EP183: Sam Chacko, BiVo/CoVo, and a Not So New Approach to Funding Ministry

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast, powered by Stadia Church Planting. Through this podcast, learn about how God is using technology and innovation in digital and digital environments around the world. Our goal? To help churches like yours learn to be the church digitally. Our heart? That churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple-making that will revolutionize your church. And now, your host, here's Jeff Reed. Well, we are continuing Season 2 on Strong with the Church Digital Podcast. Hey, it's Jeff here. Once again, all of this is powered by Stadia Church Planting. And Stadia Church Planting, the heart of what Stadia is, we're going to definitely get into in this episode.

By the way, here with Season 2, we are talking about change. We're talking about innovation. We're talking about people that are thinking outside of the box and are continuing to and celebrating that. And so, this podcast, this is not a new idea, to be honest, but we are seeing more and more of a trend in recent weeks and months where people are needing, are leaning on some of these ideas more today than maybe they were in the weeks and months, even pre-COVID in that season. So, here we are. We are talking about this idea of bivocational or co-vocational ministry. Essentially, making funding, making your salary, making your income not from the church. Now, established church people, you're freaking out right now because your income has most likely come from the church for your entire lifespan.

For me, as well, as I worked with established churches. But what's fascinating to me is I talk with digital-only church planters in this season. By far, the majority are interested in this bivocational, co-vocational model. Hey, Jeff, I don't want the church to make my income. I want to keep my job. I just want to do ministry outside of my job. Can you help me figure that piece out in a digital church? And so, we wanted to really start to explore more of what this bivocational or co-vocational, maybe even what are the differences between those two words and what does that look like? And so, what we wanted to do with Tira Stadia is we wanted to bring in a conversation with a bivocational planter.

And we didn't have to look very far. We found Sam Chaco. Sam's actually working with Stadia right now. He's one of the project managers that helps church planters execute and start their church. So, Sam knows the idea of church planting very well. As a matter of fact, he tells his story of how he's been planting and starting and running a church, even being bivocational for years, making his salary, supplying his living outside of the church ministry that he's doing. So, some phenomenal stories from him, a phenomenal perspective that honestly, even if you're not a church planter, don't skip this podcast. Listen to it. Establish church people. There are things that you need to take away from this conversation.

So, don't run away. Don't go listen to something else. Listen to this and find these nuggets that are going to be coming through this conversation. So, for the conversation, I'll bring in myself, Jeff with the Church Digital, of course, Stadia Church Planting, and my friend Sam Chaco from Stadia Church Planting into this conversation where we're talking about bivocational, co-vocational, and a not-so-new approach to funding ministry. Okay, everybody. Here you go. Tell me your ministry story. Yeah. So, I am son and a grandson of pastors. Moms and dads, both grandparents were pastors. Dad was a pastor. Dad was a bivocational pastor for over 40 years. He immigrated from India, worked in a factory, served in the church.

I entered into ministry not thinking I'd ever be a pastor. Serious events, that's another whole long story of Asian-American ministry context, but ended up planting a church where we were not expecting to plant a church. Thought we had 150 people to show up for launch service. We had a lot of people attacking us two weeks before, and the week that we launched, we had 20 people. So, I realized that full-time ministry was not going to be in my near future, so I continued working as an accountant for an organization called Marketplace Chaplains for the last 15 years. Led the church. The church has grown now to about 150 again, but we have over 30 ethnic groups in our church community, which is just an incredible community of faith, and I've been doing it for 10 years as a church plant.

And God has just been incredibly faithful, good there, and I've been doing bivocational the entire time. I just recently joined the staff at Stadia in June, serving as a project manager, so I get to walk alongside church planters in their church planting journey. And so, I'm excited to be here. That's awesome. Yeah, it's great to have you on the team here with Stadia and love that insight. So, your church, you've been, you launched 10 years ago, a decade ago. And so, I'm just curious. Like, how long do you consider yourself a church plant? At what point is a church plant a church? Like, what's, I work for a church planting organization, I should probably know that. Like, at what point do you become just a church?

You know, I think it's when we start getting to the point where we are getting involved in other church plants. I think other, until then, we're almost like, we're trying to grow. But I think real growth and multiplication is when you're seeing other churches come birth out of you. Our church, over the last six years, has had the opportunity to partner with seven other church plants around the world. And the unique story of our church is we have 13 people that were on leadership at our church bivocationally that have either planted or on staff at big churches now all over the U.S., all over the world. And so, really being intentional of seeing people being sent out. And so, yeah. That's awesome.

So, you've used this word bivocational two or three times. And for a lot of our audience out there, they don't know what the word means. And I'll be honest, I don't know that I even truly understood bivocational or co-vocational until I started working for Stadia. So, describe here a little bit. Help us understand, what is this bivocational? And in context with that, what is co-vocational? Yeah, I think bivocational is when you know God is calling you to serve in the local church or ministry, but at the same time, your source of income, your finances are coming through a different means. So, you're working somewhere. So, bivocational, now, the difference between bivocational, co-vocational, I've heard so many different terms.

I think the big difference I've heard is bivocational is you're doing a job that's completely different from the ministry, right? So, I'm coming from Marketplace Ministries, even though it was a ministry, I was doing, I was in the accounting department there. It was not ministry related. It was a quiet, safe place for me to rest often because ministry was exhausting. And now, I think I've transitioned more into co-vocational ministry where what I do is serving alongside the church, seeing other churches being planted while still serving my local church as well as the lead pastor. And so, I think that's, I think, the main difference between the two. But at the same, at the end of the day, both are, your income is coming from a different source other than your local church.

It's funny. I've had a friend of mine here in Miami, a mentor who's a small church pastor, honestly, probably about the same size church that what you're talking about, Sam, with yours. And he's bivo as well, where he has a job outside of the church. And this is a guy that used to be a full-time guy on church staff. And with planting this church, just said, hey, you know what? I'm going to create a second revenue stream for my life outside of the church. And he's just told me time and time again how much more fun it is doing ministry when you're able to, you know, be more free financially to help others in that instead of trying to worry about that economy strain of trying to pull and manufacture the money for your, you know, livelihood.

Did you have a ministry life before you planted the church? Like maybe talk to me a little bit here off the differences in your life of being a full-time guy versus being a bivo person and maybe how that's freeing for you as the church. So once I moved to Dallas, I had started working at a Christian counseling center and then transitioned into the accounting department. So I've always been bivocational. And we're honestly at the point today where I could be full-time at the church if I wanted. We are financially there and we've prayed about it often. God, you know, we just haven't felt like God was leading. And I think the beauty of doing the bivocational is I think even in the church, others have seen, hey, Sam is serving the church.

He's working full-time. He's taking care of his family. We can get involved as well. So the opportunity to see others come involved and join and be part and serve has been super exciting. And I think to your point of your friend who's the bivocational pastor, our church, this past year we were able to eliminate $2.5 million worth of debt in Dallas County because our folks were able to give funds to be able to do that. So people got a letter in the mail around Christmas time saying, hey, your medical debt has been completely erased. We've been able to support seven church plants. We've been able to do so many outreaches and things in the community where funds that could have gone for staffing has intentionally gone out to be a blessing in the community and the people around us where if at the size of the church we were, if I was full-time, that would have been much more limited.

But because God has given me the opportunity to work with stadiums and work with marketplace chaplains before, there was more funds available to do some of these other things that have had major impact in our community without a strain on the finance of our church for the size that we are. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be a strain economically in the future for the church. I'm even reminded 2020 was, and I don't know that I've ever said this on the podcast, but 2020 was the largest year for giving to nonprofits, donations to nonprofits in the history of the United States. Yet, you know, how much money came to the church? Churches are struggling. It's not that people don't have the money. It's that that money is not ending up in the church.

And so thinking different, you know, economical models, doing things like bivocational, co-vocational, even things like micro businesses and things like that. We've done podcasts on that previously, but love this idea of, hey, my salary, I'm not taking it from the church. I'm not a professional Christian, even to the point of, Sam, I love what you're saying. Hey, instead of me coming on full time with that salary, let's disperse more of this responsibility among others and start to raise them up to the higher level. Instead of me, you know, I've worked in positions where they've used that phrase, the professional Christian, the paid staff person, you know, is responsible for carrying all of that weight.

Now, what's interesting to me, Sam, is you've got this, I mean, you even alluded to it a little bit earlier. It's like, so you're a full time job, full time ministry, you know, and often ministry is above and beyond full time, you know, wife, kids, life, like those are a lot of plates that you're spinning. How are you managing this time? How are you, you know, not burning yourself out? Yeah, I think the best advice I got early on was, if it's important to you, you put it on the calendar, right? And so I've made sure things are blocked off. Evenings are blocked off for family. Sabbath for me is Friday from 6 till Saturday at 6. That's blocked off on the calendar. And if by chance I have to do a wedding or something on a Saturday, and I know in advance, I make sure that Sunday someone else is preaching for me at church.

So my family is not losing my time with me during that week. And so just really being intentional, really being disciplined of saying, hey, there are things that if I'm not disciplined, I will waste my time doing things that are not important, not necessary. And so just really using that calendar to my advantage of, hey, what's important, block it off, make sure that's on the calendar so that nothing else can take that place. Saturday at 6 is when your Sabbath ends. Is that when you start prepping for Sunday? I'm usually prepping during the week. And then Saturday at 6 is when I'm 6, 7 is when I'm going through sermon again, just making sure everything is set, ready to go. And usually it's not that long.

Friday nights for us is just family time. We are tech-free. I mean, we're just hanging out with the kids, watching movies, whatever, at home, but being intentional of saying, hey, that's our family time. Nothing else is going to disrupt that. I love that. Tech-free Friday nights. I may need to implement that. Sometimes my kids, I'll be confession hour here. Sometimes my kids take away my phone. They're like, daddy, you're done with this. And then they'll go hide it for a couple hours. My kids will probably do the same with me. Hey, so as you're, I mean, we talked about this. As you're distributing some of the responsibilities out to others and realizing that you have limitations, what does it look like to build a team centered around this?

Like, how do you recruit, develop, empower? What does building this team look like? Yeah, so we took the philosophy that if we tell someone, if we assign someone a role, we tell them right away, hey, you're not earning our trust when we give you this assignment. You have our trust. You can lose trust, but you don't have to earn it. Own this ministry. Own this responsibility. Run with it. My role is to make sure I'm checking in on you as often as possible to make sure you're doing well. Is there anything you need from me? And how do I help you grow, right? And so really, I invest into my key leaders, and they're investing into their team leaders, right? And I said this earlier, but in 10 years, we've been able to send off 13 different people to go either on the mission field or serve our local church, another church, or plant a church.

These are guys and girls who I've just spent time with, invested in, and then they came to a point where they're flourishing and God opened other doors for them. The analogy that I use, in Dallas, across the street from each other, there is a hospital that's almost anyone and everyone can go. It's connected to university. There's university students that are serving there. And across the street from that, there is this heart hospital. It's a specialty hospital, right? It's only the best of the best are serving there. So there's this training hospital, and there's a specialty hospital. For us, Law City has always been like a training church. You're going to come. You're going to learn. You're going to grow.

You want to learn how to preach? We'll do a preaching cohort for you. But you're going to preach on Sunday morning so that you have experience. And it doesn't matter to me if you've been in seminary or not. You're going to walk with me. We're going to learn. You're going to serve. And then maybe you end up at a specialty church. We're only the best of the best serve. But this is where we really want to see you flourish, grow, and use your opportunities. Because we're small enough where if you make mistakes, you're going to get grace. You're going to get love. But we really want to see you thrive and grow and flourish in that. So that's the analogy we've taken as a church. And we're just a training church.

God brings us people. We train them. We equip them. And we send them off. We also happen to be a mile away from a major university in the community. So we have a lot of students. And we realized years ago that they're only going to be here for a season. They're here for three, four years. And so we could either take them lightly or we could say, hey, we've got three, four years to pour into these people. Because then wherever they go, they're taking the gospel with them. And so giving them opportunities to serve, giving them opportunities to engage on the worship team or wherever they want to serve. And then when they're going, they're going. And so really being intentional on that. That's beautiful.

You know, one of the within digital churches, digital only expressions of church like Stadia, we work with digital churches. And there's with the maybe 150 conversations that I've had since I've started working with Stadia with people that are interested in planning a digital church. I would say probably 75% of those conversations are centered around some level of Bible Kobo, where they're not looking for the digital church to supply their income. Now, some are. And either way, like Stadia is helping with that. But it's interesting to me that, you know, one guy is a CTO, a chief technical officer for a Fortune 500 company who lived in Canada. And he called me up, you know, connected with me wanting to plan a digital church.

And his quote was to me was, Jeff, I'm not interested in my church paying my salary. This corporation's paying this huge salary to me. I don't want to give that up. I want to figure out how to do ministry and do my job. And what you're talking about, dispersing that out into others and building and releasing. Like, I love that attitude. I love that approach. What are the things in your church, even when I'm looking at this CTO friend, like, what are the things as a pastor that you need to keep versus maybe what are the things that people think you need to keep that you're very quick to release and let others do? Yeah. So I think, for me, vision is, that's mine, right? And that's me and the elders that are serving alongside of me that we own.

The content of what's being communicated, preached is mine. But we have said, hey, some of you, our job is not to tell you to fall in line with the vision of the church. Our job is to empower you to do the things that God's called you to do. I mean, and so we've had folks, give you an example, 10 years ago, one of the guys was like, hey, there's an apartment community right near our house, right near our church that has a ton of teenagers. I just want to go play basketball with these kids. So we just said, hey, what do you need from us? And he just said, promote it so that I can get some volunteers to come play with me. That basketball, every Thursday night, turned into a Bible study where these kids were now coming to church after basketball.

We were tutoring them in school, teaching them a Bible story, feeding them dinner. It wasn't even an idea that I came up with. It was something that someone else came up with, right? Our singles ministry was something that someone else came up with. So my role has been, man, God will give you guys ideas. Sometimes they'll work. Sometimes they'll fail. But I would rather you try something and it failed than you not try something and we never see the fruit of it, right? And so we've had a lot of things that we've said, hey, do it. Run with it. If it works, praise God. If it doesn't, at least you tried. And I mean, and so there's a risk there. There's always a risk of, oh, that failed and this failed.

Why do we even do it? But at the end of the day, we grow from that. We learn from that and people's lives are impacted and gives an opportunity for people to grow in ministry. And so for us, as long as it fits under the umbrella of the vision of the church, we will say run with it. Own it and do it. And we don't need the credit. You own it. You take it. And so it's been good to see how, with that mindset, how people are thinking ministry opportunities. How do we serve? How do we make a difference in our community? So, yeah. You know, it's interesting. One of the conversations that I've been having kind of off air with pastors, and it's really this, the church controlling versus the church releasing.

And, you know, it's what you're talking about, even with putting yourself in a bivo covo where you're not in a position to control, where you're really empowering a lot more of these volunteers and even discipling people, elevating the priesthood of all believers, giving more influence to the laity. Like, you're having to release a lot of that control that a typical church means. I don't know what typical church means, but like the average church would probably want to control that environment. But you seem to be talking about being much more open-handed with that. What does the discipleship process look like? How do you grow someone from, you know, maybe you don't know them at a personal level or they're not a Christian to a level that you know them spiritually?

Like, talk to me a little bit about that process. Yeah, I think it's, for me, I intentionally disciple our leaders and say, I'm going to invest a lot of time in you. And our leaders invest into the teams that they are responsible for. They make sure they're poured into. We've got community groups. We've got Bible studies, all opportunities for people to grow. But I've also given everyone in our church my calendar and said, hey, if you want to connect with me and you want to grow a walk, you're welcome to sign up and I'll meet with you anywhere. And we'll grow and we'll walk. So I've got several that have said, hey, I want to be discipled. And so if you're serious about discipleship, I'm committed to it.

And so we have several of our leaders that are doing that of intentionally walking one-on-one with people. And we can't force it on people. You've got to desire it. If I'm trying to force something on you and you're not wanting it, I'm wasting your time and you're wasting my time. So for me, it's always been, if you're serious about it, you've got my calendar link, sign up, let's go, let's talk, let's grow. And so it is making my time available for them, making sure our leaders know that their primary role is not the responsibilities that they have. Their primary roles are the people that have been entrusted to them to make sure they're growing and they're maturing. What types of things do you have them do to get to that point where you trust them in that discipleship process?

How do you coach them and release? What are their responsibilities? What does that look like? Yeah, I think all of our leaders, we walk alongside of them. Give you an example, nine years ago, we had a young girl come from a Buddhist background, get saved, and she wanted to grow on our walk with Jesus. She was a student at UTD studying to be teaching. And so at that point, our church was small with like five kids. So we had her responsible for kids' ministry. We said, you're going to learn a lesson, you're going to teach the kids, and then every week you're going to come to our house and you're going to spend time with us. And we're going to make sure you understand the lesson and you're growing in your walk with Jesus.

And the beauty of it was as she was learning the lesson, she started communicating those stories to her family members who were not followers of Jesus. And so just helped her to grow in her walk with Jesus. She's one of our strongest leaders in our church. And she just recently came up with a singles ministry that's thriving in our church. And so just really figuring out, hey, what are they passionate about? What do they love? And how do you involve Jesus in that conversation? How do you bring them, point them to, hey, how do you use teaching for Jesus? How do you use business for Jesus? It's not just head knowledge of, man, I can quote scriptures and verses, but how does my vocation, my life reflect Jesus?

And so walking through that, so. I love that. You know, even the idea of, you're talking about this lady who is developing ideas centered around a singles ministry. You, as a church, you weren't thinking that way. She was, and now you're empowering her to run in that direction, trusting her, developing her spiritually, and then letting her follow after some of the ideas and the callings that she may have. Like, that's beautiful. Is there, is there tensions within your, your organization? Like, you're not the full-time pastor. You're not the paid guy. Like, is there any disrespect or are there people who don't understand that? Or like, what, what are those tensions? Because you're operating atypical than what a normal lead pastor would be.

Yeah, I think the tensions are more, not necessarily on my role, as much as on the things that, hey, our church doesn't do this. So-and-so church has this program or that program. And it's more, why don't we have that? And the reality is, that's not what God's calling us to do. I mean, we have this much limited bandwidth, this much manpower, this much finances. How do we do the one or two things that we could do really, really well? And how do we do that with excellence? Instead of trying to do, copy a megachurch down the street where God's blessed them with resources and funds to do more. So I think that's where most of our attention is, is it's those kind of conversations of, why are we not doing what others are doing?

But in terms of time and space, again, I have given everyone my calendar that they know when I'm available. They know I'm bivocational. And so they know how all of our leaders are bivocational. So they have given us grace for that. And they work alongside with that. And I think, like I said earlier, the beauty of that is they have come alongside and served alongside of us as we do that. So every staff member in your church is a bivocational. So no money or no full, like any money going to people or like at a part-time level or all income is outside of the church? There's a few that we say, hey, we want to bless you. It's definitely not like, oh, you're going to be able to live off of this. They're working and we just say, hey, as a blessing from the church, we want to bless you a little bit.

But it's not significant. No. I mean, that's interesting. It's funny, even just in my own personal life right now, there's a church plant here in Miami Reality Church. And long story short, the executive pastor got COVID like a month before launch. And so I've been stepping in and helping manage that completely as a volunteer. And I'm not putting in major hours. Maybe I'm putting in more hours than I should time-wise. But I'm just helping to kind of make sure that they actually make it to launch and do vision trips and all the different major things that happen with the church before it launches. And as a matter of fact, even last night, I was 10 o'clock at night. I'm on a Zoom call with a social media director talking through some things as we're heading into launch week this week.

And I mean, it's time. It's a strain. And even in my own mind, it's a little bit of shift here of, hey, I'm not doing this to make money. I'm not doing this because of salary. I'm doing this for the kingdom. And there's even, I would suspect, at least in my own life, there's a little bit of humility that comes with that of, hey, I'm being part of something bigger. I'm being part of a team. This is not the season for me to lead out as much as it is support because that's what the organization needs. And your heart of how you're doing that and empowering others in that same way, I mean, I don't want to speak out of turn of it, but it seems really healthy. Do you, like these people that are going through this, do you experience any burnout, any fatigue?

Are they like, I can't do this. I need more money. Like, have you had those types of conversations? Not necessarily the money. More of the, hey, we're in a busy season where it's burnout. And so, and I think in those conversations, it's, hey, let's talk. Let's see what's on your plate that needs to be adjusted because you are working full time. So we're not expecting you to commit full time to the church, but we're expecting, hey, whatever you're doing, do it with excellence, right? And, yeah, I think one of the things that we do well is, and I think we can get better is we celebrate our people well. We make sure they're honored. We recognize them. All of the volunteers, they are consistently appreciated by our leadership.

They're recognized and appreciated. So they know they're part of the team. Their voice matters. So once a month, we get on a call just to do a check-in to just celebrate what's going on in their lives and to pray and then cast a little bit of vision casting. But it's really just to see, hey, how's everyone doing? And to make sure we're connected together. We're not in silos doing our own thing. Yeah, we just take time to make sure everyone's heard and listened to. As, you know, operating a church this way with yourself being Bivo, others being Bivo, what's the scary thing? What's the thing that you need to keep your eye on? Like, when would this go south? Have you experienced something like that?

What's the thing that you need to keep a watch out for? Yeah, so I think it's consistently being bivocational. There are some things that you can't do right away, but you've got to keep an eye on just to see if it's getting bigger, the crack is getting bigger to the point that, hey, you've got to address that. You've got to constantly keep your eyes on things like that, right? So, like, for our church, until recently, we haven't had conversations on membership. We were, because we were a very transient church with the students, we were just like, hey, if you're here, we're going to serve. You're going to serve. We're going to serve you. We're going to love on you. But as we grow, that's something we're just like saying, hey, this is probably something we need to address and we need to look at.

Well, we haven't addressed it for 10 years. But we're, so we're just, I mean, there's some of those things that we're just like, hey, is this something that we need to address right away? Or is this something that we can, it's on the table for later, but it's not an urgent issue right now? Because there's a lot of other, quote, unquote, urgent issues as bivocational ministry that come in front of you that, so what's important, what's not? So just constantly keeping your eyes on the things that are not important to make sure they don't become an issue. That's beautiful. Keep an eye on what's ahead. I have, in my own life, I have friends. Now, you've talked a lot about here, about from a church planting perspective, going by Vocovo.

Love that. Digital church planting, see a definite opportunity to take advantage of that, even physical church planting. I think there's going to be a, we were having this conversation within Stadia. I think probably 25% of the people we're talking with at this point, with even within physical or fidgetal church planting, what we call it at Stadia, 25% are thinking by Vocovo right out of the bat. And so there's a definite trend towards churches that are running the way that, Sam, you're a trendsetter for a decade. Who would have thought? But there's another probably group of audience that's out there that's listening to this, where maybe it's the staff member, not at a church plant, but more of an established church.

And in my own life, like I've Ray the Armist, co-host here on the show, is one of these guys that was a full-time staff guy. And with a master's degree in seminary, like he had an MDiv and he stepped out of that church staff role, even like not just even to part-time, but all the way down to now going back to school to become a medical tech because he wants to see the hospital become his mission field. The hospital is his church. I've also had friends leave and go part-time and take jobs as realtors so that they can engage more with people, not be stuck in an office building, doing managing church, but actually being on mission and connecting with people within the community. So there's this movement a little bit here in this season of moving away from that full-time staff position towards, Sam, some of the stuff I think you're talking about, where it's more of this bivo or covo type relationship.

My question would be, if I'm coming from like an established environment, what are some things that I need to be aware of? What are some challenges, obstacles that I might be facing as I'm moving away from that full-time paycheck towards something like what you're doing? I think if you're considering it, the first thing is you need to know your bandwidth. If you're not able to do both well, you're dishonoring both your church and whoever your employer is, right? And so you need to be able to say, hey, I can do both of my jobs well, do both for the glory of God. So if I'm working in an office setting, I should be able to commit to the office setting and not like sit in the office setting and do all the church work.

That's dishonoring to the people that's paying you. And so thinking through those conversations of how do I honor both of the vocations that I've been entrusted to, right? And so thinking through that, thinking through schedule, if you're asked to work 40 hours a week, can you look at your calendar and be able to plan, hey, when do I have time for sermon prep? When do I have time for rest? When do I have time for family? When am I taking my wife out for a date? I mean, those things, because if you don't plan it out, it's going to be overlooked and you're going to forget about it. And so working through that, I think working through where you are financially, are you able to transition out of a full-time job, go, and what's that strain on you?

And I think the last one is timing. Is this God's timing for you to do that? Or is there, is God saying wait, right? Like for us, we've been waiting for 10 years for God to say, okay, go full-time. And God still says wait. And so we're waiting. And so just being obedient to Jesus. And little did I know 10 years ago that God was having me do this for 10 years so I can equip and train church planters that are coming through Stadia's cohorts that are thinking about bivocational ministry and to be able to equip them and encourage them. And so there's sometimes a reason why God will allow you to go full-time. And sometimes there's a reason why God will tell you to wait. And you just got to trust God in that process.

You know, there was a time in my life where the number one goal and priority, confession hour, the number one priority of my life was to get a paycheck from a church. It probably wasn't the healthiest place of my life. But in my 20s, it wasn't, I'll just be honest, like it wasn't, the mindset wasn't ministry. The mindset was get paid. And that wasn't a healthy place. It wasn't a good place. And what you're describing, I mean, I'm in my 40s now, so maybe this was two decades ago. But now I'm looking at this and I'm like, man, this is so much healthier. This is so much stable, more stable. And as we're seeing, you know, troubles and problems within established churches, returning more to this bivocobo type of state seems to be far more effective and far more about disciple making.

And I think it's better than it does growth, you know, often growth seems to be the enemy of multiplication. And I think, you know, what you're describing here, we're seeing that in real time. One of my mentors and close friends has this saying that every pastor's idol is to get to the point where we don't need Jesus, that we would have enough people and enough money to be able to do all of our programs without depending on Jesus. And I think the beauty of bivocational ministry is there's this constant dependence on Jesus, dependence for Jesus to bring people to serve alongside of you because, you know, you can't do everything on your own. And a dependence for finances for the church so that the church could do the things that God's calling it to do.

So I think one of the beauties of bivocational ministry is there is just this dependence on Jesus that you're that's just fresh. That's just fresh and real. Okay, Sam. So I have a running gag here on the show that when I hear a quote, worthy enough of getting a tattoo and getting it tattooed on my body, I call it out. And I haven't done this in months. But that right there, what did you say? It was one of the idols of a pastor is getting to the point where they no longer need Jesus to do ministry or to that extent. That they have enough money and enough people that they don't have to depend on Jesus. No longer need to depend on on Jesus. Dang, sir. Man, I'm that that one hurt at a deep level.

And so I think we're going to we're going to end the plane on that one. I may start I may I'm I may start tearing up. You can't tell if you're listening on the podcast, but dang. Hey, as as we're landing the plane here, Sam, man, any any closing thoughts? It's been awesome, man. Any closing thoughts as we land in the plane? For those of you who are in bivocational ministry. Don't feel like God's not opening the door for you something now or you're in a season of waiting before God opens the door for you. You're exactly where God wants you to be. So trust God. Serve God fully. And if God has you there for the rest of your life, serve him there with all of your heart for the rest of your life. You're not any better, any worse than someone who's full time on staff.

You've just got to trust that what God's called you to do is different from someone else. It's not better. It's not worse. But you are going to touch people and your life is going to impact people. So just keep pouring in and be faithful with the things that God has given you. Right. At the end of the day, God's not going to look at your numbers. God's going to look at your faithfulness and your obedience. And so be faithful, be obedient and let God do the work. Well, thank you, sir. Appreciate the time, Sam. And so we'll include his information in the show notes if you have questions. But, man, have loved getting to know you better through this podcast conversation. And obviously looking forward to working with you more with Stadia and everything beyond.

Thank you, man, for just your faithfulness. Ten years, Bivo Kobo, doing the church, growing it back is a testament to who you are as a person. So, man, thanks for the time here jumping on this. Thanks, Jeff. Oh, definitely. For Sam, this is Jeff at the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Thanks for jumping on the podcast here. I want to see you next time at the show. Y'all have a good day.