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Episode 2: The Most Important Key to Church Health and Flourishing + Baptizing More People + The Most Disgusting Soda in History! · Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association

• 0:29
  Chase: Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry and aim for the goal
• 0:33
  Chase: of making every church flourish.
• 0:35
  Chris: And welcome back into episode two of the Every Church Flourishing podcast.
• 0:39
  Chris: You can check out our website, everychurchflourishing.com. I am joined by my
• 0:44
  Chris: co-host, Pastor Christopher Cole, who is the Assistant Director of Missions
• 0:48
  Chris: for the Great Commission Association here in Central California.
• 0:52
  Chris: Today's episode, we have, again, the Senior Directors of the Great Commission
• 0:57
  Chris: Association. We're talking about the importance of teamwork and why we do what we do together.
• 1:05
  Chris: And before we get to that interview, Pastor Chris, I have a question for you.
• 1:10
  Chris: Just generally from your position as the assistant director of missions of one
• 1:15
  Chris: of the biggest mission organizations on the West Coast, what is working in California
• 1:20
  Chris: in general in terms of church health, church flourishing?
• 1:25
  Chris: I'm not necessarily saying what gets buns on seats, what packs the pews,
• 1:29
  Chris: but you could certainly answer that. But generally speaking, what
• 1:33
  Chris: is strategically working out here on the West Coast, the left coast,
• 1:38
  Chris: that brings flourishing aspects to a church?
• 1:42
  Mike: There's no great way to answer that question that doesn't begin with what Jesus says in John chapter 15.
• 1:50
  Chris: Amen.
• 1:50
  Mike: Any real, lasting, abiding fruit has to start with connection with God.
• 1:56
  Mike: It has to start with the people of God being restored if they're not in right relationship with God,
• 2:03
  Mike: repenting, drawing close to God, humbling themselves, and not just doing that
• 2:07
  Mike: in a one-off worship service, although those certainly can be catalytic,
• 2:11
  Mike: but doing that in a persisting way where the people are committed to abiding
• 2:16
  Mike: with Christ in an intimate way.
• 2:20
  Mike: And then I think that flows out of that comes a passion for the things that God really cares about.
• 2:26
  Mike: And that means that we get a heart for being fruitful.
• 2:31
  Mike: And I don't know of any church that is being fruitful that doesn't have a heart for being fruitful.
• 2:36
  Mike: That's true across the United States, and I think it's true here in California,
• 2:41
  Mike: in our San Francisco Bay Area region that extends all the way down California's central coast.
• 2:47
  Mike: If a church doesn't want to be fruitful, if they don't see that as part of their
• 2:53
  Mike: God-given commission and passion, and they're not brokenhearted,
• 2:57
  Mike: for example, for the lost,
• 2:59
  Mike: With a deep desire to reach their communities with the good news of Jesus Christ,
• 3:04
  Mike: then they're not going to be fruitful.
• 3:08
  Mike: So every church that I know of that is growing, is healthy, is dynamically engaging
• 3:14
  Mike: their communities, they've got both of those elements going on.
• 3:17
  Mike: They really are abiding with and loving God well,
• 3:22
  Mike: And they have developed a passion and a love for their community.
• 3:27
  Mike: You know, we don't have the option of looking for Christian microculture out here.
• 3:33
  Mike: And in many ways, Chase, I don't know how you feel. You pastored in Alabama
• 3:37
  Mike: a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
• 3:40
  Mike: I was a pastor in Texas. And one of the refreshing things for me is that we
• 3:45
  Mike: don't deal with Christian ease or Christianized subcultures.
• 3:51
  Mike: Out here, you have a choice to be authentic. And I think that's a third key.
• 3:55
  Mike: If you're going to really be abiding with Christ and have a real heart for the
• 4:00
  Mike: lost and what's going to work, what's going to follow out of that in engaging
• 4:05
  Mike: this is that you've got to be committed to being authentic and real. Yeah.
• 4:11
  Mike: Californians are allergic to hypocrisy. They're allergic to let's tolerate sort
• 4:17
  Mike: of the idea of religion or the aspirations of a religious system if you're not going to live it out.
• 4:25
  Mike: They're tolerant. I think sociologically, they're very, very tolerant.
• 4:29
  Mike: They're tolerant of a lot of brokenness.
• 4:32
  Mike: But they don't want you to be inauthentic. So sort of starting maybe,
• 4:37
  Mike: I guess, on that more meta level,
• 4:38
  Mike: I think that can drive some habits and practices of healthy churches.
• 4:45
  Mike: Every healthy church that I know of in our region that's flourishing,
• 4:49
  Mike: they do really well at engaging guests that come to visit them.
• 4:54
  Mike: They have a plan and an intention to engage those who come to visit.
• 4:59
  Mike: All of those churches have different types of plans of reaching out to their community.
• 5:05
  Mike: That may be that they do block parties or they may have micro groups that are
• 5:12
  Mike: scattered throughout their community that invite people to home barbecues,
• 5:16
  Mike: but they have an intentional plan to engage their community.
• 5:20
  Mike: They have an intentional plan
• 5:22
  Mike: and strategy to greet people that come and they have a plan to reach out.
• 5:27
  Mike: Those two components are just really key.
• 5:31
  Mike: And then they're persistent at it. They're persistent at being authentic with
• 5:34
  Mike: their faith. Of course, you've got to preach the word of God. You've got to pray.
• 5:39
  Mike: You've got to do those basics really well.
• 5:42
  Mike: I don't think you can do them poorly and be fruitful in the long run.
• 5:48
  Mike: Churches that have no prayer ministry are going to experience very little vitality.
• 5:54
  Chris: Apart from him, we can do nothing.
• 5:56
  Mike: That's right. And churches that have very little commitment to exegetical preaching
• 6:02
  Mike: of God's word tend not to flourish, at least in our evangelical world.
• 6:07
  Mike: I recognize there's some churches out there that might have very different value
• 6:12
  Mike: systems that might be able to gather a crowd, but I'm talking about churches
• 6:17
  Mike: that make disciples, which leads me to my last thing.
• 6:20
  Mike: They not only have a plan for inviting people in and greeting people well and
• 6:26
  Mike: then reaching out, but they have a plan and a strategy for making disciples.
• 6:32
  Mike: They have a discipleship pathway.
• 6:34
  Mike: Now, that could be very different. And some churches, that's all built around
• 6:39
  Mike: micro groups or micro network discipleship strategies.
• 6:43
  Mike: Other groups, it's a house church strategy.
• 6:46
  Mike: Other groups, it's lots of one-on-one discipling that's going on,
• 6:51
  Mike: different ways of doing it.
• 6:52
  Mike: But they have a plan to make disciples and develop disciples who not only grow
• 6:59
  Mike: themselves, but in turn make disciples.
• 7:02
  Mike: And honestly, I'm not sure that's any different than anywhere else in the world.
• 7:06
  Mike: You've got to do those things well. Maybe if I were to give one other California-type
• 7:12
  Mike: hint, and I would say that's this.
• 7:14
  Mike: The Greek Orthodox theologian—now, here I'm throwing a Greek Orthodox theologian into a Baptist podcast,
• 7:21
  Chris: Right? My friend Sam will be very excited.
• 7:23
  Mike: The Greek Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmiemann—I hope I'm saying his name
• 7:27
  Mike: right—wrote a book called For the Life of the World.
• 7:31
  Mike: And it's actually from Jesus speaking about being the bread of life.
• 7:37
  Mike: I think it's John chapter six, right?
• 7:40
  Mike: He says, I give this my body for the life of the world. One way that gets translated.
• 7:45
  Mike: And you can't be opposed to the culture and the community in which you live
• 7:53
  Mike: in a way that shows them that really you hate them or you look down on them or you despise them.
• 8:00
  Mike: If you want to reach them and the churches that are growing and thriving,
• 8:07
  Mike: see themselves as being for their community.
• 8:10
  Mike: So like you pastor in Salinas, you've got to be for Salinas. Yeah.
• 8:15
  Mike: Not against Salinas. Now, we're not talking about compromising with the world
• 8:19
  Mike: or worldly values or giving into immorality or all of those kinds of things.
• 8:27
  Mike: What we are saying is that you've got to be more for a community than you are
• 8:32
  Mike: against it. Tim Keller used to-
• 8:34
  Chris: Keller hit on that all the time.
• 8:36
  Mike: All the time, right? All the time saying, listen, you were to seek the good
• 8:40
  Mike: of the communities that we are in.
• 8:43
  Mike: And people out here have an allergy, I would say, to churches that are oppositionally
• 8:51
  Mike: aligned to everything the community stands for.
• 8:55
  Mike: And to be frank, I've met quite a few pastors, many of them that come from out
• 9:00
  Mike: of state, that approach ministry in California by trying to gather the people
• 9:05
  Mike: that are disaffected with being Californian.
• 9:09
  Mike: Sort of, you know, let's just gather are all the people that are disaffected
• 9:12
  Mike: and angry we're angry at the california government we're angry at our communities
• 9:17
  Mike: we're angry at the world's values and so we end up with these little angry churches
• 9:21
  Mike: right yeah militant but if
• 9:23
  Mike: militant, but not really gospel-centered. But if you've got the gospel of Jesus
• 9:29
  Mike: Christ and you understand what Jesus has done for you, there is no way that
• 9:33
  Mike: we can approach any person with the spirit of condemnation, a spirit of hatred,
• 9:38
  Mike: a spirit of opposition to who they are.
• 9:41
  Mike: We can, in fact, actually be for the life of the world.
• 9:47
  Mike: And I think that's what Christ is calling us to do.
• 9:49
  Chris: Yeah, you talked about inauthentic earlier.
• 9:53
  Chris: I think that's something every church needs to wrestle with.
• 9:56
  Chris: And you also pointed out the importance of welcoming people who are visitors.
• 10:00
  Chris: And when I do go out of town, when I'm not at my home church,
• 10:05
  Chris: I tend to go to church with my parents.
• 10:07
  Chris: Maybe we're visiting with them or Janet's parents, and they both go to really
• 10:11
  Chris: big churches. And I've been to several mega churches over the years,
• 10:15
  Chris: and I noticed they're excellent at greeting people.
• 10:20
  Chris: They're extremely intentional about it. They put a lot of people into the welcoming ministry.
• 10:27
  Chris: But I will say that there is a, not naming any kind of specific churches or
• 10:32
  Chris: whatever, but I have been to churches where it's almost a Stepford Wives,
• 10:38
  Chris: kind of too happy, too bright and shiny.
• 10:41
  Chris: People greet you like they were your long lost brother you haven't seen in 10 years.
• 10:47
  Chris: And it's a kind of happiness that for me, a lot of people like it.
• 10:54
  Chris: It obviously works and it grows some churches. But for me, I would much prefer...
• 11:00
  Chris: Rather than bright, hot, gleaming, polished smiles, I would much prefer something
• 11:09
  Chris: a little bit more genuine and warm and real, and to use your word, authentic.
• 11:15
  Chris: And I think the way to make that happen, a couple of years ago,
• 11:19
  Chris: we took our church through some of Tom Rainer's stuff on welcoming visitors,
• 11:23
  Chris: which I think is very, very solid.
• 11:24
  Chris: And I think having a strategy and awareness of how important it is to be a welcoming
• 11:30
  Chris: church to visitors is important.
• 11:32
  Chris: But the way that that becomes authentic and a part of your culture is not to have a program.
• 11:39
  Chris: It's to preach the gospel and the epistles and the teachings of Jesus and to
• 11:44
  Chris: have a people who value biblical humility, biblical serving, biblical love,
• 11:51
  Chris: biblical kindness, biblical listening, all of that kind of stuff.
• 11:55
  Chris: And there's no program or strategy or whatever that replaces the kind of outflow
• 12:02
  Chris: of the fruit of the Spirit that should come from an authentic church with real greeters.
• 12:08
  Chris: I think that's massively important to reach your community.
• 12:13
  Chris: It may not grow you into a megachurch, but it will grow you into a place where
• 12:18
  Chris: people will come feel welcomed and feel real warm.
• 12:23
  Mike: And you know, I think that authenticity extends into the other aspects that I was talking about.
• 12:29
  Mike: People don't want to be sold on Jesus. It's not the same as saying we don't
• 12:34
  Mike: want to invite them to a real-world encounter with the good news of Jesus Christ
• 12:38
  Mike: and the hope that we have for them.
• 12:40
  Mike: And that does include being authentic about the fact that we are sinners in need of God's grace,
• 12:45
  Mike: that we have the hope of Christ's atonement on our behalf, that we have the
• 12:52
  Mike: passionate belief in the resurrection and the transforming grace of Jesus, right?
• 12:57
  Mike: And so when we center that gospel into the middle of these kinds of authentic relationships,
• 13:05
  Mike: that should overflow into not only how we greet guests, but how we do outreach
• 13:11
  Mike: and how we invite people into the process of becoming a follower of Jesus,
• 13:16
  Mike: and then how we teach them how to grow up to be followers of Jesus and that
• 13:22
  Mike: discipleship mechanism.
• 13:24
  Mike: And if you have authenticity in all of that, and people know that you are genuinely
• 13:28
  Mike: seeking the good that God wants to bring to their city, their community,
• 13:35
  Mike: their ethnicity, their socioeconomic group,
• 13:39
  Mike: then there's a tremendous power for transformation.
• 13:42
  Mike: And I think that's what draws people in to say, hey, I want to know more about
• 13:48
  Mike: this God that is amongst you and the hope that you have.
• 13:51
  Chris: Yes. Amen. Amen to that. Speaking of overflowing, Chris, I made a strategic mistake last night.
• 13:59
  Chris: I put four of our sodas in the refrigerator and I left out the most important one.
• 14:06
  Chris: And today we are reviewing Lester's Fixin's Ranch Dressing Soda.
• 14:14
  Chris: Which I never heard of prior to Grace finding it.
• 14:18
  Chris: And I think of all of the sodas not to chill ahead of time, one based on ranch
• 14:26
  Chris: soda might be the single worst.
• 14:31
  Mike: Room temp ranch dressing soda.
• 14:33
  Chris: It doesn't sound like a great start. And I will say, Lester's Fixins has some
• 14:39
  Chris: great sodas on Amazon. there's one grass soda, which has four stars.
• 14:45
  Chris: Sadly, ranch dressing soda on Amazon has 2.9 stars.
• 14:51
  Mike: Oh, you're influencing our Spurgeon scale.
• 14:54
  Chris: I know. I know. But they didn't measure it on Spurgeon. So maybe we'll come
• 14:58
  Chris: up with something completely different.
• 15:00
  Mike: Well, my wife loves ranch dressing. Now, she does not drink soda at all.
• 15:05
  Chris: Okay.
• 15:05
  Mike: So I will have to review this for her. and who knows, it might temp her. Let's go.
• 15:12
  Chris: Take a smell before you take a drink. Oh, exactly. Oh, that hurts.
• 15:17
  Mike: Oh, I'm not smelling the pure cane sugar.
• 15:21
  Chris: No, I'm smelling the, a little bit rancid ranch. I don't know.
• 15:25
  Chris: I don't know what Lester was thinking about when he invented this soda, but you know what?
• 15:30
  Chris: He obviously sold it to us, so I bet other people bought it too. Let's give it a shot.
• 15:35
  Mike: Let's do it.
• 15:39
  Chris: Wow. Okay.
• 15:42
  Mike: Okay. Wow.
• 15:44
  Chris: That was a little bit of unscripted, stunned silence right there.
• 15:50
  Mike: That is something I have never, you know, as an ex-missionary,
• 15:55
  Mike: I have put a lot of weird things into my mouth.
• 15:57
  Mike: This right here, Lester's Ranch Dressing Soda, might be moving close to my top
• 16:07
  Mike: 10 of weird, weird things to put in your mouth.
• 16:11
  Chris: This is crazy. Oh, you're taking another drink. That's bold.
• 16:19
  Mike: I don't know how to describe this. How do you describe sweet ranch dressing?
• 16:26
  Chris: It honestly tastes like somebody had a little bit of a pina colada drink and
• 16:33
  Chris: mixed a tablespoon with ranch.
• 16:34
  Mike: But you would not know what that's like as a Baptist pastor.
• 16:38
  Chris: Oh, no. A virgin pina colada, I should say. Oh, there you go. No alcohol.
• 16:42
  Mike: There you go. That's right. and they mix you think that it's like a pina colada
• 16:47
  Mike: and they mixed a tablespoon i i would say they mix more than a tablespoon oh
• 16:51
  Mike: into their pina colada yeah
• 16:53
  Chris: That that aftertaste is going to stay with me for a while.
• 16:56
  Mike: This is uh it it says y'all get your fixings right yeah which is of course lester's
• 17:04
  Mike: motto yep i i would not encourage you to get this lester's fixin all right i'm
• 17:11
  Mike: going to be bold before we do the Spurgeons.
• 17:14
  Mike: I'm going to give it one more shot. One more here and, and see how we're doing.
• 17:19
  Chris: Well, I'll not be a coward. Hmm.
• 17:23
  Chris: It starts off and you think this is going to be good. And then the,
• 17:27
  Chris: the rest of it hits you and you're like, Oh, this is rancid.
• 17:33
  Mike: Uh, I, you say pina coli. I was thinking the front end And sort of tastes like
• 17:37
  Mike: you're getting a cream soda.
• 17:39
  Chris: Yeah. Okay. Cream soda.
• 17:41
  Mike: And then like somebody poured in a bunch of the ranch dressing powder into a
• 17:49
  Mike: cream soda and then shook that up.
• 17:51
  Mike: It's not good, folks. I'm going to give this a zero out of five Spurgeons. This is not good.
• 17:59
  Mike: Probably the worst soda that we will taste on this show.
• 18:02
  Chris: I hope.
• 18:03
  Mike: Maybe I'll give it a half Spurgeon, but that is not good. I would not consume that.
• 18:10
  Mike: I would not recommend it except as a joke. How about you, Pastor Chase?
• 18:13
  Mike: How many Spurgeons would you give this thing?
• 18:15
  Chris: Chris, not only would I not give this a single Spurgeon, I wouldn't give this but half a Joel Osteen.
• 18:23
  Chris: This stuff is nasty. It's so bad.
• 18:27
  Chris: It's terrible. But it does raise some interesting questions about ranch dressing in general.
• 18:33
  Chris: So now it's time for you to play the ranch dressing trivia challenge.
• 18:38
  Chris: And here's the first question. In the 1950s, a plumber named, yes, a plumber,
• 18:43
  Chris: Steve Henson bought a dude ranch in California and he served his homemade dressing
• 18:49
  Chris: to his guests, which would eventually become what we know of as ranch dressing.
• 18:53
  Chris: Since the ranch was located in a valley tucked away in the mountains,
• 18:58
  Chris: what did he name that ranch?
• 19:01
  Mike: Well, I actually know this one. It's Hidden Valley Ranch.
• 19:05
  Chris: You got it. That's right. And how do you know it?
• 19:07
  Mike: We live in California's agricultural area.
• 19:11
  Chris: We do.
• 19:11
  Mike: And in fact, there is a little hidden valley. By the way, you may not know this, Pastor Chase.
• 19:18
  Mike: There's a little hidden valley. It's not the Hidden Valley Ranch place,
• 19:22
  Mike: but there's a little valley called Hidden Valley down around the Paso Robles
• 19:27
  Mike: area, and they use that Hidden Valley sort of ethos and everything else.
• 19:33
  Mike: But that's, yeah, it's Hidden Valley Ranch. I got that.
• 19:36
  Chris: I'll do you one better than that. The original Hidden Valley Ranch is within
• 19:41
  Chris: the footprint of the GCA right around Santa Barbara, California.
• 19:46
  Chris: So it is in our territory, so to speak. The Hidden Valley Ranch is in California. How about that?
• 19:53
  Mike: That's amazing. So, so cool.
• 19:56
  Chris: Yep. All right. Question number two. You are one for one so far.
• 19:59
  Chris: So ranch dressing is a very American obsession because the flavor is so uniquely
• 20:05
  Chris: tied to the United States of America.
• 20:07
  Chris: If you were to say be in the Netherlands or Iceland or Ireland or whatever,
• 20:12
  Chris: and you bought a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.
• 20:15
  Chris: It's not called Cool Ranch.
• 20:17
  Chris: Instead, it's called cool what?
• 20:21
  Mike: Cool Vegetable Flames.
• 20:24
  Chris: I'll give you a hint. It's a nationality.
• 20:26
  Mike: The Cool American?
• 20:28
  Chris: You got it. That is what it's called in other countries. Cool American chips.
• 20:35
  Chris: All right, one more. Ranch is basically a mixture of mayonnaise and herbs and
• 20:40
  Chris: onion, garlic powder, dill and parsley.
• 20:43
  Chris: But to get that tang, you need to mix in a specific dairy product,
• 20:48
  Chris: the same sour liquid that's used to make pancakes fluffy and biscuits rise. What is that?
• 20:56
  Mike: You got to mix in buttermilk.
• 20:58
  Chris: Buttermilk, that's right.
• 20:59
  Mike: It's fast as buttermilk.
• 21:01
  Chris: And you can taste the buttermilk in this awful satanic soda that we've been drinking.
• 21:09
  Chris: You can taste it, and it scares me.
• 21:12
  Mike: All right, folks, we can say wholeheartedly, buy this for your worst enemy as
• 21:19
  Mike: you are seeking to bless them or your best friend because you want to have a
• 21:25
  Mike: good laugh with them drinking this,
• 21:27
  Mike: maybe cover up the label so they don't know what it is.
• 21:31
  Mike: Because this stuff's not great. It's grim.
• 21:35
  Chris: It's pretty grim. So, Pastor Chris, I think to wash that terrible taste out
• 21:42
  Chris: of our mouth, we're going to play part two of our sit-down interview with the
• 21:47
  Chris: senior directors of the Great Commission Association.
• 21:50
  Chris: And we're going to pick up where Pastor Chris Cole is talking about how an association,
• 21:56
  Chris: specifically the Great Commission Association, can help its member churches
• 22:01
  Chris: by being present and persistent and faithful. Here we go.
• 22:07
  Mike: Yeah, and that staying power that you're talking about, because we've got the
• 22:13
  Mike: duration with the staff and the duration of the relationships,
• 22:16
  Mike: pastors may come for 18 months or they may be here for 20 years or 30 years.
• 22:20
  Mike: We have a couple of pastors that are approaching that, right?
• 22:23
  Mike: But the association is here, even as those pastoral transitions keep going.
• 22:29
  Mike: It is a stabilizing force in the life of the church. When they're doing great,
• 22:34
  Mike: we celebrate with them. We try to encourage them.
• 22:37
  Mike: We try to mobilize them. When they're struggling, we try to move them forward.
• 22:42
  Chase: A couple of things. If you're a legitimate leader who cares about fulfilling
• 22:45
  Chase: the Great Commission into every people group in this region of California,
• 22:50
  Chase: well, your one church can't do it.
• 22:52
  Chase: You don't really have a strategy. You have a strategy of how to do your church,
• 22:56
  Chase: and we pray that that goes well.
• 22:57
  Chase: But what's the strategy for the 25 different people groups that live within
• 23:01
  Chase: five miles of your church? That has to be done in partnership networks.
• 23:04
  Chase: And we're a biblical, passionate, desiring network of churches that the most
• 23:11
  Chase: exciting thing for us to do is have someone walk in and say,
• 23:13
  Chase: hey, we want to plant a church to reach this people group that's under reach.
• 23:17
  Chase: And all of our churches are on board.
• 23:19
  Chase: Everybody's excited about it. So if you're a leader that has a legitimate concern
• 23:22
  Chase: of the Great Commission being fulfilled outside of your own church context,
• 23:26
  Chase: then you have to partner with something like GCA.
• 23:30
  Chase: And we invite anybody who has that heart to join with us, and let's push it forward together.
• 23:35
  Chase: And the second thing is, I've had multiple pastors in churches who have joined.
• 23:40
  Chase: They were not raised in the SBC world.
• 23:43
  Chase: I was raised in the SBC world. That's where I was.
• 23:47
  Chase: My mother had, I was on the pew, you know, two years old. So I've never known
• 23:52
  Chase: another structure, but they didn't.
• 23:53
  Chase: They came from independent or other structures.
• 23:56
  Chase: And most of the time when they started the relationship with us or whatever, they would do this to me.
• 24:01
  Chase: Like, yeah, thank you. And we appreciate your official organization called the
• 24:06
  Chase: GCA, but stay over there.
• 24:08
  Chris: Yes, stay at a distance. Yeah.
• 24:09
  Chase: Then crisis hit. And all churches have great days, had not so great days.
• 24:15
  Chase: Well, on their not so great day, when they ran out of all the options that they
• 24:17
  Chase: could do and the things were unraveling, it was, can you help us?
• 24:23
  Chase: And I said, no, because you hurt my feelings when you fish me away.
• 24:27
  Chase: And until you make me feel better. No, of course, you are a member of church.
• 24:32
  Chase: And so I would get into help.
• 24:34
  Chase: And then a year later, the pastor would tell me, I should have gotten you involved a lot earlier.
• 24:43
  Chase: But he didn't know that he could trust us earlier. He had to wait for the crisis,
• 24:47
  Chase: and then there were no other options.
• 24:49
  Chase: God left him, except, well, you're going to have to trust somebody.
• 24:51
  Chase: And I was just at a 25th anniversary of a church, and they actually 25 years
• 24:57
  Chase: ago, when they established that they had me on the program to preach, I preached something.
• 25:01
  Chase: It was amazing, I'm sure. But I preached something.
• 25:05
  Chase: But it was the and the church flourished and 25 years later in their anniversary
• 25:09
  Chase: they wanted me to come back
• 25:11
  Chase: and preach again and that was such an honor but they said to me when I showed
• 25:15
  Chase: up at the banquet the pastor came over and he laid his hands on my shoulder
• 25:19
  Chase: and he said to me I want to thank you
• 25:22
  Chase: You have every time we have called, you have come.
• 25:27
  Chase: And I don't know another way to do ministry except to come when God calls.
• 25:34
  Chase: But to him, it was significant.
• 25:35
  Chase: And to me, it was just a beautiful word of encouragement.
• 25:40
  Chase: You want that kind of partnership or people around your ministry?
• 25:44
  Chase: It's not an organization. It's people around you. Ministry is people.
• 25:49
  Chase: And it's having somebody I can call, even when I know they're going to tell
• 25:53
  Chase: me, well, that may not have been the best thing to do, but we're still here with you. Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:58
  Chris: Well, I'm going to ask an unscripted question. Then I'm going to ask a scripted question.
• 26:03
  Chris: And I'll set up my unscripted question with a bit of a story.
• 26:06
  Chris: When I was a young pastor in my 20s, went to a prayer meeting in the Deep South
• 26:10
  Chris: with a bunch of black pastors and white pastors at the time,
• 26:14
  Chris: very few Hispanic pastors or Asian pastors in that particular group I knew.
• 26:18
  Chris: But there was about 80 of us.
• 26:20
  Chris: And there were young black pastors and young white pastors. I was part of that
• 26:25
  Chris: group. And there was older white pastors and older black pastors.
• 26:29
  Chris: And there was a worship gathering at a prayer thing.
• 26:32
  Chris: And somehow, some way, and a bunch of us were astonished at this,
• 26:36
  Chris: the older white pastors and the older black pastors got into a big argument about the music.
• 26:43
  Chris: And it got intense. And the younger guys, maybe under 35, all of us,
• 26:50
  Chris: white and black, we just kind of slunk out of the room and we went and played ping pong together.
• 26:55
  Chris: And we were like, what is that all about?
• 26:58
  Chris: And I say that to set up what is something that's very controversial in the
• 27:02
  Chris: church, not so much in California, but the concept of diversity.
• 27:05
  Chris: One of the things I am just grateful as I can be about with the Great Commission
• 27:10
  Chris: Association is how diverse we are.
• 27:15
  Chris: It's fantastic. It's a great microcosm of the body of Christ.
• 27:19
  Chris: But we don't talk about it. There's not like a diversity initiative or all of this kind of thing.
• 27:26
  Chris: And I guess my question to you guys is, how did we get so diverse? It's where we live.
• 27:32
  Se J: Yeah. Our communities. This is who we are. This is where we are, the people around us.
• 27:37
  Se J: California and especially Bay Area has become the
• 27:43
  Se J: epicenter for global, everybody coming from all over the world.
• 27:47
  Chase: Our churches made us diverse. The churches that joined us and said,
• 27:51
  Chase: we're going to be on partner with you, all of them, they came in and they wanted to do the work.
• 27:57
  Chase: So it wasn't us who made GCA diverse. It was God's churches, God's people.
• 28:04
  Chase: And it's wonderful. It's wonderful. I, you know, all of them had,
• 28:10
  Chase: every culture has a different way to make a decision, but all of them in our
• 28:14
  Chase: churches want to make a godly decision. Amen.
• 28:17
  Chase: And they want support. So we're just blessed that we get to be with these kinds of churches.
• 28:22
  Chase: And, you know, they serve all of
• 28:25
  Chase: our churches. They serve on our executive board. They serve in officers.
• 28:28
  Chase: You can see throughout the years, they're willing to do it. They're willing to serve God.
• 28:33
  Chase: So, no, that's not an issue that—it's not even an issue we really talk about
• 28:40
  Chase: or worry about because our pastors can see themselves.
• 28:44
  Chase: In the leaders and the board and what we do. They see their churches.
• 28:49
  Chase: In fact, we ask every church to serve, and they all get an opportunity to serve
• 28:54
  Chase: in leading the association.
• 28:56
  Chase: It's up to them if they want to accept the responsibility.
• 28:59
  Mike: I think environmentally, you know, we have a bit of uniqueness.
• 29:03
  Mike: If you were in more of a monocultural state, you're in central Iowa,
• 29:08
  Mike: for example, you're probably not going to get as much diversity within your
• 29:13
  Mike: church. It's just simply because that's not in your population.
• 29:16
  Mike: 66% of the tech workers in Silicon Valley were born outside the United States.
• 29:22
  Chris: That's another astonishing number. Right.
• 29:24
  Se J: Two thumbs.
• 29:25
  Mike: And, you know, we go all the way from highly educated communities in Silicon
• 29:29
  Mike: Valley down to very agricultural communities like your community, Salinas.
• 29:34
  Mike: We have communities just south of Salinas like Greenfield.
• 29:37
  Mike: Population is approximately 95% Hispanic, a little bit more actually probably in Greenfield.
• 29:43
  Mike: Right there. So you have that great diversity. So the responsibility of the
• 29:48
  Mike: Great Commission is to reach the people that are where you are at.
• 29:53
  Mike: And even though Southern Baptists have our own history that has real challenges
• 29:57
  Mike: with going far enough back with how we approach different races and different communities,
• 30:04
  Mike: the reality is that we've also got a history as Southern Baptists of being very missional people.
• 30:09
  Mike: Whether it's through the North American Mission Board's initiatives,
• 30:13
  Mike: And their desire to reach the peoples of different communities or current initiatives
• 30:20
  Mike: that come through the association, partnerships that we have.
• 30:24
  Mike: We identify unreached people groups that live in the Bay Area.
• 30:27
  Mike: We've been working in the past couple of years, for example,
• 30:30
  Mike: trying to help reach the Uyghur people in the Bay Area. We have an Afghan-American
• 30:34
  Mike: church. We have an Ethiopian church. We have a Slavic church.
• 30:39
  Mike: We have many Chinese churches, Korean churches, South Asian churches.
• 30:45
  Mike: We could just keep on going in addition to having majority groups like Hispanic
• 30:50
  Mike: churches and English language churches.
• 30:52
  Mike: So our churches have driven some of that diversity.
• 30:56
  Mike: And then if you're in an association and every church gets to serve,
• 30:59
  Mike: like on our executive board, they're going to make decisions and they're going
• 31:02
  Mike: to have to get into a room together and dialogue together with that diversity.
• 31:07
  Mike: And they all have that heart.
• 31:09
  Mike: So you see, you know, Hispanic pastors in our churches and our associations
• 31:13
  Mike: serving on our executive board that want us to reach Uyghur people,
• 31:18
  Mike: which is a beautiful thing.
• 31:19
  Mike: And you have Chinese language pastors that are working to see other people groups come to faith.
• 31:27
  Mike: One of our Chinese churches is a great example. They're working very much in
• 31:31
  Mike: partnership with our Afghan outreach,
• 31:33
  Mike: which is amazing to see that kind of engagement cross-culturally.
• 31:39
  Mike: And that's their heartbeat.
• 31:40
  Chris: So I was born in the 70s. This was after the thrust of the civil rights movement in the South.
• 31:46
  Chris: But the churches there in most of my lifetime were quite segregated,
• 31:52
  Chris: even though I would say racial relations are better.
• 31:55
  Chris: But coming from that landscape that is slowly desegregating in the church into what we have here,
• 32:05
  Chris: which is beautiful diversity in, I guess, a non-woke sort of way,
• 32:11
  Chris: it's just been so refreshing for me.
• 32:13
  Chase: Yeah. And it's also gospel-centric. All of our churches here are actually theologically, I would say,
• 32:22
  Chase: more concerned about being biblically correct and biblically driven than in a lot of places.
• 32:28
  Chase: Because here, in California, you have to choose you want to follow God.
• 32:33
  Chase: It's not the cool thing to do.
• 32:35
  Chase: My whole time here, theological issues being a
• 32:40
  Chase: has not we've not we've not lost one church due
• 32:43
  Chase: to theological issues that i can recall at this moment
• 32:46
  Chase: so that has not been their issues it's been the normal things
• 32:49
  Chase: that churches faces unity crisis uh leadership uh those kind of things so that's
• 32:54
  Chase: it's beautiful diversity who we are but our commitment to scripture commitment
• 32:58
  Chase: to the the gospel that of jesus that he's the only one that saves that's intact
• 33:04
  Chase: i mean that's really really strong and among our churches
• 33:07
  Chris: Pastor Chris, earlier you gave a statistic, kind of blew my mind,
• 33:11
  Chris: 18 months tenure for the average pastor.
• 33:14
  Chris: I'll give you one maybe that you guys don't know, that Salinas and Bakersfield
• 33:20
  Chris: are two of the least educated cities in the entire United States.
• 33:24
  Chris: San Jose is top five educated cities in the United States, you know, depending on the year.
• 33:30
  Chris: And Salinas and San Jose, like an hour away from each other.
• 33:34
  Chris: So, in our association, we have this microcosm of, as you said,
• 33:39
  Chris: just incredibly diverse educationally, thinking about the association,
• 33:44
  Chris: looking forward into the future, forecasting prophetically.
• 33:47
  Chris: It doesn't have to be prophetically. It could be strategically.
• 33:50
  Mike: We have a word. Just a word from the Lord.
• 33:53
  Chris: I will spend some time in a we have a word church. Those were interesting days.
• 33:58
  Chase: There's only more than one of them.
• 34:00
  Chris: There's a lot of them. And if you have a word, feel free to share it.
• 34:04
  Chris: I mean, the first credit deal is 12 or 14. I'm all about it.
• 34:07
  Chris: But forecasting, where do you see the GCA?
• 34:12
  Chris: Not this year. Let's look a little bit further into the future.
• 34:15
  Chris: 2027, 2028, 2029, as we head into the tail years of the 2020s,
• 34:21
  Chris: where are we going forecast wise?
• 34:23
  Se J: I think Dr. Stewart probably needs to start this with this transition.
• 34:28
  Se J: At least forecasting that we will have a new executive director installed in a couple of years.
• 34:36
  Se J: Wanting to see how we go forward from that will be sort of the marker for next 10, 20 years.
• 34:45
  Se J: But from my seat, from the operations side, I think a couple of things that
• 34:50
  Se J: we would like to see is we've been growing, building, stabilizing as much as we can.
• 34:56
  Se J: But I think we need to do some shoring up of our processes and our structure
• 35:03
  Se J: systems because we've been growing and we've been growing ever since I got here.
• 35:08
  Se J: I think we doubled, maybe more than that, as far as not only number of schools,
• 35:12
  Se J: but also in budget and everything else.
• 35:15
  Se J: And so we need to build a right infrastructure or systems so that we could do
• 35:19
  Se J: more. I think that's one.
• 35:20
  Se J: We need to focus really on developing next-generation leaders.
• 35:25
  Se J: Because I always thought I was young.
• 35:29
  Chris: But you are.
• 35:31
  Se J: Youngest in this group, yes. But I think we need to eventually and perhaps strategically
• 35:39
  Se J: develop next-generation leaders, not just for us here, but also for our churches. We're
• 35:44
  Se J: We are in dire need of that. So that's what, if I could put my two cents,
• 35:49
  Se J: those should be one systemized and then really develop leaders.
• 35:54
  Chris: Yeah, that's so important. Our deacons right now at our church are putting a
• 36:00
  Chris: guy in his 20s through the deacon process.
• 36:03
  Chris: And it's these, the guys that are spearheading that, that wanted to make it
• 36:07
  Chris: happen, are in their 60s and 70s. And they want to see these new young leaders rise up and flourish.
• 36:16
  Chase: I think for the next two years, what I see ahead for GCA is there's a lot of promise.
• 36:23
  Chase: There's a lot of promise and there's a lot of responsibility.
• 36:26
  Chase: It's challenging out there in the ministry field. It's challenging for organizations
• 36:30
  Chase: like associations and networks of churches because as we talked about COVID
• 36:34
  Chase: of impacting churches and destabilizing a lot of them.
• 36:38
  Chase: Well, a lot of those used to be your strong supporters of other networks,
• 36:42
  Chase: your association stuff.
• 36:43
  Chase: Well, as they destabilize, so does your structure, which GCA,
• 36:48
  Chase: by God's grace, we have a lot of resources. We have talent that loves God,
• 36:54
  Chase: loves to churches, and we have our pastors who are united.
• 36:58
  Chase: But there's responsibility ahead.
• 37:00
  Chase: And GCA has to seriously weigh through what is our place in the future mission
• 37:05
  Chase: world in this part of California. So that's something that we have to wrestle.
• 37:10
  Chase: I think there's more responsibility ahead for GCA.
• 37:14
  Chase: And I also think there's great promise because of just the kind of people that are serving at GCA.
• 37:21
  Chase: So I think we'll be stronger. I think we'll have more responsibility.
• 37:25
  Chase: I think God will send an executive director of missions who can—we pray that
• 37:31
  Chase: he is someone that can appreciate and evaluate what's really here as a gift from God,
• 37:36
  Chase: but also will not take this as a promotion, but as an assignment to enter into
• 37:42
  Chase: a greater work for the kingdom of God.
• 37:46
  Chris: Amen. It's such a strategic time, too, with the CSBC, California Southern Baptists,
• 37:52
  Chris: moving their epicenter more south.
• 37:56
  Chris: There's going to be great need for Baptists in the north, as you say.
• 38:01
  Chris: California is a long state. There's going to be need for associations to rise
• 38:08
  Chris: up, especially in northern California, the NorCal area.
• 38:10
  Chris: I think that the responsibility, the responsibility in creating the leaders,
• 38:16
  Chris: the upcoming leaders, it's going to be an undertaking.
• 38:20
  Chase: But it's going to be timely.
• 38:23
  Chris: It's going to be very timely.
• 38:25
  Chase: Well, and I would say we have to come alongside churches. They have the leaders.
• 38:30
  Chase: Yes. But if we can help that pastor or leadership group think through,
• 38:35
  Chase: and we've done that through GCTI, here are avenues to help you develop leaders
• 38:40
  Chase: in a practical way. And that's what Matt's team has been talking about.
• 38:43
  Chase: How do we practically move the leaders that are inside of our churches,
• 38:47
  Chase: the deacons, the governing boards, whatever we have?
• 38:50
  Chase: But we don't create leaders and we don't elevate leaders.
• 38:55
  Chase: That's the church, but we can help the church do that as a partner with it.
• 39:01
  Mike: Yeah, in addition to everything that they're sharing, which I would amen,
• 39:04
  Mike: I would say that for the next two years, at least from the mission advance team
• 39:09
  Mike: perspective, we're going to really focus on being strategically driven.
• 39:15
  Mike: We're going to have very strong emphasis on us fulfilling a strategy of equipping
• 39:21
  Mike: and training and helping churches work through their own assessments as they
• 39:26
  Mike: work to develop leaders, all of those pieces.
• 39:29
  Mike: We're going to be equipping them, doing that relationally. So I think focus
• 39:33
  Mike: is a big thing. I think community is going to expand.
• 39:36
  Mike: I think the reality of regionalized associations, that day is passing.
• 39:43
  Mike: I'm not saying it's passed.
• 39:45
  Mike: But regionalized associations being geographically defined or exclusively geographically
• 39:53
  Mike: defined or primarily geographically defined,
• 39:55
  Mike: that day is passing and we're going to be inviting people into partnership on
• 40:01
  Mike: a broader level than we ever have before.
• 40:04
  Mike: We're already experiencing that. We've got partners helping replant a church
• 40:09
  Mike: in the Silicon Valley heartbeat of Silicon Valley that are partners that are
• 40:14
  Mike: from Texas and Oklahoma and Georgia and Oregon.
• 40:21
  Mike: And, you know, it's just crazy. So I think we're going to be inviting more people
• 40:26
  Mike: to be on mission together with us,
• 40:28
  Mike: whether that's local churches joining the association or other networks or other
• 40:33
  Mike: associations, we're going to be partnering together more.
• 40:36
  Mike: So I think that partnership is going to expand, community is going to expand
• 40:41
  Mike: in some really neat and exciting ways.
• 40:44
  Mike: And that will, of course, bring about its own set of challenges as well.
• 40:49
  Mike: But I think the emphasis on us helping churches do that well with each other
• 40:56
  Mike: in our association and expanding those networks out is something that we anticipate
• 41:00
  Mike: is coming in that we're working very hard towards.
• 41:03
  Chris: Yeah. So I didn't grow up wanting to be a pastor.
• 41:06
  Chris: I wanted to be an FBI agent. And so I got kind of thrown into the whole youth pastor thing in my 20s.
• 41:12
  Chris: And definitely I was called by God.
• 41:16
  Chris: But, you know, I went to seminary. I didn't know what I was doing.
• 41:19
  Chris: Seminary doesn't always prepare you to pastor. and a group of older pastors,
• 41:25
  Chris: a coalition, took me and some other youth ministers in and we basically formed
• 41:28
  Chris: our own little association.
• 41:30
  Chris: I say that to say, if you're a young leader in a church or a pastor,
• 41:35
  Chris: youth pastor, deacon or whatever,
• 41:37
  Chris: and you're looking for togetherness, that's one of the reasons,
• 41:41
  Chris: the whole reasons that Chris and I are putting together the show and the GCA
• 41:45
  Chris: is running with it is because we want to make those connections.
• 41:49
  Chris: And so I want to just say, there's an open door for you if you're listening
• 41:53
  Chris: to this and you want partnership.
• 41:55
  Chris: You can contact us through our website, through the GCASBC website.
• 42:00
  Chris: We want to partner with you, and I think you will find a home here if you're looking.
• 42:07
  Mike: Absolutely. And to that end, as we think about equipping leaders,
• 42:10
  Mike: real quick, what's one resource that you found encouraging in the past year
• 42:17
  Mike: or two that you just like to hand off to someone, that you say,
• 42:21
  Mike: hey, this is a resource, this is a tool, this is something that's encouraged
• 42:24
  Mike: my life or it's encouraged me in leadership,
• 42:28
  Mike: maybe in one minute or less, because I know our time is getting short here.
• 42:32
  Mike: What's one resource that you would hand off to a leader and just say,
• 42:35
  Mike: I think this will encourage you, this will equip you, this will strengthen you
• 42:39
  Mike: in your leadership, in your growing, your faith, your walk with Christ?
• 42:43
  Se J: I think adding on to our previous conversation, one of the aspects that we need
• 42:50
  Se J: to hone in on is our spiritual relationship.
• 42:53
  Se J: Realities, and our spiritual vitality in our churches, ourselves individually,
• 43:00
  Se J: as an association, pastors all across.
• 43:02
  Se J: And I think the prayer movement, and again, this has been used so many ways,
• 43:07
  Se J: and so it may be a separate podcast,
• 43:09
  Se J: but I think there is a great need for spiritual renewal and awakening.
• 43:15
  Se J: So for us to see something that can't be explained by numbers or logic,
• 43:21
  Se J: For us to see God move in such a way that we could only say that was God.
• 43:25
  Se J: And so I think that's an area that I would like to see and all of us would like
• 43:31
  Se J: to see that more and how we work as a team here, but also with our pastors to really start,
• 43:37
  Se J: hey, let's lean into that because that's really significant.
• 43:41
  Se J: And I would say for that, Daniel Henderson's book for me was very helpful, Old Path, New Power.
• 43:46
  Se J: I think that would be very helpful. 21 days of prayer campaigns Across personally
• 43:51
  Se J: I still do it personally I think
• 43:54
  Se J: those will be very crucial For us I believe if I'm not right with God
• 44:01
  Se J: What I do really doesn't matter And you know God can certainly do And he could
• 44:05
  Se J: use a donkey to do his work But I wouldn't be able to witness What he's doing
• 44:11
  Se J: if I'm not with him And so that's one of the main things I would suggest
• 44:16
  Chase: My daughter just gave me a book that is kind of blowing my mind. It's by John Eldridge.
• 44:21
  Chase: It's a book he wrote 14 years ago called Waking the Dead, The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive.
• 44:28
  Chase: And that's an awesome book. It kind of is on that path, but it's really, it's incredible.
• 44:35
  Chase: For me, it's been an incredible read. I'm reading it with my adult son, and it's a blessing.
• 44:41
  Chris: For me, I would encourage staff members or even anyone listening to this to
• 44:48
  Chris: become intentionally involved in your church.
• 44:51
  Chase: Become in a ministry,
• 44:54
  Chris: Sharing your giftings with others, leading out a ministry.
• 44:59
  Chase: And also for me,
• 45:02
  Chris: Even in women's fellowship and stepping out into places that might be uncomfortable
• 45:08
  Chris: for you to allow God to help you to grow so that you could show others that
• 45:13
  Chris: it's okay to step out on faith and to be nervous about it.
• 45:17
  Chris: That's really helped my growth this year in the church.
• 45:22
  Mike: I think one thing that I would add to that is that as leaders come up,
• 45:28
  Mike: one of the things we fail to realize is that who we are matters in many ways more than what we do.
• 45:35
  Mike: And if we don't have a good sense of not only our relationship with Christ,
• 45:39
  Mike: but who we are in ourselves and how we interact with other people,
• 45:44
  Mike: that becomes such a critical reality for what we can do in the kingdom of God.
• 45:50
  Mike: And so I think any of the amazing resources, and there's a lot out there along
• 45:56
  Mike: that line, I would just think of two that come to mind immediately are Steve
• 46:01
  Mike: Cuss's Managing Leadership Anxiety,
• 46:03
  Mike: Yours and Theirs is the subtitle.
• 46:06
  Mike: And it talks about how leaders very often are transmitting anxiety into group
• 46:10
  Mike: situations, and they're failing
• 46:12
  Mike: to lead well because they've not addressed their own internal fears,
• 46:17
  Mike: insecurities, and doubts, which, by the way, ties in really well into John Eldridge's
• 46:21
  Mike: book on being fully alive to God.
• 46:23
  Mike: Or Peter Scazzaro's Emotionally Healthy Leadership.
• 46:27
  Mike: He's got a great book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Emotionally Healthy Leadership.
• 46:31
  Mike: The idea of who you are as a leader is a reflection of your own relationship
• 46:36
  Mike: to God and your own ability to manage your own fears, doubts,
• 46:41
  Mike: anxieties, and weaknesses. Both those would be fantastic.
• 46:44
  Chase: Yeah, I'm writing my own book, though. It's called Emotional Leadership.
• 46:48
  Chase: I'm almost got it done, but I keep ripping it up at the last time.
• 46:54
  Chris: Fantastic. All right.
• 46:55
  Se J: One more, and I would say, because I think many people go through unknown pains,
• 47:02
  Se J: unknown trials, challenges that they can't talk about or say out loud or people to know.
• 47:09
  Se J: I did a study with one of my group in Beijing,
• 47:14
  Se J: Gift of Pain by Dr. Par Brand and Philip Yancey, co-author.
• 47:20
  Se J: I think that helped me understand pain is not a curse.
• 47:26
  Se J: Yeah. And so I think I would recommend that book from anybody listening that's
• 47:30
  Se J: going through unknown and hidden problems.
• 47:32
  Se J: Hurts, pains, challenges. This book is good.
• 47:36
  Chris: Fantastic. You have recommended resources that I'm not familiar with.
• 47:41
  Chris: So if you're listening and you're also not familiar with and you want to remember these, don't worry.
• 47:46
  Chris: We'll have them on our website, everychurchflourishing.com under the show notes
• 47:50
  Chris: for this episode, also under our resources page.
• 47:53
  Chris: And if you want to check these resources out, we don't get a commission or anything like that.
• 47:58
  Chris: We're just recommending stuff that would be good and healthy for your spiritual walk.
• 48:02
  Chris: I'll give one that's free and it's not a book resource, but our church has really,
• 48:07
  Chris: the last few years since COVID hit, emphasized the whole Robert Murray McShane
• 48:12
  Chris: reading scripture together on a daily basis. And we're really hitting it hard this year.
• 48:17
  Chris: And for me, I've found a way to do that through the Bible app,
• 48:23
  Chris: which is free, the YouVersion Bible app. But I usually listen to my portions.
• 48:28
  Chris: And basically what you can do, depending on what plan you choose, is you you hit play.
• 48:33
  Chris: You put your earphones in or whatever and you hit play on the top passage and
• 48:37
  Chris: it will play through all of those passages.
• 48:39
  Chris: So in the morning when you're getting ready or whatever, for me today,
• 48:43
  Chris: when I was driving over to the GCA offices, I was finishing up my Bible reading
• 48:47
  Chris: on my car speakers. And it's a great way to get the word of God in on a daily basis.
• 48:53
  Chris: So, hey, thank you all for your time. I know that setting everybody up and thank
• 48:58
  Chris: you, Miss Grace, for setting us up, scheduling this and getting everybody together for you guys.
• 49:03
  Chris: You're incredibly busy. You have lots of responsibilities and roles.
• 49:06
  Chris: I appreciate you devoting the time today for us to get together in person in
• 49:11
  Chris: the office and record this. Thank you. Anybody have any parting shots?
• 49:15
  Se J: Thank you. Thank you for doing this. This is important for us.
• 49:18
  Chris: Oh, amen. Yeah.
• 49:19
  Chase: One of my two-year predictions also is that, Chase, because of your expert leadership,
• 49:23
  Chase: there will be 50,000 people listening.
• 49:25
  Chase: That will change the future of GCA.
• 49:28
  Chris: That would change a lot of things. That's a word.
• 49:31
  Mike: That's a word.
• 49:33
  Chris: I receive that word. I receive it. I don't know.
• 49:37
  Mike: We're back from that interview. Pastor Chase, I hope that was an encouragement
• 49:42
  Mike: to you as you sat there and did a wonderful job of helping guide us through that conversation.
• 49:48
  Mike: You know, I am super glad that God brought me to be a part of this amazing team.
• 49:54
  Mike: Each of our directors has a unique set of gifting and a unique perspective,
• 50:01
  Mike: but they all have a passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ being advanced throughout our region.
• 50:07
  Mike: And so whether we're doing operations or schools or we're helping churches figure
• 50:11
  Mike: out how best to do their work, then we are excited to encourage and equip one another on that team.
• 50:18
  Mike: And I'm glad I get to be a part of that team.
• 50:21
  Chris: Amen. Amen. It was it was fun. It was genuine. I think what you heard was real
• 50:27
  Chris: responses from real people who have a deep and abiding care for the church of
• 50:34
  Chris: Jesus to fulfill his great commission.
• 50:37
  Mike: Absolutely. Well, Pastor Chase, an association is a family of churches.
• 50:43
  Mike: We're a missional network of churches. We're on mission together,
• 50:47
  Mike: but we're also a family of churches, and we want to celebrate with our different churches.
• 50:52
  Mike: And we love to celebrate when churches send us word of baptism, right?
• 50:58
  Mike: I mean, we're Baptists, so we love it when we get to hear how churches are growing,
• 51:03
  Mike: how they're engaging their communities with the gospel, how they're flourishing,
• 51:07
  Mike: and how they're reaching people with the hope of the gospel and seeing them
• 51:11
  Mike: follow Jesus in obedience in baptism.
• 51:14
  Mike: And in 2024, your church, Valley Baptist Church of Salinas, California,
• 51:20
  Mike: you guys had the privilege of seeing 16 people baptized.
• 51:24
  Mike: And you're a very normative-sized congregation. You're not a congregation of 5,000 people.
• 51:32
  Mike: And this was an amazing time and an encouraging time, I know, for you. So,
• 51:37
  Mike: how did that happen? How did this come about?
• 51:42
  Mike: And what words would you share as an encouragement to other pastors out there
• 51:47
  Mike: who are praying for and seeking this kind of a movement of God amongst their church?
• 51:52
  Chris: So let me pull back the curtain a little bit and just say,
• 51:56
  Chris: I requested we do this segment. And you probably think it's so I could toot
• 52:01
  Chris: my own horn or aggrandize and brag about Valley Baptist Church.
• 52:06
  Chris: But here's the thing. I've been in ministry for 30 years and I've been pastoring
• 52:11
  Chris: as a senior pastor for not quite 20 years.
• 52:14
  Chris: I don't know, 17, no, 18, 19, something like that. A long time.
• 52:18
  Chris: And 2024 and 2025 has been by far the most people a church our size has baptized.
• 52:25
  Chris: For us, a great Sunday would be like 125 people. So we're not a huge church.
• 52:29
  Chris: To baptize that many people is
• 52:31
  Chris: very much an outlier. And if you were to invite me to your small church.
• 52:37
  Chris: Medium church baptism conference this week and I was to speak and talk about
• 52:42
  Chris: how it happened, I don't know what I would say.
• 52:45
  Chris: I don't know that I would be like, okay, here's five steps that your church
• 52:50
  Chris: can take if you want to massively increase your baptisms. And I know 16 is not off the charts.
• 52:58
  Chris: You know, there's some churches out there, mega churches, they have this strategy for baptism.
• 53:03
  Chris: They baptize tons of people.
• 53:06
  Chris: Most of those people, I don't think, stick to their churches because they'll
• 53:10
  Chris: have these, quote, spontaneous baptisms a few times a year where thousands of people get baptized.
• 53:17
  Chris: And, you know, are they being discipled? I don't know.
• 53:20
  Chris: There was a church a few years ago that kind of had this strategy where they
• 53:26
  Chris: would have what they called spontaneous baptisms, and they would call on people
• 53:30
  Chris: to come up and get baptized.
• 53:32
  Chris: But the church actually had leaders and volunteers planted in the congregation
• 53:36
  Chris: that sort of pretended like they were coming down to get baptized.
• 53:41
  Chris: And so it sort of prime in the pump took advantage of the herd mentality.
• 53:46
  Chris: The fact of the matter is.
• 53:48
  Chris: God doesn't need our help in that way. And I'm not saying, hey, be frozen chosen.
• 53:54
  Chris: I'm saying the work of salvation is a work that begins and ends with God and His Holy Spirit.
• 54:03
  Chris: And the way those people got baptized over the last two years in our little
• 54:08
  Chris: fellowship was a work of God that did not have a human strategic component to it.
• 54:14
  Chris: We want to be a people who loves Jesus, follows his word, teaches his word,
• 54:20
  Chris: sings his word, loves each other. And that's important.
• 54:23
  Chris: If I could say, here's one practical thing that may have helped.
• 54:28
  Chris: And I don't even know if it did.
• 54:30
  Chris: We started talking about baptism a little bit more in 2024. And I don't mean
• 54:35
  Chris: like we're going to have 20 sermons on baptism.
• 54:37
  Chris: I mean, we started inviting people. If you believe the gospel,
• 54:41
  Chris: you should get baptized. As a pastor, I don't talk about offering a lot.
• 54:47
  Chris: I want to be on whatever the other side of manipulation is, and I don't want
• 54:52
  Chris: to manipulate people into being baptized a lot.
• 54:54
  Chris: But I realized at some point I probably wasn't opening the door enough.
• 54:59
  Chris: And if there's a key pastor, church leader out there, talk about it.
• 55:04
  Chris: Talk about the importance of it. Teach on what the Word of God says about it and invite people.
• 55:09
  Mike: Absolutely. And I think that's so key. sometimes we are a little bit stuck ourselves in
• 55:17
  Mike: Our deep desire to not manipulate people,
• 55:21
  Mike: to not sort of provoke false conversion or false assurance of salvation,
• 55:27
  Mike: we can end up on this other side where we're not inviting people into their
• 55:32
  Mike: first great act of obedience.
• 55:34
  Mike: We're sort of saying, hey, prove it to us first.
• 55:38
  Mike: And I personally don't find that anywhere in scripture. The Ethiopian eunuch
• 55:43
  Mike: doesn't have to prove anything to Philip.
• 55:46
  Chris: Yeah.
• 55:46
  Mike: And the Philippian jailer has an immediate conversion, and Paul baptizes him right then and there.
• 55:54
  Mike: And Peter calls for people as the first sign of obedience to come to a place
• 56:01
  Mike: of baptism when he gives his great sermon on the day of Pentecost, right?
• 56:06
  Mike: So I think it is incumbent on us as pastors and leaders to say,
• 56:11
  Mike: hey, we want you to follow Jesus in baptism. Now, we want to make sure that
• 56:16
  Mike: people are authentically converted.
• 56:17
  Mike: We want to make sure they have a deep and real understanding of the gospel that's
• 56:22
  Mike: appropriate to their age and their mentality.
• 56:26
  Mike: And we don't want to give them that false assurance of salvation,
• 56:29
  Mike: but we do want to encourage them to say, let's walk in obedience to Jesus.
• 56:34
  Mike: And, you know, a few years ago, I heard a missionary talking about this issue,
• 56:38
  Mike: and he said, listen, why are we asking people to live their lives as call them to be Christians,
• 56:46
  Mike: call them to follow Jesus, but not giving them the very command of Jesus to be baptized
• 56:55
  Mike: and to profess their faith in that way.
• 56:57
  Mike: And he said, I think we're withholding the blessing of God on their lives when
• 57:03
  Mike: we don't actively encourage people to say, hey, look, your first act of obedience,
• 57:08
  Mike: baptism doesn't save you, but if you are genuinely professing faith,
• 57:13
  Mike: you've repented of your sins, you're entrusting yourself to Jesus for salvation,
• 57:18
  Mike: your first act of obedience ought to be following Jesus in the waters of baptism.
• 57:23
  Chris: Yeah, amen. We got to do that. We got to talk about that. We got to say it.
• 57:27
  Chris: In the meantime, check out our website, everychurchflourishing.com and stay
• 57:32
  Chris: tuned for next Monday because we should have another brand new episode of Every
• 57:37
  Chris: Church Flourishing waiting for you then. Until then, Godspeed.