Ted Leavenworth: Building Stronger Churches Through Care and Coaching

[00:00:00] We've seen guys go out who, you know, were rock stars in the context where they were on the Bible College or whatever, they're very gifted teachers.

[00:00:09] And oh man that's fantastic! But then they go out to the plants church and they really kind of approach some of these things as an afterthought.

[00:00:18] And then that can really cause you trouble. So that's the idea of this ministry training is to be able to say, okay look, get a appreciation for what the systems and structure is.

[00:00:29] Why, system and structure? And then okay take that into the vision in the context to where you know you're going.

[00:00:37] Welcome to the CGN Mission and Methods Podcast Season 4. My name is Nick Kady. I'm the pastor of Whitefield's Community Church in Longnought, Colorado and I will be your host this season.

[00:00:50] The goal and vision of this podcast is that it would be a forum for communication about Calvary Global Network. We want to share with you some of the stories about what God is doing.

[00:01:00] We want to talk about some of the initiatives we're involved in spearheading and we want to answer the questions you might have about who we are as a network. In this episode we speak with Ted Leavenworth. Ted is the lead pastor of Reliance Church in Temecula, California.

[00:01:16] In addition to pastoring Reliance Ted also leads the care and coaching team for CGN. In this episode Ted discusses the benefits of coaching and church assessment. He describes how their team is able to help provide support for leaders,

[00:01:32] and also practical training to upscale those who desire coaching from other leaders with more experience. Prior to planting Reliance Church, Ted worked as a paramedic and was the founder and executive pastor of a large church in Manify, California.

[00:01:48] He shares how those experiences in other roles shaped his approach to ministry today. Here's the episode. Welcome to the CGN mission and methods podcast. My name is Nick Katie. I'm joined today by Pastor Brian Broderson and our friend Ted Leavenworth.

[00:02:05] Hey, how's it going? What we're doing on this season of mission and methods is we are getting to know the members of the executive team, Ted, you remember the team and Brian maybe just share a moment from your heart about why we're doing that.

[00:02:20] Yeah. Well, you know we kind of just like our audience, our friends to know us a little bit better. I think there's been in the past.

[00:02:31] There's been a bit of an assumption that there was just sort of maybe one mind behind everything that was happening here and that is not the case. We've got such a great diversity of you know life and ministry experience with the guys on the executive team.

[00:02:49] And I think you're just going to get a more well rounded perspective on just who we are as a network awesome.

[00:02:55] Ted, welcome. Just tell us a little bit about yourself who you are where you serve and how God's brought you to this place where you're at in life and ministry. Yeah.

[00:03:04] Well, I passed a reliance church in Temecula, California. We're going on 16 years prior to that. I had planted and served as the executive pastor of revival Christian fellowship in menify.

[00:03:18] And yeah, so all together I've been in pastoral ministry for 30 years and it's funny. I actually I started my first church out of necessity.

[00:03:30] My wife and I lived in a small town at the time it was a small town now. It's over a hundred thousand people, but at the time it was 6,500 people maybe. And really no healthy churches.

[00:03:42] And so fun fact, I started a Calvary Chapel having never attended Calvary Chapel in my life. Wow, so why did you do that? Because Calvary Chapel had a reputation of teaching exegetically through the scriptures.

[00:03:54] Oh, my question is actually who let you do that? Right. Well, they didn't almost let us do that. That was funny. That's a whole other story. But now we started a Bible study in our living room.

[00:04:05] I was a baby Christian. I had no business planting a church at all. But I knew that we needed Jesus and I knew that I needed the Bible and I knew that that wasn't available in our hometown. So I started a Bible study in my home.

[00:04:20] And I put our name on the pastor's one-adlist at Kosamasa, which was a thing back then. And so we had probably two or three weeks of Bible study in my home with there were six of us at the time, counting my wife and myself.

[00:04:37] And we had a pastor named Darrell Rose show up and he was a senior pastor of a Calvary Chapel in Pacific Beach at the time. And he was getting ready to turn his church over to his assistant pastor. And so he came and led our Bible study.

[00:04:54] And he was a church planter. He knew what he was doing. And he walked us through the steps of what would be required to start a church. And so we just watched that home Bible study grow and grow.

[00:05:09] And pretty soon people were sitting all the way up my stairway. And we started Sunday morning services. We had 120-ish people show up to our first service. Somebody actually gave their life to the Lord at the very first service.

[00:05:23] And we had a video camera set up in the back to record it. We all did the church service. And then we all came back to the house. And then we watched it over again. And cheering as the hand came up in the frame.

[00:05:34] It was just a great time. That's really amazing because like if Nick, let's just say you and I were leading a church planting movement And Ted came and said hey, I got this idea.

[00:05:47] I want to do a church and I'm going to do it in my living room. I've only been a Christian a short amount of time. I don't really know much about the Bible. What do you guys think? And I've never been to one of your churches before.

[00:05:59] We would have said well maybe not. But my hope point of bringing this up is, you know, I mean we're obviously into being strategic and we're obviously being into being prepared. And all of that, we've learned all that stuff over the years, right?

[00:06:14] But I think we always have to be careful not to dismiss the possibility that God might just do something so far out of the box that you're like, wow. You know, because I can think of literally dozens of stories just like the one Ted just told us.

[00:06:35] And not just in like a local church setting, but I could think of things like that in the context of a country's and just a quick word on Ukraine. I mean when George Markey raised his hand to go to Ukraine in church plant,

[00:06:51] I was one of the guys that said absolutely not. This is not a good idea. Little did I know that he was God's man. He was like an apostle. He wasn't just going to plant a church. He was going to plant a bunch of churches. So yeah.

[00:07:06] So all that to say, man, the Lord just never ceases to amaze us at the things he does. Well, it was pretty crazy because like I said, I had no business starting to church. I was a baby Christian, but we did start the Bible study in within weeks.

[00:07:21] He had a you know, a legit seasoned trained pastor who came and took over the, Yeah. But somehow you just had it, you know, in your head to do that. And obviously the Lord put that thought there right with a plan. It was incredible.

[00:07:38] I mean, you know, it was there were six of us when we started it. And when I left in 2007, which was 15 years later to plant the church that I now passed there was 6500 of us there. Yeah. So the spirit of God just moved and weren't.

[00:07:55] Well, yeah, it was a little bit about that journey of planting a church. Well, the, it came out of the blue. I was very content in my role at Revival. I had become the executive pastor and thought I would be there the rest of my life.

[00:08:10] I was very content in my role. And God spoke to me out of a clear blue sky and told me that he wanted me to to leave. And he didn't even tell me what he wanted me to do or where he wanted me to go.

[00:08:22] It was just it's time for you to go. And so I after lots of prayer and fasting and talking to my wife, talking to my pastor and talking to the board. I had launched out on a venture of faith to plant the church.

[00:08:37] And you know, I grew up in Calvary Chapel. It's what I know. So when you're leaving a church, there's a right way to leave and there's a wrong way to leave. And I wanted to be the guy that left the right way.

[00:08:47] So where do I have your blessing to go and that kind of thing? And you're very gracious to me, encouraged me and what God had called me to do. And so we went, we were living in Temecula which was 25 miles from,

[00:09:01] from Manify where our church was and we started a home Bible study again. Handfold people and just see what God would do. Yeah. What year was that? That was in 2007, the second one. First one was in 1992 and second one is 2007. It's great.

[00:09:21] And you know, you started off with the half a dozen people and you've got a few more people than that now. Yeah. We're about 2500 people I would say. Yeah. Yeah. So I know the prior to being a pastor, you had another career. Right. Tell us about that.

[00:09:37] But I'm also kind of curious if there are any skills or experiences you gained from your time. Doing that career that have been useful to you as a pastor. Oh, yeah. For sure.

[00:09:46] I was a paramedic firefighter with a Riverside County Fire Department and so a lot of leadership and organizational skills that you acquire in that line of work. And obviously just the way that God wires you.

[00:09:58] There's a certain personality and gift mixture that goes into the choosing that path that, I guess, is a career. So yeah, that informed a lot of what I did.

[00:10:08] And then growing up in a church that starts as six people and grows to 6,500 people you learn a lot along the way. And so so that was that was very helpful as well. To me about being an executive pastor. Okay.

[00:10:26] I'm sure that's for some people it might be here's what I've noticed that people have different like ideas or concepts of what an executive pastor is and does. Right. And so let's talk about that role. Why do you think it's important why you learned in it?

[00:10:40] Well, I mean, it's it means different things to different people. I think that in my context the senior pastor determines what the role the executive pastor is going to be.

[00:10:50] The way my senior pastor was wired was that he had vision for days and he wanted to preach and that's all he wanted to do and he wanted me to do everything else,

[00:11:00] which was fine because I wanted to do everything else. So so I, you know, he left the hiring to me, firing to me, the, you know, organizing of pretty much everything, you know, to me to do.

[00:11:13] He was very good about saying what he wanted where he wanted things to go and as I said he had vision. So so it was a really good match. So yeah, the in my context the role of an executive pastor was was to run everything.

[00:11:28] Was it hard for you to make that shift then later to being the senior pastor and then maybe even having an executive pastor?

[00:11:34] Well, it was hard, but it wasn't hard for the reasons you might think what was hard for me. And this is a very, very long story.

[00:11:40] So I'll, I'll spare you the details. But when I went out to plant my church, it was it was the hardest 18 months of my life.

[00:11:48] And the reason it was the hardest 18 months of my life was because God was was breaking me and I had had a lot of pride that I was dealing with.

[00:11:59] And I was oblivious to it. My wife was not she was telling me that I was very prideful and needed to deal with that. The, the women seem to have the pride, who meter. Yeah, built in. They, they detect it.

[00:12:14] Yeah, she saw me coming in my way. She's usually right. So yeah, the Lord was breaking me and I was oblivious to it. So it was very, very difficult when I went through that.

[00:12:25] But as far as, you know, I had an opportunity in, you know, an larger church and you're serving as the executive pastor at a lot of opportunities to teach and to preach on Sundays, midweek services and things like that.

[00:12:42] So the, the preaching part wasn't difficult for me. And that was that wasn't hard. Once I was able, the first person that I hired knowing the way that I was wired the first person at the church that I hired was not myself.

[00:12:56] I took a construction job and was working construction to be able to do this second church plant but I hired an administrator because I knew that I couldn't function the way I needed to function if I were doing all those things.

[00:13:09] So that helped me to be able to navigate and then that way I could from, you know, a 30,000 foot view, so to speak.

[00:13:17] I could be able to work through my administrator and then not have to get caught up in the minutiav of all the things that could swallow you up in that. So.

[00:13:28] Well, I know Ted just for knowing you personally, we met a few years ago and I think some of our first conversations were around the idea of like managing a church size. And that's all about how things are going to be done in the next generation.

[00:13:43] I think that was what we did in the early 90's and the early 90's. Yeah. But I think that it's very hard for me to make more of that.

[00:13:53] So this is really hard for me to go through the church and I thought, you know, I'm just going out there and I'm going to go through that, to your role with CGM. Right. And so tell us about what that is.

[00:14:07] Well, I'm privileged to head up a caring coaching team. And what we endeavor to do is come alongside pastors and their teams and to help them with either the role for themselves being a pastor is a very lonely job. And it's pretty, it can be overwhelming.

[00:14:26] And so we want to be able to come alongside pastors and foster those relationships. We want to be able to help people think through change, through growth, staffing issues, systems and structures, policies. All of those, some of the boring details of ministry,

[00:14:43] like what your board should look like or what your minutes should look, or your bylash should look like. Some of these things are like watching paint right, but they can cause you some real headaches and heartaches if you're not careful. So being able to foster those relationships

[00:14:59] and come alongside pastors and their teams to just care for them and equip them, that's pretty much what we're doing. Yeah, can you tell us about some of the resources and things that you've created? Yeah, one of the things that we're doing is the leadership collective podcast.

[00:15:14] And that I do Rob Salvato myself, Nate Holdridge, now, we work on just covering the nuts and bolts of ministry going through various subjects on that. We have an episode coming up that we're going to be recording in a couple of weeks with David Guswick and Nate myself

[00:15:32] and Rob, we're going to look at sending and supporting considerations. When you're sending out a mission area you're sending out someone to plant to church, what are some considerations in that? How do you send them? How do you support them? So it's just those nuts and bolts topics

[00:15:46] that we try and focus on. So the podcast is where we'll bring on different folks to discuss different angles of ministry and the nature of that podcast is we want it to be more roundtable discussion oriented. It's not a question to answer.

[00:16:07] When I go to a conference, one of the things that I lean into is when they have a panel discussion. And those are the things usually when I go to conferences that I glean the most from. So my vision for the podcast was that this is,

[00:16:22] hey, you're going to lunch with us, we're sitting down and we're getting into the nitty gritty as some of these issues that we've wrestled with. I've always wanted to work through that. We had Wesley Town and Wayne Codero out and we're able to talk about burnout.

[00:16:39] I was one of our subjects just as an example. So being able to ask particular questions, if fun fact on that episode as we were going through it and I was preparing for that podcast, I was reading through Wayne's book, Leading on Empty.

[00:16:56] And I was about halfway through it and I went, oh, and realized that I had been leading on Empty. And so that became an impetus for me to say, I need to get a retreat and get away and do a sabbatical.

[00:17:09] So it's been beneficial for me as well. And then that prompted us subsequently to do an episode on sabbaticals. And actually we taught at the conference last year a workshop on sabbaticals. So yeah, my experience over the years is that there's no lack of need for people

[00:17:31] with experience to be available to coach and to care for. I think almost everyone probably going into ministry you know, just has a list of questions about a lot of times practical things. And then of course you're always gonna run into the challenging

[00:17:51] things that are more sort of in the department of care where you need, you know, you need encouragement. And I always think of your colleague, Salvato, you know years ago, I sent Rob from cover, a couple of this to plant a church in Salem, Oregon.

[00:18:10] And Rob had been my high school pastor for a number of years and I'd known Rob when he was actually at high school. So you know, I know him from the time he's a teenager. And anyway, he was probably up in Salem

[00:18:25] might have been close to two years. And you know, we would talk off and on and all of that and everything goes seem to be kind of fine. And I got a call from one night and it was basically just like I'm done. Yeah, I'm finished, I'm quitting.

[00:18:41] I can't, you know, just the gang go on. And I literally just talked them off the ledge, you know, spent an hour in the phone with them and even today he will talk about that moment, you know, where he was really in kind of a desperate place

[00:18:58] and really needing someone to speak into his life encouragement because it was basically, as I remember, it was just one of those kind of satanic sort of things. You know, just the enemy really trying to take them out before they could really sink down their roots

[00:19:17] and then he persevered through it. And God did a great thing and there's, you know, all these years later there's a great thriving church in Salem and Rob's back in Vista. My friend Dave says, all Satan's got to do is get you to quit, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:19:32] And Rob does talk about that. He's talked to me about that. That actually has informed part of our approach to care and coaching your conversation with him well, obviously it made all the difference in the world for his trajectory and ministry. And guys need that.

[00:19:49] And we so many of us who are either pastoring churches or starting churches, there's many that have a good network of support but then again there's many who don't. They don't know who to call or, you know, they don't have those resources.

[00:20:07] And that's what we're endeavoring to do is to provide those resources so that people can reach out and they can be able to make that connection and what do you find at this stage? Ted, because this is fairly new, right? Oh yeah. And are you funding that?

[00:20:24] Are our guys seeking you out or is it just sort of word a mouth? You know, you might hear about somebody and you reach out to them. How are people connecting with you guys for either the care or the coaching?

[00:20:37] Yeah, it's relationally driven as it always is, you know? And so we look for those opportunities to be able to respond to people, like if they'll contact those email or they'll call the church or whatever, we'll respond to them.

[00:20:55] But the lion's share is that we'll have an occasion to be at an event somewhere and someone will say, oh yeah, I listened to the podcast and hey, would you answer this question for me? Or if we're going out to an area

[00:21:10] and we know and hear of guys that are planting, we'll reach out to them proactively. And say, hey, I'm gonna be out in that area. You wanna get a cup of coffee, can we talk? And that opens up that dialogue and that relationship.

[00:21:24] And so it all stems from those connected relationships and then we're seeing guests that we have on the podcast, they are establishing those relationships. So a lot of times we'll get phone calls from the different guys that've been on,

[00:21:39] say hey, I've got a guy that wants to talk to you and you know Nick, you had reached out. Hold me, hey, could we talk about what's going on here? That's great, I'd love to, you know? So yeah, it's organic that way.

[00:21:54] And they're really, they're really like the care, that's kind of an area where I just sort of do that on a personal level. But the coaching thing is a real reality too. We just with practical things. And I've had so many conversations,

[00:22:13] guys over the years that, you know, they just had an idea about something that just wasn't quite right and it wasn't a big deal. But it was big enough to kind of put a bit of a wrench in the thing they were trying to do.

[00:22:27] And you know, you listen and suddenly go, you know what, hey, let's just tweak this right here. If you just, you know, tighten this up or loosen this up, this could make all the difference in the world. And sure enough that they just needed that sort

[00:22:40] of practical advice that would help them, you know, maybe get over a hump or something like that. So I think I've said this, I think to Nick, I just think what you guys are doing there is really invaluable.

[00:22:53] I think it's fantastic and I think it's a great thing that we as a network have guys who have a lot of life and minister experience to be available to, you know, young and old guys getting started.

[00:23:09] And sometimes it's guys who have been around for a long time and they're, you know, maybe they're feeling like, man, I just need to do something fresh and new and so somebody's got an idea that is helpful. Yeah, I'm living proof of that.

[00:23:23] I didn't know anybody and I reached out and put my name on a pastor's wanted list and that, you know, Dera Rose came out and, you know, so grateful to him to be able to help us and get us to where God wanted us to be.

[00:23:39] So I think this is something that as you mentioned in with your experience with the pastors wanted list and Brian, you tell a story about Rob, I think this is something that's always been core to who we are, this very relational nature

[00:23:53] and that but I think what we're doing that's unique and helpful is that we're making this more available to people and it doesn't just have to be, well, I hope you know the right people. Right. And if you're not a good networker, well, then bummer for you.

[00:24:08] But what we're doing is we're getting out in front of it and saying we're creating a team that's, you know, gonna be real intentional about this. And beyond the podcast, that's a way for you to share ideas but also if somebody's out there listening to this

[00:24:23] and they're like, you know what? I need that. I need care or I need coaching. Then I would just encourage that person, contact CGM Central if you will. Right. Like by emailing CGM at CalvaryChapel.com and the team there will get you connected absolutely right people.

[00:24:41] It also kind of works really well with the system of local connectors. No, so that's another way you can do it. It's because I'm just thinking through people thinking, well, what you're talking about sounds awesome but I don't have your phone number. Right, right. Yeah.

[00:24:55] And we have people I was at the conference last year and then announcement was made for those that were attending the conference that they could schedule appointments during the conference and they could talk to one of us. We my whole team made themselves available.

[00:25:11] And then we have a network of resources as well. So, you know, one just wanted an example of many of the things that I had somebody that I met with, that the conference and they had administrative issues. And I said, you need to talk to my administrator

[00:25:27] and I put them in touch. I gave them my administrators number and that began a multiple week back and forth conversation where my administrators really able to help them out with some practical things. And my point is that we have a network

[00:25:43] of resources like that available to them. Put another example, I put my children's ministry director in touch with somebody and they were able to have that ongoing conversation. So it's not just me and it's just not just my team. It's Rob, so Vado and his team at Vista

[00:26:03] and it's in Nate Holdridge and others that are available. And if we don't know, you know, if we don't know what you're asking about, we know a subject matter expert who does and we can put you in touch with them. So yeah, and I think it's important to

[00:26:19] that you mentioned yourself and Robin and Nate as kind of the team but it's not limited to that thing God. Oh yeah, let me know. It's on the team. Yeah, and even beyond, we're actually recording this sitting in Europe in a beautiful place in a Chilean

[00:26:37] overlooking a lake in the Alps. But I just spent two hours with a friend from Germany and talking to him of a ministry and thinking, you know, like there's all kinds of guys across Europe who have all of these same types of questions. Right.

[00:26:54] And they're it's not likely that they're gonna reach out to coast to Mesa or to, it's to make it a, you know, they need something and like you said, Nick, this is where the connectors come into the picture because ideally the connector would be a person

[00:27:09] who could either give that kind of care and coaching or be able to connect you with somebody more locally that could do that. So yeah, and some of those really localized contexts like in Europe, it's gonna be really helpful and the great thing is, I mean,

[00:27:24] that's why we're in network. It's one of the benefits that we have people who are able to do that in different places. Right. And that and, and A man to what you just said Brian because we, we have subject matter experts really globally

[00:27:37] and we can put you in touch with them and so you know, that's the exciting thing that we get to enjoy. Yeah, and related topic Ted, you and I recently talked about this idea of like church assessment, bringing people out, doing church assessment. What does that look like?

[00:27:56] And what do you think are some of the benefits of that for churches to consider? Yeah, we're doing that with your church. I'm taking my administrator, my children's ministry director and some of our other teams who work out, we're coming out to do an assessment at your church.

[00:28:12] And you know, I guess I would start by saying that there is a, I'll use an example. If you're listing your home and you were to get a real estate agent, one of the things that they'll do is they'll come into your home

[00:28:23] and they'll take a look around. And it's remarkable what they see this fresh set of eyes that comes into your home and things that just become part of the, just part of the, they become invisible to you. You know, that you have out on the counter or whatever

[00:28:39] and you have somebody with a fresh set of eyes comes in and they can see things. And so that's what we do with our church assessments, is we will go in with a critical eye and an encouraging spirit will go in

[00:28:52] and assess the church and be able to point out, here's some strengths that you need to continue to lean into. Here's some opportunities for growth or improvement that we see that you could focus on. And that's just those practical things.

[00:29:09] I think it's really helpful, like I'm excited about doing it. I think in the past, I would have viewed it as like, oh no, Ted's gonna come and it's gonna be like, he's gonna see all the things we're doing wrong and I'm gonna be so embarrassed.

[00:29:21] But I think I've come to a place now where I'm like, in order for us to grow, we need somebody who can help us see the things that we don't see, who knows the things that we don't know. Right.

[00:29:33] Otherwise how are we gonna get beyond where we are? Well, in the end, that's what we tell guys when we're sending them out to plant churches, I'll tell pastors that I've trained and sent out. What's gonna kill you isn't what you don't know,

[00:29:45] it's what you don't know that you don't know. And so in the same way, when we go out to doing assessment, sometimes it's just something that person doesn't know, a team doesn't know. They have and realize that. And it's sometimes we'll go out.

[00:30:03] And I see something there doing and I'm like, we're ripping that off. That's fantastic, that's brilliant. And then that gives me an opportunity to be able, it just strengthens me to be able to counsel other people in our coaching network. Really cool.

[00:30:19] So last topic I wanted to talk to you about, I know that your church is developing a mission's training school because you just speak about that for a few minutes. Yeah, this goes towards what I just said, what's gonna kill you isn't what you don't know,

[00:30:31] it's what you don't know that you don't know. And so our mission's training school is to really teach those who desire to either go out and plant a church domestically or you know, plant a church internationally. Go on the mission field, serve as a worship leader

[00:30:50] or some aspect of ministry. We want to teach them how the sausage is made. And so you can get academic understanding of what it is you think you wanna do. But what we do is, we rotate people through. So for example, you won't do this with everyone.

[00:31:11] If you have somebody who wants to be involved in worship ministry pretty much, they're going to get an intensive worship internship. But let's say you have some of you wants to go out and plant a church. What we're gonna do is we're gonna rotate them strategically

[00:31:24] through all of the critical infrastructure of our church. So there's been a couple of months and administration. There's been a couple of months in the children's ministry, they'll spend a couple of months in our operations department. And they're doing that strategically

[00:31:40] so that they can learn how the sausage is made. Not that they need to go out and replicate and do exactly what we're doing, but they can have an understanding of what's important. And what I'm about to say is, it depends geographically where you're at,

[00:31:59] but in our context, for example, in Southern California, you have basically four critical components that absolutely have to be a part of a church plant and that you have to give strong considerations to. So you think of it like four legs on a stool. One is children's ministry.

[00:32:20] One is your preaching, one is your worship, and the fourth one is a fellowship component. And the idea there is that people aren't looking for a friendly church or looking for a friend at church. And so you have to strategically consider

[00:32:34] how are we meeting each one of these needs? And in our context, the absolute most important leg on that stool is children's ministry. Because and you would say, oh, well isn't it the preaching of the word? Yes, of course, the preaching of the word is fundamental,

[00:32:51] but if you don't have a good children's ministry and people show up at your church, they're not gonna stay long enough for the teaching. They're gonna sacrifice everything on the altar of where are my kids happy, where are they fed? So, and again, that's our Southern California context,

[00:33:08] but when I'm sending a guy out to start a church, I'm telling him you have to give very strong consideration to what your children's ministry looks like and how you're caring for those kids because if you don't do that, the people are not gonna stick around.

[00:33:22] And we have cautionary tales that back this up, that we've seen guys go out who were rock stars in the context where they were in the Bible College or whatever, they're very gifted teachers. And oh man, that's fantastic, but then they go out to plant church

[00:33:40] and they really kind of approach some of these things as an afterthought and that can really cause you trouble. So, that's the idea of this ministry training is to be able to say, okay, look, get an appreciation for what the system's in structure is, why system and structure?

[00:33:58] And then okay, take that into the vision and the context to where you're going, but at least you've got that working knowledge. If someone wants to know more about that, where can they find more info? RelianceChurch.org, infoRelinesChurch.org, yeah. Ted, what are you excited about

[00:34:16] for the future of CGM? I'm massively excited about the fact that CGM is committed to making disciples and planning churches. And that's my personal wheelhouse right now. I'm in what I would consider the fourth quarter of my ministry and I'm giving myself in this fourth quarter

[00:34:37] to planting churches and descending out as many church planners and missionaries as we possibly can from our church. And that's the heartbeat of CGM and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. Awesome, thanks so much Ted. Yes, thanks Ted, this is great.

[00:34:55] Thanks for listening to this episode of the CGM Mission and Methods Podcast. In our next episode, Pastor Brian and I will be speaking with Jeff Gipe. Jeff was a successful businessman in Southern California who left a thriving business to plant a church on the new port coast.

[00:35:11] Recently, Jeff moved to Tennessee and he leads the funding team for CGM. Jeff will be discussing some of the ways that we can do more together as a network of churches than we can separately. And he'll be sharing some stories of how that is already happening

[00:35:27] and what the fruit of that has been. New episodes will be released every two weeks, so make sure you subscribe to the podcast so those episodes will be delivered to your device as soon as they come out. We'd love to hear feedback from you on these episodes.

[00:35:40] You can email us at cgnatcalverychapel.com. And if you'd like to support this podcast, one of the best ways you can do that is by giving us a rating and review on your podcast app. Written reviews are particularly helpful in helping boost this content

[00:35:57] so other people can find it and benefit from it. Until next time, God bless you. Hi friends, Brian Broderson here and I wanna let you know about the CGM International pastors and leaders conference coming up here at Calvary Chapel Coast to make a June 25th through the 28th.

[00:36:15] Our theme this year is the spirit of the Lord is upon me and oh how we need the spirit of God to be upon us in these days. So we're gonna be digging down into that great text from Isaiah 61. We're gonna be looking at all the different facets

[00:36:31] of it. We got a number of great voices that are gonna be speaking to us. We're gonna have times of prayer and worship and lots of fellowship and enjoying meals together and all kinds of wonderful things.

[00:36:42] So if you would like to be part of this conference coming up in June, please get signed up today. You can do that at conference.calvary Chapel.com. Once again, that is the CGM International pastors and leaders conference June 25th through the 28th. Hope to see you there.