The Church Systems Podcast

Henry Tolbert of Simple Systems Consulting
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A strategic conversation to help you bring discipleship into the digital world.

  1. 6d ago

    707: You Belong to Nothing

    Moses said the load was far too heavy. God did not argue with him. God did not send more anointing or a stronger word. He sent seventy men. That is the whole episode. This is the week of Season 7 where the question turns around. All month we asked who is watching your people fade. This one asks who is watching you. Three movements: The Room You Built. Numbers 11. Every relationship in that building runs through your role. People are not being distant with you, they are being appropriate. You can be surrounded, celebrated, prayed for and quoted, and still have nobody who knows what this week cost you. And notice what God never said. He never said the load was imaginary. Heavy is not weak. The Reasons We Gave. 1 Kings 19. Elijah’s problem was not his feelings, it was his arithmetic. He said I am the only one left. God said there are seven thousand. He was not out of strength, he was out of accurate information. Then the four sentences we taught ourselves because nobody taught us anything better. It comes with the territory. I have my spouse. I do not have time. I am the only one who sees it. The Road Back. Exodus 17. Moses did not drop his hands because he was weak, he dropped them because they were heavy. Heaven did not send him strength. Heaven sent two men and a rock to sit on. And read the order carefully. They got him seated before they held anything up. Rest came before reinforcement. There is a section in the middle of this one called The Things Nobody Taught Us. Nobody taught us how to receive. Nobody taught us what to do when the building is full and the house is quiet. Nobody taught us how to ask for help without it reading as failure. Nobody taught us that a pastor is allowed to be covered. And a word on that last one. Covering is not control. Covering is company. It is Aaron and Hur on each side, not a man standing over you telling you what to do. If you are not the pastor, stay for this one anyway. There are three moments in here written directly to you. The shortest version is this. Fine is a skill we were trained in. Ask a second time.

  2. Oct 13

    706. The Road With No Signs: Why Nobody Has Ever Asked Them To Join

    They are not resisting you. They are waiting. In Luke 14 a man throws a feast and sends out invitations. The whole town knows. Then verse 17 says he sent his servant to the people he had already invited. Same guests. Second trip. A human being walking to a specific door saying it is ready, come now. Most churches have a verse 16 and no verse 17. You have been announcing for years and nobody has ever been sent to the person. In this episode Henry walks through the first gate of the Member Pipeline and makes the case that your church does not have a commitment problem. It has an asking problem. Three movements: Nobody Sent The Servant. Luke 14:16-17 and 23. An announcement is delivered to a room. An invitation has a name in it. The sentence that works has three parts, their name, why you thought of them, and a specific next step. And no, a text blast does not count. If it went to a list, it is still an announcement. The Silence Voted For Them. John 1:46 and 2 Timothy 1:7. Three fears stop the ask. Rejection, awkwardness, and not knowing the words. Every one of them is about the asker. Not one is about the person being asked. And the worst one is the one that sounds spiritual. Somebody Has To Walk Them In. Acts 9:26-27. Saul tried to join the disciples and they were afraid of him. Then four words changed church history. But Barnabas took him. Belonging is assigned, not felt. Every person who stays at your church has one human being who would notice if they stopped coming. Tools do the sending. People do the church. RESOURCES Free training, see the whole system in one hour https://getchurchsystems.com/landers The Mandate Summit 2026 https://mandatesummit26.com/register Church Systems in a Box https://getchurchsystems.com/updated-checkout-page Get the book, Stuck Church https://stuckchurch.com/ Apostolic Insight airs live every Thursday at 6:30 PM CST. Season 7 is The Four Pipelines. Guests, Members, Givers, Leaders.

  3. Oct 2

    Episode 705: Attender Is Not A Member

    There are two different people sitting in the same seat at your church. One of them is visiting. One of them has already decided this is home. And you treat both of them exactly the same, because you cannot tell them apart. Nobody ever built a road between them. There is a chair, and there is a family, and in most churches in this country there is absolutely nothing in between. October opens the Member Pipeline, and Henry starts with a sentence that is going to bother some people. You have been counting the crowd and calling it the church. Three movements. The crowd, the covenant, and the commission. John 6. Jesus has the biggest crowd of his ministry and he preaches a sermon that empties the room. He gets harder, not softer. Not the Pharisees, his own disciples walked out. And then he turns to the twelve and asks the question no pastor in this country is willing to ask anybody. Are you also going to leave? Jesus was willing to lose a crowd in order to keep a body. Most pastors have never been willing to lose anybody, and that is exactly why they do not have a body. Then Ruth. Your people will be my people, your God will be my God. That is not a feeling and it is not attendance. It is a covenant statement, spoken out loud, to a specific person, with no exit built into it. A foreign woman with no claim chose a people and said so, and that one sentence put her in the lineage of Christ. And then Paul calls them members, and we hear roster. He meant body part. A hand. A foot. An eye. A body part has a function and a place it belongs to, and a person in a crowd has neither. You cannot commission a crowd. IN THIS EPISODE Why Acts 2:47 proves the early church had edges and we only have attendance The three stages of the road: stranger, citizen, family, and why nobody skips one Why your membership class never fills and your small group has the same eight people The reason your leader shortage in December starts with your membership gap in October Scripture: John 6, Acts 2:47, Ruth 1:16, Ephesians 2:19, 1 Corinthians 12 You do not have a commitment problem in your people. You have a covenant problem in your house. Nobody ever asked them for one. --- FREE TRAINING The Mandate Method. How God-called leaders build growing churches with the P3 System. Live and free. https://getchurchsystems.com/landers CHURCH SYSTEMS IN A BOX The systems library, the templates, the workflows, and the Lab every Thursday night. https://getchurchsystems.com/updated-checkout-page THE COMEBACK PLAN The book this whole thing started with. https://stuckchurch.com/ THE MANDATE TOUR https://kingdomtour.getchurchsystems.com/ --- Apostolic Insight is the podcast of Simple Systems Consulting. New episode every week through December. Henry Tolbert is the founder of Simple Systems Consulting and an Associate Pastor at The STAR Church. He and Latoya Tolbert help small and bivocational pastors build churches that run on systems instead of exhaustion. getchurchsystems.com themandateos.com

  4. Sep 25

    Episode 704: You Are The One Nobody Asks About

    Latoya hosts and teaches this one. You know who's struggling at your church. You know who got quiet. You know who stopped raising their hand in Bible study. You know who didn't come back after the funeral, and you know exactly which Sunday it was. Now name the last person who noticed you. Not the last person who needed you. Not the last person who thanked you for something you did for them. The last person who looked at you and could tell. If you had to stop and think about it, this one is for you. Latoya walks three things. The service, which starts in Luke 10 with Martha saying the thing out loud that most women in ministry have never said once. The silence, which is what she stopped saying and why. And the seeing, which is Genesis 16, where a pregnant slave woman alone in a desert becomes the first person in all of scripture to name God. She doesn't call him the God who rescues me. She doesn't call him the God who fixes it. She calls him the God who sees me. And notice what God does not do. He doesn't change her circumstance. He sends her back. What changed is that somebody saw her inside it. IN THIS EPISODE Why Jesus doesn't scold Martha for serving, and what he does instead The research: 51% of women in church leadership are at high risk of burnout Why female pastors report lower satisfaction and lower confidence than men Four reasons she doesn't say anything, and two of them belong to the church Genesis 16, and the difference between being watched and being seen Scripture: Luke 10, Genesis 16:13 Being seen is not the same as being watched. Watching evaluates. Seeing knows. --- FREE TRAINING The Mandate Method. How God-called leaders build growing churches with the P3 System. Live and free. https://getchurchsystems.com/landers MANDATE SUMMIT 2026 October 21 to 24. Four days for pastors who are done guessing. General admission is $67 through October 1. https://mandatesummit26.com/register CHURCH SYSTEMS IN A BOX The systems library, the templates, the workflows, and the Lab every Thursday night. https://getchurchsystems.com/updated-checkout-page THE COMEBACK PLAN The book this whole thing started with. https://stuckchurch.com/ --- Apostolic Insight is the podcast of Simple Systems Consulting. New episode every week through December. Latoya Tolbert helps lead the online campus at THE STAR Church and hosts the women's room for Simple Systems Consulting. She and Henry Tolbert help small and bivocational pastors build churches that run on systems instead of exhaustion. getchurchsystems.com themandateos.com

  5. Sep 25

    Episode 703: Nobody Follows Up With The Pastor

    Nobody checked on your pastor this week. Somebody probably typed "praying for you Pastor" under a post. Somebody shook their hand at the door and said good word. But nobody asked how they were doing and then got quiet long enough to hear the second answer. You already know the first answer. Blessed. Highly favored. Can't complain. They've said it ten thousand times and meant it maybe half of those. This episode is for two rooms at the same time. If you're a church member, it's so you know what to ask. If you're a pastor, it's so you know you're not crazy. Henry walks three things. The weight, which is what they're actually carrying, backed by research most churches have never seen. The wall, which is why nobody asks, and both sides built it. And the watchman, which is Exodus 17, where a national battle turned on whether two men were willing to hold up one man's arms. Somebody noticed Moses' hands were getting heavy without being told. Somebody brought a chair. Two men, one on each side, and they stayed until sundown. Israel didn't win because Moses was strong. Israel won because two men decided his arms were their assignment. IN THIS EPISODE What the data says: one in four pastors seriously considered leaving in the past year Why vocational satisfaction dropped twenty points in eleven years The Duke research on clergy physical health nobody talks about in church Four reasons nobody asks, and why two of them belong to the pastor Exodus 17, and the question every church should be able to answer Scripture: Exodus 17:12, Ezekiel 33 Who watches the one who does the watching? --- FREE TRAINING The Mandate Method. How God-called leaders build growing churches with the P3 System. Live and free. https://getchurchsystems.com/landers MANDATE SUMMIT 2026 October 21 to 24. Four days for pastors who are done guessing. General admission is $67 through October 1. https://mandatesummit26.com/register CHURCH SYSTEMS IN A BOX The systems library, the templates, the workflows, and the Lab every Thursday night. https://getchurchsystems.com/updated-checkout-page THE COMEBACK PLAN The book this whole thing started with. https://stuckchurch.com/ --- Apostolic Insight is the podcast of Simple Systems Consulting. New episode every week through December. Henry Tolbert is the founder of Simple Systems Consulting and an Associate Pastor at The STAR Church. He and Latoya Tolbert help small and bivocational pastors build churches that run on systems instead of exhaustion. getchurchsystems.com themandateos.com

  6. Sep 17

    Episode 702: The Reply Is The Job

    Somebody reached out to your church this week. A text, an email, a comment on a post. And nobody answered. That was not an inquiry you missed. That was a person offering you a relationship, and your church said no by saying nothing. In this episode Henry starts on a mountain. 1 Kings 18, Carmel, four hundred and fifty prophets on one side and one man on the other. Two altars, same wood, same bull, same crowd, same sky. The only variable in the whole experiment is which name gets called on. And Elijah sets the terms himself. The god who answers, that one is God. Then the turn. Because every week your church is one of those two altars, and somebody reaches out and finds out which one. The core of this episode is a claim worth arguing with. You cannot disciple a stranger. Relationship comes before discipleship, every single time, and there is no version of this where you skip it. Mark 3:14 says Jesus appointed twelve so they would accompany him, and then he would send them out. Accompany comes first in the sentence and first in the sequence. Three years of walking and eating and arguing came before a single one of them preached anything. We built almost every church program in America on the second half of that verse. IN THIS EPISODE The showdown at Carmel, and why the verdict was about presence and not power Mark 3:14, Zacchaeus, and the woman at the well The sequence that does not run in any other order: conversation, relationship, attendance, belonging, discipleship Why your membership class does not fill and your small group has the same eight people Who you connect with outside the room sets the pace for everybody inside it Scripture: 1 Kings 18, Mark 3:14, Luke 19, John 4 No unanswered message ever became a baptism. Not one, ever, in the history of the church. Tools do the sending. People do the church. --- FREE TRAINING The Mandate Method. How God-called leaders build growing churches with the P3 System. Live and free. https://getchurchsystems.com/landers MANDATE SUMMIT 2026 October 21 to 24. Four days for pastors who are done guessing. General admission is $67 through October 1. https://mandatesummit26.com/register CHURCH SYSTEMS IN A BOX The systems library, the templates, the workflows, and the Lab every Thursday night. https://getchurchsystems.com/updated-checkout-page THE COMEBACK PLAN The book this whole thing started with. https://stuckchurch.com/ --- Apostolic Insight is the podcast of Simple Systems Consulting. New episode every week through December. Henry Tolbert is the founder of Simple Systems Consulting and an Associate Pastor at The STAR Church. He and Latoya Tolbert help small and bivocational pastors build churches that run on systems instead of exhaustion. getchurchsystems.com themandateos.com

  7. Sep 4

    Episode 701: The System Is Running. Nobody Is Home.

    Somebody visited your church last Sunday. Whatever you use to follow up, a card, an app, a text thread, a clipboard, somebody's memory, something happened this week. And your numbers have not moved in a year. That is not a tool problem. That is four empty chairs. Season 7 of Apostolic Insight is called The Four Pipelines. Guests. Members. Givers. Leaders. Sixteen gates between them, and every single gate hands off to a human being. No software gets a name at the door. No software answers a text. No software recognizes a face on visit two. In this first episode Henry names all four guest gates, walks through why the stations are empty at most small churches, and does the math out loud on what one unstaffed gate costs you in people every year. IN THIS EPISODE The four gates every guest pipeline runs through Why friendly churches lose guests at the same rate as cold ones The Wednesday problem, and why your first move is three days late What an operator actually is: a name, one number, and a report day The real cost of a chair nobody is sitting in Scripture: Luke 14:23 NLT Tools do the sending. People do the church. --- FREE TRAINING The Mandate Method. How God-called leaders build growing churches with the P3 System. Live, free, every week. [WEBINAR LINK] MANDATE SUMMIT 2026 October 21 to 24. Four days for pastors who are done guessing. General admission is $67 through October 1. https://mandatesummit26.com/register --- Apostolic Insight is the podcast of Simple Systems Consulting. New episode every week through December. Henry Tolbert is the founder of Simple Systems Consulting and an Associate Pastor at The STAR Church. He and Latoya Tolbert help small and bivocational pastors build churches that run on systems instead of exhaustion. getchurchsystems.com themandateos.com

  8. 03/31/2025

    Episode 406: The Silent Struggle

    Are you a church leader feeling overwhelmed by the constant demands of ministry? In this episode, "5 Steps to Beat Burnout for Church Leaders," we dive into practical strategies to help you recover from burnout and rediscover your passion for leadership and discipleship. Burnout is a silent struggle many pastors face, but you don’t have to carry the weight alone. There is hope. Here’s what you’ll learn in this video: - **How to identify the warning signs of burnout** like "everything exhaustion," disconnection, and hamster wheel hangover. - **5 actionable steps to start your recovery**, including prioritizing tasks, delegating effectively, and joining a supportive community. - **The importance of building a "best self" plan** to nurture your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. - **Why connecting with a like-minded community matters** and how it can transform your ministry journey. - **How resetting your internal clock can realign your leadership mindset** with God’s timing. You’ll also hear real-life examples and encouragement from church leaders who’ve experienced the same challenges and found solutions through intentionality and connection. 💡 **Key Takeaway**: You were never meant to do ministry alone. By letting go of unnecessary burdens, empowering others, and leaning into a supportive network, you can navigate burnout and step into the fullness of what God has called you to do. ➡️ Ready to take the next step? Join the Church Systems Bootcamp to gain tools, strategies, and a thriving community that will walk with you every step of the way! 📌 **You’re not alone. There’s hope. Together, we can tackle burnout and build a stronger foundation for church growth and leadership. ** #ChurchGrowth #LeadershipDevelopment #BurnoutRecovery #PastorLife #ChurchSystems #Discipleship #MinistryLeadership #FaithLeadership #pastorself-care #burnout #howtorecoverfrommomburnout #churchleadershipburnout #burnoutrecovery CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:49 - Why Leaders Are Leaving Ministry 02:06 - The Silent Struggle of Leaders 05:53 - Recognizing Burnout Signs 12:10 - Letting Go of Responsibilities 17:30 - Delegating Tasks Effectively 21:55 - Breaking the Silence on Struggles 22:00 - Importance of Community Support 29:58 - Community Engagement Benefits 31:20 - Building Your Best Self Plan 35:20 - Resetting Your Life Clock 40:35 - Value of Community in Ministry 46:29 - Final Thoughts on Leadership 47:38 - Getting Serious About Help 48:37 - Next Episode: Synchronizing Gears

    Episode 406: The Silent Struggle
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About

A strategic conversation to help you bring discipleship into the digital world.

Information

  • Creator
    Henry Tolbert of Simple Systems Consulting
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    46
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Henry Tolbert of Simple Systems Consulting
  • Show Website
    The Church Systems Podcast