How Microchurch Makes Mega Impact

SPEAKERS: Brian Sanders, Lance Ford, Julie Roys

Note: This is a rough transcript and may contain some misspellings.

Brian: If you were given the choice between, I’ll give you a thousand people who will come every Sunday to your church and when you’re just starting out, that sounds amazing,

Brian (2): right? Get a thousand people will come

Brian: every Sunday to your church.

They’ll listen to you. They’ll really like you. They’ll support you. They’ll give money to your church, but you’ll never have more than a hundred of those people engaged in mission. That’s option one. Or I’m giving you option two and you have to pick one. You can’t have both. You can’t have a hybrid, or option two. Right now, I will give you a thousand people engaged in mission, but you’ll never be able to get more than a hundred of them in a row at the same time. Which would you choose?

Lance: So Brian, you’ve been going at this. Quite a while with Micro Church and know, I know that this almost sounds like, yeah, that’s a logical place to begin, but it really is for people that don’t know. How do you define Micro Church?

Brian: I think it’s some kind of, search for what could be called like the ecclesial minimum or the minimum viable product, which is the church,

so obviously if you said, do you need a building to be the church? Probably not. Do you need an offering to be the church? You don’t, and so you can peel back. The cultural layers of

When I think the word church, what am I thinking of?

A marquee, a pastor, a group of leaders, whatever. If you really peel all the back and think if all of that was gone, but I was left with just these elements, would that still be the church? What does it very core minimum

Lance: the irreducible

Brian: minimum.

Lance: Of

Brian: the church. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t have more, it doesn’t mean you don’t want more.

Complexity. But to acknowledge what is that? And everybody has their minimum.

Maybe your’s, four things, three things, two things, whatever, nine things. But everybody has their irreducible minimum. So for us, it was the conclusion we came to, and I don’t think we’re alone.

There’s a lot of people that would define similar language of, we would say worship, the. The alignment to Jesus as Lord community, like real, genuine relationships between people. Shared life, love, whatever. And then mission, somehow working to expand the boundaries of the kingdom of God for good, for justice for.

Faithlessness, the good news of the kingdom being brought to the world where it is not light into darkness. So when those our conclusion was when those three things are happening in the same place at the same time, you’re looking at the church.

Lance (2): Yeah.

Brian: So that changes a lot.

That changes a lot about what we have called something church, or what we think the church could be. ’cause then you start almost like a softball team. Could be the church.

A church could mean a laundromat. A church could be a break room in a law firm. A church could be under a tree in a village or something, so I think that question of, I. The simplest version of the church, the humblest version

Lance (2): of the church.

Brian: Which might be meaningful in our dis our conversation today. It’s what’s the version of the church? Which is like the least likely to offend the founder’s intent. Ah,

Lance: yeah. You know what I mean?

Brian: For

Lance: right.

Brian: For its heart to

Lance: Right and still have. The components that really still be the church. Yeah. Cause it to run on all cylinders. Yeah.

Brian: So again, I wouldn’t say that having a building or having complex programs or staff or anything like that is, is good or bad, I suppose it’s just it can be neutral.

It’s not necessary to be the church.

And when you take some of that stuff away, lance, I just think what we’re left with is actually God is. His church is in a lot of places. We didn’t think it was

Lance (3): before. Yeah. We weren’t

Brian: noticing

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: Necessarily.

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: And we’re not paying attention to the simple kind of granular beauty of the people of God trying to be the people of God.

Lance: Yeah.

Brian: Everywhere they are.

Lance: Yeah. I remember, and I know you’ll remember this in a lot of the different surveys that some of the big surveying. Companies and some of the big Christian surveying and polling companies do, for a long time they didn’t count. Micro church or house. Church. It’s which I mean that’s, oh, that’s a bit offensive to say the least.

I think it would definitely be offensive to Jesus. And the other thing is, it’s like the early church wouldn’t have got. Wouldn’t have counted it

Brian: in these polls,

Lance: would

Brian: it? I think something like 70% of church I don’t know. It’s the majority of churches, both in America, in the world and in our time and in all time have been less than a hundred people.

So what is the church like, statistically speaking, if you were to try to anthropologically define

The church or a church, a local church.

You’d have to say it was, it would be something quite small.

Lance (2): Yeah,

Brian: so it’s a very new phenomenon on this kind of consolidation of, and actually when we look at mega churches what I see when I look at a mega church is actually hundreds of.

Smaller churches.

It’s just one umbrella or one control system or one one leadership mechanism over it. All.

One brand.

Brian (2): If you will.

Brian: Which maybe there’s value in that. Maybe there’s times in which that shared brand adds value to those smaller things. But actually recognizing you’re not just one church.

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: There’s many little communities that are. Representing Jesus in lots of different places. So I think that’s also part of it too. Someone like unlocking our mind and our imagination to see God at work in lots of different places. And then some of obviously the breakdowns or failures or, I don’t know, moral turpitude.

Lance: Yeah. The crisis. The crisis,

Brian: the scandals. It’s come under the weight of this. This kind of obsession with big

With if God’s really moving, if something good is happening, you’re getting bigger.

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: And the idea that like, bigger must be better. Yeah.

Lance: And we, and you and I both, we’ve spent so many time at so many conferences, so heard so many talks, healthy things grow.

Healthy things grow well. Okay. Unhealthy things grow too. You ever heard of obesity? You ever heard of a tumor? You ever seen a bloated dead cow.

Brian: But even what is growth? Growth. If you think biologically, you’re talking about you’re throwing off cells you’re giving things away.

There’s a releasing. And with kids, if you’re, if your kid, to see your kids grow also let them go and

Lance: Yeah.

Brian: To release them. So

Lance: true.

Brian: As agents of their own lives and whatever

Lance: exactly.

Brian: But that, that, that question of the Goldilocks zone or whatever this a, this is a weird thing and I know you like these kind of things, but like, why do we never ask that question?

It’s like we’ve done almost no study, no research on what the best size of a church is.

Lance (2): Yeah.

Brian: And part of the reason why I think is ’cause we have this assumption that you just want it to be bigger. So like a church of 500 is better than a church of a hundred. The church of a thousand is better than, yeah.

So it’s

Lance: almost unquestioned.

Brian: It’s totally unquestioned. Yeah. Because if you thought what’s the optimum kind of perfect size church? We’d be trying to figure that out. Yeah. We’d be trying to find the number that, and I don’t know what the answer to that is, but my hunch is it’s probably like 75 people or something.

Yeah. It’s it’s small enough that you know everybody, but there’s some weak ties, networks are formed. People can solve each other’s problems, but. It isn’t this other thing, this sort of bigger thing, which I think, obviously creates a top heavy, potential.

Lance: And very expensive.

And very expensive

Brian: And per dollar maybe not super effective.

Lance: Yeah. And we’re, of course, we’re not hearing, and you and I know you’re not here to beat up on the big church or whatever. That’s not the issue that we’re even talking about here. But especially as Americans, we love bigger and better.

And I’m a Texan, so you do it big, everything’s gotta be bigger and better, right? And then you shrink wrap it, and then you sell it to everybody else, right? And we’ve seen so much of that man. We’ve seen a lot of that. So once again, and you know this ’cause I know you get inquiries all the time from people a lot of people just.

Have no idea what Micro Church did. So what, like Tampa underground? So if I was to become a part of a typical, one of the micro church elements within Tampa Underground what would that rhythm look like? What would I become part of?

Brian: I think one way in which the underground is slightly different from maybe some of our cousins in the small church movement or the sort of networked, decentralized church stuff is we’re really big on people discerning and obeying some call into mission.

So actually there is no entry point to the underground other than that. So it’s you or a group of people feeling I just really feel called to the kids in my neighborhood, or I really feel called to single moms, or I really just feel called to the healthcare industry ’cause I work in that or whatever some justice issue or some place where I see great unbelief.

Lance: So this would be what anthropologists or sociologists would call. The organizing principle. The

Brian: organizing principle, yes.

Lance: Would be mission. That’s right. You start with mission.

Brian: Yes. And then we organize around that organization. So I think the organizing principle of the underground would be to serve people doing that.

So to serve people who are trying to form little communities to reach or love or show compassion or bring good news into those places. So you gotta know who you’re sent to.

Brian (2): Yeah.

Brian: And then who are you gonna go with? So that’s the community component. So sense of mission, who is my community?

And then under the kind of leadership and lordship of Jesus, you’re just trying to serve those people. You’re trying to bring truth, goodness, or beauty.

Lance (2): Yeah.

Brian: Space. And then the underground is really just like our, how do we network those things together? And we wanted to just call those things churches.

So I think a lot of people would have those in big churches. And they call ’em ministries or outreaches or. Something like that. We just wanted to say, because of our minimum ecclesiology, we wanna say, actually that is the church too.

So then you can start saying okay, then who’s leading those?

I think maybe our conviction is from a New Testament lens. Those would be elders and then there’s a certain expectation for their conduct and their character.

And then those become related to each other in some sort of college of elders or some sort of. Interrelated accountability.

And covenant with each other, to do right by each other, by the kingdom, whatever.

So that’s really the underground’s, the attempt to serve people were called or sent to something and to give them a bigger family, a bigger networked family.

Lance: Yeah. And so then the rhythm within that doesn’t, it could be totally different so that Yeah, it could,

Brian: there’s question.

Yeah.

Lance: Yeah. So there’s a diversity, but those are, once again, the. The starting points and the high points. The, okay. These are our, and I know y’all don’t have a ton of check boxes, but these are like, these are pretty solid, no, if you’re not this, you’re not Right. What we’re doing.

And so then there is a ongoing rhythm of fellowship gathering. Typical

Brian: it would be for each of them to define.

Lance: Okay.

Brian: So in other words, we would wanna encourage each of these micro churches to have clarity on what their kind of discipleship pathway is. How do people come to faith or how do they come to.

Know Jesus or grow in Christ and honestly, we see ourselves as novices in all of those unique contexts or callings. So we would never wanna superimpose. And approach.

Only to ask the right questions and to say like how does a person come to faith in your thing? Or how does a person grow?

Or how does a person become accountable or something. So we’re asking, we try to ask the right questions that we think are universal, but each context, man, we gotta re respect. That sort of missionary mentality, which just that’s the ilk we come from. And.

Miss Theology or people that think of missionary terms, you have a high respect for context and the culture you enter into sometimes because you’re not from that.

Brian (2): And

Brian: so you have to listen to it, you have to respect it. And so as kind of network servants, people that are trying to serve lots of different kinds of ministers or lots of different kinds of micro churches, we can’t presume to know what the rhythms should be.

Yeah. Or the cadences should be right. But you should have some. Sure. There’s gotta be gathering points. There’s gotta be points of worship and devotion and learning and welcome. There’s gotta be a front door where people are able to come in. There’s gotta be a back door where people are able to be sent out to do other things that they’ve been called to do. And that’s probably just like the elements of a healthy, small, micro church community. Those are the things we’re becoming better at. Noticing money. Commonalities. And that’s why we could help and serve in that way. But even that dude, a lot of it, none of it is mandated.

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. It’s still very light touch and very we offer like a portfolio of services and you can take which ones you want.

Lance: But what does it look like for a pastor or a leader to be a part of that? What’s their role in that? Because the role in the typical prevailing model of the church is, okay, you’re here to create a great weekend service.

You’re here to provide great teaching. Make sure that worship team is put together and ready to go, and all those different things. And and then you’re managing a staff. But what are the leaders and pastors within Tampa Underground? What do they wake up thinking about? Not micro church

Brian: leaders, but like network leaders.

Like the people that Yeah. Have to run the planet. Yeah. I think our ethic has always been, we serve the body of micro church, the community of micro church, so we really see ourselves as like an inverted triangle.

And so our mandate is how he are they or how well are they succeeding?

How fruitful are they? That’s our measurement.

Lance (2): Okay.

Brian: Of how well we’re doing. Yeah. So then we think about building platform, essentially it’s two-sided marketplace. You

Lance: think, and when you say platform, we’re not talking about stage,

Brian: correct? I’m sorry. Yeah. I mean it in the terms of like network technology.

Yeah. Where you, it’s a two-sided marketplace where you’re inter you’re these people. Need these people and you provide something to help them. Yeah. Connect

Lance: or when you say that I’m immediately think of Ephesians four that what we commonly call fivefold, apostle, profit, Evangel, shepherd, and teacher are there to equip, to resource, to give aid to.

So you guys, as leaders, when you wake up in the morning, you’re not thinking, okay, what am I gonna tell my staff they need to do today? You’re waking up thinking, how can I serve? The folks, right? How can I resource them?

Brian: The way we have done it that organizationally is we have departments, six departments, and then each of them have department heads and they’re thinking in a lane of so let’s say media, I.

They’re thinking, how do we serve the micro churches? How do we give them what they need to succeed?

Most small ministries wouldn’t be able to pull off, a decent website or a logo or something. So there’s a little team that just lives to do that for people. Yeah. And or our finance team, which is like trying to just create low or no cost financial services for all these little startup.

Things, yeah. Startup ministries, so it’s about, yes, it’s a hundred percent about serving that. Having said that, I do think there’s an apostolic role for some people to have. And you do try to gather the network as much as possible, although that’s almost impossible. Herd herding cats, right?

Cats? Yeah. I did hear someone say recently, the way to herd cats is to tilt the floor. So I think, change changing the whole paradigm is Yeah. Way to move those. But I think it’s, you do wanna get ’em together sometimes. Sometimes. And then provide some kind of like heart to heart leadership.

But I would say the primary thing you do in that role is tell people to keep going.

So it’s very different than if you have a nominal audience that’s like doing the very bare minimum. ’cause that’s the social contract with maybe a prevailing model is just come. Sit quietly.

Nod when I say good things and give our, give us your money.

Lance: Yeah.

Brian: And then leave quietly.

Lance: Don’t rock the boat. Don’t

Brian: say anything, even, literally don’t say anything

Lance: unless it’s amen to my great preacher. Sure.

Brian: But very small things so that social contract, whatever it is, that church has spectacle or learned helplessness, essentially that’s the deal. We’ve set with people and then we’re surprised that they don’t do stuff, or we’re surprised it’s hard to get them to be missional. Yeah.

Lance: So this is because we’re changing the rules of the game. I, we’re bait and switch. So

Brian: we asked you to just come and sit there and do nothing.

But then it’s like why don’t my people go out and do mission? Or why don’t, why aren’t they more active in the church or something? And I don’t think we mean that. I think it’s a, again, it’s unintended consequences. Yeah.

Lance (2): It’s like, how

Brian: did we get here? But if you reverse that, if everybody in the audience is a missionary.

Then your thing is not to try to get them to do something like please stop being lazy or something. It’s to actually say God is pleased with you and don’t give up.

Lance (2): Yeah.

Brian: So a lot of that apostolic leadership, I think when you have a network, a decentralized network of small churches essentially, is to just tell their stories, celebrate them, serve ’em.

And help them hold on to each other.

Lance (2): Yeah.

Brian: You know what I mean? It’s hard.

Lance (2): Yeah.

Brian: Like a lot of these, a lot of these things that God calls people into in mission they’ll take a lot from your life. They’ll take a lot from your heart. Sure. These things are not easy.

And then you’ve taken away the glory of it.

So there’s also no, you’re not gonna get famous.

Lance: No.

Brian: Where are you gonna be celebrated? Maybe never, maybe nowhere.

Lance: Yeah.

Brian: Of course God sees that. And this is what breaks my heart about the narrative.

Of the church as this sort of like power hungry, dominant leader,

Lance: celebrity culture, all

Brian: that.

But I also see the lion’s share of people who would call themselves Christians or even the lion’s share of things that are churches.

Or actually quite humble, simple and beautiful. And they’re not perfect and they’re full, sinful, broken people too. Sure. But. They’re trying. And I think on aggregate, if you look at all of that, you’d be blown away by how extraordinary that is.

Yeah. Yeah.

Lance: And I think that’s a huge point. The people of God are extraordinary. If we, they could just realize that if we would just realize how gifted and how beautiful and what we have to give. I was struck. I remember the first time that I ever met you face to face.

Gosh, man, that may have been 15 years ago. And and then and I remember just seeing all the micro churches represented in that building that you guys had. And it was all wrapped around passion and affinity that people had. That’s where their mission was. And if you ask most Christians.

Do you have a passion for mission? They’d be like, okay. They’d be like, no, I don’t. I don’t want to go to Ghana, or I don’t want to go. They’re like, that’s where their thinking immediately goes rather than realizing. What about across the street or what about your school? The places you live, work hang out and that mission is right under your nose and passion is already within you, but we’ve so glamorized ministry or we’ve compartmentalized that.

Then most people don’t equate these things as calling in ministry. That’s one of the big differences you guys have tapped into.

Brian: Yeah, I think it’s what maybe Daniel Pink would call. You know the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. So extrinsic motivations are like, we’re talking about the leader trying to convince people to come join the volunteer team or something like.

And it’s extrinsic, so it’s I’m doing it for you. I’m doing it to be part of the group, or I’m doing it and that wears off so fast.

Lance (3): Yeah. ‘

Brian: cause it doesn’t come from inside you.

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: There are things that are intrinsic that you’re gonna wake up and you’re just gonna care about that. So if I have a child, let’s say with autism.

And I know how hard it is to be a parent of a kid with autism, and I know a bunch of other parents that are going through the same thing. You don’t have to convince me every day to care about that or to think that’s something God wants to help people. Yeah. Get involved in this community.

Just help with people, right? It’s that’s inside you. There’s no way for you not to care and to figure out what that thing is for each of us. What’s interesting, if you look at. Because we’ve had the privilege of watching so many hundreds of people discern their calling and then step into a mission over the years.

A lot of it, Lance, and I’m, I bet you know this, but a lot of it comes from their deepest pain, like the worst things that have happened to them becomes somehow the thing they most wanna give their lives to.

Lance (2): Yeah.

Brian: People that are either going, it’s it’s like cancer survivors, that’s a group of people you don’t wanna be a part of. You do wanna be a part of it. If you get cancer, you right. Prefer to live. But it’s such a horrendous journey to get to become a survivor. Yeah. But once you do, you’re somebody with a certain. Credibility that can talk to people that have a cancer diagnosis, if you have never had a cancer diagnosis, you can’t. Absolutely. Not in the

Brian (3): same way.

Brian: No. So that initiates you into a whole field, to use that word, like missionary word, that this whole field of ministry, which, or missionary work, which is like now you’re credible. To do if you’ve been harmed in some way, if you’ve lost something.

That sometimes those areas of deep brokenness or pain are the place God actually calls us, sends us back into,

Lance: yeah. These are places of liminality that we talk about that you have, you go into an adapt or die scenario, and then like you said, it puts you into a club that. You didn’t wanna get into, but once you were there in your situation, you were glad that there was other flesh and blood around you.

Brian: Yeah. And you realize God is there.

Lance: Yeah.

Brian: And actually, there’s in that darkness, I. There’s hope and there’s light, and so you think I, I should go back in there and I can go back in there. And so a lot of, again, that’s why a lot of micro churches are to us, they’re not necessarily just house churches.

Or some sort of like cells like that. That terminology was never satisfying really to us. Because that’s like replicating the same thing over and over again.

And I think that the sort of mosaic or the art of a real. Powerful micro church network. It’s just things that almost don’t look anything like each other, except that they’re small and they’re empowered by God.

They’re led by ordinary people.

And they’re. Some expression of the church, which is not conventional.

Lance: Which doesn’t necessarily

Brian: have a building or something.

Lance: Exactly. So when people ask you, and I know you get this question asked a lot too, so when somebody says so I’m just gonna set this up and then let you respond the way that you would, okay.

Also, micro Church. Oh that’s House Church.

Brian: I think the harder one is when they say, when people say, oh, this, it’s just like a small group. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I think some small groups in churches, if they have a missional component, I would say that actually is a church too. That’s a little micro church.

But the downside of our kind of small group ministry. Curriculum or literature over the past 30, 40 years. Is that it took mission out? Yeah. It left mission with the big church, the big ship, and it just turned community let’s just, we just need to know each other. ’cause if you come into a building with a thousand people, you’re maybe not talking to people.

You’re anonymous.

And intrinsically the leaders of those things know this. People aren’t getting know each other, so let’s put ’em in small groups at homes or something like that. Yeah. But to me the irony of that is those things really struggle to maintain over time. They, they degrade fast.

Yeah. Yeah. ’cause without mission, without that component of driving us towards something outside of ourselves. We turn on each other. It’s like scrutiny is not good for human relationships. So true. So true. Like the hard, if all we have is to look at each other right. We’re gonna pick on each other.

Lance: That’s right. Find

Brian: flaws in each

Lance: other. Yeah.

Brian: But if we have this other thing that, like you care about, I care about, and it’s actually more important than our slight differences. Yeah. Or our flaws.

Brian (2): Because

Brian: we have them. I think because that you call that co belligerence or whatever, like we both want to fight that good fight to go solve that problem. Bring light into that darkness. And that’s way more important. Then our little petty differences that helps community. Sure. The irony is that the missional component

Lance: gives you deeper community. So talk a little bit about Brian, talk a little bit about the discipleship of the disciple making factor and aim within micro Church.

Brian: Again, I wanna for you guys anyway. Yeah. I wanna say I think each micro church has to figure out its own discipleship path. So I think they are different. If you’re working with. Teens in prison, that’s gonna be a different discipleship pathway,

Than I don’t know, a micro church of doctors in residency or something like that.

Their time their education, their, the limits of being accessibility.

Lance: Accessibility.

Brian: And what is the pathway for discipleship. But I think on all of them, they, there’s a common thing of like apprenticeship or. Or letting people lead, letting people learn to lead by doing it.

Lance (2): Or

Brian: whatever the mission is. Giving the mission into the hands of neophytes, of the newbies and let them try and because we’re I don’t know, empowered as a kind of a principle organizing principle that everyone is in powered or everyone has power, use it wherever you feel you should.

That’s gotta also trickle down to the younger people in your community. And so saying look what we do, you can learn to do it by doing it with us.

And then also eventually you can do it on your own. And you could start like a different version of this somewhere else, or here’s the even more likely thing.

Is that you raise up a bunch of kids, let’s say in a juvenile detention center ministry or whatever. And when they get out, they don’t all, they’re not all called to do juvenile detention center ministry. Sure. They’re called to every kind of thing you can imagine. Yeah. And so letting them go,

Lance: yeah.

Release let go.

Brian: Seeing these little micro churches grow by sending,

So you may stay 20 people for 10 years, but you’re growing because you’ve sent 20. New micro churches have been planted out of your little things, so that’s growth too.

Lance: What has been some of the most fulfilling aspects?

You’ve been doing this a long time, and so when you do at some points, lay down, go to bed, or just sit back and have a cup of coffee and just reflect what’s your joy moments of ah, man. We’re, I feel really good about this or that

Brian: first and most frequently is just watching other people flourish.

Like watching their ministry or their thing that they started that you played some small part in incubating.

It just become awesome. And for them to get some kind of like an article written about them in the newspaper.

Or they win an award or somebody tells you on the side like, oh, this ministry is like the premier.

And this happens to me all the time now because I’m so many years removed from direct leadership and, ’cause I’m more of a city leader now, working with the foundation and lots of other stuff. So I get in these rooms where people are talking about a ministry this is like best in class in our city.

And I just remember that it’s, it was incubated in the underground.

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: And that’s like the greatest joy.

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: And the second thing is a little bit like it in the sense that I was at a, I was at an underground, I forget what they call it, like a, we had a, I don’t, missionary training school or something like that.

And I don’t do much teaching and stuff like that in those things. But somebody was. Unavailable. So they asked me to fill in for a session or something. So I came and I was sitting in the back and I was gonna, I was next up, to teach that section. And a bunch of the people that were there were like, Hey, who are you?

They had no idea who I was. And they’d come in from other cities

Lance: and Boy, that offended you,

Brian: didn’t they? Oh yeah. Then they hurt your family. So upset. Oh, it’s the best thing. And yeah. And to be able to say, oh I’m Brian. I, I’m part of the community here and. And, oh yeah, that’s cool. Tell me about your story.

And just, they’d never heard of me. Never seen,

Lance: That’s a win in your book,

Brian: right? That’s not just a win. It’s I don’t know. I there’s something, the older I get, Lance, maybe you agree with this, but the older I get, the more I want to be obscured or something. Yeah. I feel shy.

Lance: Yeah. No I get that. No,

Brian: You’re not gonna

Lance: do your brother. I totally identify with that. You know what I mean? I completely know what you mean, but

Brian: it’s not just oh, I don’t want to, I don’t want to. Be in the picture. No but to watch other people. Yeah. Shine or

Lance: to watch. Yeah. I had a buddy just the other day he pulls his phone out and he’s Hey, take a look at this.

With his grandson doing a long jump one one a track meet at the long jump, and he was like. He wasn’t showing me pictures of himself back when he was, oh, look back at when, which, how weird would that be? It would be so weird and wacko, but he was just gleaming. There’s a me last week tack.

All right. No, boy. I was good. I was hitting home runs when I was 17 at Keller High School, but you are totally more excited. Yeah. And that’s. Where we should be. That’s where the joy, and it’s

Brian: probably a little bit of phase of life thing.

Lance: It, it is for us, it’s it’s a

Brian: stage but it’s also, it is resonant.

It’s consistent with the thing we’ve set up, which is we always wanted to see people flourish and thrive and reach their thing and actually watch them reach the world, watch them. Bring light in the dark places. So it’s always gonna be one step removed. That kind of platform building is always about somebody else succeeds, somebody else thrives, somebody else is celebrated.

And when that happens, and this, you asked the question about what kind of leaders or what does leadership look like over things like that or for things like that, I think you have to really enjoy that. Process. Yeah. Watching the people you’ve loved or served or invested in.

Get the credit.

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: Get the glory. That’s, it’s the coolest thing.

Lance (3): Yeah.

Brian: And I’m not wired for that. I just want to go on record here. I’m just as egotistical, I’m just broken. I’m just as proud. More probably. But it is interesting how you can take someone like me who easily could be the worst kind of leader, like from a 19-year-old me.

And go, okay, but if we can just take a different journey, a different pathway, and Jesus is a part of that and sanctification is a part of that and failure.

But it’s like a safer route. Yeah. That we go on. Yeah. And so the, one of the gifts of the underground, it’s not just been a gift to the micro churches, the thousand micro churches we’ve launched or incubated, but to me to, I think the people who have worked.

For the underground. With the underground, it’s just it gives us a healthier thing, not just something you’re proud of that you were a part of for however long you were a part of it, but something that, that you feel comfortable with yourself at the end of a 10 year stint or a career in doing that, where you feel that, it means something to see other people. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I’d say that’s like the 21st Century success story. Is about other people. Yeah. We see that in all kinds of obviously the technology of platforming and the, and even just the idea of abundance and shared economies and the

Lance: creator

Brian: economy, all

Lance: that,

Brian: and just the value of networks is to watch other people succeed, to build something or create something that allows other people to do what they’re supposed to do.

Yeah. Or to be who they’re supposed to be.

Lance: Yeah.

Brian: And then to take great joy in that, to be like, what is my widget? My widget is the success. Success,

Lance: yeah. And you can’t have a scarcity mentality and embrace that.

Brian: And you can’t, it can’t be about control. It’s gotta be ultimately about creativity or releasing something or watching

Lance: people.

Yeah. Which really does demand a different system of leadership.

Brian: And a different. Heart.

Lance: Yeah.

Brian: Because you’ve gotta enjoy that or you’ve gotta feel rewarded by that.

Lance (3): Yes. So if

Brian: you need that stroke of your ego, you’re not gonna get it. In fact I’ve sometimes said talking to church planners, like if you had to decide right now or if you were given the choice between, I give you a thousand people who will come every Sunday to your church.

And when you’re just starting out, that sounds amazing,

Brian (2): right? Get a thousand people will come

Brian: every Sunday to your church. They’ll listen to you. They’ll really like you. They’ll support you. They’ll give money to your church, but you’ll never have more than a hundred of those people engaged in a mission.

That’s option one. Or I’m giving you option two and you have to pick one. You can’t have both. You can’t have a hybrid, or option two right now. I will give you a thousand people engaged in mission, but you’ll never be able to get more than a hundred of them in a row at the same time. Which would you choose?

And of course, you know the right answer. Yeah. Everybody knows the right answer. The right answer is coming too. But if we’re honest,

Lance: what’s the honest answer?

Brian: The honest answer is would be really hard to let go of that first option. Yeah. It’d be really hard to be like. Okay. But that means you tell me for the rest of my career, I’ll never speak to more than a hundred people.

I’ll never feel that sense of that

Lance: adrenaline, all that Yeah. That sense of

Brian: I’m important

Lance: Or listen

Brian: to more than a hundred people in a room. But you’ll be allowed to be a part of something which is releasing a thousand people in a mission. Yeah. And it, that’s about. What motivates you?

That’s about what the, your own sense of inner reward. Yeah. Because if you think to watch those 900 or a thousand people do amazing things for God. Does that feel you? Yeah. And compare that to say what you feel like on a sign. You’ve spoken to a large audience. Yeah, I’ve spoken to a large audience.

Yeah. It’s pretty empty. Yeah. It’s

Lance: not, it doesn’t too much. It’s a pretty, I thought it was gonna, I thought it was really gonna be a lot better. And it’s, and but, and there’s so much and ambition towards that, when chasing after that, I remember one time. And you’re a voracious reader.

That’s an understatement. I. So Bobby Clinton. The old fuller prophet. Some people know him as Robert Clinton. And his nom de plume,

Brian: His book name is Robert.

Lance: Yeah. But for those of us that were students of Bobby, it’s he’s Bobby and so he was great.

He was co, he was the consummate guy on mentoring and. And leadership development. He had the leadership development theory and leadership emergence theory and all that. So years and years ago ’cause I had been one of his students I was working with a friend, putting a conference together and so it was really centering on mentoring.

That was really the main subject of this thing. And so we were talking about who will invite to speak at this. In just a few days, I was gonna be out in Pasadena. I was gonna be at Fuller and actually I was gonna have breakfast with Bobby. And so I told my buddy, I said, man, let’s get Bobby. Wow.

Yeah, absolutely. I said, I’m gonna be with him next week. Me, he’ll say, yes, I get so I’ll never forget we’re riding along and so I. Tell him about this conference and he’s sitting over in the passenger seat. We’re gonna have, eight, 900 people and Bobby, we’d love to have you come, be one of our main stage speakers and everything.

So I told my buddy, you’d probably do it. Bobby Mila goes, nah, I won’t do that. You’re like, wait, what? What? And he goes, you don’t want a hit? Exactly. And we’ll, we’ll give you a nice honorarium and everything goes, nah, I won’t do, he’s, he’s probably pushing 70 at this point. But it probably would’ve been his answer.

52. Just ’cause of the way he was. So he goes, no, I won’t do that. He says I really found there’s more fruit by the 10 to 12 people I’m mentoring at any given time.

I just was like, and I guarantee there was more fruit than doing that 45, 30 minute talk that everybody goes, oh, that was great.

And by the time they’re at dinner that night. They don’t remember three points of it. It’s value of that we put

Brian: Did, do you ever read much about Henry Nolan’s inner struggle with like public speaking? So like he would, of course he was such a open, vulnerable person before people were open and vulnerable.

Yeah. Before it was cool.

Lance: Before it became an industry.

Brian: Before, yeah. Before it, it was just awkward when he did it. Yeah. Yeah. But he would talk about just being completely falling apart because he would speak to an audience of thousands and no one would invite him to dinner.

Brian (3): Oh.

Brian: And he would go back to his room and just weep and weep.

And deep loneliness.

Lance: That’s

Brian: so sad. So sad. He was one of these people that believed in like hugging ministries or whatever, like just he would actually have a therapist and

Lance: wanted to hold people. Yeah.

Brian: That thing. ’cause he was lonely broken. So there’s this public figure who’s full of charisma, who people love.

They’d listen to him and everyone, all these people would walk out, be like, oh, I heard Henry now and he changed my life. But no one invited me to dinner. And then he that darkness of feeling like I’m actually totally unloved and the incredible juxtaposition of those two emotions.

Which I imagine people that. Do a lot of public speaking. We will wrestle with maybe they can’t totally put their finger on it. But that sense of being to like the high of being beloved by all these people Yeah. They’re totally focused on Yeah. Totally interested in you. And then you leave the stage and they’re not at all,

Lance (2): Yeah.

Brian: You’re not important at all. Which could be part of why it drives us to act weird, as leaders. That where, that you’re getting that, that hit Yeah. Every week. Yeah. And then you need people to pay more attention to you or Yeah. Feed that during the week when you’re

Lance: not Yeah.

Yeah. That’s so true. It’s you go to a restaurant, you love the meal, but that doesn’t mean you wanna, you don’t live, you don’t wanna ha Yeah. You don’t live there. And that doesn’t mean you want to hang out with the chef. Necessarily. But that’s commodification then because it’s completely, it’s consumerism.

Absolutely.

Brian: It’s, which for that matter, you might as well just look at a screen.

Lance: Yeah. And is that not what’s happening? That’s also happening. I was talking with a friend yesterday that pastors are fairly large church and we’ve all heard these stories, but he said after covid, like only half the people.

Returned and he says, because they found out, man, it’s a little more convenient just to wake up and have pancakes and look at a screen.

Brian: You guys did a really good job with this live stream thing.

Lance: Yeah. Saying, Hey, I think you got this down. You got it. Yeah. And wow. Yeah. So I. Very interesting.

Hey Brian, man, I hope we can do this again, brother. Sure, my friend. I appreciate it. Thanks, man. Good conversation. Yeah,

Julie: thanks so much for listening. Listening to the Roy’s report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. And just a quick reminder that we are listeners supported, meaning we don’t have advertisers or major grants. We have you. So if you believe in what we’re doing, would you please consider donating to the Royce report?

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