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It changes our people when they start praying for their friends and neighbors that are lost. I believe our identity in Christ. We're told in 2 Corinthians 5, that we're a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. And then in the same breath, Paul says, and we were a minister of reconciliation and an ambassador of Christ. You can't have new creation without an ambassador tied together. And so when our people aren't on mission and not just vaguely on mission like they're giving to the church or they're being somewhere behind a booth, they have to be actively on mission themselves and something lights up inside of them. And I think the pathway to get there, to get your people to be on mission, is to get them to start to pray.
Intro
You're listening to the City Network Podcast. Our mission is to grow and multiply healthy churches in the Treasure Valley and beyond. Head to thecitynetwork.org for more info on our initiatives to catalyze church transformation and church planting. Here's today's podcast.
Start of the Interview
Josh: All right, welcome back to the City Network podcast. I am your host for Today, Josh Branham. And I'm joined with our guest, Derek Murphy. How's it going, Derek?
Derek: I'm doing great, Josh. How are you doing?
Josh: Really good. Super excited to have you on here. I got to know Derek a little bit through mutual ministry friends, but Derek is it the Executive Director?
Derek: That's right, yeah, the Executive Director of recently September yeah, of the Intermountain Church Planning Association.
Josh: So, yeah, I've been able to get to know Derek through participating in a church planning assessment with them, and we even have hung out a couple of times. And Derek's just a great guy. Super excited. Thanks for being on here. I wanted to just start by asking you if you could just share a little bit about your ministry journey from the Cliff Notes version, your call to Ministry, what roles have you served in over the past, what brought you to this new point as being an Executive Director of a church planning organization?
Derek: Yeah, well, first off, I think for your audience, I'm an Idaho boy from Boise, grew up on five acres out in southwest Boise. And, yeah, just love the area. And yeah, in ministry, I was part of a small church there in Southwest Boise. I felt called to the ministry as I was graduating high school, was enrolled, and already going to Boise State, but dropped out and went to Boise Bible College, actually. And, yeah, through the years, went to seminary in Tennessee, preached a little church for three years while I was out there, and just realized there's got to be more than what this church experience was. We grew, but it seemed really unhealthy. The church I read about in the Bible has got to be different. So that's when I got involved in the world of church planting, I went and did a residency with Real Life on the Palouse up in Moscow / Pullman area and was planning just to be there a year. Ended up staying seven and a half. Helped start two new campuses of Real Life. We were multi-campus. Those are now independent churches and I learned a lot about discipleship, which is what landed me in Salt Lake City is where I'm at now, and I've been here five years, and we're launching a new church out of K2 The Church I'm at right now. I'm planting a church as well as taking over the Intermountain Church Planners as Executive Director. So we got a few things on the plate.
Josh: Yeah. Not very busy though, I would imagine. Pretty relaxed.
Derek: Yep, but still trying to sabbath in there.
Josh: You've got a lot of experience for someone who's not super old. I mean, think about just all those different contexts, someone who has all those on their resume. I mean, you're looking they've got to be 60, 70 years old. Podcast listeners can't see you right now if they're just listening in.
Derek: I’m 37, just so you got an idea.
Josh: 37. Okay, so just imagine people can imagine that. But two things I just want to touch on there. One was just that experience in Tennessee. There are probably a lot of church leaders who have that. Like maybe we're experiencing some growth or victories or perceived victories, but I don't feel like we have health. Is there anything you would say to someone who feels like they're in a situation like that other than just trying to get out of that situation? But I know a lot of churches are in that place right now in that situation. American churches are experiencing unhealth at a really high level. So any wisdom or any thoughts on someone who would say, man, I feel like my church is in that spot?
Derek: What got me through were two mentors. I'd say John Wasem he was one of my professors, and he was with Stadia and then Stephen Edwards, who was the Executive Director with Intermountain Church Planners, who was my predecessor and is still on staff (Idaho Director). Both those guys were pouring into me, heavily discipling me and helping me deal with and navigate all the pitfalls and landmines and all that sort of thing. So I'd say, get somebody in your life who you can talk with and who will help you with your spiritual formation as well. And all that would be the best thing I could say. And I'll pray for you.
Josh: Were both of those guys outside of your context?
Derek: Well, John was in Tennessee at the time, and so he was local. He was not in my church.
Josh: In your church context? Yeah. I think that's huge. Sometimes you kind of start to feel crazy a little bit in certain cultures where you're like, I feel like I'm the only one who notices this thing that's going wrong. It's like normal to everyone or whatever, this doesn't seem right. This, that, or the other. There's a million different problems we could talk about, but having someone outside that you can just ask questions, even vent in healthy ways so that you don't end up having that frustration spew over an unhealthy way, you're part of the problem now.
Derek: Certainly did that.
Josh: Yeah, but that's huge. I think that's so important. Tell me a little bit about the transition into involvement in the Intermountain Church Planning Association. First of all, for people who aren't super familiar with parachurch organizations, like, what does the ICPA do and then what was your transition into now leading? It essentially look like. So what does it do and how did you get involved and get more involved there?
Derek: Yeah, I'd say Intermountain Church Planters. First of all, we like to think of ourselves you could definitely pin me down on the parachurch thing, but we like to think of ourselves as a network of churches that rather than just some organization outside of the church.
Josh: Right.
Derek: I like to very much try to think of ourselves as inside of the church. All of our staff works in other churches, and we've got a board of people that are all part of churches. We're just deciding to work together, not because we're part of a denomination, but just because we want to move the mission forward through church planting. So that's who we are. And yeah, I'd say the way I got involved was Steve Edwards, he started investing me when I was young, still in high school, and then I interned for him when I was in Bible College. So I've been involved with ICPA for over 20 years, I'd say. And I was on the board of the Intermountain Church Planters Association for eleven years before I was hired. So I've been engaged a long, long time in that world.
Josh: Yeah. What kind of things do you guys do to help either new church plants or help churches that are struggling get healthy? And who would maybe if someone who's listening to this and they're like, I think we could call them or I think we should contact them, what kind of church would be like a good candidate for to get a conversation going about you guys coming alongside them and helping out.
Derek: Yeah, so primarily we work with new churches, but we do also work with established churches. I'm doing a discipleship meeting with the church in central Idaho in February, March. We're still pinning down a date right now. We're going to be sending one of our staff, part-time staff in Oregon to get trained up in Intentional Churches. So they are a church coaching platform, using Church OS and all that. Mike Whitford will be doing that. So we do some work with established churches, especially those that we've planted. But yeah, we'd love to chat with anybody who's interested in learning more, I guess I'll tell you what we do for new churches so you understand that. And then maybe if other churches want to reach out, that's fine. But I'd say we specialize in some of the things that churches don't typically specialize in.
I guess churches do Sunday morning experiences, events, discipleship, preaching and all these sorts of things. We really specialize in helping churches and networks in deciding who would be a good church planter. So we do assessments like you mentioned. We help church planters do research, and demographic studies. We help train them how to be fundraisers because now they're full-time fundraisers as they go out. We give them materials like sending them off to boot camps to learn how to figure out their vision and mission and put that on paper. We help them with temporary leadership before their elders are appointed or some sort of board. We will put together management teams from churches regionally that can help in the leadership. We pair them with coaches and mentors. Obviously we help with funding as well. That's one of the big things that we do for new churches, because there's a lot of capital needed to invest, and we've got partner churches that are giving money to us, and then we're helping discern what church planters we can give to. And then just in the recruiting process, always looking to help recruit new people into areas and regions. So maybe that's just a summary, I guess if you want to pin down into any of those, we can do that. But that's some of what we do for new churches.
Josh: Yeah, no, that's huge. So I planted Hill City Church through a relaunch. So we were already at campus, just like you had mentioned, those two Real Life campuses that you had been a part of are now independent. I did that with Hill City Church. It was that model, you could say, of church plant. And even then there was just a ridiculous amount of things that it's like the classic things they don't teach you in Bible college, right? Yeah. And it's like, wait, how do I get a 501? Just like some of those things. And it's really like a lot of people have that. Maybe a lot of church planters might have that initial excitement and then all the tasks and the lead-up can kind of almost squash that sometimes where you might meet a church planter who's just planted a church that already burnt out because they're like they've been just trying to do it alone. And so yeah, I would encourage anyone who's interested. Where would someone find more information if they wanted to reach out and get a conversation going with the ICPA?
Derek: Yeah, intermountainchurchplanters.com is a great place to go. Get in touch with me. Or dmurphy@intermountainchurchplanters.com is my email. You can get me.
Josh: Cool.
Derek: We have connections with project management services as well to help you get through the process of putting together prayer teams, and figure out your 501c3. So it's really stressful and we want to make sure church planters are in front of people as much as possible.
Josh: Yeah, for sure. What would you say? I know you're always talking to church leaders very connected. Are you noticing any trends or things that have shifted in the last few years in church plants or church leadership? Kind of just like trends that people might not be aware of. Just you being a little bit more connected with some of these circles.
Derek: Yeah, I think one of the ones I'll give some positives and some negatives. Okay, so I'll start with negatives so we can go to a positive. But the negative is I think it's harder for church plants to get off the ground than ever right now, especially post-COVID. And that's what we're finding is that actually getting people in general, getting people to show up to church is really hard, as anybody who's a pastor, I'm sure listening to this, can understand. And so getting people to show up to a brand new church is even harder. So we're seeing that.
And so we're also seeing, that churches that are well established and well resourced actually are doing really well (at starting new church campuses). Like one of our churches, we partnered with that maybe some of your listeners may know, ECC, back in 1995, Eagle Christian, and they've got four campuses and they're (all) growing really well. They've got buildings and staffing and resources and so they're doing really well. But smaller churches that are trying to get off the ground are having a harder time and are struggling more. And so we'll see really good services put on by churches that are only having 30 to 50 people show up.
They've got the coffee and they've got the greeting team and they have a pretty good message and worship and generally, a good experience would show up in the door. And they're not having people show up in the same way that they were before. It used to be that you could just put on a good service and people would show up, that's not necessarily the case anymore. I'd say leading into that, smaller churches and new church plants are having to find ways to distinguish themselves differently than just putting on what you would typically think of when it comes to the church growth model type metrics. So there's a trend moving toward micro-church movements right now. I was at a church planners summit last year in Essence Park, Colorado, and I was surprised because this is personally where my church plant is going. And one of the reasons why I felt like I could do this by-vocationally as the ICPA Executive Director is that I'm doing a network of micro-churches. (Not because I think that's the only way you can go, but because that's where I feel like god was calling us.) And I thought this was what just God was doing in my heart. And then I showed up and there are all these other church planting movements, and younger leaders are demanding this from their church planning organizations that they're working with. And so there are all these people in these established church planting groups trying to figure out how do I do DMM and how do I do these other things? And so we see, I guess, a trend that way right now.
Another negative is that there is a huge leadership shortage right now. And something else I saw in that group of church planting organizations from all over the country is that there were church planting organizations for the first time saying we have more money than we have leaders. And that's not often the case within the church, as we know. There's usually a shortage of funds. To say, we've got money to plant churches, but we don't have church planters. That's something that we're seeing. And I think that's just across the board within church leadership, we're not seeing people step up into that setting. (For example), I'm talking with a couple of church planting candidates right now, and (one is) trying to figure out which direction he's going to go, if he wants to plant or if he wants to go to a new church. He's in an established role right now, but he's had great offers, (and we've lost church planting candidates to churches who give good offers). But this guy is just like, “I can wait”. There are going to be better offers coming in the future. I haven't seen that before.
I think there's a lack of good leaders out there right now. I think there's a need for young leaders and we don't have an answer necessarily for this problem, but definitely something to throw out there.
There is a need for training and disciple-making when it comes to raising up the next generation of leader, which is something I see groups like ours (The ICPA). Steve Edwards who I have taken over for, he's been developing young leaders for the last five years. He started grabbing young guys who were still in college, but then investing in them, discipling them, meeting with them weekly. He is still meeting with them over zoom while they're out in the ministry and trying to see the core of young leaders continue to rise and for them not to drop out, I think it's easy to get discouraged and drop out early. We're seeing that (leaders) who have one of those mentors, somebody investing in them over the long haul, stick it out. So we're hoping for some of that.
Josh: Yeah, that's been, honestly, our puzzle, right, is our church has grown numerically, spiritually. We've grown in those ways, and we want a plant, and we've kind of looked and looked, and it's like “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” Just is really kind of the epitome of where we're at. And so there's that idea of you can't microwave a church planter. You have to really disciple leadership into people over time. And it's kind of like, what's the answer? That's the answer, but it's not an easy answer. It's not a quick answer. Is there anything else you would say other than just that pouring into the younger leaders, people with potential? Anything that we can be doing as churches so that there wouldn't be this generational gap of it only takes a few short years where less and less people are saying yes to God's call before you look around, like, where have all of God's leaders gone?
Derek: Yeah. Well, I would say the one thing for local church pastors to think about is to realize you probably already have a few of these people in your midst and you may not see it. And because I've been doing more traveling and visiting churches. I see people with potential at every church. The funny thing is that the local church doesn't (always) see it because they’re thinking very myopically about “my church service”. So that person only fits within the structure that's in front of them. And so you got to think bigger than just your own church in order to start to develop these people for the future of the church. And so they don't have to go to Bible college or seminary. You can start developing them in-house, now, and start speaking those words to say, “Hey, I think you could do what I do”, and then maybe start meeting with them regularly.
Josh: Yeah, that's huge. I think it's kind of like we can't see, was is it? “the forest through the trees?” I think sometimes it's really helpful to have an outside person be like, that person is very legit. And you're like what? No, they're lame. You don't notice what you have till it's gone. One of the other things I think is so huge and that I always really appreciate about you and the ICPA culture as well, is we can always pray. And I just wanted to just hear a little bit about it and I know you have a big prayer initiative that if you could share a little bit about that, but just the importance of prayer, I think not only have we seen maybe an absence in passing the baton, so to speak, from one generation of pastors to the next, unfortunately, not every pastor is like Steve Edwards, who is just hungry for mentoring younger people. There's been a lack of transition plans for pastors to retire out of nowhere with no real plan there. But there's also, I think in some ways maybe an absence in prayer, maybe not holistically, but in praying specifically for this idea of praying for the lost to be found, praying for workers for the harvest. I just noticed sometimes our prayers get really focused on help us meet our budget, help our own church services, not to be so small after COVID like the prayers are very easily turned inward as opposed to outward towards the mission. And I know you have a huge heart for prayer, but specifically that kind of like missional-based prayer. So I was hoping you could share a little bit about this big prayer initiative that you're going after, but also just how church leaders can build a culture of that.
Derek: Yeah, that's great. Thanks for leading the way in that. I was listening to one of my African friends who has just an amazing prayer life talk about this recently and she said that when you pray just for yourself, your prayer life is pretty stale and boring. And so what praying for the mission does is actually focuses our eyes beyond ourselves and our own needs immediately and it ends up doing something to change us. And I think the reason why we pray for the mission is because, “Our vision exceeds our abilities.” David Garrison. I think a passion to pray starts with having a big vision. And we started so 20 years ago, we started praying over Utah. Steve Edwards started leading prayer teams down into the Salt Lake area, bringing people from other parts of the country to come pray. And at that time we saw five churches start out of a multi-year prayer initiative in Utah. And that doesn't sound like much, but for a group like us, it was big, especially 20 years ago. We are realizing that some of what happened was more significant than what we realized and there weren't church plants happening in that segment of time in Utah. And what it did is it not only frame board five churches for us and our group specifically, but it started an initiative of church planting in Utah. Also, for a time there were no church planters between year four and year eight. And now there's a group that's like the City Network down here in Salt Lake City called Loving Utah, and they were noticed now there is a group of 24 pastors that are new planters between year four and eight. And so you're going, wow, this is like a legacy that's led up to something really special in this valley. And so we're wanting to see a sort of revival take place, especially at this time. Because as we look at some of the issues I was bringing up in the trends, there's a leadership shortage, and we're in a very trying time. We don't actually have a model moving forward in church planting that is the “golden ticket,” I guess you could say the church growth model is becoming less and less effective every year. And so our only answer is prayer.
We've got a big vision of seeing 100,000 souls come to Christ in the next ten years. And then I started to do some demographic research on our area in the intermountain west, in Idaho and Utah especially, there's going to be a million new people that move in. And I went, oh, man, I hope there are more people who are thinking big. We need more people praying, and we need more than 100,000 people prayed for if we're going to see 100,000 reached. So we thought where we got to start is we got to start with prayer because it's overwhelming to start to think about how you break down the systems to get to 100,000 souls reached through church planting and the money it's going to take and the leadership it's going to take. And so this year, well, starting in 2023, we want to see 100,000 souls actually prayed for, individual faces. And so we're asking churches to actually encourage their people to pray for ten of their friends that don't know Jesus. And we're calling it People are the Prize because people are God's most prized creation. He loves them(us) so much. And then Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2:19, “for what is my joy, my hope, and my crown, that I will glory in the presence of Jesus Christ? And he says, “is it not you” my crown, my gold medal, it's people! It's this church (in Thessolonika). It's people actually knowing Jesus. And so we just want to lift up (people in prayer).
I think part of what we do as a group is help unite churches around the mission. And I think that's a beautiful thing that the City Network does as well. When we get together around the mission, God honors that, and we see him work in beautiful ways. But it doesn't just happen when we as pastors/church leaders pray. I think it's easy to be like, okay, Josh, we're going to get together and we're going to pray for 100,000. We actually need to mobilize our people to pray. And I think this is where you were talking about how the baton maybe hasn't been passed along. I shared this at your church, but I was reading in 1 Samuel, chapter 3. Samuel is hearing from God for the first time, and he doesn't know (it’s God). He thinks it's Eli. And it says at the beginning of that chapter, “the word of the Lord was rare in that time”. And I think one of the things that prayer does is it doesn't just coopt God to do what we asked for, but it aligns us with God's heart, because when we spend time in prayer, we start hearing the voice of God and it changes us and it aligns us. Not only does it align us with God, it aligns us with one another.
There's a guy down here in Utah County named Logan Wolf, and it's so funny. We've both been praying. We've both been seeing he's had actually 98 people baptized in the last year just by mobilizing his people to actually (pray and) evangelize. And he's a part of a small church, a small network of house churches, actually. We've been dreaming the same things because we're both praying and God's putting them on our heart. I put together a sermon series that we're going to be giving out to churches who are interested in this. And I sat in one of his classes at the last Loving Utah Summit we had in October, and he taught the exact same thing that we're putting together. And I'm just like, this is how God works. He aligns us as the body of Christ when we start praying and we start engaging with Him.
Josh: Yeah, that's huge. I love that idea. A lot of churches are dealing with division, right? The next presidential election is not that far away, and we're going to see those divisions in our churches. And I think, man, not to sidestep the issue of divisiveness, but getting everyone moving the same direction, “seeking first the kingdom” is ultimately going to be the best strategy for because we realize how sometimes petty some of the divisions that people leave churches over this, that or the other, right? Some things more serious than others, obviously. But man, if we could see a return to prayer and a heart for the loss, compassion, right? That's what Jesus feels when he sees the loss. He feels compassion. And I think that's so huge. I would just encourage any church leader just like, be praying, obviously. I mean, that sounds very small, like, hey, if you are leading at a church, you should be praying. But we've got to help others catch that culture as well. And the disciples ask Jesus, “teach us to pray.” It needs to be taught and taught not just in a sermon. We're going to do a serious sermon series on prayer, okay? I taught everyone. It's like we need to teach our churches to pray. Like we teach our children to pray, which is to pray with them and let them pray with us and just spend time doing it. Don't be scared to say the same thing over and over again. I think we are always under the pressure to say something new and to say the same old thing and to do it consistently over a long period of time is going to be key. As we try to do this, it changes our people when they start praying for their friends and neighbors that are lost. I believe our identity in Christ, we're told in 2 Corinthians 5. That we are a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come. And then in the same breath, Paul says, and we were a minister of reconciliation and an ambassador of Christ. You can't have new creation without an ambassador tied together. And so when our people aren't on mission and not just vaguely on mission like they're giving to the church or they're being somewhere behind a booth, they have to be actively on mission themselves and something lights up inside of them. The pathway to get there, to get your people to be on mission is to get them to start to pray. Because you can't pray for somebody for a year straight and God not do something inside of you. It changes you. And then not only that, if we're going to say prayer is powerful, when we do it, we also have to say that we lose power when we don't pray. And I don't know. There's a guy down here in Utah named Robert Marshall I stole this from. In Revelation, chapter eight, verse five, the prayers of Gods’ people are talked about like they are incense and the incense is rising into heaven, and they get collected in these censors. And then God puts those up on a shelf for a while, but then he takes them down. It's Revelation 8:5, actually. An angel takes those (censers) down, an angel of the Lord actually, and he fills those censers full of incense mixed with fire from heaven and then throws them back down to earth. And there's thunder and there's lightning and there are earthquakes. And it feels like we are in a (moment of) time that needs a little bit of shaking, right? We need the earth to shake a little bit. And I think people, need to remember that our prayers are effective. Even if we don't see an immediate return on investment, they might be sitting on a shelf somewhere and God's getting ready to put some fire and some power from heaven and throw them back down to the earth. I think prayers, we don't do it often because we don't see it work, but that doesn't mean it isn't going to work. And we have to have faith that God is at work.
Josh: Yeah. And I think to that point, it's like, are we willing to still pray for revival and renewal if we die before we get to see it? Do we still believe that it's worth investing and discipling beyond our own churches lifespan? I'm in a church that's 111 years old. It's a little bit older than I am right now. It's just like generations ago, these bricks were laid by faithful men and women. And are we willing to disciple people like that for them to participate in a harvest that we never get to see? Are we willing to pray prayers and we're going to pray big prayers. Would we see those things in our time? But even if we don't, it's like one of those like, will we have the faith? The Hebrews 11, those who welcomed the promises of God from a distance, and we're going to live our whole lives in faithful.
So as we wrap up, I want to ask you just kind of one more question. If you were to give an encouragement or a challenge to anyone listening to this podcast, we've got a lot of church leaders, people interested in multiplication, discipleship, all those kind of things, what would be kind of the message that you would want to leave them with?
Derek: Well, I stole this from This Cultural Moment. “Personal renewal leads to corporate renewal.” I would say try going on prayer walks for one week. Go 1 mile a day and see if you don't end up changed, go in the middle of the day when it's not convenient when yoy don't have the time and there's something to do. Get out of your chair, go walk around your neighborhood and pray over the names of the people in your neighborhood. Pray over the leaders in your church. Pray over whatever comes to your mind. Ask God questions while you're out there (and tell God the truth about whats on your heart) and see what happens.
Watch, pray, and see what happens. That's what I'd say. And know that you're not alone in this. One of the things I've been realizing is that we have all these denominations and tribes and we're part of a nondenominational network of churches. And I'm like, man, I wish we could be more united and connected. And so we went ahead and started another website that's not intermountain church planners, it's just called Peopleethertheprize.org. And if you want to just be connected with other churches who just want to pray for people who are lost, we'd love to be connected with you just through prayer and around the mission of God. So you can go and check us out there, too.
Josh: Awesome. Super great having you on the podcast. Thanks a ton, Derek. Yeah, thanks for having me, Josh. Thanks for listening to the City Network podcast. If you have any comments or questions, join the discussion on our Facebook group at thecitynetwork.org or sign up at the website to subscribe to updates from our blog and podcast.