July 26, 2026

Vision vs. Management + How Can Leaders Balance Confidence and Humility? + The Loneliness Epidemic + the Humility of “I Don’t Know.” AND Buffalo Wing Soda...SPICY!

Show Notes
Transcript

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 pastoral loneliness, a topic we’ve hit a few times before.

Pastors: Don’t pretend to know all the answers!

The strongest leaders realize they aren’t always the smartest people in the room.

Church people looking up to their pastors as spiritual gurus with all of the answers leads to dangerous dynamics, including loneliness for the pastor, lack of accountability for the pastor, and the elevation of flawed humans to positions that they are not fit to occupy.

Why is it important for local churches and pastors to come together in associations?

Lester’s Fixins Buffalo Wing Soda - Like adding Tabasco sauce to cream soda.

Chris Reinolds, host of the Kingdom over Turf Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrpOtpnXQsUo-YdeiiL-3TVSUi-R-os8B

Chris Reinolds Strategic Outsider Substack: https://associationmissionstrategist.substack.com/

The benefits of having somebody come in to your church and see it from an outsider’s perspective

WEBVTT

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We got a really fun soda review today where we try Lester's Fixin's Buffalo

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Wing Soda, which is as weird and spicy as it sounds.

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More important than that, we've got Florida mission strategist Chris Reynolds

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on the show, and he's going to talk a little bit about

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being genuine and pastoring, about loneliness, about mission strategy,

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as you might expect, but also

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balancing competence and humility. And he's gonna

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Say- You need to have enough confidence to show that you're competent in the

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pulpit to say, this is what the Bible says clearly.

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But you also have enough humility to be able to say, I don't understand everything

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and we're all figuring this out together.

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When you don't have either, you lose the trust of your people,

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or you don't have enough of either, you begin to lose the trust of the people,

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or you begin to isolate yourself.

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That work together to build up your local fellowship and the broader kingdom of God.

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Join hosts, Pastor Chris Cole and Dr. Chase Thompson from the Great Commission

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Association, led by Dr. Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry

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and aim for the goal of making every church flourish.

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Hello, everybody, and welcome into episode number 28 of the Every Church Flourishing podcast.

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We are a podcast of the Great Commission Association of California,

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which is a family of churches that spread all over North and Central California.

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If you are a pastor, a church, a church leader, and you're looking for a team,

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and you're in the West, you're in the California area, we would love to partner with you.

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Check out our website at gcasbc.org. That is gcasbc.org.

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I'm excited about the show today. We have a very interesting soda,

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as I've already mentioned, but also we continue our interview with Chris Reynolds.

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Now, we found Chris on Facebook and started reading his posts,

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and both Pastor Christopher and I were taken by his wisdom and a lot of the provocative,

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thoughtful, very important things he was saying to Christian leaders.

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And we immediately, three or four months ago, decided, hey, we got to get this

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guy on the podcast, and he was gracious enough to appear.

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So today we're back with mission strategist Chris Reynolds, and we're going

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to pick up our interview from last week.

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This is part two. You ought to listen to part one as well. But here Chris is

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discussing leadership and pastoral loneliness, which is a topic we've hit a

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few times before and is particularly important to Pastor Christopher and I.

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I wonder, Chris, you've written a lot about pastoral and leader loneliness in church, right?

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And I wonder why that is.

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And I'm wondering if that's a disconnect

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between if the reason pastors are so,

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lonely and detached, in part, is because the pastors themselves aren't really

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aligned well with how they've been designed by God and what they're doing day

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in and day out is not designed

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for relational intimacy

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and for discipleship in life on life terms, but designed around program.

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So that's just me sort of, you know, spitballing and jumping at that.

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So what would you say are some of the primary causes of pastoral and leader

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loneliness? What are some of the cures?

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There's a number of causes. It's similar to the situation. How do we fix this

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problem of disciple making in the local church?

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The loneliness thing is not one specific issue.

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It's a factor. It's a cultural issue because loneliness isn't exclusive to pastors.

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There's a lot of people. It's an epidemic of we have social media all over the

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place, but people feel lonelier than they do before.

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They feel isolated more so than they have ever felt, even though I can open

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up my phone right now and see 30 faces in less than 10 seconds.

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I mean, it's the aspect of connection. There has to be a greater connection

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to one another around the table.

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We also are dealing with a space where you're expected to be the expert.

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You're expected to have the answer.

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And even if people don't ever say that to you, that's the whisper that you hear in your head as well.

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As a pastor, as a church leader, it is uncomfortable to say the statement, I don't know.

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It actually takes a level of confidence to say, you know what,

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I don't know, but I'm gonna find out for you. I'm gonna research that a little bit.

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But I'm convinced that if we said that more often as church leaders,

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as pastors, as associational leaders, would actually probably be a lot better off because

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What it reveals to not only our peers, but also the people that God has called

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us to serve in our context is my pastor doesn't pretend he has all the answers.

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He may look like the guy that stands up on the stage and he waxes eloquent every

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single Sunday and he knows all the right things to say, but he openly admits,

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guys, I don't know, because that's the disconnect.

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There is this, you need to have enough confidence to show that you're competent

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in the pulpit to say, this is what the Bible says clearly, but you also have

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enough humility to be able to say, I don't understand everything and we're all

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figuring this out together.

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When you don't have either, you lose the trust of your people or you don't have

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enough of either, you begin to lose the trust of the people or you begin to

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isolate yourself to where it's like, you have to be set apart.

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So I think that phrase, I don't know, but I'm going to find out would actually

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be really helpful because then it gives your people the freedom to say, you know what?

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My pastor doesn't know. It's okay if I don't know. And I can go find out as

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well. How do we relieve that loneliness, having conversations with people and

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saying, you know what? I need help with this.

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You've been here before. Let's have a conversation. Would you be willing to

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share with me what it is that you've learned?

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To where we adopt a posture of just saying, it's okay if I don't have all the answers.

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The strongest leaders that run largest corporations, the best corporations, they'll

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More often than not, will be the ones that will say, I'm not the smartest guy

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in the room, but I'm intentional about hiring people that are smarter than I am.

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Because by hiring and being around those people, we collectively become smarter.

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That has to be the case for us as church leaders as well. We don't need to be

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the smartest guy in the room.

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Let's begin to leverage the strengths of our collective home.

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I think moving that way into invitation from, I don't know, and I'm okay with

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the fact that I don't know, to,

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invitation and even maybe tweaking that just a little bit to say,

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I don't know, but let's find out together.

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Let's explore together. Would you join me in learning that together?

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And I think that when I was a young pastor, I was terrified of saying those words. I don't know.

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Who was I if I wasn't the Bible answer man?

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And we had a guy in Southern California at the time that was literally his show,

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right? I'm the Bible answer man, you know?

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And I look back on some of those things today and I'm just going,

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you know, there's a lot of hubris if you position yourself as the Bible answer man, right? You know?

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But that pride does disrupt that relationship, that relational humility that

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can say, I don't know, I'm not perfect, I'm seeking to follow Jesus,

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and I want to help you follow Jesus,

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and I want to invite us into learning well with each other collaboratively

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and growing, not just in Bible knowledge, but,

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in living the way of Jesus.

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And even how we communicate from the pulpit, you know, when we illustrate,

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hey, I didn't know this and this person in the church was helping me learn this or, you know,

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using those kinds of illustrations as a pastor, at least in my experience,

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sort of lowers that reality and invites people into that set.

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It's okay, as you said. They don't have to know.

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They can enjoy the experience of being a person who's on a journey rather than

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having to always be perceived as the person that's got it all figured out on the end.

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I think that's so good. And I think the other piece is we see,

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like you said, the Bible man.

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We see in our newsfeed a lot of people that are confidently proclaiming their opinion.

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And we think, man, they really seem like they know what they're talking about.

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We're all insecure in our own ways as much as we present something otherwise. We just are.

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Anybody that reads The Strategic Outsider or listens to a podcast,

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I don't have it all figured out.

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I am simply sharing what it is that I am learning along the way and trying to

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figure out how to communicate it well so that it benefits others.

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Because I openly admit, I don't know.

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Yeah, I think we're hitting on a dynamic that it really does lead to loneliness.

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And it's not one I would have thought of at first.

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I pastored for a little over 20 years in Alabama before I moved out to California.

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A little over eight years ago. So I've been both places. And I would have thought

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the dynamic I'm about to talk about would be the opposite.

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But in Alabama, I was Chase.

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Even in churches, people sometimes called me Pastor Chase.

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They never called me Pastor. Mostly I was Chase, and I liked it that way.

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But in California, maybe in Alabama, it's because pastors are a dime a dozen

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Churches are on every street.

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In California, I'm very much Pastor Chase or pastor.

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And I've tried and tried to be like, hey, I'm just Chase.

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Just call me Chase. That's what people have always called me.

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But there's that title there.

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And I think it's because we're all used to our pastors and our preachers

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filling this role of kind of an exalted guru who knows all about the spiritual

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life, who stands up in an elevated pulpit and all of that.

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And the problem with that kind of living and that kind of position is it's going to be lonely.

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You're not going to have deep, vulnerable, profound conversations with people

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in the church about your struggles, your sins, accountability,

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your weaknesses, all of that kind of stuff, because these people are looking

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at you with rose-tinted glasses.

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And I think that does lead to profound loneliness.

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And I think probably a wise pastor would far more

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Benefit from keeping in a process of pointing people to Jesus as the guru and

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themselves as under shepherds at best.

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And sometimes we're just basically clueless under shepherds that are just fellow strugglers.

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And I think when we have that aura about us, which is, I don't know.

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I want to say 100% of the time fake, but let's, maybe there really are people

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that are the gurus that have arrived.

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I just don't know them. But for the most part, pastors are struggling followers

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of Jesus, just like church members. And I think pretending we are anything different

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really does create a profound sense of loneliness.

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So I'll say this, having been on staff at Omega Church and sat in the staff

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meetings and having talked with several support staff, many,

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many, many times over the years

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including recently that are running churches that run over 1,500,

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none of them feel like they've arrived.

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And all of them deal with insecurities. As much as they portray one thing,

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we're all dealing with it.

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And I think that is where you have to get around the table.

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And you do have to have peers to have conversations with.

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The Southeast is a little bit more of a struggle, I feel like for us,

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because there can be a concern of competition, a sense of competition.

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There's also pride in other places where it's not as churches are not as prevalent

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or they're more spread out or they're facing more difficult circumstances.

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I think that maybe that is reduced simply because there is shared tribulation together.

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Here in our region, there's probably not as much shared tribulation together.

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There's maybe perceived tribulation because they watch stuff taking place on social media,

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Not genuinely shared tribulation.

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So as a strategic outsider, Chris, you've been able to not only help individual

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churches, but you're trying to help churches that are networked together.

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And in Southern Baptist Life, we talk about that in the terms of associationalism.

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So it's 1707 here in the United States.

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Churches have been associating, Baptist churches, been associating together

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to carry out the mission of Christ together. And I know this is one of your big passions.

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It's one of the things that's in your heartbeat.

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But you've written recently and talked about the role of associations and how

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that facilitates national cooperation together and how,

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the two different entities, or three different entities, because you talked

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about in Southern Baptist Life, we talked about local associations,

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state conventions, national convention, and national partners.

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So what dynamics do you see that are critical for, say, local church pastors

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to think about when they're thinking about associating and partnering together

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on all these three levels, and how do they interact well with each other?

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I think that a key component for us to keep in mind is that associations are an organism.

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They are made up of a family of churches in a given region.

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Your national and state entities,

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Their organization, they are friends or acquaintances at best,

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but your local association, that's family.

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Now, it's important that I define association as well.

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Association is not the organization such as the Northeast Florida a family of

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churches in the sense that my office is the association or the title,

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you know, that I am the association. The association is...

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Is the churches. They make it up. They're the ones that without them, it wouldn't exist.

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And the reason why it's so essential that those things be strengthened is because

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without local collaboration among churches, our national cooperation begins

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to fall apart because we don't know how to interact with one another.

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Because Southern Baptists, by and large, we are a grassroots organization.

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That's who we are. We are a grassroots movement of local churches that decided

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on a local level and then a state level and then a national level to contribute

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to something larger than ourselves.

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And so the local association is the execution of, hey, this is how we carry this out in our context.

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This is how we work together in a real and tangible way.

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This is how we plant churches together. This is how we train up the next generation

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of leaders together together.

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In order to reach and minister to people in our context.

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This is how we send out and we support missionaries across the world because

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we're modeling it here locally, because we're doing it here in our context and we're doing it

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As an association or as a family of churches in our region.

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When that's done well, then I believe that you'll start to see a national shift

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take place because as people are doing this well on a local level,

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you begin to learn what's working.

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And then the association next door says, hey, you're doing that and it's working

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really well. That's something we'd like to try. So I'll give you an example.

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We had a church came to me and they said, we're interested in starting a ministry

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pipeline where it's not Bible college,

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it's not seminary, but it's sort of a 20,000, 30,000 foot view of ministry for

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those that feel like they're called so that they don't have to sell all their stuff and move to

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a seminary or a Bible college someplace. at 35 years old.

00:17:00.811 --> 00:17:04.441
They feel a call to ministry, but they just don't know what that means.

00:17:04.441 --> 00:17:06.888
We're wanting to start something that gives them an overview.

00:17:06.999 --> 00:17:09.361
And so I said, I think that's great.

00:17:09.593 --> 00:17:12.691
And I think it's absolutely necessary. Here's what I would encourage.

00:17:13.091 --> 00:17:17.599
Let's pull in other pastors from our region. Let's pull in other churches.

00:17:17.767 --> 00:17:21.841
So those other pastors, they help facilitate. Let's bring in the experts,

00:17:21.841 --> 00:17:24.668
those that their sweet spot is in those areas of emphasis.

00:17:24.790 --> 00:17:27.361
You got somebody that's really, really good at preaching, let's bring him in

00:17:27.361 --> 00:17:31.361
to teach the seven weeks whenever it comes to preaching. We have somebody that's

00:17:31.361 --> 00:17:35.680
good at counseling, let's bring somebody in that that's where their sweet spot is.

00:17:35.941 --> 00:17:38.711
Worship ministry, let's bring their sweet spot. Church planting,

00:17:38.711 --> 00:17:41.247
their sweet spot. Stewardship, their sweet spot.

00:17:41.392 --> 00:17:46.959
Let's leverage the strengths of our family of churches to help get this done.

00:17:47.098 --> 00:17:51.371
And then let's open it up for anybody that wants to participate or send people

00:17:51.371 --> 00:17:53.739
to it. And it's going to take a lot of coordination.

00:17:53.890 --> 00:17:58.151
And that pastor that was the champion of this met one-on-one with those pastors

00:17:58.151 --> 00:18:01.872
that sent people and said, we're not here to recruit your potential leaders.

00:18:02.226 --> 00:18:06.925
We're here to help be a resource for you at a local church level and to encourage

00:18:06.925 --> 00:18:11.005
you and to provide them with understanding of what it looks like to do ministry

00:18:11.005 --> 00:18:13.238
so that if they seek to pursue it more, they can.

00:18:13.343 --> 00:18:17.735
And we're not trying to teach them a specific doctrinal framework.

00:18:17.735 --> 00:18:19.194
We are going to keep this neutral.

00:18:19.310 --> 00:18:23.071
This is not about one extreme or another extreme. This is the basics.

00:18:23.233 --> 00:18:27.765
It's up to you to add salt to the food that's being cooked, to flavor it how

00:18:27.765 --> 00:18:32.075
you want to, because they're coming back to serve in your church in your local context.

00:18:32.075 --> 00:18:36.725
So as that's happening, I'm talking to other associational leaders across Florida,

00:18:36.725 --> 00:18:38.593
and they're starting to ask questions about it.

00:18:38.715 --> 00:18:42.785
So I then take them and connect them to that pastor and church leader,

00:18:42.785 --> 00:18:45.257
and we introduce them, and they begin learning from them.

00:18:45.391 --> 00:18:48.715
And when they start a dialogue, and now they're launching one in their context.

00:18:48.715 --> 00:18:54.174
This came as a resource from one of our state convention representatives, one of the catalysts.

00:18:54.325 --> 00:18:57.735
It's something that they did in South Florida. And he said, this is something

00:18:57.735 --> 00:18:58.644
that's worked well for us.

00:18:58.800 --> 00:19:02.655
We just took it, and we contextualized it to our need. Those other associations,

00:19:02.655 --> 00:19:05.035
they're taking it and contextualizing it to their need.

00:19:05.174 --> 00:19:09.125
What'd you have? You had a grassroots movement from one church that is now starting

00:19:09.125 --> 00:19:13.445
to spread at other places, and it's encouraging partnership and collaboration

00:19:13.445 --> 00:19:16.070
among churches in a very small microcosm.

00:19:16.221 --> 00:19:20.173
If we begin doing that as a collective whole, you see the impact that it can have.

00:19:20.410 --> 00:19:24.745
And then when we come together for a national conversation, we're all experiencing

00:19:24.745 --> 00:19:29.605
similar things because now we're working together and alongside one another.

00:19:29.605 --> 00:19:32.862
Just as an aside, there's also one that got started in London.

00:19:33.036 --> 00:19:37.025
So it went across the pond. Really, really cool story. But it's a picture of

00:19:37.025 --> 00:19:38.388
what we're talking about.

00:19:38.517 --> 00:19:45.175
You know, I love that idea of how associations can actually influence the national

00:19:45.175 --> 00:19:51.113
dynamics and the national missionality, if for lack of a better term.

00:19:51.445 --> 00:19:54.487
Another example that just came to my mind while you were sharing is,

00:19:54.638 --> 00:19:58.562
you know, we work a lot with the North American Mission Board's replant team

00:19:58.713 --> 00:20:04.140
and all of those guys, every single one of them came out of associational life

00:20:04.256 --> 00:20:06.961
and the work that they were doing there.

00:20:06.961 --> 00:20:10.869
Your neighbor association, Bob Bumgarner at First Coast Churches,

00:20:11.148 --> 00:20:14.874
Jimbo Stewart, helping to build out that dynamic there.

00:20:15.025 --> 00:20:20.461
The Genesis team on the Missouri side of the Kansas City Association there and

00:20:20.461 --> 00:20:24.891
the St. Louis Association with Bob Bickford and how those associations help

00:20:24.891 --> 00:20:29.478
move a network upward into a statewide movement.

00:20:29.588 --> 00:20:34.656
All of those sort of genesis points then merging together to influence

00:20:34.986 --> 00:20:40.151
the creation of an entire division and movement within the North American Mission

00:20:40.151 --> 00:20:45.029
Board through the replant and small church movement led by Mark Clifton.

00:20:45.314 --> 00:20:49.011
And then the way Mark Halleck was doing that out in a network family of churches

00:20:49.011 --> 00:20:55.031
out in Colorado, each of those cases, families of churches learning synergistically

00:20:55.031 --> 00:20:58.857
encouraging one another and reshaping an entire.

00:20:59.193 --> 00:21:03.501
National dialogue about what one of our entities should be putting their emphasis

00:21:03.501 --> 00:21:05.451
and their energy into. too.

00:21:05.567 --> 00:21:10.229
And we're grateful for all those associations doing that work. It's been a benefit.

00:21:10.513 --> 00:21:14.231
And we're glad for the small part we get to contribute in that from the West

00:21:14.231 --> 00:21:18.215
Coast side of things, too. So that's a great point there.

00:21:18.685 --> 00:21:24.421
Got to close out question. So I grew up on comic books and probably a lot of

00:21:24.421 --> 00:21:30.081
people around my age did. And in comic books and movies and in books and all

00:21:30.081 --> 00:21:31.793
sorts of fictional things, we

00:21:32.123 --> 00:21:38.002
We have this class of person who's not quite a villain and not quite a hero,

00:21:38.002 --> 00:21:44.432
and we call them anti-heroes or anti-heroes, and they live in this kind of difficult-to-define area.

00:21:44.772 --> 00:21:48.516
You know, you got Wolverine, you've got the Punisher, Ghost Rider,

00:21:48.835 --> 00:21:53.224
the BBC version of Sherlock, Jack Reacher, Jay Gatsby.

00:21:53.503 --> 00:21:59.452
Now, Chris Reynolds, I don't think you're an anti-hero, but you strike me as

00:21:59.452 --> 00:22:04.062
somebody who's not at all like a Donald McGavern or a C.

00:22:04.062 --> 00:22:10.362
Peter Wagner, Chris Hodges, or even a George Barna, but you care about church growth.

00:22:10.362 --> 00:22:13.362
So you're like an antihero of church growth.

00:22:13.362 --> 00:22:19.552
You're not like one of the traditional guys that focuses on buns on seats and that sort of thing.

00:22:19.552 --> 00:22:26.642
But I think any church that's making disciples is probably going to be reaching

00:22:26.642 --> 00:22:29.722
people, but not in a traditional way.

00:22:29.722 --> 00:22:34.342
So one of the things you wrote about recently was a very insightful article

00:22:34.342 --> 00:22:40.102
on the attractional fallacy, which is, you know, this idea that if you build

00:22:40.102 --> 00:22:42.011
it, they will come kind of thing.

00:22:42.162 --> 00:22:46.912
It's more than that, but that's included in that. So tell us about the attractional

00:22:46.912 --> 00:22:55.372
fallacy and is that kind of mindset dangerous or a trap, especially for small

00:22:55.372 --> 00:22:56.727
and medium-sized churches.

00:22:56.848 --> 00:23:00.522
I think the attractional fallacy, it was something that I developed simply because

00:23:00.522 --> 00:23:03.942
I just kept watching it happen over and over again as I was interacting with

00:23:03.942 --> 00:23:08.168
churches that didn't have the capacity to run a program model church.

00:23:08.319 --> 00:23:14.052
And I began to see where program model churches end up

00:23:14.432 --> 00:23:19.362
when their programs stop working, when the thing that they've always done no

00:23:19.362 --> 00:23:24.200
longer gets it done and they fail to pivot to something else.

00:23:25.054 --> 00:23:29.622
My friend, my mentor, George Bullard, he is finishing up his book.

00:23:29.622 --> 00:23:33.256
I've already seen the pre-copy of it. Vision Always Drives.

00:23:33.593 --> 00:23:36.512
It's supposed to be released in January, and so I'm looking forward to it.

00:23:36.512 --> 00:23:41.342
I've had the opportunity to help him in the book itself, and so I'm looking

00:23:41.342 --> 00:23:42.452
forward to that being released.

00:23:42.452 --> 00:23:47.102
But it talks about the life cycle of a church and that ultimately on the downside

00:23:47.102 --> 00:23:54.346
of the life cycle, you see vision is in the backseat taking a nap and management is driving.

00:23:54.473 --> 00:24:00.972
And the seats, the way that they are arranged is that it's supposed to be vision driving, relational.

00:24:01.312 --> 00:24:06.536
So relational experiences or disciple making relationships is in the passenger seat navigating.

00:24:06.687 --> 00:24:11.822
You have programs that are behind disciple-making relationships in the backseat,

00:24:11.822 --> 00:24:14.332
and you have management that's behind the driver's seat.

00:24:14.332 --> 00:24:20.062
But when vision gets tired, vision pulls off to the side of the road and switches

00:24:20.062 --> 00:24:23.472
seats with management. So management to get behind the wheel and management

00:24:23.472 --> 00:24:26.451
says, this is the place that I've always been meant to be.

00:24:26.637 --> 00:24:30.601
And it hangs on to the wheel. And after a little while of driving down the road,

00:24:30.829 --> 00:24:35.670
management looks over and sees disciple-making relationships and says, you're a mess.

00:24:35.792 --> 00:24:38.125
Because disciple-making relationships is a mess.

00:24:38.832 --> 00:24:43.302
You're a mess. So we got to pull over and I need programs up here because they're

00:24:43.302 --> 00:24:48.650
organized. And so now programs is helping to navigate and management is driving

00:24:48.794 --> 00:24:52.592
and vision and disciple-making relationships are in the backseat taking a nap.

00:24:53.027 --> 00:24:56.756
And when the church gets in that position, they stop realizing God's unique

00:24:56.756 --> 00:24:58.873
disciple-making vision for their context.

00:24:59.082 --> 00:25:02.816
And it becomes about the programs that we're running. It becomes about the things that we do.

00:25:03.196 --> 00:25:06.446
And they run through this cycle over and over and over again,

00:25:06.446 --> 00:25:12.256
where they say, as they're heading down on the life cycle, we need programs that attract people.

00:25:12.256 --> 00:25:16.228
But in order to have those programs, we need people to run them.

00:25:16.356 --> 00:25:18.423
But we need programs to attract people.

00:25:18.562 --> 00:25:22.910
And so they just keep going around and around and around, chasing themselves.

00:25:23.299 --> 00:25:24.117
Vicious circle.

00:25:24.437 --> 00:25:30.106
And until someone says you have to stop, you have to rethink what success looks

00:25:30.106 --> 00:25:33.796
like as a church until they can begin to conceptualize that,

00:25:33.796 --> 00:25:36.354
until they begin to think that through and realize

00:25:36.517 --> 00:25:39.855
they're not a cookie cutter, because that's where a lot of this comes from.

00:25:40.139 --> 00:25:46.223
That program model church was a cookie cutter model expectation of this is what all churches do.

00:25:46.345 --> 00:25:50.046
And so those churches that find themselves in that space, oftentimes it's we

00:25:50.046 --> 00:25:54.476
need young children. But in order to have young children, we need young people

00:25:54.476 --> 00:25:56.051
who can work with those children.

00:25:56.160 --> 00:25:59.996
And we need young parents to be able to come in. And so that's the same thing.

00:25:59.996 --> 00:26:02.639
It's the same basic principle of that attraction fallacy.

00:26:02.760 --> 00:26:04.816
And they have to break that cycle.

00:26:05.112 --> 00:26:09.136
And so they have to dream a new dream. They have to examine in this next season

00:26:09.136 --> 00:26:11.473
of the church's life, where is it that God is leading us?

00:26:11.624 --> 00:26:15.630
To whom has he called us to reach? And it may not be that cookie cutter model.

00:26:15.827 --> 00:26:19.296
I was meeting with a church recently, and I've used this example several times,

00:26:19.296 --> 00:26:22.686
and I said, I was standing in front of them and I was talking about this.

00:26:22.686 --> 00:26:24.622
I said, how many of you can do this?

00:26:24.772 --> 00:26:26.839
And I squatted down on my haunches.

00:26:27.106 --> 00:26:29.573
That's a Southern term. Do y'all know what I'm talking about whenever I say that?

00:26:29.909 --> 00:26:30.356
I do.

00:26:30.489 --> 00:26:33.338
You do. Okay. I just did. I know primarily.

00:26:33.338 --> 00:26:35.398
I think hunches translates to California.

00:26:35.398 --> 00:26:40.408
Okay, good. So I squatted down without getting on my knees and then I stood

00:26:40.408 --> 00:26:43.452
immediately back up and I said, how many of you can do this?

00:26:43.597 --> 00:26:46.508
And then I did it again. And all of them are in the room. They were in what

00:26:46.508 --> 00:26:50.162
you call a 60, 40, 20 window. They were all over the age of 60.

00:26:50.267 --> 00:26:55.044
They have been Christ followers for over 40 years and they've been in the same church for 20 years.

00:26:55.335 --> 00:26:56.868
They're an overly church culture.

00:26:56.868 --> 00:27:00.068
They're all gray hair. And all of them said, yeah, we can't do that.

00:27:00.068 --> 00:27:02.806
And I said that you're going to be, they're going to have a very difficult time

00:27:03.038 --> 00:27:06.298
ministering to young families with young children. Yeah. Because you have to

00:27:06.298 --> 00:27:09.846
be able to do that. That doesn't mean that you're done though.

00:27:10.055 --> 00:27:11.094
That doesn't mean you're done.

00:27:11.349 --> 00:27:15.248
It just means that maybe that's not the area of focus. Maybe your area of focus

00:27:15.248 --> 00:27:18.558
is somewhere else in some other capacity, ministering to a different people

00:27:18.558 --> 00:27:20.307
group that you can minister to.

00:27:21.050 --> 00:27:25.558
Be that because that's unique. Don't be the cookie cutter. Be exactly who it

00:27:25.558 --> 00:27:26.698
is that God has called you to be.

00:27:27.118 --> 00:27:31.516
Now, today, not what you were 20 years ago. Get out of that attraction fallacy

00:27:31.650 --> 00:27:35.258
and let's become the unique church that God has formed and fitted you to be

00:27:35.258 --> 00:27:37.739
in your context. So that's how they get out of it.

00:27:38.076 --> 00:27:42.293
But that's hard work because they have to imagine their story differently.

00:27:42.293 --> 00:27:46.633
They have to imagine a story they can't yet see, and they have to walk by faith,

00:27:46.633 --> 00:27:51.233
which is probably the most difficult thing for most churches to do is to walk

00:27:51.233 --> 00:27:52.588
by faith and not by sight.

00:27:52.832 --> 00:27:55.703
Yeah, I understand it's really important for you to

00:27:56.403 --> 00:28:03.063
not to use a sprinkler, a lawn analogy, to not water dead and dying churches,

00:28:03.063 --> 00:28:08.985