Most executive pastors spend their careers helping churches grow by building systems, hiring staff, and delegating responsibilities. But what happens when the goal isn’t building a larger Sunday gathering at all? In this episode, Phil sits down with Lucas Pulley of the Underground Network to explore one of America’s largest micro-church movements.
Lucas shares his own ministry journey—from campus ministry in Illinois to leading decentralized networks of mission-focused micro-churches—and explains how the Underground has developed systems that support hundreds of autonomous missionary leaders while preserving contextual freedom. The conversation explores what defines a church, why mission is essential alongside worship and community, how decentralized networks stay healthy without becoming overly institutionalized, and what executive pastors in traditional church settings can learn from movement thinking. Whether your church is 100 people or 10,000, this conversation offers valuable insights into leadership, delegation, coaching, governance, and creating structures that empower people for mission rather than simply managing programs.
Brought to you by The Church Hub serves pastors, ministry leaders, and their spouses through equipping and training resources. Learn more at https://thechurchhub.org
Editing and Support by The Good Podcast Co.
Episode 14 – Lucas Pulley, Full Transcript
[00:00:00] Phil: Welcome to the Backstage Pastors podcast, brought to you by the Church Hub. We bring helpful conversations to executive pastors and second chair leaders in the church and nonprofit world. I’m your host, Phil Taylor. My co-host, as always, is Tyler Dreévitz. Tyler you know, most of the time when a church has an executive pastor, they are a larger church.
The executive pastors in small or mid-sized churches tend to take on a lot of other roles in the churches, some of the pastoral work, maybe some of the preaching work. And if an XP sort of travels with a church through some of those major milestones, like hitting two 50, hitting 500, hitting 1,000, 2,000, whatever it might be they, they tend to sort of keep on ha- like handing [00:01:00] off the various hats that they’re wearing.
Like the smaller- Mm-hmm … the church you’re in, you’re wearing 50 hats, and then the bigger the church gets, you’re like, “I don’t have time for this hat anymore. I gotta hand off this hat, that’s, that hat.” And I’m always telling executive pastors that the only way forward in a growing church is delegation.
That’s the only way forward.
[00:01:20] Tyler: Oh, yeah, that for sure sounds about right.
[00:01:23] Phil: So, Tyler our guest today is gonna just completely upend everything that I know to be true about the typical XP role and their journey through growth, and that’s because he does not function in a typical church setting, what we would think of as sort of a typical church setting in an, in an American context.
Lucas Pulley is the executive director in one of the largest micro church movements in America. It started as the Tampa Underground, and it has since expanded out into other [00:02:00] cities and other parts of the country. It’s … I just find it a, a, to be a really interesting model, and I think our listeners will find it helpful regardless of how big or small their churches are.
I just think that there are, are things that we can all learn from the micro church movement.
[00:02:18] Tyler: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I’m looking forward to this interview just as much as everyone listening and watching because I wasn’t able to be there for the recording, so let’s jump right in
[00:02:34] Phil: Lucas Pulley, you are the movement services director for the Underground Church which started as Tampa Underground, not far from me in the Florida area. That role has made you i-in many ways one of the leading voices in the micro church movement in America. You put years into building and supporting decentralized networks of those kind of mission-focused [00:03:00] communities that go beyond their traditional models of churches.
And today, we’re gonna get into what it looks like kind of backstage in the Underground network from a systems and structure level. But first, I just wanna welcome you to the show, Lucas.
[00:03:16] Lucas: Thanks for having me, Phil. It’s been great to know you and connect with you this last year.
[00:03:20] Phil: Well, Lucas, you know, I’m, I’m really fascinated by what you guys do at do you prefer to have it called Tampa Underground or Underground?
[00:03:27] Lucas: Either one. Yeah.
[00:03:28] Phil: Okay. I’m, you know, I’m just kinda fascinated by what you guys are, are doing at Tampa Underground and Underground Network, and, you know, I’ve kinda been watching you from afar, not that far ’cause I’m just over in Orlando. But I’ve, I’ve seen you guys doing your thing for a little while and have wanted to connect in and, and bring this conversation to our listeners here at Backstage Pastors.
But kind of, give me the sort of, you know, TLDR on your ministry journey and, you know, how God has kinda brought you to this stage in your ministry life.
[00:03:58] Lucas: Yeah, I [00:04:00] started following Jesus right before I went to college. I went to college in, in southern Illinois. I, you know, was born and raised in central Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.
And when I was in college, I did become… Eventually, I became a part of a campus ministry. And that campus ministry was committed to, you know, training students to live as missionaries in the university world and to see ourselves as witnesses and ambassadors of the kingdom in our dorms, in our classrooms, in our intramural leagues, and to, you know, and to try to make an impact in the university world that we…
Y- you know, we had four, we had four years to change the university. Right. You know, f- to, to look more like the kingdom, and this was, this was, y- you know, 10 years from now, these are, these are tomorrow’s doctors and lawyers and everything. You could change the world if you change the campus. And, That’s right
and so, you know, I was well-discipled by a campus minister early in my faith, and I was, you know, [00:05:00] trained on how to lead, you know, discovery Bible studies and, a- and start, tried to start witnessing communities inside dorms and in apartment complexes and, and and then when I, w- we ended up, like, leading…
A, a group of us started leading that ministry when we were seniors, and that’s when we started thinking about, you know, joining in with what God was doing in the community around the campus, not just the campus. And and we basically took a lot of the things that we l- we, we learned in campus ministry, stuff like incarnational living and creative ways to share the gospel and to spark spiritual conversations and to journey with people relationally.
We took a lot of that same stuff, and we just applied it to community ministry, and we, we found ourselves leading a prison ministry and and we were running a soup kitchen for the poor, and we were doing front yard Bible studies in two or three different neighborhoods. And but, you know, we, we d- didn’t necessarily see that stuff as the church.
We were still collectively trying to go [00:06:00] to, to like a Sunday morning church the whole time- Right … that we were students. And yeah, that senior year, like when we, we had a bunch of campus ministry going on, we had all these sort of community ministries going on, and just feeling the disillusionment of the churches that we were a part of, um You know, did not know how to value or give permission or validate the ministry that we were doing in com- in the community, and sometimes saw that min- the ministry that we were doing in community as a, as a threat to-
[00:06:33] Phil: Right
the church. Somehow competing.
[00:06:35] Lucas: E- exactly. Yeah Somehow competing. It’s… And, and it, from their point of view, it’s like they, they kept trying to recruit us to, like, serve in the coffee shop and serve on the worship band and ser- and give out programs- Right … and hold the front door, and we kept having to say no to that stuff because we were so s- our lives were so saturated with ministry stuff during the week.
So, you know, so I think that, that caused a lot of dissonance in us, where we felt like, the, the ministry that we [00:07:00] were seeing happen Monday through Saturday among the unreached, and most of these people that we were working with were never gonna cross the threshold of a Sunday morning church- Right
ever. No matter how many, you know, state-of-the-art speakers or, like, c- c- creative events you did or something like that, or brochures, or… It’s, it’s just like there was no version of a Sunday morning church that they were gonna go to. But, but w- they were, they were not closed off to Jesus, and they weren’t closed off to Christians who would enter their world.
Right. And so, yeah. So I th- I think that dissonance, that contrast was sort of gnawing at us a bit. And that’s when we started imagining, I wonder if there’s an alternative way to be the church. Like, does it have to be Sunday mornings? And so we started asking these dangerous questions, you know- … like, and you know, so that, that led us to, like, wondering, gosh, is there a way to be, be a decentralized, like m- like, ministry nodes sort of family of missionaries? Is there, is that a viable way to be the church? And, and th- and then we [00:08:00] collided with d- Tampa Underground, who at the time… So that, for us, that would’ve been around 2010.
And Tampa Underground- They were already
[00:08:06] Phil: going
[00:08:06] Lucas: at that point. Yeah, they had started- Yeah … they had started in 2006 or 2007, and at the time, they were a network of microchurches in the inner city of Tampa Bay. They maybe had 20 to 25 microchurches at that point. And they would have a convening every Sunday morning of those, of all those microchurches.
So it wasn’t like this c- completely sporadic, disparate, unorganized, you know,
[00:08:31] Phil: There, there was a
[00:08:32] Lucas: Sunday service- There was a- … in essence … yeah, there was, like- Yeah … a Sunday gathering. There was a sense of us. There was a s- like, the network had a, had an underst- had an identity, had, like, a collective understanding.
So it was a really interesting paradigm for us to run into, and we felt like, oh gosh, what a that this g- it, it was like a systems upgrade for us. We were like, “Oh, there’s language to describe some of the things that we were intuitively doing and coming across. There’s some theological frameworks to sort of ground our understanding [00:09:00] in the scriptures of what is the church, and how do we live on mission, and how do we still be a citywide family, and, you know, all this kind of stuff.”
So, yeah, that’s, that’s when we sort of felt permission from the Lord to start running toward being a network of microchurches in that town in Southern Illinois. And and we became one of the earliest sister movements of Underground Network. Okay. And so that’s why… I, so I’ve been connected with the Underground since then, since around 2010.
I stayed in Southern Illinois leading that network until 2016. And then in 2016, the Tampa network asked if my wife and I would move down and provide leadership for them in a new season. And my community in Illinois sort of prayerfully discerned and said, “Yeah, we think the Lord is sending you down there.”
And, and so they, they laid ha- hands on us, and prayed for us, and commissioned us down. And, and we led the Tampa network, you know, from 2016, you know, for, for many years, five or six years. And then I spent a good stint as the executive director of Underground Network because we, we [00:10:00] continued to have more sister networks in other cities, and the need for an emerging service platform that served movement leaders nationally and internationally, and that sort of created a new, like a, a, a, a, an entirely new frame of work.
And so yeah, I’ve had a few different roles, but I’ve been in the network of microchurches world for like 16, 17 years now. Right, right. And and i- in several different cities, and have a pretty broad view of it. So
[00:10:26] Phil: Yeah, so when you, when you find yourself at a, at a conference, say, and you’re, you know, talk- you meet a pastor for the first time, and you, you do the inevitable, you know, “Where are you serving?”
[00:10:36] Lucas: Sure.
[00:10:36] Phil: Yeah. And you say, you know, “Well, I’m, I’m, you know, one of the staff leading- Mm-hmm … the Underground Network.”
[00:10:41] Lucas: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:42] Phil: And they go, “What’s that?”
[00:10:44] Lucas: Yeah. How,
[00:10:45] Phil: how… What’s kinda your… How do you answer that question?
[00:10:48] Lucas: That’s a, a… Yes, it’s a great question, and we’ve, it w- for 15 years, we were really bad at answering it.
I think we’ve gotten slightly better at answering it. You know, the r- the reason it was hard to explain Underground Network is because it was always [00:11:00] simultaneously two different things. In Tampa, you know, Right … the Underground Network is a decentralized network of microchurches that make up a c- a regional church.
Right. It is a regional church that’s made up of mission-centered microchurches in a decentralized fellowship, like a coalition. But that thing is a non-entity. That’s, that’s, there’s, there’s no j- that thing doesn’t have any jobs. It doesn’t have any money. It doesn’t have any E- EIN number. The IRS doesn’t know it exists.
It’s a completely organic coalition. The other s- side of the Underground, what we call sometimes a dual operating system, the other side of it is an underground nonprofit. That’s what I work for and my… And that nonprofit exists to serve the decentralized network of microchurches, whatever they need, whatever they say they need to start microchurches, grow microchurches, scale and multiply microchurches, and for those leaders to survive the costly life of [00:12:00] ministry leadership that they’ve embraced.
Mm. And so I work for a, a nonprofit whose exempt purpose is to serve that decentralized network, and we’ve created a, a, a platform of services like coaching services, training res- training resources and environments media services, financial services, facilities and events coordination convening environments.
All these services exist to help those leaders do what God is asking to them to be do, be the church that God is asking them to be and to persevere over the long haul.
[00:12:36] Phil: So if I find myself leading a microchurch in whatever-
[00:12:41] Lucas: Yeah …
[00:12:41] Phil: rural Wisconsin. I don’t know. Yeah. I’m just picking a, a place.
[00:12:44] Lucas: Yes, anywhere.
[00:12:45] Phil: And, and I realize, hey, I, I, I think this is the way I wanna do church. It seems to be going really well. I’m not trying to move towards a traditional church. It’s not meant to be a church plant-
[00:12:57] Lucas: Yeah …
[00:12:57] Phil: you know, per se, to become a traditional church. [00:13:00] But I wanna be connected to something bigger than myself.
I wanna have resources. I would contact somebody like Underground Church and say- Yeah, yeah … how do we, how do we get connected?
[00:13:11] Lucas: Yeah, so, we, we get contacts like that all the time. I mean, certainly people can p- can just email me you know, which is just lucas@undergroundnetwork.org or Tam- lucas@tampaunderground.com or any of our staff.
Or you could certainly e- email the info account at either of those accounts. And we love d- just chatting on Zoom, chatting on the phone with leaders anywhere that are tr- trying to figure out how to lead at the microchurch level, which is already complicated enough before you- Right … even get to network development.
But we always do try to… W- We have consistently been asked, “Hey, I’m leading, I’m leading a microchurch in rural Wisconsin or just outside Madison,” or something like that. And we have had a lot of people like that at, not just ask for help, but ask, “Can I affiliate with the Underground Network? Can I, can- Yes
can I be part of that network?” And we would, we [00:14:00] would gener- and continue to say, “We wanna help you as much as we can But we, we don’t think it’s good for you or for us, for us to be your network. You really need to be a, to find a way to anchor yourself in a localized body of people- Okay … that can actually, like, walk with you.
And we would love to forge connections with people that we know in your area that you could maybe even start to forge that with if you don’t know anybody. And so we do, we, we have a, a growing map of contacts where we can try to connect people to each other. And so… ‘Cause there’s, there’s, w- we have an increasing amount of data that what people need, one of the things people need to be able to persevere microchurch life over time, is they need to be a part…
They need a network. They need to be a part of a localized network of people. More
[00:14:52] Phil: localized, yeah.
[00:14:53] Lucas: Exactly. Yeah. That can actually walk with them through the crossroads, the crises, the pivot points.
[00:14:59] Phil: [00:15:00] Right.
[00:15:00] Lucas: W- otherwise, people don’t make it through those moments, and they need missionary peers that they can sit across a campfire or coffee shop and say, “This is what, this is the situation I’m dealing with.
Nobody came to our outreach. My teammates betrayed me. My marriage is falling apart,” whatever it is. And s-
[00:15:18] Phil: That’s gotta be more than a Zoom call.
[00:15:20] Lucas: That’s gotta be more than a Zoom call. You’re exactly right. Yeah, right. Phil knows. You know.
[00:15:25] Phil: Yeah, so the, so it sounds like the goal is not so much to say, “Hey, let’s pull together all these disparate microchurches spread across the nation and call ourselves a network,” but rather to say, “Hey, you know, microchurch leader in rural Wisconsin let’s get you connected with seven other microchurches within an hour distance of you-
[00:15:49] Lucas: Correct
[00:15:50] Phil: and let you guys do life together.”
[00:15:53] Lucas: Yeah.
[00:15:53] Phil: Get together in person from time to time as a, as a network, but-
[00:15:58] Lucas: Yeah …
[00:15:58] Phil: then you’re connected to [00:16:00] this larger thing-
[00:16:01] Lucas: Yeah …
[00:16:01] Phil: called the Underground Network.
[00:16:02] Lucas: Yeah, especially in an early phase, like ev- even just connecting them, them to like-minded leaders that can be- Mm-hmm
sort of like a helpful aid along the way. I think the long-term goal for any of those people is to multiply their, their, b- is to see that microchurch multiplied a few times into a, into a network. Right. But in, in an early phase when you’re just a microchurch in isolation, which is how all these things start.
Sure. It’s not bad to start that way. You have to start that way. But there are real vulnerabilities to start that way that need to be mitigated. And so I- Right … so I think we would always tell people living as a microchurch, which is the collision… Our, our ecclesial minimum is worship, community, and mission.
So we would say theologically, when those three things collide, that thing’s a church. When there’s-
[00:16:47] Phil: Say, say that again. You, you called it your ecclesial minimum.
[00:16:50] Lucas: Yes. The, our minimal ecclesiology. Yeah. So when, what, what are the, what’s the minimum amount of things that have to exist or be in place for something to theologically cross this threshold [00:17:00] to be known as church, you know? Right. And- And
[00:17:03] Phil: you say it’s…
[00:17:03] Lucas: We would say, we would say that it’s worship, community, and mission, and by those three things, we would mean, by community, we mean extended spiritual family, like intentional community. Right … two hours once a week in a WhatsApp thread is not enough- Yes … to do the one anothers in the New Testament. So we need a little bit more overlapping life than that.
And by worship, we don’t mean music, although that’s fantastic. Most microchurches integrate praise and worship and singing together. You should. But by worship, we mean Romans 12 living sacrifice. Like we, we’re laying down our lives as a living s- a, a, as a living sacrifice as this is our act of worship.
The, so it’s surren- it means surrender. It’s like as a community, we are fully surrendered to the leadership, lordship of Jesus in all things, that this is our act of worship. And by mission, we mean that that community surrendered to Jesus has to be pursuing some piece of the mission of God in the city around them to proclaim [00:18:00] and demonstrate the kingdom of God- Yes
among the lost and the poor. So there has to be, like, an intentional crossing of the threshold from the found to the lost that’s like the, the community has to be aimed shoulder to shoulder to participate in the mission of God s- in some way on the, like the vanguard, the front lines of the kingdom. And we would say when those three things collide, like your living is the church.
Right. And you can call it whatever you want. And there’s a whole lot of other things to church life that are good Preaching is good. Bible study is good. The sacraments are good. Qu- like, q- q- mutuality, a, a plurality of eldership is good. Like, there’s all these other things that we associate with church life, and we’re not saying all those things are bad and need to be done away with.
We would just say that they are desired and not required-
[00:18:46] Phil: Right …
[00:18:47] Lucas: to be the church. We just wanna minimize… ‘Cause as soon as, as soon as y- you take all those good things and you make them required to be the church, you’ve s- you’ve suddenly made it near impossible [00:19:00] to multiply and w- or to scale movement. And at the same time, you’ve made a definition of church that excludes probably 80% of churches in church history and 80% of the churches in the New Testament.
So, like, we wanna avoid that. We wanna have an, an understanding of church that sort of fits, like, churches through history, churches globally, churches in China, churches in Iran, churches in persecution. Right … and so, so for us, we would say, like, the life of the church exists at the intersection of worship, community, and mission, and that, a microchurch that’s living that out, is sufficiently the church but might not be efficiently the church.
That means it might run into things that it needs that it cannot provide for itself in isolation. And that, that, that’s where the need- That’s where you guys come in … for network… That’s exactly right. Yeah, yeah. That’s where the need for network emerges. Just because microchurches are sufficiently theologically the church doesn’t mean that they should [00:20:00] exist in isolation or c- or could long-term exist in isolation.
There, there is a nascent need for network, for city church, for the Church of Ephesus, for the Church of Colossae, for there to be, like, these broader networked things together that have some centralized support to help provide for house churches what they cannot provide for themselves.
[00:20:20] Phil: I, I would, I would assume, tell me if I’m wrong here, that the groups that, that are within your network- Yeah
Or in these network of networks-
[00:20:29] Lucas: Mm-hmm …
[00:20:30] Phil: are, are loving doing worship together, are loving doing community together, but that mission is the one that they struggle with the most. ‘Cause ironically- Yeah, it’s, yeah … if we, if when we add mission in as a part of the minimum viable product, which I agree with, of course- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm
um, we probably eliminate most probably 80% of all small groups connected to a traditional church. That’s right. That’s right. Right? That’s right. Like, most small groups in your typical church are gonna be worship and community. [00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Lucas: That’s right.
[00:21:00] Phil: That’s right. Or maybe just community.
[00:21:01] Lucas: Yeah. Yeah, so we, we would have…
It depends. It’s 50/50. So, and I’ll answer it this way. There’s generally two types of microchurch, just sort of descriptive types of microchurches. There are mission-specific microchurches, and then there’s distributive microchurches. Mm-hmm. So, a mission sp- the origin story of every microchurch for us is a leader or a team of leaders discerning their missionary calling from the Lord, to whom am I sent?
That is the origin story of every microchurch.
[00:21:35] Phil: Right.
[00:21:35] Lucas: Is, is to basically discern what is my Ephesians 2:10 good work that the Lord has artworked me for b- m- fr- from, from the beginning of my existence He knew about it. And I’m trying to discern what that good work is right now, and that good work is aligned somehow with the kingdom.
So the Lord is actually sending the priesthood of all believers to participate in the kingdom by sending them to people, places, causes, [00:22:00] evils to throw their lives at. So we would basically, we, we basically cultivated a community where everybody’s asking the question, “Lord, to whom am I sent? To what people, to what place, to what cause?”
So our, our team is never thinking of microchurches that should exist and don’t, and then, like, recruiting people. Our team is never starting microchurches and then, like… Or, or inviting volunteers from microchurches. We’re just never doing that stuff. We’re always Like helping people listen to Jesus about their sense of calling.
And when they ha- dis- discern like an answer to that or a clarifying or a narrowing of that question, we’re coaching and training them to be faithful missionaries, faithfully obedient to that sense of calling, and to go with an imagination for simple church in that place. Hmm. That as a missionary, you don’t have to go and just, like, invite people to church and pluck them out of their social context and drag them over to a different thing.
[00:22:56] Phil: Right.
[00:22:56] Lucas: Right. You can actually, like, bring and be witnessing [00:23:00] community in that place. So we equip people with an imagination for simple church. We see them as church planters. They often see themselves as microchurch planters. Now, when that, when the microchurch emerges, it can look, it can look one of two different ways.
One is a mission-specific microchurches, which is where the community is gathered around a common sense of calling to the same people group, place, or cause. So, there are microchurches that are reaching addiction reco- like people coming out of addiction recovery. So there’s, there’s a microchurch called Timothy Initiative that works with men coming out of incarceration or oftentimes homelessness caused by addiction, and they’re trying to pursue recovery.
And it’s a microchurch that’s like a monastic community around sobriety, discipleship, like- Right … growing in the Lord. There’s a microchurch that’s reaching kids involved in gang violence in North Tampa. It’s called Urban Fellowship. And it’s made up of a, a, of a group of families that feel called to those, to, called to that, [00:24:00] those kids.
There’s a microchurch that for, for 10, 15 years that was called Grounded that was doing respite foster care together. They felt called to kids in crisis, kids in temporary crisis, and they did respite foster care together. There’s a microchurch called Faith and Fitness that’s reaching a CrossFit gym.
They do a discovery Bible study inside of a CrossFit gym. They have a few disciples that are members in that CrossFit gym. They, then they’re sort of planting a community there. So for mission-specific microchurches, mission sometimes comes easier than community.
[00:24:34] Phil: Right.
[00:24:35] Lucas: Because they s- Well,
[00:24:36] Phil: that’s where community happens.
[00:24:37] Lucas: That’s exactly right. Yeah. So they’re, they’re… So sometimes those things, they feel like mission is clear, and missio- they have, like, mission rhythms that are pretty clear. But if they’re not careful They can get to a place where they, where the com- they feel like, “Ah, something’s not quite right.” And usually what it is is the community starts to feel like we’re co-laborers in an [00:25:00] initiative, but we’re…
It sometimes it doesn’t feel like we’re family- Right … we’re community. And so for mission specific microchurches, a lot of times the growth edge is how do we continue to move toward being like mutual belonging family while sort of engaging in mission together? The other kind of microchurch is what we call distributive microchurches which is where the community is gathered around a common, like, committed values and vision to missionary life itself, but they know they can’t do it alone, and so they convene with a group of people around, like, accountability and encouragement and values to missionary life.
But people are living that out in different places, you know? So- What’s an
[00:25:40] Phil: example of that? Like, unpack
[00:25:41] Lucas: one of those for me. My, my house church w- for many years was a distributive. It, our, my house church started out as a mission specific house church in Belmont, in a, a, a neighborhood called Belmont Heights Estates.
We called it Belmont House. And so we had four sort of Christian families that moved into that neighborhood together. We were living in [00:26:00] an, like intentional neighborhood community for many years within the same block or two of each other did neighborhood house church stuff. But then around 2021, there were people on our, living on our block that had been part of our community for many years that started asking the missionary question.
Like, they started wondering, “I wonder who I’m sent. I wonder if God is-”
[00:26:22] Phil: Yeah, yeah … “
[00:26:23] Lucas: cultivating me as a missionary.” And when they started asking that question, like two, two of them felt called to campus ministry with college students at the University of South Florida. Two of them started to feel called to workplace ministry.
They worked in downtown towers, like in downtown Tampa for these companies. Two of them were, m- a co- they were a couple that were Messianic Jews but they were still connected to the Jewish community quite a bit, and they were starting to wonder, like, “I wonder if we’re supposed to, like, be, be, like reach people in the Jewish community since we have a Jewish background and we’re Messianic.”
And then the couple that does CrossFit ministry lived right n- right next door to us at the time, you know, s- and they were starting to feel called to their [00:27:00] CrossFit gym. So we were like Oh, if you’re not called to the neighborhood, this, this house church exists to s- to reach people in this neighborhood.
If you’re not called to this neighborhood, what do we do? Do we kick you out? But they live on the block. We’re, like, raising our kids together. So, so it was like, oh, God is inviting us to be a distributive- Right … microchurch. And so- Yeah,
[00:27:20] Phil: what, what brings us together is that we’ve all got things that we’re focused on.
[00:27:25] Lucas: Exactly. And
[00:27:25] Phil: we- But we’re coming back to sort of- Exactly … rally together. Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:28] Lucas: Exactly. And we care deeply about ea- what each other’s mission. So it’s not like, “Hey, off you go.” Right. But it’s like we s- we sort of feel like we’re taking corporate responsibility for all of the mission that God is distributing through this community.
[00:27:42] Phil: Right. Right.
[00:27:43] Lucas: So, so yeah, we would… And, and, and each person in their own way, like, if, if they felt like there were people that they were reaching that it would benefit them to invite those people to be a part of the house church, they could do that. But if they felt like it was better to just keep sort of cultivating a community [00:28:00] in that pla- in that context, they could do that.
And we were just sort of there to be like, “If you, how- we’re praying for you. If you need our help to run an outreach, we’ll help each other. If you, if you need coaching, we’re gonna keep coaching each other.” We’d have coaching nights maybe, like, once a month where we would do peer coaching around, like, missionary life.
So that’s just one example, and there, there was usually always at least 10 to 15 distributive microchurches peppered across the network. But, but to your point, those distributive model microchurches would be the ones that could creep into, we’re enjoying the community, but- Yeah … how does mission really look here?
And if they weren’t careful, you know, and that was always sort of the weak, the str- the, the growth edge, the weak point y- where you, you stumble into just looking like you know- Like a small group, basically … a small group. 100%. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like how do we, how do we avoid that, right? So.
[00:28:51] Phil: Right. Right. Okay, so, so now Tampa Underground has, you know, grown beyond the Tampa area. You’re, you’re [00:29:00] spread out. You’ve got things going on across the country.
[00:29:03] Lucas: Yeah.
[00:29:03] Phil: You know, how are you kind of keeping everybody on the same page? How are you keeping, you know, everybody on the same focus and mission?
Yeah.
[00:29:14] Lucas: Yeah, so we, we have sort of replicated certain principles on the national, international level that we discovered in the local network, and they’re sort of transferable. So, you know, if you know the, the, the word fractals, we sort of see it as like- Mm-hmm … multiple different fractals. And so, what we’ve done for years and sort of what you could call, like, a research and development lab of the Tampa network, the Tampa network is like we’re experimenting with things and finding things that work, and we just sort of realized that all the microchurches, it’s ca- it’s ca- we call it a chaordic system, chaos and order.
So, we treat every microchurch leader as an, as, like, an autonomous responsible church. They’re the called one, they’re the sent one, and they [00:30:00] need to be given the freedom to make choices around contextualization of strategy and language and tools. So if we try to standardize certain methods or, or language or reporting mechanisms or whatever, that runs the risk of undercutting the need for- Sure, sure
contextualization across the network.
[00:30:21] Phil: But I guess, like, there, there must be, like, a theological statement that people sign off on- 100%,
[00:30:26] Lucas: 100% …
[00:30:26] Phil: or things like that, right? Exactly. So what, what do some of those systems and structures kinda- Exactly … look like? You know, this is the XB podcast, right? That’s right.
That’s right. Give us, give us the backstage look.
[00:30:36] Lucas: So we would say our sandbox, which is, like, the things that all of them have in co- they all either have in common or they must align to or agree to. So that sandbox is the three things that they all have in common is values, just enough theological alignment to stay healthy without being too rigid, trying to be big tent, although that is- Right
increasingly difficult in 2026. Yeah. [00:31:00] And the third one would be character and conduct agreements, Mm … which creates a basis for governance. Mm-hmm … so, so the first one, values, is is articulated in the Underground Manifesto. So that’s… We have 18 values. That’s a, that’s less of a theological document.
It’s more of, like, who we wanna be. It’s about, it’s, like, how we wanna live. I mean, any executive pastor’s gonna know, like, if you set a theological basis and say, “Hey, we can just gather with anybody around this theological basis,” once you’re, once you ru- rub shoulders with each other for nine months, you find out, oh, there’s actually…
We’re very different. There, there’s- Yeah … values breaches happening all the time that were, like, unspoken values breaches. So, our values are, like, how we want to live, who we want to be, what are we sort of striving for in life. Then theological basis, we, we’re, we’ve tried to be creedal orthodoxy, so, historic creeds, Nicene Creed, Apostles’ Creed.
[00:31:50] Phil: Right.
[00:31:50] Lucas: And we were like, “Hey- They, they, we feel like they did a good enough job. We’re just gonna try to stay creedal orthodoxy. But again, a lot of people are like, “That’s not enough. Are you, like, Pentecostal? Are [00:32:00] you Baptist?” Like, what are we… What sort of… Are you Lutheran? Like, what are we talking about?
So we realized people needed a little bit more than that. So maybe 10 years ago, we started pointing to the Lucan Covenant-
[00:32:09] Phil: Yeah …
[00:32:09] Lucas: as, like, we’re really close to… Like, our, our hearts are aligned with this thing. ‘Cause again, we were trying to avoid creating an internal Underground faith statement. Right. We liked the idea of pointing to something that was globally discerned, historically anchored.
Right. So we were like, “Hey, we’ve, we’ve always pointed to that as, like, a theological base for our community.” Well,
[00:32:30] Phil: and it gives you a larger, you know, there’s something beyond your you- Yes.
[00:32:35] Lucas: Yes, exactly …
[00:32:35] Phil: that made that decision, you know?
[00:32:37] Lucas: Exactly. It’s- Exactly …
[00:32:39] Phil: it’s not just 12 people in a living room deciding what their doctrine is.
[00:32:41] Lucas: 100%. Yeah. And we liked the global nature of it, too. Yeah. You know, one of our values is, like, God is a global God. We c- cro- cr- cross-cultural community. It’s like we, we wanna be able to anchor ourselves in something that was globally discerned theologically. And and then the, that last document for [00:33:00] character and conduct agreements is the Leadership Covenant, and the Leadership Covenant is basically an articulation of, like, Timothy and Titus, you know- Sure
le- leadership standards in modern language, a little bit of c- of language around how, how, how we intend to deal with conflict between l- in our microchurches, how we’re gonna deal with conflict between leaders. If leaders have a complaint or a dispute toward the network, w- that would be like a dissent, and we- Hmm
it’s like l- we have a pre-designed dissent process, so it’s like, hey, we don’t wanna, we don’t wanna not hear that stuff. We actually wanna invite dissent, but we wanna invite it… We wanna have a pathway where leaders know how to bring it and how to, like- Right … discern it together. So that’s in the Leadership Covenant.
There’s, there’s some stuff in there around, like, not, not exploiting your people for personal gain in any way, monetary or otherwise. Hmm. There’s there’s stuff in there around ch- living a generous life giving radically e- either toward the Underground or elsewhere, you know, like, you know, d- trying [00:34:00] to live generously.
And there’s a line in there that says, “If I am found to be in breach of any of these character and conduct agreements that I’m making or the Underground val- values or the Lucan Covenant sort of theological guardrails, I willfully will submit to the role of the governing elders in my life.”
[00:34:19] Phil: Hmm.
And those are local
[00:34:22] Lucas: The, yes, that’s local. And so, so basically, it, you know, we, we… When a leader is going through what we call the orientate, the launch process, the orientation process, when they’ve articulated a sense of calling, they’ve either already started or they’re about to go start, they want to be greenlit as like a microchurch in the network.
They wanna be treated and seen as a microchurch leader. They wanna have access to all the services that exist to help them. They would be going through some discernment and conversation processes around those three documents, and, and the, the one that we focus on probably the most is that leadership covenant, to be like, “These are the expectations that we have of you.
What all questions do you have of us? Let’s make sure we…” [00:35:00] And if it’s an internal multiplication, it’s been a person that’s been a part of a microchurch for a long time, they’ve been a part of the network for a long time, those conversations are usually pretty quick- Sure … ’cause they get it, a lot of it already.
But, But yeah, then, you know, two years later, there’s a leader that might have a moral failing, and you, and you find out about it. They– m- marriage is on the rocks, or they’re teaching something a little bit outside orthodoxy or something like that, and we come knocking on their door and say, “Hey, we just wanted to sort of talk about this.”
And they, they might say, “When did I ever say I was gonna submit to you?” And, and we can say, “Hey, there was a version of you two years ago that-
[00:35:32] Phil: Right …
[00:35:32] Lucas: said you would,” you know? So, and again, most of those conversations go great, and leaders are happy to have the governing elders in their life and, and served by that and, you know, have biblical both correction and restoration and, you know, investigative processes if necessary.
But sometimes leaders are like, “No, I never… I don’t wanna submit.” And, and at that point we can be like, “Well, that’s– Let’s– We’re just clarifying that’s a decision to step outside of the network,” right? So [00:36:00] now of course, that there’s one thing to have that system set up in place. There’s another thing to monitor it over time, right?
So there, there’s w- like how would you even find out how leaders are doing? Right. How would you find out if there, if there’s… Is there any sort of reporting mechanisms or whatever? So we do try to light touch. The two main ways we do that is through coaching. Co- coaching would be a service that it’s the, it’s one of the only services out of all the services that are non-optional.
You know, you get matched with a coach, but you, you get to pick what kind of coaching you get. So there is a little bit of freedom there to decide frequency or- Right … content or something like that. But the coaching department is like a tether to the central team, from the decentral net- decentralized network to the central team.
And and the other one is our convening environments. This is, this is one of the reasons to do, like, a network gathering, whether that’s weekly or monthly, and then beyond just, like, a routine gathering to have, like, r- two or three times a year where you do a weekend [00:37:00] retreat or you do, like, a weekend vision conference or launching conference or something like that.
It, it, those convening environments create the context for the leaders to create social fabric between each other. And as long as there’s that social fabric between leaders, a lot of times the things that you need to find out about find their way to you, you know, whether through coaching or through a healthy social fabric between leaders, so.
[00:37:27] Phil: Yeah.
[00:37:28] Lucas: Yeah, those are just a few systems comments, so.
[00:37:32] Phil: So, so, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re leading this thing in you’ve got a different kind of a title, I think. What was it? Systems services-
[00:37:41] Lucas: Yeah … director. Movement support director. Yeah. Movement sup- yeah. So yeah, that’s right. That was the other half of your question.
So since maybe- Like r- right around 20, I don’t know, 2012, 2013 is when there started to be a lot of leaders outside of Tampa that were asking for help. Yeah. And, and some of that was leaders that were part of the Tampa network and they would move, [00:38:00] and they would land somewhere, and they would just be like, “Well, we don’t know what, what else to do but micro churches,” you know?
And they would, like, sort of start a network, and they’d, they’d be like, “Can we get some kind of help from Tampa?” Or there’d be people who’d just hear about the Tampa story. They’d visit- Yeah … Tampa and experience it, and then they would start something and get something off the ground. So then probably from 2013 until 2016, the Tampa team was just saying, “We don’t offer that right now.”
Mm. Like, it’s just a Tampa network, and we don’t quite know how to imagine to be a service platform- Right. We can’t help right now- Correct … so you’re on
[00:38:29] Phil: your own.
[00:38:30] Lucas: Yeah. And it was around 2016 that the team started to feel like, I think the Lord is asking us to play our part be- to, to, to walk with leaders as best we can, and to try to figure out how to do that.
And so I think we’ve tried to replicate at the national and international scale, a really similar model where we’ve, we’ve created a platform of services that is coaching for network directors primarily, but we can coach micro church leaders if, if they don’t have [00:39:00] anything else locally. Some training environments, some training d- digital courses, tra- webinars, that kind of stuff.
We… Financial services, which is, well, again, something we, we usually offer micro churches, but we figured out how to start offering that to network directors nationally, specifically. Media services and convening environments. We started doing the micro church conference every other year nationally with network directors to get them in the room.
So the same type of services that we offer locally, we started thinking, “I wonder if network directors need that nationally.” Mm. And then in the same way that we chose so far, not, not necessarily to incorporate the decentralized network itself, but to leave it grassroots, we’ve done that same thing nationally, where there’s not necessarily a super container organization that all the sister movements are belonging to or, like, affiliating with or something like that.
We don’t necessarily… We’re not, I’m not super- we’re not supervising any of them. They’re not reporting to us. But what we’re doing is we’re creating a round table fellowship of mutual leaders that are agreed [00:40:00] around a central table of values character, some character and conduct agreements and some theological alignment.
And so again, underground manifesto for the values. There’s a director’s agreement for some of the character, like how we will lead the, you know- Yeah … some of, some of the character and conduct stuff, and also for the the loose end covenant is still sort of a backbone theologically for the the national leaders.
Now, in that director’s agreement, we specify that the Tampa team and the Tampa governing elders are not going to function as the governance for network directors across the country. So that, in that director’s agreement, we’re not necessarily saying you’re in submission to us, but we’re saying that in order to be a part of this group of sister movements, you have to have localized governance that you’re in submission to.
[00:40:54] Phil: Right.
[00:40:55] Lucas: We, we… You cannot join this body if you’re an unsubmitted leader, [00:41:00] but we’re not gonna be the thing that you’re submitted to.
[00:41:02] Phil: Yeah …
[00:41:03] Lucas: so, so that’s the one maybe shift point, you know, between the local level and the national level. So we just didn’t wanna be get- getting called into, like, broken relationships in Christ.
Suddenly you’re flying all over the country to deal with stuff. Oh my gosh, yo, 100%. Yeah. No, totally.
[00:41:17] Phil: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, w- when, you’ve been doing this now for a while, when this thing breaks down where do you see it break down? Like, what, y- no doubt you’ve you’ve, you’ve hit some roadblocks along the way.
What’s some of the biggest, you know, trials and struggles you’ve had in leading this thing?
[00:41:35] Lucas: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I’ll answer just at the network level, which I think probably most of your, m- m- you and most of your audience are probably more so- Yeah There’s a lot of ways that individual microchurches break down, right?
Yeah, kind of the executive leadership
[00:41:48] Phil: level. Yeah.
[00:41:48] Lucas: So, yeah, so at the network level, I think, w- w- in s- yeah, in an early phase, I’ll sort of run into challenge points at different seasons. So, like in a pretty early phase, we ran into the challenge [00:42:00] of you’re essentially forging a congregation of missionary leaders.
Like, you have a, you have a congregation that the members themselves are missionary leaders, and then they have their own things that they’re leading out in the city that have m- m- many congregations. But you don’t necessarily… The people second degree out, third degree out, you’re not necessarily tracking those people.
Sometimes you don’t even know those people.
[00:42:27] Phil: Right.
[00:42:28] Lucas: The pe- your, your audience, your members are these missionary leaders. What tho… Sometimes what those people need, feel like they need in different se- depending, totally depending on what they’re doing. But a lot of times they feel like they need resources, and they need teammates, and they need volunteers or whatever for the ministry initiatives that they’re doing, and where they would usually look for that stuff is their church.
[00:42:54] Phil: Right.
[00:42:55] Lucas: So I… It was a serious challenge early on to figure out like, oh, [00:43:00] we’re brewing a community. Like in, like t- like in, in the early years when it was like 20, 25, 30 microchurches, it’s like, gosh, every single one of those people is feeling the need to like talk to people about like resources and cast vision and recruit to their team, and they’re just gonna pick each other to p- to pieces.
Like, like everybody, a part of this community is not gonna be able to go through a single week without getting asked to join something or, or give money or like drop off shoes or go to the grocery store or something like that. So we did have to institute like a policy it would’ve been like maybe three or four years in, you know, where we asked microchurch leaders to no- to, to not fundraise from the underground community and not recruit from the underground community.
‘Cause it’s basically like when you’re a part of this community, everybody involved is- Yeah … already giving their time and their resour- what it means to be a part of this community is that you’re already doing that in m- in multiple places. So [00:44:00] there are exceptions to those policies, like p- i- individuals are still free to sort of approach any microchurch and say, “I’m interested in what you’re doing.
Can you tell me more about it? I’d like to get behind it.” So anybody can sort of reactively have those conversations. You just can’t proactively have it. That was certainly a challenge. I think, I think another big challenge we have is just the social dynamics of trying to build a unified tribe of people that feel like an us where everyone is doing a different thing and using different- Right
strategies and different tools and different language. You know, I think the, I think the prevailing model of church oftentimes not even for bad reason, I mean, I think there’s, like, a good thing to do, but, like, helped people find unity and trust through common tools, common strategy, common mission, common language.
It’s like we’re all, all the– We, we have 15 small groups in our church, and all 15 of them are doing the same [00:45:00] curriculum. They each meet for an hour and a half. They each have, like, a– They each feel sort of the same. Some of this is even built into, like, brand management, quality contr- experience control.
[00:45:10] Phil: Right.
[00:45:11] Lucas: You know, like, you want every experience to be the same. If, if the, if any sort of event has the church’s name on it, it needs to, like, use certain, have certain vision attached to it, certain language attached to it, certain visuals attached to it. So all that stuff aids unity, like empirically.
Right. It’s good for churches to do that. Well, if you change strategy and decide actually In order to release the priesthood of all believers to be effective in the field of mission, you actually have to give them an enormous amount of contextual freedom to decide for themselves what tool to use, what evangelism strategy, what discipleship curriculum, what metrics to count, what vision to have.
Because we’re saying, like, vision is downstream from calling, and everyone has access to calling, so everyone [00:46:00] has access to a vision. And basically, the central services team that we work for, we’re all… We’re basically a second chair organization serving 100 first chair leaders-
[00:46:11] Phil: Mm-hmm …
[00:46:11] Lucas: that are, like, envisioning their own, own microchurches.
Well, then how do you get those people to see each other as, like, a family, like a, like a citywide family? That has been a constant challenge.
[00:46:22] Phil: Hmm.
[00:46:23] Lucas: So that is a challenge in phase one. It’s a challenge in phase two. It’s a challenge in year 20. So-
[00:46:29] Phil: It’s sort of the, the tension to be managed rather than the problem to be solved,
[00:46:32] Lucas: right?
Exact- that’s exactly how to say it, the tension to be managed, and, and it’s, and, and to be constantly working on, you know? I think in the same way that you would s- that, that I think prevailing model churches sort of always feel like activating people in mission is a challenge. Like, we ju- we’re just, like, always trying to figure out that problem, and we’re always trying to get more people to think about it, more people to want it, [00:47:00] more people to emerge as leaders, more people sort of like- Right
taking risks. It… We’re on the opposite side where, like, y- like, the only reason you’re part of the underground is you, ’cause you’ve already flipped that switch.
[00:47:11] Phil: Yeah.
[00:47:12] Lucas: So everybody’s activated in mission, and our alternative problem is how do you hold them together in love and unity-
[00:47:19] Phil: Hmm …
[00:47:19] Lucas: you know, without picking each other apart.
So-
[00:47:22] Phil: I, I like that you I like that you refer to it as the prevailing church. That’s a, probably a, a nicer way to say it. That’s good.
[00:47:30] Lucas: Yeah. I like it. It’s our, it’s our preferred language. That’s exactly right. I, we, we for, I, for years, we We would say attractional, and it’s like, I don’t love how that comes off.
Or we would say megachurch. I don’t
love how that comes off. We’d say consumer church. That’s the worst one. Or like traditional. You should never say that. Yeah, traditional church has certain, like, cer- certain things. Right, right. Legacy church sort of feels a little bit more like traditional too. So yeah. Yeah. Prevailing l- is the best word that we stumbled upon, so
[00:47:56] Phil: Well, yeah, because at the end of the day, it’s, it’s not like the [00:48:00] underground church or the micro church movement is in antithesis to the prevailing church.
[00:48:05] Lucas: Exactly. Exactly. Trying not
[00:48:07] Phil: to
[00:48:07] Lucas: be.
[00:48:07] Phil: It- Exactly. This is an ecosystem, right? And- Exactly … God is using, God is using you guys. God is using the- Yes … prevailing church, to use your words. Exactly. And so I love that. We, I
[00:48:15] Lucas: mean,
[00:48:15] Phil: way back
[00:48:16] Lucas: in may- way back in maybe 2009, 2010, I think it was Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson that wrote the book On the Verge, and that was the first time that I came across the 60/40 percentages where they- Right
they, they were, they, they had, you know, come across numerous data sets that were suggesting 40% of the American and w- broader, broadly Western population would at some point in their lifetime cross the threshold of a religious institution or service, a church building, a church service in some way. And their whole point was if only 40% of the population is ever gonna come to these things, why is 100% of our imagination, seminary training, fund r- funding dollars, church planting [00:49:00] agencies essentially competing over that 40%?
There’s very little imagination that’s trying to go to the 60% that are never gonna come. And we’ve been very moted by, vated by that. Like, we wanna design a church paradigm that exists for the 60%, but that means that we still need the other church to exist For the 40% that- Right … it’s still effective for.
So we, we actually don’t want them to go away. We don’t want it to burn down, tear down. We just think, like, it’s gonna be effective for a certain population of people, and we’re trying to reach the others.
[00:49:33] Phil: Yep. That’s good. That’s good. Well, Lucas you are in, in many ways, you are part movement leader, part theologian, part systems thinker, part missionary coach.
And, I
[00:49:45] Lucas: feel seen. I feel seen.
[00:49:47] Phil: I love what you’re doing. I love what the underground church is doing, what Tampa Underground is doing, and you guys really are an important part of that ecosystem. You are gonna reach people that the prevailing church model will not reach. [00:50:00] And so for that, I’m glad that, that you guys exist.
Give us one more time. If, if listeners wanna learn more about this, give them a couple of places to go. Where do, how do they reach out? Tell them what to do.
[00:50:11] Lucas: Yeah. If, if people just wanna learn about the Tampa network, y- like learn about all the microchurches, learn about how it’s structured, you can go to tampaunderground.com.
You can literally go to the microchurches page and just, and just scroll and see all the microchurches and their story and who they’re reaching. If you want to learn more about how to do this where you are, or you want some training or equipping for what it would look like for you, you can go to undergroundnetwork.org.
That site is for our sort of national and international presence and help. And yeah, if you wanna have a conversation, you can just email me at lucas@undergroundnetwork.org or tampaunderground.com.
[00:50:48] Phil: Thanks so much for taking time with us, Lucas. I appreciate it.
[00:50:50] Lucas: Thanks for inviting me.
[00:50:55] Tyler: You know, the American church landscape tends to put the brightest spotlight on the [00:51:00] largest churches. There often seems to be this assumption that the goal is simply to get more and more people into the same room. But what fascinates me about this movement is that it’s both incredibly large in its reach and intentionally small in how people experience it.
That’s a really interesting combination, and I’m glad we were able to hear more about it
[00:51:19] Phil: Yeah, you know, there are always articles coming out about different, you know, types of churches that are growing or shrinking and different models that are working or not working, dying expanding, whatever it might be.
I feel like you’re, you’re always getting glimpses of growth and decline in, you know, all sorts of type of- types of churches. You know, you’ll find people that are drawn to the micro church movement and loving it. You’ll find people that are drawn to the mega church movement- Mm … and loving it, and everything in between.
You’ll find young people that are choosing liturgical or contemplative churches, and the article comes out and says, “All the young people want this.” And then you’ll find another article where people are choosing, you know, [00:52:00] the big, loud, modern worship that we think of as sort of a, a typical bigger mega church.
I just think God’s doing cool stuff in all different corners of the church world. Mm-hmm. And that seems to be the case with every generation if we look close enough. And so I, I thought it was really cool just to hear from Lucas about how God is using the micro church movement today.
[00:52:22] Tyler: Oh, absolutely.
You know, a few years ago, I got the opportunity to go to this sort of training thing. It was something done with Larry Osborne under the Sticky Teams brand, and it was just for 20. You had to either be an executive pastor or lead pastor. So me and my lead pastor went, and we got to spend a few da- I mean, he had us in his home.
If you know anything about Larry Osborne- Yeah, Larry’s great … he’s just one of my favorite pastors of all time, for sure. But one of the things he shared that has stuck with me, and I think of all the time, is he said, “You know, when it really boils down to it, we are all just Sunday school electives in God’s big church.”
And so, like- Right … pastor the church you wanna go to, and trust that if that’s, that’s [00:53:00] really from the Lord, there will be other people that resonate with that as well, and I think this is such a great example of just that. We need the micro church as much as we need the mega church, and it’s all important because it resonates with different people, and we all matter.
So I love that, for sure. Yeah,
[00:53:14] Phil: it’s an ecosystem, right?
[00:53:15] Tyler: Absolutely.
[00:53:16] Phil: Shepherd the flock that is among you.
[00:53:18] Tyler: Absolutely. We’ve got verses for
[00:53:18] Phil: that.
[00:53:19] Tyler: Yep. Yeah. All right. Well, Phil, as we close things out, I just wanna mention that we’re in August now, and pastors all over the country are getting ready for fall kickoff ministry launches, and all of the things that come with a new ministry season.
And so for a lot of churches, that means banners and invite cards, signs, volunteer shirts, kids ministry apparel, whatever it might be. If that’s you, I’d really encourage you to check out ridgelineprinting.com. It’s a company I co-own with another pastor, and we started it specifically to serve churches well.
Our goal is simple: provide great communication, high quality products, and fair pricing without all the headaches that come with print projects. We’d love the opportunity to serve your church this fall
[00:53:58] Phil: That’s good stuff. And, you know, for our [00:54:00] listeners, just re- recognize this, that when you purchase or work with Ridgeline Printing, you’re also supporting a couple of church planters in Salt Lake City- Mm-hmm
which is kind of a cool doubling up of your, your impact, the impact that your dollars can have on the kingdom of God, so that’s great. Appreciate that. I’ll also point out that you know, during the summer a lot of executive pastors are kind of slowing down just enough to recognize that maybe they, they wanna enter into a season of growth, and that might involve getting some coaching.
It’s one of my favorite things to do when I get to coach executive pastors, especially new executive pastors or those that are kind of entering into a new season of growth. And so reach out to me, phil@backstagepastors.org, and let’s grab a 30-minute call and just kinda talk through whether or not we’re a good fit for each other.
And if you haven’t already done so, you’re, you’re gonna wanna start with reading my books, Defining the Executive Pastor Role or Eldership Development: From Application to Affirmation. Mm. And Tyler, that’s gonna close out our show. You can follow me at [00:55:00] philtaylorxp on the socials. You can follow the show at Backstage Pastors.
[00:55:05] Tyler: You can catch me at, @tylerdrewitz, that’s D-R-E-W-I-T-Z. And the Backstage Pastors is brought the Backstage Pastors podcast is brought to you by the Church Hub. The Church Hub serves pastors, ministry leaders, and their spouses through training, equipping, and prac- practical resources. You can learn more at thechurchhub.org.
Our podcast is produced by The Good Podcast Company, and our theme music was written by Seth Kay. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you on the next show.
Backstage Pastors™️ is a Registered Trademark
