You’re seeing new people walk through the doors — but they’re not sticking. Or your small groups are full, but no one is stepping into service.
Many of us can point to a pathway on paper. What’s harder is spotting the places where people stall, and deciding what to change first.
In this episode, we look at how to identify the pressure points in your pathway and make wise, focused improvements that actually help people move towards mature, integrated discipleship.
In this conversation:
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Why every church already has a pathway, even if it doesn’t feel clear
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The most common blockages that slow people down
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How to use outcomes, people, and programs to diagnose where your church is thriving — and where it’s stuck
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Simple ways to track engagement and spot who isn’t connecting
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How to prioritise change without trying to fix everything at once
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Who should oversee the pathway, and how often it should be reviewed
TOOLBOX:
Reach Australia Podcast 5.2 Re-Work Your Discipleship Pathway with Scott Sanders
Greg Lee talk: Mission driving the ecosystem
Reach Australia’s National Conference 2026
CREDITS:
This episode was brought to you by Exdia
The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia
To pray for Reach Australia, join our WhatsApp Group
For ideas or questions please email [email protected]
Support Reach Australia’s online library
TRANSCRIPT:
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
00:00:02:21 – 00:00:03:10
Derek Hanna
00:00:03:10 – 00:00:04:22
Scott Sanders
Derek Hannah, and I’m Scott Sanders.
00:00:04:23 – 00:00:24:20
Derek Hanna
Welcome to the One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip. Gospel centered ministry. Every now and then. The one things brought to you thanks to by rich Australia. Our vision is to say thousands of healthy, evangelistic and multiplying churches, across Australia in order to reach the nation with cross sets out. Now, Scott.
00:00:24:21 – 00:00:32:22
Scott Sanders
Now what? I get tired of that vision. But you sound a little tired in that vision there. I think it’s a crack, a vision. Healthy evangelistic, multiple churches. Give it a little bit more gusto.
00:00:32:23 – 00:00:35:19
Derek Hanna
Oh my goodness to goodness. Aggressive.
00:00:35:21 – 00:00:38:12
Scott Sanders
There’s nothing pastor. There’s a lot aggressive.
00:00:38:14 – 00:00:58:18
Derek Hanna
Just don’t perceive. Just the people behind the script in front of me says insert passive aggressive Scott here. So he’s just fulfilling his duty. And, you know, I’m excited about that vision. I’ll tell you what I’m excited about. That, as I speak, as I speak, we’ve just had a whole bunch of churches in the past couple of months.
00:00:58:18 – 00:01:20:18
Derek Hanna
Launch. In order to see these, healthy events, multiple churches. It’s been amazing. Every person, out in the country, in the cities, it’s, It’s exciting. My hope is. My hope is next. You know, five, six years, we see an opening of 150 or so, which sounds like a lot because it’s just slightly under what we’ve planted so far.
00:01:20:20 – 00:01:41:05
Derek Hanna
But actually with the the churches we’re working at the moment. And what God is doing, it’s not that far off. Not that far off, anyway. That’s, that’s enough of that. Because for now, you’ve got another episode of The One Thing. And today we are going to be talking about how do you work out the weak spots on the pathway in your church?
00:01:41:07 – 00:02:00:02
Derek Hanna
Now, Scott, you’ve done a lot of work with churches, a lot of consulting with churches. And one of the tools that we talk about with them, is this pathway. Describe for me. When you put this before churches, when we talk to leaders about it, what do we mean when we talk about pathway?
00:02:00:05 – 00:02:27:24
Scott Sanders
Well, the first thing I’ll say is, everyone has a pathway. So by pathway, how is it that people who are outside your church, find out about your church moving to your church? Become part of, I guess, the systems, the structures, the processes to grow and mature in Christ. So FanGraphs uses the language of moving to the right, you know, so what does it look like for someone to move from death to life, to moving to the kingdom?
00:02:28:01 – 00:02:42:07
Scott Sanders
And a simple way of just thinking about that is, is a pathway. And the first thing to recognize is that everyone has it. It just might be broken. Blocked, or healthy in some areas and less healthy in other areas.
00:02:42:09 – 00:02:48:24
Derek Hanna
Absolutely. So when people say church, we don’t have a system, we just organically like, no, you’ve got a system. It’s called it’s called goal.
00:02:49:04 – 00:03:07:19
Scott Sanders
Everyone. Everyone gets to make a decision. Chaos is another way of another way. Breaking it down that we often talk about is also thinking about outcomes as well. So path pathway can be quite linear, although people will move in and out of it. But the breaking down of it is that it doesn’t actually pay attention to community.
00:03:07:21 – 00:03:37:00
Scott Sanders
So it thinks more about integration and, and, and welcoming it into in the church life. But it doesn’t actually talk about that kind of how do we go and actually enfolding people and, having a, a generous, rich kind of community. The other aspect it doesn’t take take into account is that loving God aspect. So, it’s very hard to kind of, situate the gathering, I guess, you know, that sort of shared space where, you know, the gathering in, you know, I think our church life is what, again, Vanguard’s call the flagship event.
00:03:37:00 – 00:03:56:01
Scott Sanders
But there’s a lot of a lot of areas that the gathering impacts. But how do you actually pick up people’s personal relationship with God? In some sense, the pathway doesn’t do that. It actually is more about actually helping people, get involved in the church and then the systems and processes we have to get people growing, serving, and on mission.
00:03:56:01 – 00:04:13:21
Scott Sanders
And so outcome thinking actually helps us think about, the, the fully formed disciple, the Colossians 128 mature person in Christ and actually thinking through, what we call, you know, just sort of five outcomes that we want, need to see in the life of a believer. As I deepen the word, that I love God, are they on mission?
00:04:13:23 – 00:04:43:20
Scott Sanders
Do they serve others? And I, did I belong in community? And then the other kind of way of breaking down church life that I’m starting to talk about a little bit more is is thinking about people flows and people groups in church life. So again, that’s another way to kind of assess health and think through how are we going with our kids transitioning to use and their use transitioning young adults and young adults into, you know, young professionals and, you know, young workers, young married older marrieds and families, and then, you know, seniors, baby boomers, empty nesters.
00:04:43:20 – 00:04:46:10
Scott Sanders
So thinking about those sort of people for us.
00:04:46:12 – 00:04:52:19
Derek Hanna
But they’re different episodes we’re just talking about. Yeah. Can I just say, if you if people want to dig back into the archives.
00:04:52:21 – 00:04:55:02
Scott Sanders
The first I know the first three episodes are where about.
00:04:55:03 – 00:04:56:16
Derek Hanna
This stuff, wasn’t it? We did.
00:04:56:18 – 00:04:58:04
Scott Sanders
A great, great.
00:04:58:05 – 00:04:58:19
Derek Hanna
00:04:58:19 – 00:05:01:12
Scott Sanders
Great. And it was. The camera even exists.
00:05:01:12 – 00:05:04:13
Derek Hanna
Then I don’t think fix this. I don’t think the internet is just a great.
00:05:04:13 – 00:05:06:03
Scott Sanders
Little PowerPoint, dog doggerel.
00:05:06:03 – 00:05:22:13
Derek Hanna
That’s what we did. But it was on pathways, because that’s the conversation. It’s just a tool. But it’s a very, very helpful tool for getting a picture of, what it’s like for someone’s journey, to explore the gospel into the church and into the Life Church in order to mature. But it’s just it’s one picture, but very, very helpful.
00:05:22:13 – 00:05:32:24
Derek Hanna
So let’s talk about the pathway. When we when you’re looking at pathways in churches, talk to us a little bit about where you see common blockages where where people getting stuck.
00:05:33:01 – 00:05:53:01
Scott Sanders
Yeah. Well I in some sense I should say it depends. As you know, I think every church, every church is different. And so a pathway analysis allows you to do two things. There’s two ways you can do that analysis. You can think about the systems and the processes at various points along the pathway. And you’re saying the shownotes a link to our pathway diagram.
00:05:53:05 – 00:06:11:24
Scott Sanders
So, so doing that and doing an analysis of the systems and processes can help you get a sense of, the health of those, whether or not they exist. So, you know, them, there might just be, an error in church life where you just haven’t resourced it or haven’t thought about it. So the one that sticks out for me is often in the conversion engine.
00:06:12:01 – 00:06:33:23
Scott Sanders
I think a lot of people put on a conversion course, and they just have the one thing and then they move people in small groups. Now I talk I talk a lot about having a follow up, you know, a follow up to your conversion process, which could be, a number, a number of courses after that. Because the mistake we often make is we think, okay, someone’s, we’ve done one course and they haven’t made that decision to follow Christ.
00:06:33:23 – 00:06:49:17
Scott Sanders
So so it kind of ends when actually probably the next step could be to have another course, a challenge, something the gospel and maybe another course. It helps to think about the Christian life before before we move them into, a membership moment or a, an integration, you know, moment.
00:06:49:17 – 00:06:55:00
Derek Hanna
So just just on that, like it sounds. One of us is a relational person at this table.
00:06:55:00 – 00:06:56:13
Scott Sanders
Today, I’m going to get to the relational stuff.
00:06:56:19 – 00:06:58:01
Derek Hanna
I will get to just like you.
00:06:58:03 – 00:06:58:24
Scott Sanders
Talk about the systems.
00:06:59:00 – 00:07:15:03
Derek Hanna
And processes. But when we use terms like the conversion engine, it sounds engineering. But effectively what we’re saying is what’s that moment in church where people can explore over time, who Jesus is? What his clients were, and what it’s like to follow him. That’s all it is. It. We often talk about courses. It might not be.
00:07:15:03 – 00:07:18:00
Scott Sanders
Of course it could be. It could be a one on one. It could be. Could be something.
00:07:18:00 – 00:07:19:11
Derek Hanna
Just saying. Do you have to that?
00:07:19:12 – 00:07:34:22
Scott Sanders
I start with the conversion engine, because only 1 in 5 churches in Australia is regularly doing something. And I think one of the problems is we’ve tried that and it didn’t work, so let’s not do it or we just haven’t put the resources to it. So that’s probably one of the first blockages I see. The other one is is way at the front, just in terms of awareness.
00:07:34:24 – 00:07:53:22
Scott Sanders
So often talk about you want to be the church of people. No, they don’t go to we actually we actually have an awareness problem. Our websites can be unhelpful at the signage and at, you know, at the, at the front of our churches is often, is often poor. We don’t take advantage of a whole bunch of stuff that actually can help people find out about our church.
00:07:53:22 – 00:08:17:03
Scott Sanders
So, so often at the front end, you can have what we call a front door problem. And people actually just don’t know, you know, know about us. The other the other aspect is, is the back door side of things. And I think the back door starts with your membership moment. It starts with your membership course or, you know, lunch, dinner, whatever it is.
00:08:17:03 – 00:08:32:11
Scott Sanders
But we need some point in time in the pathway where we’re actually challenging people. This is what it means to join our church. This is what our expectations are. And this is what it’s going to look like. That’s a great moment to again, save someone’s a Christian. But it’s a great moment to sort of set the expectation.
00:08:32:13 – 00:08:58:08
Scott Sanders
At here we meet together regularly. We want to gather around the word, you know, midweek, we want to give to the mission that we’re being called to, and we want people to be, you know, accountable and praying for, you know, for reaching the lost. So I think, that can be, another place where, where we haven’t put a lot of, you know, attention to, I think in our churches often we’re doing the, the, the small groups piece quite well.
00:08:58:08 – 00:09:14:22
Scott Sanders
But again, once you dig below the surface and ask some questions, you can you can, you know, I can always say areas for improvement. And then in the serving others space that would be the other blockage where we just need a simple moment where someone’s challenged to serve. And it could be at your membership course, but it actually needs someone being responsible for having that conversation with person.
00:09:15:01 – 00:09:23:18
Scott Sanders
So so that’s thinking about the systems sort of, side of things. And so you probably listening in thinking you just named every piece on the pathway. And that’s why I say.
00:09:23:19 – 00:09:24:18
Derek Hanna
That’s exactly what.
00:09:24:20 – 00:09:51:09
Scott Sanders
It depends. You know, it depends. And so you do want to, you do want to you don’t want to regularly be doing this. So I do encourage the church to be looking at every quarter and if, it’d be great if you can do that with, with your teams, you know, and, and, you know, if you’ve got more than one congregation meeting on a, on a Sunday or on a weekend, and it’s great to do it in your, in your focus teams or your congregation teams, if you’re a saint, you minister in your solo church planter.
00:09:51:15 – 00:10:01:13
Scott Sanders
It’s great just to do that every quarter and just have a think yourself and score, and get a sense of where you’ve seen improvement, or or just.
00:10:01:13 – 00:10:02:12
Derek Hanna
Gut gut feeling. Yeah.
00:10:02:14 – 00:10:23:22
Scott Sanders
Just got feel wonderful. But also to just go, yeah, we know there’s a problem here. And and we’re going to solve that. The reality at certain points in time in the year as well. There will be a problem like at the start of the year, you’ll have you’ll have lots of people joining church. And so and so that that will mean that there’ll be a whole bunch of people not in groups, there’ll be a whole bunch of people, you know, who haven’t, who aren’t serving.
00:10:24:03 – 00:10:38:22
Scott Sanders
And so looking at the raw data, you could say, well, serving numbers have gone down and, and, small group numbers are going down. Now, you could go, that’s really terrible and bad, but then you go now, actually, it’s because our front doors bank. Right. So this is where you can actually see linkages, you know, in the, in the pathway as well.
00:10:38:22 – 00:10:57:03
Scott Sanders
And that’s actually okay. Or we’ve had a whole bunch of people come in and do, you know, our conversion engine and make first time, you know, decisions for, for Jesus. And so they’re not regular yet coming to church. They’re not regularly in a small group. And again, that’s a good problem to have. But again, the pathway can help us think about that.
00:10:57:03 – 00:11:17:11
Scott Sanders
So so that’s thinking about system as a process. The other way the pathway is really helpful is actually thinking about people. So actually plotting people on the pathway and so I think I think people often think of the pathway is quite a, it’s quite a, you know, a structural, quite a, you know, an objective tool, but actually you can put people along it at each of the various processes and realize who’s actually not in a group.
00:11:17:11 – 00:11:38:10
Scott Sanders
So let’s look at, say, you small group engine. You could plot people and say, these are all the groups. These are all the people in groups. These are all the people who have who are not in groups. So that can help you just go, okay. We’re not happy that those people aren’t in groups. Let’s start to work through that list of people and see if we can find out the reasons why they’re not in groups, and maybe solve some of those systemic issues or also as well that could identify.
00:11:38:13 – 00:11:54:21
Scott Sanders
We’ve got people in groups, but they’re not regularly turning up. So we could also have a very people conversation there. And a discipleship conversation, that, you know, pulls, you know, pulls out in the pathway, you know, where people are, and actually focuses on their, you know, their spiritual health and the development.
00:11:54:21 – 00:12:26:19
Derek Hanna
Because the purpose of the pathway is to help people move towards knowing Jesus being, a healthy part of the life, the church to mature. So, so the people part. Not everyone is going to walk the potluck. You put this on a piece of paper. Not everyone is going to walk my pathway that I’ve put on there. But what you you are trying to design here is a pathway where you think most people in a normal course of events will work, and we love people on the edges of that and help them, but that’s the pathway just helps us.
00:12:26:24 – 00:12:30:06
Derek Hanna
What is the normal course of events? That is going to happen? Yep.
00:12:30:08 – 00:12:54:04
Scott Sanders
So yeah, that’s a long a long answer. But but hear me saying you want to do your pathway analysis. You want to think systems and structures every quarter. You want to think people and where people are at. And a simple way to just do that is to have, you know, a black color, a black color for a person’s name and then a red color for someone who’s, you know, is stepped out or, or moved out the same way just to analyze and think about people.
00:12:54:06 – 00:13:15:04
Derek Hanna
Okay. Talk to me about where you would start. So you’ve done this and people have probably seen that pathway tool, but we’ll put a link to it on there. So let’s say you’re doing your analysis. You’re doing with the leadership team. People you’re saying we get a one for awareness, we get two for integration, we get a one and a half, you know, that that might be exploring just in the conversion engine.
00:13:15:06 – 00:13:16:10
Derek Hanna
How do you know where to start?
00:13:16:12 – 00:13:34:20
Scott Sanders
So this is where looking at some of your, performance measures is kind of the wrong. It’s the wrong thing. You. Cahill’s indicators along the pathway can be really helpful. So this can gives you some objective, objective data because the one, two, three, four analysis, you know, an unhealthy or not not going. Well, that’s a one for it’s great.
00:13:34:20 – 00:13:53:00
Scott Sanders
And we’d love to speak at the registrar conference. That’s kind of how I do my I do my chart, is good for that kind of gut feel. But actually putting some objective numbers against it can be quite helpful because because often I think our confirmation bias as pastors and teams is to, is to is actually think more negatively of something rather than more positively.
00:13:53:02 – 00:14:12:13
Scott Sanders
And so you, you could start by just plotting some performance measures along eight. So for example, with the awareness piece, how many newcomers have we had to church? Yeah. A helpful, helpful rule on that is at the same number of newcomers, and first time visitors to church should be this should be greater than the average service attendance in a church.
00:14:12:13 – 00:14:29:10
Scott Sanders
So you’ve got a church of 100. You should a healthy church should say at least, that same amount of newcomers or visitors coming to church that helps you see, you know, if it’s less than that, then, hey, maybe we’ve got a front door problem. If it’s more than that, you know, that’s great. And let’s let’s see how we can, you know, push into that in terms of people integrating into church life.
00:14:29:10 – 00:14:47:05
Scott Sanders
So if you look at your membership engine, a healthy number is, is it’s actually 26% is what Macintosh has, but I’ll just use the Who’s Macintosh. Gary Macintosh is, one of the last church growth healthy old guys. 20% is is a good number. So when you think about those first time guests, 20% are actually sticking to staying in church.
00:14:47:07 – 00:15:03:07
Scott Sanders
Okay. If that if that number’s below it, then maybe you’ve got a back tail problem and you actually don’t need to go adding people will. And again, what I say with those objective data is, is you want to complexity all the problem. You actually want to you want to ask more questions and go, okay, is it just that we don’t have a membership course?
00:15:03:12 – 00:15:25:13
Scott Sanders
Is it just that when, you know, we’re calling people up three weeks later and not getting on top of me, you know, so kind of understand what’s going on there with the conversion engine, people being converted, like, that’s just a simple outcome. Okay. So they’re kind of some of your perform, you know, performance measures that can give you some objective data, that then can force you to go, okay, well, let’s think about the programs.
00:15:25:18 – 00:15:40:15
Scott Sanders
Do we have the right programs in place? And, and so, yeah. Is there too much going on if we over programed it or have we under programed it, you know, do we lock in that conversion example of not having a follow up thing doing next you need to add a follow up piece in there.
00:15:40:17 – 00:16:06:13
Scott Sanders
And then lastly it could be a people problem. So again we we just don’t have anyone on it. So serve chat’s a really good example. The person that’s doing it is the senior minister on top of all their other things. And actually, we just need to put a team around, around the senior pastor who might still be responsive for the outcome, but they’re actually working through a team, and, and they’ve set up a team that can actually have the, the serve chat conversations as well.
00:16:06:15 – 00:16:28:12
Derek Hanna
So you’ve described initially you spoke about outcomes. You’ve described the pathway. We need to think through the lens of people as well. That’s not only people who are in the pathway, but people who are looking after the pathway. The programs. What are the things that at each of those steps, we, we do, you know, to to help people move along and the performance that is, are these things doing what we expect them to do?
00:16:28:14 – 00:16:30:12
Scott Sanders
People, programs and performance.
00:16:30:13 – 00:16:49:24
Derek Hanna
Now, one of the questions is when when we do this with churches, it’s an incredibly helpful discussion and staff team as well. There can be a tendency to look at the numbers, think we’ll fix everything at once. Alternatively, to pick the lowest number, I think you should fix that. I think I want to say is part of the pathway conversation you are trying to work out.
00:16:49:24 – 00:17:11:10
Derek Hanna
What’s the thing that will have the greatest impact that way? So the very start of the pathway, if you’re to one that is at websites terrible, that’s not great. But there’s no point in fixing your website if you have no conversion engine at all. Yep. And there’s no point in fixing your website if you have no way of actually helping people take the next step.
00:17:11:10 – 00:17:18:01
Derek Hanna
So work within the pathway, work out what are the things we absolutely have to have in place and work out from there? What’s the center of it?
00:17:18:03 – 00:17:32:17
Scott Sanders
So I would say when you’re talking to a church plant which doesn’t have any systems in place, imagine you’re having a conversation with the church by saying, you, you know, you ought to have some way of people finding out about the church. So you got your website in place. You want to have some signage, right?
00:17:32:19 – 00:17:47:10
Scott Sanders
You want to have people on welcoming who can get people’s names and, and have a system process of following them up. Great. If you can have some sort of membership moment, it could just be a supper or a lunch. We say, I we’d love you to join our church. Here’s the prospectus. I’m hearing you say you must have a conversion.
00:17:47:13 – 00:18:12:07
Scott Sanders
You know, something that some process that actually helps the non-Christian be challenged with the gospel and, and learn about who Jesus is and what it means to follow him as Lord and Savior. And then, he say, you gotta you need to have a gathering so we can hear the word preached and pray and and sing praises and probably a small groups, a small group structure, some sort of way of meeting regularly around the word.
00:18:12:08 – 00:18:20:19
Scott Sanders
So they’re kind of 4 or 5 key systems that you up. Would you sort of start with, from the beginning, you know, in a church plan?
00:18:20:24 – 00:18:38:19
Derek Hanna
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And if you don’t have those in place, like just like the conversion engine, church plans will attract lots of people, new people, that’s that’s just feeling if there’s an energy there. But if you don’t have a place where people can explore Jesus, you’re driving against the whole purpose of you planning a church there. So get that in place.
00:18:38:19 – 00:18:54:13
Derek Hanna
It’s resource intensive, but just do it and then work out from there as resources increase. Yeah. Just finally as we move towards, closing off, who’s responsible for overseeing this? Who needs to be driving this conversation in churches?
00:18:54:13 – 00:19:18:21
Scott Sanders
Yeah, I get some sense is it depends on the size of your church, but I would say, the senior minister, the the planter, the lead pastor, they should be doing this, by, you know, by themselves, you know, every every quarter at least. And intuitively, a pastor is, is doing this, but actually putting it on, on paper means you can actually see you can celebrate, you know, where you’ve worked on something and say, change and growth.
00:19:18:23 – 00:19:36:03
Scott Sanders
But you can also, you know, highlight and say, yep, I know there’s a problem here, but we just don’t have the resources yet to, you know, to solve it. So I’d say in the least it needs to be the church plant of the late pastor. If you if you have a ministry team and if you’re a larger church, you the ministry team, I would say again, you you should be doing it with the ministry team.
00:19:36:05 – 00:19:54:06
Scott Sanders
Again, the pathway allows you to hand over elements of the pathway to others. It allows you to, you know, break it down and analyze what’s going on. So if you, if you, if you’ve got a ministry team, do it. Do it with others. I think pathway analysis is always better with others. And if you’re at a church plant, you can you can do it with your church planting team.
00:19:54:06 – 00:20:10:17
Scott Sanders
I’ve done it. I’ve done this with small churches and I’ve done it with, you know, young, you know, younger people. I’ve also done it with older people where I’ve just sat around the room, just used their fingers and, and got got a sense having the conversation is really important. Okay. So, Derek, you think, you know, our gatherings are one.
00:20:10:17 – 00:20:26:13
Scott Sanders
Can you tell me tell me why that. Oh, the music’s too loud. And they keep singing these young contemporary songs. You just want more reading. Mama, I’ve. I’ve seen you. I’ve seen your type in, you know, you know, in a church playing console. So again, say you’re having that conversation. You’re getting a sense of, okay, we’re not meeting old people anymore.
00:20:26:13 – 00:20:30:03
Scott Sanders
You know, we need to.
00:20:30:05 – 00:20:34:11
Derek Hanna
Hey, you bugger.
00:20:34:13 – 00:20:57:09
Scott Sanders
So so that’s a really useful thing, I think, as well, if you can. And if you get to the size where you’re a larger church and you can have a focused team, I think this is a really good thing to do amongst congregations, particularly the people conversation, because you’re actually helping people realize, oh, well, my welcoming, you know, plays a part in actually people being followed up in church, you know, and I’m yes, I’m just involved in that one little system.
00:20:57:11 – 00:21:07:20
Scott Sanders
And I think it could be better, you know, we could do hospitality better and we could get people’s names better. But I can see the impact of it, you know, in the flow and understand, okay, these are the new people that have, you know, come to church because.
00:21:07:20 – 00:21:10:08
Derek Hanna
It’s the seams between things are people get lost.
00:21:10:08 – 00:21:13:05
Scott Sanders
This was our first episode we’ve talked about. We talked about seams.
00:21:13:05 – 00:21:13:21
Derek Hanna
And,
00:21:13:23 – 00:21:33:07
Scott Sanders
Things and handovers as well. So the the big answer to your question is, as well, someone needs to be thinking about the whole thing. And again, often it’ll be the church planter or the pastor or if you, have, you know, if you’re managing a church along outcomes. I actually think the membership pastor is, is often well placed.
00:21:33:09 – 00:21:50:20
Scott Sanders
You know, and the person who’s, who’s maybe managing the database is well placed to actually be thinking about the whole pathway. Now, don’t, don’t hear that you’re then responsible for it, but because you’ve got a sense of people moving through, you can actually be saying, okay, people are getting blocked up. I’m going to, you know, Derek’s responsible for small groups.
00:21:50:20 – 00:22:04:04
Scott Sanders
So the sort of chat, I’m going to have a conversation and say, hey, people aren’t getting there when we know we need to solve that. So I think as a church gets larger, the late pastor needs to hand it over to someone who is actually he’s actually watching people flow through as well.
00:22:04:06 – 00:22:08:11
Derek Hanna
All right. Well, what is the one thing we need to know about pathways?
00:22:08:13 – 00:22:31:01
Scott Sanders
Every church has one. It’s a really, really helpful for you to actually map it out so that you can look and analyze how your systems and structures are going, but also how people are moving, moving through your pathway and where they’re stuck. Excellent. If I had a second one thing I’d also say pull out your pathway and look at it every quarter.
00:22:31:03 – 00:22:47:01
Derek Hanna
Well we don’t have a second. We can’t do two. I’m sorry. It’s the one things. God. Well look we will put a whole bunch of stuff in the toolbox. That you can look at is the framework a book that that talks about, key in breaking it down? Really helpful for getting a, a big picture understanding of that issue.
00:22:47:01 – 00:22:50:02
Derek Hanna
Really good idea. As you put it. Scott. Did you do one in Covid, didn’t you?
00:22:50:02 – 00:23:03:12
Scott Sanders
Yeah, yeah, we did one. It’s it’s pretty old now. So we’ve we’ve updated the integrated a fair bit. So this is a good reminder for us to actually reshoot that. And, and get it because I think we’ve, we’ve, got a lot better on our pathway analysis.
00:23:03:12 – 00:23:06:21
Derek Hanna
We have. But the beauty we’re seeing in churches do their own ones, which is excellent.
00:23:06:22 – 00:23:08:19
Scott Sanders
That’s exactly what we want to do. You want to contextualize it?
00:23:08:19 – 00:23:16:01
Derek Hanna
Absolutely. Gregory’s got a great video on talking about the oh pep thing and outcomes. People program performance.
00:23:16:01 – 00:23:35:04
Scott Sanders
And come to the conference. So foundations three we’re going to be thinking about people flows and and there’s always a a workshop on pathway and ecosystem analysis as well. So the great Australian National Conference next year, my great, great to bring your team to that and and learn a whole bunch of stuff.
00:23:35:10 – 00:23:44:02
Derek Hanna
Excellent. All right. If you’ve, found this episode helpful, I don’t know, lock and subscribe. Is that what we do? Like and subscribe?
00:23:44:02 – 00:23:49:12
Scott Sanders
Pass it on. Your team. It’s in the show notes. Pass in on your team. Listen to it with others. Share it with them.
00:23:49:12 – 00:23:56:12
Derek Hanna
Thank you. Scott, it’s on my my eyesight. Isn’t that great? I’m. He’s using computers. This is. Go ahead. Anyway, I’m Derek Hanna.
00:23:56:13 – 00:23:57:10
Scott Sanders
I’m Scott sanders.
00:23:57:10 – 00:23:59:20
Derek Hanna
Jetson. Music.
