The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 019 - How to Replace Yourself. Why Every Leader (Even Young Leaders) Need a Succesion Plan to be Successful—An Interview with William Vanderbloemen
(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. - Hello everybody and welcome to episode 19 of the podcast. My name's Carrie Newhoff. I'm so glad to be with you today and I really hope our time together helps you lead like never before. And we can open up with a little celebration. I wanna thank all of you who have been part of this podcast. Some of you are brand new, but a particular shout out to those of you who have been with us from the very beginning and the very beginning for this podcast goes back a little bit under five months to September of 2014. And do you know the milestone we just passed? Last week, we hit 100,000 downloads for the podcast. That's like crazy, I can't believe it. That so far exceeded my expectations and I'm so excited because what that means is that more listeners have had an opportunity, hopefully to get some help through this podcast. I have so enjoyed having these conversations with just top leaders in the church today. And I really do hope it helps you lead like never before, but that's so cool, man, 100,000 downloads. That's awesome. And here's to the next 100,000, we've got a lot of great guests lined up. And today's no exception. Today we're gonna hear from William Vanderblumen. We're gonna talk all about why you should replace yourself, which kind of makes sense if you're like a leader in your 50s or 60s, but it's a principle that we adopted at our church and all North Point strategic partners have, that sort of our church background where I serve at Kinexas Church, we're a North Point partner. And that's something we encourage everyone to do, replace yourself. But William takes it to a whole other level. In fact, he says you need a successor and you will not be successful without a successor. And chances are if you're a young leader, if you're in your 20s or 30s, you're probably ready to shut it off right now 'cause you're like, dude, that is so not my reality and I'm gonna be here for so long. And that's exactly probably why you need to listen. In fact, William goes into some fascinating territory. And I think you're really gonna enjoy today's interview with William. Today's podcast is brought to you by the Orange Conference. If you have never been to Atlanta to see the Orange Conference to be part of it, you're missing out. And this year I'm so excited. I'm hosting the senior leader track, not only are we gonna have incredible leaders on the main stage. We're gonna hear from Donald Miller, John Acuff, Reggie Joyner, Doug Fields, but on the senior leader track, Judd Wilhite from Central Church in Las Vegas is joining us, Jeff Henderson from Gwynette Church, one of the North Point churches, Perry Noble, is gonna be joining us on the senior leader track. So is Josh Gagnon, who is just actually a guest on episode 17 of the podcast. Make sure you go back and listen to that one if you missed it. I'm gonna be teaching on the track, along with a few others. Jeff Sarat is gonna be there, and it is gonna be an incredible gathering. In fact, I hope you'll agree. It's one of the finest gatherings of senior leaders, period. And the goal there is to just help you do a better job of leading through every phase of your church. So I hope you can come to Atlanta for it. It is April 29th to May the 1st. And we would love to have your registration is open right now. Make sure if you register that you register for the senior leader track, if you're a senior or executive pastor or a business leader. And you can do that simply by going to the orangeconference.com. That's the orangeconference.com. We would love to host you in Atlanta in April. Hey, we're gonna get right to the interview with William van der Blumen. But just know, if you hear anything along the way and you're like, I want more information on that, you can jump right over to the show notes. It's just carrynewhoff.com. It's C-A-R-E-Y N-I-E-U-W-H-O-F dot com slash episode 19, carrynewhoff.com slash episode 19. Everything we talk about will be in the show notes, as well as some links to what William does in a place where you can get his brand new book called Next, Pastoral Succession That Works. And without further ado, here's my interview with William van der Blumen. - Well, I'm really excited to have William van der Blumen with us today from van der Blumen and Associates and William, welcome to the podcast. - Thanks, Carrie, it's great to be here. - Hey, it's great to have you. And for the last few years, you've been doing something pretty cool. You've been helping staff the church, your search firm. I mean, everywhere I go, I just see your firm and your work. Tell us how you got started in this and how you got interested in helping staff the church. - I'll try to keep it short. I'm a little long-winded. I tell people I am a recovering preacher. And so I serve the church primarily as a senior pastor for about 15 years and then stepped out of the church, went into the corporate world in a large oil and gas company. Great people, great company, made great money, but just hated it. First, I've ever maxed out my vacation time. Couldn't figure out how it was valuable work. And I don't wanna denigrate, you know, people who are in the marketplace. You can do ministry there. I just had so much training experience in the church. You know, it felt like, man, shouldn't I be doing something for the church? So after a lot of days of self-talk about how what we were doing matters, and I would just kind of convince myself that this was a great job. I finally visited with the guy who was the search consultant for our company to essentially get career advice. And he tried to hire me. And, you know, I've been sitting around going, man, you know, okay, William, what you're doing matters. It really does because there'll be a wreck today, an ambulance will need to get somebody to the hospital, and that ambulance needs oil and gas. So what you're doing really matters, right? And, you know, when the idea of search came along, I thought, well, connecting people's phone, but I was right back at the ambulance, you know, self-talk. Right. That then led to other search firm asking you to help with a healthcare search practice, which, you know, helping hospitals find their CEOs and that sort of thing. And I thought, well, you know, Jesus healed people. Right. Hospitals healed people. You're getting closer, right? Yeah. 'Cause I love connecting people. It's my great joy. And then finally, a fellow came along who had been with one of the larger search firms in the world, Russell Reynolds, his name of the firm. And he did healthcare for them and it hurt that I might consider healthcare. But he left there to start a firm for Christian hospitals that wanted to find a CEO that was truly a believer that matched the values. Right. And he said, you know, I can't pay you, but I can teach you the right way to do search. And I said, well, I'll do that if you'll let me try and help churches. And he said, well, you're really not gonna make any money then. And so I'm used to that. I understand how churches work. But long story short, that was, you know, the fall of 2008. I went home, told Adrienne, my wife, I got a great idea. I want to quit my job at an oil and gas company and start something new for churches because churches love new ideas, you know. And for whatever reason, we were both crazy enough to do that. I know you're up in Canada, but here in the States, the fall of 2008 was not exactly the smartest time to start a new business. Nor here. No, it was a terrible, terrible season. Yeah, but the Lord's been good. We've had a lot of fun growth and we got a great team now that works all over the world. So it's a humbling thing to get to be a part of. Yeah, it's pretty cool too. It's funny, we started a church about eight months before everything crashed. So that's a great environment to raise money and by the way, in case you're wondering, exactly. Yeah, but it's funny how you survive and sometimes even thrive, right? And environments like that. So here we are in almost seven years later. And I mean, you've had a huge impact. God has really used your firm in a powerful way. So what we're going to talk about today, we're going to talk about leadership and recruitment and succession and that whole idea. And all the time I hear leaders say, it's really hard to find good people. I don't know who else to ask the question to that would be better suited answer it than you. Do you agree? Is it really hard to find good people? I'm just curious. I think it's really easy to find bad people. (laughs) That's a great answer. You know, I think churches are notorious for, you know, you get caught in the tyranny of the urgent. You know, when I was having the pastor, I was just amazed how regularly Sunday would roll around. Like every single seven days Sunday would show up. And so you get caught, you know, in the tyranny of the urgent and don't drop back to think and before, you know it, you've got to have a new youth pastor, children's pastor, and it's just got to happen and get parents clamoring and then churches make this cardinal mistake of hiring too quickly. And on the flip side, they fire too slowly. But hiring way too quickly, you get caught with the wrong person, you wait too long to fire and then you end up with this incredibly expensive venture of finding the wrong person. So I think a lot of it is the speed with which church is higher. But I also think if you look at any industry, not forget church, just any industry right now in the United States especially, there is this sort of, they call it the double-humped camel of the age curve of the labor force. So you've got all these sort of baby boomers make one hump of the camel and they're retiring. And then you've got a much smaller hump that's the millennials and then down in between the humps is the people between the millennials and the boomers. And the easy way to say it is there just aren't enough people to go around for the opportunities that are coming up. - Oh, that's a good way to look at. I mean, I'm at the very top or, you know, I'm not a boomer, but I'm somewhere in that middle. And yeah, so you're saying in that demographic, there's a scarcity? - Yeah, I think it leads to a scarcity overall. There's just, I honestly think if you lined up the great ministry opportunities that are out there and the great candidates that are out there, you'd see there's honestly just a shortage. - Hmm, hmm, that's true. It's interesting, Rich Burch was a previous podcast guest, episode eight and he talked about being born, I forget exactly what year it was in the 70s and it was like the lowest birth rate in the 20th century or something like that. And wow, yeah, so I can see that. So you see that and you see, I love what you said. You know, it's really easy to hire bad people. I think that's so true and who hasn't done that. So is it hard to find good ones in part because of the scarcity, like just the demographics right now? - I think that's a big part of it. I mean, there's certain sectors, I know you're familiar with the folks over at Orange. - Oh yeah. - The children's pastor world, I really do think there just aren't enough good people to go around. - Right. - There was a day where the children's pastor was the school teacher in your church who complained one too many times about the children's ministry and you said, "Guess what, you're the new children's minister." Oh, and they'd quit their school teacher job and come on board and that was that. But with the advent of Orange or Elevate or any one of these large groups, small group of curricula that really focuses on leadership development, it takes a whole different kind of person and I don't think enough people have been trained in that to fill the slots that are open. It seems true with senior pastors of churches that need someone with the maturity of a 40 year old and really do need youth. It's hard to find it. So there are certain sectors that are harder than others. And then at the end of the day, it's not really even so much about how many people are out there, it's who's right. I kind of describe it like an organ transplant. - Wow. - You know, when a client hires us, it's almost as delicate as saying, "We need a heart transplant." And, you know, preachers love metaphors, so maybe you can endure the metaphor. It's almost like we've been hired to go find an outsider to come inside the body and run a major system of the body. - That's very, very true. That's a great analogy. - And so the trick with talking to transplant doctors, you know, obviously finding a donor list is a big deal. And so finding candidates is a big deal. But the real art of transplant surgery is knowing how to make sure you've got a tissue match. And you can put a good heart in a good body. And if it's not a tissue match, everybody dies. - Wow. And how many people have done that? - I mean, you bring in particularly external candidates and two years later, they're gone and the church is not better off. That's a really good point, which makes sort of what I want to focus on today even more important. And that is succession planning. You just released a book along with Warren Bird called Next. What makes succession planning so hard for leaders? For senior leaders, but also for any leader. I mean, kids leaders, student leaders, executive pastors, groups, people, campus pastors, even volunteers, right? There's this idea that we need to replace ourselves. And you make the argument in your book that everybody needs to think about that. - Yeah, I'll tell you the birth of the book, for me. I mean, we did a lot of work where we see there are all these fantastic pastors that started the church growth movement, you know, Bill Hyball, so I think next year, Willow will celebrate its 40th anniversary and Saddleback will celebrate its 35th. And so, you know, those two guys, Bill Hyball's and Rick one, I call them the co-compepsy of the church growth generation. You know, they were kind of the two guys, right? - Yep. - All this innovation, all through their career, they've been the innovators. And now that they're toward the autumn of their time as the senior pastor of their congregation, it's only natural that that conversation start to happen, that we have a new innovative conversation about what's next. But we've been thinking about that for a long time, but what really nailed it for me for the book was I was talking to a candidate who had called in, he knew he wanted to move to a new ministry, his church had some issues with the new senior leader. And so I was trying to get a sense of, well, what do you want to do? He said, really, I just want to serve the kingdom in a healthy environment. And I said, okay, help me understand that. What type of pastor will roll? And he said, look, man, I will be the teaching pastor, I will be the student pastor, I'll be the women's ministry pastor, I'll even be the children's pastor. He was on and on and on. And then he stopped and he said, you know, the one thing I don't want to do, I don't want to be an interim pastor, where you go in for a year or two while you're in between pastor. I don't want to be an interim. And for whatever reason, not because I'm smart, but because everybody gets lucky every now and then, I just happen to say to him, hey, man, every pastor is an interim pastor. And it kind of, I like stopped and thought about it afterwards, like, wow, that was actually something worth remembering. Because the truth is, as a pastor, no matter what capacity you're in, there are only a few options for what happens at the end of your ministry. Either you run your ministry into the ground and it closes, or you happen to be at the head of your ministry when Jesus returns, which would be really cool. - That would be awesome. There are days where I hope that's what's gonna happen by the end of the day. - Maybe even before Sunday. - Yeah, that's right. But let's not bank on that. Jesus was pretty clear. You might want to plan like you're gonna live a little longer than today. - For sure. - And so then your only other option is someone is gonna come after me. And I don't think pastors have gotten that. I didn't get it. I didn't think about it at all. I thought about it when I was an associate. You know, I won't be an associate forever. I think student pastors think about it, but particularly head pastors, even when they're in their early 20s, when you're 30s, 40s, people just don't think about it. Warren was actually my co-author, was actually teaching of seminar on succession in Dallas a couple of weeks back. And he had several hundred pastors in the room, and he said, "Everybody stand up." And everybody stand up. And then he said, "Now sit down if you can imagine the day "that you're not the pastor of your church." And he said, "About a third of the room sat down." And, you know, the people just have not thought about it. And so you end up with things like, you know, whether it's the church waits too long, and the pastor gets a little too old, and the church plateaus starts to decline, and it's really hard to pull out of decline. That's one scenario. Or something sudden happens that you just never foresaw. I mean, ask the guys who are on staff right now at Mars Hill, it's a different day than it was two, three, four years ago, and people wouldn't have imagined that, you know, regardless of what you think about why things are the way they are, landscape changed. And it's just a plan that most corporations have that churches have not. - No, it's a good thought. You know, I've been in leadership now almost 20 years, and I think back to when I was a young leader, and it was just inconceivable, because I think you're right about lead pastors too. You don't get promoted from lead pastor. Sometimes you get fired, but you don't get promoted, you know? And you're like, well, I guess I'm just gonna do this for the rest of my life. And there is something to be said for long-term ministry too, but you're not even thinking succession when you're in your 20s or 30s, and often not even in your 40s. People aren't thinking that. So now at what age or stage of leadership for everybody, and you know, outside of lead pastors as well, including even volunteers, 'cause not every church has like massive staffs. I mean, in some places it's 98% volunteers. But if we're thinking about replacing ourselves and succession at what age or stage of leadership do you need to start saying, okay, I gotta take this seriously. When would you say you start that? - Day one. - Wow, yeah. - In fact, we found in the corporate world, it's not uncommon in the United States for a new CEO to have as the first agenda item of his first board meeting. What are we gonna do about my succession? - Really, I didn't know that. - Yeah, it's a new thing. In the last 30, 40 years, corporate America has really started to focus on this, and there've actually been some laws passed where you have to show some level of planning. And I think, you know, what's the old line about the church? The church is great at raising the flag at sunset. It's probably kind of a little bit farther behind on some best practices. So it kind of makes sense that now that that's been going on for 30 or 40 years in corporate world, the church would start to catch on it. And what people are realizing is it's never too early to start thinking about it. And, you know, in a company like, say GE, you can't get promoted to a new role until you have trained someone to walk right into your spot. So, you know, what would happen if when a student pastor arrives at a church, I think in the U.S., the average tenure of a student pastor is 18 months right now. - Okay. - So what would happen if you walked in and said, okay, we know you're not gonna be here forever. Let's say, let's try and say three years together, which would be double the norm. - Sure. - And over the course of that three years, we will give you a bonus when you leave if your successor is ready. - Oh, wow. - It will pay you $10,000 if a qualified replacement is ready the day you leave, 'cause that's a lot cheaper than going out and finding one on your own. - That's innovative. So let me just push a little bit, because I think this is, I think you're right, this is a fairly fresh thought in a lot of church circles. If you start that early, so you're a 25-year-old student pastor, you're a 30-year-old just starting out lead pastor and doesn't having that conversation right off the batter in your first year kind of make you a lame duck leader or doesn't it anticipate failure? - Did you see what I mean? - That is the great hope of this book. - All churches have, I think, made up a real big theological mistake. We view our pastoral staff. It's different, the church and its pastoral staff are different than the typical employer-employee relationship. It's not all corporate business. This is the church. - It's more relational. - It's more relational. - It's familial, but honestly, I mean, we get calls all day, every day, from solid pastors who have done a good work at their church. They don't have to leave, but they do sense the Lord prompting them to something else. And they just have nobody to talk to 'cause they feel like, oh my gosh, I can't ruin my relationship with my church. And I think what happens is, the church views their pastor or pastoral staff, whatever, youth pastor, children's pastor, whatever, almost like a spouse. And we're married, man. And so if you're talking about the day you're not here, it's like you're saying, let's have a prenup. Or if you're looking around, you're dating around. And the church does have a spouse, but it's not the pastor, right? - Christ. - Yeah. - So the hope of the book is, let's just put this taboo question on the table and say, wouldn't the whole church, big C, be healthier, if we all realized that we're all here for a temporary stay and it'd be better if we planned for the future? - No, I think that's a really good point in William. I mean, we're part of the North Point network of churches. We're a strategic partner. One of our values from day one has been replace yourself. And yet it's so difficult for a lot of people to do because of some of the stuff we're talking about today. And what I say to our team all the time is, having a successor in mind, and if your plane wasn't gonna land, if you took two months off or something like that, would your ministry run as well or better than when you were there? And hopefully the answer is yes, but that's very, very difficult for a lot of people to do. And I think part of it for me for a long time, just speaking really transparently, was insecurity, right? Like when you're in your 20s or 30s, it's like, well, I just, you know, gosh, I kind of need you and you kind of need me. So why would we get anyone else? Do you ever see that rear its head in the church? - Absolutely, pastors need to be needed and, you know, there's almost a codependency that goes on and leading your church. And now this is more about retirement. Succession isn't just about retirement, but particularly for retiring pastors, I'll never forget, the church I served here in Houston, we had a couple in the church, the Bentsons, Lloyd Bentson was his name. He was a Senator, he actually ran for vice president. You know, he's the line against Dan Quayo where he said, I knew Jack Kennedy, you're no Jack Kennedy, you know, yeah, so well, they invited me up to be the guest chaplain of the Senate for a day. And he was not in office at the time, but so he had to get somebody to host me. And so Tom Daschle, who was the Senate minority leader at the time, hosted me, was a total gentleman. I mean, we probably don't vote quite the same on everything, but couldn't have been a nicer guy and introduced me to everybody. Well, that fall, he very unexpectedly got upset in his election and lost his Senate seat. So I called Ms. Benson, I said BA, what's the best way, I would send a note to his office, but he's leaving, so what's the best way to reach out to him? She said, oh, here's his home phone number, just call him. I said, yeah, right, I mean, I'm gonna call a U.S. Senator at home. She said, William, you have no idea how little the phone rings once you're not in office. - Yeah. - And I just thought about pastors right away. - Yeah, yeah. - We do all these friends in ministry, but yeah, that's a really interesting moment for pastors. And I think that goes to identity to that codependency thing you were talking about. Now you raised something in there that's kind of interesting because if you're 25, 30, 35, even 40, you're like, I'm not retiring for years and years and years. I got a lifetime ahead of me. How is succession different from retirement? - Sure, well, we thought about talking about transitions instead of succession. Because succession does sort of evoke this mental image of the old guy retiring and the new guy taking over. But we picked the word intentionally because we want the word success to be a part of the thought. The real success of a ministry is your ability to hand it off to the next guy well. Even down to, you know, where did Jesus spend his last hours, you know, with the guys he was gonna hand it off to? Where did, you know, Moses spend his last hours? Elijah, you know, just all the way down the line. There's all these stories in the Bible of people pouring time into the guy that was gonna come after them. So for us, it's not a question of retirement. It's a question of success. And if you look at the data, now this is US and Canadian pastors, but we did quite a bit of research on just those two countries. And, you know, the average pastor over the career of their ministry is gonna go through around three or four pastoral transitions, whether that's from one children's ministry to another or an associate pastor to a senior pastor or student pastor to student pastor, you're gonna go through it three or four times. So we're hoping that the book will equip everyone in every role at every age to have a success that is unlike any other. There's a line someone told me a long time ago, I use it all the time. People will remember how you leave a lot longer than they will remember what you did while you were there. And if you can set your church up for success once you're gone, that might be your best shot at a legacy. - That's a really, really good point, William. And I know, you know, it's, I always say to our team, I think when you have a successor in place, that doesn't make you less valuable. It makes you more valuable to the church or to the organization. Like the person who can raise up enough leaders that basically they've replaced themselves, that's the person you never wanna lose. And if they move on, that's fine anyway, because, you know, they've covered themselves off. But I think that, that for me, in my journey as a leader, was a big transition point where I thought, you know, I'm actually being more effective. You know, the more I kind of fade into the limelight and allow other people to step forward and take over areas of responsibility that I used to control and I used to assume. So super helpful. So this is for everybody. It's not just for senior pastors. - What mistakes do you see church leaders and church boards making when it comes to succession? - Well, one we sort of already covered, they just won't have the conversation. Let's just ignore it. But maybe, let's assume they've had the conversation. I would say the biggest mistake right after not having the conversation that I've seen is pastors tend to stay too long in their position. - Okay. - Now, there's some outlying things there, you know, student pastors kind of move around from place to place. They're kind of like Jesus preaching from village to village and, you know, - Yeah. - Just sort of do that. Every March, we're up to our eyeballs and student pastor searches 'cause that's when everybody sings friends or friends forever and then they leave and go through it in a new minute. - I have to dust off my feet. Here I go. - Right, exactly. You know, beyond those sort of transitional ministries that can be, I think we see people stay too long. And I'd say that's true whether you're at your church for seven years and, you know, you've done what you need to do there and it's time to move to a new place. People forget that, you know, the Methodists used to move their pastors every four years, no matter what because people needed to be repotted. But where we've seen it in the most, frankly, is the outgoing, retiring pastor staying too long. And we named it in the book. I don't know if you're Canadian listeners will get it as much as Americans. We called it Brett Farve Syndrome. If you remember Brett Farve, yeah, one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, he had the most touchdowns in NFL history until Peyton Manning passed him this season, just passed. And, you know, he could be remembered for a lot of things but what he'll be remembered for was his inability to hang it up. - Yeah. - He kept moving from team to team and retiring and unretiring and retiring. We see this with pastors and, you know, I think it's, I don't think it's like malicious. I think it goes something like this. There are very few people who can stand up on a stage, whether it's in front of kids or students or a congregation and speak publicly. Study after study shows that the number one for your people have is public speaking. It's higher than death. So, you know, I think it's Jerry Seinfeld that used to say people would rather be the subject of a funeral than the speaker at the funeral. So, you know, so for God to gift someone to stand up on a regular basis and not just publicly speak, but publicly say, here's what God says for your life. - Yes. - Man, that's huge. - Yeah. - And every gift has a shadow side and the shadow side of that gift, that courage or whatever you wanna call it, I think it's a voice that whispers in your ear saying, "You got one more season." - Yeah. - "You can do this one more time." - Well, and you get diminishing results, right? - That's right. - Over time. - You probably know Brad Lominek. Do you have a catalyst? - I do. - Brad and I had a great conversation about a year ago, and I mean, he just stepped back from that key role. He kind of retired at 40. And that's one of his core convictions is that leaders stay too long. Leaders hang around far beyond the time where they've really reached their peak. Why do you think pastors do that? And leaders, period. Why do you think we do that? And is that what you refer to as boundary syndrome a little bit in the book? - It is, it is. And I'll tell you, the two biggest reasons I see people staying too long, one is just pride. They think they can keep doing it. Another is the people around them, the board members, are probably people they've done ministry battle with for years and years and years. They've been in the trenches together. You know, the pastors baptized the elders' kids and done weddings and buried parents. And so the last thing they want to do is go to their friend and pastor and say, dude, you know we're in decline, right? But on the pastor's side, where I see the mistake made, you can draw a straight line back to two things. One, income. Pastors just can't afford to retire so many, many times. They haven't done good financial planning. They haven't, in the book, we've got a little worksheet in there for how much money do you really make? Because they're different depending on what country living and they're different tax breaks that pastors get that won't be the same once you retire. What happens when all the little perks go away? And have you planned and have you retired? So make some suggestions like when you're young, the board ought to provide at least every other year financial planning for you at no cost to you. So somebody's coming alongside saying, will you be ready when the day comes? It's a shame when it's just money that keeps the guy coming back and nobody wants to be in ministry just for money. If they do, then they're not very smart. Because there are other places you could make a little more money. Exactly, exactly. The other element that I think causes people to stay too long is a loss of identity. They don't have anything to do. I don't know another career that consumes every fiber of what you are, except maybe being president of the United States for the term you're in office. I mean, pastors go to work at the place where they do their spiritual pilgrimage, at the place where they do their relationships and they do these holy moments of baptisms and funerals and weddings. And I mean, they're at the crucial moments where they're needed all the time and they pour their whole life into it. Their family grows up there. And then it's time to retire and they're supposed to step away from all of that and they have no identity. Yeah. So the guys that do really well are the guys that I see that somewhere in their ministry start to think about what's my identity after I'm no longer a pastor. When I was a young guy, I got lucky and fell into a friendship with John Maxwell. And John mentored me for years. And one of the things he said to me when I got here to Houston, it's the oldest church in town. It's actually where Sam Houston went to church. And, you know, 5,000 adults, a couple thousand kids. I'm 31 years old and I'm the senior pastor. And I said, John, you know, what do I do as a guy in his early 30s, that's the most helpful thing I can do. And he said, William, the smartest young professionals and pastors are people who spend their younger years creating options for their later years. And I said, well, tell me what that means. He said, well, you know, what are you going to do when you're no longer preaching? You know, is a mission agency that you can get excited about, kind of like he has about a quip, you know, where he's training ministers all over the world. That's not what he was doing before, but it's his new avocation because, you know, you can only chase a golf ball around a golf course for so long before you get bored and need to do something with purpose. So smart pastors will start to develop an avocation somewhere in the middle part of their career that they can start pointing to it. And frankly, smart church boards will fund some of that and will free the pastor up to go do that ministry. We just worked with a church where the pastor retired. He was able to actually able to retire early. He developed a big heart for the ministry. They were doing an orphanages all across the world. He felt a sense that God was calling him to leave. And the church probably was ready for a fresh voice. And it was seamless. He was financially able to do it. He had an avocation he could walk into. And rather than having a train wreck or some kind of weirdo hang on forever situation, the church is able to move on. Yeah, that's so good because I think the worst thing to do in ministry is hang on for paycheck. That's not why I think the vast majority of people got into it. It certainly shouldn't be what keeps you there. That's a really good point. So that's sort of the heart behind Founder's Syndrome to a certain extent as well. The guys who started churches or the women who started churches and just can't let go. And that also impacts not just mega church pastors, but like you got a church of 50. That can easily be your identity, couldn't it? Sure, sure good. Maybe even more so. Yeah, absolutely. We're coming toward the home stretch here. And this has been so valuable. Now, my guess is some of our listeners in church or even business leaders, they're going to be saying at this point, oh my, oh, oh, oh. Obviously reading your book is going to help. But what are one or two things they can do now as leaders to take a first step? If they're like, yep, I got no succession plan. I've got nobody behind me. You know, if my plane didn't land, if I don't show up at work, nothing happens. Yep, we're not even there. We're not even on the first page. What do you suggest for them? You know, I would say, obviously the book might be helpful, but short of the book, you could go to our website. There are quite a few free white papers to download. And the easiest way to get there is to go to vanderblumen.com. But on the off chance that people have trouble spelling that, we do have another way to get there. And that's findourleader.com. Okay. So people go to that and then just type in the search bar succession. There'll be a bunch of articles, a bunch of white papers, no cost. Just go enjoy the resource and hopefully it'll help them quite a bit. Fantastic. And by the way, all those links will be in the show notes. So you can just hop on over to the show notes at my blog and I'll link to all of that a little bit later on when we're wrapped up the interview. So we'll get you all of those links. And that's really good. And I think you said in your book too, like start the conversation. Isn't that a step for people? Absolutely. I need this. Absolutely. And frankly, the pastor or whatever role you are in the church, whoever, if you're thinking about your succession, you need to be the one to bring it up. Okay. And bring it up honestly and say and blame me. You know, I read this book by William and he told me I had to do this. So I'm not looking around. I'm not tired of you all. I don't, you know, I'm not a lame duck. But we need to have a conversation about what's next. A friend of mine, Bob Russell, who wrote another great little book, Transition Plan, about his own succession at Southeast Church in Louisville. He said, if the pastor brings up the conversation, it's a transition conversation. If the board brings up the conversation, it's a termination conversation. So yeah, bring up the conversation. Find some people to study it with. Find somebody outside the church to help you process that. It's way too emotional to try and do on your own in-house. You've got to have some fresh set of eyes helping you. Well, and I think, you know, the other thing, just take the stigma out of it. I mean, I'm still a leader in my 40s, not for long, but still in my 40s. And we've started the conversation here at our church and it doesn't make you a lame duck. And it doesn't mean that things are over right away. But it's like, yeah, there is going to be a day where I'm not here. There's going to be a day where I'm not leading the church that I founded. How do we set our church up for tremendous success far beyond my time in leadership? And it can be a very healthy dialogue. Now, let's say the opposite is true. Let's say the leader here is this seems like I'm never raising that. But the board member is listening and elders listening, board member, other staff members who are like, eh, there's an elephant in the room here. But the leader isn't willing. What do you do in a case like that where it's falling on deaf ears or you're afraid of the conversation? That's a very sticky situation. Yep. And I think it probably takes an outside voice, a friend of the church, another pastor that the pastor trusts. Now, I'm assuming gender, which isn't always fair. But the pastor's wife might be a great avenue to try and broach the subject with. But that is a very, very delicate thing. It is, yeah. Guys that don't do that generally are a little bit insecure. And if you bring up a tough subject like that, it doesn't help their insecurity. No, that's a good point. So maybe look for the person who has the greatest leverage to speak into their lives to raise the subject with. You said it better than I did. No, that's great advice. That's really wise advice. Because I've talked to lots of leaders who are like, yeah, we just can't have that conversation. Well, William, we've covered a lot of stuff in our time together today. And I can't thank you enough. I know a lot of people are going to want to have those conversations as difficult as it is. Easiest way for people to find you online. Findourleader.com. Okay, well, all my contacts there along with all of our team. Great. And then if somebody is in search mode, that's what your company does, right? Just to be clear. Yeah, that's the bulk of our work. I mean, we do some staff consultation, like how do we align our staff and that sort of thing. We'll do some compensation analysis. But those are all frankly kind of one-off things to helping churches build great teams. Yeah, you just released, by the way, and we'll link to it in the show notes. One of the best compensation studies for church leaders I've ever seen that came out just a few months ago in connection with Leadership Network. And we'll make sure we link to that too. William, I can't thank you enough for the time you've spent with us today. Oh, it's been an honor, man. I really appreciate you making time for me and I hope it's helpful to some of your listeners. Thanks, William. Take care. Well, an awful lot to digest on that and pretty challenging, isn't it? But so, so refreshing. And I can imagine that some of you right now are thinking, I don't know how to have that conversation. I just want to encourage you, don't be that guy, like, you know, by the chair of your elder board, the book or break the ice or have the conversation with a colleague at work or at least start the conversation. Maybe if you're married with your spouse or with somebody, your best friend, just to say, hey, how do I get through this? And of course, some of you, you're just ready to do that. And I think it's a very healthy conversation to have no matter what age you are. In fact, in a couple of episodes from now, we're going to hear from Brad Lominek. Brad Lominek was president of Catalyst. Have you ever been to the Catalyst Conference? It's an amazing gathering of like literally over 10,000 leaders in Atlanta and now all over America. And Brad actually retired, like, found his successor on his 40th birthday. And he's going to talk all about that journey. So there is more on this coming up, but I think it's a fascinating subject. And I think everybody's just going to get healthier. And again, just to reiterate, when you actually find a successor or when you're open to like developing other leaders, you actually become more valuable to the organization, not less. So just remember that. And again, if you want more, everything's in the show notes, just go to carrynewhop.com/episode19. You'll find all the links there. And of course, if you have any questions, just leave a comment. And I will jump on there and do my best to answer that. So once again, hey, thank you so much, man. A hundred thousand downloads. You guys are nuts. And thank you from making this such a great journey. And if you haven't left a review yet on iTunes, Stitcher, or Tune in Radio, please do so. Just take a moment, hop on over and leave a rating and review. Be honest. We just love to hear feedback. And when you do that, it just gets the podcast out in front of other leaders. And just thank you. Thanks so much for sharing this episode. Thanks so much for leaving reviews and ratings. And again, hop on over to the show notes because we'd love to hear from you at carrynewhop.com. Once again, thanks to the fine folks at Orange Conference for sponsoring this podcast. They are some of the people making this possible. And thank you so much to Orange Conference. And make sure that you register because tickets go fast for that. And I'm so excited about the senior leader track. So make sure that you join Jeff Henderson, Judd Wilhite, Perry Noble, Josh Gagnon, myself, and others for the senior leader track. Now, Orange is a lot more than just for senior leaders. It's a great place for family ministry people, for student ministry people. But if you're a senior executive leader, you don't want to miss it either. And make sure you register for that track. So you can do that at the orange conference. That's the orange conference dot com. And you can do that today. And we're back next week with episode 20. My guest next week is Frank Bueller. And Frank is on the senior leadership team at Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Steven Fertik is the senior pastor. Frank is going to tell us all about a problem. I think almost every church leader struggles with. You ever feel like you're the only person who really owns the mission. And you just wish, you just wish that your whole staff, even your volunteers, we get as fired up about it as you are. Well, at Elevation Church, they've got like over a dozen campuses now. They've got 18,000 people. And often the volunteers are so passionate about the mission. And they give them so much responsibility that guests actually think they're staff. And he's going to explain how that happens and why that happens. So don't miss episode 20. That happens next week. And in the meantime, have a great week. And I hope this helped you lead like never before. You've been listening to the Kerry Newhoff Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change, and personal growth to help you lead like never before.