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: 0:29

Well, welcome to another edition of Leading Conversations with the Accel Leadership Network. Today we have the awesome Andrew McDonald with us from beautiful Roseville, california. Andrew, thanks for being here. Hey, my pleasure. What's the?

J.D. Pearring: 0:47

temperature in Roseville going to be today.

Andrew MacDonald: 0:48

Well, I think we're up over 100. We're in the triple digits now.

J.D. Pearring: 0:51

Are we back up? Is it the second day of 100 this summer? It's been a great summer, yeah, 100 degree day. So tell us what's great about Roseville.

Andrew MacDonald: 1:07

As a Canadian, I love the heat and the sunshine. It's beautiful. Roseville is actually one of the fastest growing cities in the state, if not the country, right now. I think we've got West Roseville something like 30,000 new homes going in in the next six or seven years. It's just. I mean, everyone from the Bay is leaving and coming here, it would seem.

J.D. Pearring: 1:27

Yeah, as somebody who's done that, I can't blame them. Well, tell us your story growing up, how you came to Christ and all that.

Andrew MacDonald: 1:36

Yeah, I grew up on the East coast of Canada, so right above Maine and the snowy sort of snowy, cold sort of section of Canada out there. I grew up in a Presbyterian family where church was. You showed up because God was taking attendance and you sat in a hardwooden pew and you endured it and you wore a suit and then you went home and you threw your suit off, you ran in the door and you didn't have to worry about God or church again for another week and so that was kind of life. It was very separate. Faith was Sunday mornings and it was religious. You had to be there and then the rest of your week was yours, and so that was sort of my life growing up and I was sort of the chubby kid in junior high and was sort of a blast in all the athletic days, and so I got involved in football Canadian rules football and I hit a growth spurt and lost some weight and for me high school and college was all about parties, girls and sort of living that kind of a life, and so I would show up to church hungover and again God was just taking attendance. He needed my butt in the seat for some reason, but church was. It felt artificial. I felt like everyone was just kind of there putting on a mask, pretending, because I knew some of those people outside of church and I knew my family and I knew that what you look like on a Sunday was totally different than the rest of the week.

Andrew MacDonald: 3:02

Church, for me, was boring. It was totally different than the rest of the week. Church for me was boring. You just had to sit and endure the choir and the hymns and a sermon where the pastor was reading off of his notes and I remember getting really excited when you could tell he was on the last page of his notes as he turned through them, like, all right, we're on the last page, you're on the home stretch, we can get through this.

Andrew MacDonald: 3:21

And for me, church was irrelevant. It just had no real impact on my everyday life. And so it was in my early twenties. I thought, hey, it was girls and it was parties. That was the meaning of life and a couple of years of that. And I remember just feeling really hollow like okay, there's gotta be more to life than working a crummy job so that I can a party on the weekends. And I remember going okay, there's got to be more and I realized the more for me was going to be. I wanted to get married, I wanted to work a job in construction management, I wanted to have a new house and a new car and that was for me. That was, that was the high life in my, in my little mind at the time. And by the time I was 22, I had all of those things. I got married to sort of my high school sweetheart and had all of these things and life was really working out the way that I wanted it to. I'd set my mind to it and achieved it, and I was building my own house and all these sort of things.

Andrew MacDonald: 4:16

But I remember lying in bed one night I've been married about six months in a relationship that was wasn't godly from the start Um, I'm just feeling like empty and hollow. Uh and uh, I didn't pray much, but I remember praying one night in particular, a worst prayer I ever prayed. I said God, I need to need you. Uh, I knew people that their faith was real. Um, I'd started attending a Baptist church and I started to see people whose faith was a little more active and alive than alive, than sort of people that I knew growing up. And I remember going like, okay, I'm doing this on my own and it feels empty and hollow, I need to need you. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

Andrew MacDonald: 4:55

About a month later my life absolutely fell apart. My wife got some medical news and sort of things and her personality's kind of changed overnight. I think she had made a bargain with God years before and she just got fed up and angry with him and decided she wanted nothing to do with him, nothing to do with her family, and she decided she didn't want to be married, she wanted independence, she wanted a party life and she was gone. She packed up and she left. About a month after that, the company I was working for went bankrupt. I had to sell my house. I had to sell my car, move back into my parents' house and I was absolutely devastated and broken. She was my idol, my world, everything that I thought would bring me life was gone.

Andrew MacDonald: 5:41

But I remember there was this weird sense that I could feel, this nagging pull of God saying, hey, I'm trying to do something right. You tried it your way and it was empty. Over and over again, your way was empty and hollow. So are you, are you willing to trust me this time. I remember my buddies calling me up and saying, hey, let's go to the strip clubs and remember, like, hey, that would really numb what I'm feeling right now. But I don't think that's what I'm supposed to be about right now.

Andrew MacDonald: 6:06

And so I would go for walks all over the city. I'd walk along the river and I would pray, I would drive around town, I would curse out God, I would yell and scream, but then I would always have this sense where I felt like God, almost with a smirk on his face, would say okay, you get that off your chest, you done. Are you willing to trust that I'm doing something in you? And I kept getting this image of gold being refined in a furnace and so, um, sort of coming at the end of my rope in desperation, I started to meet with my pastor, I started to pray more, I started to read my bible, um, and I started to experience god in the midst of the broken and and and. While everything in my life was chaos, there was a sense of peace and purpose that I experienced in the midst of the brokenness.

Andrew MacDonald: 6:53

And so then, on Friday nights, I just couldn't sit at home by myself, and so I got invited to come and serve at my church's youth group and so I started to serve in church and I remember I remember chasing kids around a gym and, like you know, trying to sit and have discussions with them about the Bible and feeling more alive doing junior high ministry than I ever had designing HVAC systems. I'm like there's something to this and I you know. So I pressed into this for a few more weeks and got really involved in ministry and I'll never forget there was this moment I was chasing a kid across a gym floor trying to steal his socks or something stupid it was this youth game and God just hit me. He hit me with a brick in the head and I stopped right in the middle of that gym and I heard God clearly say you know you could do this right. Do what? What are you talking about? And there was this nagging, almost like sense I'd never even thought of before, never even a passing, fleeting moment of pastoral ministry. And I went are you kidding me? Do you remember who I am? Do you know, like what I've done? And that began for me to process over a few weeks, a couple of months of investigating Was there something to this? Because I've tried this thing on my own and it's ended up hollow and broken and relationships are a mess and it's just a steaming pile. When I leave my own life, I'm going. Okay, god, are you calling me to something different and maybe it's time that I try your way?

Andrew MacDonald: 8:26

So I began to meet with my pastors and do some investigating and some discernment and praying and, sure enough, at like 24, I felt this call to go to Bible college and so I packed up everything I owned which was a car and a stereo and a suitcase, and I moved to the central sort of plains of Canada where it hits like minus 40, minus 50 Celsius in the winter, which I think is like about the same in Fahrenheit. It's just stupid cold and there's nothing there and, uh, this makes no logical sense. Um, I'd never I'd never really read much of the Bible. I'd never read any theology. Books Like this was all foreign to me and then moved onto a dorm with 17 year old kids who grew up in a Juana and you know church and this was their life. This is so bizarre and it was the weirdest place to be.

Andrew MacDonald: 9:11

But all of a sudden, over a few months in Bible college, studying deeply in theology and philosophy and ministry, I came alive.

Andrew MacDonald: 9:19

It was like God had unlocked something in me that I didn't even realize was there and it was this surprising, almost funny, like God uses. You know, I'm evidence that God has a sense of humor, that I just became alive, studying the Bible and worshiping with guys in the hall and having deep conversations, you know, and instead of like, staying up partying, we would stay up and we would just talk theology and philosophy and life and ministry, and it was so much more life-giving than anything else I experienced up to that point. And so for me, it's God showing me like, hey, you can do it your own way, but that's going to end hollow and broken, or you can trust me and step into something that is terrifying and seems ridiculous, but trust that I know better than you do. A couple of years in Bible college he kind of did the same thing again, where he called me into camp ministry and I spent a summer serving in a dish pit in one of the largest camps in Canada. We had like a camp, like a kid's camp.

Andrew MacDonald: 10:15

No a dish pit, yeah, a dish pit. So I was doing dishes for like 600 people a week.

J.D. Pearring: 10:21

Oh man.

Andrew MacDonald: 10:22

So God did this work in me where I initially said, no, I'm better than that, I'm not serving in this dish pit. And there was this summer where, again, he just humbled me. He said, hey, do you trust that I know better than you do? And I said, okay, sure, let's do this. It's going to suck, but I guess I'm willing to endure suck for you.

Andrew MacDonald: 10:40

But it was this fruitful, fruitful season of learning how to serve, working with teenagers and for some of them, the hardest job they'd ever done in their life spending a week doing camp dishes and working alongside them, being able to minister to them, doing devotionals in the midst of the difficult of everyday life. And again it was God showing me life in unexpected places. Meanwhile, I spent three years kind of waiting on my ex. I had this beautiful vision in my head that God was going to have this amazing story of reconciliation and we were going to have this beautiful testimony. It didn't come to be. She went off and moved in with somebody else and moved across the country and now she lives in Australia and she had emailed me and said that she had the divorce papers filed. And so so I'm divorced and serving in camp ministry, but God continues to sort of do this fruitful thing in my life and Bible college just these unexpected places.

Andrew MacDonald: 11:36

And then in 2008, serving in camp ministry again leadership, you know, teaching kids how to do leadership Met my now wife, jen. We got married in 2008. God continued to call me into these unexpected places. I spent a few years in youth ministry. Spent a few years doing camp ministry of like college leadership stuff into young adult ministry and then west coast of canada you don't see the sun for like six months and as I got older and we had kids, it was like man that the gray skies were really starting to get to me and we sort of began to pray hey, god, wouldn't it be great to have an adventure and live somewhere we actually liked living?

J.D. Pearring: 12:17

um, and so, uh, we said you were not a fan of uh, not a fan of BC, huh.

Andrew MacDonald: 12:24

I mean it's beautiful when the sun's out. I mean the mountains are great, the ocean's great, the trees it's a beautiful spot, but from November until March it's just gray and rainy, that's all it is. And so I mean it's still better than Saskatchewan. I'll give it that much. But we really love it down here in the States and my wife loves the national parks and we were living in a small town and my kids really wanted to thrive and we're really ambitious. So we sort of said, you know, it kind of felt like our time was coming to a close, the church we were serving in in BC and so we said, hey, god, I think maybe it's time for an adventure. Will you lead us somewhere? And so, sure enough, uh, the opening came up and we moved down here into a position. Um, yeah, that that brought us down here and got to be sort of a co-pastor and, uh, got to preach a whole lot and we were serving in a church in a really, really broken neighborhood, lots of addiction, uh, single parent families, homelessness. Um, god got to. I just got to see God do a lot of miracles in that season. You know, you got to pray for people who.

Andrew MacDonald: 13:30

One of my favorite stories is this woman who started coming to a church and she saw baptism. And she approached me at the end of it and she's kind of twitching a little bit, she's homeless and you can tell that she's got some addiction stuff. She said I really want to get baptized. I went, okay, well, let's have a conversation about that. And so the next day I met with her and got to lead her to the Lord which is an amazing moment and then said hey, okay, if it comes to baptism, we need to talk a little bit about addiction and like what do you love more? And it was this really faith-stretching conversation for me where I got to side in your life. What do you love more? She said, oh well, I don't do anything heavy, it's just crystal meth. We come from very different worlds. I don't do anything heavy, just crystal meth. But I got to pray for her and she said you know what? I love Jesus more than I love the meth. And so I prayed for her and she calls it a miracle.

Andrew MacDonald: 14:18

She quit that day. She quit drinking, she quit smoking. We baptized her a couple of weeks later. Now she works a job, she brings her grandkids to church. She's been sober for like two and a half years. Just amazing, amazing stories. Again, totally unexpected, made no sense. We felt this pull in January to plant a church, and so that's the story up to that point.

J.D. Pearring: 14:52

So what was the church planting? Pull?

Andrew MacDonald: 14:57

What caused that? So, yeah, the church in its really broken neighborhood was really funded by grants. And so in January, political stuff going on, the grants kind of dried up, the church's budget kind of got cut in half and we had this little satellite campus in Roseville. I mean, the vision of it really was we've got a preacher, we've got a worship leader, we'll just send them to this building the denomination pays for in Roseville, people will show up, they'll give their tithe in Roseville and that'll help fund our budget. But there was no vision, there was no mission, it was just a satellite, consumeristic kind of service. There really wasn't much there. And so I've been pouring into that because that's my neighborhood for the last year, trying to get some new families engaged and have some amazing sort of church plant hearted families. And then, when the financial stuff kind of hit, the church said, hey, we need to kind of let roseville go, we got to stop focusing our energies out there. And um, the people in roseville came together and said, hey, actually we let us run on our own, um, give us andrew and let us be a church plant, stand around two feet. We had probably 30, 40 people at the time in January. And so, through this process of discernment, going like, can we, can I do this? Can I be a church planter, can I do all of these things? And can we, can we really make an impact in this community Basically with this, this group of people who are like our launch team, we went through a fit assessment through the North American Baptists, really kind of expecting a yellow light.

Andrew MacDonald: 16:26

I have this vision in my head that a church planter needs the most, you know the most outgoing, charismatic kind of person in every room and it needs to be sort of just in every you know neighborhood. You know nook and cranny making friends everywhere, and that's not necessarily my number one gifting. You know nook and cranny making friends everywhere and that's not necessarily my number one gifting. And so we went to this assessment expecting to get kind of a yellow light and saying, hey, okay, let's get you some coaching, let's get you some help. Uh, back in my head in some ways, kind of hoping for maybe a red light where someone would say you know what, you just need to go and be a professor at the university and that might make life a little easier.

Andrew MacDonald: 17:01

But we came through this thing. It was an amazing blessing for myself and for my wife that they really affirmed a lot in us and they gave us a green light and said they wanted to partner with us. And so in January we started to work, or February, I guess, we started to work through that process and we said, hey, again, this is ridiculous. To us it makes no sense, but God knows better than we do. To us it makes no sense, but god knows better than we do. So then in april we launched on our own as a church plant, responsible for our own finances and our own everything. Um. So we kind of rebranded and with our launch team we sort of set out right around easter, say, hey, we're going to stand around two feet, we're going to be a church plant and we're going to take a run at making an impact in this community how's it been?

J.D. Pearring: 17:41

how first? What? Four or five months been?

Andrew MacDonald: 17:47

Terrifying, exhilarating. I mean, it's been really good, I mean, but hard things, I mean good things wrapped in hard things. And so it's been a pretty steep learning curve. A lot of stuff they don't teach you in Bible college, like how to become a nonprofit, how to file payroll, how to get your EIN number, how to deal with leases and all this sort of stuff. But it's the story of my life where God calls me into something and then I go. I cannot do this. This makes no sense. And he goes, just trust me. And I go. Okay, god, no-transcript, able to financially make the swing. Um, so we just trust God. And people have been showing up. So we've been growing. Uh, over the last two months we've baptized 13 people. Uh, we were now averaging probably around 80 to 90.

Andrew MacDonald: 18:59

On a Sunday morning. We met budget for the first time this last month, which is huge three months in. And then there's obstacles. So God will answer prayer and then he'll bring an obstacle. And so we found out a couple of months ago that the building we're in now we have it on Sundays and on Wednesdays, but it's hard to be a church in a community where you're really only subleasing a space. And then we found out that we're losing Wednesdays and so we have this really vibrant young adult ministry that we're not going to have space for. And so we were praying hey, god, we need a building, but we can't afford a building, so we need you to do something.

Andrew MacDonald: 19:35

And then, through the connection with the North American Baptists just amazing, through the connection with them said oh, hey, by the way, um, we have this office building in roseville that we haven't used since covet. Uh, and I that morning I was freaking out about the fact that we don't have a printer, and I was like, do you guys have a printer? And they were like of course, we're an international office, we have two. I was like, oh, my goodness, god just gave us a printer. This is the most amazing thing, uh. And then they said hey, you know what? Actually we haven't used it since COVID and it's sitting vacant. I was like no, it's half a mile from my house and half a mile from our existing building and it's been sitting vacant. It's in my neighborhood.

Andrew MacDonald: 20:12

And they said we were praying a few months ago that a church plant in Roseville would come along and use this building for ministry, and I almost fell out of my chair. I was like, okay, okay, I'll take it. I almost fell out of my chair. I was like, okay, okay, I'll take it. And so it began this really difficult process. But really just amazing, they've agreed to let us use this facility.

Andrew MacDonald: 20:32

And so it's amazing we can theoretically if we can jump through all the hoops set up a daycare in that space. We've got somebody in our congregation who is willing to be the daycare director, which will become an economic driver for our church and a means of reaching families in our church. There is enough space to double our capacity, we can use it all week and I can have an actual physical office. We can put signs up. It's just this amazing space and so. But then that leads to obstacles of having to get a daycare license, and so now we're prayerfully removing those obstacles and we need to get a conditional use permit from the city, which again means that we have to fundraise $12,000 and wait six months on city permitting. But God continues to put people in place and funds in place, and so we are faithfully taking step by step into these things, and so God will put an obstacle in place and we desperately come together in prayer and then God will provide, and so that has been the story of the last four months.

J.D. Pearring: 21:32

So how has it been for your wife?

Andrew MacDonald: 21:36

It's good. I mean, this has been a really difficult couple of years for her. So she's a high school teacher, that's her calling, that's her ministry. But when we came down on our visa, she is not allowed to teach. We're still waiting on our green card, which I don't know if you know much about the political climate right now.

Andrew MacDonald: 21:52

Immigration is not easy, and so it's been three months where she's had to put her career on hold, uh, and so for her it's been really difficult, um, but she sees God's hand in it, uh, she sees him continue to sort of faithfully deliver.

Andrew MacDonald: 22:10

And so for her, uh, she has been able the last couple of years to get, uh, a job, air quotes working at my kid, my girl's dance studio, and so she serves the front desk and she can get paid in dance credits. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to afford to have my girls and dance. But for her it's become this missional thing. That's very much again, it's the story of our lives, completely different than what she thought she would be doing. But God has put her in this place where now she's ministering to families. She's like you know, she's praying for families, these, these, you know some of the three of these families have started coming to our church through these connections to dance, and so, I think, for her too, she's seeing like, hey, this is not the ideal for me, but God is at work and good things are happening, and so so she continues to sort of, I think, trust and grow in this waiting season for her of like this isn't what I thought my life would be, but it's good.

J.D. Pearring: 23:08

I don't always ask this, but I mean you're just starting out with the, with the you know uh official church plant. You've been ministering there for a while, but what do you see two years from now? What do you think it's going to look like two years from now, down the road.

Andrew MacDonald: 23:28

I mean, if you'd asked me two years ago where I thought I'd be, I would not be here, that's for sure. So that feels like a dangerous loaded question. I want to reach our community, I want to see people come to faith, and so I would hope that in two years we're running a couple of services with a bunch of baby Christians who are growing and pouring into each other. My hope for our church and our outreach strategy is I want our people to serve in our community. So I want to see football coaches, volleyball coaches. I want to see neighborhood HOA sort of volunteer leaders, board members. I want to see a church that is engaged in volunteering and serving and the things that our community cares about.

Andrew MacDonald: 24:15

Big thing in Roseville is youth sports. A lot of people move here because the schools are great, there's great youth sport opportunities, dance opportunities. I want a large collection of people who are engaged in volunteering and serving in our community, and so you know, obviously as a church planner you want to hope that that comes with numbers and you want to see growth there. But I want to see people in our church engaged in serving practically serving our community and the things that our community cares about, and so that's our, that's our big push right now.

J.D. Pearring: 24:49

OK, good, yeah, Can I ask? Can I ask you to talk about the political climate? It's funny because I mean, because my mom's from Canada, my daughter lives there what's your take on the political climate? We'll cut this out if it's too controversial. It seems like we should be getting along, but what's?

Andrew MacDonald: 25:12

your take, I think, everybody's nuts. Thankfully I can get up on a Sunday and say, listen, I got no horse in this race. So I mean Canada's got its own stuff. Canada's got its own stuff going on too. And so I think it just comes down to I think our allegiance needs to be to the kingdom, that our savior is not in our political system, that we are not called to be citizens of a nation. I think the church gets in trouble when it has power. So I think the fight to have the church have power seems like a dangerous avenue, or seems like a dangerous avenue. And so I mean one thing that one of the differences I think we've seen moving down here is that Americans take things really seriously and so there's pros and cons to come to that.

Andrew MacDonald: 26:07

It's like we've seen it with youth sports. Like you know, the first year we're down here going to a pep rally. I'm like you know there's actually, you know, homecoming Kings and Queens. And you know there's actually, you know, homecoming Kings and Queens. And uh, you know we went to the homecoming game and there's, you know, kids and floats and fans and fireworks and football like giant inflatable things that kids are running through. And uh, in Canada you just don't get any of that, like we don't take anything nearly as seriously. You know we don't take sports as seriously, we don't take politics as seriously. Uh, you know there's there's some blessings that come with that, but there's also, like sometimes you just like, hey, we got to not take things maybe quite as seriously and fight over as many things.

J.D. Pearring: 26:45

Well, I think you handled that. You should be a politician. You handled that, but I love the original quote Everybody's nuts. I think that's true.

Andrew MacDonald: 27:01

Hey, give us a leadership tip. One thing that I'm learning, I think, in this last couple of years is just because you're a good communicator doesn't mean you're good at communication. I've been learning that that just talking a lot and casting vision and it doesn't always mean that you're really communicating with people. I've learned that just because you are a gifted leader doesn't mean that you are leading well, and so so I've been learning those lessons a little bit.

Andrew MacDonald: 27:35

I think the big thing I'm learning now just in leadership church leadership is I think in my life I think there's a theme of yeah, okay, you've got a vision for where you think you want to go, and I think I'm just trying to learn that my call as a pastor is to go what is the heartbeat of God for his people and lead towards that.

Andrew MacDonald: 27:59

And so I mean where I am right now is so very different than where I thought it'd be a year ago, but it's so much better.

Andrew MacDonald: 28:06

And I think that's what I'm learning in my life is I have this vision for where I think I want to lead my life, where I think I want to lead my ministry, where I think I want to lead my family, and I'm just learning that, hey, trusting that the unexpected and those interruptions and even those like I mean, we went through a real broken season last year with immigration stuff and just desperately for four months going like God, where are you? Like I thought, like why don't you pave this road that you put us on? Why don't you make this easy? Um, and it's cause God needed to bring us down a really difficult path because he needed us to shift direction. And so learning that that when God's ways are different than mine, I, I need to trust that and, um, lead in the directions he's he's leading me to lead in. And so I don't know if that makes much sense, but I think that's the big thing that I'm learning is lead in the things that he's calling me to lead in, and not necessarily the vision that I have.

J.D. Pearring: 29:06

That's great. That's a very good word for us. I think we get kind of caught up and this is where I'm going and when it's really not if it's a when God changes that or tweaks that, it's easier for us to resist instead of saying no. It's just lean in trust God, he's got something. So hey, thanks, Thanks for what you're doing, Thanks for tackling the whole Roseville deal. Thanks for being a Canadian willing to come down to be around us People who take everything so seriously. I appreciate you being on today.

Andrew MacDonald: 29:41

Hey, thanks for having me.

Announcer: 30:30

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.