Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to the Leading Conversations Podcast, sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network. On each episode, JD Pering 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.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Welcome to another rendition of the Leading Conversations Podcast with Excel Leadership Network. And today we are thrilled, we're static. We're so happy to have the tremendous Tyler Gorseland with us from Seattle. Tyler, thanks for being here. JD, thanks for having me. It's such a gift to be with you again and to be on the podcast. And it's not raining in Seattle at the time. Yeah, it's remarkable that I'm inside having a conversation because it's still sunny in Seattle. So anytime that happens, we just rush outside. We don't know what to do with ourselves. So do you really? It's a joke. It's a real joke that um you're like, are people working? Like, what are they what do they have jobs? Because when it when the spring and the summer hits, you'll notice like the parks are filled in the afternoon, and you're like, Man, I guess we all had flexible schedules we didn't know about for the other nine or 10 months. And in fact, somebody told me living in Seattle is like being married to the woman of your dreams. She's just sick 70% of the time. So if you can put up with that, it's uh it's worth it and it is glorious here. So I I love that. That's that's fantastic. Well, hey, tell us your story growing up, how you came to Christ. Yeah, great. So I um grew up in actually going to AA meetings as a kid. My father was in recovery, but my family was not followers of Jesus. And so my I kind of had a nebulous spiritual higher power sort of understanding. And then um they let kids in AA meetings? Turns out I was one of the few kids. I guess when when you're visiting your dad uh and there's no child care, you get to go. And so I would sit in the basement of this Lutheran church.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Wow.

Speaker 2: 2:14

Earse spiritual formation, um, you know, hearing people talk about their worst days and moments and uh brokenness. But grace of God in that is that um, I think, you know, years later, I came to faith through young life, right before I turned 18. Okay. And um, from seeing such brokenness in my family and, you know, child of divorce, um, lots of kind of painful stuff with addiction and otherwise, um, I really longed for the love of Jesus, like really longed to know that he loved me unconditionally and that there was that relationship wouldn't end up severed. And so great young life leaders came to my high school and started telling me about Jesus. And I right before I became an adult, I was like, this is everything I've been looking for, started following Jesus, and and um that quickly threw me into the deep end of wanting to go into ministry because all I wanted to do was tell other people about him. And so that was in the summer of 2003, and a year later I was going off to ministry school, not knowing what the heck that meant, but that God had called me. Man, what ministry school did you go to? Yeah, I went to Seattle Pacific here in uh Seattle. So are you from Seattle? I am not, I am from like the Portland, Oregon, Vancouver area, so northwest, still haven't lived somewhere sunny. Um, but I am, you know, of course, the girl that introduced me to Young Life was also the one who said, Hey, I'm going to this Christian college. And I'm like, What's a Christian college? And uh came up, visited, found out that I could learn about Jesus and people in class, like how to share Jesus with people. And I thought, this is crazy, you can do this. Um, thought you could only be a youth pastor or young life leader, didn't know that it was possible to do many other things in ministry. And then uh while at SPU, I my first spiritual and father, father and mother figures really kind of helped me be discipled and trained me for ministry. So wow. So when you you uh graduated, did you go right into ministry? What'd you do? Yeah, uh I graduated in 2008. And so luckily I had a church internship with doing college ministry at the University of Washington. Uh, but a year later, uh, the church I'd been serving at had um cut 20 jobs. They had a hundred staff members, they went down to 80 uh because they the economic downturn. And so kind of all my dreams of and my fervor and passion for ministry in the local church that I had been discovering as an intern, uh, they were not hiring. And uh so I went back to the university, did recruitment, and then eventually the church I was at hired me as a hospitality pastor after kind of years of training through the church. And what's a hospitality pastor? That's a great question. I know it's silly. When you have uh mega churches, they have folks who their whole job was helping people feel connected to the church, um, you know, getting them integrated into the life of the church and um into community, and that was kind of my role um at the time. And frankly, uh it didn't work out really well. I'll be honest, my my first job as a pastor, the lead pastor didn't like me, and I got laid off six months later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How can anybody not like you? I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out. I I would say it's kind of uh my superpower. No, I uh it was the best thing that ever happened to me ministry-wise, frankly. Um that church kind of went on to deconstruct itself down into nothing. Um, like it literally doesn't exist anymore because they kind of kept trying to find the next axe to grind without reconstructing a more beautiful view of Jesus that was focused on him. And um that led me on the journey to church planting um that you know I thought was going to be safely three to five years out there, and God had other plans um that were faster than I thought. So how did that work? Just yeah, no problem. Just process of jumping into it. So uh about three, four days before I got laid off, I had had this moment. Uh I was praying, and uh, you know, I'm pretty long-winded and it was bullet pointed. And it was this moment where I read this article about reverse engineering your life. It was by a pastor, seasoned pastor. Uh, and I was like, what do I want my life to be about? And I felt like the spirit uh was leading me towards young adults, discipleship, non-believers, folks on the margins, and uh teaching. And I'm like, okay, cool, line down the piece of paper. What could I do for a living? And I was like, maybe one day I could be a lead pastor or I could work for a parachurch organization, or I could do this or that, I could be a professor, et cetera. And um, then I got laid off and then started, you know, working in the corporate world in this very neighborhood that we planted in. I started working for Amazon.com as an exec recruiter. And through that process, um, started to get back into some parachurch ministry. And along the way, I met a pastor locally who was serving folks who'd come out of a big church hurt situation. You know, it's been well, well described, but the Mars Hill implosion that happened in Seattle. And he was like, hey, you should come help out. We've got this Bible study of folks who are really trying to navigate following Jesus on the other side of church hurt. I'm like, oh, that's me too. How do I do that? So I show up, and then all of a sudden, this room keeps growing. And Tim and I serving together, it grew to about 70 people. And then it grew to 100 people. And we were asked by the community, hey, you guys have pastoral training, you've been pastors, what would it look like for you to help lead us? And with a lot of, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't know. Like we went through a church plant assessment. Um, we went under the care of another church in Portland and a church planning network. And over the next three years, we went on this journey of going, God, is it time? This thing, this giant small group is now becoming a church plant, is it? And uh eventually in October of 2015, we launched A Seattle Church after really, yeah, two and a half years of discovery as a giant core group um here in South Lake Union, Seattle. Two and a half years of discovery? What was that like? I don't recommend it. It was brutal. Uh no, I think it's really helpful because you know, we the people we were serving, and I think context is everything, were people that their primary pain that they were trying to bring back to the Lord and not give up on the church with was feeling used for a mission. And so it would have felt very tone-deaf if we were like, let's get out and reach our city without first um, you know, being with them, grieving the loss, working through kind of being an infirmary where people could get healing, that we could get back out there and do the last stage of healing, which is to go help other people heal. And um, you know, so it was a hard journey. I uh as would make all sorts of mistakes. I would say something that reminded them of the last pastor that, you know, could have been totally benign. Um, but turns out church hurt runs deep. And um I had to learn the hard way and you know, um really grew a ton in that season. Um, but I think like we took our time because it would have been inappropriate had we not, uh, versus kind of doing the let's get out there and build it quick with the momentum we have. And and it made it a longer journey to get to where we are today. But I do I do believe it was helpful for our DNA as a church. Um let me just uh um jump on this a little bit. The whole church hurt thing. Um you know, that wasn't a thing 12 years ago, but I guess it wasn't 10. But um what is that? That's a great question. I I would say that people hurt people, uh and it just so happens that um depending on the promises they make or your church made, uh those wounds go deep. So meaning like if my dad promised to always be there and then he left, you will feel more deeply like you've been devastated. And I think what was hard is um, you know, sometimes we put our faith in a local community, uh, even over and above the the Lord who is the one who is, you know, king over that community. And I think that's not always because people are have bad intentions, it's just we find that the very place that heals us can really hurt us a lot because we can easily put hope in it. Um, and I think church hurt is inevitable. I think everybody that's a part of a church community will experience pain and hurt because you're close enough to others to be hurt by them. Sure. And so I think it is has become enculturated and as like a thing that sometimes is an easy excuse to avoid continuing in community. But I think it can also, it's also a real thing that I think is important to acknowledge is that um is the longer you go in community, you will be hurt. And uh unfortunately, the only way to find healing is to re-engage with church community. Uh, I think I think you find healing through community in the same way that you find hurt through it. I I agree. That's great, that's a really good definition. You're the expert now. Um, it's good to know. I'm gonna go to you. I find that's often what's missing though is forgiveness. Yes, and uh and I even find that people don't want to hear that. So, how how do you how do you deal with that? It's a great question. Yeah, I think that um I was just interviewing for my podcast a guy who wrote a book called Uh Three Strikes, You You're Forgiven. His name's Micah E. Davis, and he was talking about you know all these different things that had happened in his story. And I know Micah, I know his story, I know his really well. Beautiful. Okay, great. So Micah's a friend, and we were talking about how um, you know, forgiveness is not just you know relational, um, it's not just responsive to what God has done, but it's required, and it's a step of obedience. Um, and I think that um we kind of lose sight of that because we often think of our faith as individualistic and we forget that we cannot follow Jesus alone and that we need to forgive others for our own ability to thrive in Jesus. You know, Jesus said what um, you know, as as I've forgiven you, forgive others. And he also said, um, you know, if you do not forgive others, you know, and you're like, whoa, that's that's gnarly, Jesus. Like, what do you mean? Like we won't experience that, the fullness of life with him, that forgiveness that he's offering us. And so I wish it weren't requisite, but I do think it is uh for thriving in Jesus. It's hard, and I think it's convenient to not forgive. Um, but then we live in captivity. And I think church hurt is a convenient category uh to keep God and community at a distance, and I think it's very real and um perhaps for some the hardest to forgive because your the connection to God is associated with it, and so it's not it's you know, it's it's it's harder because it's like where did I begin and end and where did God end and begin? It's it's really messy. And it's it's like forgiving your parents. It's like, well, they should have known better. That's right. But the the lack of forgiveness just causes us to be tormented, and then we carry that around and we carry it to the next church, and we're hurting people. It's just an interesting. Um I don't know if we had a word for it 12 years ago. And uh uh I'm I'm glad that you're you're the guy that's working through all that stuff. I just like, hey, we gotta forgive. We gotta forgive regularly, daily. We just gotta keep forgiving, keep forgiving. Like God know, hey, he he forgave me, I'm gonna forgive them, and then we can get on with life. And I'm uh anyway, let's get on to okay. So you planted this, you're in this church, you did the the the years of kind of the healing, ready to go, and then what's the plant been like? Man, it's been an adventure of a lifetime. So our neighborhood is like church planning on steroids, and I know every church planner likes to think that, but we are in the middle of the Amazon campus in South Lake Union. Um, on four corners around our church is the Apple headquarters, the Amazon, the Facebook or Meta, and the Google Cloud headquarters. We're in a co-working space in uh that's run by folks who don't yet follow Jesus, primarily. There's a couple who do. And um it's just all been grace upon grace because we didn't have a great strategic plan, we didn't have great funding. We have just seen miracles, uh, both in God providing for our church, but also in the fact that our neighborhood feels like a train stop. People come here uh for a season, and if they hopefully don't get fired by one of the tech firms or they don't move on to a new job, but nobody is from our neighborhood. Everybody comes here for a job and to maximize their professional possibilities, they have to move on to other jobs quickly to build their wealth. Sure. That's the culture, that's the tech culture. And so we just have seen so many people come and go, and it's made us change our ministry model in many ways to be like a discipleship training school, which says, hey, we're we're gonna disciple you while you're here and teach you how to make disciples and send you back to wherever you're going, because we probably won't be able to keep you here forever. And so uh the grace of that is that there are people who've rooted to be a core for our church over those years, families, um, really brave, generous people, but we've probably had three or four different churches. Um, our first three years officially launched after that season I told you about, Amazon was bringing in 10,000 people a year into the neighborhood. And so we had to figure out how to become a multi-ethnic church uh filled with young adults overnight. And how do you do that with people from 10 different cultures? Uh so that was challenging. And then season three, uh, after those couple of years was the COVID years. We were online for 15 months, and that was beyond challenging. Uh, the restrictions in Seattle and beyond were were um, you know, we weren't in a church building, and so, you know, like the restrictions were really challenging. Um, and then miraculously, we spent the last three years growing a ton coming out of COVID, and um it's been really wild to watch God uh strengthen us more than ever after like eight years of a really challenging journey. Yeah. Well, that's um I was up there just saying your space. Talk a little bit about your space and how it works. Yeah, it is almost like a a a church uh that has everything the church has, but not Jesus. So, like there's a it's a co-working space that is basically like has small groups and philanthropy, uh, and all of these like secular versions of what the church does. You know, they serve the city, they gather together, they have events, uh, they have food together and a coffee shop, a restaurant, um, all of these things that bring the city together. Um, and so we just out of my convictions of when I came to faith, I wanted to be where non-believing people are, uh, as opposed to hoping they would come to us. And so um getting to be there, they've been such incredible landlords, really generous, and we have to set up and tear it on every week, but um, we get to be, you know, where people are and just say, hey, don't come to our church, but come back right to where you already are. It's easy to invite someone to where they already are and hope that they will experience transformation in Jesus there. So it's pretty exciting. Wow. What's one really cool thing that's happened recently? Oh man, one really cool thing that's happened recently. Okay, so um, you know, we had this gal who came to our church and she was saying that she she came up for prayer, she was very cautious. Uh, she had been bleeding for like over a hundred days. Like she had uh, and she we prayed for her and we just asked God to heal her now and not just in the age to come. And uh a week later, she came back to church, not knowing that we had planned six months ago to preach on the hemorrhaging woman. And she showed up and said, Hey, you're not gonna believe this. This is crazy. But the bleeding stopped after we prayed. Um, and I'm like, Well, you're not gonna believe this. I'm about to preach on that passage, so uh let me get up and tell the church. And so uh that was incredible, um, truly astounding. Um, another is we had a guy who emailed us out of the blue telling us, Hey, I've never read the Bible, I know nothing about faith, but I feel this stirring in me to learn about religions. And he started reading the scriptures uh with me. We sat down, we did uh kind of Bible study together, and then he read the whole Bible, came to faith, got baptized, and then we got to send him uh to move to San Francisco and pray for him on his last day with us and then help him plant into a new church. And it was just like for all the moving, the coming and going, that's the blessing of getting to see people change and uh go follow Jesus. How is it for you um seeing so many people go come and then go? Yeah, it was really hard for a long time because um I'm naturally wired to disciple people like more of a shepherd, uh, like over a long period of time to walk with people. And then God threw me into this context where I have to rely on him, which is his grace for me, um, where people aren't here for a long time. And so I think for the first years, I didn't know how to grieve people leaving. And I think I just kind of said, Hey, oh, well, all right, well, bless you. Like I had to felt like I had to be nice and bless everything, even if people left for bad reasons um or for selfish reasons. And I think what um my journey has been learning how to say, like, man, that sucks, or that's sad, or I'm disappointed, or no, that's great. And we love you, we've spent a ton of time with you, and it is time for you to go. And being a sending church versus being um a clinging church that's like just trying to keep people, like that's not the mission of God. And so um, you know, really seeing it as a blessing to get to be a harbor where people come, receive healing, the boat gets patched up, and then we send it back out because boats aren't designed to just sit at the harbor. They're they're designed to get out there on the high seas. And so I think that's been the grace is like learning how to have a perspective shift of not just like how do I hold my church plant together? It's Jesus' church, and these are Jesus' people, and they're called to the ends of the earth. They're not called to just stay and uh pat our stats or you know, whatever. Uh it's made me trust God in a lot of new ways. That's really helpful. That's a good good word. The um the harbor. We actually started a church called New Harbor at one point in the Bay Area. Uh right on safe place to turn to God. So hey, two last questions. Uh tell tell us something good about Pacific Church Network because I know you're connected there. Yeah. And just give us a leadership tip or two. Great. Uh Pacific Church Network has been so generous to us over the years, and I'm so thankful for um, you know, just the consistent kindness of Jim Smith and and all the the folks over there um who have just, you know, not only checked in on us and um encouraged us as we celebrate baptisms and um just good great people, you know, like really great people, very sincere-hearted after Jesus, and give a lot of freedom to the different churches to to lead as they have. And so they were very helpful in helping us establish as a new church, um, and have just been kind over the years. Uh, leadership tip that comes to mind for me is um so Dietrich Bonhoeffer has this whole line about um, you know, like it's called the wish dream that like many church planters and leaders like have a vision for community that they love more than they love the actual community. And I think it's really tempting um to, if you're an aspirational, passionate, missional leader, to idealize the community you don't have or like uh fantasize about the community you don't have, as opposed to loving the people you do have and trusting God to bring fruit out of that. Um because I think it's a banging gong or a clinging symbol if you don't love the people you have and you just wish you had other people who are more like this or that. Uh I just think it's I think it's every church planner's temptation. I think another one is uh this idea that you'll somehow arrive at some point that your church once it hits this number, or once it has this amount in the bank account, or once um, you know, we have these people on the bus, like it's just like marriage. Like marriage is uh not a destination, it's just a new journey. And I think that similarly, church planting or pastoring is um always walking amongst sheep, stepping in stuff, uh like learning um how to love and serve those that you have and moving with God and moving with the spirit. And I think that uh whenever we get this idea of like, how do I ride off into the sunset? How do I get our church to this point where I can stop having to trust God? We've missed the point. And uh so a leadership tip for me is being um putting down the fantasy and putting down the wish stream and choosing instead to love the people in front of me and know that we're gonna always be challenged and we're gonna always have to trust Jesus in and out of every season. So that's brilliant. That's uh brilliant stuff. So hey, thanks for what you're doing. Thanks for being in Seattle, being I mean, where you are around Google and Meta and the whole deal there. Thank you for that. Thank you for your faithfulness and uh thanks for telling us your story. Thanks for having me on, JD. It's such a gift to be with you, and I love getting to share about what God's up to up here. So thanks, man.

Speaker 1: 25:46

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.