It’s Friday, September 11. This is Friday Good Stuff: Things that inspired, motivated, challenged, taught or amused me on Substack this week + what’s new at Free Range Priest.

This week’s theme: Love never ends

This week at Free Range Priest:

Real talk about how it’s so hard to change as an institution.

☕️ ‘Congregations, it’s time to spend your money’. Taking a financial risk on a bold new church venture changes the odds from a 100% chance of dying to a non-zero chance of thriving. That doesn’t make it easier for lots of churches.

☕️ ’s blog for Substack Seminary - ‘What is your organization actually designed to produce?’ - explores the gap between what we want church to be and what it often is: institutional maintenance.

☕️ At the Trexo gym, we’re focusing on the Jesus Prayer - and how small, repetitive practices help shape our souls - and bring us closer to God.


☕️ Six-word mission statements are fun and informative ways to get at the heart of what your ministry is and why it matters. It’s also not so easy to do! It’s one of the fundamentals of Cage Free Ministry. I’d love to know yours! If you’re a subscriber (free or paid!), share yours with me here and I’ll send you some feedback:

Your 6-word mission

What have I missed?

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

Subscribe now

This week we talked about Practice

and had a great time talking about how theology shapes what our ministry ends up looking like.

Here’s the highlights of what we talked about:

Why Theology Matters - Theology isn’t just for scholars — what we believe about God determines how we act, both individually and as a church. Like values, theology is something l…

Read more

This week’s Practice

Each Coffee with Coaches session focuses on a Trexo Practice.

This week we’re focused on the Jesus Prayer Practice…

Read more

What is your organization actually designed to produce?

At my first solo pastorate, we averaged somewhere around 40–50 people on a Sunday.

We also had a church council that required something like 13–15 different people to function.

Do the math—seriously, I’m not great at math.

But I do know this; a remarkably high percentage of the congregation’s active adults were needed simply to maintain the organizational structure of the church.

I remember one young woman in particular. She was a twenty-something, relatively new mom, and an elementary school teacher. In many ways, she was exactly the kind of person older, established churches constantly say they want to reach: young, interested, and looking for ways to become more involved.

Children’s ministry seemed like a natural fit. She had experience with children. She enjoyed them. She had something meaningful to contribute.

Except that position was already “filled,” and the person overseeing the ministry wasn’t particularly interested in additional help.

What we did need was a treasurer, so she volunteered.

When the institution gets in the way

Now, churches need treasurers. Someone has to pay the bills, prepare reports, and keep the organization financially accountable.

But this particular person wasn’t especially gifted or interested in that work. She was simply willing.

Eventually, she burned out. And eventually, she stepped back from regular church attendance altogether.

I don’t tell that story to blame anyone involved. I was the pastor, after all. I was part of the system too.

But looking back, I see something I didn’t fully recognize then:

We said we wanted to reach and engage younger people. But our organizational structure was designed to recruit people to maintain the organization.

Every year, we would strain to figure out who could fill all the required seats on the church council and its various committees. There was certainly some consideration of gifts and interests, but the starting question was usually:

Who can we get to fill this position?

Instead of: Here is a person who wants to make a difference. How might her gifts, interests, and calling best be used?

Those are two very different questions.

Not every volunteer is looking for a task

I think this extends well beyond that particular church.

Many churches and nonprofits have a surprisingly simplistic volunteer pipeline. Someone wants to become more involved, so we offer them a predictable menu: greet at the door, help in the tech booth, clean up after fellowship time, join a committee.

Those are important jobs. Someone needs to do them.

But not every volunteer is looking for a task. Some people are looking for meaningful responsibility and an opportunity to use their gifts.

Years ago, a mentor told me something that has stuck with me:

“As pastor, you shouldn’t be pulling weeds.”

He wasn’t saying I was too important to pull weeds. If weeds needed pulling and I was standing there, I could certainly help.

His point was about stewardship. There were things I had been trained and called to do that other people could not do—and my limited time was better spent doing those things.

I think the same principle applies to volunteers.

A highly gifted leader shouldn’t consider themselves above stacking chairs, greeting at the door, or cleaning up after fellowship. Humility and a servant’s heart matter.

But good stewardship also means asking whether we are using someone’s gifts and capacity well.

If someone can teach, lead, organize, create, or build something new, why would we make the primary expression of their service something unrelated to those gifts?

Isn’t voluntarily offering those gifts to the church already an expression of a servant’s heart?

The goal isn’t to find people for the jobs we have. It’s to discern how the people we have can best contribute to the mission.

Organizations produce what they are designed to produce

This week in Substack Seminary, we’ve been thinking about how the major pieces of church life fit together: welcome, belonging, formation, and practice.

How do people find your ministry?
How do they join it?
How do they learn the Christian faith through it?
How do they grow closer to God alongside it?

But I think there’s another question underneath all of those:

Does the organization you’ve built actually support the outcomes you say you want?

A nonprofit says it values innovation but requires so many layers of approval that trying something new becomes nearly impossible.

A church says it wants to reach its neighborhood but spends most of its volunteer capacity staffing internal committees.

A congregation says it desperately wants younger adults—and then asks the few who arrive to fill vacancies in a governance structure designed decades ago.

Organizations produce what they are structured to produce—not necessarily what their mission statements say they want.

Structure should serve mission

Imagine a church that says its pathway is:

Welcome → Belonging → Formation → Practice

But the lived experience is actually:

Welcome → Membership → Committee → Institutional maintenance

That church may appear to have a discipleship or volunteer problem.

But it might actually have a structural problem.

None of this means governance, administration, budgets, committees, or mundane volunteer tasks are inherently bad. They aren’t.

But they are means, not ends.

The structure exists to serve the mission. The mission does not exist to sustain the structure.

When maintaining those structures begins consuming the people, energy, and resources needed to actually pursue the mission, something has become inverted.

So perhaps this week’s question is: If we say we want one outcome, but our structures continually produce another, which one is our organization actually designed for?

That question may tell you far more about your ministry than your mission statement ever will.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

This is the kind of work we’re doing in Substack Seminary: not simply clarifying what we hope our ministries will accomplish, but examining whether the organizations we’re building actually make those outcomes possible.

If your structure keeps getting in the way of your mission, maybe the answer isn’t trying harder within the structure. Maybe it’s time to redesign it.

That’s the work we’re doing here.

Substack Seminary is a Newsletter that is part of
a Free Range Priest subscription.

During Quarters, you’ll get blogs thematic blogs:

• Q1: Vision & Systematic Change

• Q2: Structure & Business Model

• Q3: Theology & Community

• Q4: Technology & Collaboration

Paid FRP subscribers join Conversations live on Thursdays at 3:30 Eastern (during Quarters), and get the replay + chat invitation on Mondays.


You don’t have to do this alone. Subscribe to join the ‘home for weirdo pastors’.

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

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Sign up for the Newletters - and manage your preferences HERE.

’Where are we going to get a million dollars?’

I was working with a congregation as they dreamed about their future.

Like so many others, this historic downtown church had beautiful (and aging..) buildings, a faithful and dedicated congregation (that was getting smaller), and a passion to make the world a better place in Jesus’ name.

And they had a vision…

What if they turned their large - mostly unused - Christian education building into a small, faith-based, walkable center-city school? What if tuition were kept low - even free for those in need - making it a viable alternative to overburdened public schools in the area?

They did some research and discovered there is a consulting group for just this type of project, and reached out to them.

The consultants did:

• a neighborhood study

• an assessment of their property

• a thorough reading of the applicable laws, rules, and regulations

• got the lay of the land for building city, county, state, denominational, and congregational support.
  
  The report came back - this vision was doable! And the consulting company could walk them through the first five years of getting a school up and running.
  
  

The startup cost: $1 million.

The church leaders looked over the report, held deep conversations, prayed about it. But in the end, they decided they could not undertake this project to see their vision through.

’If only we had a million dollars’, they said sadly.

This congregation had a $3.5 million dollar endowment they could have used for the school.

’What if we need the money?’

This congregation could not get past the fear of running out of money. The interest from the endowment was a big portion of their annual budget.

They would immediately lose about $50,000 a year if they took out a million dollar chunk all at once.

They just couldn’t take the risk of moving - even a tiny bit - out of the feeling of safety this endowment provide them with.


But money in the bank is not the same thing as sustainability. And this is particularly true of spiritual organizations. We say it, but it’s hard to really believe it - the money does not matter as much as the mission. How we are bring Good News to those around us.

From what I can see from the outside, and what they post online, this church is still there (without a school), a dozen or so years later. But their membership continues to decline. They no longer have a full-time ordained minister on staff. They’re moving closer to the having to close their doors.

It feels to me as if the choice they made to stay safe was at least as risky as the path they did not take.

The paradox of ‘stewardship’.

Many churches have money left by beloved members, and carefully tended to over the years. Like the church I was working with, it could be a significant part of the budget.

It feels like a gift - and it is! It feels like a ‘nest egg’ that must be carefully tended to. And it is!

And … it can put a community in a bind.

• ’If we spend the money, we might have to close our doors.’

• ’If we don’t spend the money, we might have to close our doors.’

Taking money out of an endowment or a reserve account is a risk that is easy to see - if we spend the money, the money is gone.

It’s harder to see that not spending the money is also a risk.

It’s an investment on everything staying exactly as it is - which is not what happens with organizations (or people, or any living thing). So even if we can pay for a full-time clergy person, for instance, our membership may still be declining. Our energy for mission may be waning.

We’re losing sustainability even with money in the bank.

What are you willing to invest in?

The real question is not ‘should we spend our money or not’?

It’s: ‘what are we spending money on'?

Because churches like the one I mentioned are using the interest from their endowment in their budget - very likely for one of two things: clergy salary or building maintenance. Or both.

Yet as the church declines, one thing we’re finding is this:

Doing the same things over and over again is not changing the trajectory of the institution.

So chances are, if we just keep using the interest from the endowment to pay the pastor and keep up the building - and we do nothing else - we will just die more slowly than congregations without extra funds. But we’ll still be dying.

Lots of congregations want to innovate, but they don’t know what to do, and they don’t have the funds to do it.

But it turns out, even if they have both an idea and the funds - like the congregation and the school - they can still be held back by fear.

They can still be afraid to risk spending their money on something that hasn’t been proven:

• New technology, for reaching more people, and for making administration easier.

• New systems for sharing ministry, new roles for lay and ordained ministers.

• New ways to engage people with the Gospel - whether they are in the church or not (bringing church to people!).

• New centers of religious presence in community life (like a downtown religious school, open to everyone).
  

The truth is: lots of innovative ministry is not going to succeed. And - each failure leads to learning what will succeed.

As opposed to continuing the same systems and programs and ways of doing things that are definitely no longer working.

Taking a financial risk on a bold new church venture changes the odds from a 100% chance of dying to a non-zero chance of thriving.

Store up your treasures in heaven

Not spending the money you’ve accumulated as a congregation is truly the riskiest strategy of all.

And there’s no way around it - the least faithful.

I’ve always struggled with the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), where servants are praised for investing the Master’s money, except the one who buries his out of fear and gets sent away where there is ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’.

It seems to be praising wise investors, but that’s not how I’ve understood it. It seems to me that Jesus is saying, “the God you believe in will be the God you get’. In other words, the servant who buried his treasure was afraid of a wrathful Master, and that is exactly what he got.

If we want to see God as harsh and punitive, surely we can find Biblical examples. But if we want to see God as all-loving and life-giving, we will find those examples, too. And live our lives through that belief.

This is more in keeping with Jesus telling us to store up our treasures in heaven, and ‘where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.’ (Matthew 6:19-21).

I think about this congregation often - the one who did not start a school, though they could have.

What if they had?

What if they had started the school, and it was a struggle, and maybe it lasted a few years, and then they did run out of money, and both the church and the school closed?

Maybe - even if the school didn’t last - they would have touched a handful of lives. They would have changed the trajectory of some.

Now they face the same decline, and it seems all but certain they will close their doors with money in the bank.

In the end, they could have invested in a handful more lives transformed by the Gospel.

As far as I know, they still can.

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

Subscribe now

It’s Friday, September 4. This is Friday Good Stuff: Things that inspired, motivated, challenged, taught or amused me on Substack this week + what’s new at Free Range Priest.

It’s a wonderful work of the Holy Spirit - often I’m drawn to several pieces of writing which all have the same theme…

This week’s theme: Formation

This week at Free Range Priest:

Since I combined all my Substack publications into one, I realize it can be hard to keep up with things! But there’s lots of church reimagination Good Stuff at FRP, so each week I’ll point out a few things:

☕️ At Trexo, we’re focusing on the first and most fundamental Practice: ‘Hearts up!’ It’s one of the earliest forms of Christian worship: ‘Lift up your hearts’/’we lift them to the Lord’. It’s our orientation towards God, and it’s something we can do every day. Our ‘Hearts up!’ Coaches are Benedict of Nursia, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and Amma Theodora.

☕️ This week’s theme at Substack Seminary is ‘Practice’. Read ’s ‘We become what we practice’ to hear how our repeated actions shape who we become.


☕️ Six-word mission statements are fun and informative ways to get at the heart of what your ministry is and why it matters. It’s also not so easy to do! It’s one of the fundamentals of Cage Free Ministry. I’d love to know yours! If you’re a subscriber (free or paid!), share yours with me here and I’ll send you some feedback:

Your 6-word mission

What have I missed?

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

Subscribe now

This week we talked about Practice

and had a great conversation about the idea of a “rule of life” — the set of values and practices that directs how a person or community actually lives.

Here’s the highlights of what we talked about:

• Everyone lives by a “rule of life,” whether it is intentional or simply absorbed from culture.

• The key question is whether…

Read more

Why Christian formation requires more than welcome and belief

This week in Substack Seminary, asked a question that may sound unfamiliar to some but is actually fairly simple:

“What is your Rule of Life?”

The idea of a “rule of life” can sound odd to those of us formed in low-church traditions—and especially within our broader individualistic American culture.

YOLO—“You Only Live Once”—is a kind of rule of life, even if we don’t usually call it that. It’s a short phrase that expresses a guiding philosophy: life is brief, so take the risk, seize the opportunity, and don’t let fear hold you back.

Tim Riggins, from the television show Friday Night Lights, had his own rule of life: “Texas forever.” It expressed his loyalty, identity, and deep sense of belonging.

And then there’s the familiar cultural rule of life: “Work hard, play hard.” It offers a simple vision for how to spend our time and what kind of life is worth pursuing.

We all live by some kind of rule of life. The question is whether we have chosen it intentionally—or simply absorbed it from the culture around us.

But Cathie’s actual question is more straightforward:

“What are the repeated practices that help build relationship with God? For yourself—and also for your ministry?”

As she notes, “A regular set of faith practices helps us find rhythm, consistency, and direction in our life with God.”

And that raises an important question about how we think people actually become Christian.

Is Christianity something we think or something we practice?

Broadly speaking, American Christianity has often been understood as primarily about thinking the right things—mentally adhering to the correct set of beliefs.

In many ways, that assumption has shaped our preaching, faith formation, discipleship curriculum, and evangelism.

But what if Christianity is not strengthened primarily by thinking the right things, but by doing the right things repeatedly?

In evangelical contexts, I’ve increasingly heard the phrase:

Belong → Behave → Believe

The idea is that someone is first welcomed into a community and given a sense of belonging. Then they begin participating in the practices of that community—loving, serving, giving, praying, worshiping. Through that participation, belief takes deeper root.

For many years, however, the process often worked in exactly the opposite direction.

When belief came before belonging

When I was in junior high, my family sought to join a Baptist church.

The Sunday we came forward to join, we were immediately ushered upstairs to meet with several deacons. My father was asked to explain what he believed.

Then came, at least implicitly, the expectation that we would behave correctly—which, in many conservative Christian circles, meant adherence to a fairly strict set of social expectations.

If you believed the right things and behaved the right way, eventually you would find that you belonged.

Believe → Behave → Belong.

There are obvious problems with that model, particularly when “Christian behavior” becomes indistinguishable from the cultural preferences of a particular community.

But I wonder whether some churches have responded by swinging too far in the opposite direction.

Welcome alone does not form people

In many mainline churches, I see an extravagant emphasis on welcome and belonging—which I deeply appreciate.

But sometimes there is little intentionality about what comes next.

And to be clear, when I use the word behave, I am not talking about policing social or cultural behaviors (not that our actions never matter).

What I mean by behaviors is Christian practices that form our faith.

Retired preaching professor Ronald Allen writes:

“We learn how to engage in Christian practice by practicing, that is, by doing the things that are central to Christian identity over and over, which matures us as Christians. Practice thus both forms the church and is a means through which the church expresses its identity. We become what we practice.”

Author Chuck DeGroat makes a similar point more succinctly:

“What we behold, we become.”

He also describes sin not simply as individual behavioral violations but as habitual participation in patterns that disconnect us from ourselves, others, and God.

In other words, our repeated actions shape who we become.

Formation requires practice

The way of Christlikeness is not formed by checking boxes or completing a list of assignments.

But neither is it formed simply by agreeing with the right ideas.

What we repeatedly do shapes us.

Prayer shapes us.
Worship shapes us.
Giving shapes us.
Serving shapes us.
Confession shapes us.
Even physical practices—kneeling, standing, raising our hands, receiving communion—can shape us.

This doesn’t mean prescribing every detail of someone’s spiritual life.

It means intentionally inviting people into practices through which they can encounter God and become more like Christ.

Belonging matters. But belonging should lead somewhere.

What are your practices producing?

That leads to a question not just for churches, but for any ministry or organization:

Is everything you do—and everything you ask others to do—helping form people toward your intended purpose?

For a church, are your practices actually forming people in the way of Jesus?

For a nonprofit focused on childhood literacy, are your programs and activities actually helping children become stronger readers?

Activity alone is not formation. Busyness is not necessarily purpose.

The question is what all that activity is forming us into.

And perhaps that is one of the gifts of thinking about a Rule of Life:

We become what we practice. So we should probably be intentional about what we practice.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

This is the kind of work we’re doing in Substack Seminary: moving beyond good intentions to think intentionally about how our ministries actually form people.

If you’re building or reimagining a ministry, don’t just ask what you believe or whom you welcome.

Ask what you practice—and who those practices are helping people become.

Join us.

Substack Seminary is a Newsletter that is part of
a Free Range Priest subscription.

During Quarters, you’ll get blogs thematic blogs:

• Q1: Vision & Systematic Change

• Q2: Structure & Business Model

• Q3: Theology & Community

• Q4: Technology & Collaboration

Paid FRP subscribers join Conversations live on Thursdays at 3:30 Eastern (during Quarters), and get the replay + chat invitation on Mondays.


You don’t have to do this alone. Subscribe to join the ‘home for weirdo pastors’.

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

Subscribe now

Sign up for the Newletters - and manage your preferences HERE.

Read more

This week we talked about Formation

and had a pretty in-depth conversation about calling, vocation, and formation this week.

Here’s the highlights of what we said:

Loren Richmond Jr. :

• Still putting words to what his ministry is, but the through-line is caring about the future of the church - podcast, writing, and face-to-face work are all “R&D” for that.

Read more

‘Good Stuff’ = articles I’ve read this week that inspired, educated, entertained, or moved me.

Which for a Free Range Priest, means reading more amazing, inspiring things about God, the church, the universe, and running.

Here’s this week’s roundup:

God stuff

• ‘Redemptive Suffering is a myth’ by . ‘It’s not that suffering satisfies God. Suffering is where God shows up. What if the cross doesn’t change God’s mind about us — what if it changes our mind about God?

  ---

• ’How to Pray When You’re Drowning’ by . ‘That’s the bare-bones prayer. It’s what we’ve got when words dissolve in our mouth. When we can’t see more than a few inches in front of us, and what we see looks black.

  This is combat prayer. It may sound like ‘oh God, oh God, oh God.” It may be complete silence, and maintaining an open channel.’

Church stuff

• ‘25 Essential Anglican Writers’ by . ‘A tradition isn’t merely a collection of things our predecessors happened to believe. It’s an inheritance of arguments, prayers, habits, failures, insights and discoveries, handed from one generation to another for the rather dangerous purpose of allowing the next generation to make use of it. The point of inheriting a tradition isn’t to preserve it in amber. It’s to have something substantial enough to argue with and learn from.’

  ---

• ‘Allowing a Church to Die’ by . ‘Allowing a church to die, then, is not indifference. It is not the absence of hope or care. Sometimes it is the difficult work of discerning together when faithfulness means continuing to fight for renewed life and when faithfulness means releasing what we love into the hands of God.’

Other stuff

• ’I’d like to be less responsible’ by . ‘Years ago, when I was overwhelmed with grief and indecision, my therapist told me if I was having trouble figuring out what I wanted the best thing to do was to practice it. Go to the store and buy a peach if you really want to buy a peach. Linger a little bit on the question of what you want to wear. Practice following your impulses. It was good advice though I fall in and out of the habit. I think it’s time to give it another try.’
  

  ---

• ‘We should all aspire to be a Dolly’ by . ‘Yet what her death made me think about wasn’t just Parton, whom I admired but never met. I began to think about other Earth angels, other “Dollys” that I have been blessed to know.’
  

What I wrote this week:

• ‘I’m Father Cathie*, and I am your Free Range Priest’. ‘It felt like it was the other way around: communities and ministers seemed more preoccupied with propping up the institution than sharing the Gospel - because their survival depended on it. I thought: there has to be a better way. We should be able to figure out a new way to share Good News in the 21st century.’
  

  ---

• ‘What is the end of the journey?’ Written by (for Substack Seminary).

And finally…

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

Subscribe now

Sign up for the Newletters - and manage your preferences HERE.

This week’s Practice

Each Coffee with Coaches session focuses on a Trexo Practice.

This week we’re focused on our basic Practice: ‘Hearts up!’

Read more

Christian formation needs a destination without controlling the path

In any good marketing program, a customer’s journey has a desired endpoint.

For instance, in Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework, the end of the customer journey is generally called “Success.”

The basic SB7 framework ends with the character avoiding failure and ending in success. “Success” is the desired transformation or ideal outcome the customer experiences after using your product or service.

StoryBrand encourages you to think about that transformation in terms of a from and a to:

From: Who is the customer before engaging you?

To: Who do they become afterward?

In other words:

What does success look like for this person? What is different about their life when the journey is complete?

That might sound like marketing language. But I think there is an important connection here to Christian formation.

Becoming Christian is the work of the church

This week in Substack Seminary, started us off by reminding us that Christian ministry is ultimately about forming Christians.

“Becoming Christian is the work of the church”

She pointed to the early church’s catechumenate—the extended process of study and formation undertaken by those seeking baptism.

And, as Cathie noted, every ministry has some kind of pathway through which formation happens:

“Every ministry has a pathway for becoming formed in the faith.”

That pathway might be a Bible study, a newcomer’s group or course, spiritual direction, service to others, worship, or participation in the sacraments.

Whatever the particular form, there is an assumption that formation is actually taking place.

The person who enters the journey should, in some meaningful sense, be different because of it.

What is our desired transformation?

Theologically, we might describe the destination differently than StoryBrand does.

The Apostle Paul repeatedly uses the language of becoming more like Christ—being “conformed to the image” of Christ in Romans 8 and 2 Corinthians 3.

And in Ephesians 4:11–13, Paul describes apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers as equipping the saints for ministry so that the body of Christ might move toward maturity.

¹¹ The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ^{14 (NRSV)}

I don’t want to get too far into the theological or hermeneutical weeds here. My point is simpler:

Both Christian formation and marketing assume that people enter into a relationship or process with some kind of destination in mind.

Too many churches—and too many ministries and nonprofits—enter into relationships with people without ever becoming clear about that desired outcome.

We create programs.
We hold events.
We develop pathways.
We invite people to participate.

But toward what?

If someone spends a year deeply involved in your ministry or nonprofit, what do you hope is different about them?

If we cannot answer that question, it becomes difficult to know what all of our activity is actually for.

A destination is not the same as control

Now, to be fair, this kind of language can become problematic—even dangerous.

The history of colonial missions offers plenty of tragic examples of missionaries not only having an intended outcome, but also determining exactly what that transformation was supposed to look like culturally, socially, and personally.

But I would suggest that the problem is not having an ideal outcome. The problem is assuming we control how another person gets there.

There is a significant difference between entering into relationship with someone with a hope for their transformation and determining in advance exactly how that transformation must happen.

Chinua Achebe’s classic novel Things Fall Apart offers an interesting illustration.

Set amid the encounter between Igbo communities and British colonialism, the novel introduces the missionary Mr. Brown. His posture stands in contrast to some of the more coercive forms of colonial Christianity surrounding him.

Achebe describes Mr. Brown spending long periods in conversation with Akunna, a leader in the community:

Whenever Mr. Brown went to that village he spent long hours with Akunna in his obi talking through an interpreter about religion. Neither of them succeeded in converting the other but they learned more about their different beliefs (164).

Neither converts the other. But they listen. They learn. They attempt to understand.

Later, Mr. Brown explains his own Christian understanding of God:

“You said one interesting thing,” said Mr. Brown. “You are afraid of Chukwu. In my religion Chukwu is a loving Father and need not be feared by those who do His will” (165).

Mr. Brown clearly has an intended outcome. He wants Akunna to see something differently. I might even say his hope is that Akunna would come to understand the God he already calls Chukwu more fully through Christianity and through Jesus.

But that is very different from many colonial missionary practices that forced Indigenous peoples to abandon their language, culture, customs, and identities as a prerequisite for becoming Christian.

The hoped-for destination might be similar. The process is radically different.

Hold the process loosely

Most marketing frameworks have a suggested path toward transformation.

As Cathie reminded us, most Christian traditions do too.

And your business, nonprofit, church, or ministry should probably have one as well.

You should know: Who are people when they encounter you?

What are you inviting them into?

What practices, relationships, or experiences might help them along the way?

And ultimately: Who do you hope they are becoming?

But Christian ministry requires one additional posture that a marketing framework cannot fully capture.

We have to hold the pathway loosely enough to trust that God is already at work in another person in ways we cannot see or control.

Sometimes transformation happens through our carefully constructed pathway.

Sometimes it happens despite it.

And sometimes the person ends up somewhere we never anticipated.

Our responsibility is to know what we are inviting people toward, create a faithful pathway for getting there, and then leave enough room for God—and the other person—to surprise us.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

This is the kind of work we’re doing in Substack Seminary.

We’re not simply asking what programs you should create or how you should market them. We’re asking deeper questions about the transformation those ministries are actually intended to produce.

What does “success” look like in your ministry? Who are you hoping people become—and can you create a pathway toward that transformation without trying to control the journey?

If those are questions you’re wrestling with, join us.

Substack Seminary is a Newsletter that is part of
a Free Range Priest subscription.

During Quarters, you’ll get blogs thematic blogs:

• Q1: Vision & Systematic Change

• Q2: Structure & Business Model

• Q3: Theology & Community

• Q4: Technology & Collaboration

Paid FRP subscribers join Conversations live on Thursdays at 3:30 Eastern (during Quarters), and get the replay + chat invitation on Mondays.


You don’t have to do this alone. Subscribe to join the ‘home for weirdo pastors’.

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

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‘Good Stuff’ = articles I’ve read this week that inspired, educated, entertained, or moved me.

Which for a Free Range Priest, means reading more amazing, inspiring things about God, the church, the universe, and running.

Here’s this week’s roundup:

God stuff

• ‘The Author of a Better Story’ by . ‘there’s something about this season of my life that feels like I’m watching God take a story I once understood primarily through the lens of death and slowly rewrite it through the lens of life.’

  ---

• ’AI Studies Jesus’ Self-Claims to Discover Who Jesus Thought He Was’ by . ‘Taken together, these statements are not a collection of separate titles or roles. They form a single, coherent self-disclosure: Jesus is claiming to be the eternal God of Israel who has become a human being in order to fulfill the messianic role.’

Church stuff

• ‘Why Your Church Should Use a Lectionary’ by . ‘Scripture, not the pastor, sets the preaching agenda. While this might seem restrictive for pastors, it can actually be quite freeing: it relieves them of the burden of trying to be mind-readers, or worse yet, amateur sociologists, trying to intuit the needs of the congregation and pick passages to meet those needs.’
  

  ---

• ‘Is the Church Running Out of Big Beefy Boys?’ by . ‘And what about sin? Beefy boys are more resistant to sin than skinny men, it is science. Whenever a group of bros is like “let’s go out tonight and do a cat burglary,” the beefy boy is like “nah, I don’t have that kind of agility, I will go home and get a stew going.”’

Other stuff

• ‘Chasing the Ghost of Pikes Peak’ by . ‘Unforgiveness is a tricky disease. You don’t even know you have it until it’s finally gone. You think you’re fine, even though you aren’t. You think all is well. You even swear to people that you’ve let all ill feelings go.’
  

  ---

• ‘Technology Is Over’ by . ‘There is some saturation happening, we must notice. We’re bored by promises of better technology and now looking elsewhere. We’ve gotten pretty much all we can consume. We’re informationally obese and looking to go on a diet.’
  

What I wrote this week:

• ‘‘All are welcome’ is a lie’. ‘It’s not (usually) about walking into a church service ‘cold’. And even if it is - plenty of people somehow stumble into a church when they are in need - it doesn’t end there. It’s accompanied by formation.
  
  By walking with someone (or a group of someones) who are actively praying, practicing, worshiping together, as we grow in our relationship with God. By getting to know this community and its quirks and gifts. By becoming part of the family.’
  

  ---

• ’People want to know how to get in’. Actually written by - for Substack Seminary. ‘the ubiquitous church phrase “all are welcome” can become so vague that it tells people almost nothing. Welcome to what? What does belonging here mean? How would I know whether I actually belong?

  People want to know how they can get in.’
  

And finally…

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

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This week we talked about Belonging

and had a lively livestream conversation this week!

Here’s the highlights of what we said:

Loren Richmond Jr. highlights:

• People instinctively want to know how to be “in” or “out” — group boundaries are a sociological reality, not just arbitrary lines.

• Key distinction: excluding people based on who they are vs. welcomin…

Read more

This week’s Practice

Each Coffee with Coaches session focuses on a Trexo Practice.

This week we’re focused on our basic Practice: ‘Hearts up!’

This week’s Coach

Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170 – c. 235)

• A Roman priest and theologian who lived at the very beginning of the third century.
  
  

• Author of ‘the Apostolic Tradition’, written around 215 AD - one of the very …

Read more

Why belonging requires boundaries—and clear ways to cross them

This week in Substack Seminary, we’re asking questions about membership and belonging:

What does “membership” mean in your community? Or, to ask it more bluntly, how does someone know if they are in or out?

It reminded me, perhaps strangely, of Christian summer camp.

The strange power of belonging

I was recently watching the 2021 Netflix movie A Week Away to kill some time one evening—and relive the glory days of ’90s CCM music.

What I’ve always found fascinating about youth summer camps is the team aspect. Teenagers arrive at camp and are divided into rival teams that may have little connection to anything outside that particular week.

And yet, almost immediately, people begin developing surprisingly strong allegiances to their team—and opposition to the others.

There is nothing particularly unique about summer camp here. Human beings are remarkably good at creating groups and identifying ourselves as part of them.

We saw the same thing during this summer’s World Cup. Millions of people passionately cheered for teams based, ultimately, on where lines have been drawn on a map.

We want to belong to something. And belonging inevitably creates some distinction between who is inside and who is outside.

The problem isn’t boundaries

Understandably, there has been a tendency in some church circles to respond to the destructive ways boundaries have been used by acting as if boundaries themselves are the problem.

I understand that impulse.

Churches have used boundaries to exclude people for all kinds of terrible reasons.

But I don’t think the answer is pretending boundaries don’t exist.

As and others have noted, the ubiquitous church phrase “all are welcome” can become so vague that it tells people almost nothing. Welcome to what? What does belonging here mean? How would I know whether I actually belong?

People want to know how they can get in.

Jesus doesn’t eliminate belonging

This is where I think an important distinction gets lost.

The problem isn’t having an inside and outside. The problem is creating unjust qualifications for who is allowed to cross the boundary.

A country club saying only white men can join is obviously exclusionary.

But saying, “Here is what membership means, here is what we commit ourselves to, and here is how you can become part of it” is something quite different.

Sometimes Christians say that Jesus erases boundaries. I’m not sure that’s quite right.

Jesus radically broadens who is invited to become an insider.

That’s a significant difference.

The Christian story is filled with language about belonging: body, family, citizenship, covenant, community. The invitation is expansive, but there is still something we are being invited into.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

This is the kind of question we’re wrestling with in Substack Seminary—not simply how to make ministries more welcoming, but what exactly we are welcoming people into.

A healthy ministry doesn’t need to eliminate its boundaries.

It needs to make its invitation clear, its expectations meaningful, and the path toward belonging genuinely open.

If you’re building or reimagining a ministry and trying to figure out what belonging should actually mean, join us.

Substack Seminary is a Newsletter that is part of
a Free Range Priest subscription.

During Quarters, you’ll get blogs thematic blogs:

• Q1: Vision & Systematic Change

• Q2: Structure & Business Model

• Q3: Theology & Community

• Q4: Technology & Collaboration

Paid FRP subscribers join Conversations live on Thursdays at 3:30 Eastern (during Quarters), and get the replay + chat invitation on Mondays.


You don’t have to do this alone. Subscribe to join the ‘home for weirdo pastors’.

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

Subscribe now

Sign up for the Newletters - and manage your preferences HERE.

Morning prayer Tuesdays 8am.

This was the sign in front of the Episcopal Church in Gettysburg, PA, years ago. So long ago that I was still in my brief first marriage, and my then-husband really wanted to visit the historic battlefields in the area.

I am not a battlefield fan, so I agreed to the trip as long as there was a good pool at the hotel by which I could read while he was gone all day. Then there was the extra bonus that here was a beautiful Episcopal Church within walking distance of where we were staying - and they had morning prayer on Tuesdays. My day was set.

So the next morning, I eagerly presented myself at the red door of the church at 7:50 (I like to get there in time to settle in and prepare myself for worship) … and the door was closed. Locked (of course I tried it). No signs of life.

I am not one to be deterred.

So I walked around to the alley that led to the back entrance - a more modern glass-walled parish hall entrance, and tried those doors. No luck. I peered in, hoping someone was around. Everything was quiet.

Just then, a car came down the alley - adorned with very familiar Episcopal Church stickers. A tall, older man got out.

’Good morning!’

’Hello! I’m here for morning prayer. Are you having it?’

’Well, now, first of all, it doesn’t start till 8:15, because we all like to listen to NPR news. Second, we have it over at the nursing home ever since Fred went in there.’

‘But the sign out front says 8am, and I assumed that meant here at church.’

The man shrugged noncommittally.

‘I’m heading over there right now. Would you like to come with me?’

Yes, reader, I did get in the car of a strange man in a city I was just visiting while my husband had no idea where I was in an age before cell phones were ubiquitous…

And it was wonderful! I met Fred - and a handful of other faithful church members. We said morning prayer according to Rite I in the Book of Common Prayer (traditional language), which is my favorite. We sang some hymns. And we all got to know each other a little bit.

On the way home, Alan (my driver and new best friend) took me on a little tour of Gettysburg, and in the end I knew where I could find my people if I was ever there again.

All are welcome.

It’s such a lovely sentiment. And yet … what does it mean?

I think we tend to use it as more of a description - whatever type of person you are, we will welcome you. Our doors are open.

Yet so often, they’re not.

Literally - our church doors are locked most of the time. Our worship and practice are local, specific, somewhat organic, and honed to the needs of the people who belong there.

Church communities tend to be very close knit. This is part of what makes them so wonderful. We’re ‘like family’. But ‘family’ is not a group of strangers - it’s a group of people who have customs and traditions and has built bonds over generations. It’s where people know each other deeply.

All are not welcome in a family.

Oh, eventually, you’ll probably be one of us, if you want to, if the bonds form. But it’s more like ‘many are called, few are chosen’.

That’s a good thing.

I was and wasn’t welcomed to that church in Gettysburg.

If I had just been a ‘visitor’, just a curious soul reading their sign, if I had no idea what the Episcopal Church was (or what morning prayer was), I would have walked away and gone on with my life.

I would not have persisted - not just because the door was locked, but because I would have had no idea what I was looking for.

Worshiping with a community is the end point of church life
- not the beginning!

Why in the world would I want to sit in the pews of a strange church (much less sit in a nursing home room!) unless I already understood how praying and praising God together changes my life? Unless I was already a member of this family of faith? Or I at least had the inkling I might be?

I was welcomed because I was already one of them! I knew the quirks and foibles (and amazing warmth and hospitality) of the average Episcopal Church, so I kept trying all my keys until I found the one that worked. and once I got in, I was treated like the family member I am.

(Incidentally, none of this was about my gender, my sexuality, my station in life, or which political group I identify with. I think we actually limit ourselves when we reduce faith community to a list of demographics.)

My welcome into church began when I was born.

• I was welcomed into the life of faith when I was born into a family who went to church every Sunday, who made sure I was formed in the faith.
  
  

• I was even more welcomed when I went to a college built around relationship with God - we had Eucharist in our dorm lounges on Sunday nights, I sang in the chapel choir, worked at the Campus Ministry office, participated in the retreat program. Our class motto was ‘learning, faith, and freedom’.
  
  

• In my adult life, I was welcomed by seeing those around me whose lives were bound by Christian practice, who were Christian with their whole lives. which made me say - ‘I want my life to look like that’.
  
  

• I’ve always been welcomed by those who shared their traditions with me, who invited me to their church, talked about their faith, prayed openly, practiced forgiveness, kept sabbath and silence, and generally showed me the ropes of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
  
  
  

The ‘welcome’ we receive as Christians is an invitation into the family - slowly, over time, with small gestures and the occasional misunderstanding.

It’s about falling in love - with God, and with the people who are in love with God.

It’s not (usually) about walking into a church service ‘cold’. And even if it is - plenty of people somehow stumble into a church when they are in need - it doesn’t end there. It’s accompanied by formation.

By walking with someone (or a group of someones) who are actively praying, practicing, worshiping together, as we grow in our relationship with God. By getting to know this community and its quirks and gifts. By becoming part of the family.

How do we welcome people today?

I don’t think it has anything to do with the signs we put outside or what times our services are. As I discovered - and continue to - they are often inaccurate. Or more to the point - more descriptive than prescriptive.

Worship isn’t a show and church isn’t a business establishment with certain hours. It’s a living community of faith, and our entrance into it is not truly at the door just before worship begins. It’s our baptism, it’s our conversion experience, it’s our gradual walk of faith, accompanied by other members of this family.

It’s also, honestly, a two-way street.

We’ve got to rattle the doors, go around the back and peer in. If no one answers at first. It’s not that no one’s there. It’s not that you aren’t welcome.

It’s just that their friend Fred went into the nursing home, and they still wanted him to participate - so they up and moved their worship to him. That's love.

And yes - maybe they forgot to put it on the sign. Or maybe they figured ‘if you know, you know’.

Because that’s how family works. It’s messy and complicated and full of moments that not everyone gets.

And maybe not all are welcome.

But if you seek, you will find.

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

Subscribe now

Sign up for the Newsletters - and manage your preferences HERE.

‘Good Stuff’ = articles I’ve read this week that inspired, educated, entertained, or moved me.

Which for a Free Range Priest, means reading more amazing, inspiring things about God, the church, the universe, and running.

Here’s this week’s roundup:

God stuff

• ‘What They’ll Say At Your Funeral’ by . ‘I’ve tried to live that way. Fought my own crookedness, called it discipline, called it grit. It got me somewhere. But it never got me to beloved. The Gospel offers us a radically different view of character formation.’
  

  ---

• ‘Ask a Priest: Sin, Sex & Our God Given Desires’ by . ‘Sex is dangerous, it’s dangerous inside and outside of marriage. It shapes and bonds and destroys and builds. Be very careful how you wield your power — it can continue to bring you close or separate you from all that is good.’

Church stuff

• ‘I Want To Serve a Dying Church’ by . ‘Only a “dying church,” that is a church that knows its utter dependence upon this God, and not upon its own reputation, past greatness, resources, endowed funds or programs, can truly live.’
  

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• ‘Everyone Hates Evangelicalism. Is It Even Worth Salvaging?’ by and . ‘I suspect evangelicals have been a little too eager to believe caricatures about ourselves. As I’ve begun telling people about this book, I’ve encountered a real eagerness for it in some people—like they’re hungry for permission to be openly happy about their own tradition.’
  

Other stuff

• ‘Exactly what I wish I’d known when I started on Substack’ by . ‘If your Substack homepage is just a scroll of every post you’ve ever published, it’s time for a small upgrade. Create a “Start here” or Table of Contents post to guide readers to your best work.’
  

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• ‘Hearing Your Stories: Abby Heffern’ by and . ‘I may not be the most impressive runner with the most impressive results, but I keep coming back year after year. And because I keep coming back, I keep growing. I keep getting better. I keep finding out what else I’m capable of.’
  

What I wrote this week:

• ‘Can you describe your ministry in 6 words?’ ‘Congregations and other ministries often create ‘mission statements’ that are really descriptions … or they’re super-long but don’t really say anything - when I teach preaching, I call this ‘blah blah blah Jesus’!’

• ‘We don’t think our way into believing.’ ‘These Practices existed before the divisions of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. They unite all Christians because they’re foundational to all traditions.’
  

And finally…

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

Subscribe now

Sign up for the Newletters - and manage your preferences HERE.

How are you welcoming people into God’s presence?

That’s the question and consider in today’s Covnersation.


Three models of Welcome, from the Orthodox, Quaker, and Anglican traditions:

Sacred Sanctuary. people are welcomed into the mystery of God’s presence through the atmosphere of the bldg (light, silence, beauty). A refuge of quiet and healing.

Neighborhood. people are welcomed into relational hospitality though a close group who follow Jesus together.

Shared Activity. people are welcomed into Christian practice and worship.

Conversation highlights:

• Your church is not friendly. Everyone thinks theirs is.
  Cathie: When my job was to visit congregations, I made it my business to go to coffee hour, get my coffee, and stand in the middle of the room by myself. Mostly, nobody spoke to me at all - even though I was their preacher and celebrant!
  
  Sierra: It’s like walking into your own house. You can’t see the problems.

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• The pastor’s real job is host.
  Not just preaching or hospital visits — welcoming people into life with God.
  
  Sierra: Pastors rarely see themselves as hosts, but I think that’s really what we’re doing… hosting is a vital job. And it’s vulnerable, scary work that mostly goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
  

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• “All are welcome” is a lie - and that’s the good news.
  
  A close community has a culture. If somebody walks in and it isn’t for them, that’s information - for them and for us. Appealing to everybody means appealing to nobody.
  

• We can only offer hospitality we’ve already received.
  
  Cathie: My reading of the Gospels is that Jesus received hospitality far more than he offered it.
  
  Sierra: If we don’t see ourselves on the receiving end of God’s welcome, our hospitality comes from a false place - it’s just works, trying harder to be gooder.
  
  

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• We’ve lost the thread.
  
  Cathie: I always ask people why they love their church and they say (almost exclusively)

  • ‘I love these people’

  • ‘we do good work’

  • it helps me be a better person’
    
    Almost never : ‘I come here to grow my relationship with God.’
    
    

  Sierra: If the ministers have lost the thread, the congregation can’t hold it.

At Free Range Priest, we’re bringing church to people.

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
Subscribe to re-discover ministry JOY.

Subscribe now

Sign up for the Newletters - and manage your preferences HERE.