Transcript: The Feedback Loop: How Churches Can Build Trust and Develop Staff Through Effective Surveys //Danny de Armas, First Baptist Orlando

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“The Feedback Loop: How Churches Can Build Trust and Develop Staff Through Effective Surveys“

August 19, 2024

Encore Episode: Danny de Armas

Intro: Welcome to this special summer encore of the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast. We are pleased to witness so many people engaged with these valuable episodes.

And are you looking for a tried-and-true employee-development idea or ways to improve the communication in your organization or key selection criteria for senior leaders? If you are, my guest today outlines great ideas to improve employee development, communication, and leadership selection.

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. And I'm thrilled to announce my book has been selected for the Christian Book Awards. I’m passionate about helping Christian leaders create engaged, flourishing workplaces. And thanks for joining us today.

Well, today I'm delighted to welcome Danny de Armas to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast. Danny is the senior associate pastor for First Orlando Church. First Orlando is on a mission to follow Jesus and help others do the same. Throughout our conversation, Danny describes how you equip your leadership team and staff to keep growing in their roles; how to improve and how important it is to provide meaningful feedback and accountability, key criteria to have an effective, cohesive leadership team; techniques for good communication across the organization; and how to stay alive spiritually. I think you'll love this interview with Danny de Armas.

You know, Danny is with First Orlando and has been there since 2008. He also serves the larger church and Christian-ministry community as a board member of the Evangelical Council for Christian Accountability.

Danny, it's great to have you on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast.

Danny de Armas: Thank you, Al. I'm honored to be here. BCWI has been a big part of our health as an organization and what we're doing here, and so I’m thrilled to be able to share a little bit of that experience with you and your audience.

Al: Well, great. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. But first, you know, I want to thank you and First Orlando for hosting the Exponential Conference this winter. You know, our team was there, including Tara VanderSande, who I know has worked with you—

Danny: Right.

Al: —over the years, and Robert Wachter. And they've had such a great experience and appreciated connecting with people, particularly your staff, during that time. And Tara specifically mentioned your prayer team and how active and appreciated they were during the entire Conference. That's fantastic.

Danny: Well, we love hosting Exponential. It's a great group. You know, we're a legacy church that's 150 years old. And then, all of a sudden, you fill it up with a bunch of young men and women that are in the front lines of planning and starting churches, and it is invigorating for us. And we love hosting it. We've got them booked through ’25, and we're trying to secure them until Jesus comes, that they keep coming back.

The other thing they do for us is that our staff gets to participate in any of the breakouts, all of the general sessions. We don't take seats of paying customers, but we do get to slip in and stand, if necessary, to enrich ourselves. And it's a win-win for us. We really are grateful that they're here.

Al: And, you know, what better place to go than Orlando in the middle of the winter, right?

Danny: Exactly, exactly. They’re smart about that. They know getting people out of the frigid cold in other places.

Al: Yep.

Danny: And fortunately, this year was spectacular weather for the Conference.

Al: Yeah.

Danny: It worked out really nicely.

Al: Yeah.

Well, you know, before we get much further in the conversation, I really would like to talk a little bit about your vision for ministry in Orlando. And coming out of the pandemic, you know, many churches have really worked to find creative ways to reengage with their congregations and communities. And you did a “FOR Orlando” emphasis last fall to show your love and Jesus’ love for the city. So tell us a little bit about that initiative, and how did you involve others and impact the city and the congregation.

Danny: Yeah. FOR Orlando, we actually were inspired in part by a work, a book, called What Are You For, and we just decided, praying with our team, that we were going to challenge our people to give on one Sunday—I know there's other churches that do this as well, but we had never done something like this—that we would dedicate that offering to give away. We wouldn't keep any of it. But 100% of what we collected that particular day, we were going to give away to our ministry partners in the area. As most churches, we have different partners that actually are good at helping the needy, the homeless, and things like that. We're not so skilled at that part of it, but we do have people and money. And so what we did is we challenged our people to commit to serve, and we challenged our people to give. And our people gave almost $900,000 that day. And we're in the process of distributing that. That's a—to put things in relative terms—that's a little over two times what a typical offering is here. And we had, I want to say, it's, like, over 200 people or families who, that was their first giving opportunity here. We had no record of them giving before, but they engaged for that day. And we know that oftentimes that first-time giving becomes a catalyst for more, right?

Al: Right, right.

Danny: And so we’re just really tickled. You know, giving away $900,000 takes a little work. You got to think through and plan through and how you do that. And then we're celebrating that, about at least once a month, we'll have one of our ministry partners be with us on a Sunday, and we have the joy of giving them a part of that. And our people celebrate it and know that they're having, you know, a real tangible way that they're making a difference in our community. And it's been, man, just got to tell you, it's been a kick. It's been a lot of fun—

Al: I bet.

Danny: —to distribute money.

Probably the most fun of the entire experience was when we had a list of, I want to say 30 or 40 partners, that these are, you know, we have relationships with them already. And so we invited them to a breakfast meeting where all we said was, “We want to tell you about some of our plans for next year.” And so they showed up to breakfast, and we had it, you know, really beautifully decorated and a really good, hot breakfast, and some of our leadership here at the church for the gathering. But as they’re getting there, I know a lot of these people that run the ministries, and they're nervous and, like, “Hey, what's the ask today? What did you guys, what are you guys going to ask? because I want to be sure I'm prepared.” And it's okay, because I didn't want to tell them ahead of time. But to be able to tell them what we were doing, it left them in shock. It was just, and it's been a beautiful experience since to be able to give money away and share it with them, and our people celebrate it so much. It’s just wonderful.

You know, it's great that our people do it. You have to—it is a sacrifice because we had to find ways to not use that money in our regular operations, right? But it’s been well worth it. And it's just been a kick. It really has.

Al: What a tangible way to show the love of Jesus in your community, there's no question. And you're working through other relationships, other organizations in the same—

Danny: Right.

Al: —time, and so you're multiplying the impact. That's—

Danny: Right.

Al: That’s fantastic.

Well, you know, you guys have participated in the Employee Engagement Surveys with us since 2018. And I remember that initial conversation we had, Danny.

Danny: Do you?

Al: I know that you remember it, too. Yeah.

Danny: I do.

Al: Yeah. And with our FLOURISH factors, uplifting growth is one of your, and it is, your strongest area. And your staff feel like they're encouraged to develop. You know, their supervisor talks with them about their progress. They feel like they're cared for as a person. They feel like they belong. You know, how do you invest in growth and development for your staff? You know, share how this emphasis starts with your senior team and then how it works throughout your organization, through your managers, your supervisors, and even developing their teams.

Danny: Yeah. You know, the Survey started out of a painful experience because the first survey we did was not a BCWI survey. It was developed by people on staff, and I was not aware enough or schooled enough on the way surveys work, but it was actually used as a weapon against me. And some of that I think was, might have been purposeful. I think most of it was—it was not bad motive. It was just poorly done. And man, it was wounding to me, and it hurt me, the responses.

And so rather than just bury that and hold a grudge or, you know, get bitter about it, I talked to my friend Doug, as you relate, and said, “Hey, what is a better way to do this?” And he told me about BCWI. And I don't know if you recall, Al, but I told you, “I want to make sure on the first one, give me the results first—

Al: Yeah.

Danny: “—because I don't want to go through the wounding that I just went through.” You were reassuring at the beginning that it wasn't going to be that kind of experience, but I still, I didn't trust enough to just say, “Let's do it.” But once I saw the results and the feedback that I longed for so much—like, I want to hear the truth from people, but they're afraid to tell me the truth in so many situations. And there's something about the instrument that you all have developed, you know, the number of people that you're surveying and everything else that gives it credibility, but it's also a highly sophisticated instrument that lets us get to the issues that people are having boots on the ground. And some of that, I say issues. Sometimes it's, really, we're celebrating what they're telling us. And most of this stuff, that's what it is. The scores are, you know, mostly positive. Where there is a dip, it's a signal, like, “Hey, there’s something we can drive behavior here. Let's work on this particular issue.” But it's just been super encouraging to me to know that I'm actually hearing from people.

A couple of things that we've done with the Survey, you know, we encourage, we talk about the anonymity of it, and that takes a few years for people to actually believe that they're going to be—their identity’s going to be protected. The more time passes, the more honest they are, the more candor you get, because they trust that they're not going to be found out. And that's okay.

The other thing that I do, I personally lead the staff meeting where we show the results to everyone. Everybody gets to see the big picture of what the Survey results are. There are some intricacies to the Survey that Tara walks through with us, with the leadership team, that we don't share. It wouldn't be appropriate to share that at the all staff. But the all staff does see what the general score is and how the responses are, and that's been life giving to the staff. They get to see how their peers are responding, and it's been a very helpful thing.

It's also a very transparent and humbling thing. As a leader, you have to identify—you have said to us, “We're not doing as well in this area, and I want you to know it's going to become a priority for us in the year to come. We're focusing on this.” And that's been just so helpful for our staff. It's eliminated so many “us and them” kind of mentality things.

One of the other aspects of this you mentioned are starting with the leadership team. We call it our executive team. It's seven people, me and six others. And on that executive team, you know, the first year, I wanted to see it all myself. By the second year, Tara came in and shared with everybody. Now we're expanding that group now to a broader leadership team, has some younger people on it as well on our staff, and so they get to see the broad results as well, everybody in a managing position, and so that's been really helpful as well. And they see me taking the coaching and learning from it. Tara is really good about, in an appropriate way, identifying where senior leadership can do better and, also, where all of the managers can do better. And they see me receiving the coaching and counsel, and I'm trying to model for all of our staff the way we all should be having a learning posture about things.

It's been wonderful for us, a really positive experience.

Al: So, first of all, I'm glad that your experience was that it was a positive experience after what you experienced the first time. And I think that's a good example for our listeners that, you know, unless it's done right, you know, as you mentioned, you know, we statistically prove our Survey instrument, the data, all of that is behind it. But yeah, you really celebrate the results. You take it seriously.

But, you know, let me get back to your uplifting growth. People feel like they have opportunities to learn and grow.

Danny: So, we have a yearly staff week that—sometime in January, February. It's, like, a three-day conference event that we put on for our staff. It's become a real big learning experience and a celebration for our staff. We give away swag, and people win prizes, and our pastor has devotional time there and stuff that really connects with our people. And it's a really great experience.

We also, you know, we pay for our leadership to go to conferences. If anybody's got something they want to do, if they're married, their spouse gets to attend with them, investing in them. We, at our staff meetings, we celebrate our core values. We, again, we give away swag and winners. People win money and tickets to theme parks and things like that for displaying our staff values. And it keeps them in—the values in front of our team.

One of the more positive things that we've done lately, as we started the Survey, we started implementing this strategic planning as well, and the process, you put together teams of people to work on initiatives. And so we began to pull from multiple disciplines. So even if there's something that is primarily in the worship service or primarily in the group's ministry or primarily with the kids or whatever, we pull together a team that's across all disciplines and a lot of different gifting. And then they're the ones who present what the idea is or how we're going to implement the strategy. And so it's not a top-down, and it's not even a favor, you know, or more powerful or bigger, like the groups ministry that's got the most people on it or the admin people who, you know, control the money. It's not that way. It's more of a broad group of staff that are advocating for the direction that we're going. And they bring to that team input from a lot of different—it’s not always all the different ministries, because we're a broad organization, but at least from a lot of the different ministries are having input into what the outcome is. And that just has created buy in.

The other thing, we have, you know, we have five generations on our staff. And so it helps immensely to populate the group from, you know, at least three or four of those different generations so that, again, you're creating buy in. Even sometimes in just the way you communicate something, it's different by generation and generation, and it helps us to have those age groups represented.

And then, there's a part of this that's just blocking and tackling, Al. You got to make sure your supervisors are having one on ones with their direct reports. And one of our—my good friends and our leadership team members have said to me since I came here on staff, people do what you inspect, not what you expect. And so we do inspect and just stay after them. We model it as leaders, and then we inspect and say, “Hey, this is what you need to do. Let's make sure we're following through.”

And just making sure that our team leaders are giving feedback. That was one of the areas early on, one of—I remember specifically the area of, you know, “I've heard from my supervisor in the last six months about my performance,” that was one of our lowest scores. Well, that's not hard to fix. I mean, it's so definite. Like… And so we started setting up a system and then implement it and inspecting and making sure people do. And that's been—to every employee. I mean, even for me—I’m the number-two person, if you want to put it that way, on staff—I want feedback. And so I wasn't getting feedback as regularly as I wanted to, and this helped us. And so, so did my direct reports who were not getting—they were getting feedback if something was wrong, pretty quickly, but they weren't getting the positive feedback nearly as regularly as this process has helped us establish.

Al: Yeah. That ongoing feedback is such—and having a system, a performance-management system, it impacts so many areas. And it really, it has created this uplifting growth as your strongest area. That's fantastic. And an area that you've improved in. Yeah.

Well, we've talked about staff week. Is it an actual week of the year?

Danny: It’s not. We do three days. And this past year, if I remember correctly, we did three mornings is what we did because people get antsy and restless if it's going all day and they're worried about the other stuff. You know, we work on the relentless return of the Sabbath. It’s coming at us all the time. And so we usually leave Monday open so we can all get work done that we need to. And then, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings—our offices are closed on Friday—so Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings, and we feed them lunch. So we usually do something during lunch, but there's lunch is a part of it, so it might go till 1:00 or 1:30, and then the rest of the day is free. We found, I think the first year we did two full days, and we found doing three half days was—people were more engaged for that.

And I actually saw this at an organization that I was serving as a trustee at, North American Mission Board. I saw them doing this, and I brought the idea back to our HR and admin team and just said, “Hey, can we think about something like this? I think it might be good for them.” And I just kind of cast the idea and gave them some money to use and some freedom, and they built the rest of it. And now it has just become—like, our staff can't wait for it. And some of it's really important training that we do. It gives—our pastor has devotional time, like I mentioned, and it really connects with our staff. This is the time of the year where I get to celebrate some of the victories of the past, and I get to kind of cast vision for where we're going and give some of the big rocks of what we're planning to do in the coming year. And then, we bring in outside speakers to come and speak to us. And Tara has presented for us before at staff week. And so we just bring in—we had Tim Elmore here this year, talking about generational diversity. And it's been just great. Our staff loves it. It's been a big investment into our staff, that they see “They're not doing this because they want something from me; they want something for me. They want me to grow as a leader and servant here at the church,” and it means a lot to them.

Al: Fantastic.

Danny: It’s a lot of fun.

Al: Yeah. Staff week. I think our listeners are listening very closely, having a staff week. That’s great.

Well, you've also assembled, really, a fantastic senior leadership team, and some of them have been with you a long time, and some others are newer. So what are you doing, and what are you looking for, I should say, when you hire and promote people to your senior team? And once people are in place, how do you equip them and release them to lead?

Danny: So, I mean, I want to take for granted, really, at any level, but especially at senior team, there's a skill competency that somebody has to have. Like, our admin person has to have a basic understanding of church administration and things like that, be administrative. And we use a service-program-director model for the music and worship and production. And he's got to know a little bit about how all those worlds function. There's a certain level of, you know, the skill that they know. But that’s, you can almost find a dime a dozen. People who have the skill are almost everywhere.

What I look for, two things in particular. I look for somebody that has really high people skills, like it's easy for me to talk to them. They stay engaged in a conversation, and they have empathy and warmth towards people. We're in the people business, and if people are in your way and they're a nuisance, you're probably not going to be successful in our climate, in our world. Some churches can get by with that, but this is not one of those churches. So that's a big part of it is just their basic people skills. Are they a people person? They don’t have to be outgoing. I’m not particularly outgoing, but I do have people skills. And I think it's very important.

The other thing, I wish this wasn't necessary, Al, but I have come to learn that conflict resolution is really important in the church world. People get riled up about stuff in church world, and they take things really seriously. Like, even the rooms that they get to use for small groups or the times that you start the services or the songs that you sing. All of these things, people have a strong opinion about. Not to mention whether you're open during COVID or closed during COVID or wearing masks during COVID or no masks. I mean, people care deeply about these things. And I have found it really helpful to have people that are really good at conflict resolution. Having people who avoid conflict resolution or even conflict in general is really challenging on our staff because things pile up around them because they can't resolve conflict. And so we have found that to be—I mean, it's just something that I look for. And in interviewing, I'm asking about, you know, “Tell me about the last, really, conflict you had that really hurt you and how you navigated that,” and letting them talk a little bit about that gives me clues into that.

We skill test for personality. We use two or three different instruments. Predictive Index is one of them. Working Genius, we've started using. It's become very helpful. Those aren't so much, like, win-lose kind of thing. Like, you're going to make it if you have a certain—it's more like, okay, how are we going to adjust based on the responses?

I, also, last year took a 360, somewhat motivated by the Survey. I felt like it would be a good—again, I’m modeling something for all of our staff. That was very helpful. My executive team, our executive team, did the same thing. Took it and participated in that. We did a group exercise around that was really helpful. Anything that gives me the chance to model the learning posture and vulnerability posture and then seeing if there's a gentle way that it goes to the next level, I have found to be really helpful and positive, and all of us are learning together.

And we have a good relationship, senior team. Ours is somewhat unique in the way we function. We have two versions of our executive team. We have one with our senior pastor and one without our senior pastor. And both of those teams meet every week. One meeting is with him; one meeting is without him. He doesn't desire to get involved in the minutia of things. We do need him involved in the bigger decisions that are going to affect the church-wide stuff and those kind of things. So, but relationally, it's really strong. David's really strong relationally anyway, and he leverages that with a broader team.

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 to my conversation with Danny de Armas at First Orlando.

Well, Danny, I love the way you say you model learning, you’re modeling asking for feedback, 360s, Employment Engagement Surveys. And, yeah, you look for skills—you’ve got to have skills—but the character development, particularly around conflict resolution, I’m sure you’re looking closely at the conflict-resolution question on our Survey when you take it—

Danny: Yes.

Al: —and that gives you a chance to help some individuals along the way.

Well, you know, another area that you do so well at in the Engagement Survey—just pops out—is healthy communication. And I know for a lot of people, that just is a continuous challenge. You have a large staff; you have a large team; you have many campuses; you've got a Spanish and Portuguese congregation, or at least services—

Danny: Yeah.

Al: —so how do you and your team keep effective communication flowing, both up and down the organization, and you keep people connected to the vision and strategy? You know, how about some practical tips for our listeners? How do you foster it?

Danny: Well, it's encouraging to hear you say we're good at it, because most of the time it feels like we really are bad at it. I always feel like we're behind on this, and we're not doing as well as we should be doing. Probably, after the second year of the Engagement Survey, when that's showing up as an area where we could improve and we started working on it, I was just transparent or vulnerable in front of the team and said, “I want you to know we're trying this, but it's way harder than you realize. It's not for lack of effort. We need to get some better systems in place, and you can help us. But I want you to know I'm working on it really hard.” The speed of activity here is just, it's impossible to keep up. And so decisions are made that affect broader groups. And somehow, they get the word before their supervisor gets them the word. And I hate that when that happens, but it's just the nature of the organization, and I haven't figured out a way to prevent that. We try to ask for grace from the team and say, “There's not a motive. People aren't trying to keep you out of the know. It's just as quickly as we can do it.”

And, you know, supervisors and staff have travel and vacation and sickness and all of these real-life things that are going on. So sometimes you decide something in a meeting, and one of the supervisors is out of town for the next four days. His team or her team doesn't get the info everybody else did. But I don't want to hold them responsible. They're allowed to take a vacation. And so, a lot of times, it's just those type of situations that create stress or anxiety on their team members. So we, basically, talk about that.

We've also found focusing on the sequence of communication has been a really important thing. So almost every executive team meeting that we have, that's a part of the final conversation that we have. “Okay. What do we need to communicate out of here, and what's the sequence that it goes?” because oftentimes our biggest challenge is not that we didn't communicate; it’s that we communicated out of order. We told Group C before we told Group B, that needed to know before Group C. And so sequence is a really important part of the process. Okay, what's the sequence that we do?

And then, we use a phrase here that we need to trust or talk. And what we say is, if you hear something that doesn't make sense to you, I can promise you the people who made the decision thought it did make sense. So one or two things is true: either the person who made the decision knows more than me, or I know more than the person who made the decision. Because, again, I've seen some decisions made that I go, “Man, if they knew what I knew, they wouldn't have made that decision,” and maybe they didn't know what I knew. And so we encourage all of our staff at every level, if a decision doesn't seem right to you, you got to do one of two things: you got to trust or talk. If you think, “Hey, you know what? It's probable—that decision Danny made doesn't make sense to me, but it's probable that Danny knows more than I do about that situation, so he must know something that I don't know. I'm going to trust him,” or “He just made a decision about my area, and I don't think he knows what I know, because I can't imagine him making that decision if he knew what I knew.”

And then, I want them to talk. I want them to come to me or come to their supervisor and say, “I don't think Danny knows that.” I've had situations, two that I can think of in particular, where a person on staff two or three layers, you know, below me saw a decision that I was making and just felt like, “I don't think Danny knows.” And they didn't come directly to me, but they fed the information. And one of them, the supervisor was—I don't know if I want to use the word afraid or cautious—but they didn't want to tell me themselves. So they said, “I want the guy who works for me to tell you what he thinks because I want you to hear it from him.” And when he told me, I go, “Wow, I didn't know that. I would never have made that decision if I’d known that. I think you're right. Thank you for…” And I actually, in both of those cases, I came later and gave them a little $100 gift card to thank them for being willing to speak up. And in both cases, they thought they were getting in trouble when I came with the gift card.

But I so need people, if they know something that leadership doesn't know and a decision seems like “I can't imagine them doing that,” then I want them to talk. Most of the time, we have to trust that the people above us who are making the decision know more than us, and we're just going to trust that they know more, and they're making the decision based on the information that they have. And our staff has really rallied around that mentality: we're going to trust. Our first response is not going to be suspicion; it’s going to be trust that they have more info than we do.

Al: Again, I love that, because oftentimes, you know, where there’s a void, you know, a vacuum, it pulls negative information in, negative feelings. But just by saying, “Okay. We've got a policy of trust or talk, let's trust. And if you know something more and think that's a bad decision, then you're actually reinforced to talk about it and not be afraid that you're going to be hurt by doing it.” Yeah.

Danny: Or punished. Yeah. And to be fair, I remember vividly the ones where somebody stopped a bad decision I was going to make. Those are not hard for me to remember, right? But there are many cases where somebody has said, “Hey, I just want to make sure you know such and such.” And “Yes, I did know that. There are still some other extenuating circumstances that you're not aware of that drive me towards this decision. But I really appreciate you speaking up. It's not a problem that you spoke up. I value your ability to communicate and articulate what's on your heart and that you had the nerve to come talk to us. That's awesome. Thank you for doing it. But we are going to continue with the decision the way we're going.” And that's probably more often than me putting the brakes on, like, “Oh my goodness. I was about to make a bad decision, and I'm thankful that somebody spoke up.”

Al: These are key things that build trust and transparency in an organization and, thus, high scores in healthy communication.

But let's talk a little bit about your services in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In this time that we're in with diversity and so on, share how your church has grown to serve Orlando, which is a very diverse city. And what’s the vision for building the church community as you serve multiethnic as well as multilingual population?

Danny: We think our church needs to reflect our community in its makeup. So it's not so much that we want a diverse church as it is that we want a church that's reflective of the community we live in, and our community is diverse. If our church wasn't, then we're not reflective of who lives here. And that diversity in our city is a diversity, an ethnic diversity. It's also an age diversity. There's a belief diversity. The way we say it here, we're not in the South. You got to drive eight hours north to get in the South from Orlando, because we're not in the Deep South. It's just not. And so, it's a very diverse community.

We actually, you know, I'd love to tell you it was—I've got six steps that we took to become diverse. And that's really not—we're not smart enough to do that. What we do is we adjust or adapt to the audiences that start showing up on our campus. And we started seeing a lot of Hispanics years ago, and we developed ministry. At one point, we had four or five life groups, when I came on staff 15 years ago. That's basically what there was, four or five different life groups. We had some volunteers leading in those. They knew each other, and they would do events once or twice a year where they'd invite all of those life groups to get together for a meal or something at the church, and we'd celebrate that. But then about 10 years ago, eight years ago, we hired a Spanish pastor to lead that congregation. They basically operate like a campus, but their campus is on our campus. So they meet in facilities here on our campus. And then about a year or two later—actually, it was about the same time, we hired a Brazilian Portuguese-speaking pastor as well, and they operate as well. So both of those campuses are on our broader campus.

But here's the reason they're on our campus, Al: the families that attend our language congregations, they desire for their children to integrate with the English-speaking children. Their children are in schools with English-speaking children. They know for their children to be successful in the next generation, they need to integrate, not be a part of a ghetto where it's just their language. And so they desire for their children to integrate with the English-speaking children. So this kids’ ministry and the student ministry is designed so that all of those children are together. And the children speak—they're bilingual, for sure. Or at least right now we're seeing a lot of Hispanics coming from South America that the children don't have English yet, and so it's a little bit of a challenge. But we're pretty diverse in the numbers. We're probably running about 1500 in our Spanish congregation and about 800 in our Portuguese congregation. And that is on this very same campus with us at the same time. We have their services and small groups are concurrent with ours so that their children can be in small groups or whatever with—or actually, it's not small groups; it's student programing with that.

And again, then, we also, the generational diversity, we're one of those churches that has a traditional, musically traditional service. The message is the same, but the music is different because we have a significant population of seniors in central Florida, and we want to speak their music love language when they want to come here. And so we have a choir and orchestra that’s a part of that service. And it's a, I would call it kind of a more blended traditional service, but it is, you know, singing more hymns than not and having a choir and orchestra.

And it's no burden to do it. The people that attend that service, probably somewhere between 700 and 1,000 people on any given week. And they love us, and we love them. And it's the easiest audience to preach to because they're so hungry for scripture and the Word and learning, and it's just wonderful. We love them, and they love us. It's a lot of fun. It is a challenge because you've got to plan two services and the way we do it. And it's expensive because we've got to have staff for that and all that, but it's worth it.

Al: Yeah. Multiethnic, multigenerational, absolutely. Yeah. And responding to your audience and to your community, you know, that's just fantastic.

Well, Danny, you've served in ministry for many years, but you also have other leadership responsibilities. And in fact, I just recorded a podcast for ECFA yesterday.

Danny: Did you?

Al: And you're on the board of the—

Danny: I am.

Al: —Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. So how do you personally get filled up as a leader, and then, what spiritual practices do you find that sustain you? And what do you find about serving on a board like ECFA? How does that enrich you?

Danny: Well, I've served on two similar boards like that. I was on the North American Mission Board as a trustee and then with ECFA. Both of them have been really positive experiences for me. There are days and times in those responsibilities where the burden of responsibility is pretty significant, like you're making decisions that affect people and all of that. And I can’t say that every moment of that is pure fun, because there's a responsibility that goes with it. But it's been incredibly enriching for me.

The ECFA board, in particular, is made up of some tremendous leaders. And I sit there, oftentimes wondering, what in the world am I doing in this room? because of the people I'm surrounded with there. And it's a humbling experience and enriching experience to be around the godly wisdom that's in the room. And it's just been wonderful. A real, real blessing for me.

With the North American Mission Board, which is an organization that our church, in our church network that we support financially, there was also the excitement of seeing what our investment is doing. And man, you see the churches we're planting and the baptisms and all that stuff. It's exciting. Like, most people don't get to see that, and I got a front-row seat to it. It's, again, thank you, God, for giving me this privilege. And I steward it so carefully.

In my personal disciplines, you know, there's nothing fancy about it, Al. I'm doing the same things I learned as a teenager: to read my Bible and to pray daily. And there's probably more reading today, more reading outside the Bible, you know, things that are enriching to me. I listen to more than I actually read. My custom is I buy the book and download the audio, because I want to come back to the book and underline things, and it sticks with me longer if I have the written copy. So the authors are winning double on the whole thing, which is all fine with me.

And then, there's probably more of a musical component to my devotional experience than there was early on, just because it’s so readily available. I've got on my phone, and I can access, you know, anything I want to, worship wise, to experience that.

Probably one of the aspects of my personal walk that has really been steadying for me is, again, we used to use in high school the word quiet time or even middle school, but it wasn't very often quiet, and it wasn't very long. But solitude and silence and contemplative prayer have become a really important part of my centering. And listening to God, getting a keen sense for where He's headed and what He wants to do, that's become a broader part of my experience.

The other thing I learned from a seminary professor named George Harrison—not the Beatle, but that's his name—he would read the Bible reading that we had to read. He was my Old Testament professor, and he’d read the Bible reading, and he'd read the local paper. And invariably, he'd have a way that the reading of the day in the Bible applied to the news of the day in the paper. And reading the paper, which, you know, a lot of the views have probably—some of the papers probably more liberal than I might be and see things from a different perspective, most of them probably aren't followers of Christ—and they're saying thing, they might have some different values than me, but it helps me get connected with the world and the people in that world that are actually somebody that I love deeply and I'm trying to connect with. And I have found that to be—I'm not afraid to read opinions that are different than mine. I find that to be illuminating to me. And it helps my craft. Like, how do we reach these people with the gospel? How can I be winsome around people who believe differently than me? So I read the local paper, not from cover to cover, but I read it pretty consistently along with my Bible, and then, you know, try to apply one to the other, both directions.

Al: I love that idea of reading the paper through a biblical lens and doing it in that order, you know, starting with the Bible and then reading the paper. All right.

Danny: I wish I was half as good at it as my seminary professor, George Harrison, was. He was fantastic. It was a rich experience for me to be in his classes.

Al: And then to buy the book and download it. And I've often done that with Psalms, Danny, where I'll read the Psalm and the Bible and listen to it chanted at the same time. And it's such a rich experience. Yeah, thanks.

Well, this has really been a great conversation, Danny, and I appreciate so much you're sharing with us. You know, we started off with, you know, how the church is just really helping the community in the FOR Orlando approach. And I think our listeners will really benefit from that. But then we talked about uplifting growth, and you just talked about how the Best Christian Workplace Survey was helpful to you, kind of solved a personal problem in a way, and now has continued to feed the health of your culture. And again, I want to say congratulations on a flourishing workplace culture and for being a leader and an example for others. So, you know, one of the things about uplifting growth, you do staff week in January and three half days where you're bringing people in; you're training them; you're teaching them; you're celebrating; you're working on initiatives; just a great, great thing. And how over time, you've really taken some of the actionable feedback that you receive to put in regular one on ones and to have regular performance-management types of discussions. But I loved, then, what you said about your senior team: okay, so, let's find people on our senior team that have people skills and conflict-resolution skills, and at the same time, let's get to know them a little better before we put them on the team with, like, a Working Genius, Predictive Index and continue to grow them once they're on the team, with feedback, like 360 development and so on. But then, communication. And I applaud you. Yes, you probably don't feel like you've really knocked it in terms of healthy communication, and that's probably a good space to be, but you're doing so much. And the trust or talk, that was very interesting and helpful, to let's lead with trust and then talk about it if we don't understand. But I really appreciate also in leaders, the sequence of communication, this cascading communication, having a process in place where that just happens naturally will solve so many of your communication hiccups along the way. But yeah, it's been a great conversation.

Danny: And Al?

Al: Yeah.

Danny: One of the—if I can interrupt for a second—but one of the aspects of the sequencing that I didn't mention, it's really the reason that we were able to do that, is I used to feel like I had to be the one to communicate the most-important things. And once I released myself from that and said, “I don't have to be the one. I've got capable leaders around me. They don't have to hear it from me. I don't have to own the idea,” so we set the sequence so we make sure we're not out of order—you know, the right people are hearing first—but then, “You guys go tell them.” And man, what a relief that's been. It’s so much better. So a big part of that sequencing was it not all having to funnel through me, is that I had multiple voices that are communicating. And the truth is some of them do better at that than others, and some of them are better than me, and some are not as good as me that’s doing it. But it's all meeting the minimum standard, and everybody's getting better, right? And so it's perfectly okay for it not to come from me.

Al: And, you know, research over time has proven that it's the front-line supervisor that people want to hear from on many of these things. You're absolutely right. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah.

Danny: Yeah.

Al: So, Danny, we’ve just learned so much. But let me ask you, what, from our conversation, really comes about that you'd like to talk about that we haven't talked about yet or that you'd like to emphasize?

Danny: Well, I mean, I don't think I've said enough, and you didn't set me up for this, but I don't think I've fully captured the impact that the Survey experience has had on us. It's become such a part of our DNA. And the first part of that is that the staff knows that they have an opportunity for feedback every year and that they know that that's a sense of accountability that they have towards me and the senior pastor and our executive team, that they don't take for granted, that they're going to get a chance to speak. And by the way, that does temper us. Like, we're paying attention because they're going to get a Survey, and they're going to ask questions about this. And that's a good governor, if you will, to have on our behavior and our impulses. And so just the whole process of the Survey. Again, it was so wounding to me, to start to look back at it now and see what a gift it is to me today compared to the way it started, I almost squelched the opportunity we’d ever do that again, because I don't want to walk through that. The instrument that you guys have put together. And then Tara coming alongside us. You know, it was you and I spoke, but the implementation was actually with Tara. She was the one who was talking to me when I was reading that first feedback and coming to understand, like, wow, this is—I have actually, I'm actually, it's like I'm sitting there listening to our people talk to each other, and they've been willing to let me listen to what they think. And it was just, it has been, she's excellent at doing it, but also the information is really important and critical for a leader to know, how do people boots on the ground feel about the way we're moving? What does it feel like to them? Because it feels very differently to them than it does to me. And so I just so value the whole process. The Survey, Tara, helping us with that. She's available throughout.

And then, I got to give a lot of credit to our HR team and our administration team and our executive team because everybody has embraced this. I'm not, you know, I'm just one player in all of this. It could easily be derailed if the executive team was defensive and didn't want it to happen. But everybody takes a learning posture. Everybody's eager to learn. We work on it all year long, saying, “Let's make sure we're doing the things that we talked about that we wanted to pay attention to.” And we have the list of the things that are important to us.

The challenge with the Survey, I will tell you, you can't stop paying attention to the things that you were dealing with last year. You just got to keep adding to it, because if you stop paying attention to it, it begins to drop.

But it's just been wonderful, and I can't say enough good about how—and again, it's not just the instrument, and it's not just the consultant that's helping us; it's the combination of all of that. And it's just been just a rich experience. And our staff, it's become something that if I, if we or I, took it away from them, there would be a sense of violation. Like, you can't do that. Like, we have to have the opportunity to give feedback. This has become, like, a right to them, that they have the opportunity. And yet, it’s not a weapon. It’s not being used to, you know, cause their supervisors to be a villain or whatever. It's not. And it's just been a really positive experience for me.

Al: And it's that way because you listen, you and your team, everybody's listening to that feedback, they're acting on it, and they know that there's going to be a positive outcome. So I just can't congratulate you enough.

And, yeah, Danny, thank you for your contributions today, and I really appreciate your commitment to serving God's Kingdom by serving the local church and equipping people. We talked about that. You're equipping people to reach Orlando for Jesus. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many.

Danny: Thank you, Al.

Al: Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Danny de Armas. And I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

And you can find new ways to connect with him 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 my podcast or have any questions about flourishing workplace cultures, please email me at al@workplaces.org.

And thank you for tuning into today’s episode of the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast. And if you found it of value, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review.

Visit workplaces.org to explore more resources and tools to help you create a flourishing workplace culture.

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.