The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 010 -- How to Rapidly Navigate Change in a Traditional Church Context - An Interview with Ron Edmondson
(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 10 of the podcast. My name's Carrie Newhoff, and I wanna welcome you today. So glad that you're along, and I hope this is a great time. We spend together today so that I can help you, and maybe we can learn together, how to lead like never before. I don't think you're gonna be disappointed at all today, because our guest is a guy by the name of Ron Edmondson, and it is kind of hard to describe Ron. I mean, right now he's the pastor of a church, you'll hear about that shortly, but he has done so much with his life. You'll hear me when I introduce him. He's run for office, he's run a business, he's planted churches, and right now he's doing something huge, he's transitioning a church. And so many church leaders I talk to struggle with change, and that's really what this podcast is about. Now, change isn't just an issue for church leaders, it's also an issue for all of us who lead any kind of organization. Even if you're in a church plant or a startup company, within about two years you're having to change, because the strategy you launched with probably isn't gonna be as effective two years down the road as it is when you launch. And so change can be very, very difficult at times. If you follow me at all, you know that this is something I'm really passionate about. I've written about change in a book called Leading Change Without Losing It. For all of you who are asking, I get asked this all the time. I am moving into a writing season, actually, over the next few months. I'm gonna be sitting down to write a book, I'll let you know how that's going, and we will keep you up to date on that. But the dynamics of change can seem very mystifying. There are principles. They're definitely our principles that can help. And so what I wanna do in this interview with Ron today is walk you through his story and how God has done incredible things at his church. I mean, he's been there just over two years. They've pretty much doubled in size. He had a very traditional church that had been stuck for a long time, and his story is fascinating. So again, don't be intimidated by the size of his church. Just think about the dynamics of change, because the goal in all of this is to help you lead. Now, it's kind of fun. We're still running our contest. And a lot of you, we've got lots and lots of entries so far in previous weeks, but this is my first ever podcast contest. And if you haven't entered, please enter today. And if you've already entered, good news, you can still enter this week. And then next week, we're gonna draw for the grand prize. So it's just like this episode and the next episode, you can still enter. And here's what we're gonna give away. So this week, we're giving away a signed copy of my book, Leading Change Without Losing It. And your comment on the blog, That's Your Ballot, will also qualify you for the grand prize, which we are gonna draw after episode 11, to go to Orange 2015, free admission to the Orange Conference 2015, and coffee backstage with me and last week's guest, John Acuff. So that's how it works. So what you can do is just hop on over to the show notes, carrynewhop.com/episode10, leave a comment today. That's your ballot, both for this week's book, Leading Change Without Losing It, which we're giving away in the grand prize, which we are gonna give away after episode 11. So that's coming up real soon. Here's the question you have to answer, okay, because we're all dealing with change. The question is this. What has been the biggest obstacle to change you faced, and how have you overcome it? So you can listen to Ron's interview, and then go over, or you can head on over right now to carrynewhop.com/episode10. And you can enter simply by leaving a comment on this post. So without much further ado, let's hear from Ron. - Well, it's a thrill to have Ron Edmondson on the podcast today. And some of you probably know Ron. He's got one of the leading blogs on the internet these days in Christian leadership, and you've been blogging for a lot of years, Ron. And we became friends four or five years ago, have actually met in person since then, which can be a fun thing for online friendships. And Ron is currently a pastoring Emmanuel Baptist Church. And Ron, you're gonna talk to us today about change because you got a pretty remarkable story. - Well, I don't know about remarkable. I've got a story, and a lot of it involves change. So we should talk about it. - Give us a little bit of history because you've done a lot of things. I mean, you've run for office, you've held office, you've been in radio, you've been in business, you've been in ministry. What have you learned about change over your years in leadership? - You know, I think there are a lot of this principles that underlie all of those. And that is that change most of the time, it's always uncomfortable. And in any context, it can be messy and difficult and all those sort of things. Those are in any environment where change is, even in our personal life, we're just trying to change something that we do personally. It always, there's always attention involved. And, but I think I've also learned that change is most successful when there is a relational trust involved, also an investment of trust. And so, I get people ask me all the time about change. I've met with a couple of pastors today trying to implement some change. And I just always tell them, lead into that, those relational strengths that you already have. Many times you have relationships in that church that are built and you're not necessarily using them because they may or may not be directly affected by the change. So they're not the ones talking about it. And yet they're able to help you through it because you've got a relationship with them. They trust you and they've got voice into some of those people that are directly affected. So, well, that's a really interesting place to start 'cause I would agree with that. I think change has an awful lot to do with trust or mistrust or the success of change has to do with trust or mistrust. But I've been leading in the same context with some of the same leaders for almost 20 years. The thing that's fascinating to me about you saying that, Ron, is I don't wanna say you've moved around a lot, but I mean, you've had a lot of different business and ministry opportunities, several churches under your belt, including starting one. So church planners take note. And now you're transitioning one, but you have engineered an incredible amount of change in under two years. So we're gonna hear that story today and about the incredible change that Emmanuel went through under your leadership. But I mean, you didn't have a whole lot of time to bank a lot of trust before you started engineering change right off the bat at your church. So, and it's been, I would say, largely effective. I mean, your church has just grown exponentially in the last two years. So help me understand that. How do you get trust early on, especially for leaders who are maybe saying, "Well, I have to be here for five years to try anything." You haven't been, and it seems to have worked. - Well, I think one of the things we did is when we came in, we established very early while I was here. And what was the purpose in me being here? And that was because this was a church that had seen better days and wanted to see better days again. So that's why I'm here. So I have to keep going back to that, that that is the calling that God has placed on my life here. And the reason this church asked me to be here and incidentally we planted two churches so that in both were successful. But when you are a hundred and five year old church and you call a church planter to be your pastor, you know things are gonna be different, you know? And so I keep going back to that. But at the same time I tried to be very intentional about embracing the culture that's here without erasing it. You know, embracing the history and the success of this church and reminding them that they've been through tremendous change in the last hundred years that you know has shaped who this church is today. And that's what we're doing again. It feels real uncomfortable in the temporary but over the span of this church, that's not unusual for this church. That's actually a very common thing. Change is a very common thing in this church. - I hope people caught what you said. Embracing without erasing, I've never heard anybody quite say that before. I think that's really smart, really clever. I just made it up. - That's the way it goes sometimes, right? That's great. Okay, well, let's dive into the story a little bit. Tell us about the situation you faced two years ago when you arrived on the scene at a manual and then what's happened over the last couple of years just to catch us all up on that story. - And I'm real careful in that, Carrie, because obviously, you know, I think the church was in a not in a great situation and yet I'm real careful not to say that it was a bad church or you know, anything like that, 'cause there was a great church, a great people and a great potential. And but the church had seen better days. And so when we arrived, I think there was a lot of that it lost a good deal of people. It lost leadership, significant leaders. They had lost significant dollars that, you know, contributors that were substantial contributors had moved on. And so they had, you know, there was some financial problems, obviously growth problems. If you looked at our growth chart, it was not going the right direction. Had become very protective of ourselves. You know, I mean, that's what happens in those where you try to try to lock down and add a few more rules to the system because you don't want things to get away from you. And so a lot of rules even placed on my position that were, you know, different, you know. - Okay, so tell us, what does that mean? Like I understand that when organizations are sort of in retrenchment mode, they become very conservative. Let's just preserve what we've got and stop the bleeding. - Right. - But is that the mindset they were in? And then what were, this is interesting from a leadership standpoint, what were some of the restrictions you faced? - Well, I think some of it was expectations. - Sure. - Like, you know, where I was gonna be and what I was gonna be doing. The trust had been somewhat injured. And so, you know, they had this new committee that was supposed to be my sounding board but also my governing board. You know, it just doesn't quite work that way. - That's interesting. - You know, but they didn't really have any authority to do that either. And I don't say that. I mean, because everyone here has heard, well, everyone in leadership has heard me say this, that was a, there was reactionary moves, you know, that took place to try to protect things. And people were doing the best they knew how to do under the circumstances. And we had tremendous leadership during that time that held the church together, that kept the bills paid, that kept the staff in place, that kept the doors open, you know? So I'm an incredible gratitude to that. And yet it was not a system by any means that you would have wanted to join if you were a family looking very sure. Why would you wanna become a part of that? And so, I think recognizing that's where we were was important initially. - And so everybody named that, right? You didn't come in and sort of describe that. It was a mutual thing. You knew it, they knew it. And that gave you kind of a mandate for change? - Sure. I think they knew it. I don't think they'd identified it. - But I think they knew it. And they definitely knew the numbers. - Right. So this is a church that puts the numbers out there. - So people were leaving, leaders had left, money had left, like their donations were down, their best days were behind them. - Sure. - Give us the three minute version of the changes you've made just in the last 24 months and sort of how that went. Just give us the thumbnail thing just to get everyone on the same page. - You know, I think the biggest changes, we did switch some service things around. We had a contemporary service that was early and I don't understand why they do that, but the people you're trying to reach early don't get up early. - Sure. - And a more blended service later. And we switched those, which was a small change in my mind. It was a monumental change around here. But it was probably the single greatest thing in allowing us to grow with young families again. - The other thing we did is we have tried to change the language around here. Rather than talking about what's happening here, we're talking about what's happening out there that's not even here on campus. And so constantly they're hearing me say, "Church is not done in here alone." It's that we've got to get outside these walls if we want to be a church today. I would say the third thing, so a culture of language change. - So take the focus off themselves and start putting it on the people they want to reach in the community they live in. - Absolutely. - Sure, that makes sense. - The other thing that has happened, and these are all very simple things, but we have been very intentional to live out our vision. Our vision, leading people to Jesus and nurturing them in their faith, they had that before I got here. I agreed with it, I like it. We put some strategy words around it, gather, grow, and serve. And we have talked about those continually. In fact, I don't think you could find somebody who's been here longer than two or three weeks that doesn't know we talk about gather, grow, and serve. - That's good. - So we've constantly gone back to those are the things that are, that's our strategy to live out our mission. And it really has been as simple as those few things. - So let's do some numbers. Tell us the church size when you came and what kind of growth have you seen over the last two years? - Honestly, Carrie, those questions make me nervous. I'm not big on numbers other than the fact that they represent people. And so we count everything. But the church was averaging about 1,000 when we got here on a Sunday. We are averaging about 2,200 now. - Wow. - And yesterday was the 4th of July weekend, and we had 1933. I'll take that. And that was against 1245 a year before. - Wow. - So we had 55% increase last year over same Sunday. Absolutely blows away. When I walked in yesterday and we're doing this in the July timeframe, but when I walked in yesterday, our associate pastor said, "We could have a down day." And I said, "I'll be happy with 1,200 a day." I mean, it's because it was a 4th of July weekend. It was a Friday, three-day weekend for a fellow on a Friday. Our people are traveling, had a hard winter. They're ready to get out of town. So, we are just blown away about what God is doing. And lots of, we are truly doing what we had set out to do. Well, we set out to do in church planting. Obviously, we have some people tracking from other churches, but primarily we're reaching unchurched families, which is our goal. - And so in terms of finances and leaders, first of all, that's an incredible story and it's a great perspective to have. It is a story that God's writing. It's not just a story that we're writing for sure, but finances have started to turn around as well and leaders are stepping up to serve and to end a volunteer. - Yeah, we made budget past two years since we've been here. Someone said, and I don't know the history of all of this, but someone said it was the first time last year that we made that our regular mission offering and our regular offering and our mission offering, both in the same year and as long as they could remember. So we met both of those. We are running ahead of budget, which never happens around here in the summer. This is at church that always plays catch up in December. So we are ahead for the year in our budget. But I would say we are much like we were when I was in the church planting world as far as leaders. But we have plenty of people serving. In fact, there are more people serving today than ever before. The church has never been this large before. Even in their best days, they would never be. - Really? - Well, probably 1500 was about as big as this church has ever been. - Right, right. - So we're in new territory now and we aren't begging for anything, leaders or anything else. And yet we are in the days that we experienced in fast church growth in church planting where we're about to be leadership poor in the next year or two. - Sure, sure. You've got your development of leaders as always as fast as the access of people to your church. So, I mean, that's quite an extraordinary thing. And if you're a little bit, if you're listening and you're a little bit intimidated by the numbers, just take a zero away. I mean, imagine growing from 120 to 220 or you take away a few zeros, I think the principles are transferable. So let's drill down on the principles right now, Ron. So, I mean, obviously God's involved. Obviously this can't just be boiled down into a formula and exported anywhere. But yeah, there are probably some principles involved. So tell us some of the changes you've made beyond what you've already told us. And then why you think this has worked just so that we can take notes and sort of walk away and go, hadn't thought about it that way? Why don't we try that? What do you think's made it work? - Well, you know, I think honestly it's, there are some things that we could probably do here that can't be duplicated quite as well. And one of those is we are situated in the center of our community. And here's a building that's set for, they relocated a couple of times in the history of the church, but set here for almost 50 years at this location and was going the other direction and people were driving past us every Sunday. Somehow you have to stop the car, you know? And for us, I want a manual, or whatever church that I would be pastoring to be on the lips and minds of people in the community. I want them talking about us, hopefully in a positive light. But I want them talking about things that we're doing, what's going on over at the manual, what, you know? And so we have tried to spur conversation in the community around service. And so we are partnering with our schools, we're partnering with other churches, we're just out in the community trying to be every single week, week in and week out. And it's, again, it's changing the conversation in the community around a manual. And so when you, you know, when you are thinking church or when you are thinking whatever, there's life situations, most of the time people show up at church or something going on in their life as you know. - Sure, sure. - They are thinking a manual these days. You know, my life's falling apart. I've heard some things going on down there, I've got to go check it out. - That's really cool. So community involvement, like getting on the radar screen of the community, what else, what else? - Well, we're also stirring some of those, and I would say by far that's the biggest. But we're also stirring some of the same conversations internally in regard. We have a large facility and a lot of people come in and out of our doors through a lot of different activities, but we've not necessarily tried to turn those into people sitting there on Sunday or people involved in our ministries. We're trying to do that a little more. And then obviously the other conversation we're trying to have is with our people having conversations with people that they have relationships with. So we've changed our vocabulary, you know, from invite to bring and something we heard somebody else do. So we didn't invent it, but we're encouraging every message I send to the church, says bring a friend, every single time. - So let me back up, the old language was invite, but you changed it to bring. - Yeah. - Okay, what do you think the difference is? That's interesting, 'cause I've heard a lot of churches, including us, use the word invite, but. - Well, I think I actually got that from Perry Noble's church. - Oh yeah. - I think those single actually was the one that told me that. - Everyone bring one? - Yeah, and so we, I heard that said and thought, hey, that makes sense because it's easy to send an email message. It's a lot different to actually say, hey, well, you meet me and I wanna sit with you and then I wanna go to lunch with you afterwards. You know, there's a difference in that. So we're changing that language a lot of our people and just kind of how they're viewing their workplace and how they're viewing their neighborhoods and what their role is in leading people to Jesus and nurturing them in their faith. What role do you play? So we're trying to have those conversations a lot more work and get that in their thought process. - In terms of internal changes you've made to governance, to staffing or even to the worship service, I mean, you're a church or to your ministry structure. Have you made any radical changes there over the last two years? - We have, we came up with this strategy around our mission, the gather growth serve around leading people to Jesus and nurturing them in their faith. So we now staff around gather growth and serve. We now budget around gather growth serve. We now organize do announcements around gather growth serve. So everything lines up with that. And one of the things that did with our staffing is we tended to staff for positions around here. So almost a solo approach where everything, there's these pegs that you've just got to feel. We don't have any more pegs. There are, when a position comes available, we step back every single time and say, what is the best use of these dollars? And so, you know, for example, when I came, some of these numbers I may be wrong on, but we had numerous positions for administrative assistance around here. Just because everybody always had their own. Now we have very, very few of those. And most of those happen through attrition. Those are higher turnover positions. We just have not brought them back in. We've tried to feel, where's a ministry that's not being met? Ministry needs is not being met, where we can use those same dollars and get a bigger impact. And we've done that with our entire staff. We had a few decisions that were a little more difficult, but mostly that's just been through a reallocation of where our ministry dollars are being spent. For example, a huge, I think a huge deal for us. We're a church, intergenerational church. 40% of our number when I came was senior citizen age. - Wow. - And yet we had no real staffing around that number. And yet, I mean, we had a student ministry with two positions and 25% of the population. So it just didn't make as much sense. And those seniors, they're the lifeblood of this church. They're the most loyal, they're engaged, they're very interested, they have more time. So they like to, I mean, and I'm not saying this funny, but if there was gonna be complaints, they have more time to do that, you know. And so we can staff, we hired a lead team staff member to be their champion. And it was a pastor from a sister church in our community, good sized church, strong pastor, strong person. And now he is their pastor. I'm still their pastor, but just like the students have their pastor, he's their pastor. And it has been, it has been phenomenal in my opinion. He's between me and them in an age category. - Sure. - And so they were expecting probably more, they respect me. And when you talk about that level of trust, they may look to me and say, here's that church planter that, you know, wears jeans, you know, they can look to him and say, and when he says, no, I think this is a good move, you know, then there's a little bit stronger level of trust than we're making a lot of sense. - Well, that's kind of counterintuitive 'cause I think a lot of church planter types would have come in and said, wow, 40% of the church as seniors, we just need to ignore that, change that. But you actually rallied them around that. Couple of questions for you. I gotta go back a little bit. Number one, I'm sure podcast listeners are going, so who's doing the admin? So if you eliminated all these admin positions, what, just answer that quickly, then we'll jump back to the other thing. - Well, you know, what admin is there? You know, I mean, we still have admin positions, but I send emails and I, you know, I run copies. And, you know, we still have admin people, just the level of administrative work that any of us do. Go talk to your banker and see how they're doing on administrative health these days. Go talk to your school system that is a, one of your larger employers in the community and see how many administrative people they've got on their staff these days. - Wow. - Talk to teachers and see how much of their administrative work they're having to do these days. So the world of online and technology has lowered the need for a lot of that. And I don't mean to be cruel in this, but pastors have been rather spoiled in that and that we have been able to staff around that. But we also have upped our number of volunteers. Among those seniors, we found there were a few of them that still knew how to run a copier. And we brought them in and, you know, they can organize your, whatever it is, you know? And so we've relied on a lot more volunteer labor around here. We just transferred to a new software system and a lot of that database entry was done by volunteers. And so we've moved to a lot more volunteer base. We are thinking, Carrie, in this established church, like we were in the days when I was leading one of the church plants where we didn't have the dollars to pay for it, but had to get it done. - Wow, that's a great mindset. - That's what we're just trying to use those dollars in a wiser way now. For instance, we had no dollars at all. Our mission is shifting to where we have to get outside the walls and yet we had no dollars for staffing of that. So we've shifted dollars to that. So now we do have staff that specifically address getting us outside the walls. - So to put that in a nutshell, rather than asking for more, you just did different. It's just like, we'll just take what we have and we'll divide it differently according to our mission. - And I told our finance and personnel committees that just recently, we are doing a ministry to a lot more people these days with the same dollars that we were using when I got here. That can't remain forever. So we will eventually, yes, we will probably have more administrative positions at some point, but we will more than that have more ministry-minded people. The key for me too is administrative or non-administrative. Everybody has to do ministry here. - Yeah. - This is a ministry. That's what we do. So everybody answers the phone, but everybody also can sit with somebody and pray with somebody and lead someone to Jesus. So it is a different paradigm. We're not using organizational charts that look, you know, we're like straight lines. It's very convoluted and everybody plays a part and they overlap and, you know, some days we, some days all energy may be on discipleship and other days all energy is on service and that sort of thing. - That's a really interesting model and I gotta say on the administration part, you answer my emails instantaneously. I can't believe it. It's like an automatic bounce back or something. It's so good. So you do that well. - Now a couple of questions just about leveraging the seniors. Has that created another silo in the church or is that really, have they caught the vision and they want to see the younger generation? Like some people might think listeners would think, well, if I did that at my church, it would just mean that really we only minister to the older generation and we totally miss out on young families. How's that going for you? Are you reaching young families? Is that growing as well? - Well, absolutely. In fact, of that growth number that's predominantly young families. So, you know, just if you just took the numbers that I shared earlier, those that came in probably less than, I don't know, one half or 1% is senior adults. So that we're not getting a lot of new senior adults, you know, we're welcome them. But by the time a senior adult is either in a church or they're very hard to reach, as you know. So, we're reaching young families. That's who the new people coming in are. And as far as creating silos, you have to guard against that. But the same argument could be said why we have a student pastor or why we have a children's pastor. And so it's really champions of those people and making sure they're engaged and identifying with their specific needs and that sort of thing. But we are also trying, and we haven't got this figured out, but it is a constant conversation we're having. Our fastest growing group is 20s and 30s and young families. And so we're constantly trying to figure out with that group how do we get you engaged with our senior adults? How do we get the two of you together? Because the reality is a senior adults are welcoming to that. They're not as aggressive to go after it. And yet the 20s and 30s, they'll go. They'll do that. If we provide them the mechanism and the opportunity, they will go sit with a grandmother. - Is that because they're missing the influence of their parents or grandparents in their lives? - Yeah, absolutely, you know. I mean, we don't live with them anymore. And so I tell our church all the time, we really are missing a, the group that's missing here that we don't have as many of, or people my age. We have some, but we don't have a lot. Again, it's a harder age to get people to come. You know, when the children are the draw a lot of times. So we have lots of young families. We already had lots of seniors. I tell our seniors that they're cool. I'm not, you know, I'm not at the, because I'm their parent's age. - Right, right. - What did you wear that shirt for? You know, come on, there's gotta be. But for a, for a senior, they're cool again. And so if we can find ways for them to engage, and we've just really gotten started, we've done. In fact, we met with, with that group of 20s, some of the leaders, 20s and 30s, some of the leadership of that and tried to come up with some activities we've done. One or two of those already, where they just got together for some dinners and we've meshed them together and just made them kind of communicate with each other. And that has gone well. They just hunger, gave them a hunger for more of that. We've got some more things planned for this fall. So we're in the process of doing that. - If there was one or two factors that you would say really helped attract young families and singles and 30-somethings to your church. Is there anything you can put your finger on? 'Cause you made some changes on Sunday morning too, right? In your services? - We did, and we did on the services. I think we had to on the services, but I would say that's not the primary. I mean, we are providing 20s and 30s a place to connect with other people. I mean, that's the bottom line. And we are a friendly church. That was already here. I didn't invent that. This is a very friendly church. So you will come and enjoy that. Now, one of the reasons we had to change services in swap our service times was not because of music. It was because of proud. And a young family is going to visit at the later hour. And before I got here, they had taken the younger families out and started to produce a contemporary service at an earlier hour. So if a young family came in, they didn't see anybody that their kids were going to grow up with, or they were going to friends with. So that was really the reason we needed to make that change. And I think that helped us make the change too when we used that conversation. That made a little more sense than just a music style. You know, you can't argue with that. So we have that in the room now. And then we have created opportunities outside of that for young families to get together, to fellowship, to do Bible study together, to grow together. So we're fueling that through events, through regular Sunday offerings, where they can get together, through anything we can do to get people in a room to gather, that's our first part of our strategy, that helps them find those life altering connections, you know, 'cause people wanna do life with people. And where else are you gonna do it these days, right? - Yeah, and so we're creating those opportunities as much as we can. And I think that has probably fueled for us as much as anything. Now, obviously, you gotta have good support. You know, preschool has to be excellent, you know, safe and all those things that hopefully people already know, children's has to be engaging and children love coming. And, you know, again, it's safe and welcoming and that sort of thing. So you've gotta have those, you've gotta have excellence in those. But then I think it's just a matter of giving people an opportunity. You'll find a place here. In fact, we just started a campaign. We just, we've been doing it about six months called You'll Find Your Place, Come Find Your Place at Emmanuel. And we've done some television commercials and different things on Come Find Your Place at Emmanuel. I found my place at Emmanuel, giving people an opportunity to connect with real people and do real life with them. - Wow. Well, we got about five minutes left. And this is a fascinating story because it doesn't follow the predictable script. I think that a lot of church growth does these days. And it's fascinating because it's a story of transition. Now, almost the way it sounds, 'cause I know this isn't true, Ron, in your case, it almost sounds like everyone just stood up and applauded, but these haven't been the easiest two years. You've had some opposition to change as well. What has been the argument against change and then what have you found to be the hardest aspect of this over the last couple of years, personally? - You know, I don't know. I think the hardest thing for me has been, has been personally knowing when to press and when not to. The actual pushback has not been as hard. It has, and I've told our church, and this is probably just up until a month or so before my second anniversary, I consistently received more criticism than I received praise. Oh yeah, regardless of the number, it was just, you know, of what we were doing, experiencing growth and that sort of thing. And I'm not saying, because it's a wonderful church with a wonderful piece. - Sure, sure, sure, but I mean, that's reality, right? - But just in your number of feedback, I would receive two criticisms for every one praise. You know, it's just the way it was. And I think you've got to know that if you're coming into this, that that's going to be part of it. And then I have a church with very little filter when it comes to that, among some of the people. So knowing that coming in, that that was real possibility, but that honestly hasn't been the biggest struggle. The biggest struggle for me has been realizing, I can't do it the way I did it in a church plan. And so I have to adapt the change to the environment that I have here, which is going to be slower, which is going to mean I have to communicate more often, I have to bring more people along, I have to have more meetings before the meetings, you know, that sort of thing. It's laborsome, to be quite honest. But the biggest, the ultimate biggest challenge for me here has been leading with very intentional purpose without ever being self-serving or egotistical or arrogant. And, you know, and I have to continue to check my heart to be just gut, honest with you, Kerry, that I'm not doing this for me. I'm not doing it to brag about numbers or to be listed on a list somewhere. I don't care about those things, I really, really don't. I care about them in terms of the people they represent and the lives they represent. And I happen to look at this city and some 90% will go to church. Most, I mean, we have a large number of unsafe people in our community as every community does. And I feel a mandate to go after them. And if, if, and so trying to make sure I'm living the mission of this church, what this church has been doing for 105 years, and yet it'd be easier if I could just do it in a way that pleased me first, you know? And I can't. - Isn't that the challenge of every leader though, I think, or most of us anyway, whether you're doing a church plant or transitioning a church? It's to put that towel over your arm, to serve the people that you've been called to serve. That's huge and, you know. - And yet not let them walk over you either. - No, no, no, no. - That's not effective, you know? Jesus didn't do that and it's not effective just to say, "Oh, you don't like that, okay, we won't do it then." - That's a great point. - And so you've got to be intentional and purposeful. You've been called to this, I've been called to this. And yet at the same time, not ever forget that by the grace of God, I don't even deserve to stand here. - So when your inbox is filling up twice as often with complaints as it is with compliments, how'd you get through that? - That's what I'm deleting. (laughing) You know, I think, again, you just keep going back to the calling, you know? And the same way, hopefully you do with the positives. - Yeah. - You don't store them up, it look what I've done. You don't store up the criticism and look what I've done wrong. And I think it's the exact same approach. It's recognizing, asking yourself, "Am I, is this true? "Is it, I mean, is there something here I need to learn from? "Is there, is this representative, you know? "Is it larger?" And, you know, one of the biggest words somebody said to me years ago when I was in church planting, which was also equally full of criticism at times, especially among the church crowd in the Bible Belt. But, a seasoned pastor said to me, and I've used it so many times since then, and I was feeling beat up and he said, "Ron, you know what your problem is?" And I said, "No, what's my problem?" He said, "Your problem is you're looking "for your affirmation in the wrong place. "You need to seek your affirmation "among the people God sent you to minister to." And that has been a huge word to me. And when I look at the church, and I see this 105-year-old church that God has honored and blessed for long before I was even born and what the potential we have and what we're doing, you know, that those people who believe in this church and want to see this church go for it, they may not agree with everything I do, but they want to see this church succeed. Those are the people that God has sent me to minister to. And when they're affirming me by and large, okay, the few that are not going to get it anyway, you know, I can't do anything about that. - That's a good word. Now, we've got leaders who are on the front side of change who might be a little bit scared to see the two-to-one ratio. What would you say to them? - You know, I would say hopefully yours won't be the same way, you know? - Right. - But I think, you know, take time to step away. I step away a lot, you know, and don't be afraid to shut everything down just to spend time with God and with your family. And you'll get your inbox will be full, but you'll be full also and better able to handle that. So I think the more you're in those seasons, the more you have to discipline yourself to shut everything down for a little while and recover and go back, you know, go back into it again. And we saw Jesus continually doing that. And I think through that strength is where you keep plowing in. - Well, the time has flown today, Ron. It really, really has. And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the easiest way for them to connect with you and even read what you wrote? - The easiest way is just through my blog because everything is linked there. So it's RonEdinson.com, 2D's, Ron, E-D, M-O-N-D-S-O-N, and just you can find all the links there to connect with me. - That's great. You're a great follower, our great follow, I should say, on Twitter and social media as well. And Ron, hey, thank you so much for spending time with us. And thanks for encouraging leaders today. - Absolutely, thank you. - Well, how can you not love RonEdinson? Isn't he just a great guy? He's so down to Earth, he's so practical, and yet he's so smart and yet unassuming. I love that in a leader. And if you don't read or haven't read Ron's blog, you should really hop on over. It's a great investment. He blogs many times a week and he's always got some great insights. You can find his stuff at RonEdinson.com. And I will put the link right in the show notes. And if you go over to carryinguhoff.com/episode10, you can find the show notes there, along with some quotes from Ron and any link that we referred to or resource we referred to in this episode will be there, as always in the show notes. So it's carryinguhoff.com/episode10. And another reason I would love for you to head on over to the show notes is so that you could enter my first ever podcast contest. That's right, it's still going on. And today or this week, I'm gonna give away a copy of my book, "Leading Change Without Losing It." It's a signed copy. And all you have to do is leave a comment on this episode. And I'm gonna ask everybody, because this is in the name of "Leading Like Never Before" to answer a question while this contest is running. And so the question I would love for you to answer this week is what has been the biggest obstacle to change you faced and how have you overcome it? Pretty simple, but I'm sure you're trying to navigate change. If not in your church, in your organization, in your company, wherever you lead, it's just hard. So what has been the biggest obstacle to change you faced? How have you overcome it? When you answer that in the comment section, that is your ballot, not only to win the book this week, but after episode 11, we're gonna be giving away one free admission to Orange Conference 2015. That's almost a $300 value. Plus, you're gonna have coffee backstage with John Acuff last week's guest and myself. So that's the only ticket at the Orange Conference that includes that. So John and I would love to meet you. You'll get to go to Orange for free. We'll admit you to that conference for free. So time is running out on this podcast contest. So drop on by to karaetohoff.com/episode10. Help us answer today's question. That's your ballot. And we're all gonna learn together, isn't that kind of cool? So thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for all that you're doing. And thank you for all of you who have left ratings and reviews. And if you've enjoyed this, we're now up to 10 episodes. We've already heard from Andy Stanley, Casey Graham, Perry Noble, Cara Powell, Tony Morgan, John Acuff last week, and so many others. This is forming a little bit of a leadership library and that's what really excites me. So the easiest way to never miss an episode is to subscribe. You can do that on iTunes. You can do that on Stitcher. You can do that on TuneIn Radio. And thank you to everybody who has left a review or a comment. And thanks so much for the dialogue. We're gonna continue the leadership dialogue at my blog, KerryNewHoff.com this week. And that really just leaves us one thing, which is next week's episode. And my guest is gonna be Pete Wilson from Crosspoint Church in Nashville. Maybe you've read one of his books like Plan B or Empty Promises or maybe you watch the church online. They are an incredibly influential, fast growing church in Nashville, Tennessee. Pete is probably the coolest pastor. I think if you know Pete, he's just such a great guy. Eddie's so humble and he's so honest. And we're gonna talk about the incredible journey that God has got Crosspoint Church on and some of the lessons we can all learn from that. So don't miss episode 11. It's also when our contest closes. So make sure you subscribe now and never miss an episode. So thanks so much for tuning in. I really do hope that this has helped you lead like never before. - You've been listening to the KerryNewHoff Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (gentle music)