In this episode, Brian welcomes Hunter Taylor, an associate pastor at Brown Corners Church, to talk about his experience working throught the Multiplying Leaders cohort that was offered following the 2025 US National Conference.

Hunter shares the significance of having "ICNU" (I see in you) conversations, which encourage leaders to identify and affirm the gifts of individuals in their church and community, and offers anecdotes illustrating how this practice has positively influenced both his ministry and the lives of those he mentors.

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Host: Brian Biedenbach

Hey, welcome to another edition of ub.

Now, live at lunch.

We're a little bit later than normal.

And that is okay because some of you I know are just now sitting down for lunch and many of you maybe are picking your lunch out of your teeth with that toothpick.

So my name is Brian here at the national office Communications director here with Hunter Taylor from Brown Corners Church in Clare, Michigan.

Hunter, how you doing today?

Doing great, Brian.

How are you doing?

I'm good, I'm good.

My lunch was delicious.

It wasn't what I brought, you know, I brought something healthy and we decided to go out for pizza instead.

So.

I had pizza too.

Perfect.

I went hungry.

Howie's with a bunch of students.

So Hunter is.

Man, you, you got a lot of things going on, right?

You, you're an associate pastor at Brown Corners Church.

Now, before we get too far, we got to clarify something.

Like I've heard Brown's Corner, and I've heard Brown Corners, like officially name of the church.

Give it to us.

Listen, it's Brown Corners Church.

Now, we have documentation from the last several hundred years that says just about every variation.

Brown corner.

Brown's Corners.

Brown.

It's brown corners.

The corners are brown.

Okay.

There's multiple corners.

Just one.

Brown.

Correct.

Brown corners.

Okay, got it.

Yeah.

Just wanted to make sure we set the record straight before.

And I want you to know I'm going to get texts and emails telling me I'm wrong.

It's going.

His number is.

No, yeah, yeah, right.

It's on the church website.

Anybody can get to it.

Right?

Right.

There you go.

So I do want to mention, if you are watching live here and you got questions for, for Hunter or comments about the chat, feel free to drop those in as we go.

Always like to talk about that.

But Hunter, we said you, you're involved in a number of things.

We're here to talk about one of those things.

The, the multiplication, the.

The leadership cohort that you guys went through.

But I think people should know you have been a youth pastor at Brown Corners for a while.

You're part of the youth ministry leadership team.

You're now an associate pastor at Brown Corners.

Also part time web consultant for the denomination, part time standup comedian.

Like, you got a lot, lot of titles, a lot of things.

Now basketball coach, varsity basketball coach at the school.

I didn't know that one.

There you go.

Yeah.

Fch.

Applet.

Yeah.

There's so much.

I mean, spinning a lot of plates.

I hope you get more phone calls and texts now for looking for web Design and stand up comedy.

Well listen, I did just book my first corporate stand up event.

I've done some stuff but I booked my first corporate.

Yeah.

Christmas party for a non profit beginning of next month.

So that'll be fun.

Nice.

But I don't do that as much.

Like that's not a.

Don't, don't call me for that.

It's not really a real thing.

I just throw it out there because I saw you do it once.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And then web design, that's you're doing all that work.

I'm just looking at it and throwing it your way and say do you like this?

Does it look good?

Is it helpful?

So no, that story just for those of you are just tuning in and watching now we are working on a new website for the denomination.

UB.org will look completely different in probably in March.

It'll be a while before we fully get there and release it.

But Hunter is part of the team just helping to consult on the look and the feel and the flow of everything.

So definitely appreciate your, your input and your insight there.

Hunter.

We do want to talk more focused.

Well before we get there too, I do want to talk more about the, the leadership cohort but part of the youth ministry team.

Tell us a little bit about that, how long you've been on that team And I know the youth summit is not happening this year.

The ministry leader summit is happening this year.

So I don't know that you're as involved in the planning of that.

But talk us through the youth ministry side of things like what you do there on the leadership team and then why maybe the ministry leader summit would be valuable to attend this next year.

Yeah.

So I've been on the lead, the youth lead team for I think four years somewhere around there and when I hire or when I joined that team it was primarily focused on planning our youth ministry summit that takes place every other year in the spring in such a valuable time just to get away from the normalcy and sometimes chaos in isolation of youth ministry.

Be surrounded with like minded folks who are going through a lot of the same stuff.

Refresh, renew, refuel, talk a little bit of minute.

While we do talk a lot of ministry throughout that week, get some ideas, brainstorm, talk through some of the struggles.

But just that opportunity for the last, I don't even know how long they've been doing it.

20 plus years.

The heartbeat has been refresh, renew, refuel and that's, that's the goal so that we can.

The guys, the original team when they started the summit, sat down and they looked and they identified the springtime as winters wrapping up, the school years winding down.

That was the time most youth workers were leaving the ministry and they said that's when they were having the most crises and said we need to do something during that time to give guys a little bit of a reset button and a push to renew.

Super valuable.

I know that that's something that can be costly.

I know that something losing.

Sending your youth pastor to Florida for a week sounds like this weird, crazy.

They're just going on vacation.

But I've, I mean, I've been in ministry coming up on 15 years, but here in youth ministry for eight or nine and it's literally been life giving.

And I would, I probably wouldn't have made it the nine years had I not had that youth summit as a regular routine and rhythm.

Every other year in the ministry Leaders Summit is great too.

The.

It is fun in its own way, but it's not as fun as the youth.

Just getting a bunch of youth guys.

Now that I'm more texts and phone calls for Hunter.

Yes.

Keep piling them on.

But what I really love about the ministry leader summit, especially now that I'm an associate and I have different roles, before I was just hanging out with the youth guys.

Well, now I have.

I'm youth, I'm missions, I'm small groups.

I'm some men's ministry stuff.

So there are going to be.

My conversations at the summit this year are going to be very different.

Yeah.

Because I have some questions about what does it look like to engage your congregation in missions beyond just financial support and mission trips.

So we're going to have some of those conversations.

And for anyone who has multiple hats or you don't, we have our worship guy.

Our worship pastor goes to the ministry leader summit and has incredibly valuable conversations and connections and relationship building with the other worship folks.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I've talked about this in other shows.

I won't go too, too in depth with it, but we talked last time with John Schadel and John and I had served, we overlapped at one point on the youth ministry leadership team 20 some ago about, you know, dealing with the summit and planning the summit and stuff.

So I will say, speaking to like what you just said, like, I don't know if I would have made it had it not been for those moments.

Like I can look around the denomination and look at senior pastor after senior pastor after senior pastor that I know that I was part of the youth summit with years ago.

And so there's something about the camaraderie that's built there, the relationships that are built there and I think just the health of the minister themselves that has has allowed many to stick around in the denomination and move into some of these senior pastor roles.

And so it's been great to see how that has developed.

Right.

Like we dreamed and we prayed then, like why don't other pastors do this?

Why don't our senior pastors, why don't our worship pastors?

Because it was just the youth summit.

And so now to see the pastor summits, the ministry leader summits that are happening.

I do think it's a really encouraging time and life giving time.

So if anybody is thinking about doing that, certainly find a way to make it happen.

It is really life giving.

So.

And if you can't like contact the youth lead team and we'll figure out a way to make it happen.

Because one of the things the other half.

So that's kind of half of the youth lead team bubble.

The other half since I, when I joined on I said I don't as much as I love the youth summit and it would be cool to be a part of planning that the lead team has so much potential for more.

So we started conversations around what does it look like for the lead team to support our youth ministers.

Like I'm, I'm in the middle of Michigan.

There's to my knowledge and this is probably wrong don't.

But we're one of the most.

The northernmost or I guess UB churches in Michigan.

There's a couple more scattered above us but we're so spread out in Michigan for youth ministry.

I didn't really get connected or hear from the denomination outside of the summit ever.

And there was just.

It felt like I was doing youth ministry alone.

So we started and they've been going for quite some time.

But in ministry or in Michigan we started a couple more clusters and I love the, the senior pastors have their cluster model.

We've started to really expand that.

They've been going kind of in isolation for quite some time but we're really unifying them and trying to get all of our churches within reason connected to a cluster.

For that same reason we early on I was probably year three or four in ministry.

One of our Michigan UB guys left the ministry and we didn't really hear anything about it.

We didn't really hear why.

One of the comments that he made was well, I just didn't feel connected to the denomination and now in part, it's not really the denomination's responsibility to be supporting them on a day to day, but we do play a part in that and the lead team can come alongside and create systems and structures for that.

So we really had put a lot of our resources, effort, time and energy and prayer into what does it look like for the lead team to come alongside.

So we're doing things like a couple times a year, we're trying to get together on a zoom, praying, getting updates, celebrating what God's doing.

We are trying to start more clusters in regions that don't have them or get folks connected.

So it's really encouraging to see that lead team really bolster and grow.

We just recently added a couple new folks to the team, so that's been really, really exciting.

Some cool stuff there.

Nice.

And I think that's how, if I remember correctly, that's how you and I first connected, talking through youth summit stuff and what we can do to promote it through our website nationally.

But then it turned into a conversation about resources and resourcing youth ministry.

So as we talk about this, the website, we're looking at options of ways that we can have a landing place for youth resources, worship resources.

And that all spun out of an early conversation you and I had a year or two ago.

And so we're seeing what we can do with this is one reason I brought Hunter in on that consultation to the website is how do we make this happen?

Like, how can we provide that?

And so I love the conversations that are happening there with the youth ministry team and love what you guys are doing.

And again, just encourage anybody.

Next year, it's end of, end of April into May.

Is the ministry leader summit.

I don't have the dates off the top of my head, but more information will be coming.

They're securing the location secured.

It's.

It's a matter of what's the cost, who's the speaker, all that kind of stuff that is being worked on now.

So that'll all be out soon, I imagine.

We'll get it out through all our channels here at the office website and everything else.

But Hunter, we did want to talk about the, the leadership catalyst, the reproducing leaders that was launched at National Conferen that Andy talked a lot about.

Our speaker, Rob talked about these.

And did we?

You and I, were we in the reproducing Disciples one together?

Yeah, last fall.

Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of people on that one.

I can't remember who all was there, but yeah, I thought we were so we've been through the reproducing disciples, so I'm a little familiar with the format of it, but talk us through a little bit of what the.

For those that don't know what is the format of one of these cohorts, what does it look like, how often do you meet?

And then we'll get into some of the content, what you're doing with it now.

Yeah.

So the.

Both the reproducing.

I'm assuming they all have the same format.

I've been in two of the three.

The only one I haven't done is the reproducing churches.

But I'm assuming similar.

We all operate through new thing.

It's a hybrid online dashboard with some in Zoom meetings as well.

So it's right around eight weeks, eight to 10 weeks.

One week is your meeting on Zoom with the group, one week.

The alternating week is with your local team.

They encourage you to really not just do this alone, but have someone else in your church, whether it be another staff person or even a lay person in your church, to go through the content with.

So there's about an hour's worth of content that you're going to do on your own time throughout the week.

Some videos to watch content, some books to read, some blog posts.

A lot of it's online.

Usually it just partners with one book.

So the reproducing disciples went through the Starfish in the Spirit, and then the reproducing leaders went through Hero Maker.

Two incredible books.

As you think about what does it look like to kind of develop into this multiplication mindset, but also just really think hard about the Great Commission called to make disciples so very easy to follow.

And then I love that the online piece, it's not super.

You don't have to really know much about Internet and technology and computers to make it work.

I mean, I've done a lot of online class work, a lot of online coursework through my undergrad and now seminary.

And some of it can be pretty complex to navigate.

This stuff's really easy, user friendly.

Yeah.

And always led by the same person.

Or do you have a variety of people that come in to lead those Zoom calls?

Yeah.

So it's usually it's the same person every week.

So with the reproducing disciples, Rob kind of led the charge on that one with who was the other.

Who was our way to UB Guy?

I just can't remember who it was.

Was that Andy?

I think Robin Andy?

Was it Robin Andy?

Okay.

So then the reproducing leaders was just Andy.

There was a week he couldn't do it.

So I stepped in to help.

But yeah, it's the same person kind of leading the charge.

And really they're, they're facilitating the discussion, but the group is really teaching like we're talking through what.

How did the content practically apply to your stuff this week?

And every week we had stories every week more and more of our group.

There was 10 to 12 guys in our reproducing leaders and every week guys were sharing about, oh yeah, this is like, this is real stuff that has real impact in our ministry.

We're not just talking about stuff that doesn't.

Because when you talk to sometimes stuff for big churches, massive churches, doesn't really translate to a smaller church context or stuff in the city doesn't really translate to the rural ministry.

And we're a medium to small sized rural church.

And everything worked really well with our context.

Yeah, I love the concept of going through it with someone else in your context in your church that you have someone.

And sometimes it's.

It's hard, you take in information.

Right.

And it's hard to really process it, especially if you're an outward processor, as many of us in youth ministry have been at times.

Not that you are, I don't know that.

But to have someone to ask questions of, to think through.

And what did you hear in that one?

This is what I think.

And how do we implement this stuff?

So I do think there's something really valuable about that aspect of it too.

Now this one was the, the reproducing leaders catalyst and it was the Hero Maker was the book you mentioned.

What are some of the things like some of your takeaways coming from this that you, you know, the stories you talked about that you've implemented there at Brown Corners.

Yeah.

So the entire premise of the book Hero Maker by Dave Ferguson and I don't remember who the other author is, but anyway, Dave Ferguson is big into exponential and new thing.

You'll hear his name a lot as you dive more into the new thing stuff that we're trying to partner with.

But the entire premise of the book is we're kind of wired in ministry leadership to be the hero.

Like we, we want to do all the work we want and sometimes it's to our detriment, like we have some pride and ego stuff that we want to be elevated on this platform.

Sometimes it's just harmless nature of the beast.

But the book really tries you to, tries to help you shift your mindset from being the hero to being the hero maker, not just being the leader, but raising up and reproducing more leaders.

And they have all of their formulas and methods, their methodology.

It's really good stuff.

Go read the book.

I'm not going to spoil all of it too much, but anytime I read and someone has this, this is the way, or our way or our method for making disciples or reproducing leaders, I always look at it.

Sometimes I can be a little cynical, but I'm like, okay, I don't.

I'm probably not going to adopt all of that, but what will work?

And I'll give you an example.

They have a several step process and they have different levels for different that they would identify your church based on.

Are you growing?

Are you staying stagnant?

What does that look like?

They really want to move you to a multiplying church, which is our goal, right?

Like we want to be growing and multiplying and expanding the kingdom.

As they're talking about reproducing leaders, one of the things they, they, one of the tools they use is they call it the ICNU conversation.

I mean, that's simply when you identify that somebody is gifted in a certain area or has a personality trait that is exhibit strong leadership.

You call that out and you say, hey, I just want you to know, like, I see in you the ability to teach or I see in you the ability to be hospitable.

And I see in you this massive volume of empathy that is just rare.

And I actually had a conversation with one of my leaders as we were talking through this ICNU stuff.

My role has changed at the church.

We said, I'm the associate pastor now.

And with more stuff on my plate, I've had to get creative in how do I make sure youth ministry doesn't suffer.

Because now I'm doing small groups and missions and all the things.

So one of the ways we've done that is I told my youth ministry team, hey, if you guys want to teach at youth group, I want you to do that.

So I started, I had created a list of the team members who said they'd wanted to.

And I had one leader, Mary, who I thought told me she wanted to be on the list.

So one Monday afternoon, I texted Mary and I said, hey, did you want to be on that team?

I can't remember.

I thought you did.

And she said, absolutely no.

She did not put her name on that list.

She's like.

And she said, she's like, I don't feel gifted, I don't feel qualified but thanks.

Did you say, Jesus told me to ask you, so there must be something?

Yeah, I should have, but he comes into play here in a minute because I said, I don't want to pressure you.

Like, no worries, but for the record, you are totally qualified for this.

You can do this.

The middle schoolers love you.

You have the ability and the giftedness to teach it.

And I said, I really appreciate that you're on the team.

And she just replied real quick, thanks.

And that was it.

So then a week later, a little over a week later, I got just two screenshots sent to me.

It was her devotional, and the title of the devotional is a Willing Heart.

And you could imagine the content is when God says, go, are you willing to go?

So I responded with fascinating timing.

She said, ever since your text about large group teaching, it's been on my mind.

And this was my morning devotional today.

So I believe God's telling me to step out of my comfort zone and teach.

So I'm willing if you still want somebody.

So that was awesome.

Like, that's the content from the catalyst, putting it into practice and seeing fruit.

So then fast forward a week, because it doesn't stop there.

We had had a couple conversations with Mary in our leaders meeting about this, and I wanted to celebrate that with the group and say, hey, I want you to know that God is doing stuff here and God may be calling you guys to do something that's uncomfortable and step into that, lean into that.

So a week or two go by and Mary's.

She got sick.

She didn't have a voice.

So she had her middle school girl, small group, and she's like, hey, do any of you.

Because of the conversation Mary and I had, she.

I said, gift activation is a word that they, as a phrase that they use with the hero maker stuff.

Permission giving.

Sometimes we need to give people permission to use their gifts and kind of call that out and say, here, now, do it.

Mary wasn't feeling great and she had all this rattling in the back of her mind.

She said, hey, do any of you want to lead the small group?

And her middle school girls all jumped at it and they were fighting over the piece of paper and taking turns asking questions.

So this is the idea of reproducing leaders.

It's not just training up a leader to do stuff, but it's teaching and training your leaders in such a way that they're identifying in raising up leaders under them.

It's making a disciple maker.

Same concepts from the reproducing Disciples.

Yeah, man, I love that.

There's a couple of things you said that.

That stepped out at me, and I got a question about one or two of them just to follow up for you.

But, like, the ICNU conversations is something that I remember Ryan Kof talking about in May as we set aside the month to pray for young people who are exploring, you know, ministry.

He.

He talked a lot about, you know, how can you have some of these ICNU conversations with people in your church?

And so this just reinforces that.

I love that.

You know, the second thing was just kind of in my mind, like, I joked about.

Did you say Jesus told me to say?

Like, yeah, it.

You know, I hear that a lot.

Right.

But it's funny.

When Jesus does speak, it does, it does.

Things seem to happen, and the person that needs to hear it can hear it if they're.

They're tuning in.

Right.

So the, the ability to help someone be able to discern the, the spirit, what God's saying to them.

So in a way, you saying, hey, were you on the list?

I thought you were on the list.

Because you really thought that was a way that alerted someone, someone to, hey, the spirit's about to say something to you without you even knowing.

Right.

And so I just love that.

The way you talk about permission giving, I think sometimes it's.

It's even more about helping people understand and discern what's already happening around them, where they can go, okay, I can do that.

But the other thing was the permission giving that.

That you mentioned.

Now that's something that, you know, you don't.

As a leader, you probably have a tendency.

I have a tendency.

There's a need.

I can do that.

Like, I'll step into it.

I don't always need permission to do it, but I do think there's a lot of people that are waiting to be asked or think they could do it and don't know that they're the person that should do it.

And so unpack that a little bit more.

This idea of permission giving, what does that look like for you?

Maybe not.

How else are you implementing it?

But what is that?

Where have you seen that happen in your life or maybe in the lives of some of your leaders?

Yeah.

So we all have a name or maybe even names of people who have identified our giftedness or calling even go at a bigger scale.

I think of.

And this is used to be an embarrassing thing, but now I love it.

When I was in middle school and high school, I was in a puppet ministry.

Okay.

Okay.

And so add puppeteer to my resume.

Awesome.

Former puppeteer retired.

My shoulder doesn't have it anymore, but I would as a 10, 11 year old in this puppet group.

The guy who was leading it told me one day, he said, hey, you're gonna be the pastor of a church.

You're gonna be a pastor someday.

And I laughed.

I'm 10, 11 years old, only going to church because my parents are making me not sure what I believe.

Laughed at this old guy who told me that I'm going to be a pastor.

But then as the years went on, other people would say things like, hey.

Well, I, I'd have teachers that would say, hey, you talk too much, or hey, you're not supposed to talk right now, or some of the comedy stuff, being the class clown, making jokes, making kids laugh.

As I would get older, people would say, hey, have you ever thought about teaching or being in a play?

I had a speech teacher in seventh grade who said, hey, you should get into the plays when you get in high school.

And then that translated to at church, hey, you do the plays at high school, you should do a play here.

And it just these moments of that we think of as, oh, I'm just finding a spot in our church.

Christmas play is really an opportunity.

Like you're giving that person, A, you're activating their gifts, so gift activation.

But B, you're giving them permission to explore what their giftedness is.

This is probably as I've experienced in ministry, not doing it well and trying to be better at it.

It's the hardest thing to do as a leader because you want to do it and like, because you can do it.

But also there's the perception of, I'm the pastor, I'm supposed to do it right.

And that was my next question.

I think you're already going there a little bit.

Is personally, how easy or difficult was that to make that transition?

Not easy.

So I got the.

My role changed this fall.

And knowing that I was gonna have to do things different, I knew that the easiest spot, easiest change to make was Sunday youth group teaching time filled people into there.

But my first thought was, what's the perception of people going to be when the youth pastor is not the primary teacher?

Because I love doing it right.

So it's a very difficult change to make.

I'm still in process, but I've seen real tangible fruit and I've seen it work and seen God work through it with like Mary's a great example we see I have a student right now who's called to ministry or who we're wrestling and figuring out.

And I believe he is called to ministry.

And he said, what do I do with this?

This?

And I said, okay, let's.

Let's explore this.

We get a few weeks into him being intentional with watching me on Sunday night, small group, watching me in our small group discussions.

And then one week I walk in and he, thinking he was going to be funny, rips the paper out of my hand and says, I'm doing small group today.

And I said, okay.

He's like, oh, no, no, give it back.

I'm like, no, no, no, let's, let's see this.

Let's.

And he.

It was a struggle at first.

The kids weren't totally responsive.

But once he got into his groove, once they started talking, he did really well.

So then after that small group, I pulled him to the side and I said, okay, here's what leadership, disciple or leadership training looks like.

You saw me teach, now I let you.

And we're going to talk through.

So we talked through things like the first couple questions they didn't ask or they didn't answer because he asked too deep of a question too early.

So we talked about the difference between like a, an entry level question and add a little bit of meat.

And so those are the opportunities we have to look for and then act on.

And that's really difficult as a leader.

Don't expect to go from someone who I'm doing everything and I'm okay with that.

Sometimes we have to be okay with accepting a lesser quality product for the sake of discipleship or for the sake of leadership training.

I was okay with small group being more surface level or maybe less.

Less.

Well, I guess depth is a big thing because he was creating or I was creating an opportunity.

God created the opportunity for him to lead.

I have some teachers that are going to be teaching Sunday night that have never done it before.

Mary and a couple others.

I'm okay with the.

I am okay with lowering what my perception of a high quality youth message is for the sake of them stepping out in faith, using their gifts and speaking to a ministry in a different light.

Yeah, you know, I sometimes, you know, I've been in that position too in youth ministry and different organizations and churches I've served.

And it is difficult.

Right.

You talk about a lesser product potentially, and I think potentially is a big word there because it's in my eyes.

Right.

It's in my eyes or maybe the eyes of those who are sitting and listening or whatever.

Like who's to say I'm better than someone else other than I've done it more often, have more training and maybe feel more comfortable.

But what I've learned in that is, and you've probably been in the same, same boat too, is sometimes the messages that I give, that I put the most time and effort into and feel the best about people are like, oh, that's really good.

You know, golf clap.

The ones that I struggle with that I'm like, I don't, man.

I just.

This isn't coming.

This isn't work.

Like, you get up there and you fumble, you whatever.

And people are like, that was so good.

I needed to hear that today.

And the Lord knows what we need when we need it.

Right.

And so even that, I just think I've had volunteers step into positions.

I've had students step into positions that I'm like, oh boy, here we go.

What's this going to look like?

And people walk away going, that was the most profound, brilliant thing I've ever heard and it's changed my life.

But otherwise they would have never heard it because I was maybe even getting in the way because I thought I was the one they needed to hear from.

Right.

Yep.

And so I love that hero maker concept in that, in that instance, like there was, you know, one, one, one instance, we're in a small group together.

It's myself and it was actually Brian Kramer was part of this group.

Another UB pastor legend.

Right.

Um, he's.

He was part of the small group.

What's that?

Shout out to bk.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was high school students.

And it was, it was kind of, it was a small group that like, we were holding each other accountable for, like, how we were engaging with our lost friends.

Right.

So our high school students were going, brian, have you talked to Aaron this week?

Like, what was that conversation look like?

And Aaron is not a teenager.

Aaron was my next door neighbor.

Right.

And so they're holding us accountable.

So anyway, in that sense, in that context, there was one time where, you know, one of us was struggling to be like, we, we haven't been able to connect with our neighbor or whatever, and the student asks a question that we were like, I never thought of that.

Like, you know, so there's some brilliance in that.

When somebody has an opportunity to ask a question or to lead a small group or even to stand up in front of a room and, and teach that.

Yeah.

You know, maybe we wouldn't expect that from them, but, you know, when they're using their gifts, they've been given Those gifts for a reason and we're just giving them permission to use them and activate them.

So I love that.

What's the, what's the next step for you then with, you know, as far as the, the leadership catalyst, the stuff you learn like.

Yeah, what, what's your next step with maybe your youth ministry or other, other ministries, you have your hand in activating other leaders.

Yeah.

So one of the big things we're looking at.

So at a, we'll look at it macro level, micro level.

At a micro level, that student who is called to, who we're fleshing out, calling and he has a lot of ministry potential that we're just praying through and working through.

In January, he's going to be teaching the large group lesson for youth group.

So it's.

And he knows this and we're working towards this, but it's creating a plan at a micro level.

I know that Mary is going to knock it out of the park next week when, next Sunday night when she teaches.

And it's continuing to.

Okay, we're going to meet after that and talk through what went well.

What didn't go well, A lot of celebration and praise.

Very light on criticism.

Right.

Because that's not really the point.

We want to help them grow, but we also don't want to squash them.

So with those two folks, we're going to have some, some more opportunities and create more of these gift activation opportunities I have at a macro level.

We really, and Andy and I were talking about this.

There was our last catalyst last week and we're really looking at next steps and our natural default is I want to create a system or a structure to make leaders who are making leaders to create a leadership pipeline or.

And that's on my list, like matter of fact, ChatGPT is my friend because I have the beginnings of a leadership pipeline.

Nice.

But trying to.

Because I have some success within the youth ministry team, I'm not going to worry too much about blowing it up, going big.

One of my big ministry philosophies I borrowed from a old pastor friend.

Anytime you're starting anything new, dream big, start small, adapt quickly.

So I have our leadership pipeline on paper, but I'm not going to roll it out as church wide.

But I'm going to start rolling out with my teams.

So starting with youth ministry next we're going to look at what does it look like to implement this with this idea.

With our Sunday morning we do Sunday school.

So I'm in charge of Sunday school class.

So we're going to look at all those teachers and leaders and how are they.

How am I raising them up and training them up to be.

To identify small groups or potential.

Sorry, next class, teachers.

So I have a guy who is teaching a class right now.

Last semester, he was like, hey, I think I'm done teaching.

And I was sitting in his classroom and he said, one of you guys is going to teach this class.

And he's pretty, like, hard.

He's like, this is what's going to happen and this is how it's going to happen.

But he's maybe a little rough and gruff, but he was giving his class permission to step into that spot.

So looking forward to working with these other.

I have probably 10 Sunday school class teachers that we're going to look at.

Okay, who are you raising up right now to teach a class next semester?

So looking at our existing structures and starting to slowly implement this, rather than take the whole pipeline, throw it at them and say, okay, here's what we're gonna do.

Yeah.

And part of it is to create some of these stories that will be content for these trainings.

So that's where we're gonna start.

Start small.

I'm not gonna start with this big thing that now I have to devote hours and hours of energy to.

I'm gonna continue with Mary and the student, and then I'm going to start with my Sunday school leaders to see what happens there.

Yeah, sounds like a good plan.

I know the reproducing disciples catalyst that you and I went through together was very practical.

And we're implementing things at our church at Living Grace with Jason Holiday at the helm as our senior pastor.

I know there's things that have continued to spiral with that one in a good way.

Spiral.

And so I just looking forward to seeing as more of our pastors in the denomination engage in these reproducing disciples leaders and churches catalysts.

What that spurs as we look, you know, five years, 10 years down the road.

Like, we talked to our three church planters a few months ago, and regardless of whether they were part of one of these catalysts or not, the prayer was like, someone in our church is, I think, gonna start a church.

And like, Kelly Ball was like, oh, maybe that's me.

Maybe I'm the one that Jesus is speaking to and saying, you're going to start a church.

So through these catalysts to.

To see what conversations are getting started and how those start to grow legs and.

And start moving forward.

I'm really excited to see.

So thanks for coming on today, man.

And sharing your experience with the leadership catalyst and your time with the youth ministry leadership team.

Anything else before we go that you think is important to share to ministry leaders about summit to youth pastors out there that you've got your hand in?

Like anything else you want to.

Yeah, don't.

Yeah, I guess.

So.

As far as the leadership catalyst stuff, don't feel like you have to do everything at once.

Don't feel like you have to master permission giving and gift activation and start with the IC and UConn conversation.

Start with one person that you've interacted with this week that God's saying, hey, encourage this person, tell identify this in them.

And if you don't have that person, chances are some people watching might have that right away.

Maybe you don't pray about it.

Who's the one person I need to have an ICNU conversation with?

Whether it be on my ministry team, in my church, whatever, on the staff, whatever it is in the youth ministry realm?

If you, if you're a senior pastor, I want you, I want to encourage you to get your youth person, whether they're full time, part time, bi, vocational or volunteer, get them connected to the nearest cluster.

If you don't know who or where that is, send me an email, send me a text.

I'm sure I'm going to get some not so nice ones from some of this stuff, so I'd love to connect and have some positive text messages too.

Oh, my mom just commented, hi mom, aren't you.

You should be at work right now, mom.

Get working.

There we go.

There we go.

Shout out to my mom for popping.

And your mom's like, hunter, you should be working too.

Get off.

Listen, I have some incredible stories and I always talk to going on a mom tangent for a second.

One of my favorite things to do when I'm in the ministry leaders area, particularly with youth ministry, is I brag about my mom being on my ministry team.

And they always say, that's so cool your mom is serving.

It is really cool.

She's one of my, she's probably, she's my greatest volunteer, but she runs our cafe and our craft area.

And one of the coolest, newest things in our ministry is our craft table.

Last year we kind of redesigned our our space a little bit and I said we have a lot of things for the athletic kid, but we don't have a lot for the kid who's not athletic and who just wants to sit in.

So I would every week print off 10 different coloring pages and put them at a table and that has molded because my mom's been championing it from 10 coloring pages to they've done like build gnomes and paint pumpkins.

And there was glitter.

I hate glitter.

There was glitter somewhere.

Like every week she's like, I got this from Michael's, I got this from Joanne's and I got this.

So she's killing it.

Superstar volunteer back to youth ministry.

Whether you're a youth pastor or a senior pastor who has a youth worker.

Get them connected to the denominational stuff.

Send me a message.

My email is just hunterowncorners.org I'll even throw it out there.

So I encourage that stuff because we want to get you connected.

We want your youth folks not to feel like they're isolated when we roll out the resource stuff on the website.

We want that to be something you guys have easy access to in above everything.

I mean, keep pursuing Jesus.

I mean he, his grace is sufficient.

He will equip you for everything.

We just need to rest in him.

And that's, I mean, that's the bottom line.

Yeah, right on.

Hunter.

What was that?

Excuse me, what was that email address again?

It's just Hunter H U N T E R at Brown Corners Corners with an S org.

Put the S in the right spot.

Yeah.org all right.

To book a stand up comedian gig.

Hunter at no, I'm just kidding.

Hunter, it's been good talking with you, man.

I'm excited about what's happening at your church at Brown Corners up there and how you have even grown into other areas of ministry beyond youth ministry at your church as an associate pastor.

And what it's what I hear it's awakened in you as far as reproducing other leaders for other ministries now that you've have a, maybe a higher level view of what's happening.

Not that you didn't before, but your role is a little different now.

So thanks for sharing that.

We will.

We'll get this out here as an audio podcast here real soon so those that watch live you can re listen if there's parts of it that you, you want to go back and check out or for those who are just tuning in, catching it live.

Thanks for listening to this version of UB now live @ lunch.