Disciple-making, Emerging Adults, and University Campuses with Robin Wallar
Hey. Welcome to Church in the North, a podcast by ministry leaders and for ministry leaders. I'm your host, Rob Chartrand, program coordinator for Christian ministry at Briarcrest College. And I'm joined by my cohost, Jeff Dresser, assistant professor of worship arts. Say hello.
Rob Chartrand:Hey, Rob. And, of course, Dan Goddard, lead pastor of Victory Church in Moose Jaw. Say hi, Dan. Hello, everybody. Alright.
Rob Chartrand:Hey. We are back in studio here in Caronport, Saskatchewan, and, I got some things to talk about. First of all, did you know, guys, that, just this last Saturday, we had what was called the autumn equinox. Have you heard of that before?
Geoff Dresser:Mhmm. The autumnal equinox.
Rob Chartrand:Oh, oh, look at you speaking all Latin y, like, and stuff. Okay. That's because I have
Geoff Dresser:a student named Autumn, and I made an autumnal equinox joke with her that did not land.
Rob Chartrand:Wow. So you are very wise in the ways of autumn equinoxes. Equinox. Equinox. Something like that.
Rob Chartrand:Okay. Well, hey, it's autumn season. And, you know, Dan, I heard you guys just had your fall kickoff this last weekend. How'd that go?
Dan Goddard:We did. Kicked off the season. It went great. Yeah. It's a good excuse for having a just a big fun Sunday, right, and inviting people out.
Dan Goddard:And, so now now we've launched the season, and away we go.
Rob Chartrand:That's right. Yeah. You're you're rolling into the new sermon series. I'm sure a lot of people are. And then Thanksgiving is gonna hit us.
Rob Chartrand:And before we know it, we are gonna be into Christmas season, that that time of Advent and that whole month of planning and preparation. Yeah. I don't know about you guys, but I I always found, that if I wasn't planning Christmas by now or I didn't have Christmas planned by now, I was gonna be in deep trouble by the time it showed up. Do you guys do you guys have a strategy that you've used for, kind of planning Christmas? When do you when do you start planning Christmas?
Rob Chartrand:Jeff, what what have you guys done in the past?
Geoff Dresser:Well, at a former church that I was a worship pastor at, that church did huge Christmas productions, and so our rhythm would be right after Easter. I would have to have the all the big decisions made before summer hit. Because when summer hits, everyone is off at the cottage in a way, and it's hard to get make any decisions done. And then when the fall comes, it's it's too late if you're trying to do, you know, these big productions. So so, anyway, I'm glad that that my current church does not do huge Broadway musicals, during the Christmas season so that, it doesn't become a year round thing.
Rob Chartrand:People flying on strings and,
Geoff Dresser:oh, the this church that I was at not while I was there, but they did have they had acrobats flying. They had someone ski from the balcony down to the Wow. To the stage. So, yeah, they were they were quite the quite the productions. I just I don't even know how they got all
Rob Chartrand:that snow into the auditorium. How do they do that? Like they
Geoff Dresser:Oh, they I mean, I have I have multiple stories about snow machines. Okay. So, yeah, it was,
Rob Chartrand:alright. So when you say when you say planning, like, you mean you you gotta kinda have the theme and the script by Easter, or you're, like, everyone's recruited? Like
Geoff Dresser:For me, the big thing was the the major the major players. Like, if we're doing a play or music you know, the director and the whoever's gonna write the script, who's gonna build the set. The sets were a big thing. Wow. We have to have those people committed so that when they're making their plans, you know, through the summer, the the they understand that they've committed to this.
Geoff Dresser:And then, I mean, the planning process would be sort of iterative. And as we get closer, we're getting down into more details. But those the big decisions of, you know, the themes or the main set design and, you know, the major volunteers who are gonna be involved, that had to all be settled before before everyone disappeared over the summer.
Rob Chartrand:Wow. I I can just imagine, like, all the creatives and worship arts people listening to this right now are breaking on in a
Geoff Dresser:sweat Exactly.
Rob Chartrand:Remembering what's coming. So so, obviously, you guys are are are are working in the same church together. So what do you do for
Dan Goddard:Christmas? Not nearly that complex.
Rob Chartrand:Like
Dan Goddard:so but we we do feel the pressure the same way. Right? It's just different times and different things. So it's actually right about now that we start feeling the pressure to have our schedule nailed down. Like, you know, because, Christmas always lands on a different day and Christmas Eve and all of these different things.
Dan Goddard:So you're working through that, trying to figure out which how many services are we doing and what this year
Geoff Dresser:Christmas Eve is a Sunday this year. So we've got 24 some decisions to make about that schedule.
Rob Chartrand:Big decision. Like, I I was just speaking with someone the other day about our church, and I'm like, I wonder wonder what they're gonna do because, I mean, I'm not in charge anymore. So I don't know what the decision would be, but are you guys gonna keep, are you gonna do a Sunday morning and Sunday evening, or are you just gonna say, let's just do it all on one day kind of thing, like one service?
Dan Goddard:I assume we will do a Sunday morning and Sunday evening.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I'm putting you on the spot here.
Dan Goddard:No. We we we pretty much landed on that, but Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's where it's gonna land. We're pretty pretty determined no matter what the situation that there are people in our community who would love a service on a Sunday morning, No matter what day of the year it is or what the issue is. So, we've never we've never not done one just for the sake of those folks who who might want it.
Dan Goddard:It it yeah. It's more more motivated around sort of a heart for those who who feel lonely or feel this or that
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah.
Dan Goddard:At a given time. So that's always kept us down that path. But it's it's always a debate and always a discussion, and there's always lots of heated reasons why you can do pros and cons. And so we do the schedule piece. And then and then, of course, we also have to think about, you know, what series and, yeah, what are the themes of these services gonna be and what special elements and all of that.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Do you guys do anything added on to the Christmas Eve gathering? Like, do you, like, have special events or anything tied to them?
Dan Goddard:No. Hot chocolate and various things. Try to make it something Yeah. Something special. But
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. I think, typically, families wanna get home. I think, not that everyone in your church is in a family, but, I mean, there's people got other plans and stuff, and it's
Dan Goddard:Yeah. Yeah. We do the candlelight piece that sort of gives Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. The church where, I I previously led, we did candlelight Christmas Eve service, and, and then we did multiple services because, I mean, we just had a lot of people. But Right. We actually hired a sleigh ride company to come in Yeah. Horse drawn sleighs, and we had winter events in between the the services.
Rob Chartrand:So, like, we did an afternoon one and then an early evening one. Yeah. And so it was like a family event. Petting zoo in our gym. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:I I spent one late night, Christmas Eve cleaning up after that petting zoo because because I didn't want all my all my staff had young families. I'm like, guys, you just go home, and and no one's around. So I was mopping that floor with the smell of animal dung floating in the beer. Wow. But it was worth it.
Rob Chartrand:It it was it was totally worth it. Anyway so, you know, pastors, we get a lot of ideas for Christmas Eve. Like, where where do you guys where do you go to for Christmas Eve ideas? Do you just kinda do the same thing, or is it you know, what what do you guys do?
Dan Goddard:Yeah. Wait. I I mean, I honestly think Christmas Eve is such a unique once a year thing that for us, we we don't have to come up with something totally different.
Rob Chartrand:Right.
Dan Goddard:You The message is pretty similar.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
Dan Goddard:Yeah. The carols are carols. You know, what people are looking for is something traditional usually. Mhmm. So we do try to come up with some special element or some special, you know, something that's that makes it, fun for people to you know, something to talk about after, Be like, woah, that that musical piece or that piece was special.
Dan Goddard:But but in general, we're not going, super crazy to come up with something totally creative and out of the box.
Rob Chartrand:Jeff, do you guys, like, draw on certain sources for creative elements during Christmas Eve?
Geoff Dresser:I mean, for me, not so much during Christmas Eve because I think people do want something traditional. Right. And, when you you know, let's do a crazy jazz arrangement of a Christmas carol. My experience is that just makes people mad because they can almost sing along, but not not quite. Yeah.
Geoff Dresser:And, yeah, so for those I mean, at my previous church that did huge, big productions, we still kept Christmas Eve pretty traditional, and more of the creative elements would go during the there'd be a Christmas musical or some of the Sundays during December. Right. We might do, more creative elements. And the other piece is sort of managing the the energy and the availability of your volunteers.
RobChartrand:Yeah.
Geoff Dresser:So you, you know, people are so busy that time of year. If you're doing something really creative on Christmas Eve that requires a week worth of rehearsals, that's gonna be a tough sell for your for your volunteers. I mean, it's tough enough just getting volunteers who will, who are willing to serve for multiple services on Christmas Eve when there's, you know, usually, if they're in a family, they've got family events and other things that, that they wanna be doing.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah. My my, daughter works at a, a very large church in Edmonton, and they do 7 Christmas Eve services. Yeah. Like, it's just a all day long.
Rob Chartrand:It's full. Like Yeah. And really excellent quality. They used to do a musical. They canceled doing the Christmas musical idea like like your church because they just thought it wasn't actually, you know, getting the results that all the effort they put into it, all the money they put into it.
Rob Chartrand:So they just said, let's just make Christmas Eve special. And so 7 Christmas Eve. And her is a lead guitarist. He plays in all of them. And last year, she was the host in all of them.
Rob Chartrand:So, basically, all day, she's there and Right. And for every service is up speaking. So that that's a commitment for for Christmas.
Dan Goddard:It is. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. So, you you visit other churches. I'm and I know I do. I try to, get around to visit other churches, especially in my role here at Briarcrest. As a pastor, I I always found it hard sitting in other services because, like, I find myself either I'm I'm critiquing it or I'm like, oh, that's a good idea.
Rob Chartrand:Where's my, you know, where's my pen and paper? And, you know, I wanna write it down and all of a sudden you guys you guys find it difficult, entering in? Or do you have, like, strategies you have that you just enter right in and you just don't have that struggle? Maybe I'm maybe I'm maybe I'm the only one here, you know. But some of the peep some of my listeners, I I know I'm reading your mail right now.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. How about you, Dan?
Dan Goddard:I mean, I'm a both and guy, so I I definitely I love going to visit other churches partly because it's just fun to be there and not be in charge or have have responsibilities. So it's just nice, you know, you can worship, you can listen, engage and that kind of thing. And being a stranger a little bit is nice too, like not feeling the pressure of those those pieces.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
Dan Goddard:But then I also love cleaning everything I can. So I mean, I'm there with the camera and stealing every brochure, walking through every nook and cranny. I've gotten kicked out of so many places and churches because I'm I'm touring it, you know, and
Rob Chartrand:they're like, what are you doing here? I'm a strange man in the basement with a camera. I'm a
Dan Goddard:pastor, really, you know? And, but yeah. So I I'm sort of, no apologies, both and enjoyer of of checking out other churches.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. You have that challenge, Jeff?
Geoff Dresser:Yeah. Definitely. And the, I mean, I dealt with performance anxiety earlier on in in my, career. And, in reading through that, there's this sort of inner narrative that that that talks to yourself, that can say negative things to yourself when you're trying to perform. And it's the same discipline and sort of shutting that down and and being in the moment that I I need to go through that when I'm at, like, another church.
Geoff Dresser:And if I just wanna be present in the worship service, I I really have to, you know, make that choice and then work on keeping that inner voice silent because, yeah, I'll be like that. The b string on that guitar is out of tune, and, you know, this, these guys are speeding up in the bridge here, and I will be critiquing that. And it's I mean, I can do the same thing at my church. It's not like our church is perfect. There are lots of things that, that you can notice there that could be improved, but it's, you know, it's ultimately me that's missing out on an opportunity to to enter into worship and to be ministered to.
Geoff Dresser:And I tell myself that afterwards, I I can reflect back and sort of glean those those things. And and in teaching, in teaching, you know, worship leadership here, like when we do workshops in classes where someone's leading a song, say, for instance, I tell the students, like, let's let's enter into this as a, you know, as a worship service. Yeah. And then later, when it's over, we'll reflect back on it rather than trying to I'm gonna try to worship and sort of academically, criticize and analyze what's happening. It's it's it's just too hard to do both of those things at the same time.
Geoff Dresser:Totally.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. It's like teaching homiletics class. Same thing when the students are listening to sermons. Allow the sermon, first of all, to speak to you.
Dan Goddard:Right.
Rob Chartrand:And then you can critique it. But it's it is it is challenging.
Dan Goddard:It is challenging. And and, I mean, for us as pastor Sue, every Sunday, it's a challenge. Right? Because you wanna engage in the service in in every aspect. Yep.
Dan Goddard:But at the same time, you're evaluating, you know, is this working and not working?
Rob Chartrand:Reading the crowd. You're like, you know, what's it gonna be like when I get up there? You're thinking about your message a little bit, your segues, and, yeah, it's it's a challenge. I'm I'm a homiletics professor. I also mark sermons for one of our alliance districts.
Rob Chartrand:Right? So I'm I'm reading and listening sermons all the time, putting them all through a rubric, giving them feedback. Yeah. So it's it's really hard. Like, it really is hard for me to sit through a sermon without
Dan Goddard:Right.
Rob Chartrand:Starting to lean into to criticize it. So I really have to be, like, very intentional about speaking to myself and saying, Ron, you just need to listen to this, right, and allow God to speak to you. Otherwise, I just slip into this, critiquing mode. And I'm I'm my own worst critic, of course. But,
Dan Goddard:yeah. I have a lot of times in the in the singing portion of the service where I just feel the the spirit whispers to me, or maybe it's my own spirit just awakening me. But it's like, hey, God's here in this moment. You can fellowship with the Lord. You can you can worship God too while you think about all these other pieces, you know, and it's important to to lean that direction.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. So I I hope our our listeners are able to do that in their own ministry context as well. Well, we've been, receiving some positive feedback from listeners just in the last couple weeks. I've got some great emails. I haven't forwarded them all to you guys yet, but I'm gonna I'm gonna pass them on.
Rob Chartrand:So I just wanna, thank our listeners for that feedback. We certainly do covet it. And, just also some suggestions on some guests, that we could have on the show here. So that's really helpful. So if if, people want to, send us information, do you guys know the email address that they send it to to get it to us?
Dan Goddard:I do
Geoff Dresser:not. I also do not.
Rob Chartrand:Let's Oh.
Geoff Dresser:Why don't you tell us, Rob? Let me tell you.
Rob Chartrand:It's podcast at Briarcrest dotca. Really, really easy. Yeah. Simple. So, thanks for sending that in, and and keep on doing it, guys, because we wanna grow together with you.
Rob Chartrand:Well, this week, we have Robin Waller on the show, and he's the lead pastor of Lift Church in the Toronto Hamilton area. And this is it's it's very fascinating, what the the work that they're doing out there. So it's a it's a missional, disciple making, multisite movement of churches on university campuses. And it's been going for for quite some time, like, for over a decade. So it's a really unique model.
Rob Chartrand:It's a really fascinating story. So, yeah, looking forward to listening to that interview this week. Well, I'm listening to myself in the interview this week. That'd be good. But, yeah, I hope you guys can lean into that.
Rob Chartrand:So hey. Thanks, Dan. And thanks, Jeff, for joining us this morning. And, we will see you all next week. Sounds good.
Rob Chartrand:Well, hey, Robin Waller. Thank you for joining us with the Church in the North podcast. We're it's great to have you here, with us. And, of course, we've spent some time together already chatting a little bit about the show today. For our listeners that don't know, Robin, he is the lead pastor of Lift Church.
Rob Chartrand:I think when we say the Hamilton region of Canada, is that kind of it? But, you're all over the map. Yeah. Yeah.
RobChartrand:Yeah. All over, the Toronto, Hamilton area.
Rob Chartrand:Awesome. Well, why why don't we get get right into it? Rob, why don't you tell us a little bit about the church you lead, Lift Church? What is it, and maybe give us a little bit of background on your your guys' story, how you got into it.
RobChartrand:Yeah. So, Lift Church, we basically very simply exist to see people know Jesus and be made alive and, the goodness that he offers us, but specifically by being the church on every campus. And so we have a dream to plant a a church, a thriving church on every university campus. And, yeah, it's been quite a ride. We've been at it for 17 years now.
Rob Chartrand:Wow.
RobChartrand:And, but kind of rebooted about 10 years ago. My wife and I were part of a, really a restart, and I'm sure we'll get into that story for parts of it. But, yeah, about 8 years ago, we started planting churches and, reproducing, and over the last number of years have planted I think we're on to 7 7 churches now. Wow. 7 different locations, and lots of university students, but lots of also not university students, pretty diverse community, and, yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Okay. Well, so let's take us take us back to the beginning a little bit. What did Lift Church exist before you, or were you the founder? And, if you were, like, how did how did you where'd the idea come from? How to get started?
RobChartrand:Yeah. So kind of a crazy story. I, I joined our church as a 1st year engineering student right before day 1. It was a a church plant kind of just in concept at the time, and I was searching for a church. I really felt like we needed a church on the university campus, and so from my side, I prayed a prayer.
RobChartrand:This is way back in 2006. I said, lord, either, you can bring me a church on campus. I don't exactly know what I had in mind when I prayed that, or I threatened the Lord. I said, which I highly recommend. And I said, you know, or I'll just start one here in my dorm room.
RobChartrand:And, I guess the Lord just felt like that was a really bad idea. And 3 days later, I got a call from a guy who said he was starting a church on the university campus. And, you know, when we started, we we started as a fairly, just sort of ordinary looking church. At that time, in the mid 2000, there were quite a few churches on university campuses. The format was kind of established, and we we didn't do anything super innovative, but we did we did manage to reach some people and, but we really started to run into challenges about year 3 or 4.
RobChartrand:University students obviously don't have any money. I didn't have any money. I was still a university student, and, sustaining a traditional funding model for a church plant really wasn't working for us. And, and so out of that, the person who who started it, he moved on, to take on, a sort of a traditional family church, a large church in the area. And we, we kind of were just wandering the wilderness for a little while trying to figure out who are we, what are we doing.
RobChartrand:I started my career as a software engineer in that time that my my wife and I got married. And, yeah. And so we we had the opportunity to take on the leadership back in 2012. The church had kind of dwindled to about 20, 25 people, and, my wife and I sort of just said, well, I guess we'll lead it. And we we said, you know, we don't need we don't need to be paid.
RobChartrand:We don't need a traditional role. We just if you just give us space to lead, we'll we'll do it. And, Wow. It was amazing.
Rob Chartrand:So so did you have any, like, theological or discipleship training back then? I mean, what what was what was your what was your background? I mean, you're obviously a software engineer. They're not teaching you, the book of Romans. So what
RobChartrand:Yeah. That's right. And and my wife's a publicist, so, you know, she wasn't learning the book of Romans either. And so, you know, yeah, we, you know, we didn't have any formal training. You know?
RobChartrand:We hadn't gone to seminary, still haven't gone to seminary, or bible college. But we had experienced, both my wife and I, the power of life on life discipleship, and the incredible fruit that can happen when somebody invests in somebody else. And so I was very blessed through my teenage years to have some great disciplers in my life. You know, I had this this youth pastor actually, who was the least cool youth pastor ever. She would say that, you know, she was she was older, and, you know, just wasn't wasn't set up in to run the traditional youth ministry.
RobChartrand:But out of that, she understood that what she could do was she could equip us, to lead. And so she took a back seat and let us take kind of a front seat. And out of that, just taught us to lead, taught us to to teach scripture, taught us to communicate scripture publicly, really like, the leadership work that she did in my life was was really quite phenomenal. Her name was Kristofsky, and and so out of that came into our church at McMasters a 1st year and our original, founding pastor Dave Slater. He took me under his wing.
RobChartrand:He taught me, discipled me, invested into me. And so what we didn't what we lacked in formal training, we had received in what I think is the biblical model for raising leaders, which is life on life discipleship.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah.
RobChartrand:And so yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. And do value those youth pastors, no matter what they Yeah. What they're like when Yeah.
RobChartrand:That's right.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Wow. Okay. So, so let's jump ahead again to where we are at with, with your with your church plant and, you guys trying to find your way there. What happened next?
RobChartrand:Yeah. So so 2012, we we took over, and my wife and I knew that, you know, we were working full time, and we had no plans to change that. And so we just said, you know, let's just let's just try to be really clear on who we are and where we're going, just really believing in the power of a clear vision, and so we we clarified. We said, look, we're we're just a church, and we're a church that's committed to the university campus. And that helped people because there was a real sense of we don't know who we are, and it's very hard for people to invest in something when there isn't clear direction or clear vision, clear values.
RobChartrand:And And so that meant we were also clear on what we were not. We were not gonna look like a traditional family church, and we felt like that was okay. Right. And then we sat any or or we sat people down, and we just started to dream together, pray together, and say, Lord, what what could we do? And it was incredible.
RobChartrand:Like, it it it just exploded between 2012 and 2014, went from 25 people into many, many hundreds coming out on Sundays and in small groups. We called them simple churches, still do. And, we went from having, like, a tiny church to having a relatively large church in a span of, you know, just 2 years. And, those are really fun fun vibrant years for us.
Rob Chartrand:Now was that just at one campus, or had you gone to more than one campus at the time?
RobChartrand:No. The, at that time, we were just at McMaster, and we were just grateful to be alive, in some senses. But we started to way back in 2008, so before any of this had happened, I had quite a clear, clear picture. You could might call it a vision in my mind of a of a dandelion blowing in the wind, and the seeds sort of being scattered, and understood that to be a sort of a call to to to become a church planting church.
Rob Chartrand:K.
RobChartrand:And so we had tucked that away, and about 7 years later started to feel that that birth within us again. And so in 2015, we stepped out to plant, our second campus, at Brock University.
Rob Chartrand:Okay.
RobChartrand:Basically copying the model, that had helped us, gain some some success at McMaster, and, that began our journey, towards church planting, and reproducing.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. The, you know, they say the second campus is often the the biggest challenge. And once you figure out a lot of things there, then it's much more easy to multiply campuses after that. Did you guys face any specific challenges going to a second campus?
RobChartrand:Oh, man. It was brutal. Okay. It was, it was the steepest learning curve. You so we were we we I was still working full time as an engineer.
RobChartrand:I was commuting and Wow. So was my wife, in in her career downtown Toronto. And, we we basically tried to grow on the back of a fairly attractional style of of church Okay. Preaching, good music.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And, we we knew that it it's not hard to gather, young adults in a room if your music's good and your teaching's good. Like, they'll show up, or at least they they did then. I think things have changed a little bit now.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:But we learned, some pretty painful lessons that that at the end of the day, it's the vision and values that hold us together, not the the format of what we do. And, we discovered that we couldn't export our leadership. We had a real leadership challenge.
Rob Chartrand:Mhmm.
RobChartrand:Although we could find competent people, like some really talented people to provide, direction and leadership, because we hadn't raised them in our own context to carry and and value what we valued, when we tried to send them, maintaining cohesion was impossible.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And so that was the first key learning that was quite quite painful because those are some some really good friends, and and and it didn't work, unfortunately.
Rob Chartrand:So they began with you, but you sent them out. But then as they got there, there was there was sort of a mission drift once they arrived?
RobChartrand:No. The they they didn't begin with us.
Rob Chartrand:Okay. So they were never with Yeah. In the movement? Okay.
RobChartrand:Yeah. So they weren't they weren't sort of one of us. Yeah. They were friends from from outside, really dear friends, and, but had and and love the Lord, but had some slightly different priorities, ways of seeing things, ways of seeing church than than my wife and I did. And and so that alignment started to create some challenges in the long run.
RobChartrand:Yeah. But the bigger issue was was that we realized pretty quickly that that we were really blessed with with exceptional talent, at McMaster, in terms of leadership capabilities, music capabilities, teaching capabilities, organizational capabilities. And we we learned that we there was no chance to raise up enough leaders to be able to reproduce the number of churches that the lord was putting on our heart if our model required superstars.
Rob Chartrand:Right.
RobChartrand:And at that time, our model required superstars, unicorns. Like, you know, if somebody's talent like, super talented, it's amazing what they can achieve. But, you know, that was, like, 1 in a 1000 for us. And we needed, like, dozens and dozens and dozens or, like, we felt like that's what we needed. So we started to really look at, our model from a leadership development standpoint and say, hey.
RobChartrand:Actually, the way we're thinking is too leadership heavy. It's too expensive. It's too complicated. It's too slow to scale to the level where we can actually plant a church on every campus. And so we started to reimagine things.
Geoff Dresser:Okay.
RobChartrand:This would be back in 2018 probably.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. So, I mean, you've got a challenge then with replicating your DNA, which is hard if somebody's never experienced church as you know it and and the culture of your local church and trying to replicate that, because people do what they wanna do or what they know. Right? So if they've never been there and then you have a a leadership replication problem or a a polity or or ministry style replication problem. You need that talent to do it to pull it off.
Rob Chartrand:So what did you guys do? Did you did you did you dumb it down? Did you lower the expectations? Did you do a radical do over?
RobChartrand:Yeah. So we, I'd say we had a real come to Jesus moment. Yeah. I think what had happened was that we grew so quickly that some of the core values, that were super important to to me personally, but also I think super key to what the Lord did in our church had gotten lost along the way, particularly, this really core value of the priesthood of all believers.
Rob Chartrand:K.
RobChartrand:That that we wanted to see all believers equipped and sent into the mission field, and a subtle distinction between the called and the not quite as called started to to creep into our thinking. And and when we started to realize that, I was I was pretty shocked. I felt like, wow. This is not this is not at all what what was in my heart, or what I felt the Lord had called us to be back in when we started leading in 2012. But 5 years and a whole lot of success and and, scrambling really to to to lead things.
RobChartrand:We kinda lost our way, on that core value. And so we started to ask the question, how could we plant churches, in a way more scalable, way more reproducible way that was rooted in, the priesthood of all believers?
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And I actually had a a quite a powerful conversation. I met, a church planting organization, randomly went out for lunch with their leaders. And, every now and again, the lord, I guess, just puts people in your life that say the right thing in the right moment. And, this woman who I I met and was just hearing our story just looked at me, and she said, it sounds like you've just become really cynical. And, specifically, what I was cynical about was, the idea that, that we could call Christians to actually be obedient to the great commission, and expect like, actually expect a church to respond to that call.
RobChartrand:Like, I think there had been a cynicism either. Maybe they won't. Right. Maybe the called will, but not everybody will. And so out of that, we started to to rethink and restructure around, okay, instead of raising superstars and planting attractional churches, what if we planted churches, where we took our small group leaders, our house church leaders, and, equipped and mobilized them to be the planters?
RobChartrand:And we, instead of paying them, we asked them to get professional jobs in whatever city, and, instead of planting by attracting lots of Christians, we started with just evangelism, good old fashioned sharing of the gospel. And we realized that we were actually pretty good at that, and that that was something we knew how to raise. We didn't really know how to raise the unicorn leaders, but we knew how to raise competent house church leaders, and we knew how to do, sort of relational evangelism, and we knew how to scale it. Like, we were because we were already doing all of that.
Rob Chartrand:So were you still in your second campus by this point, or were you moved on to other campuses, launched?
RobChartrand:No. By this time, we were on our 4th campus.
Rob Chartrand:Okay.
RobChartrand:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So we planted a few more and
Rob Chartrand:So the other campuses kind of get planted in more of the classic church planning model, which is like Sunday is everything, and and you gotta get the band and the teaching in place. And then from there, you build your your other ministries kind of around that. Is that how they went launched? Or
RobChartrand:Yeah. That's exactly what happened.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. So this would have been a real paradigm shift for your church to say, okay. You know, we're not gonna do it that way. We're going to, actually go small and move towards, you know, missional discipling leaders launching smaller movements first. Is that is that correct?
Rob Chartrand:Is that a good assessment? Or
RobChartrand:Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was, it was like a 180, in some ways. Certainly, many people perceived it as a 180.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:I think from my perspective, I felt like it was a, a returning to who we always were. Yeah. But we got lost. Yeah. But, yeah, there was definitely, it was, you know, it was it was not universally well received or even well understood.
RobChartrand:And, yeah, those were probably the most challenging challenging years of my life ever on, just my leadership.
Rob Chartrand:Okay. Talk talk a little bit
RobChartrand:more about that. And steering that. Yeah. Yes. So, you know, as I've as I've touched on, there was a lot of of really precious relationships, that we had called to come kind of labor with us, both from within, and outside the church.
RobChartrand:But as we started to figure out who we really were and what we really wanted to do, a lot of those relationships weren't weren't aligned. Yeah. And, I was a young leader, and, I'm I mean, I'm still not very old, but at that time, I I definitely had some deficiencies in my my leadership style. And so I made mistakes, but I think at the core of it, there was a a perception of, not everybody wanted to go where we were going.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:There was, and and, you know, it got thrown out in all kinds of crazy ways. I had team members calling our staff telling them that I was out of my mind. They should quit their jobs. They were wasting their life.
Geoff Dresser:Oh, wow.
RobChartrand:These are like these I had a team member threaten to sue us because we shut down one of their ministries, so that we could refocus on evangelism. I I mean, it was ugly. It was really ugly. About, I would say, half the church left.
Rob Chartrand:Wow.
RobChartrand:And several $100,000 of funding walked out the door.
Rob Chartrand:At all of your campuses or or just your main campus?
RobChartrand:Everywhere across the board. Okay. And, you know, once once young adults start talking to each other, the the sort of the the spreads. Right? And, it was in the middle of that.
RobChartrand:I was still working full time as an engineer, and it was in the middle of all of that that I felt the lord say now is the time to jump, jump and and commit full time to to leading our church. And, I was like, really hard, like, now? Like, the thing's on fire. And and I'm so glad, you know, that that we did. And although it was incredibly challenging, some of the most precious relationships came out of that some of the deepest friendships that we now have came out of that out of that battle together and kind of learned who is truly truly with us.
RobChartrand:And not to say that everybody that that parted ways, many of them, are now still serving the lord and joined other church plants and have gone on to great things. But what grieves me is many of them didn't land anywhere. Mhmm. And they took their grievances and just left church.
Rob Chartrand:Okay.
RobChartrand:And that was, you know, that was painful, to see. But we had a phrase that we used at the time, which was are we being saved by the gospel, or are we being saved by community? And we learned that what we actually had was an endemic discipleship issue. We had a vibrant community. We had a vibrant sort of gathering of people, but that did not mean that we were actually making real disciples of Jesus.
RobChartrand:And what basically happened was we said, guys, we're not gonna we're not here to entertain. We're not here to create the best show. We we really wanna we wanna raise disciples that are all in for the kingdom, and willing to give their lives for for Jesus. And so, really, we exposed our own issue.
Rob Chartrand:Right. Would would you would you even say, like, you exposed your own idolatry? I mean, that the challenge in in ministry is your your ministry or your form of ministry or your community itself, your church itself does get elevated above the gospel and Jesus. And, when that's taken away, you know, as Calvin would say, I mean, it's like smoke rising from the idols, you know, from the altars of our idolatry. Right?
Rob Chartrand:You you your reaction to when it gets taken away exposes something about yourself and about what you truly value. You know what I'm saying? So
RobChartrand:100 hun a 100%. So often, what we value in church, are are basically just idols. Yeah. And we we were touching all the most sacred ones, worship team, women's ministry, men's ministry, fun events, and then we were replacing it with a call to go and actually tell people about Jesus.
Rob Chartrand:Right.
RobChartrand:Like, hey, like, instead of running this event, we're instead gonna ask you guys to go tell people the gospel. So instead of having a whole lot of fun and calling a church, let's go, you know, share the gospel with a stranger. And, oh, man, that that that's like a truth serum. And so
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:Yeah. It was it was pretty powerful. But as painful as it was, I would do it again 10 times over.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:The fruit that it's born and the joy that we've had and, this the what the Lord has been able to do in our church in the year since has been, truly incredible.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Well, let's put a pin in it for a minute of of that point in your timeline, but let let's talk a little bit about your core DNA. You have some core values that are are part of your DNA, and, you break it down into a phrase, everyone sent to multiply everything. So can you talk to us a little bit about that?
RobChartrand:Yeah. So, around that that whole tumultuous time, that phrase became the the anchoring value statement about who we were gonna be. And, really, it's 4 ideas packaged into a phrase. So, I'll kinda break it down. So everyone's said to multiply everything.
RobChartrand:The first word is is everyone. And, I've alluded to this already, but we had a real strong conviction of the priesthood of all believers. Yeah. That that that what God was creating in the church was a nation of priests, and that our job as a church and, especially our job as leaders in the church was to equip those priests, equip the saints for the work of the ministry as it says in Ephesians. And so that meant that we needed to to have a the central value that everyone was called to ministry Yeah.
RobChartrand:And to mission and to kingdom work, and that there was no divide between the the sort of the more called and the not quite so called, and, that I was a complete like, I was just an ordinary follower of Jesus. I might be leading the church. I might have a greater part of the kingdom, fulfill the great commission, do the work of the ministry. And so I'm a part of the kingdom, fulfill the great commission, do the work of the ministry. And so we wanted to to really root into this idea of of everyone.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:The second the second piece, if you wanna if you wanna jump in, you can interrupt me too. I can just Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah. All the while. I mean, there's so much we can talk about, but let's get through all 4, and then we can wheel back if we need to.
RobChartrand:Sure. Sure. Yeah. So scent, The we realized that there's there's 2 core impulses, in the church, that are sort of working at odds or two forces. We have a a gathering force, and then there's descending Yeah.
RobChartrand:Force. There's this, there's this incarnating of the gospel, this going and this being amongst the people, and then there's the the sending of the gospel, to go and be amongst other people. There's the the sharing a meal together, and then there's the going, the feeding the person you don't know. And so we started to to reflect on this this duality of forces that were at play in the church, and we realized that that it was the sending force that was the hardest to keep in focus. You know, our people didn't need a lot of encouragement to gather together.
RobChartrand:They were happy to gather together. Now in the years since, we've learned that actually the kind of gathering that we're called to is is much more challenging, as we started to study acts 2 and and that sort of thing. But but it was the sending that was really missing. And so we started to say, okay. Our our church is not just gonna exist to gather, but rather to send.
RobChartrand:And that when we say send, we mean send to plant new churches.
Rob Chartrand:Right.
RobChartrand:And so our whole church ecosystem is built around raising everyone to be a disciple maker that can be sent to make more disciple makers. And so we're as passionate about where we're not as about where we already are, and so there's the sending aspect. And then, the the multiply piece, is huge. You know, multiplication has become a bit of a trendy trendy subject in the last 4 or 5 years in the church. It's like the holy grail that everybody's trying to find, but at least in the west, we haven't quite cracked.
RobChartrand:But the core idea of multiplication was that we weren't gonna build our strategy on the talents of the few, but the gifts of everyone. And so the question wasn't how do we, build a large, you know, centralized system, but how can we rather create something that's easy to reproduce, where leaders are training leaders who are training leaders, and it's highly decentralized. And so decentralization, reproduction, the raising and descending of leaders became a core a core component. And then the word everything there, is just pointing to the fact that it's not just, the visible pieces of the ministry that we need to multiply, but it's across everything. Mhmm.
RobChartrand:We need to multiply people who can make great meals and open their homes. We need to multiply, you know, worship leaders, and we need to multiply great Yep. Yep. You know, people that can preach and teach, like, that it's the gifts of the body. Everything needs to be multiplied, not just, a few core skills.
RobChartrand:And so even right now in our church, we're sitting down with all of our team leaders and reminding them that their job as a team leader, of any team is to raise more team leaders so that we can send them to join church plants. Yeah. And so whether that means, like, we're sitting at I I sat one of our guys down that runs our setup team. I'd had a mouth for coffee last week for one of our campuses. They're just a student, a 3rd year student volunteer, and I said, hey, man.
RobChartrand:Your job is to train a generation of people that know how to create space that is welcoming to people. Job is to raise leaders so that we can send them. I said one of our biggest challenges is we we don't have enough people that know how to create welcoming spaces, and And so you gotta help us raise more leaders that can create more welcoming spaces. And he looked at me, and he was like it's like I had to, you know, his his sense of possibility went from really, really quite small to he started to see how impactful his role actually was in the broader kingdom. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. And that's that Ephesians paradigm. Right? That that God Jesus had called some to be apostles, prophets, and, you know, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to prepare the people of God for works of service, not just to do, the works of service. And I think that that trickles down to all roles within the body of Christ is we're all not just doers, but we're all equippers, and we're trying to multiply everything everywhere.
RobChartrand:Exactly.
Rob Chartrand:Let's go back to that cent paradigm. I mean, that's a you're you're you're pushing against a pretty strong tidal wave of, church ethos, which is very attractional. Right? The idea of attraction, attraction, attraction, you know, and inviting people to, you know, invite somebody to church is the common phrase, which I mean has all sorts of implications for bad ecclesiology, because
RobChartrand:there isn't a bad For sure.
Rob Chartrand:But, I mean, I mean, that's that's gonna be pretty hard for for people to, get their heads around that we are the sent people of God called by God on mission into the world. I mean, what what are some of the things that you did to to help kind of do the switch on that on that, understanding, to move from attractional to extractional, extracting the people of god into the world? Did you guys have any specific tactics you use or strategies or, maybe just teaching or what?
RobChartrand:Yeah. A little bit of everything. I think in a way, it starts by clarifying what people understand the gospel to be.
Rob Chartrand:Okay.
RobChartrand:And so so much of this actually goes back to how do we understand and relate to the gospel. The core of the gospel is sending. The father sends the son. Yeah. And he sends the son into a world that is not exactly eager to receive him.
RobChartrand:And so often we think about the gospel in essentially individualistic terms that it you know, what has Christ done, you know, to save me? But there isn't a sense of of seeing ourselves as participatory in the work of salvation, the work of bringing the good news, bringing the gospel to the nations. Yeah. To continue doing what Jesus did for us. Not not that we are those who save, obviously.
RobChartrand:You know? It it's Jesus who saves. But we're called to be ambassadors, messengers, continuing to to function as a sent people just as the father sent the son.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And so it goes back, I think, to how we understand the gospel. But then, culturally in our church, it's just become, like, what what you celebrate, you replicate.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And so we deplatformed quite a few people. We stopped celebrating the platform.
Rob Chartrand:Mhmm.
RobChartrand:And we started celebrating the sending. And so, the people who are the most celebrated in our church are those that have done and given the greatest sacrifice to be sent and put up their hands and to say, you know, I will go. And we've we've got a lot of pretty crazy stories where, you know, you'll have we have we have 1 guy in our church who felt called to to go plant a church in Mississauga. And, you know, no dis to Mississauga. No disrespect to Mississauga, but it's not the most exciting place in the world.
Rob Chartrand:Okay. Yeah.
RobChartrand:And and and he just said, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go. He had no job. He didn't know how he was gonna do it, but he's like, the Lord has sent me. So he he moved out there and and, for a year worked to, tell people the the gospel, mostly Muslim students at the, University of Toronto Mississauga campus. Yeah.
RobChartrand:And just trusted the Lord to bring him a job. And, you know, fast forward 2 years, and the Lord's good. He's working as an engineer. He managed to find a wife and get married. The leader from our church He's multiplying.
RobChartrand:Their little he's he's multiplying. You know, their churches, their little plant is is blossoming.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And so we've you know, we celebrate him. And so celebration has been a a really important And we try our hardest to every every meeting anywhere in the church, starts with celebrations of discipleship multiplication of sending.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And so
Rob Chartrand:I I we always found in our in our church, the the one that we planted, about a dozen years ago in Edmonton, Crosspoint, it's very missional DNA. But, the challenge of social media is, you know, that's very picture driven. So for example, Instagram, and and it's it's really easy to find pictures of Sunday morning, and it's really easy to find pictures of large large events. But you can't really find pictures of those missional moments because in many ways, you feel like you're violating a personal barrier or relationship. Right?
Rob Chartrand:And so you're not gonna post those pictures. And so the but the adage, you know, that, I think it's Stanley, Andy Stanley. He's like, what gets celebrated gets repeated. Right? Which which you've, just stated.
Rob Chartrand:You celebrate those things, and then people start thinking, oh, church is a Sunday morning experience. But, you know, did you face any unique challenges with that? I mean, like, with what how how you post and how you talk about things publicly?
RobChartrand:Yeah. We actually, at at some point, I don't remember when, we we we passed a rule that we were not gonna post photos of Sundays.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:We had we you know, at that time, less now, post COVID, but especially a couple of years, Sundays were bumping, like, with you know, the whole shebang, the lights, the music, the fog machines Yeah. Like, the, you know, the whole thing. And we just said we will not post photos of that, and it decimated our social media. For sure. And, and you know what?
RobChartrand:So what? The people who we were finding on social media, like, if when you win people with, you win them too. Yeah. And so the idea that, well, we'll just I used to think I will get them in the door, and then we'll reprogram them. Yeah.
RobChartrand:That's tough. But it's almost impossible. Yeah. And so instead, we just said, okay. We're gonna become the masters of the meal Okay.
RobChartrand:Of of great great meals.
Rob Chartrand:Hospitality.
RobChartrand:So our church and hospitality. Yeah. So our church eats together, I don't know, dozens of times a week, across the church. I like to talk to you about college students.
Rob Chartrand:Is everyone bringing mac and cheese, or, you got some
RobChartrand:great folks. Yeah. No. We, we've just I I don't know, created this this this value of we we eat well together. We have, a group of of quite a few people we call missionaries who are are nonstudents.
RobChartrand:They've graduated. They've committed to being a part of our church. They have jobs, doctors, engineers, nurses Yeah. Those sorts of things. And, and they they cook a lot.
RobChartrand:And, yeah. Sometimes I joke that we should we could keep, we could keep Thermos brand in business because we we buy so much Thermos product, keeping, you know, various meals hot as we we transport it, but, the the it's taken a lot of work.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And but the upshot is that, you know, that is stuff we can photograph, and we can get that out there. And, but it has been it has been challenging. Like, how do you how do you communicate and attract? But I think what it actually points to is a deeper problem.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And the deeper problem is that the core of the church if we wanna grow our churches, the core strategy needs to be life on life evangelism Yeah. Not so much advertising. If people are actually doing evangelism and I don't mean just like I shared my shared the gospel with my coworker. I mean, like, going out and intentionally finding people to tell the gospel to, in in a in a targeted and strategic way. If we're not doing that, all we're gonna reach with our advertising likely are Christians or de churched people.
Rob Chartrand:That's right. Yeah.
RobChartrand:And and, demographically, Canada is, in 20 years, will not predominantly be Christian or de churched. It will be no church experience.
Rob Chartrand:Exactly.
RobChartrand:And I don't think that they relate to our marketing campaigns on social media or our attractional style. And so what they do relate to is meals and invitation Yeah. To life and, hey. Can I tell you about Jesus?
Geoff Dresser:That's right.
Rob Chartrand:And, you know, and I think that's a really good point we need to pause on for just a minute because, I mean, you know, if we talk about attractional versus extractional, missional paradigms. Right? Attractional is bringing people to church or bringing people to the event that we host Christmas and Easter and all of that. And then extraction was extracting the people of God out on mission in the world wherever they are, whether where they eat, where they recreate, where they study, where they work, all of those places, where they live, their neighborhoods. Right?
Rob Chartrand:So there's a different paradigm here. But the de churched and if we could say unchurched, you know, just the kind of the classic breakdown. Dechurched are those who have a Christian memory. You know, either they've had church in their life at some point or they have family members who have been part of church. You know, they've grown up a little bit, and so they have some some common understanding of of church, some some sort of memory or experience.
Rob Chartrand:And then the unchurched are those who have none. Like, there's it's not even part of their world or their framework. And as emerging generations move along, the number of dechurched in the country continues to decrease and the number of unchurched continues to increase. But if our model is attractional all the time, the people that we're trying to reach continues to get smaller and smaller and smaller, and there's this whole huge percentage of the population that are unchurched that'll never darken any event that you invite them to, unless it's something that's, like you're saying, has food or people are engaging and rubbing shoulders with them 1 on 1 in relationship. Is that Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Like, a kind of a a good breakdown of what we're talking about here with your model? Yeah.
RobChartrand:I think that that's bang on. And and to give you sort of some some of our own experiences with that, in the early days, I think a big portion of our growth was from dechurched
Rob Chartrand:Okay.
RobChartrand:Students.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And around, in parallel to all the learnings that I've alluded to, we started to notice a decrease in the number of people that were responding to gospel invitations in our large format services. Yeah. 10 years ago, I could preach just about any message and do a call for salvation and have a dozen hands Yeah. Respond. But by 2017, 2018, we noticed that no one was responding.
RobChartrand:And I was like, either either I'm the problem, or or I don't know what. But when we started to realize, we realized pretty quickly that, no, the issue was that our demographics have changed. And post COVID, what we've seen is that the number of d church students, and I would say it's not just students. Students are just a reflection of the broader culture Yeah. And sort of a snapshot in time.
RobChartrand:The number of dechurched has radically decreased, and the number of unchurched is is through the roof. Yeah. And so and I think it can be misleading because there are, across the country, a lot of large megachurches or attractional style churches that are growing and doing relatively well. But I think that it it betrays the truth on the ground, which is that the church in Canada is probably not is not growing as a whole. Our net reach year over year is not growing despite the fact that the really good attractional churches are growing.
RobChartrand:And I think what that points I think it points to a a reality that they're probably growing off transfer growth. Yeah. And, what what we've really tried to to do, is say, lord, like, we gotta raise a people, a generation of Christians that are passionate about, about the work of evangelism, about the work of disciple making, and that the church is probably the church in the future of Canada, while there will probably be, still a large number of large, sort of attractional style high quality churches, the dominant form of church in the future in Canada, I think, is gonna look a lot more like the book of Acts. House to house, evangelism rooted, deprofessionalized, clergy, and and and so we've tried to ask the question, what would it look like if we if we looked more like the church in Acts, not just from a utopian standpoint, but from a from a missiological standpoint.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, what are some of the challenges you face? I mean, you're you're taking an 18 year old fresh out of, you know, a a common church experience maybe or or or some sort of a Christian memory or maybe not. Maybe they don't have any, but but they're very young and and and your goal is to help turn them into a reproducing disciple who's willing to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Rob Chartrand:I gotta expect that you're facing some similar challenges, on all of your campuses.
RobChartrand:Yeah. You know, it it it's not easy. And when I talk to my peers that work, in in campus church planting across North America, we're all the reality is that we're all having a tough time. Mhmm. We're all having to work pretty hard, and, and some of our old strategies and our old models maybe aren't working as well as they used to.
RobChartrand:Yeah. Some of the the specific challenges, relate to a lot of incoming students have adopted Christians a lot of incoming Christian students have adopted a, an understanding of the gospel that is, I think, fairly myopic or borderline idolatrous where their understanding of the gospel is, is basically that salvation equates to, personal self discovery.
Rob Chartrand:Okay.
RobChartrand:And so deprogramming that and teaching them that actually, no, the gospel is about, learning to walk with Jesus as king as every dimension of your life is, like, a pretty radical idea, and and can be hard for people to to wrap their heads around. So we do a lot of work trying to to address that. The other piece that is quite challenging is that, and but also a tremendous opportunity is that the subject of identity is probably the number one conversation that we're having on a on a day to day basis with Right. With our students. Who who am I?
RobChartrand:And the good news is the gospel has a lot to say about who you are, in Christ, and there's a really incredible message of hope and good news there. The challenge is that students have, in many cases, adopted a false identity. It might be the identity, as a victim.
Rob Chartrand:Okay.
RobChartrand:That is certainly a prevalent identity. I'm a victim. I'm a I'm a subject of my, you know, I'm just a product of my circumstances.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And as a result, many of them believe they don't have any agency. For example, we've observed that a lot of the conversation around mental health has actually been net negative, for students As we've driven mental health conversations to the forefront culturally, many students believe that they're just trapped now in their identity as somebody who has a mood disorder or what have you.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah.
RobChartrand:And so trying to disentangle their self perception from perhaps the challenges of their life can be really difficult, and there's a fragility that comes with that. And, you know, a lot of a lot of far smarter people than me have written a fair bit about that that subject. And then, of course, there's the identity rooted in in sexuality and Yeah. And gender identity. And, man, that is that is a quagmire that we have to carefully and wisely navigate every day.
RobChartrand:Yeah. But it's also a tremendous opportunity because the gospel, again, speaks so beautifully and profoundly to the subjects of sexuality and gender identity. Yeah. And so I I think in a way, what's what's happening is that the world is starting to speak really clearly in a way that is anti gospel, to a lot of these core subjects in a really loud way, but it's also being found out that the world's solutions don't really work. And I think the gospel really truly does offer freedom.
RobChartrand:And so where there's challenge, there's opportunity. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah. And I think you're right on that last point. I mean, that, you know, Christian Smith in his in his work, and he talks about moralistic therapeutic deism, you know, and which is your root of you know, you kind of alluding to in your 4 first point there is is this, you know, this this gospel of of of self promotion in in in many ways and and finding the best you know, creating the best version of yourself. That that one is a little bit more insidious.
Rob Chartrand:Right? And it attaches itself to the gospel and it and it kinda runs underground and you don't see it. Whereas what we're seeing now is the new paradigm of identity and whatnot is is is so blatantly antithetical to the gospel. Right? And, and it's it's much more easily to identify.
Rob Chartrand:However, I mean, it's also more antagonistic to the gospel. And so you're dealing with something very different, which is I mean, if we talk about identity and we talk about the new identity in Christ, you can get a lot more pushback on that. Whereas the other one, you kinda have to peel back the layers and and say, okay. Well, here's here's why moralistic therapeutic deism, the gospel, if we talk about that, you know, is so much different than the gospel where Jesus calls us to come and surrender our lives to him fully and die to self and and receive him and and make him king over our lives rather than our own selves. So, anyway, those are those are some real challenges you guys are facing.
Rob Chartrand:So much, we wow. We could talk about so much there, but, we're I I wanna make the best use of our time here. Let's get on to the the timeline again. Okay? I I remember I interviewed you for my doctoral dissertation way back in 2018, and a lot has happened since then.
Rob Chartrand:So you started shifting towards a discipleship making movement, a DMM strategy. And you've kinda told us a little bit about the shift, but, I mean, can you tell us a little bit what's what's happened since then? And, and maybe even just talk about what are the things that you're celebrating, about the shift?
RobChartrand:Yeah. So, you know, I I've alluded to a lot of of 2018. We made some big changes, but we actually made the biggest change in 2020 right before COVID.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:It was really the, the end of of several years of discovery and learning and experimentation. And what we did was we we basically officially moved from, we were kind of running a hybrid. We had these bivocation or professional, people that were starting new house churches in different cities, and then we had our old attractional style churches. And we basically led by professional clergy as as it were, and we basically moved all of our old, clergy led, church plants to, bivocational led church plants.
Rob Chartrand:Okay.
RobChartrand:And we transitioned that whole team Wow. Into different roles. Yeah. And in one shot, we basically, like, reoriented a leadership structure where, we placed I think it was something like 9 directors of regions of house churches all at once right before COVID. And I was so grateful we did that because, essentially, what it did is it set us up to run a decentralized house church network led by a bivocational team, and then COVID happened.
RobChartrand:And we could like, we couldn't have been better positioned. Wow. Yeah. And there were some challenges because making a big change like that and being unable to navigate those some of the questions people had over coffee or in person meant that, there was some relational, fallout that that did happen. But overall, it was incredible.
RobChartrand:And what it did is it it changed the perception of, what it means to be a church planter. Instead of a church planter being somebody that was highly skilled, professional, maybe had a a really comprehensive gift mix, it meant that any of our house church leaders could theoretically be a church planter. And it started with a really simple question for us. We studied we were studying the book of Acts, and in Acts 8, there's there's a little verse that completely rocked our world. And it says, in those days, a severe persecution broke out against the believers, and, and they were scattered.
RobChartrand:Yeah. And then jump down to verse 4, and it says, as they were scattered, they went on their way preaching the word. And if you fast forward to acts 11, you find out that that group of people, some of them landed in Antioch Yeah. And were the first people to figure out how to, communicate the gospel to the Gentiles. And so it was these untrained, unnamed, ordinary disciples of Jesus who were running for their lives that planted the first churches to the gentiles.
RobChartrand:And what that did is it led to us asking a question. And the question was, if we were to take anyone in our church that had come to know Jesus in our church and we moved them to another city anywhere in the world and we gave them 10 years, we just left them alone for 10 years, would we come back to find a thriving church movement in that city? And that became the calibrating question around everything we did. Mhmm. Was that what we were gonna do was we were going to to the best that we could, and by the grace of God, raise people that could answer yes to that question.
RobChartrand:And people started to put up their hands to say, I'll go plant a church over there, and I'll go plant a church over and some of them, you know, some of it didn't work. We we some of them shut down, but many all but one of them are still going. Yeah. And, there's a groundswell now of people saying, I wanna go plant a church, because they're looking at their peers going, well, my my friend was an engineer. My friend's a nurse.
RobChartrand:My friend's a veterinary technician, and there are church plants, or maybe I can plant a church too.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Well, I mean I mean, we have an account in the new testament of the church plants that made it. We don't have an account of the church plants that didn't make it. Right? But
RobChartrand:For sure.
Rob Chartrand:I mean, they had so there had to be some that failed, and that's that's required if you're gonna try and do stuff. Right? Start start new things. You you know, every entrepreneur, every church planter. I mean, what's the average?
Rob Chartrand:They fail 7 times before they get it right. I mean, that's that's Totally. Not uncommon.
RobChartrand:Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Wow. So, you got I have to think, like, did COVID almost reinforce the the core paradigm that you're working with? I mean, because COVID for so many of us across the board shut down Sunday mornings. And those churches that had small groups or other forms of discipling communities seem to do a whole lot better during COVID than those who, who solely relied on the Sunday morning experience. But in your case, I mean, you were it it's almost like COVID could have reinforced that model in your context.
RobChartrand:In in a lot of ways, I would you know, I never wanna go back to COVID, but I'm grateful for the opportunity that it provided for us to cement some things into our DNA.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:I think that the changes that we were trying to make would have been very difficult in in the absence of COVID. And as a leadership team, we had been talking about how, nearly impossible it would be to move our largest locations, to think this way, because they were so cemented in their old way of thinking. But COVID basically forced them to get on the bus Yeah. Because it just it made the most sense to structure how we were structuring. And so coming out of COVID, that major location here in Hamilton where I am, has become our largest sending force, and, the leadership out of that that location has just become absolutely incredible at raising church planters and new leaders.
RobChartrand:But it a lot of that's because of COVID.
Rob Chartrand:So Yeah.
RobChartrand:Because we just had to we had to think as a decentralized house church movement. And we're really a hybrid. Like, we still have large format gatherings.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:So we're like half house church, half not.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah. It's like Hugh Halter's the book and, right, where he talks about, cause he was so tangible kingdom, strongly missional communities, but he's, you know, he kinda backtracked on that and said, you know, both are really important. You still gotta gather and scatter.
RobChartrand:Totally. Yeah. Totally. And It's the 2 forces that I was alluding to, the sending and the and the the gathering. Yeah.
RobChartrand:Yeah. The force for togetherness and the force resentness.
Rob Chartrand:That's right. Yeah.
RobChartrand:We need both. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Hey. What would you say to leaders, today who are listening, who are involved in more traditional church structures? I mean, how would you encourage them? How would you challenge them towards creating disciple making movements?
RobChartrand:Yeah. I think I think my biggest encouragement would be to start at the top, and and work down.
Geoff Dresser:Okay.
RobChartrand:And what I mean by that is for for whoever the senior leader is to start by making sure that you're doing life on life discipleship out of your home, and then require all of your staff and senior leaders to be doing it.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Elders.
RobChartrand:And, elders, and your deacons, and, and then your your team leads, and and and work down versus I think sometimes what we do is we try to mobilize it from the bottom. We try to mobilize everyone to to do the work of discipleship, but they're not seeing it modeled.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:Or they're seeing exceptions. Like, the the classic exception that I've seen, and I've worked with quite a few churches on this question over the years, is that, they don't wanna hold their most talented competent people to the expectation of disciple me. Well, I'm you know, I lead the worship team, and I'm doing it with the worship team or I lead the preaching team, and I it's like, if you're not doing discipleship and evangelism in your personal home
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:Then there's a problem.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And so and, and what it will do is it'll very quickly expose who's on the bus and who's not on the bus. Yeah. And so that's that would be my starting point. And then the other one is I think getting really clear on what is discipleship. It means something different to everyone, and, obviously, there's a broad sense of, like, okay.
RobChartrand:It means following Jesus. But what does that mean? Yeah. And I think what we've tried to do is be really clear on this is what we mean with discipleship. We're not saying that we have the answer, but we have an answer, and we're gonna build our strategy off of that answer.
RobChartrand:And so the the systems and structures and and understanding of what is discipleship, or need to be supported by a clear understanding of what is discipleship. And so we worked really, really hard to to define an answer to that question. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Would you say, I mean, accompanying that, they need to have a clear definition of what is a disciple? I don't because that's what you're trying to replicate. Right?
RobChartrand:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I think what is a disciple? What is disciple making?
RobChartrand:Yeah. But, I I think sometimes churches suffer from being too abstract. Yeah. We we have visions and values that are are inspiring. We have statements about what it means to be a disciple that might be inspiring in a sense, but lacks enough clarity and definition to be useful in any kind of accountability.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah.
RobChartrand:And so and so it took me like, I I wrote a book on discipleship Yeah. And what we mean by this. It took me, like, a 100000 words to define it. Now maybe that's more of an indication of how hard it is for me to say things succinctly, but, there was a lot there for us to unpack around what it what it meant to be a disciple making people.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And we wanna put that book in the hands of, of our listeners too, and, we're gonna make sure we have links to that in the show notes. It's something that's available on Amazon, I'm assuming.
RobChartrand:Yeah. Yeah. There's there's 2 books, Everyone Sent to Multiply Everything, and, which is sort of a leadership book, and then Living Cent, which is a life on life discipleship book. They're both available on Amazon.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. That's great. Yeah. And then we certainly wanna encourage our our church leaders. We we know there are lots of different paradigms and ecclesiological structures that you can use, for the church.
Rob Chartrand:But at the center of it all, you know, I think we wanna see a disciple making movement, move across this country because as you say, I mean, the church has plateaued and in decline depending on how you look at the data in in Canada. And so our our old strategies, fit for a great time in in space. But, I mean, we need new strategies for the future going forward.
RobChartrand:Robin And
Rob Chartrand:Go ahead. Go ahead.
RobChartrand:So I was just gonna add that, you know, I I really believe that if we make if we put disciple making at the center of our strategy, there's no commandment to plant churches in the new testament, but there is commandments to make disciples. Yeah. And healthy churches, are the overflow of the work of discipleship. And so if we put disciple making as a priority, we will have healthy churches. That that's the biblical paradigm.
RobChartrand:And so Yeah. I don't see a downside.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Well, hey. That's a good word. Well, let's leave it at that, Robin. Thank you so much for your time and, for sharing with us today.
Rob Chartrand:Some of our listeners interested in knowing a little bit more about what you're doing besides the book, and getting involved. How can they be in touch with you?
RobChartrand:Yeah. So we can reach out through, our website, liftchurch.ca. I'm not really on any socials, our churches, so you can you can find us on on the socials. And so, yeah, liftchurch.ca, everything's there. Our books are listed there, and, put me an email.
RobChartrand:Happy to chat and hop on a call, serve as best I can.
Rob Chartrand:Awesome. Awesome. Alright. Well, hey, brother. Thanks for your time.
RobChartrand:For sure. My pleasure.
Rob Chartrand:You've been listening to the Church in the North podcast, a production of Briarcrest College and Seminary. For more information about the podcast, visit church in the north dot ca. To learn more about Briarcrest, visit briarcrest.ca. Thanks for listening. And if you like what you heard today, please share this episode with other ministry leaders.
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