Join Matt Austin and Matt Patrick as they share innovative strategies for church revitalization, including alternate income models, on the MyCom podcast.
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In this episode
In this episode of MyCom Church Communications and Marketing, we’re getting an inspiring story out of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Matt Austin and Matt Patrick are co-pastors at University United Methodist Church. Matt and Matt share their journey of reimagining church sustainability through alternate income models, space utilization, and unique ventures like their very own coffee trailer in this episode. Plus, they discuss the importance of embracing change, fostering a culture of learning, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. Whether you’re in church leadership or just passionate about community innovation, this episode is packed with actionable insights and inspiration.
Key Topics:
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[00:03:29] Recognizing Unsustainable Practices and Necessities for Change
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[00:06:28] Leveraging Church Assets for Alternate Income (Space Rental)
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[00:12:15] Developing a Five-Year Vision with the Congregation
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[00:20:06] Innovating with the Coffee Trailer Model
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[00:28:44] Embracing Failure and Learning from It
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[00:31:39] Exploring Church Property for Affordable Housing Initiatives
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Episode transcript
Ryan Dunn [00:00:00]:Ready to embark on an unforgettable journey? Of course, you are. Join the crew, July 2026 in Dublin, Ireland for the Global Young People's Convocation. Get ready for a time to connect, worship, and lead with peers worldwide. Don't miss out. Visit gypc2026.org for more information. Welcome back to another episode of my comm the podcast, providing tools to communicate your church's story and bring your congregation into the digital age. In this episode, we're getting an inspiring story out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Matt Austin and Matt Patrick are co pastors at University United Methodist Church.
Ryan Dunn [00:00:53]:
Matt and Matt share their journey of re imagining church sustainability through alternate incomes, space utilization, and unique ventures like the very own coffee trailer. Plus they discuss the importance of embracing change, fostering a culture of learning, and the lessons they've learned along the way. Whether you're in church leadership or just passionate about community innovation, this episode is packed with actionable insights and inspiration. If conversations like this are helpful for you, then we'd really appreciate your sharing your gratitude by hitting the subscribe button on your podcast listening platform. And if you've already done that, then consider leaving a rating, review, or comment. That helps other people recognize the value that we offer in my comm. Alright. It's time.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:41]:
Let's get into that valuable conversation with Matt Patrick, Matt Austin, and the story of university UNC in Tulsa. Well, reverends Matt and Matt, thank you so much for joining us from Tulsa. Hope things are going okay there. How goes it with your souls today?
Matt Austin [00:02:04]:
Oh, it's good. It's a nice rainy morning here in Tulsa. So it's a little dreary, but our souls are good.
Matt Patrick [00:02:10]:
It is raining. We needed it pretty bad, though. So it's been pretty drought laden here recently.
Matt Austin [00:02:16]:
So How are you, Ryan?
Matt Patrick [00:02:17]:
No one ever asks them that. I think
Ryan Dunn [00:02:19]:
You know, I just every now and then somebody does, and I'm always like, I I wasn't prepared. I don't know what to do. Like, what
Matt Austin [00:02:26]:
I'd ask the question.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:28]:
Alright. My soul is feeling refreshed today, so I've just come off from a little time off. And, yeah, I'm also just ready to talk about church and renovation and some of the new things. And so I guess in that, my soul is expectant and hopeful because I see so many cool things happening, within church development. So I'm excited to have this conversation because we're gonna talk about all kinds of, like, shifting models and new ways of of thinking about church. One of those ideas that we're gonna address is alternate alternate income models and specifically how you've brought that into play at University United Methodist Church. I wanna set the table for that a little bit, though. Was there a time or an experience, an moment in which you both realized or independently realized, like, what you were doing just wasn't working anymore or wasn't gonna lead you into the future?
Matt Patrick [00:03:23]:
What do you what do you mean by that? Like, like, what we were doing before we started doing this? Is that what you mean by that?
Ryan Dunn [00:03:29]:
That? Yeah. And and in a moment in which you realized, like, this is not sustainable, we need to think of something else.
Matt Patrick [00:03:35]:
Yeah. I you know, in 02/2019, I think, in the February, Matt and I went to a church planning conference and we heard it was actually one of the smaller workshops that day. There weren't that many people in there, but, it
Matt Austin [00:03:49]:
was the exponential conference in Orlando. Yeah. The
Matt Patrick [00:03:51]:
exponential conference. And, we went to a workshop kind of about this stuff by Mark Dimas, somebody a lot of the listeners probably might be familiar with, from Mosaic Church in Little Rock. And he gave a talk about some of the alternate revenue stream stuff he was doing there in Little Rock, and that was probably the most impactful thing we've got from that church finding conference. And so but it was many months later when I had an experience at the church I was appointed at at the time that will remain nameless. That's always a smart answer. Mhmm. That's basically, I had a rough day there, and it wasn't it wasn't. And we were in the process of going through a church planting residency, both Matt and I, the Path One Church planting residency.
Matt Patrick [00:04:34]:
And there were just opportunities drying up. Churches were not wanting to mother daughter as much, and opportunities were just drying up. And I
Matt Austin [00:04:41]:
This was right before disaffiliation.
Matt Patrick [00:04:43]:
Right before disaffiliation, right before, pandemic. Right? So we're talking about February. Right? And Okay. I called Matt, and we met in a sonic parking lot. And I I basically remember saying, we're going to have to figure this out on our own. No one's going to come to save us. No one's going to present us an opportunity. It's not going to happen.
Matt Patrick [00:05:02]:
We have to we have to lead on this issue. If there's something we feel like the church needs, we're going to have to make it happen. No one's going to to just plop it in our lap, you know? And so that's kinda how this process started. We really wanted to to church plant. That's what we were trained to do. I had worked in
Matt Austin [00:05:20]:
a church plant for nearly a decade, and that was my last appointment. Matt and I both were serving in Edmond, and that that's what we wanted to do. But the opportunity wasn't there, and we knew we wanted to do something creative, and we wanted to make a big impact. And so that's kinda how this all started in that parking lot of Sonic.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:39]:
So then how'd you work your way to working together at university then?
Matt Patrick [00:05:44]:
Well, a process started. Essentially, what we did is we got together and we realized very quickly that what had stayed with us from that conference was the idea of alternate income. We felt like one of the two main issues with church planting and churches in general was pastoral burnouts, but also the financial runway just runs out. If you if you study church plants and the Oklahoma conference and probably news flash every conference, they probably they probably mostly fail for the same couple of reasons. You you have pastoral burnout because it's very difficult. And most of the time, there's also just financial the runway runs out. You know, the grant money runs out, church is not making it yet, and so the funding is pulled or what however that goes.
Matt Austin [00:06:24]:
And we all know the offering plate doesn't provide like it used to. Yeah. It doesn't go as far. And so you have to have something else to supplement that. So we our idea was let's figure out that something else.
Matt Patrick [00:06:37]:
Well, we can put it this way. I mean, adjusted for inflation, University United Methodist Church was built for $800,000 in the nineteen thirties. It was like 40 something thousand dollars, I think. But that that's pretty I think the inflation adjustment is pretty close. You could not build this building for $800,000 today. It would be in the millions and millions. So just just even adjusted for inflation, construction and maintenance, everything is just an order of magnitude more expensive than it used to be because of codes and all those sorts of things. And so the money that is given to the offering plate doesn't always sustain the ratio of congregants giving towards the building size and maintenance needs is much more difficult than it was seventy years ago.
Matt Patrick [00:07:21]:
And so and it's going going to get worse as insurance costs go up and all that. Anyway, that's all, you know, to say the fact that we need other ability to receive revenue in the church other than just the offering plate, and we began a process of putting together a proposal for the Oklahoma conference to get there.
Matt Austin [00:07:37]:
We wanted to implement alternate income in a church plan. That was our initial idea. And so we pitched a couple ideas to our annual conference. We talked to our DS, and we we decided that Tulsa was the place where we wanted to be. That's where Matt and I are both from the Tulsa area. So this is home. This is where we have a lot of connections, and you need those connections to start a church plant. And so we wanted to start a church plant that was focused on alternate income.
Matt Austin [00:08:04]:
But the conference said, well, let's test the idea out at a church that needs revitalization first. And so that's how we got to university. This was a church that had a heyday back in the sixties and seventies, and like many of our churches had declined significantly up until the February into 2020 when we arrived here. And so we we were sent here with the task of exploring this alternate income idea while also seeing what it would take to revitalize this congregation.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:34]:
What was the mood of the congregation at that time? Were they expectant and ready to try something new, or was there, a sense of nostalgia in wanting to return to the past?
Matt Patrick [00:08:43]:
Yeah. That's a really good question because both and. It's it's kinda both and. It's always churches in my pastoral experience, which is about a little over ten years now. Churches are always willing to talk about doing stuff and always want to do things, but the reality of what and the consequences of change and what that means When when when the rubber finally hits the road and the changes you're making, that's typically when you run into resistance. The good news is is at university, we they had had a series of what we call here in the con Oklahoma conference conversations on church potential. Meaning, when a church is reaching the end of its life cycle and they're running out of options, we have this conversation to help churches discern what is the next step for them. And they had had multiple of these, which is how we got here.
Matt Patrick [00:09:29]:
And so when we got here, they had already kind of discerned that they needed some kind of other direction to go in. And so the the oil had already been changed. Right? Like, we didn't have to do all of that process, which is, you know, for anybody else listening. Like, that's always a really good process for your conference or or your leadership to to have whether you're Methodist or not. Right? Like, having a conversation with the church and a discernment process before you send somebody there to mix it up is is always a is a pretty good practice. But like you said, like we said, I mean, once we started changing things, yeah, there's always concerns. The one you always hear typically is communication. Right? People feel you could communicate literally perfectly and people will feel like they're not being communicated to.
Matt Patrick [00:10:13]:
I would tell any young pastor, like, you must communicate well and that is very important, but no matter what you do, that is always gonna be the baseline kind of criticism is that basically, if there if somebody is not in the room for every single decision that is made, they will feel like they're not being communicated to, and that's pretty normal human anxiety response. And so we did have some of that, but, you know, we got through it, and we can talk about the specifics of how we did that if you'd like. But, yeah, I mean, that there was, there was some resistance, but by the time any results started showing up, a lot of that went away. The anxiety went away and the excitement began. And we we kinda had the the been this sounds very strange, but we
Matt Austin [00:10:52]:
had the benefit of COVID on our side. Things weren't normal in this church. When we got here, we were appointed in July of twenty twenty.
Matt Patrick [00:11:00]:
Mhmm.
Matt Austin [00:11:00]:
We couldn't we couldn't gather, we couldn't worship, we couldn't meet the meet our congregation at all. It was all via Zoom. And so when we got here, we didn't have the typical pushback of people seeing us move something out of a room and getting upset about it because they they weren't here. That's true. We were able to move a little bit faster because of COVID. It was a silver lining of COVID, I guess you could say.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:23]:
Yeah. I do wanna talk about how you communicated through navigating this change, but I wanna start with the the first step towards taking on an alternate income model. What what was your first step? Like, what was the was it leasing out a part of space or was it something else?
Matt Austin [00:11:42]:
So when we first got here, we did an asset audit. What does this church have and how are we using it? And this church, like many of our churches, we don't have a lot of money, but we have space. So we have a church building here, fifty fifty two thousand square feet, something like that. It's a it's a big, big building. Three floors and a basement, and it was just filled with stuff. Fifty, sixty years of stuff in all of these classrooms. And so for us, renting out space was the easy answer. It was the easy answer.
Matt Austin [00:12:15]:
We could have done many other things, but one of the things Mark Dimas talked about was where does your church's desire meet the community's need? Our community needed rental space. We were hearing that from people around us that affordable office space is something that is kinda hard to find. And so we had the space, so we decided we'd we'd try to meet that demand of our community while also bringing an income to benefit our ministries. And so that was the very first thing we did. We cleared out all of the space, got all of the junk out of the rooms, had a big old garage sale in our parking lot, donated a ton of stuff, and the church did it.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:56]:
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Ryan Dunn [00:13:31]:
If you're ready to deepen your ministry and strengthen your voice, we invite you to join in. Space is limited, so register today. The link is gonna be in the show notes for this episode. And now, back to our talk with Matt Austin and Matt Patrick for University United Methodist Church. You did your audit and you looked around at the neighborhood that you're in. Is university in a residential neighborhood or is it a little bit more business setting?
Matt Austin [00:14:00]:
So we are called University United Methodist Church because we are on the campus of TU. TU surrounds us on all sides. But the neighborhood we are located in is called the Kendall Whittier neighborhood, and it's a pretty large neighborhood, and there is a business district that is a part of it. And so we have a lot of people that live here and want to work here, but there's not a lot of office space around this part of Tulsa.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:24]:
Before you took on your first tenant, did you let the congregation know that somebody was moving in?
Matt Patrick [00:14:29]:
Oh, absolutely. They they were involved with the whole process. The one of the first things we did after the asset audit so we had our asset audit. Well, actually, the first thing we did was we passed a five year vision. So we got there in joo February. By August, we had passed a new five year vision with them. One of the things that they teach you in seminary and a lot of leadership courses is not to do a lot of change or new things in the first year.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:54]:
Yeah. I've heard, like, wait the first wait out the first year. Yeah.
Matt Austin [00:14:57]:
You're all taught
Matt Patrick [00:14:58]:
that seminary. You're all taught that I could not disagree with that leadership philosophy more. I actually think it's I actually think it's completely wrong. I think that the longer you wait to do any massive change, the more you're domesticated kind of by the congregation to the point where if you do any change after a couple of years and you didn't do any before, it'll come more out of nowhere from them. And there'll be like, well, what are you doing? We, you didn't change anything. People expect change with a change in leadership. They they may not have your trust. You may not have trust built up yet, but they do expect especially churches in rough situations, expect changes to happen.
Matt Patrick [00:15:35]:
And if you do that right and correctly, it can actually be the best time to do it. And so within the first month, we we met with people. We had one on ones with, you know, the ad council and talked about, you know, we gotta go on a new direction here, and we passed the five year vision, which kinda laid out all the steps required in a great amount of detail that'd be required to get us from beginning to end of this process. And the asset audit was the first was the first part of that. And so they were they were they bought in immediately to that process so that everything else, for instance, since they passed the five year vision with all these steps listed in them, we didn't have to go back to the ad council multiple times every time we wanted to move something or clear out a classroom. It was all preapproved. That is a much more efficient way. So that way you're not going to the accounts every time you gotta move a piano or clean out a room.
Matt Patrick [00:16:24]:
If you list everything you wanna do at once and get approval, you can just move faster. At least that in our governance structure, we found that that tends to be one of the best ways to do it is get people bought into the full process early on.
Matt Austin [00:16:35]:
Because of all of those one on ones that we did, it was a unanimous yes vote. And what we did, this and it would work very well, is after this was approved, we frame I have it hanging behind me. We have it framed on our wall where everybody signed the five year agreement of what all we wanted to do, and then we shouted it from the rooftops at the church. And every single leader told everybody. We told them, go tell your friends, tell everybody. This is what we're doing because excitement was what this church needed. They were ready to do something. They were they were waiting and they were ready.
Matt Austin [00:17:06]:
They just needed someone to point and say, let's go this way. And so once we were all on board with the same direction, we just need
Matt Patrick [00:17:13]:
to tell everybody and get them excited about it. This letter, Ryan, we wrote a letter to the congregation after the five year vision passed. And the last paragraph of the letter says, in the midst of the chaos of 2020, God is working. God is up to something at University United Methodist Church. We, the administrative council, believe that our best days are ahead of us and that this vision will help us to fully live into our calling to serve the people of our church and a new and our community in a new and creative way. With a new vision and all of us working together as a church, God will come alongside us and help us begin this new era for our church. We hope that you will join in working and praying towards this new future, and then it's signed by the entire administrative council. And we sent that out to the church because we wanted people to understand that it wasn't just Matt and I, that it was that it was the governing body of the church as well that felt that this was what the best direction to go in.
Ryan Dunn [00:18:03]:
I'm guessing that there was more than facilities leasing as part of that five year vision. What were some of the other aspects?
Matt Patrick [00:18:09]:
I mean, originally, that was the main thing we focused on. The the the first two phases, I if I remember the name of the phases, we had three phases at the time. Of course, most of them are accomplished now, so I haven't looked at that five year vision in a while. The the first one was prepare, I think, and the second was fund. And so the first phase was just preparing the space for space rental and alternate income, and the second was actually fund, meaning get people into those leasing spaces so that we can fund what we're doing. And the last phase was thrive. You know, now that we have the funding we need to exist as a church, we're we're gonna do our best to to thrive and and to serve our community. Because when Matt and I got here, they were about fifteen months away from insolvency at the at the financial burn rate.
Matt Patrick [00:18:54]:
We we didn't have a ton of time to to discern. We had to start making some decisions.
Matt Austin [00:18:59]:
Since that time, now that we help coach other churches and how to do this, we have adapted the model a bit. And so now when we go into a church, we say it's kind of like a three legged stool that we're working with. That that first leg is the low hanging fruit. For us, that was rental space. Pretty easy to do. Didn't take us very long to turn this building around and start bringing an income. The second is church growth, vitally important. The church growth, the offering plate will still be your primary income source as a church unless other things go really well.
Matt Austin [00:19:32]:
It's going to be your primary income source. And then the the third thing is the little bit more risky option. What can you do that may have a higher ceiling than rental space? We know how much square footage we have. We know how much it can bring in. It's not gonna bring in more than that. And so for our church that was starting a coffee trailer that had a high ceiling. We don't even know how high it can go, but it has the potential to be something a lot a lot more, income producing, but it's more difficult. And so that was our later phase three thing that
Ryan Dunn [00:20:03]:
we But that has become a reality now. Correct?
Matt Austin [00:20:06]:
It has. Yes. We we have a fully operating coffee shop.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:10]:
So tell me about that. What what is the vision for the coffee trailer? How does it help the church meet the community?
Matt Austin [00:20:16]:
So our coffee trailer is owned and operated by this church. It is an LLC, though. And the board of our ag council, many of them also sit on the board of this LLC, and its whole entire mission is to bring in income to support the ministries of our congregation and impact our community. Our slogan is coffee that matters.
Matt Patrick [00:20:35]:
And it's called we didn't say the name. It's called Double Flag Coffee Company. It's based on the the TU, Tulsa University, is the golden hurricane. And so it's the double hurricane warning flags that you'll see, like, on the beach on a like, when a hurricane's coming in. If you don't know what that looks like, you can Google it and you'll see it. But, yeah. Well, one of the one of the key pieces, Ryan, that that when churches engage this kind of work that I think they miss is what what what I kept telling the congregation, like, over and over, and this was my own, like, pet thing, was if we run this like a ministry, it'll fail. If we if we do not prioritize the receiving of money and running it as a business, it will fail and it then it won't help anyone, and it won't connect us with the community at all.
Matt Patrick [00:21:21]:
And so first and foremost, it must be run as a business. Now it does help us make connections that we wouldn't otherwise make. It does help us connect with our community and ministry in many ways. But if that was the primary focus of it, it would bleed money. As soon
Matt Austin [00:21:36]:
as we started it, you know, we had many churches across our conference saying, hey. Can you come to this potluck thing we're doing? Right. And For no money.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:44]:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Matt Austin [00:21:45]:
Which is great. And if you have if you're part of a healthy congregation that has the money to do those things, do it. We we didn't have that blessing. We had to view this as a business and it bring in income. We had to.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:57]:
Mhmm.
Matt Patrick [00:21:58]:
And so yeah. Go ahead, Brian.
Ryan Dunn [00:22:00]:
Well, there's a lot of business decisions being made in this process. In seminary training, you don't necessarily learn about that. You don't learn about leasing rights and you don't learn the difference between a cappuccino and a latte. So were there some places where you were able to pull some information and almost get some supplemental education in navigating this process?
Matt Austin [00:22:20]:
Here's kind of the key, Ryan. You gotta be able to learn anything as a pastor these days. The the the role of pastor has dramatically shifted from what it was even twenty years ago. You know, they don't teach you this stuff in seminary. We are pushing and we do believe that more financial literacy should be taught business literacy should be taught in our seminaries, but that's just not the case right now. But you have to be able to not say that's not my job or they didn't teach that in seminary and just learn it. Matt and I spent a lot of time talking to people that had business acumen. We spent a lot of time on YouTube learning how to make coffee and run a coffee trailer.
Matt Austin [00:23:00]:
We make connections with the local largest coffee vendor here in town to teach us what to do. We found these connections of people that knew what they were doing, and we just tried to learn everything we can from them.
Matt Patrick [00:23:11]:
Yeah. That's that's one of those things. And and if anybody here is, like, a seminary professor or, like, you know, in administration in seminary, what I want folks to hear is this, is that the seminaries do have to do better on this. And I know I know a lot of them think and know this already. This is something that's already being discussed pretty widely in the seminary community is we have to teach, you know, more broadly in terms of what pastors do. A lot of pastors burn out because they think the job is preaching and teaching and pastoral care, and that's about, in my opinion, about 30% of the job. 70% of the job is the management of a non profit and the executive leadership that's required to run a healthy one. That is a very different skill set from preaching, teaching, and pastoral care.
Matt Patrick [00:23:55]:
You have to be able to make hard decisions. Like Matt said, you have to be able to learn. That's the highest value we've had to figure out is you just have to be willing to learn instead of saying they didn't teach me how to do this or saying I don't know how to do that. You can learn it. Like, I've like, I promise you, it's crazy. You can go to YouTube and type in like best practices for running commercial real estate and someone will tell you how to do that. And you have to be willing and humble enough, I think, frankly, to to say, I don't know this, but I'm willing to learn and engage it. But we do also have to in seminary, we also have to be training pastors.
Matt Patrick [00:24:32]:
I I actually think we have to be setting proper expectations for what the job is. I have colleagues that are burned out because the job is very different from what people think it yeah. You know, preaching, teaching, pastoral care, that's like, that's what people wanna do when they go to seminary. And then they get to a church and they're like, well, I didn't sign up to, you know, manage a nonprofit, manage all this staff, do this administrative work. And I kinda wanna say, yes. You did actually. That that's always been the job and it's even more so the job now than it has ever been. And so we have to start setting expectations properly on what the job is and also equipping people properly for them.
Matt Austin [00:25:07]:
And if we do that, we will get the talent that is needed to do more of what we're doing here. And we found that people get really excited about this. Yeah. At least for Matt and I, our personalities are very geared towards this type of work because, you know, we've got, like how many hobbies do we have, Matt? We've got, like, 50 different hobbies because we like learning new things.
Matt Patrick [00:25:28]:
I was talking to my fiance about that last night. Now she's gonna be laughing when she hears this part of it.
Matt Austin [00:25:33]:
But we we like learning new things. And so the idea of coming to a church, preaching, teaching, doing funerals, doing weddings, and that's it. That that's not appealing to me. No. And I know there are a lot of people out there that would that likes the idea of serving God being a pastor, and that's not appealing to them either. But this type of work might be. And so if we present ourselves as a church that does more creative stuff like this, where you get to use your brain in different ways and solve creative problems, we will begin to attract people that like that type of stuff. And that's what we need if we're gonna move into the next hundred, two hundred years as United Methodist Church.
Matt Patrick [00:26:15]:
I think it's a good point.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:16]:
Experience is often the most valuable teacher. What's been a hard learned lesson through your experience in kinda navigating this change?
Matt Austin [00:26:25]:
The United Methodist Church is long and established and very large. Matt and I are young guys. We came in here wanting to do stuff quick and fast. But we we have committed ourselves to this system, and we love this system. And so our job now is to figure out how to shift things to work in a in a way that we think will benefit the future of the congregation without disrespecting what has already been. Mhmm.
Matt Patrick [00:26:50]:
You
Matt Austin [00:26:51]:
know what I mean? Because it it's easy to come in and want to change things up. But a lot of the things we're doing are are good, and we have to help walk people through that because it's difficult change. Yeah. I think
Matt Patrick [00:27:04]:
the hardest lesson I I would agree that it it it does have to do with, like, patience. Right? And understanding you know, I heard this quote one time that young people, overestimate what they can do in the short term and underestimate what they can do in the long term. Yeah. Right? And I think that that's that's a pretty wise saying is, you know, we wanted to do things really fast. But when we really look back, you know, five years is not a short amount of time in the long run. It's a it's a it's an intermediate amount of time. Right? And and just the amount that has been able to be done through this work in five years, you know, I wanted it to be done in the first year, but that's just the wasn't possible. Right? Learning to be patient and and stay persistent to the goal, that you have set, and, you know, learning to embrace failure, you are going to have failures.
Matt Patrick [00:27:53]:
And we have already been working with churches where things did not turn out the way we wanted them in our consulting. But what I have learned is, but there is always the next thing. Failure is only final if you give up. Like, if you if you throw in the towel and you give up, then it's final. Or what you can do is say, okay, well that didn't work. So let's just shift to this other thing. There's actually one church we're working with right now where the last two things we have kind of attempted there have not gone well. And we're like, well, you know, what do we do now? Well, this other opportunity has now come up in the last couple of days and so we're going in that direction, right? Failure is only final if you give up, and learn basically not only learning to embrace failure, but to expect it and to cherish it and to never punish clergy or lay people for, for failure that is not outside of their control.
Matt Patrick [00:28:44]:
Right? We have to so many church planners or people trying to do things fail and then they don't get another shot. We have to be a little bit more permission giving and ex and expecting a failure. Cause if we kind of expect something to fail, but we're not sure if it will or not, we're not saying we're being pessimistic. We're just saying, Hey, we're out on here on the cutting edge. This has a very good chance of failing. When it does fail, It doesn't sting as hard because we knew from the beginning that that was a real possibility. And so we have to be a much more embracing a failure culture. And so kind of learning that lesson as well has been tough, but really just learning that, that things don't move as fast as you want.
Matt Patrick [00:29:23]:
And learning to be patient is probably the hardest lesson for both of us that have had to learn.
Ryan Dunn [00:29:27]:
You've talked about how you're consulting with some other churches now. Are you seeing some proposals that get you really excited? Anything that you've seen that you're like, oh, I wish I thought of that.
Matt Austin [00:29:37]:
There's a lot of proposals. Everything I see, I think I wish I would have thought
Matt Patrick [00:29:41]:
of that.
Matt Austin [00:29:41]:
There are a lot of things that are exciting and going on. And the most exciting things, we can't talk about because we're but I can say a little bit because we are partnering with some private development companies to do some really creative things with property that the church owns. And I I can't go into the details of it, but this idea of thinking beyond just our church, our denomination, and looking at what partnerships we can form in our communities to bring in that income to build big buildings and things. So we need to be looking at that more. And there's a couple really exciting things that hopefully soon we can tell everybody about.
Matt Patrick [00:30:18]:
Yeah.
Matt Austin [00:30:18]:
Because they're very exciting.
Matt Patrick [00:30:20]:
And these are things that are not like conversations. They're actually happening. Like, the the, you know, the papers are being drawn up and they're they're happening. We just we just can't really We
Matt Austin [00:30:29]:
have NDAs and we just can't speak
Matt Patrick [00:30:31]:
about that. We can't can't say a bunch about that. One thing we kinda can't can't talk about is one direction Matt and I have been going in recently is looking at partnering, with the proper not real estate developers. The other thing we were talking about is kinda like real estate development, commercial
Ryan Dunn [00:30:44]:
real
Matt Patrick [00:30:44]:
estate developers. Mhmm. But talking about partnering with, a different kind of developer to turn some of our old properties or our closed church properties into affordable housing units, that is a thing that has come up very recently. And that's not anything new. That's something that churches have been doing, but we need to be doing at a higher level than we're doing, because we always say other than the Catholic church, United Methodist Church is probably the single probably, I always say probably, probably the single largest landholder among nonprofits in America. There you'd be hard pressed to find another nonprofit that that is connectional and under one umbrella in America that owns more property than we do. And that's not our greatest, like, weakness. That's our greatest strength.
Matt Patrick [00:31:27]:
We can leverage these large property holdings we have to not only solve social ills like turning them into affordable housing, but also create revenue for us so that we can feed more people, clothe more people, house more people.
Matt Austin [00:31:39]:
We have a lot of property in, you know, downtown areas or places where people wanna be that there's just no land to buy and build anymore. Too often with affordable housing, we like to buy the cheap land on the edge of town and put people there. But that that's not dig that's not dignified. That's not giving these people the dignity and honor that got in seeing them the way God sees them. And so if we can use these properties in good places and let people live there, that's a win. That's a win for the kingdom right there.
Ryan Dunn [00:32:09]:
Indeed. Indeed. And not to mention in terms of accessibility to jobs and transportation and such.
Matt Austin [00:32:15]:
Absolutely.
Ryan Dunn [00:32:16]:
Final question for you. What's your favorite drink at the coffee bar?
Matt Austin [00:32:19]:
The Carmel Cyclone. All of our drinks are themed like storm themed.
Ryan Dunn [00:32:24]:
Okay.
Matt Austin [00:32:25]:
The Carmel Cyclone, that's mine.
Matt Patrick [00:32:27]:
I like the white we call it the mocha monsoon. It's just the mocha. But we themed everything. So yeah.
Matt Austin [00:32:34]:
I will say though, Matt and I both, we were not coffee drinkers. No.
Matt Patrick [00:32:38]:
Before we started as hard,
Ryan Dunn [00:32:40]:
did you develop the menu or did it yeah.
Matt Austin [00:32:42]:
We had to develop the taste for coffee so that we could develop the menu. And that that first week when we were taste testing as people that don't drink coffee, that was a lot of caffeine.
Matt Patrick [00:32:51]:
That that that's what I hope. That's what I hope Ryan is kinda like a final word. That's what I hope people hear. We did not drink coffee and coffee was not my passion. And we were able to start a coffee company that does well because of one thing. Anybody who's listening right here, if you have a passion in your heart, if you believe in something that could be due for the church, you can do it. You are not powerless against the changing tides of the church. You are not powerless against the changing culture that is becoming less religious.
Matt Patrick [00:33:21]:
You are not powerless. You possess everything you need to make a change, not only in your own local church, but in your conference and in your district. It starts with a yes, and it starts with a decision. You don't have to be an expert in everything to learn what is required to do this work.
Matt Austin [00:33:36]:
And don't don't wait for the conference. Don't wait for the DS to tell you what to do.
Matt Patrick [00:33:42]:
And we love our DSs.
Matt Austin [00:33:44]:
Don't don't wait for them to ask you to do something. If you want to do something, go tell them that you wanna do it. Because I guarantee you, if you go tell somebody I have this passion, I wanna do this thing, they're gonna help you do it. They're They're gonna try to help you figure out how to make your dream happen.
Ryan Dunn [00:34:00]:
Well, if somebody's entertaining this process and they wanna ask you a question, what or might be where might be a good spot to get a hold of you?
Matt Austin [00:34:07]:
So we have a shared email address called [email protected]. So you can reach it out to us there.
Matt Patrick [00:34:15]:
I'll spell it out. It's t h e m a t t s at u u m c tulsa dot org. So that's the bet yeah. That's the best place to reach us.
Ryan Dunn [00:34:27]:
Perfect. Matt and Matt, thank you so much for sharing your passion with us, for sharing the story of university with us, and for doing what you're doing.
Matt Austin [00:34:34]:
Of course. Thanks for having us, Ryan. It's been a blessing.
Ryan Dunn [00:34:39]:
So many fantastic ideas for leveraging assets and navigating an uncertain future in community here. Thanks to this episode sponsors for making these conversations possible, including global young people's convocation. Every few years, the space is created where voices unite, perspectives broaden, and faith is strengthened. G Y P C twenty twenty six in Dublin is more than an event. It's a time where faith, leadership, and community come together. From July, connect with voices from around the world, engage in powerful worship, and help shape what's next. Don't just attend, be part of the movement. Visit gypc2026.org to learn more.
Ryan Dunn [00:35:23]:
If you're feeling inspired by this conversation, check out another my comm episode. Matt and Matt reached out to me after listening to episode one zero one about rethinking church assets. That was with Mark Elsden. It definitely dovetails with this conversation. My name is Ryan Dunn. I'm looking forward to connecting with you again in our next episode, due out in one month's time. Find more of my comm in the meantime, through resourceumc.org, your spot for fresh ideas and empowerment for church leadership. Peace.