Is your church organizational culture stuck in patterns that no longer serve younger generations? After working with over 1,000 congregations through their Growing Young Cohort, researchers Dr. Kara Powell, Dr. Jake Mulder, and Raymond Chang discovered that thriving churches aren't distinguished by their programs or budgets, but by their willingness to transform their church organizational culture around three key checkpoints: relationally discipling young people, modeling kingdom diversity, and tangibly loving neighbors. These aren't flashy new strategies but research-backed, kingdom-oriented practices that create the kind of church organizational culture where faith naturally forms across generations.

In this hopeful conversation, the co-authors of "Future Focused Church" share why they believe "the best days of your church are ahead" and reveal how small wins can reshape entire congregations. Learn why "culture eats strategy for breakfast," discover the four essential skills for leading change (here, there, who, how), and hear practical stories of churches that moved from programs to people, creating meaningful community in our post-pandemic world. Whether you're struggling with declining attendance or wondering how to engage diverse communities authentically, this episode offers both theological grounding and practical hope for transforming your church organizational culture.

We're calling people back to what we see Jesus doing. ⁓ And it's shifting the ways that people are doing a little bit of everything, from the ways that they're interacting with people during the worship service to the ways that they're creating spaces to talk to one another. Really, it's more about people than programs or relationships and relevance and connection, rather than just rely on content. And as Kara mentioned earlier, we do see this uptake and this openness to relationships than in recent years, in part.

due to the isolation that people experience during the pandemic and the over-saturation of content everywhere. And so people are looking for meaningful community ⁓ in the spaces that they're in. And it requires a lot of redesign as a result.

Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast where we explore how the Church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile. Today we're joined by three incredible leaders who have spent years researching and practicing what it means to lead faithful change in our rapidly shifting cultural moment. Dr. Kara Powell, Dr. Jake Mulder, and Raymond Chang are the co-authors of a new book called Future Focused Church.

your cat.

which is a research informed guide that offers churches a roadmap for navigating transformation for today and for tomorrow. Kara is chief of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary, director of the Fuller Youth Institute and the author or co-author of numerous books. Jake is assistant chief of leadership formation at Fuller and executive director of Fuller Equip and Ray is executive director of the 10 by 10 collaboration, which has as its goal reaching

10 million young people over the next 10 years with the gospel of Jesus. So welcome Kara, Jake, and Ray.

Thanks.

It's

wonderful to be with you.

Good to be with you.

So first, tell us a bit about how you came to write this book. You all have been engaged with congregations in various ways for many years, but also specifically with younger generations who are more likely, as we all know, to be missing from organized religion.

Yeah, I can jump in there. as you mentioned, all of us have been in roles that have focused on young people. We've done that as practitioners. So we've been youth leaders, college pastors, chaplains between us in the background. But then we've all been in kind of academic and organizational roles. And from research and experience, we carry a lot of hope, but also concern, realistic concern, I think, about young people and their engagement with the faith and church.

So Kara and I specifically have worked together for Kara, I think it's been 14, 15 years connected to the Fuller Youth Institute. And we had done research on what the church might need to do differently with young people. That's all written up in a book called Growing Young. But over the last decade, we had taken about a thousand churches through a year long change process called the Growing Young Cohort. And that piece had helped us understand some of the how.

churches and faith communities can change to better support young people. Along the way, we got to know Ray. Ray was executive director of the 10 by 10 collaboration, which ⁓ aims to make faith matter for 10 million teenagers in the next 10 years. But Ray also had a lot of experience in generating movements. ⁓ Maybe later you can ask him about how he ended up in the White House because of some of his work on some important social issues.

White House ⁓

He

was a regular invitee. But out of some of that background and research and connection and ⁓ just different pieces, we thought we would love to try and codify a little bit more in a book of how to lead these changes, many of which relate to young people and some relate to other areas the church can engage.

Well, so your book begins with this claim that we believe the best days of your church are ahead. Why do you think that? And how is it not a Pollyanna statement when so many leaders find themselves struggling or as you say in the book, dedicated but drained?

Yeah, when you say we begin the book, we mean that literally. Like the very first sentence in the book is, we believe the best days of the church are ahead. And, you know, I would say that starts, Dwight, in our theology, like literally our thoughts about God. We're not ignorant about the challenges that any of us face and especially that leaders are facing these days. So many leaders have said ⁓ one or more of the last four years of ministry have been the toughest.

years of their entire ministry career. So we so empathize with that. We feel it too. And yet we believe that God is bigger. God is bigger and God's at work in churches. We get to see so many bright spots in churches of all sizes, of all different ethnicities and cultures across different regions. And especially again, when it comes to young people, we'll talk a lot about young people in this conversation.

just how open young people are to relationship with caring, trusted, Jesus-centered adults. In fact, there's data showing that post-pandemic, especially young people are particularly open to those kinds of relationships. So we think this is a season of a lot of divine windows of opportunity.

I love that. Well, so Ray, tell us what is a future focused church? What do mean by that?

Yeah, that's a great question, Dwight. You can find out the answer to that if you read the book, but we'll also give you a little bit of a preview. The way that we define it is that a future-focused church is one that is relationally discipling young people, that's modeling kingdom diversity and tangibly loving our neighbors. Those are what we consider our three checkpoints. And we lay these out in the book as intentional checkpoints because we see them all reflected in scripture.

grounded in recent and relevant research and really offering the best hope for your church culture. We actually believe that they're really important and exciting tipping points that we can be aware of and leverage and move towards inactivating. so, ⁓ relationally discipling young people, modeling kingdom diversity, and of course, tangibly and practically loving our neighbors.

So I'm curious about the research. Jake, you mentioned the thousand congregations that you've worked with around growing young. ⁓ What patterns did you see in churches that were thriving versus those that were struggling? And what are some key takeaways?

Yeah, so first I know not everyone listening is going to care about the research, but for those who do, yeah, this was lived experience with about thousand churches who have gone through this year-long training, but then we looped back to a number of those churches. It was around 40 leaders that we talked to from those congregations several years after they had finished the cohort to understand, what worked, what didn't, where did you get stuck, how did you move forward? So that we...

detail the research method in the book, it's there, but for those who do care. Those who are thriving were struggling. First, when we think of thriving, it's not primarily numbers, attendance, budget, that can be part of the equation, but it is about depth of formation and discipleship, overall vitality, engaging in neighborhood, we're paying attention to some of those metrics. But when it comes to thriving and ability to lead change,

We found that there are four skills that are really needed in this season and ⁓ for those who respect the discipline, and I know you do Dwight, these are drawn from practical theology. And so we think practical theology, action and reflection for churches matter a lot, but we've developed it more based on our research in those four areas. We call them the four zones. Church leaders need to understand they're here, they're there, they're who, and they're how. Here, there, who, how. Here is...

where they're starting from, the context that they've been placed in. There is where God is leading them, who is really the partners who are shaping their church and wider community, and then how is about the tangible next steps that they take to get there. So we found that churches that were thriving, they had a level of base expertise in all four of those. ⁓ I think we may end up talking about this one later, but we found out of those four, the churches tended to start with who.

They started with who? And I'll just give a quick example of a leader in our training. His name is John. John went through a cohort like early, early on in those 10 years, and he really led it with himself and like one or two others, and it did not go very well. He came through it again several years later and he said, here's what I'm going to do differently. I'm not just going to have this be me and one or two other people.

He said, I'm gonna get six people to go through this thing with me and then I'm gonna run a parallel process back home at my church. Cause he needed to travel from Indiana to California for the cohort. He said, I'm gonna have a parallel process of a larger team. So he was running two teams through this process. And when we talked to him a few years later and said, John, what's one of the elements that made a difference in how much progress you made? He said, I started with a team out of the gate. And I can't tell you by having the right group of people, the right who from the beginning made

all the difference in the world.

Well, so in the book, you use this term culture to talk about churches and Ray, you also used that term just a moment ago. I wonder if you can unpack why culture and you're talking about organizational culture within churches is so important in order to kind of live into this faithful future. What do you mean by that? mean, you talk about culture and how does culture actually change in congregations? Because I can imagine some leaders listening to this thinking, well,

The inherited culture I have in my congregation isn't particularly future focused. What do I do about that?

Yeah, yeah. Well, in many ways, that's what the whole book is about, right? So I love that question. Yeah, you by culture, we mean the practices and mindset and norms that come to determine how a group interacts with itself, with each other, as well as with others. And so, you know, we really believe, gosh, I'm blanking, ⁓ Jake and Ray, you'll have to help me. Is it Drucker, the culture eats strategy? Yeah, okay. So it's attributed to Drucker, this great quote that...

Drunk or Jesus, I'm trying to remember. No, didn't get drunk around that one.

Okay, stand clear of the lightning bolt that's coming Jake's way on that. So I'm glad we're in different cities here Jake. ⁓ So culture eats strategy for breakfast. ⁓ And that is so true that in any organization, I love strategy. I can do strategic thinking all day. That's a good day for me is doing strategic thinking. But ultimately it's the culture that is going to be even more important in how the organization moves forward.

So a lot of what we do in the book is help leaders understand, identify what is their current culture, they're here, and what is their vision for the culture that God might have for them, they're there. And how do they use small wins? How do they collaborate with others to see God change that culture? So, you you asked Dwight, how does culture change? And...

I just want to double click on something I said a moment ago and that is the power of small wins. We have a whole chapter on this in the book because as we look at how churches change, even big changes are normally often one small win at a time. So there was one church for instance that wanted to prioritize young people more. They wanted that to be true of their culture and so they realized that they needed to really listen to God and to young people. They wanted to be a listening church.

And so they spent more time praying individually, collectively, that was beautiful. But then they also really tried to understand what are young people's questions? What are young people's dreams? What are young people's needs? ⁓ And so young people started getting more involved in the church. They started helping out in all sorts of ways, children's ministry, media, et cetera. Well, one of the adults in the church said to a young person, gosh, know, you're doing such a good job, maybe you should preach sometime. And the teenager said,

I would love that. And that wise adult knew that that moment was a crucial fork in the road. Were they going to respond in a way that modeled the culture they wanted, which was listening to the young person, or were they going to kind of placate or minimize the young person? They chose the former and that adult went to the young people's parents, went to the senior pastor and said, hey, I think this young man should preach. He ended up preaching.

⁓ Apparently it was the shortest sermon on record at the church, but that was a small win. That was a small win to have that young person be listened to and then preach and then think about the message that's sent to the overall church. So we're big believers that small wins add up to culture change.

Love that story. Well, so let's unpack together a bit these three key checkpoints for a future focused church. Relationally discipling young people, modeling kingdom diversity, and tangibly loving our neighbors. Like why those three and what do you mean by them?

Yeah, so why those three? Well, because of what we see in Scripture, because of how we see God working these days in churches, and because of other research that we've done. So you bring all those threads together, and admittedly we're biased here, but you bring all those three threads together and we think that the church that experienced God's best in their future is probably going to emphasizing one, two, or all three of these elements.

So young people, not just entertaining young people, but truly discipling them. And you know what we encourage is that young people, don't have to be your top priority, but that you'd be able to say young people are one of our top five priorities. And sadly Dwight, based on some research we've done with the Fully Youth Institute, only one-third of senior pastors in the U.S. would say young people are one of their top five priorities.

So we have a ways to go and the church ecosystem to be prioritizing young people. But when we do, when churches prioritize young people, what's so encouraging is how that changes not just the young people, but all generations. We've studied so much how churches change young people and along the way we always see how young people are changing churches. Then the second checkpoint is modeling kingdom diversity.

And for us, this isn't about anything necessarily going on in culture or any cultural movements, but it starts with our theology. It starts with God making all people ⁓ in God's image. And what we know from Revelation 7, 9 is God's kingdom is inherently diverse. In fact, one of the shocking hallmarks of the early church was its ethnic and cultural diversity because the gospel transcends.

any kind of divisions that might otherwise come. And you know young people, they're the most ethnically diverse generation our nation has ever seen. And so our hope is that churches would reflect the ethnic diversity of their community. So we're not asking you to, you know, be more ethnically or culturally diverse in your geographic community, but that you would be a mirror of that. And then last is tangibly loving our neighbors.

You know, the way that we love our neighbors is such a big part of how the church comes to be understood and embodied. ⁓ And we're seeing churches do some really creative and courageous and innovative loving in their local community based on the needs of their local community. So whether that's people who are unhoused, whether that's people going through immigration challenges, whether it's the quality of education in the community, whatever it might be.

Churches that really ⁓ prioritize the needs of their neighbors are bright spots. So young people, kingdom diversity, and then loving our neighbors. And you know, our method, our path for change, while we've certainly seen churches use it quite a bit with those three checkpoints, it works with other elements that a church wants to change, whether that's elevate prayer more, whether that's be more involved in global missions, whatever it might be. So while we believe in these three checkpoints,

We love seeing churches use our map for other areas of change also.

Wonderful, well, so I'd love to lean into those a bit in turn. And so maybe that first one around discipleship. Ray, I'm curious, your thoughts on kind of how are future-focused churches approaching discipleship? And I think definitely you talk about young people, but also even more broadly, how does that impact everything from worship to small groups to kind of community engagement and other practices within the life of the church?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that we're seeing is a return to relationship. And so one of the things that we're hearkening people to or calling people towards is relational discipleship that's radically focused on Jesus. And all those words are intentional. ⁓ And we want to see ⁓ kind of the recultivation of relationships because a lot of times we've seen and abdicated ⁓

kind of responsibility around relationships and trusted ⁓ programming over the cultivation of relating to people. And then we're relying heavily on the dissemination of content over the creation of real meaningful connections and really fostering those connections between individuals within a community and with God. And so we're calling people back to what we see Jesus doing. ⁓ And it's shifting the ways that people are doing

a little bit of everything, from the ways that they're interacting with people during the worship service to the ways that they're creating spaces to talk to one another across tables. One of our partners, Alpha, loves the idea of circles and spaces because they want people to be face-to-face with one another. And I know of a church that basically adopted a model very similar where they have worship services around the table.

And there are, there are people that basically sit around half moon, ⁓ half moon seating around these round tables. And so really it's more about people than programs or relationships and relevance and connection rather than just rely on content. And as Kara mentioned earlier, we do see this uptake in this openness to relationships than in recent years in part due to the isolation that people experienced during the pandemic and the oversaturation of content everywhere. And so people are looking for meaningful community.

⁓ in the spaces that they're in and it requires a lot of redesign as a result.

Well, and I really appreciate your emphasis on diversity in this. I ⁓ I think a lot of studies of younger generations in America just point out that for younger generations, diversity is simply a fact of experience, right? And it's certainly an expectation that they bring to any institution or organization that they're part of. And churches are really, in many cases, lagging behind, you know, whether any other organization on this, whether it be the military or, you know, companies or business world or even other nonprofits.

So what are you learning about how churches might actually lean into reflecting the diversity of their neighborhoods? And do you have any stories of churches that were able to take that journey?

Yeah. And so, you know, we know that future focused churches do the hard work of elevating not only like the diversity within their leadership, the diversity, you know, on the stage or, you know, behind the pulpit, but also elevating the diversity of voices and practices that are allowed to emerge and surface. And we are celebrating the diversity that we're seeing emerge, you know, in all these different spaces. And as you mentioned,

excited about the ways that the church is looking to move towards it, but know that it feels like it's a lagging ⁓ entity generally. And so ⁓ one of the things that we consistently see when it comes to how churches can better reflect the diversity of the neighborhoods is by them actually becoming more involved in the life of their neighbors and building connections and learning about what's happening.

in the community and beyond the community and what's impacting the members of the community that don't show up to their churches. A part of what we have seen in this diversification process and just simply embracing the people that are in their communities is when people take and perform audits within their own community and spend some time listening to people who might give the church a chance if they felt like the church was for them or

who never felt like people within the church community were lending them a listening ear. And one of the things that we see is that those who are paying attention to what's going on around them will lean into that and then ⁓ create pipelines and avenues and pathways for people to get engaged. Obviously, some of that's done through kind of new ways of imagining evangelism ⁓ in a both relational way, but also in the ways that you present yourself as a community.

And then other ways are actually asking questions around what kind of practices we have and that we're embodying that either alienate or exclude different members of the community from participating. so ⁓ a variety of churches are doing a lot of different things when it comes to embracing the diversity of their communities. I think one of the most helpful things to start with though is that like cultural audit and

asking the question of whether we are a welcoming community to those who might not already belong to us.

So when churches embrace what you call tangibly loving our neighbors, how does that actually differ from a lot of traditional approaches to outreach or social action that we find in congregations? And then what makes that kind of neighbor love distinctively Christian? Jake, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I can jump in given at least a part of my background was in a bit more of an attractional ⁓ model of church. I can say clearly this was not primarily viewed as, we need to get more involved in our neighborhood just to grow the church or get new people to come in. So I guess I'll start with that. Part of what we found in the churches that we worked with is so often it was based on a deep posture of listening and understanding. And you'll notice that that's a theme that

comes up throughout our work. shows up in lot of the organizational change research, the ability to build in listening and emotional intelligence. And certainly we saw themes of that in the churches that we worked with. But we often found there's a lot of churches who they want to go out and do good or serve in the ways that they want to serve as opposed to actually understanding what are the needs either in our local community around the church or maybe global community or areas further out. So starting with an understanding of what the true needs are.

⁓ And then, I do want to lean into it's inherently Christ-centered. So on the one hand, it's about we've been personally transformed. So the work that we're doing is because of the transformation of what Christ has done in us. But for many churches, it was also motivated by kind of a larger sense of social good and social transformation. I'm sure we could talk many theologians, and I'm sure you have a wide audience here, Dwight, but one person who we would connect with is Dallas Willard, who wrote,

⁓ number of different ⁓ books, Spirited Disciplines, a bunch of others, but Divine Conspiracy is one that we think of where he talks about the gospel of sin management and some of us treat social good and engaging in the gospel of, we're gonna die and go to heaven, so maybe we don't need to do that much good. Others take it on as, it's our job to model Christ and do things ⁓ to bring about a better world. We view it as an intersection of the two.

Often in the churches that we worked with, we heard a lot of parable of the good Samaritan. So like, who is my neighbor? It is that person who is different from me, who should not care for me, I should not care for, is part of who I'm called to serve and love. But a lot of it was also really grounded in seeing kind of the ultimate direction that scripture and our world is headed. like Revelation 21, believing in a God who

Someday is going to set all things right and every tear is going to be wiped away and there will be no more suffering or mourning or pain and understanding that we get to be part of the reconciliation or bringing shalom to bring this back around to young people. Like these are things that we think the church is absolutely called to do. There are also things that young people very much want to be a part of and be engaged in. We saw example after example of that ⁓ in our research.

Well, I love that. I think that kind of eschatological dimension that you're talking about here really in all of these three dimensions of checkpoints as you talk about a future focused church is so helpful. ⁓ Because in this moment for our hopeful future to be clearly the future of the kingdom that God is bringing is, I think, really essential. think I find this in

conversation really encouraging and I hope our listeners will as well because we live in a moment where so often it's well the future focus church has got to be just getting the next program or technique or the next flashy fad that comes through but what you're inviting us to are really some simple very kingdom oriented disciplines and habits that can really take root. It's not rocket science and yet it is also countercultural to how many churches function. Yeah.

100%.

Well, thank you, Ray, Kara, and Jake for ⁓ giving us this hopeful glimpse of the Church of the Future. So this is the first part of a two-part conversation. So for our listeners, we're going to dig deeper next week with Ray, Kara, and Jake around ⁓ how do you actually lead this kind of transformation and what does that look like concretely on the ground in local churches. So please join us for that.

And to our audience, always, to help spread the word about Pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, leave a review, or share Pivot with a friend. See you next week.