Nonprofit Resources
Margin for Mission Podcast S1:E10 – A Life Led by Mission: A Pastor’s Journey of Calling, Growth, and Leadership – Transcript
Ken Tan:
Welcome to Margin for Mission, The CRI CapinCrouse podcast where two friends, Ken and Chris, bring you real talk about creating space for what matters most because when your organization has financial and operational margin, you can focus on your mission with confidence.
Chris Purnell:
We’re professionals who’ve spent years helping churches, higher education institutions, and other mission-focused nonprofit organizations manage their accounting, tax, compliance, and other challenges. We understand the complexities you face and we’re here to make it simpler.
Ken Tan:
In each episode, we’ll dive into practical insights on leadership, operations, and the everyday challenges of running a nonprofit without the jargon.
Chris Purnell:
And we’ll talk about life, too. Family, faith, quite a bit of football, and finding balance in a world that rarely slows down.
Ken Tan:
So whether you’re managing budgets, leading teams, or just trying to keep your mission moving forward, you’re in the right place.
Chris Purnell:
This is Margin for Mission. Let’s get started.
Ken Tan:
Well, welcome back to another episode of Margin for Mission. Hey, Chris. It’s so good to see you again, my friend, and I am super excited to have a good close friend of mine and someone I look forward to just getting to even hear his story even further, but this is a person that is near and dear to my family’s heart, too, as well. Pastor Steve Browning is joining us as well. So hey, Pastor Steve, how are you doing, sir?
Steve Browning:
How’s it going guys? Thanks so much for having me on today. So grateful for you guys, what you’re doing, the content you’re putting out in this podcast. So just honored to be here.
Ken Tan:
Absolutely. Well, let me just put a little preface on who Pastor Steve is. And it’s one of those things where I’ve just been so grateful to have been able to serve at the church that we’ve been able to hold near and dear to our hearts. We call it First City Church now because by God’s grace, we have continued to grow. It is bittersweet for me just because for me, I had recently just moved to Alabama and so being able to look back and just kind of see all that’s been happening at First City has just been so amazing and even more that what God has planned for that. But for Pastor Steve, he wears multiple hats. So I know he’s going to share a little bit himself, but Pastor Steve is the senior pastor for First City Church, also known as First Baptist Alpharetta. He also has another role where he serves as the President of the Georgia Baptist Convention. And so with this, there’s a lot of things that I would say is happening on a daily basis, so it’s never quiet over there, is it Pastor Steve?
Steve Browning:
It’s never quiet, never a dull moment, that’s for sure.
Ken Tan:
Well, I think, especially when it comes to the stories, and this is where for us, we really wanted to make it where our first guest outside of the firm was someone that was, how we say, we look up to from a ministry perspective. I’m so grateful you were the one that was willing to do this. I would say, especially for us at CapinCrouse, a lot of us, and this is coming from the stories we’ve had even in previous episodes, a lot of us came from backgrounds of either being pastor’s kids like myself, missionary’s kids, like some of our colleagues, or those that actually went through seminary or even ordained. And this is where for us, we think about this beyond the numbers. We really don’t like talking about the accounting piece too much. We really do like talking about the mission piece, too. And so, this is where part of it, we’ve heard so many wonderful stories, but we’d love to hear your story, Pastor Steve. So we’d love to hear from you. When did God call you into going to ministry?
Steve Browning:
Yeah. Well, so I’m a very, very, very typical, very normal guy. I grew up in a family that I would say we were kind of on again, off again, our relationship with the church. There would be times that we were very, very consistent over the course of months and years. There would be times we’d fall out of church for an extended period of time, but I heard the gospel when I was a pre-teen and trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And then promptly thereafter, we kind of fell out of church for a couple years. It kind of was in the wilderness wandering. And we landed at the First Baptist Church of Eustis, Florida. And the reason why we landed there is I was a part of the middle school band, not my high point in life, not my high gifting there, but I landed there for a choir performance and a band performance.
And because they’d opened up their facility, my family said, “Well, let’s try it out on a Sunday.” And that was I think eighth grade year and I never left. Just that door opening up, the church opening up its doors to the community. And through that, just developed a relationship with our student pastor. And I’ll just never forget, we were at a summer camp experience in central Florida, Stetson University in Deland, Florida. And I was sitting there in the balcony and I was praying and I said, “Lord, I just want you to know I’m all in.” And I felt like the voice of God spoke to me. And I’ll say this, what is that experience like? It’s not an audible thing. And in some ways, it may be a bit louder than that. And I’d also say, this isn’t a regular occurrence, man. It’s not like, “Yeah, also last Tuesday, the voice of God spoke to me.”
Chris Purnell:
That’s right.
Steve Browning:
It was one of the few times in my life I just really felt the Lord impressed upon me. And I felt like the Lord impressed upon me, “Are you serious about that? Just don’t say those words, ‘Hey, I’m all in,’ but are you serious about that?” And I told the Lord, “Yeah, I’m absolutely all in.” And it was just abundantly clear he was calling me to ministry. There have been times in my life I’ve probably tried to turn and run the other direction from that, had my Jonah moments along the way, but God has been very faithful to draw me back around towards ministry. I know it’s different for different people. For me, it was very much a moment in time that I can look back to. For other people, it is a slow awakening to God’s calling, but I had that definitive moment I know that the Lord called me to do his work and do that vocationally in life. So that was my calling.
Chris Purnell:
That’s cool. That’s cool. I love hearing people’s kind of discernment and calling stories and when they… Sometimes it is really black and white. It’s a strong line of demarcation. This is what I thought I was going to be doing, but then the Lord called me to something radically different. Or in your case, you’re just kind of throwing up your hands and saying, “Lord, I’m willing to do whatever. It’s yours to do with what you want.” But then you have kind of experiences with what I’ll call confirmatory moments. Those moments when that calling, that moment of calling is really solidified and confirmed, whether it’s I taught my first Sunday school class and people seem to respond or preached my first sermon. So could you walk us through some of your either early confirmation moments or moments when you started out, if there are any of those, that’d be wonderful to hear more about.
Steve Browning:
Oh no, absolutely. I think the most confirming and affirming moment was early on. Again, I’m 16 years old. I tell my student pastor, I said, “Hey, I really feel like God’s calling me to ministry.” And he was so incredibly supportive. And then, I told him, I said, “I really feel like I should start preaching. I feel like God’s given me something to say.” And he was like, “All right, well, let’s just slow your roll for just a minute. I mean, I’m not sure we’re going to throw open the microphone here.”
Chris Purnell:
At 16.
Steve Browning:
Yeah, exactly. And so, he said, “Here’s what we’ll do.” We had Wednesday night church and he said, “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll work with you over a few months. You can put together a message and I’ll give you the first 15 minutes and then I’ll come up and I’ll do the last 15 minutes of the message.” And I think that was so that if I had done something heretical, he could clean it up on the back end over there.
Chris Purnell:
That is smart. That is smart.
Steve Browning:
But I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never done this before, so I prepare. And I got to… By the end of my 15 minutes, I was like, “I’m just going to roll right into an invitation. I know we’re at the midpoint of the message. Every head bowed, eye close.” And I walked through the Gospel and, Ken and Chris, I’ll tell you as clearly as I could explained the Gospel, Jesus’ death on the cross, his resurrection for the goodness of our sins. And I just said, “Hey, is there anybody that needs to respond to that?” And there was a girl in the back of the room that raised her hand and said, “I do need to respond to that.”
Ken Tan:
That’s amazing.
Steve Browning:
Man, it was one of those moments where you realize, one, I didn’t do that. That’s something that only God can do, but to get to be a part of Him doing that in her life, I mean, it was very, very transformational, very affirming for me in that moment. Now, I’ll tell you, for me, I get distracted pretty easily. Maybe I’m a little ADHD. So kind of the doubting moments that I’ve had over the journey have been more so about opportunities. I worked at Chick-fil-A through college and seminary, and I remember our operator come and say, “Have you ever thought of being a Chick-fil-A operator?” I was like, “Maybe I should be a Chick-fil-A operator. That’s ministry, too.” Or for a season looking at the public policy and political landscape, well, maybe part of ministry is serving in public service, and that can be. But again, for me, the Lord consistently was so gentle and so gracious to keep on bringing me back and say, “Look, these are other things that you could do, but I’ve called you to be a part of vocational ministry and to do that for me.”
And so, He’s been very, very good to bring me back in when I’ve kind of gotten a little distracted along the way.
Ken Tan:
That’s awesome. And you start thinking about just the way that the Lord utilizes each part and whether it’s a fork in the road or even just a turn in that journey, how you can always look back and just even see how God was there throughout every step. And I think about this as well, just some of the things that over the course of what your journey has been, Pastor Steve, I know majority of those that are senior pastors now did not start out initially as a senior pastor, right? But this is where part of it is still being able to be as a senior pastor now looking back at those early years and learning about leadership and faithfulness and mission, what do you think were some of the things that you feel like even during those points when you first started, you look back and just still hold near and dear to even now in your current role?
Steve Browning:
Yeah. I’ll tell you, mine was not a glamorous start. My first paycheck from a church was literally… The first job I ever got paid to do at a church was to be the night janitor. There was a Christian school. They said, “Hey, we need somebody to come in overnight and to clean it up Monday through Friday, get us ready to go for the next day of school.” And so, I’m working the graveyard shift, mopping floors and sweeping things and vacuuming and getting everything ready for the next day. And then, shortly after that, you’re interning and cutting your teeth and some different things, running copies and stacking chairs and those kinds of things. But the thing that I’ve been blessed to experience though is along the way, God has allowed me to have to serve in a lot of different roles in ministry so that now in the seat that I sit in today, there’s actually not too many jobs on our staff team that I’ve not held or been akin to at some point in time in my life.
And so, it gives you a sense of empathy for what folks on your team are walking through, having to go through. It also gives you hopefully a little bit you can coach on and encourage people with there as well. And one of the things that I think is so formative, and we see this in scripture all the time, is God can put a calling on somebody’s life, but there is no shortcut way to immediately put that person into place. And we’re teaching about David now. David is anointed and then he takes years to get into that place of calling Moses, even Paul, even though he has this dramatic thing. It’s 13 years before he leaves on that first missionary journey. And so, I think sometimes we get into this mindset, “Well, if God’s called me, I need to fast-forward to what the calling needs to be at.”
And I don’t know who’s listening to this right now, but I would just say if God has you in the in between, if you’re not in the job you hope to be in one day, know this, He’s using the position you’re in today to develop you for whatever He intends for you tomorrow. So don’t run past the moment, don’t run past the lesson, learn what God has for you in it because God has something He wants to teach you that He’s going to use for the future. So that’s some of the things that I’ve learned along the way there. One of those big seasons for me was before I moved here, I was in Birmingham, Alabama. I’m serving on a mission staff at our church, Shades Mountain Baptist Church, wonderful church in the Birmingham area. And I sensed the Lord was really calling me to be a lead pastor.
I’d done student ministry for 10 years, loved it, but now sort of on a mission, staff team, local missions, and evangelism, I’m thinking, “I’m ready. I’m ready to go.” And I felt that call. And then for the next two and a half years, I had exactly zero opportunities to go be the lead pastor of a church. I mean, I’m talking about, I can’t even get a church of 12 people looking for bi-vocational… They’re like looking right at, “Well, that guy’s not got enough experience.” “I don’t know what you’re looking for here.” Nobody wants to give me a call, but it was during that season that I asked my lead pastor, Danny Wood, I said, “Would you just sit down? Would you mentor me once a month and just teach me a little bit?” And at such a valuable time, so much purpose in the waiting and the development that went along that. And so, I’m grateful. I’m grateful the Lord doesn’t immediately put us in the seat that maybe we think we want to be and that he develops us along the way.
Chris Purnell:
Man, like solid leadership goal there, Pastor Steve. Well done. This is really fantastic stuff. And honestly, when I think about the moments when I’ve been most formed as a leader, formed as a person who could serve the church, it really is in those waiting moments. There’s this one book that, like many books, sits on my shelf and is waiting to be read, but the title is wonderful. It’s by a guy named Mark Vroegop. Waiting is Never a Waste. Waiting is Never a Waste. And it’s true that the Lord uses those moments of waiting, of sometimes patiently and sometimes impatiently wanting to be somewhere else or doing something else or whatever the case may be. But I’m so grateful that you took that opportunity to say, “Okay, God has me here for a reason. I have this senior pastor. Let him provide me with some leadership principles and some training and some development that’s kind of life on life and nature and walking through that.”
I am curious. So it sounds like you spend a lot of time in church service or parachurch service and that sort of thing. You’ve got some people who are kind of like souring on the church these days. And I just finished a church, or I just finished a book rather by a guy named Paul Edwards called The Reason for Church, where he kind of walks through how people are looking for church replacements. They don’t realize it, but they are. They’re trying to find community and satisfaction and purpose and mission and belonging, which humans are designed to love. That’s how God made us. And I’m curious for you, as a person who has lived in the church world, who has probably seen some really beautiful things in the church, but also some hard things, what keeps you coming back to the church? What keeps you coming back to this institution called the Big C Church and now your Small C Church, which I’m sure we’ll get to in just a few minutes, but tell us a little bit about that. What keeps you coming back?
Steve Browning:
Well, I mean, that’s a great question, Chris. And I just want to acknowledge this. I think part of the reason why people have soured on the church is they’ve gone to church and they’ve had a hard experience and then they’re shocked by it. There’s so many people, I think they go to church and they’re like, “My goodness, I can’t believe that someone said that to me or someone did that to me.” And I’m not talking about things of an abuse manner or anything like that, but just people get their feelings hurt and you talk about church hurt, those kinds of things and they’re shocked by it. But I think part of the reason why they’re shocked by it is they forget, the church is not full of saints. It’s sinners who are just barely redeemed by Jesus. And so, we’re all trying to figure out how to treat each other, love each other, and do well by each other.
Hopefully we’re getting better at time as we do that. But look, being a part of a church at some level and at some point, you’re going to walk through some difficult relationships. You’re going to walk through conflict. You’re going to walk through hardship. And if you know coming into it, that’s going to be a part of it, then you’ll be okay. And if you doubt that that’s part of the church experience, I just challenge you. Go read the New Testament, read 1 Corinthians. My goodness, talk about your church. Go read 1 Corinthians. You will be encouraged about how normal your church is and how dysfunctional their church is, right?
Chris Purnell:
There’s hope for all of us. That’s right.
Steve Browning:
There’s hope for all of us. That’s exactly right. So I think first of all, we have to acknowledge that. We have to acknowledge that people have experienced hard things in church. That’s a part of our church experience. But at the same time, what keeps me coming back to it is that Jesus has promised this is His bride and He’s going to work through it. And look, I did parachurch ministry. I really enjoyed it for a time. And here’s the one thing that I kept on realizing about it. Parachurch ministry doesn’t give me the opportunity to get to know a 97-year-old saint and see the faithfulness of their journey over the last 70 plus years of walking with Jesus. It also doesn’t afford me the opportunity to sit with a couple, like Ken and Brittany, and sit there when they’re dedicating their second, third, fourth… They got so many kids, all these children and to see these babies dedicated and then to partner with them and knowing their children’s name and see them grow spiritually.
The church gives us a unique opportunity to be a part of this beautiful beginning to end of life walk and journey with the Lord. And I also believe if we’re talking about margin for the mission, talking about resource, it is the best way for us to collaborate our resources toward the collective mission. Because what you have at the end of the day, you have a commandments of scripture to be generous to the local church, and then you can use the local church to fuel incredible generosity. Now, you have to have the right financial practices, transparency, clarity. You have to have all of these things to make sure… Ken knows about it. He’s actually been the chairman of our finance committee in our church.
Chris Purnell:
He’s a good pick.
Steve Browning:
But when you put those things… Yeah, it’s like having a million dollar hammer on a five cent nail. We have Kent as the charity and financing committee. But when you have that kind of a commitment and you can utilize your resources and utilize the community, really, really beautiful things happen. And I’ll say this one last thing, Chris, I actually think the church is the best evangelistic tool to reach people. And the reason why I believe that is not only are you reaching people with the hope of the Gospel, but then you put them immediately in a spiritual family who can come alongside them, help them to grow and mature in their faith and become more fully the person God’s created them to be. So it’s just unique. That’s why I keep coming back to the church.
Ken Tan:
Yeah. I think just to add this, Chris, I’m going to try to be as objective, but as you can tell, I’m very, very impartial towards our church there. And just some of the things that has been just so amazing. I think about the core tenets that we have, Chris, and I’m going to say it outside is to know Jesus, discover hope, experience family, and to live sin. And it’s one of those things where just being able to see a church truly do that. And Pastor Steve, you brought up a funny memory of ours when we dedicated our last son. And I remember, because we have four boys, right? And the other family that was dedicating had, I guess, like three girls and one boy that was being dedicated. And I just remember during prayer, the girls are all just so just sweet and everything. And then, my two oldest are in a headlock with each other.
My two-year-old lays down and starts rolling down the pulpit, and Brittany’s just feeling like we are never going to be invited back. But this is where you start seeing, you talked about the spiritual family, right? It was just being able to be a family of just saying, “Hey, we are committed towards this, but we also have a church that’s committed to also helping foster.” And that’s one of the things that I feel has been so important for even our lives too as well. And I think that in itself goes back to the folks there that are committed towards it, even at the church, Pastor Steven. And that’s where I wanted to make sure you get a lot of the credit for of leading a group of folks like that, whether it’s down to the lay folks all the way up to the fellow pastors and fellow directors that are there, too.
And that itself does not happen overnight. And that’s one of the things that I would love to just hear your story on, especially when you first joined First City Alpharetta, especially some of the things that you saw there and some of the things that you were just feeling, “Hey, this is what I feel like will be important for us to do.” What were some of the things that were going through your minds? Because I know for a lot of us, we’re seeing a lot of our churches right now going through transition. A lot of pastors are retiring, and so there are new senior pastors or lead pastors coming in, and they’re probably going to have the same thoughts. And I was just curious what you saw when you first came in and some of the things you were saying, “Hey, we want to keep going with this or we want to focus on that.” Just was curious about what was going through your mind.
Steve Browning:
Well, I appreciate you asking that, Ken, and you’re very kind, but I’ll tell you, man, the Lord has been so very faithful to us here. And our story in coming here is in and of itself, just the Lord working on a set of the circumstances to bring us to a place that I would’ve never imagined would’ve ever allowed us or called me having never been a lead pastor to be here. And one of these days, they’re going to wake up and realize I’m just making it up as we go and they’re going to figure out they can get somebody way better than me. But there were 10 members of the search team and if you have a pastor that listens to this, they’ll be able to relate it to exactly what I’m saying. And if you’re out there and you’re thinking maybe one day you’re going to lead pastor, you probably need to know what I’m about to tell you. This is something important.
It is the only time that you get hired for a role in ministry by people who are not full-time in ministry and in many ways don’t really have a clear understanding of what the role entails or some of the unique things that are facing. They have a perspective, but maybe not the broad perspective. And so, I asked these 10 individuals who are amazing, amazing. In fact, some of them have since joined our team and are serving at high levels here and they’re just incredible people. I asked these 10 individuals and said, “Hey, if you cut our church, what does it bleed?” 10 different individuals, 10 different answers. And part of the reason for that is I got here in 2019, I was the fifth pastor since the year 2000, the 21st pastor overall in our 220 year history. And so, we’d had a lot of different transition. We’d had a lot of different visions. We’d had a lot of different directions on the way.
Ken knows that. Ken had actually been in the church previous to me even being there. And because of that, the church had really not a great sense of who it is or who it should be or who God created it to be. Loved the word, loved the Lord, but just not a clear picture of that. So this isn’t original to me, but we just said, “Okay, well, let’s just start listening a lot.” And so, what we did was we pulled in different groups to our home. We’ve probably had over 300 people to our home in different small groups. So maybe 15 here and 20 there, 30 people here, and they sit in the living room and everybody gets a piece of cake. And then we just ask the same three questions. “What do you love about our church? What do you wish would change about our church? What’s one big opportunity that you see in the future?” And from that, we just started whiteboarding and just kind of drawing out what everybody said. And then, we started drawing big circles around themes that we were seeing.
And after we’d done this for several hundred people, we started seeing four major themes emerge that also intersected with scripture. And they were exactly as Ken said earlier. It was know Jesus, leading people into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Discover hope, get to know Him through His Word, the hope that He has for us. Experienced family, we don’t want just church friends. We want a spiritual family. Live sin, let’s go out on the mission that God has for us outside the walls of church. And we saw those four things come up over and over and over again. And so we decided, okay, this is who we need to be at the DNA level. But I want to be very careful. This is not a decision that I made. It’s a decision we all made together. We listened to one another.
And I think this is part of the reason why some pastors may get in trouble is they get so far into what they think and the vision they have and then never take the time to really see what’s already here, what’s God already doing. The same Holy Spirit that lives in me, lives in the members of the church that know Jesus Christ. And so, what we need to do is we need to make sure that we’re working together to forge this common vision. Now, certainly the pastor’s role is then to take it, scope it, and see, okay, sequentially, where do we go? How do we move forward? What does it look like to execute on this? But at the broadest level of vision, we’ve got to invite people into that process together. And so, we walked through that, we cast out that vision, and then we just repeat it ad nauseum. I mean, for two and a half years through COVID, through everything, we just said it over and over and over and over and over again. We put it on everything.
And to this point, even former church members like Ken can even say these four things, know Jesus, discover hope, experienced family, and live sin. And the other thing is that then that becomes the clear filter for our ministry as well. Hey, look, there’s a lot of things we could be doing, but if it’s not actually helping us to effectively accomplish that, it’s great, but probably not for us. We’re going to stick to those four things and hopefully be as effective as we possibly can at seeing that come to bear for our local community. So I think as you’re thinking about a ministry and the vision for a ministry, I think one, you got to talk to people about it. You got to get their feedback and ownership in it. And then two, you’ve got to spend so much time repeating it that you’re almost sick of it because it’s at that point that it’s beginning to take hold and beginning to root into the life of the church there.
Chris Purnell:
Man, that’s really good. When I was in seminary in one of my leadership classes there, the professor would say this literally every time we got together, “Leadership begins with listening. Leadership begins with listening,” which is kind of counterintuitive for kind of leadery types, right? And you’re supposed to be coming in with the voice and the experience and the word. And to be fair, that’s what you do every Sunday. You’re bringing a 30 to 40 minute message depending on your denomination, how much people can handle before Golden Corral starts to call. So it’s one of those things that’s really important.
Ken Tan:
Jack Barbecue for us. We have to dinner before the church gets there. It’s good. It’s good.
Chris Purnell:
But I was thinking about that, Pastor Steve, when you were talking about your listening journey and seeing what’s already happening. What is the Lord already doing? Because you’re right, we serve a God who is already active. He is present everywhere and His Holy Spirit is embodied by his people. I mean, He indwells us. So I thought that that was really, really healthy and good, but there’s a balance there, right? It sounds like there were some things that needed to get addressed in this church, but also there’s some really good things coming out. And so, being able to balance, okay, I want to draw out what’s good, draw out the gems, but also try to neutralize those things that lead to unhealth, that lead to dysfunction, that lead to getting us off mission. And speaking of balance, I was kind of wondering as a person who’s the chief vision speaker, the chief vision caster, another thing that our professor would say all the time was, “If your people can’t imitate you in the words that you say, then you’re not saying things often enough.”
And I was like, “Man, that kind of makes sense. That kind of makes sense.” So for you, as you’re kind of balancing vision casting, balancing the preaching of the word, balancing the spiritual nurture, the shepherding, those core pastoral tasks, hospital visits, and then those kind of high points and low points, right? Marriages and funerals, how do you balance all of those competing demands on your time… Oh yeah, and still make time for like wife, children, friendships, that kind of stuff?
Steve Browning:
Well, I mean, I’m extremely blessed in that we have an incredible team. We have an incredible team. And I don’t just mean our staff team, although we do have an amazing staff team, but we have incredible lay leaders in our church that are just continuing to help shoulder the burden of leading out in the life of our church. I think part of it where leaders get into trouble and get out of balance is where they think it’s all on them. And I think, “Hey, I’m the only person. I’ve got to carry this whole weight on myself. I’ve got to be here and there and everywhere.” And the truth is administrate at any scale, and by any scale, I mean like beyond 30 people, you’re just not going to be able to wrap your arms around all of it. And so, you’ve got to have people who are willing to shoulder the load that way.
And so, I’ll give you a couple of key examples of what that looks like for us in the life of our church. Sometimes I’ll find out, “Hey, did you know that so-and-so in the church has just had an issue with an emergency illness and was not able to work for this past week, had a financial need that went along with that?” I’m like, “Oh my goodness, well, what do we need to do?” And they’re like, “Oh no, we already took care of it. That group, we already wrapped our arms… We got them groceries, we got it taken care of there. We’ve been kind of taking shifts on making sure yard work has done, different things, or getting the kids to school.” I’m like, “This is amazing. This is incredible.” Or there are other times where you have to have kind of delegated decision making.
When you come to a place where you think, “I’m the only person that can ever make this decision,” you’re probably not in a really healthy place. Like, you as the pastor need to be able to speak into the decision. You may have the final say in the decision, but you got to invite other voices to that decision as well. For example, when we made the decision to go multi-site, that was not a decision I made alone. In fact, it was a decision that for me, I actually thought maybe we should do this a year before we actually did it. I kind of put it out to the leadership team. I said, “Hey guys, I really think that maybe now’s the time to go forward in this.” And I had five men in the church who are not a part of our staff team, five men in the church that I really… We call our church ministry council here. Different traditions, different structures have different groups like that. I put it before them and said, “What do you think?” And they said, “Steve, we think the idea is great. We think the timing is wrong.”
And for me as a leader, now I could get sore on that and think, “Well, who are they to say? I am the chief administrator and pastor of this church,” and just charge ahead. It’s within my authority to do that, but slowing down and saying, “Okay, I think they have some reasons for this. I think I need to listen to that.” Because we slowed down, because we waited, we were in such a healthier place to make that decision. But again, you’ve got to have other people helping you make decisions, carrying the weight of those things. And then, one of the things that we’ve tried to do to endeavor to do in marriage and family is we try and put those things on the calendar first. Even before the church things happen first, the boys’ ball schedule goes on there for different baseball things. I got an oldest is playing golf, got a daughter who’s an actress, got two twins that I’m coaching in baseball right now.
My wife goes on there first. We kind of make it a point. In fact, we did it today. Thursday is when we’re recording this. We do a Thursday lunch date every Thursday, as long as we’re both in town to do it, we try and do that. And so, you just got to have those immovable things for your family to say, “I’m going to absolutely make a commitment to be there as well.” So it takes team, it takes intentionality, it takes calendaring the big rocks first, but I’m certainly no expert in this. And I will say one other thing, it’s easy when you listen to a podcast and you listen to somebody say, “Oh, they got the whole thing figured out. They know. They got the color coded calendar and everything.” Look, balance isn’t art, not a science. You’re going to be in it and then some crazy thing is going to happen two weeks from now. You’re like, “Oh, my best week calendar, man, it’s not working for me anymore.”
Okay, that’s all right. You have to get back into that balance, get back in the art of trying to put it back together again. And as long as you know what you’re trying to do and you’re putting those core things that are most important back in a schedule over and over again, then you can rubber band back to where you need to be in a place of balance and health.
Ken Tan:
I love that. And this is where even just considering that from a timing perspective, too, just the considerations of planning ahead is so important. And even just knowing that now may not be the right time, but in the future, just being prepared, it makes it a whole lot better when you have that type of breathing room and runway. One of the things, Pastor Steve, that Chris and I, we go to a number of executive pastor round tables and a lot of them are interacting with the consideration of a new campus or potentially even acquiring a church because a church had reached out to them about saying, “Hey, we’re about to close our doors,” and things like that.
The church here for First City, when it came to even just considering the new campus now that God has allowed us to open up there, what were some of the tenets there that were essentially saying, “Hey, these are some of the indicators that are saying that we probably need to consider praying about potentially going with a new campus as opposed to just expanding the square footage of our church.” What were some of the things that y’all are thinking or talking through as a part of that?
Steve Browning:
So by no means are we the expert on multi-site. I mean, look, we are a church that was running just shy of 1,000, trying to figure out with the space constraints, how do we go further in reaching our community? Maybe a campus ministry can help us with that. And so, you could have a lot of guests on here that know a lot more, but I’ll share our experience. Probably the best piece of advice that I got along the way is don’t do multi-site until you have to. It’s not a great growth strategy if you don’t have a strong enough reason why you’re going to pursue it because it does cause a lot of new conversations, healthy conversations, but a lot of new conversations you’ve never had to consider before. So like for example, you do VBS, you’ve done VBS since forever and always. You’ve done VBS the last 50 years.
You know how to do VBS, but you’ve never done it in two locations before and you’ve never had to think about resourcing that way. You never did even think about volunteers that way. You never had to think about… And all of a sudden, you’re having a healthy conversation, but it complicates a lot. And so, you got to make sure it’s worth it before you jump into it. Otherwise, your team is going to look at it and say, “Why did we ever do this to begin with?” I’ve actually been a part of a church staff where we had multi-site and it failed. And a large portion of that was because we jumped into it maybe because it was the cool thing to do or maybe the, “Hey, this is the way we’re going to quick grow our church.” And not necessarily because there was an intentional reason, rationale for us to go out this direction.
So for us, here’s the situation. We are a land locked downtown church, four and a half acres, trying to figure out how to put over 900 people on it with 213 parking spaces that we own, it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge every single week. There were times I looked at our church family, and I would even say from the platform on Sunday, “Some of you are creatively parking again, which is illegal. I need you not to be in fire zones.” And so, we did a look at some of the spiritual factors and some of the pragmatic factors. First of all, the spiritual factor, I’m a big believer in experiencing God, the old Bible study. And it says, “Look to see where God is moving and join Him there.” Let me tell you where God was moving. There was a young couple in our church that had started a small group and a community about 25 minutes away called Hickory Flat.
And this young couple had seen this group grow from a couple dozen people to then 50 people to, “My goodness, we can’t put all these people in our house anymore. We’ve got to go rent a clubhouse for it.” And that was Ken and Brittany Tan. And Kent and Brittany had started this group and it was kind of explosive with growth. And then, man, we’re having to start a second group here. So God’s already moving there. And then, we do an analysis and we find out we have 200 people that are driving from this community 25 minutes away into where we’re at. And we believe strongly in church planting. We were planting churches at that time. In fact, we’ve planted two churches in the last couple of years that are autonomous, fully autonomous churches, but we realized we could only send out maybe a couple dozen people, not like we needed 100 plus people to move.
So we said, “Hey, we’re going to keep church planting, but we’re also going to look at starting this other location.” And after a lot of prayer and looking at some of those pragmatic circumstances, we decided we’re going to go to Hickory Flat. We launched with 120 people. We’re about 18 months in. We were averaging about 275. So we’ve reached a lot of people in that community. And praise God, we just closed on land for that location about two weeks ago. And we’ll be looking towards building in the not too distant future there. But we needed it for space reasons. We needed it because we saw spiritual opportunity of a community that needed another vibrant expression of local church. And we saw God moving there already and we said, “Man, this is it. This is the timing for us to go that way.”
It has not been easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it has been 100% worth it. Can I share three mistakes we made along the journey? Three mistakes that I think would be super helpful for anybody who’s thinking about going multi-site for the future. Here’s the first one. We were told, “Hey, this is going to be super easy. You just figure out what the general giving unit you have at Alpharetta and you just think, ‘Well, how many people are going to be there in here?’ Well, just multiply that giving unit by those that’ll be there. Bada bing, bada boom, this thing’s going to pay for itself in 18 months.” That is not true. If it is true, maybe it’s true for you. It hasn’t been true for us. And here’s the reason why. If you are reaching people who are brand new to Christ, it takes a little while for the wallet to get saved, if you understand what I’m saying.
Chris Purnell:
That’s right.
Steve Browning:
So we’re discipling people into a life of generosity, but it doesn’t happen immediately. And so, I would say we probably should have built a bit more of a war chest financially to go after this. We’re doing great, but I wish we would have taken those steps a little bit earlier on. Mistake number two that I think that we made is we hired completely from outside our staff and we have a tremendous team out there. They’re incredible people, but we didn’t send a single staff member that was already a part of our team. And because of that, it became really difficult at the staff level to transfer DNA. We actually probably did a better job at the congregational level than even at the staff level of transferring DNA.
So I would have made sure that we would have had somebody, not just to incubate with us for six months. I would have sent one of our longtime people, just go do something staff-wise at our second location there. And the third thing that I would think that we would probably have done just a bit differently if we had it to do over again, is I think we did it in about six months from announcement to launch. I think we would have taken about nine to 12 and given ourselves just a bit more runway to plan. That goes back into the intentionality piece, just a little bit more time there. There’s no good way to do this on the quick, I guess is what I’m saying. So those are three mistakes we made. Hopefully somebody’s listening to this that is thinking about this, they can learn from those three mistakes and think a little bit more on it.
Ken Tan:
I’ll at least add here, it gives such a greater appreciation behind the scenes of what all it takes. Because Chris, with the new campus, one of the things that a number of us would do, we were called the setup and tear down team. And so at 7:00 AM, we would be out there with the trailers, getting each of the rooms set up because we were in a school building. And I need to preface this about how we went before the city as well. We have just by God’s grace… The school has opened themselves up to us in terms of just being able to collaborate. I believe our church was, again, awarded the best partner for the school itself. And that just kind of just shows just the culture of us wanting to be there for them, not with any other ulterior motives, just saying, “Hey, we want to be there for you. How can we help?”
And with that, they’ve really opened the doors for us just to be able to be a part of that. But it’s just been amazing just seeing some of the new faces during setup, because 7:00 AM on a Sunday morning, it is a labor of love, but it’s one of those things that you get to connect with folks as you’re helping get things set up. And at the end of the day, when you’re tearing down, you almost give kind of a figurative high five with each of the folks and saying, “Hey, we accomplished this as a group. We couldn’t do it without that group.” And it’s just amazing just seeing how many folks are willing to really jump in because a lot of it is volunteer led, too, in terms of that, too. And that’s where I think that’s made it an even deeper experience for us, too.
And so, actually that’s where part of us [inaudible 00:41:38]. I know the whole thing about starting a little bit later, but this is where part of it now is you look back and just see how God has been so good, even in that campus, all the new faces that we get to see as well. And then, that’s just where part of it is just saying… We’ve tried to tell the folks even in the beginning as we do the leadership rallies and all, the folks that come in here, this is coming not because of one person here, it is truly by God allowing us to be able to make an impact as a group. And so, that’s where I always want to emphasize that piece.
Chris Purnell:
Yeah.
Steve Browning:
No doubt.
Chris Purnell:
About being on mission together that brings you [inaudible 00:42:10] together and you have a concrete task where you’re trying to get this church service off the ground and church planting is no joke. It is no joke. It is certainly a heavy lift, sometimes figuratively, but also literally you’re moving things around to make sure that this space looks kind of like a space that’s available for worship. And I love that story, too, about how the school saw the benefit of the church being there and that you guys were voted a good partner. Man, wouldn’t it be beautiful if more and more communities and more and more established institutions like churches or like schools and others would see the church as being such a boon to their community, that would be a great glory to our God and Father for sure.
Steve Browning:
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I tell you, for us, one of the things that is important for us is here, Alpharetta, we have Alpharetta location, Hickory Flat location. It’s important for us in both places there, we want it to be the kind of church that when the community is looking for someone to ask, when the community is looking for, man, we have a need we don’t know how to fill, they would look to us and that we would be on the ready, on the speed dial that way because we’ve already been there, we’ve been consistent, we’ve been serving, and we were always looking for ways to jump in there and to make a greater difference. And one of the things that Ken just said, we have a little byline at our church, it goes with our live set mentality, but it’s for the city. And I know a lot of churches carry that as well.
You cannot lose by being known to be a church that is for the city. I mean, it tells us in Jeremiah 29:7, we always talk about verse 11. Verse 7 though, “Seek the welfare of your city for in its prospering, you too will prosper.” So we’ve seen it to be true here for sure.
Chris Purnell:
Yeah, that’s a good word. A good word.
Ken Tan:
Well, I was going to say here, and this is where part of it is for our church, we may not be the largest church here in the State of Georgia, but I think one of the amazing things here is that just through Pastor Steve and the team’s leadership there, the impact there has continued to go into a different level. And Pastor Steve, I know you’ve had the honor of serving as the President of the Georgia Baptist Convention. Now, I know for a lot of folks that don’t understand the denominational level, they may think that this is another full-time job and it could be in this case, but this is where part of it is… I wanted to hear that story, too, as well Pastor Steve, in terms of the journey towards how that ultimately opened up a door for you and just some of the things that you had to encounter in that level compared to what you’ve been doing at the church as well.
Steve Browning:
Yeah. Well, thank you for asking that. In our tradition, the way that it works, I know that you’ve got different people from different traditions listening to this, but in our tradition, the way that it works, what keeps our cooperation moving forward in terms of church planting and missionaries and seminaries and some of the different initiatives we try and do as a collective of churches, the governance for that is actually really thin. There’s not a lot of overhead that way. And part of what creates that is that we have elected officials that serve voluntarily to help these efforts to move forward. And in different states, they have different offices. In this state, I happen to be able to chance to serve as the President of the Georgia Baptist Convention, not something that I’ve aspire to, not something that I was like, man… It’s not like if you go back and find Seminary Steve Browning back in 2008, like, “Where do you want to be when you grow up?” Georgia Baptist Convention President is probably not on the top of his list, right?
But I’ll tell you though, sometimes you do things because you see there’s a need and you begin looking around and you think, “Wait a minute, am I at the age and stage of life that I’m supposed to be one of the people meeting these needs?” I’m 42 and I kind of look around sometimes and I think to myself, “Well, somebody older is going to take care of that,” and no, I think I’m there. And honestly, there’s sometimes I look around at 42 and I think, “It’s probably better somebody younger to do that.” But no, I mean, God’s put you in that position, that place. So for me, I’ll tell you exactly how this happened. A few friends of mine had asked, “Hey, would you consider serving in this role?” And I’d kind of put them off and I was like, “Ah.” I was not really sure that I’m interested or want to go in that direction. There are far more talented and gifted leaders across our state that could serve in that role and serve in that capacity.
But I was writing a message. I was writing a sermon and it was in a series that we called MOVE. And as I was writing it, it was all about life of Joshua and how Joshua effectively said… Okay, Moses is gone and the Lord was kind of building him up and saying, “Hey, it’s your time, it’s you.” And I’m writing this for our whole church family. And I don’t know how it is for you guys if you find yourself in the zone sometimes as I’m preparing for a message. I’m in the zone and I’m like, “Man, the Lord is speaking, He’s moving. I can’t wait to say this on Sunday.” And I wrote this statement and I was like, “So what is keeping you from doing the thing that God’s put right in front of you right now?” And I hit the return marker and it was like the Lord was just like, “You write that whole message not for Sunday. That one was for you actually.”
And I did. I got down on my knees and I just said, “Okay, Lord, I hear it and I see it and I’m willing and I’m grateful.” We have 3,200 Georgia Baptist churches across our state. Many of them are pastored by really faithful bi-vocational pastors who are the heroes that you’ll never hear their names until you get to heaven. And then, they’re even the guys at the front of the line. I promise you, they’re going to be up there right next to the throne. I’ll be back in the cheap seats, cheering them on there, but there are guys who are day in and day out, and one of the privileges of being in this role is getting a chance to see those guys who are pastoring faithful in small towns and small places and making a huge, amazing, eternity shaping difference in Jesus’ name and getting a chance to help champion those guys and the cooperation that supports their work across the state, I mean, that’s just a beautiful thing.
And then, the other thing that we’re really trying to figure out in our state, the guys who do the statistics, the guys who do all the surveying, I know it may sound shocking, but in the state of Georgia, which some people would say, “You guys are like… You’re the Bible belt. This is it.” There’s 11 million people in our state. Seven million people in our state claim no faith in Christianity whatsoever according to most recent studies that have been done this way. So we are a majority. In fact, there’s not a county in the State of Georgia, not a county in the State of Georgia where there’s greater than 50% church attendance. And I know that sounds shocking to a lot of people. They would think, “Wow, I thought Georgia was kind of where it was happening.” No, I’m telling you that the opportunity is massive here as it helped champion cooperative efforts to reach people with the hope of Jesus Christ.
We can’t force anybody to believe. Everybody has to make their own decision when it comes to Jesus, but we do owe it to those that we share neighborhoods with, ball teams with, communities, we do owe it to them to make sure they at least have the opportunity to hear about Jesus and choose themself whether or not they would choose to believe.
Chris Purnell:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. Well, there’s certainly plenty, plenty of harvest, as the Lord said so many years ago, that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. And from your perch now as the Georgia Baptist Convention President, being able to see those who are serving faithfully and being able to hopefully help resource them, championing them, encouraging them, providing them with what they hopefully can get access to, hopefully is going to carry the mission forward. I’m curious, as a person who is leading his own church, as a leader, leading in your family, leading in the Georgia Baptist Convention space more particularly, what do you feel like you’ve sort of learned about leadership and how leaders show up in different spaces?
And maybe kind of double clicking on the Georgia Baptist Convention, because as many of our listeners know, but many probably don’t know, the way that the Southern Baptist leadership structure and is not super top down, there’s cooperation, there’s friendly cooperation, but they are super autonomous. And so, leadership just looks a little bit different in that space. And so, I’m curious to hear more about your thoughts as you’ve navigated leadership with the Georgia Baptist Convention.
Steve Browning:
Yeah. Ministry leadership is a unique thing anyways, and pastors get this because nobody has to show up. I mean, none of your ushers have to be there, none of your Sunday school teachers have to be there. Nobody has to show up. And in our tradition, nobody has to show up to a meeting. Nobody has to cooperate. Nobody has to be behind an initiative. Everybody’s a fully autonomous church, which means you have to lead relationally. And if you don’t know how to lead relationally, you can’t win. The truth is, I think for a lot of people… Maxwell taught us a generation ago, if you’re coming in with a title and expecting that title to cause people to fall in line and go this direction and take the next hill, they’re just not going to do it. They’re just not going to do it.
But if you build relationships of mutual benefit and care and having others first mentality where you’re trying to constantly serve other people along, then you’ll be able to figure out, “Hey, I can garner maybe some of us to work together on something that benefits all of us, some of us to work together on something that’s going to benefit people who maybe they could do it for themselves.” And you have that leadership mentality, you’re leading through relational influence, then you start to see great exponential impact that can happen in the course of the ministry. The other interesting thing that I’ve learned, Chris, as I’ve just watched it, and it’s been great, sitting in the seat, I feel like I see this more clearly now than I ever heard before on this Georgia Baptist President thing, is there’s no one personality that God uses.
Chris Purnell:
No, amen.
Steve Browning:
There are an incredible amount of personality, diversity in those that God is using incredibly. And so, I’ll pick on a couple of guys in our state. I look at a guy like Jeremy Morton who pastors The First Baptist Church Woodstock. Jeremy is as animated, passionate as you… I mean, I could not even stir up even half of the passion that that guy has, and the Lord is using him dramatically to make an enormous difference. And then I look across over to Johnson Ferry, which is in Marietta, Georgia Church of several thousand there as well, to Clay Smith. And Clay is as brilliant as they come. I mean, I wish I had half of the smarts as when I watch and preach. I’m like, “That guy is the most intelligent guy I think I’ve ever heard preached the word of God.” And they could not be more different, and yet they’re making massive impacts in their communities and their communities get this.
Their communities are only like 30 minutes apart. So you see, there’s not just one kind of person that the Lord uses. And I think some of the trap that we fall into sometimes when we listen to podcasts or other preachers or read different books is we think emulation is the pathway. It really isn’t. It is being the absolute best version of who God uniquely made and called you to be. And if you can do that, you can be successful in the ministry that God has called you to. And I just see that over and over and over again in my interactions at churches of all sizes and of ministries of all types across our state from this position. So just be yourself, be the best version of you.
Chris Purnell:
That’s good.
Ken Tan:
Oh, yeah. I think about that. You mentioned the examples of leadership across the board here as well. And this is where part of it is, I know we’ve highlighted a lot about just some of the great things you’ve been able to see, but at the same time, we know that leadership as well has a level of burden. And unfortunately, I think for us, since we serve so many churches across the country, it’s been heartbreaking to see just some of the things we’ve seen, whether it’s burnout, moral failures, things like that. And so, for you, Pastor Steve, I know you come from the ability to approach this in balancing it, but how do you work in terms of just… What are some things that allow you just to stay centered in terms of your approach? Because when you start seeing some of these other churches where there are some influential leaders, too, as well, it could be very easy to lose that center. So how do you do that to protect yourself, too? What are some of the things that you consider as ways to really help sustain your own spiritual life, too?
Steve Browning:
Yeah. Well, let me just say this first. It’s really easy to answer this question, but it’s really hard to live it out. And I would also say there, before the grace of God, go I. Any of us, given the right circumstances of the right temptation, the right amount of fatigue and not having the right accountabilities can make an absolutely atrocious decision and it can happen that quickly, that quickly. My dad was not an overly spiritual man, but he did tell me, and I’ve never forgotten it when I was a kid, he said it over and over again. He said, “It really only takes about two seconds to ruin your life forever.” And I think about that all the time. For me, one of the things that keeps me very, very centered is my own personal time with the Lord. I mean, it’s the non-negotiable of every day. I have to be in the Word. I have to in prayer.
And I used to think I had to do that because that’s just what good Christians do and good pastors do. And I need to be able to say that I am so that other people do it and that kind of thing. But what I’ve learned as I’ve gone and gotten a little bit older in this and done this for a little bit longer, what I’ve learned is I can’t do this if God’s not speaking to me. I can’t go forward in vision and decision. I can’t carry these decisions if he’s not speaking to me. It is a necessity of each and every day. And so, it’s the non-negotiable of every day for me. I’ve got to be with God. I’ve got to spend that time with the Lord. The other thing that has been the non-negotiable for me is I am going to have a great marriage. I’m going to have a great marriage. And not just because I love my wife. I’m head over heels with my wife. We’re celebrating 20 years this year. Her name is Beth.
Chris Purnell:
Praise God.
Steve Browning:
And she’s, I mean, my very best friend in the whole wide world. We talk every single day at length, but I’m going to have a great marriage in my life. We’re going to invest the time. We’re going to talk daily. We’re going to date weekly. We’re going to get away at least annually. And that’s been something that someone told us years ago. We’ve made our commitment to do that. And I’m also going to be accountable to my wife. And this is the thing. I mean, a lot of guys are in accountability groups with other guys, and that’s great, and that’s important. Let me tell you what, my wife has every password I have. She could pick up my phone right now and she could go into all social media accounts. She could look at all history. She could look at my email. I mean, she could see everything. She sees everything. And to be honest with you, she doesn’t ask all that often, but just the fact that I know she could gives me the opportunity of knowing that I have a very strong accountability to my wife.
And I’m going to make sure that… Also, we’ve seen a lot of leaders fall, not necessarily in moral failure, but if we’re just honest, we’ve seen a lot of abuse of power recently that can really take hold. A lot of podcasts have been spread on that. So you got to have the right accountability structures within your church and you got to respect them. So the three that I have is I have a pastoral leadership team. Nothing says that I have to have that, but I’ve got a group of guys that I sit with every major decision we make in the life of the church, they’re going to speak into it, our lead team. And then, in addition to that, we have an HR team and I don’t set my compensation. They’re going to set the compensation. They’re going to hold me to a standard of leadership in the way I treat the rest of the staff and I’m going to submit myself to them.
And we have a finance team that’s going to make sure that they can review everything, the financial plan and really any transaction they want to, including transactions that I make as well. And knowing that you have that transparency, the accountability within your leadership structures, within your family structure, and before God as well. It’s not to say you couldn’t fall, but it becomes a lot harder to fall when you’ve put yourself at the mercy of a lot of those things there. And is it most expedient? No, it’s not the most expedient to do, but expedience isn’t the goal. It’s faithfulness.
Chris Purnell:
Faithfulness.
Steve Browning:
And so, we have to make sure we keep those right structures in place for faithfulness’ sake.
Ken Tan:
Absolutely.
Chris Purnell:
Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. And it’s an acknowledgement that we are all people that are subject to temptation, subject to failure, subject to your dad’s point, that two seconds, that’s all it takes to ruin your life and being able to humbly submit yourself to those structures is so key for leaders. I’m curious, as you’re kind of thinking through your own pastoral journey, interacting with lots of pastors around the state and trying to encourage them, and as we kind of get to close to a closing point on this particular podcast, which by the way, this has been phenomenal. And I feel like I’ve been incredibly blessed by the conversation. What sorts of things would you tell leaders as far as cultivating margin, cultivating healthy rhythms of your own personal discipleship, your own personal times with the Lord and family and all that kind of stuff? What are some final remarks that you would give to the listeners and pastors that might be listening, or just leaders in general?
Steve Browning:
Well, this is where I’m going to out myself and say, I don’t want to be a hypocrite here and talk about, I just have all this margin. I just really cracked the code on that. I probably could always do better at this. But I would say this, I think that there’s a really… We talked about balance earlier, and I’ll say it again here. Balance is really important to this because I think what happens is, especially with a new workforce that’s moving in, there’s a high prize of rest and that’s important. We have to rest. But we probably have diminished a bit of the idea of working extremely hard toward the goal and the mission. Then, there’s probably people a little bit more cut, like I would be cut with high work, but very little rest and you’re not really paying attention to that.
Chris Purnell:
Sure.
Steve Browning:
And where’s the right way? Where’s the right rhythm? How do you do the right things? Where does that meet at? I think scripture’s already given it to us. I think it is the idea of trying to have a Sabbath. You’re not trying to rest seven days a week. You’re not trying to rest… I’ve got to have this many hours. It’s like the Lord says, “Hey, you need a day. You need a day that you kind of turn it off, you need to stop and do a refuel and you need to pay attention to that. You need hours of sleep and all those things, but if you can at least have the day.” And so, one of the things that I’ve strived to do, I’m not perfect at this, but one of the things that I have strived to do is I can’t do that on Sunday. Sundays is somewhat of a work day for us.
And I know a lot of people relate to that. But for me, I really try. Beth and I both try to be at a place where Friday is a day. It’s a day for us just to turn it off, to put off the cell phones, the emails, all those kinds of things, not try and schedule 1,001 meetings. And, of course, occasionally there’ll be funerals and weddings or whatever else that pop up that way. But so far as we’re able to, we try and keep Friday as the day that we get to be together and the day that I try and have a day that I’d at least sleep in one day a week and try and do the things that are kind of filling and refilling to our cup there. And having that has been really centering and has helped me go a little further in the journey there as well. So yeah, I think you got to have at least a day try and practice Sabbath. So, yeah.
Chris Purnell:
Amen.
Ken Tan:
I love it. Well, Pastor Steve, we are so glad and grateful that you were able to join us today. And our hope is that this episode really does encourage a lot of our church leaders who are listening in because again, a lot of times whenever these situations comes up, it comes from a feeling of isolation and not being able to see that other folks have been through it and know how to walk through, knowing that none of us are perfect, but that as long as we help each other, it really does help us for this mission. So thank you again, Pastor Steve, for taking your time, too, to join us as well today.
Steve Browning:
No, absolutely. And thank you, Ken and Chris. Thank you guys for putting out great content that supports not just the work of pastors like me, but so many others and so many other fields. Thank you, thank you, thank you guys for helping us to be thoughtful about this. And thanks for letting me come on and just share a little bit today.
†This is not a CPA firm.
*Assurance, attest, and audit services provided by Capin Crouse, LLC
“Carr, Riggs & Ingram” and “CRI” are the brand names under which Carr, Riggs & Ingram, L.L.C.* (“CRI CPA”), CRI Advisors, LLC† (“CRI Advisors” or “Advisors”), and Capin Crouse, LLC* (“Capin Crouse CPA”), and CRI Capin Crouse Advisors, LLC† (“Capin Crouse Advisors”) provide professional services. CRI CPA*, Capin Crouse CPA*, CRI Advisors†, Capin Crouse Advisors†, Carr, Riggs & Ingram Capital, LLC and their respective subsidiaries operate as an alternative practice structure in accordance with the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct and applicable law, regulations and professional standards. CRI CPA* and Capin Crouse CPA* are licensed independent certified public accounting (“CPA”) firms that separately provide attest services, as well as additional ancillary services, to their clients. CRI CPA* and Capin Crouse CPA* are independently-owned CPA firms that provide attestation services separate from one another. CRI Advisors† and Capin Crouse Advisors† provide tax and business consulting services to its clients. CRI Advisors† and its subsidiaries, including Capin Crouse Advisors†, are not licensed CPA firms and will not provide any attest services. The entities falling under the Carr, Riggs & Ingram or CRI brand are independently owned and are not responsible or liable for the services and/or products provided, or engaged to be provided, by any other entity under the Carr, Riggs & Ingram or CRI brand. Our use of the terms “CRI,” “we,” “our,” “us,” and terms of similar import, denote the alternative practice structure conducted by CRI CPA*, Capin Crouse CPA*, Capin Crouse Advisors†, and CRI Advisors†, as appropriate.