The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP Bonus 005 #AskCarey Part 4
(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 another episode, a bonus episode of Ask Carrie. And this is where I take your questions and oh my goodness, do I have my work cut out for me? We have so many questions. And we're gonna have to record a bunch of these Ask Carrie podcasts over the next few months to cover them all, which is awesome. Some of you are leaving me voicemails on a regular basis on Speak Pipe, which is right off my blog, CarrieNewhoff.com. And these questions I'm gonna do in this episode, and then probably the next one, came out of a webinar that I did. Now if you're like, whoa, you did a webinar? Like when, how? I did, but it was an exclusive for people who pre-ordered. My book, and it was such a great conversation. And there were so many questions, not just about my book, we'll get to a few of those, my book Lasting Impact, which came out a couple of months ago. But just great general ministry questions, I couldn't get to them in the our webinar. And so I literally, I have six pages of great leadership questions here. So I'm gonna spend some time going through them. I'll get to a few of those today, and then we'll do another episode and wrap that up, and then back to your voicemails and your questions. And I just wanna say thanks. Thanks so much for being so engaged. Thanks for asking great questions. 2016 is gonna be a very exciting year. My team and I are looking at ways that we can serve you better and give you even more resources that we can put in your hands to help you lead like never before. So I hope that's what this episode does. And as you catch it, either right before, right after Christmas, I just wanna say thank you so much. You guys have been an incredible gift to me. This is a bonus episode. We're still doing the regular Tuesday stuff. But if this has blessed you in any way, I mean, you can't pay for it, but one of the ways that you can sort of pay it forward is to subscribe to the podcast and to leave a rating or review. We are almost at 300 reviews when I record this. And I'm sure we'll probably be past that. So if you can get to iTunes, Stitcher or Tune in Radio and leave a review, that would just be awesome sauce. So let's get to the meat and jump into our first question. This one comes from Jeff. And he asks, how do you make changes to make worship more appealing to a younger generation and the unchurched? Great question, but here's the meat of it. Without alienating older church members who are the primary financial support. Jeff, I love the way you ask that question. Thanks for asking it. Couple of thoughts. First of all, it's not automatic that older church members are gonna get alienated by a move to helping the younger generation. So the bottom line for this answer in my approach over these years has simply been this. The best way to engage older members is to simply refer to the mission. It's just to go back to the mission again and again, and then to make the mission personal. So you know, our mission at Connectsus Church is to be a church that unchurched people love to attend. And unchurched people is one thing, but when you talk to a lot of those older members, if I'm guessing your context, chances are most of their kids and grandkids do not attend church, even if they're in their community. And so the way I asked this question at the very beginning when it was mostly older members was simply to say this, do you wanna create the kind of church that reaches your kids and grandkids? And you know, most of them are gonna be like, yeah. And then you get to have that conversation where you say, okay, it's gonna be a very different church than it is right now. If we're gonna be effective, we need to create that. So I mean, for us in 2015 at Connectsus Church, you know, all these years later, our fastest growing environment has been our preschool ministry. And some of those folks who were there at the very beginning 20 years ago are still there. Unfortunately, many of them have passed away now because they were older when I started back in the 90s. But those who are left are just so thrilled to see a church packed with young people, with young adults, with kids, with the next generation. And yeah, some of their kids have returned and become Christians and been baptized when their grandkids are engaged. And of course, it doesn't always work out that way. But I know even for the older folks whose kids maybe haven't come back personally, they are just thrilled not to be the only people in the building anymore. I mean, when you have a church of six or 30 or 100 or 200 or whatever, and suddenly, you know, you've got hundreds of kids running around, that is an incredible thing. And I think your good intention members would understand that. Now, there's a second part to your question. You said, you know, without alienating older church members who are the primary financial support. Now, that's probably true in your context that obviously the existing members are supporting it. Your non-members are not supporting it. But be very, very careful about the people who tell you that they support the church financially. I have found over the years that the people who audibly say, hey, you better do what I say because I'm a tither, aren't tithers. They're not telling the truth or they mistake what tithing actually is. And often your most generous supporters, if you have financial disclosure, well, first of all, never ever leverage their giving as a way of trying to get you to do something they want. I mean, the most generous people just don't. Secondly, the people who do try to leverage their quote givings to get you to do what they want probably aren't the people you want to build the future of the church on and probably aren't giving nearly as much as you think. Now, I went for years without having financial disclosure. I've had financial disclosure over that last number of years. And I was shocked to discover when I got it that so many of the people who said, you know, well, I give big, well, okay, maybe that is big, but there are a lot of people who give a lot more and are much more cooperative with the ministry. So I just want to say, be very, very careful when you assume that people support your church financially because often the people who are the most generous, kind of like Jesus said, they'll never tell you. They don't let the right hand know what the left hand is doing. So there you go. Got a question from Jeremy. And Jeremy's part of a church called Downtown Faith. He said, which of these conversations, these are the seven conversations in my book, A Lasting Impact, and you can get the reference in the show notes, would you view as key to having with a core team of a church plant, of a church plant? I would probably say, you know, there's a bunch of them, but if you're just starting out, conversation four really is one of my favorites. And it's all about keeping high capacity leaders engaged. I mean, if you're doing a church plant, you just can't afford the staff that you need and you're really gonna have to look at high capacity leaders. So I cover seven questions that every volunteer, you know, says in their head, but are afraid to ask out loud. Like for example, are the relationships healthy? Am I signing up for life? Because one of the reasons I'm convinced that volunteers don't sign up is because there's no end date. I mean, if you think about that, I mean, anytime you make a financial transaction, it's like, okay, I'll give you, you know, $10 a month or $100 a month. But I wanna know when this ends, like this is not for life. And when you sign up for an organization, you know, often the assumption in churches, there's no end date. So people think, well, I'm signing up for life. If you can tell them, hey, we need your help for a season. We need it until, you know, new years or we need it until the summer or we need it for a year or we need it for a three year term or something like that, people are much better stepping in. And there's way more advice in chapter four than just that. The other thing I would say that I'm really passionate about is I think you lose a lot of volunteers. And again, in a church plant, it's all volunteers because the staff is disorganized. So if you provide a really disorganized atmosphere for or environment for your volunteers, you're not gonna keep them very long. So I would have that one. And then the other one I would have is probably conversation number three. Are our leaders healthy, really? Like, are you healthy? You see, because when you're planning a church, I mean, you don't get a lot of sleep, you're working weekends, it's busy, everybody's underpaid and to maintain a healthy, sustainable pace. Hey, you're gonna have to go in sprints and we've all done that. We've all put in 90 hour weeks. And I mean, I remember our startup phases at different periods, but you cannot sustain that forever. And health is more than just pace, Jeremy. It's also the culture you wanna create. Like, are you creating a culture of suspicion or trust? Are you talking about people? Or are you talking to people when you disagree with them? Are you healthy as a leader personally? Those are the questions that I think are especially important in the startup phase. I mean, they're always important. I still ask them on a regular basis, but I think you wanna pursue health. So chapters three and four is where I'd start on health and then on volunteers. Okay, next question comes from Cody. And Cody says, how do I inspire leadership to begin asking these difficult questions when I'm not in a position to lead the conversation myself? So Cody read Lasting Impact. He's like, I agree, I agree, I agree. And whether it's my book or some other book you've read, you've read a book or you listen to a podcast or you've got this brilliant idea, and you're the only one who agrees with it and you're not the senior leader. So how do you get someone to buy in? Okay, couple of thoughts around that. First of all, if you've read a book, my book, any book, doesn't matter what you've done. I mean, whenever somebody hands me a book, I always feel, and maybe this is just me, maybe I need to go to counseling, you tell me, but I always feel like there's a hidden message in there that's kind of negative, like here, you should read this because you're somehow inadequate. Do you ever feel that way? I do, when people hand me a book, it's like, I just read this, you should read it. It's like, why? I mean, if it can be about heaven, it's like, do you not think I believe in heaven or if it's about leadership? Like, do you think I'm a bad leader? See, I gotta go back to counseling over that. But maybe you've had that experience. So how do you diffuse that? Like, 'cause I love to give people books too. So here's a question. If you've got an agenda behind the book, because you really do think, oh my gosh, this guy has to read it. What do you do? How do you handle that? I would say, hey, I just finished this book, fill in the blank, you know, whatever book it is, I really loved some of the ideas in it and it really challenged me. And then you tell them how it challenged you. It made me really think about how I could do a better job of reaching my own church friends. Or it really made me wonder whether I'm healthy as a leader. And I'm wondering, would you be interested in reading it? Because I'd love to discuss some of the ideas with you. Now, when you ask it that way, to me, it kind of removes the threat. So that's what I would do. I would go Cody to your senior leader and say, hey, I just finished reading this book. You know, here's a couple of ideas that really stuck out that really challenged me. Don't say, I think they're gonna challenge you. Don't say, I think our organization stinks and as a result, we should read the book. 'Cause then immediately, you know, the defensiveness of your senior leader is up. So I would just phrase it that way and then see what he or she says. And if they're open, then you have a conversation and you say, hey, after that's over. What do you think if we read this together as a team or what do you think if we tackle these issues as a team? So that's how I would do that. So, great question, Cody. Next one comes from my friend, Tripp. And Tripp is in rural Alabama, just outside Montgomery. Only 80,000 residents in the entire county and the largest church is about four to 600 in worship. They launched two years ago with a vision to reach the unchurched. But here, 70% of the population would call themselves Christian. Thoughts on leading in a very small, church context. Well, that's a great problem. And some of you have that. I mean, all of my listeners in Canada and the Northeastern US or the Western Seaboard of the US or, you know, Jersey would be like, "Oh, I wish I had that problem." But, you know, that is a problem when 70% of the people call themselves Christian. That's a challenge. So, a couple of thoughts. Number one, you know, this could be the exception, Tripp. But my guess is that most of those so-called Christians are not in church on a Sunday. And some of them are very lukewarm. I mean, if you look at Barna's data, for example, the stuff that David Kinemann is putting out at Barna.org, you'll realize that a lot of people who call themselves Christian maybe or consider themselves Christian maybe don't bear the authentic marks of discipleship. So, I think there's some opportunities there to even reach, you know, poorly-churched or, you know, unchurched church people if there is such a thing. Second thing I would say is, you know, pray for revival, pray for God to move. One of the most remarkable stories to me happening in the church today is happening in South Carolina with Perry Noble. And Perry will be back on a podcast on this podcast, by the way, early in 2016. You know, he planted New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. Now, Anderson, South Carolina is like 30,000 people. And he planted church that reaches over 30,000 people in a town of 30,000. Now, obviously they have multiple locations, et cetera, et cetera, but like, and in a very unchurched region. So, or a very church region, I should say. So, I mean, I just, I think you look at what Perry is doing and you go, wow, with God, all things are possible. So, I would really pray that God would move in the hearts of people. I would get passionate about what you're doing. And I would just try to build the strongest mission you possibly could and invite everyone along with it. You know, I think the day of like, hey, we got cool music and listen to our band and I'm a decent preacher, is fading fast. And I think passion is gonna rule the future. So, just get real passionate about what you're doing, pray about what you're doing and just try to reach whoever you can, wherever God has planted you. And, you know, that, that I think can go a long way. Okay, next question comes from Matt, a fellow Canadian. He says, I'm minister at a church in Prince Edward Island, 100 people on average, elders are nice men, but older with a frustrating quote, small church mentality. Every decision must be approved by the board. Any ideas how to change it, they wanna grow, but they can't think differently. Yeah, I think governance is a huge issue in small churches and even mid-sized churches. And one of the reasons that your church doesn't grow, we'll link to this in the show notes, but I've got a blog post called, How to Structure Your Church to Grow Past 200 People. So, we'll link to that in the show notes, but I'll just give you the thumbnail and my view on that. I think, I think you just gotta name it. I mean, micromanaging boards are gonna stunt the growth of your church. I mean, at Kinex's church, we just submitted a $2 million budget for 2016. We have very bright elders, extremely bright elders. I mean, when you look at pages and pages and pages of Excel spreadsheet, I mean, in a two-hour meeting, how are you gonna approve a $2 million budget? And large companies, large non-profits, hospitals, I mean, places like that, you have a 50, $60 million budget. You gotta board a director, you can't say, "Hey, how much are we spending on surgical tape?" I mean, you're allowed to ask questions like that, but you can't really, there are lots of people who have worked hundreds of hours putting that document together, and you have to trust them to do a good job. So what I would encourage you to do is to have that conversation with your elders and say, "Look, one of the things I'm aware of in leadership is that a board that has to approve every decision just stunts the growth of the church. So what would you think if we sort of move to oversight and the way we do it at Kinex's is the way North Point does it because we're a North Point strategic partner, which is that the elders guide, the staff lead, and the people are gifted and serve in ministry. So the elders are basically guardrails. They're the people who give advice. They're the people who say, "Mm, you know, are we really on mission with that or not?" And our elders tend to look at things like, you know, staffing to spending ratios to make sure we're not overstaffed or understaffed. They tend to look at overall compensation levels, but again, that's the call of the lead pastor. So that's the way that we do that. And if the lead pastor keeps making terrible calls, you fire the lead pastor, that's how it goes. So that's what I would say, and that's really important. Another book, I write about it on my blog and in lasting impact, but the old book that I refer to probably more than any other church book by Carl George and Warren Bird, How to Break Church Growth Barriers. We'll link to that in the show notes. Read that. They have a whole section on boards that micromanage. It's so good. It's so good. So hope that helps Matt. And Jason asks this, "How do we build ownership on new initiatives, buy-in, especially on the volunteer level, but also on the leader level?" Great question, Jason. Here's the problem. A lot of the times, those of us who are visionary leaders, we just come in and, you know, we're off the mountain and we announce what we should do. Now, what I've discovered over the years is that that's really good if you're the only person who has to follow that vision. If you've got a lot of other people who need to follow that vision, you probably need a new strategy. And what I've discovered is that people own what they create. If they've got to say, they own it. So often what I've done as our staff has grown, as our team has grown, and, you know, our church has grown, is I'll initiate an idea. But I always try to bring it to the team, even with my sermon series. I'll bring it to the service programming team. And I'll say, "Hey, what do you guys think?" 'Cause I want them to be passionate about my next series. I don't want to be the only guy passionate about my next series. And I'll say, "What do you think about these bottom lines? What do you think about the subjects, you know, for the six-week series, are they good? What do you think about the angle? Like am I missing anything?" And that could be as short as 10 minutes or it could be as long as, you know, a two-hour brainstorming session on a series. But you see, what happens in that is it stops just being my vision and it starts to become our vision. Second thing that happens, of course, is they have better ideas than I do. So I actually end up with different bottom lines. I end up with better direction in a series. And then it kind of becomes a group effort because, you know, people are passionate about what they're engaged in. And if they've got some skin in the game on your series or some skin in the game on your vision, then they're gonna be more passionate about it. Now, you can only have so many people input to a vision. I mean, if I took that to a room of 100 people, I guess I could do that, but like you tend to get really distracted and unfocused in your thinking. So I like to keep those consultation circles to like a dozen people or less, often four or five in my case. I just think if you have four or five really smart leaders in the room, you're gonna get some really good opinions in the room. Now, so what do you do beyond that? Well, if it's a bigger change, like a vision or capital campaign or something, then the other thing you can do is think in concentric circles, but you wanna talk to a group of people who's maybe not that group making the decisions with you or giving direct input, but you wanna present an almost finished product to the next ring out and maybe pull together 10 or 20 key staff or volunteers or influencers in your church and say, "Hey, here's what we're looking at." We just really value you guys. We think you're amazing. And we would just love to see what you think of this. Can you give us some feedback in and out, anywhere from a 20 minute to hour long session, you present the vision and then you open it up for questions and you see what they have to say. And maybe you'll get some good ideas and go back and revise it. So that's sort of the consultation phase. The third phase would be especially, and this is for really big initiatives, capital campaign, long-term vision, not just your next series, but if you're doing some really big stuff, then you go one more circle out and you give some people advanced notice. So that's where either via email or better yet in person, you hold a special night and say, "Hey, this is what we've been working on. Numerous people have been consulted on this, but we really value you and we want you to be the first to know." And so here's what we're gonna, we're not rolling this out until a month from now, but we wanted you to know. And if you have any questions, we are happy to answer those questions tonight. And then you just roll through the vision and you answer their questions. And you can ask for a little bit of feedback, but by this point, the vision's 99% to bed. And man, people feel so honored when you bring them in and every once in a while, you'll also know at that point, whether you're on track or off track, because by the time you've gone to a group for input and then you've gone to a group for consultation and now you're basically at the advanced notice phase, if everyone's going thumbs down, you better get back to the drawing board fast, but what you'll discover is that a good decision gets better with time and a bad decision gets worse with time. So the wider you cast the net, the more affirmation you'll get about the proposal or conversely, you'll get people who are like, "Eh, I don't really know." And then you know you probably have a problem on your hand. So that's how I handle it. And let's say, you know, in a church of 100, you've now consulted in those three circles, 30 people. You got a 30-year church on board and you got all the leaders on board. And so when you finally announce it on a Sunday morning, you know, it's done. You're not gonna have any pushback because you've already dealt with that. So hope that helps, Jason. Tag says this, how important is biblical literacy to Christian growth? How do you prioritize it in your congregation? Tag, I'm glad you asked the question. It's just something we're all struggling with right now. I mean, 60% of the people who walk through the doors of our church can access church, don't have a church background. If they don't have a church background, there's a pretty good chance they're not reading their Bible and they've got, you know, different spiritual views from what they picked up online and in life. And so they don't know whether reincarnation is Christian or not Christian or, you know, do we become angels when we die? People just don't know. And so that's a real challenge that we're trying to figure out. What I've discovered, I wrote another post called How to Tell If You're Actually Producing Disciples. We will link to that in the show notes. But have a look at that on my blog because I say, you know, in the short term, it looks like we're not doing very well, but I'm starting to see now 'cause our church is eight years old, people that we baptized four or five years ago, they look a lot more like Jesus than they did five years ago. You know, they're reading their Bibles, they're inviting their friends, they're praying, they're serving, they're part of our mission and we're super excited about that. And now if the people you're baptizing four or five years ago are, you know, they're all falling through the cracks and none of them have lives that look like Jesus. You probably have a discipleship problem. So I think, you know, there's a lot of linear thinking out there in the church and people are like, well, you need a 101, a 201, a 301, a 401, basically, everybody should be a seminary grad? No, I don't think so. Jesus had problems with the seminary grads in his day and he just called a bunch of people to follow him who changed the world and who looked a lot more like Jesus by the time their lives were done. So I think that's a better paradigm, but by the same token, you know, personal devotions and weekend preaching probably isn't gonna run you through, you know, get you the worldview you need. It's a sort of, you know, get you in the space where you can really understand what the scripture is saying. So we're starting to explore things like seven-day seminary and initiative from Elevation Church. We're looking at different programs we can do to sort of run our core track leaders through a theology boot camp. And, you know, you can give them prescribed reading and, you know, we do some books that we share with people, but at the end of the day, we probably need something more systematic and it's a problem that's only gonna grow because, you know, the number of Christians in our culture shrink on a regular basis in America, Canada and the Western world in Europe and in Australia. And so we're gonna have to do the theological education ourselves and I think the jury's out on that one. So Bill asks, he says, "Superbook, "this is about lasting impact with very practical help." So I passed her a mainline church with roots and traditions that date back to, are you ready for this? 1777. Whoa, I mean, that's an old church. Could you speak to those of us who are in situations where change is painfully slow and may cost members leaving? Yep, great question. Everybody, a lot of listeners right now going, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." And here's, it might not be 1777, it might be 1977, but it's still painful. And what do you do when tradition goes back that far? That's very interesting. I've done some work with European churches and I've been there a few times. And I remember standing in Germany once in the very room where Luther and Calvin debated. They actually met and I'm like, wow, like that. That's just craziness. And memories in Europe go back generations and centuries which they just don't in America or Canada. But in a church that goes back to 1777, I would imagine that there's a much greater sense of history than there would be in most of our churches, particularly church plants. So change can be painfully slow. So how do you do that? Well, I think your job as a leader is to cast a vision of discontent. You have to become discontent with the status quo. I'm gonna assume that there's not rapid growth and renewal at your church. And I think your job as a leader is to become discontent with that and then very graciously come alongside your members and help them get discontent with the fact that after almost 250 years, they don't wanna be the generation that turns out the lights or loses the mission. That they've got this incredible legacy and they need to be the people to pass the torch to the next generation. So I would start there. And I would just say, hey, when we are in a city where there are thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who don't know Christ and don't go to church, we have a responsibility to reach out to them. That's what I would say. Now, what about may cost members leaving? You know, when we started in our small traditional rural churches, people said, did you lose anybody? Did you lose anybody? And the answer is, well, of course we lost people. Yeah, you're gonna lose people. And everybody is so afraid of losing people because you're focusing on the wrong people. What you need to do is you need to focus on the people you're already losing because you're already losing 10,000 unchurched people, 100,000 unchurched people. You're already losing everybody who is opting for the beach on the weekend or the ski hill on the weekend or a warm bed on the weekend. You're already losing all of them. And so what you need to do is you need to focus on the people that you're already losing. And if you lose four or five church members in the process of all of that, that's not such a big deal. They're going to heaven anyway. And the people that you're trying to reach aren't. So I would just try to remember that. That's how I'd handle that one. Great question. Okay, so Gary asks me this question. He said, great feedback, thank you. He loved the book, one of the best he's read this year. Could you explain how further engagement will drive attendance in the future? Practically, what can church leaders do to increase engagement? Thank you. So this goes back to an idea in the book that says in the future engagement will drive attendance. Attendance will not drive engagement. And that was just actually a thought that I had earlier in the year that frankly I need to develop more. I know a couple of church leaders have done full retreats on that idea, trying to figure out how to drive engagement. But let me give you the background to it, okay? I think the model for a lot of us or the assumption for a lot of us in ministry is we will get lots of people to attend and then hopefully most of them engage. In other words, we'll just grow our church by another 20 people, 50 people, 100 people, 1,000 people, and hopefully a meaningful percentage of them will engage. I don't think that's working anymore. With all of the options that are out there with people attending church less often, with podcasts and digital church and online church, I mean, I just don't see people attending as often. Now, what I do see in our church is that engaged people attend. In other words, if you're serving, if you're inviting a friend, if you're giving, if you're invested in the ministry, if you're invested in your family and you want your kids to have a great experience in our family ministry environments, well then you're going to attend. So it's not that those attenders that come engage anymore, I think it's engaged people attend. So maybe instead of asking the question, how do I fuel attendance? Maybe you should start asking the question, how do I fuel engagement? In other words, how can I get more people next year engaged in our mission? Because if you just look at people who are sold out, people who want to have great families and the Orange Curriculum helps us do such a great job with that. You can go to whatisorange.org if you want more information on that. If you want to really partner with parents, if you really want people to dig into their faith, if you want them to get passionate about inviting their friends, if you want them to get passionate about serving in the church and in the community, I mean, those are the people who are likely to show up. And so instead of just trying to drive attendance, drive engagement, because if you drive engagement, attendance will grow and take care of itself. So those are my thoughts behind it. So I would say the way to answer that is to try to figure out how to drive engagement. Hope that's helpful Gary, thanks, it's a great question. When Ling asks, how do we effectively deal with longtime power brokers, six people who are trying to round up others in the church to revolt against the pastor? Number two, people who complain about it's either her way, the pastor's way, or the highway, but are really describing themselves. Well, wow, that's a great question. It sounds like there is a classic power structure there. First of all, I just want to say, you know, regulations five, because when it talks about division, faction, jealousy, boastfulness, it says that really, those are things that are not of God. And clearly there's a dynamic that is not of God. This is not close to the heart of God, the power struggle that's going on in your church right now. If you read a little bit later on in Galatians five, you'll run into what Jesus brings when he shows up in the church, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. So I say that not to be like hyper spiritual, but just to say, clearly God isn't in this power struggle. I mean, that is not the way Jesus used power to bully people. And what I would say is probably all the power brokers either have to change or have to go. You know, you use power in the kingdom of God to serve other people, not to serve yourself. And so I would just think at some point, somebody's got to come in, maybe you need to get a mediator, maybe you need to get a neutral third party to come in and just name it for what it is, or maybe one of the players who's involved in the power struggle would have the humility to say, oh my goodness, I looked in the mirror and I didn't like what I saw. Here's what I've been doing. I am sorry, I confess, I repent. And if that doesn't happen, probably the power brokers need to be taken out. That's what I would say. And if you need a third party or a denominational help to do that, but yeah, somebody's got to call an audible because this is not healthy. All right, last question in this episode is simply this. Cheryl asks, what is your number one advice for a church that has plateaued? Great question, ask yourself why? Why? Because you're going to jump to the what and the how. How are we going to make this thing grow? How are we, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, we'll wait. Why did people used to be excited about coming and they're not excited about coming anymore? When was it that we really peaked and started to lose momentum? What was it in the water supply that got in that kind of made things go that way? Why is it that people aren't passionate about our mission anymore? Because my guess is if you're plateaued, you're not passionate. If you can start to answer those questions and they may be somewhat idiosyncratic for your church, but if you can start answering those questions, you'll be close to solving the problem. It's kind of like in a marriage, you know, if you're just having a bad season, you really have to figure out why. Why is it bad? Why are we not talking? Why are we not having fun anymore? Why, why, why, why, why? And if you can navigate that, man, great things start to happen. Now, it's painful. It's very painful to go back 'cause it's easy to blame the culture. It's easy to blame the church down the road that is growing. It's easy to blame your people. It's easy to just say, oh, people aren't faithful anymore. Hey, that's a chicken's way out. That's a coward's way out. The courageous leader looks in the mirror and goes, okay, I was in charge. This happened on my watch. What did I do? What have we done and how do we fix it? And when you go back and you have that honest, like you do a surgery. I mean, you do surgery on your problems and you're willing to put all assumptions on the table. You'll find health again and you'll grow again, but most churches would just rather blame, defend and make excuses. So that's what I would say. Just ask why, ask why. Thanks for that question, Cheryl. I really, really appreciate it. Man, I got pages more. I can't believe how few we got through in 35 minutes, but I'll come back with more. How does that sound? In fact, we'll do another bonus podcast very soon. And the best way to make sure you don't miss these random episodes is to subscribe. So I got enough fodder for a while, but if you got a burning question, you wanna leave it just go to my blog, carrynewhough.com. You'll see a little thing that says got a question, click on it, leave me a voicemail. And we'll come back to some voicemails early in 2016 as well. In the meantime, I just wanna say thank you so, so much. And if you're interested in lasting impact, you can still get your copy. In fact, you can get a free copy. The audio book is out now and Audible offers a free download. So if you haven't taken advantage of that offer, you can just go to lastingimpactbook.com, click through to Amazon and you'll find all editions of the book, the Kindle edition. If you're in the US, you'll also find the paperback edition and you'll find the Audible edition, which I believe is available globally. And you can maybe get the audio version for free. And if not, it's just like 11 or 12 bucks. That's all it is. So thank you so much to everybody who's bought the book, for everybody who's talked about it on social media. We got a few questions about the book left and a lot just about leadership and leading in the local church. So appreciate doing this with you. And I hope you have an amazing Christmas season and we'll talk real soon. Thanks. I hope this helped you lead like never before. - You've been listening to the Carry New Hough Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)