The 8 Most Common Objections to Church Multiplication Series - Objection #1 - "Not Enough Leaders" with Paul Fraser and Michael Bronson

We are kicking off a brand new podcast series called "The 8 Most Common Objections to Church Multiplication". Objections #1 is "we don't have enough leaders".  How will we have enough leaders to start new works when we don't have enough to fill our existing churches? Is this a valid objection? Our cohosts for the series, Paul Fraser and Michael Bronson, tackle this topic head on and talk about what we can do to overcome this objection!

Transcript

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Hi there. Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. My name is Paul Fraser and I hope this podcast finds you so well. In fact, I'm not sure when you're listening to this, but at the recording/release of this podcast, allergy season is in full force. And I'm not sure if you noticed, but the seasonal allergies hit me hard the other day. And I lost count after 35 separate sneezes. I don't know if you've ever had a day like that. It wasn't a fun day, but what an ab workout! And the reason why I'm bringing this up is I'm hoping an allergy medication company will sponsor our podcast. I don't know. But it's been a while since we released a podcast and excited to be back launching a new series on the Eight Most Common Objections to Church Multiplication. We recently launched a new initiative out of the Multiply Network called Every Church A Multiplying Church. And maybe in your denomination or fellowship or network, you have something already similar to this. But thought - in our tribe, in our group - that we needed to reaffirm it as a commitment in our PAOC family. So as part of the rollout, we wanted to take some time to discuss the most common objections to church multiplication. I've been in my role now for seven years at a national level and, previously to that 12 years at a district regional role, and served in the area of church multiplication for some of that. So in that time, I've heard many objections to church multiplication. And to be fair, it's not that the leaders or the teams are against church planting. They just seem to prioritize it differently and make objections to move this priority down their list. So are they misplaced priorities? Are they reasonable objections? Should they stop us from multiplying churches and leaders? And that's what we're going to talk about today. And for the rest of our Eight Objections to Church Multiplication series. This is kind of a historic day for our podcast. Historic is probably overstating it, but it's history-making. I don't know if you remember the song by Martin Smith, shout out,(singing) "I want to be a history maker". We're going to do that with this podcast. And so our guest today on this podcast won't be staying on as a guest very long because... Drumroll please... He is also going to be the co-host for this series. Michael Bronson is the lead pastor of Mountainside, Binbrook and Dundas in Ontario, is part of the lead team for New Churches Network in Western Ontario District. He's married, kids. He sings, dances, does puppet ministry, and works out twice a month. Michael, welcome to the Multiply Network podcast.(Laughter) Wow, what an accurate description, Paul. Appreciate that. Thanks for welcoming me in such a wonderful way. It's great to be here, my friend. It's awesome. Well, first, so glad to have you not just be a guest today, but also, participate by being the co-host in this series. We're going to be bringing on other guests, interviewing them. I think the big question that everyone really wants to know is, do you have allergies? Yeah, I'm so sorry about your 35 sneezes this morning. No, I do not have allergies. I'm totally allergy free, but my beautiful wife does, so I can I can relate. I can relate with that. I'm so sorry. Yeah. And you went and got her wild flowers one time, didn't you? You had to bring this up, man. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Once when I was, you know, in a moment of trying to be romantic, I picked my beautiful wife a lot of wildflowers. And yeah, it was goldenrod, and that's just what she's allergic to. But I told you that story in confidence. But thank you for bringing that up. It's great. I didn't know it was in confidence. We can edit it out later if you want, but we are trying to find a sponsor for this podcast. No, I'm just teasing. Thanks for being part of it. The objection that -- Well, maybe before we get that, tell us a little bit about, a little bit about your ministry journey. Mountainside Church was a church plant. Maybe talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So seven years ago, a group of friends and myself, we just decided, you know what? Let's. It's time to take the plunge. Time to jump in. And we started a church in Binbrook, Ontario called Mountainside Church. So that's the Hamilton area. So it's about an hour from Toronto, Ontario. And, more recently - which has been really exciting - out of Mountainside in Binbrook, we started, almost more of a replant relaunch of a church there in Dundas, Ontario. So that's about a 50 minute drive from Toronto. And, it's been a wild adventure. Anyone that's listening or watching that's been a part of a church plant or seeing new things start, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of work. But there's been a lot of fruit from it. And we're just dreaming of, you know, what does it look like to just keep going in that way and just, you know, see Canada change, right. Which is why this podcast is so exciting, right? Is we want to inspire and help equip people to to take the plunge as well. Right? Yeah. Yeah, we definitely want to see more churches started. In fact, that will be one of our objections, that we talk about in future ones. But today's objection, we're going to jump right into it, because we've got lots of things to say about this one. In today's objection, that I've heard before, Michael, I'm sure you have. And it's this one. There already aren't enough leaders for the established churches, let alone for a new church. I don't think I've been to a denominational gathering of any denomination where this particular topic, like, doesn't come up. Like this is -- This is like -- Companies, It's not just church world. It's like -- It's all, it's right across the board. We're looking for more leaders. And, is this a legit objection, do you think, for church multiplication? Yeah. Well, it's funny because as we were mapping out the objections, a lot of them are very much -- Oh, like, people just misunderstand this or they're looking at it wrong, this kind of thing. This objection - There aren't enough leaders, let alone -- to start new churches, let alone for current ones -- you know, like, it's actually completely legit. It's a totally legitimate argument if you look at it from a certain perspective. Right? So if you look at how things are currently set up, how we're currently doing church ministry, how we're doing church planting, and how we're leading our churches with leadership, our current leadership pathway, it's completely legit. Absolutely. But we don't have to look at it from from this way. I remember a couple months ago we had an intern at our church. He just a grade 12 student. And his dream, you know, just kind of rubbing shoulders with with us, with the church plant and all of this, his dream one day was to be a pastor and to eventually start a new church. And he was telling me how he was just so excited for that and kind of seeing it firsthand and all this. But it's really interesting. He went to his grandpa's house one day and kind of told him that. And his grandpa was a retired pastor. And his grandpa just looked and just said, you know, along the lines of, son, there's -- you don't need to plant the church. There's going to be a lot of churches just waiting for a pastor in general. Don't -- you don't need to worry about that. And I remember him telling me that. And I remember being so sad because here's this entrepreneurial leader that was really passionate about that, that almost gave up on that dream and said, no, no, no, I'm just going to, you know, go to an established church and that's fine. So it's -- And the grandpa has a point. That's the thing. The grandpa has a point. But it doesn't have to be this way though. Okay. So that's -- If we're looking at it from a certain angle, it's completely true. But we don't have to look at it from that angle. You know, we can take a step back and we can think outside the box. Right? Yeah. And I, I agree with you. I also think with the boomer generation retiring is a big deal, where we're actually going to have more churches open as that boomer generation begins to, you know, retire. So I think that it's a totally legit, totally legit objection. Anything else that would legitimize this in your mind? Yeah. Well, we know, we know, we have some incredible Bible Colleges here in Canada --. Yeah we do. Like some some some of the best. I really do believe that. And it's it's exciting to see some of them start to kind of change the model even of how they're recruiting, how they're educating the future leaders and pastors and this sort of thing. But if you were to take a snapshot of how many people are graduating, it is, like, it's diminishing, right. Like it's going down. And every time I'm at a conference, and you know, the different Bible Colleges have booths set up, I always ask that question, how's the enrollment? How's this? And there's some genius strategies on the way. But the truth is, just at this current moment, there's not enough people graduating from our Bible Colleges. So we need to for sure be pushing our students towards that and getting those numbers up again. And I think we just need to rethink the whole leadership pathway of how are we, how are we equipping people to become leaders in the church? I think that's the key with all of that. That is -- leadership pathways is kind of the conversation that needs to happen at every level, not just regional, like, or national, local level. We need to be thinking through what are our leadership pathways? Because for all the reasons you mentioned, and probably a few more, this is a legit objection. We need leaders to make our churches vital and healthy so they can multiply. But we also need leaders to plant new, disciple making communities. And so this is all, this is all totally legit. But what-- I guess the question that we want to talk about and transition a little bit to is, what can we-- like, what are the reasons against this objection? What are the things that we can look at to go, Okay, that's a good argument. But there's also some other arguments over here that could help us -- help us, maybe, dismantle this objection a little bit. What are some initial thoughts that come to your mind? Yeah. Well, I'm glad that God has a plan for Canada and God has equipped -- and, you know, everyone watching this -- to be leaders in Canada for such a time as this. And I'm glad that we don't need to look at a situation and say, oh, there's -- the numbers aren't making sense. There's not enough leaders being developed to fill our current churches, let alone start new churches. I'm glad we don't have to look at that statement and just say, oh, that's so unfortunate. Like, oh too bad. You know? No, that's not who we are. That's not who we are at all. We're able to look at that statement is say, okay, so what do we do about this. Like, let's try to let's try to fix this then. Let's find a solution. And I'm glad that God has put people all across Canada, you know, in every province and every territory, the right leaders to figure this out. Right? So I think what it's going to take is, it's going to take a mindset switch of how we're developing leaders and how we're discovering leaders and how we're empowering leaders. Right? Like, I remember the first time, or the first church plant that that we started here in Binbrook, I remember looking at the result of what was happening. You know, like new families coming in that were not churched families at all. You know, people that live down the street or, you know, all in this little neighbourhood, all coming to know Jesus. And I remember thinking, oh my goodness, if we add time to this, like, beautiful things are going to happen. What would it look like for us to start another church and another church and just kind of, you know, dreaming in that way? And I very quickly realized it's going to take a long, long, long time - with the way we're currently doing things- if we're ever going to do this again. I was trying to do the math. I'm like, this is going to be like 20 years before, 30 years before we could start another church. And just looking at the communities around like, you know, pulling up a map. It's like, look at all these communities that don't have life giving churches that are, you know, evangelizing and trying to reach out to the community. And I quickly realized - and I believe that we've had this discussion before as a church fellowship - but I quickly realized that it's not about having a church planting strategy. Like, how do we start new churches? - That's not even the question. You need to back up a little bit. And it's more about having a leadership development strategy. And once we get that in gear, once we get that going, starting new churches is kind of -- it's just the byproduct, right. Like, that's that's inevitably what happens afterwards. Well we -- yeah. So we say, like in our particular-- I don't know what denomination maybe some of our podcast listeners are part of -- but I would say, in our particular fellowship, we would have somewhere around 280,000 people that would call PAOC churches their home. Right. How? How! Okay -- How? We have 280,000 people who call PAOC churches their home and we have a leadership --Would it be a-- maybe it's a crisis. If, maybe if it's not a crisis yet, with the boomers retiring and all those things that, you know, we talked about before, lower enrollment, all of it. How do we have this problem? And I think we need a new mindset around leadership pathways. I totally agree with you. Yeah, I remember you saying that to me a couple of years ago. You know, we've got a quarter of a million people in our church - our larger church - family. And yet, we're wondering who are going to fill these pulpits, who are going to fill these churches. How are we going to find new people to start new churches? It's like, we just need to pause and let that sink in for a second. Out of a quarter of a million people, we don't have enough leaders? This is completely on us, right? We need to find and discover these people and then equip these people that God has called and then trust them to do this. Right? And it's so tough though because we -- often we like the ministry. We like preaching. We like being the leader in charge. We like doing this. And to pass that off in the trust that to other leaders is -- it's scary sometimes. And rightfully so. Sometimes it gets scary. And we obviously have to use wisdom with this. But I don't think it has to be -- it doesn't have to be this way. Like, God has given us exactly what we need to get to our next step. Right? And God wants to start new churches across this country. And he's given us the leaders to do this. Absolutely, He does. Absolutely. Yeah. So we have this incredible quantity of people that we can, that we can call on. And I think one of the things that, as we think about a leadership pathway and we think about, okay, so what is it going to take? We've got to find leaders in different places. And one of the places that I think we need to look is in the bi-vocational or - maybe a newer word - is co-vocational. So bi-vocational would be someone who's got a, maybe a full time job or, you know, someone who's working a .7 or something like that, and then is working.3 at the church. And that's kind of how the model -- that's how they want to keep it. They don't want to have like -- Which, I think is going to cause us to have to shift the model. We'll talk about that in a second. Or a co-vocational model where -- I had talked to this Uber guy at this conference sometime ago and he said, yeah, I'm a church planter, but I'm also an Uber driver, because that's how I'm growing my church. Like it's a co-vocational idea. So, talk to us -- like, what do you think about bi-vocational, co-vocational, empowering laypeople perhaps. What do you think about that? Yeah, I love how this is gaining traction, because it's one of the models that we see in the New Testament. Right. Like, like this is, this is what Paul was doing. He was working on the side as he needed to, to continue his ministry. And yeah, I like thinking it as bi-vocational is very much someone who starts a new work, a new ministry, a new church. And it's the ministry can't afford to pay me yet. So I have to go get a job that I wish I didn't have to do, but I'm going to do it because I have to. And then co-vocational is more of no, no, no -- like what you're saying with the Uber driver-- It's like, I'm doing this and I'm doing this other job and I'm glad I'm doing this. And then I'm also doing the church at the same time. And I just think our bi-vocational leaders, our co-vocational leaders, just they are the champions of our movement. Like, they're sacrificing so much and we just want to celebrate them. And for everyone listening that is living out, like, we applaud that. And that's just -- it's so beautiful. It's a model that we use at our church as well, at Mountainside, in Binbrook and in Dundas as well. And it's been really, it's been really effective from our end. We've got to figure out how to platform these stories more too. And to me, that's part of sharing the vision, is telling the stories of, perhaps lay people, maybe they don't have the full Bible College education. They're in process. They're may be doing a ten year, you know, a ten year program, where they're just like, hey, I want to get the training. I want to get the theology, all of that. But then we also talk about, so we need a new kind of leader, almost. Like, bi-vo/co-vocational layperson. I'm going to add one more thing is, I actually think some of our best leaders aren't even followers of Christ yet. And I think -- When we think about the lack of leadership, perhaps, there are another 30-whatever million people in Canada that have the potential to be fantastic leaders in the church. And what are we doing to reach them? You probably grew up - I certainly did - saying, like, the future of our movement is the next generation. And it's true. They are. I wouldn't say they're the future. I say they're probably the church right now. Like, they need to be more involved, given leadership, trust, all of that. But what about, like -- Why are we not focused more on reaching people far from God as a leadership pathway development strategy? Yes, absolutely. And we've -- So you're saying, you know, we should showcase more of these examples. So I'll give you the Mountainside Church example. So, right now -- I just want to give this as an example, right. This isn't prescriptive. This isn't like, everyone go do this. Just an example of what we're doing. Because your church doesn't have to be like my church, and my church doesn't have to be like your church, right? God's gifted us and given us different ideas and all this. But, so at our church, we have one full time staff - so that's myself - kind of overseeing both locations. And then we have 16 other staff that are co-vocational. And it's always funny because I'll talk to people that will say, like, Wow, you have 16 staff. It's like, listen, listen. By our definition of staff, you probably have 25 staff, you know, like, no, no, no, it's it's a very different definition. It's, you work a couple of hours a week and you have your career, you have your full time thing that you're doing. You know, we have people who are Bible College - or local college - professors. Right? We have people that are exterminators. We have people that are teachers. You know, it's -- we have a lot of different, we have entrepreneurs and business people. And they have their career. And then on the side, they work on staff of the church. And it's just, it's been beautiful seeing people that have said to me, you know, I kind of thought I missed my call to be a leader in the church. You know, I thought it was too late for me. And it's really cool. It's really exciting. Because all of these 16 people, not a single one of them got to the point where they thought they would be a leader in the church. And what it actually took was for someone to look them in the eye, sit them down, and to say, hey, you have a calling on your life to be a leader in God's kingdom. And it's so interesting. You almost see it in their eyes. Something like, it's just this look that they give of like, oh, that's right, I do have this calling on my life. And it's just incredible seeing it happen. And it can be, you know, it's not easy. Doing that and having a model like that, like it means staff meetings at night time. It means a lot of the day to day things itt's like, oh, I wish I had someone to do this, but they're co-vocational, so it's going to fall to me. It's a different mindset that you need. But my goodness, it can be really effective for God's kingdom. And remind me, I thought there was a story of one of your leaders too that got saved, like, in a ministry that you had and ended up being a key leader for you in the church. Yeah. Well, yeah there's a handful. So the one you're probably referring to is my friend, Aiden. Yeah. He lives across the street from me. He was just a grade eight kid that went to the skate park and our church was doing skate park ministry, and him and his mom started coming out to the church and, you know, became a Christian, became a disciple of Jesus. And now he actually runs our youth for our Dundas location. So it's really cool kind of seeing the steps happen. And it's like, it's what you said, Paul. Right. God has given us enough leaders, but some of them just aren't saved yet. They just need to find Jesus first. Right? It's a process. Right. A hundred percent. And so you have, you know, new kinds of leaders, bi-vocational, co-vocational. I love that story. I love that Mountainside brings people on, with responsibilities, as far as, like, being a staff member. I love that. I think that's an interesting model to explore. And then also, you guys have been in this long enough now that you're starting to see, hey, some of our leaders weren't a part of the church when we started. Weren't even part of the kingdom. Like, weren't even part of the family. And now are playing key roles. I think there's thousands and thousands of stories that are waiting to happen, if we just allowed those new believers to find their way, you know, into, like, some smaller leadership roles to help grow their leadership in the kingdom. Because everyone is called. Everyone has a ministry and a message. And so we have to believe that. We're not the only pastors in our church. And so we think about these new kinds of leaders. Then we also think of models. If you're doing bi-vocational or co-vocational, you probably can't do everything, maybe, a full time pastor that has all week. Like, trying to think of my one friend who's pastoring. He works full time in a very, like, more than full time job, and then leading the church. He can't spend 30 hours on his message. Yeah. And, you know, so these new models of, like, micro church or house church or, you know, missional communities, how do you see that playing into all this? Yeah. Well, it's interesting with that because there's the big-- there are the big cities, right, in the urban settings and this -- but then there's also the rural communities, and these small towns, and this sort of thing where, you know, here's a community of, I don't know, 500 or 1000 people. This probably won't have a church with, you know, a full time youth pastor and a full time pastor and a full time music pastor and this sort of thing. So we need to think outside the box. We need to get more creative because, listen, that small community of people are just as important as those in the urban centers with lots of people. And again, I think it just comes down to this mindset shift of -- from going from, oh no, there aren't enough leaders, so let's just not prioritize church planting, to thinking, no, no, no, there's actually -- God has actually given us exactly what we need. It's just the work of discovering and empowering those those leaders. Absolutely. Well, we got to get rid of that scarcity mindset. Right? Like, that God -- to have an abundance. It's like, well, I've only got, 15 people in my church. Yeah, but those are 15 callings. 15 ministries. That's right. 15 messages. Like, how are you unearthing all of that in those 15. And those 15, if they're on mission and disciple making, might be discipling 5 to 10 people. And so now that 15 turns into 150 pretty quickly, you know? And I know -- Underground Network, they do a micro church, Tampa Bay micro church network. They say an activated disciple actively disciples - they've done some, you know, deep dives on this - about ten people. So if you have that 15 and you've got 15 disciple makers, your church will grow. Yeah, that's right. Your church will grow. Well, and how often do we, like, in leadership circles, always talk about with finances, how we need the abundance mindset. Right. Don't have the scarcity mindset. Don't have the scarcity mindset when it comes to finances. So, and which is completely true. But let's have this with like what you said, right? With a leadership perspective of no, no, no, there's more than enough. It's, again, it's -- you got to shift the way we think a little bit. It maybe can't be, what got us this far is it going to take us to the next run? Right. Like we got to rethink some things, to think outside the box, but it's completely, completely possible, right. So what do you think the Bible says about this? I just wonder if there's someone on the podcast going, give me a scripture, you know, or whatever. Like any thoughts come to mind, Michael, around that? Yeah. And, I'm glad this is a biblical podcast. Well done. Paul, you've passed the test. Yeah. There it is. There it is. Yeah. Well, I the default thinking needs to be okay. What did what did Jesus do? What did he do with the model set out in the book of acts? What did he do in the New Testament? Right. And my my initial thoughts, every time it talks about leadership development always goes back to, to Luke chapter six, 12 and 13. I actually conveniently have it right in front of me if you'd like me to read it to you, but wow, I just, I just happened. I just have happen to have it open. Well, so Luke six 12 to 13, it says this, it says one of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray. So that's that's what we named our church after and spent the night praying to God. One morning came. He called his disciples to him and chose 12 of them whom he designated apostles. So I just love how how God was the one who was choosing, right? Like like Jesus goes to his father, the Son of God goes to the father and says, hey, who do you want to lead the church? Who do you want to lead this movement? And I just I just wonder how different Canada would look if we said, you know what, father? You have provided the right people. Who can you reveal those people? And, you know, it's really interesting to within that group, right? Within that group of people that Jesus chose to be the leaders of his church. Think of how different they all were. Think of the the the backgrounds are coming from. Think of the education, background differences. Think of the experience differences that they all had. And I don't know, I just wonder if, if, if we could follow that model and say, okay, Jesus, we're going to pray to you all night. Who do you want me to choose out of what you were just saying? We have there's 15 people to choose from. Okay. Jesus, who is the person I'm choosing to lead this area? Who's the person I am? And then just grow in it from there. And I think beautiful things happen. And Jesus -- Along with that, I think it's in Mark describing that same experience -- He comes down and He calls them not to just like be His disciples, but to actually be with Him. Yes. It was, it was an apprenticeship model. My friend Kevin, says this, has said this to me a few times, is we have to adopt more when it comes to discipleship and leadership development, more of tour guide thinking and less travel agent.

So travel agent is: 30:51

here's the documents, here's your reading, here's your-- da da da da -- and now go do it. But I think probably a better way that we would all feel more comfortable is the

tour guide: 31:02

explaining going with them, having that apprenticeship, you know, watch me do it, hear me do it. Ask me questions along the way. I think, I think that's a really important piece that Jesus brought into that. And the second thing I thought, is the relational. That there was -- it was built on a relational foundation, often referred to like, you know, the family of God. Like, as peoples or followers of Christ, we're family. And family's very, very much built around relationship. Paul the Apostle did that with Timothy and others, that just said, hey, this has to be the foundation of any leadership pathway. I'm sure you've discovered that as you're developing leaders. Yeah, well, because I'm even thinking of our our two location pastors that we have one in Binbrook, one in Dundas. Both of them started off just volunteering and serving on on teams. And then it came, it came to the point where we started walking alongside them and said, hey, I think you're actually a leader. Would you be a volunteer leader of this team and this team? And then from there we continued to walk with them and then said, hey, you should be a staff. So one of those people became our youth pastor at one of our spots. And one of those people became a kids pastor at that same church. And then from there, it was, okay, so you've proven yourself here. We've spent a lot of time together. You've proven yourself here. We've spent a lot of time together. It's time that you lead these locations. And it was funny. I think I was telling you this earlier, but at first they were so nervous and they said, I don't know if we can do this, be a Location Pastor. Can we at least call it Associate Pastor? Don't call us Location Pastor yet. And it was funny. It took almost six months of them in that Location Pastor role, but called Associate Pastor, where they said, okay, Michael, I think we actually can be called Location Pastors now. I think we have the confidence to do it. So yeah, it's completely relational and it just takes time. Absolutely. Yeah. You just need time. So the counter statement to

the objection: 33:08

there aren't enough leaders for the existing churches, never mind new ones. We would say no. I think the counter statement to this objection would be, there are more than enough people who God has called to be leaders in the kingdom who aren't leading yet, and we just need to discover, empower them, maybe discern - and I guess that's part of discover - and find ways to empower and equip them to lead. And so since we believe this counter statement to be true,

practical steps: 33:44

what can leaders do to, you know, push up against this objection? Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I just love that statement because it's the classic thing that we're all taught in youth group, right -- if that was a part of your upbringing -- is, you take the lie you replace it with the truth. Right. Oh, there's not enough leaders, there's not enough. No, no, no. Pause. You replace it. There are more than enough leaders who God has called to be leading His kingdom. No, no, there's more than enough. We just need to discover and empower them. So, yeah. So some challenges that I would give is just start, start small, but start with something. And it's okay to start small, but start with some sort of leadership pathway. Okay, if you identify a leader, what steps are you putting them and helping walk with them, and getting through those steps? So how often are you meeting with them? What kind of curriculum are you- or books - are you reading? Or are you getting them to go to a Bible College class once a week? Or kind of whatever that is. I would just start with that. Start with something. You don't need a fully established, like you're the master leader developer all at once, but just start with something. What do we do with our leaders once we identify someone? What do we do with that? And then give them opportunities, right. Give give opportunities to people to lead. And it's scary sometimes because at first they're not going to do it as well as you. And that's - welcome to leadership development. Welcome to to trusting leaders. Right. And empowering leaders. Yeah I, I had a friend say if they can do it 75% or better than you, let them do it. Or if it takes you, you know, 15 minutes or less, find others to help you do it. Like you don't -- So that was a good rule for me when I was, you know, pastoring. And it's like, okay, they can do that. Like, this level? Why am I doing it? They're passionate about it. They're excited. They're gifted for it. Yeah. So I think yeah. Important practical steps. I think, also, just let's be creative. You know, find ways to like -- I would -- One of the things that - Michael, you know this, I do coaching. And one of the things that -- you ask powerful questions. They're usually short and they send you somewhere. But part of the unearthing- and I think Jesus did this really well - was He asked good questions that helped pull things out of their lives. And I think having those conversations like, what's your dream? What's your call? What who are you called to? How can we help? What's your gift mix? Helping them discern and discover, so that they can be deployed, I think is really helpful. And we've got lots of tools that we want to roll out and help you, help you develop leaders. And so, in the future coming weeks and months, we're going to roll out some of those tools that will help you in your leadership development pathways, help you become, and, you know, help you become a church that is a multiplying church, a ministry that's a multiplying ministry. And so we're just, yeah, we're really committed to this, and we want to help you the best we can. Michael, before we go, any final thoughts around this? Anything you'd like to share? Yeah, well, I think it just comes down to if we, if we live this out, if we trust leaders, if we have this aim to, we're going to develop new leaders. Listen, there's going to actually be a surplus eventually for our current churches, our current established churches to be filled. But then also for new churches as well. So, so let's live with this mindset of, it does not have to be this way.

Yes, true: 37:43

It's like, there's this massive, you know, leadership crisis wave that everyone's been talking about for ten years. And when does it finally hit? Has it already hit? Is it on the way? Listen, it actually doesn't have to be that way. It just -- We've got to think about developing leaders differently. Yeah. God's got a plan to reach Canada. And He wants to use you and your leaders. That's right. Yeah. So we gotta lose that -- we gotta lose that mindset. All right, Michael, thanks for jumping on today. And look forward to chat more about more objections. All right. Have a great day. Thanks Paul. Thanks, everyone for tuning in.