Latest / Church Staff Book Club / Why Your Church Culture Is Your Fault
Transcript
- Jonathan Malm: was something that was causing friction in the organization. Back to the church staff book club. name is Jonathan Malm and I'm Jason Young. And we are talking about a book, The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero. That's what this podcast is all about. We pick a book for the next, however many chapters there are. So 13 chapters, 13 weeks, nine chapters like this book, nine weeks. And we take one podcast episode. to talk about the chapter. And our hope is that whether you're listening as a team or whether you're listening as an individual, that you will be able to learn together with us, that we can all learn better. We can all contextualize it better. We can all apply it better because we're learning together. ⁓ We just learn better together. Everything is better when we do it as a team. And that's our hope with this podcast is that we can do that. So this chapter that we're talking about today is chapter seven is really a team building chapter. It's super practical, but it's how do you build. an emotionally healthy team and be an emotionally healthy leader. How does your team building actually affect your ability to be an emotionally healthy leader? So it was really good stuff. I liked it. I have a little bit of pushback on some stuff, which might be some good conversation today, but ⁓ what was, what would you say is like the big thing that you got from this chapter, Jason? ⁓ I think sometimes when we lead teams, I've been guilty of this. think, well, I lead the team, right? And I think what Peter is saying is actually, yes, and you're creating the environment your team lives in. So in other words, maybe this said differently is who you are becomes the culture. And if you feel the weight of that, you're like, Whoa, that was heavy. Exactly. mean, you're a thermostat. was talking to my 17 year old son last night about leadership. works ⁓ at Chick-fil-A and We were just talking about the difference in a thermostat and a thermometer, right? And here, we're saying as a leader, you're a thermostat, you're setting the temperature and the temp you set, not reflect, but the temp you set, in essence becomes the culture that the whole team lives inside of. Yeah. I mean, you've seen, you see that with, you know, teams that are competitive, teams that are, that work around the clock. It reflects the leader. It reflects what they think the leader is expecting of them. Obviously there's exceptions to that, right? Like some of it, we all bring our own baggage into the team. you know, maybe the team is very healthy, very relaxed and I bring it and I just hustle and I can ruin it. But that's the reality is that one person can change the dynamic of the whole team, even if they're not the leader, because they have those expectations. So part of this chapter is talking about how do we address those unhealthy behaviors that are negatively affecting the whole team. He opened the, he opened the idea with this little story. The open, chapter with the story, the idea of a, a lamb, bunch of forest creatures trying to live in the jungle or in the forest, I guess, rather. And there's a lamb. Then this tiger says, Hey friends, I want to live with you. Can I live with you? And all the, all the animals are like, yes, this is great. Right. And the lamb's like, I'm a little bit concerned here. And everyone's like, no, it's fine. That's just what tigers do. The tiger is going to be fine. And obviously we see the writing on the wall of what's going to happen here. But he pitches this idea of cage the tiger. The thing that is going to potentially be consuming your organization, consuming your team, damaging your team, predatory toward your team, actually caging the tiger instead of letting it run around. Cause I think a lot of us, we are maybe a little bit avoidant to, you know, caging someone or caging something that is happening because it seems very, ⁓ It seems very aggressive. seems very like we are separating something from the organization, which we don't do, right? But he says, cage the tiger. And I really liked that. That was something that I loved opening the chapter with. in light of that, when you think about kind of the setting, you know, that like you just described, if we think about, you know, a church staff, why do you think leaders, regardless of the role, but why do you think leaders often underestimate the power of culture, like inside the church, not like necessarily culture around them per se. I don't know that they necessarily undervalue the culture. I mean, I guess some pastors do. Some pastors maybe don't see that their actions result in culture. I think they don't, they underestimate the value of culture detractors. I remember we had a a pastor that we had on staff, again, a Spanish service, which he talked about in this book. But the idea that there was this, just this, something was happening with this leader that was just causing friction in the organization. My dad, who was the pastor, described it as like, was barnacles on the boat. It was just kind of slowly eating away at the structure of the boat. It was slowing us down. It was creating drag. was, it was, we all kind of felt this like. This lack of forward momentum, almost like this, like this lack of inertia or lack of, know, whatever you want to call it that was pulling us back. And there was nothing wrong. There was no moral issue. There was no like blatantly obvious, like disrespect, ⁓ whatever it was, but there was something that was causing friction in the organization. And I was proud of my dad that he addressed it. That's, that's where a lot of us are just like, that's just the way it is. That's just the way ministry needs to be. That's just. We come to accept the dysfunction, the negative element of the culture. We don't want to address it because it's like, well, in general, the culture is good. Our culture is hardworking. We love each other, all these good things, but we don't want to focus on the thing that, it's pulling us back. That's what I would say. I don't know. mean, there are definitely, would say pastors who don't realize their impact on culture. I talked to a pastor recently that like, he's like, he's like, I finally get it, Jonathan. I finally get what you're saying that like my personality impacts the church. Like, cause he thought like, well, these are all, we're a team, you know, but like everyone is looking at you pastor. Everyone is looking at you to see how we should operate, how we should act. We want to please those in authority and we will get our culture from you. Yeah. Yeah. I like the last part of what you said that sometimes leaders underestimate their impact, right? On, on culture. Cause remember this. Culture is what people experience. It's not what you announce. And it's kind of like the old adage, ⁓ organizations, churches, businesses, it doesn't matter. Many, many do this right here. They will have values or a cute little statement or, you know, this mission purpose statement and they'll put it on the wall. They might even mention it, but sometimes the difference in that and the actual culture, like there's... There's distinct differences. remember working at a church, a multi-site church. I was there for about seven years. And what was interesting is in those seven years, I worked for three, four different leaders in seven years. Is that because they couldn't handle you? Probably. So this is more of an indictment. What are we going to do with the basement, Yeah, this is... Wait a minute. Are you staging an intervention right now? And I just don't even know it. They're not going to be the room with me right now. They have some things they want to tell you. Holy moly. That could be an interesting conversation. Oh man. Made my heart jump for a quick sec. When I think about those leaders, I think about the organizational values. The church, our values... They stayed exactly the same, but the experience vastly different simply, but what you just said. things that they said from the pulpit all stayed the same, but the way they all worked out or what actually happened is completely different. That's right. The values, mission, all that stuff stayed the same. it goes to, serves as an example to what you just said that you, the leader have a significant impact. on the culture and I think about from leader one to two to three to the last leader, which is primarily the reason I left was because of the last leader. ⁓ They shaped the culture that we experienced, not necessarily something they announced. Cause again, values and mission statement exactly the same, but that leader either made things a lot better or made things drastically worse. So it's just interesting as an example, what you just said that leaders impact and shape culture. This is, I mean, this is one of the reasons that I am actually pro past year hiring their kids to be on staff because there is this like innate consistency that runs through in the culture because a child is going to be the product of the culture of their household. Right? So I noticed, you know, working with my dad, my brother worked with as well is, is decisions were easy. Like I knew exactly what my dad would want and I could largely be consistent with. the culture of the organization, just because I was, I was his son, right? Like I'm a big fan of that. know that doesn't always work out. There's really toxic environments of that. you know, I always make the joke on Instagram about like that one, whenever you're the one person not on the, not in the family that joins the staff. And like, now you're ostracized because you're not in that group, right? Like there's definitely some unhealth that can come from that, right? But there is also some really cool opportunities that come from that. Let's talk about, he kind of gives these, this, this, these four ideas of. how do you create an emotionally healthy team? At least how they did at New Life Church, which is, you know, where he was the pastor. But the first one was work performance and spiritual formation are inseparable. So the idea of how you function in your job, but also how you are formed with Jesus, they're both just as important to the organization. And that's it. That's an interesting thing. You know, that is not something that you would do in any other job, right? Like, You don't care about how someone's marriage is going, or you don't care about, uh, you know, if they have this secret life on the side, right. Except for if it's like, like I have of a teacher that's in our neighborhood that's like, yeah, they were like doing stuff behind the scenes, like with, like they were interested in like kid stuff, know, horrible things, right. But like as a, as a, no, they were coming to school drunk. That's what it was. Like they were coming to school drunk and I'm like, Was that affecting the teacher? Like, I don't know, like, but like that did affect it because it was like, it was in the workplace, right? That's the big deal. ⁓ But like a lot of like, if he gets drunk on Saturday, you know, Saturday, Sunday, and is drunk the whole weekend, nobody cares, right? Like that's in most jobs, that doesn't really ⁓ matter, but we do have the responsibility and leadership as laid out in ⁓ Paul's letter to Timothy, right? That there are standards for those in ministry that we need to uphold. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think what you're saying in what... Peter Scazzero is saying is leadership flows from the inside out. And I think sometimes that's, we could forget that. I have forgotten that because we think of leadership being what other people see, right? Or what we are doing. And in essence, maybe said a different way is culture. Again, what people experience, not necessarily what the leader announces. It's the overflow of the leader's internal world. And so, When you think about that, it's like, what's going on in my internal world? Is it full of anxiety? Is it full of calm? Is it full of, you know, that what we've talked about before, Sabbath delight, this loving union, this, you know, or is it constant rush and, you know, lack of trust is, know, so it, in a sense, whatever's being built inside that nobody sees eventually becomes something that most people see and experience. at some point. You may pull some trickery for a little bit. And what Schazera really advocates is, you know, that's not necessary. You set the tone, let God do the inner work, and then he will do something more and deeper in the outer work, right? But sometimes we don't connect those two worlds because the outer work is sexier than the inner work because the outer work is what people see. Therefore, sometimes we hang out right there, you know, because it's outcome focused. Whereas internal is we don't see it that way sometimes. Well, so here's, here's my pushback as I was reading this, cause he's talking about, know, this person has this, you know, emotional unhealth that they bring to the team meeting or this person does this thing. And I just think of this verse though, where it talks about making allowance for each other's faults. Right. Yeah. So for the law of Christ. So how do, how do those mesh though, the idea that like, we can't allow people's faults. to stay, but we also have to make allowance for each. I mean, I have my theory on how this works out, right? But like, what would you say? That was, that was kind of some of my pushback. was like, yeah, but like, aren't we supposed to be cool with like, yeah, that's just how so-and-so is. Like, is that, I mean, that's not really what that verse means, but that's, think often how we kind of interpret it or that's how, maybe that's how we act on it. Yeah. I, I don't, I don't think Skazero is saying, and I don't believe personally that a leader has to have their world in perfect working order to show up and be, you know, their best. Look, we're human. I have challenges, so I might show up to work and, you know, my wife and I see things differently or my kids just make me think and say things internally that I wish weren't true or there's that volunteer that you just hope they never show up again because They just, they're exhausting, right? Or a staff member or maybe it's your supervisor. You know, so there are a lot of things that create sometimes internal conflict. And I think that's okay. I think that we do give allowance and grace to each other. I also think that we have to be mindful, which is this is where the self-awareness piece comes in. It's kind of like these mirror moments I can hold up and, you know, this is what I see that I have to make sure that those things don't have a negative impact long term on the team, on the church, on my volunteers, right? So there is a humanity part of who I am and you give grace to me. And there's an awareness that I have to be mindful of that it's not negatively impacting and costing the church staff, the volunteers, the church as a whole, know, something. there, I do think that there is this balanced to maybe isn't the right word, but there's an awareness on all of our parts that, you know, let me say differently. Sorry, this is, I'm a verbal processor. So if you're listening, you're real time hearing Jason's brain, which sorry about that. That phrase, well, just check your blank at the door, check your baggage, check your whatever at the door. Yeah. And then you're going to show up and be this ideal person that we need, which is often lunacy. Because like the person is a person, right? And so- It's kind of a lack of integrity of like be a different person at work than you are at home kind of again. Absolutely. Yeah. And in essence, that's what it's saying. And I think the church or the or businesses do this too, is they protect themselves because they don't want you to show up as your authentic self. Now the danger is, it's like, what is that authentic self? Is it unpredictable? You know, so I think there's a balance that you show up as your authentic self. And you realize I have to be mindful from a self-awareness perspective and how I choose to manage it. What I do, what I say, and I have to measure impact on the team. that make sense? Yeah, definitely. I think where I came to peace with it, because this was the first section was work performance and spiritual formation are inseparable. The second section was that elephants in the room get acknowledged. So don't... Don't pretend like something isn't happening. these chat, these, these sections kind of largely felt the same because, he was talking about someone's, know, gruffness in a meeting. And then the second, second section he talked about, again, someone's gruffness in the meeting. We're going to address it. But what he painted the picture of, and I think this is really where I like it is that we are going to acknowledge the things that need to change in you, but it's not going to be a matter of, sorry, you're a barnacle on the boat. We're going to cut you loose. Instead it's saying, hey, we're going to come alongside you and we're going to walk with you as you mature in this area. And that's what he painted the picture of the idea of working with some people for multiple months and spending eight hours a day preparing for this one meeting where he needed to address the elephant in the room. The idea that you, go into this with fear and trembling, you go into this with sacrificial Jesus kind of love where you say, okay, this is your fault that I see. We're going to make an allowance for it in the way that we're going to come alongside you. And we're going to help you submit that to Jesus. We're going to help you. We're going to help you mature that thing that needs maturing. And I was like, that's, that's where it is. Which changed my perspective on that verse. The idea that make allowance for each other's faults is like, ⁓ yeah, that's just Jim. He's always angry. He's always going to like react to everything we say. Right. Instead of like, Hey Jim, I love you, man. Let's, let's work on that. We don't need that in your life anymore. And let's. Let's, I'm going to, I'm going to sacrifice my time. I'm going to sacrifice my productivity. I'm going to sacrifice my vision to be able to make allowance for your fault and come alongside you and, and carry you to Jesus, which is. That's a totally different. And again, that's very contrary to our current hustle culture where it's like, we got to produce, we got to, and it's like, what if you slowed down to make an allowance for this person's fault? Not ignoring the fact that it exists, but actually helping them carry it to Jesus. That's a big responsibility. Absolutely. And ⁓ recently I built this ⁓ eight hour workshop on feedback and how feedback really is a leadership practice. But a lot of times we don't practice it for a variety of reasons. I won't unpack everything here, but it reminds me of what you, the example that you just gave, because a lot of times we'll just say, ⁓ that's just. you know, Jim, that's just Sally and kind of overlook it and move on, but it has an impact, right? But what's interesting on the feedback side of things is sometimes we don't because we want the status. We don't want to ruffle feathers. We want to quote unquote, keep peace. We don't want to be looked at at that person. But when you're building this culture, intentionally building a healthy culture, one of the things that I've noticed that healthy cultures have leaders who are willing to be courageous enough to share feedback. They are, or I shouldn't say that, let me work this out. They're confident enough to share feedback. And this is the part that many leaders don't do that can be an accelerant for your leadership and your culture, the courage to ask for it, but it requires the third part, maturity to receive it. So when you think about the culture you're trying to create, I'm gonna be confident to You know, we don't have time to unpack how do you do this feedback, but maybe in another episode, but I'm going to do that. But I'm also going to model it because this culture of helping each other and feedback and things of that nature, it's only, it only goes as far as your willingness to ask and receive it. It's not noble that you ask. It's noble and mature that you receive it and that you're willing to do something with it. So when we think about building a healthy culture and purpose, you know, It's, this would be an example of, of how you can do that as, as a leader. Yeah. I think it also, there's kind of, there's this, there's this tendency in life to create these dichotomies. So we, we are, I feel like a lot of people in ministry are like, we either are the culture of no feedback and no, we don't address the elephants in the room, or we're a culture of addressing every elephant in the room saying that was bad, that was bad, that was bad, criticizing everything. But there's a third option where it is, you know, it's almost like the covenant approach to marriage, right? Or it's like, you know, you failed in the contract, but I'm going to step up and walk us through it and fulfill that part of the contract together as a covenant. Right? So like there's the culture with the, now we're going to walk through this with you to help you. We're all going to, we're all going to suffer together to help you get to where you need to be, because that's, that's the team is going to get there. Right? It's not just like. You are a weakness to the team. It's like our team is weak. Let's all go together. It is a like, again, a carrying to Jesus type of approach, which is not usually the case because we're so married to speed that we're like, this person's just not going to be able to keep up. We got to cut them loose. And that doesn't feel very in line with Jesus's teachings and Paul's teachings in the New Testament, right? Like, it is very much like, let's make allowance for each other's faults again. ⁓ so I love that. And another thing that Peter said was that time and energy are invested. ⁓ and here's something I was thinking, I've been thinking about lately, and I don't know that, I don't know that a lot of people agree with this, but I think that churches probably have no business hiring specialists until they reach over a thousand people in attendance every week. And what I mean is instead what they should be hiring is pastors. Meaning people who will care because specialists, what specialists do is they spend 80 % of their time designing the graphic, doing the website, doing social media, all of these like very specialized tasks, right? But instead I would say you should be hiring pastors who are more focused on developing people until you're about over until you're over a thousand people, because at that point, then you have, you know, this economies of scale where you have these people that can actually care for people. And there's not as many people that are expecting to get cared for, right? Like, but up until that point, like. We should be pastoring our volunteers. We should be, and the volunteers are likely the ones who will be doing the actual specialist work, right? But instead we're pastoring them. We're leading them. We're equipping them. That's kind of something, I don't know. I don't know how you think about what you think about that, but it's something I posted on social media the day. And I'm like, I don't know. I think I agree with this, but I, I'd never thought about it until that moment. Yeah. don't, I don't know if I'm smart enough to chime in ⁓ on something like that. mean. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe so. mean, your- I need a decision right now, Jason. Yeah, I could probably give you something and it would be really wrong. mean, there, there, there could be some merit. think your thoughtful justification is sensible. Yeah, there's exceptions to that. I'd say this is like a general rule. Yeah, for sure. And look, what Jonathan and I know is you want to get your leadership right, you want to get culture right. ⁓ But it's hard. But that's, think, I think you don't have to figure it out on your own. ⁓ We hope like this podcast or other resources, or maybe you have a community of other leaders that, that God's placed you where you are for such a time as this. And he wants you to intentionally create the healthiest possible culture, not allow the culture to accidentally be created. Right? So, and that's something big to own. So yeah, I don't know. Just, I don't know that I have a real answer for that, but I think it's a worthy thought. Yeah. Because I think the idea again is that we are investing time and energy into spiritual formation, into all of these things, addressing the elephant, helping you address the elephant in the room. There was another part in the section where he was talking about, you know, a staff member that ⁓ kind of did a fireable offense. Like they, they, and he again, spent a lot of time preparing for this conversation with the staff member and he, he dressed the ideas like this is what needs to change in your life. If you can't change this, we would need to fire you. Even saying like in many organizations, this would be a fireable offense, but let's work on this together. And I just think about, you know, one time I got fired. ⁓ it wasn't really fired. was like the organization was getting rid of this branch. I was like, they loved me, but they had no longer had a place for me in the organization. Right. So, but I tell, was telling my dad about that and he, he said something. He's like, you know, Jonathan, kind of glad you got fired. feel like everyone needs to get fired one time in their life. And I'm like, and, like, that's a horrible thing to say to your son. Right. But I know my dad, he was saying, you know, like, I am excited for what this is going to do. in your formation as an individual, as a person. And the idea that sometimes we think of firing, we think of confronting, we think of these things as negative things, like that's going to hurt them. But whenever you start realizing that it is the chisel that creates the diamond, right? That creates the value in the diamond. It is that friction that creates the value in so many of us that we can actually do that in a loving way. that is actually the best thing for them. And by not exposing the facet of their diamond, if you will, we're actually being unloving. And I really love that idea that like, if we're, if we're investing the time and energy to help them become what God has created them to be, that is the most loving thing it can be, especially whenever we're applying that pressure and applying that friction and that, you know, that confrontation. Yeah, I will agree with you. I've gotten fired and laid off and both were formative for me. And actually what I didn't see at the time is God was protecting me from what I couldn't see. And ended up being, so to your point, really helpful. Didn't feel great in the moment, but helpful. Discipline doesn't feel good in the moment, but in the end it produces a good harvest, right? Yeah. So let me ask you a quick question. I know time is dwindling. So if people are listening and they're like, okay, this healthy team, this culture thing, I hear what you're talking about. What does, what are some descriptives, some adjectives, if you will, of what a healthy culture looks like? You know, what are the signs I should look for or have as a target? What would, what would be some of those words? They'd probably align a lot with New Testament verbiage, where it's, you know, considering others more highly than yourselves. It would be, ⁓ helping people carry the load. It would be the encouragement element. It would be the, helping people maintain internal perspective. It would be resting Sabbath, the, the, the, the, the celebration of rest or the celebration of health. ⁓ you know, think celebrating things that maybe are not healthy for the organization, but that are healthy for the individual actually celebrating those. Celebrating failure, I'd say would be one, not moral failure, but celebrating like, you took a risk, you tried something, that's awesome. Like celebrating innovation, I would say. Maybe that's not in the New Testament, but I do think that's a, there are a lot of churches that don't celebrate failure and because of that, they don't celebrate innovation. So I would say that's one. I don't know, what would you say? Probably better. You run a lot of these meetings in organizations where you're talking about these type of culture builders. I like all this. I love the innovation ⁓ part. In fact, a book, if anybody's interested, it's a business book. ⁓ I don't know how to pronounce the guy's name, but he goes by VG. His initials, he is a distinguished professor of business at Dartmouth. He's been there almost 50 years and so has had a gig with him recently, but he has a book. called the three boxed solution or a three box solution, something like, yeah, something like that, but it's interesting. ⁓ So it could be worth the read around innovation because it's a different way to think about it. So I love that word he said, anyways, little side note there. I don't make any commissions on books by the way you recommend, but there you go. I would add some of what we already talked about Jonathan, honesty, vulnerability, trust, ⁓ boundaries, feedback, right? And how we... how we handle conflict. know Skazero talks about the leaders and teams that avoid conflict. You what does healthy conflict look like? And, and I would say that that is one piece. think healthy cultures do well, healthy leaders do well, because I think in an attempt to build a great culture, sometimes we can be tempted to avoid conflict. But when you avoid conflict, you actually weaken the culture. And so, I would say every those plus, you know, things that, that you just said. Healthy conflict is one of those like, feels like an oxymoron, but it's actually a very true statement. You know, you, you, when you have, you know, a staph infection, you need to get it out and it's an uncomfortable yucky process, but it's a healthy conflict because you're getting out the thing that would cause decay and dysfunction in your body. So yes. So we hope this episode was helpful. Next. Chapter is chapter eight. We're getting two more chapters of this book and we'll move on to the next one. Probably need to start deciding what book we're gonna be doing next. But hey, we hope this was helpful for you. We'll see you next week. Make sure and subscribe if you haven't already. Find us on social media. We love talking about this stuff, but we'll see you next week.