Latest / Finding God at Work / 5: Facilitating Love (Tim Cool of Smart Church Solutions)

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5: Facilitating Love (Tim Cool of Smart Church Solutions) · Finding God at Work

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, I'm Chris.
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This is Finding God at Work.
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Just a reminder that Finding God at Work
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isn't just a podcast, it's also an online
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course.
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Check it out at findinggodatwork.org.
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Our current series is A Mysterious Business, bringing
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ministry and marketplace wisdom together.
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And today is an interview episode.
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We've got a special guest, Tim Kuhl, founder
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and CEO of Smart Church Solutions.
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Thank you for being with us, Tim.
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Oh, my pleasure, Chris.
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Thanks for having me.
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So Tim, let's just jump right in.
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What's the two or three minute version of
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how you started and now lead Smart Church
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Solutions?
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Yeah.
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So I'd spent a majority of my adult
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career in construction, building church facilities around the
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country.
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And what I started to see was that
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churches got all excited about building the new
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shiny thing, but not so much on taking
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care of what God's entrusted to them.
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And I'd go into buildings that were three,
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four, five years old, and they looked like
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10, 15, 20 year old buildings.
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And so we had this conviction that we
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needed to help church understand that facility stewardship
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is meaning that everything on earth belongs to
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God, including our facilities, so we better take
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care of them.
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So that's kind of the impetus of what
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got us started.
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That's great.
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That's great.
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I empathize with that.
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In my work for the food bank, I
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visit a lot of older church buildings, since
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a lot of our food pantries aren't churches.
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And you can tell when the team really
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cares about their building and when it's not
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really on the priority list.
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So what services does your business provide?
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How do you actually help churches manage their
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facilities?
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Yeah, so we do a couple of things.
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We consider ourselves a facility stewardship company.
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And so we provide facility condition assessments so
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that a church can understand what is the
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current condition of your building.
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Most churches don't understand the massive amount of
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deferred maintenance they have, and they need a
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reality check.
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They don't know that they're not operating effectively
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or efficiently in their facilities.
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So that's a big piece of it.
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We do some ongoing coaching for those facility
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managers or executive pastors, administrators.
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And then we have a software product called
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eSpace, which is a facility management software so
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that people actually have a tool to help
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them fulfill their facility stewardship initiatives.
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That's great.
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That's great.
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I imagine there might be listeners that are
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like, oh, that's helpful.
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I don't primarily do these interviews for product
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promotion, but sometimes there's crossover, which is wonderful.
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It strikes me in the podcast series so
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far, we've talked a lot about the idea
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of structure and structure versus substance.
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And you're literally helping churches care for their
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physical structure so that they can do the
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work of God.
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That's so significant.
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And sort of building on that, we've used
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this quote from a philosopher and theologian, Dallas
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Willard, that business itself can be a structure
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for love in the kingdom of God.
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So how do you view smart church solutions
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as a structure for love in the communities
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where you're working?
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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Love Dallas Willard.
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So the first piece of it for us,
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it goes back to one of our core
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values, which is we care for others.
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And if we don't care for each other,
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then how can we care for others as
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a business?
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It's kind of like the old analogy of
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you get on an airplane and they say,
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if we lose pressure, the masks will drop.
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Please put your mask on first before you
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help anyone else.
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And so if we're not a healthy organization,
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first and foremost, and we're not showing love
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and care internally with our team, how can
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we ever show that outside?
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So to me, it starts with how do
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we live out our culture internally?
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How do we then express that externally?
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To me, it's almost another form of evangelism.
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We have to get our own life right
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first before we can then help someone else
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get led to Christ.
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And so we take it very seriously as
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part of our culture that we have to
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care for others.
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To me, it's just a mandate.
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It's just something that we're going to live
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and die by.
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Yeah, yeah.
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What's an example of that, of how you
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foster that internally, caring for each other?
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So we have a couple of things.
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We have something that we call an AND
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program, and I can't tell you what the
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acronym stands for.
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But the philosophy behind it is that every
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time you heard Jesus talk about, he saw
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the blind man and he had compassion and
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healed him and he did something.
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And so we've actually started an internal care
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program for our team.
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So we have a team that will vet
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requests for assistance.
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Do they need marriage counseling?
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Do they need financial assistance?
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Do they have a loved one that passed
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away suddenly and now they need help with
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a funeral and whatnot?
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And do they need connected to a counselor
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or something else?
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So we have money set aside that that
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team then says, okay, based on that request,
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does that fit our criteria?
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And can we bless that person to show
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that we care for them?
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Obviously, a more practical way that a business
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can show they care for their employees is
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they pay them a good wage.
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Right, yeah.
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I mean, if you're facing financial difficulty because
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you're not earning enough in the first place,
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that's kind of the more obvious case.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So, you know, you've been around church long
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enough, Chris.
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You know, churches constantly say, we need to
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go the extra mile, go the extra mile.
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Okay, that's fine.
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But how about the first mile?
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Yeah.
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And so, you know, tell me what's more
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important to you.
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When you go to a restroom at a
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church, is it more important that they have
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mints there for you or that there's toilet
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paper in the stall?
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You know, let's not forget that first kind
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of thing that will help people know that
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they are cared for and they're loved.
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So paying a good wage, giving reasonable benefits,
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providing them a sense of security is important.
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So I'm a member of an organization called
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C12.
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Oh, yeah, yeah.
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And I've been involved with them since 2006.
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So a long time.
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And one of their big philosophical points is
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called BAM, business as a ministry.
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And so if we view our business truly
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as a ministry and not just a profit
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center, and if we realize that we don't
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own the business, God does, and we're just
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a steward of it, it changes your perspective
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on how you treat your employees, how you
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treat the business, how you treat your customers.
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Yeah, yeah.
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C12 has kind of indirectly helped Mission Central.
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I'm not a member, but a couple of
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my kind of mentors in this faith and
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work world are members of our regional area
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here in the Chicago suburbs.
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And I know they've said very similar things
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that that kind of philosophy of how they
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do their business is really helpful.
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It kind of leads to the question of
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profits, like businesses have to make money to
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do what they do.
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So, but obviously, if you're thinking about loving
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other people, serving other people, it's deeper than
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the bottom line.
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So how do you think about the relationship
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between profits and purpose as you lead your
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business?
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Yeah, so from a profit perspective, I view
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profit the same way I view gasoline for
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my vehicle.
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I'm not going anywhere without gas in my
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car.
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And our business isn't going anywhere with some
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profit to be made.
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But I did not buy the car to
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buy gas.
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It is the necessary component to make it
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go.
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And so I see profit the same way.
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Profit is the fuel that allows us to
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continue to pay a really good wage and
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to pay bonuses and to pay our people
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that way.
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It also is the item that allows us
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to do more R&D research and allows
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us to do expand our products and provide
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better services for our customers.
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For us as a company, we do a
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couple other things.
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And we actually have a profit sharing plan
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for our employees.
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So that allows them to benefit from collectively
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pulling together to try to help build profit.
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Then on top of that, Chris, we have
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a generosity fund.
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And we give money away to places like
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Mission Central.
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And so we've picked about a half a
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dozen ministries and organizations around the country, a
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little heavier here in the Southeast U.S.
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because that's where we're based.
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But our goal is to provide a basically
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a 10% post tax on our profit,
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which is, in essence, providing a tithe.
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Right.
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You're tithing as a business.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And so last year, we had a goal
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to give away $80,000, and we actually
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gave away $110,000.
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Wow.
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We helped a food bank in a very
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poor county of North Carolina buy a refrigerated
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box truck.
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That makes a huge difference.
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I speak as an insider.
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Refrigerated box trucks are like lifeblood for smaller
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pantries.
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That's wonderful.
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Yeah.
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And this year, the director of that called
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me up and said, hey, a bunch of
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our volunteers are getting older.
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We're going to have to buy an electronic
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hand truck.
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Yes.
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And so my wife immediately had a check
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sent to them out of that fund to
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cover.
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It was less than three grand.
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Yeah.
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But still, for them, they give everything away.
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The executive director and his wife don't even
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take a salary in this organization.
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That's wonderful.
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And so it is a way for us
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to provide generosity, because I feel that God
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has called it upon us as a business
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that does make a profit that we need
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to be generous with what he's entrusted to
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us.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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A while back for the ministry, I did
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a blog series about monastic wisdom for the
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marketplace.
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And I looked at the vow of poverty
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that certain monastic orders take and the idea
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that what that's really about is freedom from
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possessiveness, freedom from attachment, like this is mine
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and what you own owns you.
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And it strikes me that having that attitude
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of, hey, what is our profit feeding into?
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It's not just feeding into my pocketbook.
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It's feeding into generosity.
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It's feeding into profit sharing for my employees.
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You're having an open-handed posture.
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You're not saying, I need to keep all
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the profit for myself.
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You're saying, how can this feed other kingdom
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work?
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So yeah, absolutely.
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That's really beautiful.
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I was thinking when you mentioned deferred maintenance,
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right?
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I'd have to do the etymological study.
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But my hunch is that the phrase deferred
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maintenance was something that a business person came
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up with, not that a pastor came up
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with, right?
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Absolutely.
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It feels like a business concept, right?
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And yet, obviously, it's relevant for the church.
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So either with that or with other things,
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what are business ideas that have helped you
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as you serve churches or in your own
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life in the church?
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Yeah, so we're members of some secular, I'll
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call it secular.
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Although if we really want to unpeel it,
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everything is sacred.
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Right, right.
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But if we want to say non-church
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related organizations that specialize in facility management, deferred
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maintenance is one of the largest impactors of
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facility health.
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We've done probably somewhere between 40 and 50
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million square feet of church facility assessments.
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And we know that all the churches that
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have deferred maintenance, that's 100% of them,
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that there's two empirical reasons why they have
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deferred maintenance.
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And it all boils down to the term
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deferred.
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One, they don't budget for it appropriately.
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So they don't have the money to take
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care of it.
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And number two, they don't staff appropriately.
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And so they end up deferring those maintenance
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costs.
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And we know that deferred maintenance left unchecked
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will cost four, five, 10 times the cost
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of what it would cost today to fix
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it.
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Yeah, it's like the ounce of prevention thing,
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just like with health.
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Yeah.
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Well, you're not old enough.
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But if you remember in the 70s, for
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those that may be listening to the Fram
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oil filter commercial, pay me now or pay
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me later.
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I can pay an $8 oil filter or
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I can pay you $4,000 for a
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new engine.
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Your choice kind of thing.
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And same thing applies to our buildings.
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One of the most convicting things for me
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in the last year, and I've got a
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new book getting ready to come out on
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this topic, is churches need to stop seeing
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their buildings as a line item expense and
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see it as an asset of ministry.
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And the secular world understands that their buildings
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have to produce an ROI.
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You need a return on investment for your
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secular business, whether or not that's in the
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form of rental income, or you don't need
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to rent because you now buy it for
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your business to use.
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Whatever it is, there's a return on investment.
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The return on investment for a church related
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to the facility is ministry impact.
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If your building looks tired and old, is
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the community even going to want to come
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to it?
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Is your congregation going to start feeling like
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you can't take care of them anymore either
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because you can't take care of your building?
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And so there becomes this ROI thing.
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So quick little story.
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Two miles from me down the road is
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the largest grossing Chick-fil-A in the
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Carolinas.
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Ah, okay.
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Been here for over 25 years.
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Well, about two years ago, I drove by
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and the building was bulldozed.
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I'm like, what?
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So I reached out to the operator who
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we knew.
14:38
Our kids had gone to school together.
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And he goes, yeah, we tore it down
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because it doesn't do business the way we
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do business today.
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It did not have the double drive-through.
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The kitchen was structured like it was 25
14:52
years ago, which wasn't the most efficient way
14:54
to run the kitchen.
14:55
The dining room was different and so on
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and so forth.
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And he goes, yeah, it just made better
14:59
sense to tear it down and build what
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we need because it'll be more efficient and
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we'll actually make more profits long-term.
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Well, churches rarely will tear down their building
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to build a new one.
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That's generally not the case.
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But what we have found is churches need
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to go through a process every so often,
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maybe every three to five years to determine
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how do we want to do ministry today?
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And how is our building telling us we
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have to do ministry?
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Because Winston Churchill said that we shape our
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buildings and thereafter they shape us.
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And so we do ministry in 2026 the
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way our buildings tell us to.
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So if you've got a Southern Baptist building
15:41
somewhere in the Carolinas that was built in
15:43
the 50s, your Sunday school or adult education
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area has a large room with a bunch
15:49
of eight by eight rooms all the way
15:51
around it.
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Because that's what the Sunday school board said.
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That's how you do Sunday school in the
15:54
1950s.
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Yep.
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Well, that doesn't work today.
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In fact, most of those rooms are used
16:00
for Christmas tree storage now.
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And so, you know, it's just the churches
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say they're out of space.
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No, you're just using it poorly.
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Yeah.
16:08
And so while we're not going to tear
16:10
down our buildings, we need to keep them
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up and we need to then rethink how
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can I best restructure this building to help
16:20
me do ministry the way I think God's
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calling us to do it today versus 20,
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30, 40 years ago when this building was
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built.
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Sure.
16:28
Sure.
16:29
How would you answer someone who maybe is
16:33
a little bit more cynical?
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I run into this sometimes when I'm having
16:35
conversations with outsiders where they're like, oh, that
16:37
mega church just did this multi-million dollar
16:40
build out or rehabilitation project for their building.
16:43
Shouldn't they be focused on, you know, serving
16:46
the community?
16:47
And again, I have ways I might answer
16:50
that question, but how would you answer kind
16:52
of a cynical take on church buildings like
16:53
that?
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Yeah, you know, I have my own angst
16:58
with opulence.
16:59
So, you know, I don't believe God called
17:02
us to be opulent.
17:03
At the same time, if you read the
17:05
book of Numbers and you look at the
17:07
detail that God told them to build the
17:11
tabernacle from, it was pretty darn explicit.
17:14
Yeah.
17:15
And it was pretty ornate.
17:16
You know, you talk about the great vines
17:18
hanging from this, that and the other.
17:20
Attention to beauty.
17:20
Yeah.
17:21
Yeah, it was attention to beauty.
17:23
And if I can just preach for a
17:24
minute here, there were almost 8,000 Levites
17:28
that were put in charge of the care
17:31
of the building.
17:32
So the first facility managers were the high
17:36
priests, not the low priests.
17:38
And yet today, our facility managers are the
17:41
bottom end of our org chart.
17:43
Seems a little backwards to me.
17:46
In fact, there were facility managers before they
17:48
were youth pastors, just saying.
17:52
So the way I answer people when they
17:55
have that kind of concern is, OK, how
17:59
do you think they could serve your community
18:02
if they didn't have the facility?
18:05
It's the same kind of response I have
18:08
when a facility manager calls me up and
18:10
says, my pastor doesn't believe that we should
18:12
be setting money aside for the life end
18:15
of our HVAC units.
18:18
I said, OK, so you're in Phoenix, Arizona.
18:22
How many weeks could you have worship in
18:25
your sanctuary in August if the air conditioning
18:28
died?
18:30
And you don't go to Home Depot and
18:33
buy a new air conditioning unit.
18:34
That's right.
18:36
It may take weeks or months to order
18:38
that size unit.
18:40
And then you got to rent a crane
18:41
and you got to do all the other
18:42
stuff that goes with it.
18:45
These are inevitable things.
18:49
It's not like God's going to wave a
18:50
magic wand and say, it's automatically fixed.
18:53
Yes.
18:54
You know, and so I believe that if
18:58
churches are using their facility for community impact,
19:03
then I would be looking at how's the
19:04
building being used, not just the shape, size
19:08
and cost of the building.
19:09
Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful.
19:12
OK, I want to flip the question I
19:14
asked earlier.
19:15
And you've already been doing this, but what's
19:17
something that you've learned in church or in
19:19
your life in Scripture that then has helped
19:22
you as you lead your business?
19:25
Ah, it's a great question.
19:29
For me, part of it comes back to
19:32
the whole care piece.
19:34
If I care for my brothers and sisters
19:37
in Christ, then how am I going to
19:39
care for my team?
19:41
How do I care for the people that
19:42
we serve, for our vendors, for our customers?
19:47
How do I show the love of Christ
19:50
that I show others at church versus being
19:53
duplicit in how I handle my employees?
19:56
It'd be terrible for me to, oh, brother,
19:59
I love you.
20:00
And, you know, let's get together and have
20:03
a prayer meeting and then tell my employees,
20:05
you guys stink and you guys can't get
20:08
anything right.
20:09
What's wrong with you?
20:10
That's showing duplicit love.
20:12
That's just totally counterintuitive to me.
20:16
And so I think that is a big
20:19
piece.
20:19
The other piece is I was raised as
20:22
a preacher's kid, which makes me snarky out
20:25
of nature.
20:27
Comes with the territory, yeah.
20:28
But my dad, as a pastor, never pastored
20:32
large churches.
20:33
I don't think he ever had a church
20:34
bigger than about 125, which is considered a
20:38
mid-sized church in America today.
20:40
Yeah.
20:42
But it was ingrained in me that a
20:45
church facility is not the church.
20:49
It's the tool.
20:51
At the same time, the tool needs to
20:53
be appropriate for what God has called you
20:55
to do.
20:56
If God has called me to drive a
20:59
nail, I shouldn't be using a screwdriver to
21:01
do it.
21:03
And so if God has called you to
21:05
have a regional impact, that changes what your
21:08
facility should be.
21:09
If God has called you to provide a
21:12
liturgical, high church, high art form worship, and
21:16
that's what God's called you for, then be
21:18
the best at it.
21:20
So I was a music major in college,
21:22
and I love having the discussion of traditional
21:25
versus contemporary.
21:27
The reality is everything's contemporary.
21:32
Because contemporary only means that it's happening right
21:34
now.
21:35
And traditional is somewhat of a made-up
21:38
word because traditional for who?
21:41
I grew up with traditional Fanny Crosby hymns.
21:45
But somebody else who grew up with a
21:47
traditional Beethoven and Bach background has a different
21:50
sense of what is traditional.
21:52
And so to me, it is not a
21:54
matter of musical styles, liturgical styles, preaching styles.
22:00
I mean, I've got an Anglican priest here
22:02
in Charlotte that we've had a great conversation
22:04
over, okay, the liturgy, yeah, we keep reading
22:09
the same thing over and over again, but
22:10
you go to another church and they do
22:12
announcements, three songs, offerings, special music, and it's
22:16
still liturgy, it's just different.
22:19
And so I'm not hung up on what
22:21
is liturgy, what is not, or what's contemporary,
22:24
what's traditional.
22:25
For me, it is more about doing the
22:28
best that we can do and what God
22:30
has called us to do.
22:32
And to me, that goes back to understanding
22:35
my dad never pastored a big church.
22:38
God didn't call him to pastor a big
22:39
church.
22:40
But I believe he did the best he
22:42
could with the size church God gave him.
22:44
So that is a belief system that I
22:48
have brought forward with me from my childhood.
22:51
Yeah, yeah.
22:53
That's beautiful.
22:54
I love that sense of sensitivity to calling.
22:56
The calling then determines how you're working through
23:01
the structures and the building that you need
23:03
and how you use your resources.
23:06
As I think about calling, listeners to Finding
23:11
God at Work come from all sorts of
23:12
different backgrounds, but some of them might be
23:14
considering entrepreneurship or already engaged in business work.
23:18
What would you want to say to a
23:19
Christian who's stepping into that kind of work?
23:23
It's going to be harder than you think.
23:25
It's going to cost more than you realize.
23:28
But it's worth it at the end if
23:30
you have a kingdom mindset.
23:32
I think it was Billy Graham, as well
23:34
as others that said, the next greatest mission
23:37
field is in the workplace.
23:40
And so if you can approach an entrepreneurial
23:42
spirit as a mission field, it doesn't mean
23:45
you have to serve churches.
23:47
We've been blessed to serve churches.
23:49
But if I was selling widgets to people
23:52
on a street corner, can I do it
23:54
in a way that is honoring God?
23:56
And so that would be my first advice,
23:57
is make sure that whatever you're doing, you're
23:59
honoring God.
24:00
Think through your why.
24:02
I love Simon Sinek's book, Start With Why.
24:05
Most church people even understand what and how,
24:10
but they don't understand why.
24:13
And so understand your why.
24:15
And then make sure that when you're thinking
24:17
entrepreneurialism, you're not thinking in terms of, hey,
24:22
I'm actually kind of good at this as
24:24
being your primary thing.
24:26
Because I think it's Seth Godin that said,
24:28
if you can't figure out a way to
24:30
make a living at it, it's only a
24:31
hobby.
24:34
So being a music major, I had wanted
24:37
to go into music, and my dad gave
24:39
me sage advice.
24:40
He said, son, find a way to let
24:42
music be your ministry and go find a
24:44
real job.
24:47
To me, understand the cost.
24:49
You build a tower, you count the costs
24:52
ahead of time.
24:53
Understand the costs, understand what your business model
24:58
is, and then determine, is there even a
25:00
market for my product?
25:03
You may love baking pies, but is there
25:05
a market for people to buy pies at
25:07
a rate that it can actually make a
25:10
living for you?
25:10
If not, then take pies to your neighbors
25:13
and your friends and whoever else.
25:16
Yeah, and there can be beauty in that
25:17
too.
25:17
Sometimes the thing that stays a hobby, it
25:20
doesn't become your day job, and so there's
25:23
a way that there's joy there in a
25:24
different way.
25:26
I wish we could keep going, but I
25:28
think we're getting to the end of our
25:29
time here.
25:30
Tim, would you be willing to just pray
25:31
for our listeners kind of with all the
25:32
things we've talked about?
25:34
Yes, absolutely.
25:35
So God, I just want to thank you
25:37
for this time.
25:38
God, I would pray that you would anoint
25:40
this recording as it goes out.
25:42
God, that it would touch the ears and
25:44
the hearts of the listener.
25:45
God, that somehow or another you would be
25:47
glorified in the words that Chris and I
25:49
have shared today.
25:51
And God, for those who are considering entrepreneurialism,
25:54
for those who are in the middle of
25:56
trying to evaluate how to make their businesses
25:59
a ministry, or God, for those who are
26:01
in ministry that are thinking through how can
26:04
they bring best practices from a business perspective.
26:07
God, I pray that you provide them wisdom,
26:10
you bring them guidance, and God, that you
26:12
would enlighten their minds and their hearts.
26:14
God, thank you for this time again.
26:16
God, we love you.
26:22
Thanks for listening.
26:24
Finding God at Work is a production of
26:26
Mission Central, a ministry based in Aurora, Illinois,
26:28
dedicated to forming Christians for mission in everyday
26:31
life.
26:32
You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you
26:34
listen to this episode to get 10 minutes
26:36
of teaching on faith and work every Thursday.
26:38
To get resources to go deeper with each
26:40
podcast series, read our blog, and get info
26:43
about upcoming courses on faith in the workplace,
26:45
go to our website missioncentral.church. Thank you.