Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. I'm Jeremy, I'm Matt. Today we're going to take a second look at the broader church transitioning field and I'm going to ask Matt about the specifics that distinguish Flourish Coaches from other organizations that work in this same space. You might be surprised by some of our conversation today. If you didn't catch the first part of this conversation, you'll find it linked below in the episode notes. Welcome back to the Church Renewal Podcast. Hey, matt, how are you doing? Doing pretty good. Jerry. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm Jeremy Cifarotti. He is Matthew Bolling.

This has been brought to you by Flourish Coaching. There's a jingle in my head that you can't hear, matt, this is the final episode in season three of the Church Renewal Podcast. Thank you for the opportunity and the privilege of doing this with you. I have really enjoyed this For this final episode. The question here is what's the difference with the Flourish model? What's the Flourish flavor? Is there a benefit to using a flourish transitional pastor? So question number one who are your main competitors in this space?

yeah, I actually don't like thinking about it that way, but um, I realize I know, that's why.

That's why you set me up yeah, I don't.

I don't like um, I like to think of us as collaborators than competitors. So there are some other organizations and we actually, I am glad to say, are friendly among all of us. We recognize that there is way more work out there to be done than organizations or equipped and trained and called pastors to do it. There's more need than any of us can supply, and so that's different than a lot of, if you will, markets if we can use that word where there's much more supply than there is demand. We're in the where that is inverted for us. There's a lot of demand for what we do and we're all scrapping for supply. So these are collaborators. So there's two other main competitors in this space that are known quantities, at least that I commonly interact with in the United States.

So Interim Pastor Ministries is the big dog in this space. We're a little dog. They've been around for I don't know, maybe 30 years, a little bit more. They come out of the Evangelical Free Church of America and still do a lot of work in that space, but work beyond that as well, and they have. In the beginning they were placing a lot more what we might call traditional interims. In recent years they've moved to having some portion of their staff be what they call an intentional interim, working through a process that would be very akin to what Flourish would do in a church. The exec director is Tom Harris and, if he'll let us, we're going to invite him on to interview him because he has an interesting history. I have a lot of respect for him and for their organization and so they place interim pastors in churches all across the US and I've had a robust ministry the other ministry and I've learned a lot from both of these ministries. These are people that I respect and enjoy. I've been to their trainings and I'm thankful to call these folks friends and collaborators. The other ministry is called Vital Church and I've had the privilege of being exposed to their ministry, knowing some of their folks, for over a decade. Hopefully, if we can get them to take a break off of sabbatical, we'll get Dave Miles on for an interview.

I've known Dave for a bit over a decade. If I wasn't doing what I'd be doing right now, I probably, if they'd have me, I'd probably be working for Vital Church, and so so they do. Wonderful ministry. Vital Church has what I believe is the best diagnostic that I've ever seen. Ours is good. I'm grateful for it. I'm glad for it. But they've been doing it for 30 years, so they've been doing diagnostics. I think they have over 1,000 churches in their database that they've worked with. That they can then do comparative data with and it's marvelous the work that they do and so they place very highly qualified transitional pastors in churches intentional interims is what they call them and besides Dave another friend that works for them they do really really excellent work. But in terms of size they're about our size and so they're a smaller organization. Ipm's a larger organization, but really neat, neat folks.

Is Vital Church working in a specific direction with the denomination?

No, they also work both with IPM and Vital Church and actually Flourish as well, work across denominations. I think we probably have sort of niches that we more fall into. Ipm, having flown out of the evangelical free church. They do a good amount of work in the free church. Vital does a fair amount of work in the Christian Missionary Alliance. They've also done a fair amount of work in EPC churches, evangelical Presbyterian Churches and Flourish, having its roots in the Presbyterian Church in America, we tend to work among the PCA, but we've also done work as an organization with Christian Missionary Alliance, the Evangelical Free Church and most of the conservative reform denominations, opc, arp I'm missing one, anyways and obviously the PCA we're working with the EPC as well. Crc I have friends in the CRC, would work in the CRC, but they have their own internal folks that they use, and I've just come to realize that Somebody told me that and so I think that they've kind of taken care of it in-house themselves. Okay, excellent.

So, now that we've established this is a collaborative effort, and I know that you will recommend people who come to you looking to be clients or look information. You will recommend to who come to you looking to be clients or look information. You will recommend to them to go to IPM or Vital, and that's a two-way street there between the three of you guys, yep. What, then, is distinct about the TPs that Flourish is providing?

Well as an organization. Here's what I would say is distinctive. Neither of these organizations can lead a church through none of these other organizations. Vital RPM can lead a church through a transitional process completely as an external coach. So Vital will do a diagnostic external to the church, without placing a transitional pastor there, but then anything from that point on requires somebody to be on the ground a transitional pastor there but then anything from that point on requires somebody to be on the ground. Flourish is able to do not just that first phase of assessment as an external coach, but we can also take a church through the next two phases as well. So we can take them through envisioning and pastor search and we can do that all from the outside. That's the most affordable version of a transition process. So that's distinguishing the PCA some of our listeners will probably have. That would be their background. The PCA has what's the way to put it? That is kind, fairly rigorous requirements for ministers to work within its bounds.

I think that was very kind, Matt. I was trying.

It was Matt, I was trying. That was very diplomatic, I was trying, and so it's difficult for organizations that are external to the PCA to do work with inside of the PCA. Flourish is not affiliated officially with the Presbyterian Church in America, but the three of us who founded it were all PCA pastors. Our board members are PCA pastors or ruling elders. Obviously, I'm ordained in the PCA. All of the current transitional pastors that I have are ordained in the PCA and so because we come from the inside, we're able to work very effectively in the PCA and our things are tuned for it and because of that they're also easily adapted to other Presbyterian and Reformed denominations and so we've not had a barrier and even easily adapted to other evangelical denominations. So again, the privilege that we've had to work with Christian Missionary Alliance Church, evangelical free churches. So that may be our route but we can flex with it as well.

So someone's listening to this and they're saying, hey, this all sounds good. I don't really think flourish is where I want to go, but I do think that this is a direction that my church should be considering. What is your advice to them?

Yeah, I immediately put them in contact with both of my other colleagues uh, at IPM and at Vital because I think I respect their work, I think that they would deliver well and we want to keep that as a two-way street.

Would, you still invite them to reach out to you. Yeah, absolutely, and I get consistently. There's this passing back and forth of people because I think I'm very open to the fact that we may not be suitable to help your church and somebody else may be more suitable, and I'm okay with that and I don't want to be desperate for clients in a way that we try and help somebody but we're actually a mismatch for them and vital or ipm would be a better match for them so then I'm going to assume that there's not like some white elephant gift exchange out there that keeps on being handed off between the three of you guys.

I sure hope not. I sure hope not. Awesome, Matt. This brings us to the end of season three.

What we're done. Come on, there's no way. Maybe we should do this again on a different topic.

I am wide open to that. Matt, will you give me your word, here and now, that there will be a future that you can neither control nor predict? Yes, Awesome, you have it there, folks. Matt, again, I just want to say thank you to you for your time here Pulling back the screen completely. Matt and I have been together for the past 72 hours putting the entire season three together, and it's been a marathon of sorts. It has been fun. I hope to you, dear listener, that this has been beneficial. That's our goal in doing this. We do encourage you. If you have questions, please reach out with them. We would love to get more information into your hand. There are going to be episode notes with all of these episodes. Go back and listen to them again. Check out the notes. There's going to be a lot of content that is linked in them. If it isn't good for you but it's good for someone else, please pass it along. We're doing this as a way of getting as many resources to you with as few hurdles as possible. With that, this ends Season 3. Thank you for coming along. We will see you in Season 4.

This is the final episode of Season 3 of the Church Renewal Podcast. We want to thank you for lending us your time this season and invite you to reach out to us with your impressions or questions. We'll be back with the start of season four next year and you're invited to join us again as we share more insights that'll help you and your church continue your church life cycle towards strong and effective ministry. Please visit us on Facebook and share your own stories of church life and transition, and please share this podcast with your church leaders and family and friends. Now I'll leave you with this final reminder there's only one fully satisfying reason that this day dawned. That is that Jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it For Matthew Bowling and Flourish Coaching. This is Jeremy Seferati. So long, Thank you.