The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 006 – An Interview With Tony Morgan
(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 six of the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff. I'm so glad that you're here. And we are six episodes in now. And today's guest is Tony Morgan. We're gonna get to that in just a couple of minutes. Tony is a brilliant thinker and somebody I've known for a couple of years. He's helped us out at my church, Connectsus Church, North of Toronto, Canada. And he sat down about a month or two ago to do an interview. And it was really supposed to all be about teams. And we were gonna talk about your team and what's a good hire not a good hire. How do you work with volunteers? And then when we finished the interview and I kinda went back and listened to it again preparing for this episode, I realized that something really cool happened. It's very much about your teams and what do you do when you don't have the right people and how do you get the right people and who are the right people? But it actually throughout the interview, Tony kept talking about growth. And clearly one of the problems that a lot of churches have and learning how to grow their church is how to get the right team or even to position themselves if you're a leader on that team to accommodate growth. So really this has turned out to be an interview and an episode that's really all about growth. And what's really cool is, you know, often we go to conferences and seminars and you hear these guys, "Well, our church just started with three people." And a month later, it was 10,000. And you're like, "Well, that'll never happen." Or at least it hasn't happened. Tony's just got so much real world experience. This kind of works whether you have a church of 20 people and you're trying to see 30 people or you're trying to figure out how to prepare it to reach 200 or he works with a lot of mid-sized churches. So if you're maybe 400 trying to reach 600, what changes do you need to make? And Tony's had a lot of experience like New Spring Church and Granger Church. And so he understands very large churches as well. And these are some of the same principles that stop a church of 1,000 from becoming a church of 3,000. So I think you'll find it to be a fascinating interview and I'm so grateful Tony's a guest on the podcast and I just wanted to touch base with you on one or two other things before we jumped in. First of all, thank you to everybody who has jumped in on the Orange Tour this fall. It is almost over, at least for me. There's a number of stops. You can go to orangetour.org. But if you want to connect and you live in the Texas area, I'm going to be at a stop in Austin, Texas on November 4th and November 7th in Dallas, Texas. So that's a Tuesday and a Friday. I would love to see you there. I'm hosting a leaders lunch. I'll tell you more about that at the end of the podcast. But in the meantime, just go to orangetour.org or you can hop over to the show notes at carrynewhough.com/episode6 and we'll get those ready for you. Also, on the note of Teams, I just want to say thank you to the team that has helped us put this podcast together. There's a couple of people who have worked really hard in the background. And first of all, Toby Lyles is the audio producer for this podcast. He's with 24sound.com. He does just a great job. And he's a guy who makes us sound good. I record this in Toronto, North of Toronto. And then he's in Denver and he takes care of everything there and gets it uploaded. And he's amazing. So Toby, thank you. And then Kevin Jennings. Kevin has done a great job. Just sort of masterminding this with me, trying to figure out how to launch a podcast, how to launch it well, how to angle it. And he's just been great. So I just want to say because Teams are everything. Thanks to you, Toby. And thanks to you, Kevin, for helping leaders lead like never before because you're a huge part of what happens here. And so with that, I want to get right into today's interview. And I think you're really going to enjoy it. Tony is currently the chief strategic officer. I love what he calls himself of some company called the Unstuck Group. And you may know him from his blog, Tony Morgan Live. He's also written numerous books, a few with Tim Stevens, who he worked with for a season at Granger Community Church. And then also written some others solo and is also wrote a whole series called the Leisure Suit Series, which is great. So anyway, you're going to love hearing from Tony. And without much more, let's jump right into the interview. Well, I'm so excited to have my friend, Tony Morgan. With us today, hey, Tony. Hi, Kerry, it's good to be with you. Yeah, great to see you again. And well, we're sort of seeing each other, even though it's an audio podcast, but yeah. Hey, Tony, you've had-- I think of all the people I've known. You've had an opportunity to work at a number of leading churches, and also spent some time in the marketplace for people who are in business or whatever. Tell us a little bit about what got you to where you are and what you're doing right now. Yeah, I'm probably the odd church leader out there. And that I started out with a business degree, and then actually my graduate degrees in public administration. Because for about 10 years, I was in the career track of local government. I was one of those government bureaucrats, Kerry. That's what prepared me for ministry. That's amazing. Yeah, there aren't a whole lot of stories like that. But was that in Indiana? Well, we did the Midwest tour. My wife calls it the Big Ten Tour, if you're into college football. Because we made stops in Ohio and Illinois and Michigan and Indiana. So yeah, a number of places along the way, as I was getting started in that career. Cool. And then you jumped into church world, right? Because you were attending. It was at Granger, really, that you jumped in. Yeah, it had about a nine-year run at Granger Community Church way back when we used to wear ties to the office. That tells you how long ago it was, Kerry. I barely remember that day. We didn't have an office when there were ties. So by the time offices came along for us, there were no ties left. Thank goodness that we eventually started casual Fridays, I guess. I don't know what would happen to the ministry if that never came along. Yeah, and millennials are going, what? What? An everyday casual? OK. So you worked at Granger, and then a few years ago, you left Granger and tell us where you went. And you've had a couple of other churches since then on what you're doing now. Yeah, so yeah, I spent about two and a half years with Perry Noble at New Spring, and helping them get multi-site, among other things, launched. And then, yeah, about five years ago, started to get more involved with leadership coaching and primarily consulting with churches. That's the core of what we do now as a team, and helping churches really get unstuck, help them take next steps with their ministry strategy. And so with that, launched the unstuck group and have a team of about 10 people now, helping churches throughout the US and now into Canada as well. Yeah, that's great. You came up and helped us a couple of years ago, and just like super, super helpful stuff. We've had so many personality profiles done. I guess when you're a dysfunctional personality like me, you need that. But yours were incredible, and they really helped us see our team through a whole new light, and we hope to be working together again next year on some of these things. So, Tony, does some great work. You're also a Cleveland fan, true. That's right. And you can tell I'm truly a Cleveland. Yeah, I follow the Indians, and then the Cleveland Browns football team, and just so you know, Kerry, this year is a pretty significant year, 'cause it's been exactly 50 years since Cleveland has won any sports championship of any sort. So, it's quite a dry spell. Good. It could be a Toronto Maple Leafs fan at the moment. So, okay, well, let's jump into it, Tony. That's a great introduction for those of us who are getting to know you. Now, you're pretty passionate about helping churches get unstuck, hence your unstuck group, which is really the name of your organization that helps churches. But one of the places churches get stuck in on a regular basis is in hiring staff and in structuring teams. And that's kind of what you specialize in. So, let's just look at it from a mistake perspective. So, what mistakes do you see churches making with staff? And then for those of you who don't have staff, we're gonna get to that in the podcast too. Well, actually, I almost like to start there, Kerry, because I think a lot of it has to do with how the teams are structured, whether it's staff or volunteers, lay leaders, because we don't look at really how God designed the body of Christ. And within the body of Christ, you know, for the church to be healthy, for the body to be healthy, there needs to be representation of all the parts, all the gifts. And so one of the biggest mistakes I see churches making is when they're identifying their first staff or when they're identifying who in their leadership team is gonna be serving at a higher level in a lay leadership capacity. One of two mistakes, either they just senior pastors try to identify people just like them because they assume, if I'm a leader and I'm wired the way I am, then all leaders probably should be wired the way I am. And of course, when that happens, you may have great strength in one aspect of the ministry, but you're not gonna be a healthy ministry because most of the other gifts will be missing. And then the other mistake related to this is especially when a church is smaller, but I've seen even larger churches move in this direction as well, we kind of ignore the giftedness of people as we're building the team and we're just looking for availability. And I get that because Sunday is always coming and it takes a lot of effort to pull off our experiences on our worship experiences on Sunday when it comes not only to the message obviously for the teaching pastors, but worship music and guests and children's ministry and so on. There's just a lot of responsibilities and that's always coming. And so a lot of times we're just trying to find the person who's available, who's a hard worker, we know they're gonna follow through and we need lots and lots of people like that in order to accomplish the ministry God has for us. But until we find leaders that have those unique gifts and balance out the body of Christ and kind of share the load when it comes to caring for and ministering to and then ultimate leading and managing people, either volunteers or staff. If we don't do a good job there, then we're gonna find that our staff team is struggling and that of course is gonna impact the health of the entire church. - Well, those are two great places to start. So if I heard you right, you identified two things. Number one, leaders who try to reproduce themselves. It's just like a whole bunch of minimes running around the organization, which is not healthy. And then availability over ability, which I think are two great things. Let's drill down on that a little bit. So, I mean, there is a tendency to look for people just like you and you're saying that's not healthy. - Yeah, so I'll give you a couple of examples. I was working with a church several years ago and they went through the assessment just like you did, Carrie, and I found that there were about, I had probably about a dozen leaders from the team that took the assessment. And the senior pastor was very fast paced. Kind of, he was on a mission. And for him, he was always moving on to the next new idea. I mean, just a great visionary. And the church benefited through their strong vision through the years. - Absolutely. - But everybody on the team at the pastor and director level, whether it was staff or volunteers, they all shared kind of that same wiring in them. They were always looking to the next brand new idea. With the exception of one person on the team, that person was the direct opposite personality. A little bit slower paced, definitely more systems focused. They're kind of the person that wanted to make sure all the eyes are dotted and all the T's were crossed. You want to guess what role that person had, Carrie? - Pastoral care. - Oh no, admin, admin, admin. That's right. And so, the woman that was in that position was constantly on the other guys, get your check request submitted. Make sure you're following the procedures. Ironically, she was the person that was keeping everybody else on the team out of jail. But it was a good reflection of the fact that in healthy organizations, we need the vision component, but we also need the person that's thinking about how do we execute? How do we make the next steps? And then, I've seen other churches, one senior pastor, just a great shepherd leader. I mean, you mentioned caring for people. I mean, he just had a big heart and loved people. And it was interesting, everybody on his team had that same personality. I mean, they were just a very caring people. I just pictured them, you know, sitting in their staff meetings, their leadership team meetings, just kind of holding hands and singing the whole time. Now, what was ironic about that church is they called me in, because they were struggling to figure out what the future vision was gonna look like for the church. And the reason why they were struggling with that is nobody on the team had that in their wiring. There was no one that was naturally thinking about where do we go next. And all good examples of, if we're not careful, if we just hire like, we're wired up, we can pretty quickly get to a dysfunctional situation, particularly when it comes to our leadership teams. - Yeah, you know, you raised some really good points, and this is something I've had to learn over the years, and you certainly helped us see it. But we had a director of operations for several years, who was fantastic, like just really, really amazing. And she and I would go in meetings. And I mean, we got along great, but there was always a little bit of tension because I was that future guy. I'm like, what's next, what's new, no details, like don't slow me down. And she would not let me leave the room without going, okay, well, who's gonna follow up with this? And I mean, that's not even important. Let's just imagine it, you know, then it'll magically happen. You know, some of us are wired that way. And it took, it was a learned behavior for me to understand, and for her to a certain extent, we both bring value to the team. We just bring it in very different ways. And as much as I need her bent on administration, she needs my bent on vision. And then the second thing I would say, which was so helpful, when you did our whole staff profile, you put us, it's gonna be hard to describe in an audio format, but basically on a clock or a pizza. And so if it's a clock, I was kind of at 2.30 or 3 o'clock. And then we had a couple of staff members who are around at 8.30 in the evening, kind of thing, you know. And we were at opposite sides of the clock. And that's where there was a lot of tension, not tension, tension, but you know, if it's like, I had a hard time understanding where they were coming from, and they certainly had a hard time understanding where I was coming from. And a lot of that, right, is just awareness. It's just understanding we all play a role. We all have something to do here. And the body of Christ is richer for it. And I know for me, I've had to learn just like, okay, these people are not gonna respond the way I would to something. And I'm not gonna respond the way they would. And neither's wrong. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about? - Yeah, I mean, just kind of preaching. - Let me give you a personal example. As I'm building the team for the Unstuck group, my natural wiring is more kind of future focused, and there's a mission to get accomplished. That's my wiring. I'm about the mission. I just hired another guy for our team, who is kind of, he is. He's the direct opposite of me. He's a little bit slower paced. So he's thinking about how we need to execute those next steps. And he's much more relational than I am. He's just much more people focused. And it's just funny because as I'm kind of building the business, building our ministry to churches, I'm always thinking about the next new thing we need to be doing, the next relationship, the next engagement. And I've never prioritized how to extend a longer relationship, even though I know in the back of my mind, as we extend longer relationships with churches, there's going to be more impact through years. And so he's the one now that's pushing me to think, hey, Tony, you might actually need to pick up the phone and talk with some of the pastors you've actually worked with in the past. - Right. - Because they probably still need some encouragement and some challenge and so on. So it's just a great picture of how people with kind of that opposite bent really do compliment us better and make us better and certainly make the team better in the long run. - I wonder if that's a little bit like marriage. We all think we're marrying somebody who's so like us. And then a few years into it, you realize, I kind of married my opposite. And that happens over and over again, but that's so healthy. I mean, it's just you're so much richer for it. And for me, I think I become a better leader 'cause I become more aware of that. And now I have to, sometimes it's a learned behavior, but just value people who are different than me. Value people who have the opposite reaction to me. And I think that can be a real gift. Okay, so that's a really good insight into hiring yourself over and over again. I'd be terrified of an organization with lots of knees in it. But so let's look at the second issue that you identified then, availability versus ability if you wanna phrase it that way, right? That you're just desperate. You just need people and this person volunteered and a whole bunch of other people didn't. So you went with them and now you've got the wrong team, whether that's staff or volunteers. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so, and I think this again, this is particularly an issue that smaller churches need to pay attention to Carrie because early on, that's just, and I get it. When the church is smaller, whether it's a church plant or whatever your situation is, I understand the need to just find people to fill spots to make sure that things get done. But you can't stop there. As you move forward, you have to begin to identify leaders for roles that are gonna influence so that you're not the only one that's carrying the leadership and that includes both the mission of what needs to be accomplished, but the care that we need to provide people, it's the care side where discipleship happens and where accountability happens at a deeper level. It's where the relational aspects of what it is to be in ministry on mission together take place. We need to find leaders that can handle that responsibility. And so when we're looking for people to step into again, whether it's volunteer lay leadership roles or staff leadership roles, we have to move beyond just the hard worker, just the person who's available to get it done and begin to take it up a notch and begin to look for the person that has the capacity to lead, manage, or influence others. Let me give you an example of where I see this play out most often in the area of children's ministry. And I know Carrie, you have a particular heart for children's ministers. - Sure do. - It's not unusual when a church is smaller to identify the person who not only is available but they absolutely love kids. And in a smaller church setting, that is the win. You're looking for the person who just absolutely loves being engaged with kids. They love teaching them, they love being creative with them, they love relating with them. All of that is phenomenal until the church starts to experience growth. And then it's not unusual for that children's minister to become the lid to growth in the church. And the reason why is their sole focus ends up being ministry directly to the kids and they don't think about their leadership responsibility of empowering other leaders. And so sometimes this might sound crazy but in children's ministry, the win isn't finding the person that most loves children. The win is finding the leader who best equips others to love children. And that's where I see churches who are smaller and are trying to make that bump from the smaller church to a mid-sized church of several hundred. That's one of the biggest leadership challenges I see them make is that either the staff that they have or the key lay leaders that they have are so focused on getting the task done, that developing other leaders, equipping other leaders and powering other leaders is not even on their radar. And for them to go to the next level, that's precisely the type of leadership challenge that they're gonna have to embrace. - I think that's a really good point because I think most people wanna see their church grow, not for growth's sake, but because you wanna be as effective in your mission as you possibly can. And yeah, I'm somebody who's at the privilege of leading very, very small churches are actually really one church through a bunch of different phases from micro, like tiny, six people, right up to what we have today. And that was a big transition to make to go from like 50 people or a couple dozen people to several hundred. All of a sudden it's a different team that's able to lead at that level. And then to go from several hundred to almost a thousand, you need a different skill set. So if people who are listening, if leaders are navigating that right now, is that the big change they need to make? Like moving from people who want to directly be hands on to people who can lead leaders? - Well, that's the first big transition is moving from I'm doing it myself to I'm finding others that I can begin to delegate to and share that responsibility. But Kerry, there's actually another step. And this is where I see kind of the mid-sized church struggling to get to a larger church. So moving from several hundred to a thousand or more as an example, it's moving, it's the leaders moving from delegation. I'm just giving tasks to other people to actually empowering others. There's a distinction there with delegation. I'm still on top of every task. I assign every task. I train how to do the task correctly. I monitor that the task gets done. When the task gets done, I sign more tasks. And the challenge with delegation, and by the way, all good leaders learn how to delegate well. But for the leaders that don't go beyond that type of leadership, the challenge is any decision that comes along, they have to make the decision. - You become a bottleneck, right? - Yes, that's exactly right. And so the leader becomes the bottleneck. And so in some churches, that bottleneck ends up being the senior pastor. In other churches, I see it's that next tier of leaders that could be the student pastor, the children's pastor, the education pastor, whatever the case might be. If you never move beyond delegation to empowerment, empowerment, kind of the picture of that is we embrace the same mission, vision, values. Within that, we also establish clear expectations of where we're going. All of that is key. We have to have that level of accountability. But then once that framework is set, we give people the freedom to make decisions on their own. And yeah, we coach them along the way. They're gonna make some dumb decisions along the way. And we have to redirect them. But until we can move from delegation to really empowering other leaders, it's gonna be a lid on the growth and the impact that we can have in our ministry. - I think those are really good insights, Tony. So for leaders who are going, okay, that's me. I'm at the small to mid-sized church phase right now. I'm doing it all myself, I've got a leader who's doing it all herself or himself. Why is it so difficult for leaders to make that leap? And then the same question for the second step, which is going from delegation to really release and allowing people to lead. Why is that such a difficult transition for so many leaders? 'Cause the majority don't make it, right? - Yeah, I think the first jump from doing it myself to delegation really has more to do with that sense of we're good at this. And I've done this in the before. I know if I continue to do it, I can do a good job at it. When we release that to somebody else, it's not comfortable for us. We were concerned that it won't be done as well. Honestly, I think a little bit of pride also creeps in that people like me because I do this one thing very well. And if I stop doing that, then I'm gonna, how am I gonna, well, people still like me. So I think that's the biggest leap from that. I'm doing it myself to delegation. I think the step from delegation to empowerment is a slightly different deal. And I think that honestly, Kerry has more to do with control issues. We think as leaders that we have to be on top of every specific detail and not only what gets done, but how it gets done, that's signifying. We probably have some control issues that we're gonna have to get over. And again, you can get your church into a very funky place and personally get into a very funky place. If you think you need to dictate everything that gets done and how it gets done. And again, it's gonna be very uncomfortable. This is probably a bit of pride that we have to release. But the body of Christ was intended to use many people to equip many people within the framework of the gifts, spiritual gifts that they have. And so if we think we have to dictate everything, we're not embracing the power of equipping people to use their gifts. If we feel like we have to tell people specifically what to do and how to do it, we're not use it while allowing them to shape their ministry based on the unique giftedness God gave them. So again, these are two common lids that I see for churches that are trying to move beyond 100 or so, 150 so to hundreds or thousands. But their common themes carry that I see as churches try to take those next steps. - Do you think, Tony, that some of that is an internal battle as well? - I know for me, as a younger leader and trying to move from that very small church to the medium sized church, there were some insecurity issues I had to deal with, right? 'Cause you kind of like to be at the center of it. And sometimes you think you're good at something until you actually see somebody who's good at it do it. And then you realize I'm not very good at that at all. Do you think security or some of those personal things hold people back sometimes? - Well, certainly, and I mean, the other thing here is I do, I've seen pastors who are very gifted preachers. And I think a strong gift like that can carry a church for a number of years and a lot of growth, but only do a certain place. And then you're gonna notice that one person with one strong gift won't allow you to get to the next level. And frankly, I think that's like, again, God designed the church. If it were just one person, one gift, I think that, again, pride could sit in. Sin could sit in our lives as a set in into our lives as leaders. And I think to protect us, he doesn't allow a church to grow beyond just one person and one strong gift. - Right on. I think one of the other issues I encountered trying to go from delegation to empowerment was there's sometimes this tension between delegation and abdication where, okay, well, I'm not just gonna delegate and micromanage anymore. But then as a leader, it was very easy for me. In fact, my default would be to abdicate, like, okay, I won't ever ask about this. But the reality is somewhere in between empowerment does not mean abdication, does it? - Right, that's right. And really, you're getting at the core of what we work with churches through the unstuck group, Kerry, because we've recognized in order for empowerment to work, there has to be clear mission. There has to be clear specific picture of where the church is going into the future. There have to be a set of core values that we embrace as a team. But beyond that, the action initiatives that the church is trying to engage, those have to be clear at the organizational level then at the individual level. And if you don't have that framework of clarity, then you can't have accountability, which is the issue that you're talking about is empowerment is gonna be fruitless too if it isn't married to accountability. Because if you just try to empower people without that accountability, they're just gonna go off and they may have a sense of where they think the organization is going, but eventually, that's what divide churches is you have individuals with their unique gifts and their unique passions, doing what they believe God's really called them as individuals to do. But without that umbrella of that framework of what the church is trying to accomplish, the church's mission, then that's where churches begin to splinter. - Yeah, I can see that for sure. And I think one of the fears, if you haven't done the hard work, 'cause it is hard work of defining your mission and vision. I mean, beyond love, God, love people, right? - That's right. You can get so much under that mission. It's not specific or clear, but when you define your strategy, you define your values, we just spend a year defining our values as a church. I mean, that takes time and it's a lot of work. But when you get clarity around that, then you can kind of empower and you don't have to go to bed at night wondering or worrying, are people gonna run the church off in different directions? Because if you empower, but you don't have that central framework of clarity around mission, vision, values, and strategy, then you end up with people running in multiple directions in competing visions. - That's right. And so people will be very busy if you don't have that and they're gonna feel like they're accomplishing a lot. But if everybody's not pulling in the same direction, of course, usually that's another indication of when a church starts to get stuck. - Yeah. Now, one of the frameworks I've heard you use in the past and you helped us a lot with it, was this idea of leaders of 50s, 100s, and 1000s. Can you say a little bit more about that? Because that was so clarifying. - Yeah, and that's really an extension of the conversation we've just had. The leader of 50s, they tend to lead by example. They model for others. This is how we do things. These are the values that we embrace. This is the strategy we use. And particularly in a startup situation, whether you're launching a church or launching a ministry, leading by example is pretty important. But leaders will, if you're a lead, I'm sorry, this is a leader of 10s. - Oh yeah, leader of 10s. - Leader of 10s, yeah. So they're leading by example. Yeah, we're, of course, reflecting on the passage in Exodus 18 where Jethro gives Moses a little bit of coaching because Moses is trying to do it all himself. And they talk about raising up other capable leaders. - And just to add to that, a little bit of context, if you wonder where this comes from, the idea behind it that I found so helpful was that some people are really best to lead 10 people. They're really designed to lead 10 people. Some people are designed to lead 50, some hundreds. And only a few have the capacity to lead thousands and understanding the person that you're putting in a position will help you position them well for the future. You try to put a person who can lead naturally wired to lead 10 people into a position where you expect them to lead 500, you're asking for trouble. - That's right. - So yeah, just continue to say more about that because I think it's so helpful. - Yeah, so the leader of 10s, again, they lead by example, the leader of 50s, they learn how to lead others. And primarily that is through delegation. And so, of course, as you move to that level of leadership, you can accomplish a lot more ministry. But like I said earlier, you can get stuck there too if you're the one having to make all the decisions. And so, some leaders make that step to leader of hundreds then where they learn to lead other leaders. And that's where that ability to empower others comes into play. Now it's interesting, Kerry, I'll see some senior pastors as an example where they'll learn how to empower other leaders and church will experience growth and might be 1,500 or 2,000 people gathering. And I still get the phone call though, where they get stuck. And the reason why they get stuck is they don't go to that leader of thousands which is primarily leading through clear vision and also making sure that that culture of leadership development, mentoring, discipleship is embraced throughout the leadership structure. And so that's how I perceive those leaders of 10s, 50s, 100s and 1000s really being incorporated in the structure that I see in churches. - Yeah, and so just to make this super practical, a leader of 10s basically, are they ever a good staff hire or are they the kind of people who would make great small group leaders, great volunteers in a ministry? Like would you ever hire someone who's got a capacity of 10 as a full-time staff member? - Well, you know, I've never been in a small church situation, Kerry, so I'm hesitant to say no. You shouldn't do that. - Well, I have been out saying no. - Okay, all right, well, good. Now we've confirmed that. Yeah, I mean, and that's a thing too, and as you just alluded to, we need many, many, many, many, many, many leaders of 10s. That's really the core of the church. When you have people leading and influencing in their circle of relationships, whether that's a small group or a ministry team or a missions team, whatever that looks like, we need many healthy leaders of 10s. - Yeah, and then obviously for staff hires, I mean, if you've got somebody who really has a scale to look after 50 people and maybe five of them are in their inner circle or hundreds or certainly thousands, which is a rarer leader to find, that's when you start to hire. And I think one of the mistakes a lot of churches can make, Tony, and just love your feedback on it, is they hire people with too small a number. And it might be, especially in a small church, do you think sometimes it's because they know the person or they applied or they feel this pastoral commitment to helping the person out because they're between jobs? Does that ever come into play in churches? - Yeah, that could certainly come into play, but let me get more pointed for you, not only for smaller churches, but I see this happening in larger churches as well. Karrion, again, it goes back to those control issues that I mentioned earlier, is honestly, a lot of times, I think pastors hire people that are leaders of tens because they're easier to control. They're, it's easier to tell people that are at that level of leadership what to do and make sure they follow through. And so it's a lot harder. There has to be a lot more intentionality to lead leaders of 50s and leaders of hundreds and certainly leaders of thousands. And because of that, whether they're consciously making the decision or not, I think pastors or they just find it a lot easier to hire people who are leaders of tens. - Such a good point because, I mean, there's a season, I think, for all of us who start in smaller contexts where, you know, hopefully you don't think I'm the smartest person in the room, but you might actually be the smartest person in the room for a season. But if you stay the smartest person in the room, that is a problem. And I know for me, part of the journey as a leader has been getting really comfortable with people who are smarter than I am, better than I am, more gifted than I am being in the room and just giving them areas of responsibility and realizing I'm kind of a specialist in like two or three areas. And I might not even be the best, but as Andy Stanley often says, the reason I got the job was 'cause I was first, right? - Yes, that's right. - Not the best, I'm just first. And that can be a very difficult journey to make as a leader. Yeah, and you see that, do you? - Oh, definitely, yeah. And it's one of the advantages of starting my own business too. Now, Kerry is, I was the first one, so I still get to keep my job. (laughing) - That's right, you get to do that, absolutely. Tony, we got just a couple minutes left. Anything else you see in terms of mistakes that churches are making when it comes to team, staff or volunteer? - Yeah, well, I think it's just good to acknowledge to as ministry as we work through the years and culture shifts and as our churches shift and I'm praying for growth and ministries as that happens, your structure will need to shift as well. And it actually, the structure probably needs to shift more often than we would think. And in some faster growing churches, that may be an every 12 to 18 month revisit that needs to take place just to make sure that our structure is growing with the size, the body of Christ. It's very similar to just our physical body. Our skeleton has to grow as our body grows. And so I see that happening in organizations, particularly in churches. But the other key thing here, Kerry, to remember when it comes to structure is that structure should follow strategy. - Okay. - Form should follow a function and a lot of times I see churches, praying to get to a new place in their ministry, then developing vision and strategy to get to a new place. But then they try to cram that strategy onto their existing structure and it just doesn't work. You have to revisit structure if you're trying to get to a new place in your ministry. And so whether that's we're gonna embrace multi-site, whether that's we're gonna embrace a new approach to discipleship, whether that's a, we're gonna embrace a new approach to reaching our community, whatever the case might be. If your strategy is shifting, your structure has to shift. And what that means, of course, is just to cut to the bottom line, you're probably gonna have to invest new resources in new areas, new growth engines, both spiritual growth and numerical growth for your church. You're probably gonna have to invest some resources in new areas like that to experience growth, which means on the flip side, because money doesn't grow on trees and money resources aren't available, that may mean that some places where we've invested in the past, we may have to reduce in those areas. And I know those are tough decisions to make, but those are the types of decisions that growing healthy churches acknowledge that the same infrastructure, the same skeleton that got them to one level of growth will not get them to the next level of growth. - And that also means change for how a leader responds to the team and to the congregation, right? I mean, if you're leading a church of 50 people, you can pretty much visit everybody and talk to them and do the pastoral care, but at two or 300, you just can't do that anymore. And the people who are used to seeing you don't see you as much anymore. And even where we are as a church, I mean, we're restructuring right now, bringing on another senior leader. And even with our staff team of a dozen, people who used to report directly to me aren't gonna report directly to me anymore. They're gonna report to this other executive director we've hired, and that can be difficult, both for the leader and also for the people involved unless you handle it well. Is that one of the other changes? It's restricted access to people you used to have access to. - Yeah, and of course, when I was back in the marketplace, we used to talk about span of control when it comes to structure and ministry, I think of it more in terms of span of care. With span of care, good leaders, I mean, even the best leaders, I think, can care for men, and maybe as many as five to seven people. For me, I think my lid is five. Once it grows beyond five, it's very difficult. I may be able to stay on top of the tasks that need to get get accomplished, but once it grows beyond five people, it's difficult for me to really know them, to know where their challenges, where are they struggling? One clear sign for me is I just don't know specifically how to pray for them when there are too many people. And so that's just kind of a, you need to figure out what your span of care is, and then as the church grows, you have to be intentional about making sure you don't creep beyond what's appropriate for you. And the thing to remember, of course, when it gets unhealthy for you, it gets unhealthy for the leaders that you are the people that you're trying to lead as well. - That is so new. - And I know that's gonna be a difficult challenge, particularly for someone as charming and as winsome as you. - There you go. - If I've been reporting to you, Kerry, for a number of years. And now the church is growing to a place where I can't report to you anymore. That's gonna be a challenging season for us to work through together, but it absolutely has to happen for you to go to a different place in your leadership. And for me to go to a different place in my leadership as well. - And some people might actually be excited about it in some of the conversations we've had this summer. Somebody said, "I'm really looking forward to growing under another leader." And I'm like, "That's awesome. That's great." So Tony, here's, we're wrapping up. But if there was one thing our listeners could do, leaders could do in the next week or the next month to just get structure on their radar or optimal staffing on their radar, is there like one thing or maybe it's two or three that leaders could do that would just say, "Okay, now we're gonna start tackling this whole issue and avoid the mistakes so many leaders make." And any advice there? - Well, I could probably give you a number of books to read or things like that, but I really do think even for a guy like me who's really, I love the mission, I love the tasks. When it comes to stuff like this, really growing in my leadership, most oftentimes that's happened through somebody else. And I would suggest that no matter what size your church is, there's somebody else leading at a level the next step above where you are. That may be a friend that's a pastor at a different church. That may be somebody in your church that's leading a business that is at a different level. Whatever the case might be, I think that would be the optimal next step that folks should take care of is just to identify, be intentional about identifying who that person is. And don't ask them to mentor you, just ask them to go out with lunch for you or go out to coffee with you and go prepared with some questions that you can ask them about the types of staffing, leadership and structure changes they had to make to go to the next level. And go with those questions, ask the questions and just listen. Boy, I tell you what, if there's one thing that frustrates me more as church leaders that think they have all the answers and they sit down with me and they're just, they're telling me all the great things that are happening in their church. Great, now I wanna hear what the challenges are. What's gonna help you get from where you are to where God wants you to be? - Why did you bring me in? I'm trying to remember it. (laughing) - That's a good point, Tony. Listen, I'm sure they're gonna be people who wanna get in touch with you more. So if we wanna find you, what's the easiest way to find you? - Yeah, so I personally, I share leadership insights at my website, tonymorganlive.com. But more importantly, the unstuck group is like I mentioned, trying to serve churches, help churches get unstuck, help them have a bigger impact. And so you can go to the unstuckgroup.com to look for that type of help. - That's great. - On Twitter, Facebook, all of that. And I've been reading your blog for years. It was one of the first leadership blogs I started to read years ago. And thanks for doing what you do. And thank you so much, Tony, for taking time today. - Thank you, Kerry. - That was kind of neat how that worked out, isn't it? That we started talking about teams and really ended up with a podcast all about teams and growth and what happens when you don't know how to lead, man, I've been there. I mean, haven't gone from six people to almost a thousand today and trying to figure out how to lead teams. And, you know, I remember being the only staff and part time and all of that. Like, man, there's a lot of issues there and a lot of potential there. So I really hope that helped you lead like never before. And if that's helped you, maybe you want more, you can just go to the show notes. It's episode six on my website. So you go to KerryNewHoff.com/episode numeral six, episode six, and you'll find everything there, including all the links to where you can find more about Tony, please read his blog. Like I said, it was one of the first I ever read when blogging was new, TonyMorganLive.com. And if you wanna learn more about what he's doing right now with his organization and maybe how they can help you go to the unstuckgroup.com. And Tony's just a wealth of resources online and in-person and he's just great to follow. So Tony, thanks so much for helping us lead that way. And if you found this podcast helpful, please do leave a rating. If you would be one of those really awesome people who just takes a few minutes and goes to iTunes or Stitcher or TuneIn Radio, and just leave an honest review, I would so appreciate that. That really impacts the algorithm and nobody really knows how it impacts the iTunes algorithm. But when you leave a review, iTunes pays attention to that, helps with the search engine results and really helps people find the podcast and you'll be helping other leaders lead better. And you'll help me learn how this has been helpful or maybe where we could improve. So I'd love for you to leave a rating and a review on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio where we're available for this podcast. So today's podcast is sponsored by the Orange Tour. The Orange Tour is a US tour that helps you raise your family ministry team, I think your whole team to the next level. And you can join me. I've got a couple more stops I'm going to. So coming up, I'm gonna be in Austin, Texas and Dallas, Texas on November 4th and November 7th respectively. I would love to see you there. For more information, you can go to the orangetour.org and click on events and you can register for those cities or just jump onto my blog to the show notes carrynewhough.com/episode6 and you can get everything there. And I'm hosting a leaders lunch speaking on the Orange Tour and would love to meet you in person. So please drop by for that. Now next episode, you're gonna hear from Ted Cunningham. Ted's gonna talk all about millennials, that whole age group sort of 18 to 30 and delayed adolescence. Now this is fascinating from a number of perspectives. I mean, delayed adolescence is something we've seen rise in the last 20 years, right? You don't wanna be 40 years old living in your parents basement playing video games. But for a lot of reasons, young adults are having difficulty or maybe more accurately, you'll see parents are having difficulty allowing young adults to launch. And Ted's kind of an expert on that. It's a fascinating conversation. So you can listen to this one with your parenting hat on and also with your leadership hat on because of course a lot of folks are now in the workplace and that's become an employment issue. And maybe your boss who's frustrated by millennial workers, I happen to love working with millennials. That's my bias, but we've got some great millennials on our team and Ted gives us incredible insight into how delayed adolescence works. So he's an author written a lot of books with Dr. Gary Smalley. He's gonna be on the next episode next week. So best way to make sure you don't miss it is to subscribe and again, head on over to iTunes to do that Stitcher or TuneIn radio. Leave a rating if you would and we're gonna continue the dialogue on karaenuhoff.com. And for all of you who listened to the very end, here's a treat. In upcoming episodes, we are gonna be giving away something really cool. We're gonna be giving away admission to the Orange Conference next year. So you can win a pass for Orange Conference in April 2015. It's gonna be awesome. And if you tune in next week, we'll have more details about that. In the meantime, if you got questions about this show or anything, just jump on to karaenuhoff.com/episodes. Leave a comment and I will be on those comments this week. I would love to hear from you. Thanks so much. We'll see you next week. Hopefully this helped you lead like never before. - You've been listening to the "Karaenuhoff Leadership Podcast." Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]