What if the solution to declining church participation isn't better programs, but joining neighbors where they already are? Pastor Shannon Kiser, Senior Director of Fresh Expressions North America, shares how her congregation at Riverside Presbyterian transformed from hosting 2,000 kids once a year at their "Slop Fest" mud Olympics to creating ongoing relationships through fresh expressions of church. Their bold move - selling donated land and opening a seven-day-a-week coffee shop with indoor playground - turned their half of an office building into the community's favorite gathering place for families.

Shannon reveals the "who before what" principle driving fresh expressions across denominations, from dinner churches to workplace ministries. She offers practical first steps any inherited church can take to connect authentically with neighbors, including how to see your community with "the eyes of Jesus" and why one church's simple question to their local high school - "Who's the most underserved group here?" - changed everything. Perfect for church leaders feeling stuck between maintaining existing programs and wondering what God might be calling them toward in an era of rapid cultural change.

It's about the who before the what. ⁓ And so I feel like that's constantly what I'm having to help church leaders and congregations ⁓ grasp is the contextualization piece. ⁓ And that starts with a heart for the who. ⁓ Who is God calling you?

to share life with. Dinner Church is great and beautiful and just make sure it's not about just creating an alternative worship service for your church people who like to eat together, but how does it connect with the people that God is putting on our heart?

you

Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the Church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile Today's conversation is part two of a discussion with Pastor Shannon Kiser, Senior Director of Fresh Expressions North America and pastor at Riverside Presbyterian Church in Sterling, She's also the author of a brand new book ⁓ called Opening Space, which we'll be hearing more about as well.

So Shannon, ⁓ welcome back to Pivot. ⁓ I love in this second part of our conversation to dig more deeply into some case studies of fresh expressions. And particularly, let's begin with your own local context ⁓ in Riverside Presbyterian Church. You're in Northern Virginia. Tell us a little bit about the setting of your ministry and then how your church has engaged in some fresh expressions.

Sure, I'd be happy to. Just I want to make clear, I'm not the only pastor there. This is not my story. It's our story, our congregation story. our congregation ⁓ is in a ⁓ suburban ⁓ part of the Washington, D.C. metro area. ⁓ Lots of people ⁓ commute, lots of hours.

We are technological, super diverse. ⁓ And so that's our context. ⁓ yeah, what was the question that you wanted me to explore?

Yeah, well, so tell us a bit about the cafe ministry that you have as part of the church. And I think there's some other ministries like a Fresh Expression with day laborers and things like that. And how did those emerge and how do they work? you know, tell us a bit of the story.

Sure. Well, and you know, our church ⁓ was ⁓ planted by ⁓ a chemistry major, so it's always had a ⁓ kind of an experimental elements to it from as part of its DNA. know, risks and experimentation has always been a part ⁓ of its life together.

The story of sort of how we came to make this shift was that this was a church that had really worked to engage the community and it had really done so in ⁓ connecting with students and children and in a suburban context and ⁓ lots of events. used to have

We used to have a, we called it Slop Fest, and the last day of school ⁓ every year for, I don't know, 18 years or something, ⁓ we had property that we never built on, and we never built on it, by the way, because it would have constrained the mission to pour so many of our resources into building a facility. So we had been donated land by the developer. And so, ⁓

The last day of school, we would have a big event, 2,000 kids, mud Olympics, know, mud ⁓ jousting and mud obstacle course and all kinds of messy things. And then we ⁓ would sit the kids down and we'd give them our safety goggles. And there'd be some teaching about how there was no mess that you could ever make that would make God stop loving you.

You know, and so they're sitting there in the mud. It's like a beautiful message, right? And two thousand kids. And our whole church is behind it. It took, you know, it took six months of preparation. And at some point we realized, OK, we are in a different time. We are not seeing it used to be that we could connect with the students and kids and their families would come in. Our church would grow.

And we really felt called to like, what would it look like to engage these students regularly and like a natural way? We began to realize like in our community, we just had no natural gathering places. ⁓ people are rushing and they're usually here far from extended family. This is not a place where you...

often grew up, it's a place you come to because you're successful or whatever. We just really began to, we were wondering about that. And one of our elders, ⁓ just like in his business and his work, he wound up at a conference and he was listening to the founder of Zappos Shoes, who was moving their headquarters to Las Vegas.

And what he was talking about is trying to create a community aware of the need for collisions. Because if you collide with somebody numerous times, you move from being strangers who don't acknowledge each other to like acquaintances who recognize you inhabit the same community, perhaps to friends. Right. And so like

that what he brought that back and he said, well, that's what the church should be doing. And so that began our journey towards we think we're not meant to build a church facility on this building. What if I mean on this land, what if we sold that land and we invested in a missional facility that could be a blessing to our community 24 seven where

there would be natural collisions which would allow us to form natural relationships. I always have loved Hugh Halter's definition of evangelism and he talks about changing people's changing assumptions about God and God's people.

And it takes those collisions to change assumptions that Christians are mean and judgmental and hypocritical and all the things, right? It takes those relationships. So that's what kind of led us to begin thinking differently about what was needed in our community and how to do ministry. It's a long story. We thought about all kinds of different things. We wound up doing coffee. We wound up opening a coffee shop.

Mostly because as we prayed and doors were opening and closing, we wound up buying half a building, a title company bought the other half of the building and we bought half of a building because that's what we could afford and get open the doors for ⁓ like a good partner that shared our values. ⁓ And so we also wound up connecting with somebody who ⁓ was a coffee shop owner.

And through that, just had a natural way. Like, it just became clear that a coffee shop was the way to go, made sense for our context. So we opened up a seven day a week coffee shop, ⁓ which also includes an indoor children's playground because we recognize that was a need in our community as well.

kind of just put those things together. So the coffee shop immediately became a natural place for people in our community with young kids together. And ⁓ instead of being isolated as parents with young children, we just saw, we saw them befriending one another in the, in the coffee shop and in the play area. And by word of mouth, we became like the favorite place for mom's groups to form. And

We didn't have to, we didn't do any of that. We didn't do a big marketing campaign. It just, like, it was clear it was a need because it just happened so fast. But I think it's paying attention, and I'll stop here, it's just paying attention to what are the needs, where does that intersect with our passions or our abilities or things that we could do, and then we step in there and that's how we're able to...

do fresh expressions in the day labor arena. And that's how we form partnerships with schools. And that's how this coffee shop came to be is really just that paying attention, are communities changing? What are the needs? What are the longings? And what is God calling us to do?

So do you have a separate kind of building for worship and things like that, or do you use that same building that has the coffee shop in it for the rest of your church gatherings and activities?

Yeah, it's definitely, when you walk into our space, you are in the marketplace. Because again, we bought half of just a plain, all boring office building. Knowing that if this thing did not work out, we could turn around and sell it, you know? so it was risky, but it wasn't.

Like it's also an investment, right? So we can, it's something that we felt like we could give it a go. ⁓ So we own half the building. We did not develop our half of the building to be mostly church specific space.

So the upstairs we leased to a dentist, another medical practice and an artist. So we built none of that out for ourselves. ⁓ I mean, that's both a financial stream, but again, it puts us in relationships. The downstairs, we built out kind of the entryway, which has now spilled out into the lobby, which our partner loves. So it works out great.

So when you walk into this office building, this larger office building ⁓ that also has on the other side, a title company and daycare center and a chiropractor, when you walk in the lobby, it is the coffee shop. And when we talked to the congregation about it, some of whom couldn't see this, like they couldn't imagine this until they actually saw it in reality, we told them, hey, if this doesn't work,

we'll have the lobby, the church lobby we always wished we had, you know, and we'll have really good coffee. ⁓ It has worked, but that was kind of what we shared with the congregation. So we built out on the in the space that we actually do use as a church. At least probably over a third of the space is the coffee shop and the indoor play area.

which becomes Sunday school space on Sunday morning, the indoor play area, not the coffee shop. It's open on Sunday mornings as a coffee shop. Off to the side of the coffee shop is a large multi-purpose room. That is where we gather for worship. ⁓ And it's also space ⁓ that gets used by the community.

all throughout the week. lease the space out. I mean, we rent the space to ⁓ some organizations. We share the space with other organizations depending on what their goals and, ⁓ you know, kind of who they are. And then we have ⁓ just a small footprint of a church, ⁓ kind of office space, very small ⁓ footprint on offices.

a children's, one children's room and one other smaller multipurpose room. That's it. We, we just, we use the coffee shop for meetings. We hang out in the co like we want to be more in the coffee shop than in the office anyway. That was the whole point. If we build a coffee shop for collisions and then we stay in a back office somewhere, then we just, we just undid what the mission was.

So what we taught our congregation was, hey, we want you to inhabit the coffee shop, just like you normally would a coffee shop. Just hang out, bring your friends there, have your business meetings there, study there. And we like being in the coffee shop. It's a humming place to be.

Well, so I love that, you know, so many churches find themselves stuck with or have inherited, right, you know, dedicated church buildings that are so disconnected from neighbors for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes they look like fortresses. Sometimes the spaces are really inflexible, but you're what you've created together with your community is.

is a, it sounds like a much more financially sustainable kind of space, but also so much more accessible to the neighborhood than so many traditional church spaces. ⁓ And I think, you know, I just, I love that. And I think more and more churches are going to need to figure out how to do that kind of work, whether it be repurposing inherited buildings or something like buying half of an office building, which may not be the most glamorous, but functionally it sounds ⁓ so much more connected.

to your neighbors.

Yeah, and we had to, I mean, even though we didn't have a church building that we had to retrofit, though we are working with about 11 congregations right now who were, the organizing pastor of this congregation is now helping other local congregations reimagine what a missional facility could look like in there. ⁓

in their church facilities. But we had to help our congregation. Like we did have to navigate that question. Like, do we build more for us? We could have made our space much more spacious for us. But this is really what we were called to do. And we just navigated those conversations.

Mission first, mission first. This is the mission. This is the mission. This is the mission. ⁓ So that was key, I think.

I love that. So tell us a bit about the ministry with day laborers, the fresh expression with day laborers. How did that come about? What does that look like?

That was something that came about long ago. Long ago, was a season where the community that's kind one community over from our specific circle, geographic area, I guess is the best way to put it. It was the crooks.

point of the immigration debate for a while. ⁓ And so at that time, we had noticed ⁓ the congregation and or the leadership had noticed that there was a growing Spanish speaking reality in the community right around us. ⁓ were in the local park and they noticed that

Almost everybody in the park was speaking Spanish. so ⁓ they determined that we needed to invest in planting a Spanish speaking church ⁓ in the local community. And that pastor was hired and just come on site to begin to start ⁓ developing and

living into that ⁓ vision. And there was this debate that began to happen. Like, I mean, it was all over the news. People were all coming to Herndon to... And so he saw this happening ⁓ and he recognized like there are, there's all this noise happening, but there are day laborers who are in the middle of it. And so he just started going.

to Herndon with some peanut butter sandwiches, sitting on the curb, just hanging out with some of those day laborers and hearing their stories. know, they just, they just, he was just present with them ⁓ when all the news was about them. And as they did that, he began to,

⁓ explore whether they would be interested in doing some Bible study together, which they began to do, and ultimately ⁓ partnered with ⁓ another local Presbyterian church who was much closer by when they were more in that neighborhood. And ⁓ they began to be the home for a weekly ⁓ lunch.

hot lunch and worship service with day laborers. so they go with the van ⁓ that is ⁓ clearly ⁓ known as our church van and not something else. ⁓ We pick them up and bring them to that church. And there's different congregations who are now a part of that.

supporting that and have a meal and it's not just serve the meal to the day laborers, but eat the meal with day laborers and worship together. And on the days where we have the, ⁓ and again, I say we, but this is not me. ⁓ There's a whole group of people who are involved in this. ⁓

when it's a day of like high attendance, ⁓ it's actually heartbreaking because that means that very few people got work that day. And so it begins to flip your understanding of ⁓ success, right? we got a lot of people. ⁓ that means a lot of people didn't get work. And it's just, it's been a beautiful community and been there for a long time.

For leaders in inherited churches who might be watching or listening to this, thinking, wow, this all sounds really amazing and it sounds really far from where I'm at in my local community, maybe that is struggling in different ways to connect with neighbors or maybe even feeling somewhat paralyzed by erosion of people participating and energy and resources and all that, what are some first steps that you would ⁓

offer to someone who's in leadership in an inherited church to begin to take this journey or to cultivate a kind of culture in the church in which ⁓ ordinary, everyday people are empowered to do this kind of work.

That's a great, great question. ⁓ First of all, do not assume that coffee shop is your answer. I can tell you a million reasons why it's not your answer. It may be, this is not ⁓ a, that's one of the struggles. People want to come see what's happening there, but we can't replicate your situation. What I would start encouraging you to do is,

is begin to get out in your community with the eyes of Jesus. Like go out into the community. It's easy for us to run to the grocery store and just run our errands. Could you run to the grocery store and really start paying attention? Who's here? Who's not here? What's going on here? Where do I see God already at work here?

glimpses of signposts of the gospel, right? ⁓ Where do I see gaps between the kingdom of God and what I'm seeing right in front of me? so if you can start inhabiting your community that way, you're going to start being in the park noticing, well, everybody else in this park is speaking Spanish. I wonder what that

and what God might be inviting us to ⁓ notice about that. ⁓ We began to, as we began to pray for our community, ⁓ you know, we began to open our hearts to what God might be doing. I would say, ⁓ begin to ⁓ notice what you have and where you already have some natural connecting points.

I know one congregation who, as they started noticing in their community, they literally went to the high school and said, what is the most underserved group in your school? Who are the ones who just don't get noticed? And that particular school and that particular culture said, ⁓

The band is the most under-resourced, underappreciated group at our school. And so they started just becoming the best volunteers at the Friday night band dinner before the football game. And they just, they got to meet all of the families.

So, are there things that are already happening that you could begin participating in before you start thinking about, what's the big thing I'm supposed to do? What if I just got involved in some of the things that are happening and just started to build relationships and see what God unfolds there? Or notice where you already have some of those natural connections and then ⁓ begin to ask God, what would you have us do? What would you have us do?

I had one group that I was working with, Dwight. I had them, I met with them during one summer and ⁓ they were in a difficult spot. They were trying to figure out what their future looked like. And I was like, I don't ⁓ know what your future is, but let's do this together for the summer. I want you to...

If you can find a group who'd be willing to do these spiritual practices with me, this will be our vision team, right? I want you to, like, would you be willing to read scripture every day? Would you be willing to pray every day? Would you be willing to pray, Luke 10 to pray to the Lord of the gospel for laborers because the fields are ripe? And then

Would you be willing to be out in the community once a week, the neighborhood around the church once a week, just meeting the business owners, talking with neighbors, walking your dog, you know, just like inhabiting that neighborhood well. If you'd be willing to do those four things, you can be on the vision team. And what begins to happen when we do that is you begin to see in scripture some of the things you've been noticing in the neighborhood.

and you begin to notice things in the neighborhood that you've encountered in scripture. you begin, like God begins to weave a tapestry. The spirit begins to break open hearts, crack open eyes. And ⁓ we just get surprised. Like it's not what we necessarily imagined. And it gave them what they wound up.

What they wound the relationships and the stories that they kept hearing over and over, they then were able to share back with the larger church congregation, which allowed them to take a big courageous step around their facility. So I think that's really the first steps. Get in step with paying attention, listening to God, listening to the community.

take on those practices, it goes back to what we were talking about in our last episode, the journey. The journey always is gonna start with listening and forming relationships, engaging in mutual relationships, and then see where the spirit takes you.

So one last question for you. So you have a unique vantage point as senior director of Fresh Expressions North America to kind of look across the landscape of the church in North America. What are some things that are emerging around the Fresh Expressions movement? know Dinner Church has caught on in a lot of places, but what are you seeing as ⁓ some developments kind of more broadly across the country and even in Canada as well?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think the reason why dinner church is catching on is because most congregations can imagine like, ⁓ exploring faith around a shared meal. Like that sounds a lot like potlucks. We know how to do that. And I think the challenge around that is it's very easy.

⁓ to template it and make it just another alternative worship service versus really contextualizing it. I think one of the threads that I see consistently in my coaching or in conversations with people is ⁓ just you really, it's about the who before the what. ⁓

And so I feel like that's constantly what I'm having to help church leaders and congregations ⁓ grasp ⁓ is the contextualization piece. ⁓ And that starts with a heart for the who. ⁓ Who is God calling you to share life with? Dinner churches are great and beautiful.

and just make sure it's not about just creating an alternative worship service for your church people who like to eat together, but how does it connect with the people that God is putting on our heart? But it's definitely accessible for congregations to imagine. We're seeing across the denominational landscape, there's just an energy around dinner church.

and ⁓ just the beautiful theology of the Jesus table and the way that simple ⁓ Jesus stories actually crack open things in people in ways that we just never anticipate. So I think that's a big significant piece of the movement. I think becoming more playful in the way that we engage with people and just ⁓

and integrated in sort of our lives of work, school, play, and how faith integrates with that. I think that's a big piece of what I'm seeing across the landscape. Those are some of the major things I would say. I think what I can tell you about

You know, from my vantage point, working with all kinds of church leaders, it doesn't matter which denominational space you find yourself in. Everybody is trying to navigate the rapid changes in the culture around us ⁓ and what that means for the church. And that is just going to accelerate.

I mean, I've really been thinking about what are the implications of AI? Like we are getting, we are going into this massive change that I don't even think we've wrapped our heads fully around yet. ⁓ I certainly haven't, although I've been thinking about it. ⁓ And I just really think there's a need for the church to be... ⁓

you know, in the places and spaces people are inhabiting and in the big questions that people are asking. And I think as this this ethical change moves forward, like one of the big questions is going to be, what does it mean to be human? And are we in the spaces and places and posture where we can, you know, engage some of those questions with people as the world around us is just ⁓ so confusing and changing so rapidly.

I think those are some of the ⁓ big trajectories that are coming that I'm just trying to pay attention to. But every denomination is struggling with ⁓ churches that are declining. ⁓ What are the statistics? Like 4,500 churches a year closing ⁓ in the US alone ⁓ and that you may be accelerating. ⁓

I just think every denomination, each denomination and even each church is like, we thought we were the only ones and no, you're not the only ones. And yet this is such a time of great opportunity for the church. Like there's just what a gift it is ⁓ to be invited into people's everyday lives in our coffee shop and just ⁓ get to have amazing, beautiful, ⁓

conversations and shared life together. Like that's what it's all about. And that's where I faith can come to life in profound and beautiful and transformative ways.

Well, Shannon, thank you so much for this conversation and for helping us understand how fresh expressions are a really vital way in which the church is joining God in the midst of all of these changes and challenges. So in our show notes, show notes for today's episode, we have a link to your new book, Opening Space, which I recommend. It's a really wonderful, very accessible overview of fresh expressions with some fantastic stories in it.

and also to Fresh Expressions North America, which you can find at freshexpressions.com if you want to learn more. Shannon, thank you.

Alright, thanks so much for having me, Dwight. It's been a pleasure.

And to our audience, thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. If you have found the conversation helpful, please share it with a friend, like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, or leave a review on your podcast platform. It really helps. See you next week.