Do you find yourself wanting more people in your congregation to feel ownership of your church? Or do you want to be freed up more throughout your week to help people make spiritual meaning of their everyday life? In this episode, we will dive into how you can create a more sustainable and communal way forward for you and your faith community.

Do you wonder how to engage collaborative leadership instead of leading solo? A lot of clergy we talk to know that leading a church by themselves is unsustainable. Here’s a case study of a congregation that has experimented creatively with empowering small communities of members to love their neighbors in the name of Jesus. Today’s guest is pastor Stephanie Williams O’Brien of Mill City Church in Northeast Minneapolis. She also teaches at Bethel Seminary and is the co-host of Lead Stories podcast with Jo Saxton. You’ll want to watch this episode to learn how to equip your church to live and love in the way of Jesus.

Find Stephanie Williams O'Brien's book, "Stay Curious" here: https://www.broadleafbooks.com/store/product/9781506449562/Stay-Curious

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Alicia Granholm: orgeDo you find yourself wanting more people in your congregation to feel ownership of your church, or do you want to be able to be freed up more throughout your week to help people make spiritual meaning of their everyday life, or to be out in the community connecting with your neighbors? If so, you are in the right place today. Because in this episode, we will dive into how our primary model of leadership in the church has actually caused exhaustion and burnout amongst church leaders today. And what some practical next steps are that you can take to find a more sustainable and communal way forward for you and your faith community. You're in for a treat today as we dive into a case study of a church in northeast Minneapolis. Hello everyone. I'm Alicia Granholm.

Dwight Zscheile: And I'm Dwight Zscheile. Welcome to the Pivot podcast. This is the podcast where we talk about how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. A lot of pastors we talk to long to see increased ownership or engagement in the life of the church by the congregation, and know that leading a church by themselves is unsustainable, not to mention unbiblical. But many church leaders don't know where to start to make this shift. So in today's episode, we want to offer a case study of a congregation that has experienced, experimented creatively with the with empowering people to love their neighbors in the name of Jesus. And along the way, they've reimagined the role of pastors and staff in some life giving ways.

Alicia Granholm: We are super excited to have Pastor Stephanie Williams O'Brien with us today. Steph is the lead pastor of Mill City Church in Northeast Minneapolis and the author of Stay Curious: How Questions and Doubts Can Save Your Faith, as well as Make a Move: How to Stop Wavering and Making Decisions and Make Decisions in a Disorienting World. She also teaches at Bethel Seminary and is the co-host of Lead Stories podcast with Joe Saxton. Steph, welcome to the Pivot podcast.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Thanks. Great to be here.

Alicia Granholm: We are so happy to have you here. Let's dive in.

Dwight Zscheile: Steph, can you tell us a bit more about Mill City Church?

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah. Well, um, the short version is, uh, some of us thought, hey, what would it look like for a group of people to go to a specific part of the city and ask the question, "What is God doing here? And how might we join in what God's already doing?" And if we were going to do that as a group, that sounds like a church. And so we gathered some people, myself and my colleague Michael Binder from Bethel Seminary, from some churches that were very much around the heart of Multiplying Church. So people who are ready to send. And we moved to that part of the city, specific part of Minneapolis, and started to do the process of discernment. What is God doing here and how do we get to join in? How can we respond to that? And then doing the work of leading other people to learn how to ask those questions and to join in? And then soon enough, there was people joining us that weren't just from northeast, but cared about that part of the city. And we started to gather in homes and then started to gather with a Sunday worship expression, but continued that sense of what does it look like to ask those questions in our everyday spaces? And that's now coming up on 16 years, in about six months. So we're in in the middle of that, which is wild. So it feels like a lifetime ago. But still the same core DNA is driving a church that looks very different than 30 people in a living room. But, it's been a pretty wild adventure.

Dwight Zscheile: So give us a little more of a snapshot of ... Mill City now has a building, is that right? You were in a school for many years.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Give you a little of the timeline of how we got from there

Dwight Zscheile: Tell about that evolution.

Stephanie William O'Brien: How do we get from a living room to a humongous historic church building all within the same square mile of each other? So, yeah. So we you know, I think when we were asking the question, what God's doing? What is God doing in this neighborhood? You know, it was clear, like, the best thing we could do is to to participate with what was already happening outside of even just church. So we connected with a lot of local churches, which was awesome, and figured out what the heartbeat was for them, and then realized pretty quickly, you know, these school buildings are empty on Sundays, and so why don't we occupy one of those spaces when they're already empty to provide some rent towards the school district? And there was lots of challenges to doing that, but grew into a beautiful relationship with a public school that we quickly figured out was one of the highly struggling schools. Um, figured out how that was a way in which we could ask that question, well, what's God doing here? And how can we join into that story? And a number of really neat things happened in that relationship with that school. And then with a lot of other community partners. Think our heartbeat right away was why start something new if we can just join in what people are already doing, which builds a lot of credibility in the neighborhood, too, because people are always looking for more support for what they're doing and what they're doing well, and what they need more resource for. And so kind of really, kind of found ourselves as a church that was becoming very known for loving this neighborhood in the name of Jesus, loving our community in the name of Jesus as our mission, and using our time on Sunday at the school to equip people for and give them a missional imagination for what that might look like for them personally, how we might be able to do that in groups, and how as a church, we could stay committed to this part of the city, no matter where our congregation members were coming from. And that resulted in worshiping in that school for the better part of 14 years. And I said the better part, because we did get kicked out a couple times. Um, because public schools needed to keep their priorities. And replacing the fire alarms one summer was one of their priorities, for instance. And so and we ended up at another school. And, um, then when Covid happened, we were all the schools were shut down from renters and students, obviously. And so we were without a space then. In the meantime, we had bought a small building that we use kind of as a midweek space, which became a really great kind of hub for everything happening outside of Sunday, especially our equipping and training. And so we were able to set up a studio in there for Covid, and everyone's got their Covid story. Um, ours also included renting a wedding hall for a while because the school would not let us back in even when it was safe to meet in a in a large wedding hall. Perfect actually, we could spread out real good and everything. Um, and they weren't doing a lot of weddings then either, so that was cheaper than it would have normally been in northeast Minneapolis, which is pretty expensive. Um, and then, you know, we were so thrilled to get back into the school because it, it felt like home. And it's been such a meaningful place for us. And we went back and, uh, the very short version of a story is that one of those church partners that we were committed to from the beginning to say, hey, there's only one Church of Jesus. There's just meets in different places, and there's there's reasons that they're different. Um, one of those churches approached us and said, hey, we're looking at such significant decline after Covid. And we see that seems that you're having the opposite experience. And so we started a conversation and entered into the exact same question, what is God doing here? And how might we, as these two congregations join in? And that resulted in that church closing and us, we use the term adopting them, uh, spiritually and physically and emotionally and took on their people first and foremost. Who anybody who wanted to become a member of our church could immediately become a member. And, um, we inherited then their 55,000 square foot building in the heart of northeast Minneapolis that had zero debt and no giant maintenance in their in their credit. And, um, also, some lovely people who had loved that part of the city for a really long time and just about not even a year ago. Now, as we're talking here, the early 2024, we moved into that building together. They came over to the school with us for a while, and then we had been starting, while we were adopting this 135 year old Swedish immigrant originated church, we were also helping start a Hispanic, Latino, Spanish speaking church. Um, so I don't necessarily recommend adopting two very different communities at the same time. But, um, that Spanish speaking church had been meeting after us and we were really like shoving it in the time frames at the school. The school, believe it or not, turns into a Spanish immersion school while this is happening. I'm not kidding you. They changed the name to a Spanish name and that happens right as we're like, well, we'll just leave all this portable church stuff for you and your growing congregation. And all I told that Spanish speaking pastors in return was that when there is no job for me anymore, that they would hire me someday in the future, because I'm pretty sure they are a big part of the future. And so there we go. And now we're six blocks apart, the school and our Spanish speaking church. And then all of us together at the at the church building. And, um, I guess the final thing I'll say about northeast is it's very, um, it's the historic, most historic part of northeast Minneapolis. We name the church Mill City. It's the original vocation of the city, uh, the flour mills and the sawmills. And so, um, there's nothing you could say to northeast Minneapolis to say that you love them more than to adopt, like, a legacy. You know what I mean? Like, how could you possibly say we love you? We mean it. We're staying here. Young punks that are only been here for 15 years. 15 years is nothing to them, you know? But then to adopt 135 year old legacy that's been there forever from, you know, Swedish immigrants that are now of all different colors and places was pretty remarkable thing that literally would have never been anyone's strategic plan. But when we asked the question, what's God doing here and how we respond, that's how we ended up there. So now we're we're, uh, one church and they were a smaller group compared to our group. So, um, the big question was, can the culture that we have of very much kind of moving forward and stepping into what God's doing in the future and not holding on to the past, but respecting the past, could our culture be able to, um, you know, uh, move forward with enough momentum to pull the declining culture and so far, so, so good I think in that way. And, um, most of the people stayed and are pretty thrilled to see their church building filled again, but I think even more thrilled to be asking questions that they had not been asking for a long time about what God might be doing, instead of, how are we going to keep this thing open?

Alicia Granholm: I'm super curious. I have two questions I'm thinking about and they're a little different, but maybe they're related, actually. One is I'm really curious, you just mentioned about the culture and how you've gone about kind of merging these two communities and maintaining the missional DNA of Mill City and then maybe separately, but maybe not, I'm curious about even just your how you lead this new community. Yeah. And what that looks like for Mill City.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah, well, I'll, I'll back up a little bit and talk to your question about the core question today of just collaborative leadership and people seeing themselves as a part of what's happening here, not just the people that need to fall in line with whatever the leader's vision is. I think that that was what the mission of DNA was, right? It was not that myself or any of us who are on staff know the future of this church. God knows, and God's going to reveal it through all of you. And so that's very different than some of my friends who I respect, who spend, you know, a week in the mountains and their churches expecting them to come back with the vision for the year. And they're excited to hear what the Lord has spoken to this person. And that's just not how we've ever led. And that's not how I lead. And I don't think I could if I tried, to be honest. But when you tell people like "the future that God has for us is within you, and so we need you to participate in order to discover this together," they sit up straight. They, like, lean in differently, you know, like they're like, wait, what do you mean? And you know, if people are hoping for the the leader to come down from the mountaintop, they're not going to stick around Mill City very long. But if they're thinking, I want to participate and I want to be able to be in the, in the right in the thick of what God's doing, then they're really drawn to it. And so that was a really strong culture. Still a question of like, could this be something that overcomes the decline culture that had come from any church that's been in decline as much as as long as that church had? But for us, that that looks like how we lead in our staff team, how we lead with our covenant members or the people who have really we think of covenant membership as the folks who are saying, I am most committed to our mission, meaning they're going to they're going to be the people with the, I say, the highest antenna of listening to what God's asking. And they're saying, I commit to that. I commit to listening for that. Everyone's welcome to do that. But those folks have said, "we want to do that. We're we're supporting that." It's not merely we're going to keep this thing running, which was how the other church had been. I think, you know, I've thought a lot about this. And, you know, people can have a different kind of take on this, but it brings up the question of that people often use talking about the priesthood of all believers. And I just think we've really missed the mark on that. And I don't know that if I could necessarily nail it perfectly, but it's not to run the local church like being a priest is not to run a local church. And if you look at like what a priest did, you know, and I wasn't alive 2000 years ago or 2000 years before that. But it's to be the people that connect other people to God. And so the priests are supposed to be doing that all the time. And if all of a sudden, you know how that must have just been mind blowing to the first century church, that everyone gets to be a priest, and then that it wasn't going to be in the temple, it was going to be everywhere, then we've really got a confusing culture when you go back to, which was happening in this declining church, the priesthood of all believers means you all better keep this thing running. And whatever pastor we happen to have, we hope will, you know, let us do what we want so that we can keep our local church the way we want it to be. This is not any one person's fault or even their fault as a community. I think that's what we have in some ways, in some communities, said the priesthood of all believers is, like, you're supposed to all be running this church. And I look at it as the people running this local church called Mill City Church, are the staff who are equipping the people to be the church, then, in the neighborhood, in the local space. Does it mean that we want people to participate in the everyday things of greeting people? Yeah, sure. But their preoccupation should be with what God's doing. Not "do we need to change the colors of this wall?" like, you know, and like and keeping them focused on that. And that's where that culture of decline pulls people inward and towards paint colors. And you know what priorities we have on, you know, how soft the pews are and all those things and, and coffee and the I'm sure the joke you guys have had on this podcast before is who moved the coffee differently and whatever. But when you give people the the call that it's your job here to figure out how this local church and you as the church are going to participate with God. You do not have time to talk about the coffee, y'all. If you've got a problem with it, let that person know and we'll work on it. But you're not going to be the person who's going to decide this, because you've got bigger things to decide. People, they orient differently. So, you know, it's been a work in progress with bringing on that church. It was very important that they understood that their church was closing, that this wasn't really a merge, that this in no way was this a merge. Their church was closing, their assets, their ministries and their people were being given over to another church. There's not a third entity that was created; that would have been that would have been a big problem if we hadn't articulated that as clearly, because the churches in our context, both churches were congregational polity, so they needed to vote and both churches voted over 90% yes, which I think is a miracle today, that any group of Christians voted 90% for anything, much less two groups. But they had to feel the weight of this. This was their decision, and they had to discern what was best for like the Kingdom vision of northeast Minneapolis. Would it be better that we moved into that that space together? So yeah.

Dwight Zscheile: So say more about how you equip people to ask those God questions about their daily life and within the life of the church, and concretely, how does that actually take hold? What's the equipping look like for that?

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think of it as this has got to be pervasive in every space that we're in. So I think of it as a culture that sometimes we have programs or vehicles to help people move through. So the culture that we want to create is one that's asking these questions and expecting that if we pay attention, God's going to give us, you know, glimpses of what that is, and we're going to move towards that. And so that has to be everywhere from how I talk to my staff to how they talk to their teams of lay leaders in their areas, to how we talk absolutely in sermons. I mean, that's that hopefully that's a given. But there's very few times that a sermon won't include questions that people are needing to go and ask of the Holy Spirit, versus more behavior modification. It's not that we don't want to encourage people to, you know, step into holiness, but like at the end of the day, what's God's invitation to you in that and really talking about that? But then it does get into the practical of, you know, if people are really ready to lean in further, what does that look like? So one thing would be with our covenant members, um, everybody's experience listening to this of church membership meetings is wide. And so we literally, at the beginning of almost every meeting, explain to people why we do the meetings the way we do because they come from such different backgrounds, or they're many of our community were not coming from a church background, or they were coming from a different religious background. So we're saying, hey, the purpose of these meetings is, yes, to do some business because you are the people who have the most ownership of this church. We vote on some things, but number one purpose is to give to you the things that we see, the questions that we have, and then to receive from you what you think God's saying and hearing and then to send you off to to listen to that and to give that. And the leadership's role is not to tell you what the vision is, but to give, to make meaning of everything you heard and to help you then step into that vision. So it's it is still a visionary role, equipping even in that space is to say, hey, we're listening to you. How do we make meaning from what we hear from you and then give it back to you? As sometimes I use the term tracks to run on and ways to live out what I heard. Here's what I heard from you. Here's where we're going to go forward. So it looks like, you know, our membership now in a membership meeting is 200 and something people. But you know what? Even with that many people, you can do it. You put people at tables, you get some pens, you have a time of listening. You do a dwelling in the word. You ask very specific questions. You prompt them ahead of time to be thinking about this before they come. You say before this time, and next time come back with this question, and sometimes we'll get post-it notes and everybody gets to write. And then we take that. And we do like qualitative and quantitative results on that feedback. And then we can give back to them like this is what you all said. And it has determined so many things of how we move forward, what we hear from these people in those types of spaces. We can also do it through other mediums of listening with smaller groups or even surveys and things. But, it's very empowering to people to be asked, what do you think? So for instance, we've got a meeting coming up and the plan is to do some business, do the voting we need to do on some stuff and then just to pose to these people. Why do you think in this last couple of years, given everything going on in the church, big C or the global church, this specific church went through, this really unique experience, is growing even though so many are declining and is stepping into it not why, like what are we doing right? Why would God do that? And what do you think God's telling us about that and what we're supposed to do about that? That's a very different question than "would it be more strategic for us to have another service or start another site, or plant a church, or just go with the flow?" Right. Those are good questions, I guess. But the real question is, why would God be doing what God's doing right now in this experience? And how do we respond to that? And when you put that in front of people instead of just the budget, like it's a totally different meeting, but then it gets down to the practical like to your question to in addition, is when there's people who were really leaning in and saying, I really want more of this training. We do a lot of equipping, whether it's, uh, short time courses that are a few weeks, whether it's a one time seminar, for instance, we've got an innovation seminar coming up that just says, hey, if you're thinking about starting something, we've got some people in here who are experts at doing that, and they will start talking with you about that, and maybe you want some ongoing coaching with them, that kind of thing. Or we have year long experiences of cohorts where we just say, hey, if you're wanting to go deep in the way of Jesus to do that, you've got to commit to like a weekly time. We will get you some childcare, but you got to show up and we're going to do this and we're going to really talk about it, and then you're going to have to actually put this into practice between now and the next time you come back. And then we're going to talk about this again, and you're going to have the same conversation partners throughout. And by the time this is over, we're not sure what you're going to do with that. But the expectation is that if the word discipleship is in there, that there's going to be some sort of multiplication of what God's done in you, may have something to do with our church, local or not, but it is the work of Mill City Church for you to take what you've learned, to apply it in your everyday spaces. And so, I mean, the the refrain that I always say is, our mission is to love our community in the name of Jesus. And that community is northeast Minneapolis. It's this church community, but it's every community that you're in, in your everyday spaces where you live and work and learn and play. You better figure out what God's doing there and join in, because it is not for the faint of heart following Jesus in 2024. So those are some examples of the practical way that we encourage and equip people. And it's not for everyone. And so we don't we don't suggest that. I'll give other people a list of other churches that would have a different experience if they if that's where they're at, for sure. Um, and I'll give them a list of churches they shouldn't go to too. But mostly, you know what I mean. There's I really believe that, like when I say there's one church, there is only one. But if people aren't in the right local one, the number one role of the church is to help you follow Jesus. And if Mill City is not the best fit for somebody, how can I help them get there? Because we're not going to be. This isn't what I just described, is not what everybody wants to do in this season of their life. And I think just not having being ashamed of that and just saying this is what we're trying to do here. People appreciate that clarity in this day and age. I think as well.

Alicia Granholm: People appreciate any kind of clarity. Right.

Stephanie William O'Brien: People appreciate clarity. Yeah.

Alicia Granholm: So Steph, I'm really curious. When Mill City was planted, um, I know that there was an element of missional communities and that there's been kind of a transition, um, since then. And I'm curious if you could, um, maybe not just share about missional communities, but even more so just kind of the process of transitioning and, and what that discernment looks like because, you know, whenever we're really excited about a ministry, I think for any of us it can be, challenging to remain discerning about its life, and how it evolves if we don't start it that way, you know? So if when we're starting that, we kind of are constantly like giving it to the Lord and really seeking, you know, God's engagement and leading, we can, you know, we can get stuck and it can be really hard to, to iterate when we need to, to change and adapt things. So I'm curious if you can share about kind of your experience. How that's gone.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Well, I think, you know, if you're truly asking the questions that I'm talking about and you're not just saying, "what do we think would be the most strategic move here?" Then it just lends to different outcomes and to things that you would have expected and then oftentimes things you would not have expected. And so I think for us, you know, the early the early days were, "Okay, we know that our focus is how do we help people connect?" And we just use the simple like up in and out language, connect with God - in - connect with each other - out - connect out - join these relationships. Join in loving the people in the world God loves. Okay, so if that's what we're doing, then what are the vehicles for that? And um, everything I just described are those vehicles. But what we quickly realized is that the small group movement that was very popular, especially in evangelicalism, in the US, distinctly different from some of the other places, small groups were in the world were very much "in" sometimes "up," but mostly "in" and successful only when they were homogeneous. So in large part when people were most similar. And since our church was saying, well, we're not looking to be homogeneous first of all, and if you're if you're spending the very little time you have as a human these days in a group that we facilitate and it's only connecting you with other people, and it's only going to work if you're all similar. That pretty quickly was like, what we were not going to do. So then the question became, because I don't feel called as a person who was was stepping into to ministry to facilitate homogeneous friendship groups. I mean, that's just not what I felt called to do, you know, in the five fold gifting in Ephesians 4 I'm more prophetic and apostolic and even that in our collaborative leadership, helping people know what those giftings are and how they how that plays out in leading our local church, but also being the church, wherever they are. And so I thought, you know, we want places for shepherding, but if people are going to give us a little bit of time, how could that be different? And that's when the idea of missional community or really the best way to think of it is medium sized groups of people that are going to do all three things together, they're going to be able to connect around their shared understanding of faith in Jesus through Bible study, worship, prayer, even just, you know, a shared sense of purpose and mission of their "why" being Jesus. And then "in" saying we do need each other, this is really challenging to do on our own. And then "out" saying, what is the. I would say like our mission to love our community in the name of Jesus. If you're taking a bite sized chunk out of that and you're going to chew that one together, just this little smaller group, what would that be? And so a lot of those emerged over the years with the more apostolic people, evangelistic people who have those gifts, and then the shepherds saying, "well, someone's going to have to care for these people you're gathering and joining in." So it's really a great vehicle for different giftings to be used. And so, a number of those popped up over the years. We realized that they probably have like a 2 to 3 year life cycle. And that's the benefit of being part of a larger church, not just that community. Um, sometimes the micro church community will talk about that. They don't usually have that longer life because they're responding to what God's doing then. And so, for us, there was a lot of benefit to that. People were also still wanting that other type of equipping that I'm talking about, large in part because they had their in, they knew who they were doing mission with and they knew their, their mission. Some people were like, it's my workplace or it's my neighborhood, or it's this passion area that I have for racial justice or whatever it is. But they wanted to feel equipped for how I do that distinctly as a Jesus follower. And so we still have those folks today. Um, Covid really, like, took the steam out of those the missional communities that existed at that time because a lot of theirs, they were very incarnational and you, like, couldn't be together. Like there was this incredible group of women who were connecting with the Somali women in northeast Minneapolis, uh, which is profound. And, you know, you know, crossing cultural barriers and religious barriers, you literally couldn't they couldn't be together. And so then when you ask the question, well, what's God doing now? It wasn't try to become friends online with them, you know what I mean? It just you have to follow the actual leadership of what the spirit was doing. And it wasn't it wasn't that. So, um, since all the change our church has gone through, I just realized pretty quickly as we were coming out of Covid, um, one of the things that we did during Covid was connect people geographically. And so the people who already had the DNA of Up In and Out were like, oh, that's what we're doing here now that we're connected in our people who live near each other, which was great for that time during Covid. Um, so in some ways those function like somebody would call a missional community. But as we're coming into this time now and realizing we just took this whole other church and its culture back to that question, I think this year has been very much about how we help people embrace and engage the culture and DNA that we've always had. We're not. This is the new vision. I remember coming out on September, when I think churches are supposed to have like a vision Sunday. And I was like, here's the vision, the same one. We're doing the same thing, but it's completely different church at the same time, you know? Yeah. And, uh, so I think that there'll be some things like missional communities that emerge, but we're seeing people do this in with groups of people that there aren't connected to our church. I absolutely see that as this is you living this out, you know, as Mill City Church, but just because you're the only Mill citizen, quote unquote, that's there doesn't make it less, you know. Yeah. But it's not at this moment our what group life is at, at Mill City, which was the way it expressed itself for a little while. Um, right now, it's way too important that the DNA is engaged with in the culture is shifting through some of the things I just described. Um, but I believe, like when you give people access to understanding their giftings, like the five fold gifts and you give them, uh, the skills and the and the experience of listening and responding to God, they will start to step into whatever God's telling them. And so, um, our job then is to help the tracks to run on, help organize some of that and give them resources. And so I'm excited to see, you know, this time next year what comes of that. But yeah, it's like being willing to be I've read this book about being an agile church once, and I think that's it. Like, you just have to be ready to, you can't you can't have a plan that you are going to absolutely live out for five years and still be agile. You just can't. So the name of the game for us is experimenting, right? How do we experiment? The missional communities, each one of them was an experiment. The concept was an experiment, and we're not done experimenting. So I know that there'll be things that continue to emerge. Just like this crazy story of these last couple of years would have never been never been on the radar. But when you bring up at a membership meeting or any other group of leaders, how should we experiment? Instead of what should we launch? You'll have a completely different conversation, and I'd rather have the experiment one. That's the only reason I'm sitting here with you guys right now is because of the results of those experiments, you know, and what's happened. And people need to experiment in their personal lives, too. I don't know how to tell you how to reach your software company. Yeah, but I can tell you how to start some experiments in there. Yep. That's what I can do.

Alicia Granholm: See what happens.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah, exactly.

Dwight Zscheile: So this is so rich. Let me just reflect back a couple of things I'm hearing. One is, the focus really is on everyday people within the church really being present and loving their neighbors wherever they are. Right. And I think it's so easy for churches to, to really have that focus on, if I'm a leader, my primary mission is to get people engaged in this organization, right, in its activities. To sustain it.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah.

Dwight Zscheile: Right. And and you really from the start, it sounds like been released from that set of that framework, that set of expectations. So I'm curious to say for you to say a little more about then what the leaders do at Mill City, the staff. But like, how does the role of a pastor, I mean, you've shared a lot about this in terms of helping people ask those questions or learn to experiment, but say more about kind of how you and the other staff spend your days.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. I think, the truth is, is that when you do get people engaged around everything I'm talking about, you know, they do want to help support the functions of the church. You know, it's you know, getting people to volunteer for things, we have to make those assets too. But it's not pulling teeth like people are like, well, yeah, I want to help. Like the space is being created for me to ask these rich questions and to feel what I often say is "equipped to follow Jesus in an increasingly complex world." I want this to keep existing for me and others so I will participate. But that's not why they're there. You know you're not here to, you know, make sure there's coffee. But we do need some people to help with coffee because we all want coffee. That's great. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. But like, you're coming in here because you have something you need to be able to go live out there and be who God's calling you to be in those spaces. Um, and so there's a value for it. And when people value something like they want to participate in it's thriving. And then you don't have to ask the question, how do this does this thing survive? So then, you know, yes, coming back to the staff and like what that looks like. And our staff has grown quite a bit. But the function of the staff primarily is as equippers, some of those people equip by spending time with leaders who are going to be equipped that are laypeople. Some of those people spend time with people who are being equipped to do what they feel is reasonable and to participate, and for them, that's to join in, you know, serving a neighborhood partner because they're not leaders and they're not ready to do that. They could be someday, but that's not where they're at. Um, for other staff members, it really is making sure we have our administrative ducks in a row, because we don't want the priesthood of all believers worrying about that. That's leadership they should be purchasing. They should be investing in this leadership to take care of that stuff so that they're not, it's not their burden if the boiler worked right this week, it's something that they've hired some people to handle because their work as the church is stepping up to be present in the space and to create, help facilitate spaces that create missional imagination and encouragement and support like Sunday morning and to be the church in these other spaces. And so some of the staff realize that part of their role is to take that stuff off of the people's plate. And for others, though, you know, back to like a building now that we have to deal with that kind of thing, like it's a huge asset to the neighborhood and to the community. And there are some people that being able to work with their hands and to help cut costs. So is there a building team that gets to work on that? Totally. But it's the people who get excited about that and feel like that's the way they're going to serve, not making sure the coffee's hot. So there's a role for that, but that's not the primary occupation or like thing that occupies the minds of the people. And so for the staff, it does take a constant redirection, though, because the default is to do for, not to equip people to do. And so sometimes it just means like one of my staff members the other day said. These folks had this great idea and they wanted to do it. And then as soon as they realized we weren't going to do it for them, they were like, oh, I don't know about that. And so we canceled it, you know? But that's you you're training people into, to understand your role, you know? And so we don't get that right all the time. But, for us, you know, even now that we have a church building, even my full time staff, I expect them to be there on Sunday and about two half days a week. Otherwise, the expectation is that they're spending time with people. They're out in our neighborhood. They're somewhere by themselves to get the work done quicker, or we're engaging in meeting with leaders and helping them feel coached, like we're coaches. I think there's another role that's emerging more in my mind. And you guys are familiar with this, which is curating resources. So a big part of our job is to in the vast, you know, dump that is the internet to pull resources that we curate, that we say, hey, look, if you're looking to, of course, I care about biblical literacy. You're not going to get that from me by listening to me a couple times a month whenever you show up. So if you really care about this, let me say these are the resources that I support and that is a part of our role to equipping them to understand God's story so they can live into it in a richer way. But that's not going to happen because they made sure to not miss any of my sermons. It's going to happen if they're asking those questions, and we have we're ready to respond and equip them, whether it's a class or a digital resource or whatever it is. So yeah, it depends on the staff person, but that's the the constant filter is, "is this equipping people to live on mission or is this causing people to think we're doing this for them so they don't have to do the mission themselves?" So to me, it really is about deciphering the difference between the work of the church and the work of running the church organization. I actually want less people to be too burdened by running the organization, so they can feel most empowered to be the church together on Sundays, on Wednesdays, whenever we're together and everywhere they go by trying to decipher that. It's a little bit of a, you know, threading the needle, but I think it's an important one.

Alicia Granholm: No, I love that. Steph, I'm really curious. As you, as you all kind of thought about, these two congregations coming together and particularly around the culture piece. Yeah. I'm curious kind of what some, I know that you think a lot about leadership.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah.

Alicia Granholm: We share that passion. And so, you know, leadership wise, like, what were some thoughts around the intentionality that was going to be necessary in order to really move forward with a shared culture?

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it really does. I mean, at the end of the day, as the lead pastor, it really does matter what I say and what I don't say and how that goes and where I am and how my presence and all that stuff. And then me recognizing that when I choose not to be somewhere, who is there and how do they, you know, giving, giving the sense that if we are a collaborative leadership, when is it important that it's me? When is it important that other people and I don't know that we did that perfectly, but there was a lot of thought to that, even as I was the one that started to enter into the space of the congregation that was going to close and provide leadership and voice to those spaces, that's when it began, when I said, "hey, this is what we do. So if you're deciding this, this is what you're signing up for, you're not signing up for, uh, a similar version to what you're and we're not even talking about worship styles. None of that. This is the culture that you're signing up for." And I remember at one point they called me into a kind of a town hall type thing, which we would never do anything like this now in our culture, because that's just a great way for a couple people to say a lot of stuff. So I was called into one of those meetings to help respond to some questions, and I just realized part of their culture of decline had led to a lack of clarity about what was going on and what was happening, and who actually got to make what call and who didn't and what. And so I just was like, I got to be honest with these people about what's happening here because it's not fair. "Clarity is kindness" like Brene Brown says. They it's not fair for them to think that they were going into a situation where there was going to be some sort of combo pack of church in the future. U It wasn't going to be that. So I just started really early, articulating to the best I could, explaining it to their leaders who were going to then explain it to the laypeople whenever I had a chance. They had become preach once, and the whole thing was just like, well, turns out you people have been asking for 135 years what God's doing, how you respond. And that's why this church has been here this long. So it's your turn and just put putting that to them. So there's plenty of things I'm sure felt disorienting once we were together. But I don't think like the deep culture and DNA of missional leadership, thinking about who God is in that way and following the spirit and being Jesus centered would have been surprising. T hat was all throughout that discernment process and then had to be intentional as we went. One interesting thing that we were really strategic about was I was never in any of the spaces that we created for the grief, so we created a lot of spaces for that with people who are trained to come alongside folks who are going through loss. I would talk about those spaces, I'd advocate for those spaces, but when they saw me, I was talking about the future. When we were talking about the past that they needed to process, there was other people holding those spaces for them. And I would say it's very normal if you feel that I would over overly give people validation for that, but I would not lead those spaces. I would only lead the spaces that were about how we were going to join in what God's doing next. And, using the past as an example of how we're going to move forward, but not overly celebrating the past and those kinds of things. But we did do a lot of intentional things with their legacy. I know this isn't a new thought for you guys, but to say, well, I don't know, what were those entrepreneurial Swedish people thinking? Turns out this church was started by six women who thought, I don't really want to go across the Mississippi River with my horse in the snow to get to a Swedish speaking church. So if we could start a small business, we could raise enough money and then we can start a church here. So that's a cool story. Let's talk about those ladies. Let's talk about how mind blowing it would be that now this church, you know, in 2023 was adopting this community. And now there's, you know, two African pastors. What? Like that would have blown their mind. And people, you know, there's something about just saying like, this is I know that this has been the last 20 years of decline, but this is not who you are or were or who you're going to be. If we decide to do this, this is where it's going. But I was very honest with them. And one of those town halls, somebody used the word merge and we said, well, this isn't this is not a merge. I said, unless you're thinking of and I named like 694, the pretty big like highway that we have nearby our church, I said, and then like Silver Lake Road, kind of a small like little road. I said, like, if you're on Silver Lake Road and you're deciding if you're going to merge onto the highway, that's going to just keep going. That's what we're going to do. And a few people, like, cracked a smile and then a few people I saw like a silent tear go down their face. And I thought, this is, this is it. This is what I need them to hear. I do not want to bait and switch people or surprise them, and I think they'd be really excited to be on the highway once they got on it. And so if it's, if it's a highway towards what God's doing, like I think they're going to love it. And so I'd sometimes joke with people behind the scenes like their leaders, I'd be like, they're gonna love it. They just don't know, you know? And they do love it. They do love it. So, I mean, I could talk for a long time about the intricacies of the culture shift, but it's remaining just so committed to it and saying that this is the most important thing. You know, like people always say, like culture, you're eating the strategy for breakfast and all that stuff. Like it has to all flow from the culture. It can't be the other way around. I can't just take their programs and infuse culture into it. It had to be this is coming into our culture and moving forward, and it meant all their programs stopped, right? You know, it wasn't a, it wasn't a blend. It was you're joining into this. And now the new things that are emerging are coming from our culture and in the shared culture, like an adoption of a family. If a new little child joins a family, they take that family's name. They're not a new family. The family has adopted them. They're going to change that. But going forward, it's they're they it's distinct what family they joined and the family lets is shaped by that new human in the family. But it's not. The family changes its name now and is a totally new family. It's a changed family moving forward together. And that's just the way we had to keep keep it on, keep, keep on focus with that, I think.

Alicia Granholm: Yeah, yeah.

Dwight Zscheile: So one last quick question for you, for any of our listeners or watchers who are maybe in a church that isn't used to being so agile and have the kind of culture of experimentation that you've described. And what would be your counsel to leaders in terms of, of maybe a first step or a next step that they might take?

Stephanie William O'Brien: Yeah. Oh, that's a great question. Don't hijack the membership meeting. Like don't do that. Start with a few people who are, you know, we know the innovation curve. You know, honestly, maybe leave those really high innovators alone, but go for those early adapters and just say, hey, would you be a part of experimenting with me about some stuff? And don't start with experiments that would fundamentally change the church. Start with experiments like, hey, look, our church has been in this block for X amount of years, and the amount of people that have lived here and the businesses, like, we don't even know what's going on here. Would you be a part of an experiment where we would just spend some time in these spaces and see if we notice God doing something there, and they might say, "how do we know if God's doing something there?" If you're willing to do this experiment, we'll talk about how to look for that. I don't totally know either, but we can figure it out together. And if we did this for six months, I bet we'd have like really different information about why God's put our church here in this day and this moment than we would right now as we sit in this little room that used to be a church library. And these books smell bad because they need to go, like, that's I mean, that's the moment, you know, that's what we were in. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that all the whole world around that little library just changed. And where's the experiments to understand that? I think those types of experiments will grow because it's intriguing and, and, and it's the early adapters that reach the mid adapters that reach the late adapters. So if someone's listening to this and they're like, I want to lead like that, it's like, well, well again, don't bait and switch people. Clarify like, hey, we're going to move in a direction of asking these questions and, and bring that up in a way that, I mean, honestly, that church that we adopted had started to ask questions in a better way, or this wouldn't have worked for them either. And about a year and a half earlier, they started to say, let's just stop saying, what should we do? And just say what is God, like what is God going to actually ask us instead of, you know, the kind of moving to the how might we instead of what are we going to do? How are we going to get to this versus how might we move forward? And I just said, yeah, take a group of people that are excited that you like to be around and like people you actually like and say, hey, this isn't even a program. This is just something I want to try because I want to know more about what's going on. That would be a good experiment. Or, another experiment could be, what if we just figured out what the you know, what our youngest members that are actually, you know, able to articulate what they're thinking about 16 year olds, 18 year olds, 22 year olds. We got like five of them. What if we just did an experiment where we tried to find out what they think God's doing and why they're even at this church. And they might be like, well, my parents brought me here, okay. What are your friends care about? Like, what if we just wanted to find out? Not because we're going to. They're going to go bring all their friends here. They're not going to. What is going on? What's God doing in those young people? And how might those people feel if you asked them? I mean, so the experiments could be different, but I'd say start with one and move from the church question of how might we survive to how might we notice what God's doing in blank? And I think those people will love it. Worst case scenario, it's a fun experiment, and that's the only one. Best case scenario, it's the beginning of a series of experiments that could change the whole culture of the church.

Alicia Granholm: Yeah.

Dwight Zscheile: Steph, thank you so much for this wisdom and the energy. It sounds like you're having fun.

Stephanie William O'Brien: Oh yes. It's a blast, I love it. I mean you know it's like anybody else. The best and the worst thing about ministry is the people. But I'm one of those people. So it's it's great. And I've had a lot of fun. It's really hard sometimes, but it's worth getting up for every day.

Dwight Zscheile: Well, thank you all for joining us on today's episode of The Pivot podcast. We hope that you found it inspiring and encouraging, and we'd love to have you join us again next week. Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm signing off.

Faith+Lead: The Pivot podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith +Lead. Faith +Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at Faithlead.org.