Chris Bright 0:06
Welcome to the thinking church podcast with me, Chris Bright. Every week I'll be speaking with a church leader about ministry strategy and getting to grips with not just what they do, but the thinking behind why they do it. So without further ado, let's get on with the show. Well, my interview guest today is Dale Sellars. Dale is the executive director of the 95 network and has a calling to help weary and worn pastors and church leaders. Dale has been in ministry for almost 40 years he launched Dale sell his leadership Inc in 2014. To assist organisations in the areas of leadership, inspiration and evangelism. Dale became a ministry consultant for the unstuck group in 2017, with a focus on helping the small church and in July 2018, he accepted the position of executive director of the 95 network and in September of 2020, he published his first book stalled hope and help for pastors who thought they'd be there by now, his years of ministry have grown a deep love for the small and medium sized congregations, which are the backbone of the American church and of the church in the UK as well. The 95 network equips small churches to thrive and connect where each church leaders with friends and partners who care Dale, it is so great to have you back on the podcast again.
Dale Sellers 1:34
Wow, what an introduction man, I feel like a college professor or something.
Chris Bright 1:39
Well, to me You are so maybe it's...
Dale Sellers 1:41
Maybe it's like speaking at a you know, a graduation, this is good. Who is that guy you read about?
Chris Bright 1:49
fantastic to have you on. And it's good to talk about small churches with you. So let's dive straight into it. In the in the UK at the moment, lockdown restrictions have now been fully taken away, or COVID isn't gone, but the restrictions have been taken away. Which means that churches are kind of getting used to a kind of post COVID world. And with that comes a renewed need renewed need for vision and all those kinds of things. Why do you think vision is so necessary for this next period?
Dale Sellers 2:22
How much time you got? The Bible simply says without vision people perish are in one translation. It says cast off restraint. In other words, what one of the things we learned about vision, that insight I believe the Lord gave us was that, you know, if there's not clarity in the vision of the church, if you have, if you have more than one vision, you'll have division. And in so many cases, pastors think that when someone is trying to get something done that maybe they didn't think should be done. They feel like that that person is being divisive or being rebellious or whatever. And that could be the case, I'm not saying it's not. But one thing I have discovered working with small church pastors is there's often not a vision. And and so people people want to, they want their church to work. You know, one of the things we're working with dealing with at 95 network, about 50% of the churches that we meet, and that we work with annually just don't want to die. And if a church doesn't want to die, then sometimes if the pastor is not clearly communicating the mission and vision of the church, there are well meaning people who will try to push it, you know, even if you think about when Jesus was on the earth, one of the things that motivated Judas to sell Jesus out was that he wanted Jesus to become an earthly King. And he didn't understand that that wasn't his calling. So I think when we don't provide clarity in our mission, and we don't provide clarity in our vision, sometimes people will just they'll rise up out of that void, and want to get something going and it creates conflict. So if we don't provide clarity, in mission and vision, people cast off restraint. And so now that the pandemic is not over, you know, it, I think, in some circles is never going to be over. But what we've discovered in the United States churches is that of about 30% of our key people, 30% of our main supporters just aren't coming back. And there's, we may talk about that we may not talk about their reasons why people aren't coming back. So So you had churches that were shut down. When they finally got to where they could meet again. They go meaning again, and then the pastors are really discouraged. Because once they started meeting again, they discovered that some of their key people aren't coming back. So now the pastor is already exhausted has picked up the mantle of what these other people were doing, and they're just wearing themselves out and so you tend to when you get locked when you get bogged down in carrying out stuff you you don't understand the value of you being the vision caster. That makes sense. Yeah.
Chris Bright 5:00
That completely makes sense. I'd love to actually dive into that idea of why you think people aren't coming back to church as quickly as we would like or not coming back at all, in many cases, what are your thoughts? Your thoughts on that one?
Dale Sellers 5:14
real simple. Okay, so remember when the pandemic started in everybody had to shift to online? Okay. There was these arguments that would break out, let's say a church had 50 people attending, but when they shifted to online, and again, it's it's the front front of the pandemic, all of a sudden, you have these pastors who Pastor 50 8040 people, and they go, we've got 400 people come in every week, our churches as big as it's ever been, and, and and then this argument breaks out. Those people aren't, you can't count those people. They're just watch it online. So this new word came out. And it's not new, but it was new the church called engagement. And so what you had to measure is okay, what just because they're watching online, are they staying engaged? And what that means is, okay, if your services 40 minutes, are they watching a 40 minute service? are they watching for two minutes? In the US, I think the average when when we first started doing the online stuff, I think the average was sitting around 13 minutes that people stayed engaged, and very quickly, it dropped to one or two minutes. So what happened is, is the argument is, it doesn't matter how many people clicked on, checked out the service, how many people watched it to the end, or stayed involved or engaged. What this helped us to understand was, is that we had people in our churches who were faithfully attending serving week after week after week, but they weren't engaged anyway. They're just going through the motions, and having a year off, if you will. And they discovered, hey, you don't if I'm not, if I'm not checking in with what's happening in the church, I'm just click off and go check out somebody else, or not check out anything. People in our in the US, you know, I'm not sure how to do in the UK. But in the UK, in the US. If someone's in a service, and they're bored of their mind, they don't get up and walk out because it's considered rude. That's changed. And so what's happened is, it's because the church was engaging the people to start with, they're just not coming back. And I think Gavin Adams is the guy that wrote an article that said, basically, what people discovered was I haven't been to church in a year and a half in my life hasn't changed. Now we know that it has because you need fellowship. But what people are saying is the church wasn't helping our family anyway. And so why would I bother going back? People are enjoying, hey, people are enjoying Sabbath now. People are enjoying having a day off because we, in the church world, we have made it made church so much about people come in watching us do what we do. That's not engaging to people. And that I believe, is the biggest factor as to a lot of the frustration, and a lot of the reasons why people are not coming back. Yeah, I
Chris Bright 7:54
think is absolutely fascinating. And I
Dale Sellers 7:56
Riff on that for a bit, Chris.
Chris Bright 7:58
Yeah, I know. I think that I think we see that with the, the church where we've recreated a kind of a consumer centric church.
Dale Sellers 8:09
And you had you had the seeker movement. And that wasn't bad, and attractional movement, and that wasn't bad. I mean, we're trying to reach people. But it became more about the show, if you will, the attractive part of it all. See our live show our hazer, which is some churches call smoker. See, see that our bands come see our pastor, he's hip and cool. He's got a fancy haircut, he wears the right clothes. And this is the statement I've said a lot lately. If people spend more time talking about you, the pastor's communication or look, the band or its look, the room or its look than they do about Jesus, you're probably not engaging them.
Chris Bright 8:48
Yeah, because they can get they can get all that stuff from any other show. any of that, you know, just turn on the TV. And, you know, that's, that's not engaging for people, because that's just that's just your day to day, you know, great lighting, a great band, that's just kind of expected, isn't it? No, and that's not engaging anymore.
Dale Sellers 9:07
It's gone. Chris, I was on a on the road with the Christian music group in the 80s. We had these huge concerts all over the United States. And probably I know you didn't UK to the Christian bands would come and pack out stadiums and stuff. Because churches didn't have lights and sound and all this stuff. Well, the church that I attend right now, they have as good a light set up and as good a band as any band is going to come through town. You know, and again, that's that's relative. So you know, the attraction to go see that out somewhere else is not there anymore, because you can see it every week. But there's a shift that happened and it's, it's well meaning people that did this. It just became about Okay, you guys need to come here. The message I've worked on. I've worked really hard on this message. And y'all need to come here so you can validate my message. That's not gonna work anymore. There's got to be more to church than just coming and watching the Sunday morning service.
Chris Bright 10:00
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think I think vision is going to be a key thing to that I mean, to have something that's compelling that you're part of something that you're, you're part of something going forward. What I often find is that, that small churches in particular construal, to know how to come up with a vision, they struggle to know what to do, and they kind of get stuck worrying whether it's something they just would like to do, if it's like that kind of I get hit, hear a lot of that, or is it like man's plans? Or is it God's plans work? You know, how do I work that out? So how can we? How can we know that the vision that is kind of on their heart isn't just their own ideas, but it's the right vision for the church is God's vision for their church?
Dale Sellers 10:49
I'm so glad you asked. I just released a set of teachings with our 95 network. If you don't own it, it's online too. So people in the UK can get as well. But it's called small church strategies. And one of the small church strategies that I did was called vision. What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? And it was and I based it off of I had a pastor friend reached out to me last year, who was teaching a seminary course. And he said, I want you to I want you to answer two questions for me. He says, I teaching these young pastors, I want you to answer these two questions. The first question was, how can a young person get a vision from God? And I thought, you know what, that's, that's good for all of us. So I wanted to literally read you the three things that I believe are important to know if your vision is a vision from God. Number one, you got it. And this is all about defining, you got to find out what the problem is. So so look in your community Look around you and where you live, whether it's in the country or in the city, what what are the what's a problem that's affecting people that nobody's addressing? And I don't mean a Christian problem, I mean, a real what's going on in society? So here's three things you want to ask yourself about the problem. Number one, does the problem affect a lot of people? If there's a problem in your community, that's having an effect in a negative way on a lot of people, in God's putting in your heart a way to fix that problem, that problem is probably a vision from God. Number two, is it impossible to solve the problem on your own talents, and abilities? So Chris, if I recognise, there's a problem that community but I can solve it, that is not a vision from God, because I don't need God's help. And then the which leads to the third thing, this is a solution to the problem, require a team to solve it. If you have a vision from God, the vision from God is going to address an issue that nobody's dealing with. The government's not dealing with it, the church is not dealing with it. It's gonna be something that that God shows you, but you can't solve on your own. And it's gonna require team to do it. And so if you're wondering, if the vision that you have right now, is that vision from God or not, answer those three questions. You know, if you can do it yourself. It's not It's not about God, it's about you. If you don't need to pull people around you and release people around you. Because Chris, I mean, come on, think about it. The reason? Can you tell I'm fired up. The reason that people today that the church in America, and I don't know the statistics in the UK, but in America, we have both, and this is before the pandemic. So this has changed a little bit 300,000 churches, of those 300,000 churches 95% have less than 500 people attending 87% have less than 200 people attending, and 75% of all churches in the United States have less than 100 people attending. Well, I look at that, and I go, Okay, this is very simple to me. The reason that the majority of our churches are small and midsize in the United States, is because we don't do Ephesians four. I tell everybody, hey, there's this book called The Bible. There's a leader in it named Jesus who started something called the church. And in Ephesians, four to his friend Paul, he told us exactly what to do. And here's what he said, I'm going to give ministry gifts to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. And their job is to equip the saints to do ministry. Well, if you pastor a church, and you're not equipping saints to do ministry, then you're not doing it the way Jesus told you to do it. And we typically do this for one of two reasons. One, is that we have to define our life by our ministry. So we don't release people. We don't raise up leaders, we don't hand things off, because we have to do it all ourselves so that we feel good about ourselves. Our number two, we have a congregational government that feels like we're a hireling. If either one of those things takes place, it keeps you from being the clipper. So if you get a vision from God, it might be seeing a real issue. It might be that you understand you can't do it by yourself. But if you can't raise up a team to do it, you won't accomplish it.
Chris Bright 14:55
I think that's, that's so there's so much to get in. I was typing those three things down as you were writing them, you know, just just the problem affects a lot of people, is it impossible to solve? Is it possible to solve it with your talents? and abilities? If not, there needs to be impossible to solve with your talents and abilities? And does it require a team to solve? Those three things are so crucial, because it just gets you out of thinking, Okay, am I empire building? Am I just doing what I think is a nice thing? Am I am I just trying to help my own congregation and not reach new people? If you answer those three questions, and I'll put them in the show notes, because they're just so good. That I think for any church, I mean, LS for any church of any size, but especially for small churches as well. I think that's a, that's a that's the three vital questions to ask. And I'm probably going to be asking them of every single church.
Dale Sellers 15:48
Let's go before you move on to your next question. Let me dive in a little deeper to the person, the leader himself or herself, the person is leading right now. If you recognise, okay, I've got a problem with this, I want you to understand that before God releases vision through you, there's some things in your life that's got to be substract, subtracted, then there's some things in your life have got to be added, every great leader that's ever been, there's a subtraction and then an addition. So let me give you I got three things here, that have got to be subtracted out of your life before you can see that vision. Number one is you've got to subtract your scenarios, I used to tell God, I pray about something I say God, and here's five different ways you can solve this problem. He never did anything I said, he wouldn't do it the way that I said area for him. And you, if you have scenarios and you you in your mind, you block God in you box him in, you're not gonna see vision happen. Number two, you've got to subtract volatile relationships. And what I mean is this, I had a toxic board member in my church that I would not deal with. And if you've heard my story, you know, in the eighth year of pastoring, our church, we had a horrible split. It was because of that relationship. And you've got to you cannot keep ignoring volatile relationships, you got to deal with them. And then the third thing, and this is huge. If you have character shortcuts in your life, you got to deal with them. If there are things that God's been dealing with you about, and you won't let him work that through, you're never going to see a vision from God, if you have character shortcuts. Again, I could expound on all these, but I don't want to because of the time. Now, here's the things that need to be added. Excuse me so much. Here's the things that need to be added. You'll love this. Chris, are you ready? You need to add mundane wins to your life. Yes, yes. mundane wins means you do the right thing, because it's the right thing every week, because you're supposed to do it. Because that's how you get by in with people. If you're a young leader, and you're in an older congregation, and they won't follow you, it may be because you're not willing to do the stuff that nobody's gonna notice. It may be because you're not willing to, you know, do the behind the scenes things. That's part of your job. You got to do the Monday wins. I could talk about that forever. Number two, you got to add consistent communication. One of the big problems that we do, when it comes to mission and vision is we, especially in the small church setting, we may have a campaign, we may go back and talk about what we're going to do for a month. And then we don't talk about it ever again. And I have a great example of that. I used to preach a vision theories. Every year in my church, I would take the entire month of January, I would teach messages around the vision for that new year. And I would cry, I would illustrate it we would come up with all kinds of cool things to do. And I would wear myself out in January communicating that vision. And then I realised in March, everybody forgot it. It's better to communicate your vision and every message you preach, whether it's just a one line or a reminder or a paragraph, no matter even if you're preaching to the Bible, you can do this where you remind people this is why we do what we do. It's better to communicate it weekly on in a small way. Then do it a big blow up thing once because people just forget it. Andy Stanley said this years ago vision leaks. And what that is like a tire with a with a slowly. If you've communicated the vision and you pumped everybody up, if you don't keep communicating it and there's a puncher in that thing eventually leaks down. And then the third thing you've got to add to your vision is flexibility. I had a hard time with this because again, pastors who are leaders naturally have a hard time with this. You think that you know exactly how it's all supposed to work out? Well, you don't and get over yourself. You know, the important thing is that he gets done, even if they don't do it exactly how you would do. Okay, Chris, calm down now. Dance on that a little bit if you want to
Chris Bright 19:45
Well, thank you so much for listening to this week's podcast. This is only halfway through the podcast and you can listen to the full conversation by joining our members. This podcast, just go to our website, www dot thinking dot church and you can sign up to our members podcast that only costs the price of one coffee per month so it's well worth doing. So why not get a coffee, listen to the podcast and learn something new. We'll see you again for this podcast next week. So bye for now.
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