Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week I’m excited to be talking with Stephen Moore, the Director of WinShape Camps for Communities. WinShape, an organization started in 1985 by Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, started as a college program and has since grown into five different ministries, with focuses on professional development, marriages, foster care, college discipleship, and summer camps. WinShape Camps for Communities is a traveling day camp program that partners with churches to bring camps to communities all over the US while spreading the gospel of Jesus.

Are you looking for a fun and engaging way to reach more families in your community with the gospel? Want to create opportunities for college-age kids to gain ministry experience while developing their leadership? Listen in as Stephen talks about the importance of children’s ministry in shaping the future of the church as well as the transformative power of camps for campers, their families, and the summer staff.

• Children are the future. // Children’s ministry is more than just a place to keep kids occupied during services. The future of the church is children; the gospel is for them too. WinShape Camps for Communities wants to help build local, engaged church members from a young age in the places they visit. They don’t water down the gospel at the camps so the kids who attend can come to a knowing relationship with Christ.
• Engaging kids. // The mission statement of WinShape Camps for Communities is to glorify God by creating experiences that transform campers and families with the message of Christ. Don’t just entertain kids by showing videos in your kids ministry, but invest in discipleship and be intentional to engage them as they learn about Jesus.
• Form a bond. // WinShape Camps for Communities is about embracing all-out-fun and all-out-faith. By spending time with the kids at camp and investing with them in the activities they enjoy, the staffers build trust and form a bond them. Then when the time comes for the WinShape staff to share the gospel, the kids are ready to open up and listen. Camp is a setting where the gospel can come alive in a way that it doesn’t in day-to-day life at home.
• Bringing camp to you. // Not everyone can afford or feels comfortable sending their children to overnight camps. WinShape Camps for Communities partners with churches and local businesses to bring camp to a community. The traveling camps provide a safe and fun environment for children during the summer, while also incorporating the gospel and faith into the activities which range from sports and crafts to science experiments.
• Work with others in your community. // WinShape Camp for Communities is for local churches in a community, not just one church by itself. WinShape hosts a big event every January and invites host churches for a rally in Atlanta. There is a three-day event with guest speakers to teach and empower church leaders. They are also invited to bring up to eight people from different churches with them. When they go back home, these churches are given information on how to engage with other businesses and churches to invite them to partner with the traveling camp.
• WinShape brings everything. // The churches partnering with WinShape don’t have to provide anything other than volunteers to help connect with the kids. WinShape Camps for Communities bring everything with them, including all the necessary equipment and resources for the activities. Everything they do ties back to the gospel, including flag football, where they take breaks for short devotionals. By providing volunteers from the local churches to work with the kids, the kids will see familiar faces if their family decides to attend services at the church.
• An opportunity for young adults. // Working as summer staff at camps is an invaluable experience for college-age kids as well. Regardless of a young person’s area of study in college, working at a camp contributes to their personal and spiritual growth as well as helping develop their leadership skills. Plus, the impact of working with kids and families to make a difference in their lives is priceless.

You can find out more about WinShape Camps for Communities at www.winshapecamp.org.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody; welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today. You know it’s summertime and you know when you think of summer you think of camps, and so today ah we’ve brought you a bit of a different look on leadership on something that all of us I really do think should be reflecting with. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today will be absolutely no exception to that. Super excited to have Stephen Moore with us. He serves as the Director of WinShapes Camps for Communities, a traveling day camp program that brings camps ah to churches all over the country. Ah where he’s ah he’s served with WinShape camps for over sixteen years. Stephen has recruited literally thousands of summer staff to bring the gospel of Jesus and even more more ah to even more campers and families. Super excited for ah Stephen to be on the show. He’s he’s also excited for the local church. And we’re looking forward to learning more from him today. Thanks for being here today, Stephen.

Stephen Moore — Happy to be here, Rich. Thank you for having me and excited to engage with you about camp and about what we’re talking about this morning.

Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you kind of ah tell what did I miss about WinShape, tell us about WinShape folks that don’t know about about you guys or your mission, kind of talk us through that a little bit.

Stephen Moore — Yeah I’d love to. Um, WinShape was started in 1985. It was ah founded and started by the founder of Chick-Fil-A, Truett Cathy um, and it originally started with the college program at Barry College in Rome, Georgia, and then soon after a overnight camps for boys was added. Then the next summer an overnight camp for girls was added. And so about forty years ago WinShape got its start and today it has grown into five different unique ministries. So we focus on professional development. We focus on marriages, focus on homes, we focus on college discipleship. And specifically where I work we focus on summer camps.

Stephen Moore — So we have five overnight summer camps in North Georgia. We we have teams in Costa Rica and Brazil right now doing summer camps in those countries. And then we do traveling day camps all over the entire United States as you mentioned a little bit ago, and that’s what I have the opportunity to specifically work with – our traveling day camps.

Rich Birch — Love it. This is so good. And we were just before we got recorded, today we’re recording this literally on like the opening day. And so the fact that Stephen is sitting down with us for a half an hour is pretty amazing. So we really appreciate uh your time with us. I know you’re passionate about this.

Rich Birch — And, you know, I was about a month ago just maybe over a month ago I saw an interesting article entitled “Pastors, Children’s Ministry is More Than a Place to Keep Kids Occupied.” And I sat up and I was like, Ooo, that is so true and resonates with so much we talk about here at unSeminary. And so I wanted to get Stephen on to talk about that. That’s a bold title ah, because you know you’re saying maybe there are churches that are just keeping kids occupied. Ah what’s the opportunity that maybe some churches are missing by just kind of having a lower view of kids ministry? Talk us through that.

Stephen Moore — Yeah. I mean I think we see it even in scripture in Mark when Jesus says hey let the little children come to me. You know, the disciples and others are trying to stop that and he he sees and he knows that, hey no, the gospel is also for for children. It’s for everybody. And so we see it in scripture and we believe that at WinShape. Um, we often say at WinShape, we are not the local church but we are for and support the local church. So if you’re a pastor listening to this, we thank you for the ministry you’re doing, and we want to come alongside and support you in that.

Stephen Moore — Um, I think the sad reality is there are people leaving the church. Um, and we’re seeing that and so we want to focus on them and we want to engage them. But we um also know the future of the church is children. You know, seven year olds today are going to be twenty-seven year olds in 20 years. And we want them to be plugged in and invested in their local church. So what we want to create and help build are local engaged church members. And we think doing that at a young age is important. So we do not water down the gospel at Winshape Camps. No, we boldly preach and teach the gospel. And we want kids to come to a ah knowing relationship with Christ um, while at camp and then while in their local church. So, a way that we do that is is through our mission statement. We glorify God by creating experiences that transform campers and families with the message of Jesus Christ. And so we would hope that churches do that with their children’s ministries. Hey, don’t just engage them. Don’t just entertain them. Don’t just throw on Youtube videos and have fun. No, engage them with the message of Jesus Christ and let church be a place where they are able to hear and learn about Him, and ultimately hopefully grow in a relationship with him.

Rich Birch — I love that. And you know one of the things we’ve seen about growing churches that are making an impact is they are next generation obsessed. They’re thinking about kids. This is a key piece of the puzzle that you can’t just kind of phone this in. You’ve got to, you know, think about it strategically, you have to invest in it. You’ve got to ah, give great resources towards that. Why do you think you know maybe some churches struggle with this. Maybe it’s the you know more the investment, the finding people. What is the what’s the sticking point there that maybe holds ah you know, churches back, or the churches that you’ve maybe engaged with or seen out there that have, you know, maybe struggle with this?

Stephen Moore — Yeah. I think um I think some of them is the resources and the volunteers. You know, in order to have a ah thriving children’s ministry you need to have folks volunteer and engage with that. And so I know that that’s that’s something even at WinShape we’ve struggled the last few years and engaging and hiring our summer staffers. Um, there’s so many options for people. Um, and we think working at camp, I mean any camp not just WinShape, is one of the best ways you can spend your college summers. I did it for four summers and I grew so much in that. So I think that’s one reason.

Stephen Moore — And I think too ah, it is work. You know, I think there is an element of oh well, we could just make children’s ministry or our children’s program really simple and entertaining and it won’t take as much like discipleship and investment. But what we do at camp is work. It’s tough work but it’s so rewarding. And it’s so life changing that it’s worth that additional investment in going that, what we would say WinShape, that second mile. I’m going that second mile second to be able to engage with people and invest um within them in a deeper, not just entertaining, but in a life-changing way.

Rich Birch — I love that. Well WinShape, ah you know, your reputation as an organization is just so positive. You know, high quality. Um, you know, people that engage with WinShape are just like, Man, they do just do such great stuff. And one of the things that um I’ve heard people say and then when I was doing a little bit of research I see you actually talked about it, or I read on your website, you talk about all-out-fun and all-out-faith, which I just love that. I love this idea of, hey, our our ministry is both of those things. Can you talk us through that? What does that look like, because man, I think that’s something our churches could learn. How how can we have all-out-fun and all-out-faith at the same time?

Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s that’s a great ah great question. I think what we do and what we try to do is we try to build trust with children. We try to allow them to, you know, play soccer or flag football, or go to gymnastics or painting or crafts or fast food or wacky science. Those are just some of our our skill offerings. We go out out of the rec field and play games, and we listen to what the children are interested in because we know if they are able to engage with that counselor, if they’re able to engage with the volunteer, there’s going to be a trust built. In over 3 or 4 days um then when that staffer wants to sit down and and tell them about the gospel, that kid’s going to be more engaged to listen because they know that that staffer or that volunteer cares about them.

Stephen Moore — Um, and so I remember sitting down with a dad last year he came and he told me he said, thank you for the ministry you do. It’s so meaningful because we teach our kids these things in the home each and every day. But when they hear it from a 22 year old college student that cares about them, that invest in them, that wants to engage with them in whatever that activity is they hear it in a different way. It’s a reinforcement of what it’s taught at home and so that child is more open and receptive to the gospel in that setting because they’re a place they’re they’re doing activities they’re not normally doing. And they’re engaging in fun in a way they normally don’t. And so their faith can grow while at camp. Thats at any sort of camp – at our overnight camps, center day camps. There’s a lot of great Christian camps across America. We we think WinShapes one, but there are other ones too that I think it’s a camp is a setting where the gospel can come alive in a way that maybe doesn’t in ah in a day-to-day activity at home.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve I’ve joked and now you didn’t say this; I’ve said this. So don’t this is don’t don’t take this in a negative way. But I’ve joked in other settings because I’m a huge camp booster. I think it’s really important for for families to engage with. I think it’s really important for, like you say, young leaders – it’s an incredible place to work, whether it’s WinShape or other places. But I’ve joked in other contexts I said, you know, like in a lot of churches ah Jesus has like a bit of a moldy basement and and maybe like ah some you know flannel board or something like that. But when you go to camp, Jesus there, man, he’s like super engaging. He’s got all kinds of fun activities. He’s going to, you know, it’s bright and sunny out and you’re running around outdoors, doing something amazing. What an incredible context for the message of Jesus to ah, you know, to resonate. Just incredible. I just think that’s it’s one of the things that makes camp ministry just so important, I think for kids particularly.

Rich Birch — What what does it look like? So I have to be honest until I engaged with you on this, I did not know that WinShape did day camps. So this is like a learning experience for me. What does that look like when you, you know, you end up partnering with a place, and what kind of activities – how does that all work? Give us a sense of what that kind of looks like.

Stephen Moore — Yeah, of course. And and you mentioned a few minutes ago camp started this morning so yesterday…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stephen Moore — …our five overnight camps kicked off. So parents were dropping off yesterday afternoon, and they’re on day two.Day camp started this morning at 8am in ten different communities across the US.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Stephen Moore — So um, we have 10 different teams and those teams we just finished two weeks of training together.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Stephen Moore — So we brought all our WinShape summer staffers together. We professionally and intentionally trained them in their activities, in safety, in gospel presentation, and we send them on the road. Um.

Stephen Moore — And so we what we understand is not everyone can afford an overnight camp experience, nor are parents comfortable. You know some parents might say, hey, I’m not ready to send my first grader away for a week or two, but I do want them to experience camp. So what we said is, well, let’s take camp on the road.

Stephen Moore — Parents are also looking for things to do with their children while not in school during the summer. And a safe and a fun environment is important to them. We agree, but let’s put the gospel and faith in it as well.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Stephen Moore — Um, and so that’s what we do. Um so we partner with local businesses. We partner with local churches. And I think if even Florence, South Carolina we’re doing camp there in a few weeks. 25 different churches come together and send kids to camp there.

Rich Birch — Wow, wow!

Stephen Moore — It’s not just one church. It’s WinShape Camps for Communities. We want to be for that whole community.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good.

Stephen Moore — Um, and so we’re doing camp… yeah… in Texas and Florida and Illinois, all the way out to California and New Mexico and Oklahoma and everywhere in between. So um, we come in, we we set up on Sunday we go to church, we attend church at that local church. We set up all day Sunday and then Monday morning through Thursday camps from 8 to 5 and then Fridays our big Friday family fun day. So we we bring in all the parents, all the cousins, and the grandparents, and we feed them lunch. And then our day wraps up, our team packs up, and they go to the next location.

Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Love it.

Stephen Moore — But I want to focus real quick on… Um, yeah, it’s it’s a fun…

Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s clearly university, college students doing that. That’s a grinder. What an incredible summer though. That’s so fun being on the road. Sorry didn’t mean to cut you off there.

Stephen Moore — Yeah, no, you’re good. You’re good. We um, we want our staffers to build really intentional relationships with the campers and invest in them. But more importantly, we want local church volunteers there as well. Because we know on Friday we’re packing up and we’re headed to the next town. We we intentionally ask the church to provide a volunteer for every 10 campers.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Stephen Moore — So if there’s going to be 380 campers one week, we want 38 volunteers. Because on Sunday morning when that kid maybe comes back to church for the first time, which happens so often because the parents are like, Man, my child had such a fun week. We don’t go to church. Maybe we should try this place out on Sunday morning. They come on Sunday morning. They’re going to see familiar faces because there’s 38 volunteers that were with us all week are going to be there on Sunday so that child is going to immediately feel that safety and that comfort. And they’re going to even want to be more involved there. So that’s something we also do. That that volunteer component is really important to us.

Rich Birch — Can you give me a sense of the like the scale, the scope of a kind of typical WinShape Day Camp? Like is this, like you mentioned you know, almost 400, 380 kids – is that kind of typical, is that what that is typically looking like, or are they larger smaller?

Stephen Moore — Yeah, well…

Rich Birch — What, you know…

Stephen Moore — Yeah, we’re…

Rich Birch — I know they’re all different, I get that.

Stephen Moore — No, that’s a good question. We um, our average camp size is usually around 250 to 280 campers…

Rich Birch — Yep, okay.

Stephen Moore — …um per per our day camps. Our community camps um we will have some that are going to be closer to 550 campers…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Stephen Moore — …and then we’ll have some that are closer to 175. So um we bring in either a team of 20 to 25 people, or if it’s a really large camp. We’ll actually send two teams to one location.

Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense.

Stephen Moore — So this week we have ten unique locations. Next week we might have a really large location so we’ll send two teams there. So we’ll have nine unique communities. So this summer we’re doing 84 weeks of camp over the next nine weeks.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. And um, that’s incredible. It’s so cool. What when at the kind of community level. So is that I talk me through how churches are working together on this. I love that idea of like, hey, maybe there’s a group of churches that are trying to leverage this kind of opportunity. What what does that look like maybe maybe if you could have your like perfect hey this would be amazing if we did this everywhere that would be incredible. What does that kind of look like?

Stephen Moore — Yeah, you know it kind of goes back to our name WinShape Camps for Communities. We are for communities and for the local churches in that community, not just one church. So what we we do a big event every January where we bring in a lot of our host churches. We call it Host Rally. We fly them in um, to Atlanta we do a very like 3-day training. We bring in speakers, guests. We want to enrich and empower them. We know church leaders and pastors can sometimes, it’s a struggle. And so we want it to be ah a very faith-fi like encouraging weekend but we also want to equip them to do camp.

Stephen Moore — So we invite them to bring up to up to 8 people, if they want, from different churche and a leadership team. And so it’s not just First Baptist Church or whatever church. It might be 3 or 4 churches coming to that event. And when we when we send them back home, we encourage them, we help them, we resource them: Hey, this is how you can go engage with other businesses and other churches and invite them to come to camp. Um that that church I mentioned a few days ago or a few minutes ago, 25 different churches from that community. That community had over 80 families attend camp that don’t regularly attend church.

Rich Birch — Wow, interesting.

Stephen Moore — So there might have been 120 families that do. There’s 80 families right there that don’t attend or engage with the church that sent their child to a church for five days during a week. So they’re gonna be so much more likely to say, hey, I want to get plugged in because my child had an awesome experience at camp. They came back changed. We hear that so many times from parents – the child I dropped off on Monday isn’t the same child that I picked up on Friday afternoon; something changed this week. And what we think is, it’s the gospel. We think it’s Jesus. They were introduced to him and engaged it with him in a way they’ve never had before. And so then that parent’s like, you know what? I want to try that out. So we think camp is such a great tool to help local churches connect with people in their community that they normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to do with.

Rich Birch — Love it. How, at the kind of participant or at the camper level, how do WinShape Camps for Communities differentiate against other… like what kind of activities are you doing and what is that like? So again, I can picture your overnight camp experience and I’m trying to picture how do you get that into the back of a bus and move it.

Stephen Moore — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Um, you know what does that look like?

Stephen Moore — Yeah, sometimes people are like…

Rich Birch — You can’t bring those nice hills in Georgia; you can’t move those nice hills in Georgia you can’t, you know, to everywhere across the country, you know.

Stephen Moore — That’s right, we’ll figure out a way to do that. Um, so I think some people are like, is it just VBS on steroids? And we’re like no, it’s it’s more than that. So you know, we just sent our teams out. They travel in two 15-passenger vans, two 26-foot moving trucks, and an additional pickup truck. So that’s what’s great for these churches. You don’t have to provide anything; just provide us some volunteers and some space to do it.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Stephen Moore — We bring everything with us. We bring our sound and our tech equipment. We bring LED walls. We bring an incredible, impressive set with us. Um we bring in 18 different skill offerings from flag football to soccer, to wacky science to archery. You know, we bring in targets and bows and arrows, because we think these campers maybe don’t get an experience this every day. So Let’s do something new for them. We haven’t quite figured out how to bring the horses on the road with us. So horseback riding’s just at our overnight camps. But rocketry – that’s something we bring in…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so fun.

Stephen Moore — …little kids get to shoot off rockets into the air at camp in that skill. So um and again camp is from 8 to 5, and we often hear parents tell us—and the reason this is fresh on my mind is because I just let a session at this at staff training a few days ago—that it’s their child’s favorite and best week of the summer every single year…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Stephen Moore — …and they can’t wait for us to come back to the next year. And we know that’s not just unique to WinShape camps. We know that that that’s just camp in general. It’s such a special unique thing, but we want to be really intentional about what we do at camp and have it tie back to the Gospel. So if we’re taking flag football, we’re in that skill for 50 minutes, we’re taking a water break at 15 minutes in, we’re going to sit down and do a short devo. And we’re going to just, hey, for the next three minutes let’s have a water break and let’s look at a piece of scripture and how that ties into the rest of the day.So we’re intentionally trying to do that through each and everything we do at camp.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that That’s so good. Again this is fantastic. Love what you guys are up to. If there’s churches out there like that are thinking maybe this is the kind of thing I want to pursue, um are there kind of some characteristics or something you’re looking for in churches that would you’d love to partner with? I’m assuming you’re interested in partnering with new churches because you’re talking on this thing. Ah, but you know you might be looking, and obviously not for this summer but for following summers. But yeah, what what would you, you know, who are the kind of churches you’re looking for, what are some of the traits, what does that look like?

Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, so you might disagree with this and that’s okay.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Stephen Moore — We’re not looking for a camp to just come do camp for the kids in your children’s ministry.

Rich Birch — Yes, great. Love it.

Stephen Moore — We think those kids are very, very important. We think those kids need to hear the gospel and we want those kids at camp. Absolutely we want them there. But we want you to be interested in hosting camp to reach kids outside of your doors…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Stephen Moore — …to reach your community. That is really important to us and that’s one of the main characteristics we’re looking for in our churches. Are you someone that wants to get outside your walls, meet people in the community. And sometimes that’s difficult and challenging. Sometimes you know people might step into your door on Sunday morning that don’t look or, you know, act like the rest of your church, but those people need the gospel. The kids in your children’s ministry need the gospel, the kids at the church, you know, three blocks down the street need it. So we want it to be a community church that’s trying to engage with other areas and people in the community that aren’t typically in your doors on a Sunday morning. That’s really important to us.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. I love that. And I love the you know the check they’re around that sounds like the kind of thing like most churches are going to agree with that. But you got to ask the second question, do you really? Ah because, you know, we want to see that happen in our ministries, but then when it happens and the complexity that can come there…

Stephen Moore — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …um, you know we have to be ready for that for sure. So I love that. Do you, um you know, in in the actual programming, do break up into small groups at any point and kind of help kids wrestle with, is there… you talked about like video walls and all that, is there like worship experiences? Give give us a sense of those kinds of that that kind of part of the program.

Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s yeah I can give you just a quick flyover of our day. So we get there…

Rich Birch — That’s perfect.

Stephen Moore — …kids come, they’re jumping on inflatables. As kids arrive, we call it, you know, kind of arrival village training. So um, and then there’s put in different villages. So we have ocean, safari and alpine. And these are funny terms, I know, bu you know we break it down to kindergarten and first grade is 1one age. Second and third grade is another age. And fourth, fifth and some communities sixth grade is our next age. And they’re going to small groups with kids their specific age.

Stephen Moore — Um, we design our camper curriculum, that’s age specific. So ah, first grader is going to have a camper book and a camper guide that looks different than fifth graders. Um, because we want it to we want to engage in with them with the gospel in an age appropriate way. Um, they’re going to three different auditorium elements a day. and in these auditorium elements we have a worship leader that’s leading different songs and different activities. We have a theme director that’s delivering what we would call Christ-centerered truths. In our theme of the day this summer we’re going on a road trip through the life of David.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Stephen Moore — So we’re looking at a different story and a different example of the life of David every day. And we’re just tying it back on Wednesday with our gospel message on what it looks like to to be adopted as a son and daughter of Christ. And so we’re teaching that um each and every day at camp. But then we’re also kids get to sign up for four different skills. So we have, you know, so anywhere between 15 and 20 different skill offerings. And kids get to go to four of those throughout the week of camp, and those they get to choose. Um, we do rec every day, and then we do team time twice a day. And in that team time setting, that’s more of the small group bible study setting where they’re diving deeper with maybe you know 12 to 14 other kids on what the message is that day. So, it’s a fun-filled day, and they go home tired.

Rich Birch — I love it.

Stephen Moore — Um, but it’s incredible.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.

Stephen Moore — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. And I think the transferable, listen you might be listening in and saying, listen, we’re not going to run this at our our church, which is okay. But the thing I do want you to think about is man how can you inject some fun, some intentionality, some um, you know, some thoughtful process – you can hear even in just how Steven’s unpacking that. Man, there’s there’s a lot of thinking around how all of that fits together, so that it speaks the language, that it appeals to kids, obviously parents love it. They’re like this is a great. this is a great thing and want to partner with that. It’s intentionally, outward focus intentionally, saying hey we want to reach people in our community. Just love that. I hope that inspires you as you’re listening in today. Kind of as we come to wrap up, anything you’d love to, you know, so you know, say as we kind of wrap up today’s conversation?

Stephen Moore —Yeah, Rich, you just used some some words that we use often at camp. We call it the WinShapeCamps recipe. So right now we’re doing 17 different camps as we speak. Those 17 camps are 10 community camps in the US, a community camp in Brazil, and a community there are a community camp in Costa Rica, and 5 overnight camps. What we want is we want to be cooking the WinShape Camps recipe wherever we’re doing camp.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Stephen Moore — And that keeps us in line. And I’ll just quickly do a flyover those recipe ingredients…

Rich Birch — Yes, let’s do it.

Stephen Moore — …and you know, I would invite any church to do those. Um so resource stewardship – we want to use our resources and take care of the things God’s entrusted to us – um, equipment stewardship. I mean um, sorry we’ve we’ve changed some of these names.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stephen Moore — So Christ-centered truths is another one. So we want we want everything we do to have, you know, Christ as a part of it. Intentional culture. We want to be intentional about the little things we do. So a camper, they’re no longer just stepping foot into you know a local school or local church. They’re stepping foot into the Safari village where they’re a lion and they get to be with their other lions. So we’re gonna be doing cheers and we’re be doing games throughout the day.

Stephen Moore — Want to be people-first. We care about our people. We care about our summer staffers. We care about our volunteers. We care about our our campers. And engaging fun is our last one. We think everything we do, if fun’s involved, kids are going to be more receptive and understanding to hear, hear about Jesus. So um, that’s kind of our WinShape Camps recipe. And so any…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Stephen Moore — …church could do that. just like it doesn’t have to be that. But as you do children’s ministry. How can those elements be a part of what you do?

Rich Birch — Yeah that’s so good. I love that. I love how those hang together to really create a compelling ministry for, you know, for kids. And I know there’s people are listening in today that have found that, you know, just super helpful. So ah, really appreciate that. Well as we wrap up, if if people want to track with you or track with WinShape, where do we want to send them online? How do we want to, you know, get them connected with you?

Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s that’s a great question – winshapecamps.org – you’ll be able to choose our overnight camps or our day camps is one it’s going to be your first dropdown option. So that’s one way to get connected. I think my email’s on there. But if it’s not, it’s smoore@winshape.org – um, so S-M-O-O-R-E um and so you could do that. Another thing I didn’t hit on yet, Rich…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Stephen Moore — …but I just want to real quick before we leave…

Rich Birch — Absolutely.

Stephen Moore — …um is we want to engage with campers and we think it’s really important, but also I think working as summer as a summer staffer is an unbelievable value experience a valuable experience. I have 3 kids of my my own. They’re 2, 2, and 5, and I genuinely think the practical summer examples I had while working camp were very helpful for me, and they translate to any and every job out there. You could be studying chemistry and working camps still going to be a good beneficial thing for you to do during the summer. So if you know anyone of that college age, you know, 18 to 25 that you think could work camp or would be a good fit for WinShape, send them to us as well because we would love to be able to have them spend a summer with us to grow and be able to share their faith.

Rich Birch — Totally. I heartily endorse that. Ah you know, I do think like I said earlier I think the camp experience is fantastic for kids. It’s a great kind of thing to be a part of, but I really think to be honest, the sweet spot where the the place where God seems to have his ah, uses these experiences I think particularly as on that staff age transition as as young leaders. You know, man, it’s just something amazing happens ah when a young leader dedicates their summer, or like you say, all four you know summers of theirs, you know, college summers kind of thing. Man I just love that. That’s so good.

Rich Birch — Well I appreciate you coming on the show today, Stephen. I hope the rest of the summer, I know it will be fantastic, but we’re cheering for you. Thanks for giving us some time today.

Stephen Moore — Yes, Rich. I appreciate it, and thanks for the time.

Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Stevie Flockhart, Lead Pastor of 901 Church in Tennessee.

Have you ever struggled with the desire for personal recognition and validation in ministry? In this unSeminary podcast episode Stevie shares his personal journey and struggles with comparison and the desire for success. Listen in as he examines critical lessons we can learn from failures, the importance of cultivating a culture of vulnerability on your team, and insights on discipleship.

• The comparison trap. // On some level everyone struggles with the temptation to compare themselves to others and receive recognition from man instead of God. Stevie admits that as a leader who wanted to make a difference in the world, the desire for validation and achieving was a struggle. However, through two failed church plants, God gently pruned Stevie so that he learned to lift up the name of Jesus and be faithful with small things. All of this eventually prepared him for planting 901 Church in 2019.
• Free to fail. // Stevie’s experiences have given him the opportunity to create a culture at 901 Church where people are free to fail. The staff is encouraged to be wise and be good stewards, but also to be vulnerable, take a risk and not be afraid of failing. Failure teaches us and builds character, making us the people we are today.
• Enjoy the journey. // We can be so focused on the destination that we don’t pay attention to the journey we are on. But Stevie says the destination is often a mirage. There is a lot of dysfunction in the idea that if we just get to our destination we will be fulfilled and satisfied. Only Jesus can satisfy us so we need to learn to enjoy the journey, both the successes and the failures.
• Learning from others. // In an effort to avoid comparison, we can’t to hide from others. Stevie says while we don’t want to compare results, it’s valuable to compare disciplines, principles or values and to ask what we can learn from others who are farther along than us on the journey. If we want to learn from others, we have to be willing to do the things others did to get where they are.
• Apprenticeship. // Both discipleship and evangelism must be prioritized for effective ministry. In addition to offering groups and serve teams, 901 Church has an apprentice program where staff and other leaders meet with two to four people twice a month in order to grow their relationship with Jesus. In addition to reading books and doing things like scripture memorization, they have a lot of conversation around two questions: What is God teaching you right now? What are you doing about it? This intentional discipleship process becomes a pipeline that raises up leaders within the church.
• Don’t go alone. // Stevie credits the success and growth of 901 Church to the financial and practical support they received from other churches and networks along the way. As a church leader or church planter, seek wise counsel from others who are farther along in the journey. Part of the way Stevie shares his own learnings is through participation with the Extraordinary Church Collective and also as co-host, along with his wife, of the Essentials podcast.

You can learn more about 901 Church at 901church.com, plus listen to the Essentials podcast there. If you’re a church planter, connect with Extraordinary Church Collective here.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Well, hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have tuned in today. Oh, man, we’ve got a great conversation lined up. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. Today we’ve got Stevie Flockhart from us. He is the lead pastor at a church called 901 Church in Memphis, Tennessee. They’re both one of the fastest growing churches and the most reproducing churches in the country. It was planted by Stevie in 2019, very opportune time, right before the pandemic. Uh, and they’ve seen a whole ton of people take steps towards Jesus. We’re gonna talk about that today. Their dream is to reach the city and have multiple locations across nine, the 901 area and beyond, really ultimately helping to reach, uh, the world in Jesus’ name. Stevie, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Stevie Flockhart — Man, so honored to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Rich Birch — Yeah, fill in the picture there. What did I miss? Kind of talk me through what, you know, kind give us the 901 story. Give us a bit of the flavor.

Stevie Flockhart — No, that was everything. You hit everything. So, no. So we, uh 2019, uh, my family and I, uh, married to Whitney, uh, been married for almost 13 years. We got three kids. So the five of us moved to Memphis, uh, in 2018 to plant the church, to get ready to, uh launch. And so spent time with the launch team. Uh, you do not know… if we knew Covid 19 was coming in 2020. Well, guess what? We were launch in 2021 or 2022, whatever…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — …So, uh, we, uh, we launched with about 30 or 40 of us. And man, God just showed up. His hand was all over it um, learned a lot, uh, over the last several years. I’ll get to that in a moment. You know, we planted in, uh, the Atlanta area, went down to, uh, south Florida to revitalize a church uh, unsuccessfully, you know, so in the world’s eyes, man, I failed at it twice. And, uh…

Rich Birch — Okay, okay.

Stevie Flockhart — I came to Memphis, planted, and, uh, God just started blessing. And his, his favor was all over it, uh, truly skyrocketed. And every category you would ask, whatever, from attendance to salvations, to people, to groups. And then covid hit, you know? And so, uh, you go to three 30 or 40 people to several hundred in a year and a half, you think, my goodness, what’s, what’s happening here? And then Covid 19 hits, you know? And so, uh, if it had been up to us, you know, God really asked, Hey, what do you want to do?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — What’s your perfect plan? You know? And so, uh, we’d have probably planted in 2021, maybe even 2022. And so, uh…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — So we plant the church, And then a year later—uh, Easter 2019 was when we launched—and so truly, almost a year later, a little less than a year later…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Stevie Flockhart — …COVID happens. And so just like everybody else, we have to, uh, shut down, uh, meeting in person. Uh, we’re online. And it really did, uh, I don’t even wanna say killed momentum, of course it did. But it kind of gave everybody this new perspective of, so what now? You know? If we’re gonna continue to grow the church, continue to do what we need to do, we might have to do it in ways that we’ve never done before. And so, uh, we came back July of that year, and I’m telling you, God’s just been so good. I feel like we’ve planted the church twice, you know?

Rich Birch — Right.

Stevie Flockhart — So, uh, it really, and I think that was everybody’s, uh, feeling, but again, for us being so fresh and so new, but God has continued to bless. We’ve continued to develop leaders. Uh, we’ve seen over 1400 people saved in four years.

Rich Birch — Wow, wow.

Stevie Flockhart — Uh, over 700 baptized. It’s just been nuts. And so, uh, uh, developing leaders, uh, I gotta give, uh, just a nod to my spiritual father, Mack Lake, who’s just poured into me…

Rich Birch — Love Mack.

Stevie Flockhart — …and helped me just with processes and systems on how to, not just not do it all yourself and delegate, but truly reproduce yourself. You know, delegate…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Stevie Flockhart — …reproduce, empower, equip others underneath you to continue to build the church. It’s been unbelievable.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. I love, so, such a great story. And I, I love the journey your, you know, your own personal story that, you know, God’s had you on, and I’d love to go there. I’d love to actually hear more about that. You know, you end up on these lists on fastest growing, most reproducing, and…

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …you know, what does that do inside your head? Is that, how do you fight the… there must be just a natural kind of comparison game thing that happens. Take us inside that. Help us unpack that a little bit. What’s, what’s the story that’s happening there?

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. And so I think, uh, you know, for me, you know, and everybody’s journey’s a bit different, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Stevie Flockhart — But I think we all struggle with some of, uh, a lot of the same things. And so, especially leaders and, and guys that want to inspire, you know, and change the world. You know, there’s, so that comes with that sometimes if you’re not careful, you know. The flesh, your enemy will continue to try to lie to you. And so for me, uh, this is the crazy, let’s call it, uh, ironic thing about this: six, seven, eight, nine years ago, I wanted so badly to be on that top 100.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Stevie Flockhart — If I could, Lord, if I could just make the top hundred, then I could die, you know?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Stevie Flockhart — Top hundred whatever. Don’t even have to be largest or fastest hundred [inaudible]…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Stevie Flockhart — …that started this year – just let my name be out there. Something…

Rich Birch — Yep, yes.

Stevie Flockhart — …that someone has to know about me.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — And God just has a way, as you know, and as those who have grown in it know, just this way of disciplining and pruning. Uh, and he’s so kind and gentle, but it just hurts so bad. And so, uh, I just had this void, you know, and I knew Jesus, but I just needed to be known – by you, and by that guy, and that guy.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — And, uh, and something takes place where, and again, there’s no formula, there’s no magical equation. So please don’t hear that today. But when you start putting your priorities and you get your priorities right, uh, and just being known by God and being known by, you know, listen, if, if, if God loves me, and I know he does, and if my wife loves me, and those three kids love me, all the other stuff, just kind of, just kind of falls to the wayside. It really, really does. And so, when you stop caring about those things, I believe that’s when God really started giving me more. God really started trusting me with more. And so you could go to scripture and say, faithful with the small, he’ll give you more, but, uh, if you’re faithful with what he’s already given you, and I was not for so long, you know? So I would say, uh, and I wouldn’t even say, man, that I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I was just doing it for, uh, other reasons. Man, I was, I wanted to do it for God’s glory. Man, this is for your glory, Lord.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Stevie Flockhart — Just give me a little bit, you know?

Rich Birch — Right.

Stevie Flockhart — And so I’m here to preach so people would be saved. I just want everybody to know how many people have been saved? Are you with me?

Rich Birch — Sure.

Stevie Flockhart — And so, uh, not until there’s this renewing of the mind…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Stevie Flockhart — …where God takes me through a season. When I say a season, I don’t mean three months. I wish it was three months. You know, four, or five, six years of just pruning…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Stevie Flockhart — …cutting off, tearing away, pulling the weeds of my soul out, to bring me to the place where truly this is for his kingdom, not mine. His church, not mine. And I have seen over the last three or four years that when that’s your posture in your heart, cause God can’t be mocked, you know? So that’s why I, when I say there’s no special secret, like you can’t trick God into pretending like it’s not about you.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Stevie Flockhart — And then he’ll give you more so that you can get more, you know, that God can’t be tricked or mocked.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Stevie Flockhart — Uh, but when you’re truly faithful with what he’s given you, when you understand it’s not about you, it’s about lifting the name of Jesus, I do believe that’s when he starts giving you more influence, uh, and sending more people to you cause you’re not pointing to them to you, pointing them to you anymore. You’re pointing them to Jesus. So that’s what we’ve experienced.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Well, and even your story of like, you had to… there’s so many people would come on a thing like this and they would skip the fact that the first couple things didn’t go well. You know, they would skip that.

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. Sure. Right.

Rich Birch — Which is kind of the easy thing to do, right? It’s just like you, you know, you show up and it’s like, we started and things went amazing. And that, that just isn’t the truth, right?

Stevie Flockhart — Yep, yep, yep.

Rich Birch — So how, how do you, how do you lead outta that place? What’s that look like for you as you lead with your team and with other people around you? How do you cultivate that as a part of, you know, even your, your culture, your, um, yeah, the team you’re, you’re with?

Stevie Flockhart — Yep. I love you used the word culture. Uh, you know, we have a culture within our church that’s, uh, so goes the leader, I believe, so goes the people. I believe that. And so our staff, uh, we have a staff culture. One of our staff values is we’re free to fail. And so out of that, there’s this vulnerability, there’s this freedom of failure. We take risk. Uh, now let’s be wise, let’s be good stewards, you know? Let’s don’t go spend $3 million and go, let’s just see if it’s a risk tomorrow. You know what I mean?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Stevie Flockhart — And so there’s wisdom in that. But, uh, uh, looking at my story, if I could go back, and I’ll say this sometimes preaching, I’ll say this sometimes leading on my staff, if I could go back, people would ask, you know, what would you change if you could go back?

Rich Birch — Good question. Yeah.

Stevie Flockhart — And you immediately wanna say like, I wish I wouldn’t have planted so early. You know? Cause I was this young guy and thought I was the, the greatest thing that ever hit the church world, and they just couldn’t wait. You know? And God just had me to bring me through. I wish I wouldn’t have done that, but I wish we wouldn’t have gone down to South Florida and spared 14 months of literal hell down there, you know? And so, cause I believe then we were ready, but the church wasn’t; they just weren’t ready to change, you know? And they were in their ways. And so, if I could go back, Rich, I’m being honest with you, sure there are moments and times, but if I changed anything, I wouldn’t be who I am today, you know?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Stevie Flockhart — And I’m grateful for the journey. And so, uh, the destination, I’ve learned, is oftentimes a mirage. Like, you know, like, just, if I could just get here… once you get here, you want to go there, you know?

Rich Birch — Right.

Stevie Flockhart — Now there’s health in some of that, you know, but there’s also a lot of dysfunction in, if I could just get here, I’d arrive, I’d be fulfilled, I’d be satisfied. Well, Jesus is really the one that can truly satisfy, you know?

Stevie Flockhart — And so the destination really is a mirage. It’s the journey. So enjoy the journey – the successes and the failures. And so where I am today, you’re talking about, you know, unSeminary, what they did not teach me in seminary was how you would feel when you looked at the guy down the road who’s got a whole lot more people coming to your church than you have at your church.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — What they did not teach you was, you know, cause again, what we’d pray and what we’d want, I mean, we’re getting real on this pod… Like what we [inaudible]…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Stevie Flockhart — …change the city.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — And I pray that you would bless this church, and this church, and this church. Just bless my church…

Rich Birch — …as well.

Stevie Flockhart — …a little bit more, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah, yeah. Like, bro, I was jacked up. A little bit more, you know. But even, I guess even the growth, like as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Stevie Flockhart — What if God wants to radically change the city. And it’s from the church down the road. And the church up the road, you know? And you gotta be okay with that. And so, uh…

Rich Birch — Right.

Stevie Flockhart — I think we all fall into the comparison trap. We all fall into the, uh, feeling worthy, feeling validated. Uh, we all fall into the performance trap, you know? I know for me, uh, that’s just where I was. If I could just perform, if I could just, uh, check off the list, then everybody would see what I’ve accomplished. And somehow I was naive enough, you know, to think that my value and my worth was tied to how many people were coming to my church…

Rich Birch — Right.

Stevie Flockhart — …uh, how many people I had on staff, you know? And, and it’s, it’s a lie man. And the devil will ruin your life with it. So.

Rich Birch — Right.

Stevie Flockhart — And I lived it.

Rich Birch — Love, love it. So one of the things you said there got me thinking about this tension I think we feel where you, we don’t wanna get caught in the comparison trap, and I really appreciate you doing a good job, you know, helping us get inside that. But the other part of this is we wanna learn from other churches. We do want to, it’s not like you can kind of just hide…

Stevie Flockhart — Yep.

Rich Birch — …in your, you know, under a turtle somewhere. And I know it would appear like, yeah, you’re trying to learn from others, you’re trying to grow from others. Help us understand how does that work? How, how has that impacted your ministry? Is there a nuance between those two?

Stevie Flockhart — Yep. I do, uh, believe that. So I would say compare disciplines, compare principles, compare values, uh, compare, uh, uh, less results, and compare journeys, you know? And so this person, I could feel, uh, insecure about that guy, or I could go to that guy and say, how did you get here? You know, what did it take to get, so I could compare marriages and say, man, if my marriage was just… or I could say, how in the world do you and your life, your wife, love each other so much? How in the world do you parent your kids like that?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Stevie Flockhart — You know, your kids aren’t perfect, man. How did they get to that point, you know, where you’re releasing them, you’ve given them authority, they’re making their own decisions. You need to compare those things, you know? So could I believe sometimes, and again, we’re talking about the renewing of the mind. This is a healthy person, a spiritually mature, and emotionally secure person asking themselves, wait, how do I get there?

Rich Birch — Right.

Stevie Flockhart — And so a lot of times we want what other people have, but we’re not willing to do what other people did to get it, right? You know?

Rich Birch — Oh, it’s so true.

Stevie Flockhart — So, yeah. And so if we’re living in this, uh, dysfunction of, you know, uh, worthlessness and validation, if I, that’s not a good place to be.

Rich Birch — Right.

Stevie Flockhart — But if we’re living in this place, like I want to be used greatly by God. I want my marriage to be successful. I want my kids to love the kingdom, and love the church, and not be burnout. How do I accomplish that? We do need to compare disciplines and principles and values to other people. Cause sometimes our disciplines and our principles and our values aren’t lining up to, uh, put us in the place that we’d like to be in. You know? So…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Stevie Flockhart — I think there’s value in that for sure.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Um, so one of the things you said, again, going back to one of the things you said earlier, kind of pivoting back to that. Your church obviously has a focus you have a focus on reaching people, people who don’t follow Jesus. You mentioned, you know, 1400 people saved, 700 people baptized. That’s amazing. Praise God. That’s in, that’s incredible. And you know, we know that that’s because God’s at work, right?

Stevie Flockhart — Sure.

Rich Birch — Ultimately, there’s not some magic that you’re doing, but obviously there’s something as a leadership you’re doing to stay focused on that. What does that look like? How do we keep our churches focused on evangelism?

Stevie Flockhart — Yep. Yep. Uh, I mean, culture’s, everything, uh, but you’re pointing people back to mission and vision. And so, uh, our mission statement and, and 901 Church is we exist so that people would be reached and lives would be changed. Uh, it’s our way of saying, we are here so that people would be saved, and disciples would be made. I think we have done ourselves an injustice the last several years, especially in the world of podcasts and everything’s online as social media. We’re debating and fighting, and there’s division within the church, evangelism or discipleship. Oh it’s just a show and entertainment on Sunday to get people there, you know? So it’s like, it’s this weird, uh, reality of like, oh, so obviously if your church is big and has lights and there’s a band, it’s gotta be shallow.

Rich Birch — It’s so true.

Stevie Flockhart — And obviously if your church is small, and it’s like, it’s must be depth. It’s like, oh, well, goodness. Like, I think we’re missing the point here. We’re focusing on methods and not fo focusing on mission, you know?

Rich Birch — So true.

Stevie Flockhart — And so we’re here everything we do, man, and so we talk about it in staff, and we pray over this, and we fast over this. And we, uh, we have systems and metrics to make sure that we’re living out our mission. And so, every sermon I preach, every song we sing, every group we have, every recovery conversation, every marriage counseling, every person in the parking lot or serves in students knows, I’m here, priority one, for people that do not yet know Jesus. That’s why I’m here.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Stevie Flockhart — People reach. But we’re not just gonna stop there. Do I believe it’s the most important thing? I absolutely do. But do I believe it’s the only thing? I don’t, you know?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Stevie Flockhart — And so now let’s make disciples. Now let’s get cyclical for a moment. I believe, a disciples number one priority is for people that don’t yet know Jesus. You know?

Rich Birch – Yes, yes.

Stevie Flockhart — And so, uh, and so again, people reach, lives changed. Everything we do is for people that do not know Jesus. But, now you’re a part of the family. You are in the army, you know. We are not us focused. We will not be inner focused. It is continuing to be people that are not here yet. And our people have grabbed a hold of that, you know? And so they love…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it.

Stevie Flockhart — …and it’s a part of our vision, our mission, and now it is our culture.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So love that. That’s so good. And one of the common misnomers, and you kind of touched on it there, was, you know, that fast-growing churches are all shallow, that they’re not interested in discipleship. And that my experience in, you know, 10 plus years of studying these, that’s just not true.

Stevie Flockhart — Yep, yep.

Rich Birch — That actually to be a fast-growing church, you actually have to do both. You have to do discipleship…

Stevie Flockhart — Sure.

Rich Birch — …as well as evangelism. The words might look different at every church, but you have to do both. Talk us through what that looks like. What does your kind of discipleship process look like? How are you, how are you helping people take steps to Christ? That’s, that’s, you know, all those people that got baptized. What are you doing to help them, uh, grow in those relationships with, with Jesus?

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. And so, I mean, the easy, quick answer would be, you know, we, we push, uh, groups, you know, every single week. You know, we push getting involved on serve teams, you know. Uh, one of the, uh—let me be nice about it—one of the silliest conversations I could have with somebody, is coming to a church, 6, 7, 8 months, they hit the road. Nobody talked to me, nobody loved me. My uncle was in the hospital, whatever, you know, the, the situation is. And unfortunately those things happen. But oh my goodness, we’re so sorry. What group are you in?

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Stevie Flockhart — Well, I’m, I’m not in a group yet. What serve team do you serve on? Well, haven’t… I was going to, but it’s like, so you truly, let’s just get real for a moment. You show up on Sunday morning. You are the back of somebody’s head every week. You sing your songs, you hear the sermon, you leave, and you call that like you’re a part of the church? Like, no, you attend a service, you know? It’s gotta go beyond that.

Stevie Flockhart — And we talk about this stuff, you know? We, we, the truth sets us free, you know? So we say get on a serve team, it accomplishes so much. You are the hands and feet of Jesus. You’re serving others. But you’re also building community within those, you know. So even‑I get to that to a moment‑we have, uh an apprentice program at our church. Uh, every staff member, every leader has to have two to four people that they are meeting with, uh, at least twice a month where they’re walking… some, some of it’s books, some of it’s scripture memorization, some of it’s both.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Stevie Flockhart — Uh, some of it truly is just real life, uh, uh, you know, walk through, Hey, I’m going through this. I need some help right now. And so it it just looks like a, uh, it looks like the way Jesus did it, you know? He spent a, uh, a ton of time with the three, and then a whole lot of time with 12. You very rarely saw him spending an a ton of time with the crowd, with the people, you know. But he’s the most influential people person of all time. How is this? I think it’s the leadership development and the discipleship development process, you know? So those three men acted like Jesus, thought like Jesus, dealt with conflict like Jesus. And those three men went in, you know, met new people and planted churches. And so again, this, this, this trickle effect, this multiplication effect that takes place, uh, it happens all over the world, but it can happen within our church, and it has to start with discipleship.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Let’s talk about that apprentice thing. I love that. That is that, um, so like, I, you know, I think I heard you say every staff, you know, they have two to four people they meet with at least twice a month.

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Is that people that are on your team? Is that people, you know, how, how do you define those relationships? How do you ensure that’s actually expanding beyond, you know, kind of just the, the relationships that might be just in front of them? What does that look like?

Stevie Flockhart — Sure, sure, sure. So I do believe in, you know, affinity groups where we’re draw we’re drawn to naturally people who are mm-hmm.  either like us, or have the same age kids, or some of the same hobby, you know, for sure. And so we don’t just say, go find three random people. You know, but it’s people that…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — …you, you would want to have dinner with, people that you’d want to invest in. Somebody that you would, or a couple that you would say, this is somebody I wouldn’t mind spending a whole lot of time with over the next year or two, you know? And so we’ve just kind of put this into practice. We’ve always, you know, had the multiplication effect for sure.

Stevie Flockhart — But, uh, I need to go find three people and three couples. It would be, you know, where I’m spend, I’m golfing with them. I’m meeting with them at Starbucks. We go out to dinner with them every few Fridays where we’re spending the time with them, and we’re talking through, you know, and sometimes it’s as easy as two questions. You know, what is God teaching you right now? What are you doing about it? What is God teaching you right now? What are you doing about it? I mean, those two questions. You could have hours of conversations…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Stevie Flockhart — …with those two questions. Uh, and again, it’s kind of, uh, never ending. It’s open-ended. And so, uh…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Stevie Flockhart — …every staff member has, you know, an apprentice, uh, or they should, you know, every leader, every team lead, every coordinator. And again, we do it, and the language doesn’t matter right now, but you know, there is uh, a flow; there’s a leadership pipeline that we have that every single person are some people are just showing up. Then they move into team members. Well, then those team members can move into leading a team. But then when you recognize and you equip and you pour into, that person can then lead a department, and then you recognize, and you pour into, and you lead and you equip, and then that person can lead, uh, an organization, you know? So lead others, lead leaders, lead departments, lead organizations. And there, there really is a structure and a system, and there’s a way to do this. And I think it’s the Jesus way.

Rich Birch — Yes, yep.

Stevie Flockhart — And so, uh…

Rich Birch — Love it. Some good Mack Lake pipeline stuff there too. He would’ve, uh, he’d be very happy that.

Stevie Flockhart — The man, the myth, the legend. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. He’s incredible. Yeah. That’s so good. I love that. And I love the, you know, the simplicity of, you know, hey, let’s gets, get in relational, uh, get in, you know, get a relationship, kind of intentional relationship with some people. And then just some simple questions. You know, what are you learning? What’s Jesus teaching? What are you doing about it? Like, let’s just keep that in front of people. I think, man, just that alone, if we could get our people to do that, man, we’d have a leadership development revolution going on, you know, around us. That’s, uh, you know, that’s, that’s fantastic.

Rich Birch — So kind of talking about the, your actual planting experience this time, um, talk us, talk to us about, you know, are you connected with a network? Did you just do this all your own? Did you drop into, you know, your town, you know, and just like open the phone book and start calling people? Talk, talk to us about that.

Stevie Flockhart — Wow…

Rich Birch — What’s the support around you look like?

Stevie Flockhart — Sure. I think that’s some guy’s stories and I salute them…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — …and I honor them. Oh my goodness.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Stevie Flockhart — But no, we could not have, uh, been where we are done what we did, you know, New Season church in Hiram, Georgia when we first started, um, donated probably $50-, $60,000 worth of AVL sound system…

Rich Birch — Yeah that’s great. Wow.

Stevie Flockhart — …for sure. But then, uh, a church, uh, and I consider him, my pastor now Pastor Paul Taylor, Rivers Crossing Church, Cincinnati, Ohio. Uh, they just saw something in us, invited us to be, at the time it was called 10 and 10 Network. And, uh, they, I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars over three or four years. Uh, and what they did for us financially allowed us to bring on support staff, you know, so just going back to that leadership pipeline, yes, you can do it with volunteers, but when you’re able to bring on staff, uh, it’s just a game changer, you know?

Stevie Flockhart — So that’s where, again, I can tell somebody like, you know, uh, when you’re faithful in the small, God will bless you. I mean, I started the church. I was the lead pastor and the janitor and the student director…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — …and the receptionist, you know…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Stevie Flockhart — …and so, and the card note writer to the first time guest, well, then weeks go by. Yes. And you, you know, empower and equip, but they just came in, uh, financially helped us, you know, emotionally helped us. He was a pastor to me. And so I was, uh a part of, uh, the 10 and 10 network for two or three years. We’ve just changed the name. Now I’m on leadership with them, called Extraordinary Church Collective, ECC, again, based outta Cincinnati. But, uh, anybody that wants to plant a church, we’d love to have a conversation with you. But, uh, they, it was a game changer for me. We would not, maybe 901 exists without ’em, maybe, perhaps. No way, we’ve seen 1400 people say, there’s no way I have 20 staff members four years into this. There’s no way we’re looking at location number two right now, being able to renovate it  without them, the mission, the vision behind church planning, uh, and what they want to continue to do. So it’s huge. It’s huge.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Stevie Flockhart — Do it without ’em.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. And that, you know, that’s one of the things that we’ve seen, and friends, you probably know this if you’re listening in, but one of the things that you know, is like a definitive, Hey, we’ve, we’ve learned this lesson, you know, when one of the defi, the divider kind of dividing lines between church plants that make it and those that don’t, is that, that the ones that have a network are more likely to make it. They’re more likely to push through. And so, yeah, Extraordinary Church network, that’d be great. Where, if people wanna learn more about them, where do we send them online to learn more about, about that, that group?

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah – extraordinarychurchcollective.com – and , uh or Google…

Rich Birch — Dot com. Ok, great.

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. And so, Extraordinary Church Collective. Uh, my name, Steven Flockhart…

Rich Birch — Perfect.

Stevie Flockhart — …pastor Paul Taylor.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah – that’s all good. Yeah.

Stevie Flockhart — And again, we’re starting, it’s, it’s a network. It’s a collective though.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.

Stevie Flockhart — Much different. Maybe some, uh, traditional networks, and, uh, anybody, what you just hit on though, is I think the key to life, it’s community.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — It’s it, you can’t do it alone. You can’t be isolated. And what you just said, Rich, is so true. A lot of guys are failing and falling because they didn’t have people in their lives to either help them, hold them accountable, or just say, yo, hey, I’ve been there. I’ve done it. Here’s what I believe you should do. And pastors and authorities in your life to say, sometimes not just, Hey, here’s what I think you should do. Here’s what you should do.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — And here’s what you should not do.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Stevie Flockhart — Go ahead. You know?

Rich Birch — Don’t step on that landmine. Yes, exactly. I have done that. I lost my leg. Don’t do it.

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. Wise council is, so, yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. That’s so good. Well, when you look to the future, when you look up over the horizon at 901, what’s, what’s on the horizon? Where are you, you know, kind of what are you thinking about next? What are the questions you’re asking as you look down the road?

Stevie Flockhart —Yeah. And so, uh, when we planted, we always knew, so even 901 Church, it’s the area code. It’s a brand of where we’re at in Memphis. I mean, the Memphis Grizzlies talk about it all the time. Rise up 901. Justin Timberlake…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Stevie Flockhart — …Al Green, whatever. I mean, everybody just talks about the 901. And so from the very beginning, our vision behind that was to reach a city to change the world. And so we wanted to be multisite, uh, multiple locations. Uh, God, that’s a long story. I can tell you later off podcast, God gave us a 15,000 square foot building…

Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Praise God.

Stevie Flockhart — …15 minutes from us right now in the, another city just gave it to us. A church that was struggling, uh, was gonna shut down, sell it, and give the money to missions. They just gave us an almost $2 million property; they just handed to us.

Rich Birch — Praise God.

Stevie Flockhart — So we’re renovating that right now. So over the horizon is more locations, multiple locations within the 901. People have asked me, it’s like, what happens when God blesses and God does what he does, and you want to continue to church plant. So we’ve planted churches in Scotland and Chattanooga and the Ukraine and Arizona, and a digital church online only right now. But what happens, like, well, are they 901? They’re not in the area code. You know, the brand is messed up. It’s like, well, we’ll reach a city to change the world, you know? And so, uh, uh, multiple locations we want to, raising up leaders, once again. And again, moving people from one location. We’ve got about 200 of our people right now ready, excited, prepared, equipped, uh, raising them up even now to go over to the next location that’ll launch later this year. You can’t just hope to launch a location next week and send some people over there. There’s a process. It’s going back to that pipeline, getting them ready. So, uh, you ask what’s on the horizon, that’s what’s next. But, uh, we do see ourselves in 6, 7, 8, 9 locations over the next 10 or 15 years…

Rich Birch — So good.

Stevie Flockhart — …within all around the 901.

Rich Birch — Wow. This is so great. This has been so fantastic, Stevie. I really appreciate you taking time, uh, you know, to be with us today. Lots of, you know, just, I gotta page your notes here, stuff to think about and chew on. I, I know for sure our listeners do as well. Uh, just as we’re wrapping up, anything else you’d like to say, uh, before we close down today’s conversation?

Stevie Flockhart — No, thank you, Rich, for having me. I’m honored. If anybody’s listening, uh, keep Jesus the focus. Not a magazine, not a number. Be faithful with what you have. And he just promises to give us more and more and more. Be a good steward. Uh, let him be, let be trustworthy and let him be able to trust you more. So that’s what I would say to anybody.

Rich Birch — So good. That is so good. Uh, where do we wanna send people online if they wanna track with you or with the church?

Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. 901church.com. That’s our church, uh, website. But my wife and I also have a podcast called Essentials Podcast. Uh, we just help marriages, uh, parenting, leadership, you know, it’s the essentials of life. So man, anybody that would wanna support that or go there, we’d be very, very grateful.

Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, we’ll link to that as well on the show notes. So, thanks so much, Stevie. I appreciate you being here today. Thanks for sharing with us. I really appreciate it.

Stevie Flockhart — Thank you, Rich. See you next time.

As a church leader, one of the most challenging aspects of your role can be developing leaders. While it can be difficult to identify potential leaders and provide them with the necessary training and support, neglecting this area can have serious consequences for the long-term success of the Church. Listen in as Phil and George share some practical steps that church leaders can take to invest in leadership development.

• A critical issue. // Raising up leaders is critical because pulpits are emptying faster than we can fill them. Whether it’s because of ego, a fear of being replaced, or something else, many church leaders haven’t obeyed Ephesians 4:11-16, instead shouldering the work ourselves. We have to train others for the work of ministry without worrying that they may get more recognition or do something better than us. It’s rewarding when we can fan into flame God’s gift in someone else’s life to help them walk in God’s purpose for them. This process is part of making disciples.
• Leader Track. // Kingsway Church launched a 10-week program called Leader Track which is an onboarding ramp for high-capacity volunteers. It helps people apply principles from the word of God on things, such as character development, creating a personal mission statement, and leading healthy teams, to all areas of their work, homes and lives.
• Ministry Education. // Meanwhile for those interested in full-time ministry and acquiring a degree, Kingsway Church has partnered with Southeastern University (SEU) to create Kingsway Leadership School (KLS). Through KLS, Kingsway can offer 15 degrees, five of which are master’s degrees. Not only is this a more affordable option for students because they can take classes online, it also provides practical ministry experience along with their theological education.
• Head, heart, and hands. // Kingsway Leadership School is broken down into three components: head, heart, and hands. Head represents SEU’s partnership with the church, heart is leadership and character development, and hand allows students to receive college credits through a ministry practicum. This structure allows students to continue to serve in their local churches while also getting a ministry education and hands-on experience.
• Ministry practicum. // Because many of the students have full-time jobs, the program takes place midweek in the evening from 6-9pm. This midweek portion includes leadership and character development while Sundays are a ministry day. In their first year, students are exposed to all the different ministries at Kingsway Church and rotate through working with the various ministry leaders. Students in years two, three, and four are allowed to choose their ministry focus and the church leader in that area then becomes responsible for training that student.
• Lead through others. // To start taking steps towards intentional leadership development in your church, look at your calendar and identify 6-8 hours where you can be investing in other people. Model this to your staff and provide them with regular, practical training so they are equipped to invest in others. Finally, as church leaders we need to make ourselves available to our staff teams and keep developing them as they develop others.

You can learn more about Kingsway Church at www.kingsway.church, or email George to learn more about Kingsway Leadership School.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, I’m really excited for today’s conversation ah because it’s a great church, but it’s also a great church in New Jersey, even though it’s South Jersey. It’s not central jersey which just does not exist and so ah, you know and we’re already off to the races just only talking to people in New Jersey but so excited to have some leaders from Kingsway Church here, Phil Caporale and George Probasco, just are fantastic leaders from an incredible church. They’re they’re doing some great stuff ah, both in the you know online world with their church online and a couple physical campuses in South Jersey.

Rich Birch — They also have this really innovative partnership with Southeastern University in Lakeland Florida that we want to drill into and learn more. Ah, Phil is the lead Pastor, George is ah the leader of this school and also one of their campus pastors – welcome to the show show, guys. Glad you’re here.

Phil Caporale — Yeah, thanks for having us, Rich.

Rich Birch — Phil, why don’t we start with you. Tell us a little bit about kind of round out the picture, round out the Kingsway picture. What did I miss there? What what, you know, if people were to come to the church this weekend, what would they experience? Talk us through what, you know, give us the Kingsway flavor.

Phil Caporale — Yeah, yeah, thanks. Well um, our church’s been around a while. It started in in Camden New Jersey in 1925, so we’re just a couple years short of our hundredth anniversary.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Phil Caporale — So long, long history and ironically enough they started in a in a grocery store. And you know what they would do on the weekends is go in and take down all the produce off the shelves, canned goods, and and set up church. So before we were multi-campus or even knew it was a thing in in our history, embedded in the beginning of our church, they were set up and tear down in a grocery store. Um.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Like they didn’t have it 24/7; they only had it on Sundays.

Phil Caporale — Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Wow that’s amazing.

Phil Caporale — Yeah, and then sometime later, a few decades after that, bought ah a purchased a bank in the city of Camden. We have some people in our church that will tell you stories of going to Sunday school in a vault in the bank once they purchased it…

Rich Birch — Amazing. Yeah.

Phil Caporale — …and then move to our current location in Cherry Hill in the ’70s. And and then eight years ago, it’ll be 8 years this fall, that we launched the Glassboro campus that George is the campus pastor at. And that’s been going well, been in a bunch of places in the last several years, actually 8 locations in the seven plus years. Um and if people join us on Sunday in person, online, I think one of the one of the hallmarks of our church is I think authenticity. We hear that a lot from people. It’s very warm and welcoming, people use those words a lot. And even as they’re trying to express the presence of the Lord and how they sense and feel and interact with that. So, love it. Our our heart is for this area South Jersey. Obviously we’re just ten, twelve miles outside of Philadelphia too, so consider ourselves the suburb of that city as well.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. This is gonna be a great conversation particularly around the whole leadership development issue that so many of our churches are are leaning in, and there’s a lot I want to talk about I want to make sure we we talk to folks. But George why don’t we start with you. It seems like so many churches struggle with developing leaders who are not staff. In fact, recently I was talking to a church, a senior pastor lead pastor at a church, who kind of challenged his team. He gathered them together, and this is a fairly you know thousand person, 1500 person church, that challenges leaders to get together and and asked his staff,Hey like how many of you lead volunteers who lead other volunteers. And ah it was single digit. It ended up being there was just a few of these people in our churches. Man, that just seems to be such ah ah, an issue. Ah, talk to us about this issue, George. Why is this such a critical issue for us as church leaders to be thinking about?

George Probasco — Yeah I think it’s ah important for several reasons. And by the way um, you know all credit to Pastor Phil here because what you see and what you’re going to get from from this is exactly what I’ve been learning from him over the years now.

Rich Birch — Nice.

George Probasco — I’ve been saved and and knew of my faith for about 8 years and Pastor Phil’s always been there every step of the way…

Rich Birch — Love it.

George Probasco — …and so what you hear is a little bit pastor it’s going to be from Pastor Phil.

Rich Birch — I love it.

George Probasco — So I want to say I want to say Ephesians 4 and when we don’t do Ephesians 4:11-16 we are violating the scriptures. And I think so many churches, and this is pertaining to New Jersey um you know, specifically in Assemblies of God and in our network or our fellowship, is that ah pulpits are emptying faster than we can fill them. And um, that’s an unfortunate reality. And I think if I just had to draw conclusions over the years it’s because we violated simply Ephesians 11:14-16. We have not raised up leaders. Because pastors you know, probably themselves or only had a select or a small team to do the actual work of the ministry and they were doing it themselves. And so it’s critical because you know we have churches with empty pulpits now. And we have empty positions and and there’s ah, there’s a serious need in the in in these communities for pastors and ministry leaders to preach the gospel. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Phil, why are church leaders why are we tempted to not develop leaders like why, you know, why do we not do that? Like it seems because Ephesians 4 is, it is very clear. It’s not it’s not like debatable. You can’t be like, oh like I wonder what we’re supposed to do? It’s like pretty clear. But what’s those what’s the temptation. What why do you think we’re we’re tempted to not develop leaders?

Phil Caporale — Yeah, but I think part of it is not knowing how to craft the ask, for one.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Phil Caporale — You know, does it look like if if I’m a pastor, or I’m a ministry leader or director on a staff on a staff team at a church, um, there’s a little bit of that sense of responsibility. Well I was hired to do this. This is this is my job. Here’s my job description with a set list of bullet points that I have to meet some requirements on. And and while that’s true, there’s a part of all of our responsibilities, for those of us that are ministry leaders, pastors, whatever on staff at churches, to to do a part of our job, but we really want to help our our team and other churches as as the Lord allows us to to to really shift that in the sense of, Hey we’ve got to empower people.

Phil Caporale — Right back to what you and George just mentioned a moment ago – Ephesians 4 is pretty clear. You know that God gives the gifts to the church so that we can. We can pastors, evangelists, apostles, prophets, teachers um prepare the people for works of service. But if you read on and get to verses 12 through 16, particularly, there’s a lot of fruit there. Paul talks about growth, and maturity, and building up, and edification, and the body is strong, and people really find um, their groove. They use the gifts and the skills and the natural aptitudes that God’s hardwired into them to be able to um, feel that life-giving sense of purpose, being part of the body of Christ. So I think it it goes back to the the the ability and the awareness to be ah conscientious of the fact that we have to make an ask. I think it’s a little bit too, Rich, of ego that gets in the way of pastors and ministry leaders a lot of time.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.

Phil Caporale — If if I train somebody else that could do it as well or maybe even better than me, um, am I going to be needed? Is there is there a need for my position or for my role? So we’ve got to always fight and and and battle against that the need to be recognized, or to get the pat on the back for, you know, any kind of recognition. Um I think one of the greatest greatest things that we can experience—I know this is true of George, of our other leaders, and myself I’ve experienced this—that when you can fan the gift and the flame in somebody else’s life and you can watch them walk in the purpose that God’s designed them for, man, it’s one of the most rewarding things. And then you realize oh no, what Paul is instructing us there, is the same thing he told Timothy, right, in 2 Timothy 2:2. What you hear me say in the presence of others, teach reliable people that can go teach others. So Paul’s saying that you can have influence three clicks removed um and without ever seeing people because you’re passing on what you’ve been given.

Phil Caporale — So I think it’s those couple of things and then I think it’s also there’s not there’s not many good models. And we’re certainly far from having it all figured out. We’ve just been fortunate enough, and God’s been gracious enough to us to put people in our lives that have just said, hey come along, shadow me, let’s do this side by side. We have a little philosophy amongst our staff that, hey whenever you’re doing anything in ministry, whether you’re going to Costco’s and picking up supplies, whether you’re going on a hospital visit, you’re planning an event, take somebody with you, let somebody shadow you. And have conversation, right? So it’s that lead… it’s discipleship’s happening but it’s also developing leaders at the same time.

Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah I was thinking it’s not lost to me that that there’s two of you here today. I love that you’re modeling it, even in this conversation. George talk me through at Kingsway, so let’s say either you maybe in your campus specifically, or on a team in your you know in your campus you you see one of those people who are like, okay that person’s got some potential. How do you begin? What is the conversation? What’s the platform? What’s the ask for trying to move those people towards leading? What does that look like, George?

George Probasco — Yeah, so one of the things that ah that I specifically do is I try to lead through my staff. So they are really the ones having the conversations, or I am if if I’m approaching an individual in the church that I feel has leadership potential, um, what I’m doing is shoulder tapping them and then connecting them with somebody from our um, our team specifically. And so one of the programs that we launched this year, relaunched that I should say, Pastor Phil can go in a little bit more about that would be Leader Track. And that’s something that is a great pipeline onboarding ramp for ah, high capacity volunteers within the church context as far as that that perspective is concerned. And that is a little bit less skin in the game as far as fulfilling an academic requirements through our partnership with SEU, so.

Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, yeah, Phil, do you want to tell us about Leader Track, kind of unpack that? What does that look like? How do we talk to that ah, you know what’s covered there? How how does that fit? How’s that work?

Phil Caporale — Yeah, yeah, it had its Genesis in about 2015, so we’re going back a few years. Actually George and about 13 others were the pilot of that and we just put together what was then Leader Step, Rich, was really out of our assimilation and what is our Growth Track process. People were going through that, they were doing everything we were asking of them to move in their journey in their faith, and you know, being involved in the life of the church, being connected in a small group—we call life groups—being being on a ministry team. But then we had a handful of people come up to us, and George was one of them then, that said. Hey I’m I’m in but I feel like God has something else for me to develop. I feel like I can lead others. I feel like I want to learn more; I want to lead better. And so after several of those conversations, it was enough at the time our lead team for us to realize, Hey we should probably lean into this a little bit more and and do something a little bit more deliberate in training um, high-capacity volunteers that can really step into some ministry roles, but really fulfill um, what they’re sensing in their hearts and and let’s let’s do that. You know, let’s go back to Ephesians 4.

Phil Caporale — So we started doing that. We did it for several years and took about 70-ish people through that. And we were watching just the fruit of that, which was spectacular because people were owning their part of ministry. They were owning their they were owning that idea of growing their influence in their homes, in their families, on their jobs. I mean some of the stories that were outside the walls of the church were incredible of how God was working in people’s lives. And then um, from that we we launched a year-long program that was very intense that we just called Protégé, like some others have named it and that discipleship program. And then out of that was birth the the leadership school, Kingsway Leadership School.

Phil Caporale — But even even though we’re in our I think 6 year now of of the school, we realized that hey they’re gonna be people that are aren’t going to be preparing for full time ministry, or don’t need a degree, or aren’t interested in that level of commitment. So we’ve got to bring this Leader Step back that was on hiatus for a little while, and we just thought, hey it really is a track for leadership development and potentially not just leading as a volunteer. But if people are wrestling with a full time call to vocational ministry, um, Leader Track can help begin to allow them to explore that. So we just relaunched it this past fall. We named it instead of Leader Step, Leader Track this time. And it’s a ten week commitment. In fact to pilot it, or re-pilot it, we took our our Kingsway Leadership School to students through it in their fall semester, asked them for feedback, asked them to speak to it. What do you love? What do you not like? What do you need more of? What what could we take away?

Phil Caporale — And then we um, we made an invite of um, we’re hoping to take 40 people through it this year, and we just finished a ten week cohort of 22 of them um, that are already leading in many areas of of our church. Some of our pastors and ministry directors have already made specific asks of them in in you know, worship and student ministry, children’s ministry, whatever else. And now the responsibility is on our our staff to meet back up with those people that have gone through it and continue to make an ongoing investment into them.

Phil Caporale — And so some of the early fruit we’re seeing is relationships that are being forged, Rich, in some incredible ways as well. But people really leaning into it. We’re getting reports similar to what it was in the past of people applying the principles at work. I mean some of these people are lead in high-level roles in their jobs, entrepreneurs in business, whatever it is, education, and they’re taking some of the principles from the word of God on character development, and personal mission statement, and leading healthy teams, and implementing that. And they’re coming back and saying things like this, Hey this works! And we’re like yes, of course it does!

Rich Birch — Love it.

Phil Caporale — You know, that’s incredible.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Phil Caporale — So it’s it’s been fun to really watch that. And it just it just continues to ignite that fire in us to go man, this is what we as ministry leaders, as pastors, are called to do. And we shouldn’t be surprised of the fruit that Paul promised in the word.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. You know, one of the interesting things is I saw a stat recently I think it was three quarters I think it was like 76% of this is marketplace leaders who are already managers, so they’re already leading people, say they have never received any training to be a manager…

Phil Caporale — Wow.

Rich Birch — …which is fascinating. And so you can see why as a church if we step in and provide some leadership, it doesn’t surprise me at all, you step in and provide some leadership training, man, it makes a huge difference in in people’s lives. Sticking with you, Phil, how do you balance out the um like the in class, something like Leader Track, with the practicality of leading in context, you know the being with people, the two by two, how do those two balance out together? I sometimes feel like we’re tempted by classes like this; we’re tempted by like say all we need is another curriculum. When clearly obviously you know it’s more than that. h, balance that out. How does that work out for you guys at at Kingsway?

Phil Caporale — Yeah, well and George kind of alluded to it a few moments ago. One of the things that we do is we we want it to be by invitation. So until a couple of months ago during a vision so a recent vision series, we hadn’t really talked about Leader Track. Our so our church knows about Kingsway Leadership School, of course…

Rich Birch — Right.

Phil Caporale — …but Leader Track has always been this shoulder tap, this personal invite from a ministry leader because we wanted to make sure that these people were already they already have a lot of skin in the game. They’re already leading, many of them are leading really well and we’ve identified, our teams identified in them the potential to to take on more, and to and to grow their influence by leading people. Ah, one of the gaps that we noticed, Rich, in our church was between staff and ministry leaders, and others that have led others is this this group of leaders of leaders. How could we get somebody to coach others. Ah, we don’t use this term but it would be like a team captain really where where they’re investing themselves into others, from a volunteer standpoint, which could potentially be a base for us to hire potential staff someday. That’s always a thing that we’re keeping in mind, but it’s not the desired or ah intended end result.

Phil Caporale — So watching people already serve. They’re already in involved, embedded into the life of the church. This is stuff that we’re seeing on display in who they are, and how how consistent they’re involved in the life of the church, and then coming alongside of them and going hey… The content that we provided, a lot of we make it very interactive. We don’t want to just get up and lecture. They can get the information anywhere. We’ve just tried to do our best to contextualize it. And then create even within that large group of the 22 we took through it, um, we put them around small tables. And half of the evening, half of the 3 hours we were together was then building community. And we didn’t ask any of them to do this but one of the neat things that happened out of that, Rich, was very early on they started exchanging numbers together. They were in text threads. They were…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Phil Caporale — …I heard from some that I’m close to, Hey we’re we’re exchanging a prayer requests and so-and-so showed up in my house to encourage me. And nothing we ever said, we just instead of teaching in in rows, like a classroom setting, we said let’s do it around tables so we can naturally facilitate community. And that kind of caught on like wildfire and and expedited a process of us going, Hey here’s some content and curriculum we want to help you with, and if you’ll learn to lead yourself well, you’re going to be able to lead others just as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Yeah and I do think this whole leader of leaders issue, man, there’s so many of our churches we we struggle with this. We we’re looking for people to just do stuff for us, if I can be too if I can be a little too pointed. We’re looking for people who just if you could just stand here and hand out these programs, or you could just you know helping kids ministry. As opposed to, man, I want you to lead a group of leaders to make a difference. Um George, let’s talk about the Kingsway Leadership School. Let’s talk through this. Ah give us this so give us a sense of, you know, kind of what is offered through that. How does it work? How is it partnership kind of give us an overview and then let’s dig into it. So give us an overview there, George.

George Probasco — Yeah, so we’re going into our seventh year come…

Rich Birch — Amazing.

George Probasco — …comes fall. So we’ve learned a ton over the years, Rich. I mean a ton. We had to add and bring in some values for our students because we just our culture was just all over the place, and that’s one of the things that I would just say strongly is that we have to, when you’re developing a leadership culture in your church, you need to have strong values, whether it be church values or if you have like a program that you’re taking your your students through, you have to have values. So that’s one of the things that we instituted.

George Probasco — But an overview, we offer 15 degrees…

Rich Birch — Wow!

George Probasco — …in partnership with Southeastern University. Ah, five of those are which are masters degrees. And so students are able to come for our leadership development within the church, so we don’t teach any SU academic accredited courses here in the church – that is all online only. What we do is we come alongside of Southeastern University and we’re ah, developing the student’s heart and hands.

George Probasco — And so we like to break it down into three categories heart, head, and hand. So the head component would be SEU’s partnership with us. The heart component is leadership development, character development. That’s actually what our pastoral staff and and leaders are actually doing and in our students and developing in our students. And then we love to develop our students’ hands, and that’s through ministry practicum.

George Probasco — So the cool thing about Southeastern’s partnership, if you’re an extension site, is every college student gets college credits through something called practicum. That is an actual college level course through Southeastern University. And if you’re a bachelor uh, degree student or looking to acquire your bachelor degree, that’s twenty four college credits that a student can earn through ministry practicum. So what that means is if they’re serving in their local church, working with under a ministry leader, shadowing them, um, really learning from them, they are logging what they are doing in the ministry and they’re getting college credits for that. So that’s a big deal. So long, the days are over I would say with students going away to college, especially ministry students, not being developed, rather they’re just getting all head knowledge and then no practical ministry experience. So we’re looking to really, again, meet that need where we can provide an academic degree for our students, but also train them up and and give them practical ministry experience. So.

Rich Birch — Now so talk to me through ah, you know, so SEU is a fantastic school, very innovative. This is not a, they’re great school. I love those guys. They’re good people so there’s no negative in all of this. But why the partnership with them? What what about them specifically you would say, hey ah, you know they’re good people to work with? Phil why don’t you take this what what was you know, kind of what drew you to a partnership with them? Why is that been a great connection? How does that how has that been for you guys?

Phil Caporale — Yeah, we um we we early on as we were long um, going through what I mentioned earlier, Protégé, Rich, which was developed out of what Leader Track was the first time our first iteration of it. We had come into contact with a couple people, 3 or 4 actually, that said, hey you should look into SEU. They’re making college education really affordable. And I was um I was really excited about that because I’ve I’ve always I’ve always felt like there’s been these two sides of it, and neither one really fully met the um, the requirements of what it would look like for people that, especially wanted to pursue full-time vocational ministry.

Phil Caporale — And what I mean by that is we had people that would have a lot of experience in in church culture, but were missing that educational, the theology, the doctrine understanding of the scriptures, and the the formal education there. And then there were other people, to George’s point of moment they ago, Rich, that were coming out of bible colleges with almost you know, zero zero ministry practical ministry experience. So when we heard of the partnership with SEU, we did some exploration, we connected with them on some calls, and had them come up and visit us. And and the fact that they could package that and a student would never have to leave Jersey, and stay involved in their local church, do it very affordable for less than a third of the cost. There were a lot of um, very obvious pros to that. And we said, all right, well let’s let’s dig into that a little bit more. And as we did we realized that we can bring really the the crux of the discipleship, and and they can they can get an idea of what it means to here’s what a follower of Christ looks like as they’re growing, as they’re learning the lead, as they’re pursuing potentially vocational ministry. Um, and it it very quickly became appealing.

Phil Caporale — It’s funny, Rich, about half of our student body through the last six plus years has not even been within our own church. It was other churches that kids were coming out of youth ministry…

Rich Birch — Oh really? Interesting.

Phil Caporale — …other adults that were serving.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Phil Caporale — Because it allowed… pastors were interested because they’re like wait a second guys. You mean my this person from my church doesn’t need to go down to Florida for 4 years? Like no, no, they can stay involved in your church. We’ll do the discipleship part, you offer the practicum and SEU… So then it was like this three-headed partnership.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s really cool.

Phil Caporale — Um, and that’s appealed to a lot of people, you know. And and and I think the fact, especially in this day and age, where where you don’t have to go away, and it’s going to cut the cost down, again, until less than a third, that there’s ah, there’s obviously an appealing nature to that. Um, but the fact that they cannot just get practical ministry experience, but stay in that church which they’re part of, perhaps even grown up in, um, really continues to benefit, and feed that, and strengthen the local church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. Love it. So so good. George, give me a sense of the kind of week-in week-out for a student, you know, that’s engaging. What does that look like? How do they, you know, how do they connect with with with you guys? What’s that all again, kind of give us it from from their perspective. What does that look like when so, you know, when they’re in class or what I don’t even share the language you use.

George Probasco — Sure.

Rich Birch — When they’re you know when they’re engaged, what’s that look like?

George Probasco — Yeah, sure. So students gather on Wednesday evenings from 6 to 9. We’ll feed our students. A lot of them have jobs, full time jobs, so they’re doing other things. Um, and that’s another thing about ah Southeastern is that it is affordable and students are able to work a part-time job, or work full-time and almost nearly knock out their their student debt right away. So um…

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great.

George Probasco — …but so a lot of them are coming in from 6 to 9, and then what we’ll do is we’ll we’ll do some leadership development, we’ll have chapel, and then we’ll do some character development as well with them. And then Sundays is ah all hands on deck ministry day. So we are exposing them to to ministry. And we take our year one students through ah kind of a general practicum is what we call it. And we rotate them through all the various ministries here at ah at the local church. And we’re teaching them and giving them a a well-rounded exposure to Kingsway Church Min. So it’s not the end all be all, but it’s just the way how we do it in our context.

George Probasco — And so they’re working with different ministry leaders, and they’re being exposed to those ministries. And and a lot of this is and I say and I highly recommend that because what it does is it’s going to build some character. For students that just want to get up on a platform and and start speaking, well we know that that’s not realistic. And so we’re going to throw them in the kids’ ministry. We’re going to throw them in ah, you know, around teenagers or you know we’re going to really help build that character within them because that’s just what we do. And then for year two, three and four what we do is um, we take our students and we allow them to choose their ministry focus. And so…

Rich Birch — Okay.

George Probasco — …we’ll we’ll get around our our practicum leaders. So one of them being our our youth pastor, and if if a student’s interested in that that our youth pastor becomes responsible for that student. And so literally they have their own curriculum that they have built to develop help develop our students ah, to train them up to be a youth pastor or whatever the gap is.

Rich Birch — Love that. So good. Phil, a part of what you’ve talked about is this whole vocational ministry push, that a part of what… and we all know this, right? Like anybody that’s that isn’t just heads down in their local, you know, they realize, gosh, there’s a giant leadership crisis in every church. I was literally just this week talking to some leaders in a particular movement, they were saying hey we’re going to 1500 pastors retiring—and then we all know these statistics—1500 pastors retiring in the next ten years, and they’re graduating, I think it was 8 per year out of their ministry school.

Phil Caporale — Wow.

Rich Birch — So it’s like, Hey this is going to be a problem. We’re trying to, you know, so what has that what’s kind of been the output on that side? I know not all of these people are going to end up in vocational ministry, but what has that looked like, you know, give us some context on what that looks like, Phil?

Phil Caporale — Yeah, um, some of them um, it really gets it gets interesting, Rich, in the sense of placement. One of the things we are very upfront with about students that are interested in the school, in Kingsway Leadership School, is to tell them, Hey there’s no guarantee of placement upon graduation, whether it’s two years, four years, or six years that you’re with us, but we’re going to continue to walk alongside of you. And because of, you know, our network of churches and the connections that we have to a bunch of them um, we’ve been able to and minimally hook up um a student that’s finishing graduating the program, graduating the school with a degree and whatnot with other local churches and their pastors to at least entertain a conversation that sometimes has…

Rich Birch — Right.

Phil Caporale — …even um, you know turned into an interview, or them pursuing you know ministry credentials, or going down another path ah similar route to be involved in in their local church, or or Kingsway, whatever whatever the case might be. So I think one of the things is always having keeping that out in front of them, especially for those, Rich, that feel or sensing and working through a call to vocational missionary, not just pastoring but even missionary. We have a girl coming through our school right now that where she just finished up her her grad degree, is our first grad student. So she’s got this master she’s got this this Masters of Divinity and she’s preparing to go to India on a two-year term…

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Phil Caporale — …as a missionary associate. and so that’s been a big deal. She got to go on that as a scholarship for being part of the school this past this past fall, and just felt a real tug and pull in her heart from the Lord to be there. So she’s pursuing that now and I could certainly see her um, becoming a career missionary. Um, there’s a strong call in her life for that, but she’s really leaned into it. And she’s gotten that practicum experience…

Rich Birch — Right.

Phil Caporale — …that George just detailed a moment ago with um, one of our pastors who’s over missions, and has been able to really lean into that, been able to really draw from that. And not just from our pastor that’s leading her in that, but the connections that that Pastor has as well to some other pastors, to some other missionaries that has opened this girl’s scope of potential resource and influence up so she can explore this call.

Rich Birch — Yeah, this is fantastic. I love this. I love what you guys are doing here. I think there’s so much for us to learn from and continue to lean in on. George, when you think about um you know individual students, is there like similar to the student we just heard about, are there any other stories or kind of insights of like, here’s kind of how this is working out practically in in someone’s life?

George Probasco — Yeah I have a student actually, when I transitioned in into the campus pastor role in October of ’22, we had a ah vacant area also I’ve I’ve identified in at the campus.

Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.

George Probasco — And so one of our students one of our students is so high capacity. He actually um, came from another church where he was briefly youth pastoring, but he’s now with Kingsway and in in our program. And part of his practicum it just so happened to work out where he was going to be coming down to the campus with me this year. And so now I have him overseeing um, our guest experience teams at our campus. And um so he’s responsible for for five teams in particular, and caring and pastoring for them. And so that’s just providing alongside of his academics very real ah, very real experience. And and the reason why I say that is because these are just some things that textbooks don’t train you up on.

Rich Birch — Right.

George Probasco — These are things that ah they don’t they don’t tell you how to have a hard conversations, difficult conversations. You just kind of have to be thrown into that. And there’s a lot of coaching with me me and him you know, again, it’s a lot of one on one, so anything that he’s doing, we’re we’re talking about it afterwards. So that’s where the discipleship comes in.

Rich Birch — Love that. Yeah I love that and that that’s been my like very similar experience particularly as people have transitioned into our churches from um, you know the marketplace, is that there is like there’s the academic side that we can deal with it’s like okay you know you can you can learn. There’s a certain amount of theological stuff you can learn. You can take courses, but there is some. There’s real issues around how do we help people get the practical insights around, you know, when you’re sitting across the table for the first time and someone talks about that they want to leave their spouse. You know you know, that the first minute of your response there is really important. And you know you don’t want people being like, I don’t know I’ve never really thought about that before. And so what you guys are doing is, you know, in such a supportive environment is is enabling that kind of thing I think that’s fantastic.

Rich Birch — Well, Phil, why don’t we give you the last word. If I was a ah church leader that was listening in today that was saying, man, I think we need to really step up our game on this front. We need to we need to look to grow. What would be some of those first steps that we should take, whether it’s leader track or maybe even pursuing something more robust like, you know, Kingsway Leadership School. What would be some of those first steps that you would encourage leaders to be thinking about today?

Phil Caporale — Yeah I think I think part of the the first thing ah a leader needs to do is is really look at—this is very practical—look at their calendar and of their week, let’s just call it a 40 hour work week as a pastor or ministry director on staff at a church, and and ask ourselves right now, How many hours a week am I giving to intentional and deliberate leadership development? Um, ah one of the things that we put in front of our staff, it hasn’t been a hard and fast rule, but, you know, could you take up to a day a week, six to 8 hours a week, where you’re developing others. In other words, our theme this year for our our team, Rich, is um, our staff is to I just call it LTO – you’re going to lead through others. We have to lead through others. We can’t just think, hey that’s a good idea, or someday I hope to get to it. No, it’s like we have to, right? Some of us are going to be natural just doers all the time, others of us do have a proficiency to develop others, but we’re really trying to move our whole staff to think, you know, I’m here to develop others; I have to lead other people through those that are right in front of me.

Phil Caporale — And so the practical, my the first thought again practical is just looking at the calendar and it’s not necessarily a full day, like I’m just going to pick oh Thursday’s the leadership development day. It may be a two hour pocket here, and a three hour window there. But what does that look like and how do I continue to do that to make an intentional investment in other people? Because look we all know that battle right of of urgent versus important. But one of the things I’ve learned through ministry and in my experience, and probably took me a little longer to learn than I care to admit is that, yeah, you’re always going to have the urgent, but if you’ll if you’ll focus on what’s important, right? In this conversation we’re talking about developing leaders of leaders. If you’ll give more time to focus on what’s important, it will keep some of the urgent at bay. Not all of it. There’s always going to be the emergency situations, of course, but part of the urgency that creeps up at times is our lack of being purposeful and intentional in building leaders.

Phil Caporale — I think back to Exodus 18, right? This the first this is like this is like the um Old Testament version of Ephesians 4 when when Moses is kind of burned out. He’s judging all the cases and his father-in-law Jethro goes, You can’t do this, right? You got to find some leaders that can lead tens and fifties and hundreds and a thousand. And and he said at the end of that, and we often overlook this part, he said if you’ll do this, then you’ll be able to endure and the people will go home in peace. And I just thought about that like longevity and ministry. If if God’s call in our life is not just for a season but it’s for all our lives, and for those of us that are called to pastoral ministry, um, that man, let’s do this well. Let’s look to make sure that we endure and we pace well through this. And others are going to go home in peace. But there’s also tied to that word a sense of fulfillment in their own lives, you know?

Phil Caporale — And again kind of back to earlier in the conversation when you see that life-giving joy come out of others, it adds to your your sense of of purpose being fulfilled as well. So I think it’s it’s as as as simple even as going, hey look at my calendar how many how many meetings have I had with other people this week?

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.

Phil Caporale — Am I grabbing lunch or coffee with anybody and making an intentional investment into that time? And then as ministry leaders right on staff I would think um, if I’m in the executive pastor role or lead paster role or on the lead team, what are we doing to train our staff? I realized that a large portion of my job I would I would I would contend that about 25% of what I do is thinking about how I’m training the staff to lead through others. Because if I don’t train them, if I don’t model it to them, I’m I’m going to get the same thing from them, right? So it’s got to be something that’s real. So where we can invite people like Paul said, hey you follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. And and as we do that, it it catches on. And it takes a little bit of time and you’re always going to have those on the team or on the staff potentially that are a little intimidated by it. I don’t want other people to pick up my bad habits, or I’m not quite sure to do this. So we just leverage our chapel every week. We have a two hour chapel where we’ll worship and pray together. And then the second hour of most of that is training. It’s it’s it’s hey let’s get into the nuts and bolts. This was what it looks like, not just philosophically or theoretically to train leaders. But this is how we’re gonna do it.

Phil Caporale — And then keeping yourself available. I think as as the point person or if you’re leading a ministry um to just say to the rest of your staff or your team or those that report to you, hey I’m available and I’ll continue to help develop you as you develop others.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. I really appreciate this conversation today, guys. This has been super helpful and inspiring. Really, really good. George, um, if people want to connect with you, with the church with you know to kind of follow along, where do we want to send them online, just as we wrap up today’s conversation?

George Probasco — Yeah, they can ah email me personally gprobasco@kingsway.church

Rich Birch — Oh great, good stuff. And then kingsway.church for everything else if they want to track along. Well, appreciate you guys being here today. Thanks so much, and always good to talk to leaders from Jersey. So thanks for being here today.

Phil Caporale — Yeah, it was a blast, Rich, thanks for having us.

Rich Birch — Thank you.

George Probasco — Thanks for having us, Rich.