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Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We’re excited to talk with Brian Owens, Executive Pastor of Operations at First Baptist Simpsonville / Upstate Church in South Carolina.

In American culture it’s very normal to want your own voice and identity. Yet this can be challenging when you’re trying to align a church with multiple campuses to function as one unified whole. Tune in as Brian talks about campus alignment, recruiting talent, what to expect with church mergers, and more.

• Alignment essentials. // One of the significant challenges of a multisite church is maintaining alignment. Committing to unity from the top down is essential to ensure all campuses are one, pursuing the same mission. Communicate that each campus is important and has a vital role in the mission, regardless of their size or location. At First Baptist Simpsonville/Upstate Church, each site has the opportunity to interact with all of the teaching pastors and leadership staff.
• What are the constants? // In order to create a unified weekend experience across all of their locations, Brian explains that they’ve established a set of core campus constants. These guidelines ensure that for everything, from worship and teaching to kids ministry, each campus knows what to expect, what approach will be taken, and how everything will flow. Core campus constants also offer confidence to congregants that they will have the same experience no matter what campus they attend.
• Prepare ahead with staff. // When hiring staff members for any level, Brian and his team look for talent that is high capacity, high caliber leaders, and people who buy into the mission and vision. It’s critical for growing churches to be proactive when recruiting so that you aren’t left with a sudden empty spot that remains unfilled for an extended amount of time. Consider partnering with a seminary and implementing a residency program to develop future leaders. Give recent seminary graduates hands-on ministry experience that will grow their skills while helping you develop potential leaders for your church.
• Take time before merging. // First Baptist Simpsonville/Upstate Church has a passion to reach the upstate of South Carolina, and along with that, a heart to revitalize struggling churches. When considering a church merger or rebirth, take time to discuss everything with the senior leadership of the struggling church. Talk about what would be the benefits of the merger and what it would look like and mean for everyone. Let the people of the joining church have the time they need to decide if the merger is what would be best for their mission.
• Consider the liabilities. // Churches want to have a nice facility no matter how many attend, but buildings do depreciate over time. When considering a merger, look at both assets and liabilities, and the impact of older structures on insurance and risk management. On average, Brian estimates that mergers will cost $750,000 to a million dollars, between updating an older building and installing the necessary technology for services. Finally, be prepared for the legal aspects of merging, including any voting and filing paperwork with the secretary of state.

You can learn more about First Baptist Simpsonville / Upstate Church at www.fbcsimpsonville.org.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We have got Executive Pastor of Operations at First Baptist Simpsonville Upstate Church – one of the fastest growing churches in the country with, if I’m counting correctly, six campuses which I which I think 7 coming up this fall, ah in South Carolina. They offer services in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. They also have a child enrichment center for infants and toddlers through fifth grade, and their Upstate Sports Ministry which provides sports and recreation for the whole family. This is a robust and growing ministry. Brian, welcome to the show. So glad that you’re here today.

Brian Owens — Thank you so much, Rich. Glad to be here.

Why don’t you kind of fill out the picture. Tell us there what did I miss? That’s obviously kind of the boilerplate stuff, but kind of give us a a broader picture; tell us a little bit about the church.

Brian Owens — Yeah, the church is an amazing place. My family and I, we moved here fifteen years ago. I’d been in Kentucky in Louisville for about 14 years at Citibank. And coming here, it was a great experience to be able to plug into a great community.

Brian Owens — Um, Upstate of South Carolina in general has been growing crazy, especially over the last 8 to 10 years. They’re anticipating, you know, within the next six years or so another 1.53 million people total living here in the upstate. And so our passion and our goal is to try to hit each of the 11 counties that make up the upstate…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Brian Owens — …and figure out that we need to have a gospel presence there. Not that there isn’t already gospel presence there. But we just feel like that’s the kind of the vision that God has given us – the calling to is to reach the upstate.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. That’s that’s fantastic. Well obviously multisite is core to your strategy, and although we kicked off at the beginning um, you’ve got 6 locations now and I think launching another one soon. And you know, that that puts you in rare air. Like that we were saying this beforehand. You know we’re still seeing about 50% of multisite churches not getting beyond 3 locations. And the fact that you’ve you know six, seven locations, plus you’re doing gatherings – obviously something’s working there. What the one of the questions that jumps to mind right away is alignment. Why is alignment so difficult in so many churches – you know, multisite church is hard to kind of keep things rowing in the same direction. Why why is that?

Brian Owens — You know I think some of it is ah reflective of just the culture that we have. Everybody seems to need to have their own voice. Everybody wants to have their own identity. And so that happens quite a bit. So working against that to say, as a church, we’re going to be one. And we’re going to be one for the same mission. It doesn’t happen by accident, I can tell you that. It definitely takes a lot of energy and a lot of commitment. But it starts from the top down. I think that’s really key.

Brian Owens — Our leadership and especially our Lead Pastor, Wayne, has been very, very focused on this since at least 2018, 2019 when we started a couple of initiatives, one around “all in” and then “one”. Both of those drove the same general message that regardless of what campus that you are sitting at, wherever you’re having your weekend experience, wherever you’re doing your life, we’re doing it together. And on the top of that, you get the opportunity to interact with all of our teaching pastors and all of our leadership staff.

Brian Owens — So we are intentional about going to see each of the campuses. Um, and so each campus pastor isn’t just parked there for fifty-two weeks a year. They will go and spend other other weeks during there in the church year at other campuses. It’s very intentional – about once every six weeks we do a fruit basket turnover is what I call it. I don’t know if there’s another term for it or not, but that’s what we call it. Yeah.

Rich Birch — I like that – fruit basket turnover. That’s good – I like it.

Brian Owens — And that’s where even our lead pastor, he will go to our campus that’s running 600 on an Easter to, you know, two months later he’ll be at the one that’s running 175. So it’s not about the size of the congregation. It’s about each campus, wherever they’re at, are vital. They’re important. They’re plugged into the mission. And they deserve the opportunity to hear from everybody that’s on staff and make sure that we focus on doing that consistently.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Brian Owens — So that’s one of the key things that I think we do that’s unique from other things.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. You know I’ve said in other contexts, you know if it doesn’t it takes a certain kind of leader to get 10 leaders in a room and say, Okay, everybody think a different thought. It takes a different kind of leader to get 10 leaders in the room and say Okay, this is what we’re going to focus on – let’s focus on these, you know, this in common. And um I love that you’re trying to figure out how do we do that. How do we kind of keep people pushing in the same direction. Can you kind of talk us through, when you say multisite, what what does that look like from like a programming, teaching, um, you know, kids ministry? How do that, you know, what do you hold in common among your various locations? Kind of give us – I realize that’s a giant question, so try to give us a thumbnail sketch of that.

Brian Owens — Yeah, we we used to have different we’ve tried different models over the fifteen years that I’ve been here. Some have been successful, most were not, but I think the one that we’ve kind of hit our honey spot here in the last six years or so has been driven around we established like ah Wayne, our lead pastor, established with the team a set of core campus constants, so that each campus this is exactly what you’re going to get regardless, this is how it’s going to flow. This is the approach that we’re going to take. That being like, for example, just music, it’s the same music on any campus. It’s a live band regardless, but it’s it’s gonna be the same track list. It’s gonna be the same music and [inaudible]. We have two different styles that are on all of our campuses – modern and then we also have a vintage which is a little bit more pullback. It doesn’t have all the lights and the haze and all the other It’s just really more kind of a forward sound experience. But we have both of those happening on all of our campuses and so regardless of where you go, you’re gonna get the same experience.

Brian Owens — And likewise it goes to the kids. It’s been very intentional. It took us about a year to hire our Director of Kids, Emily Toole. She came to us from up in Northern Indiana and she has been great because she and her team have come together and our target is, although we want to reach everybody, our target is young families in the upstate with kids at home who are unchurched. And so we want to create an environment where families will feel safe coming, bringing their children. And when the kid leaves they’re like, you know, that was a great experience. Mom, Dad, I want to come back and be a part of that. And a lot of that is driven around the kids. So not only consistency in the worship experience but also in the kids experience.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brian Owens — So that if you’re at one campus on one side of town, or you’re even in another campus thirty, forty miles away, you’re getting the same core teaching. You’re getting the same setup. You’re getting the same experience each one of those locations.

Rich Birch — That’s good. And are have have you defined those, when you say campus constants, are those um is that like a ah written document? Are they all, how are you kind of communicating those among the various locations?

Brian Owens — Yeah, we we work with each of our campus pastors and our leadership on the team. We have, for our structure-wise, we’ve we played around with this over the last couple years. We have now what’s called our executive team. And our executive team is made up of Wayne, our lead pastor, our director of strategy, Kathy, um Wes Walker, who is our executive over creative services, Pat Gillen, who’s our executive over family ministry, Steve ah, Genoble who’s our executive over mission, Stephen Williams who’s our executive over discipleship, making it myself. And we get into a room once a week and our our our philosophy and our approach is, as far as vision is concerned as far as where we’re going direction wise, we take that responsibility. That’s our that’s our tool to play and use for leadership.

Brian Owens — But then the execution of that goes to the campus pastors, the teaching pastors, and then the directors who are over all of the sites. And so what we’ve done, we created a document “Upstate Constants” and its core around unified foundation, ah, unified identity, a unified leadership and our unified function. So all those things kind of pour into the, if you will, it’s the gasoline in the tank that drives everything that we do and all of the decisions that we make.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Now is there, this all sounds great. You know it sounds like man, this is great alignment. I’m sure there’s never any problems. There’s never any disagreement. It’s always all day long at Upstate. But if you were going to imagine, where there could be potentially conflict on defining (obviously I’m saying all that tongue in cheek…)

Brian Owens — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …you know around constants, are there common areas where you do see rub or or you maybe in the past have seen like hey it took us a while to kind of get alignment, you know, in this particular area on our constants?

Brian Owens — Yep. I think one of the big areas and this is just because of the experience that we had, we grew so fast…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Brian Owens — …we were having ah many of our staff and to ah to a large degree most of our our senior leaders serve in dual roles.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brian Owens — They’re doing not only like a teaching pastor but they also could be serving over connections, or they could be serving over recreation. And so we had to share a lot of staff and leaders in different seats during the week, and even on the weekend experience. And so um, there was a lot of um, not that we were siloed or we were in our lanes. It wasn’t any of that because we very we have very much a collaborative environment of how we work and our model is set up on that. But when you are trying to go as fast as the growth was happening and we just couldn’t keep up.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brian Owens — We were just we were pulling that rubber band as, a way Wayne kind of refers to it, and it just just stretching, stretching, stretching. And it’s only so far you can stretch it before it snaps.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brian Owens — And I think when we were just having to utilize so many staff in so many positions for example, creative arts, worship arts, bringing somebody in who not only handled the weekend experience leading on the the praise band, but then likewise immediately take that hat off and run upstairs and do students and kind of be a director for student areas we’re growing.

Brian Owens — So kind of like your split personalities was some of the the feeling that you could get when we were when we were having folks doing that into a degree. We still have folks that are doing it. But these guys and gals that are on the team, they’re amazing. They’re doing a great job, but we’ve we’ve kind of worked through that I think. But we’re continuing to grow.

Brian Owens — One of the things we’re doing different now I have to say, Rich…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Brian Owens — …is we’re trying to be proactive in our hiring. We’re trying to identify and recruit talent now, even though we might not have an official place on the bus for them to sit at the moment.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brian Owens — We know we’re gonna need them.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

Brian Owens — And so we’re trying to go ahead and go after folks and anticipate what our needs are instead just being reactive and trying to say oh, there’s a hole. There’s a need. Let’s fill it and get whoever comes along.

Rich Birch — Oh I love that because yeah, by the time you see the hole and feel the pain, it’s too late.

Brian Owens — Exactly.

Rich Birch — And you know, it’s like you know we’ll start it’ll take a year before we can find the right person. So what does that look like? How are you kind of proactively, you know, looking for people out there, kind of pursuing, and then how does the multisite thing fit into that, you know, trying to ensure that they align with your approach to the way you’re doing church?

Brian Owens — Yep, regardless of the position that we’re bringing in, whether it’s kind of a a director level or above or even just from a support position, it doesn’t matter. We look for talent that is high capacity, high caliber leaders, folks who buy into the vision and the mission.

Brian Owens — One of the things that our executive pastor of family ministries, Pat Gillen, has done in the last three years is he’s helped us establish a residency program.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brian Owens — And by that is if you are in seminary, you just graduated with your undergraduate when you’re going to work on your graduate degree, your master’s degree. We bring you on for 2 years it’s a split half and half. We provide the covering we pay your tuition for your master’s degree and your study, but you raise support to live off of. We provide you housing…

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Brian Owens — …we provide you opportunities to serve and those kind of things but that process has allowed us to identify young talent who gets into the ditches with us while they’re growing, whether it’s in students, whether it’s in worship arts, whether it’s in recreation. They get to feel what’s happening, be a part of what’s happening, they buy in to the vision, they buy in…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Brian Owens — …to what we’re doing. And then we’re able to continue to use them once they’re done with that 2-year process. We’ve got openings that we’re going to be filling. As a matter of fact, we’ve got two individuals that are going to be finishing up. We’ve got more than that that are finishing our residence program right now, but two have expressed interest in going into full time ministry.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Brian Owens — And so we are looking at spots for them on the team already, just moving them over a little bit. And since they’ve already been here, they know they know what we’re all about, who we are, and and where we’re going. And so that’s building a lot, I think, of a longer runway for retaining top talent as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. That’s like, you know, um, we’ve had Dave Miller from an organization called Leadership Pathway on which is ah they they help churches like yours build a residency program. And you know the the thing that he says all the time is it is like the, well he doesn’t say it like this, but I always think it’s like the JV team. Or the you know it’s like the up and coming. It’s the, you know, the you know, the the pool that you can draw from, and people that there are and it’s a way for you to serve even if they don’t end up at your church. Man, what a what a huge experience for them to be able to be at a growing a growing, thriving church that’ll take that with them wherever they go. And that’s a great way to kind of expand the the influence of the church.

Rich Birch — Well again, this is I’m sure never comes up comes up at at your church, but there can sometimes be tension in multisite churches between um, the kind of campus leadership and then the central leadership, the people that are responsible for stuff across all locations. How do you work that out at you know, obviously we talked about constants. That’s a part of it. But was there anything else around that that that you found that has been particularly helpful to to kind of drive alignment and keep everybody rowing in the same direction?

Brian Owens — Yeah, I think right out of the gate one of the things that we did, because we had been doing multisite since the mid two thousands.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Brian Owens — We had multi-campuses previously but each of those campuses were very unique. So we had one campus that was kind of built around a horse cowboy horse cowboy culture.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Brian Owens — So it was our cowboy church. We also had one that was kind of like 20 young pros. It was downtown Greenville kind of had a yuppy, bougie feel to it, if you will.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Brian Owens — Then we had one that was kind of just here on the west side of Simpsonville. It was our west end campus. So we just had different approaches, and each one of those um had a live teacher. Some of them at at that time our our lead pastor was Randy Harling, he would go and actually teach on Sunday evenings or wherever it was at. But it just had very unique styles. Kind of a Henry Blackaby model, I guess. If God is moving, we just gonna are gonna join him there and…

Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s just get behind it and do it. Yep.

Brian Owens — …just do it, which is great. But each one of them were going in the same direction but we were completely misaligned. So you could go to any of the campuses and you didn’t really feel that connection.

Brian Owens — So what we have really worked towards in the last couple of years as as a staff is we brought in Tony Morgan and The Unstuck Group back in 2016, 2017 and they did an assessment with us. And one of the key things that we walked away from in that is the decision making rights. And so for that it was a major turning point for us to decide, Okay, who gets the opportunity to so have the influence in the decision, but where on this decision making rights chart are those executed against.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brian Owens — And so it really clarified for the teaching pastor on the campus, Hey your your day of game on something’s going on, you need to make a ah call, you don’t have the ability to get on the horn and find somebody at the central campus to say, hey this is what’s happening. Make the call, do the decision. We’ll go with whatever happens on that Sunday morning. If the computers break down or whatever, don’t worry about it. We’ll just we’ll we’ll work through it and then we’ll get up on the other side and try to figure it out. So that kind of helped alleviated each of the campus pastors having to feel like they were having that decision rights always hanging over them.

Brian Owens — Plus when we instituted each of the directors, for example Emily – I talked about her earlier. She handles all the kids’ stuff for any campus. So she’s the one that’s on each campus ensuring the constant um rollout of all of it and ensuring that you’re getting the same experience. And so for a lot of campus pastors that alleviated them from even have to worry about, well are we hitting our targets for folks checking in in the quicken amount of time? Are we getting the security badges back? You know all the other things that you would normally think of in the day-to-day, campus pastors didn’t have to worry about that because that decision-making chart, decision-making right process clarified that for all of us going forward. And we still tweak it and adjust it as we go, but by and large that really was a huge defining moment for us.

Rich Birch — That’s cool. Yeah, like just taking the time to define that and to get real clear on exactly, you know, who’s responsible for what what is the sandbox that we’re asking you to play in, man, can be can alleviate so much pain within a multisite church for sure.

Rich Birch — So let’s talk a little bit about um you know mergers or rebirths, that sort of thing. We see this pretty common. I would imagine in a church or size that you’ve had at least one or two of those. Talk to us about that kind of experience. Obviously mergers is a really broad category for lots of different kinds of relationships as you you know have worked with other ministries, but talk to us what that’s look like for your church.

Brian Owens — Yeah, for us it’s been a very unique opportunity. We have been able to partner our denomination is this Southern Baptist denomination and we have what had historically been called Directors of Missions who were kind of like associational missionaries that were in each of the associations and had a network with all the churches, like the 68 churches in the Greenville baptist association, and they were all plugged in to the 2,100 other churches in the South Carolina convention. Our partnership that we’ve had for the last several years with Al, our director, he knows what churches are struggling. He knows which ones are prime and ready. He takes them through, he’s got his own program that he uses for revitalization to help them try to replant, repurpose, revision where they’re at.

Brian Owens — But in in that process sometimes they come to a place where they’re like, you know, we’ve got 30,000 square feet of facilities. You know, we’ve got $300,000 in the bank. We’ve had four pastors in 7 years, but you know we we just keep going back and we’re still doing the same thing and we’re not getting the results. And we know that God’s called us to have a vibrant active part in the gospel and in the kingdom work. And so sometimes Al will connect us to have those conversations. Sometimes we just naturally have those connections with other people. And when that happens we have been able to come alongside and it’s incredible. The the process that we go.

Brian Owens — It’s not it’s it’s not a very light or flippant approach; it’s a very intentional approach. We meet with senior leadership of of the the church that we’re talking with. We lay it out on the line and say you know if you move forward with this, this is what this is going to look like. And each of the times that we’ve done it, they have gotten to a place where they’re like, you know, we see that the mission is so much bigger than us. You’ve got resources…

Rich Birch — Praise God.

Brian Owens — …not that we are the the end all be all, but you know they’re just like you know this this this is what this church was founded on 80 years ago.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Brian Owens — Or this is what this church has been about for the last 30 years.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brian Owens — We want to see a gospel presence. We want to see the kingdom keep advancing. And so they make that decision and and we merge. And we do it legally just like any church. They vote, we vote, we have to file the paperwork with the secretary of state…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Brian Owens —…do all the things behind the scenes that have to get done to make it legal and official. But it’s been an incredible process for us.

Rich Birch — Yeah that’s cool. First I just want to call out Al and say man, great job. You know being, ah there might be people that are listening in today that they they you could play that kind of matchmaker, encourager kind of role. You might be engaged in a conversation with a church that’s either, you know, that that could maybe take a step towards joining another church. But but frankly, your encouragement could really help that process that, you know, you could play a role as a third party in. That that could be just so effective. So you know good on Al for being, you know, open to having that kind of voice. That’s that’s fantastic.

Rich Birch — What about some of the nuts and bolts part of that, you know, some of that, you know, we don’t get into those. My experience has been that the malt I’ve been through multiple of those as well and I found them just amazing kind of from a kingdom point of view. That’s so cool to see. And lots of good stories that you know come out. And um, but let’s talk about maybe some of the practical side around facilities and properties and that sort of stuff, from your seat in operations. Um has that been smooth sailing, super easy, anything any potholes we should be looking out for there? Advice you’d give to us as we engage in those conversations?

Brian Owens — Yeah, man, absolutely. I’ve slept like a baby through all of them. I’ve never had a restless night ever once.

Rich Birch — Yeah, exactly.

Brian Owens — Ah, no man, it it really has not been all that bad of process because typically most churches want to to have a great facility. They want to have a safe facility. So even if they don’t have a hundred people showing up there each week, they still try to take care of the best they can of the facility. But like any fixed asset, it will depreciate over time.

Brian Owens — And so when we go into these situations after now doing this about 4 or 5 times, we finally figured out there’s some key things you want to be looking at on the front end. And it’s not just ledger. It’s not just how much money is in in the the savings account, or how much money they may owe still on a bank note, but it’s the totality of the property and what is there. And um with that you also um, you you acquire new new new footprints, but you also acquire new liabilities.

Rich Birch — Oh yes.

Brian Owens — And so one of the things that we picked up in this last year is, um and and it’s to be understood, and there’s a lot of changes that’s happened with the insurance agency, but we merged with a couple of churches that have older structures, older buildings with more things that need to be mitigated. And our insurance company didn’t like it. Not that we filed anything against it. But just that we’re taking on a greater degree of risk.

Rich Birch — Just increased risk. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Owens — Exactly. And so we had it there some policies that got dropped. So we’ve had to go back out and and shop the market for that. But that’s one of the the things that we view as essential for the kingdom is is that, not that we have deep pockets, because we don’t. We have very limited um amount of money that we’re able to operate with. But if we feel that the mission that God is called that campus to have, whether it was with us, or eighty years ago when it was a completely different campus. Um, if there needs to be a gospel presence there and we feel God is moving there, we’re gonna we’re gonna step up to the plate and do it.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brian Owens — And each one of those typically require um on average three quarters of a million dollars, $750,000 to a million bucks that we have to invest over two or three years in fixing that footprint, whether that’s foundational issues, that’s plumbing, windows. We need to mitigate issues with lead paint or asbestos…

Rich Birch — Asbestos. Yeah.

Brian Owens — …or any of those other things, you just kind of get that on the front end knowing full well that yeah, you’re going to get a you’re going to get a building. You’re going to sink half a million dollars in there for AVL production when you have a worship, but you’re also going to need to sink in more just to take care of the bones of the building.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good kind of even round number to have in in mind and to be able to… how have you typically funded that? Have you funded that through like additional special offerings or have you tried to, you know, have you bankrolled that some of that into debt or what’s that look like?

Brian Owens — What we do is we have done a little bit of all. We’ve bankrolled at some of them by going back to the bank, getting a little loan. Likewise we’ve used to raise it within initiatives, two-year initiatives like our “One” or our “All-in” which kind of fall [inaudible] Generis approach for 2-year vision mission initiative. Or ah likewise we’ve also had some scenarios where folks have um, gifted the church through their estate. And that’s for example, our upstate church Haywood campus um had a gentleman who passed away this last year, Mr. Leland, um basically left us almost $1,000,000 out of his estate.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Brian Owens — That was able to be poured right back into the same campus that he had been worshiping at when it used to be Laurel Baptist for 90 years. We took that and was able to to do some upgrades and things within the facility and now it is it’s a church that when we merged with them were running around 30 or 40 um, this past Easter Sunday they had almost 500 people there.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Brian Owens — So [inaudible] do incredible do things like that. God’s faithfulness to his people is amazing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s so encouraging. Yeah, as you look to the future, are you when you’re looking I’m assuming you’re thinking about new campuses, is the merger rebirth this kind of thing is that on the kind of priority scale, is that high priority or kind of low priority? Just wait and respond? Or are you is there anything you’re doing to kind of, you know, actively, you know, kind of inculcate those conversations?

Brian Owens — Yeah, we are doing a little bit of both of it. It’s some of it is a wait and see, hurry up and wait…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Brian Owens — …because we know that, you know, things could come together with of the churches reaching out to us proactively. But at the same time, for example, our Fountain Inn campus that we’re launching this fall and just six miles down the road from where we are, we’re going into a community center and we’re going to launch out of there. We have no idea what the timeframe’s going to be, but we just bought eleven acres for our Five Forks campus which has been worshipping where they are for 7 years and they’ve been waiting. Um I hope we don’t have to wait seven years for our Fountain End campus to find a permanent location but we’ve already started meeting with real estate agents and folks within the church who have connections with land in that area to say, you know what, if if you think you can connect us with a place that’s got 8, 10, 11, 12 acres of land, we’d love to be able to think about building, which could be anywhere from 7, 8, 9, 10 billion dollars to build on some dirt. Or merging, and if you merge with a church, you know you go in you update the facilities, you spend about a million, a million and a half in a couple of years to update. So there’s cost scales you’ve got to look at on both sides. And so we we’re just keeping our ear to the ground and just kind of seeing which way the wind blows.

Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. That’s good. Well that’s fantastic. Well this has been a great conversation today, Brian. I’m I’m just so thankful that you’ve taken some time out. I know you got a lot going on. I’m honored that you took some time to be with us. Any kind of last words as we wrap up on anything we’ve talked about today, keeping your campuses aligned, or you know, the campus merger type conversations? Anything else you’d love to kind of, yeah, you’d like to encourage us today as we as we leave the conversation?

Brian Owens — Yeah I think one thing I would remind everybody who’s listening is is that have fun. You know, ministry is hard, but it is also there’s nothing in the bible that says you can’t have fun while you do it. And so I would encourage…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brian Owens — …everyone no matter where they’re at, where God’s planted them, find the joy, find the fun that’s there and have a good time. I believe that there’s joy and laughter in serving the kingdom. I believe that there’s something attractional to that. And mean people are just stink so there’s just no need to be mean, you need to be nice and have fun.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Oh I love that. That’s a great word to end on. You know I’ve ah in other contexts I’ve reflected on the fact, you know, we have the good news, and you know if we have good news and it really is good, that should be generating joy within us and we should be known as a community that’s having fun. You know we we shouldn’t be known as like oh that’s place is a drudgery to be a part of for sure. That’s a good encouragement, Brian. Appreciate that. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you or with the church? Where’s the best place for us to send them?

Brian Owens — Yep, they can go to our website: fbcsimpsonville.org, or they can go on our social media page and like us on Instagram or on Facebook.

Rich Birch — Thank you so much. I’m honored that you were here today. Thank you, sir.

Brian Owens — It’s great to be here, Rich. God bless you and thank you for giving me the chance to visit with you.