July 8, 2025 • 54 mins
Is the small church model dead? In this explosive episode of Lead Time, Tim Ahlman and Jack Kalleberg sit down with Pastor Rob Myallis (ELCA) for a brutally honest conversation about the economic realities choking the life out of mid-sized churches. With rising costs, unsustainable pastoral expectations, and shifting cultural engagement, Rob unpacks why churches averaging 80–120 in attendance may not survive without radical change.
We tackle everything:
- $30,000 health insurance costs
- Why 150 people is the relational ceiling
- The burnout crisis among solo pastors
- Why people treat church like a rec center, not a sanctuary
- And the hard truth: your old church model probably isn’t working
If you’ve ever asked, “Why are so many churches declining?” or “What future does my congregation really have?”—this one’s for you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack
Kauberg.
It's a beautiful day to bealive.
We are experiencing the lastdays of heavenly weather here in
Phoenix.
We're going from right now.
We're recording on May 5th.
It's like 65 degrees.
By Friday it's going to be 100degrees.
That's quite a swing, jack,that's right.
I'm looking forward to it.
Well, this week is going to be100 degrees.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
That's quite a swing, jack.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
That's right, I'm looking forward to it.
Well, this week is going to begreat and I'm not.
Yeah, and then it's pool time,right, that's the way the
weather works here.
But, jack, how you doing man,you loving life, I am loving
life.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I mean, we're coming off of a really beautiful Easter
season where I mean the amountof people that had come to be
guests and worship together onthis community was, I think it
far exceeded everybody'sexpectations.
We know that Easter is kind ofa heavier, a heavier season for
us and this was just reallysomething special to behold and
(00:55):
to celebrate.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So we're having a we're having a little bit of a
euphoric high off of that stilland just kind of well yeah it
kind of feels and I've talked toa lot of a lot of pastors just
coming off a retreat with 20pastors and everybody kind of
feels like you know we'veweathered.
I probably said this last yearwe've weathered the storm, but I
don't think the storm was fullyweathered and there's probably
going to be some things to stillor there obviously will be.
(01:17):
But it's like we're back insome respects in the local
church from the COVIDcatastrophe and everything that
is there, like the wounds aremostly healed and people are
coming to church.
They're different and I thinkthe sense of urgency now, the
evangelical fervor, young peoplemore passionate about things of
faith and spirituality, forthose congregations in every
(01:41):
church body who are focusing onan invite, culture, hospitality,
love.
The message is deep but it'saccessible, if that makes sense.
The preaching is open-handedBecause we're preaching to such
a broad variety of people.
Yesterday, jack, I mean, I gotto preach to a person who,
(02:03):
disenfranchised Catholic,married a nun and they have
three young kids.
And there's something in thisdisenfranchised Catholic mom
that says I think we need tofind a faith community.
And they remembered, oh, one ofour pastors, pastor Jeff,
invited them to worship and nowthey've been in our pews and
this guy has no comprehension ofthe biblical narrative at all,
(02:26):
like his family wasn't there,like that's a broad audience
that we, that we preach to onany given Sunday and so, and
then you've got your lifers, whoknow the stories, some of them
better than even I do, becausethey've been in pews.
You know all of their, all oftheir life.
It's just such a diversecontext for me.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
And then seeing all the baptisms that we had, all
the baptisms 12.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, and I've talked to so many churches where they
have these baptism sundays andpeople are coming out of the
woodwork.
We had five adults get baptizedyesterday for the first time we
don't read that total.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
First time baptism, it's great.
10 time.
10 total at gilbert and two ateast mesa.
Yeah, yeah, wow spectacular.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, dad and two, two sons at east mesa, mom and
her daughter.
It's so exciting.
Well, today we get theprivilege of learning with a
brother that I just gotconnected to after I was on
Brian Stecker's On the Linepodcast.
He reached out to me andappreciated the conversation
with Brian.
I had a lot of fun with him.
He's going to be coming out onour podcast here soon as well,
(03:21):
coming out on our podcast heresoon as well.
But Rob Myallis I'm saying thatright, rob, I should have asked
.
Myallis is a pastor inLancaster, pennsylvania.
He pastors an ELCA congregation, so we're going to get into
that story a little bit today.
He graduated from LutherSeminary in 2008.
So we got out and into thefield the same exact year.
(03:42):
He has a wife and two teenagedaughters, so all the prayers
are appreciated for me and alldads trying to raise teenage
girls and boys, to be sure.
So how you doing, rob?
What a joy to be with you today, man.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
It is great to be with you guys.
I heard you on a podcast and Iappreciated your fervor for
reaching people with the gospel,especially one that's rooted in
the theology of Martin Lutherand the Lutheran confessional
tradition, and I often feelsometimes like not quite like an
Elijah, but like I'm the onlyone, and then I discover, no,
(04:16):
that there's a multitude ofvoices that are really trying to
proclaim Jesus Christ crucifiedand risen for you as a free
gift, and so it was a joy tohear your passion for the gospel
and then your passion for howwe can reach out and connect
with people and buildcommunities, communities of
faith, in which this faith isproclaimed, received and passed
on.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, yeah, the joy and honor is mine and I don't
know as much about the ELCAstory.
I mean, don't know as muchabout the ELCA story.
I mean I look at it from anoutsider kind of perspective and
, frankly, the LCMS we haveenough opportunities to grow as
we try to, you know, start newchurches, revitalize a number of
(05:04):
our declining churches andspeak kindly and contextually to
all of us in all of our becauseour congregation is a different
type of congregation than arural, rural congregation.
Right Size, scope, staff, allof it.
It's very, very different.
And so we're trying to navigatethose waters and lead time as
one of those podcasts it'strying to set up those kinds of
conversations.
But what are some of thegreatest struggles in the ELCA?
And I'll set you up with thisYou've done some economic work
(05:25):
and you, you we've spoken aboutthis a lot the confessional,
missional kind of tension.
I'm sure that is a present dayreality in the ELCA as as well.
I'm not a huge fan of usingthose.
I think it's a false dichotomy,but nonetheless that's the way
the language kind of moves usinto these respective camps and
I believe that's unfortunate.
So just tell a little bit ofthe ELCA story, catch us up and
(05:48):
then we can move into the wayyou're looking at the economics
of the local church.
Rob, this is going to be fun.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Yeah Well, again, thanks for having me.
It's really again good to behere, and I'm going to give,
ultimately, I think, a prettyanalytical answer to that.
So I just want to start, though, with an acknowledgement that
the decline of the ELCA and,more broadly, the decline of the
Lutheran Witness although, likeyou mentioned, there seems to
be something in the waters rightnow, especially among the
(06:16):
youngest cohort, like 18 to 24,maybe to 30, where there's
something that they're comingback but it's really a pretty
emotional question for me.
I grew up in the LCA in the 80sand I don't think, actually at
that point, the experience of anelementary schooler in an LCA
church versus the elementaryschooler in an LCMS church would
have been all that different inthe 1980s.
(06:37):
Both denominations were run bymen that had fought together in
World War II.
This is like pre-sexuality,pre-call to common mission, pre
the political divides, pre thecontemporary worship and pre all
of that.
So I think we actually probablyhad a pretty similar kind of
VBS kind of experience acolytinglike as kids in the church.
(07:00):
But what has happened over timethen is that almost just about
every institution that I've beena part of in the ELCA has died.
The seminary where I my dadwent to seminary right around
the time that I was born.
That seminary in Philadelphiano longer exists as a standalone
seminary.
My dad's first call was in aWest Philly congregation.
That church no longer exists.
(07:22):
The seminary I went hasbasically become an online
campus, my intern, like my sortof contextual learning site and
seminary.
That church has closed.
I mean the Deaconess Centerwhere I went with my dads on the
weekend as a kid to givecommunion I wasn't giving, he
was giving communion thatDeaconess Center was sold.
So, like most of my childhood,the church that I grew up in,
(07:47):
beyond theology, juststructurally, has just fallen
apart, and so that's a lot ofgrief for me.
That's a lot of grief torealize that I wasn't just a
child of a congregation, I wasthe child of an ecosystem that
had all of these kind of movingpieces and I think to myself,
you know, for like my kids or mygrandkids, like what's still
(08:09):
going to be there of aconfessional Lutheran witness in
this country, and I also have areal motivation for this.
I've been coaching the crosscountry team, or helping to
coach that, and so I interactwith high schoolers and middle
schoolers and about seven oreight months in I said I need to
start praying for these kids,not because there's specifically
(08:31):
a need of prayer or something,but I realized that for many of
them, nobody prays for them.
I want you to think about that.
There are kids in ourcommunities.
Nobody prays for them.
I think of how many prayerswere ascending daily for me as a
child.
They're not getting prayed forand they're trying to figure out
who they are in this world ofsocial media, of sort of choose
(08:52):
your own identity, all of thisstuff.
And they don't know.
They've never heard the promise, they've never had water poured
over their head and said youare a beloved child of God,
solely out of Christ's favor foryou.
You are a beloved child of God,solely out of Christ's favor
for you.
And so I have this just heartof like.
If we don't get this right, godwill do it through some other
way we trust.
(09:13):
But it just breaks my heart thatas a Lutheran church in America
, we haven't always risen to thechallenge and again we're mired
in kind of like 30 to 40 yearsof institutional decline at
varying speeds in various ways.
So I'll just kind of get 30 to40 years of institutional
decline at varying speeds invarious ways.
So I'll just kind of get thatout there Like this is a really
I'm going to give you a reallyanalytical answer now, but I
want to say that there's a bigheart answer that's underneath
(09:35):
it all.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Well, yeah, I mean, god Jesus loves these little
children and there's been somuch confusion, you think the
gender confusion.
You know, where is my coreidentity?
And, as confessing Lutherans,our baptismal theology gives the
answer.
But are we letting kids?
I'll tell you this.
So I coach two high schoolfootball.
(09:57):
I get to be the chaplain, right?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
And every single devotion in some way shape or
form.
It's not the main theme, but Iwill round back to identity over
and over again and and that iswhy so many kids are so anxious
because they're trying to figureout who I am without any sense
of either antecedent, a family,a faith or even a biology, and
that is just far too great of aburden for somebody at 15 to try
(10:37):
to do all that.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
So I can't imagine trying to be somebody at that
age and saying I have to.
I have to decide on figure outwhat my identity is, and I have
to get it right because it'sgoing to have to be something
that informs me for my wholelife.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
And it's something that's going to be paraded
before everybody else andevaluated and liked or not liked
, right it's so much so decidewho I'm friends with and who I'm
not friends with.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I mean, that's a big burden to be put on a kid.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Exactly so, so that we can come back and talk about
identity formation in youanytime.
That's a hard topic for me too.
So now that I've just said that, like I come at this as
somebody who's just witnessedjust all the sort of the pieces
of the infrastructure fallingapart and the response to that
is in part like a theological,like hey, we messed up
theologically and I thinkthere's some truth to that real
(11:27):
truth.
But I don't want us to getparalyzed there because I think
there's some underlying economicissues that are at work that
even if America has a religiousrevival, it's unlikely to
benefit LCMS and ELCA churchesunless we change kind of some
ways about how we think aboutwhat it means for us to be a
(11:50):
church, especially at thecongregational level.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
What should we change ?
I mean, that's a big assertionright there, Rob.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
If there is a revival which I think there could be.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I think there definitely could be a lot of
people very open to coming toour churches and I think we're
seeing a little taste of itright now in our context, jack,
with all the first timers coming.
So what's going to prohibit usfrom being a part of welcoming
people through word andsacrament If we really believe
our theology is like so great,you know, and we're not.
I'm not even going to get intothe differences between the ELCA
(12:19):
and the LCMS at the highestlevels, but but I'm proud of our
theology.
I know you'd say in manyrespects the same.
So if we're proud, rightly inthe Holy Spirit and the truth
has been revealed to us, what'sgetting in the way of us getting
?
Speaker 4 (12:33):
it out.
Yeah, and I'll just say oneother caveat, and that is that
whenever I talk to people fromthe Missouri Synod, you all
still have a coherentdenomination.
The ELCA is not a coherentdenomination.
We can unpack that another time, but it's just not the same
kind of framework.
So even to say the ELCA thinksor teaches this, that statement
(12:53):
could have been said 20 yearsago.
It can't anymore.
It's just a lot more diversity.
And it's not just diverse, it'sjust not theological.
It's just hard to explain how,when we make decisions anymore,
theology just isn't the primarydriver anymore.
So it's kind of like apost-Lutheran, post-confessional
(13:15):
body where you have pockets ofpeople doing some really awesome
stuff, but it's just more likethe carnival than the chapel.
It's more like the carnivalthan the chapel.
Like like Lutheran Church neverviewed itself as like the
cathedral.
We all sort of sort of felt aslike the chapel, like we're kind
of the best of the cathedralbut we're not quite as like you
know, stuffy or something.
We're just the carnival.
Okay, so that all looks fine.
Let's finally now, like 15minutes in, get to economics
(13:37):
here.
Okay, there are certain sizesof a firm that make sense.
So, for instance, in the my dogjust came upstairs, sorry In
the dairy industry you don'thave farms that have 200 cows.
You have firms that have 100cows or a thousand.
(13:59):
Why is that?
Because once you get over ahundred, one family can't attend
to it and they've got to hiresomebody.
You've got to hire somebody.
Only having two or threeemployees is inefficient.
Then you got to go big.
Or like you've never seen aMcDonald's that serves a
thousand people.
Why Fast food can't do thatmany people.
No, it's because you have acertain scale for your ovens and
(14:20):
everything else.
So again, in all of ourindustries you have certain
points where firms are going tocongregate.
This is just any industry.
Certain sizes make sense.
Well, it turns out within achurch.
The scale that made sense forthe latter half of the 20th
century was 80 to 120 people.
You could have one building,one pastor, and you could also
(14:44):
have like a part-time organistand a part-time sexton and a
part-time secretary, and youcould do this and even afford to
give your pastor pay raises fora couple of years.
Right, this is kind of probablythe churches that dominated the
Lutheran landscape for a longtime, outside of the most rural
areas.
Okay, why is that model nolonger working?
(15:05):
Is it because of Word andSacrament theology?
No, it's because, well, firstof all, health insurance.
My health insurance for myfamily costs about $30,000 a
year from my congregation.
So that means that if you're acongregation that worships like
100 people a Sunday, each ofthose people is paying what like
$300 a year.
(15:26):
They're paying all this moneyjust for health insurance before
they even got to your salary,just to kind of pay.
They're not even talking.
I'm not even talking your like,your retirement, just your
health insurance alone, and sowhat you have then is an
especially so again, your mathis just harder.
The second thing and I'm goingto get back to this later is
(15:47):
that most of our buildings had asignificant expansion in the
1950s and then an even anotherround of expansions in the 1990s
, which means we're all comingup on the 30 and 60, like the 25
to 30 and the 50 to 60 yearmaintenance bills.
So we have these huge pocketsof deferred maintenance in our
buildings, which means that yourper person cost of your pastor
(16:09):
and your per person cost of yourbuilding no longer mean that
you can do that off of 80 to 100people a Sunday.
In fact, the only way you couldhave one person who doesn't
have their health insurancesplit with their spouse and can
actually afford more than likeone or two pay raises, the only
way you could do that would beto probably have about 160 to
(16:33):
200 people a Sunday, and theproblem with that is that humans
cannot relate to that manypeople.
They've done all this analysisover time of how many humans a
human can relate to andbasically it turns out that it's
about 150.
The Doomsday Book the Normansconquer the British Isles.
(16:53):
They do a whole survey of thesize, the census, the average
Welsh and British village atthat time 149.2 people.
They do this analysis of thecerebral cortex of primates and
their group sizes and thenextrapolates out to humans it's
150.
You as a human can be a ragingextrovert, but you cannot
(17:13):
remember the suffering of 150people.
In fact, in Mark's gospel whenJesus does the miracle of the
feeding of the 5,000, he dividesup the disciples and he tells
them put groups now of 50 to 100.
He doesn't say we'll do groups.
You can't relate to more people.
So, in other words, the math toget the money to work for you
(17:33):
to have one pastor you have tohave more than that one pastor
can relate to.
And this is why how many of youhave friends and pastor friends?
Their church has grown.
They took that little countrychurch and it's booming now and
on the inside, after six orseven years, those pastors are
so tired.
And they're so tired becausethey're expected to do all the
(17:55):
pastoral care for a size that'sbigger than their brain can
actually process.
And so you could say oh well,this church that worships 110
people a week, we could grow itto 130, 140.
You'll kill the pastor in theprocess.
You just can't do it.
And that's why what's happeningacross our denomination is that
these churches that used to haveenough people kind of what a
(18:16):
human could relate to 150 peopleyou could get out of that
enough kids to kind of shake andbake a Sunday school and a
youth group you just can'tanymore.
(18:37):
In other words, the minimumsize you need to be sustainable
and attractive is probably underlike 40 people a Sunday.
So you're just like a housechurch or a small church with
like a pastor who's likepart-time or you probably need
to be 300, 500, a thousand aSunday.
So you get that per buildingand per kind of clergy cost down
(19:00):
to the point of affordability.
That's a lot I just gave there,so I just bumped on you.
So tell me what makes sense orwhat makes sense there.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I don't disagree with some of the numbers you're
throwing out there.
I think one of the things thatwe're seeing is, well, we would
serve in, from a Lutheranperspective, what you would
consider to be a large church,right, and yet our staffing
ratio I would say right now Iwould say it's probably a little
(19:29):
, we're running a little toogenerous on it.
Even but you know that's adifferent conversation we're
staffing at about one full-timeequivalent for every 50 average,
you know, in average weeklyattendance, right.
So if you do the math and youtake what's our weekly average
attendance and how many peoplewe have on staff, it's about one
to 50, right Now they're notall called and ordained pastors.
(19:53):
They're people serving in alldifferent types of roles, but
still they're all part of whatwe would call the span of care
within the church.
And on top of that we have avery robust small group ministry
where we're equipping volunteerleaders to, you know, let's say
, small lowercase pastoral carefor people.
They're not doing word andsacrament, but there are going
into relationships where they'redoing spiritual care for people
(20:15):
.
So I think one of the thingsright now is like the model
right model of the pastor doingeverything, versus creating a
team of people that are sharingthe responsibility of spiritual
caregiving for the entirecongregation.
I think that's one thing thatneeds to be looked at the
economics and this is aneconomic issue it's not economic
(20:38):
to do the sole pastor does allof the caregiving anymore.
It has to be a distributedprocess within the church,
including people with differenttypes of titles and including a
lot of volunteer people.
So if you look at all of thepeople in leadership roles in
the church, including peoplethat are not paid, you know
we've got just volunteer leadersaverage about one to 10.
(20:59):
So you know one out of 10 inaverage weekly attendance.
We have somebody in some sort ofa volunteer leadership role and
that's part of the span of carefor the church and what I see
is like that is probably one ofthe most important things that
makes a church healthy and it issomething that you can begin to
start scaling into, even asyou're a smaller church.
But the problem is we don'tthink that way.
(21:21):
We're not.
You know, I think a lot ofpeople serving in these contexts
because that's been the modelfor so long, they're not
programmed to think that wayintuitively about it.
It's the pastor does everythingand maybe the culture of the
church is they want the.
I don't want to volunteervisiting me, I want the pastor
visiting me, right, and that'ssome of the culture there.
But if you can work throughthat culture, that's some of the
things that helps you getthrough the economics of this
(21:44):
issue, which is absolutely areality that you're bringing up
Thoughts on that.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Tim, it's the only way a church is going to bust
through the 120 to 150.
Uh mark in weekly worship isreleasing, releasing and
equipping the saints, uh, at aratio of probably something like
jesus did it one leader for 12,call it.
(22:11):
What call he or she, whateveryou want to call him an elder or
whatnot, a deaconess, but thatif you looked at your ratio, so
say you're the church worshiping100, do you have?
And we don't?
We don't.
We don't think that we think ofone pastor and maybe a
secretary or everything Rob wasjust saying.
But does he have a leadershipteam?
Call it whatever you want Aspiritual care team that are in
(22:32):
roughly the eight to 12 rationumber for a church worship
being about a hundred people.
That, and obviously you're like, well, I can't pay all of them.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
No, obviously you can't pay them all.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
But are you meeting with them consistently?
And I think in many churchesthat start to grow the elders
take on that kind of spiritualcare role in the congregation.
So as it grows, we've justfound small groups work right,
raising up leaders to do morespiritual care.
You can't just do small groupsbecause people are going to have
different seasons of life thatthey're walking through.
(23:03):
That's going to need morespecialized care and so you need
probably a spiritual carevisitation team.
Pastor needs to be obviouslyconnected to that as well.
But if the pastor will notcontrol it all and really focus
on Jack and I'm going back toanother podcast we had recently
focus on word and sacrament,like do Sunday things and
(23:25):
visitation things, but then alsoequip, give the word away,
train teachers, find other menthat can teach and raise them up
to teach in smaller littlecommunities, and the burden will
be shared.
I mean, the Moses and Jethrostory is so obvious here.
Right, there's no way you canpossibly do this.
This is way too heavy, way tooheavy for you, but unfortunately
(23:48):
so I'm going to counter this.
Unfortunately, a number ofthese congregations and we're
speaking in broad generalitieshere, so just give us some grace
have gone from.
I remember the day when thesanctuary was packed and it
could have been in the ninetiesearly two thousands and we were
worshiping two services, bothtraditional, most likely two
services, and there was a Biblestudy in the middle, and both of
(24:09):
those were were very full andthat congregation was probably
worshiping 250, some somewherein that range.
But over time it could be.
The community has changed overtime.
It's it's regressed, and oftenwhat you have in that regression
is a retreat in mission andthen an acquiescence to pastor
(24:30):
doing everything.
If you get right down to it, Iguarantee in those years of
growth pastor was not doingeverything, but now, kind of,
he's taken more responsibility.
I was trained to do theministry rather than develop
other people, and so, yeah, itjust kind of is what it is.
It really takes one leader, apastor, and then a small group
(24:50):
of people, a leadership teameducating themselves and saying
I think we can do it.
I think we can do it differenthere, and this is going to
benefit not just those that arein our pews, our chairs, but
also those who are going to bereached with the gospel.
We said a lot in response towhat you said.
There's no other way.
We're going to go one way orthe other.
Hopefully we're going to grow.
But I agree with you, rob.
(25:11):
I think the 80 to 120 mark,while it may be okay I don't
know that it's the best economicmodel for us advancing the
cause of Christ.
Say more there to what we justsaid, rob.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
No, look it worked really well for a long time, but
it's not necessarily going togo forward.
And I think there are some realquestions then about what is
the office of ministry, and Ithink that is one that you know
thinking about theologically,and I appreciate what you're
(25:40):
saying there about okay, look,the answer is we need the pastor
to focus on word and sacramentministry and really allow to put
it in terms of the small cardarticle, the, you know, the
consolation of the brethren, andI love what you talk about both
in terms of like, look, youhave to think your sort of
ordained staff to congregation,your program staff, your admin
(26:02):
staff and your sort of volunteerleaders and how you do that.
So the question becomes why isit then, if this is so obvious,
that the only way that we cansustain the model, if we want an
educated clergy, is to havekind of other ministries that
are going to sort of embrace anddo pastoral care?
Why is it that there's such afight on that issue?
(26:22):
I'll save you, I'll save you,I'll let us all obey the
amendment and I'll say I'll givean economic kind of business
rationale for why that gets tobe the way it is, and I want to
offer sort of two ways ofthinking about it, and the first
is mildly interesting and thesecond is haunting.
(26:42):
Okay, the mildly interestingand the second is haunting.
Okay, the mildly interestingway to think about it is that
basically we're athird-generation family business
that after World War II peoplein America got serious about
church and they built theirchurches and then in the 80s and
90s it was like the secondgeneration and now we're the
third generation and it turnsout that most businesses fail.
In the third generation offamily businesses, the founder
(27:04):
comes along, does a great thing,works really hard.
The second generation comesalong, expands what happens,
kind of like in a good sequel,like discovers the broader
universe, and the thirdgeneration well, the third
generation got what they wantedfor Christmas.
Right, they were not the onewho was putting in the 14 hour
days in the garage to figure outhow to make the product work.
(27:25):
And very often in thirdgeneration.
And I think in a lot of wayswe're kind of like these third
generation businesses out of aparticular model that like it's
just no longer sustainable, uh,on our backs I.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
That's really good, jack.
I'll kick it to you after this,I think.
I think that's a really goodmetaphor.
What happens in the thirdgeneration?
You lose the groundingmetanarrative of why the
congregation formed in the firstplace.
All of the storytellers havepassed away, those that lovingly
challenged if a pastor weremoving in a passivity direction
(27:59):
or an overly controllingdirection, providing equilibrium
toward mission and confession,those storytellers of why we
started and how we reached andgrew.
Those storytellers are nolonger there and therefore we
regress to pastor doingeverything, Jack.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
There's actually a story of innovation that goes
into the fact that you have allof these churches that were
built around this model.
They had done a lot ofanalytical work and a lot of
strategic work and said this isa system that we can embrace,
that's going to get churchesplanted everywhere, and this is
mind-blowing.
Back in the day I mean, thereseems to be a big gulf right now
(28:36):
between LCMS and ELCA.
Back in the day, they used tocollaborate with church planting
.
They would go into an area andsay, okay, you plant here and
we're going to plant here, andthen you plant here and we're
going to plant here, and theywould collaborate on this
process, and they would buildthese churches that was exactly
your size, because they had amodel in mind, saying this this
is economically a viable thingto do, and we can just repeat
(28:56):
this process over and over again.
So what was the heart of it,though, was evangelism, like
we're going to build morechurches in more locations and
places where and you know, our,our, our districts would take
the risk and buy property likeway out in advance of things
that are being developed.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
That doesn't happen anymore.
Right, think about the size ofthe properties we often bought
Jack for this day and age.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
Far too small, exactly, far too small.
Go ahead, rob.
Exactly Far too small.
Go ahead, rob.
This is really where.
So again, there was a pastor ata really large church in North
Carolina, solid guy, and he wasdoing this, trying to do like a
multi-site church, and heplanted a church and again he
had aimed for this church tokind of start with one pastor
and kind of work its way up andit didn't work.
(29:41):
And I said you kind of savedyourself time because in the end
this model doesn't work anymore.
And this is you don't have megachurches dropping like one
pastor and like two families ina place.
You have them sending out 30,40, 50 families at a time, and
those people already understandthat the pastor is not the
(30:04):
primary pastoral caregiver.
They know that from thebeginning.
Our model for the last hundredyears beat into people's brains.
The pastor is the primary nexus, of sort, of the congregation's
pastoral care, and so thequestion is how can we
theologically and practicallyundo that, and why is it so
difficult to do that?
(30:25):
Ok, haunting.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Talk about haunting.
What's haunting.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Real quick on the numbers here because I've done a
lot of research on this.
Most megachurches when they'reeither doing planting or
multi-site planting, which,whether it's new church, or
they're shooting for a staff ofabout five, and they're shooting
for about 500, four people inworship right off the bat.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
So they're already bigger than all but 25 Lutheran
churches in the country, exactly.
And the other thing I want toget to the haunting thing but
I'm going to throw out somethingthat I think that theolog—I'm
(31:05):
going to make—this is kind oftheological in my sense is that
there's going to be people,regardless of sort of Lutheran
denomination, they're going totell me that I'm wrong and then
two years later, they're goingto come back and say I hate the
fact that you're right aboutthis.
I understood that worship wasthe center of Lutheran life.
(31:26):
God comes to us in the word, aword of law and gospel, to guide
, to condemn and then to raiseus up to new life, and that that
word then was buttressedthrough Bible study.
And then you lived out this ina fellowship of intense
Christian bonds that then servedin the broader world through
revocations, and then we cameback on Sunday and God's word
(31:48):
came to us again.
Does that?
I mean you're with me?
So far, right?
Okay, what I have realized isthat for most people nowadays
they do not think about worshipas the center of their religious
life and they approach churchas the way that I approach life
and they approach church as theway that I approach, and most of
us approach, the rec center,where you know what I'm going to
(32:10):
make an hour this week for,like my faith, and this week I'm
not going to go to worship onSunday because the youth group
needs a volunteer on Sundaynight and next weekend there's a
soccer tournament on Sunday, soI'm just going to watch online.
And then the next week they'relike you know, one of my friends
is presenting in this smallgroup this week, so I really
want to go to that.
(32:30):
And then the next week theyshow up in worship.
In their mind they were likefully present for my church.
Their offerings came out oftheir you know bank accounts.
They shared with five differentpeople a link to the sermon
that they loved.
They corresponded with onestaff member multiple emails,
but in the end they were only atworship just once, and what
(32:52):
this means is most people aregoing to engage in our religious
communities in different waysand that it becomes very tough
for that church it was 100people a week to sort of
generate the sort of the numberof on-ramps that the really
large church can do, because thereally large church can offer
you 10 different ways to doBible study, 10 different ways
(33:14):
to do volunteering, 10 differentways to connect with other
people and 10 different ways toworship, and so, again, you're
just gonna be squeezed out interms of programming of what
people want towards like thereally little or the really big.
So we've got all these churchesthat are just at a size that is
not going to generate growthand if it does, it's only going
to burn the pastors out.
(33:35):
So why then are we so resistant?
Well, this is kind of whatactually I was talking about Tim
and the reason why he invitedme to be on the podcast in the
first place.
This is kind of what actually Iwas talking about, tim and the
reason why he invited me to beon the podcast in the first
place, and that is that in anorganization, let's just say
that I like playing UltimateFrisbee and a couple of us we
play Ultimate Frisbee andthere's a bunch of us are really
excited, and then eventually wehave enough people that it's no
(33:57):
longer just kind of ragtag but,like every Tuesday at 4pm,
there's like 16 of us that play.
But eventually, now we have somany people, now we need to sort
of schedule teams, and so nowwe have, like you know, a
Tuesday four o'clock game and aTuesday five o'clock game.
But eventually we need to buypennies.
So like we all kind of lookcool and we need like a referee,
(34:17):
because people get so into thissport that just is about
throwing a Frisbee around.
So at some point you grow fromlike energy to involvement, to
programs, to administration andyou sort of work your way up.
But now we have like eightteams that play Ultimate Frisbee
.
We've got even bylaws becausewe wanted to be a nonprofit,
because we wanted to get taxexemption from the local
(34:38):
businesses to donate theirsupplies to us, right?
Well, eventually some of us arelike you know, this just isn't
fun anymore.
Like we grew out of it, ourbacks didn't like us playing
ultimate Frisbee anymore.
We had knee surgery, whateverour kids grew up, and so we move
on, but there's still likepeople playing.
But eventually you get to thepoint where, like you don't
really have enough peopleanymore to do like eight teams.
(35:00):
So now you've got to likeshrink down what it is, and now
you have people who arefrantically trying to like well,
we need people to play.
Can you play?
Can you play?
I don't like Ultimate Frisbee,but I just need somebody to play
because we just need to, like,fill out, like this team, and we
got to do it, and in the end,what you're left with in any
organization towards the end isjust a structure that has these
bylaws and sort of rules for howto play that existed at the
(35:24):
peak of the institution and nolonger serve where you're at.
And what happens in anorganization, the nostalgia trap
, is that you try to go back upthe curve Right, and so this is
when an organization is dying,is when you've seen this at
churches, where they'refrantically searching for people
to fill committee spots, notbecause those committees are any
(35:45):
more even needed for themission of the church, but just
well, of course, a healthychurch has an evangelism
committee and the evangelismcommittee well, we know we need
to exist because it's in ourConstitution.
We have an evangelism committeeand this is important for a
church to have an evangelismcommittee, and you even have
somebody get up there at TempleTalk before church.
(36:05):
We're on the evangelismcommittee.
Evangelism is so important tothe gospel we need you to serve
on this committee.
What are you doing?
The committee?
Well, we're trying to figurethat out.
So if you have ideas, you cancome and bring it Right.
So like.
So I'm sensing you know whatI'm talking about here.
So what happens in anorganization is that you want to
, you kind of want to go back upto where you were, rather than
(36:28):
acknowledge that you actuallyneed to go in a different
direction.
Now, are you with me so far?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So this is called the.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
IPA, the growth curve .
Let me just summarize what youjust said.
It's an actual growth curve.
It's energy.
Woo, we're getting there, let'sconquer.
And then so we create the newthing Involvement.
People start to come to the newthing because more people are
coming to the thing.
It needs to get organized.
So programs start to develop,sports team, whatever the
services start to develop towelcome people.
(36:55):
And then you put togetherstructure, administration,
constitution, bylaws, all of thevoting mechanisms that help the
thing continue to sustainitself, and then it eventually
the focus inevitably ends upgoing more toward administration
than and this gets back to myinitial assertion around story
(37:16):
back, rather than the energy ofthe grounding metanarrative for
why the organization exists inthe first place, and obviously
in the local church, it's toreach people with the gospel, to
make disciples who makedisciples.
There's no argument there, butmore of the time and energy ends
up talking about when, on myday, we used to do it or this
institution was created to dothis and so we just got to.
(37:37):
Rather than this is whatleadership is, it's
acknowledging what is.
Do you want to acknowledge thetruth?
And in any organization, 20% isgoing to be messed up.
So let's just acknowledge yeah,we got some work to do and it's
going to be painful, for sure,but Jesus is with us and he's
never going to leave or forsakeus and again coming back for
(37:59):
leaders.
And my identity is not pastor,my identity is a love child of
God.
My identity is not perfectpastor, always making everybody
happy.
It's.
We got stuff we got to workthrough.
It's going to be difficult, butGod is with us.
And then you want to dreamagain.
You want to gather together tostart to dream new dreams, to
reach more people with thegospel.
(38:20):
Let's put our heads and heartstogether, invite the Holy Spirit
to be present and see what Godwants to do.
Jack, any observation of that?
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Yeah, no.
I what Rob?
What you described was exactlythe governance of our church
that I entered into about 20years ago.
I was elected the way I gotinvolved in leadership at our
church.
I got elected into thecontroller position on our
church council and we had allthese committees and it just
absolutely blew my mind becausewe're sitting here trying to
(38:48):
figure out, like budget issuesand I've got the social ministry
committee and the evangelismand like none of these people
were on these roles, were thereto deal with budgets.
They were there you know we'regoing to do cookouts and you
know what I mean and thegovernance was very, very, very,
very dysfunctional of thechurch.
The governance was very, very,very, very dysfunctional of the
(39:09):
church.
And what I want to do is I'mgiving a shout out to a lot of
the really, really talented laypeople in this ministry who
recognize that even before Timcame on board and we went
through governance transitionand just basically said we have
to think differently about whatthe model of our church is,
about what the model of ourchurch is, and they primed the
(39:32):
pump for a professional ministrysystem that was designed around
the professional ministry,equipping lay people to do
ministry really well underguidance and empowerment and
it's been.
It wasn't perfect the initialrendition.
We had to go through anotherrevision of that to get that
much better where it is.
But I would say you'reabsolutely right in that the
church has to embrace the ideathat, hey, at one point in time
(39:55):
this was the gold standard for agovernance model.
It got everybody involved right, it was beautiful and it works
for 150 people right, but itdoesn't work for an organization
that's scaling to 400, 500.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
At that point in time it just has no capacity to deal
with that type of leadershipand scale billing.
Yeah, so again, so what?
My first argument economicallywas that the kind of the size of
congregation that we weretending to locate around was was
not really is not going to beefficient.
It's sustainable outside ofsome really rare exceptions and
some really wealthy communitiesor churches that have large
endowments moving forward.
And then I just offer that evenif you had the money, it'd be
(40:33):
very difficult to sustain itprogrammatically.
And again, I think the futureof the church is likely going to
be much smaller organizationsthat just don't have a lot of
overhead or really can kind ofmake decisions really quickly
and offer people community Imean, just that's what they do
in their niche or like reallylarge institutions that can just
offer a whole bunch of ways forpeople to have on ramps and in
(40:55):
the busyness of their life tokind of figure out how they do
this thing of their walk withJesus and with others.
And now we're getting to thepoint of okay, so how as an
institution do we move from likesort of all these churches in
the middle to kind of thesechurches at the extremes?
And I think it takes, and whatI think it actually takes is a
lot of patience and a lot ofgood leadership, because you
(41:16):
essentially have to get peopleto trust you enough as a leader
to say we're actually not goingto go back to the way it was.
And you have to know, as aleader, how to kind of play your
cards of like.
Well, I'm not going to fightthe fact we have a Christmas
bazaar this year, even thoughthe Christmas bazaar has only
caused me stress the last fouryears.
It's not brought in anybody toJesus, it's not brought and not
(41:37):
even made us money, but likethey want to cook their soup and
they want to sell it and solike I'm not going to fight it
this year because I've got tofight this other battle.
So, and I think it just takestime as a leader to fight those
not even fight but just massagethose where you can tend to what
(41:57):
was, but free up enoughresources to kind of say where
is the spirit moving us?
So if we've got all these youknow young adults who are coming
in, or we've got a newretirement community that's
being built, how can we actuallyminister to that?
You know particular cohort andthe reality is is that most of
our systems, the pastoral careand administrative demands, will
(42:19):
suck us dry in terms of ourcapacity to do that like new
thing that God may be leading usto, new thing that God may be
leading us to.
So I would say that this,rather than what this curse says
, is that the only way forwardis to sort of not try to go back
up the nostalgia ladder but tosay where is the energy flowing
right now?
Or that's the business term interms of faith, what might God
(42:42):
be calling us to do?
Who needs the gospel in ourcommunity that we can reach in a
new way?
Or who in our church isbringing forth some ministry?
And so if I think at a healthychurch there's probably one or
two ministries every year, atleast one that you're probably
saying we're not going to dothis anymore, we're not going to
allocate communication andstaff resources to it, and if
somebody wants to do it, you gofor it, but in terms of the
(43:04):
communication and staffresources, that's not going to
get the top billing or even anyresources anymore.
I think, again, that takes alot of skill at the leadership
level to be able to navigatethat.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah, pastoring is and leading it is more art than
science, that is for sure.
And because there's people andthese ministries have people
connected to them, I guess thefrustration for me as a larger
church pastor is coming to gripswith how consumer centric the
(43:41):
everyday kind of early, maybeless mature, christian is in
their walk.
And you've got to justacknowledge, like I want a place
for my kids to experience Jesus.
What kind of programming areyou going to have?
I want a place where myfavorite pastor is preaching all
the time.
They don't have a lot ofsensitivity for development work
(44:04):
or for running tests anddevelopment of different people
through different programs.
Like if and here's the, andthis is I'm sorry, but if you're
a larger church, which in theLCMS churches that worship over
500 new data, 1.4% of the LCMSthat worship 1.4%, so we're not
(44:25):
talking a lot of churches but ifthat is your church, it's about
80 or so churches that worshipover 500.
You have to recognize thatpeople are first and foremost
consumers before they'recontributors to advancing the
gospel.
And if you're going to play thegame I'm sorry If you're in a
suburban urban where you got allthese other mega churches that
people can compare you to, etcetera, then play it to the best
(44:48):
of your ability, but don't tryto move past.
The first point of emphasis onfolks is the average Christian
is a consumer first and you cansay that's sin.
I think it is.
Eventually we want to get themto see the new life that is ours
in Jesus.
But I think at the very sametime churches like ours, or the
(45:08):
church that's in a slow decline,can start to envision if
leadership development is intheir DNA, if there's enough of
a groundswell three, four, fivepeople who really see
discipleship and then bringingmore people in I think that
congregation can have agroundswell of energy to start
smaller faith communities, housechurches, microchurches et
cetera, and I think that couldbe very, very invigorating to
(45:31):
them.
But all the data people can getticked off at us if they want,
all the data is showing churchesgoing in either of those two
directions, and so just the wayit is.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Yeah, exactly, I'm not trying to make an economics
as a difference in a normativeand a positive claim.
I'm not making it.
This is a difference in anormative and a positive claim.
I'm not making it.
This is a better like anormative claim.
I'm just saying, like you lookat it and basically people
either want a really smallcommunity where they feel
totally safe and secure in thatkind of 45, 30 to 40 people
family size group or they want alarge church where they can
(46:04):
just kind of take their pick.
And they're consumers, that'strue.
They're also just weary andthey're worn and they don't.
It's good.
It's like the reason why peopledon't buy fixer upper homes
anymore.
And this goes back to toeconomics.
If you, where in this country,where in this country can you
afford and this especially as apastor to only have like one
(46:25):
spouse working anymore, unlessthat spouse is making a lot of
money?
Right, housing costs are soexpensive.
So you've got, most familieshave at least one and a half or
two full-time working people andthey don't have time to figure
out all this stuff.
So, hey, this weekend at thechurch services online, like
that's works for us.
I'm not endorsing this.
(46:46):
I'm just saying this is thereality that we live in, and I
think this thing goes back tohow we think about not only.
So let's go then to sort ofthinking about how we would help
young clergy.
If they're a young clergy, thechances are that they're going
to be sent out, not to one ofthose 1.4% of churches, but
they're going to be sent out tothese churches where they're
(47:08):
asked to do the impossible.
They're asked to basicallyraise the dead, which Jesus can
do, but to sort of live in amodel that just isn't going to
kind of bear fruit.
So how can we help themunderstand that, like it's not
your fault, how can we help themkind of have the leadership
skills to kind of try to move inanother direction?
And then how can we equip andchallenge large churches to be
(47:33):
doing church planting or to sortof say, hey, you've just got to
, you've got to focus on scalingup, because that's the game
right now for better or forworse.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah, you know, and it may seem daunting and in
reality there are things thatsmall, smaller churches can do.
There's reforms let's saysystemic reforms, philosophical
reforms that you can do.
I would say don't reform, youknow, don't abandon the gospel
ever.
You stick with biblical truth.
But in terms of your systems,in terms of the culture that you
build right off the bat, Iwould say in a small church
(48:04):
context, you could focus onsomething called the span of
care.
What does the span of care looklike in this church?
Are there other people who areworking as volunteer leaders,
who are helping with thespiritual care and the
leadership of the church?
And can you start to build aculture that the church is
primarily run by and ministry isprimarily done by people who
(48:25):
are not paid?
Actually, the vast majority ofministry that happens in our
context is with people who arenot paid and the role of the of
the paid clergy and all ministrystaff is to help facilitate
that, to guide that, to empowerthat, to build culture around
that.
And you can do that in a smallchurch context.
(48:46):
It takes time, it takes grit,it takes it's.
You have to be good at changemanagement.
We could probably do a muchbetter job of teaching our
pastors or, let's say, a solepastor in a small church change
management to get to that pointin space, because that is an art
, that is a skill, Just like yousaid, Tim likes to say change
management is disappointingpeople at the rate that they can
(49:06):
handle.
I love that quote.
Those are things that you cando right.
Or you may say I'm committed to.
A time I met this pastor at theBPM and he says I basically run
a network of house churches, Ifunction like a bishop for a
bunch of house churches, and hesaid I don't take I don't even
(49:28):
take a salary for it.
We take offerings and we giveit away.
And he's got, you know, like 12, 15 little house churches that
he oversees and it's all beingrun volunteer, including himself
.
Right, and it's awesome.
It's a model that can scale ata certain level and do certain
things.
It's a totally valid way ofthinking about things.
Or you can build the big church.
I was at Watermark in Dallas.
(49:50):
It fits 3,000 people in there.
You know it's like that's adifferent level of scale.
They think differently.
You know they've got 25 peopleon their comms team, so you know
there's different models thatyou can explore and each one of
those requires you to thinkdifferently about the model that
you're in.
But I agree that the modelwhere the pastor does everything
that's got to go away, that'snot going to happen, that's not
(50:13):
sustainable, that's going toburn people out economically and
spiritually.
I think.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
Yeah, rob.
So, yes, yes, that's what Iwanted to share today is that,
again, all of us have a passionfor the gospel, have a real
concern about the trajectory ofthe institutions.
We're in my sense, and what Iwanted to offer today is that,
if we're thinking about how weform clergy, how we train people
, what skills are needed, how wedo mission, how we do church
(50:37):
plans, how we do all of this, Ijust wanted to say it's
important for us to get thetheology right.
But even if we get the theologyright, to assume that this
vehicle that worked for about a50, 60 year period of time in
American history is the onlyvehicle or the primary vehicle
through which it's going to work, I think that is not helpful.
(50:57):
And so then, what are the waysin which we can begrudgingly or
openly accept like, hey, this isthe new kind of economic
paradigm where pastors have tohave health insurance and
housing costs are high.
So pastors are going to be areally scarce resource.
You better be using them forword and sacrament and equipping
.
And what does that look likethen in congregations or, you
know, whatever else?
I just wanted to kind of throwsome economic models and
(51:19):
language around and maybe thatcan help spur some conversation
in some different directions,rather than the sort of the
typical, you know maybe, sort ofstuff we really kind of go in
circles around.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
Hey, this has been awesome.
Rob, you're a, you're a giftman.
I appreciate you connecting Um,and, and we didn't even get
into the ELCA.
Uh, struggles, and that'sprobably just as well, because
there there are many and uh, soI'll pray, I'll, I'll pray for,
for you and and those that aretrying to lead faithfully in the
(51:51):
elca, and I we cover thoseprayers for those of us trying
to do the same in the lcms.
Speaker 4 (51:56):
uh, for for sure yeah , yeah, like I said, I mean
there's been a lot ofdevelopments.
My sense is that if I like,took a video of the worship
service you were in in 1985 whenyou were, you know, your first
time being acolyte or whatever,and or whatever, and the first
time, I don't think they'd bethat different.
So there, there is a lot ofcommon in the heritage.
Obviously there's differencesin the denominations, but it
(52:19):
doesn't matter what denominationyou're in.
Your family's health insurancecosts the same amount, yeah, and
?
And if we want to figure outhow to be effective stewards of
the gospel, of the mysteries, wehave to kind of also be
stewards of the money and themodel that we're in.
So thanks for your.
I really appreciated both ofyour comments today.
I feel this is my owndiscussion, yeah, or whatever
(52:43):
else, that's fine.
The one resource that might beof interest is I do a weekly
blog on the Greek in thelectionary.
Now, I know that differentchurches use different
lectionaries, but I have themalso cataloged by scripture.
So I try to sort of connectwhere the Greek and preaching
might actually intersect andthat's called
lectionarygreekblogspotcom, andyou can just email me at
(53:07):
robertmayalis at yahoocom.
Robertmayalis at yahoocom.
And again, I'd love to hearother people's perspectives so
that I can grow as a leader too.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
This was a lot of fun .
This is lead time.
Please subscribe, share,comment.
All of it helps and thisplatform is growing and please
share.
Really productive, I think,very practical.
Some of our conversationsobviously get into more of the
theological.
This was in the economic realmand I hope you found it valuable
, as we do.
Whatever it takes and somepeople you shouldn't mix
(53:39):
business with well, the gospelneeds to scale, whatever it
takes to get the gospel of JesusChrist into the heart and ears
of people that they would hearand believe and then move out
into their various vocations andproclaim.
That is our invitation, that isthe call of the local church,
the ecclesia, the called andsent out ones to proclaim the
one who's called them out ofdarkness into a marvelous light.
His name is Jesus.
(54:00):
Let's make him known.
It's a good day.
Go make it a great day.
Thanks so much, jack.
Thanks Rob.
God bless you.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the
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Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
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(54:27):
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Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack
Kauberg.
It's a beautiful day to bealive.
We are experiencing the lastdays of heavenly weather here in
Phoenix.
We're going from right now.
We're recording on May 5th.
It's like 65 degrees.
By Friday it's going to be 100degrees.
That's quite a swing, jack,that's right.
I'm looking forward to it.
Well, this week is going to be100 degrees.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
That's quite a swing, jack.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
That's right, I'm looking forward to it.
Well, this week is going to begreat and I'm not.
Yeah, and then it's pool time,right, that's the way the
weather works here.
But, jack, how you doing man,you loving life, I am loving
life.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I mean, we're coming off of a really beautiful Easter
season where I mean the amountof people that had come to be
guests and worship together onthis community was, I think it
far exceeded everybody'sexpectations.
We know that Easter is kind ofa heavier, a heavier season for
us and this was just reallysomething special to behold and
(00:55):
to celebrate.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So we're having a we're having a little bit of a
euphoric high off of that stilland just kind of well yeah it
kind of feels and I've talked toa lot of a lot of pastors just
coming off a retreat with 20pastors and everybody kind of
feels like you know we'veweathered.
I probably said this last yearwe've weathered the storm, but I
don't think the storm was fullyweathered and there's probably
going to be some things to stillor there obviously will be.
(01:17):
But it's like we're back insome respects in the local
church from the COVIDcatastrophe and everything that
is there, like the wounds aremostly healed and people are
coming to church.
They're different and I thinkthe sense of urgency now, the
evangelical fervor, young peoplemore passionate about things of
faith and spirituality, forthose congregations in every
(01:41):
church body who are focusing onan invite, culture, hospitality,
love.
The message is deep but it'saccessible, if that makes sense.
The preaching is open-handedBecause we're preaching to such
a broad variety of people.
Yesterday, jack, I mean, I gotto preach to a person who,
(02:03):
disenfranchised Catholic,married a nun and they have
three young kids.
And there's something in thisdisenfranchised Catholic mom
that says I think we need tofind a faith community.
And they remembered, oh, one ofour pastors, pastor Jeff,
invited them to worship and nowthey've been in our pews and
this guy has no comprehension ofthe biblical narrative at all,
(02:26):
like his family wasn't there,like that's a broad audience
that we, that we preach to onany given Sunday and so, and
then you've got your lifers, whoknow the stories, some of them
better than even I do, becausethey've been in pews.
You know all of their, all oftheir life.
It's just such a diversecontext for me.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
And then seeing all the baptisms that we had, all
the baptisms 12.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, and I've talked to so many churches where they
have these baptism sundays andpeople are coming out of the
woodwork.
We had five adults get baptizedyesterday for the first time we
don't read that total.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
First time baptism, it's great.
10 time.
10 total at gilbert and two ateast mesa.
Yeah, yeah, wow spectacular.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, dad and two, two sons at east mesa, mom and
her daughter.
It's so exciting.
Well, today we get theprivilege of learning with a
brother that I just gotconnected to after I was on
Brian Stecker's On the Linepodcast.
He reached out to me andappreciated the conversation
with Brian.
I had a lot of fun with him.
He's going to be coming out onour podcast here soon as well,
(03:21):
coming out on our podcast heresoon as well.
But Rob Myallis I'm saying thatright, rob, I should have asked
.
Myallis is a pastor inLancaster, pennsylvania.
He pastors an ELCA congregation, so we're going to get into
that story a little bit today.
He graduated from LutherSeminary in 2008.
So we got out and into thefield the same exact year.
(03:42):
He has a wife and two teenagedaughters, so all the prayers
are appreciated for me and alldads trying to raise teenage
girls and boys, to be sure.
So how you doing, rob?
What a joy to be with you today, man.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
It is great to be with you guys.
I heard you on a podcast and Iappreciated your fervor for
reaching people with the gospel,especially one that's rooted in
the theology of Martin Lutherand the Lutheran confessional
tradition, and I often feelsometimes like not quite like an
Elijah, but like I'm the onlyone, and then I discover, no,
(04:16):
that there's a multitude ofvoices that are really trying to
proclaim Jesus Christ crucifiedand risen for you as a free
gift, and so it was a joy tohear your passion for the gospel
and then your passion for howwe can reach out and connect
with people and buildcommunities, communities of
faith, in which this faith isproclaimed, received and passed
on.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, yeah, the joy and honor is mine and I don't
know as much about the ELCAstory.
I mean, don't know as muchabout the ELCA story.
I mean I look at it from anoutsider kind of perspective and
, frankly, the LCMS we haveenough opportunities to grow as
we try to, you know, start newchurches, revitalize a number of
(05:04):
our declining churches andspeak kindly and contextually to
all of us in all of our becauseour congregation is a different
type of congregation than arural, rural congregation.
Right Size, scope, staff, allof it.
It's very, very different.
And so we're trying to navigatethose waters and lead time as
one of those podcasts it'strying to set up those kinds of
conversations.
But what are some of thegreatest struggles in the ELCA?
And I'll set you up with thisYou've done some economic work
(05:25):
and you, you we've spoken aboutthis a lot the confessional,
missional kind of tension.
I'm sure that is a present dayreality in the ELCA as as well.
I'm not a huge fan of usingthose.
I think it's a false dichotomy,but nonetheless that's the way
the language kind of moves usinto these respective camps and
I believe that's unfortunate.
So just tell a little bit ofthe ELCA story, catch us up and
(05:48):
then we can move into the wayyou're looking at the economics
of the local church.
Rob, this is going to be fun.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Yeah Well, again, thanks for having me.
It's really again good to behere, and I'm going to give,
ultimately, I think, a prettyanalytical answer to that.
So I just want to start, though, with an acknowledgement that
the decline of the ELCA and,more broadly, the decline of the
Lutheran Witness although, likeyou mentioned, there seems to
be something in the waters rightnow, especially among the
(06:16):
youngest cohort, like 18 to 24,maybe to 30, where there's
something that they're comingback but it's really a pretty
emotional question for me.
I grew up in the LCA in the 80sand I don't think, actually at
that point, the experience of anelementary schooler in an LCA
church versus the elementaryschooler in an LCMS church would
have been all that different inthe 1980s.
(06:37):
Both denominations were run bymen that had fought together in
World War II.
This is like pre-sexuality,pre-call to common mission, pre
the political divides, pre thecontemporary worship and pre all
of that.
So I think we actually probablyhad a pretty similar kind of
VBS kind of experience acolytinglike as kids in the church.
(07:00):
But what has happened over timethen is that almost just about
every institution that I've beena part of in the ELCA has died.
The seminary where I my dadwent to seminary right around
the time that I was born.
That seminary in Philadelphiano longer exists as a standalone
seminary.
My dad's first call was in aWest Philly congregation.
That church no longer exists.
(07:22):
The seminary I went hasbasically become an online
campus, my intern, like my sortof contextual learning site and
seminary.
That church has closed.
I mean the Deaconess Centerwhere I went with my dads on the
weekend as a kid to givecommunion I wasn't giving, he
was giving communion thatDeaconess Center was sold.
So, like most of my childhood,the church that I grew up in,
(07:47):
beyond theology, juststructurally, has just fallen
apart, and so that's a lot ofgrief for me.
That's a lot of grief torealize that I wasn't just a
child of a congregation, I wasthe child of an ecosystem that
had all of these kind of movingpieces and I think to myself,
you know, for like my kids or mygrandkids, like what's still
(08:09):
going to be there of aconfessional Lutheran witness in
this country, and I also have areal motivation for this.
I've been coaching the crosscountry team, or helping to
coach that, and so I interactwith high schoolers and middle
schoolers and about seven oreight months in I said I need to
start praying for these kids,not because there's specifically
(08:31):
a need of prayer or something,but I realized that for many of
them, nobody prays for them.
I want you to think about that.
There are kids in ourcommunities.
Nobody prays for them.
I think of how many prayerswere ascending daily for me as a
child.
They're not getting prayed forand they're trying to figure out
who they are in this world ofsocial media, of sort of choose
(08:52):
your own identity, all of thisstuff.
And they don't know.
They've never heard the promise, they've never had water poured
over their head and said youare a beloved child of God,
solely out of Christ's favor foryou.
You are a beloved child of God,solely out of Christ's favor
for you.
And so I have this just heartof like.
If we don't get this right, godwill do it through some other
way we trust.
(09:13):
But it just breaks my heart thatas a Lutheran church in America
, we haven't always risen to thechallenge and again we're mired
in kind of like 30 to 40 yearsof institutional decline at
varying speeds in various ways.
So I'll just kind of get 30 to40 years of institutional
decline at varying speeds invarious ways.
So I'll just kind of get thatout there Like this is a really
I'm going to give you a reallyanalytical answer now, but I
want to say that there's a bigheart answer that's underneath
(09:35):
it all.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Well, yeah, I mean, god Jesus loves these little
children and there's been somuch confusion, you think the
gender confusion.
You know, where is my coreidentity?
And, as confessing Lutherans,our baptismal theology gives the
answer.
But are we letting kids?
I'll tell you this.
So I coach two high schoolfootball.
(09:57):
I get to be the chaplain, right?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
And every single devotion in some way shape or
form.
It's not the main theme, but Iwill round back to identity over
and over again and and that iswhy so many kids are so anxious
because they're trying to figureout who I am without any sense
of either antecedent, a family,a faith or even a biology, and
that is just far too great of aburden for somebody at 15 to try
(10:37):
to do all that.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
So I can't imagine trying to be somebody at that
age and saying I have to.
I have to decide on figure outwhat my identity is, and I have
to get it right because it'sgoing to have to be something
that informs me for my wholelife.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
And it's something that's going to be paraded
before everybody else andevaluated and liked or not liked
, right it's so much so decidewho I'm friends with and who I'm
not friends with.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I mean, that's a big burden to be put on a kid.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Exactly so, so that we can come back and talk about
identity formation in youanytime.
That's a hard topic for me too.
So now that I've just said that, like I come at this as
somebody who's just witnessedjust all the sort of the pieces
of the infrastructure fallingapart and the response to that
is in part like a theological,like hey, we messed up
theologically and I thinkthere's some truth to that real
(11:27):
truth.
But I don't want us to getparalyzed there because I think
there's some underlying economicissues that are at work that
even if America has a religiousrevival, it's unlikely to
benefit LCMS and ELCA churchesunless we change kind of some
ways about how we think aboutwhat it means for us to be a
(11:50):
church, especially at thecongregational level.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
What should we change ?
I mean, that's a big assertionright there, Rob.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
If there is a revival which I think there could be.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I think there definitely could be a lot of
people very open to coming toour churches and I think we're
seeing a little taste of itright now in our context, jack,
with all the first timers coming.
So what's going to prohibit usfrom being a part of welcoming
people through word andsacrament If we really believe
our theology is like so great,you know, and we're not.
I'm not even going to get intothe differences between the ELCA
(12:19):
and the LCMS at the highestlevels, but but I'm proud of our
theology.
I know you'd say in manyrespects the same.
So if we're proud, rightly inthe Holy Spirit and the truth
has been revealed to us, what'sgetting in the way of us getting
?
Speaker 4 (12:33):
it out.
Yeah, and I'll just say oneother caveat, and that is that
whenever I talk to people fromthe Missouri Synod, you all
still have a coherentdenomination.
The ELCA is not a coherentdenomination.
We can unpack that another time, but it's just not the same
kind of framework.
So even to say the ELCA thinksor teaches this, that statement
(12:53):
could have been said 20 yearsago.
It can't anymore.
It's just a lot more diversity.
And it's not just diverse, it'sjust not theological.
It's just hard to explain how,when we make decisions anymore,
theology just isn't the primarydriver anymore.
So it's kind of like apost-Lutheran, post-confessional
(13:15):
body where you have pockets ofpeople doing some really awesome
stuff, but it's just more likethe carnival than the chapel.
It's more like the carnivalthan the chapel.
Like like Lutheran Church neverviewed itself as like the
cathedral.
We all sort of sort of felt aslike the chapel, like we're kind
of the best of the cathedralbut we're not quite as like you
know, stuffy or something.
We're just the carnival.
Okay, so that all looks fine.
Let's finally now, like 15minutes in, get to economics
(13:37):
here.
Okay, there are certain sizesof a firm that make sense.
So, for instance, in the my dogjust came upstairs, sorry In
the dairy industry you don'thave farms that have 200 cows.
You have firms that have 100cows or a thousand.
(13:59):
Why is that?
Because once you get over ahundred, one family can't attend
to it and they've got to hiresomebody.
You've got to hire somebody.
Only having two or threeemployees is inefficient.
Then you got to go big.
Or like you've never seen aMcDonald's that serves a
thousand people.
Why Fast food can't do thatmany people.
No, it's because you have acertain scale for your ovens and
(14:20):
everything else.
So again, in all of ourindustries you have certain
points where firms are going tocongregate.
This is just any industry.
Certain sizes make sense.
Well, it turns out within achurch.
The scale that made sense forthe latter half of the 20th
century was 80 to 120 people.
You could have one building,one pastor, and you could also
(14:44):
have like a part-time organistand a part-time sexton and a
part-time secretary, and youcould do this and even afford to
give your pastor pay raises fora couple of years.
Right, this is kind of probablythe churches that dominated the
Lutheran landscape for a longtime, outside of the most rural
areas.
Okay, why is that model nolonger working?
(15:05):
Is it because of Word andSacrament theology?
No, it's because, well, firstof all, health insurance.
My health insurance for myfamily costs about $30,000 a
year from my congregation.
So that means that if you're acongregation that worships like
100 people a Sunday, each ofthose people is paying what like
$300 a year.
(15:26):
They're paying all this moneyjust for health insurance before
they even got to your salary,just to kind of pay.
They're not even talking.
I'm not even talking your like,your retirement, just your
health insurance alone, and sowhat you have then is an
especially so again, your mathis just harder.
The second thing and I'm goingto get back to this later is
(15:47):
that most of our buildings had asignificant expansion in the
1950s and then an even anotherround of expansions in the 1990s
, which means we're all comingup on the 30 and 60, like the 25
to 30 and the 50 to 60 yearmaintenance bills.
So we have these huge pocketsof deferred maintenance in our
buildings, which means that yourper person cost of your pastor
(16:09):
and your per person cost of yourbuilding no longer mean that
you can do that off of 80 to 100people a Sunday.
In fact, the only way you couldhave one person who doesn't
have their health insurancesplit with their spouse and can
actually afford more than likeone or two pay raises, the only
way you could do that would beto probably have about 160 to
(16:33):
200 people a Sunday, and theproblem with that is that humans
cannot relate to that manypeople.
They've done all this analysisover time of how many humans a
human can relate to andbasically it turns out that it's
about 150.
The Doomsday Book the Normansconquer the British Isles.
(16:53):
They do a whole survey of thesize, the census, the average
Welsh and British village atthat time 149.2 people.
They do this analysis of thecerebral cortex of primates and
their group sizes and thenextrapolates out to humans it's
150.
You as a human can be a ragingextrovert, but you cannot
(17:13):
remember the suffering of 150people.
In fact, in Mark's gospel whenJesus does the miracle of the
feeding of the 5,000, he dividesup the disciples and he tells
them put groups now of 50 to 100.
He doesn't say we'll do groups.
You can't relate to more people.
So, in other words, the math toget the money to work for you
(17:33):
to have one pastor you have tohave more than that one pastor
can relate to.
And this is why how many of youhave friends and pastor friends?
Their church has grown.
They took that little countrychurch and it's booming now and
on the inside, after six orseven years, those pastors are
so tired.
And they're so tired becausethey're expected to do all the
(17:55):
pastoral care for a size that'sbigger than their brain can
actually process.
And so you could say oh well,this church that worships 110
people a week, we could grow itto 130, 140.
You'll kill the pastor in theprocess.
You just can't do it.
And that's why what's happeningacross our denomination is that
these churches that used to haveenough people kind of what a
(18:16):
human could relate to 150 peopleyou could get out of that
enough kids to kind of shake andbake a Sunday school and a
youth group you just can'tanymore.
(18:37):
In other words, the minimumsize you need to be sustainable
and attractive is probably underlike 40 people a Sunday.
So you're just like a housechurch or a small church with
like a pastor who's likepart-time or you probably need
to be 300, 500, a thousand aSunday.
So you get that per buildingand per kind of clergy cost down
(19:00):
to the point of affordability.
That's a lot I just gave there,so I just bumped on you.
So tell me what makes sense orwhat makes sense there.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I don't disagree with some of the numbers you're
throwing out there.
I think one of the things thatwe're seeing is, well, we would
serve in, from a Lutheranperspective, what you would
consider to be a large church,right, and yet our staffing
ratio I would say right now Iwould say it's probably a little
(19:29):
, we're running a little toogenerous on it.
Even but you know that's adifferent conversation we're
staffing at about one full-timeequivalent for every 50 average,
you know, in average weeklyattendance, right.
So if you do the math and youtake what's our weekly average
attendance and how many peoplewe have on staff, it's about one
to 50, right Now they're notall called and ordained pastors.
(19:53):
They're people serving in alldifferent types of roles, but
still they're all part of whatwe would call the span of care
within the church.
And on top of that we have avery robust small group ministry
where we're equipping volunteerleaders to, you know, let's say
, small lowercase pastoral carefor people.
They're not doing word andsacrament, but there are going
into relationships where they'redoing spiritual care for people
(20:15):
.
So I think one of the thingsright now is like the model
right model of the pastor doingeverything, versus creating a
team of people that are sharingthe responsibility of spiritual
caregiving for the entirecongregation.
I think that's one thing thatneeds to be looked at the
economics and this is aneconomic issue it's not economic
(20:38):
to do the sole pastor does allof the caregiving anymore.
It has to be a distributedprocess within the church,
including people with differenttypes of titles and including a
lot of volunteer people.
So if you look at all of thepeople in leadership roles in
the church, including peoplethat are not paid, you know
we've got just volunteer leadersaverage about one to 10.
(20:59):
So you know one out of 10 inaverage weekly attendance.
We have somebody in some sort ofa volunteer leadership role and
that's part of the span of carefor the church and what I see
is like that is probably one ofthe most important things that
makes a church healthy and it issomething that you can begin to
start scaling into, even asyou're a smaller church.
But the problem is we don'tthink that way.
(21:21):
We're not.
You know, I think a lot ofpeople serving in these contexts
because that's been the modelfor so long, they're not
programmed to think that wayintuitively about it.
It's the pastor does everythingand maybe the culture of the
church is they want the.
I don't want to volunteervisiting me, I want the pastor
visiting me, right, and that'ssome of the culture there.
But if you can work throughthat culture, that's some of the
things that helps you getthrough the economics of this
(21:44):
issue, which is absolutely areality that you're bringing up
Thoughts on that.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Tim, it's the only way a church is going to bust
through the 120 to 150.
Uh mark in weekly worship isreleasing, releasing and
equipping the saints, uh, at aratio of probably something like
jesus did it one leader for 12,call it.
(22:11):
What call he or she, whateveryou want to call him an elder or
whatnot, a deaconess, but thatif you looked at your ratio, so
say you're the church worshiping100, do you have?
And we don't?
We don't.
We don't think that we think ofone pastor and maybe a
secretary or everything Rob wasjust saying.
But does he have a leadershipteam?
Call it whatever you want Aspiritual care team that are in
(22:32):
roughly the eight to 12 rationumber for a church worship
being about a hundred people.
That, and obviously you're like, well, I can't pay all of them.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
No, obviously you can't pay them all.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
But are you meeting with them consistently?
And I think in many churchesthat start to grow the elders
take on that kind of spiritualcare role in the congregation.
So as it grows, we've justfound small groups work right,
raising up leaders to do morespiritual care.
You can't just do small groupsbecause people are going to have
different seasons of life thatthey're walking through.
(23:03):
That's going to need morespecialized care and so you need
probably a spiritual carevisitation team.
Pastor needs to be obviouslyconnected to that as well.
But if the pastor will notcontrol it all and really focus
on Jack and I'm going back toanother podcast we had recently
focus on word and sacrament,like do Sunday things and
(23:25):
visitation things, but then alsoequip, give the word away,
train teachers, find other menthat can teach and raise them up
to teach in smaller littlecommunities, and the burden will
be shared.
I mean, the Moses and Jethrostory is so obvious here.
Right, there's no way you canpossibly do this.
This is way too heavy, way tooheavy for you, but unfortunately
(23:48):
so I'm going to counter this.
Unfortunately, a number ofthese congregations and we're
speaking in broad generalitieshere, so just give us some grace
have gone from.
I remember the day when thesanctuary was packed and it
could have been in the ninetiesearly two thousands and we were
worshiping two services, bothtraditional, most likely two
services, and there was a Biblestudy in the middle, and both of
(24:09):
those were were very full andthat congregation was probably
worshiping 250, some somewherein that range.
But over time it could be.
The community has changed overtime.
It's it's regressed, and oftenwhat you have in that regression
is a retreat in mission andthen an acquiescence to pastor
(24:30):
doing everything.
If you get right down to it, Iguarantee in those years of
growth pastor was not doingeverything, but now, kind of,
he's taken more responsibility.
I was trained to do theministry rather than develop
other people, and so, yeah, itjust kind of is what it is.
It really takes one leader, apastor, and then a small group
(24:50):
of people, a leadership teameducating themselves and saying
I think we can do it.
I think we can do it differenthere, and this is going to
benefit not just those that arein our pews, our chairs, but
also those who are going to bereached with the gospel.
We said a lot in response towhat you said.
There's no other way.
We're going to go one way orthe other.
Hopefully we're going to grow.
But I agree with you, rob.
(25:11):
I think the 80 to 120 mark,while it may be okay I don't
know that it's the best economicmodel for us advancing the
cause of Christ.
Say more there to what we justsaid, rob.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
No, look it worked really well for a long time, but
it's not necessarily going togo forward.
And I think there are some realquestions then about what is
the office of ministry, and Ithink that is one that you know
thinking about theologically,and I appreciate what you're
(25:40):
saying there about okay, look,the answer is we need the pastor
to focus on word and sacramentministry and really allow to put
it in terms of the small cardarticle, the, you know, the
consolation of the brethren, andI love what you talk about both
in terms of like, look, youhave to think your sort of
ordained staff to congregation,your program staff, your admin
(26:02):
staff and your sort of volunteerleaders and how you do that.
So the question becomes why isit then, if this is so obvious,
that the only way that we cansustain the model, if we want an
educated clergy, is to havekind of other ministries that
are going to sort of embrace anddo pastoral care?
Why is it that there's such afight on that issue?
(26:22):
I'll save you, I'll save you,I'll let us all obey the
amendment and I'll say I'll givean economic kind of business
rationale for why that gets tobe the way it is, and I want to
offer sort of two ways ofthinking about it, and the first
is mildly interesting and thesecond is haunting.
(26:42):
Okay, the mildly interestingand the second is haunting.
Okay, the mildly interestingway to think about it is that
basically we're athird-generation family business
that after World War II peoplein America got serious about
church and they built theirchurches and then in the 80s and
90s it was like the secondgeneration and now we're the
third generation and it turnsout that most businesses fail.
In the third generation offamily businesses, the founder
(27:04):
comes along, does a great thing,works really hard.
The second generation comesalong, expands what happens,
kind of like in a good sequel,like discovers the broader
universe, and the thirdgeneration well, the third
generation got what they wantedfor Christmas.
Right, they were not the onewho was putting in the 14 hour
days in the garage to figure outhow to make the product work.
(27:25):
And very often in thirdgeneration.
And I think in a lot of wayswe're kind of like these third
generation businesses out of aparticular model that like it's
just no longer sustainable, uh,on our backs I.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
That's really good, jack.
I'll kick it to you after this,I think.
I think that's a really goodmetaphor.
What happens in the thirdgeneration?
You lose the groundingmetanarrative of why the
congregation formed in the firstplace.
All of the storytellers havepassed away, those that lovingly
challenged if a pastor weremoving in a passivity direction
(27:59):
or an overly controllingdirection, providing equilibrium
toward mission and confession,those storytellers of why we
started and how we reached andgrew.
Those storytellers are nolonger there and therefore we
regress to pastor doingeverything, Jack.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
There's actually a story of innovation that goes
into the fact that you have allof these churches that were
built around this model.
They had done a lot ofanalytical work and a lot of
strategic work and said this isa system that we can embrace,
that's going to get churchesplanted everywhere, and this is
mind-blowing.
Back in the day I mean, thereseems to be a big gulf right now
(28:36):
between LCMS and ELCA.
Back in the day, they used tocollaborate with church planting
.
They would go into an area andsay, okay, you plant here and
we're going to plant here, andthen you plant here and we're
going to plant here, and theywould collaborate on this
process, and they would buildthese churches that was exactly
your size, because they had amodel in mind, saying this this
is economically a viable thingto do, and we can just repeat
(28:56):
this process over and over again.
So what was the heart of it,though, was evangelism, like
we're going to build morechurches in more locations and
places where and you know, our,our, our districts would take
the risk and buy property likeway out in advance of things
that are being developed.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
That doesn't happen anymore.
Right, think about the size ofthe properties we often bought
Jack for this day and age.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
Far too small, exactly, far too small.
Go ahead, rob.
Exactly Far too small.
Go ahead, rob.
This is really where.
So again, there was a pastor ata really large church in North
Carolina, solid guy, and he wasdoing this, trying to do like a
multi-site church, and heplanted a church and again he
had aimed for this church tokind of start with one pastor
and kind of work its way up andit didn't work.
(29:41):
And I said you kind of savedyourself time because in the end
this model doesn't work anymore.
And this is you don't have megachurches dropping like one
pastor and like two families ina place.
You have them sending out 30,40, 50 families at a time, and
those people already understandthat the pastor is not the
(30:04):
primary pastoral caregiver.
They know that from thebeginning.
Our model for the last hundredyears beat into people's brains.
The pastor is the primary nexus, of sort, of the congregation's
pastoral care, and so thequestion is how can we
theologically and practicallyundo that, and why is it so
difficult to do that?
(30:25):
Ok, haunting.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Talk about haunting.
What's haunting.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Real quick on the numbers here because I've done a
lot of research on this.
Most megachurches when they'reeither doing planting or
multi-site planting, which,whether it's new church, or
they're shooting for a staff ofabout five, and they're shooting
for about 500, four people inworship right off the bat.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
So they're already bigger than all but 25 Lutheran
churches in the country, exactly.
And the other thing I want toget to the haunting thing but
I'm going to throw out somethingthat I think that theolog—I'm
(31:05):
going to make—this is kind oftheological in my sense is that
there's going to be people,regardless of sort of Lutheran
denomination, they're going totell me that I'm wrong and then
two years later, they're goingto come back and say I hate the
fact that you're right aboutthis.
I understood that worship wasthe center of Lutheran life.
(31:26):
God comes to us in the word, aword of law and gospel, to guide
, to condemn and then to raiseus up to new life, and that that
word then was buttressedthrough Bible study.
And then you lived out this ina fellowship of intense
Christian bonds that then servedin the broader world through
revocations, and then we cameback on Sunday and God's word
(31:48):
came to us again.
Does that?
I mean you're with me?
So far, right?
Okay, what I have realized isthat for most people nowadays
they do not think about worshipas the center of their religious
life and they approach churchas the way that I approach life
and they approach church as theway that I approach, and most of
us approach, the rec center,where you know what I'm going to
(32:10):
make an hour this week for,like my faith, and this week I'm
not going to go to worship onSunday because the youth group
needs a volunteer on Sundaynight and next weekend there's a
soccer tournament on Sunday, soI'm just going to watch online.
And then the next week they'relike you know, one of my friends
is presenting in this smallgroup this week, so I really
want to go to that.
(32:30):
And then the next week theyshow up in worship.
In their mind they were likefully present for my church.
Their offerings came out oftheir you know bank accounts.
They shared with five differentpeople a link to the sermon
that they loved.
They corresponded with onestaff member multiple emails,
but in the end they were only atworship just once, and what
(32:52):
this means is most people aregoing to engage in our religious
communities in different waysand that it becomes very tough
for that church it was 100people a week to sort of
generate the sort of the numberof on-ramps that the really
large church can do, because thereally large church can offer
you 10 different ways to doBible study, 10 different ways
(33:14):
to do volunteering, 10 differentways to connect with other
people and 10 different ways toworship, and so, again, you're
just gonna be squeezed out interms of programming of what
people want towards like thereally little or the really big.
So we've got all these churchesthat are just at a size that is
not going to generate growthand if it does, it's only going
to burn the pastors out.
(33:35):
So why then are we so resistant?
Well, this is kind of whatactually I was talking about Tim
and the reason why he invitedme to be on the podcast in the
first place.
This is kind of what actually Iwas talking about, tim and the
reason why he invited me to beon the podcast in the first
place, and that is that in anorganization, let's just say
that I like playing UltimateFrisbee and a couple of us we
play Ultimate Frisbee andthere's a bunch of us are really
excited, and then eventually wehave enough people that it's no
(33:57):
longer just kind of ragtag but,like every Tuesday at 4pm,
there's like 16 of us that play.
But eventually, now we have somany people, now we need to sort
of schedule teams, and so nowwe have, like you know, a
Tuesday four o'clock game and aTuesday five o'clock game.
But eventually we need to buypennies.
So like we all kind of lookcool and we need like a referee,
(34:17):
because people get so into thissport that just is about
throwing a Frisbee around.
So at some point you grow fromlike energy to involvement, to
programs, to administration andyou sort of work your way up.
But now we have like eightteams that play Ultimate Frisbee
.
We've got even bylaws becausewe wanted to be a nonprofit,
because we wanted to get taxexemption from the local
(34:38):
businesses to donate theirsupplies to us, right?
Well, eventually some of us arelike you know, this just isn't
fun anymore.
Like we grew out of it, ourbacks didn't like us playing
ultimate Frisbee anymore.
We had knee surgery, whateverour kids grew up, and so we move
on, but there's still likepeople playing.
But eventually you get to thepoint where, like you don't
really have enough peopleanymore to do like eight teams.
(35:00):
So now you've got to likeshrink down what it is, and now
you have people who arefrantically trying to like well,
we need people to play.
Can you play?
Can you play?
I don't like Ultimate Frisbee,but I just need somebody to play
because we just need to, like,fill out, like this team, and we
got to do it, and in the end,what you're left with in any
organization towards the end isjust a structure that has these
bylaws and sort of rules for howto play that existed at the
(35:24):
peak of the institution and nolonger serve where you're at.
And what happens in anorganization, the nostalgia trap
, is that you try to go back upthe curve Right, and so this is
when an organization is dying,is when you've seen this at
churches, where they'refrantically searching for people
to fill committee spots, notbecause those committees are any
(35:45):
more even needed for themission of the church, but just
well, of course, a healthychurch has an evangelism
committee and the evangelismcommittee well, we know we need
to exist because it's in ourConstitution.
We have an evangelism committeeand this is important for a
church to have an evangelismcommittee, and you even have
somebody get up there at TempleTalk before church.
(36:05):
We're on the evangelismcommittee.
Evangelism is so important tothe gospel we need you to serve
on this committee.
What are you doing?
The committee?
Well, we're trying to figurethat out.
So if you have ideas, you cancome and bring it Right.
So like.
So I'm sensing you know whatI'm talking about here.
So what happens in anorganization is that you want to
, you kind of want to go back upto where you were, rather than
(36:28):
acknowledge that you actuallyneed to go in a different
direction.
Now, are you with me so far?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So this is called the.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
IPA, the growth curve .
Let me just summarize what youjust said.
It's an actual growth curve.
It's energy.
Woo, we're getting there, let'sconquer.
And then so we create the newthing Involvement.
People start to come to the newthing because more people are
coming to the thing.
It needs to get organized.
So programs start to develop,sports team, whatever the
services start to develop towelcome people.
(36:55):
And then you put togetherstructure, administration,
constitution, bylaws, all of thevoting mechanisms that help the
thing continue to sustainitself, and then it eventually
the focus inevitably ends upgoing more toward administration
than and this gets back to myinitial assertion around story
(37:16):
back, rather than the energy ofthe grounding metanarrative for
why the organization exists inthe first place, and obviously
in the local church, it's toreach people with the gospel, to
make disciples who makedisciples.
There's no argument there, butmore of the time and energy ends
up talking about when, on myday, we used to do it or this
institution was created to dothis and so we just got to.
(37:37):
Rather than this is whatleadership is, it's
acknowledging what is.
Do you want to acknowledge thetruth?
And in any organization, 20% isgoing to be messed up.
So let's just acknowledge yeah,we got some work to do and it's
going to be painful, for sure,but Jesus is with us and he's
never going to leave or forsakeus and again coming back for
(37:59):
leaders.
And my identity is not pastor,my identity is a love child of
God.
My identity is not perfectpastor, always making everybody
happy.
It's.
We got stuff we got to workthrough.
It's going to be difficult, butGod is with us.
And then you want to dreamagain.
You want to gather together tostart to dream new dreams, to
reach more people with thegospel.
(38:20):
Let's put our heads and heartstogether, invite the Holy Spirit
to be present and see what Godwants to do.
Jack, any observation of that?
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Yeah, no.
I what Rob?
What you described was exactlythe governance of our church
that I entered into about 20years ago.
I was elected the way I gotinvolved in leadership at our
church.
I got elected into thecontroller position on our
church council and we had allthese committees and it just
absolutely blew my mind becausewe're sitting here trying to
(38:48):
figure out, like budget issuesand I've got the social ministry
committee and the evangelismand like none of these people
were on these roles, were thereto deal with budgets.
They were there you know we'regoing to do cookouts and you
know what I mean and thegovernance was very, very, very,
very dysfunctional of thechurch.
The governance was very, very,very, very dysfunctional of the
(39:09):
church.
And what I want to do is I'mgiving a shout out to a lot of
the really, really talented laypeople in this ministry who
recognize that even before Timcame on board and we went
through governance transitionand just basically said we have
to think differently about whatthe model of our church is,
about what the model of ourchurch is, and they primed the
(39:32):
pump for a professional ministrysystem that was designed around
the professional ministry,equipping lay people to do
ministry really well underguidance and empowerment and
it's been.
It wasn't perfect the initialrendition.
We had to go through anotherrevision of that to get that
much better where it is.
But I would say you'reabsolutely right in that the
church has to embrace the ideathat, hey, at one point in time
(39:55):
this was the gold standard for agovernance model.
It got everybody involved right, it was beautiful and it works
for 150 people right, but itdoesn't work for an organization
that's scaling to 400, 500.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
At that point in time it just has no capacity to deal
with that type of leadershipand scale billing.
Yeah, so again, so what?
My first argument economicallywas that the kind of the size of
congregation that we weretending to locate around was was
not really is not going to beefficient.
It's sustainable outside ofsome really rare exceptions and
some really wealthy communitiesor churches that have large
endowments moving forward.
And then I just offer that evenif you had the money, it'd be
(40:33):
very difficult to sustain itprogrammatically.
And again, I think the futureof the church is likely going to
be much smaller organizationsthat just don't have a lot of
overhead or really can kind ofmake decisions really quickly
and offer people community Imean, just that's what they do
in their niche or like reallylarge institutions that can just
offer a whole bunch of ways forpeople to have on ramps and in
(40:55):
the busyness of their life tokind of figure out how they do
this thing of their walk withJesus and with others.
And now we're getting to thepoint of okay, so how as an
institution do we move from likesort of all these churches in
the middle to kind of thesechurches at the extremes?
And I think it takes, and whatI think it actually takes is a
lot of patience and a lot ofgood leadership, because you
(41:16):
essentially have to get peopleto trust you enough as a leader
to say we're actually not goingto go back to the way it was.
And you have to know, as aleader, how to kind of play your
cards of like.
Well, I'm not going to fightthe fact we have a Christmas
bazaar this year, even thoughthe Christmas bazaar has only
caused me stress the last fouryears.
It's not brought in anybody toJesus, it's not brought and not
(41:37):
even made us money, but likethey want to cook their soup and
they want to sell it and solike I'm not going to fight it
this year because I've got tofight this other battle.
So, and I think it just takestime as a leader to fight those
not even fight but just massagethose where you can tend to what
(41:57):
was, but free up enoughresources to kind of say where
is the spirit moving us?
So if we've got all these youknow young adults who are coming
in, or we've got a newretirement community that's
being built, how can we actuallyminister to that?
You know particular cohort andthe reality is is that most of
our systems, the pastoral careand administrative demands, will
(42:19):
suck us dry in terms of ourcapacity to do that like new
thing that God may be leading usto, new thing that God may be
leading us to.
So I would say that this,rather than what this curse says
, is that the only way forwardis to sort of not try to go back
up the nostalgia ladder but tosay where is the energy flowing
right now?
Or that's the business term interms of faith, what might God
(42:42):
be calling us to do?
Who needs the gospel in ourcommunity that we can reach in a
new way?
Or who in our church isbringing forth some ministry?
And so if I think at a healthychurch there's probably one or
two ministries every year, atleast one that you're probably
saying we're not going to dothis anymore, we're not going to
allocate communication andstaff resources to it, and if
somebody wants to do it, you gofor it, but in terms of the
(43:04):
communication and staffresources, that's not going to
get the top billing or even anyresources anymore.
I think, again, that takes alot of skill at the leadership
level to be able to navigatethat.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah, pastoring is and leading it is more art than
science, that is for sure.
And because there's people andthese ministries have people
connected to them, I guess thefrustration for me as a larger
church pastor is coming to gripswith how consumer centric the
(43:41):
everyday kind of early, maybeless mature, christian is in
their walk.
And you've got to justacknowledge, like I want a place
for my kids to experience Jesus.
What kind of programming areyou going to have?
I want a place where myfavorite pastor is preaching all
the time.
They don't have a lot ofsensitivity for development work
(44:04):
or for running tests anddevelopment of different people
through different programs.
Like if and here's the, andthis is I'm sorry, but if you're
a larger church, which in theLCMS churches that worship over
500 new data, 1.4% of the LCMSthat worship 1.4%, so we're not
(44:25):
talking a lot of churches but ifthat is your church, it's about
80 or so churches that worshipover 500.
You have to recognize thatpeople are first and foremost
consumers before they'recontributors to advancing the
gospel.
And if you're going to play thegame I'm sorry If you're in a
suburban urban where you got allthese other mega churches that
people can compare you to, etcetera, then play it to the best
(44:48):
of your ability, but don't tryto move past.
The first point of emphasis onfolks is the average Christian
is a consumer first and you cansay that's sin.
I think it is.
Eventually we want to get themto see the new life that is ours
in Jesus.
But I think at the very sametime churches like ours, or the
(45:08):
church that's in a slow decline,can start to envision if
leadership development is intheir DNA, if there's enough of
a groundswell three, four, fivepeople who really see
discipleship and then bringingmore people in I think that
congregation can have agroundswell of energy to start
smaller faith communities, housechurches, microchurches et
cetera, and I think that couldbe very, very invigorating to
(45:31):
them.
But all the data people can getticked off at us if they want,
all the data is showing churchesgoing in either of those two
directions, and so just the wayit is.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Yeah, exactly, I'm not trying to make an economics
as a difference in a normativeand a positive claim.
I'm not making it.
This is a difference in anormative and a positive claim.
I'm not making it.
This is a better like anormative claim.
I'm just saying, like you lookat it and basically people
either want a really smallcommunity where they feel
totally safe and secure in thatkind of 45, 30 to 40 people
family size group or they want alarge church where they can
(46:04):
just kind of take their pick.
And they're consumers, that'strue.
They're also just weary andthey're worn and they don't.
It's good.
It's like the reason why peopledon't buy fixer upper homes
anymore.
And this goes back to toeconomics.
If you, where in this country,where in this country can you
afford and this especially as apastor to only have like one
(46:25):
spouse working anymore, unlessthat spouse is making a lot of
money?
Right, housing costs are soexpensive.
So you've got, most familieshave at least one and a half or
two full-time working people andthey don't have time to figure
out all this stuff.
So, hey, this weekend at thechurch services online, like
that's works for us.
I'm not endorsing this.
(46:46):
I'm just saying this is thereality that we live in, and I
think this thing goes back tohow we think about not only.
So let's go then to sort ofthinking about how we would help
young clergy.
If they're a young clergy, thechances are that they're going
to be sent out, not to one ofthose 1.4% of churches, but
they're going to be sent out tothese churches where they're
(47:08):
asked to do the impossible.
They're asked to basicallyraise the dead, which Jesus can
do, but to sort of live in amodel that just isn't going to
kind of bear fruit.
So how can we help themunderstand that, like it's not
your fault, how can we help themkind of have the leadership
skills to kind of try to move inanother direction?
And then how can we equip andchallenge large churches to be
(47:33):
doing church planting or to sortof say, hey, you've just got to
, you've got to focus on scalingup, because that's the game
right now for better or forworse.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah, you know, and it may seem daunting and in
reality there are things thatsmall, smaller churches can do.
There's reforms let's saysystemic reforms, philosophical
reforms that you can do.
I would say don't reform, youknow, don't abandon the gospel
ever.
You stick with biblical truth.
But in terms of your systems,in terms of the culture that you
build right off the bat, Iwould say in a small church
(48:04):
context, you could focus onsomething called the span of
care.
What does the span of care looklike in this church?
Are there other people who areworking as volunteer leaders,
who are helping with thespiritual care and the
leadership of the church?
And can you start to build aculture that the church is
primarily run by and ministry isprimarily done by people who
(48:25):
are not paid?
Actually, the vast majority ofministry that happens in our
context is with people who arenot paid and the role of the of
the paid clergy and all ministrystaff is to help facilitate
that, to guide that, to empowerthat, to build culture around
that.
And you can do that in a smallchurch context.
(48:46):
It takes time, it takes grit,it takes it's.
You have to be good at changemanagement.
We could probably do a muchbetter job of teaching our
pastors or, let's say, a solepastor in a small church change
management to get to that pointin space, because that is an art
, that is a skill, Just like yousaid, Tim likes to say change
management is disappointingpeople at the rate that they can
(49:06):
handle.
I love that quote.
Those are things that you cando right.
Or you may say I'm committed to.
A time I met this pastor at theBPM and he says I basically run
a network of house churches, Ifunction like a bishop for a
bunch of house churches, and hesaid I don't take I don't even
(49:28):
take a salary for it.
We take offerings and we giveit away.
And he's got, you know, like 12, 15 little house churches that
he oversees and it's all beingrun volunteer, including himself
.
Right, and it's awesome.
It's a model that can scale ata certain level and do certain
things.
It's a totally valid way ofthinking about things.
Or you can build the big church.
I was at Watermark in Dallas.
(49:50):
It fits 3,000 people in there.
You know it's like that's adifferent level of scale.
They think differently.
You know they've got 25 peopleon their comms team, so you know
there's different models thatyou can explore and each one of
those requires you to thinkdifferently about the model that
you're in.
But I agree that the modelwhere the pastor does everything
that's got to go away, that'snot going to happen, that's not
(50:13):
sustainable, that's going toburn people out economically and
spiritually.
I think.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
Yeah, rob.
So, yes, yes, that's what Iwanted to share today is that,
again, all of us have a passionfor the gospel, have a real
concern about the trajectory ofthe institutions.
We're in my sense, and what Iwanted to offer today is that,
if we're thinking about how weform clergy, how we train people
, what skills are needed, how wedo mission, how we do church
(50:37):
plans, how we do all of this, Ijust wanted to say it's
important for us to get thetheology right.
But even if we get the theologyright, to assume that this
vehicle that worked for about a50, 60 year period of time in
American history is the onlyvehicle or the primary vehicle
through which it's going to work, I think that is not helpful.
(50:57):
And so then, what are the waysin which we can begrudgingly or
openly accept like, hey, this isthe new kind of economic
paradigm where pastors have tohave health insurance and
housing costs are high.
So pastors are going to be areally scarce resource.
You better be using them forword and sacrament and equipping
.
And what does that look likethen in congregations or, you
know, whatever else?
I just wanted to kind of throwsome economic models and
(51:19):
language around and maybe thatcan help spur some conversation
in some different directions,rather than the sort of the
typical, you know maybe, sort ofstuff we really kind of go in
circles around.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
Hey, this has been awesome.
Rob, you're a, you're a giftman.
I appreciate you connecting Um,and, and we didn't even get
into the ELCA.
Uh, struggles, and that'sprobably just as well, because
there there are many and uh, soI'll pray, I'll, I'll pray for,
for you and and those that aretrying to lead faithfully in the
(51:51):
elca, and I we cover thoseprayers for those of us trying
to do the same in the lcms.
Speaker 4 (51:56):
uh, for for sure yeah , yeah, like I said, I mean
there's been a lot ofdevelopments.
My sense is that if I like,took a video of the worship
service you were in in 1985 whenyou were, you know, your first
time being acolyte or whatever,and or whatever, and the first
time, I don't think they'd bethat different.
So there, there is a lot ofcommon in the heritage.
Obviously there's differencesin the denominations, but it
(52:19):
doesn't matter what denominationyou're in.
Your family's health insurancecosts the same amount, yeah, and
?
And if we want to figure outhow to be effective stewards of
the gospel, of the mysteries, wehave to kind of also be
stewards of the money and themodel that we're in.
So thanks for your.
I really appreciated both ofyour comments today.
I feel this is my owndiscussion, yeah, or whatever
(52:43):
else, that's fine.
The one resource that might beof interest is I do a weekly
blog on the Greek in thelectionary.
Now, I know that differentchurches use different
lectionaries, but I have themalso cataloged by scripture.
So I try to sort of connectwhere the Greek and preaching
might actually intersect andthat's called
lectionarygreekblogspotcom, andyou can just email me at
(53:07):
robertmayalis at yahoocom.
Robertmayalis at yahoocom.
And again, I'd love to hearother people's perspectives so
that I can grow as a leader too.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
This was a lot of fun .
This is lead time.
Please subscribe, share,comment.
All of it helps and thisplatform is growing and please
share.
Really productive, I think,very practical.
Some of our conversationsobviously get into more of the
theological.
This was in the economic realmand I hope you found it valuable
, as we do.
Whatever it takes and somepeople you shouldn't mix
(53:39):
business with well, the gospelneeds to scale, whatever it
takes to get the gospel of JesusChrist into the heart and ears
of people that they would hearand believe and then move out
into their various vocations andproclaim.
That is our invitation, that isthe call of the local church,
the ecclesia, the called andsent out ones to proclaim the
one who's called them out ofdarkness into a marvelous light.
His name is Jesus.
(54:00):
Let's make him known.
It's a good day.
Go make it a great day.
Thanks so much, jack.
Thanks Rob.
God bless you.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
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(54:27):
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