Stop Plucking Talent, Start Developing It with Spence Shelton

Summary

unSeminary Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Stop Plucking Talent, Start Developing It with Spence Shelton
Date: August 6, 2026
Host: Rich Birch
Guest: Spence Shelton, Lead Pastor of Mercy Church (Charlotte, NC)
Episode Theme: Developing Leaders from Within the Church

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the vital need for churches to shift from “plucking” (recruiting external leaders) to intentionally developing leaders from within. Spence Shelton, lead pastor of Mercy Church, shares practical strategies, candid lessons, and inspiring stories from Mercy’s journey of multiplication, revitalization, and leadership development—including their vision to become a collaborative family of churches. The conversation unpacks how to move past talent acquisition shortcuts and build a sustainable culture of discipleship and multiplication.

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Mercy Church: Context & Vision

[03:35 – 05:08]

• Current Snapshot: Mercy Church is a multisite congregation in Charlotte, NC, with three physical locations and an online presence. Church size: “a couple thousand people...across seven services and three campuses” ([03:35]).
• Growth Through Faithfulness: Buildings are “retrofitted,” gifted by legacy congregations—a testimony to “God’s grace on us” ([03:35]). Facilities aren’t fancy, but function as “ministry multipliers.”
• Vision & Expansion:
  • The “All to Him” two-year discipleship/expansion initiative draws from Romans 12:1-2, aiming for whole-life commitment to Christ ([05:29 – 08:23]).
  • Goals:
    • Double the church by 2030 (in line with Charlotte’s rapid growth)
    • Launch a seminary certificate program
    • Send 50 missionaries by 2030
    • Form a collaborative “Mercy Family of churches” ([05:20], [07:40])
  • Core identity: “We were going to be a sending church...like an aircraft carrier that just sends out missionaries all over the place” ([06:20]).

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The Leadership Development Challenge

[08:23 – 15:34]

• Plucking vs. Developing: Many churches default to “finding leaders from over there”—attracting outsiders—rather than growing leaders from within ([08:23], [09:22]).
  • Spence warns: “We don’t do that with discipleship, why are we switching our mindset [with leadership]?” ([09:22])
• Key Insight: The same effort applied to evangelism and discipleship should apply to leadership—raising up from within.
• Shoulder Tap Culture:
  • Importance of personally inviting people from the “marketplace” to consider ministry.
  • “I was convicted and wanted to call our church...let that carry over into your leadership and your leadership development as well” ([09:22]).
  • Real examples: Executive and campus pastors recruited from secular vocations (banking, plant management, physical therapy), all “tapped on the shoulder” to consider their calling ([11:00]).
    • “A patient, long-suffering physical therapist turns out to be a great pastor...” ([11:30])
• Development is Slower (But Sustainable): “I promise it’s gonna take longer the way I’m talking about. But...there might be more people in [your church] than you realize, because I believe God provides for the church he’s growing” ([12:22]).

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Tools for Internal Leadership Development

[13:21 – 22:44]

The Lead Pastor Profile

• Systematic Clarity: Mercy developed a “Lead Pastor Profile” (effectively a ministry leader profile) with 9 traits, organized in 3 areas:
  • Character
  • Competency
  • Calling
    ([13:26], [16:25])
• Monthly Staff Training: Spence teaches these 9 points monthly, challenging staff to “teach their volunteers and leaders,” and continually revises based on feedback ([14:13–15:34]).
  • “Always say what you want them to do...I want you guys to take what I’m teaching you and go teach your volunteers” ([14:10]).

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Key Traits from the Profile (with Notable Insights)

Character: Self-Awareness

• Most overlooked trait.
• “A good leader is one who is aware of their strengths and aware of their weaknesses and is settled in their identity in Christ so that their weaknesses don’t crush them” ([16:25], [17:05])
• Avoids first-impression bias that can cause “long-term damage” ([17:50]).

Competency: Multiplier

• “I want someone who is a proven multiplier before I move them into an increased level of leadership...someone that talks a good game or someone that just has a...gift of hospitality but haven’t multiplied” ([19:33], [20:00])
• Multiplier = builder; can raise leaders, not just do things themselves.
• “If we want to build a movement of churches for the sake of the glory of God...there’s got to be multipliers leading this” ([21:21]).

Calling: Alignment

• “Really important that not only are they theologically aligned, but they are philosophically aligned in terms of how we do church” ([22:44])
• Critical lesson learned: If a capable leader “wants to change your church into a different kind of church...the best thing you can do is set them free” ([23:32]).
• “We have paid some dumb tax and so wherever we can save another person from paying it, we’d love to do that for you” ([24:55]).

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Practical Pathways & Tough Conversations

[25:08 – 30:52]

• Spiritual Gifts vs. Leadership: Don’t equate “leadership pipeline” with grading spiritual gifts; help people excel at their specific gifts and only promote leadership for those truly called and gifted.
• Trial and Error: “You’re not really going to know if someone’s gifted in leadership until you let them try to lead” ([27:14]).
  • Give “a couple swings”; coaching and feedback key to discernment.
• Handling Plateaued Development:
  • “Let’s get over...what we’re going to find is some people are going to lead a community group for 20, 30 years...others will lead for six months to two years and...this person is a leader” ([29:33], [30:07])
  • Create a culture where reassigning roles isn’t failure, just discerning gifts: “We just got to find the gift God has given you...trial and error” ([30:43])

Memorable Moment:

• Story of a lay leader who, after a shoulder tap, “just planted our fifth [community] group”—natural multiplication in action ([29:34]).

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Revitalizations and Multisite: The Mercy Experience

[32:04 – 39:45]

• Stewardship Over Self-Interest: Mergers and facility gifts must focus on “honoring a legacy of faith,” not acquiring property or brand-building ([32:10], [33:34]).
• Confident Humility:
  • “A leader needs...confident humility: confident in God’s call...but the humility to be patient and wait on the Lord and see what he has and to consider others” ([32:10]).
  • “Handle these relationships well enough so...they’ll tell other people, ‘Hey, we loved working with Mercy Church’” ([37:29])
• Practical Advice for Revitalization:
  • “Start praying...if you’re not fasting, then you’re not praying yet” ([37:52])
  • Invest years in trusting relationships with other churches—so “when those conversations can happen, they can happen” ([38:44])
  • Aim for “team player in the kingdom” posture ([38:44])
  • “A rising tide lifts all boats” ([39:23])
• Sweet Fruit from Revitalizations:
  • Elderly members from legacy churches have become “grandparents” for the younger Mercy congregation, creating beautiful, multi-generational community ([36:28])
  • “They are way bigger fans of Mercy Church than I am, and I’m the lead pastor!” ([35:50])

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Closing Encouragements

[40:00 – 41:45]

• Long-Term Perspective:
  • “You will always overestimate what you can do in five years and you will drastically underestimate what you can do in twenty” ([40:00])
  • “Stay the course, stay the course where you’re at. The Lord is going to do a work in honor of your faithfulness” ([40:31])
• For Leaders Seeking Resources:
  • Connect on Instagram: @spenceshelton
  • Mercy Church: mercycharlotte.com

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “What makes a great pastor is someone who has sat with person after person, told them, ‘You should do this to feel better,’ and then they come back and say, ‘I didn’t do the thing,’ and you say, ‘Well, you should have done that’...A long-suffering physical therapist turns out to be a great pastor.” — Spence Shelton ([11:30])
• “Clarity in expectations creates confidence in execution. The clearer you are with what you are asking someone to do, the more confident they will be in doing it.” — Spence Shelton ([28:33])
• “You will always overestimate what you can do in five years and underestimate what you can do in 20.” — Spence Shelton ([40:00])

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Key Timestamps

• [03:35] Mercy Church’s origin and facility story
• [05:20] The “All to Him” initiative & vision for multiplication
• [09:22] Why churches struggle with developing vs. plucking leaders
• [13:21] Building a “lead pastor profile” for internal development
• [16:25] Character: self-awareness
• [19:33] Competency: multiplier
• [22:44] Calling: philosophical and theological alignment
• [25:08] Shepherding non-lead-pastor-track disciples
• [32:04] Revitalization, mergers, “confident humility,” and honoring legacy
• [40:00] Encouragement: “Stay the course”

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Tone

Conversational, practical, and encouraging. Both Rich and Spence speak from field-tested ministry experience, with an honest look at the challenges and the joy of equipping saints for the work of the ministry.

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In Short:
To move beyond short-term wins, churches must invest intentionally in internal leader development, create clear, reproducible standards, honor legacy, and play the long game, trusting that God provides all that’s needed for healthy, multiplying ministry.

Transcript

[Rich Birch]

Do you feel like your church or school facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path to expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt like you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the needs of your community? Well, the team over at Risepoint can help you. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is literally a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to move your mission forward. Check them [e-mail] that is RisePoint with an E. While you're there, schedule a free call to explore possibilities for your needs, the vision, your future, that sort of thing. Risepoint believes that God still uses spaces and they're here to help you again. Reach out to them today. That's RisePoint with an e.com RisePoint.com and Schedule A call today.

[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, 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.

[Rich Birch]

Hey friends, welcome to the Unseminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know this week is a great conversation and was recommended by one of my favorite church leaders in the country and so you're going to love this conversation. It's going to be super helpful and I do think it's going to challenge you and provide you some steps forward. Excited to have Spence Shelton with us. He is from Mercy Church, a multi site church with three locations if I'm counting correctly in Charlotte plus Church Online. God is leading Mercy Church into a season of a bunch of expansion, investment in ministry facilities and outreach over a two year discipleship initiative called all to Him. They have a goal to launch the Mercy Family of churches in late 2025 which I think is maybe launched or we'll see where that goes and is aiming to form their own collective within the next five years. Super excited to have you on the

[Spence Shelton]

show today, Spence, man, such an honor to be with you, Rich. Man. This is. I'm a big. I'm going to say it. I'm a big fan of yours, man, because you have produced so much helpful content for me as a leader to lean into and grow little by little. And I can only hope that I can contribute a little bit more to the great work you've been doing, man.

[Rich Birch]

Come on. That's amazing. Honored to have you with us and to learn from you today, Spence and mutual friend and Andrew Hopper, who I love. Fantastic leader and so shout out to Hopper. Thankful for what, you know, God's doing in his church as well. So Mercy church started in 2015. Give us a picture of kind of where things are at today. If we were to come to the church, what would be experience? Kind of talk us through the last season, kind of the last couple years. What's that look like?

[Spence Shelton]

Yeah, man. So if you came to Mercy today, what you'd find as a church, you might be surprised to learn how big it actually is. Because the church is, you know, a couple thousand people, but it's across seven services and three campuses. And there's some. Some of that's intentional. Some of that is, hey, we're just kind of following the Lord, where he's led in this, and we didn't really plan for it, you know, so our average service size is not that big. But we've. The Lord's been really gracious if you came. What you'd find is, especially at our broadcast campus, you'd find an old church building that you'd be thinking, wait, are all these people, how are they filling in here? And you'd see cars parked all through a neighborhood and everything else. And you'd see a retrofitted old church building. And that's just the story of God's grace on us. A building that was given to us and a church family that decided, hey, we want to join you guys. And they gave us their building. Really cool moment, like a legacy moment of faith in our church and a couple other spots where we're seeing similar sorts of things. And it's just. It's awesome, man. So we feel blessed. We feel like we are doing what God has called us to do because we're seeing that kind of momentum in the ministry that we're doing. But none of our facilities are going to wow you, I promise. I actually love training church planters because, you know, so many times they Come in and they're like, oh, we can do this. Like, yeah, you can do it. You know, so we are praying for better wins. Yeah, but you can do it, man. If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere kind of thing. So Lord's been really gracious to us and it's a. It's been a real Joy these past 10 years.

[Rich Birch]

Yeah, it's so cool. It seems like you guys are in a bit of a pivotal season or an inflection point season where you've got a bunch of things on the horizon. Launching Mercy family of churches.

[Spence Shelton]

That's right.

[Rich Birch]

Missionary goal by 2030, a collective talk me through those. What does the future look like? What's driving the urgency? Help us understand kind of what the future looks like.

[Spence Shelton]

Yeah, man. I think this happens for any church, both leader and just the life of a church. You come to those milestone moments. We hit it last year with 10 years. And it was not only a milestone in terms of age. There was some just real growth that had been happening to the church that was forcing some good conversations around long term, you know, expansion so that we can continue to facilitate what we believe God is. Actually, I should say we could steward what God is doing in our church. And so we launched an initiative that we called all to Him. I was teaching through the book of Romans all year last year. And so it comes out of Romans 12:1 and 2. Because Christ gave his all for us. We give our all to Him. That is our living sacrifice that we do. And so we said, we got some goals as a church, man. We want to see our church. We got some reaching goals. We got some training up goals, we got some sending out goals. Because when I planted Mercy Church, one of the things that was on my heart, if we were going to come to Charlotte, North Carolina, we were going to be a sending church, which means we're going to build a sending hub here where this thing's going to be like an aircraft carrier that just sends out missionaries all over the place into the battles that the Lord has for us across the world. That was just on my heart. Instead of going to, you know, a place that might be. Might have a. I don't know, like a Pacific Northwest or Northeast, something like that. If we're coming to the Southeast, to the Bible Belt, we're doing so intentional, very intentional. So that's been on our heart ever since day one. And this all to him initiative, you know, we. We're hoping that by 2030, we double the size of our church. That's Because Charlotte is growing by 150 people a day. So, like, we've got to, you know, this isn't like it's just because it's something we want to do. It's a calling, a good stewardship of the moment that we're in. And we want to, uh. We've. We're launching a seminary certificate program for our members of our church because we want to train them up right? And we got a goal to see 50 missionaries go on the mission field by 2030. We just planted. A couple of weeks before the recording of this, we planted our next church here in Charlotte, and we've got plans for several more. We are a large family of churches about to become a collaborative. We're. We're, you know, 2028, 2029, somewhere around there, we'll officially form that collaborative if the Lord continues to do what he'. All because, man, we are convinced that God has brought us here to reach people, train them up, send them out. Which I hope does not sound novel to any church leader listening to this. I hope it just sounds like, yeah, man, that makes sense. It's like, well, then what's the. The magic? Or what's the. The secret sauce? It's just putting your hand to the plow. And now here we are 10, 11 years in, and we've been steadily doing that same work. And I think the Lord is, you know, our buddy Andrew would use the flywheel. That's his favorite version of that illustration. But you keep putting your hand to the same thing, and eventually the Lord starts to bear fruit. And that's what we're seeing now.

[Rich Birch]

Yeah, it's so good. And yeah, you know that. And you're a kind leader. You know that for some leaders, the reason why we're talking to you today is, unfortunately, that is more novel than it should be. And so we want to dig into that a little bit, particularly. Let's maybe start with that middle section, this training goals you're working on, trying to train people up. When you're thinking about the kind of leadership vision you have as a church, you're thinking about, hey, we're going to raise up leaders both here and then also sending. I think we can fall into this dichotomy around, okay, so do we find these leaders from other places and attract them to come here, or do we grow them up internally? Do we find a way to develop them internally? So it's this idea of plucking talent rather than developing it. Talk to me through. Why is training so hard in so many Churches, why do we struggle with that? And we seem to default towards let's just find somebody from over there and have them come and help us here.

[Spence Shelton]

Yeah, man. I think that mentality starts all the way down to the idea of reaching people that don't know Christ versus just sheep swapping from one church to the other church, right? So you can grow your church by transfer growth, which I actually am one who, hey man, if somebody's on the sideline in one church and then they plug into your church, I'm all for it. And if the same thing happens with mercy, all four. But our aim, what we all know as pastors and ministry leaders is our aim is, man, let's reach lost people and then disciple them, right? The same thing I think should be true with leadership development. For some reason, when it comes then to developing leaders, we tend to go a different direction and think, well, let's just go find where some leaders are and get them to, to plug in. It's like, we don't do that even with discipleship. Why are we switching our mindset? And so I want to just kind of, I have to con. I was convicted and wanted to call our church and I would call others to the same mindset that you have with discipleship. Let that carry over into your leadership and your leadership development as well. And I think that's how we're going to grow, just as how we're going to grow the kingdom by reaching lost people. How are we going to grow the leaders in the kingdom? The number of leaders we have, it's going to be developing them in our church. And I just, I don't know that we're even thinking that way and asking the question, is the guy who's a 27 year old physical therapist in my church, has anybody ever bothered to tap him on the shoulder and ask, hey man, could God be calling you into ministry? Because I watch you and no, we're not doing the shoulder tap, man. And so right now I just, I love it. Just a little bit of the story of our church. Both of our executive pastors and two of our three campus pastors were all in the marketplace. One of our executive pastors was in banking, another was a plant manager. We have two campus pastors who were both used physical therapists because they're both former physical therapists. And you know, we're sitting there having these conversations. You know what makes a great pastor is someone who has sat with person after person, told them, hey, you should do this to feel better. And then they come back to you later and say, hey, I don't feel better. And you say, did you do the thing I told you to do? And they say, no. And you say, well, you should have done that. And a patient, long suffering physical therapist turns out to be a great pastor, but somebody's got to tap him on the shoulder and say, hey, man, I think God might be calling you into this. And so my encouragement to anybody who's in ministry right now, kind of in that leadership development role, and you're like, I don't know, we're gonna have to go outside to find some talent. I promise it's gonna take longer the way I'm talking about. But if you will seek the Lord, ask the Lord and then start shoulder tapping and giving some opportunities for guys to lead, for men and women to lead there in your ministry and whatever the leadership roles might be, I think there might be more people in there than you realize, because I believe that God provides for the church, that he's growing, that he's called you to lead. And so I think it's true with leaders as well.

[Rich Birch]

Yeah, it's so good. I love that. And you know, I love the, even the vision for, hey, maybe there are some people within your church. We see this statistically, like, even if you're thinking about campus pastors, 9 out of 10 campus pastors are coming from within, which mean we've got, which means we've got to get good at this. And yeah, if your church has any kind of unique slant on the world, you've got to find people who have come up through that culture to, to ultimately push that culture forward. I love this marketplace to ministry transition. How do we help people do that? That's a real key transition, I would imagine, on your end, you've got to help connect the dots for somebody. I love that there how you even with the physical therapist were able to connect the dots between, hey, here's what you're doing. Let me talk to you about the kind of role that we're thinking about. How do you make that transition? Have you developed anything to try to help make that, you know, could, you know, connect those dots for people as you're having those conversations?

[Spence Shelton]

Yeah, I would say we don't, I don't have a conversational map that I'm doing.

[Rich Birch]

Sure.

[Spence Shelton]

I don't have that yet, though. I think that's just like many things, trial and error, and I'm still in the, still cooking to formulate that map. But what I do have that we've worked through with our Staff is something we call. It's interesting, we actually call it the lead pastor profile. Okay. The reason we call it the lead pastor profile is because everything we're doing, we're building towards developing towards planting more churches and you got to have a lead pastor to go and plant those churches. Now the thing is actually when you, when you look at it, it's actually just a ministry leader profile, you know?

[Rich Birch]

Right.

[Spence Shelton]

Everything on there. There may be a couple of things that are nuanced specifically to lead pastors, but it's kind of like when you go into Timothy and you see what are the characteristics of an elder? Well, every single one of them is just a good Christian, except then you got this thing able to teach.

[Rich Birch]

You know what I mean? Right, right.

[Spence Shelton]

So it's a similar thing is like most of our profile, nine points on it and divided into three buckets. It's mostly just what makes a good ministry leader. Well, then what I'm doing is. Or what we are doing is we're taking that and we're training our whole staff through it and saying, hey, here's what we are looking for, here's what we're trying to develop, and then here's everything. So I do a training monthly with our staff on these points and then I do it and I say, yeah, I have to verbally say it. Never underestimate or never overestimate. I guess just that it's going to happen without you saying it. Always say what you want them to do. You know, just good old preaching point there. But, man, hey, I want you guys to take what I'm teaching you and go teach your volunteers and go teach those that. And I want you to teach your leaders and then I want your leaders to be able to teach them. And if it doesn't work, I want you to come back and tell me so that we can get better at making this a multiplying thing. Right. So we just got to have a lot of checks and balances along the way, so we're hopefully training. And it took a while to pull this together in a way that it makes sense to all of us. And now that we're kind of running it, we can see the value in it of, hey, this is what we're looking for. And now you can go shoulder tap and say, I know what I'm looking. So the, the kids director can go, I know what I'm looking for. Now I can go and start shoulder tapping because I know what.

[Rich Birch]

You know what I mean.

[Spence Shelton]

Now that I know what I'm looking For those are probably the. The beginnings of a conversational map to walk somebody through. But at least you know what you're looking for. You can start to have those conversations. And if you have the relational equity, those conversations can really go somewhere.

[Rich Birch]

Love it. I'd love to double click on that. I love this lead pastor profile idea. I think working to get the clarity I think is in is a great, you know, a great task for all of us to wrestle through. We think, well, we want to develop our leaders, but then we don't have any definition of what do we mean by a leader, like, at its most basic level. So we don't need to get into all nine. But are there a couple of them that are either counterintuitive or maybe we miss, or you find yourself coming back to time and again that are like real dividing points or like ones that kind of stick out to you in the framework?

[Spence Shelton]

Yeah. All right. So obviously all nine matter to me, or I wouldn't have had them all. So I'll do my best. I'll do my best. So we divide them into three buckets. Character, competency, and calling. So each one of those has three points under it, and I'll click on one of them, maybe in each, and you can tell me if we want to go further. But character. The one that I find to be the most overlooked is self awareness. I find that to be the most overlooked characteristic of a good leader is one who is aware of their strengths and aware of their weaknesses and is settled in their identity in Christ so that their weaknesses don't crush them. You know, they can instead build a team around them, you know, because the classic thing with a lead pastor is to say, well, I'm good at vision and bad at details. It's like, okay, man, maybe we need to do something a little more thoughtful than that. Because that resonates with me for sure that you asked the guys around me for sure. But what. What. What about are you better at vision casting or vision creating? And what are the evidences of that in your ministry? You know, so for me, I'm better at vision casting than I am vision creating. That's probably my 9 to 10 is actually sharing it, but I got to have some help and love having help and the other side of that. And so there are plenty of other things like that. But when we have someone who's not aware of their strengths and weaknesses, usually that's a. That's like a stop point for us. And so if we've got someone that we think, oh, man, they, they come across. Because here's the thing, unless you have these points, somebody will. Can make a great first impression and a lot of long term damage in your ministry. Not because they have bad intent, but because they're not aware of what they're. And you give them a lot of responsibility and maybe they're not actually. They don't have the eyes of Jethro in Exodus 18 to know how to build out a ministry.

[Rich Birch]

Right.

[Spence Shelton]

You just thought they did because they gave off a good first impression. So that's my biggest, biggest one in that character or not biggest one. But that's a key one I think in the character is man, are you self aware. And so whatever we use, we love different. Whether it's the personality assessments, leadership assessments, but we also. And we just, we want to develop from within because that gives us the ability to see. We can see what their strengths and weaknesses are because we've had people eyes on them for months and years and you can't really trade that out.

[Rich Birch]

Character takes a long time of up close observation to really get a sense of where, where people are at because. And you know, we know this is, this is, you know, we don't have to think long. There are lots of examples of leaders who. It all look great but there's like a 2%, you know, problem in their character that ended up showing itself in the most kind of ugly of ways. So I know all nine are super important. I get that, I appreciate that. But we can't be here for three hours. So competency. What was, what's one in there? That, that, that tends to say we're just trying to wet people's appetite to kind of help them think through it a little bit.

[Spence Shelton]

For competency. The one that I would. The one that yeah. That I spend a lot of time on. When it comes to competency, what I would say is the multiplier. I want someone who is a proven multiplier before I move them into an increased level of leadership and responsibility. I want to see it man. And if we otherwise. Again, what I'm trying to weed out is someone that talks a good game or someone that just has a. There may be someone. I think a lot of leaders that might actually be really strong in the gift of hospitality have found themselves in the arena of administration simply because they are like generous, kind, easy to talk to people and they're great. You want to be around them. They're probably encouragers, that kind of thing. And it's like, wait a minute, have they multiplied? Do they actually Understand what it takes to take someone from leading self to use the old Ramsharan Ramcharan leadership pipeline from leading self to leading others. Have they actually. Do they understand what it takes and do they understand what it takes to go from leading others to leading leaders? And have they. Let's just look behind them. If you want to go the Bible route, you go second Timothy two, two. Are they able to train up faithful teachers who can then teach others also? That to me is especially when we get into who's going to go out and plant a church, Right. And I'm not sending somebody out that's not a builder. Another way to say multiplier would be build builder. But I, I say multiplier because I'm specifically thinking around leadership and leading those who will lead others. If we want to build a movement of churches for the sake of the glory of God, and we want these churches to go and continue to build, there's got to be multipliers leading this.

[Rich Birch]

Yes.

[Spence Shelton]

You know, gotta be. So when it comes to competency, that's like a, a deal breaker for me for who we're gonna send out to plant. And so I want to develop it starting in our student ministry, you know, and working our way through or starting in our college ministry. Working our way through. I don't want to wait until we just try to. Otherwise we got to go pluck out from the, you know, ether somebody that we hope is a multiplier. And I don't want to do that. I'd rather raise them up well.

[Rich Birch]

And we see this temptation in churches when they get to say a thousand and then they're, they're growing. You know, they're, they're eyeing 2000 beyond. There's a, there's a, a dangerous temptation that can come in, particularly for our staff teams. I know we're talking broader than just staff teams, but particularly for our staff teams, we can, we can Forget the Ephesians 4 call to equip others to ministry, and we just become doers. We hire doers rather than multipliers because they get stuff done and we're like, oh man, they're solving problems for us. But that is. Can then erode a church long term very quickly. I've seen that so many times where they end up with, you know, they slow down. They're like, why are we slowing down? It's, well, because you've stopped multiplying. You stopped doing what we're called to do. I love that. So then the third category, calling anything in there that would. That Steps that kind of is similar again, I know all nine are really important, but any of those that kind of jump to the, to the front,

[Spence Shelton]

maybe I'll give you one that has, we've learned through some, some painful trial, error and that is we call it alignment. And what we mean by that is as you develop a leader when it comes to their long term place in your church and leading maybe even beyond your. So in our case beyond our church. To go in and leading a church is going to be a part of the family of our churches. It's really important that not only are they theologically aligned, but they are philosophically aligned in terms of how we do church. So no shade on any other way of doing church. What I'm saying is so that we can continue to be united in one voice internally so at Mercy Church with how we do discipleship and then so that we can be united in how we can help and train one another as a family of churches, we got to be aligned not just around our theological convictions, but on our ministry convictions, how we do it. I would say to those of you out there who have a promising young leader, but it seems like they just don't want to do they want to change your church into their, a different kind of church. The best thing you can do is set them free. And I don't mean like that's not like code for firing by the way. That genuinely, that genuinely is like help them find a way, an off ramp to whatever it is they sense God calling them to. If they're not, you know, it might be just they need more season of development. That might be all it is. But when it comes to appointing people towards and setting people into key leadership. So take an elder role at Mercy Church, community group coaching, shepherding, that kind of thing where you're in now, you are shaping, not just participating, you're really shaping the DNA of our church. We got to be aligned with what we're doing. It also makes for a much more enjoyable experience. I'm not saying we're not thinking. We're always thinking over here about how to do it better and trying to be faithful and everything else, of course. But I'm saying, man, you want to feel like you're locked arm and arm going together and when conviction comes, that goes a separate way. It's like best to go separate. So we've learned that the kind of the hard way. I think a lot of lessons are hard and so offer this as our missions pastor likes to say, we have paid some dumb tax and so wherever we can save another person from paying it, we'd love to do that for you.

[Rich Birch]

Yeah, that's so good. I love that. And, yeah, I think alignment's a massive deal and calling it out. And I would think being in a church that is so focused on sending, you're hoping that that's a big part of what's kind of the outcome of the church, that having an outlet for that, sending in a way that makes the most sense. Hey, here's a leader who seems to have the skills, and then you can celebrate. Hey, they seem to have some unique ideas that they want to go and see happen somewhere else. That's fantastic. Rather than having to, like, fight that. I think that's cool. That's really good. So, you know, help me pick this apart a little bit. So one of the interesting things I find in this whole kind of leadership pathway, leadership pipeline conversation is there are. So I think we all can be influential. I think in one way, we are all called to be leaders, but not necessarily everyone that we're discipling is necessarily going to be a lead pastor. They're not all necessarily going to. Now, I understand we're kind of discipling towards that, but help me understand, what are you doing internally with folks that you're like, I just. They're just not going to make that jump eventually. How do you have that conversation? I know that's a hard conversation. What does that look like? Or am I just looking at this wrong? Which could be the case. Too happy to be wrong. Help me think through that.

[Spence Shelton]

Well, we got to have some freedom that comes from distinctive categories. This will help us a great deal. Helps me in pastoring a great deal. First, we got to have the category of spiritual gift. The Lord has given everyone a spiritual gift, and we got to celebrate that. And we got to be careful not to turn the leadership pipeline into. Or that concept of leader development. Turn that into a grading of gifts. Like, you've got a. You know, you need to graduate from one gift. Maybe that's a better way to say it. Graduate from one gift to the other to the other. It's like, no, no, no. What we're not talking about is graduating out of your gift set. God has given you that. And the best thing for you and for his church is to get really good at how he's given you or how he's gifted you. And when we. When we conflate those, when we only talk about just, you know, getting better, it's like, man, we got to watch out instead let's say, how can we get better at the giftings God has given us so that we can steward it really well. And then we find ourselves able to say, and when it comes to leadership, and here we are as church leaders, we're now inside of a category. We're inside of a category of leadership. And how can we develop leaders who are gifted by God's leaders? Well, the good news is maybe take some pressure off everybody. You're not really going to know if someone's gifted in leadership until you let them try to lead. You got to let them try to lead, man. And then as they lead and you give them a couple swings, two, three, four, whatever, and you coach them along the way, hey, here's what we're looking for in a leader. Here's how you can grow from leading self to leading others. Take the pressure off. This might be how God has gifted you. We don't know. But the best way to see based on what we've seen so far, is to let you try. So here's a community group and here are the things you're going to need to be a good community group leader. And we're going to coach you and support you. Let's go and let's see what the next six months brings. Right? Hey, this went really well. We want to take you out of this community group leader seat and put you in as a coach. Now, there's a different set of skills you're going to need to be a coach, but, man, it seems like your people responded to your leadership. What do we think about you as a coach? Each set of the way, man, do I have the. The way I always say it to our staff, they're sick of me saying this. So it's great to talk to you because I'm not saying this too, is that clarity in expectations creates confidence in execution. The clearer you are with what you are asking someone to do, the more confident they will be in doing it. So that's just my big thing there on. On this. Let's get over now that we're. And what we're going to find is some people are going to lead a community group faithfully for 20, 30 years at our church. Praise the Lord. What we can't see is that it can't say that a failure. Others are going to lead for six months to two years and we're going to go, man, this. This person's a leader.

[Rich Birch]

And.

[Spence Shelton]

And we're seeing it. They already. They're planting. I had someone come up to me the other day at church and tell me, hey man, I just wanted to tell you we're so excited. You challenged me about five years ago to lead a community group and we just planted our fifth group and I went like I went, I was, my mind went so far, I didn't even have time to be, to be celebrating because I was like, does anybody know that there's a guy out here with the cranking out groups gift, just planting groups every year? What's going. So I was like, hey. So that, that was a great moment the Lord gave me just of, hey, this is, this is going really well and there will be some that will lead a group and things won't go well and they won't go well and you'll keep trying different efforts. So to my community group leader friends, hey, once someone tries and tries and tries, would you maybe tap their shoulder and say, hey, can we try something else? You know, like you are not a failure. We just got to find the gift that God has given you. And the more that's in the conversation of your church, that's in the atmosphere of your church. We're just looking for the way God's gifted you and we're going to try and make you the best you can be at how he's gifted you, the easier the conversation is going to be of I don't think it's community group leadership. I don't think it's this, I don't think it's that. Because we have a culture of hey, trial and error, you know.

[Rich Birch]

Right. That's good. That's so good. I love that and I love. This has been a great kind of look under the hood of this whole multiplication issue. I think a lot of church leaders out there have the desire, they have the like, oh, we man, I would love to be a church that has that kind of vision. But then what are the mechanics underneath of that? How do we actually do that? Super helpful pivoting in this totally. Well, it's a related but different direction. Your church has been involved in a number of revitalizations. You talked about on the top end. You had a facility given to you and this is like a super inappropriate with just a few minutes left curveball to throw in there. What's your shorthand thing for us to learn about that? You know, that we've seen particularly from a multi site point of view. This area has grown hugely in the last 10 years. It was 10 years ago, 5% of new campuses came about because of multiplication revitalization. The most recent study showed it was 40%. I suspect Warren's out talking right now. I suspect the number is even going to be higher. What are the few things that you've learned about, you know, those kinds of conversations and relationships that have allowed it to work for you? And it's been helpful. It's been a joy giving part of the story at Mercy. Talk us through that.

[Spence Shelton]

I'll do so using another point in my lead pastor profile just to have some fun here. So one of the things we look for in a leader is confident, humility, confident in terms of man. They believe God has called them to something. You know, there's a settled confidence there, but the humility to be patient and wait on the Lord and see what he has and to consider others. Philippians, to consider others more important than yourself. Right. This matters a great deal when it comes to this area of revitalization. What a leader needs to know that there's this temptation, and I had it, of why would you not give us your church building things are going well for us and struggling for you. Why would you not do that? Yes, well, it's that there's an unintentional, I'm going to call it a holy ambition that may be a little bit creating some blinders. Okay. Let's use the positive side of that. The negative side would be there's some arrogance there, but the positive would be holy ambition. But what you got to know is man, often these facilities that are housing these churches, the ones that are remaining, a lot of the times there are people that have been there for decades and for a generation or two, and they put blood, sweat, tears and money into where they are. And we had to take the, the approach of slow by my standards, still fast by theirs, slow by my standards. Conversation after conversation that began with, in both of these cases began with the church that needed revitalizing coming to us. We didn't go to them. They came to us and said, hey, we're trying to figure out what's next. We hear you might be able to help. How can you help? And we had to present them. We had to consider that a stewardship of a kingdom resource, not a how do we advance the name of Mercy Church? And so it's happened two different ways for us right now. One is a campus of our church. You know, the we. It took months and months, but they wound up voting to hand us the keys, join our congregation. And we held their hand the whole way through. And it was a really beautiful thing. And it's where our broadcast campus meets today. There's another one that happened where we decided the best thing was for that to be a. Because of the neighborhood it's in, in East Charlotte, to be a church planting incubator where we could plant a church every 18 months to two years. And so that's what we're doing right now. And there's a church plant in there. And that was the best stewardship of that building. And after the conversation with their people, but we kind of. We basically put that with them and say, I had a lot of lunches and dinners that I just. I'm going to tell you, if you want to get into this game and you want to do it in a way that's going to honor the Lord, you got to be ready for the patient hand holding that I would say is honoring a legacy of faith. These folks are taking, in many ways, the greatest step of faith taken in our church has been a couple of other churches handing us keys to something that the Lord was an outpost for the gospel at one point. And now in both of those cases for us and in the others that we're starting to see that are still too soon for me to talk about, it's just, man, now there's an outpouring happening in both of those places. And you got like, man, there's a couple of folks that are from the original congregation of what is now our. Where our broadcast campus now is. And they, they're greeters. They have tears more mornings than they don't on Sunday mornings. It's beautiful, man. I mean, they're all in. They are way bigger fans of Mercy Church than I am. And I'm the lead pastor of the church, you know.

[Rich Birch]

Yes.

[Spence Shelton]

And they just, they are like, they love. Because what they actually are is they. They took a step of faith, a huge step of faith, trusting the Lord. And the Lord has blessed them and renewed a vigor in their ministry. I saw a couple of them, mid-80s, and it was about 11am weekday and they were leaving the church building. I was pulling up, I just put windows down. Hey, what are you doing? It's like, well, we just finished prayer walk in the neighborhood a couple of times and it's getting too hot now. We're going inside and I'm like, these are the people I want, man. Like, just. They're retired and they have chosen. They're gonna spend their day prayer walking. It's like, well, you told us to pray. And I'm like, yeah, thank you for leading the way. You have the time and this is what you do with it. So, man, there are if. If all we see is just, oh, a facility to advance my cause and we miss what has actually been the sweetest thing for our church has been our very young church. Got some grandparents. Yes, it's beautiful, man, Beautiful. So that's just a little bit I've learned from that, from those couple of rounds we've had.

[Rich Birch]

Yeah, that's amazing. And yeah, that underlines. So it's definitely the majority. I think it's three quarters, if I remember. The most recent statistics on these sort of revitalizations are coming about because the joining church is coming to the lead church, not the other way around. And so you have to position yourself in a way that confident humility is a great kind of benchmark to be thinking about friends. How do we hold ourselves in a way that we're here to serve other people, we're here to care for them in a way. And I say to church leaders when we talk about these things, I'm like, you have to handle these relationships well enough so that then they'll tell other people, hey, wow, we loved working with Mercy Hill man there. We love working with Mercy Church. Well, we love working with Mercy Hill too.

[Spence Shelton]

Sure.

[Rich Birch]

We love working with Mercy Hill, Mercy Church. Too many mercies. Wow, what a great, you know, interaction that has been. And wow, that's a life giving thing. And I loved that. That is what ultimately will see more of these happen long term. Not because you did some, you know, too many people have these like, you know, like they use merger and takeover and like this kind of aggressive language which just doesn't help in the conversation at all.

[Spence Shelton]

No, it doesn't help at all. Yeah, that's exactly right. You got to have that humility. And if somebody's sitting there wondering, okay, man, well, how do I, how do I wait on that without I want to go get it, I want to get started. I'd say two or three things to do. If you're looking and you believe your church might be a good church candidate for helping another church revitalize, whether that's being a campus of yours or, or something to that effect. I'd say first, start praying and asking the Lord and that if you're not fasting, then you're not praying yet. So I don't want to hear that you're praying if you're not fasting on this. Secondly, man, this is why networks matter. So I would say whatever your denomination or stream is, whatever, however, you're kind of tied to other churches in your community. If you have no relationships with other churches in your community. And then you want to go and be the revitalizer that's going to come, that's probably going to come across a certain way. So there are a number of years and years and years of meetings that I've gone to, conversations I've sat in in order to genuinely try to say, how can we help? How can we help? Whether that's sending a worship leader to go serve at a church one Sunday morning or helping one church with a building fundy kind of like thing they got to upfit or something, you know, basically I'm trying to be a team player in the kingdom here in our little corner of the world in Charlotte. And then that's going to earn the respect and the trust for when those conversations can happen in the relational network. Those conversations can happen. So I am one who just in my nature, I do not like meetings. I don't like them. They feel like necessary evils and I'm trying to get better about that. But they are actually what I do love and value is trust and relationships. And again, confident, humility. I have to be more about the kingdom than I do about my own church. And a rising tide lifts all boats, you know.

[Rich Birch]

Yeah, that's so good. Well, this has been a great conversation today, Spence. I really appreciate that. And thanks for going with me there with that little, you know, of course, detour at the end. That was fantastic. But anything you'd love to share. Just as we wrap up today's conversation,

[Spence Shelton]

I would say to. I don't know what's spurring this, but something that has helped me so much in my ministry to the leader out there, especially the young leader, but maybe to all of them, you will always overestimate what you can do in five years and you will drastically underestimate what you can do in 20. And maybe a way to say it is you will overestimate what God will do and underestimate what God will do. So this is a little plug of me saying, stay the course, stay the course where you're at. The Lord is going to do a work in honor of your faithfulness to the work. But stay in it, man. Stay in it.

[Rich Birch]

Yeah, that's so good. Just to add to that, I'm doing some research on working on a book on churches that break the 2000 barrier. And one of the interesting telltale signs are senior leaders and senior leadership teams that have been in the same church or the same community for 20 plus years. So going into their third decade, it just takes time you know, it's not there it is. It's not, you know, it's not overnight. Well, I really appreciate this has been a great, a great conversation. Spence, if people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?

[Spence Shelton]

Yeah man, you can go to probably. Social media is the, the day and age that we live in. So Spence Shelton is my social media handle. It's Instagram and and those kind of things. Our church is just Mercy Charlotte and you can go on our website, merciesharlotte.com find everything you need there. We're launching a podcast, Praise God, let's go. You can find all of it though, just through our Instagram handles, which is usually a good first landing point for folks. And however we can help, man, feel free to reach out. Nothing super shiny about what we got going on over here, but we love being in the game for the kingdom. However, we can help.

[Rich Birch]

All the best as you serve in Charlotte. Thanks so much, man.

[Spence Shelton]

Thank you, brother.

[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 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.