The importance of church governance

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:08

Hey, welcome everyone, to our unfiltered podcast. My name is Lee Stephenson and my.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:13

Co host here, I'm Danny Parmelee from Converge Mid America.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:16

And we're glad that you're with us. We're excited to have real conversations about church planting.

And so we're looking at things from in between the lines, not necessarily a major how to conversation. And today we're going to talk about church governance. This is one of those topics that can be a hot button for guys.

It's challenging for church planters to think through, like, how do we actually want to handle the affairs of our church when it comes to legal matters, when it comes to leadership issues.

And I think partly it's a difficult conversation because church planters, we just like to make stuff happen and we like having control, let's just say it. And so there's an element, like, it's hard sometimes to let go.

And so let's talk a little bit about development of standards and governance within the life of the church from early on.

And even my guess is there were changes in how that took place in the life at Epicos Church for you, Danny, and I know there was for us, as well as in our church planning journey. So talk to a little bit.

Like, what is number one advice that you give guys when they're thinking about what they should do and how they should develop it? And maybe give us an overarching view, too, of different ways that are done and then you can kind of go from there.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:38

Yeah.

And I would say the thing I was gonna even open with and say is that most church planners hate talking about this type of stuff because it just seems to go so against our personalities. Cause like you said, we like to make it happen and to think of, yeah, constitutions and, you know, oh, man.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:57

I love just sitting around the table talking about.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:59

Yeah, sitting about, like, parliamentary procedure, like, how are we actually going to make this happen? However, I do think it is a really, really important thing.

So I'm hoping that some will accidentally click on this because I don't think that many church planners are going, ooh, church governance. I think I want to listen to that podcast. However, it is important and it becomes more important the larger you get.

So in the beginning, you can kind of skirt by and probably even be functioning illegally and not following any sort of constitution. But it's later on when you need that structure, when you're renting property or when you're.

When you're purchasing property or if there's some sort of disputes or issues that Come up within the church. That is really when it becomes an issue.

So my advice is that you do spend some time out of discipline to kind of work on that constitution and just understand how you're gonna be structured and to be thinking of things three, five, and ten years kind of down the road. And for a lot of guys, I tell them, you've gotta almost kind of be thinking how things could go wrong. And that's also hard for church planners.

Cause in the beginning stages, you're optimistic.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:16

You'Re excited, and you've got nothing's gonna go wrong.

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:19

It's like the 12 disciples, and everybody's perfect and we love each other. There's never gonna be any sort of ego or leadership issues or disputes. Therefore, we're just gonna love Jesus and reach people for Christ.

We don't need to write up a constitution. So all that to say, the biggest point of advice is to, hey, spend some time to do this. This is where being part of a network is helpful.

Because there are gonna be people who have kind of walked this path before you. And you can steal stuff from other people as long as you're understanding kind of what you're stealing.

So a little bit of our story is we were just handed an existing church's constitution. And I respected this church and respected the pastor there. So all we did was we just changed the name in it.

So we went from their church name into ours and kind of submitted that to the state, hey, this works for them. And then we just basically put it into the file and honestly didn't even operate by it. So we were operating illegally, if you will.

And not that there was any major issues with that, but again, personality wise, didn't care about it. But it's later on than when we needed to purchase property. It's like, oh my goodness, like we have to do. So.

The other thing that I would say, and this was an important lesson for us, is that you will have to change your structure over time. And that's why I said think about kind of maybe different phases. Think of your two to three years out, your five years and your 10 years.

And the function that you have in your governance will likely change, even the role and responsibility. And so here's what I mean by that. In the beginning.

Well, actually, the way that we do it even in mid America, is that in the beginning there's not elders. We use an outside board type of thing.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:06

And I know, I think is a good way to do it.

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:08

Yeah, lots of church plants do that where.

Because you don't know, I mean, especially if you're new and it's pioneer, you don't know people, it takes some time to kind of get to know who are gonna be this group around you that's gonna really help to lead the church and govern the church type of thing.

So we start out with not having elders, and it gives just a little bit of a time for the lead pastor to establish himself, but still to have accountability by having some pastors from, you know, some outside churches to be able to speak into that for both accountability, but also to give some direction to the church as well.

But in those early stages, Even when you're 100 to 200 people, the role of the elders often, or whatever you call them, overseers, the board tend to be more hands on and managerial.

And for us, the way that we started, and part of this came from a theological conviction, is that I felt if you're a pastor, you're an overseer, and if you're an overseer, you're a pastor. And I do think that there is a biblical case that those words are used kind of interchangeably.

But with that, I automatically then went to the structure that if you were a pastor on staff, then you were automatically on the board. So that meant that we had a mix of staff pastors on the board and then we had lay people, which is one way to go about. And it didn't create too much.

There weren't any, like major dramatic things that happened. But it was confusing at times with this setup because I was basically their boss and they were my boss at times too.

And I'm not even saying it was confusing because somehow I was like losing power type of thing. They were confused.

They were like, okay, wait, am I talking to the lead pastor now as who I'm reporting to, or as the overseer of the church saying, well, hey, I'm making some of these decisions. So I'm a voting member of the overseer board or the elder board. So which hat am I kind of wearing?

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:11

Yeah.

And like a practical instance would be, you know, your worship pastor being on the board, maybe the one that's actually setting your salary as the lead pastor. You know, it's like, that's confusing.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:20

There was all sorts of. And we function in that way for a pretty long time.

It wasn't actually till about my last two years there that we went through a transition process to be what's called the Carver model of church governance, where it is the lead pastor in all lay overseers or elders. And the biggest change though was the actual function. So in the beginning, like I said in the beginning, it's very hands on. It's managerial.

It's, you know, I'm bringing all sorts of questions, hey, should we do this? Should we add another site? Should we, what should we do with this ministry? Here's about small groups and everyone's kind of.

It was almost more like brainstorming time.

Whereas the larger you get the elders and the overseers, if they play much more of a role where, hey, they're protecting you, they're giving you kind of the bounds to run in. But other than that, they're not getting their hands in all of the stuff that really the staff are doing.

The staff are the ones that are actually executing the vision. They're kind of just kind of protecting the vision.

Lee Stephenson: 00:08:30

Was that a hard shift to make within the life of the church or among the leaders, going from one model of governance to another model of governance?

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:39

I think that who it was hardest for was me.

And what was hard about it was I just felt like there was this going to be this perception that I was going for a power grab because it's like, okay, I need to announce to the church all of the pastors that are on the board now are now being removed. And it's kind of like, whoa, what's Danny doing here? Is he consolidating?

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:03

Stronger?

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:03

Yes, stronger. So what was so great is that the pastors were relieved to be off the board.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:12

To me, says a lot about the way you handled it and relationally connecting with him.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:16

And for some, there was a bit of a loss. I did kind of like to know, to be on the inner circle and to know a few of these different things.

But for most of them, they're like, man, I just bought back a whole bunch of extra time that I can actually execute the ministry. Because we were starting to get into reporting and all of these different things. And the church as a whole, they didn't bat an eye.

And I think that they saw the effectiveness of it because they saw, okay, this is an opportunity for, for lay elders to really step up and to have an important role and for the pastors to pastor and to lead and to execute. So for us, and we did, we had some consulting during that time, which was also helpful that we had a third party.

But yeah, for me, it was actually just more of the fear based stuff of what is this gonna look like, changing the structure.

So I think for planters to kind of let everybody know that your structure may need to change, it is going to change if your church grows, because as soon as you change it to maximize your effectiveness, you'll grow. And then once you grow now you've got new problems that you've got to change and adjust again, which again is a good thing. So how about you guys?

How did you structure?

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:34

Yeah, well, first of all, I think you got to pay attention to the language that you use. So I encourage guys, when you're developing bylaws, use the bylaw language versus constitution language.

Because if you write constitution down like that seems more binding. You can't change the constitution. And that in itself can create a lot of challenge. And so go with bylaws we developed.

There are multiple different ways to do governance.

You have congregationalism, you have staff led, you have elder led, you have Presbyterian style, I mean, and nomenclatures of all the above kind of hybrid versions.

We chose to do a hybrid version of congregationalism Presbyterian style of governance, meaning there are a few things that congregational members, to use that term, because I think that's kind of the most common term out there that they have a say in and wasn't necessarily a boat. It was more of an affirmation. So they affirmed the elders once a year.

And that was more of like, do you see these men as being godly and holding up to the Timothy Titus standards of an overseer? And in doing so, in affirmation, they were empowering them to make the decisions day to day in the life of leadership, leading the church forward.

They affirmed the budget because honestly they're the ones supporting the budget and the work that's going forward. They would affirm new members and welcoming them as be a part of what's going on. They would have a say on whether or not the church took debt.

And partly that's part of the budget conversation anyways. Outside of that, it was elder led and the elder board was made up of lay leaders within the life of the church.

And again, as we grew, you have growth challenges in the way that leadership has to happen. When we were smaller, I believe the elders work best when they're helping the pastor do ministry.

Like they're in the trenches, they're carrying a load from that standpoint. Practical.

As we grew to a ministry medium sized church, the elders kind of began to move into more of a role of helping me know how to communicate vision properly.

And so they began to let go of a lot of the other pieces of the day to day ministry side of things, but were working with me on vision casting and helping sustain momentum. When we moved into a large church category they really began to focus on the big rocks.

We're thinking down the road, what are the things that we need to move out of the way for the church to continue to gain momentum and move the mission forward. Which meant early on, the elders would be a part of budget conversations on a regular basis.

But by the time we were a large church, the only time we ever talked about the budget was when it was necessary. If there was something challenging financially, both positive or negatively like, we may have a quick conversation.

But we actually began to divvy up the elder board with specific responsibilities, too. So we had, like, a teaching elders group, and so they would handle some more teaching responsibilities in the life of the church.

We had a group that were. I call them, like shepherding elders.

And they would deal with church discipline, or if there was, you know, a family in crisis, they were going through a divorce or something of that sort, they would begin and intervene in that conversation. You know, we had financial elders that could speak into the finances and connect and understood that world.

So that helped me as well that I didn't have to be present in all those type of situations happening in the life of the church. But we knew, like, it's being handled and handled well.

Danny Parmelee: 00:14:42

Yeah. So we had the same thing as far as what members needed to vote on. So it was affirmation of elders. We didn't do other members.

We described it as purchasing or selling of property. So essentially the same thing with that and doing. The one other key one for us was hiring and firing of lead pastor.

So I don't know if you had that or not hiring.

Lee Stephenson: 00:15:11

When it came to firing, there was kind of protocol that we wrote in there and how that would be approached and the elders and such.

Danny Parmelee: 00:15:17

So tell me that, because that's the one where I think that's a really. Again, no church planner is thinking of that.

But I just know enough stories where a church planner goes on sabbatical and comes home to a letter that says, you're done.

Lee Stephenson: 00:15:34

It had to be a unanimous decision by the board, and then it had to be presented to the congregation in a way that honored the church and the future of the church. I'm summing up basic legal terminology that we wrote in the bylaws. I've seen other churches, and I actually kind of. I favor it in some way.

I think that it's wise. And I didn't know about this idea when I was copied somebody else's. Exactly, exactly.

But I know a lot of guys are interacting now with church planners, talking to them about Holding, I think let's say this first, church planners. You don't need a board, like an elder board right off the bat. Like, don't do that, like that's gonna get you in trouble.

We waited almost well over a year before we even developed a board. And then it was small, you know, and we grew from there. But I think, you know, consider waiting two years.

Have an advisory team that operates there, they give you advice and they can be people outside of your church that get you. They understand.

But one of the things I've seen is that advisory team role moves into the fact, like if there's a removal of the pastor, it may be made up of three or four pastors or high level leaders outside your church. They're the ones that actually have the authority. So the elders could bring an issue to them.

They then will launch an investigation and they actually have. So you can't be overthrown per se by the people in the life of your church. I thought that's an interesting way to look at that.

Danny Parmelee: 00:17:10

Why did you, or did you say you didn't give a lot of thought as far as congregational having to kind of sign off on it or.

Lee Stephenson: 00:17:18

They did. They technically did. You know, it's just I probably didn't give it enough thought, if I'm honest.

Because as a church planter, you just never think, like, they're going to love me, like, why would they want to get rid of me? I planted the church. Like we put all this in. But I've seen horror stories, you know, over the years where that's not necessarily always the case.

Danny Parmelee: 00:17:41

Yeah, that's good. Good stuff. Yeah. I think, you know, for us, I don't know if you. So we use the word overseer.

And we did that because when I had planted in our 20s and we were to call someone an elder, we.

Lee Stephenson: 00:17:56

Were like going back to the original Greek too.

Danny Parmelee: 00:17:58

So do you have any advice on that? As far as names, as far as overseer, elder, calling it a board, you know, I don't know what else you've heard out there.

People are trying to be creative.

Lee Stephenson: 00:18:11

Great question. I think it just needs to be clear to people in the life of your church that there are others that you are held accountable to.

I don't know if the name terminology matters that much. As long as there is a process and that there's a group of people that the pastor can.

That he can lean upon, but also that will work with pastor to help him develop his own leadership as well. I mean, we just called it the board of Elders. I know other churches that called it the board of servant leaders.

I've heard board of directors and everything in between. So it's kind of like know the context of who you are as a leader, context of the people that are coming to your church.

Use terminology that makes sense to them. You know, we board of overseers, it could be any of those above. So I'm not as particular on exact language for that.

I just, you know, if you call a board of elders, explain what an elder is, you know, and I think that's the biggest thing. We purposely chose not to use the word deacons in the life of the church. I mean deacon really just means servant. And so we were kind of like.

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:24

So you weren't a biblical church then.

Lee Stephenson: 00:19:25

No, exactly. So. But we had a lot of people serving, so and so.

But I didn't feel like having to explain constantly to people that had no real church background before coming in, like what a deacon is.

To me, when you kind of look at New Testament, seems like a term that Paul just kind of made up and popped in there and said, yeah, these are people that serve at a different level.

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:51

So you said you waited a year. I think we were even three years. What's some advice that you give in looking for an elder?

Because I've seen some pitfalls where people think, oh, well, it's just, it's the biggest givers or it's the people who can manage money the most. What were some of the markers or how did you begin to say, you know what, I think that person has elder potential.

And then what was your process for making them official?

Lee Stephenson: 00:20:24

Great question. First of all, nobody was allowed to even be considered to be an elder if they had been in the church less than two years. We felt.

And why we put the two year mark on there was, we felt like it took two years for us to really get to know them. And it took two years for them to really get to know us. And so we didn't bypass that. And that was just one of the off the bat.

And then that allowed us to see like they needed to be serving, they needed to be, you know, at least a tither. They needed to have positive rapport, they needed to be a leader. Like we wanted to see who, what kind of people are actually following them.

And we made mistakes. I mean, you're going to make mistakes through some of this. One of the things that, and you know, again, this is where unfiltered conversations.

I would be careful, I would caution anybody in making people on the board just because of the title that they have in their job. Sometimes we can get ourselves in trouble. You know, for instance, I don't know if I'd ever bring an accountant as an elder on my board.

And the reason why, to kind of explain it is accountants tend to be very black and white, and they will want to set policy in places that policy doesn't necessarily need to be made. And sometimes the elders have. As you have a growing church, an elder board has to learn to live in the gray areas a little bit.

It's not always black and white. It's not. Well, this is just what you do, and this is what you don't do.

And I found it was difficult when we had an accountant as an elder for him to keep up in the conversations because he wanted to put it into one of two categories, right or wrong.

Danny Parmelee: 00:22:05

Yeah.

Lee Stephenson: 00:22:06

And it slowed our ability to maximize the leadership in the room because we felt like sometimes we were having to pull him along and say, no, this is okay, and this is why this is okay. And sometimes we had really, really hard conversations. So I found that. That. That is one of those. And it's like, do you want accountants around? Sure.

But there are people that you can go to and ask for advice and saying, hey, would you come into the meeting this week and give us some perspective on this? That would be helpful. And so use them in, like, a more of a consulting role than necessarily having to be on your board, you know, very quickly.

I mean, obviously, if somebody comes to you and says, hey, God's calling me to be an elder here, they're automatically out. Yeah. Red flags should go off like crazy. Crazy going, not a chance. You know, so be careful of falling for that trick, because it'll happen.

Danny Parmelee: 00:22:55

What about. I have so much experience, because the last church I just came from, I was an elder. Yeah.

Lee Stephenson: 00:23:00

Yeah. Again, you know, watch that and just have those protocols.

Like, well, you know, our reality is, you know, one of the things we say is leadership is always recognized. It's not appointed. So we don't allow anybody to be on the board for the first two years that they've been in the life of our church.

So serve, get plugged in, and we'll just see how things go. And that allowed us to offset some of those things. I think, too, we really wanted to have drivers on the board.

We wanted people that are willing to take risk and willing to drive and walk by faith and really trust that God was going to do some big things.

And so we had to figure out, how do we narrow that focus and sometimes there are guys that are totally qualified, like great leaders, great heart, incredible experience, have been elders, staff people at churches, and they may be 70 years old. We found that the generational gap sometimes made it more challenging to bring them on the elder board.

And partly because they're just in a different state of life.

When you're moving towards retirement or in retirement, you're desire for risk is lessened in your personal life, which I think carries over into other areas of your life. And so we oftentimes use those type of people again as a consultant role versus being a permanent fixture on the, on the elder board.

Danny Parmelee: 00:24:25

With that, were you ever accused or did you even find yourself just gathering people around you that you knew would agree with you or, you know, like, I'll. Lee's just got a bunch of yes men and whatever. How did you make sure that your board actually was serving the purpose and not just.

Lee Stephenson: 00:24:48

I never got accused of that. At least that I knew of.

Danny Parmelee: 00:24:53

Not to your face?

Lee Stephenson: 00:24:54

Yeah, not to my face. And part of that was we really had a good group of elders and they were publicly seen. So we made sure that they were seen in their role.

You know, when we did, we did two kind of congregational update meetings a year. My elders led that. I didn't lead that. You know, I may get up and welcome everybody and say, hey, this is so and so.

And then they would actually lead that meeting. And so people got to the point where they trusted their leadership and they trusted.

And they saw the fact that these aren't just yes men that Lee brought aside. And Lee's always the spokesperson person. So I, I wanted them to see that there are other people crafting this vision in the life of who we are.

Anytime we did any major event where, you know, like we're sending a missions team or, or something of any of that kind of thing, the elders would come up and be a part of that, would even lead that, that part of, of the life of our church.

I did a state of the church address every year, and usually some shape or form would bring an elder up into that conversation, say, hey, why don't you give an update from your perspective for five minutes. And so those things I think helped us kind of push against those type of people in the life of our church. How about for you?

Danny Parmelee: 00:26:10

Yeah, I think. Oh, I'm sure I was accused of it at times, but just maybe not to the face.

But yeah, I think for us, and even for me personally, it was actually important to have a diversity of people.

And this is where especially Being young when we planted of having overseers that the age was much more so it didn't look like I was just surrounding myself with friends and to have people that have kind of different backgrounds.

And then the other thing is that when there were opportunities to rightfully share within sermons where I presented an idea that the overseers warned against and that we didn't do and that I was thankful for their, for their foresight and their kind of holding back, just sprinkled once in a while in there I think helped to kind of set that pace that they saw that they really did have that function and responsibility and we did the same thing.

Anytime that we could have them come up and we even use them for service hosting from time to time just so that they could introduce themselves and that people could kind of get a recognition. And then same with our annual business meeting, annual business vision meeting, we would have them be the ones that were presenting.

Lee Stephenson: 00:27:33

Looking back, were there anything like mistakes that you've made that you learned a lesson from when it came to bringing elders on the team or something of that sort that you had warned, pay attention to this. I didn't pay enough attention to it.

Danny Parmelee: 00:27:46

I think you said it already that you will make mistakes. It doesn't matter how spiritual someone seems, they can still mess up.

They can have spiritual immaturity, they can have things happen in their life that just kind of set them off the rails. And so I mean you just, you just have to know that just because they're elders, they're not infallible.

Just like as pastors and church planters were not infallible. So I don't know, I guess, oh, I guess what I would say is no lifetime appointments, which we did have because I was thinking, I was asking.

Lee Stephenson: 00:28:24

Whether or not you had terms.

Danny Parmelee: 00:28:26

So, so it was kind of like lifetime appointment. And now where it's at now is there's yearly review of every single and.

Lee Stephenson: 00:28:34

Yes we have, which I think is important.

Danny Parmelee: 00:28:36

Three year term that can be renewed so six years and then it's mandatory off. But even at that three year point it actually gives an out for both the rest of the board or that person.

So many of the high capacity leaders, even if they need a break, they have such a high call of responsibility in serving God that they'll push through even though they're ineffective for those next three years.

So having it now where the other overs and elders can, can give feedback and say, hey, here's where I think you excelled this last year, here's where I think you can Go forward and there's kind of that opportunity to enter into a conversation, say, hey, we know you have a three year commitment, but we think it's best that you're, you know, you don't, you don't go another year and take a year off.

Lee Stephenson: 00:29:19

Yeah.

So I know for us one, one area that I caution guys, you know, when you're going through Timothy and Titus, like pay closer attention to the verbiage and the reasonings behind why there's a list.

You know, I think I kind of work quickly through that list at times going yep, yep, yep, yep, that's there, you know, and not thinking about, okay, why is that there? And does this person encapsulate the reason why this is written here? In this passage you have a specific example. Yeah, yeah.

So like, you know, where he talks about the ability to teach. I remember one guy that we brought on the elder board that, you know, we sat around, we talked about like everything on the list was there.

Billy teacher. I was like, well he teaches a small group and does a pretty good job.

But I knew like I couldn't put him in a classroom setting and he had the ability to teach in that setting. And I wrestled with it cause I was like, man, I like the guy. I think he's well qualified. I think he'd be an asset to the team.

And I'm like, I can teach him how to teach. Like, you know, like I'm the teacher, like, this is what I do. Like I'll work with him, I'll develop that in him.

And what happened is it ended up biting us down the road about a year or so into him being on the board, maybe a little over that. And what I realized is when that's written in there, there's a reason. Because to teach at a high level you have to process information differently.

And he didn't have the ability, when somebody came to him with a differing view, to be able to work them through why logically that isn't us and why that doesn't make sense and help bring them to reality of why we've chosen to do what we've chosen. He was easily turned, to put it that way. And that really hurt us as we grew as a church.

And eventually there came a head to head where he ended up having to be removed from the board because of that.

And that could have helped us, you know, if, if I would have paid closer attention to why this is in there, I think it could have saved us some pain in that season.

Danny Parmelee: 00:31:30

I think for us one, one thing in selecting is actually paying attention to the wife as well too. If the wife is, is a not supportive, then absolutely don't do it. It will not be good for their marriage, which can create other problems.

But there is any hint of busybodyness and I know that that can be a stereotype type type of thing, but man, the amount of information that is sensitive, that is processed and that can, you know, and if they're not on board or if they have different vision than the church, sometimes they can use their husbands. And I mean there's just. Can be all sorts of issues with that. So paying attention.

Lee Stephenson: 00:32:11

You don't have an elder, you know of somebody who's like the husband or somebody that's on staff.

Danny Parmelee: 00:32:16

Yeah.

Lee Stephenson: 00:32:17

Like that creates the whole confusion. Exactly. Creates tension. I would listen to your own wife too as you're like, hey, we're thinking about bringing this person on the board.

What do you think?

And, and listen, you know, because they're going to have different perceptions of the marriage and, and the home life and different things that then maybe what you have too.

Danny Parmelee: 00:32:36

So yeah, as much as governance can be kind of a sticky thing and not wanting to pay attention, it can be really helpful and healthy. And church planners, we're leaders, we're hard driving and so surrounding yourself with a group of guys that will speak truth to you.

So find guys that.

I think some of the best candidates are guys who cared enough about you that they quietly pulled you aside and challenged and even said, hey, you know, when you preach this in your sermon or where you share this illustration or I've noticed this as you've been doing things to me.

Those are the type of guys that you know are raised higher than the ones that said, hey, I used to be an elder at my church, or I think I'm qualified to be an elder and I really want to do this type of thing. So guys that care enough about you to lovingly confront you, those are some of the best guys that you can get on your team.

Lee Stephenson: 00:33:27

Love it. Well, thanks so much. It's been a fun conversation actually talking about governance. Who knew that this could be fun? But thanks for tuning in.

This has been our unfiltered podcast. Real conversations about church planning. And we look forward to having you next time. Until next time, keep it real.