EP033: Rob Wegner & the Mission of Microchurch

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Well, I tell you what, hey, we're on episode 33 of The Church Digital, and we've got a special

treat for you. And I've not even said this publicly. I've never told this story before publicly. So

listening audience, you are the first one to hear this. So I was at the Church IT Network conference

a couple weeks ago. I spoke and helped them coordinate a lot of the breakout sessions, and it

was a lot of fun and really got to just love on and encourage a lot of the online ministers and

online pastors that are out there at the churches doing things week in and week out. One of the sessions

that I had scheduled myself to teach was this idea of merging church online and microlocations. And if

you listen to my podcast, you know that we talk about microlocations all the time. So I have a talk,

I've written blogs upon it, I've written ebooks on it. That's just one of my sweet spots. Then I find

out they were very excited to tell me that Rob Wagner was going to be one of the keynote speakers

for the conference. Now, if you don't know Rob, Rob is part of this underground movement of churches.

There's Casey Underground, which Rob has been very passionate about working with and helping this,

not a service-oriented, but a discipleship-oriented movement of church happening in the Kansas City

area, which has actually spawned off other locations. I know Tampa Underground is existing and

is going very strong. And there's even talks of starting to do something here in the Miami area.

Oops, maybe I shouldn't have said that, but it's been really fun to see this idea of underground

church, of a house church, of a microlocation, of a family being passionate about reaching into their

community on their own and empowering these people to do this, to do this level of discipleship.

And so I was scheduled to talk about house church and microlocation, but instead I'm like,

I would rather listen to this guy, Rob Wagner, over here talk about it. So I'm not going to do my talk

because I just want to listen to him, the expert, the guy who's really doing this, go into detail.

And so it was a phenomenal panel. We had some others on there. Rob was very humble to jump in here and

the others as well. But we painted a picture of what it means to move away from a service-oriented

discipleship structure and instead move towards a discipleship structure where we empower people,

where we make disciples, where we empower others in sharing their faith and discipling them to a

greater understanding of who God is and what God has for them. And I'll tell you, at the end, I think

the audience had a far greater understanding of how the microlocations worked and how just maybe,

just possibly the church of today can exist and help build these microlocations around through church

online. So here's what we've got. We had a panel set up. Of course, Rob Wagner from KC Underground

mentioned that earlier is there. We brought in Brian Phipps to the conversation. He is with an

organization called Disciples Made. It's their discipleship pathway that really ties in with the

KC Underground movement. And just both of those guys are phenomenal. We brought in Tyler Sampson from

Church Anywhere. Once again, no stranger to this podcast. It seems like every time we're talking

microlocations and church online, I'm mentioning Tyler Sansom's name. And then we brought in Jason

Morris, who also is from the Kansas City area, who has a long history with doing microlocations,

especially in context with his church and Westside family. Okay, so I want to apologize here. The recording

of this, the audio quality, isn't the best compared to what we normally have. The fidelity just is off.

The main device we were using, long story short, didn't work. And so we had to fall back on a

backup, which didn't have as crisp a recording. The content, what we're discussing, the messaging

here, honestly, is one of the better podcasts that we've created to date. And so I present to you Rob

Wagner, KC Underground, Brian Pipps, Disciples Made, Tyler Sampson, Church Anywhere, Jason Morris,

Westside family, and myself, Jeff from the Church Digital, having a conversation,

microlocations, and church online. Hey everybody, here you go.

Hi, my name is Tyler Sansom. I work at a church in Cordon, Indiana called First Capital Christian Church,

and we do a ministry called Church Anywhere. 12 seconds.

That was awesome, right? Well done.

Yes, sir. Awesome. Brian Pipps, I've been in Kansas City for about 10 years,

pastor for about 25 years. The last 10 was at Westside Family Church, where I was the next steps

pastor, disciple making structures, developed some structures that got more result than we ever

thought. A short version became a thing, stepped out to do that about a year and a half ago. It's

called Disciples Made, and we deliver online technology and coaching to implement it well.

I'm Rob Wagner. I was on staff at a church plant in Granger, Indiana, which is near South Bend. I was

there for almost 25 years, and then about five and a half years ago, moved here to Kansas City. I was

also on staff at Westside Family Church with these guys. Last year, I've been a part of founding

something called the Kansas City Underground, which is a network of missional leaders, disciple makers,

and microchurches in Kansas City, which we'll talk a little bit more about that later.

I'm Jason Morris, global innovation pastor of Westside Family Church, overseeing the digital

expression of Westside to catalyze church planting movements globally around the world and microsites

wherever they happen to be. Awesome. So a lot of what we're talking about, hopefully talking about,

is how this idea of a church online can connect with and start a micro location or a physical location

around. And so there's a difference between a campus, a multi-side campus, and then like a micro

or a house church or a watch party. And through churches around America, the ones that are doing it,

like they use different terms of what those smaller locations are. I'd love to maybe just pick apart

here a little bit, Casey Underground, like what does expression of church look like? Church Anywhere,

what does that micro expression of church, what does it tangibly look like? For us, when we talk about

a micro church, our one sentence definition is it's an extended spiritual family that's led by ordinary

people. The goal is to live in everyday gospel community, and they own the mission of Jesus in

a particular network or neighborhood. So to break down a little bit, for us, micro church is a missionary

endeavor. So we're not like organizing people that already go to churches into groups. It's like an

assimilation strategy. Usually it's a couple or people partnering as what we call missional team

that feel called to a certain context. So sometimes it's a neighborhood, sometimes it might be a people

group like there's Algerian refugees that are in Olathe, which is about 25 minutes from here,

like one of our micro churches is among Algerian refugees. We have others that are embedded into

the youth rodeo circuit of Kansas, for example, or a travel baseball league. One of them has even become

a for profit business in Bonner. So there's different contexts, but you've got people making new disciples.

And as you multiply disciples, we believe that's when you have the church. And the church, it's most

fundamental level is an extended spiritual family. And then the goal is not a meeting. So a lot of

times house churches, for example, it's people trying to take what is typically done in a weekend

service inside of a big box somewhere, and they just do it in somebody's living room. Now I'm all for

that. But the goal for us is actually a community on mission, living into the gospel as a community,

not meeting weekly. Are there weekly meetings? Absolutely. But there's so many different touches

between the meetings. And then they're owning the mission of Jesus in a particular neighborhood

or network. So there's a very like fiercely local focus on owning the mission of Jesus. We're in a

subdivision called City View Farms. And so our microchurch is owning the mission of Jesus in about a two to

three block radius of that neighborhood. And our microchurches have that kind of mission specificity.

Because if you're going to actually live like a great missionary, you can't do that very well in

multiple contexts. Like you have to kind of pick a primary where you drop down deep and really live

out the missionary rhythm. So that's what our microchurch is for us. And then we have different rhythms.

We have what we call two out, two up, two in. So two out is about once a month. One of your outs is

going to be some kind of socially inclusive party. Another one's going to be serve oriented. The two

up is within your extended spiritual family. You have like an immediate spiritual family. That's your

missional team that's owning the mission with you. You want to be meeting with them at least twice a

month. And that's orbiting around a meal, a discovery Bible study, prayer, planning for mission,

and then two in. And the two in is underneath all these microchurches, we have what we call a hub.

And the hub is the mission agency that trains the missionaries in the microchurches. So we have

seven equipping teams in a hub. And those provide all the services needed to launch and sustain and

coach and multiply microchurches. So we're saying at least twice a month, you want to be connecting with

your hub. So you're not some disconnected sort of cancerous cell that's reproducing out there that

you're under governance and you're being coached and supported. So does that get at it?

Oh yeah, I mean that was pretty rich right there. Is everybody taking notes on that?

What's interesting, I don't want to like go down this rabbit trail, but like there was a really thick

strategy there in context of what perception on the outside might actually be. It's very organic.

And so it's a really interesting tension of where you've got that hub, you've got, you know,

all these infrastructures and this plan in place. There's the six, the ins and the outs and I'll have,

I'm glad I got that recorded because I didn't write any of that down. But there is, there is

intentionality behind a lot of that, which I, just from the outside, man, I really appreciate that.

Yeah, we, we're radically committed to like grassroots and kind of organic growth.

But like if you have a garden and you have a tomato plant that's growing and you don't have

some kind of structure to hold it up, it'll lay down on the ground and rot out and die.

And that's what happens with a lot of organic church stuff. It's like first generation and

then it tends to rot. So we're trying to create a structure to support that organic growth without

controlling it or micromanaging it. Awesome. So Church Anywhere is a

initiative-based microsite strategy that we have in our discipleship pathway.

So when I say initiative-based, we, our goal would be to take someone from an unbeliever all the way to

conversion and then from conversion, help them find their purpose that will eventually help people

find and follow Jesus. So their purpose could be for, I'll give you a real life example of purpose.

One of our Church Anywhere leaders was, she was exposed to some orphans in our area

and fell in love with these orphans. So she felt like her purpose and passion was to go and help

these orphans find and follow Jesus. So she has created a Church Anywhere location at a local

orphanage that has resulted this year in three of those kids finding homes. So they do like a church

service-ish with them. That's the technology piece of it. But we always train our leaders to say that

relationships trump technology every single time. The main goal was to go out and build relationships.

And at SPIRE conference, one of the keynote speakers mentioned us, and we had never thought of us

in this context before, but it makes total sense. He said we're like the Dollar General of Churches

because we're rural. Our main mission is to have people find their purpose and go out and serve

underserved people. And so Dollar General thrives in most people like Walmart and Target because they're

serving the underserved. And so that's kind of who we are. We want to empower our people to go out and be

pastors to the underserved by utilizing technology as the tool to get in that door.

That's awesome. The Dollar General. Right. Very.

That's clear. Dollargeneralchurch.com. Right. Jason, I don't have you for the slide. I know you were coming,

but maybe share a little bit. How does Westside treat micro? Well, we have two flavors of small.

One is our church planting movement that we have internationally. And those average 42,

so that's relatively small. But we keep it small and reproducing on purpose. And it's just a full-blown

church planting movement that gets empowered through a lot of tools technologically that help them get the

job done. One of the cool things, just so that you know, just got back from India last week

and was at the graduation at the Naglanda group that KC Underground supported. In 18 months now,

we have 80 new churches. Wow.

Go God. Go God. And Enosh wanted to say thank you. So anyway, just a lot of what we do is partner

with other churches too, to create those linkages to people on the ground that are actually getting

the work done and to help them to just multiply Jesus everywhere. That's one flavor of micro-citing.

Another flavor, that's really probably more church planting in a house church scenario,

but we do a lot of online tools to empower that. That's primarily global, right? Yes, yes, globally.

One of the neat things is that some of our global partners are now using the same online tools

that I have used with them to further their efforts. Like Ed, for example, because you guys know who he is,

was on a motorbike going to three different countries all the time, rarely ever home. Today,

and I've got video of this. It's really cool. He's doing online church planning training with a Facebook

group in his language in Thai, you know, with the church planters that are in Laos and me and Marno,

that kind of stuff. So that kind of stuff, killer. Love that guy. So that's the flavor of micro-citing as a

church planter. The other flavor, which is a little bit in contrast to what you mentioned,

was taking the, what we do online and giving it freely available to anyone who wanted to use it

as a watch party for either online or on site in their neighborhood, wherever they happen to be.

We have a micro-site in France. We've got one in San Antonio. We've got one in Mexico now. There's a lot

of different places that they somehow are connected or associated with Westside that love it so much,

but they don't have something like that where they ended up moving to or something like that. And so

we just tell them, well, hey, we can help you be Westside wherever you are. We call that Westside

anywhere. So we've even, you know, messed around with the idea of instead of calling it Westside

online because online really doesn't mean anything anymore because everybody's online. It meant

something a year ago, 10 years ago when that was the differentiating factor. But today online,

it doesn't really say much. But if you say Westside anywhere, then that sparks a little bit of

creativity in people to think, oh, I could have Westside in my home or my neighborhood. But what if I'm on

the Eastside? You're always on the Westside of something. You're always on the Westside of

something. So anyway. So anyway, those are the two flavors of micro-site. Awesome. Yeah. So let's

hone in a little bit on this idea of in the global, the micro, the church planning, like that, that's

awesome. But let's try to keep it in context. Yeah, keep it domestic. Domestic. Sure. That may

trickle over international for this. So let's get practical here, whether online or physical. Like let's

define what a micro-location or micro-site is. Who are they? What are they doing? Where are they going

to be? What are some examples of micro-locations that are around? Ours are, because it's passion-based,

because it's this initiative-based, they're all over the spectrum with the possibilities of what they

could be. So for example, there's a lady and her husband who are very passionate about special needs

adults. They realize that the people that are not getting the attention are the workers. So the people that

are driving these special needs adults around, they're caring for them. And so while the special

needs adults hang out in one room of their house on Sunday nights, they do church together in the

living room with the workers. So that's like one example of what a micro-location is. So that's

empowering to people from our church that said our passion is this, to become the pastors of house

church. Another example of that though is, I shared this yesterday, but it's the coolest story ever.

An inmate at one of our locations decided that after he found Christ, his passion is now to reach out to

other people that were in his similar situations. So not necessarily just an inmate, but he's a convicted

murderer. So he's serving 65 years and he's like, guys, I love what you're doing, but you will never

reach the hardcore people in this jail with like praise and worship music and a sermon. And so what he's

decided to do is something that he's calling hardcore church. And so we helped him learn how to edit

videos. So he's creating his own videos. He's using former gang members, testimonies, that kind of thing.

And he's, he's recruited like cell leaders. So he's got his own team working with the chaplain at the

jail. And I went, I went on Sunday to be there for him for, for that service on my way here. And they

had like 307 inmates that, that, that, that were not the normal people we minister to in that jail. And

can't stress that enough. Like that's not, they're not double dipping. There's 300 completely separate

inmates. So for us, a micro location is empowering a normal person to lead a church that could be 15

people. It could be 300 people. I would basically echo your answer for us. A micro church is again,

it's a spiritual extended family. It's led by ordinary people. And we wouldn't call it like a micro site,

per se, because again, we see it more as an extended spiritual family, but they would have locations that

they're called to. Um, some examples that I just mentioned a few minutes ago, uh, one of them,

Chad and Allison Chambers, they've embedded into the youth rodeo circuit. These are kids that are,

you know, middle school, high school age. And every weekend, there's a different rodeo. And there's

about, you know, a couple hundred families that are making this circuit. So they started making disciples

in that kind of traveling band of gypsies that follow the rodeo. And, uh, like three weeks ago,

they had two, uh, women get baptized. Like they're leading people to Christ. Yeah, it is. It's amazing.

And what happens is when they're at the rodeo now, they've had so many people come to faith that they

actually have a public service and they'll have, uh, more than a hundred people who show up for that

gathered service. But then outside of the radio, uh, rodeo, we also do, we call discovery Bible studies.

So these are, it's a very simple discovery based of way of engaging the Bible. So they'll spin out

discovery Bible studies in the hometowns of the people that are a part of this larger microchurch

as a way to multiply potential new microchurches. Another family, the Barnes, um, their kids are

in a travel baseball league and, um, and then their daughters in a travel volleyball league.

That's become kind of the feeder system for their microchurch, which is located in Piper,

which is a rural community. And, uh, they've grown to where if they throw a party, they'll

have a hundred people show up. But within that there's six or seven families that kind of make

up the core of the family. Um, for us, a microchurch is going to have, you're going to have the presence of

worship community and mission. And you need to have, um, that, that balance of all three in our mind for

it to actually be a church. Like a guy who is passionate about the homeless, who's like feeding

them and then reading verses and then kind of goes home. That's fantastic. It's not a church though.

Right. So when you have a community that's built around the person of Jesus, they're practicing

community mission and worship. And for us, they also have to be willing to come under some kind

of governance. Like for us, it's pretty simple. Jesus is the head of the church. Amen. But then

there's also elders and deacons, you know? So when they're connected to the hub, they're connected

to a network of microchurches where there is that kind of governance, where they're going to

experience the headship of Jesus through eldership and so forth. A lot of what we're talking about,

they're very, um, so positive. You've got people, you got six or seven families doing a thing, um,

connected to this, uh, sporting. I honestly never thought of that. Gathering a hundred people together,

but having a core family of six or seven that are in control of their own, uh, spiritual growth,

spiritual development. A lot of times, uh, when talking with, with churches, there's a,

there's an underlying negativity, uh, maybe a perception when it comes to a house church,

somebody that's kind of controlling their own spirituality or, you know, they're so disgruntled

with the big C church or a local church expression that they're kind of doing something

on their own. What's, what is that tension really like? Like, how do you answer some of those concerns

or, or what's your perception of reading of a situation of a family who arguably another church

would look at it like, well, they're isolating themselves from being part of a larger community,

instead doing this together in their own neighborhood? Okay. For us, I think whenever

there's any kind of movement, the first part of the movement is always reactionary.

So like missional has been a movement in America for what, 15 years. So I do think early on,

there were a lot of people that were angry, um, and not unjustifiably so. There's probably some

legitimate reasons for their anger. There's been a lot of like spiritual abuse and, and corruption.

And we all can name one leader after another who built their brand around their personality,

and then it collapsed. And a lot of people have been hurt by that and disillusioned by that.

Um, but what I see a lot more of happening right now is actually like mature expressions of missional,

like what's happening with church anywhere. Like the folks that are a part of the Kansas City

underground, um, many of them discovered this passion for mission in the context of the prevailing model.

Like Westside was a fertile environment where they were learning how to become a disciple maker.

They were experiencing missionary formation. They were growing as leaders, discovering their calling,

leading this thing on mission. So when we launched out of Westside, it was actually a really positive

experience in that a bunch of people who had been developed this way. Now we're launching out, um,

a new expression of church that isn't just reaction against the old. It's more like an extension,

um, that in order for it to reach its full potential needed to break away from the prevailing model.

Um, so we, what we do to keep it being from being reactionary or getting toxic is like,

we have like a orth, orthodoxy kind of irreducible minimum that everybody agrees to,

which is like the apostles creed, the Lausanne covenant. And then we have 18 values that are part of

what it means to be the underground. The hub also provides like support and coaching and governance.

We feel like, and I've been in the prevailing model and very successful churches for 25 years. Like,

I feel like we have better eyes on, and we're more informed about what's happening in our microchurches

on a daily and weekly basis than most churches are about what's going on in their small groups.

It's just true.

Agreed.

Like, and there's a-

Yeah, I can second that too. And I'm, I'm part of Westside and my wife, she is a part of underground,

right? Because we have this, Westside is great. I often talk about it as it's a kingdom incubator.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it allows for expressions of kingdom work to go beyond the four walls of Westside,

you know, Disciples made with you. Great example. Underground's a great example. The,

the point I'm trying to make is, is that my wife has been poured into, she told me this. She's like,

I feel like I've been poured into more in the past year or two than I have in my entire life before.

Prisga.

That was the last piece I was going to say. He didn't say it, this phrase, but what got, what gets elevated to

this level and answers your question specifically is the level of soul care they provide to these

folks. Because the folks that step out, if you step out angry, whether you step out angry to plant a

church or you step out angry to start a microchurch, if you start out angry, you're going to end up

shriveling. The antidote to that is meaningful soul care under the governance support of the elders

and deacons. And, and you can't, you can't keep going in underground. You'll find your way out.

Yeah. In fact, every new microchurch leader goes through a really immersive assessment where we're

checking into like, how are you with your most important relationships, with your spiritual and

emotional health, how are you actually doing financially? And then we do a really deep

assessment on their calling. Um, everything from the GPS assessment we developed to Enneagram and

strength binders and disc and every single microchurch leader gets like a personalized coaching plan.

Um, that's like probably a year's worth of spiritual direction. Um, and then we're meeting with them to

kind of follow through on that. So all of that kind of stuff keeps it healthy, keeps it on mission and

not reactive. And there's, there's, I think if you're hearing a lot of this, it's like, whoa, that's a lot.

And yes, that is true. And I also believe that because of the way that this is being approached,

it is getting close to why you can take an ordinary person and release them into ministry

is because of this backup stuff that you guys are doing. One of the prevailing statistics that gets

talked about a lot is that the best way to get gospel saturation, have more people get baptized,

more people come to Jesus is to is new church plants. And I think that that's not necessarily

causation, but a correlative step, because I personally believe that the reason why people

get saved and people get baptized and more people get saved and baptized in a new church plant is

because the church planter was the only one that got really discipled. So if we were to really disciple

to this level, everybody, what would happen? That would change the statistic.

Let me, let me interject one thing, because we've used this word disciple, I don't know,

a dozen times in the past 15 minutes. Disciple means 100 things to 80 different people. So let's

assign, let's actually define right now what discipleship means. Like our usage of using it,

gentlemen, what is exactly discipleship?

Well, I mean, I think one of the biggest issues is the disciple making. You're pointing it,

it lacks definition and it lacks a definition that includes a motivation for people to want to be a

part of it. And I believe that Jesus offers the most extraordinary invitation that's filled with

motivation to be a disciple of his. It's in John 10, 10. It's like, let's leave the stuff that's broken,

that the thief killed, steal, killed, and destroyed. And let's walk into a fully alive life. Anybody at

fully alive already? That's it. Anybody like to have a little bit more of that fully alive

tomorrow? Yeah. And everybody in the world is saying the same thing.

So if Jesus has that kind of invitation to being his disciple, come live fully alive and leave the

brokenness of the thief, then what does that look like? And the Holy Spirit, I believe, is the source of

transformation in a disciple's life. So we ought to ask the question, how does the spirit then

practically change the life of a person into a more fully alive life? Amen.

And to me, yeah, I'm with you. Totally with you. Right? And so, I mean, you look at the scriptures and

everything boils down to these two ideas. One, he's going to bear spiritual fruit in your life.

If you're not more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, you know, self-controlled, faithful,

whatever the other one is. If you're not that, and you can parse Romans, you've missed the point.

And we're not helping people cultivate that fruit. But a definition of a disciple is one who's

becoming filled with the Spirit, evidence of the Spirit. And the other part of the Spirit's

influence in our life is what the Bible calls spiritual gifts. You know, a lot of people try

to take disciple making and boil it down. It's not what you're doing, it's who you're becoming. Or it's

not just what you're becoming, it's what you're doing. It's a hundred percent both of those things.

And if we really aim at disciple making around those two things, we call them character, fruit of the

Spirit. And then our personal calling, which is largely informed by the gifts of the Spirit, but

there's more to a personal calling. What we found in our disciple making efforts is when we cultivated fruit

and developed gifts, that created an impact in the people and then through the people that made people

predisposed to doing the kind of activity that these folks are talking about. It's almost like it created

a space for a new creativity, a new imagination about how they can be priests in their own pulpit,

whether that's serving in the way they have or the Algerian folks or whatever. I mean,

the Spirit is infinitely creative in how He wants to give people. So the definition, character times

calling equals impact. Motivation, intrinsically there. We were born to be people who are in

relationship with people. And by the way, if you develop the fruit of the Spirit, your relationships

get a whole lot better. How many of you would have better relationships with your kids if you were

more patient, self-controlled, kind, gentle. How about with your spouse? I don't have to go far.

You want those relationships. And Jesus is saying, "The thief broke him, and I've come to fix him."

All right? And then everybody's dying for the significance answer in their life. We talk about

legacy. We talk about wanting to be an intimate part of whatever is good in the world. And if you've

been given spiritual gifts from heaven that the Father says, "I'll infuse with my power to go beyond

what you can do on your own to make a difference," then why not sign up? And by the way, those two

deep-seated passions of ours to become better people that have loving relationships and to be people of

significance and influence are wired into our IT. See? I tried that. I'm a discipleship guy. I tried to go

into your world. Let me pick myself back up here. God hard-coded into you at your creation those two

desires. When he said, "Be fruitful and multiply," what does that take?

Animacy. How's it restored? Through the Spirit. And he's also hard-wired into you the "have dominion

over my creation." It's right there in the creation mandate. Be fruitful and multiply and have dominion.

That's right. So we're going to go ahead and call the ushers forward for us to talk us.

Can I jump in here with that? Please, go ahead.

Bec, I'm going to bounce off of what you just said to answer this question. So for most of you in this

room, you're not in the context of something like the underground. So you have a governing body over

top of you. It's very similar to my estimation. We are a church, not like a movement. And so it's

significantly harder to talk to leadership about the negative impacts of doing something like house

church. Because if you say, "Hey, let's have our people go be the church outside of the building,"

naturally, the building's a lot more empty. And so the church leadership across the country

looks at that and says, "Are you crazy? I'm not going to let people not come to the church."

Just hit the tension point. Right, hit the tension point. But here's the shift, though.

Whenever you empower people to go be like Jesus, that's really attractive. And we've noticed,

and it was a shock to us, but when we got out of the mindset of everything's about us,

I have this tattoo that says, "Not the kingdom of Tyler." It's this constant reminder like,

"Hey, it's not my kingdom." And so when we got out of the mindset of like,

it's all about building this physical building of the people in this church. I got 305 Oliver

Street in Cordon, Indiana. Our people became so attractive because they're living like Jesus

on mission and on purpose that our physical campus grew as well.

So wait a minute. Tyler, you're saying that if people become more open-handed and generous that

God will give more... Somebody probably taught that at some point.

The byproducts we thought with the negativity was actually a positive byproduct for us.

So not only did these microsites grow, but then our community of believers that were not in microsites

also began to grow because they saw our church going into the community, which is part of what

we're called to do. Another tension point that's like the numbers on the weekend is also giving.

People are concerned like, "Okay, the giving is going to just go to the wind." Like our experience

in the underground, I have a very, very close friend. He's actually like my spiritual father who

planted kind of a traditional model church at the same time as the underground. And if you would compare

our giving, like our internal giving through the microchurches towards the hub to sustain everything,

is actually outpacing the giving that's coming in in the weekend services in the traditional

model. And these are up to 300 people a weekend. And so that's been an interesting sort of like

experiment that we've been sort of running concurrently.

The same logic applies. Whenever you're living on mission and on purpose,

you're becoming a better disciple, which will lead to more generosity in total. It all comes full circle

there. But we've somehow for a long time kind of just stopped the ball from rolling and focused on

butts in seats. It's true.

So what are the tensions? Because we live in a world, and I put a slide up, USA Church is often

driven by large buildings and butts in seats. I didn't know he was going to say that. It was already

predestined. Is there a place for - predestined. All right. Is there a place for micro sites?

So the goal of the people in here is that they're doing the large. We need to go from large to small.

What tensions is an organization that's used to large going small? What tensions are they going to feel?

I think Jason should probably jump in this one. I do, actually. I'm not a staff at a large church.

Yeah. I can tell you about, okay, on a personal level, I can tell you about the tension in our

family, you know, because I'm a pastor of a large prevailing church with a, you know, an online campus of

thousands of people. And my wife

really felt like helping out the underground. And so there are two different, and don't get me wrong, underground

isn't, I think, has been launched from Westside. We call it divide and partner.

So the expression, in order for it to be what it needed to be, at some point when the teenager gets old enough,

they need to leave the house.

And they're not, it's not best to keep them cloistered in the basement. You've got to launch them.

And so that's what I feel like, you know, simple church and Casey and all that stuff,

when we went with disciples made at some point, you've got to launch it for it to be what God wants

it to be, because it's not our church. It's Jesus church. So at the end of the day, the, the way that

things happen is so radically different in the Casey underground context and everything that Maria was

used to, it was major whiplash because she had to unlearn so many things in order to be able to

even know how to function inside this environment that it took a while.

She kept thinking I was the lead pastor.

We don't have any pastors. Like everybody who leads a microchurch is a pastor, but we don't have

pastors on staff, you know, but probably the first three or four months I had to correct her for it,

but I was like, I'm not, I'm not a lead pastor.

We'll see. And that's, that actually surfaces. One of the tensions is the confusion because we tried to

have simple church and Casey underground coexist inside the big box environment. And what we created

was a lot of confusion for people because the discipleship pathways were so radically different

from one expression to the other. People were just confused and they didn't know what to do.

And they would, it was, it wasn't working. It wasn't working well.

I can share another tension point as well. When it comes to developing volunteers,

you know, everybody has the scramble, even IT folks has the scramble to have enough volunteers to

carry out the work on a given weekend. Like I was in charge of all the systems for first impressions

and small groups and everything else. So we had our own roll call every week. And when we started

developing our people, we realized that they were, their personal calling actually led them out of our

our department, you know, and I don't know about what you call it, but that's called customer

acquisition. You paid a price to get those people in your department. And now you're going to send

them off to the worship team or God help us the IT team or, you know, whatever else. And I can

remember the very first time, you know, my very first group discipling this way, where the guy, it was

pretty evident didn't really care as much about leading small groups as he cared about his microsite,

which was investing in folks that were on the autism scale to help them find employment and to

maintain employment. And he's changing the industry and that whole thing now. And I remember that tension

point of asking, will I let them go into their personal calling out of my space, even if that makes me

recruit more? And I answered that question quickly because God graciously gave me a conviction

that it's about the people and not about me. Like I need that tattoo. I can give you one later.

Make sure he doesn't get my tattoo. But that wasn't the case all the way around.

You know, when it came to opportunity for other folks and other departments to decide, well,

do I let these people go? Then you've got that same tension point. Will I try to hold on to people

or will I release them to this? And, uh, and that became a tension. Wow.

Yeah. The Bust in Seats model. Um, I, the only answer I can give you to this, uh, the, I don't,

I don't know what else I could say beyond this, but we have brought more people into the kingdom

and baptize more people at microsites this year than we have onsite. Um, so that's in my grand scale

of things that completely destroys that argument in my mind. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, if your goal is

actually a gospel saturation, which to me is like every man, woman, boy and girl being able to see,

hear and experience and respond to the gospel, like the more, what do you call it? Micro churches or

microsites or ministries or whatever ministries. It's like we're each time we're increasing the mission

mosaic, right? They're like pieces of a mosaic. Yeah. And so if we want to actually see the entire

metro Kansas city area in our case, it's like, well, we think it's going to take 20,000 microchurches

because that would be about 100 people for every microchurch. And we think a healthy microchurch

and it's kind of what we call spheres of influence can touch and really be, um, a gospel presence for

about a hundred people, you know? Well, you can't do that from one location, even if it's core,

which is amazing. And there's 19,000 people here, but it's still a drop in the bucket,

right? And if we keep doing and trying to scale out this very expensive model where it requires

buildings and lots of professional staff, it's like, we're never going to scale out the gospel

saturation. It's too expensive. There aren't enough high level leaders who can manage the complexities of

this thing. Um, but when church is like 20 people in my neighborhood and planning for mission is

planning the next party and inviting three new neighbors, it's like, okay, millions of people

can do that. And if discipleship like our, when we create robust experiences, but they're simple

for an ordinary person to lead and replicate, like it's, that's the game changing stuff.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's powerful right there. Um, let me ask this question because when you

mentioned the story or when, when Jason mentioned the story of his wife and you said, there's no

lead pastor, I, I twitched a little bit. I confess. Um, and it's in it, honestly, it's the

next question. There's only one chief shepherd. His name is Jesus. That's the only. So let's,

let's, let's unpack this and let's break it down at a biblical level. Um, are, what is a, what's a

challenge? Where does microsite struggle? Or does it not? Is there anything that a microsite cannot

be that the Bible calls us to be? Here's what I think. It, it can easily be less than like there's,

okay, if I had a whiteboard and draw this, like, okay, at this end of the, imagine a funnel. Okay.

At this end of the funnel and it's widest, I think a hundred percent of God's people are called to be

missionaries and disciple makers. That's your birthright as a child of God. Then you, the funnel

gets a little smaller within that group. There's a smaller number that are able to lead a team

of people or a group of people. Are you with me? Yeah. Right. And then within that group of people

that can lead a group or a team, there's a smaller number that can lead what I would call a church.

And, and then there's different models of church. If you're leading a micro church, there's tons of

people can lead that. But now if you're going to get to like prevailing traditional model,

now suddenly your funnel is getting like very, very small. So what I'm saying is if my biblical ecclesiology

like, I think the strongest case is the definition I've already given. Like if you look at what the

church was in the new Testament reality, like from the best historical data and, and also in terms of

like just biblical studies, most of the churches in the new Testament are probably 20 to 70 people that

were in Oikos, a network that was converted basically to a church. And they continued to meet like in their

homes and they became like little networks of these home churches in a city. Now when the church could

meet, bring everyone together, like they could in Jerusalem, they would, you know, and then Paul rented

a hall, the hall of what Tyrannus I think it was, right. And brought people together. So I'm all for the

public gatherings. And we actually have a space for public gatherings, even in the underground, where we bring

micro churches together as kind of a congregation to meet together. But if you have to get down to

like what is the essential ecclesiology to me, it's like, it's a spiritually, a spiritual extended family

that's led by, uh, what the Bible calls elders. And Paul didn't set up lead pastors. He set up teams

of elders in cities, right? It was a plurality of leadership. And then there's the other layer of

deacons that came in with the church of Jerusalem. Those are pretty much the only offices. So for me,

it's not a church, if there's no eldership, like to me, it's like you're, it's a great Christian group.

But if you're not under any eldership somewhere, then you're, you've chosen not to really be under

the full headship of Jesus. Because like, to me, it's like you see elders and deacons. So for it to be

a micro church, in my mind, you have to be practicing community mission and worship. And we all kind of know

the main passages for those great commandment, great commission, right? Um, but then you also have to

have those offices in place somewhere. Now that doesn't mean every micro church has to have its own

circle of elders, right? But over this network of micro churches, there are elders providing oversight.

You just alluded to elders, deacons over a network. And I'm just curious, it's not even on my list of

questions, but how, what does a network look like compared to like a one-off? Like what's the, the

stability of something of, of, of a family doing it versus creating a larger theologically backed

network of house churches that are running? Like, give me a, give me a pros and cons kind of both.

Well, I just think if you're a one-off, you're completely vulnerable. It's not going to be

sustainable. Um, it's unbiblical because you're not connected to any eldership. I think the Bible

clearly teaches that. Um, the way that we're doing it right now, this first year of the underground,

again, we're still an infant. Okay. So, um, but we decided the first year, we're just going to do

like one hub and we're going to support and create multiple networks of micro churches.

So we have like one network that's forming in Shawnee and one that's up in

Piper and Bonner, and then another one that's forming in Overland Park and Olathe. Like we have

these networks of micro churches that are forming. So we just started a task force that's going to do

elder training. So that like probably the middle of next year, we'll have elders for each one of these

networks. And then we'll formalize that and we're going to call them collectives. Okay. So a collective

is a network of at least four or five micro churches and they have eldership. Um, they will have ownership

of kind of like sustaining themselves and replicating themselves, all the signs of maturity kind of thing.

Um, they will choose to gather as much as they want. So then networks might say, we want to meet with

all the micro churches once a month. Others might say, you know what, we're going to meet every week

and we'll leave that up to the elders in those regions.

So you've been talking about this. You've got this leader, you've got this person in your funnel,

you're driving them deeper in and you want them to be the, the pastor of your house church. Uh,

you use the term campus pastor for your, your, uh, micro sites. Like, um, how do you prepare someone?

How do you grow someone to the point where they're spiritually mature enough to shepherd,

to lead, to guide house church of 30, 50, 100 people? So we, we do a, a one-on-one teaching basis.

So the first, the first couple that we launched our first two micro sites with, um, I, I trained

them for a while, uh, about six months, uh, going over a lot of the stuff that we cover in our

discipleship, um, groups like rooted, things like that, um, spiritual rhythms, spiritual disciplines

that they, they're going to need in order to pastor these people. Um, and then from then on out,

they have served as pretty much the, the gold standard and the trainers. Um, so whenever we launch

a new one, we, we kind of send them to that micro site, um, to, to like shadow these people for a

while before we launch those out. Um, but there's like, there's no, like, how many of you guys went to

Christian college? Yeah. How many of you really were prepared to do ministry when you got to your

for sure? Like, you don't, you don't know how to do ministry until you do ministry. And so, um,

we are comfortable with empowering people to use the gifts God's given them, realizing that there

might be some failures, but, um, the, the, the pros outweigh the cons in that every, every time for us.

Uh, for us, we've got like a suite of tools and training that go from informal to formal.

Um, and our hub, basically, you've got that personal discovery calling team

that helps you discover your calling, do kind of a deep dive on your own spiritual,

emotional, relational health. You get spiritual direction. So it's provided. We have a startup

coaching team that meets with new potential leaders to help them basically put together

their business plan for their new kingdom initiative. We have an ongoing coaching team

that helps to optimize the ongoing micro churches. Um, and then, um, we also, I'll let you go ahead

and talk about, we have what we call intentional disciple making environments, which is, is actually

kind of a overall, it would take you three years to go through this training. But like Tyler said,

it's on the job training. It's not like you're doing this all beforehand. And then when you're

finished with this, you'll go, it's like, no, you're doing this along the way. So why don't you talk

about the ideas? IDE, um, basically I created a couple of things. Westside was really good at

reaching the lost and equally good at losing the found, if that makes sense. We could get a lot

of folks there, but we could help seekers become believers, but we weren't systematically helping

believers become followers and followers become influencers. And so it created a couple of

experiences to do that. I'll unpack those in just a minute. But at one point I was asked,

you can't take the tools, Brian, that you've created into a third world environment where we're

doing some of our global work. So what are the irreducible minimums? And out of that has come our

language for intentional disciple making environment. And it's really three phrases that summarize it all.

The first one is outcome focused. We're relentlessly focused on the outcomes. And what are the outcomes,

if you recall, character and call? So we're always revisiting. How are we doing? Are you more loving

and joyful, peaceful? How's the calling going? The development going? Not just determining what your

gifts are, but your area of passion is and serve in that area of passion with your gifts. So we're

relentlessly focused on those two things. So it's outcome focused. It's habit fueled. Habit fueled.

It's not content fueled. Learning things doesn't make you different. It just helps you realize the gap

between where you could be and where you are, which is a problem. Right? I can't go to a CrossFit gym,

open up their manual and read it and get more fit. But for whatever reason, we've allowed content to

kind of remain king inside the church. Thinking that if we deliver the information, the practical

applications will be made and the outcomes will be accomplished. I think that that's not working.

Okay? Exclamation point. Here, here. So it's outcome focused and it's habit fueled. And what's

important is to marry the habits to the outcomes. I don't want to go to a CrossFit gym,

as I can demonstrate without any further

investigative research on that. Right? But there have been seasons of my life where the, uh, the

outcome of a more fit body got me into the gym and will get me back because it tastes good when you get

going. So what if we did tie the spiritual habits to the spiritual outcomes that help you get there?

And everybody gets it. You know, if you want the reps, you want the abs, you got to do the reps.

And it's the same thing with spiritual formation.

Somehow the enemy has tricked us into believing that the habits are about legalism.

Like it could be further from the truth.

Outcome focused, habit fueled, and then content flavored. The content is adjusted based upon where

they are in their spiritual formation. You don't teach systematic theology to folks that are

searching for Jesus. But you don't teach Craig Groeschel's same six week thing for people that are

wanting to really grow. If that makes sense. There's content that can serve folks at different

areas of formation. So that's our IDE. That's our intentional disciple making environment. And we

have one that's six months long that basically reorients people around the missional rhythms of

dependence upon the spirit to actually change in character and calling. It's called followers made.

Folks that have done that and you have to be serving somewhere in Jesus name to actually get

into these things. And it's a high bar, you know, exclusive invitation, limited duration.

What are some of the other dynamics that are unusual about followers made? Well, the length of it.

Most people are shocked that you can get someone to do six months. Yeah. And then everyone in it,

it's built on shared leadership. So not only are you learning to be a disciple by the end of it,

you're ready to make disciples. And we average 30% reproduction rate. 30% of the people that go through

followers made end up actually making you disciples. Wow. It is crazy. And another distinctive of it is we

encourage groups of up to 12 because Jesus kind of modeled that. And then we break the group, we

subdivide the groups into triads. And it's all done all at the same time. In our technology that we

delivered, we actually are a tech company that depends on tech. We deliver these experiences in a way where

you're actually reading the scripture like you version in our app. You're actually journaling.

And I will, I believe in an I will statement like, what did I learn? What am I going to do about it

within the app? And you have two other people in the group of 12 or above the 12 that are actually

seeing your journals and holding you accountable to them. Wow. So it's not just the frequency of the

journaling that you're required to keep up with. It's the actual actions that Jesus led you to

in that app. So followers made, there's a 10 and a half month leaders made that

optimizes spiritual influence and spiritual leadership, servant leadership. And then we have

one called missionaries made, which takes those folks that are already mature in Christ, either

after followers made or after leaders made, typically not all the time, that helps people really deep

dive into the blessed rhythms, where they're fully engaged with their neighbors and God is creating

spiritual activity in and through them in their area. And then microchurch learning community is a 12-month

process that helps you actually move from just having that spiritual activity into more organized

and trained into the whole system that lends to a network of houses and hubs.

So you've got disciples made. That's the six-month one. That's the initial one, right?

Disciples made is the umbrella that all four of them. Okay. So which is, well, I'm sorry,

what's that first one called? Followers made. Followers made. All right. So followers made is that

first bucket of the six months. Like what percentage of people that are involved in any given house

church micro-location go through followers made? Well, again, we have this, back to that suite of tools,

we have informal tools, which are things like, we have a set of like 11 different shapes or symbols

that are each around a key area of life. And it's the kind of thing where you can share them in like

two minutes with somebody, or you could have a two-hour conversation about it, or we have discovery

Bible studies where you can spend six weeks on it. We train all of our microchurch leaders on how to use

all those tools. Because they typically end up starting by using these informal tools. Then we teach

people how to do discovery Bible study, which is a very simple way of engaging the scripture as a community.

It bakes in obedience. It bakes in reproduction. So we teach people how to do discovery Bible study.

And then we have these follower made, leaders made. So we're again, we're under a year old. We have just

launched like one new followers made, one new leaders made, a new missionaries made, and a new microchurch

learning community. So right now, there's four of those operating. But it's just the first round.

It's not the first round for Disciples Made stuff.

No, but in the underground it is.

In Disciples Made, I mean, you guys are in New Spring Church, you're like lots of other

restores, about 40 or 50 churches so far. We're very young, very small, but about

over 5,000 people have come through these experiences.

So you've got tools that, you know, cold to hot. Maybe you've got some of the

more organic two minutes, two hours type of things to get someone who's maybe cold to Christ or cold to

the idea, and come warm them up into the process and eventually get them in a more rich pipeline of

followers made and others to roll.

Yeah. Like we would tell people it's probably going to be at least 12 to 24 months before you

actually see a really sustainable extended spiritual family in your community. And that's at the point

where you can start looking and going, okay, maybe I'll start a followers made with my microchurch.

And so it's interesting, you've got two different paradigms here, and I don't want to tug on the thread too hard,

but 12 to 24 months over here with followers made. I know rooted is probably 10 to 12 weeks.

And there's obviously strengths and weaknesses in both models and challenges to overcome.

But what's interesting is both of them have a pathway to go through to create an additional

disciple model. Well, there is a common denominator with all of this. Go for it.

It's not, it's their discipleship strategy is not one and done. It's coaching on top of just-in-time

training. Yeah. Just-in-time training. I love that. Cool. Yeah.

Tyler, Jeff, you mentioned the rooted. Tyler, did you guys use that to help build leaders up and

to prepare them for that? Is that kind of part of that training? I'll get like a two or three minute

coming. So initially, no, because we started Church Anywhere before we started doing Rooted as a

church. So we're two and a half years in Church Anywhere at this point. We started Rooted about a

year and a half ago. So now that's the funnel. Before it was, like I said, the one-on-one teaching,

the one-on-one, come along with me to a hospital call, that kind of deal. But now we have a much better

funnel. When we started it, like nobody else was doing that. So we had no idea what we were doing.

David Ertz yesterday says like the Wild West. We're shooting whatever just to see what happens. And

that's kind of how we did it. So we knew we wanted to push our people to be the church. We just didn't

have a great strategy to make those disciple leaders yet. And now we do. So we've been doing

Rooted now for about a year and a half or so. It's interesting. I just had a conversation with

a church leader out in Spokane. He's a new thing network leader out there. And they use Rooted too

as the front end of their kind of slapship pathway. And they're about to adopt Missionaries Made as

like the phase two part. It's like a four month. As he was saying that, I was like, man, that could

marry together so well. I was like, I think it's gonna, it seems like they'll actually really

complement it. We just worked with Rooted to develop an app as well. So we piloted the first

online Rooted group. And through that, they developed an app where everything was like right on there,

where you can have community within it. You can read the material. You can stay connected,

did that kind of deal. Sounds heartily familiar. Seriously, there's a lot of shared. How we did it

before was so scattered because we were in Zoom, Marco Polo, Facebook, and all this stuff, but now

it's all over the place. Yeah, one of the things that I hope you guys are noticing is that the

conversation that we were having about church online five, ten years ago was about the Sunday

service, but a lot of the new tools that you're seeing and what people are putting their energy

toward is the more important discipleship stuff that's happening. And the tech that we need to

make the discipleship work. The online ministry that we do, the Sunday service is such a small

portion of that. Right. When I come to this conference, I have to get my mind back around

like, okay, we need to focus on the Sunday service because I spend so much of my week not focusing

on the Sunday service and doing ministry in other ways. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, sorry. I don't

want to get lost on the Sunday service either. No. So somebody out there is thinking about doing

this, like how do they get started? What do they need to do? They probably need to have a

conversation with leadership. How's that go? Like what next step for somebody out there who's

interested in micro locations? What does that look like? If you're thinking about microchurch,

Brian Sanders, he leads the Underground Network, which is a larger network we're a part of. He just

released a new book. It's called Microchurches, a smaller way. I would read that book.

As a leadership team, because I think it's the best thing I've seen out there. And then

more importantly, I would ask you to think about how you can be a better missionary where

God has already sent you. So like when I'm talking about church leaders, I'll walk through

the bus rhythms and say, really the best thing you could do is like spend six months actually

really trying to live these rhythms deeply in one context and watch what Jesus does in your

own life. You know, I would start there. Yeah. I can't stress enough how, um, it's one thing to

talk about doing the cycle ministry in theory. It's another thing to actually, even though I'm the,

like the facilitator of all of Church Anywhere within our context. Um, like it is, it has changed my

life. Like really, I have a 17 year old daughter now because of Church Anywhere. Um, and so I can't

stress enough. Adopt it. Adopt it. Yeah. You have to be a part of it. Like you, you have to allow God to

take your calling and do the same thing. Um, and so start there. So even if you haven't had that

conversation with leadership yet and you're still tossing this around, nothing is stopping you from

going out and being a missionary in your neighborhood or in the local school system or wherever you're

passionate about it. Amen. With us, um, the quick answer to us is, you know, we would actually, if

you're interested in using disciples made more formal tools, like we were talking about, we actually

encourage you to start small. We don't want to go big. We encourage you to start with one pilot group

and let those stories invite other people because it is a different way that does create tensions over

time. And I would invite you to do it more small with leadership. Um, but I can give you a little poker

chip we have. That's my business card. And we've got videos on there that kind of unpack the IDE

followers made, leaders made that you can share with leadership. Uh, if nothing else, just to help

turn the dial more in the direction that we've discussed today. Yes, sir. And they're acting. You had one

as well. So, you know, my, my church site came from, I tried to launch missional communities a couple

years back. Um, and I've heard all four of you talk about, uh, these missional communities as micro

expressions. It's typically people who are focusing a majority of their time and effort being a part of

that community. So, uh, are the members of these micro churches also, uh, members and largely committed to

macro expressions of the church? Are they committing their time and their family specifically to these micro

sites? So ours are, are, um, so our, yeah, and our micro sites would consider themselves part of

First Catholic Christian church. For example, uh, there's an inmate at Branchville correctional

facility named Jerry who sends us a $10 check every single month, um, because he believes he should

be tithing to his church. Um, and that's not an uncommon thing for us. So they, they feel part of

our family. So it really is like a, um, like an, an extension of what we do in, in the building. Um,

with us just being the church outside of the building.

Oh, with Kansas city underground, um, most of the people in the micro church would see that as

their primary church. Uh, some of them though are also connected to other congregations.

So we have like various partnerships in the city. Like there's a large church in our city called

Heartland, probably church about 3000. And they, um, have freed up a staff person to help develop

micro church leaders in their congregation. So they see their, their congregation and their

church as the hub, you know, and they want to build out the equipping teams and they're a part of the

underground. So right now we're providing all those services for their people while they raise up

their first round of micro church leaders. And then over time can build their own equipping teams.

It's a, it has to be a philosophy shift because we would consider ourselves, we wouldn't say the hub,

but our church vision has shifted to function in a way of like our church is the hub. Um, and so if,

if the leadership can't make that shift, there's going to be some serious tension. Um, and you're

going to get into some problems of, well, these people are leaving and they're not, they're an actual

church, student house church, that kind of deal. Do you feel like though, the implementation of this

philosophy can fail? You try and have two feet in, you know, both these camps at the same time that we're going to be,

uh, our leadership and our vision is going to be up about macro church.

The thing I love about, uh, First Capital Church Anywhere is the vision is intricately tied to it.

That's right. Yeah. And they are, and they are reaching people that are not coming to the building.

And so I think if your audience overlaps, that's where you're going to have problems because you're,

you're Mike. It's the same thing with church online, where church online is allegedly taking people out of

the pews, find another audience, find a strategy place where it makes sense and allow both,

to compliment and help each other instead of constantly fighting and conflicting and robbing

Peter. Without that ministry philosophy shift, there will be tension. Which is in the leadership,

not just the audience. And so that's, and I know some, and I've had conversations with some of you

guys who are really considering this. It's a leadership, it's a strategy decision. You're just

rolling dice and launching something without having that strategy buy-in. Um, yeah, it's not going to

work. There's going to be too much attention. There's going to be too much. Um, I'm, I'm taking

away from this. I don't want to give it the attention. If there's some philosophical shifts

for this to be done well, that need to happen. And that leadership has that strong buy-in for it.

Yeah, I would, my, my experience having helped two churches transition and then like that, I was

personally, uh, on leadership team at, and then I've helped literally hundreds of other churches with

this is if, if you're trying to make attractional and missional equal, you can't do it. Attractional,

uh, requires a certain strategy. Missional requires a certain strategy. Sometimes they are literally

cross-current and that's just the reality of it. So you have to decide which is going to be the major,

and I think you can decide either one. You can say, we're going to be primarily attractional,

but we're going to create some space over here for R and D to do some great missional things.

Or you have to say, no, really we're attractional for missional. So now we're going to restructure

so that this is the primary and the attractional supports it, which is what I think you guys have done.

The byproduct of making it missional is the, the attractional part of what we do is, is the, is our

people, not necessarily like what we put on the stage. So it's still attractional. You can't ask people

to serve on the weekends in the children's ministry and then go launch these missions. You can't,

there's not enough time. But you can leverage those volunteer positions as incubators for developing

people's personal calling. We actually created a measurable on our data sheet for the first impressions

team. Like we had 230 volunteers or so at any given time. We had a line item in our measurables every

year. How many people did we graduate out to a better step of personal calling? Like they went,

they went from being just people that came to people that served. That's a smaller pool. If there's

people that serve, how do we help develop them and influence in that area and disciple them and then

disciple them out? So one of our micro sites is at an elementary school and

the, um, the, the lady started, uh, she's a teacher, but she started serving in our church,

um, in the elementary department, like the kids department. But when we released people,

uh, two years ago to like go about and be empowered to be the church, like she, we've cultivated this

passion within her for elementary kids for years. And so it was natural for her to step into the role

of volunteer campus pastor for an elementary campus of 100 kids.

I'm fortunate enough to have leadership behind me as far as doing on my career location.

The concern is the general attenders, the general attendance of getting the rest of the congregation

on board. Did you guys have any put back on that? And if you did, how did you navigate that?

Yeah, we had, we had some, um, but we shifted, like, like I said, we shifted our entire vision

of the entire church. So you're gonna, you're obviously gonna have to push back with that.

We knew we would take some lumps. Um, but as people started to see results, um, and so part of the

thing we do is we'll videotape baptisms, um, like at the other side. When you start showing that stuff

on the weekend of like, Hey, this is a so-and-so from two hours away. And, um, these people we sent

out to be pastors, just baptize them, check this out. Like people start to the way they feel about

these pretty quickly. There's a transition bell curve that saved my soul, Jesus, and then the

transition bell curve, because it helps you see, and this is a sociological proven thing that's in

businesses. Anytime you bring change into an organization, you've got the innovators, you've

got the early adopters, you've got the early majority, the late majority, and then the laggards,

and there's percentages of people. And here's what I've learned. It's the stories of the innovators

that attract the early adopters. It's the story of the early adopters that gain the trust of the

early majority, and so forth. And then the last 16%, the laggards, they never come.

And so there will always be pushback. There will always be 16% pushback,

regardless, for as long as you do it, until they're gone.

And if you disciple right, you're well beyond that 16%.

If you disciple right, that's why we actually say start small, and let the stories of the

first group or two or three start to leaven in the flower. It just grows over time.

So for us, that 16% pushback became very quickly outweighed by the like 103%

life change compared in person. But you can Google that bell curve and see those stats, and it's so

helpful. We're going to break the podcast right there. Many of you guys are considering this shift

to a micro location. And having done them, it is a very exciting part of ministry and the ability

that we have to impact the disciple to help people grow deeper in their faith, even using online to

create a virtual network of discipleship across the country and around the world.

Man, it's just awesome. And I pray for churches today, and I've been encouraged more and more

as more and more churches are realizing that that church online needs to replicate itself in physical

areas. And they're using this idea of the micro model really to kind of start to foster and grow

these micro locations all around the country. And so it is happening. It is a model and we will see

it continue to grow and prayerfully succeed. But this idea of getting leadership on board is so key.

And I just wanted to reiterate here right now with y'all. As you're developing these plans,

a philosophical shift like a micro location is definitely something that your leadership, that

your senior pastor, that your elders, whatever your structure is at your church, they need to understand

and catch the vision of. There are some things in church online where I've had pastors tell me in the

past, I don't care what you're doing, Jeff, just go out there and just make it happen. That's

awesome. I trust you intricately. The idea of a micro location is not something that you can just get

a free pass on. But in finding that strategy where you can reach out and impact people through the

micro location that isn't impacting your physical campus locations or fine tuning it in such a way

that both can coexist, that's where you're going to see the physical church is going to understand the

most of what church online can give you, where you're not just impacting the local areas in your town,

but you're expanding your church's reach far beyond the 15-20 miles around your building to

where God leads you and where the Holy Spirit can direct you. Micro locations goes a step further and

takes the lid off of the church. And all of a sudden you can see yourself spread in a richer,

deeper and further way. And we discussed in many ways in this podcast why micro locations can help the

church. And there's certainly more that we'll be talking about soon. Well, it's been a great podcast.

We've loved being here with you guys and we look forward to seeing you again soon here at the

church digital podcast. Y'all have a good day.