Transcription
The number one question we get from pastors and leaders is all about their team. In fact, building a staff team and a team of volunteers is critical to growing a healthy church. It's the first thing Jesus did when he started his ministry; he built a team of disciples. Today, I will give you the five keys to building a dream team on the Grow Leader Podcast.
Welcome to the Grow Leader Podcast, everyone. My name is Matt Miner, and we're here with Pastor Chris Hodges. PC, how are you doing?
Thrilled to be here. Episode number two. Yeah, we're all pros at this now. Well, we'll see. The Grow Leader Podcast, we're here so we can grow leaders that grow churches and help them reach their full potential. Excited about the content today, and I just want to say this: thank you so much for all the feedback and responses we've gotten from last month's episode. Really got a lot of feedback about that. It helps us to know that it's helping leaders out there all over the place. And so, feel free to share everything you're hearing from us today. Help others know about what we're doing here at growleader.com.
And do want to say thank you so much to our sponsors today, Wesleyan Investment Foundation. Wifonline.com is where you can find them. They do an incredible job helping churches. Why don't you tell them a little bit about our relationship with them?
Yeah, we met them several years ago, and they're, they, this organization was really created to help churches get loans for their buildings, and they only helped churches. And then there were a lot of our, our church planters who were getting into their first facilities and really having a tough time with banks or getting loans. And we've stepped in. I think there's over $350 million of loans that have been given right now to our, our churches. So they're, they're our best friends, man. These guys are incredible, and it's helping a lot of these churches that, of course, started portably to get loans for their first facilities. And not only that, for those who aren't building buildings, they're giving some of the highest rates for for money on deposit. So we have our, our money on deposit with them, and they've become dear friends, and we're grateful for them. So grateful for them.
If you're watching today, uh, in a situation where you can't take notes, if you're running, working out, maybe driving in your car, as always, everything you hear in the podcast is going to be available in our show notes. And so we've taken the notes for you. We'll get those out to you. Very, very easy to find. If you want to find those, the easiest way, go to growleader.com on the podcast tab, you can find the notes there.
Last month, we talked about the questions that leaders should be asking. And today, we're going to talk about the question you get asked the most as a senior leader.
Yes. So we do a lot of roundtables. And if you're listening and you're a pastor or a leader, you can actually apply to be a part of our roundtable experiences. They're incredible. We'll have two or three days, we sit in a circle, and we show them what we do as a church, but we have some of the greatest discussion. It's my favorite learning environment, by the way. I've learned more in a roundtable setting than any conference I've ever attended anywhere, more than even what I learned in school. I just love the dynamic of being able to ask questions. And hands down, Matt, the number one question we get asked is, "Help me with my staff. Help me with my teams. Help me find better leaders. Help me grow a better volunteer base at our church." So it's the team concepts that are the number one most asked questions. We could give you several hours of teaching on this today.
Probably the best lesson I ever learned around the topic of leadership in in leading and building great teams was actually from a book. I don't think I've ever told you this before, either, by the way. This, some of the guts of this content came from a textbook while I was an accounting major at LSU.
Wow. Yeah. So this is one of the reads, and buddy, that's that, that book is about this thick. I was going to write down the name of the book, but it seems I think it's called The Leadership Challenge. Okay. Um, and, and all I remember is yellow. You can tell it really had a great impact in my life. It's this big, giant yellow book, but it was a textbook for my accounting degree. Um, and, um, and I just remember really, there were basically five principles in this. I've since tailor-made them to fit church work and what I do, but really give a little hats off to the material that came, uh, out of this secular textbook, uh, in, in when you're studying business in college. And I want to give them to you today, and I really think they'll help us build better teams.
I just want to begin, though, by reminding everybody, the first thing Jesus did before he preached sermons or healed people is that he put a team together. And I think, honestly, it's probably the most important function that I do today. In fact, the way I say it is, the best thing I ever did. So I have to give God a lot of praise. People who know me well know, know that God deserves a lot of praise and glory for what's happened at Church of the Highlands. The more they get to know me, they know, "How in the world did that happen?" Right? But if I did any one thing well, it's really, honestly, it's developing leaders like you, Matt, and other campus pastors. Our staff team, of course, we have more than 26,000 people on our, on our volunteer base, dream team at the church. It's the most important function that we do. So how do we do it? Well, I'm going to give you these five. These are tailor-made from this textbook. And here's the first one, and that is, you have to be the kind of leader that people want to follow.
So what people don't realize whenever you're, you're building a team, that a lot of it has to do with you. And that comes back to, um, some of the core principles we talked about last week. And that is, I think people are attracted to my leadership. Honestly, if I, it's kind of hard to say it that way. I hate to be, you know, saying things to myself, you know, make myself look good. But I think when I, when I talk to people that, that say, "We enjoy following you." I think they'd like to follow me because I think they really know I really love God. And I think people are attracted to passionate leaders. I think, I think great leaders are good with people, but I think there's this excellence, consistency. I'm a little bit predictable, and I think that actually gives people that are followers of some safety. But honestly, the last one is this, this joy, this fun factor, this, you know, we laugh a lot, we eat a lot. I think people want to be around people like that. But the way John Maxwell says it is, "People first follow the person, then they follow the plan."
I can tell you why I follow you. I'd love to hear. And I think we've had this conversation. So we did not prepare this. This is not planned. You, you do well, or you may not be the host next, next podcast. But no, go ahead. You're easy to follow because you, you always know what you're going to get. So you're the same. There's authenticity on stage, off stage, small meeting, big meeting, guest in the room, home crowd in the room. You're the same all the time. It makes it very, very easy to follow. You also allow permission to fail and space to thrive. And so one of the things I've always appreciated about the Highlands team is we are very different. You're not looking to hire people just like you. You're actually looking for the people that are not like you to have a very diverse set of skills, gifts, personalities in a room, which really, really helps everybody out. Know that, hey, there's space for me to be me and still help execute in the system that we're in and really go accomplish the vision.
Well, thank you very much. Welcome. That was my plan. You will be here for episode three. No, no, I really appreciate it. I appreciate it. That it's very kind of you to say. And, um, and I have to say this, I don't think that came natural to me. This means a lot to me, and I work very hard on it. And I'm more task-driven. So I see lists and things to do. And so I have to work hard at this. This is not natural for me to be the kind of leader that people want to follow.
But I'll tell you, a book that really impacted me greatly, and John Maxwell wrote a book, and I highly recommend this book. It's called The Five Levels of Leadership. Spectacular. And he's got a version of this teaching he can give and, and customize it to biblical leaders and give you biblical examples. Of course, the books he writes, he writes, uh, to a broader audience as well. But, but there are five levels, and I'll just say them to you quickly, but I'm not going to do the content justice. But he says that the first level leadership is what he calls rights, and that is that people follow you because they have to. And most people think that that's the top, and it's actually the most bottom level, basic level of leadership.
Title alone. Exactly. It's the, it's the title on your desk. It's the, "I'm the boss, so line up," and they'll do it, but they're not, they don't want to. And then he gets into the second level, and that is relationship. People follow you because they now want to, and they want to because they're in relationship. They truly believe that you're for them, and you love them, and you want the best for them, and you do want to empower them. But that's only the second level of the five. The third is what John calls results. And results is people follow you because of what you've accomplished, of what you've done. And that matters because it's, it's why people want to go play football for Nick Saban, right? Right. Yeah, because I'm going to end up, I'm going to end up in a championship game. You know, they don't have to like him, and they probably don't. You know, because I don't know, they may, they may like it, but they know they're going to end up in the NFL, you know? So now, and I think that's important for leaders to realize that you have to be the kind of leader that can produce some results, not only for yourself, but for that other leader so they can accomplish. But that's the third level. The fourth is what he calls reproduction. People follow you for what you've done in them, and now you're mentoring, and now you're maybe even, you're even helping their kids, and you're reproducing your life in them. And the last level, a level that we all hope to attain someday, I don't think I'm there yet, it's the fifth level, and that's the respect level. People follow you because of who you are and what you represent. You're in, in some cases, you're the Billy Graham. You've become bigger than life, and, and it's just because you're Billy Graham, you know, I want to be a part of that. But this is a great book for us to read. I think if you want to get this first, all-important key to building teams, be the kind of leader people want to follow.
Number two, and I don't think leaders think about this one enough, and that is to communicate a vision that people want to join.
That's great. So I know a lot of leaders that are actually all these things we talked about in point number one. And I've talked to leaders who have great ideas and vision and hopes and dreams for their church, their business. It's not enough. You've got to be able to communicate it in a way that rallies the troops. And what I recommend is actually for leaders to listen to great motivational speeches. I mean, the "I Have a Dream" type speeches that that causes a million people to to march on the mall, right, of Washington D.C. What is that? That's more than a dream. It's the ability to communicate it in a way where people want it. And so I don't think we think enough of this. I think every pastor ought to listen to more vision nights or visions Sundays of churches that they respect because they're going to hear in these, in this communication that it makes people want to, you know, like the disciples did for Jesus, and drop their nets and follow because they knew they were in the presence of someone great.
I had this in your show notes, but let me read this great quote: "Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen." Let me say that again: "Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something, um, extraordinary happen." The words I use, if you can communicate a vision that's both exciting and ennobling, so we're going to have fun, and buddy, it's going to make a difference, right? So it's going to be a blast. You trust me, you want to come do this with me. And by the way, we're going to change the world. If you can put those two things together, you can use this in your home. Again, these are, these are principles that you can work in business, family. It's, it's, it's having exciting and ennobling.
So one of the things that we do, and we're going to talk about this in a future podcast, is we have a legacy team and we have a legacy vision. And our legacy vision is the vision we're not doing yet. It's, it's, it's the gap between, "Hey, we're doing a lot," but "Here's what we could do if." And we, we have, we communicate these, uh, through the help of Lee Domain, who is our, the CEO of Grow Leader and organizes all this for us. And we're going to get him on a future podcast to explain to us because what he helped even me with is, is it's fine for you to have vision, but we've got to explain this to people who want to contribute. And so we created these five legacy lanes, uh, for people to contribute financially into our church. And it's made all the difference. And when you tell somebody, "You can't set the vision, but you can help control the pace and how fast we get there," exactly. They light up. Exactly. Because they have power now to say, "Oh, so that's what you want to accomplish?" And say, "Yeah, we're going to do it one day, but you get to determine if it's two days, right?" And they, and it's amazing how that energizes people.
So here's the point again, is that to build great teams, it starts with your own character, your own integrity, your own passion. Are you someone that people want to follow? But the second becomes, is are you communicating vision in a way where people want to drop their nets and, and like, "Yes, yep, I'm ready to go."
Here's the third one, and this one kind of makes sense. You would expect this one to be on the list, and that is, we need to recruit fantastic people to join us. And when I say recruit, I don't think people know this, Matt, that it's every day for me. I think it's the most important function, other than preaching and studying. It's the most important function I bring personally to the church in the Highlands organization. And that is, I'm always looking for for leaders and for talent and for, and, and when I say that, I say that God has to send them to us. I don't want to be disrespectful to this. This is a calling. This is a ministry we're a part of. I'm not, I'm not an agency, right? But, but I never, I never, there's never any conversation that I'm in with someone I'm thinking, "I wonder if they, we should do life together. I wonder if they should be on our team. I wonder if I have them in the right spot."
And that was, I mean, that's my story. Tell your story for a second. Started out on the creative team. So I got hired at Highlands to help create video content. And so I ran cameras and edited videos and started interacting with you in between services on Sundays, talking about our Sunday experience. And you started asking me questions, "Hey, well, I think we actually brought you." You were so creative. We brought you into our creative meeting that we have every Thursday. And you always came prepared with some of the best questions and ideas, and you saw ways to make our church better, which meant I was underutilizing you. And that's when I knew, I mean, I got to get you into a place where you can touch more than a video. And, and honestly, I'll say this to you, I know the other, your other 22 colleagues are listening, the campus pastors, but you're one of the best, if not the best, man. You bring a lot of, a lot of joy to, uh, all that we are as a church. And, um, and that's, that's something that we can never stop doing. You don't ever stop doing. I see you at all staffs, and I'm watching you on stage before all staff starts, you're scanning the room to see who is working with people, who's gathering people around them. And you're also watching the person sitting off by themselves who's just in a chair. And I'm very attracted to people who, who what I call, light up the room.
So I, I've been known to hire people and to promote people to places just because of the way they can change the, the temperament of the room. Can you tell the story about Amy Lee Bamberg?
So in the very first years of the church, I was looking for someone to lead our dream team, which are our volunteers. Uh, it would turn into be, you know, tens of thousands of volunteers. But I knew culture was more important than organization, especially in the early years of the church. So we had this, we had this monthly, um, reception for all the new people in our church. And back then, everybody was new, of course, in the early years of our church. And this is where we just explained, you know, the story of Highlands, why I moved to Birmingham, what our vision is. I think most people do something like that. But one of the things I used to add to this meeting was, I would always have someone speak who was actually in their chair last month and they joined the church. Now. And I thought, what better to hear from somebody who a month ago was trying to look for a church and now they picked the church. So I used to pick two or three people from the previous month's reception to come say why they joined the church. And I'll never forget, there was, she just graduated at Auburn University in, ready for this, in landscape horticulture. So she was going to be, she was going to put plants in people's yards and just design landscaping. She got up there and communicated our vision. She owned the room afterwards. She was high-fiving people. I think she met everyone there. There were hundreds of people there that night. She met everyone. And I walked up to her and I said, "I don't know what you're good at, but I want to hire you today. I'll find a place for you." It was a quick interview process, and she ended up leading 10,000, 12,000 dream teamers with a landscape degree. And she is still to this day the standard for what a dream team director does. The spirit she did it with, the personality, the joy, exactly how she did it. And that's what I mean by recruiting fantastic people to join you.
I think most people have heard the list. I'll include them in the show notes. So if you're working out or driving, don't think, "Oh my goodness, I want all this content." I think I've learned this first at the Global Leadership Summit. But you're looking for people, uh, I call them the six C's. And that is, I want something that's obviously Christian. Yeah. Anyway, so you don't want to really, if you're going to lead a church, you might want to start there. You want someone with character. You want someone with competency, so they're good at what they do. You want someone with chemistry, so you get along. And, and we call this the divine flow. I don't know why I love you, I just do. And by the way, the opposite is true. Somebody who's very competent, but you just would rather avoid them. Don't, don't hire them. What's your filter for your day off? So I've always said that I would never hire somebody that I wanted to avoid on my day off. It's great because I wanted to do life with this, this value of chemistry. The fifth one is culture. Do they, do they love the culture of your church? And then finally, are they called? So we'll include those in the show notes. But they're recruiting fantastic people, uh, to join us. And you never stop doing this. We, we have, uh, farm teams, if you will. That's not what we call them, but, but the guys who are next up, ladies who are next up, who will be ready in six months, they'll be ready in a year and a half. So we literally have more than 30, uh, leaders we're developing to find our next one campus pastor, right? And by the way, that's the best, uh, tip I could pass along to the listener, and that is, if you want, if you need a spot, don't go after a person. Go after a group of people because the person who emerges will always surprise you. So if you go one for one, you'll miss it sometimes. But if you'll, if you have a spot, and I always, always, always disciple or mentor 10 or 12 people to find the next one. Something. So it's the best way to do it.
Here's the fourth. When we're running out of time, we always want to keep these first. Every first Monday of the month, we want to do it in a basically in the length of your workout, about about 20 or 30 minutes here, okay? And that is, number four, and that is, ask the team for their ideas.
So one of the biggest mistakes I think leaders make, and the reason why they don't have a great staff team, is that they don't really invite the ideas, the empowerment of the team to speak up. So we, the way we say it is, we allow them to challenge the process, but not the vision. So I'm constantly asking, "Hey, is there a, you, you can't change the vision of our church, but is there a better way to do this? Is there a way we could do this to get more horsepower out of what God's called us to do?" And you are open to listen to anything. For the person that brings a solution, if you're just coming to complain, you got to stop there. But if you could say, "Hey, here's a problem, but here's an idea I have ways we can make it better," you've listened. Every time that I've been around, and that's how you ended up as a campus pastor. So we would rotate people onto this creative team, honestly, to find out, are we underutilizing some talent? But it all began by asking them, "Hey, what do you think? Was there a better way we could have done that Sunday? Is there a better way we could have done that women's conference? Do you have any ideas for small groups?" And the people who bring these ideas to the table, what happens is, it's a cool thing, and that is, they're always excited about their own idea. So they're, they're already naturally motivated in that area. So why not ask them what their idea is?
So the way I say it to leaders is, you lead with questions. So, so because see, this is, this is a discipline for me, Matt, and you know this about me. I go into every meeting thinking I already know how things should be done. I'm, I'm a very decisive person, and I'm, and I'm very confident person. But that would be a, a tragedy if I came in and said, "Okay, here's this week's assignments, bark them all out and tell people to go perform." It wouldn't last very long.
I watched you in a roundtable, a Grow Leader roundtable, really recently. And if you're interested in our roundtables, you can find those dates and opportunities on growleader.com. Where you had a group of pastors who just come for a roundtable to spend time with you, and they're all sitting around the room, and you opened up the entire thing with, "Hey, tell me what you guys are expecting from this. Like, where can I help the most?" And went around the entire room and got questions in our content. And you probably knew this already, but you knew what they're wondering about, what they have problems with, where they need help, but it was generated in their buy-in because they got to ask a question. Exactly. It's huge. I even take it one step further, actually, even ask them, "What's the best thing you're doing right now that I should be doing?"
That's great. And these are churches, you know, younger than us, smaller than us. But I'm convinced of this, everybody's doing something that we all should be doing that's great because everybody's, they've perfected some best practice. I call it one of my favorite discussions is being a group of pastors, 23, 30 leaders, and just say, "What's the best thing that you do that I should be doing?" And, um, so the point is, uh, to be a learner as a leader, and even in your own staff meetings, and what it does, it empowers the group. They want to play ball with you when they can, when they have some buy-in to the process.
So here's the last one. So we're just trying to give you these leadership building great teams principles, and we're kind of out of time. But this is probably the most important one, and that is to create an atmosphere of encouragement.
So you got to ask yourself the question, why do people volunteer? So why would somebody who could probably make a lot more money in the business world come want to work on a church team? You got to think about that. What, like, what are the true motivations? Why would somebody want to take off work to come serve at the Grow Conference? We had hundreds of volunteers, uh, because they just took vacation days to come serve at our conference. What, what is that? There are three reasons. Again, in your show notes, and that is, they, they love to be together. I call it community. It's amazing what people do to be on the same team with someone else. And, and you know, you were even telling me before we started the show today, you were telling me how you and a bunch of the campus pastors and people on our team were going to go play golf this Friday, 26 of you, and you're competing for a, you know, for nothing. Yeah, just to get together. But that's, but, but one of the joys of being on the team is not just that, you know, we're a great church. It's like, you love your buddies. Where we say the word family, and sometimes we say it flippantly. This is where family really becomes family. You're doing life together. There's community with one another. So if you're going to create that, then you have to be conscious of it. Leader, that they're in this not for the money, not even sometimes for even what you accomplish. They're doing it for the community.
The second one is the contribution side. To know that because I held that baby in that nursery, that mama got saved. Or to, because I helped park those cars, man, those people got to hear the gospel. Or because, and we have to constantly tie their service to the, to the inline results. What's happening? And we say it every time we can. So in Dream Team Central, which is where all of our volunteers spend time together, have a Coke, get breakfast, they have a little lockers in there. We have lockers. It's their locker room. We celebrate every salvation. So whether you're in the parking team, or you're a greeter, or you're on the prayer team, you had a part in this person raising their hand and saying yes to Jesus. It's every Sunday, every time we get together. And that's an atmosphere of encouragement. When one of these dream teamers can walk into that Dream Team Central, that locker room, as you would say, and walk in and see on that chalkboard, "Hey, last Sunday, you know, 237 people got saved because you, you know, passed that bucket down that row, or because you made that coffee." Well, now they're connecting, right? And that's what I mean by creating an atmosphere and encouragement.
And the last one to create an atmosphere of encouragement, you have community, you have contribution, but the third one is commendations. People love to hear their name. They love to be told, "Way to go." They love "attaboys," "attagirls." And I don't think we do it enough. And if you've ever noticed the Bible, a lot of the letters that Paul wrote, he ends with shout-outs. You know, and there's all these Greek names like, you know, Eucalyptus and Platypus and all that, you know. And he says, "Thank you for bringing my prank. Thank you for bringing me the parchments. Thank you for bringing me a blanket." I want to shout out to Sentechi. And you have all these people that Paul took time in holy scripture to say, "Hey, by the way, before I close this letter, thank you, thank you, thank you." And do we do that enough?
That's great. And I know if we do this, so we create an atmosphere of encouragement, we do these other principles in building a great team of leaders, I know this. I know this, um, you'll be a kind of leader that people want to follow, and you'll, you'll, you'll accomplish one of the most important functions in ministry, and really in any, any work of life, and that is building great teams. Celebrate people at every single stage of their journey. That's what we learned. But they're brand new, they just got here, they joined the team, they've been here for 20 years. We celebrate. We celebrate. We celebrate.
So great. Thanks so much, Pastor Chris. That wraps it up for today. Don't forget next month, the first Monday of the month, we'll be right back here with brand new content to help leaders. We want to help you do this. Share what you've heard today. Post it, rate it, review it. Let's get the word out about the Grow Leader Podcast. And for more resources, be sure to go to growleader.com and be a part of the Grow Leader community. And finally, thank you so much to the Wesleyan Investment Foundation for all they've done to support today's podcast. We will see you next month.