July 23, 2025 • 44 mins
It's the 300th episode 🎉 of the Church Revitalization Podcast, and we're celebrating by answering some of your most pressing questions. From making tough ministry decisions to cultivating leadership in your church, Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu provide practical, actionable advice to help your church thrive.
Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu are experienced church revitalization consultants dedicated to equipping church leaders. Each week, they tackle important topics to strengthen your church's health and mission.
In this episode:
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[05:07] Q1: How to make decisions about continuing, improving, or ending ministries.
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[08:26] Q2: The value of hiring an outside church consultant.
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[13:39] Q3: What to do when your church needs revitalization but doesn't realize it.
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[17:38] Q4: How to help people see themselves as leaders in your church.
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[21:07] Q5: Staying strategic and visionary as a solo pastor despite day-to-day demands.
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[26:10] Q6: The role of spiritual formation in revitalization.
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[32:00] Q7: Preparing strategically for church growth before it happens.
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[37:26] Q8: Should church strategy implementation always lead to numerical growth?
Links:
🌐 Healthy Churches Toolkit
🌐 Full Episode Article
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Thanks for joining us for 300 episodes of strengthening churches together!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, it's the 300th episode of the Church
Revitalization Podcast, and we're answering your questions.
Let's go.
Group team, where each week we tackle important,
actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now
here's your hosts, Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu.
(00:26):
Welcome to the 300th episode of the Church
Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm
joined, as always, by my friend and co host, AJ
Mathieus. And we're doing something we haven't ever done in 300
episodes. So now we actually asked you, hey, do you
have questions? And we were stunned
(00:48):
by the response. Let's just say we have
enough content ideas for the next 300 episodes. We'll ask you again
in five years if you have questions because you've given us enough. Don't give us
yet. Ask us no more questions. We. It'll take us forever to answer all of
them. So I guess maybe that'd be my one caveat. I want to say on
the front end, if you're not hearing your question answered, don't think it wasn't a
(01:10):
good one. There were so many good ones, and we will
eventually be getting around to answering it probably maybe
as a whole standalone. So don't, don't feel too, too bad if we're not
getting to your question. We may spend a whole episode on it. Yeah, I mean,
definitely there's some that, you know, would group into similar themes or were
asked, you know, basically the same question asked different. I want to. I
(01:32):
want to tell you, listener, I am super impressed with
you. I mean, this is really. I'm still processing
the, this, Scott, the questions that we got, I mean,
dozens. And dozens and does. I mean,
overwhelmed, overwhelming response. And
so, first of all, they're excellent. I
(01:53):
mean, 99.9% of the questions are
excellent. They're also really heartfelt. I
think you guys, you really responded with actual
things that you're facing in ministry, and I'm so appreciative of hearing
that because it's really going to steer us in some particular directions
to try to address things that are helpful to you, which is why we exist.
(02:15):
It's also very humbling that you guys just the way you asked
your questions, that you, you obviously, you put a lot of trust
in us for providing good answers to you. We take that
very seriously, and so that's how we'll be addressing
them. But overall, man, I'm just so excited. This really.
We didn't really do much celebration for our 100th or 200th
(02:37):
episode. And honestly, we didn't really plan much for this one either. But
with this idea, I think this is a great way to celebrate our
300th episode. And thanks to you, it's you guys that have
made it. I think. I think this will be. This is a good episode. We're
going to answer eight questions today. Um, but what. What
you've provided for us now in the future, I'm blown away by.
(02:59):
It's a gift. Yeah, we're. We've got content for a long time
in. In the preparation, though, that we did for these episodes, I did want to
think a little bit about places where we may have. I mean, 300 episodes is
a lot, and we have covered a lot of ground in them, and every single
episode has an article along with it. If you are part
of the Healthy Churches Toolkit, don't sleep on the fact that
(03:22):
the search function is really good in the Healthy Churches
Toolkit. And so if you've got a question about a particular
topic, go into the Healthy Churches Toolkit and just
at the search bar, that's on. On the top of every page,
type in that term. And if there's a
resource, but also if there's a relevant article or
(03:44):
podcast that we did on it, that's also in there. So
if. If you've got a question about a topic, I do just want to point
you to that resource and go, we've got a lot of really good content.
My other side note, I just want to say, while I'm extremely overwhelmed and
humbled by the response that we got from the question that we sent out, I'm
a little disappointed with our audience as well. Are you?
(04:06):
I am. Oh, not a single personal question.
What's. No one wants to know anything about us.
Just, you know, not one. I think that's good. I think we need to
be reminded, yes, we're producing public media. No, we
are not celebrity by any measure. So thank you for that, too.
(04:27):
You couldn't care about either one of us
or some ridiculous thing. You're like, you know what, guys? I'm over here doing a
hard ministry guess. Help.
Get over yourself and get to the good. Get to the good. So that's a
great transition. AJ you got the first question. All right, here we
go. All right, Scotty asked
(04:50):
what principles you use to make decisions about the future of
local church ministries, whether to continue, improve,
or end them, so that the local church remains
engaged in its primary mission of discipleship. All Right.
So making. This is the tough. These are making. It's not me, by the way.
You said it's from Scotty. Scott. Yeah. I never call you Scotty on the
(05:12):
podcast. I know that. But I just thought since this was the first question and
we're like, oh, there was this overwhelming response. We're like, oh, from Scotty. Like,
this is. This is a Scotty. Different
Scotty. Yeah. Please continue. Yeah, this is where the
tough decisions get made in our strategic envisioning process.
We do mission, we do values, then we do discipleship, pathway. And that's the hard
(05:34):
part. That's where we're beginning to make tough leadership choices around
ministries and systems and processes and this kind of thing.
So what are the principles that we use to make decisions about this? Well, there's
two aspects to this. First, it's the values work that we do
before we get to this question, sort of. And in the values work that we
do, we go into Acts, chapter two, and we look at verses 41
(05:56):
through 47, and what were the behaviors
that the first century church was doing at the birth at Pentecost, at the birth
of the church of Jesus Christ, capital C
worldwide? What did the apostles and the
Holy Spirit lead these people to be doing? And
it's great stuff, and it's perfectly applicable to us today because
(06:18):
God's word is good for all people in all places, for all time.
And so that is our first measure. Okay.
Some people have variations on the exact things out of there. Five
to seven things that you see, but roughly, worship, prayer,
fellowship, evangelism, like generosity,
service, being in God's word, like instruction, teaching.
(06:42):
I think I got them all. And so that's kind of our
first measure. So do the ministries of the church
support or enable us to live
out one or more of those values? If it doesn't
attach to one of those values in a pretty direct and meaningful way,
that is a criteria in which the ministry may not, may
(07:04):
not be of tremendous discipleship value in the church.
So that's my first half to the answer. The other part then, is a
tool that we use again in the strategic envisioning process. After working
through a few steps of evaluating ministries, organizing and
evaluating the current ministries of the church, we have a tool that we use called
the decision matrix. And the decision matrix, again, this is the hard part, guys.
(07:26):
We're not telling you this is easy. But the decision matrix
is where we, we. We take the information that we've, you know, that
we've discussed about each ministry, and we make a decision Is this ministry,
is this a primary ministry in the church that we're going to invite everybody into?
Is this a secondary ministry that
supports before or after the primary ministry or has
(07:49):
a direct connection to, to get people engaged? Or is this
something perhaps that we're going to sunset and
let it begin its, its path to no longer
ness? Or is this something that should be canceled right now? Or
maybe it's an event that we did and we're just not going to do that
event again. So that's, that's how I would answer this, about making
(08:10):
decisions about ministries or the principles that we use
to decide on whether a ministry has value, whether it should
continue. So I hope that's helpful. Scotty, not Ball.
And yeah. All right, a few more to go. Scott, your turn.
All right. My first question comes from Mark. Mark
(08:30):
asked, with all of the materials that
exist online and books and
things, why should a church, or what is
the benefit of a church working with a consultant
rather than just kind of running something yourself?
And this is a great question. This is a common question that we get when
(08:52):
we're talking with the church, particularly maybe not the person who
reached out to us, because if you reached out to us, you see some value
in it. But if we're talking with a church board or
some, some council or group or committee, this might be a
common question that comes up. And so I would answer
it in a couple of ways. The first would
(09:14):
be the main reason
is you may not
have the buy in from the rest of the group
when someone on the team is leading the process,
because everything will be shaded by
that person. What people perceive as that person's kind of
(09:36):
tipping the scales. In particular, if it's the pastor who's leading the process,
people maybe won't feel the permission to speak up and go, I disagree.
Or they may. Even if it's a very open
process and everybody's participating, the feeling may be,
yeah, but you know, Pastor John led this process.
(09:56):
And so it's really his thing, it's his vision. And so by having someone
external come in and guide the process, particularly in the way
in which we do it, which it's a facilitated process, it's not
typical like business consulting where you might come in and do some
workshop and facilitation, then we deliver to you, here's what you
need to do. You do these things. We don't do it that way. You're in
(10:20):
the driver's seat the entire time. We're facilitating the process. And the
whole, the end result then is owned by the group that gives a
lot of confidence to the church that this isn't one person's idea, that it's
something that we built together. So that would be the first reason
is that it removes this, the perception that it is
one person's vision that's being sort of foisted upon
(10:42):
the rest of the church. The second reason
would be that let's just say you're an
exceptional leader and you're man, you've, you got
all the right ideas and you know everything there
is to know and you listen to the podcast and there's not a single new
thing that you've ever learned, whatever, it's fine.
(11:05):
I would say even if you were the best surgeon on the
planet, you're the number one heart surgeon, you're the
number one whatever kind of surgeon, you wouldn't perform
surgery on yourself. You wouldn't prescribe
yourself medication, you wouldn't do that. It's one. It's not
ethical to, to prescribe your own medication.
(11:27):
But also it's, it's not, you
don't have the perspective that's necessary to conduct the surgery
yourself. Certainly if it's open heart surgery, you need to be
out for that. But even if it was something laparoscopic like, even if it was
something else, you wouldn't perform that surgery on yourself. It doesn't
matter how good of a surgeon you are, the act of performing
(11:49):
the surgery on yourself is nearly impossible because you lack the
perspective to be able to do it well. And so
having someone from the outside isn't a sign of weakness or
that you don't know what you're doing. It's actually a sign of humility
and a sign of wisdom because you're having someone who has a
perspective that you don't have help. Help to guide a process that it's
(12:11):
not a reflection of your competence to have someone else help you.
And then finally, the last thing I would say is
we've worked with a number of churches that have gone through self guided processes and
then they end up contacting us in the end anyway because
they don't really know. And I mean this in all love and sincerity,
like please don't take this the wrong way, but a lot of
(12:33):
you don't know what you're doing and so
you're cobbling together your own process by reading different
articles online. And so you're not using a consistent framework.
I'm not calling our process better than anybody else's, but
there's real value in committing to one process
and framework and working that process correctly.
(12:57):
And when you don't do that and you don't hit sort of the timeline and
schedule the right way, it ends up taking twice as long or three times as
long as you, you lose a lot of momentum and you lose a lot of.
You lose face with the congregate confidence people. People like
just don't believe the leadership can do anything. And it really hurts the church
(13:17):
in the long term. Working especially with us because we're
so inexpensive in comparison to a lot of other options, you end up
getting further, faster at a lower price than if you try
to cobble something together on your own. So that was longer answer than yours,
A.J. but those would be. Those are the three reasons why I think
it's valuable to work with someone outside and not try to do it yourself. Sounds
(13:40):
good, man. That was a good one. All right, my next one is from
Billy and he asks, how do I start?
I'm in a church that clearly needs revitalization, but they don't
realize it. How do I show them that there could be
more and they could be dying a slow death over the last
10 to 15 years, or that they have been dying so. Death.
(14:03):
Yeah. This is a, this is a question that we get quite a
lot in various forms. And so I would, I've got
two points that I would say about this. As it reads, it kind
of sounds like you feel alone. A lot of pastors do or
elders or whoever the. Our contact might be. I
would start with some leadership conversations first. I
(14:25):
hope you have some kind of a board that you can trust and
meet with elders, church council, whatever form that
might be. So I would, I would broach the conversation
first in your leadership decision making circle
and at least get this conversation started and out in the open.
How do you guys feel about where we are? Do you feel ever
(14:48):
that perhaps we're just, we're not living up to the potential
that God has blessed us with? So I would first start with some leadership
conversations and let that breathe a bit.
Have these conversations over not a long period of time, over a short
period of time and begin to see where the
consensus is on that. Certainly be praying about it,
(15:09):
be praying individually and together about it. If you find
you have consensus, then I think the best way to
begin to introduce this to the church, and we always advocate for full
transparency with the church that, you know, here's
we, we believe God has called us to something greater than we are. And we're
beginning a prayerful investigation into how we
(15:32):
can improve as a church or what positive changes we can make that will
allow us greater mission effectiveness, making
maturing disciples of Jesus. The next thing I would say is we've got
an analysis that we do called the church ministry analysis. This assessment that
the church can go through that asks some
pertinent questions for six areas of church health
(15:55):
and providing actual data to the congregation is
going to take this, the emotional element out of it or perhaps
anybody feeling like, you know, there's, there's been any sway one
way or another, people with agendas and be able to just give
them real information back. It's a series of, of statements that
people can agree or disagree with. It's not intended to be taken by the whole
(16:17):
church, but by, but by active ministry leaders. But
this provides then some, some substantial data
that can be presented again with, you know, with love and care
and sincerity as to where the church is and where its opportunities
lie to be in a greater position of health
for again, your mission effectiveness. So that's what I would say.
(16:39):
Billy, start with the leadership conversations. Move into
some detached assessment that can help you
reflect back really where you are right now. And then from
then, you know, hopefully you have the consensus and,
and the, the capital,
human capital that you need to be able to make a plan then for.
(17:01):
Well, how are we going to address this? What's going to be our next step
after this? So great question. Yeah, that is
so is a really good question. Okay. And a
common one. I had one on my list that I. Anonymous, that was a
very similar question. So I would echo everything you just said. So
my next question comes from Gary.
(17:23):
Gary says, what are the best ways
to start a person on a path towards leadership in the
church when that person can't see themselves
leading anything, anytime, anywhere? Yeah, that was
a good question. I like that they don't, they don't see themselves as a leader.
How do you help them begin to see themselves that way?
(17:46):
And that's one of the things I love about our leadership pipeline
process is that in the leadership pipeline process
we call leaders, everybody from the front
line, your frontline volunteer, all the way up to a,
you know, like an elder or deacon or whatever your senior
level leadership board is, we call those
(18:09):
folks leaders. And so starting by recognizing that you have
leadership obligations even from the very beginning. So you may
not see yourself as a leader, but you are one. It starts by learning to
lead yourself. We all have an obligation to,
under the headship of Jesus, to lead ourselves.
Right. He leads us by still waters, but we follow
(18:33):
him and we are leading ourselves to follow Jesus. Right. So
it starts with leading ourselves and maybe helping someone understand that the
leadership journey doesn't
mean that it has to end at becoming an elder in the
church, that there are. There's a place, a leadership place
for you, no matter where the ceiling ends up sort of
(18:55):
being for you, and there's potential in you that needs to be developed.
If you're a parent, you know, if you're a dad, you are a leader in
your home. If you're a mom, you're a leader in your home. If you work
in a business, you know, maybe you're a frontline
employee at Best Buy. You're leading customers to.
To buy the products. You know, it doesn't matter.
(19:17):
Redefining what leadership is, not making
everything as leadership. I'm not. I'm trying to suggest that. But
seeing the opportunities for leadership and leadership development
in the small things is actually the best path
to helping someone become a leader in the great things. So my
advice, Gary, would be help people begin to understand
(19:40):
the ways in which they are already called to be a leader and
then create what we call core competencies, but clear
competencies for leadership that are sort of a stepping
ladder up along the way so that people can be developed
up to those standards. I think one of the biggest challenges that churches
face is what they want is to be able to microwave a leader. I
(20:03):
think that's something that our friend Adam said. It's like people are looking for prepackaged
leaders, but you can't microwave a leader and you don't buy them on
the shelf at Walmart. Leaders must be developed.
Don't be discouraged that when you look around, all you see is a bunch of
people who aren't very qualified to be. To be an elder
at your church, see a field of opportunity, and go, all right, there is
(20:27):
a bunch of people that we can be developing and help them begin to understand
how they're leading already and then give them clear competencies to
aspire to so that they can grow and help them develop to those
competencies. I would encourage you to go back. We. We did a whole deep dive
on leadership pipeline. I think AJ Was that last summer or two
summers ago? Last summer. I
(20:49):
want to say last summer, but you know how these go, Scott. The
years blend together. We
gave a lot away for free. I'll just say in, in.
In those episodes, I would go back, Gary, and
listen to that entire series, and it will really help you with this. Check
today's show notes for links to resources such as
(21:12):
that or YouTube description where? Wherever you're at.
Okay. Yep, here's our next one. This is from Chad
and he asks how do I stay strategic and visionary as
a single staff pastor who has to worry about the minutia of day
to day operations? And boy, is this a
common, It's a common issue that, that I
(21:35):
know probably few people
verbalize it and many feel it.
So I'm glad you asked this, Chad. I've got several things that I want
to want to point out for this. First, first
one I want to mention is really
developing the habit of, or the
(21:56):
discipline of calendaring. Well, friend of
mine would always say if it isn't written, it isn't real. And I think
the calendar helps us do that. So actually devoting time
to this question and this way of
thinking and you know, you're kind of asking two things, strategic and
visionary. So I really, I would be thinking about those
(22:19):
separately because I think they are, they're different,
they're different thought processes and I think there's, and there's different mechanics
to them. So I would be separating strategic and
visionary though they are linked. So calendaring, first of all,
devote time to it. The minutiae of the day to day
ends up becoming what drives our time.
(22:42):
And it happens to the best of us that the
urgent matters end up just consuming the
day. And before we know it, we've pushed what we wanted to do
to hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to do this. The
calendar is a tool to help you that, help you with that.
(23:02):
Next. And I'm thinking more on the visionary side here.
Prayer time and quiet time. So and again, calendar, put that on
the calendar so that you've got protected time for that. But
spending time in prayer and in the word, thinking about
the visionary things, asking God for his
vision for your church. And I do believe that even in the
(23:24):
minutiae of the day to day, every pastor has more vision than most give themselves
credit for. One of the kind of simple thought
tools that I suggest to a lot of pastors, especially if
you've been in, in the work for
a long time, is try to take yourself
back to either your initial call to ministry, maybe, or your
(23:46):
initial pastor position after seminary, or
even maybe your most recent one whenever you changed churches.
Try to bring yourself back to that moment in time when this
opportunity began to unfold before you and how
you felt about it. Because choosing that
direction, hopefully in prayer and discernment, you also chose it
(24:08):
with vision because you could see your fit in the
ministry or in this church, you could feel or
see the future and what you thought you were going to be able to do
there, the effect you were going to have on people's lives or how the church
was going to be different than it was then. All of that is
vision. And I think a lot of pastors miss that. That, oh, I was living
(24:29):
in a moment of vision. So try to bring yourself back to that in your
prayer and quiet time. Number three, just the simple fact of
being intentional, that kind of goes back into the calendaring. But when you're
having meetings with, you know, your volunteer teams, you
need to be intentional and continue to have the
language with your teams as well. Use the word strategy
(24:51):
in relation to your ministry decisions. Use the word
vision when you're speaking about the future and as a part of decision making.
So be very intentional about these terms so that you
can build that culture into the volunteer teams around you as well. They'll
help support you in that and maybe hold you accountable. And then
lastly, I want to talk about board meeting strategy. So again, hopefully though
(25:13):
your question is about the single staff pastor. I hope you still have
at least a small team of senior decision makers that come alongside
you. And this is a great Scott ball.
I think strategy for boards is that don't just have,
I mean, if you're meeting once a month and you just cram everything into that
meeting, we would suggest start meeting twice a month and have kind
(25:37):
of a business meeting and then have a separate vision,
prayer, care, shepherding, oversight meeting.
And so that you're not making decisions on strategy or,
you know, operations, you're only spending time together in the
word, in prayer, thinking about high level
visionary things and mission related things.
(25:59):
So I think that's another practical way to try to build and
maintain strategy and vision in the church as a
single staff pastor. Thanks for that question. That was a really good one.
Yeah, it's really good. Really, really relevant to. I know a lot of people
who listen to the podcast.
All right, my next question comes from
(26:22):
Lee. Lee asks, what is
the role of spiritual formation in
revitalization and how does it become an ongoing
catalyst rather than a revival or camp
type experience that fades after the initial revitalization
process concludes. We had several questions
(26:43):
similar to this one. Essentially asking the question of,
like, what is the spiritual component? Because we talk
a lot about. Well, it's the, in the intro to every
episode, practical, actionable, actionable topics to
help churches thrive. So we really live in that space
because I think we take for granted that we know you guys are,
(27:07):
are dedicated to developing yourselves Spiritually, you're
in the word, you're praying. And so we're trying to address topics
that we think are pain points for you. But
so I think if you have a criticism, could have a criticism of the podcast,
it's that maybe we don't talk enough about spiritual formation and
the spiritual side of strategic planning as much as we should.
(27:30):
So I wanted to address Lee's question, and there
were, again, several of you had a similar one, and it's a great question.
I think the first thing to remember is that
the goal of any strategic envisioning or strategic
planning or revitalization process is
ultimately the revitalization of individual people.
(27:53):
The formation. The spiritual formation of individual people.
It's very easy in the midst of a process
to get lost in the weeds and think about the mechanics of programming
and budgets and what the strategy is and what are our targets
and our metrics. And Lee, you're right in. When you're in
that season, everybody's kind of very excited about the change and
(28:16):
the new things that are happening. And when
you get out of that initial excitement
phase, the baby that sometimes gets thrown out with the bathwater
is the spirit, the focus and heart for spiritual formation.
Oh, in answer to your question, I think, number one,
(28:36):
remember that the focus is always ultimately on the individual
and their spiritual formation. The whole point of a discipleship
pathway isn't just a streamline programs, but it's to produce
discipleship fruit. That's the goal. That's why we do that process in the
first place. And so keeping constant attention as
elders, in particular to shepherd the flock and to measure
(28:58):
spiritual fruit, do we see it? And when we stop seeing the
spiritual fruit we want to see, that's an indicator that we need to do more
work on, on looking at what it is that we're doing in our
programming. So measuring discipleship fruit at
the individual level is number one. The
second thing is commitment
(29:20):
to prayer at every level is very, very important.
AJ you already mentioned this in the answer to your last question.
But ensuring that you have healthy
rhythms at the board level is extremely important.
So strategic planning should not be a moment, it should be a habit.
So I hope that every year you mark out time to
(29:43):
set goals, to refresh the vision, to decide
on strategic projects. The elders should be doing that every year because
they're the directional leadership of the church. But every month
they should be in prayer for the church and have dedicated time doing that.
And beyond that, I hope you have a prayer team
at the church and passing along prayer
(30:05):
requests Sharing those and having a culture of prayer
so that there's a constant eagerness and a hunger for the
Holy Spirit to be present
and visible and speaking through the people in the church.
And which would kind of lead me to the third and final thing, which I've
sort of already said, but I want to reiterate.
(30:26):
The revitalization process is not a one
time thing. It shouldn't be a.
And I know who Lee is, so I'll say this in a way that he'll
resonate. It's about continuous improvement. So
we shouldn't be looking at. We should not be looking at a
revitalization process as a one and done thing. One way to make sure
(30:49):
that we're constantly focused on the right things is making sure that we are in
a process of continuous improvement and a continual
focus on revitalizing always. Because
the laws of thermodynamics are at work in our. In our hearts and in our
churches. If we leave it to our own devices, it's going to decline. It's
going to fall at the spiritual level and at the structural level and the strategic
(31:12):
level. Therefore, we must always be in a process of
revitalization. And it's incumbent on the leadership to
say, we are not a church that did revitalization and we're done.
We are constantly being renewed day by day by the water of the
word, right? And by the blood of Jesus.
So it's this Romans philosophy, right? We're trying to
(31:34):
continually be renewed in our minds. So revitalization is that it's a spiritual
process that's ongoing all the time. And it's the leadership that sets the
tone through prayer and through intentional strategic leadership
every year. So that'd be my answer. That's
really good. That's really good. All right. Our last
question for this episode comes from Trent, and
(31:57):
he asks what are some practical and strategic. Your last
question. Oh, didn't. This isn't our last. You just have one more
after me after this. You went first. Oh, don't cut me short.
All right. All right, bro. What are some practical
and strategic ways to get people to see the importance of
preparing for potential growth in the church before
(32:19):
it happens so you aren't caught off guard or left unprepared
when growth does happen. So,
yeah, this is. This is really good. And I've. I've heard this asked before,
I think with a. Someone on a team at a church that I was working
with. But I got a couple of things that come to
mind for this question. The first one
(32:41):
is considering Again, the discipleship pathway or the organization of
ministries in the church to disciple people in an effective
and efficient way. So what I'm thinking about in that respect
is asking. So I guess my, let me preface this
by saying my answer to your question is comes in a couple of forms of
evaluation, determining where are we now?
(33:03):
And with some kind of strategy in the question that we're asking.
It kind of will lead us to the answer of, oh,
maybe we need to do something different. So, and I'm also
not thinking about asking or presenting this to the entire church. This is more of
a leadership question, I think, initially whether, you
know, it's paid staff or whether it's volunteer leaders. But
(33:25):
looking at our discipleship pathway. So what I'm asking there is
what would we do with new people? This
is like a fundamental question. Somebody new comes to our church
and they, we want them hopefully to desire
greater engagement and assimilation into the culture and the ministries
of the church. But if they actually came and they were so bold to say,
(33:48):
how can I get engaged here? What, what would you, what would you think I
should do? First, we need to have a question, an answer for that. So what
are we going to direct them to? What ministries are we going to direct them
to? To help them engage. So asking this of
yourself forces you then to look critically then at what you're
doing. So which then you're either going to feel like
(34:09):
you're prepared or you're not prepared and that hopefully would drive
action. The second part of that is in systems and
what I'm asking there is how do we get them there? So perhaps,
yeah, we would say, yeah, it would be great for you to join a small
group here at our church. Well, what does that process look like? We would call
that, that's a system for moot. You know, the process that somebody would
(34:31):
move through to go from point A to point B, who do they talk to?
Or is there some kind of, you know, questions that we would love to have
them answer to find the best fit for for them could be any number of
things. But that's the second half of my, of my answer
is evaluating the systems that you have in your church
for being able to move people into the next best
(34:53):
step that you've designed for them. Asking
these things then of your, of your closer leaders
and people that are leading ministries in your church will
force this perspective investigation.
And if the answers to these questions come back, well, I guess we
don't really have major organization in our ministries. It's kind of always been
(35:15):
doing the stuff and we got a lot going on, or no, we really don't
have anybody that we would be able to direct them to, or we don't have
any kind of processes for that. Well, this then
sets you up for this conversation. Should we,
before we attempt to grow the church, should. Should we establish some
fundamental things so that when, not if, but when that growth
(35:38):
begins to happen, we are ready to go and we're not
caught off guard, as your question suggested. So I hope that's helpful.
Trent, these are. This is some great strategy
planning elements right here that certainly fall within
the framework of our strategic envisioning process. So we got.
We've got resources to help think through these things in the toolkit,
(36:00):
or certainly working with, you know, one of our guides on this process
would bring these things up to the surface and ready to tackle. Thanks
for that, Trent. Yeah, man wrote. Just really briefly,
I had somewhere. Scott, you're going to chime in on this question.
I'm just so briefly, I just want to tell a story. I was, I was
at a church recently that has
(36:23):
struggled. And anyways, I love
this church. They're really. They're fantastic. But when I was, when I was there,
someone came up to me and they said, you
knew. Are you new here? And I said,
yep. And they go, what? Are you friends with someone who
goes here? Or why would I
(36:46):
be here? I said, no, I'm. I'm, you know,
I'm Scott Ball. I'm leading the strategic commissioning process. I've been working with
a team of your leaders doing some strategic planning this weekend. They go, oh, okay,
that makes sense. I mean, they were so shocked that someone.
They didn't recognize me, you know, so they were
really sweet. It was, it was totally fine. But I go, yeah. So I don't
(37:09):
know. When with Trent's question, I was thinking, you know, maybe start working on the
culture, creating, like a culture of expectation. Expect to grow. Expect
that there would be someone who's new so that maybe that when people walk up
to them, they don't go, did someone invite you? Like, what are you doing here?
How could you possibly have stumbled into this place? How did you get to this
place? Yeah. Okay.
(37:32):
My last question comes from.
Asks, should church strategy
implementation always lead to
numerical growth? And that's
a really good question. And so, Sam, I
would say it should
(37:54):
always lead to growth.
But you can define what, what that looks like and what that means.
You know, we focus essentially on church health.
That's. That's the. The thing that we care most about in our
process is health, the health of the church.
(38:14):
And numerical growth can come in healthy
and unhealthy ways. Churches can be unhealthy and they can grow
numerically and they can be healthy and grow numerically. And we
covered this actually in a recent article podcast, I think
we talked about why unhealthy churches sometimes grow. So that's a
good one about that. But I would
(38:36):
say that the inevitable, it's
inevitable that when a church is healthy,
it will grow. Now I want to, I
can have some caveats around that. That could mean
that the church becomes a really
focused on church planting and you create this culture where
(38:59):
you're constantly planting churches. This is how, this is
how Paul dealt with church growth in the New Testament is
they, they were hyper focused on always launching
the next church in the next town. But it only
happened because there were healthy churches that could, that could provide
that to happen. So I don't want to go
(39:21):
so far as to say a strategic
planning process, a good one always will lead to just,
you know, you're going to have to add five services and you're going to have
to plant 18 campuses. And if, and if you're not
seeing those kinds of exponential growth numbers, then that
means that the process didn't work or that it was ineffective, because that's not true.
(39:43):
But a good strategic planning process does
always cultivate healthier soil. And when there is
healthier soil, there is always more fruit. And when it comes
to gospel centered churches,
which I know, I know who Sam is,
yeah, I know you all are gospel centered
(40:05):
churches share the gospel. And when people share the
gospel, people come to know Jesus, which means
there's more people in the kingdom. So it's a
very long and circuitous answer of saying yes, actually, I
think it does lead to numerical growth. But there are, there's
a ton of context and nuance around that. And just because you aren't
(40:28):
seeing that fruit immediately doesn't mean the process isn't working.
Some plants take much longer to grow. I mean, you can plant an apple tree
and it's going to be years before the first apple, you know,
grows on the tree that you can eat. That doesn't mean that it isn't working.
But eventually when the help, when the, when the,
when the soil is healthy and the plant is tended
(40:51):
to, there will be fruit. It's inevitable, it must
happen. And I think that's true in churches. And actually,
would AJ kind of like your, your thought on that before we wrap up?
No, I think you covered. I, I yeah. Well, Scott, I was sitting
here thinking, I'm just not going to say anything because we agreed we weren't going
to say anything about either, but I really don't have much more to say to
(41:12):
you. That was the last question. My short answer to this would have been,
yes, I, I would expect the church to grow for the reasons that you just
gave. As you're, as you're wrapping up that question. Healthy things grow.
Yeah. Now what, what you call a lot of growth would be,
you know, that would depends on, Depend on where you are. I think in almost,
in only extreme cases, based on geography,
(41:35):
a healthy church will grow. What that, what that trend
line looks like for you. Depends. But I think even in those
circumstances. You could be developing a culture where, like,
pastors are being raised up and you're sending missionaries or you're sending,
you know, young men to become. To go to seminary and be
trained. And you know what I mean? Like, you're, that's growth, too. So, I mean,
(41:57):
there's caveats around it, I suppose, but when you have
healthy soil and you're tending a plant, there's going to be fruit that
you, you almost can't stop that from happening,
right? I believe so. I believe that to be true.
Yeah. I mean, yeah. In rare cases, we've got the tiny little
church in the middle of a cornfield and there's a handful of
(42:21):
farmers that live within an hour's drive. Outside of those types of
scenarios, I've. Worked with those churches and they grow, too. I think there's
an opportunity for healthy churches to grow. Yeah. Yeah,
yeah. So I guess. But I don't want anyone to be discouraged if you go,
well, I'm not seeing the numbers yet. Okay. Keep, Keep
tending the soil. Right. I mean, this is, this is Jesus
(42:42):
principle. It's like you. So keep sowing seed. You.
Not all of the seed that you throw is going to grow, but some
of it will. And so, you know,
you don't, you don't give up. You don't go, wow, I'm not seeing the fruit
yet. So it didn't work. It's like, no. Well, the
worst time to stop tending the plant is the day
(43:04):
before you start to see it sprout from the ground. Right.
You never see it. So you, if you, if you abandon it. So just, you
know, and I'm not saying this is actually, I don't think this is happening in
this particular church. I'm saying to you, listener, if you feel like,
man, we've worked really hard on this and we're just not seeing the fruit. Did
it doesn't matter. I'm telling you, it's inevitable.
(43:28):
Fruit comes from healthy soil. Tend to the soil.
Don't care about the fruit. That's Jesus. That's what Jesus says. He's like, find laborers
for the harvest. Mm. Don't forget about the harvest. Just
find laborers for the harvest. And the harvest is gonna happen.
Run the race. Complete the task. Amen.
(43:49):
All right. That's a good way, I think, to wrap up episode 300, my friend.
Yeah, man. Thank you guys so much for. For listening. I
don't know if there's maybe a human exists within the sound of my voice
that has been here since the beginning. God bless you for your long
suffering and patience as we developed into something useful, hopefully
for your ministry. But we truly are thankful that you tune
(44:11):
in and listen. We exist to help you, and
we exist because you care about your church, and because
you care about your church. You look for help, and you want to do better.
You want to be on mission, and you want to see the kingdom of
God grow. And for that, we're dedicated to helping you.
And we're going to keep at it as long as you'll have us. So thanks
(44:33):
so much again for your questions. Very thoughtful, very meaningful. And we'll
be back again, Lord willing, with you next week, starting with 301
and beyond. See you then.
Hey, it's the 300th episode of the Church
Revitalization Podcast, and we're answering your questions.
Let's go.
Group team, where each week we tackle important,
actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now
here's your hosts, Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu.
(00:26):
Welcome to the 300th episode of the Church
Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm
joined, as always, by my friend and co host, AJ
Mathieus. And we're doing something we haven't ever done in 300
episodes. So now we actually asked you, hey, do you
have questions? And we were stunned
(00:48):
by the response. Let's just say we have
enough content ideas for the next 300 episodes. We'll ask you again
in five years if you have questions because you've given us enough. Don't give us
yet. Ask us no more questions. We. It'll take us forever to answer all of
them. So I guess maybe that'd be my one caveat. I want to say on
the front end, if you're not hearing your question answered, don't think it wasn't a
(01:10):
good one. There were so many good ones, and we will
eventually be getting around to answering it probably maybe
as a whole standalone. So don't, don't feel too, too bad if we're not
getting to your question. We may spend a whole episode on it. Yeah, I mean,
definitely there's some that, you know, would group into similar themes or were
asked, you know, basically the same question asked different. I want to. I
(01:32):
want to tell you, listener, I am super impressed with
you. I mean, this is really. I'm still processing
the, this, Scott, the questions that we got, I mean,
dozens. And dozens and does. I mean,
overwhelmed, overwhelming response. And
so, first of all, they're excellent. I
(01:53):
mean, 99.9% of the questions are
excellent. They're also really heartfelt. I
think you guys, you really responded with actual
things that you're facing in ministry, and I'm so appreciative of hearing
that because it's really going to steer us in some particular directions
to try to address things that are helpful to you, which is why we exist.
(02:15):
It's also very humbling that you guys just the way you asked
your questions, that you, you obviously, you put a lot of trust
in us for providing good answers to you. We take that
very seriously, and so that's how we'll be addressing
them. But overall, man, I'm just so excited. This really.
We didn't really do much celebration for our 100th or 200th
(02:37):
episode. And honestly, we didn't really plan much for this one either. But
with this idea, I think this is a great way to celebrate our
300th episode. And thanks to you, it's you guys that have
made it. I think. I think this will be. This is a good episode. We're
going to answer eight questions today. Um, but what. What
you've provided for us now in the future, I'm blown away by.
(02:59):
It's a gift. Yeah, we're. We've got content for a long time
in. In the preparation, though, that we did for these episodes, I did want to
think a little bit about places where we may have. I mean, 300 episodes is
a lot, and we have covered a lot of ground in them, and every single
episode has an article along with it. If you are part
of the Healthy Churches Toolkit, don't sleep on the fact that
(03:22):
the search function is really good in the Healthy Churches
Toolkit. And so if you've got a question about a particular
topic, go into the Healthy Churches Toolkit and just
at the search bar, that's on. On the top of every page,
type in that term. And if there's a
resource, but also if there's a relevant article or
(03:44):
podcast that we did on it, that's also in there. So
if. If you've got a question about a topic, I do just want to point
you to that resource and go, we've got a lot of really good content.
My other side note, I just want to say, while I'm extremely overwhelmed and
humbled by the response that we got from the question that we sent out, I'm
a little disappointed with our audience as well. Are you?
(04:06):
I am. Oh, not a single personal question.
What's. No one wants to know anything about us.
Just, you know, not one. I think that's good. I think we need to
be reminded, yes, we're producing public media. No, we
are not celebrity by any measure. So thank you for that, too.
(04:27):
You couldn't care about either one of us
or some ridiculous thing. You're like, you know what, guys? I'm over here doing a
hard ministry guess. Help.
Get over yourself and get to the good. Get to the good. So that's a
great transition. AJ you got the first question. All right, here we
go. All right, Scotty asked
(04:50):
what principles you use to make decisions about the future of
local church ministries, whether to continue, improve,
or end them, so that the local church remains
engaged in its primary mission of discipleship. All Right.
So making. This is the tough. These are making. It's not me, by the way.
You said it's from Scotty. Scott. Yeah. I never call you Scotty on the
(05:12):
podcast. I know that. But I just thought since this was the first question and
we're like, oh, there was this overwhelming response. We're like, oh, from Scotty. Like,
this is. This is a Scotty. Different
Scotty. Yeah. Please continue. Yeah, this is where the
tough decisions get made in our strategic envisioning process.
We do mission, we do values, then we do discipleship, pathway. And that's the hard
(05:34):
part. That's where we're beginning to make tough leadership choices around
ministries and systems and processes and this kind of thing.
So what are the principles that we use to make decisions about this? Well, there's
two aspects to this. First, it's the values work that we do
before we get to this question, sort of. And in the values work that we
do, we go into Acts, chapter two, and we look at verses 41
(05:56):
through 47, and what were the behaviors
that the first century church was doing at the birth at Pentecost, at the birth
of the church of Jesus Christ, capital C
worldwide? What did the apostles and the
Holy Spirit lead these people to be doing? And
it's great stuff, and it's perfectly applicable to us today because
(06:18):
God's word is good for all people in all places, for all time.
And so that is our first measure. Okay.
Some people have variations on the exact things out of there. Five
to seven things that you see, but roughly, worship, prayer,
fellowship, evangelism, like generosity,
service, being in God's word, like instruction, teaching.
(06:42):
I think I got them all. And so that's kind of our
first measure. So do the ministries of the church
support or enable us to live
out one or more of those values? If it doesn't
attach to one of those values in a pretty direct and meaningful way,
that is a criteria in which the ministry may not, may
(07:04):
not be of tremendous discipleship value in the church.
So that's my first half to the answer. The other part then, is a
tool that we use again in the strategic envisioning process. After working
through a few steps of evaluating ministries, organizing and
evaluating the current ministries of the church, we have a tool that we use called
the decision matrix. And the decision matrix, again, this is the hard part, guys.
(07:26):
We're not telling you this is easy. But the decision matrix
is where we, we. We take the information that we've, you know, that
we've discussed about each ministry, and we make a decision Is this ministry,
is this a primary ministry in the church that we're going to invite everybody into?
Is this a secondary ministry that
supports before or after the primary ministry or has
(07:49):
a direct connection to, to get people engaged? Or is this
something perhaps that we're going to sunset and
let it begin its, its path to no longer
ness? Or is this something that should be canceled right now? Or
maybe it's an event that we did and we're just not going to do that
event again. So that's, that's how I would answer this, about making
(08:10):
decisions about ministries or the principles that we use
to decide on whether a ministry has value, whether it should
continue. So I hope that's helpful. Scotty, not Ball.
And yeah. All right, a few more to go. Scott, your turn.
All right. My first question comes from Mark. Mark
(08:30):
asked, with all of the materials that
exist online and books and
things, why should a church, or what is
the benefit of a church working with a consultant
rather than just kind of running something yourself?
And this is a great question. This is a common question that we get when
(08:52):
we're talking with the church, particularly maybe not the person who
reached out to us, because if you reached out to us, you see some value
in it. But if we're talking with a church board or
some, some council or group or committee, this might be a
common question that comes up. And so I would answer
it in a couple of ways. The first would
(09:14):
be the main reason
is you may not
have the buy in from the rest of the group
when someone on the team is leading the process,
because everything will be shaded by
that person. What people perceive as that person's kind of
(09:36):
tipping the scales. In particular, if it's the pastor who's leading the process,
people maybe won't feel the permission to speak up and go, I disagree.
Or they may. Even if it's a very open
process and everybody's participating, the feeling may be,
yeah, but you know, Pastor John led this process.
(09:56):
And so it's really his thing, it's his vision. And so by having someone
external come in and guide the process, particularly in the way
in which we do it, which it's a facilitated process, it's not
typical like business consulting where you might come in and do some
workshop and facilitation, then we deliver to you, here's what you
need to do. You do these things. We don't do it that way. You're in
(10:20):
the driver's seat the entire time. We're facilitating the process. And the
whole, the end result then is owned by the group that gives a
lot of confidence to the church that this isn't one person's idea, that it's
something that we built together. So that would be the first reason
is that it removes this, the perception that it is
one person's vision that's being sort of foisted upon
(10:42):
the rest of the church. The second reason
would be that let's just say you're an
exceptional leader and you're man, you've, you got
all the right ideas and you know everything there
is to know and you listen to the podcast and there's not a single new
thing that you've ever learned, whatever, it's fine.
(11:05):
I would say even if you were the best surgeon on the
planet, you're the number one heart surgeon, you're the
number one whatever kind of surgeon, you wouldn't perform
surgery on yourself. You wouldn't prescribe
yourself medication, you wouldn't do that. It's one. It's not
ethical to, to prescribe your own medication.
(11:27):
But also it's, it's not, you
don't have the perspective that's necessary to conduct the surgery
yourself. Certainly if it's open heart surgery, you need to be
out for that. But even if it was something laparoscopic like, even if it was
something else, you wouldn't perform that surgery on yourself. It doesn't
matter how good of a surgeon you are, the act of performing
(11:49):
the surgery on yourself is nearly impossible because you lack the
perspective to be able to do it well. And so
having someone from the outside isn't a sign of weakness or
that you don't know what you're doing. It's actually a sign of humility
and a sign of wisdom because you're having someone who has a
perspective that you don't have help. Help to guide a process that it's
(12:11):
not a reflection of your competence to have someone else help you.
And then finally, the last thing I would say is
we've worked with a number of churches that have gone through self guided processes and
then they end up contacting us in the end anyway because
they don't really know. And I mean this in all love and sincerity,
like please don't take this the wrong way, but a lot of
(12:33):
you don't know what you're doing and so
you're cobbling together your own process by reading different
articles online. And so you're not using a consistent framework.
I'm not calling our process better than anybody else's, but
there's real value in committing to one process
and framework and working that process correctly.
(12:57):
And when you don't do that and you don't hit sort of the timeline and
schedule the right way, it ends up taking twice as long or three times as
long as you, you lose a lot of momentum and you lose a lot of.
You lose face with the congregate confidence people. People like
just don't believe the leadership can do anything. And it really hurts the church
(13:17):
in the long term. Working especially with us because we're
so inexpensive in comparison to a lot of other options, you end up
getting further, faster at a lower price than if you try
to cobble something together on your own. So that was longer answer than yours,
A.J. but those would be. Those are the three reasons why I think
it's valuable to work with someone outside and not try to do it yourself. Sounds
(13:40):
good, man. That was a good one. All right, my next one is from
Billy and he asks, how do I start?
I'm in a church that clearly needs revitalization, but they don't
realize it. How do I show them that there could be
more and they could be dying a slow death over the last
10 to 15 years, or that they have been dying so. Death.
(14:03):
Yeah. This is a, this is a question that we get quite a
lot in various forms. And so I would, I've got
two points that I would say about this. As it reads, it kind
of sounds like you feel alone. A lot of pastors do or
elders or whoever the. Our contact might be. I
would start with some leadership conversations first. I
(14:25):
hope you have some kind of a board that you can trust and
meet with elders, church council, whatever form that
might be. So I would, I would broach the conversation
first in your leadership decision making circle
and at least get this conversation started and out in the open.
How do you guys feel about where we are? Do you feel ever
(14:48):
that perhaps we're just, we're not living up to the potential
that God has blessed us with? So I would first start with some leadership
conversations and let that breathe a bit.
Have these conversations over not a long period of time, over a short
period of time and begin to see where the
consensus is on that. Certainly be praying about it,
(15:09):
be praying individually and together about it. If you find
you have consensus, then I think the best way to
begin to introduce this to the church, and we always advocate for full
transparency with the church that, you know, here's
we, we believe God has called us to something greater than we are. And we're
beginning a prayerful investigation into how we
(15:32):
can improve as a church or what positive changes we can make that will
allow us greater mission effectiveness, making
maturing disciples of Jesus. The next thing I would say is we've got
an analysis that we do called the church ministry analysis. This assessment that
the church can go through that asks some
pertinent questions for six areas of church health
(15:55):
and providing actual data to the congregation is
going to take this, the emotional element out of it or perhaps
anybody feeling like, you know, there's, there's been any sway one
way or another, people with agendas and be able to just give
them real information back. It's a series of, of statements that
people can agree or disagree with. It's not intended to be taken by the whole
(16:17):
church, but by, but by active ministry leaders. But
this provides then some, some substantial data
that can be presented again with, you know, with love and care
and sincerity as to where the church is and where its opportunities
lie to be in a greater position of health
for again, your mission effectiveness. So that's what I would say.
(16:39):
Billy, start with the leadership conversations. Move into
some detached assessment that can help you
reflect back really where you are right now. And then from
then, you know, hopefully you have the consensus and,
and the, the capital,
human capital that you need to be able to make a plan then for.
(17:01):
Well, how are we going to address this? What's going to be our next step
after this? So great question. Yeah, that is
so is a really good question. Okay. And a
common one. I had one on my list that I. Anonymous, that was a
very similar question. So I would echo everything you just said. So
my next question comes from Gary.
(17:23):
Gary says, what are the best ways
to start a person on a path towards leadership in the
church when that person can't see themselves
leading anything, anytime, anywhere? Yeah, that was
a good question. I like that they don't, they don't see themselves as a leader.
How do you help them begin to see themselves that way?
(17:46):
And that's one of the things I love about our leadership pipeline
process is that in the leadership pipeline process
we call leaders, everybody from the front
line, your frontline volunteer, all the way up to a,
you know, like an elder or deacon or whatever your senior
level leadership board is, we call those
(18:09):
folks leaders. And so starting by recognizing that you have
leadership obligations even from the very beginning. So you may
not see yourself as a leader, but you are one. It starts by learning to
lead yourself. We all have an obligation to,
under the headship of Jesus, to lead ourselves.
Right. He leads us by still waters, but we follow
(18:33):
him and we are leading ourselves to follow Jesus. Right. So
it starts with leading ourselves and maybe helping someone understand that the
leadership journey doesn't
mean that it has to end at becoming an elder in the
church, that there are. There's a place, a leadership place
for you, no matter where the ceiling ends up sort of
(18:55):
being for you, and there's potential in you that needs to be developed.
If you're a parent, you know, if you're a dad, you are a leader in
your home. If you're a mom, you're a leader in your home. If you work
in a business, you know, maybe you're a frontline
employee at Best Buy. You're leading customers to.
To buy the products. You know, it doesn't matter.
(19:17):
Redefining what leadership is, not making
everything as leadership. I'm not. I'm trying to suggest that. But
seeing the opportunities for leadership and leadership development
in the small things is actually the best path
to helping someone become a leader in the great things. So my
advice, Gary, would be help people begin to understand
(19:40):
the ways in which they are already called to be a leader and
then create what we call core competencies, but clear
competencies for leadership that are sort of a stepping
ladder up along the way so that people can be developed
up to those standards. I think one of the biggest challenges that churches
face is what they want is to be able to microwave a leader. I
(20:03):
think that's something that our friend Adam said. It's like people are looking for prepackaged
leaders, but you can't microwave a leader and you don't buy them on
the shelf at Walmart. Leaders must be developed.
Don't be discouraged that when you look around, all you see is a bunch of
people who aren't very qualified to be. To be an elder
at your church, see a field of opportunity, and go, all right, there is
(20:27):
a bunch of people that we can be developing and help them begin to understand
how they're leading already and then give them clear competencies to
aspire to so that they can grow and help them develop to those
competencies. I would encourage you to go back. We. We did a whole deep dive
on leadership pipeline. I think AJ Was that last summer or two
summers ago? Last summer. I
(20:49):
want to say last summer, but you know how these go, Scott. The
years blend together. We
gave a lot away for free. I'll just say in, in.
In those episodes, I would go back, Gary, and
listen to that entire series, and it will really help you with this. Check
today's show notes for links to resources such as
(21:12):
that or YouTube description where? Wherever you're at.
Okay. Yep, here's our next one. This is from Chad
and he asks how do I stay strategic and visionary as
a single staff pastor who has to worry about the minutia of day
to day operations? And boy, is this a
common, It's a common issue that, that I
(21:35):
know probably few people
verbalize it and many feel it.
So I'm glad you asked this, Chad. I've got several things that I want
to want to point out for this. First, first
one I want to mention is really
developing the habit of, or the
(21:56):
discipline of calendaring. Well, friend of
mine would always say if it isn't written, it isn't real. And I think
the calendar helps us do that. So actually devoting time
to this question and this way of
thinking and you know, you're kind of asking two things, strategic and
visionary. So I really, I would be thinking about those
(22:19):
separately because I think they are, they're different,
they're different thought processes and I think there's, and there's different mechanics
to them. So I would be separating strategic and
visionary though they are linked. So calendaring, first of all,
devote time to it. The minutiae of the day to day
ends up becoming what drives our time.
(22:42):
And it happens to the best of us that the
urgent matters end up just consuming the
day. And before we know it, we've pushed what we wanted to do
to hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to do this. The
calendar is a tool to help you that, help you with that.
(23:02):
Next. And I'm thinking more on the visionary side here.
Prayer time and quiet time. So and again, calendar, put that on
the calendar so that you've got protected time for that. But
spending time in prayer and in the word, thinking about
the visionary things, asking God for his
vision for your church. And I do believe that even in the
(23:24):
minutiae of the day to day, every pastor has more vision than most give themselves
credit for. One of the kind of simple thought
tools that I suggest to a lot of pastors, especially if
you've been in, in the work for
a long time, is try to take yourself
back to either your initial call to ministry, maybe, or your
(23:46):
initial pastor position after seminary, or
even maybe your most recent one whenever you changed churches.
Try to bring yourself back to that moment in time when this
opportunity began to unfold before you and how
you felt about it. Because choosing that
direction, hopefully in prayer and discernment, you also chose it
(24:08):
with vision because you could see your fit in the
ministry or in this church, you could feel or
see the future and what you thought you were going to be able to do
there, the effect you were going to have on people's lives or how the church
was going to be different than it was then. All of that is
vision. And I think a lot of pastors miss that. That, oh, I was living
(24:29):
in a moment of vision. So try to bring yourself back to that in your
prayer and quiet time. Number three, just the simple fact of
being intentional, that kind of goes back into the calendaring. But when you're
having meetings with, you know, your volunteer teams, you
need to be intentional and continue to have the
language with your teams as well. Use the word strategy
(24:51):
in relation to your ministry decisions. Use the word
vision when you're speaking about the future and as a part of decision making.
So be very intentional about these terms so that you
can build that culture into the volunteer teams around you as well. They'll
help support you in that and maybe hold you accountable. And then
lastly, I want to talk about board meeting strategy. So again, hopefully though
(25:13):
your question is about the single staff pastor. I hope you still have
at least a small team of senior decision makers that come alongside
you. And this is a great Scott ball.
I think strategy for boards is that don't just have,
I mean, if you're meeting once a month and you just cram everything into that
meeting, we would suggest start meeting twice a month and have kind
(25:37):
of a business meeting and then have a separate vision,
prayer, care, shepherding, oversight meeting.
And so that you're not making decisions on strategy or,
you know, operations, you're only spending time together in the
word, in prayer, thinking about high level
visionary things and mission related things.
(25:59):
So I think that's another practical way to try to build and
maintain strategy and vision in the church as a
single staff pastor. Thanks for that question. That was a really good one.
Yeah, it's really good. Really, really relevant to. I know a lot of people
who listen to the podcast.
All right, my next question comes from
(26:22):
Lee. Lee asks, what is
the role of spiritual formation in
revitalization and how does it become an ongoing
catalyst rather than a revival or camp
type experience that fades after the initial revitalization
process concludes. We had several questions
(26:43):
similar to this one. Essentially asking the question of,
like, what is the spiritual component? Because we talk
a lot about. Well, it's the, in the intro to every
episode, practical, actionable, actionable topics to
help churches thrive. So we really live in that space
because I think we take for granted that we know you guys are,
(27:07):
are dedicated to developing yourselves Spiritually, you're
in the word, you're praying. And so we're trying to address topics
that we think are pain points for you. But
so I think if you have a criticism, could have a criticism of the podcast,
it's that maybe we don't talk enough about spiritual formation and
the spiritual side of strategic planning as much as we should.
(27:30):
So I wanted to address Lee's question, and there
were, again, several of you had a similar one, and it's a great question.
I think the first thing to remember is that
the goal of any strategic envisioning or strategic
planning or revitalization process is
ultimately the revitalization of individual people.
(27:53):
The formation. The spiritual formation of individual people.
It's very easy in the midst of a process
to get lost in the weeds and think about the mechanics of programming
and budgets and what the strategy is and what are our targets
and our metrics. And Lee, you're right in. When you're in
that season, everybody's kind of very excited about the change and
(28:16):
the new things that are happening. And when
you get out of that initial excitement
phase, the baby that sometimes gets thrown out with the bathwater
is the spirit, the focus and heart for spiritual formation.
Oh, in answer to your question, I think, number one,
(28:36):
remember that the focus is always ultimately on the individual
and their spiritual formation. The whole point of a discipleship
pathway isn't just a streamline programs, but it's to produce
discipleship fruit. That's the goal. That's why we do that process in the
first place. And so keeping constant attention as
elders, in particular to shepherd the flock and to measure
(28:58):
spiritual fruit, do we see it? And when we stop seeing the
spiritual fruit we want to see, that's an indicator that we need to do more
work on, on looking at what it is that we're doing in our
programming. So measuring discipleship fruit at
the individual level is number one. The
second thing is commitment
(29:20):
to prayer at every level is very, very important.
AJ you already mentioned this in the answer to your last question.
But ensuring that you have healthy
rhythms at the board level is extremely important.
So strategic planning should not be a moment, it should be a habit.
So I hope that every year you mark out time to
(29:43):
set goals, to refresh the vision, to decide
on strategic projects. The elders should be doing that every year because
they're the directional leadership of the church. But every month
they should be in prayer for the church and have dedicated time doing that.
And beyond that, I hope you have a prayer team
at the church and passing along prayer
(30:05):
requests Sharing those and having a culture of prayer
so that there's a constant eagerness and a hunger for the
Holy Spirit to be present
and visible and speaking through the people in the church.
And which would kind of lead me to the third and final thing, which I've
sort of already said, but I want to reiterate.
(30:26):
The revitalization process is not a one
time thing. It shouldn't be a.
And I know who Lee is, so I'll say this in a way that he'll
resonate. It's about continuous improvement. So
we shouldn't be looking at. We should not be looking at a
revitalization process as a one and done thing. One way to make sure
(30:49):
that we're constantly focused on the right things is making sure that we are in
a process of continuous improvement and a continual
focus on revitalizing always. Because
the laws of thermodynamics are at work in our. In our hearts and in our
churches. If we leave it to our own devices, it's going to decline. It's
going to fall at the spiritual level and at the structural level and the strategic
(31:12):
level. Therefore, we must always be in a process of
revitalization. And it's incumbent on the leadership to
say, we are not a church that did revitalization and we're done.
We are constantly being renewed day by day by the water of the
word, right? And by the blood of Jesus.
So it's this Romans philosophy, right? We're trying to
(31:34):
continually be renewed in our minds. So revitalization is that it's a spiritual
process that's ongoing all the time. And it's the leadership that sets the
tone through prayer and through intentional strategic leadership
every year. So that'd be my answer. That's
really good. That's really good. All right. Our last
question for this episode comes from Trent, and
(31:57):
he asks what are some practical and strategic. Your last
question. Oh, didn't. This isn't our last. You just have one more
after me after this. You went first. Oh, don't cut me short.
All right. All right, bro. What are some practical
and strategic ways to get people to see the importance of
preparing for potential growth in the church before
(32:19):
it happens so you aren't caught off guard or left unprepared
when growth does happen. So,
yeah, this is. This is really good. And I've. I've heard this asked before,
I think with a. Someone on a team at a church that I was working
with. But I got a couple of things that come to
mind for this question. The first one
(32:41):
is considering Again, the discipleship pathway or the organization of
ministries in the church to disciple people in an effective
and efficient way. So what I'm thinking about in that respect
is asking. So I guess my, let me preface this
by saying my answer to your question is comes in a couple of forms of
evaluation, determining where are we now?
(33:03):
And with some kind of strategy in the question that we're asking.
It kind of will lead us to the answer of, oh,
maybe we need to do something different. So, and I'm also
not thinking about asking or presenting this to the entire church. This is more of
a leadership question, I think, initially whether, you
know, it's paid staff or whether it's volunteer leaders. But
(33:25):
looking at our discipleship pathway. So what I'm asking there is
what would we do with new people? This
is like a fundamental question. Somebody new comes to our church
and they, we want them hopefully to desire
greater engagement and assimilation into the culture and the ministries
of the church. But if they actually came and they were so bold to say,
(33:48):
how can I get engaged here? What, what would you, what would you think I
should do? First, we need to have a question, an answer for that. So what
are we going to direct them to? What ministries are we going to direct them
to? To help them engage. So asking this of
yourself forces you then to look critically then at what you're
doing. So which then you're either going to feel like
(34:09):
you're prepared or you're not prepared and that hopefully would drive
action. The second part of that is in systems and
what I'm asking there is how do we get them there? So perhaps,
yeah, we would say, yeah, it would be great for you to join a small
group here at our church. Well, what does that process look like? We would call
that, that's a system for moot. You know, the process that somebody would
(34:31):
move through to go from point A to point B, who do they talk to?
Or is there some kind of, you know, questions that we would love to have
them answer to find the best fit for for them could be any number of
things. But that's the second half of my, of my answer
is evaluating the systems that you have in your church
for being able to move people into the next best
(34:53):
step that you've designed for them. Asking
these things then of your, of your closer leaders
and people that are leading ministries in your church will
force this perspective investigation.
And if the answers to these questions come back, well, I guess we
don't really have major organization in our ministries. It's kind of always been
(35:15):
doing the stuff and we got a lot going on, or no, we really don't
have anybody that we would be able to direct them to, or we don't have
any kind of processes for that. Well, this then
sets you up for this conversation. Should we,
before we attempt to grow the church, should. Should we establish some
fundamental things so that when, not if, but when that growth
(35:38):
begins to happen, we are ready to go and we're not
caught off guard, as your question suggested. So I hope that's helpful.
Trent, these are. This is some great strategy
planning elements right here that certainly fall within
the framework of our strategic envisioning process. So we got.
We've got resources to help think through these things in the toolkit,
(36:00):
or certainly working with, you know, one of our guides on this process
would bring these things up to the surface and ready to tackle. Thanks
for that, Trent. Yeah, man wrote. Just really briefly,
I had somewhere. Scott, you're going to chime in on this question.
I'm just so briefly, I just want to tell a story. I was, I was
at a church recently that has
(36:23):
struggled. And anyways, I love
this church. They're really. They're fantastic. But when I was, when I was there,
someone came up to me and they said, you
knew. Are you new here? And I said,
yep. And they go, what? Are you friends with someone who
goes here? Or why would I
(36:46):
be here? I said, no, I'm. I'm, you know,
I'm Scott Ball. I'm leading the strategic commissioning process. I've been working with
a team of your leaders doing some strategic planning this weekend. They go, oh, okay,
that makes sense. I mean, they were so shocked that someone.
They didn't recognize me, you know, so they were
really sweet. It was, it was totally fine. But I go, yeah. So I don't
(37:09):
know. When with Trent's question, I was thinking, you know, maybe start working on the
culture, creating, like a culture of expectation. Expect to grow. Expect
that there would be someone who's new so that maybe that when people walk up
to them, they don't go, did someone invite you? Like, what are you doing here?
How could you possibly have stumbled into this place? How did you get to this
place? Yeah. Okay.
(37:32):
My last question comes from.
Asks, should church strategy
implementation always lead to
numerical growth? And that's
a really good question. And so, Sam, I
would say it should
(37:54):
always lead to growth.
But you can define what, what that looks like and what that means.
You know, we focus essentially on church health.
That's. That's the. The thing that we care most about in our
process is health, the health of the church.
(38:14):
And numerical growth can come in healthy
and unhealthy ways. Churches can be unhealthy and they can grow
numerically and they can be healthy and grow numerically. And we
covered this actually in a recent article podcast, I think
we talked about why unhealthy churches sometimes grow. So that's a
good one about that. But I would
(38:36):
say that the inevitable, it's
inevitable that when a church is healthy,
it will grow. Now I want to, I
can have some caveats around that. That could mean
that the church becomes a really
focused on church planting and you create this culture where
(38:59):
you're constantly planting churches. This is how, this is
how Paul dealt with church growth in the New Testament is
they, they were hyper focused on always launching
the next church in the next town. But it only
happened because there were healthy churches that could, that could provide
that to happen. So I don't want to go
(39:21):
so far as to say a strategic
planning process, a good one always will lead to just,
you know, you're going to have to add five services and you're going to have
to plant 18 campuses. And if, and if you're not
seeing those kinds of exponential growth numbers, then that
means that the process didn't work or that it was ineffective, because that's not true.
(39:43):
But a good strategic planning process does
always cultivate healthier soil. And when there is
healthier soil, there is always more fruit. And when it comes
to gospel centered churches,
which I know, I know who Sam is,
yeah, I know you all are gospel centered
(40:05):
churches share the gospel. And when people share the
gospel, people come to know Jesus, which means
there's more people in the kingdom. So it's a
very long and circuitous answer of saying yes, actually, I
think it does lead to numerical growth. But there are, there's
a ton of context and nuance around that. And just because you aren't
(40:28):
seeing that fruit immediately doesn't mean the process isn't working.
Some plants take much longer to grow. I mean, you can plant an apple tree
and it's going to be years before the first apple, you know,
grows on the tree that you can eat. That doesn't mean that it isn't working.
But eventually when the help, when the, when the,
when the soil is healthy and the plant is tended
(40:51):
to, there will be fruit. It's inevitable, it must
happen. And I think that's true in churches. And actually,
would AJ kind of like your, your thought on that before we wrap up?
No, I think you covered. I, I yeah. Well, Scott, I was sitting
here thinking, I'm just not going to say anything because we agreed we weren't going
to say anything about either, but I really don't have much more to say to
(41:12):
you. That was the last question. My short answer to this would have been,
yes, I, I would expect the church to grow for the reasons that you just
gave. As you're, as you're wrapping up that question. Healthy things grow.
Yeah. Now what, what you call a lot of growth would be,
you know, that would depends on, Depend on where you are. I think in almost,
in only extreme cases, based on geography,
(41:35):
a healthy church will grow. What that, what that trend
line looks like for you. Depends. But I think even in those
circumstances. You could be developing a culture where, like,
pastors are being raised up and you're sending missionaries or you're sending,
you know, young men to become. To go to seminary and be
trained. And you know what I mean? Like, you're, that's growth, too. So, I mean,
(41:57):
there's caveats around it, I suppose, but when you have
healthy soil and you're tending a plant, there's going to be fruit that
you, you almost can't stop that from happening,
right? I believe so. I believe that to be true.
Yeah. I mean, yeah. In rare cases, we've got the tiny little
church in the middle of a cornfield and there's a handful of
(42:21):
farmers that live within an hour's drive. Outside of those types of
scenarios, I've. Worked with those churches and they grow, too. I think there's
an opportunity for healthy churches to grow. Yeah. Yeah,
yeah. So I guess. But I don't want anyone to be discouraged if you go,
well, I'm not seeing the numbers yet. Okay. Keep, Keep
tending the soil. Right. I mean, this is, this is Jesus
(42:42):
principle. It's like you. So keep sowing seed. You.
Not all of the seed that you throw is going to grow, but some
of it will. And so, you know,
you don't, you don't give up. You don't go, wow, I'm not seeing the fruit
yet. So it didn't work. It's like, no. Well, the
worst time to stop tending the plant is the day
(43:04):
before you start to see it sprout from the ground. Right.
You never see it. So you, if you, if you abandon it. So just, you
know, and I'm not saying this is actually, I don't think this is happening in
this particular church. I'm saying to you, listener, if you feel like,
man, we've worked really hard on this and we're just not seeing the fruit. Did
it doesn't matter. I'm telling you, it's inevitable.
(43:28):
Fruit comes from healthy soil. Tend to the soil.
Don't care about the fruit. That's Jesus. That's what Jesus says. He's like, find laborers
for the harvest. Mm. Don't forget about the harvest. Just
find laborers for the harvest. And the harvest is gonna happen.
Run the race. Complete the task. Amen.
(43:49):
All right. That's a good way, I think, to wrap up episode 300, my friend.
Yeah, man. Thank you guys so much for. For listening. I
don't know if there's maybe a human exists within the sound of my voice
that has been here since the beginning. God bless you for your long
suffering and patience as we developed into something useful, hopefully
for your ministry. But we truly are thankful that you tune
(44:11):
in and listen. We exist to help you, and
we exist because you care about your church, and because
you care about your church. You look for help, and you want to do better.
You want to be on mission, and you want to see the kingdom of
God grow. And for that, we're dedicated to helping you.
And we're going to keep at it as long as you'll have us. So thanks
(44:33):
so much again for your questions. Very thoughtful, very meaningful. And we'll
be back again, Lord willing, with you next week, starting with 301
and beyond. See you then.
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