On Episode 79 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with business owner Dan Frasier, about entrepreneurship & how his company, Cornerstone Commissioning Inc., is more than just a business!
Tag: #relationships
What is Construction Commissioning? With Dan Frasier
On Episode 77 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with Dan Frasier, co-founder of Cornerstone Commissioning Inc., about construction commissioning.
Show Notes
The Cornerstone Commissioning Inc. Website
About Dan Frasier
About Cornerstone Commissioning
Find Cornerstone Commissioning on Twitter
Find Cornerstone Commissioning on LinkedIn
Find Dan Frasier on LinkedIn
Cornerstone Commissioning’s Blog
“The Importance of Communication During the Commissioning Process”
“Why The Construction Industry Needs Commissioning?” by Dan Frasier
Link to SaviorLabs Assessment
Sections
Introduction
What is Commissioning in the Construction Industry?
Verifying the Performance of a Building: What A Commissioner Does
Specializing in Biomedical Research and Infectious Disease Research Facilities
Making Sure Systems are Functioning: APV — Annual Performance Verification
Who Needs a Commissioning Service?
Testing and Fixing Commissioning Issues
More Episodes
What is Construction Commissioning? With Dan Frasier
Introduction
Paul: Hello, and welcome to the Edge of Innovation. Today we’re talking with Dan Frasier from Cornerstone Commissioning Services. Right? Is it Cornerstone Commissioning?
Dan: Cornerstone Commissioning, Incorporated.
Paul: Okay. Cornerstone Commissioning, Incorporated.
What is Commissioning in the Construction Industry?
Paul: So, I’ve known you a while, and I have to honest. I don’t know what Cornerstone Commissioning means. What does commissioning mean?
Dan: So commissioning is a process that’s used in the construction industry to verify the performance of buildings. So it’s — mostly for us anyway — it’s mostly related to mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems but also life safety. And we have a special focus on building control systems.
Paul: Okay. So let me think. So most ordinary people have maybe built a house, at the extreme. Do we do commissioning in a house?
Dan: We actually have done a few houses, but that would be a very high-end home.
Paul: So give me an example. You know, no names, nothing. Just what does it actually mean? So, they’re building a new school. Is somebody actually going to be doing the commissioning part of the new school?
Dan: Most schools today, if it’s a significant project, are going to have commissioning related to it. And there will be two primary types of suppliers of commissioning services. We are involved in the MEP, the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, life safety, building control side of things. The other version would be the building envelop, so the building enclosure. There are people that focus on the enclosure of the buildings for energy, for air tightness. And we have subs who do that work on some of our projects. That would be higher-end projects where it’s a net-zero building where it’s a highly energy-efficient building that actually may have some other kind of power generation with it so it never takes anything off the grid.
Paul: Interesting. We’ll get into that.
Dan: But you need a really good envelope to do that.
Paul: So, let’s step back. You’re really close to this. We’re talking to relatively ordinary people, and the local town is going to be building a new high school. And you’re saying there’s aspects to commissioning with that. The envelope, the outside walls and the roof.
Dan: Yes.
Paul: And even the floors?
Dan: Yes.
Paul: Okay. And then there’s also like the plumbing, electrical, mechanicals. The heat pumps and the heaters and furnaces and air conditioning systems. Am I accurate in that?
Dan: Yes, that’s accurate.
Verifying the Performance of a Building: What A Commissioner Does
Paul: Okay. So what do you do? I mean, does the architect sort of say, “We’re going to put all this stuff in”? And then you guys come back and make sure it works? Or do you make sure they put in the right stuff? What happens?
Dan: So, because we’re verifying the performance of a building and we want to make sure that that is verified relative to what the owner of the building really needs, the right way to integrate us into a project is during the design phase. And so the way that happens is typically — I would say over 90% of the time — a building owner is going to hire us directly. They’re going to hire the architects and engineers directly, and they’ll hire the contractors to actually build it. The reason we like to be hired during the design phase is because we get to know buildings so intimately — how well they perform — that during the design phase is the best time to start thinking about how well the building is going to operate to meet the owner’s needs. And so during the design phase, we’ll be reviewing the designs by the architects and engineers. And then some of the more complicated projects, we’re going to be hired to do a program evaluation as well. So we specialize in some pretty unique buildings. And so we’re going to ask questions that perhaps nobody thought to ask because we know how difficult it is to get this buildings to work right if they have mission-critical requirements.
Paul: Okay. So let me rehash that a little bit. So let’s say I’m the owner. Okay? And I say, “Gee, I want to build this private high school.” Or even I’m just going to build a high school. I have to hire an architect, a builder, and I imagine not engineers. The architect would hire the engineers?
Dan: Typically. Yeah, the design engineers work as a sub consultant to architects.
Paul: So I hire a builder; I hire an architect; and I hire a commissioning company like you guys.
Dan: Yes.
Paul: Who else do I have to have at that table? There’s four of us now. Me and those three guys.
Dan: That generally covers everything that you’re going to need. There may be some other unique things that would be permitting people or code-related people. And that usually falls under the architects and engineers.
Paul: Right. That’s what we’ve had an architect on the show before, and he sort of said that we help with that. We can help with that. So I’m trying to think. So I’ve got the architect. I turn to them and I say, “I really want it to look like this kind of building.” And I show them a picture of a building. And they say, “Great.”
And the builder is sitting there thinking about “Can I make that?” And “Can I make it at a reasonable price?”
And I say, “Gee, I want to do these kind of things in the building” to tell the architect. You know, I need a gymnasium. I need a lunchroom. I need science labs. And then you’re sitting there and hearing all of this, and you’re collecting all this list and saying, okay, science labs, heating, cooling, etc. And do you then say, “Well, what else are you going to do in it?” Do you actually get down to the functional use of it?
Dan: Yeah, very much so.
Paul: And say, “Uh, gee, do you want locker rooms?” Do you say, “Gee, do you want a wood shop or a cooking center?”
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Paul: And then, oh, well if you’re going to have a cooking center, you’ve got to have ventilation. So is that sort of your role in conjunction with the architect? Because the architect, I would imagine, if they said, “Oh, here’s the cooking center. Well, we’re going to put an island in. We’re going to put a vent in and all this.” How does that interaction occur?
Specializing in Biomedical Research and Infectious Disease Research Facilities
Dan: Well, the kind of buildings that we’re involved in are…The questions that we ask during the design phase usually elevates the level of attention to some of those things you’re talking about because we specialize in biomedical research facilities and especially in infectious disease research facilities.
Paul: Yeah. We don’t want to have a failure in that.
Dan: No. And so there are a lot of things that we’re going to ask about, systems that are going to support some of the unique requirements, like if they’re going to house animals or they’re going to do research with infectious diseases. And the air flow directions are important. And so there are a lot of things that people just don’t think about that we’re going to ask the lab directors and the environmental health and safety people about some of their testing requirements or performance requirements related to biocontainment, for example.
Paul: So I think your comment of saying there’s just a lot of things that people don’t think about is extremely at the crux of this. It’s very much the focus of… You know, when we’re ordinary people on the street thinking about oh, we’re going to do this, there’s a lot of things. When we talked to our architect friend, Benjamin Nutter in Topsfield, he sort of unmasked a lot of the things that you didn’t think of. And now you’re saying for a commercial building or for something that’s going to have all of these functions, there’s a whole set of layers that we might not understand. It sounds like not only do you call those into, to view, but then you actually validate them once they’re put in. If you were to value the sort of importance of what you do, which one is the most important? They’re both equally important, but, me saying, “Hey, you need good ventilation in here” is one thing. Or a scientist saying, “We need good ventilation,” they’re not going to know the specs. Do you guys know the specs and say, “Oh, we need this kind of ventilator”? And then what happens with that?
Dan: Yeah. So during the design phase, the people who we do repeat business for, they’ve relied on us to ask questions about the type of systems that are going in, some of the components related to it. A lot of it comes back to the performance verification criteria. So we actually have a document that’s call the PVC, the Performance Verification Criteria, and it’s essentially the pass-fail criteria that’s going to be used to measure whether or not a building meets the owners requirements.
So an example of that would be… It’s an infectious disease lab, and they want to know that they don’t have dirty air going out into the public areas.
Paul: Okay. Seems good. A good thing.
Dan: Seems like a really good idea. So, the actual delivery of that means that there are certain redundancies that have to be in place for your ventilation systems, for your power supply to the building. There usually would be an emergency generator. There will be uninterruptible power supplies that help certain things ride through that loss of normal power. And so there are components that we know have to be included in a building that may not even appear during the design phase. And we need to make sure those are there to make a unique requirement like that be met.
Paul: Right.
Making Sure Systems are Functioning: APV — Annual Performance Verification
Paul: So we’re sitting here just a few days after Hawaii announced that there was an incoming missile headed toward their island. And everybody is criticizing that to say how could that mistake could happen so easily. So it sounds like a lot of the things you’re doing — not necessarily in missile avoidance, or missile announcement — is to make sure that the systems that are put in place are actually going to function when they need to function.
Do you test them after they’ve been deployed? I mean, you hand over the keys to the building, are you guys done? Or do you have to retest them?
Dan: Some buildings we’re required to retest. Or I’ll just put it this way. Some buildings are required to be tested by the owners every year. Some owners will hire us to come back on an annual basis to do performance verifications. We call them APV — Annual Performance Verification, especially if it’s related to biocontainment laboratories.
Paul: What are the ones that don’t have you come back and do it? Do they do it themselves or…?
Dan: Some will do it themselves, but some of them just aren’t real critical. I’ve just talked to you quite a bit about biomedical research within infectious disease. That happens to be one of our primary areas of focus. But we do a lot of other kinds of buildings. Some of them are kind of fun buildings. We’ve done a done a passive house where it doesn’t have any power to it.
Paul: Really?
Dan: Because it’s a high performing house in New Hampshire. And we were doing a museum for a car dealer who’s getting all these exotic cars. And so that’s the kind of a thing that’s probably not going to be verified on an annual basis. Museums, a lot of museums as well.
Who Needs a Commissioning Service?
Paul: Are there needs? So we just talked about disease, and we’ve talked about a museum and a house. So there’s three radically different buildings there. I mean, who’s requiring doing this? Is it the owner saying, “I asked for it. I’m paying for it. I want to make sure it works”? Or is it the that the government is saying, “You need to make sure this stuff works”?
Dan: Well in the case of infectious disease research facilities, it’s Center for Disease Control.
Paul: Okay. So do you work with them?
Dan: We don’t work with them, but we work with the owners of these facilities who are going to be inspected by CDC.
Paul: I see. So that’s what’s going to happen. The CDC is going to come in and look at it, and they’re going to probably say, “Show us that this has passed.”
Dan: Yes.
Paul: And then they hand them your documentation.
Dan: Yeah.
Paul: Okay. Cool. Do you ever get involved in talking with them about that? You know, are there questions or is it just more of a paperwork issue?
Dan: It’s more of a paperwork issue. I mean, we’re recognized in the industry. And we’re speaking at the CDC Symposium in a couple of weeks. They have an international symposium on biocontainment, and we’re at that meeting every two years that they have it. So we’re recognized. We’re on the standards committees relative to defining what performance is required out of systems, especially ventilation systems.
Paul: They’d look at the documentation. Oh, Cornerstone did this. They’d be a relative comfort with that as opposed to Joe’s Commissioning. They’d say, “Who’s this? I don’t know Joe.” “What is this?” And they might dig deeper, but you’ve got a good reputation out there.
Dan: Yeah. And they’ll just look to make sure that our documentation shows that we tested the things that are required to a level of scrutiny that it ought to be taken to. Some of it’s prescriptive; some of it’s not. And so they rely on us to ask the right questions and test appropriately.
Testing and Fixing Commissioning Issues
Paul: And now, when you go and test, if you have a thousand tests that you have to perform, I can’t imagine they would all pass. There must be a lot of, “Oh, we’ve got to fix this. We’ve got to fix this. We’ve got to fix this.” I mean, just having had work done around my house, it’s like, “Oh, that’s not right.” Does that happen? Is there some churn in the work?
Dan: Yeah. So I’ll just say you, you’ve talked about three different kinds of buildings from a house to a museum to these high-end biocontainment facilities. I don’t care which one of those you pick, none of them are going to be done on time. I mean, that’s just the nature of construction projects because construction is complicated. But if, as you increase the sophistication and user requirements for a building, it elevates the challenge to get something finished on time.
Finishing it on time is one thing. You know, as a contractor will say, “I just packed up my tools. They’re in my truck. I’m leaving. I’m done.” Okay, that’s not usually defining when an owner of a building says, “Okay, it’s done.” That doesn’t usually coincide with the contractor leaving. There are usually things that still have to be done.
And when it comes to commissioning, making sure that a building actually works right, we find a lot of issues. We call them commissioning issues. And one of the most important aspects of working on the project — and this is a company philosophy that we have to work very closely with the owners, architects, engineers during the design phase. And then during the construction phase, we work with those same people but more even with the contractors.
And because it’s so hard to get some of this buildings to work right, we really have to engage people in a way that’s winsome and not irritate them. We don’t want people looking at us and saying, “Oh no. Here comes Cornerstone. Here comes the commissioning agent. All they want to do is document the living daylights out of any possible thing they find wrong, and then they’re going to get paid for finding all this stuff and making us look like we can’t get this building working.”
No. What we want to do, we go, “We are going to find issues. To the extent that we can resolve issues when we find them, that is part of our focus.” And so our interaction with these contractors is to build relationships, to work on this stuff together so when we find something, we brainstorm it, we document it, we hope to not have to have it addressed again on a repeated basis. But it really it’s a quality control process to get the building to do what the owner really needs it to do. And so when it’s done, we can all feel good that we’ve worked together to deliver an owner a building that really does what it needs to do with great proficiency.
Paul: Well, we’ve been talking with Dan Frasier of Cornerstone Commissioning. And we’re really delighted that you took the time to come in today and look forward to talking to you in the future.
Dan: Thank you, Paul. This has been a pleasure.
More Episodes:
This is Part 1 of our interview with Dan Frasier. Be sure to listen to Part 2 here! We’ll be talking about building control systems and continuous commissioning!
Also published on Medium.
The Permanence of Pictures in Today’s Digital World
On Episode 70 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with photographer Al Pereira about what it takes to be a great photographer and the permanence of pictures in today’s digital world.
Show Notes
Advanced Photo’s Website
Contact Al Pereira
Find Al Pereira on Facebook
Find Al Pereira on LinkedIn
UPI – United Press International
The Eagle Tribune
How To Get Your Drone License
FAA – Becoming a Drone Pilot
The Amazing New World of Drones Podcast
Link to SaviorLabs Assessment
Sections
Photographing With Drones
Photographers Should Be Great Leaders
Websites and Photography
Photographers As Communicators
Memories Matter – Why You Should Print Your Pictures
There Is No Excuse! – Finding Time To Print Photos
The Permanence of Pictures in Today’s Digital World
Photographing With Drones
Paul: Well so now, I know it’s been a couple of years now, but you’ve been in drones.
Al: Oh, yes. I actually got certified by FAA to fly them.
Paul: Okay. So you’re a certified drone pilot. But you didn’t want to fly drones so you could just fly around and look at neighbors’ pools and stuff. You know, look at power lines or something. You did it because you thought you could make a business out of it of taking cool photographs of businesses and offices and sites. So how has that been going?
Al: I’ll tell you. The drone industry has taken off. The business side of Advanced Photo, the drones has taken off. I do a lot of real estate pictures and videos. And it seems that every week, I get more and more jobs with not just taking photos of the inside of the house but also we need the video, and we need drone photos of the outside of the house. So in the last month and a half, I’ve actually ended up getting like six more real estate agents. And I don’t want to overdo it, but it’s in a comfortable kind of stage where I can handle the work.
But that’s not where it stops too, what I do. I actually do virtual tours of houses. So that’s a new technology that hasn’t been out that long where, if you are familiar with the way Google works when you find a street and you can walk down the street, it’s similar to that. You can do a complete 360. But the quality, it’s like you’re in that house. The grain of the woods is so sharp that you could almost touch it. That’s how much reality it is. And you capture the photographs from that, and it’s magazine ready.
Paul: Wow. That’s cool.
Al: That type of quality. So from drones, the virtual tours… I mean, there isn’t much that I don’t do and I don’t love doing. Everything. One of my realtors that says, “Al, I love working with you. You’re always excited every time I call you, and that makes me feel good. It makes me want to work with you.” And that makes me feel good.
Photographers Should Be Great Leaders
Paul: Well, it should. One of the things that I think differentiates you from a lot of photographers, and just from a lot of people, is you have a great personality. One of the things I think that’s important is, I’ve worked with a lot of photographers, and I know a lot of them. And a lot of people have been in a lot of weddings where you’re watching the photographer, and they’re sort of like saying, “Uh, move.” And doing this. And they’re talking with this diminutive voice, and they’re not saying things. “Look this way.” You know, there’s no energy. And I’ve seen you take control of a room. And, “Okay. Come on. Move over here. Look this way. Okay, I want you to tilt your head just a little bit this way.” And you’re directing them to make them look good. And I think that’s one of the keys for a good photographer is to be able to communicate effectively with the people you’re working with. And that is just so rare. I’ve seen it so much that it’s just all lacking.
Al: You know, I always had this philosophy. You get hired to do a wedding, and you have a job to do. Are you going to be a follower, or are you going to be a leader? In other words, when I get hired, I walk into the house. I gradually guide the bride from step A to B to C, and I get her to be on time from the house to the church, going down the aisle. A photographer, today’s photographers are not leaders, they’re followers. And they stand back and let the bride do the work technically on their wedding day. I just did a recent wedding, and it was amazing that the photographer would say, “Okay, what other picture do you want? What other picture do you want?”
Paul: And that’s not what they’re thinking about.
Al: And I was doing video at this particular wedding. I was like, “Oh, my god. I mean, how can this be? What’s going on?” And I call them “weekend warriors” because they really don’t know the poses. They don’t know the key shots. They’ll take 2,000 photos, but you’re lucky to get 100 decent ones. So it’s important that when you look for a photographer that you get a photographer that’s going to do the job and going to do the job without you having to think for them. They should know what needs to be done.
Paul: Right, yeah. And I think you’re right. Photography is leadership, and it’s coming in and saying, “You want this to look good. Let’s do it.”
Websites and Photography
So I’d like to touch on this. We actually just had Al take some photos for us for our website which you can see on the website. And we do a lot of websites for people, companies, whatever it might be. And I think the biggest problem with websites is bad photography or, even worse, is stock photography. It is just not what people are looking for. When they come to your website, they want to see pictures of you. They want to be able to identify you. So if you’re out there in business, and your website has stock photos on it, I would run as fast as you can to get a real photographer and get some taken. And don’t get, you know, the, the sister of the daughter of the president or something like that. “Oh, they’re, they’re good with a camera.” It’s not all that expensive to hire a photographer for a couple of hours, and you will get more photos than you could use. I will tell you, the conversion rate on real photos for people on websites, makes a huge difference.
Now what you can do is go and find some stock photos that you like the design of, and say, “This is the kind of photos I want you to make.” That will help. It will decrease the amount of time, but it’s an important investment. You could spend $1,000, $10,0000 on a website and spend that little extra money to get a photographer.
Photographers As Communicators
Al: With that being said, Paul, one of the things that I’ve found with previous jobs that I’ve had is the lack of communication. They’ll hire you, and they’ll say, “Okay, we need to have you go to a location.” Okay, fine. And you try to find out what it is that I’m there for, and there’s no communication whatsoever. And you get there, and you’re trying to figure out what it is exactly they want. So you ask questions. And sometimes, they get annoyed that you’re asking the questions. “Well, I hired you. Just do the job.”
“What am I doing?” I’m taking pictures, but what is the purpose of the photos?
So you hire someone, you really need to communicate to the point that, “Okay, this is for a website.”
“What’s the website about? What do you do? What kind of a business is it? Okay, your folks, do they have personality? I mean, are they willing to be in front of the camera?” There’s so much nowadays especially. The communication factor is so important.
Paul: Right. Absolutely. And I think that’s a good point, even for your website. What does it say, you know? You need to look at it. One of the most difficult things when you have your own business website is assessing what is it actually saying, because you read so much into it. So you need to almost sit down with somebody you don’t know and say, “Tell me what you think of this website. What does this company do? What do they want you to do?” I’ve done that with different people, and I will tell you, the difference of reaction between real photos and stock photos or real video. And also video is huge. Don’t underestimate that. A good video is worth so much. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Then maybe a video is worth 10,000.
Al: You know, one of the things that I always try to imagine is, “Okay, this is my business. What would I want?” I love eye contact with the camera. I love animation in a video or even in a photo, like for example, your staff. They love what they’re doing, and I want people to be able to see that. So the smile. It’s not always about being serious. It’s let’s capture that employee’s personality because you put that up, and people are going to say, “It looks like a fun, you know, place to work at.” And that’s more important than just having a snapshot, you know.
Paul: Well, I think what you’re talking about is relationships. What photos do is remind you of a relationship, whether it’s to a place or to people, or people in a place. And an effective communicator, that is called a good photographer, a good videographer. We want to tell stories, and that’s what photos do.
Memories Matter – Why You Should Print Your Pictures
Paul: Now we’ve also talked about this, just as sort of an aside, is it used to be that you’d have a closet full of slides or photos or the people that were a little more organized would put them in books. And they’d pull them out once in a while and look at them. That can’t happen anymore.
Al: Not unless you have a projector.
Paul: Or you put it on your phone, and you flip through them there. But it’s a very different experience. You know, it’s like looking at a two by three print.
Al: That’s correct. You know it’s funny. There are a lot of people out there that have old negatives in a shoe box or the slides. And I’ve always said, out of sight, out of mind. And what good are they in a shoe box? You should do something with them. And people say, “Well, what am I’m going to do with them?”
I say, “There’s a few things you can do. You can have them scanned in, digitize them. Now that CD or DVD that you have become negatives, your negatives.” Remember the old days when you would have a roll of film? You would get negatives back. Well, there’s no such thing now. But you need to back up your digital files. You can’t trust a computer. You can’t trust external drives.
Paul: That’s true, yeah.
Al: Even DVDs you need to really have a couple of them just in case.
Paul: Yeah. They’re not archival, as we call it.
Al: But, you need to do something with them. And then once you get them in front of you, then you say, okay, what do I want to print? Do I print them at least four by six and get that album. There’s nothing like having an album to sit down on the couch with a cup of coffee or at a table and look at photos. It’s not the same on the phone. It’s not. You’re lucky if you can find them, first of all.
Paul: Well that’s the biggest thing is you can’t find them. But I also have seen people now doing like a photo wall in their house where they’ll have just bunches and bunches of prints that they’ll put up and change them once in a while or move them around. But I just think that’s a great idea because we’re in this rush, rush world. But we have to stop and smell the roses and really enjoy the memories.
Al: Well, that’s important. If you read the paper or if you sometimes watch the news, in the Midwest, there’s a tornado; there’s a flooding. And it, it doesn’t surprise me, but I always hear, “I’ve got to get my photos. Those are my memories. You can’t replace memories. You can’t replace photos.” And they will almost kill themselves just to try to get those out of there. It’s different in this part of the world because everybody is so busy. They don’t think about the memories that they have captured—
Paul: Until it’s too late.
Al: —on their phone. Right. Until it’s too late. You know, I do slideshows for memorial services, and it’s rather sad that in the last seven, eight, almost 10 years now, I’ve seen less and less recent photos of the folks that have passed than ever before. So they’re scrambling to find anything they can. And it’s 20, 30 year old photos. They don’t look like that anymore. And one of the reasons too is, “Oh, I know we have photos, but we can’t find them. They’re on a computer, or they’re on a phone.”
Paul: Who knows where? On an old phone somewhere.
Al: Right. And it’s sad because those are your memories going forward. And I have also folks that have parents that have Alzheimer’s and so forth, and they come to me and said, “You know, the other day, I showed my mother this photo from my phone, and she had a beam in her face, and it’s like she remembered. So can you print these photos?” And you know what? It makes a difference in those people’s lives.
Paul: Yeah, it sure does.
Al: Because they look at it and, for some reason—
Paul: They remember.
Al: It kind of stimulates their mind as to when it was taken, how they were in the photo and so forth. So, people need to understand photos, that Kodak moment, still exists.
Paul: Yeah, it sure does.
There Is No Excuse! – Finding Time To Print Photos
Al: You just have to take the step, and there is no excuse — I don’t have the time — because there’s emailing the photos to your local lab, there’s uploading by going to their website. There’s so many different ways. Put them on a thumb drive. Go to the store. Put them in the slot, in the mail slot, with a note saying print all of them. You know what I mean? So, it’s a few seconds it takes.
Paul: Yeah, it is. It’s something very tangible. It’s very interesting when you hold the photo and if you haven’t experienced that — because you might not have any printed photos — give it a try. It’s really incredible. it’s something that’s just a neat experience.
Al: Just holding a photo. I mean, you can turn around and show it to a friend, and you can laugh. Okay, you could put it down and say, “You know what? Wait a minute. Let me go back and look,” where you don’t have to use your finger to scroll back and try to find it from a thousand pictures.
Paul: Yeah, there’s a lot more permanence to it and it just sits there and it’s a very different experience. I think it’s important for people to start.
Al: But you know what I have noticed in the last six months to a year that I’m getting a lot younger people coming in, especially when they go to college, they come in and they print a bunch of four by sixes so they can have it on their wall. And that really excites me because they look forward to seeing those photos once they’re printed, and they get excited, and they say thank you, you know.
Paul: Absolutely.
Well, we’ve been talking with Al Pereira of Advanced Photo in North Reading, Massachusetts. You can see his work by looking in our show notes and how to get in touch with Al and get to his websites. But it’s been a privilege to talk with you. Thank you for your time and we appreciate it.
Al: It’s been a lot of fun, Paul, and I really appreciate you having me.
Paul: Alright.
Al: Thank you.
Paul: Thank you.
More Episodes:
You’ve been listening to Part 3 of our interview with Al Pereira! If you missed Part 1, you can listen to it here and if you missed part 2, you can find it here!
Also published on Medium.
Exploring Christianity: Who is God?
On episode 58 of The Edge of Innovation, we are exploring Christianity and who God is with Pastor Paul Buckley of King of Grace Church.
Show Notes
The King Of Grace Church Website
Follow Paul Buckley on Twitter
Follow King of Grace Church on Facebook
Listen to Paul Buckley’s recent sermons
Read the Hawaiian Pidgin Bible online here
Read The Gospel of Mark online here
Read The Gospel of John online here
Read the English Standard Version of the Bible online here
Link to SaviorLabs’ Free Assessment
Sections
Pastors are Shepherds
What Does a Pastor Do?
The Nature of God – Who is God?
Is God a Mean Guy?
Looking Deeper in the Bible
The Gospels
Which Bible Should I Read?
Social Media as a Relationship Substitute
King of Grace Church – How it Began
The Presence of a Person
The Main Thing – Wrapping it All Up
Exploring Christianity: Who is God?
Pastors are Shepherds
Paul P: So you were, you’re a scientist. Not were. You are. And you’re a material scientist which is nontrivial. I mean, you know, it’s figuring out how things work and how they’re used in their extreme in some ways. Not just, oh, this is tape. You put it on something. It’s really stretching and understanding materials. I mean, before Post-It notes were invented, when Post-It notes were invented, they were a miracle. But a material scientist probably could have come up with that or would have been the type of person, and you were doing that in all sorts of different materials. So, I guess what I’m getting at is there was something there that wasn’t readily apparent. You know, Post-It notes was a failed experiment.
So now you were encouraged by the people around you, by your relationship with God, to go into ministry. I’ve always been struck by all the other countries in the world have minister of defense, minister of this, minister of that. And in America, we have secretary of defense.
So what does that mean to minister to people? So would you consider yourself a minister or a pastor, or are they different things?
Paul B: Well, minister is a title, and it connotes the idea of service. So, it’s a matter of protocol in some ways, what we call someone. Pastor literally means shepherd. In the scripture, you know, that’s what the role is called. So, I’m fine being called a minister. In our church and our group of churches, we typically don’t use the word minister. But I’m supposed to minister. I’m supposed to serve. I’m supposed to help people.
Paul P: So, help with what?
Paul B: Well, I help people in my role as a lead pastor.
Paul P: Do you come over and empty my trash.
Paul B: Sometimes.
Paul P: Are you serious?
Paul B: I’ve done all sorts of things in helping people. But that’s not the core of what I’m supposed to do — empty the trash. I need to be available to help people. A pastor’s called to really be like Christ. Really, all Christians are, but a pastor’s called to be like Christ in caring for others, shepherding people. Christ is the Good Shepherd, the ultimate shepherd. And pastors are seen as under shepherds. They’re shepherds that kind of are similar. So they’re to care of people.
So that metaphor of a shepherd and his flock is used in scripture quite a bit. It’s really the ancient, near-Eastern shepherd, not a Western shepherd. So the ancient near-Eastern shepherd lived with the flock. The flock knew him. He had names for all the sheep. He could speak to them, and he would lead them. He didn’t drive them. So he’d walk ahead to the next place, and they knew his voice. They’d stay close. He cared for them. And so that’s the image. A pastor is a leader who is integral to the flock. He’s part of the flock. He knows people. They know him. He leads in Christian truth. He leads in the application of that truth, coming alongside as someone who helps people. So there’s a degree of leadership. There’s a degree of assistance. There’s a degree of counseling and care that goes on. And a pastor is supposed to do that as part of a whole church.
So there are other people that come alongside and assist in many different roles, so you’re not by yourself in that but you’re kind of leading in that. So that’s kind of what I do.
What Does a Pastor Do?
Paul P: What does that physically, practically mean? I’m trying to figure out what is it you actually do. We sort of made the joke going over and emptying somebody’s trash or whatever. But I imagine it’s a lot more in depth than that. What is sort of the top level? Give some examples of what you do.
Paul B: Yeah, really, the most important things that a pastor is to do is really to minister in the word and in prayer — so to serve with the word of God. So you’re going to teach the Bible. You teach what it means and how we live in light of the Bible. So that’s done in many different contexts. That’s done in the context of relationships and meetings. Maybe you have different meetings, different groups that meet at the church, most centrally in our Sunday worship. There’s a message every week. You know, a 40, 45-minute message that’s given on the scriptures, the truth of the scriptures and the application of that. So you’re teaching the word but that’s also happening in relational contexts throughout the week.
I meet a lot in more one-on-one or one-on-two type contexts for what we would call biblical counseling. So people going through difficulties. It could be a long stint in unemployment and just wondering, you know, “What do I do?” And, “I feel terrible about myself, and so help me out.” And we talk about biblical truths that impact that and that help them endure through those times, where people are suffering and going through sickness. We have people with relational conflicts. And all the different problems of life, a pastor is to be a helper, comes alongside, helps with the truths of God’s word and understanding and applying and enjoying those truths.
Prayer would be something I spend time in, probably about an hour every day, just praying for our church. We believe that God is and he answers prayer, and we’re called to pray. All Christians are called to pray. But a pastor is really to spend a good amount of time praying, praying for his people. So that’s what I do.
During the week, we also, we’re an organization, as well. So we are an entity, an organization that has to be led and administered. So I oversee that. I don’t do too much of the administration. We have an administrator. We have different deacons, people who serve in the church in certain roles or responsibilities. So they do a lot of that, but I kind of oversee it. So there’s that aspect as well. I interact with other pastors and other, to some degree, community organizations and so that takes up part of the week. So all in all, I have to actually work hard to not spend too much time doing my job as a pastor and to keep my hours under 60.
The Nature of God – Who is God?
Paul P: Interesting. So now, we were talking about the sort of very nature of God, and you were saying he was good. There’s a lot of people who, I think, have an opinion on God that he’s a killjoy, or just angry man up in heaven. And, is that the accurate picture of him, do you think? Or would you agree with that or not?
Paul B: No, I think it’s a very shallow picture. I think you have to deal with the fact, though, that he’s just and he’s good. And there are bad things that go on, and there are bad things we do. So to kind of think that it’s a guilt-free thing, it wouldn’t be accurate in the sense that God can’t just sweep the wrong things we do under the rug, but he does make provision for forgiveness, and he wants us to receive that provision and live in it. So the rest of the story is that he’s a God of great love. He’s a God who is glorious and all these things we see around us in creation are things that he’s made. So he’s just fantastic in all the things that he does and all the things that he wants us to engage in with him. So he’s all those things. He’s good. And he provides for us. And he cares for us. He loves us deeply. He’s infinitely powerful.
And so, again, we touch on these things in life. We love what the Hubble Telescope shows you, you know. That’s what God made, and it shows us what he’s like. He’s glorious. He’s an artist. He causes the sun to rise and set and eclipses to happen and all these glorious things that, because of just his genius, his power, and he wants you to know him. And he wants us to enjoy eclipses, and he wants us to enjoy sunny days, and he wants us to love each other, and he wants us to form companies like Savior Labs to, to do good things, to use gifts. There’s just really innumerable types of things that we’re to do by God’s design, and it really shows his character.
So yes, we have to deal with the fact that he’s holy and good, and he’s concerned about the reality of our sin and our brokenness. But he provides for that, and he wants us to live in his love. He wants us to be reconciled and, and that’s a big motivator for us as a church — to live in those things and to so love our neighbors and our community that they would be interested in hearing that good news and experiencing its results.
Is God a Mean Guy?
Paul P: That’s fascinating. There’s been a strand through history of God being this mean god up there. Certainly, there’s a bunch of people, I would think, think that. And it sounds like the God you’re describing isn’t like that. It sounds like his predominant feature or attribute is love. And that’s like, okay, so what’s the big deal? If he likes me, that seems like it’s going to trump a lot of things. I’m wondering why the predisposition to thinking he’s this big, bad, mean, mean guy up there?
Paul B: Yeah. That’s a good question. I don’t know why we always think that. I think it can come from our own sense of looking at our lives and realizing that we’ve, when we compare ourselves against God, we don’t look too good. So the typical response when God shows up in scripture is for people to hide, uh, to be afraid. And I think that’s just because of who we are.
Again, we realize that something is wrong. So I think someone who’s realizing they’ve done something wrong is going to be predisposed to think that the party that they’ve offended is coming to be angry and deal with it. So that might be part of why we would think that way about God. But he’s so much more than that. Again, he is good. He’s not going to just wink an eye at those things. But he wants us to reconciled. He approaches us through Christ and invites us to be reconciled to him.
So his disposition is not primarily towards the offense. It’s towards us in love, towards reconciliation. So that’s how he is. That’s how he thinks about us. So that caricature of the angry man is inaccurate in that way. It’s not portraying who he is. But I think it does touch on the sense, our sense of guilt and the sense of there being a problem. And again, the Good News is that there’s a solution from God to deal with that.
Paul P: But it sounds like, not only is there solutions, but he’s gone out of his way to create the solution. So in other words, you know, it’s sort of like you offend me. I guess this is… Tell me if I’m paraphrasing you right. You’ve offended me, and so I’m offended. And I’m going to create the solution to reconcile with you, even though you’re the offensive one. I’m going to not only just create the solution, not just put it on the shelf, but I going to pursue you with it. That seems radical.
Paul B: Yeah. It is radical. And we see that in the life of Christ. As we read those stories, we see what God is like. Jesus says that. If you know him, you know the father. If you really want to know what God’s like, read about Jesus in one of the gospels.
Looking Deeper in the Bible
Paul P: What would you recommend somebody read if they’ve sort of known this or heard this or are socially aware of it but are sort of intrigued by some of the things they’ve heard?
Paul B: Yeah. I think lots of places. Two good places to go, quick read that gives you a quick and dramatic snapshot of Christ—
Paul P: Well, it is 2017, so everything has to be quick.
Paul B: It’s not that quick. It’s not just a tweet. But the Gospel of Mark, is packed with action. You get to see Jesus at work, and there’s a lot of explanation that goes on. He does something, and then it gets explained and interpreted. So it’s a great way to see what he’s like.
Paul P: All of these references will be in our show note. And so, if you’re driving now, you don’t have to write this down. You can go back to our show notes afterwards.
So what else would you consider something that would be an encouragement to somebody that’s curious about this?
Paul B: Another good place to start is the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is a little more intellectual maybe, a little more oriented towards concepts versus action. So Mark brings you who Jesus is through a lot of action and then explanation of the action. John is more… it’s still action. Jesus does things, but then there’s a lot of truth, a lot of ideas and concepts that are discussed and extended, and they go on for quite a while at times. I love them both. I like John in its depth of engagement and some of those concepts.
The Gospels
Paul P: So you said the Gospel of Mark or the Gospel of John. What, what does that mean? In the Bible, there are all these different chapters or books in there and they are… Are they stories? Or what, what are they?
Paul B: The gospels. Again that would is just an old English way of saying Good News. So they’re the Good News according to Mark and, really, the good news about the life of Christ according to Mark. And they are ancient biographies. It’s important to understand ancient biographies are not like modern biographies so that the genre of biographies at that time was more about exposing you to the hero by kind of giving you snapshots. And it’s not a chronology. It’s not a detailed chronology of the hero’s life. It’s really like here’s what happened. Here’s what he did, and here’s what that means. Boom, boom, boom. You get a lot in that, so I’m not trying to underplay what you get from it. But if you go into it thinking I’m going to see a detailed, chronological biography of Jesus, you’re not going to see that.
Paul P: He was born on this day. It was a Thursday. It was raining. His parents were this, and then he grew up, and he, liked trains. Okay.
Paul B: Yeah. So it’s just a different type of literature, but really engaging biography.
Which Bible Should I Read?
Paul P: Okay. And so you’d recommend reading the Gospel of Mark and, and/or the Gospel of John. And now I know there are lots of different bibles out there. I mean, you can get the Photoshop bible, which tells everything about Photoshop. So you’re talking about, I think, the Holy Bible, of course, but there are different translations. There’s old English, which is sort of the, I think it’s called the King James Version, and what would you suggest would be more easy to read or easy to understand Bible that might be something that, you know, so you can choose from anything you want. We’re in America. We’re on the internet. We can pretty much get any, anything we want right now. Where would you have them turn?
Paul B: My favorite is the English Standard Version. All these versions are just different translations into English. So they’re pretty much all from the same original languages. So they’re all working off the same language — Hebrew and Greek and so forth. It’s just how do you say that in English? How do you translate it into our language? So they all agree very much. It’s just how do you phrase it.
So the English Standard Version is very well done. It’s a little more kind of college-level English, which can be good sometimes, because it can be more precise when it needs to be. If you want something that feels more kind of like how you talk with your best buddies, you know, the Contemporary English Version is good. And sometimes, you know, that is more effective.
I remember hearing a story of someone who went to college and was exposed to a Bible like the English Standard Version and read it and engaged in it. And they had grown up speaking, as a child, Pidgin English in Hawaii, and they were at some seminar, and there was a Bible translator reading out of a Hawaiian Pidgin English Bible, and this person was just touched deeply in their heart in ways that they had never been before, hearing the same words they had heard in a different translation now spoken in their childhood language. So it can has been that effect. So if you’re more comfortable kind of with the common vernacular you grew up with, maybe the Contemporary English Version. But the English Standard Version is an excellent—
Paul P: Well, we’ll put links to those in the show notes, maybe even the Pidgin…Hawaiian Pidgin English? Is that what it’s called?
Paul B: That’s it. Yeah.
Paul P: Wow.
Paul B: It’s called the Jesus Book.
Social Media as a Relationship Substitute
Paul P: Wow. Interesting. So we’ve sort of touched on social media and social, well, sort of social things — clubs we talked about and associations. And how do you think that is, we’re in 2017. There’s never been a 2017 yet. We’re in the first version of it, the only version of it. And we’ve never had the internet like we have it today. It’s all these new things. Imagine similar to the way the printed book was hundreds of years ago, or than the telephone was a hundred years ago, or not even a hundred years ago.
So all of these technologies come about. I think one of the differences between, I mentioned I’m into photography, so there’s been a photography club since photography was invented and people who were interested in it sort of clustered together and socialized and fellowshipped and got interested in that. But that took a very active, deliberate, act to go to a photo club. You’d have to go and do that.
Now with the internet, they’re sort of in our pocket. We can do anything we want. We can self-identify or have affinity to these groups that are much less, I guess, maybe tactile. You can have this virtualization of yourself to say, “Oh, yeah, I’m, I’m into photography because I go to this website that covers photography,” but there’s no person-to-person contact there. I might have a post on a Facebook page.
So what does that mean? Is that good? Is it bad? Is it a placebo for real relationships? And is it somebody sitting there trying to fill a need that ultimately they can’t fill because there’s nobody else in the room?
Paul B: Yeah, so is your question related to just the impact of these things on the church?
Paul P: I think that the church is one way to experience relationships. There is a big aspect of it based on what you’ve said. And what I’ve observed is that relationships are pretty important. So social media tends to, I think — I don’t want to overuse the word — become a placebo for relationships.
Paul B: Yeah, I think it’s a tool for relationship but I think we have to be careful to use it appropriately. So it can only do certain things. It can’t do other things. And I think the mistake is that we think it does it all. But like you were saying, placebo, you know, it gives this sense, like “Well, since I watch this church’s Sunday service from my house, I’m part of the church, and I’m, I’m good. I’m good to go, you know. I’m really involved in this church that I watch every Sunday,” or every Sunday night or whatever.
Now I don’t think it’s wrong necessarily to watch a church service on video. It can be great. But is that really what is intended in being part of a church? There’s so much more. There’s relationships, as you were saying. There’s a depth, there’s a breadth of relationship that is supposed to be part of being in a church. If you don’t have any commitment to anybody in that church to be there when they’re needy and just to be a friend—
Paul P: That’s what I’m saying.
Paul B: —to just to enjoy life together to some degree together as well, then you’re really not a part of that community. You’re just an observer. And yes, I think we can be anesthetized to the need for real community through the use of social media. And so we need to be wise and use it as a tool that’s appropriate to do certain things but to not use it as a total replacement for genuine community.
Paul P: I think one of the things in social media, that a lot of don’t necessarily recognize is that you don’t have any of the nonverbal cues that you can walk into a room and sense that somebody is not having a good day or is having a fantastic day. And you don’t have any way to perceive that in social media. And so it’s almost like a vacuum between us. And again, it’s not bad to send a message from one person to another or from me to the ether and everyone sees it that says, “I like Golden Retrievers.” Okay. It’s like that’s not a bad thing there. But if I don’t have a situation where people are perceiving my joys and sorrows, I’m missing out on a lot, I guess.
The Presence of a Person
Paul B: Yeah. I mean, you could analyze it from many avenues. The communication bandwidth is limited, as you were saying. So that’s certainly true. And there’s other media that’s true as well. The telephone, which we use quite a lot, doesn’t allow us to see each other. It’s a little bit better than text because you can hear in a voice. You can hear tones and cadence and all those things. So, it’s limited. Social media is limited in its bandwidth, but there’s other things that it can’t touch on, beyond just its ability to communicate or not communicate. I think there’s a huge statement in presence when we’re with somebody physically. We’re there. We’re there in their own space. We’re eating a meal together. We’re there physically. There’s an implication of friendship commitment. And there’s just something that it does for us in our relationships what we have experiences together where we’re near each other. We — I don’t know — go hang gliding together or something, you know. We’re going to talk about that for the rest of our lives. “Remember that time we went hang gliding?”
It wasn’t just that you went hang gliding, and then I went hang gliding a week later.
Paul P: We texted about it?
Paul B: “Oh, we both did that. And let’s talk about it.” No.
“We went hang gliding together. And, you know, I heard you when you, when you screamed, you know. And, I saw you. You put that landing. And then did you see the seagulls flying around?” You know, whatever it is. There’s a relationship, a fellowship in a sense in that activity together. So that’s way beyond just communication.
And then I think with that is just the life commitment of walking through life together and knowing that this person is here for me, you know. I mean, there are different levels of commitment. So within marriage, that’s a pretty high level. But the church is like a family. Family, that’s a very high level. Church is compared to a family in scripture. And so that community, the intension is that there be this life on life experience. And so social media can never do that.
Paul P: Alone it can’t do that. But I think it can enhance?
Paul B: Yeah. It’s a tool. And when it’s used appropriately, it can be very helpful.
King of Grace Church – How it Began
Paul P: Cool. So now, how long have you been doing this? You’re a pastor at a church, King of Grace in Haverhill, Mass. And we talked about you started out in Methuen and then moved into Haverhill. And so how long has this church been in existence?
Paul B: We celebrated our 15th anniversary in September actually. And I left to be trained as a pastor 17 years ago.
Paul P: So you didn’t just say one day, “I’m going to be a pastor,” and just say, “I’m open up a church.” That you actually planned and methodically went through this? Or was it “we’re going to drive to Boston?”
Paul B: Yeah. No, I didn’t want to do anything that crazy. It was a process and certainly there were other things that went on leading up to the decision to leave my job. So it was a smooth transition in the sense that it wasn’t like all of a sudden I went from doing nothing related to being a pastor to now being going off to be trained. I had been doing a lot of pastoral sorts of things up to that point. So when it was time to make the decision, it made sense.
And then I went to be trained at a pastors’ college within our denomination that has an accelerated program. So a lot of the elements you get over two or three years in seminaries, you get at this pastors’ college in nine or ten months.
Paul P: Oh, I see. Okay.
Paul B: It’s very intensive. It’s with pastors and the teachers, you get to interact quite a bit. A lot of mentoring that goes on. So it was a great. For me, it was nine month. And then I went into an internship to be further mentored and prepared. That was 11 months. And then from that I formed a team, worked with a team, and we all together started the church in 2002.
Paul P: So 15 years we’re coming up on. Are you where you expected? Not as far? Further? Or did you have no expectations or…?
Paul B: I’m grateful to be where we are. I’ll put it that way. Our church is about 200 folks that are there on a Sunday. In New England, that never happens, but that’s about how many folks we have and wonderful people and get into a lot of wonderful things.
When I started out, I was new at it and I planned out where I wanted to be. I had a one-year, five-year, a 10-year, and a 20-year plan. And so at this point, I think we’re at about the five year mark.
Paul P: Oh, really.
Paul B: Yeah.
Paul P: In what dimension? Numbers or building or…
Paul B: Multiple, multiple aspects. So, the numbers were related to just what I hoped would be the overall maturity of the church. I wanted it to be a church that was full of people that were fairly mature in their Christian worldview and the practice of that, a church that was effective in the community, reaching out to the community, being a helpful part of the community influencing people with the truth of Christianity. Also a church that was sending out other church plants. So there was a bunch of metrics that I had along those different time lines. So yeah, the five year would be inclusive of all those things. So, yeah.
Paul P: So it sounds like your expectations were higher than — dare I say — what God’s were?
Paul B: Yeah. And that’s fine with me. I think it’s better to, to aim high and then be content with what you get, so, rather than aim low and not get where you should be. So I still aim high. But it it’s tempered with some years of experience at this point.
The Main Thing – Wrapping it All Up
Paul P: Right. So, I guess just in closing, what would you sort of want to sum up? We’ve had a fairly meandering discussion here. But what would you want to say as a sort of summary of what we’ve talked about. And again, we’ve got lots of different people all over the world listening to this. They’re not all Bostonians who have a Boston worldview, which everybody in Boston thinks it’s the center of the universe, just if you don’t know that. So what would you what to sort of wrap up and put a bow on? The main things. Making sure the main thing is the main thing or remains the main thing, I think?
Paul B: Yeah. Wow. That’s a good question. We’ve talked about a lot of things. I think one of the big ideas in what we’re talking about is that we’re made by a good and great, incredibly interesting, creative, powerful, loving, good, and holy God. We’re made by him in his image, and he wants us to live that out in all it’s meant to be. But we need help with that. Left to ourselves, we’ve failed and will continue to fail. And in his care for us, in his goodness, he got involved, became a man, provided in the life and death and resurrection of Christ, a way for us to be reconciled with him and to start to fulfill what we’re made for, to image him, and all that that means. In all the different dimensions of creation and humanity. That’s offered to us. It’s a gracious gift. It’s a free gift, and we simply need to receive it, believe it, live in it, and I think live it out in the context of a community of faith, Christian faith. And I think it makes all the difference.
And I’d love to talk more and more, just about how it applies to every area of life. Again, I love science and wish I could do science and be a pastor. But, I know that worldview and that truth of being made in the image of God has a huge impact on how we do science, what we do science. And similarly with technology, with everything it connects.
So if I had to sum up, I’d say it’s about that big idea, being made by God in his image, and made for something that’s pretty fantastic. But we need help. We need him.
Paul P: Cool, very cool. Wow. We’ve been talking with Paul Buckley who’s the lead pastor at King of Grace Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts. All of his contact information and some of the resources we mentioned will be in the show notes, if you’re interested. And we appreciate your time in listening, and thank you for listening to the Edge of Innovation. Talk to you next time.