Latest / Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association / Episode 4: Church Trends, The Walmartization of Church, Big Church vs. Small Church + A British Soda Made from Garden WEEDS.

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Episode 4: Church Trends, The Walmartization of Church, Big Church vs. Small Church + A British Soda Made from Garden WEEDS. · Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association

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Chase: And pastors find health, encouragement, practical advice, soul care,
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Chase: and resources that work together to build up your local fellowship and the broader kingdom of God.
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Chase: Join hosts Pastor Chris Cole and Dr. Chase Thompson from the Great Commission Association, led by Dr.
0:30
Chase: Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry and aim for the goal
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Chase: of making every church flourish.
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Chase: Hi, I'm Chase. I'm the pastor of Valley Baptist Church in Central California.
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Chase: I'm part of the Great Commission Association of Churches that run from Santa
0:44
Chase: Barbara, California to San Jose, California.
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Chase: And I care about encouraging healthy churches by envisioning members to see
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Chase: their high calling in Christ and understand their spiritual gift and their call
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Chase: to operate in their ministry.
1:00
Chris: Hi, I'm Christopher Cole, and I'm the Associate Director of Missions for the
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Chris: Great Commission Association.
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Chris: And I care about seeing churches come to a place of flourishing through spiritual
1:12
Chris: renewal and missiological renewal, giving them a passion to see their communities
1:18
Chris: renewed with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Chase: Hey, that's awesome. And Pastor Chris has many, many years of working with churches
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Chase: and helping with renewal efforts and actually literally going on live with different
1:32
Chase: churches on their campuses,
1:34
Chase: working with leaders, helping them turn around, helping them flourish.
1:39
Chase: And so it's a great privilege to have him with us today and have this conversation.
1:43
Chase: We're going to be focusing on what does a flourishing church look like?
1:48
Chase: And one of the things that David Kinnaman, who is the head of a group that focuses
1:53
Chase: in on and church growth statistics.
1:55
Chase: He says that right now in America,
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Chase: People who actually go to church are only going to church two out of every five weekends.
2:06
Chase: And pretty much since 2020, churchgoers on average are attending somewhere in
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Chase: the neighborhood of 10 or 11 fewer services in 2025 than they did in 2000.
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Chase: So that's a lot less services per year, gatherings per year in just 20,
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Chase: 25 years. So, Pastor Chris, thinking about those statistics and the ones you're
2:31
Chase: going to share, what is the state of the church right now?
2:35
Chase: Are we flourishing in California? Are we flourishing in America?
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Chris: You know, there's a lot of different ways we could answer that question because
2:42
Chris: there are churches that are flourishing.
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Chris: And I think that one of the temptations is if you are a church that is not currently
2:50
Chris: flourishing, it's easy to say, look, around us, no one is flourishing.
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Chris: And so it becomes a way of displacement of saying, hey, no one's flourishing,
3:01
Chris: no one's healthy, and it's just the really difficult,
3:05
Chris: hard times that we are living in right now or this really difficult culture that we're in.
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Chris: And there's certainly people that are frustrated by the loss of a lot of cultural
3:16
Chris: Christianity and historical Christian ethos that has been common in America.
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Chris: But the reality is the church is flourishing all over the world.
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Chris: The church is experiencing amazing growth, especially in areas where historically
3:32
Chris: it has not necessarily been flourishing.
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Chris: You look at sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and the church is flourishing there
3:40
Chris: or in places like China or Central and Latin America.
3:44
Chris: The church is flourishing there. And even in the United States,
3:48
Chris: churches are flourishing and they are effectively reaching their communities.
3:52
Chris: Now, all of that is true. It is also true—.
3:57
Chris: In our circles, Chase, in Baptist life, particularly Southern Baptist life and
4:03
Chris: evangelical life in the United States, the latest data is incredibly troubling.
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Chris: And it's been troubling for many years because certain expressions of evangelical
4:15
Chris: churches in the United States are not only in decline currently,
4:20
Chris: but they've been in decline for a period of about 20 years.
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Chris: And it took us a long time to get honest about that. But just to give you some
4:28
Chris: recent data, for example, Lifeway Research, our Southern Baptist research organization
4:33
Chris: that we have, came up with this data this year.
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Chris: It says 79% of the churches that are SVC are currently plateaued or declining.
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Chris: And that's up from where we were just a couple of years ago when the number
4:48
Chris: was right around 71%. So we've seen in just a couple of years,
4:52
Chris: about an 8% shift that showing the problem is worse than we anticipated.
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Chris: Only about 21% of SBC churches are currently growing.
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Chris: And if a church is not growing, it is almost certainly not flourishing.
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Chris: You can go through short seasons where a church can go through a period not of stagnation,
5:15
Chris: but of re-entrenchment, regaining, sort of there's not a lot of movement,
5:21
Chris: but they're sort of just digging their roots deeper and preparing for that next phase of mission.
5:26
Chris: But that can't stay true for a very long period of time.
5:30
Chris: If your church isn't growing for any significant period of time,
5:34
Chris: you're not seeing new people come into the church, seeing lost people come into
5:38
Chris: the church and be saved, then your church is almost certainly already in some
5:42
Chris: form of plateau, stagnation, or decline.
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Chris: And the thing is that we've seen in our experience with pastors and church leaders
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Chris: is that many churches will say
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Chris: we're stagnant when in reality they're on a very slow period of decline.
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Chris: And sometimes those periods of decline are happening over 50 and 60-year timeframes.
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Chris: We've got churches in our own association, for example, whose peak attendance was in 1963.
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Chase: Wow.
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Chris: And they've been in a period of decline very slowly ever since then.
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Chris: And it takes a long time sometimes if the church was particularly healthy for
6:19
Chris: them to get to the place where they see themselves as not flourishing.
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Chase: Yeah, that's a great point. I will say this. I'm a pastor. A lot of my friends
6:26
Chase: are pastors, but in a way, pastors are some of the worst liars out there.
6:32
Chase: And what I mean by that, it's not nearly as insulting as it sounds.
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Chase: Oh, maybe it is, but we don't learn a lot of math in seminary.
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Chase: And I've noticed, and I have been guilty myself of either intentionally or unintentionally
6:49
Chase: fudging numbers to make them look better.
6:53
Chase: Maybe you weigh, I don't know, 279 pounds and you say, well,
6:58
Chase: I weigh in the mid 200s or something like that.
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Chase: Maybe your church has lost a significant amount of attendees and used to be
7:07
Chase: you averaged in the 80s and now you're in the 60s, but you still remember that.
7:13
Chase: Those days when you had 80 something people. And if somebody,
7:16
Chase: you know, asks, and for whatever reason, pastors do this all the time,
7:20
Chase: they say, you know, how big is your church?
7:22
Chase: You'll, you'll usually not give that super accurate number. You'll usually give
7:28
Chase: that super optimistic number.
7:31
Chase: Maybe lying is an uncharitable way of describing that, but I get the feeling, man, I get the pressure.
7:40
Chase: If it's a church member that wants to know, you don't want them to feel bad.
7:44
Chase: If it's a friend outside the church that wants to know, you don't want to embarrass yourself.
7:50
Chase: And we do have this kind of fixation with numbers that may be a little unhealthy,
7:55
Chase: but I also think it's unhealthy when things are not going well.
8:01
Chase: In fact, when things are going kind of badly and we're not But fulfilling our
8:06
Chase: mission of making disciples, we're taking backward steps, and we're not recognizing that.
8:12
Chase: And sometimes just kind of taking a sobering look in the mirror and really understanding
8:18
Chase: what's going on with the church is a good way to do that.
8:21
Chase: So, Pastor Chris, last episode, you talked a lot about diagnostics.
8:25
Chase: How can diagnostics kind of
8:29
Chase: hear or help pastors and church leaders understand where their church is?
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Chris: Right. Well, I mean, diagnostics is a great term that we talked about this last
8:38
Chris: episode because just like you go to the doctor, right, they're going to give
8:42
Chris: you certain tests. They're going to check your blood pressure.
8:44
Chris: They're going to check your heart rate. They're going to maybe check your blood glucose level.
8:49
Chris: They're going to do all of those different kinds of things, and they're going
8:51
Chris: to give you a picture of where you're really at. Now, many of us don't go to
8:55
Chris: the doctor. I'm terrible about going to the doctor.
8:57
Chris: We don't go to the doctor because we don't want to hear what the doctor has
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Chris: to say. So one thing I would just say right up front is this.
9:05
Chris: A lot of us don't want to analyze the state of our church currently because
9:10
Chris: we don't actually want to know the outcome of it.
9:14
Chris: Now, the problem with that is that Scripture teaches us that Jesus is diagnosing the church.
9:20
Chris: Jesus is not sitting there with the spirit of condemnation, but he is sitting
9:24
Chris: there saying, I know what is happening in your church.
9:27
Chris: And Revelation chapter 2 and 3 are great examples of that as Jesus speaks to
9:32
Chris: seven specific churches that most scholars would say are typological types of
9:37
Chris: challenges the churches have faced down through the many centuries since then.
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Chris: And Jesus does have a diagnosis for our church.
9:46
Chris: He knows what is happening in our church. He knows what's happening in the lives of our leaders.
9:50
Chris: And so when we say we don't want to know this, it's sort of like we're turning
9:54
Chris: to Jesus and saying, we don't want to listen to you.
9:57
Chris: We don't want the Holy Spirit to tell us what our true condition is.
10:02
Chris: And so one thing I would just say before we dive into maybe what some of those
10:06
Chris: diagnostic tools can look like is diagnosis requires humility.
10:10
Chris: It requires the willingness to say, we are not yet where Jesus wants us to be,
10:16
Chris: and maybe we are in fact quite far away and we need to return to who Jesus wants us to be.
10:23
Chris: So if you don't have that posture of humility, it can be really hard to listen
10:29
Chris: to the diagnostics, no matter what the tools are.
10:31
Chris: Second component that kind of follows with that is that you have to be willing
10:36
Chris: to see yourself accurately.
10:38
Chris: Jesus spoke to the church in Laodicea, and he said, I counsel you.
10:42
Chris: It's a very interesting word.
10:44
Chris: Jesus is counseling the church. He says, let me give you my advice.
10:47
Chris: The advice of Jesus is, buy salve from me.
10:51
Chris: So that you can see clearly because you're spiritually blinded, right?
10:57
Chris: So we have to be willing to do this interactive work with Jesus where we go
11:02
Chris: to him and we say, hey, we really want to know what you're doing in the life of this church.
11:06
Chris: And we're going to humble ourselves and we're going to open ourselves well to
11:09
Chris: listening to what the Spirit is saying to our churches.
11:13
Chris: And that's true wherever we're at. One of the most beautiful examples we've
11:17
Chris: had in the past couple of years of a church that's had this posture was a church
11:22
Chris: that is flourishing in our association. It is healthy. It is growing.
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Chris: They're doing really wonderful ministry. They're partnered with other churches,
11:30
Chris: and they invited our team in, and they said, look, we know we're doing okay.
11:35
Chris: We know we're doing well, but we also know we're not yet everything that Jesus wants us to be.
11:41
Chris: And so they had that posture, that humility, and that willingness to say,
11:46
Chris: we want to analyze where we're at so that we can become more of who Christ has called us to be.
11:51
Chris: So if you're a church that you think, hey, we are in decline,
11:55
Chris: you think that we're a church that is maybe we're plateaued,
11:58
Chris: or you're a church that you think, hey, we're relatively healthy,
12:01
Chris: there's still this same posture of saying we want to hear what Jesus has to
12:05
Chris: say to our church, and we want to step into a place of deliberate learning and
12:10
Chris: humility so that we can become more of who Christ has called us to be.
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Chris: So with that being said, I think that that posture is essential.
12:20
Chris: Otherwise, the diagnostics just bounce off of you. We don't really want to hear
12:25
Chris: the condition of the church, right?
12:26
Chris: Then we have to start taking a look at seeing where we are really at.
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Chris: And we use some different tools from a wonderful organization that we partner
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Chris: with called Corpus Vitae.
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Chris: They help us do some of the analysis. And some of the areas that we use to assess
12:44
Chris: in the life of a church is we assess various factors in church health.
12:48
Chris: We look for what is their prayer life like? We look at what's their fellowship
12:53
Chris: like? We look at how are they engaged with their community?
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Chris: What's their sense of outreach and mission? Do they have a healthy discipleship path?
13:01
Chris: What's their stewardship look like? Is their organizational structure appropriately
13:05
Chris: sized and shaped to fit their mission now? We'll look at all of these kinds
13:11
Chris: of things and more in a series of diagnostic tools.
13:15
Chris: And then we'll also look at the church's culture.
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Chris: Are they dominated by fear or are they a church that's being courageous in their missions?
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Chris: Are they a church that is full of healthy conflict engagement or are they a
13:30
Chris: church that tends to be very passive aggressive?
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Chris: And tends to minimize conflict and not use it in ways that are healthy,
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Chris: and that then tends to burst out into negative engagement.
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Chris: So there's a lot of different types of tools that we can use,
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Chris: but these are some of the things that we use to assess whether or not a church
13:49
Chris: is flourishing or flourishing as much as God would have them to flourish.
13:53
Chase: Okay, that's great. You've used the plural pronoun we quite a bit.
13:58
Chase: So since this is a brand new podcast, and most people listening probably don't know exactly who we are.
14:04
Chase: When you say we, who are you talking about?
14:06
Chris: We are the Great Commission Association. We're a family of churches on mission
14:11
Chris: together, as you said earlier,
14:13
Chris: all the way from north end of Santa Barbara County on California's Central Coast,
14:18
Chris: all the way up through Silicon Valley into just south of the city of San Francisco,
14:23
Chris: distance of about 290 miles.
14:26
Chris: And our churches work together to equip and facilitate one another on mission,
14:33
Chris: whether that's church planting, church replanting, church renewal,
14:37
Chris: sending out people to reach unreached people groups in the Bay Area.
14:42
Chris: We do a lot of that kind of work together. And I lead what's called the Mission
14:47
Chris: Advance Team of our association.
14:49
Chris: And we work with our churches to, with the mission of seeing those churches
14:54
Chris: all flourish and help each other flourish.
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Chris: You know, we don't see that just as the task of a staff or a group of people,
15:02
Chris: but we really believe this is done best when churches help other churches do this.
15:08
Chris: So on my team, we have a number of different people that help us do this.
15:11
Chris: There's Dr. Chris Smith, there's Dr. CJ Wan and my supervisor and their amazing
15:16
Chris: associational leader, Dr. Mike Stewart.
15:19
Chris: And then we have a number of other different care personnel and logistical personnel
15:24
Chris: that serve on our team to assist our churches in ministering to their communities and to one another.
15:32
Chase: We're part of the Southern Baptist group of churches.
15:36
Chase: And when I was in Alabama, seven and a half years ago, I had pastored a church
15:40
Chase: there, Agape Baptist in Pinson, a great church, great people,
15:45
Chase: part of the Birmingham Baptist Association. and Chris Crane right now has just a great leader.
15:51
Chase: When I was pastoring there, the association was much less active.
15:57
Chase: And I think we heard from our associational leaders maybe two or three times,
16:02
Chase: the whole 10 plus years I was pastoring.
16:05
Chase: And when I came out to Valley Baptist with my family in Salinas,
16:09
Chase: And preached the message. If you're a pastor, not everybody knows this,
16:14
Chase: if you're a pastor, basically the way you get called to a church is they invite
16:18
Chase: you out, you preach a message,
16:21
Chase: and people listen to it, and then they vote like, hey, we like this guy, we don't like this guy.
16:26
Chase: And if they vote high enough, and it's not majority, you really have to be up
16:32
Chase: there or unanimous, then the church will call you as a pastor.
16:36
Chase: So I went through that process in April of 2018 with my wife, Janet, and Dr.
16:42
Chase: Stewart of the Great Commissioned Association was there, and Pastor CJ Wan, now Dr.
16:48
Chase: CJ Wan of the GCA was there. And I was like, what is this? This is weird.
16:54
Chase: Why do our associational people here at the church to be a part of this process?
17:00
Chase: And I was honestly a little bit concerned, but in the seven and a half years since then,
17:05
Chase: I've gone from being a GCA skeptic to being incredibly glad to be part of a
17:14
Chase: team, of a brotherhood, of an association of churches.
17:18
Chase: And I guess this is my 60-second commercial for the GCA.
17:22
Chase: I mean, we're Hispanic churches, Asian churches, all kinds of different churches.
17:27
Chase: It's just such a fantastic feeling as a pastor to know you're part of something bigger.
17:35
Chase: And of course, the global body of Christ is
17:37
Chase: Bigger. But to know you're part of something bigger, but also local enough that
17:43
Chase: I can go talk to somebody if I have a need, I can get advice.
17:46
Chase: We get together multiple times a year. So it's just great having a team to be
17:54
Chase: a part of that doesn't tell us what to do as churches,
17:58
Chase: but equips us to do what Jesus has told us to do.
18:02
Chase: So that's a fantastic thing. Okay, hey, that's my commercial.
18:05
Chase: Nobody told me to do that. I'm really just genuinely a fan.
18:10
Chase: Pastor Chris, given the stats and the things we're seeing, the up and downs,
18:16
Chase: there's some positive signs in the latest stats.
18:20
Chase: One of the positive signs in 2024, church attendance in the United States of
18:25
Chase: America broadly, 28% of people went to church on a weekly or mostly weekly basis.
18:32
Chase: And that was a very low number compared to 2000. But so far,
18:36
Chase: the returns for 2025 indicate that that's gone up to 32% and more young people are going to church.
18:45
Chase: So we're seeing a mixture of good and bad analytics and diagnostics.
18:51
Chase: What does your team think about all of that and what does that mean for the
18:56
Chase: local church and what do we do with that data?
18:58
Chris: Yeah, I think there are, you know, quite a few interesting trends.
19:03
Chris: One, we'll wait and see how the 2025 data prove out.
19:06
Chris: It always takes about two or three years for data to actually verify out because
19:10
Chris: it takes a while for the data analysts to catch up.
19:13
Chris: So we, you know, there's always that little caveat that I put.
19:16
Chris: But I think we are encouraged that there are signs of the church declining nationwide,
19:23
Chris: stabilizing, sort of flattening out.
19:26
Chris: I don't know that we're seeing a ton of statistically significant growth yet.
19:33
Chris: There's been some controversial and reinterpretation of whether or not young
19:37
Chris: people are coming back to church in larger numbers.
19:40
Chris: Some experts are currently saying yes, others saying no, we're not sure the
19:44
Chris: data is actually showing that just yet.
19:46
Chris: But generally speaking, we can say that people are going back to church more.
19:52
Chris: Church attendance is increasing. There's some back and forth positives and negatives
19:58
Chris: here. Larger churches are growing.
20:01
Chris: They are. Across the United States, larger churches are growing.
20:05
Chris: Now, the really troubling thing is that the vast majority of churches in the
20:09
Chris: United States have less than 100 in average attendance.
20:13
Chris: And LifeWay's research shows that about 40-something percent of churches that
20:22
Chris: are under 50 are now in steep decline.
20:26
Chris: And churches that are under 100 are more than likely to be plateaued,
20:30
Chris: which means small churches are continuing to decline or plateau out.
20:36
Chris: Larger churches may be adding to their attendance and their growth,
20:42
Chris: and we can celebrate that, but they are a very small proportion of the churches in the United States.
20:49
Chris: And certainly in our association and certainly in California,
20:53
Chris: we have many communities where there are no churches that are of that significant size.
20:58
Chris: So you're seeing whole communities that are beginning or segments of communities
21:02
Chris: that are beginning to be disengaged from the gospel because the churches are
21:07
Chris: declining to the point where there's no significant gospel witness in a neighborhood.
21:12
Chase: All right. So, Pastor Chris, you're talking about kind of the dual dynamic where
21:16
Chase: large churches are growing and doing really well.
21:20
Chase: And small churches are fading fast.
21:24
Chase: It's like the Walmartization of church. And I guess technically I pastor a medium-sized
21:30
Chase: church. It's certainly not a large church.
21:32
Chase: And I've been concerned about this trend for a long time. I don't know that
21:40
Chase: it's super healthy for the body of Christ in the United States of America.
21:44
Chase: But according to the Horizon Stewardship 2025 trends report.
21:49
Chase: As you say, churches with a budget over $5 million a year reported a 91% rise
21:58
Chase: in attendance and a 79% increase in giving, which is pretty astonishing.
22:04
Chase: But churches with budgets of less than $100,000 are showing a big trend towards
22:12
Chase: declining and stagnation.
22:14
Chase: And that's pretty scary. And I imagine this podcast is probably not going to attract the
22:22
Chase: Craig Groeschel's and the Joel Osteen's and the pastors of the biggest and largest
22:28
Chase: and the most booming and going churches.
22:31
Chase: We're probably going to have more of the people with sub $5 million a year budgets.
22:37
Chase: What do we do in an atmosphere where small and medium-sized churches are,
22:42
Chase: I was going to say losing ground.
22:45
Chase: Of course, that's the wrong thing to say. We're not in competition.
22:48
Chase: None of us are in competition, but small and medium-sized churches are shrinking
22:52
Chase: and megachurches are exploding.
22:55
Chase: What's the average church leader and church pastor to do in an atmosphere like that?
23:01
Chris: Well, I think there's actually an exceptional opportunity here,
23:04
Chris: but let me, before I jump to that opportunity, just even give you a little bit
23:09
Chris: more data. it's not just smaller churches, it's older churches.
23:13
Chris: Since 2019, so just in a six-year period between 2019 and 2025,
23:21
Chris: churches that were founded prior to 1999 were experiencing declines of more
23:28
Chris: than 10% on average. Just let that number sink in.
23:32
Chris: So if you weren't founded in the last 26 years, Your church,
23:37
Chris: in all likelihood, experienced a decline of 10% or more.
23:42
Chris: So the older your church is, and if your church was really old,
23:45
Chris: then somewhere around 50% of the churches that were founded early part of last
23:50
Chris: century experienced significant decline of greater than 10%.
23:53
Chris: So smaller churches, older churches are declining, and there are risks that
23:57
Chris: are associated with that.
23:58
Chris: We lose historic places. We lose valuable geographic locations.
24:04
Chris: There are churches that when those sites close and become a strip mall or get
24:11
Chris: taken over by some other place—.
24:13
Chris: We lose the ability to have a significant gospel witness in whole sections of
24:17
Chris: communities because we can't recover those properties as lighthouses or locations
24:24
Chris: for gospel witness, certainly very easily.
24:27
Chris: In that way, there is perhaps an even more challenging environment there.
24:34
Chris: But I think there is an opportunity in this dynamic that we find ourselves.
24:40
Chris: Number one, if you are one of those larger churches and God is blessing you
24:45
Chris: and you are flourishing, you have an opportunity to become a massive sending church.
24:50
Chris: You have capacities that the smaller churches do not have.
24:55
Chris: And praise God that even within our own SBC family, we have many of these churches
25:01
Chris: that are doing that very thing.
25:03
Chris: Churches of 400 people that are sending out 50 people to go plant another church
25:09
Chris: or churches of thousands that are sending out hundreds of missionaries.
25:14
Chris: And there are many healthy examples of churches that,
25:18
Chris: take their size and their financial resources, and they're using that to become sending churches.
25:26
Chris: And I thank God for those churches that have those capacities.
25:29
Chris: They help fund things like replants and church plants and missionaries.
25:35
Chris: In our own association, we have several larger congregations,
25:39
Chris: and you know what? They are incredibly generous.
25:41
Chris: They give radically. They give sacrificially in ways that cost their congregation
25:47
Chris: in order to see churches planted here in the United States and around the world.
25:53
Chris: So we're grateful for those churches that have those capacities.
25:57
Chris: Now, for the smaller churches, there's an opportunity here, I believe,
26:02
Chris: for them to say, look, we may never be a church of 5,000. We may never be a church of 500.
26:09
Chris: But we can be a persistently growing church. and,
26:15
Chris: We can be a church that is persistently flourishing, a church that is persistently
26:20
Chris: reaching people with the gospel.
26:22
Chris: And there is a little bit of a way that smaller churches can look at bigger
26:26
Chris: churches and sort of resent them for their fruitfulness, their success.
26:31
Chris: And there are certainly many unhealthy expressions of large churches that are
26:35
Chris: sort of the Walmartization, as you said earlier.
26:38
Chris: There's a church today that it came out in a report that this church is holding
26:43
Chris: over $330 million in assets.
26:47
Chris: I'm not sure that is healthy for any church of any size, to be honest.
26:52
Chris: But a lot depends on what you do with those assets, right?
26:56
Chris: And so there are many churches that are smaller that need to sort of get over
27:02
Chris: their envy and be stirred up into asking the question, what is our mission field?
27:09
Chris: See, those big churches in many ways are not going to be able to reach many
27:13
Chris: of our smaller communities. For example, you live in Salinas, right?
27:17
Chris: There's going to be a cap in Salinas as to the size of a church there or in
27:23
Chris: a smaller community like Greenfield, right?
27:26
Chris: But the Greenfield, which is a small farming community just south of where Pastor
27:29
Chris: Chase lives, they need the gospel of Jesus Christ.
27:32
Chris: And we've got a church there where a very faithful pastor is sharing the gospel
27:37
Chris: and trying to witness and reach the people of that community.
27:40
Chris: So smaller churches have different geographical assignments, perhaps,
27:45
Chris: but they need to see their mission field as their mission field and their responsibility
27:51
Chris: for reaching people there, and that it is possible for them to flourish as well.
27:57
Chris: They're going to have to accept some challenging realities.
28:01
Chris: Our region of California, we pretty much know that it's going to be hard for
28:08
Chris: a church to be self-sustaining.
28:10
Chris: Unless they have between 120 and 150 regular members.
28:16
Chris: They've got to have between 120 and 150 regular members if they want to have a full-time pastor.
28:23
Chris: Now, there are many wonderful bivocational, co-vocational pastors serving in
28:27
Chris: our association, but if a church wants to have a full-time pastor,
28:32
Chris: they've got to recognize there's a certain amount of sustainability that has to be achieved.
28:37
Chris: And that is part of their responsibility, is to get to that place of being self-sustaining
28:43
Chris: in a way that says, hey, we're not going to be dependent on outside churches forever.
28:49
Chris: Now, sometimes you need some outside help. And that's one of the things our
28:52
Chris: team does is we help connect churches to partners, larger churches,
28:56
Chris: in fact, many times who want to help these churches come back to a place of flourishing.
29:01
Chris: But in almost every community we serve in, It's not an impossibility to reach
29:07
Chris: 120 or 150 or 200 people with persistent effort in evangelism,
29:14
Chris: growth in discipleship, and maturity of the believers. It really isn't.
29:18
Chris: At that point, the churches can begin to say, hey, we may be a small church,
29:22
Chris: but we are still a flourishing church.
29:24
Chris: We're a church that's growing. We're reaching lost people. We're seeing people
29:28
Chris: sent out into the harvest field, and we're seeing the kingdom come in our communities.
29:33
Chase: Absolutely. Well, hey, look, all this talk and stats and thinking about big
29:38
Chase: churches, little churches decline and growing and flourishing,
29:42
Chase: making me thirsty, brother.
29:44
Chris: Thirsty. Me too.
29:45
Chase: This is a very odd drink that Miss Grace has acquired for us. Tell me about it.
29:51
Chris: This is Ben Shaw's Dandelion and Burdick.
29:56
Chris: Now, I did not know what Burdick was.
30:00
Chase: Nope.
30:01
Chris: Pastor Chase, I just did not. I understand Burdick is like a prickly thistle,
30:07
Chris: and apparently it's like traditionally used in Eastern medicine.
30:15
Chris: It's supposed to have antioxidant, diuretic, and blood sugar lowering benefits.
30:21
Chase: Okay, that's pretty good. I like to eat candy, so that helps me.
30:25
Chris: Right. And this is a British, I think this is a British.
30:29
Chase: Oh, it's definitely British. Okay. In fact, just doing a little bit of research, Mr.
30:34
Chase: Ben Shaw was from Huddersfield, United Kingdom, created a bunch of sodas in
30:39
Chase: the Civil War era of American history or just right around there, 1860s, 1870s.
30:46
Chase: They have dandelion and Burdick, cloudy lemonade, cream soda,
30:52
Chase: root beer, and bitter shandy, which I have no idea what that is.
30:57
Chase: It sounds interesting, though.
30:59
Chris: Yeah.
30:59
Chase: Now, before I crack this open and drink it, I got to say this.
31:03
Chase: I kind of know what a dandelion is.
31:07
Chase: Right. And I kind of think it looks like a weed that has flowers.
31:13
Chase: And dandelions are the things that
31:16
Chase: they got the white puff ball you like you blow them and blow the seeds right
31:21
Chase: and i know what a burdick is like you told us it looks like a thistle what i'm
31:26
Chase: wondering is what possessed ben shaw to look at these two weeds and say i'm
31:33
Chase: thirsty let's make a drink
31:36
Chris: Exactly. Well, I mean, they have these purple or pink flowers, right?
31:41
Chris: And apparently they're weeds. They like grow everywhere.
31:45
Chris: Like once you get them started, they're just growing. So maybe he just needed
31:49
Chris: to hack down some weeds and everything.
31:51
Chris: You know, the Japanese call the Burdick the Gobo.
31:56
Chase: I guess. Oh, nice. Okay.
31:58
Chris: They cook the root in some stir fries and stuff.
32:03
Chris: And I'm not sure this sounds good before we taste the soda, but apparently the
32:08
Chris: root has a bitter, muddy taste.
32:11
Chris: And I am thinking that is not going to be good if that's what this soda tastes like.
32:15
Chase: I've had dandelion tea before, and it's not like Milo's sweet tea.
32:21
Chase: It tastes like you would kind of think. Like if you put a bunch of weeds in
32:26
Chase: water and drank it, that's what it tastes like.
32:29
Chris: Well, this particular soda, I noticed it has not only sugar in it,
32:33
Chris: it has other sweeteners as well, like saccharin and sucralose.
32:39
Chris: So they've had to put a good amount of sugar in here into this thing to make it taste something.
32:46
Chris: I mean, we're going to have to try it, right?
32:48
Chase: Yeah, we got to try it now. I mean, baby bitch, all right.
32:52
Chris: Baby bitch, all right.
32:53
Chase: Okay, I'm ready.
32:56
Chase: Not a lot of fizz i
32:58
Chris: I'm not getting any real scent off of this are you.
33:01
Chase: Well see here's my problem i've had a cold kind of deal and it sort of blasted
33:07
Chase: up my uh my my aroma sniffing ability a little bit well i do smell something
33:14
Chase: okay maybe i'm imagining it smells great because the bottle is purple right
33:20
Chris: Well here we go salute.
33:22
Chase: Pledge wow i like it i like it a lot that kind of tastes licorice to me
33:34
Chris: It definitely has like that sort of herbally flavor, but I feel like I'm drinking purple.
33:40
Chris: Yeah. I don't know what that means, but it's not what I thought a dandelion
33:44
Chris: or a burdick would taste like.
33:46
Chase: No, no. There's no muddy aftertaste.
33:48
Chris: No. It's very clean.
33:51
Chase: It's clean. It's refreshing. This is a good soda.
33:54
Chase: I would drink this. I don't know what kind of benefits it would have for our
33:58
Chase: blood sugar here, considering.
34:01
Chris: Considering they packed it full of sugar, right?
34:03
Chase: Okay, it has 72 kilojoules or 17, oh no, okay, just 17 calories.
34:13
Chase: So it looks like the sucralose and the saccharin are doing some heavy lifting here.
34:19
Chris: Yeah.
34:19
Chase: 17 calories is not bad for a can. Yeah, I'm a fan. I'm a fan.
34:25
Chris: Okay. And by the way, they said this is suitable for vegetarians and vegans.
34:30
Chris: So all of the vegetarians and vegans in our crowd, you can try this Mr.
34:36
Chris: Ben Shaw's Dandelion and Burdick soda.
34:40
Chase: I'm going to assume our upcoming review of bacon soda, which we have.
34:45
Chris: We do have that.
34:46
Chase: Is not suitable for vegans and vegetarians.
34:50
Chris: But the ranch dressing one might be.
34:52
Chase: Oh, it might be. Yeah, yeah. Well, of course, that kind of has a dairy sound to it, too.
34:58
Chase: Can a vegetarian not drink a Coke Zero or a Mountain Dew? I don't know.
35:02
Chris: We will have to ask some of our vegetarian and vegan friends.
35:05
Chase: I'm going to ask my friend, Dr. Google. Vegans drink Coke Zero.
35:10
Chase: Yes, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is vegan because it contains no animal-derived ingredients.
35:17
Chase: Oh, that's good. That's good. I was worried about our vegan friends there for a minute.
35:21
Chris: Well, you know, as to the motivations for making this, Apparently,
35:25
Chris: it is an invasive, noxious weed, and it's very difficult to eradicate.
35:30
Chris: So maybe you just boil it up so that you can say, hey, we got these weeds.
35:35
Chris: We got to do something with it.
35:37
Chase: So it's maybe like the 1800s equivalent of how they used to put invaders heads on pikes.
35:43
Chase: Like you make a few of these weeds into a soda and the weeds kind of get scared
35:48
Chase: and they're like, okay, we'll let you be.
35:51
Chase: We don't want to be canned like that.
35:54
Chase: Ben Shaw, he seems to be a little, he's a bit of a creative leader.
35:58
Chase: So we don't know what's going through his mind.
36:01
Chris: Exactly. So I'm going to go ahead and give my, we do this out of zero to five Spurgeons, right?
36:09
Chris: Yes. I'm going to, I'm probably going to come in a little bit lower than you, Pastor Chase.
36:13
Chris: I'm going to give this a, I'm going to give this a solid three Spurgeons.
36:17
Chris: I would pick it up. I would drink it if I was really thirsty,
36:19
Chris: but I don't know that I would go pursue this here.
36:23
Chris: But I think you're going to come up with a different Spurge.
36:26
Chase: I'm going to give you a higher number because I really like the flavor of this.
36:30
Chase: Now, I'm going to give it four out of five Spurgeons.
36:34
Chase: Now, the only reason not four and a half, four and a quarter or five Spurgeons
36:38
Chase: is because it doesn't have the bite that I look for in a Coke Zero.
36:45
Chase: I want a little bit of burn.
36:48
Chase: It wakes you up. It shakes you up. But when I drink, I want my throat to feel
36:53
Chase: like I'm drinking something. There you go.
36:56
Chase: This goes down smooth, which might be good for somebody. But for me,
37:00
Chase: I want a little bit more bite in my Ben Shaw's Dandelite and Burdick. Therefore...
37:06
Chase: Great flavor, four out of five spurs. All right, well, as I enjoy this delicious
37:11
Chase: dandelion and burdock beverage, let's go back into our main topic.
37:16
Chase: We don't have a ton of time left, but let's cover a little bit,
37:19
Chase: some resources for people who are in a situation where they want to learn to
37:25
Chase: help their church flourish.
37:26
Chase: And I'm going to ask you for a case study, maybe a story of a church you worked
37:33
Chase: with that you saw God do things to help it go from
37:39
Chase: Unhealthy to healthy, unflourishing to flourishing.
37:42
Chase: And while you think about what might be a good story there, I'll give you a
37:46
Chase: practical tip because I think both of us want this podcast and these videos
37:51
Chase: to be practical helps for people who are in church leadership or care about their church.
37:59
Chase: And one of the things, the numbers that Pastor Chris talked about and the numbers
38:03
Chase: that I discovered as well as we research this episode is there may be an increase
38:08
Chase: in young people going to church in the last couple of years,
38:12
Chase: but there is almost certainly a decline in older people going to church.
38:20
Chase: This is like numbers across the board. It's very kind of shocking how significantly
38:27
Chase: the decline is, but somewhere in the neighborhood of older people,
38:31
Chase: say Gen X and older than Gen X are attending 10, 11, 12, 8 less church gatherings
38:40
Chase: on average per year than they did just 20 years ago.
38:46
Chase: And so one of the things our church has found that has been very practical to
38:51
Chase: help with that, some people have this view of older people that they are done.
38:58
Chase: They're fans or dead weight or some dumb things like that.
39:03
Chase: And so therefore older people come to church, they sit, they don't do anything.
39:09
Chase: People are nice to them, but that's it.
39:12
Chase: Like 60 year old NFL player can't play in the game anymore, except the church is not the NFL.
39:19
Chase: These people that are older
39:23
Chase: Have still a ton to contribute. When I first came to Valley Baptist,
39:28
Chase: we had a member named Eileen Fulton, who sometimes had to walk with a walker.
39:35
Chase: She was quite up there age-wise, and she has since passed into glory.
39:42
Chase: But I will tell you that Miss Eileen was a Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle.
39:49
Chase: She was a giant among us and not because she had an overwhelming personality
39:57
Chase: or the oratorial giftings of Charles Spurgeon or she gave millions to the church
40:03
Chase: or anything along those lines.
40:05
Chase: I mean, I have no idea who gives what to the church. That's not my business.
40:08
Chase: But Miss Eulene would talk to everybody she didn't know and she would sit with them.
40:16
Chase: She would welcome them, not like a used car salesman, like a wise,
40:22
Chase: thoughtful, listening grandmother.
40:24
Chase: And when we lost her, we lost a perennial all-star MVP.
40:32
Chase: And so I say all that to say, if you're a church leader, pastor,
40:37
Chase: whatever, don't think of your older members as just pew sitters.
40:42
Chase: Let them have a role.
40:44
Chase: Some of our older members, they speak on Sunday morning, they share,
40:49
Chase: they exhort, they greet, they help out.
40:51
Chase: We couldn't live without them. But if you lead the church like you can live without them, you will.
41:01
Chris: Hmm. That's good. Good insight right there. Amen.
41:05
Chris: Well, I know that our time is short, but I'm going to maybe just do this and
41:09
Chris: we may have to pick up some of those practical tips, Pastor Chase,
41:12
Chris: I think maybe in another episode, but I do want to give some people some hope.
41:16
Chris: And I want to talk about a church that had senior adults only in it.
41:20
Chris: Our First Baptist Church in Nipomo, California, when they invited our associational
41:26
Chris: team in, they were down to six senior adult women.
41:30
Chris: I believe the youngest woman in the group was over 55.
41:35
Chris: So six senior adult women, that was it, and a pastor and his wife that were
41:40
Chris: ready to retire, and they didn't want their church to die.
41:44
Chris: And over the past four years, that church has been on quite the journey.
41:48
Chris: That church had not seen any outside baptisms in some—I can't remember the exact number.
41:54
Chris: I think it was like 10, 15 years at all.
41:57
Chris: They were a church that was clearly in decline.
41:59
Chris: They're a church in a significant property, but they couldn't really maintain
42:03
Chris: it. They didn't have the resources.
42:05
Chris: They got partnered up with our association, with some of our associational churches.
42:10
Chris: And they still are on their renewal journey. They're not yet to the place of
42:16
Chris: being fully self-sustaining, and that journey has not been a linear progression either.
42:23
Chris: It's not just been straightforward.
42:25
Chris: They didn't shoot from 6,000 to 6,000 overnight, right?
42:29
Chris: But that church persistently runs right now about 60 to 75, had peak worship
42:36
Chris: services in the last couple of years of 199 people.
42:39
Chris: But that church has baptized in just the past few months about, I think, six people.
42:45
Chris: Last year, that tiny little church, which had six senior adult women in it when
42:51
Chris: they entered into a process of strategic and deliberate renewal,
42:55
Chris: that church baptized 18 new believers.
42:58
Chris: Wow. And that church saw their youth group grow to where it was three times
43:04
Chris: the size of the original church, just the youth group alone.
43:07
Chris: And they've had a lot of great work there under the leadership of Pastor Michael Denton.
43:12
Chris: And like I said, it has not been easy. It has not been a linear journey.
43:16
Chris: It is not a one-size-fits-all formula.
43:19
Chris: But it is a church that had people in it, senior adult people,
43:24
Chris: who were willing to take a risk and willing to say they did not want to see this church die.
43:32
Chris: And I think that's where senior adults can leverage their moral weight and their
43:38
Chris: experiential weight and say, we are committed to seeing the next generation
43:43
Chris: reached with the gospel.
43:44
Chris: Some of the mightiest prayer warriors, the greatest greeters,
43:48
Chris: the people that you were talking about are the senior adults in the church, or they can be.
43:52
Chris: And I do think pastors and leaders need to invite them into that journey.
43:57
Chris: And I do think I would say a word to senior adults that are in the churches.
44:02
Chris: You know, God has never called you to retirement from his kingdom.
44:06
Chris: You don't get to sit back and say, well, Lord, I know that you've given me another
44:11
Chris: 25 years, my last 25 years of life, and I want to coast spiritually until you call me home.
44:19
Chris: If he's given you those 25 years or those last 20 years after you retire,
44:23
Chris: then there is a mission field for you.
44:27
Chris: And that's true for young adults. It's true for adults. It's true for children.
44:32
Chris: And it is true for senior adults in the church, that if you are in a church.
44:36
Chris: God has a mission for you.
44:38
Chris: And I think that that's one of the big distinguishing markers of flourishing churches,
44:43
Chris: where a church has a sense where every member is on mission,
44:48
Chris: you can pretty much be guaranteed that church is moving towards flourishing or will be flourishing.
44:54
Chris: Where the members stop seeing themselves as being on mission,
44:58
Chris: that's when the church begins to enter into a period of decline or enters into
45:03
Chris: a period of plateau or stagnation.
45:06
Chase: Excellent and well said. Well, for my part, I will close this out with a resource
45:12
Chase: that I think will be helpful for anybody considering flourishing.
45:16
Chase: Church health, church flourishing, church revitalization. And then I'll kick
45:21
Chase: it back over to Pastor Chris for his last thoughts and last words.
45:25
Chase: But you're initially going to dismiss this, I think, listener,
45:28
Chase: as a possible help for your church flourishing journey.
45:33
Chase: But this is the life and diary of David Brainerd.
45:38
Chase: Now, if you don't know who that is, he was a missionary to the American Indians in the early 1700s.
45:45
Chase: He lived 29 years and died of consumption or tuberculosis.
45:52
Chase: And the question is, okay, what is a diary of an old dude who lived back in
45:58
Chase: the day before the United States became the United States?
46:01
Chase: How can that help me with church revitalization? And here's how it can help you.
46:07
Chase: When you read the diary of David Brainerd, who was mightily used of God to reach
46:14
Chase: Native Americans with the gospel, you will understand so much more about ministry.
46:20
Chase: Whether you're a pastor or not, missionary or not, paid or not,
46:24
Chase: Sunday school teacher or not, you will understand that ministry in the kingdom
46:28
Chase: of God is loaded with ups and downs.
46:31
Chase: There are massive emotional struggles.
46:34
Chase: You will understand that depression is a real thing, and God is faithful even
46:38
Chase: in the midst of depression.
46:40
Chase: You will understand that ministry has tons of wins and tons of losses,
46:45
Chase: and that the only way to be fruitful and go forward is to rely on God in prayer and abide,
46:54
Chase: just like Jesus said in John 15.
46:57
Chase: And the Diary of David Brainerd is, you can buy it on Amazon or whatever,
47:01
Chase: there's all sorts of different versions of it you can get, is such a helpful
47:06
Chase: tool for church flourishing.
47:09
Chase: Not that you'll be able to put his exact strategy to use in your next Sunday
47:15
Chase: outreach or whatever, but it will equip you to be a
47:21
Chase: key part of God's desire to bring health to your church.
47:26
Chase: And the last thing I'll say is this, if you're looking for a team to join,
47:30
Chase: to partner with, if you're part of a church that doesn't have a team,
47:35
Chase: doesn't have an association, well, you go to our website, everychurchflourishing.com,
47:41
Chase: GCASBC, and hit us up.
47:43
Chase: We would love to welcome you to part of our teammates.
47:47
Chase: Pastor Chris, do you have any parting words?
47:50
Chris: Well, here's my closing thought, and that is this. You know,
47:53
Chris: our desire is to see every church come to a place of flourishing.
47:58
Chris: And here's some good news.
47:59
Chris: We believe in a God who brought his son out of the grave.
48:04
Chris: And the hope of church renewal is not found in the perfection of human methods
48:09
Chris: or our own strengths or our own wisdom,
48:11
Chris: but in the same God whose resurrection power is at work within the lives of
48:17
Chris: the people who are inside our churches.
48:20
Chris: That resurrection power that took us from spiritual death into spiritual life
48:25
Chris: is at work in our churches to this day.
48:28
Chris: And I believe that God wants to see our churches come to a place,
48:32
Chris: not only of just surviving, but a place of thriving and growth and missional engagement.
48:38
Chris: And we want to see the world and the communities around us transformed by the
48:43
Chris: gospel of Jesus Christ through that power.
48:46
Chris: So that's our hope here on Every Church Flourishing, and we're glad you guys are here.
48:51
Chase: Good closing thoughts. Well, folks, check out our website, everychurchflourishing.com.
48:56
Chase: Tell a friend, tell a family member, share the post on social media,
49:00
Chase: all that kind of good stuff.
49:01
Chase: The way these kind of podcasts grow is by word of mouth, the same way the gospel
49:07
Chase: of Jesus Christ spread throughout the known world.
49:09
Chase: So share the word, share the podcast. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Godspeed.