Serving as Spiritual Formation (Part 3)
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Spiritual formation is less about what we ask people to do and more about who we’re equipping people to become.
First, we want every Christ follower to become more like Jesus. Spiritual formation is essential. And secondly, we want churches to equip God’s people to do the work of God. That’s where serving comes in.
DISCIPLESHIP THROUGH SERVING
In this episode, I interview Pastor Daniel Im, author of The Discipleship Opportunity: Leading a Great-Commission Church in a Post-Everything World, about the role serving has in helping people grow closer to Jesus.
- How the spiritual continuum relates to serving
- The role serving has in bringing people closer to Jesus
- Strategies to help people engage in serving
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With an easy-to-use platform of products, you can bring people together with event signups, room and resource reservations, automatic volunteer scheduling, and much more.
Start using for free now at planningcenter.com.
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More Episodes in This Series
- Strategy for Volunteer Engagement – Episode 355
- Structure for Volunteer Engagement – Episode 356
- The Rooted Experience with John Thomas from Mariners Church – Episode 358
- Spiritual Gifts, Serving and Growth Track with Chris Hodges – Episode 359
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Transcript
Sean:
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast, where each week we are exploring what it means to be an unstuck church. There’s no doubt that our culture shifting priorities and availability has impacted their connection with our churches. In recent years, that’s been even more true on this side of the pandemic. But what if our experience over the last few years has actually created a greater opportunity for discipleship? On this week’s podcast, Tony and Amy continue our series on serving in the church, as Tony sits down with Daniel Im, lead pastor of Beulah Alliance Church for a conversation on the discipleship opportunity. If you’re a brand new listener to the Unstuck Podcast, you won’t wanna miss out on downloading the weekly episode show notes. Each week we share important information to support that week’s episode, offer bonus resources, and give you access to our full archive of resources for when you listen to past episodes. To learn more, just go to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. Now, before we dive in, here’s Tony with this week’s podcast sponsor.
Tony:
This episode is brought to you by Planning Center, an all-in-one software to help you organize your ministries and care for your church. With an easy to use platform of products, you can bring people together with event signups, room and resource reservations, automatic volunteer scheduling, and much more. Start using Planning Center for free now at planningcenter.com.
Amy:
Well, today we’re moving into the second half of our series on serving as spiritual formation. And I love this series because it’s so consistent with two critical foundations of what it means to be an unstuck church. First, we want every Christ follower to become more like Jesus. Spiritual formation is essential. And secondly, we want churches to equip God’s people to do the work of God. We need to give ministry away.
Tony:
Yeah. And Amy, we also know that this is, and it will always be a challenge for the church. I mean, if this was easy, we would probably would not have any record of Jesus making this critical statement. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. So, as we continue this series on serving in spiritual formation, we’re going to share conversations I recently had with three different pastors. Today we’re going to begin with a fun discussion I had with Daniel Im. If you haven’t heard Daniel before, you’re in for a treat today. He’s a pastor, he is a Bible teacher, writer, podcast host, and has a passion for the local church. He’s the lead pastor of Beulah Alliance Church and the author of No Silver Bullets. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta. So this is, that’s pretty north in Canada, Amy.
Amy:
Yep
Tony:
He has a wife, Christina, and three kids. And Amy, you know this to be the case on this podcast. We rarely share interviews with people releasing new books unless the topic directly connects with our current content focus. I’ve had to say no to some, several friends through the years on podcast interviews about new books, but Daniel’s new book, it’s called The Discipleship Opportunity. It really does fit in very well with the topic for today’s conversation and the series. So, with that introduction, here’s my conversation with Daniel about serving as spiritual formation.
Tony:
So, we’re in a series on spiritual formation with a focus on encouraging people to serve others using their spiritual gifts. And really the timing couldn’t be better to coincide with the release of your newest book, Daniel. It’s called The Discipleship Opportunity. In fact, let’s begin there. Why do you, why do you refer to changes in the church since the pandemic as an opportunity for the Body of Christ?
Daniel:
Yeah, Tony, I’m so glad to be on your podcast and excited for this conversation today. I refer to it as an opportunity, because when we think about this post, everything world that we’re living in, right? And, and yes, I’m referring to post pandemic, but also post Christian Post-truth Post, you know, fill in that blank. It’s so easy as leaders and as humans, just to go back to what we know, to go back to what we learned in seminary, to go back to what worked before, because the world almost feels and seems like it’s normal again in some sense. So when it comes to that, as leaders, we’re busy, right? It’s easy to just get caught up in the whirlwind and just get back to whatever is most urgent. But when we think about this unique time that we are living in, with the millennials being predominant in the workforce now, boomers continuing to retire the but the also the rise of Gen Z and Gen Alpha and the research that’s coming out about them being more open to spirituality than generations previous.
And I don’t know if you’re seeing this in your context, Tony, but for me and other churches that I’m seeing in the West, the stuff that we only heard about happened in the 10 40 window. The way that we heard about Jesus appearing in dreams and the underground church in China, like all of that, like, that’s the sort of stuff that I’m beginning to see in increasing frequency here in the West. So it really comes to this sense of, okay, we are living in a different time. We can’t necessarily just rely on the on the methods and the strategies that worked before. So what would it look like for us to reengage and re-look at the way we disciple re-look at the way we evangelize, re-look at the way we preach. And that’s the opportunity. I believe that’s before us.
Tony:
So in your book, you differentiate, oh, by the way I read it, it’s fantastic. And I actually read the books that when I do interviews with people, like I actually read the book. So, in your book though, you differentiate between sleepers, seekers, consumers, and disciples. So why is it important to make those types of distinctions rather than, than just calling people Christians and non-Christians?
Daniel:
Yeah. So this goes to some of the research that I did leading into the book where when you look at probably the most significant shaping influential trend on the church in the West, for the last 70 years, it’s been the church growth movement. And while there are so many helpful tools and strategies and the whole, I’m not throwing church growth movement out, but you know, I’m not saying it’s the worst thing ever. There, there, that’s not what I’m saying. Because what the church growth movement was, was a reaction to church country club, right? It was a reaction to that to say, we need to be about the great commission. We need to reach the lost. The interesting thing today though is that predominantly you have churches on the one side who are heavily evangelistic, but at maybe at the expense of lacking more focused emphasis on spiritual formation and discipleship.
And then you got churches on the other side that are more or less reaching Christians that are discipleship focused, but weak on the evangelistic side of things. What I saw before, but also in and through the pandemic and afterwards, was the sense where we don’t simply just have non-Christians and Christians in our churches and in our communities. And this wasn’t a pandemic thing, like it’s always been the case. But I think what happened was people started showing their cards through the pandemic. And what we began seeing was that, hey, there are people who are really interested in the things of God. They’re serious about discipleship. They want to be disciple makers. And wow, there are people who may not be Christian, but they are seeking answers. They know that there’s more to life than this. There’s this rise of interest rise in interest for both non-Christians and Christians and the things of God.
But what we also saw was a decrease in interest in the uninterested non-Christians, which I call the sleepers, where in a sense they’re spiritually asleep. They have no, maybe they would’ve come on an Easter or a Mother’s day, if they’re coerced, if there’s some sort of reason to go. But they’re not coming anymore. No matter what sort of tactics that may have worked in the past, it’s not working anymore. And then the dreaded consumers, the consumeristic Christians that have been talked about, written about all that stuff, where they started using this “w” word that should never ever be used in relationship to our following Jesus. But these uninterested Christians, these consumers started using the word watch as a primary verb when it came to their relationship to Jesus. But I don’t know what you Tony, but when I read the Bible, I don’t hear Jesus say, come and watch me.
Tony:
No, yeah. It’s interesting too, because in fact, I was just recently in recent months with a church, and one of the key things that they’re struggling with are people that are not watching online as much anymore, but they’re coming and watching and the services, the, and they’re watching the message, and then they are going to programs where they watch a teacher teaching from scripture. But what the church is struggling with is getting those watchers to actually engage in the mission. And that kind of leads to my next question, Daniel, is, does how we think about people on the spiritual continuum, does that, should that also inform our strategies for how we encourage people to serve in the church as well?
Daniel:
Yeah, 100%. Because when we begin realizing that the people in our churches, in our communities aren’t simply non-Christian or Christian, and our goal isn’t necessarily just to get someone across the line of faith and then into deeper relationship with Jesus, if we realize that, then what I believe this does is it frees us up to focus on where we need to focus. There’s that broadly understood 80 20 rule, right? Where 20% brings about 80% of the results, and 20% of the people in the church do 80% of the work. You know, it’s a leadership ism in a sense. And when we think about the people in our churches, in our communities, if we realize that there are interested Christians and non-Christians and uninterested, non-Christians and Christians, what would it look like if we actually focused on the interested, right?
Like, when it comes to preaching, when it comes to discipleship, when it comes to evangelism, what would it look like if we didn’t see it as our responsibility to stir up interest in the things of God, or to stir up interest and make Jesus attractive in a sense, or make spirituality attractive in it? What if we realize that the Holy Spirit has always been a better, he Holy Spirit has always done that better than we ever could. And we realize that yeah. There are some people who are spiritually asleep, and like it says in Ephesians, wake up, oh, sleep or rise up from the dead and Christ will give you light. And we pray, right? We pray for the sleepers in our, that we live, work, study, and play with. We love them. We show them the love of Jesus.
But we stop inviting them to church because they really don’t care. And if you do that too much, they’ll actually do what? Because we’re so conflict averse these days because of all everything that’s happened, they’ll just unfriend you. Right? They’ll just stop talking to you. What would it look like if you actually loved them? You neighbored well, you showed them the love of Jesus, and you waited for the and you prayed and you waited for the Holy Spirit to stir up things in their life. That then we then talked about Jesus in that way. We’ve shown them, but then we start talking about Jesus. And it’s not just the only thing we do. The only the only tool we have in our belt is come to church with me, come to church with me, come to church with me.
Right? There’s more than that. And we discipled our people to know how to love in that way. Right? What would it look like to do that? What would it look like to actually stop letting the consumers hold us hostage? Right? The uninterested Christians, we stopped letting the angry emails, right? The we stopped letting the Google reviews, we stopped letting the most vocal people who gave a lot, but didn’t give a lot. Right? That they give financially a lot, but they don’t give of their time they’re serving, you know, and they’re really holding us hostage. What would it look like if we actually stopped focusing on them and focused on those who are interested, both interested Christians and non-Christians? I believe when we have that framework, Tony, it begins, this is the opportunity, right? Like it begins, we then start dreaming, oh, okay, then maybe ministry looks like this, and maybe preaching looks like this. Maybe evangelism looks like this. And that’s what will get us going.
Tony:
So, you say, and I, by the way, I love this line. You say, our spiritual lives aren’t static. We’re either growing closer to Jesus, or we’re drifting away from him. So can you share more about that first?
Daniel:
Yeah. This is, it’s a missiological principle. Paul Hebert, it’s decades old, and it’s not original to me, but it’s this side where spirituality, discipleship isn’t about a destination, right? It’s more of the direction we’re going. Are we moving toward Christ or away from Christ? So there is this sense as pastors and church leaders where, yeah, you know what the, some people say, Hey, our job is to feed, right? Our job is to, and we are called to shepherd. But I love how John stop puts it. He actually reminds us that shepherds only hand feed sick sheep and herding sheep. Right? The role of the shepherd is actually to bring the sheep to a pasture and let the sheep feed themselves. But really the only ones that we’re supposed to hand feed are the sick ones. And the hurting ones.
So going back to your quote, there’s this sense where, how, as a pastor and as a leader, are we bringing people to fields where they want to grow closer to Jesus, right? We’re bringing people to fields where there’s not only just one little patch of green grass where all the grass is yellow, and it’s not very appealing. And it’s like, I don’t want to eat from here. Right? The grass literally is greener on the other side because there ain’t no grass here. Like, what would it look like if we were actually to, in our preaching, in our discipleship, in our life, in our evangelism, actually show people how compelling Christ is the richness of a deep relationship, would you, the adventure of not only being a disciple, but being a disciple maker. I think that’s what that looks like to bring people into that, in into that place.
Tony:
So Daniel, with that in mind, what role do you think serving has in helping people continue to grow closer to Jesus?
Daniel:
Yeah. I love that question because from a super pragmatic side of things, there’s a, well, you can’t pay for everyone. I mean, we’re, you know, investors are called to equip the saints for the work of ministry. We’re a volunteer organization. Like you could obviously answer it from a very pragmatic side of things, right? Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. You know, when you serve, you’re gonna be more like Christ. And there is this sense, but when we talk about discipleship at Beulah, we, there’s lots of different definitions of discipleship, but we talk about it more in the frame, more frequently in the frame of what does a disciple do, and a disciple of Jesus at Beulah, we talk about disciples, gather, grow, give, and go together. And the reason we use that is it is based on research from my previous book, No Silver Bullets on the Behaviors that lead to Maximum Growth, spiritual formation.
There it is research based. But the reason we use those four, and the reason I’m bringing them up right now, I’ll just parallel it to working out. If someone’s listening in and you are like, Hey, I gotta start lifting some weights, I gotta start working out. Most people start with their upper body, right? Most people start with biceps, with chest press, with shoulders. Because that’s kinda the stuff that I feel like we learnt. And it’s easy to do, paralleling it to spiritual formation that’s gathering and growing. If someone becomes a follower of Christ, it’s like, what do you do? How do you disciple someone? Oh, well, what with me to church, let’s gather, let’s gather and study the Bible together. Let’s grow, let’s, right.
Let’s gather, let’s grow, let’s do the church potluck, let’s build fellowship. Let’s live out the one in others. Let’s, and that’s all good, right? I mean, that’s the easy stuff that we go to. First. The problem with working out only your upper body is you start realizing that, oh, actually you’re, you’ll be prone to injury if you forget working out your core, right? If you don’t work out your core, which is the most important must, I can do 30 minute upper body workouts. I can do 45 minute upper body workouts, and I’m good, Tony, but don’t ask me to do a 10 minute core workout. Like, I hate like the core. It’s so painful, but it’s so important. And when it comes to your question, and when it comes to what we’re talking about right now, the core working out your core is giving together.
That’s giving of your time. That’s serving right? That’s giving of your talents, that’s giving of your treasures. That’s the discipline of tithing and offering. That’s the sort of stuff like consumeristic Christianity. They’re like the bodybuilders that have huge upper bodies, or they, they, it looks good up here, but they have their core’s not strong. They have pencil legs ’cause they’re not going either. Working out your legs is like going, that’s the squats, that’s the lunges, right? To be a balanced, to be a healthy individual. We need to work out our whole body. But to be a healthy follower of Jesus, we also need to make sure we’re giving that we’re serving. Right? So I think when it comes And we’re doing this this upcoming weekend too, a quarterly, I’ll do a pastor’s chat before I preach and I’ll just talk about what’s going on in the church, kind of like a family meeting sort of thing. And I’ll be hitting serving and I’ll be talking about serving. ’cause we’re seeing that here too, right? It’s, people are hesitant to start serving again. And I’ll be talking about it from that perspective. I’ll be giving this illustration, I’ll be calling people to not a consumeristic way of living, but Jesus actually calls us all to go and serving as a huge part of that spiritual formation.
Tony:
Yeah, as you’re talking about that, and I was just talking with another pastor about this recently, it kind of struck me a few years ago. In the church world, we would never consider hiring somebody on our staff team to pray, to pray the prayers that we want people in our church to pray. We would never consider hiring people on staff to engage God’s word in place of the way we want people to engage God’s word. We would never consider hiring people to show up on Sunday morning to hear great biblical teaching and to engage in corporate worship together. However, for whatever reason, we, as, and this is, this is truly just, I think it’s Western church. We somehow have gotten to the place where we work completely comfortable with hiring people to engage in the work of the body of Christ that God’s created us to engage.
Daniel:
Yeah.
Tony:
And I am struggling with how we have gotten to this place, but actually, following Jesus and becoming fishers of men and using our spiritual gifts as part of the body of Christ, as part of God’s design for us. And it is part of how we continue to take steps towards Jesus rather than away from the, oh, I just got on my soapbox there for a second.
Daniel:
That’s awesome. I love it.
Tony:
Let’s, Let’s flip gears just a little bit, and I, because I wanna come back to serving as well, but let’s talk about leadership specifically. Leadership in the church. Has, do you see that that shifted at all since the pandemic? And if so, what does that look like?
Daniel:
It seems like, and we’re gonna, I believe we’re gonna keep on seeing this for the next few decades. It seems like people are more tired, more hesitant to step into leadership positions. The vitriol that we’ve experienced, it’s harder than ever. Like, there’s so much doubt and skepticism and hesitancy around leadership, right? Suspicion would be a better word. There’s so much suspicion around leadership, both inside and outside the church. So there is this sense where I’ve heard others in the past talk about, hey, the calling of the calling of pastors is to be healers. More than ever, we need people, we need pastors to be less apostolic and more shepherding. And I’ve heard this. Do I agree with it? I mean, there’s the whole aspect of, in the Catholic church, why were orders started, right? Why were things created? Why are policies made? Right there’s this whole swing of, oh, it’s a reaction to its reaction, to reaction to, and I’ve also heard, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but that counselors are the new pastors, that people aren’t really going to pastors anymore with their quote unquote problems. And Tony, I don’t know how many counseling courses you took in seminary, but me, it was one. I only had to take one. And it’s like, yeah, I am not equipped to be a counselor. My wife is a counselor. Like, I am not equipped. And on the apex, I’m an apostle teacher. But when I think about leaders today, what I think we need more than ever is a round table of the right voices around the table. Where we’re not striving to be the superman superwoman. I can do everything. But where we’re bringing the right people around us, where we can live out the full giftings of the church and to lead our churches to be salt and light in our communities, in our neighborhoods, in a uniquely distinctive way.
Tony:
So Daniel, if that’s the case, for those of us who are getting paid or potentially getting paid to be in leadership in the church, do you think there have been, there are similar challenges in how we’re engaging layer volunteer leadership since the pandemic. Is it some of those same or some of those same challenges impacting volunteer leaders?
Daniel:
Yeah. I believe if you’re listening right now and you’re like, man, my church is so full of consumers, I didn’t think about this. This person’s uninterested. That person’s a consumer this. And you hear it in people’s languages, right? ’cause language. ’cause they use verbs. Like watch, they use personal pronouns like your church. They don’t call it my church or our church. They say your church. You hear it in people’s language. I actually think we’ve been a part of creating that culture and cultivating that culture where maybe because we were at one point in such a need of volunteers, we’ve made it so easy. We’ve set the bar so low, we’ve tried to do this whole, let me do it for you. Let me respect your time. Let’s, and in a sense, we’ve lowered the bar more and more.
And we’ve done that in our teaching. We’ve done that in our leadership. We’ve done that in so many different ways. I believe that the antidote to all of that is to actually call people into greater levels of responsibility. Where we’re calling people not just with a responsibility, but also giving them the commensurate authority too, in an appropriate way based on your polity and all of that too, with the accountability, right? You’re not just giving people authority without accountability or responsibility without authority. But we’re measuring and we’re balancing that responsibility, that authority, that accountability, that togetherness and because I think if our ministry, Tony, is, if we realize that there are four types of people in our churches, in our communities, and our ministry is focused on those who are interested and those who want to be there, then we don’t actually have to be apologetic.
Tony:
No.
Daniel:
I’m calling you into a role that’s gonna take more than 10 hours a week for you to really pour in.
Tony:
That’s right.
Daniel:
And if you’re not willing to, that’s okay. Like, that’s, if you have five hours, let’s try to figure out a way. But I’m not gonna baby you and do it all for you because I think then we take out the responsibility we make, we make it so light on responsibility. ’cause we’ve set the bar so low that no wonder people are upset when you don’t give them snacks. Right. You’re like, wait a second. Wait. You like, you want goldfish? No. Like, that’s what we do for the kids.
Tony:
Yeah. And that’s really in line with what, especially for leaders, people that were invited to step into lay leadership or volunteer leadership in the church. Kind of the coaching that I’ve witnessed, or provided in the past, and mainly it’s just because I see how I respond. Leaders, people that are wired with leadership gift, they love Jesus, and they want to invest that leadership in the mission of the church, they’re very likely not going to say yes to a leadership position that you’re offering them, but they will always respond positively if you give them a leadership problem or challenge that you’re trying to overcome.
Daniel:
Yeah. Yeah.
Tony:
And the crazy thing is, the bigger the problem or the bigger the challenge, or the bigger the opportunity, the more likely somebody’s willing, if they’re wired up as a leader and they love Jesus, the more likely that they will say yes. So I totally agree, Daniel. Kind of almost raising the bar, raising the expectations will probably, for those that are interested, will probably cause them to lean in even more. Alright. So let’s get very practical.
Daniel:
Yeah.
Tony:
As you think about what’s working at doula in this season right now, what are some specific strategies that you would encourage church, church leaders to practice to help people engage in serving in leadership opportunities?
Daniel:
Yeah. So the word that I repeat over and over and over again as it relates to the disciples in our context is that word equip, right? If the word to consumers is to challenge them, and that’s the role that we need to do toward them and play toward them to disciples, and to your question, it’s equip. Now, the interesting thing about equipping is empower is often that other word that goes with equip. Right? Someone says equip. You say empower, someone says empower, you say equip. And it’s cliche. It’s common to link those two words together. But I bring that together because how do we as leaders equip people both with the responsibility and the power to lead and to run that ministry? So I’ll give you an example. We’re in year three of having launched something called the Beulah Training Institute.
So it’s like a leadership residency and it’s gone through. We’re re kicking it off for this fall. We’ve learned a lot from the first two years. We’re shifting some things around. But in a sense, it’s a way to get people deeper in the Bible. It’s a way to get people theology, but also 10 hours in a sense, in and around per week of volunteer time. It’s more of a responsibility, right? They’re not paid, they’re paying into this, but it’s this higher level of responsibility care community in that sense. What’s been really neat is in and through the hiccups of it over the last two years from this program, we have hired three people and one of our new elders has come out of this program. Our dream is in the next five years, how do we hire future staff for our current and future campuses? How do we hire 95% of our staff from this? That’s our goal, that’s our dream in the next five years. Because I think there’s always a gap and always place to hire someone externally depending on what you want to change and all that. But for us locally in Edmonton, Americans don’t wanna move to Edmonton. I’ll tell you that. Winter, six months out of the year, Tony, you’ve been here, but it was, it wasn’t winter.
Tony:
It wasn’t. It wasn’t. Hey. But I was glad to find out that you all don’t live in igloos though. So that’s good to know too.
Daniel:
Yes. Right. We are at an awesome Airbnb. You’re leading us in great multi-site work. Love it. But yeah. So it’s hard to move people from the states here. And you know what? It’s hard to actually move people from the rest of Canada to Edmonton too. As much as there are people from all over Canada and internationally moving to Alberta and also moving to Edmonton. When it comes to pastors and church leaders, a lot of them rather stay where they live, or they would rather be in Vancouver or Toronto or some of these more bigger city centers. So for us, it’s simultaneously a, we want to bring people deeper in the Bible. We want to give people greater levels of opportunities to serve. Not just, here’s an usher or here’s you know, be a small group leader or here lead youth. We wanna give ’em greater levels of responsibility, but also it’s a pipeline for us for future staff as we multiply and future leaders.
Tony:
Yeah. I love that because it’s not a quick fix to solve serving challenges that you’re facing, but rather a longer term play that’s equipping people as, using the word that you referenced to, engage further in the body of Christ. Take a step into leadership and what you’re finding, and I think this is gonna be true ’cause I’ve seen it happen in other healthy, thriving churches, is it becomes a pipeline for people then to step into full-time ministry in your church to, and if it’s not your church. It could very well be some church, which would be a big kingdom win as well.
Daniel:
A hundred percent. Yeah. And that’s, and the goal isn’t for a hundred percent of the participants to be in a vocational full-time staff paid role. That’s not the goal. But if some of them can be raised up into that, we know the crisis that is looming on the church, right? With the boomers retiring with less and less people wanting to step into that full-time vocational role. Like we know that, that, and Jesus said, harvest is plentiful, workers are few. So there is a sense where that is a hope to it. But more than that, it’s how do we just better equip our volunteers and leaders, to be more equipped and to serve in greater responsibility.
Tony:
Alright. Again, Daniel’s new book is called The Discipleship Opportunity. I’ve read it, it I love it. I highly recommend that you read it as well. Daniel, as we wrap up, any final thoughts you’d like to share, especially as it relates to helping people take their next steps towards Jesus?
Daniel:
I think sometimes we think there’s like many holy spirits and there’s multiple Holy Spirits, but there’s only one Holy Spirit, right? Father, son and spirit. There’s only one. And when I look at how God is awakening the sleepers, when I think about even this one gentleman who had not been in any sort of church for over two decades, stuff’s going on in his life and he Googles Catholic churches near me. And Beulah is the number one search result.
Tony:
Which you are not a Catholic church, right?
Daniel:
And we don’t, no, no, we’re not a Catholic church and we don’t do any sort of like special S-E-O, S-E-M targeting keywords on Catholic church. It’s, we can’t repeat it, but when Beulah comes up as the number one search result, like, isn’t that Jesus going after the one? Like, isn’t that the Holy Spirit waking people up? That is the sort of stuff that I am seeing here and hearing about in the West more with more and more frequency than I’ve ever heard before. So if an awakening is happening, and I don’t know where on the timeline we are with that, but if that is happening, then what if we entrusted the Holy Spirit with that work? And we focused on the interested instead and focused on, Hey, someone’s coming in. They are seeking answers. We do Alpha, we love Alpha. That’s our tool to help people get those questions answered. Hey, someone’s here. They are a disciple of Jesus. They’ve made a commitment. Let’s bring ’em deep. Let’s not give them a mile wide and inch deep sort of teaching. Let’s bring ’em, let’s teach ’em how to feed themselves. Let’s focus on the interested so that people aren’t just called to be followers, but they’re called to be disciple makers. What would the next 30 to 50 years in the West and in and around our world look like if we focused on the interest?
Amy:
Man, Daniel has so much wisdom. And to our listeners, in case you aren’t aware, we actually have a team of about 12 pastors who serve on an advisory team for the Unstuck Group. And Daniel has been one of those pastors who we enjoyed engaging with on that team over the past couple of years. But Tony, you know, after hearing the interview that you had with him, what stood out to you from the conversation?
Tony:
Yeah, it was fun to kinda re-listen to that again. And I love his passion for spiritual formation, and the key that stood out to me in that conversation, I mean, basically what he was saying, it’s less about what we’re asking people to do and more about who we’re equipping people to become. And I love that because we’re thinking about our spiritual formation strategy with the end in mind. We want people to become like Jesus. And with that, he talked about this equipping strategy that they’re using at Beulah, which is not only providing biblical knowledge and some training and equipping along those lines, but is actually engaging people in serving opportunities. And what he articulated is so true. And I’ve seen this happen in many churches. We think sometimes in order to encourage more people to serve that we need to make it easier for people to serve.
And there’s some truth to that. But I also find for especially the highest capacity people in our churches, including leaders, by the way, we almost have to raise the bar for people who are using his word interested in becoming more like Jesus. And I see that play out time and time and I love at Beulah, their long-term play. It’s not only to help people follow Jesus, they’re using this strategy to encourage people to serve, which is also, and they’re beginning to see this leading people into leadership opportunity in their church. And in some instances that’s where they’re gonna find their future staff leaders as well. So I love how they’re addressing bigger picture, longer term issues by just equipping people, to continue to follow Jesus and engage in the mission of the body of Christ.
Amy:
I guess it goes along with the last book title. No Silver Bullet. Going for the Long play. That’s right. That’s alright. Well, tell me any final thoughts before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Tony:
Well, I wanna make sure you’ve subscribed, so you don’t miss the last two weeks of this series. We’re going to have conversation with Chris Hodges at Church of the Highlands and John Thomas, who’s gonna be talking about Rooted, coming out of Mariner’s Church. And we’re gonna dig deeper into some practical ways to engage more people in serving as part of their discipleship journeys. So subscribers, you get our leadership conversation guides that highlight the key thoughts from the episode and give you some practical conversation starters to take back to your staff teams. And in fact, I’m hearing from a lot of pastors that are using the content from those conversation guides for their staff meetings on a regular basis. And that may be something you want to do as well. And if you want to get those guides, they will come to you directly in your email inbox. You can subscribe at theunstuckgroup.com/podcast.
Sean:
Well, thanks for joining us on this week’s podcast at The Unstuck Group. Our goal is to help pastors grow healthy churches by guiding them to align vision, strategy, team and action. In everything we do, our priority is to help churches help people meet and follow Jesus. If there’s any way we can serve you and your church today, reach out to us at theunstuckgroup.com. Next week, we’re back with a brand new episode. So, until then, have a great week.
