CEP SEASON TWO EP: 20 - WITH GUEST VERNON GORDON
By Dave Mckeown and Nathan Benger
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 talk about all things leadership with key team players from IKON Church and other guests during each show.
Welcome to Season 2 Episode: 20 of the Church Explained Podcast with guest Vernon Gordon from The Life Church in Richmond, VA.
A Short bio
Vernon is the Lead Pastor of The Life Church in Virginia and the founder of the Mosaic project, and a non-profit focused on curating social change and cultural unity for the greater good. He is a self-proclaimed expert on bacon and movies.
He is also an author of a brand new book called Square One: Finding The courage to start over, stay strong, and shape your future. And more importantly, he is married to Ashley and has two children, Madison and Jackson.
In part one of the conversation, Vernon humbly shares his personal story of overcoming cancer as a child and how this led to his first steps into ministry. We also explore ideas around innovation and how to encourage our teams and church to embrace failures, as it is through this experimental approach that often leads to solutions to problems our world is facing.
SHOW NOTES
FULL TRANSCRIPT
David Mckeown 0:00
Hey, welcome to the church explained podcast a conversation to grow your leadership and build your Church. today. We've got an amazing cast Vernon Gordon with us today Hey, Vernon, how are you?
Vernon Gordon 0:20
I'm doing well. How are you guys?
David Mckeown 0:21
Yeah, we're doing good. So we've got myself and Nathan.
Nathan Benger 0:26
Yeah. And As Dave said, We're your hosts of the church explained podcast and Vernon, I'm going to read your bio. And hopefully this is all correct. You're the leader of Life Church in Virginia, founder of the mosaic project, a non profit focused on curating social change and cultural unity for the greater good. And you are a self proclaimed expert on bacon and movies, which I think we're going to come back to in a moment, we're going to come back to in a moment, you're also an author of a brand new book called square one, finding the courage to start over, stay stronger and shape your future. He has his wife Ashley, and have two kids, Madison, and Jackson. So my first question Vernon is on bacon. How do you like it cooked?
Vernon Gordon 1:17
Oh, little crispy. Okay, not too crunchy. Right. And, and ultimately, you know, I love all kinds of bacon, but the best bacon I've ever had has maple syrup, and a little pepperoni. Called a million dollar bacon. It's amazing. It's amazing.
David Mckeown 1:38
And what about movies? Then? What's your favourite movie?
Vernon Gordon 1:42
My favourite movie? So I always give this answer when asked about a favourite movie. There's a movie that makes me laugh every time. And then there's a movie that made me fall in love with movies. The movie that makes me laugh all the time is identity thief. And the movie that made me fall in love with movies, is an older movie called Primal Fear with Richard Gere, one of the greatest endings of all time, I won't give anything away. But that was when I said I was watching the movie with my dad. And I said, You know what? I think I love movies. And that was the moment.
David Mckeown 2:14
I was like, hey, well, sorry to have you. We're talking about big movies.
Nathan Benger 2:21
And now I was just gonna say, Dave, we've already started on the deep things.
David Mckeown 2:25
Yeah. They've stuff this is this is where it gets. Have you seen? Have you seen the new Top Gun Maverick?
Vernon Gordon 2:33
I have. I have. And I thought it was good. I thought it was great. I mean, it's really risky when you remake a movie that much later down the road. And whatever, Tom Cruise drinks in the morning, I need that smoothie recipe. I don't know how he's sustained that. So, but no, it was awesome. And, and I think, you know, there's some movies that can just last, you know, Star Wars, you know, Harry Potter, you know, they're just they just last and Maverick, you know, seems to kind of keep that legacy going. So that was amazing.
David Mckeown 3:06
He done a good job. And as you say, I think we're hoping to have a little bit of what he has, whatever you're drinking, I don't think he's maybe eating too much fake. And I think that's the problem. knows, he knows.
Vernon Gordon 3:21
Everybody has their vices.
David Mckeown 3:27
So they, they think we're just going to explore a bit more with Verdun today. He's leading an amazing Church. And we just want to find out a little bit more about you today for an hour and maybe a little bit about how you came to fit your journey, your background. I think that would just be great for our audience or listeners to find out today.
Vernon Gordon 3:48
Awesome. Sounds good. Well, I will start by saying, you know, it certainly was a unique journey for me. I was a former cancer patient, I was diagnosed at 10 years old, had two tumours, 13 surgeries, three years of chemotherapy. They told me I would die three times. And so for me often going through that experience, while it was a miracle for me to still be alive, often say that when I left that experience, I left loving God. But I had a lot of questions about the Church. I couldn't understand how, as a 10 year old and 11 year old as a 12 year old people could play golf for hours and could shop for hours. But as a sick kid, I just felt like I didn't see enough of Church presence. And so it really kind of, you know, made my faith journey a little difficult early on. But but one of the beautiful things that transpired was I got a call from the hospital and they say, Hey, Brenda, you and your family navigated this season with joy and laughter and we were always cutting up in our room and they said we would love it if you would come and talk to newly diagnosed families and just share your story and share how you kept your son Calling you laughter during the journey. And it was those moments that really awakened in me this desire to be what I call it a communicator of hope. I didn't know what to call it at the time, I certainly didn't proclaim it as preaching. I just knew that the feeling I got to add light and hope to their lives. I said, I got I don't know what this is, but I want to do it for the rest of my life. I want to bring that type of hope to people. And then God sent me on a beautiful trajectory that has landed me here today. But certainly, that was kind of my journey, my starting point, in finding my way to God finding my way to ministry, but it started all with cancer.
Nathan Benger 5:37
Wow, what a what, what an amazing, amazing story. That is, you mentioned that phrase communicators of hope, Vernon, and I wonder if we could dive into that a little bit, in terms of I know, you carry that yourself, but also you carry that in the Church. So I wonder if you just explain what that means in terms of for yourself, and also for the Church in terms of carrying that message communicators of hope.
Vernon Gordon 6:05
Certainly, and you know, I think is one of those phrases that has really been really sticky for us. And at the heart of the matter is to help people feel seen, known and loved, are focused is that hope comes when people who are in a world of rush in a world of busy in a world where maybe it feels like the job doesn't see them, their spouse doesn't see them, maybe they're missing each other and communication, and the myriad of other factors and influences that sometimes just cause us to see ourselves as less than how God sees us as His sons and daughters. And so one of the things we just said is what people need, when they not only start putting our building, but encounter any of our experiences, whether digitally or in person that they need to know that there's hope there's hope for their future, there's hope for their present, that God is a God of hope. And and we feel like the way the path by which that often comes about is by helping people first feel seen the infill known and then feel loved, and that that hope continues to fuel them to continue to fight another day for the future that God has already promised them.
Nathan Benger 7:12
Right. I wonder if you could actually for our listeners that seem known and loved. I wonder if you could give some like practical real life examples of where that at work through your Church?
Vernon Gordon 7:27
Certainly, yes. So one of the things we often talk about is the seven minute rule at our Church, that on practical level, how will we talk about is, you know, anytime we're doing a training or development of leaders, we say the most important time on our church's campus, the first seven minutes. And it was some research we encountered a while back. But it basically said within the first seven to 10 minutes of anybody's experience anywhere, they've already determined that they feel comfortable. We all probably know what it's like to show up to that house. And I don't know if anybody has a spouse, but me and my wife have a signal. It's kind of like how long are we going to be here? So, but you can kind of tell very early in any experience, how do I feel here? And so we say what happens in the first seven minutes where the parking lot happens in the first seven minutes. The Children's check in happens in the first seven minute, the greeter at the door happens in the first seven minutes, I often tell them, Hey, you are equally as important as the sermon not you know that the preach word isn't important. But if we don't make people feel comfortable before that, then 45 minutes later, they've already decided that this is not a place they can feel seen and known and loved or feel comfort. Another way that we try to really be mindful of that is we try to ensure that the experience when people are walking up is one that they can relate to no matter what stage of faith they're in. So we will often play a soundtrack, not the lyrics, but we will play soundtracks on the outside of our building that are common. It is so hilarious to play soundtracks of old school Stevie Wonder, or Ray Charles and people kind of know that song, it's kind of makes it that kind of nostalgia. And we've even done things as far as playing classic Disney. You'd be so surprised the grown men in the fathers are getting to that moment. So Hakuna Matata.
David Mckeown 9:20
So it's a way to
Vernon Gordon 9:22
kind of really ease the anxieties and the unknowns of a new environment. And just say, no matter what stage of faith you are in, we're creating an atmosphere where we're with you in this and we want you to feel that comfort from day one. And that's one of our core values as well. We say we pro family functions, which is all about our aim of comfort. We say if you've ever been to a cookout or picnic, the whole family is invited, no matter their background, no matter how crazy they are. They're all invited to the table. What would it look like for us to create atmosphere where in the first seven to 12 minutes, everybody feels invited to the table. So those are some of the practical ways we tried to think about it. Great.
David Mckeown 9:58
Yeah, that's That's brilliant. And I know they often say with the talk about the street from the street to the seat concept, the set of minutes. And an often they say is when people come into your building, and they come into the service, they're filtering everything through. Even the preacher, they hear they filtered through your house, I received bike at the car park coming in, and Evan has not done well there. We know at impacts, you know what they hear, even in the service itself? So yeah, that's a great example. And stuff I think people can put into practice in their own setting as well.
Vernon Gordon 10:32
Yeah, go for. And, David, if I could, if I could add to that, you know, one of the things I think that we had to really recognise for anybody who's leading a team, is that everybody is not an extrovert, and everybody's not natural in conversation. Yeah. And so often, when we talk about helping people feel known, and creating these environments of comfort, we just tell people, hey, you know, be hospitable. And hospitality is a very ambiguous and a conceptual term, that means a lot of different things. To a lot of different people. If you put me in a room full of strangers, I leave no one everybody's first name. If you put my wife in a room full of strangers, she's going to leave knowing five people's name, but she's going to know everything about those five people. And so one of the things we often do is we give people three conversation starters, like once a quarter, like, hey, here are the three questions. We want everybody asking everybody. And what that does is it takes a lot of pressure off of our teams, to have to overthink about a norm as opposed to make people feel known and seen and loved. But I'm not a natural at that. So what's the question? We do what we call rabbit hole questions, questions that naturally create conversations. So we'll say, ask people, What side of town they're from. And, and people will naturally say I'm from the north side, we say, oh, after Church, I'd love to introduce you to somebody else. I know that from that side of town. Or we may even say, hey, the finals is going on right now. And the NBA will say, Hey, who are you rooting for. And either they'll say they're not a basketball fan, which always it's also not a basketball fan, will say, Oh, you got to connect you to so and so. So we just try to give our teams an advantage in that, because they want to help us. But often we can give them concepts and not concrete approaches to being able to create that type of experience.
David Mckeown 12:13
I love that. It sounds like how you're describing your Church and the things you guys are doing. There's a lot of sort of innovation taking place, there are some of the ideas you have. I wonder if you could just speak into that. Tell us some of the things you're innovating and how you approach that?
Vernon Gordon 12:30
Certainly. So innovation is certainly important to me, it is at the core of I believe my identity in many ways and benefits the beginning of the inception of our Church. Yeah, I think one of the starting points about innovation for me it just to always make sure we make clear that innovation is not always necessarily technology. And I think that's a fallacy sometimes that we fall into is this idea that when we say innovation, we mean well, what can we create? And we're working on apps and stuff too. But what technology can we employ? But really innovation is solutions to problems, right? And so, for me as a former cancer patient, the first expression of innovation we ever had in our Church, you know, my wife and I begin dialoguing before we planted and said, you know, there are a lot of kids who were like me, who probably don't see enough representation where they are, and we're waiting for them to come to the Church. And so what we decided was, each and every fifth Sunday, we suspend our traditional worship experiences. And we mobilise our entire Church community to do an outreach project in the city. And the purpose of that is one to really like have a message and a narrative that shocks the entire community. Like, wait a minute, you guys aren't singing songs today and hearing sermons? No, no, we're living them today. And so it's always a really, really amazing experience for people to be like, isn't it Sunday? Like, yeah, this is our expression of the gospel in Church today. But but it also has given us a huge evangelistic tool to be able to really what we feel do life like Jesus, I think Jesus was the first innovator, right? If we really listened to his life, he there, he wasn't the only rabbi of his time. He just was doing things radically different than the other rabbis of his time. And so I think that he inspires the heart and the courage of innovation. I also think that at a practical level, I love what Seth Godin says he says, yesterday's remarkable is today's really good, and tomorrow's mediocre. And so I think we all have to keep in mind that whatever we innovate and is effective for this season, in another season, may not be equally as effective. So if that is true, innovation is not just an outcome. It's a journey. Right? It's an ongoing journey of exploration. because that requires two things at its core vulnerability, and humility. And and I can speak more to that if if if. But But yeah, I think that, yeah, well, I think I think the reason why it requires vulnerability is because innovation always inherit some measure of risk. And so I think one of the things we always encourage our team and our leaders to do is what we like to do is say we institutionalise failure. Now, everybody, some people don't like that word. So we can often say to, we ensure that we institutionalise offseasons. If you know anything about athletes, there is an offseason and in the offseason, every athlete I've ever known is a time they try things that they won't try on the normal season. Well, the challenge with Church is, we don't have an offseason. So all year round, people expect you to just keep doing the same thing and keep doing the same thing. And so talking to an athlete one time and it really clicked for me, he said, I try all my new things, when nobody sees so that when the game shows up, I have been able to fail in private. So what we often do is trying to give our team like, Hey, here's a month where I want you to fail, like recently in a staff meeting at our team would have you failed at recently. And I gave to people gift card for just being vulnerable about their failure, giving people permission to take vision centred risk, not the difference in risk just for his sake, sure. But to be vulnerable enough to take vision centred risk. But the other thing I think that innovation is a journey reminds us is that, you know, innovation doesn't just show up instantly, it is a ongoing process of humility as well, that it pushes us to learn from every voice in our community. It pushes us to learn from every voice on our team. It pushes us to not be satisfied with solely our own opinion. And that requires humility, it requires us saying, hey, somebody understands this problem better than me. And if we're going to create a healthy solution, we got to bring new voices to the table. So I also think it creates a healthy influx of collaboration, and working genius as well for us to ultimately take the journey towards healthy solutions so that we can continue to keep the gospel moving forward.
David Mckeown 17:24
Yeah, there's a lot of great content in there for it. And I like that approach with the staff that idea of embracing failure, not be frightened of it, and being willing to learn. And I like this idea of, of innovating. Describe for us a little bit more about what are the things are you any reading across the life of the Church? I mean, you've said the fifth Sunday thing that's pretty remarkable for a lot of churches. What else are you doing
Nathan Benger 17:49
and we might have lost them. Okay, Dave, Dave asked that question again. We lost Yeah.
David Mckeown 17:57
Well, I'll certainly yes. I'll ask that question again.
Vernon Gordon 18:00
Well, while we're pausing really quickly, is everything going good so far? Do you guys like do the answers need to be consolidated or is everything moving? Okay, for you guys.
David Mckeown 18:09
Okay, brilliant. We're happy with that? Yeah. Okay, perfect. How about you? So? Are we all back then? Yeah, we're all back. We're in Cyprus. So So I love that idea of innovation. You've been sharing their energy speak, good to find out what are the things you're trying as a Church? What are you embracing? And how do you? How do you feel in a way where it's not seen by other people? Does that make sense? So we try things like you've said it with the staff? Is there any other ways you do that as well?
Vernon Gordon 18:43
Certainly. So, you know, one of the things we do, I mentioned this Sunday already, that was one of our original forms of innovation, I guess I would say, as an evangelistic part and initiative. One of the things we're doing is something called Shalom weekends. And so we've just launched this, it has been phenomenal. So so far, so good. And it's been really interesting to see the feedback we receive what it means is every first, second and third weekend, we gather together for our traditional worship experiences, but on the fourth weekend of every month, we gather together in intimate gatherings very similar to the attitude Church. And while there are a home gatherings that we develop and curate across cities and counties and across the country, as well as some community gathering, so we kind of allow for people to also say, hey, I want to influence my neighbourhood so I'm, I am actually renting out my clubhouse and inviting all my neighbours. We have people who are on AAU basketball teams, and I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with that name, but AAU here is the Amateur Athletic Union and this basically means that young people are travelling more than their parents. They travel all summer with a sports team to different states. Well, we started to mobilise these parents and said saying, Hey, you don't like the gospel doesn't stop because you're out of state. How about you gather all of these kids and their parents around a table in a conversation. And then we have on site gatherings for people to come and be around the table as well. Still, the worship tech, still some shared word, and then we create way more space for a table dialogue. And the thought here is simply this, that people would again, going back to that idea of being seen known and love, that when when they come into a service, they sit they experience, and then we got to get them out of there, because the parking lot got to be has to be cleared for the next service. But this is actually an opportunity for more intimate dialogue, it is an opportunity to create space for community building initiatives. And what we also have found is it is an opportunity for people to take ownership of their faith attorney in new ways, you know, to say, Hey, I'm not just in my neighbourhood, God may have me on assignment in my neighbourhood. And so people are really taken to this idea of being on mission that the Great Commission is not just to show up at Church, but to do something when you leave it. So that's been one of the most exciting forms. It's taking every working genius we have on our team from the technological side, to those who are great community evangelists, and all of those different things. We also are building out an app that is really the heart behind our app, our objective has been, how do we make a how do we make the heart of our Church one tap away. And so everything from not only video content that is discipleship centred. But we also are looking to have a part of that app, be something that is socially centred. We have something now called community groups where people get a chance to connect around sewing and crafts and all the other things we've heard about, but what does it look like people to be able to access that on an app and say, Hey, we're cooking together tonight. And you can do it from anywhere. So those are some of the ones that I'm really, you know, just excited about that are coming to fruition. And and they certainly had us up late at night, but we're excited about them so far. Yeah. Now,
Nathan Benger 22:04
it sounds amazing.
David Mckeown 22:06
Lots of great ideas.
Nathan Benger 22:09
Yeah, and for Nathan, I love I love the thought of being innovative. And I love that thought of being in a Church that is innovative. But just thinking about that. What are some of the barriers that you personally may have faced as a leader, but also that you may have faced as a Church, even just thinking around this idea of being innovative, and even tackling the questions of But aren't we? Aren't we just a Church? Shouldn't we just do this? So yeah, I wonder if you could speak into that, Vernon?
Vernon Gordon 22:44
Certainly, and I'll try to offer some healthy solutions. I don't just sound pessimistic. But certainly, we have received our fair share of emails and complaints from love in our Church explained right from top givers from key influencers. Hey, if you keep going down this path, I don't know if this is the right place for me. So we've experienced that. Certainly, you know, one of the barriers we've also experienced is, again, just going back to the earlier point of the risk of failure. At the end of the day, innovation requires some measure of risk. And there have been certainly things that we've tried and said that didn't go as planned. And and that loses ultimately, right, that loses some equity. When you present the next idea, you lose a little bit of equity. So I do think we have to acknowledge those realities, the emails, the those who would prefer something more stable, as well. I will also say one of the things I would encourage every leader to understand is that this is why I talk about like all seasons or seasons of experimentation and innovation. Because one of the things we do recognise that the Church is a stabilising place for so many people and families. And we don't want them to lose that stability, particularly in the light of the uncertainty in the in the this the uncharted waters of our world. Always but certainly over the last couple of years, the Church has been a place of stability, and it's been a steady space. And so we try to make sure we're also managing the win, so that we do not improperly steward people's need for a consistency from us. And so I think those are some of the things that we do try to take into consideration. Some of the solutions to that has been one example has been just communicating vision casting, when we will be trying new things and I have been amazed to see how that helps. Our congregation kind of say, Okay, I know my Church is in this series of experimentation. We may say something like, Hey, we're doing something this weekend and next weekend and we're trying something You, and we would love for you to be in the building to take this journey with us. And what we're doing is we're inviting them to be innovators with us. And, and typically, as I lead up to those moments, I also would encourage any leader to do this. Preach innovation through scripture, so that you align people's theology to your sociological ask, right? It's like, Hey, I'm gonna challenge you, sociologically to try something new to engage differently. Yeah, but let me tell you where that sociology starts with a proper theology. Look out, Jesus did this look, the disciples in the apostles did this, and look what the outcome was, as a result of them trying something different of them approaching community different. And so we try to make sure we we always start with the theology of innovation, before we launch something, the sociology of innovation. And so I think that's been some of the ways we've handled that here. The last thing I would just say, is, it's okay to take parallel paths. One of the things that I think a mentor of mine really helped me to understand is that he said, Bernard, you're so excited to do some of these projects and initiatives and, and if you're a, you know, an apostolic leader, or an innovator like me, and a pure breed extrovert, you have a new idea. After every conference, you go to, you know, people, people dread you going, I know, there's at least one leader listening to this, like, yeah, that's me, people dread going away to a conference because they know when you come back, you're going to have a brand new idea is gonna surrounding everything that we've been working on. But one of the things that he encouraged me on that really helped me process this, he said, Vernon, okay to do parallel paths, it's okay to pilot things, while you keep the ship steady over here. And in order to do that, ultimately, that is made possible through margin, right, it's like, Hey, we're gonna keep this going. But there's 20 people over here, or there's 50 people over here, depending on the scale of your ministry. And, and I think they were really buy into this idea of what we're trying to curate, we're going to invite them to walk parallel to our Church still being aligned with vision and mission, but know that they're, they're being welcomed in to a parallel journey to, to expose them and experiment with what could be the new way in which we want to try to express the gospel. So I think those are some of the ways we've tried to navigate some of those tensions when they when they appear.
Nathan Benger 27:28
Yeah, really great, really great. Well, Vern, and we want to thank you so much for being part of the church explained podcast today. And it's been so good to chat with you Vernon around Church, but also around innovation. And I know leaders listening to this will have so much to take away. So a big thank you, Vernon, for being with us today and want to thank all of our listeners today. And remember, if you want to support what we do, then share, subscribe, leave a review, however, you're consuming this content and please do that. Also share it with someone that you may know that this conversation would benefit them and don't forget, we've got all of our free resources at IKON dot Church forward slash open and you can get signed up for exclusive free contact content and get access to that so we look forward to being together next time on the church explained podcast. We will see you soon.
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