Latest / Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association / Episode 37: WHY leads to WHAT: Pastoring Change in Churches That Want Change But Resist It. HELP! My Church Isn't Growing…What Should We Do?! With Bob Bickford

Transcript

Episode 37: WHY leads to WHAT: Pastoring Change in Churches That Want Change But Resist It. HELP! My Church Isn't Growing…What Should We Do?! With Bob Bickford · Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association

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Speaker1: Today, we're talking with Bob Bickford, who is the head of the Nashville Baptist
0:05
Speaker1: Association. And one of the things he's going to talk us through is churches
0:10
Speaker1: dealing with necessary change.
0:13
Speaker1: And he's going to tell us that the biggest hindrance to change is not understanding
0:18
Speaker1: that the necessity is there, but...
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Speaker2: Most declined churches are aware that things aren't as they should be or as they were. Right.
0:27
Speaker2: So they can see that their attendance has been down.
0:31
Speaker2: They can't fix their condition in the Sunday school space. So they have to close
0:34
Speaker2: the Sunday school space and close the doors. And, you know, so you've got puppets
0:38
Speaker2: growing mold in there and all kinds of other things that are happening there.
0:41
Speaker2: So they don't lack awareness.
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Speaker2: What they lack is readiness to do something about it.
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Speaker1: Is all about helping churches, leaders, and pastors find health,
1:03
Speaker1: encouragement, practical advice, soul care, and resources that work together
1:07
Speaker1: to build up your local fellowship and the broader kingdom of God.
1:11
Speaker1: Join hosts, Pastor Chris Cole and Dr. Chase Thompson from the Great Commission
1:15
Speaker1: Association, led by Dr. Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry
1:20
Speaker1: and aim for the goal of making every church flourish.
1:23
Speaker1: Hello, everybody, and welcome in to episode number 37 of the Every Church Flourishing Podcast.
1:29
Speaker1: We've got a deep, fun, interesting, intriguing guide today to talk to in Bob Bickford.
1:35
Speaker1: His website is bobbickford.com. And since Pastor Christopher actually knows
1:41
Speaker1: Bob and knows all about him, I'm going to kick it to Chris for the introduction.
1:45
Speaker0: Yeah, we are so excited to have Bob on the show today. Bob, thank you for coming, for being here.
1:51
Speaker0: For those of you that aren't familiar with Bob, even though he is not only my
1:55
Speaker0: friend, a friend of our Great Commission Association as well.
1:59
Speaker0: We want to tell you just a little bit about him. Bob has studied and taught
2:03
Speaker0: on church renewal for years.
2:05
Speaker0: He's lived out that reality in his own life, leaving a large multi-site church
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Speaker0: where he was on staff to go renew and replant a new congregation called the Groves in the St.
2:19
Speaker0: Louis area in 2014. Bob served there for nine years.
2:25
Speaker0: Through that time, he was also working to help develop the Missouri Baptist
2:31
Speaker0: Convention Resound Network, which is a network focused on church renewal within
2:36
Speaker0: the Missouri Baptist Convention.
2:38
Speaker0: He also then began to write resources, and he's written some wonderful books.
2:44
Speaker0: We'll have these links in our show notes for books like Am I a Replanter?
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Speaker0: Pathways to Partnership and a phenomenal resource called the Associational Replanting Guide,
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Speaker0: which if you have a chance to go to the North American Mission Board's AMS Replanting
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Speaker0: Lab, is still sort of the seminal text for how associations can be involved in helping churches
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Speaker0: walk through a renewal process.
3:11
Speaker0: And it's through that experience that I got to know Bob, where he was the associate
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Speaker0: director of replant for the North American Mission Board.
3:20
Speaker0: Today, Bob serves as the executive director of the Nashville Baptist Association.
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Speaker0: Helping churches and pastors pursue greater health, gospel faithfulness and
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Speaker0: missional effectiveness.
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Speaker0: He and his wife, Barb, live in Nashville, and they have three adult children
3:37
Speaker0: and five grandchildren.
3:39
Speaker0: And I love every conversation I get to have with Bob. When he posts something
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Speaker0: onto that blog, I read it.
3:45
Speaker0: I don't always agree with it, but I always read it and I always come away having
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Speaker0: my heart provoked, my mind stirred up to think about many things.
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Speaker0: And Bob, you have been a great friend to our association. You've spoken at our annual meeting before.
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Speaker0: You even helped with the genesis of the GCA Renew program, helping us do some
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Speaker0: of our early online work, doing a cohort that you were a big part of,
4:13
Speaker0: and you helped us communicate and connect together there.
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Speaker0: And we are just deeply grateful that you're here with us today on our podcast.
4:21
Speaker0: And I can't wait for this conversation.
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Speaker2: Man, great to see you guys. Great to be introduced to you, Chase.
4:26
Speaker2: And always good to think about my friends at the GCA.
4:30
Speaker2: And what a great time we had out there with you guys a couple years back.
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Speaker1: Okay, Bob, before we get into the nitty gritty and the frameworks you've developed
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Speaker1: and all of that, let's talk a little bit of stories. Let's talk a little bit
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Speaker1: of history and go back to your time at Sherwood Baptist Church.
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Speaker1: How did you kind of lead that church through the replanting stage and how did
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Speaker1: it shape and model the way you think about church renewal?
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Speaker1: And while you're talking about that, we'd love a couple of stories along the
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Speaker1: way about what happened during those years you were at Sherwood that might encourage
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Speaker1: replanters and potential replanters that are listening in right now.
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Speaker2: Yeah. So I was serving multi-site church in St. Louis and just really sensing that
5:20
Speaker2: We were wanting to do something different. It was, we'd been to a couple different campuses.
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Speaker2: I'd worked centrally and we had high school kids and I knew I didn't want to move from St.
5:29
Speaker2: Louis. And so the associational assistant director approached me and said,
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Speaker2: hey, there's a small church on the Southwest side of town and they're looking
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Speaker2: for a pastor, about 40 people, and they think they just have one more shot.
5:41
Speaker2: So I'd like to send your resumes.
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Speaker2: I was just like, wow, that's not what I was thinking. I was thinking like plant
5:47
Speaker2: a church, you know, do something.
5:49
Speaker2: And my wife grew up in small church. And so she was like, what do we have to
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Speaker2: lose? Like, this is, you know, there's a building already and there's some people,
5:56
Speaker2: let's, let's go. So I threw my resume in there and they kept tossing it out.
5:59
Speaker2: Like they would find all these reasons why not to choose me.
6:02
Speaker2: And it was actually, I think I was the last guy standing because it took me
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Speaker2: longer to interview and be accepted as a, voted in as a pastor for a declining
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Speaker2: church of 40 people than to work for a church of 3000.
6:15
Speaker2: It was crazy. Right. So, so I started, right. And in the interview process,
6:20
Speaker2: they all said, we need to change.
6:22
Speaker2: We've got to change. We're going to die. And I remember asking he deacon,
6:26
Speaker2: okay, well, how would you go about changing? He goes, I just start changing things.
6:30
Speaker2: I was like, great. This is awesome. And so a hundred percent vote unanimous.
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Speaker2: Everybody said they need to change. The deacon goes, let's just start changing stuff.
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Speaker2: So man, I started with a small change. And this is, you hear this quote often.
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Speaker2: I just was going to make a change to the bulletin. He said, I had all of the
6:48
Speaker2: Committee meetings listed in the calendar, all of that stuff.
6:50
Speaker2: And I thought, if we have guests come here, they're going to think,
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Speaker2: if I attend here, if I join here, I'm going to be put on a committee.
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Speaker2: And I didn't want that to be in their first impression. So I removed them.
6:59
Speaker2: And you would have thought that the Holy Spirit left the earth.
7:01
Speaker2: It was like crisis moment.
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Speaker2: You know, wailing and gnashing of teeth, et cetera. And so I,
7:08
Speaker2: what I realized was that their desire for change did not meet their willingness
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Speaker2: to change in the sense of, you know, we want change, but change meant we want more people here
7:19
Speaker2: doing the same things we're doing. And we've always done, we don't want to be different.
7:23
Speaker2: Now there's some really sweet people. There's some really hard people.
7:26
Speaker2: There were some really difficult times.
7:27
Speaker2: There was a campaign from a Sunday school class. They had like a secret meeting
7:32
Speaker2: at their house and were sending anonymous letters to try to figure out how to
7:35
Speaker2: stop me, you know, from making changes in the church and led to a showdown between
7:39
Speaker2: me and the key deacon who said, I'd just start changing stuff.
7:42
Speaker2: And ultimately he ended up leaving the church because we, we don't walk away from conflict.
7:48
Speaker2: We confront conflict. So I think one of the things I learned early was that
7:52
Speaker2: conflict, in many cases, is a good sign that you're moving in the right direction,
7:58
Speaker2: not if you're being stupid and doing dumb things, right, and being harsh.
8:03
Speaker2: When you start changing small things and you start trying to pursue and the
8:08
Speaker2: Lord's objective for the church and become missional and reach people,
8:11
Speaker2: you're going to have to change a few things. And so you need to be smart about how you do it.
8:14
Speaker2: But even just small things can lead to conflict.
8:17
Speaker2: And what we began to sense was that a lot of the conflict that had gone underground
8:22
Speaker2: and was embedded into the church, as the church was trying to get healthy,
8:26
Speaker2: the Lord was revealing it and
8:27
Speaker2: it was coming out into the open and we were going to have to deal with it.
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Speaker2: So I think my My view of success changed from everybody's happy and they're
8:34
Speaker2: fired up about where we're going to we might see people be upset and leave and
8:39
Speaker2: cause division in the church as we're trying to be healthy.
8:41
Speaker2: Also, I think if I could go back, one of the things I would do is I would just
8:44
Speaker2: try to really love the people that were there and pastor them well.
8:48
Speaker2: Laugh with them, have joy, do fellowships, all of those sorts of things.
8:53
Speaker2: You know, there were some shots across the bow that made me fearful around those
8:57
Speaker2: people because I didn't know who was going to complain about what and what they
9:01
Speaker2: were going to complain about next.
9:02
Speaker2: And it was stuff that was inconsequential in my mind.
9:05
Speaker2: But I think one of the things that we have to be mindful of,
9:08
Speaker2: especially if a church invites a pastor in to renew it, everybody's for change
9:11
Speaker2: unless it has their address on it. We always love to see the Amazon guy deliver stuff to our house.
9:16
Speaker2: We don't like to see the pastor deliver change to our church.
9:19
Speaker2: We just don't like those things. And the older I get, the less I like change.
9:23
Speaker2: I don't like when my phone updates.
9:25
Speaker2: I don't like that I have to look at the menu with the flashlight on my phone
9:28
Speaker2: if I'm at a restaurant at night. I don't like those changes,
9:31
Speaker2: right? So we get to the point where we just don't like changes.
9:34
Speaker2: But we have to realize that change represents a loss, that our people are going to grieve.
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Speaker2: One of the most powerful stories, I think, was a lady named Karen.
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Speaker2: She was the first baby born into the church. And she was a sweet, sweet lady.
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Speaker2: And she came to me one Sunday morning. We were just talking.
9:48
Speaker2: And she was like, I said, how are you doing? And she's like,
9:51
Speaker2: well, it's really hard being here. And I was like, tell me more about it.
9:54
Speaker2: She said, every time I drive up outside, the church looks like the church I
9:57
Speaker2: grew up in and the church I remember in.
10:00
Speaker2: But every time I come inside, I'm reminded it's not that church anymore.
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Speaker2: It's just really coming in life.
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Speaker2: And so, man, I learned you got to grieve with the people as the church changes,
10:12
Speaker2: the original legacy members.
10:14
Speaker2: Now, the new people that come with you, while you have those vestiges of,
10:18
Speaker2: you know, the former church that are being peeled away, the new people are going,
10:22
Speaker2: when is this going to change?
10:24
Speaker2: Like, it was funny. Christian, I don't know if you've ever seen this,
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Speaker2: but I would do announcements and they had just, and this threw me off my game
10:31
Speaker2: big time. Remember, I'd been at churches of like thousands, right?
10:34
Speaker2: And so I hear I'm in church at 40.
10:35
Speaker2: So in the service, I'm going to do announcements. And then Joy,
10:38
Speaker2: one of the oldest members, just raises her hand and just starts blurting out
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Speaker2: announcements. Like I had never seen that happen in my life.
10:45
Speaker2: And I was just like, what's happening here?
10:47
Speaker2: Right. And so you just got to embrace the awkward and the weird and just know
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Speaker2: that, man, there's some really strange things that are going to happen and just got to hang on.
10:55
Speaker2: Love the people, laugh a lot, and pursue God's mission.
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Speaker2: And I think I struggled with the first two, loving the people well and laughing a lot because
11:06
Speaker2: it felt so, so serious because of the shots across the bow and the kinds of
11:11
Speaker2: conflict that we were experiencing that I became fearful as a shepherd.
11:16
Speaker2: And when you do that, you shepherd not to get hurt. And so I would just say,
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Speaker2: if guys are listening to this and they're going through some hard times,
11:26
Speaker2: Celebrate the fact that conflict is coming out because that's probably a sign
11:30
Speaker2: you're getting healthy.
11:30
Speaker2: But man, embrace it. Embrace the suffering, embrace the conflict and realize that.
11:36
Speaker2: Possibly things are headed in the right direction and love the people in the
11:40
Speaker2: lab. And that will diminish a lot of that tension.
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Speaker1: Hey, that's great advice. That's a great story. Let me ask you a follow-up question
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Speaker1: to that, because I know replanters are going to be listening to this and you
11:51
Speaker1: have a lot of experience with it.
11:52
Speaker1: I was actually just contacted by a replanter this week. It's like,
11:55
Speaker1: I don't understand the process, what all is involved in this.
11:58
Speaker1: And I said, well, good news. We've actually had some replanters on the podcast
12:02
Speaker1: lately that'll help you walk through it.
12:04
Speaker1: But I know we place too much importance on attendance, at least a lot of pastors do.
12:10
Speaker1: But at the same time, it is far and away the easiest metric to see and track.
12:16
Speaker1: So real briefly, kind of walk us through during this process at Sherwood,
12:21
Speaker1: how attendance fluctuated and maybe what kind of sign that was.
12:28
Speaker2: Well, when we left the multisite church, people heard what we were doing and
12:32
Speaker2: a handful of people came with us. And that was awesome at first.
12:35
Speaker2: We had like 20, like 20 families and their kids came and immediately all the
12:39
Speaker2: older ladies who were serving in the kids ministry quit because they were like
12:42
Speaker2: too many kids can't do it.
12:45
Speaker2: It's like, all right, well, but they were excited to see the young people.
12:48
Speaker2: So I decided to see the kids, et cetera.
12:50
Speaker2: So we had a real significant bump. Well, that, that lasted probably for,
12:54
Speaker2: I would say nine months to 12 months and people were excited,
12:58
Speaker2: but they also realized, wait a second, these people are going to join our church
13:02
Speaker2: and they're going to participate in the decision-making process, right?
13:05
Speaker2: And so they begin to be fearful for that, right? So we kind of have this idea
13:09
Speaker2: of new people and long-term people, and so kind of an us and them.
13:12
Speaker2: And so if you're replanting, you need to bring new people with you in order
13:17
Speaker2: to move things forward, to have critical mass, to do ministry,
13:20
Speaker2: to have kids ministry, to do childcare, because we've all
13:23
Speaker2: heard about the church that has only older people and a young family stumbles
13:27
Speaker2: in there and visits, sees no kids in attendance, no young families like them,
13:30
Speaker2: and then they don't come back.
13:31
Speaker2: And so you need to have critical mass. And so it's sometimes good to bring some people with you.
13:35
Speaker2: But over time, what we saw is the church that we were becoming was not the church
13:40
Speaker2: that the people who came with us wanted to see fast enough.
13:45
Speaker2: And it was not the church that the people who were there had been there a long time remembered.
13:49
Speaker2: So we experienced something that I called the double dip. So the first dip was
13:54
Speaker2: people who were like, this is not what I want to be a part of.
13:56
Speaker2: And then they were out. Then the second dip was people who you had conflict
14:01
Speaker2: with or who decided that you were not going to be the church that they wanted
14:06
Speaker2: it to be or you were not going to remain the church they remembered.
14:09
Speaker2: And so you have a double dip. So what I would say is if you're replanting and
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Speaker2: you have an existing group, let's say a 40, you should probably expect to lose
14:17
Speaker2: a good percentage of them.
14:18
Speaker2: If you have people who come with you, and we see this whole true in church planting,
14:22
Speaker2: the people that you start a church plant with are not the people that you've
14:26
Speaker2: seen usually past two years or so. Like it just cycles through.
14:30
Speaker2: And so you have to understand the people who come with you to start something
14:34
Speaker2: are what some church planters call scaffolding people. They're there to help
14:37
Speaker2: you get the structure, to make the changes, to create what the next new is going
14:42
Speaker2: to be, and then realize that they're probably not going to stay with you.
14:45
Speaker2: So I think the thing that I would say is expect a bump, expect a decline,
14:49
Speaker2: expect maybe a double dip.
14:51
Speaker2: But then if you can survive through those two dips, what happens is people start
14:55
Speaker2: choosing the church because they like the church that they see when they show up.
15:00
Speaker2: So the new crowd that comes in are folks who resonate with your vision,
15:04
Speaker2: with who's there, with the proximity, all of those things.
15:08
Speaker2: And so they're just looking for a church, and when they show up and stay,
15:11
Speaker2: they love the church because it's something they experienced with their son and they loved it.
15:17
Speaker2: One of the things we heard was from people who were looking,
15:20
Speaker2: we like that there's multi-generational. We like that there's some older folks
15:23
Speaker2: here and some younger folks.
15:25
Speaker2: But here's the thing we heard a lot. I really like that I can actually have
15:28
Speaker2: a conversation with a pastor after the service.
15:32
Speaker2: So in the large churches we're part of, a pastor might be going to another campus in a car or vehicle.
15:39
Speaker2: He might be headed to the green room.
15:41
Speaker2: He might be in the lobby for a little bit, but there's a ton of people around him.
15:45
Speaker2: Or there's somebody kind of directing traffic near him. And so actually talking
15:49
Speaker2: to the people that opens, talking to the pastor that opens God's word for you
15:53
Speaker2: and teaches directly to you, for some people is never of the experience they have in a larger church.
15:59
Speaker2: It's not to say anything against a larger church, but I think there's a value in,
16:03
Speaker2: what we might call a normative-sized church, where a pastor can know the people
16:07
Speaker2: and the people know the house.
16:09
Speaker1: Amen.
16:09
Speaker0: Yeah, that is so good. And I love the fact that you shared a double-dip story
16:15
Speaker0: here, because I have a double-dip story. In my very first replant,
16:20
Speaker0: we didn't have that language, that terminology.
16:22
Speaker0: We were trying to figure out how to survive and thrive in this first church.
16:28
Speaker0: And I remember this happening in 1997, 1998, as we led a church through significant
16:34
Speaker0: transitions, what we would definitely call a replant, significant revitalization today.
16:39
Speaker0: What surprised me was that I was working the church over a four-year process
16:46
Speaker0: to become the church that all my younger couples in the church wanted.
16:50
Speaker0: And then they all bailed on me once it went into launch phase at like,
16:55
Speaker0: like literally we lost like 80% of my young couples that had been working four years.
17:00
Speaker0: And they were like, it's too late. It's, you know, we, we'd had so much resistance to change.
17:05
Speaker0: And, and so we lost not only the people that we expected to lose,
17:10
Speaker0: the people had been resisting the transformation, but we lost all these people
17:13
Speaker0: that had been cheering it on.
17:16
Speaker0: And I've since seen that in our second replan as well, that as you make those
17:20
Speaker0: adaptations, As you change and you become healthier, there's people who are
17:25
Speaker0: only comfortable with certain levels of health and change in a church.
17:29
Speaker0: And so I think it's profoundly helpful just to even bring that out.
17:33
Speaker0: So if you're listening to us and you're a planter, replanter, this is normal.
17:37
Speaker0: Don't feel like the world has not ended.
17:40
Speaker0: It doesn't make it less painful, but it is normal.
17:43
Speaker0: So thank you for bringing that out. And Bob, thank you for your candor.
17:47
Speaker0: I love your blog because of your candor.
17:51
Speaker0: I love how you say things that so many people that are doing this work have
17:55
Speaker0: thought, but you give us such great insight on it.
17:58
Speaker0: And speaking of that, I know that on July 28th, you published a helpful,
18:04
Speaker0: article on your blog, BobBickford.com, about how conflict often increases,
18:10
Speaker0: at least for a season, as the church gets healthier.
18:13
Speaker0: So if you're listening and something Bob said earlier about conflict increasing
18:18
Speaker0: as the church gets healthier, take a look at that piece. That's really great.
18:22
Speaker0: But I want to bring up a piece that you published on August 18th. And I have,
18:27
Speaker0: I unashamedly shared this over and over again since this piece came out, Bob.
18:34
Speaker0: You distilled down, I mean, not that we Baptists distill things,
18:39
Speaker0: right? But if we did distill things.
18:42
Speaker2: Only the Reformed brothers.
18:44
Speaker0: You know, only the Reformed brothers distill things down.
18:50
Speaker0: But you do. You distilled something down that was just so critical that I've
18:55
Speaker0: seen happen over and over again when I'm trying to co-tree planters.
18:58
Speaker0: I've experienced this myself.
19:00
Speaker0: And that's the tension between the realities of the awareness of the church
19:05
Speaker0: and their readiness for change.
19:08
Speaker0: And that article is just brilliant. And so in that article, you talk about the
19:14
Speaker0: necessity of helping us sort of discern a quadrant type of matrix here.
19:20
Speaker0: The church may have high awareness, but low readiness to change.
19:23
Speaker0: So maybe just walk us through that conceptual framework.
19:29
Speaker0: How would you explain the necessity for assessing both readiness and awareness
19:34
Speaker0: to an ordinary pastor or an ordinary
19:37
Speaker0: church member who's trying to discern this very reality right now?
19:41
Speaker2: Yeah, great question. And thanks for the shout out on the blog.
19:44
Speaker2: You and my five friends from seminary are checking it out. Everybody says,
19:49
Speaker2: no, I appreciate your kind words. Thank you.
19:51
Speaker2: We know that most declined churches are aware that things aren't as they should be or as they were.
19:59
Speaker2: So, they can see that their attendance has been down.
20:03
Speaker2: They can't fix their condition in the Sunday school space, so they have to close
20:06
Speaker2: the Sunday school space and close the doors. And, you know, so you've got puppets
20:10
Speaker2: growing mold in there and all kinds of other things that are happening there.
20:13
Speaker2: So, they don't lack awareness.
20:15
Speaker2: What they lack is readiness to do something about it, right?
20:18
Speaker2: So, one of the things that's true of us is we get habituated to our environments or our cultures.
20:25
Speaker2: So, for instance, if you have a door at your house that you have to lift up
20:30
Speaker2: to open, like lift up on the doorknob to open because it sticks,
20:34
Speaker2: because the foundation is settled and you haven't sanded it down or adjusted
20:37
Speaker2: it, you're just used to it.
20:39
Speaker2: And it doesn't stand out to you until a guest comes over and can't get out of
20:43
Speaker2: the room that they're trying to get in, you know, get out of.
20:46
Speaker2: So that's what we would call awareness. Do you know that there's a problem?
20:49
Speaker2: Most declining churches are aware that there's a problem. here's where they
20:54
Speaker2: might not have the awareness that they need.
20:56
Speaker2: They don't know the decline rate and what we would call their vitality clock, right?
21:02
Speaker2: So they're probably not sure how much have we been declining over the years, right?
21:06
Speaker2: It's like, if I look at a picture of myself in 2026
21:13
Speaker2: Here in September and a picture of myself in, let's say, 2015,
21:18
Speaker2: I'm going to suddenly be struck with the hair on the sides of my head is gray, right?
21:24
Speaker0: Yes.
21:25
Speaker2: And if I don't look in the mirror, or if I look backwards, I see a picture like, holy cow.
21:29
Speaker2: I've got a lot of gray hair, right? Et cetera, I've gained weight,
21:33
Speaker2: or I look older, whatever, et cetera.
21:36
Speaker2: So we're often struck with awareness of things that now come into our perception
21:42
Speaker2: that we didn't have focus on.
21:43
Speaker2: So one of the things we do in the consultation process is we try to help bring
21:47
Speaker2: awareness to things that churches may not see.
21:50
Speaker2: How far have they declined? Are they 50% lower than where they were?
21:53
Speaker2: How much money do they have left? Where do the people live? They no longer live
21:57
Speaker2: in the community. They live all, they're all commuters, right?
21:59
Speaker2: So the church's awareness about its condition hopefully can lead to a sense
22:05
Speaker2: of urgency or readiness.
22:07
Speaker2: So a church with high awareness and low readiness is not going to do anything, right?
22:14
Speaker2: Because they don't have to do it. Maybe they're just not ready or they're unwilling.
22:17
Speaker2: Maybe they have $250,000 in the bank and they can, at their current cash burn
22:21
Speaker2: rate, they can last another 10 or 15 years.
22:25
Speaker2: But if that same church can no longer hire a pastor and they have a $30,000
22:29
Speaker2: air conditioner bill that depletes half of their budget or almost all of their
22:32
Speaker2: budget, then their urgency or their readiness will increase.
22:36
Speaker2: So it could be a church that sees that they need to change but doesn't have
22:40
Speaker2: the urgency to change because they're unwilling to face the hard things that
22:44
Speaker2: they're needing to face because they have cash to make.
22:47
Speaker2: Like, very rarely do you have a church that has high awareness,
22:50
Speaker2: high lack of readiness that is cognizant of a spiritual condition, right?
22:56
Speaker2: So I'm trying to think of one of the churches. And mainly when I wrote this
23:00
Speaker2: article, I have several churches in mind that I've consulted.
23:03
Speaker2: And so, for instance, I've got a church that will say, we've got some hope.
23:07
Speaker2: We had a young family visit. We can still have a pastor come and we've still
23:10
Speaker2: got a part-time pastor and he drives.
23:12
Speaker2: We can have a music guy and he comes and leads singing. So, the checkbox success is we held a service.
23:17
Speaker0: We have preaching.
23:19
Speaker2: Yes. So, that's success.
23:22
Speaker2: What they don't realize is that either they're on the precipice of significant
23:26
Speaker2: decline that's going to lead to their demise.
23:29
Speaker2: And I was consulting a church like this, and after we showed them where they
23:33
Speaker2: were in their trend lines and their financial vitality, and after we projected
23:38
Speaker2: their cash burn rate, et cetera, someone came up to me and said,
23:41
Speaker2: I knew we were not doing well, but I didn't know we were this bad.
23:44
Speaker2: And I didn't know fat in the sense of I didn't know we were in this much danger.
23:48
Speaker2: Now, that still didn't produce readiness in that congregation because they were
23:53
Speaker2: unwilling to embrace the courageous decisions that needed to take place.
23:58
Speaker2: So what I've discovered is we really needed to take an approach as a pastor
24:04
Speaker2: and or a consultant for a church in each of those quads.
24:08
Speaker2: So like the quad with, I would say, high awareness and high readiness,
24:14
Speaker2: man, they're ready to go. Like, let's fast track them.
24:17
Speaker2: They're ready. And by fast track, what I mean is they're ready to receive the
24:20
Speaker2: recommendation. They're ready to go.
24:21
Speaker2: A church that has high readiness and low awareness, you need to help them understand
24:27
Speaker2: where they are, right? So we know we need to do something.
24:30
Speaker2: We're just not sure what we need to do in the timeframe in between you do it.
24:35
Speaker2: A church that has low awareness and low readiness, they're just not going to be in, right?
24:39
Speaker2: And so they may have a lot of money in the bank or they may just not care, right?
24:43
Speaker2: They may not want to change. They're like, we're just going to die.
24:46
Speaker2: That's a church you just simply, as a consultant for association,
24:49
Speaker2: you simply say, look, I know you guys are not in a posture that
24:54
Speaker2: Leading you to consider doing something new and different. That's fine.
24:58
Speaker2: When you get to the point where you're ready to stop or you can no longer go
25:01
Speaker2: on, please give us a call because we want to build on the legacy of this church
25:05
Speaker2: and we don't want to lose this gospel location, right? So that's an approach that you do with them.
25:10
Speaker2: A church that's low in their awareness and low in their readiness.
25:16
Speaker2: What you need to do is you need to develop them, right? And so be patient with
25:20
Speaker2: them, develop them, do flickering lamps, reclaiming glory, 40 days of prayer,
25:24
Speaker2: preaching sermon series, all those sorts of things,
25:26
Speaker2: and just see if you can develop them into a place of awareness and readiness, right?
25:31
Speaker2: So you have to think about the quad and where they are in the quad,
25:34
Speaker2: and it informs your action and your posture towards them. And so what I have
25:39
Speaker2: adopted in terms of just consulting churches is the principle of the nudge,
25:43
Speaker2: which I got from hostage negotiation books.
25:46
Speaker2: In particular, There's a book called Never Split the Difference.
25:49
Speaker2: It's written by an FBI hostage negotiator.
25:51
Speaker2: And so he teaches the principle of the nudge. If I have a church that's resistant,
25:56
Speaker2: can I nudge them to be a little more ready, right?
26:00
Speaker2: If they're unaware, can I nudge their awareness just a little bit more?
26:04
Speaker2: And so the questions go something like, hey, you guys have a rich history here
26:08
Speaker2: as a church. You baptize a lot of people.
26:11
Speaker2: I mean, I go in your history room and I see all the hall of pastors and all
26:14
Speaker2: these great pictures and these photos.
26:16
Speaker2: And actually, I see the fact that you won the baptism award for the convention back in, you know, 1985.
26:22
Speaker2: But it seems to me that those days are no longer true here. Is that right?
26:26
Speaker2: And the key is getting them to say, yes, that's right.
26:29
Speaker2: And so that's the first yes, that's right. Here's the second one that we go for.
26:33
Speaker2: But when I talk to people, it seems like you really want to see this location
26:38
Speaker2: used for the glory of God.
26:39
Speaker2: And you want to see neighbors come into the church like they used to.
26:44
Speaker2: You want to hear kids running through halls. You want to see people in the baptistry.
26:47
Speaker2: That true? Yes, that's true. But it also seems that you guys are kind of stuck
26:51
Speaker2: and aren't sure what to do. Am I reading that right? Yeah, that's right.
26:55
Speaker2: And it seems like you haven't been able to afford a full-time pastor and you
26:59
Speaker2: really, you're sad about that. Is that right? Yeah.
27:02
Speaker2: But it seems like you have a designated fund of like $500,000 that you're just
27:05
Speaker2: kind of sitting on that, you know, it's money that's there, but if you could
27:09
Speaker2: think about how to use it, maybe you could use it to make a difference and maybe
27:13
Speaker2: some people would be open to that. Do you think we might be able to have a conversation.
27:16
Speaker2: Yeah, I think we could. So what you're doing is you're getting them to say yes
27:21
Speaker2: to you in multiple ways over a period of time.
27:24
Speaker2: And then what you simply say to them is not the full recommendation of,
27:28
Speaker2: we're going to have to restart this thing, you have to close it,
27:30
Speaker2: or we need to merge you with it, or you need to give the building to a church
27:33
Speaker2: plant that meets next door at the school.
27:35
Speaker2: What you simply say to them is, hey, could we engage in a process over a period
27:40
Speaker2: of weeks and months where we could discover what God wants for this place?
27:44
Speaker2: Would you guys be open to that? Maybe me walking you for some of those considerations.
27:48
Speaker2: And most of the time, I would say most of the time they're going to say,
27:50
Speaker2: absolutely, we'd love to have that conversation with you.
27:53
Speaker2: So that opens the door. That doesn't mean that you're going to get them to accept
27:58
Speaker2: the recommendation, but you at least get them to walk with you for a number
28:02
Speaker2: of weeks and months, perhaps while you're having conversations.
28:05
Speaker2: But if I told them what I think they might need to do upfront,
28:10
Speaker2: they probably would not be ready for that.
28:12
Speaker2: But they're probably ready for a nudge. And so I'm looking to nudge them in
28:16
Speaker2: their awareness and their readiness in some form or fashion.
28:19
Speaker2: But I'm also telling myself, if I've got a congregation that's low in awareness
28:23
Speaker2: and low in readiness, I'm telling myself, I need to have the right expectation
28:27
Speaker2: when I go have a conversation
28:28
Speaker0: With each other.
28:29
Speaker2: My goal is not to give them a recommendation or get them to sign a consultation
28:32
Speaker2: agreement. My goal is to see where I can nudge them next.
28:36
Speaker2: And so those are in that blog and in that process, I think, Chris,
28:40
Speaker2: that what I was trying to convey is that some churches are absolutely ready.
28:46
Speaker2: Like we walked into one church and we met with a pastor, met with the deacons,
28:50
Speaker2: and they were about eight people and they were getting ready to go down to four people, right?
28:54
Speaker2: You know, half their audience or half their congregation.
28:58
Speaker2: And so the pastor said, we want you to come in and show trend lines and tell
29:02
Speaker2: them what you might be able to do with this place. So we walked in.
29:05
Speaker2: We told them that. The pastor made a real effective plea saying,
29:09
Speaker2: look, I drive from an hour away. I'm tired.
29:13
Speaker2: We're about ready to go into four people. That means more work for me and my
29:16
Speaker2: wife. We just can't do it.
29:18
Speaker2: And so we're going to have to do something.
29:21
Speaker2: And so they've suggested that if we would be willing to give them the building,
29:24
Speaker2: they'll refurb it, make sure we have a church here.
29:27
Speaker2: And somebody in the middle of the congregation towards the back of like,
29:30
Speaker2: you know, eight people goes, can we vote today?
29:36
Speaker2: I've heard of these meetings and I've never been in one until that moment.
29:40
Speaker2: I was like, so they voted. They called a special business meeting on the spot,
29:44
Speaker2: voted to give the building to the association and voted to close the next Sunday. Wow.
29:50
Speaker2: My lawyer was like, not happy about it, but it was amazing when you have a congregation
29:56
Speaker2: of high awareness, high readiness, we're tired and see it. We're ready to go.
30:01
Speaker2: As opposed to the congregation that's like, yeah, we're, we're,
30:04
Speaker2: thank you for the recommendation.
30:05
Speaker2: We'll see you later. Right. So you can find it all over the map.
30:08
Speaker2: And so I was just trying to write and mostly what, when you read my blog,
30:12
Speaker2: you could probably figure out what's been, what I've been frustrated about or
30:16
Speaker2: what I, what I've encountered and what I'm trying to work out in my mind and what I'm learning.
30:21
Speaker2: And I figure if I'm taking the headwinds, I might as well share the joy and
30:25
Speaker2: the learning with others so they don't experience it. Or maybe they can walk
30:29
Speaker2: into it and feel differently or experience differently than I do.
30:32
Speaker2: So I'm trying to redeem the pain.
30:35
Speaker2: As a church planning assessor told me one time, he said, every suffering,
30:38
Speaker2: every challenge, every pain,
30:40
Speaker2: loss, let the Lord redeem it and make it better and make it in something beautiful.
30:45
Speaker2: So I'm like, okay, let's just redeem the pain here.
30:47
Speaker0: Amen. You know, when we're redeeming the pain, I just was thinking while you
30:52
Speaker0: were sharing just now about this, the nuggets of truth you've just been dropping in there.
30:58
Speaker0: And let me just amen one in particular. If you are leading a replant right now,
31:04
Speaker0: you're a replanting pastor, you're consulting there, do not try to get the church
31:09
Speaker0: to understand exactly everything they're going to need to do.
31:14
Speaker0: Don't cast the vision for where you want the church to be five years from now.
31:18
Speaker0: Do not show them the whole enchilada.
31:21
Speaker0: You will nuke your plan right there.
31:25
Speaker0: Give them that nudge. Give them that next couple of steps. Don't give them the whole thing.
31:31
Speaker0: Take it from a guy who did that. After I spent three years prepping a church,
31:36
Speaker0: I gave them the whole plan and it just had ignition points all over it because
31:42
Speaker0: there was too much for people to process and handle.
31:45
Speaker0: Their readiness might have been for the next couple of steps.
31:49
Speaker0: Their awareness matched the next two or three steps, but I was giving them too
31:53
Speaker0: much down the line for them to really receive well.
31:57
Speaker0: And it was just, it was not wise, but that's what you do when you're a 28-year-old
32:03
Speaker0: and you feel like you've waited forever to replant this thing.
32:06
Speaker0: So let's redeem that pain and just give that encouragement to others. Pastor Chase.
32:11
Speaker1: Yeah. So, Bob, demographically in the United States of America,
32:15
Speaker1: I follow Ryan Burge really pretty closely.
32:18
Speaker1: And there's a lot of downward trend signs out there.
32:23
Speaker1: And there's going to be pastors and leaders listening to this podcast who are
32:28
Speaker1: pastoring and leading churches that are declining, but are not yet to that eight,
32:32
Speaker1: about to go to four place.
32:35
Speaker1: So before they get there, before they essentially hit rock bottom or close to rock bottom,
32:42
Speaker1: you argue in your blog that churches should usually begin with the wrong question,
32:50
Speaker1: which is, hey, what should we do to reverse this decline? What should we do now?
32:54
Speaker1: So what is the right question? And if a church pastor or leaders are listening
33:00
Speaker1: to this and their church is,
33:02
Speaker1: either slowly or quickly, declining or even plateaued, rather than what should we do,
33:08
Speaker1: what is the right question and what are the right diagnostic steps that should
33:14
Speaker1: happen before that question is asked and answered?
33:17
Speaker2: Yeah, thank you for that. We see this happen on time.
33:20
Speaker2: So I think you have to move from what should we do about our situation to why
33:26
Speaker2: are we in decline and in this situation
33:29
Speaker2: because we're dealing with primary matters, not secondary matters.
33:33
Speaker2: And so what do we need to do? Our attendance is declining and it's been declining
33:39
Speaker2: for the last five years. Well, what do we need to do? Well, we need to hold
33:41
Speaker2: a black party. We need to paint the building. We need to change the name because
33:44
Speaker2: people don't like Baptists anymore. We need to, you know, whatever, right?
33:47
Speaker2: We need to sing different songs. You know, we need a younger pastor.
33:51
Speaker2: We need, you know, all of those things. So those are all symptomatic questions
33:56
Speaker2: that deal with some visual thing and prescribe a surface solution.
34:03
Speaker2: So here's the most important question. Why are we continually in decline
34:09
Speaker2: Why do we struggle to grow? Why do we lose people? Why do young families not want to come here?
34:16
Speaker2: Why do we feel so discouraged? All these things. And so what we need to do is
34:20
Speaker2: unlayer the realities in the church and get to the system, the organizational
34:26
Speaker2: system and the culture and all those sorts of things.
34:28
Speaker2: One of the things that I always have to stress, because when you talk to someone
34:32
Speaker2: like me, particularly how I'm wired up, is I can be listening to you and I can
34:36
Speaker2: think of at least 10 or 15 things to do immediately.
34:41
Speaker2: And most of those are action-oriented and they're strategic and it's just the way my brain is wired.
34:48
Speaker2: Ultimately, the work of renewal in a church is a spiritual thing.
34:53
Speaker2: It's the work of the Lord changing minds and hearts, bringing people into a
34:58
Speaker2: vibrant relationship with Him.
35:00
Speaker2: And so I don't want to discount the necessity to focus on the spiritual,
35:06
Speaker2: because I think what happens is we have lost touch with the gospel, which shows us that...
35:13
Speaker2: We are sinners and in need of saving. When you apply that to our understanding
35:18
Speaker2: of how church life should be led, it should make us humble to go,
35:22
Speaker2: we're prone to mess things up.
35:23
Speaker2: We should probably look to God's word in order to figure out how to lead the
35:27
Speaker2: church, serve the church, be the church.
35:29
Speaker2: Also, I'm selfish and a sinner, and I'm probably going to do things that frustrate
35:34
Speaker2: people and cause divisions among the body. And so I probably need to look at
35:37
Speaker2: God's word in my life in light of God's word, under the gospel and realize that
35:42
Speaker2: I need to have a spirit of humility.
35:44
Speaker2: I need to be pursuing Jesus. I need to demonstrate the faith of the Spirit,
35:46
Speaker2: all of those social things.
35:47
Speaker2: And so I would say those are all discipleship issues. And so I think if we don't
35:52
Speaker2: start with the discipleship question and process, we're starting in the wrong place.
35:58
Speaker2: You know, when Jesus gave us the Great Commission, it was, you know,
36:01
Speaker2: going to all the world and have block parties.
36:04
Speaker2: It was not that. It was going to all the world and make disciples,
36:07
Speaker2: teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you, right? So there's this
36:11
Speaker2: fruitfulness, this faithfulness idea.
36:13
Speaker2: So let's start there, right? Then I think what we need to move on from there
36:18
Speaker2: is to say, is our symptomatic problem of losing people, low resources,
36:25
Speaker2: Lack of baptisms, division in the body, what is that primarily?
36:29
Speaker2: And I would say almost every time it traces back to a deficient discipleship.
36:33
Speaker2: And so here's a pattern that I've seen. I'm not written about this yet,
36:36
Speaker2: but I'm struggling with this idea.
36:40
Speaker2: But if we just think of a process by which discipleship is deficient,
36:44
Speaker2: It leads to focusing on the wrong things and doing things in the wrong way.
36:49
Speaker2: And so when I go into churches, I see that they have unity problems,
36:54
Speaker2: they have administration, leadership problems.
36:57
Speaker2: They have missional problems.
36:59
Speaker2: And so what happens is deficient discipleship leads to focusing on the wrong thing.
37:04
Speaker2: And so most of the time when we're focused on the wrong thing,
37:07
Speaker2: we disagree about it. We don't have a spirit of humility towards one another.
37:11
Speaker2: And so we fight about secondary matters like the administration of the church.
37:15
Speaker2: And so everybody is frustrated because maybe there's chaos in the church.
37:20
Speaker2: Maybe things aren't going the way they need to go.
37:22
Speaker2: And so when you go in and ask why, and you ask why multiple times,
37:27
Speaker2: it leads you to answers that you probably aren't expecting and that are holistically
37:32
Speaker2: different than what should we do.
37:34
Speaker2: What should we do is programmatic and surface oftentimes, and it can be strategic
37:39
Speaker2: in some ways, but the why is the most important question, I think,
37:43
Speaker2: to get to church decline.
37:44
Speaker2: You know, the principle of Toyota, they have a principle called the five whys.
37:48
Speaker2: So take an issue and then ask why five times about that issue to get to the root of the problem.
37:55
Speaker2: And so we try to do that. And in the church I'm in the transitional interim
37:58
Speaker2: right now, looking at all the symptoms,
38:01
Speaker2: What we have discovered is that the why that has led to decline is a lack of
38:07
Speaker2: leadership that was willing to engage conflict.
38:10
Speaker2: So why they've been in decline for over 30 years?
38:14
Speaker2: Because nobody really wanted to handle conflict.
38:18
Speaker2: And so what's happened is chaos, division about what the mission of the church
38:23
Speaker2: is, a need for church discipline that's gone unmet, and all those sorts of things.
38:28
Speaker2: And so people are focusing on all the chaos that that's created.
38:31
Speaker2: And the question that we don't need to ask is, you know, what are the programmatic things we need to do?
38:36
Speaker2: The question we need to ask is, okay, why are we where we are?
38:40
Speaker2: And then why leads to what? If that makes sense.
38:43
Speaker1: Why leads to what is one of the most profound four-word sentences in the context
38:50
Speaker1: of church replanting, church revitalization, and really church leadership in general.
38:56
Speaker1: And it's so good. I think this is a great place for us to break the interview.
39:01
Speaker1: We'll have part two next week.
39:04
Speaker1: While we ponder that sentence of wisdom, why leads to what, we might as well
39:10
Speaker1: sample a soda together, Pastor Christopher.
39:13
Speaker1: I don't know if you're like me, but sometimes in the morning when I get thirsty,
39:19
Speaker1: I think, do I want a soda or do I want coffee?
39:25
Speaker1: And it's very difficult to decide.
39:28
Speaker1: And I'm happy to inform our listeners and you also, Pastor Christopher,
39:33
Speaker1: that our friends from Thailand, the Tasco Beverage Company, have come up with a solution
39:42
Speaker1: to that conundrum
39:44
Speaker1: that every pastor and every church leader experiences at least five times a
39:49
Speaker1: week, that difficulty in choosing between coffee and soda.
39:53
Speaker1: Well, I got good news for you, because not only can you have both,
39:57
Speaker1: but you can have it in everybody's favorite coffee flavor,
40:02
Speaker0: Orange orange orange you glad.
40:07
Speaker1: I love orange coffee, at least in theory. I've never had it before.
40:12
Speaker1: This seems very straight.
40:15
Speaker0: Orange and coffee. Now, somebody would think this is a very,
40:21
Speaker0: very weird flavor combo.
40:24
Speaker1: Right? I would be somebody. I'm somebody. I think this is a weird flavor combo.
40:28
Speaker0: I would say this is going to be an adventurous soda for us today,
40:34
Speaker0: right? I think so. Coffee plus orange plus carbonation.
40:39
Speaker1: Yeah.
40:39
Speaker0: And so we've got that roasted black coffee flavor and we're going to get something in there with citrus?
40:49
Speaker1: I guess so. Yeah.
40:50
Speaker0: Okay.
40:51
Speaker1: And here's the thing. My two favorite coffee flavors are blueberry and cherry.
40:55
Speaker1: So I am not one to be casting aspersions on strange coffee flavors because this could be great.
41:03
Speaker1: I love orange, and I like coffee okay, and I love soda. So, I mean,
41:07
Speaker1: this is what I imagine what might happen when the church coffee urn and the
41:11
Speaker1: youth group soda cooler kind of crash together and spill all over in the same
41:15
Speaker1: bucket. But it might be amazing.
41:18
Speaker0: Well, that's an amazing analogy, and I can't wait for that to happen.
41:23
Speaker0: Now, there is something interesting that I've learned, Pastor Chase,
41:26
Speaker0: and that is that they have upsized this for the American market.
41:32
Speaker0: In Thailand, the actual size of the Tasco coffee soda orange is a mere 180 milliliters.
41:43
Speaker0: This is a 330 milliliter can.
41:46
Speaker0: So they literally doubled it for the U.S. market.
41:49
Speaker0: And I'm concerned about the caffeine level in this thing.
41:54
Speaker1: I think this is Thailand's way of calling us fat. And I, for one, am offended. Yeah.
42:00
Speaker0: It's not low calorie like some of our other items. It's 140 calories.
42:06
Speaker0: And apparently very cold is the way we're supposed to drink this.
42:11
Speaker0: So mine's been chilling for quite a while, but I think you're going to pour yours over ice.
42:15
Speaker1: Yeah, I am. And look, mine has a paper nutritional thing and I can't pull it
42:21
Speaker1: off, but I'm afraid it covers up something that says, this is for you, fat American.
42:27
Speaker1: It won't come off. So I don't know. I hope we don't have to go to war with Thailand
42:32
Speaker1: over this thing, because I really like Thai food.
42:35
Speaker0: I love Thai food. You and me both, brother. So I suggest that without further
42:42
Speaker0: delay, we just dive into Tascote Coffee Soda Orange.
42:47
Speaker1: Okay. It looks kind of orangey. It smells like, whoa.
42:52
Speaker0: Whoa. Well, that's fun. What is that?
42:55
Speaker1: It's coffee orange soda. That's what I'm smelling.
42:59
Speaker0: I got a big burst of coffee as soon as we popped the tab.
43:03
Speaker1: Yep.
43:03
Speaker0: And okay, I'm getting some orange.
43:06
Speaker1: All right. I'm going to pour it out so people can see it. Ready?
43:09
Speaker0: Ready. Let's do it. All right. Oh, look at that orange coffee flavor.
43:13
Speaker1: Soda, yeah.
43:14
Speaker0: All right.
43:15
Speaker1: What's fizzy, it's really bubbly. I can't really show you that.
43:19
Speaker0: I'm ready, sir.
43:20
Speaker1: Are you ready? Oh, you can see that. There you go.
43:21
Speaker0: Yeah, I can see it. Yeah.
43:22
Speaker1: Ready as I'll ever be, Pastor Christopher. Here we go. Fingers crossed. That's not bad.
43:28
Speaker0: It's not bad. I'm not yet there on good, but it's not bad.
43:34
Speaker1: It's not as coffee-forward as I expected. This is not an overwhelming coffee
43:39
Speaker1: flavor, but it's not an aftertaste either.
43:42
Speaker1: It's definitely coffee, but it's a very...
43:45
Speaker1: Light coffee taste. I can definitely taste the orange.
43:49
Speaker0: So I'm getting coffee on the front end, orange in the middle,
43:54
Speaker0: and then it has almost like that coffee aftertaste in your mouth.
43:59
Speaker0: Not a soda aftertaste, but like, hey, I just took a sip of coffee and I got
44:03
Speaker0: to taste the coffee in my mouth.
44:04
Speaker0: But it's still got a little bit of the orange in there.
44:08
Speaker1: Yeah, this is not bad. Look, you said earlier, you don't like strong flavors.
44:14
Speaker1: This is one of the areas where I think we might be a little different as taste testers.
44:18
Speaker1: I do like strong flavors. If I was designing this for the American market,
44:23
Speaker1: I might squeeze a little bit more essence of orange in there.
44:27
Speaker1: Okay. Yeah. I would make this a little more orange forward. But
44:33
Speaker1: it's interesting enough that if it was a high caffeine beverage,
44:36
Speaker1: it would be pretty good for a road trip to stay awake. And, you know,
44:41
Speaker1: it would it would kind of jar your brain a little bit because it's complex.
44:45
Speaker1: It's a complex flavor profile.
44:48
Speaker1: And my brain tends to like that when I'm driving and maybe not wanting to fall asleep.
44:52
Speaker0: When I was a kid, we had.
44:55
Speaker0: A coffee flavored soda in Indonesia.
45:01
Speaker0: And I definitely get that same flavor here. I can't remember if that was a Fanta
45:06
Speaker0: or a Mirinda product, but this has that same coffee soda flavor, which I really enjoyed.
45:14
Speaker0: This has a little orange twist to it.
45:18
Speaker0: I kind of feel like I would be happier if it picked one or the other.
45:22
Speaker0: That being said, again, if I'm going through Thailand and it is one of those
45:28
Speaker0: super hot, sweaty Bangkok days, and I had been there on those streets sweating to death, and I saw a,
45:37
Speaker0: Tasco coffee soda chilled with ice or in a cooler, and I wasn't sure what,
45:43
Speaker0: other products there were out there, I would absolutely grab this and drink
45:47
Speaker0: it because it would be refreshing,
45:49
Speaker0: and maybe caffeinated.
45:51
Speaker1: Yeah. The Bible tells us, thou shall not covet. And I wonder if I'm sinning
45:56
Speaker1: here because pretty much every Soda Review we do, you tell a story about when
46:01
Speaker1: you were a kid growing up in Indonesia.
46:04
Speaker1: When I was a kid, I grew up in Alabama and my stories are, we ate grits,
46:09
Speaker1: we caught crawfish, we jumped the General Lee over a river, we shot dynamite
46:15
Speaker1: arrows at Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe P.
46:18
Speaker1: Coltrane, but you got better stories from when you were a kid.
46:21
Speaker1: And I'm just jealous of that and a little bit covetous of you growing up in
46:26
Speaker1: Indonesia. So I hope you'll forgive me for that.
46:29
Speaker0: Well, brother, let me just point out that you did not have some of the things
46:34
Speaker0: that I had as a kid in Indonesia and
46:38
Speaker0: You did not have the rats and cockroach infestations, the alternating days without power.
46:49
Speaker0: And when you wanted toilet paper, you had to bring it in from America.
46:54
Speaker0: We literally had an entire closet of our house dedicated to a four-year supply
47:00
Speaker0: of toilet paper, which was hoarded because these things were not available at the time.
47:09
Speaker1: I have a statement and I have a question. My statement is Alabama only recently,
47:14
Speaker1: I think it was in 2024, went from outhouses to indoor plumbing. No, I'm kidding.
47:20
Speaker1: My question, however, is far more important than my statement.
47:24
Speaker1: And I have to be really delicate here because it's a Christian podcast and you
47:28
Speaker1: and I, we're pastors and Jesus followers and everything.
47:31
Speaker0: Right.
47:33
Speaker1: This will show my lack of knowledge of the beautiful Indonesian culture.
47:38
Speaker1: What, if not toilet paper, what do Indonesians use instead?
47:47
Speaker0: The appropriate phrase is tangan kiri.
47:53
Speaker1: Is that a bad word?
47:54
Speaker0: No, it's literally your left hand. Now, bless our listeners being unaware,
48:01
Speaker0: it's your left hand that you use to get a little ladle of water,
48:08
Speaker0: what's called a gaiyung, and you use that sort of like you would use a bidet.
48:15
Speaker0: You pour that out and splash yourself with it.
48:19
Speaker0: And the left hand is the designated hand because therefore, especially when
48:24
Speaker0: I was growing up, you never handed anybody anything with the left hand.
48:31
Speaker1: So do we not have, I guess we can't wash our hands after that or?
48:35
Speaker0: Of course you washed your hands after.
48:37
Speaker1: Okay.
48:37
Speaker0: Yes, but still.
48:39
Speaker1: Still.
48:39
Speaker0: Right.
48:40
Speaker1: Okay. Or left in this case. This is a conundrum for me, Pastor Christopher,
48:45
Speaker1: because there is a part of me that is very curious about how that works precisely.
48:53
Speaker1: And another part of me that knows I will never be able to know because I don't want to Google it.
48:59
Speaker1: I don't want it explained to me. But let's just say I'm going to have to live
49:03
Speaker1: with the mystery of not understanding that process.
49:07
Speaker0: I can take you to this day to Indonesian villages on mission trips,
49:11
Speaker0: Pastor Chase, where we will have to explain the logistics of this to you.
49:15
Speaker1: No, I'm good. Barring a clear call from God, I would like to avoid that particular
49:23
Speaker1: toilet adventure for now. Thank you for the offer.
49:27
Speaker0: However, I just want to say I did have either either Mirinda,
49:32
Speaker0: which was PepsiCo competitor to Fanta or Fanta flavored coffee.
49:38
Speaker0: I can't recall which one when I was a kid. And so we did have some exotic things.
49:43
Speaker0: Like that.
49:44
Speaker1: That's awesome. Well, I don't think we're going to receive a phone call this
49:48
Speaker1: week from the Tasco Soda representatives after that toilet discussion.
49:53
Speaker0: We may need to edit this out.
49:57
Speaker1: I will say before we go, we probably should give our reviews in Spurge to get
50:01
Speaker1: us back on track. What do you think,
50:03
Speaker0: Pastor Christopher? I'm going to give this a solid 2.75. Yeah.
50:09
Speaker0: It's not bad. I just, if I had this and some of our other recent sodas in front
50:16
Speaker0: of me, this, I don't know.
50:18
Speaker0: Maybe if it was in the morning and I didn't have a cup of coffee,
50:22
Speaker0: then I might make it a 3.5.
50:25
Speaker1: There you go. Yeah. Yeah. This is not bad. It's almost, it's actually,
50:30
Speaker1: I'm going to go ahead and say it's pretty good.
50:32
Speaker1: I'm going to give it a three. I'm going to give it a three because it's just
50:35
Speaker1: weird enough that I would want it in my rotation about once a month.
50:39
Speaker1: And that's about it. Three Spurgeons. Use toilet paper.
50:43
Speaker1: Well, that was quite an adventurous soda review.
50:48
Speaker1: And provided our overlords at the Great Commission Association of Churches of
50:54
Speaker1: California do not suspend us next week, we will be back with more from Bog Bickford.
51:01
Speaker1: Before I sign off, I do want to point you to our website, gcasbc.org.
51:07
Speaker1: That's GCASBC.org. And there you will find out one of our big upcoming events
51:14
Speaker1: with the Great Commission Association is our
51:17
Speaker1: Missions gathering in Seaside, California, which is October 9th through the 10th.
51:23
Speaker1: If you are a GCA member church, you're going to want to come to that and register now.
51:29
Speaker1: And the best way to register is through the website GCASBC.org.
51:33
Speaker1: All for now, good day to you and Godspeed.