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Follow one church's journey as they depart from modern church growth trends and reinvent themselves by equipping everyday Christians to live out their faith in real life. Find episodes and show notes at www.dereksanford.com/reinventingchurch
Danielle
Hey, welcome in today's episode. We're testing our telekinesis. No. say that. I'm leaving it. The ship from hero pastor to healthy church. Our build up set this week at grace and the values performance matrix. Matrix. Happy Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is tomorrow. When this drops, right? It is. Happy Thanksgiving.
That's all.
Derek (00:33.592)
tree.
Derek (00:40.91)
Yeah Yeah, happy Happy interactions with your crazy uncles out there in podcast land
And what is it? What were we saying the other week? It's not even called Thanksgiving anymore. It's called like the day America killed everybody day or whatever. It's like you can't I love it. Okay. Um, I have a fun game for us. really? Um, yes, I think so. So it's like a mind meld game. Basically the idea is we're going to say a word each one of us. Okay. We're going to say one, two, three word. And we're going to hear the word.
To be politically correct.
Danielle (01:16.248)
from each other that the person said. the whole point is to keep repeating that process until we say the same word.
And then however many steps it takes you.
Is how, that's how well we know each other. boy. And I'll give it my arbitrary rating. Okay. I don't know what the scale is. Exactly. Alright, so it can be anything. Any word. Any word.
ABCDRF.
Derek (01:36.312)
just one, two, three in it and then we got to merge them.
The last time we're gonna discuss this, the point is to get them together. Okay, say the same word.
So like, if the, we're trying to get the word in the middle of those two words, or is it just like whatever that word that other person said brings to
It's kind of like word association. are we? Yeah, it depends. Okay.
Depends what the two words are, suppose.
Danielle (01:58.478)
It does. All right. All right. So it's it's like rock, paper, scissors, shoot. One, two, three, word word. OK. Ready? You say one, two, three with me also. All right. Here we go. One, two, three, taco. You were OK. We can't talk. All right. So taco and word. OK.
Danielle (02:22.548)
Okay? One, two, three, ola!
I'm good.
and Ola. Okay.
Okay, well, we're not gonna get this, all right?
One, two, three, Gordita!
Danielle (02:42.958)
Okay, okay. One, two, three, Fido. Okay, I'm calling that one. We failed that one. We're starting over. But that's what happens.
No.
Derek (02:55.854)
Okay, alright, yeah, that's don't know each other. But you get it. I get it now, okay? Yeah, I was trying to be smart. I mean, smart out. Right, I'm ready.
Maybe I'll start with you
Danielle (03:04.728)
Go one. Yeah. right.
Okay. Two, three, horse.
One
Derek (03:14.712)
was know your work.
No, but I said it says what we're
Okay. To. Cow. No horse, not horse, cow. Yeah, okay. I knew we could do this. Wow. A plus.
One, three,
That's it!
Derek (03:30.64)
Okay, we went from F to A+.
One more, let's see if that was a fluke. was. It was, because I forgot my word and said no instead of... Okay.
Wait, I gotta think of another
Derek (03:45.602)
I'm ready.
One, two, three, bathtub.
Danielle (03:53.483)
One, two, three, out.
Danielle (04:00.97)
One, two, three, hot tub. shoot. We like, it passed like ships. Okay, what was heater in?
It did. Heater and hot tub.
Danielle (04:18.611)
dead.
Danielle (04:24.718)
Two three jets Okay, okay, okay one two three outside what
Yeah, we're
Derek (04:37.294)
you
Derek (04:40.888)
deck jets.
Okay, that was... Alright, and that's how you play... Get to know if you're actually friends or not.
I think we decided it was a fluke.
I was a fluke. Damn it. I'm upset. I'm not. Okay. All right. Well, I do. Okay. Perfect. Good to know. And now we know. All right. Let's move on to our reinventing church topic, which I'm sure everyone will be thankful for. So just as a reminder, we're talking about the 11 shifts every church must make to be effective in our current reality. Dave Rhodes and Stain Sheet. You guys, not today.
Judge our friendship by dumb things like that.
Derek (05:01.771)
No he's
Danielle (05:19.072)
Shane Stacey from Clarity House have been setting us up week to week, really cool little segments of wisdom. this week we're talking about moving from shifting from hero pastor to healthy church. So here's Dave Rhodes. And then we will get into an interview with Jamal.
Clarity House (05:48.366)
Hey, pastors and leaders, got a question for you. If I could wave a magic wand and at the end of doing it, you would have either 100 more leaders or 100 more volunteers. Which one would you take? Now, I think we all know the right answer to this. We're supposed to say we would choose 100 leaders. But can I just be honest with you for a moment? Some days, I think I would just choose 100 more volunteers.
See there are some days I just want to get stuff done and I just want help in doing it. But it's on those days I have to remind myself of the role I play in. The story that God is writing with our church or organization. See, I love stories and every story has a hero, a villain and a hero maker in Star Wars. Luke Skywalker is the hero. Darth Vader is one of the villains.
But Obi-Wan Kenobi is what we would call the hero maker. In Lord of the Rings, Frodo's the hero. There's all kinds of different villains. Gandalf is often what we think of when we think of the hero maker. And I want to bring that up in this video for just a moment because I think far too many times as pastors, we're playing the hero role in the story that God is writing. And there's lots of
reasons for that. We're the ones who signed up for the responsibility. We're the ones who deliver the goods. And when we think of ourselves as the hero, the pulpit is our primary tool in helping write the story that God wants to write with our church or with our organization. But just for a moment, I want to challenge your thinking. What if our role as leaders isn't to be the hero, but to be
the hero maker. What if our people are the true heroes, not just the help? What if God is writing a story in our church or in our organization through our people in that our job is not to be the hero with 100 or 1000 helpers, but instead to be the hero maker, developing 100 or 1000 people. See, when you're the hero, the pulpit is your primary tool. But when you're the hero maker, you know the pro
Clarity House (08:08.302)
Reduction of developing leaders is your primary task. And the thing I love about Jesus, although he was the greatest hero to ever live, he also became the greatest hero maker. In John chapter 14, he says it this way when he looks at his disciples, he says, you guys are gonna do even greater things than me. See, what I love about Jesus is that he always calls disciples, but he sees leaders.
And in Mark chapter three, he makes a transition in his ministry from simply doing all the ministry to empowering 312, eventually 72, 120 others to become the hero in the story that God is writing with his movement. And so in John chapter 14, he looks at his disciples and says, you guys are going to do greater things than me. It sounds almost heretical, but Jesus is the one.
who says it and the good news is it actually comes true. The disciples do, do greater things. Part of the reason we're sitting here today is because Jesus made the transition from just simply being a hero to being a hero maker. So what about you? If your church is gonna be healthy, truly healthy, you gotta get out of program management or just simply using
the pulpit to actually becoming a people developer. See, your people are the greatest untapped resource of your church. The body of Christ isn't just simply an institution, it's a movement of people. And for it to experience God's ultimate reality for your church, your organization to live out God's ultimate reality. Well, we got to shift from being the hero of the story.
to being the hero maker in the story that God is using to write a new destiny for your community. So, what role are you gonna play? Are you gonna be content to be the hero just trying to recruit 100 people to help you out? Or will you choose to be a hero maker and develop 100 people who take you far greater places than you could have ever gone on your own?
Clarity House (10:38.466)
You want to create a healthy church? It starts with us as leaders choosing to be a hero-maker.
Derek (10:51.864)
man, what a powerful challenge from Dave Rhodes talking about moving from being a hero to being a hero maker. that's exactly where we're going today. Because if we're honest, most of us didn't mean to build hero cultures in our churches, but somewhere along the way, ministry started to revolve around platform instead of people if we're not careful. And so my guest today knows about that tension as well. Jamal Williams, lead pastor of Sojourn Church in Midtown in Louisville.
And he's been intentionally leading his church. Did I do it all right?
you
Hey, you did a...
All right, all right. To move from platform dependent leadership to team based development. so Jamal, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. And before we get into it, just give us a quick snapshot of your church there, would you?
Jamaal (11:41.326)
Yeah, yeah, thanks, Derek. Yeah, I get to pastor Sojourner Midtown. It's in Louisville, Kentucky. I've been there going on 10 years in January and it's a beautiful church. It's 25 years old. It is kind of nestled in a urban community called Shelby Park, which when I came was about 55 % African-American.
about 40 % white and then the rest is kind of other kind of had a lot of immigrants and people from different nationalities. And now we're probably close to about 45 % black and it's very diverse area. So the church has been through a transformation. When I first got to Sojourn Midtown, it was a 99.5 % kind of white church and now it is a multi-ethnic church through much
and suffering and serving. But yes, it's went through a transformation in last 10 years and the Lord's been with us.
Wow, that's incredible. So hey, I know you've been in ministry from a young age and I'm sure you've seen lots of models of leadership along the way up close and personal. When did you begin to sense that this hero pastor approach might not be the healthiest way forward for your church?
Yeah, I would say it happened even before I came to Sojourn. So prior to being a Sojourner, I passed through a church called Forest Baptist Church, which was a historic African-American church. And with an African-American community, it can be very kind of senior pastor led.
Derek (13:16.716)
Yeah.
And very early, because I started pastoring way younger than I should have probably as a lead pastor, at 25, I just realized that if this was going to be a healthy church, I needed godly men and women around me. And we needed to really empower the body to be the body. And that just kind of came from a lot of weakness. So I remember going on a journey just learning and researching different leadership models.
to try to share leadership. Fast forward to coming to Soldier in Midtown, I followed up a very charismatic leader and a great preacher. And I'm thinking to myself like, if I'm following up, I'm not really that. I have my own strengths. And so even then just saying, I don't need to be the hero. I can't be the hero in that way. I need to lean into who I am and then consequently really help our members to do the same.
And then I would say this last generation of working with the Clarity House, my good friends Shane, Stacey, and Dave Rhodes kind of even took that to another level of helping me to actually answer the question, how do we equip the Saints for the work of the ministry? Not just share ministry with ministry leaders and staff and some members who have space or extremely good gifts, but everybody where every member feels valuable and feels like they're a part of what God is doing. Every member is a hero.
row.
Derek (14:45.026)
Yeah, it's really good. you know, we didn't really talk about this. But I'm curious, you know, coming from the trajectory that you've come from, you know, I the honor culture is something that's very kind of prominent in some African American churches. And like, how have you how have you navigated that thing of just saying, we still want to we still want to have a sense of honor for I think, for our leaders and for one another. But but what what has that? What has that tension felt like to you?
Yeah, that's a great question on so many levels. think growing up African-American tradition, like there's positives to that, right? But with every cultural value, there could be a shadow side to it. so at its best practice in African-American tradition, honor is important. And it kind of comes out of the history of the African-American church, right? The invisible institution that became an institution and where pastors oftentimes was maybe one of the more educated or people in the community and kind of had
access to all types of people. And so he was kind of the hub of the community. And a pastor could be a person who's maybe serving as a street sweeper during a week, but he comes.
into the sanctuary and he's like a holy man. It's a sacred position. Right. And so you have the hierarchy there. And then at its worst it could just be so dumb. I remember I first came to my church. There was a afternoon program after service program at Forest and I came into the back about 15 minutes after it had started and people were eating or waiting to eat and they were waiting on me to come back. I'm like why are you waiting on me. Hey someone needs to bless the food. So they were
honoring me by having me bless the food. And I'm like, it's 150 plus people here. Anybody could have blessed the food. No weight on me anymore, right? But that's kind of the cultural extreme. So even at Forest, I had to learn to take that honor culture, take what's good out of it, but then say, hey, we don't want to take it too far. And I think
Jamaal (16:44.172)
being and coming into a space that was majority white, it was the opposite. It's kind of pastors was like, like dude, people were saying dude to me for the first time, they called me by my first name. And, and so I think that one of the ways that I've kind of our network of churches specifically here in Louisville, because there's six sojourn churches, all autonomous now, but we used to be a collective. The way that I've kind of, I think that's something I've been able to bring from the black tradition is like, hey, we're a high honor.
culture. We don't want to take that to the extreme. But we want to do what the Bible says do is give honor to whom's honor do and outdo one another showing honor. But everyone should be showing everyone honor not just up but horizontally as well.
Yeah, I love that. Thanks for weighing in on that. That has been a topic of conversation at many a table that I sit at with my fellow pastors from African-American traditions, white traditions. And it's a very interesting conversation when we get into the, like you said, the history of it and even just some of the ways that that plays out. And I think that both of both traditions have a lot to learn from the other kind of thing, as you've said. So that's good. So we jumped right into this hero pastor thing. We should probably define terms a little bit at a basic level.
How would you describe the difference between hero pastor culture and healthy church culture in a way that maybe we haven't hit on quite yet?
Yeah, that's good. would say that, you know, what's funny is that healthy church culture starts with a healthy leader. And no leader can be healthy if he or she is the hero. Because only one person is really the hero and that's Jesus Christ. That's right. And so I think that the way that I would define a hero pastor is a pastor who people find pride in going to the church.
Jamaal (18:42.7)
because the pastor is the pastor. And I don't mean like a healthy pride. It's almost like their identity is tied up to the church because there is a super gifted, uber anointed public speaker. And what often happens in those cultures is that that is the winningness of itself. It's not people being discipled. It's not people making disciples. It's people filling.
sense of coolness or like they are special because maybe the lead pastor is special, right, or a great speaker. And so we don't want to find our identity in that, churches don't, we don't want our members to. I think Paul...
intentionally in 1st Corinthians is like tearing that down. Right. You say some say I follow Paul others I follow Peter, Apollo's you know it's Christ divided right. Or in 2nd Corinthians they're following the super apostles and Paul is trying to say hey no we're all a part of the body. We've all been uniquely gifted by the spirit and a healthy church is a church where every single person is learning more and more their personal call.
and their corporate call. And they're learning to live with gospel chest and not put as much value on the platform because they know that God has a call on their ministry just as much as the person is speaking to them.
Yeah, so so great. So we want to get into some practicals here. And so I know one of your core convictions is to move the platform to the people which I I love that phrase. Can you just kind of unpack for us what that means in your context, maybe how it's changed the way that you lead as sojourn.
Jamaal (20:34.188)
Yeah. And this is a newer emphasis for us. know, this is a journey we've been on for the last year. I really, again, appreciate Dave and Shane and their work. think that while we would have said that and I would have said most of my ministerial life like, hey, we want to equip my jobs to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.
I wasn't really helping their imagination to see what that could look like. You know, we would say things like, we want you to be a missionary where you live, work and play, but there was a gap between our missionaries and our more mature members and people who are just coming to faith. I feel like that middle ground is where we were weakest as a church.
We were good with new believers and getting them plugged in and getting them on a journey of discipleship. We were good at sending out missionaries. We have a culture of sending and a number of sent ones on the mission field. But that middle ground, if you were just kind of there, it's kind of a choose your own adventure. you know, kind of make it out if you make it out or whatever. And so we've recently just said, hey, no, everyone has a platform or
to use familiar language, that circle of influence. And it's important that you identify that and that you yourself see that this is a part of your call as a Christian. He didn't just call you from something, he called you to something. And so there's only 52 Sundays when someone can get up and preach on Sunday. And there's only one mic that should be going on at that time. But all of us, we've been called to our...
our platforms in our daily life where we all get to preach the gospel.
Derek (22:24.354)
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. it's amazing, isn't it? How so many churches, including ours and probably yours at some point, we base so much around that platform. Like, you know, people think, man, if I can get to that platform, I finally made it either as a singer, as a preacher, as, you know, even our serving has centered around that platform in the past. You know, if I can do special music one week, you know, I've arrived or something like that. And it's really a flipping
of that, you know, pushing the pushing the platform out there. So you already have a platform like go use it. I really love that turn of phrase.
Derek, would say too, like with that, right? It's all about setting a culture and culture is what you teach, celebrate, repeat, kind of really tolerate, right? So yeah. That's right. Promote and permit. And so I think the onus is on me and our leaders to celebrate God and work and the life of the people.
and what you permit.
Jamaal (23:29.974)
and not simply got a working life of the staff or an event that happened at church. And the more we do that, people just get an imagination, right? That's right.
Yeah, it's so hard, isn't it? Though, like, one of the things we found as we've been making this shift is, you know, it is easy to be platform centric, it's much harder to do the work of discovery to figure out what what's actually happening out there, you know, like, what's, what is God doing at this person's workplace or in this person's neighborhood? And, and unless we have kind of good mechanisms to hear those stories, and then tell those stories, you know, it can become, it can become really easy just to go into autopilot.
Yes, it really can. It really can.
Yeah. So you mentioned Ephesians 4, you know, there's again one of my favorite passages too, but equipping the saints for works of ministry and let's get practical. So the platform to the people Ephesians 4, what are some ways that you've kind of helped bridge that? How helped people to really live out their calling in those in those spaces?
Yeah, so one of the things that we're doing now is for our church, we're an urban church. While we have people coming from our neighborhood, a lot of people are coming from outside of our neighborhood. And it's got to be like they're coming intentionally for very specific things as our church. Like you kind of...
Jamaal (24:54.158)
they're willing to go out their way. So multi-ethnic church, which in the Midwest is not necessarily something that you have to be intentional about, multicultural, multi-socioeconomic. So they're coming in and because it's a urban church, parking isn't always the best. It's not very convenient to come back to the church during the week, right? And so one of things that we've started doing is just digitizing all of our teachings and community groups where
allowing community groups to either watch before our training or to watch together. And we've really, rather than having people come down to our church or for us, that's really helped people to be more involved in our content.
And it's also created an atmosphere within those groups where it kind of encouraging people to disciple one another. Right. So the topics evangelism if there is someone in a group who has the gift of evangelism hey when we're talking about this topic let's lean into this person more. Right. So it's just giving people more empowerment even within their groups to take on leadership not maybe in everything right because no one person is perfect everything but to kind of look around around and say hey this
person's really good on stewardship or this person's really good on filling a blank. So as we're equipping them through these digital resources, then empowering community group leaders to kind of step in to take lead and applying it and helping others in the group who may not be there. So this also looks like empower people at their place of work to do things. Yeah. You know, we had someone watching a live stream who doesn't even go to our church. I was really encouraged there and a
whole other city and state, but they were watching their daughter used to go to our church and she said, hey, you preaching this vision on equipping and every member being involved in ministry. I've started a prayer group at my job and that's something I never would have done. I'm too shy and it's coming together. There's a lot of Christians now getting together and praying and now we're starting to talk about being intentional to share our faith with others. So little things like that, which really are big things.
Derek (27:10.442)
Yeah, they really are. That's that's really incredible. You know, another another principle that you've talked about is is building culture before strategy and structure. So again, you've already hinted at it a little bit about this promote and permit and you know, kind of building that culture behind the scenes. But talk, talk about what you mean by that. And what does that look like on your team to build culture before strategy and structure?
Yeah, I think before you can go strategy and structure, really have to name.
who you want to become and name values. And so I think even coming into Midtown, we're in a diverse area. The church moved from literally across the tracks from a homogenous community that had a very specific culture. Got a building that was growing very fast. Finally got a building that they can kind of fit into. It's a beautiful cathedral, but it's in an urban area, poor area, right? So coming in, it's like, okay, how are we
want to become a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-socioeconomic church, it's got to start from the inside out. It's got to start with the elders and leaders and deacons and then work its way to the staff and then out to the church. And so I think that whenever you're trying to create culture, you have to create
values and as best if those values are created together and so and then you have to teach and train from the inside out because if your staff is excited about it if your elders are excited about if everybody can own it
Jamaal (28:49.23)
then about time it makes it to the congregation. You've already got so many storytellers who can help tell the story and carry the vision besides you. And so I'm really big on values-led leadership and been intentional about cultivating that from the inside out.
That's awesome the the the it's such a profound thing it because you know We've known and have talked about even around here this idea that culture does come from values That's kind of a commonly known leadership principle, but the thing that was we've talked about on this podcast before but that that Dave and Shane helped us with was Attaching those demonstrated by statements to our values Because all of a sudden now we're like, okay how
these aren't just little things we put up on the wall. how are we actually demonstrating these values in a variety of different settings and a variety of different environments around our church? And it really kind of forces the issue of saying, OK, if these are our values, how are we living them? And then once we start living them, now the culture starts to get established. And I think connecting those dots between values and behavior was like a big aha moment for us.
One of the ways to do that I think is just celebrating, right, when we see it.
from the pulpit and staff meetings. And even opening up staff meetings for us to say, hey, let's just go through our values real quick. Does anybody have a story about sending anyone live out like holiness this week? Holiness, know, humility, hunger, honor, health, you know, those are kind of our staff values. And then having people like, so so and so lived it out by confessing sin about the data or saying they're sorry about this, you know, and it kind of creates the culture.
Derek (30:39.586)
Yeah, love that. So I want to talk about one other kind of learning or principle that you've embodied. It's learning to lead from wholeness, not from rush or wounds. And so talk about your own journey in that principle and what you've learned about your own soul, the pace of ministry and life that has helped you to lead from a place of health rather than hurry.
You know, as they say, man, life be life and right. Excuse the broken English. And life is always going to life. Right. That's what James says. You know, all joins my brothers when you face trials of various kinds, there's always when and not it's right. And that word various is, you know, Greek is multi layered, multi colored. And so whether it's a flat tire or a season of transition, we're going to face it.
When you feel
Jamaal (31:36.042)
And so it's just really important when we do to make sure that we are anchored and that we are doing our best to not be reactive. that's hard, but it starts one from living from the inside out. John 15, you know, as much as we can to just like make that our number one pursuit.
is our own spiritual health and holistic health because healthy leaders generally have healthy teams and healthy organizations. It's just a matter time before organization or team is unhealthy if the leader is unhealthy.
Yeah, I was just gonna have you get specific like are there practices that yeah, that you have put into place or for yourself or for your team that have helped you to maintain that healthy rhythm.
Yeah, think for myself, starting with myself, so we had a really hard year last year. As a family, one of my kids had a really bad medical emergency that just took us out. And so I could not do what I normally do.
in my personal devotion and even just like working out life because of rehab and all this other stuff that had to happen with my child. So what I learned during that season was a more contemplative way to relate to the Lord rather than doing what I normally do, Bible reading plan. It's like, I'm going go through the gospels and read a paragraph and just sit silently.
Jamaal (33:19.466)
and imagine a scene, pray, and then just practice silence and solitude. So last year's just journeying through silence and solitude in the morning, more of listening, just calmed me and anchored me. It was one of the most healthy spiritual years of my life, right?
And so not getting stuck in a habit of just relating to the Lord, seeking his face and saying like, what do I need to do different this year? Like the home demands, I can't do 45 minutes to an hour of silence in the morning. Things are moving quickly. I've got a good. That's right. And doing that. Right. And then even with just health, like, hey, I may not be able to be on the same workout plan.
You're not at that stage of life. That's right.
Jamaal (34:10.562)
but how can I walk more or what can I do to just keep moving? And maybe it's a rule of if I'm going into the office, I'm on the fourth floor, no elevators. You're taking the steps each time and that'll be your workout. But it's just, just adjusting. I think with a team, it's really modeling that for our team, this less anxious presence. And when we feel anxious, lean with vulnerability.
and just say, hey guys, I'm coming into this meeting a little off. I just want to just pause. I'm just gonna pause with you and just sit for two or three minutes in silence and just read this verse a couple of times so that I can ground myself, because I'm just rushing from something or rushing from another meeting. And just modeling that for our people has just modeled vulnerability. I can see our team now doing that when.
They come to the office, maybe not in the best mood or whatever, just naming it, letting people know and that being okay. And then making space to just have a time with the Lord to recenter and go. And I think that's all of life. And then just busyness, like asking the question, creating a culture like, you know, is this, is what you're doing necessary? Like, man, this is like the sixth person I heard you meet with this week.
And three of them was around lunch hour. First, don't do that. second is like, yeah, is there anyone else that you can delegate responsibilities to and helping our staff kind of to see themselves more as supporters and coaches and not the person that has to solve everyone's problem and be in every meeting. Right.
Yeah, so eliminating things that's unnecessary and trying to streamline as much as we can and make our life about being in the presence of God, being with people and empowering other people to do the work of the ministry so that everything's not fumbling through us.
Derek (36:10.752)
Yeah, it's really great. Love it. Thanks for the encouragement and the challenge.
I think I would say is having friends and people around you too who can look into your schedule. So I think, you know, we recently put something in place a couple of years ago. I did, I just felt it. Like y'all, have, I'm like a time optimist and.
I've never heard that before and that is the perfect description.
Yes, yes, my wife, we got to go somewhere. I'm like, OK, I'm going to cut the grass, give a shave, work out. She's like, you're going to do all that 40 minutes? And so giving people permission about life, like, you're being a time optimist. There's no way you can do that. Or even with my travel, like, OK, so you're going to go here, do that, then you're going to come back. So having people even look at your schedule, I've got a team now, every quarter, they look at.
the engagements that I've accepted or my travel to make sure that I'm not just running like a chicken with my head cut off, because I want to live a more, a life of a mystic, right? A life of someone who's living from the inside out.
Derek (37:15.082)
Yeah, that's great. So speaking of travel, I want to give you a chance to give a quick shout out for your book. You got back from helping helping another crew work through your book and just just give us the 30 seconds now. What's what's what's the book about? And what's the title and people listening want to check it out? Where can they grab
Paul, thanks, Derek. Yeah, I think that Revelation 7, 7 through 9 is a great picture of people before the throne of God, of all the adjectives that John could have used and that the Spirit could have shown him in that vision. The adjective is that it's a people for every nation, every language there, and that is fulfilling Abraham's covenant and also points us back to Jesus' prayer.
Lord your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so our argument is that every church, not that they should be a multi-ethnic church because there's ways and reasons that every church can't be, but every church should have what we call a multi-ethnic kingdom culture, which essentially is a culture that allows people to bring what's good, true and beautiful about themselves and their culture to the church.
as contributors and not as assimilators. So how do we create a church where we're learning from various ethnicities and cultures of who God has brought us and we're willing to adapt so that our church looks more like heaven.
That's awesome. What's the title of the book?
Jamaal (38:40.32)
in church as it is in heaven. It's co-authored with Timothy Paul Jones, who's a apologetics professor.
Love it, love it, love it. So one final question. This is a podcast for pastors and church leaders. listen, as I've come across pastors and church leaders, there's a lot of us who are tired and tired.
in some ways because there's stuff that we can't or won't let go of. And I think specifically of pastors of smaller to mid-sized churches who kind of the expectation of our culture is that the pastor kind of does everything. so this might not even be wrongly motivated. It just may be a condition of the church culture itself. But anyway, if you were to
give advice to a church leader that's listening to this who may be afraid maybe to let go of some control of being the hero pastor. Can you give a small but maybe significant step that they could take to move from being hero pastor to being healthy church culture?
Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, I would just say, you know, oftentimes in life less is more. And Jesus is the hero, man. Let him be the hero. Pick the three or four things that you do really well and let go of everybody else and let people know that you need them to step up and use their giftings. That's biblical.
Derek (39:58.818)
Yeah.
Jamaal (40:16.526)
what we see in a book of Ephesians this call, I probably even talk about ligaments, like how the ligaments support the body. Ligaments aren't seen, but they are really important. Go ahead and pop your ACL and see how you feel the rest of day. That's right. And so, man, yeah, you're, if you're a pastor, you're supposed to care, be able to teach, be a man of character, and equip others and disciples.
So do that and equip everyone else to do what they need to do so that you can be healthy, so that your wife and kids can enjoy you, so that you can build a relationship with outsiders in the church and have slower days. We make really bad heroes, so let Jesus be the hero. Do the three or four things you do really well and give the ministry back to the people.
and you'll thank me and others later.
That's right. Such a good word. Such a good word. Thank you so much for your time today. Really, really appreciate it was really an honor to get to know you a little bit. I'm hoping we can hang out at some point here in the future. But thanks for being a part of this podcast today, Jamal. We're cheering you on from Erie, Pennsylvania, down there in Louisville.
Thanks pastor really love and respect what you do brother keep going.
Derek (41:40.386)
Bless you. Take care.
Derek (41:48.974)
Okay, that's great. That was awesome. It really fun to meet Jamal. He's got such a great ministry going there. It was really cool. Really, I loved meeting him. All these guests this year are kind of new to me. We have a shared commonality in this work that we're in, but we don't all know each other. so getting to meet these new friends, we just really hit it off.
That's awesome. Good. That's Cool. All right. So let's move to our segment we call Behind the Curtain. This is something we added in. We just want to talk about what we're actually doing week to week as we're reinventing our own church and chasing our new vision. I thought this week. Yeah. So real quick, just lay the land. We have we plan out our calendar basically twice a year for like six months at a time based on your preaching schedule. So.
This one's
Danielle (42:40.642)
And really our process is people kind of submit what they want to do or think they're doing or whatever, and we have a team that decides, doesn't decide it, but kind of decides what level of support can we bring around this to make it successful in light of the other things going around at the same time. So it's basically just to keep everything right sized so not one of our churches getting bigger than the other and all those kinds of things.
And I would just say put in a quick plug right here before you get into the details of this because I realize different churches, different sizes, different stuff like this. I know we're going to kind of universalize the principle behind this, but like I just want to put in a plug right now for like just planning, calendaring, advance, like just that process, regardless of the size of your church, regardless of the size of your staff. process of planning ahead has been a game changer for us.
So I just want to just say because because you know, know a lot of it's easy to get into kind of week to week mode or whatever, just like deal with what's coming next and and just the ability to get out ahead, even if it's just a series or two sermon series or two to get out ahead of that calendar, get out ahead of budget. Yeah, all of that stuff. There's there's like dominoes that fall from just kind of like setting a course. Yeah.
for a designated amount of time, whether that's three months, six months. We do a year, 18 months, even sometimes with our preaching. setting that course has just served us so well. yeah. And even just do things we couldn't do.
Yeah, grow. It also provides space for people who aren't here nine to five to be involved in things because you're spreading out the planning and you're making time for people to get involved and have good ideas.
Derek (44:28.078)
You can see what's coming and be like, have you guys thought about this? So build out. Tell the people what a build out is. What's in the room, what happened?
Yeah, it's been great.
Danielle (44:36.096)
Yeah, so. So a build out is the ministry leader comes in with whatever they could have one thing or they could have 10 things. What are we just scheduled the time based on how many they have? So they come in and there's someone that represents just communications. What are we going to have to do to whether whatever scale it is, if it's just you talking to your volunteers or if it's like the whole church, all all realm of communications. There's someone that represents.
kind of the creative side of things. So if you think you're gonna need like graphic design support or a video or tech support, something like that. And then we have someone that represents more traditional operational things. So table set up. What rooms do you need? Do you need child care? Do you need food? Yeah. And then we have an admin in there that a person that's kind of running the show. And then our innovation this year that we went through this week is I...
What rooms will
Danielle (45:33.942)
was usually playing little parts of those things. So I've fully given those away. And so my only focus is on how this impacts our vision, mission values, mainly vision, but that whole package. So the idea is you're kind of getting a holistic, quick brainstorm on your idea from different thinkers. That's like the benefit, I think, to the ministry leader. There's two. One is you get that brainstorming thing. You get some other wonderers in the room. We have two or three in the room at the time.
To help you make the idea better hopefully and then you can leave confidently knowing what support you're gonna get so that you don't have to worry about Making a postcard or something like that Yeah, so that's the goal and then at the end of it we have kind of the calendar and we the nice thing about doing this also for the congregation I think is that You can look at a season and say like okay, what's reasonable for a human being to do?
in the life of the church in light of them having their own lives and all the other things. Exactly, how do we balance this? Are we asking people to be here like four days a week so that they can do this or what are we doing? Yeah.
being called to live on mission.
Derek (46:45.954)
How is the experience for you being able to think just about vision? You said that was the innovation.
That was innovation. That was awesome. It's been awesome. Because if I'm thinking about communications, that's always going to taint my full view of like what, you know what I mean? It's just how it is. So yeah, I think it's been cool to be able to just focus on, okay, this new idea or there's been a couple where it's like existing ideas like, uh-oh, we might need to pivot this. This is just something we got comfortable with.
that we need to figure out. so what can we do to like leverage it differently or whatever? Yeah, so.
Let me ask you one other question. for the pastor church leader of a smaller church, it's like, must be nice to have five people doing different jobs in a room around a process like this. Like, how would you boil it down for somebody who might not have a staff of this size that has those different experts in it?
So I did and some of us did used to do it alone. Yeah ish we always work in teams but And I think I probably still have it if we want to put it in there is I do actually have like a Google Doc It morphed to a communications doc, but basically it would say like what's going on? What like columns kind of what's happening so a life group launch or something? What's the communication gonna be column? What do we need for that?
Danielle (48:13.08)
Do they need any kind of support in terms of the facility? Do they need, there's a budget implication that I don't deal with, but that could be a column. You could have, yeah, I would just say take a look at what it is and try to break it down into the way you're gonna have to handle it from beginning to finish, because the event's just not the day of the event. It's like what's the four weeks leading up to it? What's the off-ramp? What's the next step?
Yeah, I would just, I think the encouragement would be at least get organized around being able to see it all in one place. That's great. And what's needed for it. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, it's been good. It's been cool this week. But I'm tired. I'm mentally...
That's super helpful.
Derek (48:57.012)
Yeah, because you load them all into one.
Let's do it all at once. that's, I don't recommend that. I mean, it works for our moment, what we're doing, but yeah, it's crazy. All right. So let's, yeah, let's keep the practical stuff going with our tips and tools segment. Today, you wanted to talk about the values performance matrix.
So this is a tool that we found somewhere else. I think it was actually through a cohort with LCBC that I'm in that I brought back to Erin who works with our staff, Erin Mosenko. And she's found it to be really helpful, I think, with some of our supervisors and things like that. And again, I don't want to get too big churchy here. I think this is one of these really, really reproducible, portable tools.
okay.
Derek (49:42.306)
that anybody can use to really think about just the people on your team. And so even if it's a volunteer team or if it's a, you know, if it is a staff team or, you know, if it's a children's worker that's listening to this that has four volunteers that work in the nursery under that person or whatever. And it's a values performance matrix. So it's a four quadrant tool. I'll just describe it a little bit and then it's attached to the email that we send out every week that if people are interested in, they can be a part of and it's all free.
but the vertical axis is values and the horizontal axis is performance and then it's a four box quadrant. And it basically helps you to just go where on the values performance matrix, where does my team fall? Each member of my team. And so the values side of it is how well do they live out your church's heart and culture and Christ-like character? Like are they bought in on that level? And then performance is how effective
do they contribute, how good are they at their job? Essentially. because somebody can be high values and not very great at their job and people can be great at their job and not very great at their job. So anyway. True. So there are these four quadrants and the top right, so high value, high performance are the, and there's four R words, the top right is retain. These are your multipliers. So these are the people you want to keep on your team.
These are your high performers, your culture carriers. And yeah, you would do it in a heartbeat. And the thing that I think is so valuable about this tool is then it says, you know, what do you do with those people? if you have people in that category and you can name that, these are the people you invest in, you invest in their growth or development, you give them new opportunities to stretch and develop and, you know, that sort of thing.
Like if you could get more of them you
Derek (51:34.92)
And even, you you throw money at them and training at them and like whatever you can do to kind of keep them going and happy. The the high values. So this is person that like embodies your church's values, but they're a low performer. The word I like that we use is this is good citizens. So these are the good citizens like they love the mission. Yeah, they embody the values. They're not great at what they're doing right now, but they may just be in the wrong seat.
And so I think the thing with them is you reposition. Yeah, exactly. They just love them like they're in it. They're fully in it. Might be in the wrong. So you reposition those folks. The low values, so they don't embody the values, but they are great performers. So they get a lot of stuff done. Call this toxic stars. Yeah. And so for those, they hit their goals.
Yeah, I think of like a Barney Fife or something. Yeah,
Yeah. Not great. Yeah.
Derek (52:29.25)
but sometimes they do it in a way that damages culture and they damage unity sometimes, trust. So these are the people you want to restore. So you address that quickly, you try to get them repositioned, you name the values gap, you don't let their behavior continue. So this is a corrective one that if you don't get it corrected, this is probably a person that you're have to let go, but you restore them. And then the low values, low performers, this is an easy one, not easy to do.
Yep.
Derek (52:57.794)
but often easy to identify. These are the detractors and these are the people that you remove. So they're not living your values and they're not doing a good job. So it's like, why is that person on the team? And so this is a direct compassionate conversation that just removes them from their role because they are not doing anybody any good in their current state. So.
Anyway, it's a helpful tool. builds the tool that I'll include builds things out a little bit in more detail than that. But that's kind of a quick lay of the land of the tool. And I think it's just super helpful for supervisors, any team leaders, people who are just leading any group of people to almost have like a quick assessment of like, where are they and what what should I do with them?
But what should I do with them is clutch. Yeah, exactly. because not everybody needs the same stuff. That's Yeah, that's great. It's really great. OK, cool. I mean, that's it for today. If you like this episode, you can tell us by leaving a rating or review. Five stars if you did. We only have a couple more episodes left. So again, I'll encourage you to help a friend by sharing this if you think it would be beneficial. You can find detailed show notes, related resources over at DerekSanford.com forward slash reinventing church.
And that's where you can get this tool and you can sign up for his newsletter and get all the latest stuff that's going on over there. So thanks for joining us. Thanks everybody. Thanksgiving. See ya. Bye.