All Episodes

September 16, 2025 56 mins

What does it really mean for a church to be “healthy”? In this episode, Loren sits down with Chad Brooks—United Methodist congregational vitality strategist and author of Is My Church Healthy? Drawing on his years of experience as a church planter, pastor, and denominational leader, Brooks challenges common assumptions about growth and health. He unpacks why stability must come before vitality, how to measure what truly matters, and why small congregations often carry unique strengths that larger ones overlook. With both encouragement and practical tools, Brooks equips pastors, leaders, and laypeople to discern their next faithful step. Whether you lead a large church or a normal-sized one, this conversation will help you reimagine what vitality looks like in today’s context.

Key Points:

  • Why size doesn’t determine health—and how small churches can thrive

  • The four stages of congregational life: unstable, stable, vital, and sustainable

  • How to right-size ministries instead of copying “the big church down the street”

  • Why tracking data isn’t impersonal but essential to caring for people

  • The difference between mercy, justice, mission, and evangelism—and why churches must reclaim their distinct call

  • How COVID acted as a “reset button” for many congregations

Chad Brooks is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and currently serves on the staff of The Louisiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church as the Congregational Vitality Strategist. He lives in central Louisiana with his wife of 20 years Meredith. Chad is a graduate of Louisiana Tech University and Asbury Theological Seminary. Chad grew up in the church as the son of an SBC Pastor and has spent his career working in all aspects of church, from Technical Production Director of churches and a major Seminary, to a pastor of established churches and church plants. He has stewarded the Productive Pastor Community for 20 years and it equally passionate about seeing revival as he is about resourcing Pastors in all aspects of healthy ministry. When not reading and thinking about the Church, he enjoys practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and being in the outdoors at his hunting camp.

 

Mentioned Resources:

📖 Get his Book: Is My Church Healthy?

🌐 Louisiana Conference: https://www.la-umc.org/conferencestaff

🎧 Episodes Referenced: Dennis Sanders

🎧 Episodes Referenced: Drew Crowson

 

 

Presenting Sponsor:

Phillips Seminary Join conversations that expose you to new ideas, deepen your commitment and give insights to how we can minister in a changing world. 

 

Supporting Sponsors:

Restore Clergy If you are clergy in need of tailored, professional support to help you manage the demands of ministry, Restore Clergy is for you!

Kokoro  Join in for heartfelt journeys that challenges the way we see ourselves, each other, and the world we share.

 

Future Christian Team:

Loren Richmond Jr. – Host & Executive Producer

Martha Tatarnic – Co-Host

Paul Romig–Leavitt – Associate Producer

Dennis Sanders – Producer

Alexander Lang - Production Assistant

 

 

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Paul (00:07):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in
the 21st century. At the Future Christian
Podcast, we talk to pastors, authors,
and other faith leaders for helpful advice and practical
wisdom to help you and your community of faith
walk boldly into the future. Whether

(00:27):
you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member
of your faith community, this podcast is
designed to challenge, inspire, and equip
you with the tools you need for impactful ministry.
And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode.

>> Martha Tatarnic (00:44):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
Loren Richmond Jr. Is in conversation with
Chad Brooks. Chad is an
ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and
currently serves on the staff of the Louisiana
Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church
as a congregational vitality strategist.

(01:04):
He lives in central Louisiana with his wife of 20
years, Meredith. Chad is a graduate of
Louisiana Tech University and Asbury
Theological Seminary. Chad grew up in the
church as the son of an SBC
pastor and has spent his career working in all
aspects of church, from technical

(01:24):
production, director of churches and a major seminary
to a pastor of established churches and church
plants. He has stewarded the productive
pastor community for 20 years and
is equally passionate about seeing revival
as he is about resourcing pastors in all
aspects of healthy ministry. When not
reading and thinking about the church, he enjoys

(01:47):
practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and being in the
outdoors at his hunting camp. A
reminder, before we start today's conversation,
please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast, leave
a review and share Future Christian with a friend.
Connect with Loren, Martha and Future Christian
on Instagram. Shoot us an
email at loren @resonate

(02:09):
mediapro.com with comments,
questions, or ideas for future episodes.
We appreciate your voice in how we faithfully discern
the future of the church.

>> Loren (02:29):
All right, welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. This is Loren Richmond
Jr. And I am pleased to be joined today by the Reverend
Chad Brooks. Hello and welcome to the show.

>> Chad (02:37):
Hey, it's great to be on, man.

>> Loren (02:40):
Yeah. Looking forward to having this conversation
recorded. I guess we. I feel like we've had half this
conversation before in the past, so hopefully
we're going to share with our. Our listeners here.

>> Chad (02:50):
It won't be. It won't be just private. I hate when you have those fun, private
conversations. You're really wishing the microphones were
around right for it.

>> Loren (02:58):
Right?
Yeah.
So let's begin with this. Uh, what part of the world
are you coming from today? Tell us about, uh, your neck of the
woods.

>> Chad (03:08):
Yeah. So I live in central
Louisiana, which is Maybe the most un. Louisiana part
of Louisiana. But, uh, I grew up here,
was gone for 25 years. Kind of lived other places in the South.
Spent a lot of time in North Louisiana and moved back home a couple years
ago. And it's, uh, kind of weird. I'm two
blocks from the elementary school I grew up with, a half mile

(03:28):
from my mom and dad. But, uh, I'm here.
Alexandria is a city that exists because something has to be in the middle.
But, uh, it's handy for me in my day job.
So it's. It's a. It's a fun place. I'm a big fan of.

>> Loren (03:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah.
Talk about your, uh, Talk m. About your spiritual journey, what that's looked like in
the past and what that looks like today.

>> Chad (03:49):
Yeah. So I grew up the son of
a Southern Baptist megachurch pastor.
So, um, you know, especially if you're in the Deep South,
I always call these churches and I talk about a little bit and other
stuff I've done. There's always the big church down the street.
And so I grew up in one of those and had been a big chart. It'd been
a big church for 40 years.

(04:12):
And I had a. You know, a lot of folks that might have that
story of, uh, you know, growing up in, like, evangelical
large church pastors. Kid got, uh,
some gnarly sides of that story. And I don't like. I had.
My dad's awesome. He retired two years
ago. Uh, had a great experience,
fantastic church, tons of great people.

(04:32):
And I, uh, didn't realize how unique that was until
I went away to college at a small private Baptist college
my parents graduated from and realized,
uh, very quickly that I was not that
Southern Baptist. Uh,
didn't realize growing up that, you know, the church I grew up with was
not that Baptist either. And, uh, you know, so that

(04:53):
kind of started this. I became this denominational mutt
for a long time, uh, cruising around, uh,
checking different stuff out. Had a. Had a job actually
in an SBC church as a youth pastor in my early
20s. And that really solidified the whole. Okay, Chad, you
were not Baptist. And
around that time, I, uh, I, I've

(05:13):
always read, I'm a voracious reader, and
I somehow stumbled across church history.
When I was in college, I transferred to a.
A state university and I, I was a history major
and I took a History of the Christian Church class. And I
don't think I had ever heard anything about Christianity
before, like 1900.

(05:35):
Yeah, it threw me into the church fathers, the
creeds, you Know the great tradition, all of that.
And that really started me down this exploratory path to uh, finding
something different that made more sense to me.
And I discovered United Methodism, really I discovered John
Wesley and found a
lot of. I fell in love with Wesley,

(05:55):
went to seminary as a Southern Baptist, still went to a
predominantly Methodist school as a Southern Baptist and quickly
realized that one of the reasons I had such an affinity for
Methodism was I pretty much had grown up
a theological Wesleyan without knowing it.
And one of the interesting things about my dad's church is
the pastors, the senior pastors of that church

(06:16):
typically have very long tenures. And so my
dad was on staff there for 40 something years, was a youth pastor for
20 years and the senior pastor for 25 years and the
senior pastor he followed. Um, I
grew up fishing with him, hunting with him. I mean he was like a
second grandfather to me. Uh, was there
for almost 30 years. And when dad retired,

(06:36):
uh, or when he retired, dad started taking some of his, got a lot of
his books. And then, uh, and when
dad retired, the books of my dad's that I wanted were all the old
books, most of them he had taken from Big John. And
I realized like the majority of them came from the
Abington Publishing House, which was the old, one of the old United
Methodist publishing imprints.

>> Loren (06:55):
Yeah.

>> Chad (06:55):
And I started realizing, you know, 20 years ago in seminary that I was
actually a theological Wesleyan. But the longer I've
gotten from there, I realized, oh no, this is the bedrock of this. Like I
actually grew up, uh, is this
in this really weird Southern Baptist church
that was a lot more Wesleyan?
Um, like I never heard the word Calvinism until I was
19 years old.

>> Loren (07:17):
Yeah.

>> Chad (07:18):
And so a lot of my own just shape and
structure, I tell people, is as I found United
Methodism. It was almost like this adopted kid who finds his
birth parents but had great
adoptive parents along the way.
And so I've got a weird journey, you know, into
Methodism. Uh, but so much of it was
really, and it's still today, I mean,

(07:41):
very, um, rooted historical Christianity, uh,
that sort of piece. And so like my own practice is not. In the last,
you know, five or ten years, I've ah, really fell in love with
the Episcopal tradition and the prayer book.
Um, uh, my wife grew up
Catholic and always says I'd make a really good Roman Catholic too.
And so that's, that's what's interesting is, you know, my own

(08:01):
shape and future a lot of ways is
always kind of looking backwards more.
Um, but Looking in backwards in light of the future, I
guess.

>> Loren (08:12):
Yeah, yeah.
And uh, why don't you share just, just briefly kind of
about some of your professional experience because we're
certainly going to get into it here and then like your current role.

>> Chad (08:23):
Yeah, yeah. So I uh, I got
my first paycheck from a church when I was 20 years old.
And so I've, I mean I've, I've, I've been in ministry
uh my entire adult life. Ran the gamut,
you know youth pastor at small Baptist church. Was uh,
worked on campus ministry staff for a while.
When I was in seminary I was the technical director of

(08:45):
our chapel. I uh, went to Asbury and so for us
chapel was five or six hundred students and so managing
the technical side of chapel, the PA system. Yeah,
I ran our design team for chapel for several years.
Worked uh, inside of a lot of special projects uh
under uh, Reverend J.D. walt when he was there.
And then I left uh seminary and went into United

(09:06):
Methodist itinerancy. Served established
churches. Uh, I church planted for nine years.
Uh got a chance to uh, to, to start a
fantastic church. You know saw that through
like the full phase of church planning from
you know being portable for several years, being semi portable.
Uh we built a sanctuary during COVID which was a

(09:27):
horrible and great idea.
Um, uh, merged with a small
tiny little Methodist church ah during that period as
well. And uh, left a couple of
years ago with just a call to something different. Uh,
I spent a couple of years uh, inside it in Methodism we
call extension ministry where I had my mission. I
was really not at a local church. I had a little preaching

(09:50):
station church uh one quarter
time that was really opened my
eyes to a lot of, a lot of fun stuff. Um
and then two years ago stepped into my current
role as the congregational strategist for the Louisiana
Conference United Methodist Church.

>> Loren (10:09):
Yeah, thanks for sharing all that.
I'm wondering like, and this is kind of an off the off the
cuff question a little bit like you mentioned
kind of being a theological mud and
Wesleyan, uh, theological Wesleyan in
your youth and your Baptist tradition either.
What are some elements from your Baptist

(10:30):
tradition if any that you still find meaningful
that you still incorporate into your spiritual life
today? For me I still
carrying around and reading a King James Bible.

>> Chad (10:43):
Well uh, we were niv people so oh
my goodness, I never did King James. That's a part of
it. My dad's church was always seen not
theologically but just practically
as kind of a more progressive forward thinking
church. And so a lot of that it's Kind of what I said, like, when I got around
real Baptists, I was like, I'm not one of y'. All. What's going on

(11:03):
here? Um, I'll say. You know, I
think that a couple of things, and they're
not necessarily owned by that tradition.
Um, but, you know, the private devotion was
a big thing growing up there. That
still carries today. Um, that.
That absolutely kind of hangs on. And then,

(11:24):
uh, just evangelism,
like, I can never not focus
about evangelism. Um, that was
just always right in front of things,
and I've never left that behind.

>> Loren (11:40):
Okay, I've got to ask this question, Chad, because
it comes to mind
on, like, I feel like I just keep seeing this again and
again, and I'm wondering, like, do
new mainliners, like, folks who
did not grow up in the mainline tradition,
like, do they make the best mainliners?

(12:02):
Does that make sense?

>> Chad (12:03):
Like, ah, yeah.

>> Loren (12:05):
Like, I had a guy on, hopefully. Um, I'm going to
remember how to say his name. Drew
Crosson. I think it is Croson. He's, um,
Episcopal. Like, you grew up Southern Baptist.
Now he's planting a church in
Dallas, kind of big metro area.
His episode will be a few episodes back. You know, I

(12:25):
think about myself, if I can speak so highly of myself,
and. And I'm just curious, like, there does
seem to be a different kind of energy that
folks like you and I who grew up outside of the
tradition. I'm thinking of my good friend and colleague
Dennis Sanders, who grew up outside
of mainline Protestantism, and

(12:46):
for whatever reason or another, found
a home sometimes, you know,
most of the time in a mainline Protestant tradition,
uh, and seem to have a greater. I don't know, maybe this is
too judgy, but have a real passion for the church because,
like, because we found it to be a home, but we
didn't. Like you mentioned, like, it was like your. Your

(13:07):
family that you. Your long lost family.

>> Chad (13:10):
Yeah. You know, I can think. So
this might be an answer to the question. Um, it might
not be, but I. A
few years ago, when the whole,
um, deconstruction that really kind
of took over the Internet.

>> Loren (13:27):
Yeah.

>> Chad (13:27):
In the Christian sphere, I thought it was really interesting
because, like, I went through some really, really gnarly,
gnarly stuff 20 years ago.
Uh, that would probably be called deconstruction
now.

>> Loren (13:40):
Right.

>> Chad (13:41):
And I had a lot of other friends that were deep in
Southern Baptist land that
had some of the same frustrations and same questions. And
oddly enough, we're all mainline now.
And I almost wonder if. If
we're going to go like super Evangelical, super Baptist
on this. It's. It's almost like we

(14:01):
knew we didn't want to become backsliders.

>> Loren (14:04):
Right.

>> Chad (14:04):
To use that term.

>> Loren (14:06):
Right.

>> Chad (14:06):
Um, and instead we found
a home that answered those questions. And so that's a very
evangelical loaded statement.
Uh, but I do, I mean, I, I
spent a lot of time, you know,
at Asbury with weird Baptist and
Pentecostals that were considering not just

(14:27):
mainline, but I mean, a lot of these folks,
uh, oddly enough, the ones that grew up Pentecostal all either became Roman
Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.

>> Loren (14:35):
Wow.

>> Chad (14:36):
And so I do feel like maybe the,
um, that fierce
allegiance and belief in the local church
that you really don't see
inside of the main line as much
might be something that
that's brought to the table.

>> Loren (14:56):
Yeah.

>> Chad (14:57):
If that makes sense.

>> Loren (14:59):
Yeah, yeah. Uh, it's funny you use the word
backsliding. That's certainly a word that someone who did not grow
up Baptist probably is. What are you talking about?

>> Chad (15:08):
Yeah, there's that great toady song, Backslider. Are you
old enough to remember the Toadies?

>> Loren (15:12):
No.

>> Chad (15:13):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Toadies have a song called Backslider
and the, the singer of the Toadies was a preacher's kid
that, that did not stay in the church.

>> Loren (15:22):
But, well, see, that's probably why I had not heard of it because I was
too Baptist to not to probably
listen to the toadies.

>> Chad (15:29):
Also, I'm a little bit older than you. It might, it, uh, might have been.
They were kind of like a two hit wonder in the mid-90s.
So.

>> Loren (15:37):
You know, Chad, I often lament, I
think I say this sometimes, you know,
half serious and half true. Like, I think I, I
deconstructed, like you said, like 15, 20 years
too soon.
You know, I would have been social media star here.
Um, anyway, we're not here to

(15:58):
talk about, you know,
mainliners or former Baptists or deconstruction.
Ah. As interesting as it is, I want to talk to Chad about
his book. Is, uh, My Church Healthy?
And I think Chad, we first kind of encountered one
another's work on Substack.
And I was like, oh, this is great. I'm so

(16:19):
thrilled to see someone who's kind
of like we talked about, brings that passion and energy and
evangelism in a mainline
tradition. And I was thrilled to see it in another mainline
tradition. And,
uh, you know, so thrilled to see your work in church,
new church and church revitalization.
So let's just kind of. You've already kind of talked a

(16:40):
little bit about, you know, your current role, um, but
talk about how your role and your work
with churches led to putting some stuff down on
paper into a book.

>> Chad (16:51):
Yeah. So it kind of actually goes hand in hand because
one of the reasons I decided to write the book and then the books
that I'm, I'm writing right now
initially because we realized like we go into work
in these churches here in Louisiana.
Um, you know, this 90 page book is actually
saving me like three meetings.

(17:13):
And, and we were looking at just the cost of
like, I realized that, you know,
it's on Amazon, people can buy it on Amazon. But I
realized like, if I publish this through Amazon self publishing,
I can get author copies for like $2
and I can just send this to these churches in
Louisiana for dirt cheap

(17:33):
before we start our work together. Because what
Church Healthy is about is really our, like
our first meeting, the first conversation we have
with anybody and where it came from is when I got hired.
You know, most, most United, uh, Methodist annual conferences
used to have a role called the congregational developer.
That was the old job title in the 90s and

(17:53):
2000s. And when I got hired, they decided
to retitle our office and retitle
my role as congregational vitality strategist.
And I went into my boss, uh, about two
months into the job and said I've got a problem
with this word vital because this
isn't what we have to focus on right now. Like our churches

(18:14):
are actually very unstable. And
so we need to think about what it means to bring a church to
stability. Because this is post Covid. And if you're
familiar with United Methodist Church, this is post
disaffiliation 2023.

>> Loren (18:28):
Ah, right.

>> Chad (18:28):
I mean I, I got hired, I, I m. Started the job
six months after the final vote from
exiting churches in the Louisiana Conference.
Um, and, and, and he,
I've got an awesome boss, Dr. Van Stinson. And
he was like, huh, I'm intrigued. Chase the
rabbit, run the line. And so what it came up with is, you know,
the history of the word vital and methodism that comes from this

(18:51):
report. I talk about it in my book that came out in
2011 where people trying to study healthy churches and it was
so controversial, it actually got torpedoed
at the 2012 General Conference.

>> Loren (19:02):
Wow.

>> Chad (19:03):
So one of our giant governing body, the denomination,
did this amazing resource project
that was so threatening and scary, people
torpedoed him. And when I was coaching, I was
working for a company that had developed a
pastoral assessment and coaching program that was based
off of information from that report on what the
qualities of a pastor of a vital church were.

(19:25):
And so I knew that that language
was really effective and really helpful. So I went back into
the studies, what they said about actual, the actual churches. And so we came
up with there's really four stages of
church. Uh, there's ah, an
unstable church, a stable church, a vital church
or a sustainable church. And that

(19:45):
um, churches are going to fall inside of
that. And then alongside of those we really began
developing seven core categories
uh, of these churches based off what we were seeing
and what we were hearing from the churches in Louisiana and
where they were having problems. And the big thing for me
was we have to measure all these things. I'm a

(20:07):
measurement and data.

>> Loren (20:08):
Mhm.

>> Chad (20:09):
And so we have to find a way to measure these things
but also make it to where congregations can kind of self
select relatively easily where they feel like they
might be at the seven core categories of
member care and relationships, objective measurement,
objective metric, measurements, financial, health,
ministry opportunities, new member integration,

(20:30):
uh, evangelism, and then congregational engagement.
So we kind of created this big huge grid
of how a church would
manifest all seven of those core categories
alongside of the stages, the
unstable, stable, vital,
sustainable. And we created a one page grid
and uh, we loved it. So we walk into a church, hand them the

(20:52):
one page grid and their leadership can circle
like okay, we feel like this is present here at our church, this kind of stuff.
Um, and so the part of the book was really like, hey, let's just
speed up our work so we can, you know, better resource
our churches. And
um, it's been, it's
fantastic uh, to see this work

(21:13):
out, the whole thing. Actually I kind of seeded the content out
on an email list I have just walking through each of the
seven core categories and I was getting feedback back and forth
and back and forth from people in the email list. And that's when I realized like,
okay, this might be helpful because it
really, it's just that question like is my church healthy?
Typically healthy churches aren't going to ask that question.

>> Loren (21:33):
Right.

>> Chad (21:34):
Churches that are worried about things are going to ask that question.
And what I appreciate it is, is
vitality does not exist on a linear spectrum.
Church can fall all over this grid. I mean I've had,
I've seen some really, really unhealthy churches
absolutely, like justify being in the sustainable
category for one of those poor categories.

(21:54):
And so it just
so much of how I do development and with not just this
book, with the books that are coming out later on in the year it's about
eliminating the anxiety behind people. They have stuff to
work on and let's get to kind of tangible, tactical
things, uh, that are easy to do.
And if somebody's familiar with adaptive technical

(22:14):
paradigm, um, is break this down
into technical skills because 9 times out of 10 getting from
unstable to stable is absolutely technical.
You don't have to hit the tough stuff necessarily.

>> Loren (22:29):
Yeah.
I think what was most interesting to me about your
matrix is that I think most
people would just automatically assume like a big church is a,
is a great church, is a healthy church
and a small church is not a healthy church.

>> Chad (22:45):
Yeah.

>> Loren (22:45):
Talk through how your matrix kind of flips those narratives.

>> Chad (22:48):
Yeah, so that's a, that's, that's a passion of mine.
Um, um, you know the last, the last church I served at my little
tiny preaching assignment, quartertime appointment,
uh, 17 people on a Sunday
morning would uh,
score pretty well on the vitality matrix. Now
the, the congregational engagement and the

(23:09):
evangelism stuff like ah, they, they're not very, doing very good
at that. Like they had four years of money in the bank
and now you might say a church of 16 or 18 people,
isn't that uh, that effective?
Well, they're in a, they're in a municipality of like
1500 people.

>> Loren (23:24):
Yeah.

>> Chad (23:25):
So like in the book I talk a little bit about missional saturation.
Like their missional saturation number was higher than
average for Louisiana. Um, whereas
like I had a, and I doubt anybody's going to hear
it from there, but like I had an incident at my dad's
church two years ago where I, I showed up to a men's ministry
event that was going to be like a multi, like multi week thing.

(23:46):
And uh, I signed up, paid my $20.
Nobody knew who I was. I've not been here in 25 years.
Gave him my, my tech, my phone number for text messages, all this kind
of stuff. I never showed up again because it was at 5 o' clock on Friday mornings and
I'm not going to do that. And I never heard back,
like, never heard anything. It was like wow, like
y' all are a really, really big church. But I

(24:09):
mean apparently Yalls new person
systems aren't good enough to catch. Hey, why this person?
I mean this, there's 300 guys there. I mean this
is larger than 95 of the church, the
Methodist churches in Louisiana.

>> Loren (24:22):
Right.

>> Chad (24:22):
Uh, and so, and you know, other times like we've, I've got a church,
I'm working with some right now that 20 years ago was 1800
people. And it's now like 70.
And so that's it really. I mean, you can have a
really, really healthy small church that terribly,
you know, and we're not talking about morals or anything like
that. We're talking about just operations.

>> Loren (24:42):
Right.

>> Chad (24:43):
Can be really unhealthy. And I think with bigger
churches especially, one of the big issues is,
um, like I've got this kind of quick
description. I'll say there's three kinds of churches that grow. There's the
big church down the street, there's the intentionally
evangelistic church, and there's the church that has to grow or it's going to
die. One of the difficulties of the big church down
the street is just the churn. I mean, they're going to see, they're, they're

(25:06):
a tractor beam for the community. They see
so many new people. They can actually do a really bad
job at integration.

>> Loren (25:14):
Right.

>> Chad (25:14):
But just the law of, the law of ratios is going to keep them ahead
of the curve, if that makes sense.

>> Loren (25:20):
Yeah, yeah.

>> Chad (25:21):
Uh, it really is. It's not healthy.
Has nothing to do with size. But there's things that you can
measure to understand this. I'll talk about.

>> Loren (25:31):
Yeah, I'm m glad you make that point about the three kind of churches that will grow.
Um, yeah,
I think it was McIntosh. Gary
McIntosh. Have you read him? He talks about like,
this has been a number of years ago, but he talks
similarly. A church based
on its ratio against versus

(25:54):
other churches in the society are going to have that much
bigger of a, uh. Magnetism.

>> Chad (25:58):
Yes.

>> Loren (26:00):
So it's like you say, like folks are going to keep
coming just because of the gravitational pull to some
churches.

>> Chad (26:07):
I understand some of that because my, the, the town I
pastored in for almost 15 years in North
Louisiana, Monroe, West Monroe. Most people would
recognize it because, uh, Duck Dynasty
was in west. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, we'll make, we'll make the same noises. Um, but like
the population of those two, those two cities combined

(26:28):
is like 65,000. But West
Monroe, the other side of the river than I ever lived,
15,000, 20,000. And they had
probably three or four churches that averaged over
1500 on a Sunday morning.

>> Loren (26:40):
Wow.

>> Chad (26:41):
Uh, I mean, it's a, the religious landscape of that area is really
interesting. Um, and you got this magnetism
like that. You know, certain churches are going to, they get to a point
where they're just a tractor being for people who
randomly decide I'm going to start going to church. Well, I'm going to go to the
giant one I drive by all the time that has billboards
all over town, just name recognition. Um, that,

(27:01):
that's a very real thing. And uh, I talk,
I, I, some, I talk about what I call
hard edge churches versus soft edge churches.
And you know that large churches are typically pretty
hard edged. Um, you know,
you're going to get the same experience
at two or three of them that you can get anywhere else. They're

(27:22):
going to sing the same songs. They're reading this.

>> Loren (27:24):
Yeah.

>> Chad (27:25):
For people. They're, they all have
like, they, they, they, they all have the big signs out front. Hey,
great to see you here. This generic, not a
negative sense, but like it's fairly generic.

>> Loren (27:36):
Right.

>> Chad (27:36):
Um, and those types of those churches as
hard aged churches like that, um, it can be really
difficult if you're in a solid, smaller local
church and you're struggling because
uh, you're just wondering where are people
and why aren't they coming to our church? And it has nothing to do
with you being good or bad at stuff.

>> Loren (27:58):
I think this gets into another point you
make in the book that I thought was excellent. I want to see if I can find the quote
here. You talk about critical mass. You
say critical mass is having the right size of people for your ministry,
uh, approach to be useful and compelling. Attempting to be too big
of a ministry is awkward and exhausting. Leverage
your normal sized church, uh, leverage

(28:19):
your normal sized church attributes. So if you have five, seven
children, don't like make an entire wing and said,
what is the appropriate ministry we can do with five, seven
children. That might not get done in a larger setting
because it goes back to this point about that
magnetism of the big church, like small
churches. I'm sure you've seen this. Like I have. It's like, oh, we
need to replicate what they have. And you say,

(28:41):
like make sure your ministry is right sized
to your ministry context.

>> Chad (28:48):
Yeah, yeah. So it's, I mean it,
it's, I think that we have this tension
point that if,
if all churches saying, and I love how we're
pulling into this piece,
um, you know, they're going to
think, okay, we can't have youth ministry

(29:09):
unless we have the same type of youth ministry that the big
church down the street does. But
you know, a, you don't have the resources and the ability to
do that. But then also like you might be
able to do things that that big church down the street would
love to be able to do in a relational level, in
a relational dynamic. And, and to,

(29:29):
to, to M. Ms. M. That is missing a
huge opportunity. So Instead you, you need
to scale up. Like, hey, um, I got talk about
percentage based based metrics. Uh, a lot in the book
is, you know, hey, we're a church of 30.
You know, having five middle school and high
schoolers in a church of 30 is actually a really solid

(29:50):
number. So what do we do to have great
ministry for five middle
or high schoolers rather than feeling
like we're doing a bad job because we don't have 70
that the church down the street has, but The Church of Seventy, the church
that has 70 down the street is running like
600 on Sunday morning. And at

(30:10):
that size, you know, 70 might not even be the healthiest thing for them.

>> Loren (30:17):
Yeah, I think that's a great point, and I'm glad you put that in the
book.
I think this gets to another point of being an
awareness of your data. You write about how
it's impersonal not to track data, which again, I think
maybe, uh, maybe in my neck of the woods, this
is, you know, something,
something that mainliners are more comfortable with than your

(30:38):
neck of the woods. But, um, talk
about why tracking data on people
is helpful and meaningful. Really.

>> Chad (30:47):
Yeah. So, you know, I'm noticing that
data is this thing that,
you know, we don't, we don't talk about it enough. And when
we do talk about it, we feel really icky
about it. And in some ways, I think the
way that the mainline church deals with data,
um, it, it might be indicative

(31:08):
of the larger decline that we
have experienced over the last 30 or 40 years.
And I kind of make this tongue in cheek joke about it to,
to explain, you know, what happened is, is,
um, you know, if you're Catholic, you want people to know that you're not
Protestant. And if you're in the mainline, you
often want people to know you're not Baptist. And if

(31:29):
you're right, you want people to know you're not Pentecostal.
And if you're Pentecostal, you want everybody to know you are
Pentecostal. And I've been in all four of those kinds
of churches, so I can say that. Um, but anyway, like, you know,
for.

>> Loren (31:40):
I mean, I think the only way it's changed now is mainliners
want people to know they're not evangelical.

>> Chad (31:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And I'm in the Deep South. When you say
Baptist, everybody knows you're talking about. But okay, sure, I've
shared that with folks in different parts of the country. They say that exact
same thing.

>> Loren (31:55):
Right.

>> Chad (31:55):
When in reality, you know, they're. There are
theological differences between those four spectrums.

>> Loren (32:01):
Mhm.

>> Chad (32:02):
But as far as the congregations operationally or
organized in a healthy way, that's not a theological issue.
And I do feel like there's a lot of stuff that
the main line just missed in the
last 10 or 15 years that we
don't do because that's what the Baptists or the
evangelicals do. I was digging around

(32:22):
earlier today. I was going through, um, I
found this tiny little green 3 by 5 index
card that was put out by the,
the Methodist Church, so 1939 to
1968. And it was literally like you could order
a block of a thousand of these things and create a 3 by
5 index card church database.

>> Loren (32:42):
Wow.

>> Chad (32:43):
And I've cleaned out a lot of closed churches. Whenever I go
into a church, I'm just, I'm um, I've never seen
this before. And one of the things I got
talk about in the book a lot, um, is like you need
a church database. You need a modern church database because it's, it's,
it is a ministry tool. And
the amount of larger

(33:03):
mainline churches. So in the main line, a church
of 200 is considered a large church. They really
don't anything like. It blows my mind.
And I get that numbers are icky and people are
trying to make this case. And I saved two articles this morning
for people talking about how
to uh, uh, why does

(33:23):
Sunday morning attendance matter or anything?
And we're still inside. Hey, every, those are people a,
like Jesus calls us to go reach people. Uh, we
need to be good stewards of what we have been given.
And if we're not really good stewards of people, there might
be, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's
complications that are there. And then

(33:43):
also something I didn't talk about in the book that much. Um, I'm
talking about a lot. My next book is, you know, for me, Sunday morning
worship attendance is not the end all be
all metric. But what it's very helpful for
is if you imagine back into old cartoons, you had
the old timey surveyors,
we like pounded the big stake in the ground and then pulled the chain off

(34:03):
to measure against. For me,
there's no better measurement stake
than Sunday morning worship attendance. And it's helpful
to have that to understand. Oh, how are you doing
in your discipleship ministries? Like I talk about in the book
a lot, like what are healthy percentages based on your church?
Um, it's like I talked about earlier, like, you know, for a church of

(34:25):
35, middle school and high schoolers is a
solid number to have, you know, measuring those sorts
of things. And so I think ultimately we have to care about people and if we
care about our churches. Um, you know, this isn't about,
you know, bragging rights or anything. It's about
sustainability. Like, you have to have people in the church
to keep the building open. And a lot of, A lot of

(34:45):
the thrust of this book and the conversations I've had with people
about it is, um, like this
book is written for people that are nervous their church is about to have to
close.
And what can we do to get you stable?
I really don't talk that much in the book about moving
from stable to vital or hardly at all from

(35:05):
vitals to sustainable. Like, I really try to focus the book
of, of what does it mean to move from unstable to state.

>> Loren (35:12):
Hmm. Yeah.
Do you want to talk, do you want to talk a little bit through that? A little bit
here? Just what are some of those first key steps
from moving from
stable or. I'm sorry, I'm saying it backwards. Say it how you
say it again.

>> Chad (35:28):
Yeah, to move from unstable to stable.
Yeah.
So, um, so, so it with the book. Like, this is
a, this is a resourcing thing for me. I'm passionate about
resourcing pastors. I give away a
pretty, you know, solid amount of, uh, some
free digital tools. And you get the book, you can get, you know, your
own one, uh, page.

(35:50):
Uh, you know, pass the, pass the sheet out,
you know, sit down with your leadership and say, hey, just kind of curious, like, where
does this go? Look, uh, through the one, the one page
sheet. I offer a more complicated solution to it that I
honestly think is too complicated. Just go for the one page
solution. Do the one page thing. Nine times out of
ten, what I find is a couple of
things. Uh, one, very rarely are these churches,

(36:12):
so the objective metric measurements, like, they're not,
they're not doing that at all. I just kind of have
to help you establish a baseline. You want to understand a
baseline? Also give away a, uh, an
Excel spreadsheet that's a metric calculator
that has a lot of these percentage pieces built in. So,
hey, let's go in, let's fill in our Sunday attendance. Let's

(36:32):
fill in. How many visitors do we have this month? How many
kids do we have? How many youth? How many adults
in discipleship? How many people serving, how many. How many people
giving? And it spits out
automatically for you, these, those percentages.
Um, I've never worked with a church that's
struggling That I might. That's in the vital or

(36:52):
sustainable category for metric measurement.
And very rarely are they even in the stable category.
And so I think that is just. So it kind of circles back
with the last piece. Like what do we do about data? It's like this is,
this is the beginning point because it helps you set goals
and to keep goal setting, percentage based thing. I also
think congregational engagement, that first core category.

(37:15):
And um, it's almost like a cousin with the
member, the ministry opportunities as well.
Because that's where the discipleship stuff really goes into. It
is a lot of churches and I found it mainline
churches. And it might. This might be another one of those, hey, we're not
evangelical. Is no
discipleship and relationships are huge.

(37:36):
And a lot of times what I'm finding out is even the internal
piece of the church is not
doing that well for those who are not maybe in
the immediate like first couple of circles of
involvement. So outside of your like
leadership team and the people that are there every single
Sunday no matter what, a lot of times that
outer edge is there

(37:58):
barely. Um, I think I talk
about in the book how we found in Louisiana, so many of our churches are
actually significantly larger than they are on Sunday
morning. And it's that gap
between like, uh, the little. The little last church I
served, I loved, I learned. Uh, so much of that church is built into these books
I'm writing right now. No, they ran 18 or 19 on Sunday

(38:18):
morning, I think when I was there. And I did
kind of like a really analog
idea of capturing their active adults.
And there's over 40. And I was like, y', all half of the
church is not actually that active in the
church. Yeah, like we could grow our attendance.
Like we could beat where they were in 2019 if we

(38:40):
just engage the people that already call this their church.

>> Loren (38:43):
Right.

>> Chad (38:44):
And so that, that's the stuff I think is really, uh, that's what I see
changes the most because like you get that kind of stuff under control.
A lot of times your financial reality is going
to begin increasing. People, uh, are gonna be
excited about what's going on at the church. They're gonna start inviting their friends.
You're gonna have to figure out what to do with new people
because new people are coming. It's really
that, that core category of, you know,

(39:06):
the, the member care and relationships,
congregational engagement, objective metric
measurements that seem to be the biggest game changers.

>> Loren (39:17):
Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that again. I'm thinking, uh, I think this is
Tom Rainier, or maybe he just says it someone else says it like
it's the cliche, like what you measure grows.
Right?

>> Chad (39:26):
Yeah, yeah. There's so many versions of that. Yeah.

>> Loren (39:29):
Right. So I think it's important just to,
to have some sense of what you're keeping track of. So I'm glad you're
mentioning that.

>> Chad (39:36):
And with that, if you're not measuring anything, then nothing's probably
growing.

>> Loren (39:41):
Right.

>> Chad (39:41):
Because I mean I don't.
So, so, so you were part of the doc for a long time,
right?

>> Loren (39:46):
Right.

>> Chad (39:47):
You all had to submit an annual report, right?

>> Loren (39:50):
Mhm.

>> Chad (39:51):
I think a lot of times in the Main Line most people don't look at
these numbers until they do their yearly report.

>> Loren (39:57):
Right. I could see that.

>> Chad (39:59):
And then depending on your structure,
you don't have an easy way to pull out
multiple years of those same things.
Um, the United Methodist Church has a tool called um, um
data.org and it's not been updated in a couple of years. It takes a few
years to get updated. But I've never. But you can, you
can find out a handful of key information points on every single United

(40:21):
Methodist Church in the country. I've not found one of those for
other mainline denominations. I've looked for them but I've
not found them.

>> Loren (40:28):
Um, yeah,
the Episcopal Church has really good data I think
the UCC I think has been pretty
good about data keeping. But I know like the
doc, we're using a lot of like slang here for our
non mainline friends.

>> Chad (40:43):
Yeah.

>> Loren (40:44):
But the doc has not been great about data
collection historically.

>> Chad (40:48):
And what I've seen is, you know, a lot of the mainline is good
at uh, good at keeping this stuff. But for
any random person to access it in an
accessible way and to pull back, oh sure, that's what you
can't find. And a lot of
churches don't even realize, hey, let's look at our worst attendance for
the last 10 years. Like what can we tell?

>> Loren (41:08):
Right.

>> Chad (41:09):
Sunday school attendance, like that's the thing, it's not necessarily worth it. Let's
look at Sunday school, let's look at giving units like
these sort of data points and let's, let's look at these and
not just look at them in a 10 year pullback. But hey,
let's look at these things every month
and realize when we might have a problem
45 days after the problem happened. Not

(41:32):
10 months or five years.

>> Loren (41:37):
Yeah, yeah. Because even
doing like a 10 year survey of giving
and attendance and some of those more basic metrics, you
can be like. Because you know, I think uh,
what often Happens, Right. Chad, you've probably seen this is like,
you know, you lose a few people
last year and the year before and the year before. And you know, what was

(41:58):
a congregation? You know, it's like
the Baptist church that I grew up in. Right.
Was when I was a teenager, like 120, 125,
like the kind of classic mid sized church. And now it's like
60, 65. And it's nothing like dramatic. It's just kind
of this slow. Lose a
few people here and there and if you're not really paying attention,

(42:19):
it's like, whoa, what happened? But if you're
not, if you don't look at that, it's just kind of like, oh
yeah, we're smaller than we used to be.

>> Chad (42:28):
Right? Yeah, yeah.
And it's. And it's, you know, Covid. Yeah, Covid
happened. Um, as a data nerd,
Covid's actually fascinating to me because it was a giant reset
button for every church in the country.
M. But. But also
just
uh,

(42:50):
you know, realizing what does it mean
to be able to accurately kind of say where you're
at? Does seem.
And then also like one of the things like you just brought up, like, you know,
like now I've got, I have like a fourth layer
down from this that we use in Louisiana.
Uh, we'll go. Okay, how many? Because we have to report all this. I can find it. I

(43:12):
don't have to call a pastor to get this information. I can get it in our yearly, uh,
reports. Uh, okay. How many deaths do they have?
Okay, well, hey, your worship declined by 12 people
last year, but the pastor buried 20 people.

>> Loren (43:25):
Right.

>> Chad (43:26):
Uh, so. So learning to look at those third and fourth.
Fourth layer things really, really matters a lot.
If you're in this situation, you're trying to get a clear picture of
what's actually going on.
Yeah.

>> Loren (43:38):
I'm glad you, I'm glad you brought the desk because that's one. Like,
again, like you could be working your butt off,
uh, you know, being very intentional about evangelism, to use your
word. But if you're not, you know, if you're burying like you
said, 20, 30 people a year, like, that's a hard,
you know.

>> Chad (43:55):
Yeah. Yeah. And what's is me as a
denominational officer now, I feel it's my responsibility
to beat that drum when other people start asking. M like, yeah, okay, yeah, they
decline. Let's look at me deaths they had.

>> Loren (44:06):
Mhm.

>> Chad (44:06):
Because like we've got a church in our conference that's doing
fantastic that you
Know, even before COVID
was declining pretty significantly.
But you got me funerals, they had a year, and
then you have new members they took in, and they
were always outpaced. They could never outpace

(44:27):
the deaths with new members. And
we're talking a church that dealt with a lot of these every
year. And what's so interesting is,
um, I saw Ryan Berge do
something similar with one of the Lutheran denominations. But
I started tracking, uh, for churches that I
knew had been declining prior to Covid, I

(44:47):
tracked their average decline rate from
like2013
or 14 to 2020 and came up with an
aggregate like they were declining 8% a year.
And so I ran looking at their 2019
attendance. Okay, let's do an 8% decline
all the way to 2024. And then I, uh, made another
curve of their actual attendance starting in 2020.

(45:09):
And what's so funny is I'm finding a handful of churches that
the COVID reset actually helped the church. And they
are larger now than where they statistically
might have been if they continue the same.

>> Loren (45:21):
Interesting.
Yeah, interesting. Covid really
was a, really was a turning point here for so many
churches, uh, in some good and bad ways, I
suppose.
I do want to ask you before we take a break, this is kind of off
topic, but you talk about it briefly in the book
and I feel like it's such an interesting

(45:42):
thing that I want to hear, hear more about it. You talk about
ministries of Mercy and Justice vs
Ministries of Mission and evangelism in
mainline churches. So do you want to talk a little bit about that
here?

>> Chad (45:54):
Uh, yeah, I'll try to do it a little bit.
Um, so really what that came from was
me thinking we've kind of,
we. We use all four of those words almost for the
same thing sometimes.
Or like, I'll have churches, hey, we do tons of ministries of mercy and
just. But no justice. But nobody ever comes to church.

(46:14):
And you'll have sometimes, well meaning, more seasoned
saints, like, let's shut down the food pantry, because none of those
folks ever come to church. And so we have this
weird, like, put together of all of them.
And what I've been thinking about a lot lately, and
a lot of this comes from the work of Leslie Newbegin, is
this idea that m. The mission of the church

(46:36):
is the very distinct call we're
given in Matthew 28.
This is what we are called to do, and that
evangelism, mercy
and justice are all three separate
enterprises in relationship to the expanding
kingdom of God, and that we perhaps

(46:57):
need to think of all four of those as separate things
again, inside of their specific place.
So, like, I think I have a quote in the book. Don't be a community center. Be a
church. Like, yeah, you're a church.
I, I used to have a mentor pastor that would always say
this was a very justice oriented church in
a really bad neighborhood in a major city. We

(47:17):
had tons of this kind of stuff. But he'd always say, y' all remember the
church of Satan can have a coat drive.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hey, no, be in the church.
Like you're different. You're the only uniquely
different entity inside of humanity.

>> Loren (47:36):
Well, this is good conversation. Uh, let's take
a quick break. The book is again, is your
church healthy? So I guess you can get on Amazon,
right?

>> Chad (47:45):
Yep. It's the only place that's available is Amazon.

>> Loren (47:48):
So, yeah, only places available. Okay. I
guess, I guess I'm kind of at a word, uh, out of order
here. Let's plug that later. But you know, my kid is, uh, if you
can't tell, uh, hungry.

>> Chad (47:58):
Bagel. Uh, bagel pretty bad.

>> Loren (48:00):
He wants a bagel. Let's take
a quick break and we'll come back with some closing questions.
All right, we're back with Reverend Chad Brooks and. Ah,
Chad, some closing questions. You can take these as seriously
or not as you'd like to. If you're pumped for a
day. What does that day look like for you?

>> Chad (48:19):
Okay, this is a. That was a wild one, man. I like that.
Um, so as if I'm going to pretend that I
am a theological Wesleyan Pope.

>> Loren (48:28):
Okay. Um, okay.

>> Chad (48:32):
Methodism took the bank, took the class meetings
out of the requirements and measurements for local church in the
1930s. The band meetings never
really kicked on that hard in America.
That was a lot of. That was a British
phenomena. I would put the band and the class
meetings back at the forefront of the operation of the church.

>> Loren (48:53):
Okay. Yeah.
Okay. How about this? A theologian or
historical Christian figure you'd want to meet or bring back
to life.

>> Chad (49:04):
I would love to sit down and meet AW
Tozer, because the further I get away
from my 20s, the more I realize how much of a theological
influence he was on my life. I also fully expected
that he would chastise me deeply
about things, but I would still. Yeah, I just
that, you know, he, he seemed to bridge the gap

(49:25):
between so many different theological spectrums. No,
he. You couldn't pick it down as a
Calvinist or an Arminianist. Um, you know,
he wasn't evangelical, he wasn't
fundamentalist. He wasn't in that
kind of era, a classic liberal.
I mean you couldn't peg the guy down,
um, and just

(49:48):
I continue to read him like crazy fine
sermons, that kind of stuff. I would love to have a sit
down with Aw tozer.

>> Loren (49:58):
That's good.
What do you think history will remember from our current time and
place?

>> Chad (50:02):
I think that at this point I think what's important because I
know, I love how you, your emphasis on the future church.
I think that if we look at all of the issues of the
last 20, 30 years,
that we have a little bit of,
uh, false pride that we are the end all, be

(50:23):
all of things. And I think
that what the future, I think will remember about
us is that we're actually on the cusp of something
that's probably going to take a couple of hundred years to sort
out.

>> Loren (50:37):
Yeah.

>> Chad (50:38):
And that, that we are still in the
infancy stages of how people are
going to talk about that era.
And I try to remember that to not get too,
you know, spun up over things and to
try to always be, you know, very generous
and to, to be able to live in multiple places with

(50:59):
multiple groups of people and that sort of thing thinking
that like, you know, I, I, I don't, I don't want to be
arrogant and feel like we're, I'm going to figure everything
out, that this is just the beginning of something
that will take a very long time to sort
out.

>> Loren (51:16):
Yeah, that's a good answer. I appreciate that.
Um, what are your hopes for the future of Christianity?

>> Chad (51:22):
I think it's important for us to realize that we are always called
to be at the margins and that
uh, you know, the, the last
few hundred years, you know, of Christendom
was really this attempt to put Christianity as like the
governing dynamic of the entire Western social
order. Uh, uh, I'm a, I'm a big Charles

(51:42):
Taylor fan and we just look at, at how
post Reformation, really, before the
Reformation, but especially post Reformation, like the various strains
of church were trying to do civic work.
Um, you know, we have to deal with that
tension, it not being at the center of all things. I talked about the
last one. Big, uh, Augustine fan, City of

(52:03):
God. Uh, the book that made me fall in love with City of
God was Baptists. Ah. A weird Baptist From
Baylor about 20 years ago named Barry Harvey wrote a book
called Another City. Uh, that
really goes into that stuff as well. I think we also,
uh, for, and this might be kind of a combination of the last of
both these last two questions. You know, it's been almost

(52:23):
a thousand Years since the center of world Christianity has not been
in the West.

>> Loren (52:28):
Yeah.

>> Chad (52:29):
And for, for us to, you know, back that kind of arrogant
piece. It's like, you know, hey, you know, the global
Pentecostal movement, South America, Africa
and Asia is doing, I mean, massive things.
I think. I'm not a missiologist, but friends, uh, that
are. And I think I want to say, I heard even when say like
for the first time also, we don't have just one global

(52:49):
center of Christianity. We've got
several of them and none of them are
white. None of them
are in the west or in the Western, uh,
in the Northern hemisphere. You know, you got some that are
down in South America. I just think it's, it's important
for us to realize that we're not the end all, be all and that, you

(53:10):
know, the hopes of the future church is that we, we
become comfortable at the margins again because
we realize that's what we're called to be.

>> Loren (53:18):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is great. I
really appreciate your conversation, your perspectives.
Share how I kind of blew it already, but
share how folks can connect with you. Get a copy of the book, all.

>> Chad (53:30):
That so you can get the book on Amazon. It's the only place it is.
Did uh, it through Amazon KDP Publishing, which sidebar.
I think everybody should self publish right now. I love
it. Uh, you think you need to do it? Um, um, yeah,
I feel like we.

>> Loren (53:43):
Should have talked about that for the episode but.

>> Chad (53:45):
Well, we can do that but later on. But
um, you know, I'm everywhere at Rev Chad
Bru, so all the socials. If I have an
account that's under Rev Chad Brooks,
um, I really don't do this kind of stuff on Facebook.
Uh, but you know, Twitter or substack. I
will have this kind of conversation with folks all day long.

(54:06):
I um, really badly Manage Rev Chad
Brooks.com like it's their
but it's not as good as it should be. And so you
know, find me, find me on Twitter, find me on substack, uh, or
YouTube @revchadbrooks.

>> Loren (54:20):
Awesome. Well, really appreciate the conversation.
Want to recommend the book to folks and uh,
yeah, I mean I really think like your tool is
a really helpful tool for churches to consider
and evaluate themselves from.
I think like you said, many churches are going to be
pleasantly surprised where they land and
find some real opportunities for themselves in a

(54:43):
way that's sustainable and practical.
So thanks for the conversation.

>> Chad (54:48):
Thank you so much.

>> Loren (54:49):
Appreciate the book.

>> Chad (54:49):
Uh, I will say this, it's the first of four
that are coming out in the next year that are all
in the same vein. Um, I'm finishing up the rough draft
on the next one probably in the next week and a half and it's
called establishing a growth game plan and
so awesome. I kind of live and breathe normal sized
church health and so.

>> Loren (55:08):
Okay, we'll have to do it again then.

>> Chad (55:10):
Yeah.

>> Loren (55:11):
Yeah. Well, uh, we always leave folks with the word of peace, so may
God's peace be with you.

>> Chad (55:15):
Thanks so much.
Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian Podcast.
The Future Christian Podcast is produced by Resonate
Media. We love to hear from our listeners with questions,
comments, comments and ideas for future episodes.

(55:35):
Visit our
website@future-christian.com and
find the Connect with Us form at the bottom of the
page to get in touch with Martha or Loren.
But before you go, do us a favor, subscribe to
the POD to leave a review. It really helps us get
this out to more people.

>> Loren (55:52):
Thanks.

>> Chad (55:52):
And go in PE.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.