Brandon Harris: Navigating Our Faith Towards Generosity

Music. Welcome here to Mindful Leader. This is Dennis Shaw, and I'm the host of Mindful Leader.

This episode is scheduled for release on January the 20th. My guest today is a friend of mine, Brandon Harris, and he is the chief operating officer at Generis, which is outside of Atlanta, and they do assistance with churches and help them out. I'm going to let Brandon do some of his introduction. Good morning, Brandon. Good to see you. Yeah, good morning, Dennis. Thanks for inviting me to be a part of this podcast. As you said, we go back a ways. 15 years.

Yeah, I know because my daughter was born the very first term of our doctoral program at Wesley Seminary. And every year on her birthday, I'm reminded of all my friends and colleagues from Wesley. And it was such a powerful time. So it's good to be with you. Well, welcome. Good to see you. Where'd you go to school? A little bit about your experience?

What denomination, things like that? Yeah. So I went to school at Auburn, Auburn University in Alabama, and I thought I was going to be an electrical engineer. And the Lord got a hold of me. And coincidentally, it was about the same time I failed differential equations. And that kind of gave me some motivation to seek other alternatives.

And that's when I started to feel the call to ministry. And when I graduated from Auburn, I went straight to Duke and went to and did my seminary career there and came straight out of Duke. Got married, got my first appointment all in the same summer. And I started as the associate pastor at Anniston First United Methodist Church. I was there for six years. It was a great experience, but I've been a United Methodist elder now for over 20 years.

So, yeah, it's been a really eventful journey, but I have found my way into this role at Generis where I'm actually appointed to Generis as the chief operating officer. So I serve in extension ministry and I maintain my connection to the North Alabama annual conference. Wonderful.

I wanted to talk today, you had some thoughts when you and I shared this back and forth about what you could potentially talk about. And those of you who listened to my last episode heard me remark about the fact that there are people who, whatever issue you're having, their solution is a hammer. And they're going to give you the same hammer over and over and over again, no matter what your issue is. That's not the way Generis and or Brandon operate.

So Brandon, you had some thoughts. Yeah. So I'll just give a high level overview of what I do at Generis and what Generis does generally. And then that may seed a few questions and move the conversation toward some of the things that I'm passionate about. So Generis, as an organization, we fall into an industry called fundraising council. That's a fancy word in the regulatory world for fundraising and stewardship.

So in the church, we think about stewardship and generosity, and that's our specialty. We help churches to fund their vision. And in my experience in the pulpit and leading churches, I know firsthand that that is an area that pastors are not well-equipped to lead in. And we've had a lot of great success in helping churches raise a lot of money to do really big things, whether that's capital expansion or launching new ministries.

That's our sweet spot. I got into this work, as Dennis knows, I don't have a lot of deep love for the appointment system. We need to probably rework the appointment system in the 21st century. It works well for some things, and it can also cause some headaches. Well, I had some headaches at one point, and I had an opportunity to step away from a point of ministry, and at the same moment, I found Generis.

I came in to lead the operations. I'd been working as an executive pastor of a large Methodist church in the Atlanta area. I really found that I had the gifts and the passion for organizing logistics and operations and making sure that ministry flowed smoothly and was working effectively and efficiently. And so, yeah, I really found that I loved that.

And I also had experienced this really big challenge, especially in the churches that I led, of not having the resources that we needed for ministry and finding that it's because we didn't talk about faith and money in compelling and, to be honest, scriptural ways. When I found this opportunity at Generis to lead the operations team, it was just the right mix for me. And so now I'm the chief operating officer.

And we work with over 400 churches and ministries every year in helping them to grow the resources that they have and fill that gap between their vision and the dollars that they have on the table at the moment.

And so that's really exciting. I know from my personal experience in the military, there were things that were weaknesses of mine when I was 23 years old. And by the time that I retired out of the Army in my mid-40s, those weaknesses had become strengths. And one of those, for example, as it related to my clergy life, which I entered into in the mid-40s and I retired in my early 70s, was this issue, what you're describing, of fundraising.

I was afraid to talk about it. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't have any vision for how to do it. And through a series of assistance, various people, various books that I read, various programs that I participated in, it moved from being a weakness to being a core strength. And so it was one of those things of where you may think, a person may think, gee, I can't do that. I think more people can do it than they think they can do it. Exactly.

And I think in order for the church to succeed in the new world that we are moving into, we have to get serious about it. Because it's not just about the activity that the church wants to do. It's about the hearts and the discipleship and the faith of the people who make up the church. If we're not talking about giving and stewardship, we are failing to address a really core area of discipleship.

And as Jesus said, it's one of the, he talked about a lot of things that could derail someone's faith, but money he put right up there at the top. And so if we're failing to talk about it, we're doing our members and constituents a disservice.

And yeah and so i've i've really i've really found that this is i'm passionate about it i mean if i could go back to my my 22 year old 23 year old self coming out of seminary and going into my first church and the way i talked about giving i wish i could go back and just give myself a swift slap upside the head because it was it was not biblical it was not it was not helpful And I learned a lot just by necessity as I grew in leadership.

And once I got to Generis, I realized, wow, all that I still didn't know. And we have 35 people on our team that live and breathe the questions of stewardship and giving and generosity every single day. And I'm in awe every time I hear them talk about that subject. And it's really fun to be a part of this team. And I have found personally that talking to other people, being part of a community, one, I think is a quote that I got out of a book.

I think it's by Socrates. It's something like, if everything I know is from what I've read, then I know nothing. Everything I've, if what I know is what I've read, then I know nothing. And part of what you and I talked about the run-up to this was the fact that there is a community out there, a community of like-minded people to assist you. You're not alone in this activity. Yeah. Because we talked about one of the purposes of this podcast is to help church leaders who may feel alone.

And unfortunately, that is the reality. It's easy to get isolated. It's easy to feel like you don't know what to do. And I can remember the feeling of people sitting in boardrooms and committee rooms and people looking at me because I was supposed to be the one who knows what to do. I didn't know. I didn't know. And my first real encounter when I hit a real wall was when I had to help a church raise a significant amount of money.

And we ended up going with a fundraising company, a stewardship company, RSI, which is actually now part of Generis. And that experience was really helpful for me because I learned a lot of tips and tricks that I didn't know. And maybe I could have figured those out if I'd read enough or studied enough, but I had lots of other things on my plate that I couldn't devote the time to learning those and absorbing them from the resources that are out there.

I needed somebody who was capable and could kind of walk along with me. And I think one of the things that I see from church leaders is they, not just in matters of stewardship, I think in a lot of areas, they either don't feel comfortable or empowered or free to go and ask for professional help when they need it. And it may be that they don't know they need it, but just based on my own experience,

I don't know that that was always the case. I'm sure I was naive in many situations, and I really did need help and just didn't admit it. But there are certain things that I encountered that I realized, wow, I don't know what I'm talking about, and I need somebody to guide me.

Are there particular strategies that are available at a local church for how it is that they may overcome, either the leadership may participate in helping overcome this idea of the fact that everybody thinks they're alone, they're on an island and nobody's there to help them? I think it's incumbent upon the leader, first of all, to have some discipline of self-awareness. Amen. And being reflective, taking time just for prayer and study, the study of the scriptures.

I believe that the Lord speaks to us. And if you feel uncertain, if you feel that little nudge of doubt, that may be the Lord speaking to you saying, hey, this may be an area where you need to grow and to get some help. And I'm talking, of course, in terms of professional assistance at this juncture, though, that voice of the Spirit could lead you to get help in a lot of ways.

The other, I think, is making sure you have a good board to plan and lead with. If you're, as a pastor or a church leader, you're doing it solo, then I would say you're doing it wrong. You need to be partnered with people who can mirror and reflect off of you and can help you to see whether it's through kind of regular formal evaluation processes or just through daily conversation and leadership exercises that you need. This may be an area where you're not equipped.

Why don't we see if we can find some other alternatives and some support? And if your leadership at the local church is everybody who agrees with you, then maybe you need to re-examine how you're putting people in leadership. You might need to occasionally, you might need to put some people in leadership who are willing to say, Dennis, you're heading the wrong way here. Or Dennis, you need a coach. Or Dennis, this is something you need to think about.

Yeah yeah and and by the same token if if you if the people who are with you sort of affirm yeah that's a good idea let's let's get some outside help on this then it's it's validation of of your own personal what you're experiencing from the spirit and i had that experience when i when when we hired rsi i i brought that initial brought the initial idea to the to the church council and they said, yeah, that's a good idea.

Well, I think that dovetails into one of the questions that is, is it how, how, how indeed do it, is it you go about building a support network, that helps you get to a place where people, you can bring an idea forward and you think you've sort of thought through what needs to be thought through. You're ready to present it. Are you ready to talk to people about it? Is there a, do you have any insight into how you might do that? I think church leaders need three types of networks.

They need first friendships. Yeah. Amen. People who they're not working with people who they don't work for people who they're not leading peers, friendships, And I would encourage pastors to find a third space where you make those friendships. I struggled with that early on because I was a young pastor in a small town where there weren't a lot of young people in my immediate network.

And it wasn't really until we moved to Birmingham about six years into my ministry that I really found friends that weren't connected to my church. And I found that through my kids' school. We got connected into the community through the school. And two of my just dearest friends, even today, we maintain a connection because of that original relationship. And so pastors need to find a third space. You know, for our church members, it's usually the church, but that's not the case for us.

We have our home and we have our, and then our workplace and our workplace happens to be the church. We need to find that third space, whether it's a community center or a pickleball club or whatever it is you do, find that third space to build friendships.

Second network is colleagues. There are people who are going through the same struggle as you and some of my colleagues in ministry, you included, were incredibly helpful in some of those formative and most challenging years of my early ministry. And it's always great to be able to pick up the phone and say, can you believe what I'm going through? Can you believe what I'm experiencing? And have somebody on the other end say, yeah, I've been there. I'm going through it now.

And let's talk about how we can lead through that. You said you had three, but I know on that second one there, when people said to me, when I was new in ministry, if I can help, give me a call. If I can help, let me know. And they weren't just woofing me. They really wanted to help. And I had to get past some measure of self-doubt that I was going to sort of go stand on the street corner naked, and they weren't going to laugh at me over being ugly.

And they did. I went to them with very personal leadership kinds of issues, and they listened, and they were very respectful, and they gave me quality wisdom. But part of it was me. I had to get past the fear of talking to them about the potential of the fact that I was failing in some kind of area, or I wasn't capable in some kind of area. And that willingness to admit that out loud is a critical element of what you call self-awareness.

That's what mindfulness to me is partially all about, is this willingness to examine who you are, where you are, what's going on. So in the United Methodist Church, we have this thing called the Nominations Committee, and then we have a Staff Parish Relations Committee. That's the personnel committee for the church. And the members of the personnel committee are not supposed to be family members of people on staff.

Well, my very first solo appointment after I left Anniston, the church secretary was the sister of somebody who was on the nominations committee. And was sister with another person who was leading the Staff Parish Relations Committee. I mean, just the epitome of, yeah, it was way too much. And they're good people, but it was not healthy. It was not a good, it certainly wasn't following the letter of the church rules.

So I faced this position where I had to go, I didn't do anything about it initially. I waited to that nomination process that kicks in about six months into the year or the beginning of the year, so six months into your appointment. And I was facing this challenge. I had to go to the nominations committee and basically tell them, we're going to change the staff parish team because we can't have this person serving. And I remember just feeling incredibly overwhelmed because I knew the dynamics

involved. I was going to have to tell this person, your sister can't do this anymore. And I'd already faced so many challenges early on in that appointment of having to address, put out fires and deal with difficult personalities. I was not looking forward to it. And I just, anxiety was going to the roof. And I remember very distinctly calling a colleague of mine and saying, this was on a Saturday, the Saturday before the next day when we had the committee meeting. I said, I need to talk.

I just need somebody to tell me that this is the right thing or tell me if I'm blowing this out of proportion. So we went over to his house and we talked and he prayed for me. And it was so freeing. Now, it's still difficult to step into that room the next day and lead that nominations team. But that was the moment when it really unlocked for me that I need people in my life who are going through this too and have been in the same room.

And I think you mentioned people telling you, call me if you need help. That's good. But I think you need to be intentional about building those relationships too. Don't just wait until there's a crisis moment to pick up and start that relationship. After that, I really was intentional about having coffee on a regular basis with people who were in my immediate network, and that was really helpful. Friendships, colleagues, and then the third are those professional sources.

And that is where, that's of course where Generous falls into the mix, but it's also where I think we are maybe most reluctant in the church to ask for help. And I've, oh man, in the United Methodist Church, especially, I think we are so insular and, and narrow focused on, on our own little tribe that we miss some of the, some of the really great resources that are not, that don't have a cross and flame on, or don't brand themselves as Wesleyan.

And there's a lot of value that's out there in the world. And coming into Generis, I was so naive about the rich and vibrant resources that are out there in the world and the church leaders who are doing some really amazing things. Now, some of these church leaders, would I want them teaching a class on grace? No, probably not. I wouldn't want them to lead my children's confirmation class. But are they really gifted in understanding multi-site ministry? Oh, yeah.

I mean, there are some amazing mega churches out there that are innovating with multi-site and multi-use space. And I think we've just got to open our eyes to the professionals who are doing great things who may be beyond our tribe. And so I would encourage church leaders to go to conferences, network.

If there's a church that you see that's bursting at the seams in your community, make an appointment with that church leader and just say, hey, I just want to get to know you and learn what you're doing. And I think you'll find that most of those church leaders, they want to see the kingdom grow and they're not necessarily, yeah, they want to see their church grow too, but they're happy to give you advice and guidance and let you in on their secrets.

That's exactly been my experience, is that people want to share. Now, some people will offer me wisdom or insights that I just can't go, I just can't follow. But generally, by listening to them, it also helps me get to know myself better. What are my core values and why do I believe that? Sometimes if I hear somebody tell me something that internally I go tilt a little bit, why did I go tilt? What is that all about?

Our vision at Generis is to change the conversation about faith and money in the church. And we go about that. Our original line of work was capital campaign so that people would think, I need to raise money to build a building. Generis would often pop up on their radar. So I think we're really good at that. We've raised over $7 billion in our 35 years.

Because when you start to think about some of the averages in terms of numbers of people who are in churches and ministries, we've probably touched 4.7 million people in our time, in our 35 years. We've worked with over 4,000 clients. We've got a long track record of helping churches raise money. And that's not just about putting money in a bank account. Those dollars represent expanded ministry. They represent new people coming to Christ.

I mean, think about the thousands of sanctuaries and worship spaces that we've been a part of building as youth centers. I mean, those are spaces where people come to hear the gospel, to have their hearts warm, to become disciples of Jesus. And so it didn't take me long to make a compelling case as to why this ministry was an important and valid way for me to be a minister of the gospel.

So I'm really proud of the work we do, but we've reached a point, I guess it was four or five years ago, when we really started to ask seriously the question of how can we expand our work beyond the churches we're working with. By its nature, a fundraising capital campaign is best suited for a growing church.

Yes, there are churches that may be stagnant or declining that need to raise money to repair a building or whatever, but you're going to build a new building, it's going to be because you're growing. And there are lots of ministries out there in the world that are growing, and that's great. But we also recognize that there are a lot of churches that are not growing. They are comfortably stable, and of course, there are a lot that are declining.

And if we're going to change the conversation about faith and money in the church, then we need to be in ministry with them as well. And we started to think about the importance of generosity culture for helping people to get serious about their own journey with their finances.

And that's where we started to see a lot of excitement from our consulting team to think about how we can help those churches grow their giving in order to expand their vision, in order to reach new people and continue to serve in their communities. So one of our biggest challenges now is starting to help the church world that is not directly, that's not looking for a capital campaign, but to help them see that we can help them to address some of the challenges.

The generosity and stewardship challenges in their church. And that happens in really practical ways through focusing on how you talk about money and articulating your church's theology and lots of things that once you get into it, the pastors that we work with say, oh, yeah, well, that makes sense. Why didn't we think of that? Well, you didn't think of that because by default, we perpetuate the status quo.

We keep doing the things we're doing, and it's hard to evaluate those tacit assumptions and the kind of culture that's – the cultural artifacts that are just right there under the surface that we don't – that we never pick up and look at it. It's like, why are we doing it this way? And if we did it this way, if we did things differently, if we change the way we call for the offering and do the giving moment in worship, might we achieve different results? And what we're seeing is, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we've had one church that's experienced 35% giving growth year over year, going through a coaching process with us and focusing on culture of generosity. We have another one that's experienced 24% giving growth. And this is sort of in a beta testing period through this coaching process, and we're entering into a season where we're about to really expand that and market this service heavily.

And we want to help churches to grow their giving, even if they're not growing their facilities. Well, there was a term that was in Vogue about 30 years ago called a paradigm shift. And for me personally as it related to what our topic is which is.

Helping church helping churches realize that they they have the capacity they have more capacity perhaps than they think they did for me the paradigm shift was shifting from scarcity to generosity and i just for me i think scarcity was its own borderline golden calf that i just was borderline worshiping it and and once i began to think in terms of generosity and i modeled to that generosity, and I made sure people knew I was modeling it, all of a sudden,

it just was amazing what kind of shift that that had. It gave me a different capacity to talk about it. I was able to talk about it in an entirely different way. Yeah. Churches that have healthy giving cultures are led by pastors and lay leaders who are clearly and deeply aware of their own journey of generosity.

And they are generous and moving into generosity themselves. Generosity is not a destination. It is a journey. Well, I think when you went to Generous, you told me that part of your interview process included a little bit of a testimonial to the review committee that was examining whether or not they wanted Brandon to come work for them or not. Talk about your own generosity, or how do you understand generosity? Am I misremembering?

No, you're exactly right. And we ask that of every person who we ask to join our team as a consultant, every person who we ask to join our headquarters team to help with the support team. We want to know, are you passionate about this? Do you understand that your life as a disciple of Jesus is tied up with the way you use your resources at your disposal?

And that's what we mean when we talk about a discipleship journey or generosity journey, is we want you to have had what we call a second conversion. It's a conversion to passionate generosity. Your first conversion is you recognize that Jesus is your Savior.

Your second conversion is you recognize it because God gave to us through his son, and it's given to us in so many ways that that gives us the freedom and the opportunity to give to others passionately and without regard for our own well-being and needs, knowing that God's going to continue to give. So that's not about a prosperity gospel. It's giving because we know that God is going to give. Well, yeah, you think about communion. Take, bless, break, give.

What's the last element of communion, of that communion formula? Obviously, you don't break the wine, but still you take it, bless it, and give it. And wow. I mean, and I tried to make sure that my communion servers understood that they were part of this generosity theme. I wanted them to be a participant in the giving of the communion elements. So do that. Well, and I would challenge, I think the last element of communion is sending forth.

Yes, it is. That's why our Catholic brothers and sisters call it the mass or the missile. You're sending, it's mission. And we go forth as the body of Christ to break ourselves open for the world. And that is the heart of generosity. And we can't do that with just 90% of our lives. We have to do it with the full 100%. And that's why generosity with our financial resources becomes such a core component of discipleship.

And so when you work with a generis consultant, yeah, you're going to implement some strategies and some tools to grow the giving in your church for specific purposes. And that is always going to be a part of it. But you're also going to go through this journey of really wrestling with discipleship and giving, and your people are going to do that as well.

And that's the thing that's really amazing is to hear the surveys that we get back after our consulting engagements and pastors like, oh my gosh, not only did we raise these funds, but our people now really are asking questions about how their resources can make a difference for the Lord in the world. And they're wrestling with questions of discipleship. And that's exciting.

And the reason we're focusing on culture of generosity so much now is we want that conversation, that epiphany, that journey to spread to every church. I would be remiss, too, if I didn't point out that one of our fastest growing divisions in the company is our work with faith-based nonprofits.

We work with Christian schools. We work with mission organizations and other kingdom-oriented ministries. because there's people with significant resources. They want to see the impact of the church expand, and they want to give to the food pantries and the child trafficking organizations and those that are really trying to bring the gospel and practical ways as extensions of the church's ministry.

So we launched that advancement division, I guess it was 10 to 11 years ago, and it continues to be our fastest growing division. And we do some amazing work with those kingdom-oriented ministries. So I'm really excited about that. And I mentioned at the outset of the call that our... We have an almost laser focus on the church and generosity in the church and in Kingdom-oriented nonprofits.

But we have two other areas of focus that are rather small compared to the volume of work we do in other areas. But we do them because we found that these two things, if they're not done well, can sink the effectiveness of a church in making disciples. The first is family ministry. So we have a team of people who are just really gifted in helping churches to build strong youth and children's and student programs.

And if that starts to go haywire in a church, it's going to consume all of the attention of the lead pastor. You're going to start to have people walking away, and the church isn't going to be able to be effective in its ministry and fulfill its visions. That's one of the reasons we focus on that. The other is lead pastor transitions. Most of our work is with churches that are of a congregational polity, but we do occasionally work with Episcopal polity communities.

But if a lead pastor transition is not handled well, that also will cause a church's vision to fail. And for the listeners— No, I was going to say, so that becomes a big focus of our attention as well.

And for the listeners, that was a little inside baseball, but correct me if I'm wrong, but congregational polity is basically where the congregation is in the business of finding and hiring the pastor, whereas Episcopal polity is where externally it is generated by some level, some judicatory level that's above the local church, whether it's a conference or a diocese or whatever like that.

That's right. That's right. But regardless of how your church gets its leaders, when you're not intentional about that transition and really clear about what you need in a leader and how that leader is going to continue to develop the vision for that, as our mentor Lovett Weems would say, that next faithful step. You're not going to take any step at all. You're going to take steps backwards.

And so we've realized that those are two areas where we need to have some tools in our toolbox that when clients are coming to us for help, we can help them to address those issues, even as we're having the generosity conversation. Brandon, you brought up a very good point there. We were talking about congregational Episcopal leadership. I'm personally a Methodist. You're a Methodist. A lot of our leaders come in from externally.

So someone may know of the congregation, but they've been appointed there by the bishop. My own personal orientation on this is that an awful lot of the continuity of operations, It's a continuity of vision is the lay leadership at that congregation. I don't mean it's totally 100% theirs, but nonetheless, that's theirs. And I can see you on the screen there nodding your head a little bit. So let's go back to the issue about the Episcopal.

I got it on the congregational side because the continuity is the clergy person themselves.

But you can't always control the change of what's going to happen in the Episcopal model. That's going to be sort of controlled externally from you to some extent. So lay leadership of this vision. How do we go about inculcating that in such a way, or how do we go about getting ownership of that, or am I full of beans?

Well, you're right that I think in any polity, the lay people need to be the custodians or the source of the vision because it's the spirit working within every person that speaks forth into a congregation a sense of where God is leading us. There are going to be people who are more in tune to that than others, but every person should have some sort of a voice in that. It's the senior leader who is the mouthpiece for that vision.

They are the ones who listen carefully, who help the laity to discern, and then articulate it, and then shepherd it into its fullness and help it to come to fruition. Now, in a congregational polity, if it's done well, the leadership transition at the pastoral level, there's a deep and intentional focus on vision and what's the right leader for this next phase.

In an Episcopal policy when it's done well, or polity when it's done well, it's the same thing happens and the new leader comes in as not to chart a new course, but to pick up with where are we now and what's the next faithful step. That's why I've always loved that image that Lovett Weems would share is the, okay, you're taking a step and you can only go in so many directions from where you are now. So what's the next step from where we are now?

My greatest frustration with the Episcopal polity, and it's kind of ties back into some of my experience with the United Methodist Appointed System, is that there is not a very clear and effective process for listening to vision and matching the new leader with the vision of the congregation.

Sometimes it's because the church doesn't know what they what they want and what they need they don't they don't have a vision and I think maybe that's maybe that's not just in some cases maybe that's in most cases.

Others it's because there's just it's the bureaucratic the bureaucratic process it starts to the tail wags the dog and you end up with appointments out of convenience rather than a true match yeah so I think there's there's a lot of, There are pros and cons to both systems, but for the purpose of this conversation, it's really important that a church spend time thinking about their vision and articulating where are we going,

because that's going to motivate people and excite people and encourage people. In fact, when we work with churches in generosity, that's some of the most significant part of our conversation is, okay, what is the vision here? We want to build a building. Okay, no, no, no, no. What is the vision here? Why are you building this building? What is it going to do for the Lord in this community? How is it going to make disciples? And once we tease out that.

In the advancement world, it's called a case for support. You know, it's not just that you need to build an athletic facility for your school. It's that those athletic facilities are going to be a part of education and inspiring, you know, the next generation of students and, you know, whatever that case is. In the church, it's not just that you're building a youth facility. You want a place where youth can have a safe space. They can grow in their faith.

They can learn to worship, et cetera, et cetera. Well, your local context matters. In Utah, there's lots of churches, but those churches are essentially closed to anybody using that facility who's not of that denomination. And so the church that I was the pastor of, Hilltop, we ended up being not only Hilltop United Methodist Church, but we were a community resource for drama clubs.

Dance clubs, yoga, They were places that people came in order to do some of this other stuff that communities need to have done. But we were part of that. That ended up being part of our vision, which was we would provide that space for these necessary community kinds of activities to be done.

And they are actually not from a pure economic perspective that you don't get a lot of money from those you get very little but you do get a lot of i would catch the bus at the airport and people could identify my hat my hat would have on a hilltop united methodist church and they could identify they could identify the church through things that we were doing that were not church things. They knew who we were. And I just found that to be fascinating. So, anyway. I might edit that out. We'll see.

Well, I think there's certainly a case to be made for a church being open and integrated into the community. And especially in that context, it was vital. It was essential. In other contexts, it may not be, there may be other things that need to be emphasized in a season But going back to Lovett, I remember one of the most profound exercises I ever led at Avondale was one of the things that he, I think it was part of his class.

He asked the question, if your church suddenly ceased to exist, who would notice? Yeah, he did. He did. And when I was in Colorado Springs, there was a downsizing of the community centers, and the community centers intentionally reached out to churches in their local area to help pick up some of the functions that had been going on before, and they found a rich market for that. There was things that the churches could do and wanted to do. And they're still being done 10, 12, 14 years later.

For those of you that are listening and don't know who Lovett Williams is, Lovett Williams was the director of our doctorate ministry program at Wesley Seminary when Brandon and I went there. Brandon, anything else you'd like to wrap up before we close the episode? We would love to be a part of your church's ministry. you can begin with just a phone call.

It's a no obligation. Talk to us about what's going on in your church and some of the struggles you may be having, raising the funds you need for ministry, and we can talk to you a little bit about how our engagement with your church might work. And again, there's no obligation there. It's a free call. You're not going to get entered into. We're not going to keep hounding you. This is a very low-pressure organization. And I wouldn't, there's no used car salesman kind of activities.

Nothing against used car salesmen. But there's certainly a stereotype out there. And we try to stay as far away from that as possible. And I'll put something in the show notes. Do I put your phone number or do I put your email address? You can put, probably the easiest is my email address and maybe the company phone number. If people want to reach out by phone and we'll connect you with one of our strategists and I'll put that in the show notes.

Brandon, thank you very much for having said yes to this. My next guest is going to be Bruce Birch. Dr. Birch is the retired Dean at Wesley Theological Seminary. He and I are going to either talk about exile or wilderness or both. And if you have a question for what you can do to help me with this ministry.

Share share share if you if there's something here that you thought was useful to you don't hesitate to share that with your pastor or your lay leadership but just don't hesitate to do that again thank you very much brandon thank you very much for having said yes you're welcome it's been a pleasure and again this is a mindful leader and dennis shaw and i've been your host and thank you for being here with us god bless you. Music.