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unSeminary Podcast
Power of a Map, Not a Menu: Transforming Ministry Strategy with Mariners Church’s Jared Kirkwood
00:37:41
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jared Kirkwood, the Executive Pastor of Ministries and Lead Pastor at the Irvine location of Mariners Church in California. A church’s mission isn’t much without a strategy.
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- [00:00]
Rich Birch
Hey friends, welcome to the Unseminary Podcast. Do you feel like your church's facility could be preventing growth? Or are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles to the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to meet the needs of your community? Well, our friends over at Rise Point have been there. They are former ministry staff and church leaders and they under understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to.
- [00:36]
Jared Kirkwood
A place where the building really is.
- [00:38]
Rich Birch
A ministry multiplier rather than a ministry limiter. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help you and your church move the mission forward. Listen, I trust Risepoint. You can trust them with your project too. Check them out over@risepoint.com unseminary that's RisePoint with an e.com unseminary While you're there, pick up their free downloadable resource for your team. It's called 10 Things to Get Right before youe Build. Reach out to them today. The earlier in the project, the better. Again, that's RisePoint.com unseminary that's RisePoint with an e.com unseminary today.
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Unseminary Podcast Host/Announcer
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, 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. Dive in.
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Rich Birch
Hey friends, welcome to the Unseminary Podcast. Really excited for today's conversation. Been looking forward to it for quite a while. Excited to have Jared Kirkwood with us. He's a part of Mariners Church. They if you're not familiar with Mariners, they have seven locations in California if I'm counting correctly. And they're on the brink of launching a couple more plus an online community. They're one of the fastest growing churches in the country for the last number of years. Jared is the lead pastor of Mariners Irvine and and the discipleship Pastors. He or pastor he is has been at Mariners Church for 16 plus years has served as the junior high and high school pastor, lead pastor for the Rooted Network, and as a teaching pastor. Jared, welcome. So glad you're here.
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Jared Kirkwood
Hey, thank you so much for having me, Rich. I really appreciate it. Your podcast has been such a benefit to so many of us, and your insights, even helping us in the last couple of years, has been so beneficial to us as well. So thank you.
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Rich Birch
Oh, that's. That's awfully kind of you to say. I. I love Mariners. This is one of those churches don't say this about a lot of church. If I lived in your backyard, I'd be going to your church. And so I just. I just think the world of what you guys do, and, you know, you have huge influence as a church. You know, the Rooted network that come. Came out of. Out of here. We've. We've talked about rooted in the past. We've, you know, had multiple conversations with you guys. I'm just honored that you'd be here today. So why don't you fill out the picture, tell us a little bit more for folks that don't know about Mariners, Maybe give a bit of sense of that, and then tell us a little bit about your role.
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Jared Kirkwood
So I've been at Mariners since I was a college student. I had given my life to Jesus. As a senior in high school, I moved out to Southern California to go to Vanguard University. And within just a couple of short months, I started attending this. This mega church. And I thought, I have no idea who this Jesus guy really is. I better get plugged in somewhere fast so I can learn more. I had this interesting experience of sitting in Old Testament survey, hearing the story of Moses for the first time in my life. You know, I'm like, this is a wild, like, paradigm shift. I had no clue what I was really doing with my life, and yet that's amazing. My time at Vanguard and being here at Mariners Church was so pivotal and foundational to really, the trajectory of the rest of not only my life, but, of course, eternity because of Jesus. And so I started volunteering pretty quickly. I served in our junior high ministry as a life group leader for a couple of years, and then just before I graduated, I joined our staff. So this is 2005. I did about 11 years in our youth ministry, did about every job you can do in that world and loved every minute of it, of course. But then, as a lot of, you know, a lot of times happens to us guys as we get to that point where we think, okay, what's next? What else is out there? And I found myself in a place where I actually left the church for a short period of time and then came back because I missed it, craved it. My family was so connected here. Never stopped attending the church, and. And that's when the Rooted network came into the picture. Got to spend a couple of years training churches on how to run Rooted, which was beautiful and exciting. And then during that time is when we went through that senior pastor transition. So from Kenton, be sure who was here for 35 years, we moved to Eric Geiger, and it was an incredible transition. Those two guys, I think, led a masterclass of what senior pastor succession looks like. It's amazing. They're still friends. They still gather together regularly. Kenton still goes on trips with us. He still teaches occasionally in our church. I mean, it's amazing. It's so beautiful. And then Eric has been able, over the last seven years, to really make the church his. It's been a beautiful thing to not only witness, but to be so close to him in that process. So Eric asked me to move into the discipleship pastor role, which then, within two years of that, became the lead pastor for our Irvine campus, which is uniquely the broadcast and kind of primary of our seven campuses. In fact, back then, it wasn't seven. It was maybe two or three, actually. And I have the uniqueness of serving as the lead pastor for the campus in which he is the teaching pastor at. So, you know, there's some fun things there that we.
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Rich Birch
There's a lot we could talk about.
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Jared Kirkwood
That's.
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Rich Birch
That's true.
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Jared Kirkwood
Happy to go wherever you'd like to go. But then in this last year, moved into more of a central model. And so I am our lead pastor for Irvine and as well as now the executive pastor of ministries for all of our campuses.
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Rich Birch
Love it. So good. Yeah, there's a ton that we can unpack there. And, you know, there's a lot there that, you know, there's so much that Mariners does at such a high level of. Of excellence, and I think there'll be a lot that we can draw out, and I'm sure we'd love to have you on in the future. There's others, so we won't get to all of it today, but. But let's start with this whole idea around, like, keeping those seven growing more. My understanding is obviously, you guys. I feel like every time I turn around, there's like an, oh, we. Launching a new congregation, which is wonderful. Love that. You know, keeping those various locations aligned. What. How do you guys think about that internally? What what are you kind of processes, internal structures are you using to ensure that, hey, we're kind of all heading in the same direction.
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Jared Kirkwood
Yeah. So as every church should, we have a mission that is directly connected to the Great Commission. Right. So we want to inspire people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. That's what we are setting out to do here. And that mission is not much without a strateg. So the way in which we help people to actually inspire, you know, to. To be inspired to follow Jesus and then change the world around them is through what we call the transformational loop. It is four stops. Each of them have their own ministries, programs, events, teams, and et cetera. Those four stops are Follow Jesus. That's our weekend experience. Grow Together is rooted in life groups, care and recovery. Some of our discipleship courses, then we have Serve One Another. Those are our volunteer ministry teams for the church. And then Change the World are our outreach initiatives. That's local and global. So for us, the way we train our pastors, the way they equip our volunteers, the whole goal is that we would pastor people through a process, through a strategy, rather than being a program manager. The last thing I want my staff to do is spend their time just managing programs, just thinking about the next great event they're going to do. But instead, we really want to disciple people. We want to be that unique story of a church that can grow numerically but also deepen as well. That's easier said than done, but that's kind of like. We spend most of our time thinking about how do we just continue to know the amount of people that show up to our church and help them get connected to one another. And the transformational loop, our strategy is pivotal to that. We must hold on to that. We really don't do very much outside of it, and anything we do really takes me to have to say yes to it.
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Rich Birch
Right. Okay, good. And I love that idea that I want to underline something you said there. This idea of leading your team, your pastors to be, you know, really pastoring, leading people through a process rather than a program manager. That I think is such a key insight because we can get stuck on running our individual boxes. We run these like, well, I run this program. I'm the groups person. I'm the whatever person. I run junior high and I get. And this is particularly. As churches get very large, this becomes a bigger problem because it's like, yeah, I can grow my own kingdom and not think about anybody else and how it all fits together. How are you ensuring that your really trying to drive people and drive your teams and your even your programs to think about the, or the elements or environments, whatever we call those things, to move people along in that process. What's that look like?
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Jared Kirkwood
Right. So a couple of things come to mind. We have a weekly team meeting with my direct reports. Our staff is all. We could talk about organizational structure if you'd like to, but everybody that's on my team is a ministry leader for Irvine and is the strategy leader for our whole ministry area for the church. And so anytime we gather, we're talking about whatever ministry, the program, the event they're going to do and how that's connected to our strategy. Because if it's connected to the strategy, we believe that it is by default it's going to disciple people. We want to be a church that is about having a map rather than a menu. And the irony behind that phrase is that honestly, When I started 20, almost 20 years ago, we actually had printed menus. There was like, I love it. Yes. You know, four pamphlet, you know, you open it up, four full pamphlets where you can see ministries, all the things. Yeah. And guess what? We kind of felt like that was the right thing to do back then. What we've realized now is it, it kind of turned our team into travel agents where you'd meet somebody on the lobby or the patio and you'd say, you know, you get to know them and then you open up the map and you just help them go. This is where I think you should go. And then you just send them off on their way. As opposed to who we want to be, which is tour guides. We want to get to know people, we want to invite them. Hey, come and do rooted with me. Come and be a part of this, this team that I'm leading. Come serve with us. Right. So join us in what we're doing as opposed to, hey, there's this thing over there. Go and do that. So when I have my team meetings, that's a large part of our conversation is just going, let's go back to the loop. Let's go back to that map mentality. Let's try to treat ourselves as, as these tour guides who are inviting people to join us in this great adventure of discipleship and becoming more like Jesus. It has to start with us. Otherwise we're just in house consultants and that's really not at all who we want to be.
- [11:06]
Rich Birch
Yeah, that's good. I love that. I think that's a, that's a great clarity. The other thing I want to underline, which we can come back to later. But I like that that as a church you have clarified. Hey, our Irvine campus is not only leading here in Irvine, but they're also, you know, strategy leaders for our individual areas across the entire church. When there's fuzziness around that in multi site churches, this is one of the areas where it goes sideways because it's like who are we actually supposed to be looking at? Who is the person that's actually making these decisions or. Or who is, you know, who. Which is the area that we think is doing a great job. And if we're not clear on that, then just whoever's the loudest ends up getting the voice on that. And that's not necessarily what we're. That, that doesn't provide the kind of alignment that we're looking for. So I love that you've provided that kind of clarity. Let's kind of focus in specifically as you're building out that map. Talk me through what that looks like from maybe like a teaching perspective, weekend teaching. How does that radiate out into impacting? You know, Eric's obviously a compelling communicator, one of the best communicators in the country, maybe the world. And you know, a high teaching environment, value on teaching as an external someone that appears to be what's there. And you know, so many times I've coached churches through man, we've got to focus on that part. That part of what we do is so critical to who we are. It's not secondary. You've got to spend extra time focusing on that. But how does that, how does that impact your planning process? What's that look like?
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Jared Kirkwood
So we're very fortunate in that Eric is incredibly planful. He is way out in the future and he provides for us about at any given time we were going to be about a year in advance of knowing kind of what the teaching calendar is going to look like. We know the series by title.
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Rich Birch
Okay, wait a second, there's a timeout. Timeout. So a year out. Talk to me when you say a year out. Because I hear people say that and I'm like, well, what they're saying is we're still talking about Jesus a year from now. Obviously we're. What kind of level of detail is he? A year out, what's that look like?
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Jared Kirkwood
So we're prepping for Christmas right now, but I could tell you the scripture for each week of the Christmas series in 2025. So when I say a year out, I really do mean that we are so far in advance that we have the sermon briefs. It's not every bullet point, but it's the key scripture and the primary idea behind that passage. We can see how that series is going to link together. And then the real fun part of the work is aligning this beautiful scripturally based, you know, series that Eric comes back with with the momentum of the calendar and really try to sync those two things up. Here's the strategy, and here is the teaching calendar. And Eric is like the chief proponent of having a strategy. Like, he's all about the transformational loop. And so he never shows up with an element of the teaching calendar that's going to be in conflict with our strategy. Instead, what he does is says, here's the teaching calendar. Let's do. I've done everything I can to match up the momentum of the year now. Match the ministry events and programs and any kind of extra stuff we're going to do. Harness the energy that's going to come from this annualized plan that we have put together that is both teaching content but also ministry strategy. So we're lining all of those things up. And then my responsibility, really is to take his plan, turn to my team, and do the hard work of figuring out what do we say yes to, what do we say no to. If we say yes to something that is not particularly inside of our strategy, our transformational loop, this might be like an event that's going to draw people from the church. The ownership on that event is to funnel people to join us on this weekend. So ideally, we time those events right before the kickoff of a new series so we can invite them to that, because if we know they come to the new series, the message is going to be so powerful and compelling, they're going to want more of that, that hopefully they'll stay with us for the duration of that series. So then one second example would be that if we have something that is in the teaching, the teaching calendar, that is going to cause someone to go, oh, I want to know more about that. Well, then I go back to my team and say, what do we have? Or what can we create to create a special environment where somebody can go deeper on that concept, Whether that's a theological course that we've written, or maybe it's something in our care and recovery ministry where we can help process through anxiety or depression or whatever. The theme of that, that message became love that.
- [15:28]
Rich Birch
And, you know, for friends that know anything about rooted, you're getting a bit of a peek behind the scenes you understand? I know churches that have really implemented Rooted well, they have taken on that kind of rhythm within their church where you see, like, it becomes this, like, crescendo of the season, right? It's like we kind of end up, man. There's like a real momentum that builds through those weeks. You can see how that just makes sense, that that's how you're approaching kind of the calendar and you're planning in general at the church. Talk me through. You coordinate between things that are, like, they impact everybody that you know. But then there's maybe stuff. How do you allow for local congregation level or campus level stuff? How does all that fit together? What, what, what are you doing on that front to ensure that there's alignment? Because that sounds good in one location. You multiply it by seven or by a couple more. I. It just becomes exponentially more difficult to do.
- [16:20]
Jared Kirkwood
All right, so this is a podcast with a bunch of, like, executive pastors, discipleship pastors. This is the best, like, talking shop we can do right here, right?
- [16:27]
Rich Birch
Like, this is 100 into the.
- [16:29]
Jared Kirkwood
The of. Of really doing ministry road mapping. Right? So we get in in July, we get a first preview of what the teaching calendar is going to look like. I sit down with my close team, my leadership team, and we start to place what we call our Tier A events. Our roadmap roughly has three tiers, A, B and C. A is defined as all church. Rooted is like the classic example. We know when we're going to do Rooted. We know how it's going to happen. We know when the trainings are going to take place, where we put the. The launch of Rooted, the celebration. We put it on the calendar before anything else. So now, and Eric knows when those weekends are going to be. In fact, I give it to him before study break. Here's when it's going to happen. So then you can shape the start of a new series to invite people into Rooted. Just like you said, Rich, it's like it's so hand in glove for us. We hardly have to think about that, but there are a bunch of other things that we do have to think about. And so then we have these Tier B events. These are the things that we still say are all church, but they're going to be contextualized at one of our other congregations. A good example of this would be after Rooted, we have. When somebody's in a life group, we have a kind of a suite of discipleship courses called Deep Dive. And these are things around the story of God. The. The big Picture of scripture. This, you know, it's. It's theology and the mission of God, which is essentially a way to talk about systematic theology. We want our congregations, every one of them, to provide an offer those courses throughout the year. We have the best practice of when they should happen. We tell the congregations this is when you're going to do them. They figure out how the method is on them to make that thing happen. It might be life groups, it might be live teaching, so on and so forth. And then we have tier C events. These are our congregation specific events that are things that we, as the central ministry leaders, we're going to provide as options. We're going to approve them before they make the calendar, meaning we're going to agree that that is in line with our strategy and a good use of their time and a momentum marker that has a clear next step back into the loop. So there's an approval process for that. It's not as nitty gritty as it sounds. It's actually quite fun because we get to talk about the beauty of the uniqueness of our congregation. It's very different when you talk about Irvine to Santa Ana. You know, Santa Ana is the highest population of Hispanic families in Orange county or California. So the ministry opportunities we have there are a little different than we have in Irvine. You know, so we get to talk about the uniqueness of the cities that we serve and create some events or programs that might be really beautiful and beneficial to the uniqueness of the cities in which our congregations are in. So that all comes together. But the reality is A happens first, B kind of happens with A, and it's directed. The C is where all of the rubber meets the road. It's dirty. Like, roll your sleeves up. Because it's like, yes, it's complicated. Everybody wants to do their, their favorite thing, right? And I have to be the guy to say, I don't know that that's the wisest thing for us to do. That's not the most strategic, or you try to find great ways to package that.
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Rich Birch
So give us a sense of. So two. Two questions, one kind of package together. You can take them whichever way you want to go first, that process. So I get it, you come back in July, we get the teaching calendar, then we start kind of laying out what is the timeline that. To which you would say, okay, we've kind of got, we feel like we've got the year nailed down at a fairly detailed level. And then number two, connected to that, those C level things are those. Can those be Ad hoc. And they happen throughout the entire year. And, you know, how do you. How do you deal with stuff that just comes up? Because in a campus that's trying to be maybe a bit more opportunistic or saying, hey, I see an opportunity to jump on, does that fit into the planning process? What's that look like?
- [20:10]
Jared Kirkwood
Yeah. So the, the quick picture of the calendar. Eric comes back in July. Throughout the month of August is when we are really. When I say come back, by the way, he takes a few weeks of a study break where that's. This is where he's dedicating time. He's not teaching on the weekend services. We rarely see him, but he comes back with a full year of sermon briefs, so we know he's working.
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Rich Birch
Yes.
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Jared Kirkwood
But when he comes back in August, this is where we're trying to then really place those on the calendar we're lining up. If Eric's not teaching, who's going to do that? And then by September, really, my team is deeply involved. So in the September time frame is when we are committed. Before the month ends, we're going to have the, the calendar year completed for the following year. So just at the end of this September, we finished 20, 25. Now then, what my leadership team does is once a quarter, we look at the following quarter and then the quarter after that. So October 1st is the start of our second quarter of the year for us, we're going to look at, hey, what do we need to know for this upcoming quarter? Let's get excited about it, but then let's really spend some time on January through March and really make sure we agree with that plan we set out to do. Do we need to move anything? Adjust? Do we need. You know, because sometimes things change and that's totally fine. We don't want to be bound to the thing that we put together, but we do want to trust that when we built it, it was a good idea. Like there was a reason we put it there. Let's talk about that stuff. So I do that every quarter. We're getting about six months out into the future.
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Rich Birch
That's good. That makes total, certain sense.
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Jared Kirkwood
That's good.
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Rich Birch
Sorry, Keep going.
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Jared Kirkwood
Yeah, no, it's all good. You asked that question, though, about. Okay, what happens, though, in that. Those events or some of these other things. So we are allowed to break our rules anytime, right? I just know that. I know that there's a great quote. I can't remember who said it, but leadership is what you allow. You know, oftentimes we. We sort of think leadership is the, the collection of great decisions that I make and the plans that I put out there. Yes, that, that is true. But more often than not, the results of your leadership is what you allowed to happen. So the more things you say yes to when it really is outside of that plan, you know it's coming at a cost. You're going to have to say no to something else. So then the other thing that we do is we will evaluate as often as we feel necessary. We will evaluate our ministry programs and events. And we have a simple framework for this. It actually comes from a business model from the late 1970s, but we kind of adapted it to a ministry context. It's four quadrants. It's kind of a bell curve. And as you know, with any, any business leader you're thinking about how do I find that the right at the tip of the top of that bell curve. Not waiting too long, but I want to insight growth as fast as I can or at the strategic right time. So the, the framework, if you can imagine a quadrant bottom left, it's a, it's kind of a gardening metaphor, which by the way, I love because I just, I, I, that picture is so biblical, so beautiful.
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Rich Birch
Yes.
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Jared Kirkwood
And it's easy for us pastors to kind of hang on to it. Right. So the bottom left are the things that are nice. I'm sorry, that are, that are weeds. They're just, they're, they're pulling nutrients for the rest of the garden. You got to have a hard conversation about pulling those things above. Those means it has potential, but it's not really performing well. Those are going to be problem trees. We need to have honest conversations about replanting those problem trees. Then you move over to the right. High potential, high performance. These are your flourishing trees. Those are the ones that you do everything you can to feed. Those give it as much nutrients as possible because it is feeding the whole garden. And then below that one, which is high performance but low potential. These are the things that we call nice plants. And honestly, there are a lot of our tier C events. These are good things that we don't want to get rid of, but we are not going to fuel and fund and resource and build new teams. We're not going to over market and promote those things because they're nice to have, but they're not nourishing to the entirety of the church. Rudin, sorry to keep going back to it. Not only is that our pinnacle tier A event, it is our, our model example of a flourishing tree because of Rooted. It launches new life groups. People understand their. Their purpose in life. They start to jump into ministry teams. They start to give for the first time. They understand beautiful concepts around sin and repentance and God's grace on their life. People give their life to Jesus. It is truly nourishing for everything in our church. It extends into every ministry of our church. So we're going to fuel that with everything we have now to the left of that again. Those are the things that we have to find a way. Those, Those. Those problem trees, which means they have the potential to feed the whole garden. And yet, for some reason, something's not working. These are my favorite conversations because what we get to do is go, oh, I love the potential, with just a little bit of reworking, retweaking. Maybe it needs a new leader or it needs a new initiative, a new level of prioritization within our decision making. Then we know that that thing as well can become a flourishing tree. So that kind of helps maybe a framework understand around how we place certain things, how we prioritize things within our church calendar as well.
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Rich Birch
Yeah. Can you give me an example? It can be theoretical, but, like, is it. Is it possible for problem trees to be trending in the wrong direction and be like, okay, this is like, it's a problem tree becoming something that we want to pull. What would be an example of that? And is it. Can you turn, you know, have you. Have you been able to see, like, hey, let. Let it. What does that replant look like functionally? Like, what does that actually look like? To ensure that, we could try to push that towards flourishing rather than just having it kind of atrophy into, like a weed that we want to pull out?
- [25:51]
Jared Kirkwood
Yeah. So I'll give you the real time example that we're doing right now. We have noticed that while Rooted is a flourishing tree, Rooted generates life groups. And candidly, our life groups have become problem trees. They should. They have the same level of potential as Rooted does. Because if you're in a life group, you should be hearing regularly about serving and generosity and repentance and all these other great things. Those seven rhythms of Rooted are carried into our life groups as well. But why are we not seeing the same fruit from life groups as we do in Rooted? Why is it at our church that you could walk around here, you could attend a weekend service and be so utterly convinced that Rooted is incredible and yet not really? Ever hear about life groups? That's kind of a problem, so.
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Rich Birch
Oh, that's good. A little.
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Jared Kirkwood
A little Bit of an interesting thing is that rarely do you see a problem tree become a weed. And the reason is with something is a prop. If something is a tree, it has the potential to feed the whole garden. If it's truly a weed, it is taking life from the garden. It is sucking nutrients, right? And we got rid of most of those things. There's still some lingering stuff. But what that looks like is that thing that's like, we always do this. So I guess we're just going to keep doing this. And it lives on the calendar. Somebody's like, you see it move from one person to the next. Who wants this thing? I don't really want to do this anymore. Then you got to send an all staff email, hey, who wants to oversee this thing now those are your weeds. You got to pull those things when nobody wants it. It's probably a weed. So the problem trees for us, life life groups has become that for us. And so what did I do just this week? Well, over the last couple of weeks, we promoted a new person onto my leadership team. I moved four people underneath them. I had a series of strategic meetings with them to talk about what would it take for life groups to become, to perform at the level of a flourishing tree. Again, we identified those things. I took it to the senior leadership team with Eric as well, looked at, looked at all of them and said, this is what we want to do. Everyone was like, absolutely. How can we help? Now we have our plan and our Runway for over the next probably six months to really move that thing from high potential to equally as high of a performer. So it's as fast as we can do it. As soon as we assessed it, it only took us a couple weeks to restructure and to find a new plan in order to really get us out of that problem tree category. Category.
- [28:21]
Rich Birch
Yeah, that's good. Well, and you can see friends while that as you're listening in that even just having a relatively simple framework, man can be a powerful tool. As we're looking at the various aspects of what we're doing. And there are a lot of churches that, you know, we. I used to joke, like, when I started in ministry that I, I worked in there, there were churches that bragged about the, like, we've got 112 ministries. That was like, that was a common way to, to talk about church. And we realize, you know, through wisdom of people like Eric who wrote simple church, that like, hey, this just doesn't work. Like, we can't. We can't do all of those things. And we're off task and we end up just creating fiefdoms and all that stuff, but having. Having the guts to say, okay, let's actually try to categorize what we're doing, get some clarity on performance potential, and then start moving forward. That's. That's. That's fantastic. When you say, you know, you feel like you've been able to eliminate all the weeds as an organization, that's great. Maybe reflect back on that season. What was it? Were there any telltale signs that as you looked across or. Or as you've looked across, maybe in other churches, they're like, hey, this is the kind of thing I. What you said there about, like, oh, you've got to pass it around. That's a good one. The, like, hey, we got to give it extra energy beyond what it's producing. That's a good one. Any other kind of telltale signs of. Of weeds that we see in our organizations?
- [29:40]
Jared Kirkwood
Yeah, they're usually things that are outside of your strategy. There are things that are legacy, those sort of golden calves that are still walking around. They. They tend to be things that it was handed off from one person to the next. Like, it started as a great idea, and then that person left or no longer wanted to do it, and then the next person had to do it. It's that thing where you keep seeing flyers and you go, wait, we still do that. You know, it's like those little things where, you know, you walk in the men's restroom and you're like, wait, that we're still promoting this thing. You know, whatever it is, it's like it's a bunch of little things where if you've forgotten about it, it's probably a weed, you know?
- [30:17]
Rich Birch
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:19]
Jared Kirkwood
And then you have the hard work of honoring the people who love it, because there are always people who love whatever that thing is. There's going to be a contingency of people who. That is their thing. And so change management requires of us to listen and understand, but then help them see that there's a more beautiful future down the road, and you're going to help them get there. There's another thing. There's something that's more in line with our strategy or more updated with where we're going, of which you can see and they can't. So it's our responsibility to acknowledge that it's painful for them to experience that a little bit with them and then bring them somewhere. You don't just cancel it and be the guy that sends the email and it's just over. You got to walk people, right? And then one last thing I'll say with this. With this, Rich, because I do think that this is a way for. For maybe those of us who have some staff teams that are excited about creating new things and they want to generate a bunch of new events and programs and ministries and all of that. My audit on when somebody is starting to generate and create new things, I tend to stop and ask them, hey, can you tell me a couple stories about what's happening in your ministry from your experience? So just check them a little bit and say, what's going on in our kids ministry? Tell me about a new family that just showed up. Or tell me about the. The rooted group that you just led, or tell me something that is kind of showing me that you are shepherding the people of our church. You're not just leading them and making decisions independent on your own.
- [31:48]
Rich Birch
That's good.
- [31:49]
Jared Kirkwood
Does that make sense?
- [31:49]
Rich Birch
It's like totally, for sure.
- [31:51]
Jared Kirkwood
If you're doing the work of ministry, there's so much time that we can spend just caring for people, discipling the individual that. That really can take a lot of time, as it should, because we're talking about the spiritual formation of a bunch of people. You probably don't have a bunch of time to whip up a whole bunch of new ideas.
- [32:11]
Rich Birch
Let's go. Yeah, let's go dream up some new stuff. Yeah, for sure. No, that's good. Stop starting things. I've heard that before. You know, that's the. You know, we don't want to just start stuff. You know, let's. Let's work on what's in front of us and the people that are in front of us, the community that's in front of us. That's. Yeah, that's so good. Love it. Love it.
- [32:26]
Jared Kirkwood
So if I added one last part. Stop starting things and just keep shepherding people.
- [32:32]
Rich Birch
Yeah, that's good.
- [32:33]
Jared Kirkwood
Keep shepherding.
- [32:33]
Rich Birch
So good. That's good.
- [32:34]
Jared Kirkwood
Because if you just keep shepherding people, you really will. The stop starting will take care of itself.
- [32:39]
Rich Birch
Right? That's good. Yeah. Because there is a tendency, I think, to. Well, there's a. Definitely a shiny object. Shiny object syndrome that we. That some leaders have. We have. I have, where it's like, man, if we just did this, this would be the thing that would unlock that. But oftentimes the thing that actually helps people take steps towards Jesus is stuff we have been doing for a long time, but we just have got our eyes off it. We haven't Been focusing on it. We haven't been spending the time, effort, energy to do it. So, yeah, that's a good word for sure. As we're coming to kind of land the episode today, any kind of final words that you would say is just, we're. We're kind of wrapping up today's conversation.
- [33:16]
Jared Kirkwood
Well, you know, when I think about the beautiful thing that God is doing right now, He. He's on the move and has been for thousands of years. And it is such a gift to be a part of this. This kingdom that is now and not yet, that the world, as it grows seemingly darker around us and who knows what people attach their hope to. People attach their hope to all kinds of things. But if it isn't Jesus, it's going to rise and fall with whatever the current climate is of culture. And as pastors, I'm just so grateful that not only do we place our hope in Jesus, but that's the main mandate that we have as, as leaders, is that we might be able to point people towards Jesus. Because when we do that, we can eliminate some of the doubts, the distractions, the pain of unforeseen circumstances. We can remind them that Jesus is with them in this very moment. The reason I say that is, even as pastors, what we get distracted by oftentimes is the management of people. It is the leadership of programs, ministries, and events. We can get sidelined and sideways around the business of the church. And if we remind ourselves of the hope of Jesus in our life and our family's life, then we lead our teams that way. What you pour into your teams is what will overflow into their teams and will overflow into the church. So let's just keep our eyes on Jesus. I know. It's so simplistic.
- [34:41]
Rich Birch
No, no, not at all.
- [34:42]
Jared Kirkwood
I'm a pretty simple. I'm a pretty simple person, if I'm being honest.
- [34:46]
Rich Birch
No, no, that's good. No, that's such a good word. That's. That's a good encouragement for us. A great place to end today's episode. Friends, you really should be following along. You should be following Mariners and tracking what they're doing. If you're not familiar with rooted, you should definitely check that out. Where do we want to send people online to track with you or to track with the church? Where's the best place for us to send them?
- [35:05]
Jared Kirkwood
Yeah, I would be. I'd be honored if you just checked out what our church is doing across all social channels. We're at. I almost forgot. At Mariners Church, that would be embarrassing at Mariners Church. And, and I lead our Irvine campus at Mariners. Irvine. Is. Is that one, um, I'm really boring on Instagram. It's at Jared Kirkwood. But really you're just going to see pictures of my kids. So, hey, as long as you enjoy that, that's great. And then one last thing that I would just say is, is we have chosen our, our online church model to be not a live look in, but instead where we teach direct to camera. In fact, later on today, I'll be filming one of our weekend messages. And we have decided, we have made the decision back in the COVID days that we were going to be committed to building an online community that is not peeking in to the people in front of us. So we contextualize our messages to those who are spread all around the world. Like, if you really are thinking about an online strategy for your church, we have decided that this is best for us and I'd love for you to just take a look at what we're doing. If you watch a couple messages, you'll really understand how we shape and direct and contextualize to a. A community that will never really be in the. In in relationship with one another. And they can be in relationship, but not in person. And so, yeah, if you're interested, we're committed to it and we'd love to teach, you know, however we're doing it.
- [36:27]
Rich Birch
Yeah, that's great. I, yeah, I would encourage that. That's a great, that's a great word. Maybe something we can have down the road having to have more conversation about. But it, it is. Mariners is one of the churches that I point to because it seems like, you know, there is like this movement of saying, hey, we should get out of all this stuff. And I'm like, that's not what I see in churches that are prevailing. And Mariners is one of those saying, hey, we're trying to invent the future and figure out how do we connect with people. And you're doing a great job on that front. So, Jared, I really appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you so much. Honored to get a chance to spend some time with you today. Thank you, sir.
- [36:57]
Jared Kirkwood
Thank you, Rich. And thanks for all that you're doing. Thanks for the Unseminary podcast and all the resources you provide. Big fan, man. Appreciate it.
- [37:03]
Unseminary Podcast Host/Announcer
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.