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Nobody Signs Up for Difficult, but It's What You Need · Church Staff Book Club

• Jonathan Malm: Everyone sees themselves as David in the David Caluris Goliath story. Hey, welcome back to the Church Staff Book Club. My name is Jonathan Malm. And I'm Jason Young. And we are talking for our fifth week about how to get a return on failure. This is the book that we're going through. ⁓ if you're new to the podcast, our goal is to learn together. We pick a book. Every episode of the podcast, we go through one chapter of the book. We bring our ideas, our personal experience. ⁓ kind of contextualizing it to people who work primarily in churches. Our goal is that we can learn better together. ⁓ whether you're exploring as a church staff, following along with the podcast, or you're just doing it as an individual. We just believe that when more ideas come together, we get better learning. So that's our goal. ⁓ chapter five, this whole book, of course, is about failure and how to get a return on failure, how to get good stuff out of failure. But this one ⁓ was The chapter was embrace the value of hard. ⁓ failure being a part of difficult things, right? Like it is difficult, so you will fail. That's kind of the how this ties into the book. But what was what was something that you got the most out of this, Jason? Well, there's a cliche phrase that we've all heard. ⁓ but I wanna so I want to say it and then maybe say something differently about it. We we often hear growth lives on the other side of difficulty, and we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But how many people do you know that volunteer to go through difficulty? Not a lot of people, but this chapter reminds me of kind of classic Maxwell ⁓ writing and and content. And he's advocating: hey, look, hard is not the enemy. Yeah. Hard is often your your teacher. So for me, it's what would it look like if we didn't spend our lives trying to? Maybe avoid or avoid hard. It reminds me of the ⁓ what's the movie? ⁓ dodgeball, when you know he's kind of throwing the wrenches and what's saying, like dodge, duck, you know, forget like kind of his his sayings there. And it's doing the same thing with hard. Like we dodge and we duck and we avoid hard. But but what if we looked at hard as a growth accelerator because we chose to sit and walk. sit in it and walk through it. And that's my takeaway from this chapter is what would it look like, Jason, if you didn't dodge and duck hard, but you sat in it, you stayed in it, you walked through it, and it may be the very growth accelerator that changes everything versus what you think will change everything. Yeah, it kind of I as I was reading it, I'm reading it obviously through my lens of I'm currently running a company S Sunday Social. And it's funny because when we started ⁓ we were new to the industry. So we were like it was like David versus Goliath, right? ⁓ everyone everyone sees themselves as David in the David Gliss Goliath story. No one sees them as Goliath, right? But we grew and we grew rapidly. And then suddenly we were the Goliath. I I know me and my business partner had to had to make this like mentality change of like, you know, we're like, ⁓ someone's stealing our graphics. And it's just like this guy that's, you know, trying to trying to serve 20 people and like We go after him as if we're David. We're like, let's throw some rocks at him. And realizing like, ⁓ he's the David. We're the Goliath. Like we're attacking him, even though he's in the wrong, right? He's like stealing stuff, right? But like realizing that we're the Goliath in the situation. So we're coming in with force. And that's but then it it just makes me think that like there's always, you know, everyone everyone's trying to get no one's trying to become Goliath, but everyone's trying to get past that like underdog realm. But then here's the thing is once you're Goliath, there's always a David. There's always someone that can take you down. And that that was a that was a challenge for Goliath. And he didn't think that he could fail. He he thought that he got past the difficult thing in life. And then he was taken down by by David. So I feel like that was kind of something that I got from it. The idea that, like, yes, again, and we talked about this in previous episodes, the idea that, you know, as you're young in your career, as you're young in ministry, as you're young wherever you are, everything feels like a fight. And you feel like at some point you should get to a point where you no longer have to fight. And that's where you settle into complacency. That's where you settle into I d I'm not risking, I'm not having to fail, I'm not, I'm not doing anything that's causing me to grow. And then you will get taken out by a David. You know, we in ministry, hopefully we're not in a very competitive environment, right? But the idea is that there will be something. It's not maybe gonna be a, you know, a new cool worship leader that's gonna take your role. But there's going to be something like COVID that just threw a punch at every single church in the world. And we had to figure out, okay, how are we going to, how are we going to work with this? How are we going to manage this? That was David, or that was actually Goliath, I guess, in our situation, that came to take us out, right? And if we're not learning, if we're not constantly failing, if we're not constantly having to like bump our head against a wall, it can throw us for a loop. It can catch us off guard. And I think that's really what I got from this chapter the idea that like, We need to embrace hard because we never know when David or Goliath is going to come knocking on our door ready to take us out. Yeah, I'm sitting here looking at the, you know, open, had the book opened here. And they're just the some of these little kind of one-liners. ⁓ and it and and Maxwell quotes ⁓ one of his mentors, Fred Smith, and and the opening line is something in human nature tempts us to stay where we're comfortable. And what's interesting about that. Is it is actually a psychological thing that the brain craves familiarity, comfort, safety, predictability. Because it means there's no predators attacking us, right? Like that's right. So there's not a lion around the corner. Yeah, that's right. Like my threat detector, you know, can chill out just a little bit, but but what I find interesting, which in contrast to that, is I have been guilty of this. I have heard other people pray this same prayer. Is we will pray and we will join our fellow ministry leaders in prayer and we will just, God, we want to grow, we want to grow, we want to grow. And great prayer. Uh-huh. However, what I often find is that we avoid the process potentially that creates it. And the process is usually hard. Yeah. So I pray for it, and I want to avoid. usually what gets me there, the vehicle, which is which is hard. And so if you're, if you're listening, watching right now and you're like, yeah, that's me. Well guess guess what? Welcome to humanity. However, maybe the question is, how might we think about it differently, approach it differently, you know, make decisions differently, because sometimes what I think, I could be wrong, you correct me if I'm wrong. I think sometimes we avoid hard, one, because of the discomfort and all of that, but I think Sometimes we avoid hard because we think it's wrong. So if it's hard, it's wrong. Yeah. Versus hard being this launch or this accelerator into growth and, you know, newness and et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I think in this conversation, what I hope we can navigate is how might we look at hard differently? Yeah. In order that you can begin to get some of those reps in because really that's part of it. Yeah. ⁓ so anyways that's just kind of like thinking out loud over here. No, reps is the perfect way to describe it. I was shocked. So my brother, he's forty-eight, he is a teaching pastor here in town, and he texted me the other day. He said, Hey Jonathan, pray for me. I'm about to go up and do a keynote at a conference for stand-up comedians. And Part of the requirement is that everyone who speaks at this conference has to do a comedy set set, has to do a stand-up comedy set. So my brother, who is not a community, he's funny, right? Like everyone thinks they're funny though until you get and try to do stand-up comedy, right? Like I actually follow a ton of people on social media that like are early in their comedy careers, and it's just brutal them trying to work out material and trying to find out what's funny. But anyways, he goes up and does this and he sends me the video. He actually did really well. I was surprised. Not surprised that I didn't believe well on my brother, but like it is ri I just I've I know, like, you know, I do I do funny videos online. That is not the same as stand-up comedy. I would be terrified to do stand up comedy. Same. He does really well. And then I talked to him a little bit later. He comes to my house and he's like, Man, that was amazing. That was so much fun. He's like ⁓ he was he's like, I kind of want to do more of that. And it it impressed me so much that 48 years old, he should be maybe on the like kind of the like. Kind of starting to settle, but he's like, No, I'm ready to like, I'm ready to get uncomfortable again. And I was so impressed. ⁓ I don't know many people who are willing to do that. Whenever he's had a lot of s success in his career, he writes books. ⁓ he's written more books than we have. ⁓ he, you know, he speaks at conferences all the time. He has he he's he's well connected. He has all the makings of like what you should be at this age, right? And he's like, I wanna, I wanna go into something hard again. And I was like, I was so impressed. It just inspires me. I'm like, I, I never want to get to a point where I'm not willing to try something new or not willing to put myself in that. I remember in college, there was ⁓ you know, one of my teachers showed this, this like chart of like ⁓ comfort and then stress up here. And then right there in between is this learning zone where we don't learn when we're comfortable, we don't learn when we're in anxiety in anxiety, but right there where we're like, we're just uncomfortable, that's where we learn. I'm like, I always want to be able to live there. Yeah. I mean, just just think that he pursued hard. Mm-hmm. I mean, a lot of leaders when hard they don't pursue, but hard kind of comes at them, they still avoid and and yet, you know, he he pursued. It reminds me there's a there's a gal, I don't I for some reason I think I've mentioned this before on a another episode, but there's a lady, she's I think she's done a TED talk about this, but she pursued hard as well in that she Put herself out on the dance room, ⁓ dance floor. I think it was like ballroom dancing. She just got rejection after rejection. Nope, don't want to dance, don't want to dance. And she just kept putting herself out there, putting herself out there. And she talked about like how how hard it was, but what it did rep after rep after rep, it built this resiliency muscle in her. And that it, the growth for her was, I can do it. The growth for her was building this resiliency that. Easy could not produce. Safe could not produce. And so, you know, it's just an interesting way to look at like who wants to sign up for hard? Well, most people don't, but what if difficulty or or hard moments, what it what if that's the vehicle to help you grow both in your ministry, but also to help you become. More of what God wants you to be. Look at biblical stories. How many leaders and just people in general went through hard. And you know, and and that was used, that formed them, Old Testament, New Testament, you know. So it's just a well here's the way to think about it. Here's the thing that I think because I I think so often we are confronted with hard. ⁓ something difficult. Again, COVID being the perfect example working in churches, right? We're like, ⁓ my gosh, everything we knew about ministry is no longer possible to us. Right. Like The Sunday service, yeah, we can live stream. We had to figure out live stream. That wasn't really it. Like it we all felt like this isn't doing what we needed to do, right? And I worry that because COVID came into our door, instead of us going out to find COVID, we've forgotten a lot of the lessons we learned during COVID. I feel like a lot of churches have, you know, okay, so if COVID happens again, yes, we'll we'll be okay, right? But like if something else happens that's not COVID, I worry that a lot of us. Are gonna be found scrambling just as much again. Like we're not really aware of that. But I think what happens when you go and search for hard, when you go look for the difficult things, when you put yourself out there to build resiliency, something brand new can come along your way. And it's not as devastating. And I think that's that's a a key distinguisher is that a lot of us like, you know, we punches come our way, but we're not seeking punches, right? Like I think there's a value in just trying something. So I mean, I think about the churches that are like, hey, we're gonna try you know, we're gonna try virtual reality church. Hey, we're gonna try, there's all these different things. And they're just trying it, you know, and it it I think a lot of people criticize that because they're like, they're just trying to cheapen the message. But the way I see those churches is they are just trying something new. They don't know if it's going to work. They're willing to fail. They're fully expecting maybe even to fail. ⁓ but they're trying something. And I think that builds a resilient muscle that then I mean, again, it's the perfect example of like Netflix versus versus Blockbuster, right? Like Netflix created the model that killed themselves, right? Like they created the model that made their core product obsolete, which was mail and DVDs. They created streaming. They didn't create streaming, but they started streaming and it killed their core business model. But they tried something new that was a threat to them. Whereas Blockbuster eventually died out because they didn't change with the times. And I think that's Yeah. We have to be willing to go after the thing. Like what in ministry, I wonder right now, should you be going after that could potentially make your current mode of ministry obsolete? Whether that's your church, whether that's your worship team, whether that's your tech ministry, whether that's whatever it is, you know, like we rely on these things, these models, these systems that have always been there. But a thing like COVID suddenly takes that system away. And how are we going to survive? So I wonder, is there anything we could do proactively? To try and risk failure that would then potentially find this innovative form of ministry that we never knew about, or at least create resiliency whenever something does happen. I don't know. That that's like a big, like a big thought project that I would love more churches to go through regularly. I I think about the staff member who leads. You know, if you're if you're a staff leader right now and you have people that report to you, maybe even volunteers, we want. I say we want, I'm speaking in generalities here, but many staff leaders, they want the people that report to them or volunteer leaders they lead to play it safe because it represents them. They don't want their reputation or ministry to take a hit or anything. So not only is that leader maybe playing it safe, but then when the people in their circle to to play it safe. And so the the the impact of that versus Being, you know, taking calculated risks, not just for you, the leader, but including the people that report to you or volunteer leaders that that you lead, right? So it's not, we're not just talking to the leader. We're talking to the people the leader leads because, you know, I think about it this way. What if what if easy teaches us convenience, right? Yeah. But what if hard teaches us the very thing that we would like to expand, and that's capacity? Cause I hear a lot of times with leaders, you know, well, what's your capacity? Well, if if if you don't do anything different and you don't do anything hard, you don't stretch, expand, deepen, ⁓ maximize capacity, it stays limited, right? It stays in this kind of little itty bitty spot. So what if? What if Hard actually was a an accelerator, a builder of capacity? And what if that was maybe a secret for your team versus some of the things that you're doing that you're just not seeing capacity growth and things like that? I I work with a ⁓ a CEO and of a $24 billion organization. And his not mantra, but his default, his go-to is The greatest accelerator for a leader is discomfort. And so he literally on purpose moves people in the organization. You're crushing it in your area of responsibility. And then he moves you into another org or another part of the business that you're really. I just talked with a leader last week. This is what happened to them. Really, really uncomfortable. Actually, not even overly excited about it. However, the leader says, I believe this is gonna be a growth accelerator for you because it's uncomfortable. It's hard. And so that that's the culture this leader has set. And it has experienced it for themselves for over the 30 years of of being in this particular organization. So I I experienced this working ⁓ at a at a church that I remember the senior pastor. Put me in a role. I kept my current role, but added to it, which if you're listening, many of you have experienced that. You're like, ⁓ so I'm moving into a new role. No. No. You get to keep that. And that's right. Yes, and so let's we're we're doing multiplication. We're not doing subtraction here, bud. So but but I I had a moment that I thought, I don't know if I can do this. Yeah. And yet I can do this. And it felt overwhelming. And there were moments of real, real challenge and hearted discomfort. But I'm not lying to you when I say that allowed me to grow at a rapid pace that I here in, you know, 2026 am grateful for. Yeah. And so did I always want to sit in it? No. Did the hard situation reveal things about me as a person? Yeah. My leadership? Yeah. Deficiencies? Yeah. Areas of opportunity and strength. Yeah. And I think what happened for me is that season that was hard but good really exposed and challenged some of my assumptions about me, leadership, the organization, ministry. And so I'm glad that he put me in it, even though I quote, wasn't ready for it. Yeah. He put me in a season of uncomfortable and hard. And it really it really grew my own leadership. I didn't make all the right decisions. I made wrong decisions. Yeah. I I hurt other leaders, I'm sure. I but yet made the decision to stay in it. Yeah. It reminds me of I get so many questions on my Instagram about people that are, you know, hey, my pastor doesn't respect my ideas. My pastor micromanages me or my leader, whatever they want to say. Or, you know, I ⁓ I I feel like they're just, they just, they're just limiting me. They're like, and there there's all of this frustration of working under a leader that maybe doesn't get it or doesn't get them or doesn't value them. And what I so often encourage people with is if you can learn how to lead from underneath someone like that, the leadership skills you're going to develop whenever you're no longer under that leader. Are going to be incredible. I think about that with any limitation. You know, we whenever I started, you know, I started my dad was a pastor. We were at a church of 75 people, a million dollars in debt because we'd we'd just bought a property, but then the church split and then there was a lawsuit pending and we couldn't afford the property. And like, and then we had facilities that we'd let slide because we were planning on building a new location. So like the so like we were 75 people. My dad was brought into this church as the new pastor. And I got to see, I got to start volunteering in that environment. I got to start being on staff in that environment and just how much it felt like hitting a wall every time I tried to do something. Even even working with my dad, you know, they like my dad only hired me because people on staff asked him to, because he wasn't going to just for nepotistic reasons. Like he's like, I don't want to hire him just because he's my son, right? And so it almost was like he was more resistant. To my ideas just to avoid that nepotism. So it kind of felt like I'm like hitting a wall while trying to figure out how to become an adult in my dad's eyes and in my own eyes. Like, what does it mean for me to be an adult working with my dad? It's a it's a difficult thing. So all of those things were frustrations and were ⁓ limitations to me. But I feel like our books that we wrote came out of that. Every project that I've started. Has come out of that. Every, every idea, every answer I can give people has come out of that because I was able to grow in that season. And I think a lot of people, they, they despise that season. They despise the season of like frustration, of limitation. And I just try to encourage people. I'm like, hey, you don't see what's on the other side of that learning experience, of that resilience, of that thing that you're growing. So I try to encourage people with that. I know that it's gonna fall on like deaf ears, right? Because It's just it doesn't feel good in the moment. But I mean, this is this is the verse, right? Like ⁓ no what is it? No ⁓ discipline feels good in the moment, but it creates a last I forget the verse. Man, it's right there. But it creates a memorized the whole Bible yet? What? I know it's in James, but ⁓ but the idea is that like no discipline feels good in the moment, but it does produce a harvest, but we it's just hard to see that harvest. Yeah. ⁓ so confession. ⁓ And then I have a question for you, Jonathan. Confession time for me. Two confessions. One, maybe you're listening and you're like, Lee, I, you know, I had some hard seasons. I didn't stay in them. And, you know, well, you're you're normal. I remember I worked at a church. It was really, really hard. I had a terrible boss, micromanager, nitpicked everything. And finally, I just quit. It was so hard. I d I didn't stay in it any longer. I quit. Yeah. And I ended up having to, with nowhere to go, no job, no money, brand new baby. Told my wife, I quit. I can't take this guy anymore. It was, it was not just hard, it was ridiculous, but it was hard. We had nowhere to go, had to sell a house, moved in with my in-laws for 18 months, and they were super gracious. But when I look back, I should have s sucked it up and taken a different path. And You know, when I look back at Stacy and I, my wife, we talk about, we talk about that. I think about hard. So that's one I didn't stay in. I think about hard when we wrote our book, Don't Burn Out, Burn Bright, How You Can Thrive in Ministry for the Long Haul. There was a season in our writing that was really, really hard for me that I was almost experiencing some elements of exhaustion while we were writing the book. Isn't that how it works? Where like where God's like, I'm gonna teach you the lesson while you're trying to teach other people the lesson. Yes. And but you know what? I stayed in it. And it was God used that in my own life. I there were moments I didn't want to. Yeah. And, you know, so there's these like, so you're listening to two people that have navigated hard and still, you know, still do. Yeah. ⁓ here's a question I have for you. And and maybe you've already touched on it, but let me ask you specifically. So ⁓ thinking about like a hard season in your life, Jonathan. When you reflect, what did what did that season give you that you would say, I might not have received it any other way? A lot of it comes down to just priorities in life, I think. ⁓ I think about, you know, there have been moments of anxiety. It it's weird that God seems to God seems to take things away from me whenever my wife is about to go through an extreme bout of anxiety, which I'm really grateful for because that frees me up to be available to her. ⁓ we've gone through some pretty like depressive episodes and anxious episodes. ⁓ you know, I mean, I the first time I got fired, my wife was about to like go into probably like the darkest season of our life and we went through it together. But it was it was amazing. I was able to build ⁓ Sunday Social, the company that I'm running now in that season. I think, you know, our first book was written in that season. a lot of things were were were a result of that season. And at the same time, I was building these things. I was also still prioritizing my family and realizing the value that my presence had in my wife's life. So It's weird. It's it's it's it was both. It was I was like able to build a business while also being there for my family. And it was because of something taken away from me. ⁓ and it was it was it was it's not like it's not like things got better once that was taken. We like I something got taken away from me and then we went into the pit further. Like, and it reminds me there there was a friend I was talking to, and ⁓ he was he's he's like, Man, I I feel like I just keep getting hit with thing after thing, you know, I was I was gonna get this TV show deal and that got taken away right when we were about to sign the papers. I was about to, you know, get this this book deal and it was taken away right when we got the papers right. Like he just I mean, it it felt like he was like telling me thing after thing after thing. I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, man, you're Job. He's like, You mean Jonah, right? I'm like, no, Job. And he's like, ⁓ that's weird. All my pastor friends say that I'm like Jonah, like I must be running from God and God's trying to get my attention. I'm like, first of all, drop those friends, because that's really depressing. ⁓ But And I'm like, do you feel like you're running from God? He's like, I don't think so. And I'm like, then you have to r like relate to Job, man. It comes back, but it it is. You'll get hit. You'll get hit. You'll get hit. And are you running from God? Are you running to God? And that'll determine whether or not you're Jonah or Job, right? Like the same things happened. ⁓ Jonah was called to something he didn't like and then things got worse, but he ran from God. Whereas Job kept running to God and everything still sucked, but it was redeemed, right? Yeah. And ultimately Jonah was redeemed, but even then he was depressed when he was like, ⁓ I don't want to preach to these people. And then like God saves them and he's mad about it. Right. Like it was just like it shows the way we respond to things going badly our way is is based on how we lean into God. You you said something a moment ago when you mentioned that verse. And the reality is hard is rarely enjoyable in the moment. Yeah. ⁓ as ⁓ recording this podcast episode in full transparency. I'm sitting in a super hard season. ⁓ not everything is hard about the season, but there's a piece of it that is very heavy and hard. And there are moments that I want to like wiggle my way out. And it's almost like the heart is an invitation from God to sit in it and be reminded, Jason, you're not alone. And so for me, Stacy's been a great. reminder of she's like, hey, I say, Jesus, where are you? Like, what do you want me to know? Mm-hmm. Because I've often I've often seen and I'm included that leaders will ask God to remove the difficulty. And I wonder if the better question is, Jesus, where are you in it? Yeah. And what do you want me to know? And what do you want me to do? And I think when we stay in it and we're reminded that we aren't alone in it, you're like, Jason, that is so cliche. And I know, and I'm like, I know, I think that's part of the problem is we're so familiar with these phrases and we tell other people these phrases, God is with you in it. It's for you to hold up a mirror and go, hey, the same God that you told so and so this week in that ministry moment that he's with them, that's the same God that has deep and abiding affection and passion and pursuit for you that sits with you. In hard doesn't abandon you and say, Well, Jason, we'll see what you can do. I can't do anything. And so when I sit in hard and I ask him, like, Where are you? What do you want me to know? What do you want me to do? And just to think that his kindness says, Hey, Jace, I sit in this with you. Yeah. And there is a result, a development opportunity, a fruit that comes from it. Well, when you're in the moment, you're like, I'm not interested in that. Yeah. But I often find it's in that moment that I get to see up close and personal that the God I tell other people about is the exact same one that is deeply affectionate for me too. Man, that's so good. Well, this is the end of our episode. ⁓ hope you got a lot of really good stuff from that. We're gonna be talking about chapter six next week. Whether you read along with us, whether you don't, you're gonna get something good from this podcast. If you haven't subscribed yet. Be sure to do that. Find us on social media. We'd love to talk to you. But we will see you next week.