Transcript: How Sustainable Strategy Unlocked a Thriving Workplace Culture at 4KIDS // Kevin Enders, 4KIDS

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“How Sustainable Strategy Unlocked a Thriving Workplace Culture at 4KIDS“

August 4, 2025

Kevin Enders

Intro: Hi, I’m Al Lopus, and welcome to our summer encore series. We’ve pulled together the episodes you’ve loved most over the past 10 years, conversations packed with timeless wisdom, practical tips, and the kind of encouragement every leader needs. Whether it’s your first listen or favorite worth replaying, these episodes still hit home and might just be the spark you need this summer. So, let’s jump into this encore episode and see what insights await.

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, and thanks for joining us again on the Flourishing Culture Podcast. Today, we're going to look at Sustainable Strategy, which is the seventh of the eight drivers that can take the health of your workplace culture to the next level. And my guest today knows why sustainable strategy is so critical to the health of a thriving workplace culture. What he's going to share with you might challenge you and take you to a fresh, new understanding of how your culture can improve and influence your organizational impact. And with that, I want to welcome Kevin Enders, the president of 4KIDS in South Florida. Kevin, I'm so glad you can join us. Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.

Kevin Enders: Thank you so much, Al. It's my honor and pleasure to be with you and all of our listeners today.

Al: Yeah. Kevin, I want to get to what catches my eye right away about 4KIDS, and it has to do with three words, and I see these on your website: hope, homes, and healing. And there's something very basic, even moving, about these three words: hope, homes, and healing. Tell me about that.

Kevin: Yeah, my pleasure to. 4KIDS, from its beginning, was propelled with a mission to provide hope to kids in crisis and a very bold vision, if I might say, of a home for every child, whether that's a child removed from their home for the first time, siblings who need to stay together, or a young mom and an unplanned pregnancy who needs a refuge. Sometimes it's a young adult who needs a place to belong. 4KIDS has always been there to provide the hope of Jesus Christ and a home to provide that stability and love that these children need.

Recently, we've embarked on an expansion of this bold vision and added this word healing. We've been expanding aggressively our EPIC therapeutic services to our families and children, just in the two and a half years that I've been president. And we've seen just tremendous momentum, tremendous healing, and outcomes on the families and kids that we get to interact with, regarding our EPIC therapeutic services.

Al: Yeah, hope, homes, and healing. So, how did this vision capture and involve you personally? Give us a quick story of how 4KIDS helped even change the life not only of a child and a family but even yourself.

Kevin: Yeah, well, that's really what started my journey, and that's probably why I'm on this call today and sitting in this position as the president and CEO of 4KIDS. It was in 2005. My wife and I attended a local church, gave our lives to Jesus Christ, and the following year we'd been baptized. And we heard this message at the local church about the need for foster parents because there were so many children—seven to ten every day in South Florida—that are removed from their families due to abuse, abandonment, and neglect.

And, really, it changed our lives forever. We became licensed foster parents with 4KIDS. Never had any plans to adopt—we had three biological children at the time—but God had a different plan. After fostering several children, we received a young boy who was two months old, and, eventually, we adopted him the following year. He is now 12 years old. And after we had adopted him in 2008, we received a phone call a few months later that he had a little sister that was born in the hospital but also been removed from the care of her parents due to neglect. And we were so overwhelmed to bring her into our family and to adopt her as well. So that is one story. It's my story and our family's story. But that story happens hundreds of times every year as we are blessed to serve families in six counties in South Florida, over 200 traditional foster families, and we've been averaging about 60 adoptions a year. So there's a lot of stories that are happening, a lot of lives that have been changed.

Al: And how many staff do you have, Kevin?

Kevin: We have 100 staff, about 100 staff right now.

Al: Great. Well, I really love that story. And no wonder you bring such compassion and conviction to your role as president.

So how did the opportunity to lead 4KIDS unfold for you?

Kevin: Yeah. So, it started, obviously, with me becoming and my wife and I becoming foster and adoptive parents in 2007, 2008, coming to know the organization. I had been involved. I was the CEO of my own corporation at the time and then in various sales roles. So I'd been involved as a business—we call them Champions, people that are advocating for the work of 4KIDS—while I was out in the working world. They would constantly use our family to speak at churches, to recruit new families. We've done various video testimonies about our story. We love coming and speaking to prospective foster families and sharing, really, what God had done in our lives.

So while we were faithfully just serving the ministry in that capacity, there was an opportunity at 4KIDS. In 2014, the current president was promoted at the church to be a lead pastor. So it opened up an opportunity for someone to take that role. And because I had a relationship, because I was a foster and adoptive dad, someone at 4KIDS in a leadership role asked me if I would want to be considered for the role. And I said, of course. And it led to several interviews. And that was around the Christmas time of 2016. And I transitioned out of my technology role at a global technology firm and started in February of 2017 as the president and CEO. So we've been a part of this family—we called it the tribe of 4KIDS—for over that 12-year period, and it's just been such an honor to be able to come on board and be a part of it full time.

Al: Yeah. Boy, that’s great. I love the story. You know, it’s interesting. Even at BCWI, we have a couple of our staff members are adoptive parents, and we have one of our staff who’s been adopted. So it’s a story that’s close to our hearts, that’s for sure.

Your story of becoming the president of 4KIDS is a nice lead-in to what I want to talk about, and that's sustainable strategy and why sustainable strategy is vital to the health and effectiveness of every organization's workplace culture. And as I've mentioned earlier, it's one of the things that we've really found statistically that drives employee engagement. In a nutshell, Sustainable Strategy, our definition is, it's all about how an organization deliberately and effectively approaches to achieve its vision by providing the action-oriented solution to meet the needs that it's really set out to remedy. And the mission and vision certainly are essential, but they're just ideas without action, without a sustainable strategy, that builds long-term relationships, that solves the problem that an organization sets out to remedy. So it's clearly a key piece of workplace culture. Without the vision, without a strategy behind it, people die, as the Scripture, Proverbs, says.

So, prior to you becoming president, the culture was at a critical moment. What was going on inside 4KIDS at that time? Give us a little history.

Kevin: Yeah, sure. So, in those years right before I joined 4KIDS, as I mentioned briefly, I was a senior vice president for a major global technology firm, but we were still involved supporting 4KIDS at fundraisers, galas, and events. So I still had some visibility into what was going on at the organization. And I noticed that there was obviously a changeover in the leadership, and there was a void.

So how did that affect the culture? Obviously, I knew also from being a foster and adoptive parent that the core of the culture was grounded and rooted in faith and love of Jesus. We're a faith-based organization, had clear focus on how important that was to who we were, right? I mean, when a senior pastor of a megachurch is running a ministry like ours, there's no doubt that it was grounded in the right things.

But I remember being at this gala, and the program was great—as it always does, 4KIDS always puts on amazing galas—but you could tell that there was something missing, and it was just that, maybe that leadership role with a passion—again, you mentioned about a passion about what 4KIDS was all about, about providing health, homes, and healing to kids in need.

Al: Yeah, well, let me say, it’s interesting how God calls people into positions; that you were there, and you saw a gap, and obviously, your heart was engaged at that point to pursue it. That’s how it happens, isn’t it.

Kevin: Yeah. Making yourself available.

Al: Yeah.

So, after you arrived at 4KIDS, is there one thing that you believe could be a building block to a better, healthier culture?

Kevin: Absolutely. And like I said, since the 4KIDS’ past president for many years was a part-time family pastor, our scores were obviously very high in our Christian witness area and within the area of inspirational leadership. 4KIDS had a solid core strength and focus on our faith in Jesus Christ, which is the power that unites us all and calls us into this great work. And as we grew in staff size, the Holy Spirit made it clear to me that I needed to continue to lead and focus on our Christian identity and our spiritual beliefs. In fact, it's my number-one top job description that was handed to me when I was going through the interview process.

So we continue to have weekly all-staff worship and devotional meetings on Wednesday mornings, where we pull the entire staff together. It always starts with praise and worship, which is, obviously, biblical. We always want to start in an attitude of praise for what God is doing, what He has done. There's also a sweet time where we get to share praise reports and prayer requests. It could be personal. It could be—so staff related, could be family, or it could be around the kids and families that we serve. So it's this very special time that we still take time out of every week as a priority. We’ve actually extended the time an extra half an hour because we don't want to feel like we're cutting that time short.

So I’ll talk about a ministry versus this foster-care agency. There was a lot of new people. So there was this conversation about, are we a ministry of the church, or are we a foster-care agency who hires Christians? So that was clear to me that that needed to be addressed. And it was with bold conviction that we proclaim that we are a ministry of the church that happens to work in foster care. We are not a foster-care agency who just hires Christians to do the work. We don't believe that that was what God called us to do. That is a key distinction that we have maintained and will continue to maintain.

Al: Oh, I love that, yeah. And then you became president and CEO in 2017. What were some of the first steps that you took? You’re already doing that weekly all-staff devotional. I love that focus. But what are some of the other steps you took to kind of bring back that fully healthy workplace culture?

Kevin: Well, I want to take time to just say how helpful the Best Christian Workplace Survey was. We started in 2015. So the way that you guys honestly produce reports that help us to look into these key areas was so helpful for me coming on board, to be able to look, based on all the surveys of the past, what is the temperature in these different areas? How are we doing in leadership? How are we doing in our compensation? How are we doing in these strategic areas? How are we communicating? So I can't tell you how invaluable those reports were for me as I on-boarded.

Obviously, being in leadership roles in other corporations and being a CEO of my own corporation, I wanted to start off to get to know this staff personally, and they needed to get to know who I was. Again, can you imagine coming into an organization that was just about 20 years old, and I think for about 17 of those years, the president was the same person, who was a beloved pastor of a great church? So, really letting the staff know who I was, my family being transparent, authentic was really, I think, critical to building a rapport with not only my direct reports, the entire staff. I would spend time having breakfast or lunch meetings with each of the teams, listening to them. I was taught very long time ago from one of my CEOs at Footlocker: be a good listener, and understand, from the people's perspective that are doing the work, where are their opportunities; what are their pains and passions? So that was really foundational, I think, to getting me transitioned into the culture.

I obviously love Jesus, but I never worked in full-time ministry, so to speak, right? I know we say, “Everyone's in full-time ministry” but when you come into truly a ministry position, it's different. And there was a lot of question, was I going to be able to make the transition from 30 years in business to coming in in this pastoral-led role of the ministry? And I was really blessed by having some senior leaders who have been in this organization for 20, maybe 15 to 20 years, who really helped me to navigate that time and keeping my focus on my number-one job, which is the spiritual state of the flock that God has now entrusted to me. It's true.

I was open to their feedback. They would constantly course-correct me, to be honest with you, about we need to spend time understanding, how are people doing spiritually? What does their walk look like? I’ve got to tell you, that really, I think, was just such an important time to make that transition successful.

Al: And that’s not an easy transition, Kevin, I’ll be the first to say, having made that transition myself, even. So it’s really kind of having deeply spiritual people around you that helped you in that transition from the marketplace into a Christian ministry.

Kevin: Yes, sir. That’s correct. Yeah.

Al: Wow. Well, you guys surveyed for the third time in 2018. You saw a boost in the health of your culture. But the real improvement came the next year, just this year, in 2019, when you surveyed a fourth time. And it was the first time that you'd clearly grown now to our highest level of a flourishing culture, where your staff were highly engaged. And can you feel the difference? What's the difference you noticed going into your workplace culture just this last year?

Kevin: Yeah. Well, definitely, I can say it took me a year to really learn the culture and to try to quickly identify, with the help of your Surveys, where are those areas that we needed to focus. And after regaining that Best Christian Workplace status after my first year, we, as a leadership team, and all the directors got together and kind of set a three-year goal. What do we need to do to become a flourishing workplace? We are all very intentional, again, about reviewing the results and working on a strategy with a detailed task plan to help us to continue to drive what was working while putting into place steps to improve the areas that need to be improved. That's really important. Again, it was led by someone from your organization. How do we continue to do really well at the things that we're already scoring high on while also looking at the areas of opportunity? I think that's really important. We didn't just shift our focus to the things that weren't working. We tried to accomplish both.

So, yes, we got to feel and see some of those changes because of being so intentional. We drove a process to make the vision everyone's vision, not just the leaders’ vision. We share, also, with the entire staff, at least quarterly, a report on our progress, which wasn't being done in the past. So you could see that in our scores. They weren't sure why decisions were being made. Some people didn't feel included in those decisions. So again, we looked at the reports and were very intentional about looking at it, analyzing it, and saying, “What are the things we needed to improve pay and benefits? How are we promoting internal staff?”

And I did want to mention that God is so faithful, because we're a relatively small organization. I mean, we're 100 people. Sometimes there's the challenge to promote people because people hit a ceiling in their current role. But God moved some people around, promoted some people to bigger ministries outside of 4KIDS, which we maybe felt were painful, but it created avenues for internal people to get promoted. So it really, I believe, was God just blessing our efforts and helping us to achieve results in some areas that maybe historically we were kind of challenged to succeed in. So those are some of the things that we noticed right away.

Al: Well, I love those examples, where you’re building on your strengths, and you had those right off the bat to start with. But then, not taking your eye off the strengths, you also then worked to improve your weaknesses, the one-two punch, if you will, and just being intentional about it. I love the quarterly report out to employees on progress of your action plans. That really is important.

So, we look at the words sustainable and strategy, and we feel like they really go together for a reason. So give us an example in your action planning that led to sustainability for improving the health of your culture over time. What was your strategic-planning process like? Share that with our listening audience here.

Kevin: Yeah. I would be pleased to do that. So, after my first year, it was kind of nice because in my first year as president, I basically inherited the third year of a strategic plan that was developed before me. And I made the decision to just inherit that and to just learn for a year. And then January of the following year, at my one-year anniversary, we were able as a leadership team, not only my direct reports but the entire leadership team, to really plot the whole process ourselves, to start anew, so to speak, on how are we going to approach putting together this strategic plan? And, man, it was a beautiful time, and I'll never forget it because we spent some time offsite doing some spiritual retreat to really hear from the Lord on what is it that He would have us do; where would we lead this ministry? And you can imagine the little bit of pressure I may have felt coming in after 20 years and saying, “Okay, now, where are we going to take it as a team going forward?”

But it was really a beautiful time where leadership got away, we dreamed, we had some quiet time, we had a second day where we kind of reported out to each other what we felt God was doing. And then we took it back to our next level of management, our director team and our managers, which would be about 10 to 12 people. And without telling them too much, we asked them to do the same. And we asked them to get together to really just dream, to talk about our strengths, to talk about our weaknesses, to really kind of whiteboard what they saw as the strategic areas of growth and opportunity. And we were amazed to see the consistency.

And what we did through that process is we really honed it down into five key strategic areas. Then we put those up on a wall; asked everybody to kind of vote in order of priority, “What is the most important? Not that any of the five things were not critical to our success, but rank from top to bottom, independently.” And again, there was a great unity around that process, and the results were clear. So it really helped us to build a strategy. Again, it’s not the leaders’ strategy, but it's everyone's strategy. People got to speak into it. And when they ranked the things that were most important, there was such consistency. And I’ll share that with you and your audience. I mean, culture, out of all the things we do, was the number-one thing. How are we increasing spiritual development of the staff? How are we stewarding this great thing that the Lord has done? It was resoundingly the most important thing. And then we talked about building out this gold standard of support for our families and the children that we serve and focusing on our therapy and all those support mechanisms that the church offers to help our families. And then so on, how are we engaging with the community and our partners, and what does God have for us as far as growth? And then, what are the things that we need to build out from an infrastructure perspective to help facilitate that growth? So it was a couple-day process for us as a leadership team, a few-day process with the next level of management, and then, obviously, we worked the plan. We built subsets under each area that needed to be accomplished—the task plans with dates and owners to make it work. And that’s the strategy that I report out quarterly to the staff and also to my board of directors. So it was just a beautiful process of everybody coming together and speaking into the strategy and watching how God united our hearts and spirits around the same subjects.

Al: Yeah. And that’s really a unique approach that you probably didn't have before in your secular roles, where you started off as a spiritual retreat.

Kevin: Yes, that's true.

Al: Yeah, I can relate to that. I think of strategic-planning sessions that I've participated in Christian organizations and how they differ, and appropriately so, being much more spiritually focused than just sitting down and getting after it with flip charts and so on.

But, yeah, having that spiritual retreat, that spiritual focus. I loved what you said about having some time for dreaming, a quiet time, prayer time; having, then, the report outs, where you’re sharing with each other what you’re experiencing, what God is really saying to each one of you. Then, I love it because oftentimes we'll see that a senior-leadership team will go off and do that, and they'll forget about the rest of the organization. They think, “Well, we know what's going on. We'll decide.” But then you came back with your directors, and they went through a similar process so that there was really unity. And you were able to get, even though maybe it took a little extra time, you were able to get faster traction, would be my guess, with actually getting traction on the plan.

Kevin: Yeah. That's true. But again, we looked at the results of the past, and when you see people say, “I want to be involved. I want my voice to be heard. I want to know why management is making these decisions,” and you just invite them in, it really builds unity in the team, a cohesiveness to the strategy. Everyone feels like we’re rolling in the same direction, and they’re not being left out. Again, I think that’s a critical point to building a strategy that’s strong and sustainable for the organization, you know.

Al: Well, and our Survey shows that Sustainable Strategy is, in fact, the strongest area of the eight drivers of a flourishing culture. And a couple of the key items is that your staff clearly know what your goals are, and there's a consensus on those goals, and your employees know that you’ve met your goals over the past years. So, here’s a question. So describe your goal-setting process. I mean, you talked about the strategic-planning process. Describe that goal-setting process and how it came out of it. And then, even then, how do you communicate the achievement of your goals, because that’s another key thing that really came out of the Survey.

Kevin: Well, sure, yeah. So, once we as a team kind of agreed on what we felt the Lord was leading us to do at these high-level areas and communicated that back to the staff, then the teams would work from a bottoms up and say, “Okay, I understand where the organization’s going.” And we really let them build their goals bottom up. And then we would have, obviously, a reconciliation process where we allow each of those teams to present the leadership team what their goals were for the year, and we would roll it all up, and then have that reconciliation. So there is, again, great unity that helps to make sure that someone’s not completely way off track and really builds just really good momentum, I think, for everybody to know. So that's how we would get into the specific goals.

And then, and like I said, reporting it out. One of the other new processes that we put in place are we have monthly directors’ meetings, so monthly directors’ meetings, and we had to build that from the bottoms up. It didn't really exist. That's something that I used to do in my past, in various roles, and some we did very successfully in the technology firm. It's just a one-hour meeting, reporting back on, here's the culture. Again, we focus on, talk about the culture of your team. If we're saying it's the most-important thing, let's talk about it. What's the State of the Union, so to speak? Then we'll go through some numbers. And then there was a period of time saying, “How can we help you? How can management help you achieve your goals?” So we started a process where we'd have that meeting every month. And then, at the quarterly breaks, we would look at it from a quarterly perspective, looking back, but also looking forward to the goals that were ahead and making decisions.

One of the things we’re—I'm not sure how management makes decisions, so we wanted to invite people into, let's make decisions right now in this room. It doesn't have to take time. As long as it aligns with the strategy and we understand the issues, we could make quicker decisions and I think move forward in unity again much faster as an organization. So that really, I think, is what helps people to say, “Hey, I know how I'm doing. I know what our goals are. It all fits together, and everyone's working, I think, more together to help move the organization forward.”

Al: Yeah. And I bet you've got a favorite sustainable strategy that actually has gained traction as you've moved forward.

Kevin: Well, there’s many. I mean, this year, again, to set out a three-year goal to become a flourishing Christian workplace and then for God to ordain it and have it happen in one year, it was really, honestly, one of my happiest days that I’ve had as a CEO, to be honest with you. I mean, the culture drives everything else. And you’ve heard this saying, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” So, I can tell you, it was quite a proud day to get the results, to see how we had done.

But there's so many areas to talk about. One that really jumped out to me is this area of Uplifting Growth. And this is something that’s changed a lot in my career of 30 years, 30-plus years, in business. You know, you used to be in this—and you probably had this experience from being in for-profit business— you have your annual review. How did I do compared to everybody else? You wait around once a year. You have a conversation with your boss. We live in a different world today that's much more dynamic. And as our amazing director in human resources did some research on some different review processes that exist in the world, we really made a change. And because the feedback we were getting from our team was, “I want to know how I'm doing;” when you look at Millennials and the generational change—we have a lot of young people that work in the ministry—they want more consistent feedback. They want to know how they're doing. And so we as a leadership team, we heard it, we identified it, and we made a change. And I don't know how long the previous review process was in place, but we want people to know that we care about them as individuals. We want to help them solve their work-related problems, and the way to do that is to have more consistent conversation. So that one kind of sticks out as something that was a change. But I think everyone received it really well.

Al: Yeah. I love the result. Our question, “In the last six months, someone’s talked with me about my progress,” you saw really substantial increase. Now you’re way over the average of Christian workplaces in your sector. And another outcome of that was that people feel like they've had opportunities to learn and grow as well. So those are a couple of great Uplifting-Growth outcomes.

You know, I think it's fair to say that we've all heard leaders introduce what sound like brilliant strategies, yet for whatever reason, they flame out or they fall prey to tricky situations, people, or a lack of resources, whatever it is. Give us an example of a strategy that succeeded thanks to, you know, as we focus on the character, competence, and chemistry of your people working together.

Kevin: Yeah, sure. I kind of already touched on culture and how important that was. That was, obviously, a foundational thing that I think will continue to pay benefits. But what I wanted to talk briefly about is, is the build out of our EPIC therapeutic team and why it works. Again, when you ask for an example of a strategy that succeeded because the culture, competency, and chemistry, we all are Christians, and we all love Jesus. EPIC is our therapeutic approach, which was based off of Scripture. In Luke 2:52, the Bible says that even Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, in favor with God and in favor with man. And that's what EPIC really stands for. The E-P-I-C in EPIC is the Emotional state of a child, the Physical state, their Intellectual side, and their Character, which is all based off of that verse in Luke 2:52.

And so because we have this focus on the Word of God and we are praying for God to lead us, again, this strategy has been out there. But since I've been on board, we've grown this team from one to almost, I think we're at 11 people in the last two and a half years. But the impact, and God's heart and His Word is clear about healing, right? It's wonderful to provide hope in Jesus and to change lives and to get kids into great Christian homes. One of the things I felt like we needed to do better, and God said, “How are you doing with what I've already given you? How are you caring for the kids and families in your care?” And I'm going to tell you, this therapy that we're offering now to our kids and our families directly is changing lives. I hear God stories just about every week from our team about the transformative power of the therapy that we’re giving.

And just briefly, it’s kind of two-pronged. One, it's training parents. Because we're recruiting families from churches, it's training parents how to help kids who may have trauma in their lives. And the second side of it is really providing the therapy, the one-on-one therapy, with the children to help them to understand that God has a plan for their life. And we all have trauma, and God uses that and can use that, as we know in the Word, in James, that we should count it all joy when we fall into various trials, because from that joy, God produces a faith and a perseverance and a character that you can’t get from living a “perfect life.”

So, this strategy has just been growing. We’re excited about where God's taken it. We are planning on doubling the size of our team this year. And we want to be able to not only reach all the families that we serve, but also become a resource for the community and the local church. So, very excited about what’s going on in our therapy space.

Al: Oh, that’s fantastic. A great service, one that's greatly needed, there's no question about it.

It's no secret that 4KIDS’ employees are very committed to the organization, and they also love the fellowship and Christian focus that you have as an organization, and we've already, really, heard this theme as we've talked already. But how does the rich, Christian fellowship and focus link to your strategy as an organization?

Kevin: Yeah, we kind of did touch on this, but it was wonderful to see, when we polled the team and didn't give them any indication what was most important, when we put those whiteboards up on the wall, we let them kind of earmark what was the most important. And by far, culture was ranked number one. Again, because I think they see it. They see it in the way that we walk it out as an organization. They see that on Wednesdays; this is our most-important priority is to get together as a family—it’s not a staff; it’s a family—and praise God for what He’s doing and to look to Him for our direction going forward.

We’ve also instituted a daily prayer hour at lunch in the past year. I remember being at a conference and hearing about another organization—I think was IJM—who every day, they have prayer time. And it really struck me in my spirit. It's like, we should be doing this every day as an organization, praying for our partners, praying for the kids, praying for the family. So you can see that rich, Christian focus and fellowship is, it's just a priority. And every once in a while, you know, when maybe you hire a new staff, they say, “Is it okay for us to pray?” It’s like, we stop everything. We're praying before meetings, during meetings, after meetings. I mean, what does the Bible say? It says, pray unceasingly. We pray all the time. So it's just been a wonderful joy for me to see how that is even continuing to grow in importance.

Al: Yeah. And the way leadership, really everybody, is intentionally bringing this to the forefront, the importance of being faith focused.

I'm sure you agree, sustainable strategy wins the day when it's intentionally linked to a flourishing workplace culture that's working to fulfill your 4KIDS’ vision of hope, homes, and healing, as we've talked about. How about a story of a child and a family whose own hope, home, and healing came together because of the people who make up your workplace culture?

Kevin: Wow. There are so many stories that I could share. I mean, I have to be a little bit vague just to protect the families and kids, so I just want you to be aware of that. But there's one story that I've seen unfold over the past 18 months or so that is just amazing to the testimony of what happens at 4KIDS. There were—and this may be a little shocking to some people, but I don't know that many people realize how integrally linked the foster-care crisis is to the sex-trafficking crisis that we hear a lot about. And the statistics that I hear often footballed around is that 70 to 80 percent of the kids that are in domestic-abuse cases and sex trafficking have spent time in foster care—70 to 80 percent. So it was about two years ago, roughly, that three little girls came into care, into foster care. They were very young. They were under 10 years old. And they were victims of this abuse. And we had an amazing family of ours step up and want to foster these girls. And, man, I can tell you, I met them early on at an event, and you could just see the brokenness. You could just see the pain. You could see it. It was visible. But over time, through these amazing people and the power of what we do and how we do it, you could start to see that these girls changed. You could see their outlook changed, their appearance was changing. They were joyful, happy. Recently, two of them, the two sisters were adopted by this family. And, man, I got to tell you, to hear the stories now of these girls talking about their church, talking about how they serve, talking about Jesus, and just to think, Al, in a short span compared to eternity, in less than a two-year time, they went from probably one of the most broken states to this beautiful, beautiful story of restoration and how God can take the brokenness and make it so beautiful. We hear stories often of the girls playing and swimming and going to daddy-daughter dances and dressing up. And, man, it just brings such a joy to my heart and to our whole entire staff's heart to hear these transformation stories week in and week out when we continue to do the work that we do. It is just—it's almost beyond words.

Al: Yeah. Truly bringing hope, homes, and healing to real life. That’s great, yeah. Thanks, Kevin. Great story. And, as you say, it's very clear, as I've talked with people, the link between foster homes and how that can break the cycle of sex trafficking, which is really a growing issue.

Well, there's so much more we could talk about sustainable strategy and its importance to a flourishing workplace if we had more time specifically. And you've talked about this, about clearly establishing priorities, action-oriented goals, and how outcomes and results are measured and evaluated. Let’s just go on.

And I’ve really enjoyed all that we’ve talked about today and the way you've really helped to bring a flourishing culture, and the way your team has worked together, and the way you've been intentional on building your strengths and improving your weaknesses, and the regular weekly times of worship and devotion, and quarterly report outs on progress of your Best Christian Workplace goals. I mean, on and on. The way you've outlined your strategy and the way that's working, and it’s clearly working effectively in the organization; how your teams are building goals from the bottom up and the importance of that because they know their goals and they know what to do and how impactful that is for the overall organization. So considering all that you've shared with us, these are just a few of the things in how a sustainable strategy helps drive a flourishing culture, do you have one final thought that you'd like to leave with ministry leaders?

Kevin: Well, I thought about this a lot, and one of the beautiful things that I've seen take shape over the last two and a half years as I've gotten to travel to not only local ministries here in South Florida, across the state, but also across the country, and we even met at a conference in Dallas, and just attending these amazing conferences, I see this great thing coming together that God is seeing the body come together and, really, people collaborating at a different level, even within our sector, which is kind of driven by the Christian Alliance for Orphans. It seemed like the first 20 years, there was a lot of organizations who were building for doing what they do. I think what we're starting to see is organizations work together in a way like never before. I really believe that God is up to something, and He is calling not only the church, but like-minded agencies to get together and to collaborate and work together in a better way.

The other thing that came to mind is just for us to dream, to dream big. I was given a verse by my pastor, probably over 10 years ago, and it sits on my wall. I'm looking at it right now. And it's Jeremiah 33:3. And in the Word God says, “Call to me, and I will answer you, and I will show you great and mighty things that you do not know.” You know, it begins with us engaging with God. He said, “Call to me.” God’s not going to answer us if we're not talking to Him. So he's saying, “Engage with me, and let me show you what I can do.” So that's why I put that verse on my wall. It's kind of like a true north for me to keep my focus on communing with God and trying to just seek His will for what we have ahead.

And, you know, I so appreciate you inviting me on the call today and all the great ministries that are out there. And I'm excited and anticipating to see what God is going to do as we continue to try to work together and collaborate and share best practices, because I think we're better together.

Al: Yeah. I love what you’re saying, and I love the vision that you believe, and I can see that, too, that God is calling the body, and it’s coming together. It reminds me of the Lord's Prayer, that we pray that “Your Kingdom come,” and it takes the body to come together for that to happen.

Kevin Enders, president of 4KIDS, with offices in Fort Lauderdale, Delray, and Stuart, Florida, thank you for sharing your wisdom, insight, and stories, and thank you for extending your ministry and the encouragement that you've given the leaders today who are listening and benefiting from all you've shared with us. We really appreciate spending the time with us today. Thank you.

Kevin: Oh, you’re welcome. My pleasure.

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.