Rob Chartrand (00:01.159)
All right. Hey, we're rolling. All right. Here we go. Well, hey, we're excited to have on Church in the North this morning or today, Brandon and Emma Richardson, who are the co -lead pastors of Base Church in Waterloo, Ontario and beyond. Emma and Brandon, welcome to Church in the North.
Brandon Richardson (00:21.256)
Thanks for having us.
Emma (00:22.174)
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Rob Chartrand (00:24.255)
So I wanna get into your story, get into your backstories, hear more about all of that, share that with our listeners. let's just say right away, you are both pastoring base church, but it hasn't always been called that. Originally, you planted slate church back in 2017. So let's really quickly start there. What made you want to plant a church?
Who wants to take the lead? Brandy, you want to start on that or Emma?
Brandon Richardson (00:51.566)
Yeah, we're going to be, rather than fighting for the answers, we're going to be like delegating to one another.
Emma (00:56.906)
You go for it, Brandon.
Rob Chartrand (00:57.661)
Do you want me to delegate?
Brandon Richardson (00:59.428)
Yeah, yeah, you should probably delegate. we started in 2017, Slate Church. And the reason for Slate Church was we were pastoring a student ministry that, at least in our area, had quite a history of reaching students. And we were brought in within that student ministry to...
Rob Chartrand (01:01.789)
Okay, well, go ahead.
Brandon Richardson (01:21.624)
essentially provide leadership, restart it, and after a few years of being there, were falling into the common pitfalls that the student ministry had for the years prior. So we approached the pastors that were...
looking after us and caring for us, which actually happened to be Emma's aunt and uncle. said, what if we actually move this into an intergenerational church, but how to focus on students? And so through a series of conversations, we ended up taking the student ministry, sending everybody back to the places that they had come from if they didn't meet Jesus in our church or move to the city for schooling.
and only come to our church. So what we said is if you came from another church or you attend two different churches, you actually need to go back to the churches that you came from. And the reason for that is we just didn't want to build on the work that other pastors have done in our region. And so a lot of them went back, they became leaders in their respective churches. We took a small group out of that student ministry, about 40 people.
And in September 2017, we ended up launching Slate Church alongside my brother -in -law and sister -in -law who actually helped us launch the church. And we did that for a number of years before we ended up becoming Base Church.
Rob Chartrand (02:45.585)
Okay, wow. So Emma, this your guys' first pastoral leadership role or did you do something else before that?
Emma (02:52.574)
Yeah, we came out of university with just this real heart actually for church planning and this real direction that that might be somewhere in our future. And at the same time, my uncle who Brandon mentioned earlier was kind of chatting with us and talking with us and saying, basically, why don't you come for a couple of years and work with university students? This church, this ministry needs some reviving. So why don't you come and kind of cut your teeth here? And then as we got there and we were just kind of following what God was doing, that heart for church planning hadn't.
gone away, but it had shifted. And we were just seeing the need for, as Brandon said, that intergenerational church. So we were really involved in kind of our churches and our university and things like that kind of all along. But basically right at the gate, we were diving into ministry, full -time ministry and what that looked like.
Rob Chartrand (03:39.635)
Wow, wow. So did each of you grow up thinking you were going to be in ministry? Was that your aspiration from a young age or did that change? How about you, Brandon?
Brandon Richardson (03:52.418)
Yeah. mean, I don't think I really knew what I wanted to do. growing up, I was just, you know, kind of a young boy, just focused on my life until I met a youth pastor that kind of called that out of me. And as soon as he started to call it out of me, I began to realize, no, like preaching to my stuffed animals as a kid was maybe for another reason than just being bored. And so that was one of the common things I do. I set out all my stuffed animals and preach to them.
Rob Chartrand (04:19.391)
Come on.
Brandon Richardson (04:19.78)
quiz the pastor after his message and ask questions about the Middle East. And, you know, this is all at a, you know, seven years old. So all of a sudden my pastor started calling out this call to ministry on my life. So, and I actually met pretty young and, if I remember correctly, cause we were like 15 and 16 when we first met, we started dating when we were 16, 17. I think you actually felt like a call to ministry before you met me.
Emma (04:49.979)
Yeah, I grew up really like really loving the church, really loving the mission of the church and Jesus overall and feeling like, this is something that I think I could be like doing with my life. Like I really feel like God's given me certain giftings and that sort of thing. And then in meeting Brandon, it just felt like we were a great team when it came to this. And we were obviously very young. I don't think it would have had language for that then.
but we both love serving the church and love serving people. And I think we both knew in those teen years that this was a direction we'd be going.
Rob Chartrand (05:23.901)
Hmm. So where did you meet summer camp, youth group, quizzing meet,
Emma (05:28.413)
Yeah.
I know the classic, the classic places to meet. We did meet at a youth camp, like a service at a youth camp. It was in Brandon's hometown. And so he came, he happened to come out that night for a service and I was there with a friend and we met briefly and then reconnected months later.
Rob Chartrand (05:47.103)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (05:50.953)
Wow. okay, what year would that have been?
Emma (05:55.05)
20, 2007?
Rob Chartrand (06:00.519)
Okay, okay, so like the iPhone had just come out back then, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're doing like old school texting and yeah, flip phone, yeah, yeah. So, okay, so very different online relationship or connecting by text, et cetera and all that. So you said earlier that you'd been to university, where did you guys do post -secondary?
Brandon Richardson (06:00.686)
Yeah.
Emma (06:05.074)
Yeah, we weren't even on iPhone, we were on BlackBerry.
Brandon Richardson (06:05.858)
That's right.
Emma (06:11.09)
or like flip phones. think Brandon had one of the slide ones. Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (06:14.806)
Yeah, that's right.
Emma (06:21.022)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (06:30.146)
Yeah, we went to Redeemer University and that was actually a part of that whole story where and I connected young and
There just seemed to be something different, in our relationship. Our parents were kind of affirming that and supporting it. And so we figured if we're to make a go of this and we were likely going to get married in the middle of school, well, then we have to pick something, together. And so at the time Emma was wrestling between a full -time call to ministry, but also she wanted to do psychology, which would eventually lead her to therapy.
And for myself, I knew I just wanted to become a pastor and we wanted to plant a church. And so the place that seemed to have all this together that was a local to both of our families was a school called Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ontario, near Hamilton. Awesome school. yeah, that's where, you know, Emma and I both completed theology degrees. And Emma went on to also do a psychology degree in...
Rob Chartrand (07:22.463)
grade school.
Brandon Richardson (07:32.361)
I almost completed a business major as well, but Emma was teaching the stats class and I was a little scared to take it.
Rob Chartrand (07:41.467)
Yeah, correlation causation, you get that down, you're good. It's all good. Yeah. So, okay. So were you married before you got this school or did you get married in the middle or were you just dating throughout college? How did that work out?
Emma (07:44.252)
Yeah, that's right.
Brandon Richardson (07:44.546)
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Emma (07:53.194)
Yeah, so we had been dating long distance for a couple years prior to going to university and then decided to go to Redeemer together. And then basically in second year, we're like, you know what, like let's get married. Why are we waiting so long? We've been together four years at that point. That's right. Yeah, all the plight of a university student just seemed better if we were married. So we got engaged in second year, got married between second and third year at like 20, 21 years old. And then...
Rob Chartrand (08:07.271)
It's efficient, you're saving money on rent.
Emma (08:23.026)
were in like apartments that are available for like married couples on campus for the next two years. So it was actually, it was a great setup for us. We had the best of both.
Rob Chartrand (08:33.277)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you're breaking the trend. mean, because a lot of parents nowadays are pushing young people to wait to get married until like their mid twenties and, you know, get the career going and all that. And then you can start. But, I always, know, for our own kids, we kind of pushed them the same way as is like, why, why would you have to wait? I mean, just do it now and then you can, you can grow up together kind of thing. So I, I, it's interesting you guys just to hearing your story, your,
Emma (08:47.753)
Mm
Brandon Richardson (08:48.056)
Mm
Rob Chartrand (09:01.373)
you both had this call of God on your life. Your lives kind of converged that Redeemer, you've spent all this time together and now you are co -lead pastors at your church, which is, I wouldn't say it's an uncommon model. It's becoming more common, particularly in certain movements, especially if you're like a church planter, say with Ark, and we'll talk about that a little bit later on. But it is like, for most people, say in the evangelical traditions, that's like,
That's interesting. So let's talk about that for a bit. Why did you guys plant that way when you planted your first church, Slate Church?
Emma (09:43.124)
Yeah, maybe I'll speak to this first. So I think that even the idea of co -lead pastor could be a bit of a loaded term. for people, that comes with a lot of different ideas of what that means. Like there might be questions of does that mean equal, equal, equal? Like who makes the decision at the end of the day? Like is that confusing? All those ideas. So it's something that we've had to work out. We both are our title for both of us are lead pastors at the church.
Rob Chartrand (09:49.833)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm
Rob Chartrand (10:04.99)
Mm
Emma (10:12.722)
in function though, like at the end of the day, like Brandon is the lead pastor of Base Church and I support alongside him in that role as well. But our functionality of that looks a little bit different, like the areas that we lead and the oversight at the end of the day, he's making the call always with people, always with team around, always, but at the end of the day, he's leading and I am fully submitted to that. So I think that there's...
It's important to kind of get the definition because it might be different for different people, different couples, different churches, but that's kind of our take on it.
Rob Chartrand (10:44.989)
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I wanna dive deeper on that a little bit later and hear how that works and your home dynamic and your life dynamic. But that's really important, right? Like when you say co -lead passer, what does that mean exactly? Yeah. Has that evolved for you guys? Like since when you first planted to where you are now, has that, your understanding of that changed?
Emma (10:53.311)
Yeah.
Emma (10:59.848)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (11:00.409)
Yeah.
Emma (11:08.189)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (11:09.004)
I think so. think that, you know, coming from a school such as Redeemer should be a lot more traditional in some of its understandings of church structure and not even just traditional, it would heavily lean on that reformed perspective of church.
In some ways, I think coming out and co -leading was just because we actually had a number of examples that we were following in the wake of that they were leading together, they are pastoring together as couples and we hadn't given all that much thought to church structure when we started pastoring.
Rob Chartrand (11:42.452)
Hmm.
Brandon Richardson (11:45.036)
because we were hired on into a structure. So we went to plant a church, we just kept doing the same thing, but started giving a little bit more thought to almost our own convictions when it came to scripture and what does it look like? You know, some of these passages throughout scripture that talk about, you know, male headship and, and, eldership and all the rest. so, you know, for us in our context, we know that church structure is, is very important.
Rob Chartrand (12:04.851)
Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah.
Brandon Richardson (12:14.012)
we also see out there at scripture that there's actually a lot of, room for interpretation on a lot of that. it's not an essential of our faith. it's not something, it's not a salvific issue. but we still take it really seriously. So we have found that at least, holding these title lead pastors has opened a lot of, doors, at least in, in the region that we find ourselves in, in a very young city. I think people really respect, the fact that.
There's a woman that's able to carry herself in leadership and not just because it's token leadership, but she carries it because she operates in her own weight class by herself. But at the same time, we've probably taken maybe a closer...
Rob Chartrand (12:46.889)
Totally. Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (13:01.304)
I don't know, stance is almost too harsh of a word, but we would align more closely to maybe the schooling that we got at Redeemer when it comes to actually how we function internally in the church as well as in our home.
Rob Chartrand (13:12.147)
Yeah. Yeah. And for the listeners who maybe aren't aware, Redeemer is more on the complementarian side of the role of women in lead pastoral roles or eldership within local churches, right? So is that fair to say?
Brandon Richardson (13:25.868)
Yeah. So we would, I think if you were to really, really press us where we currently find ourselves would be like soft complimentarian. And I think it would surprise, it would definitely surprise my egalitarian friends who just assume, well, you have MSB, can you guys lead together? And it's like, well, because I still believe actually those interpretation of those verses is women should speak and can speak in the church. and, but yeah, when it comes to hard complimentarian, I don't think we'd align there either.
Rob Chartrand (13:33.566)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (13:55.655)
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, that's interesting. mean, because soft comment, complimentarians functionally boots on the ground, with the exception maybe of the eldership are pretty much the same as egalitarianism in terms of the function and how they how they
Emma (14:07.582)
Hmm.
Brandon Richardson (14:09.304)
That's right. That's right.
Rob Chartrand (14:11.101)
Yeah, so, okay, so you planted that way. Did you guys plant with Arc? Was that where you got you started? Because I know that Arc does a lot of, I have friends who have planted with Arc and they do the co -lead pastor kind of a model for them.
Emma (14:28.983)
So when we were doing ministry in the student ministry with the university students before planting, Brennan and I were both just all in. Like it wasn't about necessarily title, it was more a function. Like we were just boots to the ground, all in, let's do this, we're making pennies. I was working at a grocery store to make things meat. I was still in school during my masters at the time. Like it was just our whole world was making sure that we were.
Rob Chartrand (14:42.889)
Let's do this. Yeah.
Emma (14:56.23)
reaching people with the love of God specifically on the campuses. And so when it went to planting, we weren't like, we should do this as a couple or, it'd be great if we had certain titles or it would be, we literally just went in going, we're just gonna do this together. Like we're gonna keep doing this together. So I don't even think it was a super intentional move. It was just kind of the next step.
Rob Chartrand (15:11.401)
See you.
Brandon Richardson (15:19.768)
Yeah. And we planted through Arc because one of our key leaders, his brother at the time was actually getting Arc off the ground. He said, Hey, if we're going to be planting a church, like you should talk to my brother. And so as we talked to him, his name's Jonathan Lambert and he would be one of the key leaders in Arc. He essentially runs Arc. He's not the president of Arc, but he just started leading us down the process of planting with Arc and it just made sense.
Rob Chartrand (15:28.147)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (15:39.667)
Mm
Emma (15:47.934)
Yeah, it was great.
Brandon Richardson (15:49.252)
The place that we found ourselves in, the support that AHRQ offered, we largely didn't have a community outside of the student church that could support us in the way that you need to be supported during the planting process. And I can't even remember if, I don't believe it was a requirement that we had to pastor together.
But all of a sudden this thing where we felt all in on the ministry that we're leading intended to do the same thing when we planted slate, we interacted with a lot of pastors here in Canada that were doing the same thing, that as couples, they were just, this was a family. This was, you we pastor, we pastor as a family. it's not dad goes off to work and the rest of us pray that, you know, God would use him to win souls. It's like, this is a family effort. Like let's us in our household, for us in our household,
we'll serve the Lord. And so I think that's one of the things we found encouraging when we initially connected with Arc is that it just kind of aligned with how we were already operating. And then we met a bunch of people that were operating the same way and we didn't realize there was others out there doing that beyond the few that we ourselves were connecting with. And so it was just kind of a natural connection point for us.
Rob Chartrand (16:42.237)
Mm.
Rob Chartrand (16:59.933)
Yeah. Well, I mean, it sounds like what you're doing is common to most church plants or most missional enterprises is the sense that at the beginning, it's quite structureless because if you're too structured, that's going to actually hinder the gospel. So missional accommodation is necessary in the beginning stages so that you can have a lot of flex, right? And then the structure kind of comes later and you realize, maybe we got to put some
Brandon Richardson (17:13.303)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (17:23.076)
That's right.
Rob Chartrand (17:27.635)
boxes around some of these things and make sense of it. mean, Karen and I planted Crosspoint. It was like that at the beginning. It was very much us together. Well, and it requires the whole family because it just, it requires a radical reorientation of your life around the gospel, right? And it's all encompassing kind of thing. you know, and so we weren't really worried about all the structure at the beginning, but as time went on, we realized, okay, this animal can't be organic like this forever. needs some legs. so,
Brandon Richardson (17:37.475)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (17:42.136)
That's right.
Brandon Richardson (17:49.165)
That's what it.
Emma (17:56.019)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (17:56.686)
That's right.
Rob Chartrand (17:56.838)
you kind of figure that out as you go along, right? Were you thinking in the early stages? Well, we're going to set up a church that's, you know, soft, complimentary, and the model is going to look like this and like,
Brandon Richardson (17:59.886)
That's right.
Emma (18:08.972)
Not at all.
Brandon Richardson (18:09.516)
Yeah. You know what, like, one of the things Redeemer did for us...
Rob Chartrand (18:11.39)
You just.
Brandon Richardson (18:14.564)
in such an incredible way. We both grew up in Pentecostal churches, ended up at a largely reformed university. And what it did at the time, there's 52 denominations represented at Redeemer. I remember that being like a big thing. And so in all of our religion theology classes, there was these debates on so many issues. And by the time we graduated, the thing that I realized is I looked around and
Rob Chartrand (18:18.611)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (18:28.564)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (18:43.2)
In many ways, and this is no reflection of Redeemer, but everybody just ended with the same thoughts they had when they came in. Like if they grew up a certain way, they seem to carry those thoughts out. And so, you know, people deepen convictions and all the rest. I would say that one of the things that just happened for us is a lot of the non -essentials of our faith that we saw maybe a previous generation arguing about and causing disunity in the church.
Rob Chartrand (18:53.673)
Right, right.
Brandon Richardson (19:10.424)
I think we just, we lost our fight for some of those things and we gained a respect for what unified the church, those old creeds, the apostles' creed, the Nessian creed, these things that define, you know, in many ways, what makes a Christian. And we just saw it when we went into pastoring. So yeah, there was no structure because all we were focused on is, hey, could we become better disciples ourselves? And could God use us to reach new followers of Jesus?
Rob Chartrand (19:20.524)
Mm
Brandon Richardson (19:39.937)
And so when you go into pastoring with that kind of mentality, yeah, there's some structure that you start realizing might be important as time goes on. But certainly, you know, even in our church, don't, you know, if we were pressed, would tell them, yeah, maybe, you know, we line up right now as soft, complimentary, because we believe in headship. But at the end of the day, nobody's in our church is focused on that. We're so focused on reaching the lost and becoming this better disciples, deeper disciples ourselves.
Rob Chartrand (20:08.019)
Yeah, yeah. And the gospel of primary concern, right? then, yeah. And then secondary matters, tertiary matters are not really that important. Although I gotta imagine, I mean, coming out of a Pentecostal tradition, which is, know, Armenian, Keswick tradition, holiness tradition, second work of grace of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and then going to Redeemer, like you've got some worlds colliding there, which was probably really great for you.
Brandon Richardson (20:09.657)
Yeah.
That is of the utmost concern, yeah.
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (20:22.562)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Richardson (20:27.683)
Yeah.
Yes.
yeah.
Rob Chartrand (20:35.315)
for you for helping sort out a lot of the things that you thought really mattered and things that didn't.
Brandon Richardson (20:41.421)
It was the best experience we could ask for. I think that we determined we were not going to become cessationalists when we were at Redeemer. And by the way, there wasn't very many there anyway, but we determined that. The other thing we determined is that...
Rob Chartrand (20:53.373)
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Brandon Richardson (20:58.786)
the sovereignty of God really mattered. And that's just something that we didn't talk about as much growing up in the Pentecostal circle. That doesn't mean that the Pentecostal denomination doesn't talk about that. It's just, wasn't as focused on in our circles. So yeah.
Rob Chartrand (21:13.917)
Yeah, Emma, it looks like you were going to add in jump in on something there.
Emma (21:16.392)
Yeah, I was just going to say I think that it prepared us well for the demographic we find ourselves in now, right? We are multi -denominational in our church. And so we see people from a whole lot of backgrounds, non -churched people, people with different ideology on some of these more minor areas, and yet we see huge levels of unity. Because I think we're able to hold intention. What really matters
Rob Chartrand (21:22.503)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (21:26.445)
Mm
Rob Chartrand (21:40.351)
Hmm.
Emma (21:44.712)
what doesn't matter as much, but still a willingness to talk about and discuss and have good conversation about with respect and unity and all these things. So I think it allowed us to have just a wider worldview when it came to our faith.
Rob Chartrand (21:57.053)
Yeah, yeah. So I want to come back to your career in a few minutes as well, Emma, because it's really important people know you've got another gig going on here. But let's jump in on Slate Church for the first and talk about that really quick. Tell us the story of Slate in the first five years. Where did you plant? What did it look like? Maybe some of its permutations along the way. Emma, you want to start on that?
Emma (22:04.162)
Mm
Mm
Emma (22:17.492)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I can start on that. So when we launched Slate Church, we started with evening services, Sunday evenings out of like a concert venue here in Waterloo. And we didn't really know like how to do anything else. Our student ministry had been on Monday nights. We're like, okay, we'll do two services on Sunday nights and see how it goes. And we had kids in a tent the first few times in the parking lot. Like we were just trying to make it happen. But man, people were coming so hungry.
for God. Like we just saw over the course of that first year, just a real hunger, people coming to know Jesus, people coming to just see that, hey, maybe church isn't something that's like foreign or far off or something for my grandparents, but something that I can actually see Jesus being applicable to my life in, and I could actually surrender to this. we saw, I mean, there were so many great things. There were things that now in hindsight were like, wow, we've learned some things since that point. But
we just saw like a real hunger for Jesus across the universities. And then we started seeing more demographics joining. And a lot of the time it was people's parents, right? Like it was the student who's 19 years old coming, they found Jesus, their parents are so excited that their child has found Jesus. And they're like, I gotta see what this is about. And then they came and they loved it. maybe a grandparent would come. So that's how we started to see some of that shift.
Rob Chartrand (23:31.497)
Hmm. Interesting.
Emma (23:49.514)
And then there were some kids around, like we had two, I guess one child I was pregnant when we launched Slate. Yeah, yeah. I was like 35 weeks pregnant when we opened the doors of Slate Church. And so there were a few kids around, but there was kind of this awareness that, like, I remember one of our board members at the time saying like, just wait, we're gonna see like an explosion of families in the next few years because of just how many young couples there were that were starting to come.
Rob Chartrand (23:55.895)
yes, that's a story. Wow. Okay.
Rob Chartrand (24:02.687)
crazy.
Rob Chartrand (24:18.195)
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Emma (24:18.748)
established families. so then we started seeing kids ministry happening and different things going on. So those first five years, I mean, it was a bit of a whirlwind. Like when I look back on it, we had another baby in there a year and a half later, like there was so much happening. And really, like sometimes when there's like a wave of momentum, it can be a really good thing. It can also make it difficult for you to stop and go, okay, where do I
where do we want to steer the ship? Where's the Holy Spirit steering the ship? When you're riding the wave, so to speak. And so there was a lot of great things that were going on. God was certainly moving. We saw a real establishment in people's lives of the importance and significance of Jesus, of scripture, of community, of these different pieces of church life. And it was good. It was fun.
Rob Chartrand (25:09.213)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (25:09.428)
Yeah, we, we ended up after launching with evening services about six months to nine months later, we started morning services. Those morning services would take us all over Waterloo region, trying to search for a more decent facility for all those kids. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (25:26.823)
facility search. The bane of every church planter. Yeah. Yeah.
Emma (25:27.432)
Yeah, we were a mobile church, right? Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (25:31.108)
I think we counted it. was something like nine different locations by the time COVID hit. And so just before COVID, about a year before, we actually planted a third location, because now we had an evening location, a morning location. We planted a location in a small town with 13 ,000 out of a desire to actually reach rural areas in Ontario. And that was a year before COVID hit.
And so when COVID hit, we have this young church that's two and a half years old with one service that's been there for two and a half years, one that's been there for two and the other one with one. And so we faced the same problems as a lot of people that the roots that a lot of churches had actually established, which I think in some ways maybe helps and some ways didn't help. So coming out of the pandemic, actually
ended up closing that rural location and bringing our key leaders back into the city, finding a new morning location and starting a search for a building. And, you know, it's, kind of a miraculous story. Obviously we're skipping over a lot of things, but we were in a position to be able to purchase something, after COVID because God had just kind of deepened some convictions in the people of our church throughout the pandemic that
We wanted to be a church that was thriving afterwards and people really dug in their heels and we did everything we could to still maintain the mission that we had. so just before we merged to McCabe -Base Church, we actually purchased our first property before we turned five. And it was a Bible college property. And that's a whole journey in and of itself.
Rob Chartrand (27:09.406)
Okay.
Brandon Richardson (27:16.066)
but we ended up redeveloping it and moving in actually quite recently after the renovations were done. And so, yeah, our story is just as many church planters are, it's just responding to what's in front of you, keeping the mission first and foremost and keeping that direction in sight. And then just responding to the variety of things that are thrown at you.
Rob Chartrand (27:32.553)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (27:40.48)
And, you don't even know anything different. Like even as Emma was speaking there, I'm just reminded of, like it is crazy. We started a church where kids ministry was an intent in a parking lot, but you just do it because in Canada, yeah. Like.
Rob Chartrand (27:53.041)
In Canada. In Canada.
Emma (27:54.568)
Yeah, that's right.
Brandon Richardson (27:57.476)
It was, I remember it would rain and all the water would just flood under this tent. like, we'd be like, your kids are safe with us. And, and meanwhile, the busiest street in Waterloo is no, no word of life 15 feet away from this tent. And so like, looking back, this is the first time I kind of realized it, but you just, you just do the thing. you've got to, you've got a mission in mind and, and, and it doesn't even really feel like that hard of work.
Emma (28:00.361)
Yeah.
Emma (28:05.044)
haha
Brandon Richardson (28:25.848)
But it is, looking back, it was, it is.
Rob Chartrand (28:29.683)
And if you have a people who love the gospel and live in the gospel and who are mission minded, those things don't really matter. you know, all of our great concerns about, you know, the best properties and the best, you know, this and that, you know, those, not that those things don't have some semblance of importance, but I mean, you can get away with a whole lot of things at the beginning if God is moving. Like you're just,
Brandon Richardson (28:36.686)
Yes. No.
Brandon Richardson (28:56.319)
yeah. Yes.
Rob Chartrand (28:58.607)
And so again, that secondary matters, tertiary matters. When we make them primary and we miss the gospel, which is paramount, that's where everything gets all jacked up and messed up in church life. So, okay, so, I mean, so much we could talk about with Slate. I mean, yeah, I'm hearing you and part of me is like, I'm longing for those early days when we planted our church. And then part of me is like also feeling the tremendous...
Brandon Richardson (29:03.961)
That's right.
Brandon Richardson (29:10.83)
That's right.
Rob Chartrand (29:26.629)
stress and because of all the change and the uncertainty and you know, you know, are we going to make it? What's God doing here? Whoa, look at this. And yeah. And you guys probably now you're settled. You don't experience any of that now, right? I mean,
Emma (29:28.126)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (29:31.342)
Yes.
Brandon Richardson (29:40.792)
Yeah, no, no, no, no church ministry has become so easy. Yeah. We put it on autopilot. It's we're good to go.
Rob Chartrand (29:44.521)
Ha ha ha.
Well, okay, so your church continues to evolve and there's more to your story after that. mean, let's talk about base church. There's a whole backstory there. Give us kind of the skinny on that. Why the name change? What happened to the name change that precipitated it before you got there? Who wants to start?
Brandon Richardson (30:09.08)
Yeah. Yeah, I'll start off. I think all of a sudden, nearing what would be the transition from slate church to base church, all of a sudden, God started speaking in some very vivid and clear ways. One of the first ways he spoke was actually to Emma at a conference. And this is when we were homeless as a church, mobile, moving around.
Rob Chartrand (30:25.662)
Hmm.
Brandon Richardson (30:36.64)
And Emma was pregnant with our fourth child and just fell. Yeah, they just keep coming.
Emma (30:42.539)
That's it, there's only four and that's all there will be.
Rob Chartrand (30:44.189)
Okay, you guys are just, wow. Amazing. Thanks be to God. Okay.
Brandon Richardson (30:48.52)
And yeah, she just heard this voice in her spirit that said, with the birth of this child, you'll be given a building. I mean, we had been looking ever since student ministry and this the real estate market at the time was absolutely insane. And only a couple of weeks later or
or a relatively short period of time later, I got a call from this Bible college. And internally, when I received the call upstairs, I ran downstairs internally, I just knew this is it. There was no indication on that phone call from the president that they were gonna sell us the property. It was just, there was this sense in my spirit. said, Emma, you know what God spoke to you? think he's answering it. And a couple of weeks later, all of a sudden,
We're in conversations about purchasing this property.
Emma (31:39.592)
wild thing with that is that, so the conversation started and I had our daughter Lucy and the next day we signed the papers for the property. And it's just, it was just so wild what God was doing. And it just allowed us to even settle in of going, okay, God, like, we're gonna trust that you're gonna provide something for us. And then we watched over the next number of months as he did that.
Brandon Richardson (31:50.242)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (31:55.959)
Which was.
Brandon Richardson (32:01.986)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (32:06.419)
Hmm. So, okay, so I just got to ask some questions because I have been an executive pastor before and I'm really interested in properties and details, etc. Okay, so did they just give you the building? Did they sell you the building? Did the money, was there a denomination behind it that wanted some of the funds for it?
Brandon Richardson (32:06.68)
Yeah, so
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Richardson (32:14.597)
Yeah, that's right.
Brandon Richardson (32:18.338)
Yes.
Brandon Richardson (32:26.372)
It's interesting because this Bible college is called Emmanuel Bible College, which we actually through a series of events are now responsible for the leadership of the college. But it was started by the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada. And seven years prior to us entering into their story, their memorandum of understanding changed with the college. And
Rob Chartrand (32:36.722)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (32:41.021)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Richardson (32:51.556)
I'm not responsible for a lot of the decisions that were made before we showed up, but it seemed like they were drifting further and further apart. And so when we were approached by the college, it was an independent college with a still a close tie to the previous denomination. And so when we sat down with them, the real estate agent that helped walk us through, they got a real estate agent, we got a real estate agent. They were both Christians and both of them just encouraged us pick a kingdom win amount.
Rob Chartrand (32:58.462)
Hmm.
Brandon Richardson (33:19.524)
And, and so we just entered into a number of weeks of conversations around what is a kingdom win amount. And so they knew that they could get more money from a developer, but they also still wanted to make use of the property. so we said, listen, we're going to operate on Sundays and throughout the week, a couple of nights a, a week.
you guys can use it all other times and that was much more advantageous for them. And so the price they gave us was below market value. It was still fair. We still spend, millions of dollars, but, it was at least a million dollars, would assume under market value because we can actually work together. And so that's kind how that came to be.
Rob Chartrand (33:52.455)
Okay. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (34:05.492)
So, do they then rent from you to use it or do they just use it? They rent? Okay.
Brandon Richardson (34:09.38)
Correct. Yeah, so they, we put together a lease agreement with the leadership at the time and.
a co -sharing of costs. So essentially, they were using the building a lot more than we were. We weren't even going to use it on Sundays. At the time, we weren't looking for a building. We thought there was such an advantage to being in the community and renting community space for our Sundays that we were just looking for a headquarters. And so we figured if we could use this as office space and then our midweek gathering point, then we are as set as we need to be. And then...
our theater that we were renting at the time decided to renovate. And we realized we are going to keep playing this game of having to change where our church meets if we don't do something. And so was at that point we decided to renovate what was the library of the college back into a sanctuary, which was a tabernacle for a camp before the college actually purchased the property yet.
Rob Chartrand (34:55.422)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (35:08.146)
really? So this property has got history.
Emma (35:10.506)
This property has had, it was revival grounds, then it was a camp with a tabernacle, then it's been a Bible college. It's got over 100 years of people like recorded worshiping God on this space.
Rob Chartrand (35:14.014)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (35:20.957)
Yeah. Yeah. And so even though it's, it's no longer tied denominationally to the denomination, there is a huge constituency who've invested in that property over a century. Right? Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (35:29.412)
Yeah.
Emma (35:32.146)
Yeah, absolutely.
Brandon Richardson (35:34.084)
Before you go into our sanctuary now, Rob, if you were to come, there's a massive backlit photo of what the sanctuary looked like, or the tabernacle looked like with people worshiping. And we put that front and center to remind everybody that we are always stepping on the shoulders of the people, standing on the shoulders of the people before us. So yeah, there's a huge history there.
Rob Chartrand (35:43.924)
Mm.
Rob Chartrand (35:49.694)
Yeah.
So good. Yeah. Okay, so not long after this, you guys started talking about a merger. You want to talk about that?
Brandon Richardson (36:02.916)
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, kind of where we were going with that was the voice of God just became very strong and clear in, that season. And one of the other things that was becoming really clear in my spirit is I watched, probably the church that are respected the most in our area go through some, rocky times during the pandemic.
And so I started praying for them. And about two and a half years ago, I started getting this language in my soul and I felt like the question was a question, like a God question, but I just kept asking, why are we two different churches? Like, I understand denominations and I understand the need for diversity and we don't need all eyes or all noses. Like we're a body of Christ that we need all the body parts.
And for our two churches in particular, they were so similar in mission and heart and all the rest. And as they were struggling, I just started praying for them. But then it turned into this question, why are we two different churches? so, sorry, I would have started praying that prayer probably about three and a half years ago. About two years ago, I approached the pastor who, and this is where stories and God's faithfulness start to kind of cross and merge.
who was a pastor that when our student ministry, which was called the embassy, was flying off the top. We took 40 when we launched, but at its height in those three years, it was at 300. And that's where we told students, you need to go back to the churches that you came from.
Rob Chartrand (37:32.094)
Mm
Brandon Richardson (37:40.65)
Right before we got up and did that, this pastor of the church we had eventually merged with came to me and said, I just want to make sure like, what's your heart? And cause he had some of his youth and his young adults that were starting to go to the student ministry. And I remember telling him, Brian, you don't have to worry about me. I'm, I'm on the kingdom side.
I could see he was trying to trust me, but only a few months later, he would be getting back a lot of those students because we said, we're not going to build on the church, the backs of the churches around us. We actually need to start something new and contribute to what's happening in the city. And so all of a sudden here in this position where I'm starting to feel this is now eight years later, seven years later, starting to feel why are we two different churches? And that's how the conversation started. I approached Brian and I said,
Rob Chartrand (38:10.313)
Hmm. Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (38:26.69)
Why are we two different churches? And in his spirit, he just heard, you're supposed to merge. And, and that was our very first conversation. And I think, you know, just based on how God does everything, there was just so many things going around in the background where we had learned to trust one another over the last number of years. And that made a conversation possible. I would have never known that that was where God was going to take us, but
Rob Chartrand (38:43.902)
Mm.
Brandon Richardson (38:53.528)
those conversations would emerge and we'd have merged conversations for the next year before we actually, well actually a year and a half before we actually merged.
Rob Chartrand (39:03.421)
Wow. Okay. So that that's that's a challenge. So is that what led you ultimately to become bridge that a base church? I mean, like when when you when you brought them together that like the name changes that part of the conversation? Let's let's rebrand this thing or
Brandon Richardson (39:22.818)
Yeah. When we, when we actually talked about merging, we, we talked about there's a variety of different ways that you can merge. There are certainly quote unquote takeovers in the Christian world. where one church just goes, you know what, we're struggling so much. Just we would love for you guys to lead us. that wasn't the case of how we came together and it wasn't even the heart of any of our conversations. So we started asking ourselves, well, what is a merge? Like, what does it, what does that actually entail?
Rob Chartrand (39:50.044)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (39:52.164)
And it's clear when you start getting an emerged conversations that it's a sliding scale from 50 -50 to, you know, other, other expressions. And some of the language that started to help us was this language of adjoining church and a leading church. And it came out of a book that was actually read by the leadership team of the church we merged with, which was called Coinonia. And they brought this book to the table and it talked about there's always a leading church and there's always adjoining church.
And after it was established within that transition committee that and I would lead the church, it became clear that, of course, some of the vision and the emphasis and the rest that this new church would take on.
would obviously take on the characteristics of Brandon and Emma's previous leadership because they're the ones leading. But we still wanted to know like, but how can we still honor the fact that we're not just taking over? And so a few of the ways that we ensured that that was the case is one, we decided to go with a brand new name. I think we were both ready for it. Slate Church had no meaning. Everybody had asked us what's Slate Church? And we're like,
Honestly, it got thrown around at a Starbucks. It sounded like we could get all the URLs in the social media handle. So we went with it.
Rob Chartrand (41:07.273)
So what did it mean? Like, was it like a blank slate? we're just starting Ericsson's? Okay, okay.
Emma (41:10.974)
Nothing. It meant nothing.
Brandon Richardson (41:12.172)
That meant, yeah, there are many people that if they needed a meaning, we would say blank slate. Yeah, of course. But we are in the tech capital of Canada, you the Silicon Valley of Canada and what was a Google before Google, you know, before Apple, it was a fruit. So we see all these examples of tech companies and other companies that chose these names that they got to build the meaning into them themselves.
Rob Chartrand (41:38.505)
Sure, yeah.
Brandon Richardson (41:39.34)
We just wanted something that had no prior meaning in our city so that when people thought of that name, they went, I saw them handing out water bottles at that party trying to sober up students. I saw them cleaning the streets after the biggest street party in the city. we saw that, you know, so we wanted something without, and that's what we got was a name with no meaning and.
Coinonia was looking for a name change because nobody could say their name and they laughed about that now. I mean, Coinonia has such rich meaning, but they were going, it's hard to invite somebody to church where they can't say the name and nobody knows how to search it. And so we disagreed, you know what? Now's the right time to not take on either name. And we had discussions about that, but let's, let's create a new name. And, we came up with base church and yeah.
Rob Chartrand (42:23.027)
What does it mean?
Emma (42:26.006)
Yeah, yeah, Church, it kind of has a few dual meetings, but we kind of see it as like a home base that we gather together, that we deepen our faith, our discipleship, we bring other people into it, but then we go out from here. So it's kind of that base, you know, the idea of base camp, home base, like all of those pieces of language, solid foundation, we're building on the foundation, the base of Christ, and all those ideas come with Base Church, yeah.
Brandon Richardson (42:44.91)
solid foundation.
Rob Chartrand (42:51.795)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brandon Richardson (42:54.178)
Yeah, so that was one of the first things that we wanted to do is was represent this new church with a new name and new fresh identity.
And one that we could all be proud of. And a couple of the other ways that we did it was for our board. We actually created a board that was shared between board members of the previous churches. So we didn't, we didn't have, know, just one board takeover, but we actually decided, Hey, right from the top to the bottom, we combine staff teams, even right now, I guess it would be a year into move moving in together. Nine months after we actually launched as a church, but
All of our staff members are still there from both churches, except for one that moved actually out west, but that was for family reasons. So we decided to really do this thing together and we figured the biggest way people are going to recognize this as a new thing is a new identity, a new name.
Rob Chartrand (43:51.465)
Hmm. So what has it been like to try and and it's it I was gonna say get the new members to adopt the DNA of the of the leading church but if you're if they're joining you're you're probably blending DNA is a little bit and so there's a hybrid DNA that you're creating. So you're in some ways you're you're still developing that because it's still early days but on the other side you're trying to get everybody on board.
Brandon Richardson (44:10.516)
That's right.
Brandon Richardson (44:18.222)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (44:20.795)
onto this. how are, what are some of the things that you're doing to, to clarify the DNA of the new church merger? But on the other hand, to continue to make sure that everybody else is adopting it.
Brandon Richardson (44:37.657)
Yeah.
Emma (44:38.76)
Yeah, we're trying to, think also, like, I think we're trying to be clear with the vision that we have as a church, collectively, as base church, right? There's three different locations, but we are one church with the same mission, the same vision. And Brandon has a real gift when it comes to vision and actually like an apostolic gifting. so we've been able to...
have really big conversations, deep conversations, create open spaces for people to ask questions, not shy away from the hard things and the concerns. And so there's been lots of like pastoral work being done across the board with people, but we've also set before everyone, ourselves included, a vision of, hey, what can we do together? We're better together. What does God want to do through us, through our time, through our resource, through our dedication, through our community, all of these things?
what does God want to do with us and through us? And so we've seen God working over the past year as we've merged together. And I think that that goes a long way. Like at the end of the day, are not like, yes, there's gifting, yes, there's skill set that God has given us, but we are not good enough leaders, so to speak, to be able to make something like this happen. Like I couldn't just hand you a playbook and say, if you did this,
Rob Chartrand (45:56.563)
Yeah, yeah. Sure.
Emma (46:00.08)
It would, it would, so of course there's strategy, of course there's those things, but honestly at the end of the day, it's the Holy Spirit. Like the Holy Spirit did this work, is continuing to refine our church as a whole, and there's just an openness and vulnerability to say, hey, we're still figuring this out, we're gonna be intentional about it, but we're going in this direction, and we want you on board with this, and we've seen a really positive response from that.
Rob Chartrand (46:25.052)
So you've got three sites. Obviously you want to do more sites. I guess to continue to reach more people and see the mission go forth. And we can talk about that in a minute. where would you find yourself in the spectrum between say a multi -site campus model and a multi -church model? And really the continuum between the two is one of local church autonomy or local site autonomy.
Brandon Richardson (46:45.378)
Right.
Brandon Richardson (46:52.387)
Yep.
Rob Chartrand (46:53.361)
you know, and usually it surrounds itself around like key ministries, administration and Sunday morning teaching what that looks like. where do you, so multi -church, mean, obviously is there's lots of autonomy. It's really kind of a collective of agreeing together, but really it's really up to the local church to do what they do. Like it's almost like a mini denomination, whereas multi -site.
Brandon Richardson (47:03.746)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (47:18.211)
At the extreme spectrum is like so if we were to like Life .Church, Craig Rochelle, every site looks the same video venue, every ministry looks the same. They plant in neighborhoods that all look the same. So where would you guys say you're you're kind of at right now and maybe where you're going?
Brandon Richardson (47:23.929)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (47:33.57)
Yeah, I would say that we're somewhere in the middle of those two. When we merged and I mean, the previous question was all about like, what does it look like to have a integrated culture amongst the two? And the truth of our situation is the young church that was slate and the older, more mature church that was Queninia both needed different things from one another that benefited to our overall whole.
And so the understanding of the move of the spirit.
the longevity of seeing God move over decades, the maturity of the saints that had seen a thing or two and the pandemic was just the latest thing, was something that a young church that was used to hitting the streets, the pavement, bringing people in, being rapidly discipled themselves, a real clear focus on the gospel, those are all things actually that Cornelia needed. And so,
Rob Chartrand (48:34.964)
Hmm.
Brandon Richardson (48:36.944)
As we bring these two cultures together, of course, as leaders, and I knew that we needed what Quenonia had. And as the leader of Quenonia, Brian knew that Slate had some things that Quenonia needed. But there's nothing like actually bringing these two groups together. And so when it comes to leading right now,
we really are still trying to lean on the voices of everybody in the room and the unique strengths that they bring. And so when it comes to teaching across these locations, it's still team teaching. So that's something that actually both churches were used to, but now we're actually able to share the team across the locations. And so,
Rob Chartrand (49:06.558)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (49:14.791)
Mm. Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (49:21.348)
All of our teaching is anchored by myself and then it would be our location pastors and Emma would kind of be that next tier that would take on the majority of the speaking in those locations. And then we still have a team broader than that that would also be speaking less, but also filling that out. And so,
that that's one of the main ways and we want the voices of the different generations at the different churches. So you, know, all of a sudden for the first time have somebody speaking on the platform at slate. That's over the age of 35. you know, so Bay city and base university for the first time had a speaker over, over 40, but that's a really good thing. And actually that's not true. Regular speaking. had some guest speakers in that.
Rob Chartrand (49:53.853)
right? Crazy. Yeah.
Emma (50:04.915)
Yeah, we had gas.
Brandon Richardson (50:07.138)
we've had senior speak at it. But regularly now there's this benefit of demographics. And then similarly at Koni 'i, now you have a younger expression on Sundays as well. So all of our speaking is live. It's done by our teaching team there. Each of the locations would have a location pastor.
And those location pastors along with and I would have regular meetings that establish the core things that we want to be the same across each of our locations, but then where there's ability to kind of.
do your own thing. And so we're still figuring out those those guardrails and kind of defining those boundaries. And sometimes I don't think we're ever going to set it and forget it actually, because in some seasons, it needs to be tighter and other seasons, it needs to be looser. And when you're first merged and trying to create a collective identity, it was a lot tighter. But as we go on, actually seeing more of the ways that it can be looser into the future.
Rob Chartrand (50:46.27)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (51:01.652)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (51:14.818)
I mean, the goal of starting more locations is not so that we can grow a large church for the sake of growing a large church. But we're seeing the same statistics that everybody else is seeing, where more pastors are leaving the ministry than going in, more churches are closing than are starting, more people are leaving the faith than are accepting Jesus for the first time. so, I mean, I like everybody have the temptation to just complain about it.
Rob Chartrand (51:31.507)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (51:44.452)
But I think just at our core, we refuse to complain about it. And so we're like, well, let's do something. And so even right now, there's probably 10 to 20 individuals that are serious about church planning in our church. And we're just trying to figure out how do we actually bring them along a development process, put them through some of the fire that we went through ourselves, because that's the best way to learn is actually have real leadership opportunity.
Rob Chartrand (51:48.094)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (52:09.523)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (52:10.124)
And then send them off in blessing. Some of those will be based church locations, I'm sure. Some of them will just be to go help another church that is in need of a pastor that believes that the quality of leaders that we're sending out is worth taking a chance on. And we'll just see where the chips fall, but certainly we want guidelines around the things that matter most, but I think good leaders operate with a lot of autonomy. so.
Rob Chartrand (52:25.385)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (52:40.243)
I think the real hope there would be to have as little guidelines as possible.
Rob Chartrand (52:44.083)
Hmm. Okay. Wow. So just really quickly, what was the name of the book that was brought to the table, the leading and joining book that some of our listeners might want to know what the title of that is. Can you remember what it was?
Brandon Richardson (52:56.248)
Yeah, that's a great question. It is, that is the name of it. Good memory,
Emma (52:58.186)
Is it better together? I'm trying to remember. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember the author, but better together.
Rob Chartrand (53:01.203)
Better Together? Okay, Better Together. Yeah. Yeah, well, I think someone can do a Google search on Better Together. Warren Bird. yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Kind of a church growth expert there. Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (53:08.704)
I think Warren Byrd is one of them, I think. Yeah.
Emma (53:08.882)
Yeah. Okay.
Brandon Richardson (53:17.804)
Okay, yeah, I didn't know much of them, but this book was... Okay, the first half that I read, it's phenomenal. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (53:24.797)
Yeah, okay. Well, hey, you're a leader on the go. You don't need to read every page. Read what you need, right? Yeah, yeah. So our listeners don't know, Emma, but tell us about your other career, right? Because you're the co -lead pastor, you're a mom of four. I mean, like crazy life you guys have, man. And you have a practice, tell us about that.
Brandon Richardson (53:29.636)
Yeah, I'm sorry. That's all right.
Emma (53:31.626)
That's right.
Emma (53:37.873)
Mm -hmm.
Emma (53:42.097)
you
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so I'm also a registered psychotherapist. So I alluded to this earlier, but when we were first kind of on the ground with the student church, when we were first graduated from our undergrad, I was also doing my master's degree in spiritual care and psychotherapy. So at that time we got pregnant with our first child. And so when I graduated from that program, actually she was like six weeks old, like at the graduation ceremony kind of. So that kind of was a whirlwind. And so I went into
private practice, I guess probably seven or eight years ago now, and started seeing clients and it was kind of part -time. And during that time, Brandon was going, hey, why don't you expand this? Why don't you grow this? You've got a wait list. Why don't you see if you can continue to grow this? I just didn't feel like the right time as I was getting experience under my belt and you're leading the church and growing it. It was a great side business. I could help people kind of tangibly and...
from the Christian worldview is always kind of my space to work out of as a psychotherapist. So anyways, in the last couple of years, we expanded actually into what's now called Ember Counseling and Training. And so now there's, I guess, seven other therapists total, or seven therapists total, part of the business we brought partners on last year. And the whole idea of this counseling agency is that we do therapy from a Christian worldview.
Rob Chartrand (54:47.145)
Mm
Rob Chartrand (55:01.64)
Okay.
Emma (55:11.346)
And so all of our therapists are Christians, all of them are offering top -notch therapy. And we're just expanding into the training space too, where we can now support churches. We're launching a church partnership program where we can just support pastors who are going, I don't know what to do when all of a sudden someone comes into my office and they're suicidal or this person is having an affair. There's just deep mental health issues within the church. I don't know what to do. So we wanna help, we wanna train staff, we wanna train congregations.
just give people some tools that they can use because mental health and mental illness is just so big right now. It's such a big challenge in today's day and age. So yeah, yeah, that's another passion for sure.
Rob Chartrand (55:56.307)
Wow. Have you guys had a chance to read Jonathan Heights, the anxious generation book yet?
Emma (56:00.968)
Yeah, we just ordered it, didn't we? It just arrived from Amazon last week.
Brandon Richardson (56:04.024)
Yeah, I read the introduction, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (56:04.659)
Yeah, so good. Yeah. Yeah. So how has your training and your experience doing this Emma helped you in your role as a, as a pastor as a co lead pastor?
Emma (56:20.011)
Yeah, I think it's given a bit of a unique voice from the platform in preaching. I'd say that's one space where I'm just carrying maybe a different perspective or idea of the application portion of scripture. I think it helps quite a bit in my leadership and my ability to coach and work with other leaders and pastors and just how they're relating to people one -on -one and how we can navigate conflict and how we can navigate people who are struggling with things and how we can
do our own work with our own stuff that's actually living under the surface but coming out a totally different way. And so I think that I offer a level of support to our staff and even to Brandon and things like that, just by having another frame of reference and another perspective on things from this world of psychology.
Rob Chartrand (57:07.197)
Yeah. Okay. So when Brandon's struggling, he lays down on the couch, you pull out your pen and paper, put on some glasses and say, okay, Brandon, tell me, tell me about your mother.
Brandon Richardson (57:13.7)
Sorry.
Emma (57:17.406)
That's right, that's right. I turned into Freud. Yeah, no, just no lying on the couch. Never had that, but yeah, definitely good conversations. Not always about his mom.
Brandon Richardson (57:17.423)
That's right.
Rob Chartrand (57:25.673)
Ha ha ha.
Rob Chartrand (57:31.091)
Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about the church right now. Obviously merger has its own challenges. Any, any, I mean, you're just into this. Like you're just a year into this. It's crazy. So what are some of the challenges you're facing or even anticipating in the next bit here?
Brandon Richardson (57:46.211)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Richardson (57:54.402)
Yeah, that's a great question. The one thing that I know has not always been true for us, but is very true for us right now is because God orchestrated this whole thing, we could get into so many more details, but because we have sensed his hand and his leading across this whole merge,
The reality is that it's been very good. Comparatively speaking, it's been very easy. And when I say easy, would go.
Well, what about all those late nights and board meetings that you were at and all the rest and the nights where I felt like, you know, am I ever going to be able to put my kids to bed and say good night? Because we were doing so much at one time. All I mean is that we sense God's spirit in all of those conversations. It was a lot of work, hard work, but relative to what it could have been, it's been very easy.
And so I look back with a lot of gratitude. Our current challenges continue to emerge just from normal church challenges. You know, how can we continue to operate on mission? How can we make sure that we, look outwards as we grow inwards, inward in our own discipleship? I would say that as things, as organizations grow complex, you really have to fight hard for simplicity.
And so right now our greatest challenge is just integrating new systems and processes to allow ministry to flow more easily. And so, you know, I'm, right now reading a lot of books on, how to systematize things, in a way that doesn't quench mission, but really releases mission talking to executive pastors and going, Hey, what are some of the best moves that you've made? hiring a consultant.
Rob Chartrand (59:34.714)
Interesting.
Brandon Richardson (59:58.62)
and having conversations around how do we just continue to develop as a team. I think that we have all come to the table through this merge very gifted and yet there's an opportunity here to level up because it is the start of something new. And so I just recently hired for instance, one of my good friends at Village Church.
to evaluate our own preaching team. And so he's watching almost like game tape and putting together what he perceives as core values. And then I'm writing down what I think our core values should be and where are they actually missing? And he's sitting down with some of our teaching team and guiding them through some of the ways they should be growing. If these are the values we actually want to espouse as a preaching team. so we're getting into some of this stuff that I think for some, their eyes would glaze over and go outside, you know.
That's not why I got into ministry. I wouldn't want to do any of that. But I think for myself, while I always want to do ministry more, I'm seeing the benefit of actually helping others grow in their giftings with God, how much more ministry is able to happen. And so we're just in that.
If they're storming, norming and performing, we're in that norming phase of just really, really just trying to normalize some of the changes. so everybody can know how we do things as a church. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (01:01:15.964)
Okay. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (01:01:25.575)
Yeah, well, and I hope, I mean, you're gonna season is so much change that you could just have a moment to catch your breath just for a bit here and, and work on the organization rather than always in the organization. Like it sounds like you're, you're, really focusing on let's, let's step back, let's calibrate, let's listen to other voices and, learn and, and that's going to create a platform, a base, if I can use that word, for, for the next iteration of
Brandon Richardson (01:01:34.937)
Yeah.
That's right.
Brandon Richardson (01:01:46.967)
Yes.
Brandon Richardson (01:01:50.862)
That's right. That's right.
Rob Chartrand (01:01:54.109)
you know, what God wants to do, which I think is really healthy. I because if you're in turmoil all the time, it's really hard for your people, right, to know what's next.
Brandon Richardson (01:01:56.515)
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (01:02:00.825)
Yes.
Brandon Richardson (01:02:05.118)
yeah. It's, it's almost, I was on a walk earlier this morning with our kids. we do online prayer morning every Thursday. And so they were towing along and, you know, if I'm, if I'm in a sprint, because I feel like I got to get somewhere as a parent, you know, the kids behind us are, they're going, yeah, when, when are we going to get a break here, dad?
Rob Chartrand (01:02:24.467)
getting dragged.
Yeah.
Brandon Richardson (01:02:29.42)
Now, I wouldn't say I'm everybody's dad in our church, but the same thing happens with leaders. If we were just running with our heads cut off, eventually the people are leading and going, Hey, are we ever going to get a breath here? And so I feel that already within a year of this merge, we have a breath and that's, that's credit to God. But then it's also credit to you. have an incredible overseer team, a group of pastors that help MNI, an incredible board.
Rob Chartrand (01:02:33.727)
Sure.
Brandon Richardson (01:02:54.262)
that really knows how it functions and releases ministry to do ministry. And then our staff are phenomenal and have been up for the task of getting to know, you know, new people and integrate their lives together. And that has just worked its way down through all of our volunteer leaders and our volunteer congregation.
It's been one of the most rewarding things that we've been through. And so when you can catch a breath, you have to take it and you've got to get perspective and distance and work on things so that you don't go into the next round of busyness and as you said, turmoil when it comes and all the things life will throw at us. You have to take that breath and do something with it. So that's what we're hoping to do right now. Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (01:03:38.611)
Yeah, yeah. So good. Well, our time is almost gone here. This has been such a rich conversation. And I wonder if in our final moments together, if you could just take a moment and, you know, as we think about ministry leaders across the country, they are winding up for the fall season, they're busy lives, their own family life is crazy now, summer has gone, know, winter is coming, as it were.
Brandon Richardson (01:04:07.704)
Yeah, that's right.
Rob Chartrand (01:04:08.287)
I wonder if you guys could just share a word of encouragement to our ministry leaders who are listening today. Emma, do you want to start with you?
Brandon Richardson (01:04:15.756)
and the way you start.
Emma (01:04:17.939)
Yeah, yeah, I think that the first thing that comes to mind is to not pick up what isn't yours to carry. That would be my encouragement is sometimes we put all the pressure on ourselves that we need to save people, we need to create something, we need to be enough, we need to be big enough. And sometimes we're just trying to compensate a little bit for something there. And I think it's important for us to recognize that God will build his church and that if we just submit that to him. And so maybe the encouragement actually going into this fall is just like,
Love your spouse really well, love your kids really well, encourage the people around you, keep meeting with Jesus. Don't worry so much about the platform and the issues and the challenges within the church, but keep pointing people to Jesus, keep loving him, and allow your soul to be refreshed even in the midst of so much busyness. Because I think that that's the place where we actually...
Rob Chartrand (01:04:50.281)
Hmm.
Emma (01:05:14.13)
hear the voice of God, that we can actually follow that, we can have the courage to do what he's calling us to do. So that's just my, there's my encouragement.
Rob Chartrand (01:05:21.127)
Yeah. Amen. Amen. Go ahead, Brandon.
Brandon Richardson (01:05:23.226)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, if you're listening, you've made it this far in the podcast, our story. it's just, I would like to say to every leader that's, that's listening, we are in it with you. Our story is not actually one of mountaintop to just mountaintop. walked through valleys for longer than I'd like to admit.
Rob Chartrand (01:05:31.081)
you
Brandon Richardson (01:05:46.806)
and some really dark moments. so Emma and I, in this season where we are getting a breath, have really been reflecting on this idea of the ministry of staying.
what it looks like to just stay, just to remain faithful, to rely on God's strength when you feel like you've got nothing left in the gas tank. And one of my favorite verses within scripture is, anyone who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for service in the kingdom of God. And I've often thought about how hard that is and the muscle of just keeping your hands on the plow. But,
Rob Chartrand (01:06:01.119)
Hmm.
Brandon Richardson (01:06:24.236)
As I've analyzed it recently, actually realized it's less about our effort of having our hand on the plow and it's more about where our gaze is. And it says anyone who looks back, that's the problem is when we look back and what we've begun to learn through our ministry years and life following Jesus is just keep your eyes on Jesus. And the plowing becomes a little bit easier. It becomes a little bit straighter. The harvest is a little bit better. And so if anything,
Rob Chartrand (01:06:51.199)
Hmm.
Brandon Richardson (01:06:54.308)
There have been seasons where I have encouraged people to do that and I haven't been doing it myself. But in this season where keeping my eyes on Jesus has been easier than ever, I'm realizing there's always new levels to go with God. And so just submit yourself, be honest before Him. He knows the mess that you're in or how good you're doing.
So either go with him with a plea or with gratitude, but just go to him and be honest with those around you. Because I think the only reason we're here today is because we've remained vulnerable at every stage. And that was part of us, the ministry of staying for ourselves. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (01:07:37.801)
Yeah, yeah, so good, so good. Amen and amen. Well, friends, thanks so much for giving your time to share with ministry leaders today. Emma and Brandon, we hope to get you back on the podcast again soon and be praying for you guys as you continue the journey into this coming ministry season.
Brandon Richardson (01:07:53.454)
Thanks.
Emma (01:07:57.578)
Thanks, Rob.
Brandon Richardson (01:07:57.838)
Well, thanks for all you're doing, Rob.
Rob Chartrand (01:08:00.039)
All right, God bless.