[00:00:00] So it's like, man, we got to get this turnaround going. And I just threw everything at the wall. Everything that in my mind at seminary, I thought, as soon as I'm a senior pastor, I'm gonna die this and this and this. So I tried reviving Sunday school, I tried reviving Wednesday nights, I tried, you know, preaching a little bit better, I tried everything. And at the end of the year, I had made worship attendance go down by one person. So it's like, all I did with all my effort was making a little bit worse. And now I was burnt out.
[00:00:25] Welcome to episode 359. Today we start Pastor Appreciation Month, although I think pastors might be the only ones that know about it. But we're kicking off a few episodes interviewing pastors like you in the trenches, what they're doing, what they're learning and how God is showing up. Today we have a great conversation with David Kling from Covenant Presbyterian Church. That's coming up right now on The Reclaimed Leader. Welcome to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. I'm Jason Tucker.
[00:00:56] And I'm Jesse Skiffington. We're two pastors in the trenches who are passionate about church health for greater gospel impact.
[00:01:03] We share the ups and downs of ministry, strategies that worked for us, and some that didn't.
[00:01:08] Best practices and practical tools for church leadership.
[00:01:11] The goal? To help all of our churches flourish. Let's get started.
[00:01:19] Well, hey, Jesse, it is Pastor Appreciation Month, which I know you've emailed everybody saying,
[00:01:26] please, please, please, I take gift cards, Starbucks gift cards.
[00:01:30] But no, we want to appreciate pastors this month.
[00:01:33] And we're starting a series today, which I'm really excited about, where we're going to be talking stories from the trenches with pastors out doing pastor things.
[00:01:43] And I feel like whenever we talk to pastors, I get so energized because it's like somebody else is going through what we're going through,
[00:01:51] or we learn from each other so much.
[00:01:54] And I don't know, today we're going to welcome Pastor David Kling from Covenant Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama.
[00:02:01] And it was a great conversation.
[00:02:03] So I'm excited that pastors are going to get to hear David and his story of church turnaround.
[00:02:09] I think more than anything, I was really encouraged just to hear you're we're not the only ones like you, me, others.
[00:02:17] We're not alone in this this longing to see healthy, vital churches.
[00:02:23] And I love I love David's story.
[00:02:25] So I really I'm not going to spoil it by teasing it out too much, but you're going to really enjoy this.
[00:02:30] And Pastor Appreciation Month, you know, it is there's a lot that comes with leading change.
[00:02:35] There's a lot of hard things there's, you know, we talk about we'll have the scars to prove it way back.
[00:02:40] Jim Meade warned us about that.
[00:02:43] And you kind of weighed in not knowing all the lumps and bumps and bruises you're going to take.
[00:02:47] But then there's those moments that emerge where you go, it's worth it.
[00:02:51] Look what God did.
[00:02:52] Look how God was faithful in the midst of all that.
[00:02:56] So I won't spoil it.
[00:02:57] There's some really cool moments here in our conversation with David.
[00:03:00] Yeah.
[00:03:00] And since it's Pastor Appreciation Month, I thought it'd be fun if we give some stuff away to pastors.
[00:03:06] So we're going to be giving away this month.
[00:03:09] We'll do one a week.
[00:03:11] Just some of our favorite books.
[00:03:12] We got a book from Dan Ryland, Todd Bolsinger, Carl Vaders.
[00:03:16] And you will be in the running to get one month of free online coaching.
[00:03:22] And what that looks like is I'll get on a Zoom call with you for half an hour for four weeks in a row and talk about whatever the heck you need to talk about.
[00:03:32] If you just need to vent about what's going on in the church, we'll do that.
[00:03:35] If you need some, hey, how do you handle this in your church?
[00:03:38] How do you handle budgeting?
[00:03:39] How do you handle what your staff meetings look like?
[00:03:41] Whatever like that.
[00:03:43] We just spend some time one on one doing that.
[00:03:45] But I'm going to give away four free sessions, no strings attached, if you want to do that, just as a way to say that we appreciate you.
[00:03:53] Appreciate our listeners.
[00:03:54] Appreciate pastors everywhere.
[00:03:56] So hope that I find Jesse, you're not allowed to win.
[00:03:59] I was going to say, I could really use some coaching, Jason.
[00:04:02] So I guess I'm out.
[00:04:04] But, you know, that's OK.
[00:04:06] I'll see what else is out there, I guess.
[00:04:09] Anyway.
[00:04:09] So how do you get into the running?
[00:04:12] The thing is you subscribe to our weekly email.
[00:04:16] And the way you do that, go to our website, reclaimleader.com slash newsletter.
[00:04:20] There's also a pop-up.
[00:04:22] If you haven't been to our website before, it'll pop up as websites often do.
[00:04:26] And you could input your information there.
[00:04:29] We don't spam you.
[00:04:30] It's about one email a week.
[00:04:31] And we talk about the upcoming podcast episode and some other information.
[00:04:37] And we have lots of offers that we give away from time to time.
[00:04:40] So it's hopefully a resource that helps you on your journey.
[00:04:45] So again, reclaimleader.com slash newsletter.
[00:04:48] Sign up and you will be lotteried.
[00:04:52] Lotteried?
[00:04:53] I don't know.
[00:04:53] You'll be in the lottery to win stuff for Pastor Appreciation Month.
[00:04:59] All right.
[00:04:59] Hey, speaking about appreciating pastors, here is our conversation now with Pastor David Kling.
[00:05:05] We are so excited to welcome Pastor David Kling to the podcast.
[00:05:10] David and I sat next to each other.
[00:05:13] We're just talking before we hit record.
[00:05:14] We sat next to each other at a pre-conference event at a conference in Nashville.
[00:05:20] And it was awesome.
[00:05:22] We hit it off.
[00:05:23] I was invited to lead a session retreat last month.
[00:05:27] Well, whenever this airs.
[00:05:28] It was in August.
[00:05:29] I got to go to Huntsville, Alabama to his church, Covenant Presbyterian Church.
[00:05:33] And I loved it.
[00:05:35] I loved hearing this story of what's happened at Covenant and David's story of his passion
[00:05:41] for church turnaround.
[00:05:42] And we thought for this month, for October, it's technically Pastor Appreciation Month,
[00:05:47] but I think pastor's the only one that know that.
[00:05:50] That's true.
[00:05:53] But anyway, we thought it'd be cool to hear some stories from the trenches.
[00:05:56] So welcome to the podcast, David Kling.
[00:05:58] Welcome.
[00:05:59] Thank you so much, Jason.
[00:06:01] Thank you, Jesse.
[00:06:02] I love I'm a longtime listener.
[00:06:04] So it's a huge honor to get to be with you guys.
[00:06:08] Well, it's an honor to get to talk to you.
[00:06:11] Man, your church right in Huntsville.
[00:06:13] I'd never been to Huntsville.
[00:06:15] It was really cool.
[00:06:15] I really enjoyed it.
[00:06:17] And I especially loved hearing your passion again for turnaround.
[00:06:22] But that passion.
[00:06:24] You had ministers in the family.
[00:06:27] Yeah.
[00:06:27] Yeah.
[00:06:28] But that's not the route you originally went.
[00:06:30] Tell us about your beginnings and how you became a pastor.
[00:06:34] Yeah.
[00:06:34] So I went to the least Christian college in America called New College of Florida.
[00:06:41] And there was only 12 Christians in the whole school.
[00:06:46] And we were 12 different denominations and had 12 different opinions on everything.
[00:06:50] And we called ourselves the Jesus Club.
[00:06:53] And we were so small and terrible, a chapter of InterVarsity that InterVarsity actually abandoned us and decided we were no longer worth investing staff resources in.
[00:07:03] So I became the default leader of this little campus ministry.
[00:07:08] And man, we had Bible study every single day.
[00:07:11] We were seeing, you know, sharing Christ with like every single person was a salvation opportunity because no one was Christians except for us.
[00:07:18] And it was wonderful, but I got really burnt out.
[00:07:21] And so at the end of college, I thought to myself, I'm never going to do ministry ever again, even though I'm like a sixth generation pastor.
[00:07:29] And I thought, I just need to go get a job.
[00:07:32] So I went to University of Florida, got a master's in finance and then went to New York City to work as an investment banker on Wall Street for three years.
[00:07:40] And I just couldn't shake the bug.
[00:07:42] And so I ended up at a little tiny Presbyterian church on the Upper East Side called Central Presbyterian.
[00:07:49] It was only about 40 people when I started going there.
[00:07:53] No pastor.
[00:07:54] But it was just like this incredible sense that God was going to do something there.
[00:07:58] And and he did.
[00:08:00] And so just as a layperson, I got to watch this amazing church turnaround in the middle of New York City, which is also not a very Christian city.
[00:08:07] And I was sharing Christ with like my coworkers doing Bible studies in my bank and being able to witness to people, which was amazing because, you know, Wall Street, it's like in the news now.
[00:08:17] Like you work just around the clock.
[00:08:19] So you end up building really tight relationships with your coworkers.
[00:08:22] And I just knew like I wanted to share Christ, like what I really want to do in my life is share Christ with people that don't know him.
[00:08:30] And when Hurricane Sandy hit, the bank actually shut down.
[00:08:34] So we put how to put sandbags around the bank to protect it from flooding.
[00:08:38] And I just had a week of silence.
[00:08:40] My Blackberry died.
[00:08:41] So that dates me when I was there.
[00:08:43] All the Blackberries died.
[00:08:44] Crackberry.
[00:08:45] Yeah, the Crackberry died.
[00:08:47] And I just had a week to like think about what I want to do with my life.
[00:08:50] I just felt the Lord telling me, you know, to go and teach others my passion for sharing Christ, because I think that's the biggest thing, particularly for mainline, you know, Presbyterians and eco Presbyterians as as the world is becoming more secular.
[00:09:05] And is needing a more articulate expression of the gospel.
[00:09:08] We need to be leading in as mainline folk.
[00:09:12] And so I just felt that kind of hunger.
[00:09:14] And so went to Princeton Seminary, didn't tell my dad.
[00:09:17] He was so excited.
[00:09:18] I'd broken the family curse.
[00:09:20] I was not going to be a pastor.
[00:09:21] But I called him from Princeton and said, sorry, dad.
[00:09:26] Curse is not yet broken.
[00:09:28] And and then so did the three years there and then recruited kind of around the country as an associate pastor and ended up coming here to Huntsville, which is a fabulous church, kind of classic, medium sized.
[00:09:42] PCUSA church that was looking to do a baton pass from an associate who had become the senior.
[00:09:48] And so that's that's the kind of journey I've been on.
[00:09:51] And I've been there for a total of eight years now, two years as associate and six years as senior pastor.
[00:09:58] That's awesome.
[00:09:59] I feel like eight years, too, is it's such a nice amount of time.
[00:10:04] Yeah.
[00:10:05] To see things through and to get things done and to build trust.
[00:10:09] But I want to before we get into that story, it seems like, you know, your college experience, your Wall Street experience, that your heart was definitely being formed with a desire for evangelism, a desire for for outreach.
[00:10:26] And can you is that a thread that you've seen woven through your experience being the pastor there at Covenant?
[00:10:35] Yes. So that has, I think, been my greatest contribution is we've been a church that would describe itself as evangelical.
[00:10:43] So having a high view of scripture and saying that the most important thing that all of us can do is share Christ with our neighbors and see folks get saved.
[00:10:52] Even if we're reformed and we think God does the saving, you know, we do the sharing.
[00:10:57] We would be a church that has said that and has done it over the course of, you know, the 60 plus years we've been an organization.
[00:11:04] But it hadn't been maybe the main focus in the actual practice of evangelism.
[00:11:11] And even in Alabama, it's kind of like, well, everyone I know is a Christian.
[00:11:15] Well, that's becoming less and less true, even in Alabama, particularly for the younger generation.
[00:11:20] But that would probably be my biggest thing that I've brought to the church is saying, no, that's our number one priority.
[00:11:27] Everything else is second to praying for those who are distant from Christ and equipping each other on how we can share the hope that we have with our neighbors.
[00:11:37] Wow. That's pretty cool.
[00:11:39] So the home of NASA and unclaimed baggage store.
[00:11:41] And if you want a reference on that, you go check out Huntsville.
[00:11:44] I'm sure that's show notes.
[00:11:46] Yeah, put it in the show notes, put a link to it.
[00:11:47] It's so such a cool thing.
[00:11:48] But I was a guy, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and spent some time in the South and then Texas.
[00:11:55] And I noticed something of there.
[00:11:57] I think there is like you were talking about almost like a there's this part of your ministry where you're trying to convince Christians just to be Christian, like live out your faith.
[00:12:06] And it's almost like a re evangelization of the younger generation.
[00:12:11] And I imagine that comes with some pretty unique challenges.
[00:12:14] These aren't people hearing the gospel for the first time.
[00:12:16] And they're discovering it as good news again or maybe coming back to it or something.
[00:12:22] I would imagine there's something of that journey there.
[00:12:24] Is that something you've noticed in a place like Alabama?
[00:12:28] Absolutely.
[00:12:29] So I think there's a lot of people rejecting kind of Bible Belt culture.
[00:12:32] So it's kind of like Jason's context in the Northeast, you may where a lot of folks are rejecting kind of cultural Catholicism.
[00:12:40] People here are rejecting cultural Baptist ism.
[00:12:44] And but it's also with this being a major metro area, people moving from all over the world, all over the country to work in engineering or in education or in medicine.
[00:12:54] And now just so many of those markets are now national or global.
[00:12:58] So you're getting people moving from the West Coast or from the Northeast or from someplace else.
[00:13:04] And I think there's just going to be a real stiff cliff across the nation once the baby boomers are no longer with us.
[00:13:12] And it's just different saying, yeah, my grandparent was a Christian getting to the point where it's like, no, my great grandparents were Christians.
[00:13:21] You know, that's just going to be pretty thin ice.
[00:13:25] And I do think it's an opportunity.
[00:13:27] I know that they're saying now in kind of the Nicky Gumbel, Holy Trinity Brompton Alpha world that the United Kingdom used to be a in post Christendom.
[00:13:40] And now it's in pre Christendom where people don't even know what church is.
[00:13:44] But that post Christendom, which is where the United States is right now, is a huge opportunity because people have a memory.
[00:13:51] And that actually this is the moment where evangelism is easier.
[00:13:55] It's like when you still have some kind of touch point, it's actually a huge opportunity for churches to lean in and reengage people.
[00:14:03] Or there's enough social capital still that if you go to church, you're going to find friends.
[00:14:10] You're going to find people like you.
[00:14:13] So, yeah.
[00:14:14] Yeah.
[00:14:15] So, so take us to, you know, you had a good relationship with the senior pastor when you were the associate and take us to those first.
[00:14:25] Moments or, you know, a couple of months or even first year of now you're the senior pastor that everything has shaken out.
[00:14:35] The baton's been passed.
[00:14:37] Where, where are you spiritually, emotionally?
[00:14:41] Where's the church?
[00:14:42] What are some of the problems that you face?
[00:14:44] Just kind of paint the picture of those first.
[00:14:47] Yeah.
[00:14:48] Yeah.
[00:14:48] And so Jesse, did you do a baton pass as well?
[00:14:51] Yeah.
[00:14:52] Oh yeah.
[00:14:52] Yeah.
[00:14:53] Okay.
[00:14:53] Yeah.
[00:14:53] It was a, it was a baton pass.
[00:14:55] We'll call it that.
[00:14:56] Yeah.
[00:14:56] Yeah.
[00:14:57] Right.
[00:14:57] No, it really was.
[00:14:58] I don't know.
[00:14:59] So how long was your, the senior pastor there before your baton pass?
[00:15:03] 18 months.
[00:15:04] Okay.
[00:15:05] Between 18 months, two years.
[00:15:06] So it was a long overlap and there's pros and cons to that.
[00:15:12] The pro is if you've got a really healthy church, which this was quite healthy spiritually and emotionally, you can keep that healthy culture going without an interim period.
[00:15:21] The con is you don't, it's the same thing.
[00:15:25] You don't have an interim period.
[00:15:26] So you are your own interim.
[00:15:28] And in that first year of the baton pass where I was the senior pastor, the first thing I noticed was the church was exhausted.
[00:15:36] There's so much going into the pastoral transition that once that pass finally happens, it's like there's this huge letdown of energy in a congregation.
[00:15:46] And in reality, people really just needed to just chill.
[00:15:49] But I was like, oh my gosh, like if we just chill, we're going to lose the little bit of momentum that we have.
[00:15:55] And so this is the other con of the baton pass is I'd already used up my honeymoon period being the associate pastor.
[00:16:03] That's a good point.
[00:16:04] Brand new guy anymore.
[00:16:06] Yeah.
[00:16:07] So it's like I'd already used all my quick wins making the previous senior pastor finish strong, which is part of the job.
[00:16:14] You know, so you've got to have that humility to say, hey, that's a season that's important to steward well.
[00:16:18] But truly, everybody only has one honeymoon.
[00:16:22] You only have a few quick wins.
[00:16:23] And when they're gone, they're gone.
[00:16:25] So really, I started off in the driver's seat when the energy was at its lowest in the congregation.
[00:16:32] Um, we were facing significant financial pressures in the church because we had a very large mortgage for a building project that had been done before I got there.
[00:16:42] The church had actually been declining in members for about six years and declining in attendance.
[00:16:48] Um, so it's like, man, we got to get this turnaround going.
[00:16:50] And I just threw everything at the wall.
[00:16:52] Everything that in my mind at seminary, I thought, well, as soon as I'm a senior pastor, I'm going to die this and this and this.
[00:16:56] So I tried reviving Sunday school.
[00:16:58] I tried reviving Wednesday nights.
[00:17:00] I tried, you know, preaching a little bit better.
[00:17:02] I tried everything.
[00:17:03] And at the end of the year, I had made worship attendance go down by one person.
[00:17:07] So I was like, all I did with all my effort was make things a little bit worse.
[00:17:11] And now I was burnt out.
[00:17:13] So it kind of felt like the church was burnt out.
[00:17:16] And then at the end of the year, I was burnt out.
[00:17:17] And I realized I'm kind of set up for failure here.
[00:17:21] The decision-making process was really awesome because it engaged a lot of people and it made people feel really close together.
[00:17:28] But it was very slow.
[00:17:30] And I could just tell I can't make the decisions and the changes quick enough to turn this thing around.
[00:17:37] And so I was super concerned.
[00:17:40] I thought maybe if I had gotten everyone to memorize the Westminster Shorter Catechism, that that would turn the church around.
[00:17:46] And that was not it.
[00:17:48] It was for sure not.
[00:17:49] Are you kidding?
[00:17:49] It didn't do it, man.
[00:17:50] It was close, but not quite.
[00:17:52] Yeah.
[00:17:52] Yeah.
[00:17:52] Running family camp at the Presbyterian camp did not work.
[00:17:55] In fact, nobody signed up for it.
[00:17:56] And so just anything that had been a win of the past, either in my personal spiritual journey or the church's memory, we think, oh, we just bring it back.
[00:18:05] It just didn't work.
[00:18:06] And so I got turned on to Kerry Newhoff's podcast, Tony Morgan, who just passed away.
[00:18:14] Yeah.
[00:18:15] And we did it.
[00:18:16] The ministry stuff.
[00:18:17] I just started reading, reading, reading, reading and listening to podcasts like five or six hours a day.
[00:18:21] So I'm listening to like, I'm just trying to get like my MBA in church management at night, basically.
[00:18:27] And I realized we were stuck in a band between 200 and 400 that we were never going to escape because all of our organizational practices were designed to keep us at 200.
[00:18:39] And you think about most PCOSA Presbyterian churches, they're designed to be run by committees.
[00:18:45] And the committee process when it's running well, which this was a well-run church.
[00:18:49] So it's successful at what it's doing gets you right around that 250 sweet spot in engagement.
[00:18:56] And that's just kind of the way it is with church size theory.
[00:19:02] And unfortunately, the church had taken out their mortgage and doubled the size of their building when the previous senior pastor was at the very height of his powers.
[00:19:11] And so the church had been growing, growing, growing every year.
[00:19:14] They didn't have enough space for everybody.
[00:19:16] Kids are like spilling out into the hallway.
[00:19:17] And they took it up to 375 on a Sunday.
[00:19:21] Then they did the building project and basically had to cut their operating budget so that 25 to 30 percent of the budget every year is going out the door for mortgage.
[00:19:32] So now you can't afford to pay the staff to actually do the programming that's going to engage another 200 people.
[00:19:39] So now they've got this huge, beautiful building, but not the operating budget.
[00:19:43] And they thought they were so close to breaking through.
[00:19:45] So and before I went on my kind of personal education journey of what is church size theory, I would have thought they would have done it, too.
[00:19:52] So it wasn't anybody's fault.
[00:19:54] It was just ignorance.
[00:19:55] We just were unaware.
[00:19:58] So then I had to go on a journey of educating the session and being like, hey, it looks like to break through this 400 barrier.
[00:20:06] We're actually going to have to change some of the way we're doing things.
[00:20:09] And the earliest thing I identified that everybody said we need to do was shrink the size of the session, shrink the elder board from 12 to 6 and take elders off committees and put the teams, whatever committees, whatever you want to call them, really led by staff.
[00:20:28] That was a huge threat to the congregation that's had a lot of success using the committee model and has just seen wonderful things happen through that.
[00:20:37] And so that was a real challenge to kind of guide them through a process of saying, hey, let's try this.
[00:20:42] It's free. Does it cost us any money?
[00:20:44] The research suggests we should do this and let's just do an experiment.
[00:20:49] And so we did.
[00:20:50] And then it was the pandemic.
[00:20:51] And so then everything was an uproar.
[00:20:53] But the neat thing was because we made that one change, it set up all the future changes that have led to our current success.
[00:21:02] So that would put you kind of in year one of my ministry.
[00:21:06] That's.
[00:21:08] Thank you for sharing that.
[00:21:09] And I know that, you know, you got the scars to prove it.
[00:21:12] You know, right.
[00:21:12] But I was just anywhere for eight years.
[00:21:14] How many bumps and bruises do you have from doing all of that?
[00:21:17] You know, basically all my mentors told me, do not do this.
[00:21:21] You will lose your job.
[00:21:23] You will destroy the church if you try to do this.
[00:21:25] And it was like the Stan Ock thing.
[00:21:26] You guys always quote, less than that.
[00:21:29] Yeah.
[00:21:29] So the David Kling method is prune and apologize.
[00:21:35] Well, I think you're.
[00:21:37] We couldn't afford it.
[00:21:38] I was just like, we can't afford it.
[00:21:39] Like, yeah, we'll die in the midst of less than that.
[00:21:43] So we think you took a swing.
[00:21:45] You know, you went for it.
[00:21:46] Right.
[00:21:46] And I think there's something that can be invigorating.
[00:21:49] But you.
[00:21:49] I noticed something as you were talking.
[00:21:51] You weren't doing this in a just a haphazard, uneducated way.
[00:21:55] I mean, you had kind of done a deep dive into and thought carefully about how this can go
[00:22:00] and what it can look like.
[00:22:01] So you kind of became a subject matter expert.
[00:22:03] And I imagine anticipating some of the pushback and questions and all that.
[00:22:08] You weren't guessing.
[00:22:09] You had a clear sense.
[00:22:10] This was a vision that could lead in a healthy direction.
[00:22:13] And I imagine some of the right people came along with you while others threw a tantrum
[00:22:17] and did all the things that people do when they are going through change and they're not
[00:22:21] sure about it and all that.
[00:22:22] But but some of the right people go and start to see some wins.
[00:22:26] And that goes a long way.
[00:22:27] So, wow.
[00:22:28] Old leadership, man.
[00:22:29] That's leading change.
[00:22:32] One, you know, one challenging decision at a time.
[00:22:35] I think this is it's important to pause on this.
[00:22:40] And that's because there are a lot of.
[00:22:44] I don't know if it's pastors per se.
[00:22:47] I think a lot of pastors kind of get it.
[00:22:51] But definitely there are people in our churches who would say, well.
[00:22:56] Well, if the Lord wants your church bigger, he'll grow it.
[00:23:01] As if to say, just take your hands off the wheel and it's all in the Lord's hands.
[00:23:06] But this is proof that like praying harder is great, but it's not a strategy.
[00:23:12] There's there's the theological, the supernatural and the sociological reality of church.
[00:23:18] And if you're not tending to both, you know, it's a partnership.
[00:23:22] It always has been, always will be.
[00:23:24] And I and I feel like what you're sharing is me.
[00:23:27] And it was a healthy church, but I had some system failure.
[00:23:31] I had the check engine light was on.
[00:23:32] There are some things that needed to get adjusted and dialed in for everything to work properly.
[00:23:38] And so it's not like you were in this super dysfunctional church and everything was wrong.
[00:23:42] It was quite the opposite.
[00:23:44] It's just showing that like you really have to be paying attention as a pastor to all these things,
[00:23:50] which, by the way, we weren't taught at all and had to go listen to podcasts.
[00:23:55] Yeah, we missed that class.
[00:23:56] I'm pretty sure.
[00:23:57] But I also wonder, so what made the difference?
[00:24:00] Do you think?
[00:24:01] Why were your mentors wrong in this case?
[00:24:04] I'm thinking of other pastors listening in.
[00:24:06] Maybe they're getting the baton passed to them.
[00:24:09] They're thinking they're noticing some things that need to shift or change.
[00:24:13] How come you didn't lose your job?
[00:24:15] How come things didn't things didn't implode other than God is gracious and good and provided?
[00:24:20] How did you navigate?
[00:24:22] Yeah.
[00:24:22] So, you know, there's a great and maybe we could even link to it in show notes, but there's a great Harvard Business School kind of think piece,
[00:24:30] kind of putting organizations in different categories and thinking about where's your organization and what category you in.
[00:24:38] And some and different categories use different management tools.
[00:24:41] So, like just thinking about my family's history over 100 years in the PCUSA.
[00:24:48] What I know is this is a one in 100 years church that it was still extremely hard.
[00:24:53] I still did almost lose my job.
[00:24:55] But it's almost like it being a very healthy, wonderful, spiritually nourished church focused on wanting to share the gospel.
[00:25:04] They just needed a they needed to be shown a strategy of how to do it and persuaded.
[00:25:10] Some churches are so embedded in conflict from day one that they don't have that health yet.
[00:25:17] And so I don't know that my same model would have worked.
[00:25:21] I think you do need a mandate.
[00:25:22] So I think, Jesse, to your point, what why did I not lose my job?
[00:25:25] I worked systematically for a full year with the elders and trustees and other key leaders of the church to show them the research to and bring them along until there was 100 percent unanimity that, yeah, we're going to try this.
[00:25:43] Yeah, I love that.
[00:25:45] Once we tried it, things really got worse.
[00:25:50] So there's a certain amount of naivete that we all had.
[00:25:53] None of us knew how hard it was going to be after we made the jump.
[00:25:57] Yeah.
[00:25:58] But when we but going but leading up to it, there's just a wonderful, you know, there's just great Presbyterians out there who if you show them the research and you connect it to the vision, which I think is another thing I left out in the midst of this before I even had all the answers.
[00:26:13] I just went to Barnes and Noble and bought the five biggest Bibles, not the best, just the largest, the physically largest ones.
[00:26:24] And I put them on the altar and I said, once the next Sunday, I bought this on a Saturday night.
[00:26:29] I showed up Sunday morning.
[00:26:31] I said, we don't know anything about these Bibles except that they belong to five people in Huntsville that don't know Jesus.
[00:26:37] And they're going to receive him as savior in this church.
[00:26:40] And when they do, we're going to hand them a Bible off this altar and tell them how many days we've been praying for him.
[00:26:46] And so that just kind of visually resent people to like the first question, which was taking the evangelical congregation and focusing them on evangelism.
[00:26:57] And those Bibles, people told me they felt so much shame looking at them every week.
[00:27:01] People that are like, here, we're spending a million dollars a year.
[00:27:04] We're praying, we're worshiping, and we can't bring one adult to Christ.
[00:27:08] Like what is, what's the problem?
[00:27:10] And so creating, and Jason's taught me this, is not necessarily having the vision, but creating urgency around the problem.
[00:27:17] Like the urgency around the problem is we say we're an evangelical church, but we're not doing evangelism.
[00:27:22] What are we going to do about that?
[00:27:23] And so putting that little bit of pressure in there saying, if there's some kind of half-baked treasure map that might lead us towards being in church, actually doing evangelism, let's give it a try.
[00:27:36] And so I think because our church's heart really was in the right place, we were able to go on this really painful journey.
[00:27:44] And I didn't lose my job.
[00:27:46] Nice.
[00:27:47] Like I would have been some other churches.
[00:27:48] We're glad for that.
[00:27:49] And I even think, you know, one time we asked a ridiculous question here, how much are we spending per baptism every year?
[00:27:56] And it was not a very good question, maybe not super comfortable, but kind of to your point, what is the fruit of what we're doing?
[00:28:03] And I love that image of five Bibles up in the front, man.
[00:28:07] Just a visual reminder every day.
[00:28:09] A scorecard.
[00:28:10] Yeah.
[00:28:10] And I remember you said something else.
[00:28:12] You said there was consensus.
[00:28:13] You did the work and you made the decision.
[00:28:16] And then you kind of went in reverse for a little while.
[00:28:19] So, and it reminded me of what a pastor out here said, really awesome guy.
[00:28:23] But he said in the first couple of years of his leadership, as they went through change, God grew the church from 300 to 200 before they were healthy enough to grow to like five or 600 or whatever they ended up becoming these days.
[00:28:36] And sometimes you got to go backwards a little bit.
[00:28:40] And the Lord leads you back into something else than any built from there.
[00:28:44] So was that, does that resonate with your experience there?
[00:28:46] Yeah.
[00:28:47] And a little bit of it was masked by the pandemic.
[00:28:50] So just every church was doing worse.
[00:28:52] Sure.
[00:28:52] So in the midst of that chaos, again, like another one's like, Hey, don't waste the crisis.
[00:28:57] Like we did not waste the crisis.
[00:28:58] So we kept driving forward the organizational change and basically making sure every time we flip something back on in the church, it was in alignment with where we wanted to end up.
[00:29:08] And in the midst of that, basically there was a tipping point where people realized, wait a second, the church we knew and loved before is never coming back.
[00:29:16] And that's where a lot of the opposition came.
[00:29:20] And then just a lot of that for me was having to do just the really painful work of understanding where people were coming from and acknowledging that, you know, even something like a committee, which for me, I'm like, this is not valuable.
[00:29:36] This is, you know, not efficient.
[00:29:39] This is, you know, a barrier to our mission.
[00:29:43] But for somebody else, our committees were so wonderful.
[00:29:45] They did devotionals in there.
[00:29:47] They did prayers.
[00:29:48] They knew each other.
[00:29:49] They got the news of what was happening in the church.
[00:29:53] The previous senior pastor was really elegant and skilled at using committees to actually build the discipleship and spiritual health of the church.
[00:30:02] And so it took me a little bit to understand we have removed things that were people's connection to Jesus.
[00:30:10] Yeah.
[00:30:11] And so we actually like when they're upset from their point of view, like it is correct.
[00:30:16] And like we in the pruning of that, we actually did take away something very meaningful and special for somebody.
[00:30:22] And so just being able to like really genuinely apologize for that, like no, no holds barred and also understanding that other churches that still have that strategy can fill that role.
[00:30:36] And I saw that a number of times where people would leave our church and go to a different church and I'd get a call from that pastor saying, hey, I got one of your members.
[00:30:44] They say, you know, they're amazing.
[00:30:46] I'm like, yeah, they are amazing.
[00:30:48] Like, I hope they really bless your congregation.
[00:30:50] So that's kind of like the best case scenario of the transition.
[00:30:53] They're not always like that.
[00:30:54] But every single one of those departures was very, very painful for me and very painful for the whole kind of tight net church.
[00:31:02] So when we were taking steps back, we've been taking steps backward for about four years now and feel like we're kind of turning the ship and now aligned and headed the right direction.
[00:31:14] So, yeah.
[00:31:15] So let's let's get in.
[00:31:16] Let's get into that because you do have some exciting things that have been happening.
[00:31:21] You know, you got to the other side of the pandemic.
[00:31:23] You're continuing to prune and apologize.
[00:31:27] No, just kidding.
[00:31:27] So but you're right.
[00:31:29] You're you're figuring out what are the right systems for what we're doing?
[00:31:34] What's the right strategy?
[00:31:38] And who do we need to make sure has buy in?
[00:31:42] And what's how are we going to go through this whole process?
[00:31:45] Tell me about kind of what's going on now.
[00:31:47] I know that, you know, you had been thrust by debt.
[00:31:50] Yeah.
[00:31:51] For so long.
[00:31:52] And then that has changed.
[00:31:55] Tell us about where you are now and what's going on.
[00:31:58] Oh, yeah.
[00:31:59] So like a year ago.
[00:32:00] So we're we're we're surviving.
[00:32:02] It's just a miracle that we're continuing to survive financially alongside of all this organizational change.
[00:32:07] So it's very, very high stakes.
[00:32:09] There's very little room for error.
[00:32:11] And just every single staff departure.
[00:32:13] I'm trying to, like, figure out how to make it just leaner and leaner and leaner.
[00:32:18] And a year ago, I mean, we're at a spot.
[00:32:20] We're like wondering, are we going to have to close?
[00:32:23] Like, are we going to have to just walk away from this building?
[00:32:27] You know, if we had to go and meet in a cafeteria again, like we did a 1957, like who would be with us still?
[00:32:34] And do we cut everything just to try to survive or do we keep working our plan or five?
[00:32:41] You know, so we got the unstuck group in.
[00:32:42] We did all the different things.
[00:32:44] Like, do we keep working our plan that we know we need to do to reach people for Christ?
[00:32:49] Even if it means like we're going to have to put something together in the next six months.
[00:32:53] And I made every elder go around the table and everyone said, yes, yes, yes.
[00:32:57] We're going, we're going, we're going.
[00:32:59] And just took that step saying, like, even if we fail, we're going to try.
[00:33:02] And literally the month after we did that, that was in January of this year, January, 2024.
[00:33:10] In February, somebody walked in and a family in the church to two of the kind of matriarch and patriarch of the church had passed away and given $3 million to the church.
[00:33:25] We had $3 million in debt.
[00:33:26] So it was like the Lord, it was just like huge barrier on us.
[00:33:31] It was just removed.
[00:33:33] So now it's like we had no idea that was coming at all.
[00:33:39] And we were working so hard, like it depended on us.
[00:33:42] And the entire time God was just looking down, watching, knowing this day was coming and then remove that barrier from us.
[00:33:51] So what's powerful is we didn't know that was coming.
[00:33:54] So we basically had to just get extremely focused on where we're headed and like saying nothing will stop us.
[00:34:00] And now we've removed that barrier.
[00:34:01] So now things are just like surging ahead.
[00:34:05] So that's been a huge, a huge win.
[00:34:09] The other big win.
[00:34:10] So, again, it's just interesting.
[00:34:11] Like in the pandemic, there's a lot of uncertainty about the future of the church.
[00:34:15] We don't have any music.
[00:34:16] It's weird.
[00:34:17] All we have is preaching.
[00:34:19] But God answered our prayer in the pandemic for the Bibles.
[00:34:23] So it was actually during the pandemic that we saw all these people.
[00:34:27] And we're like a typical like 60s and 70s PCUSA church.
[00:34:30] We had all these people in their 20s come forward and get baptized during the pandemic, just listening to the word.
[00:34:37] And God had just moved on their hearts from all over the city to come to covenant with like no marketing strategy.
[00:34:43] So it's almost like God was just waiting for a church to start praying for these kids.
[00:34:47] And a lot of them, something happened in their life the day we started praying for those Bibles.
[00:34:52] Like that was the day they left for college.
[00:34:54] That was the day that their girlfriend broke up with them.
[00:34:57] That was the day that something happened.
[00:35:01] And now some of those kids are even going off to ministry or discerning costs to ministry.
[00:35:05] So, you know, just the heart has changed.
[00:35:09] We've got the financial burden removed.
[00:35:11] And there's just a real spirit of health.
[00:35:14] Now, another big swing we took was coming out of the pandemic again using the prune and apologize method.
[00:35:20] We had a traditional and a contemporary service and we really couldn't afford both of them.
[00:35:26] So that was just a hard conversation of we're going to have to do a blended style.
[00:35:31] And we really invested a lot in it.
[00:35:33] And it's been very successful.
[00:35:35] And now rather than it being something that people divide over, which is which worship style you go, we have one united worship service.
[00:35:41] And we lost people over that decision to on both sides, the contemporary people and the traditional people.
[00:35:46] But now we have one strategy moving forward.
[00:35:48] That's not a fight.
[00:35:50] We're going to have to hash out again.
[00:35:52] So those would be some of the things.
[00:35:54] Man, David.
[00:35:56] I mean, listen, it's amazing.
[00:35:59] I think your story is so great to hear for all of us because the number one metric that God cares about is faithfulness.
[00:36:06] How are we being faithful as we know to be and to soldier on in that faithfulness despite how bad the odds will look?
[00:36:17] Yeah.
[00:36:18] And, you know, God comes through with this incredible financial gift.
[00:36:22] I'm sure every pastor listening is like, dang, I hope my day coming.
[00:36:28] Right.
[00:36:28] Yeah.
[00:36:30] But but you you guys decided and this reminds me, Jesse, of Langdon Palmer when it was we interviewed a guy, Langdon, pastor, friend of ours.
[00:36:43] It was one of the early episodes that we did.
[00:36:46] And I think it's like the most listened to episode in our history.
[00:36:49] Oh, wow.
[00:36:49] Where he decided he went to this church and just said, what happens if we just risk it all?
[00:36:54] Let's risk it all.
[00:36:55] Let's risk losing all of our money doing this strategy and shutting our doors because we're going to shut our doors anyways if we don't take a swing here.
[00:37:04] And I love.
[00:37:07] That you took a swing.
[00:37:09] Church health, revitalization, forward movement takes nerve.
[00:37:14] It takes courage.
[00:37:16] It takes the willingness to do the hard thing, not knowing how the heck it's going to work out.
[00:37:21] And then, oh, look, lo and behold, God shows up.
[00:37:24] Every day.
[00:37:25] Yeah, it's crazy.
[00:37:27] Yeah.
[00:37:27] Well, I heard a lot of wisdom in there, too, though, David.
[00:37:29] What I appreciate is you didn't come in there, you know, prune and apologize without a thought to how to do it.
[00:37:36] You know, and I think that that pruning is with a purpose, right?
[00:37:39] You're crafting something.
[00:37:41] You're shaping something.
[00:37:42] So I love the wisdom piece, too.
[00:37:44] So take a swing.
[00:37:46] Do it wisely.
[00:37:47] What's the best?
[00:37:48] What's you know, what are you doing?
[00:37:49] And I can't imagine what it must have felt like for you.
[00:37:52] Maybe you can't even share.
[00:37:53] When you saw those Bibles being handed off and utilized, what was going on in you as you're just going, look at what happened?
[00:38:01] Oh, I just cry every single time.
[00:38:05] And I just get all choked up.
[00:38:07] I can barely get through it.
[00:38:08] And it's everything.
[00:38:11] Like going back to my calling story of why did I leave New York City is for these moments.
[00:38:15] And it just makes me think about why are we Presbyterian?
[00:38:18] It's like the Baptists are so much better at this than us.
[00:38:21] But just seeing like, who are we saving?
[00:38:23] They're like hard to reach people.
[00:38:25] They're people that weren't reached by the bigger, more successful churches.
[00:38:31] So it's just the most meaningful thing in my entire life.
[00:38:35] And it makes everything else worthwhile getting to see someone receive Christ.
[00:38:40] And so that is everything I do is for those moments.
[00:38:46] And that's what I think about all the time.
[00:38:48] Whenever I'm feeling like, what am I doing this for?
[00:38:50] And I think it makes the scars worth it in some way.
[00:38:54] It's like it kind of leads you to that.
[00:38:56] You know, no greater love has a man than this, that he laid down his life for his friends.
[00:39:00] And I think in leadership, when we have clear vision and direction and doing the hard work of change, we take it on the chain.
[00:39:06] And we might not be literally being crucified, but in a lot of ways, we take a lot of those lumps and bruises and unfair treatment and things that can beat up our souls, our hearts and our minds.
[00:39:17] But to have those kinds of wins where we get to see, God, thank you for what you're doing.
[00:39:21] And what an awesome thing to get to celebrate and just go.
[00:39:24] It wasn't without purpose.
[00:39:25] It wasn't without meaning.
[00:39:28] And I think for Presbyterians, too, one thing I found that's helpful is Presbyterians love to pray.
[00:39:34] Like they hate to evangelize, but they love to pray.
[00:39:37] So like giving something tangible that people can focus on praying for and then acknowledging it.
[00:39:42] So like handing the Bible to somebody and say, hey, we've like I think the first one was like we've been praying for you for 700 days.
[00:39:49] That's pretty awesome.
[00:39:51] That's cool.
[00:39:52] Welcome home.
[00:39:53] Like we've been praying.
[00:39:54] And then it's just like everybody gets to feel like, yeah, we have.
[00:39:56] And that's been hard for the congregation to be praying and praying and praying and not see anything.
[00:40:03] Yeah.
[00:40:04] So that's just something that's a way to include everybody in it, even if there's going to be even if it's the Lord that brings the increase, which is what we've seen.
[00:40:13] It's so random the way people come to your church and get saved.
[00:40:16] But to emphasize that point is you're partnering with the Lord with open hands, right?
[00:40:25] So you know he's going to do the feeding, but you're setting the table.
[00:40:29] So just making sure that you are acknowledging God's the one that's doing the growing, but you're the active partner in this.
[00:40:38] Well, David, man, it's been so good having you on.
[00:40:41] I love it.
[00:40:42] It's been awesome talking about your story.
[00:40:45] I love talking to you guys.
[00:40:45] You're my heroes.
[00:40:46] At the church.
[00:40:47] And what's like, you know, one thing that you're just really excited about?
[00:40:53] What's next?
[00:40:54] What's next for you?
[00:40:55] What's next for Covenant?
[00:40:57] Yeah, I think actually getting this to be less of an accident.
[00:41:03] So it's kind of like you're saying like the partnership is an active partnership.
[00:41:08] Can we actually learn the dance moves here?
[00:41:10] And they're so exciting.
[00:41:11] So the next thing that's happened just in the last month is to see a lot of change in our staffing.
[00:41:17] And we've had amazing staff people this whole time.
[00:41:21] But I think we all know staffing is.
[00:41:22] So I lost a lot of staff this last year that were wonderful.
[00:41:26] I thought, how am I going to keep going?
[00:41:27] And now all the staff is coming in.
[00:41:29] They're all focused on this vision that we've got to see more people come to Christ.
[00:41:34] And so I just feel like we might actually, you know, again, eight years later,
[00:41:40] finally be getting started on what we were supposed to be doing here and being more intentional
[00:41:45] about a discipleship process that can guide people in our community to a relationship with Christ.
[00:41:51] And so, Jason, you were a huge help with us for that.
[00:41:53] So I want to just say thank you.
[00:41:55] Thank you so much.
[00:41:56] And thank you, Jesse, for this podcast.
[00:41:58] So you guys are helping us on what I think is next, which is a more intentional discipleship process.
[00:42:05] That's awesome.
[00:42:05] Hey, if any pastors want to reach out to you, if they have questions, hey, how'd you handle this?
[00:42:10] What's the best way for them to do that?
[00:42:11] Yeah, shoot me an email.
[00:42:13] It's my david.kling, K-L-I-N-G, at covhsv, C-O-V-H-S-V dot org.
[00:42:20] And would love to connect.
[00:42:23] Awesome, man.
[00:42:23] Well, hey, thanks so much for being with us.
[00:42:26] And who knows?
[00:42:27] Maybe we'll be down in Huntsville.
[00:42:28] We'll come pay you a visit.
[00:42:29] Or please, if you come up near New York, listen, I got a place for you to stay.
[00:42:33] So come on by.
[00:42:34] I love that.
[00:42:35] See you guys.
[00:42:36] All right, man.
[00:42:37] See you.
[00:42:37] Thanks, Jesse.
[00:42:39] Jason, I love talking to pastors, man.
[00:42:41] You know, I think that's one of our favorite things about doing a podcast.
[00:42:45] One, we like each other okay.
[00:42:47] So we like talking to each other.
[00:42:49] And some of the guests we have are awesome.
[00:42:51] They bring tons of expertise from the outside, different industries and whatever.
[00:42:54] But talking to pastors like David, pastors in the trenches, leading change in real time,
[00:43:00] going through the ups and downs of all that.
[00:43:01] It's inspiring.
[00:43:02] It's encouraging.
[00:43:04] It helps me to want to keep going, keep leaning into whatever the preferred future that God
[00:43:09] has in mind for our congregation and our life here at Marine View.
[00:43:12] So David, if you're listening, nicely done.
[00:43:14] Thanks for sharing all that, pouring your heart into what you're doing.
[00:43:16] And I wonder for folks listening in, there's some different pieces of the story, right?
[00:43:23] There's kind of the beginning point.
[00:43:24] And you're looking at all the change and all the things that need to get done.
[00:43:28] And sort of the, it feels like, how are we ever going to get there?
[00:43:32] And I would encourage you to take a step, start moving in a direction, start building
[00:43:37] some of that consensus like David talked about to lead change, to begin to move.
[00:43:41] And then some of you might be more in the middle and the middle is really hard because
[00:43:46] that's where you're like, I think I might want to give up.
[00:43:49] I don't know if it's going to work.
[00:43:50] I think we might fail and you might, and you're in the middle and you're slogging through and
[00:43:55] you're kind of taking it on the chin.
[00:43:56] And, uh, and I think the encouragement there is to stick with it.
[00:44:00] Keep going.
[00:44:01] You can do it.
[00:44:02] Keep going.
[00:44:02] You're, you're on the right road.
[00:44:04] And sometimes being on the right road, the best evidence of that is that it's hard.
[00:44:09] Right.
[00:44:09] And, and it makes sense.
[00:44:11] And then I loved it where we got with David's story of getting to see some of the fruit of
[00:44:15] that commitment to pray for these, these young people pray for whoever's going to take this
[00:44:19] Bible and put their faith and trust in Christ.
[00:44:22] And to get to feel what that experience was like to see and just the emotion of that.
[00:44:27] So, you know, later on we get to experience some of the wins and hopefully there's some
[00:44:31] things throughout that God is giving us what we need to keep moving forward and to stop
[00:44:35] and celebrate when we see some, some good fruit come.
[00:44:38] Yeah.
[00:44:40] Oh man.
[00:44:40] So, so many good things to think about and such an encouragement.
[00:44:44] And again, pastors, if this is an encouragement to you, I just, I just, well, I just hope it
[00:44:49] is.
[00:44:49] I hope it's encouraging wherever you're at in your ministry, in your life, spiritually, emotionally,
[00:44:56] even physically, like what's going on.
[00:44:58] I just pray that this is like a shot in the arm for you to keep going, to think about those.
[00:45:03] I love that visual of the Bibles on the table and, you know, they belong to someone let's
[00:45:09] pray for who's going to receive this.
[00:45:11] I think that's the kind of spirit we need to help keep us going, especially when things
[00:45:14] are tough.
[00:45:15] So hang in there, everyone.
[00:45:17] Again, remember you can, you can win big, man, big prizes, reclaimleader.com slash newsletter.
[00:45:24] And, um, I don't know, any, any final thoughts before we sign off here?
[00:45:28] I think.
[00:45:29] No, I just am grateful for David's story.
[00:45:31] We're rooting for you pastors out there.
[00:45:33] Keep going.
[00:45:34] You've got this.
[00:45:35] Let's do it together.
[00:45:36] Reach out to us if you ever want to connect and just talk, uh, life ministry.
[00:45:41] We're here for that as well.
[00:45:42] We know it can be isolating and lonely.
[00:45:44] Sometimes we need each other, uh, along the road.
[00:45:47] So don't, don't hesitate to reach out Jason or Jesse at reclaimleader.com.
[00:45:51] We'd love to connect.
[00:45:52] Absolutely.
[00:45:53] Cause ministry is hard.
[00:45:54] It is so much better when we do it together.