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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Lou Pizzichillo, Lead Pastor of Community Church on Long Island. Community Church launched in January 2020—just ten weeks before the world shut down—then relaunched after 52 weeks online. Now averaging around 1,200 people across Thursday and Sunday services, Community is known as “a church for people who don’t go to church.” In a region where skepticism toward organized religion runs deep, Lou and his team are building trust by creating space for honest questions, lived-out faith, and tangible community impact.
Is your church serving in a skeptical environment? Are you trying to reach people who already think they know—and don’t like—what church is about? Lou shares practical wisdom on posture, transparency, and earning trust one decision at a time.
- Starting where people really are. // On Long Island, while some residents may identify culturally with faith traditions, most see church as judgmental, hypocritical, or irrelevant to everyday life. Lou quickly realized that the biggest obstacle wasn’t apathy—it was reputation. Rather than fighting skepticism, Community Church chose to acknowledge it. The church repeatedly communicates three cultural values: You can belong before you believe. You have permission to be in progress. And there’s no pretending. These aren’t slogans—they shape how the church operates.
- Permission to be in progress. // One of the most resonant phrases at Community is “permission to be in progress.” Many people assume that following Jesus requires instant agreement with every doctrine and behavior expectation. Instead, Community encourages people to wrestle honestly with the claims of Christ first. Secondary issues and sanctification come later. This posture doesn’t mean watering down truth—it means sequencing it wisely. By focusing on who Jesus says he is, rather than debating every peripheral topic, the church keeps the main thing central.
- No pretending—and real transparency. // Transparency builds credibility in skeptical contexts. Stories of real life—parenting mistakes, marriage tensions, leadership missteps—often resonate more than polished success stories. At the same time, Lou draws a boundary between “scars and wounds.” He shares what he has processed, not what he is still unraveling. This authenticity signals that faith isn’t about perfection but transformation. For many in the congregation, seeing a pastor admit imperfection dismantles years of distrust toward church leaders.
- Becoming an asset to the community. // Community Church doesn’t just talk about loving Babylon—it demonstrates it. Early on, Lou realized trust would not come through marketing but through partnership. Before launch, the church created “12 Days of Christmas,” giving away gifts purchased from local businesses. In year one, stores hesitated to participate; by year seven, businesses were reaching out to collaborate. What began as skepticism has shifted to partnership because trust was earned gradually.
- Serving instead of competing. // A defining moment came during the annual Argyle Fair, a 30,000-person event held across the street from the church—on a Sunday. Rather than fight the inconvenience, Community canceled services and mobilized volunteers to serve the fair, providing parking and manpower. When the event was rescheduled due to rain, the church canceled services a second week to honor its commitment. Lou describes this as a defining cultural moment: demonstrating that service isn’t convenient—it’s convictional.
- Earning trust through inconvenience. // Lou recounts being called to the mayor’s office days after launch to address parking concerns. Instead of pushing back, the church chose to rent additional parking space—even when legally unnecessary—to honor neighbors’ concerns. In another instance, Community canceled a planned Christmas light show after Village neighbors expressed concern about traffic. Though disappointing internally, the decision earned significant community goodwill. Lou believes canceling the event built more trust than hosting it would have.
- Posture over persecution. // Lou cautions leaders against defaulting to a persecution narrative when facing resistance. Most pushback, he says, comes from practical concerns—not hostility toward Jesus. By listening humbly and responding thoughtfully, churches can win trust among the large percentage of community members who are neither strongly for nor against them.
To learn more about Community Church, visit communitychurch.net or follow @communitychurch.li on social media.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, thanks so much for listening in, tuning in into today’s episode. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’re talking with a leader leading a prevailing church in frankly a part of the country that is not known for tons of prevailing churches. And so it’s an opportunity for all of us to lean in and to learn.
Rich Birch — Super excited to have Lou Pizzichillo with us from Community Church. They’re in Babylon, New York on Long Island. They’re known as a church for people who don’t go to church. They’re big on being real, bringing real questions, struggles, hangups, doubts, disappointments, and failures. Lou, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today.
Lou Pizzichillo — Thanks so much. Yeah, it’s a privilege to be here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s an honor that you would take some time to be with us today. Why don’t you kind of tell us a bit of the Community story, kind of give us a flavor of the church, help us kind of imagine if we were to arrive this weekend, what what would we experience?
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So we have an interesting history. We launched in January of 2020. And so we were open for 10 weeks.
Rich Birch — Great time.
Lou Pizzichillo — I know it was perfect. And then we closed down for 52 weeks, and we relaunched. But because of that, what’s been really cool is, you know, when you’re launching a church, the launch team is a big deal. And to launch twice, we’ve had really like two two launch teams. And so team culture has always been a real big part of our church.
Lou Pizzichillo — But yeah, we like to say that we’re a church for people who don’t go to church. and So we try to keep things pretty casual. We try not to assume that there’s any interest or experience with the people who are showing up on a Sunday. And yeah.
Rich Birch — Nice. Give us a sense of, so like size and like your, you know, the ministry style, that sort of thing. Like what would you help us kind of place what the, what the church is like if I was to arrive, arrive on a weekend?
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, we’re a pretty contemporary attractional church. We’ve got services on Thursday night and on Sunday morning. So we say the weekend starts on Thursday.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Lou Pizzichillo — We call Thursday night thurch, which is…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s funny. Thurch.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, it was a joke at first, but then it kind of like, I don’t know, just kind of gained a life of its own.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — So yeah, so the church over the course of the weekend, right now we’re at about 1,200. And it’s exciting. There are a lot of new people. And things are constantly change changing. Change is that really the only constant for us.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. Well, you’re on Long Island, and I can say as somebody who I ministered for years in New Jersey, I’m from Canada, I I get that people don’t wake up on Long Island on Sunday morning and think, hey, I should go to church today.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — You’re serving a community that is is more unchurched than other parts of the country, which is a challenge for planting. So help us understand, you know, help us just kind of get into the mindset or the um perspective of people who are outside of the church. What do they view on, you know, Christianity? Tell us, give us a sense of of kind of what you’ve learned, you know, planting in that kind of context.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So one thing that was really helpful right off the bat was somebody mentioned to me, they were like, you know, I’m not a gym person. And so when a new gym opens up in town, I don’t even really notice it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And they’re like, I think it’s the same thing for church people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — It’s like, if you’re not a church person, then you don’t really notice when churches are doing things. And so that’s like, really, it’s a big reason why we’re so vocal about saying it we’re a church for people who don’t go to church, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — Um, and yeah, from there, honestly, we found that the biggest obstacle with people here is the existing reputation of church, of what church is like and what church people are like.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — This church is seen as very judgmental, hypocritical, fake, exclusive, impractical, you know, it’s something you just do to kind of check the boxes and then you go on with your life. I’ve spoken to even a lot of, um, like devout Catholics here who have, have said like, they don’t, they do their church thing because, because it’s what they think that they’re supposed to do, but they’re, what they are doing in church does not translate to everyday life.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so church is seen as kind of an impractical thing. And, that’s kind of the starting point for a lot of people who we’re trying to connect with.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve heard it said in other contexts, it’s like, not that people don’t know the church. It’s like, it’s what they know that they don’t like.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s like, they have a sense of, you know, that that reputation. Are there any, maybe even stories or engagement you know conversations or engagements you’ve had with folks that have kind of brought that reputation to the fore. That obviously has led you to say, hey, we’re going position ourselves as a church where people don’t go into churches. Was there something that kind of influenced that as you were having, you know, even in these early years as you’ve been kind of get the ball rolling?
Lou Pizzichillo — A big part of it honestly is a lot of my extended family. Like they’re, most of them are not church people. You know, they have a lot of respect for God. Like most people on Long Island, uh, especially, you know, most kind of nominal Catholics, like they would say they’re Italian or Irish. They say, oh, of course, Jesus is my savior. You know, like they, they know the right things to say, but in terms of what it actually means on a regular basis, it’s like kind of a totally different thing. So, so yeah, I mean, that’s kind of, kind of where we’re starting.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, people have criticisms about the church and they have criticisms of of their experience with the church. How do you discern between criticisms that maybe you either need to be challenged, like, hey, that’s actually just not true, or like, oh, that’s a critique that is actually fair, and we’re going to try to steer in a different direction, ah you know, than that. Help us think about those, you know, when we think about skepticism towards the church.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, I think, honestly, the best thing for us has just been to have a posture of listening.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Lou Pizzichillo — Because even even if their claims aren’t valid, a lot of their experiences are. And so, you know, they’re like, there’s somebody who’s been going to the church for a while now, and somebody that was very close to them has like a pretty intense story of church hurt, like real damage. And so to know that he’s walking in with all of this baggage and that there are a lot of other people walking in with that baggage that don’t let you know that they have that baggage…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — …just kind of giving them the space to, to be hurt and for it to be real. That’s been huge for us just having that kind of posture of humility.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So that obviously has led to the way you’ve developed either the way you talk about ministry or the values that are underlining, you know, the ministry.
Rich Birch — What has been important for helping communicate or articulate to people like, hey, this is a place that you can show up, you know, before you, you know, you’ve kind of bought it all. It’s like, Hey, you there’s a place to explore that sort of thing. Help us think through how do you communicate and then how do those, whether they’re phrases or yeah that sort of thing, how does that translate then into the values of how you actually operate?
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So big thing is for us, it’s training the team, like getting those values into the team and helping them to understand what that looks like in a concrete way. So we say, like a lot of churches say, you can belong before you believe. And the the illustration I give almost every single time, I’m like, if somebody walks in with a church, with a shirt that says, I hate God, we are glad that person is here, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — Like we’re not assuming that they are walking in with interest or experience. And they might have a story that’s a lot more complicated than we know. So um so yes, we try to celebrate that.
Lou Pizzichillo — When somebody walks in and they’re very open about their beliefs and their views not lining up with us, that’s something that we celebrate, right? Like because these are the people that we want here.
Lou Pizzichillo — The other value that’s been really helpful for us is to say that people have permission to be in progress. And that has to do with their actions, the choices that they make, but also the things that they believe. And so you can be on board with some of our beliefs and not be on board with all of our beliefs. And we’re okay with that, right?
Lou Pizzichillo — Like rather than just saying, okay, I accept all of it at one time. And now I completely agree that everything in the Bible is true. And, you know, I endorse it. Like we just kind of give people space to say, okay, like let’s maybe let’s start with the claims of Jesus, like right to this guy really rise from the dead. And now let’s look at what he says about things like the Old Testament, you know?
Lou Pizzichillo — And so that’s that’s been a huge thing. We go back to that over and over and over again. It started as kind of like a main point in a sermon where I was like, you’ve got permission to be in progress. And so many people repeated it back to me that I was like, okay, this needs to be woven into our culture because it needs to be articulated…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — …or people just assume, okay, if I’m going to say I believe, I got to say I believe it all. And there’s no room for disagreement.
Lou Pizzichillo — And then from there, we say like, you got you can belong before you believe, you got permission to be in progress. And if both of those things are actually true for us as a church, then we can also say like our third value is no pretending.
Lou Pizzichillo — Like you don’t have to pretend to be on board with certain things if you’re not there yet. And I think if we create an environment where people can be real and dialogue and be open about the things that they’re, you know, that they disagree with, I think that’s where there’s real hope for ultimately ending in a place of alignment.
Rich Birch — Yeah, permission to be in progress to me feels very like a very Jesus value It feels like, oh, that to me, that’s like when I read the New Testament, that feels like the way he oriented himself to the people around him, right? There were clearly people that were like the rich young ruler came to him and was like, you know, asked a pointed question. Jesus gave a clear answer, and he didn’t, you know, Jesus didn’t, even though he said harsh words to or clear words, I would say, all was it always done in an environment of trying to say, hey, we I want you to be a part of this conversation. I’m really trying to be on the same side of the table. How do I bring you along?
Rich Birch — Can you, like, let’s double click on permission to be in progress. Talk us through what that looks like. Because I think, I think so many churches draw very strong lines on like, you got to believe these 15 things to be a part here. Even if we wouldn’t explicitly set that say that, it’s like implicit in our cultures.
Rich Birch — How does your culture look different when you say, hey, you’ve got permission to be in progress? What would be some of the things that might stand out to us as like, that’s a little bit different than how maybe some other churches handle this?
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So we have like we have values, but then we also just have sayings, right? Like it it is too hard for me to define what the most important values are. Like I get too obsessed with the wording and how we’re going to phrase things. And so in our our conference room, we have a big whiteboard and we write down little sayings. We actually write them in permanent marker on the whiteboard, which is wasteful, but at least we have something to reference.
Lou Pizzichillo — So when somebody says something and we’re like, hey, that’s a culture thing, it gets written on the board. One of the things that came up that’s really helped us with this idea of permission to be in progress is that the goal is to get people to Jesus and everything else is secondary. Everything else comes after that.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep, that’s good.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so I’m not going to like get into it with someone over a secondary issue or really something that’s an issue of sanctification, when we believe sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit, right? Maybe your view on that will change after you understand who Jesus is and begin to follow him.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so in a lot of ways, I feel like when we when we get too into the issues, we’re putting the cart before the horse, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so we’re trying to bring people to Jesus and show him show them what he’s like. And ah that that has been clarifying when it comes to permission to be in progress.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And I think in heavily church context, when we kind of assume, oh, basically everyone here has some level of faith, those secondary issues can become like a really big deal. It’s like we spend a lot of time talking about those things.
Rich Birch — But when the majority of people we’re interacting with you know, they haven’t, they haven’t really, really wrestled with what they think about Jesus and the difference he can make in this life. And we got to keep that, that really clear.
Rich Birch — So no pretending is an interesting value as a communicator. How do you live that out in the way you show transparency? There’s this interesting thing years ago, I had one of the ah preacher that I love or communicator. I just think the world of, you know, he talked about how there’s this tension when we’re, communicating that, you know, we’re we’re trying to be transparent, but up into a point and how, where is that point? And how do we do that in a way that’s not, that brings people along? So ah what what does that look like for you even as a as ah as a leader to say, hey, it’s not my job to pretend. I’m going to just be honest and transparent, authentic to where we are?
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. Well, I mean, I can definitely say that every time I tell a story that has me screwing up, it is it is the thing that people come to tell me about.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — Like, oh, thank you so much for telling me about you know the way you spoke to your kids…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — …or the thing that you said to your wife. Or it is just by far the thing that people love to hear. And that’s been encouraging. Now, I have had people like throw it back at me and that that comes with the territory. But I think that the stories of how that’s been helpful for people um like dramatically outweigh the people that are going to you know weaponize that stuff against you.
Lou Pizzichillo — Something else I heard, um I think Brene Brown said this in one of her books. She said she doesn’t share things she hasn’t processed through yet.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And that for me is a really helpful thing. Like If I’m in the middle of something and just in the thick of it, it’s not the time for me to like bring that to the congregation. I think that could be really unhealthy for a lot of reasons.
Lou Pizzichillo — So that’s, that’s kind of something that, and it doesn’t mean I can’t share something that just happened. You know sometimes I’ll explain an issue that just happened with my kids. That’s different than something I’m still processing and haven’t resolved yet.
Rich Birch — Right. I think she said it’s the difference between scars and wounds, right? You can talk about your scars. That’s like, that’s an area that has, has had some level of healing to it versus an open wound, right? Like this is a part that’s, that’s still gaping.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And, uh, you know, we don’t necessarily want to to share that. And that, you know, uh, that is a change. So I’m, you know, I’m of a certain age, been in this game a long time. And I remember when we first started, when I first started, that generation that came before me, people wanted like the superhuman religious leader. They wanted the like pastor to be, to have their stuff a hundred percent sewed up. Like, don’t tell me that you’re a real human. They didn’t want that.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know, and that has completely reversed.
Rich Birch — People are like, no no, like you said, we, we need to be transparent, open, authentic. People know that we’re not perfect.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — They know that we don’t have it all together.
Lou Pizzichillo — Right.
Rich Birch — And when we try to hide that, when we try to, in your language, pretend that actually is repulsive, it pushes them away.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — One of the things that stood out to me just by reputation, kind of seeing your church is it appears that you guys have a conviction around getting out and serving the community, actually making a difference in the community. You know, it strikes me as very ah a very James-approach, faith in action – it’s it should make a difference in our community. What how do talk to me about what that looks like for Community. How does that, even your name, Community, you know, Church, reflects that. Talk talk to talk to me about what that looks like.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, so we’re pretty clear. Like we we tell people we want to be an asset to the community. We want people to be glad we’re here, whether they attend our church or not. And so that started really early. Actually, before we launched, we did this thing called the 12 Days of Christmas where, so our church is in a village, right? So there are a lot of local businesses around us. What we did is during the 12 days leading up to Christmas, we went to shops and we gave away gifts from those shops. There was a different shop every day for the 12 days leading up to Christmas. So we planned this out ahead of time. But we would post on social media and be like, Hey, today the, you know, the shop is Bunger surf shop. The first 25 people there are going to get beanies from Bunger surf shop.
Lou Pizzichillo — And we paid for them. We sent the, Bunger agreed to hand them out. And people went to go get them. And what was, so it was a win, win, win, really. Like the people who participated got free beanies, the surf shop are like all the different shops in the village. They got people to go, they got traffic to their business, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Lou Pizzichillo — Because people went in then bought other stuff. And it helped us communicate that we we say we want something for you, not from you, right? We want to be an asset to the community. And so it helped us communicate that message. And the response to that has been great.
Lou Pizzichillo — Now, what’s interesting, if this doesn’t tell you something about the church’s reputation, on year one, before we launched, it was very hard to get 12 shops to agree to do this with us. Like they were like, you’re a church? I’m sorry. No, we’re not doing it.
Rich Birch — Forget it. Yeah.
Lou Pizzichillo — Now it’s year seven. Right now we’re in the middle of our our seventh year and there are shops lining up to do it. There are shops reaching out to us, asking us to collaborate.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Lou Pizzichillo — They’re helping to pay for the stuff. So it’s actually in some ways getting a little bit cheaper.
Rich Birch — Huh.
Lou Pizzichillo — And it’s just cool. It’s shown like this posture of partnership with what’s going on…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — …rather than, okay, there are the shops and then there’s the church.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — And yeah, we actually have a someone on staff now who first heard about the church on year one during the 12 days of Christmas. She started coming to the church. she eventually got baptized and now she’s on staff. And it’s just like, it has been so, so cool.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s what a cool, you know, even just a cool tactic, kind of an expression of that. Is there other ways, other kind of activities like that, that you’re engaged with throughout the year that would could illustrate this idea of being for the community, being an asset to the community? What would be another example of that that that’s happened?
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So there is this fair that happens right across the street from the church. It’s called the Argyle Fair. It’s it’s around a lake. There are about 30,000 people that come to this fair. And the fair is on a Sunday during church.
Lou Pizzichillo — The first year that we were here and had services during that Sunday, it was a mess. There were people you know like parking all over the place. It was hard to have services. Traffic was crazy. And we left church and my wife and I walked to the fair and just felt like something didn’t feel right. Like there’s some, here’s something everybody’s doing and we’re fighting against it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — So we went to the people who ran the fair and we were like, is there any way we can help? Like, is there, what do you guys need? And right away she was like, we need volunteers and we need parking. And as a church, we are uniquely equipped with volunteers and parking.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo —And so really it was there, like that almost right away, we were like, okay, next year, ah we’re going to be on board with what you’re doing.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so we decided to cancel services. And in the weeks leading up to that, we teach about the importance of serving the community. It’s kind of like the grand finale to whatever, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — …outreach series or message is being given.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lou Pizzichillo — And um yeah, so we teach on that. And then we’re like, hey, you know, two weeks from now, we’re not going to have services. Instead, we’re going to go out instead of staying in here talking about serving, we’re going to go out there and serve. And, you know, we’ve said like…
Rich Birch — Love that.
Lou Pizzichillo — …yeah, what’s what’s happening out there is not more spiritual than what’s happening in here. It’s a different way to express and grow in our faith. So we did that. And the response has just been unbelievable. Like the community has loved it. The the fair has had the help that they need. The people in our church have loved it. But this year we actually it got rained out on the first week. And so they postponed it to the next week.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Lou Pizzichillo — And that made it tough for us because now we were like, okay, are we going to cancel church two weeks in a row?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And we had a meeting about it and like looked at our values, looked at what we were talking about. We were like, you know what, this is actually an opportunity for us to really double down and say, we’re not doing this out of convenience. We’re doing this because it’s a value. And so I called up the guy who was running the fair and he was like, I get it. If you can’t do it, I get it. And it felt, it was, it was amazing to be able to say on the phone, like, Hey, we’re with you, uh, no matter what. So, uh, so we did and it was, it was awesome.
Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Like ah that, again, that what a vivid example, because I think there’s a lot of church leaders, if we’re honest, we’ve been engaged in the conversation that’s literally on the opposite side of that, where we’re like, man, how do we, these people, they’re, you know, they’re cramping our style or whatever. It’s like we naturally default towards that rather than to serve.
Rich Birch — Take us back early in the discussions because I think a lot of us have not done a good job in building trust bridges in our communities. And you know trust isn’t built with just you know, one conversation. It takes time, right? It takes, like you said, those those first 12 days of Christmas, you couldn’t get anybody. And now here’s seven years later. We want we want to get to the seven years later part really quickly.
Rich Birch — But ah those early conversations, how are you handling yourself, interacting with the like other people, you know, approaching them, having those conversations. What did you learn in the early dialogue that could help us if we’re trying to build, you know, deeper community trust in a place that just is so skeptical of that we’re coming with, just looking to take from our people.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. I mean, you have to be willing to be inconvenienced. I think that’s been a big part of it.
Lou Pizzichillo — On week one, so we we launched literally on the first day and launch day was bigger than we thought it was going to be. And on that Monday, I was called to the mayor’s office, the mayor of the village.
Lou Pizzichillo — And I was like, okay, thought I was going to go have a conversation. And when I got there, it was the it was him, it was the head of code enforcement and the fire chief all in a room waiting for me
Rich Birch — Oh, gosh.
Lou Pizzichillo — And they had pictures of cars parked all over the street. And I I realized there, like, there was a real concern about what this church was going to be in the community.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so from there, we’ve just been looking for opportunities to earn trust. The neighbors have made it very clear that they don’t like cars parking on the street. And so we, we began paying for a lot so that we could take the cars off of the street. We don’t have to, they can legally park in the street, but we rent the lot. We told the owner of the property why we’re doing it. And he got on board with what we’re doing. We’re now in a place, kind of a long story, but we now don’t have to pay for that lot.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Lou Pizzichillo — We also, like the trust has been earned one decision at a time. We were going to do this big thing in the parking lot. We did a parking lot renovation that took the whole summer. After the summer, we were like, hey, in our new parking lot, let’s put on a Christmas show. We’ll run it throughout two weeks in December.
Lou Pizzichillo — We had an animator who goes to the church. He like had this great idea for a show. He’s like, we’ll project it on the building. People will drive in. We’ll run it multiple times a night, do it for a few weeks throughout December. We were calling it Christmas in Lights.
Lou Pizzichillo — So we put this whole plan together. He’s making the thing. We start advertising it and the village comes to us and they’re like, you’re in violation of the code. You can’t do this. And and they’re giving us all these reasons that I felt like didn’t really hold that much weight, you know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — But in thinking about it, I do understand the inconvenience it would have been. We just had a major parking lot renovation. There were huge trucks making tons of noise for months.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And now that’s finally over. And we’re going to ask the village to deal with the traffic of a show happening every single night, you know, for a few weeks in December.
Rich Birch — Right Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so I went to the mayor and I was like, hey, ah it’s a new mayor at this point. But I just sat down with her and I was like, hey, listen, if you have concerns about this, I want you to feel the freedom to just come to me and say, this is a lot for the neighbors. Like, what do you think about pulling this in?
Lou Pizzichillo —And it was cool. It was an opportunity for the two of us to kind of bond, like there was some trust earned there and we canceled the show. We decided not to do it. And I released a video explaining why we weren’t doing it.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Lou Pizzichillo — And the amazing thing is that I think canceling the show accomplished more than we would have accomplished if we actually did the show.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Lou Pizzichillo — Like it earned, it was so well received when people found out that we weren’t going to do it. They were like, and even the people that attend the church, they were like, I want to be part of a church that supports their community like this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so it went really well, and it was a lot less work, and so it was it was kind of a win all around.
Rich Birch — What did the animators say? I feel but feel bad for that person who started doing that work. Did they understand. Obviously, they’re bummed or concerned.
Lou Pizzichillo — He was bummed out, but he’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and so he he totally got it. And he’s on board with what we’re trying to do, and when he knew the reason why, he was totally, totally supportive of it.
Rich Birch — Interesting. So where have you seen churches kind of get this wrong as we’ve tried to engage with the community? Maybe a common a pothole that we fall into or a way that we stub our toes, you know, a thing maybe you’ve you’ve you’ve seen that we just, we you know, kind of consistently make the same mistake.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. You know, one of my mentors told me a while ago, he was like, when you’re thinking about the church in the community, he’s like, there’s a small percentage of people that are for you. He said, there’s, there’s also a small percentage of people that are anti-church and they always will be, and you’re not going to change their minds.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And he’s like, but then there’s this large percentage that’s just kind of going to go one way or the other. And he’s like, that’s the percentage that you really have to be intentional about connecting with.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so I think, you know, it is very easy to tell the story like, hey, they don’t want us to do our Christmas show. This is persecution…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — …you know, and we got to fight and suffer for the name of Jesus. And ah we’ve just found that that’s not always the case.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — You know, it’s people that don’t want to be inconvenienced and they may love church, but there’s there’s all this stuff going in the community. Maybe they maybe they have you know other reasons why. So i think I think it’s just the posture.
Lou Pizzichillo — Like a lot of, most people, most people aren’t unreasonable. And I think if we give them the chance to really articulate what’s going on, I’ve been surprised at how understandable a lot of the feelings have been, a lot of the resistance to church comes from real stories, real experiences.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so, yeah, I think it’s the you know the whole like persecution thing or suffering or that is real and people do really experience that. But a lot of times I think we’re a little too quick to say, oh, this is what that is when really it may not be.
Rich Birch — Well, and it it’s, ah in some ways, it’s like a low form of, well, it’s a leadership shortcut for sure to like demonize, to like, oh, there, those people are come out to get us. You know, any leader that’s led before realizes, oh, that’s like a that’s a tool that actually works. People respond to that, but, but we don’t want to do that. Like that isn’t, these are the people we’re trying to love and care. These are people we’re trying to see point towards Jesus. They’re not our enemies.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Birch — They’re not, you know, they’re, they’re not, they might just not like parking, like you at the end of the day.
Lou Pizzichillo — Right. Right.
Rich Birch — And so let’s not, let’s not get over-revved, ah you know, on that. And unfortunately there are, I know, you know, way too many churches that have got themselves on the wrong side of this. And it’s very hard to backwards engineer out of that. Once you go down that road of like, we’re going to try to go negative with our community. That just isn’t, it’s just, it’s, it’s very difficult to to step back from that.
Rich Birch — If you think about a church leader that’s listening in today and they’re, they’re saying, Hey, They’re thinking we want to do a better job being trusted more locally, trusted by local leaders, trusted by other you know businesses in town, that sort of thing. What would be a couple first steps you think they could take? A couple things where they could start to try to build that kind of trust with the community around them?
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. You know, I think I’m a big believer in praying for those opportunities. And also just giving things a second look, you know. When you’re in a situation that may seem like a challenge or something that may seem like it’s getting in the way, to just stop and think, okay, is, is there an opportunity here to build trust with the community?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Lou Pizzichillo — Because we, and when we say the community, we’re not just talking about this nebulous, you know, idea of Babylon village. There are people there.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And if those people see this church as trustworthy, they may come here, you know, when their relationships are falling apart or when they’re looking for answers.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lou Pizzichillo — Um, and so it’s really just been… We have great people here who have bought into what we’re doing, who have really helped us to see like, this is an opportunity to win with the community. And yeah, you gotta, you have to look outside the box and, and also be willing to, there, there are moments like with Church Has Left the Building—with the fair—and with the Christmas and light show, there are moments where they’ll see, okay, do you really care? Do you really care?
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — Like are how how much will you inconvenience yourself? And I mean, the payoff from that has just been huge, even though it’s been an inconvenience and our giving goes down that week and it throws off the series and we got to restructure the calendar.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — It has gone, there’s there’s never been a time where we’ve regretted it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good. And, you know, there’s no doubt one of the things I think we can in our our little world of kind of church leadership, I think we can forget often that people in the communities that we’re serving, they really don’t have any frame of reference for a church of 1,200 people. Like they that that isn’t people’s normal perception of what a church is. Like a church is 25 people or 50 people in a room somewhere super small.
Rich Birch — And, and their perception can be, they just don’t, they just don’t have any idea. What is that? What’s that look like? And some of that can skew negative because it’s busy and blah, blah, blah, all those things. And so we’ve, we, we have to take it on ourselves when our church gets to the size that you’re at or larger to try to help them understand and see though this is like really positive for the community and actually point towards that.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yes.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.
Lou Pizzichillo — Yes. And, and like along those lines, ah it’s also perceived as a source of power, right? Like if, if there, if you have 1500 people that all believe the same thing and you’re trying to run a village or a community, there is this, this sense of like, okay, well, are they going to be for us or against us? Like, are all these people going to be anti-village?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lou Pizzichillo — And so there is like that, that instinct to kind of protect from this group of people that make, make things really hard for us. But over time, as they begin to see like all these people are, are behind us, they’re here to support us and they want to make this place better.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lou Pizzichillo — It’s, it really is a beautiful thing. And we’re not there yet as a church, but we’re getting there. And, uh, we’ve just seen a lot of, lot of positive signs and, uh, Yeah, think it’s paid off.
Rich Birch — So good, Lou. That’s, that’s great. Just as we wrap up today’s conversation, any kind of final words you’d have to, ah you know, to leaders that are listening in thinking about these issues today?
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. I mean, I think I would just say it’s worth it. It’s it’s messy. It does make things difficult. It can be inconvenient. And when you have people who don’t go to church coming to church and you give them permission to be in progress, you get a lot of hairy situations. And we have a lot of conversations where we’re trying to figure out which way to go.
Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.
Lou Pizzichillo — But it’s in those conversations that we cant kind of stop and remind ourselves like, Hey, we’re, we’re glad that these people are here and we’re glad that these are the problems that we’re having. And, the end of the day, this is what we feel like it’s all about. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. I just want to encourage you as you’re leading, you’re doing a great job and and it’s been fun to get a chance to get a little window into what’s going on at Community. Want to encourage you and your your team, just you’re doing the right thing. If people want to track with the church or with you online, where do we want to send them to connect with you guys?
Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, so communitychurch.net is our website. On Instagram, we’re communitychurchli, we’re @communitychurchli, and we try to keep that handle throughout all the platforms. So YouTube, same thing. But yeah, that’s it.
Rich Birch — Great. Thanks for for being here today, Lou.
Lou Pizzichillo — Thanks for having me, Rich. It’s an honor to be here, and I love what you guys are doing for the church.
