Discover Your Pathway To Transform Your Life And Reconnect With God With Greg Curtis
Are you lost, and you don’t know if you’re serving your purpose in this lifetime? It’s time to discover your pathway. Listen to this episode as Chad Burmeister and Greg Curtis talk about reconnecting with God and living a meaningful life. Greg is the Central Director of Assimilation and Guest Services at Eastside Christian Church. He has worked inter-denominationally in resourcing and coaching other churches in the development of their guest assimilation process. In this conversation, he shares his testimony, the biggest roadblock, and his calling in life. His biggest passion is connecting de-churched people to Jesus. Strengthen your faith more, climb to the top, and learn many powerful insights in this episode!
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Discover Your Pathway To Transform Your Life And Reconnect With God With Greg Curtis
I'm with somebody who lives in the area where I met my wife, which is in Southern California. Greg Curtis is the Director of Assimilation, which is onboarding but guest relations at the church. It's Eastside Church. They got the website Eastside.com, which is pretty cool. It has multiple church locations. Greg's other website is GregCurtis-Assimilation.com. We're going to dig in deep with Greg to understand his calling in life, how did he get to where he is and share some cool stuff with everybody. Greg, welcome to the show.
Thanks. It’s good to be with you.
Anaheim Hills, I remember that place. I met my wife in Manhattan Beach. We moved to Irvine and then to Lake Forest. All those golf courses around there. Both of our kids lived in Tustin Ranch for a short time when they were little and then we moved further South to Lake Forest. To help our audience connect with you, Greg, as a person, I like to go back and rewind the tape to early childhood. Are you from California originally? What are some of your first memories when you were a kid?
Discover Your Pathway: Unchurched people have been culturally de-churched through education, stories, media storytelling, and more.
I'm a third-generation Southern Californian on both my parents' sides. My mom is a descendant of Italian immigrants. My dad's Dutch-Irish. I'm so Cal that it's hard to picture myself anywhere else, but you go where God leads.
You got a surfboard in the garage and all that.
I took some surf lessons, but I stayed with boogie boarding and body surfing. I go to the beach every Monday. That's where I am on my day off.
When you grew up, what were you passionate about? You've landed in the church after a long period of time with Eastside. You left. You came back. What do you think about your early days? What did you love to do as a Southern California kid?
A lot of it surrounded my family, to be honest. I had a family and home where I was blessed that everybody wanted to hang out from the time I was a little kid. Our house was across the street from the elementary school that I grew up going to and my mother did, my aunt, and my family. I had some of the same teachers my parents did at this school. I had five generations of my family on that street.
My great-great-grandmother died when I was in fifth grade. We were all on that street. Everybody else's family was on that street. It was like one of those Italian neighborhoods that you would see in New York, except it was in LA. A lot of it was Latino and a real mixture. It was a wonderful place to grow up. My family was such an open-hearted family that even when we moved to Orange County, our home was the home to stay. At my church, if you had people stand up, if you've ever lived, had a rough patch and lived at the Curtis house, you would have people in every single service. Many have stayed there.
When I was a little kid, I would visualize myself having a talk show where I would be introducing people, both famous and friends to my family. They would be in the talk show too. I would picture that. Isn't that crazy? The wild thing is as I grew older, I can see that fulfilled in an unexpected way because my family has always been a part of my church. I've always had four generations of my family at my church, whatever church I was at.
I would use them, even ancestral photos in my messages, even what we do in connecting guests at Eastside. I have at least three moments where I'm talking about three family members or my kids showing their pictures and telling stories about them to draw people towards connection, community or God in some powerful way. Your question made me connect the dots between that little kid who used to picture having to get a talk show, introducing people to his family, to a pastor who uses his family and his family has been a part of being inclusive, open-hearted, and open-hearted pointing people towards God.
I love that image of everybody living on the same street. I talked to someone that's an intuitive and says, “I can talk to past lives and little beyond my pay grade.” I don't know if I can go that deep but you get to live on the same street with people you're physically connected with, two generations up. That's cool because you get to understand, from the great-grandparents to the great-great greats to the greats, all the way down, what was intended to be passed down through that historical timeline.
A lot of us are redoing it all every time. You have kids and then they go off and do it their own way. What I'm getting at is that's awesome. By being part of this organization called Board of Advisors, I've learned that most generations don't pass things down. I'm talking about investments and things like that but personal beliefs, belief in God, all of it doesn't go down to the third generation down.
My kids have had the blessing of growing up with most of their great-grandparents. They knew their great-grandparents and the stories that my family had passed down, even for the ones that digest when I was born that came from Europe. I know their stories. My kids know the stories and can name their great-great-great-grandparents all the way back to the immigrants that came here, what their stories were and what brought them here.
That's neat to have that level of connection. You touched on this a little bit. When you were passionate about doing that talk show, what comes through to what you're doing now? What'd you learn from that?
I am more convinced at this stage in my life more than ever when the scripture says that God placed the lonely and families, that community is what we were. That's the environment. If a fish is supposed to be in the water, human beings are supposed to be in a community. That's what we were made for. I didn't know because it was like water to me. My family life, which was a sweet family, was not the kind of home that most people lived in and the kind of friendships that I was able to be surrounded by healthy churches. I've been in healthy churches all my life. Most people didn't even have that experience.
Discover Your Pathway: There is nothing more beautiful than a spiritual community that you're a part of that is fully functioning and works.
My passion has become that this is our inheritance. Our legacy is to be family for other people, offer community, build relationships over a period of time, create some history, have a common mission, and then go through some garbage and trial together to submit this. My passion is to help people connect to that.
There's a guy named Stan who was in Sarasota. He's been an interim dad for several families because his family is like yours. Husband, wife, daughters, amazing kids but some of the daughter's friends didn't have a dad at home and in the family. His point was the biggest thing that's eroding in the American society is single-family homes. It's our responsibility as dads to take on that role with other people. If we recognize that and to your point in a church community, we need to be proactive about listening. His goal is to influence one million people. He's got a good headstart on that so I think you're right.
Growing up, my family found a kid that was in the foster system that was bussed to our church and they ended up adopting him. He became my brother. He is my brother in every sense of the word. They took people in who did not have family, but also our holidays were also filled with single parents and their kids. We didn't go around the single parent. We included the single parent. We became extended family and resources for them and that's what I think is important. Not whisking away or doing it for them but including them and giving even the single parent an extended family and a little bit of support.
It sounds like you're very happy. Everything is great. When I talk on this show, there's always something that we face that's the biggest roadblock in our life. Is there something you're comfortable sharing with our readers that was the gut punch for you that was like, “It was so bad at the time, but now I'm better for it?” What's that for you?
In 1995, the biggest gut-punch of my life is that I became the lead pastor of our church. Months after that, my wife shared with me that she was leaving me. It was like, “What? Do we even have serious problems I should know?” She was determined to leave. It was about a year and a half before that issue. We had everything but the ink on the divorce papers. Our elders at our church surrounded us.
The church at large, believe it or not, did not know what was going on, but I felt like those elders and their wives fell on us like Vietnam vets would fall on a grenade and they took the impact. They walked us through that. Fortunately,a few years later, we began to share with the congregation. We had two marriages, our 1st and our 2nd marriage. Here's what had happened and here's how we got through it. The big and most transforming challenge of our lives is having two kids from our first marriage and having another one from our second marriage.
Everybody has challenges. If you're not admitting it, you're probably making stuff up. You can see how life happens and can gradually pull the roads apart. It's upon us to say, “Let's roll up our sleeves and get to the bottom of this.” To your point, to have the support is the important part of that equation. You made it through that in ‘95. That was the year I graduated college. You've made it through those days. What are you passionate about in what you're doing?
What I'm passionate about is connecting the church people to Jesus. You may relate to this from your time in Orange County and I know in Yorba Linda where my church was. We're serving not an unchurched community and not a church community. We were about 3/4 of the people where what I call de-church. Over time, more people are becoming unchurched because a de-churched generation raises an unchurched one. I feel that there's still a little bit of this left where there are people who have experienced church in some way. Maybe it could have been that their grandmother signed them up for vacation Bible school or used to bring them to church. Maybe they made a decision, raised a hand, created a prayer or they did grow up in church for a while and they were either wandered away from it when they went to college or beyond or they were driven away from it through a bad experience.
My passion is that there are so many people that are in this de-churched category. Almost include unchurched people who have been culturally de-churched through education, stories or media storytelling. There is nothing more beautiful than a spiritual community that you're a part of that is fully functioning and works right. There are a ton of them.
We've got to guard the health of those things and move into that. My passion is helping, especially with guests since so many are from a de-churched perspective. The guests who come to our church, roughly about 1/3 are churched, 1/3 are de-churched and 1/3 have no church experience at all, even coming from another religious paradigm altogether. My passion is to connect them to Jesus and community.
Have you seen the show, The Chosen?
If my family members were here, they would scream because I watch it and rewatch it. I love that show.
My favorite part reminds me of what you're talking about and it's the opening credits when the gray fish is swimming around in the circle and all of a sudden, there's a blue one. When it flips, the first blue flipper is the one that gets me most excited because it’s 1-to-1. All you got to do is one at a time. We went to Saddleback Church in Southern California. I remember his whole mission was one more for Jesus and one at a time. Finally, at the end, when it gets to thirteen, I always wondered what's the number, so we kept trying to pause it.
It was 13 and the 12.
My whole new mission in my second half of life is to turn gray fish to blue. It's easy to connect with. I've never felt a calling to be a pastor and I don't think that's where I'll end up, but wherever God leads me for the second half, I'm ready. I've got all these skills to generate prospects and do pipeline development. The fishers of men conversation is where I'm being pulled to. On that topic, what were the questions you asked yourself that helped you discover that this is your role? There are some people that are maybe one degree off of the perfect job or maybe 180 degrees. How do you get to the perfect spot?
When we decided we were merging the churches, that can be a delicate move. It was a great move for us because even years later, 84% of my church is still here, and those who aren't moved away, retired or out of state come back and visit. There were all, but two people came and the two people were already moving out of state. It was such a successful merge but I was not taking that for granted. As it was all getting ready to take place, I met with Gene Appel, our lead pastor, an old friend of mine. He was an intern at Eastside when I was a senior in high school and lived in our home for a time like everybody else.
When he came back to Eastside after the previous senior pastor retired, it was such a neat homecoming. We had lunch every week and he asked me a question. He goes, “Greg, what do you want to do on our staff?” I'd been so focused on our church doing well and this merge that I hadn't even given hardly any thought. I told him, “In all honesty, I've been doing whatever it takes for a while that I don't even know the answer to that question. Could you give me this week?” We were meeting weekly for lunch. “Give me some time. We're going to pray about that and bring back something next week.” I got away at the beach like I do. I took a journal and started writing things. I have got to credit the Holy Spirit for this because Greg is not this smart. Two questions emerged in my mind that I think everybody ought to ask themselves when they want clarity on an issue like this.
Discover Your Pathway: The most transforming faith dynamic or principle is moving from the performance plan to the surrender plan and trust in God.
The first was, what am I doing when I see God's size results and not Greg’s size results? The second was, what am I doing when I feel the energy flowing through me instead of being taken from me? In other words, what am I doing when I feel more energized when it's done than I did before I started it? I bullet-pointed on a Word doc. It was 2/3 of 1 page. I included everything. I didn't limit it. Classic ministry travel was on that list. There was everything. It was a brain dump. I print it out and I slid it to Gene the following week. He looked at it. This is so Gene and his leadership style. He read it, slid it back and said, “Then this is your job.”
They had not planned on hiring a director of assimilation or a guest engagement director, any of that kind of stuff. They made up the position for me. They didn't have anybody in a role like this at all on the staff at Eastside. They created it for me. I walked into it and I've been on all six cylinders ever since. They gave me a blank slate, which was scary but exhilarating. I put together an engagement pathway. By the end of the first year as we began to move into that explosive growth season, we became the second fastest-growing church in the country for a season. We had about 2,000 guests identify themselves. Out of those 2,000, 1 out of 4 got in a small group, 1 out of 7 became a volunteer, 1 out of 14 crossed a border and went on a compassion trip to someplace in the country.
I don't know how those numbers compare, but they sound like they're way better than the average.
The average is 1 out of 19 in churches that they get connected and stay, but 1 out of 20 became a leader, but the coolest thing is 1 out of 3 of them got baptized.
I'd love the piece of travel because I love to travel too. At the top of my list, I got back from Sarasota and Orlando. I was in Telluride and something about being in a hotel with a 65-degree temperature. Experiencing life and meeting people that you wouldn't have otherwise met. It's an important part of the role.
That dovetailed into this because my church, the one that I pastured, the daughter church of Eastside, started about 200 churches in 7 different countries. I was always traveling in this mode. Those churches became nourished by Eastside in this new bigger entity when we combined our forces, which was wonderful. What happened is once the word got out about our growth, our phone started ringing off the hook, which was, “Gene, how did you get them there? Greg, how do you keep them there?” The website GregCurtis-Assimilation.com, I formed something called Climbing the Assimilayas with the idea that everybody thinks their church is the friendliest place, but what it means is that they're friendly to each other.
It's not a cost for a guest to connect. It's always a climb. Every guest needs a shirt but it led them to that summit of full connection with God and community. I talked about being Sherpas to navigate that trail and help people reach that summit of full connection. Our phone started going off, though, because I had to form a website where I would post all of our learnings. In traveling, I was going to churches all around the world, at least seven different countries, five continents. I was meeting with churches as small as 30 and as big as 22,000. I had to ask myself, “What are the principles that are affecting guest engagement that exists regardless of scale or culture?”
That's when I came up with an engagement pathway that is on my website and has a free checklist to pick up. I have a video course that helps churches bring their staff or their key leaders through the building of this and customizing it for their church. I've been invited. I do these two-day base camps at churches around the world but mostly in the states where I help people form that guest engagement pathway, but it's resulted in my big passion, which is I want to help churches worldwide. It goes back to being six-year-old Greg wanting to invite people into his home and family because we had a sweet thing. I want that every church is like the home I grew up in, has the biggest arms and knows how to connect people with God through community because some people get connect in community before they connect to God.
This show is generated out of a mindset concept. My partner, Robert White, graduated 1.3 million people. He's an early founder of Human Transformation Movement. He's always been a Christian but he never allowed that to come into the classroom for mindset transformation. My job from God over the years has been, “How do we put the two together?” You've got to go deep and understand the story you're telling yourself. Everything Robert's done for decades is awesome. He helped John Denver write some songs like an amazing transformation artist.
We can learn from your onboarding package because we don't have Christianity on the show's label, but it is certainly under the hood. We can cast a very wide net with the way that we're bringing people in and getting people assimilated through the Assimilayas. I want to ask you one more question. It's probably obvious. You're in the church. You've been a pastor. You work for the church. What role does faith play in your journey? I'll be curious about how that rings for you.
It's everything, but I would say that if I was to say in the first half of my life what was the most transforming faith, dynamic or principle? It was moving from the performance plan. I was big on earning it and going to the surrender plan, death-bound resurrection. The whole season with my marriage cemented that. That was a big takeaway. Since that time, the role that faith has played is not just a personal faith in God but Jesus said to seek one thing first. It's always surprising and foreign to people, especially in the States because we're part of a democracy, but He said to seek first for freedom, which means His reign, His order. He promised that all the things you worry about will take care of themselves if you're seeking first the expansion of His influence, the reconnecting of the world.
If the problem is that the world is disconnected from its creator, then the solution is to reconnect it. That's what the reconnected to the order, the design, the energy, the life force that is God in His creation. I feel like if I was to not charge my iPhone, not connected to the charger in 24 hours or so, it would be dead. If I didn't charge it for a year or more, it would have real problems like iOS updates. It wouldn't function. Our world has been like that. Everything from the environmental issues, the natural disasters, the geopolitical issues, what's happened with us as people, our bodies, our DNA.
Everything is broken because it's disconnected from the life force and the energy source that it was meant to run on. It's been like this for a long time. The solution is to reconnect it into the design, the order, the energy, the life that was meant to sustain it. That's what Jesus came to bring us and that's what we're to seek first. It's worth spending a life on. That's how my faith plays into my journey, especially in the second half of life.
We had a guest on who's the founder of On Purpose. He's got an app called ONPURPOSE.me. I encourage you to take it. I might've paid $5 or maybe it was free. I don't remember, but it puts these phrases up against each other to develop your personal mission in life. After ten minutes of back and forth, it was two words and it's exactly what you said you went through, embracing grace.
It's not embrace grace. It's embracing. Meaning it's an ongoing thing to embrace grace. You're working on it. I do feel like that is the message that I like to deliver. You were already created. You can breathe. You've got eyes. You can see, walk, touch and taste. You're already a miracle. Start from that and then figure out what God wants you to be doing with that. You don't have to work towards it. You just have to feel it.
That’s another thing that we teach our guests, Chad. We talk about Rick Warren's SHAPE. The S.H.A.P.E acronym is S, Spiritual gifts, H, Heart Passion, A, Abilities, P, Personality and E, Experience. You'll be familiar with that principle, that what God has shaped you to be points to what God has called you to do. Most people are looking up to find what God wants for their lives. I challenge people to look in because we're always looking at God, “What do you want me to do?” He's saying, “Look at how I made you because I wouldn't have made you a pot of food if what I needed was a dish to serve food on.” If you look at how He's made you in terms of those five things, that points you towards how He wants to use you. Look in and see what those things are because you are perfectly shaped for what He wants you to do for what He's called you to do. Look at your faith.
If anyone's in Southern California and they're looking for a place to assimilate and meet amazing people, be careful because you may go in and you'll be part of the church. You'll have to be a volunteer because once Greg gets through talking with you, you're going to convert to the church and the kingdom. He'll help you discover your pathway and your gifts. I need to come visit sometime in the near future.
I would love that. You have got to let me know so we can give you the world treatment.
We need to make a trip soon. We're empty nesters. It will be time to travel a little bit. Time flies when you're having fun. This has been great. Greg Curtis’s website is GregCurtis-Assimilation.com or Eastside.com. It’s fabulous getting to know you, Greg. Thanks for sharing your testimony. Even senior pastors can have a gut-punch of a marriage that's about to go south and surrounding yourself with people that are of God and for God. We all go through it. We're all human. Look in the mirror, realize you're not alone. Everybody does it. Pray about it. Connect. We did launch this app 77Pray.com. We have 65 subscribers on it already. Check that out. Thanks for joining. We'll catch you on the next episode. Cheers.
