The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 081 – A Step By Step Guide to Minimizing Opposition When Leading Organizational Church with Rob Cizek
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before, in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. - Well, hey everybody, and welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff, and I hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. Hey, I just got off the road from, well, actually quite a bit of travel, at least quite a bit of travel for me, and had a chance to meet a lot of you. In places like Los Angeles, Seattle, connected with a few leaders in Nicaragua on a compassion mission trip also in Atlanta and in Washington, DC. So if you were one of those folks that I got a chance to connect with on the road, man, what a lot of fun that was. And coming up next month, I will be in Atlanta for the Rethink Leadership Conference and the Orange Conference, which are happening concurrently. If you haven't yet registered for Rethink Leadership, make sure you do that. Go to RethinkLeadership.com, and that is a conference exclusively for senior leaders, basically for lead pastors, executive pastors, and campus pastors. There is still room, so if you haven't registered yet, make sure you do that and go to RethinkLeadership.com. And then I will be briefly at the Orange Conference. My leadership is really more at the Rethink Leadership event this year because what used to be the senior leader track at the Orange Conference has grown up into its own conference, the Rethink Leadership Conference. So I will be at the Orange Conference some nights and for a few of the main sessions, and other than that, I'll be across the street at 12 Stone Church at the John Maxwell Leadership Center for the Rethink Leadership event there. So you can check everything out online. All the links to this are in the show notes. Also, just wanna say thanks to all of you who continue to leave ratings and reviews, both for this podcast and my book. Thank you so much. And for all the encouraging email that comes in, man, we got a great season up ahead on the podcast. And before we jump into today's conversation, let me tell you, you're in for a treat. You're gonna meet Rob Sizik from Seattle. And he talks all about how to lead change. I wrote a book a few years ago called Leading Change Without Losing It, where I wrote about how to handle opposition and change. I'm actually gonna rewrite that book this summer and release it in an expanded edition later this year. And I'm super excited about that. And some of the material that Rob covers is similar to what I'm gonna be putting in the expanded Leading Change Without Losing It book. So this is just really, really practical stuff. If you're trying to lead change, how do you do it? How do you make sure you get consensus around change? Rob's got some great insights, so that's coming up. And one more thing, so many of us have been encouraged by and practically helped by Dave Ramsey. And he's got a really cool stewardship conference I want you to know about as a leader. It's coming up in May from May 16th to 18th in Franklin, Tennessee. It's gonna be an incredible time. Dave Ramsey himself is gonna be there. Perry Noble, Pete Wilson, Anthony O'Neill, who's a youth and money expert. Chris Brown, who, well actually, a lot of these guys have been on this podcast. Perry has, Pete has, Chris Brown has. We've also got Rabbi Daniel Lapine, Todd Mullins, Ron Blue, and Howard Dayton. They're all gonna be at this event. It's called Stewardship Conference 2016. It will show you how to create a culture of stewardship at your church. So Dave and his team are gonna join some America's greatest pastors, leaders and experts to help you get there. You can find out more information by simply going to my show notes. You can just go to carrynewhoff.com/episode81. Or you can just go to Dave Ramsey.com, click on events and you'll find it there. So love for you to be part of that. And that's happening May 16th to 18th in Franklin, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville. So wanted to let you know about that. Hey, so who isn't leading change? I mean, if you're not changing, you're dying. That's the bottom line. But the question is, how do you do it? That's why I'm super excited to have my guest Rob Sizik, who is the executive pastor at North Shore Christian Church, just north of Seattle, Washington. Here's my conversation with Rob. Well, on this day where I sort of have a voice, I'm recovering from a cold. It's funny, Rob, you know, these are the days where you feel better, but you sound like you're dying. But I decided to do this interview with you anyway, Rob. Welcome to the podcast. - Oh, I so appreciate it, Carian. And you know, it's funny that you have a cold because I actually had to call you about four weeks ago and say, I got a reschedule because I have no voice. - Oh, that's right. - Because I was going through this. So there is just something about this winter and the people that I've run into. It just seems that there's more colds and more very, very tough colds out there than what I've seen in the past. So I guess it's your turn and I'm sorry it's your turn. - Well, you gave it to me. I'm going to blame you. All you people from Seattle, like my goodness, infecting those of us from Toronto. It's unbelievable. But Rob and I have known each other for a couple of years and it's just a thrill to have you as a guest today, Rob. So tell people a little bit about your background, what you do right now. You're an exec pastor and tell us about where and then you didn't start out in ministry. You actually started out doing something else. And while you do that, I'm going to hack up a long day here. I'll tell us what you're up to. - Port Gary, extra brouty points for you for doing the podcast today. Well, yeah, I am executive pastor at North Shore Christian Church in the Seattle area. We're a church of about 1,500, non-denominational. And we also have a school that's a ministry of our church that runs 1,000 kids during the weekdays. So this is a 24/7, seven day a week, fully 100% utilized facility that we have going on here that we very much appreciate God giving us the opportunity to oversee that. And really, that's one of the reasons why you need an executive pastor when you have so much going on within your organization that a senior pastor really needs to focus in on what senior pastors do well. And that's teaching and shepherding. And my responsibility really is probably better, title might be administrative pastor. So most of us have the executive pastor title. A lot of folks don't know what that is. So you say, well, I'm the administrative pastor. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. - Well, the executive pastor is very mysterious, right? Sounds very high profile. You got a nice office, parking spot, the whole deal. - Well, I'm not sure about that one. - Yeah, but you know, it's funny because let's go there for a second, Rob, because like 20 years ago, only Bill Heibels had an executive pastor, right? It seemed, it seemed. That's what it was like. But now like, I talk to people with churches of 200 and they're like, yeah, and I'm the executive pastor. I'm like, okay. I didn't know that there was anything to be an executive of. But in some cases, that's sort of a new term for associate, right? - Well, it kind of depends on how people, yeah, in basically most churches who have a, what would be considered a regular executive pastor or administrative pastor are probably a thousand or more in attendance. But I've seen the title get used by other churches in different ways. But I know that the first I heard of it, I think the genesis of executive pastors is not a hundred percent known. But the first time I heard of it, it was between John Maxwell and Dan Ryland when they were in San Diego. And they simply put came up with the idea that Dan would take over the administrative functions of the church and free John to do teaching and speaking as he was doing. And I know that they did a lot preliminarily. I listened to some recordings that they had done about how they delineated their responsibilities. And so they were very influential for me and for a lot of other people in making that executive pastor role happen. Yeah, and that's the idea, right? I mean, once you, and we're just moving well past the 1,000 mark in attendance. And I know for me, it's a layer of complexity. And for a long time, I would guess I was the executive pastor, which means it probably didn't get done. But, you know, 'cause you're all good at some things. I was good at starting things, communicating, so on and so forth. But I can see that. And I did not, let me clarify. I did not mean to disparage small churches that have executive pastors. That's great. It's just, when we were 200, I was the executive pastor and the expaster and the Y pastor and the Z pastor. So, you know, it was that sort of thing. So I think that's awesome. There's a lot more in the church and a lot who listened to this podcast, which is great. Well, one of the things that has been an interesting phenomenon over the last few years as this has developed is so many of the executive pastors are coming not through Bible school and seminary, but they're coming up through the business world. And, you know, you'd ask me about where I came from. That was definitely part of my story. I was in broadcast TV news before I became an executive pastor. And it was just amazing how God prepared me in that environment, because I oversaw staff, I oversaw budgets, I had multiple departments that I had to work with and communications, legal, HR, all of that I had to do at a television station. - Yeah, and so what were you, were you a producer or what did you do with your administrator? - I started as a producer and that's the person who assembles the newscaster, write the stories, work with the reporters, with the anchors. And then I sit in the control room while the newscast is actually going on calling the shots, which was a really fun introduction to television and just some great memories doing that. And then I moved on to the news director role, which is the person who oversees the entire department. And that's really where I learned a lot of the skills that I use now in the church. And I ran into, I've been doing it for a while and God really blessed me. I was able to hit a lot of the career marks that I had aspired to. So I just started praying and I prayed the same prayer every day, I said, Lord, I just checking in, I wanna make sure this is still what you want me doing. And I prayed that prayer for two years, didn't hear a thing. Until I met the executive pastor at my church, didn't know he was the executive pastor, didn't know what an executive pastor was, but he goes, he was having the executive pastor. I said, well, you must have gone to Bible school for like 20 years, 'cause that's a real impressive sounding title. He's like, no, I didn't go to Bible school at all. And I'm like, okay, I was an executive. I was on the corporate staff of Kelloggs. And I'm like, wow, well, I'm on a corporate staff. And he went on to explain to me the things that we were just talking about. You need to, the churches get larger and they need to have senior pastors who are focused on teaching and vision and shepherding. And he talked about, and he's at a church of 30,000 now. He talked about how that was just really necessary. And continue to pray and one thing led to another. And before I knew it, I was an executive pastor, so. - Isn't that interesting? And I know there's lots of business leaders who listen to this podcast as well. And sometimes you think, man, you're just disenfranchised. But I was a lawyer before I went into ministry, got a call into ministry. People used to ask me, Rob, in the early days, like, do you ever use your law? And for the first few years, I kept saying no, 'cause I'm not reading contracts or, you know, in court litigation was my thing. It's like, not really. And now I think I use my law every day. It reshaped my mind. It, you know, I'm not interpreting documents or arguing over contracts. But, you know, it reshapes how you think. It changes your analytical abilities. And hopefully, it gives you a whole new lens through which to view ministry. And I think the church needs more entrepreneurs. And I think we need more business leaders who are in the game and helping the mission move forward. So that's encouraging. It's inspiring. So what do you do all day as an exec pastor? (laughing) That's what people ask me. - Oh my gosh. - Nothing is, nothing. - Do you, have you surprised how many times people ask me that question? I've been at my church for 10 years now. And I still think there's people walking around here going, what's that guy do? - I say, hey, listen, if you're a lead pastor, they have no idea what you do. Like, it's only an hour on Sunday, right? It's like, yeah, yeah. It takes me about 20 minutes to prepare. So for the rest, I just hang out. - Yeah, well, what I do all day is really driven by the mission of my position. And that is, I am here to serve the senior pastor. And that's how I view my role. And that means, you know, I have 30,000 foot responsibility for our budget, for our relationship with our school, for communications, for problem solving, special projects. If there's a ministry area that needs to help, I might jump in and do that for a while. All of the things that I can do to really keep that stuff out of his office. And the biggest thing that I do to support him, and this is my own take on the position, but I believe my role as chief of staff is the most valuable to my senior pastor. Because I meet regularly with all of the department heads, all of the ministry leaders. I have time to invest in those relationships so that when the inevitable problems or conflicts arise, there's relational capital there. There's knowledge, there's institutional knowledge there that I can step in and help those ministries with whatever they're going through, and thus help our church go through it. - Yeah, and that's really good. And for the senior leaders who are listening to this, or other leaders who are wired like me and you're like, wow, people actually get up in the morning and they wanna do that stuff. You really do, don't you? - I do, I love coming in and doing my job. I love our staff to a person. I like and enjoy everybody who's here. And while nobody enjoys the inevitable problems that come up, I do get to seek out at work doing them. So in helping to resolve them. So yeah, I've got the best job in the world. I know you senior pastors think you got the best job in the world, but there's a secret as XPs, we like our jobs. - I think that's the, you know, that's the whole body of Christ metaphor two Ephesians four that when everybody works in their area of strength, whether that's in a staff, a paid staff role, or just serving as a volunteer in the church, we always assume because I don't like doing it, nobody likes doing it. And that's just not true. And when you really get a fully orb team functioning, it's pretty powerful. Well, that's cool. Okay, so we're gonna focus in on change today 'cause your church has been through a lot of change, Rob. You just tell us about the talk you did. And then I wanna pick your brain on change because as you know, I'm a student of change in change theory. So this is fascinating to me. - Well, you've even written the book on change. - Well, one of them, I'm on change. - A book on change. - A book on change. - By the way, it's coming out later this year in a brand new revised expanded format, leading change without losing it, will be reissued this fall. - It's a great book. I've got it on my shelf and read it when it came out and actually some of the things in there were what we used to help lead change here here at North Shore. - That's cool. So tell us, you gave this presentation at what XP, what's it called? - It's called expaster.org. It's an annual conference in Dallas. It's sort of the national conference for executive pastors. And I was pleased this year to have an opportunity to present a session called How to Lead Organizational Change. - Wow. - And it was based on the last four years of what we've been going through here at North Shore. And our story is pretty simple, but I think that it's very applicable to most churches in their change journey. Our specific journey was we're a 25 year old church. We've been doing church in the attractional and programmatic model for a long time. And what we found was we had a lot of baby Christians. We were real good about getting people in the door and getting them to hear the gospel and to make a decision. But we really weren't so great about growing them up spiritually. So our senior pastor came to me and said we really need to change the vision of our church to something called relational discipleship, which is just a spiritual growth through knowing each other and small group environments. This was a significant cultural change for us. And that's what we've been working on for the past four years. So that's where a lot of what I'm sharing today came from. - Great, great. So organizational change is difficult. And the reality is a lot of the time we go to conferences and the communicator, Rob, as you know, started a church and it's 18 months old or five years old or 10 years old and it's grown from zero to 10,000 in 20 minutes in the whole deal. And that's not most of our reality. Most of us go to those places inspired, overwhelmed, intimidated, and then we have to go home and we have to change our church. Why do you think so many people find it difficult to navigate organizational change? - Well, I think first of all, as leaders, I think we're a little more comfortable with the idea of change. It's part of our job description. It's part of how we've been trained. But the difficulty really comes in leading our people. And the reason why that's hard is because all of our people in our congregation have an idea of what church is supposed to be like. And you know what? They already like what we do. And I think that that's a hard concept for people to get. They vote with their feet, their bringing their tithes and offerings to our church. They enjoy the people. They enjoy the teaching. They enjoy the music. They're not here because they have to be. They're here because they want to be and they really like what's already at your church. - That's right. You're changing what attracted them in the first place and what they currently value. Because if they didn't like it, they would have left. So really the point. - Exactly. And there's another thing about people. And that is many of the leaders in our church are lay leadership, the people who volunteer in our children's ministry and leader Bible studies. They're really pretty good at doing what they do now. And they're getting praise from other people. My gosh, I love how you teach the word. I can't wait to come next Wednesday night and hear you. So they're deriving value and identity from what's already happening at your church. And when you start talking about change, it can feel very devaluing to them. And lastly, I think that change is tough for us as leaders because at the end of the day, let's admit it folks, we are all people pleasers. We want people to like us. And when we show up with the change message, not always so popular. - Yeah, that's true. And I think that's what makes it tough for a leader is a leader who looks out there and goes, "Oh, all of a sudden these people don't like me. "Now I'm gonna change. "I'm gonna change course or whatever." So walk us through the ingredients that you have found to be effective in navigating organizational change. - Sure. Well, there's just a handful of them. - Okay. - There are five of them and I'll just go through 'em. - No looks are open. All right, well, maybe what we'll do is, well, we'll put these principles in the show notes. So you can always go to the show notes and get sort of this outline. That'd be great. We'll do that. - Great. The first two are gonna be pretty obvious to all of us as leaders and that all church change starts with vision. Typically, that vision comes from the senior pastor. It's something that's been prayed through or maybe discussed with the board and developed jointly with a board or some deacons or an executive team. But typically the vision for the church starts at the senior leadership level. Then it moves into strategy. Strategy is how you actually get from where you are today to where you wanna be tomorrow. That's your plan, that's techniques that you use. And I really don't wanna camp out too much on vision and strategy because I think that most folks have a pretty good handle on it. - Well, actually, if I can push back on that for a second, Rob, I really wanna drill down. Like, people toss around vision, like everybody knows what it means. And sometimes I'm not convinced people do. So when you think about vision, like what does vision mean to you as a senior leader in your church? - Vision is simply what God has called us to do that makes us different within our community. There's so many, you look around and you go, gosh, there's just so many churches in every town that you go to. And you go, why is that? Well, for me, that's how God uses different churches in different ways to reach different people. So I try, for me, I try not to misdesize vision. But even the word itself seems to be so mystical. And I think it scares people off. Well, no, I don't think it really has to scare people off. God has, if you read in Scripture, God has a limited number of roles that he expects the church to play in the world. And typically, I see him assigning different niches to different places. Although he expects us to carry them all, the truth is that certain churches are better at certain things. And that's really gets down to their vision, what God's called them today. And you need to be able to articulate that vision, right? You need to, does it have to be a phrase? Does it have to be memorable? Most certainly, and that's where the real work is. And if you want to look at the master of that, of course, is Andy Stanley, who is able to take a very broad and complex vision and boil it down to one sentence that is something that people remember and that they can repeat. And that's not something that necessarily comes in an afternoon retreat. That's something that's the work of senior leadership is not only to have the vision, but to find a way to communicate it to people so that it resonates with them. So an example would be for a vision for your church. I'm just gonna take a shot at it and you can tell me what it really is, but like to move toward a relational discipleship model. Is that the vision or what was it? What was it in your case that you were trying to navigate? Well, we moved from, you know, what we would say in our church was about previously, was share, connect, grow, and serve. That was the function. Those are actually functions of the church and they were what were on the last doors in front of our church. And those still remain obligations of ours, of course, but we took the razor blade and scratched those off. And our vision now is simply to love God, to love people, and to create disciples who make disciples. And that's all we ask our people to remember about what our church is about. Right, right, so to create disciples that make disciples. So yeah, that is different. Okay, and then you said strategy and I think that's really important. I'm not convinced all leaders understand what a strategy is because I always think strategy gets divisive, right? Because if it's like, okay, love God, love others. Well, who's really gonna fight that, Rob? Like really, who's gonna fight that? An atheist maybe, or, you know, a really cantankerous person. But for the most part, nobody's gonna fight that. But when you get a strategy, that might mean, well, we're gonna shut these ministries down or we're gonna fund these, not yours. Or in order to do that, we're not having Wednesday night anymore. Or we're having Wednesday night. I mean, that's where it starts to get divisive, isn't it? Yeah, it really is, and strategy is your plan and it's your specific plan. And it is where the conflict comes up. And part of that is, you know, how is your church known? Your church is typically known by its calendar and its budget. So you go into any church, look at those two things. You're gonna have a pretty good idea of what's going on. So when you look to implement a strategy, that's okay, how are we actually gonna make our vision reality? There's a plan. And that plan by its very nature is going to be specific and it's going to value certain things. Some people would say, well, while it's valuing that thing, it's devaluing my thing. And that's really where a lot of the conflict comes. And it's just a little bit what we were talking about earlier. And that is a big part of implementing change is leading your people to understand, okay, here's what we're called to do. And most people aren't gonna argue with it because you've backed it up with scripture and most, you know, intelligent people will go, well, that really makes sense that something Christ would have us do. But it's the tricky part of change is leading your people through that strategy. So if it's okay, I'd like to talk a little bit about how we lead our people through that strategy. - Totally. - Okay, so we have our vision. We have our strategy for figuring out how we're gonna go from where we are today to where we wanna go tomorrow. But now we have to bring that to our people. And this is where I think a lot of churches get into trouble. So I'd like you to think of your church as a pyramid. And at the very top of that pyramid is your staff and your executive team and elders. They're the senior leadership of your church. And I think there's a temptation to run out when you have a vision and just tell everybody, I wanna go out, you know, Sunday morning, I'm gonna tell you about the new direction for the churches. - Right, so in other words, you've now finished your retreat and you just get up and you preach it. - Yeah, man, it kind of makes sense until you really stop and think about it. And you're gonna know this is, this is an organization filled with people. So I gotta work on the people. And the first people I gotta work on are the people who are at the top of this pyramid. So you start with individual meetings, find out who the most influential people are amongst the staff, amongst the board. Take 'em to lunch. Listen, this is what I'm here and I've been on retreat. This is the direction I feel that God's calling us to do. And, you know, I'm letting you in first. I'm letting you in early. And that values those influencers. But for you, it gives them an opportunity to speak into what you're thinking. So now you've got an opportunity to go, "You know what? That is a problem that I hadn't thought about." So now you're beginning to refine your communication and how you wanna work with people, even from day one, from those first individual meetings with your staff and with your board. - Can I ask you a question? 'Cause this always comes up when I talk about change too. How many people do you think should have input into the vision? And by that, I mean, not just feedback, but like crafting it. I hear, for example, in a small church context, people will say, you know, we have this committee of 18 or we took the vision to the congregational meeting and everybody had an opinion. And so then we changed the vision. Like, how many people do you think legitimately can shape and craft a vision from scratch? - You know, honestly, the more people you get involved with anything, the more difficult clarity becomes. You know, there's all kinds of jokes about there, about, you know, the car that was made by committee. And, you know, so clearly inviting a ton of people into this and giving them sort of, you're gonna craft this thing responsibility is probably not real productive. You know, I think we have to own our roles. And part of the senior leadership role is to discern God's calling for the church. It's kind of your job description. So for me, and I'm not saying this is the only way that it can be done. For me, I really do look for the senior leader, the senior pastor, lead pastor, whatever the title is. And maybe with direction and some input in advance of the board, you know, what are we seeing in our current landscape and what might God call me to do? But at some point, the senior pastor has to pull away and really say, you know, and wrestle with the Lord on this one and hear from him. And that can be a pretty simple thing. It could be a pretty obvious thing. You know, I look at the organization and there's some real needs and clearly God, you know, is calling us to do that. Or it may be a process that takes a long time. But honestly, I really think that for my money, it's the senior leader who needs to hear from God on that one and develop to, and to develop division. What about you? - Yeah, you know what, I'm glad. I don't disagree with that. I think, you know, the senior leader certainly needs to embody it, own it. I would tend to normally be the writer of the vision. But I think if you're very collaborative and I know a lot of younger leaders are more collaborative in their style, I would say at the most, you're like two or three people. Like the actual drafting, here's a blank sheet of paper. What is our vision? Or, you know, you go in with some ideas and this is what I love to do. I love to test it on a team of two or three. Okay, what do you think? I don't think it makes any sense. Oh, okay, what's not clear? How would you phrase it? What's better, what's different? I think you're down to a handful. Like if you got more than five people in the room, you're gonna get scrambled eggs or really, really diffused leadership. Okay, no, I appreciate that. So that is input and formation. And then the next stage is feedback, right? Where you might be, hey, we want you to be the first to know, do you have any reaction to it? And you're not really asking them to shape it. You're asking them to refine it, right? Like they're like, oh, you know, Rob, it wasn't clear to me what this meant. Or, huh, do you really think that's too much about discipleship? What about evangelism? Or, you know, you get questioned. Exactly, yeah. But they're not shaping it at that point. Like they're not writing it from scratch. No, no, they're, you're bringing to them the vision that God has given you. And this is part of a socialization process. This is where the hard work of change is, because you're a leader, you're a shepherd, which means you're out in front of your people and you're leading them through it. You're not just dropping a big bomb on them, a vision and saying this is, you know, this is what we're doing. And then going home and crying 'cause it didn't stick, no one understands. Exactly, exactly. This is the hard work. So you start out by identifying those senior level influencers. You do some individual meetings with them. You ask for their feedback and their reaction. Now they're helping you. And honestly, I believe the spirit works in this process. It is refining that vision so that you can go to the next step, which is to go to your full board and go to your full staff and cast that same vision. And now, you know, several weeks, we're already several weeks into this process because we have to be patient and leading change. And now it's the same dynamic with our board and with our people, our staff. Guys, this is the vision and this is where God is taking me. What do you think? What are your reactions? What are you excited about? What concerns you in this? Ask them, get this stuff right out on the table. And you're gonna gain even more wisdom from your staff and your board at the top of the pyramid that you're gonna be able to refine the process further. So the next layer of the pyramid, if the staff and elders are at the very top of the pyramid, that middle layer is your lay leaders and your influencers. So your lay leaders are all those great folks. They're the 20% of your church who do 80% of the work. You know who they are, okay? Those people are important. And the influencers, they may not be quite as hands-on, but when those influencers speak in your congregation, people listen. So how do you figure out who those are? Well, just ask your staff. Go at your staff and say, staff, tell me who all of your lay leaders are and tell me who all of the influencers are in your different areas and you compile a list. And I think it's wise to bring this group together. And this is something that we learned. We scheduled three large group meetings with our lay leaders and influencers where the senior pastor could come out in the beginning of the meeting and cast the vision. We'd invite them. We would say, listen, this is... You guys are insiders in our church. We wanna provide you first word on some exciting new direction for the church. We wanna hear from you on it. So please come. We serve them dinner, a senior pastor casts the vision. So they're hearing it for the first time. And then after the vision is cast, you can break people up into small groups and let them process and ask their questions and be heard. And this is another really important step. But the thing is because you worked the top of the pyramid, now you have staff and elders who can host those small groups. So that's what we did. We broke into 20, we broke 230 people into 20 groups. And everybody was led by a staff or an elder. We processed through the senior pastor's vision. We asked them what concerned them. We wrote it down and then we would close the meeting by answering the questions that were developed within those small groups. And this was an incredibly valuable piece of the change for us because people felt listened to, they felt heard, they felt responded to that we knew what their concerns are and we could work with them. - Yeah, that's good. And I think a lot of people bypass that. Our process has been very, very similar over the years. We call it concentric circles rather than a pyramid, but the idea is exactly the same, that it sort of goes out from that initial nucleus in little waves, one group by one group. And you get less and less input the further you go out, but there is great value in being the first to know. - You know, you think about that. Nobody likes to be surprised. If you've got a stake in the church, if you've invested in it, if you serve, if you've, you know, your blood, sweat and tears are in there, you don't want to be surprised. You want to be honored by being included. And I think that process that you describe and bringing your biggest stakeholders together and saying, hey folks, here's what we're wrestling with. We would love to get your input and feedback. We want you to be the first to know we value you. That can be tremendous, excellent. Okay, take us, what's next, what's next? - All right, well, now you're into the congregation stage. And remember, we stopped from running out and just announcing everything on a Sunday a while back. - So nothing's public yet, nothing's public yet. - But now we're ready to do that. - Okay. - And we're ready to have either a special all congregational meeting to talk about the future of our church, or we're gonna have a vision casting Sunday, which is what we did. And let everybody know this is, you know, come next week, you're gonna be hearing about the future of our church. And we, again, cast the vision. But here again, those concentric circles that you're talking about, the pyramid that I'm talking about, you derive benefit from if we start at the top with our senior leadership, they can answer the questions that our lay leaders have. And if our lay leaders are informed and on board, they can answer the questions that the congregation has, because you know that's how this whole thing rolls. - That's right. - And you've already got, like in your case, 15 to 20% of your congregation bought in. - Mm-hmm. - They're already, they're championing it. So you're not the lone person in the lobby trying to champion it on a Sunday. You've got two to 300 people championing it before you announce it. - Yes, yes. - And the other thing that your lay leaders and influencers can provide your congregation is you can ask them for a commitment in advance to be doing what it is that you've asked your congregation to do. So if your vision say is for greater missional service in the community, because you've been working with your lay leader and influencers, you may have 10 of them ready to go on a project that weekend to say, guys, in our congregation, we want you to know that later this month, we have leaders in our church who are gonna be reaching out to our community this way and you can join them. So you can strategically place the next steps with your lay leaders and influencers so that your congregation immediately has an opportunity to engage your vision. So that's the hard work, the lengthy work of bringing your people along into the vision. There's just a couple of other things that you need to do to implement change at your church throughout your organization. And once you've done your strategy, you've had your vision, you've had your strategy, you've led your people through it, now it's time to celebrate, okay? And celebration is, you know, it's not just having a party or some cake in the lobby, but it is, it's a commitment to be reinforcing your vision each week in services. So that is our commitment, we've committed to celebrate our vision in some small way in every service that we have so that people can get it. Vision is caught and not taught. So we help people do that. So it can be the most obvious one is to have a video testimony from somebody who's doing your vision and you share that for a couple of minutes and people go, oh, I know that person. And yeah, I saw them doing that. And oh, that's what it looks like. Okay, I'm starting to get this thing, you can, that's a fairly obvious one. We even bought a video camera for one of our discipleship department, 'cause that's our vision, to capture the stories that we're hearing. We just have it available. Hey, you got a good story? We're gonna grab it right now. And we're gonna put it up on the screen, 'cause you know, we don't wanna get bogged down in the logistics of this thing. You can pray, take a moment, for instance, one week you can take a moment and pray for the people who are involved in your vision. Have them stand up. You know, these are the people who are doing our vision. We wanna pray for them as they go out and do this this week. Just very short, we don't have to sit there and preach at people all about vision, all time, all weeks. We simply need to have those constant little reminders in there. So celebrate those wins, get those stories out there, allow people to catch that vision as it's actually happening in your church. And the last thing that we have to do is to make sure that the behind the scenes stuff, that executive's faster stuff we were talking about earlier, that that stuff is aligned. So you know a church by its budget and its calendar. So go through your budget. And the funny thing about vision, you know, Scripture tells us that where there's no vision, people perish. Well, funny thing happens when there is a vision, things become a lot more clear. So you open up your budget, this surprised me in this journey, I'll tell you. I, we're going through a year, we're working on the change, and we get to the fiscal, the time of the year where you're planning your budget. I open up the budget and I'm shocked. What in the world are we spending all our money on here? Of course, I knew it was in the budget. I did it last year, but because I had a new lens and a new focus, everything in that budget looked different. And it was a real blessing because I can start saying, well, you know what, we're not going to spend money on this pretty obviously. And we're going to shift it over so that we can, we have money and resources to do. - Yeah, I mean a lot of people say, hey, we want to reach new families, kids are a priority, you look at their budget, they've got like 2% of their overall givings budgeted toward kids and families. I guess what's going to happen? - Yeah. - You're not going to have any kids and families. - Well, that same lens works great with your calendar. You'll open it up and say, okay, we're all about, you know, kids and families. And the only thing that you've got is bingo night. So you want to look at your calendar and just make sure that the things that you're spending your time, your building space, your staff time on, the events that you're doing line up with that vision. And the same thing goes with your staff. And this is a little bit tougher because you have relationships with your staff. But the same lens, the clarity that comes with vision, some staff members get on board right away and you go, this is an obvious fit. Other ones need a little bit of time and convincing, but eventually they find a way to lead that's consistent with your vision. And then you have some staff members who, there's just no way they're ever going to get it. They're just not wired that way, no matter how hard they try. And most, I'll tell you, most people give it, you know, they give it their best shot, but some people just never come around and you're going to have to make some changes there. - Or you haven't staffed in the area, right? Whether it's discipleship or kids or, and if you don't have staff, like if you're in a smaller church, you aren't structured for it. There's no volunteers. Your best people aren't on the thing. It's like, you know, your best people are doing something else. We'll put your best people on your highest priority and you'll see progress. - Mm-hmm, exactly. And we built an entire department that didn't exist here. - Wow. - Before the vision. - Yep. - So you're right. It may not just be only shifting, but constructing entirely new things. So those are sort of the five things. Vision, strategy, leading people, celebration and church alignment. If you're doing those things, your leading organization will change at your church. And there's a couple of things that I try to keep in mind when we're doing all of that. And one of those things is that change travels in people from their head to their heart to their hands, okay? When you first introduce a vision, what you're doing is you're imparting information. You're saying, this is something I want you to know. This is why scripture tells us to do this. - Why? - This is why we're doing it as a church. And people kind of have to get some cognitive agreement first. And then the Holy Spirit goes to work on them. And that's moving from the head to the heart. And suddenly it's not the senior pastor's vision for this, but it's Rob Sizik's obligation as a believer to do this. This is where I begin to own it. - I'm not doing this because you told me to. I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do and I own it. - Yes, this is what God has for me. That's the heart stage. And the last thing is the hand stage because if I know it in my head and I'm called to do it in my heart, the next thing I'm gonna do is act on it. So I'm gonna get out there with my hands and take activity to help further this vision at my church. And then the last thing that I keep in mind in terms of organizational change is that leaders so many times feel that when I'm leading organizational change, its success or failure, it's all on me, okay? And that's not 100% correct. In any change situation, there are three people involved. There is our part as the leader. There is their part as our members and our followers and there's God's part. And I would just encourage all leaders out there to really make those distinctions because if you come out, you have the vision, you do everything that God has asked you to do. You bring the wisest minds in to develop strategy. You communicate as absolutely as well as you can. If somebody is sitting out there and they're not doing their part by listening and giving this thing a fair shot, you can't control that. That's not on you. The good news about God's part is you can always count on God to do His part. But don't try to own their part or God's part. You only own and control your part. - That's really good. So you rolled out all this change. Did people universally applaud? Did you get pushed back at different stages? Like, tell me what you can about that. - Oh, it was amazing. They ran up on the platform and dumped Gatorade all over the senior pastor carried him out on the backs. It was, no, no, of course not. - Work out that way, right? You got some pushback, you got some angry emails. - Well, here's the thing. There is an universal buy-in. There, any proposal for change brings about very uneven reactions. And you see this, you can even take a cue from the business world where anybody rolling out a new product and so now I always keep in mind. There are the early adopters. So they're the people who come to you right after you've cast their vision and they say to you, "Wow, I've been waiting for this all my life. Why didn't we do this 10 years ago?" And you're like, "I love you, thank you." I mean, this is great, but it's only like 5% of the people. - Yeah. - And then you got some people who need to look at the early adopters and go, "Okay, well, the cool kids are doing it, so now I need to do it." And then you have about 80% of your congregation that needs time and convincing, but ultimately they'll come aboard. And then you get down to that last 5% or so, the laggard stage. They're like, "I ain't doing that for nothing." That's terrible. And honestly, there's nothing you can do with that last 5%. So no, people take longer to digest it and adopt it. Some go quick, some go slow. And then there's personality types that think it's great, personality types that don't. So no, if you're expecting universal buy-in, I think you've just set yourself up for discipline. - It's interesting. I did that profile that you're familiar with and leading change without losing it with the early adopters, early majority, silent majority, and then the opponents. And so I had to kind of pick a percentage and I picked 10% for the purposes of that book, leading change without losing it. But have you ever seen the actual opponents go above 10% in your experience or when you're trying to lead organizational change? - I think if you spend the time in concentric circles or the pyramid that I was talking about earlier, and you really do the heavy lifting of bringing your people along. I don't know, I've been amazed. The number of true resistance is very small. - You see that, I think sometimes it can swing to like 20 or 30%, but at times I've talked to leaders since the books come out and it's like, okay, 'cause they say, oh no, everyone's opposed. I'm like right down the names. And sometimes they'll have trouble coming up with more than 10 names. - Mm-hmm, exactly. - But they're loud, you know, because they're angry and they stood up and they hog the microphone or they wrote the long emails or they're lobbying people during coffee hour after the services. And, you know, we just assume loud equals large, but it doesn't always. That's interesting, I just keep sampling people and I couldn't agree with you more. And, you know, sometimes we'll ignore the early adopters because we're so focused on the people who are fighting change. And eventually, you know, I'd rather lose the people who are opposed to change than the early adopters. 'Cause the early adopters are the people you can build the future of your church on. They're the progressive thinkers. - Exactly, and I love your idea of quantifying those voices because that's exactly the experience I had is, yes, it did feel loud, but when I actually wrote down the number of people who were opposed, it was very small. And something to remember, Carrie, is that we as leaders many times in these situations, it's like being around a campfire. We're right up on it and we're feeling all of that heat. But if you take one step back, it cools down a lot. And you take two steps back, you might even be cold. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So you realize that that opposition is like standing right next to the campfire and you feel it more than other people. - Well, and sometimes you're like, oh my goodness, you know, the Jennings are opposed and the CZix are opposed and the new Hoffs are opposed and, you know, the Browns are opposed. And so you think about that, you think, ah, everybody's opposed, but then you go, wait a minute, okay, I can't think of anyone else who's opposed. It's just those four families. Oh, and what seems like a lot is actually very small. So I just say that as encouragement to people who are getting beat down by that. Anything else on dealing or handling the opposition, dealing with the opposition that comes to change? - Well, I try to keep in mind a couple of things. One is that when people are asking you questions, that's most likely not opposition. - Okay, say that, whoa, whoa, whoa, say that again, 'cause so many leaders forget that and there were seasons where I forgot that. Say it again. - Oh, me too. (laughs) Just because somebody's asking you a question doesn't mean they're opposed to your vision. - Oh, frame that, frame that. That's so good and explain why. - It's because I think sometimes as leaders, we've already had a chance to live with this, ask the questions, hear from God on it, and we forget what it's like to just be a person on the other end of it. So when you be asking questions, wouldn't you wanna know, heck, if somebody's asking you a question, they care enough to find out about it. So let's change our view about questions. And honestly, I don't say that as anybody who's great at doing it. I hear those questions, I feel like they're against me. - Yeah. - That I have to remind myself, no, they're not, they're intelligent people, they care, they're asking questions, we owe them. If we want credible leadership, we owe them credible. - I mean, think about it. If you're going, I love this, Rob, you're so right. Because, I mean, if you're going to buy a vehicle, or you're gonna go buy an investment, you're gonna talk to the sales person, or you're gonna talk to your investment person, financial advisor, thank you, words, that fail me when I'm sick. Your financial advisor, you're gonna ask questions, like, well, do you think the stock has hit the bottom, or you think it's gonna go up, or what's the upside, or do you think this guy's right, or that guy's right about its future, or you're buying a car, it's like, any warranty defects, any recalls, like, what are customers saying, and you can Google all that stuff. But anyway, you know, you're gonna ask questions, and that just makes you more certain about what you're gonna buy, right? - Yeah, exactly, that's what's going on with questions. The last thing that I try to remember in the change process, and this goes out to all you executive pastors out there, and all of you, people who lead with administration. Remember, it's relationship over rules. And that's a big thing in change, because we get our models, we get our strategies, we get our metrics, and we wanna fit into them. And the bottom line is, you're not leading it with a bunch of rules, you're leading a congregation full of people. They need your grace, they need you to walk through things with them. And really, there's no point in trying to lead positive change, and alienate everybody. So, moderate those systems and metrics and expectations by remembering this really is about relationship at the end of the day. - Well, and you know, Rob, I'm so glad you said that, because sometimes as a leader, I can get confused, and I think people follow ideas, but at the end of the day, people follow people, right? They really do. Now, people with good ideas, that helps, but people don't follow ideas as much as they follow people, and so you have to build that trust, and hopefully never violate it. Rob, people who are in the middle of change right now, any words of advice, people who are ready to quit, people who are ready just to give up? - Well, one, recognize that's a common side effect of leading change. So, it shouldn't surprise you. If it doesn't feel like you're on the mountaintop every single day of leading a change campaign, don't let it surprise you, okay? Realize that if you're thinking about change and stopping the change initiative that you're leading, be careful, because there is a time in the change process where you're just gonna drive people away, and there's nothing you can do about that. Remember, the people who are in your church now, they already love what you do. They come every Sunday, they love you, they love the programs, they don't really want to change. A certain percentage of them are gonna fall away, and you gotta know that going in, okay? So, think of it as a graph, and you see your attendance line, and you see the attendance line beginning to dip on the graph. Now, think of another line on that graph, and that is the line that comes up from the bottom and begins to build on that graph, and those are the people who are excited about your vision, and those are the people who are coming and joining or moving aboard, and so you have two things going on in that paper. One is you have a dipping line of what was, and you have a building line of what's going to be. And so many times, leaders, they start to see the fall off and they wanna stop, but they haven't given the line, the growth line enough time to replace those people and then build. And that's why they say, you know, they always say it's darkest before the dawn. Well, that's because people are quitting at exactly the wrong time. So, understand, it's a very predictable thing that you're going to lose some people in the process, and you'll probably really begin to notice them leaving right before the building process begins. So, ride that one out. Also, realize as leaders that we're wired to take ground, okay? Most people aren't, all right? So, we wanna move in, we wanna move quick, we wanna see results, and when that doesn't happen quickly, we think something's wrong. Well, nothing's wrong. It's just a dynamic of our personality. So, give your people opportunity to catch up with you and to take the ground with you, and don't just run way out in front of them and say, "Oh, nobody's here, so I'm gonna go try something else." And then, the last thing that I would do is encourage people to be aware of reading books and going to conferences. (laughing) I'm totally an advocate, I go to a lot of conferences, Gary, I'm at you at a conference, I read your books, and I read a lot of books, I'm not saying that. Well, what I'm saying is, just be wary of how seductive some of these ideas are. And it's what you were saying earlier. Yeah, you know, this church has been around for 18 months, like a 10,000 people, they must be doing something right. Well, no, let's be careful, because you know what the people under you say about that? Oh, no, Rob went to another conference, he's going to change his whole place. Last year it was this, and the year before that it was that, and man, your leadership credibility can just go in the toilet if you just fall in love with ideas. And if you're changing direction all the time. Yes, I guess. And this is gonna save us, and that's gonna save us, and I call that conferenceitis, yeah. Or it could be bookitis. You know, where last month you were gonna do this, and now this month you're gonna do that, and yeah, I totally agree. Well, Rob, this has been great. It's like getting a primer on change, which is awesome. And I know that people are gonna wanna find you online and learn more, so where can they find you online? Sure, I blogged church leadership at robsezic.com, R-O-B-C-I-Z-E-K dot com. Sorry, I wish I didn't name like Smith, and probably a little easier, but it's really, really easy. It's really easy. I'm empathetic. Yeah, yeah, and I-E-U-H-O-F. So, and that's great, and you have a great blog, and you're a great connector of people, and Rob, I just wanna thank you for helping so many people, and again, we'll have the outline with a couple of key points in the show notes, so you can check it out there. All right, thanks, Carrie. It's been an honor. Rob, thank you. Well, wasn't that helpful and practical, man? Thanks so much, Rob. You can get everything in the show notes. You can just find that at carrynewhough.com/episode81. Next week, I am back with David Kinemann, and we're gonna talk about his brand new book with Gabe Lyons called Good Faith, all about whether Christians are really seem to be extremists these days, and David just takes research, as he always does, in a fresh new direction, fascinating conversation, can't wait for you to hear it. Best way to make sure you always get this episode in your inbox every Tuesday morning is to subscribe, so you can go to iTunes, Stitcher, Tune in Radio, you can do that for free, and if you are on one of those platforms, and you would be one of those amazing people who leaves a review, I will say thank you in advance. Thanks for doing that. That gets the word out, and of course, you can always share about this podcast. You can email people a link, you can text them a link, you can put it on your Facebook, Instagram, social media, Twitter, whatever you happen to do, anything you can do to get this word out to more leaders, that would be awesome. Hey, next month, we're anticipating a big milestone for this podcast, and we're gonna celebrate by giving you guys gifts, okay? So, the more you share this episode, and the more people who listen, the closer we are gonna get to that celebration, it'll be a million downloads, we hope to hit that next month. So, super excited about that. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening. I really do hope our time together today has helped you lead like never before. - You've been listening to the "Carry Newhof Leadership Podcast." Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]