The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 011 - Overcoming Discouragement, Dissatisfaction and Overwhelm in Leadership - An Interview with Pete Wilson
(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. - Well, hey everybody, and welcome to episode 11 of the podcast. I'm Carrie Newhoff, and I'm so glad that you took some time to join in today. And I hope wherever you are, whatever you're doing, that this helps you and your team lead like never before. I am super excited for today's guest. We've got Pete Wilson on the podcast. Pete is the senior pastor of Cross Point Church in Nashville, Tennessee. They are about five campuses and over 5,000 people. It's a church plant from the last decade. And God has used Cross Point for extraordinary things. But what I love about Pete is his honesty and his transparency. And I don't know where this podcast finds you. I mean, we're recording it in a season where the days are getting shorter, nights are getting longer. And unless you live in Australia, and I know we got a few listeners in Australia, it's also getting colder where you live too, isn't it? And I know it can be so easy to get overwhelmed or discouraged or kind of feel defeated in a season like this. And if you've ever been there or you're there right now, you're gonna love to hear what Pete has to talk about today. Because he's gonna talk about how he has had to overcome that in his own life. Which, if you're like me, if you kind of have my perspective, that probably seems surprising. Because you're like, Pete, you have an amazing story. I mean, very few churches grow the way Cross Point Church has. And it would be so easy to go, you know what? If I just had that kind of life, I wouldn't have any worries. I wouldn't have any struggles. And of course, I know we know that's not true and it's certainly not true. But sometimes it feels like that's true. And that's why I think today is gonna be such a great interview with Pete. Because he's just honest about how he struggled, times where he's felt like quitting, times where he has been dissatisfied with results and what he does to keep it all in balance as a leader. And what's really cool is a lot of you contributed to the questions that I'm asking Pete today. I put it out there on social media, on Twitter and Facebook and you gave us some great questions. I had some on my own and some of yours. And I just want you to know how cool it is to be in this together with you. You guys have been awesome. And before we jump into the interview, I wanna let you know about a couple of things. First of all, to everybody who subscribed, everybody who has left ratings and reviews on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneInRadio. Thank you so much. I love what Buck wrote. He said on iTunes, love this podcast. It's like as a leader, I get to be a fly on the wall and listen to some engaging, helpful and practical insights. Thanks for that, Buck. I love this, Maddie says this. He says, "This podcast has become a new favorite source "for challenging thought-provoking content. "Great stuff. Thank you for that." And Tea Gardener, I don't know who you are, but thanks for making this your favorite podcast. See, I read 'em and I want you to know it's super encouraging and I just wanna thank you for doing that. And this is really exciting because this is the long-promised episode 11, which means, if you're tracking with it, we are gonna be drawing the grand prize of our first-ever podcast contest. So that's gonna happen in the next week. All you need to do is leave a comment on this episode at episode 11 of the podcast. So go to karaenuhoff.com/episode11. Leave a comment and the question to answer this week when you leave the comment is simply this. What has helped you overcome personal discouragement? So answer that question and then in the next seven days by next Monday, I am going to draw the grand prize winner. The grand prize winner is gonna win free admission to the Orange Conference 2015 at the end of April next year. Featured speakers include Donald Miller, Perry Noble, Reggie Joyner, Andy Stanley, John Acuff. I'm gonna be speaking there as well. And your ticket, if you win, will include coffee with John Acuff in me backstage at Orange Conference 2015. It is an incredible leadership conference, senior leaders, family pastors, next-gen pastors, everybody, you need to be there. We're gonna bring the house down. 6,000 leaders in Atlanta and you can end up being admitted for free. So what you need to do to enter to win is to simply go by the show notes, carrynewhough.com/episode11 and leave a comment answering this question. What has helped you overcome personal discouragement? I'll repeat that again at the end of the show, plus we got some other stuff I'll share with you. And in the meantime, here's my interview with Pete Wilson. Well, I am so excited to have Pete Wilson here today on the podcast, Pete. Thanks for joining us. - No, thank you, man. It's a real honor to be with you guys today. - Well, it's gonna be a lot of fun. Pete, everything I read from you, every time I hear you speak, it's always just great. And one of the things I really appreciate is just your honesty, man. You're just like, got level honest and that makes all of us feel good. - I'll be as honest as I possibly can, how about that? - Well, that's fantastic. Pete, I know a lot of our listeners already know you. They follow you, they've read your book, they read your blog, they listen or watch your sermons. But give us just a brief recap of your call into ministry in a synopsis of the first, really, like 12 years at Crosspoint. God's done some incredible things. - Yeah, it's been a blast. You know, ministry has always intrigued me, even in high school, you know, I was really involved with my youth group but never thought about it as a vocation and even in college. My all my studies, everything was geared towards politics. I thought it was gonna be a politician. - Really? - Yeah, well, I really, what I thought, what I knew I wanted to do, I wanted to make a difference. And in that season of my life, I thought the greatest difference I could make would be in politics. And of course, the deeper I got into that, the more I realized that that probably was not going to be the case. And it was a part-time youth pastor all the way through college and it wasn't until my senior year of college that I really thought, you know what? Ministry full-time is what I sense guys is calling me to do and actually planning my first church, the end of my senior year of college in Kentucky and was there for about five years before moving to Nashville and getting to be a part of starting Crosspoint which is where I've been the past 12 years. And it's, gosh, Crosspoint has been just an incredible experience. I love being one of the pastors here and we're here in Nashville, Tennessee and it's a really fun place to do ministry and lots of, you know, have a very strong arts community. Not only music, kind of music is kind of country music specifically is what we're kind of known for in Nashville, but the arts in general are really strong here in Nashville. And so whether it's movies, whether it's country music, Christian music, you name it, it's really strong here. And so I enjoy that, I enjoy being able to, you know, have some influence and those different spears and so it's been great and a lot of fun. - That's awesome. I did not realize 'cause there is a Pete Wilson who's actually a politician, right? - Yes, there is. - If you Google you, you end up with him sometimes too, so that's kind of neat. - I know, I know. - Okay, well-- - It's a very interesting 'cause I have zero interest in politics anymore. I don't even really follow it, but there was a time in my life that it really got me excited. - I understand that. I thought I'd be in politics too, but yeah, God has different plans, doesn't he? Not funny. - Yeah, and you're, are you, are you in Toronto? - Yeah, just north of Toronto. Uh-huh, about an hour north, so. - You could run for mayor there because there's always interesting stories about you guys as mayor for sure. - Yeah, no kidding, I'll tell you that has put Toronto on the map and yeah, I'll give that some thought, Pete. It's a good idea. - Hey, Pete, we're gonna drill into your story a little bit at cross point, but we were talking before this interview about what we wanted to focus on. And you shot me an email and said, one of the iron, and I'm quoting here, one of the ironies of ministry is it can cause me to neglect what matters most in the name of doing what matters most. Tell us a little bit about that. Has that been a struggle for you? How has that shown up on your leadership radar at this stage? - Yeah, you know, it really has and it's so funny. I literally just walked out of a meeting where we were interviewing a young lady who is interviewing for a staff position here at our church. She's never been on staff at a church before. And one of the things I was talking to her about, kind of cautioning her, warning her. I think so many people think that you go on staff at a church, have a leadership position at a church that, you know, it's just gonna be like, you're gonna be on a spiritual retreat, 365 days a year, you know, and it's just gonna be, you know, amazing. And all we do is sit around, you know, read the Bible and pray all day. And, you know, I think that, I know from me, whenever we're interviewing someone who hasn't worked on a church staff before, I'm always trying to be real clear about, you know what, interestingly enough, this can be a real challenge to your spiritual life. Because number one, which is busy, just all the time, and anybody that's in any church leadership position realizes that, and it's very easy to get distracted. And again, because you're often doing it in the name of the church and the name of the kingdom of God, it's very easy to allow some of your own personal, spiritual disciplines to kind of begin and to slip. And we just, we do an annual staff retreat where we take all of our staff away for a couple of days. And usually it's focused on leadership-oriented things and things we're trying to develop within our team. And we just did this, this was the week before last. And our focus on this retreat was a little different. And there was certainly some leadership-influenced stuff in there, but we just spent a lot of time focusing on the heart and focusing on our own spiritual growth and development, and what's our personal encounter with God like these days? And it was just a, it was a reminder to me of how much our Christian leaders really needed that, because it often just gets neglected in the day-to-day grind of church life. And so I just think that's really important. - Yeah, I agree. I think I've got to actually tape this part of the podcast and play it back for our staff, 'cause we hear that sometimes too. It's like, I just thought we'd talk about God a lot more, and I thought we would read our Pibles and pray a lot more. And I think that's something I see as a personal discipline, but you're right, like in ministry, it's just, it's very different. And you have to work at spiritual growth. In fact, sometimes it can be hazardous to your spiritual development. So that's a good word, Pete, appreciate that. Now, you were also talking, I think, to your staff recently about what happens when you don't get the results. You wanted in ministry. It seems like a bit of a strange question because, you know, by all accounts, you've had amazing results. I mean, Crosspoint has just exploded. But how has that played out for you personally as a leader? You ever been in a season as a leader where you're just not satisfied with even the progress you're making? - Yeah, and I think that is one of the just innate problems of being a leader is generally you're not satisfied. You know, it can make you a great leader. It can be kind of what motivates you, but you just have to be careful with that. And on our retreat, what we talked about was, we just looked at 1 Kings 19, and it's a story of Elijah, and it's just an interesting season in his leadership because he is coming off of what looked like it was gonna be a spiritual high. You know, this is 1 Kings 19 is where he's, you know, just come away from Mount Carmel and he went up against the 450 prophets of Baal and, you know, they beg Baal to, you know, light their sacrifice on fire and it doesn't happen. And then, you know, he prays to God and God sends fire down. And it's just a huge, dramatic moment. And it's one where he thought this would be the kind of event that would bring about revival and turn everyone towards God. But that's not what happens. In fact, you know, what happens is Jezebel says that she's gonna kill him. And so now he's on the run. And I identify with that. And I think a lot of our staff identify with that because in ministry, we're always making plans. We're, you know, creating events. We're tweaking service times. We're launching new ministries. And along with every new initiative that we launched, we have expectations. You know, we believe it's gonna turn out one way. You know, and if we didn't believe that, we probably wouldn't be making the changes or the tweaks that we're making along the way. And often though, in life and in ministry, things don't work out the way you thought they were gonna work out. You know, you thought if you tweaked your service times or you thought if you, you know, added this new staff position, you know, that this was gonna happen and things were gonna grow and it was gonna be amazing and the church would be full and people would be accepting Christ. And, you know, incredible things would happen. And often it just doesn't turn out that way. And I think that we're often left with thinking, wow, you know what, I'm disappointed. I'm discouraged that ministry isn't turning up the way I thought. I think there's some church planners all the time. You know, they launched a church and, you know, they've heard the two or three just superstar stories. You know, these movements where God has done miraculous things. And those are great stories. Not that we need to tell those stories, we need to celebrate those stories. But if that's the only stories you have, you know, then you go and you launch your church and it doesn't match up with that, you know, spectacular story. I think people start feeling like they're just discouraged and they feel like, you know, they're a loser. And you do what Elijah does, which Elijah goes away and he basically says that, you know, he's incapable. He takes it personally and says, this is because of me. It's my lack of leadership. It's my lack of giftedness and he internalizes that failure. And I think that's a real temptation for all of us. Oh, yeah, I can totally relate to that. And I think you're right, there's something endemic to being a leader that just makes you hope for a little bit more than you're probably realistically going to get. Or you have a great season, you think, well, this is just the new normal. It's going to continue forever. Exactly, yeah, yep. If you ever felt like Elijah, you ever get discouraged? I mean, even in the midst of all the, you know, great things you've seen at Crosspoint, you ever have seasons where you're just kind of like, I'm not the guy, I must have made some mistakes or something. Yeah, I mean, more often than honestly, I would like to admit. Sometimes I'm embarrassed by, you know, because I think we all get there. You know, you get these places where you're discouraged, or you wonder, you doubt, you know, is God with me? Does God know? Does God care? And, you know, then eventually the situation kind of works itself out, and you kind of look at your life, and you look at your ministry, and you look back and you're like, God has showed up for me again, and again, and again, and again. Why do I always go back to doubting? And whenever something doesn't go my way, why do I assume he's not with me? And yeah, there are a lot of, usually it's Monday that I'm ready to quit, but I mean, there's a lot of times, and I've been through a lot of seasons where I've thought to myself, you know, am I the right guy for this? Do I have what it takes anymore? Do I, you know, do I need to step away and allow somebody else to kind of take this to the next level? And sometimes I think that's good. I think we should be open as leaders and humble enough as leaders to say, you know what, maybe I won't always be the guy here. That's okay, but at the same time, I think I have to continually just be reminded that God has me at this place, at this time, for a reason and for a purpose. And my job is to stay connected to Christ from moment to moment to moment. He's going to be the one that bears the fruit in my life and my ministry, and my job is just to abide in him as much as I possibly can, to just abide in him to remain in him from moment to moment. That's a good word, Pete, it really is. Like, that's something I think we all struggle with. I know I've had more than a few seasons where I've been discouraged and thought, okay, that's it, I think I'm done. How do you get through them? Like, what helps you when you're in a law like that, or when you're at a low point, what have been some of the keys for you in terms of pushing through? Well, you know, my wife, Brandi, she's really helped me with this, because her faith is so much stronger than mine. And one of the things that we've talked about in our family time is, you know, throughout the Old Testament, you know, God would do something big, you know, in their lives, in the nation, and they would build an altar. And it would kind of be this physical reminder of just, you know, what God had done in that moment, where there was a, you know, a victory in battle, or whatever it might be. And we've tried to do that. Sometimes it's more difficult than you would imagine. But we try to find, whenever God's just doing something big in our family, or big in our church, we try to find a way to physically mark that. Sometimes with the picture, we have several pictures in our house that are framed, that when we see that picture, it's like, ah, I remember that season. I remember what, you know, God did in our family during that time. And so our little saying is that if we don't find ways to remember what God did in the past, we'll have a hard time trusting Him with our future. And so we love this for our boys as well, because we went them, you know, we have three boys, and we went them to be able to see and be reminded of how God's worked in our family and how God's worked in our church. And so those little altars, those little physical reminders of God's faithfulness to us are incredible prompts for us to number one, just be incredibly thankful for everything that God's doing in our life. And number two, it's a prompt to just trust Him that He has been faithful in the past. He's going to be faithful in the future, but doesn't always mean it's going to turn out the way we want it to. But we can trust this guy. He's with us. He's not abandoned us. And those are, you know, I think those are the things that really helped me pull through some of those discouraging seasons. The other thing too is just great friends, you know, other leaders in ministry that I can call and I can just say, I'm having a really tough day, you know. Would you pray for me? Would you encourage me? And I've got a couple of just great friends that will drop whatever they're doing to pour into me in those moments and that man, that's got me through some difficult days for sure. Oh, yeah. No, you know what? That sounds really healthy. And I think it's, that's a good challenge actually, because I don't think, I know a lot of the leaders I know were so progress driven. We don't stop to celebrate and mark moments or even remember them. I have a couple of pieces of a baptism puzzle. We did at a volunteer celebration event sitting on my desk and it's just two pictures of a much bigger puzzle of a baptism that was really meaningful for us in a season. And I look at those sometimes and it's like, yep, God's been faithful, he'll be faithful again. That's a good word. That's a good word. Well, that's great. You talked about your three boys and we did ask some listeners for questions that they wanted to submit. And there are some great questions. I mean, the first one, Pete just honestly was about like, where do you get your amazing hair? But I don't think we need to go there. Nobody ever asked me about my hair, Pete. Nobody. They don't. No. Well, if I ever get the opportunity interview, it's going to be my first question. That's great. But how do you stay balanced as a leader? I mean, you've got three young boys. Your kids are young. You write. You speak. You lead a big church. You travel. You're involved in mission work. How do you keep that balance in your life? Gosh, you know, I really probably don't do it as well as I would like to do it. You know, and it comes and goes for certain seasons where, Kerry, I feel like I'm very balanced. And then, you know, something kind of gets out of whack and we'll go, you know, sometimes three, four, five, maybe even six weeks and brandy my wife will sit in hell with me and just say, you know what, I think we're out of balance here. And then I'll make some corrections and I'll start saying no a lot and then see, one of my biggest struggles in ministry has been, I'm a people pleaser. I mean, by nature, and I think a lot of leaders in ministry are, they're wired to want people to be happy and a lot of us get, you know, our sense of identity from people approving of us. But I'm telling you, you know, being a people pleaser and being in ministry is a dangerous cocktail. The combination of those two things can lead you to all kinds of unhealthy extremes. And I would say the first, gosh, probably the first 10 years of my ministry, it was really driven. I thought it was driven and motivated from the desire to be loving. But in fact, it was driven and motivated from the desire to be loved. And there's a very, very subtle difference here between being motivated by the desire to be loved and this desire to be loving. Because a lot of things in ministry, again, they look like we're being very loving, being very pastoral, you know, but the reality is it's not about us loving other people, it's about us wanting to be loved. And I would just send you down a lot of dark roads, send you to a lot of different extremes. And the times that I've been out of balance in my life have come when I really am being motivated by that desire, being loved and being approved by everybody. The reality is, that's not going to happen and I know, you know, one of your guests already on your podcast has been Andy Stanley. And he wrote that book years ago, "Chosing the Cheat," and that was huge for me. And I don't know if he'd talked about that in the interview at all, but the whole principle was you've got to choose what you're going to cheat in life. And you know, for my wife and I, we've just kind of put a stake down on the ground and just said, you know, we are not going to destroy our family in the pursuit of trying to build a great church. I'm not okay with building a great church but having a mediocre family. That's not okay for us. That's not on the table. And so we want to be true to calling God's put on our life in ministry, but at the same time, we're going to be true to calling He's put, you know, on our lives as moms and dads and husbands and wives and it's a tough balance. It's one of the most difficult things I've ever done, but I'm committed to doing whatever I can to make sure I stay balanced in that way. Those are good principles and I appreciate the honesty that you've got there too. I mean, I've heard you talk about that publicly written about it being a people pleaser and I think you're right, ministry attracts people pleasers and that's such a good distinction about wanting to be loving versus wanting to be loved and we just have to do that motive check and I know in my own heart sometimes it can get pretty clouded. So what is it like a typical week? I thought this was a great question again, a reader listener submitted it. What does a typical week look like for you these days or is there a typical week? It sort of all drives that the whole how are you managing your time question practically. Yeah, I think for me in every leader, every pastor depending on the size of your church, the style of your church, the strengths and weaknesses of the people around you are going to kind of play to their specific role. My role here at Crosspoint really is as a teacher and as a vision caster. I spend the overwhelming majority of my day, my days in a week in message prep and then my other primary job is pouring into we're a multi-site church. So we have campus pastors at every church. So I spend most of my time writing messages and pouring into those campus pastors. Yeah, they're a direct report to you at this point. They are. Yeah. Well, we have an exact team, but for the most part, yeah, I'm just pouring into those guys. Like a typical week for me, Monday is message prep day for me, which I know for a lot of pastors are like, are you crazy? Why would you do that on Monday, right after Sunday? But for me, the way my mind is just kind of wired. I like to get a good head start on that message on Monday. It really frees me up to then on Tuesday is a meeting day for me. I'm in meetings with staff all day long. And if I didn't have that Monday to get a head start on the message, it would be in the back of my head the whole time and every meeting I'm in, I would not be focused on that meeting at hand. I would be worried about, oh my gosh, I got a preach in six days and I don't know where I'm preaching on because I write the week of. Okay. I know a lot of guys are two, three, some of them four weeks out, that's never been me. I can't do that for some reason. So I write the week up. So writing on Monday, Tuesdays, I'm in meetings all day with staff, Wednesday I go back to the message for half a day and then the other half of Wednesday is back to just meetings with people in the church, I do a little bit of counseling a lot, but I do a little bit of counseling on Wednesdays and Thursdays is kind of a hodgepodge of hopefully finishing up any last minute things on the message as well as putting out any fires that we've started there in the week. That's right. That's interesting because one of the principles underneath that Pete, I think is what it sounds like is for the most part, you've got a fixed schedule, at least that's what I call it, right? Mondays are always the same, Wednesdays are always the same. And final lot of leaders, I didn't go to a fixed schedule until way too late in my leadership and that has been phenomenal because then when I'm like, hey, Pete, can I talk to you on Monday, you're like, sorry, I'm busy as opposed to filling up all that white space and then saying, now I got to squeeze the message out on a Friday or Saturday. Yep. I remember being extremely, this is probably five years ago, extremely stressed out because I didn't feel like, again, as a people pleaser, you hate saying no and so saying yes to everything and what was getting squeezed out were a message prep because on that one, that's just me, right? And then in family time because it was easier to say no to them than it was to the person with a great need in the church and so someone from the church, it's kind of a leadership guru guy, really helped me lay out my calendar and he called him creating these buckets and so he would say, this is changes from season to season but he'd say, how many counseling appointments you went and did during a week, you know, so we'd say three, so he'd create on my calendar, there's three buckets for counseling, right? And then once those three buckets fill up, you get three more the next week and three more the next week but that's all the time you have in the course of your week for counseling these days, three buckets, you know, and you get this message prep bucket and it's always you know, there during the week and he really helped me create that and it's been so helpful for me because I still, it's not so much I have to say no, I just have to say, you know what, I literally, I have no time this week but I can do it in two weeks or three weeks and that's been really helpful for me. People get that, I mean we waited what, five, six weeks for this interview and I'm fine with that, you know, and that's cool, people can handle that and sometimes it just doesn't work out, that's super helpful. One of the other questions I thought was great, like where do you get your ideas from, how do you stay fresh because you are writing both a blog and books, you've got three books, you've got, you know, constant content creation both on the vision casting side and on the message prep side. What inspires you these days, like do you go to coffee shops, you take retreats or do you just sit behind a keyboard and boom, there it is. Well, I tell you the thing, it inspires me most these days is we have a little, I call it a farm, I don't know if it's really a farm, it's really more of a property. I've seen the tractor, man, it's cool. Yeah, that we have like, you know, it's that we're about an hour outside of Nashville and it's, you know, I've got three boys who love the outdoors, they love the hunt and they love the fish and that place has been a real just saving grace for me and for my family and it's a place where I try to get out there once a week, it's a place where I just feel, you know, nature has always been a place where I feel close to God and to have a place where I can go and I can come up with sermon ideas and, you know, the office just for me is not my creative space. For some guys, it's a coffee shop. For some guys, they want to be around people, you know, they can go to a mall, you know, other guys want to be taking a walk in the woods. I think everybody has to find where's that place where I feel creative, where's that place where I just feel connected to God where I feel like I just really hear and sense God speaking to me. You've got to find that space wherever that space is and be committed to say I'm going to regularly immerse myself in this environment because it's here that I feel most fed and you shouldn't feel guilty about that. You should make that part of your regular rhythm and that's a big deal for me. That's where I feel like I get a lot of my ideas. Also, you know, I don't read a ton of books but I flip through a lot of books and flipping through books, you know, often like I'll see a chapter in a book and I'll be like, oh, wow, that's interesting, you know, that'll kind of spark my creativity. I used to feel really guilty because I have a hard time finishing a book. I don't feel guilty about that anymore. I get from it what it is I need to get from it and then I'll move on. And those are the couple things that I do that have really helped kind of keep the creative juices going. I think with a lot of leaders, Pete, you're drilling into something that I hear quite a bit and it's certainly true in my life, Perry Noble, Perry Noble and I talked about that in episode two as well, that it's really hard to write when you're sitting behind a keyboard and often it's in the shower or, you know, maybe at the farm or when you're taking a walk in the woods or in my case when I'm on my bike cycling that all of a sudden these ideas without even trying start to download and you're like, wow, where did this come from? And you got to capture it. There's a rub for that, right, because I mean, then you're not in your office, when you're in your office, it looks like you're working, right, when you're on the farm. If you were to take a Wednesday or part of a Monday and just poke around the backwoods or get on your tractor or work in your garden, it doesn't really look like you're working, but sometimes that might be the best thing you could do if you really, you know, your job is to deliver great content. Do you agree with that or what do you think? I do, I agree with that, I think far and wide we have in our culture today really bought into the idol of business and we equate business with importance. And so, you know, the busier I am, the busier I look, you know, the more important I am. And I just, I bought into that lie before and, you know, I think the reality is that, you know, we stay so busy and I really think the busyness is an enemy of awareness. So we stay so busy and so hurried that often we are completely unaware of what God's doing in our life and our soul and what really matters. And so I think if you want self-awareness to increase, the business has to decrease. And what you'll find out is that creating space in your life, in your calendar for some time that's not constantly hurried and constantly, you know, producing this and producing that, you begin to become a lot more self-aware, you hear God more clearly, the ideas, the good ideas rise to the top. And I think it's a discipline that what you'll discover really great leaders have developed in their life and I think it's an important one. You know, that's a really good word. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that before that actually busyness is the enemy of self-awareness. And I think that's probably tied to spiritual development and growth too, right? You can't really grow an intimacy in a hurry, like intimacy and hurry are opposites. Yeah, you know, I think when you look at the life of Jesus, I'm kind of splitting words here, but Jesus was busy. I mean, you know, I mean, he's the son of God. I mean, the way the world literally on the shoulders. So, I mean, he was busy, but he was never hurried. And you know, I mean, try to find a place in the gospels where Jesus was ever in a hurry. He wasn't in a hurry. I mean, he was busy. There are a lot of things going on. But what we see is he's constantly withdrawn, constantly withdrawn, you know, and you know, the disciples, you know, one of the first miniature tasks, he gives them, and they come back and they're all amped up and they're ready to go. And his very next assignment was, okay, let's get away. Let's go away. Let's, you know, he didn't, as a leader, try to take advantage of their momentum and take advantage of them being all hyped up. In fact, it's like, oh, we need to get away. You know, and I think that all of us in our hurry, fast-paced lives, we tend to make a lot of mistakes. We tend to not be self-aware. And if we can find ways to be busy, but not be hurried, I think that's the rule goal. That's a, that's another good word, Pete. It really, really is. I've got time for probably one or two more questions while we're in this interview and just switching gears a little bit. I thought this was really interesting. I mean, so much has changed in your world. You think about starting a church really from scratch and now it's what, five campuses plus online and, I mean, literally thousands upon thousands of people, it's huge. You've got campus pastors you're caring for now, is there, because I'm kind of passionate about change, is there a system in place to help people handle that kind of change? I mean, we've talked a lot about how you've had to change as a leader to really keep pace and stay sane in the midst of this. But over the last 12 years, did you lose people over that? Or how have you been able to regulate the pace of change? Yeah. I mean, we have. Yeah, we've lost, you know, in every season of our church, you know, we've lost the tenders, at times we've lost staff and that's always tough. You know, the reality in any fast-growing church, any fast-growing organization, is that the structure's constantly changing. And so what sometimes happens is, you know, you hire somebody for one particular job and one particular system, well, three years later, because the church has grown, you now have a different system and the job that you originally hired for that person looks quite a bit different. And you know what, some people are wired where they can make that change from one system to the next quite naturally, you know, and there'll be some staff, I think, that will be with you in and out of every one of those changes and then there's some staff who, you know, they're just not wired that way. That's not their wiring. That's not, you know, and I've heard this before and rightfully so, they've said, this isn't what I signed on for, you know, this isn't, you know, why I came here and you have to sit back and say, you know what, you're right. And I'm sorry, you know, I didn't see this either. But I think that you do lose people along the way and I don't know that we've had a great system here for those changes. I feel like for us in the history of cross plan, I don't know that we've ever been ahead of the growth. I think most of our system changes have always been forced on us, unfortunately. We've always been kind of reactive to, oh my gosh, this kind of won't work anymore. That is broken. Yeah, now we've got to do something and that's, you know, that's just reality for us. I wish that, you know, you know, we were way ahead, you know, it's always been very discouraging for me as a leader because one of the questions that often get asked and I appreciate that you haven't asked this shit is where do you see cross point in five years usually, I'm like, I don't even know what I'm preaching on Sunday. Yeah, I know. I hate that question. So I'll never ask you that. Okay. Thank you. Great. That's our deal. Yeah, I just, I don't know. And it's not, it's just not the way God's wired me in that way and I feel like we'll probably be doing what we're doing now, you know, and that's just kind of the way I'm wired. And I know that, you know, for us, sometimes that's been discouraging and we feel like, gosh, we're so slow. What if we were ahead of this, but it's just been hard for us to predict. And so we're just trying to be the best stewards of the ministry God's given us and the people he's entrusted us with and we're trying to see Christ grown in people. And that's, that's kind of really what we're trying to stay focused on. No, that, that makes a lot of sense. And I don't know whether this is true for you, but I think when I was like 30 or 35, I used to think I could see the future. And now I'm like, I don't know, maybe Jesus will come back like I just don't know, right? Yeah. Some days I hope he will. Like that would, I would save us a lot of reorganization. It really would. Absolutely. It would. Hey, Pete, this has been amazing. I really appreciate the time you've taken. Now, I know people are going to want to drill down more with you. Talk a little bit about some of the books you've written lately. You blog your regular blogger and how else people can get in touch with you. Yeah. Well, the last couple of books I wrote a book called Plan B, which is really just about what do you do and life doesn't turn out the way you thought. And it's my favorite. It was my first book. It's still my favorite. It's my favorite feeling. Unfortunately, it will always be my favorite. But I also wrote a book called Empty Promises and another book called Let Hope In. Yeah. You know, and I blog it without wax.tv. You can also get there through Pete Wilson.tv. Now, I know the story behind that. What do you mean by without wax though? Well, the idea is, and I don't, there's like no scriptural basis for this. It's just an old story. And I don't even think that there's any historical proof of it. But the idea, the story was that in ancient times when they were selling a piece of pottery, that they would often, if there were cracks in that pottery, they would use wax to fill it in, fill in the cracks so that it would appear as if it was more sturdy than it actually was. But if something was, if they sold a piece of pottery, it had all the cracks and all the blemishes in it, it was without wax. And the story is, that's where they got the word sincerity from. But, you know, the idea for me when I started a blog was, I really wanted it to be a place where I could share the success, I could share failure, I could just be honest about the reality of my own spiritual life and the health of our church. And it wouldn't be a place where I'd just share the success stories. But we'd just be real honest and raw. And I don't blog as much as I used to. I've been kind of lazy on that. I need to get there bad, but I try to at least once or twice a week update it. That's good. Yeah. And then a cross point is just, is it cross point.tv? Cross point.tv. Yup. All the cool dots.tv. I always thought those were the best. So what did it go Pete? Hey, I don't want everything else to take it up. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's the way it goes, isn't it? That's true. Pete, I want to thank you so much. Really, really appreciate you taking all the time. I know you've helped a lot of leaders today. Well, thank you, Karyn. Thanks for doing this. You know, I think this podcast is wonderful for you to take the time. You don't have to do this, but it's your heart to really encourage other leaders. And I just think what an incredible resource. So thank you for taking your investment, your time out to do this and encourage a lot of leaders. Well, we need it and we really appreciate it. Well, thank you, Pete. It's helping me too. Well, that was really kind of Pete. And what a great interview. I mean, I just love his humility, his transparency, his honesty. And if you haven't checked out his writings, I'd encourage you to do that over at without wax.tv or maybe one of his books. I know Plan B has helped so many people. I know I've handed that out numerous times. His latest is called Let Hope In. So you definitely want to check out Pete. And it's kind of cool that this is the final week for our first ever podcast contest. And we've given away a lot of books already over the last few episodes. And all of those ballots are being entered into the final draw, which is going to happen next Monday. And that grand prize draw is for free admission to the Orange Conference 2015. That's with Donald Miller, Perry Noble, Reggie Joyner, Andy Stanley, John Acuff and myself. And if you win, you not only get into the Orange Conference for free, but John Acuff and I will have coffee with you backstage. We're really excited about that. And if you've never heard of the Orange Conference or you've never been to the Orange Conference, I'll tell you, it's a premier leadership gathering. We're going to have some of the finest leaders in ministry today. And they're going to be there. I'm running a senior leadership track for it. If you've never been there, I would so encourage you to go there. And one of you is going to go there for free next year. So just make sure that you leave your ballot today, simply go to karaenuhoff.com/episode11 and answer this question in the comments section. What has helped you overcome personal discouragement? So that's what you can do. That's your ballot. I'll be drawing next Monday. And what I love about the questions we've been asking for this contest is they kind of help us lead better. Don't they? At least that's a goal. So if you could share something along those lines, I'd be so grateful for that. And the next Monday, we make our final grand prize winner for my first ever podcast contest. So I would love for you to go and leave a comment right now. And to everybody who subscribed, left a rating or review on iTunes or on Stitcher or Tune in Radio, thank you so much for that. Next week, we are going to hear from a really cool guest, a guy you might never have heard of but a place you've probably been to or have wanted to visit. His name is Stephen Barr. And he is a lead pastor of cast member church, a church started exclusively for cast members at Disney World in Florida. That's right. There's actually a church for cast members. He's going to talk all about that. So if you're like a Disney fan, you're not going to want to miss it. And it's really all about niche ministry or niche ministry. I'll have to figure out between now and then how to say that. But anyway, long story short, it is all about how you can minister to particular like narrow demographics. And he's actually got a church that really is just for Disney staff members or as they call them, cast members. So that's next Tuesday, best way to never miss an episode is to subscribe. You can do that for free. Thanks so much for tuning in and I really do hope that this helps you lead like never before. Stay encouraged. You've been listening to the carry new Hoff leadership podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. [MUSIC]