CEP SEASON THREE EP: 25 - WITH GUEST ERIC MORRIS
By Dave Mckeown and Nathan Benger
In part two, we talk with Eric Morris, discussing the importance of creating a clear focus for Sunday services and building a recipe for an excellent service that leaders and church members would want to attend.
Eric also emphasises the importance of building a solid Biblical foundation for church members, even if it means setting aside personal passions or beliefs that may not fit with the current focus of the church community. Other practical tips for effective communication and leadership are also shared, making this episode a valuable guide for church leaders and members looking to build a strong, focused, unified community.
SHOW NOTES
FULL TRANSCRIPT
David Mckeown 0:00
Welcome to the church explained podcast a conversation to grow your leadership and build your Church. Your building is a Sunday services and they had a real clear focus that what what sort of place did like ancient traditions, the relevance of the Bible play in those services for you? What are your services focused on?
Eric Morris 0:29
So one of the things that we we basically created a recipe. Okay, so, so we created a recipe of what's what's a great service for victory City Church, what are we? What do we love? And we started with his idea of not what do we think they will love? What a we love? Like, what, what what do we what service? Do we if we were coming to a Church, what would we want? And so we came with a few things. And we begin to just list out, like, here's what, here's what a powerful service that we would attend. Because my thing is, if I am creating a service for somebody else, but I don't really like it, and I'm creating it for them, I'll never own it, and I'll get tired of it. And in two years, I'm gonna go forget this thing, I'm gonna create something new. But if I love it, then I can own it for a while until God begins to speak or, you know, all those types of things. So, one of the things was, we wanted to opening song that was exciting. We wanted like, the first song was not slow and down and contemplative, you know, and, you know, sometimes you open a service, and it's like, oh, and I'm like, No, let's, we're in Church. Let's celebrate. Yeah, so. So that became the recipe and every time we would come into a service planning, it was like, Okay, does that song hit? Is that song exciting? Well, now it's kind of a medium, but the words are good. And like, I listen. That's great. But the recipe calls for an exciting song. Yeah, the next thing we did was no weird language. So in our songs, we are not going to use lyrics and language that does not connect with a 40 year old guy. And we pick that idea out of going like, you know, the 40 year old guy, that's Billy Bob out in the farm, or, you know, blue collar, dude, if he walks into my Church, and there's a great song, we just went over as a staff, and there's a line in it that says, I want to be your laid down lover as a worship song. And I was like, Why did you just pitch me this song? And they're like, because, because the song is song is so good. And I go, bro, like, I don't want to sing to God, I want to be your laid down lover. Like, and he goes, he goes, No, but it means to lay your life down and be I go, I've know what it means. I know. It's just freaking weird. And I said, I'm not going to ask the grown men in my Church to come in and swoon to that. So So, so again, that was a recipe for us to be evaluate. Again, one of the recipes was I never preach after announcements. Because of the flow. I wanted to preach out of worship, people's hearts are ready, we come in, we bring the Word. And then when it does, when it did come to announcements, it was like we announced one thing. We talked to our guests, we talked about giving, and then hey, if you're interested, we have this. And we detailed the language, right? So like, hey, when when we say this, we we never say hey, we need you. Right? Right. It's never like, hey, we were not the desperate girlfriend. It's always all of our hosting language is, hey, this is something for you. And here's how it will benefit you. Here's how to grow you. When our with our giving. We, we never say take up our offering, we always say receive, hey, we receive we use language like thank you for your investment into the Church. So they're just like key languages that we would use. We began to build out like a three month strategy around giving, again, so detailing our service, okay, is this. And so every weekend, it's either a giving mention, right? So sometimes I just need 30 seconds. I'm not going to hit it for a long time. Sometimes there's a giving teaching, okay, that's a four minute, or sometimes it's a giving testimony. And that's a three to four minute. And so we began to kind of when we looked at our services, okay, you know, sometimes it's just mentioned, hey, there's giving available you can do it online. There's giving boxes at the end, boom, boom, boom, cool. Well, and I was super nervous because I was like, well, if we're not going to, but but again, we went to the idea of like, if I'm attending a Church, I don't I'm ugly. Ever, I don't need you to do a whole spiel of wash I'm going to give anyways. And then there's people who don't. And so we've got those other supplemental weekends for them. But what it began to do was, we were able to talk about giving without pressuring people into giving, and our finances went up, because they began attending a service that they really enjoy. So, excuse me. So we began to just kind of detail that recipe of what a service looks like, that we wanted to attend. And, and you know, sometimes we don't get it, right. But that really helped our whole team kind of rally around. Okay, this is what we wanted to do. We went as detailed as going like when it comes to lighting, we don't want a bunch of movement. Like, I don't want a bunch of movement in our lighting, you know, the splash and trash lighting? I don't want a bunch of flashing on and off. Because, again, I don't think people care about that as much. So so it was one of those like, we literally went just do we did an autopsy of every element in our service. And how do we how do we make this fit? How does what does this look like? How do we detail it out? And that's how we came up with our service recipe.
Nathan Benger 6:05
Wow. So good, good stuff there. Yeah. Isn't it really Yeah, and even just the idea of doing an autopsy on your service, I think he's just a great idea. Because I think for many people, they'll just do the service. They've always done. This, this, this is the structure we've always done. This is the way it flows, three songs and a tag and then let's do our offering and announcements and then let's go into the message. And then let's have a little response. And then we've got not not not telling you what we do here at IKON shirt, by the way.
Speaker 3 6:36
But yeah, but I think it's just great to do to do that as well. Just thinking of this season as a leader. Eric, what's the what's the greatest win for you at the moment?
Eric Morris 6:50
Probably right now, people know their Bible. We the theological challenges we are facing is so massive. You know, people, it's kind of like it's kind of like moving into a home that's already furnished, are moving into a home that's unfurnished. For too long the Church has talked to furnished homes, that there's already a furniture of a framework of biblical understanding that's been passed down generationally, we are now dealing with unfurnished homes that don't have don't have the, the kind of working understanding. And, and so for us, the big thing has just been like people don't know how to read their Bible, they don't know how to understand the different texts. Okay, is this a narrative text is poetry is this apocalyptic? And so we have really kind of leaned in and we're, and we haven't solved it yet we are. That's the big focus for us is going do people know good theology, because that's going to be the basis that's going to frame their worldview. And then that's going to actually help us build a build a really solid, solid Church. So you know, even from message prep, like it's not it's not really life coaching. You know, one thing in America here, you get a lot of like spiritualize Tony Robbins, where it's like, kinda like, hey, help you live your best life. But people don't understand why. And like, Why should I trust the Bible? What, what are some of the doctrinal truths. And so, one thing that we started doing is we incorporate the Apostles Creed, once a month in our service, where we do a public confession, I talk about the importance of confession, I talk about, hey, what you're seeing is a modern expression of an ancient faith, and we are stewards of this faith. And so we confess the Apostles Creed and, and it's amazing to me how many Gen Zers love it. They're like, this is awesome, right? Because this feels like, like weighty and serious and, and just by adding the Apostles Creed and you know, which, you know, I don't know. You know, what your congregants would you know, I'm sure. You know, I don't know if the Church of England does that. I know. You guys are. Are you guys Church of England? No, no, no.
Unknown Speaker 9:15
Yeah.
David Mckeown 9:17
We do believe. In fact, we do have had on our discipleship website. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. A lot of practices on there. And we feature with the Apostles Creed on their own of why it's important.
Eric Morris 9:33
Yeah, yeah. One of the things that's honestly probably one of the most powerful moments at any of our services is we'll come out of a worship song. And then we'll go, Hey, this is the Apostles Creed. We're going to confess this together. If you're not a believer, or you're a please don't feel obligated, but we're gonna say this together, and then to get 400 People confessing that, it's just, it's moving. It's one of those things. It's like, you know, and It really kind of helps people go. Okay. And it gives them a theological framework again, of just little drips, right, you know? Yeah. So I'd say that's, that's probably the biggest challenge that we're we're trying to figure out. And so one of the things that we're doing is with all of our leaders, we are, we are calling it our killer PS. And basically, we're detailing out. I can't do this with every person, but the people who have said, hey, I want to be on the Dream Team I want to serve. So that's about 300 people in our Church of going, Okay, we are going to personally connect with you, we're going to personally develop you and personally disciple you. So we are basically building out a curriculum, where we're going to do 15 minute talks kind of video like this. And it's going to feel like the old school Sunday school, right? It's going to go, let's talk about the doctrine of sanctification. And it's, and we're not fluffing it up, we're not like, it's just meat and potatoes. And, and man, like, our people love it. Because they're, they want to know, they, they want to understand it. And then when you place value on them, and then we discuss it, hey, okay, that personal connection. Okay, hey, what do you think? What are some challenges? Do you have any questions? And we walked through with people like that. And so that's kind of one of the ways we're attacking that.
David Mckeown 11:18
Grey? Yeah, yeah. So good. So I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about this idea of the 15% rule, and how we've, we've talked about this, again, offline. And I was quite interesting when you're dealing with aims or leaders or volunteers, just this idea of last 15%? Yeah, not for us.
Eric Morris 11:40
Well, one of my favourite quotes is by Marcus Aurelius. That said, it's the organisation of the non obvious that leads to victory. And so where this idea, one of our values is we make our own juice. And so once one, Saturday, I was making juice, orange juice for my kids. And we were all doing it together, they wanted to do it. And their little hands, they could squeeze half an orange, and it would make some juice. But then you got the tool, you know, or the, you know, you do the whole thing, you squeeze it, and that's where more juice came out. And I got this idea of going, it doesn't take a lot of effort to get to 80 85%, right, you kind of look and you go, Okay, well, this is obvious, we got to do this, we got to do this, we got to do this. But the non obvious or that last 10 to 15% is really what makes it special. So again, a little small detail was, okay, our lobbyists set up, and then I will sit with our team, when they think everything is done, right. Okay, we did all this. And I go, Okay, it's not done. And I, as a leader have to do that. And go, what else have we not thought about? And you know, there's usually 10 to 15 minutes of like, oh, I don't know, we got the check in tables, we got this and all that kind of stuff. But typically what happens is somebody around the room will go. And so for I'll give you an example for our lobby, they were like, Yeah, we're sitting, it's been 1520 minutes. I'm like, now we got to come up with something. Come on, let's think through it, right. And it's, it's being willing to sit in that for a minute and go now we got to think through this. And then one of the people go, Well, what about what about the way it smells? And I was like, Okay, let's get on that. Because it was something that nobody had even thought of nobody had even notice. And so we got, we went, This is so cheesy. This is so low budget, but it's amazing. What it does. We went and got plugins, and we got plugins from Walmart, which is our you know, I mean, I don't know as to. And so we went and got plugins, and we plugged them in in our lobby, and I'm not kidding you, we probably had 50 people that we can go. And it smells so nice in here. And that was an example of just the kind of the unconscious, you wouldn't even thought about it. But going, Okay, what's that extra juice? What's that extra thing that we can do? Every service planning, every service planning, I sit down, we go through the service, and I go, alright, I What's the juice? Where, where? Where are we going? Where are we we look at our service, what's the extra thing? And again, that just that just becomes a development thing. Right? Then your staff starts doing it. Then your leaders and you ask your leaders Hey, your volunteer leaders. Okay, cool. You've thought through this. What's, what's the juice, where's the extra 10% And that's usually the hardest. But it's the funny thing is, it's the thing that you thought of last is going to be the thing that your guest thinks of first because they see it and we find that on a regular basis. So, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 14:52
the last 15% Yeah, go on. Go for it. No, I'm
Eric Morris 14:57
just thinking like, even when you're writing your message When you're writing your message, and you've written your message, and you know how much a message is a labour of love, right? I mean, it's sometimes it's gruelling. And then when you finally get to the conclusion, you've got the notes, you're done. And you're like, Okay, good. Alright, I'll move on. It's done. It's cooked. But, but just maybe maybe walking away from it for an hour or two, or coming back the next day, and just going alright, what's, what's an illustration? What's a story? What's the point? What's the thought that maybe what didn't come to me initially. And I just let me just think through it, let me just sit for 30 minutes. And just think through maybe a little extra. And I find that when I do that, that just makes my messages maybe more clear. It makes me drive a point home in a in a more relatable way. You know, it's just, it's just a, it's just a practice that just helps you rather than going, alright, I've gotten written boom, it's done often. The next thing, just sitting in it. Okay. How can I link this a little bit more to mission or culture?
Speaker 3 15:58
Yeah. Not so good. It's so good. And yeah, just great, great principle, even even people in their personal lives as well. Just that last last 15%? Because many times we just get on yeah, I've done the thing. But actually, there might be something a little bit extra. Extra, right? Yeah. Yeah. Go go one more go one more, or whatever it might be. They talked about being laser focused. And some of these things, obviously, that we've talked about the practicalities or the cultural stuff within that, like the last 15%, you know, creating that recipe for your Sunday services. Was that was there a cost to being laser focused? Maybe for the Church, but also for you as well?
Eric Morris 16:45
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there always is. But I just would encourage somebody and I will say this, before I get into that, that the the reward typically is greater than the cost. And what that allows, when you're focused, there's always there's always going to be the extra that you're not able to get to get to. I mentioned, I mentioned it earlier. And I'll just reference it again. We there was a lot of families who had teenagers, but because we didn't have a youth group, basically said, Hey, we're choosing, we're choosing to go somewhere else. And I said, Listen, I love you, I totally get that not a problem, you've got to prioritise your teenagers. But what ended up happening because we were so focused on Sunday in our with our kids ministry, is that our younger kids exploded, it was like we ran out of kids space. And for us, it was kind of one of those things of okay, this is a win. And now we got all these kids in the pipeline. And as they get older, we're going to bring a youth Pastor online, and then all these kids that have been in our Church for three, four or five years, we're going to seamlessly move them in. So for for us being able to stay in that and go, Okay, this is, this is what we want to do. And what ends up happening is when you do launch it and you go, Okay, we are now at add, be able to add it, it fits in culturally, it fits in kind of to the groove rather than just feeling like this bolt on piece that doesn't really feel organic to your ministry. But you're doing it just because you want you want to do it. For me, personally, you know, I'm from a charismatic background. So like, we talked about the gifts of the Spirit, we talked about the the fullness of the Spirit. I knew I couldn't go there in the first few years of my Church. So I was really laser focused on just building trust with my Church, before I took them into a space where a lot of people were gonna go, Okay, are we about to get weird. And I, and I don't do it in a weird way. I'm not an A. But but for me, I had to, I had to not speak on something that I was deeply passionate about. And that was massively transformative in my life. Because I knew I'm focused right now on building trust with my Church, building up good biblical believers. And if I do that, right, then when I go to this, there's, there's going to be a level of trust there. And they're going to be willing to go with me. And we've seen that and we just came out of a series. We called it holy roller. And we we just took some fun with it, you know, the old like, oh, you're a holy roller and, and had some fun and we went there. And it was it was amazing to see people who came from, you know, typical mainline denominations or had no framework of power of the Holy Spirit in their life. And then we talked about that, it was like, so that focus allowed me to build really good trust. At the cost of going in. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hold off on this for a minute.
David Mckeown 19:51
And thinking of the transformation, then you think you've described a great transformation within the Church or the last three years, going from whatever led people to line up and 50 A core team of 300 people here strongly with you all that stuff. Brilliant. What emphasis did you place on communication, you know, to bring about that transformation, and maybe even some of the practical things you did to make communication stick?
Eric Morris 20:19
Yeah, we tried to leverage as many technical technology tools as possible. So we use clear stream, which is a texting service, and we have a texting. We have a texting calendar. And so we text we text our whole Church every week. And then we text our core team every week. So the whole Church is, hey, here's what's coming up. And the core team is here's the play of the day for the weekend. So we're regularly doing that. I asked my all of my departments that they've got to do quarterly trainings, or appreciations. So it's on the calendar, you've got to get your teams together to train and equip them or appreciate them you got to pick and so like, literally, we're I mean, it's hot in Texas. I hear it's hot over there right now. But I think it's a I think it's a different hot guys. Yeah, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But, but so I think like, you know, like our worship team, they're doing a pool party. And so So, you know, and, and even when you're doing appreciation, like vision and culture leaks and those things, and then you get the side conversations that it's like, oh, yeah, we're gonna do this. And this is cool. But putting, making that like a standard was something that was really important. We instituted a dream team huddle. This isn't new. This isn't like, this isn't a new, cool. You guys have probably heard about that. But again, we detailed okay, what is the huddle? So it started out where it was like a mini message, you know, like whoever was given the huddle would give like a five, seven minute sermon, I was like, why are we giving them a five minute 75 minute sermon when they're about to hit our 40 minute sermon? I said, a team huddle should feel like a locker room. Here's the objective, here's the win. Here's what we have. And so it became cultural. It came like an actual huddle like, here. Okay, we're we're trying to focus on intentional conversations around the outreach event. So during the lobby, asking people, Hey, are you coming to the outreach event, so it was very much like a play of the day, rather than like a motivational like hoorah. And what that did is, again, provided clarity for people, and you do that 52 times a year, your people start catching it, right, here's why we do this, here's a cultural behaviour, this is and always linking it to that. Probably the other thing is like on a regular basis, like I think one of the big things that kind of my generation and under struggle with his generosity, and talking about giving, we regularly would would take share celebrations. And again, those communication moments from the platform communicate value. So probably once a quarter, I'll get up and go, Hey, can I just tell you how many people in the last three months have started giving here at Victory City Church? And again, it's a missional thing. And we go, you know, I think the last number was like 317 people have given to victory city for the first time. Can we just celebrate? It's an amazing step. Like that's, that's incredible, right? Or, Hey, can I just tell you how many guests we've had in the past? You know, a quarter we've had 200 guests? Are you kidding me? This is amazing. Thank you for inviting, so always thinking like, how am I dripping this right? How's that IV drip just like, you know, dropping in. And that's that's been that's been pretty pivotal.
David Mckeown 23:36
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So we've had a little bit of time left on Yeah. We got one more question. And I think we'll do our quickfire questions. We'll probably not do them all. Questions, but one of the things to ask is like, what are you most proud of like, personally, as a leader in your leadership journey so far?
Eric Morris 23:59
You know, I saw this question, and I've been thinking over it. And I wanted to come up with a cooler answer, but I don't have one. Here's, here's my answer. Is that I'm still in it. And I still love it.
David Mckeown 24:16
Right? Like,
Eric Morris 24:19
you know, like ministry will kick your butt. Sorry. For now, it's okay. Okay. It will kick. Yeah, it'll kick in the teeth. And it's one of those things of going, if you're still in it, and you're still loving it. That's a win, man. That's a win. And I think help what's helped is just, me personally staying close to the Lord. And, you know, obviously keeping your relationship with God personally. Really, really close. But I think I just see so many really talented men and women and gifted and anointed and you know They they throw the towel in. And yes, there's moments where God has different plans for them. And that's amazing, but but the idea of just running the race, man and just stay in it stay in the game so that I know, I know there's going to be levels, right? You're going to walk through a season where you feel like all I got is 30%. And I tell people all the time, 30% is better than zero. Stay in it. Trust the Lord, lean in and get help. Especially on like, the mental health, like I'm a big, I'm a big thing like get counselling, get counselling, go to a counsellor, like talk to somebody, you gotta have somebody you can, you know, and that's, that's played a huge role in my life of just having somebody I can process with, cuz ministry is lonely. Or it can, it can deceive you into thinking it's lonely, but there's just so many people, like, you know, like, I'm sure you've got guys that if they called you and like, Hey, can I grab a coffee with you? I'm just talking, you would go yes. Let's, what's going on? How can I help you? How can I encourage you? And that, that goes back to that passage in the New Testament man where where we carry one another's burdens and, and so I would probably say that now I'm most proud of and I see guys who are in it, and they're still loving it and they're still going for it. And I'm like, Yes, come on, man. Get on, you.
David Mckeown 26:21
Know, we're gonna pick for ya to eat to eat. Yeah, yeah. For quickfire questions. They are quick. So,
Speaker 3 26:29
quick answers. Quick answers. Yeah. Okay, I'll start with top one. What's your favourite podcast and why? And you can't pick the church explained podcast because we know this is your favourite. Yeah,
Eric Morris 26:39
I was gonna say that. Okay. Church Church explained second place. Honestly. Honestly, I love Joe Rogan. I like listening to Joe Rogan. And and why? Why? Because it helps me understand how the world thinks. Like, like, it helps me understand my audience.
Speaker 3 26:58
Yeah. Yeah. Have you listened all the way through one of his podcasts, by the way? Because they're about 10 hours long online.
Eric Morris 27:05
Yeah, I, I have but not in a single setting. Yeah. Right. You know, it's like, I'll come back to it. Yeah.
David Mckeown 27:12
Challenging telling finally. Good. Can you recommend two of your books that you've enjoyed recently? Yeah. Tell us about those.
Eric Morris 27:21
Yeah, I've got some over here that I just so here's the one I'm enjoying right now. This is doing my head end. It's a it's a Aquinas Summa. This is super deep. But it man it is so good. It is like challenging me. It's like a one page a day book. Right? Because it punches you in the face. The other one. The other one is was Bill bought by Bill Hybels, which was just leadership. And I know Bill Hybels is he's not a popular character now. Because of some of the things but but the way he talked about the local Church, oh my goodness, like, that's the hope of the world. I'm sitting on a plane from Jamaica, on a missions trip reading that book. And I'm, I'm not a crier. I'm bawling my eyes out because I'm like, this is the freakin hope of the world. Let's go do this. Who can you know? Say he's gonna die? Types of brilliant.
Speaker 3 28:19
Well, we'll change tack from Satan's gonna die to If you could travel anywhere in the world. Where would you go and why?
Eric Morris 28:27
Manchester Tuesday night Champions League game old trapper? Well, Rick will remind you not No, I'm kidding. Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Well, chi five, no, no, no, my wife and I we love the UK. And so we've gone to London. We've gone to bath like I love the culture. I love the banter. I love the I love the personality. I've been to Italy. I've been to like the beach. You know, a cold rainy day at Stoke. That's a good day. Yeah, yeah. No it's only beuliss Yeah. No, I love it. I love London. We went to the there's a market Borough Market and in London, and we loved it. It was yeah, I just love it.
David Mckeown 29:14
So much he has a final question is if you could choose a super car. What would you choose? And why?
Eric Morris 29:24
You I saw this one too. I'm gonna go real Sunday school on you. I want the same wisdom that Solomon had. No, right. Yeah, right. I mean, you know if God tells Solomon you can have anything and Solomon picks wisdom. There's probably probably a reason why so like superpower wisdom. That'd be awesome. I know. That's not fun.
David Mckeown 29:46
Yeah, but you do get hopefully what Solomon got his well, he not only got wisdom, but he got the riches that night.
Eric Morris 29:53
Everything. Got everything, and a peaceful kingdom.
Unknown Speaker 29:57
And there we go. There we go.
David Mckeown 29:59
So lesson Eric has been great on the show. We've loved having you here. Just getting to know you a little bit and finding out some of your building Church loads under today. Yeah, loads loads. Amazing. Thanks for being with us. Hi. Can people find you that they want to connect?
Eric Morris 30:15
Yeah, Instagram is great. You know, hit me up on Instagram. My email is E Morris at Victory City DOT Church. If they have any questions, or if they want to see some of our stuff, I'm happy to share it. You know, my cell number is 417-230-8529 shoot me a text I'd love to connect. And yeah, I mean, however, I can help pastors, man leaders, like, like, I love it. Like, I'm in it. And I want to I want to see him win.
Speaker 3 30:46
Great. No, it's so good. And it's been great to chat with you, Eric. Even though you're a man united fan. I think this man this podcast has been amazing. And that's a wrap for the church explained podcast this time it's been great to be together. And if you could rate review, subscribe wherever you consuming this content and also share it with anyone you know that it will bless and help in their world. But that's been up to church explained podcast and we look forward to seeing you next time.
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