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LifeWay Leadership Podcast Network. G'day, I'm Scott Sanders. And I'm Derek Hanna. Welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel-centered ministry every week. And we're delivering on that, aren't we? Most weeks. I would say we've got a better 70% strike rate at the moment, Scott.

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I'm happy with the 70% strike rate. That's good. It's better than average. Near enough is good enough. Now The One Thing is brought to you thanks to Geneva Push, the Australian Church Planting Network. And for the month of April, a great ministry tool provided by LifeWay Leadership, Ministry Grid. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. But for now, you press play on episode 54 of The One Thing, Growth Barriers. Now I'm excited today because we've got someone in the studio who sits no less than 30 metres from us every time we record. The magic of the studio.

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He is on to his third plan. He's the director of coaching for Geneva Push. And this is the first time we've ever had him on. Not for lack of trying. He doesn't get out of bed for podcasts where the audience is still in single figures. So I just ticked over 101 and we said who we need to have Craig on. 100. That's triple figures. Yep. Yeah. Craig Tucker. Welcome. Hey, guys. Good to have you. I'm hoping to fill that 30% in your 70-30 strike rate. All of that quotas. So what we're going to be talking about today is something I've heard Craig on a few times.

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And it's something that he's actually experienced in the churches that he's been a part of previously. And it's something which, by the grace of God's goodness, he's actually grappling with again now at Scott's Presbyterian in the city. So Scott's Church in the city. If you're looking for a church in the city of Sydney, get along to Scott's Church. We're going to be talking about the challenge of growth barriers in church. So let's just put this conversation in perspective. What are we talking about, Craig, when we say growth barriers? Sure. So as churches grow, they need to change the way they do things.

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And it's not a sort of simple linear thing. But at various stages, churches and groups and the way they function go through quantum steps. So one way to think about it is it's not like cooking a chicken curry. So if you cook a chicken curry for four people, you know, you look at the recipe, you know, this much chicken, this much veggie, this much sauce. And you think, oh, strike another eight people are coming for dinner. Oh, it's okay. I'll just change the quantities and use a bigger pot and the same thing will happen.

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As churches grow, it's not like that. It's not just like increase the quantities, increase the staff, increase the people on the rosters and everything works just the same. But the way things operate and the way you operate as a leader needs to change in character, if I could say that. So we often kick around numbers when it comes to growth barriers like, you know, 50 and 80, 100, 20, 200. But the way in which people in the church and we as leaders as well experience it is different from just those hard, cold numbers. Can you describe some of the ways that we experience these growth barriers in church?

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Sure. So I reckon there's a number of numbers you can think about with that kind of thing. But the key one is around the 120. So it's called Dunbar's number. He's a psychologist. He sort of did these social experiments on how many people can you know well? How many people, if you saw them in a bar, would you be able to walk in and have a drink with them? And he settled on the number 150. We often talk about 120 because I think that's how it works in churches. And it's that number where, as the pastor, your experience is, when it's 30, 40, 50, you go home and you know exactly who was there and who wasn't.

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And if someone visited, you got to meet them and you know who they are. But something happens round about the 120 number. And it'll depend a little bit differently on personality and how good you are at working the room and cultural context. But somewhere around the 120 mark, you go home and you think, oh, was Bill there today? And, you know, Mary and Bob were actually there. And there was that new person I didn't actually get to meet. And your experience as a pastor, you suddenly feel like you've lost control a little bit.

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And this group of people you thought you knew, the way you had of leading them and of getting a feel for how the group is going, all the tools you have for that suddenly aren't there anymore. So something really significant happens. And I'm thinking with kids, with the kind of, you know, the fringe people who are kind of checking you out at the moment, when you get to about a 120, that's typically where that is. Because people express that as well differently. Like you feel, I don't know where everyone is, but people in the congregation feel it as well, don't they?

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Yeah, yeah. So from the congregation's point of view, typically what happens is they kind of feel, oh, I joined this small intimate church where, because I liked the pastor and I loved my friendship with him. And we'd hang out and I felt like we actually had a bit of a friendship. And now it feels bigger and he's a bit more distant. And so people feel like the pastor has moved away from them. And so often, so some of the ways that people express those, they say, oh, this used to feel like a real warm and welcoming community.

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But now it feels really cold and distant. And I felt like you used to have time for me, but now you've moved on. They assume that he's spending lots of time with other people. And, you know, why have you suddenly given me the cold shoulder? And so people join small churches quite often because they want a special connection with the pastor. They like the idea that they can know everybody. And somewhere around the 120 mark, they start to lose the very things that have attracted them to church.

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And if they're going to stay, they'll need to find new reasons to stay. You know, a sense of there's a vision here worth getting my shoulder behind. There's a mission to be on about. And within the larger group, we need to create or there needs to be created smaller groups where you can still have that sense of connection. Because it's great to have a group where I am known and people know me, where we can actually encourage each other week by week because we know each other well.

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And so somewhere around the 120 mark, you start to work out whether your small groups are actually functional and doing something or are actually not doing anything at all. Your small groups suddenly become really important and start to do some of the things that the big group used to be able to do. Can I ask how you've gone through this three times, different forms, very different places as well.

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How's Cathy's experience? Cathy, is your wife? How's been her experience in this? Man, you should have her on for more podcasts. I think she's already done one here. Yeah, look, so we planted when we left college in a poor socioeconomic area. We then went to an inner west in Sydney context and now we're in the CBD, all really different contexts. Man, I feel like this is my third time around the track and I'm hitting the same potholes I hit the last time. So it's not like Scott said before, I've experienced growth barriers.

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That's right. I haven't worked it out. We're still finding the same kind of things. So what's Cathy's experience, my wife, of the growth barriers? For her, when church is small, we just got stuck in and we just did things. There was a small group here. You know, we all helped clean up the site we were meeting in. Cathy taught Kids Church every week because there was no one else to teach it. And she's now had to move from being the doer, for example, in Kids Church to being the person who coordinates a team of people who teach Kids Church to actually now be someone who leads the team that coordinates Kids Church.

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And each of those roles has a different skill set. And there's a different set of values. There's a different motivation. So if you're the person who's running a group, you know, the thing that gets you up in the morning and excited and prayerful about running that group is you're going to get there and you're going to invest in the life of the people or the children who are there. When you become the coach who's preparing the team, who go on the field and teach the groups, it's a completely different reason to get up in the morning.

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The thing you live for is to see your team go out there and kick goals rather than saying, what I really want to do is go on the field and kick the goals myself. So the kind of skills you need, but also the motivation that keeps you going really has to shift. Yeah. Yeah. Now, as I said at the start of the whole month of April, the Toolbox is going to be sponsored by Ministry Grid. And some of those important changes you've just spoken about, Craig, are helpfully addressed in the Ministry Grid.

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It has this language of a leadership pipeline or a leadership pathway. They've got a whole bunch of training videos. The work has been done for you, the busy ministry leader, to help you train everyone in your church. And it's training that you can trust from experienced ministry leaders. Now, we're partnering with Lifeway Leadership as well to develop Australian content for you as well. But the tool itself will allow you to customise any training by adding videos, PDFs, YouTube videos. You can even add your own training videos as well.

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And then deliver them high-touch, high-technology to your ministry leaders. So go to ministrygrid.com to learn more. Now, let me just open up the toolbox really quickly. Here are my top three must-have resources for growth barriers. The first is two articles that just get passed around all the time. Keller on Leadership and Church Size Dynamics. And also Rick Warren on Breaking 200. Great, great little articles. They're going to help you think about those little shifts you need to make as a leader and the shifts that are going to need to be understood, communicated, passed on to those members in your church.

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Now, Craig's already talked about the shifts that you need to make as a leader. There's a great secular book called Leadership Pipeline by Sharon, Drotter, and Noel. We'll give you the link there as well. What I find in that book that's really helpful is it talks about the shifts that you need to make as you lead yourself, as you lead leaders, and then as you lead the organization as well. And then the final one, we talk often about the importance of emotional health. And so there's a great book by Burns, Chapman, and Guthrie on resilient ministry.

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And I reckon, you know, to have the capacity for these changes, you need to be, you know, working on key areas in your life as a leader that promote a healthy, sustainable ministry. So they've got five key themes, spiritual formation, self-care, emotional and cultural intelligence, thinking about your marriage and family, and then finally thinking about leadership and management. Five sort of buckets to help you think about, and I reckon that's worthwhile jumping into. So, Craig, it's really helpful. We've spoken about growth barriers and how people experience them.

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We really want to dig in this final section into how, as leaders, we can actually walk people through this process. Okay. So do you mean how does a leader lead their congregation through that process, or how does a leader make those changes in themselves? Yeah. I'm talking about how to actually lead the congregation through that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, well, I think the key thing you want to do is the first person you need to lead it through is yourself. Yep. And they're the big barriers to churches actually growing.

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But part of, and doing that will help you to think about what that means for the congregation. So it's important with church size to not leap ahead, to not do large church practice, because you want to be a large church when you're only a small church. So if I give you an example. Yeah. So imagine you're the pastor of a church of 15 people. Yeah. And you think about what is it like to welcome people into your church of 15.

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And then think about what it's like to lead a church of 1,500. And how do people get welcomed in that context? How do they move from arrive the first time to be regularly part of things to being involved and contributing to being one of your eldership or your leaders? What would that pathway, that process look like? In the group of 15, it's really, it's relational. It's organic. In the bigger group, there's got to be some really clear pathways to go through.

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So if you imagine, if you were sitting in Wynyard now in the city, if you had to get people to the art gallery at the domain, three k's away, if it was a group of 15, you'd just say, look, just keep your eye on me. We'll walk through the city together. And if someone misses the lights, we'll wait for them and we'll go through together. But if you had to take a group of 1,500 to the domain, it's not going to work. And you'll actually have to go and set up signposts along the way and people who are directing them and pointing them.

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And it'll be much, it'll be a well lit, well signposted, clear pathway on how to get there. So the way you do that, those kind of processes will really change. You can see immediately the importance of practicing the right church size. If you still want to be the organic, integrated kind of welcomer when your church reaches 1,500, no one's going to get welcomed. No one's, or they might get in the front door, but they're never going to progress through and work out how to get involved. And they'll feel massively frustrated by that.

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And so how you talk about things will be different. Likewise, if you're a small church, you don't want to practice big church. You know, if it's a group of 15, you know, and you arrive as a new person, you'd kind of expect to meet the leader sometime during the night and for him to tell you his name and hear your name, that kind of thing. But if you kind of led that group by sort of looking vaguely around the group of 15 and saying, oh, look, if there's anyone here who's new tonight, you know, maybe you'd like to make yourself known to our welcomers over in the welcome lounge after the talk.

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You would only go once, right? There'd be something you'd say, there's something weird about these people because it's not the way you do it. So just talking and explaining your processes at the various points and clarifying that is important. Yeah. Oh, it's interesting, isn't it? That is a particular challenge in multisite or maybe mother-daughter church. If you've got a big multisite church and you plan out of there, but you only have 30, but the mothership has 800 and you're inheriting processes, it's okay, the structure underneath might be the same. The touch on the top might be very, very different if you're 30, though.

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Yeah, yeah. And so you'll immediately realise there are some things you can't do as a group of 30 and you'll do things differently. But there'll be a whole lot of things you won't realise that have been part of your practice that you're bringing with you that breathe big church and are great and right for big church. But, yeah, they won't work in that small church setting. Yeah. So you do want to, if you're growing a church, you do want to lead people through those changes as well. So with a group of 15, it may well be, I reckon it's appropriate to celebrate birthdays.

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So you might want to say, hey, you know, it's Scott's birthday tonight. We've got a, you know, cheap little cake from Coles. We're going to just sing happy birthday and slap Scott on the back because it's his birthday. If you're a group of 15 wanting to grow, you might want to say, hey, the time's going to come when we won't be able to do this, when there'll just be too many birthdays to do this kind of thing. Isn't it great we're at this stage? We can actually do this. And let's remember how good this is because the time's coming when it's going to be great because God's going to grow us.

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We're going to see people come to know Jesus. Church is going to be bigger. But we will need to leave some things behind. Now, you don't want to do that for every birthday, but every now and again with that kind of practice, things like open prayer in the group, that kind of thing. And again, you might want to say, look, there'll come a time when we'll do this in our small groups, but we won't be able to do it in big church. So we'll still, someone will still remember your birthday. Someone will still care about you and know what's going on in your life, but it won't be in the big context anymore.

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I'll get a better cake and I'll get a better prayer because they'll be in my little small group who loves me. All about you. Now, that brings us to the end of the show. So, Greg, what's the one thing people should be taking away when it comes to thinking about growth barriers? I think the one thing you need to take home from church barriers is to think about how to change yourself and that sense of control that I talked about earlier when you break the 120 barrier. That you need to actually find your motivation, your reason for leading the congregation, not in being the one who's in control, but in being the one who's growing the kingdom even when it doesn't feel like you're in control.

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That's great. Thanks, Craig. It's been really good having you on today's episode. We just want to draw your attention to one of our Lifeway Leadership Podcast Network partners. Have you listened to the New Churches Podcast with Daniel Lim, Todd Adkins and Ed Stetzer? I'm going to put a couple of links in. They think into the growth barriers quite specifically at the sort of 35 and the 125 mark. So, can I point you in the direction of those? And Derek wants to talk about a national coaching tour. Oh, look, because we've got Craig here. So, yeah, we've got a national coaching tour for Geneva Push coming up in May.

[18:14]
Craig Tucker and Kathy Hurd, our directors of coaching, are going to be leading that. An excellent day on thinking through how it is that we help people, we have deliberate conversations with people that lead them to see how the gospel interacts with where they're at, the challenges are, to equip them to be self-learners in whatever context they find themselves in. Now, we'll put notes and links to those events on our page, but you can go to genevapush.com forward slash events if you want to find out more about that. Now, thanks for joining us, Craig, and thank you for joining us for another episode of The One Thing. Coming up in our next episode.

[18:46]
Can your weekly printout really have too many fonts? Is that what we're talking about? We'll find out next week as we tackle Church Bulletins. I'm Scott Sanders. I'm Derek Anna. Chat soon. Thank you.