Interview with Bryan Coch

Bryan is the senior pastor of Glad Tidings A/G in Reading PA.

Bryan was a minor league baseball player until he was hit in the face by a pitch. He was unable to play, and went into a buisness college. He was called to ministry out of a profitable buisness in concrete. He took a 70% pay cut and was called an idiot by his boss, but he knew that he had to follow the call of God on his life.
Coming from the sports world he treats everything in his pastorate as a team. He tries to keep things interconnected in that he works closely with his paid and unpaid leaders.
The church has grown from 225 to 2700. The chruch is very intentional with getting out and meeting every visitor that comes to the church. If someone fills out a visitor card on sunday, there will be someone knocking on their door on Monday. There is a team that does these visitations and there is a team that make zuccini bread to be given to the people visited.

His model for discipleship is based ona house. "The Foyer" is the sunday morning service. It is focused on changing non-believers' minds about church. "The living room" is where they change peoples' minds about fellowship. Here they use small groups to connect people and train people in the Bible. "The kitchen" this is where they train people up to be leaders and grow in intimacy with God.

"Don't just train the leaders train the team." They take the teams to the conferences and training sessions and then its not just one leader trying to implement new things with an untrained staff.
"Don't fixate on the tress you can't touch." Focus on the things that you can do and build the trust of the board, and then when you have the trust you can venture into new things.

"Order is the mother of liberty." Having services planned out in conjunction with the events, ministry, and seasons that are happening allow more freedom for the minstry. Those who think that the Holy Spirirt needs you to have everything unplanned and then fly by the seat of your pants in order for there to be a move of the Holy Spirit.

Interview with Dan Miller

On his promotional info for his church plant he put a picture of him and his hunting dog rather than him and his wife. This has become a conversation piece and starter for him.
When he first felt called to Truckville, he didn't want to go. It was a rundown backwater church with next to no money in the bank.
Within the first 100 days he was there he showed he had a vision, and he even changed the church name. He was known by the area as a man who didn't care about what people thought, he listened to God. He says that at present, his church can get somewhat wild. He says that there has to be a leader that is in constant communication with God making sure that the things going on are of the Holy Spirit and not fleshly.
He cares greatly about minister who have had moral failures. He has a prayer that God would kill him before He would allow him to bring disgrace to the kingdom of God.
He wants his staff to be more concerned with the details of people's lives. He really cares for his congregation in terms of hospitallity and the little things. He cares greatly about the details of his congegants and their families. He doesn't just remember your name, he tries to ask you about "how your daugther did in her basketball game, or how your grandma did in her perogie contest."
His church, rapidly growing, instead of building a larger sactuary, he built a recreation center. It is a 2-million dollar building that the church built and operates. It provides a need to the community for less cost than the other gyms in the area. It is not for the church people, it is for the community. 40% of the members are not part of any church.
"It's not about your own church, it's about the Kingdom of God."
"It's not about us (the church), it's about those who aren't us yet."