Classic Episode Welcome

Announcer 0:01

Welcome to a Leading Conversations Classic Podcast. We've searched through our early episodes to find some of the best just for you. If you've been with us from the beginning, you may have heard some of these. If you haven't, enjoy this classic episode. Welcome to the Leading Conversations Podcast, sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network. On each episode, J.D. Pearring 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.

The Inline Skating Detour

J.D. Pearring 0:45

Hey everyone, we are so excited to have the great and talented, the amazing Chris Hall with us today. Thanks for being here, Chris.

Chris Hall 0:54

It's good to be here. I think that's a bit of an overstatement, Phil. I appreciate that.

J.D. Pearring 1:00

I think you're amazing. I think you're talented. Um I speaking of which, the first question I have to ask you, and I didn't tell you I was going to do this, but talk to us about your skating career. Uh you are boy.

Chris Hall 1:14

Oh boy.

J.D. Pearring 1:17

People need to know this information about you.

Chris Hall 1:21

Oh boy. Okay. So, yes, the rumors are true. When I was in college, I was a professional inline skater, did uh traveled the country doing both street competitions, and I was also part of a like high uh what do you call it? Like, I don't know, like ramp stunt show. We did everything from local community shows to NBA halftime shows with slam dunks, jumping over people, that kind of stuff. And so did that for about five, uh four to five years from age like 19 to whatever, 21, 22 years old. No, 23 years old. Till I broke my same same bone, I broke my wrist for a third time and decided that uh that was gonna be the end of that. So yeah. So that was me. I was I was a fruit booter in the late 90s, so you could say that.

J.D. Pearring 2:11

Was there a particular NBA halftime show that you uh appreciated the most?

Chris Hall 2:17

Uh San Antonio Spurs. Pretty cool. Um, and then uh we got we got canceled at Miami Heat. The team flew all the way out there, and during warmups, they realized that the skates might scuff the court and that would look bad on TV, and so they wound up not having the team do the show at halftime because they were afraid we were gonna scuff up the floor. So got a free trip to Miami with no show.

J.D. Pearring 2:48

Well, it's just awesome to be in the presence of a professional inline skater.

Chris Hall 2:53

Uh yeah, it doesn't happen very often. You should feel very, very honored and privileged.

J.D. Pearring 2:58

I I am. Tell us about the story.

Chris Hall 3:01

Tell us how you came to Christ and also your call to ministry.

Meeting Christ For Real

Chris Hall 3:05

Yeah. Um, so my uh my story goes all the way back to uh when I was a really young age. My parents divorced when I was really young as an only child by birth. And my dad was a uh pretty strong follower of Christ. And at the time, my mom was not. And so uh my parents having joint custody of me, I would spend, you know, week with mom, week with dad. So when I was with my dad, he took me to church and I'd go to Sunday school and whatnot with my dad at a very large church up in the Bay Area. And then when I was with my mom, uh that was not part of our life at all. My mom remarried, and so our Sunday morning was NFL football, and that's what we did is on that side of the family. So um growing up, uh, I learned how to play the game. I learned how to, when I was in one household, be the kid that that family wanted me to be. And then when I would go over to the other household, I would be the kid that that family wanted me to be. And so um I heard the gospel at a really young age at a really healthy gospel preaching church. Um, but um, I would say that I prayed the sinner's prayer, if you will, in a kindergarten Sunday school class. Um, again, not really knowing what that meant. Um, and so I went through most of my uh childhood and early adolescence, um, really just kind of playing that game. Uh, didn't know what a life in Christ was like, didn't know really what it meant to be a Christian. And then when I was 17 years old, um, a friend at my dad's church invited me to go to Mexico on a missions trip with the youth group that I had never attended, and literally only knew one other teenager at my dad's church. And he said, I think you should go, I think you'd really like it. And I said, Well, I don't even really know if I'm a Christian. So I literally remember training for the missions trip, which you do when you're a teen, you have to like write out your testimony, you know, so that you could share it with people and share the gospel. I literally made up a story because I didn't know what a testimony was, and I really never had a conversion experience. So I literally faked a testimony based upon what I heard others say. Um, went to Mexico, um, served in there. Um, I don't know why I went. It I had to quit baseball my junior year and forfeit my spot on the varsity team to be able to go and do that, which was a stupid decision at the time, but I didn't know why I made that decision. Um, and it was like halfway through that week when I was confronted with the gospel. I was confronted with my hypocrisy um that I was playing Jesus to my own advantage when I needed to. And I really on a dirt tent city in Mexico, Mexico, did I really meet Christ for the very first time? And uh it was weird. I was on a missions trip, but that was when I really truly had surrendered my life to Christ, and it was a transformative moment for me. I literally felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, I felt the sense of forgiveness, I felt this sense that God's love and approval was fully on me, not because I had fully surrendered my life to him, and I wasn't I wasn't using God anymore, but I I made that decision to to be adopted into the family of God, and it was one of the most liberating and incredible experiences that I've ever had in my life, and it changed the trajectory trajectory of my life. Um immediately went back to my high school for my senior year, felt like I was on mission, started a club on campus, you know, for other Christians. We did, you know, lunchtime outreaches, and I just felt like God had put me on mission in high school. Um, and uh at that point made the decision to go to a secular university, went to UC Santa Barbara as a political science major because I felt like my greatest impact was not gonna be in a Christian college, but was gonna be in a secular university reaching other people far from God. So spent four years in college there with the knowing that I was gonna be uh you know on mission there, but that wasn't, I wasn't gonna do ministry. Uh my senior year, essentially, to make long story longer, God pulled the carpet out from underneath what I thought I was gonna have a career in politics after graduation and asked me to give ministry a shot. So I moved to Ventura to take a youth internship position um at a Baptist church about a half hour south uh of Santa Barbara. And that was where I cut my ministry chops and really sensed my call uh to ministry. So after doing that for about a year, I went to started doing seminary part-time, and that was where really my call to ministry was fully confirmed, was literally while I was, you know, neck deep in full-time ministry.

J.D. Pearring 7:45

That's an amazing story, uh, especially the part about going to college with the idea of being on mission. Most college students don't even consider that. So God made that hard for the lost in you as you dedicate your life to Him, huh?

Chris Hall 8:02

Yeah, yep. For sure.

The Call Toward Church Planting

J.D. Pearring 8:05

Now you're doing youth ministry, and when we first met, you had this call to plant a church. What prompted that?

Chris Hall 8:18

Uh on the the first level of it was God was prompting us to something new. We'd been youth doing youth ministry for a little over nine years, and uh and we felt like God was calling us to something new, but we didn't know if that was going to be taking over a church, you know, an existing church, church planting, or missions work. So my wife and I just eventually came to the point where we fully surrendered that to God. Like, God will go wherever, we'll do anything. And that was when he confirmed that call. And JD, you were a big part of that process with us, along with guys like John Jackson, um, and helping us work through um our giftedness and our and really what we felt like we could accomplish for the kingdom, and that happened to be church planting. Um, and so we uh we were asked to consider it. Um, and uh really once we took a step back and realized that we were actually most equipped to church plant in the city we lived in, and it was the city that we were in youth ministry in. So we went to our church and we said, we'd like to plant a new church for people who are far from God. We'd love to do it out of this church if you guys would bless it and and uh and get behind it. Um, and the why behind it was that the city of Ventura and Ventura County is a beautiful place to live. Like you really have everything that you want. I mean, Raymond, you may understand that because you live in San Diego, it's gorgeous, right? Um, however, uh it be it was statistically proven that more over 90% of the people that live in in the city of Ventura were not connected into any church at all. There were a lot of good, healthy, growing churches, but the city was so big, um, you really looked at the impact that the local church was having, and it was having a very small effect on the overall population of the city. So we said, hey, there's 90%, there's 90,000 people, over 90,000 people in this community that are far from God. We want to do something about that. So we said we want to make a difference in that. And so we sought out with the blessing and the help of our church I was working at to plant Catalyst Church in September of 2007.

J.D. Pearring 10:24

Wasn't the pastor um gone at that time? Wasn't there an interim situation?

Chris Hall 10:30

There was, yeah. About a about six months before that, the pastor who was on staff there was asked to resign. So the church went into a really difficult season. The associate pastor was uh uh put in as an interim at the time. So the church, yeah, didn't it the leadership structure was was pretty fragmented um at that time as well.

J.D. Pearring 10:50

I think it's amazing that they still got behind you. Yeah. That you I I suspect you would have done it anyway, but it's just amazing that a church would step up and say, hey, we're gonna plant, um, even though it's not the easiest time for us.

Chris Hall 11:08

It really was. Those the elders of that church uh set an example for us of what it means to truly want to be a kingdom-minded church. I mean, they didn't have their own pastor, they were trying to figure out their own future, they were in no place to plant a church. I mean, it's like a dysfunctional person having a baby, you know, it's like you're only going to birth dysfunction. And yet they said, no, we we believe in you and your wife, and we believe in your mission. And so what can we do to get behind it? Um, and those men of that elder board are forever in my debt and forever, you know, uh, yeah, just they're they're they'll always have a special place in my heart because they set aside their own agenda and they set aside even some of the financial comforts of a church that was going through a lot in order to send us out.

Launching A Second Campus

J.D. Pearring 12:00

Well, you and Sierra, your wife both took that kingdom-mindedness seriously because you were doing multi-site and helping plant. Talk about the multi-site experience there from Ventura.

Chris Hall 12:14

Yeah, um, we, I mean, when we went into church planting, we knew coming, especially coming out of Discovery Center. Uh, that was we went to Discovery Center back in 2006, and it was just like it is now, is has a huge emphasis on multiplication. So, you know, we we drank the Kool-Aid and we said, Yeah, we want to be a church planting church. And uh, but we didn't even really know what that was. But literally in the prospectus that we had to write in order to be approved by the network that we were wanting to network with at the time, um, you know, we had kind of outlined out that we felt like if we were to plant a church in Ventura, that the next plants would move eastward to Santa Paula and Fillmore, because those were two of some of the more under-resourced and underchurched cities in the county. And so we knew that we wanted to move eastward. So we that had always been on our radar, essentially. And about two years in, um, we started attracting more and more people from Santa Paula, which is that first town east of us. They were driving the 20-minute drive or 15-minute drive from Santa Paula to Ventura and were a part of our church. And so our leadership team just kind of looked up and looked around and said, Hey, uh God is drawing people to our church that are from this place that we think we want to do, do something, either a plant or a campus or whatnot. Um and so we just prayed through it. We sensed that the Holy Spirit was moving in that direction. And so we um made the decision that we were going to do a campus, uh, that we felt we were probably best equipped to do a campus at the time. So we did a capital campaign two and a half years into the church to raise money to hire a full-time campus pastor and then to move our Ventura campus into a new location and increase some of our other staffing needs, uh, raised all that money. And uh essentially three and a half years into our church plant, we launched our second campus out in Santa Paula. And at the time I was about a 25-minute distance between our original campus and the second campus that uh that we launched. So the campus for us was was birthed out of a Hartford Church planting, but we chose the campus model, um, two campuses under one umbrella of a larger uh of a larger church.

J.D. Pearring 14:30

I remember Santa Paula being on the table from the very beginning. But how did you pull off doing a campus in three years old as a church?

Chris Hall 14:40

Uh it was tough. It really was. Um, and uh it it did not come without its pains. I I I I equate it to a middle schooler having a baby, um, in that you know, it it was difficult. We felt like we weren't ready. Um, and in many ways we were ready, and in other ways we just weren't. Um obviously God had a bigger picture and I can share that later, but um but yeah, we um we for us it was purely a matter of obedience. Like we would sense that the Holy Spirit was asking us to do it, God was raising up the right people to do it, and we had the resources to do it. So even though we were probably a little bit too young to try to pull off the the model of ministry that we were pulling off, um, we felt like it was this is this was the right next step for us. Um in the in the first couple of years, we did a lot of questioning on whether or not this was really the right next step because we had hit some difficult times financially, leadership, structure-wise, um, and it was tough. So, I mean, three years in in a new church comes with the, I think a lot of people need to understand that a lot of people, especially in a young church, even though you get to build the culture as a young church, new people come in with various expectations. And so when you say, hey, we're gonna set aside youth ministry, we're gonna set aside some of the other goals that maybe you want in order to sacrifice to reach more people far from God in another town, you're gonna have people that are gonna go, well, if you're not gonna take care of my needs, then I'll go and find somewhere else to be a part of the church. I'm not really on mission with you guys. And and you kind of find out that there are people that you thought were on mission were actually there because they wanted something from the church. And when they realized they weren't gonna get it, they opted out. So there was some of that maturity within the community that we just didn't have yet, and I didn't have the discernment on a leadership level um to figure that out. But but looking back now, I mean, gosh, we're we're 14 years in on uh our church here. Um, God did a lot of difficult work in us. But I looking back now, I said I wouldn't change anything.

J.D. Pearring 16:57

But talk about the bigger picture you mentioned uh about Santa Paula. Uh how do you mean?

Chris Hall 17:04

Unpack that question a little bit.

J.D. Pearring 17:05

Well, because that's where you are now, right? That's the you know. Yeah.

Closing The Hub And Moving

Chris Hall 17:10

How did that happen? So we had been doing uh two two campuses with one church for uh about two years. Um and uh again, our leadership team has always taken the posture of we want to set aside our agenda and our goals more uh more so than, excuse me, we wanted to be able to set aside our goals and agenda in order to really pay attention to what the Holy Spirit is doing and where the Holy Spirit is going. And about two and a half, about two years in on the multi-site, uh, God was doing something in each of our campuses that was pointing us to the right next big step, which was to close the original Ventura campus and move everything out to Santa Paula. So several factors in that our Santa Paula campus was growing, it was reaching the target group. We were, we were, everything was going up and to the right in Santa Paula in a really healthy way. Ventura was just plateaued, it was it was solid, fairly solid financially, but it just was not reaching people the way we wanted it to. Um and so along that time as well, Ventura was about, we were about ready to see an exodus of young leaders. They were moving out of the area. Um, and we also had uh Matt, who was our worship pastor, overseeing both campuses for worship, but he also functioned as our Ventura campus pastor. He kept all those operations going every Sunday morning. Um, God had placed a call on them to plant a church, and so we had worked with them on finding out when and where, and it up in the Sacramento area is where uh Catalyst Woodland is, but uh we also knew that we were gonna be losing uh one of our really key staff members, and we wanted to send them out. So, all that to say is we saw the handwriting on the wall from the Holy Spirit and said, Hey, I think God's telling us we need to send the vampire sons to go plant this church in Woodland, and we need to be able to get 100% behind it financially, leadership-wise, everything like that. And we also need to go where the fish are biting, and we needed to prune the branch off of the tree that was not bearing fruit. We knew that the tree of our church would bear more fruit if we pruned it than if we just tried to keep doing what we were doing. So uh, so yeah, uh in one summer we sent off Matt and Kirsten to go plant Catalyst Woodland, and we had a great celebration to send them off. That was also the last week of the Ventura campus, and we moved everything out to Santa Paula where we where we asked all the Ventura people to come and move out there. Um and at the time we were renting an old Baptist church, uh, um, and that was where we were meeting, and we had already begun discussions with them on what a uh merger/slash takeover would look like because they were dying. And uh so yeah, so that's how we got out to Santa Paula. It was really just a move of the Holy Spirit, and it was obedient pruning on the part of our leadership team to do what we needed to do to bear more fruit.

J.D. Pearring 20:15

That truly is an amazing story when you think about how God led you, and then you guys actually following along. I see that the uh the famous Matt Van Pearson has jumped on this call with us. So I'm gonna ask Matt to ask Chris a question as we continue this uh podcast.

The Painful Work Of Pruning

J.D. Pearring 20:34

Okay. Matt, you asked Chris in the midst of this, he's telling his stories, talked about what's happened here, they sent you off. Uh give us your top question for Chris. Oh boy. Um you you don't want that. I'll give you the I'll no. Um, I think um Chris, I I would love you just to tell people about um on on the back side of it right now, like sitting here now, um, the pruning of like, oh, we needed a prune, it sounds awesome because it worked. Um, but I know that that was not the case for you. Um so what was that process? Could you just talk a little bit about like what was the hardest thing about actually walking through that process to shut down your baby and follow after what God has? I mean, it is, it's an amazing thing that that happened, but just walk us through a little bit of of what that was like for you as the senior leader having to say no to your baby to go after you know something that wasn't a guarantee by any stretch.

Chris Hall 21:40

Yeah. That's a great question, Matt, uh, because it's so central to my my story, who I am, and what I've what I've gone through and and what I bring to the table now as a leader. But really truly, when you have to go through something like that, and many of us have in some way, pruning is painful. Um it is. Extremely painful, and you learn a very fast lesson in letting go of expectations that you have in your mind in order to embrace what God's plan and expectations are for your church. Um, I mean, we all know that unmet expectations is one of the top reasons why church planters and pastors decide to quit or flame out or burn out. Um, and essentially, God took me through that fire of burnout um and um letting go for me of those unmet expectations uh was very, very painful. And it it almost caused us to tap out. Uh we we were just done. And the big expectation was we thought Ventura would be a growing, healthy, healthy, vibrant church. And that, you know what I mean? We all get into church planning with these great expectations, right? Like we're gonna reach tons of people far from God, we're gonna be baptizing people left and right, and you know, we're gonna get to a place where things are not as they used to be, and who's got heart and heart, and uh, and so um going through that process of saying, okay, God, this is what you're doing, and I'm gonna be willing to obediently follow it, um, was uh yeah, it was very painful. It was painful on the expectation side of it, um, because where God took our church is not at all, at all where I thought it would be. I mean, if you were to ask me back in 2007, hey, where do you imagine your church 15 years from now, I would have never said this. I would have never said, We're gonna be, you know, a church in Santa Paula with doing this, this, this, and this. It's like it just never would have been, it never would have crossed my mind. Um, but for a driven person who puts high expectations on myself, it was a it was a difficult pruning process of my uh of that for me. Um and then coming back of it too, like, you know, our dream had always been that Ventura would be the hub and that we would be the sending church. Well, I had to come back from my sabbatical during that time wrestling with am I called to be a pastor in Santa Paula? Is this is this where God you're calling me uh to stay? And so, yeah, God called us to stay. He said, I'm not done yet. And I don't know how long that's going to be, but I'm not done yet with you and your leadership of the church. So we we stayed, and it's been the most fruitful years of ministry that we've ever had because we stayed through it. So we we in our own life and in ministry definitely bore more fruit, even though it was a painful pruning process.

J.D. Pearring 24:49

Thanks

Advice For Planters On Expectations

J.D. Pearring 24:50

for staying, and thanks for sharing that. Uh, now that you're you're kind of on the other side of a lot of this, you've been doing a lot of coaching of church planters, mentoring, um, encouraging church planters. Here's the last question. What would you say uh to us as church planters and leaders? Give us your best shot. What do you want to say to us? What's the lesson we need to learn?

Chris Hall 25:15

Boy, uh related to the expectations thing, um laying aside our expectations as church planters is one of the hardest, yet one of the most necessary things for young church planters. I think for any pastor, but really in church planting, um, it is hard work, man. It is, especially in the especially now. I mean, we're we're in a situation globally and even nationally where it's only gonna get more difficult. And we have to set aside our pride and expectations in order to truly embrace what God wants to do through us. Um, and I believe you know, the Holy Spirit places this calling upon our lives, as Heibel's always called it, that holy discontent. And we feel compelled to do what we're doing. Um, but with that comes a certain internal expectations of what we want to see accomplished. But what happens when what we think we want to see accomplished is not what the Holy Spirit wants to accomplish through us. And and that that gap right there between our expectations and really what the Holy Spirit wants to do, um can be a really painful process if you're not willing to let go. And that's it, that's an easy thing to say, um, but it's it's a hard lesson that I think so many of us have we have to walk through that in order to really really embrace what the Holy Spirit wants to do um in and through us. Uh I mean, I was just again, I was reminded as I was preaching on Sunday, I made reference to Hebrews 11. Um, we're you know, is talking about all these heroes of the faith, and you know, and it says, but but none of them got to see the fruit of God's purpose for this. You know, and and and it made it reminded me is like how much of what I'm doing, how how much fruit that is going to be produced out of my ministry will I never see, and I will never feel the benefits of that. Um, and that's just such that's a hard pill to swallow because we live in this world where production and growth and you know it's just that's that's what we have to do. Now there's some realities that right, we got bills to pay and we got families to take care of, but um, but there's so much other of that stuff in the in the periphery uh that I think we just need to I don't know, be a little bit more aware of of what the Holy Spirit really wants to do, um and uh and and figure out a way to embrace that and let go letting go of those expectations.

J.D. Pearring 28:05

That's a phenomenal point, phenomenal message. And I think it's constant because our expectations always change, but realizing that God's He's got a plan, let's go with His. It sounds easy, but uh it's difficult. Thank you for walking through that. Thanks for being with us, Chris, and thanks for being the amazing person you are. Uh we want to see you in action on those skates as well. So well, I don't know if that's gonna happen, but it was an honor to be on here with you guys.

Excel Network Next Steps

Announcer 28:40

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.