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Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Andrew Hopper, the founding and lead pastor of Mercy Hill Church in North Carolina. Andrew has also started Breaking Barriers, which provides pastors and churches with biblical strategies to help them grow in order to go.
Are you curious about how to effectively grow your church while maintaining a strong focus on discipleship and outreach? Don’t miss this insightful discussion as Andrew reveals the correlation between invite culture, discipleship and sending members out on mission. Plus discover how the multisite model is the best tool you can use for leadership development at your church.
- Connect crowds to mission. // Andrew observed a clear ratio in his church’s data correlating the number of sent ones, baptisms, and first-time guests, which he believes is consistent in churches focused on both evangelism and sending. Over ten years, his church saw approximately 150 individuals committed to long-term missions, 1,500 baptisms, and 15,000 first-time guests, aligning in a 10:1 ratio at each level. This means that for every one sent one, there were ten baptisms, and for each baptism, there were ten first-time guests.
- Focus on the lead measure. // Effective church growth relies on focusing on the lead measure rather than the lag measure. This approach helps connect the church’s larger attendance numbers to its mission goals, showing how initial engagement leads to disciples being sent out.
- Crowd-based evangelism. // Based on the examples shown throughout the New Testament, Mercy Hill Church believes that most life change happens when there is a preacher in front of a crowd. While both one-on-one encounters and larger gatherings can lead to conversions, the latter is more effective in reaching larger number and so the congregation is encouraged to invite friends. Andrew believes that when congregants see the church service as the most impactful time for both evangelism and discipleship, they are more likely to embrace inviting others, making the process of reaching new people feel natural and significant.
- Multisite and church planting. // Andrew argues that the multisite model complements church planting rather than competing with it. In multisite contexts, there is a continuous need to cultivate new leaders for multiplying groups, services, and campuses, which naturally prepares individuals for the challenge of church planting. At Mercy Hill most leaders who have joined their church plants come from the satellite campuses rather than the main broadcast campus. These members have already shown commitment to the mission by adjusting their lives, and this willingness to adapt primes them to take the larger step of moving to a new area to support a church plant.
- Develop communicators. // The multisite model allows the pastors on your team to grow and do more preaching than they’d get the chance to do at just one location. Mercy Hill has had numerous leaders—27 in the past year alone—preach, demonstrating that multisite structures can facilitate the growth of multiple communicators. To develop other teachers, church leaders should create opportunities for different leaders to preach and lead services, which can be done through multiple services and campuses.
- Breaking growth barriers. // Breaking Barriers helps churches break through barriers that hinder mission success. It celebrates church growth and doesn’t disconnect it from going after the lead measure. Visit their website to listen to their podcast, check out events and connect with other like-minded leaders.
Follow what’s happening at Mercy Hill Church and visit Breaking Barriers for resources that will help your church grow to go.
NEXT STEPS // Unlock the Power of Public Proclamation!
Dive deeper into the Book of Acts with our Preachers in Front of a Crowd: A 16-Day Study on the Power of Public Proclamation in the Expansion of God’s Work. Inspired by Andrew Hopper’s insights on the unSeminary podcast, this guide is designed for church leaders and communicators looking to explore how public preaching has transformed lives and built the early church. Each day includes scripture, practical reflections, and thought-provoking questions to help you uncover the timeless power of sharing the gospel boldly. Download today and discover how you can grow more, so you can send more!
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, Rich here from unSeminary. So glad that you decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, sometimes I get a chance to talk to people that I’ve interacted with in real life and today’s one of those days. Super excited to have Andrew Hopper with us. He is, if you don’t know Andrew, first of all, you should know him. He’s the founding and lead pastor of a great church ah in North Carolina called Mercy Hill Church. They’re they’re constantly on the one of the fastest growing churches list in the in the country. They’re really a gospel-centered church. They have five locations.
Rich Birch — This is an incredible church because they’re not only growing in North Carolina, but they’re encouraging church planting ah in a bunch of different places. And he’s recently started, or in the last little bit, has launched ah Breaking Barriers, which is is on mission to guide churches to lead with biblical strategies to help churches grow ah so that ultimately they can go. So Andrew, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Andrew Hopper — Thanks, man. Excited to be here, man. We’ve ah we’ve really learned a lot from you and gotten some of our foundational stuff from you around growth years and years ago. So this is fun, man.
Rich Birch — Yeah, nice to get a chance to connect. Well, why don’t you fill in the picture there a little bit. Give me the Mercy Hill story, the Andrew story, fill out the picture a little bit.
Andrew Hopper — Yeah, we planted Mercy Hill in 2012. We had a chance to be fortunate enough, I got mentored in a great church in Raleigh during North Carolina. They’re called the Summit Church so um people might know Pastor JD Greer. So he’s probably 10 years ahead of me. So it was a really good relationship there, just being mentored by him. And and then I was a campus pastor there at that church. And so, man, I love the multi-site model. I think it’s probably the best leadership development tool that I’ve ever seen in churches and obviously it was benefited by that. So um you know I got a chance to learn
Andrew Hopper — And and then we moved here in 2012 to plant a brand new church, an autonomous church. We have a team of 30 young professionals that came with us, um you know 10 graduating college students, and they they turned down job offers all over the country…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Andrew Hopper — …to come and landscape and paint houses and and that kind of thing. We had about 20 others that ah quit jobs and moved over here. And and um yeah, we about an hour and a half from Raleigh Durham. And man, it’s it’s been awesome. We’ve been here, we’ve been at it for 12 years. There was never just some big flash in the pan. There was a couple of moments where God just kind of, you know, really brought brought some kind of unique growth. But but generally speaking, it’s just sort of been added to their number uh, month by month, almost, you know, for the last 12 years.
Andrew Hopper — And, um, we started planting churches in 2019. So we were, we partnered with church churches forever, you know, just giving money and and people, but we actually moved from partner planting to parent planting in 2019. And so we have five, um, five little duckling church plants from Halifax, all the way down to Tampa. And and then we we’re multi-site also. We have a five we have ah six campuses, five locations. One of them is an Español campus. So that gives you a little bit of picture of of maybe who we are.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. One of the things when I think about your church is sometimes people lodge the unfair criticism against growing churches. They say, ah, they’re just all about fluff. They’re all just, you know, they’re they’re they’re just about gimmicks. It’s about doing things that will just, you know, get in the door. But, you know, then there’s no real depth there. They’re not gospel centered. And and to be honest, you and your church come to mind all the time when I think about that.
Rich Birch — Because I’m like, no, man, like, a church like Mercy Hill is is doing a good job holding up the message of Jesus ah while at the same time really growing rapidly, and then and then also ah helping churches, you know, up and down, you know, all over the place, which is pretty amazing.
Rich Birch — But what do you say? I’m sure people have lodged that kind of complaint against you as well. Like, hey, isn’t it just all like, why are you so obsessed with seeing churches grow? Why why do you keep talking about that?
Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I’ve, you know, I’m 40 years old. So I’ve I’ve realized there is a generation that has wrestled with this before us, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andrew Hopper — And it’s, um you know, I pendulum swing. I understand that, you know, I think, I think, you know, the 80s, 90s, you had a lot of church growth stuff. Before that as well. And, the you know, with Peter Wagner and different, different guys. I’ve I’ve gotten back into some of the original you know, literature they had. It was no different. I mean, it was exact same stuff. You have a ah ah brand a brand of Christianity when they think of evangelism, they think of, you know, ah the Ethiopian eunuch. And you have another brand of evangelism that when they think of evangelism, they think of the 3000 at Pentecost.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andrew Hopper — Why people are wired in different ways like that, I don’t know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — Generally speaking, I don’t mean to take a shot here. I don’t think the people that are wired for the crowds take much of a shot at the people that are wired for one-on-one, but I do see it the other way, big time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I know. I think that’s true.
Andrew Hopper — You know, I don’t know why. I’m like, man, if you got the gift of evangelism and you’re a soul winner, I love that. I have no problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — I love seeing people get saved on a college campus, one-on-one evangelism. But you know, that’s just not, that’s not where most of it’s going to happen. And, um, and so I don’t know why it’s that way.
Andrew Hopper — So anyway, I’ve taken, yeah, I’ve taken some, we’ve taken some shots like that, but I just, man, I don’t really care that much. I mean, I think for us, uh, sending is, is the ultimate goal. And we see that as a big fruit of discipleship. And so, uh, we’ve sent just under 200 of our members out long-term that’s two years or more…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Andrew Hopper — …ah either with a church plant or with um a you know with international missions. We want to share the gospel, baptize people, we get them in groups. We feel like if they jump in the stream, they’re going to move in the river. And um as long as we’re getting to see that output side of people you know continue to be sent out, then I’m not going to be too concerned with your shallow or whatever, you know?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That’s good. Well, so there obviously there’s like a mindset shift there. It’s like, hey, we got to get our head around, you know, that that we want to see both of these things happening. We want to be um reaching people in our community. And that I love that, you know, when you said there that going is really an outcome of discipleship, that that that really should be ultimately kind of the aim.
Rich Birch — What does that actually practically look like for Mercy Hill? Like 200 people is is a lot. I know that just rolled off your tongue like it’s not a big deal, but like that’s a big deal. That’s a lot of people to go long-term somewhere else. I know that’s how your church started, but how do how do you continue that? That feels like the kind of thing the first generation does and it doesn’t get passed on to other people.
Andrew Hopper — Yeah, yeah, totally, man. I get that. I mean, I think for us, we’ve just sort of rejected the either you’re a missional sending church or you’re a big evangelism church. um And we talk about all of them all the time. I mean, we talk about it all the time. So I will like, we’re, we’re, we’re in a new, we’re about to be in a new facility at some point here in the next couple of months and, um, triple the seating size. It’s 80,000 square feet. It’s, it’s everything that the anti-church growth movement hates. Okay. And, and it’s like, I mean, it’s…
Rich Birch — You got lights, you got smoke, you got projected screens, all that.
Andrew Hopper — Yeah. Oh man, we got it all. Huge lobby, you know, 70 foot ceilings or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, you know, it’s it’s like you walk in this building and people are going to be like, well, you are who we thought you were, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andrew Hopper — But what we’re going to do is, like I was talking about last night, we have sermon, we have, you know, service on Thursday night. I was talking about it last night. I will never talk about that building and the evangelism that we can see in it without connecting it to church planting and campus multiplication and and sending missionaries.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, our church had the most, we’ve we’ve multiple times the largest sending agency in the country, the International Mission Board, we’ve had multiple times now where our church had the most people. And they they do you know they do like a like three or four times a year, they do kind of a class that goes through and then they get mobilized. And we’ve had a couple times now where we have the most most people there from any church in the country. And I will I will always connect that to seats, to crowds to I will never let that… So I mean what we want to do is bifurcate that every discipleship conference or or church thing you go to nowadays…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Andrew Hopper — …it is a giant wedge that they’re trying to push between church growth is is a different category than discipleship and we’re not we don’t care about church growth, all we care about is depth and discipleship. And we just say, well, I think the ultimate fruit of discipleship is sending. So if we can keep sending you know connected where we never talk about crowd seats, new sermon series without talking about the fruit of it may be one day being these kids that are in these families that are getting saved. They’re going to go out and they’re going to be, you know, some of our missionaries one day or whatever. So we just try hard to keep that stuff together. You know, I’ve tried…oh, go ahead.
Rich Birch — No, you go ahead and go ahead. You go and finish.
Andrew Hopper — I’m trying to teach our church. So we came, we got to the 10 year anniversary of our church. Okay. And I knew, I knew the numbers were going to be very close, something like this. I didn’t know how exactly they were, but I knew it was something like this. um And and I bet I bet if you go test this against a bunch of sending churches that are serious about um evangelism and they’re serious about sending, you’re gonna see this to be true.
Andrew Hopper — I went in and I said, okay, what’s going on in our church? And this was two years ago. We said, okay, we’ve seen about 150 sent ones. And I’m talking about two years or more. This is not like going on a mission trip or six months or something, okay?
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And then I said, okay, we’ve seen 150 sent ones. Guess what? We had seen 1500 baptisms.
Rich Birch — Oh interesting.
Andrew Hopper — Okay. And then I was like, I was like, I know what this is going to be. Guess how many first time guests we had? 15,000.
Rich Birch — Wow. 15,000. Oh, wow.
Andrew Hopper — And so it was 10 to one, 10 to one. And so I’ve taught our church like, Hey guys…
Rich Birch — Fascinating.
Andrew Hopper — …if you want to get one sent one, you got to see 10 baptisms. If you want to get one baptism, you got to see 10 first time guests. But the big connection that I think that the anti-church growth movement, um, you know, really just wants to reject um is that you don’t focus on the lag, you focus on the lead.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, that’s the kind of leadership 101, man, you focus on the lead measure.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andrew Hopper — The lead measure for us is every time we see 100 people come to that first time guest head, I’m like, dude, down the road, there’s gonna be one set one that goes out.
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s amazing.
Andrew Hopper — And if I can keep that, if I can keep that tight, then I think it it helps people connect the crowds to the mission and and that kind of stuff.
Rich Birch — Dude, I I have I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone make that connection before. What a fresh ah connection. I think it’s, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about the top end of the funnel, a lot of time about that piece of the equation. But I love that, that idea of, hey, what is the ratio connection ultimately between those?
Rich Birch — Let’s talk a little bit about that. how how What is God using at your church at that kind of top end? Why is it that people are arriving? What is the you know what are some of the things that you’re seeing to be able to, frankly see a bunch of guests come in an environment where ultimately you’re asking people to take steps that are…
Andrew Hopper — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, go live somewhere else or, you know, a bunch of years. What’s that look like?
Andrew Hopper — That’s exactly right. Well, I mean, it’s, you know, we did, we did see this modeled incredibly well at The Summit. The summit…
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Andrew Hopper — …is a, I mean, Pastor JD said, I mean, they, they can be a punching bag for, you know, everything that the anti-church growth movement thinks. But at the end of the day, they have more missionaries on the field than any other Baptist church in the country. It’s 40,000 Baptist churches.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — So it’s like, we got the see very up close. You don’t divorce these things…
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — …you know, the, the weekend stuff, and the sending stuff, and discipleship stuff, it doesn’t it all has to go together. So we we saw that. I would say for us… so I’m grateful for that. I would say for us, man, ah I and I know this gets into La La Land a little bit for people, but I really I really believe it’s philosophy and it’s how you think about stuff.
Andrew Hopper — Like our church um you know, we our our church buys into, and you you helped us with this years ago, our church buys into the concept that, and this is where you’re gonna get comments put on your on your podcast here. I think they buy into most life change happens when there’s a crowd and the preacher.
Andrew Hopper — And because of that, inviter evangelism is not demonized. And it’s it’s like, man, we want, you know, we try to equip, you know, in every way we can, we talk about it. And we don’t, you know, we don’t, we don’t downplay. We don’t do the normal Christian thing now, in my circle. And and all circles not like this, okay?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andrew Hopper — The circle I’m in is like this, the Baptist world…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — …um where, you know, the one-on-one evangelism story over years that happens in a coffee shop is so high elevated above…
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — …the student who comes to Christ in a crowd at a youth camp.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And we just don’t do that. We’re like, man, I don’t, I’ll put those two right together.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I’m glad and And also what we have no problem doing, and our people know this, is I’m like, hey, people can get saved in one-on-one encounters, and they can get saved in you know where there’s a preacher in a crowd. But don’t kid yourself to think they’re both equally as effective in terms of numbers.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yes.
Andrew Hopper — 99.9% of everybody that got saved in the book of Acts, it happened when there was a crowd and a preacher.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — That’s just facts.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, I’ve gone through at our breaking barriers conference, I literally went through every single time that people were baptized or whatever. And it’s like almost every one of them, there is a crowd and there’s somebody preaching the gospel.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andrew Hopper — Now the crowd might be 10 people, it might be 3000 people. but that And so I’m like, hey, that is just, it’s just what it is, man. And our um…
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right.
Andrew Hopper — And in our church, we have no problem saying the most effective hour for both evangelism and discipleship during the week is is the church service.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.
Andrew Hopper — If our people believe that, they don’t you know they really believe that, then suddenly I think inviting their friend to come is not second class…
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — …and they’re not getting graded because they’re not a one-on-one evangelist, soul winner all the time.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andrew Hopper — I want our people to be able to share the gospel, and I think many of them can, especially the ones that are gifted.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andrew Hopper — But you know I think that that’s probably… And so then, man, from there it all just kind of flows, man.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Andrew Hopper — Then then then we’re like, once once your people are bought into inviting, um, you know, then we do all the stuff everybody else does kind of, we do…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — …but we just, we just don’t [inaudible] about it. You know…
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. Dude, I love that. Yeah. And I’m doing a totally steal that because, you know, when people ask me that question, I go right to the pragmatic. Because people will go after me on the church growth stuff. And I mostly don’t engage, but sometimes I’ll engage when it’s a friend or somebody and I’ll be like, Hey, well, let’s talk about it.
Rich Birch — And and I go to the like, listen, I, cause they’ll be like, yeah, but shouldn’t we really be teaching people evangelism? And I’m like, yes. And I I give my my EE qualifications. I’m like listen when I was in high school I did Evangelism Explosion. I’ve knocked on a lot of doors, hey if you were to die tonight what, you know? I’ve done that. But what I do know is not everyone will do that. Not everyone will that that is such a high bar. And do I wish everyone will do that? Uh yeah, I do. I wish everyone would have that kind of conversation. But actually, what I what I do know is, man, if I can move a bunch of people in our church to take the step towards just inviting someone, that’s like the first step towards evangelism. It’s like the first step in that ah direction.
Rich Birch — But I am going to rip off the crowd in a preacher, look at the book of Acts. That is a great, that’s so good.
Andrew Hopper — It’s crazy. I mean they got, Rich, they have like, you know, the the thing that is so elevated is three years of relationship finally won them over at a coffee shop, sharing the gospel.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And I’m like, hey that never happened in the Bible one time ever.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Dude, that’s so good.
Andrew Hopper — Nobody ever nobody ever in the book of Acts did pre evangelism. So there’s no pre-evangelism, there’s evangelism, even the one-on-one encounters. It’s like, hey, they happened within 20 minutes or two hours, or but it was never like…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — …we’re gonna go make a friend for a year so we can share the gospel with them one day.
Rich Birch — Yeah, dude, that’s good.
Andrew Hopper — You know and ah you know I just think we’ve got to kind of try to stick to the text a little more.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Okay, so pivoting in a slightly different direction. Help me understand how you think about and another, what I see as a false dichotomy. So I’m going to set this up a little bit as a devil’s advocate, but I don’t actually have the energy behind this that I’m going to express. Multisite versus church planting. Like one of them is better than the other. Like, you know, that you one of them is efficient. The other is a resource hog.
Rich Birch — How do you guys think about that? Because you’re doing both. You’re actively engaged in both of these. You seem firmly committed to both. How do you talk about that? How do you think about that as a leader?
Andrew Hopper — Well, one one leads to the other and that’s that’s what people don’t understand. They look at them as if they’re in competition. What they don’t understand is almost every really awesome church planting network that is actually planting churches, not affiliating a million churches, they are born out of, guess what, multi-site churches.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Andrew Hopper — So, you know, I mean, just go down the list. Fellowship, you know, Fellowship Associates…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Highlands, whatever.
Andrew Hopper — …Acts 29, Seacoast, Summit, Summit.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yep.
Andrew Hopper — Okay, well, what is it about the multi-site model then that produces so much church planting? It’s the the radical commitment to leadership development.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andrew Hopper — When you when you multiply anything, you need more leaders. And so what happens is you end up with, you know, if you wanna multiply a group, you gotta have another leader. You wanna multiply a service, you gotta have more serve teams. You gotta multiply a campus. Now you gotta have elders and leaders. It’s just that next step of of going to church plants.
Andrew Hopper — So we, for example, man, we um we’ve sent out 124 of those almost 200 that have gone to domestic church plants. We have five, okay? The the ah overwhelming majority of that 124 do not come from our, “broadcast campus”.
Rich Birch — Oh, interesting.
Andrew Hopper — They all come from satellite.
Rich Birch — That’s an interesting insight. Interesting insight.
Andrew Hopper — They all come from the, so the “satellite campuses”. And the reason is, it’s very strategic. The reason is that they have already said yes to moving their life for the mission once.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andrew Hopper — They’ve already said, you know what, convenience wise, I like going there. I like seeing him live. I like being at the big thing. But you know what? I live in this community. I’m going to plant my life here.
Andrew Hopper — And what what people keep doing is, you know, the way churches get planted are when people ultimately say yes to something that is very uncomfortable. Well, they’ve already said yes to moving to group. If they’ve already said yes to moving to service time, you know, we’re very strategic. Hey, you need to go to Thursday night instead of Sunday to make room for the mission. I don’t wanna go to Thursday night. I know, but you need to go. Now now go to the campus. Now by the time we plant a church, we’re like, hey, you know, it’s like, well, okay, I can go move somewhere else.
Andrew Hopper — So I think that for us, um I think multi-site church, and it’s a tool for me, man. If I saw a better tool, I’d throw it down and pick something else up tomorrow. I’m not philosophically committed to it.
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Andrew Hopper — I do believe it’s the best leadership development tool I’ve ever seen. And, you know, I know this is not exactly what you asked me, but most multi-site critiques, are listen, they’re not just wrong, they are exactly backwards, okay? So what people will say about multi-site? Well, it’s just a celebration of one leader, you know? I mean, one one guy up there.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s not true.
Andrew Hopper — Do you know how many guys preached in our church last year? 27.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Andrew Hopper — You know why? Because we’re multi-site.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — You know, that’s why people get in that plant church. It’s not about, I mean, it’s not about one leader.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — It’s about the ability to, I mean, you tell me what’s more about the leader. Let’s build a huge building where 10,000 people crowd in and hear you on the stage live versus planting little things all around. Like I could go on and on. But you know, so some of that stuff is really just kind of, they’re potshots that don’t hold a lot of weight.It’s not church planting or campus-ing. It is one that leads to the other.
Andrew Hopper — And the last thing I would say about it, Rich, is I think what people say is, well, if our church grows, we’ll plant a church. It takes 10 years to develop a church planter.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And I know that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper —
We’re we’re about to plant our first church in Greensboro ah that we’ve that we’ve planted we’ve planted campuses in our town, obviously. But we’re about to plant our first church in our town. Nico’s gonna go plant this church. We met him when he was 19 years old on a college campus. He’s 29. It takes 10 years.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Andrew Hopper — you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And and when you go, the most people I’ve ever seen go on a church planting team is like 40, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — It’s very, you could plant a campus in six months and 500 people go. My point is, church planting is not a viable option for a real growth problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — Okay. I mean, it’s just not. It’s a different category. You’re talking about apples and oranges.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Andrew Hopper — And so, man, we love multi-site because we think that we think it helps us get to more church plants, and raising up pastors and preachers.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. I kind of related to that. Talk to me about the video teaching, because that’s the other kind of kind of criticism that comes up. So statistically, the more the larger a multisite, this is just true, statistically larger a multisite church is, and the more campuses they have, the more that video teaching is a part of what they do. That’s just universally true um like from a from like an industry point of view, or from like a movement point of view.
Rich Birch — And so sometimes people will lodge against the multisite movement. They’ll say like, well, it’s it’s all about whoever’s on video, which we all know is not true. But talk to me through how you how you think about that and developing communicators and how does all that fit together?
Andrew Hopper — Well, I think that, I think that, I mean, I just would reject the premise that something inherently about video is more, um is more celebratory of the lead, whoever the lead communicator is. I mean, like when people say that they’re like, hey, you got five campuses and four of them are on video. That’s like a big celebration of you. I’m like, well, our church is 3000 people. I mean, we could just build a three or 4000 seat auditorium in the old days. Would that be less celebratory of me?
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yes. Yes.
Andrew Hopper — You know, and what if we build a 5,000 person building, and we pack them all in and they all are there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper —We’re all 5,000 eyeballs are on me on the stage.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I’m the only one on the stage. Like so kind of analytically, like I’m just like, man, I just that doesn’t really make, like in my head, that don’t make a lot of sense.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I don’t think something inherently about the video um you know is more celebratory or not. So then to me, it’s a pragmatic issue, a consecrated pragmatism type issue. And the issue is…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — You know, man, you can, you know, there’s a reason why multi-site has taken off. It is so much easier to develop smaller venues. It’s cheaper, it’s easier, and it’s more strategic because of where you can put them. And so to me, that’s, it’s just more of a pragmatic issue. And but I do, but I do, I will say this, man, there is no doubt that the raising up of communicators happens at an exponential clip in multi-site churches compared to a single site church. Um, you know, and I don’t, I mean, I got, I got friends that are really committed to the single site thing and committed to live preaching and that’s fine.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andrew Hopper — Like I’m not, they can do whatever they want.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, they’re, they’re getting after it. I’m getting after it. Um, but you can’t, you can’t deny that the, ah you know, the preaching opportunities are multiply. I mean, you got one single site and the guy preaches 40 times a year. That’s only 12 opportunities.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Andrew Hopper — You got five different sites. You have 60 opportunities in that same time.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Andrew Hopper — And that’s just what we’ve experienced. I mean, I think that why we have so many guys that can preach, why guys, this is my story. I’m 24 years old. I’m getting a preach to five, 700 people, 24, 25 years old. The only reason for that was because of how many services and how many campuses we were having. And I feel like it was really beneficial for me.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent.
Andrew Hopper — You know so I think the leadership development is such a big deal.
Rich Birch — Well, a hundred percent. And and there’s that there’s the whole context on multisite that not only were you preaching, but you were doing that in a team context that was giving you feedback, that they loved you enough to not just be like, well, do whatever you want, Andrew. Or, you know, or some nice person at the end of the service was like, that was great. It was like, well, yeah, there was a lot of that that was great, but here’s some stuff you could do to get better, which in a lot of churches, that just doesn’t happen. But that’s naturally built into the multisite system because there’s like some standards there around, Hey, we need to be, in your case, you know, when you were at Summit, it needs to be kind of fit our thing. It needs to be a part of who we, you know, we are. Yeah. I love that.
Rich Birch — We did a study last year…
Andrew Hopper — And I see, yeah…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Go ahead.
Andrew Hopper — Go ahead, go ahead.
Rich Birch — I was going to say, we did a study last year of, ah so we have this, this group, we do this private coaching group called Church Growth Incubator, and it looks at, you know, invite culture stuff. And we do research on fast growing churches, firsthand research. And one of the things I was actually shocked when I was working with an associate who was helping us with this, and we were actually looking at a different issue.
Rich Birch — We were looking at, um, some stuff around teaching, but this person said, you know, I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of these churches have a lot of different people that are on stage on Sunday morning in their main campus over a year. And he said, I just happened to look at a couple of them. And I noticed it was like more than a dozen people on their main stage preaching in a in a given year.
Rich Birch — And I was like, that seems really high. And then we went and actually looked. We looked at 30 churches who they, who is actually preaching on the main stage at these locations. And the average for 2023 in 30 of the fastest growing churches was like 11.2 individual different communicators on the main stage.
Rich Birch — Now, obviously there’s a lead communicator who’s there a lot, but there’s a lot of other people that are rotating through. Again, think about then all that development that’s happening. And these are the largest, most influential churches in the country.
Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I totally agree with that I mean and and I think another thing is for the discipleship model, because people people naturally say, well, hey, that’s fine. Well what you’re saying is great. Well, then do it all the time, you know, don’t do any video.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — And what I would say is, again, this is a pragmatic issue, but it’s um it’s it’s twofold. Number one, we love to develop, but let’s don’t let’s don’t kid ourselves. If somebody’s got their 10,000 hours in, it’s a different level of communication. Okay.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Andrew Hopper — So, you know, we want to develop, but when you, when you say, Hey, we’re going to have seven of these churches and they’re all going to be preaching live…
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — …there’s a…you know, you can end up with some real sort of… The other thing I would say is, um, you know, we, we are a group model. We have a group model that is sermon-based. And so, you know, the idea of having seven different communicators and then people from different campuses that co-pollinate, you know, cross pollinate with groups, that doesn’t work.
And so, you know, cause we do a lecture lab. So we’re going to go talk about this during the week.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — So we need that sermon to be pretty streamlined. And one of the most effective ways to streamline it is to just do all the same sermon and do it on video.
Rich Birch — Yeah, dude, so good. Well, so you’ve, you’ve launched a podcast, a conference, one day, that kind of stuff called ah Breaking Barriers. You can check this out at breakinggrowthbarriers.com. Tell us about this. Why, why did you do this? What does this got to do? What’s the heart behind this? Talk, talk to us about this.
Andrew Hopper — So I um I I just have a real burden and and God has put a kind of a fire in my belly. Number one, I really believe that to whom much is given, much is required.
Rich Birch — So good.
Andrew Hopper — And I feel like our church has grown and we’ve we’ve we’ve seen some cool stuff and we want to try to and we have been poured into unbelievably. And I’ve I’ve been in a situation to to receive such good coaching and stuff like that. I want to try to multiply that.
Andrew Hopper — But the the heart of it, really, man, is that that we are we really believe that a lot of the church non-success that we’re seeing and the plateauing and all that kind of stuff is by our own design. And I think that you know what you believe about success is probably the greatest determiner of whether or not you’re ever going to have it. And trying to help free people from these sort of anti-church growth you know kind of chains that they’re in.
Andrew Hopper — I mean this this is my world okay and I know this is I know your podcast goes out every you know a lot of different worlds. But it is regularly reported in the Baptist world that between 70 and 80 percent of Baptist churches are plateaued or declining. Okay? Well we have this is what’s crazy to me, rich. We have figured out how to simultaneously mourn decline without celebrating growth. I…
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s a great insight!
Andrew Hopper — You know what I mean? We will say, the church is dying, the church is dying. And then someone says, hey, man, my church is growing. And we’re like, oh, we’re cynical about that. And I mean, it’s it’s just kind of crazy.
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s so true.
Andrew Hopper — And so Breaking Barriers is ah fundamentally all about trying to make some shifts in the way we talk.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — We want to celebrate church growth. And the way we want to do it is what I was saying earlier. We don’t disconnect it from growing. And I’m sorry, from going. So our our tagline is churches can grow without going, but they can’t go without growing.
Andrew Hopper — And so we just try every time we talk about a sent story, we want to talk about a growth story, and we just want to put those things together. Then what the, what the podcasts, what the, um, the one day things we’re doing, you’re coming to do one of our one days – we’re really grateful for that. It’s going to be great.
Andrew Hopper — Um, and then, uh, certainly our conference is all about saying, okay, if that’s true, that, that going after the lead measure is, is something we should do, need to do, be excited about we need to speak more positively about the lead measure of people coming in the door. I’m talking to icky stuff, man. Website views, first-time guests, raising money, like all that.
Andrew Hopper — Okay. Then um then, yeah, we’re gonna we need to be talking about that stuff positively. Then then we need to equip people for it, which you do a lot of, you know. We want to equip people for it very practically. So like on our podcast, I mean we’ll have three podcasts in a row that are just all about the pragmatics around how to go to two services…
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Andrew Hopper — …for example, you know
Rich Birch — Love it. Yep.
Andrew Hopper — …or, you know, just all that. I mean, just super practical in the weeds. And it’s gotten some traction, man. I think it’s cool. I think a lot of, um a lot of you know, lead church, like leaders in churches are are are are learning from it stuff. So we’re excited about that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I really would I’d strongly encourage you to drop by breakinggrowthbarriers.com. The podcast is is great. I love your guys um affect like great conversations, engaging to listen to, ah really fantastic. And so I would strongly, ah you know, endorse you you guys, you really should, ah you know, follow along.
Rich Birch — And and Andrew, I really appreciate your your candor, I appreciate your passion for this stuff. I appreciate how God’s using you. And I think you do have a unique voice ah in the in the church landscape. Multiple things I was writing down today. I’m like, man, that’s just so good, so fresh. So is there anything else you want to say just before we wrap up today’s episode?
Andrew Hopper — Nah, man, I appreciate it. I hope people will go and check it out. I just think people have got to sort of get freed up to run hard because if you have a divided heart, you will always stop short. You know? If you feel internally a little bit of slime and ickiness around some of the real practical matters, you will not chase them as hard as you as really what’s needed to see some movement happen. And so um, yeah, that’s it, man. Excited for what you guys are doing and looking forward to the one day event.
Rich Birch — Nice, that’s great. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Andrew Hopper — Yeah. So, um, my, my primary outlet is just, uh, you know, you can go to, you can follow me on Instagram. Um, but our, our, our church stuff in terms of this Breaking Barriers stuff. Yeah. You said it breakinggrowthbarriers.com. We have an Instagram Breaking Barriers, Instagram,
Andrew Hopper — Um, and, uh, really that website is pretty good. I mean, it’s always just about the next thing. We also have a private Facebook group that you have to have come and sort of be buying into what we’re doing to get in.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Andrew Hopper — And that, that, that Facebook group is awesome because it’s like, it is just so dripping with pragmatism. I love it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Andrew Hopper — You know, it’s just like, man, it’s just, how are you guys doing this? How are you doing this? And it’s not just us. I mean, it’s everybody just kind of firing off and people are putting stuff in chat.
Rich Birch — Right. So good.
Andrew Hopper — And so that’s a really cool thing to jump into if you’re into this stuff as well.
Rich Birch — So good. Appreciate you, Andrew. Thanks for leading today.
Andrew Hopper — All right, thanks, man.
