Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast
Moving Your Church from Uncertainty to Seeing a Great Harvest
March 27, 2023
Whitney George and Brian Jobe
Intro: Would you like to say your organization is experiencing a wave of momentum? Well, today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, my guests have seen their church's staff culture radically transformed in two short years. Listen to the actionable steps they've taken to tend the soil of their culture so that now their church is experiencing what they describe as a wave of momentum.
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 Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being. And I'm passionate about helping Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces. Thanks for joining us today.
Now, today, we're going to look at steps that a multi-site church took to move from low levels of employee engagement to a flourishing level. You know, change doesn't happen overnight, but once you understand the issues in your workplace culture, you can choose to make deliberate moves towards health and flourishing and get traction on improving your culture.
And I'm delighted today to welcome Whit George and Brian Jobe to the podcast today. Whit is the lead pastor of Church on the Move, and Brian is the chief operating officer. And Church on the Move is a multi-site church in the Tulsa area. Whit, Brian, welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast.
Brian Jobe: Yeah. It’s an honor to be here. Thanks for having us.
Whit George: Yeah, exciting. Thanks for having us today.
Al: We're really looking forward.
Okay, guys, let's get started. Church on the Move did your first Employee Engagement Survey with Best Christian Workplaces in late 2020. And I remember that time; that was the pandemic. And now you've had three years of Surveys, and you've moved from the lowest 20% of our church database into the top 10%. And that's really remarkable, and let me just say congratulations.
So, Whit, first of all, tell us a little bit about your story, and then let us know about your role in helping to improve the culture the last couple of years. You know, how did you unleash your leadership team to inspire employees and, especially, to build trust?
Whit: Yeah. So Church on the Move was founded by my dad in 1987. My dad pastored from ‘87 to 2017. And to just kind of give a little synopsis of that, his leadership era, my dad was a, what I'll just call, like, a heroic leader, a spiritual father to a lot of people, a pioneer in so many ways as many, many kind of pastors, particularly maybe of the boomer era, seem to be. They're pioneers, they build stuff, and they kind of, they have this sort of heroic sort of quality to them. And I started working at Church on the Move in ‘94, right out of high school. And there's so many different things that the church—I won’t bore you with all the details of my own personal journey, but in 2017 became the pastor, and in some sense taking the leadership of a really healthy, wonderful church, but also seeing that kind of to transition to where I think we needed to go was sort of a way from a, let's call it, a heroic-leadership model to a bit more of a, let's call it, a garden model, where you're trying to create an environment where people from all sorts of different backgrounds and gifts and, you know, stories can thrive and flourish in that background.
I think what I did not understand, which contributed to that really low score that you talk about out of 2020, was just how hard a transition like that would be. I think if I was talking to a leader today who was thinking about—in fact, I was just doing this yesterday with one of our coaches. We have a Christian school as well. I was just telling him that culture takes so much longer to build than you want. It just always does.
And my definition of culture is how we do things here. And it's broader than that. It’s a bit of an oversimplification of what culture is, but I think it's helpful to kind of think of it that way, as just this sort of unspoken, unwritten sometimes, ways that we do things here. And families, you know, you think about it, you know, families have cultures. It's like, you know, don't bother Dad when he's napping, or ask Mom for money; she's easier to get money from. Those are things that kids just—you just pick up on. No one had to sit you down and tell you it; you just know because that's how we do things here.
And so, you know, trying to kind of lead from one leadership style, which is my dad was very admitted—had a strong administrative gift, knew how he wanted things done, would like to get down in the weeds of different, you know, departments and whatnot and was very good at it. I mean, built a very, very healthy church that way. I just wasn't wired up that way. And I think I wildly underestimated just how difficult a leadership shift like that would be.
And so 2020 was kind of the moment where we, in a few different ways, we just got a real kind of—I was three years into my pastoral tenure and just got kind of a, I don't know, a slap in the face of just, oh, wow, this is, like, this is where I was at, especially in the Best Christian Workplace Survey, one of the categories being inspirational leadership. And that was, like, one of the lowest factors. And it was just like, oh, my goodness; what am I…? And a lot of it was just that—and Brian was great at seeing this—but there was a big gap between me and the team, like the staff, especially, I call it closer to the ground, right? There's just a bigger gap between what I thought of as the church, how I saw who we are and where we were going, and how they were actually experiencing that.
And so what we've gotten to work in doing is just closing that gap. One of the ways that we did that, maybe the most significant way to do that, is really—I had to do a lot of soul searching, especially in 2020, of figuring out who we wanted to be. And it was a lot less of, I would call it it's DNA. You're looking for who you're going to be, and that's harder to do than you think. It's asking yourself questions like, what is the church? What is the nature and purpose and mission of the church? And really going back to kind of basics and trying to deeply understand sort of what kind of community do you feel like God is creating within the church, but then, also, specifically in your context, how is it going to be expressed at Church on the Move? And so that led me to write some kind of, some documents that, honestly, for me were just personal, things that I needed to wrestle to the ground, but things that I could say, “This is what I know to be true about me. This is what I know to be true about my belief about what the church is and how it should function.”
And it was as we gained that kind of clarity, both in mission and DNA, and then let's also say even some core values as well, then comes both a fun and sometimes hard part, which is actually living it out. And I think this is where often a big disconnect with leaders is that we espouse—and in fact, this is why even the phrase core values gets an eyeroll from a lot of employees is that it's nothing more than a poster on a wall instead of a reality that's experienced. That's why I say culture is how we do things here. And so it really doesn't matter what you write on the wall, what people experience as your culture is what it is. And so you have to ask yourself, like, are we literally doing, are we valuing, even making decisions around people's employment that, honestly, you kind of have like these—churches probably are notor—not probably or definitely—notorious for having, like, charity employees, people that they've just been around, good hearted, but they're not living out some of the things that you say you value. And the tolerance of that, even in the spirit of Christian, you know, love is still can really hurt culture.
And so anyways, it's going through making tough decisions, not just letting people go, but, honestly, just choosing to have tough conversations with the leadership, with people that were working shoulder to shoulder with me and get honest about what we were trying to build and how we were impacting people downstream from us. And oh, it was so hard and painful. I can think of three or four times where that happened. But on the backside of that, that alignment, the downstream implications of that were enormous.
That's a short version. I'm sure Brian could give some more depth to that. But that's a short version as to kind of what began to happen from 2020 to—
Brian: It’s good, Whit.
Al: Yeah. And let me say, I'm sorry, Whit, that we caused you some pain, but I'm so glad that it's come up and so beneficial, come out the end, as you say, you know, downstream.
Whit: Oh, it was so beneficial.
Al: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We often get that response, and it's like, “Okay, let's dig deep.” That's what you described. You really had to dig deep. Okay, why are we here? What are we doing? Yeah, so. Oh, man.
And you know, Brian, you know, you're the COO, and so you've had your hand at making changes to the focus and the strategy from the ground up. And I know Tara VanderSande, who's the consultant that's worked with you, and I know that she's had a great impact on you guys. And she shared a presentation with the Survey results to an all-staff meeting. I'm sure that wasn't easy to sit through that first time. So what were a couple of the key areas that you focused on in that first year to create such a dramatic culture shift? I mean, it was dramatic. Certainly, healthy communication has got to be one of those areas, where you had—
Brian: No doubt.
Al: —big gains. What changes or new practices did you implement to see this improvement year one?
Brian: Well, even though that was three Surveys ago in two years, that's still pretty—that's still a wound that's open. You're really pushing on something, Al. You know, I think we're fortunate to be at a healthy culture.
Al: Mm-hmm.
Brian: I just don't think our employees fully felt it or understood it, and would unpack some of that.
Al: Yeah.
Brian: We knew we weren't in a bad place. We knew everyone didn't understand where we really were. And one of—two, honestly—of Whit’s greatest leadership gifts, he’s not threatened to bring other high-quality, high-capacity leaders in. But he also wants to face the truth. He just needs the facts. And we really believe here, if we all have the same information, we're going to make pretty similar decisions. And so Whit just kind of led the charge with, “Hey, once we get the results, we're going to do an all-staff meeting.” We did a call with Tara and let everyone participate in the Q&A and hear all the results. We didn't go through every single write-in comment, but we put the full Survey in front of all of our staff, recorded it, sent it to those that didn't have it. And honestly, that was the first step in kind of building maybe two of the most important things we did, which was communication and trust.
Communication wasn't broke, but I think—we're a fairly large, complex organization. We have a school and three churches, and so that's a couple hundred employees. It's easy to have a meeting with six or eight leaders and not get to the farthest extent of your organization. And so a lot of our, you know, leadership, development, and communication was focused on supervisors, just helping them become better communicators and managers. It's just the blocking and tackling of being a healthy organization. So, yeah, communications, building trust.
And then there was a strategy component for us. As Whit mentioned, it really getting a conviction around who we are, what we are, what we're about. You know, our mission statement emerged around that time, of introducing people to the real Jesus. Core values emerged. We have five core values, and you won’t find them on the wall of my office. I tell every one of our leaders, “You can put these on the wall if you're living these things out, but these aren't meant to be a logo. They're not a piece of paper we print off and hand to people. These are what people should experience.” And what I love about our core values is they're not something that a leadership team kind of made up and said, “Hey, this is what we aspire to be.” We were really honest with each other and said, “Hey, maybe these have a shelf life, maybe they don't. This is who we are and who we're trying to become stronger and better at.” And so, you know, our core values essentially are real, which is really about authenticity, excellence.
And for us, excellence, I mean, the business we're in, I mean, it's worth it. Like, we should be excellent. You know, I think, for us, one of our five core values, and that's really we believe in the concept of we're better together. “Hey, we're a body, but it's a body made up of unique parts. And when you put all those gifts together, man, we can do something really powerful.”
The fourth one is hungry, and it's really about kind of personal growth or being a learner, really, being hungry to grow and learn. And the last one is bold. We want our employees to know the mission, know the vision, be empowered, and let's get after it. Take initiative. I'd much rather pull back the reins a little bit than be kind of pushing employees to kind of take next steps. And our employees, they heard those core values, but they really needed to see them modeled and taught and understand what they are. And what I think is they see them in leaders around our organization. And those three things— communication, trust, and, really, I would say strategy. Whit mentioned the very personal writings and wrestlings he had, our vision statement came out of that. I mean, it was just some writing he was doing himself. And when I saw it, I was like, man, this is gold. Like, this is your heart. This is what God's calling us to be. And we still leverage those things today.
Al: Yeah. Whit, tell us a little bit about the—so mission, vision. You know, we just heard kind of the core values, but tell us a little bit as you really kind of narrowed in and focused on what it was.
Whit: Yeah. So I mean, I would say some of it was a personal learning for me. My dad is such a—how do I put this?—he's a builder. He dreams in square feet. He's an architect in so many ways. And so much of his leadership style was, you know, this is what we're going to build next. And our church was kind of oriented around that kind of leadership. I just don't have that kind of what I would call a visionary mind. I don't sit around and think, “Our church is going to be, you know, this big, and this is how many campuses, and this is how, you know, these are the states that we’ll be in.” That's just not me. And any time I was kind of pushed—not by my dad, but just by others. There would be people on this team, especially early on—like, “Where are we going? What are we trying to do?” I never had a good answer for that question, and I hated that question because I thought the only answer was how many? How much?
I mean, what I learned in 2020, I was pushed in this direction by a couple different mentors, actually. One talked to me about being a DNA leader, which is really more focused on the kind of qualities of who you are and who you're going to be. And the other one asked me to write just a document about ministry and church and kind of my philosophy. He said, “Just write down what you know to be true.”
The reason is that we were in a season where—and this is what happens when there's not a strong DNA and direction, you're going to have competing points of view, and we were feeling that. There was, like, guys on my team that are still on the team that are, like, high-high-level leaders at Church on the Move. They just have a little different emphasis, maybe a bit more evangelistic bend or whatever. And so their personality is starting to shape the direction of the church. And then people can feel my personality. And boy, and it’s not that we're fighting with each other; they can just feel like there's almost two different ways of doing this. And if I don't come in and say, “No, this is who we are,” we're going to have—it's going to be chaos. And that's exactly what we were experiencing. People just wondering, where are we going exactly? What are we going to be doing?
So what I had to do is sit down and write that out. And honestly, it was really just a personal exercise for me. I wrote it in about 45 minutes, a document just called The Church I See. I'd heard that phrase before. I just said, “What is the church I see? What does it look like?” And, you know, it just speaks to things that were close to my heart, ways of viewing the primacy of Christ within the church, the gospel, what our emphasis will be, how we think about music. It's not trying to touch on everything, but, really, so much of the things that have formed and shaped me—I'm an artist at heart, and so there's a lot about the arts, which is where I came from, the world I come out of. And so there's things like that. Our love for beauty and just things about how we're going to approach, you know, the things that are most important to us.
And so that really kind of set the tone for, okay, this is who we are. And what that led to, Al, is some really good conversations between me and other pastors, even, because we're a—so we don't do video venues. We have other senior leading, teaching pastors at each of our locations. And so you'd have good conversations, hard conversations around, “All right. I'm reading this statement here. I don't know if I agree with this, or I don't know if that's the kind of—” and then you have to talk it through and go, “What did you mean by that?” “All right. Well, here's my heart. Here's what I'm after.” “Okay.” You're getting to a point where we can all kind of stack our hands and say, “Yep, I can build that.” And it has nothing to do—and I tell people who are joining our church, like, “You're not going to find—” because we share that document with folks. And I say, “You're not going to find anything in here about how many or how much. That's not it. I think God's more interested in who you're becoming than what you accomplish.”
And I think both matter, but I think you're going to accomplish a lot and be very disconnected from the vine, as it were. And so my goal is let's build a healthy culture here where, yeah, who we are and what we accomplish are married together, that there's a good gospel culture going on here. So we focus so much on that DNA side. And what I learned is that that can be as much of a motivator for people to give, to serve, to be a part, to buy in as the—“We need a building, 20,000 square feet. It’s going to be this side of town. It needs a new—" it’s, like, that’s not me; that was my dad. I had to learn those different lanes and that different leadership style.
Al: Wow. And tell me again your mission statement.
Whit: Yeah. So it's introducing people to the real Jesus, which comes out of my own story of growing up in the church, second-generation Christian, having a belief in the Lord but not really seeing much life change, transformation, fruit of the Spirit, that kind of thing. Maybe it would be probably a bit unfair to say I was a cultural Christian, but maybe you could say largely unsanctified Christian for much, even, into my adult years and had an experience where, yeah, I was quite changed and transformed. The guy I am today is way different than the guy I was, you know, 15, 20 years ago. And so I use that a lot, particularly in Tulsa, because, you know, a lot of people are familiar with the church. We're not dealing quite yet with a post-Christian culture. So when we say “introducing people to the real Jesus,” you get a lot of people who consider themselves Christians going, “Wait a minute. What does that—what do you mean?” And that's exactly what we want.
Al: Yeah.
Whit: We want that kind of questioning.
Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.
Are you tired of spinning your wheels with unwanted turnover, toxicity, and disengaged employees? Do you want to improve your team's effectiveness and performance? A helpful way to improve is to have you and your leadership team buy our new book, Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being. This is the only research-based book that shows you how to engage employees, build fantastic teams, cultivate life-giving work, attract and retain outstanding talent, and much more. To buy a copy for you and your team, go to www.roadtoflourishing.com. And when you buy a book, you'll receive a free copy of our Rewarding Compensation: FLOURISH Guide. Again, go to roadtoflourishing.com and buy a book for you and your team, and receive a free Rewarding Compensation: FLOURISH Guide.
Welcome back to my conversation with Whit and Brian at Church on the Move.
Well, you know, you've been at this culture thing, and I really love that “introducing people to the real Jesus.” Come out here to the state of Washington.
Whit: Yeah, yeah. Totally different environment.
Al: Yeah, you would have a different environment. But you've been at this now for a few years, this culture thing, and of course, I love your definition of culture. You'll find the exact definition in my book, “It's how we do things around here.”
Whit: Oh, nice. Brilliant.
Brian: That’s awesome.
Al: Yeah.
So how do you and your senior leadership team approach employee engagement? You know, people clearly feel like the church is meeting its goals, and their work is important. That comes through in the Survey. But have there been any changes in your thinking about vision and strategy and how to engage your whole staff in working towards these goals?
Whit: Brian, I’m curious how you’d answer that question.
Brian: Yeah. I’d love to jump in. Yeah, we've been real intentional. And maybe you can house it under the communication bucket, but when you talk about employee engagement, I don't know that we would have known how to measure that before taking the Survey.
Whit: Mm-hmm.
Brian: We could feel it. It's kind of a bit intangible, and, “Man, we just don't feel like we're aligned” is maybe what we would say. And truly, we weren't. Two years ago, three Surveys ago, you've got about a third of our staff that show up on the Survey as engaged, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It was just a clarity for us that, oh, wow, we've not driven down who we are, who we're trying to be. Like Whit said, the DNA is not reaching all the extents or corners of the organization, and we've got to be so much more intentional about that. In just one year, we pretty much doubled that engagement, I think two-thirds of our staff. And then, of course, this last Survey last fall, two years later, we've got right at 80, 81% of our staff engaged. And it's a huge difference maker.
I was in a meeting with our facilities team the other day. I mean, they handle everything from preventative maintenance to landscaping. And we're getting ready to tackle some capital projects, and we've got a brand-new landscape employee. She's been there six months, and she's, basically, I mean, she's amazing with plants and growing everything. She came up to me after the kind of leadership-development time and said, “I've got an idea that I think could save us tens of thousands of dollars. Could we do this?” And her whole focus in doing that, she said, “My job in introducing people to the real Jesus is allowing more budget for ministry and less budget for growing plants. We've got this greenhouse, and we can do all sorts of stuff. If you'll tell me what you want in the flower beds in that building we're building in 2024 and ’25, I'll plant the seeds now, and I'll make it happen for you.” That's culture. That's driving down, like, our values and who we are and our DNA to people. And we've had to be very intentional with that.
Our staff as a whole, I come out of a whole different industry. I've only been in nonprofit church work for the last three years. This has been my home church for 22 years. If I had the passion on staffs previous to working in the church that the church staff has, that all churches have, you could conquer the world. And that was obviously Jesus's plan. But yeah, I just think we don't always know how to properly shepherd the people under our supervision.
And so management's way more than just doing an employee review. And so what we've really tried to cultivate is a real culture of meeting with direct reports, overflowing information, water-falling information. You've got to say things five or six times for people to hear it. And so that's dramatically changed here, where we are really equipping anyone that has anyone that works for them, say a supervisor or a manager, you know the culture, you know the DNA, you know the core values, you know the mission and vision, you're around other people that exhibit that, and your job is to go disseminate that by kind of leading, developing, and caring for the people under your little kingdom, your little department. And so we're finally seeing, like, our culture get down to every single little nook and cranny of Church on the Move.
Whit: Brian, I think you did one of the best things that—and you implemented this, but right after that 2020 Survey, we went into 2021 weekly, and we still do it every week, we do an all-staff call. So we do in-person all-staff gatherings not quite monthly, but probably eight to ten times a year. One of the things that we learned in the Survey was just that people didn't know exactly what was going—even, like, it was our managers. That was the crazy thing. We were like, “Wait a minute. You guys should be…” we just couldn't figure out why they were struggling with things that we thought we'd said. So we just—and even this kind of consistent belief that the senior leaders of the organization were somehow had all this information that we weren't sharing with people. And so we had to really go overboard. And Brian had this idea of just going to a weekly all-staff call. So every week we do this. We jump on. And gosh, it'd be 30 minutes, but it's a Zoom call. People join in live, and then it's recorded to anyone that wants to watch it back. And it's literally just a weekly touchpoint of what's going on. And the phrase that gets said a lot is just, “You know what we know.” Like, the only things we're holding back are things that maybe affect, you know, personnel situations we can't talk about. We’re sharing with—we want you to know what we know. And I think that's made a big difference, Brian. I think that was a really smart—
Brian: Yeah, it's been huge.
Al: I love that idea. That's something all of our listeners can think about. How do you do a weekly all-staff call, just so everybody knows what everybody knows.
You know, Brian, let's go back to you mentioned this point about the connection between staff and supervisors and how supervisors really—that you gave them some authority power training on how to connect with their staff. We ask the question, my supervisor cares about me as a person. My supervisor helps me solve work-related problems. So you've done some training. What are some specific ways you've equipped that middle-management supervisory group to help engage them more effectively?
Brian: Great question. And, Al, that was not one of our highest scores in the first Survey. That is our absolute highest score of every single question asked. I think it's 4.86 was a score for “my supervisor cares about me.” Our supervisors cared about our employees way before Whit and I started trying to change culture around here. Do the employees feel cared for? And I think that was the kind of missing ingredient that we've had to develop people in. We do a monthly leadership-development meeting for anyone that's a supervisor, and I think most organizations pride themselves on some level of leadership development. But this is straightforward. It's simple. It's really helping people understand how to connect with your employees. It's simple things like how do you lead yourself, how do you be transparent, how do you live out the core values? But even more than that, it's we don't want employees to be surprised when they get to an annual review with what you're going to tell them. And so that conversation should be going on all the time.
For supervisors that don't have great relationships with their employees, I just say start with a weekly one-on-one, 45-minute, no-agenda meeting with your direct reports that week. And do that for the next six or eight weeks. And that quantity of time is going to make a difference in the quality of that relationship over time.
And we don't require supervisors to meet weekly one on one with employees. But it's amazing when you raise the value of something, how much that improves relationships and communication. So the passion was there, the care was there; our employees just really needed to feel it. And so it hasn't been that heavy of a lift. It's just been a constant, steady reminder, kind of hand on the back of our supervisor, saying, “Hey, this is important. Let's do this. Take some time after that meeting. Go repeat to your team what you just heard.” So it's real simple, kind of low-level, “cookies on the bottom shelf” type stuff, but it's so important. And you've got to do it over and over and over again.
Al: Fantastic. You know, the Best Christian Workplace Survey measures employee engagement, and your church, as we've talked about, has seen tremendous improvement. And I'm curious if you've been able to see any spillover effects. And this is one of my favorite questions. You know, so as your staff is engaged and energized helping the church achieve its mission and goals, have you seen an impact on the energy and engagement amongst the broader church community? What's your reaction to that?
Whit: Oh, my goodness, yes. I mean, absolutely massive.
Al: Yeah.
Whit: And I really think that's the way that it ought to be. I see this as sort of a descending kind of waterfall, trickle-down effect really does need to start at the top. You know, if the people at the top don't know what's going on, don't love and appreciate one another, aren't enthusiastic or excited about what they're doing, obviously that's going to have an impact. But that even goes through the staff, which I view as the core of the church. And so as they are more engaged—that's the word we're using here—they're more engaged and bought in and feeling good about what they're doing, I mean, you just can't help that to have an impact on the church. And honestly, Al, I mean, that’s what we're seeing. It's been crazy. I don't know what's going on in the rest of, you know, with the rest of the church community at large. I’ve, honestly, in the last couple years, just tried to kind of keep my head down and focus on what we're doing. But just even what we're seeing at the beginning of 2023 has just kind of blown all of us away with no real, you know, concerted effort, push, whatever. We’re just seeing a wave of momentum starting to build. And I really do think it goes back to what I was saying as a garden. People feel like they're safe at COTM. They feel like they can put down roots there and grow and that their family will be well taken care of. And again, that's more than just—it's not terribly difficult to put together a clever sermon series. It's not terribly difficult to play a song or whatever at the beginning of a service that, you know, might get people's attention. Like, that's relatively easy. But those things fade pretty quickly. Building a community and a culture where people feel like they can thrive and their family can do well here, like, that takes time. And what I found is that when you put the effort into those things, people just respond because they feel—and they're coming, and they're showing up, going, they just feel like they fit here. Like, they can belong here. And so, yeah, I absolutely think that. In fact, many of the tactics and just strategy that we've employed working with our employees has been the kind of same mindset that we've tried to drip down into. In other words, they're building relationships. You know, we’re a large church, but just spending the time that you can one on one with congregants and going to lunches and coffees and making sure they know what we know. It's a lot of the same stuff. And the dividends, I'm just, I'm kind of blown away. I shouldn't be, but I am. It's amazing just to see how that's all working.
Brian: Outside of seeing the churches just thrive and grow, my favorite aspect of our culture and where it is from a health standpoint is we have a fairly complex ministry model. We have three churches in northeast Oklahoma, roughly in the same cities, in some different suburbs; live communicators at each of them. That is not a model that gravitates to doing things together. I mean, that's not normal. And when culture’s healthy, I get to support a lot of that stuff, and we've got a lot of staff that can support those things. And we're not spending time trying to come up with procedures and rules and restrictions to try to do things similarly. The culture’s the same.
Now, contextually, the way those churches live out their weekends and their weeks look a little different—they're meeting those community needs—but our support staff and, really, all of our staff could go from one of our churches to another, and they're going to be able to just kind of fit right in. What we're helping each other is build local churches instead of spending so much of our time on these sideways energy things and meetings about are we doing this program the same? We all want to be doing this together. We love the culture that's here. We love the DNA that's being established. And so it feels like everyone's running, and we're running towards the same thing, but doing it through the power of three churches.
Al: Yeah. Whit, I've got to say, I love the comment, 2023, we're experiencing a wave of momentum. And Brian, you just described much of that. And, you know, I love the gardening theme, Whit, that you've mentioned throughout this. And, you know, in the introduction of our book, Peter Greer of Hope International talks about it's all about the soil. You know, you create good soil, good things grow. And you're exactly describing where you've cultivated the soil, you've nourished, you created nourishment in the soil, and a wave of momentum is happening as a result. Well, yeah. Okay.
Well, you know, your church is also affiliated with a school, the Lincoln Christian School. And some of our ministry partners include both churches and schools. And some organizations struggle, you know, to balance interaction and the operations of two distinct enemies. You know, Lincoln Christian School is also a certified Employee Best Christian Workplace, and you really focused on employee engagement there. So, Brian, what are you learning about the positive ways for a church and a school to operate side by side with healthy interactions and boundaries? Are there some practical steps that you've taken that might be helpful for other organizations that have both a church and a school?
Brian: As anyone out there knows, that works in the environment where your organization has a church and a school, it's very complicated, and a school is not a church. And when you're working together and you have shared resources and shared teams, obviously the school drifts to wanting to do the things that a church does. And so I think the biggest gift for us through Best Christian Workplace has actually probably been towards the school. It's offered so much. We have a healthy culture. I mean, teachers and school administrators and coaches, they're passionate. They care about students. They wouldn't be there—I mean, the pay is not such that that's attracting a ton of people into that industry. You're called to that. And so culture tends to be somewhat healthy in a school with staff because they're so passionate about the mission and vision of a place and helping, you know, form the next generation.
I think for us, we're trying to work out and we have been working out, it's the identity of the school and the identity of the church need to be really clear, and then they actually work together to form kids and families that are a part of this community. And so it's a huge opportunity, huge gift. There's so much potential with that. But culturally, schools and churches are different. And we have 67 shared staff that kind of work on all of these things. But the church side and the school side have their distinct staffs. And I think if you would have asked me three years ago, I’d have said, “Man, we’re building the same culture. We’ve got the same core values. We're doing a lot of the same things. We're touching a lot of the same families.” But as Whit said, when we kind of step back and philosophically and theologically kind of break down, what are our roles? let's be really good, really strong in the lane that we're supposed to be, there's a real power in that. And unless you know what the cultural indicators are of what's healthy and what needs to be worked on, I just don't think you can grow something.
Al: Well, let's talk a little bit about trends in the church of America. And we hear about burnout. We hear about discouragement amongst pastors and church staff, particularly, you know, especially post-COVID. It's just been a tough period. Your vision is to share the real Jesus—I just love that—and you know, what that means for our everyday lives, particularly. So thinking of the staff you lead, are there some practices or rhythms to help sustain your staff spiritually, emotionally? How do you continue to serve and pour into your staff as well as your congregation?
Whit: Yeah. You know, Al, I think a lot of it comes down to—Brian touched on it just a second ago—is, I think, understanding our roles. I think we get into trouble when we try to do things that aren't ours to do.
Brian: That's good.
Whit: And so much of what I think, you know, I've lived it. You know, when you feel like you're responsible for church growth. And I get that there's so many—you know, I have friends that are in a situation where they kind of need their church. I mean, there is a financial viability piece to this that's real, that you can't just ignore and go, “Well, I’ll just love people.” You really need that. So we need churches to grow. And I felt that pressure before. I mean, the church—when I took the church, we lost, I don't know, 20 to 30% of our congregation over a period of a year or two. And you just, you feel like you're failing and all those things. I know those feelings.
But what I had to come to grips with—and this has a trickle-down effect to your staff as well—but I had to come to grips with I really can only do what I can do. And I'm not going to run myself into the ground to try to boost this thing up in some manic, frantic kind of way. I really can only do what I feel like I'm called to do, which is care well for the congregation that we have. Again, it does go back to culture. It does go back to the garden thing.
So now what's happening, Al, is we're not having to push. This wave of momentum is amazing, but it's also happening now. Jim Collins described it in his the Good to Great book on the flywheel. I'll never forget hearing this and wanting to figure out how to experience that so badly, gosh, two decades ago, is the push on the flywheel, and he describes, you know, the giant flywheel, and you're pushing on it, and you push with everything you got, and it just doesn't seem to budge. But you keep pushing, you keep pushing, you keep pushing, and eventually it starts to move, but move very slowly. And then it starts to move with a little, little bit more speed, and eventually it starts moving under its own momentum to where you're kind of just pushing it lightly, and it's still going. And it's almost as if someone comes along and says, “Hey, which push did it?” And you're like, “Well, I don't—how can I answer that question?” That to me is the gift of understanding your role and healthy culture is you're creating an environment that almost has its own momentum to it, to where I'm not having to run around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to generate excitement or momentum, but rather just caring for people. And so again, it goes back to, what is the church? what's our role? what's our part of the week? and let's do what we can do with excellence.
Here's a practical example. When I have another one of our pastors preach on the weekend, one of the things I tell them often—you know, these are guys that don't get to teach all that often, so it's a big deal. And I remember this, and I just remind them, and I have to remind myself of this—it's just another chance to preach the gospel. It matters, but the church is not built in a weekend, and it's not going to crumble in a weekend. I think churches can get in this kind of “it all hinges on this one Sunday” kind of mentality, so we end up putting—we're just pushing so hard when it's like, “I'm going to do what I can do, and then I'm going to rest, and I'm going to just—”
So, trying to kind of set that precedent for people is like, put your best work in, but then don't let work dominate your whole life. Take a break, take a Sabbath. And that, I think that mentality results in people who are serving and leading, who are fresher, who have an enthusiasm, who actually enjoy what they do because they're not feeling like they're having to manufacture a kind of energy, but rather that we're, yeah, we're recipients of the very culture that we're selling, if you will. And I think that's the best place to be.
Al: Brian, how about you? Anything you'd add on what practices and rhythms you’d encourage your team to sustain them?
Brian: Yeah. We have Sabbath practices and all the normal things you would expect, but the most valuable thing we've done for our staff is help them understand what the church is. I mean, Whit has done such a great job of helping us all understand this. How we think about the church is really going to determine how we work on the church, how we feel about the church, what we're working on each day. And when you think of the church as a garden versus a performance versus a big event, and there's a lot of great ways to think about the church, but a garden is maybe one of the more complete ways to think about the church, we’re tending the garden. That's something you do a little bit every day. You're doing it over time. You're trying to cultivate healthy soil. We're not trying to conquer the world.
And we're in kind of a harvest season right now. We're seeing a lot of people come back to church. It's such a great opportunity. But you don't see our staff stressed out about that. You don't see people running around, trying figure out, what do we need to do to meet this need? We're just out in the lobby caring for people. We're available. As opportunities come up, we get to interact with people. We have an intentionality about us.
But, you know, some people have Mondays off, some people have Fridays off, and that day we encourage people, turn off your phone. Don't be on our systems. Don't be responding. We're not expecting you to respond. So there is the practical balance there. But man, how you think about things, it really reduces the anxiety, the stress, the pressure of what we're doing. We're playing such a long game.
Whit and I, we really feel called to pass this church off to the next generation. That's what's been handed to us. And so it's not about burnout, it's not about hurrying a bunch of people or making something happen next month; it’s about, let’s create a healthy culture. Let's create a healthy soil for this garden. And you just do that one day at a time.
Al: Well, that's a great way to summarize, Brian. Thanks. Tending the garden, tending the soil, and you're seeing people coming back to church. That's fantastic.
Well, this has certainly been a great conversation. Thanks so much. And as I look back at our conversation, you know, just starting with your period of time, just kind of, like, discovering what is the whole reason we're here? what's the DNA? what do we want the church to be? And then just understanding culture is just how we do things around here. And then putting things in place to make sure there is integrity between your values and your vision and the way people behaved and acted. Living it out, as you described it, is a great start. You know, and having those values defined and actually making sure people are living those values. Brian, you mentioned they're not to be put on the wall unless you can live them. But the DNA and focusing on the DNA. And then the practical things that you've done. Weekly, all-staff calls is a great example. Monthly leadership development, really working with your front-line leaders to make sure that they're trained and are in a good spot to invest in their people. And yes, I love when you said 2023, we're seeing a wave of momentum as you're seeing a harvest from tilling the soil and to building a culture that you've built in the last couple of years. Man. And then, again, just making sure that people understand what their roles are, what the role of the church is, building that flywheel over time, making sure people are keeping their Sabbaths, but really tending the garden. This has just been a great, great conversation.
So anything you'd like to add that we've talked about?
Whit: Oh, man. You know, I think I might just say that, yeah, it's a process. It takes time. Give yourself grace for that. You know, I think back to myself, if I could go back three years ago, I mean, the turmoil that I was in, particularly the summer of 2020, asking myself the questions, do I want to keep doing this? You know, I know a lot of pastors are asking themselves that. I think if we could just kind of take a step back, exhale and say, “This is not my church; it belongs to the Lord. Make the most of what He's put in your hands.” That might be a large church, like COTM. It might be a smaller church.
God gives according to ability, but he rewards according to faithfulness, as we see from the parable of the talents. And so it's like, I don't get to control what He's put in my hand; what I do get to control is what I do with it. And so I think taking a step back and just going, “Lord, I want to steward this, I want to steward it well, and I'm committed to the process of that.” And I think just, I think if we're willing to do what's best for those—both the employees and the congregants that He has entrusted us with—says of David that he had integrity of heart and skillful hands. That's a prayer I've prayed over myself and our leaders a lot in the last five, seven years. And I think if we'll just approach it like that, “I don't get to control what God's given me, but I do get to control how I respond to it. So Lord, give me integrity of heart. Do what’s best for the people that You've given and placed in my hands, and skillful. I want to lead well.”
And so I think if you do those two things and be all right with the process, I think we can kind of dial down some of the pressure, hopefully, a little bit and the anxiety of all of what America calls success and, honestly, just live in to creating the healthiest environments and cultures possible. But what’d Paul say? “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” That's the season that we feel like we're in. We've just been planting and watering, and God is sending people. It's like, I don't know; only God.
Brian: Yeah. I think I would just specifically talk to anyone out there that's listening that's maybe on the fence of considering Best Christian Workplace. You know, as leaders we can get overconfident that we really understand maybe what reality is, or we can lean in on a confidant or a coworker, maybe our right-arm guy and feel like we really have the intelligence in our organizations and know what the right things are to work on. One of the biggest gifts of the Survey for us is just, like, it's black and white. It's a very detailed physical. And, man, I think for health purposes, you just, you want to know the facts because it's a superpower to getting to the right things to work on, especially leaders. I mean, like, when you're looking up at that dashboard, you just want to be pulling a couple levers. You don't want to be putting fingers in a bunch of leaky holes. And so, yeah, I would just, I would really encourage people to, you know, give this a shot. And I’m not on staff at Best Christian Workplace. But I just think, man, what you can do over a two-year period would really surprise you if you have all the facts and just focus on two or three things between each of those Surveys.
Al: Well, thanks. This has been a great conversation. Whit, I just love your heart. You know, what you're describing is what Peter says. Shepherd the flock that God has entrusted to you. That's the charge. And Brian, you're saying, you know, in order to water the garden, you have to know, well, there's some places that probably need a little more water than other places. So what are they?
Brian: Exactly.
Al: And you've got to measure and understand where those are. You've got to check the soil so that you can focus energies in the right places.
Well, I want to thank both of you guys for your contributions today. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to serving God's kingdom through the local church, to equip people to follow the real Jesus in everyday lives. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking in the lives of so many listeners.
Whit: Thanks, 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.
Al: Speaking of flourishing workplaces, next week we're going to be speaking with a leader whose church scored at the flourishing level the first time they took our Employee Engagement Survey. I know many of you might be thinking, “How could that be?” Join us as Jeff Cranston shares what he learned as a result. Jeff is the senior pastor of LowCountry Community Church in Bluffton, South Carolina, near Hilton Head.