The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP Bonus 003 #AskCarey Part 2
[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 bonus episode of our podcast. My name is Carey Newhoff, and I really hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. And this is the very not first, but second, ask Carey episode. It's a little experiment we're doing on this month-long anniversary celebration of the podcast's first birthday. And I just get a lot of questions. And last Thursday, we did part one. This is part two. We may do another one because, man, you guys have some great questions. So anyway, on Thursdays in September, we're just releasing these bonus episodes. And I want to thank you so much for that. And hey, you know what? This episode is brought to you by the release of my new book, called Lasting Impact, which is actually all about answering questions. It really is. It's about seven powerful conversations that can help your church grow. And it is available for pre-order right now. The release date is coming up. And I'm so glad if you are listening to this before October 6th, you've got an opportunity to get some bonuses. I have voiced the entire audiobook. That will come to you free. So will the ebook. And so will access to an exclusive webinar. And if you happen to be one of the first thousand people to order the book, you will get a limited edition. Hatch, show, print poster, letterpress, handmade poster, frameable, whole deal with key concepts and quotes from the book. And it's just gorgeous. And that's all of yours is a bonus if you pre-order the book. So you can just go to lastingimpactbook.com and get your order in now. So only the first thousand get the limited edition print. But if you order before October 6th, as in right now, you will get the free ebook, the free audio book, and the free access to the webinar. So that's going to be awesome. Thank you to everybody who has already ordered the book. And to those of you who haven't done it yet, your time is now. There's still time available to get all those bonuses, but they go away. October 6th. So on to your questions. So we've got questions that were brought in via SpeakPipe, the little widget I have on my blog at carrynewhoff.com. And you can go there any time and just leave me a question. And if enough questions pile up, I may do another bonus episode. How does that sound? And then some of you also fed in your questions on social media using the hashtag #askcarry, C-A-R-E-Y. So here's some questions. We are going to start today with Bruce Pagano. Bruce left me a voicemail and here's his question. Hey, Kerry, my name is Bruce Pagano. I blog at thewholeman.co. I was actually wondering, over the years, I've kind of believed that team leadership's important. And I've been on a number of teams where there was kind of a not a specific person that led necessarily. But there was kind of a shared voice in leadership. We all shared the same vision. Recently, I've been part of a team where we tried to do that. And it became very clear, very quickly, that a specific person needed to carry the vision and kind of cast that vision. There's some other issues. But I guess my question is, is it always necessary to have one person as the vision cast or vision carrier? Is that necessary or can a team function well without a identified leader? I know that kind of goes against all the team development stuff where certain people stand out. But so that's my question. Can you function without a identified leader, a single specific leader? Or is it necessary to actually move forward? OK, Bruce, that's a great question. I get it a lot. I've got a bias. I'm going to tell you, I have rarely seen shared leadership work well. Probably the only example I know where I think it's working masterfully without a dominant sort of where there's a dominant leader and then a second leader is at Preston Trail Community Church. That's in Texas. We'll link to it in the show notes. But Preston Trail Community Church has two co-pastors and they're doing a great job and they've had success and they're growing like crazy. That's about the only example I know. Otherwise, I've seen a division of responsibility, teaching pastor versus lead pastor. I've seen that. I've certainly seen a strong executive pastor and a lead pastor work out well. But generally speaking, if you have two people trying to do the same job and they're both strong leaders, it's just challenging. And I think really you need one voice to do that. I think somebody has to be the leader. Why? Well, because I think people naturally look toward a leader and that doesn't mean you have to be a dictator. It doesn't mean you have to be my way or the highway, not at all. In fact, fewer people will follow you if you are that way. But I think to clarify the conversation, it's really good to have a designated point leader. And if you have two people doing the same job, you kind of have to ask the question, well, couldn't you delineate the functions a little bit better? So that's my view on that. Again, this is ask Carrie, not ask somebody else, but I really appreciate the question. I think it's best to clarify things. Here's a question from Gordon Pruitt. And he is asking about how to break the 1000 attendance barrier. Now, hang on, because I'm going to go through smaller church barriers as well. Yes, I have a question about personal pastoral coaching. I'm looking for some coaching about how to help our church get over the 1000 average worship attendance barrier and want to know what your experience is, who you've hired and who you've heard great things about. Thank you. So I'm going to answer the question publicly. Because I think this is a great question. A lot of times people are like, I need to hire a consultant, but I don't really have the money. So there are some consultants who do a great job on this. Tony Morgan, for example, is offering a beyond 2000 coaching network. So you're looking to break a thousand, but he does that. If you go to Tony Morgan live.com, you'll find some information on that. Also, I think Perry Noble still does his coaching clusters. And obviously he's crushed 2000 a long time ago. So he can help with that. And then there are other organizations leadership network, leadership network, sorry, has resources around that. But I want to just share some principles that I think are helpful, because podcasts like this, we can sort of break that idea down and hopefully help everybody. So there are at least three key barriers that most churches have trouble breaking through. The first is the 200 barrier. And that's just because of pastoral care. The book that covers all of these barriers really well, best in my view, is a book called How to Break Church Growth Barriers by Carl George and Warren Bird. At 200, the barrier is pastoral care, because most small churches have one person doing all the pastoral care, just not scalable. And so what you have to do, and I write about this actually in my book, Lasting Impact, is you've got a structure bigger to grow bigger. So what you need to do is you need to stop thinking like a mom and pop corner store and start thinking like a supermarket. And you've got to staff that way. You know, in a mom and pop corner store, everybody does everything. And then, you know, one person does everything or two people do everything. That's why small churches are run. Bad idea if you want to grow. So you have to train the congregation through groups to care for itself. You've got to start thinking, okay, where do I, as a senior leader, add the most value? And I had to go through that transition myself years ago. And it was less painful for me than it was for the church. But you just have to say, hey, I can't be at every wedding. I can't be at every funeral. I can't, you know, do every hospital visit. So that's the key one at 200. Then when you're trying to go to 400, often the problem is the board. And the board is basically trying to micromanage. And that doesn't work past 400 people. So you've got to get the board to really take care of governance and to take care of safeguarding the mission and maybe just hiring and firing the senior pastor. So that's board restructuring by 400. And then once you start pushing a thousand, I think one of the big issues is just structure. We've just pushed past that level ourselves at Connectsus Church. And for the last 200 people, we've just been building systems. And I mean, your admin has to be amazing. Your finance structure has to be superb. Your organizational reporting and governance systems have to be bulletproof. And, you know, you just can't wing it anymore when you're leading a, you know, a church with an attendance of a thousand. And so I hope that helps a little bit. Again, you should all buy the book, How to Break Church Growth Barriers by Carl George and Warren Bird, I highly, highly recommend it. Okay, let's flip to Cindy. And Cindy asked this question about turning off your leadership when you get home. - Hi, Carrie. This is Cindy. One of the questions I have is being in a high level leadership position. Sometimes it's hard to turn off your leadership when you go home. Do you have any suggestions for that? Thanks. - Thanks, Cindy. And Cindy is actually from that church Preston Trail that I talked about where they co-lead. So you can follow her and she does an awesome job with next generation ministry there. So I think the only way to turn off leadership when I go home, Cindy really, honestly, is to do something entirely different. I mean, I have to cut the grass. I have to go for a bike ride or better yet, like absorb myself in something that requires my brain. For example, reading a book, watching a movie, sometimes a change of scenery really helps just to decide, okay, we're gonna go for a walk by the water or walk in the woods or a hike or in the winter of snowshoe or take the boat out. We have a boat, so we'll take the boat out in the summer. That really does a good job. And then the other thing, I think realistically, if you're a leader, you're just gonna think about this stuff. So regularly scheduled breaks. My wife and I have a little weekend away planned for October in DC. We're just gonna be around for two or three days after I speak in DC. We're just gonna unplug, I love that. Like lazy breakfast, we're probably gonna go check out Mark Batterson's church on a Sunday morning, but we'll go as guests. That's what we'll do. And so a little getaways can really help. And then if you've got kids at home and my kids are a little bit older now, but if you've got kids at home, like just play with your kids, man. I mean, when my kids were little, they love to play mini sticks, just these little tiny hockey sticks, we'd play in the driveway. And I mean, it wears you out and then you can't think anymore. So things like that. The other thing, of course, you have to guard against is technology. I have an Apple Watch. My phone is always with me. I would hate to count the number of devices we have in our house. We're just a techie family. But something I've experimented with lately since summer vacation in July, I've moved all the electronics out of the bedroom at night. So I put them in my office. They charge there overnight. I have a book on my nightstand. My wife and I are having better conversations. I'm reading at night. And then in the morning when I get up, it's not the first thing I look at. I just get up and then when I'm ready, I go overnight, pick up my phone and pick up my watch and kind of start the day. So that's another approach that you can use. Okay, we're gonna take some stuff off social media. Here is an ask carry from Shad Treadaway. Shad asks, can you tell us about your personal and leadership development plan or routine? What, when, where, how, oh, gosh, I wish, you know, Shad, I wish I could tell you, you know, here it is. It's a downloadable PDF with 17 bullet points. It's just not. I think leadership development is a state of mind. I mean, to be really transparent, I finished seminary when I was 30, 31. I'd been in school for so long. Like, since I was 19 years old, I have a degree in history, a degree in law and then a degree in theology. I actually didn't read much through my 30s. I was just, every time I read a book, like I winced and shuttered because it just reminded me too much of school. So, you know, I do read now. The last decade, I've definitely done some reading. So that's good. I listened to a ton of podcasts these days and I listened to a bunch of different sources. I listened to business podcasts, general interest podcasts. I listened to preachers, obviously. I listened to the church leaders podcast and other podcasts like that. But I find that just the variety of voices really helps. I guess, you know, I don't really test out as a networker, but have a lot of friends and I tend to track with a lot of ministry leaders. And these are conversations that aren't just, you know, hey, let's go fishing one day and talk about, you know, sports. We talk about life, we talk about ministry. We talk about stuff, like real stuff. And I really enjoy that. I do enjoy talking shops. So that's definitely part of it. And then I think there's, you know, there's a lot of hours in the day and it really depends how you use them. When you're in your drive time, you can listen to a stimulating podcast or, you know, an audiobook for those of you who love that stuff or you listen to the radio. So these days, increasingly, I'm choosing to use that time with something substantive. And I think just really, you know, if I had to put my finger on it, Chad, I would just say, are you curious? Like, are you asking questions? Because if you ask questions, you are actually gonna find ways to answer them. And sometimes it will be podcasts, it'll be books, it'll be conferences. I should add conferences. I used to go to conferences just right now with time management, usually if I go to a conference, it's because I'm speaking there. I wish that wasn't the case. I need to get back into the habit of just attending conferences again. But I get so many speaking invitations these days end up turning down 90% of them. And so, generally, when I'm on the road, it is to speak. But I try to listen on other sessions. I mean, obviously, you're not speaking at the entire event. So I try to do that. So those are some approaches. And I think it's an attitude, Chad. I think if you wanna learn and you're curious, you're gonna figure out how to do that. Okay, let's go to Ben Marshall. Hi, Carrie. My name is Ben Marshall, and I am a youth pastor in Holland, Michigan. I had a question about delegation. I'm a fairly new youth pastor, trying to implement a new mission and vision into the youth group. And just kind of wondering, as I try to implement that mission and vision and try to do a good job with that and rally some leaders and get them on board with the mission and vision, how much should I be delegating? If someone is trying to learn the mission and vision and get on board with it, how much should I delegate to them? And just kind of wondering what's the right amount of delegation and maybe some tips or strategies or methods to delegating well? Thanks, Carrie. Thank you for everything you do. Thanks for that question, Ben. And a shout out to all student pastors, all youth pastors there. That's awesome. And I know we have an awful lot listening on this podcast and reading on the blog, which is great. So excellent question. I think your biggest challenge in the first year, you say you're fairly new at it, Ben, is just gonna be clarity, clarity, clarity, clarity. And clarity on the mission and vision is important, but as I've said many times in different forums, mission and vision are generally agreed on by just about everybody, right? Like our mission is to go reach students or to honor Jesus and like, what Christian is gonna disagree with that? Everybody's gonna agree with that. So that's never where the derailment happens. The derailment happens at the strategy level. So one of the questions I'd be asking you or I would encourage you to ask yourself in these first years is what is my strategy? Like, are you clear? You know, are you gonna use large events or small group? What are your small groups gonna be like? Are you gonna have committed leaders, rotational leaders? And then why are you gonna structure the student ministry the way you're going to structure it? Because if you're not a hundred percent sure, you're gonna end up with 20 or 30 volunteers running in 20 or 30 different directions. And so your job is to figure out a strategy and you can do that with input. Like you can pull three or four of your best people together and say, hey, based on what we know or what we've read or what we've studied, what do you think the best strategy is? But definitely have a strategy. Like have a strategy be crystal clear on it, make it memorable and repeatable. And then you basically align your team around that for months and months and months and then you can start releasing them and they won't go rogue on you. Now, as to other delegation issues, actually one of the best podcast episodes I've ever heard too to be specific is from Andy Stanley's leadership podcast where he interviewed Gavin Adams. And if you haven't heard that, first of all, you should subscribe to Andy's leadership podcast. It's just the Andy Stanley leadership podcast. The July and August 2015 episodes called delegation dilemma parts one and two are gold. And that's Gavin Adams, one of his campus pastors that Andy interviews, fantastic. So definitely you want to have a look at that. Okay, now we're going to go to Jason Kennedy in Cape Town, South Africa. - Hey, Kerry, it's Jason Kennedy here in Cape Town, South Africa, websites, www.anyok.co.ca. That's A-N-T-I-O-C-H.co.ca. And the question I had and the challenge that I face consistently is my wife and I are in the ministry together. And she's an amazing leader, disciples, women well. It's probably one of our best weapons as a church, but at the same time, trying to learn how to do ministry together. And then on top of that, do family and then do life and sort of have life outside of ministry together. Just seems to be challenging. It seems to be the focus of a lot of our conflict. So I was just wondering if you or any of your guests had any insight on how do we do ministry well when our wife is a strong, amazing, powerful leader? How do we empower her? But you have the same time, not work all the time. So anyways, thanks for your ministry. Thanks for what you do and look forward to hearing all and your awesome answers and reading your future posts. God bless. - First of all, awesome South Africa. A lot of South Africans listen to the podcast and the blog, so shout out to South Africa. And I think it's great that you got a wife who's just so gifted, so skilled, and so passionate about ministry. That is absolutely incredible, Jason. Congratulations. But you're right, because when are you off? When are you off? See, I haven't had that. My wife has always been involved in ministry, but when she's worked, she's worked outside in the marketplace. And so it's a little bit of a different scenario. I'm probably the guy who brings stuff home, but I can totally see you don't have an off switch when you're both in ministry in an active way. So I think the key is just boundaries. And again, as I've hinted at earlier in this episode, phones are not your friends when it comes to boundaries. And so you're probably gonna have to figure out when to shut it down, how to shut it down, when to turn things off, and pre-negotiate. Nobody is better at boundaries than Henry Cloud and John Townsend. And if you pick up their book on boundaries or boundaries for leaders or even necessary endings, which I think is a fantastic book, not that anybody needs to end anything in your case, but really, really good on boundaries. And I think the clearer you are where you kind of realize, my identity is not wrapped up in what I do, and I need a life apart from what I do, that'll help. So the other thing is, and I hinted at this earlier in response to Cindy's question, is try to find something to replace or fill your mind. Occupying your mind is what I'm trying to say, because if you just come home and you sit around, you're just gonna think about ministry. So like, get a hobby, do something, go out, get active, and do something different, because then that'll take your mind off, and go for an awesome date night, go to the beach, go to your favorite restaurant, and agree not to talk shop, or whatever you need to do to be able to do that. Okay, a couple of other questions, these are off social media using the #AskCarry. Hashtag, that's way too many hashtags, but you know what I mean. Here's one, Jason Solyers asks, what requirements of any do you place on board members or elders to serve in that capacity? Well, definitely the biblical stuff. From Timothy and Titus, we're looking for people of character, and so we definitely want people with strong character. I just think if you've got elders of strong character who know how to handle conflict well, who are incredibly self-aware and realize, oh, this is a personal preference thing, not a biblical principle thing, and who kind of understand when they're being selfish, not that we have selfish elders at our church, but they have the self-awareness to say, all right, this is about me, and this is about my preferences. So I'm just gonna let that go, because really what I'm here to do is to safeguard the mission of the church. I want those people. I probably also want people who are leading well in other areas of their lives. You know, as the scriptures say, leading well at home, but also like people who have followers, not just opinions, but people who have accomplished something, people who are respected outside of their circle. And then this one's huge. People who are aligned. The reason so many church boards go bad, I mean, for all the reasons I mentioned, lack of self-awareness, lack of maturity, lack of character, but sometimes you can get really well-intentioned people who just have competing notions of what the church is about. And again, to harp on the theme that we talked about already in this episode, strategy is the divisive force, right? And so what I want, I wanna be crystal clear on my strategy. And I want elders who are bought into that strategy, not just the mission, not just the vision, but the strategy. And so for example, you know, we have a certain way of doing Sunday services. I want elders who love the way we do Sunday services who are open enough to say, "Hey, maybe we could do them a bit better or different," but like not elders who want to do the opposite, or not elders who wanna create a different kind of church, because if they wanna create a different kind of church, they should just go to another church. But we're gonna agree on a mission, vision, and strategy, and aligned elders are the best elders. So you need to really in your discernment process, and I would not suggest congregational election or it's just some kind of popularity thing 'cause you're gonna get unaligned elders. But if you've got a discernment process that actually takes the biblical criteria into consideration, look for alignment as well. And you wanna make sure that these are elders who understand your mission, vision, and strategy, who support it, doesn't mean it can't be refined, doesn't mean it can't be tweaked, doesn't mean every once in a while it can't be revisited, but they're not showing up at every meeting, basically saying, "Hey, here's the kind of church I want." And it's very different from the kind of church we have, unless of course you're trying to build a church that's very different and you're all shooting for the same goal. To use a really different analogy, you might have an elder who loves baseball, but everybody else loves football. Well, he should go join a baseball board and leave the football people to work together. I don't know whether that helps, but that's what I look for. Also, Gail Holt asks, "Have you ever heard of a fully contemporary church successfully adding an unplugged service to the schedule?" And by unplugged, I take it you mean, like sort of acoustic, not high production service. Yeah, I mean, I guess it happens. As a general rule, here's, and Gail, maybe I'm reading too much into your question, but I tend to hear that sort of thing from people who just don't like the style of church they have. In other words, I don't like the band, I don't like the lights, I don't like the music, I don't like the electric sound, I don't like the dance beats. So let's do an unplugged service as in, let's do a service I would like. Couple problems with that, and this may not be your question at all. So I'm just, you know, it's what, 140 characters are less, it's Twitter. I don't really know the story behind it, but that's often the context I hear it in. And I would just say, whenever that's the case, I just kind of shut that conversation down quickly. Because again, like our previous answer, well, you know, that's just about your personal preference. Go to another church that suits your preferences better. Obviously, if the church is doing a good job with what they're doing and reaching their target, then they should keep doing it. And if you're gonna add another service, do another service. If there's a problem with the current service, then address the problem in the service, rather than trying to work around the problem by offering another solution. So I just kind of think, you know, if you're doing two or three different styles of service, it probably means you're not very clear on your strategy or you're not very good at reaching people. And, you know, that's my view on that. Okay, we're gonna jump to a message left or a question left by Matthew Carpenter, Matthew. - Hey, Kerry. So much of what we do on Sunday is a stumbling block for unchurched, unsaved people. Things like singing unison about blood and other high spiritual things doesn't translate into the hearts and or lives of people who don't know Jesus. Other things like offering, passing an offering plate and specific prayers over specific, you know, in-house church requests that have to be done from the pulpit seem to alienate unbelievers or lost people or even visitors if you really think about it. And I'm wondering if there's a better way to go about doing those things so that you don't immediately write off the people who aren't already church members or covenant members of your local body. I'm also wondering if it'd be better to move a worship night, which was just worship instead of worship before a sermon to a day like Saturday and do it really, really well for your people who know the Lord and you can teach them what you're singing. Anyway, wrestling with some of this stuff, just thought I'd reach out and see if I could pick your brain. You know, that's interesting Matthew. I think that's a conversation that's been happening for a while now in the church. And it sounds an awful lot like, you know, what I heard in the 90s when I started out in ministry. And for sure, I've made a lot of those changes. We are a little bit careful with what we're singing on a Sunday morning, what we're saying on a Sunday morning. We still pass an offering plate. I know some churches have given that. I think the in-house requests, yeah, for sure. You know, that can be a case where we're gonna pray for somebody who's sick and often, you know, it turns out, and just, you know, if I offend you, I'm sorry, in advance, sort of. But, you know, it's like, oh, you know, we pray for Aunt Gertrude's hangnail. And why, you know, it's not that her hangnail doesn't need praying for, but why are we doing that in Sunday morning? That's always been my question. And again, you know, the earlier question was about the unplugged thing. If you move worship off Sunday, like a lot of people use alternative services as a substitute for courage. It's just like, if you have a problem with your Sunday morning service, change or kill your Sunday morning service. Just do it, just do it. Now, you might not do it, you know, hey, last Sunday, it was just the way it's always been in this Sunday. It's radically different. You'll be looking for a new church. If you do that, I wrote a book on change called Leading Change Without Losing Yet that can help you figure out how to lead change in the local church. You can have a look at that. But, you know, if the problem is Sunday morning, just change Sunday morning. Now, it took us, the first time I took a stab at it, five years to do it. But we set out and we said, look, within five years, we're gonna move from a completely traditional church to a fully contemporary church, whatever that means. And we've been making tweaks ever since then. So it doesn't have to take you five years, but it might take you two or three years, but then set out and just do it. And yeah, now I do think the culture is changing a little bit. I think probably 10 years ago was, you know, life is a pendulum and the pendulum had swung so far, not that Jesus was absent from a lot of churches, but people were so afraid to offend that they never convicted in some cases. And what I see among millennials is more willingness to sing about the blood of Jesus, more worship, not less. I see a more authentic experience. I see a willingness to go deeper into Christianity than maybe we thought most people would do 10 years ago. So we're experimenting with that in the main services on Sunday morning at Kenexas Church. So for example, just to give you a very clear example, communion is for believers. And for years and years, we didn't do communion on a Sunday morning, largely because 60% of our church at Kenexas Church, where I serve, it comes from an unchurched background. But very recently, we did communion for the first time on Sunday morning. And we did it. We invited people to participate. You know, we made it very clear. It was for people who had committed their lives to Christ. But I think we were able to create an environment that kind of worked for people on the outside and people on the inside. And sometimes people come to faith through experience, through touching and feeling and senses. And, you know, it was an emotional experience for some people. So I think you can experiment there, but I would avoid doing the off-service thing. So anyway, thanks for that Matthew. More questions from social media. In a smaller church, Clark and Reinhardt asks, what is the most important thing that a youth worker can do to lead better and support the senior pastor? And every senior pastor says, awesome question. Thank you, Clark. Do you want to work here? I'm kidding, that's just maybe how I think. Okay, so that's a great question, Clark. I think the best thing you can do, it's something I learned from Andy Stanley years ago, is just be publicly loyal, because public loyalty buys you private leverage. You may disagree with your senior pastor, but please, please, please do not disagree in public. I so respect staff members who disagree with me, knock on my door and say, hey, can I talk to you one-on-one? It's like, sure, hey, when you did that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, got all the time in the world for that. When I hear they did that to someone else and our staff, that's just not part of our culture. So it doesn't happen. But if I heard that they said that to someone else, I would be really upset and I would lose respect for them. So publicly support your pastor. Something else you can do is just do everything in your power to knock your ministry out of the park. Just, I love it when staff are firing on all cylinders. And sometimes people are like, well, I'm really the youth pastor, but I want to be the music guy, or I want to be the executive guy, or I want to be the senior guy one day. You know how you get to be the senior guy one day? You just do student ministry really, really well. And eventually somebody comes up and says, hey, can we give you a little more responsibility? Not that student ministry isn't a lot of responsibility. But that's how you get to do it. So I think do your job really, really well, and support your senior pastor. Okay, Jack Grimes has a question that he phoned in, Jack. Hey, Kerry, this is Jack Grimes. My question for you today is what tools or systems do you use to close the back door on first time guests? And how does that work across multiple ages and multiple ministries? - Jack, if I had a system, man, oh man, oh man, I'll be a very rich man, because everybody asked that question, how do you close the back door? Well, first of all, first of all, your back door will always be open if you're a good church. You know, anybody, anybody who says I'm going to close the back door entirely is either leading a cult and you're not giving anyone freedom or just, you know, isn't in reality. People come, people go, people are there for a season. But your question is a great one because we don't want a wide open back door, a barn door rather than a back door. You know, you want to make sure that people who need to stick stick. So I think the real key is connection and there are a variety of approaches to this. We are reconsidering everything we do in terms of next steps right now. So one of the questions I would have for you is, do you know your numbers? We did a study, you need to have a database for this, but we figured out that 25% of the people who come for the first time come for a second time. Now, those are just local people. We get a lot of guests because of, you know, our status as an North Point strategic partner. As an orange church, we work with orange, plus I do a lot of speaking. So we tend to have visitors every weekend, but of those who are actually people we're trying to reach, yeah, about 25% of them return for a second visit. When they come back a second time, 75% of them come back a third time. And then once they've come for a third time, about 70% of them come back and stick around. And then if we can connect them, if we can get them to take a step, which is in our case serving, joining a small group, inviting a friend or giving, they're around for a while. And if they take three or four of those four steps, they never leave. They're just around for a long, long, long time. It's disconnected people who leave. So, you know, we love to think, okay, I have 10 visitors, nine out of 10 are coming back for a second time, probably not. But if two out of 10 do, that's pretty good. And what we're trying to do is figure out how to turn that two, like 25% into a 30 or 35% who return for a second visit. Because we know if they come back that more than we'll want to come back. I don't know that we're going to improve much on 75% and come back a third time. Maybe you can get that to 80 or so. So, what we do is we ask people to fill out a welcome card. We have a first steps kiosk where people can connect, they get a gift basket. Their kids also get an age appropriate follow up. They get an email. We're looking at whether a phone call would be a lot better, but they get an email the next day. They get invited back. There's information on the church. We give them a coffee mug that's actually branded with Connects, it says welcome back on it. So, it kind of seeds the idea that we want them back. We teach in series, so they heard part two and they can come back for part three. Or if they came at the end of a series, they know a new series is starting. And then hopefully they came with a friend. We don't do a lot of advertising. So, people who show up at our church tend to show up because somebody invited them. We are trying to help those friends who invited people to actually know, hey, call them back. Don't just get them out once, but call them back. So, those are some of the things we're doing. I would know your numbers. And then I would try to set up a system. And we kind of need a system because, you know, we have a lot of people who are attending our church and it's just difficult to know everybody personally. So, systems pick up. Systems are actually very, very personal. So, I'd encourage you to think through your system. I hope that helps. Okay, we got three more questions in this episode all from social media. Barry Claremont, who actually goes to Connectsus, asks what happens when two leaders collide, especially in the same house? Barry, that has never, ever happened in our house. We've never had any fights. No, actually my wife and I met in law school. We have two lawyers and three first born in our little family of four, now five. So, yeah, I'm familiar with collision. I just think I'm learning more and more as a husband. I just have to submit. I have to submit to Christ, submit to my wife. And, you know, the biblical metaphor is mutual submission. So, when I submit to her, she submits to me and it just goes a lot better. I just find there's an awful lot of ego in me and I've got to subdue that. And I've got to become less and Christ has to become more and I have to think about how I can serve my family, how I can love my family, how I can serve other people, how I can love other people. And I know that sounds Sunday school, but man, it really works. So, that's my best advice on that. Tracy Shand asks, what system do you have for following up on people who have been missing from church for a number of weeks? Thanks, Tracy. The answer is, we don't. We're a pretty big church. And like, I don't know if you don't show up. So, that's a little bit of an overstatement. Here's what's true. If you have taken a step, like I just said in the answer, two answers ago, if you've taken a step and you're serving on a team, we'll notice you're missing. If you've got kids in kids ministry, we'll notice you're missing and we'll follow up with a phone call. If you are in a community group, your community group is gonna know you're missing and then we kinda know you're missing and we encourage people to follow up because that's what good people do. If you just sit in the crowd at the very back, we may never know you were there. And we kinda tell people that, right? If you really wanna connect and you wanna get known, it connects us, you need to take a step. So, in addition to the first steps kiosk, we also have a next steps kiosk and we encourage people every single Sunday. If you've been attending for a little while, take a step, take a step, take a step. So, that's what we do and I think at a certain point, you just have to say, you gotta take responsibility for your own spiritual development and I think too often people behave like big babies at church where they're like, well, I didn't notice me. Well, you didn't get involved. You didn't pay attention. So, that's my view. Final question today comes from Lanny Ray Connell Jr. And Lanny asked this, what do you think about the missional community movement and how it will affect traditional church? It's kinda new to me. Yeah, missional church has been around for a while. Appreciate the question a lot, Lanny. I think missional was a noun a decade ago that has become an adjective today. Let me explain what I mean. A year ago, it was like a tractional church's dad, a tractional being a great band, great preacher, come, come, come drive to the suburbs, park in our mega parking lot and you will meet Jesus. That missional church started out as a critique of that and it was like, we're just gonna be this missional community. But I've rarely seen a missional community actually attract thousands of people or engage thousands of people. It's like a dozen here, a hundred here and I'm not saying that's bad, that's very good. But I think what a tractional church has learned from the missional movement, is that what was a noun can become an adjective. So I know, for example, on this podcast later this fall, you're gonna hear from Jerry Gillis from the chapel in Buffalo, church of 5,000 multiple campuses who actually has become a missional attractional church. Fascinating story. It's like, we just can't wait for everybody to come to our church, we have to go to them. And I see more and more large churches and small churches taking that move back into the city saying, hey, we don't just expect the city to come to us, we're gonna go serve in the city. So for example, at our church at Kanex's church, we have two local partners in each of our cities that we're in and then we have an international partner. And so we do a lot of overseas mission work in Guatemala. And then we also have, we partner with a food bank in our buried location with a homeless shelter and then with another food bank and a homeless shelter at our real location. And we go deep with them. That's an example of an attractional church taking on a missional focus. And if you're working with millennials, missional is really, really important to them. And so you definitely want to think about that. So my little pet theory is that the noun is becoming an adjective and I think that's great. So that's it for our second Ask Carry episode. We're back to our regular schedule next week of just Tuesday releases. We haven't got any bonus episodes scheduled. But if you got a question, I'll collect them. How about that? Why don't you just use #AskCarry? ASK, C-A-R-E-Y on Twitter. Or what you can do is just go to myblogcarrynewhop.com and you will see the little speak pipe widget. It says, got a question, click on it and do what so many people have done. Just leave me a voicemail and maybe I'll do another bonus episode this fall. Maybe even two. So send me some questions. I'd love to answer them. And in the meantime, if you haven't ordered my new book, Lasting Impact, that would be so awesome to get a copy into your hands. So you can get all the details, including all of the awesome pre-order bonuses, which go away October 6th at lastingimpactbook.com. And what I do in that book is just have a lot of conversations like this. And I wrote the book not only so you could read it, but so that your whole team could study it together. There's discussion questions at the end of all seven conversations. It's called Lasting Impact, seven powerful conversations that can help your church grow. And you can get all the information, including how to order it and how to get all the bonuses at lastingimpactbook.com. Man, thanks so much for listening and I look forward to talking to you again next Tuesday when I sit down with Brad Lominick, our very first return guest. And Brad's gonna talk all about leadership and vulnerability, fascinating conversation. Can't wait to see you there. And the best way to make sure you don't miss it is to subscribe. It's absolutely free. And to all you wonderful people who keep leaving ratings and reviews on iTunes, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio, thank you so much. Makes such a difference getting the word out. Really do hope our time together today has helped you lead like never before. (upbeat music) - You've been listening to the "Carry Newhof Leadership Podcast." Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change, and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]