EP081: Craig Whitney & Moving Beyond the Church Service Business

Episode 81 of the Church at Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. Jeff here. I am really excited about this episode. Been waiting to roll it out for y'all, but we're gonna get to that here in a little bit.

Here at Stadia, we are rolling out some cohorts to help churches like yours figure out how to do church digitally. Remember, digitally it's a combination between physical and digital. And COVID wrapping up, maybe we're starting to head back to the building. Physical services are starting to happen, and which really fascinates in this season, y'all, that staff that's been so focused on online is now starting to focus back on the building. And the online pastors like, "Hey, what about me? What about me? What's happening?" Or maybe there's not even an online pastor. The church is just abandoning all these lessons that we learned in this COVID season, going back to the old normal instead of what the next normal should be.

And this is what we at Stadia here with our digital cohorts are wanting to talk through and help organizations, churches just like yours, figure out how to do church digitally, physically and digitally. Ultimately to the purpose of getting churches that thrive, grow, and multiply us, even multiply in this post-COVID season.

So we've, man, we've been taking churches where we got about 70 churches rolling through this, and in August we're gonna start this next batch of cohorts. Would love for some of the church digital audience here to jump in on some of these cohorts to check it out. The link will be in the show notes, but it's stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital. It's a three-month cohort. Information is totally on the website. We have some awesome speakers that are contributing information: Mark Venti from Church Home, Jake Randolph from Saddleback, Ben Stapley from Christ Fellowship Miami, Ray D'Armas is even contributing and talking about being an online pastor from Christ Fellowship Miami, Intentional Churches, Doug Parks, may I could start rattling off names. It's phenomenal. Jason Morris from Westside Family. You're gonna love the content of this. But more than just content, what I'm really excited about is the opportunity to help with coaching and accountability as Stadia is walking alongside the churches, not just providing you content and leaving you on your own like a conference, but coming alongside with coaching and accountability to help you thrive, grow, and multiply in the months of the cohort and even beyond. With that, so check it out: stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital.

Okay, so hey, like I said, episode 81, but AMA, we're gonna keep it in-house here talking Stadia. We've got Craig Whitney now. Craig's my boss. We get into that a little bit on the show. Craig's a great guy and I've loved working for him. He's the Vice President of Planter Development for Stadia. Basically, he's responsible for planting churches here in the US and is doing a lot with developing the planters of it. We talked a little bit about digital-only church planting. We'll talk more about that later in the coming weeks. But the core of what we wanted to talk about here is how to start a movement online. But even more than just setting aside the technic, how do you start a movement?

You see, one of the things that, and I can tell you this, maybe you're feeling this, maybe you're not, but the hardest thing for me and all of church online is discovering who these people are. When I was online pastor, I was getting tens of thousands of views a week and maybe a couple connection cards. Maybe, maybe half a dozen connection cards a week. Like a good week was maybe if I had a dozen. And that still is like less than 1% of, right around 1% of the people who are reviewing. And it's like, man, there's got to be a better way to do this.

And it was funny when I was actually on staff with Stadia and was talking with Craig after a meeting, kind of voiced this concern, and Craig's like, "Well, Jeff, you're doing it backwards." And literally when he started explaining to me what he's gonna explain in this podcast, my head exploded. Like literally, like brains know, okay, so maybe it did look a little bit like the emoji, maybe not so much. But at the end of the day, there was a phenomenal conversation, and I wanted to share this with you, Church Digital Podcast listening audience. So here we are. We've got Craig Whitney, VP of Planner Development for Stadia, also bringing in Emily Diaz, Stadia. She's one of the project managers here, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital in a conversation that I'm calling "Starting a Movement Online."

Okay, everybody, you go.

So I grew up in Northern California. My dad was a Bible College professor and then went on staff at a local church. As I got off, went off to Bible College, the guy who had been the lead pastor of that church became the director of a church planting organization. And when I was 26 years old, kind of as a mentor for me, having a conversation with him, you know, kind of a lot of the frustrations a person of that age has, he said, "Hey, have you ever thought about starting a church?" I was like, "Well, hmm, yeah, I could do that." And so that started this church planting journey for us. And I planted a church. I was 26 back, and what I kind of refer to as the dark ages of church planting when dinosaurs roamed the earth. And you know, my training for church planting was a single book. Not because that was all people wanted to offer you, it's all that existed. It's it was just crazy. We just made it up as we went. We had no idea what we were doing. And you know, great things happened. You led people of faith, remember? You know, baptizing people, people are friends today. It's awesome to be kind of the cycling. I was part of Stadia where there's people who were part of that church so we started almost 30 years ago that now are generously supporting the work of Stadia to plant more churches. And so kind of there's just this kind of you know, cool way that God brings kind of these stories and all these things around. But there's no great story to tell about this church. It didn't become a megachurch. It didn't, you know, that just, it was a pretty normal church. You know, it led people to faith. It, you know, help people restore their marriages. You know, made a difference in our community. But as a young leader, I was really ill-prepared for kind of the onslaught and realities of just day-to-day leading a church. Hit a point where just got burnt out and kind of stepped away. Actually left ministry for a while. I'm God was gracious and brought me back and got it back in the local church in ministry. And then about 13, 14 years ago now, began really had this church planting bug. I mean, had an opportunity to reengage in helping other people plant churches. Worked for another church by an organization for about seven years. But the organization I'd worked with in Northern California had eventually merged with others and become Stadia. So in some very strange, you know, grandfathered in, whatever kind of way, I'm a Stadia church planner. And so when the invitation came to join in the Stadia team, it was kind of this, you know, it feels like going home. That kind of, you know, feels like my people and my family, and I'd love to be a part of that. And so for the last five years, I've been working with Stadia, really focused on training, coaching with our church planters. Now have the opportunity to lead our Planter Development team, which is kind of a strange name, maybe doesn't really explain to people what we do. But our team is the one that really provides all of the services that Stadia has to offer to church planters in the United States. We do plant churches around the world, different strategies, different locations, but in the US, our Planter Development team is the primary team with Stadia that is doing that. And so it's a ton of fun, great team. I love working with church planters. It's a pretty good gig.

So directly, Craig is my boss, so I work underneath him. And indirectly, I guess with Emily, it's like boss of boss or something in there. So and that's that's right. Right, only yeah, yeah. So we're we're walking on eggshells at this point. I want to be very careful not to screw this up. And I'm such a scary boss. Tell you right there.

Well, the reason I wanted to do the podcast here is 'cause I really wanted to unpack a conversation that Craig and I had started, maybe a couple months ago. I think we were, it was early in the COVID season where I was consulting with a church, and enough, we've talked about this before in my past history as online pastor. There's some things that I really struggled with where we had tens of thousands of people who were watching church services online, and we really would only have two, three, five, maybe a dozen connection cards to get action on. I've got tens of thousands of people, but less than 1% are actually giving me anything to do tangible ministry with. And that just wasn't acceptable. Like, like, we need figure out ways to overcome this. And recently, I had a church tell me the story with Easter Sunday. They had half a million people watching their services online or on television, but would only action, you know, 11 connection cards. So it was more than just me as a church. There's more than just at one church. I think that's really an issue that lots of churches are struggling with today where we're doing this broadcast, but we're not effectively moving people beyond just the one hour on Sunday because they're watching in isolation. We really don't know who they are. And so this church that I was doing consulting with early in COVID season, we struggling this as well. And I was venting out a meeting with Craig right after the consult. And I was venting to Craig on it. Man, it just doesn't make sense. Like, it is, how do you solve this problem? How do we do it? And and I just like, you never, I never forget is Craig just looking at me. He's like, "Well, Jeff, you're you're doing it backwards. The goal isn't to start with the service to then get them into groups and get them serving to get them on mission. The goal," Craig, why don't you explain it? They set this up a little bit. What's what's the goal here?

Yeah, I mean, you want to get people on mission. And you want those people on mission to enter into relationship with people who, you know, are in their lives, family, friends, coworkers. You talked with Tim Silicon, our team, about the idea of the one, you know, what's your one thing? And who are the people that you do that with? And then, you know, those are the people that you're introducing to Jesus. And at some point, you know, those people then begin to become a community and begin to engage in things that church is doing. And we've just operated with kind of this, you know, that step one has to be invite people to a Sunday experience for so long that it's hard for, you know, kind of the US Church to really imagine any other way of doing it. But when you're a church planter, there is no Sunday service. And so the reality is you kind of get forced into doing it differently. You can get forced into following this different model. And so there's the sense that we have, you know, really spend a lot, I'm trying to understand and train and encourage planters to do this. And learned a lot of things along the way about what it's like when you when you start from a different place when you don't start with a Sunday service.

If you're not starting with a Sunday service, like, this is this is the part of the show where my head exploded. And this is just me coming from like 15, 20 years of multi-site church, megachurch, giga church kind of background. You know, I can remember there were seasons of my life where I would start to like wrestle with this. So I want to do maybe this thing individual, and I wanted to do these house churches and micro location. We want to grow them. But it's it was a different process. It was I was trying to push away from starting with the service, but

Starting with the individuals and it was funny because the church that I was at, they really struggled to look at it differently because it was, "No, that's not the way that we do it here." They were locked into that central kind of model with that. And so there's a lot, a lot of tension and just even realizing, "Wait, when you're starting a church plant, when you're starting a movement, yeah, you got to start with the individuals, not with the mass." Even as we're looking at birthing and doing things online and starting a movement, it was just, it was a light shed moment for me. Like it just was like there's literally a light bulb, you know, the emoji light bulb over the head. Like that was what I was feeling at that moment.

So I mean, you're coming from a church planter mindset. Some of our audiences, and what's funny is they're laughing at me right now because it's so basic in the church planting world, but it was one of those things that I just didn't capture well. Tell me this, because there are some people out there, and even as I have this conversation with churches now, you know, even just like this week a church is like, "No, there's no way, Jeff, that we can do this because it's so foreign to them because they've forgotten." So I would suggest this: you can just kind of open up the conversation here. How do you create a movement? How would a church create a movement like this? How would you start with an individual to then build off of that? Paint that picture for me.

One of the things that we minimize or don't give enough emphasis to is just the concept of movement is the significance of culture. Your movements are built on culture. They're not built on programs. Because in order to have a movement, people—so I define culture to some extent particular in this kind of like organization culture—what tells people what to do when no one's telling them what to do. You know, if you ever travel internationally and in cultures where there are just some very obvious and different things, I remember traveling to Japan. My daughter was living there. Going into a public building, getting to the door and holding the door open for, you know, the woman with the three kids coming into the store or the restaurant, I thought I was being helpful, right? That's what you do in American culture. All I was doing was creating a traffic jam because in Japanese culture, a woman's not going to enter the building first. The man enters first, and probably, you know, being a white man who was a foot taller, even probably made that even more, you know, of kind of a challenge. And so I didn't know those rules, right? Those, because that wasn't my culture.

But in a church setting, you have culture. There's things that people have learned to do even when no one's telling them what to do. And if what people have learned to do is to show up on Sunday and to give and to volunteer once a month, and then that's just kind of the things that they do, what they've forgotten how to do, what's not part of the culture, is the things that can be done individually. You know, how they live Monday through Friday, how they enter into their relationships. And in order to create movement, you have to create a culture that causes people to live that way on a daily basis, even when no one's telling them to do it, because inherently by the nature of it, they're dispersed when they're doing it.

And so, you know, if you kind of have to pull people together every time to tell them, "Hey, you should talk to your neighbor this week," or "You should have lunch with your coworker," or you know, whatever it might be, that that's never gonna work. Some of you have to instill that into a culture. And so that's really the challenge for church planters. And it's the unique thing that church planters have an opportunity to do that's so different from an established church. Church planters are creating a culture. Established churches have all kinds of dynamics, history, whatever, but they already have a culture, intentional, unintentional, you know, in understanding culture is almost always some unintended consequences of culture, but it's there. And so it really can be a radical shift to try and get a group of people who have lived a certain way—that's the culture they have—to try and get them to live differently.

And so for church planters, it's about finding people, adventurous people. Really, I mean, church planters are entrepreneurs, but really the people who join the church planting team have to be a bit brave themselves, a bit adventurous. And the ones who are most effective are the ones who are really willing to go on this new journey, learn new ways of being, new ways of doing church. And out of that really grows movement. I mean, Emily, I would say you probably have seen that in some of our church plants. Sometimes we look at programs and strategies, but I think in many ways our most effective church planters are the ones who create strong cultures.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, is that like, is anybody that comes alive, you think? For example, like a church planter that's created a strong culture that's mobilized people?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's difficult because what you're talking about, even in church planting or when you are creating a culture, this culture that you're talking about about being on mission, each individual is counterculture to even our current culture, right? In the United States, we live individualistically. And so this goes against the grain of just even our United States culture. And so I think these are people and pastors that are leading upstream. But yeah, I've seen church planters do this really effectively, and it's the ones who lead out with vision constantly, right? That are people themselves who can repeat what their church is about. Ray Hudson, who we had a conversation with, Jeff, you and I a few weeks ago, is leading out in Berkeley. And he ended up launching his church online early. And his people are living within the city, and they constantly are talking about their one. So he has said that they are a church that is for the one—there are four people who are not walking with Jesus—but their church is for that. But each of their individuals are for that. They have adopted that DNA into their own person, and they're constantly gathering together as a team and then saying, "This week I interacted with my one at the coffee shop," or "This week when I was dropping my kids off at school, I interacted with the mom of our one," or you know, they're having these interactions and these conversations, and they're life-giving and they're exciting, and it furthers the team and the church even further down on their mission because it's not just the pastor that is the one who is having these interactions and seeing transformation and people taking steps towards Jesus, but it's all the people on their teams and their teams. That's what I have seen what gets the momentum, right? When you have this team of people and there's this buzz and this excitement in the air that just naturally creates a movement forward.

Well, paint a picture for me because I mean, what you're talking about is this idea of you're creating this culture, you're creating this DNA. How does that vision get passed from a planter to the people down? Because you're not talking, you know, and one of the things Tim talked about recently was not the organizational one that's important, but also getting each individual's the ones that, and in Emily, you reference that. How do we get them to understand that one and the importance of going out and building from there?

I think Tim talked in his conversation about the importance of personal example, and I think that is probably the first and highest priority. It's really hard to get people to do something that you aren't doing yourself, to live a way that you aren't living yourself. So I think that's clear. It's kind of a first thing. I think beyond that, there's a key to inviting people into experience as opposed to kind of inviting people into training. You think about the way that Jesus trained the disciples. You know, the invitation was, "Come with me. Go do the thing that I'm doing with me." Now, along the way, yes, there was training and teaching, but most of those training and teaching moments actually followed an experience, something that happened that they experienced together but they didn't quite understand, didn't quite make sense. Or, you know, kind of like the light bulb, you know, and so then Jesus would bring some words of teaching to explain that. We have a tendency to want to do the opposite, right? We want to teach people and then hope that they would do it.

There's a book—it's old, it's probably out of print, I think I read it in college days—called "Dedication and Leadership," and it's about how the communist party trained people, kind of evangelists in their movement. And when people said, "Hey, I, you know, I want to do this," and it was in the context of London and I don't know, 40s, 50s, the first thing that they would do is give them communist tracts and send them out on a street corner. No training at all. Just like, you know, and they would just have a horrible experience. People would ask questions and they couldn't answer them and they didn't like, they didn't know what to do. And then they would come back to training and they would be like, "Tell us what to do. That was an awful experience." And so, you know, they just kept pushing, kind of pushing people beyond their comfort zone, and then almost, you know, kind of backfilling that with training. And kind of in our American or Western mindset, we just want to pump people full of information and then somehow think that they're just gonna go do the thing. But what you talked about, even despite the evidence that tells us that that almost never happens.

I just Amazoned the book "Dedication and Leadership" by Douglas Hyde. It's selling on Amazon for nine hundred and fifty-four dollars. So I'm gonna go pay for your next vacation. Show notes, saying somebody feel free to go in and spend nine hundred and fifty-four dollars on the book. I don't know, maybe he'll give it to you. Great. Hundred, yeah. Okay, so we're gonna put this guy out on the corner and he's gonna hand out communist documents, brochures, paraphernalia. He's not prepared. He's not trained. He's learning in the process. Do we use what we need to train these people as an excuse to not unleash them? Is it we need to prove that they're worthy by getting to go through a longer process before, you know, so when I talk with church planters, they're like, "Yeah, somebody's more likely to witness and bring someone to Christ earlier in their faith than later because that later never actually comes." What does that tension look like and how do you navigate that?

I don't know. I think we have probably become kind of overly concerned about orthodoxy, you know, kind of the correctness of the way things are shared. And so we've kind of perpetuated the idea by our own concerns that, you know, people had to somehow say the right words to introduce someone to Jesus. I'm incredibly grateful the church I grew up in, youth ministry, you know, this was a culture that was there. And we, as I remember as a young Christian, being empowered and trained to go and introduce other people to Jesus. And when students, other students would visit our youth group, the youth pastor didn't go visit them. My friends and I did. I can remember sitting in friends' living rooms, you know, and introducing them to Jesus. And how people say, "Yeah, I want to follow Jesus. Like, would you like it?" When you experience that, you want to go do that again. And I think the problem is, that's part of the problem, is we haven't given people that experience by the time somehow they've learned or acquired or gotten.

To a place where it somehow have the right or the privilege to go do that, they've kind of lost the excitement and enthusiasm for it, and probably very few people ever get to jump through enough hoops to get there. Kind of look at what Jesus did, you know, in the sequence of time and training the disciples, and how early it was that he's saying, "Hey, you got the spirit in you. Know, tell people and heal people." And it's crazy to our way of thinking. Like, who in their right mind would send people out to do that? For Jesus did, I love that example of, you know, when you were talking about just giving, providing people experiences, inviting them to come along. I that scripture right where Jesus goes and he calls his disciples and he just says, "Jump, you're nuts, and follow me," and they just do it. They just drop nets and they just go. And they didn't say, "Well, let me get out a list of fifty questions to check your doctrine before," or, "Let me, you know," they just went left and they followed him and they just lived life with Jesus, right, and asked questions along the way. And we have the advantage in the church planting world to really live similarly to that, right, where the church planter is calling people and saying, "Come along, let's do this thing," and people are coming along and they're doing life and having those shared experiences of ministry together.

But Craig, what would you say when with established churches who have hundreds or thousands of people, that shared experience or apprenticeship is a lot harder to achieve on that level or that scale? How do you achieve that similar culture in that environment?

Sometimes we're not very wise in the way we approach change. If you've got—I was saying, if you have hundreds of people, you don't start with the other few hundred people. You start with tens. If you have thousands of people, maybe you start with a hundred. It's unrealistic to think that you're gonna turn the whole ship all at once. And the much better strategy is say, "Let's let the ship keep going in the same direction it is, and let's find a few people that are willing to get in a little boat and go have a different kind of experience." They're gonna come back and they're going to talk about how great that was. And the next time we take the little boats, maybe there'll be two of them instead of one of them. And eventually, a whole bunch of people on the ship are gonna look around and go, "Hey, all these people are going out on these little boats and they're having a way better time than we are. Like, what is going on, right?" And then you've got a momentum to kind of turn the ship and create organizational change. But it's really a kind of a bottom-up strategy, and it's really—it's almost adopting, I think, a lot of what church planters are doing. Yet you find a few very entrepreneurial people, catalytic, who want to do something different, and you empower them and celebrate them, and the thing that they're doing begins to catch on. Wholesale organizational change in the church, in any other human organizations, almost never works well.

Let me ask this question then. If we're shifting away—if the idea of doing this backwards, if it's focusing on individuals instead of the gathering, what is the role of the gathering? So if, you know, instead of going the services, small groups, on mission, if we start on mission, the small groups have a purpose, does the big gathering have a purpose? What does this look like if we're going with this discipleship-first, disciple-making-first mentality?

I think definitely that it does. And I think when I've seen it done very well, a weekend experience is catalytic. If you think of, you know, our—I have some good friends, Bart Rendell, Doug Parks, wrote a book called "Intentional Churches." They talked about the Great Commission engine. It has three pistons, you know, the catalytic weekend or the catalytic experience, life-changing relationships, groups, transport, living, which is kind of the survey. And you can connect that to what lots of churches use, come to have these three things that they say they're about. It's biblical. There's some language nuances, but when you talk about it as an engine, there's kind of this idea of flywheel comes into effect, right? That, you know, it takes a lot of energy to get it moving, but once it gets moving, it kind of keeps itself moving and has a lot of momentum. And I think that the weekend, when seen as a catalytic element that moves people in these other areas, has the ability to really move and accelerate the flywheel.

For me, what I see is kind of where sometimes the problem starts is when Sunday, or whatever you want to call that experience, becomes the end rather than a means. When it becomes the thing—like, it is the definition of what it means to be church and to do church—rather than a thing that we do as a part of our shared mission of making disciples. And it just creates all kinds of problems. You talked about consumerism, and you just all those things in the church, they all kind of are rooted in that, seeing Sunday as an end rather than a means.

We tell church—I tell church planters, Emily will have heard me say this so many times she's probably sick of it—as a church planter, you are not going into the Sunday church service business. You are going into the people movement business. Your job as a church planter, the thing you are starting, is all about moving people from where they are to where God wants them to be. And your success is defined not by how well you do Sundays, right? If you're going into the Sunday church service business, then that would be the definition of your success. Your success is defined by how well and how many people you are able to move from where they are to where God wants them to be. And so if you really wrap your head around that, you could do Sunday and you could do it extremely well and you could have hundreds, even thousands of people showing up online, in person—I like that piece becomes somewhat irrelevant, to be honest, in this context. But you might not be moving anybody anywhere. And so is that success, right? If Sunday is the end, then it certainly looks like success. But if making disciples is the end, then that's going to look like not very successful. And so seeing Sunday as the means to accomplish what we're really about, what our mission really is, of making disciples, of helping people become who God intended them to be, doesn't take Sunday out of the equation. It just gives Sunday a different purpose, a different place in all of the activities that we share as a church.

Craig, when you talk about those three different aspects, right, of the intentional churches—they call it the Great Commission engine, right? It's the up, in, and out, yeah, church, right? A lot of times when we look at church plants or churches, there is an emphasis on one piston or another, right? It is the weekend experience and they grow to large numbers, but maybe struggle in the fact of developing individual disciples that are actually living on mission. Or it's a more missional movement, but they don't have the numbers. It seems like maybe that might be a little slower and numbers grow smaller because they're focused on each end of individual. So how do we—how do you overcome those challenges to where we those three pistons look even, and you kind of overcome those, whether the lack of making disciples in a megachurch scenario or the lack of growth in a more missional model?

The alternate, the icon of the alternatives do you describe are really a reflection of something other than Sunday becoming the end rather than a means. Community impact, issues of social justice, you know, become the end. Then you can have a group of believers who are very involved in that, and those are good biblical things that Jesus people do, but they're not the whole of the mission of the church, right? And so you've taken one piece and you've made it the end. You can, you know, make community the end. Like, "Hey, it's all about, you know, being together in close-knit relationships," and those are very transforming, can be super impactful for those people, but kind of all sense of mission, all sense of transform others. And so the overemphasis of any one of kind of those pistons or that up and out, they lead to different consequences. But what all those consequences share in common is a failure of mission. If mission is defined as making more and better disciples, and I think that's one of the challenges that we have to wrestle with—both of those things are part of the mission. We can't say, "Well, we have a lot of people, so we're making more disciples." We can't say, "Oh, you know, we only have a few people, but they're really following Jesus." Those are false dichotomies. Jesus called us to reach the whole world. We have to hold more and together intention. And we do that, then I think what you begin to realize is that these three things work together. None of them as an end, all of them are means. And if our primary metrics are how many more disciples, you know, good disciples are we making—it's maybe a little bit optimistic, but you kind of create a self-correcting system, right? Because the system's always going to come back to the core question. And if you're really asking the hard questions, at some point you're gonna realize, "Wow, what we do on Sunday is just not adequate." You know, maybe it was adequate for a different size or a different era, and our growth—that's not adequate anymore. We need to put some energy into doing that better. But you might also realize, "Wow, we put a lot of emphasis on making Sunday better, and right now what we realize is we aren't able to connect all of those people into community, and that community is so vital for life transformation." And so now we've got to give a bit of our energy there.

I think realistically, no church ever keeps all of those things in perfect balance all the time. You're always going to give a little bit of emphasis to one or the other. But if you have the right core mission and metric, again, I think you'll ask the question that causes you to give emphasis to correcting the areas that are kind of holding back your mission. I think it's when we become ideological about some of those other things, we give all of our attention to them. In essence, we kind of back ourselves into a corner. We have to prove that this is right because we've publicly declared that this thing is what's most important, you know? And we're arguing with our Christian friends about, you know, missional or incarnational or attractional, and none of that is helpful. It puts our eyes on the wrong thing. And so if we could keep the focus there, I would describe myself as kind of being model agnostic. And again, you know, Emily, you know, we work with church planters. You kind of take a lot of different approaches to the way that we do church. Stadia is not a cookie-cutter, you know, "Follow these ten steps, do this exact program," and, you know, boom, you'll get a church. Our churches don't all look alike. Oh, like, if you could visit Stadia churches across the country, sometimes I think you would be shocked. You know, it's kind of like in a family where you sometimes you meet siblings and you're like, "Wait a minute, you guys are like—you can't believe that two people go together." You would have that kind of reaction because people are living out these things in their own context with their own vision, their own ideas. What I hope that we're trying to instill in them as common is this mission of making disciples, and they're working out how to do that in their context. And that's the definition of the win, not whether your model of church is missional, incarnational...

Allah fractional to me that like I said I'm not against any of those but I'm not for any of them either you know I'm for making more and better disciples however God's equipped you to do that you know it's interesting sometimes I think the physical churches the already existing churches that say it that way they revert back to their staff as the ones who are effectively doing this right like they're they're not necessarily taking advantage of or if they're forgetting though the power of the individuals the attenders someone who's on the podcast recently called him the activators of the church recently did a conversation with another church a consulting thing and it was suggesting this idea of this backwards approach you know instead of starting with the services starting with people on mission and then building influence and growing the church that way I think was the executor kind of paused and looked and said Jeff right now we've got over a thousand people who are regularly wanting regularly attending a service online and you're telling me that that I should abandon that model and there were three of them on a zoom call and instead just focus on the three of us building that that influence and growing the department that way.

Now I'm not wasn't saying and I corrected I wasn't saying abandoned the service but also corrected this idea of yeah you're mistaking that it's I'm just talking to the three staff people who are on this zoom there's maybe fifty seventy five maybe a hundred others in your body who given the challenge could could step up and and see that so like if in the world of existing churches how do we get the Jules you suggested earlier that throw them out on the street let them go but how do we get those people going what what's that what's the catalytic thing to get them to do this?

Yeah I would probably recommend a little softer approach what Douglas I describes in his book I don't know that we need to create that much failure but I do think you've got to identify I'd go back to that you know you create that change by identifying people who are willing to go do something different you got to figure out how do we identify that what's what's the invitation and I think you know again we have this a little bit of mindset that our invitations are all designed in such a way that everyone's gonna say yes like that that's the objective and so we then make kind of the wrong invitations we're afraid to make an invitation that seems you know so audacious or so crazy that you know nine out of ten people are just gonna think we're nuts and ignore us well you know maybe that's fine because the people we really want to say yes you know are the one out of ten who are like yeah you know what I'm up for that let's go do something different I'm willing to go do something crazy and I think that plays or that works you know physical digital you know I think there's a human nature dynamic to that work with those people.

My church planning mentor had a phrase if you've been around Stata you've heard it you know that go with the goers we spend a lot of time trying to bring the laggards along to try and figure out how to get the laggards to go where do we want to go a little bit of human nature you know there's definitely some spiritual dynamics and Holy Spirit we probably have to wrestle with inside of that but we have to be ok with some few people stepping out ahead of the hole and teaching others how to do this Paul went Paul didn't even want to go to Philip I right Paul wanted to go into a like you know Paul started go planters like you know the Holy Spirit's just telling them repeatedly no no no I won't let you go start a church over there finally in a vision says because I'm trying to get you to go to this place you know Macedonia over there you know and Paul shows up and they meet this woman Lydia amongst all these women who were in this place of prayer why was like she wasn't the only woman there she was you know one of the people there but she was the goer she was the one that that heard and that listened and you know there's you maybe take a little bit of interpretation but you know a church was birthed out of Lydia's home they could have spent ten years down by the river trying to convince all of those people to join this thing they wanted to do they didn't they found the one person that was ready to go and they went and they empowered her and you know we have kind of the story of this Philippian church that was birthed it has a significant place in the New Testament it's it's really not any different you just you know sometimes we just need to go back and read the book of Acts and kind of do what they did.

Yeah it's so much truth right there what what other what other challenges would would a would a church face a church plant or a physical or excuse me either a church plant or an existing church what challenges would they face maybe thinking this way of swinging to a more balanced approach as opposed to featuring the the service as the strong I think the biggest challenge is simply letting go of what we know of what's comfortable what's familiar you know I think and I'm not maybe I shouldn't say this I think for some of our church planters in this COVID season one of the challenges is we've wondered hey are we ever going to be able to gather or we ever even gonna be able to do anything's is at some level there's this part of the vision is a self-identity of me in front of a group of people teaching them about Jesus and that's an incredibly painful thing to lose when that's the way that you have seen yourself and and been part of your dream and your vision for your life and so I M aliyou work day-to-day with church planters I you know I know there's this drive I mean you can you talk about that like this I've got to get to doing Sunday just because it's the thing I know?

Yeah I think it's built so deep into the church culture that a lot of times it is what the definition of myself as a pastor as I do I do a Sunday experience and one of the things that we talked about in this current season right of COVID is that the queen has been removed right our ability to gather on Sunday mornings to commune together to preach to worship has been removed but a lot of times from the very beginning for a church planter that's gone anyways they don't have a Sunday experience until the end of where they're trying to get in this journey right and so I think it's a learning process for those church planters of all of a sudden I I don't have this rhythm in my life that I've lived for how many ever years of being in ministry of every Sunday I wake up and I do church you don't also have the burden right of I think a lot of times pastors and church leaders that you just naturally get forced into the focus of a Sunday experience because every seven every seven days right it comes back and all of the time and the effort that goes into putting that on but as a church planter before you've officially launched that Sunday experience you don't have that pressure and so I've seen church planters struggle figuring out that new rhythm of life but then really thrive thrive in that of saying really I what you said Craig is I'm I'm in this business right too because we're about people and we're about making disciples and all of a sudden you have so much more time and energy to invest in those people that are that are around you and there's like this newfound love I think for a lot of church planters of investing in relationships investing in apprenticeship of people and walking with Jesus and then getting to see them walk towards and get it giving them roles to eventually get to a Sunday service that they launched in the end.

Yeah there was a time where I think the the hero of the church of the church was successful the hero of the church was the was the lead pastor get a dynamic person on stage people traveling I can remember even as a child I knew people that were driving you know sixty ninety minutes to come be part of the church that I was at because we just had a very dynamic pastor who was who is preaching at that in twenty twenty there's always better content there's always a better preacher I mean shoot I can pull up a podcast and listen to some of the top guys in the country just in my earbuds when I'm taking a walk and so having some of that be the draw in to to a church it's it's not as effective today as it once was the relational aspect the people aspect the on mission aspect of getting people to understand their role for evangelism and seeing in disciple making and seeing that enacted throughout their circle of influence that's where that's where people stay I think tapped in and they stay in tune because they see their part in the plan and it's more than just Craig you mentioned earlier it's more than just consuming content it's their part of God's story for the church and the church's enabling and empowering God's story in their own lives.

It's you know Larry Walker Meyer we did a podcast with him recently he's a lead pastor at a church in California as well and he mentioned this phrase of kingdom mission that a lot of times it's not some of the things that that his church does when he's empowering these people it's it's not necessarily as benefit for his church as much as it is for the kingdom and it's okay to do things for the kingdom for the church to support people as they're on kingdom mission even if it doesn't directly come back and help the church directly and so there's some fascinating nuances there it's episode sixty if I'm gonna go back and listen that podcast it was it was a good one.

What's the role you know and I hear this phrase the idea of a priesthood of all believers where you you're actually like doing maybe it's a minimal ecclesiology but there's a there's a smaller church that that's growing out of possibly something like this even my own church we're wrestling with this idea okay we've got this you know maybe a smoother movement more centralized movement that's happening here that's an equal balance of services of groups of communities and that's what's happening but we're also wrestling with this idea of maybe wrestling out and empowering some people to lead micro locations to lead house churches to do some unique things online where where they're empowered and gifted to do things like communion like baptism and and basically given the authority to do more of the biblical weight of this as opposed to maybe a pastor or someone who's more ordained doing that Craig what what what are your tensions surrounding that what does that look like and how would that fit into maybe this idea of a backwards approach of a disciple making approach?

I think it's very important I think we have a sometimes I wonder and I realize that there's a certain sense of which that is a biblical phrase but I think it's maybe not the the best way for us to understand the concept biblically you know in the Old Testament a priest had a very unique role there were things a priest could do that no one else could do access to God that a priest had that no one else had and so that gave the priest this unique place in the community in the living out of their their shared faith we come to the New Testament in on Pentecost which we just celebrated the Spirit is given equally to everyone this idea that there is one group of a person or one group of people who have an ability that nobody else has is shattered everyone now has empowered by the same pure spirit to accomplish the same work and if we understand that if we believe that then our confidence in releasing people and I think this is it is not in how well we've trained them you know it's not in how well they've you know memorized something or can you know repeat something with our confidence releasing and empower them should be based in

The recognition that the Holy Spirit is working in and through them and the same way that the Holy Spirit is working in and through us and that if there is something the Holy Spirit wants to accomplish through them, the Holy Spirit's going to accomplish that even if they don't have a clue what they're doing and even if they get the words wrong and even if they say something you'll have to edit this out of the podcast, you know, that that is actually biblically incorrect, right? It's just, I think we become so concerned about controlling all of it rather than recognizing the spirit, the presence of God in each person and asking ourselves how do we release that? How do we empower that? And there is not anyone of us who is more capable of mission, more capable of disciple making than the other.

Now again, biblically there are different gifts. Some of us have been gifted to play different roles and not everyone should sit in the seat that I sit in and I shouldn't sit in the seat that I think I get all that. But that doesn't make me better or special or different. It's just it's just unique. It's just the thing God's given me to do that I need to be faithful to in the same way that other people need to be faithful to what they've done. But it's the same spirit. That's what Paul teaches. It's the same spirit that's working in all of us. And when we hinder that, we hindered the work of the church. And so that's what needs to be released in every one.

You know, I think a lot of times when we think about disciple making, we are natural Americans, systematic minds might think, okay, well we have to build out a structure of how disciples will go out and live on mission and make disciples. And we're, you're talking about Craig, is that might look different for all people, right? Because we absolutely spirit, but each one of us, each the each of the three of us are wired intrinsically different and our bents and our passions and our voices are different.

I have the advantage of getting to work with Kansas City Underground and Rob Wagner and Bryan Johnson over the last year and a half. And this is where they are like they are right on point of really looking at individuals and helping them understand who exactly you are, how were you built, how are you wired, what are the giftings that God is giving you, and how can we utilize those things in the spirit within you to release you on mission in your life? And I think that is, that's when we get really dynamic disciples on mission, right? Is that when we say you are empowered by the spirit, right, the same that each of us have, but you're also given all of these different giftings and passions that God is giving you for a purpose to be set on fire by the spirit to go out on mission.

How is a church leader to go and take people on that process of understanding their giftings to be able to release them on mission? It's so good. It's a that's a hard challenge to write. Like, how do we how do we get started? How do we do this? So like, let me ask this question. Church plant a culture is key to all of this. I had a friend tell me once, you can control or you can grow, but you can't do both. I don't know that I agree with that to the full extent of it, but I do think it's it's an interesting challenge. And culture, as you mentioned, is really laid out throughout this where it's important to have that culture in place so that you can run, so that you can trust, so that you can release these people who are driven, who understand the culture of what you're trying to do and how the spirit leads.

Church planter already is building the culture. It's easier for, I would suggest, it's easier for a church planter to go on this road than an existing church. An existing church, there's somebody out there who's saying, okay, I'm interested in doing this. My boss is gonna think this is ridiculous. The lead pastor, there's no way that he's gonna buy into this. We need to establish that culture for the church to be healthy in that walk. Me through here. Give me a couple application points, next steps, questions to ask. How do you suggest someone who's interested in doing this in an existing church? How do they get started navigating this road?

I would suggest, and this might sound a bit like be rebellious, I mean do your job, your inner authority, but you know, just begin doing it. You know, there's probably nothing, you know, if you're a staff person at a church, there's nothing that says you can't equip people to do the work of ministry. You may have to continue to carry some things that are on your plate while you're doing that, but you know, I would really say just go do it. And I think it's the kind of thing that speaks for itself. There will be some church somewhere, some kind of broken culture somewhere, but in the vast majority of churches, if you begin equipping people and you begin releasing them and they begin making disciples, somebody's gonna notice. And rather than tell you to stop, somebody's probably gonna begin to ask the question, hey, wait a minute, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing that's different than from the rest of us doing? And how could all the rest of us be doing that?

And again, I think we have this desire to kind of fix the organization first. Now, if you're the leader of the organization, there's some difference responsibilities and role there, but if you're not, don't try and fix the organization. You know, fix yourself first, fix your own ministry first. Just just go do it. Somebody will do that and lose their job probably. I realized that that happens out there, but in the vast majority of cases, someone will take notice and some will begin to ask different questions and you can influence the organization from the bottom up. The question is, do you have the patience and the endurance to continue on that path and to really work hard at that until people notice? You know, until you can produce fruit, until people notice. And that's not going to be a quick fix. And I think that's part of the challenge of our culture. We want everything instantaneously. You know, it took Jesus three years to equip his disciples. We want to do it in three weeks and we only want to spend an hour together each week for a class, but that's not what was shown us about what this takes to accomplish.

Hey Craig, thanks for jumping on this. Definitely some things to think about as we're trying to wrestle. The thing that's resonating with me the most, and it's just, it's this idea of massive, I forget how you said it, but the massive moments don't rarely work. And so it's sometimes it's starting small and allowing it to grow. The flywheel of itself is gonna take time to develop until it gets to that self-sustaining level. Be patient with it. And run church planters starting out, you know, I'm, you know, organizations like Stadia who are holding your hand and walking through those steps with you are awesome. Existing tangible churches that are already out there, who you guys may not have that person who's giving you, you know, encouragement in that process, I'll tell you in my own life I struggled with that where you know there were one or two people that I worked with who saw the vision of what I was doing, but the majority hadn't. So hey, churches that are out there who are doing this or wanting to do this, be patient. You know, God will do something in his time. And the awesome thing is it's gonna be in his time. Trust him too to do that for you and for your organization as you're pivoting that way.

Well, Craig, as we're landing the plane here, any any questions or any any thoughts on your end? I would go back just emphasizing this. You know, if you wake up on Monday and you think you're in the Sunday church service business, write a resignation. You don't have to give it to a boss, and you know, alright, just write a resignation for yourself that says, you know what, as of today I quit being in the Sunday church service business and I'm gonna go to work today on being in the disciple making business and the people movement business. And even if I don't know how that works and I don't know how to do it, that's what I'm gonna wake up tomorrow morning thinking about doing. That mind shift more than anything else will affect everything you do in ministry.

Well, I tell you what, you've been doing a great job of getting people to resign and quit in this podcast. So if they are, if if accidentally or intentionally happened, I was about to say, you know, Stadia Church Planting dot org, and they'll be more than happy to help plan to get started on a physical or even a digital only church here coming very soon. So hey, this has been a great podcast, Craig. Man, you're an awesome boss. Thanks for being that guy. Thanks, Jeff. Love loves having you on here. Emily, once again, thank you for for joining us. For Emily, for Craig, this is Jeff at the Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on the podcast with us, and we'll see you next time, y'all. Good day.