Reflecting on a Year of Highs and Lows in 2024, and a Preview of 2025
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Wow, 2024, what a year of highs and lows. If there were ever a year to pause and look back, this is the one for us.
Sean and I invited Tiffany Deluccia to join us for this episode. If you don’t know Tiffany, she’s the third member of our leadership team here at The Unstuck Group. We wanted her to join us as we reflect on God’s faithfulness in 2024 and preview some of what’s to come in 2025.
TALKING ABOUT:
- Real stories of church health from the Unstuck tribe
- Reflecting on the contributions of Tony Morgan to the mission we’re on
- Preview of podcast series for early 2025
- New online church health assessments
- And more
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Transcript
Sean:
Today’s podcast sponsor is PlainJoe, A Storyland Studio. With PlainJoe, you can unleash the power of your church’s story. Their creative, fun-loving team of designers, architects, and specialists will come alongside your church to help you excel in your storytelling and reach the people who need you the most. PlainJoe has expertise in strategic, spatial and digital storytelling, from brand development to architecture, website design and beyond. You can learn more about their services and their team at plainjoe.net.
Well, welcome to the unstructured podcast. I’m Sean, your host today. Happy New Year, everybody. Amy, it’s gonna be a really fun episode because our teammate Tiffany Deluccia, is joining us today.
Amy:
That’s always great to have her here.
Tiffany:
Here I am.
Sean:
Well, we wanted to start off 2025, both looking back and kind of looking ahead to what’s coming. And of course for us on our team here at The Unstuck Group, by far the most significant thing that’s happened this year to us is we lost our founder, Tony Morgan in September. And it was an incredible impact on us. Amy, Tiffany and I as people, as friends of Tony’s. It was an incredible impact on our organization. It was a, an impact for the Big C Church as we heard from so many pastors who expressed their condolences and the impact that Tony had had on them. And so we, we can’t move on with this podcast without saying we miss our friend. We wish he was here, but we’re inspired by the mission that he started years ago and continue that on into 2025.
Well, in the past on the podcast, Tony had actually started the year with a podcast kind of looking back at the year that was, and all that had happened, and looking forward to the year to come. And we thought we’d continue that in his honor. Although Tony really wasn’t one for tradition, was he?
Amy:
No, not at all. But wow. Sean, Tiffany, 2024. What a year of highs and lows. I think if there was ever a year to pause and look back, this is probably the year. So Sean and I invited Tiffany Deluccia, as you mentioned, to join us. And if you don’t know Tiffany, she’s the third member of our leadership team here at Unstuck. It seems like every time she’s on the podcast, that tends to be the most popular podcast of the year.
Sean:
That’s true. Yep.
Amy:
So, glad to have you here, Tiffany. And like you said, we want her to join us as we reflect on both God’s faithfulness in 2024 and preview some of the things that are coming up in 2025.
Tiffany:
Yeah, I’m happy to be here to do that. And look, I’ve got a real microphone for the first time I’m on the podcast.
Amy:
Look at you!
Tiffany:
Not using my Apple AirPods.
Sean:
You are officially official. That’s excellent. Alright, so let’s start off with some reflection here on the year behind us. What stood out?
Amy:
Well, I’ll just jump in. It was a year of wins for the Big C Church. I remember, you know, when I was on staff at my church years ago, I always counted those baptism days as my paydays. To see people going public with their faith to hear the stories of their transformation. It made what I did matter in a very special way. So like whatever small part I had on or behind the scenes to help them in their faith journey, it made what I did there at the church matter. And that sort of describes my joy over the church’s wins this year. And there’s so many to celebrate. The week before Tony passed away, we had been in our Slack channel just celebrating some incredible reports from churches we’d been serving. One of them, Summit Church in Colorado, who I’ve been working with for several years, they had sent me an email and said, these last three weekends at church, we have broken our attendance record over and over except for holidays. We’ve never broken 400 people in person since COVID. Stetson Baptist, who serves Stetson. Do you guys remember?
Sean:
I did. And Chad did as well.
Amy:
You and Chad? Their note was, we’re seeing phenomenal growth year over year, 25 to 30%. We’re seeing people come to know Jesus. We’re launching new initiatives. We’re about to take over the facility of a dying church with hopes to revitalize that campus in the neighboring city.
Sean:
That’s awesome.
Amy:
Another one, I don’t think we mentioned, but it’s a church that Tony and I had been serving for five years, I think. And so the pastor sent him this note and said, I’m only sending this to a few friends who I know will celebrate with us. And he said to Tony, you were so instrumental in our turnaround, but we just got in the mail on Tuesday from Outreach Magazine that we are the ninth fastest growing church among all denominations. And he goes, that’s insane. We’re praising God.
And then of course, Athens Church, one of my favorites, it’s another church, Tony and I’d been serving for the past three to four years. They launched their very first multisite just a few months ago in September. And the campus pastor shared that they had 760 adults in worship across two services, just under a thousand overall, if you add in kids and students and Tony told us months ago, we should plan for three times our launch team number on opening Sunday. With 250 adults and our launch team, we were almost exactly three times our number and his colleague I love what she said. She goes, that’s awesome. Everything was flawless. And I’m an Enneagram one, so that is saying a lot. The model works, it replicates so well, we picked the right people and just, I can feel Tony smiling. It was too bad he couldn’t be there when that opened.
And maybe just one last thing that’s on my mind that I’ll share is, you know, we’ve launched several cohorts these past two years serving executive pastors and multi-site leaders. And the results these churches are seeing are game changing, like 20 to 40% growth, new services, new locations, the kingdom got bigger. That’s all I can say, at least from my seat. The kingdom got bigger in 2024, and again, that’s my payday. Whatever small or big part we hear unstuck got to play. It’s why I get on a plane at 5:00 AM, I eat Jimmy John’s alone, and spend time away from my family, because there really is nothing better than seeing God’s church in action.
Sean:
Absolutely. Well, the numbers back it up, Amy. You know, we are a data organization, not data, not data.
Amy:
Data.
Sean:
We’re very focused on the data and we love to look at the numbers because the numbers give us some indication of just the health of a church or the big C church in general. Here’s what’s cool. This year we served, I don’t think we’ve actually talked about this yet, and you guys may not know this, this year we’ve actually served 170 churches through onsite consulting, implementation, coaching, and our cohorts: 170 churches. And so it’s pretty incredible that we had the chance to partner with that many churches over this last year. But here’s what’s really cool. We saw the data trends in our unstuck tribe just really remain strong through 2024. On average, those churches in our tribe were growing by about 17% year over year. They had seen an increase in giving of over 7% year over year. And here’s the best part. They’ve seen 19% on average, more decisions to follow Jesus year over year. In total, those churches had close to 40,000 people indicate a decision to follow Jesus in the last year. That’s incredible. And the numbers back up what you’re saying, Amy.
Tiffany:
It really was just such a year of highs and lows. When we were thinking about what we wanted to reflect on, I was going back through our team Slack channel, and every Friday our whole team will post our highs and lows for the week. It’s one of the ways, as a remote team, we kind of just keep a pulse on how people are doing. And these stories all came out of the highs, but it was so hard actually going back through and looking at some of the lows that we’ve been through too. So many of the members of our unstuck tribe had incredible pain and loss this year, and it’s felt like whiplash at times. I did, it made me smile when I looked at Tony’s last ever high post on the Friday before he passed away, and he said I had a hectic travel schedule through the spring and summer, which speaks to how busy we were and how many churches we were serving. But he said, I had a few unexpected open days on my calendar this week. Emily and I drove down to the beach for a few days, spending uninterrupted time with Emily at the beach will always be a high for me.
Amy:
That’s so Tony.
Tiffany:
That was his last high post. And so it just, it’s really been a year of ups and downs. I do think that we just have to celebrate. We had the strongest first half of year we’ve ever had, and we’re ending up in a really strong position after the pandemic. It’s just wild. And it does make me happy to know that Tony’s last year serving at the Unstuck Group was marked by so much fruit.
Amy:
Well said. Well said.
Sean:
Okay. Well, let’s shift gears a little bit. Let’s give listeners a preview of kinda what they can expect from unstuck in the months to come.
Amy:
Yeah. Well, I think one of the great things is we are about to relaunch all of our online assessments. Is it sad that I get excited about that?
Sean:
No, I’m excited too.
Amy:
Man, it’s been a long time in the making, but we’re rolling out major improvements to, I guess I describe it as the user interface for all three of our online assessments in the Unstuck Learning Hub. These assessments are there, listeners, to equip you as the leader just to get an accurate look at your church’s health. And so for years we’ve had login issues or just different clunky things in it, but I’m excited about the changes. Let me just talk about the three assessments really quick. One of them is the Unstuck Church Assessment, and if those of you have taken it, you’re familiar with it. But it really helps a leader understand where their church is at in the lifecycle, if they’re gaining momentum, if they’re losing momentum. I think oftentimes as church leaders, you have a gut feel on something that is either winning or behind, but this gives you some data. It gives you some comparative things to look at, to understand where you are as well as what are the priorities, then what do we need to be working on so we can continue to gain momentum and get to that sustained health area. So that’s an assessment that a larger team can take. So you can get lots of opinions and lots of data into it, but it’ll churn out and give you a realistic picture. The second one is the Unstuck Teams assessment. And this, again, I think as pastors at the top of the food chain over an organization, everybody loves you. They love to be seen by you. They want you to think that they’re very happy. But taking this assessment actually gives you information on the health of the team, on the performance of the team, and the culture on the team.
It looks at some systems too, and it’s not complicated. Best Christian Workplace has a great assessment too. I would just say that that one’s probably like 27 pages long when you get it back. Ours is eight. So it’s pretty simple if you’re wired that way. And by the way, I do a lot of staffing structures. I run this assessment with lots of teams. It’s actually such an encouragement often to the pastors. Because teams are just healthy and at least the ones in our tribe are healthy and high performing right now. So it also gives a leader confidence to know they’ve got a great base to work with as they’re trying to lead through some changes. Or this one church I was just working with, they’re getting ready to go multi-site. It was so encouraging to understand the base that they have from a health perspective on their team.
And then the last one, of course, is our Vital Signs Assessment. So with Vital Signs, you just get a robust summary that helps you see the health of your ministry. It includes reach data, discipleship metrics, financial metrics, facility metrics. ’cause we say often no one metric tells you if you’re healthy or not. But when you get to see all of these together, it’s gonna give you just a real clear picture of where you’re healthy and where you need to work. So all that to say, with the overhaul, it’s gonna be much simpler for churches to take the assessments again and again, compare results over time. For those of you who have taken it, you will now be able to easily update your information when you’ve entered a wrong number. And you can also get your earlier report. So we’ll share more about that in the weeks, months to come as we roll that out.
Sean:
That’s great.
Amy:
Tiffany, what would you add?
Tiffany:
I was just gonna say, we should say a huge shout out to Andrew Peters at the Reach company who’s been working on those for us and just doing such a great job. I wanted to add, you’ll see a little bit of a brand update from us in the coming year. We’re working on it now. It really started with a conversation I had with Tony back in the early part of 2024. And we’ve just been sitting with it and making sure we all agreed. But we’re gonna be making a subtle shift from our tagline of we help churches get unstuck to we help pastors lead unstuck churches. And it really just reflects our heart and our intent that we do help a lot of churches that are very stuck right now to move to the other side of that. We also serve a lot of churches that are very healthy and thriving and their pastors are forward looking. They’re seeing stuckness on the horizon. They’re trying to make sure their churches don’t fall into pitfalls that are avoidable. And the other reality is you get unstuck once. It doesn’t mean you never get stuck again. And we need to have a posture of continually assessing and evaluating how we’re doing and where we need to be going next. And so yeah, it’s a subtle shift from we help churches get unstuck to we help pastors lead unstuck churches, but it feels pretty significant to us.
Amy:
I like that.
Sean:
That’s good.
Tiffany:
And it really reflects where we’ve been the last few years. And then with that, we’ll also be working on a subtle color shift in our brand. Nobody except the communications people care about this, but it’s a good reminder that things get stale and you need to be taking a fresh look at your brand every couple of years. Probably every three to five. For us, we’ve just been monitoring how the trends have changed. There’s a lot of shift from the grays of the 2010s towards the more beige, warmer tone. So yeah, we’re just paying attention and going to go neutral.
Sean:
Oh, okay. Now I’m excited about that. That’s excellent.
Tiffany:
Yeah. So we’re just looking to keep things current and we only mention it to you now because you’ll notice it.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s great. Well, we’re also working on some new content and just thought I’d give a little preview of kind of what’s coming up on the podcast. Some of the webinars we’re doing in the future, the Unstuck Church Report. So I’m really excited about our next series. So next week we kick off, Amy and I kick off a series called The Nineties Called and It Wants It’s Strategic Planning Back. So, you know, our world has just changed immeasurably since the 1990s. Culture’s changed, people have changed, but when it comes to ministry planning, a lot of times our approaches are still outdated. And so we’re gonna lean into our, or maybe just my snarky sense of humor, and talk through a new way to be intentional with your time and your people and your resources at your church.
We’re also sending out the quarterly survey that fuels the Unstuck Church report in January. So if you’re listening to this, we would love for you to participate in that as the more data we can get the, the more accurate the reports are. So it, it’ll just take you a few minutes to enter that data, and you’ll see that survey coming out in January. We have a staffing and structure series coming in February, Amy.
Amy:
Great.
Sean:
The questions of how we organize our team, what our priority hires should be, where to find people to hire, they keep coming up all the time. And so we’ll continue to help with your staffing and organizational structure at your church. And then we’re gonna talk about some creative strategies to reach and retain more people leading up to Easter, which we have a later Easter this year, it’s April 20th.
Amy:
Wow.
Sean:
And Chad, one of the consultants on our team mentioned that there’s really a lot of potential with Easter this year because it’s the first time in probably a long time that it’s falling outside of that spring break window for most of the country. So a lot of potential to reach people who are outside the church and faith right now there. So that’s what’s coming up in our content in the next few months. Amy?
Amy:
Yeah?
Sean:
Before we wrap up today’s conversation, what have we not said that we need to say?
Amy:
Well, you did say data just have to point that out.
Sean:
Oh no.
Tiffany:
I noticed that, too.
Amy:
I just, to our unstuck tribe, to our listeners, I just wanna say thank you for those that we served on the ground. Thank you for inviting us in. It was such an honor to walk alongside you and here’s what I know. Our tribe is made up of incredibly talented, humble, growth-minded people, minded pastors. And Tiffany, I like the tweak to our mission because while we serve churches, we really serve the pastors that lead those churches. And you guys are just an amazing group. And then to all the pastors connected to Unstuck listening today, thank you really for your outpouring of prayer and support as we navigated the loss of Tony this year. Your words, your emails, your prayers, they really carried us. So as we look to 2025, we just look forward to meeting more of you through our cohorts, our webinars, and our consulting.
Sean:
Well, it’s gonna be a great year on the Unstuck Church Podcast. We’re so thankful for all of you. We know that there are many excellent leadership podcasts available to listen to, and we don’t take it for granted that you spend your time tuning in here. So thank you. Make sure you subscribe to get the show notes. We have lots of practical resources and tools that we’re planning to share in the weeks ahead. You can get those at theunstuckgroup.com/podcast, and we’ll be back next Wednesday with the first new series of 2025, The 1990s Called. It’s gonna be fun, Amy.
Amy:
It will be.
Sean:
See you then.
Amy:
See you then.
