Ep. 52: Healthy Church Culture & Growth w/ Brett Landry

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew Marcus from THE INDOUBT SHOW. We got a fantastic program today. We have a good friend of mine, Brett Landry, in studio today, and we’re going to be talking about the importance of reaching our city for the gospel, what it looks like to be involved in church community, how it’s important to be in church community when we’re reaching the lost in our communities. And so we hope you tune in. We hope you enjoy today’s program, that it’s beneficial, that it’s fruitful, that it blesses and encourages you, and that it also even challenges you in your walk with God. And so we hope you tune in and enjoy the program.

All right, we got Brett Landry all the way from Vancouver. Brett, how’s it going? Thanks for being in studio today.

Brett Landry:

Oh, it’s a joy. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Marcus:

Praise God, man. So for our people who are listening, tell us a little bit about who you guys are, what you’re up to, family life, ministry life, just to give us context?

Brett Landry:

Sure, yeah. I’ve been married to my wife, Allison for over 20 years now. We have three daughters. They’re 18, 16, 14.

Andrew Marcus:

Come on, bro. That’s nuts. So when I last saw you, they were like six.

Brett Landry:

Sure, something like that.

Andrew Marcus:

Man, that’s insane.

Brett Landry:

Yeah, it was a long time ago.

Andrew Marcus:

Wow. Let’s just talk about reaching cities for Christ. Talk about it in your context. What’s been the approach for you and why you went down this path of even church planning?

Brett Landry:

Yeah. From, oh man, a long time ago when I was living in Alberta, my wife and I are from Alberta originally, Central Alberta, and felt called to plant a church in Vancouver. Now, that doesn’t make any sense apart from the Lord, because we’d never spent time in Vancouver. We never really hung around. We just sensed this was the call perhaps in the future that we were going to do this, and sort of put it in the back of our minds that this could be something that we would give ourselves to. There came a point where it was like, “I think now is the time to lean into that.” I was already a pastor and so let’s explore that.

Andrew Marcus:

So you’re pastoring in Alberta this time?

Brett Landry:

Yeah, that’s right. So thinking perhaps it’s time to make that move and see what God has for us. And so we prayed a very simple prayer, like grab hands and go, “Lord, if you’re in this, can you just open a door? Because we don’t know anyone. We don’t know how to do this.” We had no concept of how you just go and do that.

Andrew Marcus:

Wow.

Brett Landry:

I’d read a lot of books on church planting. I listened to all the podcasts I could find at the time and that kind of thing, but I was like, “I don’t know what the first step is. And so, Lord, would you show us?” It was so amazing because two days later I got a message from a friend who was connected to a friend who was now leading this new network and he said, “You should talk to them if this is something you’re interested in.”

Wow, man.

Andrew Marcus:

And so I did. And then we started that conversation and just basically followed each step that the Lord led us down. He just guided us into it. And so we ended up in Vancouver, moved here in April of 2011 and went to work at Westside Church. So we were part of the C2C network at the time, and they placed me at West Side as an apprentice. So I served there, helped them plant what is now called the Shore Church in North Vancouver the first year I was there and the second year got prepared to plant Christ City Church.

Brett Landry:

Wow.

Andrew Marcus:

So we entered into that conversation because we felt called to it because we felt like this is what we were supposed to do. And then when we went through church planting assessment, had lots of meetings with lots of people talking about this, discerning this call.

That seems a little overwhelming because don’t they just watch everything, talk to your wife and they just…

Brett Landry:

Oh, yeah. So-

Andrew Marcus:

Get the nitty-gritty?

Brett Landry:

I mean, it is nitty-gritty. It is down into everything in your life. And so it’s a psychoanalytic profile that they build for you plus your spiritual gifts. And you come and give a sample sermon and they’ve listened to some stuff before you’ve come and then they’re talking to your wife because that’s a really important aspect of this because if she’s not into it, you should definitely not do it. So the conversation goes on for months. It leads up to assessments. And the assessment is three days. It’s a very intense time. And some people recoil at the process because it feels intense. It feels intimidating, I think.

Andrew Marcus:

It sounds intimidating. I’ve had a lot of friends go through it and I’m like, “That sounds really hard.”

Brett Landry:

I loved it.

Andrew Marcus:

Wow.

Brett Landry:

Oh, I loved it. I thought it was the most fascinating thing. I love all of those kinds of things though. So I love personality tests and gift mix things. I love that, that self-discovery because I think if I can know who I am and how God has made me, then I can lead out of that. And so I actually really enjoyed it, which is maybe tells you.

Andrew Marcus:

So you’re a little weird.

Brett Landry:

Yeah, exactly. So I really enjoyed it and we went through that process.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s cool.

Brett Landry:

And then, yeah, we replaced it at West Side and then a couple of years later they sent us. So I think the important part of it was it wasn’t just an internal call. That internal call, you need to have some sense of that, but it needs to be affirmed by others. And that’s the thing where you need both. There’s a push and pull if you want to say on that. There’s two sides of the coin or however you want to phrase it. It has to be an internal thing and then it has to be affirmed by others because if it’s just internal, you can end up doing some wacky stuff.

And if it’s just other people saying, “You should do this, you should do this, you should do this.” But you’re kind of like, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” You shouldn’t do that. It needs to be both.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, that’s a really good word actually. So with church planting, I don’t know how to ask this. I don’t want to sound like we’re bashing mega churches or massive churches. Is there a danger and do you see the need to continue to plant? I mean, obviously there is a need because we can’t all reach the city. We need as many churches as we can.

Brett Landry:

Yeah, we definitely can talk about that. I think the church size does not equal church health.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s a fantastic word.

Brett Landry:

So you can have a large church that has the appearance of health that when you get internal, you find out it’s actually very unhealthy. You can have a large church that is tremendously healthy on mission. People are being discipled to maturity and it’s a giant thing. And you go, you know why this is growing? Because healthy things grow.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, the same like you can have a small church that’s unhealthy. It’s the same.

Brett Landry:

Exactly. So there’s a reason that some churches are stuck at 50 or 60 people, but you can’t just judge that based on size. So if you go and you meet those folks and you walk with me, “Ooh, I see why. This is a really healthy church in a really difficult spot,” or whatever the case might be. Now there’s some statistics around church size and it’s something like this. This is not going to be an exact quote, but it’s something like 70% of churches or smaller, but 70% of Christians are part of a church that’s over 200.

Andrew Marcus:

Okay. Carry the one.

Brett Landry:

I was told there would be no math.

Andrew Marcus:

We specifically put in the waiver not to… I’m just kidding.

Brett Landry:

So that’s an American statistic, which would be true if you look at the average church size across the country in Canada, and I’m sure if we had the same stuff it would be very similar. And so what that means is most churches are under 70 people, but most Christians actually experience their local church life in a church that’s over 200. Church size is not the thing. Now contextualization is what matters. So is there a need for a mega church? Yes, of course there is. There’s a need for a regional church that has a particular kind of reach and does things in a particular kind of way where a larger ministry like that will have different kinds of resources that will reach different kinds of people and can help people through different seasons of life that a small church might not be able to do.

So I think it’s very important that we have churches of all different kinds and all different sizes because we’re reaching all kinds of people. Now, contextualizing that is an important aspect of the work that I do with city to city and the work that we do with church planting. So the city of Vancouver, for instance, Vancouver proper, not Metro Vancouver, but the city of Vancouver itself, it is a network of 23 neighborhoods. There is no freeway in the city of Vancouver.

If you drive, you could start in Tijuana, Mexico and you can cross the border into San Diego and you can get on the I-5 and you can drive north. You can drive north on the I-5 freeway from the Mexican-American border in Southern California. And you can drive all the way on a freeway. You can come through the border at the Peace Arch Crossing, and then it turns into Highway 99. And then you can drive on Highway 99 and you’ve now driven through an entire country, into another country on the same freeway and that freeway stops when you cross the Oak Street Bridge and come into the city of Vancouver.

Vancouver does not have a freeway. Now that changes the way that people move around the city. It changes the way that people live in the city. And so Vancouver is a very neighborhood driven city. There’s clusters of neighborhoods with affinities and they have sort of central services in different areas around the city. And that means that the movement of people is very different than it would be in a suburban space.

So when we look at the city of Vancouver, and when I moved into Vancouver in 2011 and I started doing a bunch of research to try and understand my new mission field. What I realized was my new mission field is neighborhood driven. I believe that God was calling us to plant a network of neighborhood churches that were large enough to meet the needs of being sustainable as a church, but small enough to maintain community.

And so there were already some megachurches and that was wonderful. Gathering space is very difficult to find in Vancouver. And so by God’s grace, we were gifted a church building, which is a crazy story, but it’s a small neighborhood church building. It seats 200 people and that’s where we planted the church. When we planted out of there, it was because we’d grown so much, we needed to have three gatherings and three gatherings felt like it was diminishing our community because we were just running.

It was run people in, run them out. It was what we needed to do, but it didn’t feel great. So what we said is we’ll go to a third gathering, but we’ll do it as an interim measure until we can plant again. And so for us to discern church size and what’s a healthy church size, we want it to be large enough that you can have momentum as a ministry and you can have health and people can meet each other.

When sociologists will tell us that when you walk into a room with 70 or less people, if you’re raised in this culture or you’ve acclimatized to the culture that we have in this part of the world, you’ll walk in the room and you’ll realize that everybody in the room probably knows each other and you’re an outsider. So if it’s less than 70 people. So there’s a feeling sociologically that we have as a human being that goes, “Ooh, this is a small group and I’m outside of it.”

Then there’s also another number that we look at. It’s called the Dunbar number, which is the professor who came up with it. I think it’s 156 is the number, but it’s around 160. And his thing is that you actually can’t maintain more relationships than that. You can’t know more than that. So as a community you can grow. But once it gets bigger than that, not everybody knows each other and that’s not a problem, but that’s just a number that you have to be cognizant of. So somewhere in between there would be a healthy neighborhood church size.

Andrew Marcus:

Fascinating.

Brett Landry:

It’s not to say that we would try and stop the growth of something. I mean, our local church is now back at three gatherings. We’ve planted twice out of our church. One of those churches planted a church.

Andrew Marcus:

So cool.

Brett Landry:

But the way that we look at it is it’s actually our church is unsustainably large at the moment for our space and for the way that we want to be the church. And so we’re looking at planting again.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s a good reminder because like you said at the very beginning, size doesn’t matter. So how would you coach a young adult who is looking for a church? What are some of the signs for them if they can’t do digging to find out what’s happening behind closed doors? How do they know they’re in a healthy church or they’re looking for one?

Brett Landry:

Yeah, I think it’s true for young adults. I think it’s probably true for everyone that you shouldn’t want to be in a church where everyone looks like you. And so if that’s ethnicity, I understand that there’s reasons like linguistic reasons for us to gather together. If you don’t speak a language, it’s going to be difficult for you to go and join that community. So that’s a challenge. But the diversity of people gives you a bigger picture of the beauty of the body of Christ.

So if I’m speaking to a young adult and we’ve got lots of university students at our church and sometimes they come in when the university calendar year starts, they come from some other place in the world or in the country and they come in and they’re looking for a church to belong to as they study in the city of Vancouver at whatever college or university they’re at.

I love it when they don’t want to just have the homogenous group of people who are exactly the same stage and age. Now, you need that to be friends and that’s not a bad thing. You want to have friends who are at the same stage of life, the same age that you are because honestly, we hang out with a lot of university students. My wife and I do. I want them to leave my house. One of our friends got us this doormat that said, “Please leave by nine.”

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, that is so good.

Brett Landry:

It was at our front door and it was just… My wife and I both get up early in the morning and we want to say good night to our kids and we might want to chill out for a little bit.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s so fantastic. I need that mat.

Brett Landry:

But we hang out with those students. Now if they only hung out with us, then they go home and they’re like, “Well, I’m not even tired because I’m a student. I’m going to stay up till 1:00,” which is just maybe unwise. But also when I was a student, I did the exact same thing.

Andrew Marcus:

I know, man. I know.

Brett Landry:

So you want people to hang out with. You want to meet people who are at the same stage of life that you’re in, but you don’t want to have only the same stage. And so if you can integrate into a local church that has intergenerational ministry where you could belong to a community group where there’s people there who are retired, people there who are doing really well in their careers, people there who are maybe parents of grown children, maybe there’s people there who are parents of little kids. You can be a huge blessing to them and they can be a huge blessing to you if you’ll engage in those relationships.

So we try and have people mix it up as much as we can, but there’s always going to be affinity groups and that’s okay. So when young people come… I’m saying, if you’re looking for a church, don’t just look for the cool church that is full of people who look like you. Go find a church where you can go and ask somebody for some advice. And they have more to say than what they saw on TikTok that morning.

It’s like, “No, actually I’ve been in my career for 30 years and here’s how I think you could progress as you become a professional in your field. That kind of idea.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s really good. And maybe I want to ask a question about church attendance. What would you say to a young person who’s watching who just doesn’t feel the need to attend church? They’re a Christian, but I just like to be at home and watch online. It’s just a preference. It started off as a, “Oh no, we have to.” And now it’s turned into, “I just don’t want to go to church anymore, but I love God.”

Brett Landry:

Yeah. I think first of all, loving God is a good thing and watching a service on YouTube is not inherently bad. There were people who during COVID, were watching four or five different churches every week, and I was like, “Look, if your vice is watching extra church or listening to more sermons, I want to be very gracious and generous to you. There’s worse things that you could be doing with your life. Right?”

Andrew Marcus:

And there were some people who had health concerns and they needed to stay home.

Brett Landry:

Of course.

Andrew Marcus:

And obviously we’re not talking about that, but just people who have maybe lost that sense of community.

Brett Landry:

It’s 2024 and we’re back. We’ve been back for a while and we want you back. I think you have to start actually thinking about what it means to be human. So this is a bigger answer to the question, but you go all the way to what it means to be human. And so you would have a biblical anthropology, which means that you are an embodied person. You’re an embodied creature. God did not make you a spirit. But you have a body and it’s very important that you understand the fullness of what that is.

Iain Provan is a professor at Regent College who’s done… He’s written on this topic and he’s very, very helpful in part of our church. I’ve had the joy of knowing him and learning from him. He’s really emphasized this, your embodied presence in worship is a different thing than your disembodied experience of watching something.

So it goes from two dimensional to three dimensional. I would say if I only followed… Let’s say I didn’t know you in person, but I just saw some pictures of you. I would have by nature a two-dimensional vision of who you are. But when I sit with you and I get to know you, and I hear your heart and I learn about what’s happening in your family and what’s happening in your ministry and what’s happening in your life, you become a three-dimensional person.

It’s important that we exist as the church in a three-dimensional space. And so we have to be together. The scriptures are clear on that. I would say if you’re not, you can’t be a contributor. And so at our church, our staff make fun of me all the time and probably warranted in a number of ways. But one of the things I say often is that language creates culture. And so when I speak about the church, I don’t say, “You should come to church.” Whoever is doing announcements and welcoming people on a Sunday or our worship leaders, they don’t say like, “Hey, everybody, welcome to church.” Because that’s just actually fundamentally biblically untrue.

You’re not coming to church. You’re coming to the gathering of the church. The church is not a place. The church is a people. And so the church building that we have, we call it the church building because it’s the building that belongs to the congregation, the church. It’s on the corner of 43rd and Prince Edward in the city of Vancouver. But that building on the corner of 43rd and Prince Edward is not a church. That is the church building because the church is the people of God.

Now, if you have chosen to not engage in an embodied way with the people of God, you are by nature only able to consume. You are not able to participate or contribute. And so you’re not bringing the gifts that God has sovereignly given you to bear upon the rest of the community. And what happens is we’re actually missing you. So when we talk about our community groups, one of the things that I would say to people is that it’s not the same without you. And what I mean by that is, so if you’re not in a community group and you’re not attending a church, this is the language that I would use, you’re the one who is experiencing the disservice.

It’s not the same without you. But then you have people who go, “Oh, well, I don’t need that. Me and Jesus, we’re good. I’m good. I don’t need to gather with the church.” And I would say, “What if it’s not actually about you? What if it’s fundamentally not about you?”

Andrew Marcus:

Wow.

Brett Landry:

So in the kingdom, Jesus often revealed to us that there’s an others focused way of being, not a self-focused way of being. And so this gets into the hyper individuality and all of the stuff that we live in, but it’s actually not about you. So when I say a community group wouldn’t be the same without you, I’m not saying that you have something where you identified a felt need and go, “I need to be in a community group.” What I’m saying is that somebody else needs you to be in their community group because somebody else is going to experience less of God without you there to bring your presence and the gifts that he’s given you to bear upon the rest of the body.”

So it’s very important that you participate in an embodied way. Now, there’s lots of valid reasons why somebody might be really hesitant to join a local church in a physical way. Like you said, maybe there’s some health concerns. Maybe there’s some hurt. Maybe there’s some pain in the past where they did join and they felt rejected or they felt judged or they felt something else.

Andrew Marcus:

Or felt used. A lot of people feel used like they just serve, serve, serve or mistreated.

Brett Landry:

And they’re like, I don’t want to put myself in a position of vulnerability to be hurt again. I think what CS Lewis said in The Four Loves, and he’s talking about love, and he says, “If you want to make sure that you’re never hurt, that you’re never hurt again, take your heart, lock it up in a box, and no one else can ever touch you. But if you isolate your heart in that way,” this is paraphrasing what he says, he says, “it’s going to shrivel up and die.” Because you’re not designed to be on your own. You’re not designed to lock your heart up in that sense.

You have to expose yourself to the potential of pain, to the potential of relational hurt if you are to enjoy the fullness of what God has for you through relationships with others. So it’s very important that at some point you reengage. Now, maybe there’s some counseling that’s needed. Maybe you need some help. Maybe you need a friend and you need one friend that you trust and you can go with that one friend.

I also would say we try and keep the back row open metaphorically for people who want to dip in and they just want to show up and they just want to like, “Maybe I’m not ready to fully engage, but I want to come. I want to be there. I want to see it. I want to feel it. I want to smell it.” I mean, you can’t celebrate communion on your own at home. I want to celebrate communion with the body. I want to be together and I want to celebrate what God has done for me in Christ and all those kinds of things. It’s really important you come.

Andrew Marcus:

And even reaching our cities, a big aspect of that is reaching our cities within our church families.

Brett Landry:

There’s a lot of research. There’s a book that the name of it is escaping me. I think it’s called The Dechurch Movement or something like that. But it’s talking about the dechurched, those who were a part of something but then have left. And the really interesting data says that a lot of people who have left or have never been would go if someone that they cared about and someone that they trusted just invited them.

So a lot of it is that it’s actually, it’s a relational thing that being a part of a local church is experienced as being a part of a community. Now, community can become an idol and you can elevate community to a point that’s really unhealthy, but it’s experienced as a communal act of being a part of a group of people. And we all inherently as human beings want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We want to be a part and belong. We want to feel home and we want to know that this is my family and my tribe, or however you want to discuss that.

Most people will come back, if they’ve left. They’ll come back if a friend invites them because most people have left because there was some kind of relational problem, or there was some sort of idea that they could be better off on their own. And most of their experience is that they tried that out and it doesn’t work.

Andrew Marcus:

So for the young people who are watching or listening, how would you advise them or encourage them? What would you say to them to get plugged in to a local church? And then I want to also address, if someone’s thinking about planting, what advice would you give them to?

Brett Landry:

Sure. So I think if somebody’s looking at just joining a local church, maybe they’ve moved to a new city, maybe they’re in a different season of life and trying to figure it out, I think there’s lots of things you can look for in a healthy church. You have to have the essential stuff. They have to be preaching the scriptures. They have to be orthodox in their faith. I think if you are listening to a number of sermons, and it seems like more stories and illustrations than scripture is probably not a good balance.

If you’re listening and the pastor is the hero of every story that gets told, I don’t know, maybe we need to look to Jesus a little more. And so a person could be a compelling communicator, but maybe miss some of the Christ centeredness. So I’m always looking for Christ centeredness in sermons. I’m always looking for the gospel to be front and center and to be clear and compelling. So when we’re talking about that… I think worship as well. Are the songs that we’re singing true? Are they self-centered or are they God-centered? Are they biblical?

So what we talk about worship word and sacrament. Are you singing the scriptures? Are the scriptures preached? And are you celebrating the gospel in that sense? So you sing the gospel, preach the gospel, celebrate the gospel through the way you celebrate baptism and communion. There’s going to be lots of different kinds of churches. And so if you have particular convictions around certain things provided that they’re biblical secondary and tertiary issues, you could find a church that you fit in like that. I would say, just to see if you can get some time with the pastor.

Honestly, just say, I know, and just write an email. “Hi, my name is… I’m sure that you have lots of requests for meetings, but I would love to learn more about the church as I’m considering joining.” Most pastors are thrilled to get that message and go and sit down with somebody and have a coffee or have them come to the office and you spend some time together, and you can ask your questions.

Come with a great list of questions and find someone who will graciously answer them with you. I think that’s a really good thing to do. We talked about it earlier. Not just a church where everybody looks like you, but where you’re part of an intentionally diverse community. I think it’s important. You at some point are going to make some friends and you’re probably going to flourish where you’re planted, as opposed to thinking that there’s going to be some magic formula that you’re going to go visit 12 churches and that you’re going to have a magic formula that kind of one of them is just going to pop.

No, it’s like plug yourself in, get involved. Get involved in whatever life group, community group, small group kind of structure they have. Also serve because that’s a way that you can meet people when you’re serving shoulder to shoulder with them. I mean, one of the teams that we have like most churches is a cafe team. But guess what? They’re in the kitchen together, hanging out, playing music, shoulder to shoulder, talking with people who are different ages and stages of life and all that kind of thing. It’s great.

Get involved in serving. So when you’re looking for a new church, find those things. I think about this when I talk to my own kids. My children are growing up and as they’re going to go to university and they’re going to be looking for churches. What would I tell them? Sometimes you should just ask someone else.

We’ve had people join our church when they move to Vancouver and they say, “Well, I’ve listened to six months of sermons.” And we go, “Oh, okay. You’re doing your due diligence six months of sermons to see if this is the kind of place you want.”

Andrew Marcus:

What do you think?

Brett Landry:

Yeah, exactly. The kind of place that you want to be a part of. That’s good. So it’s all of those things. I think those are all helpful things to look at, ask people you trust for wisdom. Quite regularly, I will get this email, “Hey, Brett, my friend is moving to…” Fill in the blank on the city. “Do you know of any good churches there?” That’s a great email to ask your pastor about. So if you’re moving somewhere else… And then sometimes, unfortunately, there’s places and there’s been lots of churches in Vancouver that they’ve slid off the pages of the Bible. They’re no longer faithful to scripture. They’re no longer-

Andrew Marcus:

It’s happening everywhere, man.

Brett Landry:

It is. And so we’ll end up with people from those churches, and that’s a different story. Those people are hurting. They’ve just left a community in probably a very painful way, because they felt like they could no longer in good conscience stay there. Now, we’re in a different zone. And so those people who are looking for a place, you might not want to plug in. You might just need a season to sit and receive and be cared for. And so I would say make yourself known, but don’t feel like you got to jump in-

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, right away.

Brett Landry:

… and start doing everything. Just come and be.

Andrew Marcus:

Brett, thank you so much for being on the show, man. We appreciate it. We thank you for your ministry, all you’re doing in the city, and grateful for this time.

Brett Landry:

Thank you.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcast. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.

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