[00:00:00] JimBo Stewart: Welcome to another episode of the Replant Boot Camp, the podcast for church renewal leaders where we listen, learn, and laugh together with boots-on-the-ground church leaders. I’m your host, Jimbo Stewart. This podcast is sponsored by Church QuickSight by 180 Digital. Getting a website that your visitors and members will love doesn’t have to be hard.

Learn more at churchquicksight. com.

Here we are back at it again, back at another episode. I hope you’re ready to be at the boot camp here with El Jefe, the boss man himself.

[00:00:43] Mark Clifton: in Croft, Arkansas. We’re doing this live at the big Charlie Rich Music Festival.

[00:00:50] Clint Haynes: Hey guys, sorry to interrupt. Uh, Clint Haynes with Tri County Baptist Association. Uh, two things real quick. Number one, thank y’all so much for coming and investing in Delta Pastures. It means the world to us. And number two, um, it’s Colt. You’re not in Croft, you are in Colt, Arkansas, and we’re glad to have you.

[00:01:13] Mark Clifton: This is the birthplace of

[00:01:15] JimBo Stewart: It is, it is.

[00:01:16] Mark Clifton: And the festival is, I keep playing his music on my iPhone while I’m here. Uh, if you don’t know who Charlie Rich is, well, shame on you. It means you were born in the 90s, probably.

Uh, man, in the mid 70s, Charlie Rich was it for country

[00:01:31] JimBo Stewart: The thing that I, I love that we learned today from Clint Haynes, he is the AMS here at the Tri County Baptist Association in the Delta of Arkansas, and he was telling about when he, was it HeHaw

[00:01:42] Mark Clifton: Yes. Charlie Rich was on he hall

[00:01:44] JimBo Stewart: And he was supposed to say, at least everybody in Croft was waiting for him to say, salute from my home, you know, my hometown of Croft, Arkansas, but that’s not,

[00:01:54] Mark Clifton: that’s not what he said. He said, you know, they would be in the cornfield, right? Yeah. And they would all stand up and say, salute to my hometown, Croft, Arkansas. Then all the cast of E Hall would say Salute. Yeah. And they would always give the population too.

Yeah. But when Charlie Rich was on there, he said the first time he said Memphis, Tennessee.

[00:02:10] JimBo Stewart: Mm.

[00:02:11] Mark Clifton: But he went back and then he said, what?

[00:02:13] JimBo Stewart: Forest City, Arkansas. The

[00:02:14] Mark Clifton: largest town near

[00:02:16] JimBo Stewart: Yeah.

And they’ve all disowned Charlie Rich now.

[00:02:18] Mark Clifton: Now, I’ve got Charlie Rich on my playlist. My wife likes Charlie

[00:02:23] JimBo Stewart: Come on

[00:02:24] Mark Clifton: My kids like Charlie Rich. No, they

[00:02:25] JimBo Stewart: don’t He’s

[00:02:27] Mark Clifton: the Silver Fox. Had that white hair. Played that piano. Uh, he was good.

Alright.

[00:02:32] JimBo Stewart: today is so a lot of times in replanting You There’s going to be an adoption, where there’s a church coming in, and we’re in conversations on is our church going to adopt this church, or maybe you’re the other side of the conversation, are we ready to be adopted by that

[00:02:53] Mark Clifton: and what’s the process look like?

I mean, how Okay, so yeah, you’ve got, you’ve got, let’s just say there’s a new church with some name like, I don’t know, redemption Crossroad, fellowship Life Church.

[00:03:04] JimBo Stewart: Okay. Alright.

[00:03:05] Mark Clifton: its name, right? It’s just throw ’em all in there. Let’s get all the hip names. The Epic, the Epic Redemption Crossroad, fellowship Life Church.

Echo. All right. We’ll do that. All right. And then you’ve got, I don’t know, first Baptist over

[00:03:16] JimBo Stewart: Right.

[00:03:17] Mark Clifton: and first Baptist has a building and only, you know, a handful of people and epic life church redemption cross fellowship has no building, a huge name and you know, 150 people or 200. And so the new church is going to adopt the older church and move into their building.

[00:03:36] JimBo Stewart: Yeah.

[00:03:37] Mark Clifton: Okay, that sounds good, but what’s the process? How do you get from, from point one to point, how do you get from beginning to end? How do you move that? How do you, so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. There, there are many ways to do it, not just one way. This is a way to do it. It’s not the way to do

[00:03:52] JimBo Stewart: do it. I

[00:03:53] Mark Clifton: I think it’s the best way, but still, it’s a way,

[00:03:55] JimBo Stewart: a way.

Well no, this is good. This is what I like about even, our working relationship and our relationship is you have some, some brilliant ideas from your wisdom and experience and, and so I get to help you turn those into tools and resources for other

[00:04:08] Mark Clifton: Okay,

well cool.

[00:04:10] JimBo Stewart: and so this is fun. This is a good thing.

This is where you get to see the magic at work, everybody.

[00:04:14] Mark Clifton: right, so here’s what we would suggest you do. New church, old church.

Somehow

or another you agree you’re gonna enter a conversation. Could be the director of missions introduces you, state convention introduces you, you get introduced by somebody else, whatever.

But you’re introduced. Where do we go from here? Well both churches need to select a vision exploration team. Now that could be a standing team. It could be, you may decide, First Baptist may say, well we want the deacons to do it, or we want the church council to do it, or we, or we have a search team, or a vision, whatever.

But you There’s some designated team at both churches whose job it’s going to be to negotiate what it would look like for these churches to come together. Okay, so those two, those groups are elected by each, each individual church. And then they, they bring in a moderator or, or a facilitator, right? And that person’s one that’s going to facilitate these talks back and forth and then there’s a time process if, if, in our experience has been, if these two teams from these two churches, if they want to meet weekly, this could be accomplished in two months to six months, maybe longer. If they want to meet twice a month, it’s probably going to take at least three or four months, if not a year.

Okay. So how, and there may not be a big urgency to do it quickly. I would say you want to do it. More effectively than just quickly, by all means.

[00:05:35] JimBo Stewart: and what I love about the process that you started to lay out to me is, it helps us not get tripped up early on, on the things that seem to bog us down.

when I, I’ve seen conversations like this between churches get bogged down real fast. Yeah. On minute details.

[00:05:51] Mark Clifton: we’re doing. So we got two churches that have elected, who are gonna do negotiation. And we have a, a, a facilitator, have a facilitator. Is what you called it? Yeah, okay facilitator so we’re going to look at this like like from a 50, 000 foot level So the first thing we do is we get together and we say okay Here’s the we’re not going to get down to the grassroots.

We’re looking at the 50, 000 foot level

[00:06:13] JimBo Stewart: Well, Love, whenever you talk about one of the benefits of starting at this part of the conversation is, it’s going to show us that we have more commonalities than we have differences.

Let’s not get into the differences yet, because chances are we’re probably in a good commonality on these things. Our view of scripture, our view of salvation. Our view of the church ordinances, our view of theology and doctrine, and in the Baptist life, we’re gonna gear that around the Baptist faith and message and just kind of like, Hey, are we aligned on these things?

Yeah. And chances are, we are

[00:06:45] Mark Clifton: certainly for both Southern Baptists, we’re going to be very closely aligned.

And if you’re not aligned, then there’s no reason to talk about what we’re going to do about the preschoolers. If you don’t agree on the nature

[00:06:53] JimBo Stewart: yeah, we don’t need to move past

[00:06:54] Mark Clifton: that is, we don’t need to pass this. So what do we believe about scripture? It’s authority. it’s inerrancy. What do we believe about that?

What do we believe about the Bible? The church ordinances baptism and Lord’s Supper. How are you know, what do we think about them? Do we believe they are actually do even transubstantiation or not? I mean what about baptism? Do we Do we believe only in immersion or do we believe in sprinkling and his baptism required for membership and we get those are

[00:07:19] JimBo Stewart: On, on church ordinances here, though, let me ask, is this a 50, 000 foot, or, or a lower level?

I know a lot of, like, newer guys are, or reformed guys are loved going back to the weekly Lord’s Supper. No, they’re not there yet. So we’re not talking about, so at this point, we’re not debating

[00:07:35] Mark Clifton: talking about what is the purpose of the Lord’s Supper. That’s

[00:07:38] JimBo Stewart: good. Yeah. So just what is Lord’s Supper? What is baptism?

Are we in agreement

[00:07:42] Mark Clifton: Exactly. And the scripture. and also, how did we get there? and what are our influences?

Just what are we, what are those, those 50, 000 foot issues, which are important issues,

[00:07:50] JimBo Stewart: Yeah.

[00:07:51] Mark Clifton: but probably we are going to have some agreement on those, right? So that, that’s the 50, 000 foot issue. But if we’re not going to have agreement on those, then we don’t need to spend months together. So what do we do about the Bible?

What do we do about salvation? How are we saved by grace through faith? Well, what’s that really mean? again, what’s a baptism? And you do, at this point, you, you would say, you know, Does baptism save? You know, why do we baptize? Is it only by immersion? Lord supper? What’s the purpose of that? Is it? Can non believers take it?

Does it become transubstantiation or not? You know, not worry how often you take it or how you take it, but why you take it. Those kinds of

[00:08:26] JimBo Stewart: Well, that’s good. So this meeting is between the two, exploration teams are together having this conversation.

And then they’re going to go from there into town

[00:08:35] Mark Clifton: Right. So what happens is they, they would, you know, probably my experience has been the 50, 000 foot level, usually a couple of meetings because you’re not just checking a box, you’re talking about it to tell us about baptism and you know, you’re just, you’re talking about a couple of meetings after those two meetings or however many it takes to talk about the 50, 000 foot level.

Oh, by the way, both churches can suggest. 000 ft. Level

[00:09:01] JimBo Stewart: Oh, that’s good. Yeah, that’s a good point. So

They

[00:09:03] Mark Clifton: can say, here’s what we all think now.

[00:09:05] JimBo Stewart: think, oh, well, I think, you know, our wedding policy is a 50, 000 foot.

[00:09:10] Mark Clifton: right. And then the facilitator would say that is an issue, but it’s down at 15, 000 ft. We’re not gonna talk about it now.

[00:09:17] JimBo Stewart: it now. And the right of that is the facilitator. They need to agree that the facilitator gets to designate

[00:09:23] Mark Clifton: level?

[00:09:24] JimBo Stewart: level? Right. Because there may be, for example, I grew up in Independence, Missouri,

[00:09:31] Mark Clifton: because there may be, for example, I grew up in Independence, Missouri, the home of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, now called, just, the Community of Christ. And this church has had a very intentional movement to try to become more mainline and not, and considered part of mainline Christian denominations.

So I could see if you’re at independence, I could see a 50, 000 foot level is, do you believe that the, community of Christchurch, do you believe that they are a mainline organization? Do you believe that? Cause there’s a lot of people in independence who grew up in that. Okay. And so you’re going to have some folks comment.

What’s your view of.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints here in Independence and the people who’ve been members there. That could be a 50, 000 foot issue in that location.

[00:10:16] JimBo Stewart: it’s a theological

[00:10:17] Mark Clifton: It’s a theological distinction. We’re talking about theological, basic large theological pictures. So that there be sometimes like that.

they, I want to give them an opportunity, each church to say, we would like to add this to the 50, 000 foot level. And then facilitator may say. Yeah, that is 50, 000. But he also may say, No, we’re gonna put, we’ll put on a list, but we’ll put it down here at 15, 000. Okay.

[00:10:37] JimBo Stewart: So the point of this first couple of meetings, however many meetings it takes between the two exploration teams, is to get on the same page on the 50, 000 foot. Then each team is going to go back to their churches for a town hall and report.

[00:10:50] Mark Clifton: Each, now, town halls aren’t, they’re not together. Right. First Baptist has their town hall, and Redemption Echo Crossroads Church has their time hall. And town hall means the team just shares, this is what we’ve done. Here’s what we both believe about baptism, both believe about scripture, both believe about these things.

Do you all have any questions? Ask us any questions you want to ask, right? So it’s a town hall. You’re not voting on anything. Just open discussion. This is what, so people know it’s not happening behind closed doors and nobody knows. You don’t want this to look like, you For six months. It’s all secret. You want to say this is what we’ve talked about.

And here’s the agreement we came to. This is what they believe about these things. And we, and we believe we’re on the same page with these any questions. And if they say to get through the town hall, then you come back. And when both churches have gone through their town hall, they come back again and they agree that on these 50, 000 foot level, we found agreement and they say, okay, now what you do is after you agree on that, then the two churches plan some kind of a fellowship event together.

So have a dinner on Sunday afternoon or picnic or but you start getting together and you celebrate hey We we did the 50, 000 foot we’ve come together. We got a lot of work yet to do we may not get there We always we don’t ever want to set up a win lose scenario. Listen to me It’s not like well if we get to the end we win No, the journey and that sounds corny, but it’s not the journey is a win Because you’re, because you’re learning more about yourself and about your church and what it believes.

And you’re learning about another church and you’re fellowshipping with another church. And if this one doesn’t work out, you have learned so much from this process that the next process will be even more smooth. So none of it’s wasted. All right. So we’re not wasting time here. This is all good. And the Lord’s using it in our lives.

So that’s 50,

[00:12:33] JimBo Stewart: 000 theological distinctions, then you go to town halls.

Then we’re all in alignment on 50, 000 foot. We have some sort of fellowship together. Now we move to 30, 000

[00:12:44] Mark Clifton: And those are what kind of

[00:12:45] JimBo Stewart: Some of the 30, 000 foot views would be like the level of denominational affiliation and involvement. how do you view church membership? How do you view church governance? How do you view church offices such as deacons, elders, pastors?

[00:12:57] Mark Clifton: we’re getting to some meaty stuff.

[00:12:58] JimBo Stewart: Yeah. Now we’re getting to where there might be a little bit of, there’s still gonna be some commonalities.

[00:13:02] Mark Clifton: there. We start with the scripture and baptism and Jesus and All that, right? Good stuff that we all agree on, most likely, if we’re Southern Baptists. Now we go, okay, here’s where some differences come. And this could take some time.

Alright? And it will take time. These two churches, there’s no doubt they’re going to be very different in their cultures. One likely, not always, is going to have elders, one’s going to have deacons. Likely that one’s going to have regular business meetings, another one may just have one a year. One may have very, and this can, this is interesting, sometimes the new churches have a very high view of church membership.

Like with written covenants, the older churches, it’s not so strong. And sometimes it’s the other way around. Some new churches membership isn’t all that important. It’s attendance and involvement and older churches membership. So what’s membership mean and, and what’s church governance mean? And why do church now we’re not talking about. Jimbo, help me, help me with this, we make sure we make this clear. Even in the documents we’re creating, we’re not talking about what will we do with deacons and what will we do with elders that that’ll come a little later. We’re talking about a lot of our view here at deacons and elders, and we may agree or disagree, but we just need to know where we are on that.

Now it can become a deal breaker. Church, the older church could say, we will never have elders. I don’t care if, if. If Jesus himself came in here and said, elders, we’re not having elders and the newer church says, well, we’ve got to have elders. Well, then we’re done.

[00:14:31] JimBo Stewart: It’s

[00:14:31] Mark Clifton: a great time. Thank you very much.

Now, I wouldn’t say we’d be done that night. Excuse me.

[00:14:36] JimBo Stewart: Yeah.

[00:14:36] Mark Clifton: We’d say, okay, we’re at an impasse. Let’s take a couple of weeks and pray about this. Think about it. Come back, revisit it again. Talk about what we try to talk to it as much as we can. What might look like. But nonetheless, so that’s what we talk about.

[00:14:46] JimBo Stewart: So we’re, so just to clarify, we’re not at this point trying to come to a full. Like here’s what it would look like if we’re together as much as We don’t feel like we don’t we know where there’s some differences and how we view this But we don’t feel like this is stops us from

[00:15:02] Mark Clifton: stops us from

[00:15:03] JimBo Stewart: Yeah, we’re not at a deal breaker

[00:15:04] Mark Clifton: in a deal breaker.

[00:15:06] JimBo Stewart: But we’re willing to deal with that later.

Okay, so we’re not solving it yet

[00:15:10] Mark Clifton: solving it

[00:15:11] JimBo Stewart: We’re just recognizing it and seeing can we continue to

[00:15:13] Mark Clifton: we continue to move forward.

[00:15:15] JimBo Stewart: So, same pattern continues, that town halls, and then the fellowship,

[00:15:20] Mark Clifton: fellowship.

[00:15:21] JimBo Stewart: which I love that. I love the idea of one town hall discussion, then the fellowship, like, bringing those relationships closer to each other.

Because even if it doesn’t work out, it’s just good to know brothers and sisters in Christ. Then we move to 15, 000 foot.

[00:15:35] Mark Clifton: put a, I’ll

have Yeah, I’ll put this in the show notes. I’ll put a, I’ll have a document created. I’ll have a link to it in the show notes. so the 15, 000 foot view is going to be the church finances, plans, processes.

[00:15:49] JimBo Stewart: So we’re talking about assets and debt and, how we deal with the finances.

[00:15:53] Mark Clifton: How do we, what’s our budget look like? How do we re Do we have in house stewardship, or is it, someone outside?

Do we use an outside firm to manage our money? A lot of newer churches will use an outside firm. Really, all their bills are paid by the outside firm. They send, you know what I

[00:16:07] JimBo Stewart: mean. Yeah.

[00:16:07] Mark Clifton: They have, and most older churches, that would never happen. They have a

secretary

And some older churches, it’s just one person signing a check.

I mean, you gotta figure that out. So, what is our financial, uh, plans. How do we promote our financial plans? How do we pay our bills? how much much money is there, right? Do we have what’s the assets on both churches? So those financial things we got to look at and see how we agree on those financial

[00:16:33] JimBo Stewart: issues

And again here we’re not making decisions on, you know, well we would have to do this, but again we’re looking for red flags, you know, does this mean we can’t continue?

[00:16:43] Mark Clifton: if the newer, if the older church said, well, the only way we’re going to continue is if Carl gets to see keep signing the checks. We’re not going to give up.

No, we’re we’re going to hang on to that. You can’t have that. Well, then, you know, that’s we can’t move

[00:16:54] JimBo Stewart: That’s something that has to be processed and dealt with and see if we can resolve

[00:16:58] Mark Clifton: was on that thirty that thirty thousand? We’re at

[00:17:00] JimBo Stewart: 15, 000 foot is, I’ve got church financial plans, processes, personnel, but we get more into the personnel in the 5, 000

[00:17:09] Mark Clifton: Yeah. Yeah. So it basically church financial plans, church assets, any debtedness the church might have any property. Either church might own somewhere else. Sometimes newer churches have bought property and they’re not going to use it. Sometimes older churches may have a couple of missionary houses that they’ve had in the past or they may have, nonprofit that they support.

Uh, clothing room or a food pantry or those kinds of assets. We look at what what each church brings in that. Okay, so that’s 15, 000. So,

[00:17:35] JimBo Stewart: process continues.

So the exploration communities would do this together. Then they go back town halls. Then we come back for a joint fellowship. Then we moved to the 5000 ft level, which is where we’re talking. This is this is where people try to start the conversation is at the 5000 ft level. But now we’ve worked together.

There’s enough relational equity at this point. to have this conversation in a more constructive way because we’ve had all these joint fellowships, we’ve talked through all these other things. So

[00:18:03] Mark Clifton: You can’t start with these if you don’t have a trust level.

Yeah. Okay, go

[00:18:07] JimBo Stewart: Yeah. Okay,

So now we’re talking children’s ministry and youth ministry and senior adult ministry and what does discipleship look like and do we do Sunday school and what is the worship times and all the, and again, we’re not solving all the problems. We’re just seeing, is there anything that creates an impasse? There is some level of resolving, not solving of,

so let’s go back to 15, 000 for a second. We, Carl has to be the treasurer, right? We’re not saying we have to decide whether Carl’s a treasurer or not. We were just getting to a point. Can we be loose gripped with that? Can we be to the point that that’s, you know, that that’ll come, we will discuss and decide what’s best, but are you willing to say if Carl’s not it, we’re done

well, then we’re done.

But can we just get loose gripped on it? So

[00:18:52] Mark Clifton: same thing with Sunday school.

[00:18:53] JimBo Stewart: Yeah, same thing. Children’s ministry, Sunday school, all these. We just need to get loose gripped on these things and to a point where we go, yes, we’re willing to explore a different way of what this might look like if we do it

[00:19:04] Mark Clifton: And it allows one church to hear why the other church wants to do it that way. That’s important So we get to that, that 5, 000 foot level, we’re getting to some of the real day to day kind of on not day to day, but you know, week to week kind of ministry of the church. All right, by now we’ve probably invested several months in this, and we know each other pretty well.

And both churches have heard several town hall meetings, they’re aware of the process. And then we get to where it really, this is going to be determined whether we do this or not. So we’re really not, we’re not going to get to whether we’re going to do this or not fully until we get to this place.

And this is the, the grassroots level. And this is where we talk about, first of all, current any administrative personnel. Is there a secretary? Is there a part time secretary? Full time secretary? Is there a janitor?

Those kinds of jobs. We look at that at the grassroots level, paid staff that are not professional staff, so to speak. . And then what is the day to day-to-day operation of the church going to look like? How’s that going to function? basically as well, is there going to be a new constitution in bylaws or are we going to accept the constitution and bylaws of the adopting church?

Or are we gonna, are based on the experiences we’ve been through the last few months? Are we gonna make some slight changes to the constitution and bylaws? So what’s our constitution and bylaws gonna look like day one? Is it just going to be accepting the one of the new church and the older church becomes members?

And if they do become members, do they become members immediately or do they have to go through a membership process? Are there two levels of membership? Can they be grandfathered in? Those are the grassroots level where we basically get down to what do we do with paid staff? That’s not professional staff because we Actually, we missed it.

But up in the 5000 ft level, we talk about staff people as well. So, you know, if you got a paid youth minister, paid music minister and a pastor, what are we going to do with those folks at both churches? So we talk about that at the 5000 ft level. But then at the grass level, we talk about Administrative staff like custodians and secretaries and so forth.

Then we also talk about what’s the day to day operation What’s it gonna look like here in terms of how because sometimes in newer churches They’ll say we’re not gonna have anybody in the office or we office up from our home I can’t tell you how many times, church planter has never gone to an office for five hours a day.

And how many times the older church doesn’t understand why the pastor’s not in the office. So what’s it going to look like day to day? And then you get to what’s our constitution and bylaws. And this is where the real grassroots level is. This deals with membership. It deals with finances, deals with business meetings, deal with church governance.

And it may be that the newer church says, this is our constitution and bylaws, you know, we need to accept it a hundred percent, but the newer church may also say, but we’ve heard you the last few months. These things are important to you. We think we can make these adjustments. In order to make this transition best for both of us.

And hopefully sometimes if you just start with the constitution of bylaws, the newer church will say, no, it’s all or nothing. Our way or highway, but after several months of listening to the values, they may say, you know what? There’s some value it, you know, something about this community. We don’t know about your people.

We don’t know. So we’re willing to negotiate this. So usually when you get the constitution bylaws, usually there’s a little bit of negotiation still involved in there that does that. But then the two churches finally agree. Okay, this is what it is. And then you take the constitution bylaws to your town hall meetings, and that can be several town hall meetings.

All right. And those can be a little contentious sometimes.

[00:22:36] JimBo Stewart: Yeah.

[00:22:37] Mark Clifton: because what happens, and I hope y’all are still listening to this because I know it’s, it’s probably not the most exciting one you’ve ever heard, but what happens is one church doesn’t just adopt another church, really the two churches. It’s a new entity.

You

don’t just absorb a church. You bring in those people. You bring in their culture. You bring in their corporate identity, their history, their experiences, their story. It changes the new church. It changes the old church. What comes out is something different. And both groups have to know we’re both going to lose something and we’re both going to gain something.

And we have to decide if it’s worth the losing and the gaining. And you really realize that in the, in the new constitution and bylaws, this is a new entity here and even, you know, people say, well, you know, where do you, where do you deal with the name? And you know, you, you deal with that name really when you get down to the grassroots level, you don’t deal with it at the first, you, that’s the name is not all that important to be frank about it.

because a lot of times what will happen is the name legally will remain the same as first baptist, but then you’ll do business as epic church. And so, the name of those kinds of things. So basically that’s what we’re talking about. You start with 50, 000 30, 000 15, 000 5, 000 grassroots.

[00:23:59] JimBo Stewart: Yeah, and I think, a couple of, just the key pieces of this is, again, the relational equity and trust that’s built over time through having these discussions, through the joint fellowships.

Obviously, this has to be based in prayer, in a posture of humility.

[00:24:12] Mark Clifton: So, yeah, a couple of things. We want to have at least one, what do you call it? A solemn assembly. I would like to have one for each church individually. And then if you get down to the 5000 ft level, even grassroots level, some kind of a solemn assembly prayer event for both churches together.

[00:24:28] JimBo Stewart: So, early on, where, where would the first one happen for each church individually, you think?

[00:24:33] Mark Clifton: I think the first one ought to happen early on, like when you start the discussions. I think both churches

[00:24:39] JimBo Stewart: Maybe even, maybe even prior

[00:24:40] Mark Clifton: maybe even prior to. And then during the event, during the process, you have some specific prayer services, uh, where, where you do this. And then at some point near the end of the, you bring both churches in for a specific prayer service.

Let me tell you something else that works really well.

Was with a group one time I’d been through this for about almost a year with him I think The established church was still pretty resistant because the newer church was just different incredibly different And it just wasn’t gonna look like their church.

They were gonna take the vestibule in the office area and completely blow it out and make it nothing But a big coffee shop

[00:25:14] JimBo Stewart: shop. Hmm.

[00:25:15] Mark Clifton: And the pastor wasn’t going to be in the office every day. And they weren’t going to have Sunday school the way they’d always had it. And the music was going to be different.

And the stage was going to look different and a whole bit. And it was, it’s just going to be really challenging for these older people who their church had been a very prominent church in the community for many, many years, and it was going to be completely different. And, you know, they were down to, you know, about 50 or 60 people in the sanctuary seated five or 600 and the new church had about 200 with no building.

And while it was going pretty well with the teams, anytime we go back to town hall meetings, the older church, it was adamant. We, we don’t like this. This is, you know, it was pretty violent. We’re going to leave. So what we did on one of our near the end, one of the joint fellowships, the young pastor of the new church was so sensitive to the Holy spirit at this point that, After we had the meal, he said, we just want to show a video of some of the, some of our recent baptisms.

So he shows several baptisms on a video clip of young adults. And then as soon as the baptism videos are over. He says, and now I want to introduce you to each of these young couples that were baptized. They’re there and they stand up and they get to a microphone and they share how this church not only shared the gospel with them and brought them to the place of salvation, but has really redeemed, reclaimed their family, their life and everything.

And all of a sudden, you could sense in that room a change of heart. These older people who were so concerned about losing something realized, Yeah, we are losing something, but look at what we’re gaining. And I heard so many of them, they said, Jimbo, Look, it’s going to be hard for me, but if the end result are young men and women like this who come to faith in Jesus and are baptized and are, I can’t not say yes.

And the whole thing changed on that one service where they saw before them a legitimate transformation of lives. And they said, that’s what we want for our church. You know, we may not like the coffee bar, we may not like having Sunday school, we may not like all the music that we’re going to do. So, fast forward a few years later, the church is doing great, And so one of the older men in the church came to that new young pastor and he said, let me tell you something about your, your young men at this church.

He said, you know, again, you know, the coffee bar, not having Sunday school, the music, don’t get all that. But he said, I tell you, I understand I love my church now. This is an older man. He said, and I tell you two reasons. He said, do these young men you have here? He said, I tell you what, they love Jesus and they work hard.

He said, I respect any young man that loves Jesus and works hard. Listen, when you can bring two generations together, not based on this is the kind of music, but that we love Jesus and we work hard, that’s glorious. So this is hard work to do this. And let’s be honest, usually when you’re doing adoption and adoptee, you’re talking about a young church and an old church.

And it’s not easy, but if we will follow what the Lord leads, it can be really great. So hopefully this template will help again. It’s just, it’s just a way it’s not the way, but we’ll put it on the show notes and we’re working it out and hopefully be helpful to you.

[00:28:18] JimBo Stewart: All right. Thank you for coming on.

[00:28:20] Mark Clifton: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

[00:28:21] JimBo Stewart: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Replant Boot Camp Podcast, where listening to the field will lead you to the future. The Replant Boot Camp Podcast is brought to you by Church QuickSight by 180 Digital. With Church QuickSight, you’ll get a beautiful, customized website with all the features you need to help your church grow.

A helpful project manager to make sure everything is just how you want it. And the legendary 180Digital hosting and support to keep things running great. 180Digital is a team of design development and marketing experts who know and love the local church. So go to ChurchQuickSight. com to learn more and get started.