Dave Ferguson is CEO of Exponential and founding pastor of Community Christian Church in Chicagoland. He also is the author of several books including Hero Maker and B.L.E.S.S., and is a main session speaker for the upcoming 2025 Amplify Conference, October 21–22 at Wheaton College, for which Outreach magazine is a partner.
In the following interview, Ferguson discusses his succession plan and how he prepared Ted Coniaris to take over as lead pastor at Community, what makes him excited for this next season focused on getting 16% of U.S. churches to become reproducing or multiplying churches, and how Christian leaders can equip everyday disciples to bless their neighbors and share their faith effectively.
You have now fulfilled [a] very deliberate succession plan. Ted Coniaris is the lead pastor at Community. I wonder if you could walk me through why you felt like this was the right time, and the thinking behind that.
Sure, it was an 18-month lead pastor apprenticeship with Ted. About a year and a half before that, Sue and I visited with the Catapult Group, some friends there in Greenville, and went through a life plan. We started Community, which was doing really well, had locations across Chicagoland. And then along the way, we also started NewThing, which then was in over 60 countries around the world planting churches. And then we also had Exponential, which was this conference that had tremendous momentum. [I’m] not complaining, but all three of these things that I was overseeing had a lot of momentum. One person only has so much capacity. So we sat down and were like, OK, what’s next?
What came out of that was it’s definitely time to find somebody [to] step into that role of lead pastor. I had that conversation afterward with Sue, then I talked to my brother, John, because we co-founded Community Christian Church. And we began to talk about the possibility of Ted Coniaris. Ted’s a guy who probably eight years ago joined our team as a leadership resident, and then planted a location, did a great job with that. After we planted that location, then in time, we put him in charge of all of our location pastors. And then after that, we put him in charge of all of our expressions. So we added to that what we were doing with microchurches, what we were doing online. Also, what we were doing in planting churches in prisons. [He] did a great job with that. Then we had him join our lead team. And again, you can see his leadership continuing to grow. He just continued to move through that kind of that leadership path.
So when we came to the decision of going, OK, who’s next? it became pretty obvious that Ted loved Community, loved the vision, understood the culture. And candidly, I think with me overseeing all three of those organizations, having Ted move into that role—just focused on that—he was gonna do a better job and would be a better steward of all the things that Community could be than I could be with maybe only part of my attention. At that point I’d already become the interim CEO of Exponential.
So we entered in. I had the conversation with Ted, had the conversation with our lead team, had the conversation with our elders, and then we went through the 18-month apprenticeship. Everything we do at Community is around apprenticeship. Every leader needs to have an apprentice. Even the lead pastor, as you’re thinking about what’s next, you need to have an apprentice so you can put that person in that role and you can commission them to go.
That [apprenticeship] process came to a conclusion May 1st [when] Ted became the new lead pastor there, and I moved into a founding pastor role. He’s [been] doing it for all practical purposes for the last probably six, seven months. He led our lead team. He led through the last capital campaign, and he’s doing a great job. And there’s a lot of momentum at Community in every expression.
I think these are going to be big conversations going forward, especially for megachurches, really big movements, that kind of thing.
If you think about it, how long have we had megachurches? In the scope of church history I don’t think it’s been that long. In the United States, you go back to the ’80s. So for the last 40 years we’ve had these. And I think what we’re seeing happen is a lot of folks who were maybe in their 20s who started these churches that grew very large are now having to figure out, How do I handle succession? Candidly, there’s a lot that haven’t done it well, but on the other hand, it’s a hard thing if there’s nobody to look to, nobody to benchmark against when you’re doing it for the very first time. So I’m hopeful that more and more of us can do a good job of handing it off to the next generation.
So what do you think are some of the keys to doing that well, now that you’ve been through the process yourself?
I think, ideally, like in our situation, to have somebody who’s been internal, who’s been through their own leadership path. That made things a lot easier for us. [Also, we have] a culture of apprenticeship, so we could articulate, Here’s how we’re going to do this.
I think one of the things that’s made it easier for me was that I also had something I was going to. I have talked to some of my peers who are slightly older than me, and it’s been a struggle for some of them. Part of it, they’ll admit, is it’s kind of like, Man, so much of my identity was wrapped up in that. It’s just hard for it not to be. And I feel a little lost right now. And I think one of the things that Ted and I did accidentally right was me going ahead and being able to now focus on being the CEO of Exponential.
Sue and I just got back from five weeks being gone after we handed it over to Ted, but coming back, I am super pumped about all the opportunities that Exponential has, both domestically and globally, to plant churches and see what we call the 16% mission accomplished. I’m talking about what’s next. I’m not meddling in what’s going on at Community.
Ted and I even processed that [and] he said, “I’m also starting to think about what other things do I wanna invest myself in, maybe five years from now, so that at the point when I’m 60 and I’m ready to hand it off to someone else, I have something that I’m going to be able to invest myself in.
Let’s talk a little bit about Exponential. I feel like the idea of church planting is seeing a huge renaissance, and yet at the same point, less than 1% of churches in America are planting churches that are then going on to plant other churches (i.e., multiplying). What’s your vision for Exponential going forward with all the enthusiasm around church planting?
If you’re familiar with the innovation curve, 16% is—and I think Malcolm Gladwell kind of popularized this—it’s like the tipping point. If you can get 16% of any group invested in something, it can influence the whole. So we’ve really set our sights on how do we get 16% of all churches to be either reproducing or multiplying churches. And we define reproducing as ever planting another church or multiplying four generations. So when you talked about multiplying, you’re right, there’s only about 1% or less than 1% that are actually multiplying. But in reproducing, we’ve actually seen in the last decade that number increase from 4% to 7% in the United States. So we’re getting close to halfway there. But we’ve really set our sights [on getting] 16% of churches either reproducing or multiplying.
Part of it for us goes back to a biblical conviction. You go to Acts 1:8, where Jesus said, Hey, it’s gonna start in Jerusalem, then it’s gonna go to Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth. This is the mission, guys—last thing he says before he leaves planet Earth. The only way I can read that is he’s talking about a movement, and you don’t get to a movement if you’re not thinking about reproducing and multiplying. So we need everybody to be in on this.
And if you’re going to reproduce and multiply churches, really, you got to be thinking about reproducing and multiplying leaders and reproducing and multiplying disciples. So we’re championing all those things. One of the things we’re most excited about moving forward is small multiplier networks in different cities where you’ve got four to six churches coming together and saying, Hey, how do we together plant more churches? We’re starting to see that happen all across the country.
One of the things that I believe is going to come out of this acquisition with NewThing now becoming a part of Exponential is that that was kind of a forte of NewThing. Now it’s going to be something that Exponential wants to help equip. It’s not going to be the Exponential network. It’s your network. You get to do it. We just want to help. We want to be very clear about that. But we do think we can help lots of leaders across the country start these small networks. If we can get to 12,000 networks, we think that could actually get us 60,000 reproducing, multiplying churches, [and that] gets us that 16% number.
So let’s talk a little bit about equipping everyday believers. You and your brother John have talked a lot about the BLESS model that you’ve been rolling out at your church and in an app that you’ve created. Tell me a little bit about where that motivation to start that model came from.
Yeah, I mean, it really was somewhat out of my own story. I grew up in a Christian home, but there was definitely a point for me as like a 19-year-old where Jesus became real and I really got grace. I was genuinely just amped about that. I would do street evangelism, and I would basically kind of verbally assault people on the streets sometimes. I think my heart was in the right place, but I was asking questions people didn’t want to answer and answering questions they weren’t asking. And it wasn’t effective at all. Good motivation, but not effective.
Once we planted Community, I kind of swung the other way, and I was like, OK, I’m just going to live my life and people will ask me. So I wasn’t so much a verbal witness of any kind, and it went way too far [in the other direction]. I think people thought I was a good neighbor. They liked having me as a neighbor. But I didn’t see anybody come to find or follow Jesus. And I wanted something different both for me personally, but also something different for our church. There were actually three or four different things that we tried that didn’t work with our staff team, until eventually we got to the BLESS practices. We call them “the five everyday ways to love your neighbor and change the world.” The five practices, if people aren’t familiar with them, are:
B – begin with prayer
L – listen
E – eat
S – serve
S – share your story.
It becomes a very tangible way that everyday people can love their neighbors. I continue to be very, very excited about it, and we’re continuing to see lots of fruit from it.
So what are some of those tools that church leaders can use to roll out the Bless model and help encourage everyday people in the pew to start getting out there and meeting their neighbors and blessing their neighbors.
Well, I would encourage church leaders to take a look at the BLESS app. Anybody can get it for free, but there is [also] a paid portion where you can actually get a dashboard. Let’s say you’ve got a church of a couple hundred folks, and you get all of them enrolled, [saying,] “We’re going to do our very best to love our neighbors.” I think it’s also important to say, “It’s your job to love, it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict.” You’re not gonna actually ever convert somebody, but God will use you in the process. You get those 200 folks enrolled in this process, and we just encourage people to do one of these practices every day. Just one. Sometimes Christians are like, Well, if I just pray, does that count? Yeah, it counts. So if you just do that, and if you get the opportunity to listen, to eat, serve, your story, but they’ll use the BLESS app. As a lead pastor or as a staff person, you can actually get the data that says, this week here’s how many people prayed for somebody. Here’s how many people actually had a conversation and listened. Here’s how many people had a cup of coffee or shared a meal or invited somebody over or took them out to eat. Here’s how many people figured out how to love them and serve them. And here’s how many people shared their story.
So imagine this—which I think this is so cool—to be able to stand up in front of your church on a weekly basis, and even have a BLESS moment. It could just be a minute and you go, “Hey, I just want to celebrate this last week that we had 50 folks that were praying for their neighbors. We had 20 that actually had a conversation and listened. Five of you had meals with neighbors. Let’s hear it for those guys. Good job! And three of you served somebody. And one of you got a chance to share your story about Jesus.”
It’s this cool integration of technology being able to accelerate something that’s really, really, really good.
I’ll put in a plug for one other thing, and I hope this is OK. I also did a series with RightNow Media, and it’s how to create a culture of BLESS. It gives you a definition of culture, and then the makeup of culture, and then seven steps for how to create a blessed culture in your church. So, I would encourage you to get that video series, and then strongly integrate that with the BLESS app.
And if people are going, Yeah, but I don’t get this, shoot me an email and that’ll come to me and my assistant, Sarah, I’d be glad to help either point you in the right direction or we’d be glad to share [a sermon series on BLESS] with you too. I’m not trying to hawk a video series or an app. I really would love for people to actually begin to do this. We did it for I think eight years at Community before we ever wrote a book about it. So we know this. And I’ll be honest, there was a time where I’m going like, This is good about building relationships, but does it really help people find and follow Jesus? And when I got to see one of my friends say yes to Jesus for the first time, and I—this is what we do at a community—I got to baptize them. I was going like, Wow, this actually works.
I think one of the things that shifted too is we began to see lots of people who were getting to baptize their friends, lots of people who were getting to baptize their neighbors, and even their families. And that is super, super encouraging.