Real Church Growth: Strategies that Work w/ Lee Coate

On this episode of Modern Church Leader, Lee Coate, executive pastor at Crossing Church Las Vegas and President of Growmentum, unpacks his real-life experience and strategies that help churches all over the country fulfill their mission. 

Lee is no stranger to the challenges churches face. With over 30 years of ministry experience, Lee and his team at Growmentum are helping leaders capture the heart of their church and change the way they plan for their future.
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For more information on Lee Cote, follow on Instagram @leecoate

For more information on Growmentum, visit growmentumgroup.com

For more information the Crossing Church Las Vegas, visit thecrossinglv.com
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Transcript

Frank Barry: 0:05

Hey guys, Frank here with another episode of Modern Church Leader coming to you with my buddy from Vegas, Mr Lee. How's it going, man?

Lee Coats: 0:13

Hey, man, good to be with you. It's early over here, you know, so I got my coffee, but I'm ready to just engage with you, Frank, in whatever conversation you want to have today. We're going to have fun.

Frank Barry: 0:23

Yeah, I mean it's eight o'clock, but I still have kids at home, so you know I'm back.

Lee Coats: 0:30

I'm back, I'm just. I'm empty nested and just get up. Yeah, they're just. Your morning was very chill.

Frank Barry: 0:36

Yeah, mine was not. I have to, you know, not yell at my kids and help with breakfast and get their backpacks ready and they're out of new school this year they got the problem that my season of life is.

Lee Coats: 0:47

I'm going to take a nap. I've been up since four, so you know. I mean this is like the last thing I'm going to do this morning. Take a break.

Frank Barry: 0:57

Take a break. Oh so, just for give us the context, you've been in ministry for 20 years plus. You're an executive pastor out there in Vegas. But give us a little bit of your history, like how'd you get into the church?

Lee Coats: 1:11

Yeah, so you know I was a. I was a church kid who was initially pretty resistant to ministry calling. I'm not sure why, as I look at it in retrospect, but now I've been in ministry well over 30 years and you know Well, you got to update your website.

Lee Coats: 1:31

Okay, I'm doing student ministry for a season and all nighters and mission trips and you know lots of pizza and all that. I love that and still still have a lot of contact with students who came through. That season of ministry, did a lot of, did a lot of good, made a lot of mistakes.

Frank Barry: 1:50

you know as a young was that in Vegas, or were you somebody somewhere?

Lee Coats: 1:53

Yeah, so the so the interesting part about my story that's probably another podcast is that I've been in Vegas for about 31 years and I came here to do student ministry with my wife of less than a year and said, hey, let's go to Vegas, let's, you know, kind of get into ministry. See what happens, we won't be there very long. And here I sit, 30 plus years later, still in Vegas, having done ministry, and I got to tell you, Frank, and I know you, you, you obviously are a Vegas guy. People may not know that about you, but you got some history here. Yeah, I, I got here and it just connected with me, and so you know the ministry leaders that are listening.

Lee Coats: 2:38

You know, sometimes we can be pretty anxious to move up the ladder or whatever we consider the ministry hierarchical to be, and I tried that for a brief season in the middle of my tenure here and, man, it was a train wreck and I just recognize that. You know, Vegas isn't for everybody, though it seems like everybody wants to come visit me here for some reason. But at the same time, when you find your people, when you find your culture, when you find your environment, that, especially when you're following a call to ministry man. I think sometimes we underestimate that and we make what I would say, Frank, we make value decisions based on other things, and I would just encourage people that are listening that you know being in Vegas for three years doing student ministry. I was a church planner here, had a dark night of the soul, which is another podcast for another time, and then an executive pastor here thriving church in Las Vegas for going on 16 years. So I've been a youth guy, a lead guy, church planner and now an executive guy and then consulting with churches all around the country.

Lee Coats: 3:45

But again, I just feel like, man, if you ever find your place, you know like you just need to grab it and hold on to it and navigate the. You know there's times to leave. I get that. There are times where there's seasons of conclusion, but, man, my wife and I raised a family here and we just again, we, every day we feel like these are, these are the people that God has placed us in proximity to on purpose, and so that's how we look at it. Yeah, yeah, what do you love about Vegas? I think partly I probably selfishly love that. I've been here a long time and so there's part of me that just loves the familiarity and the routine. I'm a weird guy because I'm an Enneagram eight right, which some, if you're an Enneagram person, people call me an eight hole, and so you know, Enneagram eight hole, which is like you know, let's go, I know you can edit that out later.

Frank Barry: 4:42

Your team really loves you, by the way, I can tell.

Lee Coats: 4:45

But you know, so I've got all of that. And then if you're like a, if you're a, if you're a working genius person, you know I've done that and it's like galvanizer kind of personality there. And then in the thinking wavelength, which is a tool we use it's a Patterson tool we use in Gromenum I'm like a 7.5 or eight, which is like a finder, conceiver, right, and so I like all of that, like let's go innovate, change. You know risk. But in my own life, what's interesting in my own personal existence, I don't love that. So it's almost like in the rest of my world, man, I'm spinning and doing things, and then I want to go to the same place and have breakfast, I want to greet the same barista, I want to drive the same streets, I want to do those things, and so there's a weird. Probably somebody needs to analyze me therapeutically in regards to that. What I love about Vegas is I love the familiarity, I love the long-term anchored relationships that allow me to go out to dinner and greet people and know people. I just I love that.

Lee Coats: 5:49

And then you know, frankly, you know Vegas has accelerated as a city. You know, moving here in 1990, it was all about the potential. And now, living here, 30 plus years later, you know some people would argue it's fast becoming the sports capital of the world Super Bowl, F1, college football playoffs, professional team, stanley Cup champions, all that stuff that goes on. So it's become a city. Now one of the interesting things is that when I first moved here, the transient nature of the city was overwhelming. Like you were doing ministry and you basically would have about a 12 to 18 month window for people Like they're going to be here, they're going to kind of get their life together, whatever, and then they're going to go back to Kansas or Ohio or Florida, wherever they came from. That has shifted in the last five or 10 years, where now people root here and they anchor here, and so that's been a nice transition in ministry to feel like we're going to go a little bit more for the long game as we go through strategies and try to make it impact.

Frank Barry: 6:56

Yeah, yeah, I love it. And man, the sports have come on strong over there, like hockey, football, baseball team is coming there.

Lee Coats: 7:06

Yeah, in theory, the A's are going to relocate here, though People don't know what to do about it. But they're probably going to get here and it's just a place to be, and so there's a lot of buzz and we've got the sphere now. All your listeners have probably seen that big LED deal. I'm waiting for the first church to put a sphere on their campus. The big LED deal.

Frank Barry: 7:28

I have seen that thing.

Lee Coats: 7:30

Yeah. I've seen it, especially when you fly in. When you fly in, it's got something different on it all the time. It's just a sorrow, but it's a concert venue. So it opens in October. You, too, is going to do like a 30 day residency there and it's like you're inside this sphere and it's like an in the round concert venue with all the immersive experience that's there.

Frank Barry: 7:52

So there you go. When is the crossing going to do a church service there? That's the question.

Lee Coats: 7:57

That's what I was going to say. Yeah, like, when are we going to build our own sphere on our campus, right? Well, just do one there.

Frank Barry: 8:03

Just rent it out and do a big old service there.

Lee Coats: 8:05

No worries, no worries, it's not too expensive.

Frank Barry: 8:10

It's all good, ok, so you've been at this for a long time. You recently in the last handful of years, I don't know how long exactly, but you started, you, and it sounds like at least one other buddy but maybe a few other people started like a consulting group called Gromentum, and so you've spent enough time doing this and you've decided OK, let me go help other church leaders.

Lee Coats: 8:36

Yeah, so the origin story. There is really a longer term relationship. I had with a fantastic guy, k Chung, who's in California and has been an executive pastor, and we met in a different context as we were both in ministry serving churches and was starting to dip our toe into that consulting world, which right now is a very popular thing to do.

Frank Barry: 9:00

I was going to say why another consulting group? There's a few out there.

Lee Coats: 9:05

Yeah, there's a few out there. So he and I maintained a relationship and we're both kind of working. And then at one point he really is the origin of Gromentum that he individually said I'm going to put out my shingle and I'm going to begin to work with churches. He had a real passion for helping guide churches, with specific concepts that we'll talk about a little bit. And then it was really COVID that was the catalyst for he and I joining together, because he would occasionally reach out or we would spend time together and he would talk about what would it look like for us to join together and to really help churches. Our statement at Gromentum is our mission is to help churches accomplish their mission, which we would also believe is ultimately the Great Commission. And so in 2020, in the midst of COVID, I stepped away from some of the other work I was doing and continued my work here at the crossing as an executive pastor and joined forces with K, and so we've now, over the last three plus years, have really built both what I would call a consulting company, but really much more of partnerships with churches, many young leaders, churches of all sizes, and we've added some members to our team and, at the same time, we've really started to lean into some of our own IP that we believe is helpful for churches.

Lee Coats: 10:31

Our desire is to remain somewhat I'll use this term boutique, and what I mean by that is, again, as you mentioned a moment ago, there's numerous great organizations that can help you accomplish your mission, but we really like to dive in deep relationally. One of our values is that we want to dive in deep, customized, in a customized way to be able to help, and we want to give leaders access to people like myself. One of the things we bring, frank, is even you in your season right, we bring what I just recently read is what's called crystallized knowledge. It means that as we get older and we have more experience, we kind of are able. We may not be as quick, but we're able to put concepts together and be able to lead people based on our experience, and so Romaneman has really done that. We have a term we use. We say our objective is to help you pause and regularly work on it, not just in it, and that's a big deal. I mean it sounds cliche, but you lead an organization.

Lee Coats: 11:32

I'm here, boots on the Ground, and it's just really the normal suck of the day in any organization, but especially in ministry, is just the stuff that demands your attention. That's kind of what I would describe as in it, right, it's the asana, it's the phone calls, it's the Zoom calls, it's the meetings. Those things are necessary. But we really believe, coach, and actually equip teams to get up out of the in it into the on it on a regular rhythm, so that then that will dictate the in it, because the drift is always going to be to the in it.

Lee Coats: 12:05

If you're not rhythmic, if you're not regimented around the on it conversations, it's not going to happen by accident, because the in it we tell teams when we sit with them Frank, we're like, hey, we're going to have an on it meeting and the first thing you're going to recognize in this meeting is the in it is not getting done. So every time you stop with your team at Tidely and go, hey, let's really dream, let's get to 35,000 feet, all the stuff at 3,000 feet, the emails, the slacks, all of that is just is just sitting there, right, and so you've got to be just like.

Frank Barry: 12:38

It's like unnatural. I think it's like unnatural, right, and in a really weird way, we're taking our leadership team just for kind of a quick like two day, one night, like not a long thing, but in a few weeks because like and it was a bit ad hoc right, like a week ago, we were like man, we need just some time to talk about like future and things like that, and not be like on a Zoom meeting doing it, because there's something about doing it in person. That's just better. But it's like weird, right, we're planning the agenda and it's like you still want to talk about like today, but the point of it is not to talk about today, right, to talk about like a year from now, five years from now and like do that kind of planning. But for some reason it's just not natural. It's like it's very fuzzy and not defined and I can't answer an email or solve a problem. It's just bigger than that, right?

Lee Coats: 13:35

And I think the makeup of our team will sometimes dictate that, because as you analyze your team, you probably have people that really enjoy that work on it kind of thinking right but then you have a mixture of people who are much more equipped to execute, to get stuff done, and you need all those people, but sometimes it's very difficult for those right. It's that tension of you have dreamers who can't get anything done sometimes and then you have people who get everything done but don't know how to actually stop and dream and imagine. And we have taken and morphed some thinking around traction, which has been a dynamic organizational leadership pool, and we've taken it and kind of grown into it and created some vision dashboards et cetera, in helping churches design a 10, what we call a 10-year vision, a three-year view, a one-year plan and then 90-day rocks or 90-day must-dos, the priority list. And what's interesting is teams love it. We were just with a team in Seattle last week about a six, seven-year-old church plant in the heart of Bellevue, washington east side of Seattle. Man, and they are just doing really well. They're prevailing, they're reaching their city, but for them to pause and to go, what does it look like? What's a 10-year vision. It was not normal, right, like you just said, it was very abnormal, abnormal.

Lee Coats: 15:02

But by the time we get to the one, then we're starting to get into the in it, right. It's like, okay, what's 10? What is three? Right. And that starts to get a little bit more detailed. And then one is like what is the next 12 months? What are the five or six things that we need to accomplish in the next 12 months towards making the three-year view more likely to be true, towards accomplishing the 10-year vision, and that all should be dictated.

Lee Coats: 15:26

We say this in the church world. We should be led of the spirit and aware of the strategy. Let me say that for your listeners again, led of the spirit, aware of the strategy. That means strategy and spirit are not in conflict with each other or competition. They should be able to cooperate together. Right, and many churches will lean hard one way or the other. It's all strategy, right, and you're like it's got, even in this. And then you have other churches that are all like we're just going to let the spirit do what the spirit does.

Lee Coats: 15:54

It's like, yeah, but I'm not a big Jesus as a leader guy, but there is, even as we read the narrative of Jesus life. There's some intentionality if you want to call it strategy to where he went, who he talked to, who he interacted with, who he said yes to, who he said no to. There just is right, and so that's where we always talk about. We want organizations to have a clear 10-year vision, really concise three-year view, both quantifiable and narrative. Right. That then begins to build itself into what are the things that we need to do in the next hope. Now listen these five or six things. They are outside of our work, in it every day, like we still got to do what we do, right, but these are the things that we believe are actually going to speak to that vision coming and people listening some of you listening are like, yeah, of course, but you'd be surprised, especially again in the church nonprofit world, how difficult it is to get teams to think that way. It's just hard.

Frank Barry: 16:52

Yeah, I mean, thinking 10 years out again is just not, it's not normal, right. Nobody really like the long view in 10 years isn't even that long in reality, right. Right, when you think about, I don't know, just the life of a church, right, how long are most churches going to exist, right? So like 10 years is not even that long. But like, how do people, how do you get people to like click into the 10 year thing when you're sitting down in your sessions or you're kind of jumping in starting it off, like how do you get them to start thinking 10 years out?

Lee Coats: 17:25

A couple thoughts are on that Number one is I think COVID hijacked a little bit of our long term vision thinking. Let me explain Basically. In COVID we were responding weekly. You know we were building. I mean, even at the growth minute. We're talking to teams and going hey, you need a 30, 60 and 90 day plan, that's it right? Like we don't know. Are we meeting next week? Are we not meeting? Remember those days? Right? Yeah, absolutely Well, the problem is, the problem is we stopped using the long term vision muscle and so now when we go back and say let's look at a decade down the road, people they don't even know what, that they haven't exercised that muscle in a long time, right.

Lee Coats: 18:00

Then there's also the thinking that I think became pretty prevalent, that I disagree with now and Kay is my partner has kind of helped me with that Like you shouldn't plan long term. The world's changing too fast, culture's changing too fast. Any long term vision statements are ineffective, and I think I bought into that for a while, but I now adamantly disagree. Here's why Because I think the 10 year vision can capture the heart of your organization with one or two key metrics. But I think what happens is people build strategy into vision. Let me say that, again, people build strategy into vision.

Lee Coats: 18:36

In other words, I'll give you the crossings 10 year vision, and I can rattle it with the tongue, and we worked on this for a number of weeks and basically we say this in 10 years, the crossing will be a multi-generational, multi-ethnic network of 20 churches with a median age of 35. That's doubled its outward focused impact. That's it. So you think about that and you go okay, you're going to in 10 years, multi-generational. What does that look like? I don't know. We got to work on that right. That's where strategy comes in.

Lee Coats: 19:06

Multi-ethnic how do we do that? I don't know. We got to work on that. What is a network of churches? I don't know. Like we know a little more now, but at the time we made that statement, all we knew is we want to have a group of churches in Las Vegas, that kind of work together. We're going to call it that. What you know? What does it look like to have a median age of 35? Well, right now, our median age at the crossing is, as far as we can tell, 35. So we picked that because in 10 years, if we don't do something intentional, it's going to go up.

Frank Barry: 19:33

It'll go up a lot.

Lee Coats: 19:35

So we want to think strategically how do we drive that down? Right, and then doubling our outward focused impact, partnerships, nonprofits, all that. So there's enough there that we can get our teeth around and start to build strategy, but there's not so much that it's so detailed, right, and we always use a golf analogy. Frank, it only took us like 20 minutes to get to golf, right. Here's the golf analogy that's going to be helpful when you think of when guys are listening right now they're going. I can't even do 10 years. Listen to me. 10 year, 10 year vision is like the flagstick 150 yards away. Okay, you see it, you know where it is, you aim at it. If you hit the green, if you're 20 feet, 30 feet away, 10 feet away, if you hit and you're in proximity, that's pretty good. Yeah, I've seen your golf game.

Frank Barry: 20:22

That's really good. Let me just even if I get like generally around the green, I'd be happy, Correct.

Lee Coats: 20:28

Correct, but you still need that flagstick to point you in the right direction Right.

Lee Coats: 20:35

And so that's where I would say that analogy works really well. To go. We need that flag stick, even though it's way down there, the conditions we don't know. And then we always step back and go. The three year view is really when you learn golf, right, good golf teachers will tell you you can't trust your alignment when you're standing with an eight iron 150 yards away. So a good golfer will pick a divot or a leaf or a blade of grass that's three or four, five yards in front of them and they will align themselves with that closer target, with the flag stick further down, and that's how we treat the three year view. It's the closer thing that you can go. Okay, I can put some numbers around that, I can put some data, I can put some statements. I can know whether we're accomplishing that or not, right. And then the one year plan is right in front of you.

Lee Coats: 21:25

It's the aiming stick that good players use on the driving range and bad players never do, right, if you go to the driving range and someone's using an aiming stick, they're probably a good player, right, because they're sitting there holding this you just know, because they're taking the time, they recognize that their mind and their eyes and their brain are going to lie to them, and so they have to train their body to align correctly in order to have the best chance hit target. So we treat the one year plan as if it's that aiming stick right and we've got the target. We've got the three year view and we've got the 10 year vision. Now let's get right in front of us and do that work and then, on a regular rhythm of working on it, we're going to determine how we're doing. We're going to put some scorecards and some dashboards in place. We're going to build out some things that we can actually measure how we doing right. Hey, by the way, Frank churches hate measuring.

Frank Barry: 22:21

Butts and seats. I mean, every church loves to measure that one.

Lee Coats: 22:26

They do. As long as there's more butts than empty seats, yeah absolutely.

Lee Coats: 22:30

Yeah, right, but I think when we start to dig in, I think sometimes people are a little bit. They feel maybe unspiritual about the data, right, and I get it Like we're not. I don't encourage churches to be so data driven, but I think data deserves a seat at the table. Right, like you can tell me narrative stories around things that happen, and I think that deserves a place at the table as well. Yeah, you know, I think the data will tell churches. You know, we'll use the old analogy of open front door, closed front door, open back door, revolving back door. Right, you say, well, how do we know? Right, like, well, the data will give you a little bit of an indicator, at least to tell you. It's going to give you information and you guys do this with the work you do Information that's going to give you some degree of trends. That then is going to drive some degree of action. That's what I say about data Information that presents trends that will drive some action, that's all. And so you know, when we have a 10 year vision, with a three year view, we actually do that.

Lee Coats: 23:36

The other thing it does is it helps our teams be accountable. Let me use a spiritual word with you, frank. It helps us to be good stewards, right yeah, we like that word stewardship when it comes to finances, but I've really been convicted of late that stewardship is really wider than just financial. Like, if you're on a church team and you're listening to this and your work ethic is terrible, I would question your stewardship of that responsibility. Right yeah, if we're not looking at things and key indicators, I would think that's kind of a stewardship issue that we've been given by God this thing, that this, this, his thing, the church that we're supposed to steward and yet if we're not paying attention to where it's headed, I think that's just back the stewardship.

Frank Barry: 24:22

I mean, don't you think everybody Like right, the whole data thing and measuring things and tracking things? And it's interesting, not that I'm, you know, I haven't spent 30 years in ministry like you. I've. I've been to church for a long time, but it's like, whether you're a small church or a big church, you're probably counting something. Yep, like you know.

Frank Barry: 24:44

You, just like you know, if you're at the small church, you probably know roughly how many families are in your church, because you can count it, because it's a small church, and so you can just in your own head, no, you know, I've got this many families, or I have this many kids, or you know I have this much, you know dollars coming in in terms of, like, how I'm running, you know how's the church budget going, Right, just a very basic budget. So you're, you are always measuring something, even if you're not intentionally measuring things in order to, like, improve the outcomes. Right, like you're, you are measuring things and so you know the whole like data thing, measuring, tracking, wanting to improve, like. I don't even really understand it in terms of like, not wanting to do it because I'm all data. Data is just meant to help you make better decisions, right, and maybe know more about, yeah, paint the picture of where we are Right, yeah.

Lee Coats: 25:41

I mean just knowing how many. I don't think anybody would lead their family in the way as we advocate people to lead the church, right, like if I'm a dad, you're a dad, right, I want to care for my son, I want to love them, right. So we'll say things like we just need to love our people and care for our people, and I agree with that. That's what. That's what I was called to, that pastoral part, that's why I'm in Vegas and I've stayed here and in a family, you, as the dad, you would expect that, a loving father, you would do the same with your kids, right?

Lee Coats: 26:11

But you also have a responsibility, right, it's not like you can just love them. You also wake up in the morning and go man, I need to provide, I want a place for them to be secure. I want a roof over their head, I want I want food on the table. I want education to be possible. That's the strategy part that sometimes churches go well, we're just going to love people.

Lee Coats: 26:29

I'm like, okay, well, care for them is actually competent leadership, right, you care for your church by being a competent vision, a leader who wants to care and pastor people. I don't care how big your church gets. I really don't. Like every community is different, every context different, every church value is different. But I think we can't ignore the great commission. So I've got a church in Indiana that's just doing some amazing things. I was there a few weeks ago and they had almost a thousand people fill their campus over a couple of services and they're in a community that the city itself only. The population is somewhere around 10,000. Now the county is larger, right, and people are coming, but still I thought you've got 10% of this city that's next to them actually on their campus today for this back to school deal. I'm like I don't care if you're in rural Indiana or if you're in Bellevue Washington. If you can be intentional and work on it, we believe that the Holy Spirit will do the rest and will bring whatever harvest God wants to bring.

Frank Barry: 27:29

But that doesn't shirk us of the responsibility we have, yeah, yeah, I mean, ultimately, god is in control. It's not us, right, like he's the one who's acting and moving the hearts of people. We just want to do our best job and so, using data, using systems, using process, having coaching all the things are meant to be our best and obviously well, maybe not obviously, but hopefully passers-are praying and in the scriptures and getting advice and all the things they should be doing on the spiritual side of it to lead their church. When people come to you, when churches come your way, what are they mostly looking for?

Frank Barry: 28:12

Like are they looking to grow, or you know, like why are they looking for someone like you guys to help them?

Lee Coats: 28:21

I think I think part. I'll say a couple of things, I think number one, that's a great question. I think obviously there can be a little bit of difference in that, but based on you know the situation they're in. But I would summarize that by saying they are looking for outside partnership and outside influence and contribution. What I mean by that is, I think, every organization what is it?

Lee Coats: 28:45

The Pope, andy Stanley, says time in erodes awareness of right. So I think every organization has the ability to just believe what they believe, continue to do so most of the time they come to us, obviously they're wanting growth and all those things, but they're wanting someone to come alongside them to be able to speak into what they're doing and to be able to give them a path towards the opportunity for growth. And so most of the time when we're engaging with churches and we have churches all over the country who have partnered with us at Romentum they're actually not even really looking for an assessment initially, in the sense of like hey, come in and tell us all the things we're doing well and the things we're doing poorly. That is actually less and less of a thing. Those things, the practical parts, will be a part of our relationship as we grow deeper together. But they're really looking for process. Give us a process, give us tools that will allow us to analyze, to stay on mission, to stay accountable as a team, to know what we should be doing next all those things, and then best practices and assessment usually follow that for sure, I always do this move right. I'm always like, hey, I'm going to take off this hat and I'm going to put on like the executive pastor here and say this is the way you need to do it. But I try to not do that too soon, right, because I don't know.

Lee Coats: 30:10

Usually the leadership is in the room. The quality of leaders in the room. They just need somebody to help flesh that out and then to be accessible along the way. And so one of the things that is a part of the Romentum team is that we, when we enter into a relationship with a church or with the leaders, we tell them you have 100% accessibility to us, right, it means that we are here, alongside you. And so I spend a lot of days here and there responding to text or quick phone calls or things like that that are just helping guys. Hey, man, I'm about to go into a meeting with this individual Give me some perspective on what I should be looking for or what I should be saying. Leaders, specifically pastors, are desperate for that sort of mentoring in their lives, alongside of a system that will actually provide some continuity over the long term.

Frank Barry: 30:59

So that's what we're trying to do. It's been something yeah, yeah, I mean, and I get you know, having the outside confidant, friend, partner that you can go to to talk through stuff and that has also been there, obviously, and has 30 years to kind of draw on, and then you have a larger team and whatnot. I mean that's like can be invaluable, right, Because you're like, I need to get outside of my space and sometimes churches don't have like the network that they're part of, where they have that maybe built in there. You know, I don't know, it's like they're independent or whatever. So I mean that to me it makes a lot of sense. What do you find like? What are the biggest obstacles that churches are like facing when they come your way? Like, like, have you identified? Like, oh, like. These are the things they commonly are hitting up against in, because I'm assuming they all want to grow, like that's the whole point.

Lee Coats: 31:56

I would guess they're just sitting there and like there's probably some don't, but typically they're not wanting to engage with an organization.

Frank Barry: 32:04

Right, right.

Lee Coats: 32:05

Yeah.

Lee Coats: 32:09

Like if you're wanting to grow you're not reaching out to people, yeah, then we're probably not in a good fit for you. In what's going on, I think there's a couple of things that we typically see that are ongoing challenges, and that is I'll summarize it a little bit with this we use a model that we call church on mission, right, which is basically five elements of engagement or, if you want to use the word discipleship, that are indicators of someone moving, of a church that's actually on mission. And then, if you crossed out the word church and wrote the word life, that are indicators of someone who is that is living a life on mission. It doesn't mean they are right None of us can see the heart of an individual but they are indicators of that, and so typically what we see in churches is that they're very programmatic, right, they're running programs, but they don't necessarily have a structure that gives them an objective. So typically, the biggest I mean kind of to circle back a little, frank, on your question is the biggest challenge we see in churches is they really don't have a long term, and I mean even a year. They really don't have more than, like, the next year's calendar and budget and what we're trying to do. We want to reach people. And here's our five events and here's our budget, right and so, number one, I see that as a big need. Number two, I see them getting a flywheel of a church on mission model that they can go. What are the key areas that we need to pour into and actually move people in a in a destiny, towards a destination, so we help kind of tee that up and help them see what that might look like in their context.

Lee Coats: 33:46

And then, thirdly I think partly I see churches that really struggle with trying to understand what we call influence daily. Basically it's the hardest to measure and it's the most. It's the greatest indicator of a church and of an individual's relationship with Christ. Basically it's influence daily means when Jesus said be the light of the world, be the salt of the earth, it's the idea of all this stuff that we're doing as a church. Is there actually an influence daily with our people and with our church? That's actually out in the community? That's having an influence, right?

Lee Coats: 34:21

Is the guy that's coaching the youth soccer team as a follower of Christ? Is he having an influence? I don't mean like he's preaching the gospel before practice, I'm saying is his presence being an influence? Are we an influence in our neighborhoods? Are we an influence as we lead companies, as we work for companies, as we, as we frequent restaurants?

Lee Coats: 34:41

So one of the biggest things churches struggle with is actually taking the content that they put out on Sundays, like gathering, and actually mobilizing people to influence daily. So that's a biggie for churches right now is to go how does the church become a church that actually influences daily and is filled with people who are doing it in their individual's life? And we haven't completely cracked that code, but I think we see when churches begin to focus on it, where they create opportunities to model that so that then it becomes multiplied in people's lives, that actually leads to church growth, believe it or not, if church growth is the objective, then we're lost. That's not the objective right, it's to be life on mission that then, alongside influence daily, really creates disciples.

Frank Barry: 35:32

Yeah, have you seen any big breakthroughs? Alrighty, okay, all right, alright, okay, as you've been in the world, you know where you're. Just like we've been in the weeds, we're doing the thing with them and then, like I know, it's not all of a sudden, but, you know, through the work, you see these churches have a big breakthrough and you're like wow, that was incredible.

Lee Coats: 35:53

So I love this example because it's not what you would expect. So there's a church that I've been working with, we've been working with, with Gromenum, for a couple years great, great team there. They're in Canton, texas, frank, which is about an hour outside of Dallas, and if you're in the Dallas area and you're listening to this, you probably know where Canton is. The rest of us don't, because it's known. It's only known for one thing. It's only known for one thing they have, on a monthly basis, the world's largest outdoor flea market. So once a month, people come from all over Texas to Canton and the whole town like transforms into this, basically flea market slash swarmy thing.

Lee Coats: 36:34

Yeah, so there's a great couple who moved there. They just sent me a picture three weeks ago of their first Sunday at this church that it had a legacy and there was like 20 people and like $40 in the offering and we came alongside them a year or two, three or four years later and they have done such a phenomenal job of doing this and I want you to listen to this. They have taken principles of engagement and growth, church on mission, et cetera. Their mission is to help people find and follow Jesus and they have contextualized them so well. So when you go there and I've gone there and spoke and worked with their team it's definitely Canton, texas, right, it's not Las Vegas, it's not San Diego, california, but they're running the concepts through the context of Canton, texas and it's powerful there because it's unheard of there in most cases, right.

Lee Coats: 37:24

So, people are coming in droves and last weekend they had 900 people and they took all of their people over to a different church that they are now acquiring the building and eight acres and they are launching their second location 20 miles away in the next six months. And it's crazy and they're just, they're in Canton, Texas, okay, and so they're never going to be mega, mega, probably, but, man, in a rural context, they're taking principles and they're making it work and I believe that it's that's where I grow minimum. We're pretty excited because we don't think it's just for the big church or the small. We just think that there's principles that are Christ-based, that are spirit field, that can work in across the board as we live a life on mission and we determine to be a church and a leadership team that's on mission. It doesn't matter your context, it can happen. So we're excited about that, Frank. Frank can.

Lee Coats: 38:24

I pitch two things before we get off.

Frank Barry: 38:27

You can and for whatever reason, we're still, we're still rolling, my camera's having trouble, but we're still here, so let's keep going.

Lee Coats: 38:32

I know, it's kind of fun. I just see myself, I don't see you, so that's kind of fun.

Frank Barry: 38:36

No, I'm coming back, don't worry, I can hear you there.

Lee Coats: 38:38

All right, two things. Number one is, if somebody's listening and they would love to be part of the conversation. At grow minimum we offer a monthly think tank call. That started during COVID as sort of an emergency cry for help and has turned into a couple hundred people that are part of this group. Once a month we jump on a call for 60 minutes, we carve it out and we just have a conversation. We facilitate tools, et cetera, that help church leaders, executive church leaders, and you don't have to be a client of grow minimum or any of those things. We just want you to be part of the grow minimum network so they can go to the grow minimum website that you'll probably put on this and they can sign up to get invited to those calls. And there's a variety of topics that happen and then you're going to be part of something here in the next month or two coming up that I'm excited about, that you're helping us with, and that is because of those phone calls.

Lee Coats: 39:31

We decided, kind of outside of the zoom, that we wanted to get all these cool people in the same room and so October 4th within six we're having a think tank live. We call it think tank live, which is basically we invite everybody who jumps on those calls to get themselves to Las Vegas. We have a time of replenishment, we play golf and we have a whole day of content, with some great speakers who are coming in to be a part of it, and conversation around tables Very small, probably about 60 or 70 leaders, but we're going to have a great time. So great dinner and, frank, you're helping us with top golf. It's a great time to meet some other folks. So there's still room for people.

Frank Barry: 40:09

And if you haven't done top golf, I mean it's going to be a blast, it's a blast and so there's still room for people to come again.

Lee Coats: 40:14

It's Vegas. We designed it in a way that you have some downtime, some relational time and also some great content to help you be a church on mission. So you can go to our website it's right there. There's still room for you to sign up and be part of it. It's for executive level leaders. So basically we kind of say it's basically lead pastors, senior pastors, associate or executive pastors. Those are going to be the key target decision makers for these conversations on our think tank call and our think tank live.

Frank Barry: 40:44

It's going to be fun. I'm excited.

Lee Coats: 40:46

I still don't see you. I still don't see you.

Frank Barry: 40:48

I don't know what's wrong with the video, but it's all good. This is recorded.

Lee Coats: 40:51

You are a tech guy. You know that right, you are a tech guy.

Frank Barry: 40:54

You know the internet goes down sometimes. Lee, I can't control all tech. You know what I'm saying, but you're you want to attendy?

Lee Coats: 41:02

Are you on a? Are you on a? What do you?

Frank Barry: 41:05

want Commodore 64, old school.

Lee Coats: 41:09

The floppy drive went out. Now I can't see you anymore.

Frank Barry: 41:13

But, man, this has been awesome. We could keep going but I know we've both got meetings to get to. But, man, I love what you're up to at Gromantum and it's just been fun getting to know you over the last few years and super excited about the conference. So I get to come, you know, hang out with mom, go to the conference, meet some great pastors hang out with you. So we're excited. Where should folks go, like it's? Gromantumcom is the main website.

Lee Coats: 41:38

Yeah, it's gromantumgroupcom and if they go to that website, you know, go bring groupcom. There's information around what we do Love to have a conversation with people. There's information about the think tank call on a monthly basis and, obviously, the live conference coming up in October. So, yeah, gromantumgroupcom is where they should start. Or they can follow us on all the social stuff Instagram. We're pretty engaged there, so they can go to Instagram and give us a follow to keep up to date.

Frank Barry: 42:08

Yeah, and if they're ever in Vegas and want to check out your church, what's the website?

Lee Coats: 42:14

So I'm at thecrossinglvcom, which is the crossing in Las Vegas. We have three locations all over town, and so if there's a church leader that's going to come in or wants to come in, love for them to give me a heads up, love to be able to connect with them.

Frank Barry: 42:29

Love it. Man Lee, this has been awesome. Thanks guys for watching and listening, Even when my video went out. This has been great today and we'll catch you next week on another episode of Modern Church Leader. See ya, Thanks for watching.