In the history of the world, every time there has been a significant global change, every organism on the planet must either adapt or die. We are in a significant change moment in history. From business to restaurants to schools and our churches and everything in between— we have seen change at an unprecedented pace. In addition, we have witnessed a long list of casualties in every sector of society. As ministry leaders, we have always had a responsibility to take the gospel - that never changes - to a world that will never be the same. But we weren’t planning on this global change.
The reality is the global pandemic didn’t cause the change. It did, however, accelerate many trends that were already taking place. People a part of our congregations attending less, or attending multiple places, or cobbling together their own spiritual journey utilizing several resources or churches to do that.
The acceleration of these changes and how they were thrust upon you as a leader is the significant change that all of us are dealing with. Like with every historically significant change, some organisms die, some morph and others thrive. As pastors we have the added benefit of Jesus’ words, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” The church will prevail, the gospel will be necessary and relevant, the church will thrive. Jesus told us the what, we must navigate the how and therein lies the challenge. Truth be told, in this season there will be churches that die – we have already seen too many not survive the past one-anda-half years. There will be churches who morph—they will adapt and adjust but, in many ways, long for the days when we looked like we used to. Then there will be those who find opportunity, innovation and growth in the new reality we all live in. And they will thrive.
As you lead in this season, you know the challenge is to have answers, clarity and plans for what’s next. No one knows what “next” looks like or can predict what will work or won’t work. Anyone saying they do is making stuff up. There is truth in the sentiment that everyone is a start-up today.
What is certain and predictable is that - now more than ever - we need each other, we need connectivity and collaboration, we need to lean on each other. We need the innovators to push the boundaries, we need the implementers who can model the how, we need those who try and fail and try again, we need the outliers and the steady-as-we-go. We need to be present in the moment and lean into the future because that’s where Jesus said the church would prevail.
Our world needs the local church that holds high the message of Jesus, brings hope and healing and grace. Our world needs the local church that adapts while holding fast to the never changing truth of the gospel. Our world needs the local church that moves toward its brokenness with leaders who run into the chaos with the only thing that has the power to restore and redeem - Jesus. He never changes. May we lead forward and advance His church as we wait for His return - the most significant change - to come.
For more than 28 years, Rick Rusaw served as Lead Pastor at LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont, Colorado. Rick has assisted churches and denominations worldwide in developing an external focus to ministry and has authored several books and resources including the best-selling missional-book Externally Focused Church, as well as Life on Loan, Externally Focused Quest, 60 Simple Secrets Every Pastor Needs to Know, The Neighboring Church and The Neighboring Life
Rick currently leads the Spire Network, a national digital engagement platform, conference and innovation community focused on equipping and inspiring Christian leaders. Rick also serves on the executive team at Gloo, a Boulder, Colorado data and technology company.
Rick and his wife Diane have three children and seven grandchildren who all call Colorado home.
service service tennessee lobby A service elevator
registration
presidential chamber A presidential chamber B presidential Ballroom presidential Ballroom
Governor’s Ballroom & mezzanine
CHANGE UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD - RICK RUSAW
GAYLORD OPRYLAND MARRIOTT MAP
SPIRE MAIN SESSIONS
SPIRE HUDDLES
SPIRE BREAKOUTS
WINNING THE WAR IN YOUR MIND: CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE - CRAIG GROESCHEL
HOW DO CHURCHES END UP WITH DOMINEERING BULLIES FOR PASTORS? - SAM ALLBERRY
LEANING ON THE SPIRIT - JUD WILHITE
CREATING A DISCIPLE MAKING CULTURE - BOBBY HARRINGTON
FOUR THINGS WE’VE LEARNED DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS - BARNA GROUP
THE UNHINDERED LEADER - CHARITY BYERS, PH.D. & JOHN WALKER, PH.D.
DON'T LOSE HEART - DAVE CLAYTON
THE WAY FORWARD: RECONCILING DISCIPLE - EFREM SMITH
WHEN YOU CAN’T FIND YOUR DONKEY - DR. TIM HARLOW
HEALING BITTERNESS - RUSTY GEORGE
PRESENT UNCERTAINTY AND FUTURE CHURCH - WILL MANCINI
CONFERENCE EXHIBITORS
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The Great Commission is so clear and direct, yet our churches naturally drift inward. This challenge has been exacerbated during the pandemic. Join us as we huddle to talk practically about how to get our churches back on mission. The opportunity to reach people has never been greater and now is the time be intentional about equipping your ninety-nine to reach their friends, family, and neighborhoods.
A Don't go alone! Together is better! Across the board, lots of pastors are realizing the power of developing a preaching team - whether it's a staff team, pastor friends, or even volunteers. We will be hearing from leaders who have put such teams together and the way to make them work well. The formats and methods vary, but there are best practices you should learn. We will focus our breakouts to help you envision this together, and possibly even form a team right there on the spot!
Connecting the lost to you, Jesus, and others has never been more important...and maybe never more difficult. It's time for a complete practical re-think about engagement, connections, and steps that make sense. We will be studying digital engagements strategies and best practices any church can use. Now is the time to figure this out because digital church is here to stay!
Building community and making disciples in a post-Covid world is a challenge. Most churches are really grappling with how effective they are at making disciples. Consider some new online ways to measure how well people are following Christ via the ministry of your church.
A new normal is here and now is the time to make strategic decisions to adjust to this new reality. We will be discussing a wide array of ministry topics including staffing, budgeting, growth strategies, and more. Join us and our veteran team of leaders to learn how to think these important topics facing every church. Our breakouts will feature huddles for various size churches and teams, contexts, roles, and more.
You've probably experienced the difficulty of creating and maintaining vibrant community via small groups especially now in our post-Covid world. It's time to rethink our strategies while focusing on key principles that will always be true to matter the size, context, or format of your church. Join us as we re-think this together and hear from leaders that are re-inventing this pivotal aspect of church. Our breakouts will feature huddles for various size churches, contexts, capabilities, and more.
Matt Engel — Jackson A
The church has been the last main dominate player in the social “economy” to not break itself from traditional pipeline thinking (Yellow Cabs) to Platform Thinking (Uber). This shift in opportunities available to pastors and leaders today to think more like Uber and less like a Yellow Cab has enabled new approaches within ministry and impacting ministry at a faster rate than ever before in some churches! Now that ministry tools can be curated, and trust is now distributed to individuals there has never been a more opportune time to equip and release the saints for the work of service and unlocking of their passion. This is what has always wanted to happen!
Dr. Paul Alexander — Presidential Chamber A
Studies continue to show that our communities are struggling with mental health issues and addiction at an all-time high. Your church is on the front lines of these challenges. Join us as we learn about the seriousness of these challenges and ways we can equip our churches to be more proactive than ever at dealing with them. We will hear from leading local church experts and together learn how to quickly implement new strategies.
Tyler Sansom — Presidential Chamber B
Attention is the new commodity of life and people are more distracted than ever. If you aren't strategically communicating as a church, you likely aren't going to get the response you desire. The digital revolution has only made this more important. We will hear from experts and look at methods, channels, copywriting, social media, and more. Our breakouts will be designed around pertinent topics and roles. Don't miss this important huddle
The families in your church are on the front lines of today's challenges and face increasingly difficult circumstances in which to flourish. We will be looking at these challenges and hearing from national experts about how the local church can enter this reality and make a difference in the lives of children, students, and parents. If you are a children, student, or family ministry pastor or team member you must be there! Our breakouts will feature huddles for various size churches and typical roles in this area of the local church.
Overseers have a high responsibility in church life. They have a biblical, important role in every church, and especially the church that wants to grow, reach people, and make disciples. Join us as we hear from elders and leaders that have strategically thought through and designed healthy governance models that allow church to do just that.
The dropout rate among pastors has never been higher. We must guard our hearts and minds and put into place a lifestyle and work environment that is healthy for the long haul. Come and be encouraged and renewed! There will be a special time of prayer during this huddle. You are not alone! We are here for each other.
Tim Foot — Presidential Boardroom A Ben Gowell
Brian Taylor Dan Leverance
Caleb Miller
Come join the conversation as some of the top Arts Leaders in the country discuss the biggest questions and issues in the post-pandemic church as we face the challenges and momentum of “regathering” in a season where most of the ministry never stopped.
Huddles are a roundtable, interactive experience where you get to learn from experts but also have your current Church issues addressed and get to help speak into the lives of others by adding your own wisdom to the conversation.
The gap between some LGBTQ individuals and churches is only increasing... so, what does that mean for the future? How can churches love people in a culture that’s hostile to the historic view of marriage & sexuality? What questions should leaders be asking now to prepare for tomorrow? These questions, the relational contours of grace & truth, and how to love people well no matter what will be discussed in this breakout… AND brandnew resources will also be given to attendees.
Founder and Principal of Docs/ology and founder of the Justice Film Festival leads this visual breakout. Whether for outreach, evangelism or inspiring believers through the visual arts, film can play a memorable roll in anyone’s faith journey. An effective use of film in the ministry context can step beyond a single viewing event and lead to worship, praise and adoration of God through story.
You can only lead as well as you are leading yourself. That means that the answer to solving the leadership crises you face is not more external solutions, but internal. Take God’s invitation to un-hinder your heart so you can un-hinder your leadership.
Future Church Paradigm Shift – Kelly Kannwischer (Co-founder of Futurechurch.co) & Cory Hartman (Co-Author of Future Church with Will Mancini) –Governor’s Ballroom B
What if you could retain and enhance the best parts of your current model (worship services, small groups, serving opportunities) while fusing it with a fresh, new approach for discipling and releasing individual followers of Jesus to live on mission every day?
IN this breakout, we will introduce the key tool that helps you make the Future Church paradigm shift, apply this new paradigm in practical ways in your church, and fuel real church growth.
You know there is a weekend coming where you will “hand off the baton.” But in the months and years before that baton moment, what do you need to do in order to experience a successful senior leadership succession / transition? In this session, we will unpack 6 very practical succession related tools that have been used successfully with hundreds of church teams. These are powerful tools that lead to conversations that any senior leader or board member can use to prepare proactively for a transition season.
Shifting to Disciple Making a Movement (DMM)
Strategies in our Churches - Bobby Harrington & Shadonkeh Johnson – Governor’s Chamber A B C Join Bobby Harrington (CEO of Discipleship.org and Renew.org) and Shodankeh Johnson (West Africa). They will share a brief synopsis of the state of Disciple Making in US churches (less than 5% practice personal discipling making as core strategy). There are 1,400 Disciple Making Movements around the world currently reaching 78+ million people, which is 1% of the world’s population in the last 15 years, but no clear movements in the US. Learn practices you can implement in your church right away.
Engagement Innovation - Matt Engel – Jackson A & B
There are 5 core “jobs” every church on the planet has to solve for. In this breakout you will hear how some of the most innovative churches in the world are using the church engagement framework to increase the outcomes of their ministries. You will learn about experiments that have been run over that past few years which have led to further impact in their people and communities.
How To Unite The Church For The Sake Of The CityDave Clayton – Jackson C & D
Most Christians are familiar with the Great Commandment (Matt 22) and the Great Commission (Matt 28), but why have so many ignored the Great Collaboration (John 17)? In 2019 and 2020, God called us to bring the churches of Nashville together - to pray, fast, and share the good news of Jesus across our city. By the grace of God, we saw more than 700 churches set aside their differences to work together in the name of Jesus. Join us as we discuss practical ways you can unite the church in your area to reach the city that God has called you to reach for His glory.
Leading through Transition: Miami Room - Sean Morgan and David Kinnaman
(Note: Only offered 1 Time at 1:30 PM)
We’ll reveal groundbreaking research designed to help NEW Lead Pastors step into the lead role of established churches and lead forward toward a thriving impactful ministry. We will bring unprecedented, behind-thescenes insight from hundreds of church transitions. While books have been written on planning for succession, it is true that most of the church thinks the journey is over when the baton is passed from predecessor to successor...The truth is that the journey has just begun; and, the only way a senior leader transition will be measured as successful is if the new leader leads the church forward to health and growth. We know that leading established churches forward is one of the most daunting leadership challenges a church or leader will ever face. This research brings key learning to a much-needed space. We’ll cover key topics like:
• The most common issues that present roadblocks and obstacles for new leaders
• Inheriting the board/elders someone else has appointed or elected
• Building your executive leadership team
• How to approach the standard church core and giving base which is usually approaching retirement - just like the outgoing leader pastor
Faith for Exiles: Miami Room - David Kinnaman
(Note: Only offered 1 time at 3:15 PM)
In a series of groundbreaking studies that led to two bestselling books, David Kinnaman and his team at Barna Group uncovered the reasons young people are increasingly resisting and rejecting the church. But the news isn't all bleak.
Spire Engagement App Demonstration: Crystal Ballroom Side Salons C & D - Mark Kitts
The Spire Engagement App is a radical new way for Leaders to Connect, Collaborate, and share Content with other church leaders. The app is being launched at the Spire Conference, so you are invited to be the first to see this new interactive platform. Network leaders should come find out how you can expand your organization through exciting new ways. Mark will demonstrate the initial version and share what is coming in the future.
Conservative estimates suggest 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will experience some form of sexual abuse. Likely, 20% of your congregation is already living and coping with this particular trauma, and 20% of your youth are currently at risk of experiencing this trauma. How will your church respond to those who are hurting in this way? How will your church be part of the solution rather than part of the problem? This workshop provides information about the vulnerabilities present in many churches, and the ways in which you can mitigate these risks. Join us to learn how to create a Culture of Care in your church in order to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse.
Data Driven Decision Making: Crystal Ballroom Side Salons A & B - Matt Smay (Gloo) and Devon Kline (Gloo)
From ancient astronomers who tracked the position of planets to mathematicians who developed the first calendars, data-informed decision making has been a valued practice throughout history. We’ve come a long way from tally marks and etchings, and now data plays a bigger role than ever in our lives. During this 75-minute breakout session you’ll learn how churches can apply data across their ministry strategy to guide more people towards lifelong journeys of spiritual growth.
Only weeks after putting my faith in Jesus, I tried to teach my first Bible study to a group of young guys in a little church in Ada, Oklahoma. Afterward the leader of the youth group said, “Well, I guess teaching the Bible is not your gift, is it?”
Three years later I finally got up the nerve to try teaching the Bible again, after being asked to preach my first sermon. After the service, as I stood at the door saying goodbye to church members, an older gentleman looked at me with a raised brow and remarked, “Nice try.” Nice try?!
The next lady in line asked if I had any other skills besides being a preacher and then made a weak attempt to encourage me to keep my options open. Seriously, that really happened. I had to fight off the temptation to run and hide in the church baptistry. And yes, full immersion!
Despite yet another setback, still believing God’s call, I continued my journey toward full-time vocational ministry by going to seminary following college and marriage. About halfway through seminary, the day finally came when I stood before a group of spiritual leaders as a candidate for ordination in our denominational church. With the entire committee looking on, the spokesperson explained to me, “We’ve chosen not to ordain you. You don’t have the gift-mix we see in most pastors. In fact, we are not sure you are called to be a pastor. But feel free to try again next year. But for now, it’s a no.”
Immediately all those childhood memories met up with my teenage memories. They all joined forces with the rejections from the church, forming an avalanche of negative thoughts that crashed over me, engulfing me. The voices roared loudly, “You aren’t enough! You will never be enough! You will never measure up!”
And then the final verdict was delivered: You . . . don’t . . . have . . . what it takes!
Driving home in my red Geo Prizm, I felt dejected, embarrassed, confused and angry. Devastated. How can I explain to my wife that I didn’t make the cut? How can I face my pastor? My friends? My classmates? The church where I serve? The tears flowed as every possible negative thought played on repeat. But then a strange thing happened. Suddenly a different voice interrupted the others. God spoke. He spoke to me. While not audible, the words somehow seemed louder than any physical voice I had ever heard.
In that moment, my heavenly Father said, “You are not who others say you are. You are who I say you are. And I say you are called to ministry.”
“You are not who others say you are. You are who I say you are.”
While that was of course one of the most powerful moments of my life and a massive turning point, I wasn’t suddenly healed of my negative thinking or delivered from believing every lie I’d told myself while growing up. The patterns were still there. The consequences were still ingrained. But I began to realize God had a very different way for me to think and a much healthier way for me to think of myself. I realized he was offering me a choice of whether to continue to believe my lies or accept his truth about me.
That’s the beauty of allowing God to master our minds: He gives us a new path, a new way to think, but we have to get on board, agree and cooperate with Him.
How about you? What negative messages did you take away from your childhood? What unhealthy and destructive conclusions have you come to believe about yourself and your place in the world?
Satan’s strategy to win the battle for your mind is getting you to believe lies. If you believe a lie, it will hold you back from doing what God’s calling you to do. The lie will keep you living in shame from the past, when God wants to set you free for a better future. The lie will keep you from living with joy and freedom and confine you to a less-than existence.
When legendary magician Harry Houdini came into a town to do his show, he often went to the local jail, gathering a crowd of people along the way. To get buzz going about his upcoming performance, he asked the jailer to lock him in a cell. Time after time, jail after jail, town after town, Houdini escaped within minutes. But one jailer had heard that Houdini was coming, and the jailer was ready. When Houdini closed the cell door, the jailer put the key in the lock and secretly turned it in the wrong direction. He then removed the key, and everyone watched as Houdini struggled to escape — by unknowingly locking himself in repeatedly. Finally, in frustration, Houdini admitted he could not escape. The jailer then revealed his deception. Houdini had believed a lie, and the lie had held him captive.
Living your life by a lie is a lot like believing the door is locked when it isn’t. On the other side is freedom. But you first have to commit to some personal lie detection to experience the abundant life Jesus came and died to give you.
Craig Groeschel is the founding and senior pastor of Life.Church, an innovative multi-site church based in Edmond, Oklahoma. As one of the most respected leaders in the Church, Craig speaks frequently at leadership events and conferences worldwide, is a New York Times bestselling author, and serves as champion for the Global Leadership Summit. Through the top-ranking Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, he prompts innovative thinking in leaders at every level within any organization. Glassdoor has also named him in the top 10 CEOs in the U.S. (small and midsize companies) and named Life.Church as the #1 Place to Work for two consecutive years under his leadership. Craig lives in the Edmond, Oklahoma area with his wife Amy and their six children. To learn more about Craig, visit www.craiggroeschel.com.
We are, sadly, familiar with pastors having to leave the ministry because of sexual impropriety. These incidents seem to occur with such frequency as to be barely newsworthy to a watching world.
But another, equally sad trend has developed in recent years: Pastors having to leave for bullying.
While we should be concerned by this trend, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. The apostle Peter expected this possibility back in the first century. Writing to pastors, he warned that they shouldn’t be “domineering over those in [their] charge” (1 Pet. 5:3). But while domineering pastors aren’t a new problem, they do seem to be more and more evident in the Western church today. In some cases bullying goes on for many years, either unrecognized or unchallenged. Which raises some important questions: What leadership virtue are we mistaking bullying for? Which trait is such a priority that we aren’t even aware when it is deployed in an ungodly, and biblically prohibited, way? In short, why do we end up with bullies as prominent pastors?
My observation is that this process plays out in slightly different ways on either side of the Atlantic. It is common in American churches to borrow leadership wisdom from the business world. The pastor is the CEO. His role is to bring success, often and especially measured in numerical terms: The church needs to grow in membership and giving. In the UK, it’s slightly different. The church tends toward a military model. The pastor is the three-star general who directs everyone to do the right things.
There is obviously much to be learned from both successful CEOs and also great generals, but both models can quickly become toxic. When either becomes the primary model for Christian leadership, is it any wonder that domineering pastors result? The pastoras-CEO approach might foster entrepreneurialism and risk-taking, but it easily becomes results-oriented. The pastor-as-general approach might foster perseverance and grit, but it easily becomes task-oriented. One produces swagger: Their word is law because they’re economically indispensable to the church. The other produces presumption: Orders must be followed because
the general “knows” what is best for every person. In each case we either tolerate or fail to see traits of bullying, because ministry ends justify ministry means.
"No matter how dazzling in the eyes of men, loveless pastors vanish into nothingness in the sight of God."
But this must not be. Paul warns us about even superlative gifting wielded without love: “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2).
Paul doesn’t simply say that loveless giftedness is “compromised” or “diminished in effectiveness.” He doesn’t even talk about the resulting ministry, but only the person exercising the gifts—and they are nothing. Giftedness at the expense of character is never finally effective. No matter how dazzling in the eyes of men, loveless pastors vanish into nothingness in the sight of God.
So we need to look closely again at what Peter says:
Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. (1 Pet. 5:2–3)
Here Peter draws three contrasts about the work and heart of an elder: there must be willingness, not compulsion; service, not greed; and he must lead by example, not by coercion.
To domineer is to bring something into compliance by force. In the context of pastoral ministry, it happens when the flock assents to things by compulsion rather than by the work of the Spirit in their hearts. It involves the use of intimidation, threats, or bullying. There may be some connection with the previous contrasts Peter has just made: being domineering is a form of greed (“shameful gain”)—greed for power over others.
And just as Peter has already said that an elder must serve willingly (v. 2), so too those who follow must follow willingly.
To domineer is to misunderstand the role of the pastor. Yes, there is a real authority attached to the office. The writer to the Hebrews tells us to “obey your leaders and submit to them” (Heb. 13:17). But he continues, “For they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” The first part guards against anticlericalism on the part of the congregation, the second against authoritarianism on the part of the leadership. The pastor is to serve joyfully, just as the flock is to follow willingly. Although the pastor is set over the flock (1 Thess. 5:12), that is not his only relationship to it. Peter reminded us that the flock is not only “under you” (implying the pastor’s primary identity is one of hierarchical superiority), but also “among you” (reminding the pastor that he’s not above the flock, but is in fact a member of it).
To domineer is to be worldly. Jesus said, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them” (Mark 10:42). That is the way of the world around us, but it shouldn’t be true of the local church—“it shall not be so among you,” (v. 43). There is much we can learn from secular insights into leadership, but we must also recognize there is to be a clear contrast between how leadership is exercised in the secular world and how it is exercised in the church. We can learn from CEOs and generals, but pastors are not meant to be CEOs and generals.
"We can learn from CEOs and generals, but pastors are not meant to be CEOs and generals."
To domineer is to go against New Testament’s teaching on church governance. Christians will have differing convictions about precisely how churches should be structured, but one thing seems incontrovertible from the Scriptures: Churches are to be led by plural eldership. The New Testament nowhere speaks of a church elder in singular terms. The church may have a lead pastor, but there is to be a plurality of those who share leadership responsibility. No one person is meant to be in charge. Now, it is easy to have plural eldership in theory and yet still have a pastor who rules the roost. The key is whether there is clear accountability and correction, and whether that can be—and actually is—executed.
Being domineering is catastrophic for a flock. It seems effective in the short term—it gets things done!—but it is disastrous in the long term. What Paul says to the Romans about dealing with those “weak in faith” is instructive here. Those weak in faith (Rom. 14:1) abstain from certain foods or observe certain days even though God doesn’t require them to. But if this has become a conscience issue,
they shouldn’t be coerced into changing their practice: “Whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).
Paul is highlighting a broad principle that applies beyond the immediate discussion about food and special days. Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
If a believer has certain doctrinal views or behaves in certain ways simply because a domineering pastor has coerced them to, then those views or actions are not proceeding from faith. It is not the Spirit of Christ who has brought them about, but the forcefulness of a leader. This is catastrophic because the believer isn’t being led by the Lord, but by man. Believing even the right things is no good if it is for the wrong reason.
The flock is to be led, yes—by beauty of example, not force of personality.
The antidote to being domineering, then, is to lead by example rather than by coercion: “Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:3).
The flock is to be led, yes, but not by force of personality. The flock is to be led by beauty of example. Being domineering is bad leadership; and the answer to bad leadership is not no leadership but the right kind of leadership.
Again, there is authority in the office of being an elder (Heb. 13:17). There will be times when a pastor needs to call for that office to be respected and honored. But the people should be obedient to their leaders not because they’re terrified of them, but because they’re inspired and encouraged by them. Ultimately, it should be because the leaders point them to Christ by their example and spur them to their own love and good deeds.
Sam Allberry is a pastor, apologist, author and speaker. He is the author of a number of books, including Is God Anti-Gay?; What God Has to Say About Our Bodies; Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?; and 7 Myths about Singleness.
Pension Fund of the Christian Church has been serving those in the Restoration Movement since 1895. Our mission is “For Support of Ministry” and we are committed to helping pastors and lay employees of the church on the road to financial wellness.
3.6 billion in assets
With over 14,000 members and more than $3.6 billion in assets, our retirement and savings products are strong. For over 125 years, not a single member has ever experienced a loss in account value due to poor market performance, and in fact they continue to see their account value grow. We do all the investing for you and we don’t deduct fees from your account, which means you benefit from our investment expertise without having to be an expert yourself. As a church plan, we are also able to offer pastors a housing allowance in retirement.
addition to our Pension Plan, we offer:
Tax-Deferred Retirement Account - 4.0% base interest rate
Traditional and Roth IRAs - 3.5% base interest rate
Benefit Accumulation Account - 3.0% base interest rate
of 1933,
at Pension Fund
not
beneficiaries
A lack of understanding and relying on God’s Spirit is one of the regrets of my early ministry journey. For too long I treated God’s Spirit like an afterthought. I relied on my own strength, rather than the Holy Spirit’s. I confessed my faith in God, but confronted my problems in my own power. I believed God could do great things, but I didn’t activate my faith and depend on him to do those great things. I failed to fully experience and live in the promised Spirit and the promised presence of God. You cannot lead the ministry God has for you on your own steam. Your new life is powered by the grace, love, and ability that flow through the divine person of the Holy Spirit. You’ve got to remember to breathe, spiritually, and be filled by his Spirit. Otherwise, you’ll end up depleted and exhausted, defeated by your default tendency to go it alone.
I know this too well. Several years ago I was on a collision course with burnout. What I experienced was more than simple fatigue or needing a vacation. If you’re worn out, time off can recharge you, but not so with burnout. It’s an exhaustion compounded by emptiness and spiraling into darkness. It’s being emotionally overdrawn and spiritually undersupplied. When you hit full-on burnout, there’s a good chance you won’t bounce back from it with the energy and vigor you had before, especially in the area that caused it.
Red flags popped up in my life. The most jarring occurred after a baptism celebration service with new believers. Nothing fires me up like seeing people trust Jesus for their salvation or follow through with baptism. After watching hundreds of people be baptized, I felt… nothing. I was intellectually excited for them, but emotionally numb. I drove home and realized how serious things were in my heart. So I began to examine my life. I’d allowed my prayer life to slide for an extended period. I’ve never been great at sticking to set times of prayer and am at my best when I’m praying throughout the day. I couldn’t remember the last time I had asked God to fill me with his Spirit.
I had been going for too long from task to task without personally depending on God. The resulting strain began to wear me down. Bitterness took root in my heart and began to grow.
My heart was drifting and becoming cynical. I took on too much travel, too many projects, and didn’t manage my schedule with common sense. My old familiar impatience was rearing its head again. Most of us will circle around the same personality and sin patterns throughout our lives. God’s Spirit can bring victory, but this doesn’t mean these patterns won’t rare their heads again in different seasons, especially when we are vulnerable.
For me, a lack of appropriate boundaries with my schedule and a fierce ability to focus and work are both a strength and a weakness. I have struggled with these my entire adult life with varying degrees of success. My “addictive personality” that once led me down a destructive path of substance abuse shifted its focus to work and ministry. Yet something about my depth of emotional numbness startled me. I feared I might break apart like Humpty Dumpty and never get put back together again the same way.
I’d watched friends burnout, so I knew I needed to take action. So I talked to my wife, spiritual advisors, my board of Elders, and friends, being honest about things that needed to change, and I sought accountability with my schedule and life. I worked with my wife Lori to create a “stop doing list.” I quit traveling for an extended season. While I’ve always enjoyed writing, I took an indefinite sabbatical. I gave myself to core tasks of being a husband, father, and local pastor. I got more intentional about my relationship with God.
I also worked with a spiritual advisor for an extended period. He’s a Christian psychologist and doesn’t like to be called a counselor, but that’s what he is to me. After several months he told me, “Jud, you didn’t hit the burnout wall head on, but you did sideswipe it pretty good, like an Indy driver who makes the turn but scrapes the wall.”
I learned that when you’re that depleted, the last thing you have is perspective, especially on how depleted you are. You run out of perspective long before you run out of road and crash. He helped me see that my most important job was not to serve, teach or lead, but simply to breathe. I needed to love God personally and let God love me again. I needed his Spirit to fill me anew.
I did bounce back, but it was eighteen months before I began to feel like myself again—long enough to fear that I might never recover. But I’ll never forget the joy I felt one Saturday while preparing for our weekend church services. There was nowhere I’d rather be. Nothing I’d rather be doing. No one I’d rather be with than the people of our church. I felt energized, alive, strong, and at peace.
Throughout this entire process, the most important part was God’s Spirit. He breathed new life into my weary heart. I experienced the way God’s Spirit brings life not just for salvation, but for every day if we depend on him and seek his guidance and gifting.
Paul said of the Spirit, “He knows all things and makes known to us the deeper things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11). He is available to help you in your weaknesses and sustain you with every breath. He is filled with love toward you and can ensure you are never alone and never without resources to face whatever you are up against. Ask God’s Spirit to fill you every day. Ask the Spirit to guide you as you study God’s Word and lead. Consider your own stop doing list. Lead yourself well by depending on God’s Spirit. You don’t have to do ministry alone!
Jud Wilhite is an author, speaker and senior pastor of Central Church, a church founded in Las Vegas with over twelve locations nationally and internationally. Central is recognized as one of the largest and fastest growing churches in America. He is a bestselling author of several books, including Uncaged, The God of Yes, Pursued, and a study Bible for new believers, The Uncensored Truth Bible for New Beginnings. His teaching segments are heard nationally on K-LOVE radio. He and his wife, Lori, live in the Las Vegas area.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
That statement, attributed to the most influential management guru of our time, Peter Drucker, describes a reality church leaders must face in the pursuit of creating disciple making churches.
A disciple making church culture is what your church actually does in disciple making; strategy is your plans on paper. Unfortunately, while we have good intentions to make disciples, our strategy and church culture do not always line up.
What Drucker meant by “culture eats strategy for breakfast” was that lasting change in an organization comes only when the culture of an organization changes. Applying this to church, if you do not change the culture of a church, the church will not change. Many leaders fail to account for this reality.
This gets at the root of why our disciple making plans can so easily fail. We try great strategies—preaching on disciple making, small groups, D-Groups, etc. But our churches will not change—indeed cannot change— because “culture” easily defeats the strategies we adopt. That is why Louis Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, went one step further: “Organizational culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner …”
Our team has been working with national and international leaders on the key elements of creating a disciple making culture. We are working to better understand how to create disciple making cultures. We believe that will not see truly revolutionary disciple making movements within churches in North America until we create disciple making cultures. So we are excited to pursue help from those with national and international experience.
“The values, beliefs and behaviors practiced in an organization formed over time because they are rewarded or punished (i.e. by formal or informal rules, rituals, and behaviors.”
The Mckinsey Institute put it more simply: “culture is how we do things around here …”
It is helpful to understand a culture by looking through the lens of three elements: values, behaviors, and narrative.
• Values and Beliefs– the things that are truly important to us. They are what we really value and really believe about disciple making. The values are the hills we have been seriously wounded defending (or the hills that our people have died upon). The beliefs are both theological and philosophical. They define our identity and motives.
• Behaviors– These are specific practices that embed the beliefs and values. These typically emerge first out of discipline. The discipline of specific practices then leads to habits. These habits, applied time and time again, become lifestyles. Our lifestyle in turn are defined as our behaviors, which reflect what we really believe and value. They are reflected by our rules (often informal and unspoken), rituals, and behaviors.
• Narrative– the stories we tell and the language we use. These are the sayings that we repeat which explain and give meaning to our behaviors and disciplines. The things we regularly say and celebrate. The narrative is how we tell others about our behaviors. The narrative also includes the consistency of definitions and words we repeatedly use.
The Harvard Business Review describes it this way:
Bobby is the point-leader of Renew.org and Discipleship.org, both collaborative, disciple-making organizations. He is the founding and lead pastor of Harpeth Christian Church (by the Harpeth River, just outside of Nashville, TN). He has an M.A.R. and an M.Div. from Harding School of Theology and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of more than 10 books on discipleship, including Discipleshift (with Jim Putman and Robert Coleman), The Disciple Maker’s Handbook (with Josh Patrick) and Becoming a Disciple Maker: The Pursuit of Level 5 Disciple Making (with Greg Weins). He lives in the greater Nashville area with his wife and near his children and grandchildren.
Shodankeh Johnson and the story of his disciple making movement in West Africa is know to many people. You can learn about his movement and others by reading the free ebook, Kingdom Unleashed. The disciple making movement he leads – and others like it – take away our breath in terms of the disciple making movements that have been created and what they have accomplished (millions of people are disciples who make disciples).
When a group of us met with Shodankeh he challenged the conventional wisdom on how a disciple making culture is created. Since he has such a significant track record in creating disciple making churches and movements, we slowed down and listened to his advice.
He surprised us with his emphasis on discipline. He is a big advocate that we embrace discipline as the heart of disciple making. What he means by discipline is the explicit practice of specific things like fasting and prayer rhythms, Discovery Bible study, starting with persons of peace, etc., be adopted upfront. He believes that discipline is more important than talking or explaining.
He believes we place too much emphasis on Narrative (our stories and words) without first putting disciplines into place. But it may more of a reflection of his culture. Here in North America, stories and language are very powerful it terms of influencing people and helping create a culture.
I believe there is wisdom in listening to Shodankeh, but we also may need balance. We do not want to underplay the importance of narrative in the western context. In tribal, more authoritative environments, narrative may not be as important. In North America, you need to create narrative to help people with behavior and discipline. For its strengths and weaknesses, North Americans come from a broader culture that values autonomy.
Those who want to lead disciple making churches will be helped by a systematic approach to these issues. We must first clarify the values and beliefs at the heart of effective disciple making and then work our way outward, by clarifying the disciplines will need to embrace (the elements).
As we explore creating disciple making cultures in North America, one path forward for many church leaders may look like the following:
• Embrace, at a deep level, the core values and beliefs of Jesus-style disciple making.
• Commit to the right Disciplines – prayerfully (and with wisdom) adopt simple disciplines that capture the essence of the values, beliefs, and elements of disciple making (it is essential to adopt the right disciplines first).
• Fight tenaciously to uphold the disciplines.
• These disciplines consistently held and practiced will create habits – and these habits will create lifestyles.
• Develop language and narratives to explain and make viral the lifestyle of the culture. Use the language and tells stories that make sense of things early on in the process and every chance you get through it. Use them regularly in sermons, teachings, writings and conversations. Make the narrative sticky.
We are still in the early stages of our learnings about disciple making movements for North America. We have a church culture that was built around the assumptions of the modern world, and now, in a post-modern world, we are learning to go back to the Bible again. We are looking at examples of those who point us to the Bible in new ways so that we can establish church cultures that will make disciple making the norm.
Jesus is our model. We are focused on his message and his methods of disciple making. We are certain that the focus on Jesus is our best path forward as we seek to create disciple making cultures that will thrive in our new post-modern context.
At CMF International, we want to connect you to God’s mission to transform the world. Whether it’s through planting churches, training leaders, serving the poor, reaching college students or engaging the marketplace, your partnership with CMF will grow the vision of your church while having a world-wide impact.
In a time of isolation and unprecedented change, the well-being of pastors and their people has been at the forefront of Barna’s research. We now find ourselves equipped with extensive data on what it has looked like as American churches have weathered the pandemic, and in this article, we’ll take a look at some trends that have emerged from these surveys.
As COVID-19 has impacted the daily routines and roles of pastors in many ways, are leaders finding time for their own spiritual development? Fifty-one percent report it has been easy (23% very, 28% somewhat), while another 49 percent have found it difficult (10% very, 39% somewhat) to prioritize this time.
When it comes to their people’s burdens, how ready are church leaders to help their congregants through their present mental and emotional troubles? Only three in 10 pastors (30%) say they feel “very wellequipped,” though the majority (64%) notes they feel “somewhat equipped,” with a remaining 6 percent responding they are “not well-equipped.” Additionally, two in five pastors (39%) reports that they or another staff member of their church have preached on the topic of mental or emotional health within the last month.
Throughout the pandemic, Barna researchers consistently asked pastors if they felt like their church attendance was going to grow, stay the same or decline once the crisis had resolved. Toward the beginning of the pandemic, pastors appeared to be more optimistic, with about three in ten hypothesizing growth for their churches and four in ten expecting to see consistent / unchanged attendance numbers following the pandemic. However, as churches transitioned into 2021, these numbers began to wane, highlighting a notable shift in expectations for church leaders across the country.
In March of 2021, 28 percent of pastors said they expect their church will grow, 22 percent reported expecting their congregation size to stay the same and 4 percent said they have no idea what to expect. Overall, this leaves almost half (46%) of pastors saying they anticipate a decline in numbers. Barna has not observed a major change in these reported expectations since the spring of 2021.
Furthermore, giving appears to be down for roughly one in three congregations in the U.S., although only 6 percent of pastors report giving as being “significantly less” than it was before the pandemic. 46 percent of church leaders report that giving levels are “about the same.”
Although these statistics certainly can be seen as worrisome, in the early months of 2021 only 10 percent of pastors admitted their church was struggling financially, with expenses surpassing income.
Over the course of the pandemic, church leaders and their people have continued to serve their community, primarily by helping distribute food and supplies and reaching out to elderly, isolated or at-risk community members. This trend has remained fairly steady since COVID-19 disruptions began, with 33 percent of pastors reporting in the summer of 2020 that their church was distributing food and supplies and another one in five (19%) saying their congregants were reaching out to elderly, isolated or at-risk community members.
Still, during the summer of 2020, when many churches were most active in their community-support efforts, a quarter of pastors (25%) admitted their church did not have an official / organized response.
Did the community take notice of the role the Church has played during the past year and a half? Well, in May of 2021, Barna asked U.S. adults if they felt like Christian pastors in their community had been strong leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic. A solid majority
Did the community take notice of the role the Church has played during the past year and a half? Well, in May of 2021, Barna asked U.S. adults if they felt like Christian pastors in their community had been strong leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic. A solid majority of adults (both churched and unchurched adults alike) agreed with this statement (65%).
Despite the myriad challenges COVID-19 has presented to our society, almost all pastors are now fairly certain that their churches will survive the pandemic (83% very confident).
Pastors have taken advantage of opportunities to innovate over the last year and a half. In January 2021, 61 percent said their church planned to explore new community outreach programs or activities in 2021.
Two in three leaders started using new technology forums like YouTube (45%) and Facebook (32%) due to the pandemic. In total, seven in ten church leaders say their ministry priorities as a church changed in the last year (17% substantially, 53% somewhat). This data shows us that much has changed and many have innovated, perhaps for the first time.
These are some of the things we now know about the present well-being of churches in the U.S., according to the pastors who lead them—but there is much we don’t know yet. How will the online methods of worship and liturgy continue to evolve? When will the finances of both organizations and individuals recover? What will be the mental and emotional toll on leaders and churchgoers who have faced loneliness, anxiety and grief? Should congregations plan to approach additional periods of social distancing as the world continues to fight the disease? How can churches best partner to help the vulnerable in this time?
These are the right questions to be asking as we lead forward, and at Barna Group, we plan to continue to ask – and answer – these questions alongside you.
Barna Group conducted a total of 20 surveys online among Protestant Senior Pastors from March 20, 2020 – March 22, 2021. Participants are all members of Barna Group’s Church Panel. Quotas and minimal weighting have been used to ensure the sample is representative based on denomination, region and church size. Sample size varies from 250-500 church leaders depending on the survey.
n=2,007 U.S. adults, April 23-May 5, 2021.
Barna is a private, non-partisan, for-profit organization under the umbrella of the Issachar Companies. Located in Ventura, California, Barna Group has been conducting and analyzing primary research to understand cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984.
This article falls under the theme “The Church at Present.” Please mark the by line as Barna Group and not me specifically, as this article was adapted from a piece written by our editorial staff. I am not the sole author.
“God is willing—no, he longs—to edit your story, to replace fear with faith, doubt with confidence, and resentment with love. The astounding truth is that God will heal your deepest wounds and turn them into your greatest strengths—they become the source of your genius.” - Byers and Walker, Unhindered: Aligning the Story of Your Heart
Leaders are positioned right now to do a lot of reimagining for the church and shift and reshape the landscape for how we invite and disciple people into a meaningful life with Jesus.
The instinct for many leaders is to go into strategy mode and dream big about how we can do things differently to make a bigger difference. That’s a great thing. But that strategy is incomplete.
In his book, Future Church, Will Mancini predicts that in 2020-2040 the identity for the church will be a “training center where disciple making is expected of everyone.” He adds a prediction that future ministry philosophy will be “to be is more.”
The future focus of the church is expected to be a pervasive culture of disciple making. But we can’t just make any kind of disciples. We have to make healthy disciples.
Here’s the strategy you need to lead your church into its optimized future: Become a healthier leader who can make truly healthy disciples. You’ll have to get your “self” out of the way to do this well.
Becoming a healthier leader means pausing the excitement about how we can get where we want to go to pay attention to what’s inside of us that’s getting in the way of the church’s future.
There’s going to be little room in the future church for unhealthy leaders who are getting by on leadership skills alone that aren’t coupled with emotional and spiritual health to produce things like sound character, authentic care for others, and surrender to the lead of the Holy Spirit.
There is so much within your heart that is competing with the leader you want to be and with the goals you have for your future church. You may not have even known that you had some competition because it can be a sneaky adversary.
It may come in the form of things like whispers of selfdoubt, nagging shame that keeps you holding your cards too close, fear of failure, jadedness with others, or a subtle need for control that leaves your team feeling unheard and unimportant.
You may not even be as healthy as you think. Acting like a healthy leader doesn’t exactly mean you are a healthy leader. A recent article put out by Harvard Business Review gives us a powerful wake up call. This article titled, “Is your Emotional Intelligence Authentic or SelfServing” exposes the reality that even leaders who look good on the outside, may have the wrong motivations on the inside. It says, “It’s possible to fake emotional intelligence. Similar to knockoffs of luxury watches or handbags, these are emotions and actions that look like the real thing but really aren’t. With the best of intentions, I’ve seen smart leaders charge into sensitive interactions armed with what they believed was a combination of deep empathy, attuned listening, and self-awareness but was, in fact, a way to serve their own emotional needs. It’s important to learn to spot these forgeries, especially if you’re the forger.”
Too often we are blinded by our normal and don’t stop to examine how healthy we really are. Some of us mistake leadership skills for emotional and spiritual health. Others justify the hindrances within them as “This is just who I am.” There’s more we’re being called to as leaders. More ease. More empathy. More surrender. More impact. More cooperation with the Holy Spirit. In essence, more emotional and spiritual health.
All of the things that stand in our way of health (like selfdoubt, selfishness, a need for control, or a reliance on people’s approval) are called our hindrances.
Imagine what would happen to a seasoned marathon runner if you asked them to run their next race with weights strapped on each ankle. Despite their training, well-defined muscles and deep grit, they’d probably not get very far before saying, “This feels too hard!” The extra weight would hinder them too much to get even close to the intended finish line.
We’re leading hindered too. We’re held back. Weighed down. Burdened. Even paralyzed sometimes. We can’t make truly healthy disciples around us when we aren’t healthy ourselves. Why? Because our hindrances make us better at telling the Holy Spirit “no” than we realize.
Hindrances have made a home in our heart simply because we’ve lived and seen things in this imperfect life that have taught them something that God doesn’t recognize. Hindrances then show up as leadership lids that thwart our impact. Here’s a few examples:
• Abuse may teach a heart to fear. Fear may create a desperate need for safety. A desperate need for safety might then show up in a leader as riskaversion or as a need to manipulate outcomes.
• Having people close to you burn you may leave rejection in your heart, which may teach your heart not to trust. Mistrust may show up in a leader as not investing into the team well because they’ve become too self-reliant.
• Being overly affirmed for your performance in life may leave your heart with performance insecurity. Insecurity may teach your heart to work incredibly hard to outdo yourself every time. That may show up as a burned out leader who is exhausted from trying so hard or as a leader who is following more of his or her own agenda than God’s.
• Having something to prove may leave your heart with self-centeredness and arrogance. Arrogance may teach your heart to dominate and “take no prisoners.” That may get disguised as or mistakens a leader’s passion and power.
Hebrews 12:1 calls us to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” This verse is clear that sin stands in our way. We must get the blatant things out of our life that bring darkness, secrets, and damage to our lives. But we also have to “throw off everything that hinders.” There is so much in our hearts that doesn’t separate us from God as sin does, but doesn’t reflect God either.
Take just a moment and think about this question, “Who
is the hardest person you’ve ever had to lead?” Does the face of someone from your past come to mind? Are you taking a deep breath just remembering what that took from you? No matter how hard it was to lead that person, the hardest person you will ever have to lead is yourself. Leading yourself means managing your heart before it manages you, and that’s not an easy job! It takes curiosity and “want to” to begin unhindering our hearts. We have to choose to no longer settle for our normal and get curious about the hindrances in our hearts and how they get in the way. It takes courage to take God’s invitation to submit our hindrances to His healing and growth processes. It takes intention and daily investment to learn how to say “no” to the pain and imperfect learnings of our pasts and “yes” to God’s alternatives that lead to greater emotional and spiritual health.
Healthy leaders aren’t defined by their team building skills, capacity for innovation, and ability for vision-casting alone. They are distinguished by how free their hearts are from all that holds them back and weighs them down. If hearts are unhindered, lives and leadership will be unhindered too.
Emotional and spiritual health may seem like a luxury, but they are a necessity. We don’t get where we want to go without them. Or at least we don’t arrive without being drained by hindrance that’s been resisting us at every step or without leaving a wake of devastation behind us in the hearts of others.
When you first lead your heart into more emotional and spiritual health, you lead your church into the future it’s meant to have: a community of healthy disciples produced by healthy leaders.
Make this challenge yours: Throw off everything that hinders you from running the race before you with perseverance (Hebrews 12:1).
To read more about unhindering your life and leadership, look for the book Unhindered: Aligning the Story of Your Heart at availleadership.org/unhindered or amazon.com.
Drs. Walker and Byers have served Christian Ministry leaders for nearly thirty years through Blessing Ranch Ministries which seeks to restore and renew Christian leaders and their families for effective Kingdom service.
Leadership has never been an easy endeavor.
In the best of times, leadership requires all that you have. In the difficult times, leadership seems to demand far more.
I do not need to waste any time or energy trying to convince you that you have been leading in the midst of an extremely difficult season.
Whether it is the crumbling moral framework of the culture at large, the growing divide along a number of “controversial fault lines” among our own church members, the sudden shifts to how you go about leading and caring for the church, or the debilitating personal challenges you have experienced in the midst of so much uncertainty — most honest leaders are struggling to not lose heart.
A recent study from Barna revealed that 29% of pastors have strongly considered leaving pastoral ministry as a result of the challenges faced in the past year and half. If I’m honest, that number seems low.
So the question is not if leaders are weary, but maybe more significantly why are leaders soweary?
Is it possible that the discouragement of the past 18 months goes deeper than the external leadership challenges we all face?
Although the external challenges of this season have been unrelenting and quite real, I am convinced the greatest threat to Godly leadership is not the loss of church members, cultural influence, or certainty around our ironclad strategic plans. No, the greatest threat to Godly leadership is the loss of heart.
In ministry, the hard work is actually the heart work. Whether we like it or not, what we do can not be parsed out from who we are becoming. Our work flows through the heart, because the heart is the dwelling place of Christ (Ephesians 3:17). It’s the reason the writer of Proverbs calls us to guard our hearts (Proverbs 4:23),
Jesus tells us to keep our hearts (John 16:33), and Paul celebrates that in the face of great challenges he has not lost his heart (2 Corinthians 4:1).
One of my favorite moments in the scriptures unfolds near the battlefield described in 1 Samuel 17. You know the story well. Young David is sent by his father to deliver food to his brothers who had been deemed old enough and brave enough to fight. David arrives on the scene like an under appreciated Postmates driver bringing food to a party in which he was never invited. Shortly after arriving, David discovers that the Israelite army is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually defeated. Day after day the army had faced the boastful threats of their larger-than life opponent, and at some point along the way they began to take his threats to heart.
In 1 Samuel 17:32, there is an amazing exchange between young David and King Saul. David articulates the challenge facing Saul and his men quite simply. He says, “let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine, your servant will go and fight him.” David knew the greatest challenge was not the size of Goliath or the technological advancements of the Philistine army. No, the greatest threat to Israel’s future was the loss of heart.
So the question becomes, how does a leader keep his/her heart in a land dominated by “impending giants?”
Although there are many places the scriptures speak to this question, I am particularly captivated by the clarity and practicality of Hebrews 12:1-3. The writer of Hebrews declares:
“(1) Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, (2) fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (3) Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
Much like Jesus in John 16:33, the Hebrew writer leaves no room for confusion. He says I am telling you all of these things so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. The application of these Holy Spirit inspired words has been a source of life and strength to me as I’ve stood, like you, in the land of giants this year.
So how can we practically live into these truths as leaders?
The past year did not make us or break us, it merely revealed us. If you are anything like me, there are probably some areas of your life and leadership that pleasantly surprised you. Undoubtedly you discovered some parts of your life that were more resilient, faithful, durable, and beautiful than you would have known had you not gone through the pruning that you did.
But if you are honest, you probably also discovered some things about your life and leadership that you are not too eager to discuss or display broadly.
I love how the writer of Hebrews deals with this reality. He says some of the things that slow us down are not necessarily sinful, but they are not helpful for moving us towards all that God has in store for our lives. They are hinderances. But he goes a bit further. He goes on to say there are also sins that we have made peace with in our lives that have entangled our hearts, minds, and habits seeking to destroy the work of God in us and through us. We must let go of both of these. What a sobering thought.
Several times a year, my wife and I will get away on our own and together for the sole purpose of allowing God to speak into our lives in a fresh way. One of the questions we always seek to ask, but one that has had much more weight after the past season, is
“Jesus will you please show us what we need to let go of in order to faithfully love you and serve you well in this season?”
Have any bad habits crept in?
Are there any methods of ministry that have run their course?
Have I said yes to the right things, and no to the wrong things?
The list could go on.
If we will have the courage to ask, he will have the kindness to answer.
But keeping heart is not just about letting go. There is a real beauty that is found in the commitment to simply keep going. Our culture doesn’t typically celebrate perseverance well. We tend to be more impressed by the newest, fastest, and shiniest. But with every passing year of life and leadership, I find myself being drawn not to those who have started well, but to those who are learning to finish well.
There are some days, as you know, where the most noble work of leadership is to simply keep moving forward, even if you aren’t sure which direction is forward.
The Hebrew writer reminds us that leadership in the Kingdom of God is a marathon, not a wind sprint. The call of Godly leadership is not simply to run, but to run with perseverance because the course is long.
Keeping heart also requires that we learn how to run true again. The witness of scripture consistently points to the beautiful reality that God made you on purpose (Psalm 139) and for a purpose (Ephesians 2). The Hebrew writers taps into this reality in verse 1 as he calls us to “run the race marked out for us.” The goal is not simply to keep running, but to keep running the race that God has made us to run.
Although I can be inspired and taught by just about anybody, it is key that I only give my life to running the race marked out for me by Christ.
I’m convinced that very few things will deplete our life and energy like running the wrong race.
Finally, the ultimate key to keeping our hearts in the midst of leadership fatigue is found as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. I know this sounds so obvious that most of us will be tempted to skip right past this part, but humor me for just a moment. Who do you really take your leadership cues from? Who really inspires you? Whose voice has the greatest weight in your life as a leader? I love reading books, listening to podcast, and joining coaching groups — but none of those are sufficient for sustaining my heart. Unless Jesus is truly my leadership hero, my heart will be prone to fail.
I love how the Hebrew writer calls us to remember the way Jesus faced struggles as our source of strength. You can almost hear the echos of John 14:27. While walking with his disciples towards Gethsemane, Jesus turned to his disciples and said, “The peace I have is the peace I will give to you.” In other words, this enduring peace in the face of such impending hardship will be yours as well, but only if you come to me. What amazing news!
It has been a challenging season to say the least, but God is not done with you yet! Our world desperately needs wholehearted leaders — surrendered to Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, running the race marked out for them. The world needs leaders like you.
So no matter what may come, guard your heart because you are going to need it.
Dave is the lead church planter and pastor at Ethos Church; he leads vision and teaching for three campuses. Because of his deep passion for making disciples and planting churches he also serves in discipleship - leading house churches, prayer ministry, outreach, and missions. God put a big dream in the hearts of Dave and his wife, Sydney, back in 2007. They put together the original team and planted Ethos Church in 2008. Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, Dave moved to Nashville in 2000 to attend college. He attended Lipscomb University for both undergrad and graduate school. He met Sydney during orientation his freshmen year. Dave and Sydney were married in 2005. They now have three beautiful children named Micah, Jack, and Judah.
“Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”
We are living in an ever-increasing multiethnic, multicultural, and metropolitan mission field. This is true within the United States when seeing the further expansion of Diverse Metro Areas such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Houston, and Phoenix. It’s also true globally in cities such as London, Sydney, Johannesburg, Toronto, Paris, and Rome. Urbanization and diversity are all around us. This social reality cannot be stopped or even paused for a brief moment. And yet, with all of this diversity and urban expansion, there are also deep divisions and multiple dimensions of social unrest. 2020 provided a clear picture of the ways in which we are divided by race, place, and politics. Not even a global pandemic could slow down the lack of civility and our inability to find common ground for the greater good. But these great challenges are a great opportunity for the church of Jesus Christ. They open the doors for the church to equip and release cross cultural, reconciling, and disciple making followers of Christ. In this season, we sure could use more Christ-centered, multiethnic, and missional churches. No question about it. But we need more than just ethnically diverse churches. The development of the multiethnic church alone is not enough to bring transformation to a diverse, divided, and polarizing mission field. We need churches that can serve as bridges over the troubled waters of racial division and unrest. We need churches that aren’t held captive to the political parties of the nation they
are in so that they can serve as outposts of the Kingdom of God. We need churches that are centers of hope, health, and healing in places where there is brokenness, trauma, and dysfunction. Simply stated, we need churches that are both multiethnic and reconciling. And these multiethnic and reconciling churches must equip, empower, and release cross-cultural and reconciling disciple-makers into a diverse and deeply divided mission field.
It is important here to define a reconciling church. In her book, Roadmap to Reconciliation, Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil defines the term reconciliation as “an ongoing spiritual process involving forgiveness, repentance, and justice that restores broken relationships and systems to reflect God’s original intention for all creation to flourish.” With this definition in mind, a reconciling church is one which embraces the ongoing spiritual process that involves forgiveness, repentance, and justice which restores broken relationships and systems and weaves it into its discipleship strategies. The reconciling church is justice oriented and equips Christians to be disciple-makers in mission field that encompasses disparities within the social areas that are necessary for all to have access to flourishing. For this ecclesiastical practice of reconciliation to take place externally, it must first show up internally among an ethnically diverse staff and volunteer leadership within the church. Leaders of a reconciling church commit themselves to an ongoing process of spiritual maturity, intercultural development, and soul care. These are crucial elements for faithfulness and fruitfulness in disciple making
The reconciling church also focuses externally on its surrounding mission field. The late Reverend Samuel Hines, expert multiethnic church leader and reconciliation theologian, described reconciliation as both a spiritual discipline and the primary agenda of the church. Understanding the reconciling church in this way shows a dynamic relevancy for greater participation in the Great Commission in the missional reality we find ourselves in. Being that the Great Commission is about making disciples of all nations, it is clear that in America as well this is a cross-cultural, justice-oriented, and
So how does this happen? I first I have to acknowledge that we are actually seeing an increase in multiethnic and reconciling churches. There are many churches that have gone beyond making statements after a racialized tragedy or in the midst of being bombarded by political dysfunction through cable news. They have gone beyond simply seeking to diversify their staff and key volunteer leadership teams, though that should not be seen as unimportant. In some cases there are churches and para church ministries losing donors, board members, staff, and congregational members over attempts to stay deeply biblical and practically missional in this moment. So, with that stated, here are some practical steps to creating and sustaining a multiethnic and reconciling church-
It starts with leaders. Senior Pastors as well as Executive Leaders of Para Church organizations must embrace a calling to multiethnic and reconciling ministry. Don’t move this direction out of social pressure primarily. Get on the road of reconciliation and cross cultural disciple making because of divine calling. Allow the Creator of a diverse world, Who has also made reconciliation possible through His only begotten Son, to invade your soul like never before. Seek out or grow your multiethnic and reconciling circle of friends, mentors, and collaborators. Allow the stories, celebrations, trauma, and struggles of others to bless you, challenge you, change you, and mature you. Make cultural intelligence and intercultural development part of your personal and professional development.
Develop a Cross Cultural and Reconciling Team Diversity and Inclusion is a big topic in just about every sector of our society. And it should be. In a diverse world, why would you not desire to experience the blessing of a diverse team that is deeply aligned around the same vision, mission, and purpose? Revelation 7 in Scripture informs us that heaven will include a multiethnic and multilingual multitude. As followers of Christ we should work together to present a sneak preview of heaven now. Prayerfully and strategically engage your surrounding community in order to develop teams that reflect the diversity of the community for greater transformation within it. Create multiethnic collaborative networks and associations with other churches that have a different ethnic make-up than yours.
Engaging the cultures of our mission fields provides opportunities for strengthening our commitment in becoming a multiethnic and reconciling church. There are some segments of the Body of Christ who make enemies out of the cultures around them. Other segments fully embrace the cultures around them in such a way that it threatens to compromise the vision and mission God has given them. By engaging culture, we become listeners, learners, and bring a posture of humility that garners greater credibility for the transformation of lives and communities. Become more aware of the disparities by race, class, and place that impact your surrounding community. Compare and contrast those issues with the gifts, passions, and experiences of those within your congregation or Para church ministry. Build bridges of reconciliation in order to bring empowerment to the most vulnerable and healing to the brokenness that exists. Don’t try to solve all the issues in your community. Find one to three challenges that you can take on and see change within over the long haul.
When Christ returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth. There will be no dysfunction, division, disease, or dehumanizing. We will live in the eternal multiethnic and reconciling Kingdom of God. Until then, we are called to serve as ambassadors of reconciliation and cross cultural disciple makers. This work should be done out of the overflow of intimacy with God, identity in Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Collectively, we must strive to provide a sneak preview of heaven now.
Dr. Efrem Smith is an internationally recognized leader who uses motivational speaking and preaching to equip people for a life of transformation. He consults on issues of multi-ethnicity, leadership and community development. Dr. Smith is the former- president and CEO of World Impact, an urban mission, church planting and leadership-development organization. He is the current co-lead Pastor of Bayside Church, Midtown. He’s the author of several books and is a graduate of Saint John’s University, Luther Theological Seminary and received his DMin from Fuller Theological Seminary.
One day, Kish lost some donkeys, so he sent his son Saul out to find them. Saul looks for days but can’t find his donkeys anywhere, so he went to Samuel the Prophet for advice. Little did Saul know that God orchestrated the whole thing so that he and Samuel would meet because God decided that Saul would be the new King of Israel. When Samuel told Saul about God’s vision of leadership, Saul was understandably reluctant. “King of Israel? I can’t even find my own a__!!”
Do you ever feel like that? Maybe like, I don’t know, today? You are leading in your church or organization or business as best you can, but the pandemic and social melee of the past year has blown everything apart and you aren’t sure you can even find your donkey let alone lead. I feel you. Many of the church leaders I know who are my age are thinking about succession and retirement a lot sooner than they thought they would. I am one of them. I know I am not God’s anointed leader for Parkview forever, and at some point, there has to be a good hand off. But for now, I…am…the…. leader.
In our story, Saul patiently submits and accepts the anointing of Saul, who tells him that the power of God is going to enable him to do some incredible ministry.
The Spirit of God came upon him in power, and he joined in their prophesying. When all those who had formerly known him saw him prophesying with the prophets, they asked each other, “What is this that has happened to the son of Kish?” (1 Samuel 10:10-11)
I’ll tell you what happened; he was chosen and anointed by God! Because it was never about him, it was about the fact that God picked him.
So, Samuel brought the people together to introduce them to their new leader, and he did it in dramatic fashion. He had all the people gather as tribes and clans and chose Benjamin; the tribe Saul was from. Then he went through the tribe, clan by clan, until Saul’s clan was chosen. Then they announce that Saul was the winner.
I think this was the early version of American Idol. Just imagine this big dramatic moment!
“And now, your new King of Israel… Saul Kishson.” (Crickets chirping)
They just had one problem – they couldn’t find Saul.
“When they looked for him, he was not to be found. So, they inquired further of the LORD, “Has the man come here yet?” (vs. 21-22)
They had no idea where Saul was – so they asked God, who had to be laughing as he delivered the next line.
The LORD said, “Yes, he has hidden himself among the baggage.” (vs. 23)
Many, if not most of you have actually been ordained to the office you now hold by a church leadership. The rest of you have been ordained by God himself, who told us in 1 Peter 2:9 that we’re all in the “royal priesthood.”
If we’ve been ordained, we’ve been anointed. So why is it that you’re connecting with King Saul so much right now? Let me ask it this way – are you having one of those days when you know about the power of the anointing, but you just aren’t feeling like stepping forward?
It may be one of those days when you just can’t find your own donkey (this works better in King James), and you feel like hiding in the baggage.
It doesn’t matter if it’s burnout, anger, depression, or just fear – it happens to the best of us. And it can come out of nowhere. I’ve hidden in the baggage more than my fair share. The worst was a burnout that came from a time of highly fruitful ministry. Things weren’t bad, they were just busy – good busy. And one weekend I found myself hiding in the baggage. They didn’t have to inquire of God, but they did have to pull me out.
Thankfully I had some friends and counselors that surrounded me and pulled me out of the baggage and got me going again. I’ve been there again this summer to be honest.
As I look back on that experience, and the others like it, there is one common denominator that Saul and I shared. We forgot the anointing. If you know the sad story of Saul, it was a problem he really never overcame. Sometimes for Saul, it manifested itself in fear, and other times it showed up as pride. It can go both ways.
It’s usually short-lived in my life, and less common the older I get, but my natural tendency is to forget the power source. Just like Saul, even though I’ve seen the amazing things God can do through me and in spite of me, I sometimes forget that it is God who called me here. It’s the anointing. When people tell me good things that God has done through me, I won’t get a big head if it’s about the anointing. When situations arise that are totally above my pay grade, I won’t fear because I have the anointing. When it’s one of those days when people are expecting me to be their leader and I don’t want to because I can’t even find my own donkey – it’s the anointing.
Peter had some experience with this, maybe as much as any Bible writer. That’s why his words mean so much to me in my baggage-hiding moments.
If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 4:11
It’s always about the anointing.
Tim Harlow is the senior pastor of Parkview Christian Church, one of the largest, fastest growing churches in America. He has spent thirty years working with people who have baggage from their past church experiences. He knows what drives people away and that the Jesus of the Bible is ultimately the hope that brings them back.
Tim and his family make their home in the south suburbs of Chicago.
Soon after my wife and I had moved to California we met a couple that lived around the corner from us. Lorrie and I were fish out of water in California and desperate to find some friendships and meaningful connection. We were 2000 miles away from family and friends. Lorrie was home all day with our 1-year-old daughter, and I was trying to lead a 3 year old church still meeting in a movie theater, and we each knew no one other than the staff. So the first thing we did was join one of our church’s small group’s that happened to meet in our neighborhood. We were delighted to meet some new friends, and one couple in particular – The Taylor’s. They lived right around the corner from us and even though their kids were older than ours, we had a lot in common. The wives liked to walk and talk, and us guys enjoyed football and teasing each other when our teams lost. They were active in the church and committed to the cause. It was our first experience of some people we could relate to who had similar passions as ours… family, faith, and football. (Well, maybe that was just mine.)
Their daughter would babysit for us while the 4 adults would go to dinner or a movie. The husband and I would go to games and play basketball. And every Monday night we’d enjoy our small group together. It was a thrill to see them come in the theater every weekend for church – nice to see a familiar face. But after a few months I noticed the familiar face became more disgruntled. It started with occasional questions about the direction of the church; it morphed into some venting about more depth. They were friends. I trusted them. And I was a young leader. So I let them help steer the ship. We added staff to teach classes they would enjoy, I made changes to my messages that might assist their growth, but the comments continued. Until finally one day he took me to lunch and told me they were “moving on.” His reason –they didn’t like my teaching. Wow. Tell me how you really feel? They pledged we’d still be friends and get together, but you know how that goes. We didn’t see them on Sunday or Monday anymore, we stopped dropping by, and the friendship never recovered. We were wounded.
I remembered a time in second grade when a friend moved away from my class. I was very sad about this, so my mom offered this age old proverb as advice: “Make new friends, but keep the old, some are silver and the
others gold.” That seemed nice at the time. But now that I’m an adult it seems ridiculous. Friends that leave me are neither silver nor gold. They are dirt to me.
I wish that was the only time we’d felt that way, but it’s not. My guess is you have your own friendship wounds. You also know the pain of getting close to someone only to discover the feeling was not mutual and they walk away. No matter what reasons they give and nomatter how justifiable their actions, it still hurts. And it leaves a mark.
Collect enough of these friendship wounds and you think I don’t need anyone. After all,why do I even need friends? Especially if you are married with kids. Your life is busy enough. So you begin to think, THESE people in my house are my friends. I don’t have time or the emotional bandwidth for anyone else. What we really mean is we don’t want to take the risk of being hurt again.
After a few decades of this you just learn to put up some walls. Never let anyone see the real you. Only show them what they need to see. Keep everything on the surface. After all, didn’t Solomon say, “Guard your heart?” Not “needing” anyone has its benefits. While no one aspires to be a grumpy old man, or a bitter old woman, I’m sure this is how it happens.
The longer we live, the more wounds we pick up along the way. And like all wounds, if they are left untreated, they can do some serious damage.
Bitterness is just like that. We bandage it up with “I’m fine.” We glorify it like a battle scar from the war. But deep inside it’s eating us up. It cripples our relationships. It turns us into the person we never set out to be. Here are three things to use to help you get over bitterness.
Since the problem is often the symptom, do a little detective work. Don’t just say you hate crowds, or you hate democrats… let’s get to the root of it. Why do you hate these things? What is it that causes you such pain? It’s like the person who hates the Green Bay Packers. Why? Their ex-husband was a fan. We’ve all got a root cause. What is it?
When someone has hurt you or taken something from you, in your mind you think they owe you something. You sit on the judge's bench and declare… You owe me a promotion, or a childhood, or a first marriage. Instead of stating what they owe you, decide to cancel the debt. Now, keep in mind, there is a difference between forgiving and forgetting. You may never forget. And there is a difference between forgiving and trusting. You don’t have to trust them again, but you can let them out of the jail in your mind.
Nothing says “celebrate good times” like silly string. (Well, maybe Kool and the Gang) So, decide to celebrate when good things happen to the person to whom you are bitter. I had a friend that I felt backstabbed me. I was bitter for years. Then I decided to start celebrating everything they did. It turns out I was the one who was set free. If you are reading this and you think I’ve been overly encouraging to you, maybe I was once bitter toward you. (Just kidding)
The Apostle Paul reminds us that we should forgive… just as the Lord Jesus has forgiven us. (Col.3:13). In the end, we’ll be the ones who are blessed. I wish I could say that when people leave our church or our staff it no longer hurts, but itdoes. But I now have a strategy of how to handle it.
Rusty George is the Lead Pastor at Real Life Church in Southern California; a multi-site church with campuses in Canyon Country, Lancaster, Simi Valley, Valencia and a large online community. Real Life has become one of the fastest growing churches in America. Beyond leading Real Life, Rusty is a global speaker, leader and teacher focusing his messages on helping people find and follow Jesus. Rusty has also written several books and writes regularly on his blog. Rusty is first and foremost committed to his family. Rusty has been married to his wife, Lorrie, for over twenty years and they have two daughters.
More than anything else pastors are telling me these days, I hear uncertainty about the future.
For many pastors, uncertainty began well before March 2020 when COVID froze society. Worship attendance was already plateauing or declining thanks to a solid five years of diminishing frequency of regular participants' attendance. Pastors were navigating a confusing debate about the pros and cons of online church. And they were grappling with stubborn divisions in American society that members brought with them into church, threatening to divide it.
Then COVID hit. Attendance frequency dropped to zero. Online church rose to 100 percent. And the divisions in society and church gaped into open wounds.
Pastors are leading churches in crisis. Most know that when the pandemic ends, things aren't going back to what they were, not all the way. And many wonder what inperson attendance will look like in the future.
Naturally, the uncertainty felt by pastors runs alongside the loss felt by the people they serve. Over the last year, people have lost more of what they consider normal in one blow than they ever have in their lives. In addition to loss of contact with loved ones, job and financial security, school routine, shopping and dining patterns, and national stability, people have lost a paradigm of church that they were used to and largely liked.
This loss produces grief, anger, and the compulsion to assign blame. Pastors have witnessed people blaming the government, conspiracies, foreigners, neighbors, and, with respect to what the church should and shouldn't be doing, pastors themselves. This blame is caustic spume on the bitter wave of misunderstood, mishandled loss.
This is a very rough time to be in ministry, and in many ways the future of Church As We Know It really is uncertain. But be assured that some things from the past will remain in your future:
• The mission of Jesus to the world
• The depravity and lostness of people around you
• The values that motivate your church
• Your local cultural context
• God's special calling upon each unique individual
• Your capacity to imagine a preferred future
• Your ability to focus resources
• The reality that God leads his people through leaders
As a church and as a leader, you still have what matters most. You have everything you need for life and godliness. You have the presence and authority of Jesus. You have the power of the gospel. COVID didn’t take any of those things away.
But COVID has taken away something we were ripe to lose—reliance on models of church inadequate to the methods of Jesus.
It's helpful to picture every church as a two-story house with a lower room and an upper room. The Lower Room contains four elements that draw people in: place (building), personalities (leaders), people (friends), and programs (activities). The Upper Room contains God's unique disciple-making vision for the church; it's supposed to draw people up. Everyone's primary place of emotional attachment to their church is one or the other.
COVID caused such turmoil in churches because it wrecked the Lower Room with the force of a hurricane. It revealed what had been true long before the pandemic struck: most people with a church home—and probably more than pastors suspected—are emotionally attached to the Lower Room, not the Upper Room. The Lower Room's demolition sent leaders scrambling to build some kind of shelter.
Yet COVID didn't only reveal truth about churches. It also uncovered just how much pastors are attached to the Lower Room. As I detail in my book Future Church with Cory Hartman, pastors are under enormous, constant pressure to spend all their energy on the Lower Room and to define success in Lower Room terms like worship attendance. Today's miserable Lower Room scorecard makes the COVID crisis a personal crisis for many pastors even if they never get infected or lose a job. Yet in the same stroke, COVID also greets pastors as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The pastors I know didn't get into ministry to run Lower Room programs but to make Upper Room disciples. The breaking of church norms now heralds the chance to break attachment to the Lower Room. This is the golden moment to recenter the church around God's vision of disciple making, expressed in the Seven Laws of Real Church Growth:
• Real church growth starts with a culture of mission, not worship.
• Real church growth is powered by the gospel, not relevance.
• Real church growth is validated by unity, not numbers.
• Real church growth is local, not imported.
• Real church growth is about growing people, not managing programs.
• Real church growth is led by calling, not celebrity.
• Real church growth is energized by shared imagination, not shared preference.
Before people will move to the Upper Room, pastors need to move there too. Most pastors' intentions have long been there already. But their minds have been baked in an inferior, intangible paradigm of church that keeps them trapped in a Lower Room system without wanting it or knowing it. The Seven Laws summarize the unlearning and relearning that pastors have to experience personally.
Then they need to paint a picture for people of how life in the Upper Room is better than life in the Lower Room— that even the brightest glimmers of God they've gotten in the Lower Room are nothing compared to the splendor higher up. Pastors need to demonstrate through stories and experiences that no matter what Lower Room elements have been lost, what is most important is alive and well—indeed, that a reimagined future centered in the Upper Room will ultimately be better than what anyone knew before.
The last year has been foundation-shaking for many pastors. Yet maybe we needed to experience that shaking to drive us from where we’ve been to a future more authentic to Jesus' intent for his church. As painful as the process has been, let’s not waste it! Let’s embrace this time of disruption as a gift from God—an opportunity to forge a better future.
Will Mancini is a church consultant and ministry entrepreneur. He is the founder of the Future Church Company, which is three interconnected organizations that help the church more closely embody the movement that Jesus founded. Three facets make up the church of today—individuals, local churches, and networks/denominations. Future Church Co. is three organizations, each intentionally designed to serve one of these three facets of the church. Each of these organizations— Younique, Pivvot, and Denominee—delivers practical tools and interactive processes that empower followers of Jesus to design the future. Will has written six books, including Future Church, Younique, Clarity Spiral, God Dreams, Innovating Discipleship, and Church Unique. He enjoys speaking and writing about how to live a life of more meaningful progress. Will lives in Houston with his wife Romy and has four children.
After attending an Accelerate Group retreat, ministry couples will leave with tools and best practices that strengthen their relationship with one another as well as their ability to lead in the local church. These three-day events are rich with opportunities to connect with Pastor couples from around the country that share the same victories and struggles. Through the generous gifts of our supporters, the only cost for Pastor and Spouse couples is the travel to the Phoenix retreat location.
Aspen Group Booth 208
Aspen Group creates space for ministry impact for Christian churches, schools, and nonprofit ministries. Our expert design-build-furnish team equips leaders to think innovatively about their facilities by guiding them through a holistic process that assesses culture, leadership and ministry before determining what changes to make to their buildings.
Blessing Ranch Ministries Booth 107
The mission of Blessing Ranch Ministries is, “to restore and renew Christian leaders and their families for effective Kingdom service.” The goal of this incredibly effective, essential ministry is and always has been emotional and spiritual inner re-engineering and personal growth resulting in restoration and renewal of the leader. Our work is catalytic, allowing it to touch the leader, the team, and the church. It begins with unhindering leaders' hearts from all that is holding them back from being able to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1). As a leader gains emotional and spiritual health, the team and church gain too. Leadership lids are removed. Team relationships find more ease. Church culture even shifts as its leaders align more deeply with God’s intentions. Our goal is to see Christian leaders living well, leading well, and finishing well. We create pathways for healing that can respond to crises when needed and help leaders to be more connected followers of Jesus at the end of it. We also believe in creating prevention pathways that guard and protect the health of leaders (and their families) so they can stay well along the ministry journey.
Brightly Booth 219
Our aim at Brightly is to be the creative team for the church that doesn’t have one. In addition to providing ideas, we resource the church with practical training or informational material from ministry leaders. We specifically have a heart for church plants and churches with smaller staffs, and we understand both the opportunities and limitations they have. Our resources can benefit teams in at least two ways. A creative process that generates Scripture references, big ideas,
songs and illustrations takes several weeks to do well. With Brightly providing that for a church, team leaders can focus on technical needs, rehearsals and promotion, helping to raise the quality of worship experience attendees have. Secondly, Brightly ideas and sermon series emphasize the use of multiple voices and skillsets, requiring more “hands on deck” to implement the service. With the plan provided, team leaders can focus on recruiting, leading to a more engaged community of faith and a worship service stage that better represents the people in the seats. In addition to benefiting worship teams, Brightly seeks to assist preachers and teachers. When you give a preacher a head start on sermon prep, you refresh that preacher’s energy and creativity. Our content doesn’t dictate every word for a preacher, but seeks to inspire, allowing preachers to form their messages from the ideas given. So, rather than creating from scratch or imitating a well-known preacher, Brightly serves to assist preachers in creating a worship and teaching experience tailored to the church they serve. Whether they use a sermon series we provide, or simply browse the free content, preachers and worship teams will find material that helps them serve their churches and grow as ministry leaders.
Brotherhood Mutual – Booth 227 Brotherhood Mutual insures America's Christian churches, camps and schools. We have for more than 100 years. We provide comprehensive property, liability, commercial auto, and workers' compensation insurance. In addition to our customized insurance programs, we also serve ministries through payroll services and mission travel insurance. Visit www.brotherhoodmutual.com to learn how we can protect your ministry.
Building God's Way – Booth 218 Leader - As a church leader, assessing your future facility needs during these unprecedented times can be a daunting task. BGW is leading the way in offering stewardship-driven solutions that take advantage of emerging opportunities, including strategies for locating and converting available retail and commercial buildings, the integration of sustainable, for-profit models and more. BGW also offers church leaders the peace of mind of a turn-key network of services that includes access to factorydirect building supplies & furnishings, a network of Christian builder partners, strategic planning experts, fundraising and financial specialists and much more. Leader’s Team - BGW offers the most collaborative and cost-effective conceptual design process available to build unity amongst your ministry team leaders and momentum toward your ministry vision. Unlike typical design methods, the BGW Charrette process takes place over a 3 day period at the church site, which builds unity and momentum quickly. Client teams
who have participated in this process with us find it energizing as they think through how they will utilize space to the greatest advantage both now and in the future. Matters that are not entirely clear going into the charrette have a way of becoming more focused as vision and ideas are discussed between all team members. Church GrowthWe believe that pastors provide the best collaborative partners for other pastors. Who better to invite into the “foxhole” of ministry than one who intimately understands the challenges you are facing? BGW has partnered with experienced pastors of growing and embedded ministries that provide consulting services to our church clients in the areas of strategic planning and church growth. In fact. many of our designs begin with a StratOp Strategic Planning Session, which has proven to help churches gain greater clarity, alignment, momentum and growth.
C3 Coffee Company - Booth 102 C3 Coffee Co. has found an avenue of carrying out marketplace ministry in an effective way to grow community and The Church, with no strings attached. Our model is self sustaining, leads to church and community growth, involvement and produces financial assets used to aid the Church in carrying out its mission, all while providing a safe, welcoming environment to engage the community on their terms. Our model empowers This Generation to lead, grow as individuals, and become more and better disciples of Christ, all while loving the community around them as Christ did and meeting their needs. Those needs can be relational, spiritual, conversational, financial and or physical. The incredible thing is we get to do this all through coffee!
Cass Commercial Bank/GyveBooth 232
Cass and Gyve help faith-based organizations thrive by providing tailored solutions and financial guidance sharing a common purpose with us. Cass Commercial Bank has been a long time lender with specific expertise from decades of working with faith-based institutions. We help our clients assess their financial status and build financial strength so they can sustain and amplify their ministries. Gyve is owned by Cass and is a dedicated generosity platform. It is designed for faith-based organizations and non-profits. Gyve has powerful reporting and insightful analytics to foster a culture of generosity within faith-based and non-profit organizations. With four specific giving stages and six ways to accept donations, Gyve with a Round Up feature, makes it easier for individuals to live generously and empowers churches with the resources they need to pursue their missions.
CDF Capital – Booth 255
God calls His people into a story of transformation. CDF Capital helps Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the three kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. Church growth is about more than just attendance—it also involves congregational spiritual maturity, a culture of healthy leadership, discipleship-making, and more. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed. We call this Transformational Capital.
Cedarville University – Booth 207
The University achieves its mission by accomplishing the following academic objectives or “portrait statements,” which reflect characteristics of a Cedarville University graduate: Glorify God – The Cedarville graduate exemplifies devotion to the triune God, Christlike character, and faithfulness to the teachings of the Scriptures. Think Broadly and Deeply – The Cedarville graduate evaluates ideas, practices, and theories across disciplines within the framework of God’s revelation. Communicate Effectively – The Cedarville graduate listens well, and produces and delivers clear, compelling, accurate, and truthful messages in a relevant, respectful manner. Develop Academically and Professionally – The Cedarville graduate demonstrates competence and integrity in academic and professional endeavors. The Cedarville graduate lives to further the mission of Christ in the world as an active influence in spiritual, moral, professional, and social spheres.
Chaplaincy Endorsement Commission – Booth 226
Many ministers use Chaplaincy as a vehicle to put them in contact with seekers outside the walls of the church in the hopes they will become active members of their church. Chaplaincy puts the minister in touch with people in their time of deepest need in hospitals, hospice care, prisons, jails, police departments, fire department etc.. Crisis Receptivity Theory says that these times are the most likely for people to make a decision for Christ and find a spiritual home in the church served by the minister who helped them through the crisis.
Christ In Youth – Booth 217
We have 3 pathways of providing value to SpireConference Attendees: - Connect with churches, ministered, pastors and friends; - Providing resources and events to churches; - Examining needs of churches in their current state and how we best can come alongside them.
Christian Financial Resources –Booths 213, 214
The CFR slogan “Funding Ministry... Changing Lives,” sums it up. CFR carries out its purpose by receiving funds through investments and contributions, and subsequently loaning those funds at affordable rates to the independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ and their associated ministries. A board of directors provides oversight for the ministry.
Christian Standard Media – Booth 210 How Christian Standard Media will deliver: 1. Help a leader grow – At CSM, we believe leaders grow through networking. That’s why our mission statement is “leveraging the power of our unity.” Leaders grow when they are connected to other leaders, sharing best practices, exploring innovative ideas, and sharpening our focus. Christian Standard exists to provide that very thing for leaders. The Lookout exists to give leaders a platform of comprehensive discipleship for the whole church through which leaders will rise up. 2. Help a leader’s team grow – CSM comes alongside the church’s key leader to facilitate growth in both the paid staff and the volunteer difference makers and elders. We provide connectivity to our movement’s history and provide a wide-angle lens through which a leader’s team can see a more panoramic view of our movement as a whole, eliminating mission drift and sideways energy. 3. Help a leader’s church grow – CSM knows that the content and tools we provide will be shared. That’s why we’ve made it free for anyone who would like to have it in a virtual form. While Christian Standard is targeted for leaders, The Lookout is designed for the rank and file of church members, and leaders can share it in whatever form they wish. It provides discipleship through the best in teaching, in application for small group study, in personal Bible study, and in a daily reading and a prayer plan. This is key for a leader’s church to grow.
Clergy Advantage, Inc. – Booth 252 Our mission at Clergy Advantage is to make a profound difference in the lives and ministries that we serve through specialized tax, financial and retirement services. We help our ministers save tax, grow their money more effectively and enjoy peace of mind with greater success. We do this with individual clergy-specific tax and financial strategies with world class services and products, including the Clergy Advantage 403(b) retirement plan. The Clergy Advantage tax and financial teams include clergy-tax experts and Wharton Certified retirement specialists that focus only on ministers. We feel called to make sure that churches and ministers everywhere know how to use their amazing benefits effectively. So, we
strive to be the absolute best at what we do, so that you can be the absolute best at what you do.
CMF International – Booth 215
As leaders in God's Church, we're compelled to live intentional lives of discipleship, growing not only in depth of relationship with God but also with His people. Life in community ultimately leads to transformation, which is at the heart of CMFi ministries worldwide. In partnering with local churches and leaders, CMFi is committed to equipping God's people to live missionally, both locally and abroad. We do this by offering training in wholistic strategies that lead to transformation--from CHE (community health evangelism) to DBS (Discovery Bible Studies). CMFi also provides opportunities for community engagement in effective cross-cultural ministry through internships (REACH/ Study Abroad) and hands on training (EQUIP) within the 25 countries we currently serve. Often these international experiences result in a changed perspective toward what it means to live on mission, whether that means in one's neighborhood, school, workplace, or in vocational service across the world. For leaders eager to grow in their understanding of and experience with God's Global Church, CMFi is eager to help them take their next steps.
Discipleship.org/Renew.org –Booth 209 Discipleship.org and its network partners bring together the leading voices and practitioners of Jesus-style disciple making nationally. We will host the National Disciple Making Forum in Nashville on November 4th and 5th, and speakers will include Dave Clayton, Jim Putman, Alisa Childers, and more. We know that it’s life-on-life interactions with other disciples—by the power of the Holy Spirit—that produces change to become more like Jesus. Our website (Discipleship.org) and our Disciple Maker’s Collective, an online, social platform for conversations on all things disciple making, are the best combination of resources and networking community to equip a church leader in Jesus’ methods of making disciples. RENEW.org combines solid, practical Restoration Movement theology with tried and true disciple making strategies, all the while avoiding the pitfalls of stale traditionalism. continued on next page.
We invite you to join the network in the following ways: RENEW.org Gatherings
– Attend our National Gathering November 3rd in the Nashville area to gain further inspiration and vision. Speakers will include Nate Ross, Bobby Harrington, Chad Ragsdale, Jonathan Storment, and David Young. Every attendee will get a copy of our theology compendium Real Life Theology: Fuel for Faithful ad Effective Disciple Making. The RENEW.org Website – Get involved with our website and newsletter, where you will find practical material for everyday disciples and church leaders in the form of blogs, video and audio posts, book reviews, etc. RENEW.org Resources – Check out the resources and materials available from RENEW. org Publishing. Many of these are available as free downloads from RENEW.org. Disciple Maker Mentoring –Consider enrolling with one of our oneon-one mentors. We train individual church and lay leaders, both men and women, in a specific disciple making model, using the teachings of Jesus. Our model leads people to conversion and a substantive grounding in the core teachings of the New Testament. Senior Leader Learning Communities – If you believe in disciple making, this is a way to ignite the shift you want to make in your local church. In the RENEW.org learning communities, leaders come together for face-to-face learning, encouragement, and accountability in small group learning communities taught by top international disciple makers.
Educational Opportunities Tours –Booth 202
The Christian journeys delivered by EO Tours enhance the faith and Christian life of the group Host/leader and all individual travelers. The Bible will come alive in new ways that empowers teaching and preaching, energizes the call to ministry, builds relationships, and enriches Bible reading and study. Travel will also deepen travelers' understanding of Church history and enhance the knowledge and understanding of contemporary cultures and current issues of peace, reconciliation, and justice.
FAME – Booth 221
FAME brings simple access to Church Leaders to move people from Attenders to Engaged Disciples. While bringing solutions to the crisis of global healthcare access, your church engagement also increases. Partnership can be church-wide excitement for a new hospital or clinic, in the form of hands-on small group projects, or direct contact trips to global partners. Since we are serving over 60 global partners this year, FAME can assist your team in growing healthy partnerships with your existing or new global partners. FAME can mobilize YOUR teams, increase those involved in YOUR mission, and
multiply YOUR impact. FAME can increase your annual impact by onemillion people! Churches that partner with FAME's global network increase their momentum by the engagement the disciples in their church experience in bringing access to healthcare, which brings access to the good news for millions!
Financial Planning Ministry –Booth 204
FPM provides a turnkey process for leaders who want to achieve their ministry's long-range vision. Stewardship education using a Christcentered approach encourages and empowers members to give from their estate assets, rather than just their current cash flow, achieving increased levels of generosity and stewardship. We provide comprehensive services for the ministry and its members, including communication and promotional assistance, group seminars and webinars, one-on-one consultations, and the creation of revocable living trusts and wills (and other more complex tools if required). An ongoing long-term financial perspective provides ministries with readily available gift reports including active and developing estate plans, as well as actual gifts received from estate documents prepared through your stewardship ministry. Members are provided choices as they may name any church, charity or individual as a beneficiary of their estate. Members are guided through the entire process, from start to finish, with unmatched loyalty to their estate planning needs. Our dedicated consultants and highly-trained staff remove the doubt and confusion surrounding estate planning and charitable giving. We provide estate planning services your members and their families can rely on. Financial Planning Ministry is an independent third party service provider. Confidentiality is assured. Strategically safeguarding important legacy decisions is part of our ministry. Our purpose is to ensure their desires are met, creating peace of mind for both the present and the future. Estate plans may be reviewed by members at their convenience, and documents can be easily updated over time. We understand that each of our members is unique, and we seek to provide quality service to meet every individual need. We greatly value our members' faith in our work and the services we provide.
GO Ministries – Booth 106
GO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: GO Community Development renews and advances communities through the establishment of educational opportunities, small business, and international partnerships. We work in five areas: GO Kids program; GO Kingdom Business; Community
Construction projects; GO Short-term Teams and Internship program. GO MEDICAL: GO Medical empowers local medical professionals to provide quality healthcare to the vulnerable and the hurting, creating opportunities for healing and gospel transformation. We provides comprehensive care for those in need via our Medical Center and mobile medical clinics across the island. We work alongside the local leaders empowering leaders in the Dominican Republic and beyond. GO Sports empowers local coaches to disciple athletes who influence their community as leaders of the next generation. We have six academies: baseball, girls volleyball, girls and boys soccer and girls and boys basketball. Each academy is led by passionate Dominican coaches. We help our athletes grow through mentorship and Bible and English classes. Our goal is to develop Dominican youth into more than great athletes but also into leaders and workers in the Kingdom of God. GO Church Planting movement is led through the empowerment of local leaders in more than 70 communities. Our vision is to see 1,000 churches begin. Learn – Creating theological and practical learning environments via Seminary based Bible college; training quarterly church planting sessions; and yearly Global Conference held in the DR Launch – Catalyzing the movement through multiplication via Residency (6 months practice and theology living at the LDC); New Churches (the developing and sending out of leaders); Network (care, accountability and communication); and Movements (the start of a new work in a new country).
Lead – Developing apprenticeship at all levels via Missional engagement (contextualization of the Gospel); Students & Children (discipleship practices and programs); Eldership (raising up shepherd leaders within the church).
Hope International University –Booth 250 HIU will contribute to Spire attendees by exposing them to state of the art degree programs that aim to make a difference in the world. Additionally HIU is becoming known as a resource for the personal wellness of pastors. Our President, Dr. Paul Alexander has spoken nationwide the last two years on the topic of depression in ministry and Soul Care for Christian Leaders. He will be at the conference as will some from our admissions team.
Intentional Churches – Booth 216
Intentional Churches serves church leaders with a Church Operating System that offers powerful tools and practical training, which align their teams and mobilizes their 99s to repeatedly reach and grow their ONEs.
Interim Pastor Ministries – Booth 206
The greatest opportunity to take a church to a new level is during a pastoral transition. Wise congregations recognize the value of having a skilled interim pastor guide them through transition periods. IPM interims bring experience, wisdom and leadership to all churches, especially those that have plateaued or are in decline.
International Conference on Missions –Booth 225
2020 sure was a year for growth and stretching. ICOM went through that same process and we came out of last year stronger with a whole new side of tools and resources that did not exist in 2019. Just as all churches grew from it's virtual programming, ICOM had to step up our game too. Come let us share with you how you and your church, your youth group, your missions team, or your church family can join in at ICOM from the comfort of their own home or with other church members in your church building. ICOM saw 24 watch groups join us virtually last year from within the US, and many more outside the US. And this year we have so much more programming to offer. Our Student ICOM is creating a whole new mission experience that can create a missions weekend full of activities and programming without leaving your city and still take advantage of the main sessions in the evenings from ICOM. What a great way to begin your students missions plan for the year, have an introductory mission experience to lay out your plan for the next 8 - 10 months all with the activities and tools from SICOM to help you do so. You can also buy one of two passes so that you can have more time to access all the resources from ICOM as well. Drop by and booth and we will be glad to make sure what we are offering.
Johnson University – Booth 242 Johnson University's mission is to educate students for Christian ministries and other strategic vocations framed by the Great Commission in order to extend the kingdom of God among all nations. These students are the Spire Leaders of today - the lead pastors, worship pastors, nonprofit directors, missionaries, and business leaders making a difference in our movement and beyond. We support them with innovative graduate programs including a fully online MBA, master's degrees in New Testament, counseling, intercultural studies, ministry, and teaching, and an online Ph.D. in leadership studies. These students are also the Spire Leaders of tomorrow. The young people on our campuses in Knoxville, Kissimmee, and online come from 43 states and 35 countries. In addition to degrees in preaching and church leadership, youth ministry, children's ministry, missions, and worship ministry, JU offers degrees in business, psychology, graphic design, education, pre-nursing/nursing, journalism, history, and dozens more. Each student explores God's Word (the Bible), God's World (the arts and sciences),
and God's Work (their professional major). Students of every age leave Johnson University not only ready to serve as the leaders of our churches and organizations; they leave ready to live with purpose, wisdom, and kingdom impact in every sphere of life.
Legacy Deo – Booth 224 Legacy Deo is a $60 million charitable foundation that manages more than 400 accounts in a trustee capacity. We do this for churches, Christian schools, ministry organizations, and individuals. For more than sixty years, we have helped God's people leave a legacy for faith and family. We provide value to churches through two primary vehicles: endowment funds and custodial accounts. We design endowment funds that provide perpetual funding for ministry endeavors, scholarships that enable church leaders and ministry teams to continue their professional and/or general Christian education, and financial support for the church's general operations. Custodial accounts operate like a bank savings account. They are an excellent resource for churches that desire to be better stewards of their excess operating cash. Investment professionals manage our portfolio, which typically provides a return that outpaces what is available through a traditional bank account. Collectively, we oversee more than $10 million of endowment assets that benefit churches and their personnel. These endowments have distributed more than $3 million over the past two decades. We currently manage custodial assets exceeding $2.4 million. We offer a transfer service that allows church members to give appreciated investment securities without incurring capital gains tax. We also provide a comprehensive education program that promotes the joy and methods of giving generously to God's kingdom. Experience tells us that healthy, growing churches are well financed and are filled with members who give generously to advance fulfillment of The Great Commission. By collaborating with us, your church and its leadership become better stewards of God's gifts, which enhances the church's ability to spread the gospel message to those who do not yet know Jesus.
Lifeline Christian Mission –Booth 211
How many times does it feel like "missions" takes away from the mission of your church? It doesn't have to be that way! Lifeline creates solutions to connect your church and your community to your mission! Lifeline creates opportunities for your church to be engaged in outreach! We come alongside your church to customize experiences that align with your mission. What does that look like? It could be ... Creating meal packing events that engage all generations in your church. Developing a Container Outfitting project that connects with your community. Designing mission trips (domestic and international) that use the skillset of your team. These tools connect your
community to your church, your church to serve together, and individuals to take the next step in their walk with Christ. It's all part of creating a spark to live a life on mission for God!
Lipscomb University – Booth 243 Lipscomb University is a leading, national Christian university located in the capital city of Nashville. The institution offers a number of graduate degrees and certificates that are of value to church leaders attending the conference. In addition, Lipscomb University enjoys a deep history and connection within restorationist churches. Many students from these churches find Lipscomb University an excellent place to pursue their undergraduate education in a Christian context in the heart of a vibrant city that enjoys a close proximity to many of the largest churches in the Independent Christian Church fellowship. Students benefit from Lipscomb’s strong alumni network and range of partnerships within the dynamic city of Nashville, which is ranked #3 in the United States for job market growth. As the leading city in revenue and jobs for health care and the entertainment capital of the south, Lipscomb students are in a perfect place to launch their careers. Lipscomb career and internship resources include oncampus recruiting, career fairs, alumni job shadowing and a jobs database, with internships and experiential learning opportunities at numerous organizations and businesses offered to students every year. Classified as an R3 Doctoral University by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, a designation currently awarded to only seven percent of schools nationally, Lipscomb’s gifted and diverse faculty are committed to teaching students and creating knowledge to address global challenges. Our academic strength is grounded not only in the cutting-edge research of a top Christian university but we also stand solidly in the liberal arts tradition of engaged teaching. Faculty share their experience and expertise, and students contribute their ideas and energy to each academic and research activity.
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Milligan University/Emmanuel Christian Seminary – Booth 240 Milligan University and Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan provide value for Spire Leaders, teams and churches through Christian education and an emphasis on service to Christ and His Church, ministry preparation and continued ministry training, and through ministry resources. For over 150 years, our commitment to Christcentered liberal arts education has led Milligan to become a growing, wellrespected liberal arts institution that emphasizes scholarship, community, and faith. Christian Education/Emphasis on Service to Christ and Church: Milligan offers more than 100 majors, minors, pre-professional degrees, and concentrations in a variety of fields, along with graduate and adult degree completion programs. While vocational ministry is a huge emphasis for us, we also believe we need Christians in secular vocations. Whether our students go on to serve in vocational ministries or in secular vocations, they understand the impact they can have for the kingdom as well as for the local churches they attend and serve as ministers and volunteers. Ministry preparation/continued ministry training: On the undergraduate level, our Ministry Leadership Program offer 6 majors for ministry studentsBIBLICAL & THEOLOGICAL STUDIES, CHILDREN’S MINISTRY, CHURCH LEADERSHIP, INTERCULTURAL STUDIES, STUDENT MINISTRY, and WORSHIP LEADERSHIP. The Seminary offers 3 Masters programs, a Doctor or ministry, and two certificate programs. There are both residential and distance programs offered by Emmanuel to help ministers prepare or continue their training while actively serving in ministry. Ministry Resources: The Ministry Resource Center provides tools for placing and supporting alumni and others in ministry, particularly within the independent Christian churches of the Stone-Campbell movement. The MRC is part of Lilly Endowment’s Thriving in Ministry initiative. The MRC seeks to be a bridge that connects new minister to mentor, pastor to pastor, and minister to Christian community through a placement program (including ministry openings), a mentoring program, and through retreats and resources.
Museum of the Bible – Booth 201
We seek to encourage Pastors to engage with MOTB at all levels. Free filming opportunities at the museum, utilization of our resources for teachings and group visits. Discounted event luxury event space three blocks from the capital building for conferences, gatherings, worship opportunities etc. These opportunities would not be limited to pastors, but to Spire staff and leadership. Too many opportunities to list here!
Ozark Christian College –Booths 230, 231
One of the core values of the Advancement Department of Ozark Christian College is to “help leaders lead better longer”. We will introduce Spire Leaders to quality biblical education, offer Christ-centered events and materials to encourage, equip and train them and connect leaders with current students who can potentially serve in their churches for internships or as a part of their ministry staff.
PastorServe – Booth 100
We serve pastors by providing coaching, crisis support and consulting. When pastors are healthy and thriving in their private (backstage) lives and their public (front stage) lives, the Church has a much better chance of being the beacon of hope God created Her to be. This perspective excites us and serves to keep us laser focused on our reason for existence as an organization!
Pension Fund of the Christian Church – Booth 205
We work for the support of ministry in various ways. Pension Fund originated in 1895 as the Board of Ministerial Relief, serving pastors in dire financial need. Beginning with our first Pension Plan payment in the Great Depression — and throughout the market ups and downs since — we’ve honored our commitments to our members. Today, we administer one of the strongest, fully funded pension and retirement systems in the country. We also offer financial education and mentoring through our partnership with Peter Dunn, AKA Pete the Planner.
Point University – Booth 241
Deeply embedded in the heart of Point University as an academic institution is that we are called by God to create a learning environment rooted in the great redemptive theme of Scripture and accessible to contemporary humans. We are committed to providing an education that makes a difference – whether that difference impacts an individual student’s life, the culture in which we currently live, or a local body of believers determined to be fruitful and fulfilled. Every kingdom outpost/church can make a greater impact on its community by commitment to this theme. Our mission is to lead students to discover what Jesus meant by “life abundant,” and how to talk about that kind of life in the public square in compelling ways. An education at Point enables kingdom leaders to better understand the culture around us and its desperate need for life beyond our imagination in Christ. Accomplishing that goal requires that Point recognizes the value of the authentic Jesus, who came to offer such life to not only us, but the whole world. In our current world, it is more vital than ever that kingdom leaders, ministry teams, and local churches themselves discover the authentic Jesus – not the
civic Jesus we often create in our own image. At least in part, the value Point brings to a variety of Spire relationships is that we are clear about who Jesus is and what difference He makes. When that two-sided question is appropriately answered, life abundant can break out in the most amazing of places. Point can help kingdom leaders, ministry teams, and local churches discover the authentic answer to the “who is Jesus?” question in ways that transform each of these roles as we seek life abundant – a life of significance – in our work for Christ.
Prison Fellowship – Booth 103
We equip churches by training volunteers how to disciple with in prisons, give opportunities to create relationships with their families, Provide small-group curriculum, designed to embolden Christians to the need for restorative justice. Small groups will learn about the challenges in the American criminal justice system and explore how Christians can respond in hands-on ways to pursue justice and bring about true hope, restoration, and healing.
Rapha International – Booth 222
The cornerstone of Rapha’s work is the protection of children. Policies, practices, and culture that promote transparency and accountability protect everyoneboth children and adults. Rapha’s Culture of Care program is a workshop and development package for churches that prepares staff, volunteers, and congregations to prevent and detect abuse, to build policies that promote safety for all, and to care for those who have experienced trauma. Churches have special advantages when it comes to detecting abuse, but they may also face special challenges. The Culture of Care program addresses those challenges while working with church leadership to mobilize the advantagesin order to build a culture of protection and safety. When we strengthen our ability to protect children and care for those who have experienced trauma, the benefits of our work extend far into the future. Child abuse, trauma, and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) are associated with a myriad of psychological, behavioral, and health problems. These negative outcomes take a terrible toll on individuals and on communities. When faith communities respond quickly and boldly to allegations of abuse, this sends a clear message that people are safe, valued, and loved within that church community. We believe that the leaders of today’s churches are ready and eager to take a deeper look at the church’s role in child welfare and how they may stand out as safe havens. The Culture of Care program is designed to offer up-to-date information and expert advice for church leadership, and to offer support for ongoing growth.
Rescued not Arrested – Booth 212 Bible colleges do not teach their students how to effectively start prison ministry and reach and love the sex offenders, today’s lepers, welcoming them into their congregations safely. Our excellent model of 10 years of just doing that at the largest church in Arizona, CCV, has proven effective and Biblical without casting judgment or categorizing sin for fellow man. We love to add that value to every and any spire leader brave enough to welcome all sinners into their congregations. We want to add the value of offering English and Spanish Niv Custom Cover Bible’s for international & community outreaches for free as they reach the lost and broken, also offering custom cover Niv Life Application Study Bible’s for leaders they train internationally as they plant churches.
Slingshot Group – Booth 220
Founded in 2007, Slingshot Group has grown to over 50 associates and served over 2,000 churches and nonprofits. We do staffing and coaching different than the rest. With transparent service fees, guaranteed placement, and coaching embedded throughout our staffing experience, you get our entire team of practitioners. From church staff to nonprofit staff, our team has been where you’ve been. We know what it takes to hire great staff. Our passion is serving churches and Christian nonprofits. We don’t just give you a standard, corporate solution. Instead, we get to know your leadership and the community you serve, and build a personalized plan just for you.
Standing Stone Ministry – Booth 200
As ministry leaders learn about organizations like Standing Stone, they will be drawn to finding out more so that they can connect with someone who will walk them through their challenges.No one enjoys facing difficulties by themselves. Standing Stone will give many hope that there is someone who will be there to guide them through the difficult days while helping them celebrate their victories
The Solomon Foundation –Booth 251
How will TSF deliver value: 1) Help a leader grow – The Solomon Foundation’s 4th Core Value is to Help Churches Get to the Next Step and we provide tools to build strong leaders and solid partnerships. Our yearly Pastors Conference provides innovative ideas for growth, equips them with tools to manage the daily challenges and also serves to encourage them. In addition, we have an excellent program that offers leadership development with one on one training with Ken Idleman and mentorship and coaching program by our Board of Directors comprised of top mega church pastors. To further advance them, we also offer them a free membership to the Center for Church Leadership where they can use many resources that empower them for growth and allow them to thrive in their ministry. 2) Help a leader’s team grow – We believe in supporting the staff at church and offer a yearly conference for
Executive Pastors and Financial Managers.
Sessions are created and centered around practical ministry application that they can use day to day, give them opportunities to grow, network and learn from one another and provide them encouragement for their work. 3) Help a leader’s church grow – We provide a boots on ground approach with our partnership. Our staff is excellent at connecting our churches together so they can network, learn, share and grow together from churches like them or that have gone before them. We provide guidance, support an connectivity.
Thryve – Booth 105
From devotionals to first time guest experiences, people can opt into dynamic journeys that deliver the right message at the right time and keep them connected. Set it and forget it with pre-built templates, segments and groups based on how people interact. People aren’t robots, so don’t make them text like one. Thryve’s Smart Texting features for the most common questions, prayer requests and sharing stories ensure people get what they need, no matter how they text. Thryve’s not just for broadcasts. Your people can save your number and actually text back, just like they do with friends and family. Desktop and mobile apps mean you’ll never miss a chance to respond and build deeper relationships.
World Communion Cups – Booth 223 We provide premier communion products and services which streamline the serving of communion and help churches focus on their core objectives and mission. Our communion solutions address a whole range of issues which churches maybe faced with when deciding how to serve communion. Examples of this include: how to serve communion safely and in a sanitary manner; how may we serve the freshest, tastiest communion products available; how will we, as a church, minimize resources necessary to provide and serve communion; how will we minimize waste; and, how will the church serve communion as efficiently as possible with minimal disruption and maximizing time for the remainder of our service? World Communion Cups eases the management burden on the Leader(s) of the church by providing turnkey communion solutions, thus negating the need to seek and organize volunteers to facilitate communion. Our products and services make communion as efficient as possible, allowing more time for teaching and worshipping during services. Church members truly enjoy our unique, clear, unmarked, pre-filled chalices containing the freshest of products. And, there is minimal waste with the use of our products. All of this leads to good financial stewardship on the part of the church as well as more time for church leaders to focus on growing their churches and fulfilling their mission.
You come to Lipscomb with faith, a yearning for knowledge and ambition to excel. Christ’s light shines in our community, magnifying the best in you. At this intersection, a life of purpose awaits.
Welcomed in faith. Refined through learning. Ready to go.
