Transcript
Episode 2 Transcript – Bob Bickford
Rick Curtis (00:00):
Hey guys. Welcome to another episode of Conversations where I talk to thought leaders within the SBC. I have a very special friend and colleague today, Bob Bickford, and I’m going to let you introduce yourself, tell us where your ministry and currently, and give us some ministry history as well.
Bob Bickford (00:18):
Rick, I’m still good to be with you. I am now the executive director of the Nashville Baptist Association. We often say the NBA and it’s very confusing.
Rick Curtis (00:27):
Oh, yeah.
Bob Bickford (00:27):
I can’t get you tickets.
Rick Curtis (00:29):
Yeah.
Bob Bickford (00:29):
Okay. Sorry. But I’ve been in Nashville actually a year and a half, and I’ve actually been in this role for about seven and a half months. When I left the replant team, I was working with a business that was helping churches develop their own new space, and then this position came open and the Lord through seven circumstances brought me into the leadership. So I’m so grateful for the opportunity to serve in Nashville churches.
Rick Curtis (00:50):
Absolutely. Part of the reason why I wanted to have you on today is because you are one of those guys that our A M AMS has relied heavily on in replanting and training and all of that, and you were coming from the NAM end, but now you’re actually an A MS, right? So for the academic to move to practitioner, I would love to get some insights for you because well, let’s back up. Take us through the replant journey that you had here at nam. Most of the guys listening probably know you, but this broadcast goes to both AMS and pastors in their association.
Bob Bickford (01:28):
So
Rick Curtis (01:29):
Refresh us.
Bob Bickford (01:30):
Yeah, so the quick story is a move to St. Louis in oh nine was part of a multi-site church, and we merged with a declining of dying church in our far suburban campus. And so I got to be a part of that, participate in that, and then about three years into it, we felt like, you know what? We sensed the Lord doing something in us. So we transitioned off of staff not knowing exactly what was going to take place, and my resume got sent to a declining church that said we got one more shot.
Rick Curtis (01:58):
Oh, wow.
Bob Bickford (01:59):
Our associational leader gave me an introduction to the church, so I became the pastor and replanted a church and served there for nine years. Along the way, I met Mark Clifton, who was blowing up this O high di replanting, met guys like Mark Hallick and others. And so it turned into a contractor job, a part-time job, and ultimately a full-time job. And so I started as a re planter, but my association was so critical, Rick, because I would not have survived as a replant pastor where it not for my local association. That’s beautiful.
Rick Curtis (02:31):
Yeah, I love to hear that. So we believe in replanting here at nam. I think everybody knows that we’re here at the replant event, the replant lab that we do every year. That’s in the last week or third week of February every year. So you can mark your calendars if you’re an A MS, bring a team. We train re planters, replanting teams here in Alpharetta. But you were part of building that event because you understand the importance of replanting. There’s guys listening to this today, associational leaders that probably have several churches that need to hear the story and the victories in replanting, yet they haven’t yet engaged. What would you say to them, those ams that say, man, I know I need to do this. I just haven’t done it yet,
Bob Bickford (03:23):
Rick. So we had 160 some churches on our role when I got into the position at Nashville, and I knew that not all of them were active. And so we did a quick crash course to just understand who’s with us and what’s their relative health. And so as we began to kind of classify plateaued in declining, thriving, multiplying, we realized let’s focus in on the churches that are in need. Because what we sensed was that there were quite a few churches that were needed. If we lost them, we lost kingdom footprint.
Rick Curtis (03:57):
Yeah,
Bob Bickford (03:58):
Absolutely. It’s
Rick Curtis (04:00):
Happening across the nation
Bob Bickford (04:01):
And in Nashville, so many people are moving there. We lose real estate all the time. We can’t lose buildings. We can’t lose kingdom gospel outpost. And so we took the opportunity to engage with the churches that you might consider low hanging fruit. They were in a pastoral transition or they had reached out and asked for help.
Rick Curtis (04:19):
That’s great.
Bob Bickford (04:19):
We didn’t broadcast. We didn’t go after everyone. We said, who’s leaning towards us or who’s in a point of need? And so that’s how we engaged with them. And so over the seven months, we’ve had 15 conversations with 15 engagements with churches. And so we’ve got that many in the pipeline, and we’ve got about six or seven that are nearing an implementation.
Rick Curtis (04:41):
So did you say 150 churches, basically? And so you’re at 10% that are actively engaged. And then hopefully as the winds start posting on the board, which I’m sure they already are, those that are on the sidelines, they’ll go, man, I want some of that action too. Right? Yeah, absolutely. That’s the beauty of it. So you’re a year and a half in, talk to me about prioritization, because I can imagine with your background, you go and say, we’re going to replant this association and some of the healthier churches that are established and well, you have to balance, you have ministering to them as well. How do you find time to balance and what safety measures have you put in place, other leaders or whatever to say, Hey, look, following a sense of direction for the association without getting too skewed on one way or another. The reason I ask that is because you come out of replanting and you’re so skilled at it. I know my own tendencies are towards leadership development. So when I became a director of missions, I went so hard in leadership development that I had a couple pastors have to tell me, Hey, say, what about us over
Bob Bickford (05:50):
Here? Absolutely.
Rick Curtis (05:51):
So how do you maintain the balance?
Bob Bickford (05:53):
Well, I’m not balancing it now. Well, right now we’ll say that.
Rick Curtis (05:57):
Is that a public confession?
Bob Bickford (05:58):
You want to look at a camera, public confession? No balance. In fact, I think I wrestle with this concept of balance. I think the way I want to approach it is intentional use of my time and planning on my time. So I have particular days that I’ve tried to mark out, okay, I’m looking at the, so you can work in it or on it? Well, the great need of replanting in my experience will be an anchor on me that drags me to the bottom of that
Rick Curtis (06:24):
Function.
Bob Bickford (06:26):
And so I have to really discipline myself to get out of that and work on the association. And so I have particular days in the month where I’m looking at just the finances, and then I’m also thinking about the future. And so one of the things we’re thinking about is in addition to addressing the great needs of our church, how do we address the gospel needs in our city? So if I’m only spending time with churches that are plateaued in decline, then I will get into a space and a place where I think of remedy instead of advancement. Does that make sense?
Rick Curtis (06:58):
Yeah, it does.
Bob Bickford (06:59):
So I’ll spend some time with some of our thriving and multiplying churches, and I’ll ask a question, what are you excited about in the city? Where do you sense the Lord moving in the city? How do we need to join that gospel movement? How do we get everybody else involved? And so a lot of it’s just disciplining myself to not only go to the calls and the appointments where there’s great need, but discipline myself to get to those conversations where there’s great inspiration. Now here’s what’s hard about that. The guys who are leading healthy, thriving, multiplying churches, they have very little time.
Rick Curtis (07:32):
Yeah, you’re right.
Bob Bickford (07:33):
And so it takes me six, eight weeks or more to get an appointment with those guys. But I do everything I can to stay connected with them, text them, how are you doing, praying for you this week. But also I think too, when we classify our churches and we do an internal classification, we would never do this publicly, but we look at our churches in terms of their involvement and their health, and then we try to make a disciplined effort, our team, just to say, we’re going to make at least minimum five contacts with the range of churches that we have in our association. So a multiplying church, a plateaued church, a declining church, a church that we don’t know about the unknowns, how are they doing? And so we try to distribute our contacts over that just to keep casting that line to get a response
Rick Curtis (08:14):
Back. Yeah. Hey, I appreciate so much of that. I want to rewind the tape here a little bit to something that you said, because I was recently interviewing Keelan Cook, a friend of ours, and he said something very similar. And as the developer of leaders that I am, I think it’s insignificant, and I would say pastors, associational leaders. I think when I’m in a very special seat that I get to talk to the best of the best, the thought leaders in the SBC. And it’s pretty cool. And I know you at some level are one of those guys. You’re an influencer. God has put you in your position to do what he wants accomplished in your geography. So as additional thought leader, listen to what these guys are saying, common thread in Bob and Keelan was, Hey, I need to get working on it rather than in it.
(09:06):
Those were Bob’s words, Keelan would say, or I would say, we need to rise ourselves above to where we can work on the system rather than working in the system. We have a tendency to get so involved in the tyranny of the urgent responding to calls. And the way I likened it with Kelan was we become firefighters eventually. Absolutely. We wait for the bell to ring, we go out, we put out the fire, and then we come back and we wait for the bell to ring again. And it’s a dangerous place to be. And when I frequently talk on this subject, I liken it to being an arson investigator. I like that terminology, right? Because arson investigator responds to the same fire. There’s still that sense of urgency, but when they’re there, they’re asking the questions, what started this fire? What can we put in place to keep fires like this from happening again? How do we better prevent this fire or respond quicker to this fire? And you’re asking those key questions around it to develop a strategy for repeat applications.
Bob Bickford (10:02):
Absolutely.
Rick Curtis (10:03):
And so I love what you said about being working on the system and not in the system. And I also love what you said about balance because we all suffer with that. We all struggle with that because we get passionate about certain things. We know other things need to be done, but they don’t align with our passions. And so we just need to kind of see the bigger picture. And you can’t do that if you’re in the system.
Bob Bickford (10:28):
No, no. It’s too, you’re in it. You’re buried by it, you’re underneath it. And if you find yourself, and I do this, a lot of times I find myself just feeling exhausted. And I think, where have I been spending my time and how do I need to step out of what I’ve been doing to get refreshed and get refocused on something else that’s important as well.
Rick Curtis (10:48):
Yeah. You touched on it briefly, and everybody I’ve interviewed touches on it the importance of relationship. We know that nothing moves without relationship. So as we wrap up, talk about the importance of relationship a MS to pastors, but also pastors to their A MS, because we’ve got 1,115 of these guys out there as of today. And the reality is some of them are in deep, good, solid relationships with each other and others are not. And so it may be intimidating for a pastor and association. I know associational leaders, I hear from them all the time, they say to me, well, I don’t really correspond much with my mega church or my bigger church in town because they really don’t need us. Yes. Listen, a MS, your megachurches, your bigger churches need you. And you say, well, how could that be? And I think they need to have a forum within the association to share and to bless other guys. Absolutely. They can come to the table if they’re asked. So there’s this intimidation factor because of lack of relationship. So as we wrap up, how important, I guess that’s the distilled question, is how important are relationships both ways in the association to make it work?
Bob Bickford (12:05):
Yeah. Well, everything moves at the speed of relationship. And I think that you’ve articulated it well. The larger churches, the healthy churches need us in different ways than the church is in great need. And so I have to balance that or understand in a conversation, what is the best way that I can step alongside this church wherever it’s at and help it advance the gospel. And so that’s really our mission. When I meet with any pastor, regardless of where they’re at, at a healthy, thriving church, regardless of its size or at a church that’s looking for better days, I simply say, how can we help you advance the gospel? That’s the conversation. Then whatever they say is what I respond to and where we go. The other thing too, I think, is I ask every pastor to collaborate with us on something.
Rick Curtis (12:54):
Oh, nice. I like
Bob Bickford (12:55):
That. So if they’re collaborating with you to solve an issue or to pray through an issue, or to think through something in the city from whatever position they find themselves in whatever size church, whatever health condition, the church, we’re all participating with the same mission of advancing the gospel. And so what I found is when they are contributing and not responding to a request, the buy-in increases and the mission advances,
Rick Curtis (13:19):
I love that there’s so much talk among associations right now about missional alignment. How do we find our missional alignment? Well, the gospel is the spot to missionally align. There you go. Yeah. And it’s really that simple. Hey, leaders, listen. The association is such a pivotal, amazing, formidable force when done well and done in relationship. And I want to encourage you, we at nam, other practitioners across the nation are here for you. We have our events during the year. You can find out all about those at nam.net/associations. There’s organizations like S-B-C-A-L out there that are there to promote and to empower associations. And so I encourage you to connect with them. But thank you. Thank you for tuning in today and listening to my time with Bob. Bob, thank you for coming in. I appreciate you both as a friend and a thinker. You challenge me in ways that others don’t. We, I think we all challenge each other. It’s all about iron sharpening iron, and thanks for doing what you’re doing. I’m so excited for you being in Nashville for such time as this.
Bob Bickford (14:27):
Thanks, Rick.
Rick Curtis (14:27):
Alright.
Bob Bickford (14:28):
God bless you.
