The Church Initiative Story - Samuel Hodges | Faithly Stories

One of the things that makes the Griefshare experience unique and divorce care experience for someone who's not a part of a church is that it's bringing that person to the church for 13 weeks in a row. When we found that when people are able to come to a church repeatedly for 13 weeks they get connected to the culture they're invited to church by other people in the group and people just kind of they become parts of these churches in the groups where they attend the Griefshare divorce care meeting. Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life brought to you by Faithly. An online community committed to empowering church leaders learn more at Faithly.co get ready to be uplifted and inspired on the Faithly Stories podcast. Sam Hodges welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast. Hey well thank you for having me Elisa. Yeah it's really it's really quite a privilege and a pleasure to have this conversation with you. I don't know a single pastor that would tell me that they don't need resources around grief or around divorce so this is a really important conversation and I might add I think like maybe a best kept secret in the church world that like we don't want it to be a secret anymore so this is an important conversation. Yeah well I appreciate you having us on to talk about what we're doing. God's been really good to us over the years and we're excited about the lives that are being changed and churches through our Griefshare and divorce care resources so again thanks for the opportunity to speak with you and your audience. Thank you Sam. Why don't we start from the beginning of the journey for church initiative. I'd love to hear about how it was started. What was the spark that formed it? Yeah really that's the story about a ministry that started in a living room that ended up becoming a global ministry and our founder his name is Steve Grissom. He went through a divorce and it was a painful divorce a divorce that he didn't want and Steve was a faithful Christ follower and so he looked to the Lord to help him through this divorce and through that he read a lot of books and just process a lot of information to help him to get to a better place and so once he you know experienced a measure of healing he really wanted to turn around and help other people who are going through divorce and so by that time he had remarried and so he and his wife his new wife Cheryl they started a support group that met in their home to help people who are also going through divorce and this thing just it exploded and now that people just you know filling their house they had gotten to issues had issues with neighbors about parking you know where are these people parking here you know and but there was some also even of the ministry was very effective and fruitful one of the things that happened is Steve was actually starting to feel the pressure of doing these groups weekend and week out was a lot of me full time is an executive for satellite company and he's got to prepare these lessons and he he's very humble he didn't feel he was even adequate to teach these lessons and so he felt like people could benefit from something more so he started looking for something out there on the market that you know prepackaged turnkey that could help other churches offer divorce recovery ministry and he couldn't find anything and so after a while Steve really since that the Lord was telling him you know you need to do this so Steve's you know and his wife they prayed and talked about it and Steve quit his job back in 1993 and he decided to create divorce care and see the interesting thing about Steve is this Steve was trained as a journalist so before he worked as an executive for the satellite company he worked in news he'd also been a DJ and he was a news director of a CBS affiliate here in the rally area and so he had this really he had these gifts these skills so he was since he was a reporter at heart he was a good listener and he knew how to tell good stories and so what he did is he went back and started interviewing a lot of the people who wrote books that helped him and he also interviewed other people who had gone through grief and divorce and other pastors and other counselors but he had this unique skill set that allowed him to bring all that together in a video-based curriculum and it really was it was different from other things that that are out there because a lot of times when you get a video Christian video even today it's a man at a podium teaching right but what Steve was able to do was weave together these powerful stories and insights from Christian counselors people who've been through divorce you know and it was just it was just it was amazing had an amazing impact on participants and so in addition to that there was a workbook that he developed and he basically created a resource that he could then make available to churches to help them help people who are going through divorce and then after that Steve got great feedback on divorce care but he also got this question consistently do you have anything that will help people who are going through grief and he got that question enough times that the ministry set out and created grief share and that and it was 1998 and same format same design same style so since then you know the ministry's been around a little over 30 years and we've developed four different additions of grief share and divorce care over that time frame and you know we use those to help searches ministry of people who are going through grief and divorce wow so a 30-year history church initiative church initiative has resourced a lot of churches before we started recording I think you said it was over 30,000 churches over that period of time but still there's clearly opportunity for these resources to find their way to more churches who need them so tell us about the resources they've evolved a lot I'm sure over 30 years what does what do the resources look like today that you offer to churches and what's unique about them yeah the resources really haven't changed much in terms of their design you have the videos you have the workbook and then there's the group discussion component groups last about 13 last 13 weeks some churches when they offer it they might go 14 or 15 if they have a kickoff meeting or some kind of celebration on the back end but there's 13 weeks of core content for both and divorce care and as I mentioned you know these groups are places where people can just find hope and clarity after they've gone through divorce or if they've gone through grief and I think it's it's really helpful also for churches who want to be able to reach their communities with grief support or divorce recovery support but what makes these programs really unique is all the other support that we offer just to be able to carry these groups out so we like to say we don't see ourselves simply as a you know publishing materials but we see ourselves as ministry partners or partners and so in addition to the materials we are providing free coaching to church and so we have about eight coaches who work for the ministry that serve all the different churches that we have and you purchase a kit you're also assigned a coach and that coaches there for you to call anytime during the week and ask questions about how to promote the group how to troubleshoot or you know how to train people to lead your group or how to build a team that person is there for you we've got online resources to help leaders train for Greece share and divorce care they're over 30 modules for each just video-based content and that allow individuals to train individually or groups can come together and train so there's just a lot of support materials that we offer the other thing we offer is we help you promote your group and so we provide you know press releases you know letters you can send out to the community social media content that you can use to promote your group and then our own marketing team is also promoting people I mean encouraging people to find groups and we have this neat thing that's on our website we call it the Greece share and divorce care find a group and so people go in they just type in their zip code and they can find groups meeting near them they can also find online groups so it's really that support that we offer that differentiates us from other ministries because again we're not just selling products for ministry and so that's that's what makes the program unique wow that's really interesting what's also interesting to me is when I think about offering divorce care or grief care I think about a resource that you're offering to your congregation right like to your church but what I heard and what you just talked about what makes church initiative unique is that it can be part of your outreach to the community is that something that like do you encounter that a lot like our church is using your resources in that way yeah they are I mean I think that's something that I'd initially surprised us of not these materials worked in churches but it's also comes as a as a surprise to the churches themselves wow and so when we started when Steve started the ministry the idea was again to create something to help people in churches who were dealing with grief and divorce well divorce right but what ended up happening is that our leaders saw and we saw over time that in many cases over 50% of the people who participate in a group are from outside the church wow and so and they're often unchurched not just yeah churches and sometimes that happens you know somebody doesn't want to go to a divorce care group but they're church they want to go to one down the street we want to stand there but a lot of times there are non-believers in these groups people that don't have church homes or people who are Christians but they've been away from the church for a long time and so what we found is that grief sharing divorce care are incredible outreach tools and again you talk about grief sharing divorce care being a quiet secret I think that's a secret about our ministry is that it's often started by people who have a heart for care ministry but some outreach ministry and that's one thing we're trying to figure out is okay well how do we help people who are more thinking about evangelism and outreach understand the power of these ministries yeah be a their toolkit to bring people to the church so we're trying to figure those things out right wow super interesting and I think something that every church is thinking about right like what can they offer to their communities how can they reach the unchurched yeah and the thing I'll add to that I think one of the things that makes the grief share experience unique for and divorce care experience for someone who's not a part of a church is that it's bringing that person to the church for 13 weeks in a row wow many times that people go through the group two times now a lot of church events you know it's a it's a one-night event or it's a Sunday morning event you know Easter or Christmas or a picnic or something and those are very effective we found that when people are able to come to a church repeatedly for 13 weeks they get connected to the the culture they're invited to church by other people in the group and people just kind of they become parts of these churches in the groups where they attend the grief share divorce care meeting yeah wow that is really really interesting so to me you know this all seems like a no-brainer for a church that you know needs these kind of resources and is thinking about like outreach solutions and ideas what might keep a church from tapping into your resources what do like what can I push back to you here from churches who maybe say no this is not for us a lot of times it's just not having a leader who's available to take it on um sometimes churches oh churches are struggling some many churches are struggling these days with fewer volunteers and um it's so churches have to decide you know what do we want to focus on is it going to be our small group ministry is it going to be our marriage ministry is it going to be our Bible study ministry and so oftentimes churches want to offer these types of ministries they just can't identify a person who's going to take responsibility for it so that's one thing that prevents it um the other thing is sometimes pastors look at it understandably is just another thing that they have to do right I I used to be a pastor and I have I have experienced that you know you're giving your all and then you hear a podcast about something that you're not doing and it's like okay there's something else I've got to do and and that's really why we've designed our materials the way we have their turnkey designed to be led by lay people all the support because we want to make it as easy as possible for a busy pastor to get this thing running at their church and so what we tell pastors is you know if you can just find one person you know we'll help that person build a team we'll help that person promote we'll help that person train so that that lay person can launch a sustainable Christ honoring Greek share divorce care ministry at your church so um that those those are the main that's the really the I don't even call it an objection now I will say on the on the divorce care side interestingly there are some pastors who are put off sometimes by the name divorce care um because they think that it implies that they are somehow endorsing divorce which is understandable right you know given the ways you know people think and um with our context you could you know walk away with that um with that understanding so sometimes we have to um help churches understand that we're not encouraging divorce we're trying to help people who've been harmed by it yeah yeah that's important to understand so Sam you mentioned that you used to be a pastor so I'd love to actually ask you about your own personal journey um church initiative has been around for 30 years you've been at church initiative I think for about 20 years right Sam um what brought you to church initiative how did you how did you find them and how did your journey start with them yeah um it was the Lord uh 100 percent um I went to southeast and Baptist Theological Seminary which is in Wake Forest North Carolina is the Southern Baptist Seminary and I was planning on planting a church uh immediately after graduation with a friend of mine who went to Dallas Theological Seminary uh he and I went to Howard University together we were involved with campus crusade and Howard at Howard great friends and um we were set to go um the Maryland Delaware Baptist State Convention and Greenlit our church plant um and so we we were ready to go and um the Lord just really spoke to me and told me not to go which was a surprise to me and it was also a surprise to my friend Aaron and uh so uh I knew I wasn't supposed to go wasn't clear what I should do um but I just was obedient to the Lord I told him I wasn't going to be able to come because the Lord didn't want me to do it and not too long after that my pastor at the time or the outreach pastor the church I was attending introduced me to the founder of church initiative a Steve Gerson and it turned out that Steve was looking to hire someone who had theological training but also had a background in communications and so my undergraduate degree was in television production communications and going all the way back to seventh grade I'd been involved in television production in middle school in high school again that was my major and in college when I was in seminary I worked at a television station um as a video editor and as a camera operator and I thought you know going through seminary that the Lord was trying to get I was trying to get out of that so I could just do ministry right you know I want to go work in the church and just do ministry um but it seems the Lord was preparing me for something else um came to church initiative and the early uh around two thousand or so and worked in content creation for a while and then my friend and Marilyn who planted the church um he said hey the church is off the ground I've got about 150 people here I want you to come work full-time as a discipleship pastor and I said okay and um Steve our founder he said don't go you're not a pastor and I said well if it doesn't work out can I come back and he said yes and it took a few years and it indeed did not work out he was I caught him up and he said you know we've been praying for you to come back um so it's just a hundred percent guy story yeah once I got back uh Steve was interested in grooming me to succeed him as president of the ministry and in 2022 in your 2022 I became president of church initiative wow that's a great story um the way that you described who they were looking for and you were exactly that person it was like this role was a tailor-made suit that the Lord designed for you um and I think part of your journey like sort of like taking a left turn trying out something new but then coming back like I think we can I think that resonates with a lot of people um who um you know maybe make a choice to do something else but wow how beautiful that um you could come back to this tailor-made suit for you um so you're now the president of of the organization um looking back on the last couple of decades um what would you say are some of the defining moments that make church initiative what it is today yeah I think most recently um the biggest thing that is defining us has really been our response to COVID um you know I don't I don't think we're unique but uh because I know Bible study fellowship uh had to do this we had to make a pivot so that people could attend groups while everyone was um you know unable to gather for in-person church meetings and so it's so so we offered we began offering online groups and that helped us get through that crisis but what is also done is positioned us now to reach the world internationally with our groups wow you know right now their churches all over the world they're using our materials churches in Africa churches in Australia the UK you know so but it's often cost prohibitive for churches to do so it's it's rare but now that we figured out how to do online groups um we're in the process of making our materials available digitally as well so here in a couple of weeks our materials are going to be available digitally to nearly 80 additional countries wow we're really excited about that and you know that's something else that we just we know we didn't see that coming um and we in some ways we talked about it you know we would love to have online groups but COVID forced us to do it and then again it that there's a there's a next step into making it available internationally so that's something that we're really really excited about um and uh the other thing that has been pivotal is we just released a new uh version of grease share that is in Spanish and so um we just released at this spring and we're really excited about Spanish speaking churches using that and we'll also be able to make that available internationally digitally as well so really excited about some of the things that guys do in here uh allowed us to reach more people with christian at hope and care wow that's really incredible and so something that strikes me you know going back to the comment you made um about what makes you different you know the support you offer to churches you're not just publishing materials you're coming alongside them to implement these resources um so you and your team like you're really like getting into um the work of supporting grieving and hurting people how do you how does your team how do you stay grounded and healthy to do this work yeah um as a team one of the ways we do is we pray together as a staff every Monday morning and then our leadership team prays together every Thursday morning so prayer is vital to the health of the ministry um you know it's funny we were talking the other day about how many prayer requests we have and one of the things that we discussed was the possibility of shortening the prayer list uh to allow people to have time to pray for everything and i was like no we need to expand the amount of time we're praying because there are so many things that we need to bring before the Lord right prayers so there's that um personally we also during our during our morning prayer time we have our staff members rotate through sharing a short devotional which is really supposed to come out of their own personal walk with the Lord and so that's that's encouraging because you get to hear people share what they're learning whether that's from a sermon series or their personal Bible study or their devotional time um and so that just kind of reinforces the importance of staying connected um you know we also um require that staff members be active members of a local church so uh you know myself i'm involved in Bible study at my church um you know accountability groups with friends those are the kind of things that really keep me grounded my personal prayer life with my wife um those are things that keep me grounded and we encourage staff to do those things wow that's really um important for an organization that does the kind of work that you do you know we've been using a lot of like organizational language like resources and reach and we've been talking a lot like that but like unless it's all rooted in prayer i think um a minister organization like yours i think it's just so important and just so great to hear that you are all rooted in prayer it's gotta be rooted in prayer and it's gotta be personal right like you're touching so many people's lives and um you know when you're running a large ministry like yours that's trying to have reach and trying to have impact um you gotta keep it personal so you remember like the impact that you're having um and so um well can you share with us maybe one or two of those stories where you've really personally your your resources your help your support have really touched people's lives and changed them yeah um this is a a personal personal story because it's about a lady named Carla and um my wife and I we used to attend the church in apex North Carolina with Carla and her husband Scott and we were good friends our kids were friends Scott and I really bonded over the fact that we were both um red skins fans uh and they're the commanders now but you were we're a really good friend we talked about that all the time Scott like like I like I did we both volunteered in the Sunday school department at church and one Sunday after church Scott was complaining that he didn't feel well and he was trying to drink a bunch of gatorade they just kind of get himself back to a hundred percent and whatever feel better and he eventually said he wanted to go to the hospital he said why don't you take you told why to take them down there and the church is two miles from the hospital in apex and so she whisked him down there and he died in the parking lot and it just shocked the church right um my wife was at an event with Carla and her children when the pastors came and let her know what had happened and Carla uh the church supported her just did an amazing job of caring for her but a while after that you know she knew about greyshare through her relationship with me and so she went to a greyshare group that didn't meet at our church and I think she went through it a couple of times and it was so helpful to her and then um after that when we we were doing a mother version of greyshare we're creating another version of greyshare and she did an interview for it and her story was featured there and it was powerful the things she was learning and how God was working in our life fast forward a few more years we started a greyshare group at our church and she co-led the group with me wow it was amazing to be able to work with her and have her ministering to other people after what she had been through fast forward a couple years later after she went through that she wanted to become a counselor to help people and so she went to Westminster theological seminary and took courses to be a counselor and the course of that she realized you know that wasn't something that she wanted to she didn't want to be a counselor but she wanted to use those skills to help women in her church and so that's what she's doing and I think the thing to really why that's powerful to me is on the one hand it it shows just how effective our materials are and it was helpful to me to be able to help someone that I cared so much about but then the other thing is that she's flourishing now she's remarried her kids are doing well and she has helped guide them you know through their grief and I'm encouraged because I know that she is going to be able to help not just friends but her family her children and her children's children understand how to deal well with suffering and loss and so um that is the story that stands out the most to me I'm just so grateful for Carla and um everything that she's doing to give back I mean she's a poster child um for what we call here church initiative and receiving we want people to move from receiving comfort to giving comfort yeah that is what we want to see but yeah um well that that's thank you for sharing that personal story um that is a beautiful vision for um the people of the church um to go from receiving to giving comfort I mean um I think there's nothing more new testament than that and something else that I'll say is also um you know one of my favorite quotes is from pastor Rick Warren um he says that your greatest pain will often become your greatest ministry we see that with the church initiative founders story that you shared with us um his hurt coming out of divorce and needing care and how it spawned this beautiful you know 30 year ministry that in a lot of ways is just getting started and we see that in Carla's story wow um thank you for sharing all of that um so you know these these principles that um that Christians are learning and and nonbelievers were learning right coming through the program um these principles they're learning through your resources um around grief and divorce um their principles that I think can apply to other areas of her and pain are are there new areas that you're exploring beyond grief and divorce that you can talk about yeah um we are looking at creating resources to help caregivers um I'm about 44 million um caregivers in the US and many of them are stressed out um they are they're emotionally drained um they are struggling financially in some some respects um many are dealing with conflict with other family members a lot of why questions many were in many respects many of them are suffering right because of all the rest the burden and the responsibility that's on them to care for their loved ones and so we really feel like um that's an area of ministry the God is calling us to draw attention to and to come alongside people who are hurting and we we know you know in the church we know we are to help and care for our loved ones that's the responsibility of the family and is also the church um but it's not easy to do so we want to come alongside people and help them support them provide them encouragement give them a vision so that they can see how what they are doing um really is aligned with God's purposes and how they can be a benefit to the person that they're caring for beyond helping them with their physical needs um but also helping with them with their spiritual needs as well so um we're working on that right now just trying to figure out what's the best way to design resources that help people uh who are caregiving one of the challenges is that people who are caregiving have limited amount of time to come to a group and so it's making us rethink what's the best way to offer you know church-based resources that are going to help these uh help caregivers um it makes sense to them that they would you know take advantage of them wow so interesting so that is on the come something to look out for from church initiative maybe we can close with a couple of a couple of questions here we have a lot of pastors a lot of ministry leaders who are listening if they're starting to think about hey I'm I this is something I got to look into this is something you have to research um but they're kind of they're feeling uncertain you know and stretched to your point earlier about like what can stop um a church from getting um tapping into your resources if you could speak directly to those pastors and ministry leaders what would you say to them right I think um first thing I would say is um I get it it it makes sense um I mentioned earlier you know you just have this you're always here and what you're not doing and so I I don't want to be a part of that chorus right um but we are here to help um if it's something that you want in your church um we'll do everything we can to take the responsibility off your plate to help you get started and um one of the neat things about greyshare and divorce care is that the videos feature teaching by experts names that you're very familiar with like an ancient Norman Wright or a Paul trip or a glorious shaffer just just names people are familiar with and so if you can find someone who has a heart for ministry and they're willing to um facilitate a group discussion they don't have to be a pastor they don't have to be trained as a counselor if they just got a heart for hurting people we can help them get the ministry started and we can work with them so that the ministry is self-sustaining and we've designed it in such a way that it redevelopes leadership and so again you often see as people coming out of these groups who want to turn around and serve themselves one of one of the statistics I'm proudest of is that 25% approximately 25% of all new ministries new greyshare and divorce care ministries are started by former greyshare and divorce care participants wow of that because not because it's not a growth strategy or you know it reflects God's heart for healing yeah right he's the father of all compassion he's the God of all comfort and he comforts us so that we can comfort others amen we want to see happening and we track it because we want to make sure that our materials are achieving that goal right yeah so all that to say if you can find a person we'll do everything we can to get the thing running and we'll create with you a sustainable grief or divorce recovery ministry in your church wow who can who can say no to that it's the deal of a lifetime well so I think I know the answer to this question but Sam how how can we and how can our listeners be praying for you and for church initiative in this season you know I would say pray for our our leaders I mean I'm not talking about the leaders who work for church initiative I'm talking about the leaders who are leading greyshare and divorce care groups I was talking to one of our coaches and she had been in the process of calling ministries and just checking in how's it going how are you doing and what can we help you with and she mentioned that a number of the leaders that she talked to were having to step away or were because of health issues and other challenges and so a lot of our leaders they're on the front lines of ministry but they're also under attack or dealing with health issues and we want our ministries to keep going because they're so powerful they're so effective so we just want God to really strengthen and equip and build up our leader base the other thing I would say is to pray for our participants there's so many of them who are non-believers pray that they come to know christ we present the gospel over the 13 weeks that people are in the course so pray that many people will come to know christ and also the people will heal just from the resources that we've created and I guess most importantly that they would make wise decisions one of the things that stands out to us is that people don't suffer perfectly because we're falling right and so when you're dealing with grief or dealing with divorce a lot of times anything that feels good seems right and that's not a good place to be and a lot we've seen a lot of people make bad choices where they end up as Paul Tripp says they trouble their own troubles and so what we want to do is really come alongside them with the stories that we tell in the materials with the insights that they hear from other people in the group we want them to make wise choices so they don't jump into another marriage too quickly or sell a house too quick or start numbing their pain with some you know with drugs or alcohol you know so just pray for wisdom for our participants they will be patient with themselves as they're walking along their journey of healing what a beautiful ministry thank you for sharing with us the heart of the ministry the journey your vision it's really been a privilege to have you on the podcast Sam we're going to include your website and all of that in the show notes but could you just shout out really quickly for someone listening who wants to yeah tap into what what you're offering yeah if you're interested in attending a group or hosting a group you can visit griefshare.org griefshare.org and on the divorce care side is divorcecare.org that's where you can find a group or figure out how to start one thank you again Sam it really has been such a privilege and I hope that we will have a chance to talk again as your vision for you know for serving caretakers come to fruition I haven't heard anyone talk about that before but it is obviously so needed so I'm praying for you and really wishing you a fruitful ministry thank you so much Alicia thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast we pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey the Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly an online community committed to empowering church leaders pastors staff and volunteers the Faithly Digital Platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space remember to subscribe great and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly podcast stay bold stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story from taco night into room to sushi in Tokyo make every bite rewarding with gold from MX wherever you die four times the membership rewards points restaurants 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