In this episode, Derek Hanna is joined by Paul Young (planter of Providence Church Bayswater, Perth) to think about how church teams reflect on Sundays, and whether those debrief conversations are actually helping the church grow in mission, or just recycling obvious feedback.
They explore how different churches approach Sunday debriefs, what often goes wrong when they drift into planning or post-mortems, and how teams can use that time more effectively to focus on big-picture strategy, prayer, and gospel priorities.
Rather than tweaking slides or reviewing logistics, Paul argues that this time is best used to step back, pray, and work on the larger questions of mission, growth, and where God is at work in the life of the church.
In this episode:
- Why many Sunday debriefs don’t add much value
- The risk of turning debriefs into planning meetings or critique sessions
- How to shift from details to big-picture strategy and prayer
- Questions that help teams focus on mission and gospel growth
- How to use shared team time for decisions you can’t make alone
Toolbox:
Dangerous Calling by Paul David Tripp (Chapter on Glory)
The Church by Edmund Clowney
The Church on Mission by Craig Ott
Planting the Word by Erin Crider
Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni
Credits:
This episode was brought to you by Lending Hands Mortgage Brokers
The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia
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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;08;13 – 00;00;27;25
Derek Hanna
Know I am Derek, and I’m going to the one thing a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel centered ministry every single week. Fun things brought to you by Reach Australia. Our vision is to see thousands of healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches across Australia. We would love to see Australia one for cross and the church sits right at the center of that.
00;00;27;27 – 00;00;51;03
Derek Hanna
And today we’re talking about something that every church, nearly every church does, but very few, few churches, I think, have a, a moment to process afterwards for thinking through, how its pursuing that purpose of growing a table and, and reaching the lost the Sunday debrief. And it’s not just whether you have one of those moments or not, but whether that’s Sunday that maybe you pause and reflect.
00;00;51;03 – 00;01;02;26
Derek Hanna
You debrief is actually helping your church to be healthy and growing, or whether it’s just wasting your time and to, help us unpack and explore that. I’ve got Paul Young with me from Perth. Welcome, Paul.
00;01;02;29 – 00;01;05;03
Paul Young
Thanks, Derek. Lovely to be here.
00;01;05;05 – 00;01;21;27
Derek Hanna
The, I know the sport mad, isn’t it? Not another thing that is most exciting people in Perth at the moment is the fact that 2027 is going to be the year of the Perth Bears Hockey League is once again coming up. You’re fired up on you about that.
00;01;22;00 – 00;01;37;16
Paul Young
Look, there’s so much good sport going on. I don’t know if we need a rugby league team. Yeah, the Western Force are doing well. You know, the Fremantle Dockers, flag battles, waving strong round six already calling it, huge time for sport in WA.
00;01;37;18 – 00;01;46;00
Derek Hanna
Yeah. And so it’ll be even better with possibly the greatest sport in Australia playing Jason Tyler’s going to be making his comeback. Greg Slama or Billy Moore?
00;01;46;01 – 00;01;50;10
Paul Young
Gary Larsen who’s the coach again? Isn’t it some famous guy?
00;01;50;12 – 00;02;04;26
Derek Hanna
I don’t know, but I’ll give it a crack if they’re looking for anyone. But anyway. But Paul’s from Perth. He’s a church plant. He’s worked at, Providence in Perth, the city, for a few years after he trying to college. And he planted baseball. What do you do? You play at Bayswater?
00;02;04;28 – 00;02;09;18
Paul Young
We planted just over five years ago. So that might have been 20, 21.
00;02;09;25 – 00;02;29;17
Derek Hanna
Yeah, yeah. And it’s been a growing team. And just recently, this year they’ve launched an offsite, campus as well in the evening. Yeah. And so Paul’s with this growing team has been wrestling with what it looks like to think through the week in light of the vision and particularly Sunday. So that’s what we’re going to be doing with Paul today.
00;02;29;19 – 00;02;34;29
Derek Hanna
On the one thing Sunday debriefs wasting your team’s time.
00;02;35;01 – 00;02;53;16
Speaker 3
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00;02;53;18 – 00;03;11;10
Speaker 3
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00;03;11;13 – 00;03;31;07
Derek Hanna
Now, Paul, just as we get into this, before we get into the practicals of of how you’ve wrestled with this, what mistakes you might abide, how you think about it. Give us a little bit of a kind of theological framework for how it is, what you’ve wrestled with as you’ve thought through this idea, conceptually, of a Sunday debrief.
00;03;31;10 – 00;03;47;21
Paul Young
Yeah. I mean, a Sunday debrief, I think goes back to your doctrine of church. If if you’re it my year at college and you were studying with me, you would know that I was pretty papacy in on what I for. I feel like our whole year was pretty paper in on what church is and and what it means.
00;03;47;24 – 00;04;04;20
Paul Young
Famously, our lectures that were meant to be unchurched didn’t end up anything at all about the doctrine of the church. And so, that was a bit of a journey for us. So, so I’ve been doing some reading, more recently about, you know, what is church and why is it actually important? Why do Sundays actually matter?
00;04;04;27 – 00;04;30;14
Paul Young
And the thing which has really struck me is, I guess a particular way that John Calvin talks about church where Christ comes to dwell in our midst, clothed in the gospel. Sundays are a moment where Jesus is actually with us to present among us as a people through the gospel, being proclaimed and taught and sung and raised and prayed about.
00;04;30;14 – 00;04;58;18
Paul Young
And, you know, that’s like weighty and significant. It’s it’s God’s chosen way to display to the powers, you know, God’s wisdom to save everyone through Jesus. It’s the moment where people who don’t know Jesus come in and go, wow, God is really among you. Is God’s plan for the world in terms of how to bring glory to his name through growing people up and and sharing the gospel?
00;04;58;21 – 00;05;18;15
Paul Young
So Sunday is really matter. It’s not just a 10 a.m. service at a bowls club that smells like old being on the carpet. It’s not just a 430 service with carpet on the roof to dampen the sound. Like this is actually quite Christ dwelling in our midst. And how he enacts his mission in the world.
00;05;18;17 – 00;05;40;10
Derek Hanna
So just to get some terminology right is just so, understanding the people listening. Understand? Am I right in saying there is a a moment where the body, the church, the local church gathers, there’s a gathering, if we use that term for that Sunday or sometimes Saturday moment. But when we’re talking about the churchy, you’re, you’re referring to the local body that happens to gather on the weekends.
00;05;40;12 – 00;05;44;23
Derek Hanna
But that’s not the only time. They’re a church. They are the local church, and they happen to gather. Is that how you used your term?
00;05;44;25 – 00;05;46;16
Paul Young
Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah.
00;05;46;19 – 00;06;06;19
Derek Hanna
Yeah. I know there are some from, where I’m from. Where? Paul. The city that Paul trying to college trained as well. There are some other perspectives on that which we’re not going to tackle now. But particularly the, the, the question we’re asking is that that moment of gathering for God’s people who are the church is the manifold wisdom of God.
00;06;06;21 – 00;06;25;01
Derek Hanna
How do we understand that? And how do we think about it? Because it is such a key moment in the life of God’s people in their. So let me ask you then, as you’ve wrestled with, with with yourself, it sounds like you’ve been on a kind of journey as a discovering. And I want to pick your brains at the end about what books you’ve read them include.
00;06;25;01 – 00;06;37;13
Derek Hanna
But what have you discovered you were getting wrong about thinking about that Sunday gathering post? The Sunday gathering? What are most churches getting wrong or teams getting wrong? As I debrief that moment?
00;06;37;15 – 00;06;45;14
Paul Young
Yeah. I feel like I’ve been a bit of a journey with that as well. So I feel like,
00;06;45;16 – 00;07;08;24
Paul Young
In reflection, one of the things that I reckon has moved the needle the least in terms of those Sunday debrief meetings, are an hour or two where you end up just talking about how the sermon went and was the morning tea out correctly, where the lights turned on? Did the right people come up at the right time to the service late, and what they’re doing?
00;07;08;26 – 00;07;32;12
Paul Young
Not because they weren’t true things, but because they were things which actually everyone kind of knew anyway. Like if if you’re invested in the thing which is happening that Sunday or Saturday or that, that at that gathering moment, you I’m having all of those thoughts in my head, like, I actually don’t need someone else to tell me.
00;07;32;15 – 00;07;52;21
Paul Young
Service leader Jim started at ten. Oh, sorry. Not 10:00. That’s the least of my worries. Yeah. So I feel like that’s that’s been the biggest, difficulty is, like. I feel like those Sunday debrief meetings actually just turn into, planning meetings or sermon feedback.
00;07;52;23 – 00;08;09;26
Derek Hanna
Yep. Yep. How slow were the slides transitioned? And so then what do you do? Where have you where have you pivoted to then you’re allowed to use the word pivoted. Where have you moved to in terms of actually that moment of reflection? Is it still the same time slot you used to do different things. Have you scrapped things completely?
00;08;09;27 – 00;08;12;05
Derek Hanna
What do you do?
00;08;12;07 – 00;08;38;09
Paul Young
Well, I think, you know, that Sunday gathering is an important piece, but it’s only part of the pace of the life of a church. And so it’s important that, whatever we do when we talk about Sundays and how we use that time is connected to our prayer that we have for this area under God. So, you know, there’s, in, in our part of neck of the woods on the West Coast, which was very far away to many people.
00;08;38;11 – 00;09;08;14
Paul Young
There’s 70,000 people living in Perth, City of Bayswater, 67,000 of them don’t have a relationship with Jesus. There’s a gospel drought. And so we always begin with that. We pray about that. We I literally say that at the beginning of every meeting, we go through our team goals and then we share stories of, you know, what’s going on at church recently and in particular, two questions, where are lost people coming to find grace and where is their growth or living proof?
00;09;08;17 – 00;09;24;22
Paul Young
So that kind of ties into how we talk about our prayer in our area. But, you know, it’s basically just a great commission as Matthew 28. It’s where people are becoming, to know Jesus and how people are being grown in him. And we always ask those two questions at the beginning of every meeting.
00;09;24;24 – 00;09;30;10
Derek Hanna
Just to because again, in the way you phrase them, where lost, where we seeing lost people.
00;09;30;12 – 00;09;35;15
Paul Young
Lost people find grace and where is said living proof of the gospel?
00;09;35;18 – 00;09;57;08
Derek Hanna
Yeah. That’s quite so that’s the, the evidence of the fruit of the spirit transformed into Christ likeness that we want to pay attention to in the life of God’s people. Yeah. The shipping. Yeah. They’re great questions. So, okay, how does that work out in, in terms of the conversation on the ground as you reflect on the Sunday gathering moment?
00;09;57;10 – 00;10;06;16
Derek Hanna
Does it is it is it detail? Is it quite abstract? How does it interact with the other parts of the ecosystem you have identified, like small groups or connections? Talk to us about that.
00;10;06;18 – 00;10;36;12
Paul Young
Yeah. So I maybe at that moment naturally because you’re doing it on Monday, I think good stories, particularly from Sunday and the partly that’s why we use it good stories from Sunday come up. So it is a little bit more Sunday centric. But that being said, I think you I think what we’ve tried to do is take a bit more of a bigger snapshot of the, the entire, ecosystem at that point, not just what happened from hours 10 to 11 or 430 to 530 on a Sunday.
00;10;36;15 – 00;10;54;14
Paul Young
We’re actually trying to take stock of the whole moment, of everything that’s kind of going on there, that’s contributing to that hour between 430 in 5 30 or 10 and 11. So it’s like, you know, how are we going at first contact? You know, the stories about that. How are people welcomed at the door, how, you know, good stories from kids.
00;10;54;14 – 00;11;13;09
Paul Young
How is that going? And new people being integrated? People actually growing. Do we send out that person? Well, you know, are they serving well? So we’re actually taking stock for the whole pipeline, not just looking at a particular time, because I think, so much of that entire pipeline actually plays out in that one hour.
00;11;13;12 – 00;11;14;08
Derek Hanna
Yeah. It’s good.
00;11;14;10 – 00;11;16;18
Paul Young
I’m not sure if I even answered your question there.
00;11;16;20 – 00;11;36;10
Derek Hanna
Well, no, in part it’s a question of, because the other question that occurs to me within this is, I love what I’m hearing, but where do I get to say, why do I get to deal with the problem that the guy on the slide keeps doing pressing the next button, half a second light? Because, you know, he’s a pet peeve for me.
00;11;36;12 – 00;11;43;24
Derek Hanna
So where do you deal with that level of minutia? Is that is that in a different place? Yeah. What do you do with that?
00;11;43;26 – 00;12;09;02
Paul Young
Look, a couple of things, like, a couple of ways, like, I don’t know if this is the right way, but, this year I’ve taken on Sundays. You know, in previous years, it’s been other people. And this year I had the pleasure of of doing that again. I know as a Sundays guy, if the slides are being too light, like, I don’t need a meeting for someone to tell me that, like, I’m.
00;12;09;02 – 00;12;32;09
Paul Young
Because I’m thinking about Sundays. I’m really attuned to what is actually going on in a Sunday service. Like, I don’t need someone to tell me the Bible references wrong. There’s a typo in the slide. And you know that slide guy was light on on these things. Like, I know that, and I think I’ve found, you know, like other people on my team, they know that.
00;12;32;09 – 00;12;52;11
Paul Young
Well, like, particularly if they’re in charge of the Sundays, like, they want the thing to go well, like that particular area. And so they’re picking on that all the time. I don’t need a meeting to tell me that, you know, sometimes it can be helpful that, you know, they you send them a slack message or an email or whatever, but, you know, like 95% of the time they know.
00;12;52;13 – 00;13;06;08
Paul Young
And so I can transact that business offline. I can send them a text. I could send them an email. But that meeting time is precious, and you want to save it for the things that you can only do together as a team.
00;13;06;11 – 00;13;14;05
Derek Hanna
Okay. We’ll fill in that gap. And what makes the debrief actually useful then what do you want coming at the other end?
00;13;14;07 – 00;13;49;00
Paul Young
Yeah. So I reckon you probably want to move away from planning and you want to move into prayers. So I think most of the time we talk about planning. It’s like, you know, you know, is this Sunday passage right. These words, right etc., etc.. But I think you want to move out of the kind of, reactionary stuff what happened previously and actually try and push forward proactively into big things that you can change or edit within a team, to actually push the needle forward in some big ways.
00;13;49;06 – 00;14;13;09
Paul Young
So because that that team time is really precious. So what can you do together as a team that you can’t do other times and part of that is to push forward big rocks that you wouldn’t be able to push forward otherwise. So if you’re thinking, for example, as we have done, particularly with the 430 service at certain times, how can we really work on ensuring mission stays alive here, that we’re having good first contact?
00;14;13;09 – 00;14;35;03
Paul Young
I think that’s a big problem. Like, you know, we pray to God all the time that would reach more people through that service, through through both of our services. But that’s quite a big problem. That requires a bit of forward thinking and a bit of strategy to to actually process. So let’s concentrate on one part where we could actually make some progress on that together.
00;14;35;05 – 00;14;59;20
Paul Young
So for example, we broke down mission terms at 430 service. We identified first contact is something that we want to improve. So that actually let’s use our team time to make progress on that issue and think about the kind of actions that we’re going to take in three, six, 12 months time that could help contribute to that. So I reckon if that’s what you want to use your time on lesson, the planning far more on the prayer and the strategy of what’s going on.
00;14;59;22 – 00;15;21;09
Derek Hanna
So you’re it’s not as if the planning never happens. It just doesn’t happen in that moment. Right. Yeah. Okay. Great. Now we’ve you’ve got a staff team you haven’t always had a staff team, like doing growing up, Tom. But you do have a staff team, and that’s how we’re where we’ve been. Yeah, it’s. I’m not talking about here, but how does this translate across to volunteers at church?
00;15;21;12 – 00;15;27;26
Derek Hanna
So if you’re just single pasta in a church, how does it, hit the.
00;15;27;28 – 00;16;00;27
Paul Young
Yeah. Two ways. Like, if it’s, you know, if you give people actual responsibility to lead teams and lead ministries, they have those planning conversations within themselves if they’ve taken on that responsibility. Well, so our church has a bajillion WhatsApp groups, and you know, we make a lot of fun about it. But one of the cool things is that because I’m in a few of those groups, even though I mute all the notifications, you know, I’ll reply to your message if you’ve messaged me anyone’s profiles water.
00;16;01;00 – 00;16;19;16
Paul Young
You know, if I’m in any of those groups, I get to see how they talk about how Sundays went or see you went. So, I mean, the music team chat, they talk all the time, like about how things went. And it’s like really encouraging to say that they actually care and take responsibility of that upon themselves.
00;16;19;19 – 00;16;41;25
Paul Young
And so because they are able to talk about most of the planning within the group when it comes to meeting time, they too can also use that for big picture strategy stuff. So when we come together, say once a quarter, once a term, the school term for like that ministry leader meeting, you can actually get them to think into, okay, here’s where we currently are.
00;16;41;28 – 00;17;05;03
Paul Young
Hypothetically, let’s just say we’re like this in 12 months time. What would need to change in your ministry for us to do that? So, you know, they’re purely hypotheticals. They’re not at all accurate. Unless God decides to do something extraordinary. You know, so like sometimes we think about, church is going to double in 12 months. What would you what would you have to do?
00;17;05;06 – 00;17;23;02
Paul Young
Because I think the purpose of those meeting times is not to help you think a little bit better and cross the times and dot the I’s, but is to think entirely differently so that you can actually level up in structures, not just get a little bit better at, a couple of plans that you have.
00;17;23;04 – 00;17;36;28
Derek Hanna
Just one question in the way, too. So are you part of each of those, chat groups, across the church? Or have you had to, you know, have you had to change how you did that? Over time, as church grows?
00;17;37;00 – 00;17;58;14
Paul Young
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the lovely thing is, is that there’s someone in our church is very passionate about user interfaces and communications, and so they’re they’re doing most of that. I’m in the groups where they need to ask me random questions sometimes. So I’m in the music team chat, for example, because sometimes if just asked me about song lyrics, should we play this song or whatever?
00;17;58;17 – 00;18;22;06
Paul Young
But you know, if we have if we had a different Sunday Sunday person, then they would be in that, not me. Yeah. Or, you know, ministry leaders for kid stuff. Sometimes I’m in there. So I’ve got a random question about something, but by and large, I. Yeah, have tried the best I can. I give that responsibility to someone else and actually entrust them with it.
00;18;22;06 – 00;18;24;09
Paul Young
Like, yeah, trust that they’ll do a good job with it.
00;18;24;11 – 00;18;45;03
Derek Hanna
Yeah. Which is, which is a really hard skill actually, particularly when you’re heavily invested in something and particularly when it’s something that is so, so public that everyone sees the Sunday gathering, you want to jump in early, but actually, that might not be the best, best way in which to serve both the wider church moving forward and the people who you’ve given that responsibility to.
00;18;45;03 – 00;19;13;18
Derek Hanna
So it takes wisdom. Now, Paul, just as we, we just we kind of wind up and we will come back to two books because I think there’d be some good resources in your head. And I’ve got some things to throw into the mix here as well. Just before we get your one thing, is there anything else just around that Sunday debrief moment that you would encourage people who are leading teams with the senior leader or not to even think about on reviewing gatherings?
00;19;13;20 – 00;19;39;15
Paul Young
Yeah, I reckon it’s it’s too good a time to just fill up with like a, a postmortem review of how some they went. I reckon better yet, use that time to celebrate and thank God for the things that he is doing, and use that to do things that you couldn’t do on your own, which I think it’s the big picture stuff.
00;19;39;15 – 00;19;50;18
Paul Young
It’s the strategy stuff is making hard decisions. It’s it’s progressing projects, frogs that are really hard to swallow. Yeah, I reckon that’s the thing to do. Yep.
00;19;50;21 – 00;19;59;14
Derek Hanna
It’s crime. So as we do every podcast, we end up with asking people what’s the one thing? And particularly what’s the one thing you want to tell people about Sunday debriefs?
00;19;59;16 – 00;20;14;01
Paul Young
My one thing Derek would be, don’t have reviews, debrief. And then as a team, work on your big prayers together and how that can take place in that Sunday context.
00;20;14;03 – 00;20;34;10
Derek Hanna
Excellent. Thank you. That’s great. There’s an I just want to I love the fact that when you big praise before the way in which you find some of the ways in which you talk about this is, is, the lost people. Where is God doing that? And the looking for living example and grace, within people. I just think that is, you know, making a maturing in ever increasing numbers.
00;20;34;10 – 00;20;52;12
Derek Hanna
I love that. So we’ve, as we, we do each episode as well. We’ve got a toolbox collection of helpful links to which, we can we would recommend you go have a look there in the episode description for on the Rich Australia website page. Have a look at those. Here’s some for me. And then I’ll get, Paul to let him know a few of his.
00;20;52;15 – 00;21;12;07
Derek Hanna
These really the ones I’m recommending really, around the things that have shaped and shaping my theology of church, understanding of church, and how that impacts gathering. I’d recommend Edmund Carney’s book on the church. Brilliant. Love it. Great book. The book of the year for me still wasn’t written this year, written four years ago, but it’s by a guy named Craig on.
00;21;12;08 – 00;21;25;28
Derek Hanna
It’s called The Church on Mission. It’s only about 110 pages. It is so good. If you’re coming to the National Conference, I’ve got a truckload of these things and you can get it there. So register for the National Conference because if you’re not registered, then you can’t get one. But, Craig.
00;21;26;02 – 00;21;27;13
Paul Young
And one information, Derek.
00;21;27;14 – 00;21;45;26
Derek Hanna
Yeah, you get one for free for getting lots of free. Yep. And the last one for me is, Planting the Word by Aaron Crider. Really good book, and missional ecclesiology and just tracing the history of church planting in the US. But the parallels to Australia, are uncanny. It’s interesting. Paul, what have you got?
00;21;45;28 – 00;22;05;14
Paul Young
Yeah, I reckon, there’s a book called Working Genius by Patrick Johnson. He’s. That book was really helpful. It’s a secular book, just written by an organizational guy. But it’s really helped me to clarify, which things and what things we’re doing in meetings. So you don’t get that situation when you’re trying to do everything in the hour or two that you have together.
00;22;05;16 – 00;22;32;23
Paul Young
The other thing that’s been really helpful for me is, is portraits book. I realize it’s pretty old, but it’s, in his book Dangerous Calling, and he has a chapter on glory and how that works out in the pastor’s life and in the church’s life and I reckon that’s really helped shape me as I think about these things and what happens on a Sunday when we gather and, and, yeah, that’s been really helpful, not just for I think, church practice, but for my own.
00;22;32;25 – 00;22;33;24
Paul Young
So.
00;22;33;26 – 00;22;50;06
Derek Hanna
Excellent. That’s brilliant. Well, grab this episode. Flicker. Any of the staff team has. Have a listen. You can grab the links to those books on the episode notes, but, if you think this episode has been helpful to, as a favor, pass it around. Paul Young from Perth. Thanks for your time.
00;22;50;09 – 00;22;52;24
Paul Young
Thanks, Derek. Good to be there.
00;22;52;26 – 00;22;57;16
Derek Hanna
I’m Derek Jetson.
