Small Church USA with Terry Thompson

In this episode of the Church Talk podcast, hosts Jason, Rob, and Courtney engage in a deep conversation with Terry Thompson, a seasoned pastor and founder of Small Church USA. They explore Terry's journey in ministry, the revitalization of struggling churches, and the importance of focusing on church health rather than size. The discussion highlights key metrics for assessing church health, the significance of leadership and accountability, and the unique strengths of smaller churches. Terry shares success stories from his work with various churches and offers encouragement for pastors in different contexts, emphasizing the need for faithful leadership and community impact.

Click here for more on Small Church USA 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Context of Ministry Challenges
06:32 Launching Small Church USA
11:59 Key Metrics for Church Health
19:02 Unique Aspects of Small Church USA's Approach
25:25 Overcoming Obstacles in Church Health
30:50 Success Stories in Church Revitalization
39:16 Encouragement for Pastors
41:45 New Chapter

Follow us on Insta @churchtalkproject. www.churchtalkproject.com

Transcript

Jason Allison (00:00)
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Church Talk podcast with Rob and Courtney and Jason. We are so glad that you are here today. We got a great conversation lined up today. I'm excited. I'll introduce our guest here in just a minute, but Rob and Courtney, you guys, anything to update us on? I mean, it's been so long since we last saw each other.

Courtney (00:21)
Yeah, just this morning.

Rob Paterson (00:21)
Oh,

yeah. You know what? I Jason, I'm thinking of a friend of ours who pastors kind of a multi campus church in and you know, I think it was in 2020 2021 we were at his place and I remember talking to him because they had just finished construction on this beautiful building that overlooked this whole valley. It was awesome, but he always, you know, he'd always say, you know,

Jason Allison (00:23)
Yeah.

Courtney (00:24)
in real time.

Rob Paterson (00:50)
the story of how this came to be is just like the story of ministry where I could tell you stories or look one direction. And it's like, man, we are on the verge of heaven and I could look the other way. And it's like, we're on the threshold of hell, you know, there's like always those stories in life and in ministry. Uh, and, and, so I even hope that, you know, even some of our listeners, whether you're like a high level volunteer leader, a pastor, whatever,

You know, we know, we know that you have stories you could tell right now, maybe from just this last weekend that are like, wow, God is doing some amazing things. And then there's other stories that we could all tell that, that are just painful and difficult and we really don't know how to navigate them. and so we, we get that, and, and we care and we pray often for, colleagues and friends who are, you know, just in those, those spaces.

Jason Allison (01:42)
Absolutely. Courtney, do you have anything inspirational to say after that? My gosh, he just comes in and brings it like it's hot, man.

Courtney (01:46)
No.

Yeah, how do you move on from that? Thinking like, it's either heaven or hell, you know? It just depends on how you look at it.

Jason Allison (01:52)
Yeah.

Well, some people may wonder that about this, you know, our podcast, too, is which what's going to come out this week? Is it going to be heaven or hell? I don't know. But I do know we've got a great guest. And so that's usually the best starting point for the podcast to turn out good, at least from my experience we have with us. I would say he's a new friend of mine because I did not know him until a few weeks ago. It was introduced to him by one of the churches in the Converge Mid-Atlantic Network.

Courtney (01:59)
Easy.

Rob Paterson (02:01)
Ha

Jason Allison (02:22)
And his name, our guest is Terry Thompson. He is with small church USA and you can find out more just FYI at smallchurchusa.com. So it's actually makes sense. One of those few websites that actually matches the name of the organization. But yeah, you've been doing this for a long time and I want to hear more of your story. I'm not going to try to tell it even though I've heard you talk about it. It's probably comes better from you anyway, Terry man. Welcome to the podcast. Good to see you.

Courtney (02:37)
Mm-hmm.

Terry Thompson (02:49)
Yeah, thanks. Great to be with you guys today. I'm excited.

Jason Allison (02:53)
Well, maybe just to start out, tell us a little bit about your journey as you've been a pastor at the same place for decades and you've seen it grow. You've seen lots of changes. Maybe tell us a little bit about your story as a pastor and what's going on.

Terry Thompson (03:08)
Yeah, well, I'm super thankful to be called into ministry and to get to serve God full time and have done that now for over 40 years. And God's certainly been good in that regard. I started my ministry career in Indianapolis, Indiana. I was a youth pastor for 12 years. And then I was an associate pastor over in your neck of the woods in Westerville, Ohio for two years.

And then, so two very metropolitan areas, and then my first lead pastor position, we were called to a small struggling church in a small community called Crawfordsville, Indiana. So we're about an hour west of Indianapolis, surrounded by corn fields, a community of about 15,000 people. And I went to pastor a small struggling church that had been in steady decline for 10 years.

When we walked in, my wife and I, were 35 years old with two little girls. And when we walked in the door, there were 20 elderly people. The average age was 64 years old. There were two men, no kids, and the rest were elderly ladies. And so that was our first lead pastor assignment to go in and try to revitalize and breathe some new life into this church. And to be perfectly honest, I had no clue.

Jason Allison (04:25)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (04:25)
what I

was doing. And, and so so we came in and here's what I did know. I knew the church had been unhealthy for 10 years. I knew it had the trajectory was going in the wrong direction. And that somehow we had to try to figure out what was unhealthy and how to get it healthy and moving forward again. And, and so we just started to work and, and, and try to figure out preach about what is the church all about? And what does the healthy church look like? And

We started getting involved in the community and just letting people know we were in town, new things were happening. And God began to bless and bless our efforts and bless the work. so if you fast forward, and there's a lot between then and 24 years down the road, but 24 years down the road, that little church of 20 people now runs a thousand people on Sunday morning.

Jason Allison (05:14)
Mm.

Terry Thompson (05:15)
And God did immeasurably more than we could ever have asked or imagined with a couple that had no idea what they were doing when they walked in the doors. And that's just all of God's grace is all of that is. And so we got saw God do some really just incredible things in those 24 years. Lots of people accepted Christ and got baptized and joined the church. And we had ministries in every.

area of the community that we could possibly think about having ministries in. And God just really blessed it and we're thankful for that. And after 24 years, I handed the church off to a next generation pastor. So we did a succession plan. And he is now my pastor, which is super cool. And I'm still an elder, a lay elder at the church. So I still get to do a little bit there. But as we did the handoff,

Jason Allison (05:45)
Thank

That's great.

Terry Thompson (06:05)
We were trying to just praying about, God, what do you want us to do in this next season of life? We still got some energy in the tank. And it was just really impressed upon us that in those 24 years, a lot of pastors and churches have reached out to us saying, how did you do it? Can you help us? And we didn't have a lot of bandwidth to do that while I was leading the church. And so when we handed it off, we started a ministry called Small Church USA.

Jason Allison (06:23)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (06:32)
to very intentionally and on a much broader scale, help all these pastors and churches that had been reaching out to us asking for help. And so in 2021, we launched Small Church USA. We have a year long engagement that we engage with pastors and churches in. And in the last couple of years, we've helped 110 churches in.

Jason Allison (06:41)
Mm.

Rob Paterson (06:42)
Hmm.

Terry Thompson (06:58)
17 different states and we have three pastors in Jamaica that are engaged with us right now which is super cool to have kind of an international flair to some of the cohorts that we do and So God is just blessing it and he's just opening more doors all the time because I think we all know the need That's out there the churches that are hurting the pastors that are discouraged and just looking for Like what's next? How do we get this thing moving forward in a positive direction for?

Jason Allison (07:18)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (07:26)
the glory of Christ and for the impact for the kingdom. And

Jason Allison (07:30)
Mm.

Terry Thompson (07:30)
so we get to jump into that fray and help where we can.

Jason Allison (07:35)
Yeah, I love it.

Rob Paterson (07:35)
Yeah, that's

that's so cool, Terry. So I have a question, but I got some housekeeping because a lot of times, you know, people tell their story and then you're like, all of a sudden there are these like bells and whistles going off because there's overlap. Right. So I know Crawfordsville well because the first church that I worked at was in Lafayette, Indiana. I was my wife and I were there for four years. So we had people kind of from the Crawfordsville area that were part of our church up there, which was super cool.

Courtney (07:48)
Thank

Terry Thompson (07:56)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (08:05)
where in Indy we planted our first church, our first church plant was in Indianapolis. What church did you work at in Indy?

Terry Thompson (08:11)
I was on the east side over by probably you remember where Washington Square Mall was. So off of Washington and German Church Road it was Heather Hills Baptist Church. That was where I was a youth pastor.

Rob Paterson (08:24)
Wow, that's, that's cool. That, that is, yeah, you know, just kind of small world. I love that. Hey, so my question, I was, I was noodling around your website a little bit and I love kind of the tagline that it's not about size. It's about health. And, and I, know, I think in, in the church world, you know, we're all prone to this where, mean, you told your story and I suspect, you know, maybe, you know, pastors, some of our listeners might be like,

Terry Thompson (08:40)
Hmm.

Rob Paterson (08:52)
wow, I really wish that could happen for me. You know, I walk into this tiny church and that years later, decades later, there's a thousand people, man, that would be so cool, but that's never gonna, you know, and for some people, man, maybe they're in a village where there's like 10 people. And so they're never gonna have a church of a thousand just because logistically that doesn't look like share with us a little bit. Like when you say health,

What does that look like? Do you guys have some metrics you always kind of fall back to or some secret sauce? Like, so maybe some of our listeners could go, you know what? Like I can feel good about my smaller church because we are in a lot of these ways healthy and doing great things for the kingdom.

Terry Thompson (09:36)
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And we chose that tagline that specifically it's not about church size, it's about church health. Because there's so many different things like I'm not a big church growth guy, to be perfectly honest, but I am a big church health guy. Because I think all churches are different in their context. And to say, hey, if you do these three things, you can grow your church to be 1000 people. Well, that's just not the case, right?

Communities are different, churches are different, context is different, leadership's different. I all those kind of things that it's not a one size fits all. It can't be, every church is different. So we focus, when we do our year long engagement with pastors, what we're trying to help them figure out is, as they work with their leadership team, where is your church healthy? Where is it not healthy? How do we...

how do we put some tools, resources and best practices together to get your church healthy in areas that it's not? And one of the things that we often hear when pastors call us is something to this nature, my church is stuck, it's status quo, it's in decline, something along those lines, and I need help, but I don't know what to do next, right? And so I think one of the signs of a healthy church, and it's certainly not the only one.

But one of the signs of the Healthy Church is, do we have some kind of a strategic mission and plan to move the church forward if we're stuck? And a lot of pastors, probably like me, you come out of Bible college or seminary, and they taught me how to study the Bible. I never had one class on leadership, personal leadership, organizational leadership, nothing like that, strategic planning.

And so I know how to study the Bible, but then they throw me into an organization that I need to lead. I have no idea what I'm doing. And so that's what we find over and over again is that these well-meaning shepherds that love the church and love Jesus, they just don't have like, how do I put together a plan to like actually move this thing forward strategically according to a mission and a vision that we need to have for our church?

Rob Paterson (11:27)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (11:47)
That's good. So what are some of the things that you look for when you think of church health? What are some of the maybe categories that you're kind of getting the pulse of?

Terry Thompson (11:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yep, so we have multiple things we work on throughout the year. So the big categories would be this, we start with prayer. A church that's not a praying church, is not a healthy church. And I'm often reminded of Exodus 33 where when God got frustrated with the nation of Israel after the golden calf and all of that, and he said to Moses, he said, hey, listen, you guys go ahead and go, but I'm not gonna go with you, right?

Moses is like, whoa, time out, time out, you know, and he's like, hey, if you don't go with us, please don't send us up from this place. And I think we have to start by saying, we can have the best strategic plan in everything in the world, but if God doesn't go before us, like this thing's gonna be a failure, right? So we always start with that first dependence upon God, getting our leadership teams praying, getting our church praying. God, we really want.

Rob Paterson (12:25)
you

Terry Thompson (12:49)
to be on mission for you. Help us, lead us, guide us as we go through that. And so we always start there. Then we talk about, is Christ the head of the church? And I think there's four things that we focus on in that next session that Christ was about and the early church was about, preaching, prayer, evangelism, and the multiplication of leaders.

And so we do evaluations on all of those with the church and help them see Listen if Christ is really going to be the head of the church like these things have to be priorities And if we're not and we're not doing those things well Then that's probably some of the reasons why the church is not healthy and so we walk through those Then then we talk this is a big one. This is always huge for these pastors. We talk about vision and mission and core values

Jason Allison (13:41)
Hmm.

Terry Thompson (13:42)
and how mission drives everything and you got to have good alignment if you know where you're going then you can know how you're going to get there but if you don't know where you're going then you're just kind of aimlessly wandering around and so that one's a really big session for the pastors they always want more from that help us figure that out better help us get more clarity on what a mission statement, vision statement, values

How do we align all those things for where we're going? So that's a really significant session. And then we talk about, the pastor healthy? And talk about what that looks like. And then we add one that's really, I think, very important that most, a lot of times just gets missed. We do a whole session on, is the pastor's wife healthy? And they're just such an integral part of the team.

Rob Paterson (14:27)
Mm.

Jason Allison (14:27)
Mm.

Terry Thompson (14:33)
That and it gets overlooked and my wife Kelly and I we wrote a book for pastors wives because there just wasn't much out there and And so we talked about that one and then we talked about the staff and the structure Is is do we have the right people on the bus in the right seat? It's the old Jim Collins good to great book And then we talked about filters for getting the right people on your leadership team So that they're really helping you

Jason Allison (14:51)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (14:58)
And then our structure piece is, your constitution and your bylaws, are those things healthy and set up so it's really not if your church goes through difficulty, but when they go through it, because all churches will, does that thing actually help the leadership team move the church through the storm instead of hamstringing them and sinking the boat? so...

Rob Paterson (15:20)
Hmm.

Terry Thompson (15:21)
So we look at a variety of things as we go throughout the year. And then all of that is plugged into at the end of the session, at the of our year, into a three to five year strategic plan for you can't do everything in a year, but let's prioritize what do we need to do this year? What do we need to do next year? And we've helped them work through the process of deciding where are we not healthy, what needs to get healthy, and then how do we do that? So those are kind of the main.

Jason Allison (15:49)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (15:50)
big categories that we go through.

Jason Allison (15:53)
Yeah, I like that. mean, what I like, probably what I like most about that is that you, you know, squeezed it into a year. I've just been to too many where they tried to do that in an afternoon seminar or, you know, I mean, like it's just this one podcast and we'll give you the answer to all of that. And what I find, especially, I mean, pastors, I run into this all the time. accountability is one of the hardest things because especially, you know, if you're a small

church pastor, there really isn't anyone else. You're going to the office every day by yourself. You're not seeing people, you know, so there's that mutual accountability is often lacking. and, so to get some of that stuff done, it, you know, Sunday comes every week, whether you're ready or not, you know, and, so you got that tyranny, the urgent going back to Jim Collins of these things that have to happen and shoot you, you don't actually pause.

long enough to think through all those things you just mentioned. So I really like that you spread that out so there's time to process. Excuse me, it's not just a quick, yeah, here, okay, there's your mission statement, okay, next. There's so much more to that, yeah.

Rob Paterson (16:47)
Mm.

Terry Thompson (16:56)
Right, Yeah.

Rob Paterson (16:59)
Mm-mm, that's good.

Terry Thompson (17:00)
Yeah, we have, I can show you this. I know you can't see it on the podcast if you're just listening, but this is our revitalization playbook that I wrote. And this is what we take the guys through. And what we say to them is this isn't like the notebook that you get at a conference and you go home and you stick it on your shelf and you never look at it again. This stays on the top of your desk.

And this is something that we're going to continually refer to and work through throughout the course of a year. And one of the ways that we build accountability into that is when the pastors engage with us, they have to agree to work with their leadership team, whatever that looks like for them. And we start with a two day retreat where we bring all the guys into Crawfordsville and we do some leadership development things and stuff with that and get them started.

They get to meet their cohort and we have a guide pastor that works through with them for the year. But when the retreat's over, we also schedule a zoom call with the pastor and their leadership team just to say, hey, we had a great time meeting your pastor at our retreat. We're excited about where you guys are going. And so, the deacons, elders, whatever that group is, like they know what's expected moving forward as well.

Jason Allison (18:14)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (18:15)
And we have a scaled down version of the playbook that all of the leadership team gets to. So after we lead a pastor through a session, he has his playbook, he has all the PowerPoint presentations. He works the leadership team through that session. Then they do evaluations on their church. So we're trying to lead the leader to lead the leaders. And so there's a lot of accountability built into this intentionally.

and spread out over time so that you can digest it as we go.

Rob Paterson (18:43)
Hmm. That's.

Courtney (18:44)
Yeah, that sounds like

a really big, know, core piece that differentiates maybe your program from, from others. And so it makes me wonder, there like other things other than the accountability and the like leading the leader to lead the leaders that you're like, this really kind of sets small church USA apart from, from other networks, helping churches revitalize or do similar things.

Terry Thompson (19:02)
Yeah, you know, I don't, and I, and I run in a lot of circles of people that do revitalization. I've not run into anybody that does it like us yet. That's willing to take, a year and really invest in these guys. a lot of people will try it in three months or whatever. I've done leadership coaching for an organization out of Texas for a long time. And what I learned by doing that was if people are really going to get it.

like they need consistency over time. and you can't shorten and cheapen the process or it won't stick. but like we're just getting to the end of a couple of cohorts. had our, month 11 today. I did a session today and at the, at the end of our next session, they'll have their three to five year plan built out. and what we tell them is, this isn't the end. It's actually the beginning.

Jason Allison (19:31)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (19:31)
Mm.

Jason Allison (19:54)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (19:54)
Now you have your plan. Okay, we've helped

Rob Paterson (19:56)
Mm.

Terry Thompson (19:56)
you get your plan. Now you have to keep executing your plan. And we'll do quarterly follow-up calls with them to see if they're getting stuck anywhere, know, that kind of a thing. So I think that does make it unique, Courtney. And I think that's a great question. I think the other thing that we do is the two-day retreat's huge to get to know all these guys very individually and personally.

Jason Allison (20:00)
Yeah.

Courtney (20:11)
Mm-hmm.

Terry Thompson (20:20)
But then every one of our cohorts, we'll put guys in cohorts of five or six guys and they stay together for a year. Each of those has what we call a guide pastor in it. Another seasoned pastor in a healthy, vibrant church that's gonna stay with that group for the whole year. So I'll be doing the teaching, but between our monthly Zoom calls, that guy, the guide pastor, will call each of his pastors individually every month and just check in with them. Hey, how you doing?

Did you get stuck anywhere with your leadership team? What else is going on? How can we help? So really every two weeks throughout the course of a year, they're getting a touch from us. And so we are very intentional and intensive with the pastors that we've.

Jason Allison (20:57)
Wow.

Rob Paterson (20:58)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (21:02)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (21:04)
Hmm. Yeah, that's so good. Terry, you you made a statement that one of the things you assess is just the health of the leader, the health of the pastor, which I think is important. When you said that in my head, I just kept thinking as Christians, right? We're really great at coming up with all these little pithy sayings that that may or may not even be biblical, but like they stick in our heads because we've heard them from either famous people or over and over again. So I think of

Jason Allison (21:24)
you

Rob Paterson (21:30)
John Maxwell's everything rises and falls on leadership, right? Or, or the global leadership summit, when the leader gets better, everyone gets better. or, and this is like my favorite one, and this is probably of all of these, this is maybe the one I disagree with the most, the, the idea that, things that are healthy always grow. It's like, I've seen lots of unhealthy people multiply way faster than healthy people. so, you know, w would you talk a little bit about,

Cause again, I think, I think we have people who are good people who are healthy people even, or are really working on that to become and to be as healthy as possible. But maybe, you know, again, organizationally they're like, I must not be healthy because I'm not seeing the numerical success or other kinds of success in my context. Would you talk just about like what you observe in terms of the relationship between leaders and their organizations and

You know what? If I'm a healthy leader, but my organization doesn't seem to be able to get healthy or whatever, you know, does that make sense?

Terry Thompson (22:35)
Yeah, yeah. That's why I think in this realm, you have to look at it corporately and not individually, right? It isn't like one thing is the problem. Generally, there's multiple things that need to be worked on. And so, you you might have a great pastor that loves his people and he's a great shepherd and...

you know, all of that, but maybe his skill isn't organizational skill. And maybe that there is an area there that he needs to grow in. And that's what that's where we would focus our leadership on with them. And I agree with you. Healthy things grow a lot of unhealthy things grow too. If you have mold in your house, it'll grow like crazy, right? And it's not healthy. So, so yeah, I agree with that. My

Jason Allison (23:16)
Mm-hmm.

Terry Thompson (23:19)
The phrase that we like to use with leadership is this leadership is a behavior that influences others and drives an outcome and And I love that definition because everybody can change Behaviors that are holding me back from being the highest and best I can be sometimes we just don't know what those are and again a good evaluation tool will help me know where do I need to grow in order to help my organization

And so we think, I don't care who you are, everybody has areas they can work on to be a better leader. Probably all of us have blind spots. And blind spots are incredibly dangerous because we don't know what they are. So if we can identify them and self-evaluate and get some good tools to do that, which we do, then we can figure out, how can I become a better leader for...

the organization and areas that I need to grow in, because if we can grow the leader, we think we can grow the organization. I think those two things do correlate in some regards.

Rob Paterson (24:24)
Yeah, that's good.

Jason Allison (24:25)
Yeah, we just a few weeks ago had a guest on who, friend he's, he's created a, 360 self-aware type thing. and so we, had a great time talking to him about some of that stuff out. You're, right. You know, that's the problem with blind spots. You can't see them, you know? and so finding those is often a huge step towards, towards fixing that.

And then it of course comes back around to the accountability piece. Even if I know about it, if I'm not doing anything about it, it's almost worse. But if I've got someone who's holding me accountable in that process and not like they've got a stick waiting to hit you for not doing something, it's more of a mutual accountability where you both want the best for each other. That can be a very healthy thing. I'm just curious what other

like maybe obstacles are you noticing in churches? Where are things that are happening that are just getting in the way of health?

Terry Thompson (25:25)
Yeah, I think like all churches, especially maybe churches that are status quo or declining, a lot of times they do have an elderly or more elderly congregation. so just like, how do you create the urgency to get them out of the status quo? And so

Like I'm just about ready to publish a book on revitalization. It's got like four steps to it. But step number one is that crisis has to heighten the urgency. And what we see a lot of times is that there is a crisis, but there's not enough urgency to match the crisis. And so to get people to the place where they're willing to make some changes and do some things to actually address the crisis is a big obstacle, honestly.

In in moving things forward because any time we change change equals loss Even if it's a good change, right? But people are gonna something's gonna change in their life and they're gonna lose something that they've had for a long time and that's still hard for them and we so we have to understand that Sometimes when when people are giving us a little bit of resistance, it's not always bad But they're losing something we got to understand that that loss is hard

Rob Paterson (26:28)
Hmm.

Terry Thompson (26:40)
And that's what change brings. But so many times change has to be made because the definition of insanity, if we do the same thing over and over again, expect different results, that's insanity, right? So trying to raise that urgency to get people to the place where, okay, we've got to do some things to change, I think is really important.

Jason Allison (27:00)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (27:02)
And I think for leaders, one of my favorite phrases is this, and it's from the book, Canoeing the Mountains. Are you familiar with that book by Todd Bolsinger? Incredible book. It's one of the books we read with our cohorts. But one of the quotes in his book is this, leaders have to disappoint their people at a rate they can absorb. so leaders, like we have to push them out of the status quo, but we have to do it at a rate they can absorb.

Jason Allison (27:02)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (27:08)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (27:29)
And so I think there's like, it's a tricky balance for leaders to move people and to challenge them. But I love that quote and I love that book. It's really a good

Jason Allison (27:40)
Yeah. And I've seen leaders air on both sides of that. Right. You know, and it's the air because they try to change everything at once. You know, they come in and kind of, you know, bully through. But, know, the other thing is if the pain of staying the same isn't is, is not greater than the pain of changing, then they're not going to change. And so how do you create that urgency without

Rob Paterson (27:59)
Mm.

Jason Allison (28:04)
you know, lighting a fire, so to speak, or maybe not even figuratively, but actually, you know, how do you get something to move so that they have to actually move? can't, they can't sit there anymore. I don't know. you seen like any, anything happen that, that a leader can actually stir change or does it take like a crisis? I mean, you know, an outside agency or something that just

And maybe it's just we can't make the mortgage payment anymore unless something happens. That's a crisis. I don't know. What have you seen in that? Can leaders really light that fire in a figurative way before they have to do it in a real way?

Terry Thompson (28:40)
Yeah,

well, I think ultimately, you know, if we're just going to like talk theology for a minute, obviously, God has to change the heart, right? So we can try to motivate and bring that in. But I think there are things that leaders can do to help raise the urgency in a church. And sometimes it's just being honest with the church about where things are. A friend of mine just merged with another church and it was a really close vote.

Whether or not to do the merger or not do the merger but the people that were in the church that ended up getting merged into They had $17 in their bank account left and so the next week they were going to start defaulting on their mortgage and Electric bills and all that but the people they didn't tell the people that and so so sometimes

Rob Paterson (29:26)
Hmm.

Terry Thompson (29:29)
In trying to protect and whether it's a pride issue or just a protection issue or whatever it is Sometimes because we don't let the people know like where we really are and we're just honest in that evaluation That doesn't help people understand the crisis. It doesn't heighten the urgency and I think a bigger danger is there's a lot of churches that actually have money in the bank and so they can keep the doors open and That becomes a false sense of security that we're healthy

Rob Paterson (29:55)
Hmm.

Terry Thompson (29:56)
We're healthy because we can keep the doors open and pay the bills. That is a false sense of health. Because if you're not accomplishing the mission of the Great Commission, you're actually not a healthy church. so yeah, think that's why I think prayer is so incredibly important and strategy is that you lead people with vision. And if you're not going to cast a vision for why we need to be doing what we're doing biblically,

the people are very easy to stay just in the status quo.

Jason Allison (30:25)
Yeah.

Courtney (30:26)
What are some of the success stories? I know I can at least think of dozens of stories where you're like, oh man, this is a hard situation with a hard pastorate and the church is hard to move. But what are some of the success stories? And all of them don't have to be like yours, like 24 to 1,000. But what could it look like for a church to somewhat still remain small but get healthier?

Terry Thompson (30:50)
Yeah. So, so I'll give you one that the guys in our cohort right now, he's just about done with his year. When we started, his leadership team was very hesitant, didn't know if they wanted to do this. And they jumped into it. And it's a small elderly congregation. And the pastor didn't come from like a big mega church or anything like that, you know, we just, and so we started working and he got some pushback initially about

especially some mission and vision things about like having those statements to help direct us where we're going and the people like, why don't we just like preach the Bible, right? And we certainly want to do that but strategy along with that is very helpful. And so he was getting some pushback and I said to him, I said, hey listen, disappoint your people to rate they can absorb, right? So if you're pushing them too hard right now on that, just let it set.

Right? Let it sink in, let them process, keep going in the process. We'll keep working through some things. so, two months ago, in our cohort call, says, he goes, hey, can I tell you something really weird that happened? And I'm like, sure. And he goes, and I didn't even bring this up, but some of our leadership brought it up and said, hey, do you think we need to change the name of our church? Do you think that would help us?

reach more people and get more people in the doors and I said That's fantastic, right? Even if you don't change your name what you've done is you've helped lead them out of the status quo where at least they're thinking outside the box now and And so he started to see some of that today in our cohort call He was like man. I'm super excited. Like we just added four new deacons to our leadership team

And so his leadership team is growing. His church is thinking outside the box. They've leaned into the process. He goes, we're ready to execute this three-year plan that we're going to have by the end of the next month. so when we see things like that, it hasn't been explosive growth. But what it is is that church is getting healthy.

And as they get healthy and as they start figuring out the strategy for how to move things forward, more good things are gonna come out of that is what's gonna happen. So we hear stories like that all the time. It's not always exposed to growth. During our retreat, Courtney, just to give you one more example, one of the guys, say to them, we talk about prayer just before we leave. And I asked them,

Courtney (32:54)
Hmm.

Rob Paterson (33:05)
So good.

Terry Thompson (33:18)
Hey, if you had to pick like one big thing, one BHAG, right? We call big, holy, audacious goals. What do you want God to do for your church that's past you? And this one guy goes, he goes, well, he goes, like we run like 50 people. I'd like to see our church doubled by the end of the year. I'm like, that's a big goal, dude. Like double, double, that's huge, right? And so we get to the end of the year.

And he says, he goes, Hey guys, like at the retreat, said, I wanted church to double. And he goes, he goes, I thought there is no way that that can happen. But he goes, we've been praying about it. he goes, last Sunday we had 98 people in church and we had two families gone. If they'd have been there, we'd have got over that hundred mark, you know? And so, you know, so we see things like that too, where we don't know how God's going to work. That's not up to us.

Courtney (34:04)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (34:05)
Ha ha ha ha!

Jason Allison (34:06)
Thank

Terry Thompson (34:14)
But we know if the church gets healthy some really positive things will happen and the church family gets inspired and energized When there is a plan and when the plan is working

Rob Paterson (34:25)
Mm, that's, that's great. Terry, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking to myself, you know, we live in a culture where we sort of are addicted to this idea that bigger is, is always better. I'm wondering, you know, as, as we think about health, what are some ways, what are some areas that actually smaller churches can succeed in Excel where maybe bigger churches would have a harder time? Like I always joke with people, you know, I have a

Courtney (34:26)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Paterson (34:52)
I have a little bit larger church in a very small town and it's like, you know, you're like, we only had $500 in our offering. Well, you only needed 900 in order to pay for everything. You know, we need 10,000. So if 5,000 comes in, we're like 5,000 short, you know, like it's, it's kind of a similar thing. It's just on, on different levels. And maybe for some of our listeners, you know, if they're pastoring smaller churches, where could they focus their energy and get maybe a bigger return on investment?

Terry Thompson (35:21)
Yeah, that's a great question. I'll tell you what I have said to people over and over again, coming out of Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio to Crawfordsville, Indiana, I think you can really do grassroots ministry much more effectively and have a bigger impact in a small town than you can in a large town. my example is when we went to relocate our church,

We wanted to do a project with the city and needed the city to help us do some stuff. And so I called the mayor. His name was Charlie. I call it, Hey Charlie, it's Terry over at at Rock Point Church. Hey, can we grab lunch? Cause I want to throw something by you. Yeah, let's meet a pizza hut. know, and like, I can't do that in Indianapolis. I can't do that in Columbus, Ohio. I can do that in Crawfordsville, Indiana. I can know the police chief. I can know the

Courtney (36:01)
Mm-hmm.

Terry Thompson (36:07)
the mayor, I said hi to the mayor the other day at Culver's. He walked in and he's a friend and we chatted for a while. And so I think there's things in a smaller context that you can actually be incredibly effective in your context of your community and actually have a greater impact than you can maybe in metropolitan areas. And it's just a matter of figuring out.

Where can we actually make a difference in our community? And again, part of that is strategy. But man, small towns have the family feel to them, right? And you get to know people and sometimes bigger context, like, know, church of a thousand people, we have people walk through the doors every Sunday. I have no idea who they are. That didn't happen when we were running 20 people. And when we were running 20 people, I called everybody every week.

Rob Paterson (36:54)
Mm.

Jason Allison (36:54)
Yeah.

Terry Thompson (36:58)
That went out the window shortly after we started to grow, you know, but so I think there's man like you can minister well to people If you can figure out what your niche is in the community I think you can have a real missional impact in your community in a small Context much more than you can in the large

Jason Allison (37:16)
Yeah, I love that I've passed. planted a church and pastored for 17, 18 years, you know, in a small town. I still live there. And, you know, like you said, I'm friends with the mayor, the police chief, and I used to grab coffee once a month, you know, like that was just and so there is a ministry that can happen there that is really important to embrace. And I know when I would struggle, oftentimes I'd struggle because I

was trying to operate as though I was in a big city and a big church and not just embracing the opportunities in front of me. I kept thinking about the bigger, the brighter, the big, you know, and so there is a, think all of our pastors and leaders that, that listened to this podcast, I think that's an important lesson is, you know, be fully present where you're at. You know, if you do ministry there in a context that makes sense there, you know, mean, Courtney, you're down in, South Carolina or

Terry Thompson (38:02)
Yes.

Rob Paterson (38:02)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (38:10)
You know, in that North Carolina. Yeah, sorry. I was, just had a call earlier with someone in South Carolina. That's what threw me. Um, you know, the Raleigh Durham area area though, and that's different. Like you're kind, there's only there, but there are things you can do there. And, and, know, Tim, your husband who's, you know, professor or research professor, whatever it do. Like he's, he is working and you guys are operating within that context. And I love that. And so that's where I, I want our pastors to hear wherever you're at, be there.

Courtney (38:10)
North. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Allison (38:41)
And

that's a starting point. I'm not saying that's going to fix everything. If you really want to go further, call Terry and get involved in a cohort, spend a year diving in, evaluating, assessing, planning, creating a strategy. Yeah, those are all just so important. Maybe we're kind of running low on time now, so I don't want to keep you in it too much longer, but what kind of words of encouragement do you have?

for pastors, whether they're at a large church. You some of our listeners are pastors of huge churches and some of them are pastors of a church of 12. So, you know, it runs the gamut. But what kind of encouraging words might you have for them?

Terry Thompson (39:16)
Yeah, you know, as you were just saying that a minute ago, I was thinking about, you know, that the famous line from Esther for such a time as this, right? Where you are is not by accident. It's actually by God's divine plan that you are there for such a time as this. And our world needs pastors. We need faithful pastors. We need pastors that are going to love their people and preach the word and

Share the gospel of Jesus Christ. I mean all of those things and so I would just say like you did Jason just a minute ago Hey be present where you are. God has you there for such a time as this doesn't mean you're gonna be there forever but while you're there, that's where God wants you and so make the greatest difference for the kingdom that you can and And and just embrace it, you know ministry is a calling and it's a high calling and it's it's not always an easy calling

but God will always enable us to what he has called us to. And so just give it everything you have because what we do, it makes a difference for eternity. And I think sometimes we got to see the big picture and we lose sight with all the crud around us. But man, it's an eternal impact that we're someday for people that are gonna spend an eternity with Christ.

Jason Allison (40:23)
Hmm.

Rob Paterson (40:26)
Mm.

Jason Allison (40:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. Well, Terry, thank you for taking the time to share a little bit not only about the ministry, but really just to encourage our listeners. think and of course, they can reach out to you, smallchurchusa.com and so forth. And of course, we'll put all those links. And as you release this new book, let me know, please. We'll talk about it and share it and so forth. Maybe even have you back on to talk through it more because we, you know.

We don't want you to share any of the secrets until, you know, it's been published, but yeah, exactly. Exactly. but yeah, no, we appreciate it. And to, all our listeners, please reach out if you have any questions, if you'd like to hear more and maybe you can't get through for some reason, you can always reach us at, the church talk project.com. you can find us, find more there. You can email any of us, Jason Courtney, Rob at churchdocproject.com. we would love to hear from you.

Terry Thompson (41:01)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (41:02)
Till everybody's got their copy.

Courtney (41:03)
Right. Yeah.

Terry Thompson (41:04)
Yeah, that's

right.

Jason Allison (41:26)
And we would of course connect you with Terry if that's a, if that's something you could do. Thank you, Terry, Rob Courtney, as always love hanging out with you guys. It's always such a joy just being together and to the rest of our listeners have an amazing week and thanks for being part of this. get a chance, share the podcast and hit that subscribe button. It really helps us out a lot. Have a great week.