Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
Father Lorenzo Labrija talks with Matt Rogers about church planting
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: From the Try Tank Research Institute, this is the Try Tank Podcast.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And welcome to the Try Tank Podcast. I'm Father Lorenzo Labrija. This is part two of episode 30. For today's episode, recorded in person at Windsor palace in England, I talked with Matt Rogers, vicar at St Mark's in Grimsby, about how he helped revive a church that had dwindled to just four people. Matt shares insights into innovative strategies for church growth, including social media engagement and personalized invitations that resonate with the local community. So Matt candidly discusses the realities of church planting, including the need for adaptability and the significance of prayer in navigating challenges and, and celebrating successes. We had a long, free flowing conversation. This is part two of the conversation. So if you haven't listened already, go back and listen to part one. Let's get into the conversation.
Matt is starting a new church in Grimsby, North Yorkshire
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Let's, let's go back in time here to when, where you were in the story, which is you were planning in November. You launched in September because you're mad and somebody said something so you invited them, of course. And take us a year into this. Where are you a year into this November of the following year. How m many people are in your church? What have you done differently? What have you learned? If someone were starting the church, your same church in Brigsby brings Grimsby.
>> Matt Rogers: Grimsby.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Sorry, I've been getting that wrong all week. Don't feel bad. People in Grimsby, someone's starting a new church. If one year ago Matt comes to you and says, hey, I'm um, gonna start a church here, what do I do? What would you say?
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, okay, so we're a year in.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yep.
>> Matt Rogers: We're probably at around 80 people like regular on a Sunday just from invitations. From invitations.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You've done nothing. You've done no mailings, no anything special that you did?
>> Matt Rogers: We've made like a promotional video and put it out in the town.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But, uh, on social media.
>> Matt Rogers: Social media? Yeah, we've got social media channel, Facebook, Instagram, marks Grimsby if you want to find it. Shameless. So information's getting out there, but people aren't really going to come just because they've seen it on some social media. But people are starting to share the posts and what we're doing is we're posting things like, hey, this is what happened on Sunday. This is the, you can listen back to the talk with photos. You know, it's great to be out this week. We're out in town or we've been into the school. So we're starting to raise some presence on social Media around town. Yeah. Um, and, ah, people like. So seeing the church is now alive and active, so we're getting some flow there. What we haven't had is like sheep stealing from other churches. There's been no mass exodus from any other church, which is great. What did you call it? Uh, sheep stealing.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh, sheep stealing.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah. There's a fear. There's a big fear. When you plant a church, you aren't going to like, poach the sheep from someone else, like another congregation.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So sheep stealing.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay.
>> Matt Rogers: Do you not have sheep? No. But hey, there's a lot of farming around where we are.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: No, that makes sense.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah. So this idea that you turn up in the night with your truck and then you pile these sheets in and you take them to your church and.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: People are like, yeah, that's how you do it.
>> Matt Rogers: Our church is growing. And it's like, yeah, the Baptist church has took down 20. So that's often a big fear in church. Church planting. So we haven't. There's no evidence of that. Yeah, you get the odd path.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: These were people that were just unchurched.
>> Matt Rogers: Unchurched. Or a few Christians. They moved to the area. But on the whole it's new Christians. And a lot of them have come because of running Alpha. Now we love Alpha as a tool and as a vehicle for introducing people to fai, faith, growing people's faith. Uh, you don't have to use Alpha. There's other courses out there.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: How do you advertise it to get people to come in and experience your church? Through that way.
>> Matt Rogers: Through that door? Yeah. Again, we're going social media. We've got banners outside the church. We've got lots of invitations printed. We're getting out and about. They're going.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Invitations are like flyers.
>> Matt Rogers: Flyers.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And do you just put them all around town?
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: What do they say? What do the flyers say?
>> Matt Rogers: They say things like curious, um, about, um. Curious about life or questions about life.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Of the question mark from Alpha.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, that sort of thing. So I use some of their promotional.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: If you're listening to this, you can just Google it. Uh, this is alpha.org exactly. They have a very, uh, similar style of advertising it all over.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah. So that works really well. But really people aren't on the whole coming because they've seen the banner. They're coming because a friend has invited them.
Most evangelism, so what we say to the church is this, we're running Alpha
Most evangelism, so what we say to the church is this, we're running Alpha. Uh, it's a whole church event. So this is the deal. You can either invite a friend and bring Them to Alpha. You can come to Alpha yourself if you've not been before. So you've got a flavor of what it's like. You can come and serve on the team and also you can pray for Alpha. So you need to participate in some way because one thing we do is Alpha is what we do. If you're going to come and be part of the church, then you gotta take Alpha with you as well. So people are like, okay, great. So they're bringing their friends to Alpha. What's really nice is you're getting a real mix of people. Some people are bringing their elderly parents. I want my parents to hear about this. Or they're bringing a friend from work or someone from the gym or, ah, all sorts of different people. So that's how Alpha's growing. And what we do is we start by running Alpha for the term. And, uh, we get a good turnout. 20 people come along. And the key with Alpha is the videos are great, but it's all about the hospitality, the welcome. If you cut that and you think, ah, let's not bother with the food, like, no, do that, do all that stuff. Well, people will be amazed at the hospitality. Do I not need to pay for this? No, it's our gift to you. Wow. Suddenly my experience of church, my view of church has just gone up. Like this guy, that church, amazing. So. And then they're likely to come back.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: How long does the Alpha run for?
>> Matt Rogers: How many weeks? So you can run it for between eight and 12 weeks.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And do you have like a ninth week or 13th week that you're like, okay, we have finished the course, by the way, which one do you run? Mostly eight or 12?
>> Matt Rogers: Uh, we've moved to about, um, I think 10 sessions. But we also do a Holy Spirit weekend in the middle. So you've got a couple of videos on who is the Holy Spirit? What does the Holy Spirit do? How can it be filled with the Holy Spirit? We do that as an away day. We either get away to somewhere nice. I would do that in a day. So that fills some of the sessions. So, yeah, so we're doing this and then we're realizing, oh, uh, we've done a classic like this works in the city. It's Wednesday evening. Oh, wait there. Most of the people we're meeting are like single parents. They're not coming out Wednesday evening. So we start running in parallel Wednesday morning. So we're now getting a whole different demographic of people coming on Wednesday morning. We're now running Alpha Wednesday morning. And, um, Wednesday evening. Um, so we start multiplying Alpha. Then we start thinking, well, maybe some people, they're not going to come into the church. So what if it runs in someone's home? Like, someone comes, they're like, I'd love to run Alpha. I've got some work colleagues, they're not coming to church. Great. What can we do to equip you to run out? You've got a tv, you can put the videos on there. You cook them a meal that starts working as well.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Uh, and they run it. They don't need a clergy person like that.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, right, yeah. This is about equipping people to run Alpha. So we think we're going to run three Alphas in the year. We end up running like, seven due to demand. And, um, we've basically run Alpha consistently right through. And this is where team's amazing. Our team's amazing. So don't get me wrong, this church isn't, like, functioning because I'm high functioning. This is like the team are pulling together.
Church planting and revitalization is really costly. You got to count the cost
Uh, this brings me to my next big learning thing, actually. Learning curve. Okay, Alpha aside, church planting and revitalization is really costly. Costly. You got to count the cost. Money, more than money. Okay. Put aside for the moment, the generous funding. We've got to get this thing going. And, um, that takes you so far. Um, you throw yourself into the life of the church on every level. When people say, how do I join the church? We say, join, pray, serve, give. Okay? So I say to join. If you want to know what it means to join the church, well, Church of England is the established church. So you don't have to, like, be a member. You just entitled to come. It's your church. It's the people's church. Okay, so join. Okay? We want you to commit to pray. Pray for the church, pray for our town, pray for transformation, serve. We want everyone to, like, find their place to serve on a team, to find their level. Like, you gotta be in it to be a part of this. Um, and then finally give. Okay, so you're talking to people about giving financially. Well, you gotta go first. Like, as the vicar at the front, I've got to give first. I've got to say to my team, guys, if we want people to give to pay the salaries and things going forward, we've got to give, we've got to be generous. So you've got to be generous with your own finances. You've got to be generous with your time. So, yeah, I get my stipend. Right. But I'm asking people would you serve as a volunteer. I don't really like the phrase volunteer, but they're serving church. So I'm like, I want to give above and beyond because I'm part of this church. I'm m. Not as the vicar of the church. The planting team aren't just the planting team. We're part of the congregation. So I'm giving time as well to serve. Uh, I've got to commit to praying. I've got to be the first one there at the prayer meetings. I've got to be consistent. So you're modeling and all of that costs. And then you've got just the joys and the disappointments and people putting up with all my ideas. Hundred ideas for breakfast. I think we should do this. We can change this. And people are like, ah, just stick with a plan.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I haven't had coffee.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah. So a good friend of mine who planted a church in the, um, south of England, she was asked the question, what did you learn after the first year? And what she said stuck with me. And I will go with this as better advice. She said, um, pray, plan and pivot. Pray, start everything, cover everything in prayer. Secondly, you need a plan. You need a bit of an idea of where you're going. Okay, don't just turn up and be like, oh, should we do today? You need to have an idea. But pivot, like, you'll be willing to change your plans and to go, hey, we've got the plan. But we just sense that God's maybe doing something different or an opportunities come up we never saw coming. And I think that's been the same for us. Like, you turn up, you go on the training, you do your one year plan, three year plan, five year plan. You're like, we're going to do this by this point, this point. And then stuff happens. Like Covid life. Yeah, life opportunities happen. Things that you thought was going to work were going to work just because they were finding Lincoln. But in Grimsby, it just doesn't work. For some reason, the demographic's different or it just doesn't take. So rather than be disappointed and whatever, just say to the team, guys, look, if we just put in our best, if we deliver this with excellence and we do a really good job and it doesn't work, that is absolutely fine. We can say, well done, everyone. We failed really well because we put in time and effort and, um, we put love into it. It doesn't matter. What should we do instead? That's really different to rocking up and being like, wow, I didn't Advertise it. And we had no budget for this event, and no wonder no one came. Then it's like, we've got a problem, because that's just not how we work. And I think one thing you see, again, going back to the HGB network, are these values. And a lot of the values are actually difficult to put down on paper. But it's things like, it's the excellence, which is different to perfection.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But do.
>> Matt Rogers: It well, do it well. It's a bit like, aim for perfection, but settle for excellence, but don't kill yourself in the process. But, hey, look. Look at it this way. The way you work and you serve is your worship to God. So don't shortchange him. Just like, imagine I say, like, um, when I say to people on our welcome team, so these are the guys standing on the door. I say, I want you to imagine, um, that the king is coming to our church. He's coming to dinner. Okay? Suddenly you're like, I'm ready on the door.
Challenge for St. Mark's is consistency of attendance
I'm like, I'm looking all smart or whatever. I'm smiling. I'm like, I'm greeting him in the car park. You know, I'm like, everyone who comes, I'm like, that's the king. Jesus is coming into our church. Let's not, like. Let's not do this. Let's not be sloppy about this.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh, sorry, I thought you meant, like, King Charles was coming.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, like, that's fine. It's a good analogy. Yeah. Like, the king's coming.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You meant, like, the king of kings?
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah. No, no, it doesn't matter. Like, the same would apply, right? People would go into overdrive on the welcome. I don't mean, like, weird overdrive, but I mean, that's how we should treat anyone who comes through.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So excellence is important. Absolutely.
>> Matt Rogers: It is important. Yeah. So these are some of the values that start coming through, but also generosity. Are we, as leaders, generous with our finances to the church? Uh. Uh, are you willing to be up there in the biggest givers? Not that everyone sees what people give, but I see what people give. Okay. And, uh, my treasurer sees. I want to be out there in the top three.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Even though you personally.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah. Oh, it's not difficult where we live, but in all honesty, no, people are generous. But in all honesty, um, you suddenly realize in the first year, I'm like, oh, man, my family are payrolling the church, but that stuff is. We're pumping tons and tons of money. And it's because you're trying to build. Trying to build church which brings a.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Question, by the way. How many years in that?
>> Matt Rogers: Four. Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So it was a five year plan year, uh, two, you had 80 people. Year three, how many people would you say you had there?
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, we're up to about 120 on a Sunday.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: 120. So not doing anything vastly different from the years before.
>> Matt Rogers: No. So we're running a 10am service with kids and youth groups. We've started a 6pm service at this point with a bit more space for worship and ministry. We're running alpha, um, you know, usually a couple of times a week. We've got our small groups running now again, like simple things like what do you call them? Some people call them life groups, home groups.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: This isn't rocket size.
>> Matt Rogers: I was a called groups groups because we use, we get so used to calling things churchy things. You put something up and you say to one usually come along to like Hungary and people are like, oh, it's a feeding program. No, it's a small group. What does that mean? It means nothing to people outside groups. What do groups do? They're groups in me midweek, they're groups. I can go feedback our service. Right. Get this, it's called the 10. Do you know why it's 10am so you have two services, two main services and then we have like uh, a once a month, the 9am Holy Communion, like quiet. But the two main ones are now the 10 and the 6. But what you start to find, and this is a current challenge, year four, really, is consistency of attendance. So if you said how many in your committed congregation, how many people would say, I go to St. Mark's um, you're looking at between 200 and 250 people.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So that's from four to 250. Yeah, we're members.
>> Matt Rogers: We would say that's right. Let's say some marks is there too.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But the new norm, by the way, you're not alone this, the new norm is every four to six weeks is when people are going to come to your church.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Is that what you're saying?
>> Matt Rogers: Um, so they're coming probably once every three weeks. Every two weeks. Yeah. So, yeah. Now take that. Let's take 200 for example. Okay. Um, a third of that number are kids. Ah. In youth, which is exactly what you want. Because I think in the Church of England at the moment, if you have two children or two under 16s, then you're doing really well and you're about to buck the trend. We always have consistently a third of the congregation are always under the age of like 16. So we want the younger child. Is this.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Have you done something special to attract these families with young children? Did one family with young children just invite the next one and then they just invited the next one?
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I mean, how did that work?
>> Matt Rogers: Well, I think three things. Uh, one, uh, it's fun.
One genuine challenge we have is kids turning up unaccompanied at church
They have a great time for the kids. Okay. I'd love to hear our kids say that the highlight of their week is coming to church. And, um, for some of them it is. So if they're having a great time, they want to come to church. It's not. Parents are dragging them to church. They're like, I want to go to church. One genuine challenge we have is kids turning up unaccompanied. Young people unaccompanied. Not a problem because they're old enough. But kids turn up at church and they're like 8, 9 years old. I'm like, who have you come with? They're like, I was coming, Mum kicked me out of the house and here I am. Okay, so you're on the phone. You're like, someone needs to be responsible. Exactly. So they love coming. Okay. Churches love coming.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So let's pause there for a second. Uh, what makes it so much fun for them?
>> Matt Rogers: So we were really intentional from the very beginning about making our worship intergenerational. So we realized in the first few months we didn't have the human resources to run kids, church, Sunday school type stuff because we didn't have enough trained leaders to do it well. So we're like, okay, so our main service has got to hit the spot for all ages. Or not that it's about, don't get me wrong, it's not about like consumer culture. It's not about what they like. It's about how do we enable all ages to worship in a way where we get to worship as the. The family of God. The big family of God. So how do you do it? So we have. So, ah, our choice of worship songs that our worship pastor puts together are really thought through. Do the lyrics make sense to people around here as they're singing these? Like, does it enable them to worship God? Um, and, um, so some of our songs are, ah, what some churches would call all age songs. Again, we would call it Worship for Everyone. This is something you see again in the HDB network. Good use of worship for Everyone songs. There's a brilliant YouTube channel called Worship for Everyone by Nick and Becky Drake. They've written some amazing worship songs. You can use them in church and uh, schools and Just, they're simple, they're not like kiddie songs, they're not babyish, they're just great and everyone can sing them. So rather than having this sort of like we're going to sing a traditional song and then we're going to have a kids song with some actions and then we're going to go back to something for the grown ups. We're just being really careful about what we choose. As we move into intercessions, rather than someone coming up and reading, uh, intercessions, we get them interactive. So we're like, we're going to stay standing, we're going to pray together. So come together. If you're in a household, come together. We're going to start by praying for our world. So I might have a big inflatable globe battered in the middle of church. I'm like, okay, someone hold this up. Let's start to pray out over our church. So lead them in prayer. Okay, the next thing we're going to do is we're going to pray for, going to pray for our nation. So we'll say reach out a hand somewhere in the direction of somewhere that I'm going to pray. So you're just interactive. It's okay. Like all ages are okay with this. It's not slipping into like kids, it's just kids, it's everyone. Uh, and then you're moving on to the next thing. And again, um, even with the teaching, you can pitch a sermon without it being like babyish. A real art of preaching I think is how can, how can you speak to someone, enable them to grow in faith and be challenged and respond with their lives at the end of it. And um, pitch that to a seven year old, a 30 year old, a 60 year old. It's really hard to do. But again, what we do is we sometimes freak out when it comes to the family service and we're not pitching it to a five year old. And the grownups are there like, ah, oh, it's cute. But they'll be like, ah, I won't come that week because that's really for the families. So the best ones are when you deliver a 10 minute talk that's captured the 7 year old but the 16 year old comes and goes. Wow, I just found that really challenging today.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Is there a framework you follow for that?
>> Matt Rogers: Oh, that's probably another podcast.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh, okay.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, there's some great frameworks for communicating. If you come across Andy Stanley's book Communicating for a Change, he talks about me, you, God, you, we, so you can Give a me, you, God, you. We sermon in a minute or you can do it in uh, you can preach for an hour. I tend to preach normally when the kids are out in their groups for about 20 minutes. But it's like on a real simple model. It's like connect with people. Hey, I don't know about you, but have you ever done that thing where you've gone to the top of the staircase and you get up there and you just can't remember what you got up for? Everyone's like, oh yeah, hey, how often do we forget God's promises for us? Um, we think we have them and then we carry on life's journey and we just forget me, fall into turmoil. People are like, oh, you've got me. And then you're like, uh, you know, do you want to find a way of like building your life on God's promises? People are like, yeah, they're on their seats. And then you start unpacking the scriptures. You're like, hey, this is what the Bible says. So that's the me, that's what about you? Then it's the God that's unpacked this. Then it's you. Hey look, are you going to take this seriously? You're going to start living differently. There's a bit of buy in and commitment. What's going to look different for you? Then we get to the we, you start painting a picture of what our community starts to look like as a result of it. If we live in the promises of God, we'll start to see this, this and people, we realize we have a collective response.
You can capture all different ages through breakfast sermons
So I tend to use that model when preaching. But you can capture all different ages through that. And sometimes I use illustrations, sometimes I'm using some slides up on the screens. But generally something memorable is good. And when people say to me the ah, sermons they remember is when I've usually done something they've remembered. So um, someone said to me, ah, do you remember that sermon you did where you basically sat and ate breakfast in front of the congregation? I was like, oh, I've forgotten about that. She was like, yeah, it was all about how you engage and read the Bible. That's what the sermon was about. I was like, that's great. So what I decided to do is I set up this table in front of church and this nice table class and I've got toast, I've got a bowl of cereal and I've got my lapel microphone, um, on. And um, I'm basically talking about how the way I read The Bible is when I eat my breakfast. So I eat breakfast whilst preaching and people go away and they might have forgotten most of what I've said, but they're like, I can read the Bible at breakfast and God can speak to me for the day. I'm like, job done. That's the sound. That's what they need to know that it's going to have an impact to make it make a big difference. Um, so I just try to think a little bit creatively about how we can do that. Um, yeah.
How do you increase attendance for people at your church
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So this is a year for you. You mentioned your challenge.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And how are you going to deal with the challenge?
>> Matt Rogers: Remind me what I said about the challenge.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: What is your. Come on. Year three, you had 120 people. Year four, people are coming every three weeks.
>> Matt Rogers: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're like, okay, so how do you start increasing, like, attendance for people? And it was great, actually. I got my bishop along. So what we did is we launched the church in the November 2021. And each year we basically celebrate with a birthday. So we have the first birthday, second birthday, third birthday, we reinvite everyone back. So any schools that we connected with, the college, local community groups, we're like, come to our birthday. Even if you don't come to church, normally come, we're going to celebrate. And we always invite the bishop. And I tend to preach because I usually use it as a vision Sunday, and I just recast the vision again. But I always interview the bishop as part of the service and I ask the bishop questions like, uh, you know, what's the big vision for the diocese? What can we do as a church to help serve that vision? And, um, what would you want to say to the people here in the church for the year ahead? And, um, uh, my bishop or the bishop of Grimsby basically said, um, the first thing you need to do to the congregation is you need to show up if you're going to be part of the church. Come along to church. You don't realize how important it is when you come. When people turn up en masse, it makes a huge difference in terms of building critical mass, in terms of how you worship, in terms of people coming in and seeing the place full of life and joy. And if you're just dipping in, let's say you dip in once a month, you're just not going to build the relationships and the friendships that you need. So one way that we've countered that is, uh, my wife Nay and I basically made a list of people who have been dipping in and out of church for the last couple of years, but haven't really found their home. They've not joined a small group, they're not on team yet. They're just like there. And um, we basically um, decide to invite them all for lunch over a period of a few weeks. So come to church. Come to lunch after church. So I send them all a message, like personal message. Hey, it's been really great seeing you in church, but we'd love to get to know you meta tell you more about the church. Would you like to come over? Almost every household we invited, every person was like, yeah, we'll come. So suddenly we're like, oh my goodness.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: We're fit more in the lounge and.
>> Matt Rogers: Um, in the dining room. So we managed to spread them out and we get them over and we just spend time with them and we tell them a bit, again, just really gently about how we ended up here and what the vision is and find out a bit about them and how they wisely tell us a bit about how you found some marks and then just tried to reconnect them in. But really so much of it is relational. Um, again, they're not coming because of the signage outside or even because they like your social media. They're coming because someone has seen them and noticed them. And part of our, our role as pastors is to draw the gold out of people. Like everyone has gifts. The.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: What are the people?
>> Matt Rogers: Gold. Gold. It's like mining for gold. Everyone's got this gold in them. They've got.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Not like money.
>> Matt Rogers: No. Oh, that was, we'll take that as well. But like they have God given gifts and abilities and contributions to bring to the body of Christ. And a lot of people don't realize it either because they're new Christians or they've dipped in and out of church, but they've always sort of been um, almost consumers within the church. So you start saying we could, you know, I'd love it if you would serve on this team or would you mind if I come and like talk to you at some point about like how finances work because you've got a background in accounting and you know, basically, could you help me and not just me personally, could you help us as a church? Is this a way you should play your part? Sure, I'd love to do that. They suddenly realize I've got a part to play here.
St Mark's is one of the largest Episcopal churches in the United States
And um, there's always a danger with like big church. So we're not a, we're not a huge church. Right. Couple of hundreds.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I just want to Point out that you're one of the biggest churches in the United States.
>> Matt Rogers: Uh, I mean, we are big for.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Lincolnshire, but out of almost 7,000 Episcopal churches in the U.S. there are 196 that have 250 people or more. So you're one of the largest churches in the Episcopal Church, although you're over here. So if you want to come to the U.S. we'll take you.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah. So people can see that, uh, like a larger church, even take 100 people. They can walk in and they get an amazing worship pastor, this worship's great. And they've got kids in youth groups at this point, so the kids are going, this is great. And, uh, people get in their heads like, everything's sorted, but they don't have to contribute anything. So you're like, no, no, no, guys. Unless you join, pray, serve, and give, this is going to reach the end of its life before we've really begun, before we've begun to walk properly. So, again, you need to communicate the vision over and over and over and over. Like, seriously, I get sick of communicating the vision. I try to get it into every sermon, and then I'm like, people just don't get it. Um. And, um, like, Nate would say to me, you got to keep going with the vision. They don't get it. I'm like, they got to get it. It's on every email I send out. I keep doing it. In the sermons we keep putting out. She's like, people just.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You most always mention the, uh, pray, share, give.
>> Matt Rogers: That's how you join the church. But, you know, we exist so that people may encounter the love of God. Like Jesus.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Your mission.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, we even shortened it to make it catchy. And you think, that's clever, and no one pays any attention. We're like, greater love, greater life, Greater Grimsby. It's all our banners. You say to someone, what's the vision? People are like, I don't know. Love God. And we're like, no, greater love, greater love. So what we do again, every few weeks, it's probably every few months, to be honest. We do a newcomer's lunch. Uh, so we're like, stick around, or we'll invite them over. And we just go over, what does it mean to join, pray, serve, give? And you give people an opportunity to invest. And one thing I'm always quite happy to say is, hey, look, it's great having you in St Mark's if you are looking for a church where you can sort of come in, feel relaxed, enjoy the worship, but then turn around and just go again. Um, I've got a list of churches here I think you're really going to love. But if you want to come and roll your sleeves up, get stuck in, play your part serving on team, give generously, whatever.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I'm asking something of them.
>> Matt Rogers: I'm asking something of them. I'm like, if that's you and you want to do that, then you're really welcome. We'd love to have you on board. But I also throw in there, this is not going to be an easy ride. We're going to have tough days. You're going to have days when you're like, well, that was a bit flat or, or whatever else. Or, oh, uh, I'm on the team again. But that's because we are planting a church. And that's an important language, by the way, with revitalization out of HDB in Lincoln. Not. Matt is planting a church. We as a church are planting a church. There's a cost involved for the sending church and then there's a relationship to be had as you carry on. And we're going to find that in a year we're going to plant another church just outside Crimson B.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So you already know where you're doing it.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So, okay, so only because of time where people are. You're already the longest podcast ever on Tri Tech.
>> Matt Rogers: Listen to my sermons and you'll be like, he's meant to talk for 20 minutes apparently, somehow.
You had a five year plan towards sustainability. How are you getting towards sustainability within five years
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: We're still going on for an hour, but I'm going to ask you, uh, I have four, uh, sort of questions that have come up that I want to make sure we address before we can close this one. You had a five year plan towards sustainability. The, uh, sort of step down grants from the diocese and others, uh, funding sources. How are you towards. Grimsby is an un.
>> Matt Rogers: What did you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: What's the word here? Not impoverished, but yeah.
>> Matt Rogers: It's in an area of high deprivation.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: High deprivation. How are you getting towards sustainability within five years?
>> Matt Rogers: So I think we'll get there, but I think we'll get there in six to seven years. To be honest, I think we're a year behind. We're a year behind on the usual Sunday attendance and therefore the correlated giving.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay. Uh, so 250 people is still not where you should be. Where should you be by at this point?
>> Matt Rogers: Remember that a third of the congregation are under the age of 16, so that they don't know much, they don't.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Really give a lot.
>> Matt Rogers: We also have half of our attendees live within the Immediate neighborhood. And that is a lot of social housing. A lot of people live on benefits, so although they'll still give, it's very low. Yeah, our, uh, congregational giving is probably around £90,000, which is pretty impressive for the area we're in. But it's not quite there in terms.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Of what's your overall budget at this point.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah. So in all honesty, if you take what it costs, uh, for me, the staffing, the mission, the ministry, the building maintenance, uh, I think it costs about 200,000 pounds a year to run.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Are you more than four people at this point?
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: No, I mean in staff.
>> Matt Rogers: Uh, no, we haven't added any more stuff. Okay. Some of our full time roles we've made into part time.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Sorry, I didn't mean four people in the church. It's like. Have you not been listening? Larissa, where are you? Oh, no, no, I meant like the staff.
>> Matt Rogers: Okay. So actually one thing we've not done is increase the staff team. And I don't actually really intend to because I want to build a church where everyone gives their time and expertise. Otherwise you fall into a model where you rely on people being money rich and time poor. But we're actually in quite a time rich, money poor area, so we've got to get the balance right. Okay. I'm not like less non employed people. I think if there's a specialist area, we should pay for expertise. But I would much rather take the slow burn and train people and equip them than do that. Now, obviously you might. How are you going to bridge the gap? Yeah, I don't know. Um, by prayer, by. By being honest about it. When I go back to the diocese, I'm talking to the bishop and the board. I'm saying we're not quite there yet, so we're working together to try and work out that solution. Okay. I don't know where we're going to go. Like, I pray about it all the time.
Matt and the team have a plan and then the church happens
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Which brings me to point number two. You know what, I'm going to leave that for last. Let me ask you, because I heard you mention, and I could only imagine in the area that you're serving of high deprivation and the authority of your congregation being young people under 16. Let's talk a little bit, uh, about chaos, where Matt and the team has a plan and then the church happens. Because I don't want people to walk away from listening to this podcast and thinking like, well, they had a plan and everything worked out perfectly every time, every Sunday. It was just amazing. So reassure everyone. That is it more often than not that it doesn't work out according to plan and you just sort of go with it.
Talk a little bit about the chaos that goes involved in this. Some people experience chaos on Sunday
Talk a little bit about the chaos that goes involved in this.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, there's plenty of chaos. I think if you came in on a Sunday, which is sort of the main event, really, it looks good, but what you don't see is, yeah, the chaos that often runs on the outside. Some people experience chaos on Sunday. It's noisy with, like, kids and babies and running around and stuff like that. That's fine.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I've even heard you say earlier in the week is like, you were out there looking out into the congregation is like, I think it's getting away from me.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, there are times when I just have to stop and be like, hey, let's just pause there for a second and just gather your kids together. Especially when it comes to, like, celebrating Eucharist, we want to do this together and I want to teach you what's happening here. So, yeah, we have to pull it in a bit. But, yeah, no, in terms of the systems, like, recruitment was hard. Trying to get people to move was hard work. So we had vacancies straight away in our staff team from the beginning. So I was the vicar, but I was also, like the operations manager, uh, on the side without being paid the extra. So you just have to find ways. And so often you think, oh, well, we can't start because we haven't got the staffing. It's like, no, we're going, the boat's sailing. We're going to have to work together as a team. And that's where your team pulled together to work it out. We've had some staffing roles that haven't worked out. And again, that can be difficult. But again, you don't put the brakes on. You keep on going. Um, you get, you know, you start projects. You think, let's take youth work, for example. You're like, you've got no young people to start with, so how are you going to reach them? Like, they're not queuing up outside going, I'm waiting for this church to reopen. You got to get out there and you go to some schools and they're like, nah, you're not coming in. Um, so you get out onto the streets after school and you take out drinks or you, like, put some sports in the. In the. On the playing field or whatever. Some things work and some things just don't. And you've got to overcome all those disappointments. But again, goes back to the excellence thing. If you're willing to give it a shot and do your best, then you can learn from that. And I think one thing we've had to learn as a team is to celebrate what might seem like a failure. It didn't work, but let's go again. Um, I remember a conversation with one of our staff team and the projects and the goals. He'd say, it just wasn't working. And I was like, we need to have a conversation about this. And I just said, you said you were going to do this and I'm not seeing anything. What's going on there for you? And he was really honest. He just turned around and said, matt, I don't know what I'm doing. I, uh, was just like, oh, thank you. Now we can do something.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: We can work with that.
>> Matt Rogers: We came up with a plan. My background's in youth work. I said, why don't we try doing this? I said, I will give you this next term, these next three months, I'm going to give you every Monday evening and we're going to do this together to get the thing going. I couldn't guarantee it would work, but at least he would have someone walking, uh, alongside him. And that's what we did. And that's how our first youth project was birthed. And once that little bit was done by me, like, I didn't make that thing happen. I just helped him have a little more confidence. So whatever came next, that was him, like, he sorted that. So it's things like that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So in the chaos, name it.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, name it.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Name the chaos.
>> Matt Rogers: I think there's a fear, there's comparison, there's competition. When you're in a network, including HTB and you're part of 160 churches that are thriving and looking great, you can look at your ministry and just be like, it's not working.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: What am I doing?
>> Matt Rogers: This is really disappointing. You can look at the church and go, where Sunday mornings, right? You start your service, you're like, where is everyone? And then 20 minutes in, they've all turned up. You're like, can you not turn off on time?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: They're like, you try having four kids.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, maybe that's it. So those disappointments, just name them. I don't try and just like, church statistics. I don't know how this works in the us, but in the UK there's a formula. It's like you take the number from Sunday, you add 20, divide it by 2, you times it by 4, you add 30 for good measure, and you're like, you get a number and you're like, it's definitely more than there were there. So. So there's always this.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's really the formula. How there is a formula like that.
>> Matt Rogers: No one knows the formula. Uh, for some reason, what you write down, the book is always an overinflation of what reality was. So there's this sense of always being disappointed with not getting quite what you expected. Do you know what Jesus said? I will build my church.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And Jesus said two or three. He kind of set a low bar.
>> Matt Rogers: And we think, I've got to build the church. You take a model like HDB and think, uh, oh, my goodness, I've got to do all this stuff to this exceptionally high standard. But I'll tell you now, HDB are not putting that pressure on you. You put it on yourself as a leader, uh, because you think you're going to look like a fraud if it doesn't work out. And I know plenty of church leaders who've planted. The first plant didn't work. The second one didn't work. The third one just about took praise God, thanks to.
You're praying for people to be healed, and they're being healed
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: All right, so we've talked, uh, of the four things to wrap this up, we talked about sustainability. We talked about cha. Uh, number three, I want to ask you what surprised you in these last four years from the moment you got there? You're like, yep, I feel called here. You put your family in a car, drove it. Uh, you put away your. Your preppy sweater and said, I am now a citizen of Grimsby. Um, what does surprise you?
>> Matt Rogers: Well, I. The first thing I'd say is the. God is so kind. He's so kind. Just like, God just keeps surprising us. Like, miracles happen so regularly that it's become normal. And, um, like, you pray for people to be healed, and they're being healed. You're praying for people to come to faith, and they come to faith. People come and they say, would you pray for this? You pray for it. They come back and they're like, yeah, this shifted and changed. Don't get me wrong, not every prayer is answered in the way you'd expect. But as I look back, I realize that we're just seeing wonderful miracles and breakthroughs. And people genuinely are like, yeah, I believe that's God. It's enough for them to take that first step of faith and to make a commitment. Can I share with you a very quick, really bizarre story? It's a wonderful lady called Brenda came along to church. She lives in the neighborhood. And, uh, she was really anxious about being there. So I Tend to try and greet people before the service and say, hey, it's great to see you on that. You know, I'll, uh, catch you afterwards. She comes along. She was really toying with coming. I lead the service after the service, I go down and I'm like, hey, how was that for you? I try not to say, did you enjoy it? I'm like, how was that for you? She was like, oh, my goodness, you are absolutely right. You know, God really spoke to me in that service about the tortoise. I'm like, the what, sorry? The tortoise? Yeah, the tortoise. She's like, well, this morning a friend of mine messaged me I was going to come. I was coming to church. She messaged me saying, I've got a tortoise that needs rehousing and he's rescuing. He needs to come and pick it up. She's like, I was going to go to church. I don't know what to do. So she turns up a church where she's like, should I be rescuing this tortoise? So I get up and apparently I tell. I say, go and save the tortoise. I said, I never said that. She said, you did. You said it. Just at this point in the service, I realized I said, as our Savior taught us, so we pray. Absolutely true. She hears, save a tortoise. And, um, she just hears God say to her, everything's going to be okay. So she says to me, I'm going to go and save the tortoise. I'm like, bless you. Off you go. She comes back and she's like, do you know what? That was enough for, huh? Her God spoke to her. And I just think, God, you're so kind. Because clearly she didn't listen to anything that I wrote in my sermon that I thought was profound.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You were like, what she heard is gonna change people.
>> Matt Rogers: And it's funny the way people connect and you can put together. That is the Holy Spirit. You put together all these models and all this great stuff, and you think, this is gonna get it. This is gonna win people's hearts and minds. And people are just moved by the most what you think are insignificant things. But you're absolutely right. It's the Holy Spirit at work and it's pressure off. And, um, you know, sometimes you feel like you're losing control. We had this whole thing about we have proper coffee. You like serve proper coffee because it says you're worth it.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: It's worth the tea. Isn't that tea?
>> Matt Rogers: So what we're gonna do coffee and tea. All right. Yeah, I only drink tea. Really. I don't really drink coffee. And we're like, now, the refreshments, okay, we're gonna have pastries, and they're gonna be presented nicely, just like in a coffee shop. Right?
Matt: I'm struggling with the excellence of bringing and share lunches
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Again, going back to the excellence.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, back to the excellence. And then people are turning up and they're like, I brought a cake with me. I bought some biscuits. And I'm like, it's really messy. And, like, we're presenting this nicely. And, um, like a bring and share lunch. I don't know if you do these in your church.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Bringing share. Yeah, yeah.
>> Matt Rogers: Uh, man, you're like. You say to people, we're going to go for a theme. You're going to bring, like, casseroles, barbecue stuff, casseroles. People just turn up with everything. You've told them not to. But people. And you're just like, um, I can't. These people cannot be tamed. We can't. I'm struggling with the excellence. But then you look around the room, and people are building friendships and they love one another. And you're just like, God, I give up. Thank you for these people. Like, you're doing something wonderful. It's your church. I need to back off. And yet God is like, I'm okay with that. And I love you too, Matt, and you're part of this church, so just enjoy it.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Amen.
What do you spend your time doing during the week beyond just Sunday
Um, so the fourth thing that I want to ask you, and now I realize that I am going to ask you a fifth thing. So, uh, we're going over. So pause this podcast if you need to. We're going to go a little bit even longer because I want to ask you, what's your average week like, even percentages? Like, what do you spend your time doing during the week as more than just Sunday?
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, well, every week is different, as I'm sure it is for you as well. But Monday morning, first thing we do, we gather the staff team. We pray and worship. We give thanks for Sunday. We look ahead and, um, we market before we try to do anything.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You market.
>> Matt Rogers: We market the week. You market. Sorry, sorry, not market.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I said marketing.
>> Matt Rogers: No, no, no, no. We're going to begin. We're going to begin in worship. Um, we normally then roll into, like, you know, staff meeting to do some other logistical stuff. And, um, then we sort of roll into this interesting pattern of ministries. Different people have different responsibilities, but we can be in, like, pastoral meetings, uh, going to schools. We do chaplaincy at the local college. We do school assemblies or what we call collective worship. Um, we are running like Wednesday midweek rather running Alpha in the morning, alpha in the evening. Um, we're offering some training for our teams. Maybe one evening governance meetings. Um, we do a club in school called Life and Faith Pub. I mean that's brilliant. It's like kids church, but in the school. And then they bring their parents and come into the church.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I think it's worth mentioning that in the UK it is okay to mix church and the school.
>> Matt Rogers: Oh, it's great. And the schools, honestly, the schools love it. They bite your hand off. They're like, church, please come in. Do you know, because also our, ah, kids are asking questions about God and the teachers don't know what to say.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: We have no idea.
>> Matt Rogers: The church. Yeah, that's what help. It also helps that with Church of England established church, they think we're safe. So they're unlikely to invite in like a little independent church because they're like, ah, wacky Christmas.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Who's that person? Yeah, well, they've obviously now made you.
>> Matt Rogers: So. No. So it's part of the privilege really, of doing that. Okay. So we're trying to get out as much as possible. Um, I think if you, I mean, yeah, I don't want to spend too long in meetings going over the same stuff. I don't want to spend too long checking emails, but I get a lot of emails. Um, but I also make sure for myself one day a week I'm working from home. So that tends to be when other staff are not working. And that's where I'm like working on sermon writing or working on a paper or a document that needs a bit more focus.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: When's your day? Do you have one day off? Two days off?
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, so we generally have one day off. Um, I try to make it a day and a half. We're encouraged, if we can, to get to where we can, but with a workload it's not always possible because then you've got like intertwined the stuff. You've got funerals, weddings, baptisms, confirmations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of that stuff as well. So, yeah, you have to, you shuffle things around the whole time. The sacraments, all right, that's. Make sure it's an expression of my calendar. It's my. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, blah. Um, so, yeah, so, so I try, I tried to take Saturday off because my kids are quite young. Um, and uh, that's the day we get to hang out as family. It's difficult, especially wedding season. Weddings on A Saturday. Yeah. Um, but I always make sure I get at least the day, and I have to. I'm not always that great at communicating my work schedule at home. Uh, it's a marriage lesson.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Got it. That's a totally lesson. But now that's a totally different podcast.
Matt, talk to me about prayer and what it has meant to you
All right, so finally now, the fifth thing that I wanna ask you about, because it is now obvious to me, in having this conversation that we've been having, that prayer is an incredibly important part of this endeavor. It's an incredibly important part of your life. So talk to me about prayer and what it has meant to Matt, what it has meant to the launch team at St. Mark's and what it still means to all of you every day.
>> Matt Rogers: Well, prayer really is the powerhouse. And if we didn't pray the way, then we'd have burnt out. I mean, that's true. I don't know how long we could have gone on for. There are times we pray and we are giving thanks to God for the things we're seeing, and you're in a good place. But there are also times when we're genuinely on our knees saying, God, we've run out of steam. We don't know what we're doing. Um, something's come up pastorally, and we feel helpless or broken and you're interceding or like pressing it in prayer. But we also really try to listen to God. So it's commonplace, particularly in our services. Before we have a service, we gather anyone who's serving on team to quickly worship, but to pray. And as we do that, we always pause and we listen for any words of knowledge. So we say, lord, is there anything you want to say to the church today or say to us? And we ask the Holy Spirit to come. Come, Holy Spirit. And we wait and we say, look, if you sense the Lord maybe speaking to you, it might be a word, a picture, an impression of scripture. Just share that out. And then we sort of test those, and we might share those in the church. And it's amazing how people respond, but we do that for one another. We'll pray for as a staff team in our staff meeting, so we won't do business. We'll pray for each other. So we have, like every week, three line whip. It's like all staff. You come to staff gathering, we look at the Bible together, we pray together, we worship together. So that's part of our rhythm. We have daily prayer. We do that for whoever's in. Wednesday morning, we gather anyone who's around. We say, we're Going to pray. So we have these touch points, but also within, I think, the personal prayer as well. And when we say to people, join, pray, serve, give, we're saying, please be praying for the church. Like, let's pray for one another in our personal prayer as well. And, um, we're like bringing our requests to God, but we're listening, we're sharing anything we sense the Lord saying. And, um, uh, we're just seeking his ways. Um, and we're seeking his ways before we crack on and plan the turn ahead or the sermon series. And we're saying, lord, what is it you want to do to do next? So that's really like, we're seeking prayer as a way of seeking guidance from God, really. Um, and the temptation is always to crack on with the work. We're almost being too busy to pray. But I think one thing we've learned every time is we just don't pray enough. And when we do pray, things happen, things shift. And, um, we realize we really need that. Um, I mean, I struggle with, with prayer, not the concept of prayer. I think it absolutely makes sense. But I often get distracted by just cracking on with the task or checking emails or doing things like, I think I've got the plan. Instead of stopping and praying and allowing the Lord to minister. And again, it comes back. God is kind. He's so gracious. Um, that's amazing. Um, and then we gather the church. Every term we have a gathering called Kingdom Come. This happens as well within the HTB network. Kingdom Come is like a night of focused prayer and worship, uh, like prophesying over our community. It's a really powerful time. It just pushes you further. You've got people genuinely crying out to God and, uh, praying for one another. And it just centers us and it brings us together as a community and as a church. Um, and we're doing a lot of that right now as we go to church plant. It's going to be a year before we land on the ground there. But, you know, in the last few weeks, we've gone, we've walked around the neighborhood and prayer walked. We've prayed in the church we're going to plant into. We're saying, lord, before we strategize this planting thing, um, what do you want to say? What are you showing us here? What are we seeing? What opportunities are there? So, again, constantly testing through prayer, but realizing that, yeah, we're relying on the work of the spirit and, um, yeah, all of that. So, yeah, like, prayer absolutely critical and.
Tri Tech podcast recap: Alpha has been important in growing intergenerational worship
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Certainly sounds like no so as we're coming to the end only because this is now the considerably longest episode ever of the Tri Tech podcast and an.
>> Matt Rogers: Hour and a half.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But uh, just to recap the things, I just want to make sure, as I read these back to you, make sure that I have not missed anything that you think would be super important for someone to take away. Right. The launch team was important. Alpha has been important in growing intergenerational worship has been important. Seeking being exceptional in the work that you're doing has been important. We in not doing it alone, but the whole team together. So. And obviously the fundamental part that uh, the Holy Spirit and prayer has been to this work because notice how I didn't say the money, I didn't say any of that because I think of everything that you mentioned that seems to be an inconsequential detail that's about discipleship.
>> Matt Rogers: That'S about people, just.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah, but did I miss anything? Would you add to that list the team Alpha, intergenerational exceptionalism, we not alone. And the fundamental part of prayer.
>> Matt Rogers: Yeah, and I think just within that, it sounds like a lot of things, but you've got to be focused. You've got to know what you're doing and what you're not doing. So we're not the church who can do everything. You have to focus on that. People come up with ideas. They're like, we should be running this. I'm like, actually if we're going to pump our resources, like people, resources, money into things like Alpha, we can't also be the church that runs the food bank and this project and that project. So that's where collaboration works. We point people towards those projects. If people have got a heart to serve in those ministries, like, you know what, you can worship at St. Mark's and serve the neighboring church with that. Uh, so again, resist the temptation to try and do everything. Uh, we call it like, uh, our key focus areas and that includes things like youth and kids ministry. Alpha, ah, growing our leadership, um, you know, equipping people for mission out where they are and church planting. That's our five things. That's what we do. That's what we're focusing on.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Matt Rogers, the vicar at Grimsby.
Could you just pray for our listeners? I'd love to. Thank you so much for joining us
Um, can I just ask you, could you say a prayer for those listening who maybe are excited by this conversation, that have heard and they're like, I want to try some of this. Maybe it's just doing a sort of rule of life that has joined prayer. Share, give or, uh, pray, plan, pivot, all of these things. That they've heard. Could you just pray for our listeners?
>> Matt Rogers: I'd love to. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, let's pray. Yeah. Heavenly Father, thank youk that yout are the one who brings life and growth to youo church, Lord. For those listening in who, Lord, you'd're just planting seeds right now. You're giving them a vision for revitalization and renewal in the church. Uh, I pray, Lord, that yout would equip them. Um, but also, Lord, just give faith that they may take steps of obedience into your plans and purposes. Lord, give creativity that's a gift of your spirit. Give resources that are needed to start new, ah, initiatives or to revitalize. Um, Lord, would you equip and grow leaders to do exceptional things within the life of the church? And, Lord, would you equip every person to play their unique part, no matter what their capacity is, Lord, that they may, uh, be a part of the adventure to which you're calling them on, but calling us on, not just as a local church, but as a national church and as a global church. Uh, and Jesus, we just thank you that you said, I will build my church. And, um, we're just so privileged to be a part of that, uh, and to be a part of, uh, your mission in the world. Um, so, yeah, Holy Spirit, come and bring new life. Uh, we pray in your name.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Amen. Thank you so much for joining us, for taking this time to do this. I think a lot of people get a lot out of this.
>> Matt Rogers: Ah, uh, my pleasure. Bless you. Yeah.
Thanks for listening to the Tri Tank podcast. Please subscribe and leave a review
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And same as last week, the voiceovers for this episode were created by AI on one. Thanks for listening.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: 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 up for our monthly newsletter letter where you can keep up with all of our experiments. The Tri Tank podcast is a production of Trank in association with Resonate Media. Tri 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.
>> Matt Rogers: Sam.