Category: Church Vision

2_11: Jay Cull: Disciples are made through personal calling not church programming.

2_11: Jay Cull: Disciples are made through personal calling not church programming.

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Breakthrough ideas with Jay: 

  • What does it look like to move from being a “church for the unchurched” to being a “church among the unchurched?”
  • How do we activate and motivate people where they live, work, and study and play to carry their faith beyond the church into neighborhoods and workplaces?
  • What does a shift from attractional to incarnational ministry look like?
  • We’ve been trying to answer the question in our services for a long time, “Is God relevant?” Now, we’re saying, “How can we help folks encounter God in our midst and carry that everywhere we go?”
  • So we’re not asking the question, “Is God relevant?” We’re asking the question, “Is God here?”
  • How can we encounter God in that space in our public gathering?”
  • To encounter God, those that lead and prepare all week or all month for that service have encounters with God, so it becomes an overflow expression.
  • “Hey, what if we relied on prayer first?” It was the tip of the mission.
  • But 30 minutes before service, we’ll gather and ask, “What do we sense God saying? What are the micro shifts for the day?”
  • If you are not well-prepared, you would not be able to receive the last minute micro-shifts from God.
  • When it comes to planning, if you don’t have something to deviate from, then everything’s a deviation and exhausting.
  • What happens when God’s presence is very tangible, palpable, and folks are finding freedom?
  • We realized that we are not used to experiencing the presence of God in such a tangible way in our services.
  • We’re doing the work to encounter God personally, and it’s spilling over into our services.
  • We’re trying to build this relational connection, not just with each other, but with the God that we’re serving.
  • We’ve been hardwired to be good at this connecting with God and people and doing it all simultaneously.
  • Praying is leadership. What if we prayed as if it’s our only resource?
  • We’re a well-resourced church in an upper class– we’ve got plenty of ideas. But let’s pray as if it’s our only resource
  • What we’ve tried to do is not just talk about it, but from the platform, help folks engage in a prayer practice.
  • We’ve begun to use the stage as a place of equipping.
  • When I’m talking to God, where can I go in my imagination? I mean, what does it look like?
  • We are deploying people from the room on Sunday to go and live their faith the other six days of the week in the different venues God has placed them.
  • We’ve elevated the stage to place people in spectator mode with their faith.
  • How do we change the stage from a place to watch, into a place of encounter? We facilitate a meeting that they can carry with them.
  • It has been amazing to help everyone get personal clarity.
  • The church is here to help accomplish what God wants to do in your life.
  • In the Younique process, we are helping the individual say, “Hey, how do I be a disciple that makes disciples different than the person next to me?”
  • How do we have a person who knows how to help many folks reproduce so we can have an exponential movement?
  • I want to activate healthy, Spirit-led reproductive leaders that lead communities that change communities. That’s what I want to get after.
  • Are we deploying people into their calling through this Younique process by helping them find their two words and attributing all the rest of the clarity to that?
  • We’ve taught people how to coach and disciple others. Younique happens to be a great process, a context to help folks become trainers.
  • In 30 seconds, what if I could get to the heart of what’s going on with my neighbor? And not because they have the same language, but because I understand how to get to their core.
  • Be a person of the Scriptures. Don’t just master them, let them master you.
  • Be a person of prayer. Learn how to have a conversation with God until just it’s normal.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

Heartland Community Church

Fathered by God by John Eldredge

Younique: Designing the Life that God Dreamed for You by Will Mancini

Jay Cull leads as Pastor of NextGen/Missions at Heartland Community Church just outside of Kansas City, Kansas. His life calling is coaching leaders in toward breakthrough clarity to lead communities that change communities. Jay’s a former church planter, businessman turned pastor, coach and consultant.  He enjoys the outdoors, especially biking, hiking, and skiing, with his family – wife of 24 years and three adventurous children.

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2_08: Bob Bergmann – What story does the design of your church tell?

2_08: Bob Bergmann – What story does the design of your church tell?

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Breakthrough ideas with Bob:

  • The church needs to go where all the people are going.
  • Visioneering Studios is called to help the church put to form the stories about the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
  • Every building tells a story, and sometimes the story told is that we are cheap and just putting something together.
  • Sometimes the story our building tells is that “We copied something that looks successful somewhere else.”
  • What’s the prophetic story that God wants to tell through your community?
  • The Church is God’s best tool for redeeming this lost city; this lost civilization.
  • Sometimes we design for other things and miss what the greatest Designer has done.
  • We have to step back and look at where we’re going continually.
  • Don’t design from the property line in.
  • The Church is lagging because we don’t understand that people are dying of spiritual thirst.
  • We know lost people love the created work of God; they don’t know the creator God of that work.
  • People love the creation, but they don’t know the creator. Design can bridge that gap.
  • At some point, the church started looking like the buildings in the culture.
  • We create these great outdoor public spaces where the street sweeper and the stockbroker come together.
  • Where did our church buildings go off track? When did we lose the reflection of our Creator God?
  • Jesus asked these two questions: Who do you say that I am? Who do they say that I am?
  • You are going to spend the same amount of money doing something that looks more like the architect than a design that engages the lost.
  • If your church were to leave, what would people say is missing in the community? Most leaders realize outside the walls; nobody cares whether they exist or not.
  • Sometimes the building gets in the way of the message a church tries to communicate — even a word of beauty and order and design.
  • Utilizing the space between the buildings typically affects only 10% of the cost within the building.
  • We’re mimicking the Great Designer’s work. And let’s do that with our designs, with architecture, as well.
  • Make God famous. Bring Glory to God in your work.
  • Make God famous. We’re working hard at that, on Sunday morning, from the pulpit. But what if we worked just as hard in the lobby, and in the parking lot?
  • Architects want to be recognized for their style and acknowledged for something amazing they did.
  • As designers, we believe that it is not about us. Not about any awards received, it’s not about how photographed our buildings are or how many times they show up on Instagram. The design should be about how much glory it brings to God?
  • If you do good work – and I’m talking about architecture – and people can’t see you, but they can see God in it, that’s the success.

Breakthrough resources in this episode: 

How Should We Then Live by Francis Schaeffer

Crazy Love by Francis Chan

Visioneering Studios

As a small child, Bob loved art and design. The early building blocks that brought design into reality were his Lego set. Later, his love for science grew and then in his mid 20’s he surrendered his life to Jesus Christ.

Bob’s first full-time job in an Architect’s office gave him opportunities to design resorts and theme parks around the world over a 20-year span. Prior to joining Visioneering Studios, Bob served as the Principal Designer at AECOM. While at AECOM, he was giving up vacation time to design and build on the mission field. By November of 2002, As the first designer at Visioneering Studios, Bob’s dream of combining art, science and theology came together. Visioneering Studios believes that the Church is the best tool for the redemption of people and places.

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2_07: Cory Hartman – Stop wasting words convincing people to show up

2_07: Cory Hartman – Stop wasting words convincing people to show up

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Breakthrough ideas with Cory:

  • How can you use the written word to extend your reach?
  • Is there a way to leverage your weekly content to make disciples?
  • What are the best possible ways to shape and leverage your content for disciple-making outside of your Sunday service?
  • The church is a content factory every week, creating a ton of content, yet we’re not taking advantage of it outside of the sermonic moment.
  • Are you maximizing the channels to communicate the gospel?
  • The one who works longest is the one who is most devoted to the ministry of the word, right? Maybe not.
  • How do we give gospel-shaped answers to the questions that people are actually asking?
  • There seems to be a divide in the philosophy of preaching with felt need, seeker-sensitive on the one side, and expositional verse-by-verse gospel-centered on the other side. I don’t see why those are two sides.
  • The questions that people are asking, they have deeper questions in life. We’re all walking around with the more profound questions in life.
  • What does it mean to have a gospel-centered, gospel-shaped Biblical answer to the question is my boyfriend cheating on me, and how do I know?
  • When we can speak to a surface-level tension, there’s an avenue to this more significant, kind of gospel-centered question.
  • When you look at the messages that you send: your bulletin or worship guide, look at your website, look at your social media feed, and look at all the different ways that you’re communicating to other people. The call to action is to show up.
  • Show up to Sunday morning worship, show up to the small group, show up to vision night, show up to community outreach, show up to youth group, show up to whatever.
  • Did Jesus tell us, “Go ye into all the world and tell people to show up?”
  • Jesus did not say: “Guys, whatever you do, as the father has sent me, so I am sending you to get people to show up, you have to get people to show up.”
  • When the vast bulk of our content is telling people to show up, what are we communicating there?
  • Is our primary message akin to what the Lord told us that our central message was supposed to be?
  • How are we sending a “grow up” message to people in their personal and spiritual growth according to the Good News that the Lord has given us?
  • Communicate opportunities to grow up into something as much as you communicate opportunities to show up for something.
  • You don’t have to wait for Sunday or wait for the right Sunday. You don’t have to wait for that to try out the Christian life. Just try it.
  • We can talk to the skeptical person; we can speak to the secular person, we can talk to the person who’s disaffected from church and say, “Before you even come to church, try this Jesus thing. Just take this one teaching of his and put it into practice in your life this week and see what happens.”
  • People are showing up to church less, but they still maintain the same level of perceived connectedness.
  • They still call it “my church” even though versus ten years ago, attendance rates are down. And in some cases, giving is remaining the same, which is fogging the lens on what’s happening.
  • It is more biblical to say a disciple is someone who shows up. So rather than put the attendance ahead of discipleship, we need to put discipleship forward of presence.
  • How is the church going to make disciples in the networks of people’s relationships beyond the four walls?
  • Social media is one of those networks, one of those networks that our people are in, apart from the four walls of the church, that sharing the gospel should take place.
  • If we’re diligent about posting helpful enough content, maybe we are equipping our people to share with the people around them that are hurting and struggling and have questions.
  • Facebook could be the new Monday night visitation.
  • Well-designed, well-curated content shared appropriately could be that next Monday night visitation or Chick Tract with the four spiritual laws.
  • Evangelism, even if it was a little bit of a scary word, was a word in the lexicon of our church ten years ago. Not any more.
  • Not being equipped makes it difficult for people to share the gospel.
  • There’s so much baggage with the word evangelical. It’s a political party now, not a posture of believers in kind of an overflow of their life.
  • Instead of talking about how social media channels weaken our faith and weaken the connection between people and are a stumbling block, what if this could be a strength in this new evangelical age?
  • Does anybody read blog posts anymore? I think the answer is yes.
  • We’ve been sitting with the internet for a generation, still trying to figure out how to best tailor the content as the Church.
  • One of the things that the church has missed along the way is the relationship between what happens online and what happens offline.
  • The written word is valuable in part because it is so snackable and so skimmable.
  • Your first few years in ministry are primarily about growing you into the kind of branch that will produce fruit someday.
  • In God’s plan, the next long season of your life is not mainly about how he’s going to use you to help people become like Christ, but mostly about how he’s going to use people to help you become like Christ.
  • Try to relax, and don’t be afraid to relax a little that if you relax a little, you’re going to relax too much, because you’re not capable of relaxing too much.
  • Your church would be happy to keep you forever, but they deserve better than a pastor who is continually thinking about the next thing.
  • The choice that we make at that moment, whether to leap or not leap, itself has no bearing whatsoever on whether God loves us or not.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

Fulcrum Content

From Show Up to Grow Up by Cory Hartman

Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer

Younique: Designing the Life God Dreamed for You by Will Mancini

Cory Hartman is the founder and principal writer at Fulcrum Content, the company he launched to equip churches for disciple-making and help leaders extend their reach with the written word. At Fulcrum, Cory serves as a collaborative author for thought-leaders, provides editing and self-publishing assistance, writes original online pieces, adapts audio and video content into engaging articles, writes marketing copy, and crafts custom-built discipleship material. Cory served as a pastor for 13 years in churches in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He earned a doctor of ministry degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with a thesis on 19th-century educator, revivalist, publisher, and abolitionist Mansfield French. Cory previously earned an MDiv from Gordon-Conwell in urban ministry and a BA from Taylor University in biblical literature. Cory’s letters have appeared in such publications as the Boston Globe and the Newark Star-Ledger, the latter winning the paper’s Silver Pen Award. He is the author of From “Show Up to Grow Up”: How to Make Top Content That Makes Real Disciples and On Freedom and Destiny: How God’s Will and Yours Intersect. A native of central New York State, Cory’s family roots are in central Pennsylvania, where he now lives with his wife Kelly and their four children.

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2_06: Dr. Jon Roebuck – Actually talk with people… don’t just preach at them.

2_06: Dr. Jon Roebuck – Actually talk with people… don’t just preach at them.

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Breakthrough ideas with Jon:

  • How can a church stay relevant to their culture?
  • How can a church stay relational to the communities in which God has placed them?
  • How can a church remain resolute to their DNA and their calling?
  • If you will create physical space, you allow conversations to begin to happen, that are meaningful and perspective-altering,
  • We create better communities if we have better churches, and we create better churches if we have better leaders.
  • Ask yourself: what does the world around me need, and how can I begin to instill into my people this heart for ministry?
  • Community ministry is messy, it’s inconvenient, it’s expensive, it’s all of that, but it’s the right thing to do.
  • Baptists tend to hang out with Baptists, Methodists with Methodists, Presbyterians with Presbyterians, and so we don’t necessarily have an appreciation for what good work other denominations are doing. How might that change?
  • In most urban areas like ours in Nashville, nobody is connecting the dots across the denominational lines.
  • We’re beginning to see that the work in Nashville is more significant than what our church and our denomination can tackle.
  • At the local church level, what does it look like for us to be a good neighbor or contributing partner to our community?
  • What if we stopped telling our community what their needs are, but asked them to tell us what their needs are?
  • Just by the fact that we’ve opened physical space, we begin to enter into conversational space.
  • If you have enough conversations, you begin to develop relational space, where you start to engage at a different level.
  • There’s a movement from physical space to conversational, to relational, to redemptive space, and ultimately to reflective space.
  • If you create space, even physical space, in your building for the right conversations, amazing things are going to happen.
  • Be willing to invite people into your space. It’s not going to damage your church. It’s not going to damage your theology.
  • What we don’t have in our culture is, we don’t have the safe, rational, civil dialog space.
  • So, where do people go to have safe conversations about important things? It ought to be the church.
  • Why is the church not a place that important conversations can take place?
  • Forty million Americans in the last 25 years have left the church because they get judgment, and they get condemnation instead of conversation.
  • We’re too busy preaching at people to listen to what they have to say in return.
  • I believe a lot of our pastors don’t have a vision beyond the seat they’re sitting in right now, beyond the next Sunday.
  • How do you carve out space, even in your ministry, to develop relationships outside of your comfort zone?
  • I’m not going to learn to truly reach others if I surround myself with only people who look like me, who think like me, and who believe like me.
  • The number one problem with the 21st-century, American Christianity, is that lack of evangelistic zeal.
  • If we don’t understand the lies, we can’t speak the truth.
  • In the body of Christ, we tend to lead with the truth we know versus understanding the lies they know and then bringing God’s truth to that.
  • You will never get to that high plateau of doing God’s will unless you’re doing God’s will for your life today.
  • So look for God’s will along the way, not just in the here and the hereafter somewhere.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

Belmont University

Charlie Curb Center for Faith Leadership

Creating Space by Jon Roebuck

Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle

Dr. Jon R. Roebuck serves as the Executive Director of Belmont University’s Rev. Charlie Curb Center for Faith Leadership.  The Center seeks to provide on-going educational opportunities for faith-based leaders across middle Tennessee in order to equip those leaders to be relevant to culture, relational to the community, and resolute in missional focus.  The Institute sponsors a number of on-campus seminars, workshops, and courses each semester.

He is the author of three devotional books, Christmas, Then and Now, Morning Conversations, and newly released, Creating Space.  Additionally, he has written for a number of preaching periodicals and journals. Dr. Roebuck has also served on several boards and agencies for the Alabama and Tennessee Baptist conventions.

Jon and Linda Roebuck married in 1984 and have three grown children with their own families. Jon and Linda have always enjoyed different sports together but continue the debate of Auburn vs. University of Alabama football.

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2_05: Todd McMichen – Get ready to receive an alpaca: a generational look at generosity

2_05: Todd McMichen – Get ready to receive an alpaca: a generational look at generosity

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Breakthrough ideas with Todd: 

  • 74% of churches have online giving, but they only receive about 15% of their income through digital avenues.
  • 90% of our personal wealth is contained in our assets not in liquid cash – what if your church had a way to enable generosity in this way?
  • What happens if you’ve got one alpaca too many?
  • What does a generous human being look like?
  • What would it be like to have a church filled with generous people?
  • Lifeway Generosity is turning every smartphone into an offering plate.
  • Your members are giving above and beyond dollars every single week to somebody… why not the church.
  • The outside the church around generosity has completely changed from 20 years ago.
  • So 20 years ago as leaders in the church we have been afraid to talk about money because that’s a personal private matter, that’s changed.
  • Millennials are very generous, and they are socially generous.
  • if the church is going to catch up, we have got to be more confident in socializing generosity.
  • If a millennial is in worship on Sunday morning and you’re welcoming them, and you go through the entire worship service, and you’ve not told them the power of a dollar given to your local church, the difference it’s making, you’re turning them off.
  • Any time we’re about to pass the plate, anchor the moment in what your people can become by giving and tell a story of what the giving is doing.
  • The millennial generation doesn’t see different types of generosity differently. So serving generosity is equal to financial generosity.
  • 84% of millennials, on average, are giving to nonprofits. And when they give, they give almost $500 annually, and they give to three different nonprofits.
  • The millennial generation is generous. They’re just not giving in ways the church has readily acknowledged and accepted easily.
  • Every generous church we find is led by a generous pastor
  • We didn’t learn how to raise money and disciple people in their generosity in seminary. Here’s what to do.
  • Sometimes exegeting somebody’s life situation and helping them understand how generosity affects their relationship with Christ is as important.
  • What would you do if you had to cut 25% out of your budget next year?
  • Every first time givers was at some time a first time guest. Hospitality impacts generosity.
  • You can’t turn on joy across the congregation 30 seconds before the offering plate passes, joy starts in the parking lot.
  • Those churches that really welcome people well, seem to be some of those churches that are overflowing with generosity
  • When a church raises this budget 5% in advance, they start the fiscal year out, it’s behind, but everybody’s spending.
  • Instead of creating a 105% budget, what if you did 98%? It changes the game for you. So you’re not actually spending less, it’s just a completely different way of thinking and feeling about it.
  • There is a massive problem that pastors are unaware of. Total giving has flat-lined or a little bit up, but the number of givers is on dramatic decline.
  • Attendance is going down, but giving is staying the same.
  • We are going to lose 10 million givers in the Boomer generation. You can’t stop that from happening. You don’t know it’s happening.
  • Should a pastor know how much someone gives or doesn’t give? And how do we disciple the key donor?
  • The number one missing ingredient in the budget process is a yearly goal.

Breakthrough resources in this episode: 

Generospitality eBook

LifeWay Generosity

The Genius of Generosity by Chip Ingram

Webinar: Your Most Welcoming, Generous Christmas Yet!

Todd McMichen has served local churches for over 30 years in a variety of roles from small rural congregations to church plants to mega-churches. His generosity roots rise from leading multiple capital campaigns for two churches where he served as a staff member, raising over $35,000,000 for their visionary projects. Since 2000, Todd has been a well-established stewardship coach, generosity leader, author, and conference speaker. He now serves as the Director of LifeWay Generosity & Digital Giving. Todd is a graduate of Palm Beach Atlantic College in West Palm Beach, Florida and Southwestern Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, Theresa. Visit Todd’s blog at toddmcmichen.com or follow him on twitter @toddmcmichen.

 

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2_04: Todd Wilson – Church Multiplication & Your Sweet Spot Calling

2_04: Todd Wilson – Church Multiplication & Your Sweet Spot Calling

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Breakthrough ideas with Todd: 

  • What’s the difference between a church plant and a church that’s planted to be a church-planting church?
  • Imagine if somebody offered you a job where you’re 100% in your sweet spot
  • What does it mean to work 100% of my time in your sweet spot?
  • God made the world with sweet spots. They’re everywhere. You can’t go anywhere without them. What would it even mean to be in the sweet spot of calling?
  • What are the common elements of all sweet spots?
  • Every sweet spot God created has three common things. There is a design, there’s a purpose, and there’s a position.
  • Who am I created to be? That’s a design question.
  • What am I made to do? That’s a purpose question.
  • Where am I supposed to do it? That’s a position question.
  • If you can answer the position, design and purpose questions in an integrated way, you’ve found your sweet spot of calling.
  • You’ve got a ministry job, but do you have a vocational calling?
  • Over 90% of people in vocational ministry don’t know what their calling is.
  • We start conditioning our kids from the time they’re born, to focus on doing. Not on being. We skip the being.
  • People have spent their whole life on the doing and the going part, and not focused on the being part. And all of a sudden, they’re realizing, “I don’t really know who I am.”
  • And we have to treat ourselves kind of in a mystery. We’ve got to be the investigator. Our life is the laboratory that we’re investigating.
  • What we’ve got to do is go back to looking more at the ingredients that God has built into our DNA. Rather than just assuming the way that our family, our culture, our journey, our school, our church has put those ingredients together for us and kind of mandated the packaging,
  • The question is, are we going to look at it in a fresh way and discover what is there and how the integration of those things bring us to life?
  • What would you need to be doing that you’d want to spend the rest of your life doing it?
  • Does your church even want to multiply what you’re producing?
  • We are all called to be disciples who make disciples wherever we are.
  • If you feel called to go half-way around the world to dig water wells somewhere you still have to not lose sight of the primary reason you’re there is to be a disciple who makes disciples.
  • The core purpose of the church is disciple-making.
  • The truth in the American church at this point is we have embraced a programmatic approach to accumulating cultural Christians.
  • We are ignoring the primary calling in our churches of biblical disciple-making Jesus’ way opting instead for a programmatic accumulation that relies on our secondary callings.
  • Jesus gave us a model for three years with 12 leaders. The way He’s changing the world is through one on one disciple-making or small group disciple-making relationally.
  • Right now the average nominal operating system in the US church how do we add disciples? We add them programmatically.
  • We can’t get where we need to be on our mission to see church multiplication happening if the church doesn’t get back the Jesus-style or relational disciple-making as the core thing in the church.
  • Jesus could have chosen for three years to go and do big stadium revival events and drawn the most people in the world to do preaching and He could have added people that way. But he didn’t.
  • But what Jesus did was give us a model of reproduction. A disciple who makes a disciple who makes a disciple who makes a disciple.
  • What program in the history of the world has ever reproduced itself on its own? Programs do not reproduce.
  • When you have a programmatic form of addition you will always hit the next plateau.
  • Programs will always hit a plateau and you’ve got to figure out a programmatic strategy to break the programmatic barrier.
  • Multiplication is not something you do immediately. It is the outcome of reproduction four generations in the future.
  • 93% of US churches are not reproducing. Only 7% are.
  • What would the impact to the human population be if 93% of adults didn’t have kids? Because we only have 7% of churches reproducing right now.
  • 75% of the church plants that are being planted are not turning around and planting more churches.
  • Only one in four church plants is planting churches.
  • We have a double problem right now that’s keeping us from multiplication We don’t have enough churches that are reproducing and the kids that we are reproducing are cutting off the reproduction the first generation.
  • Churches have to wrestle through their paradigm of success. We have embedded so deeply in the operating system of the church a formula for success which is rooted in the wrong kind of addition
  • This journey of calling, I think it is so important for leaders of all ages to see themselves as the mystery investigator with a mystery to be untapped.
  • Your calling is something that’s a life-long discernment, you don’t all of a sudden arrive and have it perfectly, but every day, you got to
  • Who doesn’t want to live 100% of the time in their sweet spot, so what is your sweet spot?

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

Exponential

The Church Multiplication Challenge

Discipleship.org

More by Todd Wilson

Outreach Magazine’s Reproducing 100 List

The Five Most Important Questions an Organization Will Ever Ask by Peter Drucker

Todd Wilson is the founder and CEO of Exponential (exponential.org), a national non-profit ministry whose core focus is distributing thought leadership through conferences, books, podcasts, software, and small group learning communities. Todd is also the co-founder of discipleship.org, Passion for Planting (church-planting.net), Made for More, and the Multipliers Project.

Todd received his B.S. in nuclear engineering from North Carolina State University and a master’s degree equivalent from the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory. He spent 15 years serving in the Division of Naval Reactors on nuclear submarine design, operation, maintenance, and overhaul. After a two-year wrestling match with God, Todd entered full‐time vocational ministry as the Executive Pastor at New Life Christian Church where he played a visionary and strategic role for several years as New Life grew and implemented key initiatives such as multisite, externally focused, and church planting.

Todd’s passion for starting healthy new churches continues to increase, and he now spends most of his energy engaged in a wide range of leading edge and pioneering initiatives aimed at helping catalyze movements of healthy, reproducing churches.

Todd lives in Manassas, Virginia, with his wife Anna. They have two grown boys, Ben and Chris, and two beautiful daughter-in-laws, Therese and Mariah.

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2_03: Daniel Im – Should You Stay or Should You Go?

2_03: Daniel Im – Should You Stay or Should You Go?

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Breakthrough ideas with Daniel: 

  • What does it look like to live your life with our hands wide open saying, “Lord, here we are?”
  • Every leader, every pastor, goes through those seasons where restlessness clouds every conversation. What do you do?
  • A lot of leaders that come to those seasons of the restlessness, but how do we know if it’s really time to take the next step?
  • Does unsettledness come as a result of prayer and scripture? Or should unsettledness drive you to deeper times of prayer and time in the Word?
  • It is less critical where your feet are and more important as to where your heart is.
  • It doesn’t matter if we stay, and it doesn’t matter if we go, because we know that we are in God’s hands and that He is a good Father.
  • What would it look like to submit to the Lord rather than trying to lead our lives on our own?
  • Bigger and better opportunities aren’t necessarily always from God.
  • Sometimes God calls us to minister in obscurity for however long He wants, and sometimes He brings us out of that obscurity
  • Regardless of the attendance barrier that you want to grow or breakthrough, you need to move from doing to equipping.
  • You need to move from being a learner to a leader to a multiplier regardless of what barrier you want to breakthrough
  • The tendency that we have in the West is to copy and to model our ministries off of others rather than looking in the mirror and saying, “Okay. Who do we have here?”
  • Every church is unique. So what does it look like to look at yourself in the mirror, to look at your church in the mirror?
  • Church culture is simply the result of consistent decision-making around shared convictions.
  • It’s one thing for the pastor to have values. It’s another thing for those values to be shared within the organization and for us to make consistent decisions around them.
  • Discipleship is not “Here’s another program,” or, “Here is another study.”
  • How are you moving your entire church toward making disciples that make disciples that make disciples?
  • There are a lot of books written that call churches to mimic “Here’s what we do at our church. Just do this.”
  • What are the micro-shifts that will lead to a macro-change?
  • Close to 40% of America is a part of the gig economy, changing the way that we look at work, life, and love.
  • “You are what you experience” is a lie that’s risen to the surface because of Instagram and because of our culture.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

The Next Right Thing by Emily P. Freeman

The Pastor by Eugene Peterson

No Silver Bullets by Daniel Im  

You Are What You Do by Daniel Im  

Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership by Ruth Haley Barton

Daniel Im is the Senior Associate Pastor of Beulah Alliance Church. His latest book is You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love. He is also the author of No Silver Bullets and co-author of Planting Missional Churches. He co-hosts the New Churches Q&A Podcast, as well as the IMbetween Podcast. Daniel and his wife, Christina, live in Edmonton, Alberta with their three children. For more information, visit danielim.com and follow him on social media @danielsangi.

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2_02: Jen Wilkin – A Gut Check on Biblical Literacy & Sound Preaching

2_02: Jen Wilkin – A Gut Check on Biblical Literacy & Sound Preaching

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Breakthrough Ideas with Jen:

  • When you’re a single woman in the church, you usually kind of keep moving around because you don’t always fit very well.
  • We treated the Bible like it was magical, like if I open it up the Holy Spirit was just going to drop out insight on me just because I had been faithful to sit down and give it a little bit of my focus.
  • We treat the Bible, often with less respect than we would treat a common textbook or the works of Shakespeare.
  • We should recognize– obviously the Bible is much more than a book but it is at least a book. And that it would abide by some rules that all books abide by.
  • But the only way that person will be able to develop the sermon around what is sound teaching and what is not sound teaching is if they have firsthand knowledge of most of the text.
  • Those who had a platform became comfortable with holding the position of expert and those who sat in the pews became comfortable with holding the position of amateur.
  • The people in the seats took on this idea that they required someone to just download the interpretation and application of the text.
  • Most of us come to church to sit under teaching over passages that we had spent little-to-no time in ourselves prior to listening to that teaching.
  • The first guard against false teaching is knowing what the text says.
  • And the reality is the discipline is not dead. It just follows the most compelling message.
  • If people are giving their discretionary time a lot of other places and yet they’re not willing to give it to the church, well then that’s on us. That means that we’ve not communicated a compelling vision for why this matters.
  • You have to believe down to the soles of your feet that if people don’t have basic bible literacy if there are actually very negative consequences associated with that.
  • I have found almost without exception that people don’t know the bible.
  • Your people will never rise to an expectation that you have not set.
  • People actually gravitate toward committing to things that raise the bar, not things that lower the bar. That’s why people run marathons.
  • Our MO with Christian education for the last 30 years has been, “I don’t think they’ll do that.”
  • The first question that many of us in church leadership have asked has been, What do our people want?” And a better question, to begin with, is, “How are disciples formed?”
  • If we’re supposed to make disciples and teach them to obey all that Jesus has commanded, then what mechanism is going to allow us to do that?
  • The more organic a ministry model is, the harder it is for women, in particular, to opt in.
  • Because women are typically primary caregivers for at least one other human being, in order for us to opt into any commitment, we require a high level of structure, predictability, accountability, accessibility, excellence.
  • We need to have at least some spaces where we’re raising the bar and we’re asking more from our people, then those environments will require structure and accountability and predictability and accessibility, and that they’re done with excellence.
  • While I talk a lot about building Bible literacy, the little secret is that it’s not actually just Bible literacy that people are developing. It’s just literacy.
  • Is it any wonder that many teenagers leave home and don’t take the Bible seriously or don’t take Christianity seriously, when it has asked so little of them during their formative years?
  • In many churches, the needs of women are not heard with regularity just because of a leadership structure that is perhaps predominantly are all male.
  • Within the church, we have widows’ and orphans’ needs that can sometimes be missed by men in leadership if they don’t have access to regular input from the women in the congregation.
  • Anytime you start talking about women in leadership in the church, I’m either perceived to be a feminist by those who are more conservative or a patriarchalist by those who are more liberal
  • We’re committed to making sure that our church is a place where you could say, “That’s a church mother. That’s a spiritual mother for the women in our church. She’s visible. She’s obviously serving, contributing in good ways.”
  • The first common misstep that well-meaning men in leadership can make when they realize that they’re missing the voices of women is to say, “Oh, let’s  let’s ping our wives on this.”
  • Putting women into rooms where key decisions are being made means that you’re inviting someone into the room not just because they’re female but because they’re the right person to be in the room.

Breakthrough Resources in this Episode:

The Village Church Core Classes

The Knowledge of the Holy by AW Tozer

Jen Wilkin is an author and Bible teacher from Dallas, Texas. She has organized and led studies for women in home, church, and parachurch contexts. Her passion is to see others become articulate and committed followers of Christ, with a clear understanding of why they believe what they believe, grounded in the Word of God. She currently serves on the staff of The Village Church Institute. You can find her at JenWilkin.net.

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2_01: Leonard Sweet – How Almonds Keep Us Focused on Jesus

2_01: Leonard Sweet – How Almonds Keep Us Focused on Jesus

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Breakthrough Ideas with Len:

  • Show me a weakness inventory and I will show you where God can bless others through your life.
  • Our translation of the word “Word” for LOGOS is inadequate; we must embrace the tension.
  • In a “well curve world” we should live out of the overlap of opposites coming together.
  • Our world is both getting more global and more tribal – don’t resolve the tension and celebrate them.
  • We were made for this in between place… paradoxy is orthodoxy.
  • All middles are going, and churches who want to play safe in the middle will be going too.
  • The sanctuary should not be a safe place from risk, but instead be a safe place to take risk and bring the extremes together.
  • What does it mean for us to bring the extremes together and not resolve the tension?
  • Churches will be getting bigger and getting smaller, we cannot be afraid of the opposites.
  • The Early church had to be properly oriented – facing East toward the future of Christ’s return.
  • The double orienting of every church is toward the future and toward Christ.
  • Are we keeping our eyes on the future, or are we getting lost in programmatic distractions?
  • If we can keep our focus on Christ, we can have a future.

Breakthrough Resources in this Episode:

LeonardSweet.com 

Rings of Fire: Walking in Faith through a Volcanic Future

Napkin Scribbles Podcast

Author of more than two hundred articles, 1500+ published sermons and sixty books, Leonard Sweet’s recent publications include the groundbreaking textbook on preaching, Giving Blood: A Fresh Paradigm for Preaching, the best-seller From Tablet to Table, The Bad Habits of Jesus, and the fall 2019 release of the twenty-year successor to SoulTsunami, Rings of Fire: Walking in Faith Through a Volcanic Future.

Len often appears on the “50 Most Influential Christians in America” listings, and in 2010 was selected by the top non-English Christian website as one of the “Top 10 Influential World Christians of 2010”. His “Napkin Scribbles” podcasts can be accessed on leonardsweet.com or spotify. His Twitter and Facebook microblogs are ranked as some of the highest in the religious world.

Len works with graduate students at four institutions: Drew University, where he has occupied the E. Stanley Jones Chair, George Fox University, Tabor College, and Evangelical Seminary, where he currently holds the Charles Wesley Senior Professorship of Doctoral Studies. In 2015 he launched his own homiletics resource preachthestory.com. One of the most sought-after speakers in the religious world today, he resides on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands.

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21: Carol Pipes – LifeWay Communications

21: Carol Pipes – LifeWay Communications

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Breakthrough ideas with Carol: 

  • Church leaders need to be intentional with their communication beyond just Sunday sermons.
  • The first question to ask in excellent church communication is ”Who is the audience?”
  • Shape the message to the intended audience to maximize effective communication.
  • There are multiple channels to communicate with your church beyond sermons and emails.
  • Small groups and Sunday school classes are great communication channels.
  • Use every channel available to communicate; a repetitive and consistent message is critical in excellent church communication.
  • Until you are tired of saying it, your people have likely not yet heard it. Excellent communication requires ongoing repetition.
  • You can train your congregation to look to specific places for needed information.
  • The medium you use in communication may depend on the message you need to share. Not every message gets shared in the same way.
  • Important visionary moments need to be communicated face to face. An email can do more harm than good in times of change.
  • When you have a significant change happening, people may react strongly. Being in the room, at the moment, becomes critical when communicating change.
  • Excellent communication asks: Who is the Audience? What is their Message? Which Medium is best? In that order.
  • As a church leader, you compete for peoples attention and time. People are oversaturated with media today.
  • Attention spans are short; your message will get lost without intentional, repetitive communication.
  • The secret to communication lies in breaking through the cultural noise. Therefore repeat your message. Then repeat it. After that, repeat it once more.
  • Stories are the best vehicle for communicating important messages. Tell stories wherever you can. Testimony is the currency of transformation.
  • Stories are going to flow from your congregation when you are asking precise questions.
  • The church should be speaking into cultural topics because we can shine the light of the Gospel into dark moments.
  • Reporters are not bad people, just people trying to tell good stories, and serve their community.
  • Church leaders have a unique insight into the community and can serve as a source of information and perspective for local news outlets.
  • Build relationships with local news reporters and build trust with news agencies… trust leads to voice and opportunities to share the gospel of Jesus in times of challenge and celebration.
  • Developing a level of two-way trust with local news reporters opens the door for a pastor to speak biblical truth into current events and issues.
  • When a reporter calls, do not freak out – it’s not necessarily negative. Don’t be afraid to say no, not right now, or I don’t know… but do respond in some way.
  • Because you’ve developed a relationship of trust with local media, you will have the opportunity to share the Gospel.
  • Cultivating and being responsive in relationships, and being empathetic to reporters, opens the door to share the Gospel.
  • Be consistent with your message; do not be afraid to repeat yourself even if it feels weird.
  • Lead the narrative. If you don’t communicate what is happening, other people will tell your story for you.
  • People will fill in communication gaps. If you don’t tell the story in a crisis or challenging situation, someone else will try to do it for you.
  • When do you need to communicate face-to-face, as opposed to sending an email? In times of challenging communication, nothing beats being in the room.
  • How you communicate could build trust even in times when trust is broken.
  • Surrender to God daily. Give Him your day, every day.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

Facts and Trends

Ministry Safe

Ministry Grid

Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg

Elements of Style by Strunk & Campbell

On Writing Well by William Zinsser

Carol Pipes is the director of corporate communications at LifeWay Christian Resources and editor of Facts & Trends. Carol has worked in Christian publishing for 18 years, during which time she has written numerous magazine articles and previously served as editor of On Mission for the North American Mission Board. A Tennessee native, Carol lives in Nashville with her husband Keith, who leads the music ministry team at Friendship Community Church in Old Hickory. Carol loves writing about the mission of God carried out through His Church. Follow her on Twitter @CarolPipes.

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18: Greg Gibbs – Auxano Resourcing

18: Greg Gibbs – Auxano Resourcing

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Breakthrough ideas with Greg:

  • Opening your home, giving people access to you, can be a spiritual commitment.
  • The second someone walks through the door into your home; people can sniff out love, acceptance, and grace.
  • Could your home be a better place to invite someone than the church if you genuinely want to share the love of Jesus?
  • The future of Jesus people in America may just be delivering the gospel life on life and kitchen to kitchen?
  • Generosity is a family heritage that can be passed along from generation to generation.
  • Fundraising is not just a Pastor’s necessary evil like taking your vitamins… it is a vital leadership discipline.
  • Your congregation can grow spiritually when you call them to sacrifice financially.
  • Generosity is a spiritual muscle that must be warmed and used regularly.
  • Taking risks of faith reminds us that God is the great provider.
  • Jesus is on to something here… Money matters.
  • Jesus doesn’t need our money, but he does want our hearts.
  • Money captures the heart of people; that’s why Jesus talked about it so much.
  • Generosity and fundraising are categories of discipleship that create explosive spiritual growth.
  • There’s something being a church that has enough critical mass and resources to serve the community but lives small enough to feel like a family.
  • Most pastors are not trained to disciple people with whole life generosity.
  • Every pastoral leader deals with the fear of talking about money; it’s not just you.
  • Jesus doesn’t give us any right to not talk about one of the most significant sources of anxiety in the life of people: money.
  • It is malpractice for a pastor to not address the topic of money and possessions in the lives and hearts of the people in their congregation.
  • Jesus likes the topic of money… you are in good hands when you talk about money.
  • Bring up money in a gracious, confident way and normalize the conversation about generosity. We cannot-not talk about money if we are going to lead people to dependence on Christ.
  • Generosity and how we deal with our stuff is a daily topic, not an annual topic. Talk about it regularly.
  • If you only talk about money in crisis or budgetary terms, what you are saying is that giving is a financial transaction. Jesus doesn’t allow us to see generosity as a transactional practice.
  • Understanding the true nature of generosity is at the core of discipleship.
  • How can you grow someone in their dependence on God and following of Him if you do not talk about their money?
  • Breakthrough happens when generosity is normalized, as a part of people discipling – not church budgeting.
  • Does the topic of generosity need to come up in sermons on marriage and work? If you are normalizing generosity, it does.
  • Pastors need to share their generosity journey, their fears and struggles to normalize generosity.
  • When church leaders are nitpicking about theology around the tithe and giving, they’re typically NOT seeking ways to be MORE generous.
  • What if every member of your congregation acted as you do in the category of generosity? What kind of church would it be?
  • Pastor, is your life, and your generosity, worth emulating by your congregation?
  • Generosity affects every part of your ability to lead well in the church.
  • God doesn’t need your money to do His work, but He sure seems to use it.
  • Put money in its place and then continue to pursue what it means to live with generosity.
  • What if there was a how-to guide for churches that are trying to run discipleship based capital campaigns?
  • How do you lead a capital campaign? Here’s a step-by-step playbook.
  • Every pastor can execute a capital campaign; it’s not that complex. Having clarity as to WHY you are running a capital campaign and HOW this connects to God’s better future is what makes a campaign successful.
  • You can move from being intimidated about a capital campaign to being encouraged to fund a bigger dream for your church.
  • Don’t be so insecure as a young leader; your identity is not found in being the hero… Jesus is the hero.
  • You do not have to have every answer. Jesus is ok with the real you.
  • Authentic relationships with people who know and love you serve to bring out the real, imperfect version of who you are.

Breakthrough resources:

Capital Campaign Playbook by Greg Gibbs

The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero

Greg Gibbs was raised in the Philadelphia area but set down roots in the suburbs of Detroit. As the son of an IBM executive, his instincts for leadership were shaped early. He studied Organizational Communication as an undergrad and holds a master’s degree in Theology.  After years of pastoral leadership in churches, Greg turned his attention to consulting and has spent time traveling the country working with church leaders.

Greg is both a practitioner and consultant. He holds an adjunct position as Director of Organizational Advancement for Kensington Church – serving his home church by leading Church Planting and Leadership Development initiatives. Kensington is a multi-site church and has helped fund and coach over 70 church plants around the country.

After 15 years of consulting and having helped raise over $150M for various churches, Greg joined Auxano in late 2016 as a Lead Navigator. He helps senior leadership with Vision Clarity, Long-Range Planning, and Resourcing through Capital Campaigns and Generosity Development. He is the author of Capital Campaign Playbook: An Insider Look at a Church Consultant’s Game Plan.

Greg has been married to Andrea for 28 years and they have four children, one daughter-in-law, two dogs named Walter and Gustavo, and like to roast their own coffee with beans they purchase at the Eastern Market in downtown Detroit.

 

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17: Nick Floyd – Cross Church, Northwest AR

17: Nick Floyd – Cross Church, Northwest AR

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Breakthrough ideas in this episode: 

  • It is essential to stop and recount the faithfulness of God. Keep memorials in front of yourself and your people to mark how God has moved.
  • What are the characteristics of a church built on dynamic worship and strong biblical teaching look?
  • You cannot reach your community until you know your community.
  • First, understand the culture you are called to reach, and then be intentional in how you lead them in, and toward, the gospel.
  • What are the front door events within your church that engage those in your community who wouldn’t naturally attend on a Sunday morning?
  • What is the difference in being a college church versus being a church with an active ministry to college students?
  • Being a church for every generation means being wise and intentional with everything you do… from how you worship to how you dress.
  • What is your standard of excellence in reaching people? Does this standard affect everything – even how you dress?
  • How do you steward and strengthen standards of excellence within the culture of your church?
  • Young leaders can reach older generations in a professional culture, as well as build confidence, by being intentional in small ways, even down to how they dress.
  • Your building only limits your ability to reach people in the ways that you allow it to. Thinking beyond the box is a critical skill.
  • Constantly, identifying and developing new leaders is the key to maintaining healthy systems and sustaining growth.
  • Leverage natural moments of connection, like Christmas and Easter, to recruit and engage new people in serving.
  • Volunteer leaders who are invested help recruit new volunteer leaders. Sold out leaders call out leaders.
  • To grow people and to grow a church, the staff must have the heart to raise and enlist others to do ministry, not just do it all themselves.
  • Continually re-establish the culture of development among your staff. You cannot rest on past recruiting success, even for a week.
  • Great people developers are leaders who are always with people. It’s not that hard.
  • When you are with people and have the heart to serve people, development and impact happen.
  • Numbers aren’t everything, but they do provide insight to the health and growth of a church.
  • The misuse of numbers in the past often causes church leadership today to run from healthy, and even Godly, ways to connect and keep up with people.
  • Keeping track of numbers, especially baptisms, helps keep track of the effectiveness of your mission.
  • Numbers do not tell the whole story, but they do provide a snapshot of the health of your church because disciple-making is a multiplicative action.
  • Do not be afraid to set goals around things that seem to be only a work of the Holy Spirit, because God will work through your intentional leadership. Healthy goals act as a reminder to lead and serve people well.
  • Campus pastors will be continually jolted with the shock that they are not the senior pastor. Understand this and lead accordingly.
  • Second chair leaders must realize that they are not the leader; God has not placed them in the primary leadership role. Therefore trust what God is doing in that first chair leader, even if you disagree.
  • In the second chair role, when conflict arises, choose to affect what you can. Focus on the things that you can change, not those things you cannot.
  • There is something that God honors and blesses when people who are under God’s authority follow His leading.
  • What do you do after achieving a significant milestone like moving into a new building? How do you keep peoples’ focus on the mission, beyond just the means to accomplishing the mission?
  • Spend time with the Lord in reading the Bible, every day and keep a prayer list that keeps you focused.
  • Young leaders must know that you cannot skip over the next ten years of your life. You’re not ready for all that the Lord has for you and this season is training and preparation.
  • Let the Lord do what he wants to do in you, then wait for Him to bring the leadership to you.

 

Breakthrough resources: 

Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman

Intimacy with the Almighty by Charles Swindoll

A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards

Dr. Nick Floyd serves as the Lead Teaching Pastor & Staff Leader for all four campuses of Cross Church Northwest Arkansas. He teaches weekly at the Fayetteville Campus. Nick received his Bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies from Liberty University and his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He obtained his Doctor of Ministry degree from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. Nick is married to Meredith, and the couple has four children.

 

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15: Doug Paul – East End Fellowship, Richmond VA

15: Doug Paul – East End Fellowship, Richmond VA

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Breakthrough ideas with Doug:

  • How does a church begin as an accidental church plant?
  • If the Kingdom of God were to come to your town, would it look like your church?
  • Is a church a church until they hold their first worship service?
  • How does a church formalize a public witness as the body of Christ gathered?
  • What is our discipleship model? Does it work? – Core questions for every church according to Dallas Willard.
  • What are the character and competencies of Jesus that are transferrable to every member of your church? Here is one church’s approach.
  • The Five Fold Skills of East End Fellowship – the core things that every church leader should know and do.
  • Everybody says we need to make disciples, but in the end, are they just promoting another class or programmatic event? We must move into the marks of a growing disciple.
  • We signed up for the revolution of the Kingdom of God, and somewhere along the way ended up running a church. Just ask Doug.
  • Very few people have experienced life on life disciple-making, much less most of our church leaders. Here’s why.
  • What prompted your pastoral calling to begin with? Was it running more programs or reaching and discipling more people?
  • Are your people taking spiritual responsibility for being and making disciples? These are.
  • What if your church “normal” was everyone growing in a disciple-making relationship?
  • How do leaders move out of a programmatic cycle of ministry administration and into a disciple-making rhythm of growth?
  • What would happen if your church members did what Jesus said to do?
  • As it turns out, Jesus is the best disciple maker who ever lived.
  • If a church is thriving and flourishing, it is always through a team more than one leader.
  • What happens when the mission of your church moves from being run as an organization to being owned by every member?
  • Are we about the image of God in everyone or just in those who are most comfortable for us to reach?
  • Saying no to a lot of what you used to say yes to improves missional effectiveness and fights volunteer burnout.
  • How do you contextualize the mission of God in your neighborhood? Here’s how one church does it.
  • What is the most natural next step for your community to become a part of the body of Christ? Is it necessarily attending a service on Sunday morning?
  • What are the most effective ministry vehicles to carry your vision?
  • Do you care more about Justice or Jesus? How the missional movement can seem to be sidetracked.
  • How do you live in the tension of the whole of the Gospel?
  • Fight for being as passionate about personal holiness as we are communal holiness. Be as moved about your sins as you are societies ills.
  • Are we as moved to comment about our sin as much as we do government and community?
  • Are you a church in reaction to something or conviction of something? Here’s the difference.
  • If we are looking at what the next generation will wrestle with in the gospel… it will be between social justice and personal conviction.
  • What does a diverse, urban church ministry to reaching the millennial generation look like?
  • What if everything that you do in ministry up until age 55 was training for ministry from ages 55 to 75?
  • Stop leading ministry as if you have something to prove and instead becoming living proof of the gospel.
  • Are you sharing the good news of Jesus or the good behavior of a church member?
  • Discipleship is not an option… it is central to the good news of Jesus.

 

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

EastEndFellowship Kickstart Resources    Password: NoPlanB

Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman

The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

 

Doug currently helps pastor a team-led church in the inner city of Richmond, VA. He’s the former Global Strategy Director for 3DM, has planted a multiplying missional church, transitioned a mega-church, and was a Teaching Pastor and Multi-Site Director at a multi-site mega church.

Additionally, he has come alongside a myriad of businesses, non-profits, and churches. Doug specializes in re-brands, creating savvy marketing execution and bringing strategic business innovation to increase disciple-making effectiveness. He’s married to Elizabeth, a C-Suite advertising & brand executive for MullenLowe US. They have three precocious and joy-filled kids: Avery, Jude and Sam. And quite recently, they brought a Great Dane puppy into the family!

 

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14: Marty Jacumin – Bay Leaf Baptist, Raleigh NC

14: Marty Jacumin – Bay Leaf Baptist, Raleigh NC

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Breakthrough ideas with Marty:

  • How can a church effectively reach all five of the generations alive today?
  • Wake Forest University is not in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and other learning.
  • Young leaders leaving seminary have a far greater chance to end up in a multigenerational traditional church.
  • Leading a multigenerational church may just be the most exasperating, frustrating thing you will love with all your heart. It is for this pastor.
  • The older generation can, and should provide as much energy as they provide wisdom in your church.
  • Learn to lead your ideal church right where you are… don’t just hunt for it somewhere else.
  • The vast majority of churches are less than 200 in attendance… and most new pastors will step into a small church with an older generation.
  • If you want all generations to participate in the vision, cast a vision from which every generation can lead.
  • If we can get younger leaders and older leaders working together, it shows every generation the value of the other.
  • Love and shepherd people, don’t just try to change them.
  • When your people know you love them and that you want to shepherd them, they will respond to your leadership and the changes you know need to happen.
  • People will stand in the rain to watch their kids sing.
  • What could happen if you took your traditional church events out into the community?
  • Look at what you’re already doing and cast a vision to the church to leverage events to reach the community.
  • If your goal is to make people happy, sell ice cream. Not everybody wants to reach people; some will just want their preference in church.
  • Living into your unique personality and calling brings great freedom. Living without that clarity feels like a prison where someone else holds the key.
  • We don’t make hard decisions to hurt people, but sometimes we make hard decisions that hurt people.
  • Embracing the beauty of every generation, not just the difficulty in leading every generation, brings new life into a church.
  • Lead your people to understand that they wake up on the mission field everyday… they don’t have take trips overseas to be on the mission.
  • How can your church be more strategic through partnerships in reaching the community right around you?
  • Don’t try to become the leader you think people think you should be, become the leader you God has created and is calling you to be.
  • What are the challenges, as well as the benefits, of succeeding a long-tenured pastor who wants to stick around the church?
  • Staying until you are old enough to retire is not a vision for your church… it is a vacuum that often sucks much of the life out of the church.
  • Spend time with your spouse every day. Listen to what they are telling you about what they see in your leadership.
  • Get the leadership input from those who are closest to you, because they know you best and love you the most.
  • Just because someone questions what you are doing, it does not mean they are opposed to you or what you are doing.
  • Questions do not mark an adversary; they often mark an advocate who needs more information than you are giving.
  • Shepherd your family as much as you shepherd your church.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

Bay Leaf Church

Collaboration Cube

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals by John Piper

Dangerous Calling by Paul David Tripp

Dr. Marty Jacumin was born and raised in the Foothills of North Carolina. He married his beautiful wife, Lori, in 1991 and they have three children. Marty is a graduate of NC State University and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also serves as an adjunctive preaching professor. Marty has served Southern Baptists as a trustee at Southeastern Seminary and North Carolina Baptists on the State Board of Directors. Marty also was privileged to be the President of the North Carolina Baptist State Convention Pastors’ Conference in 2010. He has a great conviction and passion for preaching God’s Word. Marty’s desire to see the lost come to faith in Christ and to see believers discipled is evident in his writing, his preaching, and his everyday life.

 

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13: Kelly Kannwischer – Younique

13: Kelly Kannwischer – Younique

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Breakthrough ideas with Kelly:

  • Building a strong leadership culture brings out the best in all of your leaders.
  • Churches are generally great at helping people live out their general calling, but it takes high intentionally to grow people within their special calling.
  • What is God’s calling for you, in this life stage, at your location, with your circumstances and your specific gifts and talents?
  • There are only two questions a church should ask: What is our process for making disciples? Is it working?
  • How does your church help every member understand and live out their unique identity?
  • There is a distinction between a person’s calling and their vocation.
  • The church can unintentionally place volunteers into roles that affect the joy of living in their calling
  • Churches have an opportunity to shift the leadership culture from “What do we want from people?” to identifying and releasing people to live into their call.
  • How can the church be viewed as a place where strength, skill, and expertise help it become a disciple-making training ground for everyday life?
  • The church can and should be the training ground for gospel-centered life design.
  • What if your church had the reputation of developing called people to such a degree that marketplace leaders look there first for new employers?
  • What is gospel-centered life design? What does that look like in the church?
  • If we are going to ask questions about our identity, we must ask them in the context of our creator and His unique design for us.
  • Our calling is revealed over a lifetime when we see God’s shaping of our life as discipleship.
  • Learning how to listen as leaders is often more important than learning how to speak.
  • You can make better decisions by asking questions out of security and peace.
  • Questions from your other leaders are not necessarily those people questioning you.
  • Strength and vulnerability are twin ideas, not opposites.
  • Productivity looks different in different seasons of life. Sometimes just getting the chores done is the highest form of accomplishment.
  • Success should be measured less in how much money you make and more in how you live out your unique life call.
  • When people get an insight into the power of their call and begin to live in it, they have an even greater idea into the calling of the church.
  • How can personal clarity within your congregation engage the organizational clarity of your church?
  • When the people receive the gift of calling, it makes it easier to obtain and engage the leadership pipeline of the church.
  • Take the long view, there should be a sense of urgency in your work, but urgency shouldn’t lead to panic in the system.
  • God wants you to be a whole healthy person, as much as He wants you to be a productive, intentional leader.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

Peachtree Church Atlanta

Vanguard University

Younique

Link to Younique Preview

Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner

Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard

Kelly Kannwischer has spent her vocational life as a not-for-profit executive, consultant, and development professional. Before becoming the CEO of Younique, Kelly founded OptUp Consulting, served THINK Together as the Chief Engagement Officer, and led Vanguard University as a Vice President and President of the Vanguard University Foundation. Kelly graduated from the University of Virginia and earned her Masters degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. She is married to Rev. Dr. Richard Kannwischer and is the proud mother of two teenage girls.

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12: Danny Franks – Summit Church, Durham NC

12: Danny Franks – Summit Church, Durham NC

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Breakthrough ideas with Danny:

  • When God says “I am doing something…” words begin to create worlds.
  • Learn why nobody wants to give their life away to show up and help somebody find a parking space.
  • Why serving on a hospitality team is a lot of fun for about three weeks but becomes a lousy hobby if there is no substance.
  • If all we are calling people to do is show up to check off a box, they will only be excited for a short time. Train for this instead.
  • How vital is a welcoming ministry in a church where there is so much emphasis on the gospel and missions?
  • Is a First Impressions ministry essential? Answering this question with the Gospel is critical, here’s why.
  • Could it be that there roles in the church that we are presenting as family chores? Serving should never feel like taking out the garbage.
  • There are plenty of opportunities to offend people and make them uncomfortable when you see with first-time guest eyes.
  • We can do everything possible to make 60-75 minutes inside the worship service flawless, but if we are not thinking through what somebody sees first, it may not matter.
  • Do we need to ask – what do they see first?
  • Make sure that the messages from the stage hold up to the messages on the sidewalk.
  • The gospel is offensive but nothing else should be, especially your welcome.
  • Guests far from God may disagree with points of your sermon, but they cannot argue with the love of your people.
  • There are all kinds of offenses on a Sunday that we can fix… the gospel is one offense we shouldn’t try to fix.
  • If we make it feel like we love people, we planned for them, and we cannot wait for them to come back, people hostile to the gospel will eventually take hold.
  • Helping people understand the purpose behind needed changes is critical to keeping volunteer hearts engaged.
  • The why behind The Summit’s hospitality begins and ends with the gospel.
  • The big win of the weekend is that everyone hears the gospel communicated.
  • The Summit First Impressions Plumbline: The gospel is offensive, nothing else should be
  • The Summit First Impressions Plumbline: The why is more important than the what.
  • The Summit First Impressions Plumbline: Everything speaks.
  • The Summit First Impressions Plumbline: The first visit should set up the second visit
  • The Summit First Impressions Plumbline: Make it personal – every weekend is someone’s first weekend, meet people where they are
  • The why has to be more caught than taught. People should understand what matters most beyond just hearing words at a training meeting.
  • Leaders must be present and in conversation to ensure that culture is stewarded well from campus to campus.
  • Stories are the most significant indicator of cultural health.
  • Asking guests about their experience is a way to hear from guests and listen for systemic issues in your hospitality experience.
  • The first time guest experience is a health indicator for the entire church.
  • Stats don’t grab people’s hearts the way stories do… tell stories to motivate and to cultivate the results you want to see.
  • Gospel discipleship in every ministry means that people can move from parking cars to planting churches.
  • The majority of guest services conversations are transactional, but are your people available to connect beyond the welcome and into the relational?
  • The bare minimum number of volunteers result in the bare minimum number of gospel experiences.
  • You always need more volunteers – more people engaged in the mission creates more opportunities to engage people.
  • There has to be a passion for the guest experience… your volunteers need to see welcoming people as more than just family chores.
  • Nobody dreams of being a guest services pastor, but the reality is that Biblical hospitality is a critical component of following Jesus.
  • Guest Services are a biblical virtue expressed on an organizational level.
  • Essential Qualities of a Great Hospitality Leader: People person, Attention to detail, Dreamer not afraid to take measured risks
  • We don’t always need to learn something new; we need to revisit the truth over and over again.
  • Leaders sharpen their tools by reading – and not just leadership books.
  • You can engineer EPIC moments to engage First Time Guests.
  • Relax… let go of the perfect plan and the ideal event. Outside of salvation, there are very few things in ministry that are as life and death as we think they are.
  • We can sacrifice people on the altar of our idol the plan.
  • We are not here for the plans we are here for the people.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

The Summit Church RDU

People Are The Mission by Danny Franks

Start with Why by Simon Sinek

A Praying Life by Paul Miller

Switch by Chip & Dan Heath

The Power of Moments by Chip & Dan Heath

Danny Franks is the Pastor of Guest Services at the Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, where he’s served since 2003. In that role, he oversees guest services for ten campuses across the Triangle region of North Carolina, reaching over 11,000 people each weekend. He’s married to Merriem (out of his league), dad to three boys (cooler than he was at their age), and protector of one princess (cute as a button). Danny’s passion for the church is to help outsiders become insiders, and challenging insiders to reach outsiders. He is the author of People Are the Mission: How Churches Can Welcome Guests Without Compromising the Gospel, which released in March 2018. He’s a regular blogger at dannyfranks.org and a regular twit @LetMeBeFranks.

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11: Cal Rychener – Northwoods Church, Peoria IL

11: Cal Rychener – Northwoods Church, Peoria IL

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Breakthrough ideas with Cal:

  • What does church planting look like 30 years in?
  • How does a church move from program driven to presence driven after years of ministry success?
  • It’s possible to go deep with your weekend sermons and still be responsive to those who are not in a relationship with Christ.
  • If someone is visiting your church these days, they are looking for something meaningful, do not hold back on the presence of the Lord in worship.
  • Pastors, you can teach for maturity and still talk toward salvation.
  • Listen to your desert – when the desert is happening in your heart, the Lord wants to teach you there.
  • You can be a balanced church in the Word and the Spirit.
  • It is possible to be charismatic without being weird.
  • Never be without a swing coach, you need somebody who knows what you don’t and sees what you can’t.
  • We are the only church in the world that has our mission statement, and that is how it should be.
  • Your mission should roll off your tongue with excitement and speak life in every word.
  • What does it look like when a church truly believes Jesus came to break the chains that are still holding you?
  • Is there life in every word and passion in every syllable when you speak the mission?
  • Leadership gets tough when you are not clear on the mission that God has called you to.
  • Why is it important to have your team in the room when developing the vision, isn’t it easier to do it on your own?
  • What does visionary collaboration look like?
  • Collaboration builds a team that will fight for your values and your culture, not just own it because they are told to or paid to.
  • We shouldn’t be afraid of surfacing the misalignment on the team.
  • Don’t be afraid to find out if you have someone on the team who doesn’t share the vision.
  • What does it mean to cast your faith forward and your fear backward?
  • In staff transitions or seasons of change, the tendency is to cast our fear forward instead of casting our faith forward.
  • Your fears can keep you stuck.
  • Making the church planting shift – here’s one pastor who would instead look back at 20 pastors he raised than 20 locations that lower a screen.
  • What is the difference between a church planter and a campus pastor?
  • What happens when the multisite model becomes an obstacle to pastoring in the local context?
  • What might a hybrid model of church planting and multisite campusing look like?
  • Be who you are not who someone else is. Do not deny who God has called you to be.
  • Spend time with the Lord in personal practice, not pastoral theory.
  • If you were not a pastor, would you still live as you live?
  • Refuse to sacrifice your family to lead your church.
  • Are you the same person at home than you are on the stage?
  • Live out of your heart what God has called you to live and your legacy will take care of itself.

Breakthrough resources in this episode: 

Northwoods Community Church

God Dreams by Will Mancini

All Hail the Power of Jesus Name

The Hour That Changes the World by Dick Eastman

Originally from Archbold, Ohio, Pastor Cal Rychener graduated from Fort Wayne Bible College and went on to earn a Masters of Divinity degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In addition to his love for the local church, Cal has two other great passions. First and foremost are his wife Susan and their family: Kathryn, Andy, Avery, Madilyn and Blake Rogers; Jonathon, Michaela, Arianna and Joanna Rychener; Victoria and Kody Pinson; and Nathan Rychener. Running a distant second is his love for the Green Bay Packers, for whom he has been a guest chaplain. He has been the senior pastor of Northwoods Community Church since its beginning in 1990. Cal is also the author of the books Living at a Higher Level of Faith and God Can.

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10: Chris Driver – Fifth Street Baptist, Levelland TX

10: Chris Driver – Fifth Street Baptist, Levelland TX

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Breakthrough ideas with Chris:

  • The ethos of six-man football reflects the grit and resilience of small-town life on the west Texas plains. It also inspired this church’s vision.
  • Who will reach the small town? Who will take the gospel to those places that were once the center of life in our rural communities?
  • This church of 80 has plans to plant 100 churches, and God is providing in exciting every resource they need. How was your weekend?
  • Three church planting breakthroughs from the south plains of west Texas.
  • What does church planting look like in the small towns of west Texas? Learn about Fifth Street Baptist’s disciple-making mission points.
  • What does authentic and effective discipleship look like in a small town?
  • Small town residents understand living in community – you don’t have to teach that. But they desperately need to experience Christ-centered community.
  • You don’t have to teach community and caring for each other in the small town, you just need to connect it to Gospel purpose.
  • God delights in using small things in big ways. Here is an example from the southern plains of west Texas.
  • How do we let our people truly invest in each other’s lives? Community is bigger than just having Sunday school or small groups.
  • What happens when a church has a lot of history but not a lot of legacy?
  • Years spent in existence as a church do not automatically amount to multiplication influence in the community by the church. Hear the story of one established church leaving a legacy.
  • This church believes that reaching 10 people in 100 small towns is the way that a church of 80 can reach 1000 people each week.
  • Relationships overcome geography when discipleship looks like this.
  • What happens when you really believe that discipleship is for every believer not just the spiritually elite?
  • Claim ownership of your own discipleship first. Stop waiting for someone to disciple you and start being a disciple maker.
  • Effectiveness in the small town means that every man woman and child can realistically hear the gospel and have a chance to respond. Here is one way.
  • A church of 80 attendees has planted five churches in the last 18 months. How is your multiplication strategy working?
  • Smaller is easier to reproduce. There is something to being a simple church in simple places with simple people sharing a simple message.
  • Is your operational vision bigger than just more people in weekly worship? It should be.
  • You can sometimes make people do what you want them to do, but vision ownership like this goes beyond getting what you want to be done.
  • What happens when a church starts the multiplication process as soon as they start meeting. What does it mean to be “born pregnant” as a church?
  • God has not forgotten the small town. He has a plan and a purpose to do big ministry in small places.
  • Get out of the office. You cannot influence people you’re not in contact with.
  • Busyness in the office does not equate to effective ministry. Ministry “along the way” reflects the way of Jesus.
  • Irresponsible vision reflects an indescribable God. Be faithful with what He has given you and leave the results to Him.

Breakthrough resources in this episode: 

Fifth Street Baptist Church

Exponential Conference

God Dreams by Will Mancini

Download the whole Fifth Street story: Big Vision for Small Places

Real Life Discipleship by Jim Putman

Chris Driver is the Senior Pastor of Fifth Street Baptist Church in Levelland, Texas. Chris enjoys coaching youth sports and is passionate about the sport of six-man football.

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Episode #9: Chris Freeland

Episode #9: Chris Freeland

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Breakthrough ideas with Chris:

  • What if we could get everyone in here out there, instead of trying to get everyone out there in here?
  • How do we equip and deploy people to really love their neighbors every day of the week?
  • It is hard to love your neighbor when you don’t know your neighbor.
  • Don’t just introduce one idea on one Sunday – bringing people back to the idea multiple times demonstrates repeated intentionality.
  • Asking the same questions every week is not repetitive, it is intentional. Until you’re tired of saying it, they have likely not heard it.
  • When the pastor lives the vision first, redemptive movement becomes infectious and vision gets accomplished.
  • Cultivate vision at the highest leadership level among your staff and key volunteers.
  • Learn to celebrate the single step, not just the overall accomplishment.
  • Win every week by giving micro steps for everyone to take.
  • Permission to make the necessary changes to a church requires pointing to the DNA and what is not changing.
  • Executive Pastor Learning: don’t let your pastor get surprised by something you already knew about.
  • Executive Pastor Learning: know what needs to be on your Senior Pastor’s radar and when bad news needs to be delivered.
  • Senior Pastors and Executive Pastors should connect regularly in both organic and structured moments in which you can work through conflicts or divided perspectives.
  • How does the Senior Pastor empower leaders and give them the room to lead?
  • Vision is so critical to the church, that even the church name should be evaluated.
  • When making major changes: go slow, go pray, go read and go deep.
  • Connect stories to vision to declare God’s work among the people.
  • Cascading communication is critical in the success of any major congregational change.
  • Bring people to pray first then bring them to the change.
  • Set up your people to participate in leading the change, not just experiencing the change.
  • Pray and process, but be humble enough to know that you may not have seen everything.
  • What you think about the brand is what you think about the character of the organization.

Breakthrough resources from this episode:

Doxology Bible Church

The Art of Neighboring

BLESS by Dave Ferguson 

The Advantage – Patrick Lencioni

Leading from the Second Chair 

Leadership and Self-Deception

While Shepherds Watched their Flocks

Hero Maker – Dave Ferguson

Chris Freeland has been the Lead Pastor at Doxology Bible Church in Fort Worth, TX since 2011. Originally from Columbia, MO, Chris has a music degree from Oklahoma State University and ThM and Doctorate of Ministry degrees from Dallas Theological Seminary. He is married to Kari and they have three young children.

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Episode #8: Phil EuBank

Episode #8: Phil EuBank

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Breakthrough ideas with Phil: 

  • Reaching the lost requires removing every possible barrier of understanding – even some things you love.
  • It’s time to let go of some of these weird practices of the church that have nothing to do with Jesus.
  • Are your worship services evangelistically understandable? If you are not sure, they probably are not.
  • “Thank you for making me not feel stupid.” How to be a church where people can seek God and walk back to him.
  • Inspiring people to trade church the way we want it to become a place where God is moving is a critical job of pastoral leadership.
  • Making it possible to follow Jesus with a few non-essential *(stylistic, personal preference-driven) barriers as possible.
  • Talk about where God is calling you to go and don’t get tired of talking about it. Don’t get bored or give up… persistence toward God’s better future is critical.
  • Find the common ground of a church on mission and filter needed changes through a better future that God has ahead.
  • A unifying direction must be more than a catchphrase or neat sentence but brings a thread of accountability and direction to every part of the organization.
  • Everybody says they want vision but what they don’t realize they mean is that they want their own vision. There is no way to satisfy every expectation only to go where God wants us to go.
  • It’s easy in ministry to get consumed by the activity and lose track of Gods productivity in the lives of people.
  • When there are no stories, either we are not paying attention or what we are doing is not actually working.
  • Without purpose and meaning toward life change – church becomes a hobby and a terrible one at that.
  • When team members are free to share good ideas and share new approaches, they are able to take greater and greater ownership.
  • Time rarely solves the problems on their own… next steps matter more than a statement.
  • Separate the urgent from the important. Not everything that is happing now is important and not everything that is important is happening now.
  • When everything seems urgent, your team cannot easily discern what is actually important.
  • Deciding when you use these essential communication tools can define a clear line between the urgent and the important.

Breakthrough resources from this episode:

God Dreams – Will Mancini

Deep & Wide – Andy Stanley

VOXER – staff communication tool

H3 Leadership – Brad Lomenick

The Problem of God – Mark Clark 

The Reason for God – Tim Keller

Phil EuBank moved to Colorado two and half years ago where he serves as the Lead Pastor of Eastern Hills Community Church. Phil makes sure everyone knows that He has a gorgeous and brilliant wife and 3 really cute kids. He loves seeing people who have given up on God or church unnecessarily coming to a life-changing relationship with Jesus.

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Episode #7: Barrett Bowden

Episode #7: Barrett Bowden

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Breakthrough ideas with Barrett: 

  • How can a church reach Christians who live in the city, from within the city, not just the suburbs?
  • True fulfillment as a Christ-following leader comes from a deep sense of two key understandings.
  • Why it is important to bring yourself back to your calling as a leader, not someone else’s.
  • It is hard to truly rest if people are constantly in contact, and what to do about it.
  • Every leader needs to know their symptoms of exhaustion and unkempt health.
  • The importance of every small group having direct contact with this person.
  • Marry Biblical Gospel rooted purpose with a vocational dream and people are not just looking for a job after school, they are being sent into a calling.
  • The big problem of never really casting vision beyond week-to-week ministry engagement.
  • How does the horizon storyline work and why is it important?
  • Learn the art of “purposed nothingness” and how this makes room for the Holy Spirit.
  • The one big idea to having a church of deep maturing disciples who are loving caring people reaching the lost.
  • Three things that, together, are the source of life and effectiveness in ministry.

Breakthrough resources from this episode:

Island Community Church

Zeal Without Burnout by Christopher Ash

M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

God Dreams by Will Mancini

Dangerous Calling by Paul David Tripp

New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp

Barrett Bowden is the pastor of Island Community Church, a young and thriving congregation in downtown Memphis. Barrett has a heart for leading the church to invest in its unique, urban context and to cultivate missional leaders with a heart for the nations. Barrett is married to Michelle, an adolescent pediatrician in the Memphis area, and they have one adorable daughter, Caroline Jane.

 

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Episode #6: Talbot Davis

Episode #6: Talbot Davis

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Breakthrough ideas with Talbot: 

  • Twitter is a great place to improve as a wordsmith because it forces clarity of communication.
  • It is possible for social media to make you a better pastor and leader.
  • Making diversity the cause only results in political correctness, so make Jesus the cause and let diversity be the result.
  • Bringing diversity to staff means writing every job description carefully and hiring intentionally.
  • Knowing who you are as a church, and who you are not, brings incredible focus to a church.
  • The consistency of visionary identity from church leadership brings confidence in missional activity from the body.
  • Setting people up for lots of small wins eventually results in large victory in Jesus.
  • Be clear about your expectations for hiring and set up systems of accountability.
  • Normalize the things of the church that used to be remedial: healing prayers, altar calls, and being awake to the Spirit.
  • There is a difference in being a charismatic church and a church with a lot of charismatic people in it.
  • Processes can hinder leadership; sometimes you just need to take risks on people.
  • When it comes to staff hiring and firing, long hellos and short goodbyes are best.
  • Develop your gifts and hire others that make up for your unavoidable shortcomings.
  • Work every day and you will get better at what you do.

Breakthrough resources from this episode: 

Good Shepherd United Methodist Church

The Storm Before the Calm by Talbot Davis

Head Scratchers by Talbot Davis 

Crash Test Dummies by Talbot Davis

Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley

Talbot Davis is Pastor of Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, a modern congregation in Charlotte, North Carolina. Talbot helps lead a talented group of pastors and support staff. Talbot makes sure everyone knows that he married well, and now has two adult children. A lifetime of playing tennis consistently shapes how he leads and thinks about the world. Talbot has published five books through Abington Press as resources for both life groups and preachers in training.

 

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Episode #5: Eric Geiger

Episode #5: Eric Geiger

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Breakthrough ideas with Eric:

  • Leadership transitions will always happen, but what actually makes succession a success?
  • Following God involves holding two conflicting emotions in tension: grieving what has been and anticipating what will be.
  • There will always be unfinished work. The “unconquered territory” reminds us the work is God’s not ours.
  • How can pastors keep their heart connected to the community they are called to reach?
  • In seasons of transition, caring for your family is as important as the mechanics of moving.
  • When it comes to your family don’t try to be perfect… just be ordinary. There is beauty in an ordinary marriage.
  • The demands of ministry will never be satisfied and making approval an idol will end in ruin.
  • People will always be disappointed in some part of your ministry; therefore slow down, care for your family, and play the long game.

 

Breakthrough resources from this episode:

Love Without Walls  by Laurie Beshore

CSB Bible

The Gospel Project

Insights Team Building Tool 

Designed to Lead by Eric Geiger & Kevin Peck

Simple Church by Eric Geiger & Thom Rainer

How to Ruin Your Life by Eric Geiger 

Spiritual Leadership by Oswald Sanders

The Cross of Christ by John Stott

Auxano’s Leadership Pipeline

E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

Eric Geiger is the Senior Pastor of Mariners Church in Irvine, California. Before moving to Southern California, Eric served as senior vice-president for LifeWay Christian Services. Eric received his doctorate in leadership and church ministry from Southern Seminary. Eric has authored or co-authored several books including the best selling church leadership book, Simple Church. Eric is married to Kaye, and they have two daughters: Eden and Evie. During his free time, Eric enjoys dating his wife, taking his daughters to the beach, and playing basketball.

 

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Episode #2: Dave Rhodes

Episode #2: Dave Rhodes

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Breakthrough Ideas with Dave Rhodes:

  • The physical location of your church and the mission of your church should be inseparable.
  • Moving to the fringe of the organization, instead of the center, empowers younger generations to step up and lead.
  • Boomers and Millennials CAN get along; however, each generation must take a different approach to the other.
  • You cannot multiply the church at the rate of possible opportunity, only at the rate of people development.
  • Are you working to rest or resting to rest? Why this matters.

Dave currently works as the Pastor of Discipleship and Movement Initiatives at Grace Fellowship Church and co-founder of Younique in Atlanta, Georgia. He is a sought-after speaker, writer, consultant, and coach. He is the co-founder of Wayfarer, former US Team leader for 3DM, and a collaborative partner for several other movement organizations specializing in discipleship, leadership, and mission.

Breakthrough Resources:

The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard

100 Movements

Auxano

Church Unique by Will Mancini

 

 

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