Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: And if the body of Christ had a biblical lens of engagement as they are interacting with the world, as they're doing their job as government officials, as as they are doing their job as bank tellers and as clerks and as nurses, and they had that biblical framework, it and how they viewed the world, it wouldn't be just your voice or my voice that's contributing to the conversation.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Welcome back to Code Red. My name is Zach Terry and I am your host. On this episode, we are honored to have Chris Reynolds. He is the associational mission strategist for the family of churches that we call the Northeast Florida Baptist Association. In this episode, we're talking all things local. How can local churches work together and collaborate to expand God's kingdom, specifically through church planting? Welcome to this episode of Code Red.
Chris Reynolds, welcome to the Code Red studio.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: It's good to be here. Thanks so much for the invite.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Well, we've been wanting to bring you in for a while and kind of pick your brain.
You came in. How long have you been on the team now at Northeast Florida Baptist Association?
[00:01:33] Speaker A: So this April will be three years. Okay. Yeah. That didn't actually become official until I think June, but it'll be this April was when it was pretty much solidified that I was going to be coming here.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: And you were following a long tenured, he's probably gone by several different titles, David Drake over the years. And so you came in, you had a fresh approach.
You did things very differently than not just David, but other doms, Director of missions locally. We'll unpack what that means.
And quite honestly, early on, I didn't know that our team would accept a different approach.
But not only have they, but you're deeply loved by the pastors and the people of this association and it seems like it's being fruitful. Has that been your read on it?
[00:02:24] Speaker A: That's been my read on it. And I think it helps. One did some, some of this work prior to, you know, stepping into this role.
I was mentored by an associational guy for about seven years while I was in Columbia, South Carolina. And then I also worked for a national consulting agencies agency that had a contract with the North American Mission Board where we work with associations across the country from, you know, southeast Florida all the way up to Washington state there in Seattle, in that region, working with associational leaders. And so I had an opportunity to kind of see what works across the board, but then also have some tools in the bag to say here's how you revamp an association and help with Alignment and thinking towards bringing missional vitality to churches and helping churches accelerate the missional vitality that already exists there. And so stepping in it kind of helped with that.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: So our congregation and a lot of our viewers are people at First Fernandina. And the majority of the people in our congregation are not native Southern Baptist.
They're probably 20, 25% grew up in a Baptist or Southern Baptist context.
And so when we talk about associations, states, national conventions, they don't really have a framework for that. And they import what they know. Many of our people are Catholic or race Catholic, and so they.
That Roman Catholic perspective into what we're doing. And, you know, we're always explaining that that's not. We're the opposite of that, really. But from your perspective, explain to us what your role is and how this. This. How local associations function around our country.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Yeah, so one of the things that is oftentimes confusing from those that aren't of our tribe and even those of our tribe, I found, is that they think there's some sort of authority that exists in my office, that exists in my role. Like, you know, from a hierarchical standpoint, I literally have no control over anything that takes place in any of our churches at any sort or kind.
And so it's one of those things that it's highly relational, it's highly influential, and it's about really connecting resources together. I function really as a strategic outsider, working with pastors and church leaders to sort of come in from the outside and observe how it is that God is at work or opportunities or gaps that may exist and sort of function as a consultant of some kind, that role has evolved over the years.
Back in the 1960s, the role of associational leader looked dramatically different. You were really a resource hub from a standpoint of what is out there, what exists. Because if you went into a church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or you went to a church in Southern California, and it was a Southern Baptist church, the likelihood is it was built with a very similar architecture. It had the same programs that had the same resources. They were singing the same songs, and the same type of people were attending those churches.
You move forward to 1972, you see this emergence of the larger churches and even the megachurches, and they continue to grow as a result of that. Churches became more dynamic in their functionality. They became more dynamic in how they approach doing ministry. They became widely diverse. Add in the Internet in the late 90s, early 2000s, and now it's all over the map. And so the role of the dominant or associational missionary as it was before.
That role has shifted or needed to shift in order to continue to bring the value to those individual churches that was necessary.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: And you. How many. How many Southern Baptist congregations make up and you've currently rebranded, So I may get this fouled up occasionally, but I think of it as the Northeast Florida Baptist Association Family of Churches is what you're kind of rebranding as, which is, I think, a great move.
But our association here, how many churches approximately are in the group?
[00:06:43] Speaker A: We have roughly 40 churches that are a part of it. As family churches, we do have the opportunity for partner churches. Now, these are churches that are in alignment around belief and behavior on core doctrines, but they're not family. They're not Baptist in nature.
They may be like Redeemer Community Church, or there's other churches in the area that they have very, like, faith, and they just don't have that connection. And so it kind of provides them that space.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: One of the things I've appreciated about your time here is, I mean, everybody has a particular preference when it comes to churches, right? You know, if we could just build it out.
I think one of the things that surprise congregants about the pastor is we don't get everything that we prefer in styles of worship or whatever it might be.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: That's surprising to me.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I had a guy ask me this week. They're like, yeah, this particular song, it's not my favorite, and I don't know why we do it. And I said, well, I've never heard my favorite song exactly. But it's not about that. You know, we all have to kind of surrender those things. But so there's different approaches to how we express congregational worship. And I'm not sure what yours is, and I think that's a good thing. It's almost like being nonpartisan in a sense. But when you came in, obviously everybody's got opinions about these things.
But you have. Even in a fairly congruent, culturally similar area like northeast Florida, you've got a pretty wide expression of different types of Southern Baptist churches. So how do you think of that?
And I'm not asking you for a preference. I'm asking you more, like, what lanes do you put those in?
Whether it's a smaller church or a larger church, whether it's a more contemporary church, more traditional church. How do you identify all those differences?
[00:08:51] Speaker A: So the way that I do it is actually very intentional. So when I'm thinking in terms of a church, I'm not necessarily thinking in terms of Size culture. Now size culture is a factor because the likelihood is as the first Fernandina or first Callahan or Mercy Hill, you as leaders are going to have more in common with a different denominational church as far as your governance and structure and leadership pressures that with a church that's of a different denomination.
But it's similar size culture than you would a smaller solving for. Yeah.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Whether it's parking or you know, multi services, whatever it might be.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: And so you wouldn't be sharpened being in those spaces. Right. And so yeah, science has an aspect of it, but I'm also thinking in terms of missional vitality. The reason why I'm able to remain neutral is because whenever I'm describing churches, the churches are the individuals that make up the body of Christ. What's important is to understand that each one of those churches is a congregational expression, meaning that they are congregation in a very unique expression. They have God's unique disciple making vision for their church. They have a unique DNA and unique makeup. And so understanding that our God is not a, you know, well, this is the way that you need to do church. It's not a cookie cutter approach.
I know that each congregational expression is going to be different. The way a Hispanic speaking church is going to be entirely different than an Americanized church or you know, even a Congolese church or whatever it may be. There's different ways in which they engage in worship.
So you have those different congregational expressions. But the one thing that stays constant is their missional vitality and vibrancy. And so I actually organize them on a scale. And that's one of the things that I did when I got here. Fortunately, my background of knowing this area, I had a pretty good understanding of where they fell on that scale. And it ranges from soaring to strong, to stuck, to stumbling to spiritless.
And looking at that, I know the type of value that from an associational standpoint I can bring and they're going to be more open to whenever I engage in conversations with them.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: When you look at, obviously there's stylistic differences, all these things. When you look at the different churches, how wide of a spectrum are the more serious differences, like doctrinal differences? I'm assuming all of our churches hold to a core Baptist faith and message, but within those parameters, like for example, we would say it's okay on certain issues. If even people in the same household differ, we won't have room for that disagreement.
Do you perceive that differences within the churches in our association are doctrinal at all or more methodological?
[00:11:57] Speaker A: How do you perceive that the differences are more methodological? Based on my observations doctrinally, a lot of the times they use different words to describe the same thing and they end up building these in the best sense of the word. They build these altars around those type of words. And that's the words that they use to describe the thing that. What should they're describing, whether it be discipleship or family ministry or multiplication or they, they are talking about similar things, but they're using different words to talk about it. And even the use of different words can cause disagreement in the sense of, well, we don't have alignment here. Well, have you ever had a conversation with him or have you ever had a conversation with him or that leadership team? Oh, no, you haven't? Well, if you do, what you'll find is that you're articulating the same thing, you're just saying it differently, which is where having that conversation is important.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Why do you think that is?
I've observed that as well. And I don't know if it's a rhythm of life issue.
We live in a social media context a lot of times. And so I will see a pastor post something that I think he's talking about, maybe something we're doing, maybe how we do our multi campus expressions or whatever.
And so I'll see that and I'll think, well, I've never had a conversation about it. Why do you think that is? That we're not sitting down over coffee and talking to one another more frequently.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: So I think it's a larger cultural conversation. I think it's part of a larger narrative that takes place. And I think that in the world of social media and the Internet, we've done very well at being connected online, but not actually in community with one another, unless we're in a very similar framework as far as doctrine goes, or even in close proximity.
And so I think another contributing factor to that is, is I'm trying to think now.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: I think sometimes there's a fear that a disagreement is more hostile than it really is.
I think it's. I was reading a biography on Lincoln in his early days, before he was president.
They had all across America what was called Lyceums and they would come together and they would debate issues and it was a great way for young men to kind of develop their perspectives and their debating skills, all those things. And so he would participate in these lyceums and the Lincoln Douglas debates really kind of came out of those conversations. But sometimes I wonder if we take all of that onto social media, rather than sitting down in a room where we're going to be more cordial to one another and honestly saying, it's okay, you're not sinning by disagreeing, but I would like to hear your perspective on it, and let's go back and forth, and maybe we both change a little bit by the end of the conversation.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: I heard a podcast the other day, two individuals speaking, and they were talking about that, and they were making the argument they feel like more people need to sit down and talk about what they disagree on so that they can still come back to the things that they do agree on and work in partnership with one another. It wasn't a Christian podcast. There's two secular people discussing this particular topic. And I think in the world in which we live, that's changed. So it's a part of the broader narrative that's taking place culturally.
However, it's also extremely present in. In our region.
I know you have been here for seven years, eight years now.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: It's almost nine.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Okay. Wow.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: In July.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. And so one of the things that was different about this region was we were highly siloed as a bunch of churches. There was a lot of competition between churches.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: And do you have any idea where that came from?
[00:16:19] Speaker A: I think it had to do with unhealthiness of the churches themselves.
I think in large part, it had to do with their unhealthiness.
We had a high turnover rate whenever it came to pastors, and therefore, we had more segmented churches. We had deacon bodies that were running things as deacon boards from a structural standpoint. And so I think that that was a contributing factor because there wasn't that constant leadership, and therefore there wasn't that constant trust, and therefore it became a. Well, if we do something with the church down the street, they may take some of our people.
That's began to change because pastors like you, but also pastors in Hilliard, in Callahan, in Yulee, in North Jacksonville, they've stayed, they've. They've come in, they've plugged in, and they've committed to being present and active. And I think that's helping with the shift and the change.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: You're right. There have been longer tenures since I've been here. Several of the leading churches, especially, have maintained the same leadership.
And that's unusual, now that you mention it, but that's refreshing, and I do think that can lead toward a better future.
I had a request this week. Not this week, a couple of weeks ago, from one of our connections with Florida Family Voice. And they were asking, can you recommend five pastors to go to Tallahassee to meet with some of the officials there and learn about things that matter to us as Southern Baptists?
And my first thought was, okay, they're wanting to get the most, the largest churches in Northeast Florida, and they would include Jacksonville in that.
But then I thought, they know who those people are, so they know Heath Lambert or HB or whoever over there.
So I said, this is a good opportunity to bring some of our brothers from this association into the mix. And so everybody that I turned into them were in our Northeast Florida association.
And, you know, it's just. I think that those kind of things can help us work together and see that our goals are big enough that it requires all of our churches to kind of come together and work together. You know, I think it would be. I'm perceiving, and I may be totally wrong with this, but I would perceive that, you know, your responsibilities.
It's larger than Nassau County. How many counties do you cover?
[00:19:00] Speaker A: So we have Nassau county, but then we also have part of Duval, and then we have one church that's in southeast Georgia that's a part of the association as well.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: So if we're, if we're talking, if we're going to jump on X, I would imagine most of the conversations are going to be around national issues, whether it's national SBC issues, politics, whatever it may be.
So I would imagine that part of the challenge for someone like you is to bring that conversation more local, where we probably have more alignment and agreements than we would when we're talking about something that's not even happening in our state.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Right, right. And that's where I've had this conversation before with others.
The difficulty, whenever it comes from a national standpoint, is we talk about cooperation. We have national leaders that push. We have the Cooperative Program, where we all send resources to the state convention. They take a portion of their resource, what they've received, and then it goes to the national. Unless the church is simply sending it through the annual offering.
We talk about that national cooperation with the Cooperative Program.
However, as. As we've seen, we've observed, our national cooperation is beginning to shake. As far as what that looks like, every single year, it seems like there's more and more around. Hey, we need to remember that, you know, the national offering is going towards.
Towards these efforts. It's going to helping plant churches, helping do missionary work here in the United States, helping to do this and all very, very important things, necessary things.
But the problem is we are a grassroots movement. As Southern Baptists, we started as individual churches that chose one to be in a family of churches. And that's the reason why I use the term. By the way, most people say association. What does that mean?
It means family of churches. I'm not the association.
Each of the churches that choose to be in partnership with one another, they are the association. Together they comprise the association.
I am simply a glorified consultant that is able to become a strategic outsider to work with them. But from a national standpoint, in order for us to have more stable cooperation, we have to have more local collaboration because we are grassroots. Because if we don't have that on a local level, what ends up happening is some of the things that we're starting to see on a national level. Because we want to have conversations about the bigger issues rather than focusing on, hey, our context matters. And as Southern Baptist, we have a kingdom calling in this context as a congregational expression. And there's plenty of work to be done in this area. In fact, we're well on our way to becoming an under churched region if something doesn't change in the next 10 to 15 years.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: I totally, absolutely agree, fervently.
I believe I've said it often to our staff and to other pastors that I've spoken with that the things that we're concerned about, and it's kind of sexier to talk about the things on the national scene.
We're going to lose our freedoms or have our freedoms or express our freedoms locally.
So if a pastor is jailed for preaching the gospel, God forbid, at some point in northeast Florida, it's going to be the sheriff that's going to arrest that person, most likely.
And so we don't talk a lot about local issues, local elections, that sort of thing, because it's just not that. It's just not that sexy to talk about, right? But that's really where the battle is won or lost.
I would ask what are the things in the local region that we can and should be collaborating on?
What are the specifics where we can come together, hammer out the issues and speak as one?
[00:23:10] Speaker A: I mentioned being an under church region, that is a significant issue. So over the past 20 years, well, 25 years. Over the past 25 years, our region, just for Nassau county alone, has grown exponentially. Gone from like 70,000 at one point 25 years ago to over like 110,000 at this point in Nassau County. In the next 15, 20 years is expected to grow to about 50,000 more in this region.
Why is all that important? Well, we've only had one actual church plant until First Baptist Central Nassau started a campus. The other church start that we had came from a church split.
And so that increase in population.
But among our holding to the growth. Right.
Among our Southern Baptists who talk about church planting and church starts and all that, in our region, it's been next to nothing.
And that's a significant issue because right now we're about one church. And this is using the broadest terms of evangelical.
In Nassau county, We have about one church for every 1,333 people.
If the trend continues over the next 10 to 15 years or even 20 years, and we don't plant new congregational expressions, it'll be one church for every 2,000 people.
Therefore, there's space for us to have alignment and conversation.
But the problem is we've been so siloed trying to do our own thing as individual churches that we haven't worked together in that regard.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: How many churches would you, from your perspective, do we need to plant in the next five to 10 years?
[00:25:08] Speaker A: At minimum, probably 20 churches.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Is there a region of the county where they're more needed or.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So west of.
Yeah, west of 95, having down A1A, there's huge development plans. Huge development plans, housing, markets, all of that kind of stuff.
No plans for a church in that region. None whatsoever. If you go down, I think it's 108. Even on 108.
I brought it up on the GIS.
Their Walmart has purchased a plot of land down 108, a massive plot of land. They purchased it like 10 or 15 years ago.
There's nothing down there right now of any sort of significance. What's Walmart doing? They're planning, they're getting ready for when people move that direction. Why doesn't the church function that way? Why don't we as a family of churches function that way? Because the reality is we could fill up every single sanctuary three times over here in Nassau county and still struggle to actually have space where people can come and be equipped with the good news of the gospel.
And that's disturbing to me. So that, to me is a pressing thing for us.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that's something we could align on and work together on, even though we might see some individual issues a little differently.
When I think through what we've dealt with in starting a new campus in central Nassau, which you and the association were very gracious to us in that, letting us plant in the building, ultimately we Bought the property around it and the associational building.
But that issue, I'll tell you a good example of it, we're right on Highway 17.
And the legislative issues, hurdles that we had to cross in order to move that forward were massive.
And we had to do it quickly to beat the is it timber to tide, timber to tides development, which was going to change the architecture of everything that's built out there and would probably nearly double our cost, even though it will be one of the nicest buildings on 17 when it goes up.
So we hustled through that.
We did everything we could. We got it approved.
And I sat down with the county manager just a couple of weeks ago and was talking through what we're doing, and he was totally unaware of what we're doing on 17.
And he said, well, have you gone through the process of getting that approved? And I said, we laid a foundation this week.
Have you driven by there?
[00:27:55] Speaker A: The.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: The pines are down.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: We're.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: We're. We're moving.
And of course, we had done our due diligence. It just hadn't got to his level yet.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: But there are, as I said earlier, the. The challenges that we're facing are local challenges. They are, you know, it doesn't matter who the president is, you know, for us, planting churches.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: So I find we've. We've had to engage locally, we've had to engage in county, city, because our campus is covering both.
The island campus is partially in city district, partly in county.
So it depends on the day of the week who we're having to cooperate with and what we're having to navigate.
But I found it incredibly helpful that if they know we will engage, they treat us radically different.
But our churches have a reputation of. Not of going silent. There was a liquor referendum back, I don't know, probably five, ten years before I got here.
And I've talked to Mike Mullins, who was the county attorney at the time, and he said that was a day when the county was wanting to expand liquor sales and the churches came together and they were of one accord. They didn't want expanded, didn't see it necessarily as. Didn't agree that it was a sin under all circumstances. But they thought, yeah, if we can curb the expansion of, it's probably best for everybody.
And one pastor came in, spoke up, and he wanted to open the floodgates. Was not a Southern Baptist guy, but he had a lot of influence.
And as a result, many of the prohibitions about selling liquor near churches were relaxed in our county.
So those Things Now I'll show you how it matters. When wildlife went in, we go over to where the. The Mexican cantina is.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I can't say the name.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: I can't remember that I'm talking about.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: I do. So it starts with an A, I think.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Yeah, so. So before we approached you guys about planting in the associational building, we wanted to be in that storefront. We thought, that's a great location, great traffic.
And the problem was we couldn't get cooperation from the county officials and the wildlife development people to put a church there.
And why it's going to hurt liquor cells. And they've already gotten that approved. So these things matter. They matter for the expansion of the kingdom. They matter for church plants more than they ever have. You know, we could go up right today and acquire a campus with five acres and what was it? It's close to Douglas, Georgia. We could do that and we could plant or do a campus up there for about 120,000 fraction. Yep.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Significant.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: We could start that probably within a month if we had the right staffing for it.
That's very doable. Very doable. In Nassau county, it's difficult to do it for under a million.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So what I would say is that. And I don't know if it's cultural, I don't know if it's just a systemic issue.
The church in large part has become very reactionary.
We don't speak up until there's a problem.
We tend to not be proactive. And when I say the church, I'm not talking about the pastors. Here's the reality.
Pastors do a whole lot of different things, and a lot of the times they're getting into RAM issues. They only have so much RAM and mental energy to be able to contribute towards certain things. And then if you add in various fires and people dynamics that take place, that in and of itself takes up mental energy and it puts a strain. And therefore even to think about engaging in local politics or, you know, getting to know your county commissioners or connecting with them, that's a struggle.
Their church members are oftentimes in the room. I just left one just a little while ago. I saw so many church members from a variety of different churches that are in the room. However, the pastors, not so much, and it's not anything against them, but we're reactioning. So a problem comes up and it's, oh, we need to address this. But the same has come whenever it comes to church planting, comes to our national efforts. Whenever it comes to church planting, we do need more intentionality towards engagement. That's one of the reasons why I'm starting to get more involved with our local community, our leaders, and trying to engage whenever it comes to that side of things.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: I was glad to see that today.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Well, and my desire is to be able to make those connections, to begin to develop relationships, because we do need a broader voice and someone that can be there to say, hey, have you considered this?
Whenever it comes to churches in partnership with one another, if we want to see those churches planted that need to be planted, in order for us to be able to maintain gospel reach to those that God is bringing to this region, there has to be partnership. People subcontract the work of ministry whenever it comes to churches. Oftentimes that's what happens. The congregation subcontracts the work of ministry out to the pastors and the staff.
Oh. That's why we pay them to do this. Your primary calling as a pastor. Absolutely. Preach the word, but Ephesians 4, equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. The work of the ministry doesn't just take place in the four walls of the church.
Ministry is what you, as the church are doing in the places that you live, work, and play.
If churches stop subcontracting the work of ministry out and begin to see themselves as the church sent into the world to do ministry, it would change the dynamics, because now they're going to be engaging those meetings, engaging in politics, because they understand the lens is not. I'm a Christian and a business owner. It's a. I'm a Christian business owner, and I'm here ultimately, yes. For helping to strengthen whatever it is that I'm doing, but also with a kingdom lens in mind.
And that changes the dynamic that it takes.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: It totally does. Yeah. Keller used to say we, as a Christian, we don't. We don't have the luxury of a single bottom line.
We've got to manage multiple bottom lines.
One of the things that. I'm saying this not because you don't know it. I'm saying this because of the people watching. That will help understand the thinking behind some of the things that we've done as we've engaged locally and we've seen that there are hurdles. I'm like any other pastor. My primary time is given to sermon prep and then distribution.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: It's primarily what I do.
Then when it comes to civic engagement, we've appointed a gentleman that you know, Jerry Greason. Yeah. Who's on your stewardship team for the treasurer Right.
Jerry is our civic engagement director.
So he's the person who says, zach, here's who you need to have lunch with. Here's who you need to. Need to get to know.
And when we do a serve day, which we do every year, we'll take one, sometimes a couple times a year, we'll take a Saturday and mobilize hundreds of volunteers, put budget behind it, bring them together just to serve the community.
And so we reach out to Taco Pope, we reach out to different people in the city and say, what are the priorities, projects? We don't want any, you know, strings attached. We're not. We're not wanting recognition for this, but we're here to serve our community. How. How can you mobilize that? What could you use us for? So that might be, you know, cleaning up the. The dugouts in a baseball field or whatever it might be, you know, but we. We want to come along our side, our city officials, and help them in that way.
There's a spectrum that I would. I can't think of a better way to put it than liberal and conservative when it comes to local politics.
And most of our churches are going to tend to be more conservative in their approach to political issues, not just nationally, but locally.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: And.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: The left, in that regard, really don't want us to get engaged, stay quiet, stay out of it. Because they know, and it's irregardless, if it's a large church or a church of 30, 40 people, if that pastor engages, they can move the needle substantially.
So when it comes to things that other congregations may not fully understand, what that we're doing, I want to give some explanation to it.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: So back a couple of three years ago, we were targeted nationally as a little, what my wife calls a Gilmore girl city, Fernandina beach, and up and down the east coast, there was a group that targeted these little iconic cities, you know, small towns, county seat communities, to bring in hundreds of people to support the Pride events in June.
So we went to our city and we said, look, they have a right to do that. We're not trying to infringe upon their rights.
However, we think that children are off limits, that, you know, we need to be careful about things that we're going to do in our library, things that. Which they were planning trans story hours in our city, our county library here on the island. And we were opposing that.
They were doing events around the playground at the park downtown. And so we spoke out against that, mobilized our people for it, and the pushback we received is that it was a freedom of speech issue.
Okay.
If it's a freedom of speech issue, then you shouldn't have a problem with us doing the same thing.
And so we brought a team together and we filled out the paperwork to do a Christian Heritage parade. In all honesty, we thought they would shut it down. They would never let us do it. We wanted to do it on the 4th of July. There was nothing happening on the 4th of July, citywide or not a parade.
They came back and they said, you're right. You have a right to do it. We ask you, don't do it on the Fourth, move it back to June, because there's less activities happening downtown. Which that put us in Pride Month.
So the perception would be that we're making a national statement there.
The statement had nothing to do with national politics from our perspective, everything to do with city politics, you know, in that regard. But it also was letting them know that we have a voice that we can mobilize and we could change things in the community.
And so, you know, currently a big thing locally is the paid parking downtown.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: I've read about that.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: You know, that's the big conversation on the island. The many, many citizens that are opposed to it. Well, that's not a biblical issue.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: No.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: You know, that's a. That's a fundraising issue, city government issue. However, as it stands, my understanding, as it stands in writing, the downtown churches will have to pay for parking on Sunday during Lord's Day worship. Now, that does become an issue for our churches.
We don't have Southern Baptist churches down there, but they're sister churches and have religious freedoms just like we do. And if we don't stand with them, then eventually it'll be us.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: And so those issues, just as I said earlier, it's going to be your local officials that infringe on our rights, and they must be defended on that level.
That's the sort of thing that I'm not sure if pastors are afraid it would divide their congregation, but I found it difficult to bring people into that conversation.
It's helped us.
I don't want to give my time to it either. I get that. I want to have someone that's championing it from the congregational level, and Jerry's done that for us. But do you have any thoughts on that, or how could we strengthen that or just show our brothers and sisters that there's much to lose while we're looking at the national game?
What's happening locally is where we're going to lose some of our Freedoms and especially when it comes to church planting.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Well, and you think in terms of this conversation, it is.
All politics are local.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:30] Speaker A: What is happening on a national scale started somewhere in a small corner somewhere in the United States and it just began to build momentum.
I don't know who said it. I've looked it up, I've tried to find it out. There's a saying that, you know, one generation believes something, the second generation accepts it, the third generation rejects it altogether.
And I think that in our largely reactionary posture, we were in a position for a long time of saying, oh yeah, we all believe that. We're all Christians.
Oh yeah, I definitely believe in God. Oh, and. But it was a passive. We became a, yeah, we believe that to. Oh yeah, we accept that that's the cultural norm. And then we began to see that slow evolving where. No, we reject that altogether. Now do I see a resurgence of hey, belief and returning to faith and engagement? Sure, that's taking place, but we still need to foster that. We can't simply sit back and allow those things to, oh, they're just organically happening. We have to be intentional about those things. And the same thing whenever it comes to local stuff. The problem is, yeah, it may be a little bit controversial to start engaging in those things and it may be uncomfortable to be in those spaces because it's one of those. Well, you're here to push your agenda. Not necessarily. I'm here to be representative of what it is that God has called me to do in my context.
By not engaging, it becomes self perpetuating. We create the cycle all over again. Where? Well, because I haven't engaged now more of those things are going to be taking place and therefore we're being more and more isolated as churches away from the community in which God has called us and placed us to be a lighthouse in those places.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. And it could change so quickly, but it, and I think most pastors would agree, it's the national issues that could cause the biggest divisions in our congregation. People who've grown up in one party or another and they don't want that to be challenged.
The local issues are not as divisive.
If they want to step into the arena and understand the influence that they have as leaders locally is a safer way to do that.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: You know, and so we're available if anybody wants to reach out, you know, for what guidance we can give.
But you know, this week I'll show you an example.
We have a county library that's on Fernandina in Fernandina beach on the island.
And I had a person who's on the staff there reach out and tell me that the leadership of that library has begun to purchase witchcraft books that go in the children's section of the library.
Lgbtq. I mean, these are.
I can't even in mixed company, tell you what they are. They're really, really bad stuff. And they're going to be in the children's section simultaneously, they're hiding and moving out. Anything from a conservative viewpoint.
And so this is happening. It's happening right now. There's nothing anybody can do about it. And unless they step into it and get engaged, that one institution that, if you're like me, I don't remember the last time I went to the library except to get my passport renewed.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a long time ago.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: You know, but that one.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: I didn't even know you could do that at the library to get your passport renewed.
[00:45:08] Speaker B: Well, thank God.
But that one institution is, in effect, being totally surrendered to a very Antichrist mentality.
And so that's an opportunity that pastors can step into, let their voice be heard, and hopefully correct some of the trajectory there.
However, it's not the right.
It's not your typical, you know.in the wool Republican, conservative, Baptist who's raising the alarms here.
The people who reached out to me was from the homosexual community.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: And said, we see what's happening here, and where we have a problem is that they're targeting kids.
So to be able to look at that and say, can we have allies from a totally different perspective, that they know where we stand on that issue, but can we be an ally to them?
I think Jerry Falwell used to say, I'll help anybody. I will let anybody help me kill a snake.
And I think it requires a paradigm that's black and white, but it's broad.
[00:46:29] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that the difficulty is we are either in our country right now, we're either red or blue.
And I think we have to agree that there are some purple issues that we need to figure out together.
[00:46:39] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: The other dynamic. So I appreciate how engaged you are.
I appreciate you having the freedom to do that, to be that engaged. What I will say is that there is a need for discipleship that's more than just cerebral.
It can't be just theological education whenever it comes to the local church yet level. It can't be. We just have a discipleship program. And you say, well, how does this tie in? It ties in because that's where people begin to Develop a biblical framework for the world in which they live so that it doesn't just fall on your shoulders, it doesn't just fall on one of your, one of your designated volunteer shoulders. It doesn't just fall on them, but it becomes a cultural issue. Because when the church is equipped properly and they have that biblical lens, they're already in those spaces, they're already hearing those things. And if they know how to use that voice, that's going to change the dynamic as well.
I think part of the problem with all of the things that we see taking place on a national level is that people think that they have to have a loud voice and they have to have a national voice in order to affect change in the world.
However, I was listening to a podcast on my way in and they were talking about mediocrity over a period of time can still influence.
And if the body of Christ had a biblical lens of engagement as they are interacting with the world, as they're doing their job as government officials, as, as they are doing their job as bank tellers and as clerks and as nurses, and they had that biblical framework and how they viewed the world, it wouldn't be just your voice or my voice that's contributing to the conversation. It would be a lot louder because they would be saying, no, actually, let's have a conversation. Let me tell you about my perspective on that. And it comes from this biblical standpoint. But the only way for that to happen is for there to be a strong discipleship framework that's built in to where they're not just consumers of data, but they are now producers whenever it comes to the good news of the gospel and doing the work that God has called all of us to do.
[00:49:05] Speaker B: What would you say is. Where have you seen that fleshed out like a great framework of discipleship in the local church context that's hitting the, the marks. The way that you're describing, like what comes to mind as a healthy expression of that.
[00:49:19] Speaker A: I think that there's a lot of churches that are starting to build that out.
They're beginning that process.
We have a lot of strong churches. When I talk about that, that scale of where churches at, we have a lot of strong churches. They're healthy, they have good programs, they have good management systems.
The question then becomes, have they transitioned to becoming a soaring church?
This was developed by my mentor, George Bullard. That soaring church is the understanding that people understand what their unique disciple making calling is as an individual, how it fits into the broader church. And they're disciple Making disciples.
That's how they're functioning in the world.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: I sat down. You saw the episode I did with Adam and Amelia Baptist. That was very healthy. I think that was good for me. It was good for him. It was good for our people to see us having a dialogue together.
I hope to do more of that.
One of the things that he asked me, I don't think it was in that episode. I think it was just over lunch. But he said, man, you really feel strongly about local engagement, and you're giving time and you're. You're taking some hits for it. And he said, have you really influenced your congregation that way so that they're getting more engaged? And it occurred to me for the first time, no, they influenced me.
And I think it's safe to say prior to coming to Fernandina, like most pastors, my hands were full. I didn't want to fool with that stuff.
I would take stands more on the national issue simply because my kids were getting of the age that it mattered, and I wanted them to know where their dad stood.
I began to see things like public education had changed. When I was a kid, we had a Bible time that I remember in fourth grade, Ms. Dotson, my math teacher, would give a devotional every morning in homeroom. She had the freedom to do that. I remember the day she cried and said she couldn't do it anymore, you know, and that just stuck with me, that something's changing, you know, we would stand every day, we'd pledge allegiance to the flag.
We would sing the national anthem at games.
I began to notice some of those things began to slip, and it wasn't happening anymore. And there was a sense of national unity that was fracturing as my kids went into the system.
And so as a pastor, I felt the need to kind of carry the torch in some of those issues.
And so we would become more patriotic and all that.
But when it comes to getting engaged, I inherited after 2020.
And I say this for the island, not for the county. The county generally, you've got conservative people in the pews and the pulpit.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: On the island, that was not so much the case.
You had. Our Southern Baptist brothers were conservative, but the people in the pews were genuinely right leaning. I would say 75, 80%.
And some of the other mainline denominations were heavy left, but they would never speak to it. They would never address the issues that they disagreed on. They would preach on things where all Christians should agree, we should pray more, we should love each other.
Those kind of issues.
2020 between mandates, elections, George, Floyd, Ahmaud, Arbery, all these things happening, vaccines.
We began to have to speak out on.
I mean, the populace wouldn't allow us to stay silent. We had to show our hand and say, this is where I'm at on these issues.
As that happened, there was a big shakeup on the island, where some of the mainline denominations had a mass exodus.
And where they're wanting to go is just somewhere where their pulpit lines up with the pew.
And for the conservatives, because we had spoken out on it, they aligned with us. After 2020, we doubled in size from 2020 to 2025, still baptized a lot, reached a lot. But we had always done that, and now we're, you know, we're growing in other ways. So as that was happening and as we're having this coalition of people who felt things strongly in that regard, they began to influence me.
And they would say, hey, Pastor, we've got people at the city council meeting tonight that are speaking out.
It might be helpful if you come down and just let the council know where you stand.
And almost as a last resort, they would bring me into it.
And so it occurred to me in my conversation with Adam, they've discipled me in that. I haven't discipled them in that.
And I think if pastors would be open to the possibility that their people may care more about these issues than we inherently do, because we're thinking of eternal issues, transcendent issues, typically, if they would be open to that possibility, and they may not be, but allow your people to disciple you in some of those things, because they know if their taxes go up, their business may end.
These things for them are life and death.
[00:54:58] Speaker A: It makes sense. But if you notice your shift, it was a parodynamic shift.
They discipled you. You moved from being largely reactionary on national conversations, totally to intentional.
You move to offense. You're no longer on just defense. Now you move to offense because of the influence of the people. But you saw the impact. A lot of people have a hesitancy toward expressing opinion of any kind because of the isolation that it can bring.
However, if it's framed from a biblical framework and there's space to have honest conversations and honest dialogue with people that you may disagree with, that may not hold your viewpoints, and you can sit at the table with those people and you invite those people to your tables, how much would that change the whole dynamic of everything?
[00:55:45] Speaker B: Oh, and when you start to step into those places, you see the way this is set up. We're in a party system as Americans. And there's a reason for that. And I don't think it's a horrible situation.
[00:55:59] Speaker A: But.
[00:56:01] Speaker B: You can't move the needle alone.
You're going to have to have a coalition, and not only for the expansion of the church and the expansion of the gospel, but for the framework that allows that to happen, which is our government, our civic government.
We already have that and we agree on so much as Southern Baptists especially.
We have the national convention, we have our state conventions, and we have local associations like you're leading. And so I don't know what the issue to tackle is, but I can tell you this.
Planting the churches are not going to get easier.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: No.
[00:56:45] Speaker B: And if we're going to have policies in place that will allow for it and be able to afford the prices, then we're going to have to speak into those issues somewhere along the way to allow those, the train to run on those tracks.
[00:57:05] Speaker A: So one of the things that I'd love to see happen, there's a couple different aspects of things.
One, I'd love a national leader within our Baptist heritage and history, somebody that's representing from a national level that begins to understand the dynamics of local association and their impact and speak to from a national scale. Hey, this needs to be a point of emphasis because my role is widely varied based on where I'm at, located in the country.
And some of those roles haven't changed in decades. And so the leader that's sitting in that space, the value, to use business terminology, the value proposition that they bring to churches in their context is relatively low.
And they don't even know how to help advance the missional ministry in that region that they exist. They know how to address when something's on fire.
And that has to shift. But the only way that that's going to shift is if that gets light, that gets attention.
[00:58:13] Speaker B: You're so right.
[00:58:13] Speaker A: To me, if from a national level, it's a, hey, we need to put an emphasis on this. We need to invest resources into this. There's no prerequisite for what is expected of somebody that steps into a role like mine.
You go to, to school, you have Bible college, you have seminary, you have M. Div. You have all of those various things to step into a pastor. There's some prior level of education and expectation.
A lot of the time, the people that step into my role, the expectation is, have you been a pastor? Do you understand pastors? Okay, you're hired.
[00:58:49] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:58:50] Speaker A: But do you know how to bring value in a way that is going to accelerate movement in a region, not simply how to pastor a single church. Because I can't come in with vision and say, pastor Zach, here are the things that you're missing, and this is what you need to do. I've got a great vision for your church. If you'll just embrace it, that doesn't work.
[00:59:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:59:09] Speaker A: But unfortunately, that's what a lot of people that step into my role have a tendency to do. They don't know how to adopt that posture. So there's no mechanism for training that at this particular stage.
[00:59:20] Speaker B: Well, one of the reasons I'm grateful for you being here and what you've brought to the table is when you were hired, I was in the room the first time you came in to do your presentation with the pastors of the association. Before that, we had a private meeting without you in it. We were just talking through it. And so one of the questions I ask is, what are the metrics? Like, how do we know if he's winning or losing?
Because in all fairness to him and to us, what is it he's supposed to be accomplishing? And there was not a really good answer to that. And I don't know that I could have provided one, because it's tricky. And figuring out when you can't control the churches, how do we measure your success?
So we didn't really provide you with that, from my perspective, but you've provided us with it, and you've been faithful. You've worked hard, and you've begun to define the position in ways that we are kind of understanding a new paradigm for it. And I just say that to commend you on one hand, and then secondly, just to thank you and hope you keep up the good work.
[01:00:28] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
[01:00:30] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us today on Code Red, by the way.
[01:00:32] Speaker A: Thanks. It's been great.
