In this episode we chat with Dave Wells about what he'd like to see in his next term as General Superintendent. He lays out a vision that focuses on engaging younger leaders while increasing the urgency of focusing on discipleship. He shares about the importance the PAOC needs for agility and being willing to make the right changes for the future. As always, you hear his heart for people far from God and how he daily lives that out. Stay right to the end, so much rich wisdom and insight is shared all the way through!
In this episode we chat with Dave Wells about what he'd like to see in his next term as General Superintendent. He lays out a vision that focuses on engaging younger leaders while increasing the urgency of focusing on discipleship. He shares about the importance the PAOC needs for agility and being willing to make the right changes for the future. As always, you hear his heart for people far from God and how he daily lives that out. Stay right to the end, so much rich wisdom and insight is shared all the way through!
Transcript of Podcast by Multiply Network
Created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-
making communities across Canada
September 13, 2020 – David Wells
Paul Fraser: Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast, a podcast created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-making communities across Canada.
Hi there. Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast. My name is Paul Fraser. I’m so glad you jumped on today. Before I get to the intro for our interview today, I want to make an opportunity available to leaders out there that might be interested in thinking through the future of church. At the Multiply Network we started a Reimagine Cohort and we’re inviting leaders to jump on once a month to have a conversation about what the future looks like. If that’s at all interesting to you hit us up on social media; Twitter and Instagram@paocmultiply, or on our Facebook page: paocmultiplynetwork and we’ll be sure to send you the details of the next call.
I’m really excited to talk with David Wells, General Superintendent of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada and we talk through the next four years. You’re going to love what is in his heart. As I re-listened to this podcast I was encouraged again as he’s talking through change, thinking through flexibility and adaptability and bringing our Movement back to a place focusing on discipleship. And for those of you who know Dave, you know that he doesn’t just preach it. He and his wife Sue live it out.
In a season with so much uncertainty we want to hear from our leaders, and here’s our leader David Wells, coming up right now.
Paul Wells:
Q. Hi Dave. Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast.
David Wells:
A. Great to be back with you, Paul and being able to talk about some important things that are going on right now.
Q. That’s it. We’re going to jump right into it. There’s no fooling around with our General Superintendent. So we’re going to jump in.
Obviously you’re on holidays, so first of all thanks for taking time to do this and carve out just a few moments for us. You are travelling across Canada with Sue in the car. But before you were travelling across Canada you were hearing things from leaders going through Covid, with all the shifts and changes that are happening, what are you hearing these days from the leaders across Canada? Maybe give us a thirty thousand foot picture, as I know you are very much concerned and in contact with many of them.
A. It’s a privilege to lead leaders and to serve leaders. There is such a diversity across the country. Even travelling across the country I’m reminded of the diverse contexts that our people serve in, the diverse ministries and churches that are all engaging this from different actions. You know, take our campus ministry people just now getting ready to engage in a different way than when they can be fully on campus and running small groups and so on. Of course local churches are still figuring out about re-gathering, how they do that. So this weekend I’ll be with a church that has started to re-gather, but of course keeping their online presence. The following weekend I’ll be with a church that has gone to drive-in church the whole summer and actually seen a fairly high rate of return of people showing up in a little bit more of a rural setting than the one I’ll be in this Saturday. So knowing the diversity of the contexts, the main messages are that people are recognizing the complexity that they are dealing with and they are trying to seek out in their own setting what is the best way to navigate this moving forward. They are doing that while they’re even feeling personally stressed. They are having to learn new skills, whether it’s online skills or how to be an at-home parent, or how to live with our spouse twenty-four hours a day. (Laughter) So you cannot deny the stressors that are there and I’m glad that a lot of our support ministries, Districts, etc., have moved to strengthen and support pastors stress-related.
I’m finding churches that are successful in navigating this are doing the very same thing. They have really enhanced their congregational contact and connection. Quite frankly I think some of them started off by wanting to make sure the money didn’t disappear and they wanted to keep their budgets up.
Q. Totally.
A. They also wanted to stay connected with their congregational members. I think it has been a phenomenal learning experience about really how to reconnect on a pastoral level.
Q. Yes.
A. And where people are really at. You know, churches vary in size and so on, but some of our leaders would recognize that they got, you know, pretty platform based. They were pretty focused on the Sunday lens and that’s all good and right. But they have found themselves now recognizing that they are disconnected a bit from a lot of what real life is and maybe got an inaccurate picture of even where our people are at relative to their walk with Jesus, their discipleship. So there’s a realism that has hit everybody.
The other thing I think leaders are experiencing and that I’m experiencing is we’ve had the privilege of serving in this role for twelve years; that’s three terms. Well, all of a sudden the fourth term doesn’t look like the previous three.
Q. Right.
A. So it’s like ---
I’ve got no guarantees that I’ll be doing in the spring of 2021 what I did in the spring of 2019. I’ve got no guarantees about what circle of leaders I’ll be meeting with face-to-face and who I’ll be Zooming with and therefore what you can accomplish and what you can’t accomplish. We’re all flexing, you know. We get wisdom for the journey but the fact of the matter is that uncertainty contributes to times of stress and I think some people wonder at times who am I leading? (Laughter)
Q. Yes.
A. Because when you can’t see people quite the way you used to see them, it’s an interesting day. So we’ve had to be sure that the support systems are there, the resources are there. I appreciate what you’re doing and so many others are doing, just to let people know, leaders know, they are not alone. We’re in this together. We are elbow-to-elbow. And even just hearing that we’re all experiencing the same kind of emotions, challenges and even practical things going on in our lives whether you are a general superintendent or running the Multiply Network or pastoring in a rural or city setting, we’re in this together.
Q. And that’s really important. I was talking with you offline about Dr. Henry Cloud, who some may know out there. He said it is so important for us to hear from one another and to hear from our leadership. So I’m looking forward to hearing some of the things that you are looking forward to in this next term and some of the things we’re going to focus on.
Before we do that, any advice for leaders on how to navigate this change, how to look at these opportunities as not obstacles and maybe some of the things you’re doing to help keep a good sense about you, good thinking, good practices in your everyday life?
A. It’s interesting you used the word navigate. On my little handwritten notes the first word I’ve got is navigate. I guess I’m thinking along the terms of, you know, being out sailing and responding to the winds and tacking to what is the current circumstances. I do encourage leaders that we need to navigate the challenges.
Q. Right.
A. One thing about navigating the challenges is by and large resist over-reacting. Respond, yes, but some leaders are losing their way because they are over-reacting. Some are over-reacting to social media on some of the polarity issues that are going on and so on. I see the leaders that are really keeping their ship, their church, their ministries sailing forward, they are tacking a course where they are not in denial but they are navigating the challenges. They are realizing also that those challenges have opportunities. They are recognizing the opportunities.
We did that a bit right at the beginning of course when everyone recognized they needed to go online or connect by other means, enhanced congregational contact and people found out man, if you just go wander around in your neighbourhood and talk to neighbours, people you never met before, there were whole new opportunities. There are opportunities for community engagement. So recognizing the opportunities and responding to them, I mean, that brings a whole even enthusiasm and life that otherwise you don’t experience if you’re just in the vortex of the existing church and doing what you have always done.
Q. Yes.
A. Here’s a key thing. Stay anchored to the main things. That goes opposite of the sailing picture but it is still nautical language, you know. I found myself humming stuff like We have an anchor, you know, some older songs I know a lot of those listening might not know. On Christ the solid rock I stand. But this has been a season to drive us back to main things and the main things about the church, the main things about our own lives.
Q. Yes.
A. Obviously the number one anchor is be intimate with the Father. Use the opportunity, the time, to re-engage scripture in a deeper way. Take on areas of study that have been waiting for you. Engage scriptures you haven’t engaged for a while. But in all of it sense the intimacy of God who wants to meet us. When Jesus was on the planet and you read the gospels, he was always dealing with uncertain times. He was dealing with opposition. He had his challenges. He certainly recognized the Kingdom opportunities that were all around him. Nonetheless he responded to them. But he also anchored himself. He took the time to get alone and it’s just amazing to read the gospels and add up the number of times before Jesus was going to launch into new exploits or make important decisions or just to spend time with key people, he had no problem with solitude. He had no problem with taking some time alone with the Father. I think we’ve really got to re-emphasize that, Paul. Because in the vortex of the existing church pre-Covid a lot of leaders will be honest now and say that was slipping.
Q. Yes.
A. So anchoring to main things.
Q. That’s a really good thought. We even at International Office have had to shift just like every other office and every other organization and, depending on the province you’re in, there are different health standards and things you can do. But one of the things we did was we went to our first ever fully online General Conference. I thought that was a really great thing that we pivoted to.
And in that conference you were elected to four more years. So congratulations on that. Now what are some of the things you are looking to focus on in this next term?
A. Well, I’m going to navigate the challenges. (Laughter) That’s what we did even with General Conference to go fully online.
Q. So see Answer No. 1. That’s what we’re going to do. We’ll just replay this part.
A. Yes. (Laughter) Well, let me say that I’ve clearly understood in the role of a national and sometimes even international leader that you do have to be about the main things. Your voice is going to get muted if you’re about every little trivial item out there. We really are, I think, recapturing the call. Covid has helped but we need to become a disciple-making Movement. We have to be about that main thing, about what does that look like in our current context yes, but how do we ensure that we are a disciple-making Movement. I’ve done some communication recently about I understand that we have some characteristics of course of being a denomination because we’re going to keep doing the structural stuff well, accountability to the government and all that kind of stuff.
But we also have always prided ourselves on being a Fellowship, a family, and we’ve tried to honour that by even how we have introduced change and had family conversations and deal with issues about our vitality, whether in churches or in our disciple-making other areas, theology. So those aren’t going to go away because they are main things. They are what the Spirit speaks to the church about, whether it was in the time of Jesus’ launching the church, or a hundred years later at the end of the book of Revelation. His Spirit is still speaking about those issues.
But I think we’re all in this next four years going to need to live that out in changing contexts and understand how do you go about starting with a Canadian who doesn’t know Jesus from Justin Trudeau – I have met a number of them in my neighbourhood just over the last few months I haven’t met before. I wandered the neighbourhood with my wife. We go out for our walks and our bike rides. And then we get invited to the community outdoor physically-distanced Friday night parties. You get talking to people and you begin to hear their stories and get their background. They want to find out who you are. You see the somewhat blank looks and wondering if they can even trust you and try to find common ground. I mean, play that over and over again Paul and disciple-making ---
One friend cautioned me about even using the word anymore just last week in a conversation in BC because of the concern that it has totally lost its meaning. I would prefer we recapture the meaning. But the bottom line is it is about taking somebody who doesn’t know Jesus and there’s variations on a theme about how much awareness people do or don’t have all across Canada. They are coming from different contexts, different cultures. But what does it look like for that individual to move from that party on a Friday night on the street corner where really it's a meaningful time for them out there, holding their beer, visiting with friends. Can I go get you one? All that. That’s how much I know them. What’s it going to take knowing that based on the conversations the only other person that has been navigating their faith journey with them up to that point is the Holy Spirit. Right?
Do you catch what I’m saying?
Q. No, I don’t.
A. That might not be totally accurate. There could well have been other influences. There could have been people praying for them. And I think that is what they are being driven back to. I’m given the next four years and in doing that especially leaning young, helping younger leaders and championing younger leaders who get that we’ve got to be engaged with real Canadians ---
Q. Yes.
A. Certainly they would be aware of that, most of them. How do we provide for them a Movement. Yes, family. Yes, a denomination. But in the end the danger of a family is what has happened in a lot of our churches and why we were plateauing and declining is family gets comfortable. Family gets to be about preferences, being around the table with ourselves. Your worship can turn that way. It’s about ourselves. Your church programming. We began to look at literally the hundreds of churches that couldn’t report anyone coming to living faith. This season demands that we address that, as we have been. Thank God for you and the Multiply Network. Thank God for the Vitalization Network and the District engagement in it. But in the end it is going to get down to real people like Susan and I living on our street in Burlington and a whole Movement of people capturing what it looks like to be like Jesus.
So how do we equip, like the scriptures encourage us, how do we do the life of discipleship rather than talk about the life of discipleship? How do we lead people the way Jesus led? So he ended up with disciples because he actually led them. He lived with them. It’s a relationally based process. You cannot take the relationship component out of discipleship.
So wondering what that looks like and then see people come to living faith, genuinely the lights come on and respond to Jesus. I’ll keep leading that way.
Q. I was just going to say that so fits with our mission statement. One of the things I feel the Lord bringing me back to is our PAOC Mission Statement: To glorify God by practicing and proclaiming the gospel. We’re making disciples, to glorify God by making disciples by practicing and proclaiming the gospel. That to me has to be a rally cry now. That has to be what we filter everything through, where we evaluate our ---
Because right now, you know, I was just talking with leaders, we are doing this Reimagine Cohort, thinking about the future of the church. And it’s like one of the things we’re saying is everything, I mean everything, is up for debate, including Sunday morning gatherings. Like we’re at a stage ---
Let’s overlay the filter of disciple-making, you know, over everything we do. And if this doesn’t make disciples – I’m not suggesting Sunday mornings don’t make disciples because I think it is part of the process – but that can’t be the whole process. So what are our discipleship pathways? One of the questions I think we would all say we give a nod, like who is going to say that we shouldn’t make disciples. It’s like grandmas and apple pie. We like those things.
But are we doing enough to make disciples?
A. Well, clearly we haven’t been. I think us Pentecostals especially always live with a form of healthy dissatisfaction. We know the ideal and then we face realities. Hopefully we don’t practice denial, but we see the gap and then we ask ourselves what is the next obedient step to close the gap? So, the reality is we have a God-given opportunity in essence to reboot. Reboot around main things; the mission is rooted first of all in relationship with God the Father. I want to re-emphasize that. If you are close to the Father then you are going to have the heart of the Father like Jesus did for the lost. And lost is not a pejorative term. Lost simply means that people are not in living relationship with their Heavenly Father and they need to be brought to him, like the lost son who had to come back to the father. So we do everything we can.
So I’ll be leading the way and working with all those that serve in our various levels of leadership to bring it back to that matrix, that question. And then the pragmatics of that. How do you realign first of all a Fellowship, a Movement of churches to ---
We’ve been working at it because I’ve always understood discipleship to be a main thing, you know.
Here’s an interesting thought. I’ll step out a little bit further. When the concerns of racial injustice have risen over the last several months, some people really didn’t want to engage that because they felt it distracted, all the while saying of course we should practice racial equality. That’s right. But half the leaders I was talking to at the time Paul, so we’re only talking in the last month of two, half of them were very focused on re-gathering and what was involved in that. Rightfully so. They were asking and dealing with it and the rest of that was like it was a distraction.
But our younger leaders, no one was asking me about re-gathering. They were asking me where’s the PAOC at because my experience has been that there isn’t racial equality even within the PAOC, better yet beyond. Here’s my experience. So then you’re on calls and you’re dealing with real people, hear their stories. You hear the challenges they face and how they feel it impacts their ability to even minister the way they are called. Listen, these are prime people that I want to be part of the PAOC because they will actually go to a neighbour. They will actually reach people for Jesus. They value the local church but they’re maybe not as addicted to the vortex scene.
Q. Yes.
A. I worry that we have a truncated gospel that we do not understand that out of love for God and out of love for others you do go and you make disciplined followers of Jesus, who themselves are lovers of God and lovers of others. And in that you fulfill the great requirement that you do justice and you love mercy. You cannot take love for God and love for neighbour and truncate it and say well the big thing is people just need to get saved. Well, salvation speaks of a wholeness of being able to love God and love neighbours. If your neighbour is experiencing injustice, my love for neighbour demands that I speak to that and that I live a different life and our church engages.
Q. Right.
A. That’s not just true about racial justice but that’s true about living in a real world with real people. There are some things that to be a disciplined follower of Jesus, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, it’s a tough call. Jesus always said it was a tough call. And in our culture today there are things about pursuing Jesus that are not an easy sell in the current context where we’re talking about your truth, my truth. We’re talking about things, you know, being progressive that maybe aren’t so progressive. So part of the need for discipleship is we’re going to lose a whole generation to either side of that discussion.
Either we’re going to lose them to a real watered down version of Jesus and the gospel that doesn’t transform lives in the end, or we’re going to lose them because we didn’t live out a gospel that challenged us to apply it to the whole of life and to all of our relationships and to fulfill the great requirement as part of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. So that’s I think in these four years absolutely crucial. I have to have an integration in my own life and then the leaders I work with, of the Great Command; love God completely. Love others. Love the Great Commission so let’s go in the power of the Spirit and make disciples. But let’s know that making disciples is all about everything in life, doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly. So God help us.
Q. Thanks for leaning in on that. So much revolves around discipleship, process, conversation, living life, modeling and I appreciate you leaning in on that conversation.
One of the things as we think through working with younger leaders, there’s different mindsets developing in a Gen-Z leader than a Boomer or a Builder. How do we get them all at the table? And then even add to it Covid and all the uncertainty? I think one of the things that we all agree that flexibility and agility need to be an important characteristic of any healthy organization.
Are we flexible enough as a Fellowship to make the right adjustments in the future to be more effective in reaching Canadians with the gospel? And if we aren’t what could we do to be more flexible?
A. I have again recently been communicating that the danger of structure is arthritis if you use the physical imagery.
Q. Right.
A. If you make a body all about structure, you know, you end up with a skeleton. So you’ve got to have living systems that allow for life. You’ve got to have the breath of God and you’ve got to have the heart of love, grace and mercy. And within that to be a Movement you have to have flexibility so that your muscles are working and you are moving.
Q. Totally.
Q. Yup.
A. Now here I am, a macro leader, saying I welcome that tension because the only other choice, rather than welcoming the tension, is death. I refuse to let my Fellowship of churches die because we chose structure over life.
Q. Yes.
A. But I think that doesn’t mean ---
You don’t throw structure away per se but we need a table full right from the General Executive through to every District Executive, through to every working group we’ve got, of leaders that know how to do the tension well. And if we have to kibosh some things that are chasing some of our finest and best leaders away, we better find a way to get rid of those things. So I’m not talking lightly here, Paul. Because I know the realities of that. I know the committees. I know the Constitution. You know, by and large we have been rooted as a Movement so we have Movement-like tendencies. We’ve just got to make sure that those are rekindled and refired.
So I’m committed. Why I stayed on for four more years is to be a bridge to a whole new season of those kind of leaders leading us, yes, some of my peers, a lot of them that are younger than myself and a very diverse group of leaders, a whole new wave of diversity; male, female, different backgrounds, rural, urban, you know, just a fresh day. And that’s not pejorative of anything in the past. That’s just dealing with the now and navigating what we need for the future.
Q. And we’re a hundred years old. If we haven’t stretched in twenty or thirty years, you know, it’s going to ---
I’ve used this analogy before that when I go to play ball hockey with twenty-year-olds they just run out onto the ball hockey floor. They don’t stretch. They are fine the next day. But I’ve got to take a half hour to stretch before the game. Because here’s what I do. When I don’t do that, I over-estimate my flexibility and under-estimate the importance of stretching. I think organizations do that too. It’s so refreshing Dave to hear you say I’m all about stretching. I’m all about stretching our thinking, stretching our structures, being flexible, because as a hundred-year old Movement for us to navigate – we use that word navigate – where we read and react to the waters in front of us, we’re actually going to need that flexibility. I think it’s so important.
A. You know, the demand is if you’re going to be a Movement you’re going to be counter-cultural and you are creating a Kingdom of God community. A practical example of that is if Pentecostal people in Canada get side-tracked about the culture that we live in and get conformed to the culture rather than transformed by the renewing of their minds and you get spending most of your time on the polarities of the culture of our day, you are not going to be a disciple-making Movement. You are going to very well reflect the culture you’re in. You are going to be polarized. You are going to be arguing.
Jesus, when he talked about end times he did not leave any room to be a speculative community going on and on and on or heading out to the caves or the woods or whatever. You read Matthew 25, the parables he gave in the light of end times and all the signs he gave in Matthew 24, if you’re a watch and pray organization that is alert to the times, yes. But then what do you do? You have talents. You use them. You multiply them. If you’ve got five, go get ten, you know.
Q. Yes.
A. You are using what God has given you within the context to multiply and things happen. You find ways when people are saying there can’t be any more disciple-making communities in Canada because the church is dying you are finding all sorts of new says. Because the Kingdom of God is mustard seed and leaven. When it grows it impacts, it multiplies. And like Jesus said in Matthew 25, you also are there and you find the people that are the poor, the oppressed, the dispossessed, the bound, you know---
So the danger Paul on the one hand is we won’t be a Movement if people are dominated by the culture. That doesn’t mean be ignorant. I mean, I’m not ignorant. I’ve very well informed actually. But I’m going to be about the main things of the Kingdom and living that out in my culture and in my community. And, cheer on people who go about changing culture that way. But I’m also concerned about primarily – I don’t want to over simplify – primarily those that are younger that don’t understand how culture also impacts them. The move towards nothing is authoritative. You can’t say with confidence I believe this, or call people to live a Kingdom lifestyle and a Biblical ethic and so on. That will not give us the church of Jesus active as a Movement either. That’s going to kill us. So I’m an equal opportunity offender on this. (Laughter) If we’re going to be a Movement we’re going to be a Kingdom of God Movement. We’re not going to be a liberalized Movement. We’re not going to be a conservatized Movement. I’m not just talking politics now.
Q. Yes.
A. I’m talking about the whole culture and all the molds it wants to put you in. Let’s see some Kingdom people arise. Live out community the way Kingdom people live out community and know how Jesus used to be able to go to the broken, the dispossessed but he could also deal with the corridors of power. Right? He was an equal opportunity offender! But he was also one full of grace and truth.
Q. Yes. That is key: full of grace and truth. Very good thoughts. Thanks for sharing that.
This is a church multiplication podcast so we better throw in some stuff about church planting.
Obviously one of the things rolling around in my head these days is maybe we should actually focus more on disciple-making, hoping churches emerge rather than focusing on church planting, hoping disciples emerge. So those are some of the things ---
This discipleship talk is about multiplication. It is about seeing the Kingdom of God advance.
You and I were just on, I think, a very good online Vitalization Summit talking about how important it is for churches to be vital. One of the things that I said and continue to say is that I think a fully vitalized church is one that multiplies. That’s something that I think lines up with the scriptures and I know that’s in the heart of our vitalization team.
So years ago, and I’m talking like 2013, somewhere in there, we started using new language calling instead of necessarily calling them church plants, we needed a kind of a catch-all because there were missional initiatives, satellites, campuses, house churches and all these. We came up with the term disciple-making communities. I like that because it actually focuses on what you are describing: the main thing.
As we think about the future and as we think about movemental change, how important is it for us to start new disciple-making communities in our Fellowship to become a Movement again?
A. It’s absolutely critical. And again, our global friends in the church teach us that clearly. You will be hard pressed to find a church planting Movement globally that is not rooted in being a disciple-making Movement first of all. And that’s how they plant churches. So the multiplication takes place even in some very restrictive countries and contexts because they make disciples. The point of the matter is though once you get that into your DNA and everybody is doing it, it keeps expanding the number of people connected to any given group and the natural thing is we’re developing leaders because we’re making disciples and leaders take shape out of that. Okay, the natural thing for you as a leader to do is go and now make another disciple-making community; i.e. a church. So, as you know, in some restrictive environments there are huge house church Movements. And I think actually in the post-Covid or late-Covid era hopefully, we’ve had time to re-examine well isn’t that every bit a possibility in North America and in Canada?
Q. Yes.
A. If we see multiplication take place through disciples making disciples, maybe in home environments, watch parties, etc., and then why not have the kind of leadership that captures that and then says, well let’s keep identifying leaders out of that and they in turn can multiply. You can go basically in some ways block by block and next community over to next community over. Some of our friends have already been modelling that for us, you know, in southeastern Saskatchewan and other places. But now more than ever could we not identify leaders arising from disciple-making communities that then go and multiply. I just think the hard work for you and I and a few other people, maybe not so few, is to get that mindset really at work so we’re actually identifying those leaders and actually got the rails for that to run on so that it becomes normative.
Q. And that’s not just for Bible College grads.
A. No.
Q. This is for lay leaders that have a heart for a community in Saskatchewan twenty minutes down the road that has no gospel witness but they’re a full-time whatever, working in commerce or business or accounting, but they have a heart for that community, they are going to go start an Alpha.
A. Exactly.
Q. Something like that. This isn’t a professional clergy responsibility to start new disciple-making communities in our Movement. It is all of our responsibility. And you’re right, we learn from the global church.
A. And we learn from Movements. So even in our own circles there was a timeframe, even when I was serving out in Vancouver at Broadway Church in the late nineties, it was still the understood wisdom that campus ministries were only to be about a club that was on campus, maybe with a chaplain-like figure serving. But all the students were going to drift towards our PAOC churches because the legitimate church was the church on the corner, even if it was three miles away.
There wasn’t a lot of fruit from that. But in the meantime we have discovered that there is great opportunity to establish disciple-making communities on campuses that remain on the campus and that are there year-round and where the people that are serving as the leaders and equippers in that context are available year-round because campuses don’t die and disappear. So that’s one example where you’ve got a Movement and life is happening and students are coming to faith and how are you going to maintain the discipleship, you end up multiplying disciple-making communities on campuses. Suddenly where you said there couldn’t be a church twenty years ago because that doesn’t fit our structure, you know, churches won’t fund something if they don’t see it inside their four walls, thankfully enough of us woke up to the fact that no, people will give to mission, people will give to disciple-making communities. We’re just glad the campuses are being stirred that way. That’s only growing. That’s not going away.
Q. Yes. That’s really good news and a great example.
Dave, this has been rich. People who know that you’re my boss are probably thinking I have to say that. But I honestly mean it. This has been rich. Getting to know you ---
I’ve known you probably ten years but just working with you the last two or three years, none of the things you are saying are new. They are things that just keep coming up in your conversations, how you live and you’re not asking us to do anything you’re not doing. So I just want to say thanks to you for that.
I’ve got one last question and it relates to change. It relates to different thinking. You used the campuses as an example. Let me give you a little thought about this question I’m about to ask. Part of the PAOC’s ---
In 2019 we celebrated a hundred years and we saw great success in Canada. The problem with success is as you grow there are more things to manage, you know. When you really start growing and become eleven hundred, twelve hundred disciple-making communities across Canada, there is a lot to manage. What can happen is all the energy of an organization can go into management. We lose our innovative side. So the question I have for you is: How do we move from a management mindset to an innovation mindset from your role as General Superintendent all the way down to joe pew sitter who is sitting there, I attend the church, I want to be part of it, I want to be part of the mission of God, but what can I do to have this innovation mindset?
A. Personally I feel responsibility Paul to always be identifying the catalytic leaders that are modelling creative, innovative main thing ministry. It’s not just to be novel but it’s to be about the mission, like we’ve been talking about. But then within that who can I champion that is clearly innovating, creative and how can I make sure that we clear out of the way anything in the structure that ---
Sometimes it takes time. That’s just the nature, like you say, of established organizations. But how can we clear out of the way the kind of things that would hold that leader down. Or, in some cases, they just go into isolation and they fill out their credential and show up at a conference or two but otherwise they are unto themselves. How do you make them part of the engine room of the PAOC?
Q. Right.
A. I’m working hard to champion people, get people at the tables, not to bog them down with a bunch of management but to be able to model their story, live it out, you know, influence others and also to be unthreatened about some of the networking and structuring, the vine growth that happens around the trunk and say that’s good, too. Not try to cut it down and make it all fit into our trunk, but let some other growth happen. So again, then you’ve got to cooperate with everything from your General Executive and District, everything that is part of the structure has to be open to that.
Q. Yes.
A. And once in a while you’ve got to do some pruning so you can make room for new life. Once in a while you’ve got to prune some stuff that looked like it was going to be fruitful but it needs to be cut off, you know. So that’s all part of the responsibility of being a macro leader.
Q. Yes. To be clear, I’m not saying we don’t manage. I think there’s a level of management. But I think the percentage of what we do as it relates to management, even at a local assembly ---
I was chatting with a pastor this week about it. When I shared that thought he goes ‘guilty’. Even at a local church level you can get caught up with the management of things. I really like that idea of championing innovative ideas and making innovation normative. That should just be a part of what we are. The Holy Spirit is the most creative person on the planet. So as Christians we have access to that.
So Dave, thanks for your leadership. Thanks for your heart. You model it well. I appreciate you jumping on the Multiply Network podcast today.
A. My privilege, Paul and cheering on folks to be all that Jesus called them to be.
Q. Amen. Thanks, Dave. Safe travels back home.
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