Real Church Growth Starts With Real Discipleship
Let’s be honest: much of the Church today operates with what could be called a “functional Great Commission.” It sounds more like, “Go into all the world and make worship attenders, baptizing them in the name of small groups, and teaching them to volunteer twice a month.”
This week on the Everyday Disciple Podcast, we talk with our friend Will Mancini—author and in-demand church consultant—about why real church growth only happens through intentional disciple-making. Programs and strategies have their place, but they aren’t a substitute for living out Jesus’ original commission.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- Why many churches are living out a “functional” version of the Great Commission
- How your language and phrasing reveal your real priorities as a church
- What 3 types of church models we’ll see most over the next 20 years
- Why people—not programs—are what attract and grow the Church
From this episode:
“The dirty little secret among so many pastors is that we are really good at faking disciples rather than making disciples. The quantity and quality of our programs—and our sheer busyness keeping it all going—distract us from the truth.”
Each week the Big 3 will give you immediate action steps to get you started.
Download today’s BIG 3 right now. Read and think over them again later. You might even want to share them with others…
Thanks for Listening!
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Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Coaching and Mentorship in Missional Living by Caesar and his wife Tina
Resources for missional living and group training – Missio Publishing
Get Caesar’s latest book: Bigger Gospel for FREE… Click here.
Transcript
If real church growth is what we're all after, then I think that would be a baseline for, I don't think anybody's looking for church decline.
Caesar Kalinowski:So, uh, then the church is people, and so there's a huge indicator there, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Little, hey, little flag, like real church growth would be developing people, making disciples, developing them, helping people reach their potential for all that God had for them.
Caesar Kalinowski:And he does, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:We, I mean, the mind-blowing thing is before the whole story started, our father knew the good works he had intended for all of us to do.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we get to, we still get to, and so, I mean, I love the simplicity, but I love the profundity of real church growth.
Caesar Kalinowski:Church people.
Caesar Kalinowski:Disciple making has to become our greater and greater focus and not just an add-on.
Will Mancini:One of the, one of the ways I love to capture that idea of what you're highlighting right here is that we just say it.
Will Mancini:Programs don't attract people.
Will Mancini:People attract people.
Will Mancini:Programs don't grow people.
Will Mancini:People grow people.
Will Mancini:Let's just go back to those basics and highlight that elemental truth.
Heath Hollensbe:Welcome to the Everyday Disciple Podcast, where you'll learn how to live with.
Heath Hollensbe:Greater intentionality and an integrated faith that naturally fits into every area of life.
Heath Hollensbe:In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle.
Heath Hollensbe:This is the stuff your parents, pastors and seminary professors probably forgot to tell you.
Heath Hollensbe:And now here's your host, Caesar Kalinowski.
Caesar Kalinowski:Hey, listen, Heath, we have a pretty awesome guest on the show today.
Caesar Kalinowski:Will Mancini's a bit of a rockstar and he's a friend of mine who blends some pretty cool life experiences leading up to his pastoral and consulting work.
Caesar Kalinowski:That's what he does these days.
Caesar Kalinowski:Sure.
Caesar Kalinowski:He worked in engineering, so kind of a detail guy communications as an ad agency exec, and he pastored for years before he started bleeding.
Caesar Kalinowski:An organization helps local churches articulate.
Caesar Kalinowski:Their own unique Disciple making mission and model.
Caesar Kalinowski:So not like a one size fits all.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:But they're all about Disciple making.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we'll talk with 'em a little about all that, but, uh, let's get started.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:Will.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's so good to have you on the show, man.
Will Mancini:Hey, it's great to be with you guys.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's been way too long since we've gotten together and so I'd just like to just chat and catch up on life and your kids for the next 30 minutes.
Caesar Kalinowski:But we have a show to get to.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:I don't know if the, if the folks would all be like, Hey, great.
Caesar Kalinowski:You guys catch, can we see your vacation photos too?
Caesar Kalinowski:Will we're,
Will Mancini:exactly.
Will Mancini:Well, hey, at least, at least you gotta know, you know, I've got, I've got grown kids and I just put, you know, a baby a. Back in the game here, we, I laid an egg in an empty nest.
Will Mancini:So, we'll, we'll just summarize it that I've got a good one.
Will Mancini:19 now.
Will Mancini:I have a 19 month old, so.
Will Mancini:Wow.
Will Mancini:Man, that's a little insane.
Will Mancini:That's another, that's another session, right?
Will Mancini:That's like a oopsie, that's a oops.
Will Mancini:Yeah.
Will Mancini:Another Oopsie, uh, uh, teaching.
Will Mancini:Yeah.
Heath Hollensbe:How do you guys know each other?
Heath Hollensbe:Where do you guys go back to.
Caesar Kalinowski:I mean, I've obviously known of Will from afar and his magnificence and wisdom.
Caesar Kalinowski:But yeah, it was one of the Will.
Caesar Kalinowski:I remember first time we talked, I was like, will, you're one of these guys who I know everybody.
Caesar Kalinowski:We know everybody the same, and you and I have never talked.
Caesar Kalinowski:And so finally we found someone to broker that
Heath Hollensbe:adds up.
Heath Hollensbe:Well, those who don't know Will is like a content producer and there's so much good information.
Heath Hollensbe:We could have taken this podcast 50 billion different ways, but as Caesar and I were trying to figure out where we wanted to go with this, you'd actually gotten, uh.
Heath Hollensbe:A blog post from him and said, man, this is something that we need to really on.
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Heath Hollensbe:' Caesar Kalinowski: cause yeah, we're, you know, obviously we focus a lot on life school about, uh, real life and the gospel, touching all of life and making disciples in everyday life.
Heath Hollensbe:And what is the church's real mission?
Heath Hollensbe:So when I get this post from you Will, and it's about real church growth, I'm like, yes, I'm opening and I'm reading and I'm all about it.
Heath Hollensbe:And in there right off the get go, you start talking about.
Heath Hollensbe:The functional, like quote unquote great commission of churches in North America.
Heath Hollensbe:And man, that really grabbed me right away.
Heath Hollensbe:Like, why don't you explain what you think the functional great commission is and, and maybe why it's not serving the church very well these days.
Will Mancini:You know, being in this clarity space and you know, it's, you get kind of even start by defining what do you, what do you mean by clarity?
Will Mancini:And so by articulating a functional great commission, what we're saying is, you know, it's easy to head nod to biblical language or.
Will Mancini:These ideas that get talked about in Evangelicalism where there's, there's a, there's an illusion of fluency.
Will Mancini:You know, you can talk about it, but it does that really mean you're doing it?
Will Mancini:Yeah, and I would say that it's pretty straightforward.
Will Mancini:If you were to look, you know, just visit churches, listen to church conversation, church team meetings, after church team meetings, you could, I think, make a pretty compelling case that the functional great commission.
Will Mancini:Is what is actually operating in our minds and hearts.
Will Mancini:Each week, week in, week out is an idea of something like this.
Will Mancini:You know, go into all the world and make worship attenders, baptizing them in the name of small groups and teaching them to volunteer a few times a month.
Will Mancini:Ouch.
Will Mancini:You know, it's, it sounds, come on.
Will Mancini:What's wrong with that?
Will Mancini:I think nothing wrong with that died for something much bigger than that and want something from all of us.
Will Mancini:Much bigger than that, right?
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Heath Hollensbe:You mentioned in there that, uh, you say, you say that for all kinds of reasons, the words church and growth have become embarrassing when put side by side, right?
Heath Hollensbe:Because, because of the church growth movement has departed from our lips, it doesn't mean that it's actually impacting our hearts.
Heath Hollensbe:Why don't you dive into that a little bit of about what you're getting at when you mention that?
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Will Mancini:Well, it, it's, um, uh, in, in 2007 I worked on this, this book entitled Church Unique, and I was looking at just how, you know, how we're using our words in the church.
Will Mancini:It's interesting how, if you were to look at church growth, I mean, it was, you know, if you were producing a book or creating content or if you knew anything about, you know, church, you know, effectiveness, health growth, whatever.
Will Mancini:You just, you talked about it as church growth through the seventies, through the eighties.
Will Mancini:We could call it the popular church growth movement and all the disciplines from.
Will Mancini:Management to marketing, you know, what have you.
Will Mancini:You know, we just, we, they were all operating under the banner of church growth.
Will Mancini:It's not until the nineties that we literally see this pendulum swing.
Will Mancini:And we're almost completely apologetic from a church leadership perspective of using those two words together.
Will Mancini:So this is a pretty, you know, old idea that in the nineties, so even on the cover, you know, Rick Warren's, you know, purpose-driven church.
Will Mancini:He makes a comment about church health, not church growth.
Will Mancini:And, you know, you, I I I call it the parenthesis of effectiveness.
Will Mancini:'cause we were, we didn't know what to say.
Will Mancini:So we started just using effective, effective, effective.
Will Mancini:It was kind of the, the, the thing we went to.
Will Mancini:So, you know, Andy Stanley's writing books about effectiveness, you know, and I, I literally list there's, you know, there's, you could list 2030 church leadership, very popular books that all use the word effectiveness in it in the nineties.
Will Mancini:So we didn't know what to do, but we weren't.
Will Mancini:Talking about growth and then we've had, you know, now at least 15 years, not 20 years of this Missional reorientation.
Will Mancini:And so, you know, we may or may not have been talking about growth.
Will Mancini:So it's, it's almost like, you know, I want to kind of talk about real church growth.
Will Mancini:Let's get back to growth, but in the most authentic, biblical real kind of way.
Will Mancini:But we've just not been saying church growth for a long time.
Will Mancini:'cause many remember the negative.
Will Mancini:You know, impact of the quote church growth movement.
Caesar Kalinowski:And it's interesting 'cause it's, it's still very defended church growth and, you know, the seeker movement and all that.
Caesar Kalinowski:And for those of us that have been old enough to live kind of through when it started, and like wherever we, you know, people want to gauge where it's at today by all measurements.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's.
Caesar Kalinowski:You know, we went from America, you know, and I know we have listeners from all over the world, but you know, in North America here, we went from, when, when this thing started and the church movement started, we were maybe at 70, 75, 80% of of the country would identify as Christian and pretty high percentage had some affiliation with a church or faith community and all that.
Caesar Kalinowski:And now we're down in the thirties, probably best guess.
Caesar Kalinowski:I'm like, how, how is that growth?
Caesar Kalinowski:And yet it's so sort of still being defended.
Caesar Kalinowski:And that's, that's surprising to me.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I was just wondering like, were we ever measuring the right things?
Caesar Kalinowski:'cause if the needle's going down and not up and we're stoked about it, like, wait a minute.
Caesar Kalinowski:What, what was it we were measuring?
Will Mancini:One distinction I like to make is, if you look at the creation story of the ideas, you know, Donald McGovern, he, I mean he was just a great thinker, great researcher.
Will Mancini:And you know, here he is studying the impact of the gospel.
Will Mancini:You know, overseas, he, he was in India some places.
Will Mancini:All he was really doing is saying why, you know, originally this is like, you know, way back before the popularization of it in America, but he was originally just saying, why does the gospel flow differently in some places than others?
Will Mancini:I mean, what are some of the, you know, the, the secrets behind the, you know, why, why contextualization works the way it does, and what are the principles and practices in there?
Will Mancini:So I think it's important to recognize that the creation story had a great guise trying to solve some great problems.
Will Mancini:It got very Americanized and popularized.
Will Mancini:And I would say that actually within that whole thing, there's really only one real enemy that I think it's helpful to name and I just call it church growth idolatry.
Will Mancini:I mean, I think the problem of the church growth movement is not the, the, the content, you know, or assumptions.
Will Mancini:'cause if you go back and look at the assumptions they were dealing with, I mean they were just wrestling through some good.
Will Mancini:Challenges back then.
Will Mancini:I think the real problem, yeah, I know the problem in my heart as a pastor is the sense of, um, my, you know, I'm not really okay with myself if there's not numerical growth, you know, next year, you know, year over year at this thing I'm leading.
Will Mancini:So I think what happens is, again, it goes back to that functional mission statement.
Will Mancini:I just, you know, do I have more people in worship next month?
Will Mancini:If not, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna struggle with my identity, which is obviously, you know, unhealthy kinds of stuff that, you know, many of us have to deal with.
Will Mancini:Again, I know I have, you know, in, in, in many different seasons of my life with how I define success and, and how I, you know, whether I'm getting my identity in Christ in some, some other, uh, basic and healthy ways.
Will Mancini:But any, anyhow, that's just, I, I just, I feel like it's helpful to say, Hey, some of the key thinking behind church growth movement was actually just very solid and helpful at the time.
Will Mancini:But our church growth, idolatry kind of gets kind What, what, what, what bites us here down the road.
Will Mancini:And that's the,
Caesar Kalinowski:yeah, we talk about the thing behind the thing a lot on the show, and it's clearly the, the thing behind the thing started to shift.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I know, you know, I know from years of working at big churches, it's like, uh, yeah, that's, that's where it starts to get every meeting, every budget meeting, every planning, meeting, every, everything.
Caesar Kalinowski:You're planning out like the next event.
Caesar Kalinowski:And, and it's all about the numbers.
Caesar Kalinowski:And then clearly our, our human hearts we go to like, and I feel more approved, valuable, and loved when those numbers are up.
Caesar Kalinowski:Versus down and yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:So what do you think is better sense of what, what would be some good measurements?
Caesar Kalinowski:You know, we, we talk about, unfortunately the church through the growth, sort of church growth movement measured the three Bs.
Caesar Kalinowski:We talk about budgets, butts, and seats and buildings, you know, size and probably butts and seats first.
Caesar Kalinowski:And you've given.
Caesar Kalinowski:Uh, you've given different sets of measurements coming from the people side, which really blew me away.
Caesar Kalinowski:Place personality program, and people like friendships and community and all that.
Caesar Kalinowski:Uh, what do you think though, really?
Caesar Kalinowski:Like, I, I, I'm big on like if you, if you want to keep building the same thing, measure the same ways if you want something new, let's start to follow and quantify and measure different things.
Caesar Kalinowski:What do you think some of the things we should be paying attention?
Caesar Kalinowski:Keep our eye on the ball right now as the church capital C. Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:Well,
Will Mancini:the part.
Will Mancini:It's hard for me to answer that without going back to really what, what my primary role over the last 17 years has been, you know, working as a, you know, coach, consultant, facilitator with local church teams.
Will Mancini:And so when I think about taking the mission, uh, you know, the, the, the real mission, the church, Jesus gave the church seriously.
Will Mancini:You know, we, we build this little tool called a vision frame.
Will Mancini:And so we, we come in and help churches really.
Will Mancini:Understand their, their strengths.
Will Mancini:We have a tool called the Kingdom concept where you go in and just, you really name what can your church do better than 10,000 other churches?
Will Mancini:And we get through that.
Will Mancini:We, we begin to think, uh, about a, you know, what is a compelling and contextual articulation of, of the mission of the church will look like for, for you guys.
Will Mancini:Again, speaking of a particular church leadership team.
Will Mancini:And then we will walk through this vision frame where we frame up, well, you know, why, why do we do what we do?
Will Mancini:How do we do what we do?
Will Mancini:When are we successful at what we do and what's blown me away?
Will Mancini:You think it would be kind of, you know, obvious.
Will Mancini:Uh, most churches don't actually have a basic definition of a Disciple that they share as a leadership community, and then from which they design ministry environments and do, do their, their day-to-day work in the church.
Will Mancini:So it's tricky to kinda understand why.
Will Mancini:I mean it, you know, most.
Will Mancini:Pastors could give a good quick definition of what does it mean to follow Christ.
Will Mancini:And certainly almost every pastor I've met is a visionary.
Will Mancini:I mean, they're, they're in this game, you know, they're sacrificing and, you know, loving on people and, and the messy work of ministry 'cause they're called and passionate about it.
Will Mancini:So it's like, how do you explain this?
Will Mancini:And probably the easiest way would be to say, you know, you are a visionary, but you need more than a general sense of what you're about.
Will Mancini:If you're gonna maximize what God's called you to do, if you're gonna get even close to being effective with, you know, your, your special assignment on earth.
Will Mancini:And so I, I would just go back and start with those teams and say, you know, to answer your question, first and foremost is usually there's no shared vocabulary or codified definition of, Hey, what is it actually that we're trying to do?
Will Mancini:And, and I would take a team through that process first, and then, and then we can actually talk about.
Will Mancini:How, how, uh, you know, you would measure that.
Will Mancini:And just to quickly illustrate that, I mean, for years, um, at, at, at the church that I came to be part of in Houston, uh, again, from which I launched my, my consulting ministry, we had a basic seven point definition of, of, uh, of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in our context.
Will Mancini:And, you know, one of those for us was being people who go, you know.
Will Mancini:Two letters go and, and, and you, and you are.
Will Mancini:So that was codified in our community, but then we would measure it.
Will Mancini:We've measured over the years with a, with a little thing, we just call your top five.
Will Mancini:You know, who are the, who are the top five people, uh, who are far from God that you pray for on a regular basis.
Will Mancini:And you, you know, the power of having a community.
Will Mancini:That has a constant thing that we can talk about, testify to model together, practice, evaluate, see accountability in just a normal, natural, positive way.
Will Mancini:And over the years, you know, you, you grow a group of people who are all praying for five people.
Will Mancini:It's not rocket science, it's just simple clarity.
Will Mancini:But how many times did you go to church and just hear, you know, Bible stories and sermons?
Will Mancini:This or that, but you, you never create a sense of expectation or, or, or growth really.
Will Mancini:What, what am I becoming together?
Will Mancini:What are we becoming together as followers of Jesus?
Will Mancini:So that would just be a simple, um, you know, illustration of, of codifying an outcome of a Disciple and having a simple way to measure it.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I'm right there with you because I, it seems unfortunately rare, the, the church or the church leaders, or I'll just say Christians, that have a pretty clear articulated.
Caesar Kalinowski:Vision for like, what is it we're, who are we, our identity and what are we trying to be and do together and reproduce and, and I would hope they'd fill in the life, well, the life of Christ as sure God's eternal plan is to fill the world with his glory and it just doesn't come up.
Caesar Kalinowski:And discipleship, I know, is it's like, it's kind of like the new buzzword, and yet I still think we're stuck in a bit of a, you know, it's somewhat siloed into events and it's really more about Christian education.
Caesar Kalinowski:Of worldview then the making of disciples.
Caesar Kalinowski:And there again, that word, and I think it's kinda what you're saying there will, is making disciples go and make disciples, go make, uh, that implies process, that implies some codification of what is going on, what is being done.
Will Mancini:It's, it's a nice way to start the conversation of are you, are you doing organized Disciple making or are you doing this, you know, Christian programming approach.
Will Mancini:It's not like Christian programming is bad in and of itself.
Will Mancini:It's just, it may not actually be the church at the end of the day when you add everything up.
Will Mancini:It may be better to be a 5 0 1 C3 and just call yourself a Christian education ministry, um, because you know, you can do a lot of stuff in the name of church and not be actually, you know, growing disciples in an organized way to maybe highlight how prevalent that is and several weeks ago.
Will Mancini:I was, uh, I was in, uh, Atlanta in the morning and I was in Dallas in the afternoon, and I, I was literally talking to two people who were kind of driving me to the airport in both cases.
Will Mancini:And I was with a, a gentleman in his sixties, he is a Presbyterian senior pastor, and he said to me, will, I'm tired of being a rotary club with a choir.
Will Mancini:And to feel the discontent coming from his generation and from his faith tribe articulated that way.
Will Mancini:Was significant.
Will Mancini:Uh, a young guy, uh, 36 years old, you know, a Baptist pastor, just new pastor, six months in a new, relatively, again, I wanna be, we consider one of our effective churches out there, and he's just driving in the car and I'm asking him, what are, you know, what are you attending to these days?
Will Mancini:It's your first, you know, you're in your first 90 days.
Will Mancini:He said, well, I'm just, I'm just trying to get the, get my leaders to understand this is not about having, you know, hooks, throwing hooks out there in the community and having a show on Sunday.
Will Mancini:Hmm.
Will Mancini:You know, and it's, it was just such a different way of saying the same thing, and it's this.
Will Mancini:Holy discontent around this Christian programming paradigm, right?
Will Mancini:It's, it's thick.
Will Mancini:That's just, you just see it everywhere.
Will Mancini:It's thick.
Caesar Kalinowski:Can you, can you help me and our listeners will, if you, if you've got some wisdom here, I gotta throw something on you.
Caesar Kalinowski:That's, it's an anathema that, uh, we drag out so often, but it, it really is, is, and I think it might be some of what's at the core of our issue and our problem as, as the church, and I count myself as, as that.
Caesar Kalinowski:Obviously.
Caesar Kalinowski:So it's, it's, um, there's no pointing fingers here other than backing myself.
Caesar Kalinowski:So I think so often we think that the mission was to get people saved, make converts versus, versus make disciples.
Caesar Kalinowski:And it feels like until that flips for a person, for a leader, for a pastor, for a church staff, for the church, capital C, we're, we're a bit stuck because we're, we're still gonna keep chasing and maybe.
Caesar Kalinowski:Tweaking stuff in the wrong direction.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's the whole thing of like, you know, which wall is your ladder leaning on?
Caesar Kalinowski:You know, help us, how can you help us out with that?
Caesar Kalinowski:Or do you even agree with that?
Caesar Kalinowski:Like, we've, we've gotta get to what is the, like, what's the win, right?
Will Mancini:Yeah.
Will Mancini:Yeah.
Will Mancini:It's, well, I, and I, I do agree with that.
Will Mancini:I think, you know, I think in different faith tribes there's a different, um, uh, focus on the, the moment of conversion.
Will Mancini:So you can see different, you know, different leaders have to different degrees have that, have that preoccupation with.
Will Mancini:Getting across the line of faith or getting that salvation rather than the, the growth.
Will Mancini:But I, I think, you know what, what I've come to believe, and it's, you know, when my own holy discontent roars up sometimes, you know, you can, I don't wanna come across, you know, mean to, to the men and women who I've called to serve.
Will Mancini:And so I've gotta dial back.
Will Mancini:And so when I, when I go back and try to empathize a little bit and go, okay, what, how have we gotten into this predicament?
Will Mancini:Which I try to look and, and see, okay, how have we begun to do sometimes the, you know, the, the wrong things, but for the right reason.
Will Mancini:So it's how, how do these things happen over time?
Will Mancini:And so I'll share a few thoughts along those lines.
Will Mancini:You know, one, one of them, one big idea to kind of walk through when we talk about this functional, great commission or, you know, idea that we chase conver, you know, con conversions or decisions, not disciples.
Will Mancini:Uh, it was, it's been said that we, we miss our goal.
Will Mancini:Not because of obstacles, but because of a clearer path to a lesser goal.
Will Mancini:Mm. So I, I think it's helpful to understand that, you know, um, clarity is so attractive that once, once I'm on a path and once I begin to see some way that I can begin just to work within, you know, if, if, you know, we can call it maybe a paradigm stuckness, but it just, it, it feels like what works.
Will Mancini:It's a clearer path to a lesser goal.
Will Mancini:So, you know, Christian programming is a lesser goal.
Will Mancini:I mean, you really can win at Christian programming.
Will Mancini:You can, you can build some great buildings, have some great events that people come to.
Will Mancini:You can really celebrate the name of Jesus and teach great stuff out of his word.
Will Mancini:I mean, there's a lot of great stuff you can do there.
Will Mancini:And so I think it's, you know, we just wanna acknowledge, sometimes we just, you know, we, we have a lesser goal.
Will Mancini:We would say, you know, you've heard it said where there is no vision.
Will Mancini:The people perish.
Will Mancini:And now I say to you, well, there is no vision.
Will Mancini:The people cherish something.
Will Mancini:They, they grab onto something.
Will Mancini:There is some lesser goal that people, I mean, people wanna be effective.
Will Mancini:People wanna be good and, and we're gonna measure something.
Will Mancini:We're gonna get something done.
Will Mancini:And so it literally, I believe we, we, we just begin to, you know.
Will Mancini:Hunt down the, you know, the, the, not the bad thing, but the less than ideal thing, it's,
Caesar Kalinowski:well, I think what we start to cherish is the path of least for assistance.
Caesar Kalinowski:There you go.
Will Mancini:Yeah, absolutely.
Will Mancini:Absolutely.
Will Mancini:And it certainly helps when we're celebrate, when there's, you can find plenty of people to celebrate with you.
Will Mancini:Those, you know, lesser goals.
Will Mancini:Uh, IE we're, you know.
Will Mancini:Sometime this year you'll see a top, you know, a hundred fastest, you know, growing or largest church.
Will Mancini:You're probably not gonna see anytime soon.
Will Mancini:The top a hundred most prayerful congregations, or the top a hundred most sending congregations, right?
Will Mancini:We just, we're not gonna see that.
Will Mancini:Well, like
Caesar Kalinowski:let's work together to come up with how do we measure disciples being made who now know how to make Disciple.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right, and that probably goes back to, you said something a little bit earlier, like, do we even have a clear definition of what a Disciple is for, for our own organizations, our own family, our own church?
Caesar Kalinowski:What, you know, whatever.
Caesar Kalinowski:Because if we don't, then how do we know if we're replicating that?
Will Mancini:Yeah, that's right.
Will Mancini:I mean, it's, it's so fundamental to what we learn in third grade.
Will Mancini:You know, Mrs. Huskins, English teacher, you know, class i I lit. Literally, you gotta put the story in your own words to show that you understand it, that you have comprehension.
Will Mancini:And so.
Will Mancini:You know, you've heard me say Caesar before, you know, words create worlds.
Will Mancini:What are we saying?
Will Mancini:How are we talking?
Will Mancini:And your, your language is gonna reveal what's most important to you.
Will Mancini:And if we don't have a language around what a Disciple is, we're, we're, we're probably actually not day by day, week after week.
Will Mancini:Meaningfully moving toward Disciple making.
Will Mancini:Agreed.
Caesar Kalinowski:Well, so we've kinda started this talk out today or this, our talk today with, uh, talking about real church growth and that's what kind of caught my eye when I got an email from you last week.
Caesar Kalinowski:But, uh, uh, let's, let's kind of start to wrap up with, let's put that back on the back end too.
Caesar Kalinowski:So, real church growth equals what then will.
Caesar Kalinowski:If it's not the, what we've kind of been looking at for the last two or three decades,
Will Mancini:and I would suggest that standing at this point as we get, you know, you know, we're a year out from, from 2020 in terms of our calendar year, and I think we can be looking at the next 20 years of church life through this lens.
Will Mancini:I think it's gonna be a helpful lens.
Will Mancini:I would say there are three kinds of churches.
Will Mancini:So let me, let me, uh, approach that question.
Will Mancini:Uh, with this, I think there are gonna, there there are men and women who have given up on organized church and they're doing.
Will Mancini:Beautiful things.
Will Mancini:It's just not as organized of, of a look and feel.
Will Mancini:That is, it would be the unorganized Disciple making or the organic Disciple making.
Will Mancini:That would be a house, church, that would be a simple church or maybe some Missional Community models that, you know, there's not the, there's not the, uh, features of, you know, church building.
Will Mancini:There's not budgets, there's not staff.
Will Mancini:Those kinds of things.
Will Mancini:And that's beautiful.
Will Mancini:And I think that can and should happen and can and should grow.
Will Mancini:I would celebrate any of that, what I'll call quote unorganized, Disciple making, not sliding it, just saying it doesn't have the features of the American, the traditional features of an American church.
Will Mancini:Then you're gonna have the second kind of churches.
Will Mancini:The churches that don't get through this paradigm, and they're truly not making disciples.
Will Mancini:They're faking disciples, which was the point of that email real church tro is when you're actually making disciples.
Will Mancini:Yeah.
Will Mancini:So what's gonna happen is there's gonna continue to be churches.
Will Mancini:Um, they may say the word Disciple, but they're really doing Christian programming and it really is operating off of functional, great commission that's different than what Jesus offered.
Will Mancini:I think the middle way, I think what we're gonna see the most wrestling through, and I think it's the, the, you know, the, the beautiful kind of middle way here of what most churches are gonna be doing in the next 20 years.
Will Mancini:Trying to figure out this organized Disciple making.
Will Mancini:They're not gonna throw out their church building, stop their church budget, stop their elders and deacons meeting, whatever that looks like.
Will Mancini:But we're just gonna fight the good fight and we're gonna, we're gonna continue to repurpose and refound all the organizational stuff of church around the mission of Jesus.
Will Mancini:And we're just gonna be, you know, work, working to keep the main thing, the main thing I think, can vary again.
Will Mancini:You know, messy but glorious ways.
Will Mancini:So, uh, real church growth is that commitment.
Will Mancini:And one way to make it, to polarize the conversation is to say, you know, real church growth for the church in the next 20 years is, is gonna be defined by people coming into the community relationally through, you know, one-on-one evangelism and discipleship.
Will Mancini:Way more than it has happened in the last, you know, 20, 40, 60 years through just, you know, coming in through organi, you know, organized Christian programming.
Will Mancini:We just want to, which is one way to think about all the ways we need to continue to shift this paradigm of organized Disciple making.
Will Mancini:We gotta readjust our expectations.
Will Mancini:We gotta be able to, you know, figure out how to do the both end of, uh, of, of doing great worship services, of, of, you know, funding the buildings that we've been, we've made, uh, you know, to, to glorify God and, and accomplish what he's accomplished to do.
Will Mancini:But we're I just real church growth is.
Will Mancini:Using everything at your disposal in the organized church and pointing it back to doing organized Disciple making again, and, and readjusting everything in your team's life and your emotional life to, to be excited about that opportunity really.
Will Mancini:And if, and if,
Caesar Kalinowski:if real church growth is what we're all after.
Caesar Kalinowski:I think that would be a baseline for, I don't think anybody's looking for church decline.
Caesar Kalinowski:So, uh, then the church is people, and so there's a huge indicator there, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Little, hey, little flag, like real church growth would be.
Caesar Kalinowski:Developing people, making disciples, developing them, helping people reach their potential for all that God had for them.
Caesar Kalinowski:And he does, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:We, I mean, the mind blowing thing is before, the whole story started, our father knew the good works he had intended for all of us to do.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we get to, we still get to, exactly.
Caesar Kalinowski:And so, I mean, I love the simplicity, but I love the profundity of real church growth.
Caesar Kalinowski:Church people.
Caesar Kalinowski:Let organized Disciple making , has to become our greater and greater focus and not just an add-on.
Will Mancini:One of the, one of the ways I love to capture that idea of what you're highlighting right here is that we just say it, uh, programs don't attract people.
Will Mancini:People attract people.
Will Mancini:Programs don't grow people, people grow people.
Will Mancini:Let's just go back to those basics and, and highlight.
Will Mancini:Highlight that elemental truth.
Heath Hollensbe:I love that.
Heath Hollensbe:Will, I mean, as we're closing up, just, you know, I'm, I'm a bit younger than, than Caesar and, and yourself and, and having that feel of having been through, when I first started in ministry, it was in the midst of the purpose driven everything.
Heath Hollensbe:Uh, and it got super attractional and, and it just started to feel really gimmicky.
Heath Hollensbe:And I love what you're, you're saying is like these programs don't really attract people and it feels phony after year and year of stepping up and rep punting the ball, trying to.
Heath Hollensbe:Trying to believe that these programs will attract people.
Heath Hollensbe:It's never gonna be the program that does it, or it might initially, but if it, if there's not people investment, it's not gonna last long term at all.
Heath Hollensbe:Jesus
Caesar Kalinowski:is a person.
Caesar Kalinowski:Holy spirit's a person.
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah, exactly.
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Heath Hollensbe:So,
Caesar Kalinowski:yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:Will, as we, as we wrap this up, tell, tell, tell us and our listeners here a little bit about unique.
Caesar Kalinowski:Because Unique is
Will Mancini:unique.
Will Mancini:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Will Mancini:Well, the.
Will Mancini:We've, we've started an organization formally Life Unique.
Will Mancini:We, we, the nickname is unique with A YOU.
Will Mancini:So playing off of, hey, you know, you're a one of a kind, Disciple, Disciple saint, and that, you know, reflecting on this idea of doing organized Disciple making, what we, what we believe that one of the greatest challenges that the church is trying to bring value through being a teaching center.
Will Mancini:And we believe Jesus made it to be a training center.
Will Mancini:So as I've worked with churches organizationally, I realized we need, we need tools and pathways to work our way back to becoming a training center Again.
Will Mancini:What does it look like to be living?
Will Mancini:And again, I know that's the heartbeat of, you know, life school.
Will Mancini:The, so as we, as we, as we've done that, a, a group of people have come together to, to take the, the life work of creating breakthrough at an organizational level and apply that to creating breakthrough at an individual.
Will Mancini:Personal level.
Will Mancini:So we call it gospel centered life design because there's an ocean of intentionality, you know, intentionality writing and books and products and events.
Will Mancini:And we're saying, Hey, what does ultimate intentionality look like through the lens of Jesus and the good news?
Will Mancini:And, uh, if the, the gospel's at the center of your life, what does it mean to design an in intentional life?
Will Mancini:To have a life plan?
Will Mancini:What does it mean to understand your vocational calling and to get, you know, the maximum punch out of that in your lifetime?
Will Mancini:So, uh, that life unique process takes people through a very robust journey.
Will Mancini:It's a training, it's a coached experience, and our heartbeat at Unique is to see that deliver through the local church.
Will Mancini:So we're trying to create a best practice toolbox and then certify individual church leaders, lay leaders so that they can deliver great life planning, life design, uh, tools and processes at the front line of ministry.
Will Mancini:In a way, what we.
Will Mancini:We're anticipating the continued trend that your most committed people are attending church less and less.
Will Mancini:That's a simple value proposition that's continuing to be downgraded in the local church in our culture.
Will Mancini:And we think great training will, uh, will, uh, add value.
Will Mancini:And we want the church through again in culture, so to speak, through, uh, through great offerings like, like this.
Will Mancini:So this, in a way, it's our program that has nothing to do with being a program.
Will Mancini:It's a multipliable.
Will Mancini:Training coach process that any church can, can bring to its people.
Will Mancini:Uh, ultimately what we're looking for is that people know their life call.
Will Mancini:That is their special assignment from God.
Will Mancini:I think everyone has one.
Will Mancini:I think it can be known and it can be named, it can be unleashed in a powerful way.
Will Mancini:In someone's life.
Will Mancini:So that's what we want to unleash through the church.
Caesar Kalinowski:Alright, well we're gonna put in the show notes how people can get ahold of you.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yep.
Caesar Kalinowski:And, and check out unique at a little bit of a deeper level.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I know you guys offer webinars from time to time and also, we'll, we're gonna put all that information in the show notes.
Caesar Kalinowski:Hey, will, thanks so much for the time today.
Caesar Kalinowski:I, I'd like to keep going.
Caesar Kalinowski:Maybe we're gonna get you back on like, you know, like we, we were talking maybe offline before we got started.
Caesar Kalinowski:You're, you're a tough guy to kneel down.
Caesar Kalinowski:I mean, you are the busiest man in.
Caesar Kalinowski:Church rock and roll.
Caesar Kalinowski:But I, we we're gonna get you back on, 'cause this is just, there's too much good stuff here to fit into an episode, but thanks so much man.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's great having you.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's great talking to you.
Caesar Kalinowski:Love being with you.
Caesar Kalinowski:Appreciate,
Heath Hollensbe:uh, the time to connect and look forward to next time.
Heath Hollensbe:I love the pastoral side of it.
Heath Hollensbe:You know, you get some guys that are such visionaries, but he actually has been in the trenches.
Heath Hollensbe:He's got a pastoral prophet.
Heath Hollensbe:He is, is this, he's like calling us back.
Heath Hollensbe:Right.
Heath Hollensbe:Probably never gotten in a fist fight.
Heath Hollensbe:Like just a cool beard.
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Heath Hollensbe:He's like gonna write in and go like I totally have gotten in fist.
Heath Hollensbe:Okay.
Heath Hollensbe:So lots to pull from this episode, Caesar, but let's get to the big three, which is the big three takeaways that we want people even with right now.
Heath Hollensbe:And you get those for free by going to everyday Disciple dot com slash big three.
Heath Hollensbe:Caesar, what would you say the big three are for this week?
Caesar Kalinowski:So much to pull out.
Caesar Kalinowski:I had to really think about this, but buckle up.
Caesar Kalinowski:Here they are.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:Alright.
Caesar Kalinowski:The first of the big three is like if, if nothing don't miss this.
Caesar Kalinowski:In the next 20 years, we'll most commonly see three types of Christian Church experiences.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:And this is how Will broke 'em out.
Caesar Kalinowski:He said that those types of.
Caesar Kalinowski:People, Christians and churches that have given up on organized church and they're content with experiencing organic Disciple making.
Heath Hollensbe:Okay?
Caesar Kalinowski:And, and those, those folks, uh, might be part of a house, church, or a simple church model.
Caesar Kalinowski:So there'll also be those that will continue to be part of organized churches with leaders that are not actually making disciples.
Caesar Kalinowski:They're faking disciples.
Caesar Kalinowski:They're getting people into the Sunday service as their priority, and they may use the word Disciple, but they're really doing Christian programming and they operate off a functional, great commission.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's not what Jesus offered and modeled.
Caesar Kalinowski:And then he said there's a third, uh, middle way that most churches and more and more churches are starting to go after.
Caesar Kalinowski:And that's organized Disciple making.
Caesar Kalinowski:They're not throwing out the church services in buildings, but they've truly prioritized.
Caesar Kalinowski:Organized and intentional Disciple making and they take the great commission from Jesus.
Caesar Kalinowski:Seriously.
Caesar Kalinowski:That's job one for them.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:So the question there is on this first of the big three is which will you participate in
Heath Hollensbe:only one?
Heath Hollensbe:Sounds good to me.
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:Well I think there's gonna be a lot.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:In that other one there, where're like kind of fake it, you know?
Caesar Kalinowski:'cause we got the, this is what we've always done.
Caesar Kalinowski:Anyway.
Caesar Kalinowski:Second to dig three words, create worlds.
Caesar Kalinowski:Your language will reveal what's most important to you as a person, as a leader, and as a church.
Caesar Kalinowski:And if we don't have language around and a standard for what we believe discipleship is, we're probably not day by day, week by week, meaningfully moving toward Disciple making.
Caesar Kalinowski:Hmm.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah, that's
Heath Hollensbe:a good word.
Heath Hollensbe:It's gotta be
Caesar Kalinowski:defined, like what exactly are we building?
Caesar Kalinowski:What are we making?
Caesar Kalinowski:Language creates culture, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah, quite a bit.
Caesar Kalinowski:Exactly.
Caesar Kalinowski:So third is, uh, the third of big three is the church is and has always been people surprise, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:So if the church is people, then real church growth is using everything at your disposal in the church and repurposing and pointing it back to organized Disciple making programs don't attract people.
Caesar Kalinowski:People attract people and real church growth is about growing and maturing people.
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:Disciples that make more disciples.
Caesar Kalinowski:And that's something that's worth giving our lives and our hopes and dreams to.
Caesar Kalinowski:It is.
Caesar Kalinowski:It is, man.
Heath Hollensbe:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:So I'm really excited about that.
Caesar Kalinowski:The things that Will gave us today and talked to us and reminded us of and caution us on, man, it's really stirred me up.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:Download the big three, so it's super concise.
Caesar Kalinowski:You know, that's a lot to take notes on this week.
Heath Hollensbe:Hey, you can also join our Facebook group if you haven't yet.
Heath Hollensbe:Again, it's a growing community on Facebook.
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Heath Hollensbe:Okay, thanks for joining us today.
Heath Hollensbe:For more information on this show and to get loads of free discipleship resources, visit everyday Disciple dot com.
Heath Hollensbe:And remember, you really can live with a spiritual freedom and relational peace that Jesus promised every day.