Transcript: 5 Key Steps to Getting Your Church or Organization Unstuck // Jim Tomberlin, The Unstuck Group

The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series

“5 Key Steps to Getting Your Church or Organization Unstuck“

February 28, 2022

Intro: Today is a special and unique episode. Listen to my conversation with a leader who is in his fifth decade of spiritual and organizational leadership. He can honestly say each organization he has served was healthier when he left than when he started. Learn from his immense wisdom, and listen to his personal challenge for you at the end of our conversation.

Al Lopus: Hi, I'm Al Lopus, and you're listening to the Flourishing Culture Podcast, where we help you create a flourishing workplace. The problem employers are facing today is that more of our employees are quitting than ever before. Some people are calling this the great resignation. And now with millions of open jobs, how can churches, Christian non-profits, and Christian-owned businesses face this tidal wave of resignations while attracting new, outstanding talent? And we know that having a flourishing workplace with fully engaged employees is the solution. I'll be your guide today as we talk with a thought leader about key steps that you can take to create a flourishing workplace culture.

So, now let's meet today's special guest.

Organizations have seasons of growth and change, and through each season, your leadership team needs a variety of competencies to help your organization thrive. Our guest today will help you understand the skills that you need to find and build into your leadership team, and these principles apply whether you lead a small ministry or a large, complex organization.

I'm delighted to welcome Jim Tomberlin, who is the multi-site merger strategist at The Unstuck Group, and Jim has pastored churches in New Mexico, Germany. He’s grown a megachurch in Colorado, where he currently lives, and pioneered the multi-site strategy for a megachurch in Illinois. And he's been consulting and coaching church leaders in multi-site strategy for more than 15 years. So, Jim, welcome back to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.

Jim Tomberlin: Thank you, Al. It’s great to be back with you.

Al: Jim, you’ve been following Jesus and been a pastor for many years and a consultant and leading in local churches, large organizations, now consulting. What are some of the habits or practices that you've sustained over the years, even in your roles and responsibilities as they've changed? What are some of those spiritual practices and habits that you've found helpful?

Jim: I appreciate that question, Al. I would say, I love the leadership stuff and growing organizations and churches and all, but, really, I think the foundation for ministry is—three words come to mind that have really guided me through my years, in my fifth decade of church ministry, local ministry. The first word is the word overflow. When I was being ordained in 1980 by my pastor, Charles Stanley—ever heard of Charles Stanley?—

Al: Yeah. Who’s that?

Jim: —he said, “Jim, as you begin your ministry, your ministry is really the overflow of your life with Jesus.” And so I never forgot those words from my pastor, first pastor, Charles Stanley, and I've always tried to maintain that first priority of being with Jesus; in His word daily; in conversation with Him; growing my relationship with Him; acknowledging, recognizing that's the foundation for any effectiveness and impact in ministry. So overflow. The ministry’s overflow of my relationship with Jesus.

The second word is the word delight. I love the words of David in Psalm 37:4, where he says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” And I've always felt like if I was truly delighting in the Lord and putting Jesus first in his kingdom, Matthew 6:33, that my desires, that my passion was lining up with what God's desires were for my life, for His will for my life. And so that was my goal to stay just being delighted in my relationship with Jesus and growing in Him and let the overflow of that happen, and His desires for my life will match up with the passions in my heart.

Then, a third word that comes to mind is the word experience. Back many years ago, I came across this book by Henry Blackaby called Experiencing God. It had a profound impact on my life in terms of this question is, how does a person experience God? And he had a process, a strategy, that really resonated with me. He said, “If you really want to experience God, ask God to show you where He's moving, where He's working, and when He shows you, that's the invitation.” So that's a regular prayer, “Lord, where are You working? What are You doing? Where are You moving?” And so it's important to listen, watch, and then obey.

So, overflow, delight, experience, experience God.

Al:  That’s great. Yeah. Thanks, Jim. That’s a great foundation for anybody in Christian service, whether you’re in Christian service or not. Yeah.

And as you've worked with church leadership teams, how do you help them identify and build leadership skills that they need to thrive and lead in the future?

Jim: Al, I'm a pretty simple person, and I think where I like to start with that conversation when I sit down with a pastor or a leadership team is, what does success look like in your life or in your organization one year from now, three years from now, five years from now? That simple question really helps to clarify, the answer to that question will clarify what they need in their life to accomplish that, and what do they need to do and what tools they may need to require to achieve their success. So what do you want to be a year from now? What does success look like a year from now for you, three years from now, five years from now? That's the starting point.

Al: Yeah. That’s great.

Well, when a church comes to you for help, Jim, they may have had a period of growth in the past, maybe now losing momentum. Then, you know, of course, we're coming out of COVID, and a lot of churches would say they're in that spot. You know, share with us the process that you would go through with a church leadership team as you help them get unstuck, to use the term of the consulting firm you work with.

Jim: Well, Al, I like to start with the premise that the role, the primary role, of a leader or of a leadership team is to define reality—three things that leaders do, things that nobody else can do. They have to do this. First of all, what is our reality? Where are we now? What's the good and the bad and the ugly of our organization, of our church, right now? That's the first step of a leader.

The second thing is to cast vision for the future. That is, all right. Here's where we are now. But where do we want to be? And in our context, in the church world, you know, where do we believe that God is wanting us to—what's the vision He's given us? Where do we want to be? What's our goal? Where are we striving to arrive? And so we're getting clarity on that picture of where we want to be.

And then, figuring out, how do we get there? And so the third step for a leader is, here's where we are; here's where we want to go; and here's how we're going to get there. Now follow me. As Paul the Apostle said, “Follow me now as I follow the Lord.”

So where are we now, where do we want to go, and how do we get there? That's the starting point for any organization that's stuck, or it needs to constantly be asking that question so they don't get stuck.

Al: Wow. And you've got some key ingredients getting a church or organization unstuck. What would some of those steps be?

Jim: The first thing to get unstuck is to clarify, what's our mission? What's our vision? What's our strategy? Clarity is such a big word in organizational life and leadership. My good friend, Will Mancini—

Al: Yeah.

Jim: —likes to say clarity isn't everything, but it changes everything. And so that's always the beginning part. What's our mission? What's our vision? What’s our strategy?

And then, once you get clarity around that as a leader and then as a leadership team, just to align your staff, your finances, and your calendar around our mission, our vision, our strategy. Alignment’s a big word where a lot of people, a lot of organizations, have great mission statements, great visionary visions. But have they aligned their organization and all of its components? So the key big components are staff, budget, calendar.

Now, once you've aligned your team and calendar and budget around your mission and vision, we need to reorganize the staff to reflect our priorities. That has to do with getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. But more about getting people, the right people, on the bus and in the right seats. You get that accomplished—and that doesn't happen overnight, but that takes some time. There's some people you got to export out of your organization. There's new people you want to import in.

You know, there's a slogan that you and I have known for many years: if you want to reinforce the culture, hire from within. But when you need to change the culture or an aspect of your culture, bring someone from outside, who can help do that.

But anyway, so that reorganizing your staff, your organization, is very important to achieving your mission.

A fourth step is to reshape your culture. And this is what you at BCWI do so well is to intentionally and continuously focusing on cultivating and maintaining a healthy organizational structure. I think this is, a lot of ways, it's more recent in business world or organization world, church world, how important our culture is to achieving the long-term goals of our churches or organizations. But we recognize that when we take good care of our people and we have a healthy staff culture, we will be better and more effective at serving our clients, our constituents, our church members, our church family.

And then, kind of a last piece, as sort of a bow around all of this, Al, of helping churches be unstuck is to rebuild trust or to gain trust. And you have been so helpful in your organization with us, working with you and other churches as well, about how trust is rebuilt with transparency; with integrity, of course; with competence; and over communication. That’s sort of the key ingredients of regaining or rebuilding or building trust with your followers, with your team.

Al: And, Jim, you've just finished a tenure with Christ Church in Miami, and you've helped to, really, get them unstuck in many ways, in following this same five steps, didn't you?

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Al: Yeah. Yeah.

Well, some of your consulting work involves church mergers. They are very complicated. It's a complicated process. When does a merger make sense for a church, and how can you be successful in the process? What can you tell us, Jim?

Jim: Well, thank you for that question. It's a big question, a great question. And we are seeing a lot of mergers happening. It's been happening for the last decade or more, a growing increase of church mergers, and, certainly, it’s been accelerated through COVID. You know, Al, there are over 320,000 Protestant churches in America, North America; 60 percent of them are stuck. That's 190,000 churches. 25 percent of them are struggling. That is, they're on life-preservation or life-support mode. That's about 80,000 churches. You add those two up, struggling and stuck churches, that's over a quarter of a million churches in North America who are in trouble. In spite of that, they're about 15 percent of churches nationwide that are strong, what I call strong, churches. They’re healthy. They're growing. They're not perfect, but they are flourishing. There's about 50,000 churches. So that's the good news.

So, what kind of church is a good candidate for a merger? All three of them. All three kinds of churches: strong, struggling, and stuck churches are good candidates. A struggling church can be reborn through a merger. Get a second chapter, a new life. Stuck churches can be revitalized through merging with another church. And, then, strong churches can, obviously, reproduce and multiply through mergers. And that's what we're seeing happening.

Over 40 percent of multi-site campuses have come by way of a merger. That was before COVID. So right now, I'm involved with three merger conversations across the country, and they, all three, reflect those categories.

But I would say, Al, that mergers that have good outcomes are like a dance, where one leads and the other follows or joins.

Al: Mm-hmm.

Jim: The most-effective mergers are not partnerships. They're not marriages. They're not like two equals coming together. It can happen, but those are the rare kind. It's really where one leads and the other follows. And it's very important that both churches understand up front who is the lead church and who is the joining church.

I’m talking right now with a church—I won’t tell you the city—but it's a church planter whose church is growing. It’s been flourishing last several years. They meet in a rented facility, and they're looking for a facility. Not far away, ten minutes, is a church that's been around for 150 years, and it's in decline and struggling. Hasn't had children in their nursery for years. They have a building. They need a pastor. This pastor had this growing church, has people, and growing, needs a facility. Those are great conversations that are happening right now.

But the lead church isn't the one with the building; it's the one that's healthy. And so the lead church is not necessarily the biggest or the wealthiest, but it's the healthiest church. It is very important that both churches understand who's the healthy church, which way the trajectory of the church is going. Is it going up and to the right, regardless of the size. Or is it going to the right and, you know, lower? It’s very important to determine who's the lead and who's the follow.

Al: Yeah. And you've worked a little bit, we've worked, with Warren Bird a bit. Tell us about the book that you guys have written.

Jim: Well, Warren Bird is probably the most knowledgeable person about the church in the world today. He's a walking encyclopedia about all things about the church. And it’s been my great privilege to write two books with Warren, and actually one book that we were invited two years ago to do an upgrade—or not an upgrade, but just put it paperback. And we asked if we could do an upgrade on it, and they said, “We would love to have you do an upgraded version.” The good news is, Al, that we didn't have to repent of anything we wrote in the first book.

Al: Oh, that’s—

Jim: Everything we wrote in the first book in 2011 was still valid and true. Ten years later, we were able to bring a lot more tools and resources and stories, update on the stories as well. That was released in 2020. And so that's been very robust in itself because this is, again, COVID has only accelerated what was already happening.

And so we wrote a book to be a roadmap for churches. It's called Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work, expanded and updated as the latest one—

Al: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: —to be a roadmap for churches to follow who are considering a merger. And for some churches, the book is all they need. It’s a roadmap. But most church mergers need, usually, an experienced third party to help them navigate the merger conversation, or I'd say minefield. It's not something that church leaders wake up every day thinking, “Oh, boy. One day we're going to get to merge with another church.”

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: And now, back to today’s special guest.

I love that, Jim. Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work, expanded and updated. Now, if it was a technology book, it would be 2.0.

You know, this involves helping people move through change, when you're looking at mergers; as an example, moving churches from struggling to maybe strong. But changes in a leadership team are inevitable, in many cases. So how do you help a leader or a leadership team know when they need to move out of an organization and when to bring in new leaders? This is very delicate work, for sure.

Jim: Al, that’s a great question, and the answer to that question begins where we started a few moments ago. Al, it always gets back to having clarity and alignment around mission and vision, as we said earlier. Why do we exist, and what does the future look like if we were going to accomplish our mission? That being said, I found that effective teams revolve around team players who have the four Cs, something that you're very familiar with, that many church leaders and organizations that are familiar with the four Cs of personnel, of a hire, of a staff member, the team player.

The obvious one, the first two are character. Obviously, we, in our world, we want individuals who have character and competence in their sphere of expertise. But, you know, just having character and competency are a must for effective team members, but they're not enough. What's really important for effective teams is having team players who have good chemistry on the team and with each other, and a sense of calling, that I was made for this, for this time and for this place and for these people. This is, whatever you call calling, that sense of, “This is what I was made for. This is what I feel God is leading me to do. I feel this is what my purpose in life is.” When you have that combination of character and competency and chemistry—we get along with each other. We flow well—and that sense of calling, that is an incredible powerhouse of a team.

Al: I love it. The four Cs. And we often add contribution as another C, where if people made a contribution in the past, because that's a good possible indication that they'll make a good one in the future. Yeah.

So, here at the Best Christian Workplaces Institute, we're all about helping teams flourish, and I know that you've used our Engagement Survey in your work at Christ Fellowship in Miami. How has that process helped the team identify leadership skills and competencies, as you've outlined as important, that they want to and need to develop?

Jim: Al, one of the best things that we did at Christ Fellowship was to bring you and BCWI into help us become a flourishing culture. Your Survey provided a safe format for our staff to respond to. We had about 125 staff at the time. And it held up a mirror to the leadership, which I was leading the leadership as the chief of staff. It held up a mirror to us to reveal the good things that we were doing—the good, the bad, and the ugly of our workplace. It affirmed what we were doing right, it highlighted what we needed to get better at, and it also revealed the things that we needed to correct. And that process helped the leadership team to make better informed decisions going forward, and it gave our staff confidence that we were committed to becoming a flourishing workplace. Your team helped us immeasurably with suggestions, tools, processes, resources to improve our culture. And we went, Al, from critical juncture—as you know, the second stage or level in the dashboard, just above toxic—

Al: That red area, yeah.

Jim: Yeah. We were just barely above toxic. We’d been at toxic. And by the time you came in, we were starting to move in the right direction. That was encouraging, just, at least we got to critical juncture.

But over the next couple of years, in three years we went from a critical juncture to flourishing. And that last Survey—it was an annual survey and debrief of all that—was at the end of 2020. Right in the middle of COVID, we were going through all that. And we ended up landing with a flourishing grade at that time. And we're just really grateful for that process.

But one of the best outcomes of becoming a flourishing workplace was the restoring of trust in our leadership, and it's still continuing to this day. It's never been healthier. One-hundred-and-three-year-old church is better positioned now, with the healthiest team, the most united and cohesive team. Going into the future, I'm just so thrilled that the best years are still in front of them.

Al: Yeah. And what a transformation that you've seen of that staff, from that period of time to now flourishing.

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Al: You know, you've helped so many leaders develop the skills they need to lead a multi-site church model. Now share with us some of the particular leadership competencies that are essential for multi-site churches. And how might these skills also be part of a toolkit for other organizations that have teams spread across geographic areas, maybe not a church, but other multi-location organizations?

Jim: Al, I would say, first of all, that multi-site is a healthy church model. Multi-siting is all about reproducing and multiplying ministry best practices across multiple locations. But it also reproduces what is not healthy in your church. And so the first thing a church or organization is asked itself when it's thinking about multi-siting is, are we healthy enough to do this? If your church is not healthy, then get healthy. Then multi-site. Multi-siting when you're not healthy is like running on a broken leg or having a baby in a broken marriage. Neither one of those are going to have a good outcome. So multi-site is a healthy church model. That's the starting point.

Now, effective multi-site churches are clear on the why and the how of multi-site. We're doing this because this is the best way for us to fulfill the mission and vision of our church. So they're clear on the why and the how. They are led by a central leadership team. They are served by a central support team with standardized ministries across all locations that are implemented by site staff that are in alignment with the mission, the vision, and the strategy of the church. And that paragraph I just shared with you, that is the essence of effective, in my opinion, effective multi-site church.

Al: Yeah. Clear on the why, led from a central leadership team. They are served by a central support team. That’s, oftentimes, where it gets pretty confusing, isn’t it.

Jim: Yes.

Al: And then, standardized ministries across all those locations. Yeah. That’s great advice.

Organizations and churches of all sizes have had to adapt to challenging conditions these past two years. I mean, COVID has really wreaked havoc with a number of organizations. What changes do you think will be here for the long term as leaders guide their local church communities for spiritual growth and flourishing?

Jim: Al, that's a great question. You know, as terrible as the COVID experience was for the world and so many of the terrible outcomes of that, it did provide opportunity for many organizations and churches to make a lot of needed changes, and many churches and organizations have done that. But sadly, I'm afraid that most churches will default back to pre-COVID thinking and practices. But there are some church leaders who are seizing the opportunity and will become the leading churches of the post-pandemic era because they are using this as an opportunity to make those changes and to embrace a new day, a new chapter, a new season in our world.

But, you know, the eight areas that you cover with BCWI that helped churches to build flourishing workplaces and cultures have not been diminished, but they've been enhanced. As a matter of fact, your organization, when I worked with The Unstuck Group, we are so well positioned to help organizations now in the area where the need is now even more felt. It was already happening before. Churches and organizations were understanding how important culture is and how to have healthy culture and healthy staff organizations. And so that is only going to be enhanced and multiplied, what you're doing, Al, and your company, to help churches become healthy places and organizations become flourishing places to work. Church employees are not going to remain in or go to work in unhealthy church cultures in the future. We put up with a lot of the unhealthiness in the past. I hope that day is over, and I think it will be for a lot of places.

Now, this is the new day of the employee, in my opinion, not the employer. It's where employees rule; employers serve their employees. That's a reverse of the way it used to be. I think, Al, the best church workplaces in the new normal are churches with flourishing, compelling, mission-driven cultures, that are fun and flexible places to work in, with competitive salaries and benefits, with opportunities to grow. These are the churches and organizations that are going to attract and sustain top talent.

Al: Wow, Jim, I love that. Employees will no longer go to work for unhealthy places. And that gets right at my desire, that churches, Christian workplaces, set the standard as the best, most effective places to work in the world. And it becomes pretty clear, and employees have choices now, don’t they—

Jim: Yes.

Al: —even more than ever in this period of great resignation.

And so, Jim, this has just been a great conversation. We've learned so much. I appreciate, for example, your five steps to help organizations get unstuck, you know, to clarify, mission, vision, strategy, align around it, to reorganize, to help reshape the culture, the internal culture, and then build trust and rebuild trust that may have been broken for whatever reason. And your analogy of mergers, where so many churches are struggling, so many more are stuck, and 15 percent are strong. I wish those were reversed, those numbers. But that is reality, which is the first role of a leader, as you described, as described reality. But to make sure you've got the right people with the four Cs of character, competence, chemistry, and calling. Absolutely.

Here's a question for you, Jim. Now I've recently talked with Warren Bird myself, and I've asked him, “Is the megachurch going to survive post-COVID?” He says, “Absolutely. The megachurch is stronger than ever.” I don't know. What's your perception on that, Jim?

Jim: Well, I would say the megachurch is not a new phenomenon. The first church of the Christian era was a megachurch in Jerusalem, and it was a multi-site church, meeting at many locations. One gathering in a public place and the temple courts, and then hundreds of house churches, all the church of Jerusalem. So that concept is not a new concept. There's many expressions of it over the centuries, as technology becomes the tool that allows churches to expand and reach in different ways, whether it's the printing press or the radio or TV or Internet.

And so, no. Every generation, God’s going to raise up strong church leaders and strong churches. There’s going to be, like the men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what to do. And those churches will be strong and growing. And in fact, we are seeing even larger churches. Now, the megachurch campus is not sustainable, but megachurch is reaching a lot, thousands of people and uniting under one banner as a local church in multiple locations. Yeah, that's not going away. And I'm looking for—there'll be churches and megachurches on the Moon one day and on Mars. And they’ll be online because that's how we're going to go to those places.

Al: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, there’s a vision for the future.

So, Jim, this has been a great conversation. Is there anything you’d like to add about what we’ve talked about, a bottom line that you'd like to leave with our listeners?

Jim: Let me say one thing more about the megachurches, then I’ll give a final word.

Al: Yeah.

Jim: But, you know, that’s just one expression of a church. I'm so grateful for all churches. What I love about the multi-site model, it's being big and small. The ideal multi-site model is really a lot of small congregations united under one central leadership and support. So even those are not multi-site, we need all kinds of churches. We need them to be healthy churches, whether they're small, medium-sized, or large. And so that's one of things I've dedicated my life to. I love working with churches of all sizes.

But I would say, Al, in kind of wrapping up final words, thank you for giving me the opportunity to say a few thoughts. After five decades now—I'm in my fifth decade—of church ministry, still going strong. But I would say, and I've served five churches over the last four decades of my ministry, I would just say to church leaders and pastors, finish well. Finish well. By God's grace, every church I've served, I left them better, stronger, and healthier than when I arrived there. And not only that, I have visited all of my previous churches many, many times over the years, and I'm always welcomed back as the former beloved pastor. I'm so grateful for that, and I just thank God's grace for that. But it's a stage of my life that's so rewarding to me, that I have served my church, the churches I've served, I did my part in their journey. And when I did transition, none of the churches I served, every one I went to, I thought I was giving the rest of my life there. I had no idea I'd be serving four different churches, five different churches, in my career. But it was always my intention to go and to give my life there and to make a difference. And I feel a tremendous joy in that.

If you don't leave well, then all the good that you did in those years there is forgotten, and all that’s remembered is how poorly you left. But if you finish well and you leave well, then all the good that you did serving is remembered and celebrated. And I'm grateful for that testimony. My challenge to pastors: leave well, finish well.

Al: Thanks, Jim. That was just great advice. Finish well.

And ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to find out more about Jim Tomberlin and the work of The Unstuck Group, go to theunstuckgroup—all one word—.com. Theunstuckgroup.com.

Jim, thanks so much for your contributions today. And most of all, I appreciate your devotion and service to our loving God. I thank you for the encouragement for us to all stay in the Word, to stay fresh, and let our ministry, whatever it is, be an outflow of our relationship with Christ. So thanks for that and for your passion for equipping churches to thrive and to share the Good News in their communities. Thanks for taking your time out and for speaking into so many lives today. Thanks, Jim.

Jim: Thank you, Al.

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