[0:00]
Before we jump into this week's episode, let me tell you about EA Insurance, one of the sponsors for the Reach Australia National Conference. Are you running a church or not-for-profit organisation? Do you have property, volunteers or run activities for children? Would your insurance policy adequately cover your risks if the unexpected happened? Our conference sponsor EA Insurance Services is a specialist faith and not-for-profit insurance brokerage and can help with insurance solutions that are tailored to give you the right cover at a competitive price.

[0:30]
If you'd like an insurance strategy review or more information, go to eangurance.com.au. Lifeway Leadership Podcast Network. Get out, I'm Scott Sanders and I'm Derek Hanna. Welcome to the one thing a podcast is I'm going to give you one gospel-centred ministry tip every week.

[1:03]
Derek, we had Pete on the episode, it's been a long time since we've been able to look across at each other, starry eyes, you know, record a podcast. I asked him his question, your favourite opening partnership? You've guessed it rightly, it was Mars and Bernie. Who is your favourite opening partnership? Mine is actually Gordon Greenwich and Desi Haynes. England and English opening. I know, that's right, I know. You're seeing it in the end. You're seeing it in the end afterwards.

[1:33]
West Indies. Yeah, the windies. Yeah, they're amazing, I love watching them. It was brutal, but they were great. For those of you listening in a country that doesn't love cricket, we're talking about the opening partnership in Creece. I'll just give that to the little caveat and little explanation. But the windies were, it was kind of that with you summer watching the windies belt Australia. Absolutely. Absolutely. Some people say you know feels hope the windies now and look part of me does. No, I've seen deep, deep scars from that period of my life.

[2:03]
Now the one thing is brought to you thanks to RetroStraia, we want to see thousands of healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches across Australia. And for this month, we want to encourage you to give to the online resource library campaign. So jump onto RetroStraia.com forward slash give and you can find out how to make a one-off donation so we can keep recording and sending out these great podcasts. But for now, you've pressed play on another episode of the one thing, reset. So Derek, one of the tools that we often talk about is the Now We're How.

[2:42]
It's a very sort of simple strategic planning concept that we we're using our consults that we use as we think into specific areas of ministry life in church plants and in established churches. And really basically we want to ask three questions as we think into planning as we think into sort of next steps for a church. The first question is a sort of understanding, analysing the current situation. Most people then quickly jump to the how we actually want to say no before jumping to the how we actually want you to think about your desired future, the desired outcomes you're looking for.

[3:16]
And give that a time horizon of you know 12 months or three to five years where is it that you actually want to go. Once you've done both those two things, you've assessed the current situation and you've looked forward to the future reality where you wanted to go. Only then you go, okay, well actually how do we get there? You need to do those two building blocks. So over the next three episodes what we want to do is you want to push into thinking about those three big questions. And so this episode particularly want to just push into the current situation. Just to set it up though as we think through the next three because you're running through this with a lot of churches and you said go from now, go to how aware and go to how.

[3:58]
Is that your experience much churches going that cycle if they don't? Why is it using this tool house at helpful? Well, I think most churches go straight to the how and it's our natural inclination. We read a book, we go to a conference, we chat with someone else in ministry and we think, oh man, yeah, I think I can do. I want to do exactly what they're doing and we think that the solution is actually doing the same thing. But actually the reality is we often in a different context where at a different life cycle stage in our church life, they're just different pieces going on the ground.

[4:28]
We actually need to really ask the hard questions first, you know, assess the current situation, look into the now, push into the reality. So that so that we can be then hopefully getting the how, you know, getting the how right. But again, we make that other fatal mistake of not actually working out, well, what do we want to hit? And so it was a beautiful moment, I think, in the conference a couple of weeks ago where we wanted the church leaders said, I've just been pushed really hard and I've realised that I was, you know, shooting the arrow and then painting the target around the area.

[5:01]
And I think that's often what happened, you know, we don't define the where and say we're often always hitting it because, you know, we're doing great, but actually we're not actually hitting where we should be going. Because it is my action to most problems as well, it's just to play whack a mole. There's a problem, you just smack it. And you know, that's much easier because it's quite hard to actually pause and reflect because a lot of the time at least I find in my life or when I've been leading a church or a ministry work at Rich Australia, is the problems that exist are often beaking with me.

[5:32]
And I'm really one of us as questions like they're uncomfortable questions. So it's easy to play whack a mole rather than ask the deeper questions, which will lead to that more effective outcome that I want. So yeah, humble, humble leadership, which we were pushed and encouraged to be pushing into does want to ask some questions about your leadership, you know, and the leadership team. And their role in, you know, in the current reality as well. So yeah, all right, well, let's talk about now. That's what we're going to talk about in this first one.

[6:02]
Then we're going to talk about the where and how that's the order. That's right. And so really in this first section, the questions that we need to be thinking through the questions we need to be asking, want to want to drive towards actually understanding the current situation well. So if we think big picture just in church life, and I want to push over these next three episodes into say the mission area, particularly Derek, and really get some of your experience from your consults, I then want to sort of push down into a smaller area of church life like small groups. Just so we can show you what does it look like in the big picture, what does it also look like in, you know, for an aspect or a ministry in church life as well.

[6:40]
And so you're asking a question, what is actually going on now? So you use a whole bunch of tools, you know, SWOT analysis. So what are the strengths, what are the weaknesses of how we're going, what are the opportunities, what are the threats. You can look into the data, you know, big picture data, what's actually going on again, what kind of data you're looking at there? You want to look at trends, particularly so actually go back over five, you know, five, 10 years if you can understand, you know, big, those big moments, but then also pushing to what's actually happening in the last 12 months.

[7:12]
That's tricky during COVID, isn't it? Like that's data anomalies in there. Yeah, it is. And so in terms of thinking about resetting now in COVID, I think one of the things I want to push into is say it's actually realizing that the last three months, you know, probably an hour, you can now say we've now got us. Almost a settled pattern of people returning. So what we're finding is after this second period of lockdown across Australia and the sort of on my corner outbreak, people haven't come back to church as much as they did after that first outbreak.

[7:43]
But now sort of post Easter, we're really getting into a sense of, okay, this is, this is our new normal, you know, we can't give it saying two years ago, this is what it was like and we want to, we want to be there. No, probably your attendance levels as they are now are really a counter reality. So, so you need to be realizing, okay, then what does it look like to resource that with teams on a Sunday? What does it look like for our congregation mix? But that's kind of the new normal. Okay, just to flag you've used new normal now, no more, you know, sorry. I apologize.

[8:13]
I just got to play Wacomold with me. Yeah, that's right. I'm going to limit on that. All right, that's good. Okay. So, so we are even so dig into day as well, just recognizing last couple of years has been tricky, but we are begin dear to bench line. Oh, yeah. And I think, again, what I'm seeing is the sort of pre the previous sort of three to five years of your church life are going to really help you understand how you've come out of COVID as well post lockdown. So, churches that were declining, I think, I think they're going to see a significant, you know, significant decline in their numbers of people returning. I think, you know, the trends that were happening that you may or may not have been aware are going to be really seen in actually people coming back.

[8:54]
I think again, understanding the new reality in front of you as well, people are going to be coming to church less regular. So, I would have said pre COVID and even in congregation 70% was a good sort of regularity of attendance and probably 65% for a morning congregation. I think now we're going to see sort of 50% as being, you know, the the the reality of regular church attendance. So, again, helpful to sort of have those big picture, big picture goals and expectations so that you're not kind of beating yourself up or you're not trying to push towards a where that's that's unachievable.

[9:26]
So, I'm hearing a lot of church leaders come back and say, what 50% and I think the reality is it is now socially unacceptable to cough. And people are actually keeping their kids at home who are sick whereas in the past they'll be like, you'd be bringing everyone and you know, whoppin the snot off your office self as you came in and sat down and listen to listen to a sermon because church is so important. So, again, understanding that then will help us start thinking about where do we want to get to.

[9:56]
So, you it might be different in your church context. I'm only talking generally there, but starting to do some of those stats and saying, okay, we're actually saying 50% of our people coming back. Which means probably our larger membership, you know, a larger sort of people who would call this church home, you know, in some sense it's actually could be quite quite higher. So, doing the work on looking into your role, assessing who is a part of our church family, who's making small groups, you know, a regular occurrence is another sort of piece of data that you want to push into. How else do you find that? You've got data. We're just pretty cold and clinical, very informative. But there are other ways you can get a sense of what's actually going on.

[10:34]
Yeah, well, we've just hopefully, your church has just done the NCLS National Church Life Service. Some great, you know, more subjective questions in there that I think are, you know, can really helpful, you know, hopefully pushing the people's spiritual growth and how they're feeling about serving and how they're feeling about belonging the leadership in the church. The other thing you can do is survey some of your key leaders. So work with your key team leaders in church and your small group leaders. Ask them how they're feeling about things. Ask those feeling questions, those more subjective questions. And listen, you know, so I'd be encouraging, you know, doing a few town halls or getting a few key leaders together and having those meetings and just listening into where are they at.

[11:15]
Because I get, I think part of the new part of the reality that's in front of us is, is that people are tired, they're exhausted. And I think we're seeing that again, talking to my brother who's a member of Surf Club. We're not seeing people return back in great numbers with volunteerism. I'm looking at the PNC, you know, sort of minutes regularly. There's less people showing up for those meetings. So I think we're kind of all really worn out in some ways of, you know, volunteering in the wider, in the wider sense as well.

[11:46]
Okay, so let's work on that basis and people are tired. They are worn out leaders as well. It's been a really trippy, trippy, has been a trippy couple of years. It's sort of been tricky couple of years. Bit of whiplash as well, just in start, stop, stop, stop. And so it's a tricky context in which to feed back and be introspective about this. So how do you deliver, how do you facilitate this question about them now then? Yeah, again, I think not, not resorting to my feelings and where I'm at. So again, trying to get those data, you know, data points from a number of people.

[12:17]
So, so pulling in your parish council or your eldership, if you, you know, Bill is to have a larger staff team, you know, bringing them in and asking some of these questions as a group and actually assessing things. So this is where I think maybe the pen, the pennegon, you know, thinking about what are we seeking to see in the life of a believer? You know, we want to, we want to disciple his deep in the word, who's loving God, who's serving others, who's in community and who's on mission. Using that as a grid, just to sort of ask the question, well, where do we think people are at in terms of their deep, you know, their love of God's word and their change lives?

[12:51]
So, we're at a people at and renewing their minds and in repentance and faith and, you know, responding in obedience. We're at people's desire to love one another and to serve in church life and just their mission. Ah, asking all those sort of questions, you know, broadly, I think in getting a sense school will help situate where we think people are at. People are in respect to how they're going in terms of maturity and individually, and corporately your son's running this. So, if you haven't seen the pennegon, let me explain this kind of five sides to it or everyone I think most of you would understand a pennegon.

[13:24]
I just want to explain a pennegon is five. So, if you look, you learn something new every time you listen to the one thing. I haven't quite worked that hexagons yet. There's something different about them. Six, it's six, they're right. Anyway, the pennegon is really trying to look at the New Testament and say, when we look at this, when we describe what it looks like to be a matured disciple of Christ, how is it the New Testament describes now? If you come up with five, fantastic. You come up with eight fantastic. Really what you're trying to do is you're trying to capture what are the key things that the New Testament uses to describe,

[13:57]
individually and corporately, God's people. And so, we've on five things, one of the five things very quickly. You want to say a disciple is deep in the word, loving God, in community, serving others and on mission. Okay. And so, I want to push now just into the mission one, because you're a passionate, passionate about mission, passionate about evangelism. You're doing a number of consults. What are you seeing in the now? What are some questions you might ask just to push particularly into the missional engagement, the evangelistic sort of temperature of a church?

[14:30]
Yeah, well, there's another ways you can approach a new, you've mentioned a couple of the avenues you go in. And so, at the very crude level, you're asking a question of how many people have been converted in the last 12 months? Very, very crude question. But a good diagnostic question. Now, last 12 months have been hard, so you're not kind of hanging everything on that. But even if you spread it last five years, how many people have become a Christian in this church? Come to know Jesus, come to life in the last five years.

[15:00]
And that is a good indication possibly of where heat within the church, where energy within the church is being pushed. Now, again, sometimes because of whatever circumstances that number might be higher or lower, so you've got to interrogate that again a little bit. So, there are other avenues you're wanting to push into. We do use a thing we call a mission funnel, which talks about contact and connect and convert and then the life of church. But really, the questions are just trying to work up from that first question.

[15:30]
How many people have become a Christian? I would want to be then asking the question. Talk to me about how many people within the life of the church, where the French are exploring Christianity in any way in any sense. So, almost such a mission funnel is in people who are on the way to engaging in investigating Jesus. Yeah, yeah. So, haven't made a comment yet, but they are actually asking those questions in a meaningful way. Might be one-on-one Bible study, someone who might be running some sort of Christian explain course.

[16:00]
Whatever it is, who is asking questions around that? And often I hear a lot of church leaders say, we don't have a lot of pipeline, we actually don't have a lot of people. And then I kind of push back in and say, have you looked at the last sort of three months? How many people have visited? Have you done the work to look through those 50 names or 30 names to see who's not a Christian? Has someone called them and invited them to that? Then have you looked back the last six to 12 months? I'm assuming there are a lot of non-Christians in that list of people who have come.

[16:30]
Has someone invited them to this as well? And then you go actually. There is actually quite a number of this. Have you been praying for those people? Have you been actively sort of trying to just help them move along to the next step, inviting them to church or inviting them to this course? If you are someone who is sitting in a pure church, would you invite a friend along? If they give a very, very quick no, then that's a good indication as a problem there, isn't it? That might be a mission-hit problem. Absolutely. And there are all these avenues. You're really just asking that first question. Have you been working up from there and interrogating all the things? What happens at a Sunday gathering?

[17:00]
How are we equipping people? How are we praying? You mentioned praying. What do we celebrate here? Do we celebrate the things that we actually want to see? Do we hear from people who might have been converted? Hear from people who shared the gospel with someone? Do we talk about people who aren't Christians if they're the enemy of a state when they come? All those kinds of things feed into building mission-hit. So there's no one question, but it is a series of questions that you want to keep asking. And you want to be curious in that, not clever. So there's no silver bullet. You just being curious, why is it that no one ever returns to church a second week?

[17:35]
That might be part of the problem there. You're curious in there, you'll unpick that problem. And then the reality is you just go to the next problem. And you keep unpicking until you get to the point where you can actually… We are beginning to see some momentum build. People have confidence in what they're going to be coming Christians. We're celebrating it. It's not a silver bullet, but yeah. Okay, that's really helpful just to push into the mission area. I want to kind of pull down to an area of church life. So small groups, small groups, functionally in church life. I think do a whole bunch of stuff.

[18:06]
They get people deep in the word. They're a great community that's smaller than the larger community that we see on a Sunday. And so there's an opportunity for care and pastoral care to happen and take place just in people sharing their lives with each other. They're a great platform as well to build mission heat as well. Place where people are keeping each other accountable for having those conversations. So I want to put a problem that was raised in one of the mini-concils that we had. One of the church leaders said, look, we've got 40% of people in groups at the moment.

[18:39]
And we heard that some conference you needed to have 70 to 80%. How do we get 40% of people in our groups to 70%. So here's someone going, okay, the now, what's the now? And asking the question, okay, we've only got 40% of people groups. Now, some questions. What are some questions you'd be asking that really want to understand the what of what's going on with only 40% of people being in groups? What did you ask? I've got questions to answer. I'll give you a second.

[19:10]
So I did the mini-concil with Richard Sweaters at Hunter Bobble Church. It was excellent. One of the first things that he did just pushing into now, which he did in number 12 was, what does the Bobble have to say about this? And I thought it was a really wonderful way to start to go, okay, what are our convictions about actually leading up regularly? And here's our thing, we're going to throw out some proof texts. He bruised 10 again. I've got to give it you know. But it was what it was. It was a really wonderful, we're looking through the Old Testament, the New Testament, thinking about the importance of gathering and gathering as God's people and digging into His word together.

[19:45]
And so that was a really helpful place to start. Okay, let's integrate it. Well, is 40% okay? Like I didn't see an X2, 40% of people gathered together. It's the X3. Gathered regularly in sport groups. So that was the first question. The second question, we did it. Okay, so what's going on? It's been the history of a small group, a tendency in your church. So again, looking back at that trend data, who are the people that are currently meeting? Fanat, it was largely older, older Christians. It was men's groups. What are they currently studying?

[20:17]
What's the quality of the materials they're doing? What have you done in the past to get people into the inner groups? And so, you know, in terms of let's think about your membership course or what does it mean to actually be a member of this church? Is small groups a high priority in that space? So we're pushing to hold on to some sort of cultural things as well as trying to understand how did they get to this point? Again, what have you done in the past? Even just asking it now question, what have you done in the past to get people into groups? Just to sort of get a sense of where things are up to?

[20:47]
Because I want to ask a question with small groups, with every part. How do you understand how small groups function within that church? Like what purpose do they play? And that informs everything else, I think, because maybe 40% is the right number. Maybe 90% is the right number. But until you understand what function they play within the whole ecosystem, what level of parcel carry you expecting them to carry? What are they meant to be the primary teaching vehicles? Are they evangelistic units? All those kinds of questions do feed into what they're like, how they're set up, and haven't people are going to get in?

[21:19]
And in some ways, you're almost, this is where you're now and you're where questions are kind of blending into each other there. Because in some ways, you can say, what's the current reality of what they're doing? But you're starting to also push into those questions, well, what are we actually seeking to achieve? Do we want parcel carry to happen there? Do we want people to be doing XYZ? Yeah. The other, what questions you be asking is, how many people are in your groups? When are the groups meeting? How many leaders do you have in those groups?

[21:49]
What are the materials, materials or small group material resources that you're using? So they're just some really helpful now questions to ask. And again, can I encourage you to do doing these things with your team? So with that small group example, with probably some of your key small group leaders, you know, you're more experienced, small group leaders, don't do this stuff alone, okay? It's so much better to be doing it with a group of people. Yes. Alrighty. That's good. So that is the now. That's the now we've been talking about.

[22:19]
How do you, as a church, and as a leadership within the church, ask that question of where are we at now in all the different aspects of church life in order to move towards being healthy, event-istic, multiplying yourself now? Scott's got one thing for us. So what is the one thing you want to say Scott about now? Don't be afraid to ask the hard questions when you're pushing into the now. You really want to confront reality and confront that of yourself as a leader, but also of actually what's going on in the small, the ministry that you're pushing into or the whole church that you're pushing into as well.

[22:54]
Excellent. Well, that is it for the first, sorry, wait a minute, Scott. Oh, the toolbox. Jesus, what happens when I go on? When I'm not invited on. Yeah, ever so we don't. When I'm not invited on to the podcast very often. Okay. We're going to do the two. What's in the toolbox today, Scott? Well, I'm going to I want to give you a few old podcast episodes to push into. Episode 208. Now we're how are planning to all for 2022. It feels like such a long time ago. Mission planning though using the now we how as well.

[23:25]
So if you want to just see a fuller longer episode. But really we're pushed into mission. There are some great resources on mission that we'll put in the podcast show notes as well. And also some eCasey system workshops are going to be coming on the registrar podcast. So be on the lookout for those as well. All right. Well, that's all from us from episode one of a reset. We're going to have two more. We're going to talk about where next time we're going to talk about how next time. But for the moment, I'm Scott Sanders.

[23:55]
I'm Derek Hanna. Chad soon.