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Follow one church's journey as they depart from modern church growth trends and reinvent themselves by equipping everyday Christians to live out their faith in real life. Find episodes and show notes at www.dereksanford.com/reinventingchurch
Danielle (00:19.138)
Thanks for joining us in today's episode, Must See TV, moving from complexity to clarity. It's Christmas time in the city. And living on a prayer. Hi, my name's Danielle Heartland. This is the Reverend Derek Sanford. Hey, do you remember how the newspapers would never stop calling you Reverend?
Yeah. And then when I became a reverend, they found out.
Yeah, they're like, pastor. Lead dude, Derek, Deeks. Yeah, that is funny. That is when they switched it.
you
Derek (00:47.874)
this with because we've kept telling them don't please don't call me Reverend please don't call me Reverend yeah I too officially a Reverend yet yeah and it's too much it's a lot and then so they stopped and that was the one I got ordained
But,
Yo The dude that leads that place Yeah, they got real real casual with it. Yeah All right. Let's warm up not that we're not already. Yeah Okay, so I thought we could talk about You know, maybe a couple good things. We've been watching lately good or not. So good without I'm talking to all of you to any judgment
Listen, that's not possible. People judge. We won't judge each other, but people know each other too well. And what I would like to know is what makes for a good TV series. And can you share it or not with people that you're watching it?
No, yeah, that's true.
Danielle (01:36.269)
Okay.
Danielle (01:43.976)
let me talk about this one, I think it'll probably still be popular when this hits. Have you watched the documentary Unknown? number.
No. No.
If you have not watched it and you plan on watching it, just fast forward this bit.
what is it about?
It's about a girl who's about 15 or 16 and she and her boyfriend are getting like all these text messages from this unknown number that are like everything from like over sexualizing them in their relationship to like you should just kill yourselves. Like just awful all the things you hear about like going sideways with teenagers and stuff. It's just an end. There's all these investigations about like who's doing it. It's a small town. It's like all these kids like this kid that kid this group that group.
Derek (02:31.266)
Yeah, I haven't heard about it. It's intense though. Okay.
Yeah. So that's one thing that makes for a good thing, think, is like super intense, super like, I like documentary things. I mean, like shows, obviously, too, that are like fun and whatever, but like, I love the documentaries where you're like, what, how is this real?
We don't get into documentaries much. Oh, gosh. So I don't know. I've watched some on my own. Like that. I mean, I did that during COVID.
Tiger King and stuff. Well, everyone did that during common. It was our only choice.
Kim didn't watch that with me. was just so personal. But so our thing is, so first of all, my criteria is it has to be something that we generally that we watch together. OK, yeah. So I'll do some, you know, I'll watch something on my own, maybe randomly before I'm up later than Kim. So right before I go to bed, sometimes I'll watch half of a show or just a...
Danielle (03:25.249)
Yeah.
wind down. Yeah. But like in the evening, our general practices will typically watch one thing together. And so we're we like the longer series. And so I found that we and I think we've actually talked about it. I think it's more reflection on our lives. My wife builds houses for a living. Right. And so she's a designer builder who's dealing with all kinds of crazy problems that come up during the course of a day. And obviously, I'm in ministry. And so I think one of the things that we've decided is the
we both like shows that where people are having to solve bigger problems than we've had to deal with that day. So it's like, so we can walk away going at least as hard as today was for us, least we didn't have to that. And so, you know, we tend to be into these kind of like, you know, we watched Homeland was a that we through for a long time. Carrie Mathison character drove me crazy after a while. She's like, yeah, it just got.
Got too much effort. But the one we're watching right now is called Blind Spot on Netflix. So it is a it's this woman that has tattoos all over her body and you don't know why like head to toe and they turn out to be clues to for the FBI to solve crime.
Okay, but that's a movie called Memento.
Derek (04:45.23)
Oh, right. Oh, yeah. That's one of my that's one of my favorite. Right. I was such a. It was. Yeah. Yeah. But somebody placed. Well, yeah. Not to give it. Yeah. Not to give it all away. But but and then they kind of go they, you know, they scan her whole body into the system. And when things trigger, like there's a logo or something.
That never came up in our favorite movies last year. Good movie. Gone. So similar, like she has it for clues.
Danielle (05:00.716)
Boiler
Danielle (05:11.522)
Okay.
comes up on their crime radar and they know that it's also a tattoo. They know there's some connection that the FBI needs to get involved because there's this other conspiracy happening. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, that's cool. And we look for stuff that has four or five or six seasons. you know, it's not a one hit one. Yeah. And it's got a little staying power. Yeah. So, yeah, so we're going through that. We're on like, you know, season two or three or something like that. OK, cool. So, yeah, that's a good one for us right now. Great.
That's smart, that's a hot tip.
Danielle (05:37.966)
There go. There we go. All right. Congratulations to you.
Great, congratulations.
Consider ourselves warmed up.
Next. man, that's what we need. We need a drop that's like, now what were we doing? my gosh. This is 40. Okay. Well, not you. 50. Gross. Okay. So this season, we're talking about 11 shifts that every church must make to be effective in our current culture reality.
Those killer segues.
Derek (05:56.718)
Now this.
Danielle (06:17.646)
We'll every single week again, we'll have someone from clarity house either Dave Rhodes or Shane Stacey to kind of tee us up But this week before we get to I think it's Shane before we get to Shane We have an interview that you did with Phil Eubank and let me just say a little bit about Phil and Then we'll cut to the interviews So Phil Eubank has served a ministry for more than 20 years answering God's call from a young age despite growing up in a challenging family environment
He has an undergrad degree in pastoral studies and preaching from Moody Bible Institute and an advanced master of divinity in preaching and biblical languages from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Phil, that was a tongue twister for me. Throughout his ministry, Phil's been passionate about teaching the Bible with clarity, developing leaders and equipping followers of Jesus to reach those close to them but far from God. As a lead pastor of Menlo Church, a multi-site congregation in the heart of Silicon Valley, he oversees four campuses across the Bay Area.
You
Danielle (07:15.948)
In just over two years, Phil's been leading Menlo's revitalization, reshaping systems, empowering campus leaders and helping the church engage in a highly innovative and diverse culture with the hope of Jesus. His firsthand experience navigating the opportunities and challenge of multi-site ministry fuels his passion to help other leaders thrive in this unique model. Phil and his wife, Alyssa, have been married nearly 20 years and are raising four kids. When he manages having a little downtime, he enjoys cycling the hills of Northern California.
And by the way, isn't there just the one hill? I don't know. Discovering great Mexican food and holding out stubborn hope for the, Cleveland Brown.
Ha ha ha!
Derek (07:55.918)
He's got some Midwest. That's kind of And listen, this dude, we had such a great conversation, but he, you know, we're talking about complexity to clarity. This guy, he's just a brilliant thinker. He's got his stuff together. He's figured out how to simplify things and really, yeah, I think people are really going to benefit from this guy.
Alright, let's go to Shane and then we'll see your garbage-raising with Phil.
Guest Speakers (08:21.624)
Have you ever been to the Cheesecake Factory before? I remember being there years ago for the first time and being surprised when the waiter came to the table and dropped onto the table this hard bound catalog like menu with page after page after page of options. And honestly, it was overwhelming. It sent me into menu paralysis. And if you've ever seen an episode of Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay, you quickly find out that too many items on the menu is a big, big problem. Well, I bring this up because over last two decades of working with churches around the disciple making culture,
all around the country, a common problem we often see is that a church's disciple making process or pathway has become way too complex. It becomes a sprawling menu of programs and events and classes. And each one of them are good, but together there's no clear sense of how they really relate to one another. And more importantly, what part do they play in making, maturing and multiplying disciples of Jesus? One of our favorite exercises to run at Clarity House when we're on the ground with the team,
is to quickly diagnose kind of the reality that they might be feeling around this is what we call the three minute napkin test. We ask the team that we're gathered with to on a napkin, just a sketch, their current disciple making pathway or process. You know, what are the primary organized kind of components or programs or, you know, kind of inputs that they would have? And the sketch should illustrate also how those components relate to one another in order to fulfill the mission of Jesus as their church.
and then we have them compare those napkin sketches. And most often the drawings vary widely as you can expect. And sometimes leaders don't even know what to include in the sketch. And those variations between napkin sketches on a single team are quickly a clear sign that we've shifted from what you might call a multiplication map to a ministry menu. Now, in some rare cases, these pictures do align, which is wonderful. And so we asked the second question. And the second question is this.
does the pathway that you've drawn move the finish line beyond the functional Great Commission? Well, what's the functional Great Commission? Well, the functional Great Commission is going to all the world and make worship attenders, baptize them in the name of small groups, and teach them how to volunteer a few hours a week. I mean, these are all good things, but it's not that they're inaccurate, it's just that they're inadequate when you hold them up against the actual Great Commission and in a growingly post-Christian context.
Guest Speakers (10:42.882)
We would call that a church's assimilation funnel or their engagement funnel. It's helping people take next steps into the life of the church. And it's valuable, but it rarely produces multiplying disciples. For that, you need to kind of forge within your engagement funnel, an empowerment funnel or a multiplication funnel, helping people identify their calling, become self-feeders.
and trained to be gospel influencers in the places where they live, work, and play among specific people and specific places that God is sending them to both be and bring good news. Now, this lack of clarity and integration of a disciple-making pathway, it has some ripple effects. Like when you don't have that clarity, oftentimes staff will feel more like event planners than people developers. And ministries will start competing for time and volunteers and resources.
And even your people will start expecting different ministry environments to either do everything or do something that they were never designed to do. And so here's the key principle. Your disciple making pathway should function more like a multiplication map than a ministry menu. Let me say it again. Your disciple making pathway, it should function more like a multiplication map than a ministry menu. Let's double click into that for a moment. A menu says, hey, pick whatever you want. We offer lots of things here.
And the win is often participation. How many people are participating in these different offerings? And the focus is often next steps into the life of the church. And church leaders often get trapped in a customer service kind of mentality. How do we keep people happy or keep offering what they want? Here the difference here of a multiplication map. A multiplication map says, here's how we can support you in growing as a disciple of Jesus, becoming a self-feeding, reproducing disciple.
of Jesus and it's concerned with helping people take their next step, not merely into the life of the church, but in relation to Jesus and being able to become more like Jesus, but also to do what Jesus did. It focuses on creating disciples who become leaders or disciple makers who are sent out on mission rather than just creating converts who become worship attenders that serve. so success revolves around activation, not just participation.
Guest Speakers (13:01.394)
And church leaders again function in a multiplication pathway. They function more like with a training mentality than a customer service mentality. So let me just give you two questions to wrestle that can help you kind of get some clarity around your disciple making pathway. The first is this, do you have a clear picture of the kind of disciples of Jesus that your church is designed to make mature and multiply? And you might say, Shane, that has nothing to do with the pathway. And say, you're right.
Directly, it does not, but indirectly, it's absolutely significant. It's the question you need to start with. Because if you're not clear on the outcome, your pathway can end up leading people to the wrong destination, and the pathway itself become the end rather than the means. And the second question would be this, what kind of support do people need to become the kind of disciples of Jesus that you are trying to raise up? And if you'll answer that in your pathway, not just everything you can provide, but what is necessary versus what is nice.
Now, here's the thing, discipleship will always be messy because people are messy, but your disciple making pathway, it doesn't need to be. And if you want to multiply disciples, I would encourage you to stop handing them a menu and start guiding them with a map.
you
Derek (14:19.34)
Hey, I'm here with Phil Eubank. Phil, so good to have you, man. Thanks so much for joining the podcast. I really, really appreciate it.
Yeah, glad to be here.
Yeah, you've been leading Menlo Church, which is in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's a place known for innovation and complexity and disruption. And you actually followed a famous pastor there, John Ortberg, that many of us know and have followed over the years. And so can you just give us a little intro? How has living and leading in that environment shaped the way that you think about church and ministry? How's it going there? What's happening in your part of the world? I'm in Erie, Pennsylvania. You're in California. And so we're on opposite ends of this place.
Just give us a little intro.
Sure. So I grew up in the Midwest. So I've driven through Erie, Pennsylvania. that's actually, so yeah, plenty of experience throughout the country a little bit actually, and have been here for just about three years now moved here from Colorado, where I was the pastor of a large single site outside of Denver. And so there was some of what I think makes Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley of where we came from. And, I think I've always had.
Derek (15:04.91)
God bless.
Guest Speakers (15:28.248)
technology and disruption as a sort of part of how I think about life and ministry. So I think God knew what he was doing long before we were here. I think that part of my story is every place that I've been in ministry has required significant change when I got there through leadership transitions that maybe were a little bumpier than they would have wanted. And that's certainly been true at Menlo. When I first got here,
There would be people that would say, man, you're following John Orberg. Who's been nothing but kind and gracious to me, him and Nancy. But like you got some really big shoes to fill and my answer was always the same, which is good news. I brought my own pair and I think he still needs his. And I think you just have to be confident enough as a leader that you say, hey, I am who God made me to be. I'm going to be that, you know, being formed into the image of Jesus every day more and more, but that's either going to be enough or it's not, but I'm not going to.
fake that I am somebody else. So I think that being able to lean into that after a significant season of transition, Menlo's been incredibly gracious with, and obviously Silicon Valley is a little bit coming from like your EPA, it would feel like taking a time machine. And there's just so much of the edge case, like I hear people are doing this and I hear people are doing this and you.
You come to Silicon Valley and you're like, are you required to drive Teslas? Like that's how many Teslas you'll find. And they're all driving themselves, you know, and there's waymos and AI is literally everything. And it is, you know, pushing the edge of a whole bunch of different stuff. And there are really cool, fun things about that. But there are also really spiritually deforming elements of culture that you're swimming in it. You don't, you don't realize, but I think the sort of busy equals important.
quotient of American culture is even more that way in Silicon Valley. Everybody that's here is here because they've chosen to be here. They know it's easier and cheaper to live in other places, but they want to be around the smartest people in the world. They want to be trying to solve the greatest problems in the world. And that's really fun and really cool. And I think in a faith context, when people try all that without God, and even if they're successful, it doesn't feel successful, even if they
Guest Speakers (17:49.88)
get to where they were thinking that it was gonna give them peace, it didn't give them peace. I think we get to stand in the gap and point to the good news of Jesus and say, man, there's a better way to live. And the kind of change that you're trying to bring actually even that inside of you is a Imago Dei, God-given discontent that can only be fully and finally satisfied.
That's really beautiful, man. I love that. And yeah, just such a unique mission field there because of all of those swirling things that are happening. And we're talking about this shift that we're making, this reinventing church.
journey that we're on from kind of a church stroke growth, a tractional model of doing church to more of a missional multiplication, disciple making model. And, you know, I know you guys are somewhere in that same journey along the way. And the particular thing that we're talking about this time is from complexity to clarity. So I think what has happened in a lot of churches, there have been a lot of complexity heaped on to just kind of keep the machine going. And, you know, one of the
one of the important moves of the journey is to kind of get the clarity. So maybe talk a little bit about your personal and your church's journey in that stream. And then, you know, I know that this phrase that you sent over, I think is just so profound that says work on it, not just in it. so tell us a little bit about that. What does that mean? And especially for like some pastors that are trying to do everything at this point, you what does that mean?
in, you know, what does it look like in your week to week, you know, kind of thing.
Guest Speakers (19:31.02)
Yeah, I think that the journey for Menlo as a church, we're more than 150 years old. so every church trend, every flavor of the month, flavor of the decade, Menlo has tried. And I think there's some really sweet faithfulness in that of people that are going, yeah, I know this is the thing you're doing now, but like I'll be on the other side of that too. You know, I'm going to keep going. This is our church. It's why Menlo is still here.
And I think there's a really sweet gift in that, that for the better part of a year, our first six months here was triage. There's no easier way to put it. was navigating massive change structurally of things that just nobody was in the seat to be able to make difficult decisions. So we had a lot of difficult decisions stacked up to make. And then we spent about a year after that with Dave and Shane and Clarity House team.
literally on our site where we would get together every month or so and continue to work on, let's take the best of where Menlo has been and believe for the best that could still be ahead, honor the past and honor the future and hear the voice of God for our church and our community. And so that process was, you know, as a leader, you're always carrying this tension of like, I have to keep working in it, Sunday's coming, we are.
pastoring people who have real lives that really need to be cared for. And you're also trying to think through, hey, I know something's broken. I think that even if you're in a highly attractional model, I was in a highly attractional model church in Colorado, a large church, that they're doing great stuff. But I was feeling a dissonance in me of like, oh man, this show is exhausting. And it feels like it's taking more and more energy and delivering less and less results. And so,
I already had felt that sort of internal angst. And so much of what we were doing in sort of the adaptation of the tools that we were using felt very resonant for us. And we were at a really key place where every piece of it, values, vision, strategy, it was like a time capsule. So our mission was from three years ago. Our strategy was from five years ago. Our values were from eight years ago and 12 years ago.
Guest Speakers (21:56.078)
So it was a great way to be able to pull all of that up, put it on a board, pray through it, seek God's best for Menlo and for the communities around us and end up with something at the end of that year that we brought to every campus that we had prayed through individually and collectively as a leadership team and felt just God's hand of clarity around this is who we believe God's calling us to be as a church and the kind of shaping work and strategic change to get to a place where we can.
both reach and meet the needs of our community. We feel called to reach the next 3 % of the Bay Area, about 250,000 people in the next decade through church networks, church planting, and a healthy Menlo. And doing that in a way that is very different over time. So it's been really sweet, but carrying the tension of, still like, is preaching teaching pastor, like I still have to preach this weekend. And I have to care for people that are in crisis.
and I have to navigate staff stuff, and we have to approve a budget thing, and I have that dinner deal that I have to go to, and how do I make sure that the way we're thinking about praying about and preparing for the future gets onto my calendar and the calendar of our leaders too.
Yeah, that's great. Have you found any keys to keeping that rhythm of like of keeping the big picture stuff on your calendar versus the the week to week?
Yeah, I think that part of it for me is I'm very disciplined about my calendar. So if you looked at my calendar, I always ask the question at the end of my week, is my calendar helping me get done what I need to get done? Or do I survive my calendar? I'm sort of serving it. And then I get to the end of the day or end of the week and I go, oh, when am I going to get that stuff done? And I'm not perfect at it. But I think when I proactively look at
Guest Speakers (23:48.032)
my calendar for the week and go, something that happened last week with the Monday holiday and we moved actually also on that day. And so I was looking at my calendar and I was like, this isn't gonna work. And so I blew up part of one of my days because I knew something needed to change. So I think that stuff has been helpful. And then we use a lot of learnings from Patrick Linciani around meeting structure. And so like Death by Meeting is sort of the book that outlines his philosophy.
But basically the core idea is give every meeting a single purpose, either operational kind of logistics, strategic, which every one of our teams does at least once a month, or developmental, which happens depending on the team between once and twice a quarter. And so I think that allows, like when you get to the strategic meeting, you're gonna have people that light up, that you're able to go, oh wow, this is an amazing. And so once a month for us, this is usually when it happens. It happened yesterday.
All of our campuses come together. We have an entire meeting day. We do fun stuff together. We share meals together, but we also put leaders in a room that might not always be in the same physical space. And we have longer term strategic conversations. And having done this work already, now you get to really sharpen the pencil on a specific topic. So yesterday's was about, let's name the tension and opportunities for improvement. We will not solve this. This is a tension we will manage, not a problem that we will solve.
between the dynamics of central and campuses in a multi-site.
Mm-hmm. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean we could I think we could do a whole another podcast on time management and calendar management as we talk about this But I do think it's interesting to hear you say that specifically because we're talking about from complexity to clarity as an organization and so, know I think even one little micro takeaway here is that a lot of that does come back to you know Are we managing the complexity in our own calendars and are we getting to clarity on what's most important by the end of the week?
Derek (25:49.759)
And that's a huge, that's a huge.
But I I lead a small cohort of leaders in the space of AI and integrating their work and their faith as sort of a part of our strategy, just like just my cohort. And I think one of the things that if we're not careful as a church, we reflect the dysfunctions of our culture. And one of those dysfunctions in our culture is that
Because in our culture, busy and stressed means important, that actually even when you're in a space where you have freedom, you become so familiar with dysfunction that actually you build in complexity and busyness into your calendar, your ministry philosophy, because to not do that makes you feel lazy and unimportant.
And so I think it's just the spiritual formation to say, hey, there are going to be times that it's a push. There are going to be times that it's full and busy. But like, let's make sure that those are really strategic. And then when we get to seasons, like we did this for our staff, we announced it yesterday, the week of July 4th, we looked at our calendar and we said, man, that is a weird, sleepy week. Like we should just shut down the office. There's no reason for us to be here. We're, we're just sort of rinse and repeating the annual calendar.
So we said to our staff, we really wanna be more intentional about giving permission where you don't have to be on. Like literally, we can shut the whole thing down for a week. We do it between Christmas and New Year's, and now we're gonna do it at this first part of July as well. And I think for us, that's part of the spiritual formation work to say, as a ministry staff member, you don't always have to be on, but it takes two to tango. Like I can tell you to not be on, but.
Guest Speakers (27:28.77)
then are you still are you still on because you don't like the quiet is more stressful than the busy.
Right, yeah. I love that, that in your part of the world specifically, like that's a big counter-cultural move, you know, to do that. It's really good. The other thing that I love that as we kind of communicated about this, you you talked about the church being a hospital for sinners, a teaching hospital for sinners, and it's such a vivid picture. Can you just talk about that imagery, what it means? Give us that perspective and...
that really helps to keep discipleship both messy and hopeful for people.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. think the pastor before John Ortberg at Menlo was guy named Walt Gerber, very, very prominent pastor, was here for a lot of years. God used him to grow Menlo pretty exponentially at the time. And he would say a lot, we're hospital for sinners. And it was this way of clarifying, we are not a perfect place.
We do not have perfect people in it. And back then, mean, this was like, I mean, this is decades ago. He was divorced when he came, which was very controversial. And so it really allowed out of his own story for him to be honest, to say, hey, here's stuff that I struggle with. Here's pain points I've experienced. And I think it gave the church permission for that. And I think that the church came without realizing it, especially as we get bigger and more sophisticated, just get a glossiness that makes being honest and being real.
Guest Speakers (29:06.4)
not that helpful. I think that there's a fine line that if we're just a place where people come wallow, I think we've overcorrected at times in this generation where being real has put transformation on the back burner and it's like, I'm just gonna be a mess and Jesus is cool with it and he doesn't wanna change me. And I mean, I guess if you don't read the Bible, that works great, but Jesus has got a better way of life, like a way he wants us to lean into. And then...
I've added this kind of idea. was watching a show that was like a show about a teaching hospital. And I thought, you know, there is something about this at Menlo, you know, just like people don't come to this area if they don't feel called to it professionally, that is a million times more the case with ministry. you're not, know, depending on where you are in the country, getting people to come move where you have ministry and work for you and all that stuff.
much easier. Cost of living is different. Cultural headwinds are different. Coming to the Bay Area is like, hey, it doesn't matter what we pay you, it's going to feel like a pay cut. It doesn't matter where you're coming from, it's going to feel harder. You want to do it? Like that's the tough pitch of it. And so because of that, think Menlo has been in the paradigm of missionary or mercenary.
We have been a lot more like looking for mercenaries, people that we hire from the outside that can kill it for a season as opposed to man, missionaries are homegrown. They cook here for a while, but it takes a teaching hospital for centers approach that as a manager, what we'll say is if you don't like having meetings with people about how they showed up in that last meeting, a young leader to say, hey, let's just talk about.
what it does to other people in the room when you're zoning out. Let's talk about what it means when they get an email from you about an unrelated subject in a meeting that they're in with you. Like what does that say to them? If you don't wanna just help people grow up as leaders and followers of Jesus on a staff, this is probably not the staff for you. And so letting people know in the world of build it or buy it, we gotta do a lot more building in Silicon Valley and a lot more buying, or a lot less buying. We can't afford it over here. And so I think that has been just an important
Guest Speakers (31:20.958)
A piece that I think as I look around the church more widely post COVID, probably more churches should be thinking about whether that's residency programs that are more intentional, like we have one of those, or that's just like, how are we reaching into our staffing structure and changing it to make space for people where it's, you know, like.
second career stuff or somebody that's maybe primarily staying at home with kids but could do something part-time. How do you get more flexible in the way you think about and develop teams, whether that's volunteer teams or staff? We're doing it out of necessity, but I also think it has the added benefit when we look at Ephesians that we would equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. For us, that's how we apply.
Yeah, that's great. That's great. So another thing is we think about complexity to clarity and this idea of like, how do we embody that in these shifts that we're making as churches? You one of the things that you talk about is collaboration and shared rhythms. And so I'd love to hear you just kind of talk about how does collaboration and shared rhythms contribute to clarity and kind of help to resist the complexity of the moment.
And then just what does it look like to collaborate and to share rhythms with? And I'm thinking about, you know, people that listen to this podcast are pastors from all kinds of different walks. Not everybody has a big church or even a full staff. Some people, like you just said, are working with volunteers. And so just even thinking through that lens of like, how does collaboration and shared rhythms help to bring clarity, organizational and other.
Yeah, I I think if you have a meeting that is a standing meeting that exists basically in a rinse and repeat fashion once a week or once a month, in my opinion, that's like a great place to start.
Guest Speakers (33:13.198)
to say, if you try, so a great example for us in this conversation of creating collaboration rhythms is with our board, with our elders. So when I got here, our elders had had to over function a lot in the transition. They were having to reach into the day-to-day functioning of Menlo. And one of my prayers was that,
the place that they could add the greatest value around strategic oversight, fiduciary responsibility, and congregational care, that their focus could narrow to those things. And so what we did was I said, hey, right now we're spending 12 gatherings a year basically in business meetings. So what if we accomplished what we're currently doing in 12 meetings in four? And we put them at the strategic times throughout the year where those meetings
what they needed to. You had the information you needed to be able to prayerfully prepare for those. Every briefing that they get happens before they get in the room so that we are really coming together for them to talk about it. I record like a basically a video slide deck every time and so does anybody else that's giving stuff to them that they can pray, they can prepare for. It really helps introverts and internal processors who can't like, they're just not gonna show up well if you're like, hey, you heard this 10 seconds ago.
Let's Yeah, I think thinking through some of those tools and rhythms and then our central leaders. So if you're a single site church, think about like your departments, whether they're volunteers or staff members, our departments show up once a year, each one of them. They do one of those. And then the elders just hear an update, ask good questions, pray for them, ask how they can better support them. And so that takes up a few meetings. And then we have a couple like prayer retreats where
not as good in the moment.
Guest Speakers (35:00.268)
there is no agenda. Like we're not going away and going, hey, it's like team bonding plus future strategy, plus let's deal with this mess, plus prayer. It's like, hey, we're gonna go pray for 12 hours today. Like that's what we're doing. And I think that stuff really frees people up and I think can shake the organization out of cruise control. And I think if you don't have those rhythms in place, your rhythm becomes your cruise control.
And that happens for us at session level, that happens for us in every staff team. And so if that's, what are your meeting structures? What are the things you're doing differently at different points of the year? In the month of January, we put together a team of about 12 to 15 folks with prep work. And we do a day away where we prepare the teaching calendar. Usually our teaching calendar is 12 to 18 months out and we create new series concepts.
appreciate what God has done, talk about where we're going, and then everybody goes into smaller groups, forms some teaching concept ideas. We come back kind of like fun, shark tank style. People pitch the ideas that they have about future teaching series. We get to take, this one was great, but it would even be great with the one that you all came up with. And by the end of the day, we probably have another 12 to 18 months of teaching content once we build it out. But that really helps everybody.
be a part of it, right? So they know, hey, just a reminder, here's our strategy. What you all call dream disciple, we call kingdom quality. So here are our kingdom qualities as a church. So we get to reinforce all of that. That's really helpful. And so much of it flows from the way we created all that in the first place. Many of those same leaders that were in the rooms for a year, it's normal for them now to go, yeah, this makes sense. And we talk about the kind of vision frame. go, this is really not gonna change. We're not debating.
Values we're not debating kingdom qualities. We're not debating strategy. We're not debating mission We're going this is this is the part of it. That's pretty locked But as we think about how we achieve where God's calling us in the next 10 years 5 years 3 years and 1 year and 90 days Man, we get a chance together to roll up our sleeves and come up with the best plan
Derek (37:13.246)
That's super helpful. And Phil, you also have this thing about the center and the edges concept. And I think all church leaders understand this feeling of overwhelm that comes when we just keep adding and adding and adding. We've got this menu. By the end, we've got this menu of options for people to choose from. And can you just talk about this center and edges concept and how it's helped you, again, to move from complexity to clarity?
Yeah, I think that all of us, if we're not careful, we all drift towards complexity, all of us. And we do it for a million good reasons. And if you're in a church, you have as many people as are in your church, there are that many people that have really good ideas. And so they're going to bring ideas to you. And if you're a really nice pastor, the thing that you think that's so nice is to say, yes. Right. Let me do that thing. Or what I think sometimes we do is we
find a way to take this thing that they're doing and from a program and message perspective, we sort of squeeze it into something that we're already doing, which has the negative impact of probably watering down the strategy of the thing you're already doing and not really giving them the resources for that thing to be successful because we don't really believe in our strategy. If we really believed in our strategy, we just defend it. But we're not sure it will work. And it's like, I don't want to lose that person. So I guess I'll let them do the thing that they want to do.
And I think just coming back to over and over and over and over and over again, what does it look like for your church overall? And then what is your specific season? I think the more you can name that and the more that becomes shared language, that becomes your center. That becomes the bullseye. For us at Menlo, our mission statement is bringing hope to everyone by living out your identity in Christ every day. The way we say that a lot from stages at Menlo, we believe that hope is for everyone. And so we build ministries with that in mind and we bring it.
Like we're hope bringers. We're not hope waiters. Hope shouldn't be hard to find. We should be bringing it with us everywhere we live, work, learn, play and go. And then the second thing that we do out of that is that every year we have a sort of a focus point or a theme that we're learning and growing into. So this year we're focusing on becoming an invitational culture. So if somebody said, hey, I have this really cool idea and it was super invitational and it fit within our ministry plan, we would be like.
Guest Speakers (39:31.618)
let's go like let's figure it out does this make sense does it fit within the plan if somebody came to us and said here's this really cool fun, I mean no shade on them at all but like Christmas tea that some folks would really love to do or like you know dudes that know Jesus barbecue for us we would say that man that's a lot about come to me for church people and that's just not our mission. And it's not what we're trying to grow into this year. So I think if you define the center if you if you show people what the bulls eye is
then all of a sudden those other decisions become a lot clearer, are they close to the bullseye or are they not? But I think the introspective question as a leader is, is your process good? That the center of your bullseye is not your center, it's God's center. And it's not God's center just through you, it's through a process where you know you have men and women leaders standing around you, that when that top giver, when that pretty loud.
person comes at you because you're not doing the thing that they want you to do. Do you have people that will stand with you and say, no, no, no, we really believe we're stacking hands. We said this is what we're doing and these are some things we're not right.
That's awesome. My staff makes fun of me because they say don't mention tools around Derek because I've become obsessed with helpful tools that train people how to be a disciple. This center and edges thing that you just described would be a fantastic leadership tool if nobody's developed that. I think that's really good. I got one more question and then we got to wrap up. This has been just gold, Phil. Thank you so much. think pastors, leaders, church leaders,
Cast vision from God, sometimes every Sunday, you know, we have these big ideas from God that inspire. But I think where a lot of us fall down is we don't necessarily know how to mobilize out of those visions. Like we've got these big ideas and plans, but can you just talk about how you've learned to boil vision down for people that can help them to take actual steps out of those visions?
Guest Speakers (41:35.766)
Yeah, I think that we are really good. Somebody shared a Instagram or TikTok video with me in the last couple of days and it was sort of poking fun at the way as Christians, sometimes we can use flowery Christian language and we just have enough people that gas us up around us that we've not noticed that we're not giving them meaningful, helpful next steps. So it's like, what should you do? Just like, just trust God. Hmm. Yeah, I needed that today. Like, what did you need? Trust? That was new information, you know? And so I think being able to say,
My instinct as a communicator especially, but I think just as a pastor in general, my instinct is I don't want somebody to feel like I think they're stupid. And so I'm going to give them principles that I'm going to trust them to apply them. But I think that really a lot of times what we need to do is I've heard it's I've said it like put put cookies on the bottom shelf. How do you help people find them and be able to reach them? So we think about three audiences when we teach saints, people who are followers of Jesus for, you know, a month or a decade or longer.
skeptics, people who aren't sure about God, you know, they're interested, and prodigals, people who have walked away, they're not sure God wants them back. And so we're regularly thinking about out of these three, what is the next step that all three could take? And not three different steps, like one simple step that all three could take.
And that challenges all of our ministry environments because if we're asking them to go serve somewhere, do you have a place for all three of those categories to serve? If we have a community action thing through our For the Bay initiative to really be known in our communities as being advocating for and caring for people who are far from God, whether they ever come to know Jesus at Menlo or not, can somebody from all of those categories say yes to that? If we ask them to take a spiritual practice, does that spiritual practice scale? Can a prodigal try it?
Can a skeptic try it? Can a saint try it? And so I think it just becomes a really important factor. And then any communicator for us, they run through their message on Tuesday. We submit a manuscript on Wednesday, or I'm sorry, we submit a manuscript Wednesday. We run through the message on Thursday. We get feedback. And then hopefully by the time we get to the weekend and deliver it, we've really refined it to make sure it might not be the best message you've ever heard. But you hopefully get to a place where you go, wow, this was really specific. This was intentional.
Guest Speakers (43:51.116)
And there are strategic next steps built into Menlo that are designed from what we talked about. It's not like there's a message that sends you into some ethereal headspace, and then there's a bunch of programs running in the background, which I think can be our tendon.
Yeah, that's man, very, very helpful. I'm taking that away from this kind of that that whole Saint skeptics and prodigals is a very, helpful framework to think about all kinds of things. I really appreciate that.
And I'm sure that's not from me. I'm sure.
No, I get it. get it.
Anything you hear from me, I'm sure somebody else did.
Danielle (44:26.968)
Ha
Somebody said it first. Hey, just to circle way back, big picture, we're moving from complexity to clarity. If there's pastors listening to this out there, again, we've got people listening from big churches, small churches, urban, suburban, rural, and they say, yeah, things have gotten too complex at my church and I want to take a clarity step. Anything you would just say as like an early...
first step that people could take or a thought that people could think about to kind of move them in that direction.
Yeah, I mean, I would say whatever you can do to move the leaders that are around you with you on the journey that you're on, our board goes through, like we read books all the time together just as a part of our rhythm. And so right now we are reading a book called Pursuing God's Will Together by Ruth Haley Barton. That is such a helpful book. And I think really can till the soil of a leadership team if it's, hey, I'm not sure they're ready. Things are up and to the right. Stuff stable.
There's a lot of what ifs that can come in this. That book can be great. There's another one. It's like just out of my eyeset over here. I think it's called Lead With Prayer. But I think anything that takes your leaders with you so that you don't go, hey, I've been praying about this behind the scenes. I didn't know how to talk to you guys about it. But I've been praying about this thing for 18 months. And you're at this point of like.
Guest Speakers (45:50.924)
desperation, this has to change, but you have not led people well to be on that journey with you. And so I'd say whatever you can do, just bring people in the journey with you, trust that God's gonna bring clarity along the way, but let Him be the one that sets the pace of it. Don't try to manufacture it or twist people's arm, but just say, God, you're gonna move in the hearts of people on this team, on this staff, or on this board, and just start with...
you know, first team principles. What's the highest team you sit on? If you sit with your elders, start there. If you sit with your senior leadership team, great, start there. If you sit at mid-level manager meeting, great, start there. Start at the highest level you serve on and see what God does.
I think that's really sage advice. Thanks, Phil. just we're cheering you on from over here. Heard so much about your ministry and have been kind of following from afar. And so just know that you've got cheerleaders over here on the East Coast saying, just expand the kingdom and spread the gospel like crazy over there.
You too, man, takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people and so glad for ministries in the Midwest, East Coast, West Coast. I think God's doing something really unique and special right now and honored to be on the shoulders of the giants, the men and women who've been praying that something special might happen and we get to bear some of the fruit from their faith.
Amen. Amen. Thanks for your time today, Phil.
Guest Speakers (47:11.662)
Of course, have a great day. You too.
Danielle (47:18.734)
Cool, okay, I hope you guys found that helpful. Yes.
Yeah, I love that. I love talking to Phil. think he's such a such an inspiring leader. as people I think as people probably there's like five podcast episodes within that one conversation that we could have taken rabbit trails forever. But it was really hopefully insightful and helpful to those who listen.
Yeah, cool. All right. As always, we like to have a practical couple of practical moments and this segment we call Behind the Curtain. And this is where we talk about something that actually happened this week at Grace that we can kind of help relate to this.
as we're reinventing our church for all to see.
Yeah, everyone's watching. So so we thought we'd talk about this week. had our creative team kick off for an event that we have every year called Christmas at the Warner. And it is a Christmas Eve program around Christmas Eve that we hold at a historic theater in Erie, a historic Warner theater. And so we call it Christmas at the Warner. It's kind of birthed out. It was like about
Danielle (48:29.87)
12 years ago, think. This is our 10th year doing it, because we had two year break for COVID. But yeah, so.
And we've called it like our, this is when our church decided to stop doing Christmas Eve services at our church. And we basically said we wanna have a Christmas Eve service that we take to the community at the time. We're in a very Catholic area, very kind of religious area, but not necessarily Protestant or whatever. But Christmas Eve is something that people can kind of get around no matter what tradition they're from. So we thought it was just a great time to.
you know, get actually away from the church building, get to a neutral space and open the doors wide for people who may be exploring Christ or may just come out because it's Christmas and you know, we have a chance to share the gospel.
And at the beginning, I remember it was an actual sacrifice feeling. who doesn't love?
Correct. Yeah, our people wanted to have Christmas at our church.
Danielle (49:25.304)
We just, it's like the cozy vibes, all the things. So it was a shift for the first couple that we did, I think. Yeah.
And now we're on year 10. Right. Yeah.
which feels like crazy. every year we talk about, even before we were doing Inventing Church, part of our process was like these big rocks, these big things that we do. Is it still valuable? Is it still serving its purpose? Is it still a vision, mission, all the things? And this one just keeps getting through. there are, because there are some lasting things. think, I mean, the interesting discussion is about
Thanks.
Danielle (50:03.69)
as we're reinventing and as we're trying to be a little bit less attractional, quote unquote, attractional. Because really, Christmas at the Warner fills the attractional bucket. It checks every single thing you would need off the list.
High production, it's high, you know, it is, it draws the crowd. It draws people. And you know, I think not only do we ask evaluative questions every year of like, should we do this again next year? Is it worth time, money, energy, like all the stuff that it takes? You know, since we've been having this conversation, it takes on a new spin because then it's like, does this fit our disciple making model?
And you know, think some of the we've decided up until now that yes, it continues to or that we will continue to do this attract one attractional event through the year as kind of an open funnel to receive lots of folks. One of the things that we did is we shifted our attention a little bit to developing volunteers and leaders behind the scenes and just to say, hey, what does it look like to serve in a space like this and put a lot more intentionality around
people who serve behind the scenes and developing them and discipling them and talking about, you know, how to be a light in the darkness and those kind of things. so, you know, I think that's one subtle shift. the fact remains, it is a very attraction program that we have decided, at least for now, to keep in our annual rhythm. but anyway, the behind the scenes part is that we started planning for that this week and we're talking about Christmas in September and August when we started.
So how did it go? You were part of those creative meetings. Talk about what your process is when we gather those teams together.
Danielle (51:43.574)
Yeah, so really we look at like who's on the team or around the team or in the atmosphere who just is a good thinker. Like you don't have to even, you could be in the creative team and like not even be at the program. You could just be part of the thinking and part of the ideation or whatever. And it's usually a pretty large group, which I don't normally like to do, but for some reason it just works I think because everyone's like amped or whatever. I find myself like,
I don't know if this is actually a principle, but I kind of do it like when you're, you you throw out prompts for like people to think about or whatever in a room of like 12, it can be silent for a long time. So I'm constantly telling myself like, if you talk first, you lose. If you talk first, you lose. You know, just let it like go and it can be uncomfortable. But I just, and in fact, I would say probably for an hour, it's uncomfortable. And then something catches and then it just goes off for the last hour or whatever.
But yeah, so yeah, process is just looking at what's the rationale from you? Like what kind of themes are we hitting at? What kind of things are you circling around? And then usually whatever pops off the page to people is where kind of we follow. And so then, yeah, just kind of develop it as much as possible. what'll be next is you and I'll talk again and I'll say, this was the thing of your list of the theme that really caught.
and then make sure that's still catches with you. Sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it doesn't and that's fine and we just figure it out but or sometimes you'll be like, that's not what I meant. But no, this one's gonna be sick, it's gonna be awesome. Yeah and I think for us, the holidays, think are like for us were the baby steps of like getting ahead. Like even when, you know what I mean? Cause we were in like a system that we had like from our way back when.
I'm talking like 20 years even, 30 years. Like that would be the thing where we could like plan on the side because the other stuff was just going.
Derek (53:48.43)
The rhythms of the Sunday morning services were their own thing. Those of us who like to get way ahead can get on the side and get way ahead. And we've since really transitioned the whole church to this kind of way ahead model.
And it was what it was.
Danielle (54:01.294)
which has been like game changing for sure. But yeah, I don't know. think, yeah, if you're listening to this in October, get with one or two other people and talk about like, could Christmas look like this year? What's a way that we could, or if you don't wanna do it attractionally, like what's a way that we can use it as a way to like send people out? Like there's a lot of different ways you could take it, you know, but.
That's good. And even I think it's a great time for big projects, too. I mean, over the years we've done. We always do something with Christmas the Warner where we're partnering with a local agency in the community or whatever that we're giving towards. That's a good point. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, we did we've done series Advent Conspiracy. I'm thinking about some of those that we've done in the past where, know, the one year we adopt. mean, it was awesome. We adopted the state prison system as like a Christmas program for the prisoners and their families, because sometimes the families of prisoners don't get
gifts because the breadwinner is in prison or whatever. so we talked to them about what would it look like for us to help with that. I remember the moment where we just said, I said, how many are there across the state whose families don't have Christmas? And they told me the number. And for me to be able to say, we'll take all of them. It was just awesome. And to come to our church and say, we took all of them.
That was wild.
Danielle (55:20.354)
We have to do this.
Let's provide Christmas for these folks. so, yeah, I think it's just a great time of year to think creatively about how can the church kind of interact with our culture differently and in a hopeful way. yeah, so great Christmas in September, October, whatever it is.
Christmas and our whole life. Okay, let's move to tips and tools. This is a section where we just want to be practical about things you can use in your everyday life, everyday ministry life, leading. And so you wanted to share and talk a little bit today about what a prayer walk could look like. So talk about it.
This is a this is kind of feels like a little bit of an old-fashioned throwback but It's on the top of my head because we're in this we're in a training season for intentional friend and one of the we're going through the the blessed model the day Ferguson BL ESS So the B is begin with prayer and so we've built some exercises into our training
Sorry, intentional friend is one of our dreams.
Derek (56:24.622)
roles. Yeah. So we've developed a six week master training course around, we're developing them around each of the dream disciple roles. This is one that we're going through right now around intentional friend. And so B-L-E-S-S the B is begin with prayer. And so we have a series of exercises that we're taking people through to practice being better at praying for our friends. And so one of them is this prayer walk. And it was just kind of this reminder of this is a really great tool.
for the average Christian, I think, to incorporate, but also for leaders that we could tap into maybe at a different level. And so, you know, we're encouraging people to pick their place. So maybe it's the neighborhood, maybe it's their workplace, maybe it's a place that they frequent, you know, and just walk and pray. And really, I think the key to it is a couple of good prompts.
Okay, so we've encouraged people that we actually have a little bit of a homework assignment that they do a prayer walk in between classes and then come back Having thought about these prompts, but the the simple prayer I think that is great for a prayer walk is God opened my eyes to see the people around me in a way that you see them so You know the simple version of that is God help me see what you see, you know and so and and we encourage people people to look for people and to look for places and so to look for people and say
Who do I see regularly in this space that I don't really know? Who looks lonely or stressed or hurried? Where do I see people connecting with each other? And who has God already placed in my path that I might be overlooking? So there's like a people lens, like look for people on your walk. And then there's a place lens. And so where do people naturally gather and linger? What spaces feel welcoming and which feel isolating? Where do I sense God's presence?
What needs do I notice that friendship could address? And again, we're in the intentional friend training. And then the assignment that we gave them was really just these two questions. What did I notice that I usually miss? And where might God be inviting me to pay attention? And I just think those two sentences, you put like, actually three, if you start with, God help me see what you see, and then afterwards reflect on what did I notice that I usually miss? And where might God be inviting me to pay attention?
Derek (58:42.51)
that for the common person, for a leader, for a Christian, for whoever, those three questions in a prayer walk could be really transformative. And so I just offer that tool. That's great. I'm going to I'm actually doing it, putting together or making this tool available so that people can kind of see these things right now. so it's just it was just a good old school reminder that a good old fashioned prayer walk is a very powerful thing if you ask the right questions.
Right, I you could do that around your office. Totally. You could do it around on a Sunday morning. Neighborhoods, Let's do this.
around your home you walk through your home. Yeah it's just a really good tool.
It's just so crazy how things like that can fall off. You know what mean? That's cool. That's great. So that'll be part of the show notes, too, I think. Right. Yes. Link to that. Or at least the text. Yeah. Cool. All right. OK. I think that's it for today. Yep. Good one. All right. So if you like this episode, tell us by leaving a rating or review five stars if you did. For those of you who don't know how to use a rating system. If you don't want to miss what's next, make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast or you can subscribe on YouTube by that little bell.
Yep.
Derek (59:31.79)
Good one.
Danielle (59:47.864)
What do they say? Smash that bell. Sure. So stupid. You can always share these links, help a friend you think might benefit from some of this content. Like we were talking about, you can find detailed show notes and related resources over at DerekSanford.com forward slash reinventing church. That's where you can also subscribe to his weekly newsletter to get all the latest free tools and posts.
you
Derek (01:00:10.604)
Yep. Great. Thanks for joining us. Thanks everybody. See ya. See ya.
you