Modern Church Leader
Hear pastors share what's working in their churches. Welcome to Modern Church Leader, a show for church leaders to learn business strategies, leadership skills, church tech tips, and generosity. Tune in for powerful interviews to help you grow your church to be more effective, efficient, and powerful for the kingdom of God. For more information, visit https://www.mclconference.com/
Modern Church Leader
Transforming Sacred Spaces into Community Hubs with Disney Magic
Can spaces tell stories? Discover how Mel, a Disney Imagineer and expert in three-dimensional storytelling, has transformed his childhood passions into a career that brings environments to life. From his humble beginnings in Vietnam to contributing significantly to Disneyland's evolution, Mel takes us through his journey of crafting immersive experiences that transcend traditional boundaries. Get an insider's look into Disneyland Resort Garden District and the multifaceted world of Disney Imagineering.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Modern Church Leader. Excited to talk to our guest today who's coming to our conference, going to be a speaker, lead a great workshop, but you get a little preview today. So, mel, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks man, Great to be here Honored. Yeah, looking forward to the conference.
Speaker 1:Where are you coming to us from? You know?
Speaker 2:I get to visit my beautiful bride, my cozy home here in Orange County kind of inland from Laguna Beach at least once a week, literally flying in from Miami and Orlando and heading out in less than 24 hours to Shanghai. So I get to tag it in here.
Speaker 1:Just running around, yeah, and actually I don't often get to talk Go ahead. But yeah, running around, yeah, and actually I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't often get to talk. Go ahead, go ahead. Oh, 102 degrees, man you believe that.
Speaker 1:So I'm in San Diego. I don't often get guests from the West coast, so I live in San Diego and it's blazing, it's like a hundred and something here. Wow, it's crazy, I don't know what's going on. My, like my kids are in middle school now and, uh, two of them are trying out for the golf team and so this week was their first like golf practice and they canceled golf practice Cause it was too hot. Yeah, I'm like what? What's going on? I let, I grew up in Vegas Like we practiced in full football pads in like 110. We didn't cancel practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're pretty wimpy here. We pay a premium for God's thermostat to be set right at about 72 to 80. And so we freak out when the AC breaks the natural.
Speaker 1:AC. Trees are melting, grass is burning, everything's like bad, but that's cool, man. Well, why don't you tell us you do some really cool stuff, a unique set of skills and work experience compared to maybe a lot of our guests? I'd love to hear you worked at Disney. You do a bunch of things like helping plan these kind of large experiences and all kinds of stuff. So you help not just like churches and ministries and cause-based things, but you do all kinds of work. But you know, tell us a story. Go back to the. You know how you got into like, what kind of stuff do you do and how did you even get into it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, at the high level we do what we call three-dimensional storytelling. That lifts the spirit. So I've got a brother that's a partner that is a kind of technical digital guru. He's got a team of former Pixar guys doing proprietary software and applications for interactive storytelling. I've got another partner that does strategic storytelling. So branding, identity strategy work. My passion focus since I was a wee little kid has been what I call spatial storytelling.
Speaker 2:Some Disney fans know that Disney had a unit called Disney Imagineering and we basically are similar to that for the rest of the world. It doesn't happen to have a group like that in-house. So at Disney Imagineering we had over 140 different disciplines to basically tell stories in three-dimensional spaces. So everything from architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, master planning, graphic design, show set design. So we actually have all those disciplines within our you know that 150-person team. So one of the things that we do out of that is we have a kind of a special ops group of us that have a kind of a passion for kingdom work and over the last few decades have probably worked on probably about a thousand cause oriented projects, whether it's church campuses, hospitals, schools, you name it around the world. In fact you know an entire village for survivors of sex trafficking. You know some of the fastest growing churches in the country, from Saddleback to Willow Creek, calvary, fort Lauderdale, you name it. So it's been a pretty crazy ride to get to work with some pretty amazing Sherpas and gurus along the way.
Speaker 2:But, like I said, it started as a kid. I was born in Vietnam. Earliest memories bombs going off in Saigon. But then I also remember kind of getting evac'd out of there before the fall of Saigon, making a trip to Disneyland, looking at the twinkle lights down Main Street, usa and I think the fusion of bombs going off and looking at the world that was in a world that couldn't should be kind of made some weird wiring.
Speaker 2:So you know, I started drawing up future cities and theme parks and places, like I said, that I wanted to visit when I was probably 11, 12 years old. My first Boy Scout merit badge was architecture. So just a weird kid. You know I wish they would have had some of these theme park designer video games when I was a kid because I thought I was the only weird guy in the world. I wrote my first letter to Disney Imagineering when I was like 13,. I think no way. Yeah, they sent the rejection letter that said stay in school, kid. They didn't take me up on any of my free consulting of all the ways they could fix it.
Speaker 1:You're like, I'm here Word for free.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so anyways, I'm here. Word for free.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anyway, how long did you spend as an?
Speaker 2:Imagineer. You know I was there for about 10 years the 90s was known by the CEO at the time as the Disney decade and most of my time was spent focused on reimagining and redeveloping the area around the original magical little park that a daddy built for his daughter's Disneyland, which really was just a quarter section of land 160 acres. Ultimately, we ended up planning about two square miles surrounding it, what's now known as the Disneyland Resort Garden District, and so it was really great because Disney was paying for my graduate degree at the time. I was learning while I was doing, and I would say that that was kind of my real grad school as opposed to the actual master's degree that I got.
Speaker 1:What kind of like give us a little bit of the behind the scenes, behind the curtain. Like when you're an Imagineer you're there for 10 years, like would you learn working in that kind of environment? I mean, they're like one of the best right, like Disney's one of the best at this kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Well, you kind of really learned that man, people are willing to pay a premium and you have to. It begs the question what are they willing to pay that premium for? If they're willing to save up? Deal with planes, trains, automobiles. You know all this hassle of travel to just just and then to get to your front door and shell out. You know at least 100 plus each just to step across the turnstile threshold to enter into this space. What is that? You know and you know.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, what I learned was really the secret you know is story. You know, we've just come to believe that story is fundamental to the human condition. Is story? We've just come to believe that story is fundamental to the human condition. It's one of the things that God uses to kind of differentiate us from other creatures. And without a sense of who we are, who I am, over space and time, you kind of are schizophrenic and you just don't have that significance.
Speaker 2:And sometimes we tell ourselves bad stories about ourselves, right, and that's out of trauma and damage. But at the end of the day, story really has the power to form who we are and transform who we can become, and again, the power of spatial storytelling, of understanding the character setting and plot. It's a fundamentally different way of approaching placemaking, whether it's the scale of a home, a hospitality experience, a campus, a city, you know even a region. It's just a different approach than normal modern, especially modern minimalist design, which is based on this kind of religious mantra almost called form follows function, that idea of minimalist utilitarianism. You know my graduate thesis was was that?
Speaker 2:hey, you know I think we forgot something a long way. Throughout history, form has followed fiction. Spaces did tell stories, and you know that's kind of I think a skill that we learned at Disney was that man, if you have the story right, that can inform thousands of design decisions across multiple disciplines, and one plus one equals three over and over again, and it really creates compelling destinations that, again, are just different than the average strip mall in the United States of Generica that we all drive by and go to. You don't have to hit that Walmart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was just driving by the Home Depot.
Speaker 2:So I'm very familiar with that.
Speaker 1:Yep the mall of Generica yeah, right, um, so so you were there. I mean, I don't know, I have so many like questions about like the behind the scenes. Like you walk into disney and we did florida, so we did like last summer maybe it was the summer before we kind of hit all the parks there. So, like I get you.
Speaker 1:When it's like you I mean you're traveling, you're on planes and you're in ubers and you got all your luggage and you got the hotel and it's like a whole thing and it's not cheap to go, do that, even if you do it as cost effective as possible. Right, like making that whole thing happen is not a cheap adventure, but you're right, it's packed. Like you go there and there's like thousands and thousands of people running around doing these things. Um, how does like is the story when you go into a disney theme park like you have these different lands. Is that kind of like like you think through that stuff from the beginning? They just go like, okay, we're gonna have this big old theme park for building a new one, and they just think through the different like areas of the park and like what's gonna, you know, like be interesting to people than that right it like, said I.
Speaker 2:I like to point out to especially millennials, that there was actually, in fact, a historical dude named walt disney it's not just a corporate and in a lot of ways, the original what we call castle parks, the disneyland and the magic kingdom, I mean really were this authentic kind of synopsis of uh walt disney's kind of. You know this mid-century uh guy born at the turn of the century, you know that had both. This kind of. You know this mid-century guy born at the turn of the century, you know that had both this kind of roots in this optimism you know of, you know looking through the rose-colored lens of nostalgia, editing out all the stuff he didn't know about. You know injustice and you know whatever. But just seeing those roots of what a small town community that supported each other could look, taste and feel like, you're basically ushered into his childhood Again through through that editing of a Hollywood art director and an artist, right. So it's much like an impressionist painter. You're not just asking him to paint a, you know do an Instagram photo of what he saw in reality, you're asking for his interpretation. And that's what Main Street you know say is this quintessential memory, right? And then you enter into this central hub area where you're totally empowered to then step into almost the major kind of narrative, televisual, filmic genres you know, at least of the day.
Speaker 2:So I mean, you know, in the 1950s, you know the Westerns were kind of a big deal. You know the idea of a new West was really what the whole suburban push was about. You know, when you're stepping north into the Disney Channel through that castle, you're stepping east into the future, which you know, the whole idea of the space race and kind of that mid-century optimism and faith in corporate technology. You know it was very much of the time. And again that's when we approach spatial storytelling. A lot of times it does have to be soil specific. Again, whether we're working with a ministry, a corporate entity, an IP, it's got to be that right mix of kind of character setting, plot, soil story, silver to actually do something that's got some legs. You know it's really not just about kind of rando, hey, let's do.
Speaker 1:You know cartoon town you know right, right, you know just paint everything bright colors.
Speaker 2:And you know whatever? I literally just got done with a lunch meeting of a entertainment attraction owner that just was dying, the the manager just wanted to paint these bright, wacky, gaudy colors just to try to get eyeballs like, like you know not a lot of thought into it. I'm like, please don't just just let us have at least one conversation with your stakeholders.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, they haven't been hired yet, but I'm like okay, let's just have one conversation and have some significance, to give you some reasons for colors, rather than just someone saying I need eyeballs, you know, to be grabbed you know from the roadside, right yeah?
Speaker 1:So you went from that and then you created your own thing, sounds like, with your brother and some partners and you kind of said I want to go take this skill, this talent, out into the outside of Disney, what, what? Give us an example of some of the types of projects you worked on or you have worked on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I want to give credit not only to my brother Peter, but a friend named Mike Foster who has been around, good friend with Bob Goff and guys like Jed Wilhite. You know he really had this passion for helping the church tell a better story frankly. You know, coming out of the 80s 90s, you know the church and televangelists and you know just didn't have a great reputation. There was a big disconnect between what especially Americans thought of the church or the megachurch versus you know what they thought about Jesus. Even people were down with, you know, the grace and truth and compassion of Jesus, but they just saw a lot of hypocrisy and, you know, whatever with the church.
Speaker 2:And so the part of that original holy discontent was man, we've learned some skills along the way from the tech industry, from the film industry, from Disney, that we thought could be applied to churches in the kingdom. And again, really initially it was a pretty hard push to just help lift the church out of this pit. We thought of just kind of, uh, just generic, you know, kind of cut and paste, um, kind of let's just try not to. I mean, back then the radical thing to do at willow creek was let's not try to offend anybody by, you know, putting up any crosses and making all of our. Let's try to make our buildings just look neutral and, if anything, let's make them look like a community college or a you know the campus term or whatever.
Speaker 2:So let's just not offend, almost like hide the fact that we're Christians or that it's a religious structure, and paint everything black. And you know that was kind of the punk rock approach back then. And we said, well, you know, there's a blank sheet of paper, that's fine, but there's also the opportunity to paint on that canvas and again tell a better story with a little more intentionality. And so again, you know some of I'm still thinking about some of the first churches that we encountered. You know, one was happened to be in a, in a town that is, you know, not too far from here, called Corona, corona, california, and before there was a global pandemic named after him.
Speaker 2:Everyone thought that the town name was Spanish for beer or, or you know the actual dictionary definition was a concentric circle of light surrounding a luminous body. So we ended up, you know, kind of playing up that, that idea of a circle of light, digging into the roots of kind of sacred space, especially in kind of pre-modern eras where, you know, quite often the third place, the gathering place of cities and communities, happen to be at the foot of the cross, at the foot of a cross shaped basilica or a cathedral basilica or a cathedral, and that that great outdoor room was that piazza, that that, uh, you know, was the best restaurants, best cafes, you know, you're, you're. It was more expensive to live closer to that central gathering place and for the way that that was also where the town, well, was the source of living water. So in that particular case, we came up with this idea of sort of this post-modern piazza, uh, that that also was kind of a lifelong learning village where you could have everything from preschool to PhD. There's, there's housing developed on site that we planned out, that was done as kind of condos, and so it really is kind of this unique taste of what, you know, if we're serious about praying for, you know, your will being done on Earth as it is in heaven that's one way to think of it You're actually almost creating this human ecology that, you know, almost restores that broken connection between you know, us and the creator and creation of vertical connection, as well as the potential to restore connections horizontally, Right, how easy is it in suburbia to have a next door neighbor that you never talk to, right?
Speaker 2:You just see each other pulling out of the driveway, you know. But that's totally different than even when you're in a place like Disney or in a, you know, a piazza like this, where you actually are rubbing shoulders with so many different demographics, people that have completely different faith backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, and everyone's getting along great because literally everyone is there basically to share in this process of making, forming these magical memories basically between them and their kids. Quite often that really kind of stand the test of time and you know, there's no price tag, no barcode, but that's really the product that Disney's creating are those memories, and they've learned that they can keep charging. More and more people still come, you know yeah, I know no doubt.
Speaker 1:So you, you were sharing about that one. What, um, what other kind of projects have you helped like churches specifically with? Like, yeah, do you do like whole new builds of things with them and think about like the building, or are you thinking about like the whole community around it when they're building something bigger, or like I don't know? Give me, help me understand.
Speaker 2:So again, it's a three-dimensional storytelling. So a church may come across us and say, hey, we, we just need help with our brand, for example. They might need a new name, a new logo, a new new front, a digital front porch, a new Web site. Right, that's, that's the first step of storytelling. Right is an introduction and a name and quite often, you know we've helped. You know folks get out of whatever denominational or box or preset preconception people you know had on whether that's just a visual update, whether it's a completely new name.
Speaker 2:You know that's quite often a starting point, right? You know, sometimes it's like, hey look, we've got an environment, a facility, campus, or we don't. We need help figuring out how we can express that story in, whether it's a temporary setup like a school. We have loved working with church planners, work with Elevation Church, steve Furtick, when they got in their first Kmart building, and we're able to kind of take whatever visual identity they had created in like an event space, translate that into their first physical environments, even if it's just a renovation of an existing space, and then, of course, ultimately in many cases we're able to either create a new structure from scratch in terms of full architecture, engineering, interior design, or even an entire site from master planning.
Speaker 2:In America it's kind of weird to exist as a church.
Speaker 2:You almost need permission to exist. There's no such thing, typically as a church zone, so you have to, instead of know, instead of being cited on the highest hill and the most prominent location, like you were historically in Europe, you have to almost beg for the forgiveness to exist. So that's where you know. As an urban planner, I've been able to master plan over a thousand sites successfully with condition use permits and and basically make the argument that, hey, we actually can be an asset, not an eyesore, not a black hole in the community not paying sales tax or not generating sales tax, not paying property tax.
Speaker 2:But you know, and one of the ways that we've been busy with that in some cases is just identifying that the traditional suburban American church solution of having a building and a parking lot sit pretty much empty six and a half days a week may not be considered the best stewardship, you know, by by either serious disciples of Christ or even their, their, their civic leaders or neighbors. You know, because you're literally just creating this heat, sink, asphalt parking lot. And you know, for years it was like, oh, I've got a solution, let's plug in a school into the Sunday school or daycare, or get some guys to use the gym and create a multi-useless gymatorium, kind of thing, not a lot of creativity into that.
Speaker 2:There's a lot better ways to use you know that site and space and parking lot. So we've been able to introduce you know there's no one go-to solution but you know, like something as simple, as like a lobby, like, if you design it right, why couldn't that be this amazing co-working space with screaming Wi-Fi? You know awesome espresso, great. You know drop-in daycare, play centers, I mean gathering places, meeting rooms. Why can't it be the go-to place for people to kind of come together rather than just being stuck in a you know office cubicle or in a spare bedroom? And so again, that's not even any creativity, but that's just saying from ground up, like a narthex or a lobby, like it be something other than that. You know the other six and a half days a week, but you know again, whether it's housing, whether it's artist galleries, whether it's food halls, I mean all kinds of solutions.
Speaker 2:One of my favorites is we we partner with a local homeless shelter and turned an abandoned nursery space into this thing called restoration roasters. That was basically providing jobs, training, but it was actually the best coffee house in this big region, kind of award-winning coffee house. But you know the choice of every design. Every material was all reclaimed wood, reclaimed bricks. It was telling the story of restoration, reclamation, renewal, both in every person that you're interacting with, because you've got someone that was formerly homeless, now they're. You know, a student that kind of looks like this hipster barista. It's like this miracle transformation in the coffee.
Speaker 2:Literally, the coffee is a cup of compassion, taste of transformation, that's, you know, pretty humble, but you know just a conversion of a little, teeny little nursery room into a great coffee house, but we we love like large and small scales of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So right, yeah, yeah house, but we we love like large and small scales of that kind of stuff. So, right, yeah, yeah, have you done anything? Uh where you're working I don't know whether it's new build or you're coming in and helping a church with like the interior of a building, where you're like helping them rethink uh, like I don't know anything related to the worship experience or any of the like in you know?
Speaker 2:like you just think of a normal church.
Speaker 2:Like you got someone preaching and you got the seats and that's kind of church right yeah so now anything cool there yeah, I mean, that's par for the course and that's really almost in most cases, whether it's a renovated worship center auditorium or whether it's new ground up. That really is kind of you know, obviously that's the engine, that's the heart and soul, and so to be able to bring that I would say early on, you know, the paradigm that we brought to that was very much around the idea that hey, look, there is one of the most powerful storytelling spaces in history since the cathedrals. That happens to cost a lot less than a cathedral and that's the, the, the Hollywood film backlot soundstage, the idea of this clear span soundstage. We've done so many like really cost of that but it's literally probably about the lowest cost per square foot for column free space you can do. But we've been able to create these kind of soundstage spaces where you know, blessed are the flexible we will not break. You can tell whatever story, tell a different story week in, week out and actually, rather than them look like a soundstage.
Speaker 2:We've been able to figure out all these different urban design, architectural tricks to completely, whether we're just stashing it behind evergreen trees, whether we're creating false fronts, facades, whether we're just orienting one corner to the street. We've been able to kind of hide the bigness by, you know, ushering people through a portal or creating a different type of feel. But then once you get inside, you have really this flexible space that we've got, you know God's gifts of technology and media to really dress the set however we want, change it out multiple times a year. So we're big into flexibility. That's something that's probably a consistent value over time. We're also big into stewardship.
Speaker 2:I mean because we recognize that tension that especially when people hear that there's some background with Disney, they're like what do you do some Mickey Mouse shaped church? Or you know, we don't have Disney's budget to do whatever it's really. Yeah, quite often it's not about spending a dime extra than they would have spent designing, kind of the church next door. It really is just how you allocate those funds, like what's the stuff that really makes an impact?
Speaker 1:that again makes you a better storyteller that's what do you help churches think about related to this stuff, because it strikes me as, like most churches built maybe building a new building and doing so they're like looking at the next church, like they're looking at the next kind of cool church for inspiration, versus trying to like think about, like rethink their space or do something unique for who they are. So, like, how do you come in and help somebody go on that journey?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's a great point because it used to be actually the standard go-to. I call mr brady. Every town had a mr brady church architect. That's a deep cut man. You got to see the brady bunch movie but uh, you know, this is the guy that just did his home church, you know, learned you know, uh, on his home project.
Speaker 2:And then he just becomes a trusted church architect. So he kind of rovers the the same idea, you know, because he had 20 years ago. You know, our main thing is really trying to not look like the church next door. Be authentic, figure out your own story and tell that. And again, we certainly have a bag of tricks, slash toolbox of what we think are pretty cost-effective flexible storytelling techniques in terms of the way we use architecture and interior design graphics technology to convey that story. That, frankly, architecture in terms of architectural, structural engineering and roof forms, that is probably the least cost-effective way of conveying stories. We've had a lot of celebrity star architects have their first church commission and they think, oh, I'm going to do this thing in the form of praying hands or a nun's hat or whatever crazy ideas. And there's just a lot more effective ways of telling flexible, authentic stories than the roofline of the building, like a lot of guys tried to do in the 60s and 70s. And so again, same thing A lot of people are still, you know, trying to achieve stuff with stuff that was state of the art.
Speaker 2:When you're doing stained glass windows in medieval cathedrals. That was state of the art, audio video, lighting technology. Well, guess what there's? There's other ways to spend that money. That give you some other more flexible storytelling tools. That give you some other more flexible storytelling tools. Then you know, I could get a led wall, or you know, same price or a lot lower than a stained glass window, for example.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's kind of a crude example, but yeah, yeah, very cool man. So you're, you're headed off to a To Shanghai. Yeah yeah, what's the project out there?
Speaker 2:Well, I can't fully disclose it on air, but we're happy to be working with Keep it on the DL. That's okay. We happen to be working with a lot of the top gaming publishers in the company Very cool and there's a number of projects that are bringing these. You know, gaming generates more and I'm talking about video gaming, not casino gaming.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I got three boys. Yeah, exactly, they play plenty of video games.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and it not just takes up the time but it actually generates more revenue than both the film and the music industry combined. So really have to be at the cusp of bringing you know. Our team was deeply involved with a super Nintendo world for universal, you know, from the blue sky phase to the. You know architecture, to some of the building. But again, the future of being able to step into those types of interactive stories, ie games, you know, to actually do more than just be entertained but to actually live in some of these environments is kind of kind of crazy. So if you go on YouTube, google it Saudi Arabia you'll see. You know Mark Hamill doing a little announcement about the first gaming district outside of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. So yeah, some fun stuff.
Speaker 1:My kids would be pumped to go do something like that. They've, uh, they've found, I don't. I don't remember exactly where it was, if it was like Japan or wherever, but it's like a hotel. That's like all transformer themed out, or whatever it's tied to the theme park or something like that. They're like dad, we want to go there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they, they, they. They've just started to roll out some of the announcements of some of the stuff that is going on just in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but the Dragon Ball Z theme park, I think, is announced. Yeah, it's, it's. It's kind of crazy, that's wild. It's going to be coming.
Speaker 1:So well, man, thanks for coming on the show. We're excited to have you at the conference yeah, can't wait man hopefully people got a little preview. Today you're doing a workshop. Uh any, any teasers, any, any like? Do you have a, a title?
Speaker 2:yet or a working idea and what you're going to go over. You know I'm gonna have to get over my jet lag, but uh, yeah, it tends to be around that idea of uh again, our, my last uh mission is this idea of three-dimensional storytelling that lifts the spirit and there's ways, I think, that contemporary apostles and kingdom leaders have been. I feel like I've been humbled to get to learn from the feet of some real Yodas out there and it's been great to partner with guys. My heart's broken over Tony Morgan and his family, some real Yodas out there, and it's been great to partner with guys Like my heart's broken over Tony Morgan and his family, but you know just there's guys like Tony that have just been amazing co-workers and the idea of advancing Ekklesia, the power of Christ-centered community to change the world, because we just, you know, I believe it's just still this amazing storytelling and community vessel, wherever two or more gathered, that Christ is there and so excited to share some of the real life case studies of how that's happened around the world Four corners.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it. We're excited to have you. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks, guys, for listening. Make sure to give the show a like, spread the word and we'll catch you next week on another episode of Modern Church Leader. See ya.