building. We know that. Rich Birch — But that’s not what people who don’t go to church that’s not what they think about. Aaron Mora — Yeah. Rich Birch — They think about the actual physical building. And there’s something to that that is that makes a difference to or the excel it can be an accelerating factor ah in our growth. Aaron Stanski, talk to maybe ah, an executive pastor person who’s leaning in today who’s listening. And they’re like maybe a little bit more of the nickels, and you know measuring the the pencils, and thinking about that. You know I love Executive Pastors, friends who are listening in. I’m not making fun of you. Ah, but what would you say to them if they’re thinking about this kind of step? What should their takeaway be from that side? Um you know, if they’re thinking, man, I wonder if we should move these campuses in or this campus into a physical location? Aaron Stanski — Ah, yeah I mean, I think there’s a lot of things to count there. Um, but I know I know one of the things that we that we quickly noticed and you know Aaron Mora had pointed this out at their portable location is that there were lids that were preventing them from growing. Um. Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — They had plenty of seats in the gym that they were you know setting up in and stuff, but there were other places of the facility, some kids rooms that were completely maxed out, zero community space with hallways and some other things. And it it does get cold in Michigan so it’s kind of important to have some indoor gathering space. So there were some lids that were going to prevent them from growing. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — And so like how are we going to address those lids. And you know I’m sure if my wife and I I mean we’re christians already, if we moved over to Alma, Michigan we’d find community and like we’d participate and stuff, and that would be great. Um, but the question becomes like if if they were still portable and those lids were existed existing there, and the Holy Spirit told me, man, I need to invite my lost neighbor or my coworker to come to church with me. If the next thought out of my brain is but I got to tell them to get there early so that they get a parking spot. Aaron Stanski — Or I have to explain to them, go down the weird hallway and like the, or kids or if there’s some sort of excuse that I have to make ah in that invitation, then that’s a problem, right? And you can address it a lot of different ways, right? And we’ve talked about them on this podcast, and we should consider them, like adding more services ah like, you know, expanding expanding campuses, all of those other things. But when we’ve exhausted those resources and those families live in that community and want to go to a place that loves on their kids and they can learn about Jesus and stuff, that’s when it’s time to make room for more. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Aaron Stanski — And we have to figure out the best most effective way to do it. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. What what um, give us a sense ah if a church has A Needs Analysis, I want to underline something that that was said. Like the assumption isn’t that oh you’re necessarily going to do a building project like. Aaron Mora — No. Rich Birch — You know I’ve said to church leaders who are facing facility issues, I’ve said man, you should you really should get Aaron and his team in from Risepointe because you know they they might convince you out of a building project and say actually, let’s make these three changes and that’ll get you another 2 years and then that gives you more time. Talk to us about that Aaron Stanski… Aaron Stanski — Yeah I mean we’ve done that. Rich Birch — …that kind of dynamic. Right. Yeah. Aaron Stanski — We’ve done that plenty of times. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — I mean at the heart of what we do, we’re church leaders ourselves. Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — We’re all actively serving and like at our churches and stuff too. And so the assumption isn’t that building is the solution, right? Rich Birch — Right. It’s good. Aaron Stanski — The assumption is God is doing something unique in and through this community and we have to understand how are we using our building. Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — How are we aligning our building in our facility to our mission and vision and is there an opportunity to do it at ah at a better scale. Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — And so yeah for lots of churches iIt’s like man, what what makes you unique? What are how are you serving your community, and what does it look like to do some of those things? Some churches it’s It’s like we’ve moved offices out. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — And by doing that that’s high space and we’re able to add more seats and and some of those other things… Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — …and for a fraction of the cost of what it would, you know you know, be to do something else we’ve identified a solution that yeah is going to unleash them for the next two years three years four years, and if God continues to bless, you know, then we can look at brick and mortar. Rich Birch — Love that. Again, bad for business. Great for the kingdom. I’m like you should every solution should be build a new building. Ah, but again, this is why I love Aaron and the team at Risepointe because they really are trying to come alongside. These people love churches and they want to help. And this has been just such a great conversation today. Rich Birch — Well it’s kind of have last words. Aaron Mora, if people want to kind of track with Community Church and you know track with the church, where do we want to send them online to kind of follow along, to check out the story, that sort of thing? Aaron Mora — Yeah, because Community Church is kind of a generic name. In fact, a couple years ago we went through a process of rebranding. Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Mora — And we went around, had a whole process of finding finding names for churches and we actually loved, came back to our name, Community Church. Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Mora — Which um so community MI – MI as in Michigan – communitymi.org… Rich Birch — Michigan. Yep. Aaron Mora — …is our website. And of course Facebook and other spots as well. Um, and so you want to check it out. I think that ah you know even looking at the the Alma campus specifically, um, we just finished the project but I think there’s some pictures probably getting posted on Risepointe’s site um, to be able to to peek in and see what it looks like. And I just have to tell you I am so stinking proud like of what we ended up with. Rich Birch — Aw that’s good. Aaron Mora — Um, you know, even like some of the the colors coming from between the carpet, going up the walls in the kids space, and indoor playground, which in Michigan is killer… Rich Birch — Big deal. Yep. Aaron Mora — …place for for moms groups to be able to already start meeting in. Um, it just it it looks fantastic. In fact, I think ah we’re in a more rural context. We’re about an hour north of Lansing, about 2 hours north of Detroit, Michigan. People walk in and be like, I can’t believe this church is here. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Aaron Mora — So check it out – I’m ah super super happy with the project. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s good to hear, man. That’s that that makes me happy because there are a lot of church leaders who go through these things and they come to the end of them and they’re like, man we just burned so much money, time, effort, energy. I lost way too much time with my kids… Aaron Mora — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and I walk around this building and feel like, it’s okay, you know. So I love the fact that you’re you know you’re feeling that. And I did see some of those pictures and it’s funny as we’re going through, I’m like this is the problem with podcasts is like, it’s a beautiful facility – just trust us! Aaron Mora — It’s good. Rich Birch — So Aaron Stanski where do we want to send people to actually see pictures of this project? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — And if they want to you know, connect with you and do A Needs Analysis, all that stuff, where do we want to send them online? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, you can just go to risepointe.com – that’s Risepointe with an E dot com. And ah yeah, actually the ah the Alma project is going to be right on our homepage. You just scroll down there and you’re going to see it. There’ll be 2 projects down there but you can click on that one. There’s going to be tons of photos. So you’ll see some of the finished photos of the space. Ah there’s also going to be some of the renderings. So some of the initial renderings of what did we what did we pitch and how did it actually get done. And then I think we’ll even have a cleaned up site ah floor plan. Rich Birch — Oh great. Aaron Stanski — So if you kind of want to get a sense of what does that floor plan look like, what are some things that ah you might compare to you know, kind of some of your spaces at your church – that’ll be on there. You’ll also notice that we took the entire floor plan and we just kind of kinked it about 15 degrees or so. I think we’ve all walked into a big box store and we didn’t want it to feel like a box. We wanted it to feel very community-oriented. So just a little bit of ah of a tilt there on the floor plan will give you a sense of of some of the things that we did. Aaron Stanski — Um, and yeah, if you want to get connected with us, there’s buttons right there on the on the homepage of Risepointe as well. Ah, you can click right on that if you want to have a conversation, you just fill out a little form and pick a time that works for you. We’d love to connect, hear more about what God is doing at your church, and how we at Risepointe could help. Rich Birch — That’s crazy again. I say that right on the front page. I’ve said this to Aaron before, it’s just a click a schedule to call schedule a call button – that’s nuts that they make it so easy. So that’s ah, you really should do that friends I know there’s people that are listening in that you as we’ve been talking today, you’re like, man, that really does describe a campus or that describes our church and man we’re early. We’re not even sure. I feel nervous talking to these guys. No no, reach out click that button, book the call. That’s a great next step. Rich Birch — I appreciate you guys being on this on the on the call today and being a part of the podcast. Ah, thanks for being here, the two Aarons. It’s been a great. Aaron Mora — That’s right. Rich Birch — The first time I’ve had a double Aaron podcast. So glad for you guys being here today. Thanks for being here. Take care. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, thanks, Rich.

Daniel Im, Lead Pastor at Beulah Alliance Church, shares insights on leading churches in a post-Christian, diverse world. Discusses spiritual hunger, refocusing on Jesus amidst distractions, and shifting from attractional to truth-centered approaches. Emphasizes the importance of making disciples and holding fast to convictions in a changing world.

Join us as Joe Platania, Executive Pastor at Central Christian Church, shares valuable insights on maintaining a healthy staff culture. Discover how leadership modeling, staff development, and organizational health are essential for creating a thriving environment. Learn about building trust, fostering accountability, and sustaining health in a multi-site church setting.

Balancing rapid growth with integration is key in church community. Metrics like attrition rate, new guests, and retention are crucial for sustainable growth. Focus on front door invite culture to double church size over 1,000 days.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Gail Ewell a leader at Bay Area Christian Church and Hope Technology School. Gail’s story is one of personal struggle and triumph. As a mother of children with special needs, she faced significant challenges in attending church. Her experiences shed light on the isolation and strain that families with special needs often endure. It was through these personal trials that Gail’s passion for inclusivity within the church was ignited. Tune in as Gail shares how the simple step of a church extending friendship can transform a community. Focus on the isolation and strain. // It’s estimated that about one in five children are neurodivergent and yet 85% of churches don’t have ministries that can support them. In California, 1 in 22 children are diagnosed with autism and other types of disabilities are on the rise. Bay Area Christian Church (BACC) is committed to inclusivity and working to address the isolation and strain of special needs families. Spiritual Resource Ministry. // It’s not uncommon for parents and children to miss church because it can be difficult to attend with a child’s special needs. BACC has developed spiritual resource ministries which promote the inclusion of people and families with special needs so that they don’t feel isolated. It began with smaller classes that are more sensory-friendly and include both neurotypical and neurodivergent children. From there it grew to creating E-sports and E-life which offer inclusive programs for a variety of activities, from soccer and karate to gardening and photography. Partner with others. // Because the goal is to include rather than segregate, Bay Area Christian partners with other youth ministries, professional sports teams, guest speakers and more. Identify the needs in your community and the gifting in your church and how you can pair the two together. Partner with organizations, schools, ministries, businesses and teams in your area to provide inclusive opportunities for children with special needs. Start small. // Gail encourages churches that feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin to start small. Extend friendship to the special needs community in your area because there is often a friendship deficit here. Anyone can give the gift of listening or friendship. Not only are you building relationships among the children, but their families also benefit from being able to connect with others. Provide training. // The success of inclusive programs is largely dependent on the volunteers who bring them to life. Gail emphasizes the importance of training these individuals, underscoring the biblical principles of friendship, encouragement and support for the vulnerable. Recognizing and appreciating these volunteers is crucial, as they are the ones who make a tangible difference in the lives of special needs individuals and their families. Seek understanding. // If you’re facing challenges and concerns, open a dialogue with the family affected by special needs in order to know how to best interact with their child. Seek to understand what is needed and what you may not have considered in your program or outreach. Meeting a critical need. // While it can feel intimidating to step onto the path of developing a spiritual resource ministry, Gail encourages churches to just begin. Remote areas may not have a lot of services for special needs children and families. There’s a big opportunity for churches to step in and offer purpose and occasions for inclusion. It begins with a heart to love people, extend friendship and meet a need. Want to learn how to build a spiritual resource ministry at your church? Visit Bay Area Christian Church’s website to download the SRM Manual that Gail mentions. Plus explore E-sports and E-life for examples of inclusive community service programs. 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 — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You’re in for a real treat. Super excited to have Gail Ewell with us. She’s at Bay Area Christian Church. It’s a fantastic church in the Bay Area, obviously. She’s also a part of Hope Technology School. Bay Area Christian Church is deeply committed to creating environments where children and adults with special needs can thrive alongside their neurotypical peers. And ah the the school that she’s a part of, Hope Technology School, is a fully inclusion nonprofit school located in Palo Alto. Ah, super excited to have you on the show today, Gail. Thanks for being here. Gail Ewell — Hey Thanks Rich! Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Rich Birch — Now this is going to be great. I’m honored that you would take some time to be with us. Tell us a little bit about Bay Area Christian. Kind of fill out the picture. Give us a you know a flavor of the church. Help us understand more about it. Gail Ewell — Yeah, we’re we have 8 campuses throughout the Bay area, and Bay is really big and we’re spread all over the place. But yeah, we’re church committed to inclusivity for those with different abilities And it’s been a definitely work in progress. So it’s it’s really been a great light for we’re very um, focused on God and good, doing good and so a lot of our focus is outreach to the community. So we do a lot of community activities and programs. That’s a central focus for our church. Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Well I want to kind of zero in a little bit on what you’ve done to create a more inclusive church. And let’s talk a little bit about why this is such an issue. I had heard that and I and I don’t know whether this is true, but it’s one of those things I heard and it was stuck in my brain. I was talking to a friend who’s involved in similar ministry and they were talking about children specifically. But they were saying 1 in 5, I think was the number that they used, of children would be considered ah neuro-divergent different, you know than than everyone else. And 85% of churches don’t do any special needs ah, ministry whatsoever. Gail Ewell — Yeah. Rich Birch — Um, and ah those that that struck me. I found that you know, really shocking. So talk to us tell us talk to us about why this is such an issue. Gail Ewell — Ah, well in California 1 in 22 children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Rich Birch — Wow. Yep. Gail Ewell — And and other types of disabilities are on the rise as well across the United States. But around maybe 15% of US children between three and seventeen years old are affected by a developmental disability. And emphasizing of course the need for ministries and churches for inclusion. I actually recently heard of a study conducted by the university of Wisconsin that monitors the stress levels of ah mothers for eight days. Rich Birch — Wow. Gail Ewell — And they measured their hormone levels on specific days. And the study found that chronic stress levels experienced by these mothers was were similar to that of a combat foot soldier. Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness. Wow. Gail Ewell — So yeah, so what we the problem I guess that we or the need is that we were trying to address the isolation and strain of special needs families that can be a significant problem for not only in our congregation, but also in our communities. Rich Birch — So how did what was the kind of journey the starting journey for this at Bay Area Christian? Where did this where did this begin? Gail Ewell — So as a mother and a leader I was going to church and um, we have a strong women’s ministry, and that’s my primary focus – women’s ministry. I’m an executive women’s ministry leader for very large church. And I couldn’t get into church because I was at church the building but because my child had autism I was unable to be a part of the whole service because I was always getting called out at the children’s ministry. And my first son John was born with ah down syndrome – that was a surprise to us. We didn’t know. Gail Ewell — And then two years later our son Jordan was diagnosed with autism. So we had significant needs in our own family and we experienced our own barriers. Um, and I knew and understood there must be a lot of other people facing this kind of challenge. Rich Birch — Absolutely. Gail Ewell — So we created programs for that because I knew the community probably at back then had you know needs. And I just ah understand that you know I realized that a lot of moms and children are missing church because there’s just no way they can even fathom going to church with their child’s needs, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Gail Ewell — And um, one you know it’s just and so I become you know all, most parents become strong advocates when this they get these kind of needs in their family. For those that have less support needs there’s more advocacy out there. But I always think of Proverbs 31 that says we should speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves. Rich Birch — That’s good. Gail Ewell — And my my children at that time were nonverbal… Rich Birch — Oh wow. Gail Ewell — …and I had a strong conviction about speaking up for the nonverbal… Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Gail Ewell — …and those literally the had no voice. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Wow. So What does this look like at Bay Area Bay Area Christian? Like if I’m a parent who’s exploring, thinking about coming to the church, how do you actually engage with them? What does that look like? Gail Ewell — Yeah, we had two programs we developed out of these needs that we saw in my own life, and in the community, and in our church. And that’s um we developed a spiritual resource ministry that was founded in 1996 but that was mostly to help families who felt isolated and ah couldn’t participate in church. And so what we did is we developed what we call our SRM Ministry – the Spiritual Resource Ministry. Which basically you know for me I didn’t understand sensory sensitivities back then. Now it’s a little bit more known. Sensory friendly is a more common term. But back then I didn’t understand my child was experiencing experiencing sensory sensitivities in church. Rich Birch — Right. Gail Ewell — And so you know there’s the loud, there’s the music, there’s the crowds. And you know even for us that are neurotypical, we can experience sensory sensitivities at times, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, for sure. Gail Ewell — So we’ve had to develop a smaller class and we started from there that was more sensory friendly. And then we did kind of a reverse mainstream where we allowed children to come in who are neurotypical. And it just and from there it kind of exploded and ballooned into over 20 locations. Gail Ewell — The six sports that we did E-sports and E-life. And E-sports is more like soccer, basketball, football, karate, dance, fitness. It just kind of exploded because the members expertise or talents, they could take their talent and use it wherever their community was. And they caught a vision and it exploded. And then it’s more of late it’s turned into E-life, which is more like activities versus sports. Rich Birch — Okay. Gail Ewell — And so not everybody does sports. But you know we anyone at any level can come. I mean even our E-sports program, you know we have ah a child… I’ll give you an example of a boy and who came with a wheelchair and he had Spina Bifida and he did not want to go to the wheelchair programs that were out there. And so what the volunteers did is they gave him a walker and he’s the goalie and he was so excited. Parents are in tears. You know like we’re trying to constantly modify and adapt our program so anyone could come at any level. Rich Birch — Wow. Gail Ewell — And the E-life kind of came out of that and that’s more like gardening and theater and photography and academics. And we had a professor do an e-stem class recently for his community… Rich Birch — Wow. Gail Ewell — …and then gaming. That’s a big one – the e-gaming. So we have a couple that’s awesome. The Combs and they they run that as well for their children… Rich Birch — Wow. Gail Ewell — …and for the community. Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, well I I love this. Gail Ewell — And sorry – tell me when to stop. Rich Birch — I know – I love it. I love it. Because you know as people that are you’re listening in, you’re realizing, man, there is so much going on at Bay Area Christian in this area, which has been my experience in the past. It’s like when we take some first steps in this direction, we realize oh my goodness, there’s this tremendous need in the in the community and it’s an opportunity for us to step in, and and it does start to balloon. But let’s take a step back to, maybe if a if a church is thinking about or or maybe at Bay Area when you when you first started to offer, you know, the the classroom and stuff like that. How did you build say awareness and education with the church in general? Like you know, obviously the parents who who are wrestling with these issues understood that, hey this is a there there’s stuff here I this is something I need help with. Gail Ewell — Yeah. Rich Birch — But with the broader church, what’s that look like? Gail Ewell — Well we kind of did a needs assessment in our church where we just understand the specific needs of our church community and identified areas that required additional support. The members that needed the support. We are fairly large church. So there were a lot more when we kind of looked at it opened our eyes and looked at it and were able to see the needs. And then we did identified church talents and then we’re able to assess talents. But also looking at professionals who in the field had experience, right? Whether it’s healthcare providers, or teachers, or special educators, or therapists. They were just a lot, boatload of people that we didn’t always understand. We had such a wealth within the church. We just had to go assess that and identify the talent. And we created those programs out of that talent. Gail Ewell — But early on it was, you know, ah humble beginnings. We across the street was a big field and it was full of duck poop and um geese poop, and that was our first E-soccer. Rich Birch — Right. Gail Ewell — And you know and it was just humble beginnings. Yeah, we just started and and it grew from there. And for a lot of churches, I think it’s just honestly believing that you can do something. And I try to encourage people that um, you can start with friendship because there’s a friendship deficit in that community. Um, and so I think anyone can give the gift of listening or being a friend. And that’s that’s where we started. We started with just outreach and friendship and listening and started small. Rich Birch — Yeah. Gail Ewell — So I don’t know if that answers the question. Rich Birch — Yeah, no, that’s good. That’s really good. Yeah, maybe unpack that a little bit more. When you think about what some of those, what would be some of your advice. I’m sure you get calls from churches and they you know leaders see the need. They’re like I understand but, man where do we start? I’m a little you know I look at everything Bay Area has done. That’ll be great 5 years from now, but what’s my first step into this area? Gail Ewell — So we did our first step, I think we started with some sort of evangelistic type outreach for workshops that we did. Rich Birch — Okay. Gail Ewell — And so I just took an interest I had and I remember just reaching out to doctors in the field, whether it’s natural medicine, or [inaudible] medicine – something interesting to all people. And I invited a a guest speaker. Rich Birch — Okay. Gail Ewell — And we just created our, you know if you have a church building, you can have it there. And then you reach out to your community to come to the guest speaker. Because there are a lot of people who want to hear different topics, whether it’s anxiety or depression or you know or just could be tailored to a specific special need. And… Rich Birch — Right. Gail Ewell — …and that’s when we realized we had so many people come that that’s when we realized, wow, you know we could build a ministry from this because the outreach was actually easy. Um, and sometimes we get frustrated with that. But this was so easy. I mean my son went to preschool at special needs preschool, and I invited his friend his little buddy and his mom. And his mom came and then from there she came to church and she became a Christian. Then he grew up, he became Christian. Now he’s trying to help all his friends become christian. Gail Ewell — And he you know he’s he’s autistic. And how he’s going to school and he wants to be a broadcaster. Rich Birch — Oh cool. Gail Ewell — You know he’s been on television. And and that was just a first workshop we did and that was the first thing she came to, and then from there you see the evolution of how you can change lives and help people and serve people in the community. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so cool. Yeah, I love that. I think there’s you know there’s a lot there. When you think about what have you learned in kind of interacting with the various ministries of the church because as you start to provide say hey we’re trying to open our door here to, say kids kids with special needs or you know the broader community with special needs, that starts to have impact on lots of other ministries. You know you start thinking, hey we want to you can’t just have like a there’s just like a special needs ministry and then that’s totally disconnected from the rest of the church. It’s got to be integrated into what do we do. What have you learned on that front? How do you collaborate with existing ministries? Gail Ewell — Absolutely, yeah, the goal is inclusion not separation. Rich Birch — Yes. Gail Ewell — So you you don’t want to have a special needs, you know children’s ministry or a special need… you know the goal is not to segregate, it’s to include. And so we collaborated like you said with existing ministries that we partnered with ah, the youth ministries, and so a lot of our middle school and teens came out. You know they maybe did their high school service hours. So there was ways that we partnered with other ministries to get things kind of rolling um, and that really helped us a lot. We promote volunteering in our church and you know at all the time. And did we did a lot of, I thought back because sometimes you don’t think about what you do, you know you don’t think about I did this now, Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes. Gail Ewell — You know God gets all the glory – I mean he had it explode. But but um, we offered a lot of training sessions, you know, where we could just help enlighten people about different areas or needs of special needs, and that helped the volunteers with their skills and knowledge. And um, you know I always like to start with a biblical motivation. So Matthew 5 says be the light, and you know if you shine bright people are gonna be they’re gonna see that light and want to come to it. Rich Birch — That’s good. Gail Ewell — You know, ah every church community, like you said, you know, it’s it’s unique. And you know the tactics you find are are going to be specific to your city and your needs. But recruiting and dedicate yourself to volunteers is really important for a thriving ministry. And we just went out to the community and we found, you know, university sports teams, the USF, University San Francisco, they actually have their men’s and women’s basketball team come out and help us with e-hoops… Rich Birch — Oh wow. Gail Ewell — …you know and help us with the clinics. And then the major league, our major league teams like the Earthquakes and the Warriors, we actually partnered with them to do activities and clinics. And our kids were able to go out and play on play where the play pros play. And and ah play you know sometimes they play on the the actual you know, um place where they’re playing it for the halftime. Or sometimes they’re having a special clinic, and even Ron Adams, one of the assistant coaches came out and spoke to the kids. So we like to partner with, you know, universities or or major leagues in your area, or existing ministries, or just looking for outreach where people want to do good… Rich Birch — Yes. Gail Ewell — …because that’s our our conviction to God and good. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s so cool. I love that. When you think about the training of you know, your existing ministries and some of that coaching that you’ve done within your you know your existing you know things that were already running. Was there, is there some go-to advice that you find yourself coming back to time and again to try to help various ministries be more inclusive? Is there like a piece of advice that it’s like, oh you know, I would say these two things to everybody every ministry? What what would be some of those things? Gail Ewell — Yeah, I think um training for training definitely did a lot of sensory-friendly. Matthew 25 says that you know the parallel shoots a groats it says there’s a part where it says when when did you see you friend…this is The Voice, it says when did we see you friendless or excluded, without friends when did we see you weak or without friends? And Jesus respond when you when you saw the least of these and you ignored their suffering, you ignored me. And I think something we can all relate to is loneliness and friendlessness and and needing friends. Gail Ewell — And that’s really a critical part of building and training the volunteers because our volunteers aren’t just doing their duty. They’re making friends. Rich Birch — Yes. Gail Ewell — They’re going out and being friends. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Gail Ewell — You know they’re volunteering in other ways that we don’t even know. They’re going to homes and you know they’re serving the community on a, not just a buddy. You know a good buddy. It’s their friend, you know? And they’re helping to break that friendship deficit and that isolation and that stress of those families in an incredible way because of their big hearts. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. Well I’m sure over the years you’ve you know there’s some volunteers, speaking of volunteers that have really stood out and have been like, wow these these people are doing an amazing job and… Gail Ewell — Yeah. Rich Birch — You know what what would be some of the ways that you’ve shown, you know you’ve recognized those people, you’ve shown appreciation, you’ve you’ve tried to you know, celebrate them internally? Gail Ewell — Um, yeah, we do recognition appreciation all the time, regular acknowledgement, appreciation of the volunteers. One one of the guys that really stands out to me is Jason Collette because we had volunteered to do a sensory [inaudible] vaccine clinic and the family said that they called him personally and asked if he would come to another time of his doctor appointment… Rich Birch — Okay. Gail Ewell — …because the only way this child would get it her his shots was, I think he, was through having Jason there. Rich Birch — Wow, wow. Gail Ewell — And so, you know he’s a really bighearted guy. And he went. And you know his own you said, oh sure I’ll come to your doctor appointment, help ya. And you know that he got all his shots and everything you know. And the family was so grateful because there’s so many needs in the community they get so isolated and they can’t do some of the basic things that we take for granted, just go to the doctor, you know. Rich Birch — Right? Yeah, that’s cool. What a cool story. I love that. You know, going that’s, talk about going above and beyond. Gail Ewell — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like it’s you know it’s so much more than just showing up for e-sports or whatever… Gail Ewell — Yeah. Rich Birch — …whatever he’s volunteering with. It’s like how do I really get into these families’ lives and help serve you know their their total life. Gail Ewell — Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s that’s amazing. What when what is the kind of the support for volunteers look like? How do you what kind of training do you are you doing? I’m trying to kind of get a sense of what that looks like. Obviously there would be whatever you would normally do for for every other volunteer, but then there must be more that you’re doing on top of that to provide additional support and help. Gail Ewell — Yeah, yeah, definitely. We’ve definitely developed trainings for, especially from some of the sports programs for the volunteers that come out… Rich Birch — Okay. Gail Ewell — …on how to interact specifically with the special children with special needs. And we’ve utilized and accessed our own talent in our church to do that, and including um, you know this special some of the ones that have more expertise to come out and help the coaches. We’ve also, so specifically they’re talking about how to interact and how not how not to react, and how to be a friend. And you know how to encourage participation. And you know these are children who otherwise would have no sports. Rich Birch — Interesting. Gail Ewell — You know they would not be it. They would not be at sports. Rich Birch — Right, right. Gail Ewell — I mean it’s beautiful to watch, because you just realize, wow, this is definitely God’s work, you know. Because this wouldn’t otherwise happen. And these these events are they’re they’re monumental in the child’s life. They’re what they remember. They’re their favorite time of the week, you know, when they come. Gail Ewell — And but we have had to so you know we’ve learned by doing. It’s a work in progress and a lot of hands-on field experience. So we’ve learned by doing and so then we access the talent from the church, and then we continue to have volunteer recruitment, but trainings that can help them learn to be more sensitive sort of to the special needs. You make mistakes, but honestly the parents are so grateful and it’s free, and and they make friends and otherwise at school many times they’re friendless, you know. So not always, but you know they are a lot. And the parents get to have a little break on the sideline… Rich Birch — Right. Gail Ewell — …and talk to other parents. Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s some networking that happens there for sure. Gail Ewell — And get yes and just get support and encouragement. Rich Birch — Yeah. Gail Ewell — So that’s just that’s the the favorite time for those families. But yeah, the volunteers are getting trained as much as we can and much as we know, and we’re learning from our mistakes. But I don’t know if that’s specific enough for you. Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Yeah, that’s good. Gail Ewell — But that’s what we um do. Rich Birch — Yeah, I remember um once I was talking to a parent who was reflecting thanking, you know our our our church for having you know of a similar kind of ministry. And they were saying you know my son um, who would have been a teenager at this point you know everyone in my son’s life because of his his special needs are various care workers that are paid to be with him, that are you know these are and and um, and I get choked up every time I think about it. And she said you know when we come to church, these people are choosing to be with my son. And you know they’re they’re you know they’re they’re saying hey I want to be here. This is you know, um and she was reflecting on, man, what that what what that meant to her as a mom… Gail Ewell — Yeah. Rich Birch — …that you know there’d be people that were going out of the way to say, yeah I I want to be with your kid. And and like you say it develops into that kind of friendship; it develops into… I like that you keep coming back to that. That this whole idea of isolation and you know friendship ultimately and how do we develop relationships. It’s not about providing some sort of program. It’s ultimately trying to get people connected with each other. I love that. Gail Ewell — Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great story because we see that happening and um I appreciate that those ministries so much, because I think it’s sometimes the only thing they have, you know. Like you said the paid versus a real friend or… Rich Birch — Yeah. Gail Ewell — …someone not being paid to be with me. We like to empower the adults, and that’s on my heart because my kids have grown up… Rich Birch — Grown up. Yeah. Gail Ewell — …and are adults with special needs. But um because you know we’ve empowered them to become coaches now. You know they went through the program now they’re learning and training to become the coaches, and that really is inspirational because they’re seeing their purpose you know? Rich Birch — Yep, yeah, that’s cool. Talk to me about I’m sure there are um, once once you open up as a church and say hey we want to do more of this, and and I I do want to talk more about the adult side of the equation as well. So this is I’m going to ask a kid question, but I want to get to that. You know part of what we’re we’re trying to do is you say hey we want to be inclusive for anybody. And that ends up you know which is wonderful and we’re trying to figure that out. Rich Birch — But then there can end up being kids or adults that come that have very severe, you know, ah medical needs that are, you know, they’re like complex that they’re you know there’s something we need to think really delicately about. We need to ensure that we you know we handle that relationship in that individual well so that we don’t you know, create any you know further problems. How do you handle that? How do you how do you ensure that kind of the right information is getting the right people that we’re you know we’re handling people correctly, doing everything we need to do? Um, yeah, what what does that look like? Gail Ewell — So like I think that if you open the dialogue with the families, they know they’re the experts. Rich Birch — Yep. Gail Ewell — They’re the seasoned parent, you know. And when you open that dialogue and you have good communication with families then you know best how you can accommodate or modify or meet needs. Ah, and and when you have that listening ear and you’re open to hearing the the the needs and what they need for support. I know we have one family and their child, you know is a wheelchair and has some special needs as far as their physical mobility, et cetera. And that you know coming to Camp was hard because our Camp had hills. Rich Birch — Yep, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gail Ewell — Um, some of those camps was like alone pushing the wheelchair up and down the hills… Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Gail Ewell — …you know is wearing her out you know. And there was some other complex needs. So you know we just communicated in a way where we could get volunteers to push and make sure her cabin’s on the flat level. And just accommodated make sure her our classes were on the flat levels you know. And thinking about mobility needs right? And that was just talking to the mom and get hearing her feedback and hearing, oh yeah, I’m not even we’re not even. We’re so sorry we oversight you know. We’re not even thinking about the hills, you know… Rich Birch — Right, yeah. Gail Ewell — …and how hard that would be for someone to go up and down them hills for the classes a camp, right? Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah for sure. Yeah, that makes total sense. Well let’s pivot in a little slightly different direction. Tell me about Hope Technology School – tell me a little bit about this. Gail Ewell — Yeah, um, Hope Technology School is an inclusion school which means that everyone’s included in education. There’s no separate classes. Um, it basically we have neuro 60% special those with special needs and then 40% are actually neurotypical . Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Gail Ewell — So they so a lot of people but you know that’s a a nonprofit private school, um and a lot of people it’s non-sectarian it’s not religious. Um, but it’s an incredible light because we include. And and we’ve seen I mean we’ve seen the neurotypical people graduate, go to college, get incredible jobs, you know. We’ve seen this kids with special needs go go to college. I mean it’s just the power of inclusion is amazing. And um we’ve learned a lot in the years we’ve done it. You know whatever is a twenty plus years um. And you know we do collaborative teaching and differentiated instruction and you know we have ah kind of a universal design approach to education and modeling. And for anyone out there with education background, they know, kind of these terms. But you know it really helps us have a really successful inclusion model. Um, so is that helpful? Rich Birch — Um, yeah, that’s wonderful. I love that. And you know I think this is that kind of thing is at least that’s been my experience as well. You see as churches or individuals or leaders, they they start moving in this area. And you start to realize, oh man there are just so many needs. There’s so many pieces of the puzzle here around how do we create a world where you know we can include more people where people can be ah, be you know, get a place at the table. And you know like it’s it’s you know there’s lots of different pieces here which I just think is so inspiring and you know just so incredible. Rich Birch — So when you look to the future as at the church when you think kind of you know where where does this go next for Bay Area Christian as you think about inclusion down the road? What would be some of the questions you’re wondering about as you look up over the horizon? Gail Ewell — Um, as far as new programs and outreach and things like that I think our E-life is something we’d like to develop more because we were primarily focused initially on inclusive sports programs and getting people out who otherwise wouldn’t have any opportunities. Ah, so E-life I mean there’s just a whole world of things we can do with that, you know. It basically if they’re cooking or doing yoga or whatever you can make it an inclusive activity and you know. And the E stands for exceptional. So we think they’re all exceptional. Gail Ewell — Um, so that that’s something we’d like to develop more. And then I think the isolation is something I’d like to tackle more in the adult ministries. It’s something I like to tackle more and do more for the adult ministries. So there’s just not a lot when people age out of the system, so to speak that’s a term, they the parents and adults lose a lot of their support. I mean there’s these day programs they can go to – it depends on the city and the area you’re in what kind of services. Sometimes people in remote areas just don’t have a lot of services. There’s not a lot. And the church can do a lot as far as providing purpose and opportunities for um inclusion. Gail Ewell — I I don’t know if I should keep so you know hopefully you could edit this out if it’s not a good story there. Yeah, but but ah… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Gail Ewell — You know I don’t know um, but what if some part that inspired but also challenged and convicted me was when I moved to the city I’m in now, and um I heard ah a neighbor asked me at a block party, did you hear about this story? And and I and then I didn’t know what she was talking about. I went and looked it up and it was basically a person in our area who aged out of the system—a mom —and she ended up shooting her son and shooting shooting herself. And… Rich Birch — Oh how sad. Gail Ewell — …and it for me I mean we don’t ever want to hear the uplift you only want to hear the uplifting stories. But really honestly that burned a hole in my soul. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, oh man. Yes. And I said I want to provide something for the adult because she reached out to her neighbor and her neighbor didn’t know what to do. And there was I just keep thinking if someone had reached out to her… Rich Birch — Right. Gail Ewell — …her and her son would be alive, right? Rich Birch — Right. Gail Ewell — She was so distraught, obviously probably had mental health issues and depression and whatnot. But so that gives you just a window into the isolation that can sometimes occur for those with more support needs. And that there’s just pinnacle moments in my life where like something’s burn in your heart and you go, I’m gonna do some about that, you know. Rich Birch — We got to do something about that. Yeah. Yeah, totally, yeah. Gail Ewell — Yeah I’m gonna do some about that. There’s something I’m gonna do. I’m gonna get a conviction about that. And I’m not going to forget about those those individuals who are who are really in need. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And I think you know that that is such a great example of I think as churches, think a lot the churches that I’ve seen that have got engaged in trying to create an inclusive environment, it typically starts when kids ministry. But then what happens over time… Gail Ewell — Right. Rich Birch — …is you know these those young people though they they go from kids to young people to young adults to adults… Gail Ewell — Yes. Rich Birch — …and and and which is a wonderful thing, right? Then it creates these new opportunities for a church to say hey what what can we do? And you know man look forward to a future where that’s just a normal part of um, you know what’s happening in in the church. Rich Birch — Do you have a sense…so ah like this feels like ah it’s still a minority of churches that are doing something. Like this this feels like ah you know what do you have any sense of the kind of percentages what that looks like, how many churches out there? Gail Ewell — Yeah I don’t know the percentages but when I’m ah in social media and I’m on support groups and I’m following ah parents that have huge followings… Rich Birch — Yep. Gail Ewell — …you know with special needs families, there are so there are good works out there. There are people reaching out. There are activities. Um, but I think it’s what you said, it’s It’s few. Rich Birch — Yeah. Gail Ewell — You know there’s not compared to how many people there are and how many churches there are. Rich Birch — Yes. Gail Ewell — I think most people can get intimidated by it. I was telling one of my friends a story about when um I was in high school and you know they ask you what do you want… they kind of help you with what do you want to be career building or whatever. And they sent me to back then an institution where all the ah people with down syndrome were put. And it was terrible experience for me. And I remember walking out of there going I never want to work with people with special needs. I was too afraid of what I saw. Rich Birch — Right. Gail Ewell — Of course now they don’t have those institutions, but it’s much different for people now in that sense. But um I think a lot of times fear… Rich Birch — Yeah. Gail Ewell — …can keep us from opening up our ministries because we fear of the unknown, I suppose. Rich Birch — Yes. Gail Ewell — I don’t know anything about it. Or I don’t know oh that’s going to be too hard or it’s going to burn us all out or it’s going to take up too many resources or. And they don’t understand that really it it just starts with a big heart to love people and be a friend and reach out and meet a need. And and I think God blesses it. He he you know was at John 9 where he talks about the man born blind and he says that the parents didn’t sin. It’s because the work of God was meant to be seen through his life. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Gail Ewell — And I think that that’s what God can do. Rich Birch — Yeah. Gail Ewell — He can show the he can show the light. He can show the work. He can show your hearts. Rich Birch — Yeah, amen. That’s so good. Well I think that’s a great place to to to land it. I think that’s a great kind of even you know, kind of final thought there. But as we wrap up, kind of any any final words then I want to make sure that we give out contact information, websites, all that stuff so people can track. Because I think this is a great story and there’s going to be churches that are going to want to know more about it. But any kind of final words and then how can people track with you and the church. Gail Ewell — Ah, final word. My final words would be believe that you can make a difference. Believe that you can listen. You can be a friend. Reach out to your neighbor. Reach out to the people at school. Understand and believe that you can really help, you know. Rich Birch — That’s good. Gail Ewell — Try not to judge. You know when you see the boy at the Target having a meltdown, you know be just reach out and be a friend. Is there anything I can do for you? Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Gail Ewell — Um, you know I think we’ve developed a spiritual resource manual that’s coming soon. We have updated an old one and so you can register for access and um on that on the website I’ll I’ll give to you all the websites. And you can access that manual which will give you a lot of hands-on tactics and practical advice about how to start your spiritual resource ministry or how to start an E-sports or an E-activities in your community. So there’s a lot of ah resources we have online if people want to register for access… Rich Birch — Love it. Gail Ewell — …to the spiritual resource manual. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I’ll I’ll put a link to that in the in the show notes. But I think that’s just at bacc.cc/srm for folks that are listening in. Gail Ewell — Yes. Rich Birch — Um, but we’ll ah we’ll we’ll put a link in the show notes as well for that. I would encourage people to pick that up. Well this has been a fantastic conversation, Gail. I really appreciate you being here today. Thanks so much for being on. Gail Ewell — Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Highlights from the XPS 2024 conference include understanding organizational doubt levels, leadership stages, and target audience strategies. Emphasizing building relationships, the event offered valuable insights for church leaders navigating challenges.

Join Phil Taylor, a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience, as he discusses the evolving role of Executive Pastors in churches, the importance of emotional intelligence, and the critical relationship between lead and executive pastors. Discover when a church needs an XP based on the lead pastor's style and why being attentive to the soul is crucial. Explore insights on the role of eldership development and the significance of the executive pastor book for pastors and potential XPs.