The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 047 – Breaking Down the Divide Between Business and Church—An Interview with David McDaniel
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before, in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. (upbeat music) - Well, hey, everybody. And welcome to episode 47 of the podcast. My name's Carrie Newhoff. I hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. I am really thrilled to have David McDaniel as my guest for this episode. David has been a friend of mine for 10 years now. And at one point kind of was my boss when he was a Director of Strategic Partnerships at North Point Church. He's now an elder there. And David's one of those guys who just has done an awful lot in his life. He was in the business sector for years and sold a startup that did incredibly well, then moved into ministry. And we get to some of that story. And now is back in business again. He left North Point Church a staff position a couple of years ago. And now he is in commercial real estate. So he's done all kinds of interesting stuff, although he'd never tell you he is a Harvard MBA grad. And he's simply brilliant. He's actually a close personal friend. He is a mentor of mine. We talk regularly just about life and about family and about leadership. In fact, right after record this intro, I'm gonna be talking to him just about some stuff going on in my life. And he's just always got great advice. And I wanted to have David on number one, 'cause he's a friend, number two, 'cause he's brilliant. Number three, because I think he really speaks into that space and helps us bridge the divide between business and the church. There's like this ongoing debate all the time in the church about, you know, what can business learn from the church? What can church learn from business? And some people hate that conversation. Other people love that conversation. Some people criticize that conversation. And I think David brings incredible clarity to it. And so much so that Andy Stanley's asked him to serve as an elder at North Point Church. I mean, that's an incredible responsibility. And he just, he's just great. And I think you're really gonna enjoy it. So for all the business leaders who are part of a church, but going, hey, how come my voice doesn't always get hurt? Hope this will be helpful. For all of you church leaders, maybe who don't really know how to engage business voices, hope this is gonna be helpful. Hey, just a couple of things before we jump into David's interview. First of all, if you have not registered for the Orange Tour yet this fall, I would so encourage you to do that. I'm gonna be in a bunch of cities across the US and would love to meet with you there. All the details are at orangetour.org. It is a great single day session. Just like high octane leadership, we're gonna be talking all about how to reach families. And I'm gonna be working with senior leaders. So I would love to have that conversation with you. You can go to orangetour.org or again, just check the show notes for this and love to have a conversation with you there. Secondly, thank you to everybody who continues to share this show. It's hard to believe we're coming up to our first anniversary next month. And it's hard to believe that a year ago, none of this existed. And it was about 419 of you who got the word out for the first time on this podcast last September. It was 419 people who said, yeah, I'm interested in this podcast, so shoot me some details. So I did. And you shared it with people. And do you know last month we had a week where over 17,000 leaders listened to this podcast in a seven day window? So you just think about how that's changed from like 419 people who said, hey, I believe in this, this is just an idea, but I'll share it with my friends. And now less than a year later, 17,000 people listened in a seven day window. Over like 60,000 people a month are listening to the podcast now. And that's just so encouraging. So I just want to say thank you for that. And for all of you who have left reviews, for all of you who keep sharing this stuff, posting it to your Facebook wall, emailing it to friends. And I don't know about you, but I've always thought, if our church could reach a thousand more people, wouldn't that be awesome? I mean, you're doing this anyway. So wouldn't it be wonderful if a thousand more people came to know Jesus doing what you're doing? And in a similar way, I feel kind of a calling on my life to help lead leaders or help leaders. And I think it's just awesome. Like I couldn't have imagined a year ago that 17,000 people would listen in the course of seven days. So just thank you so much for that. And as you share it, I hope you help other leaders as well. And you can do that by leaving a rating or review on iTunes, on Stitcher or on Tune in radio, or also just subscribing. If you haven't subscribed yet, it's a way to never miss an episode. So just want to say thank you for that as we approach the first anniversary of the podcast. It makes it very motivating to keep doing this. And now we're going to jump into my conversation with David McDaniel. Well, I'm super excited to have my great friend and business leader and North Point elder and former director of strategic partnerships for North Point. David McDaniel on the podcast today. Hi, David. Hey, Kerry. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. But you and I met 10 years ago, didn't we? That's right. In Chicago at Willow Creek. We did. We met at Willow Creek at one of the very early multi-site sort of sessions that they had. And I remember meeting you down front and it was great. Yeah, yeah. Do we know about each other ahead of time or was it just one of those random things? Reggie Joyner, I think told each of us to make sure that we saw each other while we were there, which we did. I'm forever grateful to Reggie for introducing us. It's been a wonderful relationship. Yeah, it's been great. David's been one of our elders at Kinexis Church, one of the founding elders of Kinexis Church. And unfortunately, we had to kick you off. It was either like rig our constitution like a third world nation and just keep your term forever or. I think it was a wise exercise of church discipline. You saw some things in my life that you weren't pleased with. You pulled me aside. You did. It was very biblical and I got excommunicated. That's fine. I think it's been rebuked though. I'm encouraged to see the progress in your life, David. (laughing) Yeah, David's absolutely one of my favorite people and a guy that I consider to be my mentor and was kind of my boss. I mean, do I have a boss at North Point? But you were my boss for a few years and invited me and Kinexis Church into the strategic partnership circle and came from business, but then left again the staff at North Point about three years ago to jump right back into business. So give us your like, you know, two minute bio, David. Sure, I'm happy to do that. Maybe you and my mom are the only people in the world that would be interested for whatever reason. I tend to do things in 10 year stints. And so I started in industrial real estate developing warehouse buildings, basically. And spent about 10 years doing that and then very cyclical business. And in one of the down cycles, I actually I was in Dallas the time I left and moved to Atlanta with two, well, met a new friend and joined an old friend and started a telecom company. And we did that for 10 years and very fortunately did fine with that. And then about that time we sold that company and about that time our church was going, it was a Baptist church in Atlanta was going through some difficulty. And we ended up starting a new church which was called Buckhead Fellowship. We thought we would trick people. That's awesome. Calling it a fellowship, not a church. You tricked everybody, didn't you with that? That's the problem. We tricked everyone. And that ultimately, God's grace, that ultimately became Buckhead Church. And I kind of got swallowed up into North Point. Never intending to go in the ministry but I did that for about 10 years. So that's another 10 year stint. And then now, for the last two or three years, I'm back in industrial real estate. So maybe it's cyclical and I'm kind of repeating the cycle. So you're buying up buildings and? Yeah, in our business, like say cyclical, so at the bottom of the trough and you buy buildings. And then as the markets improve, which is where we are now, you build buildings. So that's kind of where we're in that transition and we're starting to build warehouses which is wonderfully exciting only to people that build warehouses, not to podcast listeners. So I won't bore you with that. Yeah, but I mean, it's one of those things where I don't think, you know, when you were in your 30s, you would have thought you'd give a decade of your life on church staff. And you know, it just never occurred to you. You were just a business guy, an entrepreneur and Christian always involved in the church. But what led you to take like a more, 'cause this is what I want to focus on. We're gonna talk a little bit about multi-site, your time at North Point and so on. But I really want to talk about the church business. I would say tension that exists sometimes between a lot of the leaders that I meet in church world who are like, you know, church really can't learn anything from business and a lot of business leaders who look at the church and go, yeah, we can't learn anything from church. And the church really doesn't have much to say to us. And I mean, I understand where that tension comes from. But one of my favorite parts of leadership is actually taking some of the best principles you can learn in business and some of the best leaders and taking the best of church world and kind of putting them together. But what led you as a business leader to go, you know, this is more than just a place I go to on a Sunday morning. - Right. You know, I had a very segmented view of the two and I think most people do. And so there's business world and there's church world and they're very different. And as I get older and I don't know that this is correct, but this is what I think now. And I suspect it's correct, but I'm not 100% sorry. But I just think God is amused by all of these differentiators. You know, it's like, wait a minute. I created both of you people. You're exactly alike. You're human beings. You happen to be in different sectors that the IRS deems one for profit, one not for profit, but you're supposed to glorify me in everything you do. And, you know, one is not more spiritual than the other and one is not more effective than the other. Yet we fall into these traps as people is seeing it that way, which is just crazy to me. Now, I had a very convenient, separate view of the world though, when I, you know, when I was 30. - So it was completely bifurcated, so to speak. - And it was sort of what you did on, and that wasn't morally or spiritually, it was just like, I don't know whether my business guests can ever be used in the church. - Yeah, and, you know, with all due respect, it was, it was empirically demonstrated for me. You know, I had that view of the universe and I probably spent some time around churches that were, you know, they had their fair share of, I'll just say not effective leaders. Now, trust me, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying that about all churches, but I think what changed that for me was meeting the North Point guys. I had never, ever been around anyone that thought of leadership in those same ways that Andy and his team did. And that's what, that's what changed everything for me. - Okay, let's back up to something you said before, yet to the North Point days, because you said, you know, as a young business leader, and I think this is true, I mean, gosh, I've, you know, can access this somewhat larger church now, but I remember, you know, when our churches were really, really small, you've got business people in your church every Sunday. And I think, and I learned this, 'cause I mean, my first sort of training was in law, and I worked for a year in downtown Toronto, which is like the equivalent of Wall Street. And I was part of a church, but like it was like there were two worlds, and there was sort of the church world, and there was a business world, and you know, people would drive down to the financial district, or to some of the towers in downtown Toronto, where they practice law, and then they'd come to church on Sunday. But I think you're right. The attitude that I picked up early on, when I was in my 20s in law in downtown Toronto, was, you know, church really doesn't speak into business, and business doesn't really speak into church. And that always bothered me. So your view of church leaders early on, when you were a young entrepreneur, was, wow, there's some really ineffective people in church world. - Right, right. And I think what, you know, a couple of things probably could have influenced me otherwise. First of all, I think church leaders that aren't learning, and aren't great leaders, and aren't trying to get better and better, do themselves a huge disservice, and I'll even be more blunt than that. I think they've got a disservice by not honoring him, and growing and trying to honor him by the craftsmanship, you know, of what you produce and what you do. But I think by being better leaders, and trying to learn everything they can from the world in general, including the business world, about being better, and is an important thing to do. And there's great resources that are written by business leaders, and there are great resources that are written by nonprofit leaders, but they're all kinds of resources to get better. And I think I would have been attracted to a team of people with any organization, for profit or not, that is trying to be better and better and better. We all love those stories. We love the, we love the coffee shop that goes the extra mile, that does the extra thing for us, you know, as a consumer or the running shoe store that does something new and different, you know, puts you on a treadmill or whatever. We're intrigued by people trying to do something better. And I think if churches do that, it naturally just draws business leaders in as a magnet. You know, people want to be a part of something that's missional and is effective at achieving whatever it's trying to achieve. That's a great story. You know, whether it's a restaurant or a shoe store or a church, you know, people are, people are excited to be part of something that is actually making a difference. - So you and I tend to be on the same page when it comes to that. I agree with what you've said. And yet, I think we both experienced a lot of resistance to those ideas too in the church world, where there is an inherent suspicion or distrust of any idea that would come from the business community, from where you sit as a business leader. Do you have any idea why some Christian leaders, and I know I'm asking you to speak for other people or think for other people, but do you have any idea why a meaningful number of church leaders seem to have that inherent distrust or suspicion about business leaders? And then secondly, and maybe even more interestingly, how does that make you feel as a business leader? - Well, I think that more than one business leader has probably run all over a church guy or a church person. So business leaders, probably in some instances, deserve to be distrusted or mistrusted. But I do think there's this crazy notion sometimes that things are either spiritual or their business, you know, and there's a bifurcation there. And I have no idea, you know, why that's true. I think if people really examine that, they would say, no, that's not really true. The same principles that allow a successful business to operate. And by that, I mean a really wealth thought of business that's really taking care of its customers and all of its stakeholders and doing a great job in the community. More often than not, the reason they're doing them, that's not because they're evil, greedy people going after prophets, 'cause they're adhering to God's principles. They may not be godly people, but they're adhering to principles that God established for leadership, guess what? It happens to work for believers and non-believers. I mean, that's just a God principle. And so I think when we stop thinking of leadership principles as either being church leadership or business leadership and they're totally different, I think they're more similar than they are different. And I think the more we tear down those walls, the better serve we are. And I think if church leaders would get rid of that notion, they would avail themselves of wonderful leadership principles and wonderful leadership people that would love to be part of your church, but they feel this wall, this sort of Chinese wall that's not really there, it's only there in our heads. And likewise, business leaders would stop thinking of church people as quote unquote, so spiritual, because we know from being on the spiritual side of the ministry side, there are a bunch of knuckleheads who aren't very spiritual, who call themselves church leaders, who don't deserve that title. Just like there are a bunch of business leaders who are just blowhards and they aren't really very good business people. They're just people and they're flawed on both sides of them, both sides of this Chinese wall that I think is really just imaginary personally. You know, that may be heretical, but I think we just tend to do that 'cause it's convenient for us to think of people in boxes. - Well, that's a really good way of thinking about it. And I think that's pretty balanced, David. You know, there is that sense in which I appreciate the fact that you raised it. There are probably a lot of church leaders listening who have been burned by business leaders. And, you know, where you talk about the business leader who just comes in and like, you know, my way or the highway and Bull in a China shop runs over a bunch of elders or pastors or church leaders. And so business in the mind of that kind of leader gets tarnished and like, well, I had an entrepreneur on my elder board once or I had a business owner on my elder board once and it was a disaster and we're never going back there. - Well, I think they're using what is probably an emotionally, you know, someone with a low EQ or emotional quotient whose masquerading is a great business guy. And really, if you probably looked at their business, they probably run their business the same way. It's probably revolving door and however effective they are, they would have been a better business leader if they didn't run over people in general. So the bad practices they're exhibiting in your church aren't business practices, they're just bad practices. It's a low EQ person trying to compensate by just running over people. And so what they've experienced is not bad business people, they've experienced bad leadership in general. And the best leaders are the ones on either side of the equation that can come in and really help. And people just love, they're just attracted to them and they're magnetically attached to them and they'll go wherever they go. And you also probably have seen those kind of business guys and I've seen church people go, well, that business leader is a great business leader, but it's because he's so spiritual or whatever. But I would submit to you that there are business guys who are as lost as they can be, who are great leaders and they just have naturally learned God's principles in business and they're great business people and they would be wonderful folks to come alongside you in church and help you in church and maybe meet God, maybe meet Jesus in so doing, but I think what they're seeing is just bad leadership. They're not seeing business people. - So this is interesting because you're saying, okay, so and I realize this will be a category bender for some people, but that there are business leaders who maybe don't believe in God would consider themselves atheists, no interest in Jesus or whatever who have actually discovered God's principles in leadership. That's interesting, that's gonna bend some of us who are seminary graduates going, how does that happen? Can you say more about that? - Fascinating that Jim Collins book, and I can't remember, you'll have to forgive me, I can't remember if it's built to last or good to great, but he discovers leadership principles that happen to work. And one really, you know, counterintuitive leadership principle that he finds, I think it must be built to last, that he finds this and he calls it category five leaders. - Yeah. - He in the spiritual world would call that servant leader. But he was amazed, he went in expecting, they did us empirical studies and they were trying to find out who is really an arrogant leader versus who is a more humble leader. And how do we measure that? And they literally measured PR releases, press releases about the CEO personally in companies, trying to get a proxy for how humble. And the leaders that emerge are the guys that don't, they have a high ego for the company, but not for themselves personally. And, you know, so we would call that, you know, we would call that humility and servant leadership. It's actually a God principle, you know, Jesus demonstrated it while he was here on the earth. It works, it's a God thing. Well, these people that have this, you know, that were in these successful companies, you know, maybe one or two of them knew that that was, but you know, they were Christians and they were just emulating Christ, but maybe one or two of them had no idea. They were just, you know, their personalities were naturally humble and that short work for them, but they stumbled on God's principle of servant leadership. Jim Collins calls it, you know, a category five leader. It's this counter, he expected to find Jack Welsh kind of people. - Right. - People that were just, you know, gung ho in your face kind of leaders and he found the opposite. And that's a, that's just a God principle. - I think you wrote about that in both books, but I remember it's in good to great that he uncovers the secret sauce for the first time and says, you know, you would have expected to see bravado, you know, I fire the bottom 10% of my staff every month and that's how we become great. And he was just shocked to discover. And I think he did call it humility, David, he did. - Yes. - And that is so surprising. And I think what a lot of Christians think is, well, if you didn't read it in the Bible, it can't be true. And yet, you know, I believe all truth is from God. If something actually is true and humility is a biblical principle. So when you encounter that, you know, in the Harvard Business Review or in one of Jim Collins' books, that doesn't mean that it's not potentially from God. I mean, all truth is from God, it just resonates, right? Math is math. I mean, two plus two equals four regardless of where you are. - That's exactly the point I'm making. And I think when we destroy this sort of myth of non-profit versus profit or business leader versus church leader or parish church leader or ministry leader and just think about God's principles, a lot of things start to make sense. You know, I listen to your podcast. Another one I listen to is a Harvard Business Review podcast. And when they counterintuitively find these things like Jim Collins did and they talk about something that works, it's always interesting to me because they rarely, they're never coming at it from a spiritual perspective or from a biblical perspective. But they'll discover something true about, and they'll say, human nature or whatever, that it makes me smile, it's like, there it is. You know, there's God's thumbprint on us. Or there's one of God's principles that someone discovered empirically. Why should that surprise us that someone stumbles across one of God's principles without stumbling across Jesus first? - Mm-hmm. Well, and I mean, this whole idea of organizational leadership and excellence, I mean, I always think, man, when Solomon built the temple, if you actually read that or even the construction of the tabernacle before that after Moses, that was organizational genius. Or when Moses reorganized how to lead 600,000 Israelites in the desert, it's like, okay, we've got to go to tens and hundreds and thousands and, you know, we've got to find leaders for that. Or when the church reorganized in Acts chapter six because the apostles were getting exhausted and never any time to preach or pray. And they were involved in the daily distribution of food. All of that is just basic leadership principles that operate in business every day. - Or, yeah, was it coincidental that Jesus, you know, worked with the three and the 12 differently? You know, was that just something God was showing us about, yeah, how to sort of multiply ministry or multiply leadership, forget ministry, multiply leadership and influence whether you're running a coffee shop or a church. - And so for you, those walls have broken down more and more over the course of your life and career. - Absolutely, they have. And to the point where, you know, I no longer, you know, and I, you know, I no longer really think of myself, well, you spent 10 years in the ministry, now you're not in the ministry. You, you know, no, I'm in the ministry now, you know, just like I was to them. And I happen to work, you know, in an organization that the IRS deems as a taxable organization. But, you know, I'm very much, I'm as called to the ministry as you are, you know, carrying you run a church. It's just a different, I get a paycheck in a different way. - So what are some things that a leader could do, David, who maybe is like, yeah, you know, what I got owned? There's a division in my mind, a divide in my mind between business and church, between sacred and secular. What are some things leaders can do? I mean, take yourself back 15 years before you met Andy Stanley, before you said, "Hey, why don't we do video?" And we'll get into that at Buckhead Fellowship, right? - Right, right. - But before you got there, what would have been some things that would have made you go, "Oh, maybe this isn't as polarized as I thought. Maybe the gifts that I'm using in the financial district, Monday to Friday, have some application in church world." - Boy, you know, if I had run across a young church leader or maybe a student minister or whatever that had read Jim Collins and his concepts of leadership or what works in organizations and what doesn't. And for whatever reason they decided, "Yeah, I know this is written about business, but maybe, just maybe if I read this whole book, I'll find one nugget that I can use for leadership in my student ministry or in my..." And if someone will just open a leadership book and start reading and looking for God's principles, don't view them as inherently business or evil because you ran across an evil business guy one day. You know, think of it as there are God's principles buried in there that people may be stumbling across quote unquote, accidentally. You know, that's just how God reveals himself through his truth, right? And it's not always the four spiritual laws, you know, it's not always because someone knocked on your door and did an EE presentation to you. It might be that you learn one of God's principles because you just, you see him in nature, you know, and you see how leadership works. So I think if I had been exposed to that early on, it would have been really cool. And I would have seen the similarities between business and church. And there are millions of them. They're more alike than they are different. If I had seen that early on, I would have been drawn to it. So my advice to a young church leader who thinks they're different or they could never appeal to a 45 year old bank president is absolutely you can. But you got to tear the walls down. I love Andy Stanley's story about, you know, he knew, you know, he was son of a pastor. He knew he knew nothing about never, you know, really worked in the business room, knew nothing about it. But he was painfully aware of it. And he just decided he'd hang out with Charlie Renfro who was the best business guy he knew. He was older than him and he was a mentor relationship. And he just hung out with him. And it's like, Charlie, teach me about the real world. And he just, you know, hung out with him every Friday for, you know, years and, you know, in the mornings. And, you know, just find that kind of relationship, read those kind of books and do your best to, you know, the way you tear down barriers is, you know, you move to the middle. - Yeah, I think that's a good point, you know, have your notebooks open. I meet with business leaders all the time at CanXis. And, you know, I'm not there to teach. I'm there as much to learn and to listen and to empathize and try to figure that out. But yeah, and I think you're right, you know, a lot of church leaders end up with churches they're only experienced. They come directly out of Bible college and go into a church staff position. I mean, I had that one year in law that I think taught me so much. It felt like a decade in the good way, in a good way. But, you know, I'm like, and I did that because I thought, well, I've got the opportunity to do it number one, but number two, I want to know what it's like before I step into church world to earn a paycheck 365 days in a completely secular environment. And I mean, downtown Toronto law, completely secular environment. (laughs) - Yeah, I can only imagine. - Oh, yeah. - I think, you know, just asking questions of business people, you know, why does you open the, you know, the new location? Why did you do this? Why did you fire that guy? Why did you hire this person? Why did you enter into this product market, you know, whatever, asking those questions, not looking for spiritual significance or anything, just, you know, the more you know about human nature, the more you know about business, the more you know about what your congregation does for a living, you know, the better sermons you're gonna preach, the better you can minister them, better you can be a pastor of them. So just innocently being curious, you'll find a lot of principles that you can use. It'll be, it'll be great. And they will find that you're curious, and that's compelling, and they'll start being curious about the decisions you make. And you'll find that there's way more similarities, and there are differences. - Well, and you raise a really good, like, preaching principle as well, which is you have to be a student of your congregation. You need to be a student of the Bible, but you need to be a student of your congregation as well, because if you don't understand a business person's world, or you don't understand, you know, the stay-at-home parents' world, or even, you know, more challenging for those of us who are on our first marriage as you and I are, the blended family's world, or the guy who's 45 wanted to get married, never got married. If you're not asking questions, you can't really empathize, you can't really understand, you only speak out of your own experience, and you're only actually gonna connect with a very small percentage of your congregation who thinks like you. - Right, and I think your best illustrations of God's principles and God's points are ones that people see in the real world not recognizing it. You know, the Jim Collins thing, that's a great sermon illustration on servant leadership, someone who ran across it empirically. Wasn't looking for it. Wasn't reading Jesus, and how he dealt with people, but rather looking at executives and organizations that work, and so if you happen to know that and you're preaching on servant leadership, well, what a great illustration. In fact, here's a business guy that stumbled into it. Don't we love those kind of stories? - And a guy like Bill Hybels, if you've ever been to the Global Leadership Summit, I mean, he has Collins back as a member of faculty on a regular basis. I think Collins was a surprise that he stumbled on some biblical truth as anybody, and guys like Bill Hybels were helping him connect the dots, and it's like, no, actually, this is Jesus talks all about humility. Ken Blanchard, another example of a business leader. He wrote what, one minute manager, how many billion copies did that sell in the 80s, still selling, and he actually has become a Christian later in life because of Christian leaders who reached out to him and kind of said, hey, you know, you're discovering some stuff that Jesus talked about a long time ago. - So, you know, all the more reason to spend time around business people, you'll preach better, you'll minister to them better, your leadership will be stronger, you'll tear down in your mind these artificial barriers that you build, you'll also learn, you know, sometimes I think church leaders think all business people are the same. And just like, they're knuckleheads that are church leaders and great people that are quiet, church leaders that are great church leaders, they may not, you know, publish books and write wonderful sermons and all that kind of stuff, but they're fantastic leaders for different reasons, and they're just not in the limelight. - Well, the same is true in business world. - And you'll learn to be more discerning. Sometimes church leaders get enamored of the brash blowhard, you know, guy that drives the seven series BMW, you know, whatever it is, and they're chasing after the wrong leader, you know? And you'll become a better discerner of leadership on either side of this sort of false dichotomy that we have in our head. - Yeah, and that's a really good point too, you know, we think of, oh, all business leaders are like, well, of course not, people are different, and they're great business leaders in your church, they're struggling business leaders in your church, there are not very good business leaders in your church as well. So, you know, how do you administer to and learn from and even help, you know, people in different settings? This is super helpful, this is why, you can see why I love talking to David. So, you got more interested in the church than just being a member when you met some of the guys, when you started, I love that Buckhead Fellowship, I forgot about that part. - Yeah, so you were trying to start a church and then walk us through that story because you started multi-site before there was even a word for multi-site and, you know, there's one bucked out on it that somebody wrote in the 90s. - Well, the whole thing, you know, I'm not taking any credit for the whole thing is a divine accident. But just real quickly, just, just, Norpoint had totally prepared for it and was headed that direction. I mean, so it's Andy and his team before I ever got involved. But, you know, I think because of the crowding in the one auditorium, they went from video overflow to, they went to what was then their kids stuff theater and they called it theater worship, you know, where they did video overflow with a live band, you know, trying to do something, anything, serve bagels, donuts, get people in this inferior room, you know. - So they had built this campus in 1998 that they had overgrown, like outgrown day two. - Completely, yeah, and then Andy, you know, as he tells it, did what he later thought, this is the biggest mistake in my life. I built an auditorium, the size of my live auditorium for video overflow next door to it. This is, you know, and then they learned that work. And then they bought land, but they didn't buy land in Buckhead, they bought land north, which, you know, in coming, which would later become Brown's British Community Church, but they were ready to do the multi-site thing, to pull the trigger and to do that. And then these knuckleheads with, you know, Buckhead Fellowship came along and, you know, he coached us as an independent organization for a while. And then probably out of frustration for, you know, are just bungling or who knows what it was, you know, asks us if we would actually become their first campus and they look, you know, they reverse, you know, 50 years of church growth, which goes from density to sparsity, from urban to suburban, and they went the other direction. And they went right into, you know, arguably, you know, the most church, you know, part of the city. - Midtown Atlanta. - Yeah, right, to Buckhead. And so the experiment there was, well, we know our adult worship environment can be done with video, but can we do a whole church that's, you know, 20 miles away? - Right. - You know, well, the whole model were separate from us. You know, Buckhead was sort of the first example of kind of the whole model surviving away from, you know, the first copy. And, you know, and then later, you know, that we went back to Brown's Bridge and built that, but, you know, the whole thing was an experiment, kind of the whole way. And it was born out of the necessity to solve the crowding problem at North Point. And it wasn't that we didn't have enough land at North Point 'cause there was a, actually a site where they could build yet another auditorium or larger auditorium, but the traffic infrastructure became so snarled that you couldn't physically get cars on and off the campus during peak hours. And so it was really just born out of total necessity of overrunning, you know, one site. - Wow. So yeah, so North Point had twined its auditorium, so it could accommodate, I don't know, 5,000 people at once or 4,000 people at once and then was gonna go North, but when you showed up at Buckhead Fellowship, Andy started just coaching you as an independent church and then said, "Hey, would you guys come in "and be our location in Midtown, almost downtown Atlanta?" And so you actually became the first campus pastor of Buckhead Church. - Yeah. Well, I let the record show at the time, I had no pastor qualification whatsoever. At the time, we called that, the title was Campus Director. - Okay, there you go. - Yeah, I think it wasn't that we even knew what the titles were at that point, but we called them Campus Director for a good long while. - Yeah. - Yeah, so effectively, I guess I had that title first. - And then handed things over to a guy named Jeff Henderson. - Yes. - Who is now, who was what, six years, five years, seven years? At Buckhead Church and now started Gwynette Church and a lot of listeners would know him from preaching rocket as well. And then now Billy Phoenix runs Buckhead Church, but it went from that little tiny nucleus of people who were probably meeting in a living room at the beginning to, what is it, eight or 9,000 attendees today? - Yeah, I mean, it's just crazy. I laugh every time, Lauren, I go in, we just, we just can't believe it. It's just so, so far from anything we ever envisioned or anything we were capable of, it's laughable. So it's just a huge demonstration of what God chose to do and for whatever reason, let us, you know, sit on the 50-yard line and watch, it was amazing. - But that's an example of business practices applied to church because, I mean, you went from that to Andy inviting you to join the staff at North Point and you did and you became the director of multi-site or a director of multi-site and campus expansion, strategic partnerships from North Point. And we took that sort of franchise idea and you said, well, if this is working in Atlanta, why don't we see if we can plant some churches in other places and now there's over 20 strategic partnerships as well, of which we're wanting it. Connects is church where I serve. - Yeah, we sort of, yeah, we did a, you know, for the campus model, we adhered to a business principle of kind of growth by cannibalization, you know, which is a retail growth concept. - Okay, same more about that. 'Cause you and I talk about that all the time, but when I let that word slip, hey, we need to cannibalize this. People are like, whoa, are you on some tropical island? - Yeah, I know, I know, it just doesn't sound very spiritual, you know, and this is my view of multi-site and I understand there are churches that don't do this and I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm just saying, this is just what we've chosen. This is me personally, I'm not even gonna say this is North Point, I'm not speaking for North Point, but this is me personally, I think to me churches use, there are lost people in this environment or there are, this is a really growing community or whatever and therefore we must go there. And I think that, I think that people only go to church based on relationships with believers, you know, either they hear a believer, reference their church and they go, maybe I'll try that out, maybe they get actively invited, but there is a brand awareness that makes a big difference and, you know, in the same way that maybe a restaurant, you know, would grow maybe more successfully about multiple locations in a large city than it would be trying to survive in a brand new city where they don't have word of mouth, you know, sort of brand awareness. - Right. - And so, you know, so therefore, if you build close enough to where you take a lot, you can solve your crowding issue about taking half the people out of your existing auditorium and putting them in the new one because it's closer and now you've got two half full auditoriums with people that are there too, you have invaders and invitees and the whole thing works faster and better. You know, so I'm just a, I'm a huge proponent of that sort of strategy of multi-site growth where you grow into fewer larger campuses that are all very close together. - Yeah, and the idea of cannibalization is rather than growing them an hour apart where you're really only gonna take like two people from your existing church and plant them out there, you might take 20, 30, 40, 50% of your existing people and move them to a location 20 minutes away, 15 minutes away. - Yeah, I happen to think that your church source probably isn't good enough, you know, to attract unchurched people, you know, in this new environment. I think you're just so much, but your people are good enough to attract unchurched people. And I think if you have people that will develop relationships and invite people organically and naturally, that's the way humans are, you know, I think, and I just think you're more successful. And so I think, you know, rather than going way out of the suburbs and building a campus, why not? You know, and also if you have crowding issues where you are, why not solve that problem? And come closer and intentionally cannibalize yourself or basically move a lot of people out. And don't force them to do it, to take a missionary oath and to go to Uganda, you know, make a campus big and attractive and attract them out. And in the same way they'll attract new people in. And, you know, so that's my sermon, Ed. But, you know, I just happen to think it's so difficult to find great leaders, you know, several of your former podcasts have been on the woes of trying to find great campus pastors, you know, they're difficult to find. And, you know, it's difficult to run an organization at three or four campuses, much less 20 or 30 campuses. So why not? But, you know, God didn't ask us to go out and create campuses. He asked us to go out and create disciples, right? That was the great commandment. And so if you can achieve the same sort of discipleship or the same sort of new people coming to a relationship which eases through three campuses as you could with 30, I would submit to you, you should do it with three. You know, let's minimize the interior sort of friction we have in trying to run that many different organizations. - In the same way that you probably couldn't imagine what Buckhead Church would become with like 6, 7, 8,000, 9,000 people attending on a weekend when, you know, it was just you starting out and it all seemed so tenuous, you probably couldn't anticipate what multi-site would become when you started that 13, 14 years ago. But I think, David, I wonder, we haven't talked about this before, but like I wonder if you can make the argument that the business acumen of a number of leaders in the early multi-site days really made multi-site possible. Like that wasn't so much church thinking as it was business thinking because there was the whole franchise model. And in the early days of strategic partnerships and multi-site, we would talk about, you know, like a franchise concept of doing that. And I think that's a little more wobbly now than it was back then. But, you know, I wonder if it was your business training that really helped you become innovative in, you know, most churches would have just said, well, we're just out of room, or you build a much bigger auditorium that seats 10,000 people. - Yeah, you know, this interesting concept, I was just trying to think, Kerry, here's what, rather than business, I would just say those are God's principles. Maybe business has to lean unknowingly, has to lean on God's principles because if you don't, you die. And in other words, the penalty for not being an effective organization on the for-profit side of the spectrum is that you just die. And so they're not business principles, they're God's principles, but they're in an environment that's harsh. You know, you lose oxygen in that environment, you die. You know, and so I think, I don't think it's business principles, I think it's just a harsh environment, and the only thing that works are God's principles. Long term. - That's a good point. Long term, right. If you're going to be effective, and that was good to great, right? Companies that were great, like above market returns for what was it? A 30 year window, not a three year window. A 30 year window. - Exactly. - Companies that didn't have CEOs who were humble, didn't perform as well as companies that had CEOs that were humble. - Great point. You know, GE wasn't in that list. - Yes. - It's a long term company, but you know, Jack Wells is very mercurial, say what you want about his leadership, and so forth, very mercurial personality. And the Walgreens was in that list. You know, very understated leader, don't even know his name, can't remember from the book. - Yeah. - But there was a difference there. I would say that's God's principles. And so on the not-for-profit end of the spectrum, you know, you have a few donors, you know, your aunt, your uncle, or one donor happens like a church, a church can survive forever. It'll dwindle down to nothing, but there's not that same sort of thing that will absolutely from market forces kill a church. - Right. Businesses die faster than churches. - That's true. - Yeah, but I think they succeed, you know, I think beating a dead horse. I think they succeed because of God's principles. So going back to North Point, I think it's an environment that encourages God's leadership principles to thrive. You can put a label of business principles on them if you want. I think it's artificial. I think it's God's leadership principles. I think the franchise model is very similar to what Moses experienced when he franchised himself to different leaders that could handle different things and serve more people, right? Moses could only open one location, you know, with his leadership concepts in the desert that, you know, that he was taught by his father in all, he actually could reach a lot more people. Well, he franchised himself. So, you know, God forbid, it's franchising is actually maybe that idea or that concept or that way to grow a network of churches. Maybe that's a God thing, who knows? Maybe it's not a business thing. - That's cool. What was the hardest transition for you when you first stepped out of the business world and stepped into the church world? What was the hardest thing for you personally? - For me personally, it was tearing down those walls in my mind because, you know, I was just surprised as anyone to meet Andy and his team and to, you know, I've read more business books as a part of Norpoint than I ever read in business school, in business, you know, it is a much more leadership and boring environment. So, I had to learn that. I had to throw away, you know, that first. - So, hang on, that was a big claim you made because you're actually a Harvard MBA graduate and you read more business books at Northpoint than you had even in your career. - It's not even close. - Really? - It's not even close, five X, it's not even close. So, you know, I had to realize that, you know, hey, this is a, stop thinking of them as business and church. Think of effective and ineffective. - Okay. - That's really helpful. Think of organizations as ineffective or effective. And we all know churches or parroturches or ministries that are effective or ineffective, but don't think of it as for profit or not for profit or business or ministry. They're just organizations and some are effective and some aren't and I would submit to you the effective ones or ones that adhere to God's principles, either knowingly or unknowingly. - That's something I picked up from Andy too, you know, and we now read lots of business books. I mean, we've worked through the advantage right now. We're reading Greg McEwen's essentialism. Fantastic book. As a leadership team, it takes us forever to get through them just 'cause, you know, you're plugging away an hour or two a month at it, but it's so fantastic. And we read spiritual books. I mean, I'm reading Tim Keller's book on prayer and so on. So again, you know, if God really does own all truth, sometimes it shows up in surprising places. - Exactly. - And the more you realize that the better off you are, you know, this is silly, but, you know, one of the things Lauren and I never got used to was that this whole Sunday being a work day, taking a day off during the week and North Point tends to be Fridays for most people. That was weird. You know, I never really got used to that. That was just kind of a funny thing that we could never quite figure out how to make work with. - Right, yeah, 'cause that's what a lot of churches have done, either take Monday off or Friday off as a substitute for Sunday. And yeah, so that was a tough adjustment. - But, you know, we talk about this business, non-business thing. I would try to tell people to go, what's up with you here now with a church? What's going on? You can imagine, you know, business school reunions, that sort of thing. - You're doing what happened? Did your life fall apart? - You need to understand, you know, it's really business oriented. We're doing this sort of franchise model and growing churches and that, you know, I would get these sort of condescending sort of looks like good for you, you've rationalized this. - Sorry, I didn't work out for you in corporate. - Exactly, yeah, so it's pretty fun. But that's all right, that's clearly it. - Yeah, and that's why I'm really excited about conversations like this, David. Wouldn't it be great if we lived in a world where there wasn't the divide? Like, I find when I'm talking to business leaders too, they're like, what do you do? And I'm more tempted to lead, I don't know, we do this, but with, you know, I'm an author or I'm a blogger or I'm a speaker rather than I'm a pastor because there's so much negative association that comes with that. It's our own fault and you can fight that. And Carrie, I've watched you. I've seen you around your elders. You know, I spent a lot of time watching you around that and you are universally accepted by business people. It's not because of your quote unquote business prowess. It is because of your leadership prowess. And again, you know, it's, and you have a natural curiosity. You ask people questions, you know, you're just engaging and in any young leader who thinks that he can't ever get a bank president or a corporate executive or a whatever to join his church or be a meaningful part of his team, leadership wise or become an elder is unnecessarily limiting himself. I think you find a business mentor and you start reading quote unquote business books if you want to call them that, but you do everything to discover God's leadership principles from every angle and try to close that gap. You'd be surprised, business people love it when churches and ministries adhere to business principles and learn things from books written by business leaders and apply them and make them work. They love it. It's intriguing and it attracts others and business leaders attract business leaders. So is it surprising at all that people are attracted to God's truth? You know, so just avail yourself of that. And I think you'd be very pleasantly surprised. - Well, here's another paradigm too. I mean, could it be that the church well-led, let's just call it well-led, well-run becomes a model for businesses? That's one of the things is we've taken this more seriously, God's principles as you're saying and as we try to find them, you know, in the business community and definitely, I mean, everything gets tested against scripture and the whole deal, but we've now have business leaders who come to connect us and it's like, you know, this is better run than most businesses. And that can become very compelling and you can actually be a place like, who wouldn't want a humanitarian workplace? Who wouldn't want people's lives to have significance? Who wouldn't want that? And why can't the church be that place? - I could not agree more. And I think we have an inherent advantage because the business world has to stumble across God's truth and quite often they're counterintuitive, right? You know, so the servant leader thinks the last thing Jim Collins expected to find, they have to dig for it. We don't have to, right? We can go right to it. And we recognize that that's God's principles of leadership. That's just the way people are. That's the way you treat people. Forgiveness, counterintuitive thing, right? But it is, it's just a principle that's helpful and true. And so I just feel like the more, you know, the more that we realize that, the more we will run better, more effective organizations and more will be lifted up in case studies and business schools and studies of leadership. And Jim Collins, you know, one day might write a book referring to a ministry of God forbid or a not-for-profit that's run really well that's just stumbled across all kinds of principles that are useful in the for-profit world. So we have no excuse. - Well, and even guys like Patrick Lencioni are increasingly pointing to churches, effective churches as models of leadership. And Joel Manby, who you know, he wrote a book a few years ago called Love Works, which is basically, I run my secular company according to 1 Corinthians 13. And this is what we do. These are the values that we embody for our employees. And I mean, it is a business book. And again, when businesses operate under God's principles, because all truth is from God, businesses tend to do better than when they don't. - Absolutely. And I think, like I say, we have an inherent advantage. We ought to get to it faster, you know? And I think we have that capability. I think those walls are being torn down. - Well, I think out of necessity. - You know, David, I really think this has been a super helpful conversation. Sort of paradigm shifting some nuances there that I hadn't really heard before. And I hope this is helpful. So, you know, if you're a leader who thinks of business and church as being completely separate. And I mean, I know where that comes from too. That's what I was taught in seminary. You really can't learn from business. This is the church, it's sacred, it's God's work, it's different. And, you know, hopefully that breaks down a few walls. And if you're a business leader who just rolls your eyes whenever you see the church, hopefully that helps you realize that the church actually run well has some incredible things to offer the business community. David, any last thoughts on this whole subject that you want to share with leaders? - Yeah, I think just that. I just think, look to good leadership and effective leaders regardless of what organizations they are. And likewise, bad, you know? They're bad leaders and try to learn why they're bad. And what works there. And, you know, so there's a good bad example so that you don't follow it. But I think the more that you do that, the better off you are, so. - Well, and pastors and church leaders would be in the unique position of being able to actually discern the biblical principles behind why it's good or why it's bad. And that can be a contribution that we make, I think, to the world as well. So, David, I know people are going to want to connect with you. And what's the easiest way? I mean, you're in business right now. So, it's not like, you know, you're on the speaking circuit or have a, you had a blog, which is still up, right? Is it still alive? - You didn't want me to bring that up, did you? - I know, it's out there somewhere. Yeah, I really got some stuff, yeah, like what? Maybe eight years ago, I've both decided about, you know, large campuses rather than smaller and some real estate stuff. Yeah, I'm not really necessarily out trying to increase my influence or speaking engagements. I don't do that at all. But, yeah, I'm on Twitter at the McDaniel every once in a while. I'll throw something up, but not very often. So, I wish I could tell you more. - And the name of your business, just in case people are wondering. - Well, it's called Huntington Industrial Partners. So, if you have some land and want to develop a warehouse or something like that, you know, give us a call. - David, thanks. You've been a huge investment in my life and continue to be. And I know as an elder at North Point Church these days, you continue to, you know, bring your wisdom to the leadership table at the highest level at North Point Church with Andy and his whole team. And just thanks for building into lots and lots of leaders this week. - Well, Carrie, your influence on me through the years has been huge. And I count you as a wonderful friend and a person from whom I have learned a ton and I appreciate you very much. I love the podcast. I'm a devoted listener to it. And I just think you're doing great stuff. I'm in awe of the way that you can continually create content. It's very cool. And it's fun to watch God's giving you that capability. It's fun. - You know, hey, and okay, we were wrapping up, but this is really cool. And this is why you need mentors in your life too because David, you've been really instrumental in trying to help me find my calling. 'Cause, you know, I had a blog for five years before I really started blogging seriously. And I remember some conversations we would have two or three years ago and you're like, so where is the content limit? Like, do you just create this stuff? And, you know, great mentors ask great questions and you really pushed me. And I'm like, you know, David, I don't know where the bottom is, but I haven't found it yet. Why can I write one to three blog posts a week? I don't really know on leadership. And you were both shocked that there was that much content but such a great encourager. And, you know, again, it's like a Buckhead church thing to think that there would be all these people who read my blog. I mean, at that time when we were having those conversations we were like 1,000 people a month, who read my blog and it's just taken off. - Here's a great example of God's Prince. You know, God put his thumbprint on each of us. So we have common grace and we have this, we're built in God's image. But he also gave us unique abilities and talents. We know that as Christians. And, you know, the things that you're really good at doing and the thing that God put in you, you rarely see because you think everyone has it. You know, so I think you were shocked that I was asking you that question. Like, where's the end of this content train? I don't know how you do this. You're like, I don't know, I got 10 more. - I don't know how I do this. - You were the last person to say, "Yeah, I think I'm a content creator." And I'm like, it's just intuitively obvious to anyone who spends time around you. Well, as a pastor, as you're talking to business leaders or whatever, you can see the thumbprint of what God put in them. And you can call it out and say, "Wow, God built you with the ability to do this or that." You know that's unique, don't you? Because sometimes you don't see it in the mirror. And that's an advantage, again, that we have, you know, just knowing scripture or whatever. But not that you didn't see it from scripture or whatever, but that's just something God built into you and wants you clearly put you on this planet to do. And it's fun to watch you do it. - But you and I've had multiple conversations in person and, you know, over video and so on, 'cause you're in Atlanta and I'm in North of Toronto. And even at my house, I mean, when you've been up here. - Right. - But, you know, I get, let me just close it this way by saying this, I get notes, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say every day from people saying thank you. You know, thanks for the blog or thanks for the podcast or you know whether that's a comment on social media or a blog post or whatever. But what you need to know is there are guys like David McDaniel behind that. And if you hadn't been an encourager, if you hadn't been a guy who's praying for me, you know, I might not have taken that gift as seriously. And it's guys like you, David, I know you're blushing right now, but you give me the confidence in those early days. And even at times where it gets hard to do all this stuff and lead a church full time to keep going. So I just wanna say thank you and what an honor it is to have you on the podcast today. - Well, thank you, Carrie. The pleasure's been all mine. And thank you, those very kind things that you said. I appreciate that. - So David, here's the bonus round. You had a thought that we didn't cover in the interview, 'cause we just kept talking. So go ahead and share it. I thought it was brilliant. - So one of the ways that I would try to explain North Point or bucket of church more typically, because I live in bucket and I hang around, you know, bucket of business people. And they might hear about it or they know I'm involved in a church and they would ask a question or whatever. And I would say, look, probably the best way to explain it is not going from church world to try to explain what we do, but rather say what if you were gonna open a business and you were gonna try to attract, you know, 18 to 40 year old or 45, 50 year old people that didn't regularly go to church and you wanted them to come and have a great experience. And most of these folks believe in some sort of God or believe in some sort of good, but they don't like church. So how are you gonna get around that? What would you do? Well, bucket of church was created to do that. And it was like a business, but it was created to do that. So if you had a clean sheet of paper and we're gonna build quote unquote a business to attract this marketplace and to change their lives to the extent you had any effect at that, that's how the church happened. And so I think young church leaders can say, how would you approach, how could you help me approach this particular problem I'm having? At its core, it's a business or an organization problem. You know, so I think you really engage business leaders really lean in when they realize, oh, you do this music for a reason or you do, you made this environment look really attractive for a reason. It wasn't your personal taste. It was to attract a marketplace. They understand that even atheist understands that. And so it's appealing, you know, we all love stories of businesses that do something innovative to attract a market. Everyone loves that story. And everyone loves that story, whether it's a church or a ministry or a restaurant. And if that's, you know, if that's happening in business, well, I shouldn't only happen in business. Why can't the church be that way too? - Right. So I think when you expose the commonality of what you're trying to do and what quote unquote, "they", the business world is trying to do and you show them that really our worlds aren't that different. You just, you close that gap down a little bit. I think that's a good thing. - Well, I think you can probably sense after that interview why David and I have become such good friends over the last 10 years. So David, I'm so grateful that you were able to share your wisdom. I know David's not the kind of guy who would ever put himself out there, but it was just so good that he did. And I'm so grateful for that. So David, thank you so much. If you want more information, you can just go to the show notes by the way. You can find it at carrynewhoff.com/episode47. Carrynewhoff.com/episode47, which means we will be back next week with episode 48. And next week I am going to be having a conversation with a guy named Jeff Price. He is a leader of a local church. So for all of you who are like trying to figure out growth or trying to figure out change or are leading in a small church context, you're gonna love Jeff's story. He's just a guy that I don't really know that well, but heard about him from an other leader and said, "Hey, would you be willing to be a guest on this podcast?" He's got a great story. He's seen his church grow significantly and he has engineered massive change in like a year. It's crazy. So if you're afraid of change or you're thinking about brokering change, Jeff will inspire you so much. And one of the things I love about this, being able to do this podcast is we talk to people who lead some of the biggest churches in the world and also some leaders who, just like you and me, are in the trenches. Not that people who lead big churches aren't in the trenches, but are in the trenches slugging it out with limited budget, limited resources, limited amounts of people, and Jeff's gonna bring you a very inspiring story. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. So that is next week. And whatever you're doing this week, just know I'm pulling for you. And I hope this has helped. You lead like never before. Talk to you next Tuesday. (upbeat music) - You've been listening to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)