unSeminary Podcast

If there’s one thing church leaders should be obsessed with, it’s the front door. In this special compilation episode, we’ve pulled together four conversations from leading churches and ministry organizations that are seeing success in helping first-time guests move from curious visitors to fully engaged disciples. The challenge facing churches today is different than it was even a few years ago. Guests are arriving with different motivations, different expectations, and different questions. Churches that continue using yesterday’s assimilation strategies may unintentionally lose people God is already drawing. Don’t miss the four critical lessons every church should consider as they prepare for the fall ministry season. From changing guest motivations to intentional follow-up systems, discipleship pathways, and data-driven care, each conversation offers practical insights that can help churches better connect with the people walking through their doors. People Are Coming to Church Looking for God Greg Curtis shares a remarkable shift he’s seeing among first-time guests, particularly younger adults. Where people once came primarily looking for community, support, or practical life help, many are now arriving already searching for God. In some cases, they’ve already begun reading Scripture, exploring faith, or experiencing spiritual curiosity before ever attending a service. This means churches must be prepared to engage people with greater intentionality from the moment they arrive. Key Takeaway // Many first-time guests are no longer casually checking out church. They’re arriving with genuine questions about God and faith, often after beginning a spiritual journey on their own. Churches must be prepared to meet that curiosity with intentional next steps. Listen to the Full Episode // They’re Looking for God … Don’t Miss Them: Fixing Your Church’s Assimilation Problem with Greg Curtis & Tommy Carreras (March 26, 2026) Follow-Up Can’t Be Left to Chance John Sellers explains how Journey Church creates a clear and repeatable process for helping guests take their next step. Through intentional touchpoints—including a welcoming first interaction, relational next-step environments, and a six-week follow-up process involving texts, emails, phone calls, and personal invitations—the church ensures guests don’t simply attend once and disappear. Consistent follow-up may not be flashy, but it remains one of the most effective growth strategies churches can implement. Key Takeaway // Fast-growing churches rarely rely on a single welcome interaction. They build systems that encourage guests to take multiple steps over several weeks, increasing the likelihood that visitors become connected participants. Listen to the Full Episode // From Guests to Baptisms: Building Clear Next Steps with John Sellers (November 13, 2025)  A Clear Pathway Helps People Keep Moving Ashley Lentz outlines Lutheran Church of Hope’s discipleship pathway, which helps leaders identify where people are spiritually and what their next step should be. Rather than treating every attendee the same, the church intentionally helps people move from seeker to believer, from believer to follower, and ultimately into servant leadership. The framework creates clarity for both staff and volunteers while helping people continue growing long after their first visit. Key Takeaway // People are far more likely to stay engaged when churches provide a defined pathway for spiritual growth. Clarity helps both guests and leaders understand what comes next. Listen to the Full Episode // Clarity Is Kindness: Simplifying Next Steps in a Growing Church with Ashley Lentz (September 18, 2025)  Data Is a Tool for Shepherding, Not Just Administration Ronee de Leon of TouchPoint challenges churches to view their database as more than a record-keeping system. Using her framework of Conviction, Collection, Clarity, and Care, she explains how churches can use data to proactively identify opportunities for discipleship and connection. Effective data practices ensure people do not fall through the cracks and allow churches to provide personalized care at scale. Key Takeaway // Churches cannot effectively shepherd hundreds—or thousands—of people through memory alone. Healthy systems and meaningful data help leaders identify opportunities for connection, care, and discipleship before people drift away. Listen to the Full Episode // From Data to Discipleship: The Four Cs Every Church Needs with Ronee de Leon (April 30, 2026)  This episode serves as a timely challenge for church leaders preparing for the months ahead. As more spiritually curious people walk through church doors, the question isn’t whether guests are coming. It’s whether our systems, pathways, and follow-up processes are prepared to help them stay. The churches seeing the greatest impact are not leaving assimilation to chance. They’re intentionally creating environments where people can move from a first visit to a life transformed by Jesus. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Friends, Rich here from the unSeminary Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. We’ve got a very special compilation episode for you.Rich Birch — Listen, I have heard echoes of similar things happening over the last year or so on the podcast, so we’re pulling together these episodes because I want to point out to you critical lessons for your church, particularly here in the summertime, as you think about what are some things that we should be reloading for this fall. Listen, friends, you know, and I know that you and I are a part of the local church and the local church is the only organization in the world that exists for people that are not here yet. You and I should be fanatically focused on the front door.Rich Birch — We should be first-time-guest-obsessed. And on today’s episode, I want to peek in on four discussions that talk about changing dynamics when it comes to connecting with first time guests. And no conversation around this whole area of assimilation would be complete without talking to and listening to Greg Curtis. Rich Birch — If you do not know Greg, where have you been? He’s been at Eastside Church for the last decade running their assimilation work. And he’s really seeing some interesting shifts in particularly young adults when it comes that I keep seeing across the country. And in this clip, he’s going to open up and tell you about a subtle shift that he has seen and some of the changes they’ve made around assimilating people when they come in.Rich Birch — Now, today’s conversation, we’re going to really frame around Greg’s three part model. We talk about the screen to the seat, the seat to the circle, and then the circle to the street. We want you to understand that how we’re connecting with guests today is different than what it looked like five years ago.Rich Birch — It’s definitely different than what it looked like pre-COVID. So let’s listen in first and see if we can catch what Greg is seeing and think about the dynamics that you’re seeing at your church. Listen in to what Greg’s got to say… [Clip 1 Begins]Rich Birch — People get assimilated, get connected. What have you noticed maybe something that’s maybe different in the way people are engaging right now that’s different than maybe even a year or two ago?Greg Curtis — A crescendo over the last two years has been remarkable in its shift towards—this is going to sound crazy because we’re talking to churches—they’re wanting God now. And what I mean by that is prior, we were having to sell the benefits of following Jesus – most growing churches, which there are. And I think it was a compelling thing to share with the culture.Greg Curtis — And so people were coming to church to find community, to find help with parenting, to find support in marriage or to, you know, a variety of different things. And so the draw and what was causing people to engage with church was really, what help in my life? How can I increase the quality of my life? Maybe even get some pretty powerful pain points addressed. Greg Curtis — This has shifted. I’ll put it in the terms of our young adult pastor. His name is Charles. He came to me. He said, Greg, prior to two, three years ago, maybe not even that long, he said young adults were coming, 80% of them to find friends and community, and about 20% to find God.Greg Curtis — He goes, it’s flipped. It’s flipped. Now it’s 80% God and 20% community.Greg Curtis — And that has expressed itself in some remarkable ways. I’ll just throw two out. At the end of last year, I was covering somebody, a pastor who was going to baptize somebody after the service. He had to be gone. So I said, yeah, I’ll cover it. So in our context, I’ll meet that person ahead of time and kind of show them where to sit in the service, when to come out, where the baptistry is, et cetera.Greg Curtis — And I met her. She was 28 years old, named Connie. And I said, as we’re walking through the baptistry, so, you know, I asked these typical questions: how long have you been coming to Eastside, which is my church?Greg Curtis — And she says, oh, I’ve never been to Eastside. I was like, oh, so you’re from our online campus. And she goes, no, I’ve never really heard of Eastside.Greg Curtis — And I said, well, what’s led you to be baptized today? And this was her story. She goes, I grew up in a very non-religious home, and I’ve never been to church. And I vowed I’d never even date a religious person. But I had some friends, three months ago, that invited me to watch The Chosen with them. I didn’t want to.Greg Curtis — I was mad at myself for getting engaged after the first episode, kept watching, decided to buy myself a Bible two months ago. I started reading the Old Testament and New Testament concurrently and decided I love Jesus and I want to follow Him, and I could tell what I needed to do was get baptized. But, get this, I’m the game day operations coordinator for the NFL. So I work on Sundays, and I just Googled who would baptize me on a Saturday. And your form came up, and I filled it out. So here I am.Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. Greg Curtis — Yeah. And I’ll tell you what, she didn’t know, Rich, that this baptism was going to be in front of other people until we were in the water and the whole church was looking at her. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s incredible.Greg Curtis — The questions she had, we’ve remained in touch. The questions she asks are so precious. But I’m telling you, I’ve had a few of those that are similar. That one’s pretty dramatic, but are very similar. No background at all. They’re coming because they’re having a God moment before they get to us.Rich Birch — Yeah. Greg Curtis — And that’s a big shift because God is doing something literally worldwide and in our culture right now that they’re coming to us to find God, and they’re already encountering him in some way, and they need help with that and want it. And that’s a huge shift. [Clip 1 Ends]Rich Birch — Fantastic. Listen, if 80% of the guests are arriving at your church with a God question burning in their heart, the first 60 minutes, what we do every single weekend is critically important. I have seen this over my career.Rich Birch — Listen, I had recently one of those birthdays with a zero on the end. And I can tell you, as someone who’s been three decades into ministry experience, there was a time where people stumbled into our churches. And that’s just frankly not happening anymore.Rich Birch — People are arriving with real questions. And we might have been able to, in a previous generation, entertain them or try to diffuse this idea that we ain’t your mama’s church. But that isn’t where people are at anymore. Rich Birch — They’re coming with real live questions in their heart. They’re not stumbling into your church on Sunday morning because they don’t know what’s going on there. They’re coming looking for real questions.Rich Birch — And you and I, our processes, what we do on Sunday morning has got to meet that intensity. We can’t just hand them a coffee mug and say, we’ll see you next week. We’ve got to follow them up with some fervor and excitement and frankly a bit more intensity than what most churches are doing. Rich Birch — I love this conversation that’s coming up with John Sellers. He’s executive pastor of locations at Journey Church in Central Florida—three campuses with a fourth on the way—and is one of the most consistently fastest-growing churches in the country. Now, listen to what John talks about when he talks about the follow-up process, that they aren’t just leaving it to chance. They are working with intention to move these first time guests and get them plugged in. Rich Birch — The question I have for you is, is this the kind of intensity that you’re following up your first time guests with? Let’s listen in. [Clip 2 Begins]John Sellers — So at our church, every location has a tent. It’s a new here tent. And so the first step that we’re communicating, the clear step on that first or second week is: stop by the tent.John Sellers — Like, I know that’s a big step and we have to remind our serve team. And behind the curtain, that seems simple to us, but like to a new person at a church, even going to a tent or making themselves known by filling out a Connect card, even if it’s digital, like that’s a big step for somebody. John Sellers — And so a lot of our communication’s go to the tent. We’d love to meet you. We’ve got a gift card for you just to celebrate the step of faith you took to be here today. And so once they take that step, it starts us being able to follow up through text messages, emails, phone calls, and really encouraging them to step into our Next Steps class.John Sellers — And so when they step into our Next Steps class, one of the things we’re even constantly trying to think through what we call it because “class” probably isn’t the best way to describe it. And we’re actually revamping it right now. John Sellers — But for us, even that Next Steps class is a round table. It’s relational. It’s getting them around our Next Steps team that wants to hear their story. You know, what brought you through the doors? Wants to begin to hear about maybe what’s on their heart? Where are they at? What’s their next faith step?John Sellers — And so those are the first couple of weeks. If we can encourage them to stop by the tent, that allows us to stay in contact with them relationally. And then the next step would be go to one of our Next Steps classes after a service.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Can we pull apart a bit of the detail there? Just because I know people are wondering this because I get these questions.Rich Birch — So it sounds like when you arrive at the New Year tent, there’s a gift card there. Where’s that gift card for? What is the value of that? And why a gift card? Talk to us about that.John Sellers — Yes. So for now, and we’ve experimented, we’ll change this up like constantly. But right now it’s for a local coffee shop. And it’s literally a $5 gift card. It’s just a thank you to say thank you for coming. John Sellers — It’s a little gift bag. It’s got information about our church, obviously. And it’s just a step. The way we phrase it is we know it’s a big step of faith you took to be here today. And so we just want to celebrate the fact that you made it in the room. And so that’s what it is – $5. John Sellers — On big events, we’ll do a Journey Church cup and make it a little more substantial. But it’s just a $5 gift card to a local coffee shop.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And I love the thinking behind that, friends, that are listening in, is sometimes what I see churches do, they’ll be like, hey, if you want to get connected, or if you’ve got interested about your Next Steps, or if you’re wondering where to go, drop by the tent outside. People are not asking that question when they first come.Rich Birch — We’ve got to take a celebratory step. And I like what you’re saying. I love that language of we want to celebrate the faith step by being here today. And we want to give you a gift in exchange for that. People will do that for a $5 gift card, or a coffee mug, or whatever. That’s good.Rich Birch — And then the other thing that caught my attention you said was, you said: and we follow up with texts and emails. Talk about how many of that, what’s that communication process look like? There’s another area where I see churches drop the ball all the time.John Sellers — Sure, it’s a variety. There’s a workflow that we use through our database system planning center that is owned by our Weekend Experience team members. But basically, it starts with an email from our lead pastor with a short video for them to watch, a message directly from him.John Sellers — It includes a text message or phone call from the location pastors within two weeks. It includes other text messages and emails. So it lasts about six weeks. And it’s more information about how to take steps at our church. John Sellers — And so some of its vision, a lot of it is geared towards stepping into the Next Steps class. But yes, it’s multiple, and it’s a variety. And it’s over the span of six weeks. And then we even have, you know, workflows built out that, you know, if somebody goes through that six-week process without taking the next step, that periodically we’ll check back in with them. [Clip 2 Ends]Rich Birch — Boring stuff grows churches. I’ve said it before. I’m going to keep saying it.Rich Birch — A monthly Next Steps cadence or New Year cadence, whatever you call it at your church, a $5 gift card may not be exciting, but it’s the kind of thing that we see time and time again at fast-growing churches. But the question is, what happens after week six? Where do we take people beyond this initial connection?Rich Birch — In fact, I’ve seen in some churches that have done extensive studies on this. If people do not get plugged in in the first 100 days, they might come, they might even come back. But if they don’t take a significant step, that is get on a team or in a group in those first 100 days, they will just not connect to your church. Rich Birch — So I want to peek in on a conversation we had with Ashley Lentz. She’s the Connections Pastor at a fantastic church, Lutheran Church of Hope, a multi-site church with seven campuses in Central Iowa. There’s 7,000 people at their one location every single weekend.Rich Birch — And she really takes the longer arc view. Where do we go? It’s really, going back to what Greg talked about, there’s this kind of seat to circle, and then there’s the circle to street. That’s what this conversation is all about. How do we get these people who have taken these first few steps, what are we doing to get them actually plugged in? Let’s listen in to what Ashley has to say. Rich Birch — There’s so much we can learn here. And again, I want you to be thinking about when you think about this fall at your church, are there some things you should be adjusting as we go into the fall? [Clip 3 Begins]Ashley Lentz — One of the tools that we use, and it is very much an internal tool is what I would call it. We call it the Hope Circle. And it is what I would call a discipleship tool or a discipleship pathway.Ashley Lentz — And if I were to say that to our congregation members, they would really have no idea what I’m talking about. It is very internal. But it’s helpful to identify where people are on this Hope Circle.Ashley Lentz — And so the circle starts with being a seeker. At a church our size, we have people every weekend who have zero idea what the church thing is about. They’ve maybe never been introduced to Jesus. Someone just invited them to church. They maybe knew they needed church and walked in the door, but have no idea what to expect. And so they are seeking something that has been missing in their life.Ashley Lentz — And so helping people identify if that’s where you are, here are kind of the very preliminary places that would be helpful for you to start plugging in. As we move around that circle, we get to believers, people who are like, okay, I’m bought into the Jesus thing. I’ve heard the message, I believe, now what? I wanna understand this better. I believe in Jesus. I believe in God. I’m here for it, but I don’t really know the things. Ashley Lentz — So where do we go from there and how do we help them then move into being super excited about Jesus? I don’t just believe, I’m on fire for Jesus. I’m a follower, right? I am all in, my life looks different. I’ve been transformed. How do I follow him? Ashley Lentz — And then how do you serve people in that arena too? Because that’s gonna look different than somebody who’s come in as a seeker looking for Jesus and somebody who’s on fire for Jesus.Ashley Lentz — So how do we move them around the circle? So it’s seeker, believer, follower, and then kind of the last part of our circle is servant leader. How do we move them then into serving and letting the transformed nature of the gospel pour out of them into the world around us?Ashley Lentz — And I would say our secret sauce here at Hope is we love volunteers. Like as we move people around the Hope Circle, I and my colleagues, we want to equip people to lead. So being a servant leader inside these walls, but also outside these walls is really like, that’s what’s attractional to people is letting them know like you’re on fire for Jesus, go tell everyone about it and serve in the arena you find yourself in, whether in the church or outside the church. [Clip 3 Ends]Rich Birch — A pathway you can’t measure is a pathway you cannot improve. Friends, you’ve got a brain problem. Over 200 people, you simply cannot track where people are at in the processes we have talked about before.Rich Birch — Your mind literally cannot hold in place where all of these people are at in their process. And so underneath everything we’ve talked about today, you need a robust approach to data. Rich Birch — Listen, your church database is a care mechanism. It’s just a way we make sure people do not fall through the cracks. And so everything that we’ve talked about in today’s episode needs a robust approach to data and the way you handle data to move people just from a broad, kind of like they’re attending all the way through to caring, ensuring that they are plugged in. So I wanna peek into one final conversation. Rich Birch — Ronee de Leon, she’s the executive director of Partner Church Success at Touchpoint. But outside of that, she’s formerly on staff at a large multi-site church in Columbus, Ohio. And Touchpoint sits across hundreds of churches and Ronee sees the patterns.Rich Birch — Listen, what I want you to listen to carefully here is these four Cs that she talks about. Conviction, collection, clarity, care. And ask your question, are you doing this with your data?Rich Birch — Does your data structure actually allow you to move people along in a way that ensures that we’re actually getting them plugged in? Friends, I don’t want you to miss the opportunity that God’s bringing your way. And this conversation could help you think differently about that, particularly in the next couple of months. [Clip 4 Begins]Ronee de Leon — Let’s alliterate some more. Like I said, I was on church staff for a long time. Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.Ronee de Leon — And it does become memorable, right? So this is a really simple framework that really is more stages. It’s a progression. But even though it’s simple, whether they know it or not, every church is in one of these stages when it comes to data-driven discipleship. Ronee de Leon — And so four kind of Cs of this or stages are conviction, collection, clarity, and care. And I’ll just give a brief description of each of those and then we can go dive in a little bit deeper.Ronee de Leon — But conviction, really the question that we’re answering here is, do you truly believe this matters even when it’s not easy? So leaders believe that shepherding is important, but do we wanna move into doing it proactively? And are we comfortable using data as a tool to do that well? So that’s kind of the conviction piece. Do you really believe that this matters? Ronee de Leon — Collection then, are you committed to consistently gathering the data that’s needed? Not just once, but as a rhythm. It’s hard work, but it is a worthy cause, a valiant effort. Ronee de Leon — Let’s move to clarity real quick. Again, the question we’re answering is, now that you have the data, do you have the insight? Do you really see what it’s telling you? And what are we doing with it?Ronee de Leon — And then the last one here, of course, is where we’re acting on the insights to connect with our people. Will you actually act on the insights and shepherd people or will it stay theoretical? That’s kind of where we’re headed with this. [Clip 4 Ends] Rich Birch — We started this off today talking about how we see this pattern happening across the church. And I think these four episodes really hang incredibly together. Greg Curtis, he really named the moment that we’re in. I really do think that we’re seeing something that is generationally important. And I do not want your church to miss it. Rich Birch — John Sellers, I thought gave a really clear discussion around how we move these people that are arriving. How do we get them to take those first steps and get plugged in? Rich Birch — Then Ashley Lentz, she unpacked what it looked like to go from the seat to the circle, to the circle to the street pathway. What are we doing to actually get people to plug in deep in our community?Rich Birch — And then finally, Ronee brought it home, giving us a measurement layer to really bring the whole thing together with some honesty and truth. Rich Birch — Listen, this is the question: if I was sitting across from you and your staff this week, if I was in your staff meeting, the question I would simply ask is this, which of these four pieces is the weakest in our church as we approach this fall? And what’s the smallest move we could make in the next 30 days to improve where we need to in these areas? Rich Birch — We’ve got links to all of these show notes before. Please stay tuned. We’ve got incredible episodes coming up all summer long and all fall long here at unSeminary. Rich Birch — We’re on a mission to help 100 churches like yours grow by a thousand people by talking about stuff they don’t talk about in seminary. Rich Birch — Thanks so much for being here, friends. We’ll see you next week. Take care.

Picture this. It’s the year 2000, and a psychology lab at Cornell University is about to ruin a college student’s morning. A researcher hands an undergrad a t-shirt and asks them to put it on. The student unfolds it and sees the face staring back at them: Barry Manilow. Not vintage-cool Barry Manilow. Not ironic, Barry Manilow. Just… Barry Manilow. The kind of shirt that would get you roasted by your roommate before you made it out the door. The student puts it on anyway (this is science, after all) and is told to walk into a room where a group of peers is already seated. Before they open the door, the researcher asks a simple question: “How many people in that room do you think will notice your shirt?” The student thinks about it. They’re about to walk into a room of college kids wearing the musical equivalent of a “kick me” sign. They predict that about half the room will notice. They walk in and sit down. They endure a few minutes of low-grade social agony before the researcher pulls them out and surveys the room. The actual number of people who noticed the shirt? Roughly one in four. The student had overestimated by a factor of two. But the really fascinating part came next. When the researchers repeated the experiment with shirts people would actually want to wear … Bob Marley, Martin Luther King Jr. … the gap blew wide open. Students still predicted that nearly half the room would clock what they were wearing but the real number dropped to fewer than one in ten. A six-to-one overestimate. When the message was positive rather than embarrassing, people paid even less attention [ref]. Psychologists call this the Spotlight Effect. We anchor on our own vivid internal experience and dramatically overestimate how much other people are paying attention to us. Now apply that to your church. You’ve talked about inviting from the stage, you’ve put it in the newsletter, and you mentioned it in your staff meeting last month. It feels like you’ve been beating this drum constantly. But here’s what the research suggests: your congregation has barely registered the beat. And that’s not because they don’t care, it’s because human brains simply don’t absorb messages the way communicators assume they do. The encouraging news is that the gap between where your church is right now and genuine invite-culture momentum may be smaller than it feels. Your people love your church and they’re already in the room, but they need far more persistent encouragement, training, and equipping around invitation than most leaders realize. The difference between stuck churches and growing churches comes down to this: growing churches persistently train, equip, and motivate their people to invite. They don’t do it once a quarter but rather build it into the rhythm of everything they do, all year long. You’re Tapping, They’re Guessing There’s a lesser-known study from Stanford that might be the single most uncomfortable data point for anyone who communicates for a living. Researcher Elizabeth Newton asked people to tap out the rhythm of well-known songs on a table while a listener tried to identify the tune. The tappers predicted their listeners would get it right about 50% of the time. The actual success rate was 2.5% [ref]. That’s a 20-to-1 gap between what the communicator heard in their head and what the audience actually received. This is exactly what happens in churches every week. A pastor who has spent 20 hours in a sermon text hears a full symphony of meaning, nuance, and application. The congregation hears a series of disconnected taps on a table. And when it comes to broader communication—announcements about serving, reminders to invite, follow-up on events—the gap compounds. An XPastor survey of roughly 200 church leaders found that leaders estimated 44% of their people had forgotten the sermon by Monday, and a cumulative 94% by Wednesday [ref]. Church communication practitioners consistently report the same phenomenon: people approach them after six weeks of announcements asking about events they’d never heard of. If 94% of your congregation has forgotten this week’s sermon by midweek, what happened to that invitation challenge you made three Sundays ago? The honest answer is that it evaporated. Don’t despair over this because it’s just a reason to lean in harder and more consistently than you thought you needed to. The Channels Are Working Against You Even when you do communicate about the invitation, the platforms themselves are filtering your message before it reaches your people. Facebook organic reach has collapsed from 16% in 2012 to approximately 1.2–1.65% in 2025 [ref]. A church page with 10,000 followers reaches roughly 130–165 people per post. Instagram organic reach sits at around 3.5%, and it dropped another 30–40% across all post formats in 2025 alone. A church that posts once on Facebook and once on Instagram and considers the communication job done has reached, at best, about 5% of its online followers. Email is the bright spot for churches, but even it tells a sobering story. Religious organizations have some of the highest email open rates of any industry, which is roughly 30% according to analysis of more than 91,000 church emails [ref]. Those are strong numbers. They also mean 70% of your email list never opens any given message, and more than 90% never click a link inside it. Meanwhile, the average person encounters an estimated 6,000–10,000 marketing messages per day and consciously registers fewer than 150 of them. Your midweek email is competing with thousands of other messages for one of those limited attention slots. None of this means you should stop posting or stop emailing. It means that a single mention through a single channel barely registers. If you want your congregation to internalize the idea that inviting friends is a normal, expected part of following Jesus at your church, you need to show up across multiple channels, repeatedly, over weeks and months. The research on multi-channel communication backs this up: campaigns using three or more channels produced a 287% higher engagement rate than single-channel campaigns [ref], and multi-channel donors give roughly three times more in lifetime value than single-channel donors [ref]. Multiple channels don’t just add to your message. They multiply its impact, because each new context creates a distinct memory trace and a separate pathway to recall. Repetition Isn’t Annoying. It’s How Trust Gets Built. There’s a reason the idea of persistent communication makes church leaders uneasy. Nobody wants to be the church that nags. But the science on how humans process repeated messages is remarkably clear, and it doesn’t validate the fear. Robert Zajonc’s Mere Exposure Effect, first demonstrated in 1968, showed that repeated exposure to a stimulus—with no reinforcement, no reward, no positive association—is enough on its own to increase how much people like it [ref]. A 2017 meta-analysis of 268 exposure curves confirmed that the preference curve rises with exposure and peaks at around 10–20 presentations before beginning to decline [ref]. And that decline is primarily a risk with simple, unchanging stimuli. When you vary the format or channel while keeping the core message consistent, the positive range extends significantly. The effect is actually stronger when people aren’t consciously aware of the repeated exposure [ref]. The old Marketing Rule of 7 … the idea that people need seven exposures before taking action …comes from the 1930s movie industry. In 2025, research across industries puts the average number of touchpoints before a decision at nearly 29 [ref]. Seven was the floor almost a century ago. Your congregation needs far more than a single stage announcement and an Instagram post to shift their behavior around invitation. “But We Don’t Want to Annoy People” This is the objection every church communicator faces, and it deserves a fair hearing. The fear of over-communicating is real, but the data says the fear is dramatically lopsided. A Stanford study by Flynn and Lide analyzed more than 2,700 archived 360-degree leadership assessments and conducted four additional studies. They found that leaders who miscalibrated their communication were nearly 10 times more likely to be criticized for under-communicating than for over-communicating [ref]. Leaders who under-communicated were perceived as lacking empathy and leadership ability. Leaders who over-communicated were, in the researchers’ words, given the benefit of the doubt. The conclusion was clear: over-communication may be seen as a nuisance, but under-communication is seen as a leadership flaw. The email data tells the same story from a different angle. Organizations that send emails only once a month have a 78% higher unsubscribe rate than those that send more frequently. The baseline unsubscribe rate for nonprofits sits at just 0.17–0.19% per send, which is well below the cross-industry average. Your people are not bolting when you show up in their inbox. They’re far more likely to disengage when they rarely hear from you at all. There are real tipping points, and it’s worth exploring them. Complaints increase meaningfully beyond five emails per week and spike beyond seven. But the resolution from the research is consistent: frequency is not the enemy, irrelevance is. People resist when they feel their autonomy is threatened, and that resistance is triggered far more by tone—guilt-laden, high-pressure, directive language—than by volume. The legitimate risk for churches is not communicating too often about invitation, it’s communicating too often with the same generic, unsegmented, ask-heavy content through a single channel. What Growing Churches Actually Do Differently If the research makes one thing unavoidable, it’s that shifting an invite culture requires consistent, persistent, long-term pressure across the full breadth of your church’s life. Growing churches don’t just mention inviting once a quarter during a sermon series on evangelism. They weave it into everything, and they sustain it for years. In working with churches across North America for more than two decades and conducting over 800 interviews with leadership teams from some of the fastest-growing churches in the country, I’ve found that the churches building genuine invite-culture momentum are consistently working across five interconnected areas. I call them the 5 Gears of Invite Culture, and they function less like a menu you pick from and more like the tumblers in a lock. All five need to turn together. Shareable Weekend Teaching is the biggest lever. When your teaching is the kind of thing people want to talk about at lunch on Sunday, you’ve created the raw material for invitation. Research from Gallup confirms that sermon content is the primary reason three in four worshippers attend. If your weekend teaching connects Scripture to real life in a way that gives people language they can share, inviting becomes dramatically easier. Eventful Big Days are not the strategy on their own, but they serve as training grounds for invitation. Easter, back-to-school, Christmas—these are cultural moments when people are genuinely more receptive to an invitation, and they give your congregation a natural on-ramp to practice the skill of inviting. The key is to design them backward from the invite and then leverage them to build a weekly rhythm that outlasts the event. Captivating Online Conversations turn your digital presence from a broadcast channel into a relational bridge. The social media reach numbers above make it clear that posting once isn’t enough. But when your online presence is built around genuine conversation rather than promotion, it becomes another context in which the invitation message is encoded in a distinct way. Magnetic Community Service gets your people out of the building and into proximity with the people they’re being asked to invite. Churches that serve their communities together create the relational bridges that make invitation feel natural rather than forced. Appealing Volunteer Experience may be the most underestimated gear. People who serve, invite. The data is consistent on this point: engaged volunteers become your most enthusiastic advocates. When your volunteer culture is the kind of thing people are proud to bring a friend into, invitation stops feeling like a program and starts feeling like a reflex. These five gears are where the multi-channel science meets the practical reality of church life. Each gear represents a different context in which your people encounter the invitation message, and each creates a separate memory trace and retrieval pathway. When all five are turning together, the effect compounds. When one or two are stuck, the whole engine labors, and that’s often the real reason growth feels harder than it should. Find Out Which Gear Is Stuck If any of this research resonated—if you read the tapping study and thought, “that’s exactly what’s happening with our invite messaging”—then the next step isn’t to simply communicate more. It’s to figure out where the alignment is breaking down in your specific context. That’s exactly what I built the free Invite Culture Audit Workshop to help you do. On Tuesday, May 12th at 12 noon ET, I’ll walk you through a practical scorecard that shows where your invite culture is strong, where it’s leaking, and which gear to focus on first. You’ll see real examples from churches that have moved the invitation from something they talk about to something their people actually do, week after week. And you’ll walk away with a 90-day blueprint you can start acting on immediately. This isn’t a motivational talk; it’s a diagnostic session designed to give you and your team clarity. Sixty minutes, straight to the point, with a concrete plan that fits into your existing rhythms Register for free here: helpchurchleaders.com/invite-culture-audit-workshop Your people love your church. They’re already in the room. With the right systems and sustained encouragement, they’re closer to becoming a church full of inviters than you think. Let’s figure out what’s keeping the gears from turning.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Scott Worthington, Lead Pastor of Hope Church in Las Vegas, Nevada. After serving on staff for over 15 years, Scott stepped into the lead pastor role in 2022 following founding pastor Vance Pitman. In this conversation, Scott shares candid insights from that transition—what he learned, what surprised him, and how he’s helping the church move forward in a new season. Are you navigating a leadership transition—or preparing for one? Wondering how to honor the past while leading into the future? Scott offers practical wisdom on succession, culture, and leading through change with humility and clarity. When transition happens faster than expected. // Scott’s transition didn’t follow a long, multi-year succession plan. While there had been informal conversations about the future, the actual handoff happened in a matter of months when Vance stepped into a new national role. Moving from a worship/creative role into the senior pastor seat required rapid adjustment. One of Scott’s biggest realizations was that strong personal relationships don’t eliminate the complexity of leadership transition. Even with deep trust, there were moments of tension, especially when his leadership instincts differed from the mentor who had shaped him. Learning to lead without feeling like he was disappointing his former pastor became a key internal challenge. Hold tightly to mission, loosely to strategy. // As Scott stepped into leadership, he quickly identified what could not change: the church’s mission, vision, and core discipleship philosophy. For years, Hope Church had emphasized abiding in Christ as the foundation of ministry, rooted in John 15. That DNA remained non-negotiable. However, strategy was a different story. Scott embraced the idea that while the mission is fixed, methods must evolve. Ask the hard question: are we making disciples? // Early in his leadership, Scott gathered his team and asked a deceptively simple but weighty question: Are we actually making disciples? While there were encouraging stories of life change, the broader picture required honest evaluation. The disruptions of COVID had reshaped engagement, and the church needed to recalibrate. This question became the catalyst for new strategic direction, pushing the team to rethink how they measured spiritual growth and engagement. Introducing “spiritual cartography.” // One of the key strategic shifts Scott led was helping people identify where they are on their spiritual journey – a concept he calls “spiritual cartography.” The church began consistently communicating that everyone is somewhere spiritually and every Jesus follower has a next step. This language became embedded in sermons, staff culture, signage, and communication. To support this, they developed a simple “Discovery Tool” that helps people assess their current spiritual stage and identify next steps. Listening before leading. // In the early days of transition, Scott prioritized listening over directing. Rather than immediately implementing changes, he met with every department on staff, asking questions about culture, strengths, and areas for growth. Importantly, he resisted the urge to defend or explain, focusing instead on gathering insight. These conversations provided valuable data that shaped future decisions. His posture of humility helped build trust across the team during a potentially fragile season. Growing into the role. // One of Scott’s personal challenges was preaching. Having only preached 37 times before becoming lead pastor, he knew this was an area for growth. He joined a preaching cohort, studied extensively, and committed to getting reps. Over time, he began finding his own voice and learning not to imitate his predecessor but to lead authentically while still reflecting the influence of years under his leadership. A final reminder for leaders. // Scott closes with a powerful encouragement: ministry flows from intimacy with Jesus, not activity for Him. Leaders can easily drift into busyness and neglect their relationship with Christ. But as he reminds us, apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. True fruitfulness comes from abiding in Him. To learn more about Hope Church, visit hopechurchlv.com or follow @hopechurchlv on social media. Plus, don’t miss Hope’s spiritual cartography Discovery Tool. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it! Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. This is one of those issues that literally thousands of churches across the country are at some phase of working on. And so I know that this is going to be a practical conversation for you. Excited to have Scott Worthington with us today. He is the lead pastor at Hope Church, a church in Las Vegas. It’s a multisite church with three locations, if I can count correctly, in Nevada. They were founded in 2001 by Vance Pitman, and then he passed the baton to Scott, who stepped into the senior pastor role in 2022. Super excited to have Scott on the show today. Welcome. So glad you’re here.Scott Worthington — Thank you so much, Rich. It is a privilege. Grateful to be here with you today.Rich Birch — I’m honored that you’re you’re here and taking some time out. I know you’ve lots going on. Tell us a little bit of the Hope Church story, kind of cast a bit of the picture. If we were to arrive this weekend, what would we experience, that sort of thing?Scott Worthington — Yeah, Hope Church is an incredible church here in Las Vegas, as you said, three locations, three congregations what we call them. And yeah, I began to attend Hope Church right out of college in 2006, 2007, and been here for, I guess, 20 years now.Scott Worthington — And Vance Pitman, you mentioned his name. He was my pastor. He is the founding pastor here. He planted this church in 2001. Three dudes from the South moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, and 18 people started in his living room. It’s an incredible story of just church planting, and I don’t know how much we’ll get into that, but obviously that’s not my story to tell. That’s his, but it really is a miracle of God of what he’s done here. Scott Worthington — And then, yeah, Vance was my pastor for 16 years. I started as an intern in the student ministry and kind of just as God opened doors, walked through those doors, and eventually, I was the most surprised guy in the room when when Pastor Vance tapped tapped me on the shoulder in 2022, and he was being called to go lead a church planting organization here in North America. And yeah, he said, I think you’re supposed to be the senior pastor.Scott Worthington — And so we walked through our whole process, and it has been such a privilege now going on four years of leading the church that I’ve loved for 20. So it’s been a it’s been a wild, amazing, ah grace-filled ride, man.Rich Birch — Love it. I am looking forward diving into that today and helping people understand kind of what you learned through that process a little bit. I wonder if we could start, what’s your like, you know, you’re at a conference or you’re talking to somebody and they’re like, explain to me how the transition went. What’s the kind of the two minute version? I know it’s like, there’s a lot there, but how, how, how did that from that initial conversation through till, okay, you know, you’re now the lead pastor. What’s that look like?Scott Worthington — Yeah, the transition in the beginning, I would say it was it was really great. And and and the things that I’ll share publicly here is they’ve all been dealt with and things have been reconciled.Rich Birch — Yes.Scott Worthington — I’m so i’m so grateful. Pastor Vance is actually coming—our 25th anniversary is this September, and he is coming to preach our 25th anniversary. I’m so, so looking forward to that. Scott Worthington — But you know In the beginning, there’s there’s multiple ways to do transitions. Of course, there’s so many. Some people, especially when you got a kind of larger than life guy like Pastor Vance, they they’ll bring in another kind of larger than life big name somewhere. And we just felt like, and I say we, that was our whole lead pastoral staff, our stewardship team, which is our board. We just felt like um that that wasn’t the that wasn’t the move for us, that God wasn’t leading. Scott Worthington — I wasn’t so much a part of those conversations because my name was the leading name. And Vance just said, I think God has raised up the next leader right from within. And so that’s already a little different in that sometimes it’s like a five-year run or a six-year run and it’s like there’s a whole plan. This was this was a matter of months. I’m going from being one of the worship pastors here to being the lead pastor. And it was it it was very healthy in the beginning. And even even throughout the hard, it was good. And God’s grace has been all over it. But man, we just didn’t know what we didn’t know. Scott Worthington — One of the things we took for granted, I think, is that because of the relationship between Vance and I—I mean, he was my pastor for 16 years. We had a podcast together. I mean, we traveled together. I was the student pastor to his kids. I mean, it’s one of my really, really good friends, my mentor, my my pastor. Scott Worthington — And some of the advice that many people have written books on and done podcasts on and what what you should do in transition, frankly, we just thought, I don’t know if we need to do that. I mean, it’s Scott and Vance. It’s it’s it’s all good. And and there was just things that we didn’t know. I didn’t know how to handle. I don’t know if he knew how to handle. And again, I want to be careful. I don’t want to put words in his mouth. We’ve talked a lot about all this. I can speak for me. Scott Worthington — When Vance had an opinion that may have differed from mine in the way I should be doing something, I didn’t realize how hard that was gonna be for me to feel like I was disappointing my pastor. You know what mean? Rich Birch — Interesting. Scott Worthington — And really, really good, deep conversations have been had since then. But yeah, of course, you know we all know theologically, Joshua isn’t called to be Moses. You know, Joshua had to do things differently. And and it was harder for me to do that than I realized, Rich.Scott Worthington — It was it was harder for me to go right when I’ve been trained so long to go left by Pastor Vance, but I really felt God leading us right in some ways. And that was actually more difficult for me than I than I anticipated.Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d love to double click click on that part, because I think that that the core of all of these transitions, right, is this tension of like, hey, there’s some stuff that’s essential to preserve. And then by definition, like I think that’s a really apropos, you know, Moses to Joshua, I think is a really good, vivid example. There’s also things that need to evolve and change. How what helped you distinguish between those two as you think about, hmm, here’s some stuff we should really keep. And then here’s some stuff we should maybe start thinking differently about.Scott Worthington — Yeah, I would say to start with the what I needed to keep, I mean, I’ve been discipled here. I didn’t give my life to Christ at this church, but I joke and say, I wish God would have saved me at this church. So would have literally been, you know, the entire story. But I got saved here in another church in town and and quickly kind of made the transition through some circumstances here to Hope.Scott Worthington — But everything I know about ministry, I learned from, from, this church and from pastor Vance. And, uh, I mean, my wife and I were married to this church. We began having kids in this church. I’ve I’ve, joked that my entire adult life has been lived in the context of discipleship at Hope Church. And so all of the things, I mean, our mission, our vision, our values, everything has shaped me as a husband, a father, a Jesus follower, a pastor.Scott Worthington — You know, I’m so grateful that God’s given Vance, such a platform around the world. I mean, he he literally travels all over the country and all over the world preaching about this idea that of John 15, right? Apart from him, we can do nothing. That our our primary call is to intimacy with Jesus, not ministry for Jesus. And I mean, these are things that I just rattle off because they’re so in me. And and that was what was so embedded in the culture of Hope Church from the very beginning when it was 18 people in his living room, now to thousands. And I knew there’s no way I could do anything other than that.Scott Worthington — And so, you know, our mission, our vision is hasn’t changed. We we exist to connect people to live life with Jesus follower. And we believe a Jesus follower abides in Christ, connects in community and shares in the mission. I mean, these are things that I’ve heard for years 20 years and I’m still preaching to this day because they’ve changed me.Rich Birch — Right. Yep.Scott Worthington — Those were things that were, I mean, they, those were not changing. But I think it’s that old Andy Stanley line, you know, you, you marry the, the, the mission and you date the strategy. And so there were some ways that we were—and I might’ve butchered that. I have no idea. Sorry, Andy, if you listen…Rich Birch — It’s fine. Exactly.Scott Worthington — Yeah, I knew there were some things strategically that maybe we could start to play with that would help people deeper abide in Christ, connect in community and share in the mission.Scott Worthington — So those were the things that we started as a team. And that’s what I’m I’m also grateful for, the tracks that Vance laid down of of doing things together with with a plurality of elders. And so this isn’t me on a mountain, you know, coming up with the ideas and and and saying, this is this is what the Lord says. Scott Worthington — There’s an incredible team of pastors around me, especially as I’m I’m younger in the pastorate here, helping me make those decisions and helping me understand what what we should be. And of course, I’m I’m driving with vision, but man, they are such gifts to me. And and that was all stuff that I I picked up the baton from Vance. He led that way. And so I’ve tried to to continue that and and really tap into the guys around me.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I’d love to double click on that around some strategic decisions that you’ve sensed with your team. Hey, there we need to maybe to go in a new direction. What led you to that? What was kind of the data? What were you seeing? What what was the the thing that kind of precursed even making those decisions? And then if there’s an example of one or two, that’d be interesting as well.Scott Worthington — Yeah. So of of course, every person listening this podcast, they know, man, COVID was just such a shakeup for everybody. Rich Birch — Yep.Scott Worthington — And we were interesting because not only do we have COVID here and, you know, I know depending on where you’re listening, you had different restrictions and all that, but we, we, we had a lot ah here in in Vegas. We we had really taken a lot of our cues at that time from California. And so if you know what California did, we were, we were kind of right behind them. Scott Worthington — And yeah, we, so we, going into kind of reopening, if you will, we also just built a new building. And so we had a new building, reopening, the shakeup that COVID brought all of us. Then it sounds like a long time, but we know one or two years of ministry goes by in a flash. And so within one or two years of kind of reopening and reestablishing who our church really is, not just, you know, watching on YouTube, but also in the room and really the the core of the community, that’s when the transition happened. So it all happened so fast. So we really had to take a step back and go, okay, who, who is our church? Are we making disciples, right?Scott Worthington — That’s just our our mission to connect people to live a life of Jesus follower is just a contextualized version of the Great Commission, right? To make disciples. So are we doing that? And that’s a that’s a hard question to ask because you you got to be prepared to really deal with the results, right? Scott Worthington — Like when you ask your leadership team, and that’s what I did that very first lead team retreat we took two months after I began leading Hope. um I said, guys, I’m gonna ask a question that sounds silly, but it needs to be asked. Are we making disciples? Are we making, ah helping people abide in Christ, connect to community and share in the mission? And of course we have stories of like, yes, this person that just recently got saved, you know, out of the harvest, into the harvest kind of thing.Scott Worthington — But when you really started to drill down kind of on this new, I hate to say new church, but I mean, out of COVID, we all know… Rich Birch — Sure. Scott Worthington — …man, it was, they were like, you’re making new people, it’s growing. And then you’re going, wait, where’d all those other people go? That they got used to Sundays by the pool… Rich Birch — Right. Scott Worthington — …you know, like, and we’re we’re just asking good, hard questions that I think leads you to start making strategic choices that, that pushed the mission forward. And so, yeah, we’re we’re asking those hard questions and then we’re saying, okay, does the the does the strategy we used to have, does that accomplish the mission now in this season and this time?Scott Worthington — And of course, we we saw some fruit there, incredible fruit, but new leader, new season, in some ways, a lot of a new church. Let’s move forward with maybe some different strategic initiatives. Scott Worthington — And that’s when we started to to kind of ask the question, which will lead to maybe some practical stuff, where are people spiritually? That’s kind of where we’ve been leading over the last few years. Asking a question, you know, the the super nerdy form of this is is spiritual cartography. It’s really nerdy. But like really helping people understand everyone is somewhere spiritually. We want to so help you see where you are spiritually and then help you take a next step. And really just like putting it on the bottom shelf. How do we help people grow in their faith and take next steps? And that’s basically kind of the strategy we’ve been operating off of for the last couple of years. And it’s it’s been incredible.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. I love that. I wonder if you could, you know, give us a little bit of detail around that spiritual cartography. Love that. That’s a great turn of phrase. But how how are we how are you helping people see more clearly where they are and then provide those steps that maybe looks a little different? It’s been a shift than, say, 10 years ago kind of thing as a church.Scott Worthington — Yeah, I’d say, you know, everyone, again, leaders listening know this, but it starts with language. So we just started very strategically saying a couple of things. Number one, saying, hey, we believe everyone is on the spiritual journey somewhere or everyone is a certain place on the spiritual journey.Scott Worthington — And we believe every Jesus follower has a next step. I like that language because it connects our mission to the strategy, right? If we exist to connect people to live the life with Jesus follower, we say, hey, every Jesus follower has a next step. If it’s about following Jesus, I joke with our church, not to insult your intelligence, but following Jesus implies movement. It implies you are taking steps. You cannot be following if you’re standing still.Scott Worthington — And you know this, but I mean there there are people in churches that have checked all the boxes: I give, I serve, I got baptized. And then they think, I’ve checked all the main assimilation boxes. I guess I must be done growing. And we know that is not the case. There’s always more of Christ. There’s always more of of his movement in our lives. Scott Worthington — And so that was language that we just, I mean, I end every email with that. We we talk about that in staff meeting. I mean, we are constantly using where are people on the spiritual journey and how do you take your next step? Or their staff, I’m I’m encouraging what’s, what’s your next step?Scott Worthington — With me, I’m always saying, Hey, I believe God’s leading me in my next step to this. And so language, I think starts it. And then of course you’ve got to give people handlebars. You’ve got to, and of course, including language, by the way, is is signage. I mean, there’s signs all over our campus now that, Hey, we want to help you take your next step.Scott Worthington — And then we developed what we call our Discovery tool, which I think has been really helpful tool that we’ve given people. It’s it’s very simple. It is, I think it’s 20 questions that just gauge to help people understand where they are on their spiritual journey.Scott Worthington — And I know some people might be thinking, well, that sounds like you’re labeling folks. And that is the number one pushback that we get on this. And I get it. I get it. People think if you tell people that where they are on the spiritual journey, they’re gonna feel like they’re labeled and they they can’t, you know whatever it may be. And I think Dallas Willard said, I’ll probably butcher this quote too, but he said, the only thing worse than helping people see where they are spiritually is not helping people where they are spiritually.Rich Birch — That’s good.Scott Worthington — Like it’s one of those, like, yes, there are dangers, if you will. Because you know, on the wrong hand, somebody could weaponize it and be like, well, you’re this way spiritually and I’m this way spiritually. But at the end of the day, as a church, we want to help people take next steps in their faith. Rich Birch — Yep. That’s good.Scott Worthington — And so that tool has been really helpful. So there’s like wayfinding signs all over our campus where they can scan a QR code and and take that tool. And we do that in our services. And we’re trying to help people just take a next step.Rich Birch — That’s great. I love that. That’s so good. Maybe we’ll link to that. I think I’ve seen that actually on your site or I saw that somewhere when I was poking around to even give people a sense of that. Don’t take the test though, friends. Just look at it because we don’t want to stuff your system with a bunch of you know bad data. But yeah, that’s that’s fantastic.Rich Birch — Pivoting a little bit to your team. So one of the interesting dynamics when any you know there’s a kind of lead pastor transition is obviously there was a team there when when you joined and they’re amazing people that God’s been using them, done great things. But a part of your early job is to assess kind of where things at and staff health and try to gain actual kind of insight from them and to think about the future.Rich Birch — When you think about those early days, what were you doing to to kind of establish yourself and and assess where things were at with your team?Scott Worthington — Yeah, I, again, because of the nature of our transition, I was not a new guy, right? That was, ah that I think is a lot of of transition leaders. They’re going, all right, need to establish myself and people need to get to know me. I’ve been here, ah there’s one other guy that’s been on staff longer than I have at this point. He’s one of my best friends. He’s still on our staff. He’s incredible. He’s been here 20 years. I’ve been here 19. Scott Worthington — And ah so I’m a known… it wasn’t like, hi, my name’s Scott. Let me let me get to know you. But now that I am the leader, what I wanted to do is I wanted to get to know the culture. I wanted to get to know what, What is really happening on our staff level, especially through a transition? You know, people people get all kinds of feels. And some people are like, uh-oh, what’s going to happen? Or some people may be excited or what it may be. Scott Worthington — So actually sat down, I recommend, depending on your size of or scope, whoever’s listening, this could be really helpful or maybe impossible to do. But you know, we had at that time probably a staff of about 80. And I literally brought every staff team in. You know, so you got small groups and worship and you know whatever it may be, break up with your departments. And whether it was the lead pastor of that ministry or the intern, I invited them all in.Scott Worthington — And I had them, I asked them five questions and I said, the point of this little 20 minute meetup is for me to talk less and you to talk more. I’m just going to take notes. And I asked, they were all culture questions. Where do you feel you know where do you feel most motivated for the mission right now at Hope Church? Stuff like that. Very much like, where do you feel like we have a strong culture and where do you feel like we need to grow as a culture? And I tried to be true to my word. I gave the questions and then I shut up and let them talk.Scott Worthington — And man, to hear, you know, the intern right next to the lead pastor of that ministry, just share honestly. And I didn’t give feedback. I didn’t defend. And there were things that you wanted to, right? You wanted to go, well, wait a minute, let me tell you why that is. And I just knew I’m getting data right now that will help me make decisions to help shape the culture that we want here at Hope. Rich Birch — Sure. Scott Worthington — And not to say that the culture was bad. Of course, I’m not saying that.Rich Birch — Yeah.Scott Worthington — But again, new leader, I need to see kind of what we’re dealing with it as you go forward and where people’s hearts and minds are as we as we walk through a major transition with our founding pastor. And so that was super, super clarifying and helpful for me as the leader. Then I can make decisions with my team to help um you know drive that culture to a better place.Rich Birch — That’s cool. The church has continued to grow and impact people, which is incredible. And that’s, you know, I think both to you, you know, to both of you guys’ credit… Scott Worthington — Yeah. Rich Birch — …to that you, you handled this transition in a way that it wasn’t like, Hey, things collapsed. So, you know, you just honor you for that. That’s, that’s incredible. Rich Birch — When you think about those early, you know, maybe year or two, what were some early signs that you felt as a leader, okay people are with me. Like this is, because there’s the like, there’s the someone’s going to take over, this is being foist upon you, but then eventually people decide are they going to follow you or not. Scott Worthington — Yeah. Rich Birch — What were some of those signs, where you’re, oh no, I think I think that’s going to work; people are going to follow me.Scott Worthington — Yeah, I think, man, it was just, it’s, it’s all God’s grace because, yeah, I know looking back now I was, I made some mistakes. You know, there’s that balance and anybody who’s, who’s led a transition knows this. Like there’s the balance of wanting to, you know, wanting to continue to do what, what God has been doing here at Hope. But then, you know, okay, I think I have this idea. And, you know, we, we did a couple ideas that were like, those are great. And then a couple ideas that were like, that was horrible. Let’s never do that again. Rich Birch — Love it. Scott Worthington — And even even through those, you know, some hard conversations with some longtime members that that had some questions. By the way, I think that’s another great tip. Like invite those in. And when somebody’s been at our church for 8, 10, 12, 20 years, and they request a meeting, it’d be really easy for me to be like you know, Come on, old timer. No, man, these are gifted saints who have given so much to this church. Like I would relish a meeting and and a lunch with them, even if it’s hard to hear. Scott Worthington — There were some, there were some like, hey, I got i got some questions on what we’re doing. And ah yeah, I would say, man when when even through some of that, God was continuing to save people here. Our baptism numbers are are higher than they’ve ever been. And I know, you know, I’m pretty hard on myself. So I know the mistakes that I’ve made. I know that, I mean, gosh, anybody who’s listened to this, who knows who Vance is, I don’t say this because I’m on a public podcast. I’ve said this behind closed doors. He’s one of, if not my favorite preacher of this generation. I mean, the dude can preach the paint off the walls. And up until this, this a funny little nugget up until, you know, I wasn’t the preacher here. I wasn’t even the secondary preacher. I was, I preached six or seven times a year. I was the one of the worship guys. I led the creative ministry. And when I began to lead Hope Church, I counted them because they’re all on one file on my computer. I had preached 37 times to adults in my whole life. Scott Worthington — Which, even if you hear that, like, that’s kind of crazy that Vance would hand off the baton to somebody who preached 37 times. So I knew, listen, I need to grow in my preaching. I’ve preached, you know, less than a few dozen times and I’m taking over for one of the greatest preachers ever. And a guy that I’ve sat under is preaching for 16 years and just grown so much. So all of that, and still God’s growing our church. Still people are getting baptized. It shows a couple of things, Rich. It’s not, it has nothing to do with me. It’s all his grace. But also they they do they do trust me.Scott Worthington — There were there were there were elements and and and initiatives we did and things we we we tried and and people showed up and and people were encouraging. And it was like, man, there there are glimpses of God’s grace that they’re with us. Not just me, my my leadership team. And and ah those were pretty evident really early on. And and I praise God for that, man, because those were those were wind in our sails.Rich Birch — I’d love to hear more about what you were doing to grow your preaching. That’s incredible. i think there are oftentimes in a transition like this, the the person that people are looking for is the like, who’s the person that’s been up 20 times a year or whatever. Scott Worthington — Yeah. Rich Birch — So what have you done to grow that side? What’s what’s that development track look like for you?Scott Worthington — Yeah, right in the beginning, I jumped into a I jumped into a preaching cohort that was a kind of a national thing that I that I got a part of. And I got to be a travel a few places with a group of guys for eight months. And and we just we just learned how to be better preachers from some of the best in the world. It was awesome. Scott Worthington — And I’m just a natural learner. And so I’ve just devoured the preaching books. And and then I knew everyone, you can do all that. At the end of the day, it’s reps, it’s reps.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.Scott Worthington — So as I look back at like those first couple months of sermons, I could tell I was I was trying to be, not trying to be Vance. I don’t think I’ve ever done that. But you know trying, it was just a little outside of me. And I praise God for the grace that our church has given me. But I feel like now I’m I’m finally a few years in finding my voice and finding what I’m good at and what I’m not.Scott Worthington — And and and so, yeah, it’s just it’s reps. But then also just learning from the pros, man. dDoing preaching cohorts and, you know, doing, you know, online modules and and and then listening to a ton of preaching and eating the meat, spitting out the bones. And I think all of that maybe just kind of contributed. And and I praise God, I’m still 39 years old and I have more than 37 reps under my belt now, but it’s still not a lot in comparison to many guys listening to this. And I can’t, I joke, I was like, I can’t wait to see the preacher I am at 50 years old. Another 11 years, man, I can’t wait. I can’t wait.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. That’s fantastic. Well, and that is, you know, there’s an interesting tension there I’ve said. So I’m not, um I used to think I was a good communicator and then I worked for some really great communicators. And so then I was like, oh man, I’m not very good at this. But, and so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this part of what we do. And there is an interesting thing where, um like I’ve said to people, when we would have someone come and guest speak, you know I would say, listen, you you can’t ignore the community. The fact that the community has been developed under Vance teaching… Scott Worthington — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and they’re they’re used to that. And so it’s not that you you don’t need to imitate him… Scott Worthington — Yeah. Rich Birch —…but you would you would be dumb to not at least consider that as you’re preaching, right? You need to think through, you can’t be like, oh, maybe something’s totally different because it’s just hard to make that transition. And so you’ve got to at least consider that in the in the transition.Scott Worthington — And the thing with that is, again, because of the nature of our transition, some things just naturally come out, not because I’m trying to be Vance, but it’s because I’ve sat under his teaching for 16 years, right?Rich Birch — Yes, 100%. 100%. Scott Worthington — Like it naturally comes out of me Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Scott Worthington — And it’s not like, oh, he’s copying Vance. It’s like, no, I’m i’m actually being the disciple that God raises up… Rich Birch — I’ve been influenced. Yeah. yesScott Worthington — …in churches that you are in for a long time.Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, 100%, which is great, which is fantastic. So think I want you to put on kind of the theoretical hat. I want you to think about two different groups of people. First, the the successor is kind of the heir apparent sitting in a church today. They’re waiting in the wings. They haven’t been identified maybe even publicly, there’s been some conversation. What would you say to that person to be working on? I know that wasn’t your situation. It was kind of jumped quickly, but I would love to get your thoughts. What would you say to a leader that reaches out to you and asks, you know, hey, what what advice would you give them?Scott Worthington — I would say, yeah, and and just to to rewind real quick, it’s funny, there actually was, when Vance and I were doing our podcast, you know before and after a podcast, there would be these kind of these kind of statements of like, man, one day in eight or nine years when I retire, I think you’re the guy. But again, that was eight or nine years. So there was definitely kind of talks and it seemed like Vance kind of knew at some point, but then when he got the call to go lead the church funding organization, it was it just kind of got you know shifted into into… Rich Birch — Accelerated. Yeah. Scott Worthington — …yeah, accelerated, yeah. So, but I would say, man, in those in those moments, I just I just tried to remain humble and like, God, if if this is if this is what you want, awesome. If if it’s not, I also love what I’m doing.Scott Worthington — One of the things that I think, again, kind of feels weird saying this, but I’ve been you know told this and I do I do affirm it. I think one of the reasons why God opened the door and and put it on Vance’s heart and the leader’s heart at the time to to ask me to step into this is this was not something I was like shooting for. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s goodScott Worthington — And and you know I got one of my best friends got back to plant a church in New York, New York City next year. We’re sending them out in in a couple months. Like he knew from a very early age that God put on his heart to plant a church. I’m not saying that’s bad. I think there are guys listening, people listening to this right now that are like, I am called to plant a church. That’s awesome. Or or called to lead a church. That was just not my story. Scott Worthington — I, whether I was a student pastor or the worship pastor, like I was grateful to be a part of whatever God had me doing. And it’s it’s that idea that Jesus says, right? Being faithful with little and then maybe being entrusted with much. And that doesn’t mean you’re always gonna get the top seat on the organization. But I was just like, okay, Lord, if that if that’s what you have for me one day when Vance retires, awesome. Prepare me now for that. Scott Worthington — And we know, again, back to Joshua and Moses, we know, man, Joshua shows up way back in the story. And he’s just the he’s just the dude that sent out to be a spy. Nobody at the time knew that he was going to be the leader, but God knew. And Joshua was faithful with what he had in front of him. Rich Birch — That’s good.Scott Worthington — Because I also have heard of transitions getting weird where like it doesn’t happen. Right? The heir apparent is like behind the scenes. It’s it’s it’s stamped and then five years come and go. And it’s like, hey, I don’t think this is it. And so if you put all of your eggs and like, I am the guy, rather than just holding it open to be like, Lord, this is what right now seems to be the plan. But you know many are the plans of a man, but the Lord directs the steps. So um yeah, I would say remain humble, remain dependent and ah be faithful in what’s put in your hands now. And if he opens that door, joyfully walk through it because his grace will sustain you.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. And the the other person I’m thinking about is somebody is in like the first 90 days, this transition has just taken place. When you look back to the early days of your transition, either what did you wish somebody said to you? Or maybe here was something that went well. Or, you know, maybe here’s here’s a pothole that I want you to avoid, and particularly in that first window, the first couple months, as you’ve started to walk into that.Scott Worthington — Yeah, it’s kind of the, I feel like pretty, pretty age old advice, but, you know, be careful with how fast you try to change things. I don’t think there’s a couple of things that I did that I definitely would go back and go, hey, that was, that was not, not wise. But I got some, some great advice. I had some great guys around me. And I think you have to listen more than you talk in those early days. You’ve you’ve got to learn, and again, it depends on if you’re the new guy or you’re like me, you came up in the organization, but you’re still now the new at the new seat. There’s still just a lot of learning.Scott Worthington — I mean, I remember the first time I sat down, it was it was before the official transition, of course, but it was it was right right around the summer of ’22 when I first sat down with like the the financial books for the first time. And I’d never seen any of that. And I just knew in that moment, I have so much to learn. That was an area that I just had never even even been in a back room in. And so um it was just, again, that humble posture. Like I have so much to learn here and I need to ask a lot more questions than I need to give directives. I need to ah I need to listen more than I need to talk.Scott Worthington — Of course, there’s moments when I’m leading my staff and all the things where I need to give vision and direction. And I’m not saying abdicate your responsibility as a leader, but um man, you don’t know what you don’t know, especially in those first 90 days. And I would even say six months to a year… Rich Birch — Right. Scott Worthington — …where you’re just learning things. And then I just took a lot of people out to coffee, lot of people to lunch in our church. And I just, I started to ask questions about how they feel about the culture of Hope and how we can grow and how we can get better. Scott Worthington — And yeah, I gave my staff a lot of access. Some people will be like, oh, that’s dangerous. I literally put a glass door in my office and I said, hey, at any point you guys want to swing by if you got questions about what you see. I’ve called them just softball tosses. Like what are those softball tosses that you can do, you know, eating lunch in the break room, if you if you have a break room, or taking your staff to lunch. Because people are looking for you to become now the bougie senior leader that doesn’t have time for the staff.Scott Worthington — At least that’s been in my spirit. Like people are looking like, oh, now, you know, now Scott’s the the top guy. And I just was like, I’ve never been that guy. I’ve never been the the guy that isolates. And so I’m still going to eat my lunch in the break room. I’ll never forget. We had a staff member come in and it was like three weeks after the transition. She said, what are you doing in here? And she was genuinely shocked that I was eating lunch in the break room. And I laughed and I said, I’ve been eating lunch in this break room for 15 years. And and that was an easy win. Like that created a culture. Scott Worthington — And now I eat lunch with our staff in the break room. And I know, you know, depending on the the scope this scope and scale of whoever’s listening, that could be different. But a large church like us, like they they didn’t expect that from me. And so um it was an easy win. So man, look for easy wins. Listen more than you talk and and just be humble that that you’re going to learn a lot in those those early days.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I think the the posture of humility goes a long way. And it’s interesting how those, it’s like a relatively small thing, but like something as simple as like, hey, you know, eat in the break room, I think can can speak volumes to people and earn you chips… Scott Worthington — Yeah. Yeah. Rich Birch — …for then, you know, other things that are coming. Scott, this has been a super helpful conversation. Any last words as we wrap up today’s conversation?Scott Worthington — Yeah, I would just, I think I want to encourage the listeners with what the discipleship that I’ve learned here at to Hope for so long. Because I know, I know, I know, even this morning, ministry leaders can can get so busy that they they start to think, I can skip out on my time with the Lord. And again I just honor Pastor Vance for teaching me this for so many years. It really cannot be said enough that your primary call on your life, if you’re listening to this and you’re in ministry and you got a big role and a big title and a big church, and you’re even a small role, a small title, small church, you have responsibility over people. Jesus was not lying when he said, apart from me, you can do nothing. But if we abide in him, we bear much fruit. Scott Worthington — Dude, it’s crazy as the enemy deceives us into thinking, well, we can skip that part so that I can go make much fruit. You can’t. It’s a dead branch cut off from the vine. You can’t bear any fruit. But connected to the vine, spending that time with Jesus, really cultivating a true, deep relationship with the Lord actually is what produces the fruit. And I don’t know maybe somebody needs to hear that this morning like I need to hear that.Rich Birch — No, that’s fantastic. Scott, thank you so much for being here today, for taking some time to spend with us. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?Scott Worthington — Yeah, hopechurchlv.com, hopechurchlv.com. That’s got all our stuff. And we’re on the socials with all the the same handle, hopechurchlv. And any way we can serve the the greater kingdom, man, we’re down for it.Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much for being here today. I appreciate that.Scott Worthington — Thank you, guys.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Greg Curtis and Tommy Carreras from Climbing the Assimilayas, an organization dedicated to helping churches build systems that move people from first-time guests to engaged disciples. With years of experience working inside and alongside growing churches, Greg and Tommy bring practical insight into one of the most overlooked—and most critical—areas of church health: assimilation. Are people showing up at your church but not sticking? Do you feel like guests are slipping through the cracks despite your best efforts? In this conversation, Greg and Tommy unpack what’s changing about how people engage with church today and how leaders can respond. A seismic shift in why people are coming. // One of the biggest changes in churches is a shift in motivation: people are no longer primarily coming to church for community or life improvement—they’re coming to find God. Where previous generations often needed to be convinced of the benefits of church, many new guests today are already spiritually curious or even actively seeking Jesus before they arrive. Greg shares stories of individuals with no church background who are reading Scripture, watching content like The Chosen, and showing up ready to take decisive steps like baptism. This means churches must recalibrate their approach—not just creating welcoming environments, but facilitating genuine encounters with God. You’re missing more people than you think. // Tommy identifies a foundational issue: most churches are only tracking a fraction of the people actually engaging. Many leaders celebrate the number of new guests they can count, but in reality, they’re missing a significant percentage—especially families checking in children or people who never stop at a guest table. Churches often aren’t lacking opportunity—they’re overlooking it. Recognizing and responding to all entry points into the church is critical if leaders want to move more people toward connection and growth. Stop telling your story—start naming theirs. // A common mistake churches make is focusing on communicating their own story—how the church started, what it believes, and why it exists—rather than connecting with the story of the guest. Guests aren’t primarily interested in your church’s narrative; they’re asking what God might be doing in their life and how your church fits into that. Instead of offering multiple vague next steps, churches should provide clear, guided invitations that help people take one meaningful step forward. When churches shift from “Here’s who we are” to “Here’s how we can help you,” engagement increases dramatically. The first questions every guest is asking. // Every new person is subconsciously asking, “Is there anyone here like me?” That question shapes their experience from the parking lot to the worship service. But today, a second question is emerging: “Is there someone worth imitating?” Guests are looking for more than information—they’re looking for transformation. This has led many churches to create space for prayer, reflection, and personal ministry during or after services. These moments often become powerful connection points where guests experience both God and meaningful relationships with others. People are looking for people—not programs. // Both Greg and Tommy emphasize that guests aren’t primarily searching for better programming—they’re searching for meaningful relationships. That means churches must prioritize relational connection over information delivery. Simple actions—like learning someone’s name, asking thoughtful questions, and creating environments where people feel seen—can have a greater impact than any polished program. Designing clear pathways for connection. // Greg outlines three key journeys every church should consider: from the “screen to the seat” (first-time attendance), from the “seat to the circle” (relational connection through groups, teams, etc.), and from the “circle to the street” (living out faith in everyday life). Each stage requires intentional environments and clear next steps. Without these pathways, guests may attend once or twice but never fully engage. Every response is a sacred opportunity. // Tommy closes with a powerful reminder: every form submission, every piece of contact information, every small step a guest takes is a miracle. People don’t casually give their information—they do so because something significant is happening in their life. When churches fail to follow up or steward those moments well, they’re not just missing a system—they’re missing a person God is drawing. Leaders must treat every interaction as sacred and respond with urgency, care, and intentionality. To learn more about Climbing the Assimilayas, access their free assimilation audit, or explore their Sherpa Tribe coaching community, visit assimilayas.com. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: SermonDone Hey friends, Sunday is coming… is your Sermon Done?Pastor, you don’t need more pressure—you need support. That’s why you need to check out SermonDone—the premium AI assistant built exclusivelyfor pastors. SermonDone helps you handle the heavy lifting: deep sermon research, series planning, and even a theologically aligned first draft—in your voice—because it actually trains on up to 15 of your past sermons. But it doesn’t stop there. With just a click, you can instantly turn your message into small group guides, discussion questions, and even kids curriculum. It’s like adding a research assistant, a writing partner, and a discipleship team—all in one. Try it free for 5 days. Head over to www.SermonDone.com and use promo code Rich20 for 20% off today! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. We have got repeat guests on the call, which you know what that means. These are people I love dearly and who I know have so much that they can help you with. You’re going want to stay plugged in. In fact, this is one of those areas that I think many of our churches are stumbling on and are not doing a good job. We’re not doing what we should be doing. And that doesn’t just come from like, it’s a hunch. I’ve literally been in dozens of conversations where what these guys have shared literally illuminates our thinking and helps us take steps towards being a more effective church. So you’re going to want to stay tuned stay tuned for the entire conversation. Rich Birch — Super excited to have Greg Curtis and Tommy Carreras with us. They’re with an organization called Climbing the Assimilayas. Greg is the director of First Steps and Content Development Eastside Christian Church, a fantastic church. Been on the podcast a number of of times. They’re a multi-site church with six locations in all the places that make sense, California, Nevada, and Minnesota. Of course, those fit together.Rich Birch — And then Tommy is is the head sherpa at Climbing the Assimilayas. Super excited to have both of you guys on. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.Greg Curtis — Yeah. It’s awesome to be with you, man. Always.Rich Birch — Always fun to connect. Why don’t actually, before we jump in, Tommy, why don’t you tell us about Climbing the Assimilayas? How do you guys help churches? What do you do to come alongside us and help us get better at what what we do?Tommy Carreras — Yeah, I’d love to. Climbing the Assimilayas was started by Greg back when I was brand new in ministry. I was a groups pastor who had just taken over sort of the rest of the pipeline of getting people into groups because I realized I couldn’t get anybody into groups because I wasn’t in charge of anything that was happening before that.Tommy Carreras — So I met Greg in like 2013, 2014. He had just taken over the role of assimilation at Eastside. He kind of designed the role himself when his lead pastor—I’m telling your story now, Greg. Usually you get to tell it.—But his lead pastor, Gene Appel, said, hey, what what do you want to do in this next season? And Greg kind of designed the role based on what he saw was super necessary in the church and also what he was really well designed for.Tommy Carreras — And he was right. Because it was exactly what I needed at the time. It was just trying to figure out what a replicable and scalable system looked like for making things more personal and more effective at getting people to take real next steps. And it sounded really simple, but it was so unbelievably challenging because I just kept getting it wrong myself. And I had no idea where to actually go for advice on any of this. And he started figuring it out, started universalizing some of the principles that were working for him at Eastside and testing those with other churches.Tommy Carreras — I was at his first ever base camp training at Eastside. And so a long friendship began there. And then I just believed everything he said at that point and customized it, contextualized it for ministry and in also Southern California, but a different part. And, you know, it’s California is like five states total. Rich Birch — Right. Sure.Tommy Carreras — So it was much different than Eastside, but also all the principles held up. And so that’s what he’s been doing ever since. I came alongside him a few years ago to sort of throw gas on the fire. I had transitioned out of my role in ministry and started doing a few things with multiple churches. And this was one of them. And it has been a blast to help build these systems in churches that are super hungry for helping people connect, but can’t quite build the systems or just don’t have the models out there that are able to adapt and flex with the changing culture and the changing needs. Because those needs of guests have changed a lot over 12, 13 years.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fantastic. And friends that are listening in, both Greg and Tommy are the kind of leaders that I just say, you should just do what they say. Like, just listen to what they’re doing and do it. And you’d be amazed at the results that we’ve seen at churches all across the country. And so you’re in for a treat of a conversation today. Rich Birch — Greg, since we last talked, so I think that was maybe a year ago, maybe 18 months ago, what have you continued to notice that’s maybe different around how people are engaging, connecting? We’re talking about getting first time guests, the kind of people that are arriving, trying to help those people get assimilated, get connected. What what have you noticed maybe something that’s that’s maybe different in the way people are engaging right now that’s different than maybe even a year or two ago?Greg Curtis — Yeah, over a crescendo over the last two years has been remarkable in its shift towards—this is going to sound crazy because we’re talking to churches—they’re wanting God now. And what I what I mean by that is prior, we were having to sell the benefits of following Jesus, most growing churches, which there are, and I think it was a compelling thing to share with the culture.Greg Curtis — And so people were coming to church to find community, to find help with parenting, to find support in marriage or to, you know, a variety of different things. And so the draw and and what was causing people to engage with church was really what can, what help in my life? How can I increase the quality of my life? Maybe even get some pretty powerful pain points addressed.Greg Curtis — This has shifted. I’ll put it in the terms of our um our young adult pastor. His name is Charles. He came to me. He said, Greg, prior to a few two, three years ago, maybe not even that long. He said, young adults were coming, 80% of them to find friends and community, and about 20% to find God. He goes, it’s flipped. It’s flipped. Now it’s 80% God and 20% community.Greg Curtis — And that has expressed itself in some remarkable ways. I’ll just throw two out. At the end of last year, i was covering somebody, ah a pastor who was gonna baptize somebody after the service. He had to be gone, so I said, yeah, I’ll cover it. So in our context, I’ll meet that person ahead of time and kind of show him where to sit in the service, when to come out, where the baptistry is, et cetera.Greg Curtis — And I met her, she was 28 years old, named Connie. And I said, as we’re walking through the baptistry, so, you know, I asked these typical questions, how how long have you been coming to Eastside, which is my church? And ah she says, oh, I’ve I’ve never been to Eastside.Greg Curtis — And was like, oh, so you’re from our online campus? And she goes, no, I’ve never really heard of Eastside. And I said, well, what’s led you to be baptized today?Rich Birch — Right.Greg Curtis — And this was her story. She goes, I grew up in a very non-religious home and I’ve I’ve never been to church. And I have, I vowed I’d never even date a religious person, but I had some friends three months ago that invited me to watch The Chosen with them.Greg Curtis — I didn’t want to. I got I was mad at myself for getting engaged after the first episode. Kept watching. Decided to buy myself a Bible two months ago. I started reading the Old Testament and New Testament concurrently and decided, I love Jesus and I want to follow him. And I could tell what I needed to do was get baptized. But get this. I’m the game day operations coordinator for the NFL. So I work on Sundays. And I just Googled who would baptize me on a Saturday. And your form came up and I filled it out. So here I am.Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.Greg Curtis — Yeah. And and I’ll tell you what. She didn’t know, Rich, that this baptism was going to be in front of other people until we were in the water and the whole church was looking at her.Rich Birch — Wow. That’s incredible.Greg Curtis — Okay. The questions she had, we’ve we’ve remained in touch. The questions she asks are so precious. I mean…Rich Birch — So good.Greg Curtis — …but I’m telling you, I met with somebody, I’ve had a few of those that are similar. That one’s pretty dramatic, but are very similar. No background at all. They’re coming because they’re having a God moment before they get to us.Rich Birch — Yeah. Greg Curtis — And that’s a big shift because God is doing something literally worldwide and in our culture right now that they’re coming to us to find God and and they’re already they’re already encountering him in some way and they need help with that and want it. And that’s a huge shift.Rich Birch — Yeah, I would agree. I’ve seen that in our context, in our church, so my specific home church that I’m a part of, Connexus. I’ve seen that at our church. We’ve seen it in the churches we work with. There is a um a measurable change in the way, kind of the state that people are at when they arrive. You know, that the way I’ve said, echoed similar to what you’re saying there, Greg, is like, There used to be, you know, you and I are of a certain age. I can remember a time when, you know, people would kind of stumble into church and they, you know, they were there for all different kinds of reasons. And, you know, we had to hold their hand for a long time. Rich Birch — But it seems like now people are arriving and they have ah It’s like a God question on their heart that they’re looking for an answer for. It’s they’re, they’re arriving already asking something significant. And, you know, we’ve got to meet them there. We can’t, we can’t just leave that.Greg Curtis — So get get this. I’ve often, I think I’ve probably said this on your podcast before, but for for our church, Christmas is our Super Bowl. It’s our number one outreach event for the year. Traditionally, we’ve gotten 18% of our guest leads from Christmas for for the year.Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.Greg Curtis — Okay. But yeah, but we tried something in light of this. Because we’re we’re we’re looking at this and trying to meet God in in this. And we did something we have never done at Christmas services. And that’s, we it’s so counterintuitive. We invited people, we just shared the gospel. If you want to be baptized right now, We’ll do it.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.Greg Curtis — And we have never done that because, and and you’ve heard me say i Christmas guests are different than other guests of the year. They’re not there to find God. They’re there because Aunt Sally invited them to a Christmas service before the dinner and gift exchange. So they’re on their way someplace. They’re not going to do anything. And we just thought, let’s just try it. Rich Birch — RightGreg Curtis — And it probably, we we were we were prepared for, we thought maybe, you know, we’re a church of, I don’t know, 12-, 15,000 today. We thought maybe we’d get 120 people to respond, but we prepared for 200 just in case. We had 399 people… Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. That’s incredible. On Christmas Eve. Greg Curtis — …get baptized by coming to a Christmas service, not knowing that they were going to do that.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible.Greg Curtis — So that just that that just illustrates there’s a seismic spiritual shift going on. And I think meeting guests there is going to be very smart for us in this hour.Rich Birch — Yeah, and I want to, that’s a great place to start. I think sets up, tees up the conversation we will be having today, which is, friends, I think a lot of our churches could be missing some of these folks as they’re as they’re connecting. And I want to really mine from you guys. You guys are the experts on this. You interact with a lot of churches. I want to mine for our our listeners some help for them. So Tommy, from your vantage point, you work with churches across the country where we’re asking questions like this.Rich Birch — How do we get these people plugged in? How can we help these first time guests take steps towards ultimately groups, teams, get plugged into whatever it is that we’re trying to get them plugged in. Where do you see that leaders keep getting stuck when it comes to helping people take their next steps beyond this kind of first weekend? Where do we keep stumbling? What do you see consistently bubbling up in the churches that you’re working with?Tommy Carreras — Yeah. Yeah, there’s a few really specific things. And the first one is, first of all, we always have to move as far left or as far up, however you’d like to think, left to right, top to bottom. We have to move all the way to the left or all the way to the top. And the problem is there aren’t enough people in your funnel in the first place.Tommy Carreras — We’ve talked about this before, but a really, really popular church that I’ve been talking to a lot recently, and working with—by “popular”, I mean it’s growing, it’s a few thousand, so it’s there’s something there, obviously, and really popular online pastor. Not not super duper 2 million followers, but like quarter of a million. That’s a lot. Right. And just a wonderful guy. Right. Tommy Carreras — They announced really proudly recently that they had 1300 new people in the last year and their church of 25 to 2800. And I, looked him and said, guys, guys, that’s not even half of how many new people walked in the door. And they just looked so con confused.Tommy Carreras — They’re like, that’s a great number. I’m like, that’s a that’s a great number. It’s a really bad percentage, though. And it’s just wrong. Doesn’t matter if it’s good, bad, ugly.Rich Birch — Right.Tommy Carreras — It’s just wrong. The idea is most often we’re trying to help people take next steps, but we’re just looking at half or less than half of the actual people that are there. And so if we can’t get the top of the funnel right and recognize who’s there, and some of that is just missing the data that we do have. You can give this one away… If you’re not treating your new families like new guests, you’re ignoring them. You’re not missing them. You’re ignoring them because they’re giving you all the info. They’re giving you all the info besides their social security number, right? We need all their info for having their children. And we’re just missing that opportunity usually because we don’t treat them like, well, they didn’t go to the new guest table. But well, who cares? Bring the new guest table to them, right? Just bring it over there and treat them as such. And so that’s a huge one. That’s 30 to 40% of your new guest leads are actually coming in through kids. And so we have to stop ignoring those people.Tommy Carreras — But also it’s all about that invitation. If we can’t get that invitation right originally, then we’re always going to be looking at less than the actual amount. And then fewer people are going to take next steps because fewer people are being invited to take next steps. And so the top of the funnel is the first problem. We’re just not dealing with all the information. Tommy Carreras — The bigger sort of meta problem that I think has has been really interesting to watch is that most churches end up trying to tell their story instead of name their guest’s story.Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.Tommy Carreras — And so if you want to go like the StoryBrand route, and if you’re a Donald Miller fan, which I think, Rich, you are a Donald Miller fan, like it, how could you not be, right?Rich Birch — Sure, sure.Tommy Carreras — Like, “Blue Like Jazz” and “StoryBrand”, where does this guy stop? But the idea is we try and play the hero so that they’ll choose us. We’re trying to make sure all our theological ducks are in a row. We need to tell them the story about the incredible call that that God had on this this church planter’s life 23 years ago and that incredible first moment. And and they’re just sitting there going, Okay, that’s really cool…Rich Birch — That’s interesting to you.Tommy Carreras — …but it has nothing to do with them. Yeah, that’s super interesting. And that sounds like a great documentary that I would watch the trailer for. But that’s it. And what we’re not trying to do, though, is name their story, how they might be feeling right now, and how we might play a part in their story.Tommy Carreras — So instead of trying to say, here’s the story of our church, do you want to get on board? Those assimilation environments, whether it’s your “one program”, which is our language for, you know, the the program that you invite somebody to to help them take a next step into belonging and purpose. Instead of trying to name our story as an organization and say, here’s where you can fit into it. We’re trying to say, here’s the story we believe that God is writing in your life. And we might be able to play a part of it. It’s way bigger than us as a church, but we would love to play a part in it. And here’s the specific next thing that we would like to try and do for you because God’s writing your story and it’s a really good one. And we think we can plug in right here, right now.Tommy Carreras — And that’s the other thing. It’s a lot of times we’re just trying to go and here’s all the ways you could connect. And Greg’s been saying this since 2013 when I met him. But, you know, if you give if you give somebody A, B, C and D, they’ll choose E, none of the above. We’re just we’re giving them options and really they want guidance. And so if we can say, hey, here’s the thing that we have found is the best step for most people like you right now. Then they can just say yes or no.Tommy Carreras — And yes or no is great because if they say no, we just downsell and say, well, what do you want? What are you looking for? What what can we help you accomplish in your story and in your life right now? Not what environment do you want to be in? Because they don’t know. They don’t know what the deliverable of a group is. They don’t know why they would do it. We just have to say, what what do you want then?Tommy Carreras — And they say, oh I’m kind of looking for this, this, this. And you go, oh well, this is an environment that might be built just for you. And so we’re just trying to come alongside their story. But most often we’re trying to convince them that our story is really compelling. And that’s just falling way too flat.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. So much there. Unpack. Friends, rewind. Listen to that. There’s good stuff packed in there. Greg, sticking with this idea of options versus guidance, you know, when we’re thinking about a new person that walks into our church this weekend, this season, what do you think they’re actually trying to figure out in those first few weeks? What are the kind of questions that are on their minds that we’ve got to try to guide them towards? What are you seeing in the churches you’re working with? How should we be trying to guide those people?Greg Curtis — Multiple thoughts come to mind with that one. I’ve always said, and I do think that it’s still true, that the number one question when any of us are in a new environment is, and we’re not conscious of it really, but we look around and is there anyone here like me? And that’s that’s the inner question everybody is asking whenever they go to someplace that’s foreign or new to them. And that, you know, in a church context, that starts in the parking lot.Greg Curtis — And that sounds unusual. But if you’ve if you’ve driven in in on your motorcycle and every other car is a Mercedes and a Beamer, when you pull up, you know, you start to feel other than. And it’s people just look around, is is there somebody here like me? Greg Curtis — And I do think, like I had mentioned before, they are trying to figure out if this is a place where I can encounter God. So I do think we need to calibrate our services in such a way that they do encounter God. And I think that there’s a shift and I can’t wait to see how it gets ferreted out. But the shift in worship that needs to be happening is not just singing great praise songs and, having compelling announcements and and great teaching that is given to you, but having moments where they they actually feel like they’re encountering God, you know what I mean, in some way. And not that he’s not encountered, you know, through his word and and and and in worship. But um you know, ah creating a little bit of space ah for that, I think, going to actually speak to what they’re trying to figure out, which is, okay can I figure out God here? I have so many questions.Greg Curtis — And when they encounter God, that covers a multitude of sins, so to speak. Like, they may have three burning questions, but when if they actually encounter God, the questions almost go into the backseat because, oh my gosh, I just I sense God here. And when I say this, I’m not being theoretical. I just met with a gal, another 28-year-old, yesterday. And again, no church back when whatsoever.Greg Curtis — Her father was Jewish. She passed away a year ago. And she just feels orphaned and started looking for God and started watching us online for two weeks and then came and got baptized her first week she came because we happen to be doing one of those baptism things that we do maybe five times a year.Greg Curtis — And so we sat down, she had her little Bible that we print. It’s one of these few dads that we make. We call it a Bible, but we just print out text for the Bible because we’re doing an Old Testament survey kind of thing called the Old Testament Junk. But she’s she’s like, I think I should get it. Like she just figured out that’s not actually a Bible. And she what what Bible should I get was her first question.Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Right.Greg Curtis — Her other second question. because I said, you got a real pastor of front of you. Where do where do you which what kind of Bible should I get? The second one was, how do you pray?Rich Birch — Love it.Greg Curtis — This is the kind of stuff that as we were growing up, you said we were men of a certain age, that we used to anticipate and dream that people would ask us these incredible discipleship questions, like the disciples asked Jesus, Lord, how do we pray? And he gives them Lord’s Prayer. And we were prepared for those questions, but we were unprepared for a culture that was pretty disinterested. And so we’ve gone to the other paths I mentioned before. But now they’re asking the questions that we we are very prepared to answer, but I think we’re just got a little unused to it. And we need to put those things right in our pocket again because they’re asking. Greg Curtis — And so those are the kinds of of things that that they’re looking for in their first few weeks. And I think they’ll gauge and they are gauging our church by different things than they were a couple of years ago. You know, yeah, sure we have our kids program needs to be good and safe. You know, and and and we can’t do a sloppy job, you know, as we worship God corporately. But they’re gauging it by is God here? Am I meeting him? How can I connect with him? And that is just a very beautiful thing to see happen. That’s a great shift.Rich Birch — You know, I kind of sticking with that. One of the things I’ve been doting as I’ve been interacting with churches across the country is something that a friend of mine, Jeff Brody, lead pastor at Connexus has said. He talked, he’s talked about how we’re trying to offer what we’ve been calling accessible encounter, that it’s like we are trying to, so he wouldn’t say this next part, I’m saying this, so I don’t want to put words in his mouth.Rich Birch — But, um you know, i come from I come from the attractional church movement. That would be my background. Happy to say that that is my background. I know you’re not supposed to admit that, but that’s where that’s my background. It’s like you’re not supposed to say or that’s who it is.Rich Birch — And you know, what we were trying to do there was trying to connect with people who don’t normally attend church. And that’s still our heart. That’s still what we’re trying to do. But what we’ve realized is people are looking for an encounter with God that is that does go beyond. It transcends like, here’s three great ideas for this week at work or whatever. It’s it’s like, hey, I’m coming with real questions.Rich Birch — And so people are looking for something in the service that does have a transformational experience or an encounter to it. Sticking with you for a second, Greg, do you see that trend? So we’re doing more, I’m seeing more churches doing more kind of prayer stuff at the altar, end of the service experience, light these candles if you’re praying for that, fill out this card and post it on the cross. More of those kinds of experiences than I’ve seen before. What do you think about that, Greg?Greg Curtis — No, I feel that too. But that do you know what that does, is it shifts me into one thing I didn’t say is, I also think they’re looking for a person, a resource that they can talk to also. Tommy Carreras — Yeah.Greg Curtis — And I think that when we have those after church like prayer moments, like what what how that’ll look at our church is, and we’ve we’ve decided for this very reason to increase the frequency of them because we didn’t do them often. Now we’re doing them a little bit more regularly, more cyclically. But we we’ll have a prayer team, and I love being on the prayer team that’s at front afterwards because of the content that we were talking about.Greg Curtis — And lines will form of people, and we just pray for them and and talk to them and look in their eyes and sometimes connect them to resources if you know, that’s appropriate. But we just watch the people just line up for that, you know. And I just think people are looking for also a person or a guide, you know, that they could ask some questions of. Rich Birch — Right.Greg Curtis — And so I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who’s, I think he’s 31. And um his name is Kellen. Love this guy. He’s a leader on staff at a church in Georgia. And his thing, and I’m not saying this is the answer, but because I don’t think anybody knows the answer right now, because all of this, there’s not, and it’s really multiple answers, right? It’s just a bunch of things. But I’ll throw this in as an ingredient in the thought soup, you know, that’s percolating right now on all this. He was saying, especially with all the younger people returning to church, he that he sees a shift in the attractional church model maybe that may be happening over the next five years, where instead of the worship service being the attractional event, and then we get them assimilation-wise into small groups and ministry teams, that it it may be the reverse of that.Greg Curtis — Where because they’re looking for God in a person, they end up in somebody’s home at, at a, something that may look like a small group, as we think of them, and conversations over coffee. And they get so enraptured in it that it starts there. And then it ends kind of like my friend, Connie, who, who came the NFL gal, it ends at your church. It doesn’t start there. That’s the shift. It starts to end there. And that may mean in the future, our attractional church model and worship may shift to something that’s unapologetically for those who are following and seeking Jesus, not trying to get them to. And that’s a big shift. So so the the the river flow may be shifting. And I just think that’s an interesting thought. It’s been in my head for a while.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Tommy Carreras — I think it’s so funny that you mentioned that people are looking for a person, because I was hoping to jump in and say, I think that all of this is like they’re looking for people, not experiences. Rich Birch — Right.Tommy Carreras — And so thank you for for going there. The question that came to mind, because I’ve always loved your question to to remind us how simple and basic the initial need of a guest is. Anybody in any new scenario, is anybody here like me? I think the question that they’re asking next, is anyone here worth imitating? Because also imitation, imitation is the way we learn. It’s the way we grow. It’s why Jesus is a, is a person we follow, not a doctrinal set of beliefs that we adhere to. Tommy Carreras — That’s not the point. The point is the person we follow and the people we’re becoming and everybody wants to become someone better. And that’s not actually a legalistic gross, like, Oh, you’re just prideful. No, no, no. We’re designed to be phenomenally wonderful people that look like Jesus. That’s what our, our actual heart’s desire is. Tommy Carreras — And so if God’s leaning into that desire in people, then their first question is going to naturally be, is anybody here worth imitating? And we can’t tell people that we’re worth imitating. We can only show them that we’re worth imitating. And how do we show them? We walk up to people we don’t know and say, Hey, I don’t think I know you yet. And you deserve to be known. I’m Tommy. What’s your name? And just take it from there. Tommy Carreras — That’s somebody that’s worth imitating. That is somebody that’s confident and inviting and welcoming and kind and compassionate and interested and curious. That’s who I want to be. And so I’m going to naturally say, oh, if that’s the first person I met here, what are all these other people like? This could be wonderful.Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — Yeah.Tommy Carreras — And so I think those two questions really build the the exact desire set, or at least the first initial desires of somebody who’s who’s coming to church, especially somebody who’s explicitly coming to get to know God and to be the best version of themselves. And they’re they’re actually saying, and I think God defines what that best version looks like. That’s like the best news ever for churches. But we tend to miss it because we design for information transfer and not relationship building. And that’s just not what they’re looking for.Greg Curtis — Yes.Rich Birch — So sticking with that, Tommy, I’d love to, I’d love you to unpack that a little bit. Think of maybe I’m a church of a thousand. So it’s, you know, this thing’s got some energy behind it. And I want to design this, these kind of initial first steps. I want to design our weekend experience and then whatever I’m asking for people to make, to try to get them towards some relationship and get them towards some people. What are some of those initial things that we should be thinking about to try to help them take those first couple steps? What are some of the, these initial steps. Again, picture a church of maybe a thousand. What’s that look like? So it’s gotta be done at scale.Rich Birch — I love the idea of like, you know, I could note people in the room who I don’t know, but like, we all know you get up over a couple hundred and it’s like, I don’t know. By the time you get to a thousand, you look around your lobby and you’re like, I don’t know any of these people. Like I don’t know who any of these people are.Tommy Carreras — I don’t know any of these people. Yeah.Rich Birch — So how do we, how do we build a system for lack of a better word that helps us move people towards that?Tommy Carreras — Yeah, I think that first we have to get clear on our goals as a team and we have to get clear on every environment’s goal and make sure there is an environment for every step of the journey. Nobody’s just going to take a big swing. Right. And also we, I would love to live in a place and and be in a church where this is just like, I don’t have to design any systems because all the people just naturally do it. Tommy Carreras — And I would say that often, like I want to, I want to, I want our church to be a church where we don’t even need a group connection event because everybody gets invited to a group personally. And that wasn’t because I was actually hoping that would be a realistic thing. I was trying to set such a clear picture of my actual goal that we could just move 5% in that direction. We could get 20% of our people invited instead of going through a connection event. That would be awesome. Even 5% is better than zero. Tommy Carreras — And so I tried to set ah a visionary goal just for the sake of the culture building. But we have to build the systems and and be really obvious about it because people are also walking in with baggage and they’re walking in with a clear picture and they’re they’re asking to be proved wrong in most cases. Well, i don’t know about in most cases, but in plenty cases, they’re they’re hoping they’re proved wrong. Tommy Carreras — Well, church people just like each other. Well, church people are going to judge the places that don’t have it together yet. Lightning is going to strike when I walk in the door. I’m not actually going to be useful here. I’m going to be a burden. All of those things, that’s the baggage they’re walking in with, not just because of church hurt, because of life hurt. And that is exactly why we’re here, to meet that and say, that’s actually a lie. That’s actually a lie from the father of lies. And you’re here to meet the good father that has only truth for you. And I’m going to show it to you. Tommy Carreras — But we need the systems and the environments that build it correctly and that that lean toward those and produce those kinds of relationships or relational touch points. We need to set clear goals and we need to be relentless in our invitation into those environments. So just having a new here sign on a booth is not an invitation. It’s information. But when my favorite way to announce, for example, which should be an announcement, every single service, hopefully twice in the service. Hey, if you’re new here or you consider yourself new here, and if if you haven’t done this yet, we’d love you to go have a conversation at this place. We want to put this gift in your hands or this something and, and, and here’s what I would always say. And if you’re thinking that the free mug is a bribe to get to know you, you are exactly right. The mug is great, but what’s better is that we think you’re worth knowing and we want to make sure that you have every opportunity to have a familiar face next time you walk in the door.Tommy Carreras — Not, we want to meet you because it’s part of our organizational goal to identify this many guests so that hopefully you give at some point. That’s not a great message. The great message is you’re worth knowing. We think you deserve a familiar face who calls you by name next time you walk in the door. And hopefully also there’s going to be a next time. And we’d like to ensure that there’s a next time. So yes, it’s a bribe. All we want to do is get to know you. We stop by the place. Tommy Carreras — And that, that really worked because also we’re not being slick. We’re being honest. We’re being vulnerable. We’re being transparent. We’re saying we’re just here to do this and whatever it takes to get you there. That’s great. You can leave the mug. The point is we would love to get to know you because you’re worth knowing. And so we’re trying to make sure those environments exist. And then we also have to follow it up. Tommy Carreras — And that means training people training. empowering volunteers to actually accomplish the goal as opposed to accomplish what they think is the goal, but never really was. And so if they’re like, I got to sell the church. Nope. No, no, no. You got to remember their name and ask three personal questions about them. That’s my, that’s my goal for you. Just do that. Tommy Carreras — And if they come to the next thing, like we’ll, we’ll get them to the next thing. You got to mention the program that we want them to come to. That’s fine. They’re not going to come next week anyway. They’re not ready for that. Just get to know them. Rich Birch — That’s good.Tommy Carreras — And so we’re setting real goals and making them very attainable for those volunteers. And then we’re also doing it ourselves in staff and we’re not hiding in the green room, just a little note. But you know, if you’re on staff and you’re hiding in the green room, you know, would fix that. Just fix it.Rich Birch — Yeah, exactly. Stop doing that. I love that. So super tactically, Greg, because we’re talking, we talked, you brought up the ethical bribe. I like to call it the like, Hey, we’ve got a great coffee mug or a water bottle. And you know, it’s one of those things. I love how you framed that, Tommy. Cause I like, think that’s a, that’s a great way even just to like unpack this exactly what we’re trying to do. I think that’s fantastic.Rich Birch — Greg, you’ve helped us think, you’ve helped me think so clearly around um how are we collecting people’s contact information, which is just the start of the of the relationship. Like we’re I think sometimes we can get that turned upside down. It’s like we’re trying to hit the metric because for some metric reason. No, no, it’s ultimately about trying to start a relationship. What are you learning about the timing, the context of all of that, of that kind of part of the service that we’re asking when we’re giving them? You know, what is the ethical bribe, all of that?Rich Birch — What are you learning these days for this very tippy top part of the transaction we’re talking about, the very first step? Is there anything that you’re learning there that we should be thinking differently about?Greg Curtis — I don’t I don’t know. I’m always cautious about saying what I’m learning as if it’s been learned. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — I think that we are experimenting with some new things in light of this. And I would say that one of the big shifts is it’s look, how do I say it? In light of everything we’ve said already about them looking for God, right? And not just life help. They, I think looking at their discipleship, there’s an old word, you know, but they’re they’re learning to follow Jesus, right? Their discipleship, becoming a follower of Jesus. We have always looked at that through just a biblical theological doctrinal lens. Like, do they know this? Have they done that kind of thing? Greg Curtis — And I think it’s an interesting thing to look at it through the journeys that they experience at at when they come into a new church from their angle. So I call them, I’ve said this before, I think to your crowd, but I call those three journeys the journey from the street to the seat, which really became from the screen to the seat after COVID.Greg Curtis — Right. Like I mentioned, the gal I met with ah on Sunday, she had already attended our church twice online before she had come. And many churches I have talked to, their average is about four times that they’ve attended your church online. But that journey from, say, the screen to the seat where they’re ah they’re seeing you on their television. But then it’s the parking lot, the greeters, the info counter, kids checked in, ushers, whatever. Right. That journey is is so important. Greg Curtis — And that journey is about but ah belonging. But then you get the journey from, ah that’s really the growing journey, which is what they’re there for. And that’s a journey from the seat to a circle. And that’s because the circle is the environment we know works best for somebody to grow, where they’re just kind of FaceTime with people, you know, that in Tommy’s words, they might want to imitate, right? And learn from.Greg Curtis — But it’s so important to get that information. We’re making a big shift where instead of like we’re actually experimenting and saying this for the last few weeks at our church where we’re not collecting their information at all at the at that stage. What we’re doing is saying just come get a free get come get…in our case, we have like a grill where they could get a free meal. Come get a free coffee drink or meal or whatever on us. And we’re we’re not asking them for anything. We’re just creating engagement.Greg Curtis — But we’re starting to shift because we are baptizing, like in our in our case, over the last 15 months, we’ve baptized over 1800 people. And that’s a big that’s a big shift from targeting what I call cold leads to warm leads. You know, you want to get engagement, start collecting stuff and engaging with people when they’ve been willing to get wet in front of people they don’t know, because they made a decision to follow Jesus. That’s a warm lead.Rich Birch — Right.Greg Curtis — Somebody, you know what I’m saying? And in the, in the spirit of the parable of the talents investing where the, you’re starting to see results, you know, in the fruit and just being strategic about that.Rich Birch — Right.Greg Curtis — That’s where we’re pouring in some of our, of our best stuff. We’re experimenting with that. I’m not telling people to do that yet because we don’t know how that’s going to work for us.Rich Birch — Yes.Greg Curtis — So let me just say that in the… Rich Birch — Yes. That’s good. Yeah.Greg Curtis — But moving them from the seat to the circle through that kind of engagement, you know through whatever one program you have, inviting them into a ministry team, a small group. And then that third journey is the journey, you know once it’s belongings established, growing established, then it’s it’s going, the journey about going.Greg Curtis — That’s the journey from the circle back out to the street. And it’s really just equipping people to to not just know Jesus, but to be more like him and to imitate him ultimately, even through their other people examples. And ad I just think that there’s some great environments that we can talk about later that really equip them to do that. Because we may look at the Bible and see, here’s discipleship steps. But from the guest vantage point, it’s their journey from the screen to the seat, the seat to the circle, and the circle back out to the street. And so what environments are we creating?Greg Curtis — And like you said, how are we engaging with them? When do we get their contact info, right? When do we invest in in the engagement? And for us, it it seems a worthy experiment to shift to, because we are seeing so many baptisms in light of the the huge God interest, is to start it’s like a it’s a it’s a discipleship moment to let the discipleship issues drive when we do what. And look at it through the lens of these journeys that guests experience our church with. Right. So that’s a little bit about, you know, what we’re looking at in there and on the front end.Rich Birch — Love it. Well, I friends who are listening in, I was really hoping that you’ll take steps to get connected with Greg and Tommy. We’ve talked about a bunch of stuff. The problem with these things is, man, we can just keep going. And like, there’s so much in this that I find fascinating and, you know, I’ve always loved when people connect. Rich Birch — I do want to kind of pivot and talk a little bit about how you guys help churches. So first, maybe Tommy, talk to us about, you’ve got this incredible free audit that you’ve made available for folks. Talk to us about the audit. How will it help us? We’ll put a link to in the show notes about it. But I really think 100% of the people that are listening today should take this. This would be a great next step for folks coming out of today. Talk us through this a little bit.Tommy Carreras — Yeah, yeah. One of my favorite things about the audit, because it’s it’s a brand new tool that we just rolled out. Because we had a 63-point checklist before, and it was phenomenal. I worked through every item on that checklist…Rich Birch — Yes.Tommy Carreras — …when Greg initially rolled it out a long time ago. And what we did was we took our own medicine and said, how do we reorganize this instead of around an organizational checklist of do we have the features that we think are valuable? Instead, we said, well, what what milestones are going to help a guest on their journey. And so we, we organize the assimilation audit around the three journeys of the guest, not the environments of the church. Tommy Carreras — Now the audit does say, well, this is an environment that meets them in this thing that they’re looking for on their journey, but, do you have the environment? Is it working? Is the main question usually is, is it actually working? And we give you some actual markers around whether or not it’s working. Because the the reality is you have the programs, you have the ingredients, you have the volunteers, you probably have a great Sunday experience. And yet all the people are still disappearing or at least most of them. And they’re, the problem is they do it quietly. They don’t write in and tell you… Rich Birch — Right. Tommy Carreras — …by the way, I left because I didn’t find somebody that I could imitate quickly enough because what I really had was all this baggage from this… They don’t tell you any of that. You just never knew they were even there. Rich Birch — So true. Tommy Carreras — And so what we’re trying to do is look at the experience and go based on all the churches that we’ve worked with, Greg, for over 12 years and seeing this happen over and over and over and seeing the remarkable consistency in the issues and the challenges. We said, here are the leakage points in the system. And some of them are pretty surprising. Some of them are super obvious. But what this will do is actually help you audit the effectiveness of those experiences, organized by what the guests are hoping they experience. They’re desperately hoping you can provide for them on their journey.Tommy Carreras — And the best part about it, honestly, like it’s a Google doc right now. That is, I’m just giving you that admission because also it’s not a fancy tool that I vibe coded like Rich recently vibe coded one of his really cool assessment tools. I haven’t done that yet. And the the reality is though, it’s a Google doc because also you should write some notes on this thing and you should sit around it as a staff and share it and have real conversations.Tommy Carreras — Cause the, the, the gold of this audit is going to be in the conversation and the arguments: No, I think it’s red. No, it’s yellow. It’s doing okay. But what about this person? What about this person?Rich Birch — That’s good.Tommy Carreras — Will somebody go pull up the numbers? Because the numbers… That’s where the gold is in the audit. And it’s, I mean, it’s a lot. It’s a lot of stuff to dig through in your system because it’s 49 points. It’s 49 stops along the way on those three journeys. But you’re going uncover so much. And then I think that it’ll give you a really clear pathway toward, okay, well, here’s what we should do first. Rich Birch — That’s good.Tommy Carreras — And that might be the most important thing about it.Greg Curtis — I would just say, too, on that point that for your listeners, if you’re at a point where you are either feeling alone in in wanting to see a breakthrough in engagement or you have a team and you guys are just kind of spinning your wheels and you have the same results all the time and wanting to see them increase and they really don’t that much, this thing is do it for a few weeks together in meetings. It will invigorate. And you’ll do it do it with a team, even if if ah ah but ah a team of key volunteers yeah in a smaller context.Greg Curtis — But make a day retreat or something out of it and really go through it. And you will find that you, oh my gosh, you can shake out all of the obstacles, all the pain points and weaknesses. It will be very, very helpful and rejuvenating. And it’s free. So there’s that.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Yeah, and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. I really do think this would be a great next step for everybody who’s listening in. Super helpful. Great. It’s crazy that it’s free to me. You know, don’t don’t trash talk that it’s just a Google Doc. Like, man, a lot of intelligence built into that that, you know, we want people to take.Rich Birch — And then the second thing, Greg, could you tell us about the Sherpa tribe? Because I think there are people, well, I know there are churches that are listening in that, you know, you talked about earlier, there was this, you know, hey, there’s 1300 guests or or, you know, sorry, Tommy was talking about the fact there’s 1300 guests at this church, and they should have had a lot more. That has been my experience with 100% of the churches that I’ve talked to around these issues, we’re missing people. So how does the Sherpa tribe help with that? How does that actually help us find those guests, get them to stay, get them to serve and to start growing? What does that look like?Greg Curtis — Well, alongside of looking at the guest journeys in these three ways that I earlier described, we we find that each church, once they do the audit, has a different weakness. You know what I mean? Some of them are common, right? But they ah they’re at their own place and shoring up and strengthening different aspects of that journey. Greg Curtis — And so what we did is we took our video course, which was one of our mainstays, and we started breaking it up and creating a ton more videos that breaking up around 10 minutes and then creating action points for each one and allowing ah people who become part of our Sherpa tribe—which you can go to assimilayas.com and click on Sherpa Tribe, find out more—to to to go right where they need it and study the things and action points that they need. Go deep in that. And then weekly meet with Tommy or I, with other people just like them from around the country and beyond that in these Zoom sessions where there’s no agenda but you. Rich Birch — Right.Greg Curtis — And you bring your questions and what you’re struggling through in this. And we have the most dynamic and fun conversations that create breakthroughs for teams through those through those Zoom moments. Tommy, would you add anything to that?Tommy Carreras — No, I think the the other the other piece of the puzzle that’s so powerful is we’ve seen the we’ve seen the best results from the folks who haven’t just jumped in to go like, I got to shore up a thing and get some information and and then get out and then you know milk it for all it’s worth and just get in.Tommy Carreras — What they’re really, that the churches who are getting the most out of it are the ones who say, this is the year where we fix this. Greg Curtis — Yeah, yeah.Tommy Carreras — This is the year where we look different at the end of it. This is the year that our staff gets it. There are no more people just sitting around in workflows or process queues 29, 42, 83 days overdue. That is the biggest crisis that we could have now because we all get it. We’re speaking the same language and we’re serving each other and we’re doing all these things to shore up all of these systems because it’s not just one person. And most likely it’s most people’s second or third job on their actual plate. Tommy Carreras — And so we’re trying to skip them up to third base on all of these different kind of sections of their assimilation system. And we’re trying to give them the people and the contextualization that’s going to make it come to life for their entire team. But it’s it’s the churches that go, we’re going to make it this year is going to be the one where things change.Tommy Carreras — And they they dive in and they go, I’m going to commit to this thing because they believe that it’s a keystone. It’s almost like a keystone habit. We fix this. Everything else is going to make more sense in our church. And that’s assimilation is a mindset and ah a sort of almost a belief system, not just a couple different environments in our church or a couple different process cues. And so those are the churches that are really crushing it inside the tribe.Rich Birch — Yeah, that that’s fantastic. And friends, again, we’ll link to that. It’s assimilayas.com where you can you know connect more with Tommy, with Greg, with everything that they’re they’re doing. And you know super hearty endorsement from me. You guys do great work and I think it’s super helpful for many churches. This is one of these areas that if we don’t keep an eye on over time, we’re just missing people. We’re missing people taking steps closer to Jesus.Rich Birch — Tommy, why don’t I give you the last word here? Any kind of last encouragement as we wrap up today’s episode that you’d like to share with listeners who are you know thinking about these issues? Obviously, these people are the better part of an hour in. What would you say to them as we wrap up today’s call?Tommy Carreras — Yeah. I was at a church recently and they I was working on mostly data with them. Okay. And they said, hey do you want to talk to the staff for 20 minutes? And I said, okay, sure. Random. I’m going to try and convince them that data matters. And that they okay, they should love their church management software at the end of this 20 minute talk.Tommy Carreras — And by the end of it, they did actually. They believed me. But the whole idea was I led with there’s a whole bunch that got to it, but the the crux at the end was every form response. Every time somebody gives us their information is a miracle. God has moved heaven and earth since before time began to get them to put their name, email, and phone number on that stupid Planning Center form. And it’s a dang miracle.Tommy Carreras — And if that’s true, then every single person in a queue or a workflow or a form, you know, submission, whatever you call in your church management software, that is a sacred opportunity and a massive burden of leadership on our shoulders.Greg Curtis — Yeah.Tommy Carreras — And every red light overdue, 23 days not started, all of those are massive warning signals in our ministry. All because it’s a miracle that anybody would say yes to anything. And how could we not do everything in our power to lean in meet them there and steward their next step and get them across the gap that they are not going to and may not be able to cross on their own.Tommy Carreras — That’s the opportunity ahead of us. And it’s just sacred. And I hope that we don’t miss it.Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, thank you so much, guys. really appreciate you being on the show. Again, that’s assimilayas.com. We’ll link to all of that, but appreciate you being here today. We’ll have to have you on again in the future because this is such an important area, but appreciate you being here today. Thank you. Tommy Carreras — Thanks, Rich.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Brandon Boyd, Executive Pastor at Quay Church in Windermere, Florida—one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. What began as a struggling congregation marked by multiple splits has experienced dramatic renewal and growth since a 2022 replant under Lead Pastor Luke Lazon. Is your church experiencing rapid growth that feels both exciting and overwhelming? Wondering how to scale systems, structure, and culture without losing spiritual health? Tune in as Brandon shares how Quay Church is stewarding momentum while building clarity, accountability, and lasting impact. From flat structure to scalable leadership. // When Brandon arrived in 2024, Quay had grown from 400 to 1,500 people, but its internal structure hadn’t caught up. Meetings were crowded, decisions were unclear, and Sunday services were running long due to lack of coordination. The church had been operating as a flat organization where everyone contributed to every decision. That worked at a smaller size but became chaotic during rapid growth. Quay implemented tiered leadership levels: elders at 50,000 feet guarding mission and doctrine, an executive team at 40,000 feet solving forward-facing challenges, and a lead team at 30,000 feet ensuring weekly ministry execution. This created clarity in decision-making and allowed the church to scale effectively. Systems in many places leads to excellence. // A guiding philosophy Brandon has is SIMPLE—Systems In Many Places Leads to Excellence. Brandon introduced tools like Asana for project management, Slack for communication, and Otter for meeting documentation. Agendas are shared ahead of time, action items are clearly assigned, and meeting notes are converted into trackable tasks. Each meeting is defined by purpose—innovation, execution, or decision—so participants know what is expected. The tools support clarity, but the real goal is alignment and accountability. Guarding culture during rapid growth. // Growth creates urgency that can easily become chaos. Quay combats this with clearly defined staff values: Kingdom over castles. Nimble over fragile. Sled dogs over show dogs. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Burn the ships. These values act as decision filters. Everyone owns the broader mission, not just their ministry lane. Staff lead by example—serving first, giving first, even parking farther away to prioritize guests. A 2026 staff covenant outlines expectations for spiritual leadership, generosity, and ownership, ensuring alignment as the church continues to grow. Spiritual health beyond attendance growth. // While attendance has surged to nearly 2,700 adults weekly, Brandon points to transformation as the real marker of health. Spontaneous altar ministry has become a defining feature of services—not manufactured, but Spirit-led. People regularly respond in repentance, prayer, and life change. One man publicly confessed infidelity and committed to reconciliation. The church just celebrated 188 baptisms last year, reinforcing that growth is not just numeric but spiritual. Leading through overwhelm. // Brandon closes with a vulnerable reminder: rapid growth can be overwhelming. Leaders must acknowledge that reality rather than pretending to be superhuman. Honest conversations with lead pastors, elders, and trusted peers help prevent burnout. When God calls, He equips—but leaders must stay transparent and supported during demanding seasons. To learn more about Quay Church, visit quaychurch.org or follow @quaychurch on social media. You can connect with Brandon on Instagram at @bgboyd. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe Do you feel like your church’s or school’s facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today, and you’re definitely going to be rewarded for that. Today, we’re talking with a church that I like to say has platinum problems. Like every church wants to be a fast-growing church. They want to be, or you’ll hear leaders talk about in a season where they’re growing, where we’re capturing a church and a leader in the midst of that right now.Rich Birch — And I’m really excited to talk to Brandon Boyd. He is at Quay Church in Windermere, Florida. This is a fast-growing church. It’s one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. He serves as the XP. And I’m really looking forward to unpacking the story a little bit. Tell us a little bit about Quay and the history there, the story, what’s going on. Tell us, bring us up to speed.Brandon Boyd — Yeah, Rich, thanks for having me on the podcast today. Just such a joy to chat with you and tell all the incredible things that the Lord’s doing at Quay. So I’ve only been at Quay for about like 15 months. And so previously, I’m a native Texan, grew up in Dallas, served my home church in Dallas and another church in the Dallas, North Dallas area. And then the Lord transplanted us all the way out here to Orlando, Florida – Windermere, suburb of Orlando, which is on the north side of Disney World, which is pretty fun. And so I’m married and I’ve got three daughters. I live in a sorority, basically, which is really fun. Rich Birch — Love it.Brandon Boyd — And so when the Lord said, hey, I’m taking you to Windermere, was pretty easy yes for our family, for what the Lord had for us. And so, you know, Quay is a little bit of a replant. And so our church was initially started in the early 2000s and went through like two or three church splits. And we shouldn’t really have a church just because of those splits and what was occurring at that time period. Brandon Boyd — And I would say our church got replanted in 2022 when Luke Lazon, who was our young adult pastor at the time when he became the lead pastor. At that time, there was basically like 400 people that were calling our church home. We were known as Lifebridge Church at the time.Brandon Boyd — And then you fast forward to when I got here in May of 2024, we had grown to 1,500 adults. And then this past weekend, we had 2,700 adults with us, and then about 500 kids and students. And so it’s just been a wild ride these last three years. And I’ve just been fortunate to be a part of it in the past like 15 months.Rich Birch — Well I, yeah, I want to acknowledge that, you know, that kind of growth is, it’s exciting and fun and and have lived through similar seasons in the past, but there is also comes with a lot of challenges and a lot of like real world problems. And so I appreciate that you’ve taken time to, you know, help us think through these issues today. And even just before the call started, we were talking about stuff literally from last weekend that was like, well, there’s a new problem. We got to figure that one out. So excited for this. Rich Birch — Well, let’s talk about when you stepped into the role. So you you you arrive, you know, the church is obviously growing, had experienced incredible growth in the couple years before you got here, went from 400 to 1500. When did you realize that maybe not just that it was growing, but maybe the qualitative, the kind of what kind of growth Quay was having was was maybe a little bit different and was kind of going to inform the next couple of years. Help us think through what was that like when you first arrived, unpack that, you know, those first weeks or months.Brandon Boyd — Yeah. So my my first Sunday was Mother’s Day in 2024. And on that day, we had communion, we had baptism, we had a parent-child moment. And I looked up to us and I said, we’re just not communicating well. So we can’t have all these elements in a worship gathering taking place at the same time.Brandon Boyd — And so I started talking with our XP over worship and creative. And I just said, help me understand your planning process through the week. And so I took that first week just to ask a lot of questions like, how are we sitting together? How are we working together? What’s not working? And then what we started to do was start to organize our meetings behind the scenes. So we really took that summer of 2024 and start putting some processes in place that would help us kind of scale up well.Brandon Boyd — And part of that was we use a project management tool on the back end to make sure that everything is operating well. We use Asana. And some of this is what I learned in Dallas with our team there. And I took that and brought it here and scaled it. And so everything runs through a project through us on the back end. Worship is a project. All of our events are a project. And so everybody knows what is expected of them today. What is expected of them tomorrow, two weeks from now. And it’s also our accountability tool.Brandon Boyd — So back to that first Sunday, when we realized that we had all these things going on, Luke still preached for 40 minutes. And then they looked at me and said, Hey, we’re just always over time on our gatherings. Well, everything’s got to be spelled out. And so that was an initial thought that I said, this can’t be the Wild West anymore. Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — Because of the rapid growth that we had going on, knowing that we’ve got natural growth cycles coming up, whether it’s in the fall when school starts, and in January. And that’s kind of what we saw happen at Quay in that first year in 2024.Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s a lot there I want to unpack. And I want to get to meetings and and project management. I want to really dive into some of those details. But one of the things I’ve been, as I’ve kind of watched from afar, what’s happened at Quay, you guys have done a good job balancing the past, even just how you talked about there, kind of balancing, talking about the past, but then you know, projecting forward and kind of casting vision for the future, how did the church’s past really approach your, or has that, ah you know, kind of ah impacted your leadership as you’ve approached leading here in the, even in the current, or as you think to the future, how are those two connected together?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, I think just an axiom I live by is I always want to speak respectfully about the past, be honest about what’s going on presently, and optimistically about the future.Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — And so we’re super grateful for the people that went ahead of us that helped start this and plant this church way back in the early 2000s, and then had the foresight to kind of buy this piece of property in Windermere.Brandon Boyd — We’ve got part of our property is not developed yet. And we had a developer show up the other day that offered $5 million dollars for our grass kind of parking lot where we’re going to expand our campus on. But I couldn’t imagine unloading and reloading everything into an elementary school or a high school right now. So we’re super grateful for the people that went ahead of us, not only the pastoral leadership, elders, but also the people that called this church home, that hung on for the hope that something better was coming in the future.Brandon Boyd — And so they’ve been on this wild ride, up and down of, splits, attendance, differences, whatever else, but knowing that, you know, there ought to be a church in this part of Windermere, that there should be a gospel presence, especially in a place that’s so known for entertainment. Like you can stand on our roof at nighttime and see the fireworks from Disney World.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — If the wind, if the wind is blowing just right, you can hear the whistle from the train at the Magic Kingdom. I mean, that’s how close we are. Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — So for a spot in Orlando that’s known for entertainment, why shouldn’t there be a place that is a flag spot for the gospel. And so knowing that those people went before us, knowing that you’ve got people moving here on a daily and weekly basis, we appreciate that, but we also got to look forward to the future.Brandon Boyd — And so we had this opportunity to kind of rebrand our church. So our church was named after our young adult ministry Quay. And a quay is a literal thing. Like it’s a place where ships unload and reload their cargo. And that’s just a metaphor for the church – that the church a place where people can unload the things and that are burdensome and get refilled up with the message of Jesus and take that out into their places of influence, to their schools, to their work places.Brandon Boyd — And so when we cast that vision early in 2025, the people that had been here when all the ups and downs of the church really saw, like this is the moment. And then they saw this surge of people that were coming in to hear the gospel message. We baptized this past year 188 people. Rich Birch — That’s great.Brandon Boyd — That’s adults, children, kids. Rich Birch — Fantastic. Brandon Boyd — I got to baptize my own daughter this past year, which is super exciting. But to see life change. So you go from this really small remnant that was left to see this surge and explosion, to see people, their lives being transformed for the gospel, I think is how they’ve just seen, all right, what’s next? What’s next, Lord, for us? And we’ve got this phrase here that stewardship is our responsibility, that we’re just merely stewards of what the Lord has provided to us. Rich Birch — Right. Good.Brandon Boyd — And so we’re just stewarding this moment. And we really want to set it up well for the people that follow me, that follow Pastor Luke, that follow any of us, that we want to leave it better than we found it.Rich Birch —Yeah, that’s so good. And I just want to honor you for how you guys even publicly are handling all that. Because I think particularly with the growth that you’ve seen, it would be easy to be like, man, isn’t it incredible what’s happening now, but even kind of just forgetting what’s gone in the past. So, you know, honor you for what you’re doing there. I think that’s that’s incredible. Rich Birch —Well, let’s get back to some of those rhythms. So one of the things you talked about was like, hey, we realized, oh, maybe these, ah you know, the meetings, we just, we didn’t have the right, maybe the right flow of information. Brandon Boyd — Yeah.Rich Birch — So let’s talk through what did that look like? How did you how did you pick that apart, diagnose the problem maybe first? And then how did we make some shifts towards the kind of system you’re currently running?Brandon Boyd — So our organization was a flat organization. So when I got here, everybody was involved in every single decision. Everybody, like there was a weekly staff meeting where everybody was there and they were pitching ideas left and right about what we need to do on Sunday, what we need to do for our student ministry programming. And then we had a weekly meeting where everybody was involved with all the event processes and everything else.Brandon Boyd — And so I think another obstacle that we were trying to work past was Luke went from, like I said, young adult pastor to lead pastor. So he went from a peer on the hall to the boss. And so I knew that we had to put some structures in place and we had to scale the organization, and had to put some meeting structures around that. So we created an executive team meeting that meets on Mondays. We created a lead team that meets on Tuesdays. And we put people in those meetings that had influence or had certain gift sets, or we took Working Genius. And so we’ve kind of started to strategize our meetings around Working Genius and putting people in meetings where they thrive. Brandon Boyd — So if they’re an innovator, if they’re a wonderer, then we may need to put them on the front side of work. If they’re more of an implementer and they’re more of somebody that can get the tasks done, they don’t need to be in all these meetings. So what we’ve tried to do moving forward is really name what the meeting is before it’s even called, so people know what the expectation is.Brandon Boyd — So what what we’ve tried to do over the past year is really provide clarity and expectation.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.  Brandon Boyd — So when somebody comes to a meeting, they know what they need to prepare, but then they also know what their expectation is in the conversation.Rich Birch — That’s great. A couple things I want to unpack there. First, ah for listeners, we had Patrick Lencioni on talking about Working Genius. If you should go back and listen to that episode, if you don’t know Working Genius, it’s a fantastic tool. Here’s an example of a church is actually putting it into practice, not just like reading the book and putting it on the shelf.Rich Birch — So can you pull apart the, when you say executive team and lead team, the kind of Monday and Tuesday, how do you, what’s the like 30 second definition between those two and their roles and responsibilities between those two groups and who’s kind of comprises those, those teams.Brandon Boyd — Yeah. So our exec, well, it really starts with our elder team. So for a period of time, like our elders had to be really involved just because of the nature of what was going on in our church. But they have since decided that they needed to fly at a higher level. So we’ll we’ll just talk 50,000 feet.Brandon Boyd — So the elders are at the 50,000 feet. They’re really guarding the mission and vision of the church. Rich Birch — Yep.Brandon Boyd — And then you come down to the executive team, which flies at 40,000 feet. And they’re really tasked at making sure that from an executive level, we’ve got you know all the the problems that need to be solved, that we’re looking at the vision forward, that we’re not only looking at the current week, but we’re looking six weeks out. We just wrapped up Christmas. We’re already talking about Easter. and We’re talking about Christmas already for 2026. Brandon Boyd — And then you step down to the lead team. They’re at 30,000 feet. And what they’re doing is making sure that our ministries are humming and running on a weekly basis and making sure that those budgets, ministry resources, calendars, everything are executing.Brandon Boyd — So what we’ve done is the executive team is obviously our lead pastor. We’ve got myself as executive pastor. We’ve got the other executive pastor of worship and creative, Justin Melton. And then we added our spiritual formation pastor, Mike Brook on that team.Brandon Boyd — Our lead team is the executive team, plus our project manager, plus our young adult pastor. Cause young adults are so important and and vibrant to our house.Rich Birch — Sure.Brandon Boyd — And that’s kind of like the impetus for the rebirth of our church. And then we’ve got like people in charge of kind our crews, which is our small groups and then kind of our volunteer teams in that. And so that’s kind of those teams.Brandon Boyd — And then out of that, you’ve got ministry teams that run on a weekly basis. And then our staff gathers for once a month where we pray together. we have some fun together. We eat lunch. And so let’s kind of put some meeting structures that we put in place and the purpose of them.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.Brandon Boyd — So we’ve kind of walked through 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, all the way down to zero. So everybody knows what the purpose of each of those meetings are.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I’m assuming so you go executive to lead and then is there then like a weekly team meeting? So each of those people that are on the executive, or on the the lead team, they would then have their, you know, kind of trickle that down that information throughout the organization. Brandon Boyd — Yep.Rich Birch — Is that what that looks like basically?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.Brandon Boyd — You’re exactly right. So those ministry teams meet on a weekly basis. Rich Birch — Right. Brandon Boyd — And so, yep.Rich Birch — Okay. One other thing you said that caught my attention, which is a small, it’s like, since we’re sticking with the the quay metaphor, the the nautical metaphor, it’s a small, like a rudder. It’s not that big, but it’s it’s a huge deal. Actually, people knowing what we’re talking about in the upcoming meeting and being prepared for those meetings can be transformational in an organization. So talk me through what does that look like? What’s your expectation? And then when it’s running perfect, what is the kind of goal that we’re, we’re trying to go towards on that, you know, on that front, obviously that we don’t, we don’t bat a hundred, but I’m not even sure I’m mixing metaphors. Now we don’t bat a thousand. I think it is.Brandon Boyd — Yeah.Rich Birch — What is that? You know, what, what does that look like?Brandon Boyd — Yeah. If you’re batting a hundred, I think you’re batting pretty bad. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.Brandon Boyd — And so what what we try to do, I mean, we’re not afraid of tools. And so we use several different tools.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — Already talked about Asana. We use Slack for internal communication. So we we really try to strive that we’ve got to get our agendas out ahead of time and then understand if there is an action item in the agenda so that people can understand what’s expected of them.Brandon Boyd — We use another tool called Otter that helps make minutes and notes. And then we disseminate those to the people so they know what’s expected of them. Otter does a great job of recognizing voices and then they’ll also tag people. Then we take that and dump it into Asana. Brandon Boyd — So if we’re having, we’ll just use our student ministry. If we’re having like our weekly Wednesday night student ministry programming for middle schoolers, they’ll know what’s expected of them from what our middle school director is speaking on to what’s expected from production to what’s expected from our creative team to what’s expected from our communications team on the website, social media, some of those other things.Brandon Boyd — And so we use, we’re we’re not shy to use tools. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Brandon Boyd — And so we use those tools just to make sure that everybody understands what’s expected before the meeting and after the meeting.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I’m an Otter user as well. Brandon Boyd — Yeah. Rich Birch — Use it in my coaching. And it’s it’s ah it’s transformed my own personal interaction with the churches I work with. And then I’ve actually had a number of churches pick it up and start using it. I had an XP, this was before Christmas, texted me after just one week. He was like, dude, this has changed our game because it’s like having someone, it’s like in every meeting having like an incredibly detailed assistant that’s writing notes on everything that’s going on and they don’t they don’t miss anything or miss very little, which is, you know, incredible. Rich Birch — So now let’s talk about so from there. So like I get the idea you’re using Asana, get that Slack, Otter, tools are together. How do you ensure that things keep simple and streamlined rather than becoming con, you know, yeah really complicated and, you know, were just bolting on stuff. How do you think about those issues as, as you’re growing?Brandon Boyd — So I’ve got a phrase that I learned at one of my churches in Texas, and it’s actually an acronym. It’s for SIMPLE. So, systems in many places leads to excellence.Brandon Boyd — So we just try to keep things simple. Like we launch a fourth gathering here. We’re at max capacity on Sunday mornings with all three of our gatherings from 8:15 and 11:45. So we’re we’re launching a fourth one here in a few weeks at Sunday night at 5 p.m. And so if we just take what’s replicable from the Sunday morning experience and add it to the the evening experience. But it’s just the basic thing. Brandon Boyd — So yes, we’ve got tools. Yes, we’ve got Asana. Yes, we’ve got Slack… [inaudible] to call a stand-up meeting and just to make sure everybody’s understand what’s going on and just have a conversation. Like my door, I’ve got an open door policy. And if my door’s open, just come on in and ask a question to make sure that you understand what’s going on.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — I think it’s just the basic thing. Rich Birch — Right. Brandon Boyd — A lot of times we can hide behind email, we can hide behind Slack, we can hide behind text messages, but we’ve we’ve just got to be more proactive than reactive and say…hey, if you don’t understand something, then it’s okay to come ask a question because I may miss something because we’re involved at a different level.Brandon Boyd — And so what we try to do is just make sure that we’ve got avenues for people to ask questions, whether that’s having quick standup meetings before we run to a big initiative. We also run things where it’s kind of an integration meeting. So if we’re looking at Christmas, Easter, if we’re looking at another objective where we’re going to get everybody on the table and we’re going to walk through a checklist just to make sure even the most small, minute details are taken care of.Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — Part of it is like we’re a stickler for excellence. So we would say excellence is our standard. And part of that is just kind where we are with Disney and Universal and theme parks all over everywhere that everybody that goes to our church already has an excellence experience whenever they go to that. So why can’t they have the same excellence level when they come to church on Sundays?Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.Brandon Boyd — So.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. A big issue in growing churches is, you know, the people side. So it’s related to what we’re talking about. But as you’re scaling, you know, your team has to continue to grow as people. They have to, you know, step up their game as growth has accelerated. How are you accelerating whether people are operating at their best contribution? They’re kind of really leaning in, you know, and they’re kind of performing at their highest. How how have you been able to keep an eye on that?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, I think this a growing thing for us. I’ve got a “no freak out” policy.Rich Birch — Right. Good. Brandon Boyd — So we’ve we’ve just got to talk through it.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — We’ve only got about 20 full time equivalents behind the scene. Rich Birch — That’s great. Brandon Boyd — So when you’re in a church that’s twenty seven hundred and then you add in kids, you’re easily at thirty two hundred on a weekend basis. We have to run lean and mean knowing that we’re trying to project out for when we need to hire additional staff members or we need to hire some part-time.Brandon Boyd — We’re launching an internship program. And so what we’re trying to do is making sure that our staff team feels taken care of, feels heard, feels supported. And I think a lot of that is being accomplished by when we went from a flat organization, nobody, everybody knew who their boss was, but their boss didn’t know maybe what specifically what their directions were. So as we created the executive team, as we created the lead team, as we’ve got those ministry teams, we’ve created avenues for people to be able to feel supported and cared for.Brandon Boyd — And so what I’ve said to our team is you’re caring for the people just down the rung for us. Obviously, Luke and I are caring for our entire team. But just making sure that we’ve got avenues for feedback, avenues for just encouragement, avenues for conversation.Brandon Boyd — And then what we’re trying to figure out next is how do we hold people accountable? So how do we, yes, we’ve told people what’s expected from them. We actually created like a staff covenant for 2026. Like here here’s our expectations, just in case you’re you’re curious about what’s expected from you. And in case you’re caring, well, I was hired under this pastor and this was what the agreement was, that’s out the door. But as 2026 for Quay Church, just so we’re all entirely clear… Rich Birch — That’s cool. Brandon Boyd — …this is what we’re covenanting, not only, from us as a team, but to the Lord. And so we’ve got that. We’ve got accountability.Rich Birch — What are some of the, just before we leave that, what what are some of the things that landed in that? You don’t have to get into this… Brandon Boyd — Yeah. Rich Birch —…but, you know kind of categories of things that you’re, you’re recovenanting around?Brandon Boyd — We kind of made a joke that it sometimes we just, our volunteers, which we call stewards, they kind of outwork us.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — And so like, hello, like we, we want to be the first one in and the last one out. And so in the covenant, it just talks about, Hey, we’re we’re going to be here for all the gatherings and we’re going to set the table and make sure that our house is ready to go before people show up.Brandon Boyd — We’re going to covenant. If we’re going to ask our church family to do something, whether be in a group or tithe or whatever, those things that we ask from the platform, we’re going to do it first. So one of the things that I just said to our staff team today is, we need to give up parking in our staff parking lot and we need to park in the farthest spots away on our grass parking a lot.Rich Birch — 100%, yep.Brandon Boyd — So those spots are ready to go for people. And so it’s just little things like that, just making sure that we’re super clear so that there’s no shadow of a doubt that as we go into 2026 and we kind of anticipated that we would have another growth wave based upon what we saw in 2024 and 2025, that in 2026, we just need to be clear what was expected from them as people stepped into it.Rich Birch — That’s cool. Well, when, you know, everything in a growth phase that you’re in, it can get chaotic pretty quickly, because everything feels urgent. It’s like, you know literally, even just the situation we talked about, and before we jumped on the call. It’s like, oh, my goodness, you know, we had a bunch of new more people show up that we’re excited they’re with us, but now we’ve got figure out how to keep them plugged in and all that. Rich Birch — How do you keep from the urgency turning into chaos? What are you doing to try to really push back in some ways and and keep your team focused? And I like that no freak out, you know, no freak out policy. Like, hey, let’s not freak out. We’ll figure it out. But but what’s that functionally look like?Brandon Boyd — I think part of it is it just goes back to our staff values. And so when we were looking, when I first came on board on this, on the church staff, Luke was like, Hey, we got to rebrand the church now. And I said, that’s a longer conversation that we need to roll out in a smart and healthy way. And also gives us time to cast vision. Brandon Boyd — But that first fall that I was here in the fall of 2024, we rolled out staff values and we really go back to those staff values to help people understand they’re not just phrases that we stick up on a wall, but it’s who we are as ah as a culture, as a people. And so one of our values is that we want to build a kingdom over castles. Rich Birch — Good. Brandon Boyd — So we’re more interested in obviously the kingdom of the church, the kingdom of the Lord, and not your own necessary small little ministry thing at Quay Church. So everybody is all in on the broader conversation of the church. Like I told our staff team this past week, as we look towards the launch of the fourth gathering here in a few weeks: No matter what your role is, you’re all jumping in and helping make sure that facilities is ready to go the next day. No matter what your role is, we’re all going to be nimble and shift to it.Brandon Boyd — Another phrase that we like to use is that we’re nimble over fragile. And so we don’t really hold on to things that that that we’re, that we created. We’re we we’re open-handed and open-palmed. It goes back to what I said earlier about stewardship. We’re just stewarding this whole thing. This isn’t ours. This is the Lord’s.Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — That comes down from our lead pastor to our team. He models that so well. And so we really just kind of run with the staff values. Our other staff values are: we take the risk And so we’re willing to take risks for the gospel, whatever that looks like. We’re willing to push that forward. We want to be sled dogs over show dogs. Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — And so we want to put in the good work and all pulled together in the same direction. “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast” is another one of our staff values. We believe that, yes, we can take time to make a decision, but once we make the decision, then we can run so much faster because we’ve got clarity. “Kingdom over castle” I already talked about. “Nimble over fragile.”Brandon Boyd — And then a last one is we just want to burn the ships. And so this is the day that the Lord has for us. And so while we do look back in the past from time, the past is in the past, and we’ve got today. We’re not promised for tomorrow, obviously. And so what can we do now with what the Lord is doing in our church to make sure that the message of Jesus is available to people not only in this part of Windermere, but also throughout the other Orlando regions?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so cool. When you think about Quay today, what tells you that the church is becoming healthier not just bigger? i know there can be like criticisms of, and listen, that comes from a place of h being on the other side of these questions when I’ve led before where there’s like this criticism. They look at something like Quay and they’re like, oh, like that’s just whatever. It’s a fad. It’s going, you know, but that’s not the case. What are some of those, either metrics, or stories, or things that you see happening that say like, oh no, things are actually heading, not just bigger, but also healthier.Brandon Boyd — It’s not like we have a growth strategy on my whiteboard over here and we’re like, hey, we got to hit this marker and this marker by then.Rich Birch — Yes. Right.Brandon Boyd — But I think what’s, I’ll just tell you a quick story.Rich Birch — Yeah.Brandon Boyd — We’re in a collection of what we call Sermon Series Collection of Conversations. So we’re in a conversation about Song of Songs right now. We call it Divine Desire, and we’re walking through that.Brandon Boyd — And the Lord has really blessed what we would call altar ministry. And so at the end of our gathering, especially during the last song, after the message has been communicated, people just come down to the front of the altar for prayer. Rich Birch — That’s great.Brandon Boyd — And we’ve got pastors, we’ve got elders, we’ve got deacons. And some of those things that are being communicated in those moments, like last fall, we had a gentleman come down and he said that he was cheating on his spouse and was repentant. And he’s like, I got to go get her now. And we’ve got to share this right now in this moment.Rich Birch — Wow.Brandon Boyd — So I think we’re seeing like real life transformation take place in the gatherings, obviously through the movement of the Holy Spirit. But then the Spirit is directing people to make inroads right now in that moment. Like don’t leave this building today before you’ve had a conversation with the Lord and you’ve confessed your sin. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Brandon Boyd — So I think from that perspective, I’ve just been able to see that happen and to see people really take their faith seriously in that moment, rather than just like coming to a worship gathering, getting in their car and going home.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. That’s great. Any, you know, the talk to me a little bit more about the response time, the altar time. I would say this for sure is a “trends” may be the wrong word, but like we see more and more churches, you know, employing that, that tactic. What have you learned from just managing that as a normal part of your worship experience? What, what has been, and has that been an add in the last couple of years or has it always been there?Brandon Boyd — I think it’s I think it’s been an add, but it hasn’t been like a programmatic element… Rich Birch — Right. Brandon Boyd — …that we’ve said, we’ve got to have altar ministry. I think it’s just been a movement of the Lord. So last spring we had we had this moment where it was our last gathering of the morning was at 11:45. And then we had this altar ministry where people just stayed and prayed after the end. And I don’t even remember what Luke spoke on. That started at 1:00 basically, and didn’t wrap up till 6 p.m. that night.Rich Birch — Wow.Brandon Boyd — So we’re not manufacturing any of this.Rich Birch — No. Yeah, yeah.Brandon Boyd — I think it’s just the Lord. And I think it’s just being sensitive to what the Lord is doing. And I think it’s the courage of not only Luke, our pastor, but other people that fill the pulpit when Luke isn’t there, that says, hey, don’t leave this room.Brandon Boyd — Our worship pastor, Justin Melton, does a great job of this at the end of each gathering. Don’t leave this room before you’ve talked to somebody, if the Lord is prompting that. So I think from a programmatic standpoint, we just want to be open-handed and just provide opportunities for people either to come forward or go to the next step space to have a conversation. And so it’s just been really remarkable to watch. Brandon Boyd — Like at first, I was kind of like, what in the world is going on? These people are just getting out of their seats and coming down front. But that altar ministry is not only prevalent in our Sunday morning worship gatherings, it’s prevalent in our student gatherings, whether that’s Wednesday night for middle school or Sunday nights for high school, and Thursday nights for our young adults. So it’s just something that the Lord is kind of stirring in and through our church.Rich Birch — Yeah, I was visiting, maybe 18 months ago, I was visiting a church. It was, the year before it was the second fastest growing church in the country. And showed up, and there was nothing about the kind of my pre-experience with this church that would have led me to believe that like, oh, altar time was going to be a part of their experience. And but very similarly, at the end of the the service, it was very like nonchalant is is the wrong word, but it wasn’t it was not a programmatic. We are, you know people know what we’re talking about. Brandon Boyd — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — Like we’re not, we’re not trying to, we’re not doing anything to get people to respond. And I would say, I don’t know, two thirds of the room got up and came down or, you know, half the room, it was like a huge portion of the room got up and came down. And I remember talking to the lead guy the next thing, he’s a good friend of mine. And I was like, like trying to pick it apart and understand it from a process point of view. And he was like, Rich man, the fact that we don’t totally understand it is a part of what we think that God’s using, right? Which is is beautiful. So that’s, that’s great to hear. That’s cool. Rich Birch — Are you doing anything with your elders or staff team to train towards that? Because you want to make sure that, you know, the people that are receiving some of that, you know, are kind of thought about it ahead of time before they got down there. Is anything you’re doing on that front?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, we’ve had training conversations and just how to be receptive to what people are sharing and knowing that we’ve we’ve done that with our elders, with our deacons and our staff team and pastors. andRich Birch — Sure.Brandon Boyd — But some of that is obviously there’s there’s going to be greater needs that extend past a Sunday.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — So what is the immediate conversation that we need to have? But then if it’s a counseling issue, how can we refer them to a counseling partner? Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — Are there things that we can handle internally? Part of it is like we’ve just had this rapid growth in our church where it’s like you would assume if you come to our church that we would have this ministry, this handoff, this handoff. So another thing that we’ve had to do this past year is kind of build those handoffs as we’ve experienced some of these altar ministry things.Rich Birch — Sure.Brandon Boyd — Yeah.Rich Birch — That’s cool. Well, it’s been a fantastic conversation. What kind of final words would you have or encouragement would you have to a leader who’s maybe experiencing, obviously what you’re experiencing is super unique across the country, but is maybe experiencing a season of growth that there’s, Hey, there’s, we’re experiencing more momentum. We’re seeing this across the country in a number of churches, but what would you, what would your kind of final words be to them as we wrap up today’s conversation?Brandon Boyd — I think for me, just the final thing that I’d like to say, Rich, is it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — I’ve felt overwhelmed in this season, and it’s okay to acknowledge that. And so just to have that space with my lead pastor where I can go into him and just say, look, I’m overwhelmed. I’m going to be okay. But I just want you to know that I am overwhelmed. And then being able to be transparent with our elder board about that. I think that’s just ah a feeling of, as if you’re in a fast-growing church like this situation or other situations, where it’s okay just to acknowledge we’re humans. You don’t have to act like a superhuman, that everything is okay.Rich Birch — RightBrandon Boyd — But just to say, hey, I’m overwhelmed and it’s a season. And then being able to express that not only to your lead pastor, to your elders, but I’ve got friends outside of Orlando that are in pastoral ministry that understand what that feels like. So just creating that network of being able to say that. Because what my fear is that people can just get overwhelmed and can get burned out and can say like, I hate the church. I don’t want to be a pastor anymore. And I believe that the when the Lord calls you, he’s also going to equip you. And so at the same time, you just need to be able to voice that and just say like, I am overwhelmed. We are going to make it through it, but here’s some things that I need help on.Rich Birch — That’s so good. Brandon, I really appreciate you being on today and taking time out of your schedule, packed schedule, I’m sure, to help us today.Brandon Boyd — Yeah.Rich Birch — So I really appreciate that. If people want to connect with Quay, connect with you, kind of track with the story, where do we want to send them online?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, so you can go to our social media. That’s @quaychurch, Q-U-A-Y Church. Also, quaychurch.org. And then I’m on Instagram @bgboyd.Rich Birch — Nice. That’s great. Thanks so much for being here today.Brandon Boyd — Yep, my pleasure.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Lou Pizzichillo, Lead Pastor of Community Church on Long Island. Community Church launched in January 2020—just ten weeks before the world shut down—then relaunched after 52 weeks online. Now averaging around 1,200 people across Thursday and Sunday services, Community is known as “a church for people who don’t go to church.” In a region where skepticism toward organized religion runs deep, Lou and his team are building trust by creating space for honest questions, lived-out faith, and tangible community impact. Is your church serving in a skeptical environment? Are you trying to reach people who already think they know—and don’t like—what church is about? Lou shares practical wisdom on posture, transparency, and earning trust one decision at a time. Starting where people really are. // On Long Island, while some residents may identify culturally with faith traditions, most see church as judgmental, hypocritical, or irrelevant to everyday life. Lou quickly realized that the biggest obstacle wasn’t apathy—it was reputation. Rather than fighting skepticism, Community Church chose to acknowledge it. The church repeatedly communicates three cultural values: You can belong before you believe. You have permission to be in progress. And there’s no pretending. These aren’t slogans—they shape how the church operates. Permission to be in progress. // One of the most resonant phrases at Community is “permission to be in progress.” Many people assume that following Jesus requires instant agreement with every doctrine and behavior expectation. Instead, Community encourages people to wrestle honestly with the claims of Christ first. Secondary issues and sanctification come later. This posture doesn’t mean watering down truth—it means sequencing it wisely. By focusing on who Jesus says he is, rather than debating every peripheral topic, the church keeps the main thing central. No pretending—and real transparency. // Transparency builds credibility in skeptical contexts. Stories of real life—parenting mistakes, marriage tensions, leadership missteps—often resonate more than polished success stories. At the same time, Lou draws a boundary between “scars and wounds.” He shares what he has processed, not what he is still unraveling. This authenticity signals that faith isn’t about perfection but transformation. For many in the congregation, seeing a pastor admit imperfection dismantles years of distrust toward church leaders. Becoming an asset to the community. // Community Church doesn’t just talk about loving Babylon—it demonstrates it. Early on, Lou realized trust would not come through marketing but through partnership. Before launch, the church created “12 Days of Christmas,” giving away gifts purchased from local businesses. In year one, stores hesitated to participate; by year seven, businesses were reaching out to collaborate. What began as skepticism has shifted to partnership because trust was earned gradually. Serving instead of competing. // A defining moment came during the annual Argyle Fair, a 30,000-person event held across the street from the church—on a Sunday. Rather than fight the inconvenience, Community canceled services and mobilized volunteers to serve the fair, providing parking and manpower. When the event was rescheduled due to rain, the church canceled services a second week to honor its commitment. Lou describes this as a defining cultural moment: demonstrating that service isn’t convenient—it’s convictional. Earning trust through inconvenience. // Lou recounts being called to the mayor’s office days after launch to address parking concerns. Instead of pushing back, the church chose to rent additional parking space—even when legally unnecessary—to honor neighbors’ concerns. In another instance, Community canceled a planned Christmas light show after Village neighbors expressed concern about traffic. Though disappointing internally, the decision earned significant community goodwill. Lou believes canceling the event built more trust than hosting it would have. Posture over persecution. // Lou cautions leaders against defaulting to a persecution narrative when facing resistance. Most pushback, he says, comes from practical concerns—not hostility toward Jesus. By listening humbly and responding thoughtfully, churches can win trust among the large percentage of community members who are neither strongly for nor against them. To learn more about Community Church, visit communitychurch.net or follow @communitychurch.li on social media. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they’re reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you’ve been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, thanks so much for listening in, tuning in into today’s episode. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’re talking with a leader leading a prevailing church in frankly a part of the country that is not known for tons of prevailing churches. And so it’s an opportunity for all of us to lean in and to learn.Rich Birch — Super excited to have Lou Pizzichillo with us from Community Church. They’re in Babylon, New York on Long Island. They’re known as a church for people who don’t go to church. They’re big on being real, bringing real questions, struggles, hangups, doubts, disappointments, and failures. Lou, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today.Lou Pizzichillo — Thanks so much. Yeah, it’s a privilege to be here.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s an honor that you would take some time to be with us today. Why don’t you kind of tell us a bit of the Community story, kind of give us a flavor of the church, help us kind of imagine if we were to arrive this weekend, what what would we experience?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So we have an interesting history. We launched in January of 2020. And so we were open for 10 weeks.Rich Birch — Great time.Lou Pizzichillo — I know it was perfect. And then we closed down for 52 weeks, and we relaunched. But because of that, what’s been really cool is, you know, when you’re launching a church, the launch team is a big deal. And to launch twice, we’ve had really like two two launch teams. And so team culture has always been a real big part of our church.Lou Pizzichillo — But yeah, we like to say that we’re a church for people who don’t go to church. and So we try to keep things pretty casual. We try not to assume that there’s any interest or experience with the people who are showing up on a Sunday. And yeah.Rich Birch — Nice. Give us a sense of, so like size and like your, you know, the ministry style, that sort of thing. Like what would you help us kind of place what the, what the church is like if I was to arrive, arrive on a weekend?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, we’re a pretty contemporary attractional church. We’ve got services on Thursday night and on Sunday morning. So we say the weekend starts on Thursday. Rich Birch — Love it. Lou Pizzichillo — We call Thursday night thurch, which is… Rich Birch — Oh, that’s funny. Thurch. Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, it was a joke at first, but then it kind of like, I don’t know, just kind of gained a life of its own.Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — So yeah, so the church over the course of the weekend, right now we’re at about 1,200. And it’s exciting. There are a lot of new people. And things are constantly change changing. Change is that really the only constant for us.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. Well, you’re on Long Island, and I can say as somebody who I ministered for years in New Jersey, I’m from Canada, I I get that people don’t wake up on Long Island on Sunday morning and think, hey, I should go to church today. Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, yeah.Rich Birch — You’re serving a community that is is more unchurched than other parts of the country, which is a challenge for planting. So help us understand, you know, help us just kind of get into the mindset or the um perspective of people who are outside of the church. What do they view on, you know, Christianity? Tell us, give us a sense of of kind of what you’ve learned, you know, planting in that kind of context.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So one thing that was really helpful right off the bat was somebody mentioned to me, they were like, you know, I’m not a gym person. And so when a new gym opens up in town, I don’t even really notice it.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And they’re like, I think it’s the same thing for church people.Rich Birch — Right. Lou Pizzichillo — It’s like, if you’re not a church person, then you don’t really notice when churches are doing things. And so that’s like, really, it’s a big reason why we’re so vocal about saying it we’re a church for people who don’t go to church, you know?Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — Um, and yeah, from there, honestly, we found that the biggest obstacle with people here is the existing reputation of church, of what church is like and what church people are like.Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — This church is seen as very judgmental, hypocritical, fake, exclusive, impractical, you know, it’s something you just do to kind of check the boxes and then you go on with your life. I’ve spoken to even a lot of, um, like devout Catholics here who have, have said like, they don’t, they do their church thing because, because it’s what they think that they’re supposed to do, but they’re, what they are doing in church does not translate to everyday life.Lou Pizzichillo — And so church is seen as kind of an impractical thing. And, that’s kind of the starting point for a lot of people who we’re trying to connect with.Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve heard it said in other contexts, it’s like, not that people don’t know the church. It’s like, it’s what they know that they don’t like.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, yeah.Rich Birch — It’s like, they have a sense of, you know, that that reputation. Are there any, maybe even stories or engagement you know conversations or engagements you’ve had with folks that have kind of brought that reputation to the fore. That obviously has led you to say, hey, we’re going position ourselves as a church where people don’t go into churches. Was there something that kind of influenced that as you were having, you know, even in these early years as you’ve been kind of get the ball rolling?Lou Pizzichillo — A big part of it honestly is a lot of my extended family. Like they’re, most of them are not church people. You know, they have a lot of respect for God. Like most people on Long Island, uh, especially, you know, most kind of nominal Catholics, like they would say they’re Italian or Irish. They say, oh, of course, Jesus is my savior. You know, like they, they know the right things to say, but in terms of what it actually means on a regular basis, it’s like kind of a totally different thing. So, so yeah, I mean, that’s kind of, kind of where we’re starting.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, people have criticisms about the church and they have criticisms of of their experience with the church. How do you discern between criticisms that maybe you either need to be challenged, like, hey, that’s actually just not true, or like, oh, that’s a critique that is actually fair, and we’re going to try to steer in a different direction, ah you know, than that. Help us think about those, you know, when we think about skepticism towards the church.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, I think, honestly, the best thing for us has just been to have a posture of listening.Rich Birch — That’s good.Lou Pizzichillo — Because even even if their claims aren’t valid, a lot of their experiences are. And so, you know, they’re like, there’s somebody who’s been going to the church for a while now, and somebody that was very close to them has like a pretty intense story of church hurt, like real damage. And so to know that he’s walking in with all of this baggage and that there are a lot of other people walking in with that baggage that don’t let you know that they have that baggage… Rich Birch — Right. Lou Pizzichillo — …just kind of giving them the space to, to be hurt and for it to be real. That’s been huge for us just having that kind of posture of humility. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So that obviously has led to the way you’ve developed either the way you talk about ministry or the values that are underlining, you know, the ministry.Rich Birch — What has been important for helping communicate or articulate to people like, hey, this is a place that you can show up, you know, before you, you know, you’ve kind of bought it all. It’s like, Hey, you there’s a place to explore that sort of thing. Help us think through how do you communicate and then how do those, whether they’re phrases or yeah that sort of thing, how does that translate then into the values of how you actually operate?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So big thing is for us, it’s training the team, like getting those values into the team and helping them to understand what that looks like in a concrete way. So we say, like a lot of churches say, you can belong before you believe. And the the illustration I give almost every single time, I’m like, if somebody walks in with a church, with a shirt that says, I hate God, we are glad that person is here, right? Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — Like we’re not assuming that they are walking in with interest or experience. And they might have a story that’s a lot more complicated than we know. So um so yes, we try to celebrate that.Lou Pizzichillo — When somebody walks in and they’re very open about their beliefs and their views not lining up with us, that’s something that we celebrate, right? Like because these are the people that we want here.Lou Pizzichillo — The other value that’s been really helpful for us is to say that people have permission to be in progress. And that has to do with their actions, the choices that they make, but also the things that they believe. And so you can be on board with some of our beliefs and not be on board with all of our beliefs. And we’re okay with that, right?Lou Pizzichillo — Like rather than just saying, okay, I accept all of it at one time. And now I completely agree that everything in the Bible is true. And, you know, I endorse it. Like we just kind of give people space to say, okay, like let’s maybe let’s start with the claims of Jesus, like right to this guy really rise from the dead. And now let’s look at what he says about things like the Old Testament, you know?Lou Pizzichillo — And so that’s that’s been a huge thing. We go back to that over and over and over again. It started as kind of like a main point in a sermon where I was like, you’ve got permission to be in progress. And so many people repeated it back to me that I was like, okay, this needs to be woven into our culture because it needs to be articulated…Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — …or people just assume, okay, if I’m going to say I believe, I got to say I believe it all. And there’s no room for disagreement.Lou Pizzichillo — And then from there, we say like, you got you can belong before you believe, you got permission to be in progress. And if both of those things are actually true for us as a church, then we can also say like our third value is no pretending.Lou Pizzichillo — Like you don’t have to pretend to be on board with certain things if you’re not there yet. And I think if we create an environment where people can be real and dialogue and be open about the things that they’re, you know, that they disagree with, I think that’s where there’s real hope for ultimately ending in a place of alignment.Rich Birch — Yeah, permission to be in progress to me feels very like a very Jesus value It feels like, oh, that to me, that’s like when I read the New Testament, that feels like the way he oriented himself to the people around him, right? There were clearly people that were like the rich young ruler came to him and was like, you know, asked a pointed question. Jesus gave a clear answer, and he didn’t, you know, Jesus didn’t, even though he said harsh words to or clear words, I would say, all was it always done in an environment of trying to say, hey, we I want you to be a part of this conversation. I’m really trying to be on the same side of the table. How do I bring you along?Rich Birch — Can you, like, let’s double click on permission to be in progress. Talk us through what that looks like. Because I think, I think so many churches draw very strong lines on like, you got to believe these 15 things to be a part here. Even if we wouldn’t explicitly set that say that, it’s like implicit in our cultures.Rich Birch — How does your culture look different when you say, hey, you’ve got permission to be in progress? What would be some of the things that might stand out to us as like, that’s a little bit different than how maybe some other churches handle this?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So we have like we have values, but then we also just have sayings, right? Like it it is too hard for me to define what the most important values are. Like I get too obsessed with the wording and how we’re going to phrase things. And so in our our conference room, we have a big whiteboard and we write down little sayings. We actually write them in permanent marker on the whiteboard, which is wasteful, but at least we have something to reference.Lou Pizzichillo — So when somebody says something and we’re like, hey, that’s a culture thing, it gets written on the board. One of the things that came up that’s really helped us with this idea of permission to be in progress is that the goal is to get people to Jesus and everything else is secondary. Everything else comes after that.Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep, that’s good.Lou Pizzichillo — And so I’m not going to like get into it with someone over a secondary issue or really something that’s an issue of sanctification, when we believe sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit, right? Maybe your view on that will change after you understand who Jesus is and begin to follow him.Lou Pizzichillo — And so in a lot of ways, I feel like when we when we get too into the issues, we’re putting the cart before the horse, right? Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — And so we’re trying to bring people to Jesus and show him show them what he’s like. And ah that that has been clarifying when it comes to permission to be in progress.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And I think in heavily church context, when we kind of assume, oh, basically everyone here has some level of faith, those secondary issues can become like a really big deal. It’s like we spend a lot of time talking about those things.Rich Birch — But when the majority of people we’re interacting with you know, they haven’t, they haven’t really, really wrestled with what they think about Jesus and the difference he can make in this life. And we got to keep that, that really clear. Rich Birch — So no pretending is an interesting value as a communicator. How do you live that out in the way you show transparency? There’s this interesting thing years ago, I had one of the ah preacher that I love or communicator. I just think the world of, you know, he talked about how there’s this tension when we’re, communicating that, you know, we’re we’re trying to be transparent, but up into a point and how, where is that point? And how do we do that in a way that’s not, that brings people along? So ah what what does that look like for you even as a as ah as a leader to say, hey, it’s not my job to pretend. I’m going to just be honest and transparent, authentic to where we are? Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. Well, I mean, I can definitely say that every time I tell a story that has me screwing up, it is it is the thing that people come to tell me about. Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — Like, oh, thank you so much for telling me about you know the way you spoke to your kids… Rich Birch — Yes. Lou Pizzichillo — …or the thing that you said to your wife. Or it is just by far the thing that people love to hear. And that’s been encouraging. Now, I have had people like throw it back at me and that that comes with the territory. But I think that the stories of how that’s been helpful for people um like dramatically outweigh the people that are going to you know weaponize that stuff against you.Lou Pizzichillo — Something else I heard, um I think Brene Brown said this in one of her books. She said she doesn’t share things she hasn’t processed through yet.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And that for me is a really helpful thing. Like If I’m in the middle of something and just in the thick of it, it’s not the time for me to like bring that to the congregation. I think that could be really unhealthy for a lot of reasons.Lou Pizzichillo — So that’s, that’s kind of something that, and it doesn’t mean I can’t share something that just happened. You know sometimes I’ll explain an issue that just happened with my kids. That’s different than something I’m still processing and haven’t resolved yet.Rich Birch — Right. I think she said it’s the difference between scars and wounds, right? You can talk about your scars. That’s like, that’s an area that has, has had some level of healing to it versus an open wound, right? Like this is a part that’s, that’s still gaping.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.Rich Birch — And, uh, you know, we don’t necessarily want to to share that. And that, you know, uh, that is a change. So I’m, you know, I’m of a certain age, been in this game a long time. And I remember when we first started, when I first started, that generation that came before me, people wanted like the superhuman religious leader. They wanted the like pastor to be, to have their stuff a hundred percent sewed up. Like, don’t tell me that you’re a real human. They didn’t want that.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.Rich Birch — You know, and that has completely reversed.Rich Birch — People are like, no no, like you said, we, we need to be transparent, open, authentic. People know that we’re not perfect. Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. Rich Birch — They know that we don’t have it all together. Lou Pizzichillo — Right.Rich Birch — And when we try to hide that, when we try to, in your language, pretend that actually is repulsive, it pushes them away. Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.Rich Birch — One of the things that stood out to me just by reputation, kind of seeing your church is it appears that you guys have a conviction around getting out and serving the community, actually making a difference in the community. You know, it strikes me as very ah a very James-approach, faith in action – it’s it should make a difference in our community. What how do talk to me about what that looks like for Community. How does that, even your name, Community, you know, Church, reflects that. Talk talk to talk to me about what that looks like.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, so we’re pretty clear. Like we we tell people we want to be an asset to the community. We want people to be glad we’re here, whether they attend our church or not. And so that started really early. Actually, before we launched, we did this thing called the 12 Days of Christmas where, so our church is in a village, right? So there are a lot of local businesses around us. What we did is during the 12 days leading up to Christmas, we went to shops and we gave away gifts from those shops. There was a different shop every day for the 12 days leading up to Christmas. So we planned this out ahead of time. But we would post on social media and be like, Hey, today the, you know, the shop is Bunger surf shop. The first 25 people there are going to get beanies from Bunger surf shop.Lou Pizzichillo — And we paid for them. We sent the, Bunger agreed to hand them out. And people went to go get them. And what was, so it was a win, win, win, really. Like the people who participated got free beanies, the surf shop are like all the different shops in the village. They got people to go, they got traffic to their business, right?Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.Lou Pizzichillo — Because people went in then bought other stuff. And it helped us communicate that we we say we want something for you, not from you, right? We want to be an asset to the community. And so it helped us communicate that message. And the response to that has been great.Lou Pizzichillo — Now, what’s interesting, if this doesn’t tell you something about the church’s reputation, on year one, before we launched, it was very hard to get 12 shops to agree to do this with us. Like they were like, you’re a church? I’m sorry. No, we’re not doing it.Rich Birch — Forget it. Yeah.Lou Pizzichillo — Now it’s year seven. Right now we’re in the middle of our our seventh year and there are shops lining up to do it. There are shops reaching out to us, asking us to collaborate.Rich Birch — Wow.Lou Pizzichillo — They’re helping to pay for the stuff. So it’s actually in some ways getting a little bit cheaper.Rich Birch — Huh.Lou Pizzichillo — And it’s just cool. It’s shown like this posture of partnership with what’s going on… Rich Birch — Yes. Lou Pizzichillo — …rather than, okay, there are the shops and then there’s the church. Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — And yeah, we actually have a someone on staff now who first heard about the church on year one during the 12 days of Christmas. She started coming to the church. she eventually got baptized and now she’s on staff. And it’s just like, it has been so, so cool.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s what a cool, you know, even just a cool tactic, kind of an expression of that. Is there other ways, other kind of activities like that, that you’re engaged with throughout the year that would could illustrate this idea of being for the community, being an asset to the community? What would be another example of that that that’s happened?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So there is this fair that happens right across the street from the church. It’s called the Argyle Fair. It’s it’s around a lake. There are about 30,000 people that come to this fair. And the fair is on a Sunday during church.Lou Pizzichillo — The first year that we were here and had services during that Sunday, it was a mess. There were people you know like parking all over the place. It was hard to have services. Traffic was crazy. And we left church and my wife and I walked to the fair and just felt like something didn’t feel right. Like there’s some, here’s something everybody’s doing and we’re fighting against it.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — So we went to the people who ran the fair and we were like, is there any way we can help? Like, is there, what do you guys need? And right away she was like, we need volunteers and we need parking. And as a church, we are uniquely equipped with volunteers and parking. Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo —And so really it was there, like that almost right away, we were like, okay, next year, ah we’re going to be on board with what you’re doing.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.Lou Pizzichillo — And so we decided to cancel services. And in the weeks leading up to that, we teach about the importance of serving the community. It’s kind of like the grand finale to whatever, you know…Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — …outreach series or message is being given.Rich Birch — Yeah.Lou Pizzichillo — And um yeah, so we teach on that. And then we’re like, hey, you know, two weeks from now, we’re not going to have services. Instead, we’re going to go out instead of staying in here talking about serving, we’re going to go out there and serve. And, you know, we’ve said like… Rich Birch — Love that. Lou Pizzichillo — …yeah, what’s what’s happening out there is not more spiritual than what’s happening in here. It’s a different way to express and grow in our faith. So we did that. And the response has just been unbelievable. Like the community has loved it. The the fair has had the help that they need. The people in our church have loved it. But this year we actually it got rained out on the first week. And so they postponed it to the next week.Rich Birch — Oh, wow.Lou Pizzichillo — And that made it tough for us because now we were like, okay, are we going to cancel church two weeks in a row? Rich Birch — Right. Lou Pizzichillo — And we had a meeting about it and like looked at our values, looked at what we were talking about. We were like, you know what, this is actually an opportunity for us to really double down and say, we’re not doing this out of convenience. We’re doing this because it’s a value. And so I called up the guy who was running the fair and he was like, I get it. If you can’t do it, I get it. And it felt, it was, it was amazing to be able to say on the phone, like, Hey, we’re with you, uh, no matter what. So, uh, so we did and it was, it was awesome.Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Like ah that, again, that what a vivid example, because I think there’s a lot of church leaders, if we’re honest, we’ve been engaged in the conversation that’s literally on the opposite side of that, where we’re like, man, how do we, these people, they’re, you know, they’re cramping our style or whatever. It’s like we naturally default towards that rather than to serve. Rich Birch — Take us back early in the discussions because I think a lot of us have not done a good job in building trust bridges in our communities. And you know trust isn’t built with just you know, one conversation. It takes time, right? It takes, like you said, those those first 12 days of Christmas, you couldn’t get anybody. And now here’s seven years later. We want we want to get to the seven years later part really quickly.Rich Birch — But ah those early conversations, how are you handling yourself, interacting with the like other people, you know, approaching them, having those conversations. What did you learn in the early dialogue that could help us if we’re trying to build, you know, deeper community trust in a place that just is so skeptical of that we’re coming with, just looking to take from our people.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. I mean, you have to be willing to be inconvenienced. I think that’s been a big part of it.Lou Pizzichillo — On week one, so we we launched literally on the first day and launch day was bigger than we thought it was going to be. And on that Monday, I was called to the mayor’s office, the mayor of the village.Lou Pizzichillo — And I was like, okay, thought I was going to go have a conversation. And when I got there, it was the it was him, it was the head of code enforcement and the fire chief all in a room waiting for me Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Lou Pizzichillo — And they had pictures of cars parked all over the street. And I I realized there, like, there was a real concern about what this church was going to be in the community.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so from there, we’ve just been looking for opportunities to earn trust. The neighbors have made it very clear that they don’t like cars parking on the street. And so we, we began paying for a lot so that we could take the cars off of the street. We don’t have to, they can legally park in the street, but we rent the lot. We told the owner of the property why we’re doing it. And he got on board with what we’re doing. We’re now in a place, kind of a long story, but we now don’t have to pay for that lot.Rich Birch — Wow.Lou Pizzichillo — We also, like the trust has been earned one decision at a time. We were going to do this big thing in the parking lot. We did a parking lot renovation that took the whole summer. After the summer, we were like, hey, in our new parking lot, let’s put on a Christmas show. We’ll run it throughout two weeks in December.Lou Pizzichillo — We had an animator who goes to the church. He like had this great idea for a show. He’s like, we’ll project it on the building. People will drive in. We’ll run it multiple times a night, do it for a few weeks throughout December. We were calling it Christmas in Lights.Lou Pizzichillo — So we put this whole plan together. He’s making the thing. We start advertising it and the village comes to us and they’re like, you’re in violation of the code. You can’t do this. And and they’re giving us all these reasons that I felt like didn’t really hold that much weight, you know.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — But in thinking about it, I do understand the inconvenience it would have been. We just had a major parking lot renovation. There were huge trucks making tons of noise for months. Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And now that’s finally over. And we’re going to ask the village to deal with the traffic of a show happening every single night, you know, for a few weeks in December.Rich Birch — Right Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so I went to the mayor and I was like, hey, ah it’s a new mayor at this point. But I just sat down with her and I was like, hey, listen, if you have concerns about this, I want you to feel the freedom to just come to me and say, this is a lot for the neighbors. Like, what do you think about pulling this in?Lou Pizzichillo —And it was cool. It was an opportunity for the two of us to kind of bond, like there was some trust earned there and we canceled the show. We decided not to do it. And I released a video explaining why we weren’t doing it.Rich Birch — Wow.Lou Pizzichillo — And the amazing thing is that I think canceling the show accomplished more than we would have accomplished if we actually did the show.Rich Birch — Interesting.Lou Pizzichillo — Like it earned, it was so well received when people found out that we weren’t going to do it. They were like, and even the people that attend the church, they were like, I want to be part of a church that supports their community like this.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so it went really well, and it was a lot less work, and so it was it was kind of a win all around. Rich Birch — What did the animators say? I feel but feel bad for that person who started doing that work. Did they understand. Obviously, they’re bummed or concerned.Lou Pizzichillo — He was bummed out, but he’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and so he he totally got it. And he’s on board with what we’re trying to do, and when he knew the reason why, he was totally, totally supportive of it.Rich Birch — Interesting. So where have you seen churches kind of get this wrong as we’ve tried to engage with the community? Maybe a common a pothole that we fall into or a way that we stub our toes, you know, a thing maybe you’ve you’ve you’ve seen that we just, we you know, kind of consistently make the same mistake.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. You know, one of my mentors told me a while ago, he was like, when you’re thinking about the church in the community, he’s like, there’s a small percentage of people that are for you. He said, there’s, there’s also a small percentage of people that are anti-church and they always will be, and you’re not going to change their minds.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And he’s like, but then there’s this large percentage that’s just kind of going to go one way or the other. And he’s like, that’s the percentage that you really have to be intentional about connecting with.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so I think, you know, it is very easy to tell the story like, hey, they don’t want us to do our Christmas show. This is persecution… Rich Birch — Yes. Lou Pizzichillo — …you know, and we got to fight and suffer for the name of Jesus. And ah we’ve just found that that’s not always the case. Rich Birch — Right. Lou Pizzichillo — You know, it’s people that don’t want to be inconvenienced and they may love church, but there’s there’s all this stuff going in the community. Maybe they maybe they have you know other reasons why. So i think I think it’s just the posture.Lou Pizzichillo — Like a lot of, most people, most people aren’t unreasonable. And I think if we give them the chance to really articulate what’s going on, I’ve been surprised at how understandable a  lot of the feelings have been, a lot of the resistance to church comes from real stories, real experiences.Rich Birch — Right, right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so, yeah, I think it’s the you know the whole like persecution thing or suffering or that is real and people do really experience that. But a lot of times I think we’re a little too quick to say, oh, this is what that is when really it may not be.Rich Birch — Well, and it it’s, ah in some ways, it’s like a low form of, well, it’s a leadership shortcut for sure to like demonize, to like, oh, there, those people are come out to get us. You know, any leader that’s led before realizes, oh, that’s like a that’s a tool that actually works. People respond to that, but, but we don’t want to do that. Like that isn’t, these are the people we’re trying to love and care. These are people we’re trying to see point towards Jesus. They’re not our enemies.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. Yeah.Rich Birch — They’re not, you know, they’re, they’re not, they might just not like parking, like you at the end of the day.Lou Pizzichillo — Right. Right.Rich Birch — And so let’s not, let’s not get over-revved, ah you know, on that. And unfortunately there are, I know, you know, way too many churches that have got themselves on the wrong side of this. And it’s very hard to backwards engineer out of that. Once you go down that road of like, we’re going to try to go negative with our community. That just isn’t, it’s just, it’s, it’s very difficult to to step back from that.Rich Birch — If you think about a church leader that’s listening in today and they’re, they’re saying, Hey, They’re thinking we want to do a better job being trusted more locally, trusted by local leaders, trusted by other you know businesses in town, that sort of thing. What would be a couple first steps you think they could take? A couple things where they could start to try to build that kind of trust with the community around them?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. You know, I think I’m a big believer in praying for those opportunities. And also just giving things a second look, you know. When you’re in a situation that may seem like a challenge or something that may seem like it’s getting in the way, to just stop and think, okay, is, is there an opportunity here to build trust with the community?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Lou Pizzichillo — Because we, and when we say the community, we’re not just talking about this nebulous, you know, idea of Babylon village. There are people there.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And if those people see this church as trustworthy, they may come here, you know, when their relationships are falling apart or when they’re looking for answers.Rich Birch — Yep.Lou Pizzichillo — Um, and so it’s really just been… We have great people here who have bought into what we’re doing, who have really helped us to see like, this is an opportunity to win with the community. And yeah, you gotta, you have to look outside the box and, and also be willing to, there, there are moments like with Church Has Left the Building—with the fair—and with the Christmas and light show, there are moments where they’ll see, okay, do you really care? Do you really care?Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — Like are how how much will you inconvenience yourself? And I mean, the payoff from that has just been huge, even though it’s been an inconvenience and our giving goes down that week and it throws off the series and we got to restructure the calendar.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — It has gone, there’s there’s never been a time where we’ve regretted it.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good. And, you know, there’s no doubt one of the things I think we can in our our little world of kind of church leadership, I think we can forget often that people in the communities that we’re serving, they really don’t have any frame of reference for a church of 1,200 people. Like they that that isn’t people’s normal perception of what a church is. Like a church is 25 people or 50 people in a room somewhere super small.Rich Birch — And, and their perception can be, they just don’t, they just don’t have any idea. What is that? What’s that look like? And some of that can skew negative because it’s busy and blah, blah, blah, all those things. And so we’ve, we, we have to take it on ourselves when our church gets to the size that you’re at or larger to try to help them understand and see though this is like really positive for the community and actually point towards that.Lou Pizzichillo — Yes.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.Lou Pizzichillo — Yes. And, and like along those lines, ah it’s also perceived as a source of power, right? Like if, if there, if you have 1500 people that all believe the same thing and you’re trying to run a village or a community, there is this, this sense of like, okay, well, are they going to be for us or against us? Like, are all these people going to be anti-village?Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so there is like that, that instinct to kind of protect from this group of people that make, make things really hard for us. But over time, as they begin to see like all these people are, are behind us, they’re here to support us and they want to make this place better.Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — It’s, it really is a beautiful thing. And we’re not there yet as a church, but we’re getting there. And, uh, we’ve just seen a lot of, lot of positive signs and, uh, Yeah, think it’s paid off.Rich Birch — So good, Lou. That’s, that’s great. Just as we wrap up today’s conversation, any kind of final words you’d have to, ah you know, to leaders that are listening in thinking about these issues today?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. I mean, I think I would just say it’s worth it. It’s it’s messy. It does make things difficult. It can be inconvenient. And when you have people who don’t go to church coming to church and you give them permission to be in progress, you get a lot of hairy situations. And we have a lot of conversations where we’re trying to figure out which way to go.Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.Lou Pizzichillo — But it’s in those conversations that we cant kind of stop and remind ourselves like, Hey, we’re, we’re glad that these people are here and we’re glad that these are the problems that we’re having. And, the end of the day, this is what we feel like it’s all about. So.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. I just want to encourage you as you’re leading, you’re doing a great job and and it’s been fun to get a chance to get a little window into what’s going on at Community. Want to encourage you and your your team, just you’re doing the right thing. If people want to track with the church or with you online, where do we want to send them to connect with you guys?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, so communitychurch.net is our website. On Instagram, we’re communitychurchli, we’re @communitychurchli, and we try to keep that handle throughout all the platforms. So YouTube, same thing. But yeah, that’s it.Rich Birch — Great. Thanks for for being here today, Lou.Lou Pizzichillo — Thanks for having me, Rich. It’s an honor to be here, and I love what you guys are doing for the church.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jason and Nan Britt from Bethlehem Church, one of the fastest-growing churches in the country with three campuses in Georgia—and a fourth on the way. Jason serves as Lead Pastor, while Nan has pioneered a powerful inclusion ministry called Bethlehem Buddies, designed to help children, students, and adults with special needs fully participate in the life of the church. In this conversation, they unpack how inclusive ministry became a defining part of Bethlehem’s culture and how any church—regardless of size—can take meaningful steps in this direction. Is your church unsure how to serve families affected by special needs? Do you feel overwhelmed by where to start or afraid of doing it wrong? Jason and Nan offer practical, hope-filled wisdom rooted in real-life experience. Revitalization with intentional mission. // Bethlehem Church is a revitalization story at every campus. When Jason arrived 14 years ago, the church had plateaued and was struggling to reflect its surrounding community. Rather than questioning the church’s heart, Jason focused on intentionality—helping the congregation shift from insider-focused habits to an outward-facing mission. Located near Athens, Georgia, Bethlehem serves a family-centric community, prompting leaders to double down on reaching families and the next generation. That commitment laid the groundwork for inclusion ministry, even before the church realized it. Seeing an unreached community. // Nan’s background in special education played a critical role in shaping Bethlehem Buddies. Long before it became a formal ministry, Jason and Nan were deeply immersed in the lives of families affected by disability. When they arrived at Bethlehem, they recognized that many families in their community wanted to attend church but lacked the support to do so. Rather than being opposed to special needs ministry, churches often feel overwhelmed by it. Bethlehem chose to take a different approach—starting small, stepping in with humility, and learning along the way. Inclusion, not separation. // Nan defines inclusion as inviting people with disabilities into the same environments as everyone else—preschool, kids ministry, student ministry, and adult worship—rather than isolating them into separate spaces. Inclusion honors the individual and recognizes that people with disabilities don’t all look the same or need the same support. A five-year-old with autism and a 30-year-old man with Down syndrome should be welcomed into age-appropriate environments, with individualized support when needed. The goal isn’t just inclusion, but belonging—creating space for people to contribute and use their gifts within the body of Christ. The buddy model at scale. // Bethlehem Buddies pairs each individual with a trained volunteer—called a “buddy”—whose role is simple but powerful: be their best friend for 90 minutes. Buddies focus on connection over compliance, valuing relationship more than control. While some individuals prefer quieter environments, most are included directly into existing ministries with one-on-one support. Parents can attend worship knowing their child or adult family member is safe, known, and loved. Over time, this model has grown from serving one child to serving more than 300 families every weekend. Unexpected volunteer impact. // One of the biggest surprises has been how Bethlehem Buddies shapes volunteer culture. The ministry attracts people who might never serve in traditional kids or student roles—men, teenagers, business leaders—and cultivates empathy, humility, and ownership. Jason notes that the ministry has become one of the strongest volunteer-recruiting pipelines in the church, strengthening the overall mission and heart of Bethlehem. From program to culture. // Early on, Nan personally recruited volunteers by tapping shoulders and inviting people she saw potential in. Over time, inclusion became embedded in the church’s DNA. Today, the culture itself recruits. Serving families affected by special needs has reshaped Bethlehem’s understanding of the gospel—reinforcing the truth that the kingdom of God is for everyone, especially “the least of these.” Jason emphasizes that while inclusion started as the right thing to do, it has become one of the most spiritually formative aspects of the church. Simple steps for churches. // For churches wondering where to begin, Nan encourages leaders to start with one service, one plan, and one conversation. Decide how you would respond if a family arrived this Sunday. Identify a few volunteers who could serve as buddies. Use a detailed family intake form to prepare volunteers and build trust with parents. Jason urges pastors to see opportunity rather than obstacles—and to remember that you don’t need to be an expert to start, just willing to learn. To learn more about Bethlehem Church and the Bethlehem Buddies Network, visit bethlehemchurch.us. Churches interested in starting or strengthening inclusion ministry can email Nan directly and take take a look at Bethlehem’s Buddies Volunteer Handbook. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe Do you feel like your church’s or school’s facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey, friends. Welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I really want you to lean in today. This is one of those issues that we see in churches all the time that I really hope tons churches that are leaning in or listening in today will lean in on this issue, particularly if you’re a growing church. This might be one of those just up over the horizon issues that it that you can get ahead on and work ahead on now and and actually create more space for more people in your community. Rich Birch — Really excited to have Jason and Nan Britt with us. They’re from Bethlehem Church. It’s repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country with three locations, if I’m counting correctly, in Georgia. Jason is the lead pastor and Nan has championed a program called Bethlehem Buddies. And we’re really looking forward to pulling this apart. They offer that all campuses and they provide inclusive support to help preschooler, child, teenager, and adults with special needs transition smoothly into one of the church’s worship environments. So Jason, Nan, welcome to the show. So glad that you are here.Nan Britt — Thank you. Jason Britt — And we’re thankful, thankful for for you having us.Rich Birch — Yeah, Jason, why don’t you tell us, kind of give us the picture of Bethlehem Church, kind of tell us a little bit about the church, kind of set the picture. If we were to arrive… Jason Britt — Yeah. Yeah. Rich Birch — …on a typical weekend, what would we experience?Jason Britt — Yeah. It’s three campuses, hopefully four soon. They’re all revitalization story. We just actually relocated our broadcast campus about a mile down the road. We’re a year in now… Rich Birch — Nice. Jason Britt — …December when you’re broadcasting this. And so we opened, new and it’s a revitalization story, multiple services, and it’s just a church that had history. And all of our campuses, Rich, are revitalization stories, too.Jason Britt — And it was a church with history that just had the courage, if you will, to envision a new future or be open to envisioning a new future. And we’ve been here for 14 years. It was my first senior pastorate, and it’s been a phenomenal year. And the church has just embraced the mission of leading people to discover new life in Christ in all areas of our ministry.Rich Birch — Why don’t we stick with you, Jason, and double click on revitalization. Jason Britt — Yeah. Rich Birch — Kind of pull apart that picture a little bit, help people, because I know there’s people that are listening in today that are on the other side of revitalization. And they’re thinking, hey, you know, what were some of, you know, you first stepped into that journey. What were some early questions that you were asking that really about that kind of led you to the place of like, hey, this is what I think the church could become. Where what started that journey for you?Jason Britt — Yeah, I think even in the process of, you know how it goes in different denominations or tribes have different ways of calling a pastor. And so for me, as I talked with the group that was selecting a pastor, the church had been plateaued for a number of years, plateaued, declining, kind of fell on that. And ultimately, my question for them is, what’s your limiting, have you guys considered your limiting factor? You know, and I think our church, although the heart was there, it did not reflect the community as a whole. And so by that, I mean the heart for mission was there, but not the intentionality of mission, if you will.Jason Britt — And so we really kind of began a two to three year journey of what would it look like for our church to reflect our community. And our community, Rich, we’re outside we’re kind of the bedroom community of Athens Georgia. Rich Birch — Okay. Jason Britt — All of our campuses surround the college town of Athens and it’s very family-centric, very kid-centric. I mean it’s not a high single adult population out here, if you will. This is where families live. And so we really needed to double down and become incredibly serious about the next generation and reaching families.Jason Britt — And I think it was just the reality of getting intentional with what our mission and heart was. The church wasn’t, I think I heard years ago, maybe on your podcast or somebody else, a pastor say, when you take over a church, one of two things are happening. They either believe they won the Super Bowl or they believe they’re losing every game.Jason Britt — Neither he goes, neither—I think it was Jud Wilhite said, I’m not sure… Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah. Jason Britt — …He goes, neither are true. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Jason Britt — But you have to understand their psyche… Rich Birch — Right. Jason Britt — …and the way they see their ministry. So for me, the gift of Bethlehem, Rich, was they were, they were, they were ready to win. I didn’t have to convince them they had to change a ton. I just had to, in many ways, give permission to see things differently. That if you will, the local church tends to be drift toward insider focused…Rich Birch — Yep, that’s true. Yeah.Jason Britt — …and the gospel is very outsider focused. And so for us, it was a lot of, if you will, deconstructing some things before we reconstructed, a lot of examining the fruit of what we were doing, not the intent. You know, that was a lot of the earliest, probably where lot people that you’re listening, your listeners are in revitalization. A lot of it’s not what we, early on, is not what we need to do that we’re not doing is what we need to stop doing that we’re doing.Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.Jason Britt — Right. And that’s the hard part, the deconstruction.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s true.Jason Britt — That was my first two or three years. It’s when I had a full head of hair and no gray, you know what i’m saying, bro? And so it was good though, man.Rich Birch — Yes, for sure.Jason Britt — And so that was our early days of really the heart didn’t need a lot of work. The direction and the intentionality to mission, if you will, strategy and vision. So.Rich Birch — Well, I think there’s a lot of churches that are listening in that I think can relate with that idea of like, hey, the heart of our church is is right, but we’re not really taking intentional steps. And at some point as a leadership team, you realized that there were families that wanted to participate fully, but needed something different in order to do that. That’s ultimately what led us to what we’re talking about today. Rich Birch — What opened your eyes to that gap? What kind of got the ball rolling for you as a leadership team, for you specifically or for our leadership team as you were thinking about this issue?Nan Britt — Yeah, so, um you know, we’ve always been in ministry, Jason in ministry, but really my calling has been early on in special education. You know, that was my training and experience.Rich Birch — Okay.Nan Britt — And ah so professionally, you know, that was my job as a teacher. And so really for the first 10 years of our marriage, Jason walked alongside that road with me. And so the students that I taught really had a lot of needs. And so we really got to know those families. We were really immersed in the special needs community of families.Nan Britt — And so as we came to Bethlehem, we knew, we just knew this was such a great need. This was really an unreached group of people in our community. And so we were excited at the opportunity to be able to serve these families. You know, with him taking that role as as lead pastor, we wanted to make that a priority with our church.Nan Britt — And so that was that was an easy way for me to get involved as a volunteer. So I served as a volunteer for several years because that was just my experience and training and gifting and, you know, what I felt called to to do to to take what I had learned and really use that, you know, in the church.Jason Britt — Yeah, I think we’ve been to some great, we served at two great churches before we came here, awesome churches. If I said them, many of your listeners would know they were awesome and we have nothing, but I remember us being there. A lot of times it was, as we as we were serving there, it was not a, nobody’s against special needs ministry. It just seems overwhelming. Rich Birch — That’s true. Yeah.Jason Britt — Right. And that’s what you find is nobody’s against doing it. It’s just kind of what it seems overwhelming, if you will, or where do we even start? And so I think for us, when we came, our kids were young. And as Nan began to It just began as with one person. Rich Birch — Right.Jason Britt — And really beginning inclusion there. It was more of instead of being overwhelmed by it, almost, if you will… Nan Britt — Yeah. Jason Britt — …taking a step in and giving the example of what of what that looks like.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. And let’s let’s start, we’re going to get into some tactics in a second, but Jason, I want you to think about from like at a 30,000 foot point of view. My impression as an outsider, looking at this, you know, what you guys are doing, it’s pretty robust. You’ve created a pathway for children, students, adults with special needs to be fully included. And we’ll talk about what that means in a minute. But it to me, i think this could struggle if it’s just a tactic. It seems like what you’ve done has been able to talk about it really at kind of a cultural, this who we’re trying to be. So talk to us how we do that as senior leaders. How do we move this from beyond just like this is another thing we do to like, oh, this is a part of who we are. This is how we see ourselves.Jason Britt — Yeah, and and Nan could probably fill a little bit of the gaps here, but I think for me, I would say two things to senior leaders or senior teams if you’re talking about that. I think the cultural piece is when it becomes a kingdom of God, everybody’s invited at the table. Nan Britt — Yes. Jason Britt — The least of these, marginalized, which we know the gospel – Jesus is more drawn to empty hearts and empty lives than he is full rooms, if you will, you know? And so then in our society, the poor, the marginalized or the least of these is not only poor and impoverished, but oftentimes it’s families who have lived and wrestled with and, walk through this. And so creating space for everybody, I would say was a very, for us, Jesus-centric type thing. Nan Britt — Yes. Jason Britt — It was like this, if we are for the least of these, if we are for all people, that was one of our kind of core values as Bethlehem Church is a church for all people, right? Gospel, for God so loved the world. That’s a pretty broad path right there, the world.Rich Birch — Right. Yes.Jason Britt — So then let’s be intentional there. And, and the thing that I would tell you now, and as Nan gets into the tactics, we didn’t do this to start. This wasn’t the reason. The reason was it was the right thing and we could do this, but, Rich, man, I am telling you, when you begin to serve these families and and you see the joy and the blessing and what it does to the heart of the church, you cannot exchange.Rich Birch — That’s true.Jason Britt — Serving these families, when I talk to other pastor buddies that are stepping into this or some good friends that are in the Buddies Network who would do this, I’m like, man, what it does for the whole of your church when it comes to the heart of Christ, you know, and we’ve seen it go from one kid to three serving 300 families a weekend now. And so it’s been a crazy thing. But what it does for the overall mission and heart of the church and the volunteers and the church seeing this is a powerful thing.Rich Birch — Yeah, I would agree. You know, we talked a little bit beforehand about yeah when I esrved at Liquid Church for years, and this has been a part of our story there. It’s like of my proudest things that we had been a part of. And but but I want to take a step back. And Nan, can you help us understand when you say the word inclusion, what do you mean by that as opposed to separation?Rich Birch — So I’ll paint a bit of a picture for you. Maybe I’m a church of, I don’t know, 5-, 600 people. And sure, there are some kids that we can see. There are kids with special needs. And and I’m like, don’t don’t we just want to create a place where we can like put those kids away so they don’t bother us? Again, I’m I’m using hyperbole. Nan Britt — Right. Rich Birch — Obviously, I’m playing a bit of the devil’s advocate. I don’t actually believe that. Nan Britt — Right. Rich Birch — But what what do you mean by inclusion, not separation? What does that look like?Nan Britt — Yes. Well, inclusion simply means that you are, in the church setting, looking at preschool ministry, kids ministry, students, adult ministries, and really just looking for opportunity to include everyone into those environments. You know, and we know that some people, individuals with disabilities, just may need some individualized love, care, and support. But I think inclusion also speaks more importantly to honoring people and seeing people as individuals. Rich Birch — So true.Nan Britt — And so, for example, we know that a 30-year-old man with Down syndrome looks very different than a five-year-old with autism. And so inclusion is honoring and seeing a person for who they are. And so we want to invite a 30 year old man with Down syndrome into the same opportunities that we’re inviting other 30 year old men in in the church. Nan Britt — And so, so that just gives an example and it actually simplifies things a lot. You know, you you’re really whatever is being offered, you know, at your church, for each age group, you’re you’re simply just opening up that opportunity for our kids and adults with disabilities and special needs to be a part of that.Nan Britt — And then, like we said, we just know sometimes that may mean they need some individualized support in order to be a part of those ah great ministries happening. But it I think inclusion really speaks to honoring that individual and seeing them, what they can contribute to the body of Christ. Nan Britt — And so we know everyone wants to be included, but belonging is really the goal. You know, people, we we know the difference, you know, as people when we’re included in a place, but when we’re invited to to to contribute back… Rich Birch — So good. Nan Britt — …and to use our gifts and strengths, you know, that’s when you really feel a sense of belonging. And so I think that’s the power of inclusion versus just, hey, let’s just provide a separate space and because this is what we’re supposed to do.Rich Birch — Right. Right. So can you get tactical on that? What does that actually look like for, because I, you know, I, I understand doing this at a one or two people, but at scale, 3-, 400, 500 every weekend over a year, like that’s, how do you actually do that? We’ll stick with you, Nan. If I’myeah, what what does that look like? How do how do we provide that care? How do we and how do we learn how we can best support people and then communicate with them and all that? What does it kind of… Nan Britt — Yes. Rich Birch — I know there’s a lot there, I understand… Nan Britt — Yes.Rich Birch — …but but give us kind of an overview. We start there.Nan Britt — eah, that’s a great question. I think it’s really important to first define your goal of like… Rich Birch — Right. Nan Britt — …okay, what is our goal and why are we we providing disability ministry, special needs ministry? And what I believe is the goal of it is that so a family can attend worship, can attend a worship service together on a Sunday morning.Rich Birch — Great.Nan Britt — That is the goal. You know, first, over other nights of programming happening at your church, we believe that we want our families to hear the gospel message, the hope of Jesus, to experience worship, prayer, sit under preaching. And so that’s why we we want to focus on inviting them and providing support around a worship service. We know most likely for parents to be able to attend the service, then that means their child or adult is going to need some individualized support and care.Nan Britt — And so that’s that’s where the Buddies team, the Buddies ministry comes in. And so ah you’re going to need some some volunteers. And so really, i think that simplifies it a lot because I think churches get overwhelmed to think, man, do we need to provide something every time the doors of our church are open? And I would say a great place to start and focus on is we want families to be invited to your worship service. Nan Britt — And then equally, ah we want our individuals to experience the love of Christ, grow in their faith, be be in community um with others. And so I think that’s the place to start is while mom and dad get to attend a service and they’re siblings, then we provide a volunteer to pair up with kids and adults with disabilities.Nan Britt — And then from there, you already have these great ministries happening in your church, kids ministries, student ministries, sometimes on a Sunday morning. And then you’re able to just join in the great ministry happening with that buddy support with a child.Nan Britt — And then I do think that if you have the space at your church, you can also offer a classroom space for kids and adults who prefer a quieter setting or do better in a small group setting. Then you can offer another space that that also has the same great ministry happening. So I really think those volunteers drive the ministry… Jason Britt — Yeah. Nan Britt — …and then just get to participate in with with all the great things happening on a Sunday morning at your church.Rich Birch — I love that. Jason, can you, let’s talk about it from the side, because Nan was talking there about the volunteer side of the equation. Let’s talk about it from that end.Rich Birch — What have you seen, kind of what impact has adding buddies and adding a really robust inclusion culture to your church?Jason Britt — Yeah.Rich Birch — How has that kind of impacted the volunteers who are and engaged in this ministry?Jason Britt — Yeah, I think a couple things and our kids will be examples, but they’re friends as well. What you see is there, and and we’ve seen this with male leadership, is there are people that would probably not raise their hand and say, hey, I want to be in preschool or kids ministry. But the chance to pair up and walk with a teenager with special needs, to be included, to be a one-on-one individualized and walk into our kid’s town or our midtown, which is our younger environments, it’s very empowering. And, I mean, it just opens opportunities for connection. And that’s one thing that we’ve seen, that we see people who may not want more than handing out a, but if you will, just on the Sunday service, if you were the Sunday morning weekend environment, serving opportunities, obviously there’s more in the church, but those coffee, parking lot, greeter, than kids ministry. A lot of your churches that you minister to look similar ours, you know what I mean? Jason Britt — And so what we found was that stream of empowering and inviting, and candidly our buddies ministry, is stronger in the recruiting aspect than our kids or student ministry because it’s so unique and it calls things out of people that maybe the other don’t, if you will. We’ve seen that. And so I would say that that was one of the benefits that we didn’t know early on. Nan maybe did just because of her background in special needs. But as we’ve seen it, I mean, you know, students, it’s a powerful thing when you’re watching a 16-year-old, 17-year-old high schooler, when you’re watching them walk with a five-year-old with autism or Down syndrome into a children’s ministry class. That’s just a pretty powerful thing. The humility, the ownership, there’s just… Nan Britt — Empathy. Jason Britt — …empathy. That rich, the discipleship piece of that’s incredibly strong. You know… Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Jason Britt — …that just in this simple, it’s not filling a hole, it’s empowering. And so that’s one of the things we’ve seen. I mean, I know you’ve been around, if you were Liquid, even the Night to Shine, obviously the the Tim Tebow thing. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fantastic. Jason Britt — Even that, that’s probably the big mass on a mass scale we do where the church is incredibly involved. But then the opportunities it’s opened up for us on the outside of the church to partner with other nonprofits and bring nonprofits that for serve families with special needs, but we get to bring a gospel presence to that. Rich Birch — Love it.Jason Britt — And that’s because of what we’re doing internally. So I’ve seen both of those things that the mission fulfilled in ways that it’s not just serving those families with special needs, but taking the church to a place we’ve never been.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And, you know, to underline something you said there that we’ve seen through multiple conversations that I think when we cast a big picture and a big responsibility to volunteers, they will step up to that. In fact, they’ll actually lean in. They’ll be like,I’m this is great. This requires a lot of me.Jason Britt — Yes.Rich Birch — I would love to lean in.Jason Britt — Yes.Rich Birch — So Nan, what have you learned about, let’s keep keep on this whole topic here, volunteers. What have you learned about recruiting, finding these volunteers, training them so they feel prepared, confident, like, you know, this is your professionally, you said this… Nan Britt — Right. Rich Birch — …your this is your professional background, but, you know, you take your average 16-year-old, they’re not professionally equipped for this. And so how do you help them get to a place where they can be a buddy?Nan Britt — Right.Rich Birch — Talk us through what that looks like.Nan Britt — Yes. It’s, it’s really, it’s so exciting. That’s something that I’ve always been passionate about to connect people to purpose. And so, and then like you said, to take what I have learned and, and really, put it into terms and, and easy ways, easy strategies for, everyday volunteers to feel equipped.Nan Britt — And, and, and so I think that we, a lot of our training materials have come from that that we love to share with churches because we that’s something that we prioritize is we we have many volunteers that serve that do have a background in special education a lot like myself with experience, and I think they’re needed for sure in this ministry. But we have the majority of our volunteers are teenagers and adults who are businessmen. They own their own construction company. Women who you know are stay-at-home moms. Teenagers who, yeah, who would say, hey, I have a heart for this. I’m available. And we love that. We think that that is absolutely the right person to serve. And so we’ve just found some easy ways. Nan Britt — We are highly prepared on our end as a staff. to ah provide the best experience possible for the volunteer and the child on a Sunday morning. And so we do that with, we have a great family form that we have all of our families fill out. We’ve done that for 11 years. It’s a really detailed form. And so we feel like that gives us so much great information about the child or adult that we’re working with, that the parent has given us. Their interests, their likes, things that their dislikes, what to do to to help them stay calm and engaged. We utilize that every week. We get that in the hands of the volunteers so they feel equipped to to know the child they’re paired up with. Jason Britt — Yeah. Nan Britt — And then we we have great just engaging activities and and Bible stories and worship that that just provide the best experience possible for for an hour and a half on a Sunday morning while they’re with us. We want our volunteers to feel supported, to just enjoy being with their child or adult. You know, we say your role is to be their best friend on a Sunday, to hang out. We really prioritize connection over compliance. You know, we’re highly relational. It’s very individualized. And so we, I think that takes away a lot of the nervousness for our volunteers. Jason Britt — Yeah.Nan Britt — And we really, do have great experiences because church is different. Church is different and should be different than school, than therapy, than camp.Rich Birch — Right.Nan Britt — And so you really can have such a a great experience, you know, for an hour and a half, you know, during a service and people feel equipped. We encourage them. We support them. And, and as you know, Rich, people step in to, to volunteer and, but they always come back to us and say, they are so much more of a blessing to me.Jason Britt — Yeah, yeah. Nan Britt — You know, they, they are really ministering to me because our kids and adults, you know, just have such a, a peaceful presence and unhurried spirit, gracious. They’ll pray for you. And so they turn around and bless our volunteers and minister to them. And in so many greater ways than we, than we ever really do for them. Jason Britt — It’s good.Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. And you use the word buddy, and I’d love to double click on that. You you talked about this, Nan, this idea of be their best friend that, you know, for that 90 minutes every week. It’s not about compliance. Talk us about talk to us about that a little bit more, kind of unpack that a little bit. What does that look like? Because that’s a nuance that I think people might, who have not been around this kind of ministry might not understand that. So unpack that a little bit more. What’s that look like?Nan Britt — Yes. So that’s, that’s what we choose to call our volunteers, buddies, buddy volunteers. And we we think it’s, it fits whether you’re with a child or with your, whether you’re with an adult with a disability. And I think that, the the beauty and the success of the ministry is it’s just individualized, you know, undivided attention for a whole, like you said, 90 minutes where we want our kids and adults to feel seen and heard and valued.Nan Britt — And so if you’re a buddy volunteer, you you have that permission to just celebrate and make that morning just all about their child and get on their level, play with them. You know, we we give a lot of direction around ways to interact with people that have differences. You know, if they’re in a wheelchair, if they don’t verbally communicate, hey, here’s some creative ways of of how you can interact with your buddy. And just to that, you know, to to just place such a high value on that child or adult. And yeah, and there there’s so much celebration around it and so much joy. I think people who walk by buddies or around our ministry, that’s the culture of it’s just so much joy and celebration.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s great.Nan Britt — Even when they’re you’re in the presence of so many complex needs, you know, this is a group of people who have a lot of hardships and and very complex needs on paper, but yet you can still just have such a great experience as a buddy volunteer. And like I said, I think that the reason for it is it’s so individualized and it’s ah based around their interest, what they like, and really valuing them and then sharing the love of Jesus. Jason Britt — Yeah.Nan Britt — You know, that unconditional love. That is what we are we strive to share, you know, as a buddy volunteer to our kids and adults. Jason Britt — And I think, we’re Rich, I would add, I think in your churches that are listening, now, then we’re 10 years in, the culture recruits. Nan Britt — True.Jason Britt — Early on, early on, I would say Nan, and she doesn’t give herself enough credit for this, she shoulder tapped a lot of people and would say, hey, you know this is when the church was very smaller and it was. But in the early days, it was a lot of, just like there’s individual care, I would just say the recruiting was individualized… Nan Britt — Yes. Jason Britt — …by Nan, tapping shoulders, saying, hey, I see this in you, or hey, I think you could help me. I mean, I think about… You know, our friends, Richard, Andy, some of these guys who were men’s men that are friends of mine that and and she would just be very specific. Would you and and all of them were like, absolutely. Nan Britt — Yeah.Jason Britt — Before they even knew what they were getting into.Rich Birch — Right.Jason Britt — I just think early on, I would tell you now our culture does a lot of the recruiting.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Jason Britt — But early on it was individualized. I see this in you, that shoulder tapping. Nan Britt — Yep, that’s true. Jason Britt — It was never necessarily my vision for it, recruiting people. It was more of the individualized. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Jason Britt — And then now it’s part of our culture, but I would say it didn’t start. It just became a part of our culture. Nan Britt — Yeah. Jason Britt — Does that make sense?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s 100%. 100%. That’s a great thing to underline, even just in general… Jason Britt — Yes. Rich Birch — …but specifically in this this ministry, that those early people that we get involved really do kind of cast vision for the future of like, oh, we’re looking for more of these kind of, like you said, whoever those guys are, your men’s men guys.Jason Britt — Yeah.Rich Birch — It’s like, well, that then creates a door for like other guys like that to say, hey, I want to be a part of that.Nan Britt — Absolutely.Rich Birch — And yeah, that’s good.Nan Britt — Yes.Rich Birch — I was also don’t underestimate the the power of the person asking. I know you highlighted this celebrating your wife, but that’s very true. Like that you want to, the person you put in in charge of this wants to be the kind of person that is trusted and is loved and has got some wisdom. So Jason, sticking with you, I’m sure you get calls from leads, from other lead pastors or executive pastors that might have some like common misunderstandings or fears that about starting a special needs ministry. What are some of those fears that they have and what do you say to them to try to say, no, no, you should do this. What are what are the things that come up in a conversation like that?Jason Britt — It’s great question. I think a lot of times it’s not, it’s, if you don’t have a background or awareness or someone in your family or close to you that has special needs or disabilities, there is a lot of what if, what if, what if.Rich Birch — Right.Jaon Britt — And so like, what if the needs extreme, you know, they have feeding tube or they kind of create the worst case scenario or the hardest situation to go, I don’t know if we could ever. Rich Birch — Right. Jason Britt — And what you realize is the vast majority, the, the, the, the needs not that extreme. So it’s kind of almost right size and go in. No, no, no, no. I think you’re, you’re out thinking, you know, in church, you’ve been around church, Rich, you know, we have a way of out-thinking ourselves somehow of going, well, what if…Rich Birch — Sure. Sure.Jason Britt — Hey, Hey, Hey, there’s a really good chance, you know?Rich Birch — Right.Jason Britt — And so I think that’d be one of going, no, I think, but a lot of times it’s not from against, it’s just a lack of awareness. Rich Birch — Right. Jason Britt — You know, it’s not, we can’t do this because. I think liability, something that comes up, I mean, candidly, Rich, you know, in this day and age of liability and stuff like that. And I think again, the reality is, we are 10 years in, 300 families. It’s just not something we’ve ever dealt with. Nan Britt — Yeah. Jason Britt — You know, got think these families love these kids more than we could ever love these kids.Rich Birch — Right.Jason Britt — And so we’re going to be fully equipped and they’re, they’re not, if there’s great needs that, that are, that, they’re probably not going to check them in. They’ll sit with them in the service. You know what I mean? Something like that.Rich Birch — Yep, sure.Jason Britt — I think sometimes that would be one. And then… Nan Britt — Well, yeah, and I would just say, I think that’s when it’s important to have have humility and invite in someone that, like myself that, and I only say myself because like a teacher. Someone who has experience and training professionally in this field so that they’re able to to answer those questions, and to really right size and give a realistic. You know, and I’ve been in some of those conversations before to say, you know, in 11 years, that’s not something that we’ve ever dealt with the church… Jason Britt — Right. Yeah. Nan Britt — …but, but, Hey, here’s something else that you need to think about.Jason Britt — Yeah.Nan Britt — And so I think it’s, it’s really important. I have a lot of respect for leaders who show humility in saying, Hey, I, I even admit I have some ignorance about this conversation… Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. Nan Britt — …and I’d like to invite in so ah someone, an expert in this area to help us move forward in this conversation. Yeah.Jason Britt — Yeah, that’s been the, I think that’s the, yeah, that’s what we have talked to. Again, it’s almost permission, that Nan’s right, humility and just going, okay, we don’t know what we don’t know, let’s just ask some questions. Rich Birch — Right.Jason Britt — But the other thing I would say is, like, we don’t have, um if you will, a room. We don’t have space. We don’t, we’re we’re for it. And I think we go back to our early days, neither did we. You know It was all inclusion-based and all still is before we had a safety room, if you will, or before we had, what do you call it?Nan Britt — We don’t call it a safety room. It’s just a buddy space. Jason Britt — Buddy Space. Like like you know if there’s a kid that’s having an issue or or you know something. We didn’t we have a little more now than we did, but back in the day, it was more inclusion and just start where where you’re at. Nan Britt — Yeah. Jason Britt — You can do something.Nan Britt — That’s right.Rich Birch — Yeah. I think that’s a good word, Jason, that I think we get way too far ahead of us. And we’re like, we and we picture 300 families and like, oh my goodness, what’s going to happen? It’s like, well, how about but we start with the two kids that are right in front of us?Nan Britt — That’s right. Jason Britt — That’s it.Rich Birch — And what can we do to support those families? Nan, you said this, I’d love to invite you in on these conversations. I’m sure there’s churches that are listening in there like I would love Nan’s help. Talk to me about the buddies network. This is a way—I love this—you guys have stepped out to try to help more churches. Talk us through what that is. How do you help churches? How can you engage with them that sort of thing.Nan Britt — Yes. I mean, you’re exactly right. That’s that’s where the idea came from, is that in our area, you know, around metro Atlanta, around Athens, we are in weekly conversations with churches of of how to start a ministry or just begin, like you’re saying, what are some easy steps, tangible ways to serve families, bring awareness to it. And so we just decided, you know, out stewarding, being a good steward of the the great work God has done at Bethlehem, the resources he’s provided for us that we love. Nan Britt — Jason and I, we, we, our big kingdom church people. We love partnering with churches. We love knowing other pastors. And, and so that’s been exciting for me just to work with other churches and share with them. I think we’ve learned so much at Bethlehem, like Jason said, from being very small with no budget, no space, being very conservative in, in what we’ve done to now having a huge ministry, a large ministry, having great space. Jason Britt — Right.Nan Britt — I think we just have learned so many ways to be able to equip churches. And and that’s really the heart behind it. And so we’ve done this last year, really, I have I’m leading that and and kind of initiating that. We just have put in quarterly quarterly lunches if you are nearby and close to us to join us for that. Quick things to your inbox that give ideas. We share our resources. We’re where we don’t want you to recreate something, spend time on that.Bethlehem Church — Because like you said, a lot of that a lot of times it’s kids’ ministries, people who already wear a lot of hats at their churches. I mean, they are overwhelmed. They are leading kids’ ministry. We have some a part of our network that are family pastors, and then they have also been given this task of, hey, figure out special needs ministry as well.Jason Britt — Yeah. Nan Britt — Or volunteers. They’re not paid. So it’s our desire just to get in there and help equip. Jason Britt — Yeah. Nan Britt — And to make it fit the structure of your church. You know, every church is unique. And so ah we just want to make this tangible and easy. And so, yeah. And so we we walk alongside churches really at their own pace, you know, of what they say, hey, we need help with this. Jason Britt — Yep.Nan Britt — And in 2026, we hope to keep expanding resources and more so online that really allow churches outside of Georgia, you know, to access more resources.Rich Birch — Yeah, that which you’ve provided and we’ll link to this, the Buddies Volunteer Handbook. I thought this was great, kind of a I know I love this kind of thing. I’m always like diving deep on, wow, it’s so cool to see what people do. I love this. Talk to us a little bit about this resource. How does it fit in your… Nan Britt — Yes. Rich Birch — …like in your process with Buddies and all that?Nan Britt — Yes. For sure, you know, the first few years, like we’re saying of our ministry, that our our procedures and systems looked more like just a Word document. Rich Birch — Right.Nan Britt — You know, something that I would share onboarding volunteers of, hey, this is your role as a buddy. You know, this is what it means to serve at our ministry. This is these are the expectations. This is… And then in time, you know, we created that. It turned into a handbook, you know, a nicely you know printed handbook that that matched really what our kids ministry handbook and our student ministry handbook looked like. And so it is a great resource that that’s how we onboard volunteers and kind of their their first invitation into the ministry of we go through that handbook with them. We prioritize, hey, this is what we say is your role and what a win is in our ministry. So it goes through a lot of our our systems put around the ministry, the procedures. And what I like to share with churches is kind of what Jason was saying. Really, special needs ministry fits neatly into that that umbrella of all the systems and procedures and policies that a church already has in place for kids ministry… Rich Birch — Yeah. Nan Britt — …and student ministry, special needs ministry fits within that. And that is the way we function at our church. And so there, back when you said there really is not additional liability or additional policies for special needs ministry. So, that’s contained in our handbook. And yeah, it’s a great resource to share with our volunteers and drives the the goals and expectations of the ministry. Jason Britt — Yeah . Rich Birch — That’s so good. Nan Britt — And that’s what we share a lot with we share our handbook with churches and then our family form. Most churches are saying, hey, you mentioned the form that you give to parents.Rich Birch — Yeah. Help us understand that. Yeah. Yes.Nan Britt — Hey, can you share that with us? And we say, absolutely. Just just take our logo off of it. You put your church logo on there. Rich Birch — Yes. Nan Britt — And you just just just start using that because that’s that’s another great resource we share.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. So as we’re coming down to land, kind of a same similar question to both you. I’ll start with you, Nan. Let’s picture that you’re a leader within a church who’s got a passion for this area and is like thinking, hey, we we need to take some steps in the next, maybe the next six months, next three months to kind of move this from, hey, we’re helping a couple kids to we want to create a bit more structure there. What would you say to them to like, Hey, here are some first steps that you should be taking to try to expand this beyond something that’s informal to like, we’re trying to make this a little bit more part of what we do, not just something we’re kind of dealing with. It’s like, we’re going to actively add this.Nan Britt — Right. Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think something immediately that churches can do is to have a conversation, you know, around kids ministry, around the team on Sundays, and essentially just to have a plan in place of, okay, what would we do if a family visited our church? And just by having a conversation and being prepared, really just allows you to welcome that family without the stress and panic on your face. Rich Birch — Sure. Right. Nan Britt — You know, of that we know it’s unintentional, but we never want a family to feel like an inconvenience or a burden or unwelcomed at our church. But simply by having a plan of okay, what would we do if a family came? And I think that that could easily be we’re going to get them checked in and they’re going to go into our kids’ ministry environments. But maybe we can have two or three extra volunteers on call that we would utilize or we might pull from our existing kids ministry classes to be a buddy for that morning for that child in the second grade class. That’s that’s pretty easy to do. But if you have already talked through that, then when a family comes, it doesn’t send you in a into panic mode.Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Nan Britt — And and then, like because as we said, the parents are still there. They’re in service. You can always call them or text them with a question or a need that you might have. And then from there, I think it gives you time to put some systems in place. What that might be like is you you prioritize a Sunday morning service. If you if you offer multiple services, I always tell churches, hey, you know, pick, choose a service and build your volunteer team around one service. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.Nan Britt — And then that is a service you can communicate to the community of, hey, we’re offering our buddies team at the nine o’clock service on Sunday morning. We’d love to invite you to attend at this time. That’s pretty manageable for churches rather than feeling overwhelmed of, wow, do we need to offer her volunteers at every service that we have on a Sunday? So just starting small. Jason Britt — Yep, yep. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Nan Britt — And then, like I said, an easy step is, is, getting access to a family form. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Perfect. Nan Britt — And like I said, we can easily share that with you because you collect such great information that really helps you feel prepared for the hour and a half that the family’s with you on a Sunday morning.Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. So similar question, Jason, let’s say you’re, imagine you’re a lead pastor and, you know, somebody on their team comes to you and says, Hey, we, we had this conversation as a huddle, like, Hey, what could we do? And we realized we’ve got to add some more emphasis on this. We, you know, if, if we had a family come today, oh, I’m not sure, you know, we might be able to serve one kid or two kids if they came or one or two people if they came, but we’re not, I’m not sure if we had any more than that, that we, and we’d like to add some more volunteer time. We’re not looking for money, just kind of some more emphasis. What would you say to a lead pastor who had someone come to them? How would you kind of coach them to respond to that, to a, to a leader that came with them with that kind of request?Jason Britt — Yeah, I would say just because I know how does a senior pastor would, hey, we got this, we got this. It seems like there’s always about five things pressing and and and it’s like another thing, you know. I would say see the opportunity.Rich Birch — Love it.Jason Britt — That’s what I would just go, man, the opportunity and, you know, see the opportunity for gospel presence. I mean, I think some of my favorite stories, and we don’t have time to get to them, have been families that came or brought their special needs adult or student, or and they’ve been baptized because of that, you know. So the opportunity of it, it is a communit… Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Jason Britt — …of people that in the local church we are for, but oftentimes unintentionally we haven’t been prepared for or, and again, it’s legitimate and get it. I think it’s the, also there’s just great resources. Like I just got, we just came off, I mean, you know, this stuff, Rich, there’s just like there’s people who help out. We just came off of a two-year generosity initiative. And I need help thinking strategically. Rich Birch — Right.Jason Britt — I don’t need, you know, and and they help that. Well, there’s people like Nan. Uh, there’s people that are out there that are there to help.Rich Birch — Right.Jason Britt — And I think there’s a lot more similarities in churches with people who can help… Nan Britt — Yeah.Rich Birch — Yes. Jason Britt — …than just like I needed in the general there. That’s the same thing I would tell a pastor. Don’t be overwhelmed. See the opportunity. Nan Britt — Yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.Nan Britt — I would add, I think that’s key that, you know, in the same way that, like you’re saying, in the world of production or other ministries, we are familiar with contracting with people who that’s their specialty. That’s their skill. That’s their experience. I think it’s the same way in this conversation with special needs ministry. I think that is the quickest way to… Jason Britt — Yep. Nan Britt — …move along the conversation is to maybe to consider contracting with a person that that has that is a professional in this. It it it will eliminate all of those what-if questions… Jason Britt — Yep. Nan Britt — …the fear around it, and someone who knows this this ministry and knows what to do. Jason Britt — Yep. Absolutely. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Nan Britt — You know who’s not surprised by the needs of people with disabilities and special needs. So I think that for churches that And like we said, it’s it’s similar to contracting with other needs around the church.Rich Birch — Right. Good.Nan Britt — So just as quickly as you can, get someone in the conversation that is an expert and kind of knows ah you know what how to care, how to care for these kids. Jason Britt — Yep, yep.Rich Birch — So good. Well, Nan, we’ll give you the last word. If people want to get in touch with with you, with the church to talk about the network or to just just even learn more, where do we want to send them online so they can access more information, you know, that sort of thing?Nan Britt — Yes. So ah they are welcome to email me, nan@bethlehemchurch.us. I would love that to just, like I said, eat weekly, that’s really my role on our staff now is is talking and training and and just working alongside churches. So I would love to connect. And then our website is BethlehemChurch.us, which they can find our Bethlehem Buddies page. Just see a lot of great resources there and then get in touch with our staff there as well. Jason Britt — Yep.Rich Birch — That’s great. Appreciate you guys being here today. Thank you so much. And thanks for what you’re doing. Appreciate being on the show today.Nan Britt — Thanks so much. Jason Britt — Thank you. 

Leading Into 2026: Executive Pastor Insights Momentum is real. So is the pressure. This free report draws from the largest dedicated survey of Executive Pastors ever, revealing what leaders are actually facing as they prepare for 2026. Why staff health is the #1 pressure point Where churches feel hopeful — and stretched thin What worked in 2025 and is worth repeating Clear decision filters for the year ahead Download the Full Report Free PDF • Built for Executive Pastors • Instant access Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re wrapping up our conversations with executive pastors from prevailing churches to unpack what leaders like you shared in the National Executive Pastor Survey. Today we’re joined by Shayla McCormick, executive leader at Coastal Community Church in Florida. Coastal is a rapidly growing multisite church with three locations, consistently ranking among the fastest-growing churches in the country. Shayla serves alongside her husband and brings deep operational insight shaped by leading a large church with a remarkably lean staff. In this conversation, Shayla helps unpack one of the most pressing themes from the survey: how churches hire—and why so many find themselves hiring the same roles over and over again. She challenges leaders to rethink staffing through the lens of multiplication rather than pressure relief. Why churches keep hiring the same roles. // According to the survey, churches continue to prioritize familiar roles—especially NextGen and support positions—even as ministry contexts change. Shayla believes this pattern often comes from reactive hiring. When attendance grows, volunteers feel stretched, systems strain, and leaders feel pain. The quickest solution is to hire someone to relieve pressure. But Shayla cautions that hiring to relieve pain is different from hiring to build capacity. When churches skip the discernment step—asking what this season truly requires—they repeat the same staffing patterns without addressing root issues. Relieving pressure vs. building capacity. // Shayla draws a sharp distinction between doers and equippers. Doers add short-term relief by completing tasks, while equippers multiply long-term impact by developing others. Coastal intentionally prioritizes hiring equippers—even when that means living with short-term discomfort. Her leadership philosophy flows directly from Ephesians 4 – the role of leaders is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. The courage to make the “big ask.” // Shayla challenges the assumption that busy or successful people won’t serve. Too often, leaders say no for people before ever asking. At Coastal, high-capacity professionals—business owners, executives, retirees—serve in everything from parking to finance. The key is matching people’s gifts with meaningful responsibility and inviting them with confidence. A radically lean staff model. // Coastal averages around 5,000 in weekly attendance with just 25 staff members, an unusually low ratio. This isn’t accidental—it’s strategic. Shayla explains that Coastal has built a high-capacity volunteer culture where unpaid leaders carry real responsibility. Staff members exist to equip and empower those leaders. This approach requires more upfront investment in training and coaching, but it produces sustainable growth without constant hiring. The risk of overstaffing. // Overstaffing creates more than financial strain. Shayla warns that it can lead to lazy culture, misaligned expectations, and long-term instability. Churches that staff heavily during growth seasons often face painful decisions when momentum slows. Without a strong culture of equipping, ministries become staff-dependent rather than leader-driven. Shayla encourages leaders to steward today with foresight—preparing for future seasons, not just current demand. When hiring is the right move. // While Coastal resists reactive hiring, Shayla is clear that hiring still matters. For example, Coastal recently decided to add staff in Kids Ministry—not because volunteers were failing, but because the kids pastor needed freedom to focus on strategy, family connection, and leader development. The new role removes task-based pressure while also serving as a developmental pipeline for future campus launches. The goal isn’t to replace volunteers—it’s to free equippers to multiply more leaders. Mission over position. // As Coastal grows, Shayla emphasizes a culture of mission over position. Roles evolve as the church evolves. Using metaphors like scaffolding and rotating tires, she reminds leaders that some roles exist for a season—and that rotation is necessary for long-term health. Leaders regularly ask: Who are you developing? Who’s next? This mindset ensures the church can grow without being dependent on specific individuals. Starting points for stretched teams. // For leaders feeling perpetually tired despite added staff, Shayla offers simple coaching: eliminate work God never asked you to do, clarify expectations, and require every leader to develop others. Growth doesn’t come from adding people—it comes from multiplying leaders. To learn more about Coastal Community Church, visit coastalcommunity.tv or follow @coastalchurch on Instagram. You can also connect with Shayla at @shaylamccormick. Watch the full episode below: Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they’re reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you’ve been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We are in the middle of these special episodes—I’ve been loving these—around really responding to your survey. We did a National Executive Pastor Survey. It’s the largest survey I can say that I’m aware of, of this, where we get out and talk to executive pastors across the country and really ask them, how’s it going in their church? What are they feeling? What are they learning? To really take a litmus test of where things are at. Rich Birch — And then what we’re doing is pulling in some incredible… leaders to help you wrestle through with some of the findings. And I’m excited, privileged, really, to have Shayla McCormick with us today. She’s with an incredible church called Coastal Community Church, a multi-site church with, if I’m counting correctly, three locations in Florida. It started in September 2009, not that long ago, and they’ve repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. She serves with her husband at this church, and this is an incredible church. You should be following along with Shayla and with the church. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.Shayla McCormick — Thank you so much, Rich. I’m glad to be back and excited just to, you know, share with everybody just some insights and things that that I’ve learned along the way too.Rich Birch — Nice. This is yeah super fun to have you on again. And you should go back and listen to back episode that Shayla was on was one of our best of last year. Super helpful. So you’re going to want to lean in on that.Rich Birch — Now, when I saw some of the results from the survey, friends, I’m letting you behind the curtain. We looked at a couple different you know things and I sent them out to these friends and I said, hey, you pick whichever one you want. And I was really hoping that you would pick this one because I really think that you’ve got just so much to offer to this. So let’s, I’m going to unpack this a little bit. Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — So one of the questions we asked was, ah you know, there’s all these different roles that people are hiring. And for years, in fact, I actually thought about maybe not doing this question this year, because basically the order is pretty similar that people come back every year. But what we’ve seen from 2023 to 2024 is that particularly support roles, this idea of support roles that churches are out looking for those has grown significantly, 12 percentage points in those three years. Other roles like NextGen remain consistently at the top. You know, Outreach ranks the lowest at like 9 to 12 percent, which breaks my heart as a former outreach pastor. I was like, ah, people are not thinking about those things. Rich Birch — So today what I want to do is unpack this idea around what are who are we hiring for? What difference does it make? We know as an executive pastor listening in, I know that many of you are are kicking off this year thinking about, hmm, who should we be hiring? What should that look like? And really this tension that we all face with you know, being understaffed and overstaffed. How does all that work together? So I’m really looking forward to having your input on it.Rich Birch — Why do you think churches continue to hire for essentially the same roles as we see year in, year out, Shayla, why do we see that? Even as ministry changes, it’s like we find ourselves having the same conversation. Where are the kids ministry people? Where are the support roles people? Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Rich Birch — Why do we find ourselves in these same conversations?Shayla McCormick — Yeah, honestly, I think a lot of times as church leaders, like we repeat roles because we haven’t we haven’t really honestly just kind of stopped long enough to really go, what does this season actually require? Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — I think a lot of times what we do is we hire to almost relieve pressure but not really build capacity. And so I think we repeat roles because like kids ministry, right? That’s always a place where you have growth, you have kids, you have to staff a lot of volunteers. It’s a lot of administrative work. And, you know, sometimes I think we can tend to go, Hey, I want to relieve pressure on this. And so we end up trying to to put somebody in a seat and then we end up over hiring. And a lot of, a lot of us hire when it hurts, right? When, okay, attendance is growing, volunteers are tired, systems are breaking, A leader is overwhelmed.Shayla McCormick — And we end up, I think, making these desperation hires rather than hiring to actually build capacity… Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Shayla McCormick — …so that we can continue to grow. And so I think a lot of times our mindset kind of subtly shifts from, I mean, Ephesians 4, right? You equip the saints for the work of the ministry. And it sometimes our mindset shifts from equipping the saints to to almost replacing the staff role or the saints role with a staff member.Shayla McCormick — And it can tend to just, you can be overstaffed. And then that puts pressure financially and all, you know, like so much, but we just continue to repeat the process. Because again, we hired to relieve pressure instead of build capacity and we’re not really sitting… Rich Birch — Yeah, I would love to unpack that. Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Rich Birch — I think there’s so much there. So how are you discerning or how, you know, if a church calls you up and is asking you discern really between those two, like, Hey, I’ve got maybe I’ve got an operational problem. I’m trying to relieve pressure using the language you do. You were saying versus like building capacity for the future, which inherently sounds like to me, if I’m choosing to build capacity, I’m going to live with some pain in the short term is what I hear in that. Help me discern what that, what that looks like. How how do you work that out at, you know, at, at Coastal?Shayla McCormick — Yeah, I think we we are always looking for equippers, for multipliers. We ask the question very consistently, is this a doer or is this a leader? And not that doers are bad. Doers can actually, they can help you add capacity because it relieves the stress or the pain on a leader, right? Because you have somebody doing stuff, but equipers actually, they multiply. And so when I’m a growing church, if I continue to hire doers, then I’m just like, I’m solving a temporary so solution essentially, or a temporary problem, because at some point those things are going to go away.Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — But what, what the approach that we’ve taken is the Ephesians 4, you know, you equip the saints for the work of the ministries. And I think a lot of, lot of the times we actually neglect almost our volunteer base. And we lean heavily on our volunteers, our, We average probably 5,000 in weekend attendance, and we have about 25 staff members. And that is not a lot of staff for…Rich Birch — That’s insane. That to me, that is… Friends, I hope you heard that. So that’s like one to 200 or something like that. It’s it’s that’s all it’s Shayla McCormick — I don’t even know. It’s low.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s very low. It’s very low. Yes.Shayla McCormick — But we have a very, very, very high value in equipping our volunteers. Because there are people in our church that want to, they want to do. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — They might be the doers that can help build capacity in a way that can help lift responsibility off people. We have people that come in that like, they’re like on staff, but they don’t get paid just because they want to come and they want to serve. Rich Birch — Yes.Shayla McCormick — And a lot of times I think we actually, say no for people because, oh, I don’t want to ask somebody to do another thing. But they’re like begging, use my gifts, use my talents. But we’re saying no for them. And then we’re going and hiring for these positions when it’s something that we could actually give away…Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Shayla McCormick — …and equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Rich Birch — Yes.Shayla McCormick — And for instance, in our kids’ ministry, we average at one of our locations probably about between 500 and 600 kids on the weekend. And I have one full-time staff member for that position right now.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Yeah.Shayla McCormick — And now we are getting ready to hire an additional person. But she has done a phenomenal job at building high-capacity leaders that are volunteers… Rich Birch — That’s good. Shayla McCormick — …that want to give their time and their energy and their resources and their passion. But I think for so many churches, we just we say no for people… Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%. Shayla McCormick — …and then we end up hiring something that we could give away in a volunteer capacity. Now that is harder on us… Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — …because you have to you know you have to teach and equip and you know pick things up, but…Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s it’s longer term. It’s it’s not it’s not a quick and easy. Shayla McCormick — Right. Rich Birch — So I want to come back to the big ask in a second. Shayla McCormick — Okay. Rich Birch — But I want I want to play a bit of the devil’s advocate. Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — So I was having this conversation with a church leader recently, and we were looking at their staff, like their just total staffing. And we were actually having this conversation between, I was asking them like, hey, what how many of these people would you say are Ephesians 4 type people, equippers, people who are… Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Rich Birch — And then how many of these would be doers? Because every staff team has some doers on it. Like you have some percentage of them.Shayla McCormick — Yes, 100%.Rich Birch — When you, shooting from the hip of those 25, what do you think your ratio is on your team of equippers to doers? Because this is what this leader said to me. They were like, because I was kind of pushing them. I was like, I think you need to have less of these doers on your team. Like we’ve got to, we got to get not, I said, we’d have to get rid of them, but we got to grow some of these leaders up to become more multipliers.Shayla McCormick — Yep.Rich Birch — And they were like, well, but those people, they release my multiplying type people to do the work that they need to do. And I was like, yes, but if we don’t watch this ratio very quickly, we’ll we’ll end up with a bunch of doers on our team. So what would the ratio look like for you on your team? How do you think about those issues? Unpack that for me.Shayla McCormick — Yeah, I would I would say it’s maybe like a, I would say it’s maybe 10% that are, that are…Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Yeah. A couple, two or three, maybe four at the most kind of thing.Shayla McCormick — Yes, exactly, that are that are not the ones that I’m expecting. And even even them, I expect to go out and multiply as well. It’s it’s it’s part of our part of our conversations.Rich Birch — Yeah.Shayla McCormick — But it’s a very low percentage because for me, it again, it goes back to, those are things that I can equip other people to do… Rich Birch — Yes. Shayla McCormick — …that I can give ministry away. And…Rich Birch — Okay. So yeah, let’s talk about the big ask. Shayla McCormick — Okay. Rich Birch — So I hear this all the time from church leaders across the country and they’ll this is, this is how the conversation goes. They’re like, yeah, yeah. But you don’t know, like people in our part of the country, they’re very busy. Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — And like the people at our church, they’re kind of like a big deal. And like, they got a lot going on in their life. And like, This is true. You guys are in like the greater Fort Lauderdale area. This is a very, you are not like some backwoods, you know, place and you’re doing the big ask.Rich Birch — You’re saying, hey, you used it, which is you said like, hey, basically we’re saying, could you work part time for us in this area?Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — Have a huge amount of responsibility. How do you keep the big ask in front of people? How, how what’s that look like? Unpack that for us.Shayla McCormick — I mean, something that we talk about on our staff very frequently is, because it’s so natural to say, oh, they’re too busy, especially high capacity people. What I’ve what I’ve realized is is just a side note, but like, single moms are the most high-capacity people. They are the busiest people juggling the most things. But there are best people to come in and serve and do and all of that.Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — But they’re busy. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — And so just because someone seems busy or successful or, you know, whatever barrier that you put in your brain, like, I think the reality is is we say no for them before we even ask.Rich Birch — 100%. 100%.Shayla McCormick — And so the conversations on our team always look like, are you saying no for them? Make the ask anyways. And a lot of times they’re like, oh my gosh, they said yes. I mean, I have people that run million, billion dollar companies serving in my parking team. You know, it’s like…Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — It’s, yeah, I mean, I you have people that are retired, very successful, business leaders that are coming in and volunteering to you know do finance things. Like it’s finding what are what are they great at and giving them purpose in it.Rich Birch — Yes, yes.Shayla McCormick — And not just saying no for them because I think they’re successful or they’re too busy.Rich Birch — How much of that is, because I would totally agree, how much of that is like, like what I hear you saying, it’s like a mindset issue for us as leaders. Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — Like, hey, we can’t, even when we ask someone, we can say no before them in that question, right? We can be like, I don’t know if you could, well, you know, you’re real busy and I’m not sure blah blah, blah. And that kind of lets them off the hook before we even. So part of it is a mindset, but then part of it has to be like a structural thing, the way you’re structuring the roles. How do those two interact with each other?Shayla McCormick — Ask the question one more time.Rich Birch — So part of it is like our mindset are the, the, when we approach people, we’re asking them in a way that, you know, is casting vision for like, Hey, this is a huge opportunity to push the kingdom forward. But then also a part of it, I would assume is like the way we’re structuring the roles so that it it feels like, no, like we’re, we’re kind of, it is a big ask. Like, it’s like, we’re giving them enough responsibility and all that sort of thing. How do those interact with each other when you’re asking someone, when you’re making a big ask like that?Shayla McCormick — I mean, I think most of what I’m talking, what I’m referring to is a little bit more in the the doer space or the operational space.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Okay, good. Yep.Shayla McCormick — So it’s structuring things based on almost task or, you know, responsibility that can be repeated consistently and come in and just, you know, like get it done, so that I don’t have to, again, go back to hiring somebody to do these tasks to take this off of this staff member’s plate to increase their capacity. I’m basically giving those tasks and responsibilities to a volunteer. And I think a lot of times what’s scary to me is people, us, you know, churches, their first response to problem in every situation is to hire. Rich Birch — Yeah, right.Shayla McCormick — And I think if that’s your first response, you’re going to get in, trouble you’re going to get in big trouble.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.Shayla McCormick — And you’re going end up overstaffed because you, you staffed in seasons where attendance was growing or something again, to relieve that pressure…Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — …not thinking multiplication. And if every solution is to hire, I don’t think the church has a staffing problem. actually think they probably have a discipleship problem. And like…Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Shayla McCormick — …and an equipping problem because the goal is to multiply apply leaders faster so that your church grows.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so if we’re not thinking multiplication and equipping, then you know I think we’re gonna get to a place where, again, we’re we’re overstaffing and we’re hiring for the same things because we haven’t learned to equip and empower and train up.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s double click on that. Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — What risks? So overstaffing, why is that a risk? What’s the there’s obviously a financial risk there. Are there other risks that you see there that emerge when a church consistently staffs for doers or execution rather than you know invest in you know equipping and raising up the people in their church? What will be some other risks you see in that?Shayla McCormick — Yeah, I think if you’re, if you, I’m trying to figure out how to frame this. If you’re not thinking multiplication, you’re going to, you’re going to hit a point in your church where like everything isn’t always up and to the right.Rich Birch — Right. Yes. True.Shayla McCormick — And so it’s not that I’m planning for failure or the difficulty, but I’m also trying to steward what has been entrusted to me, and some of that requires foresight and wisdom… Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — …even in my planning and my budgeting. And so if one season I’m staffing something in growth, the next season might not look the same. And I’ve because I haven’t diligently given, again, Ephesians 4, given ministry away, my role, pastor’s roles, you know, like, is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Rich Birch — Yep.Shayla McCormick — And if I haven’t done those things properly, then I think I’m going to get a hit a season where then I’m letting staff go. Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — And, you know, or honestly, culture has become lazy because everybody doesn’t have enough to to do. And so there’s tensions and frustrations and, you know, like, and it starts you start to get a culture, I think, where you say, well, we’ll just hire for that. We’ll just hire for that. We’ll just hire for that. Instead of, okay, who’s next? Are you always developing? Like, what volunteer have you asked to do that? Have you given ministry away? And start asking our staff questions. If they’re coming to you and saying, hey, i need ah I need this role and I need this role and I need this role, the question back should be, well, who have you been developing?Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — You know, what ministry have you given away? Some of those things that just kind of push back on the solution is not always to hire somebody. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — But what responsibility have you taken in development of people?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. in the In the kids ministry area, you had referenced this earlier, you know, a campus with 500 kids and one staff, which again is is, I know there’s lots of executive pastors that are listening in that are like, what? That’s crazy. But you are, ah you have decided to add a staff member there. What was it that kind of clicked over to say, okay, yeah, we are going to add someone. And and what are what is that role that you’re adding? And how do you continue to ensure that we’re, you know, that we keep this focus as we look to the future?Shayla McCormick — For us, my kid’s pastor is obviously very high capacity, you know, and she is a multiplier. And her greatest use of her time for me is connecting with those families, is creating opportunities for them to connect, and hiring another person is going to free her up to connect more with families on the weekends, and to spend more of her time being strategic.Shayla McCormick — And so she needs to duplicate another her on the weekends that can make sure they’re facilitating volunteers and they’re making sure people are encouraged and that teams are built and that people are showing up and schedules are being done. And it’s it’s high people, but it’s also task and responsibility that comes off of her plate that frees her up to um do the thing that she’s great at.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic.Shayla McCormick — And obviously, she’s given all that stuff away in this season, but now we’re also using that as a developmental role to potentially be a kids director at another location when we launch a location.Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. There will be more, hopefully more coastal locations in the future… Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — …and you need to you know raise those people up now you have the ability to do that. This is one way, you know, to do that as well.Shayla McCormick — Yep. Yep. Right.Rich Birch — So put yourself in a, a, say a friend calls executive pastor calls and they’re in this kind of this topic. They feel like, man, my team is perpetually stretched.Rich Birch — We, we added a bunch of staff last year and, it just didn’t help. You know, it’s like we find it sure we’re starting out the new year here and our headcount is up, but people are as tired. They’re as burnt out as they’ve ever been. And it feels disproportionate. It feels like, oh, man, like I don’t this things are not getting better. What are they missing? What what are what’s the how would you coach them? Maybe some first steps that you would kind of help them to think about what they should be doing on this front.Shayla McCormick — So I think maybe first and foremost, I might ask what what work are you doing that really God never asked you to do, first of all? I think we, we, add a lot of things that aren’t probably the best use of people’s times. And so where have we added things that we didn’t need to add that aren’t adding value… Rich Birch — That’s good. Shayla McCormick — …that can, number one, lift something off of our team that maybe they don’t just, you know, doesn’t add value. Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so that would probably be one of the first places I would start. It was like what are what are you working on that God hasn’t asked you to do?Rich Birch — Yeah, what can we streamline? What do we need to pull back? Yeah, yeah.Shayla McCormick — Exactly. And then…Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — …secondarily, I think I would really focus on leaning into, and this is what we’ve done in in many seasons, is we’ve leaned into two things. Number one is starting to ask our team, like, hey, who’s who’s around you that you’re developing? I need you to pick three people, you know, and just start pouring into them. I know this this isn’t a, I know this doesn’t lift the load, necessarily in the moment, but I think it can help lift it for the future. So it’s like, hey, how am I teaching my staff to look for other leaders and developing those leaders? And the other question just went away from my mind.Rich Birch — Well, that’s a great one, though. This even it’s the idea of who are the two or three people that you’re developing, that’s a powerful idea. Because I think there’s think particularly if you’re a church that’s caught in this treadmill, um there probably are people in your orbit. There are there are volunteers that would be looking for more to do to look. But but oftentimes our team, we just they don’t see those people. They don’t because we haven’t challenged them to see those people.Shayla McCormick — It’s it’s it’s honestly a question that’s a regular part of all of our teams one-on-ones… Rich Birch — That’s cool. Shayla McCormick — …that one of the questions is, who’s next? Like you should always be replacing yourself. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Who’s next? Yeah, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And that is just a continual pipeline of people and it’s teaching them to see other people and develop people. And they know that when I come to this meeting with my leader, I need to be telling them what I did, who I’m investing in, you know, what that looks like. So that there’s like a pipeline of leadership.Shayla McCormick — And I even, like with with my own assistant, I’ll say this, she’s like, Shayla, how do I do that? It’s like I’m, she’s right, a doer, you know, she’s my assistant. But I said, honestly, the the way that there’s so much that you can give away, you can build volunteer teams to execute gift baskets when a, you know… Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — Like there are things that we just have to teach people to start giving away… Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — …and equipping other people to do.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.Shayla McCormick — And I think it’s why I don’t I don’t use like being a large church with a small staff as like a bragging thing because I I don’t think that that’s necessarily healthy long term.Rich Birch — Yes. Shayla McCormick — But I think that it’s very strategic in how we have built a volunteer culture that is very high capacity and shows up and gets it done because we simply just haven’t said no… Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — …and we’ve always looked for somebody else to come up underneath us.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I know for for me in seasons when I led in fast-growing churches… Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Rich Birch — …churches that were deemed as some of the fastest growing churches in the country, I would say to my… Now, I sat in a different seat than you were because I was never like a founding team member. Well, that’s not actually not true. That’s not actually not true. I was in one church. But but I always tried to hold my role with open hands, even with my team. Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — I would say, listen, the the people that I don’t I don’t want to get in the way of the mission, the mission is bigger than my job and my role.Shayla McCormick — Yes.Rich Birch — And there might come a season when the ministry will outpace me and I need to be willing to step aside.Shayla McCormick — Yep. Yes.Rich Birch — And that whenever I said that, there was always like, it freaked people out a little bit. They were like, oh my goodness, what are you saying? What are you saying? But I do think that those people that got us here may not necessarily be those people that will get us there. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And and this does not apply to any of the 25 people currently employed at Coastal Church, but help us understand…Shayla McCormick — Hey, we’ve had this conversation with all of them, so it could apply to them.Rich Birch — Oh good. Okay. Okay, good. I Okay, good. I didn’t want to you know have people listen to it at your church and be like, oh my goodness. But help me understand how you think about that as a leader, because I think that’s a real dynamic in this area.Shayla McCormick — Yeah, there’s there’s two two things, two almost analogies that that I’ll give you. One was when we were a smaller church, we were a growing church, we were a church plant, and somebody gave us some some great advice. And they said, listen, the people you start with are not going to be the people you finish with, and that’s not a bad thing. That that happens. Rich Birch — Yep.Shayla McCormick — And they said, when you are building something, there’s a phase of that building that requires scaffolding. Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — And scaffolding serves a purpose in that season to build the structure and the walls and and all of the things, but there is a point where that scaffolding has to come down… Rich Birch — Yeah. Shayla McCormick — …in order for you to utilize that building or that space effectively. Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — And I think sometimes that’s people in a way. Like they serve a purpose for a season, but it’s not like, it’s not like oh, now they can’t serve in any capacity or any way. It’s just that the role that they played for that season was very important. But it looks different in the next season. And we have to be okay with that if we want to continue to grow.Shayla McCormick — As we’ve grown, there was actually people probably know the name Charlotte Gambill. Charlotte Gambill has invested a lot in our team and in in our church. And she came in and did a ah session with us. And one of the things that she talked with us about is like, if you think about a a vehicle, right? And that vehicle is there to get you to the destination of where you’re going. And that vehicle has tires. And those tires have to be rotated.Rich Birch — Right, oh, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And as a team member, you are like a tire. And what you are doing is getting that vehicle to the proper destination. But if you don’t allow yourself to be rotated, then there’s going to be a problem in getting that vehicle to the location. Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so language that we use is this is mission over position. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And your position may change. Your position may rotate. But this is not about your position, this is about your mission. And if you’re not here because of the mission, then you’re gonna be fixated on your position.Shayla McCormick — And so our team knows that. We we talk about that very frequently, like, hey, remember this is mission over position. And we’re gonna we’re gonna rotate the tire today.Rich Birch — Yep.Shayla McCormick — But this is because this is for the mission, not because of your position. Rich Birch — Yeah.Shayla McCormick — And so we just consistently have those conversations. And if we if we don’t rotate those things, And if there’s something that’s worn out and we don’t change it, it’s going to affect the mission of where that organization is going.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s, that’s worth the price of admission right there. I think, you know, I think so many of us, um you know, people who are listening in their church leaders, they love people. They want to see them take steps towards Jesus. And, you know, we hold onto people too long or we, or we, you know, we always believe the best. We’re like, no, they’re going to get there. They’re going to get there.Rich Birch — But what would you say to a leader? You know, Give us some courage to say, hey, maybe there’s a team member we need to rotate, either find a different seat on the bus, or it might be we we need to move them off this year. Like we need to get them on a performance improvement plan and do the like, hey, you’re not leaving today, but it’s like, this has got a change. You’ve got a shift from being a doer to being an equipper. And we’re going to work on this for the next three months. But we need to see, we actually actually need to see progress on this. Give us some courage to do that. Talk us through that. If that’s the if that’s the leader that’s listening in today.Shayla McCormick — I mean, I think first of all, if you’re sensing that and you’re feeling that, you need to start having some very honest conversations. I think Proverbs is very clear when it says, bind mercy and truth around your neck. Like, we can have those truthful conversations while still being merciful. And, you know, if if you’re not clear with people, then there’s just, then there’s there’s going to be hurt, there’s going to be bitterness, there’s going to be all of those things. And so if you can just even start the conversation, if you’ve been frustrated for a long time but you haven’t said anything, honestly, it’s your fault. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Shayla McCormick — Because you’ve allowed it for so long. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — And now that’s that’s you’ve allowed behavior to continue. So the first step I think is just giving yourself freedom to have a mercy and truth conversation, right? Of just going, hey, like I know your your heart is here I know you have vision for this organization, but there’s just some things that need to adjust. Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — And so we’re going to bring some clarity to those things that need to adjust.Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — And you have those conversations and then, hey, let’s check in a month from now and just here’s some action steps for you to do. And it just gives framework for like, okay, now if they’re not doing those things, you’re just like, you know, hey, do you, we asked the question, do you get it? Do you want it? And do you have the capacity to do it? Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — If they have, if they get it and they want it, but they don’t have the capacity, they have to change their seat, you know.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so for me, I think it’s really starting off with the clarifying conversation… Rich Birch — Yeah. Shayla McCormick — …if you haven’t had that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Shayla McCormick — And in that clarifying conversation leads to either an off-ramp or an adjustment of seat.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. I know that there are people who are listening in who that you know, like, hey, I’ve got to make a change. I have this staff member, team member that’s got to make a change. We can’t do this for another year. And even that idea of sitting down, having a you know, a truthful, but merciful conversation and doing exactly what Shayla said there. Let’s have the conversation and then document it. Shayla McCormick — Yes.Rich Birch — Here’s exactly what we talked about. Here are the three or four things that we need to see progress in the next month on. And we love you dearly, but in a month, we’re going to come back and actually ask you on that. My experience has been when you have that…Shayla McCormick — And even…Rich Birch — Yeah, go ahead.Shayla McCormick — …even asking at the end of that, like, hey, do you have any questions? Or even repeat back to me what you heard… Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — …because I want to understand how you’re receiving the information that I just gave you, because it can help you even go a little bit deeper in shaping that.Rich Birch — Clarify it. Yeah, that’s so good. Well, this has been a great conversation. Question that’s not really, it’s just kind of a broader question… Shayla McCormick — OK. Rich Birch — …about this coming year. What are the what are the questions that are kicking around in your head for this year as you look to 2026 as we come to kind of close today’s episode? What are you thinking about? Might be around this. It might be around other stuff. What are you thinking about this year?Shayla McCormick — Ooh, I was actually talking to my husband about this. We’re getting ready to go into a leadership team meeting, and the thing that’s just been sitting in my head, and this is so probably counterintuitive to large church, but it’s how can I grow smaller?Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so I’m just trying to think how can we be more intentional as we grow to make a large church feel small? And then I’m also thinking, are we building a church that can grow without us? So how, you know, is it only because of us that things are happening? Or how are we, again, ah equipping people that if we weren’t here, it would continue on? Rich Birch — I love that.Shayla McCormick — So how do I grow smaller? And would this survive without us?Rich Birch — Wow, those are two super profound questions. And they are so totally related to what we’re talking about today. Both of those, you’re only going to get to it feeling smaller. You know, that is that is the great irony of a growing church. I’ve said that to many. I didn’t I wasn’t as eloquent as you were there, but one of the, the interesting kind of tensions is when you become a church of 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, you get around those circles. Those churches are asking the, how do we be more intimate? How do we, um you know, we, okay. So we figured out how to gather crowds and, but how do we go beyond that? Right. How do we, how do we now, you know, really drive into deeper, more intimate conversations? I love that. And yes.Shayla McCormick — Systems just complicate things. Rich Birch — Yes. Shayla McCormick — So it’s like, how do you how do you simplify? I really appreciate you, appreciate your leadership and all that you’re doing and how you helped us today. And if people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?Shayla McCormick — Yeah, they can follow our church on Instagram. It’s at Coastal Church or visit our website, coastalcommunity.tv. I’m not super active on Instagram, but you can follow me if you want to @shaylamccormick.Rich Birch — That’s great. Shayla, I really appreciate you being here today. And thanks so much for helping us out as we kick off 2026.Shayla McCormick — Of course. Thanks so much, Rich.