397 Mission in Action: Lighthouse Church (Jeremy Kidd)

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Pete Hughes (00:56.344)
G’day, I’m Pete Hughes. Welcome to The One Thing. It’s a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for Gospel centered ministry every week. And The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia. We want to see thousands of healthy, evangelistic and multiplying churches all over our country. And we’ve had a few episodes with Dave Jensen on mission, but they were all principles. We want to see it put in action. And so today we’ve got Jeremy Kidd from Lighthouse Church on the New South Wales coast joining us and talking about what these guys are doing. Jeremy, thanks for joining us.

Jeremy Kidd (01:24.63)
Hi, yeah, good to be here. Glad to be here.

Pete Hughes (01:27.158)
Now this is your first time on the podcast, is that right?

Jeremy Kidd (01:29.964)
Yeah, sure is. Stoked to be here. I’ve been listening to the podcast for ages and I just want to start off by saying I’m super thankful for it and how much it’s grown me from ministry up here on the coast. And even to start, I want to give a little shout out to my mate, Josh. He’s listened to every single episode and he’s going to be part of a church plant doing MTS up in the Northern Rivers region next year. So we’re stoked for them heading off at the start of 2026.

Pete Hughes (01:56.654)
Fantastic. I love it. He’s listening to the podcast. He’s planning a church. He’s doing MTS. Good on you, Josh. You’re doing all the right things. But we’re not here to talk about Josh. You’ve pressed play on another episode of The One Thing, Mission in Action from Lighthouse Church. Sorry, we just threw an ad in there, so just stay with it. OK. Jeremy, let’s just, let me get this right. You’re actually not, you’re not theologically trained yet, are you? You’re in the process of getting theologically trained.

Jeremy Kidd (02:26.68)
Well done. So I’m kind of part way, I’m doing part-time work at Lighthouse as our kind of mission pastor type role and then doing part-time study at SMBC finishing up this year.

Pete Hughes (02:37.666)
How did you come to have the role? Because you’re the mission pastor there. If you’re not theologically trained, how important is that to do your job?

Jeremy Kidd (02:45.664)
Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. Maybe restart it, Pete. I’m like part way through. I don’t know whether I’d say I’m like half theologically trained. Are you saying that because it’s like helpful to bring it out from the point of like you don’t have to be a full time pass doing the role?

Pete Hughes (02:56.653)
Yeah, that’s right.

Pete Hughes (03:01.894)
yeah, I think it’s also helpful for people to hear. I don’t have to have a full degree to do mission, basically, is what I’m trying to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, we’ll start again. Now, Jeremy, let me, you got that right. You’re in the process of getting theologically trained. If people were thinking of taking a role like this, how important do you think it is to have some sort of theological training to be a missions pastor?

Jeremy Kidd (03:08.108)
Yeah, cool. Yeah, okay, yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Kidd (03:28.62)
Yeah, for sure. I reckon a big part of what’s actually been helpful for me taking on the role of mission at church is actually a lot of just coaching from people to help me think about what is my responsibility, I suppose, to lead mission in seeing both people become Christians at church and also then fire up and equip our people who are already Christians at church to be together. Part of this process of saying people go from

I suppose dead to disciple someone who’s now saved and part of the kingdom.

Pete Hughes (04:03.394)
Okay, cool. And so, but it’s always good to get theological training. So I’m glad that you are. Now, you guys keep pretty good statistics at Lighthouse. What are you looking for? And what data do you keep track of to make sure that you’re staying on track?

Jeremy Kidd (04:19.03)
Yeah, it’s a great question. The thing that we are particularly interested in, it’s the actual point of when someone’s become a Christian and particularly once they’ve made some sort of a profession of faith, it’s seeing them moved into the life of church. So for us, generally what that looks like through our evangelistic series is we have a point at the end of the series where they might say, yes, I’ve prayed to accept Jesus. But then really it’s through our follow up.

course or a follow up Bible study that we get more clarification on where they’re at. And so we measure when someone makes what we’d say a profession of faith and we would say they’re converted. But then we also measure when they are going to our connect series and becoming part of a growth group, because that feels like where the real win is, because you’ve seen them really enter into the life of church, enter into the kind of ecosystem where they’re.

They kind of off the mission hands into the rest of the ecosystem where they’ll keep now growing as a Christian.

Pete Hughes (05:21.582)
That’s great that you’re thinking not just about the conversion moment, but beyond that as well. Now, your mission at Lighthouse is to love the lost. And one of the things I’ve seen is that you guys have seen your conversion rate, so to speak, rise. I know you’ve kept stats from 2017 through to 2024. It’s always important to keep that data so you know where you’re going. What did you change to get there?

Jeremy Kidd (05:47.309)
Yeah.

Jeremy Kidd (05:50.968)
Yeah, yeah. It’s been a really good process for me, I think just reflecting over the year and trying to go at the principle, a little bit of what Dave Jensen was sharing in the last podcast of actually thinking, how do we get people to the moment where they’re actually going to become a Christian and therefore really focusing in on making it the easiest and best place for someone to want to invite a friend along to at our kind of

conversion engine, our life series, and shaving off maybe other things that we are doing to be able to basically just run more moments, are a very interesting series for people to become Christians and more follow up and intentional follow up off the back of it. And so a lot of what we’ve changed was over time, me reflecting on some of the things I was learning and hearing through other Reach Australia podcasts and working out.

Could we maybe do less other things and run progressively more and more life series and keep trying to run them kind of better, but could we also make church on Sunday even more and more and more enjoyable for our church people that they would want to invite a friend kind of directly to church on Sunday rather than maybe something before coming along to church.

Pete Hughes (07:14.85)
Did you make particular changes for what you did on a Sunday to do that?

Jeremy Kidd (07:18.956)
Yeah, well, one thing we did was recruiting, of taking responsibility to recruit a new person to be a special event Sunday leader. And so she pays a lot of attention to a couple of times a term thinking about what’s a special event. And it’s not that those are just the only Sundays that people invite along to, but they have this constant feeling of, I am really enjoying church and I do really want to bring my friend along.

But then alongside that, it’s just the line that I’ve heard used is always having an intentional eye to the non-believer at church. It’s not that Sunday is all about the non-believer, but that we expect there to be non-believers in the room. And so we’ll preach with that in mind and we’ll MC with that in mind and we’ll connect and welcome with people with that in mind. And that means people do inevitably end up coming who aren’t Christians yet.

Pete Hughes (08:18.956)
Now you’ve got people inviting people to church, which is great. But have I got this right that actually you’ve got a lot of people coming to you through socials and the online presence. If that’s case, what’s a practical tweak that you’ve done to your online presence to help people come to church? What’s a particular, sorry, let me do that question again, because I just stuffed it up. But I’ve got that stat right, is that right?

Jeremy Kidd (08:42.178)
Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Kidd (08:45.944)
Yeah, yeah. It’s about 60 % of people. Yeah.

Pete Hughes (08:47.906)
Yeah, okay, cool. Okay, so you’ve got some people who are coming to church because they’ve been invited and I understand it’s about 40%, but there’s about 60 % of your people coming through socials and an online presence. What’s a practical tweak that you’ve made that you would love every church leader to steal tomorrow that will help that online presence be more effective?

Jeremy Kidd (09:10.562)
Yeah, absolutely. I would just really encourage people to think about the fact that their front door has a lot more to do with social media and their Google profile and your website than you might first think. So we are seeing so, so many people, like you mentioned there, 60 % of people who are coming straight to church on Sunday, having never met someone from our church yet. And I reckon that

Massive part of that and people have actually said this to us is because the website is super clear The google profile has a bunch of photos on it and people who are reviewing it from our church that just says hey church is great these are some things I enjoy about it and and the socials just having photos of people of all sorts of demographics makes It means that just like when you and I search up a cafe and we look at the cafe and we’re like, yeah That looks like a pretty good cafe

People do the same thing with church. And so we want people to think, yeah, that looks like a church I could see myself going to. And then they come along.

Pete Hughes (10:15.394)
It is really an amazing thing, isn’t it? Just that how important that online presence is. And in the toolbox, we will have a previous episode that we did with Liz, who works here at the office, and her great passion and her suggestions for having a better online presence. But now let me come back to that thing. Because one of the things that you mentioned there was that you’ve actually focused down into the life series and that your evangelistic engine, that meant that you’ve actually

shut down certain ministries that I guess you might think were pre-evangelistic. How did you do that well? Because I can imagine shutting down ministries is going to be quite a painful thing. Or did you do it? Or did Colin do it? How did that process happen?

Jeremy Kidd (10:57.24)
Yeah, yeah. So I think the first thing to say is that to actually come to that decision of shutting down a ministry, it has to be driven by, I think, a principle of love. so our vision, this love for the lost, of actually thinking about, for us, there’s 100,000 people in a 20-minute radius of church for us, and probably only 2 % are in Bible-believing churches. And so

I have to keep preaching to myself and preaching to our people that we have a greater love for the lost in our area than a love for what we are already doing in the ministries at church. And so it means that we are always willing to be flexible to change things for the sake of seeing more people saved. And so that principle is the background that then has led to us stopping and starting a few different ministries.

And so one of those things, for example, for me, I started MTS at Lighthouse Church. Connen got me to have a crack at starting a what we call junior drivers. It was a mums and kids group to with the deliberate anum of saying kids and mums come to know Jesus and dads on the coast. But so we ran that for about three and a half years. And I had an absolutely fantastic team, super evangelistic.

But we just saw so little fruit. Not many people coming to church. Hardly anyone came to life across those three and a half years. And so I, with the team, decided, is this the best way that we could use our time to see people become Christians? And together as a team, we decided actually, it seems like probably not. And so because of our love for the loss, we were willing to stop that alongside some other things like men’s and women’s events.

so that when we start, when I started MTS, we were doing two life series per year. To now we’ve moved towards doing six life series per year. And just that change has meant that there are numbers of people who are investigating Jesus at life series are just growing exponentially because of that deliberate shift in focus. But the principle behind it is constantly this love for the lost. How can we see more people become Christians?

Pete Hughes (13:20.056)
That’s such a great way to put it. It’s about love and love for the loss. And I’m so encouraging you to hear you think through that. And I imagine that would make it a lot easier as you’re trying to talk to someone who you’re about to say, hey, we’re going to shut down this ministry that you really love, but actually we need to love the loss more. That’s a great way to do it. Sorry, did I just get that right? You’re writing the Life series six times a year. Is that right?

Jeremy Kidd (13:44.726)
Yeah, that’s right. Yep.

Pete Hughes (13:46.508)
Wow, okay. How did you build up from two times a year to six times? How did that actually happen?

Jeremy Kidd (13:52.364)
Yeah. So, I mean, one thing is, Conan, as our senior pastor, was willing to do the whole Reach Australia thing where you take responsibility and you build responsibility. And so having kind of got me in doing MTS, over time, he got me involved kind of MCing and then eventually passed it on to me to do the talks. And then over time, him coaching me and us

kind of thinking through some of these concepts, we got to the point where we decided, we could add an extra one in. And so we went to three life series in a year, and then we decided, maybe we could, we can add another one and then add another one. And then eventually we worked out, maybe we could, like we could do them in parallel. So we’ll, at the moment we’ll do six, but we’re doing two in parallel on a term one, term two and term.

three and it means that if someone has a family with kids they come along to our Sunday version where we’ve got kids minding at the same time and then if they’re maybe more available on a weeknight they’ll come along to the weeknight one. But it’s worked really great as well because it means if someone misses out a week on the Sunday or the midweek then they can also catch up with the other one. But really like what it’s looked like over time is just it’s then me taking on what Conan has done.

in continuing to work out where do I need to raise up someone as a team leader or someone to be part of inviting people along, getting them registered, running the cafe, running our welcoming team. And it’s only because of everyone involved that we can actually run that many and therefore see more people investigate Jesus and see more people become Christians.

Pete Hughes (15:43.138)
Fantastic. And actually that gives me good opportunity to dig into what Dave keeps referring to as mission heat. You know, that is getting Christians, you know, passionate about the loss themselves. What’s been some of the things that you’ve done and what’s been, I guess, the key thing you’ve done to create missional heat in your church?

Jeremy Kidd (16:00.908)
Yeah, I think key things are just continuing to celebrate when people become Christians. So we do a few things. have interviews on Sunday where we’ll share someone having become a Christian or we’ll share someone who’s had a go at inviting a friend along and we’ll celebrate that whether it has led to someone becoming a Christian or not. Another thing is we’ll be praying consistently. So we’re always doing the

praying for two or three local contacts at least twice or three times per term in our growth groups. We’ll do even, I sometimes just flick out my phone and take a little selfie video and send it through to the Facebook group chat with someone who’s had a crack at evangelism or maybe the numbers of people coming along to the life series at the moment. Yeah, those are good things.

Pete Hughes (16:48.056)
That’s a great way of sharing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m just getting your phone out. Hey, I’ve just heard a good story. Let me share it with you. And you’ve also included it in your team meetings along the way, isn’t it? That you’ve kind of gone, who did I, who’d you share the gospel with this week? Yeah, that’s a great, great way. In those stories, has there been anything that’s really surprised you when you’ve asked that question or seen Christians seeking to invite friends?

Jeremy Kidd (17:11.564)
Yeah, I think just people feel like they’re not perfect at it. But when you can just share stories of both the staff up the front and by being that, yes, this is something that I do, but also people who aren’t necessarily staff or leaders saying that, yeah, actually, I can invite someone along as well. There multiple different types of people and sharing that different demographics, maybe people you wouldn’t expect to be doing evangelism.

actually helps encourage people to keep going. But a big thing is we just need to keep putting in front of people because it’s just hard. We find ourselves busy or we forget to do it or we forget about the fact that there are so many people around us that every person is spiritual and their eternity is either under condemnation or with eternal life. And yeah, it’s just that constant reminder that actually helps.

Pete Hughes (18:13.294)
Absolutely right. It’s just remembering the weight of eternity that’s there. Okay, Jeremy, this is the one thing, I’m going to get to the one thing question. What’s the one thing you want to encourage churches to do to be more missional?

Jeremy Kidd (18:28.952)
I’d say love the lost by being willing to change your ministry inputs, what you do for the output of seeing more people saved.

Pete Hughes (18:41.496)
Fantastic mate, can I just encourage you? Thank you for sticking to one thing Our regular listeners have come and talked to me from time to time and go you asked for one thing and you get five So thank you for sticking to one appreciate that in the toolbox We’ve got a bunch of things We’ll have she have a link to the lighthouse website so you can have a look at what they do after their online presence I’ve also got Liz’s episode there on socials and that sort of thing So how you think carefully about how you present yourself online?

Jeremy Kidd (18:51.608)
No worries.

Pete Hughes (19:07.926)
We also have the mission ebook and the previous episodes from Dave so you can see the principles that Jeremy’s been working from. Jeremy, mate, thank you so much for joining us. I’m really excited about the work that’s happening in your church and it’s been really encouraging to hear the stories behind all of that as well.

Jeremy Kidd (19:24.248)
Now thanks for having me.

Pete Hughes (19:26.284)
I also want to point out, don’t forget the Rich Australia conference is coming up all on mission, so make sure you come along to that. Especially there’s a special site just for planting, so if you’re thinking that I need to create more mission by planting another church, make sure you come along to that. But if there’s anything that you want to let us know about, any questions you have, email us resources at richaustralia.com.au. If you’ve got any questions, email me and I’ll pass them on to Jeremy. I’m Pete Hughes, chat soon.