If your church is waiting until every seat is full before adding another service, are you waiting too long?

In this episode, Derek Hanna talks with Ben Mansfield and Petrina Enchelmaier from Southside Presbyterian, Brisbane about why they started planning a second Sunday service four years before they needed one.

They share:

  • The convictions behind the decision
  • How they led their church through change
  • The mistakes they avoided
  • Opportunities created for mission and discipleship

Toolbox: 

Southside Presbyterian’s Service Multiplication Planning Booklet

Southside Presbyterian’s Role Description Templates

Working Genius

Credits: 

This episode was brought to you by MTS

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]⁠⁠

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Transcript:

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

00:00:08:10 – 00:00:28:23

Derek 

Guys, I’m Derek Hannah. Welcome to the One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel centered ministry. Every single week, the one thing is brought to you by rich Australia. Our vision, our hope and our prayer, and what we’re planning towards with our network of churches is to see thousands of healthy, evangelistic and multiplying churches across Australia.

00:00:29:00 – 00:00:51:22

Derek 

And so we are talking about Molokai today. Today we’re talking about the how and when to multiply services effectively. So we do talk about multiplication in lots of different contexts. Multiplying disciples, multiplying churches. But today we’re sitting right in the middle of that, the multiplying services effectively. Question. So how do you do that? By adding going from 1 to 2 or 2 to 3.

00:00:51:24 – 00:01:13:08

Derek 

It’s complex. You’ve got to communicate. You’ve got to build teams. You gotta have capacity, you gotta have margin. And it’s not just about duplicating. It’s much more complex than that. And so this question and grappling with what does it look like? And today, in order to grapple with that question, we have, two people who work at Southside Presbyterian in Mansfield, Patrina Ingabire.

00:01:13:10 – 00:01:15:10

Derek 

Welcome. Good to have you here.

00:01:15:12 – 00:01:17:22

Ben 

Hey, Derek. Hello.

00:01:17:24 – 00:01:24:23

Derek 

Just tell us a little bit about to start with you, Ben. We’ll get to you. Patrina. What what’s your role at Southside? How long you been there?

00:01:25:00 – 00:01:44:19

Ben 

Yeah, sure. So I’m, an associate pastor at Southside. I’m on the team here. I’ve been at Southside for, I think, 12 years full time and then five years in training before that. I’m the kid’s ministry coordinator here at Southside. I’ve been here with my family for a bit over ten years and on staff part time for about eight.

00:01:44:21 – 00:02:04:12

Derek 

Brilliant. Excellent. So these guys are going to be talking us through, what their experience is. What were what they learned when they multiplied services at Southside? What drove it was hard. What they learn, all those kind of things. And so now you have press play on another episode of the one thing how and when to multiply services effectively.

00:02:04:14 – 00:02:28:18

Katrina 

This episode is brought to you by MTS Ministry Training Strategy. Harvest workers need to be healthy workers at MTS, where rising training and resourcing healthy trainers. They can then raise up healthy workers for the harvest. To find out more, we’d love to connect. Head along to our website at mts.com so that you.

00:02:28:20 – 00:02:48:19

Derek 

Can. Okay, guys, here’s what I want you to do. Just one is back. To the start. Why did say I saw you guys like that in south of Brisbane? McGregor area. You’ve been involved in a number of different things. You you were part of, planning a church, Providence church, many years ago.

00:02:48:21 – 00:02:57:20

Derek 

But what? Take us back. What did Southside begin thinking about? Multiplying services rather than church planning or some other avenue?

00:02:57:22 – 00:03:17:10

Ben 

Yeah, I think, for us here at Southside for a long time, say, from when we were a small church of kind of that 30 to 40 range, we wanted to recognize that God had us here for a reason. So we began to think about reaching 1% of our community. So around us at that time, it was about a thousand people.

00:03:17:10 – 00:03:38:10

Ben 

And as a small church, we thought, that’s kind of a good vision to see that God would use us to make and grow disciples, around us. And so we knew that, part of that would be that, yeah, we wanted to grow and multiply, and we wanted to create more room for people to come and, yeah, get to know Jesus and love Jesus.

00:03:38:12 – 00:04:00:15

Ben 

So we we did help with Providence. That was about ten years ago. But we wanted to continue to be effective through every means that we can. And so part of that was planting churches, but also we recognize that we wanted to we would need to multiply services if we wanted to see a thousand people come to know Jesus and grow in their knowledge of him.

00:04:00:17 – 00:04:12:17

Derek 

So, Patrina, you’ve been there for a number of years as well. What’s what for you has been like this journey towards multiplying services, particularly in kids or areas. You’ve got direct responsibility in?

00:04:12:19 – 00:04:32:09

Ben 

Yes, particularly in the kids space. It becomes very obvious quite quickly when you’re starting to outgrow the physical spaces that you have. We had kids in rooms all over the place, lots of kids in fairly small rooms, and we got to that point of not wanting to be limited by that, but really conscious that there were so many people out there in our community.

00:04:32:09 – 00:04:40:00

Ben 

So many families that didn’t know Jesus weren’t coming to church. And so we needed to have room for them in our community.

00:04:40:02 – 00:04:59:21

Derek 

It’s quite one of the things I want to push into in a moment is, when your convictions. But one of the things that I do love that I constantly here at a South Side is you guys are thinking about, those people who aren’t in the church, they kind of feel that they’re not. Not only, the people who are in your church, you want to show up in love.

00:04:59:23 – 00:05:15:10

Derek 

It’s the the thousands upon thousands of people in MacGregor and beyond who don’t have anything to do. You. I’m. You would love to see them in and, come tonight, Lord Jesus. So tell me, what were the convictions for you guys that drove this decision towards multiplying? Because it’s not easy.

00:05:15:12 – 00:05:35:09

Ben 

Yeah, yeah. I think like when we think about even the journey of Southside. So we we met in a small house and then we moved to, we rented a building and then we moved to our own building driven by that vision of reaching 1% of our community. And so it’s always been, I think, in our DNA to be looking outside of our church.

00:05:35:11 – 00:05:56:15

Ben 

So even though we’re in, we moved into our new building about ten years ago and our building started to fill up. So we have an auditorium, a bit of about 450. We could sit there, but because of the journey of kind of constantly looking outward, it did force us to be thinking about multiplying. But the convictions were underlying that the whole time.

00:05:56:15 – 00:06:16:06

Ben 

So we wanted to highlight, especially in this move, the three big kind of convictions. So the first one was that Jesus is the hope of the world. So I mean, we’ve you know, we stole directly from Rage Australia the concept of Jesus being the lifeboat. I think, you know, South Side thinks that’s our illustration, weak as we say it that many times.

00:06:16:06 – 00:06:44:12

Ben 

But we want to recognize, you know, the deep convictions that heaven or hell are real and that we have the life giving message of Jesus. And so that’s something that drives us. We also, again, stolen straight from rage, is that the pain of change is greater than the pain of not changing. So we recognize that even though where we were that time, I mean, when we were talking about going to another service, we still had room to grow in our current auditorium.

00:06:44:12 – 00:07:08:09

Ben 

So there were still seats. It was still comfortable, but we wanted to recognize that the pain of staying comfortable was, was worse than non non-Christians, people not finding out the life giving message of Jesus. And then we also had that conviction that another service would help our vision and mission to make and grow disciples. So it would provide us more opportunities to see people go deeper in their faith.

00:07:08:11 – 00:07:25:08

Ben 

It would provide us more opportunities to see more people connecting. And then particularly with, yeah, the other ministries involved, Natchez like kids and all that sort of stuff. Like as we created more room to grow and more people could come in for that. So those were the big convictions. I think. Underlying. Yeah, the heart behind wanting to change in the first place.

00:07:25:14 – 00:07:41:14

Derek 

Yeah. And look at this stuff in rich Australia that you’re saying you stole. I’m sure we stole from someone else as well. And that’s okay. I think Tony Robbins is that, that quote you just said there, but, I’ve heard, heard he is the Andrew Hodges, that lifeboat illustration, but I’m sure he got it from somewhere else as well.

00:07:41:16 – 00:08:05:05

Derek 

And to be honest, who cares? Because underneath these are, some really deep biblical convictions that we have about where people are going to spend eternity in their is you’re talking to people who are leading, investing in kids, and you’re talking to parents as well about this sacrifice and the change that they’re going to need to make coming up, what convictions did you push into it for them?

00:08:05:07 – 00:08:26:12

Ben 

The same as for the adults, but just at a slightly different level. We we don’t want our families to just be comfortable with a church that works for them, where they know all the people, where their kids are. You know, we want obviously their kids to be safe and to be happy and to have friends, but we don’t want to get them comfortable in the place where, all right, I’m here now and so no one else can come.

00:08:26:14 – 00:08:47:04

Ben 

We want even the youngest disciples to be really conscious that there are all those people out there who don’t know Jesus. We want to be able to tell them to invite their friends and know that their friends are going to come in and feel comfortable and not feel like they are too many people in the room. So it’s it’s the same as we do for the adults, just at every level.

00:08:47:10 – 00:09:10:20

Derek 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So your your question wasn’t so much, you know, is this a, is this a comfortable thing to do? Or is it pragmatically possible the question really was driven by what does it look like to reach this 1%? Within your congregation, within your church? So the title of this episode, Denise, is head of multiply your service effectively.

00:09:10:22 – 00:09:19:03

Derek 

Talk to me. Let’s move from some of the convictions that you spoke to people about to some of the more pragmatic things that you begin to do as you move towards it.

00:09:19:05 – 00:09:37:00

Ben 

Yeah, sure. I think, one of the key questions that we had as we were thinking through this was not just like, can we run another service? But what’s the best way that we can multiply our current resources to make and grow more disciples? So for us, we recognize that 1% of our community was for services in our building.

00:09:37:06 – 00:10:00:12

Ben 

And so we wrestled with this question, not just, you know, the I guess, the typical things that we were a morning service at 9:00 Am, the assumed next service was, kind of an evening service, but we had to wrestle with with our current resources. What’s the best next service? And if we kind of saw the vision of for services fall on a Sunday, what’s the best next one before we get down the track.

00:10:00:12 – 00:10:24:21

Ben 

So we went with two morning services in the end. But we as we were working out shifts through what that look like. So some, some practical stuff that we were thinking about was we started talking about this way earlier than felt natural. So Ross, who’s on our team here as well, this was an idea that we began to say well before, people felt the pain of a full auditorium.

00:10:24:23 – 00:10:34:07

Ben 

So in our, annual reports, it was just dropped in that this was coming well before we actually had to do anything about that.

00:10:34:13 – 00:10:38:24

Derek 

And when you say well before, talk to me at bedtime. From. What are you talking, eight year, two years? Hell.

00:10:39:01 – 00:11:03:18

Ben 

Yeah. Probably like four years before we actually talked to our congregation about going to two services, another service. It was just mentioned and it was interesting because, you know, you’d read it and be like, you know, the feeling was, that’s a long way off and that feels crazy. But then by the time we was serious to actually talk about it, people were on board with the idea that we needed to do that.

00:11:03:20 – 00:11:24:02

Ben 

About 18 months out from moving to two services, we met with all of our key leaders, say our elders here at church, our staff, the wives were involved with that as well. We wanted to get people in the room who, had thoughts about this, hear their concerns, but also help them get on board. That was about 18 months out.

00:11:24:07 – 00:11:53:06

Ben 

About 13 months out. We created a booklet that, we wanted to help our church think through it. This was a vision booklet. So for us, it wasn’t just about creating another service. It was taking the opportunity to recast and resell our vision. And so we want to celebrate our past while also addressing the future. We also put like heaps of questions and answers in that booklet as well to to give people every opportunity to read and understand what we were doing and why we were doing it.

00:11:53:08 – 00:12:21:01

Ben 

On the back of that, our elders then met with every growth group to work through the booklet, 11 months out from actually going to two services before the decision was made, exactly on what services would look like, we did surveys, AGM reports. We got our teams on board, leader conversations, lots and lots of communication because we knew for us that if this was going to work, it was going to work because team leaders were in on it, that they were really keen for that.

00:12:21:01 – 00:12:40:21

Ben 

And so we worked really hard with our team leaders then, because we wanted them to not just be on board with the decision, but actually shape what that would look like in their teams as we would multiply our services. We knew that kids would be one of the big ones for us, which we can come back to in a little bit and dig into with the trainer exactly what that look like.

00:12:40:23 – 00:12:57:13

Ben 

But the key thing I think in all of this was that we just wanted we wanted that team leaders own the decisions that they would make, which we knew there was a cost to that particularly. So if they were going to make a decision about their teams that they owned that for that reason and then just before the change happened.

00:12:57:13 – 00:13:20:01

Ben 

So we we had heard that the best time to do, a new thing in a church was either February or October, based on, you know, when people are around and that sort of stuff. And so we were going to do that in February. So in January, we ran a series called Room to Grow where we had interviews, we told stories, and we kept challenging people to actually look at the fields and not the barns.

00:13:20:03 – 00:13:37:05

Ben 

And in God’s providence, our team reflected on this, and it was so good because at that time we did that service, Al auditorium was packed, so there was just no way people could look around and not realize that we needed to actually do another service to see more people come to know and love Jesus.

00:13:37:07 – 00:13:55:13

Derek 

Yeah, it sounds, it sounds very deliberate. It sounds, I know, giving you a high level view. It sounds very, idyllic in some ways. It seems like you just got everything right. Did it feel like that at the time, as you were going through it, that you you’re nailing this thing and you were just. This is leadership, exemplar.

00:13:55:15 – 00:13:58:09

Derek 

How did it feel with the pushback?

00:13:58:11 – 00:14:23:22

Ben 

I think, like, my God, is that, there was a little bit. But because we were doing things so early, it gave people the opportunity to push back in a like the heat in the conversation was taken out because it was so early and because we had a booklet that had we’d worked hard on that booklet to try and help people see the vision of what we were doing.

00:14:23:24 – 00:14:41:16

Ben 

It allowed us to have those conversations, even when people were pushing back in a way that grounded us in the vision and mission that God has given us here at Southside. So there were moments where you sort of felt the tension, but because it was so far out, it allowed us to work through that. In a quite helpful there.

00:14:41:16 – 00:15:04:09

Ben 

I say easy way. Do you want to add to that? Yeah, I think, I think the key there was the amount of time that we had, the difficult conversations that we were having and the journey that we were seeing people walk on would have been stressful and difficult if it had been all, we have to work through all this stuff because we’ve got this next service starting in three months time.

00:15:04:11 – 00:15:14:08

Ben 

Because we had so long we could let people take their time. You can give people a booklet and give them weeks to think about it and come back and have another conversation. And that was really valuable.

00:15:14:10 – 00:15:15:08

Derek 

Yeah. That’s it.

00:15:15:08 – 00:15:37:14

Ben 

Even, for us to like, there was moments where I think for me personally, like, I, I really like change. Just like, I’ll, I’ll change driving the way home just for something different. And so I didn’t mind change. So I was ready to kind of go the October before. And that’s where I was helpful in our team to kind of go, actually, some people need a little bit longer.

00:15:37:16 – 00:15:45:04

Ben 

And so that being working together in a team was quite helpful for that to go. And I let’s, let’s take that time on this. Yeah.

00:15:45:06 – 00:16:08:18

Derek 

Yeah. No that’s good. Well we’re going to push into the, the team thing. Just next just to, to reiterate as well, the, the beauty of the process here as well as you’re not seeing this is merely a pragmatic exercise. This is a moment of lifting people to a greater gospel vision and maturing them. And so that leading with that, even as you make the change, it’s just it’s a great way to to frame it.

00:16:08:24 – 00:16:44:06

Derek 

But you’ve reflected day on some on the, the the way your teams worked and how that worked. You’ve mentioned before to me just were off that you’ve, you will not discovered but you, you started using working genius, which is a, personality profiling tool. That, that you can get online access online, but as you, as you started thinking about your team in this process, had a working genius help you understand how you work together ahead and smooth other things or help you more effectively make this change.

00:16:44:08 – 00:17:07:06

Ben 

The interesting thing about working genius with our team is that we didn’t actually discover it until after we’d made this change. So when we look back, we can see the process of multiplying was made so much easier by the fact that we all have different geniuses and we work really nicely together as a team. But it wasn’t actually something that we were conscious of using that language at the time.

00:17:07:07 – 00:17:24:15

Ben 

But it is really helpful when we look back at that. Yes, I think for us, as we think about it, one of the ways that was helpful was, we recognize and learned that Ross is a wanderer. So he’s at the front end of the the process of working genius. He’s dreaming about things well before it needs to happen.

00:17:24:17 – 00:17:46:14

Ben 

And so that’s why he was planning of second service well before any of the rest of us. But then it was helpful that the rest of our team was involved along the process. So I was the one that created the, booklet, in terms of conversations with Ross. But then I invented the booklet. We worked together to discern what we were thinking.

00:17:46:14 – 00:18:06:22

Ben 

So one of the things along the whole way is we’re pretty we’re all pretty good decisions. So we lean on each other for that. In our team, I am at galvanize. And so getting people along, our team leaders and, our key stakeholders in this process was also helpful in that. And then Petrina brought the enablement.

00:18:06:22 – 00:18:25:23

Ben 

Do you want to speak to that, Petrina? Yeah. Enablement is is getting people on board in ways that really work for them. So it was really important for me that all my team was happy and settled and keen to come with us on that journey. And we’ll go into that a little bit later. And then the end of the working genius is tenacity, where we all just work together to make that thing happen.

00:18:25:23 – 00:18:30:02

Ben 

Once we had a date in the calendar, it was going to happen and we all did it together.

00:18:30:04 – 00:18:46:21

Derek 

Yeah, and it’s the last 5% that’s of an odd how would he though, on the working genius that like, every team is going to have different gifts. Sometimes they’re a bit more lopsided than others. But actually you need in that that working genius you need to work at how and do all those things in the process.

00:18:46:21 – 00:19:02:09

Derek 

So even the process of you laying that out and different people are going to lean in more strongly than others, but you actually need the whole thing. It sounds like you need it from the wunderman and the gospel vision right through to that last 5%. To actually get this thing done, of how it was actually going to work.

00:19:02:09 – 00:19:14:20

Derek 

Like where where is the cars going to park? How are we going to get people in and out? How are we going to raise up, the teams and talk to them? All those kind of things. What were the hardest teams to multiply within your church?

00:19:14:22 – 00:19:31:15

Ben 

Yeah. So I think the two big pressure points. So once we decided to go to a second morning service. So we we wanted to shake everything up. So I went from a nine to an 830 and a 1030. That was a helpful thing to do, to sort of just make sure that no one could win, I guess, in terms of where they would stay.

00:19:31:17 – 00:19:52:06

Ben 

And, a part of that then was trying to figure out how we used our resources to, yeah, to serve in our teams. The hardest one was, the hardest two were music and kids. So just the nature of music, I think, in the nature of kids. And we’ll talk about kids in a moment with, music we ended up creating.

00:19:52:06 – 00:20:11:08

Ben 

So we were on a two week, two week, rotation at one service. So, one team would be on team A, would do two weeks, team B would do two weeks to move to two services. We recognize if we go to three teams and then, the, the teams can actually serve across both services. So there was actually some we had to invent a little bit.

00:20:11:08 – 00:20:30:15

Ben 

We had to think differently to what we were already doing. There was some restrictions to, you know, two morning services, meaning that the second service can’t rehearse before there’s there’s some just logistical things that you’ve got to think through there. But we one of the key things with that was, again, we already had good teams and we had good leaders in place.

00:20:30:15 – 00:20:53:06

Ben 

So multiplying that was made so much easier because of the team culture and the ladies that we had there. The next hardest one was kids, though, and so Patrina took the head for this heavy lifting today. Yes. Yeah. So kids, when we made the decision that it would be two morning services, both with kids programs, which is what we needed for the number of families in our church.

00:20:53:08 – 00:21:08:13

Ben 

That was the point where I really had to get my head around what this would look like, and I knew it was going to be a big task because we had such a big lead up in terms of time, I was able to make some decisions that just made it easier for us at once. We got there.

00:21:08:19 – 00:21:34:20

Ben 

So a whole year before we went to two services, we started a three year curriculum for our kids programs, which meant that when we made the change, the curriculum would be same old, same old. And through all of those early stages, early months of getting used to two services, that was easy. And also we made the decision to keep the groupings the same, the age groupings the same, and keeping leaders with the same age groups where we could.

00:21:34:22 – 00:21:44:20

Ben 

So it was finding every opportunity to keep consistency in the midst of that. One big change was really important for us.

00:21:44:22 – 00:22:03:00

Derek 

Yeah that’s helpful. And that’s often why when we’re saying just multiply they do two two services in the morning or two in the evening in order to both one provide the consistency also for people to be able to serve at one and maybe go to the other, sometimes as well. Is that is that what your kids ministry ladies are doing?

00:22:03:00 – 00:22:04:24

Derek 

Serving one go to the other?

00:22:05:01 – 00:22:29:13

Ben 

A little bit of everything. One of the things that was really important to me, as we said earlier, was, yeah, really bringing my ladies along on that journey, towards going to two services, knowing that we would need more ladies, we needed to build capacity and people in the lead up knowing that we would probably have some short term pain of people perhaps serving more than they were comfortable to long term.

00:22:29:15 – 00:23:00:00

Ben 

But having people imbued with that vision, I guess, of, you know, this is why we’re doing this. We’re doing it to reach the 1%. And so the short term pain of serving a lot for a little bit was okay to match that with the long term goal. We have a really diverse kids church team. So we’ve got older people, parents, young adults, teenagers, and they all have different lifestyles, different desires for this Sundays.

00:23:00:00 – 00:23:20:05

Ben 

So it was really important for me to give them options on how they would serve rather than impose all that on them. So it meant that I had to carry a bit more uncertainty and do more of the heavy lifting in, in organizing that and getting those logistics. So, working it out. But it was it was worth it to bring our people along with us.

00:23:20:07 – 00:23:26:11

Derek 

We just talked to me a little bit about that, for both of you. What what did doing this cost the church?

00:23:26:13 – 00:23:48:00

Ben 

Yeah. I think like, there was some perceived costs, say, upfront. We, there was some assumptions that people had of us. I think people had the assumptions of often we had a number of people that had an experience of multiplying services at other churches, and so came with baggage of that. So some people thought that we were asking them to be there all Sunday.

00:23:48:02 – 00:24:09:11

Ben 

Some people thought that we would tell them where to go, or we’d force this change upon people. So it was helpful to have that time to actually just walk through people pastorally, through those things, to encourage people that we’re not going to force them to do anything that, we want them to, you know, come along with us on that journey there was a little bit of a cost of the long run up.

00:24:09:11 – 00:24:33:00

Ben 

So the repeated communication was helpful for our leaders. But there’s just a recognition that we knew as a team that we had to constantly be thinking about this and planning for this. So there was a little bit of a cost there. After we went to two services, I think some people felt the loss of one service, but that didn’t it didn’t actually last as long as maybe we thought it would.

00:24:33:00 – 00:24:52:18

Ben 

So some people, felt that. But then as time goes on, you just, I don’t know, you just get to a new normal pretty quickly. And then I think the, probably the biggest cost was just the reality of the cost to staff and key leaders. So as a staff team, we feel that. And, we’re that.

00:24:52:18 – 00:25:10:20

Ben 

I mean, most of us have gotten pretty used to two services, but upfront, it was a big thing. There’s always a bit of that adjustment. And I think just being a small team to, like, there’s a reality of, yeah, there’s just more people. More people to love, more people to past, and there’s still the same amount of us.

00:25:10:20 – 00:25:16:06

Ben 

So there’s a bit of a cost there as well as we think through just the realities of going to two services.

00:25:16:08 – 00:25:34:05

Derek 

So talk to me about that. Then the, we started out talking about 1%, wanting to be reached. You know, however you want to kind of slice the, the hopes that we have, we want to see people come to know Jesus. We want to see people grow to be like him. So with those big outcomes in mind, what difference is this?

00:25:34:05 – 00:25:36:03

Derek 

Might this change for you in that.

00:25:36:05 – 00:26:01:23

Ben 

Yeah. Well, when we went to two services, so this is the beginning of 2025, we went to two services. So we’re just over, nearly 18 months past that. Now, last year, we under God were able to say nearly 20% growth of our attendance on a Sunday. But one of the things that we were really struck by is that we too, within that could see about 6 to 7% of our adults converted.

00:26:01:23 – 00:26:26:04

Ben 

So actually coming to faith throughout the year as well. So it was, it was so that, that 20% growth, that was about double what we were kind of year on year average. So we noticed a yeah, a kind of a a steeper growth curve there I think like this is anecdotal as well, but it just seems like too there’s just a lot more stories of people stepping up as well.

00:26:26:10 – 00:26:45:18

Ben 

Stories of, people just experience personal transformation to. So within that it’s not just that we’re seeing more people, but we’re seeing more people grow deeper in their faith as they become leaders or as they engage with, yeah, different realities of, you know, church life.

00:26:45:20 – 00:26:55:13

Derek 

It’s good. Let me just ask you, we’re going to get to the one thing in a moment, but this is just warming up to it. What would you say to churches who are thinking about multiplying services?

00:26:55:15 – 00:27:19:09

Ben 

I think if it’s done well that this is an opportunity. Multiplying services is an opportunity to recast and resell the vision that we have not only for people in our church, but for the people outside of our church. It’s a moment in time where you can look back and celebrate what God has done, and a moment to look forward to the potential of what God could do.

00:27:19:11 – 00:27:46:20

Ben 

I think it’s a chance to reawaken people to the reality that God is at work in his world, and so it’s just one of those moments that like if if he can, it’s crucial. Like in terms of seeing a church actually take their faith seriously. And yeah, to do what God has called us to do in the world, which is to make and grow disciples.

00:27:46:22 – 00:28:11:19

Ben 

Another thing I would say is to be honest with yourselves as a staff team, as a key leadership team, and know where your strengths are and know where your weaknesses are. No, where you pressure points are the fact that everyone knew that kids was going to be a big moving piece. I felt really well supported in that because everybody knew that, acknowledged it, checked in with me, helped me with things I needed.

00:28:11:21 – 00:28:17:17

Ben 

That’s really important that you are honest together as a team of how that’s going to work.

00:28:17:19 – 00:28:35:04

Derek 

That’s great because you you focus so much is on helping the church as well navigate this change. But to actually be aware that you actually you’ve got to help each other as a team navigate through that space. Well that’s excellent. Here it is. The one thing, Ben and Petrina, what’s the one thing you’d want to tell people about multiplying services?

00:28:35:06 – 00:28:59:14

Ben 

We think the one thing when it comes to multiplying services is to recognize that multiplying a service is not a project or an end in itself, but it’s an opportunity to make and grow disciples. And as you’re thinking about multiplying services, it’s a consistent, clear communication over and over again to help people see what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

00:28:59:16 – 00:29:09:05

Ben 

And if you can do that, then what you’ll see is more people come to know and love Jesus in your church and connected into your church.

00:29:09:07 – 00:29:20:14

Derek 

I love it. Although my English teacher would say you’ve probably concatenated full sentences, but that’s okay, because the one thing on here is never the one thing that’s great, but you’re going to do a one night.

00:29:20:14 – 00:29:23:07

Ben 

I’m very happy for that one thing. Thank you.

00:29:23:09 – 00:29:40:01

Derek 

Well, look, really thankful for you guys coming on and sharing and thankful for what God has been doing for many years outside. It’s excellent. One of the things that these guys, SAS, I, as a church and as a team have been very generous with and made available is a bunch of resources that they put together over the last few years.

00:29:40:01 – 00:30:02:04

Derek 

Some are in leadership development and serving, but the one for this one, as we enter the toolbox, you can go to our show notes page and find these, they put together service multiplication planning booklet, that you can grab on Canva and you can download the template and see what they’ve done there. It’s excellent. It’s got it leads with mission, leads with vision, talks about the pragmatics, lies at the timing, has a frequently asked questions section.

00:30:02:07 – 00:30:22:10

Derek 

You can grab that and see it, how they they will think about it and adapt it for yourself as well. It’s got the modification timeline that I mentioned before. I’d recommend as well for your team. Like if you’ve got a, staff team or an elder team or, whichever teams you’ve got a moment to work on, genius is a helpful, tool to use for them.

00:30:22:12 – 00:30:42:12

Derek 

It doesn’t tell you how good people are of things. But it does tell you, where they might be, where they might be inclined to to spend their time or get energy from and how you might work together better. But you can grab that search. Working genius, and you’ll find that as well. Anyway, if you found this episode helpful, do is favor.

00:30:42:16 – 00:30:46:12

Derek 

Pass it on. But, Ben Patrina, thanks for your time.

00:30:46:14 – 00:30:48:06

Ben 

Thanks very much. So, yeah, I’m.

00:30:48:07 – 00:30:49:15

Derek 

I’m Derek. Gonna chat soon.