Rob Chartrand (00:03.029)
Well, hey, we're excited to have on Church in the North today, Dustin Funk. He is the lead pastor of Oasis Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Dustin, welcome to Church in the North.
Dustin (00:14.242)
Thanks so much for having me. Long time listener, first time caller. So great to be here with you. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (00:21.089)
Awesome. So you're the one that's great. We're going to, we're going to get into a lot of interesting details about what's happening in your church, but we want to go back a little ways. And we'll talk about your ministry backstory. Why don't you tell the listeners, how did you end up in ministry? And maybe after that, where did you serve prior to coming to Oasis?
Dustin (00:44.426)
Yeah, so I was fortunate enough to grow up going to a great church. I grew up in Winnipeg here where I'm serving, and I went to Calvary Temple Church, some of you in the West, or maybe a can of my heard of H.H. Barber. He was my pastor. And so just phenomenal church with great youth ministries and camp connections. And for me, I just had some really powerful experiences with God when I was in my teenage years and kind of just knew that this was his plan for me. And yeah, so grateful, grateful for that.
I went to college in Saskatchewan and a small college in Saskatoon. And then in one of my summers, my first two summers, I was working, I was lifeguarding. One summer I actually went tree planting with a guy you'll know, Wes Olmsted from Breyer Crest. He took me up near Princeton. Yeah. And so, and then the following year I had signed up to go back to them tree planting, but I got a call out of the blue.
Rob Chartrand (01:30.509)
That's great. I just had a meeting with Wes an hour ago. That's awesome. Yeah.
Dustin (01:41.302)
to work at a church in Ottawa from a guy I knew in Winnipeg. And so I called Wes and said, "'Hey, I feel like this is God's leading.'" And I was a pretty terrible tree planter. So he was happy to probably get me off his crew without breaking my, you know, it's not me, it's you, you know, and, oh, I think I did actually. So, yeah, so then I came back from that summer position in Ottawa and yeah, I just was.
Rob Chartrand (01:56.121)
You looked at a lot of J-roots, did you?
Dustin (02:08.69)
I was starting to connect with a youth pastor in Winnipeg to work with him at a church and then just was praying by my bedside one night and felt God said to me, I want to put you in a place where you'll teach and preach on a regular basis. And it wasn't audible, but it's like whatever is one decibel below that. It was just very clear so much that I just said, you got, if that's what you want, I'll say yes to that. And I woke the next morning to a phone call. I had a spare. I was going to U of M at the time finishing off.
Rob Chartrand (02:27.961)
Sure. Yeah.
Dustin (02:39.346)
another degree and was my pastor at Calvary Temple. Pastor Barber had retired at that time and Pastor Bruce Martin gave me a call and said, hey, there's this church that wants someone to teach on Sunday. It's Little Italian Church. So I was like little Twilight Zone moment, looked at the phone and said yes. And I don't know what pastor, I was 21. So I just celebrated 25 years at Oasis or what, you know, became Oasis this fall. And they were—
Rob Chartrand (02:57.193)
How old were you about that time? Wow.
Dustin (03:06.73)
really small, really desperate. And I was, you know, you just, one of my favorite writers talks about how callings are precious things. Sometimes you only get one in a lifetime. And not to say that this will be my forever, but I was so lucky to be led there. And that calling story, I've gone back to a number of times and things have gotten hard over the years just to say, okay, God, you led me here. You're gonna supply all I need to get through this. So that's kind of the nutshell version of how I got to this church.
Rob Chartrand (03:34.037)
Yeah, yeah. So that was your first church then like in where in a full time ministry capacity. That's amazing. Yeah.
Dustin (03:42.142)
Yeah, yeah, all my years in Saskatoon, I had interned at a smaller church. I grew up going to big church and I realized, hey, like that may not be my future in ministry. So I interned at a small, smaller church in Saskatoon and, and then did that summer thing. I was telling you about Ottawa and then started here. Yeah. So it's my first, first kind of full-time gig.
Rob Chartrand (03:53.43)
Mm.
Rob Chartrand (04:01.393)
Okay, well give us a bit of the origin story of Oasis. When, how did it get started before you got there?
Dustin (04:08.618)
Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, it's kind of similar to a lot of ethnic stories, ethnic church stories in Canada, where churches that have a lot of immigration from certain areas, often the church is the only place where you hear your language from the old country in Canada. And so you know, in Winnipeg, a lot of our Filipino churches are just crushing it, you know, they're doing really well. And if immigration stops, though, which was what happened in Italy, as a country went through some really hard times post war, there's a lot of immigration to Canada.
Rob Chartrand (04:29.601)
Yeah.
Dustin (04:37.454)
And so a church was born out of that, an evangelical church that, or even a Pentecostal church, I guess it was out of the ministry of Calvary Temple again, as some, a lot of Italian people are just, you know, very devout Catholics and these people had experiences that didn't really fit with that. And so the church did fairly well for a while. And then just through some conflict and through migration, it had kind of really shrunk.
Rob Chartrand (04:45.73)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (04:53.441)
Right.
Dustin (05:07.298)
and kind of resisted as many, unfortunately many ethnic churches resist becoming part of the dominant culture. And, you know, when I kind of say joke, when I started that, you know, there was only a small handful of older Italian people and their kids, they were only Italian at World Cup Soccer time, you know, the rest of the time they're Canadian. So I was brought in because I think they were, they kind of reached a point of desperation and they realized they needed to, you know, reach, become part of that.
Rob Chartrand (05:12.789)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (05:24.317)
Right. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.
Dustin (05:36.702)
larger culture that surrounded them. And, but that being said, my first number of months there, I can't remember how long it was. I was speaking through an interpreter into Italian Sunday morning, Sunday night. And over time, we just kind of, as I maybe built up a little trust with these people, I didn't try to make any changes. The first while just said, hey, like, let's look around. None of your kids are here. None of your grandkids are here. What if we try something new? And these...
Rob Chartrand (05:46.649)
Hmm. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (06:01.4)
Yeah.
Dustin (06:04.442)
It's a bit emotional for me because these beautiful people said yes, and for them reaching lost people was more than their old songs, their old ways of doing things. And we're incredibly supportive for, there's almost none of them left, they've all passed away, but incredibly supportive of what we were doing through the years when it probably was not their style of music, their style of church, but they had a heart for the things of the Lord and the kingdom of God living on past them. So.
Rob Chartrand (06:06.133)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (06:12.237)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (06:20.834)
Wow.
Dustin (06:33.866)
Very powerful.
Rob Chartrand (06:33.993)
Yeah. Yeah, good on them. So you're obviously a funk that doesn't sound very Italian.
Dustin (06:38.99)
Mmm. Yeah, Destino Funcarelli was what my buddies called me working here because, yeah, again, they were desperate. So, you know, yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (06:47.929)
They didn't have it. Yeah, they couldn't find an Italian pastor probably. Italian speaking. Yeah. And so working with a translator for a while. Wow. That, I mean, that, that cuts your preparation time in half cause you got to wait for the response, right? Like you're only doing half a sermon in many ways.
Dustin (06:58.71)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm sure Pastor Vincenzo improved a lot of my sermons as a young guy when he translated the barbies, so.
Rob Chartrand (07:06.749)
Okay. Yeah, but I mean, that's that is a challenge with a lot of homogeneous churches that are have language specific contexts, right? And, and then their kids grow up Canadian. I mean, I have a number of churches, I mean, some we've had on the podcast, we've talked about that, like, I mean, what do you do with these kids who are third culture, they they're comfortable in their home culture, but they're also comfortable in Canadian culture, and then they begin to disappear from church, or they go to other churches.
Dustin (07:18.424)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (07:36.141)
right? So, so it's amazing that they had the foresight and the and the vision to say, yeah, I mean, it's not our preferred context, but we're willing to, you know, for the sake of the gospel and the kingdom, go to English. So what was that like? What? Talk to us about that changing it to English. Did it take right away? Did a lot of them speak English or as a second language?
Dustin (07:36.426)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Dustin (07:55.818)
Yeah, most of them spoke at least broken English, almost all of them did. Maybe some of the very old people didn't, but they were so just excited to have young people coming in, you know? There was all of a sudden when we did that, there was a rush of, I had been working at Youth for Christ camp, and I don't know, some of the connections there that kind of followed me. And so I think they were just so excited to have other people come in. And yeah, it was a journey that we really,
they embraced and were supportive of. And we go back to that story. I talk to our church now as there's changes about saying, hey, this has always been the heart of our church, that it's not been about us, it's about who is not here. And, you know, Luke 15, Jesus tells three stories in succession about, you know, a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son, and just how focused our God's heart is on people that aren't here. And that's been the story of this church where, imagine your church going into a different language.
Rob Chartrand (08:34.07)
Hmm. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (08:44.824)
Yeah.
Dustin (08:54.846)
Surely we can put up with these changes so that we make room for more people or their cars or their kids. And we're lucky to have a heritage like that. Long may it continue to encourage the people of Oasis going forward.
Rob Chartrand (09:00.77)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (09:05.577)
Yeah. So, um, how, what was the size of the church when, when you, when you did that, was it just under a hundred or was it a little bit bigger than that?
Dustin (09:16.586)
Oh, I was smaller than that. It was only maybe 12 or 15 people my first week there. And so it was really like they could, I think that really led to the desperation where, you know, they could see the writing on the wall that they were all senior citizens. This is, something has to change pretty quickly. And yeah, and you know, there's maybe a few more people connected to the church than that would started coming back pretty soon after they had a, you know, another pastor, they'd gone a while without one. And so we maybe, you know,
Rob Chartrand (09:25.143)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (09:32.183)
Yeah.
Dustin (09:44.602)
normalized a little bigger than that. But but yeah, it was it was very small.
Rob Chartrand (09:50.013)
Okay, so we're going to talk about you outgrowing a building. We'll get there in a minute, but obviously you went through a season of growth. What contributed to the season of growth?
Dustin (09:53.816)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Dustin (10:00.722)
Well, yeah, so we started in a small building there on Cathcart Street in Winnipeg. And the cool thing was, because of some of their past history and people being generous, this church was almost paid off after a few years of me working there. And so we had a ministry center. But like a lot of churches in Canada, these weren't built with a lot of foresight, where you had a church that seated 120, a foyer that held about eight people and parking for about 15. And so...
Rob Chartrand (10:12.418)
Mm.
Rob Chartrand (10:24.894)
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.
Dustin (10:26.814)
We went through some massive renovations through some of the generosity of the existing people there, one person in particular. And then just, you know, we've always been word of mouth, word of mouth advertising and people inviting friends. And I don't know if that's something we'll talk to you later or not, but I can't remember at what point in the journey we read about a, I think it was a Barnistat, but it was someone saying for people who don't attend church that actually show up on a given Sunday,
are invited by a trusted friend. And if you think about that, that means that almost 100% of your advertising is useless if it's not through an invite. Like it's just too big a step to come on a Sunday morning. If someone's not saying, I'll meet you at the door, I'll pick you up and I'll sit with you. And so we've always just tried to trust that. And that goes into part of our strategy is that building trust with your people. And if we...
Rob Chartrand (10:58.218)
Right. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (11:03.801)
Mm hmm. Yeah.
That's right.
Rob Chartrand (11:22.329)
Mm-hmm.
Dustin (11:25.438)
If we are consistent in the experience we provide, they become your growth engine. Because I think most people, if the Holy Spirit's working in our life, we wanna share our hope, we wanna invite friends. But the question they're asking their pastor every Sunday is can I trust you? When I was in Saskatoon, my roommate was from Brandon, Manitoba. And one Sunday, we went to this, it was a great church, and we wanted to invite friends. And so he bumped into a friend of his, and this person's girlfriend, they were living together in Brandon.
Rob Chartrand (11:29.122)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (11:41.131)
Yeah.
Dustin (11:55.158)
He said, hey, you gotta come to church with us. And we brought them. And this was a great church, but they came on the Sunday where this missionary was there. And it was one of the weirdest religious experiences of my life, you know, and all the way home. We're apologizing to them in the car that next Sunday, the pastor's apologizing to the church. And that made an impression on me though, that you realize what's at stake every Sunday is someone's first chance, someone's maybe only chance they're given at church. What are you gonna do? But it also, it tells you, it was more than just that one Sunday.
it breaks trust with your people where they say, I don't know what's coming next. And that's in the length of our services, that's in the quality of our services, that's in all these things. And if you are humble enough and diligent enough to build a consistent experience, your people become your growth engine. And there's people I joke with at our church that say, I gotta put you on staff. It's because they've brought 50 or 60 people, no exaggeration, just because they're comfortable inviting
Rob Chartrand (12:28.729)
That's right.
Rob Chartrand (12:43.289)
That's right, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (12:51.478)
Yeah.
Dustin (12:54.966)
We're not gonna embarrass you as a newcomer. We're gonna hopefully provide, the gospel adds meaning to our life and I think it's our job to show that so what in our sermons, so.
Rob Chartrand (13:03.797)
Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like, I mean, you have a come and see culture, right? So it's the idea of the one disciple taking the other disciples, they will come and see. And so it's a bringer culture. And so you have these people who are bringers on their arms, bringing to people, the church. But before that, they're cultivating trust relationships with them. I mean, they're sowing seeds of the gospel, I mean, because they're not just going to say to a random stranger, hey, just come to church because they'll go, oh, sure. So, I mean, there's obviously that's a culture that you guys have where you are.
Dustin (13:14.22)
Yeah.
Dustin (13:30.19)
Totally.
Rob Chartrand (13:33.749)
And I think you're right, like with if the if the Sunday morning expression is inconsistent, like service links is could be a half an hour or two hours or preacher quality varies or worship quality varies. And so your bringers stop bringing because they're like, I don't want to, I don't want to sabotage this relationship that I've built with my friend, and they I bring them on a on a Sunday, we would call it the cringe factor, you know, so
Dustin (13:59.447)
Mm, Amen.
Rob Chartrand (14:00.093)
if they're if they're bringing somebody on a Sunday morning and there's a whole lot of cringe and then they're then they have to spend the rest of the day apologizing to that person or explaining to them. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, you know. Yeah.
Dustin (14:09.682)
And if I could just add to that, like, for people that complain, one of their first questions is, Hey, when was the last time you brought someone with you? Because if you do that, and you're sitting in church, you like grow antennas out of every pore of your body. And you're just like, I hope the music's good. I hope Dustin doesn't lay an egg for a sermon, you know, and, and you understand why we serve good coffee and why you and if you get too far from that, you often end up complaining about
Rob Chartrand (14:23.373)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (14:27.587)
Yeah.
Dustin (14:36.63)
the wrong things in church and not that there aren't things to complain about. Hey, I'd be, one of my good buddies gives me language or he says when people complain, hey, I'd be disappointed if you weren't disappointed. Like I have trouble too with a lot of things we're still working out. But if you bring a lost person with you, man, you see everything through new eyes. And if I could add one other thing to that Rob, if that's okay, just I would say a learning that I got from
Rob Chartrand (14:38.338)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (14:46.295)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (14:57.781)
Yeah, go for it.
Dustin (15:02.622)
my buddy Phil Kniezel, who's a pastor at Hope City Church in Edmonton, who would be a great guest on this podcast as well, is just the power of online services, which now that's, this was, he was talking to us before the pandemic, but just for outsiders, it's sometimes too big a step to come into a church in online services. If your quality is, you know, you want your quality to be good, but it gives people a way to check things out before they'd ever darken the doors.
Rob Chartrand (15:07.361)
Yeah, Phil. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (15:14.009)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dustin (15:30.414)
And where do you go? I don't know if I go anywhere today without checking online first. For sure people are gonna do that with church.
Rob Chartrand (15:35.757)
That's right. Yeah. Yeah, we assume the front door of our church is the front door of our church is not it's your website, or your YouTube account or whatever. I mean, that's what they're gonna check out for. And we had a cross point. I mean, we had visitors come all the time, every week, you have new people. And if I can't can I ask them, how did you hear about cross point? And they'll inevitably say, Oh, we went online and we checked out your church, we've been watching for two or three weeks, you know, to see if it's okay to step inside the door. And that doesn't matter if you're believers or non believers, they're still going to do that.
Dustin (15:44.496)
Yeah.
Dustin (15:59.724)
Yeah.
Yeah, we used to have.
Dustin (16:06.654)
Well said. Yeah, we used to tell our Parkinson. Hey, Sunday's beginning the parking lot, but that's not really true. They begin on social media.
Rob Chartrand (16:12.937)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's interesting for people who are listening, the one page that they go to the most is your sermon page or maybe the I'm new page, but it's also your staff page. They're gonna check out your staff page. And I would say don't ignore that page because it's really important for outsiders. They wanna know who's there and who am I gonna meet when I get there.
Dustin (16:35.722)
Yeah, well said.
Rob Chartrand (16:38.493)
I would do, I did this with my own church, with our teams, but I would do it in my consultancy with other churches as well, is I would take the whole team out to the beginning of the parking lot. And I say, you know, let's walk through this with newcomer lenses. What do you see? You know?
What's their first impression? Oh, it's hard to find a parking spot or you get to the front door. What do you see? Oh, I have a greeter there. Oh, but he's talking to somebody else, you know, like, so walking through every step. And one thing you don't want to ignore is bathrooms, like bathrooms. The men you can get away with it with the men. But as my wife and I have to her churches, she's like, Oh, that bathrooms gross, I never want to come back here kind of thing. And after doing that tour, I came back to our chairs like we got to fix the bathrooms like that's a significant fact.
Dustin (17:06.742)
Yeah.
Dustin (17:11.17)
Hahaha
Dustin (17:18.358)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (17:24.897)
But all of that matters. And so some of us might, some of our listeners might hear this and go, well, you're just, you're being driven by consumerism in saying this. How would you respond to that?
Dustin (17:36.518)
Oh man, the details matter. The details matter on stuff you believe in. And
Reality is whether you like it or not is someone has prayed and prepared and witnessed to their son or their daughter And they've brought them and they're they say they're gonna give one chance to church and for us we talk about removing the unnecessary obstacles where You're just not gonna complain about the sound being bad or the bathrooms being dirty You're not getting a spot so that if you're gonna read like the gospel is offensive the gospel says I am not enough I am a great sinner and I needed to find thanks be to God a great Savior
Rob Chartrand (17:49.567)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (17:57.174)
Yes. Yeah.
Dustin (18:12.752)
If you're gonna turn away from Jesus, please let that be the reason, and not all the other reasons. And these details matter because people matter. And so we're gonna bring our best. We believe that excellence honors God and it inspires people. And that was something that we had to change a little bit where the attitude, sometimes the start of our church was, hey, we're not using this, let's give it to the church, which is fine, but this is also an attitude of, hey, let's bring our first and our best as a response to the-
Rob Chartrand (18:30.784)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (18:35.797)
Right.
Dustin (18:42.854)
where Apostle Paul said the cross was an unspeakable gift and it's inappropriate for me to respond to that with conditions and say you know this part of my life's off limits and what if we did that with our resources as well and with our space because it you know if your space looks good it communicates we really believe in this we value this we value this message so yeah I think that
Rob Chartrand (18:47.008)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (18:55.338)
Yeah.
Dustin (19:07.234)
There's something to what you guys did in your lot. And I might steal that idea from you, Rob. And one thing with that too, is we've used secret shoppers a lot too.
Rob Chartrand (19:11.993)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great way forward to if anyone needs a secret shopper.
Dustin (19:20.766)
Yeah. They'll tell you the honest truth though. And it's hard. Sometimes it's hard. We have to say, oh, we missed that we failed. And we didn't think of this and thank you. Cause ultimately that type of feedback, it is a gift.
Rob Chartrand (19:26.206)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (19:33.505)
Yeah, yeah, and I think what undergirds it all as well is just a strong understanding of biblical hospitality. Like welcoming the stranger, welcoming the foreigner, welcoming the outsider. How do you do that well? And so it's not just a consumptive itch that you're trying to scratch, but rather there is this sense of you're welcoming people into the community of faith in a way that, like you say, is without obstacles.
Dustin (19:44.11)
Mm-hmm.
Dustin (19:52.278)
Yes.
Dustin (19:59.766)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (20:00.693)
So let's get back to your story a little bit. So you started to experience this season of growth. Did you go through some of the similar patterns that churches would go through? We need to hire this position, youth and children and an associate and all of that.
Dustin (20:16.142)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. We're so lucky that we were able to recruit just some great staff, and some of that's by the Lord's leading, some of that is by fluke or whatnot. But yeah, you know, as you grow, I really love what Rick Warren says, as you start growing, some of your first staff hires have to be generalists. They have to wear a few hats and be able to do a few things.
We're very lucky, Wesley Weiss was my first hire, is a lifelong friend, and he just does so many things well. He's now kind of, his role is now kind of focused into being in charge of just the Sunday morning experience in total, in our auditorium, and then just from the, you know, the foyers and that. But, and then similarly, we did that with our children's, but the children's is such a large thing. We hired a children's pastor as we grew, and.
hired our youth guy, but yeah, our youth guy started, he was also doing our lighting and things just because you need to turn it into a full time position. And as things grew, and I think you can never overestimate the importance of building the right team with the right people. And yeah, we had a some of our growth challenges were just actually though, getting back to your question, we're in space where we were in this little building. And sometimes, you know, again, in the words of Rick Warren,
Rob Chartrand (21:15.861)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (21:26.413)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (21:34.425)
Yeah.
Dustin (21:39.002)
Sometimes the shoe tells the foot how big it can grow. And your church, our church, we had to get out of this little building if we were gonna keep growing. And so we were, you know, we were being shown by real estate agents, other options that were slightly bigger, but I could just see we were probably gonna have that same problem again in a few months. So I was reading, I can't remember which, it was Outreach or one of these church magazines back.
Rob Chartrand (21:42.166)
Yeah, that's right.
Rob Chartrand (22:00.017)
Right, yeah exactly.
Rob Chartrand (22:05.913)
Mm-hmm.
Dustin (22:06.338)
20 years ago and I saw an advertisement for portable church industries.
Rob Chartrand (22:12.465)
Yes. Yes, I went to a lot of church planning conferences and I saw those nice kits prefab. Yeah.
Dustin (22:18.534)
Yeah, yeah. So, and I just saw that I knew that is a solution for us. And many early minus 30 mornings in Winnipeg, regretted the decision and thought, what was I doing? But it was phenomenal. And so we moved from, well, we actually kept our building. Our building was our youth space and our offices. But we met in a junior high nearby for 12 and a half years. We were a portable church.
Rob Chartrand (22:35.795)
Okay, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (22:44.055)
Yeah.
Dustin (22:44.358)
And for all the listeners, if you're looking for a growth solution, portable church industries out of, I think they're out of Detroit, a phenomenal ministry that as I talked to Pete a few years ago, just to say thanks for all those years, I think they'd at that point created over a million seats, if you can imagine that for churches all around the world in, you know, we used a gym, but sometimes it's in theaters and auditoriums in schools or in community colleges. And I think we were the first church in Canada to do a full system where, you know, we bought three 24 foot trailers.
Rob Chartrand (22:58.64)
Mm. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (23:05.976)
Yeah.
Dustin (23:14.25)
with all the cases and it was a huge investment for us at the time. And, and it was a huge investment of our people where we had literally hundreds of people on our setup and tear down teams that would show up very early on a cold and hot Sunday mornings and stay and tear down, but it was beautiful and you know, one, one way I almost miss those days because it gave ownership to.
Rob Chartrand (23:26.519)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (23:32.62)
Yep.
Dustin (23:43.566)
people that are a little more rugged, people that are never gonna be working in kids ministry in the choirs, they showed up and turned wrenches to put together stages and backdrops and that was their church. And so, when we moved into our facility, remember now we've tried very hard to move them into positions of ministry, but in some ways I regret that as just not having that place of participation, but yeah, Met in a School.
Rob Chartrand (23:47.233)
Yeah, for sure.
Rob Chartrand (24:05.301)
Yeah, it was it was the same for us when we went from portable into a building. I mean, there was a lot there were a lot of there was a lot of camaraderie that was built in that Sunday morning setup tear down experience and a lot of more men were involved too. Like they were just moving stuff and then having coffee and tearing down and so there was a sense of loss when we finally got a building and we had to really think strategically well, how can we then get them involved? And I don't know if we ever really did in the same way. Yeah. So
Dustin (24:17.066)
Yeah, yeah, incredible.
Dustin (24:32.47)
Yep. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (24:34.997)
What did you do with your equipment? I mean, well, we'll get back to that. I mean, you're obviously you didn't stay portable forever, but you did it backwards. I mean, you went from a building to a portable. I mean, that not a lot of churches do that. Was that a hard sell for your community?
Dustin (24:41.911)
Hmm.
Dustin (24:50.226)
Yeah, in some ways just because they could see the work that was ahead and in some ways, we didn't do the... By the end, I think we did the gym we were meeting in pretty well, but at the start we didn't and you're kind of figuring this out. But there was just a heart to reach more people. But you were leaving a really... After our renovations on this building we started, it was cozy, it was beautiful. And to leave that into a cool gym...
But we knew we just couldn't stay there. There was no room to invite friends. And it was costly. It was a big investment for us. But it was also created buy-in and ownership. And it was a great season that kind of gave us a fighting spirit. Because there's some Sundays when just one of the trailers gets a flat, or one of the trucks breaks down, or one of a
Rob Chartrand (25:31.127)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Dustin (25:45.222)
Sometimes we'd show up and in the gym, there's, oh, the school forgot about us. This happened all the time and you know, they left in a thousand chairs or whatever we had to move and you know, so it, uh, it was a hard season, incredible season, but, uh, yeah, thankful to be, to be through that season too.
Rob Chartrand (25:53.663)
Right. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (26:02.645)
Was your kids ministry in classrooms?
Dustin (26:05.77)
It was in the cafeteria and then the school had some unique larger hallways. And you know, we, the way the school system worked here, they're incredibly, the school division that we're in was incredibly gracious to us. Let us be there. But using the classrooms was off limits just because that was the teacher's area. And they're, you know, some of their. Yeah. So we had to be creative and, you know, use some of these wider hallways, but it worked. And.
Rob Chartrand (26:07.478)
Oh, that's good.
Rob Chartrand (26:23.649)
Teachers like their classrooms, yeah, yeah.
Dustin (26:32.682)
We're thankful that we were able to be there for so long, but I don't know if we'd still be in there. COVID kind of changed a lot of things. So I see kind of God's timing in that is there's kind of the relationships between school divisions and outsiders coming in is obviously always a little bit of a variable. And I felt sometimes like I was a foreign missionaries. I was just giving gift cards to custodians and gym teachers and principals and superintendents and just saying, I'm so sorry, we'll try to do it better.
Rob Chartrand (26:33.974)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (26:44.426)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (26:56.789)
Yeah, yeah, holding it all together. Yeah.
Dustin (27:01.77)
You know, we're guests here. How do you want this done? And you say jump, we say how high. And but, yeah, so thanks be to God. He really, he went before us in that season for sure.
Rob Chartrand (27:12.537)
Hmm. So how far into your experience at the portable site? Did you start thinking about another building? Or did you already knew that you were going to just do this interim and then start prepping for developing a new site?
Dustin (27:28.898)
Yeah, I think we kind of knew right from the start that if this church by God's grace continues to grow, we'll need a permanent home just because we could always tell the relationship was never very stable with the school. And it would change with each new superintendent or principal or custodian and gym teacher that came in there. And so we were looking for land throughout, not that we had money for land through all that season. And then...
Rob Chartrand (27:31.874)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (27:39.329)
That's right. Yeah.
Dustin (27:57.342)
I can't remember exactly what year we finally were able to purchase a former lumber yard nearby, thankfully. We wanted to kind of stay in the area. And we had kind of been, as a church, trying to have our financial strategy to live with the discipline of paying a mortgage before we had one, just to say, hey, this is coming. And so we had saved up some money to pay for that land. And then the process started of just, you know, designing and building and capital campaign and all those things for a more permanent home.
Rob Chartrand (28:03.425)
Hmm. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (28:26.745)
How long from the time of your capital campaigns beginning until the end of you being in the facility, what was the length of time left remaining?
Dustin (28:37.822)
Yeah, that's a great question. I'm pretty sure it was about two years from the start of our capital campaign. Now, my executive pastor may correct me on that, but yeah, I think we started a capital campaign and yeah. Yeah, yeah, so I think it was about two years. And so we did a three year campaign and there was still a year of commitments coming. And you know, if our listeners have ever done capital campaigns that life changes for people. These are.
Rob Chartrand (28:47.702)
Hmm.
That's okay. You can round it off evangelistically speaking. What was the number?
Dustin (29:07.138)
you know, they make commitments based on today's realities and life changes. And so some people, we have some people still seven years later, or I guess it would be nine years later from the capital campaign still contributing because they life changed for them, but they still want to honor that, which is a beautiful thing. And so it was about two years and we were in our building and it was an incredible celebration to.
Rob Chartrand (29:11.885)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (29:22.134)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (29:30.583)
Hmm.
Dustin (29:31.03)
have a space of our own where we could do things we couldn't. Like we just couldn't ask the school often for Christmas Eve services because of their commitments or even Good Friday, things like that. So, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (29:40.861)
Yeah. Yeah, well, that's great. So and then your church, of course, since then is continuing to grow.
Dustin (29:48.998)
Yeah, thanks be to God, still people inviting. And there's that old rule of thumb where if your church is 80% full, it's full, because it just emotionally is full, there's odd scattering of seats. And so to have room for people to invite friends, and it's exciting just that that's how we grow with people inviting friends saying, hey, I'll show up. And we try to do things once in a while to support that, whether it's giving them an invitation or a postcard at strategic times like Easter.
Christmas Eve or just an invite to, but almost 100% of our advertising comes through something that comes with a personal invite. And so text invites people can use. If you text this, we'll give you an invite. You text it on to your friends. And yeah, by God's grace, it's continued to grow, but it's a pandemic in there, which was an interesting season where everybody's attendance went to zero for a while. So.
Rob Chartrand (30:19.063)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (30:40.561)
Yeah, for sure. You know, so when you have a second service now, when you first got into the building, did you have a second service at the time?
Dustin (30:45.622)
Mm-hmm.
Dustin (30:48.886)
We did, yeah, we've been at two services for, I can't remember how long, and we really like it because it gives people the opportunity to serve in one, and our kids ministry needs so many people, some of our best people, and then attend one.
Rob Chartrand (31:01.357)
So you were at two services in the school and you just carried that right over. Okay.
Dustin (31:05.694)
Exactly. Yeah, just and one of our volunteers said it so well. We for this Christmas Eve, we did six services. There's reach out to our community and we might have been able to for numbers to do one less than that. But one of our volunteers who gets the vision said it's not necessarily about space. It's about options. And the same thing's true about Sunday mornings, where as much as we want church to be the number one or, you know, following the Lord to be the number one priority, expressly going to church, people have kids in hockey. People have.
Rob Chartrand (31:23.127)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (31:34.668)
Yeah.
Dustin (31:34.786)
kids and other things. And so giving options has been an exceptional thing for so many families to make church work outside of other commitments that they value.
Rob Chartrand (31:41.142)
Mm.
Rob Chartrand (31:45.237)
Yeah, so I know that the megachurch in present times has kind of received a bit of a bad rap. Part of that is obviously some leadership fallout that gets covered. They tell the 10 stories of people who fail, but not the thousand stories of those who continue to serve faithfully. But some might say like big churches, megachurches, they're kind of a big show, they can tater.
They cater to a consumerist culture. Pastor's got a glittering jacket on and he comes in on strings and ropes. And maybe I'm embellishing here. But for those who say that about, you know, you're just a big show and you're just drawing Christians from other places, how would you respond to that?
Dustin (32:32.126)
Well, I think there's legitimate concerns in those criticisms that you always have to be aware of and always be asking honestly before the Lord, where is my heart? Why are we doing this? But the other side of that is that churches grow for a reason, you know, we were a small church and we try to be very intentional in our relational practices. One story that I'll share is a family bought a house, a very involved family bought a house about 45 minutes away from us and then you just kind of know, they say, oh, we're gonna keep coming, but.
Rob Chartrand (32:37.258)
Yeah.
Dustin (32:59.058)
you probably should find someplace closer. And they did, they went to a small church, but they were surprised by this church. They just said, I can't, I'm trying to connect, but I can't connect. And so they've actually made the decision they're gonna come back and keep coming. And they said it was because our church is so relational. And hey, that's, I'm not, right, I guess it sounds like I'm bragging, maybe I am, but it's a story when I got, we got it right. There's times when we've failed too, but what are your processes? Your systems are currently designed to give you the exact results you're getting.
Rob Chartrand (33:21.218)
Yeah.
Dustin (33:27.854)
If you don't like your results, what are your routines? What are your systems? And so we try to be very careful in building in redundancy. And I'm using that kind of in a software term of double checks to make sure if someone signs up for something, someone's calling the back and then we're gonna make sure they got called back and there's a double check because if you, more than a show, we're asking, we've never backed away from asking people for full devotion to Jesus Christ, expressed in serving, joining community.
Rob Chartrand (33:28.289)
Yeah, that's right.
Rob Chartrand (33:38.573)
Yeah.
Dustin (33:57.686)
giving generously of your resources, inviting other people. If people do that, whether your church is big or small, hopefully you have some systems more than just your memory to ensure that people are connecting. Go ahead.
Rob Chartrand (34:10.794)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (34:14.665)
No, and I think that's important with size and scale especially that you have to be, if you want to be a welcoming culture, you really got to systematize it and work at it. And do due diligence at responding when people are courageously putting their heart on their sleeve and filling in a connecting card, for example, and they turn it in, and they don't hear from your church in a month. I mean, that sends a message to them. Yeah.
Dustin (34:36.989)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (34:38.345)
I remember one church I worked in, I came into the new role, I was replacing another person in the role before, and I opened up the drawer, and there was a stack of connecting cards there, filled in that were never followed up on. And I thought, oh my, oh no, you know.
Dustin (34:51.754)
Yeah, those are worth their weight in gold if someone is gonna take that step, you know? So...
Rob Chartrand (34:55.765)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about the other criticism though, that big churches are a mile wide, but an inch deep in terms of spiritual formation and discipleship. What are you guys doing to, once people make those commitments to Christ, to help them along the journey towards spiritual maturity?
Dustin (35:18.646)
Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, because as a leader, you're always asking, is it working? Is the system working? And if we're honest, you always want more fruit. You always want more fruit than you're actually getting. And, um, and so how do you define success? A great, probably many of our readers have heard of Jim Collins and, uh, listeners, I should say, good, good to great. They've read that. Uh, he also writes an addendum to that book called good to great in the social sectors, which has really helped us as a church, because, you know, it says in business, your measure of success is easy. It's a metric of money in versus money out.
Rob Chartrand (35:23.626)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (35:40.601)
That's right.
Dustin (35:48.646)
and produced, but in nonprofits, your measures of success is results against mission and the mission of going to all the world and make disciples, you know, teaching them to obey. And so what does success look like for us? It's a little bit softer than a defined metric, you know, on a spreadsheet in businesses. So we ask questions like, is anyone here accepting Christ? Like, do we have baptism stories? And so you can go online and see some of our baptism stories. We do.
Rob Chartrand (35:58.72)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (36:07.533)
That's right. Yeah.
Dustin (36:17.89)
almost all of them by video, which is a way for them to share their story. It takes away the emotion of the moment so that they can be fully present. Instead of saying that live, you know, and it helps us be a little more predictable in our service links, like we were talking about with guests, because as Rob, as good as things are in the main service, one of my friends said, the Holy Spirit leaves the nursery after an hour, you know, so, you know, you gotta so be unpredictable. So, you know, are people accepting Christ? Is anyone getting baptized?
Rob Chartrand (36:30.911)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (36:41.336)
It's so true.
Dustin (36:47.678)
is evangelism happening? That's a marker of spiritual growth. Is anyone inviting Christ? Are people joining life groups and giving of their free time to be in community, not only for their benefits, but to help other people? Are people serving? And how is the level of our serving teams? Are people being generous? Are they laying down their resources and their finances? And so...
Those are all things we have to ask continually, monitor the levels of to and there's other factors. Those are just some of the top of my head to say, does our model of church work? And you need to ask that if you're a big church or a small church. And yeah, so
Rob Chartrand (37:17.249)
Yep, yep. Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (37:24.897)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I appreciate Collins addendum there. I mean, he talks about the difference between qualitative metrics versus quantitative, right? And there's some things you can quantify, like how many people served on a Sunday and whatnot. But life change, how do you quantify that? That's that's really challenging. So it's those qualitative stories that you hear and you're starting to track and pay attention to. And those are a little bit less tangible, but they're very important if you're going to know.
Dustin (37:41.102)
Totally. Yeah.
Dustin (37:48.406)
Mm-hmm.
Dustin (37:53.611)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (37:54.197)
what God is really doing in your church. Do you guys do any follow-up? Like, do you have like a beginner discipleship class or do you obviously have a small groups ministry?
Dustin (38:03.242)
Mm hmm. Yeah, we run alpha a few times a year, which we just really believe in. It's phenomenal. The listeners have seen the alpha film series that came out a number of years ago with just incredible starting discussion. Yeah, we use that. But we also have a bit of unique life groups model that allows us we feel to hopefully put people into groups a bit sooner. Then in that is, and this isn't always the case, it doesn't always work, but we make our own curriculum. And so
Rob Chartrand (38:05.634)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (38:13.81)
It's excellent.
Rob Chartrand (38:25.4)
Hmm.
Dustin (38:32.89)
We make our own curriculum by the pastor who teaches Sunday or another pastor and it complements the same topic. There was a great book that came out, I think it was by, I can't remember who put it up, but it was called The Big Idea and it just kind of criticizing how sometimes churches, you know, you get one idea on the reader board on the way in, then you get another idea in the welcome and another idea in the worship and another idea in the message. And you add that up times 52 weeks, you've got like, you know, 350 things to change in your life.
Rob Chartrand (38:36.842)
Okay, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (38:54.358)
That's right. Yeah.
Dustin (39:02.518)
Uh, in a year, I don't know if I can do that. Like, can I even change one thing a week? Like, can I work on one thing for a week? And so we try to have our service services around one idea that hopefully as a, I think it was Haddon Robinson that said, you know, a sermon is a bullet. It's not buck shot. It's one idea. And hopefully we said, what if the whole service is like that, but then, Hey, what if we make our life groups like that? And then this is the time when you can go into your groups during the week and say, uh,
Rob Chartrand (39:05.087)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (39:17.077)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dustin (39:29.314)
you know, I don't know if I agree with Dustin said, or what does this look like if I actually believe the message on Sunday and tried to do that as a mom. So I think it makes, it's still a big step to join community. But we have had incredible success putting new believers or non-believers into life groups, not only for their success, but also for the success of the group. Because sometimes if you're honest, if you've been in group with the same people too long, it's like, here we go again, and this story, and you know, oh Jesus.
Rob Chartrand (39:56.332)
Yeah.
Dustin (39:58.134)
raises Lazarus from the dead, you know? And it's like, and you see things, instead of it being boring, if there's a new, a first time person in there, it livens up the discussion, because you're seeing, like almost like inviting them to church, and you're seeing the Bible through their eyes. So we have had a lot of success. And if I could, I don't know if, show you an example of something I drew out, it's often a window diagram. But if we're trying to get someone here, if this is the saved line,
Rob Chartrand (40:23.957)
Yep.
Rob Chartrand (40:28.226)
Yeah.
Dustin (40:28.266)
And this is the church line. If you're trying to get someone who's unsaved, unchurched, to obviously a position where they know Christ and are in a church family, the dominant theory for many years in Christian world was to get them saved, you know? And the numbers on that, and I'm not gonna, all evangelism is good evangelism, but the numbers of people still walking with the Lord 10 years after a crusade are not good.
Rob Chartrand (40:43.641)
saved and then into community, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (40:55.587)
Yeah.
Dustin (40:55.762)
And again, I don't want to knock that all evangelism is good evangelism. I have people in my church that have come to Christ that way, but they were found if you get people into a believing church, and even if they're not in their community, and they can try before they buy, and they can belong before they believe, the long-term effects of that getting them down here are exceptional. And so that's an answer to your question. A few of our strategies, but we're always looking for better ideas.
Rob Chartrand (41:11.321)
That's right. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (41:22.261)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Belonging before believing. Yeah, so significant. I think the book you referred to is by Ferguson, the big idea book there. Yeah, yeah, it's great book. So yeah, you're doing pulpit based small groups, number of churches, like Life Church would do something like that, right? So and it ties what you hear Sunday morning to what you're discussing and working through together as a church. It's a lot of work, though.
Dustin (41:31.071)
Mm-hmm, yes, yeah, yeah.
Dustin (41:48.542)
It is. It's a ton of work. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (41:49.173)
to do it to make sure because you got to get it out to your leaders especially if leaders are meeting on Sunday night.
Dustin (41:55.118)
And as a lead pastor or the, or the, or the, it's not the lead pastor, as the teaching pastor, you have to be far enough ahead that it gives your team enough time to also prepare a message that's recorded ahead of time and good questions, but it is, we've found it to be exceptionally worth it. And it's just so much value. So I highly recommend it because I think, you know, taking a step for as an outsider into groups is a big step. If we say, hey, we make our own curriculum and you can discuss things here, it makes it a little bit more accessible.
of a step and it just again I think is so good to unify our church around. You know if you apply one idea this week, one idea we want you to actually try this out and try to build your life upon the rocks, use Jesus words, actually do this. So
Rob Chartrand (42:39.402)
Yeah.
So you said you had identified people in your congregation who were bringers. Is there anything that you've done to help generate a bringer culture?
Dustin (42:53.446)
Well, yeah, I think one of the things we've said, just, you know, the biggest thing we build and trust, like we talked about before, and making sure it's a consistent experience because people know they're not going to get burned, they're not going to get embarrassed. We've tried, you know, every church has to make decisions on what's the quality of our service. Is it can you play in the band if you are taking just picked up a guitar? You know, every church says, what's the level? And we've always tried to let the artists be the artists. And we've kind of.
Rob Chartrand (42:58.561)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (43:14.559)
Right. Yeah.
Dustin (43:23.458)
tried to have a church culture that people are very proud to invite their friends to. And the cool thing about that is good artists, they actually only want to usually play with other good artists because they sound good and they almost create a culture of that. And I think that's biblical too, you know, you look at the commands for building the tabernacle and say, go find Basaliel, I have gifted him with these craftsmanship gifts. I think it's the same thing for the arts. And so
Rob Chartrand (43:33.917)
Yes, that's right. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (43:47.914)
Mm-hmm.
Dustin (43:50.27)
And that's not just who you put on your worship team or not, but it's also the technology choices and the decisions you make. We've made some expensive decisions along the way because we felt this leads to a more consistent experience for outsiders coming, for our church family coming. They just wanna be proud to invite their friends to hear the gospel and partner with people. And we say to people, hey, like.
Rob Chartrand (44:10.879)
Yeah.
Dustin (44:16.338)
We understand that maybe you don't know all the answers or you don't know how to phrase things, but we're here to help and we can't reach those people without you. God has specifically placed you on that cul-de-sac, on that sports team, in that workplace. And yet God's given us as a church together, not individually, but together gifts to be the body of Christ. And so the closest thing you might experience to being in God's presence now is in the church. And it's like you're with him when you, so.
Rob Chartrand (44:22.893)
Hmm.
Dustin (44:45.27)
We'll do our part, you do your part, and it's a partnership. So those are a few things that come off the top of my head.
Rob Chartrand (44:51.309)
Hmm, hmm, yeah. You know, we're seeing what we would call the rise of the nuns and the duns in our present day. So, particularly among millennials and now upcoming Gen Z, emerging adults are kind of evacuating church and some are losing their faith, some are just leaving church and doing other things. What's your church been doing with the next generation, with emerging adults?
Dustin (45:17.944)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (45:18.185)
Um, you guys been trying to, are you guys experiencing the same things? Are you, are you, uh, trying to reach out to this next gen?
Dustin (45:25.558)
Yeah, there's definitely some of that. And again, you're never satisfied with your even one person leaves, but in general, we've been having some great traction these last number of years through a new strategy that I really can't take a lot of credit for. This is Daryl Jansen, our director of student ministries or student pastor, where we just realized that we're kind of in a season in culture where there's a bit of a prolonged adolescence. And so we started a young adult group called The Living Room meets Thursday nights. And again, it uses often our small group curriculum
so it's not an overbearing responsibility of teaching weight onto our student pastors. And they have a large group kind of hosted thing where they have some fun and then watch that video and then break into small groups and we feed them a dinner every night. And it's just been so in some ways it's like youth group, but it's a little more chill, it's a little more mature through the meal. And it's expensive, but we've been seeing some great success with that. I can't say we have it 100% figured out, but we're better than we were six or seven years ago.
And again, it's that real belonging, you know? And then, you know, following that, they'll break off and play spike ball and things. And there's, it's really cool. We got one guy a few years ago where he's like, yeah, I'm not sure about the whole resurrection of Jesus thing, but I love spike ball. So I'm coming back every week. And so just those things to build connection. And they just had their first retreat. They went out to camp nearby and just to see these, yeah, these, I think we'd be a little over a hundred young adults every week that are connecting.
Rob Chartrand (46:43.363)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (46:53.533)
Oh, wow. That's great. Yeah.
Dustin (46:54.722)
And some are bigger than that. So we're trying to do whatever we can to help facilitate making this faith your own as you know, there's so many transitions going on in your life from moving out of your parents' home or university. Yeah, and yet I would say that as well, there seems to be post pandemic where we are at least, a bit of a fresh wind blowing where West, some of who I mentioned before was in the grocery store.
a few weeks ago and bumped into two young adult guys who just said, hey, you work in Oasis? And he goes, yeah. He says, yeah, you know, we just thought we'd give church a try. We're looking for something more. And so we've been hearing stories about that. And so if it is the case and the Holy Spirit is working on people's hearts and lives and maybe an exaggerated way than what we've seen in the past number of years, I just hope and pray that our sails are set to be able to receive that and steward that well.
Rob Chartrand (47:32.119)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (47:50.785)
Yeah, you're preaching practice, you know, when you're trying to contextualize your messages. Do you ever have young adults in mind or emerging Gen as you're walking through it in terms of application?
Dustin (47:55.811)
Mm-hmm.
Dustin (48:04.098)
Totally, and I'll just say up front that I don't do it as well as I should. I've asked my student ministry team to get after me in times when I fail to do that, because sometimes, you know, you default to just the season of life that you're in. But I try to have one of the things from a book, Communicating for a Change, that is so good, is just thinking through the concentric circles of application of people's influence, you know, their job, their school, their places of...
Rob Chartrand (48:13.512)
Yeah, yeah.
Dustin (48:34.282)
recreation, but also seasons of life where that's kids in high school, which for us is kind of or middle school younger than that, they're probably in our kids ministry environments, but then young adults and all the questions of what does this mean is you're trying to figure out your major in college or choose a profession as you know, young families are singles or parents of kids. And what does this mean for you as you're going through, you know,
Rob Chartrand (48:39.468)
Yeah.
Dustin (49:00.758)
the years of parenting that seems so long or as you become an empty nest or a senior citizen, what would it mean if you actually lived out this practice in retirement? You know, the message of retirement we get from our culture is, you know, you're gonna get this RV, you're gonna be riding into the sunset. That's not a message. And so thinking about applying it to them too, what would it mean if you got this unique season where you have all this time and often money, you can be like a full-time worker in our church. And so we recently just hired a pastor to seniors because
Rob Chartrand (49:14.581)
Yeah, yeah.
Dustin (49:29.814)
we've just seen some of our most incredible volunteers week after week are these people with time who come and show ownership for driving one of our trucks to clear the snow off our lot or paint walls or this one guy named Marv who is just incredibly loves woodwork and he's built so many little things that I needed for a tool to chair to do or excuse me a stool to do communion off and things like that. So yeah, but original question I need to get better at that but definitely I get
Rob Chartrand (49:32.739)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (49:52.789)
Yeah.
Dustin (49:58.826)
I get a talking to you from some of our student minister team. And it's like, you know, you got to need more applications for people in high school or in university. And so I'm trying to get better at that.
Rob Chartrand (50:06.667)
Right. And not just to try and use the slang. That was lit, guys. This is bumping. Yeah.
Dustin (50:10.046)
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, my boys make fun of me if they any way for that. I gotta yes.
Rob Chartrand (50:18.953)
It's disingenuous, yeah, yeah. But sometimes if you hang out with, like as I do in the college setting, you just start picking up these idioms just naturally. So, well, I'm glad you're feeding them. I think that's a great tactic. And not a tactic, but it creates community and all that. But, you know, emerging adults, they will gather around food. I mean, that's a great way to bring them together. And obviously they can't host their own small groups. So if you can host a table group experience in a larger venue.
Dustin (50:28.84)
Oh yeah.
Dustin (50:32.907)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (50:48.333)
They get the best of both worlds. They get the larger community plus their own intimate space. So yeah, that's great. How you guys been developing leaders in your setting? Do you have a leadership pathway? I know a lot of larger churches that's on their minds. I mean, even smaller churches, but I mean, like what would a leadership pathway look like for us? Even going towards hiring staff.
Dustin (50:54.412)
Well said.
Dustin (51:15.81)
Totally, yeah. And so we have a few things that we really lean into. One is a generic leadership training. I'm still a big believer in the global leadership summit. And one of the reasons for that is for me, I was sponsored by an individual in our church to work with a leadership coach out of Toronto a few years ago, and she was very good. It was exceptional. I learned a lot, but I think there was eight or 10 areas we kind of went through. And in every one of those areas, I had been introduced to the topic or the primary or secondary author we were looking at.
And I was like, where have I learned all this stuff? And I looked back of, it was from being an attendee at the global leadership summit for the last 22 years or so. And so I was just looking back, I'm so thankful. So we are now a host site, which I just love because all this leadership training, you know, funnels down not only into our staff, but some of our volunteers who take off time in the summer to be there. So going through that, I was just like, wow, they have actually tapped into some of the leading voices in different, you know, some of the
Rob Chartrand (51:50.586)
Mm.
Yeah.
Dustin (52:15.858)
Classic functions of leadership whether that's team building vision casting raising resources so many of the things I've learned about there So that would be a generic thing specifically We invest in a lot of conferences Networks were part of a network of like-minded churches Which is so good at discovering the why behind the what of what we're doing does your what support your why if not? Let's change it. Let's let's look at that. And so
That network, which is called the Irresistible Church Network, puts us in conversation with other churches like us. Not just for me, but I'm a call group monthly, and our leaders are in call groups monthly with people in other churches. And they can say, hey, I have this trouble, whether that's space or people problems. But this network also supplies some exceptional training job-specific roles, where
Rob Chartrand (52:51.422)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (53:04.355)
Yeah.
Dustin (53:14.89)
you know, there's training out there, but if you're actually trying to be a church that reaches people far from God, it's a little bit different than sometimes what you hear in church, the generic church training or maybe what you get denominationally, which is a mixed bag. It could be very good or very bad. So those are kind of our two main streams, but at the end of the day, we try to be very generous as well with, you know, audible or books for people to read if they have a request for resources or conferences.
Rob Chartrand (53:43.553)
Hmm.
Dustin (53:44.362)
We'll try to do our best to raise resources to get.
Rob Chartrand (53:47.241)
Yeah. I mean, you guys are obviously not part of a denomination, right? So you're non denominational. So you've had to kind of develop these networks of relationships with like minded churches. And then there's a whole lot of sharing that's going on in those networks. Is that correct? Yeah.
Dustin (53:52.462)
That's right, yeah.
Dustin (54:05.278)
Exactly. And we, one of my professors back when I was in Saskatoon, a great guy named Murray Colin, who's been a pastor for years, I learned so much from him. And he talked about taking anti-NIH pills, NIH being not invented here. And if someone has a great idea, you're obligated to make that your own and employ it and don't be afraid of, and the cool thing is, is our church has grown a bit.
Rob Chartrand (54:22.017)
Ha ha ha!
Rob Chartrand (54:31.693)
Yeah.
Dustin (54:33.142)
We've been able, one of the most fun things for us is we help other churches every week of the year, whether that's with facilities or curriculum or just some of the things we've learned and just being generous, because we're all on the same team and we need more healthy churches, not less.
Rob Chartrand (54:51.245)
Yeah.
Yeah, one of the books I signed to my homiletic students, my communication students as well, is Austin Kleon's book, Steal Like an Artist. And the premise of the book is essentially all art is theft. And he's quoting Picasso when he says that. I mean, all art is theft. I mean, every artist didn't just create their art in a vacuum, they learned it from somebody else. And then they modified it and they changed it and they shaped it. And I think, you know, I'm not suggesting, he makes a distinction between plagiarism
Dustin (55:00.772)
Hmm.
Dustin (55:06.475)
Mmm.
Rob Chartrand (55:24.056)
I think you're right. I mean, there's so much we can learn. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. There's so much we can gain from so many other people. I find it interesting in our conversation together. I'm picking up little nuances of what you say. And I'm like, yeah, I thought I was at that Willow Creek conference when Jim Collins was there and he stood up and he promoted his addendum, you know, and, you know, you're talking, you know, just about your what? I'm like, yeah, I was at that Willow Creek conference when Jim Collins was there and he stood up and he promoted his addendum, you know, and, you know, you're talking, you know, just about your what? I'm like, yeah, I was at that Willow Creek conference when Jim Collins was there and he stood up and he promoted his addendum, you know, and,
Dustin (55:27.97)
Absolutely. And everything.
Dustin (55:40.204)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (55:48.021)
matching your why and Simon Sinek is there, you know, I just, so many of those things, but we learn them as we go in pastoral ministry from other people.
Dustin (55:50.313)
Mmm.
Dustin (55:57.642)
Yeah, yeah. And I think we're obligated before the Lord to bring best of breed practices, whether that's management, leadership, staff support, mental health resources, but also programming and kids. And hey, if someone else is doing it better, we're all on the same team. Why would we not learn and humbly? You know, it's always contextualized. What you were doing in Moose Jaw is different than me in Winnipeg, or my friend in Edmonton, or my buddy in...
Rob Chartrand (56:17.689)
That's right.
Dustin (56:26.53)
uh you know outside of uh Vancouver there's always that but uh at the end of the day we're not doing this for our own glory we're doing this for the Lord's
Dustin (56:41.078)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (56:46.525)
Yeah, that's
Rob Chartrand (57:02.145)
to you in other ways if you're just so generous and just give it away. So, yeah.
Dustin (57:06.242)
Yeah, well said. And they're such a great example of that in so many ways.
Rob Chartrand (57:09.437)
Yeah. Well, hey, I wondered if as we close here, our time is almost gone and I'll have to get you back on here again to talk further about some other things. But I wonder if you could give a final word of encouragement to our listeners. We have a lot of ministry leaders out there who are leaning in to this conversation. Give us a final word.
Dustin (57:31.702)
I guess my encouragement would just be to keep going. These have been hard years, and I kind of feel maybe the winds are changing a bit. And, you know, Jesus has said, I've sent you to reap what you have not sown. And for many years, it sure hasn't felt like that at times. Maybe we're going into a season of that. But in all things, you know, the days and details of our life are known to God. They matter to God. And,
Rob Chartrand (57:49.997)
Yeah.
Dustin (57:59.802)
in all the things that we do and we try our best to be excellent and craft good sermons, God is really the main attraction or the only attraction and the Holy Spirit's promise to do the heavy lifting for us. And so let's just remain faithful, obedient, diligent and
And I always had the privilege of interviewing Dallas Jenkins, who's behind the chosen project. Winnipeg's kind of become a film destination. And so he was here and I couldn't believe it. People were saying, is he really going to be there on Sunday morning? And thankfully he was. And he makes so much out of the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000, which has been so huge for us as a church as well that, you know, our best is not enough to feed God's people. But Dallas said, you know, our job is to bring a good loaves and fish, a good offering. And his job is to feed.
Rob Chartrand (58:21.922)
Mm.
Rob Chartrand (58:29.015)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (58:32.929)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (58:39.341)
Hmm.
Dustin (58:45.078)
his people. And so let's just remain humble and obedient in doing that.
Rob Chartrand (58:45.229)
Hmm.
Yeah. Good word. Good word. Well, Dustin, thanks for joining us on Church in the North.
Dustin (58:56.374)
Thanks for having me. What a privilege to be able to be here with you.
Rob Chartrand (58:59.381)
Yeah, bless you. We'll talk again soon.
Dustin (59:01.282)
Thanks, Rob.