Venture Unfiltered #12: Spokane Church Plant

Venture Church. Today's a lucky day. Someone is literally calling me at the

beginning of this. Can you believe that right now? Pastor Brandon, is

it a PWN solicitor? I should we Is it an aerial? No,

it's not. If it's your wife, you should answer no, no,

no, no, it's not. Well. Welcome everyone. Today is a

bonus episode of Venture Unfiltered. I'm your host, Pastor Tony. We got

the legendary Peb Glad to be here. We have with us two very special

people here on the podcast. You may know him, you may not know

them. If you live in Spokane, you know who they are. They're

on billboards everywhere. Folks. We have Justin and Amanda Farley in the house

are Spokekane. Campus passers give a huge round of applause. Shout out,

come on, Judah, Okay, all right, Justin and Amanda say hi

to everyone. It's good to be here. Good to see you. Hey.

If you did not know this, Venture Church is a multi site church.

We have campuses and different locations. We have plans that you're going to

hear about in the next several months for new campuses and additional locations, but

oftentimes people don't get the opportunity to hear from our different campus pastors know about

our expressions in a different community. And Justin and Amanda lead our Spokane campus.

And first off, would you just tell a little bit of your story,

tell us about yourself. Let everybody know who you are. Let's stark

with Amanda A man. I want to you introduce yourself first. Give everybody

your quick resume. Oh my quick resume. Well, I grew up as

a pastor's kid and in the Tri Cities and when to Northwest University, majored

in youth ministry and became a youth pastor, pastor down on the Peninsula.

Let's go back to the Tri Cities. Worked for my dad, which was

an amazing privilege that I didn't think I would like until I did it,

and then I loved it. And then I met Justin and I married him

when I moved to Spokane, and now we're planting a church. Come on,

Justin, what do you have to add to that? For me,

it would been growing up to Tri Cities as well, went to Northwest after

Northwest youth pastor in Moses Lake and some of the best years in snow Amish

as youth pastor, planted a church in the Tri Cities, took time away,

and then now I was able to marry Amanda and plant a church and

Spokene. Let's go, and how long have you guys been married? So

almost two years October. Random question that I've always wondered. You're a Dodgers

fan. How did you become a Dodgers fan? Love baseball? So nineteen

eighty five nineteen eighty six, watched the World Series with my father and my

grandfather. My dad was a huge Dodger fan. His dad was a Brooklyn

Dodger fan. There was no baseball in Seattle really until the seventies, and

so Dodgers were the first on the West coast. Let's go. When I

heard an eighty six that my dad was a Dodger fan, that's when I

was a Dodging fan. Nineteen eighty eight they won for the first time.

I thought they're gonna win every time. I had to wait thirty plus years

for the next time. Let's be really honest. There wasn't really baseball in

the Seattle area until the early nineties. Truth, Yeah, that's stuff.

Didn't have you been to Dodger Stadium before? I used to as a youth

pastor, planned mission trips to Los Angeles just so I could figure out a

way to see a Dodger. Got a dream center for the twelfth time every

other year, every other year. Yep, let's go. Man, how

many Dodger dogs do you estimate of eaten? Too many? Far too many?

But there's never really enough, So it's kind of a catch point two

those lawyers, Amanda, are you a Dodger fan or you a Mariner fan?

I fifth, do you know what baseball is? My dad's a Yankees

fan? Oh, where's the boo button? Judah? Oh yuck? Okay,

just for humor steak, Yes, the Raiders role. There we go.

H unique story. But how did we all get connected that eventually led

to you guys launching a venture expression East of the Mountains. Yeah, well,

I think Justin really knew you Brandon from his time here, and I

knew Die from serving on some network teams together. And when we got married,

or in the process of getting married, we uh found out we were

going to be moving to Spokane because Justin got a job in Spokan thirty six

hours after we got engaged. Wow, that was not fun, and so

we decided to move. We were going to move to Spokane, which is

what was best for our family, and so he was joking with you,

I think over text about you know, hey, if you ever decide to

plant in Spokane or Tri Cities, like, let us know, and you

said, hey, let's have a conversation about that. And we thought we

were joking, and I think you maybe thought we were joking, and then

all of a sudden it wasn't a joke, and it just it happened,

really fastened for us. A couple Zoom meetings in we decided to come visit,

and we still we talk about this moment where we came to visit.

In December. It was a kid's Christmas program Sunday. We sat out in

the foyer after the first service and we said to each other, this is

something that we want to be parked. There's a culture, there's leadership that

we want to follow. I mean, first Justin was like, how could

we get jobs on the central campus staff? This is a cool place to

be. But obviously God called us to spoken and so we just felt special

being here and like something we wanted to really be part of and something God

was calling us to so we do have the most amazing kids pastor around.

So those kids programs every year. When I was on staff at churches,

I dreaded the kid's Christmas program. And now if you asked us about anybody

in our church, one of their favorite services of the year is what in

the world is Kaylee and our kid's team going to pull out for that kid's

service or the pastor's kids hijacket? Every year they do. Yes, my

daughter threw a fit on stage last year. I'll never forget, Tony.

This is totally irrelevant. But we are in the middle of staff training,

which is why we have the Farley's here. It's we get together once a

year and bring all of our staff from all over in. And I had

one of my former bosses, Rob Carlson, ministered to us. By the

way, was like pound gold. I mean, it was awesome. I

don't know what to say other than the fact that we're bringing ing back multiple

times in the next twelve months because he has too much wealth of information to

share. But I'll never forget when Rob had little kids, I was a

youth pastor and the Kid's Christmas program at BCA happened, and Rob's son his

middle son started sprinting around on the platform. I mean, Dian, I

are like, that kid is going to get spanked. And then after the

entire program was over, I saw Rob grab his son. He hugged his

son and he went pritt. That was incredible. Do that again the next

service. That was just never know what's what deems a spank and what doesn't

anymore? Now, yes, So going back to Spokane, so we talked.

We made this commitment that we would launch a venture campus in Spokane.

You guys made the commitment to take the lead in it. How long ago

did you guys launch the campus? We launched last October monthly preview gatherings and

then we went weekly in January, so just about eight months we're into it.

Now. Was that a challenge, like doing previews like around the holidays

and then I mean, but then you have the new year, so people

probably want to start going to church again. When I was that beneficial for

you guys doing in January? Yeah? I think we I think January was

helpful. That was good timing. I think launching preview services in September and

October was good timing. The holidays was tough, and I think we probably

did too many preview services, but you don't know till you know. Times

so interesting. Yeah, we learned a lot with the launch of the Spokane

campus as I project future campuses, things that we would definitely do again and

things that we learned through trial and error adventure. One of our kind of

mottos is everything is an experiment and we try it, and I would agree

that, well, I think what we learned is you can have too many

preview services, Like you gained a lot of momentum and then you got to

take a break for a month and then you have another one. And we

kind of learned that lesson, didn't We absolutely, it's hard. It was

hard to gain that you lose that momentum. People were like, okay,

I want to start going weekly, but we weren't quite ready. So yeah,

if you live you'll learn. Yeah, but now we're weekly. So

it's also a unique time to start a church too, because we had multiple

people share with us today and they lamented how challenging the COVID season was.

And we launched a campus right after COVID too, so there was multiple unique

challenges. But you guys have done an amazing job. We're almost to your

year anniversary. How do you feel. Well, I'll tell you one of

the things that's exciting for me is to see the baptisms, water baptisms,

maybe that, so we're seeing people grow. One of my friends who I

prayed for for four years is who didn't I don't even know when he crossed

the line of faith, to be honest, but they have been a part

of the church since the beginning. And even the Sunday I told him,

I said, you planted a church, and he looks at me kind of,

I'm like, you were there from the beginning. You know. I

wasn't just Amanda and me or our team, it was everyone who was there

from the beginning. You're the one that's been praying with us and walking with

us. And he was the first person we baptized and venture Spokene history,

and so see Jesus do that in his life unbelievable. So wow, why

we're doing it? It kind of makes the whole thing worth it does.

So, Amanda, what would you say so far in this journey has been

the most fulfilling thing. Well, Justina and I were talking about that on

the road yesterday. I think there's a lot of moments that we could point

to that we're exciting or felt like, oh, we're doing this. But

but for me, one of the most memorable and most fulfilling moments so far

was just maybe a month ago, we had an outdoor service. The school

needed us to take a break from meeting, and so we set up in

the park right around the corner and and justin that morning was telling me,

I'm gonna I'm just this is going to be a terrible Sunday. That's what

he told me on the way. It's going to be terrible. I am

not feeling good about this. You're gonna hate me when it's over. I'm

terrible as a pastor. I'm going to be a terrible speaker. I mean,

he was really feeling it that morning. And we got there and we

set up, and he crushed it. He did such a good job.

It was shorter because it was outside, and at the end he kind of

came back, which was unusual for him. Usually he would pass off to

a host. He came back after our final worship song and said, I

just really feel prompted to have you guys really gather around each other like who

has needs and prey and all of a sudden, I looked around and I

was like, we're doing it like this is people who have not been in

church. Most of them are d churched. We don't have hardly any transfer

growth from any other church. They're all crossing the line of faith or coming

back to Jesus or have been really disillusioned by the church, really hurt,

and they're praying for each other and they're crying together, and they're saying afterwards,

this is such a special moment. That was so special. And on

top of it, they're doing it in a public place. There are beach

volleyball players one hundred feet away just having a game. Don't lust keep praying.

Yeah, it just felt so like this is what we did this for,

this is what we were made for. And so for me, and

that's that was a special moment. Well, let me ask too, so

like, I mean, you guys are in Spokane. There's dozens of churches

in Spokane, Like why that area? I mean I mean, and also

like you know, that's that's probably new for all these people to say,

all right, there's a new church on the block now. And yeah,

well, one of the things that we say to our church all the time

is you know, we didn't bring Jesus to Spokane. Jesus is already alive

and active in the valley on the South Hill, on the north side,

and yet there are a lot of great churches there, christ centered, Bible

based. We just saw the vision and the values of venture, mission,

community, generosity, the leadership of Pastor Brannon and Pastor Die and we thought

we can bring reinforcements into this place. And we love Spokane. We want

to love our neighborhood, we want to love our city. So why not

see a team of people disciples make disciples. So I think there's a lot

of great churches. And my hope is just that we're just one more work,

not just a worship gathering, but people that are going to scatter throughout

the community being Saltenlite. Wow. I mean I would add to that.

We also we saw the statistics so said in the first five years, like

new church plants reach eighty five percent more people. And we're not about just

getting more Christians that do our like I don't really care where they go to

church. I want people who meet Jesus and people who experience that kind of

freedom and that kind of life. And because of our family circumstances. We

were planted in Spokane. That's where God had us. We knew there was

a call on our lives and that there was opportunity. There were lost people

in Spokane. Only eleven percent of Spokane is part of a Bible believing church.

So you know, you have an area of almost six hundred thousand people.

That's a lot of people who aren't part of a Bible believing church.

And if a new church reaches eighty five percent more people then a traditional church

that has been there more than five years, then I don't think there's any

number of new churches or new campuses like that's enough. Wow. One of

the things I worked on finished my doctorate a little over a year ago,

but I wrote it on best practices for multi site and I quoted often that

stat that you guys are talking about about most people find Jesus that at church

has been in existence for three to five years, I think, and again

it's around that seventy five to eighty five percent number. The one benefit about

going multi sites, so this is one of the great things about venture being

multi site is that every time you launch a new campus, it resets that

clock for every single church, because the whole organization starts focusing on we're reaching

out. There's an adjustment, a change, or start talking about living missional

living on mission, and it resets the whole thing and it kind of allows

all of our campuses to kind of reignite and engage back in that entrepreneurial missional

let's repeat, reach people for Jesus mindset. It's great church planning. I

tell everybody, hardest thing you'll ever do in your entire life. Justin has

now done it twice, double the pain. What would you guys say over

the last say, twelve months has been the most challenging part. I'll let

Amanda to cover. I think more of the church and the leadership team piece.

I think for me personally, it has been wrestling through my own,

my own journey. I told I think Pastor Brandon's a few times there was

a season in my life six five six years ago I didn't think I'd ever

passed her again. And so there are times when I get up there on

a Sunday morning to teach where I feel this wave of Justin, you're dis

qualified, you shouldn't be up there. But I have people in a scheme

of people who are praying with me, support us and invested in us.

And I think the more we share our story and the more we share the

grace of Jesus, that it's just it's apparent that we are on the right

track and people come to faith because of the grace that's been shown to me.

And so I think for me, it's been a wrestling match of man,

I am I really even should I be doing this? But at the

same time, I don't. That's I can't think of anything else I'd rather

do with my family and with my friends. We have at the Central campus.

Our church has really kind of rallied around the song. I think it's

called God is Able, But the key part of that song says God's not

done with me yet. And that's what I would speak over you, God's

not done with you yet. There's more to the story and everything that's happened.

It's just a chapter, but the book isn't even half over. So

it's fun to see God kind of resurrect those dreams and that vision in your

life. And again now you get the opportunity to help your wife lead.

You get to the opportunity to lead maybe from a out of your brokenness and

Yo, Tony and I are fans of Mosaic Church. When I was dreaming

of what Venture would be twenty years ago, I visited Mosaic in La and

I always wondered, what is the name of the church mean? And I

pulled the pastor IERN McManus aside after I'd visited one of his late night It

was like the nine o'clock surface, which was packed. It was amazing,

and I asked him, I go, what does Mosaic mean? And he

says, you take a bunch of broken pieces and you put it together and

it makes something beautiful. And I think that's what God is able to do

out of our lives. It's my favorite thing when I think of all of

our campus pastors across Venture, It's like God took all of these broken people

that he has healed, put it together and has really made this beautiful expression

of faith as a result. Amanda, Not because I want to focus on

the things that are challenging, but what have you found maybe the most surprising,

most challenging part of this journey so far? Well, I think we

also would have Justin would agree with me. I think that organizationally the most

challenging part was building something from scratch, really the model of a parachute plant

where you just land in a city and you don't have very much connection.

Justin had been there for a couple of years, but he was really walking

through a painful time in his life where he was hiding, and so his

relationships were minimal. He wasn't really outspoken in any of his circles. And

I moved from the Tri Cities and so I started. We were starting from

ground zero when we said yes to you, it was me and him.

We weren't even sure our kids were on portantly, and so it was just

slow like building and building that team culture. And there are still roles on

our team that aren't filled, like we're waiting for the right people, you

know, And so that's that's just been a challenge. Kay. How did

that? Though? I think one thing that we don't tell the story enough

is a lot of our team came from Venture Pullouse, so another campus of

Venture that was being sent so on through life, just life, you know,

chapter they came to Spokane and because of their transformation, because of their

spiritual growth, because their community that they experienced in Pulus, they were like

I want to reproduce this and Spokane and so it was really cool to see

the campuses. The Central campus invests so much in us, but then also

another campus invest people, send people and trust people. Did they move there

or did they just commute there? They had moved there all independently of the

plant. Wow, right as the plant was happening, and so they're like,

we love what God did in our lives Moscow, so now we're just

going to jump on. So that was pretty big for us. One of

our hardest workers and and maybe load carriers on our team always jokes that Pastor

Scott just told him he was going to be on Spokane's lead team and he

said, I just didn't question it, and so I just started showing up.

Assumed it was to drive off a bridge, and I just I just

did it. They just told me to do it. We're just so grateful

for him meet us so much. That's so awesome. Well, our hope

is that future church planners will listen to these as an encouragement and as a

resource. But I meet often with guys or gals that want to plant churches,

and most people that are planting a church are trying to decide do I

want to be connected to a larger multi site church, to a campus,

or do I want absolute total autonomy and do my own thing. And you

guys are a little First off, you guys are your A plus leaders.

You absolutely have the skill to do this on your own. But I have

long believed that if we are willing to drop and rank and fight as a

unit, we can do way more together. And you guys are seeing kind

of the beauty of launching a church in an area where you're not familiar.

It's parachute launches, Amanda said right after COVID when we're talking to pastors of

some of the largest churches in our region and they're like still recovering now,

and you guys launched then. But because of the resources of the central campus,

the resources of our other campus, specifically our police campus, you guys

are able to pull this off. It really shows what makes kind of this

mosaic come together, what makes the beauty of multi site, which makes it

worth it. We're just better together. I mean, it's so cliche to

say, but like you know, I think when I feel siloed, it's

because I've done it to myself. I siloed myself it's not like people are

just pushing me away. And I think that's the beauty of it, Like,

yeah, you guys are far and we don't have the opportunity always hang

out and talk and whatnot. But the fact that Polus had people come over

and that we helped kind of send people or you know, and whatnot,

that's just the video of it. I just can't imagine church planners who go,

you know what, I don't need a parent church. I don't need

anyone. It's my show. I'm want to be the boss. I'm doing

my own thing, and God bust them some do. I just can't imagine

a world like that. Well, church planning is hard. It's always hard.

It's the one constant is it's it's hard, and it's lonely. And

being able to feel like there's people that I can talk to, there's people

that understand me. Just being able to feel like you're part of something bigger,

greater. I don't it helps a little bit. It's still still really

difficult. Yeah, I've done it both ways. And maybe when we were

dating and we were just wrestling with and dreaming what our life together would look

like, we tweeter around that idea of what would it looked like for us

to pastor together. And one of the things we said was maybe we could

be campus pastors someday. Like we were wrestling with that and praying through that,

and honestly, I wouldn't do any other way. And because it's the

trust that you have given us and the trust that we have for you as

our lead pastor and as the team central. Five hours is a long ways,

but there's still that relationship, there's still that safety net, there's still

the patience and the trust that you have given us through this season of planting

the seed. So I mean, we're grateful for that relationship, and I

wouldn't do any other way. Looking back, I would add one of the

things that just attracted me and justin so much to Venture was the way that

you and Die partner together, the way that you both have your own independent

call. We felt like you understood maybe our relationship better than maybe others because

of the way we've watched you live it out. And I think what's been

so surprising about some of our time at Spokane is that we've had a group

of people come who have been really disillusioned, especially not a theme that we

were looking to see. A theme that's emerged is a group of people that

have been really disillusioned in how men and women have partnered in church, to

the point that they've said I'm done. I'm not done with Jesus, but

I am done with church. And some of them have come over and over

and over again, we've heard there's something unique about this partnership where you speak

every other Sunday, where Amanda does all the day to day and you know,

Justin leads to but he's not calling us and he's not sending us emails,

and we're seeing something that feels like a balanced approach of men and women

in the body of Christ. And what they say over and over again is

this feel safe to me? Safe enough that I want to invite my friends

who are really disillusioned. But it's taking me months to decide that you're safe.

But now we're going to invite my unchurched friends to come and hear about

Jesus. Maybe they won't end up broken like I did. Yeah, Yeah,

it's wow. It's a slow progressive journey. I have a couple more

questions for you guys, and we can wrap this up. But what advice

would you have. If there's a church planner, future campus pastor for any

church listening to this, do you have any thoughts or advice that you would

give to a future church planner that maybe you've learned along the way, maybe

that you were surprised about, but just advice that you would give. Yeah,

I would say, in the simplest way, dream and pray big and

set low expectations. Maybe that sounds really bad but or realistic. Yeah,

yeah, but somehow you have to be able to pace yourself and expect things

to be small and slow, and not despise those small beginnings while not letting

that discourage you from dreaming and praying and planning and hoping and believing for God

to do what he can do and what he's already doing. And so that

is a tough tension. It's a tough tension to lead through. Personally,

it's a tough tension to lead a team through. But I just think it's

the only way to do it. How do you, guys, how do

you guys keep the staff morale up when you're like, all right, guys,

we're setting up, we're tearing down, we're tired. All right,

let's keep going and justin does it. I think it really just keeping the

mission before the people. Venture has an amazing vision and value, so that

stuff is pretty easy to cast that vision and they get people to rally around.

But ultimately, if we don't offer them Jesus and we don't offer them

a place to belong, they're not gonna stay and it's not gonna be worth

it. So if we can remind people why we're setting up and why we're

tearing down and also simultaneously be praying for the next chapter at Venture right now

Adventure Spokane, we love Horizon Middle School in the neighborhood that God started us

at. At this moment though, we're just not quite confident that this is

where we need to stay. So we're really praying as a team, where

do you want us, Where are you going to place us? Where do

you want to position us? Where we can really scatter as a church and

and if that's you know, at some point, you know, a building,

a facility that won't just be a blessing on a Sunday morning, but

something that we can really offer to the community, whether it be a community

center or a place for you know, young parents to drop their kids off

or a coffee shop. We really are praying. Okay Jesus, you you

knew we were going to be here. You know what's next, and so

that's why we keep in that front of the people. It's like, be

present, but then also be expecting for what's now. From all my church

planner friends, they say the number one thing on their mind is they're always

thinking of a building anywhere they're going, anywhere they're driving, They're like,

that could be our church, that could be our building. Like that's always

on the forefront of their minds. Yeah, you don't like, you don't

like the empty buildings because it's an eyesore, but you're also like, maybe

that could be our place, you know, so that Planet Fitness can be

our gym. Yeah, and our church, our central campus has our nineteenth

birthday in two months, three months November. I spent years chasing buildings,

is the way that I would say it is the life of a church planner,

especially in the state of Washington where there's not a lot of abandoned buildings

and things like that. So we'll we'll join with you guys in praying for

that. Yeah. I think the theme verse for venture for all of our

campuses everywhere is Paul's word in Glaciers, where he says is don't grow weary

in doing good, for at the proper time you will reap a harvest if

you do not give up. I think what Amanda said is like dead right

on. You go to CMN conference, you go to church planning conferences,

and we always only have speak at those things like the one in a thousand

churches, the guy or gal that went in planted a church, and by

the way, we only get them to speak after their church is blown up.

And so you're sitting there and we rally all these people to risk everything,

and then they are like, cred there's forty people here. This is

not and they forget to tell those parts of and they get discouraged story and

they get discouraged. But the reality of church planning is you persevere, you're

faithful, you're faithful, you fight, you don't quit, you don't give

up your persevere and then you kind of look back and think, you know,

not where I thought this thing was going to be, but look where

we are right now. And then you baptize the buddy that you've been praying

for, and God is really great and in the middle of it. He

just kind of reminds you, this is why I called you to do this,

This is why I had you do this, and that person matters.

And there's gonna come a day when all of these dreams that you guys had

initially will come to pass. It might not happen the way you thought in

the timing, but you're going to reap a harvest if you do not give

up. Thank you guys for taking the time to drive over here, for

joining us with our staff training, and for being really honest, transparent with

everyone that's listening for what it's worth. I am immensely proud of you guys.

I love bragging. You guys are hard of our team. Oh gosh,

so thank you guys for what you do. I am excited for the

future of the campus, but we're here for you. Thank you, Team

Spokane. Let's go see you guys next week. Have a good day everyone,

audios. Remember Jesus is the hope of the world, not the local

church, although he used the church as a instrument investment. We got dislike

to me last week.