Transcript: Top Trends That Are Impacting Church and Organizational Growth // Warren Bird

The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series

Top Trends That Are Impacting Church and Organizational Growth
June 13, 2022

Warren Bird

Intro: Is your church growing? What are the current trends impacting church and organizational growth on this side of the pandemic? Well, today we talk with a top researcher on the keys to church growth and leadership development.

Al Lopus: Hi, I'm Al Lopus, and you're listening to the Flourishing Culture Podcast, where we help you create a flourishing workplace. The problem employers are facing today is that more of our employees are quitting than ever before. Some people are calling this the great resignation. And now with millions of open jobs, how can churches, Christian non-profits, and Christian-owned businesses face this tidal wave of resignations while attracting new, outstanding talent? And we know that having a flourishing workplace with fully engaged employees is the solution. I'll be your guide today as we talk with a thought leader about key steps that you can take to create a flourishing workplace culture.

So, now let's meet today's special guest.

As leaders, we can learn from our peers and other churches and Christian organizations to understand how they are growing and developing. And also, research into trends and best practices helps all of us on our road to flourishing. And our guest today can help us understand the landscape of this movement in the church and how we can move forward as we follow Jesus and lead with integrity.

I'm delighted to welcome Warren Bird, who is the senior vice president of research and equipping at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, known as the ECFA. Warren has a rich, deep understanding of the church movement and organizations, including megachurches, and he's authored and coauthored 34 books and has a heart for equipping church leaders. So welcome, Warren, to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.

Warren Bird: Thank you for those gracious words, Al. And as a researcher, I noticed the Best Christian Workplaces Institute in your earliest days. I've learned from you, and we actually did a research project together during my leadership network days. And most recently, I read your insightful new book, Road to Flourishing.

Al: Yeah. Thank you, Warren. And I appreciate your endorsement and just even your reading of it, so thank you.

So well, you know, Warren, here at the Best Christian Workplaces Institute, we're all about helping organizations flourish. You know, our work complements the work of the ECFA. I've heard many people say, “Well, ECFA has the financial side. Best Christian Workplaces has the people side,” the two key areas. But what are a few of the best practices that you observe in organizations that are growing and thriving while exhibiting good governance and integrity in their administration? There's an opening question for you.

Warren: We could spend the whole time talking about that. That's such a rich area to explore. But for starters, the role of effective teams has increased in ministry through teams and as a team and learning how to get better at it. And I understand you want to dig deeper into the topic of teams that thrive, later in this interview, so let me shift to some other trends.

The role of leadership development has been on the rise for the last 20 years. To use a sports metaphor, the idea is one of strengthening the bench by investing in the development of others. What the book Hero Maker, among others, promotes—I just enjoyed listening to Dave Ferguson, lead author of Hero Maker, on one of your earlier podcasts. Developing more and better leaders is a tremendously healthy practice for any church, ministry, or organization, and this also relates to succession planning, which is really an aspect of leadership development. And I understand you want to dig more into that topic of succession later in our interview as well.

But one more practice, as we're introducing our time together, during the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic, a greater emphasis on self-care, soul care, if you will, has arisen as an antidote to anxiety, burnout, and the many other mental-health issues that have become more prominent. One of the earliest books I coauthored is with Pete Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, and the thesis that you can’t be a growing Christian if you're not also maturing emotionally—that is, learning how to handle anger, discouragement, or conflict in a biblical, Christ-centered way—that idea, to use one of your favorite words, Al, has flourished over the years, and this whole soul care, self-care, being healthy, work-life balance has risen in prominence, which opens the door for places like Best Christian Workplace Institute to help people get better and gauge where they are at.

Al: Yeah. I really love your work there with Pete on the emotionally healthy church. In our culture today, don't we need to learn how to handle anger, discouragement, or conflict, even as we're driving on freeways? Yeah.

So Warren, you know, we've seen churches of all sizes adapt to the changing conditions these past two years. I mean, this has really been a crucible time for churches. So what changes do you think will be here for the long term as leaders guide their local church communities into the future now that we've come out of the, and are coming out—we're not out of it yet fully—but we're coming out of the pandemic? What do you think?

Warren: Yes, says the man from Seattle, where cases happen, to the man in New York, where I'm a few miles from where our ground zero was, but frankly, my sense is that the pandemic was more of an accelerator than a condition changer. Yes, video calls, work from home, and more, that was all in motion before the pandemic, and starting March 2020, they rapidly accelerated. And likewise, churches in long term, or other ministry organizations, in a long-term struggle for growth momentum or financial viability before the pandemic, suddenly experienced compacted timelines as those challenges accelerated during the pandemic.

So now to your question specifically, what will be here for the long term? First, for most churches—let's just focus on churches for a minute—to find a way forward today, they have to think and act like church planters. Our society increasingly views churches as on the margins, no longer at the center as offering answers to important questions or being essential to the well-being of a community. And any church that reverts back to business as usual before the pandemic, simply waiting on spiritually hungry people to come to them, is going to hit big trouble.

Second, churches will need to learn how to do more of their discipleship digitally, ideally as a seamless integration of in-person and digital. I’m part of a—my wife and I are part of a small group, and sometimes we meet in person, sometimes digital, and I feel like I've met with the people because we've all figured out how to do that well and smoothly. But this idea goes far beyond putting Sunday’s church service on the Internet so that the parent with the snotty-nose kid can stay home and watch it from there. Really, digital discipleship is going to figure out how do we take kind of the lobby of the church, where all the fellowship and interaction happens, how do we make that more of a meaningful online and discipleship experience?

Al: Yeah. Wow, I love that. So, yeah, thinking more like church planters. It's not going to be the same as it was. And discipleship digitally, I mean, that's going to be taking what we've learned the last two years and making that effective.

But, you know, Warren, one thing I know, you've had your finger on the latest research about church models, what's working well to reach communities. And we've seen megachurches, multi-site models, and church mergers. What sort of church-leadership and organization structure do you expect to see more in the next five, ten, 15 years?

Warren: Well, first, the research is very clear that churches get bigger by growing smaller. And I’ll illustrate that on a couple of levels. The bigger the church, the more likely it is to have a thriving small-group ministry. Just before the pandemic, we surveyed megachurches, that's attendance of 2,000 and higher, and we asked how central that system of small groups, whatever you call them, home group, Sunday School, whatever, how central is that to your strategy of Christian formation and discipleship? So we tried to ask the core, how are you reproducing disciples of Jesus Christ? And 90% —9-0—said, gave it the highest rank to the centrality of small groups.

So it's the analogy of the football game. Yeah, I love the excitement of the big crowd, and all the cheering and the electricity there. But if I'm not with a bunch of buddies that I can turn to and high-five, and “Did you see that?” and share a stat with three tailgate coming in or out, if I don't have that kind of personal connection, I'm just frustrated. It's not much of a meaningful experience. I feel alone and isolated. And to come back to Scripture, all the 57 “one and others” of Scripture—love one another, encourage one another, carry one another's burdens, weep with one another—I can’t do that sitting all alone in that football stadium, but I can if I have the friends. So getting—you grow bigger by growing smaller.

Now, that’s in terms of discipleship. But there's a second level to that, and that's the multiple expressions or experiences. In other words, long gone is the one big sanctuary where the church gathers once on Sunday morning. That wasn't even before the pandemic. But the growth in recent years has decidedly shown up by having multiple services, being multi-site, involving mergers. By the way, four out of ten multisite campuses come by way of mergers. By planting churches, multiple ways that the church extends itself so that it's not the football-stadium feel, without multiple expressions that are smaller and are also points of vitality.

Al: That's an interesting stat. Thanks, Warren. Four out of ten of the multi-sites are actually a result of mergers.

Warren: I'll tell you one more that goes—

Al: Yeah.

Warren: If you're a church planter and have a facility, one out of five got that facility by way of a ministry merger.

Al: Mm-hmm.

Warren: The churches that are struggling and trying to say, “Okay, I'm not sure there's another chapter ahead for us,” two very viable options are, one, give it to a church planter and have a total restart that can be part of a multisite campus. Stay with it, and ride a new wave recycle for your life as a church.

Al: Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Well, we're kind of waterskiing here, I know, Warren, hitting the tops of several waves here, as we’ve now talked about church and church growth.

But let's, you know, we've got baby boomers who are retiring. And let's talk a little bit about leadership recession. You know, many large churches started off with a high-profile leader. They had the ability to attract a following. But churches that have the staying power seem to be developing emerging leaders and leadership teams so that the whole organization isn’t dependent on one personality. And we've just, we've seen too many one-personality churches crash. So what are some common features that you see in large churches that have helped them successfully move from one generation to the next, when it comes to leadership and transition of these high-profile, senior, often, founder leaders?

Warren: Yes, that's essential to talk about, but succession is so much more than retirement planning. Probably the most-quoted sentence from the book that William Vanderbloemen and I did, titled Next: Pastoral Succession That Works, and there's an expanded and updated edition, is the opening sentence of chapter one that basically says, I don't know who you are or where you serve, but unless Jesus comes back, you're an interim forever.

Al: Yeah.

Warren: You're an interim pastor, usher, parking-lot person. And one of the most important things you can do is anticipate that day when you will pass the baton. Now, retirement kind of forces it, but at every age, there's a question of, how am I strengthening the next person? And imaginations in how to do it all lead to this idea of leadership development of, how am I cultivating other people who do what I do? How am I diminishing myself, shadowing myself, raising up other leaders, pouring myself into others? So there's, first, a fundamental commitment that says we want to develop—Al, one of the words you would love—a culture that's friendly and comfortable in this succession. And just interestingly, historically, a number of years ago, probably the first book that came out on succession targeted to Christian ministries and churches was called The Elephant in the Boardroom, meaning it's there; we're all aware of it; but who's going to raise the topic? And then the first, the original edition of Next, we thought, “Okay, we're going to get the discussion. We’re going to move it at least from the parking lot to the pastor's home. But, you know, if I were to pass the baton, can we imagine the first steps of what that would look like?, to the updated edition, expanded, where it's here are how board members and pastors have that conversation in a healthy way.

And the church that I'm part of, every January, young pastor, every January we update the plan, both kind of the, you know, if the plane should go down, the emergency session. But also, “Pastor, who are you cultivating teaching gifts with the leadership gifts? How are you building both internally, and if the internals don't work out, who are some externals that you're cultivating?” And so, actually, the book gives, like, ten commandments for younger pastors can do and ten pastors for older pastors more thinking towards retirement.

But yes, there are definite steps and best practices that you can take that everyone, including me, including you, take to think about, how do we look at succession in a godly way? And read my Bible through, as I try to every year, and it's just amazing. You have lots of great hand offs, right?

Al: Oh, man. We've got—

Warren And you have some terrible ones. And the irony is, you know, Moses handed off magnificently to Joshua. But then in the opening chapter of Judges, Joshua did a terrible job, and the people didn't follow God.

Al: Yeah. Similar to Solomon.

Warren: Yeah.

Al: Yeah. Lousy, anyway, yeah, for the next generation. That's fascinating.

You know, I just love it, and I've said this myself. We're all in interim roles, aren't we? If we just had that attitude, and it's the attitude Christ is really hoping that we'll all have is that we're open handed with our roles. But having those conversations, I mean, you’ve seen, I've seen, where leaders are afraid to even bring up the topic of succession, and that's just not healthy, either.

Warren: But the main reason leaders don't bring it up is they are not financially prepared. You know, should I move on? Oh. And you don't want to stay somewhere—

Al: Yeah.

Warren: —just because you're financially pressured into doing so. But that's reality for an awful lot of people. Well, the sooner you, in a healthy way, have these kind of discussions—I remember talking with one board, and the pastor asked me to come in, and he was there in the room, and I had his full permission ask this, to say, “Now, if God should keep him here a long time, I want to talk to you about a plan for helping him prepare for that day financially.” And I said, “What do you know about the pastor's finances?” “Oh, he owns a home in this other state.” He's like, “No, that's my brother's home. We just left it to me.” “Oh, he's got this situation.” “No, that’s out of the kindness of this friend.” And they were like, “Oh, Pastor, we just assumed,” so let's have the discussion and have the trust and have the board active and say, “And Pastor, how can we care for you in every way, including you not having to worry about finances? And if that means us paying each year for you to go to see an independent financial planner, to take whatever resources you have from this church or other ministries or your spouses or whatever, let us help you have that outside wisdom. Go find a godly person who does finances real well, and let us pay for that each year.” That’s just many ideas.

Al: That’s fantastic. And yeah, it is a job. And in Christian ministry, you know, it is a ministry, but it's also a job, isn’t it. So having that practical conversation around finances is an important part of that. Well, you know, yeah, great conversation around succession. Next: Pastoral Succession That Works, glad you mentioned that book, a resource for others.

So, Warren, I've been so impressed. Again, over the years, you've got such a great handle on research and best practices. You update a lot of your research year after year. Can you share a story with us? Is there an example or two of a church or an organization that you've worked with that was struggling and was able to turn around, because of their difficulties, to emerge stronger so that they can really accomplish the mission that they were set out to do? How about a story?

Warren: Absolutely. And stories are what energize us and make so much worthwhile when we see God at work and we go, yes, yes, it came together. So let me start with one from the book Jim Tomberlin and I did called Better Together. It's the story of a church that had cycled through, and pretty much everyone was in their seventies or eighties, and they were going to give their campus, with their denomination’s permission, to a young whippersnapper. And the president of the congregation, that was how they were structured, a layperson, they’re having this ceremony, and he says, “Well, about this time I'm supposed to give in the program, I'm supposed to give you the keys to our building. And I'm not going to do that.” Pregnant pause. Everybody's like, “Oh, no.” Second thoughts or whatever. Instead, he reaches in a bag, and he pulls out a little plaque, and he said, “Twenty years ago, it was very popular to come up with a mission statement. We would look at the Great Commission of reaching the world for Christ, the great command of loving everyone, and kind of blend that together and put it into a mission statement. And here is our mission statement.” And he read it. And he said, “Now, for you to carry that mission statement into the next generation, you're going to need some keys to do it. You're going to need a building to do it. So here you go.” “And we're with you, Pastor.” Well, what a way to center back into mission and to have a restart for that church.

Another example, in the book Real Followers that I wrote for a pastor named Mike Slaughter, I tell his story of coming to a 100-year-old church that had, like so many, a core of good people who were tremendously underutilized. And he got them in a Bible study. He got them excited about the Book of Acts and believing that God is still active and wanting to do things like that. They together prayed hard for things, saw God take some steps that were very amazing for a church in their setting and at their size. They all grew in faith. They grew in boldness. They grew into wanting to share the good things God was doing. And the church grew, and people came to Christ, and it was exciting. And my point there is that the turnaround happened by raising the bar of discipleship, cultivating a culture of high expectation of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: And now, back to today’s special guest.

Warren: In the book Liquid Church, that I coauthored with founding pastor Tim Lucas, we tell the story of a challenge that God used to bless the community, and namely, it was one of the core families had a child with disabilities. As the pastor was reading through the Bible and preparing sermons, he was impressed by King David, finding Mephibosheth, remember the—

Al: Oh, yeah.

Warren: —one who was dropped, and his feet hurt. And he calls him and he says, in essence, I want you to sit at the king’s table for the rest of your life. I want to honor you. And that being a picture of this is how God treats and views people with physical or other emotional challenges. And what happened, unbeknownst to them, is that ministry, that showcasing, you know, here, you walk in the church, and one of the greeters is someone with Down syndrome. You say, “Man, if I have a family member like that, this is a church that speaks up for people like that.” That’s been a magnet to the community—

Al: Wow.

Warren: —drawing all kinds of unchurched families. Just, here's a church that wants to serve for my whole family, including my special-needs child. So I'm just encouraged by so many stories of ministries turning around or getting a kick start because of something where God showed up as people listened and prayed and obeyed.

Al: I love your reference to Jim Tomberlin, your book Better Together, and that story. You know, we've had Jim on our podcast a couple of times and just really great stories, great insights as well. So thanks, Warren. Again, great stories. I love the three motivating examples. I mean, and there's a number of churches out there that just are looking for stories like that that they can become. So that's visionary. I appreciate it.

You know, it's good to hear a specific example of how God is redeeming and using leaders who are willing to grow and change and then help a congregation grow and change. Thriving teams are an important way for churches and Christian organizations to accomplish their mission. We call them fantastic teams in our book Road to Flourishing. And your research on church leadership and structure, what are some practices that you see that are common to thriving, effective, even fantastic teams?

Warren: Well, let me highlight two. I had a season where I was researching the book that became Teams That Thrive, Ryan Hartwig, the lead author. And they were two that were really a rebuke to me, a surprise. The first is that vast majority of teams are mediocre, and they don't realize it.

Al: Right.

Warren: So used to, “Well, that's what I saw in another church,” or “That's the best I know.” They have no idea of the unlimited potential of what can happen where a group of people can far exceed what the individuals by themselves could have contributed, and in how you do teams and how you structure and how you value teams. And I just, I had a time of repentance of saying, “Oh, wow. Those church board meetings that I left, those other things that I called a team, and they really weren’t teams. Just a bunch of individuals.”

Al: Just groups. Yeah, right.

Warren: Yeah. Well, it’s called a working group in academic language.

So, we have, like, Mother's Day’s coming; Christmas is coming. You know, we're motivated by a certain day, but “Hey, my team could get better.” It's like, “Yeah, I need to do that, but not right now. I got too many other screaming things.”

Second thing that was a real eye-opener for me is the role of purpose. I had no idea how strongly the purpose, whether clearly identified or not, that is a clear, compelling, and contagious purpose, how that can drive a team in terms of clarity of goals, clarity of vision, momentum, accountability. So often our purpose is fuzzy.

We interviewed some teams, and we said, “All right. Write down the purpose of your team.” And I held up the two pieces of paper, and I'm like, “These two teams’ purpose came from people sitting in the same room, on the same team? They are on different planets.” So that may be an exercise for anyone, to just start by pass around sheets of paper, and say, “Write down in one sentence, what's the purpose of our team?” And then compare and see how closely aligned you are. And if not, you got work to do. You can be so much better.

Al: Yeah, that's a great, great thought. You know, so many times, as you say, even organizations with their mission statements. I remember at Care Net, they had a new president. Warren came in and asked everybody to write the mission statement down on a 3x5 card. Nobody could do it. But, yeah, clear, compelling, and contagious purpose statements are really important for any team.

So, at BCWI, you know, we do Employee Engagement Surveys for many large churches, medium- and smaller-sized churches as well, and we find that workplace culture is often healthier in these larger churches and even multisite churches than some of the medium and smaller churches. You know, people are engaged with the mission. They're excited about their contributions to their teams. Their work culture is often better. And we score it on a scale. They're better than some of these other medium or smaller churches. What are your thoughts? You've worked with a lot of churches, large, medium, and small. What are some of your thoughts about why we might see a positive culture in some of these larger churches? And what would these smaller churches learn from that?

Warren: Well, first of all, any church can move towards thriving. There's nothing inherent about ties. You primed me on this question, and I wrote a lot of things, scratched them off, wrote some more, scratched them off. So let me give you where I landed, see if this is helpful.

I want to come a side door and first talk from the attenders’ perspective. A larger church has to work harder to retain people than a smaller church does. Think of all the barriers a large church has to overcome. I got to park farther away. I got to talk to all these people who are greeting me at the door. Maybe I have to follow little arrows like you do in IKEA, just to figure out how to find places.

Al: Right.

Warren: Well, you know, none of that is true in a smaller church, which draws me to the smaller church. I can't have the same level of a relationship with the senior pastor as I do at a smaller church, and so much more. So inherently, in order to survive and grow, leaders and staff at larger churches have to be more intentional about a lot of things. And that spills over, I believe, into the staff culture. When you research churches of all sizes, larger churches do consistently convey a stronger clarity of purpose. And I say that as an anchor and a behind the scenes. Goals follows vision, money follows vision, volunteer wants to join something that's going somewhere.

But let me now bring it all the way into the staff perspective, which is really what you asked. Yes, it is likely a better overall workplace due to the size of the staff, the division of labor, the perks of working for a well-organized, mission-driven group. There's that purpose. And with the other dedicated, like-minded folks, due to the size, the senior leaders have to think about things like staff retention, fit in positions, that smaller churches just don't have the luxury to do so. In smaller churches, it's more often that you're the jack of all trades rather than specialized into the slot that you like and are particularly qualified for.

So there's an intentionality with the staff and in leading the staff and in working on the staff culture. But absolutely nothing prevents a church of any size from being more intentional about trying to up the quality bar of the staff experience and, thus, get that high coveted score back from Best Christian Workplaces Institute.

Al: Yeah. It is oftentimes that quality and focusing on those processes. Yeah. That’s very helpful. But intentionality, of course, that also helps us in our own individual relationship with Christ when we’re intentional about that.

Well, Warren, on the purpose of the local church is to equip believers to fulfill the Great Commission and to make Jesus—

Warren: Amen.

Al: —to make Jesus known and to make disciples who will make disciples, generations of disciples. So what does discipleship look like? You know, you've mentioned this earlier as a key for growth. What does discipleship look like in the next generation of Christians who will be leading our churches in the next 10 to 15 years? What stays the same? Maybe more importantly, what's changing? What's your thoughts on that?

Warren: What I hope stays the same and becomes even more central is discipleship is about becoming more like Jesus—

Al: Mm-hmm.

Warren: —not just to me and Jesus. Jesus was forever reaching out, inviting that next person. So it's becoming more like Jesus in the sense that I, too, am serving and reaching and making other disciples. You said, just in passing, something that's so important. You said we're about to be disciple—we're to be disciple makers.

Al: Yeah, right.

Warren: So easy to be so focused on the discipleship of me and to think that that's where it ends and not to understand that the most important thing I can do is reproduce myself by walk with the Lord, with my children, with my spouse, with those around me, and then spilling over with my neighbors, with my work associates, that that's the truest, that's the fullest expression of being like Jesus.

And ECFA recently did—and, in fact, as we're interviewing, the survey is still live—something called the new faces of church planting, exploring not just new churches but multisite campuses, how they differ, but what does the next generation look like, to your question. And peeking at the early findings, I am overwhelmed how many churches say, “We are committed to making disciples who make disciples. We are committed to planting a church that plants another church. We are committed to starting a multisite campus that helps launch other multisite campuses. We are committed to making leaders who develop other leaders.” That multiple generation, the Second Timothy 2:2, Paul says to Timothy, and you can actually count four generations in this, “The things you've heard me say in the presence of many witnesses commit to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others,” I had to think, at one point when I was memorizing that verse, can I point to someone that I led to the Lord who led someone to the Lord who led someone to the Lord who lead…and I can't. So that cycle, that momentum, that outward focus, I predict and I hope will become more center stage for what discipleship looks like in coming years.

Al: What a great vision that you've just outlined, where there's multiple generations of discipleship and disciples. You know, can you count four generations, as you did with Timothy, there? That's exactly right.

Well, Warren, this has been such a rich conversation. I just love all that we've talked about. Starting with early trends, that we need to be effective in teams, that leadership development is really a key and how our soul care is something. And that's even under the category, I'm hearing a lot about self-leadership these days and how that's a key trend that we're seeing. We can't lead others unless we're healthy ourselves. And then, you know, we've seen that, yep, the pandemic has really been an accelerator and how we need to think about planting churches and revitalizing churches through church planting and, just, digital discipleship and how we need to think of hybrid methods, not just the in-person methods. And all of us have been in one group or another that has probably had people, instead of just locally in Zoom sessions and small groups, you know, but are now from all over the world they're participating in our discipleship groups, and technology has allowed that. So, you know, continuing to see that. And then we've talked a lot about churches, and a lot of this also applies to our Christian nonprofits when it comes to just growing into the future, and how churches become bigger by really focusing on small groups and having multiple expressions of worship, just not one way of doing it. And I love the trends that you described. Around four out of ten churches are as a result in multisite church, as a result of mergers, and how one in five church plants come from a multisite kind of an operation. Yep, great discussion on succession, the importance of thriving teams, and the particularly the role of an exciting, clear, compelling purpose of those teams. And how being intentional allows larger churches to grow, and they have clear purposes and a clear focus on quality. And then, finally, discipleship. We just want to have more people becoming more like Jesus. And so let's develop leaders and others who will help that process. Wow, what a great conversation.

How about one other thing that you'd like to add that we've talked about? I realize I took even a long time summarizing the breadth of our—

Warren: Well, yeah. The thing I was going to add is you can help me with my talks any time. You’re really good organizer, summarizer. You know, this was wonderful.

Al: Right.

Warren: If I’m going to add anything, it's that we don't need to be stuck. Today there are more resources, more tools, more help, more accessibility, and hopefully more vibrant Christians nearby that we can hang out with.

Al: Right.

Warren: If we are stuck, we can find a path forward, that we can, to use your word, flourish not only in our walk with the Lord, but in our ministry places as well.

Al: And we find God wants us to flourish. So that is His hope and His dream for each of us.

So, Warren, thanks for your contributions today. You know, and I’d encourage anybody to just go to Amazon and put in your name, Warren Bird, and you'll see his books and find all kinds of resources that would be available. But most of all, I appreciate your commitment to equipping leaders to multiply their impact by adopting effective practices so that the local church can thrive and fulfill its mission in the world. So thanks for taking out your time today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners. Thank you, Warren.

Warren: Well, let me just add, it's a privilege to be personally aligned with an organization like Best Christian Workplaces. And my wonderful employer, ECFA, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, I just, this week, took my annual Survey, and we will get the findings, and we will be both be encouraged in health, but we'll also find places where we can get better. And I'm just so thankful that you do this and you make it available. And as a Survey guy, you know, you do it real well, so thank you. And—

Al: Oh, thank you.

Warren: —you’re a part of my journey—

Al: Thank you, Warren.

Warren: —in many ways.

Al: Yeah. That's fantastic. And, again, you work for a great organization, let me just say that. So, look forward to seeing you again on the path as we serve together. Thanks, Warren.

Outro: Thank you for joining us on the Flourishing Culture Podcast and for investing this time in your workplace culture. If there's a specific insight, story, or action step you've enjoyed, please share it with others so they can benefit, too. Please share this podcast with friends on social media, and show your support by rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen.

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