Simple Faith With Rusty George

0:00:00 - Rusty George
As a pastor, I'm constantly concerned about how to create connections beyond just the weekend services, and one of the valuable tools that we have found for achieving this at our church is our app powered by Subsplash. It's one thing to have an app. It's another thing to have an app that has the ability to allow your community to access messages, resources and even give, and Subsplash created that for us. It's become our go-to platform for connecting with our congregation in ways we never could have before. Subsplash is so much more than just a platform or even just an app. It brings people together, empowers giving and transforms lives. If you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to visit their website at subsplash.com. That's s-u-b-s-p-l-a-s-h.com, subsplash.com.

Following Jesus isn't always easy, but it's not complicated. Join us each week as we work to make faith simple. This is simple faith. Well, it's post-pandemic How's your church? For many of us leading in the church world, we're finding that the metrics we used to have just aren't the same they were before the pandemic. Well, today we get to hear from a church growth expert on what it takes to grow a church in a post-pandemic world. This is simple faith. You know, as we like to say, following Jesus isn't easy, but it's not complicated, and each week we try to make faith a bit more simple, and sometimes we veer into the leadership lane and talk specifically to those of us leading in churches.

For those of you that have been a church leader, if you've been leading for a variety of years, you probably recognize the name, Rich Birch. He's written some great books, like the Church Growth Flywheel one of my favorites and so many others. He has an incredible blog and an incredible podcast called Unseminary. He's just a great guy. He's a really good Canadian too on top of that, and we sit down to talk about what does church growth look like in a post-pandemic world? Can't wait for you to hear my conversation with Rich Birch, and I want to thank Subsplash for their sponsorship of this podcast. Here we go with my conversation with Rich. Rich Birch, thank you so much for joining us again. Welcome back. And for our listeners that did not catch episode one, which I think there's only four people in the United States that did not listen to it it was so well received, but no, curious. Just to tell our people a little bit about what you do with Unseminary and who you are.

0:02:42 - Rich Birch
Well, thank you so much, Rusty. First of all, it's super honor that you would have me on your podcast and the fact that you'd have me back that's amazing, you know that's great. So I'm honored to get a chance to spend some time with you and just love the work that you're up to in your ministry and so, yeah, so I'm a church leadership wonk. I love talking to church leaders, I love leading in the local church. I've had a kind of a unique background over 25 plus years led really in that second seat, so have a real passion for executive pastor types, and a number of years ago we started a blog and a podcast called Unseminary, which was really trying to tackle the things that they don't teach you in seminary and so trying to share and disseminate that information. We're 800 some odd episodes in on that podcast, which is crazy. I didn't know if I'd get beyond my first five, and so the fact that we're still at it is pretty amazing.

You've been an incredible guest on that. So, yeah, I'm married, got two young adult kids and one dog that we keep trying to figure out why she's whining so much. So that's kind of my. You know my life in a nutshell. I am Canadian don't hold it against me and I'm one of those people that have ministered on both sides of the border, so I've worked for years in Canada and also in the States and so which provides kind of an interesting you know vantage point to think about what we do.

0:04:03 - Rusty George
So what part of the States were you in?

0:04:06 - Rich Birch
I was at a church in New Jersey called Liquid Church for years for a part of eight years with Tim Lucas there on the senior leadership team and, yeah, which was a fantastic. That is a great church, tim's a great guy really counting him as a friend and they're doing just great things there in New Jersey and was honored to be there. So that's in the Manhattan facing suburbs of New Jersey, one of those parts of the country where people do not wake up like your part of the country where people don't wake up on Sunday morning and think, hmm, we should go to church today. They just don't. That's not on the list of things that people decide they should do, so it's always fun, you know, serving in those contexts.

0:04:40 - Rusty George
Right, oh, that's great. Yeah, I've heard great things about Liquid Church. Okay, so I love your podcast, love all the things that you share. I love how practical it is. Nothing worse than spending two hours listening to a podcast and all you got was, you know, more information but not any help. So I love what you guys do.

You know, being in Canada, as our friend Kerry likes to say, canada's kind of the canary in the cave or the canary in the mine, however you want to say it, that dictates what the rest of the world's about to experience. So, first England, then Canada, then America, when it comes to just the church and how we're receiving the gospel, and, like you said, not everybody wakes up on Sunday morning and thinks let's go to church. So what are you seeing? When it comes to, you know, these two groups of people. We often talk about how to reach un-churched people and de-churched people. It seems like where I live, there's always been a lot of un-churched people, but now there's becoming an increasingly greater amount of de-churched. To have just said, yeah, I'm done with that. What do you see them?

0:05:39 - Rich Birch
Yeah, that's very true. So in our part of the world it's low, single digit percentage of people, maybe three, four percent. It's hard to find good numbers of folks that attend church regularly, and so it is. You know we are. We do live in an increasingly un-churched or de-churched, you know, population. You know the interesting thing about Canada is that it, you know we probably are, I don't know, maybe 30 years ahead If that's ahead, I don't know what that is or behind, depending on the way you look at the numbers.

Right and, and you know it is as simple as that, people, there isn't this underlying guilt that, like you should attend church. It's, you know. It's like saying, you know, if you don't like, you know, it's like saying, hey, you should go to a mosque, well, why would you go to a mosque? You have no reason to go to a mosque, you're not Muslim, so why would you go there? Or you know you should go to the synagogue. It's, it's a whole category of questions or whole category of activities that people just don't think about. Now the interesting thing is, I do think in some ways that creates new opportunities and better opportunities for the local church.

I talk to friends who minister in areas of the country that are are, you know, that are still pretty, you know, traditionally churched areas, and that's a whole different problem, because in that part of the country it's like, yeah, everybody might go to church, but does it mean anything? Does it have any kind of connection? And so one of the things that I actually like about here, or, you know, I was in England a couple of weeks ago. I was saying the same thing to a pastor there man, like everybody who shows up on a Sunday, like they're here for a reason, like they're, they're not just stumbling in, they've got like a real question that they're asking, they're wrestling with their, they're showing up and thinking, hmm, you know, I'm looking for an answer which I do think actually in some ways makes what we do a little simpler, a little a little more straightforward, because people are coming, you know, eyes wide open, and I think that is, I think that's true, I think, while people attend church less, I do think that the, the kind of spiritual intensity is as hot as it has ever been. People are looking for answers. I think in some ways in our culture, you know, because we've kind of gone to the complete other side of secular humanism, where it's like people realize maybe that doesn't actually work, like I.

There has to be some sort of connection. There's got to be something bigger than this, and you know it might be. You know they're putting all kinds of things in that God shaped hole, as we would see it, but there isn't a debate of whether that's. You know, whether there's something that is bigger than us, and so I do think it is, creates a unique opportunity for us. But we do have to think about it clearly. We don't. We have to think about our assumptions. We have to think about the assumptions of the people that we're talking with. We have to think about how we communicate and we have to slow down and re explain things again, things as simple. You know, our mutual friend, kerry Newhoft, does a very good job at this and you know, every time we open the Bible it's like we can't just assume that anyone here cares about it and so, or really even knows anything about it, and so you've got to slow down, re explain. Terms take time to, you know, to help people understand, to kind of bring them into the story.

0:08:48 - Rusty George
Oh, that's so good. I love what you said. I never thought about it this way. We tend to view it as okay, secular humanism, and then we see all these movies and TV shows like everything from Stranger Things to the endless supply of movies about people being, you know, having exorcisms as the culture's craving spirituality. But it's not that they're returning. They've just got to the other side of secular humanism, found at wanting, and now they're into spirituality, but not necessarily connected to God, jesus or the church as we knew it before. Is that right?

0:09:22 - Rich Birch
Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you a perfect example of that. There was a time where and I'm sure, rusty, I know this was never your ministry, but we knew churches like this that it was almost like a bait and switch around how we talked about Jesus. Like we would say and I'm using it hyperbole, it's extreme examples to kind of prove a point we would say, like come this weekend, we've got this big show and it would be like great music and great whatever, and then we would kind of slip Jesus into that, that we would hope that kind of attached to the funny comedy that we ran on Sunday morning or attached to the music that we used, that people would kind of hear about Jesus. And again, I'm oversimplifying a strategy, but there was that idea.

Now I've found, serving in a really in a post-Christian context, people appreciate un-church, people appreciate when we're just really up front with this is what we're talking about here. Here at our church we talk about the Bible and here are the kinds of things that we're gonna talk about. An example of this would be even in our kids ministry. You know there was a time where people would show up to our kids ministry. We're like I really have no idea what they're teaching over there, what is happening back in kids ministry.

But I found that un-church folks, they wanna know what are you teaching my kids? What are the Bible verses that you're using? What's the bottom lines, what are you talking about? And even if they don't believe it, even if they're like, that doesn't really mean anything to me. But I'm thankful that you're going out of the way to try to communicate to me in a way that honors me. That's like okay, we're not trying to bait and switch. I'm not trying to trick you into anything or trick your kids into anything. In that case, I wanna just be really up front with you.

And so for us, we go out of our way to communicate. Here's exactly the Bible verses and the kids sticking with the kids example. Here's exactly the Bible verses we're teaching. This is exactly what the bottom line is. This is exactly what the take home is. This is what we're hoping your kids will do different when they go home. Un-church people love that. They respond really well to that Because they're like, oh, wow, that's. I appreciate that. I appreciate you're treating me like an adult, which is a good thing.

0:11:23 - Rusty George
Yeah, I think that's. One of the things that drew me to California was the spiritual openness to things. It's just listen, we'll try anything once. Just shoot straight with us. What is it? And there wasn't really this need to bait and switch people. And oh, by the way, jesus does this for you. It's a here's what Jesus says, and they'll take it or leave it.

0:11:43 - Rich Birch
Well, and I found even related. So again, I'm unabashedly. Most of my experience has been in what has been called the Attractional Church Movement. Now don't get me started.

I think every church is Attractional. Some are just better at it than others, but so don't get me down that road. But there was a time where the kind of standard practice in the Attractional Church Movement was at the end of our services, you think about it. What would happen is we would. It would usually end with whatever the teaching was and basically the implicit or explicit message was there's some interesting ideas? Go and think about it. Like, take those ideas and go and leave and chew on it. Where that's really shifted.

We end our services typically with some sort of prayer experience, some sort of like hey, you've got an opportunity to come forward right now and someone will pray for you or help you think through if God's kind of done something impacted you today and just I don't know, it was probably two months ago. I was talking to a person who would they would identify that they're not a Christian. They're kind of on this journey trying to figure it out, and they were talking about this in our services. They were like, well, this weekend when they said, hey, we should come to the front, they were like I. They said I have this like burning desire. I need someone to pray for me. I really wanna, and she's like I've never had anyone pray for me in my entire life.

What a unique experience, what an interesting now to me. I think that's great. That's moving in the right direction. That's helping her. Now she's early in a journey. She's still wrestling with what it means to follow Jesus, but that's a shift in the way we deal with un-church people, where before we were almost a little bit scared, if I'm honest, our kind of standard practice was we were a little bit scared to go there. But we've seen that change and shift over time. That's not just in our context, but we're seeing that across the country as well, as churches are saying, hey, as a part of us trying to relate to people's needs, we have to actually give them some sort of experience, some sort of encounter with God when they come.

0:13:39 - Rusty George
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I happen to be from a tradition where we do communion every week, yeah, and I've found that to be that experiential moment where, hey, after a message, we can do communion, we can have a prayer moment, there can be prayer down front. But it really does create that moment and because we deal with such a high Catholic population that they grew up Catholic, then they ran away and now they've come back to some sort of church, just they feel like this is meeting their needs a little bit better. They love that communion moment. In fact, in the age of attractional ministry, I remember thinking should we get rid of communion every week? Is it such an insider experience? And the overwhelming feedback was no. We want that moment to connect with the divine rather than just watch you teach to us.

0:14:21 - Rich Birch
So it is Well exactly Well, and I think that you know this that as great teaching as communication, as TED Talks become more and more available online, we need to offer something that's more than that right, and it's not just people. Again, I think seekers have shifted and changed, or what we used to call seekers or un-churched people. They've shifted and changed where they're looking for an encounter. Ultimately, they're trying to come to Jesus, and which I think is again a step in the right direction. I would hate people to come to our churches, as my friend Kerry says coding Kerry twice in one podcast. I'd hate for them to come to our church and only find us right. We don't want them to just show up and all they get is us right. We ultimately want to point them to Jesus. And how can we do that? And I love that.

The same with a high value on or focus on adult baptism is the same kind of thing, right, which your movement is. It would be similar in that that it's like hey, that is man. If you can get people to get in a tub and get wet in front of other people, man, that's a powerful, powerful symbol for folks and does draw people in, right. You're like what is happening in that person's life that they would stand up in front of everybody, say a few things about their faith and then that person's gonna dunk them under the water. Wow, that's amazing. It's almost like the New Testament is real right, you know, it's almost like. It's almost like wow, you know, cal, suprise, what a surprise. You know Like they believe and be baptized. What an incredible symbol for people to, for us to help people engage with.

0:15:59 - Rusty George
Oh, so well said. And to quote Carrie one more time how do we create more down non-downloadable experiences and that is what's going on in the room when we do baptisms, when we do communion is they're getting this experience with something, even if they don't believe it? They sure appreciate that we do and they'd like to think maybe I could as well. Right, I love that. Okay, so this begs the question should and this is an ongoing debate with everybody should messages get shorter?

then, so that there can be space for more experiential moments, whether that's worship or communion or baptisms or prayer. You know, I think I heard somebody on a podcast say it's not that our attention spans are shrinking, it's that we're getting better at listening, meaning consuming content at a shorter amount or a greater rate. Now our minds are quick enough we can say, okay, move on, I got it. So can we teach more or should we teach less? What's your thinking on that Great question.

0:16:57 - Rich Birch
That's a great question. So I so this comes from a person who's not a primary communicator, so cause you're gonna say this guy's you know he might be the answer I give you you're like of course he's gonna say you should teach more because he likes communicating, cause he is a communicator. That's not my primary role, that hasn't been my primary role, but I value that part of what we do so high. In fact, I think most churches don't value it enough. Like the vast majority, they do not spend enough time, effort and energy.

There was a study done by this is a pre-pandemic study, but just before the pandemic from our friends at Gallup where they asked you know, they asked people who attended religious services. This wasn't just churches, it was also, it wasn't just Christian churches, it was also other, you know, religious movements. They said why do you attend? And two thirds of or sorry, three quarters of the reason why people said they attended was because of the message, because of what was being said. It wasn't the music, it wasn't the other elements, it's actually that part of the message, that part of the service, the message, super important. And then they ask the follow-up question. They're like what are you looking for in the message and the two things that came out. Again, three quarters. They were like 1% difference on both of these.

One was it needs to. The message needs to be based on the Bible or based on scripture. It needs to be based on a transcendent truth, not just and man, we've seen this too much. Right, it's just because it rhymes does not mean it's true. You know, it's like. It needs to be actually based on scripture. And then number two is it needs to be applicable to daily life. And so, friends, the good thing about this is you already know this. They taught you this in seminary. This thing is true. You should teach from the Bible. You should open up the Bible, teach from the Bible and give them something that's applicable to everyday life.

What the stats show is that's what people are actually looking for. So and you know, in my work on church growth I mean, I hammer this all the time with you know with, the difference between stagnant and growing churches is that growing churches train, mobilize and equip their people to invite their friends, and what they typically are inviting them to is whatever you're talking about as a church, and that so it's. So should it be short? Should it be long. I would say that's not a dog I have in that fight. Now we just did a study, actually as a part of this group that I'm, that I lead, where we looked at 20 messages from the fastest growing churches between the ages, between the sizes, sorry, of a thousand and 5,000. And the average message length continues to be over 30 minutes. It was like 33, 34 minutes in luck, and that's in the last year, based on and we looked at their most popular message, based on YouTube downloads. So we're still seeing long messages.

I can't, you know, I think it's a little bit like standup comedy If someone's no good, they can do standup for about five minutes. If they're amazing, they can hold an auditorium, a stadium, for an hour and a half. You know, I think it really depends. It depends on the text, it depends on the communicator, it depends on the time of the year. You know, I I like the. I think there's a sweet spot somewhere in the 25 to 35 minute range. I think in that length a decent communicator can actually open up the text, can actually, you know, create some tension and actually resolve it. I think it's. I think it's difficult. We all saw this during COVID, right. Right, it's so difficult to do that in 12 minutes. 15 minutes it's possible, but it's very difficult to do that in in that timeframe.

0:20:23 - Rusty George
Yeah.

0:20:23 - Rich Birch
What? How long do you teach? What is your? What's your thought on that? You are more qualified answer that than me. You actually do that on a regular basis.

0:20:31 - Rusty George
I I find, in order to get done what I need to get done, engage people, teach people and then apply to people, it takes around 30 minutes. Uh, there's been some weekends it's felt like, man, I got so much I've got to say about this because it's such a controversial issue, it's going to go 40 and I tell the worship team hey, just FYI, or they're you know, post COVID, I got used to teaching for 20 minutes. It felt like devotionals all the time that, uh, I kind of had to, you know, get the reps back in to get that back up there to 30 minutes. So for me it just seems like I mean, at at my age, you know, I'm 50, now I 50 plus, I should say, uh, it's like I don't know if it's going to change. It's 30 minutes. So, uh, maybe, maybe this next generation will crack the code a little better than me, uh, but that just seems like where I am with it.

0:21:21 - Rich Birch
Yeah, and I would look at again.

so, as a from a church growth point of view, from a communications point of view, I would work backwards from okay, what is the sweet spot that our communicator both they, you know, they think that they're in and then also that's kind of affirmed in community that people are like, yeah, yeah, no, that that person should go 30, 35 minutes and then we should look at everything else and say, okay, how do we trim all of that other stuff? And that's coming from a person who was responsible for, for organizing all the other stuff. That's coming from the person that managed the music people and managed announcements and managed everything that wasn't teaching, because it's, frankly, friends. It's just not as important. It isn't. It does not rank as high in our peoples or in, even more importantly, their friends, uh, in the value in our, in our services. I know that's hard to say, I know that's that's tough to say, but it's just true that works out time and again that that portion is just so critically important.

0:22:17 - Rusty George
Okay, so, as somebody who oversees that area uh, with the other stuff and you work with worship leaders, what do you say to a worship leader that decides it's time for he or her to preach as well? And you know what I mean Well yeah, so we just.

0:22:33 - Rich Birch
I just have a joke about it. I, I so and I so I've attacked this. I've had this in the past and I, you know, the joke I've joked about is I'm like listen, uh, preachers, they won't sing. So please, singers, don't preach. Like, and you know so if I was at your church I'd be like listen, we don't want Rusty singing, believe me, we do not want.

That's true Um in fact, actually I have a running gag with Tim Lucas, who he could still cash in on this. I was like, tim, I'd love for you, one Sunday, to actually break out in song and I'll give you a hundred bucks if you do it. That would be, that would be amazing, just as a kind of a funny joke. And I said it stands, stands as long as he has not done that. You know, whatever. 15 years later, he still hasn't, you know, pulled that trigger. But yeah, so there's the kind of joking side of it which is, hey, we, we're, we're not asking you to, you know, we're not asking you to speak, in the same way that we're not asking Rusty to sing. Um, so please, you know, keep that down.

Um, some of that comes with coaching and and and you've got to get relationship. You have to build relationship with those people to the point where it's like, you know, you have to have some tough conversations and and say, like this actually, what you're doing right now is undoing it. I've seen that way more with campus pastors in a multi-site context than with worship leaders, where or at the end of the. And this, this I will attack. Even with somebody I don't know very well, I'll attack it. I'll be like listen, rusty preached everything you need to preach. Please do not get up and re-preach the message. I know you've got thoughts on it. I know that you, you know, because you're an engaged, intelligent love. You love Jesus too and you're a good communicator. Probably you, you could do this, probably, um, but we're asking you to not do that, please don't cause I've seen that way too many times. It's like at the end of the message, you know he's what that person's supposed to do is they're supposed to exit.

Everybody just say thanks for coming and then they go up and say you know, today, when Rusty said, and then they, you know, they, they lay out another three points and you're like that's not helpful.

That is not unless we're asking you to do that, um, which we have done in the past where we'll say you know what we're going to do, we're going to have, we're going to have Rusty set up the first two thirds. He's going to set up the, the tension he's going to, but then we're going to give you the application and so you know, here's Rusty, he's going to hand it off to you to deliberately say okay, hey, um, we're going to hand off to our campus pastors and they've they've got some stuff that they would love to help us wrestle through, and then they're they're dealing with the application stuff which we ask them to talk about from their own perspective and say, hey, this is, this is how this thing that we're talking about, this is how this interacts in my life and and I think this is how this could interact in your life. But, um, that the those, I do think. So the thing I would say why am I? With worship people, I'm probably a little more tender, just cause they're tender souls there.

0:25:07 - Rusty George
Yes.

0:25:07 - Rich Birch
And and we got to walk with them over an extended period of time. There's I know it's super personal and that's fine, like that's good, we actually like that, that's a good thing. But, um, with campus pastors, I found they can, they can take a little more direct. You know, um, let's just attack this Um, and and I, frankly, I found there's more offenders that are campus pastors than there are worship leaders. I think most worship leaders get that. They understand, like, okay, I understand that I can't, I'm just not going to repreach this thing.

0:25:32 - Rusty George
Yeah, um, yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, campus pastors are often, uh, looking for that moment to to communicate. You know they don't get it that often, so when they get that shot, here it comes. So let's repreach the message. Yeah, okay.

So while while we're picking on, uh various people on staff, um, I know that you have done some great work on helping uh lead pastors and executive pastors communicate better. I was going to say get along, but it's it's deeper than that, cause I think they're both often right. They just miss the communication part with each other. What have you seen there? How can you help some of our listeners that are trying to cause?

I get this question a lot of hey, I got this XP, he does a really good job or she's really great, but we just don't really see eye to eye. I just feel like we're just two different people and and then you get the guy that says I just want to hire my best friend and they don't do a great job. So you know, what do you see there? And what have you talked to people about? Hey, let me interrupt for just a second. If you're a church leader and your church does not have an app or your app seems to be a little bit limited. Check out subsplashcom as a great resource to really give your app all the horsepower that it needs. You can connect people, you can help them get access to messages and you can help them set up recurring giving, which is a game changer when it comes to resourcing your ministry Subsplashcom. Okay, back to our episode.

0:26:58 - Rich Birch
Yeah, there's a ton that we could unpack there and I do a lot of, you know, a lot of. There's a lot of executive pastors on my list. I hear from them a lot Whenever I'm out coaching, if I'm doing onsite coaching with the church, even if we're, you know we're not talking explicitly about the XP lead pastor relationship or working on church growth or whatever. It's pretty common for you know one point to get pulled aside by the lead pastor and the lead pastor says exactly what you're saying hey, man, I just love my executive pastor, so good there, he or she are just so good at executing, and they'd rattle off a whole bunch of good things. And they say, but can you help me get the relationship, how do I make that a better relationship? Or vice versa. Next, peel, pulled me aside, say, man, I love my lead pastor, he or she are just so like great at vision and so a good, a good preacher and all that, but can you help me understand how to do that relationship? So I do think them. I think the two things.

I would say one you probably, in that relationship, need to have, maybe annually, you need to have a define the relationship conversation. And I would put this on the executive pastor. I would say, hey, you know, once a year you know you're not going to be able to ask your lead pastor, like, what's it like to be on the other side of me, like, is this helping or hurting, how can I serve you better, how can I serve the mission better? I think you know, once a year at least you know having that. Oftentimes, you know, my experience has been that you know lead pastors, they may not come to that. It might take them a lot to kind of work up to want to have that conversation for a bunch of reasons.

And so I would put that on XPs to say, hey, you know, once a year, put it in your calendar, have a like, have a. Let's define this relationship. How's it going, how's it working out? And then I think the other, the other part of it is you. You hit on exactly the tension that when you're having this defined, the relationship, you need to get clarity on what is your lead pastor. I would say from the executive pastor seat, what is the lead pastor actually looking for? Are they looking for another friend or are they looking for somebody to execute? Are they? Are they looking for someone to? To just take this, these balls, and run with it and you've got to get clear on what that looks like and what they say might not actually be what they need. Like it's a nuance thing. It's like it takes a long time to kind of figure that out.

0:29:13 - Rusty George
Yeah.

0:29:13 - Rich Birch
You know, I, I, the, I worked, have worked for three incredible lead pastors in this kind of number two seat incredible guys though, though three those three happen to be guys and our relationships were a little bit different. But I never ironically, I never personally never was like I need to be this person's best friend. We need to be like hanging out, going fishing every weekend. I I didn't put that, that kind of weight on the relationship. I'm like we're great co-workers. I'm happy to draw swords with this person and you know I'll run through a wall for them, but like we don't need to be best buds, like we don't do Now. Ironically, those people and we talked about Tim, ironically those have become very close, fruitful friendships. There are people who, to this day, if they texted me, I would do whatever they want me to do because they're great people. But we didn't load it up with that kind of relationship on the front end because I think that could be problematic.

I probably the only thing and you and I were talking in this little bit briefly earlier I was on another conversation with our friend, sean Morgan and probably the one area where I would get super definitive on is the co-leading thing, where it's kind of presented, as these are like two people, like it's a two-headed Hydra kind of thing.

I'm super suspicious of those leadership models Like I as and I will say that as a senior leader with like I got lots of capacity, I can lead lots of stuff, I don't have a problem making decisions.

But I think, ultimately, I think God has called a person to be the lead pastor of your church and so if you're structured like that, I would be cautious on that, because I've seen that go sideways more times than than not it can work out, but I have seen it go sideways a bunch of times. You know, at liquid it was funny because Tim would talk like that publicly there was we had a four-part leadership team and he would talk publicly. He would be like, well, we're in this all together and we're the four of us are a team leading the church, and like he would use that kind of language. And then internally you know the three of us were joking we're like, yeah, that's fine, you can say that, tim, but like we report to you Like that's, you know, that's this how this works, and sure, there aren't really lots of times where it gets into this like power dynamic thing, where it's like well, you, got to do this because I work for you know you work for me.

Of course we're all like senior leaders. Of course we don't. That's not really how we operate. It's not brokered like that. But at the end of the day, you're the lead pastor, You're the one that God's called to lead this thing, and I do think that's a different than any other role. It doesn't really have a parallel, you know, in the church, so I don't know.

0:31:44 - Rusty George
You know that. That brings up something that I get asked about. A lot is okay. Should I have one XP or should I have two? And the common thing is to have somebody over ministry and somebody over operations, or should I have three and a third person over all the worship and programming? Yeah, and obviously you are a part of that. At liquid Yep, I always tell people it depends on your personality, you know. Do you want, you know, a partnership, like you know you're playing doubles and tennis, or do you want to play golf with you know, four on the course? So I mean, is there a point where, okay, now you've got too many direct reports or you know what? You really should just do one thing and let the other? Let have one XP that just you know, knows where all the bodies are buried, so to speak. You know what. What's your advice to guys on this?

0:32:30 - Rich Birch
Yeah. So I would say it depends, which is not a very helpful answer. So we do see lots of times churches are, you know, when they're approaching or at a thousand in size, that they are adding an XP in and the functional thing that often goes is happening. There is, you know, teaching. It gets back to what we were talking about earlier teaching and vision. Are they just takes time? It's not. It takes a lot of time, effort and energy and I can argue that any phase of a lead pastor's life, early on, it's like it takes a lot of time because you take more time to prep. Later it takes a lot of time because you've said everything you're ever going to say on these topics and so it takes longer. Like you, you know you've already preached through the whole Bible eight times and so now you're like, oh gosh, I got to come up with another Easter message. What am I going to say? Or another Mother's Day message, or Christmas or whatever. Whatever is coming up like that takes longer, and so typically we see it at a thousand. Now lots of churches have ended up in that kind of three headed thing where it's like a lead pastor with two executive pastors. I see we see that lots of times very common, where you have, like somebody essentially over programming and then somebody over kind of the business operations or ministry and the kind of business operations, and I do think there's some wisdom to that, rather than the the lead pastor has one direct report and then that one direct report, the executive pastor, everyone else reports to that person. I think, particularly as the church gets above 2000, you know, once you end up with 30, 40 staff, you know it becomes more difficult to have that all go through one person. You've just downloaded the problem of too many direct reports to another person, which, granted, they do have more time because they're not preaching on the weekend typically. But you know, I do think it's. I do think that there's some wisdom in the kind of the three or four configuration. We see three lots of times and I do think that's a good place.

Now, if you're thinking about that long term, you know, let's say you have one executive pastor now and maybe you're still holding on to some direct reports as a lead pastor, you know it'd be good in one of those to find the relationship conversation to talk about. Hey, what is this going to look like long term? What is that you know these, these. If you're holding on to some direct report to say you're a church of 1500 people and maybe you're holding on to all the programming stuff, you're holding on to all the Sunday stuff because that's so connected to your teaching, that's fine.

You know, you probably want to start getting that in the dialogue, like hey, I could see you long term over the kind of business operations if that person is more that way or over more of the you know the ministry operations, what do you think about that? Let's talk about what that. You know what that looks like before we kind of get there. So I do think it's a best practice. I do think you know the irony of most executive pastor roles is they really are built around the lead pastor, like they're like what is the stuff that the lead pastor A doesn't, either doesn't want to do or doesn't feel like they're competent in, and so then we kind of fill that in with other senior leaders. You know that's pretty typical.

0:35:25 - Rusty George
So that's good. I want to ask you about inviting people to church. You've done a lot of work on this. You got great stuff out there about this. What does the invite culture look like now Versus pre pandemic? Has it changed? Are people inviting people less? Is it just more digital? You know, check out my church online. Is it more? Hey, I just post something on Facebook and call that inviting people. What are you seeing right now when it comes to are people inviting others to church?

0:35:53 - Rich Birch
Great question. Well, you know, I know this was, this was a reality all across the country. It looked different at different times during the pandemic, but there was some places it was like three weeks, some it was like three months, some it was like a year. There was a protracted amount of time where inviting a friend to come to church felt like what you were saying was you should come and catch a disease, like it had that kind of, and so people got out of the habit of doing it. Right, they? Because it felt like, you know, because we, there was so much public stuff around and again, I realize it was not, it wasn't like this everywhere, but there was some version of that and so we went, you know, maybe a year, maybe six months, maybe 18 months, where we weren't, we weren't actively moving our people to do that. And so I think first we have to understand that that context is real.

What we're seeing is, you know, the fastest growing churches, churches that are reaching people today, train, equip and motivate their people to invite their friends. It is not left to chance. They're not like, hey, we just happened to do something, you know. They're like, no, no, we're thinking about the series that we're rolling out. We're thinking about the tools that we're putting in their hands. We're giving them both digital and physical tools. We're thinking about every big day Christmas, easter, you know, the start of school, the start of the new year. We're thinking about that backwards from okay, how do we make invite tools? We're doing stuff before where we used to like, hey, we're gonna have like a photo booth for Mother's Day. We're gonna tell people that ahead of time and say, hey, invite your friends. You know, before you know pre-pandemic, it was a best practice pre-pandemic, before big days, to show, not just tell, people about your services. So it was like hey coming up, like you know, let's say, we're planning for, you know, a Mother's Day service. Like hey, coming up on Mother's Day, we've got a great message for moms. We're gonna be giving them all carnations, we're gonna have, you know, an all female worship band.

Whatever your special stuff is that you're doing for mothers on that day, you wanna actually tell your people exactly what's happening in those experiences and you wanna frame them, not from your perspective, not why your people will like it, but you know, please invite your friends, because A this is what the message is about. This is the kind of person that you know would love to hear that. Or B, you know you wanna invite your mom because you know we're gonna give her flowers on that day, so you don't have to buy her flowers. Or you know, c, we're gonna do photo booths because we love getting pictures taken with your mom and your mom would love that. It's going those extra steps to think about it from our you know, from our guest perspective.

So, absolutely, we're seeing the churches that are growing. We're seeing an increased concentration thinking about invite culture, ironically, a decreased time, effort and energy spent on what we used to call church marketing, which is like outbound, distant, like Facebook ads, you know, tv ads, that kind of stuff, like flyer drops, all those kind of things. There's definitely a decrease in that post pandemic and an increase in again in the churches that are growing. We're seeing that and it just is just what happens. This was true pre-pandemic, that growing churches were motivating, were equipping, were figuring out how to increase their invite culture. But it's become even more important and acknowledge that. Hey, at some point we stopped actually doing that because of you know it was weird at one point during the pandemic in our communities?

0:39:24 - Rusty George
Oh yeah, definitely, and it is interesting. I mean as a lead guy you think. Well, I said that three years ago they should know they should be doing that, but it just takes a regular cadence of talking about it. And one of the things I've learned from a great lead pastor by the name of Gene Apple, who's been on the podcast a few times, is he not only talks about it, he tells stories of the people he's inviting yes, and even asks the church to pray for so and so because he's inviting them. But it kind of makes it a, it's an all skate, we're all in on this and we're all. We've all got a list of four or five people we'd love to see come to know the love of Jesus. So let's invite them and that really does change the evangelism culture.

0:40:01 - Rich Birch
Yeah, and we talk about that Train, equip and motivate. So train, it's like you got to teach on it. You got to. You know, when you come up to those passages in scriptures, you got to say, hey, this is this is how we reach the community, this is what it looks like. You got to equip them. You got to give them tools. You have to give them, you know, here's stuff they can download, here's invites, they can give away here's whatever and here's the information. That's another part of the equipping. And then motivate is exactly what you're talking about there.

It's the stories, it's the it's. It's pushing in your testimony videos to say, okay, who invited you first to come to the church? What did that actually look like? Let's talk about what that was. It's, it's, you know, it's retelling again the stories of you know, people who have, who have taken steps closer to Jesus. That's a part of that mode. You can't just do one of those. You got to do all of them. You got to train, equip and motivate. You know your people to, to, to be equipping their, you know, to, or to increase the invite culture for sure.

0:40:54 - Rusty George
That's great. Okay, I want to ask you about. You've written several books. My favorite is the church growth flywheel, because it's just five practical things every church can do. That just keeps momentum going. You wrote that several years ago. What would you change now with that in the review mirror a few years? Would you tweak anything? Certainly post pandemic or just the world we're living in. What would be different today?

0:41:17 - Rich Birch
Yeah, great question. So kind of apropos cause. I am actually working on a book that is kind of like church growth flywheel re-looked at, and there is, I would say. So there are these five different things we talked about in there. We don't need to get into all five of them, but the one that I would swap out is there was this kind of one of the five things was about like getting the right message, the right people at the right time, talking about internal communications and and while I think that's really important, I think a part of what we missed there was a focus particularly on building the volunteer culture.

From a church growth point of view, one of the things that we've seen is if you can move people from not serving to serving, those people become a lot more likely to invite their friends. That the amount of change that happens in their life for when you cast vision to them and like if they're like yeah, yeah, I used to not volunteer, now I do that actually that move and then also a part of the core idea behind you know, it's all this invite culture stuff is a part of what's behind church growth flywheel, and one of the things that we realize is and we've seen and this is for sure, true post pandemic is when people make a change in their own personal life, when they're like, okay, now I'm volunteering at my church, that becomes a whole bunch of trickle down conversations with other people at work at what are you doing this weekend? Oh, I'm volunteering at this thing at my church. Or you know what are you doing? Your mom asks you what are you doing? Oh, I'm volunteering at church. And so, and then there's this interesting rule of thumb that we keep running into, which is typically churches are. You know, typically you are. There's a three to one ratio between the number of people serving, or a one to three ratio, and the number of people serving in the size of your church. So if your church is 3000 people typically a church of 3000 people they have a thousand people that are volunteering. Now, lots of church leaders, too many church leaders, live in the world where they're like well, we will add more when we grow, we will add more volunteers. But actually that's not the case. That's it's the other way around. As we add more volunteers, that is a preceding number, that's a leading indicator of growth that's about to come. So one of the ways to go to your church is, if you're again back to that number of the 1000 to 3000, is, hey, what could we do to add 250 volunteers in the next year? Because if we could add 250 volunteers in this next year, it's almost guaranteed that you're gonna grow by 750, your church is gonna grow from. Yeah, you're gonna grow by 750 people. It's almost guaranteed.

This is the dynamic behind the multisite church movement. Over the years, when we launched new campuses, we always thought about like, oh, we're going to new places, and that's true. But actually the deeper truth behind it is we were releasing two thirds of. In most multisites it was two thirds of the people we were releasing were brand new volunteers. So I think multisites are really important. I think it's a good tool. I don't think it's gone anywhere. But the deeper kind of thing behind that is what are we doing to engage more volunteers? So if we're, or when we're, redoing this book and this kind of thinking, for sure an increased look at what are we doing to release more volunteers as a church growth tactic. So I understand that it's a lot of other things. It's a part of discipleship, it's a part of deepening community, it's all of those other things. But if you can strip those out and take a step back, you'll see that actually there's some church growth kind of fuel behind all that. If we just take some time to focus on it, that's brilliant.

0:44:48 - Rusty George
I hope people have listened to this podcast long enough to hear that, because that was gold.

0:44:55 - Rich Birch
You know the interesting thing about this, this is one of those. So it was pre-pandemic. And then, particularly in the last couple of years that we've been talking with churches and working with churches, it is one of those lightball moments where people are like, oh my goodness, I see it. It's like you've seen through, it's like the old matrix thing. It's like you kind of see through one of those like, oh my goodness, like and again, friends that are listening in. I would challenge you talk to your staff, talk to your people. You might know this number. What is the total number of people that are volunteering? So, humans like adults, people that are volunteering? Typically it's a one to three ratio. Typically we're seeing, you know, if it's a church, it's super sticky. A church of 750 people, they have 250 volunteers. Church of 1,000, they have somewhere around 300 volunteers, 350 volunteers, and so the question is what can we do to add more volunteers in this coming year? What do we do to engage? How do we spend more time, effort, energy on that as a leading indicator of potential growth?

0:45:49 - Rusty George
That's so interesting because I think in every church conference room in America where I'll sit around thinking about, well, we need to deepen our people's faith journey and the way they do that is they sacrifice time and they serve when really that's a lead indicator for the inviting of people and the growth of your church on the other end. So that's fantastic.

0:46:10 - Rich Birch
And I've seen this time and again and you've seen this as you engage with fast-growing churches. It's very hard to find a fast-growing church that doesn't have a robust volunteer culture. It just those two things are connected. In fact, I remember years ago, I know some people may not love Elevation Church. They might not like Stephen Ferdic, they're like he's a quirky fellow. You know he's and it's a quirky church. But the thing that you cannot deny is, man, their volunteer culture. It is white hot.

I remember 10 years ago I was went and visited one of their campuses and it was Saturday night. They were setting up at this at their university campus and it was, you know, there was a hundred people in this building setting this thing up and then they're getting together after, fired up, ready to go. Well, that's like an unstoppable force for trying to launch, you know, to try to make a difference in their community. And although I would contest and I've said this privately in a lot of places, I would contest, obviously Stephen's a very gifted communicator. Obviously, their worship music is amazing, all that is true. I would say that actually their volunteer culture is at the core of why that church continues to have the impact that it has, because it had this incredible kind of way of getting people plugged in, and that that ultimately precedes growth, growth.

0:47:27 - Rusty George
I thought that was Canadian for growth.

0:47:30 - Rich Birch
Yeah, I don't know where that came from.

0:47:32 - Rusty George
Okay.

0:47:32 - Rich Birch
Yeah, exactly.

0:47:34 - Rusty George
Okay, so here's what I want to close with. You're a. You listen to a lot of podcasts. You read a lot of books. Give our listeners and me a few things to be reading or listening to that you think, man, this is really good. I'm not sure people know about this.

0:47:48 - Rich Birch
Okay, that's good, that's a good question. A couple that, a couple books that might be that I've read in the last year, in a bit that are so that might be non-traditional church leaders are going to read in and you're going to look at this book and be like I'm not sure I should. I'm asking you to chew up the meat and spit out the bones. There's some stuff that you're not going to love. There's this guy, phil Jones, that wrote this book. Exactly what to say.

0:48:10 - Rusty George
Have you bumped into this book? No, no, I haven't.

0:48:12 - Rich Birch
So it's an interesting book it is. So he's kind of like a sales trainer kind of guy, like he's, and and the core insight that Phil has is we don't spend enough time thinking about the first things, that the first words that come out of our, our mouths. And so he, he says like hey, think about all the things that are happening in your week. You have a couple meetings Everyone has a couple meetings every week that are like the most important meetings of their week and we don't think about what exactly is the first things I'm going to say and how am I going to position that conversation so that it points in the direction that I want it to go from, and which I do think is a core insight. I do think that's true. I think there's like I do I think about hey, I'm going to talk to my daughter, you know, this weekend about this thing, and what do I actually want to say in that conversation, what are the words that I want? And so this book exactly what to say really pushes us on that. It's also interesting because it is so.

Phil has sold and you'll appreciate this, as an author has sold. That book is sold, it's approaching 2 million copies, 1.75 million copies and it's a self published book and so which is almost unheard of, so or it is unheard of, so it's an interesting, that's you know, kind of an interesting book. And then I reread Richard Koch's book from 20 years ago this year, the 80 20 rule, 80 20 principle, which so this, you know, this idea that you know 80% of your results are coming from 20% of your work. And so I've just told you, friends, the entire thing, that's what the whole book talks about it takes ironically I did think this was kind of funny I read the expanded edition, which does feel like it's going in the opposite direction of the book. It should have went like, it should have been like. What is the four page version of?

0:49:55 - Rusty George
this book Like the 20%.

0:49:57 - Rich Birch
Yeah, what is the 20% is a little bit ironic to me that he had an expanded edition, but but outside of that, you know what that book man it is. I reread that this fall and it is consistent. Performer. Again, I'm like man it, even though I've told you the concept, there's nothing more than what I just told told you 80% of your results come from 20% of what you do. Go and apply likewise and so, but it is, it's a. It's a good book. You know the other one, so this is not really. This is like I would say, like an app. It's kind of like a. That's been fantastic has been the. It's called Lectio 365.

It's put on by that UK movement called the 24 prayer, 24 seven prayer folks, and it is every day. They provide two different kind of structured readings, one in the morning, one for the morning, one in the evening, and it's read to you, they, so they they're, they're doing them for you and you're, you're listening in. That's like a tradition. That I'm not from, that's not my background, but I have found that to be just very accessible. It's been a very accessible tool for that, that spiritual habit of okay, I'm going to slow down and, and you know, have kind of a guided prayer time. It's and it's completely free, which is amazing and it's. You know, there and the 24 seven prayer folks are incredible, they're, they're great people. So I don't know that'd be a couple of resources if you're looking for, just in case people are like this guy's just given all business examples. I'm like no, that's you know, that's spiritual to.

0:51:28 - Rusty George
That's good. Yeah, exactly, rich. This has been fantastic. Always great to talk with you. It doesn't happen near often enough, so looking forward to doing this more, but really grateful for your time and helping our listeners out so much, so really appreciate it, man.

0:51:42 - Rich Birch
Thanks so much, rusty. Like I said, I appreciate you. I appreciate the work you do, appreciate the podcast and and just all everything that you do to help church leaders as well. Thanks for having me on.

0:51:52 - Rusty George
Well, pardon the pun, but that was so rich. I'm sure he's never heard that before. Reach out to him on social media, tell him how much you appreciated it and make sure that you check out his resources, his podcast, un-seminary and make sure that you also share this with a friend. I know they're going to be blessed by it as well. Next week we're back with brand new content. I tell you what it is, but I'd spoil the surprise, so make sure you join us next week on Simple Faith.