Becoming a Future-Focused Church : Kara Powell

Full-Text Transcript

In our world of rapid change and increasing uncertainty, how can you help guide your faith community into becoming a future-focused church?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Kara Powell. Kara is the Chief of Leadership Formation at Fuller Theological Seminary and the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute. Her most recent book is entitled Future-Focused Church. Together, Kara and I explore an approach to local church ministry that is not just another method but a dynamic framework adaptable to the unique context and calling of your church. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each week, I have the honor and privilege of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we dive into a topic all in an effort to help you and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy, sustainable rhythms so you can really thrive in both life and leadership. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network, and not only do we have a conversation every week, but we also create an entire toolkit that compliments that conversation. You can find the toolkit for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. Now in this toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including the Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. In there, you’ll find both insights that were pulled from this conversation and also reflective questions so you can dig more deeply and process the topic that we’re discussing. We encourage you to use this for your own growth but also share it with the ministry leaders in your local church so that together, you guys can grow and consider how this conversation applies to your unique context. So be sure to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Now, our team at Pastor Serve loves walking alongside ministry leaders, and if you’d like to learn more about how you can receive a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, you can find that information at PastorServe.org/freesession. That’s PastorServe.org/freesession. If you join us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We absolutely love getting to know our audience better and we’ll be praying for you and for your ministry. Whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe and follow. You do not want to miss out on these great conversations and we do have a great conversation for you today. At this time, I’d like to welcome Kara Powell to the show. Kara, welcome.

Kara Powell
It’s great to be with you, Jason, and I just love the goal of this podcast. Holistic, thriving, and growing with others. This could be a great conversation.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited for what we’re going to dive into. Now, Kara, you and your colleagues, Jake and Raymond, have released a new book called Future-Focused Church. Excited about this great book. It’s more than just a book, Kara, I’ve enjoyed it. It’s almost like a guide. It’s not just something you read, but you engage with it. So I appreciate that first and foremost. But I will say this, and I want to start here. The title begs the question, okay, so how can we be a future-focused church when we live in a time where there’s such a rapid pace of change, and it’s only increasing, right? There’s that sense of uncertainty, and that’s the world that we’re pastoring in right now. So, let’s start with this. Future-focused. Help us with that.

Kara Powell
Well, you know my first thought, and I’m glad this was my default, actually, it’s not all the time, but I’m glad it was with this question, is to go to theology. To go to what we know about God, and we know that God is a God of the past, present, and future. As much as God is active now at this very moment that we’re having this conversation, and folks are listening and watching, God’s also giving us a sense of what He might want to do in the future. So you’re absolutely right. It is a tension to be in the moment and also be mindful and kind of planning for the future, but I think that’s who God is, and as people made in God’s image, I think we as humans can hold that tension. Now I will say, I think it’s quite possible that leaders have a predisposition. Some might be very present-focused and not think as much about the future. Others may be more like me, more future-focused, and need to slow down, be mindful, and really savor the present. So it’s great to be in community where we can have folks who balance us and help us hold all that in tension.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. Great response. I’ve been thinking that a lot of the uncertainties we faced over the last five years. The pandemic, wow, that threw everyone for a loop, right? Then just a lot of political tensions, racial tensions, and all of these things. Life seems to be just shifting and pivoting so rapidly. So the idea of being future-focused, I think, can also give us a sense of maybe rootedness to some degree, even though we know there has to be some flexibility, at least we’re not just being cast about, right? So, as we look at this idea of future-focused, you kind of define a future-focused church in a very specific way, and I’d love for you to share that because I think that is helpful for us to be thinking about, Okay, what exactly are we talking about when we’re talking about looking forward, right?

Kara Powell
Yeah, absolutely. So you’re right. Ray, Jake, and I have a specific definition of a future-focused church, and it’s one that is a group of Jesus followers who seek God’s direction together, which we’ve kind of been touching on. This is communal and it’s about where God’s leading us, not our own brilliant ideas. Lord, forgive me for all the times that I’ve pursued my ideas and not yours, probably even already today. But ideally, we’re seeking God’s direction together. As we’ve looked at scripture, as we’ve looked at research, and as we’ve looked at real-life churches and how God tends to be working, we think future-focused churches are going to emphasize three checkpoints. Number one, they’re going to be relationally discipling young people. Note, I didn’t say entertaining young people, but really investing in the transformation, the life-on-life transformation of young people. Second, they’re going to be modeling Kingdom diversity. Our country is more ethnically and culturally diverse than it ever has been, and we want to welcome churches not to force diversity but to resemble the diversity of the communities in which they live. Then, thirdly, that we are tangibly loving our neighbors. That is so compelling. I’m recording this from Los Angeles just a month or five weeks after the terrible fires hit us, and I was just putting in an email today to a friend that there’s so much brokenness, but there’s beauty in the way we’re seeing churches, and Jesus followers tangibly love others. Welcome others into their homes, as our family has done, we’ve had a 22-year-old displaced fire person living with us now for a while. So how can we, whatever city we live in, whatever our community is experiencing, be tangibly loving our neighbors? So those are the three checkpoints that we think are fairly essential for the Church of the future.

Jason Daye
Yeah. I love that, Kara. Now let me ask the follow-up question to that. How did you, Jake, and Ray fall on these three checkpoints?

Kara Powell
Yeah. So we certainly have our biases and if you know anything about the research that we’ve done over the last few decades at the Fuller Youth Institute, you know that we love young people. We can’t wait to see how 16 and 26-year-olds are being used by God today and in the future to change our world. So we certainly have a bias toward young people. We have biases in all these areas. But honestly, we looked at Scripture as well as we looked at real-life churches. We’ve journeyed with over 1000 churches who’ve been making changes and looked at the areas where churches either needed to change the most or saw the most potential for growth and vitality. So these were particular tipping point areas for churches that if we could invest in these they made a difference in other ways. So it was a whole combination of things, for sure.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love it. There is a sense of, it makes sense if we’re talking about the future-focused church, we’ve gotta be talking about the next generation. I mean, that’s just one of the things. I mean, we could go on and on, about research that you guys have done and others have done all around what’s going on in the church, young generations, and those types of things. But, yeah, that focus there. So let’s say, Kara, you’re out to coffee with the pastor. You’re talking to a pastor about this idea of future-focused. Again, they have maybe some reservations to some degree because I’m just trying to get through the next month, right? I’m not really looking forward. It seems like it could be overwhelming to be thinking, not that we shouldn’t be doing that, but where would you tell that pastor to start? Where’s like a beginning point, right?

Kara Powell
Yeah. Well, first if this pastor is concerned and is trying to grasp, like, Where does this fit within their priorities? Why should they think about the future? I’d probably start with a line from our book that’s gotten a lot of attention, which is, we don’t want your church to go the way of Blockbuster. And, Jason, I don’t know what your recollection is of Blockbuster, but I remember going with my husband, going with friends, going with siblings, and desperately hoping that we would find the hard copy DVD inside the DVD box and that it was in stock, and it would take 20 to 30 minutes to find the right DVD. Then we would drive home and watch it. And that felt like really cutting-edge technology. Well, of course, Netflix came along and as of this conversation, there is one Blockbuster store in the whole country, in Oregon, whereas Netflix has become a multi-billion dollar business. Why? Because Netflix didn’t just think about what we’re doing now but was proactive about the future. So there are so many times and instances where the church has been ahead, but there’s a lot of times where the church has been behind. I’d rather be part of a church, and I know young people would rather be part of a church that was asking more innovative questions. So the why is that we don’t want your church to go the way Blockbuster and we think the best days of your church are ahead. So the future is exciting. Let’s prayerfully dream about it. So I’d start with why. I think your question was a little bit more about also how. How do you start? I love the scenario you set up of me having coffee with the pastor because that’s actually how we wrote the book. We walk through four zones. First, what’s your “here”? How do you listen and define reality? Next, what’s your “there”? What is God’s preferable future for you and how do you know what that is? Who are the people that are most important to get from here to there? Then the bulk of the book is on how you actually get from here to there, which usually the biggest stumbling blocks for pastors are in that hat. So after talking about why, I quickly rough out that map, and then we start working our way through it.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. So, Kara, talk to me a little bit about the adaptive side of all of this because, again, I feel like I’m beating the drum now, but things are changing rapidly. So, as a pastor’s leaning into this because we talked about “here”. Okay, we can figure here out because it’s here. We can look at it. We can do surveys. We can do whatever and figure that out. We talk about the there. There is the spiritual component of praying, seeking God, and God’s direction. But is that “there” a set place in the future? Let’s talk about the adaptability part, right?

Kara Powell
Yeah. Great question. My husband is an engineer, and he has a great phrase that he’s often said to me when I’m looking back at a decision and think, oh, I should have done that differently. He says, Well, you made the best decision that you had with the data you had available. Sounds very much like an engineer. I think that’s a lot of leadership, right? Prayerfully, ideally, in community with others, making the best decisions that we have. And your point is exactly right, Jason, that there is no single static “there”. So one of the diagrams we have in the book that’s got a lot of attention is we have multiple “theres” because our “there” can tweak along the way. You mentioned the pandemic, of course, that creates a new “there” for us. For those of us who live in the US with the election, the political season, and what we’re experiencing now, for many churches, that’s raising new questions about ‘there”. So, yes, the “there” can change, and certainly the path that we take to get to the “there” changes. This is not like an escalator, up and to the right. The path of getting from here to there is much more like a roller coaster with ups and downs and curlicues and steps backwards and forwards, etc. So, I feel a bit like a broken record here, but that’s why we start the book with the “here” which is listening to God and listening to others. That is an ongoing process that’s not just something we do at a leadership offsite, and then assume we’ve done it as much as we need to for the next 3, 6, or 12 months. That’s a constant prayer for reflection process, again, ideally done with others.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. Absolutely love that. I will say that the illustrations were comforting as I was reading through. Both the circuitous nature of here to there because that’s what ministry feels like, right? And also the illustration that says, hey, those “there’s”, there might be multiple “there’s”, but we’re moving in the direction. Then, as you said, it’s not something where you just go sit and plan a five-year strategy, and then you say, Okay, this is it. Let’s buckle in and ignore everything else that’s going on around you. I mean, you have the Spirit speaking into the circumstances, right?

Kara Powell
And to that end, I’ll tell you, at Fuller Seminary, I oversee all of our non-degree training, and more and more of the centers that are doing non-degree training, including the Fuller Youth Institute that I lead, we used to set annual goals and three-year goals, and we certainly have a vision for where we hope God takes us in 2030. So we do have our eye far ahead on the horizon, but we’re more setting goals by the quarter or six months so that we can stay on our toes and stay nimble. So you’re absolutely right. I think some of our time horizons we need to rethink. Again, having a sense of “there”, but then having goals that we can adjust and fluctuate based on how God works and how people respond.

Jason Daye
Absolutely, absolutely. I love it. So, Kara, you’ve mentioned multiple times this idea of leading in community, right? Not leading in a vacuum. I’d like to lean into that because in ministry sometimes, there are a lot of pastors who are solo pastors, right? So you kind of sometimes feel alone and there can be a sense of isolation, which we always are prayerfully and encouraging pastors to fight against that. But throughout Future-Focused Church, throughout the book, you make kind of almost an assumption that this is happening within community, right? Like you declare this idea of how you set it up initially. So talk to us a little bit about the necessity of community and then maybe how that solo pastor can think about what that community looks like

Kara Powell
Yeah. I mentioned that we’ve journeyed with over 1000 churches, and we’ve had churches that are 75 and churches that are 7,500 so this process has emerged from our work with a whole diverse array of churches denominationally, size-wise, regionally, etc. Well, here’s what I would say, probably most folks right now are listening or watching this podcast on their own. You can listen to a podcast on your own, but you can’t bring about change on your own. So one of our early chapters is about a transformation team. A group of 5, even 3 to 12 people who are dedicated to bringing about change. Jim Collins talks about getting the right people on the bus, and that’s what we need to ask ourselves to begin with. For a solo pastor, the good news is, generally, people who go to smaller churches, tend to want to be a little bit more involved. It’s folks who go to larger churches that tend to want to stay more anonymous, in terms of just who’s attracted. So, hopefully, a smaller church, larger church, or whatever the size is, there are people that would have shared this vision for change and would be willing to give some time. We get into a lot of real specifics in the book about how the transformation team works and how often they should meet. I’ll reveal that we suggest about every three-ish weeks. Who should be the leader? Maybe it’s not you, especially if you’re the solo pastor. Maybe there’s somebody else who has the personality, maybe even has the vocational background to be this kind of leader. One of our key mantras for change is that people tend to support what they create. People tend to support what they create. One of the stories we tell in the book is about this senior pastor of a small church who felt really burdened to start gathering with young adults. So whenever a young adult would come into his church, he would like make a beeline for that person, introduce himself, get their name, email, etc. After six to nine months, he had a number of young adult names. So he and his wife decided to start a young adult small group. A senior pastor just really burdened by young adults and realizing that this is the future of his church. Well, one of the beautiful questions that he asked, and I would encourage us all to ask young people we care about this question, what would you like to see God do through you? What would you like to see God do through you? By asking that question, this pastor was able to really tap into young adult skills and visions. It happened to be that many of the young adults had a medical background in their professions, and so their answer was, we’d love to see a free neighborhood medical clinic for people who don’t have resources. So this pastor wisely involved the elder team and involved others in the church, and it ended up becoming an annual highlight of the church’s work overall and outreach to the community because the pastor started by asking, What would you like to see God do through you? So people tend to support what they create. Let’s involve them in helping create change.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. It’s an ownership model, right? That like people are engaged more. Absolutely love that. So we’re looking at this idea of kind of pulling together a transformation team. It’s kind of understanding where we are now, where God’s taking us, that “there” piece. We’ve touched on it. What are some recommendations that you have, or things that you’ve seen with the churches that you’ve worked with on sorting through and landing because there can be a lot of like when you get a group of people in a room, there can be a lot of people that have a lot of different passions, right? A lot of excitement behind things. So, how do you either bubble something up or discern out of many things that have bubbled up the direction that God’s leading?

Kara Powell
Yeah. So start with scripture, I would say. We’ve seen church teams do this. While there are a vast number of Scripture passages of images, it’s striking, Jason, how things do tend to emerge in church communities. So for instance, one transformation team, they have listened to people in their church, and they were trying to discern their “there”. They agreed they would meditate on Scripture and come together. When they came together, it was stunning how many of them were drawn toward the parable of the prodigal son in Luke and so they decided we are going to be a community of hospitality that welcomes all, regardless of their background. So they created this beautiful vision statement that emerged from Scripture. So a lot of times it can come from scripture or it can come from phrases or images. Part of what we talk about in the book is, instead of focusing on the negative of your church’s experiences, maybe there are positive stories or images. Maybe the way your church survived a tough situation, like a fire. I mentioned that earlier, there’s actually a story about this in the book. A church that had part of the worship center burned by fire and that actually became a story of resilience for them and that became a key part of the kind of “there” they wanted to be. Another great exercise churches can do is to imagine a young person, say, take a 10-year-old and imagine they’re part of your church for the next eight years. What would you want them to experience over those eight years before they might graduate from high school and maybe move and how can your church be that kind of community? So whether it’s scripture, whether it’s thinking about a story and how God’s already worked in your church, whether it’s identifying specific young people and creating a vision for them, or maybe it’s your community. One of the churches that we talk about in the book had a real vision for loving those who are unhoused, and so a lot of their “there” had to do with hospitality and welcome and that the table is big enough for all of us. In fact, I mean, they said we’re all wanderers in search of belonging that can be found at God’s table where outsiders are no more. Just a really compelling image related to their community which they felt called to serve. So, in the book, we walk through like, how do you take these images and then create a paragraph, or no more than a page, of a vision statement that, ideally, is a sentence that a 13-year-old could remember and rephrase? That’s usually my litmus test for a good vision statement is if a 13-year-old remember and say it. So this can be a real time of creativity and again, involving the community. Oh, one last thought, we really encourage that if a transformation team comes up with a vision that you shop that around, so to speak, your church. Don’t share it as a final, chiseled-in-stone sentence or paragraph, but share it as a working draft and see how your community responds. One church that we coached did just that, and honestly, the response was pretty flat, and that wasn’t what the transformation team was hoping, but they got great data from that, they listened more, spent more time, and ended up with a compelling paragraph that everybody loved, and can stack hands on. So, once you have a draft, share it with others, small groups, or your whole church at a post-worship meeting. Invite people to speak into it, and again, they’ll support what they create.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. That’s a great pointer. Absolutely love that, Kara. The kind of the howls, the practical piece, that’s what I really appreciate about the book, right? Because, as I said, it’s not just a book you read. It’s kind of a guide that you engage with and it walks you through. So the Future-Focused Church gives you kind of step-by-step, kind of how to process through everything, and how to develop this. I have one big question that people might be thinking who have not yet read the book. Okay, people might be thinking this, or they’re watching this or listening to this. Kara, how is what you, Jake, and Ray put together in Future-Focused Church not just another church growth idea that we’ve all seen just with a little refresh?

Kara Powell
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really great question, I would say, we really try to ground it in what God wants to do in and through your church. So I think one of the tensions I face as we develop resources for leaders is we want them to be really turnkey and easy to implement, but have all sorts of room for contextualization. So the process that we give we’ve seen work in hundreds of churches. We think three main areas that churches should wrestle with are young people, ethnic diversity, and how we love our neighbors. But God might be calling your church to be more prayerful and if that’s the case, then this process also can work because you think about God’s invitation for you to be more prayerful. Maybe God’s calling you into a season of rest and this would be a radical shift for your church to be a refuge and a place that doesn’t demand more and more from people, but really experiences and offers God’s peace. Well, if that’s the shift that you want to make, you can also use this process. So we certainly have you know, as we talked earlier, our biases about these three areas, but this process can be used with any change that you feel like God’s inviting you to make. I’ll just say this in our work with churches, knowing what needs to change is somewhat tough. Knowing how to bring about change is the real challenging question, and so that’s what we try to equip leaders with. How do you maintain disciplined attention in the midst of all your juggling? How do you leverage small wins? Oh, this is a mistake I made as a leader. I went for the big wins instead of understanding the power of a series of small wins. So yeah, learn from our mistakes and learn from the way God’s worked in other churches. You can use this with any shift you’re trying to make.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I absolutely love that and I love the fact that this book wasn’t written out of one church’s experience. I mean, that’s huge. So we talk about contextualizing this to your world, your neighborhood, your people, and where God has you. I think that that helps a lot because there are a lot of kind of these old-school church growth methods that arose from a specific context. Then it was like, Hey, this is how we did it. Go and do it. Whereas this takes into account the fact that, as you said, churches from 75 to 7,500. It doesn’t matter if you’re a smaller church, medium-sized church, or even a megachurch, this allows you to kind of really lean into and breathe in what it is that the Spirit is doing in our midst, leading, and guiding us. So I found that to be super helpful. Kara, as we’re winding down, I want to give you the opportunity to share. You’ve got the ears and eyes of men and women serving in the front lines of ministry. Just an opportunity to share some final words of encouragement for them.

Kara Powell
Yeah, I would just say, I mentioned this really quickly earlier, but I’ll say it again. I believe in a God of hope and a God who redeems. So, pastors, the data shows that you’re likely more tired than you’ve been in years. You’re dedicated yet drained. We talk about that in the book. In the midst of that, we believe the best days of your church and your leadership are ahead. One of my favorite stories was about a church in the Upper Midwest that had been several 100 but had really shrunk down to 50 to 75 people and the church was about to shut its doors and sell its building and its property. But then the leadership decided, You know what, it’s not too late. We are not too small and we are not too tired. They implemented the practice that we’re talking about here and this church that was 50 to 75 is now 1,500 people, 1,000 of whom are under 30, and just a vibrant church in its city. And while that was one of the more radical growth stories, usually it’s more incremental change, you just never know what God’s going to do. And it’s not just about numerical growth, of course, it’s about people’s ongoing individual growth in relationship with God and relationship with others, too. So we really believe that the best days of the church are ahead, and we don’t want you to try to figure it out alone. We want to be with you in the process.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much, Kara. Appreciate you, once again, making the time to hang out with us. Future-Focused Church is the name of Kara’s newest book, along with her co-authors Jake and Ray, and you can find links to the book and to lots of other ministry things related to Kara and the team at Fuller in the toolkit for this episode. You can find that at PastorServe.org/network and we’ll have all those links available for you there. Kara, we certainly appreciate you making the time to be with us. Thank you so much.

Kara Powell
Well, thank you for a great conversation, and thanks to your listeners for the way they serve Jesus and others day in and day out.

Jason Daye
Amen. God bless you, Kara. Thank you.

Kara Powell
Thank you.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.