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Follow one church's journey as they depart from modern church growth trends and reinvent themselves by equipping everyday Christians to live out their faith in real life. Find episodes and show notes at www.dereksanford.com/reinventingchurch
Speaker 2 (00:07.407)
you
Speaker 2 (00:17.774)
Welcome in today's episode, we're talking cruel summer, shifting 11 gears behind the curtain at grace and in tips and tools, we tango with the Terminator. But we'll be back. Yeah, we need some words bring Danielle in right? Yeah, that's It's I love it
I see what you did there.
Speaker 1 (00:37.23)
creative introductions.
Speaker 1 (00:42.147)
Yeah, we both appreciate it.
For those of you who are new to the podcast, my name is Danielle Heartland and this is Pastor Derek Sanford and we have this new digs.
Yeah, we got some new digs. Stepping up in the world.
I was thinking like when the team, thank you, Ellen, Darrall, Owen, Matt, everybody, Nick, when they were working on it, was like, yeah, it is weird. Like we used to do it where we don't ever talk to each other. Sitting in a booth together.
Shoulder to shoulder we go to war shoulder to shoulder, but we don't ever talk that way
Speaker 2 (01:13.678)
Now they know we have cameras everyone can have my reactions So I'm excited to do this again, good question, you know
What do do here? What do you do at Grave?
Tell people what you hear.
What your role is. So I have the awesome honor of leading the programming team here. So that's everything from communications, marketing. We have some content that we do, video, graphics and tech. Yeah. Creative endeavors at the church, basically.
And we've done this together for a long time. So one of the things that people have listened to the first two seasons have said is that they're like, man, you guys seem to really know each other. And it's like, yeah, we both know too much. It's like a mutual, what is it called? Thank you. We can't launch nuclear war.
Speaker 2 (01:54.766)
Yeah, it's not good.
Self-assured destruction.
Yeah, right, yeah. 100%.
Yeah, so we've been doing this a long time. You were in the youth ministry when I was a youth pastor and have been in leadership here. And so we're just kind of chronicling our journey for those that are new, chronicling our journey through this shift that we're making as a church. Grace is a very old church. 1895, we started with 19 Swedish immigrants on the corner of Seventh and Holland in downtown Erie, Pennsylvania. And our church has morphed a lot since then. But right now we're going through a major shift from, you know, kind of a growth,
growth, church growth, attraction model, which is basically the model that I came up. I just celebrated 30 years here at Grace this year. So been at this for a long time and we're making a shift to more a disciple oriented missional multiplication model as a church. And we just decided to kind of chronicle our journey through that process. And so it should be fun, but let's catch up first before we talk more about all that.
Speaker 2 (02:55.918)
Okay, so summer catch up. Okay, I realized we have a full circle moment here. For, I was like one of the first. nervous about this. No, it was one of the first couple episodes, like a couple seasons ago. We talked about your like healthy obsession with fantasy football and how your mind works and whatever. And we had a banter about whether or not we thought Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's relationship was real. Oh my gosh.
What's happening?
You know what's happening because everybody knows what's happening. We shouldn't even be talking about anything other than this on this podcast.
I own Travis Kelsey won my dynasty leagues and this is of great concern to me for other reason for other reason. Yeah.
You're in trouble. I heard she's like making a lot of sourdough bread and stuff too, so he's gonna slow down.
Speaker 1 (03:43.498)
I'm trying to trade him as quickly as possible. Get out while I can. Just give me a second round draft pick next year, I'll be fine. You didn't think it was going this way, you? When are they getting married? I haven't heard, to be honest.
You
Speaker 2 (03:53.73)
That's it? For sure, married. Yeah.
Already married. They just got engaged.
I really follow it, I know. This part of the thing, I heard that they got engaged. That's all I know. There's fantastic memes, which I've seen. So my favorite was he's chosen his groomsman and it was a picture of four referees standing right next to
Okay, I even get that. I get that joke. yeah, no.
Yeah, so... we get good memes out of it, I'm all fine with it.
Speaker 2 (04:34.818)
Yeah, so but again, I will say back to our original conversation. The timing is interesting. of her tour. She just said she's coming out with a new album and his season is starting.
They're business people.
Speaker 1 (04:50.072)
They're business people. Everybody benefits, right? NFL benefits. Yeah. Yeah, the music industry.
I some documentary where, not documentary, was like a part of a documentary, where they were saying like the chiefs specifically, their fandom flipped, it's like 58 % women. Female. Yeah, which is like, I mean, but for them that's a win, because that's like, well, it's a win, I mean, business-wise. Okay. Because it's like the whole family's coming to the game now. It's not just like the dad and his friend. Right. Chagrin maybe.
Is it though?
Speaker 1 (05:21.57)
And maybe they're all. Exactly. But yeah, and maybe the whole family's buying jerseys instead of just the guy. Yeah, no, I get it. Yeah, I get it.
Yeah, it's lifting up everything. Anyway, don't care about this. I just thought it was funny that that was like one of the first things we talked about randomly. That's funny. And yeah, and your fantasy football draft kicked off one of them. Yeah. The other day, which was fun to overhear.
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (05:44.802)
This was our, yeah, this is our staff. We have a staff league from some of the guys on our staff. You were.
not. I was I would be again, but nobody asked. Really? I understand what. Oh, OK. As long as nobody gets mad at me for doing the dumb.
No, that's fine. Yeah, that no that's part of the fun. It's just I you went out on a little bit of a sour note, but
I held my own. I held my own. Okay, anyway. Yeah, so how about summertime? What'd do this summer?
Let's be honest. Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:17.368)
Summer was great. had a little bit of time. Man, we went to Europe.
By the way, I already know all this. So don't, we just said like we know each other really well. I'm like, what'd do this summer? So yeah, maybe an extra little nugget, whatever.
This is for the benefit of the- So Ayden and Kim and I went to England, went to London, and that's the first time I'd ever been there. So we've been lots of places, but like I'd never been there. So we had just an absolute blast. My funny takeaways were all the pomp and circumstance, like we saw the changing of the guard. We actually saw King Charles come riding through in his car, like right in front of us and all the stuff with that.
You know, they wear all their costumes and everything. And I came back going, we need to work on our entrances.
If there's one thing I learned from-
Speaker 1 (07:11.38)
Yeah, the entrances are spectacular. So yeah, so when I come up to preach next week, I expect it.
You
And I realize you don't even have to be really good at playing the bugle, you just play it and then something...
Something happens.
So we don't even need to set the bar too high. but here's the here's the big moment. We went we went to Oxford for a day. And I mean, I just geeked out so hard. mean, it was so, so incredible. I've been like ever since, like on this deep C.S. Lewis, you know, dive and reading all this stuff again and like with all the backstory and with it. It was just so spectacular. It was it was surreal. Felt like I was in a.
Speaker 1 (07:56.814)
You know, a Harry Potter movie and a CS Lewis thing all at once. And Tolkien, and they were all there. And hearing the stories from, we actually got a guide that did a Tolkien-Lewis tour with us through Oxford, a walking tour. And man, my poor wife and daughter were just like, he and I were like vibing off each other so hard. They're like, oh, this is great. They're looking at the trees and the paths.
It's still.
Beautiful. yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous. So yeah, it was great. was great. I definitely want to go back and soak it in a little bit more. I'm in this Thursday night guys group now that were they got so compelled. We're actually reading till we have faces together as almost like a book club, which is not what this thing started as. Yeah. But man, until you you know that this is my favorite Lewis book, but not everybody does. But
It's been fun getting back into it because it was actually Lewis's favorite of his book. So he basically said, he's on record of saying, this is my best book. And man, when you read that book in conjunction with like the four loves and some of the, the thought is that he put all of his other works into this book, but then wrote it as a fantasy, you know, like a mythology kind of which was his fascination from the beginning before he even be able to.
I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (09:19.459)
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:22.838)
became a Christian. So anyway, we could do a whole segment on that. But so that's been that's been super fun. How about you? What happened to you this summer?
on the opposite side of the spectrum. went to dirty Myrtle. As per usual. The land of. Myrtle.
Myrtle Beach This would be very clear
Just so you don't think it's another Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in the United States.
as as people don't think it's like beach ten at Lake Erie
Speaker 2 (09:55.854)
Actually, there are beautiful parts of Myrtle Beach obviously we wouldn't go there but Dave's not like that. Yeah, we went that was our main vacation, which was cool. We ended up just ran we did not plan this so financially, you know, but I didn't know this you can Airbnb like an RV or like a trail you know, like a camper. Wow.
I just randomly looked in this campground on the beach that Dave grew up, my husband Dave grew up, going to Rural Beach several times a year with his family. There were like 10 openings, which is so weird. was like height of the summer. And I was like, hey, there's like openings. And we just started looking, found a pretty, mean, it was like the cost of an Airbnb. I mean, it was not that, it was just so. So his best friend was in the States.
their missionaries overseas and they were driving up from Florida and they ended up just meeting us there and we had like almost a week with them at this campground kind of unexpectedly which was really cool and it was the thing that was cool about it is as you probably remember they have kids we have DACs your kids have to get to a certain age to which you can have conversations with adults again like on dinner
trips, whatever. And so all the kids, think, were like sweet spot for that. Like they were doing their own thing, old enough to like kind of walk to the beach on their own stuff. So we had some really like cool, beautiful conversations and got to like, feel like truly catch up with them. Even though we've seen them, I don't feel like we've caught up with them in like five years. So it was awesome. It was really cool, fun. Yeah. So that was our, that was our big thing. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it.
That's great. We told people last time that I was a grandpa, so I have to give one quick Ruby update. So she's nine months. She just turned nine months. She's walking very early. So she's walking everywhere. She crawled for like one day and then decided to walk. That's was. Yeah. It's a certain personality or something that she's they transitioned her to a big bed. So she's got like her whole room. Her whole room is a bed. Like it's huge. It's like it looks like a sheep pen.
Speaker 2 (12:08.93)
I mean, it's awesome, I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (12:17.26)
But it's great, it's great. So we're so much fun with Ruby.
Speaker 1 (12:25.102)
It's a lot. It's huge. She's sitting in the middle of it with a huge smile. I don't know where they found it, but yeah, it's good.
I Kim built it or something.
Speaker 2 (12:33.77)
All right, so every week what we want to do is have a segment and we're super excited about this. new. We have not done this before. You guys who have listened for a while have heard us talk about Clarity House and and or Dave and Shane. And so.
Which is not a Christian music band.
sound like it. Shane and Shane. Oh, shout out. Keep dating ourselves. Let's do this. Yeah, so let's talk about that a little bit, like your kind of hopes for that, why we're doing that segment and whether it's gonna
Yeah, really, we're trying something a little new really this whole season based on some of that. people who listen know that this group is who helped us to begin to make this transition as a church. Well, they've also helped a bunch of other churches across the country who are in this same process as us of transitioning their churches from kind of a growth mega church model to a multiplication model, discipleship model. And so...
They're going to weigh in and really this season we're talking about, we're going to organize it around these 11 shifts that we're saying every church must make. And so we'll be starting out every week with a three to five minute segment from Dave and Shane, who are going to be popping on. And we've seen a couple of their prototypes and it's just gold guys. It's just really, if you tune in just for that, you're going to get your money's worth.
Speaker 2 (13:47.406)
ourselves.
Speaker 1 (13:55.146)
And then we'll move from that segment as we introduce the topic, and I'll share the topics in a minute, into an interview with you and I and another church leader from around the country who's pastoring or leading another church, who's in the middle of that topics transition. And so it should be really good that they're kind of in the waters with us in this transition mode.
And I would just say to our listeners like if you've been in ministry for any length of time like you you know that the ground is shifting I think everybody feels it and senses it and The strategies that worked 20 years ago are not the strategies that are producing disciples today And I think people's expectation of church has changed Culture has changed and whether we like it or not the church has changed, Yeah, and the question is are we are we gonna go with it? Are we gonna you know dig our heels in?
And just to be clear, change doesn't mean chasing all the latest trends or something like that, scrapping everything that came before. It's not that at all. It's just re-centering on the mission of Jesus and then asking hard questions about, we living that mission in our own time, in our own place, as faithful as we possibly can? And so during these next 11 episodes, we're gonna talk about 11 real pivotal shifts that we believe every church needs to wrestle through.
and as we move from a tractional crowd center to discipleship multiplication. So the 11 shifts are from Sunday to every day, from complexity to clarity, from staff driven to leader multiplying, from teaching to training, from attendance to apprenticeship, from assimilation to activation, from consumer culture to kingdom culture, from growth to depth, from seeker to sender, from hero pastor to healthy church, and from events to environments.
Easy.
Speaker 1 (15:43.95)
So I think all of these, for anybody listening, all of these shifts are going to challenge you. They're going to stretch the imagination, I think, of what the church can and should be. And honestly, I think some of them are going to sting a little, which for us too. And so because they just hit close to home. I just believe that if those that are listening, if we lean in and think about these things together, I just believe we're to come away with a clearer picture about what the church should look like in our time.
And because we like to keep it practical, we're also adding another segment. We're going to keep our segment that we, you know, what happened this week. I is what we called it. We're calling it behind the curtain. And we just want to talk about really, really recent stuff that we're walking through. We've heard from some of our listeners that that's been a really health helpful segment. Yeah. Because it, you know, it's just kind of us saying, here's what, here's what happened this week and here's what we did about it. But one other thing at the very end, we'll talk about some ministry tips and tools, tools and tips. What do we decide?
Tips and tools. so I'm gonna just share a tool or a principle or a practice that has shaped us. It's gonna be very quick. Think of it as a mini coaching session, tucked inside every episode. again, whether you're pastor, church leader, someone who just loves the church and wants to listen in, what's going on behind the scene. I know we've got a lot of Grace Church folks that listen to this to get insider information. I would just say you don't wanna miss this season. It's gonna be great.
That's great. All right. So with that said, let's jump in. Let's talk about our reinventing church topic. So again, we're shifting from a church growth, a tractional model to a missional multiplication model without throwing the baby out with the bath water. We're like merging these things together. And so normally, like you said, we'll have maybe a guest that we're interviewing for this. today, think you want to just like, sorry, review a couple of things we've talked about.
Yeah, so I went back to the very first episode. thanks. Just like Tiller. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:41.368)
Taylor. She is guiding us. I Here's what I'm going tell you right now. if you'd asked me that three years ago, four years ago, I would said, no, I started listening to it.
I mean
Do you like her music?
Speaker 1 (18:00.846)
Do you change or does she change?
I think when she lost her mind because she couldn't have her albums and like, she didn't lose her mind, but you know what I mean? When that happened, I do think she changed. Really? I do. Cause she was like a kid. Yeah. I mean, she was young when she
She had to grow up and now all of sudden she's...
And yeah, and some of her songs are trite and some whatever fine I think if she is the one that's coming up with some of these ideas and things and if she is writing or at least collaborating Bare minimum. She's good with words in my opinion. If you would just read didn't we do this? Yeah, did we do Taylor Swift or see us Lewis or something or like? Yeah, mean she's she can be profound right? So anyway, I think she's very creative
No, it was CSL.
Speaker 2 (18:51.446)
and I think she's built something that nobody else has ever done before. Which is, for me, those kinds of things attract me. Like I just wanna know what's going on. So I started listening to her music and I was like, okay. So I probably have like five or six that I listen to often.
up back here.
Because that's what she does.
She's like a brain worm. Okay, I went the brain worm route. Okay, so I went back to our original episode. I think that's where we started.
Edit.
Speaker 1 (19:26.158)
And the thing that we talked about that very first episode is we said five mindset shifting insights, five mind shifting insights about reinventing church. And so I thought we'd come back to those and just kind of use them as a jumping off point to talk about where we are two years later and thinking about these things. And so the first one that we talked about was this phrase, the modern church is over-inspired and under-trained. And this idea that man,
Lots of people know how to come together and raise their hands and worship and sing great songs and hear great sermons even, but not a ton of people know exactly what to do with that and how to actually live it out. And so we talked about this idea that yeah, the church is great at kind of producing content that inspires people, but have we trained people? And I think we even mentioned along the way, this like...
this Daniel moment at the beginning of Daniel when he's being asked to do all these things to assimilate to Babylon and he refuses to eat the food and then he says, test me in this. And so test and see if my way isn't better. And it's like, do we have a generation of Christians who are walking out their faith in such a way that they could say, test me? Right? I think you're right. I think you're right.
No.
No.
Speaker 1 (20:49.11)
And so one of the things we talked about in that first episode is like, could we move our posture from wow to aha? So in other words, instead of people when they come to a worship service or whatever, instead of going, wow, like we did this new song or wow, that sermon was awesome, that they go, aha, I could do that. Or I know what to do with that. And so...
You know, I would even say as recently as this Sunday, I mean, I've made some shifts even in my preaching and some of that stuff, even as recently as a Sunday. I I had one of our staff people actually come up to me and go and say, this was a training sermon. Like, I feel like you trained us and it wasn't just a teaching sermon. So there was a tool with it. And we talked very practically about kind of the questions Jesus asked and how we could use question, the question ladder that moved up. So anyway.
That's one little thing, but I was reflecting on another story from a recent kind of discipleship group that met in one of our groups. And so again, we're trying to get really practical with these things. And the person is a business owner, the person says, you know, they're just trying to figure out how to integrate their faith into their workplace. so one of the other people in the group says, you know, hey, how are you?
How are you integrating your faith into work? He says, I never thought about it, which is a common response that we've found. Never thought about how my faith plays into work. So the group starts talking about, well, what are you like at work? Like, what do people think of you at work? How is your influence at work? And the person says, actually, I'm a bit of a hothead. Like, people think that I'm, I have a short fuse. They walk out of my office, probably feeling a little worse about themselves when they walked in. So this person's kind of self-identifying this thing. so, you know, again, this is,
So they say, what would it look like to not do that? What would it take to not do that? Right? What would it take to not be that guy? And he goes, well, I bet if I prayed to God before somebody walked into my office and just invited him into my mind and heart again, invited him into the space, that might change my... Everyone's like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:44.174)
What?
Speaker 1 (23:07.438)
Yes, do that, do that, do that. And so we've made it kind of a practice to walk out of those with an I will statement. What are you gonna do? So I will, this week, before at least one, baby, yeah, before at least one encounter with an employee, I'm gonna pray and invite God into the thing. He comes back next week and is like, that changed everything. He's like, the conversation was different, they told me about their family, I got insight into why.
Mm-hmm, babies.
Speaker 1 (23:34.648)
things weren't going as well at work, like the thing I was going to confront them on, all of sudden I had context for it, I got to care for them. He said, I even felt like I could have said a prayer for him. And so the group goes, did you? He's like, no way. This week, your I will statement is if that comes up, I will pray for it, even if it's not with them, even if it's right after they leave. So anyway, it's just this like, it reminds me.
The modern church is over-inspired and under-trained. Who's walking with our people through those moments of going, let's just talk day to day, is Jesus showing up in your life? And it's not rocket science of like, I do this. Okay, well what would it look like for you to not do that? And to have a community around you that's gonna hold you accountable to do something? I mean, it's just wild. So anyway.
Yeah, as I was reflecting on that one, I was thinking through. So.
and this is me included, we just love to be in places and exposed to things that make us feel good. That's a human thing. And we have so fed into that. And I even think of like, again, we've said this before, but like, don't besmirch or I don't wanna say anything negative about what we quote unquote used to do because it was for the right time and the right place, I believe.
And so, not that we didn't make mistakes, obviously, but I think about stuff, like when I would meet with other churches or talk about how to make experiences that can move people kind of a thing. I was always talking about moving to action, not emotionally moving, but the examples even I would use are just like, we're in competition with all these things. TV, video, whatever, blah, blah.
Speaker 2 (25:26.06)
No, we're not. And so even just like dialing that back, like, okay, yeah, people might come here to feel good, to get an injection, a boost, but like for what? Like what is the Sunday even experience for? And there's other, it's not just Sunday experience, there's other training spaces, but if we can continue, and we're still big time tweaking this in our organization, but if we can give,
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:55.576)
people that, yeah, it's fine. You come here in community, you're rubbing shoulders with people, you're worshiping together. For what? Now what are you gonna do with this time or what are you gonna do with what you learned in this time or whatever? And just, I don't know, it's been reflecting on just.
I think it's really wise. I think the baby step for us is even just thinking like, I'm trying to dial down the win, like what's a win in this for us and just going, so yes, I would love to have our people's hearts transformed and them doing different things in those moments. The first win of all is that they would think about it. Right. That when they're in their how do I think about this idea that my faith
and Jesus is real right now and that Jesus is with me right now. just I put this is random, but I'm like, if 50 % of our church just thought about it every day, we would we could transform the city. Absolutely. We could even stop short of all the training and all that. Like, just think about it. Yeah. And bring it to mind that I'm a child of God right now. And what does that mean for this moment? Like, my gosh.
Yeah,
Speaker 1 (27:05.846)
So anyway, I think that's the first one. The second one is that every church should define discipleship locally. And so we talked a lot about our process at the time of just saying it was a big aha moment for me of just going, yeah, there's all these discipleship principles in the scriptures for sure. And, you know, evangelism and prayer and mission and giving and, you know, there's these markers of discipleship. It was the big.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (27:18.638)
Thank
Speaker 1 (27:33.814)
reveal to me to go, we could actually put definition around that locally. And we started with this kind local predicament. What does this area need right now? What are some of the struggles and problems that our region has, this region of the world? And then ask the question, what kind of disciple is required to meet this moment right now in this region? And to bring definition, and again, we're not straying far from the biblical definitions. It's putting new language to...
What does that look like to be an evangelist in our time and place? And so we've used this word compassionate storyteller, that there has to be compassion and it's revolving around story, that there's a lot of broken stories in our, and how do we tell a better story? And so again, it's just bringing definition to this really big idea that we can make very complicated. What does it mean to be a disciple? And well, there's 15 markers that you need to, you know what I mean? And just to say,
we can actually put wording to it, bring definition to it, around these scriptural principles that define it for our time and place. And so that's been pretty transformative to us.
I agree and again the muscle previously would be Because we've done that work before what are the things around eerie that are like what are our challenges? What are we dealing with? This is how we have five thousand nonprofits pop up because the muscle is what's the program? That's right. What's the yeah verse where does the money need to go versus?
kind of people do we need to make?
Speaker 2 (29:04.13)
We just need different kinds of people. Yeah, that was probably that local predicament stuff was like, I'll never forget that stuff. That's so good.
Yeah, and I think it's led us to really lean into those discipleship roles. We have four of them. for example, I just did the whole series in August is about embedded influencer, which is another one of those roles, compassionate storyteller, intentional friend, embedded influencer, savvy follower. So it's affected our preaching. How are we helping people to understand those four roles?
We've been behind the scenes building trainings. So we're getting ready to launch our first master training course for intentional friends next week and creating tools around that. And it's just been it's been really transformative to us. And and our church is so hungry for it. I I told the story like we did a very targeted invitation to people to come into this first master training course based on.
those who have self-evaluated themselves around these dream disciple roles and said, is my weakest area that I need training on. We only opened up the class to those people. So we sent those people an email. I think we had 25 spaces or whatever. was full in 48 hours. people are so hungry because we've given it some definition and going, man, if you could get better in this area, you could really be kind of a maturing.
disciple of Jesus that's doing this work.
Speaker 2 (30:35.118)
Yeah, it gives people a target like this is what this could look like.
Right, exactly. The third one is that, and I went back and this is the one that rubbed me the wrong way, just because it's not, it probably doesn't rise to the level of the others, but I just put churches generally misuse their core values. And I think we were in the middle of a core value conversation at the time and just going, you know, we'd used our core values for years, kind of as discipleship measures. And they're not, that's not really how they're most effective. And so one of the big pivots for us was to say,
We're going to redefine the values. These are our North stars in terms of keeping us going in the right direction. Generally, they help us to not go too far to the right or to the left. But the part of that process that was so helpful was the demonstrated by. So for each core value, we came up with a couple of demonstrated by statements. So here's our value, and here's how that value is demonstrated in our actual life and leadership as a church.
And that was super helpful. But if I were to come in with a new one right now for number three, it would be discipleship is less complicated than we think it is. And I think I know for me, I think for our church in general, think for churches in general, discipleship has become this mysterious, it almost feels like this mysterious thing that we can never really catch or grab onto.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:48.972)
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:04.85)
and you know no say it
you almost think, sorry, don't you almost think that that is almost like, it's like this, it's too, it's like we're trying to on purpose subconsciously make it big to do. You know people like this who do, there are people who walk around, this is like their MO, but that's what it feels like. feels like, yeah, it's the 15 laws and the da da and the whatever and whatever, whatever and it's.
big to do.
Speaker 2 (32:33.432)
You gotta know the pie chart and what percent of this and that and other thing you gotta be. And all these rules. And that's just not...
I mean even just saying the word discipleship, I know people listening, it's like every brain will pop in a different picture of what that looks like or means. It's usually based on our tradition or where we grew up or whatever we put around that word. And honestly, it's as simple as helping another human being consistently take their next spiritual step toward Jesus. I mean, that's all it is. And so, you know, I described that business person that...
So that was in one of what we're calling our intensives. It's just a huddle. It's essentially a classic huddle environment. the frustration for me is when I go back to all of the material that I've created over the years to help discipleship.
If I held in my arms all the binders you made for me from 17 years old. Correct.
Alright. Be like a Congress bill. Those pictures you see stacked on.
Speaker 2 (33:35.931)
Pork spending all awesome stuff
Yeah, no, it's great. It's great and I labored and poured over it and I've done now three of these leadership intensives that story was one came from one of them and it's like We put those four discipleship roles in front of the group Each has two questions with it to like probing question. So there's eight total questions We literally go read those eight questions till the Holy Spirit tells you to stop When somebody like okay, he stopped me why?
Why did the Spirit tell you to stop there? Okay, they say it. Turn to the rest of the group. What is the Holy Spirit telling you guys to tell that person, anybody have a story, something popping to mind, a scripture, a life experience that might help them in this moment? So Spirit of God, please work, but speak through us to this person. Great, they say it. Next, who's next? Okay, he stopped me here. What is the Holy Spirit telling everyone else to tell you? We'd go through that, and then we get to the end and create an I will statement.
because we just say, we don't want to be the kind of people who God, when God tells us to do something, we don't do it. So he's obviously spoken to you. What are you going to do about it? So everybody says, I will. And then they fill in that sentence. It's been more transformative than any discipleship material I've ever created. so it's simpler than, and here's the thing that I love about it. We'll talk more about this this season, but like that's also transferable. You know, that's transferable. That's not something that
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:06.83)
Oh, you need to be a great teacher. You need to have Derek's experience. Right. Right. It's like, can you sit down with people, walk them through a series of questions, invite the Holy Spirit to the space, and then say, what are you going to do about it? That's That's discipleship.
16 week course on how to lead.
Speaker 2 (35:21.368)
That's it. And I will say he is not like oversimplifying what these are. The one I was in was exactly like that. That's literally all you talked about and all you did. it was, yeah, it was transformative for sure.
that.
Speaker 1 (35:37.496)
People are like, can we never stop doing this? I mean, it's like, it's so compelling to be in an environment like that. So that would be my new third one. The fourth is, and we'll rush through these last two, people are desperate to find their purpose in life. so, you know, and I think that's still so true. We've gone through a number of now groups that have come through this handcrafted calling experience and it's helping to.
I agree.
Speaker 1 (36:04.686)
them to define their two word purpose, their calling statement. And I'm just telling you that to put words to it and the stories that are emerging from people who are in the marketplace or people who are in their nonprofit or people who are in their affinity group that understand those two words ringing in their ears that this is why I'm walking into this space. Oh my goodness. So I'm most excited about that. That's the most undeveloped, I think, part of what we're doing right now. But holy moly, it's kind of a...
Ready to
And then fifth is people's experience of the church is tied to a strict but unwritten social contract. so anytime you start messing with change, there's this contract that people have in their mind that says, this is what the church does for me and this is what I do for the church and don't mess with that. And as soon as you start messing with that, and so we've been messing with it, you know, and we've definitely felt it as a church. I mean, just to bring people up to speed. We certainly are experiencing momentum as a church, but
definitely have had a little bit of people opting out of this new vision of just, not for me. Because it broke the social code. They said, I want the church to do these things for me. And here's what I will do. And usually what I will do is I'll show up on Sundays a couple times a month. I'll put some money on the plate and I'll write an email when I'm ticked off.
Yeah. And you will provide an environment in which I can anytime bring somebody with me and you can get them across some sort of.
Speaker 1 (37:28.12)
That's my job.
Speaker 1 (37:36.728)
Yeah. Now listen, I'm under, we have a lot of people at grace who are, that's not their. They are amazing, amazing fully in, but the people who that was their expectation, this is tweaking the wrong way. They're like, I didn't sign up.
no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (37:53.762)
and you probably have to wrestle with it. We all had to wrestle with it, actually. that's good. Those are good. Okay, good reminder. All right, so our next segment we're calling Behind the Curtain, this is we talked about at the beginning. People are kind of, you know, like to see us mess about, if you will.
We do. We all do, including me.
Speaker 1 (38:12.79)
We have a lot of things we could talk about this week. Amen?
Yes, always. And maybe someday we'll just do a daily podcast. Just come in here and see what happened. You're not gonna believe what just happened.
Come in at five o'clock every day and just download.
But it's not obviously not all bad right hardly bad um, but I think it I hope it's helpful to be able to see there's not a lot of people that are literally saying like This positive or negative we messed this up or this is how we got there or whatever. So I hope it's helpful Yeah, yeah, they're really cool
So we'll start with a positive And we've talked about these intensives a couple of times now, so this is kind of on theme. But I had a breakfast this morning with a young man, 23-year-old, came through an intensive with me a couple rounds ago. And without my knowing it, prompting it, anything, he had a breakfast with me this morning just to kind of catch me up. And he said, since we finished, I've turned around and done an intensive with my four brothers.
Speaker 2 (39:18.648)
Yeah.
So they're family, know, have a family of these young dudes and a couple older, couple younger, and he's walking them through this intense, he's like, it's just been transformational for my family and for me. But when I talk about it being transferable and not complicated, like to me, that's one of the markers of like, is it good? Because if it's good, it can be transferred to the next round and have effectiveness and fruit out of it. Like I don't wanna just make,
Great.
Speaker 1 (39:48.428)
make it seem like if it's simple, it's right, because it's not always true. But when there's fruit and faithfulness attached to it, just so it was just like that was this morning a couple hours ago, like just buoyed my my spirit because it's like that's that's the idea. And I think he's the word. I tell you the word. was an unknown.
I forget what I
Unsanctioned, yeah, He's doing this unsanctioned ministry. I'm like, my prayer is that we have about 2,000 unsanctioned ministries going on like this all the time, because if we're controlling it, it's not.
It won't go. It's not multiplying. right. That's great.
So yeah, that was cool. That just happened this morning, but we can get in some of the dirt probably as it settles out next time.
Speaker 2 (40:34.37)
For sure. All right. So tips and tools. So we want to talk a little bit about AI. And I realized you and I, don't I mean, we've had like little blips of conversation. I don't think we've actually ever talked about it together like AI. Derek. Hey, Derek. AI. We've been in separate meetings for some reason. Yeah. So what?
What's your angle? What do you want to about?
Well, I mean, I just think that that Christians in general, the church specifically is really wrestling through like, what do do with this? What does it mean? I mean, I preach a sermon on it. In fact, if some if anyone wants to go download that, yeah, you could go check out the sermon in the archives. think, you know, it's one of these things where I feel like it either gets.
embraced fully as the answer to all of humanity's problems, or it gets rejected out of hand as the devil and the mark of the beast and whatever. And so there seems to be these like two responses or reactions to it. And it's like like anything else. I just feel like the church needs to come in and go, OK, what is the good? What's the bad? How do we navigate? And it is different than other technologies. So it's not a one to one comparison. But I think there's a sense where we need to celebrate the
I mean, just think about the human ingenuity that's required to come up with an invention like that. I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible. And it's going to help people medically. It's going to have I mean, there's just so many incredible things that are going to come out from it. Will it eventually destroy our society? I don't know. That's the downside.
Speaker 2 (42:12.11)
But let's say this for everyone. This version of AI that we're using, that most of us are using, is incapable of taking over the world. There are other versions that are to be dreamt of and that are probably in some back room somewhere. 100%.
Ha
Speaker 1 (42:28.962)
Right. speaking of memes, there's some good ones around this too, because it's like, you know, me, humanity, or, you know, AI is going to take over humanity. AI is these robots in China running around a track or whatever, crashing into each other, looking like total. Yeah. It's just funny. But the development right now is that it's, you know, it's like toddler stage. And when it gets to teenage and your own adult stage, I think there's going to be half.
Bye.
Speaker 2 (42:48.366)
It is funny. Yeah. It's good. But-
Speaker 1 (42:58.274)
have to be a lot more conversation around. So anyway, it's a real thing for the church. I came up with a tool for our writing team and we're gonna include that in my email distribution. So if people wanna go sign up for the email, this whole season we're gonna include some tools along the way that are very specific that I think will be like turnkey helpful to churches. But anything that you have to say about AI, like.
lot of things to say, but I won't. So I wanna recommend a book, first of all. This book, AI in the Church, it's by Jason Moore. I sat in on a workshop he did. The reason I like his perspective, and I think it would be good for church leaders, is he grew up, for those of you that know, maybe, Kinghamsburg Church in Ohio, he was their graphic designer from the jump. Went to school while he was working there.
built, basically ended up doing my job at Gingham's Berg. know, creative church, awesome place. He ended up being kind of their technology czar. So he really got in on the ground floor of a lot of this. I like his approach because he's coming from a ministry ministry perspective, from a pastoral perspective, but also from a creative perspective, because he cares about the humanity of the work, you know, the all the things. But yet he knows he's very knowledgeable.
So it's not just him making a case for or against. He's really like, so I recommend that book highly. And I would just say, I guess kind of what I've already said is like, the AI that we have right now in our fingertips, it's large language model, predictive language model AI. It's not actually able to make its own decisions. Here's an example. So we...
just started planning our big Christmas program. I was like, man, everyone's telling me all this different information about what schools in Erie are in and out on Christmas Eve, or on Christmas week. When do schools go out of session? So I just, I have I have chat GBT like voice on my phone now, so I was just like, hey can you, and I talked to it like it's my friend, which is really sick, but.
Speaker 2 (45:21.374)
We just have it's just fun. So hey, can you look at all the schools in Erie County and Crawford County? let me know who's in session December 22nd and December 23rd of this year and Yeah, just make like a chart and rank it in like who's I? Forget I said like most days off to least days off or whatever. So I see it I look and I had not ever seen this before it started telling me like
Checking Erie County PDF, whatever. was like, shut that down. Chronicles, that's work. So I shut that down and I just kept working on the thing that I was prepping for the meeting. And then I look over, chart. I'm looking at the chart and I'm like, whoa, it's done. It's done. I could have gone to every single school website, you know, the whole thing. So I guess my thing is as long as you're researching stuff, you know what you're using and how you're using it.
It's an excellent productivity tool. Never ever would I, even with that chart, I checked a couple. Like I would never just be like,
No,
It is nothing. It's just searching really fast. So what it did for the chart, that's what it does when you're like, hey, can you help me do a Bible study for my blah, blah about Philippians 2? All it's doing is just pulling stuff that already exists. So it's going to get it wrong because it's not deciding. It's just ranking based on an algorithm, just like your Facebook feed or just like your Netflix recommendations or whatever. That's all it's doing just with words. And they've coded it to go like,
Speaker 2 (46:57.934)
Cool like talk out. Yeah, we anyway I would say wait in but look at your because your tools excellent in terms of like guardrails like the whole human sandwich thing like Human input AI help human output. Yes, you know that whole thing. Yeah, but yeah, I'm a strong advocate of like getting in the water playing with it figuring it out, but just not It's a do it with you not a do it for
Yeah, that's good. And that's what it was funny. I was talking to a brand new pastor last week out of the gates. We were talking a little bit about AI and he was asking me how I use it. And it was funny to me to think about for me, having done this for 30 years and having thousands of files of sermons, thousands of leadership trainings, thousands of things in all those spaces that I've written, I've come up with versus him just starting out who has like 10.
Yeah, and the temptations for us I think are different because the temptation for me is never to create using it I've already got the stuff it's to help me go through the stuff I already have and maybe repackage it or rethink it or come out of a different way and so for me it's almost like a Research like a like you just said like a digging buddy digging tool. Yeah, and for him the temptation is to go I don't have anything created
will you help me create something brand new? so it's just an interesting, even just thinking from like a longevity lens, the temptations are different around it. So let me just give a couple of thoughts around this tool. I'm not gonna give the whole thing. If people want it, they can go find it, but it's broken down this way. And actually this is for, again, for our writing teams, for our content teams. And so we felt like that was the first group.
that we really needed to give some guidance around. And so there's a whole theology section, a theology of AI. So what does it look like to keep tools in their proper place? And so I go through five theological concepts and some rationales that go with those. Then I go into a section of like seven ways to use AI for writers. And so like things like research assistant, which is what we just kind of talked about, and editorial coach. So help edit, you know, things.
Speaker 1 (49:14.67)
This is my favorite. This is my actually one of my main uses right now is the what I called the brevity buddy Because I can take a certain a finished product sermon and go this is 500 words too long And I'm gonna be over time if I keep this exactly the way it is. I need 500 words cut out Where would you recommend cutting them? That's good. And again, I don't always agree with where it wants to cut because it's like no no, I need to say Yeah, but
You don't
You know where it can. Yeah, sorry. don't know. So anyway that I think, you know, just so there's some prompts here about how to properly use it. There are some prompts or some ways to not use it. And so Ghostwriter, Final Editor, Discernment Replacer. And I think that's the one where it's just like, this is not going to discern that this is not going to discern what to say, what not to say. This cannot be the Holy Spirit for you. You need to discern what is God.
inviting me to write to say to create whatever and so this can't take that place but and Then really the tool also includes just some sample prompts for each of those And so like if people wanted to copy and paste some prompts in we've done some of that work So anyway, that's a tool that we'll make available to people but this little segment will be about tools like that that we use from leadership to you know to whatever and we'll just You know pick a different different topic each time and include a tool
Great. Hey, I think that's it.
Speaker 1 (50:43.938)
Hey Danielle, we're off to the races again. Okay. Season three.
Guys, if you've made it this far, I'm proud of you. I'm always just... Guys, it's fine. It's all good. Okay, so...
And listen, 11 pivotal shifts every church needs to wrestle with.
I think it's gonna be awesome. you, seriously. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to undersell for real, like what Clarity House is bringing in these guests. It's gonna be awesome. be so good. Yep. All right, cool. So if you like this episode, the other ones will be better. Tell us by leaving a rating or review. Five stars if you did. And like we said, you don't want to miss what's coming up next. So subscribe. I know for me, I listen to podcasts and sometimes it takes them like 10 times. Like, okay, I need to subscribe to this so I know when there's a new thing.
happens all the time. So subscribe so you remember and feel free to obviously share this with a friend. You can find detailed show notes, related resources over at derikstanford.com forward slash reinventing church. And that's where you can also subscribe, subscribe hard work to his newsletter, which is it's good. It has a lot of extra tools in it. Some little behind the scenes stuff Derrick likes. It's a good newsletter. So recommend it. All right. We will see you next time. Thanks, everybody.
Speaker 1 (51:58.754)
See ya. Peace.