[0:00]
Good day, I'm Scott Sanders and welcome to the Reach Australia podcast. A podcast that's all about helping you become a healthy, evangelistic, multiplying church. Uh now I've got Greg again with me in this episode and we're going to be pushing into the third principle. Uh team team pastoring or or your role as a senior pastor, lead pastor in uh being responsible for the whole system, but also handing over and giving responsibility uh to others. We're going to push into a whole bunch of different areas. Uh and I think this is a really

[0:32]
important thing to uh push into. I just want to hear you Greg just talk about what How do you understand you know sort of the key things that you do as a lead pastor? So um one is I want to take responsibility for what's happening across the entire church. Um so which doesn't necessarily mean that I do everything, but I'm responsible for uh this church rather than um kind of getting dragged along in its wake. Um the next thing I want to do is

[1:03]
I want to have a a team of senior leaders where they're really clear on what their job is and what the outcome that we're looking for and I help them to do it. Um and I I also want to have those guys working well together. I want them aligned so that um they're all pushing in the same direction and all of their different ministries actually um work well together instead of tripping over each other. You press play on another episode and this is all about team pastoring.

[1:34]
So one of the sort of objections or big questions we have as we sort of push into this is, you know, team pastoring, you know, uh what's you know, what's different about this to congregational pastoring? Cuz Yeah, so in congregational pastoring uh I'll look after 10:00 a.m. You'll look after 5:00 p.m. Someone else will look after 7:00 p.m. Um and one of them can be really going well, another one's probably middling, the other one's a bit of a basket case, but that's all right. As long as my one's going well, that your one is going out

[2:04]
to the farm. Um whereas, what we're looking at here is the whole of the church and how um all of them are working well. So, that's one of those big differences. So, uh the idea of of us all also pushing towards that high-level outcome, the idea that, you know, we're all aligned towards actually seeing everybody in the church making and growing disciples. Uh and so, success for me is actually, you know, you're successful, too. So, we're we're actually not competing. Yeah. Uh we're actually working together towards this

[2:34]
overall outcome. Yeah, that's right. So, um no matter what the congregation, we're actually pushing people towards those big goals that we've got for every disciple, you know, deep in the word, God-wardly attentive, on mission, serving, being part of a community. Um it's no good if the people at 10:00 a.m. are there, but the people at 7:00 p.m. aren't. We're actually caring about all of the congregations and every individual there. So, a key part of this is actually about allocating out those purposes. It's about allocating responsibility, handing handing that over.

[3:05]
That's a That's a big thing for a pastor. Now, you're you're coaching a number of pastors as part of the Reach Australia development program. What What are you seeing, you know, pastors struggling with most in sort of the handing over of responsibility? Yep. Uh two things that we always struggle with is what I like to do and what's hard to do. Mhm. So, um I struggle to hand over leading the growth group ministry cuz I really like it. Um I struggle to hand over mission cuz I really like it. Um but the fact is, um there is only so much I can do

[3:38]
and that handing it over is actually going to be better. The second reason people struggle is when I hand it over uh to someone else, there's going to be an initial drop in quality, uh and it's going to require me to invest time in training. And so, for a lot of guys, I'm just going to keep doing all the things that I like to do, kind of ignore all the things that I don't like to do because it's just too hard to give it up or to train. I I want to That That's really helpful, Greg. I think another another objection to this and another sort of, you know, question a lot of guys has is, you know,

[4:09]
I I didn't get into ministry to be a manager, you know, to to to lead a team. I I got into ministry to spend time with people in the word. I got into ministry cuz I'm a preacher and I'm all about preaching God's word. Yeah. Uh so, team pastoring, you know, what does it look like to be a shepherd? What does it look like to be a pastor in in this team pastoring role? What am I giving up or am I giving up stuff? Yeah. What it looks like always is doing what your sheep need. So, I think whenever we say, "I didn't get into

[4:40]
ministry to At that point, it's a fairly selfish point of view, isn't it?" Um We got into ministry to look after the sheep. And if the flock is one person or two people, then what those sheep need and what you can give them is lots of personal attention. But if the flock is to be 6 or 700, that's going to really require me to think differently um about uh what they need me to be. And what they need me to be mightn't be the very um lovely, personal, sharing in

[5:13]
their lounge room. You can do that for about six people. Um But I've got But you want to to shepherd all of the sheep in the flock. I think it always keep coming back to what are the sheep need rather than what I want to do. So, Lyle Schaller, you know, church growth expert of the '70s talks about, you know, the need for a pastor to move from being a shepherd to a rancher in order to sort of move past that, you know, that growth barrier of 125, you know, 120 to push past 200, 250. What does it look like to be the rancher? So, the rancher is going to have

[5:43]
multiple shepherds. Uh the rancher is looking at um not just what is this individual sheep need, but what is the whole flock need? Where are we going to move the flock to next in terms of feeding them? That is the rancher thinks about multiple levels of shepherds and what are the systems that need to happen for this flock, this whole flock to be cared for. And it might feel like there is less personal involvement, but there's just as much love. Cuz you're making sure that every sheep is loved.

[6:15]
Now, there's a lot of angst out there about moving towards specialization. So so not being that generalist, you know, that there's a fear I think of you know, losing those key pastoral skills. Yeah. Can you speak to that for us? The thing is we're all specialists who are pretending to be generalists. So where there is no such thing as the omni gifted person. And the move towards specialist in some ways is just recognizing the reality.

[6:47]
And the fact is we all operate as specialists anyway. So if you talk to most pastors they'll be wide swaths of their ministry that they're just ignoring cuz they either don't like it or they're no good at it, but those things are still important. And so for my mind the move towards specialization is a recognition of the reality of how we're wired and how ministry works anyway. So let's do it deliberately. Let's actually identify where people are gifted. Let's identify the areas that we

[7:19]
want ministry to happen and plug people into them rather than kind of go, well, I want to do everything and I'm just going to have a crack at it. Yeah, I I I think it was really helpful you said you want to plug people into it cuz I think a lot of people as they think into pastoral with purpose and as they think into the move towards specialization kind of in our in our head and our frame where always thinking about, "Oh, I need to staff, you know, I need to staff someone for that." But actually, you can move towards this before you have a you

[7:49]
know, a staff team. You actually probably it will you can move towards it even as a church plant. So, what does it look like if you're a new church or if you're a small church to move towards pastoring with purpose? Yeah, I think you're finding the person. Well, one is knowing what your purpose is and we've talked about those. Yep. Um finding the person who is passionate about that. They're going to champion the idea. Um and then you start to train them to to build a team to do it. Mhm. Um

[8:20]
Now, it might be that church is small enough that they can do that on a day a week. Uh you don't need to you wouldn't want to employ someone into it. Um And because they're not looking after a whole congregation and doing preaching and running Bible studies and those things, they don't necessarily need to be theologically trained yet. They just need to love Jesus, be passionate about that area, and growing in the skill of building a team. So, if I was planting a church tomorrow, I'd still have our purposes. Um I mightn't even be employed, let alone anyone else. Mhm. But we'd be looking to plug people into

[8:50]
all of those. Yeah. And so, that's how you start to build that team. Find persons to plug into purpose areas uh and work with them to become passionate champions of their teams. Yeah, and so across our area our purpose areas, um two out of the five were people who grew up in church and the reason that the way they got their job is they were passionate in and they grew up in that ministry and eventually we thought, "Well, we should employ them." And so, but that organic thing of growing up was what happened.

[9:21]
Yeah, I want to push in an area that you see lots in church life, this this idea of siloing. Mhm. What siloing? Uh so, picture of a an image of a silo is uh it's tall, it's straight, and it's not connected to to bit next to it. Uh and so, uh you got two silos next to each other. One can be full, the other can be empty, but they're not connected and things don't move between them. That's what often happens in churches. It happens in our heart first because I care about my thing, not about your

[9:51]
thing. But it can also happen in churches where an area, a congregation, a type of ministry is going really well, and the one right next to it is dying. Now, Tony Morgan in his book on sort of ministry silos has sort of six, you know, areas where you can sort of identify or see, you know, where things aren't going wrong. Let me just briefly sort of push those out. The vision isn't clear. Leadership isn't focused and committed. It's another sort of way you can see that silo is happening.

[10:21]
The staff structure isn't aligned to the vision of the church. There's an internal culture of competition. So, really helpful you sort of said that sort of sitting alongside each other. You know, we're not upset that actually one silo is full and the other one's empty. We're actually not getting concerned about that. There's not an intentional communication strategy as well in the team itself to actually encourage that working together. And then finally, you've got systems that just don't encourage moving towards that overall purpose. They're some ways to identify it. Yeah.

[10:52]
How does team pastoring, you know, or is team pastoring the solution to that then? Yeah. Yes, in that team pastoring is recognizing that we're after an ecosystem, not a silo. And in an ecosystem, everything flourishes together. And so, for instance, um how is it that the deep in the word people are really going to succeed if the community people, um the people who are working on building community, are doing a great

[11:23]
job? Um likewise, the more the deep in the word people do their work well, the more the community is going to grow, which also means that the serving ministry is going to grow as well. All of that's going to help people to be God-wardly attentive and together as a church, we're going to be on mission, rather than five disconnected silos. All of them work together. All of them succeed and hum together. And when they all know that, in order to do their job well, they're relying on four other areas of ministry. What that means is

[11:54]
our guys are really passionate about everyone else succeeding because they know they can't Mhm. unless everyone else does. Now, final question. We talk often about poetry and plumbing. Yeah. Uh now, I think most pastors are are quite, you know, they're good at, you know, telling the story, casting the vision, you know, motivating, firing people up. They suck at implementation. They they're not Well, they're not very good at building the systems and structures. Yeah. My sense is, you know, that's kind of you, Greg. You know, you're you're you're great at the You know, you're

[12:24]
great at telling the story. Yeah. So, is is that you? And how What would you say to the pastor who's actually not that great at systems and structures? How do they start to, you know, move towards a a structured way of thinking about team pastoring? Yeah. Um it is me. By and large, I think I'm wired to care more about uh the poetry than the plumbing, but I care passionately now about the plumbing because plumbing loves people. Um we Anyone who's ever been in a family knows that. Um you can't just operate

[12:55]
with poetry. You can't just operate with goodwill. Uh we've got four kids. To get get kids out of the house requires military precision. Put that into a church family, it's irresponsible to be a pastor that just says, "Look, I'm all about vision. I'm all about the culture, but I don't really think into the structures." No, that's our job. Mhm. Uh the sheep need us to do it. And so, I've become uh as thoughtful as I can be about all the plumbing, about how we structure, where we put people, about measuring outcomes, about making sure

[13:27]
that the um the ecosystem and the scaffolding of it really works cuz the sheep need it. So Greg, help us sort of land this in God's word. What does the Bible say about team pastoring? Yeah, it's funny it's it's It's not you don't look in the concordance and go team pastoring. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like mission, you know, where's mission? Where's team pastoring in the Bible? Yeah, where's Trinity? Um Yeah, so the phrase team pastoring isn't there, um but it's consistent with what the Bible teaches us about the way God gifts his

[13:57]
body. So the church is a body with different parts and different gifts. Um And now as we do leadership, rather than sticking someone at the top and saying, "Well, your job is actually to have all of the gifts and to be amazing at all of them and cover all of it." What we're saying is, "No, you probably have you do have particular gifts. You are not everything the church needs, but within your church are people with those gifts. And so your job is to find

[14:28]
them, infuse them, love them, train them, deploy them, and support them." That's That's 1 Corinthians 12, isn't it? It's really consistent with it in a way that the solo pastor who does everything just isn't consistent with 1 Corinthians 12. So you're a part of the the Reach Australia development program. You're one of our coaches. You're also one of our facilitators as well at our leadership intensives. Can you tell us, you know, why you're involved in the Reach Australia development program? The reason I'm involved is those the four parts of it, the conference, the

[15:00]
the cohort intensive, the where we go to churches and we do the consult and the coaching. Um What they do is help people to get ideas and then implement them. Most people we go to a conference, you get heaps of ideas, but then you go home and life takes over. Mhm. Um The consult and the coaching actually really helps to change the way we do church. Um having I've been uh here in Newcastle for 20 something 22 years, this is the first Reach Australia is the

[15:30]
first thing that I thought, yes, it's not just going to give people good ideas, it's actually going to change the way they do ministry uh and change the way church is run in the long term. That's why I've said I'm completely in. Great. Well, if you've joined uh well, if you've enjoyed this episode, it'd be great if you could uh share it with your mates. Uh share it with someone who might need to hear more about uh team pastoring. Now, this is an area that is a real challenge. It requires, you know, skill development, it requires a a change in how you operate, uh but it's something

[16:01]
that we ought to be uh you know, doing more and more. We've been given uh you know, the body uh of Christ and we've been given gifted people and we actually want to see that functioning well and functioning towards uh a purpose. I'm Scott Sanders. Chat soon. We want to Reach Australia. We want to see our friends and families workmates saved in a living relationship with our glorious and great God. This is our urgent passion.

[16:32]
But at present, we are not seeing much progress made. We live in a nation of more than 25 million men, women, and children where no religion is now the largest category of belief in Australia, accounting for more than 30% of people. Meanwhile, Australia's population is growing at a rate of over 400,000 people each year. And 65% of those people are coming from overseas. We're a national mission field

[17:04]
of people who need to hear about Jesus. Yet the average Australian church is small and getting older. And the very real concern is the number of workers needed for the harvest is dropping off, not only in cities but in rural and regional areas as well. And the consistent message that we get from pastors and other church leaders is that they feel stressed and ill-equipped for the task. That's why we're launching Reach Australia.

[17:35]
We're a fresh initiative that combines the strengths of number of like-minded ministries to help church leaders and their teams grow. There's no one of us that can own the vision. It's going to take all of us to come together. So that under God, we might see healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches courageously reaching the lost with the gospel. We long to see our nation won for Jesus Christ through healthy, evangelistically effective churches. Our mission is to build a growing network of theologically driven,

[18:07]
spiritually vibrant, evangelistically urgent, and practically skilled church leaders. We don't pretend to think we have all the answers. We're not offering a one-size-fits-all solution. But we are convinced that we can make some real progress together. It is the local church, spiritually healthy, outwardly looking, confident, and capable that under God will reach this country. And we want to help you not only grow spiritually as leaders, but strategically mobilize the saints of this great mission. All you have to do

[18:38]
to get started is connect. Visit the website reachaustralia.com.au. Reach Australia, vital leaders growing thriving churches.