Is your church struggling to meaningfully engage with your community? In this transformative episode of the Pivot Podcast, host Dwight Zscheile interviews Pastor Ed Doerner about his innovative approach to church leadership community engagement. Discover how Messiah Lutheran Church in Midland, Michigan transformed from being $5.2 million in debt to creating a sustainable community ministry model that provides $6.2 million worth of services annually through their "Beyond the Breakwater" approach.
Pastor Ed shares practical insights on developing sustainable ministries that preserve dignity, reach the often-overlooked ALICE population (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed), and create organic opportunities for faith conversations. Learn about their car repair facility, grocery store, healthcare clinic, and appliance refurbishment ministries—all designed to engage church leaders in community transformation while empowering lay leadership.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. My name is Dwight Zscheile And on this podcast, we discuss what we believe are four key pivots that God is calling many churches to make in the 21st century. They're a pivot in posture, from primarily fixing institutional 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 of inherited and new forms together, and a pivot in leadership from predominantly clergy-led lay-supported ministry to lay-led clergy-supported ministry. So today, I am so excited to welcome Pastor Ed Doerner from Messiah Lutheran Church in Midland, Michigan. Through deep listening and discernment, this congregation has been on a remarkable journey of holistically engaging its neighbors.
They've developed a variety of creative ministries in housing, transportation, food security, child care, employment, healing, all kinds of things under the umbrella of what they call Elevate Ministries. And in so doing, they have created this kind of mixed ecology of many different forms of ministry beyond just traditional church programs that are empowering lay leadership and
meaningfully connecting with so many of their neighbors. So Ed, welcome to the Pivot Podcast. It's great to have you here.
Ed Doerner (:Thanks, Dwight. It's really good to be on the podcast. Thanks so much for having me.
Dwight Zscheile (:So share a bit about your ministry context. Tell us a little bit about Messiah as a congregation and then the neighborhood in which you're located.
Ed Doerner (:So we're up in Midland, Michigan and it's a city of about 45,000 people, but kind of ironically, we're three and a half miles south. We're actually, we've got some farm fields around us. We're on 44 acres and it's a little bit of a rural setting, at least where the church is located, but most of the ministry that we do is all within the city context.
Dwight Zscheile (:So you've described Messiah as once being, quote, all safe in the harbor, scared to go out beyond the breakwater and into our community. Share a bit about that story. And I think there's probably a lot of churches that can relate to that type of metaphor, where they aren't quite sure necessarily how to connect with neighbors. What was it like when you got there? What were they doing? then how have you
how has the church begun to take that journey out beyond the breakwater into the risk of trying some new things?
Ed Doerner (:Well, let's talk about the model for a quick moment because that'll help everybody understand. So it's, it's a model based upon the Great Lakes. And if anybody's wondering where specifically South Haven, Michigan, it's a great place to look at. You've got the Harbor. You've got a breakwater. The breakwater is designed to protect the Harbor from the open water, which can get very rough, very choppy. But according to the model that you need the Harbor, cause you can't be always out beyond. ⁓ but
It's beyond the breakwater where people who don't know Christ are. They're there, they're drowning. We see salvation is almost like when you get saved, Jesus puts a life jacket on you. And what happened is that churches come into the harbor, they refuel, they regroup, they resupply, and then they should be going back out. But what's happened is I've watched this, I've been in ministry 34 years, I've watched churches go into the harbor, camp out, shut their engine off.
build gardens around their churches, and they forget that they're on mission, and now they're just in the church. Forgive me for saying this, playing church. Church hopping is when people go from boat to boat to boat, they're all in the harbor. Who's got the best program? Who's got the best, whatever the church has to offer. And it's always at the cost of saving souls. And it's a model that we share is like churches hold up a sign and say, swim here.
avenue. So when I got here in:And we have carried those on. They've been in existence for over 30 years. And so the foundation was set beautifully. And even when I came, I told them, I'm really going to be in my office. I'm going to be spending almost all of my time in the community because that's what the church should be about is gathering for worship, but being in the community because that's where the ministry's at.
Dwight Zscheile (:So how did that story then unfold from there in terms of what steps were taken and how you eventually got to this place now where you have so many different creative community ministries which we love for you to share more about in detail. But kind of tell us a little bit about that process.
Ed Doerner (:Well, they're all different. Every one of the ministries is different. So the first ministry we did, we have a coffee house at the church called Journey's and the manager, we went for breakfast and he said, you see that location right down the street on Main Street? I think Journey's ought to open up a coffee house there. And we had no money. mean, understand when I got here, we were $5.2 million in debt. We had no money to start any of these ministries. So I would tell every church,
Never worry about the money. We had no money and yet big dreams and yet God was able to supply The ability for us to do this using the community. They've been very generous with us So we started a coffee house on Main Street It was an amazing ministry more people were coming to the coffee house about 1,500 people every single week We watched God change lives do amazing things. It was a church on Main Street that didn't look like a church
And yet every day people were meeting Jesus through the coffee house. And we did that for about five years. And then our landlord became very greedy, priced us out. And we had to close that. But we noticed that that was the first real step into the community besides the afterschool programs. And then it was always based upon needs. So when you say, how do we start? I'll you an example of like the car repair, because we have a car repair facility.
And we have a car dealership. Not too many churches have car dealerships and we have a parts store that goes along with it. But we were a sponsor for a local garage that was changing the oil and 35 single moms cars. And I was part of that for the day. At the end of the day, six cars got condemned, meaning they're not safe and they're not worth fixing. And so we sent these six moms away saying, you shouldn't be driving this car. It's unsafe for your children.
God bless you. I hope it goes well. And I cried when that was the only alternative. So I spent a year going to garages, trying something to figure out how do we help these moms? Because that was an unacceptable answer to say your car's not safe and send them away. Well, a year later, with no money, we built a 5,000 square foot automotive garage, 10 days.
And in the last 12 years, we've worked on 20,000 cars. And we've received in donation about 575 cars. We've repurposed about 400 of them. And that means the average person donates a car to about $4,500 of value. Let's just say we have $400 into the car. We'll sell it for about $450. So people are getting $4,500 cars for about $500. And we've just.
taken upon ourselves to like, God, we got to do something about fixing this need and meeting this need. And that's how it started. So every one of our ministries has a story of how it started, but the end product is that it's really changing lives every day.
Dwight Zscheile (:So talk a little bit more then about the funding because you've emphasized very much that when you started all of these, the church wasn't able to invest a lot of money in them. So where has the funding come from and how's that worked?
Ed Doerner (:Yes.
Well, I'm going to talk a few principles because a lot of what we do is based upon principles and principles are universal. You can use the principles anywhere. The first principle I would talk about is, is multiplication that we charge for all of our ministries. That's critical to understand that it's for dignity. That's another principle that if you give it away, it's charity. Most of the population resents that even the poor really want to have some skin in the game.
And so we charge for everything, but we charge an affordable rate of what they can afford it. So we charge for car repair, but we're about 42 % of retail values. So if you went down the street, got car work done, cost you a thousand dollars, we could do it for about $420. So funding. We take our tithe. We invest our tithe into the community ministries who multiply the dollars.
And we have an incredible ministry. So I don't want to get hung up on dollars too much, but so our budget is about 1.2 million a year. We give our community ministries about $150,000 a year for an investment of $150,000 from the church a year in cash. They do $3 million of ministry, but in actually value.
ue is about like last year in:But when you understand the multiplication principle, it's amazing how much you can do.
Dwight Zscheile (:So you're getting other community organizations and partners to come alongside to help to invest in these ministries as well, is that how it's working?
Ed Doerner (:No, see, see, that's kind of a, I would say that's an old concept. Um, are other ministries around town partnering with us? Absolutely. And I can talk about how they do that, but I mean something simple. Here's another principle, brokering. If you had a car, Dwight, and you donated the car to our garage, how much did it cost us? Nothing. So we work on a car. We have $400 into the car. We sell for 500.
So we make maybe 100 bucks, 50 bucks or 100 bucks. And it goes to somebody who really needs it. See, what was the cost of ministry to us? Zero. So we did a $4,500 value transaction at zero cost to the church. So when you operate these ministries in that fashion, we can do unlimited ministry.
at virtually no cost to the church and yet it changes a lot of lives.
Dwight Zscheile (:I love that. I love the sustainability of that in particular. Talk about kind good stewardship of the balance, yes.
Ed Doerner (:Yes.
Yes.
Okay, so let's trade, trade. mean, just to go to a different topic. So our food ministry. So we actually run a grocery store. It's not a food pantry. We used to do food pantries and food giveaways. But here's the problem with the food giveaway. If you're a donor and I went to you and I said, Hey, I need $5,000 and you give me $5,000 and I give a food giveaway and I give it all away. Now I want to do another one. I go back to the you and say, can I have another $5,000?
And after a while, you're going to get tired of me asking for $5,000 to do this. Okay. Now watch how we do it. We went actually to the church individuals, and we went to anybody in the community and said, would you like to give us a gift so we can buy $60,000 of food? We identified 52 items. put them in our grocery store. We charge one nickel over what we pay for it. That's it. A nickel over. So we raised $60,000.
And I took that $60,000, stole food for nickel over cost. And after I sold the $60,000, I had $60,000 that I could go buy it myself again and again and again. So we turned every thousand dollars of donation into, we've used it 55 times now in the last eight and a half years. So we turned $60,000 into $3 million of ministry.
at no cost to the church.
Dwight Zscheile (:I love that. That is such a transformational model. yeah, and I think particularly, you know, to shift beyond simply a charity paradigm. so tell me a bit about the kind of relationships that the churches formed with neighbors through all of this amazing work you're doing.
Ed Doerner (:Yes.
Yes.
Okay, so to answer that question, there's a people group, like we all know poverty, for a family of four it's about $30,000. Then there's this midsection that nobody knows what to call them. It used to be the middle class, but that's actually vanished. And United Way coined it, and it's in 17 different states. It's called the ALICE population. ALICE is an acronym for Asset Limited Income Constraint Employed. They're working, but they can't make it.
In Michigan, it takes about $78,000 to survive, just survive for a family of four. That's no eating out, no vacation, no emergency fund, just survival. So when you focus on poverty, that's only 13 % of the population. That's the only one most churches are reaching. Whenever they do free ministry, they're only reaching 13%. That means they're disregarding 87%.
When you focus on the ALICE population, those that are working and trying, we found that those in poverty raise up and actually are happy to be charged what they can afford. And it also means everybody above 78,000, which is about 60 % of the population, want to be part of a ministry that's helping people help themselves. So by us targeting on the middle people group, we're actually reaching all populations.
So remember, like the person who gave a car, donated a car, that's above $78,000. That's what they're making. They're changing a life of a single mom. When we saw that car for $400, it changes her life because she has no car payments. The person above $78,000 feels amazing that they were able to help this single mom. And sometimes, like here would be an example of like when she comes in, we look at her car.
We condemn it, not safe, not worth fixing. We take her old car as scrap for payment for the new car. She drives out in a new car to her for $23 for paperwork with the state of Michigan. So you see, when you focus on that middle section, the Alice population, you're actually reaching the entire population. Like we just sold recently a car to a homeless person. He's in poverty. We sold the car to him for $2.27.
Why 227? Because somebody gave him $10 donation that morning, knocked on his window, gave him $10 donation. He used $7.73 for food, came to us living in his car. We looked at the car, condemned the car, sold him a car for $2.27, because that's how much he had left. So you see, with this model, we're reaching poverty. We're reaching the other spectrum.
And we're bringing them all together so that everybody, this is a cool thing, everybody in the community is partnering in ministry. So when you talk about partnerships, actually with all of our ministries, I think we are partnering probably with every agency or nearly every agency, nearly every church, because churches have somebody that they're ministering to that needs car repair. They come to us.
We work on the car, they do the ministry. We partner with Cancer Services and Salvation Army. mean, Disability Network, veterans, name it. We are probably partnering with them because we're here to serve them. And let's say Salvation Army is working with a family. have $1,000 for car work. They send them over to us and we make sure the car is amazingly well and in tune and running well and it might cost them 200 bucks.
So we save the agency money by us doing it. So we just feel like we are underwriting this entire community, serving this entire community, and giving the whole community a chance to be part of ministry, even though it's not their own.
Dwight Zscheile (:So tell us a bit more about some of the other ministries that are under this umbrella of Elevate. You've got some other things going on as well.
Ed Doerner (:Yes. Okay. So there's actually three entities. There's Messiah Church. There is Elevate Community Ministry and there's Gateway, FAMI and Urgent Care. That's a separate 501C3. So three organizations and why? Because the state of Michigan said, hey Messiah, you can't keep doing all these ministries you're doing underneath the church any longer. So they said we need a separate 501C3. So we did. We got a separate 501C3 about three years ago.
And you know what the amazing thing is? We didn't know is that the community was waiting for us to move it out from under the church, even though it's the same board, Elevate and Messiah, the same board. But when you have a separate EIN, you know, employee identification number with the federal government, it's amazing how much money the community has given us for these ministries, especially for capital improvements. Okay. So there's eight needs in a community housing, transportation.
food, childcare, jobs, healthcare, recovery, and community. And we're all eight of them. And we didn't set out to be in all eight of them, but needs came our way, opportunities came our way, and we are serving thousands in our community.
Dwight Zscheile (:So share a bit more about what some of those, so you have pivot point appliance. What is that? Give that as an example.
Ed Doerner (:Yes.
Yes. Okay. So pivot point appliance was actually, they were going to close it on the alcohol treatment center started this place where people who are recovering alcoholics, ⁓ could be employed, ⁓ in their recovery. Well, they were going to close it. And so we actually just asked if we could have it. And now we're in the appliance world. So we hire people with barriers to employment and we work on appliances and we take them in.
in donation, just like the car ministry, we take them in as donation, we fix them up, refurbish them, and then we sell them to primarily the Alice community who needs a break. And so maybe a $800 washer will sell for 150 bucks. So the proceeds from selling the appliance goes for the workers that are working there. And they all have barriers. They may be 15 years in prison, eight years in prison.
drug addiction, we work with the court system, parole officers who they need jobs for people. Jobs are the number one reason that people stay out of jail or out of prison again is if they have a job. So we're doing appliances, but now we just branched into roofing and ramps because that's a huge need in our community that people that are in poverty or in Alice can afford to put a roof on. And so we went into roofing ramps and appliances, but the whole goal.
is jobs, creation, in a setting where we can really pour into the person and help them really understand the difference that Christ makes in their life. And at the same time, we get to serve a community that's so desperately in need for appliances.
Dwight Zscheile (:So you're also in childcare and healthcare. Share a bit more about those ministries.
Ed Doerner (:Yes.
Okay, so childcare is we have a preschool and an early care and education and childcare is actually the number one need that's facing families today that's going on not affordable childcare. State of Michigan really disrupted this because they're offering free preschool to anybody and everybody. And so actually that's a ministry that we actually are going to be saying goodbye to at least the preschool part of this.
on May 20th of this year because we lost incredible enrollment to free preschool. So, but we still know affordable childcare is the real need. And so we're already looking at ways like, how do you do that? And that's the hardest one to do to make it affordable. So that was one you asked about. Gateway is the other one. That's our healthcare. It's a family and urgent care. And people come in, we focus on Alice and poverty.
We take everybody, we take if you've got insurance or somebody has no insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, everything in between, we serve them. But here's the key. If you came to us and you're uninsured, you'll never pay more than $40 for your visit. So when you come in, remember, dignity is everything, so we're gonna charge you. Recently we had a person who mustered up 35 cents. 35 cents is all they had. And they paid for their healthcare.
But we have a relationship with the hospital so that when we refer, let's say you came to us, you pay your $40, we send something going on with your heart, we refer you to the hospital, we know the financial aid of the hospital, so what we do is we kind of go in the back door under a financial aid program and we're able to get you all medical care, and I mean all medical care, cardiologists, surgery, heart surgery, inpatient care.
And guess how much it will cost you? $40. We've sent over a thousand people. We've been open for two and a half years. We sent over a thousand people through the hospital network and they collectively has charged zero to all thousand people that have needed everything from MRIs, the CAT scans, the chemo treatments, radiation, cancer, you name it. And the total cost has been the $40 that they paid to us. That's why we call it the gateway.
because we're the gateway for the Alice community who has no insurance for the best healthcare. So, but also Jesus said, enter by the narrow gate. So the difference in our healthcare is as soon as you get roomed, we ask every patient, would you like the provider to pray with you? And it brings more people than you can imagine to tears because they're like, I've never had a provider pray for healing for me. So our provider prays for them. And we have about 80 % of people.
of our population that says, I would like you to pray for me. The other 20 % when we leave the room, we still pray for them. So 100 % of people get prayed for, only 80 % get prayed with the person. And Jesus is the healer. So bringing healing into people's lives, it's amazing. It's been the most incredible journey watching people get the healing that they need for $40. Crazy.
Dwight Zscheile (:That's amazing. So tell us about leadership for these ministries. These are leadership intensive ministries, I'm imagining on multiple levels. Who are the leaders? Where have they come from? How have you developed and equipped them? What's that look like?
Ed Doerner (:Yes.
Boy, I wish you could take any credit for it, but I can't take any credit. God raised them all different. For example, the garage, his name is Mike. Mike was for his whole career, 30 some years in parts. And I actually ran the garage for six months. I was out in the garage as a garage manager. And I was working with Mike every day on the phone, probably 20 times a day we would call.
And he goes, Hey, is that position filled? I said, no, that's why you're talking to me. Cause I'm filling it, you know? ⁓ so God raised up Mike. Now Mike's running the garage. we have somebody at gateway who was actually running another clinic, heard about us by accident. and we hired her to be our practice manager. the guy who's running our pivot point actually came just to talk to me. Cause it was situation going on in his life. We hired him as a church.
pivot point opportunity arose and he slid over. And, um, so we have people, phenomenal people in every one of those roles. And, um, and the bridge, I didn't tell you as 100 % volunteer run. So it's not only our manager is volunteer, our supervisors are, are, volunteers. And then the whole community jumps in to participate. So
Dow Chemical Corporation, DuPont Corporation, Dow Credit Union, other churches, agencies, doctor's offices, they're all part of the pool of running the Bridge Food Center. So it's leadership intensive, but really it takes for God to raise up amazing people and I just release. They have all the authority to make all the decisions and...
I ask him if he would give me the privilege of continuing to lead the whole ministry so that we can keep all the ministries headed in the right direction of Christ. And then how can I help them all work well with each other and in all the people that we're serving? How do we holistically approach ministry to the entire community?
Dwight Zscheile (:So tell us a bit about how this has changed the congregation itself, right? The ways in which this kind of ministry, this kind of work has transformed, like what does it meant for the kind of membership of the congregation?
Ed Doerner (:Well, I think it's changed radically. You know, there's some people that didn't want to go with the change. And in 2018, actually there was a coup and the church to get rid of me. Cause they didn't want to do it. And the leadership said, no, this is the direction of the church. This is what God's called us to do. And so we said goodbye to a number of people who went to another church. And so the church has really focused on community. And I think the real key is.
Everything that we do in the church is for the community and the church is invited. Instead of we do things for the church and we invite the community into the church. It's a whole philosophy shift. When you get the church to think about, like when we open up the garage, we told the it's not for you. Please don't get your car worked there. This is for the community.
And it wasn't until a year later that we opened it up and said, Hey church, if you want to get your car work down here too, you're able. They're like, ⁓ we thought this was entirely for the community. So this church is really used to when a ministry opens that it's for the community, oftentimes run by the community. ⁓ I'm just the person that keeps it all together. So, and how this translates now over the last five or six years, every person who's come to Messiah that I've had a chance to just say,
We're glad you're here. What brings you? It's crazy, Dwight. I hear the same two words every time. We heard, and it doesn't matter what we heard. It's kind of like Rahab. You know, the story of Rahab in the Bible that we heard about what happened with God and the Israelites and these other kingdoms. We heard, and I feel like everybody who comes to Messiah, they heard about somebody who got a car, somebody donated cars, somebody bought food, somebody.
from Dow was participating at the bridge. heard something and they're coming to the church that has a reputation of serving the community. And so when they come, they're coming not to be consumers in the church, they're coming to be participants in the ministry and the mission of the church. That's the huge change that's going on now.
Dwight Zscheile (:So.
Many churches kind of have a heart for loving neighbors in some ways. And sometimes they struggle to connect that to the gospel or aren't sure how to connect it with that work more explicitly with the gospel. So I love the prayer story that you told, but share a bit more about kind of how faith is woven into these ministries in ways that are inclusive in welcoming to people and
Ed Doerner (:Yeah.
Dwight Zscheile (:and part of the overall kind of holistic approach to loving neighbors.
Ed Doerner (:Yes.
Yeah. Okay. So it is all about loving God, loving your neighbor. But the gospel is organic. Besides gateway that prays intentionally with every person. Here's what we've learned and it'll help answer your question. That if you walked in the bridge for the very first time, that's in like an interaction. Never met you before. Like today, you and I, this is an interaction. From there, it
it goes into a connection like, I think I know you. From there, goes into a relationship. From a relationship, that's when there's an opportunity to be Jesus, pray with a person, talk to them about Christ. Here's the numbers that we've found concretely. It takes 1,000 interactions for 300 connections. Of the 300 connections, 30 will develop into a relationship. Of the 30, one or two.
organically will lead to an opportunity that you can really be Jesus to that person. So how does that work? Let's say you're coming into the bridge and you're being loved. And measurably, you're being loved by people that are in the bridge that are serving because they're there to serve. Nobody gets paid. And it forms from there into connection. They come back again. It forms into a relationship. You're like, hey, how's this going? How'd surgery go? How's your mom doing?
And we watch and wait for always the opportunity and they present themselves now daily because we have enough interactions that somebody will walk in and how are you doing? You know, we call them by name and they're like, I just got diagnosed with cancer. There's the ministry chance. Would you like to talk? Would you like to pray? Yeah, that's why I came. I came to tell you because we found that when the church is running these places and they walk in and they feel
cared for so deeply that that's the place they turn when life happens. Here be another example of in the garage. Now this is such a great store, it's heartwarming. One of our customers at the garage got diagnosed with cancer and he called Mike up on the phone, this is just recently, and said, can I come see you? And he said, sure. He walked in the door and he said, Mike, I just got diagnosed with cancer.
And I didn't know where to turn. And I know you guys are, are Christians and I'm not a Christian, but would you guys pray for me? And he said, I'd never go to a church, but I, when I came here, so Mike actually gathered all the mechanics around and they prayed for this gentleman who was just diagnosed with cancer. See, it's kind of beyond the breakwater model. We see this as like, we send boats out, like a big boat.
a garage, an automotive garage, a grocery store, an appliance store, and we park it out there. People are coming for their needs to be met, but when they come in and they interact with us, they've never felt so loved in all their life and so cared for. So when life happens, it's on their terms, because we've noticed, because I watch this happen, people come into the grocery store, and if you're too quick and say, let me tell you about Christ or let me just...
Hey, have you been to church before? Hey, I want to invite you. We want some physically take a step back. See, they're not ready. But when we wait on their timetable, they take a step forward. And Dwight, I will tell you with all the ministries we have, I can visit any one of those ministries on a daily basis and tell me the God story. And they all have God stories that have happened in the last day or two, because it's you can see God at work like, you know,
go to the garage, you're homeless, go to the garage. I'm gonna break your car so you go to the garage. And then you get love done. And then you get cared for. And you might get prayed for. So it's organic, but from our side, it's very, very intentional about how do we lead the ministries to provide those opportunities to happen daily.
Dwight Zscheile (:So Ed, what would be some advice you would give for some leaders out there listening or watching who might want to take some initial steps into this kind of model of community ministry?
Ed Doerner (:Great idea. I would say get out of your office. That's the number one thing. When I came to this church, I said, you need to know that my office would be the least used space in the entire church. And they laughed at me. They said, why? I said, cause I'm never here. I mean, I'm in my office now on a podcast with you. This is most time I'll spend in this office the entire week because I'm going to be in coffee houses. I'm going to be in grocery store.
I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in community meetings. I'm going to be somewhere in the community. So I lead by example in the community. Then the staff that I have here, all of them are engaged in some kind of community ministry as part of even their employment. Like, hey, take time, go do this, you know, go coach basketball, go be on this board, go on. So I think step one, get into your community and start asking a lot of questions like.
Go to restaurant and just ask your waitress. Actually, you can ask two questions. What can I pray for? And it's amazing their response. But the better question is before you even ask about prayer, what's the most unmet need in our community? What would you say? And hardly anybody will say, I don't know. Almost everybody will go, it's childcare. You know, if I had childcare, I could work better hours.
car repair. It's they tell you go to meetings, meet with the mayor, meet with the comptroller, meet with the business alliance, meet with anybody who will answer the question. And this is my always my leading question. What is the number one unmet need in our community from your perspective? Everybody has opinion about that. Then pray.
Dwight Zscheile (:Thanks.
So I can imagine some people hearing those words and thinking, well, but what about all of the running of the internal stuff of the church? And who does that if the pastor's staff are out really in the neighborhood all the time? How does that work in your context?
Ed Doerner (:Well, here's how it works. Most of what pastors do are harbor. It's really not, I know I'm gonna get in trouble for this.
It's not necessarily impacting the gospel, meaning it's not changing a life for the gospel sake. It's not reaching. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. That means he intentionally sought after the lost. Sometimes we're too busy in meetings, in discussions, in talking. You know, we've
We've done this model. Churches at large have done this model for years. And where is it getting us? So I disbanded most of the meetings that were taking place here because like if you're not meeting to strategize to go seek the lost, then what are we doing? So it's still good though. Don't get me wrong. There's a balance on you've got to preach every weekend, but why not do that in a coffee house in the context of a coffee house?
You've got to go see people in hospital go see them. You're still teaching but it's a shift in mentality is your Bible class for the sake of just getting people spiritually fat or Are you trying to? strengthen their faith to go missionally See, I think the church doesn't need more education about Jesus. I think they need to go
practice their faith and get into the communities. But you also need to have an avenue for those that are seeking and don't know Christ. How do you help develop them in their faith? So there's a balance. But what I've learned is that unless you're about 80 % missional, you'll never see results. If you're thinking I can do 10 % missional, you'll never see results. Not even 20%.
So you have to have a whole missional bent to seek and to save. Then the people that are coming want to be equipped to go. That's the difference.
Dwight Zscheile (:you
So I imagine that that process involved, that culture change, you're describing a culture change really, and a real shift in expectations of people and what people have for the church and staff and all those things. That must have been quite a process to shift over the number of years that you've been, and you've been in leadership at this church for how many years now? Okay.
Ed Doerner (:Yes. Yes.
Yes.
17 years.
Dwight Zscheile (:So say a word about that, because I know this is another place where people sometimes get stuck and say, gosh, everything is so different in the culture of expectations. If you will, the social contract in my congregation, I could never do that. People would never accept that. How did that work for you?
Ed Doerner (:Well, every conversation you have should be somewhat missional in some capacity. And it could be the smallest thing. How can you help someone else?
How can you talk to someone else? How can you serve somebody else? How can you? It doesn't matter what it is. Every message should be, now what? Now you're leaving this place. Now go be missional. You know, simple things like on Sunday, you will hear me regularly say, when you go to the restaurant, you be very generous with your tip and be Jesus to that person and live it out. Your conversation should be seasoned with grace because they're listening to what you talk about.
when you go to the grocery store. everything that we do, every class, every message, everything, you just have to keep speaking missional, missional, missional. And slowly people start to test it. And I think slowly you make that shift over years. And the resistance that I had too, is people would say, but I don't want to do that. I just want the cozy church we've ever had.
Well, maybe this isn't the best place for you. Maybe another place is a better place because we're going to be missional because that is our calling. That is our calling as a church. Maybe I can give you one example that might help you. That might help everybody. And I think this is where we get it wrong as a church at large, capital C church, all denominations. Remember in the Bible where it says God so loved the world. So if you think about
You know, God so loved the world. And he raised up the church and put him in the middle between him and the world and said, church, go into the world and love people so they can experience my love. But here's what that's missional. What the church has done is said, they know where we are. Let the world come to.
us and we'll show them God's love. And that is not scriptural. Jesus said, you'll be my witnesses and Jerusalem, Judea to the end of the earth. So he's raised up the church to show the world how much they're loved. And churches don't realize their very calling is to help somebody experience God's love first, then use words.
when asked.
And that is a philosophical shift, I think, to Church Got Wrong.
Dwight Zscheile (:Ed, this has been so inspiring and instructive on so many levels. You have hosted a podcast called Beyond the Breakwater that goes into more in depth about this. Can you just say a word about that and where our listeners, our viewers who might want to go deeper can find that podcast.
Ed Doerner (:Yes.
Yes.
Well, I'd be surprised if anybody didn't want to go deeper. So the whole purpose of the podcast beyond the breakwater, that's the podcast. That's where we outline every model and there's business plans and there's how did it start and what's the philosophy and why we're doing it. We interview the managers of all those ministries. And because we're always growing and developing, we thought the podcast was the best way that we could keep growing and keep releasing new podcasts.
So that we can bring every listener along in the journey. And actually, you know who the best beneficiary of this has been our own church. They've been listening to these podcasts and learning so much even about their own church. It's been, it's been incredible.
Dwight Zscheile (:Well, wonderful. I know I will definitely be going to listen into more depth and hopefully this episode of Pivot will just kind of whet people's appetite for that. So Ed, again, thank you for being with us today on the Pivot Podcast.
Ed Doerner (:My pleasure, Dwight. It's really been an honor. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Dwight Zscheile (:To our audience, thank you for joining us. To help spread the word about Pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, or if you're listening, head to whatever podcast platform and leave a review. It really helps. And finally, the best compliment you can give us is to share Pivot with a friend. So until next time, this is Dwight Zscheile signing off. See you next week.