Why this exists
I spent a decade becoming the person the church couldn’t do without.
Durable Church is a Christian formation and ministry capacity organization founded by David Runnels. It serves church leaders, staff, and volunteers through studies, retreats, writing, and hands-on work that helps congregations share responsibility and keep ministry running through change.
I’ve served in and around churches for three decades. For ten of those years I was on one church’s staff in data and technology, leading teams and departments. I was the one who knew how things worked: the systems, the logins, the reasons behind the reasons. It felt like faithfulness. It was also a risk the church didn’t know it was carrying.
The most faithful thing I could do was build myself out of a job.
Now I work alongside churches from the outside. Durable Church is what came from learning that lesson. The studies, the retreats, the writing, and the hands-on work all aim at the same thing: capacity that lives in many faithful people, handed over completely, with nothing held back.
David Runnels
Founder, Durable Church
Not a consultant
So why not just call it consulting?
Every engagement is designed so the church needs us less at the end than at the start. We build alongside your people, transfer the understanding and authority to carry the work, and agree on what a complete handoff will look like. The church keeps what has been built.
That is why the formation comes first. Systems can be handed over in a weekend. People who can carry them with skill, judgment, and a sense of calling are formed over months. The studies and retreats are not a side offering. They are how the transfer actually holds.