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The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
Father Lorenzo Labrija welcomes you to the Tritank Podcast
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: From the Try Tank Research Institute, this is the Try Tank Podcast. And welcome to the Try Tank Podcast. I'm Father Lorenzo Labrija. Uh, this is episode 34034. On the first 90 days. In this episode, we sit down with Dwight Kahn, a visionary rector who has revitalized Epiphany Parish in Seattle. Join us as we delve into his insights on leadership, community building, and the power of relationships in the Kingdom of God. Whether you're a new rector or a seasoned leader, Deut's story offers practical wisdom and inspiration for anyone looking to make a meaningful impact. And same as last week, the voiceovers for this episode were created by AI on, um, WonderCraft. Thanks for listening. And let's dive into the episode foreign. Welcome to the Try Tank Podcast.
>> Doyt Conn: Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. I appreciate the invitation.
I'm a big fan of your style of leadership
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: All right, well, as you know, I am a big fan of your style of leadership. How you. You're. When we did our AI Summit in Seattle, everyone just seems to. I. I was going to use the word revere, but that sounds almost like you're like, judging from on top or something like that. But it's more like they trust you. Your. Your staff, their epiphany trusts you. They know you have a vision. And I said, uh, he's got to start something. Then when you sort of tell me about when you first got to Epiphany and how things were and how you changed it around, I'm like, okay, this is someone that I think could give some good practical advice to those who are out in the field and may just be starting a rectorship or they're just coming out of seminary beginning. But. So this is basically what would be the someone who's coming in, what are their first 90 days type conversation that I want us to have today.
Part of the conversation is when you start. Think about that initial negotiation
So, doy Kong, congratulations. You just got a new job at St. Swithin's in the Swamp, and you are the brand new rector and you're coming in. So what do you do when you first get to town?
>> Doyt Conn: So before I get to town, part of the conversation is money. Part of the conversation is when you start. And I think it's important that you only have one chance to negotiate your first salary. Uh, so you do it at the beginning. But also it's very important to remember to articulate to the people that you're going to go work with at the church that your pay is directly proportionate to your congregation. They can't pay you more than they can pay you. And they can only pay you what they bring in, and that's generally connected to how much pledge income comes in. So when I came to Epiphany, we were a C minus church in whatever scale they were, they had in the diocese. I was a young priest that had no experience as a rector, and my income wasn't very good. It was just barely what I was making as an associate in Beverly Hills when I left. And so I said, okay, uh, I'll take that, but if we grow, you're going to pay me more. And those things have to be held in check. Now, that's a tension always, because when you're growing, you're always adding staff and you're adding programs and. But you have to do that in balance with the amount of money coming in and what you're getting paid as well. Think about that initial negotiation. The second thing that's important to think about is they're going to want you right away. They're going to want you to start immediately. They've been struggling, They've been waiting around. You're coming, and everybody's excited. That said, pick your starting date. For me, it was. I waited around until Advent one, and there were.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: How long does that wait?
>> Doyt Conn: I was, uh, from July. Okay, so six months, five months. It was a while. Right. And so I wanted to have a good goodbye in Beverly Hills, uh, All Saints, uh, fabulous church. And I, um, then I want to have some time off. You don't get time off. And I knew that they would be okay. But also by starting advent one, the expectation. If I'd started August 1st, the expectation for what September would look like and Sunday school would look like in choir would look like, and the liturgical outline would look like, and the classes would look like. Would be very high and impossible to meet. But when I came in late November 2008, um, I did not have Sunday school expectation riding on my back until the following September. And so now I had Runway to build what I needed to build, which is really two things, right? One is trust and relationship within the congregation itself. Right. And second is sort of a vision of how we're going to be able to carry this off. So starting in the summer, no great benefit to any priest because there'll be a false expectation on what September looks like.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: That's actually a good point because kind of what you're doing there is. You're modeling two things. One is a proper goodbye somewhere. I think it's very important that just sometimes, just because people are leaving, they don't. Well, I'M already out of there. So, uh, let me just walk out. And sometimes they inadvertently may burn a bridge that you don't even think about. So a proper goodbye is important. But I think also the second part of that, the starting in Advent, so they're not expecting, right. That fall programming already when you walk in, is about managing expectations so that you're not setting yourself up for failure, right? You're managing the people's expectations to say, okay, well, the guy just started, you know, and, and he's starting in, you know, late November. So it's obviously, you know, so we're looking at next vacation Bible school for next summer or something like that. So like you said, you bought yourself that, that Runway that. That's. You see, I knew I had the right guess for this.
>> Doyt Conn: Now the unexpected thing to this is it also built excitement, right? So there was, There was conversation within the community of Epiphany that this priest was coming in, right? And he was arriving. And so there was big banners out in front of the church for months that says, welcome Dute Kahn and family to Epiphany Parish November 29th. Or whatever I started, right. And so there was this anticipation that built within the community that had drifted away because the church that I joined was a church that was vastly diminished. It was at the edge of whether or not it would continue to flounder or maybe find a spark to flourish. It was one of the smallest Episcopal churches in the city of Seattle at the time. But it had the great good fortune of a corporate memory of being a strong, thriving church. And so for me, I always wanted to go to a church that had that memory because it's easier to re. Inflate, ah, congregation than to build one that has never had, um, ah, a memory of being much bigger than a small church. And there were people here who had the memory of what that was like, right. So it was easier to get them excited about what the church could be.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Like again because they sort of remember it from.
>> Doyt Conn: They remembered the flourishing times back when, you know, 70 years ago or 50 years ago.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: You see, there are some advantages of having mostly older people in church. They remember those times when the church, they were all full.
>> Doyt Conn: Yep, they do. And so they were excited. And that was the promise that came. So in that meantime, what I also did, uh, before my very first Sunday, is I got their photo directory and I memorized every single person's name. So my first. Not many people, around 100 people, right. My first Sunday I knew them by name.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Wow.
>> Doyt Conn: And all of a Sudden, they felt like, man, we are home. We are home to the church that seemed to have disappeared, and now it's back. And that spread like wildfire within the community of people that had drifted away.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Was there a, uh, particular method you used other than their picture, and you just went over it every day?
>> Doyt Conn: A couple times, yeah.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Just flippant repetition, repetition, repetition.
>> Doyt Conn: No. Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit.
When you become rector of a church, sermons have to be good
Carol Anderson, the rector of All Saints, who was my leader, mentor, and had a profound influence on my priesthood, said to me, she said, when you become the rector of a church, the Holy Spirit will give you the power to remember everybody's name.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Oh, God bless. Thank you.
>> Doyt Conn: Seems to be the case.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: There you go.
>> Doyt Conn: So, uh, I believe that, and it continues to be the case.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Excellent. So you made it there. You know, they had the banners outside under new management. Come on in. Uh, and you show up finally for Advent 1. You know everyone's name, they're all impressed. They start telling everyone, like wildfire, that there's this guy who. Who he makes you belong there.
>> Doyt Conn: And then there's two important things you do right away.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Okay?
>> Doyt Conn: You preach excellently. You preach brilliantly. You spend all of your time working on your sermons. I've heard people say, go meet everybody. You'll meet them eventually, right? Because they're going to come to you. And the biggest impact you can have is from the pulpit. So the sermons have to be good. And every single Sunday, they have to be good, because that's the word that's going to spread. People are going to say, he's a good preacher. He's worth coming to here. You got to come here. So don't let them down. I spent 20 hours on a sermon today. I still spend 12 or 15 hours on a sermon. We spend time because that is your bang for your buck. Make no mistake about it. That's where they feel like they get to know you. You can't know all of them right away, but they get to know you. And that is the thing that's going to keep them coming. And so what happens with a new rector, Lorenzo, is they all get a bump, right? But what they can't all do and what we were fortunate enough to do here at Epiphany is you want to keep that accelerating you. So if you get a bump because people are coming to check you out, you want to make sure they come the next Sunday and the next Sunday and the Sunday after that, and they bring their friends and they return to a pattern of the spiritual exercise of worship grounded under the leadership of the new rector, because they preach well. And my focus of, uh, preaching was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and more specifically the, the Kingdom of God. What is the Kingdom of God?
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Like, was this in a series or you just, you just.
>> Doyt Conn: I do do it all the time.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: That this is all.
>> Doyt Conn: Okay, wove it in. So that's the first thing I did. The second thing I did was teach something very hard, right? So don't teach something easy. Teach something hard. The first class I did Wednesday night, Nicene Creed. So nobody likes the Nicene Creed and people in Seattle like it.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: How many people showed up?
>> Doyt Conn: Like tons. 45. They packed in. Why? Because they wanted to meet this new rector and he was going to teach something that was dumb, right? That nobody liked. And they all had an opinion about it. And I knew that because anybody who sits in the pews has an opinion about the nice in creed. So I'm like, okay, bring it down, bring it on, bring it on. Right? And that was galvanizing. Uh, after that, I taught a 7am class on Dallas Willard's Divine Conspiracy. Again, people would rather do something hard than easy, right? People want to step into the difficult thing, not the. Because it is meaningful and it is transformative. If I go to the gym once a month and I lift 20 pound, uh, dumbbells, that is not a meaningful form of exercise. But if I go to the gym every day and I lift 75 pound dumbbells, over time, both, there is the endurance built, uh, the sense of accomplishment achieved. And there is transformation. The hard things transform people's lives. And so right away, hard things, not the easy things.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: And you know what's interesting is when you talk about, you know, good preaching, that people are going to be like, okay, this is a good preacher who has something to say. And two, because I'm still surprised, right? When you said you're still taking like 12, 15 hours. I mean, you've gone around the cycle a few times by now. So it's not like, oh, I've never seen this pericope, this, this reading before. I'm just going to go ahead and preach. You know the one that I did six years ago, they probably won't even remember it. You're like, no, I'm still going into this. I'm still finding something that speaks God today to my community in Seattle and to my people. So that in and of itself says that you're still, to this day talking. If you, uh, walking the walk, the, the, the walk that you did the moment you came in, now what, 17.
>> Doyt Conn: 17 years later, years ago. And. And we've more than quadrupled, right? We've gone from an ASA of like 80 to an ASA of 400 in that time.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Look at that. I mean, and the second thing, though, the. This teach something hard, which is what people have been telling us, right? Part of the reason that we see the churches that grew even during the pandemic, like, and I'm going to guess that your church did not have a loss of membership during the pandemic.
>> Doyt Conn: Not at all.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Exactly. You probably even grew. Because what we notice is that the congregations that request something of people, right?
Epiphany had division, they had conflict. And advice was given to me to deal with the conflict
That you're here because, like you said, the gym analogy, you're here to get bigger at the gym or healthier. So you're going to have to work your heart, you're going to have to work your muscles to do that. The same thing is that people are at church. They're not just there for a social event. They're there because they want to become better disciples of Jesus, theoretically, we hope. And so. And that requires effort. That requires continuing to go to worship, continue to study scripture, continue to pray. All the things that we know come from that.
>> Doyt Conn: The other thing I would say that was noticeable, but I hear it all the time. Epiphany had division, they had conflict. When I arrived, they had just fired an associate who wanted to be rector, uh, who had been here for 10 years, and he was 65 years old. That caused conflict. But there was deeper conflict before that. That had gone back to the rector before there was conflict. And advice was given to me to, you have to deal with the conflict. But what I did was, did not deal with the conflict at all.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Wait, so hold on a second. You get this wise, sage advice, deal with the conflict right away so that you can figure it out. And you came in. Did you just, like, ignore it or did you.
>> Doyt Conn: Yeah, yeah, Some of it washed into my office. So. But. But the thing that leads a church out of conflict is vision, is direction, is the unity of the Trinity, right? As we say at Epiphany, relationship is primary in the kingdom of God. And when the God is center, relationship is always healthy. And so, gosh, we don't have conflict to this day, 17 years later, we don't have conflict because we're followers of Jesus, right? Uh, and we have a God that is a relational God, and that is a God of love, right? That is love, makes love, generates love, gives love to us, right? So I had a couple of folks come in and, you know, sort of state their case. And I said, well, That's a rough case. I understand. I wasn't here, know what to do about it. But I'm glad you're here. Let's go to church or let's pray. And so my advice to folks is vision leads. Vision creates healing and brings church together. So don't get all wound up in the mess, because they're going to look to you to then try to solve the mess. That's not your mess to deal with. You can't solve that mess as the new rector, but you can lead them to hell.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: That's a, uh, that's. That's an interesting way of looking, but I think it makes sense just, uh, if you think about it, that people would be like, well, I'm not going to worry about that whole thing. Let's look at the future and focus on the vision that. And to that vision.
Epiphany has two altars; one has worked for 2,000 years
By the way, how did you come up for the first vision for Epiphany? Did you sort of come with it? Did you do sort of like you went out and talked to every member and asked them your hopes and visions.
>> Doyt Conn: And together we don't even have a vision statement now. We don't have a mission statement. We don't have a business plan. We have the gospel. Um, I would say, but you.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Because, you know, even though it sounds a little bit flipped, uh, there, it's not. Because what you're saying is our mission, our vision is Jesus is the holy Scriptures. The, uh, this is what we're called to do. Why. Why do I need to rewrite something? Why do I need to. To come up with something more than what's. What's been around for 2,000 years?
>> Doyt Conn: I would say, Yeah, I mean. Yeah, Exactly. It's worked 2,000 years. The thing I would say is two things happened. One, a lucky thing happened to me the first Sunday I came out and stood before the congregation pretty full. I mean, now it would look anemic, but at the time it felt full. And I said, you know, I'm glad to see you, uh, wherever you are, on your spiritual journey. You have a place at Epiphany. And, um, that just came out because I don't know why it came out. Holy Spirit. And so many people commented on that when they left that we now, 17 years later, not only say it at every single service that is conducted at this parish, but it's also carved on a giant rock out in front of the church.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: And I've seen it.
>> Doyt Conn: Yeah, you've seen it. And that was fortunate. So, you know, but I did a couple of other things too. When I got here, there was a, ah, makeshift altar sitting in the middle of the chancellor that one of the interims had set up there to try to bring the altar closer to the congregation. And there was lights and wires, like, taped to the floor with duct tape. And there's like a makeshift, like, goofy platform. The chairs behind the halter were on. And so before my very first Sunday, I'm like, so how do you do communion? Like, what's the communion thing here? And they're like, well, you know, you do the communion at this little goofy altar, and then you all run back up to the other altar, that's the permanent altar, and everybody kneels at the rail and you give them communion. And I said, so you have two altars on a Sunday? And they're like, yeah. And I said, well, how long's this one been here? And they said, three years. And I said, it looks like a, ah, sixth grader put it there last week. It hasn't found its life. What do you think people would think if we just took this thing? Um, and, you know, people say, don't make big changes when you first get there. And, uh, and I thought to myself, big change. I mean, this thing doesn't look like it should be here in the first place. And it doesn't seem to work liturgically. And I don't want to be stuck with this thing for a year trying to get rid of it. And so I called a couple of people. I, uh, didn't know very many people. I said, what do you think people would think if. If you got rid of that? And they said, I don't think anybody care. So we ripped it down. It took us 10 minutes to rip it down. That's how incomplete it was.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: It wasn't a solid construction.
>> Doyt Conn: It was. It wasn't the thing. And so my first service back, it was back up at the high altar, the main altar. People came out of service and said, our church is back.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Oh, interesting.
>> Doyt Conn: It's back. Thank you for bringing our church back. Um, so. So it's important, right, to nuance what is important, what is permanent, what is a value? You know, oftentimes an interim will leave you junk. And so just because they did it, it doesn't mean it's better. What is permanent is the thing that you want to settle into. So those are a couple of things that happened in my early journey at epiphany.
How did you articulate the gospel vision for them
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: But going back for a second to the vision question, I know that it's grounded in scripture, grounded in Jesus, but You said that, uh, the vision can create the healing. Right. That you had a vision and that you were leading people, and that was enough to bring people out of the visions that they had. So that vision, how did you either articulate the gospel vision for them or. Or how did you come up with. With a way? Or was it just the. Wherever you are on your journey?
>> Doyt Conn: No, I mean, so. So when I arrived here, I'm only as good as, like, the last book I read or, you know, whatever I've been thinking about.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: And you read a lot, so you.
>> Doyt Conn: Must switching from one personality to another schizoid. Uh, but the thing I would say is I really spent the first two years here, uh, talking about the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God is right here, right now. And it's where what God wants to have happen always happens the way God wants it to happen. Except where God withdraws God's preference in favor of our freedom. And freedom is, uh, a core necessity, as is sin, because love is real. And if God really loves us, then we must have a chance to deny God. And God loves us so much that God went to the cross to allow us to be free. But then God, through the resurrection, rejected human rejection without denying human freedom. That's the story of Christianity. Right. That's the story of the resurrection. And so I spent my first couple of years just teaching about Kingdom of God principles. Why mercy is more important than justice, why it is more powerful, and just the way the Kingdom of God works, works and our place in it. And I just thought, setting the, articulating this worldview, the Christian worldview, the Jesus worldview, was completely interesting to me and, uh, also a challenge, but also completely foreign to a community that called themselves Christians. Right. They're all about, we got to go do this good thing. No, I don't want to do that good thing. Let's fight about it.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: And we haven't fought in a bit.
>> Doyt Conn: Yeah. As opposed to, this is the Christian lifestyle. This is the God created world. This is how we live in it. So that was the vision. Um, and we still preach that.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Were you in any way. Did you come up with the whole Kingdom series, like, each week? You were just tying it in, figuring out where the Holy Spirit was leading you, or did you follow a curriculum for the Kingdom?
>> Doyt Conn: No, no, no. I'm terrible with curriculums. We always write our own curriculum. It's an epiphany.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Okay.
>> Doyt Conn: And it keeps things fresh. It's also invigorating for me, sort of intellectually. Um, you know, I think if Dr. Eversley, my theology professor at seminary, said to me once, I can tell how dynamic a parish is when I go into the priest's office, if I see the books on the shelves that we had taught them years ago at seminary, we know the place is dead, right? And so our job as a priest, I think my job is to be at the edge all the time of what the community is thinking about and reading and in thinking about my own theology. So it would never occur to me in a million years to go back and look at an old sermon because the world's just too fundamentally different for it to be relevant anymore.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Now I want to make sure that no one thinks like, oh my God, Doit is just like stubborn headed. And going forward, he's just doing his own things in Seattle. And when the moment he came in, he was like a bull. But because knowing you, I know that you're also very collaborative, that you bring people around you and around. How did you make sure that no one was left behind of your parishioners?
>> Doyt Conn: Or was that much of a question? How did you.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Those that perhaps were more afraid of the change and were like, oh my God, what is happening? And it's happening.
>> Doyt Conn: I was very fortunate, right, because things were really at the bottom. The housing market had crashed, the giving was anemic here. People were. So I bought at the bottom of the market, if you will. And. And so people were really ready for something. And I sensed that. I mean, there's two other pieces that are important. We write our sermons here at Epiphany in Community, not individually. We have a whole sermon writing team. We work on these things together. And we do that so we can hear what's happening in the life of the congregation. And so we can keep through lines on our theology, irrespective of who's preaching. So things here are very collaborative institutionally. We also spend a lot of time going back and reviewing everything that we have done. So we can always make incremental changes to be better and better all the time. Time. We have a whole dashboard series that we correct, that we put together where we evaluate something that's happened. We give it a score to consider how we want to think about it in the future. Doesn't mean we won't do it, but it gives us sort of some kind of loose little idiosyncratic, if you will. It's not complete science, data driven, but at least it's consistent about how we think about things. And parishioners are involved in these reflections as well. But the most important thing I think is, is just loving on your people. Right? So at the same time, simultaneously, when we're preaching, we're teaching about the Nicene Creed, I went, I saw people, I went to their homes, right. I heard their stories, invited them into the office, right. And just you get to know folks and you build trust through those relationships over time. Um, and, and you're in love with them. You're called to love them, but then you fall in love with them. Um, and it is. That's a wonderful thing. I've been at Epiphany for a long time now. Far and away, the majority of the people that attend here know no other rector than me. Mhm.
One of the most important things that we do here today is outreach
Right. Because we've grown so much.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Correct.
>> Doyt Conn: And still the pattern plays the same. Right? You get to know them, you love on them, you hear their stories, you invite them in. Uh, you meet them where they are. Right. You make space however you can. One of the most important things that we do here today is we create as many avenues for entry and connection as possible through outreach, through classes, through small groups. Right. Through parties. We do tons of parties. Uh, through pilgrimages, through all of the things, through volunteer opportunities institutionally. So I don't know what to say about that.
Your sermon is created in community and you have this process to critique it
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: So let me ask you a couple of things on what you just said. So because I definitely want to make sure that if I were listening, I'd have a few questions here. So for example, you have, your sermon is created in community and you have this process. Could you just sort of walk us through the process for someone that's not.
>> Doyt Conn: Sure aware of it? So we meet every Tuesday morning at 9:30 on Zoom. The people that attend that are me, my parochial vicar, my director of communications, my two lay preachers who preach consistently, another, uh, uh, assistant priest, our verger, and a different parishioner. Every single week we come together, we all have watched and read the sermon that had happened the Sunday before, and we critique it. We critique it. They're like, oh, it was so good. It was so good. Great. So good's good, everybody, you know, that feels good, but what can we do better? And we put together sort of, uh, an ongoing workbook of things that we need to attend to in our sermons where we look, how we talk, how we give it differently between the different services where the same sermon is given. So we do, we always, always critique the sermon. And then we, for sort of the second half, we do exegesis on the text that will be preached 12 days in the future. Right. So not the coming Sunday. But the Sunday after, okay, and then we talk about what's confusing about this. What do we like about this? Everybody's read it before they come into the room. And the person that's going to preach that text has already thought about it before they arrived that Tuesday morning. So then we, you know, what have we preached about? What are themes that are emerging? What are people talking about? What's going on in the world, what's going on in the parish? And we wrap all that up, we give it to the preacher, and they go and they work on that sermon from that Tuesday to the next Tuesday, when they're required to give it in the pulpit to the communication director, he then critiques it and they work on it, sometimes mutually, or sometimes just the preacher, until they give it that coming Sunday. So we work our sermons. We try to create these language through lines right between the different preachers. The communication director is responsible for that. Because we know that if somebody's going to take the time to get up Sunday morning and come to Epiphany Parish, that the expectation is we have worked very hard on the message that we're going to share with them.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: And does that. Does that process take away some of the spontaneity or some of the, uh. If something happens in the news that you want to mention that happened in the last two days, let's say something happens on Friday and you want to mention it on Sunday, do you still do that? Do you weave it in in some way? Or do you just say no, you know what? The next.
>> Doyt Conn: In seven in 17 years that's happened once, we can think it's going to happen, but it mostly doesn't happen. Um, at least in my experience. You know, if you're preaching the gospel, it's generally more interesting than whatever's happening in the news anyway at any given moment in time. So we definitely stay away from that. And when we want to preach about a topical issue, let's say we want to preach about fascism. Let's say there's a sense in the community that fascism is on the rise. To pretend theoretically. And, um, so we don't talk about today. We do what we learned in cpe. You always reflect on an issue that's completed. So we'll go back in history and look at another time that has already passed through that might reflect a fascist tendency, because then everybody can agree on the historical outcome. We can never agree on the historical outcome of an event that's happening right now. Uh, but we can find historical comparisons or analogies that we can agree on to preach the gospel against. Right. So one of the ways that we maintain a, uh, parish that is very purple politically with Trump supporters and left, left leaning Seattleites, wherever that lands. Yeah. Um, is, uh, that we preach the gospel and when we preach against issues, we find issues that are resolved that let people say, oh, well, that really is analogous to right now. And I said, well, maybe right, if you want to interpret it that way.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: But that's on you, not me. I did not preach that.
>> Doyt Conn: That is not what I preached. We preached about Jesus and what Jesus would say to a type of moment in time. And you always can find that historically. And that's allowed us to keep, uh, grow, I think, but certainly keep our congregation together.
So you've brought up some great points, but we haven't talked about finances
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: So you've brought up some great points, but we haven't much talked about finances. And I know that when you first arrived here, uh, in Seattle, for as many of the other. I got lucky because of this. I got lucky because of that. You also had a not so lucky turn when it came to the budget that had been approved. And some people taking. Tell us that story real quick.
>> Doyt Conn: Yeah, I don't know. Um, when I came, uh, our annual, I think pledge base was about $500,000, maybe, maybe a little less. And, uh, another $125,000 was generated from school rental, uh, from an independent school that was occupying our property. And they were leaving my second year here in pulling all their money and building a building next door. And so our financial situation was a little bit precarious, but there was elasticity in giving and there was enthusiasm about what was going on in the parish and the unity of the parish and the people coming into the parish that allowed us to begin to grow our pledge base. Right. And so that happened pretty quickly. But the thing we, we did even my very first year is we did not have an annual appeal program. We did not have an like, oh, you know, this year what we did. Right. But the stewardship campaign, we didn't set, uh, a goal for how much money we were going to raise. Uh, we just said, okay, it's that time of year when you all step up and pledge. And pledging is important because it pays our salaries. Right. It takes, uh, care of the buildings. Um, and every pledge counts towards our position in the diocese with regards to the number of delegates we get to have at convention. So. And it helps us plan a budget. And if you don't pledge, then we don't know how to plan. And so at Epiphany, every year since then, we have the annual Appeal and I give a sermon, and we have a, uh. In a parishioner give a sermon, and then, you know, we send a pledge cards, we talk about what we've done. But my theory is, if we haven't done a good job being church throughout the year, saying something new during the annual appeal is offensive. Right? So our goal is just to point out what we've already done and say we've done it because you've given, and we can do more if you give more.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Okay?
>> Doyt Conn: So that's how. That's how we. It's just part of the deal, right? Here it is. Annual appeal again, right? It's not a big deal. It's just a thing that happens. You want to know what a big deal is? Easter is a big deal, right? That's a big deal. That's where we, uh. The resurrection of Jesus. And annual appeal is just part of the pattern of the year that everybody. So do you not do, like, an.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: In gathering or some sort of official.
>> Doyt Conn: We do an in. We do an in gathering gathering on November 16th. And then we have a sweet sweeper team that will call you if you haven't pledged, and they'll keep calling you until you either tell them to pound salt or you pledge.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: So. And so you were able to make that happen in the first year when you had that right away. Now the same, uh, it now dawns on me the same model that you did, which is not really having a goal and just sort of saying, this is what we need to. That's how you did your capital campaign. You did a capital campaign where the consultants had come in and they told you, we can only do this amount. And you're like, oh, that sounds weird, and you're going to go get the people and that, but I'm going to do the ask. And you're so. You're like, I don't think we need consultants. Tell us that story.
>> Doyt Conn: Yeah, so I've been here, I don't know, 2014, six. Six years maybe. Um, and we've done two little projects, uh, where we raised $300,000 and $150,000 to fix up some rooms for preschool. So we had a little bit of institutional credibility on, uh, bringing a little bit of money, doing good projects, uh, you know, on time, on budget. And so. So a person came to me and he said, hey, look, I'm getting old. It's time we do a capital campaign. You better fire it up. So I looked around, I said, okay, what do we need to do? And we began to think about it and put together a plan for the things that needed to happen here. And it was not insignificant. Um, called together a group, sat down, said, hey, how do we do this? And uh, some of the people who I'd called together said, well, this is how we do it at the opera, this is how we do it at the symphony. We bring in a consultant or the university or whatever they've been part of, of. And uh, let's get the very best consultants that do the very best church consulting things. And uh, then, um, so we got a couple of them. They came in and they pitched us and they all said the same thing. They said, what's your vision? As I told them the vision, what do you want to do? I talked about what we wanted to do and they said, so this is what we'll do for you. You tell us your biggest givers, we will then take the vision that you've just articulated it. Uh, we will go sit down with them, we will tell them about it, we will ask them what they are willing to contribute, we'll come back and we'll tell you what that number was. And then that'll probably make up about 80, 70% of what you guys can raise. And then you go get all the rest from all the other people and we'll take 10% of that. Uh, and I said, wow. And they said, and we think because you have at that point we had about a million dollar a year budget, they said, we think if you're really good, you can raise $4 million dollars on that. That's a, that's a pretty good thing. And I said, well, so what you're saying is you'll go talk to my biggest givers after I tell you who they are, you'll ask them for the money, you'll, you'll share the vision and then you'll come back and tell me, and then we'll do all the rest of the work. And they said yes, and I'll give you 10% for that. And they said yes. And I said, well, that doesn't sound like a very good deal. So, because I said I know them so I can go talk to them and they'll probably say they'll give me more than they'll say they'll give you. And uh, and nobody can share the vision the way m me. So we cut them loose. We hired a parishioner who was here to sort of be the coordinator of that project. And then we had some starts and stops and stuff and we sort of talked about the project a lot. But we didn't have a lot of specifics about it.
The goal was 100% participation in the design of the church
We said, first, we're going to do the chapel because it's fallen down, and then we're going to do the acoustics in the church, if we raise enough money for that. And then if we happen to raise more money, we'll do the great hall. And if we happen to raise more money, we'll do the gardens. But if we only raise enough for the chapel, that's a win. That's fabulous. And if we raise a little more, that's a win. Right. So we didn't set a dollar amount. We had one goal, and the goal was 100% participation. And everyone gives generously to the vision. Because what the vision was was, hey, who gave you the church? Who do you want to leave it to? And what do we need to do to do that? And, uh, so we talked about it. We had 83 meetings in different people's homes. People came together. We would have a conversation. I'd ask a question, uh, who gave you the church? And people would share. And then I'd say, great, thank you. And we'd go away. And then we had another set of meetings, say, who do you want to leave the church to? What does it look like? And then we talked about that. And all the while we have the background and noise going on of, you know, what do we do? Who's our contractors, all that stuff. Right. What's the design going to look like? But we didn't do really specific visions. Um, we did general conversations about that. And then we go ahead and we say, all right, we're going to start June 1st. Everybody's going to say how much money they can give. And at the end of July, we're going to. Everybody will have given at that point. Of course, we did have some people give big gifts. And we, uh, were able to raise $9.2 million on that, which would have been $900,000 to the consultant, uh, which would have been. We would have taken all the credit for it. Obscene. I can only imagine. And so. So that's. That's just a little bit of how we did it. Very relational, very conversational. Ah, very communal. Not about the thing, but about the vision. Because when you get caught up in arguments about the thing, you know, I said, oh, people, are you going to remove the pews? I'm like, yeah, we're going to remove the pews. Like, I don't want to remove the pews. I'm like, it'll be okay, you know, and it Turns out it was okay, right? You know, are you going to move the baptismal font? The theory on it is we did so much that everybody would like most of it. A few people wouldn't like a few things, but they would all dislike different things.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: But there was still something they liked. They knew that there wasn't something, that there was something they didn't like, and they were most. Okay, uh, well, there you go.
>> Doyt Conn: Right.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Uh, process too.
Ralota is a new faith formation program at Epiphany in Seattle
I know we're running actually short on time here, so let me just. I want. I want to bring it around now to the new faith formation program that you have begun there at Epiphany, called Ralota. Tell us about that.
>> Doyt Conn: Ralota means the totality of all relationships. And by the way, I have noticed.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: A pattern in all of the conversation is relational. Relational.
>> Doyt Conn: Relational relationship is primary. In the kingdom of God, we have a relational God. So, so we, uh. So we're looking down the road, uh, as Roloda was beginning. And we said, we got a presidential election coming up. We have a deeply divided community. We have people who are feeling isolated post Covid. And, And. And we need to. We need to do something to bring community back, to gather people around the table to share lives. And so I gr. Gathered a group together and said, hey, let's do a test run on Alpha. I'd done Alpha before. I liked Alpha to a certain extent. And we ran an Alpha course. Not a course, uh, just a evening session. And the 35 people that I called to sort of assess that said, hey, fine, if you want to do it, that's okay, but why don't we do something that sounds more like a picture? Why don't you write something like, uh, oh, no. So. But I love doing that kind of thing. And so, so got a. Got a group together and we began to construct a Rolotta course. And the. The foundational idea was very simple. We gather people around table, we serve them dinner, we have a table host, and we have rich conversation. And, uh, we decided we wanted to do this for the whole city of Seattle. So we decided to make it a non religious per se. Right? Just a gathering around tables to tell stories. And so we broke it into eight parts. The first time together is about origin story. Second time is about things we belong to because of our origin story. The third thing is things we belong to that we chose. The fourth was about love, um, and not agape love, but all the other kinds of love. The fifth is about meaning frameworks of our life. The sixth is about things we practice that change us. The seventh is about mystery and the eighth is about community. We wrote a workbook for this. We wrote, we called them prompts and table questions for this. And we gathered and trained a group of table leaders to lead these conversations. And then we set up Epiphany to welcome them with the love of Jesus. Right? So when the people would come in, we ah, want to talk about Jesus. We would show them what it's like to welcome somebody and care for them and feel, feed them and give them great food. We got a great chef here then. But how do you bring them in? So we advertised on city buses all over the city. We plastered the city with posters with QR codes. And people came, Lorenzo, they came. We've since run five of these Roloda things. Every time, of course, we iterate to make them better. So the way I described it to you just a second ago is how it is right now. But boy, we, we moved those eight courses around trying to figure out what we're doing worked best iterating, we would, we always get together and have a mind dump after every single roulette, uh, class with my leaders. And we say, okay, what do we change? And then we'd rewrite and we change and we would rethink because we're constantly iterating on, uh, ways in which we bring people together. But what we ultimately learned is that everybody's story is different. We can't account for our own story. You know, maybe suffering from me was pulling an acl, playing tennis where somebody else's suffering was. They're a refugee from the South Sudan, very different suffering. But, but they're not comparable. Suffering is suffering uniquely to each individual person. And we can still align around that reality. And so we found that these communities developed really beautifully around these tables with a very diverse community, community of people. And some ended up staying at Epiphany. And some of course went back into the community.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: I called it a formation program. Would you call it a formation program? Is it a Christian formation program or no?
>> Doyt Conn: I'd call it, um, a community healing program.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Okay. More of a. And introducing them into relationship with your.
>> Doyt Conn: Community as well, for sure. Now after that we've also written what we call a Christian rolota, which takes those same eight blocks and tells the gospel story within them. And so we've done that with our congregation as well, which has been very successful. So we can sort of take, you know, these blocks and reformat them for Christianity particularly.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Do you think you're going to make some of those Programs available to other churches around the country.
>> Doyt Conn: Hope is that we will, after this most current one, that we're in our fifth rolata. We are now ready to franchise it, if you will, or share it out with communities.
How do you prepare for your day to be Christ centered, Jesus centered
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Excellent. Well, Joy, I do have one last question and I know I'm like at time already, but one quick question. How do you prepare for your day to be Christ centered, Jesus centered? When you're going to work on your sermon, what do you do? What sort of practices do you do?
>> Doyt Conn: So every day I get up early. I'm a really early riser, Lorenzo. And I make my coffee and I take it up to my study and I do 10 minutes of yoga and then I pray for 45 minutes every single day. I do the office. I, uh, use morning at the office and I. And then I meditate for 30 minutes and then I come up at it. I do it every day, seven days a week. Not a day goes by that that doesn't happen. Happens on vacation. Happens. It always happens first thing. And then, uh, five days a week, I write a handwritten note to a parishioner. Different parishioner every day, random one, just whoever comes to my heart. Send them a note, tell them I, I love them and I'm thinking about them. And then, uh, then I get into m. My brain work, right. I get into the Bible, I get into my sermon writings, I get into my study, my classes, and I usually, that lasts probably get out of bed. Today I got out of bed at 4:30. Um, and then I didn't go to the gym till 9:30. So I have that, that, that time of just intense sort of work, brain work. And I, and I, and I do that just about seven days a week. Ah. And it is, it's my job. And I can't teach prayer and I can't call people to the spiritual exercises if I'm not living it on myself.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Wow.
>> Doyt Conn: Um, and I think it makes me a little bit better.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Amen.
Father Lorenzo Abrija: I think there is a lot here
Well, Doid Kahn, thank you very much for joining us on the Tri Tank podcast. I think there is a lot here for someone that's just starting at a congregation. Of course everything is contextual. You'll have to figure out on your own some of the steps. But I think some of the general points that were made here, uh, for St. Swithin's in the swamp, and what's really important right, uh, when I told you that you were arriving there, and now at the end of your arrival there at St. Swithin's is it's all relational. It really is all about that relata, if you will. Uh, it really is about just how we are all in relation with each other and centered on Jesus and the work that we do.
>> Doyt Conn: Thank you for letting me just sort of share my story and ramble a bit. I appreciate it, Lorenzo. I'm glad you're doing this work. Thank you.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: All right. Thank you.
>> Doyt Conn: Peace, brother.
>> Father Lorenzo Lebrija: Uh, thanks for listening. Please subscribe and be sure to leave a review. To learn more about Tritech, visit Tritech. Be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter where you can keep up with all of our experiments. The Tri Tank Podcast is a production of Tri Tank in association with Resonate Media. Try Tank is a joint venture between Virginia Theological Seminary and General Theological Seminary. Again, thanks for joining us. I'm, um, Father Lorenzo Abrija. Until next time. May God bless you.