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Beyond the Breakwater: Pastor Ed Doerner's Innovative Approach to Church Ministry
Lead Time listeners, Tim Ahlman here! We love bringing you content to grow as leaders in your ministry and beyond, but we want to make sure we’re hitting the mark. Can you help us out by filling out a quick 5-question survey? It’ll take less than a minute and help us know what you like about the podcast, what topics you want more of, and even which guests you’d love to hear from next.
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The episode highlights the innovative ministry of Pastor Ed Doerner, who shows how churches can effectively engage communities by addressing what they need help with! Through initiatives like a car repair garage and grocery store, Pastor Ed illustrates the importance of dignity and sustainable models in outreach, encouraging churches to expand their missions beyond conventional practices.
• Pastor Ed Doerner's journey of innovative ministry
• Addressing transportation challenges through affordable car repairs
• The impact of running a grocery store on community dignity
• Importance of serving the ALICE population in ministry
• Engaging the community through volunteerism and participation
• The eight core needs of communities: housing, transportation, food, childcare, jobs, healthcare, recovery, and community
• Trusting in God's provision when stepping beyond comfort zones
• Encouragement for churches to embrace missional outreach strategies
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Lead Time listeners, tim Allman here. We love at Lead Time bringing you content to grow as leaders in your ministry and beyond, but we want to make sure that we're hitting the mark, so can you help us out by filling this five-question survey? It's going to take less than a minute. It helps us know what you like about the podcast. We want to hear what topics you want more of and even which guests you'd love to hear from next. Please let us know. We want to know also how likely you are to recommend Lead Time to a pastor, a friend or a church leader. Your feedback, it really really matters. Check out the link in the show notes and let us know what you think. Thank you for helping us lead better together. God bless.
Speaker 2:This is Lead Time.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman here. Jack Kauberg is in the house today. Jack, you've been out and about with conferences and all the. You were at an AI conference learning about how churches can leverage AI today in healthy ways. How are you doing, man?
Speaker 3:I've been doing well. It is awesome to be back online with you, man. It feels like it's been a hot minute, but, yeah, I've been doing well. It is awesome to be back online with you, man, it feels like it's been a hot minute, but yeah, I've been a traveling man. A couple of different conferences. One was a cohort of executive pastors and executive directors, which was a really great learning experience for me. And then, like you said, the one following was a conference learning about the most innovative ways that churches are using artificial intelligence and it's really exciting. It's kind of, I think, the potential is. I mean, think about how much potential the printing press had for the church and the impact of that, and we're just seeing I think we're on the very beginning of seeing how it might help church ministries as well with artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's either going to kill us or it's going to help us multiply the gospel. Both things could happen. Anyway, think about the printing press.
Speaker 3:It was a blessing and a curse, right Like you can print Bibles with it. You can print, really, you know, you can print the 95 thesis with it or you can print a lot of terrible stuff with it. So it's going to get used and here's the key thing, god is not surprised by it. He's not surprised by the invention of AI.
Speaker 1:Very true, very true. Well, good to have you back, man. Today we get the privilege of hanging out with a pastor that I just got to meet. I heard his story from Jordan Besling. Thanks for connecting us, jordan, and the pastor we get to hang out today. I would make the case after just spending five minutes listening to his ministry story one of the most innovative entrepreneurial releasing for these ministries that you're about to hear about, to be multiplied. He's obviously got an empowering gift, a releasing, trusting gift.
Speaker 1:I want to introduce Pastor Ed Dorner, who is from Messiah Lutheran Church in Midland, michigan, center of the state. Just heard about him and this guy doesn't just do word and sacrament. He's been mobilizing missionaries to meet felt needs through a coffee house, an automotive garage, a grocery store and even a health care center. This is unbelievable and has recently put together a separate 501c3 in the state of Michigan called Elevate. So Ed has been in his context for 16 years, and over 30 years as a pastor, you're probably asking. I just asked him what denomination are you? A part of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Praise be to God. You're a part of our tribe expanding the kingdom of God, ed, how are you doing, brother? Thanks for hanging with us today on Lead Time.
Speaker 4:I'm doing great. Thank you guys for having me. It's good to meet you both and just really great to be a part of it.
Speaker 1:Hey, no, the joy is ours. And if you're listening and not watching on YouTube, you're like. This guy does podcasts an awful lot. Not only does he sound good, he looks good, he has his own podcast called Beyond the Breakwater, where he talks about a lot. I'm sure he's going into a lot of depth there telling this story and kind of the why behind the what. So tell the why story of what led you to say you know what the church could be Now. Word and sacrament is huge for us, but word and sacrament isn't the end. It's the end of our sin, praise be to God. But it's the catalyst for love and good deeds as the people of God are mobilized, empowered, equipped for love and good deeds out in the community. Tell us a story of how Messiah said we could be more Ed.
Speaker 4:In our community. I think it just happened because needs came our way and we started to meet needs. And like automotive, I mean, we changed to oil in 35 single mom's cars and seven of them were condemned, meaning unsafe and not worth fixing, and we decided we should probably do something about it. And so we looked and tried all different avenues and nothing worked. And we said maybe we should build, do something about it. And so we looked and tried all different avenues and nothing worked. And we said maybe we should build our own garage. So that would be an avenue or an idea of how a ministry came about. And now, 11 years later, we've done over 20,000 cars, we have a car dealership and so we take in donated cars and we've taken in about 575 cars in donation and get them into the hands of these same people that when we condemn a car we put them in a car. So it's really needs-based. I mean a need comes our way and what is God calling us to do to meet that need?
Speaker 3:So think about the impact of that. People who are struggling now have an opportunity to get to work where maybe that was like, not an option or is going to be really expensive, or maybe they had to depend on public transportation. That wasn't ideal to them. Now they have options in life that they didn't have before because transportation is being provided for them.
Speaker 4:I don't think we knew how large of an issue it was until we started doing this and the people that are coming in and in need, and there seems to be more desperation today. People have less money and they're coming in and they're really hurting and they need their cars repaired and they just don't have the money to do it. And so we're about 38% of retail.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's incredible 38% of retail in your area. Say more. That's incredible. 38% of retail in your area. Say more. What do you mean?
Speaker 4:Yeah, If you go down the street and you would get car repair and let's say you'd pay $1,000 for the repair down there, we'd be about $380.
Speaker 3:And the way that you would bring the price down is through donations and stuff like that. How does that work?
Speaker 4:Well, there's a whole maybe process. You might say that if you're a customer, you're paying the retail price. If you're a client, then you're paying the client price, which is less. We don't have a large markup on parts, like if you would go into, say, auto value and buy a part for $100, we sell it to you for $100, so that we're not marking it up from retail when if you go to another garage they're going to mark it up another 60% or so based upon retail. So we just keep our numbers down and we have a book it's called Mitchell One that says if it's going to take an hour to work on your brakes, we charge you for an hour. If it takes us three hours, because we work on a lot of older cars, we charge you for one hour at the client rate, with the no markup on parts or a small markup on parts. And you add all that up together and it's just a huge savings for people.
Speaker 3:And you're employing mechanics.
Speaker 4:We are.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, it's so out of the box, Ed, I'm so excited. So people may come up to you because you obviously didn't learn this at the seminary 30 some years ago how to run all these kind of not-for-profits and or for-profits with a kingdom bent right. So start with your why. When people come up to you and say like, why are you doing this, Pastor Dorner? What do you say, man?
Speaker 4:It's pretty simple. I think we got to go back into Luke, chapter 19, when Jesus talked about he came to seek and to save the lost. What I've noticed over the years is that churches really have lost the ability to reach into their communities and they don't know how to do it and they don't know what to do, and so there's a whole philosophy of attractional, of come to us. So if I would even back up a little bit further I know you had Bob Newton on here and I was down in South Africa with Bob earlier in the year and learned something very extraordinary. He took John 3.16 and he just put God and then he put the world, how much God loves the world, and he put the church in the middle and he said through the church God loves the world.
Speaker 4:But for some reason the church got stuck and we almost interpreted as a church is for God to love the church and the world needs to come to the church. And that's not what he said. He said for God to love the world raises up the church to go into the world, not expecting the world to come to it. And I think, boy, when he told me that, that was like an eye opener for me and I think, boy, when he told me that, that was like an eye-opener for me and so I think that really gave a lot of simple answers of why. Because that's how God loves the world, that's how God loves our community, uses the church to love the community and if you think about Jesus' ministry, it was always around felt needs he saw a need, he would serve them and take care of their needs.
Speaker 3:He healed and he fed right. So he went to people's core needs right then, which was and it was very attractional. And you said kind of a word I think that's a trigger for people, the word attract, right. Some people get offended by that that, hey, what, what role is that? We're not, we're not Disney, we're not here to attract people. But the reality is is that Jesus wanted to build relationships with people and have his presence known and actually, you know, get be known in the community as a presence that loves, loves humanity, yes, and so now I love how you're thinking about this. This is great, commission, thinking right that God Christ commissions the church to go and make disciples. It's not, like you said, god so loved the church, he loves the world and he commissions the church to do this.
Speaker 4:Right. The church becomes his hands, his feet. I know we talk about that, but we're just actually living it out where every day we're a seven day a week church. One day a week we celebrate the other six days. We're actually in the community missionally. So I think that's really.
Speaker 4:I think the two words that we work hard at or think about a lot is are we missional, are we attractional? If you're attractional, you're waiting, but if you're missional, you're going. It might help. Can I walk us through the model, because I think the model will probably change everybody's thinking. And why are we looking at a model is because Jesus oftentimes would say what should we compare the kingdom of God to? And he would use a model, a modern day model, like a mustard seed For us.
Speaker 4:We're in the Great Lakes and we're using the model of beyond the breakwater. Now, a lot of people don't know what a breakwater is, but there's the, let's just say, lake Michigan, the open waters. There's a breakwater and then there's inside the harbor and I think what happened is well, let me start this Lost people are beyond the breakwater. There are no lost people in the harbor, that's the safety. And they're all beyond the breakwater. They're drowning without Christ. They're going to die without Christ. Beyond the breakwater they're drowning without Christ. They're going to die without Christ and the church is on mission to go out beyond the breakwater to do everything in their power to care for them, rescue them, give them a life jacket. I believe that's what salvation is is that Jesus offers them a life jacket. Now they can't die again spiritually. And the church is to go out beyond the breakwater then come into the harbor, rest, refuel, disciple, worship, gratitude and head beyond the breakwater to go rescue more people.
Speaker 4:What I've watched over these 30 years in ministry is that the church has been hanging out in the harbor and then when you talk about church shopping, it's really just people going from one dock to another dock and they're trading churches who's got the best program, who's got the best show, who's got the best worship, who's got the best preacher, who's got the best? But it's all harbor. And if you look at our church body, almost all the ministry that we're doing is harbor ministry. We have a structure for harbor ministry, the way that we're organized is harbor ministry and we talk a lot about saving the lost, but I don't see a lot of examples of churches that fire up their boats, go beyond the breakwater and say what are we doing To rescue people? As opposed to doing that, what I've watched is that we hold up our signs in the harbor and we say swim here, that's attractional, come to us, and it's on you. It's on you, here's the sign Come to us. Look on Facebook You're invited. Look on our church signs You're invited. And what we're doing is we're sitting in a harbor saying that people come to us.
Speaker 4:So our ministries are really simply avenues by which. It's the means by which we get to interact with an awful lot of people through a felt need, share the love of Christ and then sometimes, in the midst of doing all those things, we get a chance to actually talk about Christ, pray with people, love on them, care for them. So all of these ministries that we're doing are just the means by which we get to love people. I mean Jesus said love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Love your neighbors yourself. So we're going to show people we love them before we ever tell them that God loves them.
Speaker 1:It's pretty simple. Well, it simply gets overlooked and or placed to the side rather than at the center of what it means to be the people of God. I love that image going beyond the breakwater we're staying in the harbor. Breakwater, we're staying in the harbor. Unfortunately and I get to hear from different leaders at different places in the LCMS story today one of our primary strategies church planting strategies, which we need more church plants. So I'm not downgrading church planting at all, but the strategy is to find the people who basically look like us so for us it's white, european affluent, slightly above affluent and then go and strategically place a church there.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm saying it's wrong if that's your only strategy, because Jesus went and hung out with a lot of people that were very, very diverse and take time to cultivate relationship, to raise up leaders, to mobilize. I mean, jesus spends three years, you know, deep years with the 12. So we got to get away from thinking that small is bad, but they're a roughshod group. You know, they're a very diverse group. They come from different walks of life and then they're sent back by the Spirit's power at Pentecost. They're sent back into their various vocations and beyond, not just into their vocations, but as evangelists, to start a movement.
Speaker 1:They were mobilized by the Holy Spirit to start. They were given permission with the expectation because they saw Jesus go and meet felt needs among the sinners, the lost, the outcasts, the females. You know that. Then they, oh, this is the way to do it. Sure, we can care for those that are well. I think Jesus is well and sick. It really comes in. But no, no, no, it's the sick who need a doctor. Go to the sick, where are people meeting, and that's when we talk felt needs. That's all it is is going where sick people are and to gain a hearing for the gospel. And then may they know. You're my disciples, by the way. You love one another, you love those who come to you. I mean, you kind of use the attractional missional, but when we're truly living in step with the mission of God, the missio Dei, to seek and save the lost, that actually has a very attractive element to it, pastor Dorner. Anything more to say there, and even get more into your model. It's fantastic.
Speaker 4:I can just tell you that we watch a lot of people that come to the church to see if the church is really living out what they've already experienced. So there's an attractional element to it. But the attractional element is people are coming for more. It's a mission, yeah, but it's always based on mission. It's always based on—it's really kind of cool.
Speaker 4:You guys, I've got to tell you over the last five years, every new person that comes to the church and I would pretty much say everybody, to the best of my knowledge when you ask what brings you, it's always the same two words we heard, and it doesn't matter what they heard. We heard how somebody was helped with an appliance. Or we heard about somebody who got food, or somebody who got to see a provider at the healthcare clinic. Or we heard like last week I talked to somebody who's like I heard from my dad who donated a car about your car ministry and I came to hear more about who the church is. And so people are coming attractionally, but they're coming missionally because they want to be a part of what they've heard.
Speaker 1:So fantastic, so anything more. I mean, you use the model of Beyond the Breakwater. I think that's really, really helpful Anything more, as you kind of teach the model and, yeah, share with other churches who are looking to engage in felt-need ministry. That could help expand the kingdom of God.
Speaker 4:Well, there's so much with that model, but let's keep it simple again. If you think about on Sunday morning, what it really should be is everybody should be coming in from beyond the breakwater in a small dinghy, what we might call, and getting filled up, celebrating together, getting refueled, getting equipped, hearing the Word of God, celebrating with other believers, getting back in their dinghy, and they should be as a family, very missional. So that would be like a family going out beyond the breakwater, which you hope the whole church so are our pastors preaching and teaching missionally. That it's not about harbor, it's about going back and going beyond the breakwater. Then what can the church do? Because I think the church collectively is able to do far more than the individual can go, and so churches should be going beyond the breakwater as a church with binoculars, looking for those people that are lost and using means.
Speaker 4:What is the means? So we use food as a means, or healthcare as a means, or community as a mean. I mean there's eight needs in every community. We just go for the needs and basically set up shop and have a ministry there. But then there's one step further beyond the church, I think, is when the church has a ministry and we see this as like a large boat and it would be them going out like with a large platform on the boat and that would be our car ministry, where people are coming in. I mean, we have between 150 and 200 contacts a day just from our garage. So drivers, regional people, salesmen, clients, customers, parts guys, you name it. So the impact of the ministry is huge and that would be like you know it going out there and it just parked and everybody who has some kind of a car need comes to that place and we use that as a means to share with them how much God loves them.
Speaker 1:So good. So you have a grocery store as well.
Speaker 4:We do.
Speaker 1:Tell us the story. I mean a lot of churches, like we've got a large food pantry, but this is an actual grocery store. I assume there's produce and all of that. I mean that's quite an endeavor, jack. I'm thinking we're going to put together a Fry's or a Safeway. Are you kidding me? I don't know. So tell us, get behind the scenes a little bit in terms of what it looks like for a church to run a grocery store. Ed, this is fantastic.
Speaker 4:Okay, so let me take you back. So about nine years ago we were doing a food giveaway. So let me go one step further back. We had a coffee house on Main Street. More people were coming to the coffee house every year than were coming to the church and it was just a great ministry center. It was like the church on Main Street that didn't look like a church. And we took the tips and we would buy food. So over the course of five years we gave away 275 tons of food from the tip jar and people knew when they put a 20 in there, it's going to buy food.
Speaker 4:Well, we interviewed the people that we were giving the food to and that was a wake-up call for us. So I was one of the interviewers. We interviewed 10 people at my table. And what do you like about the food giveaway? What do you not like? And boy did I get my eyes open. And they said Ed, we don't mean any disrespect, but we hate this. You're stripping us of our dignity, you're robbing us of our dignity. And the more that we talked and the more that I listened. And they're diabetic and we're giving them lots of carbs and some of it's expired and some of it's almost always past the due date. And I'm feeling really small at this point, like I thought we were doing something good, and I finally said what do you want? And they said we'll tell you exactly what we want. We want a store we can afford and we never did a food giveaway again.
Speaker 4:And let me talk about the why. Because this was a game changer for every ministry we have. When you give something free, when the church is involved in giving something free first of all, you're going to be hard-pressed to find something scripturally where Jesus gave free. He gave himself freely. There's only two times he gave food and that's when they couldn't provide for themselves. But Jesus didn't go around handing everybody food. He didn't do that. Churches are doing that today. The reason why churches are doing it goes back to the Great Society with Lyndon B Johnson Johnson, that they were trying to eradicate poverty. And so churches today are acting almost like extensions of the government by giving away things for free.
Speaker 4:What people don't realize is that when you give something away free, you're robbing them of their self-core their core being their value and we're making them to be a beggar. And when you make somebody feel like a beggar and they've got their hand out. This is what somebody asked me at the table when we interviewed them When's the last time you had a handout like this and we're begging for food? And I said never. They said then you'll never understand me, but you are robbing me. And I said tell me more about that. So here's what we learned is that if you do it for free, you're robbing them. You're not giving them. You may be giving them food, but you're robbing them of their core being, of who they are before God. The church should never be doing that. But here's what we learned. Here's the difference. You know, if you sell that same food for a quarter, now you have a business deal. Now you're an equal playing field and no dignity is lost. Now you're just a phenomenal deal store.
Speaker 4:So a year later, we never did a food giveaway again. We opened up a grocery store, all volunteer run. We charge five cents over what we pay for it and so people, people come in. They can buy as much as they want. We actually took over the same location that a Save-A-Lot grocery store was 16,000 square feet. We just moved in there in January and I mean, if you walked in, it looks like Meijer. Well, you guys probably don't know what Meijer is. I mean, it looks like a regular grocery store, but it's all volunteer run.
Speaker 1:It's all volunteer run it's all volunteer run. I'm sorry to get into the nuts and bolts, but does the average everyday community member shop there and they're like this is the best deal around man? They're only charging me $50,000. How does that work?
Speaker 4:As long as you make less than $72,000. So there's another concept here. So we focus on a group called the ALICE population. The only federal guidelines that we have for all of us is the federal poverty guidelines. So for a family of four that's 30,000 or less, but then there's nothing. I mean, where's the middle class? What's the middle class mean today? There's no guidelines anywhere.
Speaker 4:So United Way, about a decade ago, came up with a classification called ALICE, which is an acronym for Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed, and in our state it's about $72,000. Midland is almost perfectly matched up with what the state needs are. So for a family of four to make between $30,000 and $72,000, that would require about $36 an hour. Now I don't know about you, but there's not a lot of people that are making $36 an hour. Even if there's two people making $18 an hour, they're not working 40 hours. So if that's the survival number between 30 and 72, that's our focus group. We target everything for them and we can come back to the why we target them. But it's actually really powerful ministry when you target them, because there's only in our state 13% of the population is in poverty and 87% is above poverty. When a church is giving things away free. They're going after the 13% which every other agency, every other church, all the government, everybody's going after 13,000, and we're disregarding 87% of the population. If we're doing it in the name of Christ, then we're literally saying we don't care about the 87%, we're going to compete with everybody else to go after the 13%, but in the process we're going to rob them of their dignity and then we wonder why they're not coming to our church and that's the pattern that most churches are in. So here's a new model when you go after Alice and that means you charge, when you charge people and it doesn't matter what you charge them and you're in the Alice population, you actually get to serve all people, groups. Because what we find is that those in poverty because now it's dignified, they rise up and they love it that they're able to pay it, but they're paying a price that they can afford. Rarely do we get complaints from anybody in poverty Rarely. But when we were given away free, we would always get complaints. But when you're doing something that you're charging them and you maintain and you protect their dignity, they're so grateful. But then now we can go above 72,000. And my biggest challenge to every church leader and pastor is what is your church doing to reach those above 72,000? I asked pastors that so far and so far I don't get an answer, because they're going after poverty and it's called donor fatigue, that donors are getting tired of reaching into poverty because of this whole thing we might call entitlement and I'm not being disrespectful, but it's what we're dealing with all right now.
Speaker 4:Watch the shift. What we do is, if you focus on Alice, we put all of our time and energy in Alice poverty rises up and they come to the grocery store, they come to the car repair clinic, they come to our healthcare center. Those above 72,000 feel like they're really helping a person. So our average car value is about $4,500. Our average price is about $500. We sell it for what we have into it. It needs tires. We sell it for tires. It needs a starter. We put a starter and we sell it to you for a starter. So people are getting about a $4,500 car for about $500. So you know how the above 72,000 person feels, like they're changing a life and they don't have to know Christ.
Speaker 4:But the impact that they're having, because what we've learned in these ministries is that people have two needs inside of them. The first need is to provide for their families. So they're going to do whatever they have to do to provide for their own family. When that's satisfied, the second need kicks in. For all of us, you want your life to matter. You're looking for a purpose, you're looking for meaning. Typically, meaning and purpose comes from helping somebody else. But if you're tired of only working in poverty, the church could do Alice, and so for us. It's amazing Nobody's in this world, nobody's in the Alice arena. Look across the country, you'll see nobody in that arena and churches feel like, no, you got to give everything away.
Speaker 4:Well, it disregards what Paul said in 2 Thessalonians, chapter 3. If a person doesn't work, he shouldn't eat, and he goes on. Most people disregard this verse that people should settle down and earn the food they eat. So if the scriptures say we should be earning the food that we eat, why are we giving it away free? Now, there's a segment of the population that they need it. I mean, if you're homeless, you're on the streets and you've got some mental health issues, that's one thing. But you know what we help homeless people by giving them here's a broom, here's a rake, and they'd much rather have a job and earn the food than they would a handout. That's the world that we're learning a lot.
Speaker 3:So how do you? You said you're serving Alice. You actually means test people or as the honor system. How does that work with you in?
Speaker 4:that context. Yeah, it's great, great question. Every ministry is different. So if we walk into the bridge, we know we have seven seconds. When somebody comes in, that's a food, the grocery store, the bridge food center, because we're bridging the gap. And so when you walk into the bridge we have seven seconds and it either wins their heart or they turn around and walk out and we basically say, hey, we're a volunteer run grocery store. Everything is a nickel over what we pay for it and it's for anybody who makes less than 72,000.
Speaker 4:And then we go silent and I have to tell you about 100% of the people qualify themselves right on the spot. They're like what I wish I made that much money, how much? And rarely, but sometimes it happens. Oh well, I make more than that. And we're like you want a tour? They're like sure, then we give a tour. So when you throw that out there for food, we've never had an issue. Now the garage is different. We partner with Salvation Army and we send people over to get qualified because the money that we are helping to provide for them, the church uses its tithe to underwrite that labor. We don't take it out of the pockets of our workers. So when we give a discount to somebody in Alice for the car repair. The church is writing that discount check.
Speaker 3:Do people know that the church is being generous this way to them? I mean, what does that look like relationally for people to know how the church is supporting them and helping them out this way?
Speaker 4:Well, it may not sound Well, I don't know how it's going to sound coming across. That's not a focus for us.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:See, because what we want to do is we're going to love you, we're going to care for you. We watch and we wait and those opportunities always arise. If you want to know who's behind it, you're going to find out. There's a second phenomenal thing that happens, like the Bridge Food Center. It's in town, it's not anywhere near the church, it's in a strip mall. It allows churches and corporations and organizations to partner with the church, because the church is the silent partner. It allows us to be Jesus. So here'd be an example.
Speaker 4:Wednesday is a lot of times is a corporate day, so Dow Chemical sends people over from the corporation. We might have people from Corteva, we might have people from the credit union and I'll come in and say hello to everybody and Dow Credit Union. The employees are running the grocery store and they love it because it gives them a chance to serve. So we've created a sandbox where the whole community can play in the sandbox. So the person that's leading that ministry this is how we always start we explain to all the volunteers this is what we're about and it's about Jesus and we're going to pray, and so we'd invite you to pray with us and we pray with all these people that are coming in and set them loose for the day and then they get a chance to serve the community and it's catching.
Speaker 4:I mean, we don't have trouble getting volunteers in a community to come and run a grocery store four days a week because everybody's participating. So see, the church quietly set it up and is running it, but the ministry that's coming out of it is really powerful because people are coming repeatedly and they're like. They always ask two questions. They always do. They want to know who you are and why you're doing it. There's your open, there's your invitation to share.
Speaker 1:Wow, I just love this story so much, jack, I desperately want a grocery store.
Speaker 3:I know, actually I'm thinking there's an empty, a vacant grocery store, just like a couple blocks from here.
Speaker 4:We'll do it, let's do it.
Speaker 3:I'm taking this through. So, Ed, do you help other ministries think through how they might do something like this? This is fascinating. We do.
Speaker 4:We sure do so. Every month we have something called Beyond the Breakwater experience, and Every month we have something called Beyond the Breakwater experience and we invite people actually everybody's invited just come for the day and its experience, because we walk you through Beyond the Breakwater and then we take you to all the ministries and let people, just let them dream. And what is God doing in this place? What can you learn about this place? It's having a tremendous impact in people and in churches across Michigan because they're starting to see church in action. And boy, james has really spoken to me. James too, you know we talk about faith and deeds. It's really convicting. What happens if a church has faith and has no deeds thing? What happens if a church has faith and has no deeds? I wonder how many churches we have that are phenomenal, tremendous faith, but there's no deeds, there's nothing that the church is doing to love and serve people in their communities. Jesus, I mean, what did James say? Luther would say there's no such thing.
Speaker 3:If you have faith it must compel you to love your neighbor and do stuff right. So that's kind of a challenge there, right?
Speaker 4:Then how come churches aren't doing it? I think that's probably my biggest question. What did James say? Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by my deeds. So here's something that might help. We don't know what to call it, so we're calling it a relational pyramid.
Speaker 4:We found through the grocery store that if you have a thousand interactions with people, you come across so like for us today, I mean just met you guys. It's an interaction with you guys. So if I see it by best practice, it'd be like hey, you know, we met together, we talked together. That's a connection. Then it goes to a relationship and then there's something that happens spiritually. That's the highest level, um, it's uh, I'd like to pray with you, um, can I share with you, um, what's going on in your life, and it gets really deep. So what we find is that it takes a thousand interactions for 300 connections. Out of 300 connections, it takes about 30 of those will result in relationships Of those 30, one or two. So if you came into the grocery store first time, interaction, come back a second time or third time, you're like hey, I think I know you, I think we met before. They come in a third time and you call them by name. You're asking them how they're doing, how'd surgery go, how's his mother doing. You're really engaging them. Then you watch and wait because they're going to walk in someday and they're going to be in tears and they're going to hunt you down and they're going to say somebody died or can we talk, or I really need your help.
Speaker 4:Great example of that is somebody came into the garage about a month ago and called up and said can I come to the garage? And Mike's our manager. He said yeah, guy came in. And he said I didn't know where to go. He said I just got diagnosed with cancer and I'm really scared and I knew you guys were praying for me and all the mechanics pretty cool, all the mechanics gathered around him prayed for him and the church is actually in the backyard. He didn't go into the church for prayer, he went to an automotive garage for prayer.
Speaker 4:When's the last time you thought about going to a garage for prayer? See, you wait and you watch for those moments and those opportunities and that's when you can talk about Christ. We've learned if you do too early, like if somebody comes in the grocery store and we broach it, they physically take a step back. They're not ready, but when they ask, they take a step towards you and all we do is encourage the volunteers. Just answer the question, just give them a chance to keep walking, keep exploring, and they do so.
Speaker 4:Here's the cool thing. When I took this back to the board and the elders and I showed this pyramid that we're learning, I said how would you interpret this? I loved the response. They said Ed, can you help us figure out how to get 100,000 interactions a year? That's awesome and I love that response. And so all of our ministries. If you come at it from that angle, all of our ministries are how do we encounter the most relationships and the most people that we possibly could to then turn that into a connection, a relationship and a possible salvation?
Speaker 1:Ed. This is revolutionary. Go ahead, jack. I got a master, I got a big, big question, but go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, I was asking a practical question of like how is the local church a bridge into this ministry? What is it doing to activate its people to participate, to contribute? What does that look like?
Speaker 4:Well, I think one of the greatest things is that we have a lot of people that come on Sunday morning that become voice, I mean mouthpieces. When you tell a story in church about how God changed a life, that story is retold. I think one of my favorite stories is there was about a five-month period that I was running the garage and a guy named Jeremiah is a driver from Auto Value came in and he was always there. I saw him a lot. You know tattoos. I mean just love the guy, amazing guy. And one day he came in. He was really sad. I said what's going on? He said my grandpa died. I said you want to talk? He said yeah. So we went in the back and we talked, just cared for him, prayed together.
Speaker 4:He went back to work. He came in two weeks later and he walked in. He goes I didn't know you're a pastor and I said, well, yeah, I am. And he goes baptize me please. I said, all right, when he goes, how about right now? In the back of the shop I said tell you what? How about we do it Sunday? Let the whole church celebrate.
Speaker 4:It was amazing to see Jeremiah come to church on Sunday and the whole church got to celebrate. I said this is Jeremiah, he's one of our delivery guys from Auto Value, part of our garage ministry. You give the church something to celebrate and they tell others Remember what I shared earlier that when people come to the church, we heard, we heard. So the church can volunteer, the church can donate cars, the church can bring in bonus items to the bridge. Let me go back to the bridge for a minute.
Speaker 4:If you give something free, like sometimes a volunteer will make a mistake when people walk in and they're like, let me, this is the free section, and they walk out looking for charity. But you know what happens when people buy and then you give a bonus section where for every $10 they spend, they get a bonus item free. Right Now you're a buy one, get one store.
Speaker 4:Yeah they spend, they get a bonus item free. Right Now you're a buy one get one store. Then we partner with an organization in town and we get bread and produce from them every week. So if you spend a couple of dollars and you get a bonus item and then you get bread and you get some produce and you walk out, you walk out $10, $12 for a dollar. But people feel amazing because they're like I can't believe how much I got for a dollar or for $10. Look at everything that I got. See, we're protecting their dignity. But the other thing remember I told you about the community participating in this, the Above 72?. We go through about 300 free items a day, so 1,200 a week. In eight years we've never been lacking because the community keeps going and buying and sometimes people can afford maybe a can of corn to put on the bonus section or they can buy a whole pallet. But they're participating and helping people in their needs through buy One Get One.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. This is the most innovative entrepreneurial, I guess picture of what the book when Helping Hurts, which came out almost 20 years ago, now looks like ABCD Asset-Based Community Development. And early on in ministry, ed started a ministry called the Table and it's still going. Today it's Thursday's meal and worship, inclusive of, but not exclusively, for, the working poor and homeless in the Denver Metro. And now we have La Mesa Ministries that have been going on for 10 years here in the Phoenix Metro. And the amount of stories. We're working on the first tiny house village in the state of Arizona that will be coming out in 2025. Praise.
Speaker 3:God, which people pay rent for?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is a dignity instilling movement. So let's get a little higher here. What has God done in the church? I heard this kind of historical understanding of the movement of American Christianity from 1965 to 2005. It was about the church growth movement and you're still largely an American, you know. So you could start a church and it was very simple. If you can relate to people well, communicate the gospel, get word and sacrament out. It was relatively easy, if you will, from 2005 to 2020. And you can look at the literature in this You've got a lot of groups like Exponential Acts 29. The conversation was a lot about church multiplication and Acts, as the playbook, was a lot of what took place there. So from 2005, 2020, what happened in 2020? Covid, etc. And now we're in a and there's a lot of like church historians and sociologists that are looking at what is the next generation of the church going to be. So it's gone from church growth, a movement to church multiplication to now getting back.
Speaker 1:So if Acts is a playbook, guess who we're looking at today as the primary mover and shaker? It's the way of Jesus, it's Luke. It's going back to the very beginning. And how did the? Not just the early church. But how did Jesus form his disciples? Go and proclaim the kingdom of God. Go and meet felt needs. Go, cast out demons. It's the boomerang theology. They go and proclaim the kingdom of god. Go and meet felt needs. Go, cast out demons. It's the boomerang theology. They go and then they, they come back. And so today, the biggest question is will the church be about mobilizing the body, mobilizing every single member for love and good deeds, and we want to be about jack.
Speaker 1:There's a part of me that's almost in our mission statement. I want to move away because I think a lot of times you think multiplication and you think, well, I don't multiply, but every single baptized believer could and should, in their local context, be mobilized to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a dark and dying world. That's what we want to be, that's what we want to be about and, ed, you're a living manifestation of what that looks like and I want to move. We're coming down the homestretch here, but move to the top eight felt needs that every community has. I mean, you've started a health crisis. I want to hear about your health ministry. I think the church has a lot to say in this today. But then you can start before you get into your healthcare clinic.
Speaker 1:Talk about those eight felt needs and, listener, if you don't have a pen, the two things you probably want to write down is how are you engaging Alice I'm going to bring that back Asset limited income, constrained employed, $72,000 or less in a family per year. How are we engaging that community? And today this is a very real sociological dilemma. The middle class is being stripped. We're going one of two ways high income or very, very low income, and so I love that recognition of Alice. And now get out your pen and let's walk through those eight felt needs. Ed, thank you, this has been so amazing.
Speaker 4:Okay, first one is housing transportation food, childcare jobs, healthcare recovery and after COVID community that's a new one. So we're in some degree we're in all of them. I love the concept of a tiny house. I'll tell you what we do in our housing ministry is that we have our first house of 20 houses. We move somebody in, we hold back, we charge them 30% of what they currently make, so it doesn't matter how much they make. We keep 100 back for carpet cleaning and paint when they leave and we rebate the other 90% to get them back on their feet, like to pay it on their debts. Paint when they leave, and we rebate the other 90% to get them back on their feet, like to pay it on their debts, help them with their education, so that within three years they're in a whole better situation that they don't need us anymore. Our long-term plan is that after three years they could just buy the house on a land contract for no interest and stay in the house, and then we would take the income and buy more homes. So it would just be a self replenishing and growing ministry.
Speaker 4:That's housing transportation. We actually have the repair facility, we have a car dealership, we have a parts department which is actually our funding source to help fund the ministry. I know we didn't talk about that today, but the whole entrepreneurial side of this is how do you create something where there's an income coming in to pay for the ministry so that it doesn't fall on the burden of the church? So let me come back to that a minute. So that's transportation. Food is a grocery store, so housing, transportation, food, childcare. We have an early care and education center. And then there's jobs. We have an appliance store where we hire people who have barriers to employment. They're going into roofing and ramps so that we can hire a hundred people and set them at work working on Alice and Below for an affordable rate. Community we have the coffee house. That's our hospitality ministry. We used to have a very vibrant recovery ministry and that pastor's gone, so now we participate in NAAA, things of that nature.
Speaker 4:I think that's all of them, but they're all felt needs and every community has them, and I think this is what I wish I could really speak to pastors. They don't understand the power of the church, of what the church is able to do. Now here's what I mean by that From a simple financial standpoint. Okay, this is called a multiplication principle. We tithe. We give about $140,000 to these community ministries. These community ministries, collectively, are doing about $3 million of cash a year, about $5 to $6 million of retail value. So think about the math For a $150,000 donation, we've multiplied it 20 times for a $3 million ministry. So our community ministries are doing twice as much as the church is doing, but in value, they're doing four times the amount. That's multiplication, that's taking a bag of gold of five talents and turning it into five talents. Here'd be another example of what I mean by multiplication, of what the church can do.
Speaker 4:So the original food for the grocery store was $60,000. We raised $60,000 in about six weeks. What we're doing, though, is that we're using this money over and over and over again. So if you give a gift of $60,000 and we sell it, we have $60,000 to buy more food. But if we were doing a giveaway, we take $60,000, we buy more food, but if we were doing a giveaway, we take $60,000, give it away. Then we have to raise $60,000 more, right? So we've used our original $60,000 50 times In eight years. We have a 50-fold return on the $60,000. So we told investors, donors we could take $1,000 and turn it into $100,000. At this point, for every $1,000 given we've turned it into $50,000 per donor, the church can do that. God can extraordinarily use the gifts of the church to radically meet the needs of people in the community by using an entrepreneurial model. It's funding, it so self-funding, and then we're creative by using other things that are feeding financially to help.
Speaker 1:Ed, it's amazing, what do you tell the pastor in the church? Because I think we get this in our context some. Jack, just at a conference yesterday with our district where our district president, God love him, he's like I hear all the time, Well, I can't do it. And I'm sure, Ed, you get the same thing in your district and in your spheres of influence. Well, I can't. I'm not Ed Dornan. I mean, I don't have that call in my life, there's no way.
Speaker 1:So the scarcity mentality, kind of Satan uses that scarcity mentality on overdrive, I think, in a lot of our leaders. I don't have the wisdom or the team or the people you know, or I think that's a big one. I'll throw this out. I've heard from pastors right, they're like I don't have, I don't have the. Obviously Ed has all these people. I don't have the people to which I say and this is my Lutheran snark, God forgive me, Praise God for grace, I'm like they got the wrong pastor. Then, if you don't have the right people and they got the wrong pastor, you don't believe in the to mobilize the found to reach the lost and end of end of sentence Right. So as you, as you start to talk to and cast vision for pastors and kind of knock down some of the scarcity mentality with the abundance of who our God is. What do you say to them, Ed?
Speaker 4:Uh, you cut out a little bit, so say the question again.
Speaker 1:So, for those who have a scarcity mentality, what do you, what do you say to that pastor?
Speaker 4:I don't think they really believe in what God can do and what God is able to do. I think when God presents a need, especially to a church, and God, his desire is to love the world through the church, god is going to equip the church in order to do what he's asking the church to do in the community. You know all these ministries. I know you're going to probably have a lot more questions. We had no money when I got to the church 16 years ago. We were $5.2 million in debt and we had no money zero to start these ministries. But when you go into a community and you have a dream to serve the community with a different way, it's amazing how many people in the community say we'd like to partner with you, we want to help you. Let's see what can happen from this, and the community is benefiting tremendously. It's trusting in God's provision.
Speaker 3:That's what's behind the boldness of ministry is trusting it's not that every idea is a great idea, but that God is prepared to give resources to things that actually impact the kingdom, and trusting in the Lord that that's his desire, that he will actually resource.
Speaker 4:Yeah, jack, let's go back to the model, and I just want to affirm everything you just said, because when you go beyond the breakwater and you don't know where to go, you don't know what to do, you don't know how to do it. You are trusting God with everything in you. You're scared, the enemy is out there trying to get you back into the harbor and you're having to trust God every step of the way in this ministry and you get to watch from a front row seat. God do the greatest work. I think and I know I don't mean to be sound judgmental on churches and pastors but they are in the harbor, missing out on the miracles of God. I think in most churches God could leave and come back 10 years later and they would never know it because they don't need God, because they're never going beyond the breakwater. They're staying in a harbor. Tell me what you need God for. You're safe, you're secure, there's no enemy. Satan's not trying to get you to do anything because you're not doing anything, and so, if you just come from that angle, I think Satan has won a heyday in almost every one of our churches. Because I was listening to one of it.
Speaker 4:Oh, jerry Kishnick is who it was who was talking about in the Constitution that we went from missional number one to missional number two and number one become defending. So who's defending in the harbor? What are we defending from? There's nothing to defend it because nobody's attacking and Satan's like okay, church, stay in the harbor and I'll leave you alone. And I think as a whole, and I think our districts are, it's like a house of cards. We have this institution that's oh, you got to be on this committee and you got to do this and do this, and everybody's in the harbor creating this entire bureaucratic. What House of cards. And tell me somebody who's taken a boat beyond the breakwater to try to change a life or go to rescue someone. So I think Satan has the biggest hold on our church by keeping us in the harbor and in churches until a church, until a pastor says we're going beyond the breakwater, come with me. I don't know what we're doing, where we're going, how we're going to do it. I don't know anything, but let's go see if we can figure it out. That's when you start to see the provision of God. That's when you get to see the blessing of God. Like that's all he'd been asking. And if I could leave. Boy, I know we're getting to the end, but I just feel like I have to say this Imagine being a drowning person beyond a breakwater.
Speaker 4:God is right next to you. You're an unbeliever and you go under once and God is screaming, begging, pleading the church to come out there. He'll do all the work. We don't do the work. He does all the work. He's begging the church to come beyond a breakwater so that he could save that person, because that's how God does it through other people. And he goes under a second time and he's begging the church, but the church is too busy doing whatever the church is doing in the harbor and the person dies without Christ.
Speaker 4:And the church is still in the harbor. Because I think, as pastors, if we were at the end of the breakwater and you saw somebody drowning, wouldn't you do everything in your power to get out there? But yet, for some reason, I'm watching and I'm hearing and I'm listening to our pastors who are so afraid because they don't know what to do. They don't know how to do it Scarcity mindset. They're sitting in the harbor, people are dying across the street without Christ and they're sitting in their office saying I don't know what to do, so I'll just turn a blind eye, pretend that they're not going to hell, and then go back to what A harbor ministry.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The Great Commission is not about building towers or building forts. It's about storming the gates of hell.
Speaker 1:Going beyond the breakwater Right, pastor Dorner, about our church and our struggles and, I guess, lamenting that we're not poking and prodding one another toward creative ways to meet felt needs to gain a hearing for the gospel, like I don't. I just don't hear that as much. And this is no, this is not any one person, it's not to President Harrison. And let me let me pause on this. I know, president Harrison, you've got a big job and you've got you've got team and you've got different, different interests from people in Synod. And then there's leaders who are all around you, who are, who are trying to support and steer and a little bit, since I bring up president Harrison, he wrote a really good article in the Lutheran witness about hope in the midst of trying times and I know you're a church man who loves Jesus and loves the mission of of God and if you have influence, which you do to set up conversations where we can listen and learn with one another. Going back to the Koinonia project, shout out to Herb Mueller. He's been with the Lord now for a little while. I think his heart was in our different contexts. We need to listen and learn from one another and every church has gifts to give and gifts to receive, and I need this is what I've said over the years Like sure, brother, I need you to listen to my sermons and make sure I'm in the confessions, which I am, and and in the word of God, and then maybe, maybe you need pastors like Pastor Dorner who love Luther and the confessions and the scriptures, but really love the mission and creative ways to express and meet felt needs. So if you're, if you're listening and you've been convicted at all by this here's, here would be my one invitation, and I'll let you have the last word there at my one invitation Take a listen to those eight felt needs. What is it? What is it Housing? Is it healthcare? What is it for you? And would you just say and start to pray around, one felt need in your community. I bet you've got different data points to help you, help you figure that out. We're going to solve the community loneliness crisis by going to meet, meet people somewhere that, like the possibilities of what can be started by the local church, are really endless, and I think that's a that's a perspective you have had.
Speaker 1:Just choose one. Like you, you just chose one. You chose the automotive dilemma for single moms with low income. Right, you just chose one, and then the Holy Spirit over time. This is what God does, open door after door. I know who you are. You're after my heart, you're after my kids who are lost.
Speaker 1:So let's, have you thought about this? Have you thought about this? The abundance of who God is? And all the great ideas that come from the body of Christ not just you, ed, because I bet we can get behind the curtain. So many other people had great ideas and all you're doing is like, oh, yeah, yeah, like this is the environment that I'm living in and it's invigorating, it's inspiring and people want to be generous toward it. And so, yeah, any closing comments and kind of a loving invitation, ed. And so, yeah, any closing comments and kind of a loving invitation, ed. I know I said a lot there, from the highest of the LCMS down to the grassroots, where we're just trying to be faithful, to get the gospel into the heart and minds of people, and we're doing so through meeting felt needs, anything more to say about that.
Speaker 4:Ed, I think you said it really well and I think, if you use the model, I think most of what we're doing in the church body is all harbor, most of it is it's not until the church really goes beyond the breakwater. That that's when it gets real, that's when it gets hard, that's when it gets messy. And I would tell every church pastor get out of your office, get in your communities, go beyond the breakwater and just go sit, sit in a coffeehouse, listen, go to Burger King, listen, go somewhere, talk to people, talk to the mayor, talk to the leaders in the community and see how the church can make a difference in the community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If people want to connect with you, how can they do so? Ed?
Speaker 4:I think email is the best. I mean you can go to either Messiah Midland, you know, and to the website, or go to Elevate Midland or hello at beyondthebreakwaterorg. And I think if I would encourage anything, the reason why we started the podcast is because this is changing and developing all the time. The podcast is really. It fleshes us out in tremendous detail so that over the course of 60, 70 podcasts, people are really starting to understand the nuts, the bolts. How does it work, listening to the managers, what does it take to get this going? How did we start it? I mean, it's everything. So what we did in an hour really is going to be fleshed out. So if anybody wants to learn more, that's where I would start beyondabreakwaterorg.
Speaker 1:So good. This is lead time. Please rate us wherever it is you take this in If this was helpful for you. That help gets the word out and we pledge to have more hope-filled, jesus-filled, holy Spirit-saturated conversations like this that lead us. It's a new day. It's a new day. Leader and mobilize, equip, empower, release, inspire, send, like, give the gospel away liberally, get it out into the hearts and minds of people in your community, meet, felt needs. It's an awesome, awesome day to be the church who is on mission to make Jesus known. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. What a joy to be with you, ed. Good work, jack.
Speaker 2:God bless, guys. Thanks, scott, you've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.