← unSeminary Podcast
unSeminary Podcast
Chosen: How Adoption & Foster Care Fuel a Fast-Growing Church’s Mission with Andrew Hopper
00:43:19
Loading summary
Transcript70 lines
- [00:00]
Andrew Hopper
Hey friends.
- [00:01]
Rich
Rich here from the Unseminary podcast. You know we often talk about churches not doing well, but maybe your church is doing really well right now and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep the momentum going. It could be the time to start a new location. Maybe you've hesitated in the past few years, but now, now is the time for you to step out in faith again and launch your next location. That's why I've partnered with Portable Church Industries for a new resource called Launch a new location in 150 days or less. Portable Church has assembled a bunch of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum in a new location by sending part of your congregation back to their neighborhood and on mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step by step plan to launch your next or new location and a five minute readiness tool that will help you know if your church is ready to go. Listen, I really want you to drop by portablechurch.com rich that's portablechurch.com rich to get this free resource. Launch a new location in 150 days or less. Listen, if your church is growing, now is the time for you to step out and launch a new location. You know I'm passionate about this. So I want you to drop by portablechurch.com rich today to pick up this brand new resource. Launch a new location in 150 days or less again, one last time. That's portablechurch.com rich today.
- [01:32]
Unseminary Podcast Host
Welcome to the Unseminary Podcast. The place where church leaders get practical insights, tips and strategies for ministry growth. Today you're stepping into something bigger than just a conversation. This podcast is part of a bold mission to help 100 churches grow by 1,000 people. Whether you're dreaming of increasing your impact in your community, empowering your team and or reaching more people with the message of Jesus, you're in the right place. We're here to bring you the stuff you wish they taught in seminary. Ideas and tools you can put into action this week to see transformation in your ministry. Let's dive in.
- [02:12]
Rich
Hey friends, welcome to the Unseminary Podcast. We have got a multi time guest on and you know what that means. That means that I really respect, deeply, admire and want you to listen up and today is no exception and excited to have Andrew Hopper with us. He is the lead pastor of a church that they should be following. That you should be following. He's a lead pastor of Mercy Hill Church with five locations, if I'm counting correctly, in North Carolina and is repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. I love this church on many levels. They're centered on the gospel and have a radical commitment to sending people to the nations. They have a desire to make disciples and multiply churches. Andrew, welcome to the show. So glad you're here, man.
- [02:50]
Andrew Hopper
I'm so pumped to be here. Love the podcast. Really appreciate it man.
- [02:54]
Rich
Yeah, I'm honored that you would come back. For folks that, that don't know Mercy Hill, give me a bit of a kind of an update. Tell us a little bit about the church. Maybe update us from last time you were on.
- [03:03]
Andrew Hopper
Yeah, man. So just real quick. Planted in 2012 we had 30 people all you know, kind of young, professional age and man just really believe that God could do something incredible through, you know, just through our, our open hands. And he did. And so it's been 13 years. It's crazy. We've been sort of pushing the same boulder up the Same Mountain for 13 years. Just flywheel kind of concept and keep pushing and the Lord has done incredible thing like you said, five campuses and man just moved into a new home and hub. That was from last time we had a chance. That's been really great. Our, our. We were in a rented location for a long time as our main like broadcast campus. We're a video, video based multi site and so it's a, it was a three or four year journey to raise the money and build this new facility. But we're in and the Lord has really blessed that with tons of new people. Highest baptisms sent ones, first time guest numbers all. Everything that we've done. This has been a, you know, we've been on a ride God for that. It's, it's, it's for his sake and his renown. But this year has been unlike the others.
- [04:14]
Rich
So yeah, you were saying beforehand it's like 30 something like some 30 something year over year growth that's insane to keep up with.
- [04:22]
Andrew Hopper
It is man and the giving does not, you know, the giving doesn't reflect that yet. So it's, it's like we're trying to do ministry on a budget of a church that's 3,000 but a church that's running 4,500. And it's like how do you do that effectively without killing everybody?
- [04:39]
Rich
Nice.
- [04:40]
Andrew Hopper
All your staff. I mean so. But we're, we're learning man. We're figuring it out. It's fun. We got, we just planted our sixth church. So that's from the campuses. This is first time rich. We've planted a church in our own city.
- [04:52]
Rich
Oh Nice.
- [04:53]
Andrew Hopper
That's really a really cool dynamic and it's been fun. He's doing great, man. It was a college student we met when he was 19 years old at North Carolina A&T. Ten years later, he's an elder here. He's done a lot of different things and, man, he goes and plants a new church in Greensboro about five minutes from 1 of our campuses. And they're doing great.
- [05:12]
Rich
Yeah, that's so good. Well, the thing, there's lots I love about Mercy Hill, but one of the things that I've loved about your church from, you know, the chance we've had a journey a little bit over the years about it is you just have real clarity around the mission. This idea of making disciples, multiplying churches, it's like that has been rock solid from the beginning. When you think about how we want churches to have discipleship at its core, this idea of a church that actually grows people up in their relationship with. With Christ, what matters most at the foundation, how are you keeping that so foundational to, you know, what's happening at Mercy Hill?
- [05:46]
Andrew Hopper
Yeah, I think. I think that we always sort of bought into kind of what we see in Acts 2 is a little bit of a flywheel gap. We call gather, group, give, go. A lot of churches have something like that. The difference, I think at Mercy Hill a little bit than what I see in. In. In a lot of churches that we help mentor and coach is that 2020 hit. And everybody was like, man, what is a church? What. What discipleship? What are we going to do now? And people were kind of. And I do think it was. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't just me. I mean, our, you know, our executive pastor, Bobby, he was really integral in this. We sort of really doubled down on. No, I. I kind of think the church is going to come back. And I kind of think what we were doing is sort of what our church is set up to do. It. It kind of a brand new thing. We are sort of a big box sending brand and that, you know, for us, when we look at Acts two, we're like, dude, the gathering, there's no more. There's no more important hour for discipleship and evangelism. And I know there's a lot of things written against that and people are kind of almost downplaying it. We're just like, man, we just don't believe it. We believe people need to be in a group. You know, they need generosity is a lead step in discipleship. Give. And we got to teach People, there's a mission bigger than themselves. And if we do that, it's going to funnel more people into the gathering. So I, I think fundamentally what I would say, we need to get, you know, we could talk about our value, we could talk about values to gospel, getting an identity. But I think landing on, you know, it's very hard now to not get a word salad, book form thing. When you ask somebody, how are you making disciples?
- [07:24]
Rich
It can just be right very. Who knows what that means?
- [07:28]
Andrew Hopper
Yeah, for us, it's just been a very clear, simple process. Like, man, we believe if someone is in the gathering, if they're in relationship, if they're being pushed on generosity, and if they're living for a mission bigger than themselves, that's a current of maturity that will move them. They just get in the stream. They'll move.
- [07:47]
Rich
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
- [07:49]
Andrew Hopper
So I, you know, for us, I think that's as, you know, we've tried to simplify things there.
- [07:55]
Rich
So. Yeah, and, and your last episode, I've pointed a ton of people to it to really. And we really unpack a lot of what you talked about there in more detail. You're going to want. Go back and, and listen to that. You've reached as a church, you've reached a lot of people who don't grow up in church, that it's like, there's a lot of people who are there. You know, we used to say, we ain't your mama's church, but Mama didn't go to church, you know, so, you know, and it's been a long time that people were there. What challenges have you seen, you know, helping move people from curiosity into real, ongoing discipleship? So, like, I think there are. We're seeing a swell of attendance across the country. People are like, oh, I'm kind of interested in this, but we got to move them from just, oh, this is something interesting to like, actually want to grow my relationship with Jesus.
- [08:38]
Andrew Hopper
Yeah. I mean, and it's. It's funny, too Rich. You probably have a better bird's eye view of this than I do, but I feel like churches that have been faithfully growing for like, the last 10 years, they're not really doing a lot different now. Or even though there's this big swell happening. What I do think is that some churches have sort of decided like, oh, clarity does matter.
- [08:59]
Rich
Yes.
- [08:59]
Andrew Hopper
Don't try to be friends with the culture we're going to speak in and be prophetic. And, you know, even, even to the, you know, Proverbs 25, 26 says you know, there, there's no, there's no benefit in a muddied spring. You know, it's like, gotta be sorta. You gotta figure out if we're gonna be clear. So I, you know, for me, I think, like, and you're right, we do reach. Most of the people that we reach that are in the camp that you're talking about are college age. We reach a lot of people, though, that are, you know, they're, they're coming back to the faith because they're Southerner. You know, they kind of, they kind of were, you know, they did have some church in their background. They're coming back, their kids are not only born, but they're realizing they're sinners and they don't have answers. So they're, they're trying to figure that out. They're coming back to church and, you know, I think the biggest thing that moves people from like, interest into a decision point is just being very clear on this is what the gospel is. This is the life it compels you to. Are you going to be in or out? One of the things we say at Mercy Hill a lot is like, man, if you're, if you're just intrigued, you know, if you're interested, you're not going to stay at Mercy Hill because we're never going to let you. You're going to get pushed every week. And it's like, man, people that are not really in are like, I'm not going to do that. You know, they're just like, I'm not going to sit here and get like, pushed every single week on something. I don't really. Then the flip side is when people say, all right, you know what stake in the ground I'm in.
- [10:24]
Rich
Yeah, we're doing this.
- [10:25]
Andrew Hopper
And when it looks like this, I want to build my life on this. It's like, well, now, you know, it's, it's. Man, I'm hopefully, you know, putting tools in the belt every single week to live that life.
- [10:35]
Rich
Yeah, it's good. I do think there was a time where people wandered into our churches where I don't think that happens as much anymore. I think people, when they arrive, they come with questions with live active questions that they're trying to wrestle with kind of regardless of where they're. They're at in their journey. And they're what, to your point around, you know, there's no benefit in a muddy stream. People aren't looking for anything that sounds like, well, what do you think? Because the reason why they're there is because they're asking questions. And so, you know, they're. They're looking for clarity. Like, I think you're saying, well, one of the things I love about your church is there's a high commitment to. You're tearing down what I think is a false dichotomy. Sometimes I think when churches come to this idea of outreach or making a difference in their community, there's this. There can be this gap or false dichotomy between doing good in our communities and making disciples. Like, we gave that up at some point. We were like, you can't. You know, we can't do both of those things for some reason. Why. Why did we do that? Why did we as churches say we can't both make a difference in our communities and also make disciples?
- [11:39]
Andrew Hopper
Yeah, I think it's. I actually have a lot of sympathy for the fundamentalist leaning. I know it sounds a little bit weird. Churches that fled from the, you know, from the good, do good in your city kind of thing, I don't think they're right. But I do have sympathy for that because I understand how quickly that sort of, you know, is so hijacked by liberal. By theological liberalism to where it's finally, man, we're digging wells and wherever, but we're not talking about who the true source of living water is. Like, we don't want to be offensive. We just want to do good without speaking the whole, you know, you know, live your life as a Christian, only use words if necessary or whatever, you know, And. And I. So I understand why people kind of fled and have fled that. Like, you know, I've even had our church before when I. When I talk about adoption or we. We have a ministry, a ministry called no More Spectators. We're like, moving people towards community ministry. And we had people kind of going like, oh, my gosh, this seems like a sign of, like, churches start going this way and then they lose the gospel. And I'm like, well, the reason you're kind of feel like that is because a lot of churches have done that. You know, you're not feeling like that just out of nowhere now. Of course, I think it's a little bit immature and we've got to push through the way we talk about it. Rich is man, we want to do good in our community. As signs of the kingdom coming, they are not building the kingdom. You know, if we go repaint a house or house, a homeless person, one day, that person, we parted with that house. Whether they, you know, get messed up and leave or whether they do great and then would die one day, you know, or if we have, you know, if we go and, you know, we're gonna. For example, we have a family in our church that they need a ramp built because, man, the brother is struggling with Ms. And he's. They're fighting it like Christians do. We're gonna go do that. You know, we're gonna go build that ramp. That ramp's gonna rot and die one, you know, rotten rot away one day. And, you know, whether it's 100 years from now or whatever, like, it's not literally the kingdom, but when the outside world sees us engage and, you know, our church. I know we'll talk about this. Primarily when we think about community ministry, we think about it in terms of adoption, foster care, and families count, which I can talk to you about. I think it's bringing a sign of the kingdom that is to the community around us to say, hey, this is not the gospel, but it sure points to the gospel. You know, it's a pretty good signpost of like, yeah, there's a kingdom coming where kids aren't separated from their parents, you know, and so that's kind of the way that we think about. It's not, you know, it's not the kingdom. It's a sign of the kingdom that is coming.
- [14:19]
Rich
Yeah, let's dive in. So adoptions, foster care, families count. These are not small issues like you started with, like putting a ramp on, painting somebody. Those are like, okay, I can organize my head around that. And then we jump to what I think are obviously significant. How it can be easy. I think for church leaders, it can be easy. We're, you know, we got a lot of fish to fry in our own backyard. When you see big problems like that, help us unpack that. Why do you, as a lead pastor, why are you passionate about these issues? Why are these the things that you've chosen?
- [14:51]
Andrew Hopper
I think it's, man, I think it's great. I mean, Ulta, if you can't, if you don't mind, I'll go back and give you a little bit of context. I'm a context.
- [14:57]
Rich
Absolutely. Let's do it.
- [14:58]
Andrew Hopper
Number one. So I always want to frame it and where we've been. But the short answer to the question is I think that every church, because it is made up of individual believers that have individual gift matrix, they are gifted. The church is gifted in a unique way because the people which are the church are gifted in a unique way. And so to me, slapping a top down every single Church has to manifest signs of the kingdom in X way, which for, for example, not to pick on them, but like, you know, the whole diversity church kind of movement, I love, you know, if that's your brand, that's awesome. That's great. Go, go. Bring signs of the kingdom in that area. But, you know, what people do is they take their thing and then slap it on every single church. You know, hey, this is the sign of the kingdom that you have to manifest. I don't think that it takes every kind of church to reach the city because there's all, you know, there's every kind of people in the city. Right. For us, though, and I think for a lot of churches that. That maybe are made up a little bit like we are. I think there is a lot of meat on the bone for adoption, foster care, families count ministry. And I think churches could be greatly helped by latching on to maybe, you know, something in particular. Maybe this. Maybe this specifically. How we got there, Rich, was we had. We had, you know, huge movement in our church in 2019. I was very, very convicted. Some of the exponential stuff was coming out, you know, mobilizing outside the walls of the church. And I really was, man, I was just really affected by that. And I don't want the dichotomy, you know, I don't want the. Well, you. You people serve in the church and not outside the church. It's like, no, most people serve outside the church. If you watch them, they are serving inside the church as well. It's. It's like, man, you know, ju. Just because serving inside the church is not the finish line, don't demonize it because it is a starting place. I don't like that kind of whole thing. But. But it did affect me to say, okay, what are we doing to push to the outside? So we.
- [16:58]
Rich
We.
- [16:58]
Andrew Hopper
We did a thing. You would have loved this, man, except for the fact that it didn't really work that good. Okay. It was awesome. It was. We still have the domain name nomorespectators.com. i had the tagline, Jesus didn't die to create spectators. He died to create servants. Not spectators. Workers, not watchers. We, man, you could go to nomorespectators.com and, you know, it was like. It was like a funnel for all of these community ministry opportunities in our city. So it was, you know, people from the housing, you know, authority type stuff would post things and it was. It was all this kind of. It had a bunch of stuff in it. In the end of the day, great idea. It was a little too complex. Our people latched on to the foster care pregnancy network, you know, ended up being families account guardian ad litem and adoption. So our guy that was over all that at the time, our sending director, which is hard for me to have a good idea that ends up dying hard. Okay, that's just tough.
- [18:01]
Rich
You had a great sticky statement and everything. Come on.
- [18:04]
Andrew Hopper
I'm the king of sunken cost bias, okay? Like, I'm like, dude. And so finally, around 2020, he came to me and he said, bro, I know this is hard for you because it was like a two year initiative. He's like, this is hard. He said, no more spectators. Needs to just turn into chosen. And it needs to be like, you had this idea for 30 different things. It just, this needs to be our niche, man. You know, we, we don't do a lot of these other things, but we do this really well. And it was hard for me. Ultimately, it was great wisdom by them, not me. And we started going down that road. And partly I think it's because rich is hard is near to my heart. I have an adopted daughter. A lot of our staff have adopted kids. We just have a guy right now. Our associate director of first impressions at the Ridge campus is in Texas right now. You know, bringing their daughter home. I mean, so it's just. And so it sort of started to morph into. And the, the big thing I'll say, and I, you know, I've been talking a lot here, but the big thing I'll say is if you think about the way I just described all that, it doesn't start with the need in the community. It starts with the gift matrix of the church or we will always have with us. Like, there is no, there's no scenario until Jesus comes back that there's no kids that need to be adopted.
- [19:23]
Rich
Right?
- [19:23]
Andrew Hopper
You know, and it's just the reality of it. And so there's always going to be need in the community. It's more about, okay, what are the Ephesians 2, 10 works that your church, because the church is made up of people who are individually called. What are the, you know, what are those works that God has set out for your church? And, you know, so for us, we just felt like, dude, this is a heartbeat thing. Our people got more. They get more fired up. The greatest thing I've ever been able to mobilize our people for prayer for is go to the abortion clinic and pray, right? I mean, a thousand people on their face in the pavement. It's like, it just Strikes a chord with our church and who we are. So we want to run after that.
- [20:04]
Rich
Yeah, well, I love that. And we're going to dig. Dig out a bunch of this. But let's think about it first from a perspective of somebody who's maybe attended your church. They just started. They're relatively new. You know, the idea of something as weighty as adoption or foster care, that's a big ask. And you know, when you. How do I experience that as someone who's just new? What are some ways that I could get plugged in? What does that look like? That, that. Because I'm hard. It's hard to imagine that I go from zero to, you know, adoption. You know, how do I end up. Or flying to Texas to, you know, pick up a kid? That's a lot. Help me understand how are you. Because I know you guys are so good at moving people along from kind of where they are to where you're hoping. What's that look like? What's the kind of. How do you bring people along in this, man?
- [20:48]
Andrew Hopper
Totally. I think you're right. I think it's a combination of big vision on one end and then baby steps on the. But the big vision matters. Like, we don't want to be scared of the big vision. So, you know, for example, our weekender process, which I know you've talked about some, you know, that weakener process, you know, people literally for years, we would give them a passport application in the weekender process because we're like, you're at this church, you're probably going to be overseas at some point on a mission trip. And so to me, it's like, people are like, dude, that probably scares the crap out of people. And it's like, well, I mean, we want to make sure they know what they're getting into. You know, we're not telling them they got to do that tomorrow. But that is. And then, and then there's all these baby steps, right? Like, hey, come to, you know, every February we do scent weekend. Come to the prayer night. Like, that's a baby step. That's not you getting to go into Nepal. But you know, hey, we're doing this missions offering at the end of the year. Like maybe get, you know, so there's all these. I would say that our. The way we think about chosen ministry, which again, adoption, foster care, families count and rope holding, which is a big part of this discussion, is that way it's big vision on the front end. So we're never going to tell somebody, hey, you know I know you could never do this. Like, I'll never. I think people can do it, and they should. More Christians than are. Should. At the same time, we're also not guilting anybody. Like, so I'm. You know, the first thing I'll tell people is like, hey, you know, when we start talking about adoption, I always say, Always say, hey, we have not lined up a bunch of little kids in the lobby for you to take one home today. Okay? And then I'll tell them that's next week. Okay.
- [22:30]
Rich
That'S great.
- [22:31]
Andrew Hopper
We try hard to, like, put some levity in it, man. We're not. Everybody's not going to do that. In fact, a minority, a small minority is going to do it. But everyone can be involved and there are baby steps. So we try to highlight giving, man. Like, if you. Someone adopts from Mercy hill, we pay 25% of their adoption. Okay? If they're a member and they're in a community group, they get 25. All right, well, you know, we're going to connect that. Like, man, you. You are never going to adopt. You feel like that's. But it's like, well, I give a hundred dollars a month to the church. Well, hey, you know, you're. You are. You are supporting, making a difference. We do parents night out, you know, for all of our foster and adoptive parents. We do it quarterly. It's like, hey, those are opportunities to come and serve, man. You can serve the meal, you can do. We do rope holding, which I know we'll probably talk about, but. But the. The idea of rope holding is just like, man, I'm not going to do this, but I can be in the corner for somebody. They're in my community group, and I want to be their first call if they need a babysitter or they need, you know, a gift card or whatever they need. So I. I think, man, we try to do big vision. You know, we're gonna. We're gonna set a huge vision, you know, for 20. 2030. For 2030. Actually, we just hit our vision for 2025, which is 200 adoptive or foster families. There's a lot of ways people can be involved with it.
- [23:45]
Rich
So good. There's. I think I would encourage friends who are listening in. You really should be following Mercy Hill, Andrew, because I do think you're a very unique communicator where you. And you just described it. And I think to you, it's just like, that's just what you do. But this idea of, like, you're calling people to a high Bar. But you're not leveraging shame, guilt. You know, it's. And, And I think so many times our language can kind of lean in that direction, or we can. If we really are trying to push people towards something, or we can just undersell the vision. You know, we can be like, oh, it's not that. It's not that big of a deal. You know, it's not for everybody. So I would encourage people to listen and talk to me about rope holding. How is that? What's that look like? Unpack what that looks like a little bit.
- [24:28]
Andrew Hopper
Yeah. So rope. So the rope holding analogy, which a lot of your listeners probably already know this, but you know, William Carey, Andrew Fuller, William Carey, father of modern missions. He's. He. He. He makes the statement, I'll dangle at the end of the rope in the pit if you'll hold the rope talking to Fuller. And Fuller held the rope for him. Like, you know, Kerry goes to mission field. Fuller's raising money, preaching sermons, organizing mission boards. So that's kind of the picture, right? So we say, all right, not everybody is going to go down into the pit of foster care, adoption, even. Even families count. I mean, these are. These are massive spiritual warfare battlegrounds, you know, which is one of the reasons why our church wants to be involved so much. I mean, you. If you want to talk about getting to the. You can do all the rhetoric in the world, brother. You want to get to the very bottom of societal issues. You. You be involved in somebody's story that's trying. That's trying to get their kids back from the foster care system. You're trying to help them with that. I mean, every. You could. Fatherlessness, poverty, drug abuse. I mean, everything you can think, you know, so this is. This is just spiritual war. So what we tell people is like, hey, ma', am, if we got people that are mobilizing for. For adoption and foster care, we better have people in their corner, because the enemy is going to bring his war machine, right? And we see it all the time. I mean, you're gonna see, you know, a family steps in to adopt, and you're going to start seeing them. You know, there can be sickness, they can have marital problems, they can have financial things that come up. They can begin to believe lies, frustrations. I mean, there's just. So they can become, you know, their heart can start getting hard toward the system. I mean, there's so many things that come at them. And so what we say is, we need people in their corner right now. It's funny because, like, the way our church has operated was at first we said, all right, we're gonna. We're gonna do, you know, the. The community group is going to hold the rope for the people. And, and that. That was fine. The problem is, when we really kicked off this ministry, so many people got involved that it became overwhelming to the group. So we said, we got to start this ministry. The rope holder ministry is good. It's like, what does a rope holder do? They kind of do whatever the person needs them to do. So there are examples of the rope holding ministry going really well, where it's like, hey, man, they're. They're helping with childcare with the other kids when they're going to foster care appointments in court and. Or, hey, we're. We're helping you do some things around the house whenever you're overseas doing your adoption, which is going to put you three weeks in country. You know, there are some good examples like that. But the other thing that we've learned is, you know, foster care and adoption families that are. That are walking through this, they're going through a very trying time. And to just pair them with somebody they don't know and say, hey, look, here's your supporter. Supporter. It can be a little bit like, oh, that's awesome. And then they never reach out to them. Them.
- [27:17]
Rich
Right.
- [27:18]
Andrew Hopper
They never reach out to them. The rope holder is ready. But it's just like, dude, I don't. I don't know you.
- [27:21]
Rich
Who are you?
- [27:22]
Andrew Hopper
Yeah, and so what we're trying to figure out now as we reboot that rope holder idea is, you know, how. How do you kind of integrate relationships they've already had? Almost like, hey, do you have this massive pool of people called rope holders? Or when an adoptive family comes up, you say to them, hey, who can we shoulder tap rope holder for you? And then we'll train them, but not, oh, that's cool. But say for you, then we'll. We'll put them in. So that's kind of what we're. So as part of our reboot for 2030, you know, that's sort of what's in our mind right now.
- [27:55]
Rich
Yeah, that's cool.
- [27:56]
Andrew Hopper
We have a whole playbook for the way we've done it, which anybody, you know, if anybody wants any of those things, they can go to andrewphopper.com forward/choven, and I can send you any of that stuff we have. But on the rope holder side, you know, just full transparency. We're still, you know, kind of, you know, I'm sure it'll always be that way, that we make them improve.
- [28:16]
Rich
I was trying to make it better. Yeah. And I want to. Yeah. At some point in this journey, you decided, hey, we've got to put this vision and framework into writing like we. And you actually ended up writing a book. And friends who are listening in, I want to encourage you to pick up a copy of this book. Listen, we're almost half an hour in. I know you're interested in this. This is the kind of thing. Andrew's a trusted leader. He's. I've had a chance to take a peek at the book. This will be super helpful for you. But. But that's a lot of effort to put this together into a book. What pushed you from just leading this ministry to ultimately saying, hey, I want to capture this into a resource that could help other people?
- [28:49]
Andrew Hopper
Well, I, you know, Rich, I never really saw myself as like a writer, just like a practitioner, man. Let's just keep. Keep working on the thing and going. Right. And I. And truthfully, I got approached, hey, would you have any interest in writing? You know, a new growth press is the one that's editing this book and putting it out. And it was funny, though, because the second I was asked, I was like, man, I know what we should do. It should be what we should do. It's my story's family story with our special needs child that we've adopted. It's our church's journey. But more important than either of those two things, it's a grounding in the gospel centered motivation. Because I think that is what is so important. We don't do guilt motivation. And cute kids and sad cute kids and sad stories are good reasons, but that you need a great reason because it's hard. The great reason is, of course, adopted people adopt people. And so we delve way into the helplessness of our spiritual condition. How God adopted us and then how, you know, that provides a deep motivation for us to go and do the same for others.
- [29:56]
Rich
Can you unpack that a little bit more? Because I think this is, to me, a core part of the book that I think is really helpful. Even if you're maybe listening in, you're thinking, okay, I'm not sure adoption or foster care is necessarily the thing, but you unpack this idea of gospel rather than guilt. And can you talk us through, you know how. Yeah, just talk us through that part, that concept a bit more. Just double click on that a little bit.
- [30:18]
Andrew Hopper
Yeah. So, you know, when we think about behaviors that flow from the Christian life There's really only two ways to think about it, right? Like, one of them is we try to do things in order that God would approve of us, you know, that he would, you know, he would, he would, he would let us in his family, you know, those types of things. And we, you know, this is for a lot of Baptistic world, which I am. This was kind of like, wow, this is really revolutionary. But that was 20 years ago, Keller and all that. You know, we just started understanding what more of a gospel center motivation. Of course, the other way to think about Christian behaviors is you are part of the family because of what Christ has done for you. And the family has a culture, the family works a certain way. There's fruit that will pop out in your life, not so that you can gain entrance into the vine. That's not how it works. Like, you know, you don't, you don't produce fruit to get in the vine. You produce fruit because you're in the vine. And so, you know, when we think about, like, like Titus 2, for example, when we think about how the grace of God appears to all men, teaching us not just salvation, but teaching us to obey his commands. So there's something about salvation that is inherent to the gospel centered motivation of, of, of going out living the Christian life. You know, it's, it's kind of the John Bunyan idea when they said, man, if you, you know, if you keep preaching this gospel message, people are going to do whatever they want to do. And he said, no, if I keep preaching this gospel message, people are going to do whatever God wants them to do.
- [31:51]
Rich
Right?
- [31:51]
Andrew Hopper
You know, and so I think what we've done in this book is just say, hey, that, that is true universally in our Christian life. Like, if I'm not tithing and I'm stingy, I can do motivation in two ways. Number one, how dare you, you piece of trash that never, you know, why would you never give. Look what got. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Guilt, guilt, shame, Shame, right? Or the other way to say is like, man, what kind of riches has God given you in the gospel? And what kind of inheritance do you now have as a son of the king? It's like, all right, that's powerful, you know, and it will, it will take us places that guilt never can. Guilt will work for a while. You can put fire under somebody and it'll move them, but if you put it in them, they'll run through a wall, you know, and so it's like, it's like, hey, how. Okay, so you could do it with all these different things. We've tried to take this book and do that with adoption to say, all right, right. We know. James 1:27, we need to care for the fatherless and the orphan. We understand. I mean, dude, there ain't. When you talk about metaphors, there's two big ones, marriage and adoption, you know, and so if you want to do adoption, well, we can do it from two motivations. One motivation is, look how many kids need. That's it all. That's all true. That moves my heart, you know, look, can you believe this story of this kid? And that's fine. Of course, you could do guilt, too. Like, how dare you, you know, have this nice happy family and not go adopt a little poor orphan kid? You know, you could do guilt. All those things will be fine. They'll put fire onto you a little bit. But if you want to put the fire in someone that is going to carry them through the long haul of all this stuff, I think it's better to start with. All right, there's kids that need to be chosen. Were you chosen? You know, so, like, one of the, you know, one. I'll give you an example. We know of a family here in the tribe. They've got a. An awesome son that is 20 something years old. Kids got down syndrome, and they adopted him from Ecuador. And his story was, one day a carpenter was built, was working on this building, and he heard cries coming out of a dump, like a trash heap. This child had just been born and been left, you know, with his deformities, had just been left, dumpster. And they brought him to the orphanage. And next thing you know, you know, about three or four years later, he got adopted by this family that we know. And that family's father, he said, eddie's story is my story. I was pulled from the trash heap by a carpenter. And if you. It's like, that is powerful. You know, when you start thinking, in my sin, I was one who had no part and parcel in the kingdom of God. I was headlong in rebellion. I had rejected. I was not a son. And God lavished his love upon me that I would be called his child. And if. If that has happened to me spiritually, how could I not want to do that or at least help those, you know, I'm not saying it's an offer, everybody, but be involved in others that are doing that as well. And so that's what we say. Adopted people adopt people. Chosen people choose people. And. Hey, I didn't answer your last Question. Okay, last question was, why do we write the book? Very simply, I think more people just need to think about what I just said. You know, I think churches do. And I think that if, you know, a lot of churches have adoption minded people and a little bit of fuel in that fire might create some really cool ministry in that church. And this book lays really well for being like, man, make it a small group resource for eight weeks. You know, it's got questions at the end of each chapter like my. My prayer is that this book would catalyze tens of thousands of Christian adoptions. Wow. And so that's why we wrote the book. Yeah.
- [35:29]
Rich
And I thought the same thing as I was looking through it, that this would be a great resource for a small group, a great resource as a staff training thing. Because again, I think there's two things happening on two levels from my perspective. There's what you're actually talking about adoption, but then there's how you talk about it. And I think even both of those, I think could be interesting as a staff team to kind of unpack and think about how do we ensure that what we're doing is so gospel infused. That's part of why I love you as a communicator. I think you do such a good job on that. It's just fantastic. So I would strongly encourage people to pick it up, help me understand the connection. So Mercy Hill is known for, at least from my perspective, known as ascending church. You know, you. The thing one of the. And I've told again, I told you this before. You're the first church leader I've ever bumped into that has connected New here guests to number of missionaries sent this like idea of like this funnel of how do we move people all the way along to that. I think that's incredible. How does that kind of sending culture and adoption, how does that fit together? How does that help kind of fuel the flywheel of what's happening at Mercy Hill?
- [36:31]
Andrew Hopper
Well, you. You helped me think about this when you came and did our one day for our. For our breaking barriers group, you know, for the pastoral trainings that we do. Because in your church growth book, you talk about how, you know, community ministry is used as an evangelism tool. I'm not. I'm probably butchering the way.
- [36:51]
Rich
Oh, that's good. Yep, that's great.
- [36:54]
Andrew Hopper
That was like a big light bulb for me because. Because we, we definitely do that, but we have not leveraged the communications of that.
- [37:02]
Rich
Right.
- [37:03]
Andrew Hopper
And so, you know, for us now, what we're trying to really think about is how does our adoption and foster care ministry and rope holding and families count? Ministry. How does that create open. We call them open doors, right? Like, how does it create open doors? Questions in the community where people come in and we've seen it, you know. So, like when we're talking about the sending culture, that pipeline starts when new people get interested in faith, they get interested in church. And you know, like, for example, we. We had a guy, we just did a historic video. Man, he's saved, baptized, servant now, you know, family, young family, prototypical Mercy Hill guy. Like, man, just, you know, blue collar heart, white collar job. Just that, I mean, just everything we talk about. Right. He's our, he's kind of our guy. And the way he got connected was his boss had signed up to be a rope holder and it just blew his mind. Like, why would a guy take limited time and go help these families? I mean, of course he thought it was a good thing, but it really intrigued him. And so we've tried to, we're trying to leverage more of the communication side. It's tricky. You don't want to be like, hey, look at us, you know, in the community. At the same time, I'm like, man, this year, you know, when we're going to do a pretty significant upgrade to some of the. Our foster care system has. There's a house that has a backyard. And the backyard is where families come to play with kids, play with their kids. They're trying to get back from the foster care. Yeah. And we've said like, you know what, man, if these parents are putting in, that needs to be like the best, the best backyard, right?
- [38:44]
Rich
Yeah, absolutely, 100%.
- [38:46]
Andrew Hopper
And so, you know, we're. We're going to do a significant investment in some, you know, whatever. Like a play structure. Yeah, whatever. Like a pergola type thing. They're going to put a shed out, they're all going to connect it. Pavers. All that stuff is what we want to do. And you know, we're looking at that and I'm going like, yeah, I mean, I get it. Like, you don't let your know what your right hand's doing. But at the same time, that's not for us. That's for people that are interested to say, like, why would a church do that? You know, like, why do they care so much? And it's because, hey, sign of the kingdom. We want to build families through adoption. We want to restore families through foster care. And families count. This is part of that. So we've tried to, we've tried to use it as a way. And I would really encourage church leaders to think about that. Like, hey, is your community ministry actually an evangelism strategy?
- [39:36]
Rich
Right. Yeah. That's good. Love that. And yeah, I would encourage you, continue to. Encourage you to think through those things because I do think that there's. We've seen that there's huge opportunity for folks who don't normally attend church. They're interested. The way I've said in other contexts is they see it as a good thing, we see it as a God thing. We're not going to fight them over the semantics of it at the front end because like you say, it's. It's the kingdom puncturing through that grabs their attention and you're like, oh, what, what, you know, what's going on there? It's a first step. How do we encourage those people? Like on that backyard project? I. No doubt if you're rallying a bunch of guys to go work there, I know that there are guys in your church who have friends who they could invite who don't attend church, who maybe would never walk in your church who'd say, hey, will you come and work for a Saturday for a couple hours and swing a hammer and help us do this thing? Let me explain what this is about. They absolutely would show up. Right? 100% they'd show up and, and they'll get intrigued by that and they'll be like, oh, what's going on there? That's, that's fantastic. Well, friends, unabashedly, I want you to pick up copies of. Not just a copy, copies of this book. So where do we want to send people to pick up copies? That sort of thing?
- [40:42]
Andrew Hopper
Yeah, man, they can just go to andrewphopper.com forward/choven books out so they can go pick up a copy. I mean, it's also just like on Amazon or whatever, but. Right. That link will take you straight to New Growth Press. So, yeah, man, would love it. Would love to hear from anybody who's using it. Well, in a church context to catalyze Christian adoption.
- [41:03]
Rich
Love it. Anything else you want to share just as we close? And how could people track. Go to the website, other places we want to send them?
- [41:09]
Andrew Hopper
Instagram. We have a lot of stuff on Instagram. Entropy Hopper on Instagram. Yeah. The last thing I would say as a closing thought, Rich, is, you know, the Christian adoption boom has sort of happened. Twenty years ago, people started talking about this a lot more. And now you can feel in some of the podcast world and all that, there's a bit of a backlash. Not. Not to don't do it, but also, like, hey, no one told us how hard this was going to be. You're dealing with traumatic situations, kids that have been brought, you know, I mean, it's. It's crazy. One thing I try to do in this book is I try to say, hey, that's not a good reason to take our ball and go home, you know, Instead, we just need to try to shoot as straight as we can. And I do that in this book. Man, it is hard. It's. You're on the front lines of spiritual war. I mean, it's almost like, dude, the greatest transfer of faith from one generation to another happens in the home. We love it when adults get saved. I get that. But let's be honest. Statistically, where does it normally happen, right? And so if you got a home that's broken apart that Christians are trying to put back together, what did we think Satan was going to do? You know? And so instead of taking our ball and going home, let's just call it what it is and then ask the Lord to steal our spine and to move forward with the mission. So, yeah, man, I'd love for people to pick it up and I appreciate the time to talk about it today.
- [42:31]
Rich
Andrew, thanks so much. Appreciate you. Just want to honor you for the work you do. You're a great leader and I love how God's using you and your church to make a difference. Thanks for being on the show today.
- [42:40]
Andrew Hopper
Thanks, brother.
- [42:41]
Unseminary Podcast Host
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Unseminary Podcast. If you found today's conversation helpful, I'd share it with a friend in ministry. It's a simple way to spark new ideas and grow together. Also, don't Forget to visit unseminary.com to sign up for our email list. You'll get exclusive resources and practical tools delivered straight to your inbox to help you lead your church more effectively. Most importantly, take what you learned today and put it into action this week. Ministry impact starts with small, intentional steps. See you next time.