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Church Leader, shift your focus from mere institutional insights to individual transformation. Be intentional. Join hosts Doug Parks (CEO and Co-Founder of Intentional Churches) and Erin Johnston (Co-Executive Pastor of Canyon Ridge Christian Church) as they share weekly thought-provoking discussions and actionable takeaways that will resource you to help your people encounter Jesus. Take the step toward authentic discipleship of your congregation so you can mobilize the ninety-nine to reach the one.
I like a phrase I learned from an African leader. He said, invite people to the kitchen, don't invite them to the table. So when I'm in the kitchen, I view the food very, very differently. I'm not judging the food as a consumer. I helped make it.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Well, hey, everyone. Welcome back to season 3 of the Intentional Churches podcast. Podcast. My name is Erin Johnston, and I'm here with a couple of my friends today. I've got Doug Parks from IC.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Hey, Doug. What's up?
DOUG PARKS:Hey, Erin. Great to see you again. Can't wait to get into a great convo today.
ERIN JOHNSTON:And we're here also with our friend Dano. Dano is one of my good friends. He's a movement catalyst, gardener extraordinaire, all sorts of great things to know about my friend, Dan. But, Dan, why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself? Who are you?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Help our listeners know just who is Dano.
DANO:Well, I had many years of church pastoral experience, at Cane Ridge, along with Doug. And I did that for about 8 years, and then we went to South Asia and catalyzed, movements or helped start movements of disciples and churches among Muslim peoples. And now we're back here in, Vegas and connecting with you guys. Mostly what I say about what I do is that I grow my fruit in other people's trees.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Yes. That's awesome. Literally and figuratively. Well, we in this season are talking about just what are the questions that church leaders are asking, what are the challenges that church leaders are facing, and we're trying to just wrap our arms around, tackle some of these questions, some of these challenges. And so today, I really wanna focus our conversation around this idea of collaboration and working well together across teams.
ERIN JOHNSTON:One of the things that I know many, many church leaders experience, I'm sure for many of our listeners, is this idea of silos on our teams. Like, you've got the youth person working only on youth ministry. Right? And you've got the engagement person working only on engagement ministry, when it's time to make decisions or we wanna create something new or we wanna take ground together, or even in the way that intentional churches some of the words that they use is, like, when we're looking for breakthrough, when we're seeking breakthrough in a particular challenge, we need to work together. And, Dan, I know you have done a lot of work in this idea of collaboration, and so maybe would you just start by telling us I know you don't use the word collaboration.
ERIN JOHNSTON:You use a different word, which is cocreation. Would you just help invite our listeners into as as we start the conversation of how are we gonna eliminate silos and help people work together, Talk to us about some of the language and vocab you use as you think about this conversation.
DANO:Well, cocreation and or collaboration, it's really getting everybody in, the system, everybody in the organization, everybody in the space involved and engaged and not leaving anybody out. What we've found is even after 500 years of the protestant reformation, maybe one of the most missing components is the priesthood of all believers. And that can even happen on a staff where all of the energy, all of the creativity, all of the initiative is locked up in a few influential leaders with authority instead of diffused throughout each department. You know, the the sense of awakening. What we're really trying to talk about is awakening agency at the bottom and the edge of the organization, initiative and creativity at the bottom and the edge of the organization.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Yeah. That's that's really good. And so cocreation is all about helping every person bring their god given contribution to the table and not just a a select few experts to use their influence and their initiative. Doug, maybe help us translate this, into the the language you use at intentional churches. How do you think about this idea of collaboration or cocreation?
DOUG PARKS:Aaron, I do wanna back up first and say we're talking we've talked a lot about ministry departments and the siloing in between ministry departments. But in our work, we also see it in much smaller churches that might be committee based or team based where people are, you know, they're because they're passionate about a topic like missions or bible studies or something. They may be in a a committee that's working on that. And oftentimes, those committees silo as well. And so this problem of siloing in church runs rampant whether you're small church, big church, doesn't doesn't matter, and there are different, nuances to the how we solve each.
DOUG PARKS:But at the end of the day, what Dan said, it would be the approach of intentional churches. Structurally, your organization, however it's built with volunteer leadership, paid staff, whatever, has to be built with an a component of cross functionality. That's the word we use, cross ministry function that is working on different things than for instance, a ministry silo would because, you know, for years I hated ministry silos. I tried to eradicate them, but at the end of the day, they do have a place in our organizations. They provide hierarchy.
DOUG PARKS:They provide, we often say at IC, they they help drive a topic or an issue to excellence. We want people from children's ministry working on making children's ministry awesome, but this idea that we're talking about with Dan, cross functionality, cross ministry attacking from our viewpoint puts siloing in its correct place in the organization.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Okay. Yeah. So we want people still fulfilling the role. If we're thinking about a church staff for a moment for a moment, we we want people fulfilling the role that they were hired to fulfill. Right?
ERIN JOHNSTON:So if if someone is just amazing at children's ministry, they should continue to be amazing at children's ministry, and we want all the good from them towards that end. And, also, everyone should be able to and equipped and really unleashed to contribute their god given gifts in multiple directions.
DOUG PARKS:Amen.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Dan, why don't we we kinda move into how do you start to do this? So if you say you had big church, small church, anywhere in between, that was really hoping to set out in the direction of, like, much greater collaboration, cross functionality, cocreation, any of these words that we're kind of using interchangeably. How does that look? How do you think about that? What what should be the first couple steps that that a team does?
ERIN JOHNSTON:And then maybe that can help us start to help people kind of, think about this in their own context.
DANO:Well, I like a phrase I learned from an African leader. He said, invite people to the kitchen. Don't invite them to the table. So when you invite someone to the table, you know, someone else makes the food. You're asked how you and you're asked how you like it.
DANO:And when others are invited to the table, you know, you become the entertainer, and they become consumer. You're the host or the hostess, and they're the guest. And in fact, in churches, we call people guests all the time. And sometimes people become perennial guests, because our membership classes are one directional. We talk at people, and our invitations to volunteer are mostly filling holes.
DANO:They're definitely not characterized by collaboration and engagement. On the other side, when you invite people to the kitchen, you know, what happens when you invite people to the kitchen that family and friends are coming to the kitchen? They you make yourself at home, but you're also expected to clean up the mess and be help a part of the cooking. So when I'm in the kitchen, I view the food very, very differently. I'm not judging the food as a consumer I helped make it.
DANO:So my engagement is off the charts. I'm gonna give you my full attention when you lead because I expect the same when I'm leaving. And and whenever you're invited to the kitchen, it's getting past this idea of professional chefs. You know, no one's always doing the cooking while everybody else is relaxing a glass of wine. You know, we still need the support of experienced cooks that kind of frame the menu or bring their know how, but everybody's involved in the process.
DANO:Another way to think about it and a way that I I have a friend who's engaged in, like, inner city church work, and they call their neighborhood their people garden. And so another way to describe this is that we invite everybody into the kitchen to bring all the ingredients from their own gardens, and we make something together that the community can only be birthed from the community itself. And I think what that does is it invites people out of guest consumer, critique mode and invites them to become really bring a contribution. And that's what we're really all about is trying to find ways to unlock contribution from everybody that's involved in the community.
ERIN JOHNSTON:That's great. I'm wondering for for our listeners especially, that's that sounds like such a good idea, but what are the kinds of things that we need this type of collaboration or cross functionality around? Doug, maybe maybe you would speak to this for for a moment as you, help people into this with intentional churches. What are the types of maybe issues or challenges or things that you advise teams to really use this method with?
DOUG PARKS:Yeah. In in our work, we're gonna one of the biggest hurdles we face in church leadership is we we don't understand a couple of points of emphasis. Number 1, ministry is a 0 sum proposition. We use that phrase a lot. What we mean by it is a friend of ours says there is no innocent yes.
DOUG PARKS:And at the same time, everything in ministry is important all the time. We treat it as if we have an endless supply of resource. So we say yes to way too many things. And then at the same time, we say it's all equally as important. And so the way we like to think about this and how you utilize this tool of, I love Dan's word of cocreation, collaboration, this cross functionality is we're using it, to set in place prioritization and sequencing.
DOUG PARKS:And that is a new discipline for most church leaders to learn, to say in this next season's work of the 10 or 20 things we could do this 1 or 2 thing, these 1 or 2 things are the most important, and then we're gonna deploy cross ministry, cross functionality against that. A team made up of people from outside of the silos to go attack that work. And so you can't do I don't believe you'd have the, enough bandwidth and space to do 10 or 20 of these teams at one time, but you have to be focused in on a priority in sequence, taking the long view in ministry. Think about how much we can accomplish over the next 10 years as opposed to kind of the silver bullet mentality. We all have microwave ministry that we could just fix everything in the next 30 days, you know, that kind of approach.
DOUG PARKS:So
ERIN JOHNSTON:Yeah. Just getting super practical to what, you both have said. I think about, like, in in my context, last year we we just realized, man, we need a new approach to volunteers. We need a better way to, like, get volunteers, recruit them. We need a better way to train them, and we really wanna train them, with our DNA, which is really important to who we're becoming.
ERIN JOHNSTON:So they're not just warm bodies, you know, doing a role on a Sunday morning, but they really understand what it means to to make disciples who make disciples, and they understand what we mean when we say that. And, so we put one of these cross functional teams together, cocreation team, and came together and said, let's let's kind of eliminate everything that is, and let's let's start from scratch. And we had people from all different ministries and areas across our church, which was really important for the creation of a whole new volunteer pipeline and and all of those things, but it wouldn't been wouldn't have been possible without multiple areas of ministry represented. I also want to point to something else, Dano, that I've heard you talk about before, and that is the difference between, like, this idea of collaboration, cocreation, and just, like, telling people something or selling people something or just having people consult you on your ideas that you already have? What's the difference between true collaboration, like inviting a team to really build something together, or the leadership just kind of inviting some some people from the team to consult them on their ideas.
ERIN JOHNSTON:I I want our listeners to make sure they catch the difference here. Dan, would you flush that out for us?
DANO:Well, every one of the kinds of leadership mindsets that you can show up as, and, we develop like a like a spectrum from telling and selling all the way up to cocreation. What we found is, mostly these days, people kind of sniff out telling and realize it's that's not really good. It's not gonna get the job done, but selling has never been more popular. But what happens when a leader sells the vision? They're creating consumers of the vision.
DANO:If you sell the vision, you're you're having to convince people to go after what's you know, I'd almost wanna ask, what's the most important thing everybody's get trying to garner in a meeting? Leader leaders are trying to garner in a meeting, and it's ownership. But if you try to sell people to own the vision, then you're constantly trying to get them to continue that process. But co creation is a mindset, and it's the most developed kind of leader that can kinda manage their own anxiety and be present to the team or the congregation and invite them into the journey courageously and patiently. And for most leaders, it it really brings out a lot of insecurity, especially if they're just being driven by busyness to chase this ownership when reality, you know, it's something that is developed over time and you have to take, you know, small steps to invite, you know, followers or people on your team into the, you know, the the really scary place of being part of owning that the consequences of the outcome.
DANO:That's why I oftentimes feel like point leaders in churches, you know, they're pushed further and further up into situations that are really precarious. They put the, you know, their own souls are very precarious when they're responsible for so much. And then, of course, if they fall, it has such a big impact on the organization, on the church, on the community, but that doesn't have to be the case that they share that sense of ownership. They invite people into the experience of walking along with them and bearing the, you know, the unbearable burden of the consequences of what we're doing. That work has a lot to do with what's happening in the interior life of the leader.
DANO:And I found that only the most developed leaders can kinda manage that. It's much easier to I go into my cave. I figure out what, you know, me and God wanna do, and I come out and announce it. But that kind of installed change requires constant, constant attention to keep ownership high as opposed to making space in a a wider group of people. Not even it's not everybody, but increasingly wider groups of people to be able to be part of creating the vision together.
DANO:And then also what that does is when we hit the adaptive challenges in front of us, challenges that we didn't anticipate and we didn't know how to approach, Everybody carries the DNA of the vision in a much more embedded way so they can adapt at the edges, without the leader being the only one that sets the agenda or solves the problem.
DOUG PARKS:Well, I Aaron, I and, Dan, I just think, Dan, what you're saying is so spot on because especially in the American church, the the responsibility issue when you're in the mantle of senior leadership or executive team leadership of a church, and you introduce a concept like cocreation or a strategy about how we're gonna go about doing something, it really is. There's a whole lot of fear that can kick in because my experience has been when we get into the collaborative environments, excellence levels will tend to drop a little. Patience levels have to grow. Ego and internal identity issues are being challenged, not just for the senior leader, but for maybe the team member who really feels judged and their identity and worth comes from performance. And am I gonna fail?
DOUG PARKS:Are you gonna, so there's all this stirring up that goes on when you go down this road. However, what I what you said, Dan, the power in ownership buy in, alignment over the long haul is worth the price to pay. Not even considering the developmental side as a disciple, what it's doing to challenge our identity issues across the board, But organizationally, the the ground we can take over time, we actually can go faster the more we embed this kind of DNA in our churches. So, anyway, I loved your analogy of the kitchen versus the table because I think that is very pertinent to what, this conversation is developing into.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Yeah. I just wanna reiterate, at first, this will not be quick. This will take way longer at first, and it will be really easy to want to throw in the towel. Cocreation sounds nice, then you get into an actual cocreation environment and you're like, oh my goodness. Here we are several weeks later, and we're just now, you know, forming our conclusions or or whatever, you know, making a decision or whatever the case might be.
ERIN JOHNSTON:And I will just say it's worth it because it begins to change your culture. And once, not just your staff members, but even congregants, even key volunteers, once they feel like I have a place in the kitchen here, not just at the table, not just to show up on a Sunday morning and consume what you have prepared for me, but I have a seat or a place in the kitchen that really begins to change. Like Dan was saying, how people show up, how they arrive, the amount of ownership that they carry with them, the amount of freedom they feel to act and to do, what they sense that God's called them to do. So I think that's just really helpful. I wanna get, like, hyper practical for a minute for our listeners.
ERIN JOHNSTON:For somebody who's like, okay. We have maybe a challenge in front of us or maybe we wanna take some new ground. What would be, like, the first three practical steps you would advise that someone take? Or and or I'm gonna give you both a couple options and you can choose, and then the other person can take the other. What are a few questions that a leader should be asking themselves of themselves or their organization to know where they're at in this whole collaborative cocreation, conversation, whether they need to take more ground, whether they need to start from from the beginning, whether they need to work on themselves internally.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Like, what are some key questions a leader should be asking, and or what are the first three steps a leader should be taking to head in the direction of of greater cocreation and collaboration? Dan, will you start us out? You can pick. Do you if you wanna ask questions or or give 3 steps.
DOUG PARKS:This doesn't seem fair.
DANO:How about this? I'm gonna just, I'm gonna take my autonomy and express it. I'm gonna tell a story that really does embed the 3 steps if you will. So around Cane Ridge, right after, you know, kinda in the midst of COVID is when I came back to the US, and I was just asking around, you know, my home church. So how do you guys do corporate discernment?
DANO:How do you discern together what what god's inviting us into in the in the next season, or for the next, you know, year? And, there was there was a lot of crickets, you know, because there wasn't a lot of corporateness to it. And so we Aaron was a part of this and obviously Drew and many others. But we we began co creating or bringing together cross functionality of a wide group of staff, and that included, like, even some people from the janitorial staff. We really wanted to push the boundaries of who we assume should be in the room and even brought some elders in.
DANO:Every one of them had to go do interviews from uncommon voices in the congregation. They were not just the key volunteers who already know us. They're really closely, but further in just new believers, maybe even outliers, there you know, everybody was intended to get, you know, 5 to 8 interviews. They would listen really well to what was happening in congregation, and then they would carry that sacredness of those voices to our seasonal discernment times, which is an actual meeting. Every one of them would have to write like an independent 250 word summary of their summary work and then 3 words or phrases that were birthed in prayer and listening to God based on what they heard at the edges from real people in the congregation and what they sense from the Lord.
DANO:And this output was compiled without any names. This is the part of the cross functionality that's really hard to endure when you're person with authority. We had no names on any of the outputs so that those people with authority couldn't garner outside outsized influence. But We didn't want them to go as, oh, what's the senior pastor think? Well, I wanna agree with that.
DANO:Instead, nobody knew whose contribution was coming and that really kept from any monopolizing conversations, and it really pushed us to listen really well to each other. And and, of course, we took substantial time. Maybe I shouldn't say a course. We took substantial time listening to God in those meetings. For some people, an awkward amount of listening, because the practice of personal discernment wasn't as common.
DANO:But noticing patterns across the summaries of all that was heard in the congregation And, of course, there was people with the gift of synthesis, and they helped to clarify those major themes that we might pursue in the next 3, 6, maybe 12 months. But what the result was of this cross functional, cross you know, co cocreation kind of team was vision and direction was tethered to our shared understanding of our deepest values, the DNA of who we are, and we were still connected to and and what was sensed by the interviews at the edges. It wasn't something birthed in a boardroom or it wasn't birthed in a pastor study. It was birthed in, like, really listening well. And we were able to say and I think we still regularly are able to say with confidence and integrity that we are cocreating a future we sense the Lord is calling us into and that our congregation is hungry for.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Oh, so good. Doug, what would you add in terms of questions or that that leaders should be asking or even a few a first few practical steps that they should be taking based on this story from Dan?
DOUG PARKS:Yeah. Well, that's it it's an incredible story because most churches we go to have no systematic approach or a way that they're going to corporately discern. I'm going to back up to just like just some real practical things I've learned on how to implement in our world, we call these projects that we're gonna work on, VIPs. You don't need to worry about the term, but in essence, we give a name to the cross functional projects. If you've read 4 disciplines of execution, they're called WIGs.
DOUG PARKS:If you've done any kind of strata up stuff, they're called WINS. You know, every has their different, thing. But here's what I've learned is that teams do need to feel like they are winning. And so for me, when teams go attack cocreation in the beginning, I actually like for it to be a little bit of a smaller project. I try to stay across away from philosophical, like, we're not here to philosophically wandering in the desert for the next 5 months.
DOUG PARKS:And, you know, getting practicing the muscle at the same time, a teammate needs to feel like it's winning because too many times I've set teams up to fail where the thing they were tackling was so big out of the gate and they'd never practiced cocreation. And so, yeah. So there's be a couple of pragmatic ones. I think the main question, Aaron, I would be asking around this topic. There's probably dozens if we have more time, but I think I would be asking if I were a senior leader who had influence, how committed am I really?
DOUG PARKS:How committed is our organization really to the development of people into their best contributions? And do I care more about outcomes than I care about the development of people? Again, if you take the long haul view, the long haul view, we are in the people development under Jesus sovereignty business. And if I take a longer view, I get less antsy about, hey, what do I accomplish or achieve in this little 3 or 6 month window? Even though I'm impatient myself, by the way, I have to I struggle with this.
DOUG PARKS:So
ERIN JOHNSTON:Yeah. Well, this has been so helpful. Just for our listeners, our encouragement to you would be to to take the question that that Doug just asked. How committed are all of us, to the development of people bringing their best contribution, over just our outcomes or our our best laid plans, and then start looking around. Where can you start inviting people to the kitchen and not just to the table?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Where can you invite people to roll up their sleeves, get their hands dirty alongside you, and really, start thinking about maybe a small step in the direction of of cocreation or collaboration. I think all of our churches and, really, beyond our churches, the kingdom of God is better when every person is able to bring their full god given contribution. So, Doug, Dano, thank you so much for a great conversation today. This has been fun. Good to hang with both of you, and thanks everyone for listening to the Intentional Churches podcast.
ERIN JOHNSTON:We'll see you soon.