[0:01]
G'day, I'm Derek Hanna. Welcome to the Reach Australia podcast. The vision of Reach Australia is to see thousands of healthy evangelistic multiplying churches across Australia that reach the lost. For this podcast, you have joined us for serving by different church sizes. This one we're going to be joined by Mike Sams, who's going to talk about serving in a church 75 to 125. Enjoy. Okay, so what we're going to do before we do anything else, I want you with, if you've

[0:35]
got someone else in your team here, or you can just turn to someone around you and welcome someone in on your team if they're just having to be by themselves, just have a chat for a few minutes about what are the challenges in the serve area for you, for you guys. Now, what I want you to do as you think about that though, see if you can identify challenges specifically because of the size that you're at. I'll put it out there that one of the challenges we have in conferences like this is that sometimes,

[1:06]
as one who's been with you in this size previously, you come to a conference like this and you see all the shiny stuff and you're thinking, how do I translate it? How do I process it? Because I'm here and I can't relate. We're going to try and relate today. And so I want you to think about what are the challenges to help us push into that. So have some discussions and then we'll come back together and see if we can see where we're kind of at in all of this. So, go for it. I reckon we could go on and on, right?

[1:36]
With the challenges. What I want to suggest to you is what we're going to do today is we're going to be thinking about these things that we've heard and seeing how these, we address these by working on these things in a way that's scalable for us, start to be achievable, and hopefully we can chip away at being realistic in working on them. And so that's what we're going to try and think about a little bit more today.

[2:10]
That's our objective. And the way I thought we'd do it is, seeing it's a case study, instead of just going through everything that happened at church, I thought what I'd do is share with you the first few years of our church plant in 2016 in Golden Grove. The first few years, how did we address this as a small church? And I'm going to do that not by telling you step by step, but by telling you about people and different people

[2:42]
and what we learnt in the moments of serving areas with these different people. that was really good, that worked really well and some of them will be stories in which we learnt some hard lessons and I learnt some hard lessons along the way and then hopefully you can not have to do those things as well. So that's what I thought we'd do and to share with you a bit of that story. So let me give you some context of our church and then and actually before we do that the reason why we want to do this is because what I had up on the slide just before.

[3:17]
we're really trying to think about where are we now the now we're how that um we are unashamedly want you to get sick of because you live and breathe it right where are we now as this kind of sized church and this here that was good but you need to be thinking about this even more and more in your church where are you now what is going on what are the challenges that are really happening in the serve area for you and where do you want to go and that's why i changed the title session to breaking the 75, we don't want to figure out where we are now so we can easily just be a

[3:52]
church of whatever size you're at forever because we could probably totally change the seminar and just talk about with the people you've got how you can just keep it going but that's not what we're on about right and so we're actually thinking about where do we want to go, we want to break whatever size we're at and then we need to think a bit more practically on what that looks like on the ground for us. So where were we at Grove in 2016? Well just before 2016 when we planted, we started with a core team of about 35 adults which was about 15 or so smaller than we'd hoped

[4:29]
for a whole bunch of reasons that we don't need to talk about but the reason we still wanted to go ahead with it and go forward was there was a really strong core of 15 or so people that were to ministry. And these guys could have run, like I said, we could have run church for quite a while with this group of people. So let me tell you about the first person I wanted to share with you. His name was Jeff and he was on the core team. And Jeff was absolute legend of a guy. And what Jeff loved was figuring about how church would work. And so what we did before

[5:11]
ages and ages talking about what kind of church are we going to be. And we spend lots of time talking about what matters to us as a church. We talk about what's the way we're going to talk about church? Where are we going? And we landed really on two key biblical passages which shaped our vision. So we were going to be compelled by the love of Christ, 2 Corinthians 5, 14, and we were going to be other person centred because of Mark 10 45. The son of man came to

[5:46]
serve and not, oh man I've gone blank, how about that? And not to serve but to give his life as a ransom for many, that is a shocker, wow. That's a fail. So, but that idea that Jesus came to serve and his service gave us salvation, shaped who we were as a church. And so in all our call meetings, all our times beforehand, we would talk about this and talk about this. And Jeff was totally on board. And we kept talking about what is it going to look like

[6:17]
to serve in our church? And we do all these things. And then about three weeks or four weeks before the launch, Jeff asked to meet up with me. Great. We caught up with him. And we sat down for a coffee and he said, I don't think we can plan. I think we have to stop. And I was a little like, that came from nowhere. What happened there was Jeff, thankfully because he was so helpful for us, he was an engineer. And he liked to see how things would work and how everything would take in place.

[6:50]
What didn't we do in all of these early call meetings? We didn't talk about how Sundays was going to work because we'd already done that because we had a false start, which I won't get into. because we had a false start, we had everything in place, we wanted to establish our culture and we didn't talk about all the things that we needed to set up, who was going to serve here. We had all that in place. But Jeff, who was an engineer, didn't have that clear in his head and we were doing something he couldn't see because it hadn't started yet and he's thinking, this thing isn't going to even happen,

[7:21]
which is reasonable for him. He wasn't to blame there. Who was to blame? Go and do it. Yeah, I think so. So it's good to get old friends to just tell you honest things, right? It was my fault because what I didn't do, as we think about these things, I was trying to help our team to stir heart and set the vision for serve and everything in church, but I didn't help people in the first steps of serving, bringing them on board.

[7:52]
I didn't bring one of my key core people along with us. And that was a really great lesson very early on. and I said, oh, okay, let's have a good conversation and let me fill in with you where we're at. That, I think, is a really important lesson for us, particularly in smaller churches, is that when we've got the people that are keen and making sure that they're with us and we carry them with us and they know what's happening and that they're on board. So that was the first serve lesson before we even started

[8:24]
that happened with Jeff. Okay, let me tell you about the next person who taught me lots of lessons. And this is Jack. So one of the things that happened for us was when we planted, we planted with an MTSer, an apprentice. Now, if you had 30 people, this is a question I want you to answer in your head, first of all. If you have 30 people and you're trying to go to church and then you've got someone to come on board and you have to train them

[8:56]
training them and you're a small church and no one else to help, how do you feel? That's an important question for you to answer because I want to suggest to you one of the key things to think about is how do you allocate your time and energy when you're a small church, that making it a priority to invest in other leaders is crucial at that point. that is not something that happens all the time in small churches and I want to challenge you if

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you think that you don't have the time for that lots and lots of churches can't do it it's a little bit like the the hurdy argument about we're not doing well enough and you know how he says we're not doing well enough but there's a church around the corner that is growing and if they're growing you're in the same context maybe you should think about how we can how we can do things I think that's the same with regards to training leaders and thinking into that space is that it is you can actually bring them on board for lots of reasons so what happened with Jack is that but a month or

[10:02]
two before whenever it was we went to multiply and multiply there was a conference that Geneva had for church planters and we went to that conference but we decided to not just go to the conference, what we did is we decided to make it our first kind of staff time away and so we stayed away for an extra two days and we went into the cave onto how is it going to work, this church, what do we want to achieve and we were thinking, we were just thinking M's and purposes, you don't have to think in that way but that's just the way we were doing it and I said, Jack is a brilliant

[10:34]
musician and gets how to lead musicians, it's okay, you're going to take that responsibility And then my coach in Geneva said, why don't you get your apprentice, if they've got a level of competence, to look after the serve area? Because in the first few months, he can't break your church, even if he doesn't get it right. Well, as it turned out, it was a masterstroke. Whether it was the right strategy or not, I have no idea, and others can argue with me it's not. But what was the masterstroke about? Jack and I had already, this isn't someone who's coming fresh and I didn't know, so Peter's questions were dealt with, and he was really confident about those.

[11:08]
If they weren't dealt with, actually, I think it's right, Pete. good point but what if I change the way I trained Jack in the two things he had the responsibility for so when it comes to to the whole leading the platform up the front which I gave him not just music let's set the parameters now while we're away here are the things you're going to work on we're going to meet about how you're going and I'm going to leave you to it and I'm going to give you the support you need but that's your responsibility but when it comes to trying to figure out how we're

[11:41]
You're the one who's ultimately responsible and I'm going to work with you on trying to figure this one out. And that's how we went about trying to do it. What it did, it actually helped with our intentional recruitment strategy. It was me being intentionally how I was going to recruit Jack in actually what he was going to do and then how he would then recruit others. It's not just go and get someone to do something, but think about the type of level of support and leadership you need

[12:13]
and how you're going to communicate to them. So one of the problems we have is we just want to get people doing things. Is that right in small church? Because there's so many things that have to be done. And if we can just get that out of the way, we can go to the next thing. But if we can stop and think, what does the person that God is blessed to have in front of me, what do they need right at this moment that I can support them in? And it could be different in different roles. maybe we can actually do more. So what I'm actually talking about, I don't know where it is in the slides, so let me just fly through. Here we go. This is something Scott Curtis shared on Foundations,

[12:45]
is that you may have seen situational leadership styles, all sorts of different ways you can talk about it. This is just one, in which you can see there are different ways in which the leadership and the serving relationship looks. And so when it came to on the platform, it was pretty much we lived in style too for the whole time he was an apprentice and actually and then and then actually he just took it on board but when it came to ministry

[13:15]
oh sorry the other way around he he he did everything and I just checked in when it came to the platform and all that area but when it came to when it came to ministry and he didn't really was so much more involved in it and I was telling him, okay, this is what we're going to do, have you got it? And let's go and do it and let's see how you go and let's wrestle with it and let's see how we're going to figure it out. And that's just a practical example of how the relationships are different.

[13:47]
And I want to suggest to you, when we're thinking about the people that got in front of us, we can actually deploy them quicker if we think about what kind of level of communication do I need with them and how can they do that with others? all right so we've got Jeff and Jack that taught us some lessons now let me tell you let me tell you about Amanda Amanda and her husband became the first key people that were keen on doing the church plant with us and that was fantastic to get to

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know so what we did for months before we were planting is we'd have lunch with them every they were nurses so they had that beautiful shift work so we could do that and in those times we're just chatting and dreaming and planning and Amanda said something that to this day is one of the dearest things to my heart man I love doing spreadsheets so I said something like I can't remember exactly it's quite a while ago and I said would you like to do spreadsheets for the gospel

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um amanda loved admin i wasn't thinking about having someone come on board at admin jack coming uh but she loved doing it and she'd never given the idea that she could do it for for church she was just getting in on board and so we shifted i said would you do you think you could organize me and my wife laughed and said good luck with that and then we we talked about it. And what happened was, Amanda loved doing that. She got more and more keen on church and

[15:28]
getting involved. And as we're thinking about the areas to serve, there was one area that was still a big blockage for us with the people that we had. We could get Sundays happening and Jeff was fine, but I probably fudged a little bit how good we were going when it came to our kids program. We didn't really have heaps of people there, but because we've built up over time, without any because I know what I was doing, Amanda thought, well, the first few Sundays, I'm going to have a crack at making it happen. I don't love doing kids ministry, but I'm going to make it happen.

[15:59]
After those first few weeks, what happened was, Amanda came back to me and said, I'm a little bit surprised because I loved it. So what do you do then? All right, you shift and you say, would you like, do you think you can make time to manage that to happen? He said, Well, what if you didn't, could you shift your nursing stuff around? And it turned out that she decided that she could actually coordinate the kids program,

[16:29]
but she didn't have deep theological training and didn't have the skills to put it in. And so, on one level, I should have alarm bells ringing, right? To give someone that responsibility. So, what should I do? What do you think you could do? That's a better question. Sorry? get get so yeah you don't she doesn't need to write anything that's exactly right yep yes absolutely build in some training theologically and actually there's lots of

[17:00]
great resources which you all know that here's just about helping us think through intentionally how you bring people in um and so what did what did we learn what do we did we learn with amanda we if you identify opportunities and needs and prioritize which ones there are you can ask You can ask things of people in a way that you haven't before. I never thought in me thinking through all the different things I'd love to get people to do is to ask someone to look after some spreadsheets and be intentional about that.

[17:31]
Didn't think that was needed, but actually we'll get to that in a moment. But it also meant that we had to prioritise. And this is the story where I made Amanda and my wife cry quite a lot, actually. so what happened when we when we planted one of the ministries that they were running back at the church we went from was a music for minnie's group a junior group you know music all that kind of stuff the problem was when we were leaving uh my wife and amanda were running it and there was no

[18:02]
one really to take it over from the church we were going at and we and we we tried to raise people up and it just wasn't going to quite happen that the people that were the next level just couldn't do it for whatever reasons and so so I they said to me I reckon we can keep running it and I had to think they're going to get really angry at me but what do I do and I I this time I said to them I don't think we can run it and I'm going to ask you not to run it even though it's a good thing

[18:35]
but I don't think we can do it so the thing was when you start a church or when you when you're trying to do a thing, if you've got split priorities, even if it's just a little bit, it was going to be hard in those initial phases and they're two of our most important resources early on. That sounded, I don't talk about my wife usually as a resource, so don't let that get back to her. But in regards to key people, when we're starting, they were totally on board for that and then to have something that was going to significantly take away their time, we had to decide how

[19:09]
we prioritize our opportunities and needs and that was a hard thing to do there's other times when I didn't make the hard call and I regretted it but I thought I'd just share that one with you because it was really personal and sometimes when we're a small church we're scared to make the hard decision why are we scared to make the hard decision loss and the pain when you don't have heaps of people and you probably don't think you're gonna have someone if they leave or it It doesn't happen that there's not many others and so that scares you, doesn't it?

[19:40]
And so we've got to be clear on how we figure those priorities. There's a lot more we could talk about this but we'll move on for the time being. Thinking through those priorities, when do we have to make a call on a good thing for the sake of another thing that at this time we think is the bigger priority and we can't do both? So that was a significant lesson. and it was a significant reminder to me which I didn't always keep is sometimes make that hardcore. So that was Amanda.

[20:12]
So we're building out my favourite people. This was just a chance for me to remember people that I love that haven't seen for ages. Joel. Joel. So Joel came to church. So Jack said he knew a young adult who was very keen to come along and he seemed really keen and he had a friend. and his friend was going to come and I was a little bit cynical and we came and had and they came and caught up and had a coffee and he was in his third degree and he wasn't second degree and he wasn't really committing and his friend came and was said he was really keen and this guy Joel

[20:48]
came and we left this conversation about him coming to church and I thought there's no way he's going to turn up and I'd already written him off what happened three weeks into our church Luke decided that he wasn't going to be part of the church and Joel was probably one of the most committed people that I've ever seen in the first three weeks of a church and I thought well I got that wrong and what happened with Joel, Joel just was going to a church previously in which the Bible teaching was so bad that I could give my worst ever talk and as long as I

[21:24]
said Jesus died for you and he rose again and you need to trust in him he would think it was the most amazing thing he's ever heard. And most times we did better than that, I reckon, the people that spoke. And so he was lapping it up. And so what do we do with that? Well, I met up with Joel each week and started to think, where's this going to go? And Jack met up with him each week and was chaining him and building up into resources with him. Now, he ended up leading, Jack got him to

[21:55]
lead some of the bands instead of him leading the bands and he did that and then when Jack led uh when Jack um thought that he could do more I suggested to him why don't you actually do some more things up the front and talk into these things and he had a crack at that um and then and then Jack would talk about can you see what's happening what did I just talk about and what have what have I done with Jack, with Joel, in a small church?

[22:26]
Both of us are speaking to him about the same things over the time, over and over, and because we both love spending time with him, and we did different things with him, but there's a lot of other people, even though it's a small church, and we'd invested heaps and heaps of time with him, that one of us could have done that. and that was on me because sometimes in ministry when we see that person who's got great potential we want to be the one to disciple and fellowship him and to this day we still we still have contact

[22:56]
he texts me and see how he's going and he's a chaplain in a in a country region in south australia now in a in this local school which is fantastic doing some chaplaincy stuff um but we our resources with Joel. And so there were other young adults that we could have spent more time with that we didn't. And what a bad mistake that was. So being intentional about just because it's great to meet up with someone

[23:27]
and to have fellowship with them, maybe you can do it with more people if we're a little bit more intentional. And that's crucially important when you have limited time and you want to reach as many people as you can. And that was Joel. So we're just creating a picture. Now what I want to do is I just want to stop talking about people for a moment and just highlight what's happened for our church and our leadership development in our church.

[23:57]
So we ended up, I think, because we were really focused on number one, very quickly, so within two years, I haven't got the numbers in my head, say it was somewhere around 80 we did crack crack 100 one sunday but we're probably living around 80s after two years um we had i think it was somewhere around 80 to 75 percent of people doing something that were part of our church down here and then we kind of had me jack

[24:29]
and amanda up here and we did actually want to have teams and create teams we did have kind of team leaders but I'm going to put a name here I'm going to call this team leader fragile because what we did we did something that was an issue that someone brought up there we were examples of doing it badly partly out of ignorance I think at the time what we did we really were sold. We had drunk the Kool-Aid on teams. We literally were all in. We were totally

[25:07]
convinced on wanting to get people serving and giving people opportunities, taking risks. We wanted people to have their teams and have people overseeing them, but it was fragile. We set people up to lead teams and they were very fragile because we did not equip them well enough to think through, hey, when you're organising these people, here are some key things. The ministry map that we haven't seen yet because we did it in Foundations and we might not have

[25:37]
seen it and you'll see it tomorrow probably or it's in the survey book as well. We did not pay attention to when you train people, what does it look like to lead others, not just in the skills but the core kind of leading things that you need. And so they were fragile, it basically depended the person, whether the person was naturally kind of gifted in that and we kind of gave them just enough to, gave them just enough to make it okay but they were fragile because

[26:13]
as soon as people down here weren't getting on or there was an issue and they didn't have the skills and we hadn't set it up, very quickly we'd have lots of teams that weren't really working well as teams and everyone just did what they wanted. And so we created a little bit of a problem for ourselves that looked really good on paper because we didn't pay attention to that little thing. So where does that fit in there? What's the issue for us there?

[26:46]
so good yeah it's supporting those in ministry roles so and it's supporting those um with what they need in the role so sometimes we can think we just get along and have a chat with them and be encouraging and supporting uh that's so good it's good discipleship to get alongside people but the challenge is the challenge is are we actually helping them have the tools to deal with conflict to deal with moving the team forward to actually help the team do can they do a simple

[27:18]
now where how that's not hard to teach to show someone hey when you get with your team do you know what you want them to where you want them to go when you're talking with the kids when we teach the kids today the main point is we want them to see that jesus came to serve and he gave his life If the kids go away knowing that today, we've achieved our goal. What are the things we're going to do? How are we going to go about that? Do you guys know what we're going to do today? Can you tell us? Giving the skills to that, to have communication, to organise. We didn't do anything like that.

[27:50]
It was just totally dependent upon people's natural abilities or if they learnt it in their work life or in all sorts of other areas. So any questions? I'm going to get you guys to do an exercise in a moment, but I'm going to tell you about one of the, I think it was the real blessings that we had in those first few years, is that we actually got to have another MTS to come on board.

[28:21]
And his name, he had a great name, his name was Mike, Michael. And Michael could not have been any more different to Jack. He did not play music. He wasn't as kind of relaxed as Jack. He gave up being fairly high up in the Defence Force, which we were nearby, with an engineering role

[28:53]
and a leadership role to do MTS. So what did we learn with Michael? Well, we had discovered this problem when he came on board. And I thought, well, why don't we come up, why don't we have a little project as part of your training and let's see if you can solve this problem for us. I said, I gave it to him as a problem. I said, I didn't have a picture like that, but I talked to him about the problem. I didn't pipeline it out and everything.

[29:23]
I said, we don't have people knowing what they're supposed to do and have clarity, and we don't have people who are leading others, it's not working well. I want you to go away and figure out how we might try and solve it. Now, why would I do that with very little information other than that for Michael? Pardon? He can own it and he has the skills already to do that because of what I knew about him. If I did that to Jack, we'd still be here working it out of his space.

[29:54]
If he was here, I'd say that, so don't worry. the way he was wired, where it was for Michael. So understanding the people in front of you. And so he went away. And the one thing I said is, on the Geneva website, there's a Building Leaders online program that you can do that. That may help you as a starting point. And so then what he did through that, he went through all the ministries that we have and he wrote out a one-page responsibilities and what it takes to be in the role.

[30:25]
and if you're a team leader, this is what it looks like as a starting point. And he did that for the first three months of his MTS and put it together. We're a small church. We ended up having every role, because he just spent a few months, just one page clarity and it was a game changer in that early phase because we actually were able to be clearer with people. And that was really helpful. And so he did that. but then he also said you guys you guys could possibly do better uh with the way you figure

[30:58]
out what your needs are and uh and so he said what if we think about can i have a go at trying to put together working out where we want people to serve and i said okay do you want me to help do you want anything well if you're happy for me to have a crack at i'll have a crack at it and then I'll show you and Amanda what I'm thinking. And so what he did was, he did something that I have stolen unashamedly and shared with some of you, what he put together was a spreadsheet which was very helpful, kind of, and I'll explain that. So what he did was, he went,

[31:36]
John Smith's really busy in this church, he's a good dude. What he did was, he went through everything that happened in church and and he thought about it in the way that we were structured and so we kind of got the circles the leadership pipeline area and he identified who's serving where and what and what needs that we have and then thought well what if we highlight what um where we'd like people to be and what if when we've got someone we'd like to ask to serve in that area we put their name in where they're highlighted could we do that even though we're now at this point you

[32:12]
Would that work? And then what if we actually didn't just make this up randomly but we thought about where we want to go, what is the difference we're trying to make and make the decisions based on that? And so we thought about what's the minimum thing we need to do to have service leading happening and we kind of want to land at having four service leaders that we can know that that'll be something they'll be good and consistent and rely on but it'd be great, it's a desire, it's not essential if we had six and we currently

[32:44]
got five. So when he did that, can I share that? What does that tell us in regards to serve when you're a small church? What does it tell us about our service leaders in regards to happening? And everything else. We don't need to spend our time focusing on that. We can move on to the other things. Because there's lots of other things in church, right? And so if we do that across the board, that's just the little snapshot of it, it's not the actual spreadsheet, it becomes very helpful because if we're thinking ecosystems, what are we thinking? We're thinking about how everything depends upon

[33:18]
everything else and have we stacked the decks somewhere. Because when you're a small church and you set it up like this, if you've got a team leader who's actually a really good recruiter, that's where all your people are. But it might not be where you need it, you need your people, you see and so that was a very very helpful um way for us to see where we were at and we discovered a few things we discovered if i moved it along to mission one of the reasons we struggled

[33:49]
we had a we had a time when we weren't really focusing on mission like we started is because we couldn't get people to actually take more responsibility in mission formally in our church why couldn't we because all the people that could potentially do that were wrapped up in other high level things in church like other teach other heavy load things so now what do we need to do what do you reckon we need to do we've got to repatriate we've got to go back and think about do we need to make the music the music for minnie's call and and redeploy because actually

[34:25]
mission's really important if we have one less community group and we redeploy that because those two would love to run Lifecourse and they've got the skills and with a bit of training they could, one less community group is not going to break the church and it's not saying that we don't think getting deep in the Word is not important if we try and still have everyone in it and then build up more community groups later. And so that helped us really see where our blind spots were. Now, what have we done there? Let me go back to the 10 things. What was the problem? I'll go back

[35:01]
with this yeah we over engineered it for our size absolutely because we just totally got into it he was so keen and we ran with it it was over engineered we did it for too much but what we can take away from it is you don't need all that but you need that kind of tracking whether you got 30 people because if you've got 30 people you really want to make sure you've got them mobilized and doing really what's the best thing for them and you can be more organic and

[35:31]
out. So it might be something that you just start with on a bit of paper or that you build this up over time but if we're wanting to break and grow we think into that space. I would suggest over-engineering is more helpful than not being intentional and I think we learnt that this is one where that was a good thing. So yeah so that's where we thought through the problem of over-engineering, building people into church but it was very helpful as well.

[36:05]
So, as these things we've been talking about, the other one was, it really helped us track progress and make changes as needed because what can happen, what can happen if you just do it organically? Because we kind of swung the pendulum and decided not to go into the middle, which we were really organic and then we when we got really structured that was our problem what what's uh what's helpful about tracking progress and making changes as needed having that how does it help you when you're a small church yeah that's great timing as tony

[36:39]
walked in from yeah that's exactly right that's exactly right spot on um yep and so what we're what we're um So what we're thinking about is how can we be adaptable to the people in front of us to love them? Now, you could think that's just way too structured and rigid, but actually what's really helpful is thinking, how can I mobilize people so that they are passionate for ministry?

[37:10]
When we talked all about the thing that Graeme talked about, how you're not setting a vision for serve, you're setting a vision for the gospel, and that's the thing that motivates people to serve. That was Christ's love compels us for us and that's about mission and that drove us in everything we did. That's shaping us and so then we want to have that fire going by continuing to build people up and giving them opportunities to serve and to grow in that. And so if we know what's happening instead of it being anecdotal,

[37:43]
we might have greater picture. Sometimes because we're small, Or we can think we know what's going on at church because, oh, this happened and this happened. Or have you ever said to someone, what's happening at church? Oh, yeah, we had five new people come. It was really great. And that is great. But if you don't stop and think those five new people were my wife's family and they live interstate, it's not that great. It was wonderful to have them come and visit us. But in regards to bringing new people into church that week, we didn't have any potential new people.

[38:13]
and so having an intentional way of doing that is important in an early phase as well. Okay, how are we going for time before I get you to do something? Yeah, good. Let me tell you, another fail. Okay, let me tell you about Tim. So, we got to Michael. Tim, Tim was a good friend. He was on the core team way back in the beginning.

[38:44]
And what Tim basically ran SA Power is he was high up. And he came to church and he came from a reformed church. He was a pastor's kid. He was, could almost be more reformed than me. kind of you know he was he was absolutely on board theologically we'd meet up and read the bible from day one together it was we had a uh this was a encouraging personal relationship in that sense of building one another up um which we all should have he he had that role for me

[39:17]
as well and not and me for him and and tim was on the core team and had great wisdom into it and how to make things happen and he's and his main ministry on a sunday because he had to serve heart can you guess what it was it was a church plan with the servant heart i wonder if you've ever done chairs because that's it that's it uh he did chairs and he said i love i'm totally down with doing it and he made that happen um and he would continue to do that

[39:50]
and and he would get involved and he'd talk and do do things amongst church and what i never entertain the notion of someone who was theologically reformed and thought through. I didn't think about how he could help me think through how we could build some structures that we needed, that we were struggling in. Because I was thinking, I wasn't thinking about the fact that he's someone who likes to get alongside people and had skills that we wouldn't naturally necessarily think

[40:23]
could help. He could, just with his eyes closed, with me talking to him, turn this into strong. And I don't think I really ever talked to him about it. Working with people on first steps to serving, I had blinkers on to thinking about how he could help serve at church. And I met up with him every week. And we didn't have that conversation until down the track and I kind of said to him, hey do you know it was the dumbest thing I've ever asked someone possibly I said

[40:58]
Tim do you do you have skills in leading people and he's just looked at me like you are the biggest goose in the world do you have we not spoken uh and so you get get the point is that when we're wanting to build people up understanding who they are and where their gifts and abilities lie and maybe it provides avenues of how you can build your church, build up the people in your church in ways that you haven't thought through. So Tim hopefully will teach you that lesson as

[41:30]
well to think through who are the people that are in front of you and how can they help you in that place. Now I got one, actually I'm going to tell you one, actually I'm going to tell you but I'm going to embarrass him anyway. There's one more person and he's in the room. Sorry, this person's in the room because one day at church, a guy turned up and he said, I'm just here with my family.

[42:01]
I was at a church. I used to be the pastor. I was a youth pastor there. We're not going to be there anymore. We'd just love to come. And I said, great. Why don't we have a coffee? and then I caught up with him and had coffee and I said to him would you like to read the Bible with me I thought as pastor I'd love to get to know him I want to know how he I would love to know open up the word with him and that I thought that would just be encouraging and I don't know Luke if you can remember what you said to me when I asked you can you remember that's nearly what

[42:35]
you said you said I don't think anyone's ever particularly asked me ministry to read the Bible now isn't that astounding and and that was that was uh a great moment because i asked luke i asked us to read the bible and as it turned out i really liked him and he's here so that's good and and i think he liked me to some extent and so we got to know each other more and more and he didn't know what he was going to do and then i went on long service leave and so I talked to Paul Harrington said I wonder if Luke could actually look after the church

[43:11]
for a while well he'd go on long service leave and turned out he'd love to and he did that and it was a great great opportunity and I was in a privilege sometimes you go on long service leave and you don't know who's going to come and someone's coming and you don't know I got to know that I could trust Luke because we said while we're reading together he's thinking about ministry and all his all his stuff and and it was a great opportunity to to uh encourage him and build him up in this time and then as it turned out much to my surprise i left grove way before i thought i would to come and work for reach and luke came on board and took on and is now still

[43:46]
at the church that all happened because um i just asked him would he like to read the bible so what does that one tell what does that one tell sorry for bringing that up what what does that one kind of just help us just get back to the very foundational things about what it is to to um get serve happening heart and vision absolutely it's heart and vision and at the heart of our heart and vision is the word and it's it's jesus and it's fellowship around the word

[44:19]
and so all of those team meetings all of those groups happening together we want them to be driven by the word in those moments we don't want them to be just functional things that make church happen and uh that that privilege that we had uh in that moment that's the way we want our churches to be like now what i want to get you to do an activity but before we do that i want to see if we can draw a distinction between, I think, two groups in the room. To have that kind of culture in our church,

[44:51]
we've got churches that have been going for a while, maybe a long time, and we're under 100, and we've got church plants that are starting and forming. What are the things that you need to pay attention to that are distinctive between both? to foster what we just talked about then, this sense of being focused on serving around the Word and fellowship and discipleship

[45:23]
and building others up in that. What are the distinctions that you have? If you're going to create cultures in your church, it looks like that. What's at the very basic difference? So you've got to keep things the same, so what are you trying to do? you're trying to change a culture. So it's pretty obvious. If it's a new-ish thing, or it hasn't even started yet, what are you trying to do? Create, start, build,

[45:55]
from beginning, from scratch. Why is that distinction important? Very helpful that there's a different conversation that he's had. It's that you're wanting to try and challenge the status quo of where things are at, because we want to have a greater heat for gospel work in this church. We want to have people on fire for serving because the gospel shapes us in that direction and that's not where things are at.

[46:25]
So the conversations you're having is around we don't really have God's heart for service. How are you going to challenge that there? Now if you go into a group that's trying to start something saying, guys, we don't have a heart for service. That's not going to work, is it? What's the conversation if you're trying to start something? What is God's heart for service? How should we start something?

[46:56]
Or how should we really, because we're in this beginning phase, how should we build it in a way that is shaped by the gospel, by our convictions? That was the situation I was in, and that's why we shaped it around 2 Corinthians 5 and Mark 10. Because we wanted it, we wanted to have a simple way of talking about it and we wanted it to be driven by a mission and that mission spills out into being compelled into other things and we wanted Jesus to be front and centre and when it comes to service,

[47:27]
having service actually drawing us back to how we're saved by Jesus made a lot of sense to us. So when you have your conversations at church, people and serving, how are you doing that challenging for them? Okay, now, what I want you to do, I want you to now, we've talked about challenges, I want you to go back and have a conversation with people around you or you can do it yourself if there's no one else there

[48:00]
and I want you to think through, let's go actually, let's go back to this one. i want you to think through now i'm going to put the 10 back up in a moment i want to think want you to think through which of the 10 which of those 10 things do you think need the most attention when you look at them and why what what are the issues what what's the current thing going on now and i want you to say where do you want to go in your truth and being realistic with your size it would be great to have everything happening in

[48:34]
the church and the point of us breaking into our sizes is to us to get real with what's achievable and see if we can move the dial where do you want to go with the gospel conviction and then what that looks like and then and then maybe start to draw out some how and things but if you can if you can spend most if you even just spend time and you get stuck here that's okay because this is not a do this now and that's the only time you've got to do it this is the way that we should we can think about things spend some time thinking about where where are we at are we a church that

[49:08]
needs to change our culture i don't even know what the culture is i don't think i've thought about it enough maybe you've got to take that step back and ask that question not presume we're starting something and i haven't given enough thought to what kind of church we're going to be because we've gotten on and done stuff oh i've got to go back and think through what are our values where is the gospel taking us in this place where where are you now and where would you like to go spend some time thinking about thinking on that for the next 15 or so

[49:38]
minutes and then we're going to have a Q&A I'm going to get a couple people up up for you to grill about any of your questions because you might be sick of me so spend some time doing that and discussing that with each other for a bit well we hope that was helpful for you in your For more resources, head over to the Reach Australia website, reachaustralia.com.au for more resources on that and any other number of topics to help you in your church grow a healthy, evangelistic, multiplying church.