American Reformation
Shifting the Titanic: Joyful Church Revitalization with Pastor Jeremy Jacoby
Ever wondered how a seasoned pastor reinvigorates hope in struggling churches? Join us on the American Reformation podcast as we welcome Pastor Jeremy Jacoby, a trailblazer in church planting and revitalization. Pastor Jeremy opens up about his transformative journey from founding new congregations to breathing new life into established churches that are navigating transitions and demographic changes. His personal anecdotes about being an empty nester add a relatable and uplifting dimension to his story, shedding light on how he uses this new phase of life to further his mission.
Curious about the latest trends in church missions and discipleship? Pastor Jeremy sheds light on the pivot from creating to curating content within discipleship. We dive into the role of community in shaping Christ-like character and humility, tackling modern cultural issues, and the practical applications of sound doctrine. Listen as we discuss the significance of catechisms for today’s congregations, mental health support within church communities, and the profound impact of the Best Practices Conference in Phoenix. This conversation underscores the importance of strategic planning and clear mission statements tailored to a church's unique cultural context.
Laughter and joy are indispensable in ministry, and Pastor Jeremy knows just how to leverage them for building trust and connection. Through humorous anecdotes and reflections on biblical stories, we explore the value of humor in leadership and team-building. This episode also delves into the essentials of policy governance in churches, showcasing how empowering leadership can lead to greater agility and effectiveness. We wrap up with a heartfelt discussion on the importance of unity, humility, and joy in ministry, leaving you inspired to maintain a Jesus-centered approach in all challenges ahead. Tune in for an enriching conversation filled with practical wisdom and a focus on collective support within the church community.
Ever wondered how a seasoned pastor reinvigorates hope in struggling churches? Join us on the American Reformation podcast as we welcome Pastor Jeremy Jacoby, a trailblazer in church planting and revitalization. Pastor Jeremy opens up about his transformative journey from founding new congregations to breathing new life into established churches that are navigating transitions and demographic changes. His personal anecdotes about being an empty nester add a relatable and uplifting dimension to his story, shedding light on how he uses this new phase of life to further his mission.
Curious about the latest trends in church missions and discipleship? Pastor Jeremy sheds light on the pivot from creating to curating content within discipleship. We dive into the role of community in shaping Christ-like character and humility, tackling modern cultural issues, and the practical applications of sound doctrine. Listen as we discuss the significance of catechisms for today’s congregations, mental health support within church communities, and the profound impact of the Best Practices Conference in Phoenix. This conversation underscores the importance of strategic planning and clear mission statements tailored to a church's unique cultural context.
Laughter and joy are indispensable in ministry, and Pastor Jeremy knows just how to leverage them for building trust and connection. Through humorous anecdotes and reflections on biblical stories, we explore the value of humor in leadership and team-building. This episode also delves into the essentials of policy governance in churches, showcasing how empowering leadership can lead to greater agility and effectiveness. We wrap up with a heartfelt discussion on the importance of unity, humility, and joy in ministry, leaving you inspired to maintain a Jesus-centered approach in all challenges ahead. Tune in for an enriching conversation filled with practical wisdom and a focus on collective support within the church community.
Welcome to the American Reformation podcast, tim Allman. Here I pray the joy of Jesus. The love that is yours in your baptismal identity is fueling you today to be a learner, a listener and one who desires to dream big dreams to reach as many people as possible with the gospel in this wild day and age in which we live and lead here in the American Christian Church. So I get the privilege today of hanging out with my longtime friend, partner in the gospel, pastor Jeremy Jacoby. Let me tell you a little bit about him. A Colorado native, a graduate of Denver Lutheran High School, go Lights he was about 10 years older than I was and those were some epic years the late 80s, early 90s at Denver Lutheran High School, a federal there, so so good. Concordia University, irvine, is where he graduated in 93. And then St Louis Seminary Concordia Seminary in St Louis, in 97. He served parishes in Nebraska and Colorado, including being a church planter for the Rocky Mountain District, and he's been at Summit of Peace since 2009, called to serve as a senior pastor in 2011.
Speaker 1:He is the father of Jessica Johanna am I saying that right? Yep, johanna, johanna, that right, yep, johanna, yep, johanna. Cool name and the husband of Julie, and he's an avid, so he's got kids college age right now. That kind of timestamps your season of life. I'm right behind you, very, very close. He's an avid fan of all Denver sports teams runner, hiker, occasional gamer, voracious reader Fantastic You're going to hear this fantastic storyteller. And he's a recovering social media addict and an extreme practitioner in the sarcastic arts. The one and the only Jeremy Jacoby. How you doing, bro, I'm doing fantastic, it's great to see you and beyond, appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, this is going to be so fun. So standard opening question how are you praying for reformation in the American Christian church, bro?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm kind of getting into a new season of life where I'm answering that question probably differently. My heart is really being drawn to churches that feel hopeless, existing churches who feel hopeless. So I'm really praying for a reformation for those churches, churches who have been around for a while, a reformation for those churches churches who have been around for a while but just feel like that with whether it's since COVID and that accelerated things or or just whatever changing demographics, changing leadership, loss of pastor, whatever it might be ones that are just kind of feeling, feeling hopeless, which is interesting because I come from kind of a start, new church planning background or did that for quite a while. But now that I don't know if it's because I'm an empty nester now which, by the way, I can't recommend high enough Like, do it as soon as you can. Like, I love, love my girls, but my wife and I had been on 23 dates in 2024. We went on three last year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, what a cool season. So I'm curious about how that developed in you, that desire for revitalization. You didn't use that word, but that's kind of the revitalization of hope and wonder and awe, not just for pastors, but I hear your heart for lay leaders, elders, et cetera, anybody who's in a leadership role, who's put in the time, the energy and just feels stuck Right. And we're with the ULC, we're encountering a lot of those congregations as who's in a leadership role, who's put in the time, the energy and just feels stuck right and we're with the ULC, we're encountering a lot of those congregations as well. And so I have a soft spot in my heart, obviously for revitalization work as well. How did that develop in you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a couple different convergence of a number of different things. One, I'm a circuit visitor for that term for people in the tribe who know what that is. But it means I kind of provide a little bit of leadership for some of our local churches and as they've tried to relaunch or transition or just deal with even vacancies, pastoral vacancies and the shortage, and just kind of wrestling with some of those churches walking alongside of them, trying to get them headed to a new direction, along with being connected to an organization called 5-2. Have you ever had Bill on?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, okay, so your listeners may be familiar, so I'm a catalyst for them, and so I've been connected with Bill going back to 2011,. Under kind of a different model, but under this new one. One of the things they added to their repertoire, coming out of the pandemic, is what's called a strategic growth process, and it really is trying to help churches relaunch. And so fly around the country and do some coaching with them for that. But then also just kind of thinking about what I wanted to do in this season of life where I have kids around the house and so I got a lot more, a lot more time, still have some energy, and and I just, I guess, the more I ran across churches that are that feel like that, I used to use the word broken and I decided I didn't like using that word broken churches. Instead, I like, I like to use the ones that feel hopeless.
Speaker 2:But, um, what really, I guess, moved my heart was a reckoning to recognize a realization that, um, to be honest, they're there where they are from poor leadership. You know it's not, it's not really their fault. You know what I mean, and when you work with them a lot of times, you know you can feel frustrated because they can have this sort of you know, adverse to change mindset and that kind of thing. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like you know, it's church leadership that's failed these people ultimately, I think in most cases, and it was kind of all of those things coming together.
Speaker 1:That's led me to that point at this moment. So, that's a general statement. I'd love to go a little bit deeper.
Speaker 2:When you say poor pastoral leadership, get specific.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I don't want to be too much of a downer, but I really think in our tribe we kind of train our pastors to be chaplains, and that's not a bad thing I don't mean that derogatively but we teach them to take care of their people, visit them, give them the word and sacraments, which are all important and powerful things, but I don't think we really challenge them towards discipleship. I don't know that we challenge them to living out the faith that is so much a part of Lutheranism. We don't do a lot of intentional. We don't do a lot of intentional both, I guess, discipleship inside and outside right. We're not intentional about reaching the community, being open to people who are not like us, and so it's not. You know again, it's not. I'm not even when I say a failure of leadership, I'm not even saying the pastor who was there before, kind of thing. I'm going beyond that. Right, we just don't have this. The world has moved past us, I think, while we've been standing on the sideline in terms of what pastors need to lead.
Speaker 1:Is that more? Yeah, well, there's just more. And if I could pray for one thing for a pastor, a pastor, a pastor sent out to pastor, a pastor trying to care for his sheep and to find more sheep is that they would maintain a posture of humility and learning that and that they would learn within our tribe, outside of our tribe, that they would recognize they've got a lot of theological wisdom to sift through junk theological junk and to grab maybe the first article leadership reality posture. There's so much to learn in, not just historically, sociologically, what makes people neuroscience, what makes people tick, how to lead a team I mean, the gamut is so, so wide. And I love the book Humilitas.
Speaker 1:I've referenced it multiple times that the advent of humility historically was with the person and work of a guy by the name of Jesus of Nazareth some 2000 years ago, who had the highest claim being God in the flesh and lowered himself and even invited other people onto his team disciples and gave them work to do. And these guys were a train wreck and yet they were filled when the Pentecost reality came with the Holy Spirit and led them to dream new dreams. I love Peter's sermon right In Acts 2, your old men are going to dream new. Let's pray today that, old men, I'm calling out for you, a brother who's got five years before you're on the Concordia plans pension plan Could you dream new dreams to discover, develop and deploy leaders who are within your congregation, maybe even the next generation of pastor who's there, and pour into them, just like Paul did with Timothy pour into one that they would pour into more.
Speaker 1:I'm praying for that sort of a day because we've got a lot of aging congregations and a lot of aging pastors and we serve the ageless God. So let us not be crippled by ageism but dream new dreams. Anything more to add to that kind of little leadership. Rant there, jeremy.
Speaker 2:Well, no, I think you're completely right're completely right. Uh, one of the against that's a secular book, but one of them that we're just loving as a staff is called um, uh, uh, it's on hospitality. No, I'm totally blanking on it. Um, it's extreme hospitality or um, but um, yeah, it's about the food service industry, but it's about just going to extremes to serve people, to connect with them.
Speaker 2:And I think you know, I heard somebody say this a while ago and I've been really just wrestling with it and really connecting with it and they said you know, like when you and I started into the ministry, content was everything Trying to get good content, because it was hard to come by Right. So if you could create good content, you had it, but because community was everywhere, because it was hard to come by right. So if you could create good content, you had it, but because community was everywhere. And now I think we flipped where content is everywhere and community is so hard to come by, and what we have in the gospel and in our belief as Lutherans is this deep connection to God and one another. Right, and so we have everything.
Speaker 2:So I'm doing a sermon series on the book of Acts right now and I just ended yesterday saying everything that we see, that exists in the early church, in the book of Acts, all the power of the Holy Spirit, how he directs the apostles, the miraculous things that are happening, the converge all of that still exists in your church, our church, right now, at this moment. Nothing's changed. Our God has not gotten smaller. The world has gotten bigger, but our God has always been bigger. Nothing's changed. Our god has not gotten smaller. The world has gotten bigger, but our god has always been bigger, right and so. So it's just it's it's. It's it's recognizing we have all that we need, right? Um, we just got to trust god and then get after it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I love that paradigm shift. I think that's another way to talk about the repercussions of the rise of secularism is. It's been a battle over words and I'm going to go to the enlightenment. Right, we can figure it out on our own, we can find meaning on our own, and then, when that obviously proves false, we are very we're idol making factories, right, and so then we go after all of these ways to find meaning, find purpose, find community.
Speaker 1:When people today say I'm spiritual, not religious, what's your initial gut response, listener, is it man or is it like, wow, they've got this spiritual heart. Cry for the God of the universe, the God who created them. Let's tell them about the one who came to redeem them. His name is Jesus, and that's the only reason the church gathers is to focus on the work and the word and the way of Jesus, right, which then draws us into into community. But I think we're really wrestling with.
Speaker 1:It used to be a content game and now it's about content curation. You know, some of the power struggles we have right now is well, we got to get the right words in the right way. Well, it's all out there, and I could give you a whole host of folks that are wonderful, wonderful theologians that you can learn from. But then the devil is in the details of how is it being lived out? Do you have the character of Christ, the empowering spirit of Christ, the humility of Christ, and that can only be discerned in community, the empowering spirit of Christ, the humility of Christ, and that can only be discerned in community? So to kind of land this, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know that I learned discipleship. I learned discipleship because I was discipled in my local context, but I didn't go to the seminary to learn deep discipleship. I went there for content. Anything more to say about? If a pastor has never been discipled right, if we've never come underneath the headship of a spiritual father or mother, how are we going to do that for one small group, a team, let alone release people to be disciple multipliers? I mean, it seems kind of like a daunting task, doesn't it? Jeremy?
Speaker 2:It does, and it's partly because we come from our background of where it's. You know. It's about good doctrine, and good doctrine has to be there. Don't misunderstand me. Right, I know you'd agree with that, but our good doctrine should lead to something Right, and so you know, if you think about it like I was reflecting on this the other day, right like um, you look at our catechism, you look any, any of the, the denominations use catechisms. Right, right now, there's three, um, there's maybe three questions that explain what the trinity is like, and there's about 70 about how our view of the sacraments are correct. Right, and that needs to be flipped.
Speaker 2:Nowadays we're post-christian right we need to and whether you're thinking about how you, how you know the great de-churching and how many people are open to returning to church or spirituality, or are you familiar with the Human Flourishing Project?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and some of their stuff right how they've talked about the importance of community and things. So we have everything to answer the questions that they're asking. Right, we're just have everything to answer the questions that they're asking. We're answering different questions. We're still answering the old questions. If you think about it, our faith, our catechism, is written as a retort to Catholicism. That's not the conversation anybody needs to have anymore. Ours is what you talked about the idols of this world. If you think about all the mental health stuff that's going on, I mean everything that are that American culture is asking. The gospel has and is the answer to, and our Lutheran theology has a. I obviously am Lutheran, so I think it has the best way to to give it to people.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, law gospel baby tension filled, so so good. So I heard the reason I sent this is I love hanging out with you and I think you're fascinating. I think I don't have a lot of sarcasm in me, but I'm hoping we can get a little bit of Jacoby sarcasm before this podcast is done. Conference down here in Phoenix For those people may hear, from time to time you and I are kind of best practice veterans best practice conference at Christ Church, phoenix veterans. We've been going for years and years. I was actually at the first one 14 years ago or something like that.
Speaker 2:I think it's they've had 13, cause there was one missing from. Covid, the first one was 14 years ago, yep.
Speaker 1:And you've hardly missed any as well, right.
Speaker 2:No. So I went the second year and then pretty much have never missed, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what is it for those that are unfamiliar?
Speaker 2:Well, so you know it was a Christ Church Lutheran out there in Phoenix had this idea and concept came from. It wasn't just Jeff Frank there, there's other pastors involved that we know, but Jeff's ranked there, there's other pastors involved that we know. But they came up with this idea of saying you know, like you know, how do we kind of help other people? We have certain ministries that are doing things well in certain areas and we think we could help people, learn from them, and we know that they could come in and share things that they're seeing and doing that could be helpful to them. And so it just became this conference where they bring in, they have a couple of keynote speakers to speak on some particular things. A lot of times it's, you know, facing the church or or a community. There's always one that Jeff likes to have where a couple shares their, their journey and what's going on. But the big bulk of it is lived out in these breakouts where you just have different churches or ministries who are just sharing kind of what they, what they've learned, and and so we'd.
Speaker 2:I'd been taking my church for five or six years and then, um, one time I just was with Jeff and said to him I said, hey, what if we do this sectional, just our church will do this section on um, what a medium-sized church learned from best practices, right. And so what we did was he did about five or six years of where we just kind of shared what we took away and what worked with us, because a lot of churches that present are much bigger Not all, not all, but they're bigger than ours, have larger staff. So we presented on that a while and I don't know what you think. I think this is kind of cool, I've noticed.
Speaker 2:I think there's best practices is in its third season now. You had its first season where it was a lot of the churches big churches, but churches that were doing well and were coming and sharing stuff. You had a second season of ones that were learning from that and then they started to present. And now I think we're into a third one, we're into a third group of churches who are starting to come, who've never come before. I ran into more first time people this past fall than I think I'd ever had, but that's kind of that's best practices.
Speaker 1:It is and, uh, it's a posture of learning. It's a free conference. If you can get your team down there in February, late February, uh it's. It's amazing, the hospitality you talk about, hospitality off the charts uh, they feed you. You have to say no, to pass the shrink and cause there, else it's just going to be very, very bad for your digestive system, but it's going to be great for your spiritual system and you're going to meet a lot of different people from a lot of different contexts and I would like to dismiss the myth that it's only for mission oriented churches that have to do new starts. No, no, no. All different churches, all different kind of contexts should be coming, and it should. I hope it's a uniting rather than dividing experience, as long as you have the posture of humility entering in it's game on Anything more there, Jeremy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was down last year with my, a friend of mine well, he's my brother-in-law, who works for 1517, another organization that's loves the gospel, and he brought he was bringing staff for the first time and he'd been before and he, the night before we were going, he, his staff, was saying so what should we and expect when you gather with other brothers and sisters of Christ? It to be like, not like a district convention or not like a you know, those sorts of things he said. You will leave more encouraged about where the direction of the church is going than almost anything you'll go to, and I 100% agree.
Speaker 1:So your big talk that I was that I loved talked about helping churches launch or relaunch with mission vision values. You titled it Shifting the Titanic. So why did you give your talk that title?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So a couple of reasons. One is because to kind of get at where we started, which is a lot of churches feel like where their head is inevitable. It's not a question of if, but when they're going to crash and close right. The other was to talk to kind of acknowledge that this is not. There's no magic bullet. You're not going to go and do something for three weeks and everything's going to be fixed. It's going to take a long time to turn a ship like that.
Speaker 2:And then it actually goes back to a seminal event in our church when we were making some really big decisions back around 2017, structure change and all this sort of stuff and I went into our voters meeting where I'd written my own parable, basically, in which I said the church has to stop operating like a cruise ship and think of itself as a rescue boat. Right, and once you're rescued, you're brought on board, you're taken to the infirmary, you're fixed up, but then you go join in the rescue. And once you're rescued, you're brought on board, you're taken to the infirmary, you're, you're fixed up, but then you go join in the rescue and we're not. We're not laying out on a on a cruise ship. So that's just kind of language I've used internally for a while and so it became, I thought it was fun to to kind of, you know, clickbait. Basically it's clickbait, that's what it is, Tim.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, sometimes that's what you got to do to gain an audience. So let's go into the greater challenges in churches establishing their unique mission, vision and values. A lot of people listen to this and they're like, oh, now you got me. I knew it was about this church growth, this sold-out to secular corporate America kind of approach, and now you're talking mission, vision, values. What would be, what would be your response to that brother or sister who has, but I would say, is a very narrow understanding of mission, vision, values, jeremy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one, I'd say. I mean we use first article gifts all over to make the church the church.
Speaker 2:I mean you use it in every church, uses it in their office with whoever handles the money, like, we use first article gifts all the time, right, and so, um, you know it is um, um, this is a human way of dealing with, uh, you know, kind of a complex problem. Is it passed down from God on high? No, but I think it's a really helpful and important way that works really well in the Western world. Now, what's interesting about this is I do just work in Cambodia and other cultures and I don't do this there, right, I think this is kind of a unique to just kind of our culture, right, and so that's the first place I'd start is we're just trying to use a first article thing that helps us get a handle on what God called us to do, right, because if you think about it and you and I know this, every church's mission is the same. It's a great commission, right, but the question is how are you gifted? What are the gifts God has given to your people in your context? Because that's going to point directly to what I think God wants you to do in your community, right, it's Acts, it's the book of Acts, and so it's just kind of a way of saying, like, if you think about when Paul says being all things to all people when he, when he says that, he's talking about himself, and I think it's true of the church, but one of the challenges is, I'd suggest uh, it's not true of a congregation. A congregation is not to be all things to all people, but the body of christ is to be all things to all people. We're in our local context, we're supposed to be for a specific group of people, right, that God has placed us in this area, among these people for a reason. So if you start by establishing values, mission, vision and then strategy right, because, if you think about it, a lot of churches, even if they don't like this process, they still sit around and brainstorm, problem solving, and what you're doing is you're basically creating strategy, backwards, reactionary strategy, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:And so if you start with values, you start with what's important to you, what is unique about you in individuals, and then what's unique about you as a group of people. And so you come from this place of values that says what are we about, what's important and passionate to us? Because we all have values, right? You remember? You remember when you got married, right, marriage is bringing two sets of values together and saying what are our new ones? Right Happens when you start a new job, when you join a new team. You have all you know, we do this everywhere in life. So you start with this place of values and it leads you to say then then you know, what does God want us to do? Right, what? Who does he want us to reach in this community? Right, and then you create this, this vision, this, uh, this picture of what that new reality might look like. And then you move to to strategy, right, um, and it's just a again a first article way to get a handle on why God has placed us in this community.
Speaker 1:I love that. What is the difference between mission like a mission statement and vision, the way I kind of frame it up? But love your take, jeremy.
Speaker 2:Well, so I'm using 5-2's language here and people use these interchangeably whatever. But mission we usually talk about as like a one sentence statement in which it's your like, it's not quite an elevator pitch, but it's a one sentence thing that makes you say, ok, this is what our, what I'm about, right? And then your vision is is usually like maybe 20 sentences Right, this is the picture you're creating for your community that says this is what it's going to look like in the future. Right, like, you know what it's like out here.
Speaker 2:But if I was trying to convince other people who are listening to this, I say hey, you got to come visit Colorado. I don't know if you know this. You think we're you'll freeze to death or whatever. We're always a top 10 in sunshine in the country. Right, 90 percent of the time that I shovel snow after it snowed, I'm doing it in shorts the next day, right, I'm giving them a picture. Like, you should see the mountains on the sunset, right, you? So you're detailing this very, um, specific picture so that they can see it and say, yeah, I want to go there. Right, and so then that's vision, and then your strategy is your specific actions you're going to take. Right. How? What do we got to do to get there Right?
Speaker 1:So that's, I love that. I love that. So, if you're framing it up in your mind, values are who we are, the vision, I'm, I'm. I'm putting it in your language, as you were just talking to the vision.
Speaker 2:So we'd go values lead to to mission, yeah To vision, to strategy Good.
Speaker 1:Good, good, good, the mission being the why we exist, almost the mission of this place, the why. And then the longer sentence, the story, the narrative. That kind of shapes out what it is we're living into. That is the vision. Then obviously you get into strategy and that gets into the execution. How are we going to go about accomplishing this? And that's where you get into like three or the four disciplines of execution establishing a wildly important goal and then working for lead measures rather than lag measures. What's the unit of work? Who's going to do it? When is it going to be done by?
Speaker 1:And this just establishes a culture of accountability within the congregation, because a lot of times there are very few and let's talk systems here. There are very few systems that are present. And I think a lot of times in the smaller, medium sized church you're like, well, the big church, those guys, they, they do the systems work, they establish all these different, you know fancy, fancy things online to help them track people and all this kind of stuff. So dismiss the myth. I think that is you know, a smaller, medium-sized church can't have systems.
Speaker 2:Right, and you know you measure what matters, right, that's right. And I think probably one of the things that they struggle with a little bit is that we tend to measure input, not output. We measure what we're, the work we're doing, not what it's creating. Does that make sense? Yeah, and, to be fair, that's where you make this, that's where you shake the snow globe from working with a business to kingdom business. Right, it's a bigger challenge to talk and think around that way.
Speaker 2:And so when you think about, like you know, like if you just changed the organization we're talking about, you would say, well, a really big family needs to have healthy systems and ways that they behave. Right, they have to have values so that they don't hurt each other, but a small family doesn't have that. Well, no, you would never. You would never say that A husband and wife need them. Two people need them. If there's more than one person, you need a healthy system, right, it doesn't matter. On your size, um, could you make the argument the bigger, you get more critical. Maybe I don't know, but you need them, no matter what size you are. Right, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:So what? What are some of the cause? We've got a lot of smaller, medium-sized church leaders listening. Where would you tell them if they're like man, we don't have, maybe, an up-to-date people development system? We've struggled to engage, like we've got a vision of sorts, like in my mind I have some sort of future preferred reality, but it's not clearly articulated. Where would you help them start, especially around mission, vision, values, leading the system? What would you give them? Some steps there.
Speaker 2:Jeremy. Well, so I want to kind of just clarify one thing, and again, this is just my perspective I think your values, your mission, your vision and your strategy help establish that a system is needed, and I think that's done largely top-down. But I think you also you really establish a system through your culture and I think culture is done bottom-up. So I'll answer kind of the first half to begin Now. This is self-serving because I happen to part-time work for an organization that does this, but I do recommend that, if you can, that you have someone outside you lead you through that process, for a couple of reasons. I mean, I know how. I've been doing this for 20 plus years and I'm having someone do it with us right now, and that's because you get to. If you've been there a long time, it's they need a new voice. You know what I mean. We've all been there where we have a guest preacher come in and they say something we've been saying forever and they're like do you hear that? That was brilliant? And you're like right, so, so, so, yeah, it's the whole. You know, do we need a consultant? Well, yeah, you do. You need someone with a different voice to come in and kind of help lead you through it. It gets you all on the same page.
Speaker 2:You, as the leader, aren't the bad guy when you have to push back and go. Is that really, you know? Are you, is that really what you want to be about, or whatever. So I highly recommend that. That's, that's. But then I'd say the opposite, for when you're changing culture, it starts with the lead. The leader has to embody and live out the culture he wants to create, and it can't be in words only. Right, if you were saying to your people you know, we need to connect with our community, we need to, you know, love the people we work with and all this kind of stuff, and you are always in your office, you can't, you're not living out. It just starts there, right, um, and then it, you know, then it kind of moves out. Where you do it with your, then it has to be your staff, then it has to be like small groups, if you have them, and then into larger groups and then it makes it to the bigger body. So it's, it's literally the opposite of the way you do. Um, values, uh, mission, vision, strategy.
Speaker 1:So, as you think culture, are these the behaviors of the organization.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 2:Anything more than behaviors. Well, it's well. No, yeah, it's more than behaviors. It is you're establishing true community and trust, right, because that's the big thing that we don't always think about. We think, well, I'm their pastor, they trust me or no? No, and you can, and trust can be broken in ways we don't even realize. Right, you know, we thought he'd be over to see grandma much faster than he was. We're not important, you know just the smallest things, you know. But conversely, right, you can, you know when you're there for them in their darkest moment, that's that starts to establish a trust that can almost never agree. You know, then, they're with you for everything. But that has to be something everyone feels, not just from the leadership, not just from the staff. They have to feel it about, about each other. So it's behavior.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but really that comes from trust, I think. Yeah, that's so good. One of the ways you build trust, I think is, is humor. I've done a lot of thinking about the role of laughter in the, in the ministry. And how do I cause I've been here 11 years how do I maintain a lighthearted, adventurous kind of spirit, because it's easy to listen. I got a lot of. I'm blessed to have a lot of young, young team leaders, you know, and youth brings new ideas, more energy. And how do I listen to things, listen to comments and and have a posture like I'm curiously, adventurously listening to them for the first time, even though there may be words like I've embedded whatever it is they're actually sharing. So, and I think laughter has this kind of connecting role. As you look at humor, the role of humor and laughter in your leadership, should pastors laugh more? What words of wisdom would you give to us around creating a space where we just take ourselves less seriously? Jeremy?
Speaker 1:you know, A hundred percent A hundred percent, yeah.
Speaker 2:And now I'll say with a little bit of self-knowledge, I use it as to this day as a defense mechanism. I'm like Chandler on Friends, right, like so. So even I have to be careful how much I use it. But I do think and the churches particularly that I've served, even I'm serving now, I didn't realize it, this wasn't intentional. This is just kind of who I am. Right, my mom used to joke that if I hadn't become a pastor I'd be a stand-up comic or a politician, and I don't know what that says about how those three professions go together, but I don't know what that means. But yeah, I mean, if you think about art, I mean the Bible's full of funny stories that we don't even realize, right, like I think one of the funniest and it's pretty crude is when Elijah's facing down the prophets of Baal and he basically says when they can't get anything done, is Baal on the can? Is he indisposed, right?
Speaker 2:I mean it's, it's funny stuff right and so you find a lot more humor in the bible than I think. Um, to start, and I think our god is a joy, a god of joy and laughter, so I always make try to make it a big part of of what we do. Um, I'm on this kick now like, for example, I don't know if you know, but the whole April Fool's comes from the Eastern Orthodox Church and their practice of telling jokes on Easter because they considered the resurrection to be the biggest joke God ever played on the devil, and so that's where this sort of joking, so I would always tell a joke to start off on Easter, right. And so now I did a few years. I transitioned where I always have Easter memes, where we get started right away with some Easter memes just to kind of laugh. And when I use it in communication, to be quite honest, there's also the little like I sprinkle jokes or humor or memes or whatever throughout my messages to bring them back Right. You got it.
Speaker 2:It's like you used to use illustrations. It's just, most of my illustrations are funny. But going beyond that, making fun of yourself talking about the challenges, I mean, you know, I don't know how much you use your own family in um and in illustrations, and I, I do with mine, I always warn them ahead of time and they're, they're kind of used to it. But, um, but just seeing like how, how, yeah, pastures, family life isn't just as messy as as mine. Um, because, you're right, we, we take ourselves too seriously and then we give this impression to people that, um, that walking as a disciple is this, I don't know, robotic slog, yeah, uh, when it's not, I mean, there's so much joy and laughter and fun in it. And then, if you think about it as a building a team, I just it's, it's a, it's a deep part of how we trust each other.
Speaker 1:Right, we can joke together, be made fun of, make fun of, but still love each other and all that. I can't be mad at someone I'm laughing with, like those right. Like humor has this connecting component, that, and if we could learn I'm going to connect humor to confession Like if we could learn as pastors to say you know what I was really wrong there. Like I thought it was this and it was. I was just. I don you know what I was really wrong there and like I thought it was this and it was. I was just. I don't know what I was thinking and I know I could.
Speaker 1:I could give some examples, but it's not even helpful. Like if pastors just had that sort of playful posture around being wrong. Like I think their team would people gravitate toward that because everybody's like I could remember a time when I was a doof, said something I shouldn't have said or didn't say something I should have said. Like we've all been there and can we, can pastors call it out of themselves consistently, and I think the pulpit is a great place to recognize our humanity. I told an awful story. It really is an awful story for 11 years of telling the story of loving Dumb and Dumber the movie way back in the day and babysitting a kid that I gave him Pepto-Bismol rather than Exlax and the kid couldn't go to the bathroom for a week and it was not a good thing. But you should have seen the jaws drop Like you're an awful human Pastor, you know it's like yeah join the party, let's go.
Speaker 1:We've all done, done stuff, so anything more to add toward? Uh, laughter connected to confession even.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because if you think about it, I think one of the things that I'm not going to get all political, but one of the things people are frustrated with, like mainstream media, is you never hear anybody say we got that wrong, Sorry about that. I mean. Think how much trust if you just heard it once it would garner.
Speaker 2:Right, and so if we are going to stand up and do that, yeah, it's, it's, it's so, so, so important again because it builds trust with them, but it also shows that we're we're vulnerable and that confession doesn't have to be this scary thing where you're out forever, now right, the the cancel culture we live in. People expect that if you get caught for something dumb, you said out forever, now right, the cancel culture we live in. People expect that if you get caught for something dumb, you said 10 years ago, well, your life is over. And we show no, you're never done with God. He never gives up on you and neither does his community, and we lead that way when we love and laugh about it.
Speaker 1:I think the local church has the opportunity If leaders will lead with humility, kindness, courage, laughter, joy, the joy of Jesus. We've got a incredible opportunity to radically shift culture, to shift the political conversation today, to set people, to help them go. I'm interviewing a guy who wrote Rob Kelly, and Alan Hirsch who wrote Metanoia Metanoia book. Have you read Metanoia, jeremy?
Speaker 1:No, it's on my list it is so good, so rich, so not just missiological but deeply like theological, around the nature of repentance. And it's really this meta having your mind set above where Christ is. Colossians talks about this a lot. Right, this is the heart of it. It's not just the turning around in the Hebrew sense, but it's the elevating above, or to put it in adaptive leadership form.
Speaker 1:I'm going to look from the balcony and see what's going on on the dance floor and there's a lot of funny things that are taking place in the dance floor and a lot of things we may be anxious about on the dance floor that we shouldn't be that anxious about. And so can leaders go to that metanoia place consistently to bring peace, to bring joy, to bring then out of that peace and joy creativity. As we move from our amygdala we get hijacked right and our brains to the left prefrontal cortex where collaboration and innovation and all of those beautiful things take place. The awe and wonder that I just got to be a human and a leader, for goodness sake, in the church right now, and I want arms open wide to my congregation and to the world to let them know there is a God we're not in and he sent his son Jesus, because he loves the world so much, to invite them into the story of Jesus. That is our incredible opportunity. I think joy, laughter, is the fuel for that mission, jeremy. Anything more to add as we land?
Speaker 2:So, if you think about it like right now, I'm a big fan of, of cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I think that's just a super helpful thing for for many, many people.
Speaker 2:But if you think at its basis, um, I did a mini sermon series right after Easter where I talked about, uh, the gifts of the resurrection, of joy, peace and hope, and I did these daily devotions, went with it because I wanted to encourage my people and I talked about some mental health stuff, but I want to encourage them to think about you know when, when God talks about having us be daily in his word, right, Obviously, we believe his word has power, real, real power. But on a on a practical neuroscience level, you are changing what your brain is thinking about. You paused in your day and said I'm not going to focus on the social media, the whatever, and if you and so people get intimidated and think, well, I don't have time to read the Bible for 30 minutes a day, no, you don't, but seven times you could stop and read the same verse.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Right, and you are. It's exactly how you described it. It's just changing how we're using. And again, we're not. We're not saying it's a one or the other, because we believe in the power of God's word as well, but on a practical level, we're elevating what, what we're focusing on. We're thinking on the things above Right and and and. When we focus on what God's word says about us over what our flesh says or the world says that's the beginning of hope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my verse today, like in between meetings I'm heading to a campus leadership meeting right here in like five minutes, right, you know, in between meetings, rejoice in the Lord. Always, again, I'll say rejoice, rejoice in the Lord, like just to have these verses that just start to marinate in our spirit and it changes every. It changes our mind, changes our perspective, it changes our approach. When someone I don't know what someone's going to say in the meeting, they may say something that I disagree with. Right, and so is my. Am I going to attack? Am I going to go to anger? Am I going to go? No, I'm going to rejoice and I'm going to listen, I'm going to love and provide a reasonable response. But it's not going to be, it's not going to be heated, there's no need for that. Our team is healthy, etc.
Speaker 2:So the word literally works 40 hours in the week in the world, and then I'm online for however many hours. It's not a one-to-one thing. God's word is so powerful, you don't have to like, you don't need an hour of it to fight off an hour of television or streaming or social media Like you. Just need regular Doses of God's love and reminder.
Speaker 1:Right, so we are what we've been called to and the hope of what is what is to come, this honest understanding of God's story. You know I'll just go past present, future, right, god's faithfulness in the past, god's presence in in the present and the hope of the restoration of all things when Jesus returns. I need to be reminded of that meta story, that grounding story that I'm a part of.
Speaker 2:And that hope that's connected to the previous two things. Right, it's not. It's not hope in isolation. It's hoping a God that's shown time and time and time and time again, he'll do it.
Speaker 1:He'll do it and he does it. We'll continue to do it. So good. So last question here. So we're down the homestretch. I love this conversation today. This is so fun. You're a gift to the body of Christ and it's an honor to call you a friend, bro. Top three values for building a healthy church leadership team. What is it at Summit of Peace? And help these values be something that could be a launching point, maybe for churches who are saying you know what? I've never really established the who we are around. A value set Give us an example.
Speaker 2:Yeah you know what? I've never really established the who we are around, a value set. Give us an example, um, yeah, so, so we, we believe in, uh, that we're loved by Jesus and so we love everyone. And that sounds like a, you know, just a throwaway, but we believe. You have to. You have to start there, right. You have to, um, you have to start an understanding that that Jesus loves us and so that leads us to love one another, right, and so we want to be deeply invested in each other as a team, but it's also always connected to Jesus, right, and so you can be, you know, feel loved here.
Speaker 1:Can I pause on that really quick? People experience words like love differently Genders. Women experience that word different than, say, men do. So how do you bring the word like love to a man who's like I don't talk about?
Speaker 2:love. I hardly ever even tell my wife.
Speaker 1:I love her so we actually.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you're familiar with the love languages. Yeah, we do that as a staff. So I make our staff do that. We do strength finders, we do a couple other different things.
Speaker 2:I believe one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is self-awareness, Right, Not not just know who you are, Don't, don't be like. It doesn't mean you have to fix everything, Cause you're not gonna, uh, you, but you can't have these limiting you know things about you, right, you got to deal with those but, but, but. So self-knowledge, and so we start from a place like that and so like, for example, my, my least of my love languages is words of affirmation Right, and it's almost. I have almost entirely female staff and I have a wife and daughters and it's all of. There's one or two right, Almost always. Um, so much so I, I, I use this as an illustration with my congregation a few times, um, where I said when you come out and tell me great sermon, pastor, I mean I that's nice, but if I see you change your behavior, if I see you do something different, you know, invest, join a ministry, serve.
Speaker 2:That's more important to me. And so now to this day, people will come out and say, I know you don't care or want to hear it, but I thought that was a good sermon, so I have to be like that's not what I meant, but and yeah, so just real, practically thinking about what does that? What does love look like for each other, Right? Whether that's and, and whether that's a God thing or a. You know, it's something I was on back of my mind when we put the staff together. Well, one of all of ours is quality time, Right, and so this is a staff where we do tons of tons of stuff together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good, anything else.
Speaker 2:We really operate from a place where, when we win, when others win, what does that mean? So, when a ministry that we're not even a part of does something awesome right, this is one of my favorite things, and I was so bad about that this Tim early on in my ministry. I was such a a such a choke point for ministry I don't know about. But now my one of my favorite things is I run in somebody in the community or at church or whatever and they're like, hey, we went to this event that your church put on. It was so awesome.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, we did yeah, I mean, I know of it you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:But we've empowered empowered people to go and live out their spiritual, the gifts they have and and the love of God to do these things, and I'm not in charge of them. You know what I mean, and so the staff has to. You know, we want to put our egos at the door and say, well, I don't care if, you know, the lay leader who spoke at it got all the credit when we did all the work. It doesn't matter, Right? We win when others win.
Speaker 1:That's so good. That is a silo buster in ministry and we celebrate that. Takes a leader like yourself telling good stories. I'm the chief storyteller and I'm not the CEO at Christ Greenfield and the chief reminding officer, reminding folks of who God is, what he's done, who we are, where we're going and how well we're loving one another on our way to there. I would be remiss I didn't even put it on this document. But our congregations both have utilized Paul Zills and governance. Talk about the role of governance. We're both strict Carver know if they're approaching a point where they could move into Now. We're not policy-based, jim Galvin. No slight to you, jim Galvin. We are strict, policy governance carver model. So talk about policy governance just a bit.
Speaker 2:A great way to close by the way, a super fun way to close this podcast. Who wouldn't want to hear about, like talk about church administration and governance? Yeah, so, um, yeah, as a model, we switched to, in fact, that when I mentioned that, that vote in 2017, that's what I was talking about when we were making that, that change to this, this structure, yeah, so I just believe that um, again, this is a first article gift, but I I believe it reflects a biblical principle as well, right, because if you think about it with our old structure, without being super bored about it like you, we had elders and we had church council, and council was supposed to handle business and elders were supposed to have spiritual stuff, but they were also the pastor's boss and reviewer. So your partner's your boss and your reviewer, somehow also the pastor's boss and reviewer, so your partner's your boss and your reviewer, somehow. But if you look at Paul, he had there was shared spiritual leadership and there was accountability, but there was headship, right. And so I believe, with deep responsibility, which the senior pastor church has perhaps the deepest of responsibility, there should be deep accountability and it sounds strange to most people, but I'm under more accountability in this model than in any other structure I've had, and that includes your voters, church council and elders.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you'd agree with that. I do, yeah and so, but again, what it does is it says look, we believe God's called this person to be here and lead us, and so we're going to give him the ends. This is just a weird way of saying it, but this is what we believe God has placed us here to accomplish, and he's going to report to us. He gets to make the decisions. We're not management. He decides, and as long as he's heading us this way and he stays in bounds, these are your policies, right? As long as he doesn't violate these things, and they're always stating the negative Limitations.
Speaker 2:Yep limitations and they're always stating the negative. He can't put us in fiscal jeopardy. That's always the one I know about your church. A pastor can't figure out the money. He can't be. We're this. However many years. We're in now four oh seven, we'll still be at a voters meeting Like, are not voting on the budget because the budget is in compliance with our ends and just the policies, right, that kind of thing. So on a practical level, or on a big picture level, that's what it was. But I'll tell you just two specific things. I don't know how people under the other model survived COVID.
Speaker 2:I agree, sometimes I had to change what we were going to do on Sunday three times before it happened and if I had to get permission from elders council every single time that kind of stuff. But the other is and they told us I don't know if they emphasized it with you, but I was told by other professors who had this because I think it took 44 people to fill all of our other boards. We now have nine. This because I think it took 44 people to fill all of our other boards. We are. We now have nine board members and all of those other people now are freed into ministry. We have more volunteers doing stuff because they're not just sitting on a board. So on a practical level, I think this structure actually lets your people be free to pursue their gifts.
Speaker 1:Do you, do you think there's? Because again smaller cruise ship, not cruise ship? But what was the boat metaphor you used? Yeah?
Speaker 2:a rescue boat.
Speaker 1:Rescue boat. I wanted a speed boat. I want to do water skiing right now, for some reason, Anyway. So the rescue boat. Can a rescue boat size church live into policy governance? What are your thoughts there?
Speaker 2:I think any size church can my plant? We did one Um, although I hadn't learned enough about it, so we were probably policy based. But, um, but you do really have to. Um, and I'm, and I'm a, I'm a big strategy guy. I'm all like, if I do the, the strengths, um, strength finders are familiar with that. I'm almost all strategic, a little bit of relational Um, I joke, my wife, my god has given me my, my wife, who's the exact opposite, she's the. You know, I'm like we're going to mars. They're like, okay, well, how are we gonna get there?
Speaker 1:I'm like I don't know, let's just do it.
Speaker 2:They figure out launch date, fuel, build the rocket. That's my admin, uh, my director of operations. These are the people come around but um, and so it can be really challenging for a pastor, cause it's not uh, zills like to say it um is logical but not intuitive, and it's. You know, it's a lot of work getting set up and I don't know about you, um, uh, but once it's going, it's kind of much easier to demonstrate compliance and do the reporting, that kind of stuff. So's going to change. So you've got these little mini seasons where you've got to put your nose to the grindstone and do this kind of admin stuff. But the amount that it frees up, and so I believe you can have it under any structure any size, yeah, I tend to agree, especially if you have board members who can relate to the congregation as owners.
Speaker 1:That's what they're going to learn Right and so, and you need I mean, for a healthy board, you need a variety of different skills. You know, to have someone with a law background would be great. To have someone who's in finance would be fantastic. To have one or two members that have maybe led companies of some note, some scale and size. That's very, very helpful because then they know what the pastor what, what helps the executive leader and what hampers the executive leader. There's a little bit of empathy there, so you need HR background.
Speaker 1:HR background. There's a number of different skills, right. So I think that's the only thing related to size. Like if you don't have folks that have and obviously a love for Lord and a love for his mission and a love for their local church going, going on mission, that's kind of a prerequisite for folks being on the board as well. But I think a smaller, growing congregation, if you started with this model and then had a pastor that you kind of raised up that had more of these kind of strategic, I think there is a pastoral profile. If you're passive and don't like accountability, if you want to live and kind of live behind the scenes rather than do not go toward, everything will be exposed. Everything will be exposed. And I mean going to the first couple years of meetings went from monthly to quarterly meetings, about five meetings a year. It was like thank you, sir, May I have another, Like just getting smacked in the face as you felt a little bit like a failure, so I had to continually remind myself of my baptismal identity.
Speaker 1:Our team. It's a work in progress but now we're about five to six years in. It's a pretty well-oiled machine. We have compliance in about 85% and the others that we're not in compliance with yet it's because there are some stretch metrics that we're using to really force us into either new start development, leadership development, financial, like what is our financial strategy that's going to provide the greatest catalytic effect into the future? So we're really pressing it right now as it relates in that governance model.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Paul Zills. If you want to hit up Paul Zills, just send me an email at thealmondatcglchurchorg. I'd love to connect you to him. And Paul is ruthless in love, in Jesus love, and so it's been quite a dance for our board because he's very frank. I love, I love Frank. Talk to be honest. Just tell me what it is. Don't beat around the bush, and Paul does not beat around the bush. So if that's you, that's your congregation, maybe that would be a great next step. So, Jeremy, this has been so much fun. If people want to connect with you and your ministry and even your consulting work, how can they do so?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can go to uh pjatsummitofpeaceorg. They can get me directly. I'm on Instagram at jake26.2,. Point is spelled out Uh. Or if you connect us at um five two, we always like to uh connect. Connect first with a Woolsey. So if you just go to five two spelled out um, dot, uh, org. I think that's right. I should probably know that. Yeah, just reach out and connect with them. They're doing great work as well. So any of those ways you can connect with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad it's been awesome being seeing you again, being on with you.
Speaker 1:Likewise, I'm glad you're not just a friend but a gospel proclaimer in the Lutheran church Missouri synod. We need more. Jeremy Jacobis, thank you for staying invested, thank you for your heart, for you can kind of say, the underdog. It's going to take a number of us saying, come on, brother, pastor, congregation, we're better together. You don't have to become one of our congregations by any stretch, but we're learning. Come alongside us and learn. I think that's it. Maintain the humility of Jesus, the joy of Jesus, the laughter of Christ and man. It's so much. Ministry can be so much fun because there's hard times coming right. We're preparing ourselves in community with the love of Christ, the joy of Jesus, to say, hey, we're going to weather whatever storm comes with our hope set on Christ and his return. This has been so much fun, jeremy. It's a good day. Go make it a great day and we promise to have Jesus-centered, joy-filled conversations week after week on the American Reformation podcast. Thanks, jeremy. So much fun, yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you. His peace be with you yeah likewise.