Transcript: How Leaders Can Stay Faithful to their Mission and Finish Strong // Steve Woodworth, Masterworks

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

How Leaders Can Stay Faithful to their Mission and Finish Strong

March 20, 2023

Steve Woodworth

Intro: How can Christian leaders stay faithful in their mission and finish strong? Well, today we'll talk with a CEO who has personally worked with many of the top leaders in Christian organizations over the past 30 years. Some of these leaders have finished strong; others have experienced very public, disastrous endings. Listen in as Steve Woodworth at Masterworks shares several keys that will help you finish strong.

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, co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces, and I'd like to thank you for joining us today.

Our research tells us that inspirational leadership is not only a key factor in a flourishing workplace, but it's the primary factor. And today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we're going to consider the qualities of a leader who stays faithful to their mission and vision over time. There are so many ways to get derailed in leadership and so many temptations along the way. So we're going to consider practices that will help you keep serving God faithfully over the long term.

And to help us in this discussion, I'm delighted to welcome Steve Woodworth, and Steve is the CEO of the well-known organization Masterworks. Steve, welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast.

Steve Woodworth: Thank you, Al. Glad to be here. Appreciate your friendship through the years and appreciate your co-sponsorship of the CEO Forum at Christian Leadership Alliance that we've done for a lot of years together.

Al: We have. And Steve, that's really what caused us to put this together.

But let's start with an introduction of the work that your organization does. Tell us about Masterworks. You've taken your years of experience, I know, in not only nonprofits, but World Vision as well as in the corporate world, and you’ve put together a team, a really great team, of professionals to serve ministries. So how does Masterworks help Christian organizations achieve excellence by connecting with their constituents?

Steve: We’re essentially a marketing agency with a strong technology underpinning to everything that we do. I was VP of marketing at World Vision and decided that when I left there that I wanted to help other Christian organizations with the kinds of things that we had learned, or I had learned, at World Vision and World Vision had learned along the way, a very innovative culture situation where we knew our donors. We talked to them. We had regular conversations with real donors. We had data and analytics underlying everything at a time when that was very rare. I mean, we had a mainframe computer capturing everything that we possibly could. And there was a culture that preceded me that was just very innovative, constant brainstorming of ideas, and trying lots of things and rolling out with the things that worked. And that wasn't common in those days. So I decided I wanted to try to bring that to other Christian organizations. We have been doing that for 30 years. I just had my 30-year anniversary of Masterworks.

Al: Oh, fantastic. Yeah. So innovation. You had a mainframe computer.

Steve: Yes.

Al: That was innovation at the time, and things have changed.

Steve: Most listeners won’t know what that means.

Al: You probably even had punch cards with that computer. But anyway, we'll get off track.

So, Steve, really what caused me to think about this conversation was that you wrote a book, a little booklet, entitled How Can Ministry Leaders Stay Faithful to Their Mission? And you shared this at the Christian Leadership Alliance. And again, we co-sponsored the CEO Forum. And I'm sure with many other leaders that this is an important topic. Why was this topic so important to you, and what caused you to want to take the time to actually document and put down your thoughts on paper and create this booklet?

Steve: Well, Al, I’d been thinking about it for several years. I'm reaching that point in life, in my sixties, where I have to get serious about thinking about my own situation and how does Masterworks thrive in the years ahead, and how does it stay aligned to the mission and vision that I feel that God's called us to?

And then, three things in 2022 came together that just really took the whole thing in my mind to a different level. I first listened to the Christianity Today podcast, “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,” which was a chilling account of the falling apart of a 15,000-member church in Seattle. You live here. You know how unchurched Seattle is one of the most unchurched cities in the country. And this was a thriving church reaching a younger generation, just doing amazing things, amazing fruit, and it just all fell apart within a matter of months. And the documentation that Christianity does to try to understand what happened and why it happened was chilling in my own life and caused me to put together pieces and things I'd seen in other leaders.

And at the same time, I came across Bobby Clinton, J. Robert Clinton, former Fuller Seminary professor of leadership, came across his work as I was thinking about this Mars Hill thing. I was quite into that. And he studied 1300 leaders in his career and estimated that one-third finished well, Christian leaders. So two-thirds of Christian leaders did not finish well, according to Bobby Clinton.

And then thirdly, I came across a book I had read many years ago by Dallas Willard called The Great Omission, and the book is about the lack of discipleship in the church. But in the middle of it, almost out of place, is a chapter about organizations and how they drift from their mission. And I later talked to a friend who knew Dallas Willard and asked him, “What's that chapter doing in the middle of that book? It doesn't seem to fit there.” And he said, “Yeah, I felt that, too, after I'd already sent it off to the publisher. It was too late.” But it's a terrific chapter about organizations and how to try to stay faithful to the mission and vision that God gave you and how to pass it on to the next generation and how incredibly hard that is.

Al: Yeah, those are three things. Yeah, they all came together in 2022.

Well, you talk about a common issue for leaders that don't finish well. They don't pass on the vision and mission to the next generation of leaders. And in some cases, they just completely fail in the process. In your booklet, you outline a path to certain failure. So what are some of the key turning points for a leader who is headed for failure?

Steve: Yeah. This is kind of putting together the Mars Hill podcast with the Dallas Willard chapter. Dallas Willard calls it that a leader who's really successful in ministry has what he calls the fire of God. And I can't remember the exact definition, but it's a sense that you have a vision of what God has asked you to do with your life, you can connect it to what God wants to do in the world, and it fits your giftedness. And then you go at it with enthusiasm and passion because you feel like God has uniquely wired you to meet this need and do this thing. And it succeeds beyond your capabilities, and so you’re very aware that God is using you. And when this happens, it attracts followers who are attracted to the success, and the leader begins to feel responsible for success more than for stewarding the fire of God, to use Willard's term. And they start to miss God's plan, and they don't continue with a sense of dependency upon God that they started out with. And God's plan often unfolds over time. He doesn't usually give us a 30-page manual that's going to cover the next 30 years, one year per section or something like that. It's as you go, you have to continue to be led. And when you stop pressing into the Lord, you stop getting that direction from Him, and you start to miss His will.

And with success, too, and a lot of fruit from what you've done, is a strong temptation to arrogance and lack of accountability. If I were to boil down what the CT podcast says about Mars Hill, that was the core issue: arrogance and lack of accountability. And then a shift of focus towards success instead of faithfulness, and then falling back on natural gifts and plans and motivated followers and everything except for God. And that's the downward spiral.

Al: I think we both worked for Prison Fellowship over time. And Chuck Colson had on his desk, God calls us to be faithful, not successful. And that's exactly what you're saying. He finished well—

Steve: Yes, he did.

Al: —as an example. Had that on his desk. Your point there about we focus on success, not faithfulness, and that can really get us off track. Wow.

Steve: Yeah.

Al: That’s just great, Steve.

You've, clearly, thought about leaders who have gone through this downward spiral. You've watched them self-destruct as you've observed them. We’ve seen that example of Mars Hill together here in Seattle. My daughter was going to that church at one point, was very interested in my daughter and what she was hearing about sex and marriage.

Steve: Yeah.

Al: So that was a… But how can a leader get back on track if they've headed down this downward spiral? And I guess a leader really even has to question themselves, are they still on this firm upward spiral, or are they possibly in a downward spiral? Is there a way to help them stop this trajectory before they hit bottom?

Steve: Couple thoughts come to mind. First of all, I think it's very hard. I think when you hear this story, CT not only talks about Mars Hill; they talk about ten or so other leaders in the last 20, 30 years who have had significant failure in ministry. And I think that this core issue of arrogance, I mean, humility is the fundamental key, I believe. And once you become arrogant, how do you reclaim humility? I mean, David is a great example in the Bible, how he made many mistakes, huge mistakes, but he repented each time and started over. There are a number of stories of kings in the Bible that prophets confronted, and they threw the prophet in jail. And David, immediately, when confronted by the prophet Nathan, repents and asks, “What do I do?” And the same thing when he counted the troops and the population. And that was an arrogant moment in his life. And he just kept repenting and starting over, depending upon God and humility, and as you see in the Psalms, very sorry for what he did and constantly asking for God's mercy. I think he understood God's grace as well or better than any other saint in the Old Testament.

You know, I think, also, that there's a huge temptation. Tim Keller talks about how the enemy uses lies to deceive us. And he said that of all the pastors that he's counseled that have gone through moral failure, they almost all have the exact same one of two lies in their minds: “I deserve this,” as in, “I get a little bit of extra grace to sin a little bit because I work so hard and because I'm doing all this stuff for God;” or “I don't deserve this,” as in, “Like, the way my wife treats me and doesn't give me the honor that I deserve.” These are the two huge temptations he sees in leaders that are pastors that are successful, and I think the same thing is true in organizations, too. “I deserve this,” or “I don't deserve this,” becomes sort of like this sense of entitlement and is antithetical to humility.

Al: That's really good, Steve. Yeah. The lie that we hear: “I deserve this. It’s okay for me to sin a little bit. God is a forgiving God, right?” Or “I don't deserve this.” Great.

And you also talk a little bit about accountability and how that's helpful.

Steve: Yeah, yeah. Accountability, I think, is absolutely key. Being open, like the example I just gave of David with Nathan, being open to allow people to speak into your life, these leaders that have fallen have generally all had boards of elders or boards of organizations, and yet the leader was so overbearing that they weren't truly accountable. They weren't truly listening to the people they were supposed to be accountable to.

And then I think it's really important that you have friends that can call you out on getting a big head. And as pastor at Mars Hill, there's a story in there where his executive assistant one day said to him, “I think it might be good if you had an older leader in your life, like an older pastor, to just help you and counsel you.” And I can't remember if it was the next day or if it was a few days later, she was not only called into the office with a group of elders and fired, but she was banned from the church property for being disobedient and being defiant. And all she was doing was trying to help. So this was clearly a case where a leader just refused to listen to people.

Al: Yeah. And also, reflecting on that podcast, when he then fired two of his elders—

Steve: Yeah.

Al: —you talk about lack of accountability. “Oh, I don't like what you're telling me. I'm going to fire you,” and again, “ban you from the property.” So yeah, that sense of accountability—

Steve: The best way to stop a downward spiral is never get on it.

Al: Yeah. Let’s start there. That’s right, Steve. Yeah.

Wow. So we've just talked about the downward spiral. We've had a couple of examples. You know, I've heard of other examples where these leaders become narcissistic, and they remove themselves from others. And again, that's kind of the point of accountability.

But let's talk about prevention. Okay. Let's move to, how can we prevent this? There's all sorts of temptations in front of a leader. They can lose focus. They can get distracted by power and success or even having a big following, where they're worshiped in many ways. So what are some of the practices or guardrails that can help a leader from heading down this spiral toward failure?

Steve: Well, everything starts with love for God trumping everything else in your life. I think having a love relationship with God—I'm part of an organization called Asian Access that trains pastors all over the world, and business leaders, and that's their first principle. Their very first training session is on having a love relationship with God. And so that's where it starts. I think guardrails, too, defining as much detail as you can about what God is leading you to do, what the organization to do, what is the original vision? How is it changing over time? Being open with your senior leaders about that so that everybody's on the same page and can course correct in real time and being open to that, being open to input and correction.

I think as a CEO for 30 years, I feel like I don't think I can remember one single thing where I have made a decision that has gone against my team when my team has been opposed to it. If I have those smart, godly people disagreeing with me, then I must be wrong, and I will stop and wait until I have more clarity before I would ever move ahead against that kind of good team around you.

And then the classical spiritual disciplines. Dallas Willard emphasizes that a senior leadership team of an organization or church should be open with each other about their spiritual disciplines. And they should be praying together. They should talk about what they're learning in the Bible together. They should be sharing what their practices are, related to solitude and other things like that to just be sure that everybody's relationship with the Lord is fresh, and if it's not, that we can lean in and encourage one another in that direction.

Al: Yeah. We have a 360, Steve, mentioning that, and spiritual vitality is one of the dimensions that we actually ask. And some people will ask, “Well, how do I know what somebody's practice is?” And well, your point here of sharing your spiritual disciplines, your practices with others, and encouraging one another, it's not that you're boasting, but sharing is really helpful. I agree. That's great. Yeah. So being open, sharing your spiritual practices, discussing.

But I’ve got to go back to your previous point. In your 30 years of leadership, if you're not on the same page with your leadership team, you've never really kind of forced your way, forced a decision without your team being on board with that. I think that's just a fascinating and helpful example. Yeah. So, wow.

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And now back to today’s special guest.

Passing on the vision and mission of an organization to the next generation is something you've identified as a core issue in leadership. And it seems to get the focus off the individual leader and then onto the purpose of the organization is a key step.

So, let’s get personal here a little bit, Steve. You’re now the CEO, and you’ve got Bryan Brown in place as president of Masterworks. I've just gone through a transition, transitioning last June 30, my CEO role to Jay Bransford, who was our president and chief operating officer. So how have you worked on succession there at Masterworks? How are you making sure that the mission and vision that, you know, God birthed in you stays intact beyond your leadership?

Steve: First of all, I guess I'd say we talk about it a lot. We meet regularly as an executive leadership team—there are five others and myself—and we talk a lot about that. And we talk about it to the staff a lot, too, to make sure that it's clear; talk about it until—someone once told me you should talk about it until you’re sick of talking about it.

And then, and we talk about how it's changing as the needs change. Our target type of organization has changed dramatically over the last 15, 20 years in terms of what they need and what they want from us. And there's a lot more technology, and a lot of organizations want to do some of the things in-house that they used to outsource. And so we've had to talk about, how do we keep our central, our vision of what we're doing right now aligned with our mission? Our mission is to help Christian organizations thrive, to help them grow. And what they need today is different than what they needed 10 or 15 years ago. We’ve built a whole digital division, and digital marketing has now overtaken direct mail in terms of the number of new donors we're acquiring for our clients.

So we're constantly talking about it. And we're talking about it not just as a business strategy; but much more than business strategy, we talk about it as, well, what is God calling us to do that will help Christian organizations thrive at this point in time?

And then there's been, like with Bryan, I began to think about him as a potential candidate. There was, well, two other candidates, so a couple—that was a couple of years ago—two other ones opted out. One person left; one person just said they didn't want the job anymore. The person that left, we’re still very good friends. They came up with a different idea of what they thought they wanted to do with their lives, and we're continuing to be supportive of each other, encouraging of each other.

But it started to come down to Bryan being the one person that appeared to be the logical conclusion. And I brought in an outside consultant to help us process that decision. And he pushed us to come to a consensus that we were all in favor of Bryan, and we would identify where Bryan's gaps were. So rather than waiting until everybody thought, “Hey, Bryan's ready. And Steve, you can hand the reins over,” we decided to define a path for Bryan to get to become president. We made him COO. We defined a path to being president, and we identified the gaps that he needed to grow in and learn and experiences he needed to have that he hadn't had. And we all committed, all in the same meeting, to doing everything we could to help Bryan get there and get ready. Every single person on our executive leadership team made that commitment. It caused Bryan to get choked up. I hope he doesn't get embarrassed by that, but it was that kind of a moment.

So Bryan and I also—I think one of the key things was we spent many hours talking. We would have three- and four-hour sessions at my house, talking about values and leadership styles and success factors that I thought were critical to get us to where we were. Bryan came out of a tough, hard-driving business world of a media agency that burned through a lot of employees and worked people to the bone. And he came to a place where he wanted to understand, “How did you do this? How did you build a relational culture that’s a combination of business and ministry? I want to learn how to do that.” And we spent hours talking through that, which also brought us, I think, to a deep friendship and a mutually very satisfying relationship across generations. He's more than 20 years younger than me.

Al: Steve, those are great thoughts. So Bryan really became the clear one over the years. But you brought in an outside consultant, and I encourage our listeners to think about that: how, then, the outside consultant really helped to engineer and to facilitate a discussion around what some of the gaps were that would need to be identified and filled as you went forward; that there was a mutual commitment not only on your part but also the rest of the team and the leadership team to really help him succeed; and then, yeah, I love this: hours of discussions with the founder, knowing what the original mission and vision was; and one thing, of course, I'm very keen on: how to develop a relationship-based, healthy culture that will be sustained and reflect the values of Christ over time. Yeah. Great, Steve. Yeah, I experienced much the same. Even now, as I'm the board chair, meet on a weekly basis with our president and CEO, just to continue our relationship and building as BCWI moves forward.

Steve: The consultant also emphasized being serious about having a timeline, which was not my—that was not my default position. My default position was, “I'll know when he's ready.” And I think everybody around me felt the same way. And the consultant said, “If you take that position, what tends to happen is you'll never feel like he's ready. And he'll never want to push you off to the side, because he wants to be deferential and respectful. And so it gets dragged out for a long time. But if you set a timeline—even if it's not set in cement; it's set in pencil—that ‘We think it's going to be six to 18 months, and these are the things you need to do, and we're going to help you to do them,’ then it just brings so much clarity to everybody, and it brings the organization to focus on making it happen.”

Al: Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. We said, “Okay, June 30, 2022,” and yeah, that was a couple of years after—well, that was two years almost exactly when Jay had joined us as president. And the intention was that he would be the next CEO. And yeah, putting that date down made us focus, and it kind of, even in the last three months, it made us focus on a number of those gaps. “Okay, let's get this up to speed and transferred, so that on day one, July 1, you're ready to go.” Yeah, that's great.

You know, in your booklet, we see many examples of failed leaders, and we can all think of examples of people who have failed miserably in the past couple of decades. So let's talk about great leaders. You know, let's move off of what the failures were. Let’s talk about great leaders. So what are some of the qualities of these faithful leaders, and what do they exhibit over the long haul? You're don’t necessarily—let's not name names necessarily, but what are some of the great examples of leaders that you'd like to share?

Steve: Well, I say that there's two types of leaders that I see in Christian organizations. I haven't worked very much with churches except my own church. But there are—it's working with probably a couple hundred parachurch organizations by now, I would say there's two types of leaders. One is, “Why me, God? Are you sure you got the right guy?” And the opposite of that is, “I'm God's gift to the world.” And the former type are far more successful at leading an organization in a ministry to real impact. And those that feel like they're God's gift to the Christian-ministry world are people who often flame out, and people don't really want to follow them.

I also talk about leadership as a stewardship of others’ gifts and time, that fairly early in my career I figured out that leadership is not about being the smartest guy in the room and having the answers. It's about having the right sense of direction and then marshaling the people that you have as part of your team to use their gifts to get things done and to do it in a way that they feel good about themselves when they go home at night. They feel like they've accomplished something that fits with who God has made them to be.

You know, I can name one name—

Al: Yeah?

Steve: —with apologies to all my clients that have great leaders. I really do work with some terrific people that are terrific leaders. But one person that stands out to me—I never worked for, but I've been friends with for many years, 20-plus years—is Rich Stearns, the former president of World Vision, now the president emeritus of World Vision U.S. I met Rich the first year that he came to World Vision because I was just five years removed from having been the VP of marketing, and we were introduced by the recruiter who I knew and who had brought Rich in. And I saw a guy right there whose, his story, he tells it in his book, The Hole in Our Gospel. He didn't want the job, and he told the recruiter multiple times that he was not interested. And I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something to the effect of, “Are you open to God potentially wanting you to do this?” and that arrested Rich. And by the time he was being interviewed, he was going from board member to board member telling them why he was not the guy, and when they told him that they chose him, he said, “You've made a mistake.” And so here is a guy who did not—it was the opposite. He had good corporate experience, but he thought, “I don't know how to run a nonprofit.”

So the first year he was there, I met him, and he spent the whole time asking me questions about what I thought needed to change in the organization. And I had left over some things that I thought needed to change. I felt that the overhead was too high, for example, and that, the board was all over that by the time Rich got there, and it was one of his, if not his top priority, given from the board. So we had a great conversation in which I felt like, “Gosh, this guy, I'm not working for him, I'm not consulting for him, but he just wants to soak up whatever he can learn.”

And even 20 years later, the last year or two that Rich was there, they had been flat for a few years. And I remember being in his office and him saying, “Why do you think we're not growing?” And I started talking, and he stood up and started writing things on his whiteboard. The things that I was telling him as to why I thought they weren't growing, he was writing down on his whiteboard. And that just shows you this sort of sense of humility.

By then, he was very successful. He had tripled the size of World Vision from 300 million to a billion in the U.S. alone. And I felt like he was still the same humble guy that he was at the very beginning. And then he has a book out now—I'm not just trying to promote his books—but Lead Like It Matters to God is his sort of last word on leadership and the things that he's learned in his career, and it's all about character. And it contains a great line to start it off, “Success is overrated.” I love that. And then he goes on to detail the various character qualities that he thinks God wants to see in leaders that He has called to lead things for His kingdom.

Al: Yeah, that's a great book, Steve, and I’d highly recommend our listeners if they haven't bought it and read it. And character is so important, and he really identifies a number of character competencies that are important, and he's got, then, great stories that go with them. And if our listeners would love to search Rich’s name under the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, they'll find that we had a podcast on that book about a year ago after it came out. So yeah, great example. Thanks, Steve. That's fantastic, and a great example of humility. And nobody would argue that Rich had tremendous success at World Vision.

And I remember listening to a speech he gave at CLA—you may have been there—after there had been some kerfuffle about one issue or another—

Steve: Yeah.

Al: —and he just apologized to the community for not really being on track and—

Steve: Yeah, for making a mistake. Yeah.

Al: For making a mistake. And recognized the mistake. He changed. He implemented ways to make sure that wouldn't happen again. Really a great example. Yeah. So yeah, so much good wisdom there.

Well, Steve, we've learned so much from our conversation today, and it's just worthwhile to even think about it. So, Steve, this has been a great discussion. You've written about this, but where can readers, if they want to learn more about it, where can they get your thoughts?

Steve: I'm actually working on a book right now. It's my top priority for 2022 to write a book on succession. I've talked to several Christian leaders who have said there isn't anything quite like that out there. And my plan is to interview a number of people, which I've already started, that have had good successions. I interviewed Rich Stearns, I mentioned his name, great interview. And here's another example of humility. He wants me to interview his board chair at the time and the chair of the succession committee and his successor, which I'm going to do also, to make sure that I'm not just getting his rose-colored view of how his succession went. But I think it’s a model.

And then I'm interviewing some people whose successions went very poorly, and things flopped after them. And I'm going to try to condense that into these key findings, which, obviously, you can see I already have a lot of opinions. But I'm going to try to verify that through good 10 or 15 interviews with people who are experienced in their own successions. And I expect to publish that probably in a year, early next year.

Al: Yeah. Well, I look forward to that. Steve, much like you, over the years, I've talked with people that—that's mostly I've talked with those that have been the successors versus those that have turned it over. But I get different stories from the person that turned it over to the person that took it. I get different stories on the same story. One said, “Oh, yeah. It was a great succession. The person that has succeeded me, that was smooth and effective.” And then I listen to the person who he received the role, and he said, “Oh, it was bumpy. It was just really dysfunctional.” I mean, on and on. So I can't wait to hear real stories of good and then maybe some not-so-good successions.

Well, you know, I've learned so much, and we've learned so much from our discussion. I love the Dallas Willard fire-of-God concept, a vision of what God wants you to do in your life, the fire of God when it comes to the vision of an organization, and how we need to really keep that in mind. How arrogance, and we came over, and we talked about arrogance. We've seen arrogance in leaders. Am I a leader that “I'm God's gift to the world?” or “Why me, God?” And certainly, “Thank you for choosing me for this role. And I’m just humbled and amazed that You did.” But that whole thing, issue of arrogance versus humility. And really to not focus on success but on being faithful and really being fresh in that faithfulness so that we don't go down the downward spiral. And you've given us just great ideas how we shouldn't listen to the lie that comes before us, that there's two lies. That was very insightful. That it's okay to sin a little bit because I deserve this because I've worked so hard and been God's agent here, and so I deserve this. Or then, just the other part of “I don't deserve this,” and how that breeds to difficulty. But to stop the spiral, we need to really focus on our love for God. We need to go back to our original vision. We need to keep our spiritual disciplines fresh and even share them with others. I mean, all of this has just been a great discussion. So, then, finally, as you wrapped it up, as an example of somebody that has done ended strong, ended well in Rich Stearns, so in a shout out to Rich.

Is there anything else, Steve, that you'd like to add that we've talked about?

Steve: I think it's been a thorough discussion. Thank you, Al, for the questions. Thank for the opportunity. Thank you for doing this. This is a really great podcast. I enjoy it, and I'll continue to listen to it, not just to hear mine, but to hear the other ones, too.

Al: Yeah, great, Steve. Well, thanks.

Well, Steve, you know, I do want to thank you for your contribution today. Most of all, I appreciate your heart for excellence and faithfulness in Christian leadership, in Christian ministry, and the way that you've served so many organizations and how Masterworks has helped them thrive. I’ve seen it over and over. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners.

Steve: Thank you, Al.

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.