Multiply Network Podcast
Multiply Network Podcast
Episode #13 with Robin Wallar from Lift Church
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In this episode we chat with Robin about reaching and engaging millennials. He speaks from his experience leading Lift Church and shares some observations and trends he's seeing at our university campuses.
Transcript of Podcast by Multiply Network
Created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-
making communities across Canada
2019 – Robin Wallard
Paul Fraser: Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast, a podcast created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-making communities across Canada.
Hi there. Welcome to episode #13. My name is Paul Fraser, the host of the Multiply Network podcast. I’m so glad you tuned in today. I’m excited to talk with a friend of mine, Robin Wallard from LIFT Church, talking about reaching Millennials, what is it going to take, what do we need to do ---
He talks a little bit about their model of church planting. He’s got a robust vision to see LIFT churches on many different campuses. They are already at #3. You’re going to love the interview. He talks a little bit about bi-vocational ministry. I think personally that is a big part of our future as we look to multiply disciple-making communities in churches all across Canada. You are going to love what he’s got to say. He’s got lots of great thoughts. And the interview is coming up right now.
Well, we are so happy to have Robin Wallard, lead pastor of LIFT Church here. He’s going to tell us a little bit about the story of LIFT Church and how he connects with it. Robin, welcome to the podcast.
Robin Wallard:
A. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Paul.
Q. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your story, your journey with LIFT Church and how you ended up there and pastoring this great church.
A. The story goes back thirteen years ago. I was an undergraduate student studying nuclear engineering at McMaster University. I got connected in with a church that was being planted that became LIFT Church. I kind of served as the right-hand guy there for a couple of years, four years and fell in love with it. I fell in love with the idea of planting churches in a university or college context. It was awesome. We really struggled in those early years, the first six years or so, with who we were, what we were doing. So come year six we had a couple of leadership transitions. I had been working as an engineer full time and the opportunity came up to kind of take over the reins of leading LIFT. This would be about six years ago. I loved the church. I believe in it. But it was in a bit of a tricky spot. So my wife and I kind of put up our hands and said we would be happy to take it over. My engineering work will kind of carry it from a financial standpoint so for the subsequent five years I’ve actually worked bi-vocationally to lead LIFT.
It was really cool. It was just sort of blossoming and growing and what started at “Mac” has now reproduced at Brock University, Mohawk College and it has kind of crystallized into this beautiful idea that we exist to see people -- but really students -- it’s a special emphasis, made fully alive in the hope of Jesus by being a church on every college and university campus that we can plant on, as fast as we can plant, as fast as we can raise leaders and plant them, we’re going to see churches planted.
So that’s a very quick summary of thirteen years of crazy history. But really what we’re seeing at LIFT right now is a bit of a movement to discipleship happening where leaders are being raised and then sent, and then raised and then sent to go and tell their world about Jesus. As a result we believe that we’re going to see at least a church planted every year for the next eight years out of LIFT. That’s conservative in our estimate. We think we could easily plant two a year or even three a year come a couple more years from now.
Q. Yes. And that’s the idea of that multiplication, you know, as you plant healthy churches they will reproduce. So it won’t all have to come from McMaster.
A. Yes. A quick story on that. We’re going to be planting a site at Guelph University next year and the leader isn’t coming out of our McMaster site, which is our original. He’s actually coming out of our Brock site, which is #2. There are leaders being developed at all the sites for future plants right now as we speak.
Q. That’s so great. I just want to drill down a little bit on something you said because bi-vocational, I think, is going to be a big part of our future. I know today we’re going to be talking about reaching Millennials and we’re going to dive into that.
But any comments on the bi-vocational planting, any thoughts, helpful tips you have found that maybe other bi-vocational planters can take from your experience?
A. Yes. I would encourage anyone that is bi-vocational by saying you are not a second rate pastor. You are not a second rate leader. You are the future. I think most of our team, if not all of our team, has or currently works bi-vocationally. In fact, the way we think about it internally at LIFT is we don’t delineate between staff and non-staff. If you were to ask me I would say we probably have fifty bi-vocational staff at LIFT, if not more. Not actually on staff.
I’m doing “air” quotes for those of you listening.
We have just tried to eradicate the distinction between professional clergy and laity. We have said that is a non-Biblical distinction. Everyone is called to ministry. Everyone is sent as an ambassador into this world. So if you are sitting in that place of being bi-vocational and wrestling with am I doing it right, I would say yes and we need more of that. We need to celebrate that as a broader church family, those who are willing to walk that road.
It’s tough. It’s hard. It’s sacrificial. But it is so worth it.
Q. Such a great thought there about bi-vocational in the future. Thanks for just diving in a little bit on there. I know it wasn’t in the script. But great thoughts. That idea of second rate leaders and being bi-vocational, I totally agree with you.
It has been a while since I have been on the university campus. I’m not going to tell you how long but it has been a while since I graduated. And maybe some other people out there listening to the podcast that go man, that seems like a lifetime ago. For those that don’t know, what are university campuses and colleges like for students; pressures, schedules, what is their culture like? Take us through. You are living that every day. What is it like?
A. I think in some ways it is the same as it has always been and in some ways it is very different. The same piece would be that it is still school. School is still happening and kind of that classic picture of a party dimension, post-secondary life, is still obviously a big part of our campuses. But I think there are some big differences right now. Number one, I would say the pressure to perform is a lot higher. The pressure to get in ---
The entrance averages for high school students coming in is a lot higher. So you’ve got way higher pressure to perform across the board, which in turn creates massive mental health problems. We have a major mental health crisis at our universities. A couple of stats to throw at you. Sixty-five percent of 2 million post-secondary students in Canada are suffering from overwhelming anxiety; 13% have seriously considered suicide; 69% or something like that, are regularly abusing alcohol. I mean, the situation is pretty challenging and pretty intense.
One of the other major factors that is probably a little bit different is the diversity. We are seeing way, way more diversity on our campuses. The quantity of international students as a portion of the enrollment is way higher than it was in the past. I think there are well over three hundred thousand international students in Canada right now on our post-secondary campuses. At our Mohawk College campus, for example, 30% of that campus are international students. That’s about 6,000 or 7,000 students, almost all of them from India. So that is a major difference in the make-up of how do you design a church to reach that demographic. But it is also very different.
Guelph University is only 3% international students. So there is a lot of diversity in that but every campus kind of has this fast churn of all these cultures and people and backgrounds and as a result requires that we really contextualize the gospel in a unique way. So if you take all that together you’ve got a lot of diversity, a lot of people from all over the world, combined with a ton of pressure to perform, combined with all the old stuff of partying, drugs and that kind of thing. It’s a pretty dynamic place.
But one myth that I would almost like to correct is that it is a place that is hostile to the gospel. In the last number of years – I’ve kind of been around university campuses for the last thirteen years or so – I’ve observed a bit of a shift. I think in the last especially five or six years, there has been a shift where I’ve seen our campuses become increasingly secularized.
Q. Um-hmm.
A. But in a way that is one of the biggest wins we’ve had as a church because it means that the people on our campus have no idea who Jesus is, which means they are open. The fact that our campuses are so secular now means that they have no opposition to the gospel.
Q. Okay.
A. And that’s very surprising to people. I think people hear our campuses are secular so that must mean they are opposed to the gospel. But they are so secular they have no reason to be opposed to the gospel.
Q. Right.
A. What we’re finding is that the ground is really really ready when you start opening up gospel conversations with people, they respond. They are hungry. They are searching. You take that desire for some answers to those mental health problems and that pressure to perform and then you bring some gospel life into that, it is transformative.
Q. That’s a little bit opposite of what we hear.
A. Yes.
Q. Books we’re reading about becoming post-Christian. They aren’t hostile but post-truth is hostile, any truth based ideology, post truth mindset. And typically universities are kind of the front edge of that secular post truth, which we’re moving that way, which it seems like we are. But you are saying that hey at this point they are open to hear the story of Christ.
A. Post truth and a lot of the dialogue around post truth is not all bad because it means that people are also open to the idea of tell me what you believe.
Q. Right.
A. Post truth is kind of an environment on our campuses where people are very open to hearing what other people believe. But it is also I think a little more nuanced than that. Because you have massive populations of international students, largely from other faith systems; Hinduism and all that kind of thing, there’s a real kind of interaction there with people who believe all kinds of different things and as a result there is a real openness to them.
Q. Yes.
A. It’s not unusual for us at all as a church to see people from all kinds of faith systems just walk into our services and engage with what we’re doing. Just two days ago we had somebody from a Hindu background give his life to Jesus.
Q. Wow.
A. He just walked in and said yeah, he had been kind of processing with us for a number of months. He said, “Yes, I’m ready.” So I think the situation is much more optimistic than I think we often assume.
Q. I think some of the reading you get is so Doomsday, you know, on some of those things. To hear someone who is actually at ground level on campus I think that is exciting.
So what do you think makes LIFT Church so effective at the college and university campuses? What are some of the things you are doing that you are seeing some effectiveness?
A. I think there’s a few things we’ve sort of cracked, if you will. The first is that we believe that presence is absolutely essential. If we’re going to actually reach people in the context of the university we have to get inside the walls. And we have to be committed to being inside the walls. So we’ve just put up our hand and said we’re going to plant churches inside the walls of the university. We’re going to put roots down there. We’re going to be committed to doing it and we’re not going to leave: ever. We’re never going to drift off from the campus.
That has some consequences with it but it also opens up a lot of opportunity for us. So I think the first piece is a commitment to the campus as a first priority. And in many cases we would go so far as to say it is our only priority.
I think the second piece is we’ve learned how to do that in a way that wins trust and is winsome. We don’t show up with our battleship and say hey, we’re here to save the day and aren’t we awesome and we roll up with our program. We work very hard to earn trust. We take a long time. Our planting process is slow. We listen. We learn. We contextualize. We understand. What that means is by the time we’re finally running services the Administration, the campus body, the Student Unions, are all onside and appreciate what we’re doing because they understand that we’re there to add value to the campus. We are there to increase the overall environment, help to build the overall environment of the campus. So they are excited that we’re there typically.
I think the other piece is that because it is all we do, we have structured our entire church to be optimized for reaching that environment. I’ll give you an example. A lot of people say to me Robin, it must be really tough to lead a church that has such high turnover. We’re turning our congregation over pretty much every four years. Some people stay but there is a lot of churn. For us that’s our biggest win. We think it’s our biggest strength. So we have had to design and build leadership systems, discipleship systems that are optimized for train and send, train and send. High turnover. High transients. We think that is actually a great environment to build a thriving church. But it meant that we had to build the whole thing to support it.
Q. Yes, as opposed to it being an obstacle, it became an opportunity.
A. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Q. And you’ve got to look at it that way. When we planted City Center Church on the UofA campus we weren’t designed to be a campus church but we wanted to be within walking distance of a campus. Yes, we saw lots of turnover but we saw that as a great opportunity to send people to do different things and we became a church that planted other churches and it is still going today. All of those things.
So we learned some things. At that time Millennials were the big conversation starter. How are we going to reach Millennials? Now we’re drifting. A lot of the students coming to university are Gen-Z but you are still spending, still got the tail end of the Millennials there. What are you learning about reaching Millennials for the gospel and now maybe if you want to touch on Gen-Z if there’s a difference or if you are starting to see a difference?
Enlighten us about what you are noticing there.
A. I think Millennials and Gen-Z are very similar. I think Gen-Z are just pushing some of the ideas we learned with Millennials further. I think there are a few things I would highlight.
The first is that we are really, really simple with our message. We preach the gospel. We have one message and we preach it every week without fail. We communicate the gospel. What I mean by that is we are unashamed and unafraid to communicate hey, we are sinners in need of a Saviour. If you come to any LIFT service at any site you are going to be engaged with some pretty hard hitting gospel messages, not just in our preaching but in the structure of the whole church. We are about as far from seeker friendly as you can get, partly because I think that Millennials are looking ---
Millennials are just give it to me straight. Don’t water it down. Don’t give it to me gentle. Just hit me in the face. Tell me how it is and I’ll decide what I think about it. So we just lead with everything we’ve got. We don’t hold back. We don’t water it down. We don’t try and make it more palatable. We say hey, this is what scripture says. So it’s kind of starting there and a couple of other pieces I would layer on ---
The second is that we have ---
One of the things that Millennials and Gen-Z have grown up in is a high experience culture where experience is king. Everything is about the experience.
Q. Um-hmm.
A. And we’ve kind of looked at that and said we can’t compete. In terms of experience there is just no way that I can up the ante week in and week out and compete on a value proposition of experiences. To be honest, the university does a way better job. But we can compete in a much deeper value proposition than experience, which is purpose. So we have kind of turned it around and said instead of trying to give you experiences that are highly attractional, we’re going to set a challenge bar incredibly high. We’re going to call you to a standard of living that is going to blow your mind and challenge you, call you way more than anybody else, kind of taking a page out of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book where when Christ calls a man he bids him to come and die. We basically say to our students hey, welcome to church. We’re glad you’re here. If you’re going to be a Jesus follower we’re going to call you to come and die, so come and die and build your life to serve him. So a really, really high bar of challenge, a high bar of invitation.
What that means is when our students get that they go holy moly, you’re inviting us to something really profound. This isn’t an experience that I’m going to have for a moment, go home and be alone. This is an invitation to a life of mission. I don’t think anybody else is offering that and I think that is what Jesus calls all of us to. But as a church that is committed to reaching largely Millennials and Gen-Z, we’ve put that bar as high as we can set it and said you guys can jump over it. You can actually step into this life of mission.
Q. Wow.
A. And I think the third thing I would say is that we have abandoned any kind of what I would call addition oriented thinking and adopted only a multiplication oriented thinking.
Q. You’re going to get a big amen from me on that!
A. Laughter. That’s good. Yes.
Q. It’s my favourite math sign is the multiplication sign. Love it. Unpack that for me.
A. I think as churches we are very used to building additional oriented pretty much everything, where there’s a few key people that hold a large amount of influence and it is ‘come listen to me.’ Come to the service. Come here from the stage. Come. Bring your friends to church so that they can hear about Jesus. We basically said that we actually think that is unbiblical, not to say that services and worship is ---
Don’t get me wrong. But that when we start dis-empowering the saints and start dis-empowering people from actually being ambassadors for the kingdom themselves. We have moved into addition thinking instead of multiplication thinking. When we start empowering people to actually tell people about Jesus, who in turn tell people about Jesus, who in turn tell people about Jesus, the potential human impact is way higher. The health of leadership in the church is way higher. The growth of the church is slower initially. It takes longer to get this off the ground but by the time, and if you give it time, you end up with a way bigger movement. It’s slower because it means you actually have to disciple people and train them to do the hard work of evangelism, introducing people to Jesus and, in turn, replicating that again.
I think as a church that’s all we’re going to do. If you come to LIFT we don’t run a lot of events. We don’t have all the things that we’re saying hey, come to. Everything that we do is built around how do we mobilize our people to be missional in their world and we hold them very, very accountable to that.
Q. Yes.
A. So it’s not just an idea. We actually measure it. We test it. Are we actually multiplying? The only way into leadership at LIFT is to multiply your way into leadership. And we expect that of a first-year. So our first-years at LIFT are seventeen or eighteen years old. If they do their job right they should be leading at least fifty or sixty people by their third year under their care. That should multiply underneath them. Our best what we call multipliers can do that in 6 months. So we have first-years leading groups in our tiered structures in the many many dozens of people.
That’s what we mean when we say a discipleship movement at LIFT Church. It is not a movement of hey come listen to Robin Wallard. It’s being empowered to in turn empower others.
Q. Wow. We need to multiply that. That’s very biblical and well said. It’s not easy to do. I can’t remember who told me this but they quoted it from someone. One of my Bible College professors said to me once that the art of originality is simply forgetting where you got it from.
A. Laughter.
Q. So I’m going to say this. We over-estimate what could be done in a year and under-estimate what could be done in ten.
A. Yes.
Q. I think I screwed up the quote. But the point is that we think let’s get that first year and try to provide, grow and build a crowd and all that. But I like your approach that is to start slow, build deep, multiply because the exponential math works way better in your favour if you are building that.
In fact, we were just at a church planting conference and they said the new number you need to be counting is not the crowd but your core. Does your core grow every year, those core leaders, those core disciplers, because if that core grows your crowd will grow.
A. Um-hmm. So one of the things we do when we’re planting sites is we don’t actually allow them to move to hosting services until we have seen consistent multiplication before they’ve even had services. So, we start with a small ---
We call them simple churches.
A small church needs to multiply and then multiply again before they get the green light for services so that in the DNA of each new location is multiplication. Every person as they are integrated in is invited into this multiplying process.
Q. Yes.
A. So one of the key metrics we’re measuring every week at LIFT is how many people were able to multiply themselves into new places, new simple churches, new leaders and can we track that through the system. It is probably our No. 1 most important metric, more than attendance or any of that.
Q. That’s great. So existing churches, you know, are out there trying to reach Millennials. You are on campus. You are totally surrounded by them. Why don’t you give us some thoughts and advice? These Millennials will age out after 4 years or 6 years or whatever and they are going to local churches. What do churches need to be doing to welcome them, to engage them? I’ll leave that with you. What are your thoughts?
A. The first thing I would say is put them to work. I don’t mean put them to work doing a simple thing like tasks. I mean get them into leadership as quickly as you can. That is going to be risky. It means it is probably going to make your leadership teams uncomfortable. It is probably going to feel like we have people that are unqualified at the table. But again, air quotes! “Unqualified.” I think when I look at the Jesus model of working with his disciples he would kind of receive them, he did a little bit of work with them and then he would send them out. He gave them this mandate to go and tell people about the kingdom of God.
I think that if a church is going to be receiving Millennials, especially if they have been taught to think multiplication and they have been taught to think missional with their life, we have to get them into leadership quickly or they are going to get really bored really fast otherwise. I would say it is futile to try to entertain them. Don’t play the entertainment game. I’m going to say something that might be even controversial, Paul. If this gets you in trouble I apologize. But I think we’ve got to shift our thinking on young adults. I think a lot of churches receive Gen-Z and Millennials and we kind of put them in a young adult category. I think we need to dissolve that category altogether and just say you are now an adult. Behave like an adult. Live like an adult and step into leadership. This delayed adolescence doesn’t help anyone and I think ends up hurting the church because it puts what could be our best pioneering vibrant multiplication-oriented leaders and it limits their potential. So let’s get them mobilized for the kingdom
Q. I love that!
A. Okay.
Q. I love it. I think we need to be thinking that way. Whether we can drill down in the weeds as it relates to programming for that or whatever, but the idea is you are adults. Because I think one of the things that I’m discovering as a parent of now just tail-end Millennials and now starting Gen-Zs, is that Gen-X parents knocked down every obstacle they could for the kids and so now they don’t know necessarily how to get through failure, difficulty, learning how to persevere because mom and dad have done a great job of just really being there for them and working hard. Now of course this is just big broad statements. But there’s books coming out on this. There’s universities that are going these high-performing athletes have a failure and it just immediately sends them into a tailspin because they have never experienced failure before. This idea of growing up and these now young adults to adults, that’s a big deal and it’s something that needs to be, I don’t know, addressed or talked about. We’ve got to walk with these. When you said to me I think the number was 65% of university students were struggling with ---
Did you say high anxiety or just ---
A. Overall overwhelming anxiety.
Q. Overall overwhelming anxiety, we’ve got to have a response as a church to come alongside them, encourage them, say it’s going to be okay, you’re going to get through this. We’re going to help you. But this is part of growing.
A. I think that’s the key. The temptation is to coddle somebody that is feeling overwhelmed. In our experience that does not help. What we’ve done as a church is we allow and we encourage our students to fail and to fail hard. They’re in my office or part of our team, often in tears and we encourage them. We pray for them but we don’t, okay, you failed. Welcome to life. You’re going to be okay. Get back up on your feet and get back out there. They don’t like it initially but they come back a couple of weeks later and say thank you. Their confidence increases because now they have failed they know they can survive failure.
So I think as church leaders we have a responsibility to create an environment in which they not only can fail but they likely will fail and allow our leadership teams to be very tolerant of that failure. So what we get is the moments when they don’t fail and they’re brilliant, really drawn out of them.
Q. Yes. And just that grit, that tenacity gets built into them. Yes, I love that.
What do we need to do, just before we get to our final rapid fire questions round, last question for you. What do you think we as the PAOC need to do, as an organization, so think 30,000 feet, to be adjusting our methods ---
Well, I won’t put words in your mouth. What do we need to be doing to reach Millennials as a PAOC?
A. I have 2 things to say to that. Firstly I think the PAOC as a broad family has a real strength in experiences and creating experiential events. I think we don’t need to throw that out altogether. But I do think we need to go deep on empowered discipleship. We need to really, really ask the question: How do we equip people to be multiplying disciples? If we can take our strength as a broad family in creating experiences that can be catalytic, but then anchor it in a strong base of multiplying discipleship that is empowered, I think that would be absolutely transformative.
Q. Yes.
A. I think that would be sort of my first big thing. I think the second thing is we’ve got to get Millennials and younger into key leadership positions and make decisive quick moves at a high level to empower that voice at the table. I think naturally Movements age as they get older, as wisdom is gained. But the challenge is that limits the ability to pioneer. So I would say let’s get some voices at the table that are young, that are passionate, that have some creativity and allow them to fail in the process. So those would be probably my two big ones on that.
Q. Great thoughts. Oh, you’ve got more?
A. I’ve got one last one.
Q. Okay.
A. I think just keep the gospel front and center.
Q. Yes, yes, yes.
A. I think let’s anchor and communicate the gospel as completely as we can. We do not need to water the message down, not that we have. That is not a reactive thing so much as an affirming thing.
Q. Yes.
A. Let’s keep communicating and pointing people to the wholeness of the gospel as revealed in scriptures.
Q. Yes, great thought. And it’s great to hear that from a younger leader. Because there could be a lot of leaders out there older than you who would go yes! More gospel. More gospel. I think it was Mark Twain who said that the best story-teller wins the generation. A great story-teller is having a great story. And we’ve got the best one out there. Thanks for reminding us of that.
Great insights. Thanks for doing what you are doing with LIFT. We’re so happy partnering with you and jumping in where we can. I know your District in Western Ontario is really excited about some of the things you are doing. So keep up the good work, Robin. We are praying for you and we’re just believing that you’re going to do something incredible. We love your vision so keep going.
All right. Rapid fire questions. You don’t know what the questions are so you just get to shoot from the hip here.
Favourite book you’ve read in the last twelve months?
A. Oh my gosh. Gaining By Losing, by J. D. Greer.
Q. Gaining by Losing. Great. What do you want to shoot for hours per sleep per night?
A. Seven.
Q. Seven is good for you? Okay. Did you have a favourite pet growing up and what was it?
A. I had this Bouvier dog growing up and he was awesome. I was a little boy in South Africa. He was awesome.
Q. Okay. Favourite book of the Bible?
A. Oh man. I’m going 2 Corinthians today.
Q. Today.
A. Today but it will change tomorrow.
Q. It’s all your favourite book. Right?
A. Yes, that’s right.
Q. If someone could buy you a beverage that you would just love, what would that be?
A. Coffee every time.
Q. Every time? What kind? No speciality coffee? Straight up.
A. Any kind of coffee from any kind of shop.
Q. Okay. Favourite podcast?
A. I’m not really a podcast guy.
Q. No? What are you?
A. I’m an audio books guy. I love audio books.
Q. Okay. Your least favourite subject to learn about?
A. Knitting. I love learning so something like that. Can you have a least favourite?
Q. You just offended a ton of knitters out there.
A. I’m sorry.
Q. We’re going to get some firm emails. Give us your favourite leisure activity so when you have a free minute or two, what are you doing?
A. Mountain biking.
Q. Mountain biking. And last question: most influential leaders in your life? Give us maybe 2 or 3.
A. I had this incredible youth pastor growing up. Her name was Chris. She was like the anti-youth pastor. I think she taught me what it means to empower people. She would be one of them. I have a buddy out in a collection of churches, very similar, in California and one in Washington State that are very encouraging to us. They kind of help to show us what we’re doing isn’t insane. A guy named Ed Kane and then I’m really grateful to some in the family of the PAOC, Dave Slater who took me under his wing when I was just a punk seventeen-year old kid and let me kind of see the inside of planting churches. Those are a few, just off the cuff.
Q. Thanks Robin for jumping on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.
A. Yes, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Paul.
--- End of Recording