Q: What do you do to feed your spirit?
Bill Easum: Go fishing. Sail fish and marlin on 12 lb. test. I have a team that fishes the world in tournaments.
Q: Where do you go?
B: Ecudor. Peru. You don't go north to fish marlin.
Q: What do you do when you catch them?
B: Release them.
Q: Do you weigh them?
B: No. It's per fish. You don't weigh them. But the average is about 110 to 200.
Q: What else?
B: Books. Reading. Right now fishing is bigger than reading.
Q: What happens to you spiritually when you go fishing.
B: Have you ever been 100 miles off shore when the sun comes up? It's beautiful. You do have to discipline yourself so you don't miss it.
Q: What do you like about it.
B: Cell phones don't work 20 miles off shore. It's just a cathartic experience for me. But the real button goes way beyond that. The real button is when someone you've been working with commits their life to follow the way. If I didn't see that happen every week, I couldn't have stayed in ministry. If pastors don't see that, I don't know how they stay in ministry.
Q: Is there going to be fishing in heaven?
B: It isn't going to be heaven if there isn't fishing.
Q: What's your biggest mistake?
B. Being a Methodist. I wasted 20 of my 30 years.
Q: What would you have done differently?
B: There's this guy I'm writing a book with. He's 30 and he has 5000 members in worship. When I was 30 I had 400. This guy does in a day what I didn't do in 6 months. When I bought property, it took me two years. It takes him one day because he is the board and I had to go through a board. He hands out 20K of $100 bills one day and raises three quarters of a million. That would have taken me five years.
In a world of speed, you can't wait for a board to meet. You can't wait for permission. You can make daily decisions. You have no budget. The budget is whatever it is God says you ought to do. It is pretty Biblical, but it scares the mainliners to death.
If God wants it done, what difference does it make that it is in the budget?
Q: What about accountability?
B: The last ten years of my ministry I could basically do what I wanted. I had $100K that I could spend each year without asking anybody. That's when the church exploded. I had 10 people who I respected and who liked me. I liked them. They liked me. They were all smarter than me. (Probably not in the church... they were all in business.)
One thing I learned is leaders always want to always be in contact of people who are better than them. Because leaders always want to learn. They don't want to make the mistakes the leaders did or reinvent the wheel.
The other thing I did wrong, I didn't have a mentor or an accountability partner. There were no books out for help. I didn't know where to go for help. Now you've got all kinds of mentors out there.
Q: What are the emerging trends for the emerging church?
B: I think the biggest trend is not church planting, but churches that are setting up church planting centers within their churches. They're all over the country right now. We wrote a book on churches that were planting 10, 15, 20 churches a year. And they're all successful. No failures.
Sweet: One of the hardest things to do as a Methodists is to plant a church.
B: I have told Methodist Bishops, I'll plant churches for you, it will cost you no more than $50K a plant, and for every one that fails, I'll pay you the money back personally. No takers thus far.
B: Multiple sites is the second biggest trend. it's not a fad. When holograms come in, it's going to be huge. The third one is there's a huge movement to the city. The goal isn't to build churches, it is to change the city. Almost every major city has a movement like this. The fourth is, the church is a farm system for raising up leadership from the junior high up. There's not a mainline church in the country that understood this. The black churches have understood this for a while. Teaching people how to lead without government or anyone else helping them. The fifth is always doing the leading within a team atmosphere. Always asking people their advice. If you've mobilized the congregation and every person is giving ten hours a week to minstry, you don't need a huge staff. The growing churches don't have a huge staff. Anyone can answer the phone in the church. The only people you need is those who can train people to do the ministry.
The more you think "farm system" the less staff you need.
Q: What else?
B: You'll see the disappearance of job descriptions. You'll see the disappearance of annual budgets. People will look at the budget every quarter. There will be flexibility. There will be a multiplication mindset. These churches that are growing, they don't add one church start-up. They'll add four. The denominations couldn't stomach this.
Q: Tell us about the happenest church you know.
B: There's this guy who left his family for a year, went to Hawaii, planted a church with four people. 1000 people showed up for the first Sunday. They planted five churches within 15 minutes of the church. "Whatever we can do to make you feel loved, that's what they try to do for you." They are very, very, very, very loving. And very, very, very, very fundamentalist ethos.
Q: Tell us about effective churches.
B: The more effective the church, the more likely that the pastors have been raised by the church, grown up in the system, and never went to seminary. One of my favorite churches - the best team based churches in America - is in Naperville, Community Christian Church. Why does it work? First of all we're friends. Second of all we go on vacation together. We love eachother. We sink or swim together.
Q: What else?
B: Video venue. Live. Big screen. When you have live worship in one place and offsites. Live band. Live campus ministry. Video preacher. There's got to be someone there who is live, does what the pastor does, but doesn't preach. Some of them craft the big idea - the video, the graphics, the story board - it is all one big idea. (They call it "the big idea") In multiple sites, the stress level often goes off the charts. With this, the genius they offer the church is, you do the same thing in every location. There's a church in Skagette Valley, that has ten sites. Any rural church can go multiple site, or can get the message from Bill Hybels or this great preacher. This is a godsend, because they aren't going to get a great preacher. If we get a good person, they're going to be gone. If we have a dud, they're going to be hear forever. Why wouldn't they think of beaming someone's services into your church. This is huge. It isn't going to go away.
Bill to Sweet: There will be a day when you dont' have to leave home to preach. You'll just be a big hologram.
Len's Wife Elizabeth: Well... I might like that.
Q: Is our challenge to do for our world today what the great Wesleys and Calvins did for their day? Where do you see it happening?
B: If you live or die on small groups, your methodology comes right from Wesley, but it's not a Methodist thing any more.
Sweet: Methodism has become Wesley's worst nightmare.
Sorin Sweet: (raising hand) Did Jesus ever get married?
B: Not to my knowledge.
Q: Generically, what are some things you'd recommend I do at our church?
B: Is the worship the best you can do? Does it speak the language, the technology and the culture of the people around you? Do every 10 people have a pastor? Does every person in your community know you're there? You ought to take your next year's salary and spend it to make sure they do. The cheapest thing to do for advertizing is putting an ad up at movie theaters.
Michael: How long ago did Jesus die?
Sweet: About 2000 years.
Soren: How long ago is Bible times? Like when it all started. Like when it was Adam and Eve times?
Sweet: You know how God created the universe?
Soren: Let there be light.
Sweet: And you remember where God said "Let there be light?"
Soren: In the dark.
Sweet: The real Hebrew is like "and God sang..." Everything that exists is a musical sound. Every time a flower bursts into existence is a musical sound.
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