This quarter in Substack Seminary, we’re talking about how technology can help us in ministry.

And to kick things off, I thought I’d start with something practical: four tech tools I’m using right now and finding helpful.

None of these are specifically “church software.” In fact, that’s part of what I like about them. They help me manage relationships, organize work, communicate, and create across the different contexts in which I work.

1. Dex

Dex is a personal CRM—or Customer Relationship Management system. CRMs are essentially databases designed to help organizations keep track of relationships: who someone is, when you last interacted, what you’ve talked about, and when you might want to follow up.

I found Dex after trying to find a CRM that could manage relationships from all the different contexts of my work.

What I like about Dex is that it isn’t tied to one particular business or organization. It is my CRM.

So I can keep track of relationships from church, nonprofits, podcasting, writing, consulting, and everything else—all in the same place. Dex can also track notes, reminders, important dates, and other information that helps you remember where you left off with someone.

I’m of the belief that when someone has a need, the person they reach out to isn’t necessarily the most qualified person they know. It’s often whoever is top of mind.

So, maintaining those relationships is important.

At minimum, I think pastors and ministry leaders could use something like this to help keep track of relationships and pastoral-care follow-ups.

2. Trello

Trello is a project and task-management tool built around boards, lists, and cards. You can use those to organize projects, track tasks, set deadlines, and see where different pieces of work stand.

There are many project-management tools available, so Trello may not be the right solution for you. I initially tried it because I had friends who used it and liked it.

I’m still exploring everything it can do.

But, again, one thing I like as someone doing multiple things is that I can create different boards corresponding to the different areas of my work: church, nonprofit, podcasting, writing, and so on.

Instead of trying to keep all those projects in my head, Trello gives me a place to put them.

3. Riverside

Riverside is an online recording and communication platform. Think of something like Zoom, but built much more intentionally around producing high-quality audio and video content.

I’ve used Riverside for several years in my podcasting work.

But I’m increasingly encouraging clients to think beyond podcast recording and consider the other ways tools like this can be used in ministry—webinars, interviews, video conversations, training materials, and on-demand content.

Especially as ministry becomes less geographically bound, the ability to create good digital content is increasingly part of ministry infrastructure.

4. ChatGPT

Finally, I don’t know how someone can avoid utilizing AI in modern ministry.

ChatGPT is an AI assistant that can help with things like brainstorming, writing, research, planning, working with files, and organizing information.

I know AI usage is still controversial in some ministry contexts. And I wouldn’t want someone to plug in a biblical text, have AI spit out a sermon, and then preach that sermon as their own.

But that’s very different from using AI as a tool.

Even this morning, as I’m writing this, I put some particulars into AI and had it help me flesh out an end-of-year giving plan, including weekly checklists.

I use it to brainstorm, organize ideas, challenge my thinking, refine writing, research questions, and help turn ideas into actionable plans.

AI doesn’t have to replace your thinking. It can help you think and work more effectively.

Use technology to support the work

None of these tools will make you a better pastor or ministry leader by themselves.

But they can help you remember people, organize your work, communicate more effectively, and spend less time trying to keep everything straight in your head.

And that’s part of what we’re exploring this quarter in Substack Seminary:

How can technology support the ministry we’re actually called to do—rather than simply becoming one more thing we have to manage?

And perhaps I should add this: as we’re all trying to figure out how to make our work sustainable, if you’re interested in any of these products, let me know. I can send you a referral link.

It doesn’t change my recommendation—I’m sharing these because they’re tools I actually use and find helpful—but if you’re going to sign up anyway, I certainly won’t turn down the referral.

Be sure to leave a comment below with your favorite technology tool in ministry.

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’.

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Substack Seminary Q4 starts Monday!

October 5th. The theme is Technology and Collaboration.

To wrap up Q3, we invited Substack Seminary enrollee to share her thoughts on Theology and Community. Thank you Thea!

What might God do through you?

God is relational. The truth that God exists in three distinct yet deliberately connected forms expresses how much God values relationships. This relationship expresses itself by moving right into the neighborhood, embodying a desire to know and be known so that creation might see and believe in greater things through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God’s gracious, redeeming and renewing life comes through authentic, deep and revealing relationships with real people also willing to know and be known.

Growing up in a chaotic and violent home, I prayed for the courage to believe the small voice whispering inside of me, “there has to be a better way.” As a young adult, I found my own manipulative, toxic and abusive relationship immediately inflicting bruises and scars to my body and brain, the voice inside began to scream “you deserve a better way.”

After 5 years of contorting myself to try and fit into who someone else needed me to be so that they could function with peace, I dreamed of escaping to live a new way in a land far far away. It was overseas, in a 70% atheist country of Czech Republic, with little faith in me, I met three women who embodied what I needed: friendship.

During our long walks to the train, through sleet and snow, and over three hour lunches across crumble filled tables, these women were willing to get to know, and let me get to know them, bruises, scars, hopes and dreams. It was through these relationships, each revealed they had a relationship with the God of everything something I never even dreamed was a possibility.

It was under the deep wide Czech sky I realized for the first time God was not distant and disgusted with me, but madly in love with and always present with protection and provision, even on my worst days.

This new connection led me to be able to return home, redeem my broken relationships with my family and learn to recognize and receive real love that shows up as honesty, kindness, mercy and self control. My relationship with God also empowered me to drop my salty nets and join the Jesus mission through pastoral ministry, trusting that God could and would work through even me, a wretched sinner still learning a new way to be.

In church planting, revitalization and daring to dream up something new, God has always shown up through people, willing to co-dream, believe and bring something out of nothing repeatedly.

Noticing this truth, led me to create , a space for women ready to connect with other dreamers, be encouraged by daring believers and held accountable to the goodness of God already at work in wondrous ways. She Believes Community embodies God’s choice to move right into the neighborhood, coming dangerously close to all our weakness, hunger, sickness and selfish ways, yet offering healing, hope and a brand new way instead of running away.

Jesus chose relationships, close proximity and living in the messy middle of human life in order to offer a new way, modeling what mercy looks like and promising that death doesn’t stop God’s will and way. By choosing connection, encouragement and accountability, fellow dreamers can stop wishing for a better reality, like those waiting for God’s kingdom to come, and learn to be the better way, bringing hope, change, comfort and redemption to their families, work place and neighborhoods resulting in a world that shines brighter, beyond isolation, envy and shame.

She Believes Community is a little-Christ, worried less about titles, given authority or the way power tends to work today.

Instead, we focus on being present with one another, boldly sharing our stories and trusting that God is here, now, working towards good in you today. She Believes Community lives out an embodied theology of God’s kingdom that moves us from despising ourselves in our booths, to determined followers of Jesus willing to share the influence this new way of living changes things.

We welcome you to come and see where else God will lead.

Find us at shebelievescommunity.com

Thea Curry-Fuson is the Founder and Executive Director of She Believes Community. Thea also provides content, connection and community to faithful leaders ready to dream and believe in a better reality via speaking, writing, coaching and consulting.

Visit theacurryfuson.com to connect.

Substack Seminary Q4: Technology and Collaboration
We are the case study.

It’s not just the theme - we’re doing it in real time!

, , … and you !- answer these questions in public, via blog and livestream (Thursdays at 3:30pm Eastern)

Week 1 - starts Oct 5: The tech your ministry is built on

Inventory what you’re using and how (your digital ‘stack’!). Favorite platform? One that gives you fits? One you wish you were using/could use? AI (yes/no/how)

Week 2 - starts Oct 12: Who is your network?

Map your collaboration - who you work with, how decisions get made, who supports your ministry and how you support others. Where is the accountability?

Week 3 - starting Oct 19: How do strangers become community members?

Picking up from Q3: Theology and Community - let’s audit our welcome sequence!
How do you use technology to get people’s attention, engage them with what you’re doing, and have them become part of the community?

Week 4 - Oct 26: How do we form people we never meet?

Christian faith and practice is about intimacy and community. How do we foster this in digital space?

Week 5 - Nov 2: What does a Cage Free Minister do all day?

Cathie, Sierra, and Loren will share from our daily work lives - how we use digital platforms in our ministry, who we rely on to help support us, how we support others in their ministry.

Week 6 - Nov 9: What did we build this Quarter?

Before-and-after - what we built this Quarter - what we’re going to take with us as we move forward.

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

Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry and get ‘unstuck’.
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Sacred Space still matters

On the evening of April 15, 2019, a fire broke out beneath the eaves of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

What began quietly soon became catastrophic. By nightfall, the spire had collapsed, and flames consumed most of the roof.

Firefighters battled the blaze through the night. By morning, they had managed to save the main structure—the bell towers, rose windows, and stone walls that had stood for more than eight centuries.

But the roof was lost.

The fire burned through what was known as “the forest,” a dense lattice of oak beams dating back to the 13th century. Wood cut centuries before Columbus crossed the Atlantic vanished in hours.

And as it burned, thousands of people gathered along the banks of the Seine.

They stood in silence.
They prayed.
They sang hymns.
Some wept openly.

Others simply watched, unable to look away.

Suddenly, the building mattered

No one shouted, “Empty the pews.”

No one argued that the building no longer mattered because church attendance had declined.

No one suggested that the space had outlived its usefulness.

In that moment, people understood—almost instinctively—what sacred space means.

The loss of a church is never just about bricks and beams.

It is about memory.
Identity.
Continuity.
Community.
Hope.

It is about the spiritual and cultural good a place can hold—even for people who may rarely, if ever, worship there.

Moments of crisis have a way of revealing what we actually value.

Notre-Dame showed us that when sacred space is threatened, people recognize its importance immediately.

We are losing sacred spaces much more quietly

Most church buildings don’t disappear in spectacular fires broadcast around the world.

They disappear slowly.

Attendance declines.
Budgets tighten.
Deferred maintenance accumulates.
Rooms sit empty six days a week.

Eventually, someone asks whether the congregation can afford the building anymore.

That’s a reasonable question.

But I don’t think it’s the only question—or even necessarily the most important one.

Before asking what a church building is worth, we should ask what it could be for.

What role could this space play in its neighborhood?

Who could gather here?

What community need could be met here?

What partnerships could emerge?

How might a building that feels like a burden on Sunday become an asset for ministry throughout the week?

The building isn’t the church—but it still matters

We’ve spent decades reminding ourselves that the church is not the building.

That’s true.

But sometimes we’ve repeated it so often that we’ve forgotten the other side of the equation:

Buildings matter.

Physical places shape communities. They hold memories. They create opportunities for encounter. They provide places where people can worship, eat, learn, organize, grieve, celebrate, receive help, and simply belong.

A church building doesn’t have to become a museum to be worth preserving.

Nor does preserving it mean keeping everything exactly as it has always been.

Sometimes honoring a sacred space means imagining new ways for it to serve the community around it.

This is the question behind my new book

This is the central concern of my new book, The Church as Community Hub: Sharing Spaces to Help Neighborhoods Thrive.

The book explores how congregations can think differently about buildings, land, partnerships, and community engagement—not primarily as strategies for saving struggling institutions, but as resources for mission.

Because the question isn’t simply:

How do we save our building?

It’s:

How can this building help us participate more fully in what God is already doing in our neighborhood?

Those are very different questions.

And they lead to very different possibilities.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

This is also exactly the kind of question we’re asking in Substack Seminary.

What have we inherited?

What is still serving the mission?

What needs to change?

And how might the resources already in our hands become part of whatever God is calling us toward next?

Notre-Dame’s fire reminded millions of people that sacred spaces matter.

Churches shouldn’t have to wait until they’re about to lose theirs to discover why.

If you’re wrestling with the future of your church, its building, or its relationship with the surrounding community, The Church as Community Hub was written for that conversation.

Check out the book here: https://churchpublishing.org/products/9781640659988-the-church-as-community-hub

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.

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

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.

Subscribe now

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

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.

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

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.


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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

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
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During Quarters, you’ll get blogs thematic blogs:

• Q1: Vision & Systematic Change

• Q2: Structure & Business Model

• Q3: Theology & Community

• Q4: Technology & Collaboration

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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.

  ---

• 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.
  

  ---

• “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.
  
  

  ---

• 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.

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How do people experience you?

This week in Substack Seminary, we’re asking questions around welcome and ministry, specifically:

How do people first experience your ministry? And what are you inviting them into?

In the opening post, shared three “Models of Welcome” drawn from Orthodox, Quaker, and Anglican traditions: the Sacred Sanctuary Model, the Neighborhood Model, and the Shared Activity Model.

She noted that many ministries contain elements of each, then asked:

“Which is closest to yours? Or do you have another way of welcoming people into life with God?”

I’m excited about this question, if only because I’m taking a very different—and far less liturgical—approach than my high-church counterpart Cathie.

What came to my mind was a sales funnel.

From sales funnel to ministry pathway

A sales funnel is essentially a map of a customer’s journey—from first becoming aware of an organization through stages like interest, decision, and action.

I was working on something similar recently for , a Christian nonprofit I consult with. Instead of a sales funnel, I’ve been calling it the GRL Pathway.

The question is essentially the same as Cathie’s:

How do people enter into relationship with us, and where are we inviting them to go from there?

For Green Room Leaders, worship leaders and churches tend to enter the organization’s orbit in a couple of ways. Sometimes the organization reaches out directly to worship leaders and begins building relationships. Other times, a church comes looking for help filling an immediate worship leadership need.

And that second entry point has been particularly interesting.

An entry point is not the destination

A church might approach the organization because they need someone to lead worship next Sunday.

But Green Room Leaders doesn’t ultimately want to be a fill-in musician service. The larger goal is to strengthen worship leaders, ministries, and ultimately the culture of the churches they serve.

The immediate need is the entry point. It isn’t necessarily what you are inviting people into.

That distinction matters.

If someone comes to you needing a musician next Sunday, they probably don’t want to immediately hear your pitch for technical consulting or a year-long cohort.

Welcome begins by recognizing why someone walked through the door in the first place.

Welcome requires a pathway

But good ministry also asks what might come next.

Once you understand how people first experience your ministry, you can begin building a pathway appropriate to that entry point.

What do they need right now?
What relationship needs to develop next?
What deeper need might emerge over time?
And ultimately, what are you inviting them into?

This is where I think the language of a sales funnel actually has something to teach us.

Welcome isn’t simply opening the door. It’s thinking intentionally about where the door leads.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

This is exactly the kind of work we’re doing in Substack Seminary: taking seriously both the theology and the mechanics of ministry.

Because it’s not enough to say, “Everyone is welcome.”

We also need to know how people find us, what they encounter when they arrive, and where we’re hoping to go together.

If you’re building or reimagining a ministry and need help creating that pathway, 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’.

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How is your ministry actually ministry?

That’s the question and I were discussing today ( is out this week)

• ‘Ministry of presence’ is a skill. Loren talks about his blog this week, which focuses on his chaplain role.
  “Focus on being out of the gifting and grace that God has given to you”
  
  and we talked about how that presence doesn’t just happen. As Loren …

Read more

What I thought chaplaincy was

When I was training as a hospital chaplain several years ago, I understood the role primarily as emotional support or crisis response—something closer to a social worker than a minister.

Part of that was probably my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) training. Part of it was that I was training during the chaos of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. And part of it was simply my own misunderstanding of the role.

It wasn’t until I stepped away from chaplaincy, returned to parish ministry, worked in social work, and then came back to chaplaincy that I began to understand the difference.

Learning to “be”

Along the way, ’s memoir Walk with Me helped put words to what I had begun to experience.

She writes:

“CPE is the process of discovering the ‘how’ of bringing ourselves into the room and making ourselves selflessly available to the other… Learning to be vulnerable amid suffering is a process requiring an internal excavation of the soul that frees us to be the empathic creatures God made us to be.”

Later she contrasts parish ministry and chaplaincy this way:

“A pastor is a bundle of ‘to dos.’ A chaplain is merely ‘to be.’ Chaplains merely present themselves to others in the whirlwind of their pain. I had to learn ‘to be’ and not ‘to do.’”

That distinction has stayed with me.

Doing versus being

This week in Substack Seminary, we’re asking what makes our ministry actually ministry.

Corcella’s insight offers one helpful way to think about it: the difference between ministry as doing and ministry as being.

Much of what we celebrate in ministry is measurable. We count impact, budgets, participants, and outcomes.

Chaplaincy pushes in another direction.

It teaches to enter spaces in need of ministry stripped of agendas, productivity, and to-do lists.

To simply be a visible reminder of God’s love, presence, and grace.

Corcella puts it beautifully:

“Chaplains get to take a person’s spark of hope and turn it into a flame burning in love. The sick, injured, ill, and traumatized need witness to their suffering, and they need witness to the survival, not of the body, but of the sacred spirit.”

The deeper question

I wonder if this is one of the best questions we can ask of any ministry.

Is its value found primarily in what it produces? Or in how it embodies the love and grace of God?

Corcella reminds us that faith points to “a transcendent being—God—who is at our side offering unconditional love and unending compassion.”

That doesn’t mean ministry never does anything.

It means that everything ministry does should flow from who it is.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

This is the kind of discernment we’re cultivating in Substack Seminary.

Not simply building better ministries, but becoming the kind of leaders whose work flows from God’s presence rather than endless production.

If your ministry has begun to feel like an endless list of things to do, perhaps it’s worth asking whether God is inviting you to recover the ministry of simply being.

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

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Substack Seminary is now a newsletter of Free Range Priest!

If you are already a subscriber of either Free Range Priest or Substack seminary, you will get blogs and emails from Substack Seminary.

If you don’t want to hear things about Substack Seminary, you can adjust your Newsletter sign ups (and your notification preferences) here:

Newsletter preferences

(look for the link near the top of this page that says ‘account settings’)

From now on, a paid Free Range Priest subscription gets you into Substack Seminary, Trexo, Cage Free Ministry, and more — making it more accessible to all.

Substack Seminary is the home for weirdo orphan pastors

• Ministers doing church in new ways, whether inside, outside, or alongside the institution.

• Q3 - Theology and Community - starts Monday and runs six weeks, through September 13.

• The guiding question: how is your ministry actually ministry — how are you sharing the faith, forming community, and bearing the tradition into the world?

• Those who are enrolled in the full program will stay enrolled and continue with the same process.
  

  

What does it mean to be ‘outside the box’ and creating theological connection and community?

• Loren: hospital chaplaincy. He didn’t understand the pastoral work until he was really doing it, saying a word of truth: you’re forgiven, God loves you.

• Cathie: Cage Free Ministry - when you’re outside Sunday worship, the role isn’t proscribed, it’s organic and riskier.

• Sierra: in her small town, a lot of her job is being publicly a pastor — people ask her to do funerals and weddings, and when something bad happens, they come find her. They may never come to church, but you can tell them: you are loved, God is with you, he is near.
  

We talked about the burden of feeling like we’re carrying it all, but we don’t have to: denominations change, the church never fails, because the church is something bigger. Institutions come and go, but the institution of us in the church goes back to the beginning and goes to the end.

We talked about the loneliness of being clergy - especially Cage Free Ministers. We found each other because of that - it’s what started Substack Seminary. We need each other.

Learn more about Substack Seminary

Loren dropped a shameless plug: his book, The Church as Community Hub, comes out September 8 and is available for pre-order wherever books are sold. Cathie has already pre-ordered hers!

Substack Seminary is a Newsletter that is part of
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During Quarters, you’ll get blogs thematic blogs:

• Q1: Vision & Systematic Change

• Q2: Structure & Business Model

• Q3: Theology & Community

• Q4: Technology & Collaboration

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Most churches are not asking pastors to do more—they are asking them to do the impossible.
The modern pastoral job description would require several full-time positions in any other organization.

William (Bill) Harrison is president of Lutheran Theological Seminary, Saskatoon, former chair of the Saskatoon Theological Union Common Faculty, and the author of Leadership in a Shrinking Church. While I’d recommend his book for pastors and church leaders more broadly, Harrison clearly names dynamics of pastoral leadership that are often assumed without being explicitly named.

Specifically, he describes how the demands of the pastoral role have continued to expand over time, even going back hundreds of years. He writes:

“We have accumulated, in the lives of most [pastors] the following priorities: eucharistic leadership, building construction and maintenance, preaching and teaching, therapeutic level pastoral care, trained management, and numbers oriented mission…

We have placed very high expectations on the shoulders of presbyters. At the same time, we commonly offer small salaries and an assumption of mobility that tests personal relationships and family ties. This would be tough even in a growing church.” (p. 82)

How we got here

Notice what Harrison points out. Pastoral leadership began as Eucharistic leadership—word and sacrament.

With the construction of church buildings, even beginning in the Middle Ages, came responsibility for construction and maintenance. More recently, the pastor is expected to function as a counselor, corporate executive, and—since the COVID-19 pandemic—a digital outreach specialist.

These are, in themselves, full-time roles in larger organizations.

Yet within a church setting, a pastor is often expected—sometimes unwittingly—to fulfill all of them.

This is not a failure of effort. It is a failure of structure.

Doing less with less

So what do we do instead?

Harrison suggests that “there are some things that can be done about this situation.” First, he argues, churches must clarify what church leadership is about today.

At minimum, this means being explicit about what a church expects from its pastor—and what can reasonably be completed within the scope of pay and time.

“The second,” Harrison says, “is to foster a team that can pick up necessary work that clergy need to drop in order to do their primary work.”

“The third,” and likely the most underrated, “is to let go of tasks that do not contribute sufficiently to the work that needs to be done” (p. 82).

Harrison summarizes this posture as doing less with less.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

One of the recurring conversations in Substack Seminary is the decline of institutional Christianity. While there are many reasons to grieve this reality, there is also an opportunity embedded within it.

Decline creates permission to rewrite expectations.

Especially expectations around the role of the pastor or clergyperson.

This kind of work—naming misaligned expectations, reclaiming sustainable leadership, and reimagining ministry for a smaller, leaner church—is exactly what Substack Seminary exists to do.

Substack Seminary is not about doing church better by working harder. It’s about learning how to lead faithfully within real limits.

If you’re a pastor, church leader, or thoughtful practitioner navigating ministry with fewer resources and greater complexity, this is the conversation you belong in.

Join us.

Substack Seminary is a Newsletter that is part of
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During Quarters, you’ll get blogs thematic blogs:

• Q1: Vision & Systematic Change

• Q2: Structure & Business Model

• Q3: Theology & Community

• Q4: Technology & Collaboration

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What makes this work so hard is precisely why Substack Seminary exists.

Like my colleague , I am—by necessity and calling—a kind of “free-range priest.” I work across multiple contexts and roles, many of them outside traditional parish structures. Another pastor recently suggested I call myself a “New Era Pastor.” That phrase tracks in more ways than one.

I work part time as a hospital chaplain. I work part time for a ministry nonprofit. I podcast. I read. I write. I teach. I do this work here on Substack.

None of this is accidental. It’s adaptive.

What makes it difficult is that even as churches and denominations acknowledge institutional decline, most still operate as if institutional stability is the norm. The structures have changed. The assumptions have not.

The lingering assumption of institutional margin

Here’s a simple example.

In my role as a part-time hospital chaplain, I work on-call overnight shifts. Most nights, I’m not called in. I earn a very modest stipend for being available. When I am called in, families or patients often ask, “What church are you from?”

The assumption is telling.

They assume I’m a community pastor—employed full time by a congregation with enough institutional margin to absorb late-night crisis care. And, to be fair, the hospital system assumes something similar, based on how little it pays for that availability.

This same logic shows up in denominational and church contexts.

Cathie has shared stories of awkward conversations when she explains that she charges for her time. I’ve had those same moments—the pause, the raised eyebrow, the confusion—when I explain why a church or judicatory should hire me rather than assume my labor is already subsidized somewhere else.

The problem with fractional ministry

This exposes a deeper issue with how part-time and fractional ministry roles are framed.

Even when a church funds a part-time position, it often assumes the remaining income needed for a full-time living can be easily made up elsewhere. In reality, those remaining hours are almost impossible to replace with stable, meaningful work—especially on a one-to-one basis, and especially with work that aligns with a clergyperson’s training and vocation.

Ministry does not scale cleanly into fractions.

A 1/2 or 3/4 role still carries full-time emotional, cognitive, and relational demands. Schedules are inflexible. Emergencies don’t respect job descriptions. And the remaining income often has to be earned in work entirely outside one’s specialty.

What looks like flexibility on paper becomes precarity in practice.

This is why cobbling together part-time roles so often fails—not because clergy lack creativity or effort, but because the work is being measured with the wrong formula.

Why the contractor metaphor matters

This is where the language of a contractor becomes helpful—not as a redefinition of ministry, but as a metaphor.

When you hire a contractor, you are not paying for the number of hours they spend on the job. You are paying for their experience, skill, and judgment—the ability to build something correctly the first time, avoid costly mistakes, and respond when things don’t go as planned.

Pastoral work often functions the same way.

Churches are not simply purchasing time.
They are engaging formation, discernment, and lived experience.

This helps explain why fractional ministry so often fails. A church may pay for “part-time hours,” but still expects full-vocation availability, wisdom in crisis, and long-range pastoral judgment.

The contractor metaphor tells the truth: churches are not buying hours; they are paying for expertise.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

This is why Cathie and I keep pushing for different ways of imagining clergy employment—and why Substack Seminary exists.

We are trying to help leaders navigate ministry after institutional certainty has faded. To name the mismatch between expectations and reality. To advocate for fairer, clearer, and more sustainable ways of structuring clergy work.

Substack Seminary is not about restoring an institution that no longer exists.
It’s about forming leaders who can live faithfully within real limits.

If you are navigating ministry across multiple roles, wrestling with fractional employment, or trying to articulate your value clearly and honestly—this is the conversation you belong in.

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.


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Right now. Today.
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Right now, most churches are saying some version of this: we need to grow to survive.

But when growth becomes the condition for survival, churches are pushed into a posture of desperation rather than discernment.

Every organization—and every church—has the same basic limits.

Capacity is made up of three things:
time, money, and people.

When churches begin to believe they must grow to survive, they often stop asking what faithfulness looks like within those real limits.

Growth or viability?

Instead of asking, How do we grow?
we might need to ask, How do we stay viable?

For many churches and nonprofits right now, viability matters more than growth.

Not because growth is bad—but because growth that outpaces your time, your people, and your money eventually breaks the system.

When growth becomes a theological problem

We often treat growth as a sign of divine favor.

But sometimes chasing growth assumes the future depends on us—

our energy,
our cleverness,
our ability to do more with less.

I’d argue the opposite.

Faithfulness looks like honoring the capacity you actually have.

Being faithful within your real budget, your real volunteers, and your real time is far more realistic—and far more sustainable—than chasing growth that exhausts people and empties accounts.

Viability is not giving up

Viability isn’t resignation.
It’s stewardship.

It’s choosing:
sustainability over spectacle
presence over pressure
depth over scale

And maybe, in this moment, the most faithful thing a church can do isn’t to get bigger—

but to get honest about its time, its money, and its people,
and learn how to live well within them.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

This kind of discernment—choosing viability over spectacle, faithfulness over frantic growth—is exactly the work of Substack Seminary.

Substack Seminary exists to help pastors and church leaders think clearly about capacity, sustainability, and leadership in a post-growth church.

If you’re tired of being told that bigger is the only faithful option, and you want language and frameworks for leading well within real limits, this is the space for you.

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.


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Passion is never the problem. Capacity is (Part 1).

I recently sat in on a board training for a newly forming nonprofit. It was early—very early—in its life. The mission was good. The people were earnest. There was genuine passion in the room.

And yet, the longer the conversation went on, the more alarm bells started going off in my head.

A few days later, in a one-on-one with the board chair, I said something that felt almost taboo:

You might need to shut this down.

I didn’t expect to say it out loud.


Part 2:

When passion outruns capacity

The issue wasn’t vision or values. It was simpler—and harder to admit.

The board chair is leaving.

In this case, the board chair is also functioning as executive director. They carry operations, relationships, public visibility, and day-to-day decision-making. There is no redundancy. No staff ED. No one else positioned to absorb that weight.

When the chair leaves, the executive function leaves too.

The response was familiar: We should add more board members.

That’s not wrong. But recruiting and onboarding takes time. Which means new members would arrive just as the current leader walks out the door.

That’s not succession.

That’s a leadership cliff.

Structure is not capacity

Nonprofits—and churches—often confuse structure with capacity.

We assume that if we fix the org chart, the work will continue.

But titles don’t answer emails.
Committees don’t manage partnerships.
Passion doesn’t replace executive labor.

Time is the hidden antagonist.

Creating a fundraising committee doesn’t help if there isn’t a viable donor list.

Creating an evangelism team doesn’t help if there are no relationships with unchurched people.

Creating a savings plan doesn’t help if you’re bleeding red monthly.

If nothing materially changes—money or people—the likely outcome isn’t growth.

It’s burnout.

Sometimes stopping is stewardship

Sometimes the most responsible advice isn’t push harder or believe more.

Sometimes it’s pause.
Sometimes it’s close.

That isn’t failure.
It’s stewardship.

Something does not have to live forever to have been faithful.

God may perform miracles.
But God also invented math.

Substack Seminary exists for precisely these conversations — the ones where discernment matters more than optimism.

Why this matters for Substack Seminary

If you are leading something that feels one leader away from collapse, this is the space to think honestly about it.

Substack Seminary exists to help pastors and church leaders think clearly about capacity, sustainability, and leadership in a post-growth church.

If you’re tired of being told that bigger is the only faithful option, and you want language and frameworks for leading well within real limits, this is the space for you.

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’.

Subscribe now

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

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