Church for the Rest of Us Podcast

CFTROU 0040: Identifying Pockets Of Lostness In this final episode of our second season, we talk with Pastor Konstantin Goncharov, a pastor and church planter originally from Ukraine. After being chosen to come to America to study, Konstantin returned to the Ukraine to plant and pastor the first church in his community. The fall of the Berlin Wall exposed a great spiritual hunger in the Soviet Uni...

CFTROU 0039: Helping the Lone Ranger Today we welcome Pastor Wadson Vasconcelos who currently pastors Family Church Portuguese. He started out his journey with Jesus as a lone ranger – a lone ranger with a passion for the gospel and Portuguese-speaking people. While still holding down a full-time job, Wadson began hosting Portuguese Bible studies in his home. The numbers kept growing and growing a...

CFTROU 0038: Multicultural Revitalization Today’s episode features one of our best church revitalization stories. It is about three pastors and three churches who have effectively partnered to reach more people in their heart languages. It is an incredible story of humility, kingdom vision, and multicultural outreach. It doesn’t matter if you are in a small church, a rural church, a suburban churc...

CFTROU 0037: Encouraging Pastors Today’s episode features Dr. Ray Underwood, a church planter and pastor for over 30 years who currently serves as the Chief Encouragement Officer at Family Church – the CEO of Family Church. The title is tongue in cheek, but the role is real and reproducible. Dr. Ray is incredibly passionate about helping other pastors grow and seeing them succeed. He believes that...

CFTROU 0036: Move Beyond Diversity to Inclusivity Today’s episode features a frank conversation between Pastor Jimmy Scroggins and Pastor Eric Kelly on moving past diversity to inclusivity in our churches. It may help to know that Pastor Jimmy is white, and Pastor Eric is black. Their friendship and some hard conversations about race have helped both men be better husbands, fathers, followers of J...

CFTROU 0035: Connections: First Connection Follow-up This is the final episode in our four-part series on “Connections.” Once again, we have Bev Bonner and Kim Wells with us to conclude this series and talk about following up with people who attend our First Connections class. We want to track guests and new attendees, so they are not lost at sea after visiting our church. We have identified some...

CFTROU 0034: Connections: First Connection This is the third in our four-part series on “Connections.” Today we’re talking to Bev Bonner and Kim Wells about our First Connection class. This is a one-time class that allows us to get to know our guests and allows them to get to know us. We’ll take a look at the history of the program and how it has changed with time to serve Family Church. The goal,...

CFTROU 0033: Connections: Tracking Guests This is the second of our four-part series on “Connections.” On today’s episode we welcome back Bev Bonner and Kim Wells. Last week, we had Bev and Kim on the show and we focused on capturing guest information. Today, we’re going to talk about what we do to reel people in. Tracking guests is more than just checking numbers and seeing a list of names; it is...

CFTROU 0032: Connections: Capturing Guests Today we start a four-part series on “Connections” with Bev Bonner and Kim Wells. Bev and Kim set the philosophy and strategy Family Church employs to make connections with those who visit our church. In this first episode we focus on capturing guest information. Our goal is to get our guests to self-identify so that we can connect with them. We’ll unpack...

CFTROU 0031: Multisite Church for the Rest of Us Today we conclude a series on multisite church with our friend and church leadership expert, Kadi Cole. Kadi is going to share 8 factors for a church of any size to consider prior to going multisite. They are: vision, a strong core team, funding, launch strategy, and more. Kadi also gives us some insight into potential barriers to multisite growth a...

CFTROU 0030: Multisite Tensions This in the second of a three-part conversation with multisite expert Kadi Cole. Today, we are addressing some of the tensions that have to be managed when a church decides to expand from one campus to two campuses, or from eight to eleven! Whatever the number, tensions are almost inevitable because as we all know that growth brings new opportunities, but it also br...

CFTROU 0029: Multisite Landscape Today we welcome Family Church member, Kadi Cole. Kadi is a facilitator and consultant to church leaders around the country and serves as the Director of the Multisite HUB at the Leadership Network. Prior to that, Kadi was the Executive Director of Multisite Ministries at Christ Fellowship Church in Palm Beach County, the Dean of Student Development at Palm Beach A...

CFTROU 0028: Seed Church Concept Today we’re joined by Robby Christmas. Robby is a National Church Planting catalyst with the North American Mission Board and focuses on bi-vocational church planting. He is stationed at Family Church where he is a key part of our strategy for affordable and sustainable church planting and works with our Family Church residency program. In this episode, we find out...

CFTROU 0027: The Call, Cost and Benefits of Bivo, Part 2 Today on the show I am joined by Family Church Pastor, Steve Scalici. This is the second in our two-part series on being a bivocational pastor. In previous episodes, we have talked about how bivocational church planting is both affordable and viable. This is where guys like Steve Scalici come in. Steve works a day job as the Senior Vice Pres...

CFTROU 0026: The Call, Cost and Benefits of Bivo, Part 1 Today I’m joined by Pastor Jimmy Muir, one of our bivocational campus pastors serving at Family Church. Jimmy actually grew up at our church, was called to ministry here, trained here, and now serves as a campus pastor while also working as the Marketing Director for United Franchise Group. He unpacks for us what motivates him to pursue his...

CFTROU 0025: Leadership Pipeline: LAUNCH This is our final episode in this series about developing leaders. This week we talk about our newest source for new leaders called LAUNCH. This is a training program developed by our Family Church worship leaders for people interested in using their creativity to advance God’s kingdom. Joining us today are two Family Church worship leaders and LAUNCH coach...

CFTROU 0024: Leadership Pipeline: Residency This is the third of four episodes and creating a leadership pipeline that will help fuel your church’s mission. Today we are focusing on our Residency Program, which trains men and women for ministry while they still have their boots on the ground. Our guest today is Dr. Mark Warnock, an associate worship pastor and the staff member who gives leadership...

CFTROU 0023: Leadership Pipeline: Students This is part two of our four-part series on developing more leaders through a leadership pipeline. Today we are joined by our Downtown Campus Pastor/Student Pastor, Derek Simpson, and our Pastor to Middle School Students, Kevin Saxton. Both of these men are absolute superstars when it comes to developing leaders among our students. We will learn about the...

CFTROU 0022: Leadership Pipeline: Kids Today marks the beginning of our second season here at the Church for the Rest of Us podcast. In our first season, we gave a broad overview of our strategies and principles. In this season, we plan to drill down in some areas where our listeners have asked to learn more about how we do what we do. For example, Episode 11 was titled “My Church Needs More Leade...

CFTROU 0021: Building a New Church Culture, Not New Church Programs: Membership This is the final episode of our four-part series on Building a New Church Culture, Not New Church Programs” and it is also our last show for the season. Today we are going to talk about membership and how it is a part of our church culture. We have one front door to our church and it is a one-time class called First C...

CFTROU 0020: Building a New Church Culture, Not New Church Programs: Metrics This is part three of our four-part series called “Building a New Church Culture, Not New Church Programs.” Today we are going to talk about metrics and how they serve as a dashboard for creating culture. We will produce more of what we measure. We believe that key metrics are a means to assembling and building culture. K...

CFTROU 0019: Building a New Church Culture, Not New Church Programs: Meetings This is part two of our four-part series on “Building a New Church Culture, Not New Church Programs.” We are talking about our very favorite part of ministry at Family Church — meetings! Most people like to avoid more meetings, but we believe meetings are key to building a strong church culture. Plus, meetings can be fun...

CFTROU 0018: Building a New Church Culture, Not New Church Programs: Messaging This is the first in a four-part series called “Building a New Church Culture, Not New Church Programs.” In today’s episode, we talk about the importance of messaging. This series includes Family Church’s Communications and Executive Staff Director, Leslee Bennett. We are excited about this series because it is part of...

CFTROU 0017: Autonomous Launch This is the last in our series on Multisite Church for the Rest of Us. To this point, we have covered why we do multisite, how we do multisite, and we have drilled down on three of the four ways we have planted. Today we are going to talk about how we have helped plant autonomous churches. These are independent partner churches that do not carry the Family Church nam...

CFTROU 0016: How to Plant a Seed Church We are continuing our series on Multisite Church for the Rest of Us. This is part four of a six-part series and another way to go multisite. We call it a seed church. A seed church starts with a person who has a passion for a place or a people group. We plant that seed and see if it can grow into a church. As you may know by now, we believe in getting a lot...