None: 0:06

Welcome to the Leading Conversations podcast sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network. On each episode, jd Paring will have conversations with church planting pastors and leaders from around the country. You can learn more about how to connect with Excel at the end of this podcast. Let's join JD now and listen in on this leading conversation.

J.D. : 0:30

Welcome to another edition of the Leading Conversations podcast with Excel Leadership Network. Today we are very excited to have with us the great David Whitaker from Venture Church Network, all the way from South Carolina. Thanks for being here, David.

Mike Whitaker: 0:46

Hey, it's great to be with you, JD.

J.D. : 0:48

So where are you today?

Mike Whitaker: 0:52

I'm in Greenville, South Carolina. We moved here about four years ago.

J.D. : 0:58

How is Greenville, South Carolina?

Mike Whitaker: 1:01

It is. If you, if you look for best cities to go visit or, um, even best places to move, it's usually in the top 10. Um, it's a medium-sized city, so you have the options of large, of a larger city, but, uh it, you have some of the option, the nice things and amenities of a small town. So the people who grew up here think it's gotten too big. Those of us who moved here, who have made it bigger, think it's a great place to be.

J.D. : 1:40

Well, good. And are you the president? Are you the Grand Poobah of Venture Church Network, or what's your title?

Mike Whitaker: 1:47

Yeah, I'm that guy. It's president of Venture Church Network.

J.D. : 1:54

Okay, do I need to address you as El Presidente?

Mike Whitaker: 1:57

Yeah or hey you. Yeah, it's a new role for our network. Good.

J.D. : 2:04

Well, hopefully we'll get into that, but let's start at the beginning. Tell us how you came to Jesus, just growing up, what happened?

Mike Whitaker: 2:14

I grew up in a pastor's home, and so my story is I was a great, wicked sinner and, at six years of age, gave my life to Jesus. I still remember the moment. It was a midweek service and I was sitting. My mom wasn't able to be there because she was taking care of my sister, and so I was told to sit in the back and just be quiet and listen. And somehow, in the process of that service, I came to realize that I had never really given my life to Jesus myself, and so I did that, told my dad after church, and he made sure I understood what I was doing, and I won't say I never doubted after that, but I can clearly look back at that time to realize that Jesus became my Savior.

J.D. : 3:24

Wow, that's great. At six years old Was growing up in a pastor's home. A good thing for you. Was it hard? What was that experience like for?

Mike Whitaker: 3:33

you. It was actually great for me. You know I had parents that tried to make sure that I wasn't behaving for their ministry's sake and tried to make a difference between my behavior as a follower of Jesus as opposed to my behavior as the pastor's son, and so it was a good experience. The problem were other people in the church that were criticizing that would be critical of my behavior because I was the preacher's son, and so that part wasn't easy. But we had a great childhood, great parents. I don't have a lot to complain about there.

J.D. : 4:25

Parents. I don't have a lot to complain about there, since a lot of pastors listen to this podcast and they have kids. What is one thing your parents did?

Mike Whitaker: 4:47

I mean you kind of mentioned already one thing, but what's another thing your parents did as parents of kids in ministry that you just think is great and maybe you tried to model? Well, one thing was my dad. Whenever my dad heard someone make some comments or that came up, he was very quick to go confront them and explain to them that he didn't want kids living a certain way because of his job, and so that really spoke to me and was very helpful. The other thing is they would also provide opportunities for us to engage. So, you know, I was moving chairs, I was stuffing bulletins, I was going with my dad to a hospital visitation to visit somebody sick. He just brought me along through it and I enjoyed it and at the same time didn't make me feel like I had to. Um, he, he made, he made it as best as he could, and, uh, I mean the reality was I was a preacher's kid and so we blame the Deacon's kids for our behavior. Um, but, um, but he did a good job with that.

Mike Whitaker: 6:09

The other thing that was really that I see with a lot of preachers' kids is the parents are too vocal about the problems they're going through and you know, when you're a pastor, you get shots, people say things and there's, you know, difficulties in every church at some level, and my parents were really good about not having doing two things, and here's the overbalance. The overbalance is you're not exposed to any issues and problems, and so you're wondering you know why aren't my parents happy with that family? And so they would tell us things that are going on, but they were very careful not to create bitterness in our heart when they were going through a difficult time, and so I didn't know about some of the things that happened to them until years later, because they were very good about protecting us in that way.

J.D. : 7:20

Did you have a period of rebellion or anything like that?

Mike Whitaker: 7:25

Did you have a period of rebellion or anything like that? Yeah, I had. In junior high. High school I had the typical Christian kid issue of is this real If I've been born in a different family, and so I wrestled with my faith a little bit in my high school years and I wrestled with even in my early college years. I struggled my first year or two.

Mike Whitaker: 8:00

And I think a lot of it had to do with identity. You know what is my identity and you know, am I considered important on the basis of who my parents are or am I having problems because of who they are? They're getting in the way. So you know stuff that was going on with my high school friends, the parties and all of that um it was. It was difficult because I never could. I could not get away with um going to those Cause I there were too many people in town. We lived in a small community in the early part and then when we moved to California, that opened some areas of struggle, but I was grateful.

J.D. : 8:58

my parents just kept open communication. Yeah, that's huge Talk about your call to ministry. What happened there? How did you get involved in the family business?

Mike Whitaker: 9:06

Yeah, Well, you know, when you're in high school and there's these expectations of people that, well, you're going to be a preacher because your dad's a preacher, and absolutely not I was going to go into law or I was going to go into some other thing, I was not going to be a preacher and I ended up I don't know. I think I got involved in some ministry things. We had buses, you know. So I was given a bus route and I would go out and try to get kids to ride our bus to church, and that was back in the bus days, and I don't know, in the process of that, just began to get a burden for preaching and, in spite of the fact that I didn't want to do this, because it was expected and I realized this was what God was calling me to do.

Mike Whitaker: 10:10

So, which was interesting, because my dad was the kind of guy that would walk into a room and he knew everybody and everybody knew he was president and um, you know, I'm, I'm an introvert, Um, and I, I, I like people, but, um, I'm happy to enjoy my time by myself and um, so I really struggled with public speaking. Uh, anytime I got up and I I thought people were actually listening to me when I was talking. I get this lip quiver and so I was not a great public speaker, but in fact I wasn't one and I had to work through that. But I just felt like that was God's calling for me.

J.D. : 11:01

How'd you work through the public speaking bug?

Mike Whitaker: 11:10

me How'd you work through the public speaking bug? I minored in speech and just forced myself to and, you know, had teachers work with me and forced myself to work through the issues and, um, you know, a lot of it came out of my own insecurities, because I wasn't the guy that was, you know, would walk into a room and everybody would know it. I was the quiet guy and so I, you know, had these insecurities that I needed to work through and find my identity in Christ and the reality of the gospel as it speaks into that part of our life and as well as just practically working through things. But as I look back at it, I think it was my struggle with my identity and my insecurities.

J.D. : 11:58

Can I ask where you went to college?

Mike Whitaker: 12:00

I went to Bob Jones University.

J.D. : 12:03

I think I knew that, but I just need that. So you're back in God's country, in South Carolina. Then right, you lived there. And how did you get to Bob Jones from California?

Mike Whitaker: 12:13

Yeah, well, both of my parents went to Bob Jones that's where they met and that was a school I was not going to go to and we did a college tour, looked at Bible colleges, you know, around the country and they had, you know, say what you will. They had great programs, they had good education, they had a lot of opportunities, um, and we were still in that fundamental orbit, um, at that time. Uh, so it was, I got a great education, um, you know, in later years I had to kind of work through the, the fundamentalist, separatist issues, and so I had some conflict with the leadership here back in the day. So Greenville was not on my radar as a place that I would ever live in. But here we are.

J.D. : 13:20

How was it? I mean, I don't really know much about it, I just know there's a bunch of rules and as a kid who went to UCLA, it's just hard to fathom somebody going to a place where there was more rules than necessary.

Mike Whitaker: 13:33

What was that like?

J.D. : 13:33

for you and your wife. Did you meet your wife there?

Mike Whitaker: 13:36

Yeah, I did. Well, we grew up in homes where there were rules and stuff, so that made it a little bit easier. Where there were rules and stuff, so that made it a little bit easier. And really it took me a few years to, probably toward the years I was in grad school. I just started looking at some of the things, and one of the things they taught me was to study the scriptures, to be expositional. They did a great job with that and I started evaluating the rules and started evaluating expectations and that our value in Christ was not in the gospel but in our behavior, and so I had to work through that. But it was a great education. I got a lot out of it. But I also realized there was a bigger view of Christianity than simply a list of behaviors. What's interesting is the organization you know, venture Church Network actually had some roots with Bob Jones type of fundamentalism and that's part of that history. So I think it has served me well to have that have had that background as I'm navigating through this network.

J.D. : 15:11

Didn't Venture Church come out of that, though? Did it come out of a fundamental thing?

Mike Whitaker: 15:28

came out of the. You know, back in the early 20th century there was a lot of liberal theology and we were a part of the Northern Baptist Convention. You had the Northern Baptist and Southern Baptist and the Northern Baptist got pretty liberal to the point where they were no longer requiring missionaries to sign off on the virgin birth of Jesus, the deity of Jesus, the inerrancy of scripture, and there was a group of pastors and churches that said wait, that really does matter. So they started the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society. That was like 1943. By 47, the convention said you can't be a part of the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society and us. You've got to make a choice. And at risk of their pensions and in some cases their buildings, they came out of the Northern Baptist and formed the Conservative Baptist Association of America and that's actually Venture Church Network's DBA for the Conservative Baptist.

J.D. : 16:42

Conservative Baptist. Conservative baptist. Conservative baptist had rob nuces to say worst name possible well, yeah, you know what does that name mean. And um in 1943 it was a little bit different than yeah it it meant something.

Mike Whitaker: 16:58

You know, you got the idea. Okay, we're conservative in doctrine. Uh, today, if you were, if you know what? And that was why we changed our name is because, when you use the word conservative Baptist, everybody knew what that meant. They had their own ideas, but everyone immediately had something come to mind. So we found ourselves always on our back foot trying to explain no, we're not that kind of conservative, it doesn't mean our music style or service styles, it's not a style thing and it's a doctrinal thing. And no, it's not a political thing, it's a doctrinal thing. And so we kept stumbling over the name, and so that's why we are now Venture Church Network.

J.D. : 17:47

Well, you came to college. You said grad school. Did you go immediately into pastoring?

Mike Whitaker: 17:54

I actually, yeah, I was on staff at Bob Jones for a while and then I went and worked with my dad. He had, in 1966, moved to the. We were in Iowa at the time. He was pastoring a small church in mid-state Iowa and through a series of circumstances he was. He had a friend that had moved to Sacramento and he asked my dad to come and do a week of revival meetings Back in the day. They still did that, a week of revival meetings Back in the day. They still did that. And he saw people coming to faith left and right and he just was amazed by what the open door that was there. That wasn't in the Midwest. And so some pastors asked him if he'd be willing to come and plant a church in Dublin. Come and plant a church in Dublin, california. So in 1966, he went there. They had been meeting with a seminary professor from San Francisco and so he became the first pastor and so I grew up in a church plant in the Bay Area.

J.D. : 19:09

Oh, wow. And then what about your pastoral time when you were pastor?

Mike Whitaker: 19:15

So I was with him for seven years and the plan was I was going to take over the church and I wanted to and he wanted me to. But after seven years he still wasn't ready, and I was more than ready to take leadership, and so we figured the Lord was calling us elsewhere, and so I ended up taking a fundamentalist church in Phoenix, arizona, that said they wanted to change and I was 30 years old and believed them, and so I was there for 13 years and then, in 2004, moved to back to the Bay Area and pastored for 16, 17 years in Morgan Hill, just outside of San Jose.

J.D. : 20:16

Wow, and now you're. How did you get the Venture Church Network gig? What caused that to happen?

Mike Whitaker: 20:38

happen. Well, when we moved to, my stance with networks and denominations were they were a waste of time. It was a bunch of old guys getting together talking about things that needed to happen and I didn't see any value in it. My dad was a proponent of it, but I just never felt I had time. But when I moved to Morgan Hill, we had been planted by the CBA in Northern California and so they asked me to be on the board and I thought, okay, and next thing, I know I'm serving on the board and, through a series of circumstances, ended up becoming the regional director for Northern California and Nevada.

Mike Whitaker: 21:21

And I was there, for I did that for about 10 years years, and we were eight regions around the country, there was about a thousand churches and we just weren't doing a good job. The network was dying, the association was dying, and so I remember and that's probably around 2018, we started asking the question do we just like? There needed to be players engaged in helping network churches and helping churches be healthy and get healthy and be multiplying. And so we realized that somebody needed to be pulling the strings together, that somebody needed to be pulling the strings together, and so they asked me to take that on. So I had been doing the region full-time along with pastoring full-time in Morgan Hill. So I thought, well, I could do the same thing nationally and handed off the region to another pastor in Sacramento.

Mike Whitaker: 22:53

And then I tried to do the national part-time while I was still pastoring and realized quickly that wasn't going to work. So in February of 2020, I was asked to take this on full time. They basically said we have no budget for your role, but we're willing to carve something out and use what we do have and see if we can get something rolling. So, uh, in 20 march of 2020, lynette and I uh had been praying and decided to take the role. Um, we were up at a uh, our northwest region and the next day after we made that decision, I get a call from the office saying the governor shut down the churches in California. What do we do so?

J.D. : 23:52

COVID was your fault. As soon as you said yes, then COVID.

Mike Whitaker: 23:56

Yeah, right. So we got the church. I had been the elders in our church and I were very open with each other, so they knew I was walking through these things and so I said our focus needs to be on getting our church through this process. So we did and by May, the elders said, hey, we think we can take it from here. You need to do what God's called you to do. So we left in September of 2020, which was really tough because, um, you know, we we had. We had never loved a church like we love that church and we had never been loved by a church like we were with that church. And so we knew it was a unique experience and, um, we, it was tough to leave, but we knew if we were going to work with an organization whose mission statement was to help churches take bold next steps, we needed to do that.

J.D. : 25:04

And you moved to South Carolina because COVID didn't hit there, because COVID didn't hit there.

Mike Whitaker: 25:10

Yeah, well, you know it's funny. Originally we thought we were going to move back to Phoenix, but there were several things pulling here. One was cost of living living. Both of our kids and my son's wife and two granddaughters live in New York City, so that was obviously a draw. And then our most challenged regions were on the East Coast, and so the other reds, the other directors, thought it would be advantageous if I could be on the West or the East Coast to give them some more attention. So everything seemed to kind of pull us to this direction. And my son's in-laws are in South Carolina so, and we had family here and it's a great community to live in, and at the time I was able to really we were able to get a house that was quite a bit cheaper than the Bay Area. So things work together well.

J.D. : 26:26

Yeah, that's not surprising that it's cheaper than the Bay Area.

Mike Whitaker: 26:28

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.

J.D. : 26:32

What's the vision for Venture Church Network? You talked about bold next steps. What's on the horizon?

Mike Whitaker: 26:38

Yeah, you know, we really want to help churches experience and that whole bold next steps and even the name Venture came out of the process of you know what would our future be and what are we want to focusing on. And as we look back at our history and saw that you know we had some leaders that took some risks of, at my age, walking away from a pension that I'm looking to for my retirement because of a doctrine. It's the right thing. I hope I would have the courage to do that same thing. And one of the definitions of venture is advancing in the face of risk or danger, and we thought, you know that really is the call God has for us.

Mike Whitaker: 27:39

You look at Acts 4, you see Peter and John preaching at the temple and the Sanhedrin sees them and hears them and confronts them and they notice their boldness and so they go through that whole process release them with the idea don't preach in Jesus' name. They go back to the church and they rejoice and they pray and they say, god, give us more boldness. And I, you know, I think in our culture we would say, god, take this persecution away. But they're asking for more boldness and they go out and they preach with greater boldness. Acts says and you know we felt like that was the calling that God had for us is churches. We tend to play it safe and as pastors we tend to play it safe because we don't want conflict and we're conflict adverse, and not that we should be looking for conflict, but we have a mission that should focus us and is going to create conflict from being just comfortable. And so if we could come alongside churches, not tell them what that next step needed to be, but either encourage them, be their biggest fan, pray with them, help them in the process of finding what that next step is and resourcing them in any way we can to help them take the next step to see the gospel furthered.

Mike Whitaker: 29:18

So our values are gospel driven. We think gospel matters and that the message that I'm preaching to those who don't know Jesus is the same message I need every day. We do think doctrine matters, so we're biblically faithful. We think we're called to make disciples, so we want churches that are disciple-making. And we think relationships matter, so we want that connection happening. So those drive the values of our network.

Mike Whitaker: 29:54

There are kind of three things we do we want to connect pastors with pastors and churches with churches and we want them to help each other. We don't want to be the experts in the office. We think the experts are out there doing it and let's connect them relationally. Secondly, we want to help churches take their bold next steps. So whatever we need to do to resource them or help them work through a model that would help them to be making disciples. And then, thirdly, that we are multiplying. Whether it's services or campuses or congregations, we want to be multiplying.

Mike Whitaker: 30:35

So we're still in a rescue phase. You know, some of our regions are still struggling financially and we're trying to demonstrate the new nature of what it means to be a part of this network. But I think, through people like yourself and Excel and other ministries that are helping churches catch a vision for multiplying themselves and having something that is multipliable we think is really important. So, at the end of the day, if we could see gospel-centered, transformational churches happening in our communities, that's the win. Venture Church Network is we're here to serve the church and we only matter if we do serve the church. And if at some point we're not able to serve the church, well, then we need a closed shop, because the church is who Jesus came and died for, and we're just an organization that is helping to bring people together so they can accomplish what God's called us to be and to do.

J.D. : 31:53

Great stuff. I love the bold next steps. I love what you're doing. You're doing a great job taking some bold next steps yourself and what you're doing with the network. It's been pretty exciting to see Last question. Give us a leadership tip. You've been doing this for a while.

Mike Whitaker: 32:18

You know I'm I think the biggest burden I have is the next generation. I think our generation did not do a good job in passing the baton off to other leaders and if there is any regret I have in my own personal ministry, in my own personal ministry, it's that I didn't spend more time mentoring and giving opportunity for leadership to the next generation. I think every pastor should be actively looking for opportunities to help the next generation and we're too late if we're waiting until they graduate from high school or college to say hey, you know, have you considered ministry? I think even in the elementary years we as churches need to be creating an environment where you know serving the cause of Christ, environment where you know serving the cause of Christ, looking for opportunities to make a difference in this church that he is building. You get to be a part of that and to tell those kind of stories, but to specifically be mentoring and engaging with the next generation and giving them opportunities to lead, we're too we're, we're holding on too hard.

Mike Whitaker: 33:54

I heard and I've heard this before, someone this week mentioned about a pastor and he was saying to his church and to his leadership and to us he said you know, I, I to his leadership and to us. He said you know, I've been here for 30 years and my plan is to, you know, die in the pulpit. Well, that's great, you know, for you, you know for someone to say, hey, you know, he died serving Jesus, you know, but is that really good for the church? You know, could he be saying, hey, my goal is to serve the church well until I die and in the meantime, I need to set up the next generation and unfortunately, in that church and in a lot of churches, they're not preparing for the next generation to take leadership, because they're holding on to it and waiting until they die before the next generation gets to pick up the baton and doesn't know what to do with it.

Mike Whitaker: 35:01

I was watching the Olympics last week or a week before, and when the Americans fumbled the baton pass, as has happened in previous Olympics, I was immediately thinking about what our mission and ministry is to really pass the baton well, that that is going to make the difference in the race.

Mike Whitaker: 35:27

And I can run as hard as I can, but if I don't pass the baton well and if I don't do it in the zone that needs to happen, we're going to fail at the race and I've got over a dozen churches right now in our network looking for pastors and for many of these they're churches that are rural communities. You know they're not naturally attractive to hey going in and seeing a church really boom because the community is growing. But they need pastors, they need shepherds, they need leaders and they don't have them because pastors and leaders in the past haven't been building that pipeline. So if there's anything I could do to encourage us who are still holding the leadership, look for opportunities to let other people lead and look for opportunities to mentor and shape the next generation so that we can get that pipeline refilled and see the gospel continue to blossom in our churches and communities.

J.D. : 36:42

That's brilliant, that's so necessary and it's just I mean, it's so biblical too. Things you've heard from me pass on to others, so thanks for that encouragement.

Mike Whitaker: 36:52

Yeah, you'd think we would get it, but we don't.

J.D. : 36:58

We're holding on too tight.

Mike Whitaker: 36:59

Yeah, we really are.

J.D. : 37:01

David, thanks so much for your time. Thanks for all you're doing. Keep up the good work. Find some younger leaders.

Mike Whitaker: 37:15

Well, thank you, and you know what JD, I just I want to take the chance here to just say how much I have appreciated you and Excel. Even before I even got to know you, you were a part of helping us in Northern California get church planting off the ground. I didn't really have a clue how to get that going and you were incredibly helpful to Josh Roten who eventually helped us lead our church planting effort there, and you were very generous with your time and your resources to help us get that started and you're helping other regions now in our network get churches planted and started as a ministry. And I just want to say how grateful I am for you personally and for your friendship, but also especially for what you're doing in serving the broader church and seeing churches multiply, and I'm incredibly grateful and will forever be grateful for your heart and ministry and generosity to us.

J.D. : 38:20

Well, thanks, david. That means a lot. I have a heart for the Bay Area obviously Northern Cal for you and for your network, and I'm excited about what God's doing. So thanks so much for being here.

Mike Whitaker: 38:33

Thanks, great to be with you.

None: 38:37

Thanks for joining the Leading Conversations podcast. We hope that you found it both helpful and encouraging. At Excel Leadership Network, our focus is on the church planter rather than the church. If you'd like to find out more about us, visit our webpage at excelnetwork. org. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes.