“Structure changes have really changed our church… and it’s changed me.”
We’re doing something different this week on the podcast. We invited Pastor Donny Wadley from Fountain City Church in Knoxville, TN to share his experience going through The Unstuck Process.
Before engaging with us, they were hitting a growth barrier—like many of the churches in our tribe. They had facility challenges and questions about making room for all the people who were coming to their church, and they needed an outside perspective to guide them through it.
In this episode, Sean and Pastor Donny talk about the impactful learnings and changes Fountain City went through as they navigated growth.
- Using Metrics to Look at Ministry in a Comprehensive Way
- Getting the Right People in the Right Positions
- The Journey to Creating a Fresh Vision
Sometimes, seeing the real numbers in the assessment is what lights the fire. [episode 446] #unstuckchurch Share on X The vision is yours to carry, but having people around you to speak into it, confirm it and push on it changes everything. [episode 446] #unstuckchurch Share on X “The staffing changes were something I didn’t even see a huge need for, but they have really changed our church; they’ve changed me, as it’s given me more time for vision.” —Donny Wadley [episode 446] #unstuckchurch Share on X
This Episode Is Brought to You By PlainJoe Studios
This Episode is Sponsored by PlainJoe Studios:
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Reach out to their team at plainjoestudios.com and dream up the bright future of your church.
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Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean, and today we’re doing something a little bit different. Every once in a while I get to sit down with a pastor who’s been through our process and just ask, okay, what actually happened? Not the polished version, just the real one. So, today that pastor is Donny Wadley, a Fountain City Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Donny came to the Unstuck Group back in 2023, hitting a growth barrier. He had facility challenges, questions about how to make room for all the people actually showing up, which is a good problem, but still a problem. One of our consultants, Chad Hunt, walked with them through the next two years, the full process of ministry health assessment, strategic planning, staffing and organizational structure. And what I love about this conversation is that the changes that move the needle the most weren’t necessarily the ones Donniy was expecting going in. So I’ll let him tell you more about that.
Before we get there, though, I wanna say thanks to this week’s podcast sponsor PlainJoe Studios. Our most recent Unstuck Church Report shows the average church is growing by 14% year over year, which means a lot of churches are suddenly paying a lot more attention to their worship spaces. PlainJoe works with churches to design beautiful, engaging environments that connect with the communities they’re trying to reach. Architectural, design, branding, they do all of that. So check them out at plainjoe.net. Alright, here’s my conversation with Pastor Donny Wadley.
Well, pastor Donny, thanks for being on the podcast today. My first question to you is pretty simple. What was going on at Fountain City that made you pick up the phone and call us back in 2022?
Donny:
We were struggling through I felt like some situations where we were having people come guests regularly to the church. So we were growing, things were going pretty well, but we seemed to have the back door to the church was open as wide as the front door to the church was. And so we kept getting guests and visitors and people were inviting people, and there was a lot of excitement, but I was like, I feel like we should be growing more because of all the guests that we’re having. And I just, I really, and even as I think about it today, I think back on that time, and I think, man, I really wanted someone with an outside perspective to come in and just look at everything and say, what, what do you think? You know, sure. You see this other places, you know, give us some help, you know, some ideas, some things that might push us in the right way.
Because for us, I’m not interested just growing a large church. That’s not a goal. The goal is to reach people. And, you know, we here at Fountain City would say to lead all people to follow Christ completely. It’s pretty simple. That’s what we want to do. And so all people means all people. And so whatever that means we want to do. I wasn’t interested in seeing people just come visit a couple of weeks and then slide out the back door or come for a year and slide out the back door. How can we have an opportunity to disciple these people individually? And so we reached out because we really, I needed some other eyes on this to say, what do you think? You know, somebody from the outside I felt is what we were looking for at that time.
Sean:
I love that; you weren’t just frustrated because people were leaving. You were frustrated because people were supposed to be staying, that holy discontent is exactly the right starting point. So for listeners who haven’t been through our process before, the first thing we do is we spend a day on site. We call it a perspective visitor, a health assessment. It’s not a planning day. It’s really just a, let’s look at your data, have some honest conversations, and then figure out what we’re actually dealing with before we start making plans. So when you went through that day with our consultant, Chad, were there any surprises for you?
Donny:
It’s so interesting. Well, matter of fact, I love Chad. Chad’s great. And we have a great relationship. I’m so thankful for him. He is wonderful. But the assessment, it’s interesting. You start out by asking all of these questions and all of these metrics to know what’s going on in your church. And so we thought we already had some decent metrics. Well, once we dove into this, I realized, wait, we are having to dig to find some of these, what I would consider now basic metrics. I think that was one of the things for me that was a big surprise because I felt like, well, we had some decent metrics going on, but then once we started looking into all of the things you guys asked for, I was like, I’m having to go here for this and here for that, and we’re having to try to figure out what this is. And I think that was one of the biggest surprises for me was we don’t really know how healthy we are because we’re not measuring all the things properly.
And I think also one of the things with the health assessment that, I think as a church, you wanna see people come to know Christ and you wanna baptize them. We want that. That’s what we want to do. You know, that’s what we feel like our mission is.
Sean:
Right.
Donny:
And so because of that, when I realized the average church, the percentage of baptisms per year was this, and I thought we were doing okay. And then I realized our percentage was less than that. As a growing church, as a church that’s reaching new people, as a church, that there’s a lot of excitement and people are inviting people in already. I was like, what are we doing here? What’s going on? This is not good. And that was for me, really eye-opening. And then it’s interesting, we’re inside the city, but we are not downtown. And so with that in mind, you know, we’re in a situation where one of the first things that the assessment taught us was we are 56 parking spots less than we need per service.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s a lid.
Donny:
And we were like, whoa, this is crazy. And so you immediately see these things as you’re looking at this with this assessment. That’s just very helpful and it was very good there. I mean, we could probably spend our whole time talking about what we noticed through the assessment, but it was good. It was really, that’s a thing that I would say, you know, you guys want us to fit to give these metrics back to you still even today, because we’re in the database and we still, it’s good for us to continue this. We know where we’re at. We know what’s going on. And so that’s still helpful for us even today. So the assessment was original, but now it’s still something that, Hey, we’re keeping up with all this stuff again, which is good.
Sean:
Donny, I’ll bet every pastor driving right now is just nodding along, listening to you, you know, that scramble of, okay, that number’s over here. And that one’s in the spreadsheet somewhere. And then I think finance has this one—is so common for churches and church leaders. The good news is that you figured it out and you’ve got a dashboard buttoned up now. So, and I think that matters.
Donny:
Yeah. The frustration with that was way more than I thought it would be. Just getting it and then realizing, what are we doing here? We’re trying to reach people. We want to do these things. Why have we missed this? So it was, it was very exhaustive, but it was so good in the long run.
Sean:
Well, let’s talk about your two days of planning. The assessment visit, that first visit was really just kind of the priming the pump. It’s the, let’s figure out what we’re dealing with step before we start building anything. So when you got into the actual planning sessions with Chad, what were a couple of your, maybe “aha” moments?
Donny:
I do think that the planning sessions were so good. So we had a pretty, a decent sized team in there. You guys are looking for a decent sized team. Not too large, not too small. But I think one of the things that was helpful for us was to get some, I don’t know the right way to say it, lay people that are just regular people that are for the church that like wanna see the mission of the church move forward when they were in there, starting to see some of these things and experience some of this. I think that was an aha moment for some of our people. And it was just like, wait, oh, we want to, this is so much larger than us just coming to church on Sundays and serving here and being for the church and maybe being a deacon or something like that. And I think that was a glimpse for some of them into what all’s going on, Hey, we’re trying to reach people and they wanted to reach people that, you know, just having the right people in the room was a bonus for us. It was a positive thing. As we moved forward.
And then I think that you’re going through this process with your, with Chad for us; we’re going through this process with Chad, and as we’re sitting there, some of the things come out and people have different ideas. As a leader, one of the things that I always felt was so helpful is, you know, people are still looking to you as the lead pastor. They’re looking at what you’re doing. And if I’m saying something to help another lead pastor out there, I felt like Chad was in the room saying these things, helping us out. But in reality, he would come back to me and say, what are your thoughts, Donny? How do you feel about where, where are you at in this moment? And that’s so helpful because you are normally the person or one of the two people that by far know the most of what’s going on everywhere.
Sean:
Right. Yeah.
Donny:
And so when he, when your consultant’s saying to you, where are you at? What do you feel like, what are you thinking? I think that was like, there’s, there’s this, in this moment, there’s this reassurance of, Hey, we’re all on the same page here. I’m here to help you. How can we like be in this together? What are your thoughts on this? And I never felt like that we were going in this weird direction, but there was a couple of times where I felt like, man, I see what everyone’s saying, but I think this is more important. And so we could redirect and get to that. And that was helpful.
I also felt like in those moments that there was some pressure on me in my mind to come up with this vision or whatever, like in the end, because you guys, you’ll wrap down to a point to where you say, Hey, what’s the vision here? And everybody gets to go out and talk about things and come back. And I just felt like that time prepared me for that moment. So those days prepared me for that moment so much that when that came out of my mouth, someone actually in our group, they actually taped it on their phone.
Sean:
Oh yeah.
Donny:
And they’ve listened to it a few more times because they were just like, oh, I want to hear what he has to say in this moment. Because everyone else got to go around the room and say some things. And like, for me, it’s like, oh, I’ve been thinking about these things a lot and now let’s just let it all come out. And that was a great moment for me that I wasn’t expecting. I was a little like, oh, what’s this gonna look like? I’m a little nervous, people are gonna be looking at you, whatever. But after spending that time with everyone and Chad just leading through that, it was just like, I think it just bubbled out. You know, just flowed out. It was great. I loved it.
Sean:
I’m really glad you said that because I think a lot of lead pastors feel kind of quietly intimidated by the vision question. Like, I’m supposed to have this fully formed and everybody’s watching me, but that’s actually not how it’s supposed to work. You’ve got a whole team in that room for a reason. The vision is yours to carry, but having people around you to speak into it, confirm it, push on it, that changes everything. So once that vision was on the table and your team rallied around it, what happened next? What did that do for you practically?
Donny:
Yeah, I think that’s what I was gonna say with what you were just saying, which was so helpful, was I think people in the room hearing the vision were in that moment. Like, wow, this is big. And we’re excited. And so I think that that was, that was kind of like, I don’t think that personally, I didn’t see all of this that coming through in this couple of days, I would say that. But I think that’s one of the things that happened where we were all just like, man, yeah, let’s go for this. Let’s do this. And so that was kind of a huge thing for us as well. I don’t know if that answers your question exactly, with what you were thinking, but for us, I felt like the vision all of a sudden got larger, which for me, I’m saying, well, yeah, we’re trying to reach people and there’s a whole lot of need out there. There’s a whole lot of gospel need in the world, so let’s go for this. So we were, I was excited about that.
Sean:
Yeah. What I’m hearing you say, Donny is that laying out the vision basically did the rallying for you.
Donny:
Exactly. Yeah.
Sean:
You didn’t have to sell it, you just said it, and people kind of leaned in then.
Donny:
And then Chad or who, if you have a different consultant, whoever that would be, they’re just coming alongside of that being a cheerleader for that as well. You know, so that’s the beauty of all of this, as you can tell, like, I’m for this, like, no one asked me, are you for this or not? But as you can tell, just in our conversation here, I’m like, this was a great thing for our church and it’s, it was a good thing for me personally. And not only that, it’s moved my mind in thinking larger every year now.
Sean:
I actually pulled your vital signs from when you refreshed your plan back in 2024. And even then, two years ago, you could already see the dial starting to move. So what were two or three of the numbers that stood out to you?
Donny:
We’ve had a 141% increase from 2023 in our baptisms.
Sean:
Wow. That is incredible.
Donny:
Yeah. That’s exciting.
Sean:
Yeah. It is. Absolutely. That’s not a small number. 141% increase in baptisms. That is the whole ball game for you guys. That’s literally your mission. And honestly, I think there’s something important here. Sometimes, seeing the real numbers in the assessment is what lights the fire. You see where you actually are and then you go, well, that’s not good enough. And I think that’s actually a gift. So talk to me about the specific shifts that you made. What changed that started driving results like that?
Donny:
We, when one of the things that’s huge for us was our next steps area. So when we were doing this to begin with, we had connect cards. And so we were trying, I would say we tried everything we could possibly try to get people to fill these cards out because we wanted to, we wanted to help them. We wanted to move them forward in their walk. With Jesus. We wanted to get ’em plugged into the church, into a group. And all of the things that are important we were trying to do, but it just was not taking place. And so, like, when we look back in 2023, the numbers were like, we had 24 connect cards filled out. Now, I don’t know for most people, but for the year, I was gonna say, I don’t know, for most people, most people are probably thinking, oh, they didn’t, they don’t have many guests or whatever. I’m like, look, we probably had 24 guests in every two weeks.
Sean:
Yeah, right.
Donny:
That’s how many people were coming new, but we had 24 cards all year. And we’re like, what? What’s happening? It’s not working. And so this was one of the shifts that we, it took us a little time to get rolling with because we wanted to do it up and do it right from the beginning. And we felt like that. And so we started a next steps area at our church, and then it bloomed into a little something different even today. But when we began that area, we had different things going on each week of the month. And so the last Sunday of the month was if you wanted to join the church. The first one was if you were new here. The second one is if you were, let’s see, it was, I think it was if you’ve been coming for a little bit and you’re just haven’t been connected. And so we just did some different things like that. Each week we would talk about it.
Now we’re just saying, Hey, this is our next steps area and you can come back there to get involved in a group. You can come back there if this is your first time here, you know, we’d love to meet you. We’ve got a little gift for you. We’ve got some things like that going on. And the different, this is what I was gonna say, the difference in us, what we’re doing back there now, as compared to 2023. In 2025, we collected 131 cards as opposed to 24 and 2023. And so just to see what God is doing back there. Now, one of the things that’s also good is, so just learning from Unstuck, was our follow up system afterwards is so much greater. And so you’ve got all of the things, we had good intentions and good plans we felt like before. Now we have great intentions and great plans. And that makes all the difference. Yeah. And so, you know, we’ve always wanted to reach people with the good news of Jesus Christ. And so that hasn’t changed. And so we’ve just become more effective at it, I believe.
Sean:
Right. Okay. So 24 to 131, that’s five times the engagement. And you didn’t add more services or at a campus, you just changed the system. I think Donny, that’s such a good example of what we talk about all the time. New growth requires new systems. What you were doing back in 2022 wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t built for where you were going. So what other shifts did you make?
Donny:
One of the things that was important for us that I didn’t, I don’t think I saw this on the front end, but just through staff staffing and staff alignment and some things like that, we ended up with Chad helping us through some of that. And so now, like we are set up a little different. We have a XP of ministries and an XP of like budgets, buildings and missions. And so we have, yeah, we have some things like that, that they’re, it’s set up a little different than maybe most churches, but that’s okay. It works for us and what we’re doing and where we’re at. And so the staffing stuff was something I didn’t see happening or I didn’t even see a huge need, but that has really changed our church and it’s changed me where I have narrowed down what I need to do, which gives me more time for vision, which I love.
Sean:
Yeah. I’m so glad you brought that up because this is one of the things we hear from lead pastors all the time. After they go through this, I didn’t realize how much I was carrying that wasn’t actually mine to carry. You don’t know what that could feel like until you’re finally on the other side of it. And that’s exactly what we want. Lead pastors doing what only lead pastors can do.
Donny:
It has changed my outlook, ideas. It’s changed everything about ministry for me. It really has. It’s been great for me. And having the right people in the right positions under me doing what only they can do, that’s part of that as well. And they’re good at it. That makes a difference.
Sean:
Donny, one last thing before I let you go. Any stories of leading through change? Any hard decisions you’ve had to navigate as you were actually implementing the plan that you created?
Donny:
For us, we were in a good place before you came in. And so I would say, we had made a bunch of changes, you know, from time to time. I think at one point all we did was make changes. And so, we were, I think sometimes we, even with your name, the Unstuck Group, for us, I don’t think we were in this area where I would say, man, nothing’s going on.
Sean:
Right, yeah.
Donny:
People aren’t excited, whatever. And so I think that’s what propelled us to this new level was having some outside perspective. And so I think that some of the changes that we were able to make were processes and some things on the inside that most people were like, yeah, this needs to take place already. We get it. We see it. So I don’t think a lot of it was really, really difficult and really, really hard for us. Which was great. Once we finished the two-day planning day for us to come outta there and say, I don’t think a lot of people are gonna be, people are gonna see this as being good. And that was kind of nice for us leading through change.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s actually really helpful context. And it’s not an accident. I just pulled your unstuck church assessment. Yeah. And you were in momentum growth. The momentum growth phase when we came in, that phase is actually the best time to install systems and make changes. ’cause people are already accustomed to things shifting and changing. They’re not protective yet. They’re still in that kind of whatever it takes mode. And the churches that wait until they’ve crested and are in maintenance, well, change gets really hard really fast at that point. You gotta get ahead of it. That’s smart leadership.
Donny:
That’s exactly right. And I’m thankful to God for that, that we were able to see, hey, we do need someone from the outside to come in and look at this. And Unstuck was perfect for that.
Sean:
Well, I’m really glad I got to sit down with Donny for that one. You know, a few things stuck out to me that I think are worth naming before we close out. The first is something he said about metrics that he thought that they had a decent handle on things until they actually started pulling the data that we asked them for. And it turned out they weren’t measuring what mattered, which meant they didn’t really know how healthy or not they actually were. That’s more common than most churches want to admit. But once you’ve seen your ministry through that lens, you can’t unsee it. You know, warning signs start to show up earlier and you actually can have time to respond to some of those things.
The second thing, and this is the one that’s really stayed with me, is what Donny said about the structural changes that he didn’t walk into the process thinking structure was the problem, but here’s what he said. On the other side of that, it’s changed my church and it’s changed me. That is not a small thing. When a pastor says a conversation like this has changed how he does ministry and how he sees himself as a leader, that is incredibly encouraging.
And the last thing, his vision moment, he described feeling the weight of that responsibility and then the process kind of cleared the runway for it, and it just came out of him. I love that. You know, vision doesn’t always need to feel forced. Sometimes it just needs the right conditions.
So if any of that has resonated with you today and you’re wondering what this could look like for your church, the easiest next step is just to start a conversation. You can connect with me or my teammate Chad, if you go to theunstuckgroup.com/start. And if this podcast has been helpful, a review, wherever you listen, goes a long way for us. You can subscribe for show notes and resources as well at theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. Next week, we start a brand new series here on the podcast, and I’m gonna share some of the hard lessons that we are learning as we coach churches through a rapidly changing culture. Until then, we hope you have a great week.
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