Episode Transcript
And we'll take it from there. All right, here we go. I'm going to count it in three, two. Well, Jason, Allison, thanks so much for being a guest on the Revitalize My Church podcast. Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm excited. Jason, you and I have had a little bit of time together over the course of the last couple of years. We have actually, our paths kind of crossed through other mutual relationships and other people that we know more frequently than you and I actually cross paths. But I'm really excited to sit down with you today to dig in on some issues that I think are really going to be helpful for the average church pastor and those that might be listening to this podcast. But before we get into kind of the meat of our conversation today, why don't you just share a bit of your background, your ministry story, how you ended up doing what you're doing today. And we should probably clarify a little bit about what you actually do today because you do a lot of different things. You've got your hands in many pies. So why don't you start there? Tell us what you do and then back up and tell us how you got to doing what you're doing. Yeah, sure. So my primary job is I'm the director of church strengthening for Converge Mid-Atlantic. Converge is a national network of churches and there are ten regions. One of the regions is Mid-Atlantic. And so my job there is to create and curate resources to strengthen pastors and churches. I'm also on staff at a church and just outside of Columbus, Ohio, it's a church plant. Actually, the whole story there is I planted a church in this area, seven plus years ago. And in we started the process of merging with this new church plant that hadn't launched yet. And by the beginning of twenty twenty, we had made that all happen and we're looking to launch two campuses, one that I'd already started and then a new one just down the road and everything was going great. Then we started merging with a third church that had a building and all this stuff and everything was a go and their elders voted to say yes. And two days later, the pandemic shutdown happened. And so we navigated that for the next few months and launched officially, you know, in the October of twenty twenty, which is not ideal in so many ways. But I've stayed on. My job was basically to stay on and help mentor the new pastor that was taken. See, honestly, he had never preached a sermon before. You know, so it was it was but he's doing great. He's amazing. wonderful communicator and is doing a great job. So that's the other. And then I also started up two years ago, the Church Talk Project, which has a podcast called the Church Talk Podcast, which you have been graciously a guest on. And I appreciate that. So I started that up as well. Just again, that whole thing is to engage, equip and encourage pastors. So that's that's really everything I do revolves around that in some way, shape or form. And honestly, that's because when I was in the midst of merging that my church plant kind of out of existence into this new thing, you know, God just really worked on me. And I realized, you know, my calling and my, as Simon Sinek puts it, my why was really to help people, really help people achieve their God-given dreams. And that did not necessarily include leading a church. And so that was, that was a long, that was a process for me and a lot of, a lot of tears, some therapy, you know, a lot of things, but that's, you know, so that's where I've, I've landed. So now I've got my hand in, yeah, multiple things, but they all, All of them center around engaging, equipping, encouraging pastors and leaders in that. If I'm not mistaken, you do some Vision Days with Ninety-Five Network as well, right? Yes. Yes, I do. I'm a Vision Day consultant for Ninety-Five Network, which is a whole other, I guess, organization that I've neglected to mention. See, you've got your hands in so many things, you forget which pies are there, right? Yeah. We were just talking offline before we started recording that Dale Sellers, who is the executive director, is one of the common connections that you and I have. Dale's been a guest on our podcast. And just this past weekend, I was actually hanging out with Dale at his house. And just three days before I was there, you were hanging out with Dale at his house. So Dale, if you're listening to this, Jason, I love you. Thank you for the work that you do for the local church. Dale's been a real encouragement to me, and I'm sure he has been to you as well. Dale's a good leader, and I'm transitioning, see where I'm going here, because we're going to talk about leadership today. I had fired some questions to you before we set up the call to record this podcast, and one of the questions that I kind of asked you was what you feel like some of the common struggles are that you see with church leaders today. Now, one of the things that Converge, this is what I love about your role at Converge is that your role at Converge is not to make small churches big or big churches bigger, but to take churches that need to be healthy and help them become healthier. And obviously you can't have a healthy church without having a healthy leader. And so let's talk a little bit about leaders. What are some of the common struggles that you see with leaders in the normative size church today? Yeah, I mean, to me, the number one issue that I keep running into over and over and over is pastors of, as you called it, the normative size church, which I don't know exactly what that number is, but I know it's not that big. I got that from Mark Clifton from North American Mission Board or Tom Rainer, one of those guys, normative size church. It's like the church of like, you know, fifty to five hundred. Like, honestly, like that's that's really the normative size church in America. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And it might even be, you know, fifty to three hundred now. But, you know, what I see them is they really struggle with leading leaders. And that's that's one difference I've noticed. And I work, you know, we have churches in my region that are anywhere from five thousand to twenty thousand. And I work with those pastors in the same way. And just one thing that I notice is that those pastors have a gift and have developed the skill. of leading leaders toward the churches that are more in the normative to smaller, which is, I've worked in all of these churches and led different paths, so I think they're all valuable and important. But there's something about pastors leading leaders that I'm not seeing in some of these smaller to medium-sized churches. Let me ask you a question. If I'm a pastor in a normal-sized church, how do I start by identifying who the leaders are in my church to begin with? If you're going to coach me and help me lead leaders better, how do I start by identifying who those leaders are? And that that is the sixty four thousand dollar question. Right. That is one of the questions that I know. You know, the church that I serve, we're not a big church. We're a small church. And identifying leaders is always a struggle. And when pastors ask me that, the first thing I ask them is, you know, are you letting anyone else do anything in the church? You know, and that's. Do you have any opportunity to identify leadership gifts in anyone? Because so many pastors, and I was the same way, you end up doing everything because it's just easier, right? When you involve other people, it gets complicated. It gets complex. They do it maybe half as good as you could have done it, and they're slower. And we don't just we don't take time to actually invest in people to identify are their leaders. One of the tools I've been working on with somebody else trying to figure out a way to do exactly this, and I'm starting to break it down into The different roles that we see within the church, like it starts out you're an attender, right? Somebody just shows up. And then maybe you volunteer on a team. And then maybe you're a task team leader where you're leading just a group of people. And that may be a move into like a group leader, a small group leader. And then you turn into a leader of leaders. Like you've got a group of teams that you lead. And so I've kind of worked that backwards to say, OK, what are the characteristics and the competencies that we in our particular church need to see in someone at each of those levels? And so and I'm still working through some of this. I don't want to I don't have like a nice little PDF to send out. I'm still processing. But, you know, when you think of an attendee. their primary function is to learn, is to just be there. But when you get to a volunteer, their primary function is really to serve somewhere. But you got to ask yourself, what do they need to be trained to do what you're asking them to do? And then do you have any place in your process where they get that training? You know, it might be for a volunteer. I got to know how to make the coffee. If I'm going to be the person that comes in early on Sunday and makes the coffee, I got to be trained on the machine. I got to be trained on where stuff is. It's really simple. Right. But I mean, that that needs to happen at some point. But then you get that task team leader. Right. The person who's leading the team. Now we're starting to ask what kind of things do they need to be competent at? Like now they're organizing something. They're making out a schedule. There's administration gifts. And it's being able to kind of break it down into these different categories to say, okay, who has competencies and characteristics that I see that I could help train to do something more. And then, of course, as the list gets higher and higher in the hierarchy, so to speak, and the org chart, the competencies change, the characteristics change. There's a point at which they move from someone who serves to someone being a shepherd, right? Because now they're leading a group of leaders or a group of people that they need to care about. And that's, you know, training someone to be a shepherd is different than training them how to turn the coffee machine on. And I think too many times pastors don't break that down. They don't realize I don't need to invest the same amount of time into training the coffee team or the greeters as I do the elders or your board. And they kind of make it, they try to make one silver bullet that's going to train everybody. And then they end up actually training nobody in that process. Yeah, I recently had Dan Ryland on the show. And if our audience that's listening today happened to listen to that particular podcast episode, we talked briefly about the difference between delegation and development. You and I talked about that a little bit offline before we started recording. And I think I'm a leader. I'm a church planter. I'm planting a church right now. And I've realized, even myself in recent months, that I have failed in some areas that I need to be developing people and also delegating. Those are two different things. I think a lot of times pastors will default by thinking that because they're delegating things to other people, that they're actually... developing, which is not necessarily the same thing. Why don't you just share a little bit of your insight or opinion on what the balance is that a pastor needs to find between the difference between developing leaders and delegating tasks and responsibilities in the church? I think, I mean, the first obvious thing is you can only develop so many people at a time. I mean, truly develop them. Jesus had twelve, right? You know, and those are the ones he was. And even of those, he had the three that he was really pouring into. Developing is going to take more time, it's going to take energy, and it's going to take a process over time. We can't do a seminar and develop people. Delegating can be done a little bit more quickly in some ways. It's something that I can send an email out and ask someone to handle something. There's no development that happens there. There can be at times, right? But usually it's the whole disciple's journey, right? Where it starts out, I do you watch, and then it's I do you help. And then it's you do I watch and I help. And then the last one, and I usually say it's you do and I cheer. That's development, right? Where you're helping them do. If I'm just asking you, hey, can you go unlock that door, make sure those doors are open or whatever, I'm not really pouring into you. But if I'm helping you learn, that's where development takes place. Yeah, let's assume that your church is somewhere like Ohio where you get lots of snow in the winter. I'm in Texas and we don't, occasionally we do, but you get a lot of snow. And let's say you need some snow removal, sidewalks shoveled on Sunday mornings before service starts and some ice melt put down. Is that what they call that stuff, ice melt? It's one thing for you to ask someone to go to Home Depot to pick up the supplies and to do that job. It's different when you ask that person to build a team to make sure that we always have coverage and that the supplies are always stocked up and that there's always personnel assigned to take care of the sidewalks on a day that it snows. It's very different. I find in my experience that most pastors in a church of fifty or eighty or one hundred and twenty. They're the one going to the Home Depot and buying the ice melt. They're the one there early on a Sunday morning shoveling the sidewalk and putting the ice melts down themselves. And there's a tension there because I think a lot of times they feel like, well, because they're the paid staff, they're responsible for getting that stuff done. Now, this is a... That's a very broad example. And some of the pastors that are listening to this are laughing at me because they're like, I would never shovel the snow because I've got a guy in my church that always does it. Or some of them are in Florida and they're like, we don't know what you're talking about, Bart. Whatever. But can you talk to the tensions that pastors may feel as to why they don't involve others in the leadership aspect of ministry? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I do think that the biblical charge that we were given in Ephesians is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Our job is not to do all of the things. Our job as pastors is to equip the saints to do the ministry. And so I think we have a biblical mandate to do it. And when we then try to make it all about us, we're going against what the Apostle Paul told us to do and we're building a church. So I think that's part of it is we forget that biblical mandate. But then I do think you're right. There's a tension of, hey, it's a smaller church and I'm getting paid. I feel bad asking somebody to get here early when it's cold. And it only happens like for us, it's going to happen five times in the year. So building a team around something that it's so hard and I'll just do it because I feel guilty about asking anyone else. And when I talk with pastors who start to talk like that, and I've talked like that too, so I've been there. The first thing I want to say is, do you realize that you are robbing some people of leaning into their own spiritual journey of serving? Because you're doing something that someone else could do. And there are things that as pastors only you can do. and so you got to make sure you're doing those you need to be you know as the as the apostles said it in the book of acts right we want to dedicate ourselves to the scripture and to prayer and you know we need someone else to handle some of these other things and so we need to see our job of not only delegating but also developing as part of our biblical mandate and what god has called us to do Yeah, it's messy. And yeah, there are times that the phrase I always heard was, if someone can do it, eighty percent as good as you could do it, let them do it. And as pastors, often that's not good enough for us, right? We're worried that if they didn't, well, you know what, how about we just trust the Holy Spirit that if we're being obedient and we are actually pouring ourselves into the saints that are gathering in our church and developing them and watching them grow and celebrating them in the process, maybe the Holy Spirit will show up and do what the Holy Spirit does. Yeah. I'm the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to that, because that has probably been one of my weakest areas as a leader is being able to entrust to others what I feel like I do well. And it could be anything from music to graphic design, to copywriting, to organizing events like I'm good at a lot of different things. And so I've personally been guilty of withholding opportunity to others. But here's the mantra that I've adopted in twenty twenty five. OK, you ready? It's not really a mantra because I haven't thoroughly fleshed it out. But here's the general idea is If somebody can do it, eighty percent as well as I do it, I'm going to say that that's good enough to start. But here's where development comes. Yes. I'm going to try to help them get to eighty one percent. Yes. And then I'm going to use that eighty one percent to try to help them get to eighty two percent. I'm not going to let them stay at eighty percent if I think that they could do it eighty five or ninety percent as well as I do. Maybe they could even do it as well as I do if I actually invested in them and gave them the time. But let's face it, Jason, as pastors, we're busy. We have a lot going on. And sometimes it's just faster for me to do it myself than it is to bring somebody else along and train them to do it. Speak to the pastor who's thinking that. Yeah. Okay. So literally this morning in our staff meeting, this came up. Okay. And this is the prime example. There's a group of women in the church who want to do this event, this women's event. And it's a fine idea. I'm not big into women's events. Okay. Cause that's not my, you know, but they, you won't be invited. That's for sure. I will not be invited. I'm hoping that cause it's a chocolate party where they're doing stuff and whatever. And, and they, the group of ladies who want to do it are a little bit older and we're trying to reach a younger crowd. And so it can be frustrating when their ideas of what they want to do are not going to connect with a younger crowd. And so we've been trying to navigate, how do you, you know, celebrate the good thing that they're they want to do. They really want to their hearts in the right place while also saying, you know what, the one name that they wanted, really, they didn't understand that that actually sounded more like a dating app that you don't want, you know, as opposed to just an event to come and gather and whatever. And so and then they were worried about the graphics and this and that, which really they were. So all that to say, there was this group who were really excited They had energy, but they they they were going to do it forty percent as good as you know, if. But what we said was, let's let's work on getting them to at least sixty to seventy percent. Let's let them learn through the process of doing this and celebrate that. And then we're saying, you know what? They also have this idea of something they want to try that we know will never work. so let's take the energy and let's figure out something that will work and let's get them excited about that where we can work alongside them and hopefully in the process over the next two years right they begin to catch the values and the vision of what the church is all about and what it actually means to reach you know a a twenty something uh in this area or even a thirty something in this area as opposed to the way they did it in the nineteen eighties, when quite honestly, the church that we merged with, you know, they were they were doing well, you know, like that. That was that was when things were going well. And so what I challenge myself and then others is, OK, what are we learning from them that maybe we wouldn't have learned had we not invested in them? And then how are we seeing their energy and their excitement that maybe we can't bring to the table because we're doing fifty two other things? How can we utilize that in a way that celebrates them and moves them forward? In my Converge job, I happened to right before that meeting, I was in another meeting where the role was kind of reversed I was the one with the ideas and was the one trying to get something done while someone who was a supervisor for me was was slowing things down by not making the decisions that I thought we needed to make you know and so I said what what am I learning that maybe these ladies are feeling that I need to speak into or the team needs to speak into so that they can begin to grow as leaders and as a team. And all the while they've got to understand the vision and the values of the church. And if they don't understand that, then they're never going to be able to do it as well as it could be done. And that's my fault. That's not their fault. And that's where I do think pastors, when they're not leading leaders, it's because they're not clear on their vision and they're not clear on the operating values that the church has and how to celebrate that and how to lean into that. Yeah, I'll tell you, I think one of the key differentiators, if you don't know, if you are sitting here and you're going, I don't know if I'm leading leaders or I don't know if I'm delegating versus developing, I don't know what the difference is. Here's the way I would define it. If success for the event is merely that the event takes place or that the activity gets accomplished, you've delegated. If you set objectives, goals, and outcomes, and you're holding someone accountable for those specific outcomes, you are now developing a leader, right? So for instance, your lady's event there, it's one thing for us to say, well, it's going to happen on this date. This is the food we're going to eat. This is the person that's going to speak. This is how the registration is going to happen. And this is who's going to clean up when it's all done. And all of those things happen. But if we haven't actually set any key performance metrics to say the goal is for this number of people to come for this number of people to take a next step for this particular outcome in the process. um we probably ought to rethink the reason that we're doing the event in the first place this is one of the ways that we as leaders bring leadership to the event but that's also having one person who's not just responsible for making sure that all the details get pulled off but that we actually achieve the goals that the event or the activity is is set to achieve right and then at the, after the event, we always evaluate, we always debrief. We always go through that person and say, you know, what did we learn? What could have done better? Why did, why were we unable to hit the metrics that we were expecting? Or, you know, what were the key things that contributed to our ability to accomplish what we had hoped to accomplish? So, you know, smaller churches, Dan Ryland and I actually talked about this as well. Smaller churches can tend to be very, very busy churches. We And we mark our success merely by having a full calendar and having a lot of things on the calendar. But in the grand scheme of things, a simpler model will also give us the ability to better invest in the leaders or the potential leaders that we need to invest in. Jason, why don't you talk a little bit about what the benefit is for a pastor, especially a normal-sized church pastor? What is the benefit of investing in leaders? Oh, goodness. Where to start on that one? I'm coaching a pastor of a small church in Kentucky, and they're exactly what you just described. They do a lot of stuff, and he delegates really well. So they keep doing a lot of stuff. my coaching approach with him is to say let's back up and ask why why are we doing any of this stuff and does it line up and so when you begin to develop people and you really start to all of a sudden the vision gets clearer it has to because if it doesn't then you know you just keep doing stuff and then it gets everybody starts arguing because they think they're doing the thing And so if the vision gets clearer, then all of a sudden the decisions get lesser, right? Because now people are filtering out ideas before they even get to you. And so your stress level can go down a little bit because you're not having to tell – You know, Auntie Mildred, who has been there for, you know, one hundred and twelve years, who has an idea for something. You don't have to tell her no, because she already knows that. Oh, wait a minute. That doesn't work. That's not how we do things. So as you invest in people and you develop people, it also instead of just simply doing more stuff. All of a sudden, you're learning how and then teaching others how to be accountable. To me, the small and medium-sized church, the one thing that they don't do well, and I'm just as guilty, is accountability. We don't circle back and say, what worked? What didn't work? Why did this particular thing work? Is it something we can replicate? Or is it something that we just happened to hit at the right time? What are the things that we're learning from this? And did we announce it the right way at the right time? And then why didn't we? What kept us from doing that? So I'm not sure I answered your question, but those are the things that I see is as you're developing leaders, you're building accountability into your systems. by default, right? And that's going to help you become a better leader. Number one, it's going to help them develop as followers of Jesus within the church. And ultimately it's going to have a greater kingdom impact because now it's not just you doing the work of the kingdom. It's you equipping the saints to do the work of the kingdom. And that's going to have a much bigger impact. Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that pastors are always dealing with is the tyranny of Sunday is always coming, right? Sunday is always coming. And if you're a small church pastor or a normal size church pastor, chances are you're preaching forty eight out of fifty two weeks a year. Right. I mean, that's that's reality. So I'm going to I'm going to speak directly to a situation that I literally was walking through this last week. And Jerry, if you happen to be listening to this podcast, shout out to you, Jerry. So I was in South Carolina before. uh visiting one of the churches that I'm coaching and the pastor there is is co-vocational full-time school teacher part-time pastor this is his first pastorate so he's new and he's learning how to pastor but right now he's preaching pretty much every sunday because there really isn't anybody else in his church to do so and um he's got some older folks in his church and this past uh week when I was there visiting one of his elders lost his spouse, lost his wife. And a huge hit for the church. Neither patriarch, matriarchs of the church, longtime stalwart members. And it was really important for Jerry to be available, to be accessible, to be present for this family, both while she was in her last days in the hospital, and then there, of course, with the family after she passed. And, you know, one of the things that I encouraged Jerry to do during this season, I said, you know, I think it's beautiful that you've literally been going to the hospital like every other day. Like you've been there a lot. I said, but the pace of what you're doing is not sustainable. You're going to hit a wall. You need to read Dale Sellers' book, Stalled. Okay, there you go. Dale, if you're listening to this, there's a plug. See, we do love you. Read Stalled by Dale Sellers. No, the reality is you're going to hit a wall. You can't keep up this pace forever. You can't have a sermon every single week. And what happens if you have two crises during the week, three crises in a week, and you're a solo pastor? You find yourself dealing with that all the time. The primary reason you need to build into your leaders, invest in leaders and learn how to lead leaders is that you need people to shepherd with you. Under shepherds, co-shepherds, however you want to frame it. Sometimes it's a matter of getting logistical things done. And there are logistics that have to be managed in a church that's having weekend worship gatherings and any kind of outreach engagement. But then there's the care and the shepherding of people. And of course, you know, Everybody who's listening to this podcast knows the story of Moses and his father-in-law, Jethro, and the investment in leaders so that the people could all be shepherded. Man, I mean, you can't get any more biblical than that. It's just a biblical model. And you're right. We need to equip the saints for the work of ministry. not equip the saints to make coffee not equip the saints simply to shovel sidewalks but to equip the saints to actually do ministry with us to use the gifts and the talents and the experiences that they have to help us shepherd develop care for the people in our churches and Um, you know, I, it's, it's tricky. It's hard. Uh, I've been there. I'm, I'm a bit of a, I'm a type a high D personality. Let's get her done. Um, and it is a slow process to have to pause and work at the pace of people who, number one, who might have a full-time job and a family, and I want to invest in them to help them lead. He or she has gifts and talents that I've identified could potentially help me lead in the church and, but they have limited time. I have limited time and I'm tired and they're tired and it's hard. It's really, really hard thing to do to make the time. So based on that, now we're all exhausted because I've exhausted us all. Jason, if I'm not currently investing in leaders, I'm not leading leaders. What are the, some of the, maybe give me a couple of practical first steps that I can take to make leading leaders a part of a practice in my church. I mean, I think number one, clarify your disciple-making vision, right? Do I know why I'm doing what I'm doing? Do I know what a disciple looks like if they are attending my church? And am I doing anything to move forward in that? So that would be the first step. Clarify that disciple-making vision. The second one is spend time with your people. Just watching them in action and start looking for those leaders and look for two. You don't need twelve. Look for two and then invest in them. Jesus had twelve. You're not Jesus. Pick two. There you go. And Jesus had twelve and one of them turned on him, right? Yeah. I mean, let's just get a couple and know it's going to be a slow process, but invest in them and start. And hopefully you're actually growing as a leader in this process as well. So what are you doing to invest in your own leadership journey? uh are you reading anything are you do you have a coach you know I mean a coach can be a huge help in this process um you know do you have a network that you are connected with that maybe has some resources that you could tap into like those are just a start like identify a few people that you are gonna pour into for six months as a leader and it might be something as simple as we're gonna meet you know once a month or twice a month simply to talk about leadership and jesus and you know like you don't have to have a big formal study and all that stuff right now start there and and it'll evolve you know like the the next year as you dive into this you're going to have some you're going to have some experiences in your pocket right of doing this you're going to have learned some things You're going to have two more or three more people that are leaders in your church that now have eyes looking around at people and learning how to identify leaders. Slowly, that'll begin to raise up the value of leadership. So that would be my suggestion. Start with clarify your vision and then start looking for a couple of leaders that you can invest in for six months with purpose, intentionality, and then begin to start forming a process so that you can do that repeatedly and it begins to grow in that way. That's great counsel. The last year that I was pastoring the church that I pastored back in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, I made a decision to basically read a few books through the course of the year. I picked four books and I invited three guys to read those books with me. And two of the three said yes. And we picked one book each quarter and we assigned multiple chapters over a two week, three week period. We met, I think, every second week or every third week and then just talked about what we were learning from these leadership books and how we could apply what we were learning in the books into the ministry and into our daily lives. I tell you what, it was cool it was some of the most fruitful conversation it was a growing experience a learning and growing experience for me I'm a reader and I do tend to read a lot of books But reading the books with other guys who I could invest in, who were eager to be invested in was huge. And I think that's another thing that a lot of pastors fail to realize is that a lot of times we have men, women in our churches who are longing for someone to mentor them. And so Jason, you mentioned that, you know, I think every pastor should have a coach. And I think every pastor should be coaching other leaders in their church. Don't assume that when you're asking someone to step into some kind of mentoring, leadership development relationship with you, that you're inconveniencing them. A lot of times people are craving it. They're longing for it. They're looking for it. And so it was something I did before. It's something that I'm I'm hoping to do again in the near future. I've already got a couple of books picked out that I'd like to find some guys to read those with. And it's just, you know, it's very informal, but it's organized. And I think that's the, you know, the most important aspect of it. Just organize it, even if it's informal. Yeah. No, I remember when I was in seminary a hundred years ago, a pastor that was an adjunct professor came in, and he had a ten-month process that he took ten guys. Then once a month, they read ten books, and they had dinner together and discussed it. And he basically said, if you miss one, you're out. Like he was, boom, you know, like really, which is, you know, fine. But, and he did this and over the course of ten years, right, he cultivated a hundred leaders. And, you know, like, and not all of them stuck around. You know, there's always that diminishing returns that happens. I get it. But, I mean, think about it. If you think long term, all of a sudden you're developing people and you're making a kingdom investment because everyone leaves your church at some point. They either get a job move, they get mad at you and leave or they die, but they're going to leave your church. And so if you're investing in them, then guess what? You're sending out seeds of people who've been developed so that the next place they land, they can then begin to make a kingdom impact because of what you did. Yeah, that's really great. Jason, as we wrap up here, because we're coming to the end of our time together, can you speak for just a minute to our audience? It's going to be mostly pastors, elders, maybe some lay church leaders. Their churches are potentially stuck, stagnant, in decline. Maybe you can just speak some words of encouragement to them as they look to find a new way forward. Yeah, you know, the more I have worked with pastors, the message that I keep coming back to is don't be afraid. Yes, we live in a very odd, strange, contentious, divisive society right now. And yes, there seems to be fires everywhere. But don't be afraid that you have been given the message of the gospel. You have been given hope. and that's what people want when it when everything boils away and there's nothing left but the person and what they need they need hope they need meaning they need jesus and that's what you have and so there I just keep going you know go one more day and know that you know jesus said when he gave the great commission he says and I will be with you So no matter where you are and no matter how bad things seem, I've been there. I have been at the point where the elders of the church said, yes, that's the role you should take and that's what you should do, but we're leaving. We don't wanna be part of it. We just don't feel like that's what we wanna do. Have fun, see you later, and they left. I get it. I know it can be dark. But just know that it might be dark, but it's not over. And ultimately, you know, Jesus is the one you're working for, not a group of people. Yeah. Thank you, Jason. If our audience has questions or follow up or would like to connect with you or maybe listen to your podcast, where's the best place for them to find your stuff, Jason? Yeah, well, the Church Talk podcast is on pretty much any of the streaming platforms. The churchtalkproject.com is the website. You can read Jason at churchtalkproject.com. You can reach me at that. We're on social media and stuff. With Converge, if they're interested in learning more about that network, convergemidatlantic.com, you can find out more there or reach out to me, and I'm more than happy to answer any questions or to help out in any way I can. I will link to all of those things in our show notes. I really appreciate you taking the time to hang out with me today. Good to get to know your story a little bit better and to hear your heart for the local church. For those of you who have stuck around and made it all the way through to the end of this podcast, good on you. I hope that it has been helpful, fruitful, and encouraging for you. If you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, wherever you're listening, or if you're watching on our YouTube channel, please make sure that you subscribe so that you don't miss future episodes. And if you know someone who might be able to be encouraged by listening to this particular podcast episode or any of our other episodes, make sure that you share it with them. You can leave us a rating and a review. And to some degree, that'll probably feed the algorithms of the interweb and more people will find it. But The best thing you can do is to just share the link to this show with somebody that you know that we don't know. That's the way that we're going to get the word out there. So again, Jason, thanks again for hanging out with me today. Oh, I loved it. And hey, I've already subscribed to your podcast, so I listened to it as well. You are awesome. Thanks, man.
