Community First: How Century Church is Redefining Outreach and Church Spaces with Patrick Quinn

unSeminary Podcast

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Patrick Quinn, the lead pastor at Century Church in Alabama. Century has a vision to plant one hundred churches across America in order to see more people brought into a life-saving communion with Jesus Christ.

Can you imagine a church so ingrained in a local community that the core values of that local congregation become the core values of the entire town? This is precisely the goal for Century Church. Tune in as Patrick unpacks this innovative approach where a church transforms its community through loving service.

• Build the town. // Churches are no longer seen as the hub of activity for their communities as they were in American history. But Patrick believes the church is always at its best when it’s solving problems for its local community and loving it in very specific, tangible ways. Rather than building the church, early on Century Church made a decision to prioritize building the town they were in and then let the town build the church.
• Community first. // The community-first mindset of Century Church is reflected in everything they do, from staffing to budgeting and programming. A lot of church budgets are focused primarily on church programming. Century decided to flip that, prioritizing community initiatives and their programs, which are designed to serve the entire community rather than only church members. The church then works off of a smaller portion of the budget. Similarly, the staff members are all very involved in the community, even having bi-vocational roles, such as serving as chaplain of the local football team.
• Partner with the community. // What it would look like for us to lose the church in order to find the true essence of the church? Where is the church supposed to serve? Previously Century Church used pole barns on their 23-acre property to host outdoor church services. As they grew, they took a unique approach to property development by inviting the community to design the church’s space based on the town’s needs. They hosted a five-day charrette involving architects, town planners, and engineers from eighteen states and two countries to create a mixed-use space that prioritized community needs. The church would then use some of that space for weekend services.
• Adapt your plans. // Initially the church was going to build a performing arts center, but they tabled the plans in favor of constructing a gym and recreational space, which better met the needs of the town. Listen to the community and families around you and be willing to adapt your plans based on the evolving needs of the community. This builds momentum and demonstrates your commitment to making a difference. People not looking for Jesus will realize Jesus has been looking for them as they make use of these spaces and programs.
• Expand your reach. // Century Church operates its 23-acre space as a separate entity called “The Well.” The church has a voice on the board and has put guardrails in place that outline how the space can be used within the community. They also seek like-minded partners who are committed to excellence and want to bring opportunities to the town. With lease agreements and contracts, these partnerships fall under the umbrella of The Well rather than falling other the umbrella of Century Church. Partnerships can amplify your impact and reach. Look for organizations and groups that share your values and commitment to excellence.

You can discover more about Century Church’s ministry model at www.centuryproject.org.

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: CDF Capital

Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple: we lend money to churches.

CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation with Patrick Quinn. He is the lead pastor at Century Church. This a church plant that was established in 2017 in Alabama. It’s an independent Methodist Church and this church, man, they, Patrick and I got a chance to interact a little bit at Exponential earlier this year I was inspired by what was going on. Ah but this church really has a vision to plant 100 churches, which is amazing, in communities all across America in order so to to see more people brought into a life-saving communion with Jesus Christ. Patrick, we are so glad you’re here today. Thanks for being here.

Patrick Quinn — Rich, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be a part of the conversation today.

Rich Birch — Well, fill out the picture. Kind of tell us a little bit about Century. You know, if people were to come this weekend, what would they experience? That kind of thing.

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so what they would experience currently is probably something that’s not happening in many other places in America.

Rich Birch — I love it.

Patrick Quinn — You and had talked about that at Exponential. But during covid we were meeting in a public elementary school in a fast-growing small town ah, that doesn’t have a lot of other facilities. And so when covid hit we needed to get out of the public elementary school for obvious reasons. If everybody goes back to thinking about what was going on there and how you had to have everything clean for five days and all of those things. And so we did not want to be a church that all of a sudden shut down our public elementary school for the next week due to ah worshipping.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Patrick Quinn — So we moved out of there. A lot of people went virtual. We certainly did that but we had purchased ah a 23-acre piece of property. It’s completely raw land, and we ultimately ended up ah building an outdoor venue. And we thought that this was going to be somewhat…

Rich Birch — That sounds real fancy. That sounds fancy. Outdoor venue sounds very fancy. That’s not necessarily what I picture.

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, okay, I’ll bring it down for you because we’re in Alabama. We we have two pole barns.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Love it.

Patrick Quinn — Pole barns, now they’re large, they are large pole barns.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — Fifty feet wide by eighty-four feet long…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Patrick Quinn — …and 9 shipping containers which I’m sitting in one right now while we’re doing this recording that we built…

Rich Birch — Really, this is in one of those? But if you see the video it’s that I wouldn’t even know you’re in a shipping container.

Patrick Quinn — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing.

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, yeah, I’m in a shipping container right now.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Patrick Quinn — So not headed to China.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Patrick Quinn — But but we are we are here on the property. So we have 9 shipping containers, 2 pole barns, lot of raw land, and we are currently building our first building. But we went outside and our people did not want to go back to the elementary school when it was all said and done. They wanted to stay where we were on this property. They felt called to it to then begin the process. Well we have been an outdoor venue every Sunday for the last almost four years now.

Rich Birch — Wow, that’s incredible.

Patrick Quinn — No matter if it’s snowing, raining, hot Alabama summer.

Rich Birch — Gosh.

Patrick Quinn — No matter what it is and somehow, Rich, people keep showing up, like it looks like the field of dreams out here every Sunday.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I there’s so much of this story. I I we just before the episode I was like, I’m not entirely sure how we’re gonna tell this whole thing because there’s so much here. Tell tell us about when you put up the tents. This is a to me this talks about resilience. I think there’s a lot of leaders that when you put up the tents and then what happened, you tell us that story…

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so…

Rich Birch — …I think would be like, okay I’m not sure the Lord’s called us to this, you know.

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so we’re outside and we’re and we’re literally on a raw piece of property, nothing on it. No utilities, nothing. And we are outside and we have fire pits for the winter. We’re trying to like figure out what to do next. And I was like okay, we’re going to build this outdoor venue. What could we do that would be ah, you know, enticing for the community to want to come check it out? So we we purchased two huge tents – Barnum and Bailey style tents.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Patrick Quinn — I mean big massive tents. And you know, one we were going to put the children’s ministry in, the other we were going to do worship in. And Rich, we got one worship service in before Hurricane Zeta came up through the Gulf of Mexico…

Rich Birch — Oh no.

Patrick Quinn — …went went across the beach, you know, down in the panhandle of Florida, and we are about 2 hours north by driving distance and we still had a Cat 1 hurricane come through and it wiped our tents out.

Rich Birch — Oh gosh.

Patrick Quinn — We literally only worshipped for one Sunday with the tents.

Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.

Patrick Quinn — So yeah, we were standing out there on the field after the hurricane came through and we had worked so hard to try to, you know, we don’t have any facilities. Our people have been worshipping completely outside. It’s cold, rainy, all of that. We put up these tents. We finally are excited. And there’s no doubt my team and a lot of lay leaders, we just stood there on that property pretty dejected at first, you know, like what are we doing?

Rich Birch — Yes, understandable.

Patrick Quinn — Like this doesn’t seem to be some something maybe we should be doing.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Patrick Quinn — And but the community showed up and cleaned it all up. And then the town helped us with some zoning…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Patrick Quinn — …to allow us to get these really nice pole barns constructed on the property, and for us to continue the mission and we’ve been growing ever since. We started with 100 people at Century Church – that’s part of Century.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — Psalm 100 is another part of that in scripture. But um, we started with about 100 and now we we shrunk back like everybody did in covid and we grew it back to we’re we’re approaching 600 people out here on a raw piece of property.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. That’s amazing. Well you know you might be listening in, friends, and think, oh we’re going to talk about the zaniness of being meeting outdoors for 4 years, but that’s not actually the part of the story. That’s a part of it. But that’s not the part that caught my attention. This was it. You know when I hear ah, Patrick and his leadership team talk, um I really hear a church that is trying to be for the community in a very real way, and has done all kinds of things to try to engage and serve and love the community they’re in. And frankly to be honest I found a little bit convicting. Because I feel like we try to be that in our church, but and sometimes I feel like maybe it’s just a marketing thing as opposed to you know the actual acting it out. I said that; Patrick didn’t say that. Don’t worry, friends. Ah but tell us about, you know, how is it that Century Church has been for your community. What’s that actually look like? Give us kind of a picture of what that is and then I’d love to unpack that for us as we think about our churches.

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so when I I have a lot of my experience was in the megachurch previously. And I ended up in a small town. I’m a military kid, originally, so I didn’t have a lot of small town experience. But I end up in a small town that is fast-growing with a brand new school system.

Patrick Quinn — And you see all of the needs in in a small town, sometimes more clearly than in a large metropolitan area that that ah you know I’ve obviously had the opportunity to pastor in. And so as you start looking at it, we had a choice early on. Do we build the church, or do we build the town?

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Patrick Quinn — And I think that’s where we made some decisions early on to say, you know what? I feel like God’s called us to build the town, to really embed the gospel of Jesus in this community is to build the town, and let the town help build the church. And so that’s where we started leaning into this idea of putting our community first.

Patrick Quinn — And I started thinking through it a lot and a lot of research – I’m ah I’m a researcher by nature. I stay up all night, read too much, do all sorts of things, all kinds of conversations. A lot of things I’ve I’ve followed you and a host of other people. And so ah, along the way we just started thinking through, how how can we, in a small medium-sized, growing town have influence with the current generation.

Rich Birch — Um, so let’s talk about that. Like so I think there’s lots of us that talk about putting our community first. We say that. Like we’re like we’re like… but what does that actually look like for you? What what are some examples of where you’ve said, hey we’ve we’ve actually tried to, whether it’s been strategic or whether it’s just been by positional opportunity, like hey, we see an opportunity. What have been some of those examples of that?

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so for the beginning of this we we just started talking about the fact that a lot of ah churches in general that I’ve even pastored are not seen as the hub of activity for their communities, like they were in American history and even in the history of the church where where people can come and dream big dreams, reach ambitious goals, get loved through hard and sticky situations. But mostly this: solve community problems, be an incubator for new growth, help build the community around some excellence based on, you know, Jesus’s teachings. So in short I would say that the church is always at its best when we’re loving on the community in very specific, tangible ways. And so I’ll tell you about a few of those.

Patrick Quinn — So so for instance for us all of our staffing, um, we we expect our staff to actually be involved in our community and not just at our church.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Patrick Quinn — And that works out in some very tangible ways. Like for me, I am the mental coach chaplain for the local football team. I I am constantly in meetings with the town council, mayor, school board. I I am very much engaged in the community as a whole. And we are one of the places that when there’s a problem in the community, they call us to help be a part of the solution.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Patrick Quinn — And and I mean in a very not like come paint a fence or we have like a little local mission project.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — I mean like we have issues in our community, how do we solve them? But that’s because we have positioned ourself early on that we really care about the direction of the community. Another thing that happens with our staffing is like, for instance, we have one of our staff members is a bus driver. And um, you know he drives the bus every morning and every afternoon, and he’s our youth minister and our director of operations, and he’s a bus drive full time bus driver.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Patrick Quinn — And that is part of the mission of the church is that every single one of us find a, if you will, a bi-vocational role.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — And so so our staff is geared out into the community. Our budgeting, so a lot of times in church world, our budgets are—I mean if we’re honest with ourselves and we really reflect, and I and I’ve had 21 years to do this now,—a lot of our church budgets are focused on church programming.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — And I mean to to a large extent that’s okay. But what we’ve endeavored to do is to flip the model a little bit and look at our budgeting as how can we take the dollars that God has given us and truly put them into community efforts, and and initiatives, and ways that we can help build the community. And then let the church function off of, you know, a smaller portion, if you will. nd so we look at that from a budgeting standpoint.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Patrick Quinn — Um, so so in in staffing, and budgeting, and then also our programs.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Patrick Quinn — So our programs are not… We have very few. And I mean very few internal programs.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — Like it’s it’s it’s almost a rarity for Century to have ah a program that would be centered primarily on church folks. So much so that sometimes, Rich, one of the challenges is actually getting church people to to our church folks to come to the event because they almost feel like the event is actually for the whole community, and maybe they’re they’re not as an… I mean we’ve had some challenges on trying to figure that out because we’re like, oh this isn’t the church potluck. It’s the community, you know, huge festival.

Rich Birch — Right.

And so whether it’s an easter egg hunt, a trunk-or-treat, or we’re hosting fundraisers on our property.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — You know, here’s one ah one story that I would say was ah was a catalyst for putting our community first.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Patrick Quinn — We’re meeting in the elementary school early on and this seven year old little girl, her name was Zana, and I still see her face and I still think about her family. And um, she she passed away in a in just, you know, a shocking way through the flu.

Rich Birch — Oh.

Patrick Quinn — And the school called me and said, hey can you come help us with this family. And I’m like, sure no problem. I’ll be glad.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.

Patrick Quinn — But there was a there was a wrinkle to this. The the little girl’s family was Muslim.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Patrick Quinn — An active Muslim family. And so I come up there to meet and I had no idea what I was exactly getting into.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — And through the course of the next hour this mother who has lost her 7-year-old little girl looks at me, a Christian pastor in deep south Alabama…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — …and says, ah, will you do my little girl’s funeral?

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow, that’s so cool.

Patrick Quinn — And I’m like what? Um and then and then I said yes. I said yes, we’ll absolutely do it. Well here’s the problem, Rich. We didn’t have a building…

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — …to do a funeral in.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — So we had to unroll our box portable church…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — …into the school, do this whole funeral. Well I leave there and I’m thinking to myself, I have not consulted my leadership team.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — I have not asked my staff. We are about to have to unroll all of this portable equipment on a day that we normally wouldn’t have to do it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — People are gonna have to take off of work.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — I mean there’s all of these things that are going to have to happen. And by the way I’m gonna tell them it’s not a church member.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Patrick Quinn — It’s not even an unchurched person.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — This is a Muslim family in deep south Alabama.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Patrick Quinn — And we gave ah and I say that the way that I’m saying it because this was a this was a moment early on in our church to say, are we gonna put our community first…

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Patrick Quinn — …and love people right where they are?

I love that.

Patrick Quinn — And our community was shocked. I had so many people coming up to me and saying, I’m pretty sure our church wouldn’t have done that.

Rich Birch — Right. Well, that’s what I was thinking as you as you were saying that. I think there’s a lot of leaders who who would have made even the reasonable, you know, like I don’t know, I’m not sure. Ah you know, but I love that your knee-jerk reaction was like, hey we want to serve. And then my assumption is that that then has opened up other opportunities to partner in town. And you know that must have kind of ended up, you know, creating those kind of discussions where then as a church you’re trying to come up with how do we decide, how do we figure out who to partner with? How do we figure out who to align with?

Rich Birch — I know a lot of churches have pretty, you know, really clear boundaries on that kind of thing, which does which we think of as boundaries, but really sometimes just create um you know obstacles to folks in our community. Talk us through what does that look like for when you’re trying to, you know, forge partnerships with with organizations, or the you know government all that kind of stuff. How how how are you doing that with your town?

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so two things that guided us in our development of this church in in our town was really two statements early on. One of them was I wanted to create a place where people not looking for Jesus come to realize that Jesus has always been looking for them.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Patrick Quinn — And if and if I could do that then I have the opportunity to reach new people. Because when you plant a church, obviously you’re you’re not wanting to just steal everybody else’s sheep, you want to reach new people with the gospel. The other thing was ultimately, if we’re going to put our community first, what would it look like when Jesus says lose your life for my sake and you will find it? What would it look like—I would tell our leaders this early on—what would it look like for us to lose the church in order to maybe find the true essence of the church?

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Patrick Quinn — Like where are the churches supposed to serve?

Rich Birch — Wow.

Patrick Quinn — Where the church is supposed to grow and go? And so like when we did that little girl’s funeral, you’re right, Rich. I mean what happened next was the whole like several people in the community were like, whoa. Why? How?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Patrick Quinn — And so all these questions and unchurched people started looking at us differently. And I’ve baptized probably half our church members now, and I mean unchurched people coming to this church and being a part of what we’re doing. And I think it’s because, you know, you always grow up you you grow up in churches and people say oh you, you know, people should be curious about your faith. They should, you should be contagious.

Patrick Quinn — But I mean really and truly a lot of times I look around—I’m not being, I don’t want to be judgmental about this, but I want to challenge everybody—like are people today really curious? Like are they?

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — Um and I think when you do some stuff like what we’ve done. And some of it has just been put on our doorstep. I mean that that situation got put on our doorstep, you know?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Patrick Quinn — But it was an opportunity to say, all right, I think Jesus would do this.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Patrick Quinn — I think Jesus would walk with this family.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — And it made a whole bunch of other people curious. And so yeah, we ended up with visitors. We ended up with people having theological conversations with me. People that had that walked had walked away from the church for 20 years or more going, wait – why did you just do that? What’s going on? And it messed with people theologically. It messed with their constructs of what a church looks like and should behave like. And so before you knew it I’m in conversations that I would have never had…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Patrick Quinn — …had I just played the normal role of a pastor in a small town.

Rich Birch — Well, I love it. I think this is such a great, powerful example to me. It feels very Jesus. It feels like that feels, smells very much like when I you know the kind of thing that Jesus would do. He had the reputation of being, you know, he was surrounded by people that the religious people in town were like I’m not sure I want those people hanging around with me. And you know doing a a funeral for a Muslim family, um, you know you were leaning in and trying to care for people. Your heart obviously open to them and were like man, what a terrible, tragic, like we can get on the same page here. We know that it’s a tragedy that your kid. It’s no parent should ever you know bury their child. That’s just unnatural. That’s not how life is supposed to go. And the fact that you stepped in there. But to me I look at that and I’m like, man, that feels like Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman, right? People, you know, same kind of like oh are we really supposed to talk with them, are we, you know, are you when you’re doing a funeral, what does that mean? Are you questioning, you know? Are you saying you know? Are you agreeing with everything? Like no, no, we’re we’re trying to love a family and who’s going through a tragic moment which does very much feel like ah, that feels like Jesus. Has that spilled out you know that are there other examples of that where where when you think, oh this may be a bad idea, but it feels like Jesus is leading us in that direction?

Patrick Quinn — Oh yeah.

Rich Birch — Um, you know there’ve been other of those that have have kind of come across your path over the years?

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so then I would say another primary example is, so this church with no facilities on a raw piece of property hosts today the largest fundraiser in our community for our schools.

Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool.

Patrick Quinn — We will and we do it in the next couple of weeks. It is called the Crawfish Boil. It’s by the Patriot Fund. Our mascot for the local schools – the patriots.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Patrick Quinn — And so the Patriot Fund puts on this ah, crawfish boil. And they outgrew their space next down the road from us in a local neighborhood. And when they outgrew it, they were looking for a place, they couldn’t find one, couldn’t find one, and it looked like it was actually gonna die off. And these are seriously needed funds for our for our schools.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — Um, and and so we we said we would host it. But here’s the problem. Um, once again I’m in deep south Alabama, Rich.

Rich Birch — Yes.

And and they they allow you, for years, when it was in this local neighborhood, they allow you to bring your own alcohol to the event.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yes.

Patrick Quinn — And so, you know you’re allowed to bring your own, they don’t serve it. They don’t they don’t, you know, provide it but you can bring whatever you’d like to bring in your coolers or whatever. And so we had another decision to make.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — We had a piece of property. We have the facility to to be able to pull it off. Um do we let this thing go by the wayside and let $100,000 go out of our schools…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Patrick Quinn — …or do we try to figure out how to make it work and our leadership team looked at it again and said this is the type of thing that we feel like Jesus would figure out. Um and so we started figuring it out. And we didn’t we didn’t become teetotalers um, in in Alabama.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — Um, we we still allow it. But we also put some guardrails…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Patrick Quinn — …and turned it a little more family friendly.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Patrick Quinn — But we still got people asking, you know, obviously some folks that are a little more hard line. Why are you allowing this? What are you doing? Is this really what a church should be, you know, about?

Rich Birch — Yeah, engaged in or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Quinn — Yes, all of those things, and and yet today we’re 4 years into providing this event, and I cannot tell you the amount of conversations that I have on our own property with people who yeah, maybe even have had a few drinks. Or people who haven’t but are looking around going, wait a second. This is a church?

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, this different kind of thing.

Patrick Quinn — And you all are having this huge festival.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — And it’s it’s pretty incredible. Ah so we are we are known as that kind of place that we’re we are going to support our community. We are going to love people where they are. And if we can even get them on our property and you know people not looking for Jesus that come to realize Jesus has been looking for them. And so we’ll we’ll wade into the messy and into the gray areas of life in order that we might earn the right to have a conversation.

Rich Birch — Now that’s this this kind of there’s so much here. Like we could talk that we could have 5 episodes here, friends. There’s like so many things I want to talk about. But this kind of intention um to like serve the community has ultimately led you to think about how you develop that property. Um, it’s led you to a place where you’ve made a bunch of decisions and kind of pulled together, you know, I think a different kind of approach to land development. Tell me about that part of the story. This is fascinating, friends, lean in.

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so I I started out a long time ago in management at Sandestine Golf and Beach Resort…

Rich Birch — Okay.

Patrick Quinn — …in the panhandle of Florida. And so I learned a lot in hospitality management, resort management, learned a lot in in just how spaces and places matter to people – those kind of things. So you take that as the backdrop and then I end up in theology school and on as a pastor. And so as we started to look at the property and what we could do and helping to build the town and what the town needs. How could we put our community first? and a lot of times we design things in the church for the church first—what does the church need—and then we’ll let the community come use it.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Patrick Quinn — What if we could create a different model where we actually invite our community onto our property and into an incubator, if you will—we called it a charrette—and we let the community design our own space.

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Patrick Quinn — Like what are the needs of this community that the church could uniquely try to meet, and then the church will figure it out on the backend. So what that looks like today is we we ended up with a five day charrette that we, through a, through a lot of different relationships, we were able to host 23 architects, town planners, engineers from all over America – from 18 states and 2 countries.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Patrick Quinn — We have them even from Canada. And so so we had some from Canada, Rich, that was good.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Patrick Quinn — And and they came here for five days. And I mean they had resumes that would blow your mind.

Rich Birch — Amazing.

Patrick Quinn — And they were mostly from the Christian Caucus of the Congress for New Urbanism.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Patrick Quinn — So you could look them up.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.

Patrick Quinn — And and they came and they helped us map this out, invite our whole community, and what we have now today is is really a mixed use 23-acre space that is designed for profit for for-profit entities, nonprofit entities, incubator-type opportunities, mission and ministry, but it’s all been leaning out toward the community, and then the church would figure out ways that we’ll use it. So every space is intended to be dual use, but dual use in the way that the community wins first, and then the church. And I’ll explain just here’s a here’s a anecdotal piece of how that works.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — So a lot of churches will have, let’s just use coffee shops for example. A lot of churches will have coffee shops. But if we’re honest with ourselves, most of the coffee shops that I’ve ever been around in in all of our churches, they are um, well, they’re not sustainable, one.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — And they they just we’re not coffee people.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Patrick Quinn — Like we’re just not. We’re we’re church. We know how to run churches.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Patrick Quinn — We we don’t know how to run coffee shops.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Patrick Quinn — And so what I endeavor to do on this property and what our leadership has has said Okay, let’s do this is. There’s somebody in this community that can run an amazing coffee shop, and wants the opportunity to do it. And and and will and we’ll also give glory to God in doing it. So let’s let them come run a coffee shop…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Patrick Quinn — …and do it with excellence. And then we will support it. We’re not going to make our own coffee on top of you. Um, we’ll we’ll support it and let you be a part of our overall master plan. So if you could take that example and extrapolate it out over every other type of business opportunity…

Rich Birch — That’s incredible.

Patrick Quinn — …mission opportunity, all of that. So what will ultimately happen on these twenty-three acres will be we’ll have dozens of partners…

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — …with dual use spaces that the church will figure out how to utilize as well as as the community.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s it’s literally turning upside down, I feel like there’s a lot of churches that and and in one way this is like a noble thing. It’s like we’ve got 100,000 square feet and but it sits empty for most of the week – let’s figure out some use of that. You’re you’re literally looking at it the other way around which is, hey let’s design a space—if that’s what I understand—design is that’s designed spaces—it’s not just a space, a number of spaces—that will get used all week long. And then we’ll figure out how to shoehorn into it on the weekend or when we need it. Um, I just love that. And you’re in the process of building a first space. Talk talk about that space. What is that? What’s that going to be used for and then how how does that fit together with this whole vision?

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so um, well one thing about the coffee shop by the way that I’ll parlay into the building is that um, you know, then the coffee shop can become a place on Wednesday nights where youth meet for a small group

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — Or where on Sunday mornings um, we use it for what you’d maybe even think of as a traditional Sunday school class. So that’s what I mean by the church figures out what to do with it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — We’re not going to dictate the space on the front end. We’ll figure out how to utilize it through some dual use lease agreements, bringing down the cost, share it across these different platforms, and then ultimately the church gets to figure out how to… And let’s be creative about it and that looks more interesting to people than you just build your children’s wing and then say, all right, y’all can come use some of the space if you want to during the week, right?

Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Quinn — So like it’s a lot better approach and more fresh for a community. And unchurched people to go, geez you really care. So get to the building. We are building a gym. And in our community, we don’t have anything like this. Like we’re building a we’re building for our first building is ah is a large gym, high school basketball-size basketball court that’ll also be able to turn two volleyball courts and or basketball or two smaller basketball courts…

Rich Birch — And hopefully some pickleball courts, You gotta be pickleball.

Patrick Quinn — Yeah, actually there are pickleball lines.

Rich Birch — You know there better be.

Patrick Quinn — And and we have positioned a couple of large soccer fields next to it.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Patrick Quinn — Because in our community there’s not a lot of recreational space yet.

Rich Birch — Right.

Patrick Quinn — And so we have found that I mean, once again, and this was not the original plan. The original plan was to build more of a performing arts type center where we had a worship space.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — But as, and and and this is an important point, Rich. As we started to finish up the construction documents of that, inflation was a part of the decision um to move away from it. We moved away from our initial building, but we also realized that wasn’t the biggest need in our community right now. And so we literally are putting on the shelf…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Patrick Quinn — …completed construction documents that we will have paid, you know, a large sum of money for.

Rich Birch — Yes, yep.

Patrick Quinn — And we’re putting it on the shelf in order to build another building that we actually feel will benefit our community even more.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Patrick Quinn — And so we’ve listened to families. We’ve listened to the community. We’ve we’ve we’ve heard how um, so many of them are looking for things that are more recreational…

Rich Birch — That’s so cool.

Patrick Quinn — …and so, okay, well if that’s what our community wants, then we’ll build that. And so now we’re gonna worship in a gym instead of worshiping in the space that we thought we were gonna worship in because our community throughout the week will be able to utilize it so much more.

Patrick Quinn — And people not looking for Jesus will come to realize Jesus has been looking for them. Because they’ll be here with their kids doing all those kinds of things. And by the way this isn’t upward. This isn’t like for us I’m not saying anything bad about any other program.

Rich Birch — Oh no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Quinn — But what I’m saying for us, we’ve decided that we want everything that we do out here to be done with absolute excellence. And so we want developmental athletic programs to come that will raise up kids to even become D1 athletes.

Rich Birch — Cool.

Patrick Quinn — Um, now that doesn’t have to be for every child and other children will find ways into these programs that they can still have fun and develop. But our partners – you get back to who’s partnering with us. We want partners that want excellence in everything that we do. So we would so we have already partnered with a soccer/football club.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Patrick Quinn — They call him a football club…

Rich Birch — Yep, yep.

Patrick Quinn — …you know, because if you’re really serious, you’re a football club. You’re not a soccer.

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, love it. Love it.

Patrick Quinn — So we have a football club. They’re called the Yellow Hammer Football Club.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Patrick Quinn — And they have started out here and they are a developmental soccer program. And so when we say that we’re doing things for the community, it’s not your typical um least common denominator type of activity.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Patrick Quinn — It is we want we want people being wowed by the… The church historically has been able to solve problems. I feel like when I read church history, the church when we are at our best, we are solving problems for our local community.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so true. Yep.

Patrick Quinn — And somewhere along the way, and I don’t know if it’s our fault or just, you know, natural vision leaks if we’re not careful, I don’t know, but somewhere along the way, we are not, if we’re honest if we look at ourselves in the mirror as leaders, we are not the first stop where people think to solve problems in our communities anymore.

Rich Birch — Right, right, right.

Patrick Quinn — And I just wanted to do something where hopefully we can position ourselves every step of the way, whether it’s a soccer program, or a coffee shop, or something with the town council that they look at the church of Jesus Christ as a place. It doesn’t have to be the only place. But but we sure should be in the in the conversation if we’re doing our job well. Where we are helping to solve the community the community’s issues. And if we’re doing that then a whole new generation of unchurched type people, I feel like, start looking at the church differently.

Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so true. I love that. And that’s great historical context. It’s true. Like universities and hospitals and so many kind of public good institutions that now have either been taken over by the government, or are just you know there are independent nonprofits, that sort of thing, when you trace back their history they were you know Jesus-loving leaders who saw a need and said, hey we can help with this. We can pull this together. And I love that I love that you’re kind of standing in that stead in that history to try to see something great happen in your ah community.

Rich Birch — Well there’s so much more we could talk about, but I know there’s like executive pastor type people that are listening in that want to get into some of the details around how are you structuring those those relationships, or or how do you think you’ll structure those relationships? There’s a lot we could talk about there, but like take the football club you’re working with. So like did you are did you build the building, like you you raised the money to raise it, and then you’re leasing it back? How does all that work, just to give us just give a sense of that. And if people can reach out to you and talk to you if they got questions about that, I’m sure.

Patrick Quinn — Absolutely. I would love to talk to anybody who wants to look at the model more. But I would say the the way that we’re trying to structure it is we call the twenty three acres The Well.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Patrick Quinn — So century church meets at The Well.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Patrick Quinn — And what we endeavor to do is to make The Well a 501c3. We’ll put a board in place. Church governance will have a big voice in that, obviously.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Patrick Quinn — We create partnerships that fall up underneath The Well. And then what happens next is we have these dual use relationships that some people smarter than me, obviously, XPs that are listening know already, right, that the lead pastor is not the one that’s going to be doing all of this, right?

Rich Birch — It’s good vision. It’s good vision. It’s good… Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Quinn — Right. Yeah, like I’ve run out of my bandwidth pretty quickly on this. So so we we will create these partnerships through these lease agreements and contracts that will that will help our church, you know, we’ll have some guardrails.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Patrick Quinn — But you can already see the type of church we are where we’re willing to you know flex into some gray.

Rich Birch — Yeah flex on that stuff. Yep.

Patrick Quinn — But but we will create some guardrails, and then ultimately these contracts will will fall up underneath The Well. They will operate not not under Century Church’s umbrella. Century Church will be another entity that meets at The Well. And then and then as what we look for in partners are obviously some like-minded people. But we look for people who want to do things with excellence. And we want to bring opportunity to ah both the people that want to do something, but also to the town.

Patrick Quinn — So in other words, another way to look at this is that I heard someone once say that I loved is that we want to create a canvas where other people can come paint their dreams.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Patrick Quinn — So if we can figure out how to do that, and we’re still in the beginning stages of this, but the football club is our first you know example of that that I could that I could share with you, is they’ve come out and they have a contract with us. We will share the space, the fields, and things of that nature. But we give them priority to set their schedules, and we will work with our calendars. But ultimately we want them to be very successful. We want to root them on. We want them to be very successful in all that they do. Um, but communication is obviously going to be key.

Patrick Quinn — And look some people listening to this are going to say that’s way too messy, like I don’t want to get into all of that. But for me, the brain damage of figuring that out means that we get to sit at the table in our wider community. And the brain damage is worth it to me. Also what I hope will be um something that the Lord uses even through this podcast is that the brain damage of us figuring it out means that the next small/medium-sized town that has a pastor that may be listening to this that wants to figure it out, maybe we’ve paid some of the stupid tax. You know? Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Love it.

Patrick Quinn — Maybe we’ve gone through some of the brain damage and we can help be a catalyst. That ultimately gets us, when you said we want to launch a hundred churches, um I’m just fine with if Century ever is called into a hundred churches that that are that are absolutely part of Century I’m I’m fine to go to more small towns and be a part of that. I’m also fine in resourcing other pastors and helping other church leaders figure out how to launch something very similar with similar principles. And I feel like that’s every bit as much a part of what the Lord might be doing through our church family.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that is so good. Well I just want to honor you, Patrick. I just love what you’re up to here. To me this just smells so much like Jesus. It just it smells like him. You know it’s it’s very, you know, Jeremiah 29 – seek the prosperity and peace of our community. It feels like Luke 10, hey find a man of peace and, you know, work with them. There’s like it’s it is messy. Like it’s not you know, but but I think it’s the kind of work that God’s calling us to. And I think you’re, you know, you’re kind of projecting for us a new way to think about these things. There’s a ton we could have talked about here, but I want to encourage people to connect with you. So where do we want to send them online if they want to connect with the church, kind of hear more of the story, where where do we want to send them?

Patrick Quinn — The the best place, I mean we have our church website, but the best place to go if you want to learn more about the model of what we’re doing is centuryproject.org – centuryproject.org. And I actually have put my cell phone number literally on that website, so they could text me if they want to, reach out to me via email. But I love to talk about this. And I love to be a part of brainstorming and dreaming with other pastors. I literally was doing it in Huntsville, Alabama just a few days ago, standing on a 40-acre piece of property…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Patrick Quinn — …and having an opportunity to have a conversation with another pastor about what they are looking to do to bring a similar type concept of what we’re doing here. There’s about probably 10 to 12 other pastors that have reached out to me in the last even couple of years that we’ve engaged in conversation all over America about what this looks like in their small/medium-sized town context and how to actually implement some of these core principles. So, I enjoy doing that work and look forward to hearing from some people.

Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so good. I would love, friends, obviously a part of what we’re talking about is like the development of land and pictures and you know obviously you can’t do that in audio format. But I would encourage you to drop by centuryproject.org ah, to even get a sense of when you talk about the development of the property and that there’s some images on there that give you a better sense of what we’re talking about here. Um, it’s pretty inspiring stuff. So I really appreciate you being on today, Patrick. Thank you so much for taking time to be with us, and you know and just Godspeed as you take steps here towards you know, just the next things that God has for you and your ministry. Thanks for being here today.

Patrick Quinn — Thank you so much much, Rich, for having me. I appreciate it. It’s been a great conversation.