The Thriving Church with Dale Sellers

In this conversation, Dale Sellers and Jason Allison discuss the upcoming Thriving Church Conference, sharing insights from their experiences in ministry and church leadership. They explore the importance of foundational principles for healthy churches, address common barriers to engagement, and highlight leadership traits necessary for thriving ministries. The discussion emphasizes the need for clarity in vision, community involvement, and the significance of supporting small and mid-sized churches.

For more visit www.churchtalkproject.com or www.95Network.org

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the New Conference
03:17 Jason's Journey in Ministry
06:04 Reflections on Church Planting
09:00 Challenges of Church Leadership
11:26 The Importance of Support Networks
14:23 Introducing the New Conference Details
17:18 Foundational Principles for Healthy Churches
21:21 Navigating Church Engagement: Clear Next Steps
25:35 Unified Purpose: The Heart of Church Mission
26:21 Overcoming Barriers: Internal Inspiration and Vision
30:54 Leadership Insecurity: Addressing Common Challenges
34:18 Cultural Relevance: Understanding Community Needs
36:53 Leadership Traits: Embracing Effective Practices
42:25 Healthy Churches: The Path to Growth and Impact
44:09 New Chapter

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Transcript

Jason Allison (00:02)
Hello, Church Talk podcast listeners. A couple of weeks ago, I talked with my good friend, Dale Sellers of 95 Network. We're working on a project together that we are calling the Thriving Church Conference. We're planning to have it available before summer. Dale and I recorded the conversation for the 95 Network podcast, and I wanted to share it with you, the Church Talk family. If you have questions or if you want to learn more, I'll have links in the show notes.

or you can visit 95network.org or churchtalkproject.com. Also, I would love to hear what issues you're facing in leadership and in ministry. Please email me at jason at churchtalkproject.com. Here's my conversation with Dale Sellers about the Thriving Church Conference.

Speaker 1 (00:50)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the 95 podcast. This is Dale Sellers, executive director of 95 network. Hanging out with Jason Allison today. As most of you know, Jason's one of the members of our team at 95 network. And today we are going to share with you some exciting new information. We have a brand new conference that we are rolling out. Really honestly, it'll probably hit the hardest this fall coming up. We're recording this now in April of 2025.

But we want to kind of go over some information that's in it to let you know what's in it. And then maybe even see if you'd be willing to host it in your area or just have your, I think your whole staff through it, whatever you want to do. But anyway, that's what the podcast is going to be about today about this exciting new conference. But first of all, Jason, how you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:32)
I'm doing great. I really am.

Speaker 1 (01:35)
That's really good to hear, You're becoming quite the world traveler. Well, I guess the America traveler.

Speaker 2 (01:41)
Yeah, I don't travel the world, yeah, getting around a lot. But no, I'm doing doing really well. How are you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:47)
You know what? I'm living the dream. and sometimes it's scary, but it's a dream. And, I'm excited about this new information. Well, what basically what happened for those who are listening is we, we try, we haven't, we don't get to do it every year just for financial reasons, but we try to bring our whole team together from all over the country in January. and just talk about where we are, you know, what, what, what is 95 network doing? There's, there's we're doing this.

working that we need to continue with, are there things that we're doing that's not working? Or is there things out there that need to be addressed in our specific arena that we aren't addressing? And we spend time praying together and talking together. We've got some really, really sharp people on the team. And that's kind of where this information that we're going to unveil today came from. It came from our team meeting, just trying our best to come along beside and support small and mid-sized churches.

And so I'm pretty excited about what's coming. I'm actually excited about the next few years because I felt there's a shift, there's a movement happening in the church as a whole where I know the next generations are really beginning to check out church, looking for authenticity and real. And if you want to equip and be equipped, you have an opportunity to really be impactful in your area.

with that, is kind of a backdrop before we get into the specifics of the new conference. There may be people listening who don't know who Jason is. and so Jason, take a moment just to recap a little bit of your story. And then we'll kind of dive into what, what we're gonna talk about today.

Speaker 2 (03:17)
Yeah, sure. I mean, the highlights are back in about 2018 ish, I believe I reached out to the unstuck group because I got a grant or they said I could qualify for one to get a coach. And I was at a pretty low point in ministry. And so I reached out and they stuck me with this guy called Dale Sellers. And so since then, our friendship has grown. so I know I

I talk about you often as one of the people who really kept me in ministry and kept me from bailing on a whole lot of stuff in that time. And so over the last five, six years, you and I have become friends and we've worked together on several things and I've enjoyed my connection with the 95 network. But also in that process, I am now serving as the Director of Church Strengthening for Converge Mid-Atlantic.

officially like full time as of just a week ago. So that's been a journey as well. So yeah, I travel around the East coast basically and try to come up with tools and resources to help churches and our little family, our little tribe to help them grow as healthy churches and healthy leaders.

Speaker 1 (04:25)
How long had you been in ministry when we connected?

Speaker 2 (04:28)
When we connected, it would have been about 28 years, give or take.

Speaker 1 (04:34)
I thought it was the long way, almost 30 years. you've been in ministry for almost 30 years and you have served, like you were like, you did the children's ministry for a large church, if I remember that. Yep. And that was, had gone very well. Talk about that and then going into the planting part.

Speaker 2 (04:48)
Yeah, I mean, I children's ministry at a really large church and then became the, this is a great title, the director of spiritual maturity at a church plant.

Speaker 1 (04:57)
We need you to do that for the people on the network. I'm going sign off, need some help.

Speaker 2 (05:01)
Yeah, I did that. And that was a church plant. Actually, the guy who the youth pastor that had kind of helped me realize my call to ministry planted that church and asked me to come back and to help him because it had grown. so while I was there, it grew from about four or five hundred over the next eight years. We were running well over two thousand on a weekend. you know, I was the.

associate guy, right? And so I did that and from there then planted. I left that church with their blessing and so forth to go plant a church about an hour south just outside of Columbus, Ohio. So that was about seven, 18 years ago when that happened.

Speaker 1 (05:38)
Why did you go plant a church?

Speaker 2 (05:40)
Well, I thought God was calling me to You're still asking yourself that same question. I do think he did, but his ways are not our ways. I planted the church and there are lots of people whose lives have been changed out of the ministry of that. I think we had almost 100 baptisms over the 10 to 12 years that we were operating and so forth.

So I mean, you I do feel like that there was a calling in that and that God was moving. And then in the process ended up bringing that to a close by merging it into another church plant that a couple of friends of mine were wanting to do in the same area, merge that together. And then I stayed on as more the number two guy to support the lead pastor, kind of handed him the baton. And so that's been for the last five years, what I've been doing.

And that church plant is going pretty well. we're seeing people baptized, we're seeing things happen that are good. it's not this explosive, we're not gonna make the cover of any magazines, but it's still God is moving. Even out of the stuff that happened in my tenure as the church planter and lead pastor, some was really, really good and then some of it was a struggle. And so, yeah, I had to learn from that.

Speaker 1 (06:53)
You were in ministry basically almost 20 years and you planted a church. How long did that last before you merged?

Speaker 2 (07:00)
It

would have been so 06 to 2020 so about 14 years

Speaker 1 (07:06)
Okay.

When you look back at that now, what do you think? What is your, when you look back at that, what was the name of that church you planted? Yeah. So a Terra Nova, when you look at Terra Nova, when we say that, what does that make you think?

Speaker 2 (07:15)
Terra Nova.

You know, that's an evolving answer, That's why I asked you that. Because I mean, right now I look back and part of me thinks, know, God, why did you call me to do that? Because I know good things happen, but I also know it was there were were consequences to the decision, you know, ripples in my family and strains and conflicts and, you know, just difficulty. Some of it is I would say was attack from the outside, you know, the enemy.

And some of it was, man, I was stretched in ways that I don't know that I was capable of meeting some things that needed to be done. So I have a mixture of, I'm so glad I did it. I'm so glad I was obedient. And God, what were you thinking when you did this? Like, why did you put me through that? Did I really need to go through that? So yeah, it kind of goes back and forth depending on the day and if the pizza I had last night was any good.

Speaker 1 (08:18)
I asked you that because I look back, you I pastored a small church for 12 years. It grew from 30 to 300 back to 150 because in the eighth year we had a terrible split. Our church was called Victory Life. And I look back at that and I just, have a, a...

a mixed bag of emotions when I look back at it, because one, I was not at all prepared or equipped to do what I was doing, but I was being told through the conferences and this was the church growth movement time. The principles, if you do this, your church will grow. If you do this, it'll grow. And I tried to do all that stuff and it didn't work. so what it did was it helped me realize how badly damaged I was.

I didn't realize at the time, you I didn't realize that, that, a lot of my, a lot of what I was doing, um, every, every time. And I'm still have to work through this one. This is we have a therapy session for a minute. So every time something negative happens, my first thought is what did I do wrong?

Speaker 2 (09:13)
Yes.

Yes.

Speaker 1 (09:18)
fact,

I'm thinking last week I was praying about it. think I'm going to write about this. It might even be the next thing I put out. It's just because the natural thought every time something negative happens or something doesn't come through or whatever, and I start going through the scenario of, well, they must be mad at me because of this or I did that or whatever. And it's just a horrible way to live.

Speaker 2 (09:38)
Yes. No, I totally understand what you're saying. Like that. That's still the case for me.

Speaker 1 (09:43)
So the church, so the way I describe it was in our heyday, and really what happened to us was there were three church splits that happened within six months of each other around us, and half of those people from those churches all came to our church. So we went from like 180 people to 306 months. And I knew then I was in trouble because I'm getting all the disgruntled. We're the new flashy thing, even though we weren't new or flashy.

And what I thought did happen, it all blew up in our face. And I remember just thinking, if I could have described what it was like leading back then, was like I was spinning plates. I was spinning plates. And so I feel like I had like seven plates I tried to keep spinning all the time. And I would raise up people, I would do all the things they told us to do. I'd pour into people, I would raise up leaders, I'd spend time with them, and I would raise them up, I would equip them, and I would hand off something to them.

and let them have that plate and begin to work on the other plates. And then it was like they would drop their plate on purpose. So I'd come out and hang out with them. Yeah. And so I remember realizing probably in about the eighth year, somewhere up near this church split time, these people, they don't want me to be their pastor. They want me to be their buddy. And that's when I realized, because I used to pray and go, okay, God, how do I know when it's time to leave? And now what I realized was somewhere in that season there, I got to the point where I was everybody's buddy.

Speaker 2 (10:50)
Yes.

Speaker 1 (11:02)
But I could not inspire them to do ministry, to use their gifts, to give, you know. And so what we ended up doing after we went through the split, we hung them for four more years and then we closed the church. It was not healthy enough to hand off even to an enemy. And so I talked to three pastors in our area, three different type churches. And I just said, hey, we are closing. I'm recommending your church is one of the churches that our people go to.

but I look back at it now and I'm going, if I hadn't gone through all that, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. Wouldn't have been able to write the book stalled. I wouldn't have gone through a lot of the counseling and revelation that I've gotten about why I was the mess that I was, or should I say why I am the mess that I am one of those works? know, I mean, I'm 60, I'm only 63 in June. We're recording this in April. I should, I should have arrived by now, but I haven't.

Speaker 2 (11:50)
Hahaha

Speaker 1 (11:53)
And so, so that's, you know, working in that setting. And I think this is, this would be true of you too, working in the settings that we worked in gives us a tremendous passion, compassion, patience, understanding all those words with small church pastors. Because, you know, and at my time, I really bought into the John Maxwell into leadership and there's so much that I learned from him, but I did catch some things. I'm not saying he taught these or he said this.

Speaker 2 (12:06)
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (12:18)
But I did get to the point where I thought, well, if you're just, if you're not a leader, you're just not worth anything. Right. If you're a manager, you don't count. Or if you, know, if you're not, if you're not driven, then you know, why, why are you even alive? mean, I just had this really disdain toward anybody who wasn't leadership oriented. and then I realized that's a sorry attitude and it's You know, the God made some people to be managers and some people to be leaders and some people to be.

Speaker 2 (12:39)
Yeah, there's that.

Speaker 1 (12:46)
We need all the parts of the body. so I realized today, and I think about this, if anybody asks me, why don't you do what you do at 95 network? Cause we've been this a long time now. And I think we can say this on the podcast. It's not often rewarding. And what I mean by that is we don't, we don't get a lot of boy, thank y'all.

Speaker 2 (12:48)
Yes.

Speaker 1 (13:06)
We're implementing what you're saying. We get a lot of resistance still. We're trying to help people. so, but I just remember there were multiple times, I didn't have a Jason, I didn't have a team, and there were multiple times that every time I say this, I could see this, that I'd lay on the floor of my office and cry for a friend. Because I'm going, God, I don't know who to talk to. I don't want to take this home to my family. I don't want to this burden on my wife. I don't want my kids to grow up in a hate church. And I've told this story.

Speaker 2 (13:22)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:31)
more recently, but I went to a board member. I went to one board member and I sat down with him at one of our favorite restaurants. And this guy, I hunted with this guy. I fished with this guy. He was one of my plate spinners. He was over our home group ministry. I mean, they would have 30 people show up at their house on Sundays after church for home group. I mean, he just could build community. And I just said, Hey, I need to talk to you today.

I said, and nothing's, nothing's happened. Nothing. haven't, I'm not quitting. I'm not, I'm not, you know, nothing immoral has happened. I just, I need to talk to you. I'm not, I'm, I've got some things going on. I just need to talk through. as I started talking, he puts his hand up across the table in front of me and said, stop, stop. He said, I don't need to hear this. He said, my life's a disaster and I need your life to be perfect. So I really don't want to know. And I just remember thinking of that day, I guess, I guess you do carry this by yourself and you do this alone.

Speaker 2 (14:23)
You're on your own.

Speaker 1 (14:24)
And as we both know, that's not true. And that's why I love Converge. That's why I love 95 Network. I love any ministry out there that's coming along beside supporting it. Dirt Roads Networks does this. Carl Vader's does this. But we just come along beside pastors and say, hey, you're not broken. You're not less than. A lot of you were not equipped to do what you're doing, whether you're in a small church or big church. And so we exist to help you guys.

What does that make you think?

Speaker 2 (14:50)
That makes me think I wish I was connected to something like this.

Speaker 1 (14:55)
I say that a lot. I wish 95 network had been here when I was there.

Speaker 2 (14:59)
Yes, yeah, yeah. Because a lot of it isn't, I didn't need, I had a lot of tools. I didn't necessarily know how to use them well, but I needed someone to just walk with me and say, hey, notice this, or don't forget this, or did you see how that went? Just the walking alongside thing that I just, didn't, we say this in the SoulCare seminar, but the problem with blind spots is that you can't see them.

and you need someone who can help you see them. And I didn't have that. And so I got blindsided a couple of times and it was as much my fault as the person who did it. so having something like this would have been just, I think it would have, I don't know that it would have changed the course of history necessarily because I think God has used some of that to get me to where, so I can't, you can always play that game of ifs and buts, right? If they were candy and nuts, I would have Merry Christmas. I do know,

what we are doing has the potential to truly support and help pastors and leaders.

Speaker 1 (16:00)
Well, you know, when, when I had the opportunity, cause I was, I was on the board for 95 network, 95 network was founded by Jim Powell out of Peoria, Illinois, and I was serving on the board. then, uh, uh, he's, he's, he stepped down and turned it over to me and some other pastors. And we had a group of pastors that, uh, were on our leadership team and they wanted me to be, they wanted me to be the head of 95 network.

to take executive director role. Well, I didn't want to do it because I was also already serving with the unstuck group where it's where I met you. And, and my whole life, I have always envisioned I've always going to be part of a great team. And man, the people at unstuck, you know, they were just such amazing. They all still are amazing people. Great, great leaders, great, very sharp, very smart people. And honestly, I didn't want to leave that because I had, I had, was a situation where I had to leave that to do this and I didn't want to leave it. And so I didn't do it for like six months.

And then God let some hard times come, not at Unstopped, but other areas that led me to say yes to this position. I've had opportunities to do things that I would have never had a chance to do before. But the point of sharing that was, is I was so blessed to be part of a team. And we've built a team here at 95 Network as well now. But when you're a small church pastor, you don't have a team.

Speaker 2 (17:19)
No.

Speaker 1 (17:20)
You know, so often you're an island. And I say that not because you choose to be one, sometimes it's just the way it is. And then, I've always said the reason that 95 % of churches are small is one of two, or mid-size. There's one or two reasons. Either one is the pastor is not an equipper. The pastor, in other words, they won't give things off to people because they need to be doing everything so they can be needed.

They'd rather cut the grass with the push more so they can get a pat on the back than get someone else to do it. And so there's this need inside of us to be affirmed. And that is certainly what drives some pastors. But the biggest problem or issue that I think causes it is that the church government system of the church government in America is not biblical, it's American. So we have a democracy mentality. And so they view the pastor as a harling.

The problem is that's not what God said. That's not how he told us to do it. And so he can't move and bless in that setting like he would if we were healthy, which leads us to the reason we're doing this podcast. It's just talk about the fact that we are breaking out a brand new conference. know, we still do the SoulCare conference. We still do our blueprint conference to help with structure and strategy. We still do the small church strategies conference, but we, as in our meeting in January, we just felt like

Speaker 2 (18:21)
Yes.

Speaker 1 (18:37)
God, there something that we need to be offering? And we spent a good bit of time before we even started working on anything, praying and just asking the Lord to lead us. And throughout the day, as we worked through some things, we came up with that basically we wanna help create healthy, thriving churches. And so we're doing a new conference right now. mean, the title could change, but right now we're calling it Equipping Principles for Cultivating a Healthy, Thriving Church. And this is some really good...

practical stuff. As I said, when I wrote stalled, I wish someone had written that book when I was stalled. And as I look at this stuff in this conference, I'm going, good gracious, why couldn't somebody have done this when we were pastoring?

Speaker 2 (19:09)
Yes.

Yes. Yes, timing is everything.

Speaker 1 (19:19)
Yes.

And so what we're going to do today is we're going to just kind of walk through just the overview of this conference. It's three sessions. And one of the things we have done at 95 network with our conferences, we've shortened them a lot. We try to kind of get them done in half a day so that if you show up at nine o'clock by noon, we are done with the conference and then we have lunch on site. And so this conference is going to do that as well. But it's three sessions that we've had in the past, but the last session.

It's something, you know, we're going to get out there a little bit and try something new. And we'll kind of talk about that in just a little bit. But the first session, we call it the foundation, foundation, foundational pillars to establish. So if you're leading a church, even though can't say that it is something, something that we're trying to do is we want to help churches understand that they've got to develop some foundational principles that will help guide them with, you know, how to do this. So if you want to, why don't you dive in a couple of those.

Speaker 2 (20:13)
Well, yeah, I mean, the first one is simply making involvement easy. You know, if you create an institution that no one can get into, it's going to be really hard to have a healthy institution where people are growing in their faith. And, you know, it's funny to me, though, how difficult it is for pastors to really have a clear next step. They kind of want to have a bunch of options, but nothing is really clear.

And so it's hard for people to know, hey, I came, I enjoyed this, I wanna be part of this, what do I do next? And when the answer to that question is three or four paragraphs long, then you end up getting overwhelmed and don't do anything.

Speaker 1 (20:53)
I recently did a vision day with the church that as we finished it out, we realized that the biggest problem was that one of the problems was they had was that they do membership process and they were upset because people were not joining. But as we dove into it, we realized they didn't have a clear process for you to join. So here they are, they're all upset with the people and going, you know, these people, won't join the church. And it's like, you don't have a clear next day. It's as simple as, you know, if someone comes to your church and they want to become a Christian,

Speaker 2 (21:09)
So yeah

Speaker 1 (21:21)
Is there a clear next step of what to do to do that? And it's kind of like you visit a church and there's no signage anywhere and you're like, need... Because someone says, someone with a restroom is, and you'll talk to a church about, oh, you need to have signage for And they're like, everybody knows where the bathroom is. No, they don't. And everybody doesn't know the clear next step. So that's why that's important. What's the second one?

Speaker 2 (21:44)
A unified purpose. this is one where, you know, churches, you got to know what the church is about. And, you know, you say this all the time, but, you 2000 years ago, there was a man who, you know, gave us a mission, right? And God gave us this book called the Bible. And in it, Jesus says, go and make disciples. And at some point, we have to be unified in our purpose. And that's going to grow out of spending time together praying.

Right. Evaluating what's going on around you. I call it exegeting your community. Right. You got to know the. Yeah. If you're going to learn how to reach them, you got to know who they are, which kind of leads to the next pillar, which is discovering God's desire. Right. When you, you know, we and we say this all the time at vision days, but, know, God wants to reach your community more than you do. And the question is, are you going to join him in that? Do you really want to say yes to God?

Speaker 1 (22:14)
I like that

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (22:36)
in giving him your church so that it can actually be, you know, it can accomplish something in the community in which it lives.

Speaker 1 (22:42)
Yeah. You know, another principle we're to talk about when we talk about these foundational principles is valuing evaluation. We do not do this in the small church very well at all where we actually evaluate. In fact, one of the big things that I say is in the small church, we're known for doing 20 things poorly instead of one or two things well.

And we need to hone down and focus in so that we can do those things. then we need to follow through. Another issue we see all the time is that churches, they don't follow through, there's no accountability. you've got to have an evaluation as a process you can put in place. Let me give you simple example. So we're recording this a couple of weeks before Easter.

I've seen churches who will make a big push, maybe two months before, we're going to do this at We're going to have this thing and they'll get banners printed and all this stuff. And they talk about this specialty thing they're going to do for Easter. And then something happens and it falls apart and then they don't do it. And then there's no accountability. There's no repercussions for that. And so you've got to have an evaluation process in place. And then the final principle in that first session that we talk about, our foundational principle, is just obeying the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 2 (23:49)
novel idea.

Speaker 1 (23:51)
Jason, I'm amazed, man. There's just a lot. I worked with a church recently that I just said, you know, we spent eight hours together the day and not one person mentioned anything about the Holy Spirit at all. And you're telling me you want a New Testament church and you want to be empowered to do what God called you to do. And yet there's no apparatus in place. There's no avenue in place to where you even acknowledged it. The Holy Spirit wants to move and work in your church. And so

That's a huge principle.

Speaker 2 (24:15)
Well, I mean, part of that too is I really believe that a healthy church needs a healthy leader. And so if the leader of the church, the pastor of the church is not regularly connecting with the Holy Spirit in times of prayer and study that aren't just preparing for a sermon, right? If that's not happening, then it's going to be really hard for the church as a whole to be led by the spirit.

Speaker 1 (24:39)
When I hear someone say that when I was pastoring, I was always convicted because I was always behind. I was always behind. I did so many of my sermons on Saturday night and sometimes Sunday morning. And I was so busy all week. I look back and go, what was I But, know, mean, my majority of study time in those days was just getting ready for Sunday. And that's not going to keep me healthy on the inside.

Speaker 2 (24:52)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:01)
So let's do this. Let's take a short break. We'll come back from the break and then we'll talk about sessions two and three. And we're just giving you just a broad overview of the things we're going to cover in this new conference on developing or equipping you to cultivate a healthy, thriving church. So take a short break. Be right

Back here with Jason Allison, just talking through some of the content of our new conference and really the heart. We spent some time at the front, just talking about the heart of why we do what we do and why we're trying to serve small and mid-sized churches.

because Jason and I both have been part of the small mid-sized church. We both pastored those. didn't fail. We just didn't blow the doors off.

Speaker 2 (25:44)
We did not make the cover of any magazines.

Speaker 1 (25:47)
Oh,

maybe the wrong ones anyway. So we talked in the first session about just some foundational pillars that you and I have in place. And we'll walk through the second session. So we'll take a break after that one. And then we'll do some questions around tables for the people who attend. And we'll come back to the second session. And this session addresses common barriers.

that prevent engagement, know, barriers that we have in place, things that either we know we have in place or we don't know we have place, that keep people from getting engaged or involved in, you know, walking through what God has for them. So Jason, what's the first one of those?

Speaker 2 (26:21)
The first one is that there's no internal inspiration or intentional calling, which basically pastors, they don't have a vision for where this church could go or what it could become. Well, you know what? tell you, one of the reasons there's a problem is because if you don't have a vision for it, someone else will. Yeah. And then you're not the one actually leading the church. And yet you're the one that God has called.

Speaker 1 (26:36)
Is that a problem?

Speaker 2 (26:50)
to lead the church, and that's gonna create some problems.

Speaker 1 (26:54)
You know, we're not going to go into all of this details of every one, but this particular one, I think we need to spend a little time talking about this. So, so some of things that we address here is, know, when you don't have clarity in your mission and vision, sometimes you just make stuff up.

Speaker 2 (27:07)
yeah.

And then we call it the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1 (27:10)
Remember,

know, the example that I've always heard is, you know, it's like taking spaghetti and throwing it on the wall and see what sticks and then whatever sticks, that's kind of what you do. That's not really very inspired.

Speaker 2 (27:19)
You just end up with a bunch of spaghetti everywhere when you do that and a big mess.

Speaker 1 (27:24)
Exactly

what happens. Yeah. Another point that we make in there too is, know, and I've, I've seen this one more times than not is when you don't have a vision, you just copy somebody else's.

Speaker 2 (27:34)
Yeah, yeah. And it doesn't work. It's just there where it works for them. That context is not your context. You know, there's some things you can learn from it. I'm not saying don't look, but my goodness, at some point, you've got to say, God called me for this time in this place. And he asked me to bring myself to this. What is he now asking me to do with all of that? And that's the only way it's going to work.

Because, and like I already said, if you aren't casting any vision, another thing we're talking about is your followers, the people of the church, they're gonna push you to basically do theirs, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (28:13)
I have never heard anyone address this issue. I started talking about this, I think three or four years ago, but one of the things that happens when, you are not communicating vision, if you're not communicating mission and either, know, which is why we exist and visions where we're going is as a leader, if you're not communicating that.

you have people in your church that love Jesus, they love you, and they love that church, and they love the community, and they want to do something to impact. And so what happens is, is they will start trying to help you figure out something to do. And the tendency is, is to label those people as bad or as Jezebels or as rebellious because you feel that pressure.

They're not trying necessarily to be mean-spirited. They just want the church to go somewhere and do something. at this point, they believe in you. But what happens is this is an area, I've just seen this over and over, it will create so much division between the leader and their congregation. It'll create separation. It'll create distrust. When you aren't clear, if you're not communicating where we're going and they start trying to push you to do that, somebody's going have to come to Jesus' meeting.

you know what saying? At some point that's going to happen and I have just seen that happen over and over and over which would kind of lead us to what happens is when you feel that pressure you'll sometimes just create diversions to get the attention off yourself.

Speaker 2 (29:45)
Well, when you don't know what you're doing, just look busy so nobody asked. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's kind of the idea is, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (29:53)
I as you said that, that's kind what I did. Like I told you, I'd get there on Saturday night and I'm going, man, I don't have my sermon ready for tomorrow. But I never looked back and go, well, what did I do all week? Because again, I'm not talking about pastoring thousands of people. The majority of my time, we averaged 150 basically. And that's counting kids and everybody. And I had a youth pastor and a children's person. So it's like, I mean, what did I do?

Well, I think part of what I did was I tried to stay busy so I didn't have to deal with the fact that I didn't know what I was doing.

Speaker 2 (30:27)
Yes. And I mean, I have done the same thing. So no judgment on this end, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (30:33)
Well, that's all that we just talked about is really just in that first barrier that we think is a very important thing to address. The next one that we deal with and which we've dealt with this before in our couple of other conferences, we talk about leadership insecurity. And so we're not going to spend a lot of time talking about that now because if you're dealing with insecurity, it just comes up in every area of your life.

Speaker 2 (30:54)
It does. It does. But that leads to the third one. It is, you know, and this is just real, especially in smaller churches is a lack of resources.

Speaker 1 (31:05)
So you brought, you brought that out when our team, when our team met together and you just talked about, know, I mean, we, this is one of those things that you already, everybody knows that, but yeah, but it can still be a barrier because you've got to deal with it. So talk us through that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (31:18)
Well, you know, it's one of those things where you hear some of these churches cast this big vision or they do this thing and you're like, man, that would be amazing in our town if we could do that. And then you look around and you're like, I don't have enough people to do this. I don't have enough money to do this. I don't have enough, you know, pull in the community to even influence anything here. And then you just get frustrated and then you get discouraged and you know, and so you look around and it's like, yes, God wants you to do something, but

You also have to be realistic in that. I was talking to a friend of mine and he talked about this idea of managing expectations, especially in things like this. It's like, you know, when you are presented with this idea, this concept of what could be, right? And that's what a vision is. Then there's a practice in managing the expectations where the first thing you do is you really think about what are the idealistic, like what are the outcomes that could happen? Like if everything went perfectly and God showed up and

Talk through that, write it down, work it through with your team. But then go to the next one, which is also now approach it from a pessimistic perspective. What would happen if everything went wrong? What are the worst possible outcomes? But then the third thing, and this, gotta go through those two to get to the third one, and that's the realistic outcomes. okay, it's probably not gonna be the idealistic one. It's probably not gonna be the pessimistic one. But what are the realistic ones? And then, can I be okay with that? Like it.

Can I accept that to recognize here the resources that I have, here the things going on in my community that I can work with, here's the stuff, you know, and now I'm going to move forward with that. And it's not just, get a bunch more money. It's really no, no. How can I actually use what is in front of me to do what God is calling me to do? And, and yeah, I may not start the next.

you know, celebrate recovery movement across the entire country or, you know, Alpha group like that. No, it might just be in this community for the next season. We are doing something that's actually meeting a need. But to do that, I got to do things like I got to just streamline things. I can't be doing everything. I can do a couple of things.

Speaker 1 (33:21)
going to be held accountable for what you didn't have. mean, the stewardship principles are not about what you didn't have. It's about doing what you could with what you had. so I think that was a really good way to evaluate it. Because I thought I would never do that second session you talked about, the pessimistic one. I was like, no way. So I was never probably realistic.

Speaker 2 (33:24)
Yes.

But that's the thing is sometimes you got to, all of that gives you the contrasting colors so that you actually get a full picture and you get to evaluate ahead of time, how am I going to respond when expectations are exceeded or they aren't met or if they just are kind of, what is that going to look like? And you can work through it together.

Speaker 1 (34:01)
Yeah, I was pretty, pretty big mess back then. So I probably didn't do good with this one. And this next one, you brought this up in our team meeting as well. And I want you to address it, but we talk about our fourth barrier is being isolated from current needs or current cultural needs. What is that? What is that about?

Speaker 2 (34:18)
Well, honestly, you if you've been a Christian for more than five years, you probably don't know any heathens, right? I mean, you just, you're surrounded in your little Christian bubble and then pastors, man, we spend all of our time with Christians and we go to a church to work. And so we don't know what's going on in the world around us. And so we get disconnected and we think,

this next thing that this idea we had, that's going to be so cool and it's really going to connect with the community. And we actually haven't talked to anyone in the community to see if it's something that's needed. And so, and you've got to, you've got to admit that. And then you've got to take steps to get outside of that. And maybe, you know, I've got a friend who, he, he's kind of out just outside of Philadelphia and they opened a coffee shop. And I know that's the cliche thing for true, but this isn't in the church.

They actually created a nonprofit out, you know, and I mean, now all of a sudden they have an AA meeting that meets there and they're having 70 to 80 people show up to this AA meeting because it's not in a church. It's at a coffee shop and they like close the place down. this meeting can happen because that's a problem in their community, but he had to get outside of the church. I mean, he drives a school bus now just so he can be.

in touch with the families in their community. mean, like, I the extra income is never bad, but, but, know, things like that is we think outside the box, do something different so you can be connected and you can actually know what the current cultural needs.

Speaker 1 (35:47)
I could even say you could even just look at your Sunday morning service. There is so much inside our language that we use. know, when Gene and I went to a church recently and it was just like, I mean, great church. And I struggle with this tension because I know that church should still be church. Just all the language and I don't know, you know, just pick up lines and that kind of, it's so churchy.

Yeah. For those who have not been to church or don't know the language, they feel really, you know, it's like a barrier they've got to overcome and we need, we need to remove barriers instead of create them, which we have one more barrier that we talked about. again, you kind of help guide this one as well.

Speaker 2 (36:26)
Well, it's that, you know, the pressure to be all things to all people. Right. And that's leadership. And you've already touched on this in a few ways, but the idea that, hey, you got to know what you're about and then stick to it. You don't need to be everything. I've tried that and it's exhausting and you never do it. You never win. And so, man, just figure out what God has called you to be and what then God is calling that the church that you're leading to be and stay focused on that.

and see what happens.

Speaker 1 (36:55)
And then we take a break and we sit around some tables and we answer some questions. And then we go to this brand new concept that we have introduced for our third session. Our last session, we call it leadership traits to embrace. there, there's several of them here. Let me see. We call them different shifts that we make. think there's like six of them. we're not going to go through these today, but just these different shifts. Cause I want to get to this other part. So what we typically do is we typically have a 40 minute teaching session.

and a 20 minute breakout session where we sit around tables and people answer questions with each other that we brought up. But we're doing something different with this last session. We're gonna cover those leaderships traits, try to do that about 10 minutes. And then we've got a series of tools that we have introduced that correlate with some of the things we've talked about. Kind of walk us through some of that, Jason, because you have developed this.

Speaker 2 (37:43)
Yeah, I mean, and I want to give credit where credit is due. Friends of mine at Clarity House, I've gone through their certification process and worked with them in some really cool stuff. And some of these tools I've adapted from what they taught me. these tools are things that every pastor needs to have in their back pocket because it helps you understand the situation in which you're in. It gives you some language. It gives you some pictures.

of, okay, what is this gonna look like? I mean, we talk about what motivates people to show up at church and we work through that. And then we talk about, you know, what really needs to ultimately motivate them? What does that look like in the context of church, in the context of church throughout history? And then what is the role of the church in connecting people from those surface level things to the deeper thing of finding their purpose and then connecting their purpose

to the divine disciple making vision that the church has. That's the role of leadership in the church. And so we work through the tools that help you understand that. We talk about the disciples journey. What does that mean? What does it look like to go from, who is Jesus to I'm now making disciples. I'm multiplying myself. So yeah, and these tools are really practical. They're just, draw them on a whiteboard type thing. They're not, you don't have to have a

know, a degree in rocket surgery to make it happen. If I can do it, anybody can, right, Dale? So I don't know. mean, I don't know. It's hard to talk too much about them because they are, you know, flip chart type things.

Speaker 1 (39:13)
What we're going to do is, as I said, we're going to take about 10 minutes and cover that just a few principles. But then we're going to spend the rest of this time either doing Q &A to talk about anything that the people at the conference want to either clarity on that we've already discussed or show them how to use these specific tools. And this part will be very organic. It'll be based on the group of people who were there, what they want to talk about.

We want this to be impactful. don't, you know, one of the things that we realized a long time ago, and it's not faulting anyone, but typically when a small pastor or small church pastor goes to a large conference, they walk away with one of two thoughts. Either what one they go, wow, I'm glad they can do that stuff. I could never do that stuff or worse. go back and try to implement stuff that they saw at some huge church.

And, know, they go out and buy a hazer and try to put in lights and a hazer is what some of y'all call a smoke machine. And in two weeks later, they get fired because they set the church on fire, but they didn't really set the church on fire. It's just haze. because it principles that work, they are transferable, you still have to understand in the context of where you are. And so.

So there is no magic bullet out there. There is no gimmick that will do. And even if you could come up with a hype gimmick that would work, the problem is it wears you and your volunteers out because you have to keep out hyping the last hype.

Speaker 2 (40:30)
Well, it's, know, what you win them with, you win them too. Yes, absolutely. you win them with hype, you win them too hype. You didn't win them to Jesus. That's right.

Speaker 1 (40:40)
And so we're going to spend as much time as, in fact, what we'll do is we'll still do the timing so that that third session ends in time for lunch, but we're going to hang around after lunch. So if someone does want to learn some more of these principles or the tools that we have, or they still have questions that need to answer, we just want to be there to serve. We want to be there to help. know, sometimes when I look back at my life and I look at ministry, I've not really worked for any really good leaders.

You know, just the lead pastors that I have served under were just not strong leaders. So I'm gonna leave it at that. And then, you know, there's a lot of pain that I went through when we pastored our church. In fact, you know, most people know that, you know, nine years ago I had open heart surgery and basically it was from stress. I'm 53 years old and having an open heart surgery and I lived in stress. And we just don't want you live that way. You know, we want you to be healthy.

We want you to be whole. I that's why we got the Soul Care Essentials Conference. And then we thought, you know what? Let's support that. Let's partner that conference with this new one just to help churches learn how to be equipped to cultivate a church that's thriving and that's healthy. And one of the things you always hear us say at 95 Network, as we work with churches, our first priority always is health first. Because honestly, if you're not healthy, we don't want your church to grow. No.

this is going to be a bigger mess than what you're dealing with. So you're sitting here, Jason, and as we wrap up the podcast, and you're having coffee at one of your famous places that you post on social media with a pastor who really, they need this conference, and they don't know they need it. And so you have a chance to speak into their life. Why would you share with them why they should be part of this? And here's one or two things. Either one, we'd love for you to attend this conference, but we'd also, need...

Folks who would be willing to host it. You know, one of the cool things about hosting a 95 network conferences, there's no cost to you. we have a, we have a partnership with compassion international. help us offset some of the costs and, and, so all we need you to do is just if you can provide lunch and then use your influence to get people there. but you know, you're sitting there talking with someone about, know, either come into the conference or hosting the conference. What would you tell them?

Speaker 2 (42:47)
I would tell them, you know, if you want in a short amount of time, some great material that is just it's a it's a launching pad, right? It's a conversation starter that you take back to your team or better yet, bring your team and then go back and process it together. You know, this is the type thing that can change the trajectory of your church. And I know, you know, we talk about the Holy Spirit being involved in all that. Yes, I don't mean to.

know, set that aside, but in the same breath, God called you to lead the church. And if you aren't leading it, then let's figure out why. What are the barriers that are keeping you from leading it well? And I think we've identified some, and I think introducing this can help you then lead your team better, which will then make the church healthier. And really, that's the goal. The goal is healthy churches.

Speaker 1 (43:36)
That's what we want to do. We want to help you be healthy and then create a healthy ministry because at the end of the day, what's going to happen is there's going to be souls that will, that will meet Jesus. And that's why we do what we do. So.

Speaker 2 (43:47)
Amen.

Speaker 1 (43:49)
There it is, folks. This is kind of an overview. If you have any questions or want to know more about it, just feel free to reach out to us here at 95 Network. You can reach me at Dale at 95network.org. You can also reach Jason at Jason at 95network.org. And we would love to serve you, help you, and we are really looking forward to rolling out this new conference.

Speaker 2 (44:08)
Yes, can't wait.