Pastor Stanley Patton of Victory Church shares lessons from leading a multicultural, multigenerational church plant on Florida’s Space Coast during a pandemic.

0:18 Lee Stephenson introduces special guest Stanley Patton, pastor of Victory Church, a church plant in Melbourne, Florida.

0:53 Stanley gives a brief history of his church and talks about why he decided to plant in Melbourne.

1:33 Lee asks Stanley if he thinks Florida is part of the Bible Belt.

2:40 Stanley shares lessons he’s learned from leading a multicultural, multigenerational church during the pandemic.

5:04 Stanley talks about how COVID-19 has impacted his church’s Victory Kids Sports ministry.

6:54 Stanley shares how Victory Kids Sports created a virtual experience for its sports programming.

8:50 Stanley talks about how his church has been able to not only survive but thrive financially during the pandemic.

10:21 Stanley says as a pastor or leader, it’s OK not to have all the answers. "It doesn’t mean that I have apathy in that moment. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care. It’s just the fact that I don’t have clarity."

12:23 Stanley reminds us that seasons of difficulty are not new. "I just believe that that the God I serve, he loves me enough that he’s not going to leave me in my mess and leave me in mediocrity. He’s going to help us rise out of this meteorically in a new season."

Lee Stephenson: Welcome, everyone, to the Unfiltered podcast. Lee Stephenson here with my co-host.

Danny Parmelee: I’m Danny Parmelee. And I oversee church planting for Converge MidAmerica.

Lee Stephenson: And we’re recording live from Orlando right now. And we’ve got a special guest with us today. We have pastor Stanley Patton, the pastor, church planter in Melbourne, Florida, and pastors Victory Church. So.

Danny Parmelee: Suffering for Jesus on the beach.

Lee Stephenson: Melbourne’s tough

Stanley Patton: Someone’s got to do it. So I guess the Lord has to send me. OK, I’m just saying, why not me? Lord, here I am. Send me.

Lee Stephenson: Tell us just a brief history of your church. How long have you been around? Why Melbourne? What’s your church makeup at this point?

Stanley Patton: Wow, that’s a great question, Lee. So our church is approximately four years old. We’ll be four on March 6. We’re still the baby church. But we’re excited about it. Planted March 6, three and a half years ago. It’s a multicultural church, multigenerational church, a church for all people. We chose Melbourne because we did a lot of Barna stats. And the stats in Melbourne said that there were really no Bible-believing churches there. 70% of the population wasn’t attending a church. And so we wanted to kind of be the change agent kind of group that would come into that neighborhood. Plus I live there, and really help people find Jesus in that neighborhood.

Lee Stephenson: No, that’s great. Now, you and I, we live in Florida. And so.

Stanley Patton: Someone’s got to do it.

Lee Stephenson: Somebody’s got to do it. I hear from a lot of people from other states and stuff like that, that they believe they think of Florida as being part of the Bible Belt. Would you agree with that statement or disagree with that statement?

Stanley Patton: When it comes to what you see in Melbourne, from a geography perspective, it is a part of the Bible Belt. But Florida is a very weird state; people come from a variety of places in Florida. I mean, there’s a huge population that comes from the Caribbean islands, there’s a lot of people from up north, and then you suddenly find people that are originally from Florida. So there’s not a lot of natives here. So we are a part of the Bible Belt, geographically speaking, but there are a lot of people that are far away from God here.

Lee Stephenson: And we have a lot of our listeners are either have a desire to plant a multicultural, multigenerational type of church. And COVID, in particular, this past year, I mean, it’s hurt everybody, everybody’s been touched by that. And so I’d love for you to just take a few moments and just share what have been some leadership lessons you’ve learned this year, when it comes to leading a multicultural church?

Stanley Patton: Well, I think one of the first things that I had to learn was the fact that because we are a multicultural church, everybody has a different thinking process around this concept of COVID-19. There are people that say, wear a mask, then there are people that say, don’t wear a mask. There are people that say trust science, there are people that say trust God, and everybody has a different opinion. And so when you’re leading a multicultural church, everybody is not monolithic. Obviously, the thinking processes are different, the strategies that they want to employ are different. Some people are wanting to come back to church, others are not wanting to come back to church due to the rising COVID numbers in certain demographics of people, especially groups like African Americans and Latinos. And so we have to kind of navigate that space constantly and consistently. So I’ve learned to really listen to all peoples, even though that’s what we’re supposed to do as pastors, I’ve learned to listen to all people and allow them to have value in that. But at the same time, I have to realize that my job as a senior pastor is always to listen to the Holy Spirit, and figure out what’s in the best interest of the church first and foremost, here, regardless of you know, different factions of people and what they have to say. And so I really tried to listen well in this particular season. The other thing that I’ve had to learn in this season was how to be flexible, and how to pivot like on a dime. I mean, many churches, especially those that are listening today, you’ve had to figure out how to pivot, you’ve had to figure out how to move from portable to like virtual. I mean, you’ve done all kinds of amazing things in this season. We had to do the same thing. We had to be flexible. We had to pivot, we had to really train our team differently in this season. Instead of having a welcome team that’s in person, we had to have a welcome team that’s virtual, which is kind of a very weird space for us to be in, Hey, good morning, and we’re texting and typing at this point in time. But we had to do those things just because there was paramount for it, especially in these COVID-19 days. So I think those are the two lessons that I’ve learned well. I’ve had to listen well. But I’ve also had to lead well in learning how to pivot and be flexible in my leadership style.

Danny Parmelee: And Stanley for you guys, you have kind of a unique model because you had your church very, very much connected with a ministry Victory Sports, so why don’t you talk a little bit about that, and then also how that either compounded things and making it more difficult, or if it was like oh man, I’m really thankful that we had this other side thing, because it really helped us to get through.

Stanley Patton: Well, the Victory Kids Sports ministry, as you call it, was really designed to help us do you know what we call the three R’s, which is to reach people, redefine what we do in our community, but also to raise support for our church. And those are kind of the three things that we wanted to do. In COVID-19, you know, it’s just been impossible to be able to get in schools to talk with people, just because of proximity issues and health concerns. A lot of our business was really centered around making sure that we can connect with kids, administrators, school superintendents, and that’s just impossible.

Danny Parmelee: Give a small snapshot of what the ministry is of the Victory Kids Sports, like, what does that? What do you actually do?

Stanley Patton: Absolutely. So what we do is we figure out how to get into a school. And we bring a sports program into that school for a number of weeks. Normally, that can be for an entire semester, or it can be as little as six weeks. That’s usually what we tried, because it just takes about six weeks really develop connections with people and we want to develop a team for that. But once we get into that school, our whole focus is really to try to play those sports with the school to define exactly who Jesus is in that moment without being too churchy and too proselytizing in that moment. And then at the same time to really kind of recalibrate them towards what we’re trying to do in our community. Which is, obviously we’re planting church. And we want to make sure that people know and understand who Jesus is.

Lee Stephenson: So overnight, you kind of out of the schools, part of your ministry thinking and grid is gotta be changed, again come back to the word pivot. What have you done, and how have you continued to maintain momentum among those that you’re trying to lead continue to keep the vision and the mission fresh for people versus becoming too pessimistic towards what’s going on in reality?

Stanley Patton: Well, as everything moved virtual. I mean, church moved virtual, schools moved virtual. We realized probably about three months into COVID, we were going to really have to go virtual with our sports programming. There just wasn’t a lot of options out there. We’ve looked at the YouTube videos, we’ve looked at the Zoom calls with, you know, physical education. And so we really created a team that could come alongside us to help us create a series of prepackaged videos that we could take directly to the schools and actually sell them to the schools. And that was very, very popular. So we have everything from basketball, virtually, football virtually, track and field virtually, soccer virtually, I mean, you name it, we already have it. And we call it Victory Virtual and Victory Virtual is really kind of physical education virtually on steroids. It comes with video game components, it comes with cartoon characters that are doing all the movements. It’s led by a lot of kid actors. And so we’re really excited about it. And we’re beginning to sell that in a lot of other spaces. So we had to pivot, we had to be flexible.

Danny Parmelee: It seems a little weird to say kids sports on steroids. You’re not suggesting the kids use steroids are you, just to be clear for our listeners?

Stanley Patton: Hey, if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying, OK? We’ve all been out there with the 10 year old that’s got the mustache, there’s something going on there. But what we’re talking about in concerns, I mean, I’m not even listened to Danny on this. But I want suggest to us that no, the kids are not on steroids. But what we are doing is doing a pre-packaged kind of templated video series that seems to be working well in that educational space.

Danny Parmelee: OK, so on a serious note, you said though, that the Victory Kids Sports does help to even fund the church. Did you have to pivot then? Because it’s like, man, you’re also losing this income because you’re essentially kicked out of the schools or you don’t have that opportunity. So did you have to adjust other things, adjust your spending in that, or did you have enough to kinda?

Stanley Patton: Did we have to furlough everybody? Is that what you’re asking? Well, we had to do what everybody else had to do to survive. We had to figure out how to create a new budget, but through the support and financial giving of Victory Church, our members, our constituents, our partners, who have been faithful even during these, you know, very, very fierce economic challenging times, we’ve been able to survive and not only survive, but also thrive from a church perspective. Anything else that Victory Kids Sports brought to the table was just kind of icing on the cake. We weren’t expecting that, obviously, at this season. We also do have a big major sports camp that we offer during spring and summer. And so if you need a place to send some, you know, really bad kids or whatever, or some really cool kids, we’ll take them. And that seems to be one of the biggest things that we do in our county. We’re gonna do it this year. We did it last year and we’re gonna continue to rock and roll.

Lee Stephenson: Love it, love it. Just another practical leadership lesson. I’d love to hear your take on this just for our listeners. This has been a unique and very challenging time to lead as a pastor because as you mentioned before, like you have people on this side of one opinion and then the complete opposite and how do you maintain clarity and lead well, knowing no matter what decision you make 50% are going to be upset with you. What have you found your base and obviously, I mean the Lord is obviously that base.

Stanley Patton: Oh, I can’t give you like the VBS answer. Just say, I pray about it, you know, I seek God and there’s a smoke signal in the sky. So go this direction, and that’s gonna be it. Alright, so the one thing that I believe to answer that question, Lee is, I mean, we’re operating in the season of I don’t know, and I’m OK with not knowing all the answers, I’m OK with saying, I really don’t know. But in that I don’t know, it doesn’t mean that I have apathy in that moment, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care. It’s just the fact that I don’t have clarity. And there, I think we’re all kind of walking in that murky situation. Do I step left or do I step right? Do I stand still? And I believe that that’s the one place that I’ve been, in terms of just my relationship with God is just, I just been standing still and waiting for God to kind of give clarity in this moment. Because I do feel like to be honest, as we’re on Unfiltered, that we’re flying blind, you know, we’re at 50,000 feet in the air, and there’s no one driving the plane at times. And so I do feel like I don’t know what we’re gonna do. But I do know that I do have these moments, not at moments of brilliance, but just moments that the Holy Spirit is speaking into my life and says, and whispering do this, and I just try to listen to those little still small voice moments in my life, and we move in that direction.

Danny Parmelee: Stanley, that’s really, really good. I don’t know if I’ve yet heard a pastor say that it’s OK to say, I don’t know, and that it’s not an apathy thing. I think that everyone, so many pastors and leaders are feeling like, well, in order to lead people through this, I have to be the one that is confident in the direction and knows. And when you really don’t, then you’re just kind of a fake and a fraud. So I just I love that, Stanley, that’s really great just waiting on the Lord and when you are prompted in something.

Stanley Patton: Don’t tell my church, OK. Don’t tell anybody I said that publicly. But I believe that, you know, we are operating in a season of questions. There are a lot of questions. And a lot of people are asking, why is this happening? Why are we going through this? Does the church have a response? Does the church have an answer? How are we going to navigate this process? And to the church, you know, seasons of difficulty are not new to us. This is expected. Jesus tells us that we will have challenging times. He tells us to expect these kinds of dark days. And so I just believe that the God that I serve, he loves me enough that he’s not going to leave me in my mess and leave me in mediocrity. He’s going to help us to rise out of this meteorically in a new season. And I just believe that we’re going to get through this and this too shall pass.

Lee Stephenson: Love it. Love it, Stanley. I appreciate just taking a little bit of your time to share your story, share your heart and even the leadership lessons that you’ve learned over this past year. You guys are doing a great ministry and we pray and excited see what continues to come out of that over the years to come. For our listeners, thanks for tuning in. This is the Unfiltered podcast. Until next time, keep it real.