The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP Bonus 004 #AskCarey Part 3
[MUSIC PLAYING] 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 another bonusode of my leadership podcast. We are doing Ask Carey around three today, backed by popular demand. You guys keep asking questions. And as long as you do, I'll throw one of these in every once in a while into the mix. So we did a couple back in September. That went over really, really well. We actually did three bonus episodes. One, an entire recap of the first year of podcasting in about an hour, which was a lot of fun. And then we tried this. We thought, well, I'll just take some questions and see if it helps. And apparently it did because you guys keep asking questions. And the way to do it is you can use the hashtag #AskCarry on Twitter, very easy way to do it. Or just go to myblogcarrynewhoff.com and you'll see a little widget on the side that says, got a question. Click on that and leave me a voicemail. You'll hear exactly how that works in a few minutes. So just want to say thanks for making this fun. And I think you guys know this is my favorite part of what I get to do with you on this podcast is not just interview top leaders, which is normally what we do every Tuesday. But I love interacting with you. So every once in a while on a Thursday, we're going to throw in a bonus episode. And I've actually got enough for a couple of ask carries, but you can keep asking questions, which would be great. And then here's what I thought we would do for December. I would love to do an exclusive ask carry. I say exclusive because basically, well, I guess it's exclusive because it's my podcast. But anyway, that's not my point. My point is simply this. I want to do an episode, a bonus. So devoted to answering your questions about my new book, "Lasting Impact." And I know a lot of you have dug into it. We have moved a lot of copies of that book. And even though the book has questions in it, you probably have questions based on the book, something you read that you're like, "Ah, I want to know more." Or, "How does that really work?" I would love to hear that. So use the hashtag ask carry or just go to my blog and say, "Hey, I got a question about the book." And then hit me up. And we will do a bonus episode in December of 2015 around that. Sounds good. And hey, while I got you the easiest way to make sure you don't miss any bonus odes or anything else is to subscribe. And if you haven't done that yet, just jump onto iTunes or to Stitcher or to tune in radio and hit subscribe. And then that makes it super easy. So I would love for you to do that. If you want more on my new book, just go to lastingimpactbook.com and you can find out more details. So in the meantime, let's jump right into your questions. Just got a couple via social media. But most of these are just voicemails that got sent to me via the website. So we're gonna start with Tom, who actually, I forget how he hit me up, whether that was like an email or I don't know, but I thought it was a great question. So this is Tom and he wanted to know, what kind of advice would you carry give to the millennial youth pastor who has found tension between their vocation and authentic friendships within the church? So here's the background to help clarify the question. He says, my role has prevented me, 'cause he's on church staff, from having legitimate friendships with people my own age at church. People naturally feel weird around the pastor and I can confidently say that my wife and I are not perpetuating the weirdness. Yeah, you're right, Tom, sometimes that happens. I'm gonna trust you that you're not the weird one. It's just a weird dynamic, yep. So many pastors tell us to remain separate or that the shepherd isn't on the sheep's level. I don't entirely agree. We are, and listen to Tom here. We are just worn out with having a little to no friends in our church. Either we're viewed as aliens or viewed as narcs. I love that. In other words, we're coming in to police you. Seriously, I'm at a relatively conservative assembly of God church of about 2,500. So I understand some of this comes from the background. What would you advise me? Is this something you've come across? Is it a cultural thing? Is it a millennial thing? Is it a larger issue? Man, it is a huge issue. So thanks for asking Tom. How do you approach that? Well, I've been doing this for 20 years in ministry. And I would say, yeah, that was a big issue for my wife and I. I mean, we came to very small churches, certainly not 2,500. And you're kind of in that weird role. And so I'm gonna talk about the perfect storm. I'm gonna give this a little bit of airplay 'cause I think this is a really important question and you are not alone, Tom. But here's the perfect storm of ministry, okay? First of all, you move into a community and you're brand new and you're looking for friends. And everybody that you're trying to reach either is somebody that you hope one day will go to your church or one day become a Christian or, you know, at least if you're somewhat evangelical like I am or there's somebody who are part of your church. So you've got that weird relationship where you have the potential to be their pastor. That's number one, you know, it's sort of what you do. It's your job, all right? So that adds a dynamic. The second part of the perfect storm is this, that you do what you believe, right? Like I used to be a lawyer. I mean, I wasn't really, I was a lawyer, but like I wouldn't say, hey, the core of my identity, I'm a lawyer. No, I was a Christian and you can be a Christian lawyer, by the way, just in case you were wondering. So, you know, you are a Christian, but you do Christianity for a living. So that's the second part of weird. Number one, you're everyone's boss. Number two, or, you know, pastor or whatever. Number two, who you are at the very core of your being if you're a Christian is also what you do in your, quote, day job or calling. And then the third part of the perfect storm is this, that you work in your community. I mean, if I was a Christian lawyer, going back to that, you know, I take my law hat off on weekends or when I'm with my family. And yeah, you might have to answer a text, but it's like at the core, I'm a Christian, I'm a person, that sort of thing, right? That transcends, goes off office hours. But then, you know, you're gonna have friends at your law firm, but you're not necessarily, they're not your whole community. Like I would have been part of a church. I was part of a church while I was in law. And so my friends are from a diverse setting. The weird part is, and this is the perfect storm. This is the three fronts. Colliding is in ministry. You know, it's your job and you're sort of seen as the pastor wherever you go. Regardless of your age demographic. Secondly, it is who you are. I mean, you wake up in the morning, you're a Christian. You're on holidays, you're still a Christian. And then the third part is everybody that you interact with in your local community is part of your community. So either someone you're hoping to reach or somebody you are reaching. So that makes it weird and it is an epic level of weirdness. So what do you do about that? Well, I think number one, even knowing that, that perfect storm is huge. I mean, just kind of say, okay, yeah, that's why it's weird. And if you can understand that funk, then you can go, okay, well now I can get a handle on that and lead around it. So now to the heart of the question, is it possible to have friendships in that kind of context? And I think the answer is yes. But I'm gonna say something here and people may disagree and people who attend my church and listen, this might go, I disagree totally, that's okay. I think there is a limit to the friendships that you can have in the church where you serve. And it's simply this and it's not a big limit. It's just, you know, that last 2%. I have found, I've been fortunate enough to find some great friends in our church. And we've been in community with them, but I will always be their pastor. I mean, I am super close with our elders and I love our elders and I love some people I've been in group with and I love the people that we've hung out for 20 years with, but I've always played a role in their lives. And so here's where sort of the weird part of that friendship is, if my challenge is with the church or if my challenge is with them, sometimes it is not very healthy for me because of the position I hold to deal with that issue directly with some of my closest friends. So that doesn't mean you can't do things together. That doesn't, I mean, when I'm recording this, I'm going on a trip with like a dozen people from our church. I am so stoked, I love those people. They're amazing and they are some of my closest friends in the world, a few of them in the group. So I mean, I say that as a guy who has friends in the church. However, I then have an outer circle of people, okay? In this outer circle of people, generally these days tend to be people who live hundreds or thousands of miles away. I connect with them via text or occasionally on Skype or via phone call. And they're the people that I'm like, okay, here's what's driving me nuts, you know? And I can sort of vent about the church because if you vent to your unchurched friend about the church, well, that's just weird. And then if you vent to the church people about your church, well, that's weird. And so I have a couple of friends that if they're having a bad day, they call me. And if I'm having a bad day, I call them. And I think that makes it healthy because then I can go back into my church and love on those people. And I don't, you know, you're not the husband who comes home every day and just complains, complains, complains, complains, complains, right? So, and listen, I don't have a lot of those days. We have an incredible church. We have a very, very healthy church, but I think that's actually made it healthier. And it's made those relationships far better is just to have that safe place that you can go to. And then just to wrap this up, Tom, I think that's something that the vast majority of pastors and church leaders don't have. So where do you start? I mean, you know, if you listen to the podcast, I have a lot of friends and some of the guests are actually some of those people. I won't name them, but, I mean, I've got their cell number. They've got mine and we talk and I'm like, okay, ready to jump off a building today. And they're like, funny, so am I, right? And we talk about it. And then it's fine. I can go right back to my community and, you know, nine times out of 10, just talking about it solves it. So, I mean, I've got, I've got those people. And if you don't have those people, I mean, who is a friend that you don't work for that doesn't pay you, that you are not the pastor of and they're not really your pastor, that you can just kind of talk to and then develop a couple of those relationships. And I think that solves the funk. And I think that gives you the opportunity to really love and value the friendships that you can build in your community. Realizing that, yeah, you're always gonna be the pastor and that's okay 'cause you got other friends too. Right, okay, so does that help, Tom? I hope so. Okay, now we are gonna go to one of the voicemails. Okay, so the first question comes to us from Nick, who's a 26-year-old church leader in Ocala, Florida. - Hey, Carrie, my name is Nick. I'm a young adult's pastor in Ocala, Florida. I'm 26 years old and my question to you is, if you could go back in time and give advice to your 26-year-old self, what are the maybe one or two most important things that you would tell yourself? Thanks, Carrie, love the podcast. Appreciate your time. - Nick, thanks so much, man. And hey, I gotta tell you, I just love all the young leaders that are getting back to me these days. I hear from so many of you on social. I hear from you on the podcast. I hear from you on the blog. I hear from you about the book. That's just awesome. I'll tell you, at this stage of my life, nothing gives me more joy than being able to pour back into young leaders. Because, you know, Nick, I kind of grew up without a mentor at that stage of my life. I kind of figured it out myself. And that was a mistake. I got some mentors along the way when I hit my 30s. But, you know, I always say to people now, actually my wife and I just started a small group and they're all young couples in their 20s. And, you know, I just turned 50. And so I'm at a very different stage of life. But when I was 25, when I was 26, I didn't want advice from anybody over 30. Maybe I was too arrogant, or I don't know, it was a generational thing. And I just find all the people at our church, you know, in their 20s and 30s are just so open in a way that I never was. And in so many people online, like on the blog and on the podcast, are just amazing in terms of saying, "Hey, build into me." So I already think you have a huge advantage. That's why I say that. What would I do? I would say, deal with your junk faster. I was in my mid 30s when I first started getting counseling. And as I've talked about before, the only reason I did was because my wife basically said, "You have to." And I thought, "No, no, no honey, you have to." But it was actually me. So I, yeah, I would have gone to counseling earlier. I think we could have avoided some pain and probably reduced painful season in our marriage to a much shorter season if I had gone earlier and been open and dealt with my issues. And I think I would have been a better leader, younger. You know, what emerged over a decade ago after lots and lots of counseling was a different leader. And me and a different approach to things. And I'm not saying God didn't use my 20s. God didn't use my 30s. He used them in some pretty powerful ways. But I think I could have gotten better faster if I dealt with my issues. My junk and gone to counseling, good Christian counseling earlier. Second thing I would say is work as hard on your character as you do on your skill set. I was like, "Mr. Skillset, Mr. Skillset, Mr. Skillset." Throw some skill sets at me. I'm all over that. But I really resisted people who talked about the heart, people who talked about character. And it wasn't like I, you know, had some horrible hidden thing that, you know, I didn't want anyone to know about it. It was just, you know, I was half decent human being, I guess. But I just wish I had taken my character as seriously as I took my skill set. So I think if you do those two things, if you just go deal with your issues, you'll be a better, I don't know if you're married or not Nick, but you'll be a better husband, you'll be a better father, you'll be a better leader, you'll be a better person and a better friend. And then I would encourage you to take your character as seriously as you do your leadership skill set because you can grow your character. And that's a good thing. And I write an awful lot about that and speak a lot about that. So that's probably why. That's pretty close to my heart. Now onto the next question. This one's from Andrew Walker. - Hey Carrie, this is Andrew Walker. I am currently the discipleship pastor at one church in North Carolina. And then the lead pastor of a replant that our church is engaged in as well. A question that I have often wanted to ask several leaders is how do you organize your time on a day-to-day basis? What does your day look like? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? Thanks, appreciate it very much. Love the podcast. - Andrew, thanks so much. First of all, thanks for the kind words. And secondly, we have an Andrew Walker at our church too. He's our music director. Not the same guy, but anyway, really good and a shout out to everybody in North Carolina, lots of people listening there. What does my Monday to Friday look like? I'll tell you, it's probably in flux right now a little bit, but I'll tell you what it's been for the last five years. It's been, and it's just because I'm focusing more and more on content as I go forward. So I gotta figure out a new rhythm. But anyway, what it has looked like is I try to create at least two days a week to work on things rather than in things. I think ministry is very difficult because basically you can spend your whole life reacting to people. It's like you can react to your inbox, react to your voicemail, react to people who wanna meet with you. And I think the most effective leaders I know at least are leaders who actually decide, no, I'm not gonna be reactive, I'm gonna be proactive. And actually we'll link to this in the show notes, but I wrote a post recently about seven things you'll never have enough time for. We'll link to that in the show notes. I would just encourage everybody who struggles with time to read that. Those are seven things that I've had to decide, okay, if I don't budget for that, it's never gonna happen. Message prep, visioning, exercise, adequate sleep. Nobody ever funds you to say, hey, are you working on your message right now? But they'll criticize you if you do a bad job. So you've gotta make the time to do that. So here's the way I've done it for the last few years. Monday and Wednesday, I almost never book meetings. And Tuesday and Thursday I do meetings. So Tuesday I go into the office, I actually work from home Monday and Wednesday. Tuesday and Thursday I go into the office. And the reason I limit my time in the office is if I spent five days a week in the office, I would have five days of meetings or five days of interruption. And I just, you know, to do what I do, I just can't do it, not with the church our size. I've gotta produce great content. I follow Andy Stanley. So, you know, I better be good on a Sunday. And that for me requires focus and attention. So does visioning, so does communicating. I do a lot of the communication for our church. So, you know, it's just, that's easier for me out of the office. It's easier for me at my home. And I mean, I could schedule 80 hours a week of meetings. I just choose not to. So I do maybe, I don't know, what would I do? 10, 15 hours a week of meetings at the most. And for the rest, I'm not in meetings. And two days a week, I'm not even in the office. Well, three days a week, I'm not even in the office. Why? Because I'll get nothing done. And I will respond to everyone else's agenda. So that's how I get this done. The other thing I do, I get up really early, usually, well, sometimes as early as 4.30, usually 5.5.36. And I do the blog and the podcast sort of in my spare time. You know, first thing in the morning, or I'm actually recording this on a Wednesday night at 8.30. And I'm not going to be up for a lot longer, but you know, it was kind of like, okay, I can do this, even though I probably can't write a message anymore. I'm too tired, but I could do this. So I do that in the margins. And I still had some time to watch a baseball game today, it's playoff season. So my team hasn't been beat out yet. And you know, I went for a walk earlier today. That stimulates some thinking. You know, life is only as busy as you make it. So that's how I structure my time. Saturdays, I try to never do ministry stuff on it. I just try to take the day off. And you know, sometimes I'll do an hour or two, but that's it. And we're also empty nesters. So that's one of the reasons why I think I can do the podcast. I can do bonus episodes like this. I can write books. I mean, my wife has a life. I have a life and we have a fantastic life together. And there's still a little bit of time. If you get up early, if you work hard, if you hustle, if you don't waste time, if you don't have like habits that sort of take everything, you know, all your free time away that really don't produce anything. This is sort of my hobby. This is what I do. So it's Wednesday night. I'm recording this and basically that's the key. If you can figure out what distracts you and then stay away from that and make sure that you take at least half your week to work on the important stuff because I'll tell you the urgent is going to take care of itself. So that's how I've spent my time over the last few years. And honestly, since I made that shift six years ago, they have been the six most productive years of my life. I've written three books, published three books, written four actually, and do some speaking. And I lead a church full time and, you know, most people locally would say, wow, your communication's never been better. That's just when I decided to take control of my time. So I hope that helps, Andrew. It sounds like you got a lot on your plate too. Do a discipleship at one church and lead pastor of a replant at another. You're going to need to organize your time well. Okay, now we're going to go to Andy Meinard from Midland, Michigan. Hi, Carrie. This is Andy Meinard from Midland, Michigan. Thank you for your awesome library of content that you make available for us. My question for you is what were some factors that led to the decision to join as a North Point strategic partner in order some advantages to forming such an alliance? And can you describe that journey of transition forming? Hey, Andy, thanks so much. Really appreciate that. Glad you are enjoying the library of content. That's the way I see it. So that's cool that we share that. Factors get this question all the time that made us wanna join the North Point strategic partnership. So for us, that happened about eight years ago when we started Connects as church. By my relationship with the folks at North Point, we'd go back almost a decade now. It was 2006. I met Andy Stanley the year before I had met Reggie Joyner and Reggie introduced me to Andy and some of the members of the team as they were starting partnerships. And a partnership with North Point, just to be totally clear, is something that right now you still can't apply for. You sort of have to be invited in. I have no idea why we got invited in, but we did. And I'm very grateful for that. It's helped us a lot. There are some changes happening in North Point strategic partner world yet. So, or now I should say, so you'll wanna keep your ears open in 2016 for them. I'm not sure I'm at Liberty to say what they are, but there will be probably greater opportunities moving forward in the future than there are currently. For those of you who like me, have a lot of respect for what's happening at North Point. So watch for that in 2016. But let's talk about partnerships in general because not everybody's gonna be a North Point strategic partner, a few things. Number one, they are not silver bullets, okay? Every church, including life church North Point, that has opened up partnerships or campuses, discover that it's not a just add water thing. I mean, there has to be God in the middle of it, and you have to have great leadership. So, if you're sitting there, and I talked to a lot of churches, and I'm sure this is not you, Andy, but I talked to a lot of church leaders who are kind of like, you know, if we could just have a strategic partnership with North Point, all our problems would go away. No, they won't. No, they won't. Andy Stanley would be the first guy to tell you that. You gotta lead the church well. And I mean, where the church has led well, the church tends to do better where it struggles in that area. Well, we tend to struggle. Distance can be a factor as well. We are, what, 800, a thousand miles away from North Point, but, you know, I let a church here before we are North Point partner, and we plan on being a strategic partner for a long time, as long as they'll have us, but I suppose if that day came to an end, well, I'm still responsible for leading a church here. So, that's what we're gonna do. You gotta have that attitude. Your partnerships cannot solve your problems. Now, what did they give you? They give us a couple of things. They give us content. I teach halftime. Andy teaches the other half of the time via video, but best of all, they give you relationships, and I absolutely love the relationships that I have at North Point. Few days from now, I'm gonna jump on a plane. I'm gonna fly to Atlanta. I'm gonna spend five or six days with North Point people, and they are some of my favorite people. We also have a great relationship with the folks at Orange. Just go to whatisorange.org, if you wanna know what they're all about, and those relationships are gold, and they just help. And they, again, they can't solve all your problems, but to be able to call really smart people and go, "Hey, here's what I'm struggling with." And every once in a while, you know, the answer's like, "I don't know either." Well, it's okay. Well, at least I know that you don't know. But the relationships are great, and it's a kind of community, both in Orange World and North Point World, where when you're down, everybody mourns with you, but when you win, everyone cheers with you. And without saying a whole lot, I think we've all probably experienced community in the church, where if you're winning, everyone else is jealous and critical, and if you're losing, sometimes people gloat. That stinks. And what I love about the relationships that we get to be a part of is, that is never the case. And I think that's fantastic. So if you can find a community like that, what does it give you? It gives you access to content. It helps you not duplicate the strategy. If you're comfortable running with someone's strategy, it gives you, in our case, fantastic relationships, both at North Point and in Orange. The other thing you have to have though, is you have to have the security to be able to put somebody else who's probably a better communicator than you up on the screen, and you have to be okay with that. And you have to be okay with peeing in the room with high capacity leaders who actually might be smarter than you on some issues. And if you're cool with that, and it takes a while for all of us to get cool with that, but if you're cool with that, then that could be fantastic. But it's not a silver bullet. Okay, thanks Andy, great question. Let's go to Fred Baker for the next question. Hey, Kerry, this is Fred Baker at Fellowship Asheville. I have a short question for you that may require a long answer. What does the strategic planning process look like for Connectsus Church? Thanks, appreciate all you do. Well, thanks, Fred. What does the strategic planning process look like for Connectsus Church? I mean, in the early days, it was like me and a computer. It's gotten a lot better since then. So here's what we tend to do. This year, we really mixed it up. We brought in Tony Morgan. A lot of you would know him from Tony Morgan Live.com in the unstuck group. He did a two-day consultation, actually, it's a year-long process where we reviewed everything. It's a stratops thing. So it's sort of the five-year, like complete overhaul, complete audit of everything we do. And I like to do that every three to five years. I like to do a complete rethink. Why? Because we didn't end up changing a whole lot, but we looked at everything. It's like bringing your car in for an overhaul. And you're like, I want that 200-point inspection. And you realize that, you know, 196 points are fine. Oh, but these four, you should really pay attention to. And you can miss that if you don't do a comprehensive review. So every three to five years, we do a comprehensive review. That's what we did this year. And again, we threw a lot of stuff on the wall, most of it stuck. So we're not making any radical changes. It's really just building from strength to strength. But I'm really, really glad we did it. We tested all the assumptions. And we did make some changes. One of the aha moments actually in that was we're growing, but like we should be attracting twice the number of new people that we are. And we're one of the faster growing churches in our region. And we have literally hundreds and hundreds of new families every year. Apparently we should have a thousand new families show up on our door every year. We had no idea. We learned that in the process. So guess what? We're doubling our outreach efforts next year. So that's something we learned by the outside review. Now, a couple of other things we would do in a normal year is we just take our team off-site. And I should probably actually have some of our executive directors answer this question because I'm not as involved as I used to be. 'Cause they run it. 'Cause sometimes you just have to let the smirk people run these things. But basically what we do is we do a SWOT analysis. And we kind of go through our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. We then will break off in departments for the service programming people will go off and the family ministry, kids and student ministry people will go off, the admin people will go off and they'll do like a half day on their own and then we'll come back and report our findings. And then often we will try to establish let's say, you know, a bullet list of like 20 things that are really, we think are important. And then we'll try to narrow them down to 10 or fewer strategic priorities for the year. Sometimes one or two. And then we'll develop a playbook, a strategic action plan. So once we've identified the key priorities in every area and the overall priorities, we then go back and develop what would it be, tactics and goals and objectives and timelines around them and then we hold ourselves to them over the course of the year. So that's generally how we do strategic planning and it's a pretty standard philosophy. If you want more, read anything Patrick Lencioni wrote, including the advantage. It's fantastic. One of my favorite books will link to the advantage in the show notes, but I hope that helps a little bit. And now a re-question. This one is from Gail Holt in New Mexico. And I took it via Twitter, 140 characters. I completely misinterpreted the question. So Gail, we're going to give you another shot. Give us the background. - Hey, Kerry, this is Gail Holt from the Crossroads Bible Fellowship in Edgewood, New Mexico. Thanks for tackling my question, but you're right. It was only 140 characters and I don't think I adequately explained my question. We are actually full in two services on Sunday morning with a fully contemporary style lights and everything. But to add a third service, we're really going to be stretching our musicians then and our Sunday school then. So I wondered if we added a 12 o'clock service if we could do it in an unplugged style so we can use fewer musicians. We need fewer technical people. And there are some older people that we have to admit, they come, they enjoy, but they would enjoy an acoustic service just as well. So that was my question, 'cause we need to add a third service. What we're doing is good. We're hitting it on all cylinders right now. We're just running out of space. So yeah, I don't know if you can tackle this again or not, but thanks. - Well, Gail, that is a fantastic problem to have. I mean, absolutely full. And so now I understand the question. It's like, you're not trying to generate growth. You're trying to accommodate growth. So do you use an unplugged service to help with that? Yeah, I think that's a great temporary strategy. And if what you really need is just more seats, but you don't really have the team to pull off a fully-orbed service, if that is such a term, then yeah, I think that would be fine. However, it sounds to me now that we've got the minute version, not the 140 character version, like you may have some infrastructure that you need to catch up on. Hire some staff, build some volunteers, develop some structure. So I guess you really have two options. One is you could launch the service and then shore up your infrastructure. The other thing is maybe you could spend three or four months just recruiting more volunteers, building up that infrastructure and then away you go. For the last year or two, we have really focused at Connectsus on building our infrastructure, getting our systems nailed. And so in that process, we crossed the 1,000 barrier in weekend attendance, almost 1,100 now, actually. And we, I think, have the infrastructure when we're fully staffed now to accommodate 50% more. So you wanna get to that point and that's gonna take systems and that's gonna take team and that's gonna take people. So whether you do that first or whether you do that second, that's up to you, but I think it can be a great overflow. But then I would really focus on your systems before you do more. So thanks, Gail. I hope that helps and happy to take a question and get on that. So let's go to Greg, who's got the next question for us. - Carrie, how do you practically help your members experience fruit in the Great Commission? And how are you guys doing on that? - Greg, thanks for the question, man. We get asked that a lot. And I would say, probably for those of you who have churches that are focused on outreach, the more you focus on outreach, the more you get asked the question, hey, are you guys actually producing disciples? I actually wrote a blog post. We'll connect to that in the show notes. It's called "How to Tell if Your Church is Actually Making Disciples." Because I've just gotten this question so often, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna blog on it. So I'll cover that in more detail in there. But I think we're doing a decent job. And I think I like the term you use, even though it's a bit weird in our culture, to say, you know, what's the fruit? It is a biblical term. Jesus used it. And I think it's an apt metaphor. I mean, if you go to an orchard to pick apples, and there's lots of apple trees, but there's no apples, what good is it? And similarly, if you're following Jesus, there's gonna be fruit. So in the blog post, I talk about Galatians 5 establishing the fruits of what happens when you are not following Christ. There's division, faction, jealousy, anger, discord. Sounds like a lot of churches, doesn't it? And then you look at the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Later in Galatians 5, it's love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, goodness, and self-control. I look at our church today, and I actually see more of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in the lives of people we baptized two, three, four, five years down the road than I ever have. And that thrills me as a pastor. Is it perfect? No, there's some people who like, you know, fall between the cracks and some people who disappear. I think Jesus taught about that. He didn't he talk about the parable of the sower, right? It's not all gonna yield a great harvest, but for the most part, it is, and that's incredible. So how have we done that? Here's how we've done that. We've simplified our ministry model. The more we've simplified it, the better the fruit has gotten. I mean, I used to run a program-based church, and there were some really good things about it, but at the end of the day, there was still a lot of jealousy and factions and discord and anger. And then about 10 years ago, we just simplified everything and said, okay, in the end, this is where we landed. We're gonna do four things. We're gonna invite people to be part of community. We're gonna ask everybody who follows Jesus to serve. We're gonna ask everyone to invite their friends, and we're gonna challenge everyone to give. And that's it. That's all we do at our church. It's like, well, what should we do to follow Jesus? Well, become part of a group, serve, invite your friends and give. And then, you know, if they've been church people for a long time, they go, well, what else do we do? It's like, well, join a group, serve, invite your friends and give. And the more we've stuck to those guns, the more we discover that people bear fruit. Now, if they don't do those four things, who knows what happens? But if they do, we find that people who are four for four, oh my goodness, they are incredible people. And they're transformed. People who do three for four show great signs of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Two for four, yeah, okay, one for four, sometimes. Oh, for four, you know, sometimes, but not that often. So when they follow that strategy, it works really well. So that's how we're measuring. We just look for fruit, and that's what we're doing. And overall, I'm pretty pleased, Greg. So thanks for the question. So now, next question. - Hello, Carrie. My name is Drew, I came a lot from Kansas City, Missouri. My question to you is what ways do you recognize your volunteers throughout the year to ensure that they stay aligned and alive? Thank you. - Drew, great to hear from you and a shout out to Kansas City. I actually was in Kansas City this past summer. Flew in there to go to Branson, Missouri. Great city and lots of people there who interact on the blog and podcast. So how do we do that? Well, I blog quite extensively about how to serve volunteers and actually wrote a whole chapter about it in lasting impact, my latest book. So I think one of the best ways you can serve volunteers is to be incredibly organized, to do a great job of supporting them every weekend, to make sure that when they show up, you have done your very best to serve them and to set them up for success. That is not appreciation enough, but my goodness. You could do the most killer appreciation event of the year. And if you're disorganized and your volunteers are disheartened week after week and if you're chronically understaffed, I don't think spending even a half million dollars on an appreciation event makes up for bad organizations. So I think you need to be organized. You need to serve your volunteers well. You need to, another thing that we do to keep them aligned is you just need to repeat the vision again and again and again and again. And you do this for a few years and you're just like, am I tired every time I talk to volunteers? I'm like, can I talk about something new? No, repeat the vision. Okay, so I go and I repeat the vision because I live in it every day. They might hear from me a couple times a year on it. And if we remind them of what we do and then why we do what we do, it's just so, so motivating. Like think about it, when you go to the gym, I know a few people who really love to work out, but most people don't really love to work out. You need the motivation. It's like, well, imagine yourself in better shape or being able to do 100 pushups or able to run with your kids rather than waddle or whatever. So I think the motivation is there. The why behind the what is really important. And so you just wanna explain, hey, you're not just babysitting in preschool. In fact, that's the opposite of what we do. You are giving a child the first impression of their heavenly father. You're helping a sixth grade boy navigate. One of the most confusing seasons of his life. You're helping the kid who sits all alone at lunch to realize that they're not alone. See when you cast vision and you remind them of the why behind the what? That works well, but I would say read that blog post. We'll go through it. I surface some of the key ideas. That's in the show notes just about how to attract and keep high capacity volunteers. And hopefully that'll help. And I would say if you just stay organized and you remind them of the why behind the what, and then you appreciate them along the way and you constantly cast vision, you're halfway down the road to really serving them. Okay, question nine comes from John. - Can you share the three top ways you saw the passion exhibited in these churches? - So John's question just to give you some context is right out of a blog post that I wrote a little while ago called five surprising characteristics of churches that are actually reaching the next generation. So let me give everybody a bit of backstory. I've been out on the road more this year than in years visiting other churches. And I just saw that churches that are actually making an impact with 18 to 30 year olds have some common characteristics that other churches don't. And their model might be different, their building might be different, their style might be different. But I saw these five similarities over and over and over again. And so I wrote the blog post again. We'll link to it in the show notes. So you can see it's called five surprising characteristics of churches that are actually reaching the next generation. But the biggest surprise, the biggest learning I had, it's just their passion. Like John said, it's just their passion. And it's passion over polish. These churches didn't all have $20 million budgets. They didn't have perfect production, but they were just so passionate. So what do I mean by that? I mean, we have probably all been in churches where it's pretty clear the leaders are on autopilot or cruise control or they're phoning it in. And that was the opposite of these churches. You could just tell these leaders woke up every day and their passion for the ministry, the local ministry, was white-hot. They wanted to see lost people come to Christ. They wanted to reach the next generation. They acted like what they were doing was the most important thing in the world because quite honestly, it's the gospel, it is. And there was no sense of, hey, we've been doing this for years. There was no sense of, look, we've arrived. I mean, these guys, there was a hunger, there was a hustle. There was a passion in them that was just contagious. And I didn't always like the style of music, but that didn't matter. It captivated me because the worship leader was just so passionate about it. I mean, they weren't trying to nail the notes. I mean, they did nail the notes nearly as much as they were trying to express somehow their love for Jesus. And again, it's not all like hyper-caresmatic or whatever. These are just passionate people. And it was different styles, different models, different budgets, different sizes, but they were passionate and they were being very, very effective. I think Rick Warren in an article I read recently said, one of his seminary professors, I guess. It was one of his seminary professors said, "You wanna know the temperature of any church? Stick the thermometer in the mouth of the pastor." It's exactly it. Those guys were on fire. And passion beats polish when it comes to reaching the next generation. If you're passionate, it's what Wesley said centuries ago. He said, "Light a man on fire and people will come from miles to watch him burn." I just think that's true. I think it's still true. Next question is from Steve. Who's got a question about alignment and when it's time to let people go? - Hey, Carrie. My question is, when do you know when it is time to let a team member go for not being aligned with your church's vision and mission and strategy? I read your blog post on that. And just how there is, you know, there's a fine line between when they are going rogue, versus being a critical independent thinker. And just curious how you could help a church who may be struggling with that with some people being really aligned and moving the church forward and that always being stuck maybe two steps behind. Thanks a lot. - Steve, that's a great question. Yeah, lots of blog questions, which is great. We get a chance to interact even more than we do in the comments. So that's good. Yeah, I think leaders can go rogue because of a lack of alignment. And alignment to me is really a common commitment to a mission, vision and strategy. And where alignment always goes south is that people are not strategically aligned. You know, our mission, 'cause I'm gonna assume you're a Christian if you're listening to this podcast or connected somehow with a church, 'cause this is what this is for, you believe in Jesus. So we're all aligned on that. Yep, and you believe the church has something to do with like growing people and reaching people. Yep, we're aligned on that and loving people, right? Okay, we're aligned on that, great. But you may have a very different idea of what the music in a church should be like than somebody else in your church. See, that's where strategy comes in. We have a very clear definition of the role our weekend services play at our church and other churches do it differently and that's okay. We're not right and they're wrong. Like we could be, you know, we're just different. We're just different. It's not a question of right or wrong. We have a particular approach and a strategy behind our children's ministry. We are really committed to that. That's a strategic decision. We are strategic on how we govern our church. We have a strategy around that. And so it's my job as a leader to get everybody aligned around our strategy, not just our mission and vision. And that's where a lot of leadership in churches falls short because we never get to that point. So I think if the strategy is clarified to get to your question, Steve, if the strategy is clarified then, and they're not on board and they really just disagree, then it's time to let them go. You know, this isn't the church for them. That's how I would phrase it. And it's not a question of my way or the highway. It's just, you know, if you're working for Apple but you really would rather sell Samsung phones, you should actually go work for Samsung. Stop working for Apple. You can bring to Apple. You can be committed to Apple's approach and say, hey, we can learn some stuff from the Android people over here and all the Android people said, amen. But, you know, if you're really working against the purposes of the organization, then you shouldn't be in that organization. So then that's when I think it's time to move on. And so as long as I see fundamental alignment around mission, vision and strategy, or if there's disagreement, it's on how to make the strategy better, but they yield to the group when the group decides, no, this is what we're gonna do, then they're okay. So if they're just the constant negative voice and you can tell they're not behind the mission, vision or strategy, then probably it's time to move on. That's how I'd call it anyway. Okay, so one more question. And this question is gonna come today from Kevin Thomas from Columbus, Ohio. Really quick question. Go ahead, Kevin. - Hi, Gary. This is Kevin Thomas in Columbus, Ohio. I'm glad listener of your podcast, Pastor here in Columbus. Friends in Toronto as well. Anyways, I have a good question. I was here talking about the show notes and for some reason I'm having trouble finding them on your website. So if you could let me know where to find the show notes, I'd appreciate it. Thanks, God bless, brother. - Love it, man. I'm so glad you asked that question because every single podcast episode I talk about the show notes and it never occurred to me that people might not know where to find them. So they're just on my blog. If you just go to the URL, kerrynewhough.com, you will see it there. And then you can actually search my blog if it's a particular episode. So let's say I interviewed Perry Noble. You'll find the show notes just when you hit that search or actually you can use Google as well. Just Google my name and the guest or my name and the podcast and the show notes will pop up. So anyway, that's it. They're just embedded in my blog. Isn't that easy? Now, a little trick. If you, I think you can do this now with iOS 9, where the show notes pop up on your podcast app for sure, forever, you've been able to do that through my favorite podcast app, which is the Overcast app. And we'll link to that in the show notes. But if you click on the Overcast app and listen to my podcast through that, the show notes actually show up on the Overcast app. So you can actually just be listening to the podcast and scrolling through the show notes the same way. So that's it. Okay. Well, that's it for the podcast. I have way more questions than I was able to answer. So thank you for your patience, but we'll come back with an other bonus episode within a few weeks. And then don't forget in December, we're going to do a lasting impact Q and A. So I'll say more about that as a time arrives to record that. But if you've got your questions, you can leave it on the Speakpipe widget on my blog. Just go to the Got Questions tab on the right at carrynewhough.com, leave me a voicemail. If you've got any general leadership question, or specifically for that December bonus episode, where we just do lasting impact book questions, then that would be awesome. So we'll be back with a bonus. So randomly, sometime in the next few weeks, probably. And thanks so much for listening. I really do hope that our time together today helps 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)