Episodes

Every Church Flourishing Episodes 41 and 42 with Lisanne Huber and Jerry Watson. Title: How Church Turnaround Works from the Inside! Small churches are in danger. What can be done? Soda Review: I Want Grandma's Banana Cream Pie, Not Her Socks. The Shonen Banana soda review: Delicious, but more sugar than three bananas or one slice of banana cream pie. Roughly 30 percent of Americans claim zero religious affiliation - a vast increase from the 1980s and 1990s. A typical church congregation is roug...

Every Church Flourishing Episode 40 with Tammi Smorynski and Samuel Kommu Title: How Can Churches Recognize Their Weaknesses and Do Something About Them? Tim Challies ' leadership advice. How does the church go forward from a human perspective? The worst soda ever conceived. Absolutely disgusting. Made from a fruit banned from multiple airlines, and a fruit that shut down an entire government building just because of the smell. "Durian fruit, when it is incredibly ripe, has a cross smel...

Every Church Flourishing Episodes 39-40 with Tammi Smorynski and Samuel Kommu and possibly Pastor Christopher. Title: Church Renewal from the Inside - Church Revitalization from the pews. Samuel Kommu from Calvary Baptist Church in Santa Clara Tammi Smorynski from Oak Grove Baptist Church in San Jose Some of the negative impacts of Church Drama. Young leaders. To be sustainable, churches need to constantly prioritize getting younger people involved in leadership. The church is a complex organi...

Every Church Flourishing 38 With Bob Bickford. Title: Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast. Church Replanting, Church Revitalization, and Help For Struggling Churches with Bob Bickford. FIND YOUR DOTTIES. The Dangers of Soda Racism. If you don’t deal with your church’s problems because you don’t want people to leave, the truth is that people will leave BECAUSE you aren’t dealing with your church’s problems. Put a gifted pastor in the wrong culture and that culture will eat him alive. ...

Cody Bryan and Christian Challenge Santa Cruz: Brandon O’Sullivan at Gospel Community: How can young ministers and leaders in the church avoid controversy and offense so that they can be fruitful and flourish? How can churches have...

Today's episode features Pastor Brandon O'Sullivan from Gospel Community Church in Santa Cruz, California: https://www.gospelcommunitysc.org/leadership And Cody Bryan, from Christian Challenge at U.C. Santa Cruz. Episode 35: How Can Parachurch and Church Ministries Work Together?? The Kingdom of God is Not Competitive, But Cooperative. How Can Churches Make Room for Young Leaders and Not Stifle Them? Why is it CRUCIAL for churches to make room for young leaders?? How a Bible-Believing C...

How to get in touch with Jason Kovacs and Gospel Care Collective: https://www.gospelcarecollective.com/counseling/jason-kovacs/ How Jesus in the Garden models for us the need to share our burdens, pains, and needs with other believers rather than bottle them up. What are signs and symptoms that your anxiety or stress has gone beyond the point where you can handle it on your own? What are some signs in a leader’s life that they are close to a breakdown? What are signs that you should ...

Every Church Flourishing with Jason Kovacs, 33-34. Guest: Jason Kovacs is not simply a biblical counselor who works with pastors, but even that is pretty special. He has also been heavily involved in church planting, pastoral ministry, adoption/orphan-care advocacy, nonprofit leadership, counseling-center development, trauma-informed care, and ministry to burned-out pastors. Jason Kovacs is the founder and Executive Director of the Gospel Care Collective, a ministry devoted to gospel-center...

Today, we continue talking with Pastor Ed Compean of Shoreline Calvary Chapel Church in Morro Bay about churches helping churches and interdenominational cooperation and unity. Tango Mango Soda Review. It’s the most honorable thing you can do to have the humility to say, “I don’t know it all, and I need help.” Resources: David Jackson - Falling in Love with Jesus Again: https://replantbootcamp.com/podcast/ep240/ Bob Bickford: Pathways to Partnership: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999418...

How can churches help other dying, declining, and plateauing churches, and WHY should they? The Health of a Church is Not Found in its Sanctuary Size but in the Great Commissional Mobilization of its people. Why Should Churches Foster (Help) Other Churches? Today we interview Pastor Ed Compean, a former missionary to Nairobi, Kenya, and a current Calvary Chapel pastor in Morro Bay, California, who is helping to foster an SBC church a few towns over. Why should a pastor from a different denomi...

Every Church Flourishing Episodes 29-30 Jeff Woolstenhulme and Michael Denton Practical Wisdom on Church Change for small and medium sized churches, and church replants. How can pastors build trust in new or hurting congregations? How Vulnerable Should Pastors Be When it Comes to Confessing Sins? Benign Neglect: Not everything needs to be changed. Also, during today’s soda review, a possible home/office invasion happens - in progress - which may spell the end of Pastor Christopher Cole, co...

ECF Episode 28: Vision vs. Management, How Can Leaders Balance Confidence and Humility? + The Loneliness Epidemic: Finding Connection Shortage in an Online Society. + the Humility of “I Don’t Know.” Vision vs. Management: When Vision gets tired, Management takes over the wheel and drives the organization. Only trillionaires in California have 8 acres. Intro script. We are back with Missions Strategist Chris Reinolds, and today we pick up with the interview discussing leadership and past...

Also: A Beginner's Course on Coffee Roasting! We begin today’s episode in the middle of an interview with Gateway Seminary Bay Area Director Dr. Cameron Schweitzer, and his is discussing the upcoming Bay Area Theology symposium which will address issues like Christian Nationalism, politics and Christian leadership, and other hot-button topics right now. How can pastors effectively lead in a politically polarized atmosphere? The sufficiency of Scripture should inform all aspects of how we d...

Pastors and Church Leaders: MUST You Go to Seminary? NO! But, Why SHOULD You? Why Should Pastors or Church leaders consider a seminary degree? All about Gateway Seminary, Bay Area Campus. What makes in person seminary training better than online seminary or online classes? Incarnate ministry training vs. online ministry training. The benefits and drawbacks of fully online seminary or graduate school. Upcoming Bay Area theology symposium on how churches should receive immigrants and d...

Today, we have a deep discussion with Dr. Se J. Won on the topic of prayer, and Dr. Won goes beyond the normal prayer discussions and will lead us into a wonderful blend of spirituality and practicality as we discuss how to enrich your prayer life, and why the tyranny of the urgent is less worth your time than abiding in Christ is. Se J shared one of my favorite quotes I’ve heard recently when he said, “We often settle for what we can do, what we can muster up, rather than what God can do…Someti...

#22. On today’s episode, we finish up a great interview with Dr. Cathie Smith, who is the Great Commission Association Women in Ministry Ambassador. If you are following the news, this is a timely conversation for us, as the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the SBC, grapples with the role of women in ministry. Today, we talk with Dr. Cathie about how pastors should seek to enlist qualified and gifted women to serve in leadership roles and invite them to speak into sermon topics, schedul...

How can pastors and churches encourage women to use their gifts for the Kingdom of God? Seven Ways to Empower Women In the Church: 1. Engage them. Engage them in discipleship and making disciples. See them, connect with them, open doors of opportunity for them as God allows. 2. Encourage their giftings. 3. Exhort God’s calling in their lives and give them opportunities to respond to what God is calling her to do – commission/send out 4. “Equip women for ministry and disciple-making. This inc...

Why should pastors talk about controversial Bible passages and difficult Bible origin questions with church members? Old Testament Scholar Dr. Anthony Ferguson answers... Today, we talk to Dr. Anthony Ferguson, an Old Testament Textual Criticism expert and pastor, about some pretty deep Bible nerd stuff, including how pastors can talk about the background of the Bible without turning the church into a seminary. Some of this short interview is pretty deep, but if you feel lost, never fear, we wi...

Fun show today. We are going to talk about human evangelism - human messengers and heavenly messengers/angels. Our guest is Dr. Anthony Ferguson of 11th Street Baptist Church in Upland, California, which is a city of about 80,000 that borders Los Angeles. Dr. Ferguson is one of the founders of the Yellow Card initiative, bringing the Good News to World Cup attendees this Summer. We will also talk about guardian angels, and whether or not the Bible teaches that each church is assigned its very OW...

Today's episode is SPANISH ONLY and features a discussion with California Hispanic Pastor Humberto Hernandez and Dr. Chris Smith of the Great Commission Association. Pastor Humberto and Dr. Smith talk about keys to church health in the Hispanic church in America. PLEASE LET US KNOW IF YOU WANT MORE SPANISH ONLY EPISODES! El episodio de hoy es solo en español y presenta una conversación con el pastor hispano de California, Humberto Hernández, y el Dr. Chris Smith, de la Great Commission Associat...

Another action-packed episode of the ECF podcast today. Gateway Seminary VP Dr. Kristen Ferguson joins us, and our co-hosts are school superintendent Lanette Lozano and Women’s ministry expert Dr. Cathie Smith. Today, we talk about how women in the church are a fundamental key to church flourishing that no wise leader should ever overlook. We will also talk to Dr. Ferguson about AI - can AI take the place of counseling, pastors, sermon prep? How much should Christians lean on AI? We’ve got Cal B...

Today we’ve got Gateway Seminary vice president Dr. Kristen Ferguson for a fascinating conversation that ranges from women's ministry, to being a pastor’s wife, and concludes with a moving discussion of special needs ministry in the church AND special needs MINISTERING TO THE CHURCH. We will also have JC, the Cal Baptist Ministry student, back to review the World’s Hottest Soda with us - does it live up to the hype? Does it injure us? We also have a great Spanish language interview at the end wi...

Great pod today, with some fascinating topics and guest hosts and guest reviewers. We’ve got a review of a Scottish Soda - Irn Bru, made with steel girders, apparently, and a great guest reviewer there AND ALSO a listener question from Robin F., who asks about the Apocrypha - those mysterious books that are in some Bibles, absent from others, and are the centerpiece for tons of conspiracy theories about the church. What is the Apocrypha, and should you be reading it? WHY is it no longer in most ...

Are you at the end of your rope? Today we discuss how to know you are close to running out of rope and what to do about it. PLUS: Preacher Myths. Will the lion lay down with the lamb? Did Paul fall of his horse on the Damascus Road? Did Mary ride a donkey to Bethlehem? Did Jesus leave a coded message in His tomb with a folded napkin? Does sparing the rod spoil the child? We will cover these preaching myths and more! Welcome to episode 14 of the Every Church Flourishing Podcast, sponsored by the...