CEP 01: PAUL BENGER - WHY WE SHOULD BE GENEROUS.

Mar 9

By Dave Mckeown & Nathan Benger

Welcome to Episode 01 of the podcast.

The Church Explained Podcast is a conversation to help grow your leadership, develop your team and build your church. Your hosts will be Dave Mckeown and Nathan Benger. We will talk about all things leadership with key team players from IKON Church and other guests during each show. In this episode, we talk about the power of generosity and share our strategy to help the capital C church to thrive.

Listen and access the full show notes below or search for The Church Explained Podcast on Apple Podcast or where you get your podcasts and listen for free.

On the show - Paul Benger

FULL TRANSCRIPT

David Mckeown 0:00

Welcome to the church explained podcast. We really appreciate you joining us. The church explained podcast is a conversation to develop your leadership and grow your church. Our goal in this podcast is to share inspirational insights and ideas, resource leaders, churches, and teams, through conversations with key team players at IKON church, and other invited guests. In this episode, we're going to talk about generosity. Does it really matter?

Hi, I'm David McKeown.

Nathan Benger 0:35

And I'm Nathan Benger.

David Mckeown 0:36

And we're the hosts of the Church Explained podcast. Today we're joined with Paul Benger, the lead pastor of IKON church, we're going to talk about generosity does it really matter. So we want to chat, Paul, and just find out a little bit about you. It says on your Twitter handle, which I really like actually. It says that you are pastor, leader, author, that your creative, fun, the Jesus follower, and also a curator of ideas. That's the bit I really like the curator of ideas, Jesus follower is good as well, I have to say that this is a church podcast. But hey, it's great to have you here. We just want to find out a little bit about you, as we're going to chat today in this podcast.

Paul Benger 1:20

Fantastic. Well, it's great to be here. And we know each other. Well, I'm excited, obviously to get involved in the church explained podcast and and for that. Yeah, I'm the lead pastor of IKON church. We planted the church 33 years ago, and we're a multi campus church, we call it now. And, you know, we've got six campuses, which also includes our online campuses. Now, I'm really thrilled about that married to Jeannie been married for a long time, I think 37 years. And she'd be able to tell you more accurately than me with three children, and three grandchildren. And we really love life. And like he said, we tried to make life fun. You mentioned a curator of ideas. It was interesting that somebody read my Twitter handle and said, like, I've never seen that before curator of ideas. What kind of ideas do you curate? And I said, good ones, I actually curate some of yours, because this person who was writing to me was a very famous author. So So yeah, so a lot of people find that intriguing.

David Mckeown 2:31

You've been leading the church for 33 years, did you say? 33, 34 years. multisite Church? And we're going to pick that up on another episode aren't we going to talk about multisite church, but for this one, as I said, we want to talk about generosity does it matter. And one of the reasons we want to talk about this is because we're about to launch something brand new in IKON Church, called IKON open IKON open. I nearly forgot that. I may. I don't know why. We are excited about it. So Paul, tell us a little bit about what what's the purpose of IKON open? Why are we launching it? And why are we excited about it? Yeah, yeah.

Paul Benger 3:07

And also guess why it links with the theme of generosity and, for us IKON open? Well, for us as a church IKON church, we have always wanted to be generous, not just to our communities, not just to the people who call IKON church, their church family, but to the bigger church, the wider church, the universal church, you know, around the world. So we've always said that we're passionate about the church, which means that other churches matter to us as much as our own. And so over the years, IKON churches, it's developed as it's grown, and our team has grown. And we know we've got some great people on our team. Now, many other churches have looked to us and asked us for resources for help or ideas. And we've always said, yes, you know, we've we've always wherever it's been possible, said, Yes, we'd love to share with you. And we've done that. So we started to dream about, well, could we have a place? Could we have a ministry, if you like, within our church an arm of our church where we could point people and say, it's there, it's already prepared for you, we, we've been waiting for you. We've been expecting you coming so that we've produced everything we've produced, we've not just done for our own church and for our own consumption, but we've created it with you in mind so that you could if it's useful for you, you can just take it. And so it's our I guess it's our attempt at being generous to the wider church and saying whatever God's blessed us with, we want to be a blessing to whoever would find that helpful to them.

Nathan Benger 4:46

And I guess, like we said at the start, this podcast is a conversation to develop your leadership grow your church. So what are some of those resources that are kind of going to be included? Obviously, you mentioned, you know, we got teams. Those kinds of things at IKON church where we're being asked for stuff, so what kinds of resources? You know, can people grab hold off on IKON open?

Paul Benger 5:09

Well, obviously the resources around key ministry in church. So you know, message messages, children's work youth work, which, again, I think those are things that we've done really well Sunday services but also leadership. And we'll be putting things out around the way we train leaders, the way we develop leaders, maybe even our weekly staff meeting some of those, as well, but also some of the practical things, the how to's of church, you know, sometimes churches come to us, you know, in this season of lockdown, many churches have come to us and said, How have you done church online? You know, particularly at the beginning, they didn't know what to do, how to do church online? How do we do it simply how do we do it cheaply, we've not got a budget. And so churches have come and we've helped them. And we've sent them resources and pointed them in the right direction. so practical things as well, things around governance, you know, how do you set up, you know, a board of trustees and you know, some of the practical things, how do you manage Finance? in church, we'll get to some of that stuff as well. But we're hoping across the site, and of course, as it develops, there'll be resources that will help people in any area of church life they need. And if they come looking for something, and it's not there, and they get in touch with us, and we we've got it. Yeah, we'll put it there. Yeah, yeah,

David Mckeown 6:30

I think that's the exciting thing that we want to be generous with other churches, we want to help resource people and help them develop in their leadership. And we will have quite a number of elements on the site. And also, if someone's looking for a message, they can grab maybe the message series, the message, artwork, that transcript, all that stuff that they could take, and actually just use in their setting. We know that many, many church leaders will go on and they'll say, well, that just sparks an idea for me, I'll take that and use it my setting. And really, that's what we're there for. How can we resource leaders? How can we help people? And as you've said, Paul, IKON open is just a genius way to extend our hand. Yeah, show generosity to others.

Paul Benger 7:12

Absolutely. And, you know, I love it. When people say, you know, we came, just need an idea. Sometimes pastors will contact me, I listen to your message, you sparked an idea. And then they go go away and develop another a message based on that. And that's what we kind of want to be really use our creativity to spark the creativity elsewhere. Another area is in the area of worship and music our team have begun writing and so will will provide tracks Well, you know, the ones that we've developed, are all free of charge, that churches can actually just access that stuff to help them, you know, develop their leadership and grow their church.

Nathan Benger 7:54

And, you know, like you said, it comes as not from a place of, you know, like, Look at us, we've got all the answers. It's actually come from a place of we've had, so many people have asked, yeah, that actually, let's create this resource base as well.

Paul Benger 8:11

Yeah, I mean, even this week, yesterday, I was on a call at large, larger UK church, and found out we're gonna do baptisms in lockdown, and very few churches have done baptisms in lockdown. And it was just how are you gonna do baptisms in lockdown? And we've been wrestling. And so I just spent half an hour saying, Well, we've spent hours thinking about it, and how are we going to do it, and they're just going to take our model, you know, not that it's a fixed model. It's just the model for this moment. They're gonna take that idea. And they're gonna use it in their church at Easter.

Nathan Benger 8:48

And there are different seasons for churches, like we, you know, we know we're in lockdown at the moment, but I was just thinking at the start of lockdown, we had churches in Spain, who were working with access our services. Yeah, because they weren't able to do anything.

Paul Benger 9:03

Yeah, we helped them, we helped them think about how they could go online, but in them, I think it was for about six weeks before they felt confident and comfortable. They just joined our services. And some of them still do catch up with our services now, because they enjoyed it so much.

David Mckeown 9:20

I mean, there's a lot of stuff that we're offering there for people. And I think it's not just the resources on this site, but we want to say to people, listen, if you need help, they can contact this contact. That's the idea behind it as well develop some connections with people some friendships, so that we're there to help them not just want to get resources. Of course, they can do that and go and get them. Take them go away. But if they want to develop more than that, yeah, Want to connect with us, maybe they need some help with some youth stuff or whatever it may be, hey, we've got people skills there as well, not just physical resources. And I think that's the thing to point out to people as well. Yeah.

Paul Benger 9:56

It's an extension of this heart we've had for over 30 years that if anyone's asked us for help, we've said yes, then if we can, we'll help. And so it's just an extension where we actually can put some resources towards it and say, you know, this is part of who we are, we actually want to.

Nathan Benger 10:15

We did an exercise as a church, where we looked at our values, and one of our values that came out was generous. Yeah. And it's not just, you know, and maybe we can talk about how we come up with those values and in future episodes, and that will be a great episode. How do you come up with the values church, and we did a piece of work and generous was one of those that came up. And this is like a moment where we're saying, We're not just saying that on a piece of paper, this is us doing that? Yeah.

David Mckeown 10:48

It's taking that extra step isn’t it the thing? We're moving from just thinking about ourselves as IKON church, but we're going to be thinking about, you know, the global the capital C church, really the I think that's the, the amazing things that we can even think about that, and just picking up what you said earlier, Paul, it's not about that. We're better. Yeah. But actually, it's just the fact that God's blessed us not, we're piles and piles of stuff, let's not give the wrong impression out there. But actually, we have created some great stuff and our heart is to give that away. And one of the ideas we had been talking around was this idea of creation versus consumption. Anyone want to just pop in and chat on that?

Paul Benger 11:29

Well, I think another one of our values is to be creative. And we call that to find a way and we you know, there's some some biblical precedent for that, obviously, not just in generous but but God is always creating, and he's creating, creating, creating new And so rather than just consuming things just on ourselves or for ourselves, this is again, an even this podcast is an opportunity for us to create something that will be generous and add value to other people. So we very much want to be a creative people, you know, and not just consumers, not just people who are just all the time thinking about themselves and just consuming for their own needs. But creating for others, I think that's a vision that we've got strongly in our, in our culture,

Nathan Benger 12:21

do you think that should be something that every church should do?

Paul Benger 12:26

I think every church would Aspire, I guess to that, I know, there's been seasons in our church where we wouldn't be able to create for others as much as just create for ourselves. And I think that the creative idea is we all need to be creative, in terms of, you know, generating things that are life giving, and actually can reproduce. That's the pattern of creation, that things are actually full of life and reproduce. And sometimes you have to focus on yourself, but then I think the heart of our churches needs to be can we, could this benefit others. And I always use the illustration, I know, it's a simple illustration. But you know, when you're learning to drive a car, maybe on that first lesson, you learn, you put the key in the door, you open the door, you turn the ignition on, you know, you don't put keys in doors anymore, no you dont, in my day when you learn to drive. And after your first lesson, you don't know much. But you know more than somebody else, you've gone a little bit further and you could share that with with somebody else. And so I don't think this is just some idea for churches with great resources or large churches there. There are churches that have far more I guess than than we have. But it's the heart of our church. And we believe that as we do this, the big the church, the universal church will be blessed, and we'll be blessed as well.

David Mckeown 13:55

And of course, it got me thinking there is obviously other networks or resources out there that people can access besides what we're offering. But I suppose Ours is a little bit specific in the sense of, because we're based in the UK, our content then lends itself to the UK market across Europe. I mean, of course, it's usable in any part of the world. Yeah. But I know that we find out of the resources that are out there, are some of them coming from across the water, that sometimes they don't always fit in the UK setting. Would that be true to say? I mean, some of the resources out there and fantastic resources, but they don't always fit our language wise or culture wise we're at. So I think for us then the offer we're offering, it's really specific to UK, Europe, and it'll help really resource churches. Any thoughts on that?

Paul Benger 14:46

Yeah, I mean, I think that's an important point because I know I've found myself when you go searching for resources, if something doesn't quite feel cultural, if it doesn't quite feel, you tend you tend not to pursue it. And so, you know, to take away a cultural barrier. And I think there is a, you know, there's the UK, we do have this position where where, you know, geographically still part of Europe, although not politically, but we're still part of Europe,keep that quiet. Yeah, keep that quiet. But then there are also other areas who perhaps would be more akin to as where that, you know, our style, our culture, our thinking, and the recent history, I guess, of the church in the UK might fit more for people. And we know that, you know, what we do isn't for everybody, but actually, it may actually just provide a niche that people find helpful. And particularly, I guess, in those UK, European type cultures.

Nathan Benger 15:54

And again, it comes back to the heart of generosity again, yeah, in terms of wanting to be generous with what we've been given and open our hand to other people, so they can access. And there are even some some things that, you know, in terms of, you know, like, like you were saying, sometimes culturally, it can be different. But also even style, it can be different as well. And sometimes there's even just, you know, like it nudges churches, yeah, to think differently. Yeah. Which I think is an important thing, especially in today's culture, where everything moves. So fast paced.

Paul Benger 16:33

Yeah. And my hope would be that the stuff that we're creating, I think this will be true, is not too far away for people. I know, sometimes I've been to conferences, or I've been to, you know, resources and online, and you're so admire what they're doing. But it feels so far away. You don't know what your next step is? Well, I'm hoping the things that we create, will help churches of all sizes, to think well, that's the next step we could take, or here's some help towards the next step. This is how we could organise. This is how we could think about that. So I, that's my hope that churches, it gives picture, just hope, for progress for growth, moving forward, it helps them spark their vision and their own creativity, for what God wants to do with them, and in them and through them. And, and that it's not too far away. So that, you know, people are thinking, well, that's, that's not relevant to us. We can never do that. No, it's really good. I guess the beauty, I guess, of IKON church, because we pioneered the church, we started, you know, we start with three people. Yeah, you know, so we went always hundreds of people. Yeah, you know, we actually start with three people. So we've been through that whole journey of different sizes of one, we call them campuses, but on campus, you know, now now six? Well, you know, it's not a backward step for us to think, how do we provide a wider how do we provide something that will help this, you know, the much smaller the pioneer in the embryonic the one, one campus, one location, church? That's all. That's all in us. So we're unlikely just to produce things for churches a similar size?

David Mckeown 18:29

I think it's a good good thing to point out in the sense that the contents not just for multi site churches, like us, that's for somebody who's a single church, or maybe somebody who's running a youth ministry, or somebody who wants small group resources. There's that content there. I was trying to think through there and just really wrapping up today with a sort of final question. But you know, what is the best ways for leaders and churches to be generous, because let's say they're sitting, you're in their church, were probably in their home at the present time. And they're thinking, well, we don't have six campuses, or we don't have resources, but they can do something, can't they? So come on, what can what can those individuals or those churches do?

Paul Benger 19:11

Well, I think it starts with the heart, for for generosity, it starts, it starts in the heart of considering, you know, that sense that, you know, we've always had that thought, if anybody asks we'll help, you know, I've sat on other church boards, and, and worked with other churches worked in other environments, as well. So just just, I think when you've got that heart doors will open to you and to never think something, you know, a piece of work a piece of help is small. It is it's always a seed of generosity is all about sowing as well, isn't it? And just to sow whatever and that if there is anything that you do, that you have that can help other people to be open and to be You know, to offer I think there's a verse in Psalm 145, I gave that you've kind of brought to us around this IKON open things that talks about having an open hand. And so I would just just say, start with the heart. Just start with an open heart and a open desire, not just to see your church grow, yes, you must, you must have, you know, you've got to have that passion, but also to say, God bless the other churches, in your town, in your city, in your region. And anything that you've got to say, will, we'll help if we can.

Nathan Benger 20:34

Really good, I think, you know, we just wrote down here, even if you feel limited as a church, and we've we've put finance here, which can be the one of the biggest areas, but I think even in resource you can feel limited. There's, there's a way to consider, can we be creative? Yes, can we be generous with what we've created with, you know, even with another church, another leader, but also even just coming back to that point where you were saying creative with our church, finding a way and just doing something to, you know, either improve, or, you know, just to like, solve a problem? Yeah, I think is a great way to move from that scarcity mindset to that abundance mindset, that moving forward mindset rather than that, you know, we might call it maintenance mindset, to actually a movement forward.

Paul Benger 21:29

Well on our, you know, one of our taglines for creativity is we always find a way. And I guess that's the tagline because we never feel like we've got the resources we need. You know, if we're, you know, if we decide, hey, we want to do this, it would be easy if then all the resources are already in place. Well, I have to say, in 34 years of leading IKON, that has never been the case, I envy I honestly envy those where they could say, let's start a new campus. And we've got a whole bunch of money that we can throw at it, we've got lines around the corner. I know. We have never, never had that, you know, we've been talking even today to our production team. And saying, we want to do we want to do this, but we've not got any resources. So how do we find a way but every artist has the limitation of a canvas, and the limitation of material, if you think of a painter, yeah, he's got a canvas, it's limited in its size. And its he's limited with the paints that he produced. But he still can create a masterpiece, with the limitation. That's how that's the abundance mindset. That's how you've got to view that what God has given to you, you know, it can start as a frustration. But now we have what we have, let's create something great within it.

David Mckeown 22:52

And I think churches and church leaders really ought to take that to heart really, because there's nothing worse of a church leader sits and thinks actually, I've created this idea I'm going to keep it in my church. Yeah. Because I've I shared to the church down the road, they'll steal my ideas, church leaders don't do that, do they guys? Not a chance? But generally, but if you have that mindset, I think you know, it's a recipe for disaster really. I think if you've got a great idea, go and tell the church down the road road share, share with them, because maybe they'll take it develop it. Maybe you can do something together. Yeah. And I suppose that's our heart isn't of being generous IKON open even the church explained podcast. Let's get out what we have to be a blessing to others. Yeah. Well, what a great point because that can be a battle.

Nathan Benger 23:41

yeah. No, it's all right. That's, that's really good. And that's a great way to end. Yeah, this church explained podcast episode, it's been so good to share around like the IKON open stuff and what we have to offer. And big thanks to you. Thanks, Paul. Paul, for being with us. Great to be here. Yeah. Thanks for listening to the church explained podcast, it's been so great that we've been able to be together. And what we'd love for you to do is to support by sharing, reviewing, wherever you're consuming this content. If you're on iTunes, leave us a review, make sure you like and share this, if you're watching this on YouTube. Wherever you consume this content. We'd love your support in doing this. And like we mentioned, in this podcast, we talked about IKON open, we'd love you to head over to ikon.church/open. And there you'll find sample resources that you're able to access and quickly and easily you can sign up to get exclusive access to all of our content on IKON open. And so let me encourage you to do that. But that's all for now. Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode by going over to ikon.church/open click on the church explained podcast and you'll find The show notes there. Under this podcast episode, you'll find all the links and descriptions to all the resources we've talked about and you can sign up to IKON open there for exclusive access to all of the content. Or make sure you subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube, so you're notified when the next church explained podcast goes live and we look forward to seeing you then