Faithfulness beyond giving and attendance - with Brian Foreman

Brian Foreman, with three decades of experience related to congregations as staff and support, he combines his theological, leadership and community engagement education with the practical experience of serving congregations, and he is most passionate about seeing individuals and congregations transform their communities through the invitation God has given them to join in God’s work. A key way Brian serves churches is through a ministry that builds a platform for congregations to equip one another for the unique challenges and opportunities of being church in their respective contexts.

Brian received his BA in Religion and Christian Ministries from Campbell University, a Master of Religious Education from Duke University Divinity School and a Doctorate in Education Leadership from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte.

Key topics

• The development and purpose of the Thriving Traits Assessment, including five key traits: compelling clarity, dynamic collaboration, rooted relationships, faithful agility, and holy tenacity.

• The importance of perception gaps between clergy and congregants, and how the assessment helps bridge those perceptions.

• How the assessment uses self-evaluation by both leaders and members, fostering honest dialogue.

• The role of stories and community narratives in strengthening congregational identity.

• Challenges pastors face with political and social issues, and how the assessment can unify diverse church personalities.

• The transformative potential of the assessment to shift organizational culture from program-driven to relationally connected.

• The analogy between church health metrics and personal accountability measures like Bible reading and prayer.

• The significant impact of understanding perception gaps, especially in areas like clarity and collaboration, leading to more aligned ministry efforts.

• The influence of societal changes and social media on youth ministry and congregational engagement strategies.

• The importance of curiosity, openness, and storytelling in church leadership and community development.

TIMESTAMPS

00:01 - Introduction to Brian Foreman and his work with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
 00:32 - Brian's recent holiday experience in Curacao and insights into social media influence
 01:22 - Observations on beach culture and social media influencers
 01:45 - Conversations about local coffee and its significance to travel experience
 02:24 - The challenge of finding coffee at events and its symbolism in community engagement
 02:52 - Overview of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship: mission and diversity
 04:02 - Explanation of church autonomy within Baptist tradition and ecumenical collaborations
 04:58 - The concept and evolution of the Fellowship over 35 years
 05:47 - Brian’s background in youth ministry and theological reflection with teens
 06:11 - Transition from youth minister to educator and organizational leadership lessons
 08:42 - Current challenges in youth ministry, social media impact, and adolescent development
 10:00 - Shifts in youth engagem

Podcast Disclaimer:

Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and my guests, and do not represent the stance of any institution.  This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Greetings, friends. I have with me Brian Foreman. He's the coordinator of Congregational Ministries Teams for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, where he focuses on helping congregations and their leaders thrive through coaching, resourcing, and collaborative initiatives. He has deep experience as a consultant and educator in areas such as youth ministry, leadership development, and congregational health. Greetings, Brian.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

Hi there. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Lovely. Now have you just come back from holidays? Is that correct? Have I understood that correctly?

SPEAKER_03 1:42

We spent a few days away in the southern part of the Caribbean. So yeah, it was and it was a lovely time to disconnect and unplug and just not think about work.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

What was the best thing you did on holiday?

SPEAKER_03 1:53

Ooh, that's such a great question. So in Curacao, that's there's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has the it's a famous picture of colorful houses that are along the waterfront there. And so we got to see that and experience some of the local culture there. And otherwise it was just going to the local beaches and vegging out. And really the highlight of some of those trips were watching the social media influencers do their work.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

On the beach?

SPEAKER_03 2:21

On the beach.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Oh my goodness, that's just like in Bali. It's a thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:25

Yeah. Yes. I mean, they had underwater cameras and lighting that they used and hundreds and hundreds of pictures. And then they didn't get the pictures right, or they went and changed outfits and came back and did the pictures again. It was fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Fascinating. And are you a coffee drinker?

SPEAKER_03 2:40

I am.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

And what was the coffee like over there?

SPEAKER_03 2:42

It was pretty decent. Um there was a pause. Well, I was trying to think through it. Like we So some of the folks we were with, they bought a brand that you can get in the United States. It's grew at the house. And so it was it was fine. It's what you would expect. We did pick up one bag of local coffee, and it was it was very nice. It was a little bit stronger than some of my colleagues or my friends who were on the trip with us might have liked, but it was great for me. I mean, I drink black coffee and I like the strong, flavorful coffee, and they had it. They had it.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Nice. I mean, one of the things that I lamented about at the gathering in Houston was I couldn't find any coffee, Brian. I was jet-lagged. There was no coffee to be seen at the conference. I thought, how do these people do life?

SPEAKER_03 3:26

No, no and nowhere convenient to the to the campus either. So my colleague and I, we drove to find coffee every day.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Right. If I had met you then, I would have been with you looking for coffee.

SPEAKER_03 3:38

We would have shared.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Brian, tell tell me a little bit about your your uh well, first of all, tell us a bit about the cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Let's start there.

SPEAKER_03 3:48

All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna test a new way of talking about what the cooperative Baptist Fellowship is.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

It's really in the name. Cooperative. We are an organization that believes deeply in finding ways to cooperate with community partners, global field personnel, local ministries in different places around where we are in different places around the globe. But in domestic ministries, which I do more in my work there, it really is about helping churches figure out how to cooperate with local communities. Our brand of Baptist doesn't have a lot of other Baptist friends. And so if it's going to be ecumenical work, it's got to be with groups like the United Methodist Church or PC USA, Presbyterian Church of the USA, and some others like that. So then you get to Baptist, and we are deeply, deeply Baptist and believe wholeheartedly in that each church governs itself and so has local church autonomy, which means that we have churches that in US political descriptions, some lean a little bit more conservative and red in their political theological identity, and some lean more blue in their political theological identity. And we really try to hold a space where they remain together so that we don't create echo chambers. And then fellowship. Um, when the CBF was created 35 years ago, there was a resistance to there was never an intention for it to become a denomination of churches. It was always intended that this would be a group of churches that held some lots of similarities together, but could remain in relationship with other Christian denominations, namely American Baptist or Southern Baptist. And over the years, it's become increasingly difficult for that to be the case. And so fellowship really represents more of a way our folks come together. Our annual gathering, a lot of people describe as feeling a little bit like a family reunion, which is always nice, but also just trying to welcome new folks into relationship and fellowship. So cooperative Baptist fellowship. It's a Christian Baptist denomination, is a simple answer, but I gave you the long the long version.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

I appreciated that because there was nothing I knew about you guys. So um it's it's wonderful to hear the the story and the history of that as well. And I know you you do many things in your role. And I wanted to talk to you because I attended one of the seminars that you were presenting and hosting. But before I get to that, when I went on LinkedIn to look you up, I noticed that you have also a deep history working in youth ministry and understanding it even at a strategic level, would that be right?

SPEAKER_03 6:13

I think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

Yeah. I mean, so when I was um when I was in high school here in the United States, I sensed a calling to ministry and thought this is this is what it's gonna be. And I had somebody, a mentor, who sort of guided me in that way. And I really expected that I would be the the greatest youth minister to ever live and to do it for a career. And I made it from for about 25 years in youth ministry in some way, shape, or form within the local church. And then we relocated to uh a different part of the state in North Carolina where we live for my wife's job, and I ended up teaching a at a uh small private Christian college, Baptist College. And I was teaching as an adjunct in the Divinity School and in the undergraduate department of Christian studies, and and was asked to teach about youth ministry. So I spent a lot more time in those spaces thinking less about the nuts and bolts of how to sort of do program director youth ministry, you know, programming all the activities and giving the permissions, slips formed and all of those pieces, and started to think about it a little bit more from um an academic perspective is not really the word that I want to use because that sounds like we're talking about a Justice High Academy, but I wanted to challenge youth ministers or folks who are gonna be working with teenagers to think theologically about how they approach their work. Is there a theological way to think about human sexuality? Is there a theological way to think about service projects? Insert whatever you want, social media, music, and all of those types of things. So that was really where a lot of that came to be. And then I had two really, I'm gonna call them moderately willing lab rats of my own. My oldest is now 26 and the youngest is 22. And they were uh oftentimes my laboratory of testing out ideas and seeing how things communicated and how people how they responded to it. And what was funny about that is when my oldest went to university, he went to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and he would come home and ask questions that I knew they weren't his questions. They were the questions of his peers who had not really had good relationships with the church for some reason, typically some part of their lifestyle, right? But they still had spiritual questions. And so I then became this, he was the de facto questioner for his friends to come and ask questions in a safe space. So what I've realized is even in my current job with CBF is that my calling has always been to be a Christian educator, and it started in youth ministry. But I wouldn't trade that for the world because youth ministry teaches you so many things about organizational leadership, human relationships, all of those pieces.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

I'm curious, your thoughts on the youth space at the moment, maybe just starting in the US. What are you seeing? What are you observing? What are your hopes, encouragements for those in youth ministry?

SPEAKER_03 9:03

Yeah. Sorry, I'm struggling with the question because I don't want to want to start with the negative, right? But and because I don't want to sound like the curmudgeon, like, you know, 30 years ago when I was this or that, this is never the problem. So many of the same things, but social media has accelerated so many issues for teenagers. There were there were probably when when we were when I was a teenager, you know, like being feeling left out, feeling picked on, all of these different things, comparing myself to someone else. And social media has just amplified that. And I am not a person who just laments social media exists. So I don't want to, I don't want to communicate that. But I realize that it from a developmental perspective, it's really hard for teenagers because it's also really hard for adults.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

I have friends who are trying to convince themselves of something based on the way they post about their lives on social media. That's not a unique phenomenon to teenagers, right? However, some of the other things that we've seen that I'm seeing around teenagers with churches and and youth ministers that I've been in communication with is a deeper desire to do service work. They want their faith to be something that's tied to actual ministry. And that's causing a problem for a lot of churches with young professionals, young adults, because they come from youth ministries where they do work that's connected to their faith. They go to college and get involved with a college ministry that's doing mission projects, service projects. Then they come to church and the church gets so excited that a 24-year-old has walked them in the door, and they think the best way to keep them there is to put them on a committee. I don't know any 24 or 25-year-old that wants to be on the church finance committee or the flower committee. That may be the case. But specifically about teenagers, um, I think the service component is massive right now. One of the things that we've seen post-pandemic is you used to advertise a weekend retreat, a summer trip, whatever the case may be. And the teenagers were there. Those were the big events. Now a lot of US-based teenagers don't want to do the overnight. So a reticence towards it. There's a I'm I try to stray away from using the word anxiety to describe something like this, but there's an anxiousness around it. And I don't know if it's because of the formation that happened during the pandemic, this is just a blip, or if this is just the new normal, right? But something accelerated during that time. Um and I and I have questions. I don't have answers, obviously, but I have lots of questions about what that is. And and so for people who are leading youth ministries, the way we go about our work has changed, has fundamentally changed, right? I mean, when I was doing youth ministry, I I planned events, I planned the calendar, I went to the kids' events, but if we planned something, they came. And now, you know, Wednesdays or Sunday nights that have historically been high attendance pieces are much, much lower. And they're not coming for the same reasons. But the relational side of it is still so valuable. And showing up where they are and showing up where their families are is becoming sort of the pieces of the new model to say, if I'm only if my performance as a youth minister is based on how many go on a trip with me or come on Wednesday nights, then I'm probably failing. But that doesn't take into account how many text messages, phone calls, virtual interactions, going to ball games, going to different things, having coffee with kids, those things aren't are different metric. Right. And so when I first when I realized this for the first time for me in youth ministry, it was when I would come back from a trip and somebody say, How many kids went on that trip? And and I thought, that's the wrong question. Like I don't want to be judged based on how many went. I want to be judged on the stories that are told about formation. And so, um, and so I basically started answering with, well, let me tell you a story about the trip, right? So I changed the question. But I think that's a big piece of it. I think we're in a monumental shift for youth ministry that the old metrics and the old models, I'm gonna be hesitant to say, but don't really seem to be serving us as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Well, I think that's a beautiful segue because I I I um remain open and curious. I think one of the things that I'm trying very hard to do in my own formation is to be open to how things shift. Um I was trained as a psychologist, but I think and I I think I said this even in your seminar that I think we need to start thinking sociologically and anthropologically as well. Just in the moment, understanding the shifts of how meaning is made by people, what it represents, some of the the the ways that young people connect and do life is something we want to observe and understand and inquire because they still need us, but they're they're not going to relate with us if we come in and and be judgy mcjudgy about it. So I I love that. I suspect, and I'm gonna segue now that maybe that's the same curiosity and attitude you have when you're bringing into even understanding things like congregational health, that there are shifts there are changes. So I'd love to start by asking you about the project you presented first. What is it called? Where is it up to right now? And then we'll continue talking. So tell us.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Sure. In in 2019, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship started a new discovery journey to try to listen to and hear from congregations, ministry partners, all of those things. And we have churches from largely from Texas up through the mid-Atlantic part of the U.S., think of Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia. But we're growing into the Northeast and New York, Maine, places like that, and all the way out to the West Coast. So as this shift is all happening and we're also growing more diverse, this is this is a denomination that started out of the Southern Baptist, which had its roots in a split with American Baptist over slavery back in the around the American Civil War, right? So our history is that we are predominantly white denomination, but there's been a lot of intentionality around diversifying. Why am I telling you all this? It's because as all of this shifting started to happen within our organization, it became even more important as we're growing to be listening and paying attention to what our churches and ministers are experiencing. It was called, it was a really fancy name called Toward Bold Faithfulness. Um and so because of Toward Bold Faithfulness, what we started to hear were some themes around churches or ministries within churches that were thriving. Uh flourishing may even have been the word we used at the time. But there were five traits that seemed to emerge, and it was churches that had, and I'll give the the full title that we use for them, compelling clarity, dynamic collaboration, rooted relationships, faithful agility, and holy tenacity, right? And so we took those five traits and applied for a grant to really field test these traits with congregations in CBF life. And for a number of years, we did some weekend retreats, cohorts types of things, helping churches think and talk about the traits. And what we realized is that they really did resonate, but that the model of helping them think about the traits and where they're present in their congregations was not robust enough. It was very, it would have been very, very slow growth to the tune of six to eight congregations a year, versus how do we, how do we do this at a scaling level that makes more sense? So that led us to creating the Thriving Traits Assessment. We worked with an assessment designer out of the UK who specializes in this work, and she did an absolutely wonderful job for us. And so that's that that um assessment is designed really for an individual to take with the idea that we can aggregate the scores of everyone from the congregation who takes the assessment. It's 40 questions, it takes about 20 minutes to do. And for for native English speakers, let me be clear, we haven't translated it into any other languages, nor have we tested it for cultural differences as well. In fact, it was funny when Catherine sent us the first draft, we were dealing with British English and some British colloquialisms and idioms as well. So that was fun. That was a reminder that there's a lot of work to do around this. But what we wanted to do is ask churches to participate in taking this assessment to give themselves scores on the five traits. And we did that for a couple of reasons. One, in my work, I travel to a lot of churches, and I'm in and out of churches on a Saturday or Sunday or Wednesday, whatever the case may be, where oftentimes the church leader will be apologetic from the beginning. In fact, I've I've been asked to maybe not come on this Sunday because it's typically our lowest Sunday. Why don't you come on this Sunday? But it's still not going to be a lot of people. And so there's this self-esteem issue that's happening in our churches. And then I go and and yeah, instead of it being 150 people, it's 40. But then they start talking about the ministry they're doing. And I can see the traits in the ministry. I can see how they're doing something that other churches could learn so much from, but it's just part of their everyday. But they were still measuring their success, for lack of a better word, based on the people who were attending on Sunday mornings and what the offering looked like. And we thought we have these five traits that could be an entirely different metric for how a church understands itself and judges itself that are hopefully more positive, right? So even with the report that a congregation or an individual receives, it says this is your, this is your greatest strength, right? Of the five traits. And the lowest one is is framed as this is your area of of greatest opportunity for growth. Right. So we don't want to put anything in there that makes that that lowers the self-esteem. And then what we hope happens with as a result of the of the scores, the the congregational score, what we hope happens in the way the results are presented to them is that one, they start to discuss why they think they scored the way they did on the traits, um, whether that be high or low. And then secondly, and I think this is something that we really weren't sure how important it was going to become, but the we we give them a radar chart of where the scores are. And for everyone who identifies as a member of the congregation, uh, it's one colored line. And then the church leadership, and that's um, you know, the clergy, the deacons or elders, whatever that mechanism is for their congregation, that's a different colored line. And so you have you have gaps between clergy and congregants about what what a particular trait score might be.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Which which is in terms of their evaluation? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

So it doesn't sound like a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Evaluating their congregation and congregation evaluating themselves.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

Yes. And how does the gap all of them clergy in it? All of themselves in it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

And do you know other trends? Is it clergy overestimate or congregation overestimate, or it can be different for everybody?

SPEAKER_03 19:38

It's all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

So what we love about that is it's a it creates a perception gap, and that's a place for conversation.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

For a conversation.

SPEAKER_03 19:46

Why do you as a pastor think that or or church staff think that you are a 40 on compelling clarity and the rest of the church has it scored at a 28?

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Right?

SPEAKER_03 19:58

If if you can't define, if you're defining your mission in a way that the church can't articulate, then there's something to be addressed there. There's a question to be asked there. Um so that's one of the things that we think is potentially one of the more exciting pieces. But you know, we talk about it. Uh I worked at a church in in uh for a number of years that had 37 exterior doors. What? So that's a big church. So if you can imagine being a visitor with small children, yeah. Whichever door you went in, that was your first impression of the church. Well, that's what this assessment kind of gives us a sense of is that you have all of the folks in the church have the opportunity to share their experience of the church, right? It doesn't mean their answer is right or wrong, but it gives them a more well-rounded sense. So that so maybe there's somebody who sits there and say, Well, we are just a warm and friendly church, and then they're on the rooted relationship score, it's like really, really low. And you're like, Okay, are you really warm and friendly? It's talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

I'm gonna read the definitions actually. Now, this is this was taken by my AI note-taker, so please correct as you see fit. It said, rooted relationships, deep mutual connections within and beyond the congregation. So I'm thinking that means outside the church doors as well. Compelling clarity, a clear, lived sense of identity and mission that guides decisions, dynamic collaboration, partnerships that achieve more together than alone.

SPEAKER_03 21:23

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

What sort of partnerships, Brian?

SPEAKER_03 21:26

It could be any type of community partnership. It could be with a local nonprofit, it could be with um a private-public partnership with the government, or it could be with individuals who are doing interesting things in the community, or it can be with other churches as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

And so is rooted relationships the relationships that you might have with your neighbor, um, or is that different from partners from dynamic collaboration?

SPEAKER_03 21:46

I'm smiling at you for those who are listening to this. That's really the interesting part of this, is that that these things impact one another. And and if I could, if I were to to in a perfect world dream up um a second version of this assessment, it would actually take into account how the scores on each of the traits impact the scores of the other traits. If you're familiar with the workplace big five, are you familiar with that personality assessment?

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Personality assessment.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

Yeah, you know, each of the subtraits for the big the big five personality traits impacts the scores of the other ones. So in my dream world, eventually this assessment would do the similar type of thing. But what it but what it does now is it requires us to draw some connections through questions about you seem to indicate rooted relationships, but you aren't doing collaboration very well outside of the church. Where are the relationships really rooted? And if they say internally, then there's another question. Like, well, why aren't you doing it externally?

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Gotcha. All right.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

Like we don't know what we're supposed to be doing, we don't know what we're good at, we don't know what God's called us to do.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

So true, so true. Um holy tenacity, perseverance in core convictions through challenge and change is what it said. I don't really understand that one.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Yeah, I figured these are the last two are the hardest to really kind of to figure out for folks. But tenacity is is you know obviously there are hard times in churches and people figure out how to stick together when those challenges occur. Um so that's probably the easiest anecdote for for describing what holy tenacity would look like. Is when hard times hit, have you have you got what it have you got staying power, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Gotcha. And then faithful agility, creative adaptation that stays tethered to long-term vision. Is that correct? Yes. Pretty close.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Um just revisiting this, these uh categories, how did they come up? Were they did they come up from those focus groups, Brian?

SPEAKER_03 23:44

They did. They came up from the I was gonna say they came up from um listening sessions, focus groups, online surveys, congregational visits, yeah, all of those pieces. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think um I I think about 80% of respondents were lay people.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Incredible. Yeah, that's fascinating. I think that's just giving me a new spin to look at those definitions again. They'd probably not be the sorts of things that I thought congregations would think about, Brian. I'm being schooled.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

Well, I think some of it is interpretation of the people, you know, looking at the results and realizing how important relationships are. Like it's that's low-hanging fruit. But to really find people talking about with conviction their sense of how they made it through difficult times or how they made it through challenging times, or, you know, anything from a a church fight to a a loss of a beloved member of the community, any of you know all of those things when when the offerings were low. Maybe they were a church that they survived the housing crash in the US and the uh during the Great Last Recession, you know, all of those pieces. So it was really fascinating how people talked about these things. And so it's it's really sort of like a um qualitative study that drew those five traits out.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah, uh, even as you're saying this, there's something that I I say, you know, in in my work as a psychologist, we we look at um, you know, what happens after natural disasters, you know, what do communities do? And they really gather and they tell the stories of where we've come from, what we've lost, and where we're going. And it's these gatherings around, I like to think of it as around campfires, but you know, uh around telling the stories that really keep people connected and engaged with the mission. And that sounds to me like what you discovered that these qualities that communities, church communities are talking about. Um, I actually wrote up the notes for the common table and I've been disseminating it to my my colleagues and some other places. And for this segment, the AI note-taker said beyond butts and bucks. Yeah. I'm gonna add a third one, beyond butts, butts, and bible or behibor, because generally I've seen um we we talk about measuring attendance, the financial position, and sort of the the the the behaviors in terms of you know how often do you read your Bible and how often you're praying. What are your thoughts about that approach and what you've discovered in your approach coming from this ground narratives?

SPEAKER_03 26:17

Yeah, those first two B's, bucks and butts, were um were really corporate metrics. Right. Right? Like they came from the business world and they were metrics that we understood coming out of the 1920s and 30s in the United States, uh, particularly after World War II with the the population boom and and all of those pieces. And a part of that is because you didn't have to measure those things when the church was the local neighborhood or community church.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Like you can go back to talking about the rural church and see the impact that the invention of the and access to the automobile did to that, right? So suddenly, suddenly churches became a marketplace approach for members, which, you know, because they could drive past the church. If they got mad at somebody, they could drive five miles to the next church, right?

unknown 27:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 27:01

Whereas when you had to walk, you went, you you figured it out, right? You either held a grudge and just bit your tongue, or you created chaos.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 27:09

Or you forgave. Like, let's not forget about that one, or maybe there was a conflict where you forgave somebody. It's a crazy idea in the church, right? Um but but uh but I think that's where those two values really came from. Okay. And then somewhere in the American church in particular, and this circles back to youth ministry, a a lot of the work was being done was was essentially behavior modification, right? And in a in more evangelical circles, it was really about keeping kids, getting kids saved. Okay. Right. And I think that's been a uh it was a focus for the church as well, which is where that behavior piece came into. Can we measure if they're reading their Bible, if they're praying daily? Like as a teenager, I had the biggest guilt complex because when I would pray at night, I'd inevitably fall asleep. So every youth camp, I'm going back down to rededicate my life because I'm terrified that I disappointed Jesus that I can't stay awake. And and and all of that was probably well intended, but really drove drove more to a behavior modification, a way of being Christian, a way of being faithful. It really wasn't about being faithful. Faithfulness is when it's messy and you need tenacity. It's when it's it's when it's hard and somebody walks with you through through those hard times. And that's again, not just a teenage thing, but so I think that's where some of this this comes in. And so when I think about these five traits, it's it's really an opportunity to draw out stories within the congregations of when they have seen these things demonstrated, right? When did you see tenacity in the church? When are relationships so important? And so then the church members start talking about these things and it elicits a a more positive response and builds self-esteem as well. Unless, of course, they say, Well, we we really didn't we don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Then then maybe we we've undercombined ourselves with that, but I don't I don't think that to be the case.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:59

Yeah. Sorry, I think I've circled all around your question.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

I'm not sure I actually I think you answered it perfectly. I I love that you talk about the automobile and you talk about behavior modification because this these two things rattle in my head quite a bit. And when I look at leadership theory, I look at the way that we assume that we scale and build a business, massive technology disrupts, and then we scramble to find a way to make sense of it and know that we're going okay, and then we never re-evaluate that. Or there's a danger that we don't evaluate whether that was for a time and we've now moved on. With regards to the behaviors, though, I've heard it being said, and I don't have a clear opinion. I don't think about these things as often as other people do, that there's benefit in looking at those things as well. Um, what are your thoughts about that in relation to just broadly? Do you think there's a place to look at those things?

SPEAKER_03 29:55

Yeah. Are you talking about individual behavior?

SPEAKER_01 29:57

Yeah. So how often you read your Bible and how often you're attending, how often you're volunteering.

SPEAKER_03 30:03

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think I think there's certainly a place for it. Um, I think it's helpful, right? It's an accountability measure as much as anything else. At the same time, I wouldn't want anybody to ever think that if you do these things, they make you they make you a good person. And then your behavior external to that doesn't follow suit. Right. If I if I read my Bible and it tells me two things that Jesus said, love God and love your neighbor. And then I go out and I'm just nasty to people. What am I what am I doing to the image of God in that person, much less to the to my neighbor, you know. So um, so I think it's a it's a both and piece. Also, you never know what someone's carrying. Like I love the fact that you talk about being curious and open. And I've been struck by, and particularly in recent years, of reading more stories of whether it be an athlete or a musician and where their where their stories come from and how faith intersects with those stories when they talk about it, right? But the the I remember reading a story from the rock band Metallica, having that old dark music, right? And this this guy did a Canadian pastor did a whole study about what the gospel says about where the gospel is found in the music of Metallica. And so he dug into the background of their lead singer who was their songwriter, James Hatfield, and learned about this abusive space that he grew up in. And so that's why his songs are so full of wait for this good churchy word, lament, right? And so we don't, we don't know what somebody's carrying with them. And so to go to somebody like, and that's pretty dramatic, but to go to somebody like that and say, well, if you just read your Bible and you just pray more, you're gonna be a better person. Well, we've not taken into account the whole person. Right. So I do think there are there's definitely a place for those types of metrics for accountability perspective, but but I also don't want them to become the measuring point because I don't think Christian faith is about checking boxes.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

You must have stories now to tell us. You know, you the instrument is out there, you're collecting data within, you know, what you can share. Tell us some stories about what you've discovered, what you guys are finding.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

Yeah. Well, we're in a pilot phase, and so there aren't a whole lot of churches back. What we found is that a lot of clergy are terribly frightened by this idea until they see the instrument. You know, so they they don't want to do it as a congregation. They want to do it with their deacon body, you know, with with with a leadership group of eight, 10, 12 people to see what it does. And so then once they do that, then we have a conversation with them and they're they're really finding value in this sense of maybe that explains, and then they start talking about something that clearly we don't know anything about. I mean, that that's not the intention. We're not bringing any expertise to them about their local context. We're just shining a light on it and a mirror at the same time, right? For them to think about what they're experiencing in their congregational life or their their faith community's life. And so I think those have been some of the really interesting things. There's a church um outside of DC, Washington, D.C., that's in a pastor search. And so when they read the results, they thought, does this match our the profile for what we're advertising for our next senior pastor? Like we're saying we want this, but this is what we do.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 33:12

And then in this particular instance, those were in conflict.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Can you give an example? What does that look like? Just without betraying confidentiality, what does that mismatch? What is underneath? What is that?

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Yeah, well, pretty particularly in this case, it was a church that has remarkable lay leadership that is incredibly passionate about community ministry. And so their job description was for a senior pastor that was a strong pulpiteer, was a strong teacher of the Bible.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Right.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

Um, it didn't say anything about collaborator or relationship builder within the community or community leader, right? So so they were so would they could they have could they have found the right or will they find the right pastor even without job description? It's absolutely possible, right? But it for them now they understand we also need to put a a big emphasis on this. Because you can imagine if if the person didn't want to do any outside work with the community, over time that's going to cause a rift with the congregation. And the last thing a congregation needs is conflict. I should say unhealthy conflict.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

You mentioned the terror. You said terrified. What is what are clergy afraid of?

SPEAKER_03 34:20

Well, you know, the the the the beauty and the um the beast of Baptist life is that each church hires and each church fires. Yeah. There's not a higher ecclesial body. And so, you know, is this going to shine something of a deficit on our church? It's going to reflect poorly on me. And, you know, the questions, they don't, they don't make that sort of judgment call. There's there's nothing about that they really need to worry about. But I understand the sense of anxiousness around that. Like most of our clergy are navigating minefields weekly in the pulpit because of the political situation in the United States. And and statistically, there's not any truly, and I I mean, I hate to make religion about politics in this particular instance, but there's not like a truly democratic congregation and a truly Republican congregation. It's some mix and some amalgam of all of them. And so that pastor might say something that they think is relatively tame and it and it gets them in trouble. And that they spend two days trying to clean up relationships and explain themselves and actually say this is actually what the Bible says about this. Or on the other side of it, why didn't you say something about this thing that happened this week in the news? You can't every week.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

So I'm just thinking that actually what this can give pastors though is a you way to unite people around the things that their hearts are really anchored in. Yes, we have these differences and we have these opinions, but you know, if we're a church that is about rooted relationships and we are loving on one another so we can love on one another's neighbors, that can be something that pulls them back together and say, but look, let's major on the major here.

SPEAKER_03 35:58

And two people who see things ideologically at polar extremes, yeah, it's really easy for them to us and them their neighbor, right? Even in the church. But I know in every service trip that I've ever been on, every community project that I've ever participated in, whether it be home building, construction of some sort, or soup kitchen, clothes kitchen, whatever you name it, nobody that I'm working with or serving alongside has ever asked me what my political affiliation is or what I think about this thing in the Bible. We're all focused on the mission at hand, which is to love our neighbor. It's the love of Christ that compels us to do that sort of work.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 36:43

Why wouldn't the same love compel us to stay together in our relationships, to show that tenacity in our relationships when things get hard? Because here's the thing Paul talks about seeing through a glass, we all see through the glass dimly or darkly, depending on the translation you look at. To me, that means we all see part of the gospel, we all see part of God's plan. See all of it. And anybody who says they do, I think is misguided. Because Paul pretty clearly says we all see through a glass dimly. And I've looked through enough stained glass windows and dirty windows and all the things in my life to understand that passage that well, I can kind of see what's happening, but I can't see everything that's happening. So if I can lean into the posture of openness and curiosity because I care about the relationship more than I do about my opinion, yeah, it's I'm not sure that's the right way to describe that, then perhaps that leads us to a better place.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

And so when a church in your pilot does the survey, the big reveal, how does it happen? How do you how do you do it?

SPEAKER_03 37:47

Fireworks, fire truck. I mean, we send the police, they do their sirens and everything. It's a whole parade. So as soon as an individual completes it, uh it's automated to send them their results. Like an individual automatically gets their results. The leadership team of the church designates who gets the congregational report because then there's going to be a follow-up conversation with us. The follow-up conversation with us is not about us saying, here's what you're doing right, here's what you're doing wrong, any anything like that. That follow-up conversation is really about here's some things we would ask you to notice, here's some things we noticed. What do you think about them? But that congregational report also has five reflection questions that are just sort of beginning points for them to start thinking through. Um, and as a result, then we give them time to sit with that and determine what type of engagement they would like to have with us next. Do they do they want any type of engagement with us next? If they say no, that's okay. If they say we'd really like to do a facilitated discussion with the congregation around this, we'll come and do that. If they say we'd like some self-guided resources around this, we'll provide those types of things. If they say we would really like to know some other churches who were doing this particular thing well, can you connect us with them or with some other potential ministry partners? And we'll do that as well. I mean, so there's a whole host of things. It's it's a the assessment is a high-tech product, right? But really the work and the transformation comes in the high touch piece.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

And do you have any stories yet of uh churches that may have had uh a real aha moment from engaging with the survey?

SPEAKER_03 39:16

Yeah, the the aha moment has been where the gaps are.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 39:20

Right? Like they just had not considered that the people who are the leaders in the church and and the the congregation as a whole were that far off on their perceptions of clarity and collaboration in this one particular instance.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:35

And a couple of other churches had some minor gaps, but but those gaps became places they really focused, which I thought was great because it's then it's about alignment, it's not about trying to get a perfect score, it's about getting on the same page. And sometimes they're singing from the same hymn book, and sometimes they're not even singing the same type of music.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

Oh yeah, yeah. I'm gonna ask you from a leadership perspective, is that a byproduct of not having a vision and mission that people understand or some kind of communication break breakdown, or we just seeing two different versions of what church means? Like how do people get that gap?

SPEAKER_03 40:13

Wow, that's such a great question. We could talk for quite some time about that. I think there are two things. I think one, the whole uh the whole concept of the church as marketplace has also created a space where churches don't feel like they should be as clear about who they are because they're still trying to attract people to come and join, which is a which is an economically motivated piece. And I don't mean that in any way, shape, or form to be judgmental of churches. I think it's just a capitalistic factor in which our churches exist, right? But on the flip side of that, when you aren't clear about who you are, what you stand for, what you what are the non-negotiables, should we say, then it creates a space where where you have growing fractious possibilities. And so, and so then that's one piece of it. I think the other piece is what you said towards the end. It's a lack of lack of communication. And I don't even think it's always a lack of communication. I think it's a it's a it's uh uh our culture of busyness. I'm so busy I don't have time to really understand X, Y, or Z. I I think we have I think we have a lot of challenges around that. What it means to be a member at a congregation, what it means to be a contributing member in the community, especially when my I've got to take my kids to two soccer practices or football practices, three baseball practices, you know, during the week, plus drama club band X, Y, and Z. And so yeah, then the church does start to take a secondary role in the in the community or in the in the vision units' lives. But at the same time, when they do engage, they expect a certain thing. Yeah, which is just sort of an opportunity for either disconnection if they don't find it, or again, one of those fraction points. One of those or friction points, maybe a better word.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Yeah, I I I um I have a team of psychologists. So apart from being a pastor's wife, I also have um a a practice of psychologists. And about three years ago, Brian, I was noticing that we were writing things, articles and things like that. And I thought, ain't nobody gonna be reading this. Like, why would we wanna why would anybody want to read this? Because the whole point of us writing a blog was not to mark to us, but the philosophy is if people can't come to see us, they can at least access something from us. And about three years ago, it was a real struggle. I had to get us to think about the people, not the expert stuff we were writing. Who are we writing to? What are they struggling with? And that really came to a process of us making sure that before we offer anything, we actually ask our local neighborhood, you know, what are they struggling with? What do they need? How can we encourage them? How can we inspire them? And you would think that after three years of saying that we'd all understand what that meant, but no, you know, we gotta rehearse it. We we gotta ask the question, but is that what people are telling us? Or is that what we think we should be doing? And that rehearsal, that constant rehearsal. And so I think what I've and I'm hearing it more now from you, and I think that's just a product of time from when I first encountered what you were doing. I think that that's the health and benefit of this instrument is you're getting a rehearsal loop as well of bringing people back into the story. Well, actually not about us, it's really about our motivations in terms of becoming healthier ourselves so that we can be motivated to spread, to scale not through numbers, but really through the connection that we have with people.

SPEAKER_03 43:41

I love that. I love this so much. And and and let's be clear, part of this journey has also begun to transform our organization, our denomination, the way that we do our work for the for the first 30 years. We're 35 years old. I think I mentioned that earlier, but for the first 30 years, we were program driven. So we would we would create something and then we'd market it to our churches and they would participate, right? And I'm wondering if it was ever that panacea that we seem to think it was. You know, we remember the good old days with nostalgia. And nostalgia, I think, is anyway, I won't tell you what I think about nostalgia. Any, um, but I um but now, and so then when I first started five years ago with the organization, we still, when we would receive grants or start new programs, they would live in a particular team, and that team would silo the program, a vertical silo. And over the last few years, we've started to say, what would it look like? So and then the thriving traits, the thriving congregations work started as a silo. Then we said, we need to turn this on its side.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 44:36

It it needs to cut across the organization. Now, how do we do that? And as we started to ask that question, we we started to also realize is we had not been asking what people wanted. And one of the terrifying things about this instrument is when we had that conversation with the church and they say, What we need is this, or or what the help we need, or we may not know it. We may not have an answer. Now, chances are I can I can find you somebody who has an answer. Like I really love the fact that people are saying you don't have to have all the answers, Brian. It's okay. Okay. Right. And to release some of that pressure. But also it's that sense that when we do this, we start to really understand what the pressures are on our congregations. And pastors begin to really understand the pressures on their congregants and their congregants' lives. So it's it's a trickle, I mean it's a trickle down, but it's also a a bubble up of what we're experiencing with the instruments. So that's part of why we're so passionate about it, is because we also see how it's changing our work and our organization, just the idea of it.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

Yeah. So you're in pilot phase. Did you find a university to partner with you?

SPEAKER_03 45:43

We haven't yet.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

Okay. Well, who knows? That could be an Australian university that would say, we're in. We want to be a part of this.

SPEAKER_03 45:51

I suspect maybe we should talk offline.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

And actually, to that note, if are you open for Australians to participate in taking your survey and being part of your work at this point in time?

SPEAKER_03 46:02

That's a great question. Um I'm I'm gonna say a tentative yes. And here are the reasons for being tentative. One is that it's it's culturally very US centric. Yes. The language. Although it's not as bad as it could be if I had written it, right? Like having a UK designer really cut down on a lot of that piece. But the other side of it is part of our response to it is also uh out of a out of a US lens. Like this is what we know, this is what we do. It excites me the possibility of learning new things.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:36

So let me talk myself into saying yes without it being a tentative.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

Well, actually, I I love that. I think there's so much wisdom in that. Uh, and I think that's that's how we do research and pilots well. It's actually the natural boundaries for the time and season that we're in. So, you know, we you never know where this conversation may spread to. It might not be Australia. There are people who are listening in Africa as well. That's kind of thing. It was like 490 cities across 69 countries. So you know. You don't know where this will go.

SPEAKER_03 47:09

That's phenomenal. That's really great.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

Brian, I I I've loved our conversation. It's been so encouraging. It's given me so much to think about myself, just in terms of how we think about. I think, I think I'd even want to remove in my brain the word health, you know, church health. It's almost like it's, you know, when you when you get when we do marriage work or relationship work, we call it the dream together. You know, what is the co-created dream? And then, you know, all these other qualities underneath the dream that you're building together is is what we we work on so that you get to that dream together. I almost feel like what we've talked about today is that mutuality of a congregation, the mutuality between the congregation and their leadership for that dream that they have together. And I feel like the the traits that you talk about make so much sense when I think about it in that frame of reference. So, if anything, you've given me a lot today, even just to think about. So I really thank you for that.

SPEAKER_03 48:11

Thanks. And I'm absolutely going to borrow that.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Let me know. I can send you the exact transcript of what I just said. Okay. Cheers, Brian. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

Thanks, you as well.