Co-Host: 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. Pearring: 0:30

Well, welcome to another edition of Leadership Conversations, with the Leading Conversation with Leadership Network. Today we have the privilege to have the great and wonderful Steve Ingram with us from Arizona. Steve, thanks for being here.

Steve Engram: 0:50

Well, yeah, I don't know how great or how wonderful, but I am glad to be here. It's good to be able to be on this with you. Where in Arizona are you?

J.D. Pearring: 0:56

living right now.

Steve Engram: 0:57

So I pastor a church in Goodyear, arizona, so Goodyear's on the west side of Phoenix, so just actually kind of built around I-10 on you know. So if you're heading west to LA, we're kind of one of the eastern suburbs of LA, I guess is the best way to put it. Goodyear was actually named. This is where they used to grow cotton back in the very early days 100 years ago for Goodyear Tires, and that's how it got its name, or at least that's the word on the street I've pastored Desert Springs Community Church for. This January will be 30 years years, and so it's yeah, we've been in Goodyear for since 2007. Originally the church was in Glendale, then moved to Litchfield Park and then moved to Goodyear in 2007. So Wow wow.

J.D. Pearring: 1:59

Well, talk about your upbringing Where'd you grow up and how you came to Christ.

Steve Engram: 2:04

Yeah, so I was really, really blessed. I grew up in a Christian home. My parents were in full-time ministry my entire life. I was born in Detroit, michigan.

Steve Engram: 2:14

My dad was the director of Voice of Christian Youth, a Youth for Christ ministry there in Detroit, and so was then came to faith in Christ as a small child was actually in Wichita, kansas, which is where my mom's family's all from, and we would go there spend a couple weeks each summer and one summer one of those Kansas storms blew up and as that sky turned that greenish, grayish, black and and the hail started and the sirens are going off and we're running for the, for the basement for the first time. That question of man, what would happen to me when I died and I had no idea and obviously I survived the storm but talked to my folks about my the fear and they shared the gospel with me and that was the night it really made sense and I put my faith in Jesus and obviously grace decision that I've ever made Then when I was. I think it was six, that sounds like.

Steve Engram: 3:18

Wizard of Oz to me? Yeah, well, it was. I didn't see the Wicked Witch of the West, but it was a life-changing experience. Then, when I was about six, my dad left Youth for Christ and went into pastoring and pastored for, I think, ultimately 55 years. I grew up around the things of the Lord, always had a heart to want to follow him. My dad and I were really close, always wanted to preach, went to Moody Bible Institute. At that point I really thought I wanted to be like a revivalist. When I graduated from there, the Lord opened the door.

Steve Engram: 3:58

I actually joined the staff of a church that my dad pastored in Northern Ohio, which is what I consider home. It was a large church of about 2,200 and ended up, through a really weird set of circumstances, their youth pastor left. They asked me to take it for seven months and that ended up being a seven-year gig, and so that was a wonderful time, one of the cool things, you know I look back. You know now that I, you know, have had a number of youth pastors. I would have fired my butt really quickly, but one of the cool things is out of the kids in that youth group, about 35 of them went into full-time vocational ministry. So that part's really cool.

Steve Engram: 4:47

Part of my story that's kind of interesting is I was actually I was a youth pastor met a young lady there who come to faith in Christ as a high school student went off to Wheaton College, high school student went off to Wheaton College, and then we met and we got married and it was a wonderful time in our life. Four years into it she's pregnant with our first child. But complications set in. At about eight months my son was born, struggled for a little bit but he did okay, but complications set in and my the Lord, in his infinite grace and wisdom, took my wife home. Uh, so here I was, 28 years old and a three day old baby, uh, to raise by myself.

Steve Engram: 5:43

Uh was interesting. All this actually played out on a Monday through Thursday back in 1988. That Monday actually started with us putting my parents on a plane to move to Phoenix Arizona, as he was taking a church out here and so literally was left alone taking a church out here, and so literally was left alone. My mom and my sister moved back to help me for those first few months and the Lord opened the door that I could join the staff of the church that my dad was pastoring here up in North Phoenix, and it was, you know, god was very faithful during that time, obviously. How did you even make it?

J.D. Pearring: 6:25

through that with grieving your wife but a three-day-old baby, and then not much family. How did you make it through that, Steve?

Steve Engram: 6:35

You know the simple answer, the glib answer, but it's the truth answer is just the grace of God. I mean, I had a wonderful Christian community there in northern Ohio that you know loved us really well. There was a wonderful Christian community here, a church called Palmcroft. That boy accepted me and my son and loved us really well. Obviously my family, my parents, my sister, were huge. Kind of the interesting story is my sister, who at that time was a senior in high school, married a guy in ministry and they planted a church and church did great. He actually got a really horrendous disease that took his life at I think he was 45. So they had four kids. So I was able to, on the other side of that, help walk them through that. And then my dad went to be with the Lord five years ago now. So have been able to or my mom and my sister were there to support me when I walked through it Been able to be there to help them walk through it.

Steve Engram: 7:53

So, very faithful, brought another wonderful, you know, next to my salvation. The greatest gift that he gave me was Tammy, who now I love me but loved my son and excuse me. And then God gave us two more kids, and so we have three children, two of whom are married. We have five grandkids, and life is really good. So, in the midst of all of it, god is very faithful.

J.D. Pearring: 8:27

Well, thanks for sharing that. Let's go back a little bit. You were raised as a pastor's kid. What did your parents do? Well, that I mean kind of encouraged you to go into ministry. You hear all these war stories. What was you know? You hear all these war stories?

Steve Engram: 8:44

Yes, you do right, because you know you live in a pastor's home, you see the backside of ministry and yeah, there are those moments. I mean I will tell you that, you know, no church is perfect. But honestly, you know, you just saw, I had a lot of people that invested in me in these churches From one time when I was a little kid. I remember the guy, I think he was a deacon, but he would come and mow the grass and let me ride on the tractor with him. I can remember an eighth grade Sunday school teacher who gave me opportunities to teach. Just a lot of people that invested in me along the way always wanted to preach. That was kind of, you know, my heart's desire and you know, had the privilege of going on mission trips as a high school student and actually doing some of that. So it was just always kind of what I wanted to do and I believe God gifted me to do so.

J.D. Pearring: 9:48

Was there a specific call to ministry? You said it's kind of what you always wanted to do.

Steve Engram: 9:54

No, I don't, you know, I didn't have a moment in time, it's just I wanted to serve the Lord. I really believe that he gifted me to kind of understand the church and minister within the context of the church, and so I served on staff of two churches for, I think, a total about 14 years. Then I've been the lead pastor at Desert Springs for 30 years and now I also serve. So I always tell people I don't golf and I don't fish and I don't hunt, but the last 12 years kind of my hobby is I lead a organization of churches that we have here called Venture Church Network. Ours is the Southwest region, about 75 churches, and I serve as the executive director of that. So I get to do a lot of coaching and encouraging along the way, and we set a goal of trying to plant 30 churches by the end of 2030. And so yeah, so life is full.

J.D. Pearring: 11:06

What do you do with your spare time, Steve?

Steve Engram: 11:10

I spend it with my wife. I was just telling you before we came on the podcast that that's my best life is when I get to be with her. Good.

J.D. Pearring: 11:22

Now, how did you move from staff to lead position? What happened there? What made that happen? What?

Steve Engram: 11:27

happened there? What made that happen? So at that point I was the executive pastor at Palmcroft, the church that my dad pastored in North Phoenix. We had a sister church. Again, we're not in a denomination, a Venture Church Network is an association of churches, but we had a sister church that approached us. They had been planted in 83.

Steve Engram: 11:48

This would have been the fall of 94. They were planted to reach the far southwest valley of Phoenix and had done fairly well, but they had fallen on hard times. A founding pastor had left, probably about three, four years, about three years before that Another guy came in, as best I could tell, just wasn't a good fit. Church went through a bit of a split. I mean I think at kind of the highest point they were church, maybe about 120, 125. But by the time they reached out in the fall of 94, they were at that point probably about 50. But they didn't have the financial resource to pay their mortgage and certainly not to call a pastor. So they reached out to Palmcroft, which was God was doing some really incredible things at that time and it was growing. Could we help them? And so we did help them that fall. We got them caught up on their mortgage and things, and ultimately it's like, would you want to take us over? But they had a half million dollars debt on a building that I would tell you you could write a book about where not to put a church building by where this one was. And so Polnkroft, I think wisely, didn't want to assume that, but it was like, well, what if we sent Steve and Tammy and maybe some other families and we'll come alongside of you and we'll support them? And so actually, my first year at Desert Springs, I was still the executive pastor at Palmcroft and then went full time with Desert Springs the following year, and then they financially supported us for following year, and then they financially supported us for man, probably five, six years, until we were able to get up on our feet and, um, and it was it, you know, was in an area that was, uh, transitioning and it was just, it was a, was a low, you know, with kind of low middle class, upper lower class area. So even as we grew, the finances were always really, really tough, and so they hung with us quite a while.

Steve Engram: 14:00

We ultimately moved in 2004. And then that's kind of when the church really began to grow and thrive, and then we moved again three years later about a half mile wasn't very far at that point into Goodyear and that's actually what ultimately got us into doing some church planting. So in 2007, we moved to Goodyear and Goodyear's a newer area. It's a growing area and by 2014, we were running out of space and our MO for no strategic reason, but it had just simply been. You know, when we kind of outgrew a place, we would go multiple services but we'd outgrow it even at that point we would move to a new location and in 2014, we were kind of getting to that place again.

Steve Engram: 15:09

But God had really given us favor in this community. You know, in the old days when I was growing up, a lot of times communities when they would be creating the community, would leave space for schools and for churches, right, and you know land is so expensive. They just don't do that much anymore. And so we're in this city that is growing within five miles of our church right now. I think it's 195,000 people that they expect in the next 10 years to be about 230,000 people, in the next 10 years to be about 230,000 people. And yet if you were to go five miles into the city from where we are, you won't find five church buildings. There's churches, they're in a lot of schools and those type of things and those are wonderful things. But to actually have a presence in a community by having a building was just something really cool.

Steve Engram: 16:12

And through that we got really tied into a middle school just down the road from us. I mean so much so. I mean, when I was a youth pastor back in the day, I couldn't even get on the campus of the school where I graduated from. Maybe it was because they knew me, I don't know. I mean this separation of church and state. Well, we've got people on this campus almost every day of the week helping them. We're doing after-school programs with a couple hundred kids every week for this school. And then that was now turning into that same type of openness, with the big high school of about 24, 2500 students around the corner from them, and it was like man, god's just given us some real favor here in this community and we don't want to leave that. And so, yeah, we've got some of these space issues.

Steve Engram: 17:11

And then that's when God really began to put upon our heart the idea of planting. I'd had a youth pastor that had been with us for six, seven years, and you know he was great, but he was ready to pastor. You know, you just saw that development and I had nowhere, you know nothing to do. In fact, I put his name in a church back in Western Illinois, eastern Iowa, and sadly ended up not being a really good fit for him.

Steve Engram: 17:45

And about this time was when we were going maybe what we need to do is to plant and so we invited him to come back and we planted our first church, mission Church in Goodyear, about five miles from where we're at. I sent out about 50 folks and you know I'm thrilled to tell you that they're doing great today. But we saw how healthy that was for us as a church, as well as for them, and so we started leaning into that. Lord opened up the opportunity in 2018 to plant a church down in Nicaragua with some folks out of our church who were missionaries down there, and then we planted another church here locally in January of 2021, called Salt Church, probably about six miles from where we're at. So, yeah, so that's kind of been our journey, and we are right now actually in a building process we just finished in addition to one of our buildings, and now we're in fact I was just looking at some revisions that we're going back out to the city on a new worship center.

J.D. Pearring: 19:03

Give us 30 seconds on what the new worship center is going to look like.

Steve Engram: 19:08

It's multipurpose, I'm just. I am definitely the function person. Form. Color that has I care less. To me it's all about function. So it's a multi-purpose worship center. We're in a gymnasium right now. The seat's about 600. This will seat about 950. But it gives us the opportunity. We've never been able to use our gym for outreach to the community because's ministries and Bible studies and all the time. So we're going to build this with a huge lobby because we at one point had the world's largest or smallest lobby. We gave up our offices in order to expand it a little bit, but we hope that this will kind of become the gathering place for our community. We just don't have that, and so we're going to offer free coffee and place to meet with folks and internet if you work from home and want to be around some people in the afternoons and try to use this as a place to minister better to our community and to grow, but also to free up the gym. So now we can do some more ministry components for the community with that.

J.D. Pearring: 20:41

Oh, that sounds great. Yeah, hey, talk a little bit about. I know you have a church planting vision for the future as well.

Steve Engram: 20:49

We do so. Our goal is ultimately I would love to be in the place where we could be the major driver on a church plant, either locally, nationally or internationally, every year. I'm just a big believer in the local church. I think that's what God has ordained to take the gospel, and so I don't know if you've been paying attention some interesting stuff happening in Nicaragua that had been kind of a focus of ours, but probably with what's going on down there, so we're actually God's been opening some doors in Japan, so we're actually helping a church do some some revitalization over there with, and our hope is is that we're going to be able to help do some church planting over there.

Steve Engram: 21:46

It's a very, very different area. I mean church planting over there. It's a very, very different area. I mean, statistically, one half of 1% of the population are born-again evangelical Christians, whatever definition you want to use of that. So you know you don't launch large, you don't go over there and get a facility. It's way, way different, but that just seems to be a direction the Lord is pointing us, and so those will take much longer.

Steve Engram: 22:20

Right now we actually have been engaged, but I think picking up our engagement with a church plant happening over in Palm Springs, california. It's about three and a half hours from us, and we're kind of in that process of looking at if we kind of adopt them as one. We can't, you know, send people per se. Three and a half hours is a long way, though maybe somebody will move over there. That would be cool, somebody will move over there, that would be cool. But but we can send teams and we can resource and provide some of that. You know the I want to say stability. So, like bookkeeping and social media stuff, we can do that. That's what we do with our back office, back office stuff.

Steve Engram: 23:09

Yeah, yeah.

J.D. Pearring: 23:10

Yeah, TJ and Jess have been on this podcast and, yeah, that would be great to have even more support, because Palm Springs is way more unchurched, I think, than any of us thought.

Steve Engram: 23:22

Yeah, it really is. My wife and I were just over there, actually got to be a part of their church service on Sunday morning, but I just noticed driving over it was like there are just no churches here and so needs it, but there's definitely. The enemy has a stronghold over there, so it's going to be tough work, but we're excited about what God's doing and partnering with them. Yeah.

J.D. Pearring: 23:59

Well, give us a leadership tip or two.

Steve Engram: 24:04

You've been doing this for a long time. What's top of your head for leadership tips, familiar with the Pareto principle, is that 20% of what you do brings 80% of your results. In the Christian world we would talk about it. You know spiritual gifting, but to me that's, as you grow in leadership, of figuring out what is that, what is that thing that God has made me to do that brings the greatest value, and lean into that. You know, when I was growing up, it was more figure out your weaknesses and work on your weaknesses.

Steve Engram: 24:42

Um, and I I just don't subscribe to that anymore. That doesn't mean you shouldn't work on your weaknesses, uh. But if all your time is going to that, you're not playing to your strengths. So, learning what it is that God has gifted and wired you to do, and as much as you can play in that area, you're going to bring the greatest value, I think, to your organization, your church, and then find people who are gifted in the areas that you're not gifted at and let them run, you know, let them find that place where they can flourish and make up for those short slats that you have and empower them to do that. So for me, that's just a huge leadership thing that I've learned. The other thing is is that Before you go, on.

J.D. Pearring: 25:43

What's your unique ability, what are your strengths?

Steve Engram: 25:46

Steve, that's a great question. I think how God's gifted me is I'm a person of faith, so I tend to run ahead of people. I've had to learn to kind of tone that down. But I would tell people I am not a great out-of-the-box thinker. That's not my strength. So I'm not even sure I would be a good church planter. What I did was I did a church turnaround and what I think I'm really good at is you give me the box and you give me the problems and I'll figure that out. So I'm a great problem solver. Moving things on, bringing vision to things, I think are the places that I excel, and so those are things that I try to lean into, which you know at this point. You know God is blessed with the church that I pastor, that I can really. I got a great staff that do so much of the ministry and I can lean into that, and now also working with our association. So that's what I try to lean into.

J.D. Pearring: 27:07

You had one other leadership tip.

Steve Engram: 27:10

Yeah. So I think you know the big thing about leadership is that there's always other things that you can do, and as you rise in leadership, there's going to be more calls upon you to bring leadership to different things, and it's the always be looking and evaluating what are the important things and making sure that those are getting the priority. It's a story that everybody's heard, but to me it's so important for us to get. It's the professor who pulls out the big pickle jar, puts in all the big rocks and says is it full? And everybody says yes, and he pulls out the gravel and he takes it to the brim. Is it full? Well, we think so. Well, then he pulls out the sand and by this time is it full? Probably not. Well, then he takes the water. But the principle that he, he points out is is not always you can fit something else in. It's just, if the rocks are going to get in, they have to go in first. The big things have to go in first.

Steve Engram: 28:20

And so in my life you know what are the big things? Well, for me it's my time with the Lord. It's some of the vision pieces, if God has gifted me to be a visionary and I get so caught up in the day-to-day stuff that I don't ever set aside time to do vision. That was big mistake that I made a few years back, where you know. So now I try to have I call it a think day. I try to do at least one think day a month and then then usually try to take a week sometime during the year to go and do long range planning and thinking and what is next, and because if you don't put those things in they just won't get done.

J.D. Pearring: 29:07

So that's brilliant. That's brilliant. One last question you mentioned Venture Church Network Southwest. You mentioned a little bit about your vision, but tell us about, yeah, where do you see the network going?

Steve Engram: 29:22

So we're about 75 churches. A lot of them are older. We're an older association. The heyday was probably back in the 60s to 80s. A lot of churches have gotten off mission again I'm more probably of a turnaround guy, uh.

Steve Engram: 29:44

So we really try to speak a lot towards church health, getting churches back on mission, and one of the greatest ways I think to do that is to get involved in church planting. It. It causes you to see in somebody else their need to reach out to community and I think it it it helps reinvigorate that in your own church. And so yeah, so we've got, you know, we don't have one way that we plant. We've got a lot of different ways.

Steve Engram: 30:17

But I personally think you know now, having been in this arena for a while, and you might see it differently because you're obviously this is really your arena. But I think if we can get churches that will actually plant other churches, that's probably the healthiest way forward for church plants and, even if they're not of the size and scope to be able to do it by themselves, to partner with other churches and to get involved. So that's really a big emphasis that we're looking at and trying to get our churches focused on how they can. Even if they don't think that they have the ability to plan I think they do they're just going to have to do it in partnership. So let's build those partnerships and let's let them see the joy, and I think that will help them actually re-envision their own community and what they need to be doing to reach it with the gospel.

J.D. Pearring: 31:19

I'm right there with you. I think that's great. I really appreciate your vision for that, your vision for planting out of your church and respect you a lot, Really appreciate being on today. Well, thank you.

Steve Engram: 31:31

Well, hey, here's a shameless plug. If it's okay, If not, you can cut it out and they'll never know. But actually I do a podcast. It's a weekly podcast called Resident Strangers. It's how to live Christian in a foreign world, and it was kind of birthed back in 2020 when I saw Christians in the midst of COVID, the whole George Floyd situation, the election, and it was just like how is it that we don't understand that? We're here, you know, as those who are ambassadors of Christ number one, and so I've got a guy in my church he's one of my elders, who is a philosophy professor of all things at GCU and we just try to talk theology and how do we practically live it out? So, yeah, just another way we're trying to get people thinking about living on mission and resident strangers. Resident strangers you can find it wherever your favorite podcasts are found.

J.D. Pearring: 32:50

If you're on this podcast. You figured it out so great. I'll check it out. Thanks so much.

Steve Engram: 32:58

Cool. Yeah Well, we do the same thing. We try to you try to keep this at 30 minutes. I think we've been pretty close. We call it a one commute podcast, so it's 25 minutes or less just talking theology, and then how do we practically live it out?

J.D. Pearring: 33:14

Good, we'll check it out. Well, thanks, steve. Thanks for all you're doing. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thank you, jd.

Steve Engram: 33:20

Thanks for having me.

Co-Host: 34:10

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. See you next time with another leading conversation.