Latest / Church Staff Book Club / Speed Might Be Your Enemy
Transcript
- Jonathan Malm: Think of emotions as data, not directives. Hello. Welcome back to the church staff book club. My name is Jonathan Maum and I'm Jason Young. And I thought about this, Jonathan. Okay. I've to come up with a little better intro other than like, and I'm Jason Young. So maybe somebody listening can have an idea and just fire off a message and say, ⁓ you got to do this better. So anyways, yeah, Jonathan Maum, Jason Young. I always have to edit. There's always a little pause whenever I hand it off to you and, ⁓ fun, but Yes, welcome back to the podcast. We are talking about the emotionally healthy leader. ⁓ It has been a phenomenal book so far. I feel like I've actually adjusted quite a few things in my life based on this book. We're only in chapter six, so we're not even halfway through, or about halfway through. I think it's like 13 chapters. And this one we were talking about before was probably the most ⁓ practical that we've had so far of chapters. Like this is probably. Again, if Jason and I were writing the book, we probably would have put this chapter earlier on in the book because you always like, you can't count that people read the whole thing. Right. So that's right. This is probably what I would have put a little bit earlier, but it was really some good stuff. ⁓ do you want to explain what the chapter was about Jason? Yeah. I mean, you can see the title of it, planning and decision-making, which sounds pretty boring. Right. But Jonathan, I were talking about this chapter feels like this may not be an accurate description, but it feels like this chapter is like rubber meets the road. So we've talked about. loving union, we've talked about Sabbath. You we've talked about these internal things. Now we're talking about, if you will, external things like planning, decision-making, right? So I guess I would say it maybe like this. A lot of leaders, ⁓ they make decisions based on speed, ⁓ pressure, outcomes, but what the author, Scazzero, is inviting us to consider is what if you made decisions based on discernment, presence, listening? And I think it's just a, it's a very challenging way to approach. But if you're interested in outcomes, if you're a leader right now listening and you're interested in outcomes, the way Skazero talks about it actually gives you better outcomes. So it'll be a good conversation about how we make decisions and how we can make better decisions. Yeah, it's funny he, He opens the chapter with a story. It was like, it felt super familiar. He said that he was on a plane with his wife. They were traveling to a conference and he just, ⁓ by the way, honey, we are launching a Spanish ministry soon. And she's like, what? And he's like, yeah, we got this guy from Columbia. He's coming. He's coming. He's highly recommended. And she's like, we don't even have like a healthy English ministry. Why are we launching a Spanish ministry? And he was just thinking, okay, it's going to include more people, it's gonna double the ministry, it's going to like, he was thinking about all the external outcomes. It's really funny because we had this exact situation at my church. My dad was a pastor, we brought in a guy from Columbia, literally the same story, highly recommended, he was a doctor. He came in and we're like, this is gonna be phenomenal. We have all these Spanish speakers in our church. Like my dad, we were missionaries in Guatemala, so we love Spanish, we know Spanish, it's not like it's gonna be like the separate thing. And ultimately what happened is the same thing that happened to Peter Scazzaro was that the ministry kind of failed and went somewhere else and that was sort of a split and there was multiple splits afterwards. And it was just kind of this messy thing. At best, it was just like a net neutral, like nothing happened. At worst, you lost some people and probably burned some people in the process. It's funny, but it is, it's one of those things. And I tend to act this way too, where I am very instinctual. I'm like, I know what- I know what I need to do. I need to more money or I need to launch a new thing or I need to expand in some way. And I just do it without necessarily, unfortunately consulting God. I'm usually on the back end of like, hey God, can you bless that decision I made? How was something Peter addressed in this chapter? And I'm like, ⁓ that's me. Like I'm really working on getting better at that. But yeah, I honestly took a ton of notes from this chapter. It was really helpful. ⁓ Again, if you don't read with us, That's fine. We hope we'll give you as much as you need to be able to implement this in your church. But you're missing out on some really good depth if you're not reading along with us. But yeah, what was the main thing you got from this chapter? I think it was around, and he talks about this, right? Speed, discernment. ⁓ Sometimes, okay, if you're listening or watching this, maybe you can empathize. How many of you have ever done like positive and negative list like good and bad, right? And if you're like, ⁓ yeah, that's Welcome to the team. You are normal human being. Me too. I've got a little whiteboard to my right in my office here and I do this. In fact, I recently did it. I think what I learned in this is related to that. I think that we think we are capable of making the wisest and the best decisions. And I think what I learned in this chapter is I have got to slow down And just because it's good, doesn't mean it's from God. And I need to discern what does he want me to know? What does he want me to do? What is he inviting me into? Not, Jason, you're so smart, dude. And you've done some great things. And so you know what to do. okay, decision made, you know, execute. let me ask you this question. Because something I said echoes something that you said. What gets lost when decisions are, when leaders make decisions too quickly? What do you think could get lost? Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of wisdom that you miss out on. That was one of the points that Peter made is the idea of prudence is acting out of wisdom. There's a lot of times too, that we don't understand our own limits or we don't understand what the next season Will require of us. think about a story, you know, I was, I was, our church was maybe 400, 300, 400, 500 people. I was in the tech booth primarily at this time. I loved the tech stuff, lights, sound, camera, all that stuff, pro presenter. And I, I desperately wanted moving lights. Like at this time, like this was, this was the thing that I wanted. I'm like, ⁓ if we could have moving lights. Like again, I was, I was modeling after something that I saw from another church. I was like, I want that for me. And. It didn't occur to me, I never got them, right? It didn't occur to me until later, whenever I was running this website, Church Stage Dentities, and I was kind of talking to people and just like, I was now outside of that environment and like, maybe seeing a little bit clearer because I was outside of my situation, I realized, man, if I would have had those moving lights, the amount of extra work that would have put on me to have to program them, because once you have it, you have to use it, right? It's not like it works on its own. I would have to program them. I would have to get another volunteer to come in and program. Like the extra burden it would put on my ministry. I just saw the outward appearance. I saw the results. This would look incredible. It would really set the mood for worship. You know, it would be cool. Cause that's, you know, being honest, that's one of the things that I cared about, right? Like, but I didn't realize the toll that it would take on us. And I'm like, I was not ready with my team to be able to. bring those in. So I think that's a lot of times he talks about a conference that he did, right? They were like, we need to set the cap at 325. And he's like, no, it's going to be so good. And then they exceeded their cap by quite a bit. And they just, didn't realize the toll it would take on the team. That was a lot of tease. The total would take to have capacity for that large of a group. One of the things that I always tell churches is, ⁓ especially churches that are focused on growth is I always say, what would happen if you had a bump of 20 % attendance this next Sunday? would you have the people in place to facilitate ministry? Would you have the kids ministry ministers you need? Would you have the seating that you need? Cause a lot of times people don't realize that there's this cap to growth largely because people do come in, you get a big Sunday and then like ministry kind of falls apart. And that's often what happens. Again, we're not aware of our capacity. And whenever we don't consult God who is much more aware of our capacity than we are, we miss out on that. That's my take. know I kind of... meandered all around, but that's sort of the whole thought I had on that, on those kind of limitations. Well, and I think sometimes, I don't know for you, I have been guilty of this, not that fast decisions are bad, so don't hear us say that, but I will say this, fast decisions could bypass deep discernment. And the question that I have is, okay, if that's true, then how do you find deep discernment? And I think part of the answer, and it's so stinking hard, is We need space to do that. And if we look at our calendars, space is usually not generous, you know, on our schedules. And I don't think, I don't think people make bad decisions or unhealthy decisions or unwise decisions, whatever word you want to use, report decisions from a lack of intelligence. We're probably, if you're listening right now, you're probably a really smart person. I don't think that's the problem. I think a challenge is, it's from a lack of space and remember this that we don't just, we're not just making decisions to make decisions to keep things moving forward. We have to remember that decisions form us, decisions form your team. They form, you know, whatever it is that you're doing. And I think if fast decisions have a tendency to bypass deep discernment and we need the space in order to do that, that's really hard. And so I love what he talks about, you know, What does discernment look like inside of our, you know, decision-making and, and maybe, maybe this is a question I could toss out for, for both of us. I don't know if this is even accurate, Jonathan, but discernment can feel slower than like, you know, making a decision. Why is discernment or why does discernment feel slower or is slower versus traditional decision-making? lot of times I think this is the struggle is that discernment will require us reevaluating our paradigm of success. And that's, that feels like starting over, you know, I mean, I think naturally as a business leader or whenever I was working at a church, again, more, more income as a business leader, more, customers, more influence, more brand equity, whatever you want to call it. Working in a church, more people coming, people more engaged. It's, it's this growth mentality, right? More, more, more, more. And it might be that God is calling you to less. We don't see that as a good thing in Western culture, in like Catholic culture, right? It's reevaluating what success looks like. And that's scary because we are beholden to the people in our church, if they see that we're having less people attend, that decreases momentum, that decreases our options of what we can do because we don't have as much income. you know, less is always more of a limitation. We see limitations as bad, which they aren't, but it's hard to believe that, right? Like, ⁓ yeah, so we see limitations as bad. And then we just want to have success the way we define success and discerning what God actually wants will require us realigning our priorities with his. think, I mean, and I don't think it's one of those like, I don't think it's one of those like, we're afraid, we are afraid of that a little bit, but we would never say like, ⁓ I don't want God's. success to be the dictating factor in this, but it's maybe subconsciously what the reality is. That's what I would say. Yeah. My friend, Dr. Richard Blackaby, you know, who he and his dad, Henry Blackaby, wrote experiencing God and just a remarkable leader. There's this one phrase that I remember being a 16 year old and still to this day, I tell him this still to this day, it just echoes. And I love working with him. teach a doctoral class together. And, but the phrase is, find out where God is working and join him there. And I think sometimes so often what we do is the flip side. Here's where I am. I'm going to invite him to join me. And I don't know for you, maybe this is just me. Maybe this is something that I've struggled with historically. We often hear these phrases like these little buzz phrases like leadership is influence. Okay, it's true. I get it. I know what it means. Yeah, great. But one I think about that I've learned over the years is I actually think listening is leadership in the context of what we're talking about right now, because one thing that we should practice more is how to actually listen to God in our leadership. And that means slowing down. That means this You know, is it a formula? I'm a solutions guy. You are too. We build. that's just internal to us. And I think sometimes we try to, I don't know for you, for me, sometimes we think of God as a formula. Okay, we got to plug and play. We get this outcome. And really what God is inviting us into, and Skazera highlights this, is I'm inviting you to walk in this relationship and listen to me. And when you listen to me, not just when a decision needs to be made, but you know, day in and day out. And again, I'm not perfect at this. I think that is where that discernment comes in. that's, you know, and he talks about this, that's where slowing down the process takes center stage. And I don't know for you, but slow is not in my vocabulary. And this chapter was a real good challenge and a re-centering on why slow is paramount to walking with God, but making better decisions. when it comes to planning. It's so funny, my team, especially my marketing team, get really frustrated with me because I have an idea and then I launch it about a week later. And my marketing guy's like, dude, you gotta slow down, you gotta give us a chance to build some momentum, to let people know something's coming, to create a launch plan. I mean, it's funny, this weekend I learned about vibe coding, about coding with AI, and I've already launched two apps. I'm like, let's go, let's go. Like I'm all about speed and it is hard to stop. And the reality is, and I think this is something that I need to work on with my relationship with God is I am a ⁓ horrible employee. probably if you're a lead pastor or if you're in any type of, honestly in ministry tend to be entrepreneurial types, which we make horrible employees. Last job I got fired from, like my boss was like, hey, we need to start a podcast. And at the time I was like, no, podcast is a bad idea. And I just didn't do it, which is really bad when your boss tells you to do something. I'm like, no, I don't think that's gonna work. Like that's bad. And I feel like sometimes I carry that into my relationship with God where like, I'm like, you tell me, you give me the general outline of what you want me to do. So I'm starting this company, I'm helping churches. You give me the general outline, I'll figure out the details. You don't tell me the details, God. I'll figure out the details, right? I'll figure out what the measure of success is. And I do think that's something, a reality of what I have is like, I'm willing to trust God with the the overall framework, but don't tell me what color to paint the wall, right? Like don't like and He's offering saying maybe maybe it should be and you said this maybe it should be more about the relationship about the doing with Instead of the doing for and I think that is the reality I want to do do for like yeah, I'll do all these things for you God But as long as I do them the way I want to do them Partially because that means I get the credit whenever people think it's awesome ⁓ Instead of just like, know, whenever I go on vacation with my wife, we're like, Hey, what should we do together? What should, you know, where should we go to eat? And that's the relationship that develops. It's not come along, babe, we're going to go over here. I got this plan. Right. Like that's not fun because it works. It works on the relationship to make decisions together. And that seems like what he's inviting us into is, is how are we including God in our plans? Meaning in making the plans in the first place. That's right. Well, and, and you know, God. When I think about Jesus coming to earth, like to be with us, That word, manual, to be with us. It's the same thing here. Like he's not seeing, all right, Jonathan, Jason, how well are you all gonna perform today? It's in Skazera, we talked about this in previous episode, like this loving union. And from the loving union, we don't use the loving union, but from the loving union comes clarity, discernment, but really what he's after is me, you, like being together. And it's interesting when Skazera talks about, okay, like slow down, which is again, confession here, hard for me to do, because I think when we slow down, fears surface, struggles actually appear. It makes me ask like, why do some leaders struggle to wait to slow down before making decisions? I don't know. What do you think? I would say we have a vision of what we want to accomplish. think about, I have this list of things that I want my son to experience in life, like movies, books, know, travel things. And I am, it's a strong vision. Fixated on that. He's four years old. He can't he can't do that stuff yet, right? The other day I watched kpop demon hunters. I know that yeah, maybe edgy for some people. It was a really good movie like Besides the fact that it's you know, it's your in spirituality, whatever right? Like but like they're they're fighting the demons the demons are the bad guys at least right and It's a really it's really popular kids. Everyone in my in my son's class knows it I'm like this was a really good movie. The songs are awesome And he's like, we watch kpop demon hunters and I'm like, okay, let's do it five minutes in, I'm like, ⁓ this was a bad idea. ⁓ he was just not ready. He's not ready for like that intensity, that intense of a movie. And we've been dealing with him getting out of his room, like frantically running to our room for the past like five months or four months because of this, because of this dumb decision that I did, because I had a vision for experiencing something with my son that it was not the right timing. And that's what I love. I love that he gives this idea that, we have, we have to sometimes slow down the timeline of things where, okay, yeah, maybe it is a good thing. Maybe God does want us to grow to that level or to have that equipment or to bring on that employee or bring on that, know, start this initiative, whatever it is. But the timing needs to be a year or two and we're thinking like one month and it can create nightmares if you will, right? Like, it can create for my son. It can create nightmares for your ministry. Yeah, I mean, And when we think about this space, again, the slowing down and creating some space, sometimes it can feel like waiting or slowing down or the space is a waste. But really what's happening in there is it's actually forming us for what is to come. worked with a senior pastor years ago and he used to always say this. just, my wife and I were talking about this the other day. He used to always say this, God is preparing you. for what he has prepared for you. And so there is this weight and this journey. And I think sometimes, I could be wrong, but I think sometimes we rush decisions because we're uncomfortable with uncertainty because speed gives us control, but waiting requires trust. And so if we love control, many of us do, I do, right? And so speed lets me control the decision, often the outcome, often the process, right? Versus waiting, it's like, you know, I'm not waiting on me, I'm waiting on what is God doing? Who is he orchestrating, you know, around me? So there is this slowing down, which, which, because then talks about, so slowing down is a thing, right? And like, we're in agreement, it's just hard. He begins to talk about, what we can do in this process when it comes to planning and decision making, right? Slowing down, talking about, you know, not just making a decision, but this discernment that comes in the space, right? But he talks about like people. And we hear this word community a lot. Let me ask you this, you and I both come from church world, like, why is it dangerous for leaders to make decisions in isolation? A lot of times, Again, I mean, if you, if you look at the disc profile, right, you have the eyes, ⁓ and the D's like the drivers, the high inspiration people. We don't tend we, because I'm an eye, we don't tend to think about the nitty gritty. They're like, you know, okay, so what's the, what's the rollout going to be of this? And you have a bunch of S's and C's who every time you're in a meeting and you pitch out a great idea and you're like, let's start it next week. They're freaking out. Cause they're like. I have way more work now to do. Like I'm still trying to implement the last idea you had, which is a reality. And then now I have to like structure my mind to think about the 20 things that I need to do to prepare for this or that you need to do that you haven't thought of. Yeah. And there's, this is reality, especially when you're talking about church, there's this reality of, you know, okay, yeah, your staff is one member of it, but your congregation is another member. You've had all week thinking about church, thinking about a change that you're going to make. Your congregation has only 52 hours a year to think about that they're generally thinking about church. And, know, okay, I thought about one hour last week, but you've already made two changes by the time I show up next week. And now I have one hour to process that. Like there's just, it's a smaller part of their life than it is for us if we work in church full time. And I think that's a big deal is like when we make these sweeping, rapid changes, people can't keep up. And they say that, they say that like, changing jobs, these changes are actually stress points to us. ⁓ moving away has some of the same stress point as it does as someone dying to you, right? Like the stress of having to go through that change for your body is similar to you experiencing a death in your family, right? So there's this grieving that happens with change, especially when it's outside of your control. And when we're changing so rapidly, we don't give people a chance to process and they're just feeling emotionally exhausted. I don't know if you have felt this way sometimes. Okay. So we're talking about space. We're talking about slowing down. We're talking about, you know, being discerning. We're talking about now inviting voices. And you're like, man, that now that really slows me down. And sometimes I have been guilty of making decisions because I don't, I know I should bring in other voices, but I don't want to slow down. And I know bringing them in will make me slow down. And then I think the older I get, so, you know, I'm 47 right now. Got a lot to learn, but I think one thing I have learned is in the context of community that we're talking about right now is that community slows us down in the best possible way because I think I've learned that God often speaks through the voices we least expect. And so if I slow down, give it space, seeking discernment, God, what are you inviting me to know? What do you want me to do? Right? And he's going to use these voices. So I kind of pop. assume a posture of like asking and listening, right? Because I think the danger is that isolation has the possibility of distorting discernment, right? Because I'm making a decision in a vacuum. so this may be an inaccurate statement, but I'm gonna toss it out there and I'm sure somebody will write if they disagree. But I think if no one can challenge you, no one can help you because that means you're not open to either side, right? Because you're trying to do this like I'm gonna do this thing. And what community is saying is, hey, challenge what I'm thinking. What do I not know? What should I see? So that is considered help because people care for you. But again, we gotta create the space and we invite the voices and we assume a posture of, all right, talk to me. Right, I'm listening. my problem. Here's my problem. And this is something that is push, it's pushback. I agree with you, but it's also pushback is. And this is, this will sound so arrogant and so like cynical maybe, but I have this notion that I constantly remember is that 50 % of people are below average. And then I think of myself, I'm in the top like 10 % of like thinkers, right? I would say like maybe even 5 % like, and that's, that's just, maybe it's just pure arrogance on my part. I do think it's true. Right. But, but so, so I'm like, my tendency is why would I submit myself a top five thinker? to a bunch of people that are below average, right? Like that's, maybe I'm the only one willing to admit that, but I think a lot of us have that mentality. Like if you've built a successful ministry, if you've built a successful business, you've done things people haven't achieved. I think about that with writing a book, right? Like I'm like, ⁓ I wanna work on our next book. And frequently people remind me like, you published a book. Like most people dream about having one book published ever, right? Like, so there's this reality of like, Why would I submit when I achieved all this stuff? Why would I submit to someone who's never even done that or never even been in this world? I think that's part of why we don't do that. Maybe it's a little arrogance. It's a little bit of, I don't know that it's even necessarily arrogance. think there is some wisdom in knowing that like I've been places they've never been so they won't have the insight. But the biggest thing though I think is trusting God that God speaks through an ass. You know, like God will speak through a donkey, right? Like God will speak how he wants to speak. And one thing that I have a hard time from this chapter, but I thought was really good, is he says the idea that whenever you are going into a decision, there is this value in having an indifference to it. Meaning I don't really care if I'm really consulting with God, hey God, what should we do in this situation? The healthiest approach we can have is to have an indifference to say, I don't really care either way you decide God, if you decide to grow, if you decide to shrink us, if you decide for me to stop, you decide, whatever it is, I'm indifferent to the decision. God, I just want your will. And that is such a healthy perspective on being led by God, but it's so remarkably difficult to do. Yeah, it is. you you said something that sometimes we invite people into this communal exploratory, right, journey of. making a decision and we're like, we, typically choose people based on their experience, right? And that's not a bad thing, but I do want to kind of poke one thing that you said. yeah, yeah. Cause we're going to pull from their experience and the wisdom in order to make the best decision. But I think there's one little caveat and you're going to say, ⁓ you just, you know, Jesus juked me. But I think it's this idea. You're right. They may not have been where I had been experientially from a church or work experience. But I also think there's people that have been places with God that I've never been. That's really good, man. That's true. And I need that in my life because, and this kind of goes to the end of the chapter, because there is a tension with the natural emotions that we feel when it comes to being excited about something or going to go do something or my motives. the speed at which I work. And that's where it makes me begin to ask like, okay, well, how do emotions play a role in decision-making? Emotions in and of themselves aren't bad. But I've got to pay attention because, know, think of emotions as data, not directives, right? And think about, well, if you feel anxious about something, I should notice it, but I don't have to obey it, right? So it's not allowing it to control, you know, who we are. Whereas when you look at the space Skazera talks about, ⁓ slowing down the space, kind of inviting God into this, like the discernment side of things, the community aspect, not like, ⁓ I feel this, I do this, right? Many times we feel pressure, and I think God's guidance is often in line with peace, not pressure. And sometimes that's really, I don't know, I don't know for you, but sometimes that's really, really hard for me. Yeah, it is. I think that's... a reality for anyone serving in ministry and we do need help working that out. Hey, before we end, because we're about to end our podcast, we have not mentioned our sponsor, which is us. LobbyLabs.com is a community that we launched for guest services, first impressions, connections leaders, just like we've created this podcast so that we can learn together. We've created Lobby Labs so that you can learn from high level leaders. from what other churches have been able to implement in their ministries. Our hope is that we can learn better together, that you can maybe come above the water to get some air when you might feel like you're drowning every week. Maybe that one thing that you've been struggling with for months and years, maybe someone's already solved and you just need to be able to connect with them. our hope is that through this community and coaching group that guest services, first impressions, connections leaders can really take their ministry to the next level. And hopefully, Learn to hear from God a little bit better for the ministry Sometimes whenever we sometimes when we get that space when we solve that thing that was frustrating us That gives us a little bit extra margin to be able to hear from God on the things that maybe matter a little bit more Well, yes. Yeah, but sorry. I had a conversation there, but This was great. We'll be talking about chapter 7 next week again If you're following along if you haven't gotten the book grab it if you don't want to that's fine You can just tune in but make sure and subscribe and we'll see you next week