Transcript: 3 Essential Catalysts for Sustainable Ministry Growth // Dave Riner, Stacey Howard, Student Mobilization

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“3 Essential Catalysts for Sustainable Ministry Growth“

January 22, 2024

Dave Riner and Stacey Howard

Intro: How does a flourishing workplace culture impact your organization's ability to grow? Well, yes, it does. But while growth is great, it can also be a challenge to effectively bring on new staff and engage them and encourage them in the mission of your organization. So how do you keep improving workplace health while growing? Well, today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we’ll focus on taking your employee engagement to the next level. Listen in and learn some fresh ideas that you can apply to your own organization.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the book Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being, which was a finalist in the Christian Book Awards. And I'm passionate about helping Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces.

Today I’m delighted to welcome Dave Riner and Stacey Howard to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast. Dave is the CEO of Student Mobilization, and Stacey is the H.R. director. Their organization engages, establishes, and equips students to be spiritual leaders for the rest of their lives.

Throughout our conversation, Dave and Stacey talk about the importance of onboarding for linking people to the mission, vision, and values of the organization; how healthy communication across regional lines creates strength and innovation for the organization; the role of encouraging employees to learn and grow for organizational sustainability; how having a flourishing culture encourages organizational growth through attaining top talent and how it makes attracting new talent even easier. And as Dave says, you can't fake flourishing. People can see very quickly the health of your culture.

So I know you're going to love this interview with Dave Riner and Stacey Howard. But before we dive in, this episode is brought to you by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Leadership 360 and our leadership and group coaching. We can help you transform your leadership effectiveness with our stakeholder-based coaching process. Learn more by going to workplaces.org/coaching, and check it out today.

And again, hello to our new listeners. Thanks for joining us. And we really honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this.

But let me tell you a little bit more about Dave Riner and Stacey Howard and their work at StuMo, the Student Mobilization organization. Dave Riner has an engineering degree and an MBA and worked in the corporate world for several years. And he was an early supporter in encouraging of Student Mobilization, which was a new organization in the late ‘80s. And about eight years in, Dave was recruited to come in and staff as a staff member with StuMo, and he left the corporate world for ministry.

Stacey Howard has much the same background. She was involved in StuMo as a student at the University of Tulsa. And after graduation, she held several different corporate human-resource positions, including working with Target. She came to StuMo in 2020 as their H.R. director. StuMo started in 1986 at the University of Arkansas and has now spread from campuses in Arizona to Pennsylvania. In addition to campus ministry, they offer student conferences and a summer discipleship-training experience.

So here's my conversation with Dave Riner and Stacey Howard.

Dave and Stacey, it's great to have you on the podcast, and I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

Dave Riner: Well, it’s great to be back, Al.

Stacey Howard: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Al: I'm looking forward to it, and I'm really looking forward to hearing more about StuMo. Why don’t we start off with a little bit of a background on the ministry. And your name is Student Mobilization, or StuMo, as you call it, and it's all about equipping college students as spiritual leaders. And we need the next generation of Christian spiritual leaders, for sure, in our country and around the world.

Dave, you have such a huge heart for this generation of students. Share with us the strategic nature of focusing on college students, and how does investment in young adults make a difference in our society both today and tomorrow?

Dave: Sure, Al. I think we all know these are really challenging and changing times. The culture’s shifting, and much of that shift is originating on the college campus, and it's a shift away from biblical truth. Students are showing up today on campus with little or even zero biblical knowledge or church exposure. Al, I think when you and I were in college, maybe a lot of students were rebelling against the Christian values of their parents. Well, today, the majority of college students are not rebelling against that background; they never had that Christian upbringing to begin with. And so it's a vulnerable time. The social and academic climate on the campus is all geared to conform everyone on campus to worldly values and causes. You can see it on TV. You can see it on social media. As we know, there's no peace and fulfillment, though, apart from Jesus. And so the anxiety and depression are higher in this generation than any previous generation. I would say two words to describe today's college students are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

But the great news is that this generation, like every generation before them, is on a journey. They're searching for meaning, they’re open, they really want to be loved, and our StuMo leaders want to meet them.

Al, besides your Survey, we did another little survey recently, and we found that over 80% of StuMo staff came to faith while they were in college. And so they naturally believe that God can change people because it happened to them. And so they want to connect face to face with student leaders. Our staff are big-time inviters. They're always creating events and get-togethers and tournaments to host and meet students, especially non-believing freshmen. They want to get to know them and ultimately, of course, share Jesus with them. And so we're seeing that this darkness on campus today actually makes the light of Jesus shine brighter. I think we see that back in biblical times, and we see it today. And so there's a reason to celebrate, and there's a reason to pray for the campus today.

Al: Yeah. And Stacey, how about you? What would you like to add?

Stacey: Yeah. I mean, well, like you mentioned in your introduction, I was actually involved in StuMo as a student myself several years ago. And I can say from personal experience that college is a time in people's lives where they are extremely moldable and available and teachable. So I'm grateful that StuMo staff helped me learn what it looked like to follow Jesus wholeheartedly and pursue people for the sake of His Kingdom when I was in college.

Al: Yeah. Well, I came to faith in college, too. It was a remarkably rich time as I grew in the faith. And yeah, I know exactly and have a heart for what you're talking about.

It's thrilling for me to see over the years since we started working together, and I believe it was 2019, perhaps, you've grown to serve several more campuses in additional states in the last few years. And during this time of growth, your employee-engagement scores have continued to increase. In fact, I was looking at your results, and your top 10 scores are in the 99th or 100th percentile of all Christian parachurch mission organizations. Just fantastic. Yeah. With over 90% engaged, the way we talk about it. People love working for StuMo and are committed to the mission and vision of the organization.

So let's talk about how you've kept a strong culture as you've continued to grow. Dave, what are some specific practices that you have on your leadership team to help your people embrace the values and principles of your ministry of StuMo? And even as you're growing and adding new staff, how are you continuing to, again, grow as well as improve the health of your culture?

Dave: Al, I think last time we talked about onboarding at StuMo, I mentioned that it was actually a three-year process. We're bringing the college grads who are already seeing success in ministry in college to our organization. They want to be on staff full time as a full-time job. And so one of the important trainings that we have is our new-staff training. And that's where we do a lot to formally train in our mission, vision, and values. To this point, the new recruits have organically experienced our values and our principles. But for the first two years on staff, we have occasions to teach them and give them the why behind our strategies. Plus, we do formal employee training, like other organizations, and Stacey plays a huge role in turning our students into professional ministers.

Al: Wow. And Dave, you know, you talked about new-staff training when they come on staff. Is there a time, a couple of weeks, that you have them together, or how do you do that?

Dave: Sure. I think the best time for the new-staff training tends to be December. It’s between semesters, and so they're sort of right off the campus. And so they have a lot of fresh celebrations and questions to ask. And so we get them together, and that's when we'd mostly do new-staff training. Then we have another, I guess, orientation that we do in January.

Al: Yeah, right. Okay. Thanks.

Well, Stacey, what would you like to add from an H.R. perspective? You know, as you bring on new people in support regions that are growing, you know, what are some of the H.R. practices that you feel make a difference in strong employee engagement?

Stacey: Yeah, definitely. Well, like Dave mentioned, from an administrative standpoint, we really try to make sure that our new staff understand the mission, the values, and the principles of StuMo upfront. Hopefully, they already know most of that because they were involved as students. But we really want to make sure they absolutely understand it whenever they're on staff because it's just core to who we are.

But as you can imagine, most of our staff are young, extroverted, and ambitious, but they might not be the most naturally administratively talented people. So we try to invest in them professionally to help them transition into the “real world” as smoothly as possible. So in H.R. this looks like giving simple breakdowns of what insurance looks like, how it works; what different terminology means; and things like that. I go through 401(k) Roth versus traditional. And lots of things which you wouldn't necessarily get in quite that much depth in a traditional workplace, I try to really make sure they fully understand it, not just surface level, but truly understand it on a deeper level. And these are basic skills that aren’t necessarily taught, but we believe that helping our staff understand develops them and encourages them to engage in the future with administrative duty.

Al: Yeah. You’ve got all of these extroverted, outgoing, but they're not administratively oriented. Yeah. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about, and I know a lot of our listeners do, too.

Well, a number of our Best Christian Workplace ministry partners have a regional structure as you do and as you lead the ministry in a different geographic areas. So how do you keep a flow of communication? You know, healthy communication is one of our eight drivers. How do you keep a flow of healthy communication between the regions and the headquarters, and how do you equip your regional leaders for excellence and teamwork in their regions rather than just being silos, for example? So Dave, what are your ideas on this?

Dave: Well, that's a great question because I think our roots are strong at the campus and the regional level, and so it's a real challenge to communicate and stay unified at the corporate level. Any of our regions could be a separate ministry organization themselves, but our leaders are wise enough to discern that there are big administrative advantages to being one larger organization. There's some missional advantages for cross-pollination, for best practices, and, of course, for encouragement and accountability. There are advantages from an innovation standpoint. We really have 30 laboratories of ministry. Those are our 30 campus ministries. And so they're always looking for new ways to connect and communicate with this newest version of the American high school grad that's coming on to campus.

Al: Sharing experiences, I mean, it's changing every year, isn't it, what's coming on campus? Yeah.

Stacey, what would you add as far as engaging and connecting regional staff to the overall organization? Sometimes that falls directly in human-resource-communication perspective.

Stacey: Well, like Dave mentioned, we have a very decentralized staff, which is not uncommon, especially in campus ministry and a lot of peer churches in general. But on top of this, they don't work traditional office hours, so they're not sitting in front of a computer all day, waiting for emails, or anything like that. Like I said earlier, they're extroverted young people that are just excited to engage with the next generation. So this can make engaging with them more challenging from a headquarters or administrative perspective. So we actually recently hired a communications coordinator, and that has been a huge help to us. She helps us communicate with them in a way that's conducive to their ministry and their day-to-day lives. And so a lot of times this looks like all-staff texts or Teams messages, graphics, videos, ways that we can engage in the younger demographic, the younger generation in a way that they most thrive.

Al: Yeah. And that’s how—we kind of describe healthy communication as two-way communication, and knowing how people receive communication is part of that. Yeah, so, so texts, videos, graphics, Teams messages. Yeah, absolutely. The next generation is not necessarily spending a lot of time reading emails, are they?

One of the things that we've noticed is one of your top scores in employee engagement is that employees feel like someone is encouraging their development. And again, you're working with many people that are coming out of college and are wanting to continue to grow and develop. So we know that this kind of a score doesn't happen by accident. How do you train and support your supervisors and managers to encourage the growth and development of the people on their team? Stacey, how do you roll this out from an H.R. perspective to supervisors and managers? Are there some practical steps that you can share with our listeners to help implement this in your own organization?

Stacey: Yeah. I think definitely a starting point, one of the big ways that we do this is through the selection of our campus directors. So we're trying to find people that already naturally have a shepherding heart, so people that love to develop and invest in those around them. So I would say definitely finding key leaders is essential.

But I truly believe that the Best Christian Workplace Survey has been a great way for our staff and leaders to develop. So shameless plug for you guys. It really allows them to receive tangible feedback and work on areas where they can improve or just continue on in areas where they're already thriving.

Al: How you kind of screen for shepherd hearts, is that something that you do, or is it just an observation, or…?

Stacey: Yeah. That's a good question. I think it's similar to the way we have talked about the three-year-interview process of our staff that are coming on as being students. They are being observed and somewhat evaluated, in a sense, whenever they are students, seeing how they steward their responsibilities to see if they'd be a good fit on staff. And in the same way, whenever those staff are under leadership, they're somewhat being evaluated, in a sense, if they would make good leaders one day. And so their leaders are developing them and investing in them and seeing if those types of qualities are really latching on to see if they would want to do that for the next generation themselves and see if they would be quality leaders, if they have that desire themselves to do that in the future.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: Welcome back with Dave Riner and Stacey Howard.

So Stacey, you mentioned that you really look for leaders with shepherd hearts. And so how do you evaluate whether a leader has a shepherd heart or not?

Stacey: Yeah. I think it really happens somewhat organically. So kind of like how Dave mentioned that we evaluate, or somewhat evaluate, our students as they are going through their college ministry to see if they might be a good fit for being staff one day, we kind of do the same thing once they are on staff, if they have any desire to be a leader one day, where their leadership is already investing in them and shepherding them. And they're seeing some if those qualities are rubbing off on the staff and seeing if that's something that they have a desire to do one day themselves. So maybe that isn't something that they're interested in doing one day. But if it is, they're investing those qualities into the younger staff people to see if one day they might be a good leader themselves.

Al: Great. Yeah. Well, thanks.

And Dave, what would you like to add? Is there something that you could add to this?

Dave: Yeah. Like Stacey said, the Best Christian Workplace Survey is really a primary tool. You know, Al, it has built in benchmarking, the accountability processes, where our ministry regions are compared to other similar organizations. Really, I guess, our overall ministry’s compared to other orgs. But then, our regions can be compared to each other. And so as leader of the whole ministry, I really love that it's objective. There's these 55 or so great solid questions that staff can respond to, and then those answers are simply rolled up and reported. It's a straight-up evaluation without any subjective opinions. But then, we can come together and really try to understand why scores are high or why scores are low. So we really value the whole process as a unifying development tool for our whole organization.

Al: Right, right. Yeah. And it's great feedback because development is a part. You know, uplifting growth is one of our key drivers for employee engagement. And that's a great way to evaluate, are we actually building into our people?

Dave, your staff raises their support for their salaries, and fundraising can be challenging, and yet at the same time, your people feel like they're fairly paid. And we have other ministries that we work with that are involved in fundraising for staff support. How can strong employee engagement contribute to effective fundraising? What are some of the principles that have been helpful at StuMo in equipping your staff to actually fundraise effectively? What would you say?

Dave: Well, our founder, Steve Shadrach, gave us a strong start. We apply the same principles and strategies that Steve actually offers to other organizations through support-raising solutions. That has a new name. It's called Via. His website is via—V-I-A—nations.org. So some of the ministries that you serve may have already used some of Steve's support-raising training. And he also wrote a book called The God Ask. It's a great resource.

But as far as StuMo goes, I think we start with hiring courageous people. We find that support raising and evangelism are twins. That means that they both require casting a big vision, presenting that golden opportunity, overcoming a significant amount of rejection, and then reoffering that opportunity again and again. So it starts with hiring resilient people and then training them to be, really, even more resilient.

Also, we really make sure that our staff don't stop until they're well funded. It's tempting to leave the support trail early, and that can be a recipe for trouble because your underfunded staff aren't able to focus on the ministry like they want to. So they can be distracted, and they could also even leave ministry early. And so we really think being well funded is also a huge key to our culture.

Al: Yeah. And you've got a chance—you know, many of your new staff have been involved in discipleship on campus with your staff. So they've seen that courageous approach to begin with. Yeah.

Stacey, what would you add to this?

Stacey: Yeah. I think support-raising training is our first interaction with staff on a corporate level. So there are many of the new staff meeting each other and learning more about the organization behind the scenes. So the whole thing is really exciting for them. So we're working off of that momentum to try to help them view fundraising as a joyful partnership with those who want to further the Kingdom of God.

And then, I also think we work really hard to make sure that the salary breakdown, their benefits, and things like that are as transparent and clear as possible, like I mentioned before, because we believe that the more our staff understand the why behind fundraising, the more motivated they're going to be and the more prepared they're going to feel when they're explaining it to their donors.

Al: It's really great for me to see the growth in your ministry, then what you're experiencing. And it's such a needed area on the college campus to have effective Christian ministry to equip the next generation of spiritual leaders who are on the campuses right now.

So we've seen in many organizations that we work with, there's a clear link between a flourishing culture and ministry growth. We believe, and Cary Humphries, who you work with, often says, “Healthy things grow.” So from your perspective, how does having a flourishing culture actually help your ministry grow?

Dave: Sure. So for us, growth is two things. First, you have to retain the people that you have, right? If you're subtracting as fast as you're adding, you can't really grow. So again, we have to have a thriving culture in order to encourage people to stay. Now, that also includes successful exits, where the experience of StuMo is used to then launch them to another career. And those examples actually bring confidence that StuMo is a great place to start. But also, growth is adding new people, and those are going to be people who are attracted to your vision and your community. They're drawn to that flourishing culture. But you can't really fake flourishing, Al. The organization has to authentically be a good place to work, especially for young people, because they can really tell whether something is real or not. They can sense if you have a meaningful vision and a warm community. So that still means that we have a lot of human interactions. We still have our share of misunderstandings and conflict resolution. But your Survey actually precipitates a lot of important conversations.

Al: That’s great, Dave. Thanks. You can’t fake flourishing. I really believe that, too.

So Stacey, what would you add to this from your perspective?

Stacey: Yeah. I think exit interviews are a key component to this as well. We're always willing and encouraging hearing feedback, and someone leaving has nothing to lose. So it's a great time to hear honest feedback and learn areas of growth. Our leaders are given this feedback and are encouraged to implement change where it's needed, or maybe continue practices that have been affirmed through that exit interview. And although someone's leaving staff, we truly view it as an opportunity for cultural growth. And I believe these interviews have helped grow our industry over time, even though that might sound counterintuitive, because we learn so much from them.

Al: They are great, no question about it.

Well, Stacey and Dave, we've learned so much from this conversation. I just think, Dave, your intro comments about how the culture is shifting in our country and around the world, that people aren't coming to college with a Christian background, and that allows the light of Jesus to shine even brighter when people are authentically living and sharing the Gospel. And I just love the way you describe the ways in which you're able to grow as an organization and actually flourish at the same time through effective onboarding of new staff and really helping to make sure they understand the mission, vision, and values of StuMo and provide ongoing training. And how healthy communication internally inside the organization really is an advantage, and how through that communication, you're able to share innovative ways to continue to advance and communicate effective tools to advance the ministry. And again, the connection between fundraising and engagement, that fundraising and ministry are twins. And in evangelical ministry, you get a lot of rejection while you also do that with fundraising. But that really builds resilience and strength in your staff. And then, absolutely, having a flourishing workplace culture does breed and help growth by keeping people that are really effective because you can't grow if you're losing your people. It's a great way to add people that are attracted to a flourishing workplace with meaning and purpose. And boy, you can't fake it. Yeah.

This has been a great conversation. Is there anything you'd like to add that we've talked about, Dave?

Dave: Sure. I'd add one thing. Stacey and I both came to StuMo from the corporate world. I came from a career at Conoco Phillips, and we were able to steal Stacey from the Target stores. She was an H.R. professional there. And so I think we both see StuMo is a great chance to apply some of the professional processes that we saw in the business world to a great ministry. And really, the Best Christian Workplaces’ Survey is a really similar tool to the H.R. processes that the big boys in the corporate world use. And so I really think your Survey is state of the art.

I think something to look for is, what is the motivation for us for these good scores? There can be lip service to the importance of employee satisfaction in the corporate world, meaning that the driver for a good score there is kudos for the organization, for the H.R. department. And then maybe secondarily, it’s concern for the employee. But we've got to watch that also. We don't want to pat ourselves on the back for high scores, right? We want to be introspective because we actually care for the people rather than this be just a corporate have to. So I really think that's why StuMo has seen our high scores go higher, our staff trust, that our leaders want to hear from them. And I see our leaders really wanting to respond and make the culture even better. And likewise, I know that Best Christian Workplaces, you guys are always looking for ways to make your ministry better as well.

Al: Yeah. We are, and always looking for input.

Well, Dave and Stacey, thanks so much for your contributions today. Thanks for this conversation and sharing with us so many good ideas. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to bringing the good news of Jesus to the next generation of leaders in our society. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking in the lives of so many listeners.

Dave: Thank you, Al.

Stacey: Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Al: Well, thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Dave Riner and Stacey Howard. And I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with them and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing workplace cultures, please email me at al@workplaces.org.

And leaders, if you want to improve your leadership, expand your organization's impact for good, and see greater faithfulness in our broader culture, help us achieve our goal to see more flourishing Christian-led workplaces like Student Mobilization. To help, please share this podcast with another leader or launch a project in your own organization to discover and improve the health of your workplace culture. If you're interested in learning more, please go to workplaces.org and request a sample report.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al: Next week, you're going to enjoy a conversation where my guest is Barry Rowan, the author of The Spiritual Art of Business. Barry is an accomplished senior executive of several publicly traded companies, and you're really going to enjoy this conversation as he talks about his new book and the connection between the spiritual and working in business.