0015 - The Weight - Adam Hamilton - “Innovation, Mission, and Reopening”

Show Notes:

We are living in an unprecedented time. Churches are currently faced with difficult decisions over how and when to reopen their doors. How has COVID affected Christian worship? 

In this episode, Chris and Eddie are joined by Adam Hamilton. Hamilton is an author and a Senior Pastor at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas. The Resurrection is one of the largest churches in Methodism. 

Hamilton discusses the frequent zoom calls with his staff, the opportunity to learn and connect with other pastors in the United States, and the unexpected rewards in the midst of having to remain at home. Listeners will learn what Church of the Resurrection is doing and how they will approach reopening. All three pastors Chris, Eddie, and Adam examine and consider the new form of ministry that focuses on online worship. Hamilton emphasizes the importance of holding onto the knowledge gained during this time and applying it to the future. 

The Weight - Afterthoughts:

We've realized that a lot of great conversation actually happens AFTER we say goodbye to our guests and turn the microphones off. So, we decided to turn the mics back on (and a camera) and create a new segment called, Afterthoughts.

This will live on our new YouTube channel and you can find our Afterthoughts on this episode NOW!

Resources:

• Jason Gray's song, “Order, Disorder, Reorder”

https://open.spotify.com/track/4f6gwNw4W4k11LBvrJib9f?si=oA_ZNeuzRI-fq08uVET7Qg

• Listen to other episodes:  https://www.theweightpodcast.com

• The Weight on Instagram:  @theweight_pod

• The Weight on Facebook:  @theweightpod

• The Weight on Twitter:  @theweight_pod

• Adam Hamilton on Instagram:  @revadamhamilton

• Adam Hamilton on Twitter:  @revadamhamilton

• Adam Hamilton on the web:  www.adamhamilton.org

• Church of the Resurrection:  www.cor.org 

Full Transcript:

Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie rester

Chris McAlilly 00:01 Chris McAlilly here.

Eddie Rester 00:02And we are the hosts of The Weight. And we're glad that you're with us today.

Chris McAlilly 00:07Today we're talking to Adam Hamilton, and he, it's a great conversation with him. He's a leader of a very large United Methodist Church in Leawood, Kansas. And he's leading his congregation through the global pandemic in innovative ways.

Eddie Rester 00:24And it's interesting that it doesn't matter if you're a church like his 20,000 people on aweekend, or 20 people on the weekend, we're all trying to figure this out. And he kind of gets that there's this significant moment that we're in not just to figure out structurally how to get past the pandemic, but to really take hold of our mission again.

Chris McAlilly 00:45Yeah, how do you reach people at a time where people are turning back towards the church, perhaps the first time in many years. There's a, there's a lot of opportunity and, and great ideas and things I think I want to try here. A lot of things I hadn't thought about before.

Eddie Rester 01:03So make sure you share this podcast with your friends and enjoy the conversation with Adam Hamilton. [Intro] Let's be honest, there's some topics that are too heavy for 20 minutes sermon. There are issues that need conversation, not just explanation.

Chris McAlilly 01:19We believe that the church is called to engage in a way that honors the weightiness and importance of these topics for how we live faithfully today. We'll cover everything from art to mental health, social injustice, to the future of the church.

Eddie Rester 01:31If it's something that culture talks about, we need to be talking about it too.

Chris McAlilly 01:37We're here today with Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, one of the largest churches in, in Methodism, but also a leader across the country. Adam, thanks so much for, for being with us today.

Adam Hamilton 01:52Hey, Chris and Eddie. It's great to be with you today. Thank you for inviting me.

Eddie Rester 01:55Yeah, we, we're all kind of in this boat as church leaders together right now, trying to figure out, you know, what's going on? What do we need to look at? What do we need to see? So, share with us a little bit just kind of about where y'all are right now with being open, not being open with what's going on at Church with the Resurrection right now?

Chris McAlilly 02:16We're recording on May the 28th, I just want to make sure to get that out there.

Eddie Rester 02:18Yeah, things change quickly. So we won't hold you to this on May 30th.

Adam Hamilton 02:20Haha, that's good. So we are opening our offices on June 1 for staff to return with certain caveats. So so the doors will continue to be locked, people will be able to make appointments, and I believe, I don't remember the exact where we settled whether people are allowed to come for appointments here, you know, during the first couple weeks or not, but I know that that will be... What we've done is we're encouraging our staff to work at home if they can. We've already had essential staff in certain areas where they had to work in the offices be here, but otherwise everybody was working at home. And we have said continue that for the next month. But if you need to be in the office, you can be. And we're setting it up where no more than 50% of, say there's a, you know, set of offices that are together--a suite of offices--no more than 50% on any given day in those offices. So we're, you know, slowly starting back into getting back into offices. We think in July, that'll be, you know, we'll have the offices open where people can actually come, you know, for appointments and those kind of things. We have been, like everybody else using tons of Zoom and Teams meetings, Microsoft Teams, to connect with each other. And it's interesting. We have been, you know, we'r, and I think this is probably true for a lot of people, we have not been in-person with our staff, and at the same time, we are meeting more with our staff now than we ever have been before. It's actually been pretty cool. So, you know, this morning, three days a week I'm on meetings with my executive staff, 17 of our staff members, for 30 minutes, 30 to 40 minutes, then two days a week with all of our staff, and usually we'll have about 150 or more of our staff joined for that call and we'll be 45 minutes there. And you know, we'll give them financial updates. We're giving them you know, ministry updates, this some kind of testimonial every... so this is Tuesdays and Thursdays. So this morning, I kicked it off, talked a little bit about, you know, the President's, you know, decree that we were in essential business last Friday. And I said, "that's not news to any of us. We knew we were essential. And we never closed our doors.

We've been open, we might have closed our doors, but we've been open all the way through this". And I said, you know, just because the president said, You know, I want you to be open as soon as possible, doesn't mean that we have to do that. That's. So anyway, we talked a little bit about that. We had one of our staff who works in international missions, shared pictures of what's going on with our mission partners in Malawi and other places, and that was really cool. And so there's always this kind of testimonial thing. And then, and then, you know, we jumped into the finance report. So we're trying to help our staff know, this is how we're doing. This is what's going on, as much information as we can give them, and then especially in you know, this kind of high anxiety period. And then, you know, we ended by talking about we did our prayer concerns and I just taught them a
little bit from my book, The Walk on, you know, five patterns of, you know, five things we can do in prayer. So anyway, that's just an example of we're doing that kind of stuff with our staff. We're doing that with our volunteers, we're having, you know, calls where we get all of our, all of our elected officials together, and we've never done that before, you know, and so it's, it's actually, that's, that part's been pretty cool. And we're out in the
community, sort of like crazy right now. And so people see us ,they hear about us the news, they see us, you know, the community and so anyway, all that is a long way of saying that, June, we're coming back to our offices. We're still trying to decide when we come back to corporate worship, in-person corporate worship. So we're looking at either July 12 or August 16. And what we're really watching is what happens after, you know, these churches that have already started meeting together, and you know, there's no one-size- fits-all plan, you know, there's little communities where there's nobody been Coronavirus, and you know, you can have they had 20 people in worship, and this building seats 100, and it's just very easy for them to socially distance. In our case, it's a little more complicated than that. And so, you know, we've said, we're going to watch and see what happens. See if the risk, you know, risk factor goes up as, as churches are meeting again. But our primary concern we've told our people is your safety. And we have Methodism as a whole, as an older, we have a lot of older members. And so here at Resurrection, you
know, half of our people, more than half of our people are over 55. And so we have said, you know, we know they would show up for worship, if we started holding worship, many of them would. And so we've surveyed them, we find out kind of took their polls for watching what's going on around us. And we're saying we would rather be two weeks later than everybody would have liked or a month later than everybody would have liked, than to have started a month earlier or two weeks earlier than we should have and seen people get sick.

Eddie Rester 02:38 Right.

Adam Hamilton 02:55And that's, we've had five deaths due to COVID in our congregation in the last, you know, in the last three months, and I really don't want to, I don't want to be, they didn't contract it here. These were older adults and people in different situations, but, but I don't want to be the one who said, hey, let's all get together and then have two or three people get sick and die. Because we were in a hurry to get back together in physical worship. When we're already worshiping online.

Chris McAlilly 07:14I feel like the the stakes are always hiring Christiannleadership for a number of reasons. I feel like the stakes are even more clearly defined in this environment. For you, as you think about, I, I guess what, what are the... How do you step away from your staff? How do you think about your, your own kind of habits of mind and reflection? I think that's one of the things I've found difficult right now is to step away and get... there's so much information out there. It's what, what sources of information have you found helpful for conversation partners or books or resources as you, as you try to think clearly about what is happening around you?

Eddie Rester 07:56Yeah, well, one of the things we did several weeks ago, a couple months ago actually, is we had a phone call with I think there was 12 pastors of larger churches, United Methodists, and just said, Hey, you know, what's, what are you doing what's going on, and we all, you know, we all just kind of compare notes. That was really helpful. And I think, when you can talk with people like that, that are of your church size or a little larger, so you kind of see, you know, sometimes the things that relate to a church of multiple thousands aren't the same things that a church of 50 or 75 needs to deal with. Some of them are, and some of them are not. So, you know, I think that connecting with people in that way, I, you know, in the phone calls, I think we shared some things from Resurrection that were helpful to others, but I also came away going "oh, that's a great idea. Why
didn't we think of that?" And so and then you kind of also get a sense of where other people are. So we're all you know, we're all wrestling with the same thing. When do we come back? We're all trying to figure out what's responsible and, you know, wise for us to do and, and, and I think in particular, like now, after the president's comments, last was a Thursday or Friday, before Memorial Day, I started getting, you know, emails or direct messages from social media. Like, you know, okay, the president said, we're supposed to be open, you know, why are we opening. And I didn't get a lot of those. I don't think a lot of people feel that way. But I got a few and I got some from other, you know, people across the country who were just Trump fans and felt like we needed to, you know, this was a I mean, they were kind of turning it into a political referendum. If we didn't open, if Resurrection did open, we weren't in favor of the president or something. We were against the president. And I just had to remind people look, the President, again, was not saying you have to be open. The president was saying you're an essential business. And he was saying governors shouldn't restrict churches from being open. Whether you agree with that or not, it's not everybody needs to be open right now. And so I think, you know, it's helpful to have those conversations with other people to just, you know, in like-sized churches, and here in Kansas City, I've been connecting with pastors of other large churches that are not United Methodist, and, you know, one of them has already started meeting again, and the other one, two other ones are like, Hey, you know, what are you guys doing and what's the survey, you do? With your congregation, we're going to do it too. And so we're all trying to compare notes and figure out what's, you know, what makes sense. It's been real. It's been real interesting over the last month that I probably spent more time talking to other pastors from other denominations, other theological stripes, because we're all kind of in this right now. Not just the not just the conversation around reopening, but really trying to figure out what is what is ministry look like right now? What's, what can we focus our attention on? What, what, how can we help each other? And I just wonder, as you think backwards a little bit, then I want us to think forward, what have been some of the things has been surprising for you, that you've really seen God move and at work there in your setting? Right. Well, one of the things I'll just say is that there were a number of things that we have talked about wanting to change or needing to migrate or evolve in our ministries that you know, we didn't do it. We hesitated,
because you know when you do it, you're gonna have people mad, they're gonna be upset. It's like, okay, do I really want people to be mad upset right now about this, if we don't do this ministry, or if we, you know, change how we're doing this thing. And worship is one of those great ones, you know, sometimes we have more worship services than we really need, or sometimes we have, you know, musical differences and, and it was, you know, in some ways, it was like, okay, we have to do this together. At Resurrection, our strategy has been, we film the worship services on Friday. And we have the worship
leader, we have five, five campuses. And we have the pastor, the campus pastor of each
of those campuses and a worship leader for each of those campuses together, leading the service. So we each have, you know, a role to play and that way, all of our campuses are seeing part of their campus represented in this worship, and we kind of merged our worship style. So we have a string quartet, and we have the organ play some the organ play some of the time, string quartet every weekend, but we've got a band up there leading and we're doing traditional hymns, and we're doing modern stuff. And it's, it's actually been pretty awesome. And it's been a, you know, three months of, uh, my traditional people seeing folks with guitars, leading these beautiful songs up front, you know, that creates a sort of a habit or pattern. The three months of some of our other campuses seeing, you know, more hymns being sung, and they're used to more modern worship, that's, that's a good thing, too. So, you know, it's been a lot of that kind of, you know, that's gonna, that's helping us as we move forward in terms of our, you know, some of the migration we needed to make in terms of worship. The use of technology for, for connecting with people has just been awesome. I mean, you know, whether it's, I was traveling to speak at conferences, you know, every month and or not every month, but oftentimes, you know, am I I don't know how often I'll do that again, I might be doing this by, you know, by Zoom or something from here on out. Staff meetings, small groups meeting, you know, there's been a lot of really, you know, we've, we figured out really quickly we, you know, we used to bring people in to livestream the worship. So, you know, you would, if you were worshiping online, we've done online for 10 years. And we we would have online, but you were basically watching the worship service as it was going on. And I would look to the camera once in a while, but generally, you were like peering into the worship service. And we've said that? We're not going to do that anymore. We are going to continue to film a dedicated online worship experience that is exceptional. And then we'll do our in-person worship as well. And anyway, just I could go on and on. But there's a ton of things that we have learned from this. We are, you know, we had talked about television years ago, and we thought, "why would we use television, we have internet, it's free." And we you know, we were offered Easter worship here in Kansas City on TV for free. The local station wanted to, you know, do this as a support to the community. And all of a sudden we had, you know, we have, like tens of thousands of people joining us for, like 45,000 on television on Easter morning. And we're like, "Who are these people?" You know, and then one of them ends up being my uncle who doesn't go to church. He's like, "no, it's awesome. You know, I've told all my friends, you know, and I'm getting people to join." I'm like, my uncle, who is an agnostic, has now become an evangelist to try to get people to join on the local television station to watch the service. I'm like, wow, you know, and then we had prisoners writing from prisons. And I like, I didn't thought about those guys who don't have computers, and then ourselves, you know, and, and then the, you know, my mother-in-law's in a retirement community, in an assisted living center where she doesn't have good access to computers. And anyway, all of a sudden, we saw we would have never, ever done that. And, you know, now we're, you know, now we're on for, you know, purchasing doing that every weekend. And I there's 100 things like that, that we've just like, wow, we never thought to do, thought to do that. How awesome is this? And we're going to be better because of it. And I think that's true for every church that's willing to really look at how they can improve what they're doing now and adapt. And then not to say the great fear would be we go back in-person worship we go, "okay, now we don't have to do any of that stuff anymore". As opposed to going, "no, now we've learned a new way of doing ministry that's maybe even more effective." And, and then what, you know what of the old stuff do we need to bring back? I think that's the that's one of the key questions. We did a big survey on our congregation, and one of the interesting things that we found is that, like 56, 57%, said that they came to church every Sunday during the month. I think that's kind of high. But that's that's how they responded. But then we asked how many people have been watching online, and like 67% said they're watching every week online. So there's more, more of our folks are saying, "I'm tuning in every week," than showing up on-site every week.

Chris McAlilly 15:45This is going to be, this is a key, I think this is a key question. In some ways, it feels a little bit like the, the the new frontier. I saw somebody say this on Twitter, that it's kind of the new frontier of the worship wars, almost, this sense of--I don't mean that negatively necessarily--but just, just, just the sense of virtual versus in-person worship. And I think they're, they're clearly, it's, it's like new territory that people are kind of exploring. And I think they're things that you gain and the things that you lose. Clearly one of the things that you gain in virtual worship is--and I think that's one of the things we're noticing as well, there is there's a kind of, I think it's different than you know, when television broadly, like televangelism took off in the in the 70s, 80s, it was broadcast communication. A lot of the community, everything that's happening, most everything that's happening, I guess, you're, you're saying that you guys are are broadcasting on TV, but what we're doing is

Eddie Rester 16:42Yeah, we're about half and half online and TV right now.

Chris McAlilly 16:44Yeah, but there's, there's a kind of network to communication, you know, what I mean? There's a, there's, it's, it's your, your uncle who's an agnostic who has this personal connection to you or someone else in the church that leads them to... And I see that happening across the country, and even around the world, it's like I'm tuning in to some, you know, Sam Wells at, you know, St. Marten-in-the-Fields and you know,

Adam Hamilton 17:07 Right

Chris McAlilly 17:07Trafalgar Square in London. It's like "oh, this is very nice, maybe I'll go check this out for a moment."

Eddie Rester 17:11A friend of ours having a watch party in Costa Rica with friends of his son in California and, you know, DC and New York

Chris McAlilly 17:21Yeah, but we're connected to people that we wouldn't be connected to otherwise. I do think there's something, I guess how would you frame it in the form of a question? What do you think you, what do you gain online? And what do you lose, and then what do you, what do you, what is it about in-person worship that, why not just go completely... I mean, I think I heard someone say like, "we're gonna close, close up shop here. We're gonna sell the property. We're just gonna be online. I can play golf on Sunday."

Adam Hamilton 17:48Yeah, well, they're they're certainly like this is the first time since I was 14 that I've had Saturdays and Sundays off. I'm still working Saturday some but because we film on
Friday, like I'm it's pretty awesome for me. You know, it's like, this is really this is a, I could do this the rest of my ministry. There are some really important things that are, that are lost. But before I come to that, I want to, I want to say one of the cool things about, as you just described this: So for instance, several weeks ago, there was a song that Jason Gray who's a contemporary Christian artist--I just say as an artist who is a Christian, but he's had some real hits on the contemporary Christian charts. And anyway, he attends our worship, he attends worship with us online, has for several years, but he had this song, and I said, he wrote me, I was talking about Walter Bergman's "Orientation, Disorientation, Reorientation" as thinking about these phases that we go through in life. And I use this each week in a series on hope, right after Easter. And he said, "Hey, I wrote a song called 'Ordered, Disordered, Reordered' that goes right along with that." And so I listened to his song, and I'm like, "Hey, could you sing that for worship this weekend?" So from his, you know, from his living room in Nashville, he, you know, does an awesome version of the song that we're listening to, you know, we're streaming through Resurrection. And then it's going across the country and around the world, to thousands of people who are hearing it, you know, for the first time and it was just like, you know, now that's just a whole new deal. Like in the past, we wouldn't have hired, you know, a musician to come from Nashville, fly them into Kansas City, just do one song at the end of the sermon.

Eddie Rester 19:20 Right.

Adam Hamilton 19:20But suddenly, there's possibilities for how we can do ministry that we know that we never thought of. And I will mention, to, like our our team has been, our congregational care pastors every morning, there's a different one doing a morning devotion for people on on video and on Facebook Live. We've got, I do a Tuesday night Vespers, usually from my kitchen. And we'll have between Tuesday night when people watch it live and on the Wednesday, there'll be over 1000 people who will kind of, I picture them sitting in my kitchen with me. And last week, it was just Q&A, you know, I asked, or two weeks ago, just Q&A. And I said, you know, send me your questions. We'll just talk about them. And it was just, it was really pretty stinking awesome. And then last night, we had a, or Tuesday, we had hymn sing, and we'd record record this for the nursing home and the care centers and our memory care folks who usually come here for worship and they couldn't. But I was sitting there listening to this hymn sing in our chapel, and I thought, I think our people on Tuesday night would like to sing these hymns. And so we cut it down. And, you know, I introduced it, and then we have 15 minutes of singing old hymns, you know, on Tuesday night, and it was, you know, thousand people were singing these hymns in their, you know, in their kitchens or their living rooms. And so just, you know, Vacation Bible Camp this year. I'm sure you guys are doing the same, but we're doing it in a box or a sitting up backpack to kids with all kinds of cool stuff to do. And then it'll be online. And then there's a part of it where you invite your neighborhood friends, you know, if things are safe to do that, invite your neighborhood friends over for part of it. Something that's going to be an outreach to your neighborhood friends who may never registered for a weekend Vacation Bible Camp of Resurrection.

Eddie Rester 20:42We actually took it a step, a step further. We're actually doing you know, on Sunday morning, Vacation Bible School the whole summer. So the Gospel stories on Sunday morning, kids crafts and how to make snacks at home. So

Adam Hamilton 20:55 Oh, that's awesome.

Eddie Rester 20:56 We're pretty fired up.

Adam Hamilton 20:57 Oh, that's great. Cool, cool.

Chris McAlilly 20:59Yeah, I do think it, it creates the possibility of doing... I mean, there, there are far more possibilities. And there are certain constraints, and it's just like any, any other time any other, any other discipline, or any other art form... You know, I mean, and I think about, you know, Picasso for a period of time he just did blue, you know, he constrained himself to blue, you know, the color blue and did everything in blue. Or, I don't know, there's something about certain constraints that you, that you have that, that force you to a different, a different level of creativity. I guess what, what I've always respected about Resurrection, and particularly under your leadership, is that there's always been a drive and passion to reach people for Christ beyond the people that you're currently reaching. Can you talk a little bit about what drives or motivates you? I mean, what, you know, it is one thing to say "we've got this cool technology and it's this crazy moment. We're doing all these things." For you, what is the why? What's the why? Or what is the motivation for you?

Adam Hamilton 22:03Yeah. Well what you know, and it's captured in our purpose statement, you know, that we feel God called us to start a church to build a Christian community, where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians. And we feel like United Methodism as a whole, and not just Methodist, but I would say Methodists, we have an approach to the gospel that connects with, I think, thinking people. It connects with, in today's world, non-religious and nominally religious people who are saying, "Show me the gospel. Show me something that, you know, show me that you really care about what's going on in the world, and you're showing compassion and justice and you're, you know, you're trying to help the world be a better place. And I might just be interested in, in what your theological beliefs are." And so I feel like we, you know, that union of the evangelical and social gospel, that union of the head and the heart and that, you know, combined with the hands, I think, is, you know, it's just a really compelling, you know, approach the gospel. And, and what drives me is, you know, it's looking at all of these folks who are non-religious and nominally religious community or, you know, there's other words today--religion is not really the word we want to use so much-- but, you know, the the unchurched or the disconnected or disaffiliated. And I think there's a lot of those folks who are who are hungry for and well, they all need what Christ has to offer. And I'm absolutely persuaded, I mean, a fundamental conviction, my life is that we need what Jesus offers. That, that God is and that God came to us in Jesus, to address the existential needs that we have. Our brokenness and our need for for redemption; our need for love and grace and mercy. And we can't find that anywhere else except in Jesus. And so I believe that we are not fully human, and we are not fully alive, we are not what God intended us to be until we know Him. And until we know Christ, and we follow him and in him and we find life and so, you know, I, I want people to know that. And I feel like there's a, today we live in an increasingly post-Christian culture of society, and the, the approaches to the gospel that that were, you know, really, you know, successful in the 1980s and 1990s. And the theological convictions of that era, you know, so I'm thinking now, my Southern Baptist friends and, you know, more evangelical, nondenominational and charismatic churches, like, I'm thankful for them, I came to faith in Christ through a little Pentecostal church. I'm so grateful for that part of the Christian faith. But those churches are declining, too, today. You know, you look at that and you go, okay, they're not reaching people. And I have, you know, those churches calling me saying, "Okay, what are you doing to reach people? Like, I want to know how this works." And, and I so I look at as an example, I look at my children's generation. And I think I want to know, what are we going to do to reach millennials and Gen Z? And we're not doing a very good job. And even at Resurrection, we're, we have about, you know, we have a couple thousand millennials and Gen Z who are part of our congregation, but that's 2000 out of 20,000 members, you know, that's, that's still a, you know, a fraction of, you know, the numbers we would like to reach. And, and a lot of these have preconceived ideas of the church, what it, what it stands for, what it believes in, what it's against. And, you know, I love it when I have people say, Wow, I didn't know you could be a Christian and be like this. And you know, I've had these conversations on. I had a Zoom call with a woman who hadn't been to church, it was just this is just this week on, I think it was Monday of this week. And she had come for a sermon in January. And she was waiting to talk to me. And it took, it took me two months to, you know, for me to get her on the schedule after she finally reached out to the church. She was afraid to come to church ,hadn't been in 20 something years. And she just had questions. And she wanted to know, you know, would she be welcomed. What kind of church is this really, and, and I had this conversation with her, you know, and by the end of the conversation, you know, she's in tears, and we're, you know, she's like, "I want to join this church. I want to be a part of this church," and I'm like, well, you keep coming for a while, we'll have a joining somewhere down the road, but right now, I just want you to come. I want you to come I want you to, you know, want you to continue to, to say yes to Jesus and what it means to follow him. I had a call last week with a young woman who she said, "I think I'm an atheist. But as a kid, I went to the church and I just thought maybe, you know, I came on Easter with my parents and your sermon really got me thinking" and so she's said I just have these questions. And I'm like, great, you know, she's 17 years old and we had this great conversation. By the time we get to the, into the conversation, she's like, she's in tears again. She says, "I think I need to come back home," meaning come back to her faith in Christ. And that to me, like if I just have one of those in a month, like I get to be a pastor. Like that just drives me. I love helping people who thought that, thought they knew what Christianity was about, and were repelled by it, to rediscover Jesus and to want to follow him and that is why I get up in the morning. So that's part of my passion and joy.

Chris McAlilly 27:00I can hear the the, in some ways reinvigoration for that ministry in this time, as you've, you know, I think a crisis, you know... I think or you know, it's a crisis, but it's also just a moment where I think everyone that I talk to in ministry or beyond and leading businesses or other organizations are really, I mean, it's a time to pause and kind of think through, "what have I been doing? I've been at this furious pace for so long in this, in this direction. And now I have a moment to kind of pause and think and reflect and, and, you know, double down and, and, and, and kind of think about the next 5, 10, 15 years." I guess, for you, as you think about how has this moment helped you in that way, kind of read it, you know, take a moment and kind of pause, you're not traveling as much. You're thinking, I would assume that you're probably thinking about the next, you know, decade or two of your ministry. Kind of what, what has it

Adam Hamilton 27:59 Yeah

Chris McAlilly 28:00what has it raise it up in you? This, this particular moment?

Adam Hamilton 28:03Yeah. That's great question. So a couple things have happened. One is the fact that I've been able to find a little more balance. And the first month and a half of this, I didn't because I had two book manuscripts do, and that I was six months behind on and they both came crashing down at the same time. So every little bit of time that I would have picked up from not traveling or whatever, I spent finishing these books. But, but after that, I felt, I felt when you're not exhausted, and you're not, like, running so hard that you can't think. And then then you find, you know, you, you find a renewed passion again, and I, you know, long prayer walks and studying scripture, and I mean, I do that all the time anyway. But it's been, it has been renewing on that side of things to be able to be with my wife in the evenings, you know, and, and so, all that's been good. And I think spending more time with people. So these, you know, Tuesday night Vespers, and feeling a connection there, and connecting with our staff, and, and then being able to do some stuff which my wife's been kind of irritated with me because I'm, you know, here I'm, you know, we're supposed to be slowed down a bit but instead, my tendency is to fill those empty spaces with more stuff. So people called and said, "Hey, you know, we're studying your book "Unafraid" right now in Florida. Do you think you could join our groups for a moment?" I'm like, that'd be kind of fun. Sure, you know, so I joined a small group or join Sunday school classes

Eddie Rester 29:30 Join a podcast

Adam Hamilton 29:30Yeah, people've been calling about podcasts. I've done more of those in the last couple months that I normally would. And so, but that's been fun, too. I mean, I love doing that kind of stuff. It's just a matter of, you know, finding the time. So I'm not, one of the things I've loved is not being in the middle of conflict, denomination conflict right now. But instead in just ministry with people. I didn't get into this to be in a denominational fight. I got into this to follow Jesus and to try to love people and love them into His kingdom. And so I feel, I do feel reinvigorated and excited and, and I'm enjoying ministry probably more than I have in quite a while. The last year and a half was, I would say, one of the worst 18 month periods of my, in terms of personal joy, and, you know, reward of being in ministry that I've ever experienced. I was, I was ready to quit several times last 18 months. Right now I'm like, "Hey, I'm ready to go for another 10 years." I'm 55 so my, my target has been somewhere around 65 that I, you know, step away from full time Senior Pastor, Church of the Resurrection, and I move into, you know, whatever that next chapter of God's adventure is for my life and so.

Eddie Rester 30:44Well, thinking about the future... You know, I want to skip past denominational conflict stuff, but as we think kind of around the corner, one day there'll be a vaccine. One day, folks are going to be able to return to church on site, you know, in fullness, I think. So, as we think about the church of the next two to three to five years, what are opportunities, that in your mind, you would say, "I hope churches don't miss this" as we begin to emerge on the other side of all of this?

Adam Hamilton 31:24That's a good question. I think. I think first of all, this is a slant-way of getting at your question, I think it's going to be, it could be as long as two years before, if ever, we see worship attendance in person back to what it was in February of this year. So we're anticipating, there are a large number of people... right now we surveyed our congregation, 42% of our people aren't interested in coming back until there's a vaccine or treatment. So let's just say that's the next, somewhere that's by the end of this year, early next year. I'm anticipating that we'll get most of our people back in physical attendence by then. But you know, when you go a year and a half without actually getting in a car, getting dressed, getting in a car, and showing up and worship physically, and you've done it from your living room, and you like it, and it's been done well, it's going to be... And this goes back to a question I didn't answer that you asked earlier, I jumped off off the train for a minute. But the, we've got to figure out how do we help people see the value and importance of meeting together? What, what is a meeting together in person for worship? What is the value of that? And I think, I think we're going to have a great, you know, an important job to do in helping people see, you know, why we shouldn't, in the words of Hebrews forsake the assembling of ourselves. And, and so, you know, we're gonna have to work on that. At the same time we're gonna have to work on, like at Resurrection, you know, with, with four times the number of people Sunday, I think we have four and a half times the number of people we had last year on Memorial Day weekend. So and you know, we only count if they've been, you know, we look to see that they join us for 30 minutes or more. So if they join us for 30 minutes or more, that counts if they didn't, it didn't count. So what I'm asking is, what are we going to do to try to keep as many of those people as possible engaged with us, after we go back to having in person worship? Some of them will start coming with us. And we hope that this is a step towards getting them back in physical worship. But for many of them, they may never do that. And so what are we going to do to continue to, and how are we going to rethink what ministry looks like, when, in an age in which some people will never show up a building? And that I think requires a different way of thinking about ministry. You've heard people talking about this already. You know, we're a, we're a digital church with an online, you know, campus. I mean, with an in-person campus, a physical campus. You know, in the past, we were physical churches with a with an online presence. Now, maybe that's been reversed. I don't really, I'm not sure I really want to completely think of it that way. I think what's going to continue to drive us is what we do in person. But, but I, we're gonna, you know, for instance, we are looking at staffing and realigning resources around what our online looks like, and social media and what we're doing with social media, and how we evaluate which of the things that we're currently doing online--and we're doing a ton of stuff every week--are effective and which ones are not effective, and which ones need to continue and which ones we need to put more resources behind, and which ones we, you know, set aside when all this is done.

Eddie Rester 34:36We, we for a while talked about well, is the future of OU a second site somewhere, a second physical site somewhere? And I think what we've, what we've come to is, there's this online congregation that really is our second site--a lot of folks that are all over the US and beyond. And how do we minster in a way that's faithful and effective in the future with folks that either may not come or even don't live in the area close enough to show up?

Chris McAlilly 35:08I do think that there's a digital, there's a digital communications dimension to, I mean, I think that's one of the things that that I've come to realize that we have to think about,
we have to think about ourselves as a, as a digital communications organization. And, and we have to think about our engagement with the folks who are connecting to, you know, to worship or any other, any other I guess, digital content that is out there. And I feel like that's, that's just, I think there's a temptation in that to just spend your... I do think I appreciate the, the, the idea of, "We're going to do a lot of these things. We're going to do them for this set amount of time, we're going to do a lot of experimentation, figure out what works, what doesn't, and then figure out how to align resources around the experiments that are actually gaining a foothold." And then think the question is, I mean, engagement does seem like a good category to measure. How do you, how do you move people from... I think that's it's gonna require a totally different set of metrics in terms of, how do you think about, all right, here's 30 minutes, rather than an hour with us in person, and that, that's gonna count as a, you know, a time in attendance with us. And then from there, how do you get people to say yes, to be a part of online groups and then, and on, you know, kind of moving people down, you know, a clear track of, of deepened formation and faithfulness. I think it's, it does represent a ton of opportunity to really rethink, really rethink the way people would engage, and in some ways, I feel like there'll be a lot, a lot more room for folks to breathe, because they don't have to be. And there's another,
there's a kind of anonymity there. You can kind of check it out and move through some of those steps without the pressure of, I don't know, without a kind of social pressure. Because you're gonna do it on your own terms, you know.

Adam Hamilton 37:05I think that's right. I think in three months, we've moved forward 10 years. And so we have, we have taken a, we have stepped to where we would have been in 2030 in two or three months, or at least made a giant stride there. One of the things I might suggest that that I'm not hearing a lot of people talk about, but what we're working on right now is hybridization, where we are making it possible for people to be online joining in-person, small groups. So we know that the small groups are important, and we're starting this with our support groups. So with AA groups and other groups that are, you know, aimed at really helping people who need other folks. Some of them are ready to be back right now, desperately longing to be back right now. Others are saying, You know what, I, I need the group, I just can't, I can't be in there in person. My health is compromised, or I just don't feel safe or comfortable. And so we're outfitting rooms right now, during the next two weeks, we've been working on this for the last couple months, the last month. So that that room is as quality as we can make it for people to be able to, you know, with us--I'm not even sure what all this looks like yet. I've heard about it, but I haven't seen it--you know, video screen where you're seeing, you know, the people like a Zoom screen, but it's an 80- inch screen or whatever. So, so you can see multiple people who are there in the room with you, but you're also, or you know, who are online with you, but you're also fully engaging with the group that's in the room. And, you know, we have St. Paul School of Theology is one of our Methodist seminaries is located here on our Leawood campus. And they already do this when they have classes in Oklahoma City and classes here in Kansas City simultaneously. So they've got screens and two walls, and they've got cameras mounted in different places so that you can, you know, be in a class in Oklahoma City with a professor there in the class here in Kansas City feels like they're a part of it and vice versa. So we're looking at that kind of hybridization with our, with our small groups right away and outfitting certain classrooms so that Sunday School classes, Bible studies, women's groups, men's groups, and especially, we're going to start with the support groups have that access. But Chris, you said something a second ago that I want to pick up on. And that is the you know, how we're making disciples. And earlier this year, I had a book came out called "The Walk," and there's about, there's a lot of churches across the country just didn't, and our church has really focused on this, as you know, these five things that we, five essential practices in the Christian spiritual life. And we have emphasized, these have also been our expectations for membership here Resurrection, so these five things. And we've had people who've joined Church of the Resurrection, who live in other cities who worship with us online. And actually they, in the past, they flew into Kansas City to go to our Coffee with the Pastors, they come back from time to time to do certain, to volunteer in certain areas. But, but the five things we, you know, we have worship is one of those, and worship and prayer. So each one is a public dimension, a corporate dimension and a private dimension. So, worship and prayer. So five times I'm going to pray. Once a week I'm going to be gathered with God's people and worship. The second is, ah, study. And so it's listening. It's paying attention, attention. It's, it's, you know, being, it's studying scripture, listening for God to speak. It's being in small groups. It's so we do that in small groups, but we do it daily scripture reading. Now, the third one is serving. And so we, you know, we commit to serving God with our, in our daily lives, we're serving God by serving other people. And we do that together. And we do that, you know, we do that alone. And all of these are aimed at deepening our faith and our walk with Christ. And they're measurable. Every one of them you can measure. The fourth one is, is giving. And so again, that has to do with both what we give in our tithes and offerings to the church, but it's also the, you know, the generosity that cultivating a sort of habit of generosity in our daily lives. And then the last one is sharing our faith and bearing witness to our faith in word and deed, so that others might know Christ. And, and I think all five of those things, people can engage in and do digitally. I mean, you know, there's a component which they're living them out physically with other people, but there's a, there is much of this that is able to be done digitally. And that's what we've seen the last two months, you know. We've seen people actually giving. We've seen them, sharing their friends, in fact, more people inviting their friends to join them for worship, than have probably ever done before, maybe in the history of, you know, our planet because of the, people using social media to invite their friends. You know, they're able to worship and join us for worship, experience that and, and small groups. And, and then, you know, we're, again, like you guys, out serving the community. Every week our members are out serving. So it's been, it's been pretty cool. But it's, you know, we, there is a path. It's kind of our method to our Methodism here at Resurrection. And we've found that our people are still doing all five of those things, while the doors are locked.

Eddie Rester 41:52And I think that's the challenge for us is that encouraging people to continue to be the church outside the walls of the church, living those commitments as they walk, and not kind of letting the rubber band just kind of snap back into place and think, "well, I've gone to church, I've checked that box, I've signed up for something that the church is doing. So I've checked that box. And we pray to church, soo I get to check that box." You know, I think,

Adam Hamilton 42:20 Yep.

Eddie Rester 42:20we've got to, I think part of the challenge moving forward is really helping folks find their footing in entrepreneurs with their faith and living it out there in a way that build, that they are building the kingdom not waiting on the church to somehow magically do that for them.

Adam Hamilton 42:40Right. Right. And, you know, the idea that, I mean, I love this picture that the church is what we are when we're out living our faith. You know, we're being salt and light in the community. And it's, you know, it clearly is not a building. The building is an important tool. But what we've learned is it's ,you know, it's not, and I do think there's going to be a place where people are going to go, "okay, I just got to be together with my people." You know, I had a woman just the other day, send me a direct direct message in the middle of night and she was suicidal, you know, and she's like, I just can't do it anymore. I can't do it. I don't want to, I don't want to do this anymore, you know, she was, you know, really at the end of her rope when it came to her emotional state. And part of that was, "I need to see people. I need to be with my, you know, with my..." It wasn't just the church, but the church was a key part of that. The other day I had a, I'm sitting in my office right now and had a woman walking down the sidewalk looking outside my window right now this woman's walking on the sidewalk. And, you know, she comes up and she was leaving a prayer request. We have a, like a deposit-type thing outside for prayer requests and for offerings. And so she tried to get in the building and it was locked, and when I saw her, I jumped up from my desk, walked around to where the door was, and she was just turning around to leave, and I said, "Hey, you know, just want to check, are you okay? Do you need anything?" And she was like flabbergasted that I was there. She didn't think anybody was here. And then it was the senior pastor. And so, so we start talking and I said, "Well, let's meet around by the main entrance, you know, well, we can you can go inside a little bit. I can't bring open these doors, but let's go inside." And, you know, brought her inside for a minute, and she's like, "You know, my life is so broken right now. And I thought, if I could just see a pastor, maybe it would be okay. You know, if I could just be a pastor." And she said, "And then you were here." You know, and I'm sitting here at my desk thinking, "you know what, I think I should go check on her. I think I should check and see if she's okay." And there was this God moment, you know, and part of me realized, that might have, there might have been someway that could have worked out on a Zoom call. But, and it wasn't like I had any answers for her life problems, it was that, that physical presence, it was incarnating in that moment, Christ's love for her. And so I think that is, that is still going to be a tremendous need that people have. And I think that maybe the longer this goes on, the more people are going to want and need that. But right now we have sort of balance of fear and anxiety. And, you know, we have a way of addressing scratching, most of that itch but not all of it online.

Chris McAlilly 42:46What, as we're kind of, we're, again, incredibly thankful for your time and really
appreciate you coming on today. As we wrap up, I wonder if you, as you think about, you know, speaking of fear and anxiety, what what are your fears and anxieties for the church in the next in the next 24 months or so? And for the church, you know, I think particularly in America, across denominations. And then also what are ,what are your, what are your hopes and, and what encouragement would you offer to church leaders right now?

Adam Hamilton 45:46Yeah. Well, so this, this would appear to be, I mean, you know, it's hard to know what the numbers are and how many people are actually coming--to some people counting three- second views on Facebook as somebody being with them. And so I don't know what to make of all the numbers, but it feels like, as I'm looking at our statistics here, and I'm hearing other people talk, but this is a moment of unbelievable turning towards God and looking for hope. Turning towards the church, turning towards God in control. Part of that is we have no competition on Sunday mornings. Golf has gone, sports are gone, brunch is gone. And so people are tuning in. But, but so this is exhilarating. It's exciting to see people are turning to us and looking for hope. They're looking for answers. They're looking for hope. They're looking, they're returning to things that mattered to them in the past, but they've kind of forgotten. So that I think is exhilarating. There's a huge opportunity here and a huge opportunity for us to rethink how we do ministry and an opportunity for change that we've needed and should have made but didn't. But now all of a sudden, you know, is going to be possible because people will understand "Oh, yeah, we can't go back to the way we were. We got to do some things differently." That's a, that's the huge upside, I think. And the fear I have is that we're going to get three or four or five months down the road, maybe not even that long, maybe two months down the road, and we go back to normal. And by normal, I mean, all of those people who are turning to us for hope have said, "You know what? I'm doing okay now. Gosh, I'm not afraid anymore. And, you know, I really appreciated the church being there when I needed them." And, and we've not done a good job of engaging those people and keeping them. And so, you know, my fear is a year from now, we are all super depressed, because not only, not only did we not keep all of those people who started worshiping with us, but we actually lost a number of folks who got used to worshipping at home and no longer show up in person. And, and so we could find ourselves... If we're not intentional about continuing to think about ministry, from the perspective of those new people to join us, we might just find that a year from now, we're all depressed because we lost them. You know, I saw this after 9/11 9/11, there was a huge surge in people who were coming to church. And, but a year later, you know, we were back to where we were before 9/11. And I just hate for us to miss this opportunity we have before us right now.

Eddie Rester 48:14The church, as I think back on 9/11, I don't think we, one, knew what to do with the folks that showed up. And I hope that that's not the same story this time.

Adam Hamilton 48:25 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 48:26So, Adam, thank you so much for your time, offering us a little bit of your schedule today. It's been a joy to get to talk to you today.

Adam Hamilton 48:35Oh, me too. I've really enjoyed the conversation and appreciate what you guys are doing. And I appreciate the I was looking over your previous podcasts from the month of May, and you've had some really good stuff going on there. So thank you for that as well. Especially when we're talking about race, and issues related to race right now, which are really critical. And so appreciate you guys and thank you for what you're doing in Mississippi.

Eddie Rester 48:56And if you're missing sports right now, check out the one with Wright Thompson. You'll enjoy that one. Yeah.

Adam Hamilton 49:01 I will, thanks.

Eddie Rester 49:02 Thanks, Adam.

Adam Hamilton 49:02Cool. You bet. Good to talk to you guys.

Eddie Rester 49:06Thank you for listening today. Go ahead and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And go ahead and hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts.

Chris McAlilly 49:15This wouldn't be possible without our partner General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. We want to thank also our producer Cody Hickman. Follow us next week. We'll be back with another episode of "The Weight."