Introduction to Craig Whitney

Announcer 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

Hey , welcome to another rendition of the Leading Conversations podcast with Excel Leadership Network . Today we are thrilled to have the great , the wonderful , the wise sage , craig Whitney , here with us . All the way from are you ? Carmichael , california ?

Craig Whitney 0:47

Carmichael Carmichael . Yes , we're what ? 20 miles apart ?

J.D. Pearring 0:53

Yeah , we're 20 miles apart and we're starting to see each other actually in the region , which is weird . We used to just only see each other , like in Florida , but hey , thanks for being here .

Craig Whitney 1:03

Yeah , it's great to be here . Thanks for inviting me to spend some time this morning , looking forward to the conversation .

J.D. Pearring 1:09

Yeah , well , hey , tell us your story . Start right out . Tell us how you came to Christ , and all of that growing up .

Craig Whitney 1:14

Yeah , I was born in the Bay Area . My dad at the time was a professor at what was then San Jose Bible College . Those who live in the area now know that as William Jessup University , then San Jose Bible College . Those who live in the area now know that as William Jessup University . And so , you know , grew up in a ministry family . When I was in elementary school , our family moved to Napa . My dad went back into local church .

Craig Whitney 1:38

Ministry was a what did they call him director of Christian education , like a job that doesn't exist anymore because he was in charge of the Sunday school at the church . But it was a great church , great experience . I was probably 12 . These really pivotal moments for me that were part of summer camp , as you remember my generation , you remember going to summer camp when I made a decision to follow Jesus and remember , you know , at that point you know background church , you know , knew the Bible stories backwards and forwards and all those kinds of things . But just remember becoming aware , probably you know , age-wise and just experientially , that faith was something that I needed and probably even more that salvation was something that I needed , that I actually was a person who sinned , and even though I knew all the right answers . I didn't always do all the right things , and so I came to faith then .

J.D. Pearring 2:36

Let me just pause and make a plug for the summer camps . We've been doing this podcast for a number of years and there is just a high percentage of people , especially people in ministry , who came to Christ through some sort of camp experience and I know they're not necessarily clean makers and we've stopped doing them and I think , just culturally we don't do week-long camps anymore and you know we can't get people to go away for a weekend , but there's just something about it . I don't even know what it is . Is it just getting away or yeah , I don't know .

Craig Whitney 3:13

I was excited .

Craig Whitney 3:14

I was telling you before we got started that I was in Dallas over the weekend doing a multiplication workshop , and one of the things they were pitching to all the churches that were there at lunch was a summer camp for high school students , and I was very excited about it and one of the things they were sharing how many kids the summer before had come to faith and how many kids have made commitments to ministry , and so it was kind of like , hey , it still happens and it still works .

Craig Whitney 3:37

There's just not , I guess , not enough people doing it . I don't know , but for me , you know , it was probably four or five years later . I can't remember you know how , exactly how many summers I was there as a high school student getting ready to go off to college , to university , study engineering , and I just really felt called into ministry , and so that was part , you know , part of the thing was , hey , who wants to go into full time ministry ? And so came home , changed all my plans and went off to Bible College , and so that was really also sort of my first commitment and sense of calling to ministry was at camp as well .

J.D. Pearring 4:14

Where did you go to college ?

Craig Whitney 4:16

I went to what was then Pacific Christian College in Southern California . It's now Hope University . My dad was still very involved . He was no longer teaching but he was on the board and very involved at San Jose Bible College and so I started this feeling if I go to San Jose Bible College , all I'm going to be is his son , and I'm sure probably my parents were like you know , we would get all these discounts and all these great things . I was like no , I want to be at least a little bit of my own person , and our youth pastor at the time was from there . There were probably 15 to 20 kids that went off with me the same year to go to Bible college at Hope . So it was a great experience .

J.D. Pearring 5:00

Well , talk to a little bit . What was the call ? If you remember what made you go , hey , I think I'm going to go into ministry . I mean , it sounds like it was part of the camp thing , but what was that in your head or your soul that caused that ?

Craig Whitney 5:27

I think , and even you know what you know , 40 plus years later , the sense that there were a lot of things that I could do .

Craig Whitney 5:30

You know , with that stage of my life , a lot of things I could have gone to do to make a lot of money . But the question of what's the difference that I want to make with my life and the recognition that making disciples was a higher priority than any of the other things that I was imagining doing with my life , and so just kind of making a commitment that that's what I wanted to give my occupational and vocational life to occupational and vocational life too . I was really fortunate and I've discovered this along the way that I was taught how to make disciples . As a high school student I went to youth group and we , you know , we did a lot of the things that youth groups of the day did , you know , had pizza nights and lock-ins and just you know all that kind of stuff that you know , youth groups in the 80s would have done .

Craig Whitney 6:25

But underneath that we had a phenomenal youth pastor who , you know , identified , you know , leadership potential in students and brought us in . I mean , we were taught how to share our faith , we were taught how to do discipleship , we were taught how to lead Bible study , and so there was sort of this . You know , I just I'd had that experience

Coming to Faith and Ministry Calling

Craig Whitney 6:45

already of leading people of faith , of discipling people that were my peers , my students , fellow high school students . It was like I think I want to spend my time doing that more than I want to spend my time as an engineer .

J.D. Pearring 6:59

Wow . So you went off to college . What happened then ?

Craig Whitney 7:03

I went off to college sort of typical that day . Youth ministry major Got married between my junior senior year , started working as a youth pastor at that time a church in Southern California . When I graduated came back to Northern California where I was from . First full-time ministry was in a church in Petaluma . Didn't last very long in student ministry , to be honest . I think I did that for about four years and then worked as an associate pastor of a church just a little further up the road in Santa Rosa and was only there a couple of years before the guy who had been the lead pastor at the church where my dad worked he had transitioned to planting another church , became a director of the Church Planning Association and so he asked me if I'd start a church when I was 26 . And I'm not sure that was the wisest thing I've ever done , or maybe the wisest thing he'd ever done . But we said yes .

Craig Whitney 7:57

We were sort of in that generation that we were convinced . You know the Peter Wagner quote was new . Then you know planting churches is the most effective . New then you know , you know planting churches is the most effective way to make disciples . And so we believe that we heard what other people we knew were doing in church planting .

Craig Whitney 8:14

And so , man , 1991 , we planted a church in Windsor , california , and that's where my church planting journey began . Wow , well , windsor . My sister moved to Windsor in 1991 . So it was the new emerging suburb of Santa Rosa , right 15,000 . And the projections were like it was going to be 60,000 in the next five years . It's 35 years later and there's like 20,000 people in Windsor , I think . Probably six months after the church started they actually incorporated as a town , elected their first city council , and that city council still put a no growth boundary around the community that stopped all of the future growth that had been planned . And so it was an interesting dynamic as a church planter , where you moved into this place thinking there's just going to be new people coming here in droves , and we're not even six months old and the flow of new people just stopped completely .

J.D. Pearring 9:26

That's the Bay Area . We had the same experience when we moved to the bay area to plant . We moved to one of the fastest growing cities . We moved on a saturday . On tuesday there were elections that shut it down and over the next five years when we were there , every election was between people who were no growth forever and no growth for at least the foreseeable future .

Craig Whitney 9:52

So but but everybody at least agreed on no growth right yeah , well , it was .

J.D. Pearring 9:56

Definitely . We're not growing .

Craig Whitney 9:59

Uh , we're trying to be sausalito , yeah , yep yep , that that's very much what it was like . It was a great place to live , um , our kids were born there and , you know , you planted the thing that I remember most . You know the best memories of it are really the reason that we started the church . It's the people that came to faith and the people that we led to faith . While we were planting the church , god still used that even though tens of thousands of people never moved to that community to introduce people to Jesus and heal marriages and just all of the things that you want to see happen when you plant a church .

Craig Whitney 10:42

How long were you there ? About seven years ? Yeah , right , at seven years . I mean I was obviously very young . Um , by the , you know , started our family , I was working on a master's degree . Um , you know , planning a church just craziness to be doing all of this stuff at once . And by the time I was 33 , 34 , I was , yeah , you look at the charts of burnout . You know they ask you these questions , you know , and if you answer , you know five of them , yes , you're burnout . And I answered like nine out of ten of them , yes , and so I actually stepped away from ministry for a while .

Craig Whitney 11:19

Went one of the couples that had come to faith we baptized in the church owned a business there in Sonoma County went to work for them . It was a very strange experience because overnight I was making more than double what I'd been making as a church planter . It was just like this is nuts . I would get bonus checks that were bigger than my monthly salary as a church planter , and I was actually good at it , and so it was a strange experience , but it was kind of funny .

Craig Whitney 11:48

After all of that , god used that experience , I think , in two really significant well , probably three really significant ways in my life . The first was just really understanding emotional , mental , spiritual , health boundaries , all of those kinds of things . Really , you know , as a church planter , I was still in that mode of you know , I'm going to do all of these things for God , instead of really in a mode of I'm going to rely on God to do what he's going to do through me and in me , and so there was a season there that I think all that kind of clicked into place in a really different way . It was really working there that I sort of discovered some of the things that I was good at and like , oh , I'm actually good at this and I have some gifts and skills and talents that I can use . And the most interesting thing was , even though we'd led all kinds of people of faith at the church , it just completely altered my view of evangelism Because I'd grown up in the church .

Craig Whitney 12:48

It just completely altered my view of evangelism because I'd grown up in the church . I'd grown , you know , my dad had been a pastor and I'm working in this secular environment . You know , saturday afternoons after a busy , crazy day , you know someone would have run down to the liquor store and buy a 24 pack and you know the whole crew would sit around and drink beer and I would not be the person who would bring up conversations about God . Somebody else was and that just sort of blew my mind because you know the world I'd grown up in like that . You know you had to be a church to talk about God .

Craig Whitney 13:26

I don't know what it , but just this reality that you could hang out with people in that environment and have ordinary , everyday conversations about God was not something I'd actually ever experienced before and just completely changed my perspective of how I related to people outside the church , how I saw and understood evangelism . I didn't do that for very long . I don't even know if I was there a full year before I went back into local church ministry but it was a really pivotal . It's like one of those intense developmental seasons in my life that really to a large extent has shaped everything that I've done since then Sort of crazy to say in some ways almost more than the church planting did .

J.D. Pearring 13:58

Amazing , that's great , that's interesting . Yeah , so you went back into ministry . What happened there ?

Craig Whitney 14:06

I went , worked for a very short season at a church in Silicon Valley .

First Church Planting Experience

Craig Whitney 14:10

Talk about the growth . We were there during the first dot-com boom . It was craziness . We were leading people to faith . We baptized two , three people every week during the season that I was at that church . We also said goodbye to two or three people every week . So it was this church of about 500 people . We'd baptize a couple hundred people a year and wouldn't grow and it's not , you know . You can sort of say , oh well , you know your back door and kind of all those things . No , we could name the 200 people who left because they all said goodbye on their way out and told us where they were moving and said you know , it was just a weird , just the transience of people during that season , very multicultural .

Craig Whitney 14:51

That was my first experience in a multicultural church . At one point we counted and we had people in the church from over 30 countries of origin . So not just you know that that was their , you know , whatever their ethnic heritage ? But they were actually born there , not here . Uh , so it was a crazy , crazy dynamic . Uh , lots of fun . Learned a lot of things in that environment too um , doing small groups and discipleship and doing that in a multicultural context . Uh was a great , great experience , um , and then ended up up here , um , in the year 2000 in Sacramento area , and we've been here ever since .

J.D. Pearring 15:33

Now , why did you come up here to God's country , the greater Sacramento area ?

Craig Whitney 15:39

Yeah , I kind of asked the other question why did we ever leave the Bay Area ? Because , you know , once we left we've never been able to afford to go back .

J.D. Pearring 15:46

Well , you probably couldn't afford to live there when you were there . I mean , if that's .

Craig Whitney 15:49

Yeah , we couldn't . We rented the whole time we were there and the rent would seem cheap now , but at the time it was just absurd the church that we had been at , even though there were lots of great things that went through a transition , senior pastor left and it was just sort of one of those things where you know the season's over , my season , you know working with him is over , and so we're just looking for another place to have a similar kind of impact . And so came up here to a similar kind of role at a church that was in Citrus Heights okay , uh , but then you moved into more of a church planting leadership role , right , yes , um , in 2007 .

Craig Whitney 16:31

Uh , I had the opportunity I had , um , so when I got up here , I began to get involved in church planning again , on sort of the coaching you know , assessment , just you know the other side of it , um , helping other people plant churches just volunteer you know , just assessment , just you know the other side of it . Helping other people plant churches just volunteer , you know , just connected through the association . I was a part of all those kinds of things . And so in 2007 , I had an opportunity to go to work with a guy named John Burke .

Craig Whitney 16:57

If you're of the right generation , you'll remember a book called no Perfect People Allowed that he wrote back in 2005 . He was a pastor of a church in Austin and they were helping others plant churches , really in postmodern contexts . We weren't really focused on Austin per se . I was working with church planters in Europe and Australia and other places in the US as well . So transitioned into that role , worked there full time for about seven years helping plant churches with them , and then in 2014 , I transitioned into a role at Stadia and worked for Stadia for almost a decade .

J.D. Pearring 17:40

And what were you doing ?

Craig Whitney 17:43

What really happened . I mean , in big terms , I was helping other people plant churches , but while I was working with John , we developed some assessment tools , we developed some training tools and when I went to work at Stadia , I really focused on a lot of the same things assessment , training , coaching for church planters and yeah , so I spent 15 plus years in sort of that space helping people plant churches and incredible honor and privilege Just literally hundreds of church planters around the country that had to have got to have some part in their church planting journey and I'm just incredibly grateful for the season and the opportunity that I had in both places to be a part of seeing churches started and leaders really equipped to do that .

J.D. Pearring 18:36

Can I ask you tell us a story about one church that you helped , some cool thing that happened when you were doing that some , some cool thing that happened when you were doing that . You know , sometimes on the second level , you know we're we're kind of behind the scenes and we don't always get to see that .

Craig Whitney 18:58

So what happened ? Yeah , I will tell this story . Well , you know what ? There's two stories I'll tell because they tie into what I'm doing now Multiply Project . But I'll tell this one While I was working there in Austin I never lived in Austin , I lived here in Sacramento the whole time , came back and forth and do meetings like this , but I got connected with a guy out in a town called Caldwell , so

Burnout and Business World Perspective

Craig Whitney 19:20

it's between Austin and college station . If you know Texas , it's a little town of about 2000 people .

Craig Whitney 19:27

I mean you , you know what these little towns are , scattered all over Texas . I was in his seventies , um had been an oil and gas executive , um had moved out there excuse me and um wanted to plant a church . It was just kind of just crazy , um , I had never helped anybody plant a church in a small town . So we had all these thoughts and ideas about you build a team and things that you do kind of to lead up to . And I remember sort of going through some of the training stuff with him and he was just like time out , you've never lived in a small town , have you ? And I was like no , he says you don't understand . If I go and get a PO box at the post office or I go to the bank and I open a bank account in the name of the new church , before I get home , everyone in town will know that we're starting the church . It's like oh , okay , Anyway , but help them plant this church . They just they had a vision , and this was a huge part of you know what Gateway was doing , which sort of was a weird thing for small-town Texas . The theme was no perfect people allowed , come as you are , and so they just really had a vision , in a small town , for starting a church for people who just didn't feel welcome in the existing churches in town . I think it was their third or fourth birthday . I went to speak and just to celebrate their birthday with them and he's walking me around before service introducing me to people . Almost every single person I met was a recovering addict , recovering alcoholic , formerly incarcerated . But every one of these people's lives had just been completely transformed , uh , because they had found Jesus and found community and found support and found transformation at this church .

Craig Whitney 21:14

I was such a mess by the time we got to preach . It's like , how am I supposed to preach ? I'm just gonna sit up here and ball , like look at it , all of you out there , um , you know . So it was just one of those . I , I mean of those . I I mean I didn't do that , I just got the privilege of sort of walking along , you know , riding along shotgun on , um , this just amazing church that got planted in this little small town that no one would ever write stories about . You know , it's like a church like that's . No one's ever writing a book , he's not going to ever speak on a conference stage , but the work that they did in that town was just incredible .

J.D. Pearring 21:45

Wow , wow . So what are you doing now ?

Craig Whitney 21:50

So you know , 15 years of doing that , and one of the things that became really evident was the pipeline . The flow of potential church planters was shrinking , drying up , and we sort of went from , you know , probably around the , you know the late aughts , the you know early teens , 10 , 15 years ago , 15 plus years ago , where it seemed like everybody wanted to plant a church , and you know , we created assessments so we could figure out which one of the people actually could , and now the pipeline's just dried up . I mean , I know you guys are planting churches , but you just don't have the people standing in line to plant churches that there were 15 years ago , and so we saw that during my time at Stadia . So a teammate of mine at Stadia and I have started something we call Multiply Project , and , in very simple terms , our mission is to make more church planters . That sounds strange , I know , but it's sort of the simplest way to say it .

Craig Whitney 22:55

Our strategy , though , is to come alongside churches and help churches

Leading Multicultural Ministry

Craig Whitney 23:00

call , equip and send church planters from within their church , and that's really the big shift . We relied on Bible college and seminaries . We relied on this flow of youth pastors who would outgrow youth ministry and want to become church planters and churches weren't really looking at the people in their congregations and saying you know which one of these people could plant a church and so really trying to help churches reimagine one kind of what a church planter looks like and then two really have the tools and resources that they need to equip people to become church planters and be able to send people out so that really church planting becomes church-based and is really church multiplication rather than something that a denomination or some other group of people does outside of the local church .

J.D. Pearring 23:51

What's like one practical step of what a church should do .

Craig Whitney 23:56

You know , this is the funniest thing . My teammate and I have been doing trainings and workshops around the country . This is why we were in Dallas this last weekend and we're challenging people to three habits , and they seem so simple , but we discover that people aren't doing them and so they're more transformative than I ever imagined that they would be . And so it's really . The starting point is challenging people just to make a list , just to write down the names of people in their church that they think have greater kingdom potential than they're currently living into Disciple makers , leaders , whatever it might be , not even necessarily church planners , just people who you see and you think they've got more potential than what they're currently living into . Make a list . And so then , the three habits are we just want you to pray every day for one of those people . You make the list , whatever . It's five people , it's eight people , it's 12 people , but just start at the top , pray for a name one day . Next day , pray for another name , next day , pray for another name , and just pray your way through the list . When you get to the bottom , go back to the top . Every day , pray for one person on that list . Second habit is we just call weekly influence , prioritizing your schedule , having a conversation with one of the people on that list every week . Could be a coffee , could be a lunch , might just be a phone call , but have some kind of interaction with the people on that list . We're challenging people to have one of three kinds of conversations . I see in you conversations , discovery conversations and what we call coaching conversations .

Craig Whitney 25:28

And then the third habit is just once a month . If you're praying every day , you're doing the weekly inputs . Once a month , just update your list . What have you learned ? Maybe you put somebody's name and you've met with them . You're like nope , that's not going anywhere . And there's somebody new you met and like I need to add their name to the list . Maybe it's what's the next step for somebody ? Based on your conversations ? Just update the list once a month .

Craig Whitney 25:49

And again , it seems so simple , but if people will do it , they go from oh there's , we don't have anybody who could plant a church too . I got a list of six people . I don't know if all of them could , but somebody . And so it's just this total transformation through three simple habits from there's nobody here who could plan a church to there's more than one person here who could plan a church . It's fascinating how just really simple habits transform our perspective , and our goal is to see people become church planners . But you also step back and realize there's zero loss in this equation . Where is the downside of praying for people daily and talking to somebody a week about what their next steps in faith and ministry are , even if they don't end up planning a church ? Where's the downside ?

J.D. Pearring 26:42

Yeah , there's no downside . That's great , there's no downside .

Craig Whitney 26:45

There's no loss , it's a total win , no matter what happens as long as you do it , and so there is more to it than that , but that's just a simple thing that we're teaching people that anybody can do , and it's fascinating how doing it just transforms your whole mindset into what's possible . And really we talk about multiplication like crazy , but so few people are actually doing it and this is a way that you actually do multiplication and , as you do , actually integrate a culture of multiplication into your church , Because it's about who , not what . That's the shift we're getting people to make . So asking what's next who , not what , that's the shift we're getting people to make . So asking what's next ? Ask who next Programs don't multiply . People do so . Until we focus on people , we'll never see multiplication .

J.D. Pearring 27:34

Great , great stuff . Now is this all in your book .

Craig Whitney 27:40

Yes , yes . So I wrote a book came out in February called the Antioch

The Multiply Project Mission

Craig Whitney 27:45

Way . One of the things that was part of my journey and really convicting for me about this was just the Antioch Church in Acts , chapter 13 . And probably most of your listeners are familiar with that . But sort of this tension , you know I heard somebody just this week talking about being an Acts 2 church and I grew up in an environment where we're talking about being an Acts 2 church and there's great things in Acts 2 , you know sort of elements that I would say , hey , you probably ought to pay attention to those things and they do provide a guide for us of things that your church should be doing . Right , you know the fellowship prayer word . Like I'm not , I don't want to say that's bad and God blessed the Antioch church . But the Antioch church was supposed to be a witness to Jerusalem , judea , samaria and the ends of the earth . And we get all the way to chapter 6 , chapter 7 , and they're all still in Jerusalem . Nobody's gone anywhere and God allows them to be persecuted and they get scattered and some people who are not from Jerusalem Jews but not from Jerusalem go and begin to tell Greeks in Antioch about Jesus and this Antioch church is the one that becomes the epicenter of the expansion of the gospel to the whole Greek and Roman world . It wasn't Jerusalem , it was Antioch .

Craig Whitney 28:56

And it all begins in that , verse 1 through 3 , you know they're having a prayer meeting . They aren't even asking the question you know , where should we plant a church ? Right , it's just these five . I imagine they were the elders of the church . They're having a prayer meeting and the Holy Spirit says set aside Barnabas and Saul for the work that I've called them to , and the biggest thing that they did was just obey . They had no framework . They had no . No one had ever done this before . This is the first time anyone was actually sent out to go to another place to tell people about Jesus . They just obeyed Barnabas and Saul . Go down , get in a boat and go out across the Mediterranean to Cyprus , and I think that there's a model in there , a pattern at least , that we can follow , and it's this pattern of calling , equipping , sending and celebrating church planters and very simple , but just not something that we've prioritized . We think about what it means to be an Acts 2 church . We don't think about what it means to be an Acts 13 church .

J.D. Pearring 30:02

Well Acts . You can be an Acts 8 church where there's persecution . You can be in Acts 18 church where you just shut it down and wipe the dust off your face .

Craig Whitney 30:12

Your feet , yeah Acts 13, .

J.D. Pearring 30:14

That's where it's at .

Craig Whitney 30:15

Yeah .

J.D. Pearring 30:16

If somebody wants to utilize your services for Multiply Project , how do they get a hold of you ?

Craig Whitney 30:25

Website multiplyprojectorg . Email you Website multiplyprojectorg . Email me . Craig at multiplyprojectorg . So pretty easy to find . You can Google that and find us find me . You can Google my name , you'll find me .

J.D. Pearring 30:38

Great , yeah , well , I really appreciate what you're doing . I believe we have a lot in common . Hey , let's end with give us a leadership tip . You've kind of talked about a few , but give us a leadership tip .

Craig Whitney 30:52

Yeah , I think , just consistent with the things that we're doing . I think one of the things I would say as a leadership tip to be a developer of people I was actually just working on this yesterday we think about programs , we think about vision , we think about strategy . I would challenge you to think about steps , and this simple phrase I actually learned from John Burke 15 years ago . Simple question who's next , what's next ? And so really , the leadership tip is the what's next tip is are we offering to people a simple next step in their journey

Three Habits for Church Multiplication

Craig Whitney 31:30

towards Jesus , in their journey towards ministry , towards leadership ? I think we tend to jump out to the end of the story .

Craig Whitney 31:37

Right , we have these grand ideas and human beings , I mean . We get inspired by those grand ideas , but we don't act on them . What we act on is steps . Proverbs tells us that man makes his plans , but it's the Lord who guides his steps . And so that's this idea of what does it look like to be a leader who invests in others one step at a time ? And that may seem again overly simplistic , but if you invest in people one step at a time and that may seem again overly simplistic , but if you invest in people one step at a time . You'll find yourself somewhere down the road and realize how those steps have added up to incredible things that God is doing in and through other people .

J.D. Pearring 32:19

That is brilliant , greg , that's brilliant , and so are you , and I appreciate our friendship .

Craig Whitney 32:25

Thank you .

J.D. Pearring 32:25

The opportunity to have you on today . Yeah , thank you , jd , and so are you , and appreciate our friendship . Thank you the opportunity to have you on today .

Craig Whitney 32:30

Yeah , thank you , jd . Thanks for being here . Yeah , thanks for having me Great hanging out . Love what you're doing . I really appreciate the shared heart for church planting and for introducing people to Jesus through new churches . You and I caught that bug around the same time and here we are , all these years later , still doing it . So I'm grateful for you and grateful for what you're doing .

J.D. Pearring 32:50

Likewise , god bless .

Announcer 33:41

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 .