The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP078 – Perry Noble on How He's Had to Radically Change His Approach to Leadership
Welcome to the Carey 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, Carey Newhoff. Well hey everybody and welcome to episode 78 of the podcast. My name is Carey Newhoff. I hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. I think it's going to. I'm so thrilled to have a previous guest back. If you were with us at the very beginning, and some of you were, you'll know that episode too is Perry Noble. And Perry in that episode shared just a really heart wrenching open, honest, and at times actually his only Perry can be very funny story about a very dark period in his life where not only was he burnt out, but in moments felt like taking his own life. Not a laughing matter, but his only Perry can do. He talked about it in the most helpful and engaging way. One of the most raw interviews I've ever done and also one of my favorites and one of the most downloaded in the history of this podcast. If you never caught Perry on round one, you got to go back. Just go back into iTunes or into Stitcher or Tune in radio and find episode two or just go to Carey Newhoff.com/episode2 and listen to Perry's story. Then come back and listen to this because this time we catch him, he's doing quite well. Perry, like leaders would, he battled back against that and he got the help he needed and managed to keep leading his church and New Spring keeps growing and he's got a brand new book called the most excellent way to lead. And in this book, it's fascinating, he sent me an early copy, it's just great. And Perry talks all about how he had to learn a whole new paradigm for leadership, which was based on love because if you're an A-type driven person, you're probably not very loving by nature. I know the Holy Spirit has had a lot of work to do in my life when it comes to making me more loving, both at home and at work and in terms of my leadership. And he's probably still got lots of work to do. So if you struggle with that because you're so driven or maybe you're loving but you're not driven enough, you're going to love this conversation with Perry, plus his new book, which releases this month, it's called the most excellent way to lead. So so glad to have Perry back on the podcast. And just before we jump into the interview, I want to tell you about a couple of quick things. First of all, I do sound nasally. I know if you listen to the podcast last time, I told you had a cold and you're like, what a week later? You don't have your cold gone yet? No, I recorded last week, 10 minutes ago, because I got some travel and unfortunately my cold has not disappeared in the last 10 minutes. But anyway, you know, sometimes I batch these things and I'm on the road. So that's what I'm doing. And yes, hopefully by the time you hear this, I'll be much better. So that's number one. Number two, far more important about a week ago, I finished shooting a brand new companion to my new book, lasting impact, lasting impact, seven powerful conversations that can help your church grow came out last fall. It's been received far better than we thought and you've been so encouraged. We had high hopes for the book, but you guys have been just so encouraging. The reviews have been amazing and the feedback from you has been great. And I've had the opportunity or rally actually the request, it's like, Hey, can you come and teach this stuff to our church? And I would love to do that and every once in a while, I can get on the road and do that. But as you know, that can get expensive at times by the time you do air for fair hotel and the whole deal. And so here's what our team decided to do. We just decided to shoot a bunch of videos, actually far more content that I would be able to do at your church, if I was actually there live and we're going to make that available to you this spring in the lasting impact team edition video companion course. We're so excited about that. I'm so excited about it. It's being edited right now. It's going to be released in the spring. So stay tuned for that. If you read the book and you're like, man, I got to have some of these conversations with the team. Maybe the conversation about volunteers or why your church isn't growing faster. Why young adults are walking away from the church or maybe the conversation in the book about why your church is so resistant to change, then, Hey, helps on the way. So very, very soon this spring, I'm going to have a video companion course that basically you can just press play. It'll intro the conversation for about 20 to 25 minutes and then you can launch into a discussion of the book and all the discussion questions are included. So I just wanted you to be the first to know that that is on the way soon. And thanks again. If you haven't got the book yet, you can find out more information at lasting impactbook.com. Even get a free chapter there if you want to sample it. So that's a little bit about what's going on in my life. And if you haven't yet registered for the rethink leadership conference with Andy Stanley, Reggie Joyner, John Acuff, Jeff Anderson, Brad Lominek, myself, Leon's Crump, make sure you do that today. Just go to rethinkleadership.com, it's in Atlanta at the end of April. And by that is the time actually we're hoping that the lasting impact team edition will be available. So we're super excited about that. Anyway, here is my conversation with the one and only Perry Noble. Well, it's that time. Perry Noble is back on the podcast. Perry, thanks so much for coming back. So good to have you. Sorry, man. And usually don't get a second date on these podcasts. So I'm incredibly honored, man. I'm even dressed up, even though listeners can't see, but I did put on a collared shirt today because I was talking to you. That's pretty impressive, man. Pretty impressive. I'll tell you. And you have a standing invitation to come back on the podcast anytime you want, my friend. Okay. I'll take you up on that. So I'll tell you what, Perry, I'm going to jump in right now and you were episode two of this podcast, one of the most downloaded episodes of all time where you talked about your burnout and you talked about even suicidal thoughts you had. I mean, as you always are, hilarious, but powerful, like really, really spoke to the heart. One of the most downloaded episodes we've done on this podcast, 75, 80 episodes in. And I think it just spoke to people's heart, but today we're going to talk about leadership. Today we're going to talk about how you lead and how you learn to lead differently as your church has grown, but before we go there, tell us sort of what's new in your world and what is one problem? Because everybody thinks, Oh gosh, new spring church, you've got everything figured out. What's one problem you don't know how to solve right now? I don't know how to raise a godly kid right now because people ask me that all the time, they go, how do you raise godly children? And I'm like, well, I've got an eight and a half year old. And so far, I think I'm doing real good, but you know it, Carrie. I mean, you're listeners know this, you can see a student and they're the best student in the world. They're the best teenager, whatever. And you look at their home life and you're like, their mom's a crack addict and the bad is, you know, arrested. And then you see this other family and the mom and dad are the most super people in the world. And the kid is just crazy. My biggest thing right now is, okay, you know, there's not a recipe for raising a child. There are over 7 billion people on the planet. So I think there's over 7 billion ways to communicate. And I'm just trying to figure out how to speak my daughter's love language and raise her in a way where she just loves Jesus and loves the church. Yeah, that is, that's a good answer and that's an honest confession. You don't really know because they turn out to be adults and adults have this thing called free will. And you and I don't always exercise them in God's direction. So you'll appreciate this. I recently, LaCretia, my wife and I, I asked Andy Stanley, who, I mean, just love him to death. He's forgotten more than I'll ever know. And we went to dinner with him in Sandra. And we sat down and I said, I'm not going to ask you one single church question tonight. I said, this is all I want to know. You've got three kids that are out of high school into college. They all love Jesus. They all love the church. How'd you do it? Wow. That was a powerful, that needs to be a conversation that you need to have with him on this podcast because I would download it and listen to it about once a week. Okay. That's a good idea. Andy and I are talking again soon and we've got a couple of different subjects, but I know, you know, hopefully he'll come back more than once as well. And he is brilliant on that stuff. He really is and he handles things so well. I mean, he and I've talked a little bit about, you know, raising his kids and all that. And oh, that's, that's great. Well, that's good. And newsprint continues to do well and you're feeling good too, right? Like you're in a place where, man, like me, that burnout is a part of your history, but not, you know, you always got to be careful, but, but you're overall, you should be covered. You always have to equal destiny. That's what I can tell myself. And it's so true. Awesome. By the way, if you haven't listened to episode two, go back and even check out the show notes. Perry and I put a big package together that's helped thousands, tens of thousands of leaders at this point. So if you're burnt out, make sure you don't miss that. But this time we're going to talk about leadership. So Perry, things have changed a lot, right? Sixteen years ago, you started with about a dozen and a half people in your living room. That's how news spring church started. Today you've got, what, 400 staff and like over 30,000 people on the weekend. So there's a difference. Yes, sir. What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced as a leader on this journey, Perry? I think there's two. The first one is continually developing as a leader. I tell people when I was 28 years old and started the church, I knew everything there was to know about church planting, leadership and evangelism. Now I'm 16 years into this thing and I think I know what I'm going to do tomorrow, but I'm not an expert, man. When I was 28 and I don't say this haphazardly, I really did think I was an expert. And the more I got into this thing, the more I began to realize, you know what? Not everybody's going to like the way we do new spring church. And you know, that's fine. That's okay. Not everybody's going to like me as a person. Not everybody's going to like my preaching. Not everybody's going to like our worship style. You know what? That's okay. Because the last I checked, there's between three and four billion people that haven't been reached. Yeah. And so that's the market. And so I think understanding that, continually developing as a leader and the second thing, and I don't know, I've just gone through this thing lately where I'm seeing opportunity in every crisis is something that I'm having to learn how to do. So for example, you've seen the reports. You've seen everything about how millennials are not going to church. Millennials are walking away from the church. People are turning away from the church. And church leaders seem to be freaking out about this, but Carrie, I'm like, hey, that's an opportunity. Yeah. That's an opportunity. If less people are going, that means the unchurched market is increasing. So instead of worrying about it, wringing our hands about it, or even praying about it, because some people use prayers and excuse for inactivity, let's roll up our sleeves and figure out what it's going to take to reach those people. So about 10 years ago, I would have been chicken a little running around screaming, the sky is falling. And now I'm like, I think there's an opportunity. If they're not going to church, let's figure out why and let's fix it. Yeah. That's a good attitude. That's a good attitude. But you've had to grow an awful lot as a leader too, right? You've had to move from like total hands on leadership to focusing on a couple of things. Is that a tough journey for you? It is. So I remember talking to my counselor when I was going through my period of burnout and stuff. And he said, he said, new spring is a great church because you're a controlling hands on guy. And he said, and you are in a state of depression because you're a controlling hands on guy. And he said, eventually you can't control anything. And what happened was the church got so big you couldn't control it anymore. So now I've learned, I've learned that I think one of the greatest things carry that's happened to me is learning how to go from control to influence. That I don't need to control things. I just need to be a influence, I need to be the primary influencer in our church as far as our staff goes, qualifying other than Jesus, but I need to be the primary influence. But as far as control, there are godlier people that have better ideas than me. And I just need to get them on my team and let them go. It's interesting, you know, because when you and I were chatting ahead of time, you know, one of the journeys for all of us is not being in all the weeds, not being in all the details. And I made a major change in how I led Kinexis Church and what I was doing last year at Kinexis Church so that I got way out to focus on teaching. But the thing that surprised me in the last few years, even as our church has grown is, you know, as your church gets bigger, you think you probably matter less as a leader, but your influence actually is all, did you find this? Like, I always found people would tell me, no, you have so much influence in this organization, you don't even realize it, but I didn't feel like I had any because it was bigger than me. Well, the reason we don't think we have influences because we're not controlling things. See, when we control things, we know we have influence because I can remember a day carry where, I mean, I designed the set, I built the set, I set up the chairs, I helped count the offering, I picked the font out for the bulletin. In fact, I did the bulletins, I typed them up every week. Me too. So I remember what that was like and now, people told me about fonts and I'm like, I don't know what, I don't, like, one of the things I get made fun of is when we first started the church, I loved Comic Sans, loved the font, Comic Sans. Now, all of my creative guys hate me, they're like, you can never use that font again, but I thought it was so cool. So, because of this. It was for about 10 minutes in the 90s. Yeah, yeah, but because of them, we don't use Comic Sans anymore, see? It's just great. You know, it's funny. I have the same way, I used to pick all the fonts, I used to make the bulletin, I used to, like, think about margin justifications and graphic design and man, I started contemporary worship at our church by using an overhead and actually using, like, clip art and, like, stock photos in the background, that was me. And then, like, smart people took over. And now, I'm with you. I know nothing about fonts. I know one font that apparently we use a lot is Gotham. So if there's any hipster people walking around and they're like, are you into fonts? You just say Gotham and they go, oh, I don't know what that is. What that means. Ariel, I think, in times, New Roman, and apparently there's four billion fonts. What? What personal? Like, did that come at some personal cost for you to have to step back? Does that? Is that always a challenge? Or is it easy? Yeah. Here's the deal, man. When we first started the church, I was the young, cool, hip leader. And now, I'm not. People say 44 is middle-aged, but honestly, I don't want to live to be 88. I hope Jesus comes and gets me to a fore then. But so I'm not the young guy anymore. I'm definitely not the hip guy. I'm not the cool guy. And so, kind of learning to step into that season and own it, because at the end of the day, I don't want to be the fat man wearing skinny jeans, trying to be somebody that I have not. So I think that's been one of the biggest lessons is learning, "You know what? You had a season where you kind of did your run. Now, it's my job to find those young men and those young women that really do have the great ideas and kind of put them in leadership positions and influence them and let them go." That's good. So, Perry, you got a brand new book. We've already told people about the special promotion they've got for it. I've had a chance to read an advanced copy. It's a great book. And this is of the three books you've written. This is the one you're most excited about. Yes. I told you earlier, you know, this, so third book, if you call books babies, this is the only baby I really wanted to show people pictures of, the other two, I think, I think they're ugly. But, you know, whatever, this is the one I had the most fun writing. Yeah, yeah. It ended up being a lot longer than you thought too, right, because you couldn't stop. It was supposed to be a 40,000 word document and wound up being over 60,000 words. That's cool. So, it's all about your journey as a leader and learning to lead with love. So, what was your definition of leadership when you started out back at New Spring Church? Was that 2000? It started? Yeah. Yeah. 2000. Yeah. Yeah. Really, it was because I was like, well, if you are in control, then you lead. But it took me a while to understand that wasn't the best way to lead because at the end of the day, Hitler had control, but he's not the guy that any of us want to become, right? Right. And so, I was like, man, what, what, what is it? And so, I've been on this journey and so it was real funny. This is how I wrote the book. This is where I came up with this. I was reading through 1 Corinthians and just how messed up that church was. Anyway, I paused because I was like, you know, the only reason that we have the New Testament is they were really crappy messed up churches and Paul had to write to him and go, stop doing that, stop doing that, stop doing that. Here's what you need to believe. And so, because there were churches that made mistakes, we got the Bible. But I was reading through 1 Corinthians and 1 Corinthians 13, Kerry, has always confused me because at the end of the day, I read the Bible in chapters and verses. And so, it's like you're reading through 1 Corinthians 12, which is primarily about leadership and spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 14 is leadership, spiritual gifts, speaking in tongues, but it has the text in there. If the trumpet's not sounding clearly, then who will respond to the Bible? And then 1 Corinthians 13 is almost like Paul was writing through the Bible and he paused and you said, you know what, one of these days there's going to be a group of people called Christians and they're going to get married and I need to give them some wedding verses. So he penned that because if you look at the way 1 Corinthians 12, 13 and 14 has split up, when people split that up and put chapters and verses, it's like they didn't know what to do with 1 Corinthians 13. So I'm reading through this and I'm like, okay, 1 Corinthians 12 is all about leadership and leading. 1 Corinthians 14 is about leadership and leading and it just hit me. 1 Corinthians 13 is the glue that holds 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 together. So when Paul's writing about love, he's not talking about a couple. He's talking about the way we lead people. Now, let me just qualify this. If you use 1 Corinthians 13 in your wedding vows, I don't think you need to go out and renew them. I don't think you're not married or whatever. It's just, for me, the light click that I'm like, you know what? If you lead people, the way Paul spells out 1 Corinthians 13 to lead people, that's going to be a leader I want to follow. That's going to be a leader that makes a difference. Weird to think that, and I agree with your interpretation, 1 Corinthians 13 is actually about leadership, which we don't think of. We think, and I mean, it applies in your marriage, it applies in your relationship, it applies in your parenting, but really it's for leadership. When did the penny drop for you? Was that fairly recently in leadership, or did that happen years ago? It's been in the past two or three years where I just think about the leaders that I love and respect the most, and they don't have a, they're not theologically the same. They're not methodologies, not the same. They don't love the same things. And so as I'm thinking about this 1 Corinthians 13, I'm realizing I don't follow people because they're reformed, or baptized, or Presbyterian, or Methodist, because I've got friends in all of those camps, and I finally realized it's not the position, it's the person, it's the person. It always comes back, and you've heard the phrase, I don't know who said it first, people join an organization, but they quit a person, or they quit a manager, like man, that's just so true. It's interesting, you know, because I have control freak tendencies, you have control freak tendencies. Did you ever like working for control freaks? No, and I worked for some, I remember God, do you have little Caesars in Canada? Yeah, we do. Yeah. So I worked for little Caesars, and at the end of the day, 24 pepperonis on a large pizza. That's what it used to be. I don't know what it is now. I would have a manager look over my shoulder and count the pepperonis, and I'm like, dude, you manage a pizza place and you've got nothing better to do, then stand and watch a 16 year old put 24 pepperonis on a pizza. I think you hit your lid. So it's in those control freak tendencies are in us all. Isn't that weird, eh? Because I mean, I'm the same way, I do not like control freaks. I don't want to work for one, I don't want to be married to one, but I don't mind being one. Yeah. That's weird. It's like, I don't like it when people are rude to me, but when I'm rude to you, I had a reason. Yeah. That's justified. I'm justified. That's weird because, you know, and it's interesting, you know, when you think about the future, Perry, I love how your definition of leadership has shifted over the years, because I think like your counselor told you, care only actually gets or control only gets you so far. Like, I know your big goal is to reach 100,000 people, you know, to be a church of 100,000, which is going to be a life goal. I mean, that's going to take everything you got. You're not going to get there by being a control freak, probably. Oh, no, no, no. If I took over the control of this organization, we would go to about 2,000 people from 30,000 to 2,000, like probably overnight. So, yeah. Because it shrinks back to your level of direct involvement, right? I think that's a growth barrier at 200. It's a growth barrier. You can't break through it. 400 or 1,000. Okay, well, that's good, so you go through each of the virtues or the characteristics of love that Paul talks about in this book, and you sort of start out with patience. So, my guess is you're not the most patient man in the world by nature, Perry. Talk about that. So, here's the thing that I realized one day, and it took, I mean, when it hit me, it was like, "Oh, my gosh, we are the most impatient I think the world's ever been right now, currently." And a month from now, we'll be more impatient. And the reason is, we can have anything we want immediately. I mean, think about going back and having a conversation with your great, great grandfather and explaining to him what a microwave is, what a cell phone is, and how easy it is to travel from here to California in less than five hours. Those concepts would be mind-blowing. But today we can have everything we want instantaneously. But when scripture was written, it wasn't a technologically driven society, it was agriculture. Every reference to spiritual growth in the Bible is agricultural. Well, my dad planted a garden one time when I was a kid, and I just remember planting these tomato plants and being so excited about them and going out and looking every day and there was no tomato, I mean, it was like 70 to 80 days before they even really started growing and showing fruit. And coming back to that and going, you know what, leadership is like planting that seed. And at the end of the day, you want it to grow, you want it to cultivate, and you want it to bear fruit. And so that's the toughest thing for me, is being patient enough to plant the seed, cultivate it, and let it actually grow and not pick the fruit too early. So what's taught you that? How have you learned, because I'm very impatient as well, I had to wait 15 minutes at my bank. Like I couldn't go, couldn't do it online, I had to wait 15 minutes, I had enough time yesterday to think, why can't banks be like airports and actually have an express line? Or like, you know, some kind of line where if you have a certain amount of status or points, you can go in the express line. That's terrible thinking. Like I'm not really proud of thinking about that, but I thought about that yesterday. Leaders see things like they should be like we really do, and it doesn't matter if you're leading a church or a business or, you know, a family, you see things as they should be and you want them there. But part of the journey for other people is helping them see what you see, because if they see what you see, they'll probably come up with two or three things, way better, they'll come up with things way more effective than you would have if they can just see what you see. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, because I told the teller, I mean, we knew each other, I'd stop there from time to time. And she said, I told her my idea and she goes, you know, that was a really long wait. Like you normally don't wait that long. And she says, next time you just go to the front desk and they'll help you if you're in a real hurry. I'm like, oh, I didn't know that. There you go. So how have you overcome your impatience? What are you doing that's helped? Because I think there's a lot of impatient people, Perry, who would say, yeah, I'm impatient, but I don't know how to get over it. Is it that you just temper it or you just try to make sure the words don't come out of your mouth or the attitude doesn't show or what are you doing personally to overcome? Well, I've got a group of a leadership team that I really, the rule is when we close the door, I just I want to be able to give unfiltered information and I want to be able to receive unfiltered information because my statement to my guys and gals lately have been, if you only give me 90% of the information, there's a 100% chance I'll make the wrong decision. That extra 10% is probably what I need. So when we get behind the doors, I can be unfiltered, I hear unfiltered, but I've got a safe environment to throw out unfiltered thoughts and I've got people that have permission to say, man, that's dumb, they don't even have to qualify it with, we love you and think you're great and you're awesome and you look, you look like you've done this and by the way, that idea was dumb. And by the way, you're great and awesome. It's like, hey, man, I hear what you're saying, Perry, I just don't think that's the best decision that's not going to work and I listen to them. That's good. You know, let's talk about that for a moment, Perry, if we can, unfiltered, like no filter. One of the things I had to realize is our church group bigger and again, your church is much bigger than most churches by every size, but even as ours grew, it's like I have to be careful because as Andy Stanley, our friend Andy Stanley says, you know, your words weigh 1,000 pounds as a leader. And so if I say to a volunteer, hey, how come you put the teaching TV there, not here? They can go home and that can ruin their whole week. And so what we've developed in the last little while is just like two or three people that are always near me that I can give unfiltered feedback to, like, hey, that song is off time. It's never off time or bands too good, but you know, I'm just trying to pick an example or I don't like the mix or this isn't right where I can sort of give that. And then they kind of filter it through the organization and they give me unfiltered feedback, but it, it, it creates, it stops you from like crushing the hopes of anybody else in your organization. Do you find that really helpful? Let's say our band pick the song and I think it's the dumbest song in the world. I need to be able to say to the people immediately around me, I think that song was dumb rather than saying it and have 18 people scramble to go figure out how to do a new song. That's not what I want. I just wanted to say, I think the song is dumb. I can't think, well, actually I can't, I can think of a song that we did about seven years ago that I was like, this is the dumbest thing in the world. But I didn't say anything until after Sunday and, but you got to have that unfiltered person around you and you got to be able, because, you know, the whole love is patient, love is kind. And some people think kind is nice, kind is not nice, kind is speaking the truth in love. That's what kindness is. Being able to tell people, don't, don't show me that picture again because your babies ugly. Just don't do it. Hey, you in your chapter on kindness, you told a really interesting story about a time where you were treated unkindly. You tell a lot of stories in the book back when you were a student pastor. Do you remember that when the food fight? Well, see, so here's the deal. I didn't know that a food fight in a graveyard was a bad idea. In the southeastern part of the United States, churches, a lot of churches have graveyards. Carrie, I was a brand new Christian. I've been on, I've been on staff and so I, they told me at this church, get kids to vacation Bible school. And I'm like, y'all teenagers don't do vacation Bible school. They're just not interested. And they were like, well, we've always done it. So you get them there. So the first year we did it was a colossal failure. The next year, they were like, well, you know, you didn't get kids. And I was like, will you let me do anything I want? They were like, yes. I said, do you mean that? They're like, yes. I don't know. And so I told the kids is like, y'all on the last night, we're gonna have a food fight and y'all can bring anything, any type of eggs, milk, whatever. And these, especially the guys were the gross, like one guy set out milk in the sun all week and let it spoil. I mean, it was just, so we got there, ketchup, mustard, eggs, pickles. And the food fight went from the, to the, from where we were having it to the graveyard. And I thought this is great because I'm behind Missers Thompson's headstone and I'm like, getting it back in. She don't care. She's dead. And that night, the pastor of the church preached my funeral. I mean, screamed, yelled, I mean, uncontrollable over the telephone. And I was like, I never want to be on the receiving end of that. Even if the person did something horribly wrong, that was the most dehumanizing thing that's the, I mean, I've never been talked to that way. So it was a great lesson. Hmm. I can only imagine. Why do you, why do you think leading love is so, we're leading with love is so hard because I find it's, it's been a journey for me too, especially over the last decade. It's like, I naturally can be so harsh. I naturally can be so critical. And I think most of us who are great at leadership, like, you know, you do notice the lint on, on the, on the wall, you notice, um, you know, the, the, uh, the thing that's out of place. You notice the song that didn't fit entirely with the message. You notice all that. And then it can come off is so harsh. I'm guilty as charged. Why, why is that so natural and why is leading with love so hard in your view? Even the love requires us to, um, adapt the mindset that love always assumes the best. Love always assumes the best. So let's say you give somebody an assignment, um, you say, Hey, can you get X, Y and Z done? And they say yes, and they don't get it done. Yeah. If it's different. Now, if they've got a habit of not being able to get it done, that's one thing. But if they don't get X, Y and Z done, your first thought shouldn't be, um, what is there a freaking problem? What a slacker. Your problem. I mean, now I'm learning your first thought should be, uh, I wonder if their kids are okay. Like the kid gets sick. I wonder if, um, everything's okay in their family. I wonder, uh, if they had car problems and they couldn't get to the location. Yeah. Like really given people the benefit of the doubt, um, what that does over time is people just buy it gives you equity with people instead of walking into a room and going, um, you didn't get this done and this is 17 reasons why you completely suck as a leader instead of going, Hey, um, you didn't get this done. Walt me through it. Tell me what happened. Well, my little girl's up throwing up all night. Well, we're, yeah, we're going to cut you some slack there and wire your ear breathing on me. If your little girl's up, that's good in the book. You talk about the struggle that driven people have with leading with love and, um, it seems to be far more, uh, an intense problem with driven people and driven people also tend to drive their churches, right? So they tend to have growing churches, right? Drivers do a type of people do. Um, why does our drive seem to be so opposed to love? Well, we'll tell ourselves like, uh, I yelled at that person and it was best for them. Well, if, if the building was on fire and they didn't see it, you should yell. I mean, you should definitely yell for a bunch of people, but unless that's going on. I mean, it's, I don't know about you, but when, when I'm talking to you and I have a problem, when your volume goes up, your influence goes down. And you might think I just controlled that room by yelling at people, but this is something I've had to learn, Carrie, and I've had it, I've had to learn it the hard way. I'm a driven person, but people don't enjoy being driven. They enjoy being led. People will let you lead them. But if you step in and drive people sooner away, sooner or later, they'll walk away from you. Um, cause they're looking for somebody to believe in them. That's a really good distinction. You know, the difference between being driven and being led, how have you seen that show up in your leadership? Like you're a driven guy. I mean, you do not send a set goals, like a hundred thousand people unless you're driven to some extent. So what have been some of the obstacles you've hit in that internal journey? And how have you pushed past that? How, how has this become, it sounds like it's learned behavior, right? That's what a counselor would call it, learned behavior. I've got a lot of learned behavior in my life because I found my natural instincts are not always helpful. People say, oh, you're so gracious. You're so kind. Like if you only knew what I really feel like inside, I felt ones might cut me off in traffic today. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's just instinctive, you know, I didn't, I didn't get a, the gas pump didn't print out the receipt. I had to go inside. And immediately I was just like, come on, pray for Sodom and Gomorrah curse to happen on that place. Hey, did you not have a receipt in the gas tank? Good gosh, people here. So how do, how have you learned that behavior? How has this journey sort of unfolded for you? Making mistakes. So, so let me tell you one of the dumbest things I've ever done. And this, this legitimately is in my top five of the dumbest things I've ever done. I love our church. I love our vision. I'm addicted to change lives. I love seeing people give their lives to Jesus. I love seeing people take their next steps. And I lose sight of the fact that I work in it so much. On Sundays, normal people go home and on Mondays, they're not thinking about the Shekinah glory. They're thinking about, do we have cereal for the kids and can we get them to school without them killing each other? And so I get all fired up. So I walk out one Sunday and I'm preaching and I'm so fired up about the vision of our church and us making a difference. I said, today, if you're a member in New Spring and you're not volunteering, we're purging the roles. We're kicking you off the membership roles. That just came out of nowhere. I didn't know any staff. I was going to do it. I didn't tell any staff. I was going to say it afterwards. It created a humongous mistrust in me, not by the staff because they were like, great. That's fun. It created a huge mistrust in me by our people. And it took me years to get in fact, I still hear, I remember that time you'll purge the roles and I'm like, dear Lord help us, I didn't mean to do that. But I made that mistake. And so now instead of going, we're kicking everybody out, we're going, hey, you have the potential. You can make a difference. You matter. Let's find where you can, let's find where you feel value. Let's get you involved in something in a volunteer area that you love doing. You don't want to volunteer during the week. You want to volunteer down at the homeless shelter on Tuesday? Awesome. You win, the church wins, everybody wins, let's figure out how we can get you plugged in somewhere, making a difference rather than we're going to kick you out if you don't do something. God. So stupid. Yeah. And you did it. I did it. Oh my gosh. I've got a, I've got a PhD in stupidity. I do, man. When, how long did it take you to figure out that that was a mistake? Did you know as soon as it was out of your mouth? Right. When I walked off the, right, when I walked off the platform, um, Shane Duffy, who is now our executive pastor, right when I walked off, he's like, Hey man, that was a great message. I would have loved to have known we're going to purge the rolls. And I was like, yeah, man, I just, that was, I felt awesome about it and da, da, da, da. And then, um, I started getting texts and emails like, are you okay? Um, is everything all right? And about 72 hours later, we were getting emails and phone calls. And when I say a lot of people, it was less than 50 overall. But it was 50 people that mattered. Yeah. Um, we wound up, honestly, we wound up losing a really solid couple in our church because the woman had stepped away from a season of volunteering and the husband was still very involved, but she took that statement very personally and they left our church. And that was like, man, I caused that. That was on me. That's my bad. And so I've got to be way more patient with people because at the end of the day, God's been very patient with me. Did you ever issue a retraction just to follow the story through? I did. I'm on, on multiple occasions. I've said in a message, Hey, some of you'll remember a time when I preached this message and I said this and everybody's heads nod, like I'm like, why do you all remember that one? Why can't you remember the one where people gave their lives to Christ? And I'm like, I've told people that was dumb, that was stupid. I shouldn't have done that. It was immature. I've issued personal apologies for that. And, you know, and I've moved past it, but every once in a while, it'll, it's like whack them all a little, stick its little head up and I'll be like, Oh, God, but this again. That's so good. That's so good. And thanks for being so honest. You know, we've all been there. We've all done stuff and the staff or, you know, the team are like, we didn't know that. And I think you raised a really good point. It's not necessarily when people walk out because every once in a while, you need to lose some people like that's not the end of the world in your organization. But when you lose the good people, when you said something that pushes a great, healthy, loving body and couple out of the church and I've done that, I think we've all done that, it's like, Oh, that's a mistake. Well, you could, on the service, you can justify it. You can say yes. That's right. If you're not volunteering, then you need to, you know, you can justify the language. You can justify the thought. But at the end of the day, that's people on the other end of that message and you need to take their, you just need to take their feelings and consideration. Gosh. I feel like I've been hugging people. I feel like I've been, I just, I just need to hug something right now. I just, I just hug myself for exactly what's better. What difference has learning to lead with love made for you? Let's take it from several aspects. For you personally, how's that changed the interior life of a Perry Noble? And then I want to ask you about the impact on your team and how that's changed your team culture. And then even for your family, you know, obviously this is going to have some implication if you're a controlling person and you're sort of walking away from that, like start with you. How do you feel different as a leader, Perry, because you're learning to lead with love? So when a leader walks into the room, and this doesn't matter, male or female, young or old, corporate or church, when a leader walks into the room, they're going to come and create one of two emotions, joy or fear. There's not a middle ground. And for the longest time, I created fear and I was unaware of it. So I would ask, hey, I need to meet with so and so for about five minutes. So, you know, my system would reach out to them, so Perry wants to meet with you. And every time they're like, I thought I was getting fired. I'm like, I don't, I haven't fired anybody in seven years. Like I, I can, and the last person I fired, it was a mutually agreed upon thing. I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I'm like, why do I create fear? And I had a real good friend point out to me, that's the only option. You create joy or fear when you walk into a room. And so I've just, I've just, I want to be the leader that I actually create joy. I mean, if we need to talk about something, let's talk about it. I talk about that in the book, you've got to address problems head on. That's leading with love, telling the truth, but there's a way to tell the truth and still respect the other person and not tear them down. Yep. To lead with love that way. So it's had an impact on your team as you made that switch. So now people aren't as afraid or fun, like, like we just have a lot of fun. Like today we were listening to 90s music and I was scaring somebody on staff. I'm just jump out behind walls or something. I'm just, there's a lot of fun. And so everybody's real nervous, but, um, because they think they're going to get scared, but, you know, it's just fun work should be a fun place, no matter what you're doing. It should be fun. Yep. And you're right, you know, you can eventually create a culture. I can totally see that where if you lead by control or by dominance or something like that and you don't lead with love, where people can handle you, right? You become that person. You get some people around you. It's like, Perry, don't go into that room. Yeah. And the other thing is like a lot of leaders want to walk into a room and be feared. They want to walk into the room and be the man or the woman. And I'm like, I just want to walk in the room and people go, Oh, God. Yeah. Perry's here. This is, this is cool. This is awesome. Once again, that doesn't mean we don't have tense conversations. I had a tense conversation today. Um, it was real intense, but afterwards it was done. It was over. Bam. We're right back into our work. We're right back into doing what we need to do. That's good. What about the internal difference for you? So it's had a positive impact on your team. How would you say you're different as a person, as a Christ follower, as a husband, as a father? How's Perry different? Well, I'm having to learn how to be a husband and a father all over again because I've got all this time now where I'm not trying to control everything. So I think I'm becoming better. Unfortunately, there's not an app that I can download to see what my grade is on all those things. So, you will know in 20 years whether or not I even knew what I was talking about. But I feel more at peace. I feel more rested. I feel more restful. I kind of enjoy in life a little bit more. It's a great place to be when you feel like when you don't feel like you have to control the world that we follow a God that does and he's in control and he's sovereign. And I'm like, man, I think I'm just, I think I believe that will now. Everybody says they believe in the sovereignty of God, but how you reacted to crisis proves whether or not you're a Christian or an atheist. So of all the things that that's a really good point, I don't want, I don't want people to miss that. How you respond in a crisis determines whether you're a Christian or an atheist. I think that's the first time I've ever actually said that and I might just retweet myself. That's good. That's good. That's great. You know, of all the things Paul writes about, loves patient, kind, not boastful, not jealous, envious, rude, you know, the whole list, which one still challenges you the most? Which one is like, I'm going to work on this for 20 more years, patient, patient, talked about a lot in his podcast, but that's the one is patience. It's like, Oh, God, please, please, please, and you know, it's, it's in my marriage. It's in my being a dad. It's in the leadership. It's in being a Dallas Cowboys fan and watching them just continually lose and get worse. I mean, it's just every, it's like, ah, so like, I'm a big college football fan, Kerry, and having to wait to the fall for college football to kick off again. Every time I think about it, I just want to cry. Really? Yeah. And it's Clemson, right? Yes. Should I get that right? I realize if I'd pick the wrong team, this might be the end of the podcast right now and our friendship. So that could be, it could be over. No, I'm leading my love. I would have given you the benefit of that. I'm a Canadian. Yeah. He's Canadian. I mean, you know, you know, are you a hockey fan? You know, I'm one of six Canadians who are not, but I'm a big Blue Jays fan. If you were, Hey, if you were a Maple Leafs fan, I'm an hour outside of Toronto. Okay. I mean, when my youngest who's now 20 was in kindergarten, it was his grandfather who played for the Maple Leafs that last won the Stanley Cup. So yeah, it's like 1967, man. The last time they won, so, you know, a lot of, a lot of people died without seeing the Stanley Cup, but the Blue Jays made a good run for it last season. And we saw him win the World Series in the 90s when I lived in the city. So sorry, Atlanta, sorry, Philadelphia, but that was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. I'm going to say love assumes the best and you didn't know how much my, I love for the Braves. You didn't know how deep that was. And so you would have never wounded me. Like you just wounded me. I had an idea on. Yeah. It's Atlanta for you? Yeah. I love the Braves, but I love the Braves when nobody loved them. Like when you called the Braves and you're like, what times the game started, they were like, what time can you get here? That's, that's what I loved them. So I kind of see that song rise and good gosh, I don't think we could, I don't know who, I don't mean we're just not good right now. Well in true Canadian fashion, I'm, I'm very sorry for your hurt. I'm being fascia, man, I'm assuming the best. It's tough. Perry, I think there's a lot of leaders who are listening going, oh yeah, I haven't mastered the love. I can preach on it well, but I don't lead with it at home. I don't lead with it in, in, you know, my team or at church or even feel a lot of love right now. Do you have like a couple of, obviously I want them to get your book and they need to read your book and they need to read 1 Corinthians 13, but like practically if they want to start, where's one or two places they could start to say, I want to just get better at this? Here's, here's the cool thing about the book, Kerry. And it sounds like I'm trying to peddle my book and I am, but I wrote the book so you can, the best thing to do is just start somewhere. You can pick a characteristic. At the end of every chapter, there are questions for you to wrestle with. There are questions for you to talk about with your team. And there's also some summary statements. So I wrote the book not to be just this book that you read and kind of put on a shelf, but I designed it for leadership, leaders and leadership teams to walk through together and to journey together. And so just picking a characteristic, you know, love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy. What does that mean? What does that mean? Does not envy? Oh, I'm, I'm a bit envious when somebody gets attention and I don't get attention. Well, how do I deal with that? How do I celebrate that rather than let that get to me and kind of picking a characteristic and working through it? So that's the thing is I wrote the book. Of course, I went and ordered patients kindness, but just picking one of those and starting there, I think is the, I think was my heart for, for leaders as I wrote the book. You know, that really resonates with me. And that is how it's laid out. So it's a little bit of a workbook as well. Right. I mean, you can, you can look at that, but I've had to deal with different scriptures and different characteristics like, you know, it might be love or it might just be patience or it might be jealousy. You know, there's a season a while ago where I was really jealous and I'm like, man, that is ugly. Like when you trace that down and it took months of prayer, reflection, then our mutual friend, Jeff Henderson has that great question, right? What's it like to be on the other side of me? Yeah. And if you ask that question and you have people who will tell you the truth, they'll say, yep, you're jealous or yep, you're tough to live with right now or whatever that every leader on some magnitude deals with jealousy. I talk about that extensively in the book and learning how to celebrate the success of others rather than say, because you've been in pastor circles, business leaders do this too. But you've been in pastor circles. Well, somebody will say so and so church is really going and automatic default is, yeah, but I talked to somebody on staff and you don't know what's really going on that jealousy. Yes. Instead of going, you know, what they are doing awesome, man, that is great. You know, just kind of how hard is it to say that? Yep. And if you don't qualify their success and you say nothing, often it's very tempting to say, just feel totally defeated about your own, like, oh, well, we only had a 5% year last year or a negative 5% year last year. All bring is down or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny, you know, and it's so competitive in pastoral circles. I started a new mentoring call group I do in the North Point Network because we're North Point strategic partner today. And you know, I was setting ground rules for the guys and I'm like, hey, just so you know, we all look at each other's churches. We all look at each other's dashboards. This is not going to be a competition. This is not a my church is bigger than your church kind of environment. Like we just, we just need to call an audible and stop that stuff once in a while. And when somebody's having a good year, celebrate rather than go, oh, I know Perry. We sold out or they don't really preach the gospel. It's yeah. Oh, yeah. That's my favorite is how, so you determine that you, I mean, they used to get entire councils of people and have meetings for days to determine that. So I'm, man, I'm so glad I would progress. Yes. I, I, I, I'm an arbiter for all those things, just in case you were wondering, Perry, I could tell whether you preach the gospel or not firstly. That's just it. And it even goes down to what I call qualifying statement. So for example, somebody will say, I was reading a book by Brian Houston. Now, I don't agree with everything he says, Paul's, why did you have to say that? Why did you, of course you don't agree with everything he says you're a human being. There are no two humans on the planet that agree on everything. But if we don't watch it, we get so obsessed with other people's view of us that we feel like we need to qualify every single statement we make. And that goes back to that, man, I just, I, I'm an insecure person and I need the affirmation of other people. And that's not leading people that's using people and manipulating them to get them to say something good about you. Oh, that's good. Man. Okay. So this is going to be some hard work. This kid, I mean, I know you didn't really write this as a devotional, but this could even be like a devotional. You could just find the chapter that owns you and say, okay, I'm going to spend like a month on this and working on the devotional. So are you? Yeah. Yeah. That's going to be, it's going to be an idea. We're going to kind of, because it's, it's something, I mean, you can read it and, and, and put it on a shelf, but I, I really, my prayer in writing the book is that it genuinely helps people. Yeah. Well, it's a whole idea of being made into a new creation, which you and I are in the middle of right now and everybody who's listening to this, every leader who's listening to this, like we're being made new and it's painful and it's difficult, but it's so worthwhile. Perry, we're going to, I'll tell everybody in just a minute how to get into a special promotion that you and the publisher have made available for podcast listeners and for early adopters on your book. But like if there's a really quick thing, parrynoble.com is a great place to look for everything. Perry, and what are some other sites that you want to direct people to? Most excellent way to lead.com, that's the, that's the other website that's, and it's long, most excellent way to lead, and let me explain that, let me explain that just very quickly. Sure. I didn't come up with that title. I didn't say that, that was something at the end of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul's last words is now I will show you a most excellent way. And then he goes into love. So I just borrowed a verse from scripture and said, if Paul said it, then I'll just check mark what Paul said and said, amen, I'm going to talk about the most excellent way to lead. So that's where it came from. That's cool. That's cool. So that's most excellent way.com is everything for the book. And of course, we'll link to all your social channels on, and your fun follow on Instagram and Twitter and all that stuff. So that's great. Perry, thanks so much for being our guests. Thanks for being so generous with our listeners once again and with leaders. And we're just excited for you as you head into yet another fresh season at new spring. Thanks, man. Love you. Love what you're doing here. Keep up the great work. Thanks, Perry. Man, isn't Perry just awesome? I just, I just love him. And you know, Perry's one of those leaders who just reminds me that you can absolutely be yourself and God uses you. I just love that about Perry. And he is in real life, exactly the way he seems on stage, he's just a great guy. And I hope you'll get his new book. All the details are in the show notes. You can just go to kerrynohoff.com/episode78 and you'll find them there. And then next week, hey, man, I'll tell you, I am pumped for next week because we're going to have a conversation with Justin Dean. And Justin was on the senior leadership team at Mars Hill two years ago when everything went down with Mark Driscoll and Justin and I connected. And I just say, hey, would you be willing to do a podcast episode with me and just debrief on the good things? And then some of the other things that happened in the final days of Mars Hill. So that is next week to make sure you don't miss it. It's going to release on Tuesday. Make sure you subscribe and thank you to all you amazing listeners who continue to leave reviews and ratings and iTunes and on other platforms. Thank you. When you do that, not only does it give me feedback, but it helps iTunes share it with other leaders and I'm so grateful for that. We'll be back next Tuesday with a brand new episode with Justin Dean. Hope today has helped you lead like never before. [MUSIC]