From Data to Discipleship: The Four Cs Every Church Needs with Ronee de Leon

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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Ronee de Leon, Executive Director of Partner Church Success at TouchPoint Software. With nearly two decades of ministry experience and now serving churches across the country, Ronee brings a unique perspective at the intersection of systems, strategy, and shepherding.

Are you relying on attendance and giving numbers to understand your church? Wondering how to actually “see” your people as your church grows more complex? Ronee shares a practical framework for turning data into meaningful ministry action.

• You can’t shepherd what you can’t see. // One of the biggest challenges Ronee sees across churches is a lack of visibility. While most churches are passionate about reaching people, many rely on high-level metrics—attendance and giving—that only tell part of the story. As churches grow (especially beyond 300 people), intuitive leadership alone is no longer enough. Leaders can’t be in every room, and without deeper insight, they miss critical moments in people’s lives. The result is a gap between what leaders think is happening and what’s actually happening in people’s spiritual journeys.
• From data to discipleship. // Ronee emphasizes that data itself is not the goal. Rather, discipleship is. The opportunity for churches today is to transform raw data into actionable insight that helps people take meaningful next steps. Instead of just knowing how many people are in groups, leaders should be asking deeper questions: Who is still engaged three weeks in? Who dropped off halfway through? What patterns are emerging in people’s participation? These insights reveal where discipleship is thriving and where it’s stalling.
• The four stages of data-driven discipleship. // To help churches think clearly about this process, Ronee outlines a simple framework: conviction, collection, clarity, and care. Conviction asks whether leaders truly believe data collection matters enough to prioritize it. Collection focuses on consistently gathering meaningful data, not just sporadically. Clarity is the ability to interpret that data, moving from information to insight. And finally, care is where action happens – using those insights to connect with people and shepherd them effectively. Every church, she notes, is somewhere along this progression.
• Where most churches get stuck. // Many churches struggle in the gap between collection and clarity. They gather data but don’t translate it into meaningful action. Data becomes a warehouse rather than a tool. The shift happens when leaders move from asking “What happened?” to “What does this mean and what should we do next?” This requires intentional conversations, regular review rhythms, and a willingness to engage with the data rather than ignore it.
• Drifting is the key moment to watch. // One of the most important indicators Ronee highlights is disengagement. When people begin to drift—missing groups, serving less, or disengaging from community—it often signals deeper issues. Behind that drift could be doubt, divorce, depression, diagnosis, or financial stress. Without visibility, churches miss the opportunity to respond. But with the right systems in place, leaders can proactively reach out, offering care at the exact moment it’s needed most.
• From surveillance to stewardship. // Data collection isn’t surveillance, but rather stewardship. When used correctly, data enables pastors and leaders to care for people more effectively. A simple phone call or conversation, prompted by data, can change someone’s trajectory. Ronee shares examples of pastors identifying disengaged individuals, reaching out, and discovering significant life challenges—leading to holistic care that addresses spiritual, emotional, and practical needs.
• Culture matters more than tools. // While technology plays an important role, culture is the starting point. Churches must first align around why data matters. Without that shared conviction, systems will fail regardless of how advanced they are. Teams need clarity, support, and accountability to consistently engage with data. Leaders must normalize conversations about it by reviewing insights in meetings, celebrating wins, and integrating it into everyday ministry rhythms.
• Measuring what really matters. // One of the most important shifts happening today is moving beyond weekend attendance as the primary measure of health. Many churches are discovering they are actually ministering to two to three times more people than their weekend numbers suggest. This broader view changes how leaders think about staffing, engagement, and discipleship pathways. It also raises a deeper question: are we promoting participation, or are we cultivating transformation?

To learn more about TouchPoint Software and access the free church health assessment, visit touchpointsoftware.com/unseminary.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, we say here at the podcast that it’s like stuff you wish they taught in seminary. And 100% know that today’s topic is one of those that they’re not talking about in seminary, but for particularly my executive pastors, senior leader type people that are listening in, you think about this almost every single day. And your team interacts with it multiple times a day. And it’s something you’re gonna wanna lean in on for an incredible conversation today with Ronee de Leon.

She is the Executive Director of Partner Church Success at TouchPoint Software. If you do not know who TouchPoint Software is, you have been living under a rock. It’s a church management and engagement platform that serves churches across the country. She brings over 18 years of experience working in and alongside ministry, combining strategic systems, thinking with a deep heart for shepherding. TouchPoint, this is an incredible organization, has a mission for helping churches transform their data into discipleship, and they really talk a lot about engagement. And so we really want to dive in with this today. Ronee, thanks for being here. Thanks for being on the show.

Ronee de Leon — It’s my pleasure. It’s great to be back, Rich. Thank you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good to have you back on. Slightly different context, but same kind of conversations, but glad to have you back on. Why don’t you bring us up to speed? Tell us a little bit about the Ronee story and tell us a little bit about TouchPoint. How’s all that work together?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I have been on a journey. Anybody following the Lord, I feel like is on a fun adventure with Jesus. And I have definitely felt that in the last couple of years. I’ve been at TouchPoint for a little less than two years. But before that, I was at a large multi-site mega church based in Columbus, Ohio, and just grateful for the way that the Lord pivots us in our journey when it’s time. And so I had the opportunity to move from serving one church to lots and lots of churches across the country. And I just, it’s such a privilege to serve the bride of Christ in the way that we do at TouchPoint, like you said, through technology, but it’s so much more than that.

Rich Birch — Yeah. and I want to take advantage, friends, I want to take advantage of the with the fact that Ronnie’s here. You see churches across the country. You’re working with churches across the country. You have a great experience. And friends, if you’re listening in today and you’re like, oh, like we already have a system like this, I want you to listen in because we’re not we’re not here to sell you on anything. We want to have a bigger conversation, ask some bigger questions, to help you wrestle with and think about this issue, but frankly, to take advantage of your position TouchPoint because you see so much.

Rich Birch — When you think about the landscape of churches, when they’re looking at, you know, particularly the leaders, we’re thinking about executive pastor type person, when they come to actually knowing their people, where are their people are at at their church, Where what does a landscape look like for us on that front? How do we know kind of the people in our church? How do we get a sense of who are they? What are they do and how are they engaging with us?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I love the church, Rich. I recently have been kind of working through the language with the Lord of, I think the calling on my life is to be the best maid of honor to the bride of Christ that I can be. So it’s such a unique vantage point…

Rich Birch — I love that.

Ronee de Leon — …at TouchPoint serving churches all over the country, like you said. The church has a lot of passion and we’re doing a lot to reach people. But some things that I see are that we still have visibility gaps and why that matters is because churches cannot shepherd what they cannot see.

Rich Birch — So true.

Ronee de Leon — And so we we’ve got a lot of people in our care, but if we’re just taking ministry snapshots instead of understanding meaningful steps as people take their discipleship journey, we’re still struggling with visibility into what’s actually happening in our church.

Rich Birch — Wow, I’m looking forward to digging into that. I know many of us, ah you know, I like to call it the nickels and noses issue. Like we know, in fact, probably 100% of the pastors that are listening in today, they know how many people attended last weekend. And they probably know generally where things are at on the revenue side, particularly, hopefully on the expense side too. But that’s just a really high level, maybe not that helpful, if I hear what you’re saying. Where does the picture start to break down when all we see is these two? If if if we’re just looking at these two numbers, how does that kind of limit our ability? I like that, you know, to see our people, to ultimately disciple them.

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say there is a ton of opportunity to transform data into discipleship. And when we stay high level, we’re missing the opportunities that double clicking into those things would allow us.

Ronee de Leon — Like you said, with an attendance example, we know how many people are in groups. Sometimes that’s roster based. Churches really are getting into this might know what their retention rate is, you know how many people actually are staying in groups over the course of the season. But like if we keep clicking and keep drilling into this, there is the ability for us to understand as people are engaging in these groups and disengaging from these groups.

Ronee de Leon — You know, who’s still connected. three weeks into the season, six weeks into the season, 12 weeks into the season, and who’s not? And why did they fall off? And so there is a high level view that’s helpful year over year, season to season. But again, we’re missing a lot of discipleship opportunities by not drilling down into this to kind of these personal levels.

Rich Birch — Yeah, well and I can imagine as particularly as our churches grow, I think ah there’s a lot of leaders in the church that are like really intuitive leaders and they like to kind of like get in a room and like, I can feel this thing. I just know how it’s going. But as the church grows and becomes you know, more complex, that’s harder to do. You can’t, you just can’t, you can’t get in all the rooms. There’s, there’s, you can’t be in more than one place at once. If you have multiple locations, you can’t do that. And so how, as that happens, what are the kind of maybe questions that you see leaders asking that that doesn’t work anymore though? They can’t get answers out of that. They want answers for that, but they just can’t get it. What, what are those?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say, Rich, intuition is God-given…

Rich Birch — Right.

Ronee de Leon — …but feelings are fleeting, right?

Rich Birch — So true.

Ronee de Leon — I’m a big believer in facts are our friends. So we’ve we’ve got to have the data and make data-driven decisions. But I think the questions that leaders are are trying to answer that sometimes they can’t with those feelings. In my experience, it feels like the breaking point of visibility is around like that 300 mark. If your church is growing to or above around 300, your, your staff’s eyes just can’t see everything anymore on a weekend.

Ronee de Leon — And so the questions that I think we want to answer that we, we lose visibility to as we grow and bigger churches obviously suffer from this as well, but we want to know who’s new. We want to know who’s stalling in their discipleship journey. We want to know who needs care, who’s drifting. And, that’s the part, Rich, that I think is is really important. Because when people are drifting from something that they were previously engaged in, it’s probably the things of life that they’re going through that we, the church, are responsible for caring for them and connecting with them, shepherding through.

Ronee de Leon — You know it’s it’s a bunch of Ds, Rich. It’s doubt. It’s divorce. It’s depression. It’s diagnosis. It’s economic duress. It’s disgruntlement. It’s distraction. It’s all of these things that we can’t see if we’re not double clicking. But but we want to know who’s drifting. We want to know who needs care and we want to show up in a timely manner

Rich Birch — Okay, that’s fantastic. I love the D list as well. Good, great preacher. Lots of Ds there. I love it. So let’s double click another D on this this. I know you have a framework to help churches wrestle through this, to to actually you know get beyond just these kind of high level to undersee, both see these people and understand them, move them along. Do you want to kind of talk us through this framework? Give us a high level over and then maybe we’ll kind of dive into pieces of it.

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, let’s alliterate some more.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Ronee de Leon — Like I said, I was on church staff for a long time.

Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.

Ronee de Leon — It feels like it’s more memorable, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Ronee de Leon — So um this is a really simple framework that really is more stages. It’s a progression. But even though it’s simple, whether they know it or not, every church is in one of these stages when it comes to data-driven discipleship.

Ronee de Leon — And so four kind of C’s of this or stages are conviction, collection, clarity, and care. And I’ll just give a brief description of each of those…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Ronee de Leon — …and then we can go dive in a little bit deeper.

Ronee de Leon — But conviction, really the question that we’re answering here is, do you truly believe this matters even when it’s not easy? So leaders believe that shepherding is important, but do we want to move into doing it proactively? And are we comfortable using data as a tool to do that well? So that’s kind of the conviction piece. Do you really believe that this matters?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Ronee de Leon — Collection then, are you committed to consistently gathering the data that’s needed? Not just once, but as a rhythm. It’s hard work, but it is a worthy cause, a valiant effort.

Ronee de Leon — Let’s move to clarity real quick.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Ronee de Leon — Again, the question we’re answering is, now that you have the data, do you have the insight? Do you really see what it’s telling you and what are we doing with it?

Ronee de Leon — And then the last one, care, of course, is where we’re acting on the insights to connect with our people. Will you actually act on the insights and shepherd people or will it stay theoretical? That’s that’s kind of where we’re headed with this.

Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense. So again, so that’s conviction, collection, clarity, and care. I’d love to talk about collection a little bit. So I think our churches would love to collect data. And in fact, I know there’s lots of leaders that are listening in that are like, they’re like, yeah, that sounds right. I would love to get more data. I’m just not sure how to do that. How do we build a system for collecting that data, for getting, you know, even the things you talked about, people dropping out of groups, you know, not just people rostering, but like, how do we, how do we do that? What’s the starting point for collecting data?

Ronee de Leon — To be honest, I think the starting point is your culture.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Ronee de Leon — I think that this is often an upstream problem when we think it’s a downstream one. I think that we think people just need to follow up or just be more regular about it. But if we don’t have a strong culture around why we gather the data and what we’re doing with it, there’s just a lack of clarity with the team. So I think culture really matters as a starting point. Of course, we can get into…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Ronee de Leon — …of of how to collect it. But I think we have to start there.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a good insight. Because I can see where, yeah, we have to even just at a high level, is this a is this a conversation where we’re willing to have, want to have, want to be a part of, and we’ve got to deal with it, like you say, upstream rather than, okay, let’s dive into the actual tool first. Let’s figure out you know how important this is.

Rich Birch — But my experience…I’m going to play a little bit of devil’s advocate on this question. Hopefully you can take it Ronee. Our relationship can sustain that.

Ronee de Leon — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But like, I feel like churches collect more data that they than they use. Like I I’ve bumped into churches where they’re like, yeah, we’ve got this data, but we’re not actually doing anything with it. What’s the difference between a church that does that? Like that just sitting on data, not using it. And one that actually can gain some clarity from it. What’s the pivot between collection and clarity? How do we do that?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, the difference is data and discernment. A church that’s collecting information knows what happened, but a church with clarity understands what it means and what to do next. And like you said, we’ve got to be willing to talk about it. We have to spend the time to translate it. It is a pivot. That raw data is is rarely helpful. And um to what do they say to to push back on your pushback?

Ronee de Leon — I am surprised as I deal with churches, how many of them don’t have all the data. I think sometimes we make an assumption that above a certain size, they just collect group data and they take attendance and that’s what they do.

Ronee de Leon — Or our volunteers check in or our kids and students check in regularly and they’re excellent at it. I find that that is actually less frequent of a case than than I think you or I would hope to believe.

Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool. Well and so again, I said, we weren’t going to be like selling TouchPoint, but I do want to understand kind of your unique position on this issue. How is TouchPoint accelerate… because to me, I think the model turns here on this collection clarity issue. It’s like, man, we’ve got a, we have to use technology to enable us to collect data. And then that And then have some sort of intermediating technology that helps us gain better clarity on that. Talk us through where is TouchPoint’s kind of expertise in these these two parts of the four Cs?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say that TouchPoint obviously helps with collection. We’re a church management software with some unique features that are going to help you get um an intuitive kind of collective view of people’s engagement.

Ronee de Leon — So we offer things like engagement scores, which which not a lot of church management softwares have kind of baked into it. We want you to understand that overall participation and be able to see what level at what levels people are engaged and as they’re disengaging. There are ways to do that and and other softwares, but TouchPoint does have some unique kind of approaches to that built into the software.

Ronee de Leon — I would say another piece to this that kind of separates us is we have a team of consultants and those consultants are not only partnering with churches as they’re kind of getting up and running in TouchPoint to learn how to use the system.

Ronee de Leon — We’re kind of ministry consultants. We often, just a couple of weeks ago, I had a church in Texas approach me and say, you know, we have a lot of great people on our staff, but to be honest, a lot of them have transitioned from the marketplace. We don’t know what we don’t know. What processes should we have? What should our baptism process look like?

Ronee de Leon — And so we have a whole team as part of our TouchPoint team that sits with churches and helps strategize around ministry philosophy and best approaches. And so I’d say that’s another place where we we kind of shine in the space.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Ronee de Leon — Everybody in the space wants to see the church win. Everybody has good hearts. And I can only speak to the team that I’m on. And these guys, they really counted a privilege to serve the church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. Like, and and you can see, you know, a church when this is done well, when you have got a solution like TouchPoint at the core of what you’re doing, it ends up touching all of your processes. It doesn’t surprise me that a church like that would reach out and say, Hey, like, can you help us work through because you start to see the value of like, man, if we can embed this into the core of what we do, we get a better, like you say, it’s not just like, oh, look, we get a good engagement score. It actually helps us minister to people better. It actually helps us to, and so it makes sense to me that you find yourself in increasing conversations that are obviously related to technology. They they have a, for lack of better word, a touch point to technology, but they are, they’re also, you know, other kind of related systems in the church.

Rich Birch — So obviously, ultimately, this all points towards care, maybe paint a bit of a vision for us, maybe think of a church that’s doing this well. That’s like, hey, here’s some of the telltale signs that they’re actually following through that they’re, yes, they’ve got, they’ve at a high level kind of culture, they’ve got this conviction. Yes, we’re going to do that. They’re, they’re finding lots of places to collect data that doesn’t seem intrusive. They’re ultimately gaining some clarity on that. And that’s translating into real world care. Give us some, a few pictures of what does that actually look like when you’re like, oh, that’s working well.

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say um one of the best kind of tells of this is we hear less and less stories of people disengaging and nobody knew and they were hurt by that. We missed an opportunity to care for or connect with them when those things of life came up.

Ronee de Leon — You know, it’s as simple sometimes as a phone call or a text, a conversation on a weekend when when the data is showing you that this person has been disengaging or not around, to to just reach out and say, hey, how you doing? You know, this is not um surveillance. This is stewardship. This is this is caring for our people.

Ronee de Leon — And there’s a story out of the church where where I used to work that I love and I still tell just because of the multifaceted kind of piece of the engagement that came out of it. So a campus pastor who was using data really well saw an individual in his church on a list of people who were disengaging. And so he reached out and he learned that this individual had lost his job that was causing doubt in his faith. And he was actually beginning to struggle with some depression.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Ronee de Leon — You know, if we play that scenario out, if we never saw that, we didn’t reach out, what happens to that guy? You know, the story could have looked very, very different.

Ronee de Leon — But because that pastor was able to use the data for the purposes of discipleship and make that connection, we we saw him and connected him. We were able to address his physical needs. You know, there was some assistance the church could provide or or point him to. We were able to help with mental needs, emotional needs, spiritual needs. There was pastoral care and Christian counseling. And so, so many different ways that we were able to engage and and and walk alongside this individual. Like I said, the way I think the church wants to and should be, but we maybe would have never known about that individual if we hadn’t had the indicator ah because of the data.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so you something you said there caught my attention. I’m like, oh, we got to loop back around on that. The example used there, you talked about the campus pastor type person. They had like a disengagement report. There was like the system ended up generating, hey, here’s a list of people. I’m assuming by what you said, here’s some people who you know I you should connect with.

Rich Birch — Talk to me about how that happens. I I I’m not like I’m not putting down any other solutions out there. I’ve worked in a number of them. I have not had that experience where it’s like, hey, these are some people you should talk to. Talk to me about how TouchPoint actually does that. What does that look like at at the level of a church? How how do we get to the point where we’re using this well enough that we can have a report like that, that we could actually take action on? That’s incredible.

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say um it comes down to consistency in some ways, right? You build some reports in your system. TouchPoint has a lot of unique reporting that we can do to surface that data for you. But no matter what system you’re using, I would say if you and your team aren’t using some something as simple as absentee report of some sort, people who have been missing three or more consecutive weeks from groups or something like that.

Rich Birch — Volunteering, yep.

Ronee de Leon — I mean you can start there and and it’s really that easy. But there are more complex ways to understand rather than the arbitrary, I want to call everybody who’s missing three weeks, understand as personal participation patterns change. And that is a really unique approach to it.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Ronee de Leon — And I would say it does take a software like TouchPoint or even one that TouchPoint just partnered with called Path we’re getting into seeing those personal participation patterns and that’s where I think we get into some secret sauce and just be able to show up in a really timely manner.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. Like being able that that to me, friends, okay, I’m just going to stop pretending like I’m not biased. Like I’m biased. You should be checking out TouchPoint. But like the the I was I tried. I held for almost 20 minutes. I tried to be the the but the unbiased, you know, second voice or whatever.

Rich Birch — But but I think a part of the all of these systems have, for years, have like, this is the thing that’s all been talked about. Like, this is going to be amazing. But actually what they end up doing is being, they they’re just like warehouses of data. Like it’s just, it’s just a big list. It’s basically a complex spreadsheet of people’s names. And that’s not helpful. That doesn’t actually help us. And the the vicious cycle I’ve seen with my team is our people, our people people, the people that actually interact with our folks, they don’t see the value in this helping them. So then they don’t end up interacting with the tool and giving data and all of that stuff because they’re like, well, this doesn’t actually help me do my job. So why am I interacting with it? What I love about TouchPoint is we’re saying, hey, how do we get to the to the idea of a personalized path, a personalized understanding of where people are at? That’s, you know, that’s incredible.

Rich Birch — So you’ve worked with lots of churches, hundreds of churches, and, you know, lots all across the country, great, lots of different contexts. What trends are you seeing right now that church that are helping churches think about engagement differently than maybe a few years ago, that things that are like, okay, this is, you know, kind of the cutting edge stuff we we should be thinking about, you know, in the in the future, what are some things we should be looking at?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I’m really grateful that in the last few years, I think there has been started to see a shift, at least in churches moving from simply gathering the data to asking what they can do with it. How can we actually leverage this for discipleship? I think churches are taking that more seriously. It even used to be a little taboo for churches to gather data. That’s not the case anymore. And and I’m grateful for that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Ronee de Leon — I see that moving in a really positive direction. I’m seeing churches being willing to evaluate their technology stack, which I think is really important. Again, we’ve been gathering the data long enough long enough.

Ronee de Leon — If it’s not useful, what are what are we doing? What are we doing with it?

Rich Birch — Right. Why are we doing this?

Ronee de Leon — And so yeah, understanding is our technology really serving us well and as a tool exactly for those people you just mentioned. Your people people, your pastoral people, is it quick and easy and getting them to their people more quickly?

Ronee de Leon — And then even the idea of decisions being made around data about specifically the actual size of our ministry. I think this has been said for years now, pre-COVID it was true. Now it’s it’s even more true. Weekend service numbers don’t tell the whole story…

Rich Birch — Right.

Ronee de Leon — …of who is in and around our ministry pond. And we have to understand that and start making decisions around that.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Ronee de Leon — Or in those spaces, how are we discipling them towards the importance of the weekend service and that gathering? And so, I’m just seeing some things shift in that area as well. Executive pastors don’t love this conversation, Rich. I’m just going to throw that out there. Because a lot of our staffing ratios are based on weekend service attendance numbers, but we’re actually serving. The patterns that I’m seeing are somewhere between two and a half to three times that number of people in our ministries.

Ronee de Leon — So there’s there’s a lot of movement in the world of data, but those are some of the things that are kind of surfacing that I think is really helpful and productive for churches.

Rich Birch — Okay, I want to, I would like I said, I was want to take advantage of your expertise. An area that, speaking in this whole this consistency issue, hey, how do we keep our people engaged, keep our staff, our volunteers, key volunteers engaged in um collecting data and, you know, ensuring that they’re engaging with the tool. What have you seen as best practices either on the front end, like, hey, when we’re rolling out a new system, if we’ve, if we’ve switched, say, for instance, if you’re listening in and you want to switch to TouchPoint, what are some best practices on that front or just ongoing to keep our people using this? How do we, how do we, yeah, what’s what’s best practice on that front?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, what you’re kind of hinting towards is a little bit around change management and the stick-to-it-ativeness around that, right?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Ronee de Leon — There is a leadership coaching company that I’ve worked with in the past that talks about to achieve anything, you need clarity, support and accountability. And I’m a really big believer in that clarity. Again, we’ve talked about what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Support is do we have the tools and the training to make that happen?

Ronee de Leon — The biggest lacking piece that I see often in church world is the accountability side.

Rich Birch — Right.

Ronee de Leon — You know, we we wrestle with the idea of grace and truth. And a lot of times we want to lean really heavily into the grace side of things. I think there is a huge opportunity for accountability to be reframed in church world. It doesn’t have to be a drop the hammer approach.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Ronee de Leon — You know, it’s seeing people do the right thing and helping them continue to do that. So I would say if you don’t have all three of those pieces, you’re probably going struggle to achieve just about anything. And the part, like I said, that I see really, really with area for opportunity in the church world is that accountability piece.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Any that I think that’s a clear framework. That’s like the cost of the price price worth the price of admission of today’s episode right there.

Rich Birch — Clarity, support, accountability. That’s fantastic. On the accountability side, how do we do that? What what what are some ways to, ou know, I’m thinking carrot and stick. It’s like I can we’ve celebrated where it’s like, hey, look at this person. This department’s doing a great job with this. How how else are should are have you seen churches that are particularly effective at driving that kind of consistency, driving accountability? What are they doing to ins ensure or that that’s, you know, that’s actually happening in their organization?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah. Casting the vision of this being stewardship, I think really matters.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Ronee de Leon — You know, there’s a verse in Hebrews that talks about, your church leaders will be accountable to the Lord for the people they’re shepherding. And so I think really, casting the vision around stewardship as part of that. But then practically it can’t be weird to talk about it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Ronee de Leon — You know, let’s talk about it in department meetings. Let’s talk about it and celebrate in staff meetings. Let’s bring it up in one-on-ones. Pull the technology up with the people that you lead and look through the lists and say, what are the stories? How are things going? You know, how can I support you as you move this forward? But I just think it can’t be weird to talk about.

Ronee de Leon — So between taking the stewardship side seriously and just starting to incorporate it into every conversation, every meeting, if it matters to us, and it does. It does because people are the mission of the church, right? How do we just continue to build that culture around it?

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. So you’ve put together a great resource that I want to make sure, if you’re listening in friends, you’ve invested almost 30 minutes here, you need to jump on this resource, like super helpful: the church health assessment. Talk us through what is this tool? How will it help? Why should we jump on board? You know, what what what kind of conversation could it help us with but with our team even this week?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah. The church health assessment is looking at five widely accepted kind of industry benchmarks to understand how your church is comparing to those. So like we talked about earlier, this could give you a starting place to understand, according, you know, based on those benchmarks, how is your church doing? How are a few of these ministries doing? And then it’s, it’s probably going to highlight somewhere specific for you to start drilling into and double clicking on. So, that assessment is going to be at TouchPointsoftware.com/unseminary.

Rich Birch — Ooo, look at that.

Ronee de Leon — Like I said, it’s going to take you, if you’ve got the data, which is part of this conversation, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Ronee de Leon — But if you know the numbers, it’s only going to take you two or three minutes to get these five key areas kind of benchmarked to understand how your church is performing compared to those accepted benchmarks.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Like, again, friends, I would love for you to check that out. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that. Thanks for doing that. What a great gift, tool for people that are listening in. That’s super helpful. I appreciate that. I think I can see where this kind of thing could be super helpful for us, even to have like a bit of a leadership conversation around, let’s do it and then talk about it together. It’s a good conversation.

Rich Birch — So taking a step back, if I’m if i’m an executive pastor or senior leader who’s listening in, and I feel like I’m constantly, or we’re mostly reacting. We’re constantly reacting to problems at our church. You know, we’re not getting ahead of this. We’re not seeing kind of data but as it, you know, we’re not developing, like you say, ahead. We’re just, it’s stuff happens and then we you react. How could we use data to help us get ahead of that rather than, you know, just reacting all the time? What’s one of the first areas we should look at and consider as a church?

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say that a simple place to start is kind of revisiting this framework of conviction, collection, clarity, and care. And ask yourself, what C is my church stuck on? Where are we stuck in this journey? And dive in there, ask the questions, reach out to another church who maybe is doing this really well. But that’s where I would say, practically, I would ask yourself, where are you on this kind of progressive journey of data-driven discipleship?

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. This has been a fantastic conversation. If you were, I’m going to get one more last question in for you here. What’s one question you wish every church leader who’s listening in today would would ask about their church that almost nobody’s asking right now, that’s thinking about this area, that’s thinking about like, hey, what are we, you know, here’s a question I wish we were thinking about that we’re not thinking about today.

Ronee de Leon — Yeah, churches are asking a lot of good questions. And I love this topic. I’m passionate about data-driven discipleship.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Ronee de Leon — But I think the question behind the question behind the question kind of comes down to: are we promoting participation or are we cultivating transformation? And that’s what I hope that we’re asking through this kind of sea of data and everything that we’re we’re looking at. The core of things. Are we promoting participation or are we cultivating transformation for the people of our churches?

Rich Birch — Well, this is fantastic. There’s a ton we could talk about on this front. This has been helpful conversation for us today. Friends, I want to encourage you to take the church health assessment. Give us that address again that we want to send people to.

Ronee de Leon — It’s going to be at touchpointsoftware.com/unseminary.

Rich Birch — Great. Well, you can do that right in your phone right now. We’d love for you to go and check that out. We’ll put a link to that. Anywhere else we want to send people online, Ronee, if they want to track with TouchPoint or maybe we’re sitting in today and we’re thinking, you know what, maybe we should relook at this area. I’m not super happy with what’s going on with our, you know, church management software. Where do we want to send them online to get more information and about what what you guys do?

Ronee de Leon — Go ahead and just check out touchpointsoftware.com. I would recommend you get a demo. Like I said, it’s kind of a conversation that churches are having right now, evaluating their tech stack. If you haven’t looked at it in a while, just take a look, maybe just look around and we would love the opportunity to connect with you and demo TouchPoint for you. So that same website without the backslash, get a demo and we’d we’d be just thrilled to have a conversation with you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s good. Friends, I just want to endorse that. I think that’s a great next step for lots of our churches that are listening in today. Listen, friends, your team spends a lot of time in this in this tool. Whatever you use on this front, they spend a lot of time on it. It’s worth a sober second look. It’s worth, if you haven’t looked at this in a while, to take a step back and say, hey, let’s take a look at this again. And TouchPoint would be a great one to for you to to to take a look at and say, hmm, I wonder if maybe we should be looking at a change.

Rich Birch — So Appreciate that, Ronee. It’s so great seeing you again. I’d love to have you come back on in the future. I’m sure there’s more we could talk about, but thanks for being here today.

Ronee de Leon — Sounds good. Thank you, Rich.