150-Year-Old Church Adds a Zero to Its Vision. The Question That Changed First Orlando

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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Trey Hildebrant, Danny de Armas, and David Loveless from First Orlando, a historic multisite church serving Central Florida since 1871. Together, they are helping lead the church into a new season focused on multiplication, leadership development, and sending people into new gospel expressions across their region and beyond.

What happens when a 150-year-old church decides it doesn’t want to simply preserve what it has built? How do you move from addition to multiplication without losing the strengths that got you there? Tune in as the First Orlando team shares how a bold vision, a new leadership structure, and a commitment to empowering everyday people are reshaping the future of the church.

• Lead through shared responsibility. // First Orlando currently operates with a “table of three” senior leadership model. Trey Hildebrant leads teaching and provides direction to campus pastors, Danny de Armas oversees executive leadership and organizational strategy, and David Uth provides shepherding and pastoral leadership. All three report to the board rather than to one another. The model works because they have clearly defined lanes, strong relationships, and the ability to disagree privately while stepping out publicly in unity.
• Make the Great Commission personal. // A major shift began when Danny realized the Great Commission is not only an institutional mission for the church but a personal mission for every believer. That insight reframed the way First Orlando began thinking about its future. Instead of asking only what the church organization could accomplish, leaders started asking how they could equip people to live on mission wherever God had already placed them.
• Put a God-sized vision on the table. // During a peer learning gathering, First Orlando leaders were challenged to imagine how many new gospel expressions they could launch over the next decade. Their initial answer was 10. Then they were challenged to add a zero. That moment eventually became the “110” vision: raising up 300 leaders and launching 100 gospel expressions over 10 years. The goal felt impossible, which was exactly what made it worth pursuing.
• Define gospel expressions broadly. // First Orlando defines a gospel expression as a “Great Commission community” where people pursue Jesus together, become more like Him, and are sent back into their everyday world. Rather than limiting the vision to traditional church plants, the team developed four expressions: regional campuses, church plants, microsites, and missional expressions. This gives the church room to reach different kinds of people through different ministry models.
• Match the model to the mission field. // Each gospel expression is designed for a different context. Regional campuses offer a full-service First Orlando experience. Church plants launch with their own identity and governance while remaining connected relationally. Microsites create smaller gatherings in homes, workplaces, or community spaces for people skeptical of institutional church. Missional expressions embed disciples directly into cultural spaces such as prisons, recovery communities, or even social clubs.
• Build the leadership pipeline first. // The team recognizes that multiplication will only happen if leaders are raised up before new expressions are launched. First Orlando is developing a sending residency built for co-vocational and bi-vocational people who can keep their jobs, families, and neighborhoods while being equipped for mission. The residency combines community, training, practice, feedback, and assignments over an extended season.
• Shift from “we can do it” to “you can do it.” // David Loveless, Executive Pastor of Global Mobilization, explains that churches focused on addition often communicate, “We can do ministry, and you can help us.” Multiplying churches reverse that mindset: “God has given you a vision, and we want to help you live it out.” First Orlando is working to expand the kingdom imagination of its people so they no longer see ministry as something that primarily happens through staff and programs.
• Keep celebrating the vision. // Launching a big vision is only the beginning. Trey emphasizes the importance of repeatedly telling stories of new gospel expressions, baptisms, and people stepping into leadership. Celebration helps the church remain emotionally connected to the vision long after the initial launch. Without consistent storytelling, even a compelling strategy can quietly fade into the background.

To learn more about First Orlando and follow the story of its campuses, sending residency, and expanding gospel expressions, visit First Orlando at firstorlando.com and follow the church across its social channels. Leaders interested in learning more about their framework and resources behind their multiplication strategy can also connect directly with the First Orlando team.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, Rich here from the unSeminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Wow, we have got an incredibly special podcast for you today. The stuff we’re talking about on multiple layers, I know, hope, pray, will impact your church. We’re talking about how do teams interact with each other. We’re talking about vision for the future. We’re talking about multiplication. And we’re getting a chance to sit down with multiple leaders from a prevailing church that’s doing a great job. Looking forward to looking under the hood. Alittle bit excited to have our friends from First Orlando with us. This is the first time I was just joking about this. The first time we have had. Three, not one, not two, but three guests on the line. So this is going to be good. It’s going to stretch me. It’s kind of like The View, but for church leaders. It’s going to be good and hopefully fun.

Rich Birch — Excited to have Trey Hildebrant with us. He is the senior teaching pastor at First Orlando, newest member of the team. Danny de Armas, he is the Senior Executive Pastor, if I’m getting all the titles correctly, and David Loveless, Executive Pastor of Global Mobilization. Honored to have you guys with us.

Rich Birch — If you’re not aware of First Orlando, This church started in 1871. They currently have multiple campuses across the greater Orlando area, including, if I’m counting correctly, four English locations, Campus Hispano and Campus Brasilio. It’s a fantastic church doing lots of great things. There’s lots of stuff we could talk about. Excited to have you guys on the call today. Thanks for being here.

Trey Hildebrant — We’re excited.

Danny de Armas — Great to be a part.

Rich Birch — Why don’t we start, Trey, with you. Kind of tell, that’s like a boilerplate about the church. For folks that don’t know the church, kind of tell us a little bit about the church. Give us a bit more flavor. Fill out the picture a little bit for us.

Trey Hildebrant — Well, you mentioned that we are a church that’s 150 years old. So there is a rich legacy. When I joined the team, one of the things that we celebrated was there’s only been five pastors in the past 100 years or something like that.

Rich Birch — Wow, wow.

Trey Hildebrant — So there’s this history there. There’s this presence in the community and around the world, honestly, that that honest partly drew my heart to First Orlando. And so we’ve been here since December of ’25, my wife and I. We came from an incredible church, but knew God was calling us to something different. and knew that Wherever God called us, we wanted to be a part of salvations and baptisms.

Trey Hildebrant — And early in the conversation with First Orlando, David Uth and I, our senior shepherding pastor, just sat around and talked about our heart for baptisms for an hour one day in the interview process. And it’s that history. It’s that culture, it’s that calling, that Great Commission calling that helped affirm that this is where God wanted us to be. And hopefully, with me being the the new one on the team, one of the younger guys on the team, I hope to be here for 35 years to continue what God has been doing over the past 150.

Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Yeah. You know, to honor your your leadership and your church, you know, I think of First Orlando as like one of those churches of record. It’s like when I think of Orlando, I think of First Orlando, like you guys have been there for a long time and served well. You know, I like to call you like a, it’s a life-giving church. Like this is the kind of church, my wife and I have this shorthand whenever I travel or interact with other church leaders, the shorthand we’ve boiled it down to, she says, yeah, but would you go there? Like, would you be a part of that church?

Rich Birch — And First Orlando is definitely one of those churches. It’s like, man, you guys do such a great job on so many levels. And there’s a lot we could talk about.

Trey Hildebrant — Well, it’s really kind of really kind of you to say that.

Rich Birch — Oh, come on.

Trey Hildebrant — There is something sweet. There is something really sweet about the presence of this place that you just even touched on. We just had a prayer gathering. We pray on Thursday mornings at 9 a.m. as a staff. And one of the things that came out in the prayer today was just there’s a presence here that helps draw people in and we’re grateful.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And we bumped into each other at Exponential last year. And I think you, I think actually it was this three-part leadership team. You guys were kind of wandering around the halls and as you graciously allow all these people from all over the world to come in, you poked your head into one of the sessions I was a part of. And, and talk to me about this kind of three-part leadership team. How, how does that work? Kind of unpack that a little bit. I know, like I think it’s amazing. I think it’s good. There’s no undercurrent of like cynicism about that, but just how what did you step into as a leader, Trey? When you joined, you know, Danny and David Uth as you started leading there.

Trey Hildebrant — Yeah, so it is different. And we can embrace that, that there’s this this plurality of senior pastors. We have three senior pastors at First Orlando. We call it the table of three. The team before I got here did a wonderful job of of telling the story of why three, even putting language around it. And so I stepped in as the senior teaching pastor.

Trey Hildebrant — So I offer leadership to our Sundays, to teaching across our campuses, helping shape sermons for our our John Young campus, which is our largest campus, but then also all of the campuses. And we have a great relationship with the campus pastors who also preach live. We broadcast from time to time, but that’s our primary model. So I get to help provide leadership to that. And then things that might would trickle down from teaching and vision and spiritual leadership.

Trey Hildebrant — Danny de Armas here is our senior executive pastor. He runs the church, for for lack of a better way of saying it. Danny’s got his hand on all the levers and all the buttons leading the staff, helping us move forward in a way that’s healthy across the board financially to strategy to staff culture. And then David Uth is our senior shepherding pastor, and he offers so much in just his presence and spiritual leadership and prayer and care.

Trey Hildebrant — I’m grateful to be able to follow the preaching ministry of a man who’s still here. And you asked like, how is it working? So all three of us report to the board, you know. So we have we don’t report to one another nobody reports to One or the other, we report to the board. But we have a friendship among the three of us. We spend a lot of time together. We’ve learned how to beat up ideas. Maybe even disagree a little bit, but then step out of a room in in unity.

Trey Hildebrant — And one of the greatest gifts to me is I have a trusted, both Danny David and Danny are trusted. But I think about 20 plus years of David Uth preaching to step into an environment where he’s still here and he’s a cheerleader. He is the biggest supporter of the teaching ministry that I’ve been able to bring to First Orlando. He comes in, he sits on the front row. If he’s not going to be on the front row for a sermon, he tells me like, I’m so sorry, I’m not going to be here for this service. Because he’s going to go speak to a life group or go care for someone.

Trey Hildebrant — So we we’re still working on some of the dynamics for sure, but it’s working because the relationships are right and the spirit’s right. And we so we have our lanes and we we’re learning how to how to operate in those lanes, but then trust one another to help influence the overall vision and direction of the church. So it’s been wonderful.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. I love I love that. What that’s like a whole other conversation at some point. I’d love to sit down and kind of unpack that.

Danny de Armas — It is. It is a whole nother podcast. It’s been a five-year journey to…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Danny de Armas — …go from a single senior pastor to where we are today. And it’s ah it’s been fantastic. And our church has been so supportive. That’s probably the biggest surprise for me, having been here through the whole process.

Danny de Armas — The church, when we first started talking about this, it seemed like such a stretch to get the church to embrace it. And it has it has happened without a I mean, it’s just been incredible. It’s been a work of God, to be honest with you. It’s just it’s inexplicable that we were able to do it. And again I echo Trey’s sentiment, it is you know, there’s some it’s a relationship, so you’re still learning a little bit, and poor Trey has to hang around with two old guys most of the time, and that’s a challenge for him, I’m sure.

Danny de Armas — But it’s been awesome for us and and it gives us uh, you know freedom to to work in the lanes where we’re called and gifted in a way that is just has been fantastic. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve I’ve been lurking since since Exponential, just kind of following along a little closer with your, you know, just just all the public stuff. And it and yeah, I think it’s amazing. The kind of vibe that all that generates externally, I think is super positive. And I think it’s a great model, interesting kind of like thing to for churches to consider. You know, I think we are all wondering, okay, how do we lead these things?

Danny de Armas — Right.

Rich Birch — They are difficult.

Danny de Armas — Right.

Rich Birch — They’re not, you know, we talk about stuff you wish they taught in seminary. There is no course on how to lead a church like First Orlando. This is a complex, large organization, you know…

Danny de Armas — Yes it is.

Rich Birch — …a lot of history. And that I think is an interesting kind of solution you know towards that. That’s but I get, like I said, it’s a whole other conversation. We won’t get into that…

Danny de Armas — It is.

Rich Birch — …much more of that today. Danny one of the things that caught my attention was again, we were at Exponential and I had heard that there was some kind of a new season that was kind of coming up at the church. And I love that a church is a church 150 years old, still dreaming, still thinking about the future, still thinking about what’s coming next. And in the midst of this kind of leadership transition what were you sensing as a leadership team that God was stirring as we were looking into this next season?

Danny de Armas — Well, the way those things always work for me is it’s there’s multiple forces hitting me at the same time. I acknowledge I’m God’s remedial child. And so it it takes hearing things multiple ways. And I was in, probably a year and a half ago, in a conference setting. And and a friend of mine who was leading our time said said something that I’m sure he had said a bunch of other times but it didn’t connect with me. And it was the idea that the the Great Commission is not institutional, it’s individual. It’s a personal mission statement more than it is a church mission statement.

Danny de Armas — ‘m a systems guy. I’m a church guy. And I’ve always viewed it as a church thing. And then and then the the challenge was, so how do we make the Great Commission, a personal mission endeavor. Like this is what we want our people to wrap their hearts around.

Danny de Armas — And so that was boiling in me. And then I attended a conference with David Loveless. I think we were in California. We were in a conference with other multi-site and church planting churches that are kind of similar to us. Somehow we got in the room. I’m not exactly sure. I didn’t feel like I belonged in the room, but we were invited to be there.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Danny de Armas — And at the end of the time, it was a challenge time by the leaders of the of our gathering, which was really a peer to peer kind of environment. But the challenge at the end, they said, hey, as your with your groups, we had three or four of us from staff there. Would you write down, over the next 10 years, if things just went great and you were able to do the things that are in your heart to do. How many new church plants or campuses or kind of gospel expressions do you think you could launch in the next 10 years?

Danny de Armas — So we went together and and we we’re so committed to stuff already. I mean, we’ve got we’re building a campus on the west side of town. That’s a big investment. And we got missions giving that we do. And for goodness sakes, now we’ve got three senior pastors we have to pay. And all of these things that we have to do. And a lot of, you know, we’re busy already.

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny de Armas — And so in the conversation, I pitched like what I thought was super aggressive and say, well, what if in 10 years we did 10 more? Like we’re, we have four campuses and so and we have a couple of church plants that we’ve helped start in the last couple of years, our last three years. So I said, well, what do we do ten?

Danny de Armas — So anyway, to make the story story not so long, the challenge [inaudible] the leaders said so what if what if God was doing something really dramatic in you? And wanted to do something that could be like God-sized, not not something you feel like you can do, but something that’s bigger than that?

Danny de Armas — And it was there was kind of a silence in the room and everybody kind of mulling that around. And one of the other pastors stood up and said, I feel like that The Titanic is sinking and I’m moving furniture around on the deck. And when he said it, it’s like. Man, it just penetrated.

Danny de Armas — And and I thought, man, am I just moving furniture around? So and again, it was just convicting. And then the the leader said, well, what if what if you just did something bold and put a zero to whatever number you wrote down. Add a zero to it.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Danny de Armas — And I said it out loud to Loveless who was there with me. I said, I’ve lost my mind, but put a zero up there.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Danny de Armas — Because it’s felt so unreachable. Like there’s no way. And so but in a prayer that we just had together in those moments, we committed to it and said, I don’t haven’t. I haven’t talked to David and Trey yet. And obviously I can’t speak on behalf of the church, but I did write it down and I’m gonna come back and share it with them.

Danny de Armas — And so. I did, and with with angst. And fear. And with the preface of… Hey guys. I’ve lost my mind. and I need you to tell me I’ve lost my mind and this is not something we need to do.

Rich Birch — Shouldn’t have gone to California. There’s something in the air. They’re smoking weed out there or something. Who knows?

Danny de Armas — Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we’ve always we’re always suspicious of that West Coast anyway.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, exactly.

Danny de Armas — So this just confirms it.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Danny de Armas — But when I described like I’ve just described to you, what the moment was for us. They both said, that’s awesome. We don’t know how. But let’s commit to it. And again, we prayed and said, God, we don’t know how to do this. And I actually, I don’t know, a few weeks later preached it at the beginning of the calendar year. And I told the people, I don’t know if we can do this. We don’t know exactly what it takes to do it. But here’s what I know. We’re going to give everything we have and put ourselves fully towards it for the next 10 years, this is what we’re aiming at. And if we don’t make it, we can say we gave it everything we had to get there.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Danny de Armas — And so that’s that was the genesis of it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. I love just to underline for you listeners, like I think it would be really easy for a church like First to just like, let’s just ride on what we’ve been doing. And instead of like saying, no, like, in fact, actually, it would be easier to say, Let’s just gather more people into the buildings we already have, rather than say hey we’re going to do this hundred thing in 10 years. That’s that’s amazing; that’s inspiring.

Rich Birch — How does it how does that kind of what’s the language that’s been started to kind of form around that, Danny? How do you say it publicly now? It’s it’s moved beyond just on the board now. You’ve you started to talk about it.

Danny de Armas — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What was does it look like? How do you so kind of…

Danny de Armas — I mean, we…

Rich Birch — …talk about it.

Danny de Armas — …internally would call it 110.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Danny de Armas — We just say that. Our vision our our vision for 110, there’s also emerged with Loveless’ help. We’ve we’ve kind of codified that. What does it take to do that? And it’s it’s about having a leadership pipeline. The leadership pipeline is what this is all about. That’s this is that’s the way it multiplies. And it it takes multiplication. And multiplication was a big part of the conversation at the conference that we were at.

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny de Armas — And that was before we came back and hosted Exponential whose theme was Multiply.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Danny de Armas — Right.

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny de Armas — And so for us, this was all confirmation. We didn’t know where Exponential was going thematically at that time. And you know but God was doing something and in the midst of a lot of different churches who are all experiencing this same thing.

Danny de Armas — So for us, it’s i’s us raising up and empowering and training 300 leaders over the next 10 years. who can who we can deploy. into a hundred different expressions. And we’re we don’t this word gospel expressions is kind of code too. That was probably the first environment that I remember hearing that comment, or that title, that description, that term. And but here’s our the reason we’re landing on it and it’s it’s probably not the best I don’t know if it’s the best way to describe it or not but here’s why, is we don’t know everything that’s going to be innovated in the next 10 years.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Danny de Armas — So it’s hard to, our staff struggles with it. I struggle some, but our staff struggles more. When we don’t when we can’t define everything.

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny de Armas — And so. It’s a and I think there’ll be seasons of I think that is but I’m not sure it is and I don’t think that is but maybe it is.

Rich Birch — I don’t know if that counts. Yeah, yeah

Danny de Armas — But we’re we’re, yeah, we’re just going to hold it loosely. And today it just feels so different than it did. It was almost a year ago we were at that conference. It just feels so different than it did then. It feels like, man, God’s doing something and we’re just a part of something way bigger than us. And He’s raising up our people and we’re training and empowering them and we’re giving them permission to do what God’s put in their heart to do.

Danny de Armas — And this is a blast. It’s messy. It’s out of bounds. We don’t control it. They’re doing stuff. It’s not us. And and it’s it’s just, it’s it’s becoming more fun every day.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. When you, just double clicking on the the gospel expressions language, I’m going to force you to do what you don’t want to do. Tell us, Danny, what what are the kind of things you are imagining? I understand there’s probably things outside your imagination, but what would some of those things you think will end up looking?

Danny de Armas — Well, the I’m going to answer the two most common because they do count also, and that’s church plants and campuses. So we need to be about both of those.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Danny de Armas — I think most of our campuses will actually be revitalization. I’m kind of convinced for the time being the church in central Florida owns enough real estate.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Danny de Armas — We just need to fill up the buildings that we have. And so and we have some opportunities. But and then some church plants, we want to be about that. I’m going to defer to David Loveless to tell us more about the other. And right now we have four categories. Uh, and and I ‘ll let him describe the others because he’s had it kind of helped us develop the categories.

Rich Birch — Yep. Operationalizing, yeah.

Danny de Armas — Yeah. So…

Rich Birch — Yeah, David, David, why don’t you tell us a little bit about that four different categories?

Danny de Armas — Loveless, why don’t you explain that?

Rich Birch — How does that hang together?

David Loveless — Yeah. What we do we talk about, we have four different types of gospel expressions. We’re going to have regional campuses, church plants, microsites, and the missional expressions. And so we’ve given a simple definition for each one of those. Then we have defined what types of people are each one of those best at uniquely reaching and discipling. And then what types of leaders are required to lead each one of those four different types of gospel expressions.

David Loveless —And actually just backing up before that, the first thing we had to do, you know, Danny said, OK, we get this vision and now we got to now we got to define all this. We got to figure out what’s the strategy behind it.

David Loveless — So he looked around the room, tried to figure out who had the lowest IQ that would agree to such a thing. And so that fell to me.

Trey Hildebrant — Who’s the mad scientist in the room? That’s…

Rich Birch — That’s fun.

David Loveless — And so I went, okay, we got to start with we have to define for us, What’s a gospel expression? And so we worked and worked on that for several months and basically came up with three simple words.

Danny de Armas — Yeah.

David Loveless — And then gave three defining characteristics of it. We said that a gospel expression for us was going to be a great commission community. It was going to be a family on mission. Community is family, extended spiritual family that’s on a mission together, great commission.

David Loveless — So we said a gospel expression is a great commission community where people are pursuing Jesus together where they’re becoming more like Him, and where they’re sent by him back into their everyday world. So we started with that, and then we started thinking about how can that best be lived out. That’s when we came up with these four different types of launch models of the campuses of the church plants, of the microsites, and the missional expressions.

David Loveless — Now you know, a while ago, you know, you were talking about this grand, illustrious history of First Orlando. She dramatically changed course about eight years ago where we moved from being a church that was consumed with thinking about addition, as most churches are, to we began thinking eight years ago around multiplication in ways that perhaps we never had. That’s when we started making plans for and we executed a plan on going multi-site for the first time. We were probably one of the few large churches in the country that hadn’t yet been to the multi-site party.

David Loveless — And so about eight years ago, we joined that party and we started launching other campuses as well as planting churches within this same region all at the same time. So that kind of set us up for really where we’re evolving, morphing, moving into today in these four particular expressions.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, just some stats on that. And Warren’s got new stats coming out this fall, which we’re excited to talk about here in upcoming episodes.

David Loveless — This is why he exists, is to come up with more stats.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes, exactly. I love Warren. he We all love Warren.

Danny de Armas — We do too.

David Loveless — We do love him.

Rich Birch — The most recent study, not the one he’s doing right now, I’m sure it’s even higher, churches over 2000. It’s low 80 % of churches ah over 2000 across the country are now multi-site. So it’s almost the way I say that I work with a lot of churches in the thousand to 2000 range. And the way I say those churches, I’m like, you statistically it’s unlikely you will get over the 2000 barrier and not be multi-site.

Danny de Armas — Not be multisite, right.

Rich Birch — Like you’re you are in the radical minority which you guys found yourselves obviously you’re much larger than that at that point and started going you know multi-site which led to this which I think is just incredible. Can you um pull out a little bit of the definitions around regional church plants, you know, and and again, I realize it’s early days. I’m trying to push you to to nail down some some terms here, like nailing jello to a wall. I get that. But kind of give us the 15 second on each of those. How do they how do they how do you define those four?

David Loveless — Yeah, it’s no longer it’s no longer feeling jello-ish to me.

Rich Birch — Good. Okay, good.

David Loveless — I mean we’ve we’ve laid out some things. We now have some examples, real life examples, that we’re in the early embryonic stages of of creating or exist now. So when we talk about a regional campus, we’re talking about a full service campus that extends our reach into neighborhoods in Central Florida where they’re going to have a worship service that looks like ours. They’re going to have a kids ministry, student ministry, life groups. They’re going to have connection experiences, so a full-service campus like that. That’s got our name. It’s led by one of our campus pastors.

David Loveless — Then when we think about the second category of church plants, this is where we are taking a trained church planter, we are sending resources and people with that church planter where they have our DNA, but they’re going to establish their own name, their own brand, their own identity, their own governance. But at the same time, they want to stay in a coaching relationship with us and want to be a part of our broader network of our family of churches that we would have.

David Loveless — And we know with church plants, they’re best at really going into pioneering areas under-resourced areas, as in there aren’t that many churches or that many effective churches. And going in where people are really desiring something that’s more real. authentic local they don’t want something exported in from somewhere else. So that’s why church plants are great for.

David Loveless — Then the third type is microsites. These are small, simple gatherings of 20 to 50 to maybe 70 people that are going to show up in a living room, an apartment complex, a common room, in a coffee shop, in workplaces, things like that. And this is really designed for people that are either unchurched or de-churched. And they’re just really skeptical of an institutional church. And this is typically going to be led by a lay leader and by a team of people who have been trained uniquely for that. Oftentimes in microsites we might broadcast a part of a service or a sermon into there, and they’ll create some other live events and then group experiences from it.

David Loveless — Other times, we may not broadcast anything into there. We may take that lay leader. And where he’ll take the the teaching outline that Trey and his team have put together and where he will actually use that or she will use that themselves in that context. But it’s not about creating a church service. It’s about, let’s go back to our definition of a gospel expression. It’s having this great commission community that has those three traits I mentioned a while ago.

David Loveless — And then the fourth thing, of the missional expression is usually ah the community of disciples that are organized. They want to be an incarnational presence and you unique crack or crevice in the in the culture. It might be in recovery groups or in prisons. It might be like right now I’m having conversations with two couples that are part of a pickleball club. And all the people in their pickleball club, they could care less about the church. They don’t want to go to an established church. We’re talking about how can they create a unique missional expression right there with them. So those are some of the examples of it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s really cool. As that’s, thank you for walking us through that. As you’ve been kind of pivoting from, you know, an idea an idea of vision to these four, and then trying to articulate it and start to operationalize it, David, what’s been the hardest part of, you know, getting this into people’s hands, actually saying, okay, here is the you know, this is what the next steps look like beyond, hey, that’s somebody else’s idea.

Rich Birch — The thing I’m picking up here is that at the end of the day, and and you started with this, Danny, about you know the the Great Commission is a personal commission.

Danny de Armas — Right.

Rich Birch — So it’s not it’s about individuals at first being engaged in this.

Danny de Armas — Right. Right.

Rich Birch — So David, what’s been the hardest part about actually getting individuals to engage in this process?

David Loveless — Where do we start?

Trey Hildebrant — Yes.

David Loveless — I think. I think the most fundamental thing, and this came out of the research that a lot of us were involved in back a number of years ago where we ended up in an Exponential kind of published it as level five churches. And talked about level one, level two, three, four, and five churches that were, at level one that were just barely surviving, up to level five churches that were now reproducing themselves.

David Loveless — And what a lot of us saw back a number of years ago is that churches basically that are either in subtraction or addition mode, they are all about, we can do it and you can help us.

David Loveless — But churches that move into level four and five, where they become ou know reproducing in nature where they become ultimately multiplying in nature, they have a different mentality. Their mentality is looking at people and saying, you can do it. God’s given you a vision. God’s equipped you. There’s an acorn within you that is a potential kingdom force, not just a tree. And we want to help you be able to do that where you live, work, or play.

David Loveless — So I think for us, it’s beginning to help our people have a brand new kingdom imagination. They’ve never had before. Up until now they’ve thought about First Orlando is where you go to church. It’s where you go and give. It’s where you go and serve in faithful, very meaningful ways like that.

David Loveless — But now we’re trying to turn the tables and going, listen. It’s going to take all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. And this kind of church is limited in the amount of people it can actually reach. We want to be able to have some new gospel expressions through hundreds of you.

David Loveless — So now being able to envision and now through our sending residency, equip them to do that. The new residency that we’ve just designed we’re about to launch we’ve just got through having two preview events around it it’s kind of unique in nature in that it’s intended for people that are co-vocational or bi-vocational rather than people that are just predominantly full-time vocational.

David Loveless — So we tell people, hey, listen, we’ve designed this thing so you can keep your family, your job, your neighborhood intact, all at the same time learning and being equipped in some new ways of what it means to be, you know a part of a family on mission. And we’re going to train you to do that. And then we’re going to help you either launch these new expressions based upon the unique calling God’s given you that will help you discern and identify. Or we may send you back into one of our existing expressions where you will be a leader in a brand new way there.

Rich Birch — That’s cool. Give me a little more framework of the residency. Is it like two years long? Is it how how often do they meet? What is that? Just a little bit of detail around that would be interesting.

David Loveless — Sure. It’s it’s ah a weekly training cohort that’s two and a half hours in nature. It begins with a meal because, first of all, we’re trying to build relationships with people. We’re trying to demonstrate what it means to be community…

Rich Birch — Community. Yep.

David Loveless — …not go to a church. And so people learn that around tables, right? And then from there we have training sections and we have practices where we create feedback loops around all that. And then they have assignments. It’s like an eight hour a week commitment. And the initial commitment extends from October through May.

Rich Birch — Okay.

David Loveless — Then they get to come up for air. And either will graduate them at that particular level or they’ll sign up for a year or two around the whole thing.

Rich Birch — Okay.

David Loveless — And so we’re going to offer it two different times each week. And we’re trying to capture people just where they are and their availability. I was just hosting another preview event last night. And I said, I know a lot of you think eight hours a week, where am I going to get that? I said, I can find your eight hours. I said the research is most of you spend 40, 50 hours a week on your screen. So I can find those eight hours really easily for you, you know.

David Loveless — And but what we’ve noticed is the people that have been coming to these preview events, God’s already been at work in them. He’s already been stirring something.

Rich Birch — For sure.

David Loveless — They just haven’t had language. They didn’t know what to name it. And they didn’t know that their church at First Orlando had actually been designing something just for them. And man, it’s making them come alive.

Rich Birch — Yeah, and David, I do want to affirm that. It’s amazing and connects to us stuff that we often run into in other churches, fast-growing churches where you know there’s a big ask. One of the differences between usually a stuck in stagnant church and a growing church is growing churches make big asks of their people. They they are not they do not do not hesitate with saying hey you got it this is a big deal for you. You got, it’s got eight hours for an entire year and then you might do a second year.

Rich Birch — Like as opposed to a stuck in stagnant church is like, well, could you just give us 15 minutes? Could you just do this? We’ll make it super easy. You just got to do these few things. That’s a sign of a stuck and stagnant church as opposed to a growing church. I love that.

Rich Birch — Trey, pivoting on how you’ve been talking about this from the stage, what how has this changed and morphed from the kind of public communication side, you or David or anyone else that’s speaking as you’re communicating about this, what are you doing to ensure that there’s kind of the vision is properly aligned and we’re moving people along from that vantage point?

Trey Hildebrant — Yeah, that’s something that we’ve begun to do is it’s kind of baked into every single teaching. And I think that’s, we were in a teaching series on family as we have this conversation right now. And it’s even beginning to talk about parenting through a great commission lens. It’s talking about marriage through a great commission lens. Then we’re starting a teaching series called One More. And we’re going to we’re going to talk about the personal evangelism, personal Great Commission, as of you know the Great Commission as a personal mission endeavor.

Trey Hildebrant — But then make sure that our church doesn’t separate any of these other teachings from what God is calling us to do. Like we are going to have to help teach our church, hey when we have a series on family, we’re still talking about the great commission. When we talk about One More, yeah, we’re talking about personal evangelism. But for some of you, this gospel expression something’s gonna birth in you. And here’s how you can jump into the sending residency.

Danny de Armas — Yep.

Trey Hildebrant — So when we start One More in two weeks, I’ll teach through the Great Commission all the way to domino into there may be something God has put in you to go reach a people who have not yet been reached. And that’ll be some of the language that we use.

Trey Hildebrant — A big piece of this, and we’ve said this a few times, is continuing to say things like this. This isn’t what the first Orlando pastors are going to go do. This is what you’re going to go do. And we’re going to help you go do it. And the more we say that, the more I think it’s going to bake into the the culture.

Trey Hildebrant — One of the things that we’re also having to do is just shift the world view of our church. David and I were having this conversation—I don’t know if that was yesterday, two days ago—around a church like First Orlando—and you used the idea of Titanic, Danny—in a positive way, it is a cruise ship. Like it’s we have all the amenities.

Rich Birch — There’s a lot going on. Yeah, yeah.

Trey Hildebrant — There’s a lot going on. You have all the amenities. We have all the ministries. And it’s easy for people to be here and continue to ask the questions of: well Is the kids ministry what I need it to be? Is the student ministry what I want? Do you have a small group that fits my particular niche?

Trey Hildebrant — What can we do all the time to activate the cruise ship to get people from not thinking as much about what does this mean for me, but push the like the uncomfortable piece a little bit, in how we teach and disciple our people to go, I want to be a part of that.

Trey Hildebrant — And you mentioned the the big ask, like a lot of churches that are growing are good at making the the big ask. I think ah another piece of it is there’s this multiplication principle. I’ll say it from the negative first. I think a lot of pastors and even a lot of our team and even myself, let me just put myself in that category. It’s easy to think from a scarcity mindset of…

Rich Birch — So true.

Trey Hildebrant — …Oh man, if i if I have a sending conversation (sending residency, we have a brochure), if I have a sending conversation with my best small group leader in middle school. What does that mean for the ministry I’m currently leading, right?

David Loveless — Great point.

Rich Birch — Right.

David Loveless — Yep.

Trey Hildebrant — And what I think you begin to see, like a great commission formula that doesn’t even make sense is once you begin to hold people loosely. And you begin to see, Okay, we want to measure our church, not just by butts in the seats, but by who we’re sending. By the way, that’s a statement I will keep saying as well, Rich, from the stage is what if we didn’t measure our church just by who’s here, but who we’re sending. When we begin to do that, it’s like God brings up the people that were in the wings who needed that other leader to take a step. And we can release the scarcity mindset and just go, man, if we multiply and send… Our ministries are going to be okay.

Trey Hildebrant — I think that’s what we have to break a little bit at a church like First Orlando is, Hey, the amenities are going to take care of themselves. I keep using that word kind of tongue in cheek. But if we become a sending church. Man, that’s who we want to be for the future.

Danny de Armas — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Danny de Armas — And that is…That is hard though. For me, I mean I’ve been here a long time. And it’s sending some people who have become like family to me. And now you see God doing work in their lives and I can see it already, like they’re gonna go. And it’s going to be awesome. And some of the expressions don’t require you’re still going to be here on Sunday and all that. But some of them not that way.

Danny de Armas — Some of them, it’s like, I know that God’s doing a work in them and I can see it. And on one hand, I celebrate it. On the other side, I grieve. Like, I like having them here.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Danny de Armas — It is a that is part of the formula is that you got a good, but man, it is awesome. The two things that have surprised me the most…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Danny de Armas — …since we first cast a vision to the church publicly is the big vision of a hundred resonates with people. Like it taps into top leaders who go, that’s awesome. How can I help? It’s inspiring.

Trey Hildebrant — Yeah, and that’s the key. Just to double tap on that quickly, Danny. You I think it all ah aligns with what we’ve been saying over the past 10 minutes, Rich, and the big starting with the big ask thought, is our sharpest leaders and our people who are leading large in life, they they’re not they don’t respond to the, hey, give me the 15 minutes if you please.

Danny de Armas — No.

Trey Hildebrant — They’re hearing this and there’s an entrepreneurial spirit that’s awakening in some of them as we go with the big vision. They want to be…

Danny de Armas — Yeah.

Trey Hildebrant — …brought into something larger than, I promise it won’t be too much.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Danny de Armas — Right.

Trey Hildebrant — You know that type of mentality.

Danny de Armas — And even my caution when I said it publicly that I did from the platform, man, our top leaders. They were texting me or calling me going, way to go. And yeah, we’re going to do it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Danny de Armas — Don’t you, God’s going to do something here. We’re with you. It was just bold.

Danny de Armas — The other part is how how inspiring it is to our people for us to say, This isn’t us doing it. This is you doing it. We’re going to help you, but you’re going to do it. And all of a sudden they’re like, okay – I got a role in this. And it’s and the response has not been, oh, okay, they’re asking us to do something. The the response is inspiring, in a way that is, yeah, that’s been the shock to me is how quickly our people have embraced an idea that again, I was cautious and ashamed even to bring it up, like they’re going to… I think I’ve lost my mind. So I know they’re going to think I’ve lost my mind. And and yet somehow God used it in a way that I just never.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Danny de Armas — Yeah, I never really contemplated and I’m just so grateful for the way he’s doing it and the way Loveless is helping put structure to it all. The way Trey’s communicating it and leading us to all communicate it. It’s just it’s just been a ou know one of the greatest joys of ministry that I’ve been a part of to see something you know, take hold within our church and now to see people that I love and care for deeply. And see God moving in their lives and doing, you know taking steps they’ve never taken before.

Danny de Armas — I had a businessman that I was with recently who said he’s they’re contemplating building a new office building for his company. And he said, I got I think I’ve got to make sure I’ve got a room on the ground floor that can seat 100, 150 people.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Danny de Armas — Because if we if we if we build it, I’m sure there’ll be some kind of gospel expression that wants to use that room on a Sunday.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.

Danny de Armas — And my comment is make sure you got parking. But yes.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s I love that.

Danny de Armas — And so, so, yeah, and if you if you’re asking for 15 minutes and make sure you’re here 30 of the next 52 weeks, that is not a big vision.

Rich Birch — It’s not inspiring. Yeah. And I…

Danny de Armas — And so somehow it, yeah. Somehow it resonated with our people. And I’m so grateful that I was at the conference that the leaders there and the pastor there spoke what they did. It anchored in my soul. And I I was compelled.

Danny de Armas — They say, man, we got to add a zero. And so.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s so cool. I love that. And I you know I know in my relationship with Jesus, I feel like he’s constantly reorienting me around other people. He’s saying, it’s not about you. It’s about others. It’s about others.

Danny de Armas — Right.

Rich Birch — Stop being so self-centered. Stop making it about you. and To me, what you’re doing as a church is the same thing. You’re saying, hey, like we’ve got to be focused on this external vision that’s bigger than us. And and and yeah that’s just amazing. that’s That’s incredible.

Rich Birch — As we come down to land, maybe Loveless, we can come back, if I’m friends enough with you now to call you by your last name.

David Loveless — You are.

Danny de Armas — That’s what we do. There’s two Davids here we got to call. Actually, there’s three, but we got to call him by his last name.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit, if if I’m a church of a thousand people, so much smaller church. But, you know, I have a similar kind of thing bubbling inside of maybe my senior leader. And I’m like an executive pastor type person. And I’m I’m trying to think about what some first steps towards operationalizing this is. To actually sit in that seat of I want to help make this thing work rather than being the voice of no.

Rich Birch — What would be some initial steps you would encourage, you know, an operational type leader to kind of help provide some structure to this thing to get this thing rolling?

David Loveless — I think a couple of things come to mind. First of all, you know, there’s been so much talk in recent years about we need to plant, we need to start more churches. And every time I hear that, I go, what do you mean by that? Like what kinds of churches?

David Loveless — I don’t think we need to just start a bunch of new churches. We need to go what kinds of churches…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Loveless — …are going to be high impact in the 21st century that are completely anchored into the first century, but they’re expressed in these brand new unique ways. So I would encourage a church in the context of what you just described to sit down and even try to redefine. When I had to kind of start working on this definition of what a gospel expression was. Really in the back of my mind, I’m like, it’s time for us to redefine church. What kind of church do we want to be and be able to multiply and reproduce in the future?

David Loveless — So that can create in and evoke its own interesting conversation. Then second of all, we go, all right, so what kinds of life forms, what kinds of ministry vehicles might this look like moving forward? What are some of the ones we’re already familiar with? What are some ones we’re not as familiar with, but we’ve heard rumors? We’ve heard rumors in other parts of the world are going on, and do some research around those and say, God, are there any of those particular types that you’re drawing us toward?

David Loveless — We don’t have to try to copy what everyone else is doing, but are you…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Loveless — And then the third thing is to learn who are some people that are already just a couple of steps in front of you. They are not a leap of a tall building in front of you, but a couple of steps in front of you. You could reach out and learn from and all that.

David Loveless — And then fourth thing is to say, are we willing to put together the training apparatus that’s going to be absolutely essential to make that happen. Because you can have the vision, you can have a fantastic strategy, but if you haven’t raised up the right kinds of men and women that are then mobilized to do this, not individually…

Danny de Armas — That’s right.

David Loveless — …but teams together…

Danny de Armas — Yep.

David Loveless — …the whole thing’s going to be nothing but a pipe dream.

Danny de Armas — Yeah.

David Loveless — Learn how to establish that in some brand new, innovative ways. I think the residency of the past have been fantastic, have been helpful on many fronts. But also believe they have their own severe limitations placed upon them that we’ve got to break free from as we move into the second quarter of the 21st century.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. That’s, yeah, super helpful. I know in the 13 campuses I launched directly and then a bunch I’ve coached coached the thing I push all the time with people is the predictor of the success of those new campuses is the size and health of the volunteer core that’s going to those new new campuses.

Danny de Armas — Yep. Yeah.

Rich Birch — And so really, that’s part of what I love what you’re doing. You actually have to think about the pipeline that produces those volunteers, really way out from before you launch the new location. You’ve got to figure out what are we doing to find and release and train those people, not just like, hey, we’re going to make this thing happen.

Rich Birch — Trey, let’s let’s give you the final word. We started with you. We’ll end with you. Any encouragement to leaders that might be listening in today? Any kind of final thoughts around where this kind of next step is for, you know, for First and for people that might be listening in?

Trey Hildebrant — Yeah, one of the things that I’ve loved about the how God has put together the team to help build this. So I think some encouragement to your listeners would be, you may have somebody that’s at the epicenter of the idea or even is good at communicating it. But what’s going to make this win for First Orlando? First and foremost, we believe the Holy Spirit’s in this. It’s empowered. It’s great commission. But that there are people in their lane that are going to help make this work.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Trey Hildebrant — So bring the team in. Find the the David Loveless, have the Danny de Armas, know how you’re going to communicate it. And trust other people to build the different pieces of it that are necessary to make a big vision work. Don’t let it stay siloed inside of just even the the, you know, one or two key leaders.

Trey Hildebrant — The other piece that’s been on my head and heart a lot over the past few weeks is how do we celebrate this along the way? One of the one of the things that I’ve seen happen in churches, even churches that I’ve helped lead, is the the joke ah was for years. We’re good at having the baby, but not good at raising the child. And you’re and talking about vision and strategy, I think one of the ways you raise the vision up in the life of your church is how do you celebrate it as you get the ball rolling?

Rich Birch — Good.

Trey Hildebrant — So one of the things that I know we’re going to pay attention to over the next few weeks, not only how do we cast vision, in how do we equip, how do we bring it into sermons. and other environments like I’ve shared.

Trey Hildebrant — But every four months, every three months, how do we elevate? Here are the three new gospel expressions. Here’s a baptism story from one of our new expressions out on the other side of town. Making sure that as you get a vision and a strategy rolling, that we celebrate it in the the right ways. Because I wonder how often that is the missing component of a vision having sustaining power is we launch it and we start it. And then six months later, the church is like, are we still? Are we still doing that thing?

Rich Birch — Is that still a thing?

Trey Hildebrant — And…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Trey Hildebrant — …so I have a lot of heart and passion for how do we tell the story throughout the next 10 years that our church stays attached to it. Not only attached to it in vision, but honestly kind of attached to it emotionally that this is who we are and and how we’re growing. So.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, I appreciate you, gentlemen. I just want to publicly honor you for making this this, what to me seems like an amazing, huge pivot as a church. And again, just honor the fact that you could have just been like, hey, let’s keep, to use your analogy, Trey, let’s just keep enjoying the the cruise ship, but are choosing to do this new thing. I think it’s amazing. So Trey, where do we want to send people online if they want to track with the story at First Orlando? Is there social places we want to send them? What would be some of those places?

Trey Hildebrant — Yeah, I definitely think our social media will do a great job of sharing the story as we get going. So you can look for First Orlando. And then you’ll even see how we’re doing expressions. We have handles for all of our other campuses, First Orlando Hispaño, First Orlando Brazil, some of these other places. So find us online. We’re going to talk about it a lot in our social worlds. Danny, David, any thoughts on the best place for people to follow.

David Loveless — Yeah, give them, the two the two of you, give them your text number.

Trey Hildebrant — Yeah, that’s it.

David Loveless — That’s that’s what, that’s my highest recommendation right there.

David Loveless —They could up practically, they can also just reach out to me, davidloveless [at] firstorlando [dot] com.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

David Loveless — We’ll see what we can do to help serve the cause out there. We’re committed.

Trey Hildebrant — Because we have, like like I mentioned earlier, we have framework documents, we have sending residency has has been built. So there’s, I don’t know how much of that. you know People would wonder how much, but we have a lot of stuff people could look at. A lot of work David and others have done to get us to a place of definitions, codifying, next steps, that type of stuff. So that’d be helpful.

David Loveless — We’re running a special for the next 14 days for $599.95.

Danny de Armas — Hey Rich, if I can add one bit to this. We’re students and we’re learning like crazy.

David Loveless — Yep, yep. Yep.

Danny de Armas — there’s more learning than anything else and going on. And we’re stepping into categories, again, a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to use any of the terms that we’ve talked about today. Okay. It’s just like I wasn’t there. And so I would. uh also ask within your audience. There are many who are well ahead of us in this journey.

David Loveless — Yes.

Danny de Armas — The multiplication idea is something that has resonated with people. And we’re we’re tapping into something that is a force that the Holy Spirit is doing. We didn’t you know and to be honest, like I mentioned at the beginning, I feel like we’re late to the party. And I feel like we’re the least likely place for this to be going on.

Danny de Armas — And so I would just invite your audience to give us the he best of the best of information. We’re hungry for things.

David Loveless — Yes. Yes.

Danny de Armas — You can reach out to any of us and ways that you’re communicating this, the way that you’re structuring things, the elements of your residency, which is really our leadership pipeline. That’s what we’ve are developed for the first time. But we’re we’re eager to learn that the whole vision birthed in a peer-to-peer learning environment where peers challenged us to take steps we had never taken before to this level. And so really having you know, your audience participate in that with us, I want you to know we are we’re students and we’re learning. And we want to ah participate together with others in this. So any any input they’re willing to give us, we’re eager to hear it.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, that’s great. That’s a great place to end, Danny. I really appreciate that modeling that leaders are learners. Thank you, gentlemen, so much for being here and look forward to hearing how this story of story evolves in the coming years.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much, friends.

David Loveless — Thanks, Rich.

Trey Hildebrant — Thanks, Rich.

Danny de Armas — Thank you, Rich.