The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 054 – Jud Wilhite With Practical Help on Transitioning a Church
Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. Well hey everybody and welcome to episode 54 of the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff and I really hope our time together today helps you lead like never before and if you're listening to this on release day, come hang out with me. I'm in California. I'm in Irvine, California on the Orange Tour today and tomorrow September 22nd and 23rd. I would love to say hello to you. Come hang out for your senior leader. We will have lunch. It's going to be awesome. You can get all the details on orange tour dot org and you can pick up a copy of my brand new book called lasting impact. I'll tell you more about that in just a second. But in the meantime, let me tell you all about today's episode. I am so thrilled to have Judd Wilhite on the podcast. Judd is an incredible leader, somebody that I've admired for a long time and I had a chance to meet on a couple of different occasions and we sort of kept in touch and I'm just so thrilled to have him on the podcast. He serves as senior pastor of central Christian church and you know, most churches and you're probably in the situation are not church plants. You're just not. I planted a church. I've transitioned to church. Fast majority of church leaders who listen to this podcast are doing what Judd tried to do, which is to transition to church and it is stinking hard work. It just is. I mean, you've got to take 10, 20, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years of tradition behind you and then kind of find a way to the future and it's just, it's just not easy and Judd had a doubly difficult task. He took over central church when he was 32 years old and he took it over from Jean Apple who was leaving to go on to become the new senior leader at Willow Creek to replace Bill Hybels. Do you remember that? Yeah. Judd was the guy who replaced Jean. So Judd had grown the church over 18 years. I think it was to about 5,000, 5,500 people, maybe even a little bit more and was widely loved and so successful and Judd, the young punk comes in and now he's got to lead them to better days and I so appreciated how honest Judd was in this interview about how hard it got at times and what's really cool, like, forget about the size because most of you probably are not leaving churches of 5,000 or as Judd is today, 20,000. I totally get that. But the principles are transferable and how he led in the transition, particularly the first five years, he breaks it down step by step and it's brilliant. It's just brilliant. I asked him when this was all over. I said, Judd, have you ever written on this? He's like, no, I'm like, dude, you have to write on that, man. It's just so good. So I think this is gold. I hope you do too. So before we jump into the interview, just to note that you've only got a couple of weeks left until all the good early bird bonuses disappear on my brand new book, lasting impact, seven powerful conversations that can help your church grow. And in the book, I talk about some key conversations, like why people are attending church less often, whether our leaders are really healthy, why millennials are walking away from the church about how much change your church can handle. It's seven pivotal conversations that I think can help your church grow. And I wrote it obviously for you as a reader, but the book is actually designed for you to take these conversations into real meetings that you actually attend, like elder meetings, board meetings, leadership team meetings, executive team meetings, volunteer meetings, meetings, so that you can get your whole group talking about the issues that you need to be talking about so that you can make progress. So if you order now before the release date, book releases October six, here's what you're going to get. You're going to get a free ebook. You're going to get the free audio book and you'll get exclusive access to a webinar with me on how to have the conversation with your team. And if you are among the first thousand people to preorder the book, you will get a limited edition hatch show print. It is a letterpress, handmade print. It's beautiful. It's frameable. It's got key ideas from the book. It alone, I think, is worth more than the purchase price of the book. I mean, you're getting, I don't know, $150, $200 worth of bonuses on top of the book itself. And that's all for simply preordering the book. You can get all the information at lasting impact book.com. That's just lasting impact book.com. So if you want to get a copy, now's the time. Those bonuses go away quickly. And again, if you're hanging out in Irvine, California or anywhere nearby, come see us on the Orange Tour today and tomorrow we would love to connect. So if you want more on today's episode, you can find everything in the show notes. It's just carrynewhoff.com/episode54. And now here's my conversation with Judd Wilhite. Judd's so great to be hanging out with you today. Welcome. It's scary, man. It's awesome to be with you. I appreciate it. Hey, so, Judd, I know a lot of our leaders who listen will already know you and have followed you for a while, read your books, heard you speak. But catch us up a little bit on your story and maybe even how you got into ministry and what you've done so far to date. Yeah. Well, I came to, I mean, I grew up around the church. My parents attended on the weekends and drug me along. I was familiar with it, at least to some degree. I usually walk through the church and roam the alleys around our neighborhood church. Told my parents I was a youth group. You pretended. Yeah. Smoke cigarettes and wait for it to be over, you know, and then meet them back up at the car. So, you know, for me, I got in, I started running around with a lot of kids that were older than me. Somewhat typical story got caught up in drugs and kind of that whole deal and it's been about four years in a drug addiction that just continued to get worse till I was, you know, 17 senior year of high school and finally about halfway through that senior year came to a place of realizing I'm either going to die or I'm going to go crazy. I'm going to go to jail or I'm going to get some help. And that was really when I walked through. I say it this way. I'd been around church my whole life, but that was the first time I walked through the doors of a church on my own terms, asking my own questions and not my parents. Wow. So, yeah, and that small group of people walked with me, helped me, coached me. I didn't do AA. I didn't do Celebrate Recovery. I never went to a drug rehab center. I just quit. Cold Turkey, got on my knees, asked God for help and had a great church around me that walked with me. So I always say I kind of came out of that and just that was, that's my life story. After that, I wanted to give my life to helping people experience the hope of God and to doing it through the local church. And so I never wanted to do anything else really after looking back on that experience. Let me ask you, why do you think in that pivotal moment you turned toward Christ and toward God and the church rather than away because not everybody pivots that way? I'm just curious. Yeah, well, I think for me, I just, I felt like I was out of options. You know, I had, I was, I say I was fairly deep in a addiction and I, it was deep for a 17 year old kid in a smaller Texas community. You know, if I lived in Las Vegas, I'd probably be dead, right? But thank God I was in a little more sheltered, insulated environment. So, but for me, I really felt like I just didn't know where else to turn. So I wasn't entirely sure like that Christ is real and all of this is real. I just knew I didn't have a lot of options. I knew I couldn't do it on my own. Right. Right. So I had this experience, you know, about two months before I finally went clean and it really haunted me. And that's kind of what, you know, it was this, it didn't, I didn't stop using, which that's fascinating about addiction, you know, but, you know, I knew like I met acrossroads and the next time it may be the last time you just don't know. So I really needed help and that's why I turned to the church and I didn't know where else to turn. Well, that's good. And that you said you had an experience, was the OD itself the experience or did something happen while you were out or? Yeah, I know. I was just more realizing like this is, this is messed up. You're really messed up and you could kill yourself. You know, you're playing with. Wow. Wow. Well, by the basic. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's full in 17 man. Nothing can hurt you, you know, and until you go through something like that and you realize like, whoa, you know, and then I had some friends have some really bad experiences. And anyway, it just all came down to the grace of God and getting on my knees one day and a church full of people that walked with me, you know, that's, it's a, and it wasn't like the really cool people in church. I found my way to this really odd ball Bible study, all the sort of strange, none of them were like me. They were all sort of nerdy or you know, and I was more like rocker, druggie guy, you know, right, kind of odd, hodgepodge of people that needed each other and needed God, you know, that funny how God works sometimes, like it wasn't even a whole bunch of 18 year olds who were in rehab. It was just this quirky group that probably nobody really wanted to hang out with that was instrumental in your life. Yeah. They didn't, we didn't listen to the same music. They didn't go to the same places. We didn't have the same friends, none of them had ever done drugs. None of them had ever, you know, I came out of a whole different culture, you know, in the teen world, right? And it was beautiful, man. It was beautiful. Some of those people, I haven't, I have loose acquaintances with them all these years later, but I look back on a few of those conversations that were really pivotal and God used some of those people in a way I didn't even realize when I was in it. Man, that's hope, that's hope for everybody, right? And, and what a powerful witness to the community of Christ when it gathers too. So you were saying you wanted to, at that point, you wanted to give your life over to Christ and not just give your life as in your heart and your will and who you are, but you wanted to give your future to God too. So is that the beginning of a call to ministry or desire to go into ministry? Yeah, I think the call to ministry for me maybe came a little later. I wanted to serve Christ and I wanted to help people. I think I was just, it really intimidated and scared about being a pastor and serving in ministry. I was just to, I had all these, I just thought I was disqualified. I felt like I was disqualified from all the things that I had done. And so, you know, at 17, I had sobered up, you know, that spring I'm walking down the hallway at church and are the senior pastor of this church, Pastor Roy Wheeler, grabbed me by the arm. He knew my dad and he had known me around the church, but my family had been a part of that church and he grabbed me by the arm and he goes, "Hey, this judge, you should, you should seriously think about being a pastor." And I mean, I was only sober like two months, and I'm looking, "What?" And he was the first guy, you know, and I would just say to leaders, we can't ever underestimate those little promptings that God puts on our heart, even if it doesn't always make sense, even if the person you're talking to you in your rational state would say they would never be ministerial material. If God prompts you, put your hand on somebody's shoulder and say, "You know, you should pray about this." Because that's all you're doing. But for me, that was, that one question started me on a journey that ultimately led to Bible college after a little stint in a rock band, Separate thing. And that's some fun. But yeah, Bible college, and then about a year and a half in, I was serving in ministry. I read, of all people, Martin Lloyd Jones, the British, well, yeah, I was where I think reading that biography by the end of it, I really sense for the first time, the call to pastoral ministry, and it really took grip in my heart. So was there something in the Bible, was it just a story of his life and how God used him? This is a high view of preaching and what preaching could do and how it could impact people's lives. And I think that was the first time for me that I just, you know, I got on my knees and I started to pray, like, God, I believe, you know, this is what I would, I won't say I felt 100% called like angels, you know, played and the sky rolled back. I think a lot of us sometimes over spiritualize what that call is. Initially, I just had this passion. I was begging God for the chance to preach anywhere, you know, like that's all I care. I just wanted to share his message and, you know, I was walking down our dorm room floor and it was ringing and I picked it up randomly, literally about two weeks after I met with our Christian service director at this Christian school and he told me that just no opportunity used to preach. You know, you're too young. You need to think about youth ministry and that was a love youth ministry, but it was never my heart. You know, I felt like this is what I'm called. Pick the phone up and it was, you know, it was a church. They were just in the hunt. It was three and a half hours from my school and they're like, hey, would you be willing, we're looking for somebody to come down and speak on the weekends, you know, typical little country church. This was in Texas and I just told the guy, yes, on the phone and I never, I never stopped. You know, I actually outside of a small gap in graduate school between churches when I moved, I've always served in ministry since then. Isn't that great? How old were you at the time? Early twenties? I would have been maybe 20. Wow. Wow. You know, and years of college, I was a senior pastor. That's fantastic. Well, you know, and the other thing on calling too, I want to like do a blog post on that at some point, you know, you're in pretty good company. When you say, I didn't really experience a call, I just had a passion. I know I've talked to a number of people, Andy Stanley, you know, has said, I never really received a call. I just wanted to volunteer, Clay Scroggins, who works with Andy. Same deal. It's like, I just, you know, I never had a supernatural experience. I just, I wanted to serve him and I mean, God's used those guys powerfully as he's used use. So you started preaching at this little church and then we're going to talk a lot about transition in ministry today, but you served in several churches before 13 years ago landing at Central and in Vegas. Well, yeah, I did two or three different smaller churches in little towns around when I went to go to Bible College and then graduate school, and I got to go back home to my home church for six years and serve there, which was, you know, a lot of fun and great joy. That's cool. It's been a couple of years in Southern California at great church there and then migrated across the desert from Southern California to Las Vegas. So without busting your age, how old were you roughly by the time you got to Vegas? 32. Oh, wow. So quite young and set the scene for us because we're focusing a little bit, well, we're going to talk about a lot of things, but I really want to drill down on transitioning a church because I think the vast majority of church leaders are not going to plant a church. They're going to transition a church and you had to transition a pretty big church when you got there in a pretty successful church. So tell us about that. Yeah. Well, I know that transitioning, whether you're following a great leader or a horrible leader, they all have their own sets of challenges, you know, and I followed a great leader, like truly an amazing leader, Gene Apple, who led the church for 18 years, led it from, you know, five, 600 people. The church is actually 53 years old. Yeah, it goes back to 62, doesn't it? Yeah. He really did the hard work of instilling from my perspective, a culture of grace instilling a heart to really reach people who are far from God and see them come to faith. He really instilled this culture of, I think, second chances and helped transition the church from a very traditional church to a more sort of contemporary church model. Did an amazing job and was super well-loved. He's doing a great job at a church in Southern California right now and I remember a joke with me on social media. Hey, maybe you want to follow me over here too, you know, when I'm, when I'm done here and I'm like, dude, no, you know, I only have one in me. One transition behind a great leader is all Judge Roheik can do. Yeah. So that's all I got. I want to follow a disaster and see what that's like. So even there are 13 years, so talk a little bit about how, how, what condition the church was in. Like Gene actually left to go to Willow Creek, right, didn't he? Right. Gene, Gene left to go to Willow Creek. I was the, if I remember right, I was the 43rd candidate on their list. Really? Seriously? Hey, I'm number 43. I'm number 43, like, like I'm on nobody's radar. I'm not out of your mouth, you know, and Gene had been gone for several months to Willow. They had been in a search process in his last month there because he transitioned again as really well as well as you can and laid the deck and try to do the as much advanced planning as possible and really set the church up for, for longer term success. And so long story short, you know, I stepped in and so, you know, you've got this amazing church with this great history, the church was six to seven thousand people depending on the weekend. I mean, tremendous. Right. 10x what it was when he got it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And had been there, you know, I hope people heard that for 18 years. It's not like he showed up for three years, blew it up and then laughed. Like they loved him. They respected him. They admired him. And for a lot of those, I guess they were the, he was the only pastor they had ever known, right? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It was an amazing church community and I think, I think the greatest challenge that I faced in the first year to two years may have been more staff oriented, trying to get our staff and our teams to believe that our best days weren't behind us. You know, really trying to get people to believe that we, that we could, there was more to accomplish. You know, there was two million people in our city that didn't go to church. Yeah. So yeah, you know, this is a huge church. But if you really look at kind of how we're doing as far as impact, it's pretty minimal. And even today, you know, I said that to our team again recently, I'm like, you know, it's pretty minimal when you really look at how many people aren't connected and how much work there is to do. And so helping people not just look around the walls of the church and, and because I think there's a rallying that happens in a transition and you, you know, you celebrate what's happened and, you know, and then you got to get people's focus and attention out of what's happened and out of the inside of the church and back to the needs of the city and back to the outside of the church where people are really hurting. What you said is really important though, you know, when you follow a successful leader, and I'm so excited to have this conversation because I think that's going to be a challenge for a lot of leaders, Judd, you know, there are a lot of successful churches and that success might not be like 8,000 or 15,000 people, but it might be 500. It might be a thousand or 200 or 5,000. I mean, at the end of the day, if that's the best epoch the church has ever experienced, a lot of those leaders are going to be retiring or stepping back in the next 10 or 15 years. And in Jean's case, it was moving on. And I think this is going to be a huge issue for the church. So what did you do in the, you said you had some challenges with staff like just believing and I think that's such a key insight, believing that our best days are ahead of us. But when you play back where you were 13 years ago, what were some things you did in those first months or that first year that you think were good practices looking back on it? Yeah. Well, I think the first, maybe one of the most important things I did coming in was around my heart, my attitude and I'm going to get to some practices, but I held everything loosely. I told my wife the first year we didn't unpack all our boxes. We actually left boxes in the garage because I said, look, don't unpack the boxes. We may not make it. Things would say I won't make it. And I felt 100% called like we both felt like God is calling us to do this, even though it's a, it's a large church and it's all the things people on the outside would say, sure God's calling you to do that, I'm sure God's calling you to do that. And to this day, we still feel 100% we were convinced this, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. This is what we think we're supposed to do. But I can't say that I felt like we were, we were called to survive. I just felt like we were called to go. And so we left all the boxes, pack half of them in our garage the first year. I mean, I had guys, I had the vice chairman of our board of elders. His son was in a seminary in Florida and he said, my son told me that their, their class in Florida was talking about central and gene apple and you stepping in. And they all took bets on whether you would last one year or two years. Oh, how encouraging, how encouraging, you know, but I think it helped me. I'm like, all right, well, this isn't about me, you know, this isn't about my ego or whether I survive or not or whatever. This is about being faithful to God and holding it loosely and having a humble teachable spirit and just going in and trying to learn. And so with all of that said, how do you take a team that has won so many super bowls and has this great legacy and in many ways just came off a super bowl season, right? Well, you know, I don't think you go in and repaint the locker room and throw the playbook out. So I came in the first year in that environment and basically said, I'm going to learn, I'm going to listen, I'm going to love, and I'm going to build some relationships and I am in many ways, I'm just going to follow the playbook, the playbook that had already been successful. The playbook that people were familiar with in the church. And so that was my first year. And you know, I think at the end of that first year, I had a, it was great, it was great for me. It was really wisdom for me. A lot of guys just want to go in and start blowing stuff up. And I think you have to be, you have to be wise, you know, about how you navigate that, how you walk into that situation. You have no credibility. You have no chance. You got to get some chips, you know, yeah, especially at 32 and, and let me ask you this and I want you to keep going, but let me ask you this, did the playbook resonate with who you are? Like on, in year one, did you look at it and go, Oh, I don't like this. I don't like that. I don't like this. I don't like that. Or was it like 80% you were 80 or 90% comfortable with it? Because I think one of the challenges for people when they walk in and they're like, I'm just going to spend a year listening and learning is, and, and that may be wise in some cases, but they, you know, the church is in trouble. That may be a big difference between transitioning from success to success as opposed to from failure or, or, or, or crisis to success. My whole analogy about, about football or sports, I didn't really clarify it very well. You know, built ourselves when he took over the Dallas Cowboys after losing seasons. The first thing he did was repaint the locker room. Right. Gotcha. You know what I mean? So I felt like I'm going in, this has got a winning history of Whiter. It's a winning team. It's a very different approach. I think if you go in and it's broken, then you got to do something immediately that says to the players, to the team that this is going to be different. It's a new day. That's, that's really good advice. And I really appreciate the clarification and distinction because I think this is just super helpful. Keep going, Jed. Yes. I was down with the heart of the church and Gina did a great job transitioning it. Now Jean would tell you he knew, I think God had called him out at the end of one season in the beginning of another. I would say over the last 12 years at Central, we've been through two more reinventions. We've reinvented ourselves two more times with all the pain and the thousands of people that leave and the, you know, all the stuff that comes with that, you know, when you go through a reinvention, not the mission, but a lot of organization, the way we're approaching it. And I think Jean would tell you when he left, he knew it was due up for that, but he also did what it would take, you know, to go there and God was going somewhere else. So this isn't anything other than just affirmation that Jean knows he would have done the exact same thing if he was here. But it was time. The church was getting older. It was time for a reinvention. It was tired in some ways. It was progressive sort of contemporary Christianity, but it wasn't, you know, 20s, 30s, 40s in my perspective. It was more 50s, 60s, some 40s in the age dynamic you're looking at. Again, it's a large successful church. So don't take this too extreme. It's amazing. Right. Those are some things I'm looking out in the first year going, all right, we got to get younger. Right. And you're 32, right? So you're looking around going right here, you know, we don't have, we don't have a lot of young kids. We got older junior high school age kids in our kids program. We got like we're, we've aged and now we've got to reinvent. And so that was a part of kind of what was driving me going in. And I'll tell you a few things in a transition you got to do, like, especially if you're in a multi-staff transition, one is you need to listen enough to have a framework of where the church is coming from and where the people are coming from. And you need to listen for some key things. So anybody that spoke bad about gene was on my list immediately because they will speak bad about, and this wasn't many people. Gene was very loud. Yeah, sure, sure. Don't hear about me. When I ride off into the sunset, Kerry, they'll speak people on staff and others who speak bad about you. I can name them. Yeah. Life, right? It is what it is. Yeah. But you know, I think people do that and they do it in an attempt in a transition, in a transition in the first few years, it's a power struggle. Everybody wants, everybody's pulling for power. And you feel like stretch Armstrong, everybody's working you, right? You know, everybody wants to go out to lunch and have dinner and this is my, here's what's below it. This is my agenda. This is my men's ministry thing I want to do. This is, you know, Gene's, the former pastor's gone and now I'm going to come in and see if I can work my way in here, like, there is a ton of that that just happens and how people speak about the former leader and how people speak about the former days and the former pastor. You need to lean in heavily to that because if they are negative or dark, now you can be truthful without being negative and dark and you can be kind and be truthful. But if they are really negative and dark and loose with their lips, I immediately cut them out of my leadership sphere, my circle and if they were staff, I put them on a transition list. Wow. And I transitioned. Well, a half dozen, you know, pretty high level positions and a lot of it was just because of the way they were talking about the previous leader. They told me they're not loyal and they were, if they won't be loyal to him, they're not going to be loyal to me. Well, that's really, you know, that's really sage advice because I think it shows a lot of humility. Number one, to sit and listen, even when the playbook wasn't perfect and you kind of realized, okay, it's time to reboot. But then the second thing, I think someone with maybe less character might have said, oh, they don't like Gene, I'm going to leverage that in my favor and I'm going to rally them around me. I think you're so wise to realize, you know, disloyal to the last leader or dark about the last leader and they'll be dark about something, even if they're keen on me now. Yeah, that's right. And if they think they're winning favor with me by running down whatever happened, you know, they're sadly going to be mistaken. And so that was, that was, I think, a very important part of those first few months for me. And then I started setting our board up. You know, I feel like in a transition, your board is very important. If the board is behind you, no matter what kind of board structure you have, if they are behind you and understand transition dynamics, then they will watch your back and stand with you. And as long as you keep the board behind you, you can get through just about anything unless you're in a different model of church, right? Without the board behind you, even if the church is going well, man, it can be a mess. And, you know, how many times have we seen the board in a transition before the transition was fully through, even though it could have worked, you know, they cut the senior pastor's authority off. They clip as Achilles, basically, and he can't run anymore and he realizes three years later we're done. Wow. Yeah. So I think the board dynamics, the temptation is to look to the church, right? Right. Oh, man, we got to get this going. We got to get that going. And that's, that's right. And that's true. But, you know, I spent a good amount of relational time hanging out with guys that were on our board. I started to get to know who they were and I started to plant seeds with them. And I started to talk to them about this basic idea that any transition, even a good transition, is going to be messy. Yeah. And so there's going to be people that leave, there's going to be people that don't like it. I followed a great leader, a great pastor, but the, the spinoff of that is I didn't even have to bring a lot of change for people to leave. It was just me breathing, you know, like all I had to do was walk up there. Well, you're not him. Because you're different. Yeah. That's right. You're different. He's gone. You're not him. I'm out of here. Which, which I understand. So, which by the way, I, you know, my very first weekend, I just pulled a stool up and said, all right, let's just have a family talk, you know, this guy was amazing and I'm not him. I'll never be him. And as long as you're looking for him, you're going to be disappointed, you know, like we're going into the future. This is a new day and I'm a new leader and I'm going to be my own guy and I'm going to figure it out and I need you to, and you know what, our church was fantastic. They got that. They embraced it overall, but you know, those expectations are too much to carry, you know. How did you know how to do this? I'm just a little side note. Like did you read a book? Did you have people speaking into your life or this was just intuition? It's just intuition, I think. It's good for you. Yeah. Good for you. Okay. Tell me more about the first year. Tell us more. So, board structure, I didn't know how to do any of this, and I feel like that guy right now that looks back and goes, this was our game plan and it all worked out perfectly. At the moment, bro, I'm living, moment by moment, I'm literal. I remember about eight months in, a guy called me on my phone at the office that was a part time staff member at the church, not, you know, not in a core leadership position. He was just down lying a little bit, left me a message to saying, "Hey man, I just want you to know my wife and I spent some time praying for you and we love you and we're behind you." And, you know, that was it. I literally, I was alone in my office. I was down in my hands and knees, weeping like a baby, you know, I needed about 30 minutes to do that. And then I'm back up on my feet running. I don't have time, you know, like I didn't have time to sit around and, but when it hits you, like, "Holy cow, what are we doing? All this stuff's flying around." I'm in the middle of this. People are leaving, everybody hates me, you know, that's how you feel, right? And you get a message, "Hey, we prayed for you." And then you melt down and then you get back up and you're like, "All right, just keep running." Wow. So were people leaving? Like you got that, that happened. Did you see a net decline? I would say, you know, I think my first weekend, we had done a mailer to the whole city literally. And so we had kind of gone all in and we saw maybe 7,000 people show up, which was amazing. And you know, by January, we were 5,500, you know, February. So which it's all scale, you know, I understand if you're at a church of 300, and I've been a pastor of a church of 300, easy to kind of look out and go, "Ah, I don't know, but let me tell you, man, when you start dropping that much, everybody's talking about it and everybody knows it." Yeah. So you're down 20% roughly. Yeah. So bad at math, but yeah, so mathematicians will come in. Yeah, me too. That's why I'm like, "Sure." Yeah, yeah, sure. Close enough, close enough, eventually. Here's what I started. Here's the seeds I started planning with our board that I thought I'd just pass on to guys going into transition. And that is, if you've got the church kind of in, because remember Rick Warren, the purpose of the church, the concentric circles. Oh, yes. I do. I still use that. I still use it. Here they are, because I think this is helpful for transition talk to give us a frame, right? So you've got the core at the very center. And the next circle out is the congregation, and the next circle out from that is the crowd, right? Yeah. I think I'm getting this right. It's close. It's close. I don't know. I just because I use it, but I always think I make up my own version, so I don't know. But I know what you mean. That's exactly it. Keep going. 20 years ago. But anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would say to our board, like, "Here's the thing. In year one, the farthest circle, the crowd, they're going to make up their minds." I have a lot of transition in the crowd. It probably won't show up too bad in our giving in the first year. Now it may in a dark situation, a difficult situation, where you have to make things more drastic. But in our situation, I didn't forecast it to make too much of an impact in the first year, and it didn't. Well, here's the most important thing I kept saying to them. But once we get into year two and year three, people that are more bought in, that are going to hold on longer because they're bought in, are going to start to leave. And so in year two and three, the congregation starts to leave, and then in year two to three, the core starts to leave. Now, if the transition's going well, the crowd is now filling back in. There's a new congregation that's now starting to buy in, and you're actually starting a new core, which by year three, the old core feels like they're left out. They're not in. Right. You've got a new core that's happening. That's brilliant. That's what I planted with the board that was so important. As I say, guys, it's year two to three when your friends are going to start leaving this church, and you need to look with me at the metrics of the church and not at your relationships. Because if you make it about your friends leaving, and our church is now growing, and the metrics are going north, we're seeing baptisms, we're seeing people come to faith, we're seeing people get into group life, we're seeing people serve, right? All the vital signs by year three, four are starting to trend upward. We're going to feel like in your relational sphere, the wheels are falling off. This is 911. We got to do something now. Wow, that's gold. That seed was gold. That seed may have saved my life, honestly. And I'm not smart enough to come up with all that on my own. A very smart guy, Doug Slabaugh, who is an incredible leader, served with Rick Warren for years, kind of let out there in the purpose driven life and was part of Fuller's church growth seminar and all that has been a mentor to me and a coach in a lot of ways. Doug gave me that, but I ran with it and I met with each one of our board members and kept planting those seeds. Here's where it paid off for me. My second year, at the end of two full years, I went on vacation. Now at this point, we had made some changes. We had changed music style. I say music style, not traditional to contemporary. We just got more progressive. I felt like in that season, we needed to target a 30 year old guy with our old church approach, which isn't true for everybody. I wouldn't even say it's true for us now. It was a season. I don't think these seasons are forever. You have been flow with them, but I was just looking out like, we don't have guys in our church and we don't have any young people in our church. We got to reinvent our church generation. So we did colors, branding, logo, website, design, music, programming. I would say we did the whole shift to simple church, which Jean had started and was sort of, I think he knew we got to go down this road and that process had begun, but I was able to come in over the next two or three years and help finish it and bear the brunt of people being mad at me for canceling programs. I think it killed their favorites. I mean, we just underestimate, I think, how hard it is to kill programs like that. It's really hard. I took this all the time, like, hey, walk carefully, walk carefully here. I unwired our Wednesday night believer service. I was going to go in and kill it. I was just going to walk in and kill it. It's been like three years and I thought, I'm done. I'm tired of this. It's not our approach. We were launching campuses about to launch our first multi-site campus. We wanted to be in a situation where it was reproducible and a midweek service wasn't going to be reproducible for us in all these different portable environments. I was like, we just got to change our whole structure and our approach. If it's good enough for the midweek, it's good enough for the weekend. That was kind of the thing. It's different. It's good approach. So I came in, literally, I mean, I'm a week away. This is how stupid I am. I'm a week away from just going and this thing had been going 15 years, 16 years at the time. It was big for that kind of a service. It was pretty significant and this guy came to our church and he had been a part of a church that had a 10 or 15 year Wednesday night service and a pastor who had been there 30 years and the pastor just walked in and killed it and he goes, I want you to know, three years later, that guy would tell you it almost killed him and he goes, you've only been here a couple of years. Do you want to die? He just sprayed reality up for me and I'm like, so this is what I did. So I started putting a different teacher in every week and I stopped attending because it killed me. I cannot attend something that's slowly dying. Oh, yeah. Just kills me. We had a teaching team of three or four guys who started rotating them through. I actually started meeting with them like you're charged with killing the service slowly. Right, we started unwiring the music, pretty soon it's an acoustic guitar and it literally took me, I want to say, I have to actually go back and look at the months and dates, but I don't think it's an exaggeration to say two to three years to wire it down to about 200 people and then walk in and say, okay, now we're done. Wow. So all that to say, like in transitions, be wise, but setting that setting. So the first couple of years, we're narrowing things where the thing that I did, I think that helped us have the most success is we clarified our focus again and then we narrowed our approach. We stopped doing a lot of other things and we focused on the three or four critical things that we thought we needed to be as a church and I feel like we went from being a pond to being a rushing river. You know, like we went from being sort of getting stale, just kind of sitting there and then you go through a transition and you've lost the momentum and then the first year, you're the new guy, you lose some more momentum, you know, it just kind of felt like a pond. We've got to get back to being a river and that started to happen when we narrowed that focus and started really trying to do the things that we felt God was calling us to do the best of our ability and not doing, right, all these other things. But around year two to three, I'm long-winded about this, but I'm coming back to that. This is great. Oh, core congregation crowd, around year two to three that summer, I went on vacation and I got a call from one of our elders and said, Judd, we're concerned enough that you need to come back from vacation and we need to have an emergency board meeting. And we're going to have it at my house. Okay. Power play. Power play. Every pastor in leader right now is like, oh, that's not good. Yeah, that's not good. That's right. Like, this is either the warning bell or this is like we're done or what's going to happen here. Totally. And sure enough, it was great hearted guys, good board. I was very blessed, you know, none of them were guys that I had really journeyed with or done life with. They were, they were jeans guys, right? So that's always a challenge in those early years, but, but they were, he had led them to be open hearted and, you know, so I'm very grateful for that. And probably influenced them in ways I'll never know, honestly. I think when the, you know, I should ask him, but he probably stood up for me probably even now is like, dude, you have no idea what I did to you. You know? You don't even think you don't know, right? I went in and I sat down with these guys and all their friends were leading the church. And they really felt like it was 9-1-1. I was able to show them this is what was so important that our attendance was actually starting to increase for the first time, just a little, not a lot, but a little bit, you know, our, our decisions that we're seeing people make for Jesus was actually starting to increase, just to hear baptisms, you're starting to increase as the guys, the wheels are falling off, truly. This is not what happens. You have to, you know, and then this was the moment and I'm telling you, you could see it around the room. I said, do you remember? This was in July. I said, do you remember in May, when in a meeting, I went through this whole thing, the core, the congregation, the crowd, we've talked about this again and again and again. And it was like, you did tell us this was going to happen. This is exactly what's happening. And I just felt like I got tons of chips in that meeting and I walked out with those guys saying, you're right, we're behind you, we're sorry, we freaked out, you know, like we're with you. And that's why I'm like, lay the seeds now for two years, I tried to get them ready for worst case scenario, just in case, you know? Because I think the difference is knowing is one thing in understanding, but you're so right, Judd. Like in the moment when it's my friends are leaving and my friends are saying, and then I'm the guy in power. So, you know, I'm responsible and the wheels are falling off and man, for you to have the presence of mine, not to get derailed and to come back to that moment. And that, that is exceptional. Now, the other thing I don't want people to lose is you lost momentum for three years. That must have seemed like an eternity or stalled out, you know, kind of dipped installed for three years. The numbers held okay, but the interesting thing about that is I would say the first six months, we were just, you know, we were like a bucket with a huge hole in it. We were just leaking out the bottom, right? And so, but it would, I guess, I guess another way to say it is, it wasn't like it was all up and to the right. I mean, you had to really look at the numbers to go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, say is like everybody's different than how they approach it. I mean, my approach in a transition is I'm counting my, I'm going to cut my losses and I got to reach new people. And then that's just, I just come in knowing we're going to have that crowd and then the congregation and then the core that they just, for whatever reason, you know, it's, there is that whole principle. God calls people through churches more than two churches in different seasons and there are people that are going to be called through here. They were called for a season and now they're called to another. The visions change, the missions change, you know, all those things. So yeah, the first two or three years was pretty brutal before we started. There was a lot happening that didn't show up on the numbers, right? The numbers held, but people didn't see that the significant amount of people leaving really significant and the significant amount of people starting to come. So all of that, you know, was playing out. How did you hang in there? How did you just not quit? Well, you know, I wanted to. I think there were seasons where, you know, I, and I wondered like I did not feel security in my role at central furlough. It may have been five years, you know, where I really felt very secure. Now that made me a hungry, risk-taking, passionate, I think humble, surrendered leader, you know, and I think it made me a better leader, but I don't wish it on anybody. That's right. It's like I was watching the hard knocks, you know, the NFL training, football training program and you're watching all these guys and, and they're like, this is so incredibly competitive and you just get cut, you know, like you've cut, you're gone, like all sports, right? You know, you perform, cut, you're gone. That's whether, whether the church put that on me or I put it on myself, I've definitely felt that intensely the first few years at central, you know, it's like perform or you're cut. Right. So I think you did an exceptional job through this transition. This is like a textbook and I mean, textbooks are always messy. You're right. It's painful and everything. You did a great job, I think, leading your board and I think you're right, healthy at the top, unified at the top, unified at the bottom for the most part long term and unhealthy at the top, unhealthy all over. But how did you personally handle all that criticism and the losses, like, can you walk us through that? Because I think that's what just kills so many leaders. It's like, I just can't hand, and I've been through seasons of loss too after success. You know, we'll talk about the other transitions you've done a little bit later. I don't want to lose that, but, you know, when you then stand up and you have so many people saying you're not the guy, you're making a mistake, you're killing a good thing. Remember how good it was when Jean was here? How do you endure that emotionally and personally? I'm not sure I did a great job. I think endure is the right word. Yeah. Everybody tends to process differently, and I tend to process by burying and dealing with it after the fact. And I have a fairly large capacity to bury, to deal with it later, but it does come back. It comes up later. Yeah. So I don't always process things as well in the moment when Las Vegas, the economy really crashed here and we went through four years of really intense financial hardship. It was another moment that was, you know, I didn't really deal with that until it was over. And I was probably two, three, four years into it before I actually started processing the emotions of what that had meant, you know, and I think the same was true here. But Dr. John Walker is the greatest resource I've ever had in my life as it relates to how I've been able to deal with this stuff. And he leads a ministry called Blessings Ranch, www.blessings ranch.com. Gotcha. Everybody write that down. Okay. Okay. We're going to need this. Brilliant. Therapist and Christian, he hates the word counselor because he thinks Christian counseling is kind of a joke, you know, in the way it's been abused, spiritual guide, psychologist. And he specializes in pastors and leaders. I mean, that's, that's what he does. He's done probably over 10,000 pastors, and I'm talking about, that may be an exaggeration, but it's an insane amount, over 15 years of this full time, giving his life to pastors and leaders. He is amazing and can put his finger on it. So what he does can put his finger on what you're going through. So over the years, he's helped me process through a lot of this and even more recently I reached out to him and I just said, man, my best friend in men in life and ministry had told me like I said, judge, you're always so positive and hopeful and you love everybody. You don't have any enemies and he's like, but I don't hear that in you right now. I hear some bitterness. I hear, I think for the first time maybe some cynicism, he's like, you're, you're not cynical guy. There are guys that are cynical. That's not you, man. You're like happy, smiling, love everybody. You know, he's like, where are you? What's happening to you? And he goes, um, it's been sort of an accountability partner for me and he said, you need to talk to counselor. Well, I always call Dr. John Walker. He's the guy. And, uh, so I call him up and John walked me through a process that any, you don't have to have a counselor to go through this, but I think this was really helpful. And I think this was part of the process of me also getting through those years of criticism in the transition because it feels like everybody's against you. Yeah. And it feels like everybody's got agendas and you're getting pulled like stretch Armstrong and all of that. I want you to get a piece of paper out and he goes, we're going to, we're going to write down the actual names of people that have really hurt you and wounded you. You know, that, that it was the most clarifying thing to write their names down. And here's what it did for me. In the end, I had actually 10 names out of 20 years of ministry. Wow. You think about that, right? Yeah. I feel like everybody's, you know, you're going to start feeling like everybody's against me, man. You know, this person betrayed me and this person didn't keep their word and this person was a loyal and they went back and, you know, you want to start looking over your shoulder, but you're trying really hard not to become that stereotypical paranoid senior pastor guy, you know, you're fighting all that. And then he's like 10 names he goes, now let's talk through each one of these people and what happened. And it just made me realize like, okay, then I had, and then I went through a process with him for a few weeks of praying every day for those people, praying for really the ability to forgive and to surrender, actually saw one of them recently. And I hugged them, we talked for about 15 or 20 minutes, I walked out and I told my wife she was with me. I said, you know, it was beautiful about that. I have no emotions right now at all. Isn't that powerful? You know, like, and I won't say I was like, whoo, I'm glad I saw you. Yeah. Yeah. But I didn't have the earlier emotions of hurt, betrayal. You never made it right. You lied. You know, like all these things, it's like, that's what forgiveness feels like and it felt really good. And within five minutes, I was on to the next thing in my day. That's so good. That little thing of just listing them out and some of those names went all the way back to the trend. This actually happened in the last year for me, but what's fascinating, some of those names went all the way back to the transition. So over a decade, man, man, you know, I'll often talk about doing the math because we think it's everybody and then you realize, man, it's just a tiny little group. And I had just a vouch for that, Judd, I had the same experience about a decade ago. There were some people at just one of those periods that went south in our church and there were just a handful of families with whom it was really, really hard and, you know, they laughed and I hadn't seen them in a while and I bumped into one earlier this year. And it was one of those weird moments where it was the first time we'd seen each other for real in years. And it was that do we ignore each other? Do I thought, you know, you got to make a decision to live the gospel. I'd been trying to forgive this guy for a while. I just went over. I smiled. I shook his hand. You could tell he was really awkward about it too. Within 10 minutes, we were laughing and we remembered why we were once friends and it was so liberating. I came home, told my wife like, I haven't seen him since. We're not having dinner every Friday night anymore, but it's that sort of release and that joy that can happen. And that's what has to happen if you're going to stick around, right? Like if you're going to be in Vegas for a while, I mean, it's a big city, but like, you're going to bump into some of those people and you've got to do the hard work of forgiveness. Judd, this is just gold, man, gold on transition. Thank you so much. Anything else that got you through those first few years? Well, I think I had a handful of pastoral friends and mentors. My mentor from Amarillo, Texas, Roy Wheeler, I never know, you know, there's different opinions on when you're in a transition. How much do you reach out to the predecessor and journey with them? And I think that probably goes to your past relationship. I always felt like I had a great respect for love for relationship with Jean, but you know, I didn't really know him well before this. And so I reached out to other guys and maybe that what, you know, he may have been able to save me some heartache that I went through actually, but these other guys were great counsel for me in general. And they reminded me, it's the same experience I had reading Sam Chan's book, Leadership Pain, recently this summer, you know, if you've been around, if you've been the leader for a while, you pretty much know the contents of that book because you've lived it, but it's so refreshing to just hear other other voices, a bunch of other pastor voices in the book and things to realize like, that's right, I'm not alone for everybody. Even superstar mega church pastor guy, he bleeds red just like me. He's got emotional wounds just like me, you know, like we all of that is super helpful. And those guys really coached me and walked, walked me through that. And then my wife found the same network and she actually started a network called Leading and Loving It. Yeah. That is a network of encouragement for pastor's wives and women in ministry and a lot of it came out of that for her, she looked around, she'd come out of her, appeared of depression into a transition. And I think just looked around and felt like I'm all alone, like there's got to be somebody else like me. And this thing is just really grown and grown and grown and church planners wives and senior pastors wives, youth pastors wives, they all huddle up in their own collective groupings and they do online virtual monthly small group gatherings, eight to 10 anonymous people that aren't in your town in similar ministry environments, like it seems like a youth pastor's wives in churches of 500, you know, or less. So good. So similarities right in smaller towns or in cities and they just pocket them up and they have that community. You figured out together that way. We'll link to that book, we'll link to the ranch, we'll link to your wife's ministry leading and loving it. We'll link to all that in the show notes. So that'd be great sources for people, but yeah. So it's gotten a little bit better than those first three years in the last decade, hasn't it? Chad catches up with the rest of the story, tell us, tell us what's happened since. And again, I, you know, we got a little bit of time left and I want to hear about the other transitions because it's not like, okay, you set your playbook back in, let's say 2005 or whenever that was, and you've just run with it without any adjustments. Now you've got the tough job of, okay, we changed what was, but now I've led you through some change, but now it's time to change again. Sometimes that can be as difficult or more difficult than, than changing with somebody else built. So walk us through, through the last decade. Yeah. I think, I think I maybe idealize like after I get through this transition and all these people leave and all these new people come now, these are your people, right? Like, you know, I don't mean that they're all Jesus people. They are. But they've come under your leadership. They're familiar with you. You don't have to jump through those hoops anymore, right? Right on. Oh, you, they come from. So that's all I mean, when I say that, but like they're, they're, but I know what you mean. They're going to rally around your vision and your playbook and they're not going to cause any trouble. And so, and then I, and I guess I thought that was kind of, you know, one and done, right? Like you did that and then you're done and then you realize every time you transition and the playbook changes a little bit, even though you have the same thing all over again, like how much people leave, people that you loved, people that you're, and now, you know, I've been there long enough that, I remember about five years in, Gene said to me something that was really wise once he said, and just a sidebar conversation, he said, well, now your problems are more and more going to be the problems that you've created. And that's easy in the first couple of years in a transition to be like that guy, that guy, you would have done this in your mind or in your heart, right? You know, only that that way to hold it for ballgame about your three, four and five. And you start, now they start coming back up and these are, these are culture issues and problem issues you've created. Right. Now you've got to deal with the ramifications of that, right? Yep. The things you've said yes to in the old statement, there is no innocent. Yes. There's always a cost, right? You've said yes, but now here comes the non innocent part of that. Yes. And now you've got to deal with the ramifications of that. And so, yeah, we've looked around, I would say at least twice. It was just after the transition period and the dust had settled around year five and we started going multi-site. There was a whole leadership, organizational, structural transition. And we had prepared for that for a few years by narrowing our focus and then really beginning to launch some campuses. And then I would say we did that again about three years ago. And I think for us then, maybe four, but three is probably more realistic. That was more about really settling in to becoming now who we are. I think you try to try, if you go to a multi-site kind of model, which I don't suggest up to everybody and I don't think it's as sexy as people think it is. And I think it's got a lot of weaknesses and there, and I'm in it. I've been in it for a lot of years now and I still think there are aspects of it that are unproven and unknown, you know, like in the long term. So I'm the first guy in line to go. I'm not sure either, you know, like their good strengths and then their challenges. And we're just trying to reach people for Christ in a cost-effective way. And this is one approach, but it's not the only. But I think for us, it was sort of, we went through such an intense financial struggle in Vegas that just, it's hard to explain how much it paralyzed us and we went through several rounds of layoffs and, you know, we had 70% of our church was underwater on their home mortgages. You know, if you can imagine 70% of your church owes more than they have and can't sell out of their house, you know, is facing bankruptcy and those are just, it's just hard to, it's just a number. But when you walk through it with faces and names, you know, you realize it's really, it really spun us out hard and it didn't change our vision, but we kind of put it on hold. It really became about surviving. And so we came through that season and I'm going to say that we're six years now from when that started and we're just now, Las Vegas is still just now like housing prices are back up to the 2003, 2004 level, you know, like we're, so if you bought no 506, oh seven and those three years boom years, you're still under water, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh man. So we're still, I think 30, 40% last study I saw, which was a little dated and most people would say that's a, that's like a Katrina disaster. That's like a nightmare. But when you're 70% underwater, you're like, we're making up ground, man, we're doing great. We've had to reinvent again based on new financial realities and some new things like that. And it wasn't again, like throwing the playbook out, but it was a reinvention. So so it was just less money for ministry than you had been used to ministry. We reorganized staff, I think we had, we originally organized our leadership team around like family ministries, operations, groups, what, what we might call ministry development, which I guess that would come under groups and, you know, weekend services. And then you realize like once you're at six, seven, eight campuses, it just starts all looking different. You know, now you need a central global, global operations, right, vector, you need somebody over, just all the personnel starts looking different. So you start reorging the entire organization from top to bottom. And so we've been through that twice. I think at the church level, they don't feel it as intensely. Yeah. Although we kind of redid our assimilation process and a lot of those things in the last one and they felt that. But that was mostly good thing. Yeah. But that's stuff for, tough for staff. And I mean, you spend most of your time with staff and elders. That's where you spend. That's where you feel it. Because somebody who was on the inside circle, maybe is a layer away now. And then you're like, I didn't really want to do that. But we had to do it. And that's, that's, I've always said probably the most difficult changes, at least in the last decade for me, the most pain I feel is around personnel changes. That is the hardest for me as a leader. It's just. Yes. So those are the people you're doing life with. And those are the people that, you know, it's just hard. Well, and to, and to be that, that, uh, the great leader, you know, what does it mean to be a great leader and a great leader trusts his team to make great staffing and leadership decisions, which is very hard when you're not sure you disagree with them. Or you're not sure there was enough warrant to let that person go, or you're not sure that, you know, we should have made this transition the way we did. And so you try to guide coach and lead, but also like do it as a great leader, not as a micromanager. That's a challenge, you know, agreed, agreed, agreed, Jod, and I mean, you're doing it a large scale. So it was about 5,000 people sort of in the valley at year two or whatever, 5,500. How many do you see now over here? You have how many locations and how many people do you see on a weekend these days? So, you know, we're at, we're at eight locations, uh, right around 20,000 people, um, you know, attending our campuses and then online, we count as well on top of that, but it's a separate number. So that's crazy. That's just crazy and amazing. But to think you almost didn't make it like that, and the church almost didn't make it, right? Yeah. I mean, the church, I think would have, I think the church would have been fine with it. I mean, right? I almost, you know, it's an honor to be to be able to lead it. And there were some, a few days where I wasn't sure, uh, they were going to continue to extend me that honor. But I will say this again, uh, the benefits of a successful following a successful leader with a culture of health in the church and integrity over a long time. It's pretty huge. I did feel like people transferred early on in that first year to me, a lot of them transferred 18 years worth of chips to me that I didn't earn. Wow. You know, that's to Jesus credit for sure. How are you spending the money? How are you, you know, are you, are you, uh, do you have moral integrity when women are in your office? Do you have like all of those questions? I look back now and I, I would think if you followed somebody that had been through all of that, a really tough, all that stuff's in the air, right? Yeah. Yeah. I had none of that, you know, because it was just like, we're a pastor, we trust you. I mean, we, the guy who walked with integrity before you for 18 years, why wouldn't you do that? Right. Right. Which had a guy ask me once, like, why do you walk with integrity? Why do you kind of toe the line? And I remembered this really pretty significant decision we were making involved quite a bit of finances and things at our board level. And there's one board member who seemed to have the most questions about this decision and we went around and around and around about it. And finally, um, they asked this board member, well, what do you think? Are you good? You know, on this decision. And he said, I'm good. And I said, well, don't, you have more questions. You didn't look like you got all your questions answered. He says, I don't have all my questions answered. And he pointed at me, he goes, but I trust him. Wow. Wow. So I looked at this guy and says, why do you, why do you try to, you know, how do you, what keeps you on the straight and narrow and I just, I saw his face and I said, because people trust me. And that was a trust that I inherited from another great leader by the grace and mercy of God. I hope I never mess it up. You know, I just want to walk you on that one with you on that one walk in that trust and walk in that integrity. It's a sacred bond and we see it being broken all the time in our culture and in churches and it breaks my heart, you know, yeah. Let me ask you, uh, and I got a couple more questions. Man, this hour is flown by, but it's been so, so good transformation. There's a difference between transition and transformation. When would you say if you started year one, when would you say the church was finally transformed? And I've got a working definition of, of transformation and, you know, it's not like your people were in Egypt before, but it's basically when the people don't want to go back to Egypt, right where, where, where what was externally imposed change becomes an internally owned value. When, when would you say the change became that complete? I'd say probably that's, that's a, that's the five year mark problem. So it took about five years. And I want people to hear that, you know, that it doesn't, it doesn't happen overnight. And even if they're externally bought in when it, when it lives in their heart, that's a different thing. So that took five years. That took five years. Yeah. And every now, I will tell you, I'm, I'm, I'm an optimist about some of these things. And so I thought, I think we're through it and then at year three, I think we're through it and year four, I mean, we're, I think we're through it, you know, and we weren't really through, we were through of another portion of it, but we weren't transformation. We weren't through it. Right. But I think by year five, I sat back and realized now we're through it, you know, wow. And then the two other changes you've done, the, the most recent of which probably was only felt by, by staff, but I mean, that creates dislocation as well. Because that probably wasn't five years, but that two or three years or a year to really get to the other side of it and go, okay, now we're all running in the same direction again. Yeah. I think, um, I think those are probably maybe even 12 month kind of situations, not nearly as extreme, you know, maybe 12 month to 24 month. It's just different. There are people that don't like it or don't like this or staff to get riled. And then it's mainly the people that are in relational network with those staff that might get riled up if changes are made and all of that. But outside of that, I think that stuff has been a much quicker turn. Now it might take two or three years to fully get down into the life of the church. Right. Right. Some of these things and really to have, you know, start changing the culture of the church. But the turbulence settled down quicker. Yeah. Yeah. I would say so. You know, capital campaigns have a way of bringing these things about. Yeah. They do. Little likes it is. We, uh, so I would say like our last one, we launched kind of a continuation of vision and direction two years ago and launched a capital campaign with it that was a two year capital campaign. We're wrapping that up now. We paid a pretty good price in the first year, especially given our history of the last five years, the recession, all those things, we, it had been a long time. And so, and we're going right into another one. I'm kicking off another capital campaign where we did two year. In that recession, I'm like, don't tell me we're going into another recession. You're going to do another capital campaign. Please, no. We'll take that. I'll take that. That's all you read. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so you think you think that may, you know, figure a small exodus for us. It had been a long time. And when you cast a clear vision and you really call people to sacrifice and to shoulder up, there are people that just kind of go, you know, I wasn't really that into this anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Don't you think? You'll always come in and they always say, you're not going to lose anybody if you do a capital campaign and you're giving to the general fund, it's going to go up. I'm like, well, I've never seen that happen in any church I've ever been a part of. So, I always lost people. You're a church in every other church. But for me, I'm always like, sure, it will. Yeah. I'm with you on that. Hey, Jed, you talked about promptings earlier. And before we started recording, you said you had read something today. And this may actually just be for one guy who listened to the very end of this podcast. But remember the news article you were talking about that if we got a chance to mention it? Oh, yeah. I just was quietly this morning just sitting outside, taking in the morning, dark early. And I'm a morning guy, so mornings are great for me and popped open the news. And I read about this, it's this tragic, this professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary that had taken his life and I guess in his suicide note and mentioned the Ashley Madison website, which was a part, I think, of the picture, which was a pornographic website that many will know if you're following the news at all, you know, that they released the names of people that had registered and all of that. So we don't know all the dynamics there. We don't know what this guy had gone through, what he was facing. But I'll tell you man, my heart broke and my heart didn't break in a judgmental way. Like it didn't look like we all have challenges and issues, but my heart broke that my perception was this person felt so trapped and like there was no way out and he couldn't see a way out for himself, his family, his future, he couldn't face the reality, you know, of that being exposed. And again, I don't know in his case if that's the whole story, but I just thought, man, there are, if you've blown it, I don't care what you've done as a pastor or as a leader, more than likely you're going to be harder on yourself than anybody else is, you know, because you carry that and you know and you kept it a secret and you buried it and you know, hate yourself for it. And this Paul says you hate the sin that goes on within you. I just want some guys to know, we love you, you're not alone, man, reach out to somebody. Don't do what you preach, which is you always tell people, don't make, you know, ultimate commitments and decisions with temporary problems. And that really is a temporary problem. Your life is not over after a failure like that. So that's what I would say to those individuals and then to other guys who, you know, maybe that hasn't been their struggle or they aren't facing anything as intensely like that. Just the importance of protecting the ministry and honoring the sacred trust that people have given you and putting good guardrails in your life. So I'm not perfect, but for me, I almost never travel alone. If I travel, I almost always have somebody with me now. There's, you know, once or twice a year, I might end up on a quick day trip or something where it's just easier to do it alone. So I don't want to be so rigid and somebody says, I saw you on a flight one time and you said, but that's my basic principle. I haven't met alone with a woman other than my wife in 12, 13 years, you know, ever. I mean, I don't counsel. I don't talk with women alone and behind a closed-door environment ever. I don't put myself in that situation, you know, and it's not because I'm so spiritual. It's because I'm not. Right. Right. Right. I don't sign the checks. I don't write, you know, I like try to have all these things going on that are checks and balances in our ministry. Just we all know this. It's basic stuff. But man, it's huge. And I've said for years, if you could, you don't have to be the most talented or the most gifted. You have good character and integrity. You may outlast everybody else and just be the last guy standing. You might follow that guy over the guy who's more charismatic any day, you know. That's a really good word, Judd. I know there's some leaders who are going to want more and going to want to track with you. So anything you're working on right now, you want to tell us about and where can people find you online? CentralOnline.tv is our church site. So CentralOnline.tv, judwellheight.com as some of my personal information, leading and loving it. We just love the church. We love people who serve the church. We love serving the church. We're grateful to be in it. And so I'm most excited about what God's doing in the church. We've got capital campaigns and building campaigns and we're in it and we're running. We're full steam ahead, you know. And it's very exciting. And those are the things I'm most excited about right now, more than writing or books or outside things, it's church-related things. That's cool. That's so cool. We're excited about just what we're doing, you know. Judd, that's awesome. We'll link to all your social media profile too in the show notes. So I can't thank you enough on behalf of everybody who just maybe heard this discouraged and certainly everybody who's trying to transition something loads of wisdom here. Thank you so much. Thanks, Gary. I loved it. I don't think I oversold that interview. Did I? Like, oh my goodness. That is the best stuff on transitioning a church. I think I've ever heard. It's just brilliant. And again, you know, conferences tends to be a lot of church planters and that's awesome. But when you're trying to transition to church, man, I just love that stuff. So if you want more, you'll find some details in the show notes such as karaenuhoff.com/episode54. And thank you so much for all of the interaction on the blog. And thank you for all of you. If this has helped you, like, would you mind leaving a rating and review in iTunes? You can just do that or it's ditcher or tune in radio, wherever you happen to listen. I would love that. And for all of you who do that, I just want to say thank you so much because when you do that, it gets the word out in front of other leaders so that they too can be helped. So if you think this is helpful, one of the best ways you can pay it forward is leaving a rating or review. And you can do that in any iTunes store, anywhere in the world, you happen to be listening. So thanks so much for that. Next week, we come back with Brad Lominek, but in the meantime, we got another bonus episode. That's right. We're celebrating one year on the podcast and I've got another Ask Carry coming up on Thursday. So two days from now, we're back with another Ask Carry. Lots of great questions. Best way to make sure you don't miss it is to subscribe. It's free. And again, if you want to share this with a friend, that's great. And then Brad is back. He is my very first. I didn't know who it was going to be, but you'll hear a few in season two. My first return guest, he was on episode, what was it, 27 in the first season. And Brad is going to talk about the three essential components it takes to lead in today's culture. He's got a brand new book out and then Jeff Henderson is back and he and I are going to talk about my new book and the ideas in it two weeks from now. So a lot coming up this fall. Oh, and if you're a podcast listener, one of the top podcasters on the planet is up in October. His name is Lewis Howes. This guy gets like 800,000 downloads a month on his podcast. And he's got a new book called the School of Greatness, the same name as his podcast. He's going to be my guest in October too. So going to be a lot of fun things coming up in season two. Can't wait to hang out with you again on Thursday. And remember, bonuses are going away soon on lasting impact book. So you can just get that at lastingimpactbook.com. And thanks so much everybody. I really hope our time together today has helped you lead like never before. [MUSIC]