Midweek Podcast - One Service Church

We're rolling.

And action.

Hey Justin.

Hey, hey, what's up, Madison?

Nothing much.

How are you?

I'm good.

We have been a one-service church for a year?

No?

Two years?

Do math.

What year is it?

2024.

So two and a half years?

No.

Three years?

Yep.

Yeah, three, three plus, I think, at this point.

COVID kind of just like it's like a time warp.

Time warp.

Absolutely.

I can't remember things correctly.

Um, and we weren't always a one service church.

No.

No, we so okay, we started in 2005, one service.

Um remember those days, Alex?

Alex is watching us.

It's weird.

We got our camera guy, Zach.

Camera and what are like now he's got extra gear, and then we just have Alex just watching it.

He's making sure judging us?

He makes he makes sure that we say the right things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you uh if it cuts abruptly, it's because Alex just yells at it.

Yeah, so uh, but I looked at Alex because he was here from the beginning.

Um one service all the way up from 2005 uh until 2014.

We we went to two seconds.

We went to two in September of 2014.

We just felt like it was a kind of a I mean I honestly we had been kind of stagnant for a while at that point in time.

We'd had a lot of leadership change.

There was a it was a very like interesting season.

I became the pastor in that season.

And um part of it was uh just feeling like it was time for something new and and to be a little bit more aggressive.

Part of it was kind of growth strategy, to be honest with you.

Like it was a well, we feel like we can reach more people, and so if we build it, they will come.

Yeah, and there's actually there is a uh sort of common uh held like one of those sort of just uh standard operating practices out there in the church world that uh multiple services is good because it gives people options, right?

So and then there's this thought uh and this is kind of what we leaned into and said, um, that it can really bless your people because you have the chance to go to church and also serve.

You can do both.

Right, right.

So you're not missing uh attending for serving.

Because, you know, when we only had one, um if you helped in the kids' areas, for example, you have to miss the entire service, and that's really tough.

And so there were a lot of positives, a lot of reasons to do it, and we we did experience success.

We grew um a good bit when we went to two services, and then we we maintained that all the way up until the magical time of of 2020.

Corona hits and uh COVID and all the news about it and all the speculation about it and all the Yeah, so we paused in person gatherings.

We paused in person gatherings, and uh but we were pretty quick to come back as well.

But in coming back, it was interesting.

It was the first time we'd ever had a chance to pause.

You know, you don't get to do that as a church because Sundays happen every Sunday.

Like we can never say, hey guys, we had a busy week, we're gonna do Sunday on Monday this week because we just need one more day to prepare.

Like it's just it's Sunday, it's gonna happen.

So there's this rhythm to church that is sort of an an unstoppable thing, and you don't have a lot of time to do major pivots because you don't have time to catch your breath, you know, on to the next one.

And so COVID did give us a chance to sort of pause.

And I was doing a lot of praying back then about you know, Lord, like what next?

I I didn't feel like we could come back the same way we were, we we weren't gonna have as many volunteers.

It was a lot of stuff, a lot of uncertainty at the time.

Um, and I had a pretty interesting moment with the Lord where I realized we got to come back with one service.

Like we're we have to because the volunteer base isn't there.

It was like a practical reason.

It was, and a lot of people were still on the fence about their comfort level.

So we just knew okay.

And we were coming back pretty early.

We we were doing social distancing in the building, which we have the room to do.

Yeah, right.

I know.

Sorry, I'm laughing because I'm thinking back to just like I know it seems I would do things so differently now, knowing but whatever.

That's but everyone was trying to figure it out.

And a ton of people weren't ready, even like our key volunteers, people who were super bought into the church.

A lot of our lot of people who are older or whatever.

And so when I realized, I mean we gotta come back one service, there was like a brief moment, and I mean 30 seconds of mourning.

It felt like a a retreat, it felt like a big step backwards.

All that effort and energy that went into adding that second service, and for years we were we were doing that, but that lasted for 30 seconds, and it literally gave way to this sort of flood of positive thoughts.

It was like God opened my eyes up to all the all the things that we could do differently.

Um and I I became excited about one service and got to the point where within a few days I was putting some stuff together to share with um kind of our board, and then I shared with the staff.

Um, hey, we're gonna come back, we're gonna be a one-service church, but it not in just a temporary way.

We're not just gonna be one service for a few months and get that second service going again.

We're gonna pivot and strategically, we are going to be a one-gathering church, and I think we could even grow beyond what we were at two gatherings at one.

And when I said that, I mostly believed it.

Um but seriously, I like 70% believed it.

Right.

Like I felt like God had shown me some things, but it was also I hope this works.

There's yeah, there were some mysterious walls to be crossed.

Correct.

Like of like how are we going to possibly do this or that?

Yeah.

Imagining that.

And so coming back as one and you've you've used the word gathering now.

We've said service.

So we're not sure.

They're interchangeable.

Yeah.

I probably prefer gathering just because service means like your car gets serviced.

Well, part of our culture's always been that we're not like a super churchy in our language.

Right.

Um so we try our best to find normal sounding words that uh mean the same thing so that you don't have to like There's not a great word.

There's not a great word for it.

Gathering even sounds like kind of like a cult thing.

Like me that's a good thing.

Are you coming up to gathering?

We're all gathering.

Are you coming?

Yeah, I guess service, it's just churches and like funerals and stuff like that.

Like so, I don't know.

It's not um whatever word you want to use, it doesn't really matter.

But yeah, um, and here we are fast forward.

We've been meeting as a one service or one gathering church, whichever one you want to use, now for almost four years.

And we've actually grown, we have grown beyond what we were at two services prior to COVID.

We have on a typical Sunday more people coming to one than we're coming to both.

And it's allowed us to simplify what we do.

Um, there's a lot of practical, like super practical benefits, and then there's also some really, I think, powerful spiritual benefits to it as well.

Yeah, to the point where now we've kind of doubled down.

Um, and at every turn over the last couple of years where we've hit a wall of like, hey, we're kind of full, we can go to two services, or what else can we do?

And so we've knocked walls down, we've built walls, we've uh started using another parking lot that's adjacent to our parking lot, we've bought shuttles, and we've just sort of doubled down on being a one-gathering church.

And and for the foreseeable future, I don't see a change in that.

I really I think it's the right thing for us to do.

And it's unique.

What are the spiritual benefits there?

So, okay, like I said, practical and spiritual, right?

Um the practical benefits are are just and and they overlap for sure.

Um there's a lot of simplicity.

Like whenever do you remember the staff meeting where we talked about being a one?

Do you you remember that one?

Because we were all in the big room.

Is this the one where we circled up and we were in a big circle?

Team A and team B.

Yeah, it was all the same meeting.

Yes, it was a giant meeting, but let me ask you a question.

I'm gonna turn the tables on you.

Uh what went through your head when I said we're gonna be a one-gathering church?

Because you have you had only ever worked here with multiple services.

Well, there's this I I don't know if it's selfish because I think it applies to everyone, so it's not just me, but the idea of like we we can go to Moe's.

I went to Mo's with my family at after church on a Sunday, and we were like the only people there.

I was like, is Moe's just not, you know, popular anymore?

It's like this restaurant.

But as we were leaving, it was like, okay, jam-packed.

But it was just like, oh, like leaving after two services means that your day on a Sunday just lasts a lot longer longer in the morning.

Yep.

You're into the afternoon by the time you actually leave church and shut everything down.

Yeah.

Um, but one of the bigger things that I thought, so it's like, yeah, going out to lunch with my family or having a day afterwards.

But I had a few volunteers that came to mind where we did kind of have that idea of like, oh yeah, they show up first service to serve and then they attend second service, or they show up first service to attend, and then they serve second service.

I just saw a lot of people just not doing that.

And so they ended up showing up to serve and either leaving or showing up only to serve, and they were missing out on church.

Not that serving isn't church, but what we had kind of preached as a benefit of two services wasn't actually being taken advantage of that much because it was a much longer day to show up at the 9 a.m.

and stay through.

Yeah.

And that's so yeah, on those practical levels, when we were a multi-gathering church, um multi-service.

No, you're you're in I'm in my head now.

Don't get in your head.

It's fine.

Yeah.

Um So when we had exactly what you said.

A the practical side of it was okay, are people actually doing this?

We did have some people who were serving and then going, but what we found was, I mean, if we wanted to go like real deep dive, people who were scheduled to serve at the second service would rarely get up earlier and come to church first.

And so, like you said, this dynamic was happening where um people were c were coming to to serve on their teams and then doing that more often than they were actually going to church.

And as that goes on for six months or a year, and it's like, well, for every one time I get to sit and worship and learn, I'm serving two times.

That and you just the even just like the physical toll of like it can be exhausting, even if you are trying to like get filled up and do do what's right, uh you know what I mean.

Uh like go to church and serve on the same Sunday, it's just exhausting to do that.

Like if you're with the four-year-olds during first service and then you attend afterwards, like and that's what your every week experience ends up being for a long period of time.

That's also as exhausting as only doing every other service.

Absolutely.

Yeah, no, it's it yeah, so either you're not doing it or you are.

If you are, you're just wiped.

Right.

And if you're not, um eventually the rhythm is so off that you serve more than you you go, and and after a while it's it stops feeling like your church, and now it's just this organization that you you help with, clock into.

Yeah, seriously.

And so we actually saw a lot of people get burned out.

Right.

Um and staff-wise, I care a lot about our staff, most of them.

Um I care about almost all of them.

Almost all but one.

Like 85 percent.

There's one.

No, I care a lot about our staff.

And so the idea of you guys being able to go have lunch with your families afterwards, um, that was a real positive because I thought, man, this will especially you're having kids.

Yeah.

I the every time I thought about that, I was like, man, I'm so glad that they'll get to go have a Sunday like everybody else.

And to say that too about the volunteer kids, because we had that dynamic and we tried to make it fun and make it happen.

Yeah.

But like if you do go to service and volunteer at two services, your kids have to stay and either repeat the same thing over again, or we can kind of make a fun thing for them for one service and they go to their normal thing the next service, but it's also exhausting for the whole family.

So um that was the immediate benefit that I saw was like, oh, we can be kind of totally focused on um honoring people that are like giving their time, obviously, but it's not going to be burning people out at the rate that people were being burnt out.

So correct.

And um so that's kind of the practical stuff, but then the spiritual side is more it's more meaningful to me.

Um and I guess I'll c I'll put this in this caveat, I'll talk about this a little bit later.

I'm not saying that churches that have multiple services are doing it wrong.

Right.

Um, we're sort of unique in that we can even try this, the way that we're we're laid out.

There's some unique things about our church that give us the ability to even attempt this that a lot of churches couldn't even you just couldn't.

Right.

And it's not that we will never go to the No, we've never we've never said that's it's for this season, but kind of like until the Lord leads us to do that, and our bent right now is every time we do hit that capacity level, instead of going, well, let's go to another service, we go, what else could we do?

And there may be a day where there's nothing else that we can do.

Right.

And then we say, Okay, Lord, like show us what's we'll figure out what's next.

Um But the spiritual side of it is when we had multiple gatherings, man, I'll tell you, um there'd be these dynamics that would happen sometimes where the first gathering might just be awesome, you know, and the worship is people are in it.

And it is like the people that showed up early traditionally where they were their hand raisers.

Correct.

We had more, they they were more enthusiastic because they were like, I can't wait to worship God this morning.

Um and so they there sometimes that would be the dynamic.

Um, and then it would go awesome, and then the second service would hit, and we would have services where it felt really dead, and we're like, Whoa, what happened?

So you try to like make it happen again, you know what I mean?

Um manufacture what already happened.

Yes.

And even like the performed authenticity of like, I haven't said this before an hour ago, like correct.

Welcome his hand.

You know, like just like it's like every part of it, you're like, it's a weird deja vu thing.

But we do multiple gatherings when we have Christmas, when we have you know Easter, and so we we do that.

Right.

Um but every Sunday, yeah, you felt this tension of man, the first one went awesome, and so let's like we gotta make that happen again.

And sometimes that you forced it a little bit, or the flip could happen.

Right.

Where the first gathering wasn't great, and so you're trying to almost compensate for that by making sure that the second one You're like overly excited and overly enthusiastic, or you're amending your message to fit the illustration better or whatever it is.

Well, you're you're meeting with the worship team and with Matt who leads our worship team, and we're like, hey, um, we need to like really that didn't work, and you know.

And I think too, the the element of uh baptisms started happening during the service and we didn't have like a baptism day.

And it was always kind of an uh uh an interesting dynamic because you could go back on like and watch the highlight video of the baptisms, but it wasn't that everyone was in the room.

So if someone got baptized in first service, everyone that still showed up to church on that same date, like half of them didn't see that baptism celebrate.

So sometimes we'd have you know one baptism at the first and two at the second, or sometimes none at the second, and three at the first, and you're like, Oh, I wish everyone could have seen that.

And so, yeah, that was a thing.

And then even I guess going back to even practical again, kind of practical spiritual, not that there, again, there's a lot of overlap.

Um, we spent so much time focused on transitioning too.

It was like we have to hit, you know, when I was teaching, and this is where they they do overlap big time.

Okay, I might really feel led to dwell on something a little bit longer.

Maybe something pops in my mind as I'm talking about a subject that didn't pop in my mind when I prepared.

I'd love to spend five minutes really talking about this because I think it really helps the people in the room.

Right.

But I'm looking at the clock and we don't have five minutes because if we go five minutes long, it's like this domino effect.

Parking lots of parking lots jam.

Check-in is terrible.

Kids are and it's and we had a few Sundays like that.

So you're like, we got to hit this time exactly.

Um, and then we would spend in the kids' areas, like so much of the energy was got to get this group out, get the next group in, the next group of volunteers has to come in and get it.

Yeah, there's team meetings while people are getting checked out.

So much.

And so much of the busyness and the focus was just on those transition moments.

And uh now that's not really a thing at all.

And it allows your focus to be on the most important things.

And so you know when I'm teaching on a Sunday, and I'm pretty good at hitting the time.

Um, there's a few times where, you know, I know you're in the student area, so if it if it's not I'm timed out a little bit more than you have to be.

Um but now if it goes five minutes longer, it goes five minutes longer.

It doesn't really you have my you have my blessing.

I know you don't like it when it goes too short.

Yeah, yeah.

So I have there haven't a few times where I've sort of I've looked at the clock and appreciate it.

I have noticed that.

This will hurt.

And I can sort of recap a little bit.

Um but the point is it doesn't matter if it goes five minutes longer.

What probably matters if it goes 30 minutes longer.

And you also have people's expectations.

Sunday to Sunday to respond to the scripture that we're learning that week.

So if this requires like, hey Matt, could we add an extra song or do a response at the end, or maybe we have more baptisms, or whatever it is.

It's like there's just room in the room to do the only focus.

Yeah, the only focus is what is gonna make this experience the best it can be, and we're not having to juggle, yeah, but that's gonna be at the cost of this next one starting smoothly.

And you know, even on that simplicity standpoint, I can hang out after the service and just talk to whoever wants to talk.

Um we have food trucks sometimes, and we can just we're gonna do that here in a little bit, and people can hang out and eat.

There's not a rush to get people out.

It's just it's really created, even though we're a large church, it's really created a much smaller church feel.

And I don't know, it's really unique.

It's it's the It's become one of the most defining aspects of our church is that we are a one-gathering church.

We have a lot of people that show up.

You might have to park across the street, but there's something really beautiful and powerful about everyone being in the room together, seeing every baptism that happens, worship, we're all united.

The message, everyone hears every little thing.

There's not, it's just everyone's having the same experience.

And so it reunites us.

It's simple.

We can linger, we can take our time when we're done.

There's no rush.

It's I don't know, it's just it's been really special.

Yeah, and as part of that like COVID journey, um, we basically learned that we could also pull off youth on Sunday mornings because youth used to be on Wednesday nights, high school on Wednesday nights, middle school on Sunday mornings.

But we had uh our student space was like a breakout space, so it just sat empty really for a couple of months, and we were like, actually, we can kind of do youth in a creative way.

And so I've just been really appreciative because I had spent years seeing students on Sunday mornings that never made it to Wednesday nights.

Like their family's really involved in our church, they would call this their church home, it's where they go every Sunday, but they just weren't connected with the other teenagers that are in the group.

And so having youth on Sundays has given that opportunity to like.

It's funny, I was talking to a dad uh of of an athlete yesterday, and he was talking about how they they struggle so much to balance church and the sports thing because if you have a kid who's an athlete or maybe a kid gets a part-time job, right?

You know, they don't Wednesday nights aren't sacred to culture in any evening.

Um, and he was just basically saying that Sunday mornings is really one of the only times that they have that they can pretty much bank on most of the year.

And you know, there's a whole separate conversation about choices you make as a parent.

Like we're not going to miss this for that, but um Sunday mornings are much easier for most families to to set aside than even in the evening, right?

And so we had a lot of kids, whether it was because of extra activities, um, sports, band, right, drama, or they get a job when they get a car and they need that they need to work and they're working nights.

And Wednesday evenings, Sunday evenings, those got hard, but Sunday mornings is pretty reasonable.

And it's definitely changed the uh makeup of the group because um you'd have a lot of people that are either connected at other churches or aren't connected anywhere.

But I think what's been interesting is to see like, oh, the buy-in from the youth group, the community there is much, much higher.

There's much less drama because it's like your parents drove you to church.

Like you're there as a family, it's a thing.

Like it's not this like I did this alone sort of thing.

And I was really worried.

My one of my biggest concerns was like, will it not be like uh an evangelistic style thing?

Well, it's on Wednesday mornings, you can't.

Yeah, come after school, we're gonna come to youth.

But um, students have actually really brought their friends, and I meet a ton of new students every week.

You should probably spend the night on Saturday night.

Well, they do that, but what's cool is that happens one week, and then week two or three or four, I'm meeting the parents of that friend, and they're coming to church.

And so it's like giving an opportunity not just to serve like the students at a youth thing, but it's really saying, like, oh, mom and dad, like I went to my friend's church, like you should come.

Yeah, which which on Wednesday nights, we have Wednesday night stuff, but that was never really a dynamic.

It's extra, yeah, it's harder to engage with if you've never been part of the church.

Right.

And so I never even thought about that.

Our youth stuff, too, we just do our extra stuff on Wednesdays now.

So if you miss the extra stuff, that's okay, but you're still involved with the main thing on Sunday mornings.

And I will say one more thing about two services to one is with the youth on Sunday mornings, especially the middle school, it is so tough to have two services because it was always like Jimmy shows up to service one and his best friend is Johnny, and Johnny's at service.

Service two.

And it's like they could go six months and never see each other, never even know that they go to the same church, but having it all in one service kind of creates that community a lot more specifically.

So yeah, no, it's it's been a real and it it's easy to talk about it like it's been just the easiest thing to do.

There have been a lot of challenges.

Yeah.

I mean, we've had to really rethink whole areas of our church.

I'll say the the youth thing is kind of a mess in terms of like w how we landed there, but it's really cool.

But it's yeah, you've had to iterate multiple times.

Yes.

Um, but even cool things that we could never have done.

Like now the the main worship team on Sundays in the in the big room, when they finish leading worship for the adults, they walk backstage, they go, you know, in the back hallway, they show up in your space, and they're leading worship for the high school and the junior high.

And so the the sort of worship culture in The youth has grown a lot because you've got really dedicated people, like the main people putting their focus into that.

So we're seeing that happen.

Um, but all of that has required constant iteration.

Right.

And it's just amazing.

I think about the like I said, we've knocked walls down.

Uh we had to build a new kid space, we've put up a wall to create a lobby in our fourth and fifth grade area, because it grew with one gathering, it was way outgrowing the space we had.

So there's been a lot of of Creative Solutions.

Creative solutions.

And and here's the truth it's not for everybody.

Um I recognize that there's gonna be people who go, you know what, I just the fact that I might have to park across the street and ride a little shuttle over, I don't want that.

And if if we if we had multiple services, it would be more convenient.

Um that I got a text actually yesterday from a guy, and he means well, and I actually think he's figuring some stuff out.

Um but you know, he's like, just go to two services, you know, because it would be a lot better for me.

Right.

Is essentially what he said.

It would be more convenient for me if you guys had multiple gatherings.

I, you know, but it's like at the cost of what?

Because if we if we announced two gatherings, he'd be like, Yes, sweet, parking's gonna be better.

Um and we've got parking, even the parking thing.

We have a parking team that crushes it.

We built a we had to build a new exit out of our parking lot to make it flow, but it's flowing faster than ever before.

They like the bus.

They get to ride a bus.

I see them on the bus a lot.

We kind of timing of that.

My son came up and was like, Dad, I rode the shuttle.

I rode the shuttle, it's a big deal.

Cool.

Um But my point with that guy was like, yeah, okay, well, for us to go to two gatherings, that means telling that means telling the staff and all the key volunteers, hey, um, need another couple hours out of you guys every Sunday.

Um so lunch with your family, and that's out off the table.

It also means we need to recruit about 150 new volunteers to be able to make all those areas work because one thing we didn't talk about is in our volunteers uh areas, the kids' areas, we've been able to simplify how that works.

Right.

So it used to be that you'd serve every other week, and the idea was one Sunday on, one Sunday off, or a couple on, couple off, but then people would just only show up when they would serve all that.

Well, now if you're serving in a kid's area, you serve and not there's a little bit of difference in high school.

But for the most part, you serve for a month and you do miss Sunday mornings that month in terms of coming to the big room, but you can watch the podcast and or whatever.

But then you get multiple months where you just get to go to church and you're in the big room.

And most of our volunteers have have said that they they love that because they kind of get into volunteer mode and then they get to rest.

And they're not constantly bouncing back and forth between the channels.

And I will say I'll speak on behalf of the volunteers, maybe.

I think that and also the way that the teams are led, like we we keep saying it's like you miss church to volunteer.

I think a lot of the teams are kind of built so that it's like it is just as meaningful.

Correct.

But you kind of do have to enter that mode, of course.

But like you are getting a lot out of it.

And I have to tell some volunteers, like they text them like, hey, can I help out this Sunday?

It's like, well, you just were on for four straight weeks in a row.

You might want to they're like into it.

So they're they're they're doing it that way.

I mean, I had to quote unquote miss church for three years when I led the kids' areas, and it got to where I just realized this is my form of worship.

This is this is how I worship God today.

So I totally get that.

But I think we're protecting that in general.

Correct.

And over the long haul, you know, it gets unbalanced.

So I guess to sum it all up, um being a one gathering or one service church, whichever one of those you want to say, it is it has become one of the most defining aspects of who we are.

It gives us a level of simplicity and unity that is really hard to achieve when you have a larger church.

Often the bigger it gets, the more complicated it gets, and the more corporate it has to get.

And the more decisions are sort of in a business mindset than kind of a family mindset.

And I'm not saying that's wrong.

We have a big building, we have a big parking lot, and we're surrounded by big parking lots.

Lots of churches don't have those factors.

They couldn't even consider this.

Right.

But we can.

And in doing this, it's created a couple of issues.

We've had to figure some things out, right?

We've had to adjust parking, we've had to buy shuttles, all that.

We've had to move move walls, kids' areas, all that.

But I think what we've found, and it's worth fighting for, and it's worth being open to God, helping us be creative to keep, is there's just this really beautiful.

I'm not trying to be a broken record, but simplicity and unity.

You get to do church together with your church family, and everyone that shows up every week sees everyone that shows up every week.

And it's and it's really it's really special and it's almost unheard of in a church our size.

So um again, it it's different.

It's what we feel like God's led us to do.

It might mean people have to park, you know, across the street, ride a shuttle every once in a while, and maybe one day we'll have five shuttles and we'll use lots of.

I don't know.

Right.

Um, we're open to that.

But right now, I I'm really glad we did this.

And I think maybe the takeaway for anyone, um whether you work at a church or you know, whatever, is hey, you don't always have to do the things that everyone says you have to do, right?

Or that you've done or that you've done in the past.

Like maybe there is uh an advantage to just taking some time to step back.

Correct.

Maybe not, you know, pause or whatever we did.

Yep.

Um we had the COVID pause, but just say, like, okay, I'm gonna get out of the weeds here and just say, like, what are the things that I need to adjust to Yeah.

Very often we're living life assuming, well, I have to do A or B.

Like those are the I mean, if I don't do this, I have to do that because and you know, for me for a long time it was either at a service or you're gonna be stagnant and not grow.

And so either grow or shrink.

And the well, we've grown, like I said, we've grown beyond what we were at two services with one service or or gathering, depending on what you want to use.

I'm gonna keep saying that.

But often with God, we think it's A or B, God has all kinds of options that we just don't even don't even know, and we need Him to show it to us.

And so if you're stuck in any aspect of life and you think, well, I've got to do this or that, stop and pray and and even ask questions like, well, what else could I do?

You know, and what we've found is that so far, every time we've been like, Well, I guess we're gonna have to go to two, someone has been like, wait a minute.

We could knock down that wall, we could add more furniture to that space.

And there always is, you said there's 30 seconds of mourning.

I think at every single iteration, there's been like, oh, I don't want to do that.

And I think you have it the most, because your area's probably had to change the most.

Yeah, that's true.

But yeah, every time we've changed it, it's like, ooh, okay.

Well, is it possible?

It's possible.

Uh oh, and then you realize it's good because God's got good stuff waiting for you.

He does.

So I uh foreseeable future, we're gonna keep along this path.

There's still some walls that we can knock out.

And some walls that we can add.

There's still, yeah, absolutely.

There's so many walls, so many possibilities of walls.

Um but I think it's what God's led us to do, and I'm really pleased with the results so far.

So that's that's what we do.

It's different, it's unique.

Um and I kind of hope every church just sort of the takeaway would be seek God and be open to God leading you to do things a little bit differently and then stick to that and see what happens.

It's really blessed us so far.

So cool.

Yep.

All right.

Is there anything else that you want to say before we go?

Are you doing okay?

Is there anything you want to get off your chest or no confess publicly?

I yelled at everyone on the way into work today.

You yelled at everyone?

Almost everyone.

I didn't yell at Zach.

You yelled at Alex?

Yeah.

What did what'd you yell?

I yelled, yay, it's Monday.

It's gonna be a great day.

Are you excited for the week?

Oh, you were trying to like hype up the Yeah, no, it's just I I was hyped, yeah.

It was fun.

Okay.

I mean, I thought it was fun.

Did you think it was fun?

Okay, cool.

All right.

So, yay.

I don't know when this podcast is coming out, but today is the day.

Today, this is the Lord.

The Lord has made.

I will be glad and rejoice.

Rejoice in it.

I say it again.

Today is today!

And bye.