Church Revitalization with a Missional Heart : Josh Hayden

Full-Text Transcript

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each week, I have the privilege of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we tackle a topic all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you really thrive in both life and leadership. Now, if you are joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up. Drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below so we can get to know you better. We’ll be praying for your ministry. And wherever you’re joining us, please make sure to subscribe and follow so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. Super excited about today’s conversation. I am joined by Josh Hayden. Josh is the Co-President and Co-Founder of the Iwa Collaborative, where he does remissioning training with denominational groups, non-denominational groups, and other church networks around the world. He serves as Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church in Ashland, Virginia, and his latest book is entitled Remissioning Church. Josh, welcome to the show, brother.

Josh Hayden
Hey, Jason, thanks so much for having me. So glad to be here with you.

Jason Daye
Oh, man, so glad to have you. Super excited about this conversation. Been looking forward to it ever since I received your latest book, Remissioning Church, and the idea of revitalizing established churches. Absolutely critical, because sure, we can plant churches, and new churches do need to be planted, but we have so many existing churches that have a footprint in communities and neighborhoods across our country and really around the world, that have the opportunity to continue to impact the communities in which they find themselves. And all of us in ministry have experienced, to some degree, this kind of tension around how can we live more fully into what God has called us to do and who God has called us to be in our community? So this idea of revitalizing, now, I love the term that you use, Josh. You use this term remissioning, and so I’d like to start there, if we could. Talk to us a little bit about what using the term remissioning really does to help us think through this in maybe a fresh way.

Josh Hayden
Yeah, great question, Jason. I think remissioning is the process of the inside-out transformation of a church through discipleship for the sake of our neighbors and world. It’s a very steady, dedicated, purposeful process where we’re asking, how do we make the kinds of disciples inside of our church that aren’t just good for the church, but actually good for the neighborhoods and the communities in which our church is situated and rooted? I think revitalization is a great word, but one of the ways I would sort of differentiate between revitalization and remissioning is that revitalization is refreshing an existing church to do its current work with greater clarity, purpose, and intention, and usually it leads to numerical growth. Revitalization is sort of working smarter and harder at things you’re already kind of good at, just to do them better and more efficiently. But remissioning a church is asking, if our people gathered into our building and the building and all the people fell into a sinkhole and disappeared, would our community even notice that we’re gone? Are we living in such a way that the community is actually a better place, not just our church? So, revitalizing a church is sort of like updating an app on your favorite device, but remissioning a church is updating the operating system. It’s actually asking, how does the whole of what we’re doing actually like create this ecosystem where multiple things can flourish at the same time?

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that explanation, and that kind of leads us to a deeper question. It makes remissioning sound a lot harder than revitalizing, right? There’s a big difference between updating an app and installing a new operating system. So that kind of leads us to this idea, and it’s something that you flesh out in your new book, Remissioning Church, this idea of stewardship. Which I love how you bring this into the conversation, so I’d love for you to take some time, if you could, Josh, to talk to us about this concept of stewardship, and how it applies to what we’re looking at doing in and through our local churches, in our communities.

Josh Hayden
Yeah. So I think one of the things that churches often mistake is if somehow they are the originator and creator of the mission of God, but it’s God’s mission, and we’re simply joining in. So, one of the reasons why it’s so important for us to think about how we are stewards of the mission is because it’s God’s mission, and God invited us to join in. The question isn’t how do we start everything up? But it’s more like if God is already moving, active, working in our communities, and in our world, where are the places where God’s inviting us to go with him? Where are the places where God’s saying, Hey, here’s where your neighbors are already gathering. Can you join in and help people to understand how God’s in their midst? So, the stewarding language is really important because when churches own things, whether it’s buildings, pews, programs, or even really good things. I’ve seen churches really move into an ownership mentality around good, missional activities and projects, but when those things wear out, or they cease to actually see the kind of impact or bear the kind of fruit that God desires. When we are kind of operating in an ownership mentality, we struggle to bring those things to the cross and let them die, or die to a version of themselves, so that new life can be born. So, kind of growing the stewardship mentality that all of us, not just the pastor, but the leadership community of the church and the people of the church, are meant to steward the mission of God, listen to God’s voice, see God at work around us, and then join into that work is really important. But when we think we own it, that’s usually when that’s often the source of deep conflict that is about to happen within the life of a church.

Jason Daye
Yeah. So the stewarding piece has to do with not only what we’re kind of experiencing as a church community and what we have maybe historically or traditionally been experiencing, but there’s also a part of the stewarding piece when we are looking at the community around us, right? As you said, what is God already doing and where is God already at work around us? So, how do we begin to lean into kind of that community side of stewardship when we’re looking at this idea of remissioning our church?

Josh Hayden
Yeah, it’s a great set of resources within this kind of way of thinking called asset-based community development, which is actually like, where are the assets that already exist in a community where our neighbors have gifts, skills, and abilities that they have already at their disposal? They might even already be deploying them, but the church is just blind because they think that, Oh, it can’t be good if we don’t start it. What does it look like for us to actually join in where people are already gathering, moving, and see the image of God and others, and say, rather than beginning with what people might need from us, how do we see what assets, what resources, what gifts they already bring to the table? Our job is to help navigate connection and relationship. Help people to see that, Oh, when we bring these together, our community is a better place. It flourishes when we collaborate together. So, a church that is stuck rather than starting a new program, one of the things I often encourage them to do is to go find where people in their community are already gathering and just show up and either be like the cleanup patrol for after an event is over, or just simply show up, invite some friends, and just pay attention for an evening or an afternoon and see how people are relating to each other. Look for opportunities to just ask some questions, but just listen and watch first, rather than thinking that you have to bring people to you first. I found the process that I call this is exegeting the neighborhood. So, when you actually show up and listen first, rather than assuming that you have all the answers, that’s the major difference between ownership and stewardship. We’re asking, how do you show up where people are gathering, doing meaningful things, relating to each other, hanging out in coffee shops, parades in your town, or whatever it might be, where people are getting together? Show up, listen, and ask where God might be speaking in that place with those folks.

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, just a quick reminder that we provide a free toolkit that complements today’s conversation. You can find this for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. In the toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. This growth guide includes insights pulled from today’s conversation, as well as reflection questions, so you and the ministry team at your local church can dig more deeply into this topic and see how it relates to your specific ministry context. Again, you can find it at PastorServe.org/network.

Jason Daye
Yeah, Josh, it’s interesting because, and you touched on this a little bit earlier, oftentimes in our local churches, our ministries, we’re really looking hard at, okay, how can we kind of make an impact. We talk about impact, right? And there’s nothing wrong with impact, but oftentimes that turns into, How can we make a big splash in the community? How can we, as you said, own something that everyone says, Oh, this is associated with First Baptist, or whatever. This is associated with United Methodist, and kind of what that means for us. There is a sense of, within churches, they get excited about kind of having something that they’ve championed in the community, and yet this perspective steps back and says, Okay, how do we kind of get into the fibers of things that are already happening and let ourselves be interwoven into a tapestry that already exists, rather than kind of stitching something up ourselves? What is one of the great challenges, or, I guess, this kind of change management, how do you help your people move from the excitement of saying, hey, this is something that we’ve done and given to the community, to Hey, it’s okay for us to just be a part of kind of the background in the midst of something? How do you make that transition?

Josh Hayden
Yeah. Ron Heifetz from the Harvard Business School, talks about a kind of adaptive leadership, leading through change processes. He says it’s disappointing people at a rate they can absorb. Yeah, it’s not an encouraging phrase at first, or when you first hear that. But, when we think about leading through change processes, so much of the work is learning to regulate our own emotional temperatures as leaders and the leadership community within our context. Realizing that people aren’t usually like light switches. They don’t just turn on or off. They’re usually like dimmer switches. Or how the sun wakes up into the day, or the sun sets at night. It’s a gradual process of awakening. So, because the goal of remissioning is to make disciples who are asking, how do our relationships, programs, events, and shared ways of being good neighbors kind of see the flourishing of God’s Kingdom in our community? It isn’t, how do we just change people? The goal isn’t to just change, because innovation is all that’s important, but the hope of the remission process is that we start to break down the cycle. I don’t know. I’m in 165+ year old church. And one of the generational kind of traumas we pass on to each other is that we just say, well, that’s not how we do things here. We just pass that on from one generation to another. But rather, we’re asking, well, as we imitate Jesus together, how do we love our neighbors? So, the change process, if the goal isn’t to just change people, but to see change as a way to help people navigate their everyday life as a disciple of Jesus, when churches don’t lead through change processes well, we actually short-circuit their discipleship journey. So a really great example is that we had a woman when we were going from two worship services. I would say our traditional service was like a formal funeral every week, and then our contemporary service was like an informal funeral, where I still had a suit on, but I preached from the ground, and the music, I couldn’t hear anyone singing. It was so sad. It was hard. We moved from two into one, and we’re trying new things. We had more people join our church, and we baptized more people in that 20-week experiment than we had in 10 years. And a woman who’s so kind and wonderful gave me a call one day and was like, Hey, you’re a very nice person. I’m not anti to change, but it’s really hard, and I’m not sure if I can stay. And I was like, Oh well, gosh, tell me more. And she’s like, you know, my husband died, I went through a ton, my daughter got divorced, and she moved into my house. I’ve experienced so much change in my everyday life. I love that I could just show up on a Sunday, know what to expect, and I didn’t have to worry about other things changing in my life, too. I was like, Oh, thank you for telling me. And also, I’m so sorry. Instead of helping you to grow the muscles you needed to follow Jesus and the change that happens in all the other parts of your life, we actually broke your discipleship journey by not helping to learn how to change here with us in a safe way, so that when your husband passed away, your daughter gets divorced, and you’re navigating all this, we actually didn’t help you to grow those discipleship muscles, to know that God didn’t ask you to just stay put. But, as you embrace the cross and follow Jesus in your everyday life, it changes the very normal part of your everyday, and we didn’t do a good job. I’m really sorry. She eventually started dating someone else and went to another church eventually, but we remained friends. She was very kind, and we hired another pastor from another church. She spoke really well of us. It’s really important to recognize that the change process is a discipleship process, and when churches don’t navigate change well, we actually short-circuit the way that disciples can live their faith out in their everyday life. So this is actually a critical, critical thing for churches to learn to work through together.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s so important, I think, as we focus in on the fact that we are called to help make disciples, we’re called to help people make that journey, and grow in Christ-likeness, part of that is through our processes of change and how we manage those processes. One of the things that, as we’re looking at this idea of change and how people respond to it, is there are two different areas that we see within the local church where people are responding. One is our congregants. Those people God entrusted to us. How are they experiencing the change? The flip side is our leadership. Whether that’s ourselves as a lead pastor, if we’re a solo pastor, maybe some other key volunteers, or church board elders, whatever that might be, or a staff. I would love, Josh, for you to walk us through a little bit in all the work that you’ve been doing in helping other pastors and other churches go through this remissioning journey. Let’s start with our congregations. What are a couple of the biggest obstacles or biggest challenges that pastors are seeing as they’re going through the process of remissioning in terms of their congregants, their people?

Josh Hayden
I think one of the biggest challenges is that we, most churches, don’t have muscles for kind of longer change processes, rather than something that they can see the results of in, like one to two months, three months at most. And so the kind of process we’re talking about, and I think in my own church, some of my leaders, when they first read the book and they loved it, were like, Oh my gosh, it was strange to read something that was so true of who we were. They’re like, if we knew the length and breadth of this process from the get-go, I’m not sure that I would have had the stamina to do it. I think one of the challenges of remissioning is that they’re the greatest opportunities for growing muscles for people to think about navigating the kind of hardships that exist in life that don’t get solved in a day, a week, a month, or three months. Suffering is a part of life. Grief, sorrow, or change in relationships are all parts of people’s journeys. So, one of the things that is so, so helpful in this process is to grow congregations that are able to think about long-term sustainability in a community, and not just how we make a splash for six months and then look for the next splash six months later. I think part of the challenge there is that sometimes we’re wired to just think about church growth in the context of, how do we get people from another church into our church, rather than actually make disciples in our community? And so one of the biggest challenges facing remissioning is that we’ve exported so much of our mission to other organizations, agencies, or denominational groups that people actually don’t know how to live on mission in their everyday lives. So growing these kinds of muscles so that people can believe that they can live on mission with God and steward that in their everyday lives. This became a crystal clear challenge in light of the pandemic, right? I know people don’t want to talk about it, but the question wasn’t, How do we equip people to live on mission now that they’re not in a Sunday-centric model of existence? Instead, we were like, how do we just get people back? Well, what if the goal isn’t to get people off the soccer fields, but to give them better tools to make disciples as they go on the soccer fields? So these change processes don’t have to just be painful. They can be beautiful opportunities for people to learn how to navigate change in their everyday lives. So, that’s a huge challenge on the congregation side, to pace the process in a way that they can tolerate. I think leaders often get too anxious themselves, or they get mad at people, and so they short-circuit the ability for the spirit to do the work. Most change is like a drip, drip, drip, not big, thunderclap moments of change. So learning to regulate our own temperatures as leaders is critical in this process. I think also communication is a critical piece for leaders. They often think they’ve communicated well, but the congregation doesn’t believe that. George Bernard Shaw, I have a sticky note I keep on my computer all the time. He said that the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. So, when we’re going through change processes, it’s really important to communicate well, take the necessary time, and give good feedback loops. I think when we don’t, when we’re not honest about where people are actually at in the appropriation of that change in their discipleship journey, we want people to be somewhere they’re not. People aren’t going to go from, it’s like grief. You don’t just jump from one stage to another. You actually have to go through that journey over time, and it almost acts like a spiral. You spin through it multiple times. So, I actually, like, the fundamental belief of remissioning church is that people can change. I mean, it’s the heart of the gospel. And when people are like, well, old dogs can’t learn new tricks, or people are stuck in their ways, I actually think it’s a fundamental disagreement with the hope of Jesus that, no matter if you’ve been laying by a pool for 38 years waiting for someone to put you in or you’ve been living one way of life in one religious community, and all of a sudden you wake up to a whole nother, you know, at a well. Regardless of our journey, God invites us, no matter how far we think people are from understanding the depth of that good news. So, if leaders don’t believe their churches can change, it’s going to be really hard for their churches to believe it, too.

Jason Daye
At Pastor Serve, we love walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders just like you. If you want to learn more about how you can qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, please visit PastorServe.org/freesession. You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. That’s PastorServe.org/freesession.

Jason Daye
Yeah, no, it’s a good word. Let’s get really practical, Josh. We’ve talked a little bit about kind of the investment. This isn’t a microwave situation; this is crock-pot cooking, and the idea that it’s this journey that we’re on with our people. So, practically speaking, what does that look like? Let’s talk about your experience in your church. What’s the length of this journey? And not that every church is going to be the same. This isn’t some super formula; this is a way of living, right? But, what are some markers, maybe, that you guys have experienced where you’ve seen, okay, over the course of this, seeking God, and remissioning, you’ve seen some things happening that encourage you that, okay, we’re moving in the right direction, in step with the Spirit?

Josh Hayden
Yeah, that’s great. So, probably one of the clearest examples for us is that I pastor a church that is just north of Richmond, Virginia, which was the former capital of the Confederacy. So, race and culture were a significant challenge, not just in our county, but it’s a challenge in this part of our state. Basically, in 2019, our church was having meaningful conversations about who our neighbor is and who qualifies to be our neighbor. Who are the people in our community that God’s invited us to love and grow relationships with, and we had discovered a new partnership with a sister African American church in our community. We had gotten a grant to do some work together, and it actually caused a lot of consternation for some folks in my church. And it raised questions about, well, it was almost like separate but equal. Like, what does it mean for us to be in relationships with people that look different, act different, or whose way of talking about God is different than ours? We weren’t even talking about like our neighbors as a whole, right? We’re just talking about a sister church in our community. And what that led us to is a really in-depth, difficult, but truly transformative process of clarifying who it is that God’s invited us to love in our community. So, through some really difficult conversations about race and culture, we actually had a service where we repented of the ways that we had been poor neighbors and contributed to the racial tension in our community. In a public service together, we named those. We had a 95-year-old repent of the way that she worked against the integration of public schools in our county. She’d been holding that in her body for 60 years. So, in light of that journey that we went on together, the question became, well, if God’s asking us to love our neighbors no matter what, like, what does that actually look like for us? We already had a kind of robust food access work that we did in our church, but what had been born over a couple of years of discernment was actually a number of refugees and immigrants who were being placed into our region, and they didn’t have community. They needed significant help navigating how to make homes, how to get jobs, and English language classes. So a church that had struggled with having clarity that God loves our neighbor regardless of where they’re from or what they look like, now runs the kind of strongest English language classes in partnership with government support in our community. We do social work, where we actually help some of those families get rooted, have homes, get jobs, and become citizens. In fact, just this past Sunday, I had a man who’s a new citizen from Iran here in the United States, who’s in worship, who’s Muslim, but he is interested in Jesus, and because of the English language classes, is so moved. Hugged me after worship on Sunday. So these kinds of markers to me are church moving from suspicion of neighbor to deep love of neighbor, and a temperament of being okay with a longer process of transformation in people’s lives. And so those kinds of indicators. I think moving from things you count to measuring life change is a significant shift for people.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s awesome, man. I love those stories of how God’s at work, Josh, there in your local church. As you are helping resource other pastors to do this, I’d love to hear a little bit about what you’re doing with Iwa Collaborative and kind of almost helping us think through, practically, what is a bit of a process, because one is obviously, your book Remissioning Church which kind of lays this out, but you’ve really leaned into walking alongside other churches and helping them kind of embrace this and experience that. So, can you give us kind of an insight into what that process even looks like?

Josh Hayden
Yeah, I think I didn’t answer fully your last question about how long these kinds of processes take, and I think it’s because I’m always a little nervous to answer it, because if you’re pursuing these change processes very diligently, it usually takes somewhere between three to five years. If you’re moving quickly, four to six years is pretty typical. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have meaningful change along the way, but it just takes time because people don’t change quickly. So, one of the things we’ve learned at Iwa Collaborative is that people, like pastors and leaders, need other leaders who are going on this process, on this journey, to know that they’re not alone, to get coaching from other practitioners who are doing this work at various different cities and locales all across our nation, and especially in the UK, we do a lot of work there, in urban settings, rural settings, small churches, larger churches, and medium-sized churches. So, what we’ve discovered is that people need about 25 to 30 weeks to basically wrestle through some of their preconceived notions about what a successful church, a healthy church, or mature church looks like. Most pastors and leaders are feeling pressure because the things they can count, which are money, people, or programs, those things have been disrupted, and they need some help to create, actually, like measuring sticks about transformation in people’s lives. And then they can reevaluate money and programs, and people, the number of people, based on what kind of life change is happening. The higher level of work is to not just ask how the life change is happening inside of the church, but also in our community. We call them remissioning collectives. So, what they are is 25-week journeys with usually like 6 to 10 other leaders who are going through the same process at various stages. Some are close to death. Others are just experiencing some plateau. Others are in decline or drop out. And we have once-a-week gatherings with two practitioner coaches who love remissioning church or are remissioning in their own context, and they journey with those pastors and leaders for those 25 weeks. Probably the best part is like, there isn’t this like project at the end that’s homework or you have to write a paper. With each core competency that they work through, we actually ask them to create the presentation that they are going to work through with their leadership or their church at large, so that they’re building with good feedback from their peers and coaches to be able to tell the story of where they believe God’s inviting them to go as a church for the road ahead. I have a doctorate. Writing papers is great, but I actually think that creating the presentation or the videos or whatever it’s going to be that helps to tell the story of where a church is being invited to go with God is really, really important. So those remissioning collectives, we have a 101 and a 201, those things are incredibly helpful to go on these journeys with other people. For those who maybe don’t have 25 weeks to go on these kind of journeys, we actually have partners seminaries, and we have an executive certificate for people who are like, Hey, I’ve got about 10 weeks. I can come to an intensive and then kind of shoot into a more bite-sized version of some stuff. Those are some of the things we do as well. We’ve just found that when leaders try to do this on their own, it’s usually really difficult to try to navigate this by themselves. And I don’t think God wants us to be alone and discouraged. I think this is where the body of Christ, in its different parts, can be together.

Jason Daye
Absolutely, I love that. I love the work you’re doing. Josh, as we kind of wind down this conversation, a great conversation around what it looks like to really remission our local churches, and I appreciate your honesty in some of the challenges that are faced, and the fact that this isn’t a quick fix, obviously, but it’s meaningful work. As we wind down, I’d love for you to just share some words of encouragement for pastors and ministry leaders who are watching or listening. What would you like to share with them?

Josh Hayden
So, I’ve been pastoring a little over 20 years now, 21 plus years. I spent about 11 years in a church plant, over 10 years in an established church, and I would say the last three years of pastoring have probably been the most joy-filled years I’ve ever had as a leader. So, when I write and talk about these things, I hope pastors and leaders know that whatever suffering or rut that they might feel stuck in, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. God really does love his church. God really does love our neighbors, and is inviting us as churches to experience this deep hope within our own lives as leaders, to see people go through these transformation processes. And whatever depth of transformation God’s inviting our church into, us as leaders are invited into that same journey. So, my hope is that leaders will be encouraged to know that God isn’t done with you, that there’s hope for your own leadership work, there’s hope for your spiritual lives, but that same hope that God has for the kingdom to be on earth as in heaven. God isn’t trying to remission your church at your expense. It’s meant for us to learn how to embrace the cross and find new life together. So I just hope that people know that this work is worth it and it’s transformative for our own lives.

Jason Daye
I love it. Great word, brother. Great word. Remissioning Church is Josh’s latest book. Josh, if people want to connect with you or connect with Iwa Collaborative, what are some ways they can do that?

Josh Hayden
Yeah. So if they want to pick up the book, you can get it at your favorite local bookstore, perhaps, but easily on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any of that kind of stuff. And if they’d like to connect in some of those remission and collective work, they can go to Iwa Collaborative, iwacollaborative.com. They can sign up for some of our collectives. We have groups starting this fall, and they also start in the New Year as well. So there’s usually a couple of on-ramps there. Then I’m on Instagram, LinkedIn, all those fun social media places, and would love to connect. Yeah, if I can be an encouragement to you in any way, know that I would love it.

Jason Daye
Excellent. Love it, brother. For those of you who are watching and listening along, we will have links to the Iwa Collaborative so you can look at the Remission Collectives, links to Josh’s book Remissioning Church, and his social links in the toolkit that you can find for this episode. You can find that PastorServe.org/network so be sure to check that out. Lots of great resources in there, including a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide to help you dig more deeply into the conversation that Josh and I have had today and see how it applies to your particular context. So be sure to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Josh, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for making time to hang out with us here on FrontStage BackStage, brother.

Josh Hayden
Such a joy, Jason. Thanks for the great work you do and amazing conversations you host. A joy.

Jason Daye
Awesome. Thank you. God bless you.

Josh Hayden
You, too.

Jason Daye
Here at Pastor Serve, we hope you’re truly finding value through these episodes of FrontStage BackStage. If so, please consider leaving a review for us on your favorite podcast platform. These reviews help other ministry leaders and pastors just like you find the show, so they can benefit as well. Also, consider sharing this episode with a colleague or other ministry friend, and don’t forget our free toolkit, which is available at PastorServe.org/network. This is Jason Daye, encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well.