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The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: From Try Tank Experimental Laboratory. This
is the Try Tank podcast where we talk
about all things related to innovation in
the church. I'm Father Lorenz Labrija.
Thank you for joining us
and hello everyone. Welcome to the Try Tank
Podcast. This is episode
25 on the missional
call. My guest today, and I'm actually on the road
recording this in Kansas City, Missouri. My guest today is
the Reverend Chantal McKinney, a seasoned Episcopal
priest and church planter with over 20 years of
ministry experience. She's passionate about helping
churches rediscover their missional call by
engaging deeply with their communities.
After successfully planting a bilingual,
multicultural church in a low income neighborhood,
she now coaches congregations nationwide,
guiding them through a transformative process of
renewal and outreach. We'll be talking, walking through that
process step by step. Through her work,
she helps churches shift their culture, grow in
discipleship, and become truly present in their
neighborhoods. Today we will be talking
about how every congregation can discover or perhaps
rediscover their missional call and the difference that
that can make in the vitality of a congregation.
A special note at the end, we actually had finished our
conversation when we started. We kept talking and she
gave me some examples and I said, well, hold on a second. I got to record at least
one of them so we can add. So we will. Goodbye in the
episode. But then we come. Just stay tuned.
There'll be one, uh, more example. Uh, it's about two
more minutes or so so that you can get an actual example.
So. And now on to the
podcast.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: M.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: All right, so let's begin our conversation.
When we were talking, that prompted me to say, let's have this
conversation for the podcast.
What I was most. I think
that everyone should have a coach. Right? And this is what you do
now. In fact, let's begin there. Let's begin with a little
bit of your story. How did you end up becoming a
coach? You've been in ministry for over
20 years. I wasn't gonna say decades, but you did so.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Because you look way younger. But I was when.
Yeah. So bring us up to date.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Okay. So I, um, of course, like
most parish priests, was focused
on, um, parish ministry
for the over half of my ministry.
And I started
this particular journey by feeling called to
plant a church in Southside Winston Salem. I had always
wanted to do Latino ministry, a ministry with lower
income folks, and was always,
um, challenged by the fact that it's hard to get a job as an
Episcopal priest in that context. So
it came, um, to be the time in My life where I
was like, let me create the thing that I want to do.
And so that took a long time. That took,
you know, years. Starting as a street
missioner, quarter time spending, um,
a lot of time in the streets. And long story short,
as soon as I moved from primarily being
behind a desk or within church walls
out into the world, it was almost like the
lens with which I saw what God does
shatter. And it expanded because
I was overwhelmed by all
of the bountiful, um, abundant ways that
the spirit is already moving in our communities. And I did
not realize that as.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: A parish priest, because parish priests
tend to be not, not in a bad way, but
there's so much going on inside that one can become just
if you, if you let it, you'll be focused only on the
inside of the church 100%.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: And, and to be clear, I have so much compassion for
that. Like, I was there too. I don't judge it. It's just the
way that our system is set up. Um,
clergy never have free
time on their hands. There's always
pulls on their time within the church. And some
parishes, some parish priests and churches do a
great job networking in the community. But I
myself was challenged by being in the community as
much as my heart was calling me to be, as much as God was calling me to
be. So, um,
I ended up planting a church with a core team of people
in um, this lower income neighborhood. It was a
bilingual church, it was multicultural. It
was um, a federated church between the
ELCA and the Episcopal Church. It was so
equally two denominations. And it was in a
neighborhood that was over 75%,
um, African American and Latino.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Which is very unusual for our church. We talk a lot about how we
want to um, be a church that
represents the world. We talk a lot about diversity, we talk
a lot about, um, respecting other
cultures. And we don't necessarily plant churches
that look like that. And we are not churches that look like that.
And so in some ways I felt like, you know,
the leadership around me was saying, you're kind of forging a way for us and we're
all learning from you. And it was a
beautiful process. I was very well Supported
by 10Tech and the Diocese and the team
on the ground. And we, we um,
committed hours and days and weeks and
months and years to getting to know our neighbors. We
literally got to know our neighbors. We came to love
them, they came to love us.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So let's talk a little bit about that process. How did you get to know your
neighbors for someone that's that's listening. And they have a congregation.
They're like, okay, you're right.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: How do you start?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I've been too focused inward. Let me focus outward.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah. How we started, like, the kind of the nuts
and bolts was that. We started with, uh, the Bible study
of. I think it's Mark 6, where Jesus
is sending the disciples out by 2. We studied it,
and we studied it together.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And we, in this case was your church.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: It was a core team. This is before we had a church. There was
a few ragtag folks, Episcopalians
mostly from area Episcopal churches, that committed
to go on this journey with me to see, like, hey, what is. I
wonder if we could start a church.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You sort of put the call out there, said, raise your hand if you want to join me. And
they did.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: And that's what happened.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: So we did some community organizing training
and we studied scripture with the
lens of, well, m. What did Jesus do? Like,
how did he get his disciples and what did he say? And what was the
purpose of going out? What does that look like for us today
in this neighborhood? How can we literally
learn from how Jesus began to
enter into community and to attract people to
the cause of Christ, the cause of God?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And did you find overlap between the community organizing
methods and which methodology did you use?
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: I was, um, formerly trained
by, um, a community organizer in the
IAF method. He happened to be, um.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Iaf.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yes.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I don't even know it. Okay.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: IAF is Industrial areas Foundation.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Kind of a technical term for one of
three branches of community organizing.
Um, this guy happened to be a,
um, youth in El Salvador under
Oscar Romero. And it was very
shaped, just we had very similar hearts for
a love for, um, those on
the margins of community. And so he
literally took me under his wings and like, trained
me. And then we did that to. Together with our core
team. But, um, there's a lot of
overlap in the notion of
relationship and being. Just being
with. Not trying to control them, not convincing
them of a program, not going into the
community saying, hey, we know what we're going to do to
help you. But literally just opening
ourselves up to learning and listening from the
community. And, um,
we were. It was. It's a beautiful process.
Again, it kind of transformed all of us that did it,
and it really radically transformed
the way that I perceived what it looks like to be a Christian
today.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And how long was this process?
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Well, it never stops.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh, good point. Thank you.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: But I mean, to be missional is that it never stops. We in
the Episcopal Church kind of forget And a lot of our churches are not
missional. But to follow Jesus faithfully is
to never stop going into community with that
spirit of Christ. Right?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: But we did it intentionally. Um,
from 2014 to 2016, I
did it very intentionally. Meaning that's all we did.
We were not. We were not much. I mean, we were,
um, starting to. Once we.
Basically what we said was, we're not going to do anything as a new
church without hearing from our community. Like, we
will let them take the lead. Lead in telling us the
ministries that we need to create for the community
to be a blessing. And so when we met people, that was the
conversations. Hey, we're a new church in town and
we, uh, don't have a building, and we're not going to do
anything without getting to know you. And we want to learn
about what you love about the neighborhood. What are your longings, what are
your hopes?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And was that received well by the community?
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: So well, it was so easy to
talk to strangers because they love, loved our
message of, ah, we just want to be a blessing to this
neighborhood. And, hey, will you partner with us? Like, do
you want your neighborhood to be a better place? And the answer was
yes.
And so what were some of the.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Things they told you that they wanted in their neighborhood?
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah, so the number one thing that we heard
was that there was a lot of food insecurity
and there was challenges with the schools, even
on the middle school level. There was, um,
there's a spirit of,
um, a desire for
middle schoolers to join gangs. And so that's happening
pretty. Yeah, yeah, pretty early. So there was a
desire for, we want our kids to be safe after school.
We have food insecurity. There's also a lot of joy.
Just tons of young
folks, young parents, children. It was
vibrant. It's like, joyful. It's scrappy.
Like, I. I love to the people that I met.
And so we created the city's first bilingual food
pantry as a response for what they told us.
And we started doing things like, hey, we're gonna have, like, play
kickball after school and have snacks and open up this church. By then
we started renting. We started using the space of a
dying Lutheran church. So we started doing really scrappy things
that were super simple. And the community
came along. It was really. So we grew very organically.
So long story short, we ended up becoming a church
thriving, bustling food pantry. I mean,
the people of the community became the
leaders. We attracted others. And it was the Episcopal
Church that said, hey, can we, like, pay you to become
a coach. Can you start showing our. We said we wanted
to show others, teach others. We said that you would be showing us,
and so we're ready to train you to be a coach.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: So for as long as I could, I did both. And I
was both a church planter and a coach. But it
became really clear at some point that I needed to,
um, choose like I could.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You also have a family, right? You're also human.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Right. I was literally pregnant in the nursing
while I was starting a church plant and had two boys
in addition. So, yeah, and I'm definitely a family
person. I love my family. I'm not. I'm not going
to leave them on the wayside.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. But what's interesting,
and to put a pause on the story there for a second, because I want
to continue, but it's interesting because you
were able to plant a church by getting to know
the neighborhood outside of the building costs,
which most people that are listening to us today on this
podcast already have a building. So the things that you
did to sort of grow that vibrancy in young people,
none of that was really expensive. It
was just time to go and be in the neighborhood.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: That's correct.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Maybe a little bit of learning in the IAC method or
one of the other methods of, uh. Uh, so great.
So you did the church. You decided at one point.
Okay. And my heart is calling me more to be a coach.
And. And so you moved into this role. And. And the main
reason why we want to talk to this, because I really
believe that whether you're a church planter or
you've been in the congregation for 20 years, having
the mindset of a church planter.
Exactly makes sense because I think that's the way Jesus
would, Would. Would have us. Don't just sit on your
laurels or on the endowment, but rather go and
be in the neighborhood and not be there.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: That's exactly right. There is a lot of
a spirit of, um.
To have the mindset of a church planter is to
be, um. For me, that looks
like being passionate about, um, following
Jesus. Golden. Why in the community? Like, I really want to
make the community a better place. I really want to unite people in the
spirit of God's love. I really want to,
um, introduce people to a living
relationship of Christ, and I want to model
that. And I want our faith community to be vibrant and
attractive to people that are lonely or
longing or that need hope. I mean, and that,
my God, the world needs that. We all know that Right.
But the reality is literally the brick
walls of our church. We can be so active and do
such good and godly things in our church walls,
but the people down the street don't
know it, don't feel it, don't sense it.
Unless we are communicating to them.
The red door doesn't matter to them. It doesn't mean
anything.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. You can see those days are gone.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: At 11 o'clock to welcome them. You're not
reaching out to them by doing that. We must
follow Christ into our communities in
order. And the result of that is thriving. I
mean, we, we are thriving as a church
community when we do that, and we're thriving in the neighborhoods that
we are a part of to make the world a better place
when we do that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So on the practical end, if somebody's listening to us and like, I'm
totally in, I want to do this. What would you say, as a coach,
if you will? Uh, what would you say? Uh, first of all, I think
anyone, they should get a coach. Right. Having
someone that helps you walk alongside this, that has
done it before, that has that experience, that can help
you when you. Because nothing is perfect, you're going to have the bad
days, right? You're going to have the days when you go and talk to someone and they're like,
I really don't want to talk to you.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And let me tell you how bad religion is. Right. And you're gonna, you're gonna have those
days. But for someone that's listening, like, yeah, I want to start beginning
this work. What would you say they should do, like, right away? What would be
an action plan?
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: So an action plan would
be to gather your people and to
study.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: How many people would you say you need to do a little team?
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Um, I started with 12. When I work with
mission teams around the country now, and I'll talk a little bit about the
cohort m that I'm. That I do soon,
but, um, I think six is fine.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: I've worked with four. A team of four. You, you really want two
or three or four. It does, but. And what you want,
ideally is to, in time, grow the
culture of their mission team. Because we're all called to be
missional. Right, of course. But it's also,
it works just fine to start with a small group of
people that are committed to it. And you study scripture, you simply
study what Jesus did, and you develop your golden why,
if you're going out into the community to make your parochial report
look better, for higher numbers in the pews, people Will
sense your inauthenticity.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Got it.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: So, like, open your heart and get excited
about the love of Christ again. Right. And
some of us need to get excited again about it. But we have to,
like, be aware of our golden why before we go
into the community. And like, and you pray, I
mean, and you know, you will once in a while encounter people that
are like, yeah, whatever. And Jesus said, wipe the dust off your
feet. So you really have to have good
boundaries. You have to kind of center
yourself in the light of Christ. But when you go and
you express a sincere desire to
make your little corner of the world a better place. Place with and
alongside them, I'll tell you what. Most people are like,
well, yeah, like, I mean, we had people
joining the work that we were doing at
CBC that were members of other churches or that,
like, wouldn't come on Sunday, but they were like, but we love this
neighborhood and we're on board. And then eventually they join
or they bring a friend along that. So I mean it, you just,
you take what you can get and you just, you pray.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But I think that could do something else, right? In the sense of
if you have a community, community, and let's say you managed to get.
It's you as the. As the leader and three other people. And you
begin with four. And you begin. We have a podcast on
this, if anybody wants to listen to it, on the culture of
change. Changing culture in the church where Father Jason
was basically like, begin with the one or two that actually get it and
it'll go. Even if you begin with three others in
you and you begin studying scripture and you begin doing this
work, I think a couple things would happen. One is the others in
the church would be like, I, uh, wonder what they're having. They seem to be
having fun. They seem to be growing as Christians.
And for them, church is not just a
Sunday morning thing anymore. Right.
And I think that grows the vitality of the church as a
whole.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: That's right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And then when you go out into the. So that
team, that nucleus team can grow.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: That's right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Is the one thing. So the going out
there and being for the community of the community
is not just for the community, but it's also for the church of church.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Absolutely.
And this is where I want to introduce. So what I do now, uh,
for a long time, I just worked with individual church
plants and mission redevelopments. So Nowadays they're
saying 75% of existing Episcopal
churches are good candidates for redevelopment,
which means to reimagine what it looks like to
be church in their context today. So I used
to work individually with multiple churches around
the country doing this work, work. And then I
created, um, just inspired by God on my
Sabbath, you know, the way that God moves.
Created like a three year, two to three
year process. I don't care for the word
program because it's really a journey where I'm working with
the program.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Seems like there's an end. Right. Whereas a process is just
lifelong.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: I'm. I'm interested in shifting the DNA of
churches. So, uh, the work that I do is like,
we go in and we're partnering with church churches that seek to
genuinely transform the way they
are church together. So it's not.
It's not like, oh, and now the program ends by, no, you're
on the journey. Right. So now I
work with cohorts of churches. And, um, I'm
hopeful to have a cohort starting in the fall. And so there's
actually a place on the rootthrivestore.com
website where you can fill out a form and we'll link to.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That in the show. Notes for all of you.
Rootthrivesaur.com.
okay.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: But the beauty of doing this
work in cohorts is that we have a
seminar where we're doing the same community
organizing training. We do asset based community
development training. It's a great
program.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: M. I did know that one, and that was a good one.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yes. It's very rich in spiritual
Christian formation. There's. I weave in
lots of elements of scripture. So we have
one monthly seminar. We have group coaching, we
have individual coaching. And then every month
is a different teaching team speaker. So, like, on the
website, you can see all of the people, um,
lovely. Incredible leaders of the Episcopal Church that
joined the seminars to teach. And
then the beauty of doing this in a cohort model is,
is that you're learning from one another.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah, the peer learning.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah, absolutely. So it's not like me,
Chantal the expert. No, it's like I'm holding space.
So, yeah, I'm doing some of the training and the
accompanying. But what's beautiful is that in
a matter of months, the churches across the
country are inspired and learning from one another and
getting tips and. Oh, yeah, well, if we
met every Saturday, we met once a month, Saturday afternoon
for what, one hour, and we got 12 of us. And man, we had so many
conversations. And like, you just learn tips for
how to do the thing and you
cultivate community with the other churches. And one of
the surprises that came to us was
about Six months into these seminars, the
churches realized that they cultivated
community with one another in the small groups
in the seminars, and it allowed them to have
confidence, is they went into community to
cultivate community. It's like, well, you've already done it once via Zoom,
so it's not going to be so hard now in person, you've already
met strangers, gotten to know them, you care about them, you know how
to, um, continue those
conversations, to say, hey, tell me about your
family member with cancer. I've been praying for them.
Yes, we cultivate that, so it's really
cool. But in the process of two to three years, the
shifting that happens is amazing. Like, a lot
of our, um, several of the mission teams
raised up someone that ended up becoming the senior warden, and
several churches had big visioning.
Um, I did several visioning conferences or retreats for
churches to kind of take on the work of, like, what did
we learn from the community? And how is this going to shape who we
are? Um, they develop a process where they
create a new mission, vision and
values. Because you will be
transformed by listening to the wisdom, to
listening to how God's already moving in the community.
And that will impact your mission and your
vision of your church, which is.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Such a, if you will, such a wonderful
byproduct, right, of this, which is,
yeah, we might be doing it to get to know our community
better.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: And there's so much more to it.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: If we're all being honest. Part of that is like, and we hope some of them
will join us. Right? We hope that they'll join our family.
But the sort of byproduct also
is that you get to know members of your own church better
because you're going through this process together. You get to know your
community better, and you get to bring a new sort
of life to your own congregation
100%. And that mindset that we were talking about a
moment ago of being a church planner, that
this missional work is not done even if we have.
If we have 30 members or if we have 300
members, the missional process is still continuing.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: That's correct. And that's right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's a win for the church.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: It is a win for the church. And I'll tell you, it's the
most beautiful thing for me was listening
to the mission team members
articulate transformation. Like, I actually have a whole page
on my website of, um, just quotes from things that they've
said about the way that they've transformed their perspective
or what they're doing now. And it's so
powerful to see the way God
opens doors, the way the spirit moves. When we enter
into God's movement in the world. It's already
there.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah, absolutely.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: It's already there. And it kind of is
like, we might have, uh. We say we know the spirit
moves in the church. Right. But what's cool is when you
spend ample time in community. It's like
going from a stream of water to the ocean, and it's
beautiful. There's flow, and you're just
entering into alignment with, like, the
collaborations and the spirit and the hopes
of multiple people. So doing God's
work in community is. Does not become hard. It's actually
really joyful. And that's one of the things that our parishioners
kept expressing. They were like, this is amazing. This is, like the
best formation. This is exciting.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And what's interesting is the
transformation that you described. Right. Going in from. People
probably think it's like, oh, my God, I'm too shy. I'm an Episcopalian.
I can't go knocking door to door. It's like. It's not about knocking
door. And it's like.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: What do you mean? A friend? Right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Exactly.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: It's like. It's like meeting a neighbor. Would you. If a new
neighbor moved across the street from you, would you knock on their door and say,
hey, man, we're neighbors? And that's what I would say.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Just want to say hello.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Hey, we're your church neighbors. Like, we're just wanting to say hello
and get to know you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And it can also happen at the grocery store. It can happen at so
many different places. It's not limited. And that's. And also
there, by the way, is the not doing it alone.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Even Jesus always sent them out in pairs. Right.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Always by two.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. So you're doing this work together.
Uh, listen, this is exciting conversation,
but I don't want us to go too long.
What is the one tidbit that you would leave people with
behind as they're discerning this
for their own congregation? What is the.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah. Uh, so what I would say is, um,
I think I'm going to start by acknowledging that
the way. For whatever reason, the way our
polity or structure is set up, it's
really hard. We don't have it in the culture of
the Episcopal Church to be deeply missional. Other
denominations have it. Um, other
denominations are growing because of it. Other denominations also
use hellfire and damnation, and we don't have that either.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's true. Right? Yes.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: But we could do a better job of being
missional. And we can do that in a spirit of love, not
fear. Right. This is one of the beautiful,
um, values of the Episcopal Church is that we do
reject that sort of condemnation and
that we tend to associate with
evangelizing. And it's okay
that clergy are already stretched too thin.
That's exactly why I created Reap Five Swords so that
I could form Laity. It's a lay
centered program. The clergy that join along and
participate love it. They
often use tidbits and sermons or they'll use some of the
seminar videos for formation. But it doesn't
require, um, our clergy. It just
requires the leadership of the church to say, hey, we're on
board. And we're down with like, at least you starting
with two people and then growing a team from there. So it's
totally doable.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And that's a great insight if you think about it, because anyone who's been
in ministry, there's always that one or two people who are
like, we need to grow our church. What do we do to grow our church?
And, uh, you're like, well, we'll talk about it later. Now you can say
like, well, hey.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Listen, here's the thing.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Find another person and we'll make you part of
these cohorts and let's do it together. And we will support you all the
way. Right now I don't have the time, but you seem to have all
this energy to evangelize.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: That's right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Let's train you to do it right. This is sort of the way to do
it. So people can go on your website to find out more
information. They can, um, I'm sure, have a conversation with
you if they have other questions.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Absolutely.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Do you suggest that the cohort. So. So if one church
has, let's say, four members, that all four of them join
the training together as, As a cohort.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah. So what I usually do is when a church is interested,
and I often work with diocese to find the
churches that are great candidates. I also have worked with, with
just directly with churches. But what I say to
churches is find me. I just want two people, any two people
that are interested in this process, and I'll start with those
two. And through coaching, we'll grow a mission
team. And the mission team can start as three or four, and
we usually grow it to six or more.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: And then those are the folks that are committing to a monthly
seminar. And only one or two after that will
do the coaching. The co leaders, I work with the co
leaders, um, cultivate discipleship because that's
another, like, we could do better about
deeply forming disciples that are going out
and that are really blessing the community and that spirit of
Christ. So that's. It's the co leaders I end up
doing a lot of the coaching with.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Great.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: And I have a resource bank this 24 7. So you miss m
a seminar. It's there that works great for
churches that are like, hey, this speaker was fire. We're going to bring
him for. We're going to like, show it to the whole church at, after,
um, worship, you know. So
it's deeply created to support
churches in all the ways. It's like a
wraparound process for transformation.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You know, it's one of those moments I wish I were in a parish
setting that I could be like, I want our church to do this.
Because if any of you listening, if you just even have
a little excitement about how you could grow your
church or if you know someone in
your church, oh, I have all this energy. Uh, just let me
lose, let me lose. They're like a little rocket on the launch
pad. This is the thing for them and
what a difference it could make. Again, not just for the
church, but for the community and for the
individuals who are transformed by this process as
they live out their Christianity.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: This is the spark that ignites
the spirit of thriving and
excitement and why, why we are church
anyway. Right?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Exactly. Amen to that. All right, Chantal, thank you so
much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah, really, it was a blessing to, to have this conversation with you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Excellent, thanks.
All right, tell us the story.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: All right, so one of the churches I, I worked
with, um, this is All Souls in Mechanicsville,
Virginia, has a community
garden. And, uh, one, the leader of the
community garden, intentionally
sowed too many cabbage seeds.
And so the harvest came
in and they were overrun with
cabbages. And so all they did,
I think they literally took a wagon and filled
their wagon with produce and literally knocked on
doors and said, hey, we're your neighbors. Here's
a cabbage. Like, will you have some of our produce?
And listen, you know, I'm from the South. It's like, who doesn't
love it when their neighbors knocking on their door with produce from
their backyard garden? I mean, it's like the best gift you can
receive. That it. No one is
going to turn down your neighbor's produce. You're like,
what a gift. This is awesome.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's true.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: So that was the easiest entrance into getting to know their
neighbors. And, um, as they were doing that,
you know, One of them said to me, we started realizing
that a lot of them are lonely and they're neighbors, but
they're lonely or they started learning things about one another.
And so that's where a church can say, hey, come join
us. Next Saturday, we have, like, this open hour of gardening. Or,
like, I'm going to introduce these two neighbors to, um, each
other. Yes. So it's not hard. It's
just. You have to think about the.
What are you. What is your script? Like, what are you saying when
you knock on the door? Is there a little, like, sweet,
humble thing you can do, like hand out a cabbage? I mean, there's.
But it doesn't have to be hard. I think the hardest
part is the fear that we enter into it with.
But if you can commit to trying the thing for a
few weeks, you will get excited because
most people in the world are good people. And once we establish
connection, it's delightful.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And you get over that fear. Anytime you try something new, it
will be hard because you've never done it. But you're growing.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah. You're growing that the ch. The.
The fear and the hardness is a sign that you are growing.
You're stretching beyond where you were before. And that's a good and
godly thing.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Amen. Amen to that.
>> Reverend Chantal McKinney: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: All right, thanks for the story.
Foreign
thanks for listening. Please subscribe and
be sure to leave a review. To Learn more about
Try Tank, visit
Tritank.org Be sure to sign
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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 Labrija.
Until next time, may God bless.