Ask a Pastor Ep. 75 - Mega vs. Micro Churches
Welcome to Ask a Pastor, a podcast from Orchard Hill Church! Have you ever had a question about the Bible, Faith, or Christianity as a whole? Submit your question and one of our pastors will answer on the program. New episodes every Wednesday.
This episode Senior Pastor, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund, Strip District Campus Pastor, Joel Haldeman, and Director of Young Adult Ministry, Josiah Leuenberger, have a conversation about the differences between mega and micro churches and the pros and cons of each.
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Podcast Transcript
J. Haldeman: Hey welcome to the Ask a Pastor podcast. We're going to spend some time answering ... go in deep onto one question. If you have questions, please feel free to send them in and we'd love to get to those in the podcast. Today, or the day that this is airing is New Year's Day.
J. Leuenberger: Yes.
J. Haldeman: I'd like to hear from both of you, do you have New Year's Day traditions?
J. Leuenberger: Happy New Year fellas.
J. Haldeman: Happy New Year.
K. Bjorklund: To you as well. What's your tradition for New Year's Josiah?
J. Leuenberger: Oh man, when I was a kid, my parents always used to rent a movie and we would watch a movie together on New Year's Eve. The only movie that I remember specifically watching was White Fang and I remember crying because the dog died and I was just devastated.
J. Haldeman: Oh, spoiler alert.
J. Leuenberger: A real animal lover.
K. Bjorklund: Wow, there you go.
J. Leuenberger: Spoiler alert.
K. Bjorklund: How about you, Joel?
J. Haldeman: New Year's Day, I'm a sauerkraut fan-
J. Leuenberger: Ooh.
J. Haldeman: Is that a normal thing where you guys are from that you eat sauerkraut on New Year's Day?
K. Bjorklund: My wife's tried-
J. Haldeman: For luck.
K. Bjorklund: ... to introduce that to our family and my kids vetoed it.
J. Leuenberger: Some good probiotics in there, right?
J. Haldeman: That's right. Except, I'm pretty adamant about Silver Floss, which is in a can, so there's no probiotics. I think that's how that works.
J. Leuenberger: That sounds like expensive floss.
K. Bjorklund: It's something.
J. Haldeman: Other than that, no, we just hang out at home. How about you guys?
K. Bjorklund: We, for years, did the leave New Year's Eve, drive to a place and stay overnight and then ski on New Year's Day-
J. Leuenberger: Oh, wow.
K. Bjorklund: ... because people were gone. It was fun obviously just to take the kids and do that, but it was also part of my parenting strategy of not having them want to go out other places on New Year's Eve. It was provide something more exciting, rather than just sitting around and having them say, "I want to go over here, go there."
J. Leuenberger: Wise play.
K. Bjorklund: That was our thing. It became a tradition. It's kind of started to die with my wife's back. Skiing isn't really a thing right now, so I'm not sure what we're going to do this year. But that has been our tradition for probably about seven, eight years.
J. Haldeman: All right. That's a good tradition. No sleeping away hangovers, right?
J. Leuenberger: No. I don't think I've made it to midnight for probably five to eight years now. I'm getting old.
J. Haldeman: I'm probably with you on that. You guys stay up until midnight?
K. Bjorklund: Most of the time, sometimes not, depends on what all's going on.
J. Haldeman: When our kids were young especially we did not, but I think two years ago ... Last year we definitely did. Stayed up, saw fireworks and it was cool.
K. Bjorklund: What we've tried to do is be the first out on the ski hill, because everyone else is sleeping off their hangover. You get a couple hours of almost nobody on the slopes on a holiday. It was kind of fun.
J. Haldeman: Oh, wow. Good. All right. We got a question to go deep on for New Year's Day. We're talking about megachurches, microchurches and multi-site churches. We could probably spend a lot of time talking about this. I'd like to first hear, tell us about your sort of the size of the church that you went to that was your first experience of church. You want to go first?
J. Leuenberger: Yeah. Sure. I grew up in a pastor's home. My dad's a Presbyterian minister. Primarily in Western Pennsylvania, small towns. The majority of my growing up was in churches somewhere between 100 and 250, 300 people. I got to see a variety of church contexts. Really enjoyed growing up in those churches. The opportunity that I had in the smaller church is to really get to know people at a closer level. Growing up in a church where your dad's the pastor, you don't have much of a say on where you're going on a Sunday morning. I had a great experience growing up in the church. When my wife and I got married and we had the opportunity to choose churches for ourselves, we have chosen to be in some churches that were similar in size and other churches that were very different. We found all those different expressions of the church to be meaningful in their own way. How about you guys?
J. Haldeman: I grew up going to a church that was fairly big, 800 or so people. It had a school. That was just always normal for me. When I was in college, I was part of a house church for three years, which was an interesting experience. In Chicago, went to Willow Creek for a season. That was a Saturday night thing while at a church of about 100. I feel like I've been in a lot of those different sizes and all of them have been interesting and unique.
K. Bjorklund: Yeah. I had a lot of variety growing up as well. My parents did church, so there was a large church in there, what you'd probably call a megachurch. There was a medium-sized church and probably a smaller church and then there was some house church and then no church. We hit all the spectrum as I was growing up.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. Let's start here. If you were to give somebody a piece of advice on, I'm looking for a church, should I seek out a small church or a big church? What would you say to them?
K. Bjorklund: I don't know that there's a preferred answer to that. I think there's benefits to both opportunities. I wouldn't say the size of the church should be the driver. I would say you should be more driven by doctrine. I think a lot of times people look at churches at what are the services they provide and then they categorize them, either large has all kinds of services, small has better community, which by the way that's not necessarily true as a distinction. You can be in a small church that doesn't have great community. You can be in a big church that doesn't provide some of the same ministries or services that are important. I would say start with doctrine, start with mission. Those things are are like minded with the people who are already there. That's probably a more important driver, in my mind, than size.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. Yeah.
J. Leuenberger: Yeah. I think that with the whole big church versus small church conversation, starting off, the church is first of all the people of God gathered together. It's not primarily are we showing up to this big building, this small building, a big organization or a small organization. It's the gathering of these people who are saying, "We want to follow after God and live life together as a community based around a set of values that are biblical, looking to see what is the church meant to be about." We're a community where we show the world around us how the gospel changes things. God's grace in our life changes things for us. We're a community of people who want to support one another, who want to be on mission together. I think it's really those values, like you said, Kurt. It's the values that I would encourage people to look for. Community of people who say, "We want to base all that we do around God's values and being people who are centered around grace." And also people who just enjoy living life together.
J. Leuenberger: When you show up to a church and you're like, "Man, I don't really know that anyone noticed I'm here," that's a real bummer. Whether it's a small church or a big church. Being a part of a community where people really value relationships is part of the way in which we grow. I think it's something that's essential to me.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. Orchard Hills, obviously, a larger church, but in the Strip District we're a small campus. I'll often have people come on Sundays and they'll just their story of how they ended up there. They'll say they went to a bunch of churches or they came from another church and it just felt like it was too big to them. They like the experience of the small church. But I think you've made a really good point that the size is going to dictate how you feel, but not necessarily whether or not you're experiencing real community. When I think back to being in that house church, I would say my community was probably no different than it is today. I have the same level of deep relationships that are supportive. That size does create some sort of feeling.
K. Bjorklund: Community is more about what you invest than it is the size of the room. In other words, if you show up and you invest in people's lives, you're part of groups serving, you'll have community. If you don't, you won't, regardless of the size. The smaller size gives the illusion of community faster. You walk into a church that's smaller and you say, "Well, I saw these people here last week, I said hello, I know their name, now I feel more a sense of community." Whereas a large church, like Orchard Hill, Wexford, you can walk in and out and feel like you don't see the same people for multiple weeks. You can be more anonymous if you choose to be. There's pluses and minuses to both, but I think it's an illusion of community.
K. Bjorklund: I've had a chance, just over my life as a pastor ... The first church I pastored as a lead pastor it was about 100 people when I went there and it grew to be a large church by the time I was done. I had the chance to live in it as a church of 100, 200, 300, 600, 800 and so on. I feel like I understand the different sizes. When you get to be 200 people, you really don't know everybody there anyway. It's an illusion. 100 people, you can kind of know everybody, know who they are. At some point, that changes anyway and you have to get in a smaller group in order to have real community at some point regardless of the size of a church.
K. Bjorklund: Even in a house church, 20 people, are you really going to have deep conversation with all 20 people and know what's really happening in all of their lives? Probably not. You probably still need a smaller group. Even in something that small, I'm not sure that that's there. The hard part, from a church leadership standpoint is the assimilation process. What I found is about 300 people it became really hard to assimilate, compared to before that. Up until then, it was, hey, there's a new person, "Hey, I'm Kurt and have I introduced you to so and so" and "Hey, we have all these things going on."
K. Bjorklund: About 300, you had to have systems, you had to work at it in a whole different way to help people come in. It took then people wanting to assimilate, whereas before that, it just kind of happened. That's the advantage probably of saying, "I'm going to a smaller church" is you feel like I'm going to be known more quickly whereas in a bigger church you probably have to make some decision.
K. Bjorklund: There's some advantages to the bigger ... One thing I love at Orchard Hill Wexford is I'm always meeting new people who in many cases have been here for years and I think, "Wow, these are awesome people that I would love to spend time with." Sometimes in a small church you feel like, "Ah, I already had dinner with them, I know them." Whereas here, there's an endless group of people that I would love to get to know.
J. Leuenberger: I think that sometimes we can attach value to the model that we are familiar with. In a small church, it's easier to build familiarity with people. Like you said, sometimes that can give an illusion of depth to relationships where maybe we would feel like if we lost that we'd really be missing out. After we got married we moved to the state of Tennessee and we chose a church for ourselves and it was a church that we probably never would've seen ourselves at. We were shocked at how much we liked it. When we showed up there were about 75 people gathering. The pastor would stand in the middle of a circle of chairs and he would preach from the middle. We were like, "Oh man, this is going to be weird." But when showed up-
J. Haldeman: Was it?
J. Leuenberger: ... we were like, "Wow." It was cool to face people and to see faces when we were singing, to see faces when we were hearing the word. We really enjoyed it actually and we found in that small setting when you build familiarity if you're willing to take that extra step and actually make those acquaintances a relationship by spending some more time together and really going deeper in conversation that can be a real advantage. However, the challenge that we saw is that as the church grew in the time we were there over those three years it went from about 75 or 80 people, up to 400. People who had been there from the beginning started to become really frustrated.
J. Haldeman: Interesting.
J. Leuenberger: They're like, "Oh, this church ... We started on community and now we've sold out. Look at all these people." We all used to gather in and we all knew each other and now we have greeters, we have people who are standing at the door-
K. Bjorklund: 300. They had to get some systems in place and it didn't feel the same-
J. Leuenberger: It was totally-
K. Bjorklund: ... if it was organic.
J. Leuenberger: Yeah.
K. Bjorklund: Because all of a sudden you can't be as organic as you grow.
J. Leuenberger: There was more of an effort.
K. Bjorklund: Right.
J. Leuenberger: Because we had to, so the people who were new could feel welcomed and then they could be invited into relationships as well. It's a lot harder to do. The problem is is that some people attached a value to that form of community that they had experienced in the past instead of saying, "Hey, we're still a church that loves the gospel, we love one another, and we want to give everyone a place to belong." They thought, man, 75 was where it's at and now that we're at 400, oh man. If they didn't like 400 how are they going to feel walking into a church at 2000? I certainly don't think we're in the wrong direction being a church that is our size.
J. Haldeman: I think one of the challenges is that in a church of a few hundred you have this experience of you go, you experience a church, you make your decision about whether you're going to come back. If you decide to come back, it's not hard to get to know a couple of people and to remember a couple names and you feel like you can expand the circle of people that you know, like I know some people there. Then it feels like the next step into a life group or something where you're really experiencing community isn't that hard.
J. Haldeman: I think the challenge that we experience in large churches is that people have a hard time finding that sort of medium-sized community where someone knows me, I know a group of people, I know a person in the same profession as me. What we try to do is we try to put people straight from I'm new here into here's a life group of 12 people, go to their living room and share your secrets with them and that's just a hard transition. What advice do you give to people? How do you even start to be known before you're ready to jump into a group?
J. Leuenberger: Yeah. This is a big part of what my role is here at Orchard Hill, to help people find a place to connect in relationships. Because that's when people come into the church and they actually continue to participate in the life of the church rather than showing up to church as an event to become a part of the community. It's really about finding a place to build those relationships. When I meet someone who's new, I'm thinking about what do we have on the calendar that I can invite them to, what groups do we have going on that I can help them engage in? Not because I want to boost participation numbers, but because I want to help them find relationships with people who can get to know them, who can support them and encourage them and challenge them to grow wherever they are in their journey of faith.
J. Leuenberger: I think for most of us when we would talk about the things that have been most influential in our development spiritually, man, I've heard a lot of great sermons in my day, but I'm not like, "Man, I remember this one sermon, that what changed it all for me." When I think about the most influential moments in my faith, I think of people. I think of conversations. As much as I love to share messages and work on them, I know that as a minister I've got to help people connect in relationships and in community because that's oftentimes what makes the most impact on someone in their spiritual development.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. Yeah. In a life group, we're trying to get maybe a dozen or so people that are in a group together. You're a life stage pastor, so what's the number that you'd put on, the number that you'd put on the number of people that are in the life stage that you're trying to reach-
J. Leuenberger: Yeah. In a specific group?
J. Haldeman: ... that are involved in your group, your life stage?
J. Leuenberger: Yeah. My life stage, I've got about 200 people who are really engaged. For us, what we think about when we talk about engagement, what I'm saying is this person has said, "Man, I'm really here, I'm participating, this is my community." That means they're serving in one way or they're involved in a life group, bible study, or some sort of ministry where it requires a regular participation in the community life. When it comes to young adults, oftentimes those are people who move here to the city of Pittsburgh for jobs, fresh out of college or maybe they've moved here for a job, second job out of school and they feel like I'm in this big city, I don't really know anyone. I want to make friends. Faith has always been a part of my life. I'm here because I want to grow and because I want to find community. We also find a lot of people here at Orchard Hill who are young couples who are looking to get to know other couples.
J. Leuenberger: It can be an intimidating thing to graduate from college and you feel like up until this point, my life has been mapped out before me. I always knew what the next step would be. You graduate and you're like, "Okay, now I'm an adult, what do I do? Do I just show up to work every day? Where am I going to make friends? What are some goals that I have to shoot for?" I'm really grateful, we get a lot of people here at Orchard Hill who have come here trying to answer those questions.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. Yeah. They meet another accountant and they can talk together about how exciting Excel is.
J. Leuenberger: Man, seriously, we have a life group of young adults here that is 50%, two-thirds accountants.
K. Bjorklund: There you go.
J. Leuenberger: A real affinity group.
J. Haldeman: That sounds like a really boring group.
K. Bjorklund: There's a couple things here that strike me. One is I think it's important that any church community does its best to help people connect. But there's also an organic nature to that that you can't totally facilitate or force. What I mean by that is at some level it becomes somebody's own decision about how much am I going to invest. You either choose to invest somewhere or you don't. If you choose to invest, you'll end up with community. If you don't, you won't. It's almost that easy. I think certainly from a church leadership standpoint, we want to do everything we can to facilitate engagement and people being there. But if somebody chooses not to, then that will be their choice and that happens in all size churches again.
J. Haldeman: That's true.
K. Bjorklund: You see it in small churches where people say, "Hey, I just come to the service, I like it, that's what I do." You see it in a large church. For some people, that's okay. They might feel like they have enough community at other places. They may say, "That's my active worship, that's what I do." But for other people there is that. I guess what I'm saying is it's you can structure it, but there's an organic side to it, but it really is a choice that each person makes.
J. Leuenberger: I don't know what you guys think about this, but sometimes when it comes to the large church small church conversation, I think it's easy for people in either side church when you're in a leadership position to say, "Man, I'm in a small church." Wouldn't it be awesome if I had a staff the size of a large church and I could have someone who just was full-time paid to focus on youth or music or plugging people into life groups, things like that. Oh, wow, what if we could produce this level of excellent in our worship arts. Then I think, sometimes in large churches, we can think to ourselves, man, wouldn't it be nice to just have this simple church.
J. Haldeman: If I didn't have to deal with all these people?
J. Leuenberger: Yes. Just the layers of complexity.
J. Haldeman: Right.
J. Leuenberger: I think it's easy on either side to just look at the challenges that you're experiencing and the things that might come a little bit more readily in a church of a different size and just feel like the grass is a little greener on the other side.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. Yeah.
J. Leuenberger: I heard Matt Chandler say once, "If I ever leave my church" ... Matt Chandler is a large church, The Village Church pastor. He said, "If I ever leave my church, it's not going to be because I had some moral fallout, it's going to be because I just thought to myself, "Man, wouldn't it be nice to pastor a church of a hundred people and just know what was going on in people's lives?" Because as someone who's in a leadership role, you do feel a level of concern and responsibility and care for the people that you serve. Man, it can just be complex keeping track of everyone.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good point.
K. Bjorklund: Joel, what do you see as the dangers of the whole house church movement? Are there dangers? Is that a positive movement?
J. Haldeman: Yeah.
K. Bjorklund: Now they call it microchurch. It's certainly not new. It's been going on for generations where people say, "Let's gather, get rid of paid clergy, we'll all be volunteers, we'll meet in a house. There's no overhead, no structure. We just get around. I'll share the word, sing a little bit, do life together and call it good." What do you see is positive, negative of that?
J. Haldeman: I think there's a sense in which the church in many ways grew in people's houses. That was a significant part of the early church anyway. They weren't all house churches, but that was definitely a part of it. I think, also, there's this mindset when you're in it that we are more biblical because the church that met in this person's house is what it says, the end of some of the Epistles, right? We're doing church the right way. We're not spending money on a building. Any time you have a chip on your shoulder in terms of how you're doing church I think is a problem. Thinking back to my experience there was some really great things about it. I think that having structure creates accountability, that's where I have a little bit of a concern.
J. Haldeman: Certainly we've read about places like China where the church has grown almost exclusively through house churches. I would say it probably has to happen that way. Here, if there was a house church movement, I would say it would be really appropriate for them to be networked in some way, for them to be some sort of oversight, to have multiple elders. I guess those would be my concerns.
K. Bjorklund: Josiah, what do you see?
J. Leuenberger: I think something that's really nice about a house church is it's a pretty low bar for someone to come if they're not churched. If I'm inviting a friend of mine who doesn't know anything about Christian faith over to my house for dinner and then I have some of my other Christian friends over and we transition into a time of bible study or something, my friend who's not a believer could feel a little bit more comfortable in a home environment than they would coming into a church building. I see that as an advantage.
J. Leuenberger: But what I would really miss, if my only church involvement was a house church, is being in community with people who are totally different from me. I love being in a church where I'm talking with people and I'm like, "Man, if we weren't in this place together, there's no way our paths would cross." That happens all the time here at Orchard Hill. We have people here from all over the world, all different parts of the city. People from blue collar professions, white collar, everywhere in between. It's really a meaningful thing to be able to look around a room and say, "What do we have in common, except for Jesus Christ?" Probably nothing. But what's more important than the bond that we have in Jesus Christ?
J. Leuenberger: I think my concern about house churches is that people would just gather together with people are like them. It would be a get together of friends who shared faith, rather than a place where people who are coming from all over, different backgrounds are united together as one in Jesus because of what he has done. Can that be done in a house church? I think there has to be a way, but like we said, there are different challenges for every form of church and I think there are certainly challenges to the house church model.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. My other concern is just about what happens to preaching in that setting. There is a difference between preaching and sharing. My experience was it was exclusively sharing, bible study leading, which is just different than preaching. Preaching carries with it some sort of authority, more pre-planning. Just in addition to that, things can get real weird just through groupthink. Just having a group of people that are making decisions together, having authority that is people that are carefully selected, that are seeing a bigger context [inaudible 00:26:26]. I just see some value in that.
K. Bjorklund: Yeah. I would echo those things. I think there is one other thing that would be a concern for me and certainly there are outliers and times when this may not be the case. Again, back to the concern about doctrine for me. You would expect me and maybe the three of us to all say this because of seminary education. I think having a seminary-trained pastor is of value for a church community and to have all lay people, not that lay people can't interpret the Bible, not that there aren't lay people who would necessarily interpret it better or that there aren't seminary-trained people who get it wrong. I'm not saying that. I think the value of that is still something that's worthwhile and then elders and accountability.
K. Bjorklund: The benefits of a house church all exist in a church small group ministry. But, in that context, you have doctrinal oversight, you generally will have a seminary-trained pastor, if the church believes in that. Maybe the way to think about it is this. If you were sick, you might be able to go to somebody who self studied as a doctor, never went to medical school and they might give you better advice than somebody who went to medical school. But more times than not, you want to go see somebody who went through the training. Doesn't mean that they have it nailed down. They might give you the wrong advice, wrong treatment. But there's a better chance that there's somebody who studied it deeply and just having worked through the seminary education there is something to the rigor of that study that prepares somebody to help spot err and to guide correctly.
K. Bjorklund: That would be a concern I would have with the house church, microchurch movement of just saying, "We just do our own thing. We've got our own decisions. There is no doctrine, no stated authority, in terms of teaching with that." Again, I think you can get all the benefits of a house church thing through a church small group ministry.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk multi-site now because previously it was large church or small church, now it's one church that is both large and small. The idea behind the multi-site movement is a church that grows big sometimes. Grows big, has some resources in terms of figuring out their model of ministry, staffing, all those sorts of things can then take some of their resources and put it someplace and say, "Let's grow an expression of the church there" which is what we've been playing with for the past five or six years, six years. My question then is this. What makes a church a church? What are some of the bare minimums? Even think about house church. When does a group of people that are having a Bible study together become a church?
J. Leuenberger: You know, I really appreciate this movement that has developed in the last decade or so of churches multiplying. Whether through church planting or adding multi-sites. It's really cool to see churches popping up in parts of the city where they weren't previously because there are churches in our city who might have the resources to be able to say, "Let's extend our mission and multiply ourselves, our DNA, our mission, into a place in the city that's not being reached." It's really cool. We've done that in two different locations and I know that there are some other great churches in our city who have done the same. I think that we see God honoring worship taking place, the preaching, teaching of the word. We see community opportunities where people can come into relationships, where they can be challenged with opportunities to understand who God is wherever they are in their faith journey and take steps of maturity and also be equipped to serve.
J. Leuenberger: When we see those things taking place, I'm really eager to see people come and be a part. I know that we're always looking for more opportunities where we can allow that to come together in Pittsburgh.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. Yeah.
K. Bjorklund: What do you see as somebody who's obviously living inside the world of that?
J. Haldeman: I'm a fan of how we do it. I think it's good. The way we say is we are one church, Orchard Hill Church in multiple locations. Orchard Hill Strip District is not a church that's different form Orchard Hill Wexford, we're one church. I think that's the right way to do it. But for the sake of having an interesting conversation here, I think that it's just a semantics game to say we're one organization, yes. But the question that I'm getting at here is what makes a church a church? If the apostle Paul walked into our Butler County church one Sunday and Brady explained to him we're one church along with this church in Wexford and this church in the Strip District, I feel like his head would explode and he'd say, "You do communion, you have preaching, there's at least one elder that's here, you're a church," right? Do you disagree with that or ...
K. Bjorklund: No.
J. Haldeman: Yeah.
K. Bjorklund: I didn't necessarily make that ... At some point it is semantic because-
J. Haldeman: Right.
K. Bjorklund: I think multi-site done well, your location should end up being a church, the only difference is it's tied probably. But I think if your locations don't pass the test of church, which if you go back to the Reformers and some people they'd say it's the right administration of communion, church discipline, not just communion, the sacraments, faithful teaching of the word, some of those things. Yeah, that should all be there. I guess I'm not sure exactly where. Probably, you're right, it goes to the house church thing. Do you need multiple elders that are recognized? Is that part of it?
K. Bjorklund: The issue with multi-site, if we did multi-site and had no video feed of any teaching, you wouldn't even question the whole thing, even though we're tied together by governance. It really comes down in many ways to video teaching and how much is needed. I really wasn't a fan of the idea of video teaching when this whole thing started because it always felt arrogant to me. It was like this person's so good that nobody else can deliver a message in any other location. What we've seen, as we started to go, is that there's something about the teaching that does tie a church together having the same voice that if you don't have that, at some point then you really aren't the same church.
K. Bjorklund: The other thing that's interesting and I can say this from years of having taught. When you're in a small church and even a medium-sized church, you know so many people and their stories and there's a beauty to that, but there's also a hindrance to that in teaching and preaching. Because when you stand up to teach, if you've sat with somebody this week ... I was just thinking about something and I even want to be careful how I say it right now. Because you sit with somebody, you know the story and then you're teaching on something five weeks later that has it and you see the person sitting there. You have to be aware that they don't feel like you're standing there taking a shot at them from the pulpit, which is legitimate. I think there's something in the video that actually allows people, especially in a smaller church at times, to receive a more direct challenge. That sometimes when you're the site pastor or the on-site, it's harder to do.
K. Bjorklund: Now, there's also a beauty that and that's why I think in some ways our model is ideal because there's a sense in which you know the people in the Strip District, Brady knows the people in Butler County. I know some of the people here. I know some of the people here. There's a chance to do both hand with that. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense to everybody, but there is something to that-
J. Haldeman: Oh, sure.
K. Bjorklund: ... that is healthy. I think what we've seen, not just at our church, but nationally, even regionally is that a lot of times people like that I have somebody who cares for me, but isn't always the person delivering the message in that moment. I want to hear from that person, but I also want a little distance. When you're in a smaller church, there's no distance. You talk about something, everybody's sitting there going, "I wonder if he's referring to that person over there." That's where big actually sometimes feels better.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. When we think about the megachurch thing that happened in the what '70's, '80's when it all began, it seems like the maybe systemic conflict that came out of that was turning church into this consumer sort of thing. Churches became driven around just thinking these people are consumers, how do we give them what we want? When I think about the multi-site model, the thing that concerns me most thinking systemically, and I've already expressed this to you, is that instead of ... You look at church with 12 campuses. Instead of 12 church planners that are developing a gift of preaching, you have one guy who's already good at preaching who's just preaching to a larger crowd and we're not developing preachers. We're not developing pastors to do some of the stuff that is farmed to the central services.
J. Haldeman: I do appreciate our system for doing this where our campus pastors at this point are on 25, 33% of the time. It's not a load that's overwhelming so that we can spend time meeting people, doing the stuff that we need to grow a small church, but also still be developed in ways that are helpful.
J. Leuenberger: I really appreciate that about Orchard Hill as a church. Coming here, I was really surprised about how many times Kurt gave me opportunities to preach. I was like, "Man, like, you're really generous with those slots." That's just been something that I've really appreciated because it's given me those opportunities to develop and I see that that's true for a lot of our staff. That's a choice that is made here. That's really cool, because in a big church, like you said, it can become a consumer mentally. I know there are a lot of people who would say, "Oh, I come to this church because I love Kurt's teaching" and rightly so. But I also appreciate that this is a church that values developing leaders for the future and so that's a part of what we value here.
J. Leuenberger: The whole consumer culture thing is something that I think about a lot and it's something that I feel pretty passionately about. People can come into the church and say, "What is this place going to do for me?" I think that part of our role as pastors is to recognize, you know what? The fact that people would come to this church as a consumer that's actually a good thing. I'm glad that they're going somewhere-
J. Haldeman: Interesting.
J. Leuenberger: ... and they're taking steps to learn. However, part of our role as leaders is to lead them to think bigger about what church is about and what their life could be like if they showed up instead of saying, "I'm here for myself to see what I can get." To bring them to a point where they would see the beauty of the gospel enough to say, "Man, my life would really take on a whole new level of meaning if I thought about what I could give to this community." Oftentimes, people really grow in their faith in a whole new way and even come to believe for the first time when they decide I'm going to start participating in the mission, rather than just showing up as a consumer.
J. Haldeman: Yeah.
K. Bjorklund: It's a false dichotomy. What you hear a lot of times is people who are in smaller churches say, "Hey, we're missional." Big churches are attractional. Attractional bad, missional good, that kind of thing. It's just not true. Because anywhere where you have a large church that's attractional, you have a ton of people who are incredibly missional. Who have been for a long time and continue to be or you can't function as a large church that's attractional. Anywhere you have any church you have people who are consumers and people who are part of that process. It's just a false dichotomy to say it's one or the other in terms of how church works. You can have a church of 50 people and half the people are consumers saying, "What are you doing for me?" You can have a church of two people and somebody can be a consumer.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:39:53].
J. Leuenberger: Don't we want to attract as many people as we can-
K. Bjorklund: Right.
J. Leuenberger: ... so we can lead them to faith-
K. Bjorklund: It's part of the mission-
J. Leuenberger: ... grow them and equip them to be-
K. Bjorklund: ... at the end of the day.
J. Leuenberger: ... missional.
K. Bjorklund: That's right. It all runs together. Yeah.
J. Haldeman: All right. We need some rapid fire questions.
J. Leuenberger: Good stuff.
J. Haldeman: All right. Here we go. Josiah, you get to go first.
J. Leuenberger: Yes.
J. Haldeman: Finish this sentence. The world would be a better place if everybody just ...
J. Leuenberger: Drank more coffee.
J. Haldeman: Kurt?
K. Bjorklund: Drank more water.
J. Haldeman: Oh. I was going to say gave $2.75 to Wikipedia, because I'm so sick of those banners.
J. Leuenberger: Now I want to say exercise, because I'm a big exercise guy.
J. Haldeman: Yeah?
J. Leuenberger: Yeah. I love to workout. I love the way that it helps me de-stress and have a clear mind.
J. Haldeman: All right. I'm feeling guilty-
J. Leuenberger: Changed your answer.
J. Haldeman: My real answer to that was live within our means.
J. Leuenberger: That's a whole different level of wisdom than I brought to the table, Joel.
J. Haldeman: All right, Kurt, this one's to you. New Year's resolutions, should people make them?
K. Bjorklund: If it helps them, sure. If they want to. I don't care. Make them, don't make them.
J. Haldeman: Have you ever had a successful New Year's resolution?
K. Bjorklund: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a fine time to reflect on your life and say what changes do I want to make and try to be intentional about stuff. I do that, not just at New Year's, but often. It leads to being more intentional. Josiah just mentioned exercise. I do it around family time. I try to just assess how my investing in my own marriage and my kids. Sometimes it leads to good actions. I've probably never kept anything perfectly. There's a piece of me that says, "Why try if you think you're going to fail." But then there's another piece that says, "Of course you want to improve your life." I think if somebody finds it helpful, great. If somebody says, "I don't want any part of it, that's good." The real issue is are you living intentionally? Are you doing what you want to do?
K. Bjorklund: The danger, I think, in our culture is that we get run by the tyranny of what is in front of us. Sometimes that's just I have to go to work, I have to shop, I have to do this project, I need to get the kids here, there. You get done with your day and you say, "Wow, I didn't exercise. I didn't spend time with my spouse. I didn't pursue God at all. I didn't serve anybody. I didn't have a meaningful conversation with a friend. I didn't do anything that was joyful. I didn't spend any time having a heart to heart with any of my kids." Just right there, you have a huge to-do list, which is overwhelming, but if you're not intentional.
K. Bjorklund: I think what's even more damaging is so many people are so tired at the end of the day that what is default is let me see what I can watch.
J. Haldeman: That's right.
K. Bjorklund: Binge watching has actually made that worse because now you feel more intentional in your watching than it used to be when it was like oh, there's nothing on. Now it's like, oh, I can find something that's really pretty good that I want to watch that feels good. It's fine to binge watch too, but when you have all these other priorities you can just find yourself going through a month of life and before you know it you haven't done the things that are most important. That's a long answer to a rapid fire question.
J. Haldeman: There's more content that we can enjoy than we'll ever possibly have time to enjoy.
K. Bjorklund: Absolutely.
J. Haldeman: You got to be willing to say, "I'm going to be intentional here." What about you any good New Year's resolutions that you've kept or broken?
J. Leuenberger: Yeah. I love the new year as a time to refocus. I think the mistake that we culturally often make, I know I can make this mistake personally, is my New Year's resolutions are just focused on self. I love to encourage people to make a New Year's resolution focused on God and others. This year, I wouldn't have called it a resolution, but myself and two buddies made a commitment at the start of this year that every morning, five days a week we would read the same chapter of scripture and then we would take a picture of it with our phones and text it out to one another with a-
J. Haldeman: Oh, nice.
J. Leuenberger: ... little thought that stuck out to us. It has been a game changer for my consistency and my devotional life. Oftentimes I've really buckled down, but we all have periods of inconsistency. But when there are three of us who are all committed to keeping each other accountable in that way, man, it's just helpful. It's been really life giving. It's totally deep in those relationships and my walk with God. I'm really grateful that we made that commitment together. We're going to keep that going, round two, 2020.
J. Haldeman: That's awesome. That's really cool.
J. Leuenberger: Yeah. It's been cool.
K. Bjorklund: How about you? What do you think about that?
J. Haldeman: You know, I read a book on timing a couple years ago or a year ago and it just talks about how important it is to look at the timing in starting a job, ending a job, starting the year, all these sorts of things and taking advantage of those. I've always made a habit of just spending some time reflecting. We do a Strip District men's retreat every year and I think it's so powerful just to give people an opportunity to step back and evaluate their spiritual life. Yeah. I've always made, but I might've not always kept them. I've generally found it helpful to me. The religious part of me that's very task driven always wants to prove myself through them. Sometimes it's refreshing to look back and say, "I didn't keep that goal." And that's okay.
K. Bjorklund: Yeah. It's where spiritual life and exercise are good analogies because most people at some point in their life decide to exercise somehow. Some people go through life, I think you might be one of them, who just naturally doesn't have to exercise.
J. Leuenberger: Most of us are jealous [crosstalk 00:46:13].
K. Bjorklund: Because, I mean, the man eats ice cream every night, beer every night, looks like that. Maybe not every night.
J. Haldeman: Not every night.
K. Bjorklund: For most of us we say, "Oh, you know, I need to exercise." There are days I get up and it's like, "I can't wait to exercise, I look forward to it." And then there are days where you say, "I don't want to do that today, I want to skip it." But it's the discipline of it that is not ... It's not legalistic, it's I want the benefits and the good things that come from it. It's in the discipline that you actually find what it is you're looking for. We get that with exercise, but when it's spiritual we tend to think, "Oh, that's legalistic, I shouldn't have to ever feel it should" or this or that. The truth is, like Josiah's morning devotion discipline there's probably mornings where you think, "I would rather skip it" and-
J. Leuenberger: Just stay on my Google News.
K. Bjorklund: ... get about my way and yet that discipline turns out to be where you find connection in life. I think that's true with all disciplines.
J. Haldeman: Yeah. That's good. I did, when I was doing student ministry, go 365 days in a row of eating ice cream and taking a picture and cataloging it on Instagram [crosstalk 00:47:32].
K. Bjorklund: I did not know that.
J. Haldeman: I missed one day. I was out of the country.
J. Leuenberger: What an impressive streak.
K. Bjorklund: That is.
J. Haldeman: It wasn't available.
K. Bjorklund: That's how I knew you did so much ice cream. I didn't realize you did it 365-
J. Haldeman: Oh, yeah.
K. Bjorklund: Literally.
J. Leuenberger: I admire your commitment.
J. Haldeman: And I have picture evidence of them. All right. That's all we got. Send your questions to askapastor@orchardhillchurch.com. We'd love to either dive deep or throw it into the rapid fire and get some questions answered.
J. Leuenberger: Thanks guys.
