The Tim Ahlman Podcast
The Tim Ahlman Podcast is your go-to resource for inspiring conversations that equip leaders to thrive in every vocation, inside and outside the church. With three primary focuses, this podcast dives deep into:
Leadership: Learn from experts across diverse fields as we explore how their insights can shape and sustain a healthy culture in the local church and beyond. Over 60% of listeners expressed a desire for practical discussions on cultivating thriving environments—and that's exactly what these conversations will deliver.
Learn: Engage in deep theological discussions with scholars who illuminate how Christ is revealed on every page of Scripture. Together, we’ll bridge theology to the realities of a post-Christian America, ensuring practical application for today’s world. This segment aligns closely with the themes of the American Reformation Podcast and resonates with the 60% of you who crave more exploration in this area.
Live: Discover healthy habits that empower leaders in all vocations to become holistically healthy. As followers of Jesus, we’re called to lead not only with faith but also with physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
Join Tim Ahlman as we navigate leadership, learning, and living with purpose, so you can lead with strength, wisdom, and a Christ-centered vision.
The Tim Ahlman Podcast
Stop Preserving—Start Planting: The Real Reason the LCMS Is Stuck
Let’s start having the hard conversations that move the Church forward.
Is church planting just a trendy distraction from revitalization? Or is it exactly what the LCMS needs right now?
In this powerful conversation, Tim Ahlman sits down with Mark and Laura Pulliam—founders of Lazarus Church in Spring, Texas—who planted just 10 weeks before the pandemic… and thrived. Together they confront outdated models of ministry, risk-aversion in Lutheran leadership, and why launching new churches might be our best tool for reaching the de-churched and unchurched.
Hear why their church didn’t worship publicly for 18 months, why being “Lutheran” isn’t always on the sign, and why church planting is more accessible than most think.
Welcome to the Tim Allman Podcast. It's a beautiful day to be alive. Pray, the joy of Jesus is with you. As I get the chance to hang out with a husband and wife, a ministry couple in the LCMS, mark and Laura Apolium, let me tell you about them. They are a church planning team behind Lazarus Church in Spring, texas. Steve Soans, a friend of mine, pastor in Texas, said hey, you got to talk to this couple and I'm so, so pumped for this conversation. They're a Lutheran church that launched 10 Sundays before the pandemic. The reason I laugh is our multi-site launched like a month before the pandemic. Yeah, oh well, that's hard and is thriving today through that as a hub for multiplying and incubating everyday missionaries, gospel experiments and future church planners. Praise God.
Speaker 1:Mark is a CMC pastor, a storyteller. His greatest passion is to help people discover who God made them to be and pointing them to an identity rooted in Christ through baptism. He holds a master's in theology from Concordia, irvine, and a BA as a DCE from Concordia, Texas. He's also good friends and a classmate in the CMC, the Cross-Cultural Ministry Program, with my good buddy, longtime pastor friend, jake Besling. Let me tell you about Laura. Laura is a director of Christian education and a brand photographer. She is currently bivocational as a co-planter of Lazarus Church and a small business owner. What's your business?
Speaker 2:Laura I. It's vintage photography, simple vintage photography in the North Houston area. How?
Speaker 1:cool is that she graduated as a DCE in the DCE program at Concordia, texas, and received her master's of theology from Concordia. You guys kind of flip-flopped there a little bit. From Concordia, irvine. In 2018, mark and Laura moved to North Houston to start Lazarus Church as part of Harvest Partnership. There we go, steve Soans and the Harvest Partnership group, a planning partnership that seeks to connect disconnected people to Jesus, seems like a very good thing to do. His church and his kingdom, calling their lives to be radically changed by the truth of who Jesus is and how much he loves them. Together, they're raising their three children. They're in it Flint and Wade, two young boys, seven and four, and then Casey, a little girl, one years old, raising them to love Jesus, other people and the great and wild outdoors. You can find their church at LazarusChurchcom.
Speaker 1:How you doing, mark, laura, what a joy to be with you. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, this is going to be fun. All right, this is going to be largely a podcast around church planning. I'd love to have you, mark, maybe kick us off Make the case for church planting in the LCMS. Some people say we've got enough churches, we need to work on revitalization. All is very, very true. Well enough churches, I would say, is definitely not true. But we do need to work on revitalization, but we also need to work at church planting. Talk about that, make the case in the LCMS, mark.
Speaker 3:Yeah, to kind of set the stage for it, I'm going to kick it over to Laura. Storytelling is such a compelling way to communicate and I think there's a historical precedent for what we see, so I'm going to kick it to you?
Speaker 2:Sure, we were talking about this the other day. I'm not a history buff, so if I mess anything up you do have to forgive me, but if you've seen the movie or read the history of Dunkirk, in the Battle of Operation Dynamo, a lot of stranded soldiers, allied soldiers, on the beach and not enough people could get to them. I think it was over 300,000 soldiers waiting on the beach, surrounded by German troops, needing to be rescued, and obviously the first choice is to send in as many Navy destroyers as possible to go rescue those soldiers. But even with all of the Navy destroyers that could be mobilized, there was still not enough. So what did they do? They called in the yachts and the pleasure vessels and the life boats and everybody and anybody. I think they had over 100 civilian crafts in addition to all these Navy destroyers going in and all of these soldiers were rescued.
Speaker 2:And I think, when it comes to church planting, there are so many analogies that we can pull from here, because we do need churches, we need established churches, we need to revitalize churches, we need evangelists in neighborhoods, we need anybody and everybody with a boat to get in it, because our culture is there, everybody's going to go somewhere. And we all, every single one of us, whether pastor, dce, lay person, we all have a boat. We, we know Jesus and we want to bring people into a saving relationship with him. So everybody, grab an oar. There's work for anybody and everybody. So if you are an established church, if you are a church plant, if you are a church that feels like you're failing and you need some resources to revitalize, yes, yes to all of it. So that's where we come from. We are pro-church planting, we are pro-revitalization. We are pro-church planting, we are pro-revitalization, we are pro-established churches, we are pro-the gospel.
Speaker 3:I think the heart is that we want for disconnected people to become connected to Jesus, his church and his kingdom, calling for their lives. And, however that happens, we want to be encouraging that In the analogy, the destroyers, those that are well-trained, they've got this military background, they understand what they're doing, they can do that the absolute best way. We need pastors who are going out and planting churches. We also need people who, by nature of their baptism, are missionaries to go out and be having gospel conversations with their neighbors and living in such a way that they have the opportunity to share this hope that changes someone's eternal destination. It's not something that we have to do because it's all on us. The Holy Spirit is going to take care of that. Obviously, we're going to live that out in our vocation. But we also need to be looking for those opportunities. I think that's the prayer for that kingdom calling peace that God would open our eyes to those opportunities that are around us, for the Holy Spirit to be working in those places.
Speaker 3:And I think, you know, in the LCMS in particular, if we're just, you know, talking about our tribe, we have what I believe is the best theology out there. It is solidly biblical, solidly about Jesus, solidly about being saved by grace through faith in what he's done, and it's really the best. This is why I'm LCMS If it wasn't, I'd be somewhere else, but I'm here because I really do believe this is the very best that there is, and why would we not be about getting that good gospel message out to people who desperately need to hear it? So just some stats that just kind of come to mind Nerd data nerds I love it, let's go. So are we? Some stats that just kind of come to mind Nerd data nerds? I love it, let's go.
Speaker 3:So are we. So probably one of the most formative documents we came across as we were considering church planting way back in the day was this 2002. Now.
Speaker 2:Very dated now.
Speaker 3:Why Plant Churches? By Timothy Keller. I know he wrote Center Church Big Long. This one is a nice little small pamphlet it's really easy to find online too, but he made the case that 60 to 80% of new churches members were previously not attending any church body and in 2014, so that's a little bit dated. Updated research from Lifeway Research found that 42% of people attending a new church had previously not attended church before or hadn't attended church before for many years. Starting new things really does reach new people. If we are really about connecting more than just the people that we see on a Sunday morning, those who are de-churched and unchurched then we need to be starting something new that is accessible and has accessible points of entry for people who have very little or no experience with a church culture. So I actually did the pause.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's pause on that. Really quick Mark Sociologically. Why do you think that is? New people are more attracted, more likely to come into a new thing. I have my ideas, but I'd love to get you guys take.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me ask you a question If you're going to move, your family and your kids are going to start school, would you rather do that at the beginning of the school year, when everybody's new, or in the middle of the school year?
Speaker 1:Hey, there you go, I get it.
Speaker 2:It's honestly, it's easier to break in at the beginning, like if we're just talking sociologically, like people would rather join something that's not already established and you know much as we would like to say. Well, I have a welcoming church. You know. We did traditional parish ministry for eight years before jumping into this church planting world and that was something that we had to come to grips with just in ourselves as our lives revolving around parish ministry and all the ministries that we were running and the great things that were happening. There were not a lot of entry points, even in the especially, you know, in ministries that I was responsible for, I had not intentionally built entry points. So I think that's number one. That's why new things reach new people.
Speaker 2:And also it's just kind of like we get desensitized to things that we see all the time. Think about just your commute to your office. Wherever you're going, you probably your eyes are just auto-correcting all these things that are here all the time. You don't even see them, but one new sign pops up and your brain takes note of it. And I think the same thing happens in our communities. If there's a church that's been there for 50 years, you know people kind of auto-correct it out, but if something new happens, people notice it in a different way and that's certainly what we've found.
Speaker 2:To go back to the research that Mark did you know when Lifeway came out with that 42% of people at a church plant are new people? Like that sounds really awesome, but in my mind I'm always kind of the skeptic, like oh well, surely that's you know, these non-denom churches and stuff? Nope, mark ran the numbers for Lazarus Church two years ago and we were sitting very much at 41%. 41% of our congregation is had not been going to church before, or they were not even Christian before. So I don't even know if we'll be able to explain it for another 10 years why this is working, but it's working.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you can think of the principle too when it comes to small groups, right and as, having worked in the established church ministry as well before we got into church planning, one of the big struggles is always trying to figure out how do we allow spaces for somebody new to show up to a small group that's been together for a long time. They've got a depth of relationship. It's a really good thing. Good spiritual care happens in those forums, but it's going to be really difficult for somebody to break into a new group if everybody there has been meeting for a long, long time and knows each other. It's years of relationship.
Speaker 3:So just one thing that we have applied using this kind of new things to reach new people principle even to the way we think about small groups is we launch and land small groups twice a year. They'll kick off in the fall about the time school starts, and then they will land around Thanksgiving time so that there's a breaking point. People can go be out in their community, be doing Christmas stuff. I don't want them to be having a bunch of commitments in the month of December so they can be inviting people into their lives, into their rhythms, whatever that looks like to get the gospel out there. Same thing during the summer. We did land groups before summer happened, so that block parties can happen, so people can be engaged in what's going on in the neighborhood around, not be so committed to a full calendar at the church that they miss opportunities to be engaged with people outside the church.
Speaker 1:How'd you fall in love with church planning? Could you tell that story? Because not everybody. You guys are kind of weird man, you know who wants to take on that kind of risk Because there is a risk to go launch. I don't know exactly how this thing is going to go.
Speaker 1:What I do know is that risk tolerance by many pastors, regardless of the denomination, by many pastors and regardless of the denomination, is often pretty low, the entrepreneurial or kind of open to change kind of perspective for a lot of church leaders. We get into it because we love the tradition, we love the ritual, we love what has been and let us just kind of and I'm painting with a broad brush, but this is, I have data from my doctor to kind of show this is true that just kind of go along to get along and let the church kind of do what the church does. I have made the case for a long time that we need to be raising up, at a variety of different levels, those that have not an unhealthy sense of risk, because you can go too far and it becomes chaos, right, but slightly above average tolerance for risk. And could we cultivate that in our existing churches and then spin off and send with kind of the undergirding foundation of the local established church that you're going to be. Ok, we're going to be there with you, but we believe in you Go.
Speaker 1:We need more leaders like Mark and Laura Pulliam. So how do you become you?
Speaker 2:I think we could go in two directions. One is I think I would just speak to anybody listening and say that God wired you the way that he did for a reason. This is not a faith resource, but I'm going to throw it out because I think it's a helpful framework. Patrick Lencioni wrote a book on working geniuses and it just talks about how there are different levels involved with making a project. You know you have a project that needs to happen from wonder, like I wonder what could be all the way to someone's got to land the plane and oftentimes it's not the same person launching as landing a plane and I think what we're seeing is a lot of church planters tend to be a little bit higher on that. I wonder how we could reach this community for Christ. Could we create a new ministry here? And they're inventing all the time. So as we look back at our history and anybody listening, look back at your history you might know if you have the seeds to be a church planter already. I would say it's less to do with risk assessment and I'll talk about why in just a moment. As it is, how did God wire you From the time I was a very little kid, I can look back at my history and go.
Speaker 2:I was always starting little businesses. I had a duct tape wallet business that funded my first year textbooks in college. Like Mark, same thing he was mowing lawns. Like we were always inventing ways to do new things that had never been done. And then, when it comes to church planting, as soon as we saw that there was a need for this thing that had been mulling around in our heads and there were the resources to make it happen, there was the prayer that had gone ahead of us. We felt like that was the external confirmation for this thing that was inside of us. Now I will say I'm going to go back to the risk part when Mark and I had talked. Actually, you get started with the 15-year backtrack, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So back when we were finishing up undergrad, on our way off to seminary, I thought I was going to St Louis. Cmc was sort of on my radar at the time and then became the main thing shortly afterward. But with the process back in that day was we would have to go in for an interview before a panel of fellow pastors and they would just kind of have the discussion and send a recommendation up to the main office, right. So we are sitting there as a young engaged couple we're not even married yet at this point and we were talking about how we what brought us together.
Speaker 3:One of the big hallmarks of our relationship was we we liked working on group projects together. You know how awful group projects are Like. You always end up having to pull the weight for somebody who's not pulling their weight and it was nice to be able to finally find somebody who could run at the same speed that the other person could run. So we ended up working together on a lot of group projects in undergrad and, hearing that, knowing that that was part of our relationship, part of our history. It was Kevin Westergren, who's now at Redeemer in Austin, who said have you guys ever thought about church planting, because this could be really cool to see that play out.
Speaker 2:And I was like I don't even know what that is, yeah, talking about Not even on our radar at all.
Speaker 3:But that question kind of rolled around in the back of our mind for another seven years, eight years, as we were pondering what would it look like to start something new from scratch? What could be built if we were not building on any sort of foundation that was already there, but could actually just build and design what we think is absolutely best from the get-go. And so that was really exciting for us. And if you're that kind of entrepreneurial church planter heart, that question is going to resonate a lot with you. You're going to find yourself, like Laura said, inventing things just because you can't help it. It just it comes out of the way that God built and wired you. And that's not to say that if you don't have that you can't be a church planter.
Speaker 3:I think there's a huge variety of gifts, as Laura talked about in the Patrick Lencioni thing. That's a great framework the gifts that God gives to us. There's lots of good scripture about the body of Christ, how we need each other, how we work well with each other. Somebody who maybe is good at the galvanizing and enabling pieces that Lindsay Oni's framework puts forward could use somebody around who is a wonder invention type, who's saying what are we doing to reach these people out there? What can we come up with? That's going to be something that could connect here with this person that isn't necessarily being reached otherwise.
Speaker 2:Now to the risk assessment piece. We were at an established church. We were both on staff. It was a mid-sized congregation. We had just had our first baby. Mark has had his church planter assessment application to the Texas district, comfortably sitting on the desk for like two years at this point, like two years at this point, and you know I'm still on maternity leave with our fresh newborn, and he walks in the door and says I finally turned in that church planter assessment.
Speaker 1:It's like okay, great timing, yeah good timing.
Speaker 2:So as much as I wanted to be on board you know you are looking for a certain stability in your life and ministry and church planting does it does the idea felt very risky. But if I could just kind of, you know, turn the corner here and talk about what our transition period looked like, yeah please.
Speaker 2:We received a call after Mark was, you know, assessed by the district. We got. We were both interviewed. We got a green light. We thought, oh, we're just going to sit on this for another couple of years.
Speaker 2:Very shortly after we got a call from Al Dering at Christ the King in Kingwood and said hey, we're praying over this neighborhood in North Houston. We see a lot of rooftops and not a lot of steeples. It's a very housing centric area, like it's just a lot a lot of houses. And they said we've been praying at a coffee shop nearby or a pizza place nearby and we really think that a church plant needs to be in this neighborhood. So we take our nine month old and we're driving to Houston and the whole way I'm like I cannot believe we're wasting these good people's time. I would. We're not going to move Like. We're just so very stable right now. This is. This is silly. And by the time we left that weekend with what would turn into now the harvest partnership, I was just scrolling Zillow because I was like I don't even care, I want to be a part of this.
Speaker 2:And the thing that made the risk go away was here around this table, were all of these pastors of established churches Some of them had been there 30 plus years in their congregations Al Dering, steve Soans and then you've got some younger guys who have just planted a church less than five years ago and they're all sitting at this table and they're all saying we've been praying for you or you know someone like you.
Speaker 2:We don't know who God is sending, but God is sending someone to reach these people, because none of our churches are reaching this little slice right here. None of us are able to reach them. And we want to send money and people and physical resources and we want to come around you relationally, we want to be your friends. We sat on the floor, you know, with the Coonsey family and the Benson family and asked them straight out like, if we came here, would you actually be our friends? Yes, and they've been our friends. So by the time we were driving home, so much generosity had been extended, so much kingdom mindedness, just acknowledging that if God is going to do something here, he's going to provide more than what we need through all of us working together. It did not feel risky by the time we got back to San Antonio. It did not feel risky to plant a church.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's, I mean the book of Acts coming alive. Guys, you got to be a part of it, man, how cool is that? Because the Al and the Steve, you know, those guys are kind of like apostolic leaders in the Texas district and through Harvest Partnership and you know, I think of the Timothy or Titus and like they stood on the shoulders of the 12 and obviously the Apostle Paul and and they didn't, the risk was kind of gone because Jesus was there and his church was there and prayer was there and there was a sending spirit. You can do it, we're with you, you're not alone. And so, yeah, man, could that story be told more and more in our church body. That is so good, that's the way it's supposed to work, and so I'd love to get behind the scenes just a little bit more for folks. So you say yes, what are some of the first steps you start to do in partnership with Harvest Partnership, et cetera, to launch what became Lazarus Church? How long was the preparation stage, launch stage? Just tell that story a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Can we start?
Speaker 2:in San Antonio.
Speaker 3:We can. Before we jump to that, though, even the the risk assessment part, though one more to double click on. But we're sitting in the the back porch. Actually, we're right now at Steven Ursula's house, as they're watching our youngest, casey, so we can be on the podcast, which is awesome, thanks. But they they really do embody that kind of open-headed generosity in everything that they do. Their ethos is absolutely 100% authentic. They hosted a bunch of people at the back porch. We were having a conversation, and one of the leaders at Resurrection, which is one of the ascending churches, asked the question what would failure look like for you guys? And we said well, failure would look like nobody getting to hear about Jesus, and we know that's not going to happen. So I mean, you know, if that truly is failure, then even if it doesn't work out and we end up having to figure things out when the money runs out, we would be okay. It's not a failure because the kingdom of growth is happening, yeah, so back to San Antonio. When we were in San Antonio, yeah.
Speaker 2:So where it all started was for us personally, for our family. We had to start in a spirit of repentance because we looked at our neighborhood and we said we do not know these people. So the first thing we did, as we're packing up to move, is we hosted a block party for our neighborhood in San Antonio. We got to know some names, you know. We kind of left with a blessing to our neighborhood and with that spirit of repentance of a, we did not do what we were called to do, just not as church workers but as like Christian neighbors.
Speaker 2:We've been talking about it for a long time We've been talking about it, but we didn't know their names, we didn't know their stories.
Speaker 2:We had a couple over to our house that the gentleman he ended up passing away of cancer just not long after we moved. We had moving boxes all over our living room, but we had them into our living room just to hear their story, to tell them what we were doing, how we were going to plant a church, and so I think that's the first step for anybody who wants to get into church. Planting is just a spirit of repentance and humility and going, gosh, we don't know what we're doing, at least for us. We were so entrenched in our you know, very comfortable parish ministry that we had not a culture of invitation but a culture of preservation, like, okay, I've got this ministry spinning, like I have to expend all of my time and resources keeping this thing that I have built going, and that was very humbling, I think, for us to recognize, okay, we're not going to have this anymore, so all that's left is invitation. So then you know, here we go, we move to North Houston and then the next 18 months we're kind of training.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had a fishing license from the different churches that were sending us. So at Christ the King, the Dwelling and Resurrection, we were given permission to show up, cast the vision. They gave me time to be able to speak. You know, lead the sermon, do opportunities to engage with Bible studies, share what it feels like God is calling us to do and invite people to pray. If it feels like the Holy Spirit is leading you to be a part of this, we'd love to have an additional conversation.
Speaker 3:So from that there was several vision kind of gatherings we had at our house to just kind of share what was going on there. One of my favorite people who showed up to that actually was the disconnected husband of a lady who was very much faithful at the resurrection, but she actually lived in our mission focus area and so I was like man, you know, corey, I want to hear your story. Like if you hear something that seems weird or off, like your voice is the one we want to be listening to here, and a few years back Corey was laughing at me. He's become super connected to Lazarus. He's our like go-to percussionist.
Speaker 2:Integral is a better word than connected.
Speaker 3:Integral is absolutely right. He was laughing because he had a better attendance record than his wife did, actually.
Speaker 2:He has a better attendance record than I do.
Speaker 3:It's true. So lots of vision gathering, just kind of sharing what we felt like God was calling us to do. We also had the team. You know that invitation is also paired with challenge. So well, right, we had them do a lot of reading. We read the Gospel Comes with a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield just super fascinating book about hospitality.
Speaker 2:Take or leave her theology, but like just her story is very compelling.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we read church planting books. We read about family worship that book by Donald Whitney we had people read selections from no Silver Bullets by Daniel M and Planting Mission Churches by Stetzer and Hans we took them on field trips using the first-time visitor audit that Daniel M has.
Speaker 2:So we would take them to go visit a church, maybe a Lutheran church or maybe a non-denom church plant in our area, and then we'd all get together and talk about, okay, how did it feel to be new? Because a lot of us don't remember what it feels like to be new and we have to revisit that feeling so that we can acknowledge the feelings of other people walking into our churches, and we should probably talk about how worship is not central to our rhythms of discipleship. But I mean, let's just talk about it. Worship is super weird. Like it's super weird.
Speaker 2:It is the weirdest thing that we as the church, one of the weirdest things that we as the church of God do is corporate worship, because unless you're going to a concert or a baseball game, people don't corporately sing.
Speaker 2:Let's just talk about singing. It is weird. Sitting in rows and singing is weird unless you're at a concert, and so we just had to kind of remind ourselves OK, for the person who does not go to church or, you know, hasn't been to church since a really bad experience with their great grandma 25 years ago how do we welcome them and do we have other on ramps for them besides and in addition to corporate worship? So we actually delayed the start of corporate worship at Lazarus for about 18 months and encouraged our people, like as we're training them, to continue to worship and to be a part of another Lutheran church in our area, because a lot of them were already connected to a church. Some of them got even more connected during that time. But we wanted corporate worship to kind of be the last rhythm of following Jesus. That we did as a church body and I think, especially with where the pandemic fell with our start time, that ended up being absolutely the right call for Lazarus.
Speaker 3:We also launched groups about a semester before worship began, so small groups were already kind of kicked off and that was great to have those kind of depth of relationships which really honestly carried us a lot of the way in the pandemic, because when we couldn't actually gather in person, it was very natural for people to get online and say, ok, well it's. You know it's not in person, but at least I know some of the people that are on here and I can be connecting. And I texted my neighbor, I invited them to tune into and they were continuing to live in that kind of liminal space when we had a lot of uncertainty, even as we were launching and figuring out what it was like to be a church too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how many groups did you have during that time? Do you remember Five, six, 10?
Speaker 3:We we're in the rate somewhere between five.
Speaker 1:It was fairly small we launched with about 20 25 people about 25 people including kids, so we were pretty small when we started you know, there we're walking through a consultation on multi-site and the values of multi-site and starting new and kind of know when to do which. In our context, phoenix Valley, booming, 1000 people a week moving into our county. I think there's room for both approaches, but the best practice of multi site launching is the you've got an established brand and you want to take that established brand to a new place, and I mean the mega churches around here launch. They're looking at rooftops, just like you're talking about, and they will launch. It's insane with sometimes upward of a thousand people on the launch Sunday. I mean that's wild for we as Lutherans, oh my goodness. So the best practice for multi-site launch is at least 200 people for your opening worship gathering, which we didn't do. That with our multi-site. I think we were close. This is Jake. This is Jake launching our multi-site back in the day, right before the. I would say we were probably 180 or something like that on launch Sunday, most of whom were from our community, since we've been around after COVID around the 100 mark for a bit and yeah, so that's.
Speaker 1:There's a different approach there to multi site, which I believe has its place. But I also think church planning it may not be cookie cutter, we've got to large model launch right up front. If there is the runway one, you've got to have, as Steve Soans called you, if there is the runway one, you've got to have, as Steve Soans called you, both the power planting couple. It's very strange. That's what he told me about you guys, which is true, you guys are together, but there's a commitment, the runway with a group of people, for you know, a couple, three years, you're going to be okay, but we need to. We can start small and start relationally and build out that team.
Speaker 1:I have to look at the early church, like that's obviously the way it started. There's a small church meeting in a house and they're maybe Jewish, and so they're going to interact and do evangelism with Jews in the temple, temple courts, et cetera, to let them know the Messiah has come and and it started much more organically than I think a lot of the multi-site approaches we have today. There's room, there's definitely room for both, but I would love to see, out of our congregation, more plants, identify couples like you, and what I love about the story is partner with other churches to help launch those respective couples because, man, we need more churches in our Phoenix Valley as well. So any comments. Any comments, though, from you guys in terms of multi-site maybe you haven't been around multi-site as much as I have and others have, but multi-site and and launching new Mark or Laura.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean the um. I think both models have their strengths and benefits. To you they're there. We should be planting lots of churches.
Speaker 2:however, it gets done, let's take it back to the Dunkirk model. Let's just get it done. Let's get it done with those small boats all the way up to the big ones. Let's do it all. Mice and elephants.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So Houston Church Planner Network has this great line that they use. I forget who the head of the person is who originally said this, but he said I forget who the head of the person is who originally said this, but he said we want to see the church invade Houston, not like a herd of elephants, but more like an infestation of mice. We want to see lots and lots of churches popping up all over the place, because it's being a lot more efficient in some cases than having one really big behemoth that we land over. I know another big behemoth that we're going to land over. Here there's a mobile Now, not that there can't be those things. Those things are great, wonderful. They connect people to Jesus. Praise God, there's a mobility to something that maybe is a little bit smaller, that allows you to adjust when the community needs maybe aren't exactly what you thought from the get-go, and I think we've seen there's some helpful things that come from that too. And truthfully, honestly, starting small is probably where I would guess most of the people who are listening to this. The encouragement that I would have for them is do smart, start small. Starting with a multi-site launch where you're sending 200 people. That's not accessible for most people in an LCMS context. What is more accessible is collaboration, and starting small. So collaboration we were the benefits of people who came along pastors, legacy pastors, 30 years in a place, who had a conversation with another pastor and said, hey, what would it look like if we were to partner together to share some of the risk, the financial risk, the resources, resource sharing, to be able to make this happen. And they did, and there was incredible trust to that. A lot of low control, high accountability, conversations, open-handed generosity, all those kind of values of the Harvest Partnership that we have words for now were just kind of there under the surface of the water they were swimming in. And so that is, I think, something that has to be there, this trust, this idea that we're going to be in collaboration, not competition, because it's not a competition. Jesus is every one of our boss, he's the one that we're actually serving and he's the one who gets all the glory anyway.
Speaker 3:And then, secondly, start small. One of our neighbors just down the street started doing this thing. He said you know, we have this thing in the church, where we send people across the globe to go do mission work somewhere else and they come back and they like share what's going on. I just want to know my neighbors and so he started something that he's called Hot Dog Wednesday. He grabs a pack of weenies you know they're good hot dogs but he throws them on the grill and he's out there and they just have like chips and stuff and you bring your own drink and they had a huge pile of people in their front yard just hanging out because he wants to serve his neighborhood and get to know his neighbors.
Speaker 3:Could we do, as the church, more Hot Dog Wednesdays to get to know our neighbors and have opportunities for that? I mean, what's the budget for that, tim? A pack of hot dogs, man, that is cheap and easy and replicable, why not? What's keeping us from trying something new to reach new people with the good news of Jesus that can change someone's eternity?
Speaker 2:I think that part of the reason we're hesitant to jump on any one bandwagon for this is the way to plant churches, and even within the Harvest Partnership, every church planter they brought in has a completely different model, if you want to call it that. But I think what we all have in common is that we want to share what we have. So I think if you think about, okay, well, if we're going to talk multi-site and sending 200 people, that's not accessible for the majority of Lutheran churches in the United States, just because of the sizes of our congregation. So that seems unattainable. So we can kind of brush that off and say, well, I can't do that. But what if we break it down and say what if you could start with Hot Dog Wednesdays? Or what if you could start with designating, you know, $100,000 in your budget to you know, bring in a church planter to sponsor a church planter for a year. Or $100,000 over four years to provide an entire runway to start a new congregation. Well, what if that sounds like too much? What if you could get three buddies in your area and each of you just designate $25,000? Over the course of four or five years you could start another church. And sometimes I'm just going to address the fear. Well, I'm already the Lutheran church in my area. We get that kind of parish model, but we are moving into a time and place when more is better.
Speaker 2:We think of our churches from the 1950s and we thought about them like high schools. I went to Georgetown. Georgetown had one high school, you know Georgetown High School. What if we think about it like elementary schools? In our neighborhood alone there are what four elementary schools and we pass one on the way on a seven-minute drive to where we meet for Lazarus. I would love to see another Lutheran church planted in all four elementary schools in our neighborhood. I would love to see that because I think that together we could reach more people than Lazarus could reach. So I think we have to start thinking of our congregations less like high schools the community high school and more like elementary schools. They're everywhere. Let's put them everywhere. Let's get more churches and reach more people.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful vision. I would love to see it take place. I think there is still the parish model which keeps us thinking if they live here, they're going to go to my thing. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people right now. That's what our district president says. A hundred percent agree with him. And and so, yeah, could we collaborate rather than compete with one another? And so let's get into it, lazarus. What if I were to come on a Sunday? Where are we meeting? What are we doing? Talk about the DNA of your church.
Speaker 3:So we meet in an elementary school. Local elementary school chose that intentionally. As part of kind of our launch team's preparation for launching, we visited several possible locations, one that I honestly thought we were going to be in because we had met this guy on a prayer walk and had the team come and meet this guy. It was a good conversation. He has a volleyball gymnasium in our mission focus area and as I was taking the team to different places, we were prayer walking over different potential locations. We showed up at one. We actually went inside, walked around and some of the ladies after were like that smells like a gym. I don't know that we should do it and I'm like, oh, I didn't even think about, I didn't notice. So I'm glad I have a team around me who can make me better than me making bonehead decision on my own. So we meet in an elementary school because very few people have had a bad experience at an elementary school In our area.
Speaker 3:The elementary schools are a kind of a hub for community activity, so it makes sense that we've got a fantastic, honestly relationship with our principal. She loves that a school, that a church is meeting at the school. We partner with them for a bunch of events to just kind of bless the teachers but also get connected with families. We try to be available for the events that they invite us to and be a presence in the community so people can say, oh okay, this is a church that's local, one that we know is here and that we can connect with. So, just trying to get things out there, show up on a Sunday morning.
Speaker 3:You're going to see stepping stones. There's going to be pretty clear. Here's the entry. You know there's flags and stuff. When you go in the front doors you can see, okay, over there is the welcome table. So I'm going to go towards that. And the next thing you're going to see is the coffee and the baby changing area and the restroom where that is, because those things are all super important, right, and you'll have people engaging, asking questions, asking hey, is this your first time here? Can I help show you around where kids are? I notice you have kids. Here's the place where Lazarus Kids is going to meet later in the service. Here's what that's going to look like. Come in the back and get some coffee. Let me introduce you to somebody else. So it strives to be a very welcoming place. Practically. We're very lightweight. We fit everything in a 20-foot trailer, 7 by 15.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a very small trailer. Everything goes in there. We got a grant to cover rolling carts so that it's very easy onloading and offloading. We built the system so that it's less like loading a dishwasher, as in there's only one right way to do it, and more like a okay, this is so easy and labeled that a brand new person who's having a conversation can get involved and feel like an integral part of putting the church back in the box. You know, at the end of the service and we've seen that, especially engaging young men like these boxes are so big, only like big, strong guys can roll them, and so the moms all stand around while the kids run crazy and visit and the dads all like roll these carts in.
Speaker 2:We are a very young congregation because that is just what our community looks like. It's a very young neighborhood area, but we represent multiple generations. We talk about how the noise of kids is very welcome at Lazarus Church and we make accommodations for that. We say that discipleship is just very messy and we're here to support you in whatever you need. So we've got a lot of people who were disconnected from church and started coming back because they said, okay, if my husband's working, or my wife is working and I'm solo parenting on a Sunday, it's easier to bring my kids to Lazarus than it is to like stay home with them. So that's kind of the culture that we've sought to create, and it's working.
Speaker 3:It is. I will say too, worship is one piece to all of it, right? So we emphasize the rhythms of discipleship rest, read, worship, study, celebrate, serve and prayerfully repeating that process over and over again, and that's just our contextualization of the great commandment and the great commission put into language that people in our culture can understand. We have worship as one of those seven rhythms, because it's one piece, it's a very important piece, but it's not the only piece. So there are people who show up on a Sunday morning, have never connected to us besides, they saw a sign and they said okay, I think I'm going to go check this out this week.
Speaker 3:My favorites, though, are when people show up and they've been walking alongside somebody else in the rhythms of discipleship too, that somebody else has been inviting them to walk with them as they're walking with Jesus.
Speaker 3:So I think of Alicia, who showed up because she was connected to Sean and Misty and she was just going through a really difficult time. They came alongside her and adopted her into their family and loved her, and she became connected to Lazarus Church because of that expression of love and care in her life. I think of the other people who are inviting people into groups we had a couple of years ago I guess it was 2022, one of my favorite baptisms was the mother-daughter baptism combo. That all happened because this one person who was connected to Lazarus had a group in her home where she was engaging with other young moms and just a bunch of her neighbors showed up. She did a fantastic job leading that Bible study and because of that, this family that had not been connected to a church, didn't even own a Bible in their home, showed up and the mother and daughter got baptized, and that's just super exciting for me.
Speaker 2:And they're still connected. They are still connected and a part of our church which is super awesome.
Speaker 1:Oh, hey, that's so good. I love those stories. What percentage because I think this is part of the debate for us in the LCMS is yes, we need more churches to reach Lutherans, but like confessional Lutherans, but like confessional Lutherans, biblically oriented Lutherans are not moving into our communities like they once did, right, I mean in the PSD, a lot of our early churches, pacific Southwest District in California, southern California there was a massive German migration, mostly Lutheran, from the Midwest out to the West, and so you could start a church and you start with worship and Lutherans show up. Right, and, to be fair, this church that I'm at right here, 40 years old plus Christ Greenfield, was started with that sort of an approach. There are Lutherans moving out to Gilbert, out to the East Valley, and so let's start a church. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto, things have changed. So a church. We're not in Kansas anymore, toto, things have changed.
Speaker 1:So what percentage of folks as they find out, is this a Lutheran church or they just come? I'm going to guess it's the latter. This is what I'm experiencing. Many people are coming here that have been disconnected, de-churched or never connected to a church, that were invited by a friend and we want them to meet and know Jesus and then, at the appropriate time, we're going to let them know and this is how we articulate our faith connected to our Lutheran heritage, the Lutheran confessions. Is that similar to your story, mark and Laura?
Speaker 3:Yeah, People, always they get a little bit of heartburn over is Lutheran in the name or not? Are you hiding the fact that you're Lutheran or not? You don't hide that. It comes out in absolutely everything as I explain the beliefs of Lazarus Church that we are about, that we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone, as revealed in scripture alone, and go through these Lutheran distinctives. It's astounding to me how many people have this realization of like, oh, you know, I grew up in a different church body, but actually I think I'm probably Lutheran. Actually, if you're explaining it like, that actually makes sense to me. It's a we. We have this incredible gift and I don't think it is something that we have to be as concerned about.
Speaker 3:Yes, there are Lutherans moving into new areas. We do need to have a place for them to go. There's lots of places for them to go actually. But you're right, In the culture in which we live, that sort of denominational identity is becoming of less and less value. So I think we have to go back to what are the distinctives that actually are lived out? How are we actually living out our values? We value this incredible gift of grace by faith in Jesus, and it changes lives and as you hear about it and get to see it lived out in this place, we hope that it touches you and changes you too, and that if this is something that resonates with you, we want you to be a part of the journey. Keep walking with us as we walk with Jesus.
Speaker 2:I think we are all charged with exegeting our culture and as we were doing that process for this area that we were called to, one of the things we realized that a lot of people in this area would say that they are Christian. But then, when Mark actually did the work and called every Christian church within a 10-mile radius of where we were called to plant, he asked them a couple of questions. He asked them a couple of questions. He said if every service that you offer and every was filled to capacity, every seat filled to capacity, how many people could have a seat on a Sunday? And he took all of these churches data and he added it all up and what he found was in this area that said that it was, you know, 80 percent Christian. In reality, if every church in that area was full to capacity at every service, only about 20% would actually have a seat Less, less. It was a very small percentage.
Speaker 3:Credit where credit's due. I got that from Ted Daring, whom you've had on the podcast before. He referenced us, so I got to reference him. He is a good friend and the church that does that in his area in the Round Rock area does it on a much grander scale. I was just focused on our mission-focused area where we were planning on planting.
Speaker 2:So, with that data in mind, we had that discussion very early on of do we put Lutheran in the name? And what we landed on was, yes, we're going to put Lutheran in the name, but we're not going to market it, we're not going to put it on the signs. So our official name is Lazarus Lutheran Church and if you walk in and you're familiar with Lutheranism, you're going to go oh yeah, this is a Lutheran church. I say those that same. You know those confession, the confession and absolution, like oh, that's copy paste. I know where they got that from. It's going to sound very familiar, but it's not on the signs.
Speaker 2:Because what we found was a lot of people were saying they were Christian, but what they meant by that is that their family was Catholic or they went to Catholic school, or they used to be Presbyterian or they had some other denomination that they had in their head that they were, but they weren't living it. And so we wanted those people to feel welcome and to be able to tell people, you know, family members, like, yeah, I'm going to Lazarus Lazarus Church, you know, and it seemed more approachable. Lazarus, lazarus Church, you know, and it seemed more approachable. So if you were to talk to many of the people in our congregation, they would tell you that, yeah, I grew up Catholic or I grew up Methodist, but they hadn't been in the last 10 or 15 years, and so we just that was a big discussion is, where does the word Lutheran fit? And that's where we landed.
Speaker 1:Guys, this has been so much fun. Last question what do you say to someone who says Jesus never said anything about planting churches? He said go and make disciples. That's a popular phrase that is out there right now. We're about making disciples.
Speaker 1:It is quite interesting that, I mean, even the Apostle Paul, in his writings, is not like giving this huge charge. I mean, maybe you guys find it? No, he's responding to what is the church is on the move, disciples have been made, leaders are being multiplied, right, I mean, this is what he's talking about. He's not saying, hey, and you guys, you got to make sure you're launching up. No, like the DNA of launching, because the, the Holy Spirit, was doing. It was alive and well. You know, and that's what we got to pray for, I think, is the Holy Spirit to descend upon us and our hearts break For people who are not disciples of Jesus, who don't know the goodness, the grandeur, the love. We're recording this during Holy Week right, it's probably being released after that the Easter reality, the hope that life wins on the last day when Jesus comes back to make all things new. You're a part of the greatest love story of all time. Because we're connected to Jesus, we want more and more disciples of Jesus, those that then in turn.
Speaker 1:Naturally it's very evident why wouldn't I share what I've received? I love the Apostle Paul. He says what do you have that you've not received? Just give it away. Give it away, you know. So yeah, all right, my little talk about discipleship done. Churches just naturally kind of happen. But we got to be focused on making disciples, multiplying disciples. Say more there, mark, laura, yeah.
Speaker 3:Somebody said if you start out to make a church, to start a church, you may or may not make disciples. If you start off to make disciples, the church is going to be born. But in some ways I think also it's kind of a false dichotomy. Like you always have to have both Disciples of Jesus need a place to be able to gather and receive the gifts of Jesus and respond in prayer and praise. That's Luther. If we are making disciples and not connecting to them to a church, we're creating spiritual orphans. We're not going to do that. Conversely, if we're creating a church but not making disciples, then we have, you know, the latest, greatest iteration of a country club that may or may not actually fulfill the mission and the great commission of Jesus. So I think we have to have both. They work hand in hand.
Speaker 3:And again to throw back to Timothy Keller, church planting with a discipleship focus is one of the best tools in our tool belt right now in the American context in order to fulfill the Great Commission. So I think we do need to be about both. We do need to be about planting churches that aren't just reaching the Lutherans that moved into the neighborhood, but are actually seeking to connect disconnected people to Jesus, and that's our heartbeat, that's I know your heartbeat, I think that's truly that's. That's the heartbeat of the LCMS. If I'm really honest, I think our desire as a church body is to see more people know Jesus and become a part of his kingdom, and I want that. If I had a prayer for our church body, it would be that that becomes a thing that we rally around and that unites us to get back on to that gift that Jesus has given to us that needs to be shared, that we can't keep to ourselves. You know, jeremiah, it's fire in our bones. We can't hold on to this. It's going to burst out.
Speaker 2:I think our call to action for anyone listening because I imagine it's ministry leaders and lay people who are involved in their churches, ministry leaders and lay people who are involved in their churches it's not to go out and plant a church. That sounds crazy to say that right. My call to action would be meet with another ministry leader and pray for the disconnected people in your backyard. Just pray for them, because that's how this thing called Harvest Partnership started. We call it a spirit-led multiplication, because nobody got together and was like let's create a five-year plan for planting churches. It's what's happening, but it's kind of like the dichotomy of you know, are we building churches or making disciples? If we all committed to praying for the disconnected people around us, god is going to work through that, because that's what he wants. That's his heart. So we just want to. We want to fit our hearts to his and I truly believe that his heart is to bring everyone into a knowledge of our savior Jesus.
Speaker 1:You two are amazing. This has been so much fun. You're a gift to the body of Christ, obviously to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. We need more couples like you and single people, young and old, ready to go, say here am I Send me. If people want to connect with you, mark and Laura, how can they do so?
Speaker 3:Two places. Check out harvestpartnershipchurch Shares some of the DNA of Harvest Partnership, and then you'll hear the things that we have going on lazarshurchcom.
Speaker 1:Hey, this is so good. This is the Tim Allman Podcast. We have a weekly Wednesday conversation with leaders within and outside of the LCMS, lined up with a posture of humility, just looking to learn. The world is beautiful. Jesus is on the move and by His Spirit's power we get to partner with Him to reach more people with the gospel. It's a good day. Go make it a great day. Thanks so much, mark and Laura.
Speaker 2:Thank you.