In this episode of the Pivot Podcast, the Rev. Dr. Christian Selvaratnam shares how he caught the church planting vision and has spent 25 years developing innovative models for training church planters and traditional pastors alike.

As Dean of Church Planting at St. Hild Theological College in England, Christian explains the power of the medieval apprenticeship approach to leadership development. Learn how "leading from the middle" can activate more people in ministry and create a "mixed ecology" of both new and revitalized churches. Whether you're contemplating starting something new or breathing fresh life into an established congregation, this conversation offers practical wisdom for the journey.

Learn more about Christian and his work at https://sthild.org/christian-selvaratnam.

Check out "How the Inherited and Innovative Church Work Together" with Jorge Acevedo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs2rt4_czHk to continue your journey with the Pivot Podcast.

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We also have in the historic denominations, a lot of churches that are close to an inevitable closure, perhaps even as high as 40%. And we've got one or two options with that. We either close it and then it's gone or we sell the building maybe, or we say, this is like a living cycle and this current cycle has come to an end. And that is sad, but

But this church also has a great story, but it can have another story, perhaps a fresh beginning. And so actually most of the church planting that's happening in the UK within the denominational churches is actually this revitalizing of existing churches that have either closed or are close to closing. But there's a vision and an opportunity for something new that restarts that kind of missional edge that's needed today.

Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the Church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile and I'm joined by Terri Elton. If you're not familiar with what we do at Pivot, we believe there are four key pivots God is calling many churches to make in the 21st century. They are a pivot in posture, from fixing problems to listening and discerning where God is leading. A pivot in focus, from membership to discipleship.

A pivot in structure from one size fits all models of ministry to a mixed ecology and a pivot in leadership from clergy-led lay-supported ministry to lay-led clergy-supported ministry. That's right, Terri. And that's why we are so excited to welcome to the Pivot podcast the Reverend Dr. Christian Selvrotnum. He is the Dean of Church Planting and founder of the Center for Church Planting at St. Hilde, which is a theological college that's British for seminary in the north of England. He's a church planter, author, and educator whose most recent books are Why Plant Churches and The Craft of Church Planting. Christian was the first ordained leader of G2, which is a church plant in the city of York. And he also spent 15 years working for Alpha, including as head of Alpha UK. So he brings a depth of experience in cultivating a mixed ecology of innovative forms of church alongside time-honored ones.

Christian, welcome to the Pivot Podcast.

It's so great to be with you here. Glad to meet you all.

So Christian, I'd like to start by having you share a little about your own story and how God called you into this ministry of church planting.

Yeah. And it was, it was an unexpected calling. was recently married. I was the pastor of a church in the south of England and having a lot of fun, doing that part of a team of three, leaders. were called the elders and, one day, one of the team, one of the other elders, George and his wife, Jill, said to my wife and I that they, it was a long story, but they'd been praying about something. They had some contacts in another city and they said, we're going to go and plant a church in Coventry. And I hadn't, I didn't even know what that meant. I just thought that sounds amazing. But, these were really dear friends of ours. So of course we wanted to kind of be alongside them. We wanted to support them. We, we understood this was an adventurous thing.

So we sort of journeyed with them in the buildup to this plant, their move and the first few months while they were there. And what I didn't realize was church planting is contagious. You can pick it up just by hanging around with somebody. And so we never intended to, we were just thought, well, we're going to be here for you and then we'll stay here doing what we're doing, which is great. And remember there was a moment when my wife turned to me and she said, I think we'll do this. Don't you think?

And I said, yeah, I think so. And it was almost like an accidental, like a, realization that, okay, we've, we've had something modeled for us. and, and now we will do it. So that for us opened the door. can tell you more, but that shortly after that, an opportunity came for us to be involved in, in church planting for the first time.

It was earlier than that, but it was in York. and another funny story, my wife and I, we were living in the south of England, but we'd both grown up in the north. my wife and it'll clean myself in Halstead halfway between his York. So York and York was well known to both of us. And my wife said to me, she, she knew that, church planting was becoming more of a thing in our denomination, in our movement. So she said, don't, don't sign us up to just go anywhere. She said, unless it's York. She actually said this. So the next week I was away at a leaders prayer retreat. There were lots of people there and they said, Hey, we've got some church plant opportunities. If you're at all interested, come and see us. And they read out the names of some cities and one of them was York. So I went up to the guy and said, York, I want to come. And he said, yeah, you should obviously talk about it. And I was like, don't need to just sign us up.

So we jumped in before he even knew what the opportunity exactly was. And that's what brought us to York in the first time.

So tell us a little bit about the churches you ended up planting there and some things you learned along the way.

Yeah, mean, planting really has become part of my life. That first church plant was in 1999. So I've got 25 years now of doing this, more time involved in church planting than before then involved in ministry and other ways. being involved in different types, that first church plant was kind of a reproduction where the

The church we started was very similar to the one we'd come from and that just seemed to be the natural model. made sense. We just kind of went to a new place to do the things that we'd done before. And I did that for five years. The more recent one G2, which stands for next generation. That was kind of the idea of the name was a really curious story. had a ministry colleague who talked to a friend in Scotland.

And the friend in Scotland was a Baptist minister and they had to move out of their building for refurbishment and they met in a local school. And what the Baptist minister said to my friend was, it was really interesting because when we were in a different venue and we had a slightly different style, different people came to explore faith with us. So my friend Roger, who was a minister said, I think we should try that. And at the time I was, I was then in a, Anglican church and a really magnificent building, but they can be quite intimidating. You know, it's old stone and it's pews and it's stained glass windows. Really impressive. But if you're not used to that, it's a big step to come for the first time. So G2 began as an experiment in a local health club, like a really high end venue, the kind of venue that everyone knew. And if you invited your friend to a meeting there, they'd want to go because they know it's a really nice place. And we did some research. We had a year building up to that and we eventually settled on having a more innovative style. We would, we would sit around tables rather than pews or lines of chairs. We would, we tried to model it on cafe style and people were beginning to experiment with that model at the time. And, and we wanted to keep it kind of really low.

And I was involved in alpha at the time. And so I knew the power of kind of unscripted discussion of allowing interaction. So for example, our sermons always included discussion. didn't just want to speak at people. We wanted it to be a conversation. And we learned through that lots of other things. But one of the things we learned was allowing people to interact with the idea, with the talk, with the message was a really powerful way of them exploring faith.

So say more about your experience with Alpha. Many people in the US are familiar with Alpha, but maybe say a little bit about what it is. And how did that help you think about evangelism or reaching kind of beyond the typical church members?

Yeah, sure. And I mean, it was a great privilege to work for Alpha for 15 years. I was focused really on the UK, but Alpha was global. And so I had all the thrill, the investment of meeting people from all parts of the world, very different contexts, countries, different cultures, different needs, different levels of wealth, different languages. But seeing actually wherever you were in the world, people were interested in exploring Christian faith. I saw it change over my time there, but we started to find that people we knew, friends, families, colleagues, were in a generation where many of them had never been to church before. And so any sense of responding to Christianity or Jesus had no background.

It would be an odd question to ask, do you want to follow Jesus? Who is Jesus? Well, I don't know anything about Jesus. And so one of the things Alpha did is it provided a way of people to just to understand the basics. The other thing I think it did that was really helpful is it provided an intermediary step so that people, the first step didn't have to be go to church on Sunday where there's community singing and this; sometimes you stand, sometimes you sit and these things can be very discouraging or confusing. Alpha provides sort of a distinctive and easier introduction into that. And so the format was really just like attending a class or a program, typically eight to 12 weeks, usually in an evening. Alpha always started with food.

And hospitality is so powerful. If you sit around a table, you're all equal, whoever you are. You've got something to talk about. And you're connecting as human beings, not people who have an opinion or an idea. It's a brilliant way of bringing people together. And I think we learned that from the monasteries, the ancient monasteries understood hospitality. And so Alpha begins with hospitality. And there's a talk and it covers just a topic of Christianity and it gives some content to listen to, to absorb. And then the real powerhouse of Alpha is a small group where the discussion is led by the guests. So there is a host, but the host is really there to not speak because what we really want the guests to do is to talk. And it can sound a bit odd if you've not experienced Alpha, but that small group becomes an incredible way of people exploring faith together. And actually, if you're a guest, never been to church, you're a little bit suspicious of the person who's obviously a Christian or, you know, they're dressed like this, you kind of think, well, you're, you're going to sell it to me, obviously. But if you can tell, well, this other person, they're a fellow guest, then then you want to buzz with them. And you might learn, well, we don't necessarily, you know, I didn't think Jesus existed. You think he did exist, but he's a philosopher. You think, well, he's a he was like a really spiritual person.

That becomes a process. then because Alpha meets during the week, every week, what we found was things incubated within people's lives. And so you'd come back the next week and it was as if God had been speaking to people or the ideas or the conversation had been filtered through. And then one more key thing about Alpha is typically there's a day or a weekend away focusing on hearing talks about the Holy Spirit.

And almost always within that, we give an opportunity just to pray with someone if they would like that. And when you talk to guests at the end, very often that is like a turning point where it's like they switch from, finding out about something and then they start talking after the weekend away when they've been prayed for as something that they're growing with, that they're learning within them. their mind might not have quite put together the pieces, but it's just their hearts beginning to say, yes, whatever this is, I want this. And I don't know the stats for the US, but in the UK, Alpha's huge. Probably a quarter of churches run Alpha in a given year. Some churches will run it many times and daytime and evening, et cetera.

And if I think about my friends, probably half of my friends that have come to faith did so on an Alpha course, because it's almost a standard part of church evangelization in the UK today.

Well, so I just want to connect that gathering around tables for discussion with your approach to planting G2. And I think about Jesus' ministry was so often around tables with people. And somehow we've turned church into so much more of a performative thing, focused on stages. Or if there's a table, it's an altar table that's very far removed from certainly conversation or people kind of gathering around as equals. And so there's something really powerful there to recover, I think, and that Alpha's sort of figured out how to do. And I've even heard from some people who kind of finished Alpha, graduate from it, and then they start going to church, sort of traditional worship experiences, and like, well, now we don't get to talk to anyone anymore, or have these small groups or things, right? Yeah, well, so I want to ask you, because you've just written this book.

Why church planting, right? Why do we need new churches? A lot of people look at the landscape and they've got all these inherited churches that are struggling. Why should we focus resources on starting new churches? Even maybe they look weird and it's not clear they're going to succeed. So give us an answer to that.

Yeah. We'll read the book for a fuller answer, but I think there's some really key things. I mean, you could say we have too many churches. You could say we have too few churches. In the UK, we're seeing, and across Europe, a significant shift. It's a post-Christian, less Christian season, era. And the way in which churches are engaging with people is changing.

Historically, our historic churches have been organized around geography. So it's a church near to where you live within walking distance. And old churches have bells because that would be the way you'd know they'd start ringing the bell with enough time for you to walk to get there. And that served past generations incredibly well. But we know now that our societies are much more complex.

They're racially diverse, but also we we align with different groups. And so we need to think not just about where people live, but where they work. I'm involved in a church plant that only connects with people during the week. Because we're connecting with people where they work and we're in the heart of the city center in Leeds as the current church plant I'm involved in. Where people study is a huge thing in the UK in terms of people who just into that adult age, but they're, they're a distinctive community as a distinctive tribe. And there's a, there's a, there's a distinctive engagement that's needed with them, through people's social lives and particularly younger generations, young families, empty nesters, there are some distinct social gathering themes that affect local communities and of course the digital space. So in my denomination, we aim to have a church for every community, but we've realized that the meaning of that word community is now more complex. Just because the person who lives in my street is near to me, it doesn't necessarily mean that they would connect with the church that I might go to. And so we need a whole diversity of churches to reach people.

The other thing I think is really significant about church planting is it is an act of internal renewal of the whole church. And I think we're starting to see evidence and data for that in the UK. Some analysis of the last year's church attendance, looking at church plants, looking at legacy churches, et cetera, and just tracking. I think we're starting to see that the missional focus that naturally exists within a church plant is starting to affect the whole of the network. It's shifting the culture and it's kind of creating a new momentum of its own. And so if that's true, and I think it is and I hope it is, then we could also say church planting is actually a way of renewing the whole church.

And so it's not a case of, you know, out with something and in with something else, but actually we need, we need both. We need new churches that are reaching new people in new ways. And we need to find ways to renew, revitalize, rejuvenate some of our existing churches. We also have in the historic denominations, a lot of churches that are close to an inevitable closure, perhaps even as high as 40%.

And we've got one or two options with that. We either close it and then it's gone or we, you know, we sell the building maybe. Or we say, this is like a living cycle and this current cycle has come to an end and that, that is sad, but, but this church also has a great story, but it can have another story, perhaps a fresh beginning. And so actually most of the church planting that's happening in the UK within the denominational churches is actually this revitalizing of existing churches that have either closed or are close to closing, but there's a vision and an opportunity for something new that restarts that kind of missional edge that's needed today.

I love that metaphor of thinking of seasons and planting fits with that, you know, of there's death and life all the time, all around us. In your previous book, The Craft of Church Planting, you use the ancient model of apprenticeship as the model for training. I'd like you to just say a little bit more about that.

Remember, you're speaking to people that do training in classrooms, and maybe that's not the best way to do this. And I was thinking of how contagious church planting might be for folks. put those pieces together as we think about how to train leaders for this work.

So I'm all for classroom training. I'm a Dean of Church Planning at my college. So I do a lot of that and it has enormous value.

So we might still have a job. Is that what you're saying, Christian? Yeah.

Yeah, I really hope so. I really hope I can keep my job. And for some people that is an outstanding way of learning, but there are lots of brilliant people who don't learn quite that way. And maybe there are other ways we could enable them to learn, which means that we don't get to miss out on what they have to offer. My interest in apprenticeship came in the second church plant that I mentioned, G2.

I had a full-time job working for Alpha. So G2 was kind of on the side. I was a volunteer and actually in the early stages, everyone was a volunteer. And I remember very early on talking to a friend and saying, we, we really have to find a way to get everyone involved here. And so we went on a journey of doing that and we came up, we tried loads of ideas that were, worked really well. had a thing of training preachers where they do five minute talks and we had a kind of pairing people up to lead the service where you had one person that knew what to do and one person that was learning what to do. And we kind of often worked as teams because between us, we might know enough how to do things. And so I reflected later looking back that actually I was, I was kind of inventing apprenticeship models of training, but I wasn't using that language. The second thing that helped me to understand this was, I had an office in the city center of York and every day I would walk past two, two modern remnants of medieval craft guilds, the York Minster stone yard where they cut the stone for cathedrals and the Minster glaziers where they made and repaired stained glass. And I'd been on tours in both of those. So I knew, I knew what they did. And one day the kind of penny dropped and I realized, in the past, in the medieval era, this was how people were trained. And it's like, I'm rediscovering some of that in this church plant that I'm doing. And we discovered that our methods were really effective. We were able to train leaders really quickly, not using classrooms or programs, but kind of on the job training, which really was usually about being alongside somebody who was a bit further ahead than you and then having a structure and a program, gathering people who were learning at a similar stage so they could buzz with the things they were learning and taking people on a progression. And so that kind of led me to my doctoral studies, which was looking at what if church planters were trained in an apprenticeship model rather than in the classroom model, which is the one we know so well in the West. Would it have any advantages? And I think it does. And I've been able to implement some of that in the work I do at the Theological College where I teach, where I've been able to develop new programs that approach training in other ways. One of the key things I did find in my doctoral studies was the role of artistry in these medieval guilds. That's something we've lost in training. It's as if the industrial revolution industrialized us and the advent of machines made work like we become a machine, like we all become engineers and we used to be artisans. And any church planter knows there's an inherent creativity that's required to get that job done.

If you're going to contextualize, how do you contextualize? You contextualize through imagination and creative thinking. And so I think that was one of the keys that it was really helpful for me to understand that apprenticeship training treats people like an artist. You're not, we have this phrase, vicar school and vicar factory. Vicar factory is a phrase.

And it's almost like, you you go along and whatever you come in, you'll be molded to be exactly the same and you'll pop out the other end. We don't do that, but that's the joke people make. The guilds were exactly the opposite. That every person learning was unique and the person training them, their job was to release their unique style distinctively and to help them to grow into that. I often say to students, I can train you about church planting, but I don't know what kind of church planting you will need to do. So this is a bit like, you're going to need to be an artist. I can't paint the picture for you now, but I can teach you how to paint and I can teach you how to learn to paint. And if you can learn in that way, then actually further down the line, when you are in that place, you can be the artist that understands.

What does this church plant need to look like?

love that there's different values you're preferencing in those two. And one is what the leader brings, what the church planter brings is honored from the very beginning. And that's not only from what I hear you asking, but also that you're engaging right away, right, in a context. And so contextualizing that piece over time. I also appreciate I think one of the problems we have in the training model is we think you have to master it before you do it. And there's kind of the self-doubt or over confidence in yourself before doing it. So I love the integration of the kind of practice reflection wisdom kind of conversation that you highlighted in that. Well, so reading your book taught me a lot about medieval apprenticeships and even some of the familiar terms like a journeyman we think about like a journeyman electrician Tell us a little bit about that's that sort of step in the development of a You know of a craftsperson in in the medieval period that journeyman sort of Spending some time traveling around to other workshops to be exposed more broadly because I think one of the things that people often worry about if Training is very localized

in one place is that it can be too narrow.

Yeah, exactly. So in the guilds, roughly speaking, there were three stages of training, the apprenticeship, which was the beginner and in the medieval guilds, these were often children and older youth because that was their schooling. And so it might be, that might be quite a long period because they're young and apprenticeship was about absorbing, absorbing the feel of the trade.

that you were exploring and beginning to master the rudimentary skills. And that was often measured. Let's say it was a carpenter that the, the ending of your apprenticeship would be when you could make a chair and the chair would evidence that you've learned how to drill holes, to, to, turn wood, to cut, to shape, that you had the, you had basic skills, you know, it kind of fitted and the chair.

stood, stood level, et cetera. And so that would be like the evidence of that. And I actually went somewhere in Ireland that still practice that it's Waterford crystal. and they produce lead crystal, things, and they're all handmade. And one of the things they, do for training is there's something called the apprenticeship bowl. Have you ever had like a Sherry trifle?

It's if you can picture that the bowl, the glass bowl with cuts and the fluted edges. That's what the apprenticeship bowl looks like. And at Waterford Crystal, they still practice this. You graduate from being a basic apprentice when you can make a bowl or an apprentice bowl and you can have a go anytime you like, but obviously it's not going to work on your first day or whatever you progress into it. You're given a plain bowl and you have a week to discuss.

to apply, I think you have to do 17 different kinds of cuts, different fluting, different finishing. And you can ask for help from anyone, but no one is allowed to touch your bowl. And if you can present the evidence at the end, then you are demonstrating that you have mastered the basic skills and you're ready for the next level of learning. So that's the one you've mentioned, the journeyman.

Uh, it was sometimes referred to as the wandering years. And typically you were a journeyman for three years. The rule is that you had to leave your workshop. So you're kind of kicked out of the nest. And I met some modern day journeymen who told me, you know, that it's still the case. You have a final evening with your master and there's certain things and ceremonies. Then in the early next morning, the master walks you to the city walls.

and some other journeyman collects you and you go and you're not supposed to look back and you're not, was, told me he wasn't allowed within 50 kilometers of his workshop for three years. And the idea is that the journeyman would travel and because they've got skills, they can be employed. So the word journeyman means a day worker, someone who can be paid for a day's work, who can do a good day's work. And

You go somewhere else, you find another workshop in your same trade, but maybe it's in a different country. Maybe you've gone from Germany to France or England. And so it's similar, but different. And also the person teaching you, the master has a different approach. So you learn in a new style. The apprenticeship has training delivered for them. They kind of train under supervision. The journeyman is in a second phase, which

can be technically called an autodidact, which means self-learning. So it means you haven't learned everything, but you've learned how to learn. And so whereas somebody else sort of held your hand through learning as an apprenticeship, now you know how to repeat that. You know how to go into a workshop and notice what's different and say, can you explain this tool? Am I holding it the correct way? And you know, how do you do this? And you can take note of the pattern.

The ideal journeyman would travel every three or four months. They would have a log book. Each master would sign it and write what they would learn. And then to complete the journeyman years, you would return home and you would have to make something. And the thing the apprentice made was called pieces. And the journeyman had to make a master's piece, which is the origin of that word we know well, masterpiece.

And the masterpiece should show evidence of your basic skills, evidence of the new things that you've learned, demonstrating that you've both remembered your basic skills, but you've also shown you've learned some new skills and you produce the thing that is the evidence of that. And if you could do that successfully, then you could enter the third stage and you could become a master.

I love that. That's beautiful. I can kind of see it. I have been to England and seen some of those pieces that you're talking about. As you look across the landscape today of the UK and around the world, what are some new Christian communities trends or what are you seeing as kind of new things that are birthing out of that work? Or at least what gets you excited about that work today?

I heard you mentioned it earlier at the beginning, the idea that the church is a mixed ecology, that it is an ecology. And I think in England, that's where our thinking is. And I think we're at the early stages of really testing out new ecclesial models. And so we've got church planting where a new church that's the same as the one that it's coming from is happening.

We've got some new kind of hub type churches, which we call resource churches, which are churches that typically have a sense of a calling to be prolifically involved in church planting. And what that typically means is internally the church is raising up lots of leaders, is aiming, is planning and aiming to send people. Some of these churches are doing it every four years. Some are doing it every two.

years, so you can see it in their budget, in their leadership structure, in their staffing, in how they talk. They're trying to reseed churches and church planting back into the networks that they serve. And we're seeing a lot of variety, some of which are probably still untested. Maybe they need to run for five or 10 years before we can say, I've got friends doing things called choir church, forest church.

Disciple- making movements, are small churches that meet in homes. I've got a friend that runs, a church that serves, the people that do the food delivery. I don't know what one we have. have like delivery and just eat and examples like you probably have like equivalent examples. but it out there's not a good church for these guys to join. So my friend runs it on Friday evening in his backyard.

They come in and he runs a 10 minute service or a 15 minute service that just repeats on Friday. The guys come in and then if they get another order, they head out. And it's just a crazy kind of experimental form of church. Who knows if it will last? Who knows if it's sustainable, it can grow, but it's reaching new people in new ways and it's helping the existing church kind of.

understand maybe ways in which it needs to grow and develop. And I think all our denominations now are strongly aligning around having church planting in the center of their vision and their strategy. It used to be on the periphery. It's very much center now for most denominations in the UK.

So what are a few words of advice you would give to someone who might feel called to start a new Christian community?

I number one, I would say to that person, find a way to get apprenticed. And apprenticeship is really easy. You just need to show up somewhere and get invited in. just find, rather than just go, I'll have a go, I've never done it, let's hope it works. That would be a risky way to do it. Better to say, I'm gonna take a year, I'm gonna find someone who's doing some church planting and I'm just gonna see, can I hang around with them and sort of almost just be their apprentice?

And maybe find, you know, is there any way, you going somewhere? Could I drive you? Are you doing anything? Could I sit next to you? and often like the before and after conversations can be so, powerful if you're, if you're there learning with someone, Hey, tell me what you're going to do. Like, why are you doing it that way? Brilliant. Okay. Afterwards, you might ask them what, why is it you did it this way? What, is that the only way you do it? Do you have any other advice? I think.

Everyone can find a way to get some kind of apprenticeship experience. think number two, find your guild. So the guild is anyone else doing the same thing. So find as many of those things. Church planters often feel lonely. They can feel isolated. It can be amazing on day one and then six months in you can think, this is so hard. Nothing's working. With no money, no-

It can feel so discouraging. So you need to have a guild to be part of. It doesn't matter what you call it, but it's a bunch of friends who want to know each other, want to encourage each other and tell you that, you you learn, you talked about the learning. We often say is just in time learning. So, Seminar is often delivered just in case learning, like we'll teach you this just in case you need it. But by the time you need it, you've probably forgotten.

what you were taught, but just in time learning works, if you know who you can go to to say, tomorrow, I need to do this. I've never done this before. Have you done this? Brilliant. Tell me, tell me what you did. Any advice? Can you lend me a resource? And that can be incredibly powerful. And I think the other thing we haven't touched on it, but church planting can be really hard work and there is a real need to cultivate.

resilience traits in pioneering. Some of that's about knowing yourself really well. I think that if I wanted to really train a church planter, I would tell them, I need you to fail first. We need to do some failing so you understand your limits and your boundaries. And so we know how you behave when your world falls apart. You know, we all have

good or bad ways we might respond when things are difficult. And let's not find that out when you're the one leading it and it all depends on you. How about we find that out whilst you're on our team so we can look after you. And so I think one of the things I'm most exercised about at the moment in the UK scene is making sure the people we train and send out as church planters have had the right input.

to help them understand themselves and to be resilient and to understand what healthy leadership looks like, what it looks like to sustain their spiritual life so they can do this for the long haul and not just get burnt out after five years.

So let me flip that question. What would you say to leaders in the existing congregations, in the inherited systems, whether it's a congregation, a bishop, or some of those church denominational church systems around the same kinds of questions about church planting?

Well, I think the apprenticeship idea is so simple. fits almost any context that anyone can take, anyone can think about what it is and begin to apply it. One of the dangers of professional ministry is we're sort of saying to people, we've given you all this training so that you can be the one. Whereas an apprentice making leader.

actually is thinking how many people can I activate into ministry? And I used to have a phrase in my church that I want to lead from the middle. Because if I lead from the front, then you're never at the front. And I don't need to be at the front and I was a volunteer, so I didn't have enough capacity to do that as well. But I could lead from the middle where I can constantly be thinking my ministry is to notice people, to get the timing.

to do the conversations, to work out ways. How could we get you involved? How could we get you involved? How can I invite you into this room so you can begin to learn that? So I think people who've been in ministry a long time, they often sometimes grow a bit stale. They love what they do, but it can become hard work. And there is nothing more life-giving than sharing what you have with someone else. And it's so easy to do it.

Like I say to pastors, of you, you're doing something on Sunday, you could invite someone else into that, even just to sit next to you or to do, like if you're doing a talk and you need to read a quote from a book, get someone else to do it and have them stand next to you. And then afterwards, tell them that that was so good. And can we do this again?

How about next time you do the introduction and then eventually, you know, it's like you'll do the talk and I'll just read the quote for you. And then one day it's, you know, you lead the talk and, and you've got my phone number. I can, I'll give you any help that you want. So I, I think the inherited church, the legacy church has so much it can offer as long as we make room. And that's the creative question. Just think about anything you're doing and everything you're doing.

How can you have an apprentice in the room alongside you? How can you work with an emerging community of people that are learning? How can you make room for the journeyman? Is there a way in which people can come from somewhere where they've learned the basics? They can come to you and just become, they can help you, but at the same time, you're advancing their train.

Well, we haven't even touched on this, but this is how Jesus made disciples, right? It's through this very kind of pattern that you're describing of apprenticeship. That will, I think, have to be the focus of a whole other Pivot Podcast interview that we'll do with you maybe some other time. But Christian, thank you so much for sharing your insights and wisdom with us.

That's so kind, I've loved talking to you.

And to our audience, thank you also for joining us for this episode of the Pivot Podcast. You can help us spread the word about Pivot by liking or subscribing to YouTube or to whatever podcast platform that you're on and leave us a review. Finally, the best compliment you can give us is to share Pivot with a friend. Until next time, this is Dwight and Terri signing off.