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281: Pastor Plek interviews James Foster, lead pastor of Taylor Bible Church on this special podcast episode this week. Together they discuss the reality of church planting and the struggles and hows that come with it. This episode isn't just about gathering a flock; it's about nurturing souls through recovery and discipleship programs that transcend traditional boundaries. Tune in to hear more about James's church planting journey and how Taylor Bible Church seeks to tackle the intricacies of planting and nurturing a church that seeks to serve as a beacon of faith and community.
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00:05 - Update on Church Planting Ministry
08:37 - Church's Recovery and Discipleship Programs
21:44 - Evaluate Community Groups and Church Spaces
35:36 - Managing Family, Church, and Leadership Expectations
43:46 - Planning a Church and Ministry Considerations
56:04 - Church Planning Q&A and Discussion
And welcome back to Pastor Plex podcast. I'm your host, pastor Plex. Joining me in studio in Austin, texas, is none other than James Dean Foster.
Speaker 2:James, how are you doing Great man, thanks.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, if you don't know it, james was here at Wells branch community church for about 10 years and then he we sent him off to huddle by the church for a church plant residency and he has now planted Taylor Bible church, which launched in October of 23. And now here we are. So, james, we need an update of what is going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we are working on spinning up all of our ministry plans for this this year, getting some new things in motion with making disciples, and it's been a great, great experience. We are excited about having a lot of families that we are just having come and attend and that we didn't have a connection with that are coming and sticking. Yeah, tell us about in church plant world.
Speaker 1:You know, you kind of have your core team and then you launch. You have your launch team and then there's sort of an expectation over time that your core team will not not that there's an expectation they're going to leave, but it just happens. They sort of move on and then you get more people from the community and the kind of the goals keep as many of those people all together at the same time and it's super challenging. So how has that gone for you with your core team and then adding new people into the mix, how's that gone?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say that so far it's been relatively event free. Nice has been we've been able to bring some new families in, get them connected and as they've been connecting, there hasn't been a lot of friction or tension there with the existing folks on the core team. They're still in a good place, bought into the mission of reaching every man, woman and child and greater Taylor with the life changing reality of Jesus Christ, nice, and so as that is expanding, they're excited.
Speaker 1:So tell me about what you have experienced. You had, I think, 38 or something like that on the 37 on our charter 37 on the charter service, and then talk to me about what like a Sunday morning experiences for you, because I know you have a volunteer service and then a like the actual service.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have our at 3pm. We do our servant service. We actually did that at 2.45 this past week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why'd you move it up?
Speaker 2:We moved it up just for a two week period. So we're doing our membership class to bring in some folks that are attending and want to hear more about what the church believes and everything, and so we're bringing them through that membership class which we needed a little bit more time than just the 45 minutes to an hour in the servant service timeframe. So we bumped the servant service up to 2.45. And then we did have like 30 minutes after the servant service, before the next one, but it was, it was perfect.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so how many people are attending now, starting with 37 on a court on a charter, and then now what?
Speaker 2:And then we have 30 or so in our servant service and then another 60 to 70 that are attending our regular service.
Speaker 1:So would you call that 100 people, or is that 30 plus we're approaching 100.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're approaching 100, but I would call it probably the 60 to 70 would be the actual number. And then some of the people that are serving during our main service are attending our servant service. So they're taking still hear the word and worship together without thinking about their other responsibilities.
Speaker 1:Here's a big question. This is probably a very serious question you're having to face right now. We're recording this before the Super Bowl. So Super Bowl Yep, it's this Sunday. Yeah, what are you going to?
Speaker 2:do, and we're competing with the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're a pretty amazing preacher though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's going to test it for sure. So we're going to see how loyal our people are to, because we've got people that travel a long distance too. So even though the Super Bowl starts technically after, our service would be done. Nice people will be returning home after the Super Bowl has already started.
Speaker 1:But you don't want to show up to Super Bowl party on time or early because then you're a loser. So you need to communicate that to your people right off the bat. You don't want to be a loser If you're going to be a socially relevant, competent person who's going to invite more people to Jesus. You never show up early or on time for a Super Bowl party.
Speaker 2:There you go, so I'll have to do a special video announcement. Okay, really, let people know.
Speaker 1:So I want like a lot of people that listen are obviously church plant people that want to start church plant Tell me some of the challenges you're experiencing, because you're October, November, December, January, February we're five months in. What are some of the challenges?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is a question Figuring out everything, and everything kind of falls into that category of okay. So you've got to figure out what does it look like to regularly meet with your ministry leaders and invest in them, as they're investing in your people, right? So then saying, okay, well, which ministries need a regular meeting and what's the frequency of that, and what should those meetings even look like? Right, sitting in a chair you haven't sat in before, and then doing that with a lot of people that are volunteers. And then, okay, what's the best use of my time from week to week, going with here's sermon prep, which seems to always need more time than I have, and trying to figure out, okay, what's the best way to have a weekly rhythm of preaching, week to week to week, and so far, since we've launched, I've taken one Sunday of not preaching, and the rest I have preached in some part.
Speaker 1:Who preached it? Elder Tim Tim.
Speaker 2:Arnelder preached that Sunday and he did great. It was his first sermon and he did an awesome job with it, which was amazing, awesome, and a big part of that is his investment in all our people.
Speaker 1:So obviously it doesn't really matter what he says. He's gonna be like we love you.
Speaker 2:But he did a great job on top of that.
Speaker 1:So well, wonderful. Even more, that's always the challenge is developing other preachers so that you can't leave Now. Remember, since your service is in the afternoon, we have plenty of preachers here that would love to come and help you out if you need it. So talk to me about. One of the things that we talked about was and this is just true of all church plans that the great need for something like a Regen, a recovery discipleship method. Talk to me about, like your recognition early of that. Tell me what that's about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in our men's group we're having conversations about just what's going on in life, and it comes up organically that this person and this person and this person have Alcoholics Anonymous background, narcotics Anonymous background, another Narcotics Anonymous background, and then there are other people that are attending that have similar backgrounds, and so it's just saying, okay, god, who are you bringing here and what does this city need? And this is an opportunity for us to provide a way for people to recover and a way for people to regenerate into the image of God in them, and so we want to provide so.
Speaker 1:I love that. What I love about what you're doing is this is what, and I think this is what all church planners have to do. And so if you're a aspiring church planner, here's what I need you to remember. What James just did there is he took the people that he had, saw a common background and didn't just go huh, that's weird. He goes. How can I leverage this to move the kingdom forward? Absolutely, and I think that that, to me, is a trait of a church planner. So, because, honestly, to pull off region is something that is super hard, because it takes a lot. In fact, we even looked at it for our church because we're like, all right, we have clearly have a lot of people that are drug addicts, we have a lot of people that are alcoholics, we have a lot of people that are just unfunctional as humans, and so we're like how region would be such a blessing, but then when we look for leadership for that, we didn't have it.
Speaker 2:So what you guys are doing I think you said you found 10 people- yeah which I mean, that's like the goal would be to, when we launch it officially, to have 10 people that have already gone through it. Yeah at least the the groundwork phase, and so we do have three people that had experienced with it before Nice, and then also the others that have the need for it yeah slash other recovery ministry backgrounds, but but more in like an NA or AA context, and so they recognize their need, they have a passion for it. Here's some other folks that also recognize their need because regenerate. What's so good about that is that it's not just a here's your gross sin, and then you're an alcoholic, you're addicted to narcotics, but it's no. You might wrestle with shame or anger or bitterness, and you know there's there's that inventory that they have with all the different ways, struggles that you might have, and so identifying one of those and then saying these are the three things that I'll focus on in my recovery this, this time through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. One of the things that you know we have an our discipleship pathway that you help create was the regenerate, which you know. We should probably put a trademark on that and that word, but it essentially talks about the same thing of like confession, repentance of sin and sort of owning up all the darkness of your heart and having healing brought over your life. So I think that's huge and so it's awesome. I think that your whole church really is it. You start with men and women, or just men. What direction you go with that?
Speaker 2:right now it's looking like we're moving more towards men, but we're trying to work it into both our men's and women's Bible study already. So we're going through rest and war by Ben Stewart. People are reading the books and there's some questions that they're doing outside of that and then kind of coming together to have those discussions and then within that there's a really good spot for us to identify Okay, these are the issues and this is where we can go even deeper than Ben goes in this book, because it came from a place of looking at our discipleship framework and saying Part of me wants to just bring it all together, like bring these weeks together and bring these weeks together and bring these modules together. But but then I go. If we can lay the groundwork in Regeneration before we actually get to discipleship nice, which we've talked about before, right, you've got recovery ministry and then you've got your other ministry and then your leadership training that's going to go on top of that. So what does that look like? We need to invest more time here before we get to our main Discipleship framework.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I think we went the opposite route on this because we started with hey, let's do regen. And then, as we saw the people that we could probably get involved with it, we saw we didn't have enough functional humans to sort of pull off a region training to launch large enough, but we did have enough functional humans to do a re-engage. So one of so, watermark, came up with regeneration and re-engage Watermark Community Church in Dallas, texas, and so we were like, let's, we're gonna go that way and then from our re-engage Successes we're gonna say, hey, wow, you realize that there's issues in your marriage. It's probably just you let, why don't we send you to regen? and we're hoping to kind of get enough people that direction from it so the other thing that we have is a Samson Society, which is like a sex addicts group and we've modified it enough to really fit our own needs, kind of going with the our Whenever someone confesses sin, you pray the gospel over them, being a component that wasn't in the Samson Society sex addicts thing initially but became part of it as we saw that that became essential For healing. Mm-hmm, and we've, you know, I've always said this like confession to God first, john 1 9 If we confess our sins, god's faithful injustice to forgive us all our sins and cleanse from all unrighteousness, that's a vertical confession to God is healing or sorry, forgiveness. And then Confess your sins one to another and pray for each other that you may be healed. That so that Horizontal confession plus a vertical prayer of the gospel over them brings healing. And so I think that's where we've really landed the plane for our I don't know if it's recovery or if it's just the Sanctification- process which whatever that looks like, whether it's recovery, discipleship, whatever, it's kind of all the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I think, I feel like Maybe the Lord's been growing me or causing me to lean in more on this, is Like taking down some of the barriers for our everyday Christians. Yeah, and saying, hey, we're all in recovery from something nice as we look at this inventory, like we've all got issues that we're not talking about because we just look more functional. Mm-hmm and so the more that we can break those barriers down and say, hey, we're all in this healing process, the more I think people that are hurting will come and be a part of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things I love that watermarked it is they took the entire staff through region, which is a huge commitment absolutely and then, once they did it there, I will say, hey, everyone's been through this, you probably should go through this too, and it was really, really healthy. And there's a part of me it's like that's what I'm gonna do Eventually yeah, yeah, absolutely so way to go on starting that direction. Now, are you personally a part of that, or did you get as that? How are you doing dealing with that?
Speaker 2:So we've got our we've got.
Speaker 1:Tim is taking one of your elder, your other elder.
Speaker 2:Tim is one of our elders. Yeah, it's me, and me and Tim.
Speaker 1:I'm two elders, yep.
Speaker 2:So he's taking a guy there now and then we're talking about like phasing. Okay, what's the next step for us? To bring some other folks into it. I met with the Pastor over region, mark Davis, at city view, and so he's he leaves their region ministry last week, and so we're kind of talking about different ways that we could potentially so good phase it out. There's another time that it happens in Georgetown as well, and so trying to just see how other people are doing it, and then there's a couple of opportunities to even, like, go to a little mini Region conference to say, okay, what does this look like?
Speaker 1:so the one in Georgetown? Is that Hill Country Boucher shirts down or is that another?
Speaker 2:I believe it's a celebration. I don't know for sure really celebration has. I think so I could be wrong.
Speaker 1:The only reason I say that is one in Georgetown.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1:They probably have a celebrate recovery, but I wouldn't imagine them having region, because that's kind of a watermarky thing that you kind of sign all the doctrinal agreements All right, um, okay, so talk to me about, like you said, stressor. You haven't had any big events, but like is it for you just really the sermon week to week.
Speaker 2:That's always the hardest to figure out how to get time for that I would say that there's something in me that I and I struggled with this even when I was here. Yeah for as long as I've preached, there's always a A feeling that you could do a little more sure and, and some of that is a performance- issue on my part that I need to like let that idle die. Expose that and say what's the deeper cause for this and what does it look like to be faithful to the word, as faithful as I possibly can with the a lot of hours that I can possibly give to it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2:And so there's a there's a refining in me that's happening, and then, obviously, on top of that, thinking of the other 20 things I want to do every week and making sure that I can get as many of those done as possible without Dropping the wrong ball currently staff wise.
Speaker 1:Is it's just you and you have admin, or is it just you, just me?
Speaker 2:and I can get some admin support from Hutto as needed, but I try not to Tap on that too much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's super hard.
Speaker 2:Man yeah.
Speaker 1:So what I've done recently I've actually revamped my schedule to kind of make it more User-friendly and efficient and effortless is probably the best word for it so I went and took Monday mornings all the way up to my lunch and I make that sermon prep time, because usually you don't get anything done Monday morning anyway, because everyone's just getting back and you're trying to figure out and you do a lot of random talking about stuff that doesn't matter, and so I just cut that out and then so I do a four-hour block there and then I do another four-hour block Tuesday morning. So and then I preach the message now, tuesday at at four o'clock, wow, and then I have Wednesdays, which is what we're recording on Wednesday, now, tomorrow at, do we have?
Speaker 2:that cohort tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. So after that cohort I'll preach it again tomorrow with it'll be more revised and that way I'll preach it at least twice, because usually what happens I'll preach what I was doing before is just preaching on Thursday Yep to the staff, and Then I'd be like it would be always half cocked. It was just mm-hmm, it was painful and I. And now I feel like oh and I, and Sunday morning and it's funny, it might be the how different is like our first Serb service attendance is like 95 to 100 and our second service attendance like 150 to 160, and so maybe there's a reason for that. I don't know. Yeah but like so I'm like I Really wanted to kind of emphasize the sermon prep so that my first sermon out of the gun is has enough of the Fine tuning because I think you know, especially after you preach it once, you're like, ah, and you're like I could fix that. Well, now, after preaching it twice, now anyway, so that has helped me a lot and so not insane, you need to do that, but that's been helpful. And then also the collaborative preaching meeting for me still happens right, if we record this podcast, there you go, that's awesome. So all right. So Talk to me about evangelism. I mean, that's that's essential for any church plan. How are you still keeping that the forefront when probably everybody's wanting ministry like regen, I want to recovery minister, I want to whatever I want to and how do you keep Gospel sharing going?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I think the evangelism cohort that we're part of is is definitely really helpful for that Talk to everyone about what we're doing. So it is Churches that care about evangelism and moving that needle. Just how do I become a little bit more evangelistic personally? And then how do I have a church that I'm leading that's a little bit more evangelistic as well and and it takes it, wants it to be one of your main four focuses as a church, which I think is essential. But for most churches you'd be like oh, I don't know about top four, maybe like number six or seven, it's up there. We're just trying to survive right, exactly, and and I would say that Sit from launch team, core team, to now it has fallen off a bit, but not not as far as like a huge concern, but Definitely like the logistical piece of all of the stuff that needs to happen on a Sunday, taking precedence over the going out and Evangelizing that's. That's a real struggle, that I yeah.
Speaker 1:I think, I think every church has this struggle and hence why, you know, keeping it at the forefront, yeah, is so essential. In fact, one of the things that our elders have talked about recently that we might implement is, you know how? We have our focus conference every year, and so this year we're just might call it a bless conference. We just go do it bless every year, and a different emphasis of prayer, listening and eating with one another serving or sharing. Yeah, I'd be the way to work that out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I haven't, we haven't really come to any, but as well as elders have been talking and we had our, you know, robert sass, our one of our elders is our Missional influence leader who gives us a bless infusion every 30 days, yep. So he met with the staff yesterday. They met with elderboard this morning and that has been a real blessing for me personally to kind of see how how valuable it is To kind of keep that at the forefront of your constantly going over at do your 30s, do your minute 30 testimony, do your 15 second testimony, who are the people on your bless list and where you out with them and like just getting asked those questions on the regular keeps on the forefront. So it's whatever you talk about is what is valued, and so I think that's part of the least for me in church world is keeping what I value in front of everybody is so important, because Of course we're gonna do Super Bowl party. Community group Sunday morning is gonna happen, yeah. It might not happen, well, but it's gonna happen, yeah. And so I think that that's the part where I want to kind of like let's press into the Great Commission, and obviously we always want to be Living out the great commandment. So I don't know, I thought not that again, I don't have any solutions by any stretch of the imagination, but I think for us just the evangelism cohort, to your point, have been helpful in just mean, because it felt like the first year was just like Getting off the ground again, especially post COVID, when you know we lost a lot of things from COVID, like we had so many outreach opportunities with the community that just sort of died. And there there is a new generation who knew Joseph, who did not know Joseph, meaning there's a whole new generation of don't even remember all the events we did with the mud, the right municipal utility district where we would go and serve, and it would be evangelism opportunity, at least invite opportunity. Yeah now how effective those were, I'm not really sure, but it was like we were outside focused, and so I think there's a part of that that I'm missing, and so we're having to sort of Redivitalize and refine with our neighborhood next to a neighborhood approach. That's a little bit more relational and a little, probably more effective, but it doesn't feel like you're doing anything Because you didn't have this huge setup, events or strategy behind it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that kind of takes me back to my days of being an apartment life cares team. Yeah, long ago, right, and one of the things that One of our mentors told us I think it was actually the Delgato's yeah, john, david and Patricia.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We were talking about how different events that you do could be more of like Brett events, like where you've got a lot of exposure, and so when I think of like doing different Outreaches in the city, really sponsoring a mud event and like the mud was basically like, hey, you're the engine that's gonna make this thing go, that's awesome. Yeah, because you've got that reputation with them. But if those people aren't coming to know Jesus, then you also go.
Speaker 1:What's the point? The big point right with that?
Speaker 2:Is it? Is it worth it? And you would say yes, but then if you've got limited resources in limited time, do we sacrifice all of this to have non Evangelism exposure?
Speaker 1:and so what we did in I think it was you were here for glad and generous hearts here what we do is we kind of tone down our ability to go do events because people weren't having fun. I know that seems like just an awful way to put that, but and then we said let's dedicate this year to enjoying each other and making your community group something that people Actually want to be a part of yep. And I think what we saw was a sort of a switch in the vibe of like this is something that I'm supposed to enjoy and have fun at. I think we saw real so our community group growth sort of experience became enhanced and better and or at least people liked to be there and that's always essential. Talk to me about your community group structure set up. How are you doing that and how many groups do you have and how's all working?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say First, I think your glad and generous heart stuff was after, after my time. So it's it's awesome to hear that, because I remember our struggle was people wanted it, wanted to go, but they had to go right the main. It was more of a had to than a one yeah and so shifting. That is a huge deal because we can. We can get together and talk Bible all day long, hundred percent In in our culture. But, you know, are we okay with actually like knowing each other and going deeper? And it are your community group people, your people yeah, like that's another. That was huge.
Speaker 1:I we made a huge shift on that yeah, to make it your people, and what that meant was some groups had to die so that other groups could be born of people that they actually wanted to spend time with. And I think what's hard for me and this is just maybe- the. I don't want to call it perfectionist, a Christian I'm definitely not that but like you should like all Christians. Yep, like you, this is the family of God for crying out. You don't get to choose your family, your family, god chooses it. And now you're stuck with them and you better like it. Yeah, and so I think there was a part of that. But what happens when you do that? It doesn't. It doesn't have an axe to environment, it has more of a I know, gulag environment, I guess and so and so I think, though, what we we hopefully Effectively did in that year and hopefully since is we've created an environment where I want to be here, and if you don't want to be here, please don't, it's okay, there's another group probably for you that we could. If you disbanded and restarted, probably fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah so our groups, yeah, yeah, groups. We've got three groups at the moment. We've got one that's more like a traditional community group men and women not a lot of kids there, yep, and then that one has about 12 adults and there might be one. There's one child that is in the group but not coming to the group right the negative Maybe sir, and then You've got you got a Men's group and a women's group, which basically we've got 18 guys in the men's group that are coming and we're doing the study Rest in War. We just finished the study measure of a man by Dean Getz. Yeah, talking about elder characteristics and nice. How we should all aspire to be an elder, but as Men we should also just seek to grow in these, these different character qualifier all 18 guys, it's like every week 18. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it varies from week to week, obviously, with different strokes, but we have, you know, 14 regularly coming out of a group of eight. Yeah, that's great and they're, they're seeking to grow. The ladies started with the study on the book of Mark, which is what we went through, but they were going a little bit faster through it, meeting every other week, having discussions on the book of Mark, and they were kind of, they were kind of Hightailing it through there, like four or five chapters a week At first, which four or five chapters that they were discussing? Sure, after reading them over that the two weeks, yeah, and so that kind of laid a foundation. They did mark, they did Ruth, and now they're doing rest in war, yeah, and they're basically a week ahead of us on the rest of war study.
Speaker 1:So men's group, women's group, traditional mixed group, yep, and then kind of the goal to start a region group is an region group Is coming yeah that's great. I mean that that really isn't.
Speaker 2:I mean, when you kind of divide out three groups for 60 people, that's actually right on yeah, and it it's really helpful that there's some folks that, like Through the rest and war study, are experiencing these like Realizations that they might need a little bit more support, and so what does that look like? Let's talk about potentially plugging this in as another layer of support before we Launch our discipleship pathway and everything officially.
Speaker 1:so talk to me about like so you guys been in your meeting at Taylor assembly of God?
Speaker 2:We've got crossroads assembly of God, crossroads Taylor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how has that experience been for you? And when you think about like I Mean, probably you want to get to a Sunday morning experience, like everybody wants to get to the Sunday morning experience. Is there. Are you looking towards that, or is that something that you're like we're content here for now? And what challenges sort of lie in renting a space for another church?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say probably the most equivalent thing to that space would be At Wells branch when we were renting the rec center. Yeah, so you come in, you set up, you teared, you have the service, you tear down. There's a little bit less on the setup and tear down side, which is a huge blessing, right, but there is still a lot of. Okay, we're moving stuff that the bulletins from the, the church that we're in out, and then we're putting them back exactly as they were or as best as we possibly can. In that regard, there's a little bit of shifting on the stage that we've got to do, which mostly isn't problematic, but I think there's. There's occasional like landmines there, of like. You move the piano or something and you can't, you can't take the covers off of the percussion set or something, for example, like it would be a Catastrophic experience. So there's there's some, there's some spots that you have to have wisdom. Yeah, also the ability to have these conversations of like, hey, we're gonna do our best and we need to keep an open line of communication so we can talk through these things. Super, because inevitably we might leave something Wrong, but we're not. We're not doing that because we don't like you guys, or not grateful or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's always challenging because I think the host church would have a tendency to take things personal and so, even when we hosted, we've hosted. We hosted life church for a season and we host we're hosting a Korean church, the blessing church currently on Sunday afternoons and so there's a tendency to kind of see any sort of inconvenience as they don't care, and that's clearly not it. I mean these people are doing the best they can with what, what they have. There's a reason why they're renting a space and I think sometimes the host church needs to remember that at least I know we do, and so we. It's an honor and a blessing to host another church here, because we have double impact with the building and and that's huge, absolutely so. When you think about Sunday morning, do you ever have like any thoughts on like what kind of space you'd want?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that that's absolutely a desire that we have. There's some challenges there in the city of other churches that are preaching the gospel and wanting to Take a stand on certain social issues and different things that have caused some Division in the city.
Speaker 1:Oh, and so that church might be off limits for you, even if they have a space so potentially, yes, ain't, but Not because you disagree, but because they've made such a yeah you're thinking through.
Speaker 2:Okay, if we're gonna be guilty by association, who are we gonna associate with right, and who are we gonna link arms with and say this is our tribe, this is our people? And there are pros and cons with each of those, for each different space that you might consider Wow. And then it also Intersects with the public sector as far as, like, the most ideal place for most church plants to meet would be schools, right, right, because they're not meeting on Sundays. I could rent a school that the district doesn't even have any room for that in their policy, because the groundwork hasn't been laid. If anything.
Speaker 1:No one is renting schools on Sundays.
Speaker 2:Correct. Yeah, oh, that's brutal, which is which has been exacerbated by some other things that, have you know, caused some issues in the city, like having to pride to parades, because there's this group of Churches that are against having they won't really want to Chris it to be a Christmas parade and then you've got this pride group that wants to participate and these guys don't want to let these guys in. And then the city says let's just have two parades, let's see what happens, and yeah so. And then the following year they just did one parade but you couldn't regulate who is in and out and all sorts of Dancing around there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you said the sign says we're not with these people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do we? How do we then intersect and say, hey, we're gonna preach the gospel, we're gonna preach the whole council of God, we're traditional, we're gonna biblical, we're gonna be biblical here and when? How do you then Approach those, those different Locations and make it, make a plea, while also saying I don't want to sign away all my rights here.
Speaker 1:But right oh.
Speaker 2:Certain fires here either yeah.
Speaker 1:So like there's a potential that if you said something like not pro homosexual, then they'd be like, hey, we're gonna have to ask you to not meet here anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and and that's obviously. I would say that's a kind of like just a fear that's over the top and not necessarily rational. Yeah but you also don't want to say, hey, this will never happen in your desperation to get a space, because everybody's desperate to get a space, right yeah?
Speaker 1:Super tough. So so there is the, the school district. I thought there's other spots that you guys were looking at.
Speaker 2:One point yeah, a lot of the other spots like logistically didn't work or financially didn't work, so the space that we are in there's a great rate that is very affordable. Yeah, it works for us and allows us to have a nice runway to build our church, or forgot, to build his church. Yeah, they're in Taylor through us, and so we're excited about that. But then, thinking through the the long-term financial ramifications of that, and then there's some people that have come to our church because we're the only church meeting on a Sunday evening, which is really sweet, and so you go. Okay, lord, you're bringing us these people. We want to have a heart for them here, and is this something that we continue, even in our X season?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and that will be a huge challenge, because An evening service is super hard, because it does reach a niche demographic, which is huge, but usually it's not an overwhelming amount. And so all of a sudden, you find yourself having church for a small group. Yep, but I think there's some wisdom in that if you could make that happen. Even it was a small group that met exactly that time that wouldn't be the worst, absolutely Okay. so how is Talk to me about your family and your children and your wife and how they have transition and how they are handling the, the move from Pastor on staff to lead pastor, and how's that how you, how's the whole family?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man. So I've got ace, who's five and a half. I've got Keras, who's three and a half. I've got Luke, who's seven months old, maybe eight now, but he's getting up there, man, they're, they're amazing. Have been super supportive of everything we've done so far as much secure kids can be. Katie, obviously, has been most supportive of and flexible of this, this dream becoming a reality for us to move to Taylor and and she likes Taylor. Yeah, she loves Taylor, which is, which is a big selling point.
Speaker 1:Why does she love it?
Speaker 2:It's very similar to the town that she grew up in and also really similar to the town I grew up in, which is, which is great, yeah, where's the course of Canada? Or scan a text you grew up oh, yeah, yeah, so that's cool.
Speaker 1:So so that, like her support is huge. Talk to me about how your wife supports you in this season, especially in the first year of a church plan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, what was interesting was that, before we Got to this stage, we were praying about and looking at all these different locations and there was this I don't want to say stubbornness, but there were some, there was some feet dragging in every location that we brought up before, and and it was a I don't think this is it. I don't think this is it, I don't think this is it, and and so for me being, you know, just Confused by that, there's like a okay, so is this something that we're still gonna be able to plant? We just need to find, like, the unicorn location or somewhere that you're you're you're happy about Putting our roots in. But but really, I think the reluctance and the the wisdom piece there is hey, this is the place that we hope to live and exist and Plant our roots here to do ministry for the next 30 plus years. Right, what does that look like? We do really want to be very particular and very picky about where it might be and making sure that that demographic is one that you're passionate about reaching, and what's neat about it is that it's also going to be rapidly changing as Different things are happening the economic development over there.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, what's that? Yeah, well on, I want to get to that.
Speaker 2:Yep, keep going on yeah so Katie has sacrificed a ton to make this all happen. How so saying, raising our kids and doing home. She's doing homeschool with ace right now. We're trying it out for their first year, still figuring out a lot of things there, and so she's doing homeschool with Keras in preschool, homeschool with ace, also taking care of our eight month old Luke, and so just keeping the whole house running. And then also, how does she then support a church plant? Which then means, okay, we were at Wells Branch Community Church for 10 years and then we moved to Hutto for a year and change, and then, in that process of that year and change, we're then working towards planting and so they're starting to be like some uprooting again, which I would say uprooting when you live is a huge obstacle, uprooting where you worship is a huge obstacle. Changing roles and in a staff position is gonna be another huge, like changing of the guard. That's gonna cause a lot of Instability or questions or like all sorts of new Challenges that you're gonna figure out in that new season that's great.
Speaker 1:So how about for her? Like is she, and is she leading the women's group? Like is, and I don't know if this is the right way. So is there an expectation that she would have any of the sort of leadership in that, and how did you guys navigate that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we recognize that there would be a like by nature, like you've got to understand that people are going to look to you and they're gonna see you as a Leader, even if you're not in a leadership position. And so we've done our best to keep her free of the leadership positions in any sort of title, yeah, and just have her attend, and that's been really healthy for us. Yeah, that's huge to free her up of that expectation. Well, also, there might still be some of that, but it's not being Forced upon her anyway.
Speaker 1:Well, that's really good. Okay, so You're With Tim, who was, who's an elder, at City View, which is a larger church, and he's tell me about your, your elder. I guess he'd be your elder chairman, because he's another elder, but talk to you about your relationship with him, how that's progressed and how you've gotten to develop it over time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Tim is a huge blessing, wise, gifted in leadership, and he's great articulator of the gospel and he can Lead and shepherd and care for people in a way that is really winsome. Yeah, and then also he's willing and able to have the hard conversations to spur somebody up on for for more and greater things, which is really powerful to have in an elder. In an elder Period yeah, I'm gonna say elder candidate, but in any sort of elder you've got to see the character, qualifications, that consistency of this man's the same in every arena of his life. And then he's been a huge support in Caring for our people. And what does it look like for us to Be there for people as they're going through different seasons in life, walking through creating our budget and kind of guiding our finance team to Land on different budget numbers so that we can then do that. And I'm involved in that process somewhat, but he's really the the leader of that process, yeah, moment. His wife, mandy, is our worship director and so nice benefit also.
Speaker 1:So nice.
Speaker 2:She's, she's leading worship, he's helping with so she sings mm-hmm and plays guitar oh nice, leads our band and it's like a whole part-time for free type thing.
Speaker 1:Hey, that's a huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we definitely are wrestling with different things there, like how to how do you work with that and Make that sustainable long term, because she does an amazing job.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that is super hard. Yeah, wow, okay, so Tim.
Speaker 2:Tim's amazing. He's leading our men's group. Yeah, he's leading our women's group, and so they've been really helpful in that as well, and so you know, are you leading the traditional group or are you not leading group? I'm not leading a group at the moment. I'm trying to try to stay out of that seat as long as possible as well. We definitely want to have a group and we might host it, but having somebody else lead it at least yeah, officially good yeah, that's good Okay.
Speaker 1:So I I talked to you about your children's ministry. I knew that that was some of the constraints of space. How have you managed with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've got two children's directors. We've got Aaron Snyder, who was a member here at Wells Branch Community Church, and we've got Laurie Vineyard, who is my mother-in-law.
Speaker 1:Oh fun. Are they paid, or are they not paid?
Speaker 2:not paid, so directors that are volunteer yeah, which is amazing, and they facilitate three different classes one for our preschool, one for our nursery and then one for our early elementary Kiddos, and then some of our older elementary Kiddos Attend the service with us nice and so we have seen some cooler, cool stuff there. They've done a great job. Adopting truth 78 is the the curriculum that they've kind of adopted. Yeah, and it's been really helpful. Nice, and then. The space constraints were the big thing I've you were wrestling through yes, so we have three small classrooms that we use for our Kiddos and we've got about 20 to 30 Kiddos that are gonna be there during the main service and so trying to navigate that is a little bit dicey with, okay, here's, here's the kids that were then bringing into these classrooms and if it's cold and wet and rainy, do you take them outside? You probably can't. The sermon, the sermon time frame and everything. So we've got the kids in our main service. Yep, for the first two songs, yep, and we pray over the kids, we commission the kids.
Speaker 1:Oh, we send them to their classes like what you guys do with. Yeah. Yeah, we only do that. One of our fourth and fifth graders rest, kind of get checked in, but I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that way the kids can be with their family when they worship. It's maybe not as focused as you might have otherwise, but it's sweet.
Speaker 1:It's really sweet. Yeah, I love that. I think there's something really powerful. In fact, we, you know, because our kids are here for both services, and so sometimes we haven't just come to big church and just experience the whole thing and sit there while I preach the sermon, which is, like you know, disciplining your children from the stage while you're preaching. But, I think that's really good. Okay, so that is really helpful. I feel like that's a great reason because I think you've got the children's ministry and you probably already know this because I Talk stats all the time but your Sunday morning adult attendance, your, of that, your children's ministry, will be 30%. So if you have 60 adults, you'll have 20 kids, and so that's just standard. That is never wrong. You can, you could pretty much, you know, do an over-under by about, you know, depending on on how big your church is, by about one to ten Difference Sunday to Sunday, and you're not gonna be far off that and then the student ministry is usually gonna be around 10% of that Sunday morning attendance. So let's say, you have a hundred adults on a Sunday morning, you'll have 30 kids. If you have 60 gold 60 adults, you have 20 kids. So you know that that's kind of a way to sort of look at that. The other one was you know, if a hundred adults, you'll have 10 teenagers or 10 Student ministry. So anyway, that's sort of fun to think through just when everything through numbers and how it's how much space you need, and so you can, you can get away with it for a season, oh, with three classrooms and an outside. The outside is huge, as being here at the strip center in Austin is challenging for us because going outside is not really an option. Yep, although we are, we are talking. You know, theoretically, adrian has been wanting for the longest time to put a playground outside the fire lane. It's not actually a fire lane, so, yeah, so we're excited for that potential. I'm not sure how we're gonna do that, but that could be the direction we go, because we need more space, as everybody does. Absolutely Okay. So, james, let's talk. Let's talk to potential church planners like they're thinking about it. They're contemplating coming to the associations Assessment. What would you say to them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say that the Association of Hill Country Churches will do a number of things for them that would help them to be successful in planning a church, primarily having a group of guys that are with you and that are championing this greater mission to reach every man, woman and child in greater Austin with life-changing reality. Jesus Christ, we want everybody to hear and have repeated opportunities to hear and respond to the gospel. That level of commitment will make you better, just by association with absolutely with the association.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that and I think really one of the things we always talk about. There's three things. You have starting skills, the same skills and self-awareness and Like, I think, being able to develop those things wherever you're at and be able to ask the questions Am I a starter, am I a sustainer? And do I have self-awareness to a level that I can go in, see my weaknesses and fill in the gaps of my leadership? That's super hard to do. And also, being okay with somebody else doing a critical part of the mission because You're not gifted in that way, and that's okay for a church player not to be gifted in every possible way, because when you think about it, I mean just just in general, what a pastor has to do, like, for example, you know, you know me with my PowerPoint architecture plans. I'm always drawing new plans. Yeah so you have to be an architect, you have to be in real estate, you have to be a theologian, you have to be a counselor, you have to be a Evangelist, an evangelist and a financial analyst. You have got to do everything and eventually you're gonna go. I actually can't do everything, and that's okay, and so I'm gonna offload this portion of the ministry to an elder, to a staff member, to a deacon, to whatever, and I think that's huge.
Speaker 2:Yep and being willing to serve in whatever capacity is necessary and learn and grow. Probably so, if somebody were to come to an Association church in the process to being planted, you're gonna learn, you're gonna see how things are done. I had the the joy of being able to be here for ten years and then being at Hutto for about 16 months and so seeing two very different churches operating in more of suburb context, more of a and and then here urban urban, suburban right, and so you've got these different contexts too of like a lot more family, church and a lot more We've got young adults and they're exciting and then they're gone.
Speaker 1:We're gone.
Speaker 2:So so, looking at that and saying, okay, in these two different contexts there's there's two very different ministry philosophies that you have to have yep, that are also still like we're still asking the same questions of who are you where you had, spiritually, how can I help you take the next step? Yep, and then saying, okay, I can appreciate both of these things. And then, as I'm thinking about putting it together, what we're gonna do in Taylor, I've got a. I've got a greater ability to do that, having the experience in that of being a staff person on both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love to hear what your thoughts are the difference between Hutto and Wells branch you know, oh man and you don't have to like. You have to spare my feelings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I would love is like.
Speaker 1:I can imagine we kind of run and gun and like it's whatever and out there it's probably way more structured.
Speaker 2:You know I would say that there is a that One of the biggest influences on your life early on was Andy Stanley, which in his Missional approach, his missional model, I think is really, really Special, like meet people where they're at and you've got a place where people Will come and learn and grow and they somebody who's not a Christian would feel you a million times more comfortable here than they would at Hudow Bible. There are some things that we do here that we explain hey, if you're not comfortable, you don't have to stand. If you'd like, you can stand and worship with us right. There are some barriers that are being taken down here that would go unspoken at Hudow Bible, and so there's more of like a An intentionality behind the other's guests here kind of thing. And intentionality with guests, of like making somebody that's not a Christian feel super welcome here which Hudow doesn't do, and I think that there are things that are not explained up front but then create different discipleship opportunities or different conversations. Oh, interesting, and maybe some more mystery of what is happening here, where the Christians are gathering and worshiping and so it's more. I would say this is a little bit of a caricature, but like more newcomer friendly here in a regard of people will come and they'll hear the gospel, Like they're going to hear the gospel in both places but, they'll come and they'll feel more welcome right away here, versus a worship service that's directed more like more for the believers that are there.
Speaker 1:Right, you're supposed to say, hey, believers you're going to go out as opposed to hey, welcome the whole world. Here's what we believe.
Speaker 2:And here's why. And so there's different pros and cons to both of those even just wrestling with some of that. Yeah, who's?
Speaker 1:this service, for that has always been a question that we've had to wrestle with and we kind of here, at least, we went for an attractional missional model, meaning an attractional Like we wanted to be. Obviously we're glorifying God, but we wanted to make it low bar low barrier of entry when you come in and so there isn't a lot of insider language and we try to explain everything very clearly because we know that a lot of people just don't know Diddley squat, or at least they're faking it and then. But the problem with that is it doesn't feel like when's the gathering. The problem we have when's the gathering with just the Christians, and I think that has its own problems with it as well.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So, even wrestling with something like that I think that's probably just the main one I would say there's an opportunity to say, okay, what do we hope to be and what is God bringing us to do here in Taylor? What does?
Speaker 1:Taylor need. What does Taylor need? Going back to Taylor, I think about Samsung. I mean, that's pretty much the only thought. When I think Taylor, I think monster building coming, and is it already built or is it?
Speaker 2:being built, In the process of being built. It's going to be fully functional, hopefully like mid year, or at least for the first mid mid this year.
Speaker 1:You hear different things.
Speaker 2:Okay, you hear different things, so very soon it's coming, and then there are already people that are moving here for that and then all sorts of other businesses that Samsung has these connections with that are coming to Georgetown or Leander or other spots. Exactly, yeah, and so it's not just the Samsung company itself, it's the other partner companies that are coming to be close to them, right, because that's where the business contracts. Is this a?
Speaker 1:chip manufacturing place. Okay so especially in the world of AI right where that's going to be a big deal. So this could be a huge hub. When you think Nvidia over there off Parmer Lane, you think Samsung there and Taylor, you think Google and Apple all along the Parmer corridor, then now all the way over to you know you got Tesla all the way up to Samsung and Taylor. I think this is a wild time to be in. Austin, at least the greater Austin area because everything is so co-located because of the environment Texas has created. But then the high tech, ai world is coming and we have got to be able to minister in a diverse sort of set of skills, and when I think Samsung, because it's a Korean company primarily. In fact, the Korean church that meets at our church has a lot of people that live in Taylor. That it's wild and so it's interesting, but you're not. It's not just to be a Korean growth. Your experience, growth from all, yep, the diverse people, do you? And then this is you know, this goes back to, you know, church stride. Do you have like a person that you're looked like? This is the person we're trying to reach their college educated, they blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do you have something like that? Or have you thought through that? Or is just like whoever the Lord brings, brings and we're just kind of whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a little bit like that. I would say that the people that are going to be most likely to come are oftentimes very similar to us too. Yeah, and you don't want to just minister to like, it'll be easiest for me to just minister to people that are okay, we've got a 34 year old white male that's married, has three kids that are all under six, and like, if you look around, you'll see that there's a pattern of that already. Yep, and not necessarily exactly that, obviously, but very similar to that already. And so you say, okay, this is good for us to focus here, but also, how do we widen that and how do we focus on reaching other folks? There was a guy, john Lee, who was a he's Korean. He lives in our neighborhood. We've been ministering to him, have seen some cool things, and then he is going to a different place to worship now in the season hoping to find a wife, and so there's, there's these barriers there where you go. Okay, this is this is challenging of the guy who was maybe a picture of who we could reach, but there's there's some differences between John and some other Korean folks. You don't want to make a caricature too much, but I think it does help you to focus in on. These are some things that we could do with our subject matter expert kind of helping us out.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is a good deal. Yeah, I think you know you're trying to reach everybody and it gets super hard because, like, who is the everybody? Yeah yeah, because I think you're going to reach. Probably you know your own ethnicity pump. It's a natural draw for that and then you reach usually 10 years below and 10 years above you, and so you know. So for you it's from 24 to 44, it's going to be your natural bent for people. And so how, what does that mean? And how do you kind of grow that area, especially with three kids? So you're probably going to have everyone's either going to be like we're going to be like the pastor, we're going to have three kids, or we're going to have four kids, or whatever the thing is. So I mean it is, it's fascinating to me, kind of like all the demographics play into it and kind of the direction you're going.
Speaker 2:And what's been cool has been some of the folks that we've gotten have been like 20 years above and beyond. That's huge. Which has been neat. But Tim's parents are there, my mother-in-law is there, Mandy's mom is there, and so there's there's a lot of three generations already kind of forming in our church, which is huge, really special to see from just here's core team plus family above, and then them and their kids.
Speaker 1:That's great. Okay, man Janice, we covered a lot of ground there. Any other thoughts on church planning that you want to tell all young up and coming church planners or people in the process, what do they need to know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard and it will take a level of commitment that you don't maybe know you need already. It's going to definitely be demanding and challenging, even in the seasons that I feel like are a little bit more rest, like a season of okay, we're seeing things that I'm not walking through exactly the same struggles that some other people that have gone before me are having, but there's still, like this, this constant barrage or attack on you could be doing more, you could be doing this, and so really knowing who you are and your identity in Christ builds a foundation to plant and to do it in a place that remains healthy, which I'm growing towards. Having to be reminded of, that of like, hey, you're putting too much pressure on yourself to do XYZ because you can't Now be free and do your best at XYZ.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I appreciate it. That's great, james, I think you're way more mature than I was at that age and because I started at Wells Branch when I was 34. And then here I am now at 46, almost 47.
Speaker 2:So kind of wow All right?
Speaker 1:Well, hey, thanks so much for watching. Make sure, if you got any questions on church planning specifically, you can text at 737-231-0605. We're going to bring James back from trying to get you and Holland back here. Holland was supposed to be here and so we're going to have to ridicule him until he comes back. But yeah, if you want to talk church planning, if you have any questions about that faith, culture, everything in between, let us know. Go to pastorplechcom, drop us a line there. We'd love to hear from you, so from our house to yours. Awesome, thank you. God bless you.
