The Master Leader: 12 Ways to Lead Like Jesus with Mark Moore

0:00:04 Well, welcome everyone to another Nexus webinar. I'm your host, Andrew Estes. And today I'm excited to welcome Mark Moore, well-known author, speaker, professor, and a teaching pastor at Christ Church of the Valley in Peoria, Arizona.

0:00:19 Mark joined the staff there back in July of 2012, initially founded by Don Wilson. CCV now has over 48,000 people in regular attendance across 18 thriving campuses all across the Phoenix Valley and beyond as they continue to reach lost people for Christ.

0:00:38 Prior to joining CCV, Mark was a professor at Ozark Christian College, my alma mater, back in Joplin, Missouri for nearly 22 years, I believe.

0:00:47 And he is also the author and co-author of several books, including the hugely popular Core 52 series and his most recent book, which we're going to unpack today, The Master Leader, 12 ways to lead like Jesus.

0:01:01 So Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. It's an honor. So grateful for this. I'd love to just maybe start before we dive into the book.

0:01:11 Just a little bit of your background, even beyond just the 22 years at Ozark, the almost 13 years at CCV.

0:01:19 Just give us a little bit of background about who you are, some of the things that you've been able to be a part of.

0:01:25 Yeah. I hail from the West Coast, born in Portland, but grew up in Sacramento. know, my grandfather was a church planter, kind of like what you guys are doing in nexus.

0:01:37 Way back in the day, he was actually born in 1876. So he planted over a dozen churches in northern California and southern Oregon.

0:01:48 I never knew it. So it wasn't like I'm, you know, following in his footsteps. My call was completely separate and unrelated to his.

0:01:57 In fact, my dad took me to an old revival meeting. It's probably 13, 14. And I'd always kind of heard stories of my grandfather and you know, what a powerhouse he was.

0:02:09 And this preacher, man, he's old hellfire and brimstone. And it just turned me off. My dad, however, loved it. And I remember walking out, he put his hand on our shoulders and said, boys, you've just heard your grandfather preach.

0:02:21 And it was just, it was heartbreaking to me because I knew I didn't want to approach, it just wasn't native to how I wanted to approach evangelism or preaching.

0:02:32 In fact, I didn't even want to be a preacher until later. I got the call. And when I did, I was looking for a school that was known for creating preachers.

0:02:43 And Ozark, it's just, I don't think it's the old school that creates great preachers. Obviously, there's plenty of those. But God led me to that place at that time.

0:02:52 And it was his hand on my life at Ozark, I planted doing mission work in Latin America. Went down to San Antonio, post-graduation to do that.

0:03:04 And after my master's degree, they called me back. Honestly, I did this out of my voice. I thought they were asking me to be consultant for a center that would help disadvantaged students.

0:03:16 And then the dean at the time said, well, you'll probably need to look for housing too. And I hung up the phone and I thought, housing.

0:03:22 He's talking about a job. So, it worked out, 22 years, training leaders like yourself to go into ministry and make an impact, and then at the 22 year mark, I met Don Wilson at a gas station in Durango, Colorado.

0:03:40 I'm walking down the hill from, say, how about conference, I'm going to go do some writing. We had never met.

0:03:46 I knew who he was. What I didn't know is he'd been asking around his youth pastor's son, like, who's a guy that could be a teaching pastor for us.

0:03:54 And my name kept coming up. So I come up behind him and say, hey, Mr. Can you loan me a dollar?

0:04:00 And he is so sharp. He recognized my voice from the sermons that he'd listen to. Turn around and said, no, but we need to talk.

0:04:08 And so he laid out this vision for the Leadership Institute for preaching on the weekend and for young adult ministries and that's kind of the my thinking was I could spend half my life in the academy and then the other half of my life in the church and he just felt balanced and here's the truth.

0:04:26 Some of the young guys coming up through Ozark. guys that I had invested in Disciple to Shane Wood and Michael DeFazio and Mike Akram and Jim Dalrymple, I'm going, you know what, they're going to be better than me, but they don't know it yet.

0:04:41 So if I leave now, I can get out before they realize I'm crashing and burning, so that's my story so far.

0:04:49 Yeah, that's awesome. Tell me just a little bit about what is, so your role as teaching pastor as CCV, what is that kind of entail?

0:04:55 know, I have a stupid, crazy fit job for me. So what it entails is I go in the office and I look around and say, okay, what needs to be done today?

0:05:07 That I want to do. And that's what I do. I preach on the weekends about once a month. I do a lot of staff training.

0:05:14 I do a lot of kind of theological development. Case in point, we just did a marriage series on for the last five weeks.

0:05:24 Incredibly impactful, but what we never touched on people living together. So I have already invested in some thinking through that, the sociological implications.

0:05:35 Even if you weren't a Christian, I would say it's a bad idea. In fact, non-Christian therapists and counselors say it's a bad idea.

0:05:41 So just having that at the ready to unpack that in a biblical manner but also sociologically helpful manner for for couples.

0:05:51 Now we're gonna we're gonna put it out on video this this week for social media and other resources for our sociopaths.

0:05:58 So just stuff like that help help where I can. Yeah yeah no that's great. Well I came across your book at the end of last year called The Master Leader right.

0:06:08 So you went I believe that came out at the end of last year like October timeframe? Is that about right?

0:06:14 Actually, there's a backstory Andrew. Okay. Previous edition, I think it goes back to 2018. Wow. Okay. I was asked to speak at a conference multiple sessions on leadership.

0:06:26 And so I'm just I'm just dated dumping. You know, after after teaching for once you're an old dude, you gotta have a deep well.

0:06:35 So I'm pulling this stuff out. I didn't even And added it much, but it came out to 80 pages and I thought, well, well, shoot.

0:06:43 Like, what's the easiest way to get this in these guy's hands? To college press publishing graciously put it together. And honestly, I did a pretty poor job of all the editing of it.

0:06:56 So former student, Chad Harrington, got that manuscript and he said, man, can I, it's out of print. Can I, can I reprint it?

0:07:05 And I said, absolutely not. It's a piece of junk. I don't want my name on that so give me give me six months to edit it And so I started editing it.

0:07:13 I've got I've got it all up on the whiteboard all the ideas that I had at that time Well, it was still called the master leader, but I had these It's all day to dump on the on the board One of our executive pastors Jeff Osborne is an incredibly astute leader or no formal Bible training, it knows the

0:07:34 Bible well, but he knows business like he's an expert. I brought him on my office and I said, okay, help me think through this.

0:07:41 Really what I wanted him to do is pat me on the back and say, this is good. And he said, that's not good.

0:07:49 He said your biblical stuff is phenomenal, but honestly, my business guys would get two pages into it and go, TMI, I'm out.

0:07:57 They want the down and dirty. What do I need right now to be a leader? So that's where this idea came of Jeff coming alongside and at one point, he was making so many editorial suggestions.

0:08:10 I'm gonna go, I can't do that. Why don't you do that and let's do this thing together. So that's really how that came about and it turned out to be a pretty good project for both of us.

0:08:26 I'm proud of the way it looks now in no small part to Jeff's contribution because here's our goal. I know I'm monologuing here, but I want to lay this out so that everyone listening can really see the value of this.

0:08:42 We have created a book to help pastors be better at business and business leaders be better pastors in their business.

0:08:53 And it's been it's been field tested on both sides in the church and in businesses if you want a book that as a pastor you can give to your key leaders to help them pastor better in their businesses and they kind of help coach and mentor you in the business practices of the church.

0:09:12 This is a real win for both sides of the equation. Yeah, that's fantastic. I love that just because yeah, the formatting of what Jeff and just the history and everything that he brings from his own experience, like you go in and you'll every chapter, you kind of introduce a topic and then Jeff gets a

0:09:31 few pages to talk about that concept in the business world and from a faith-based perspective and then you pause on that and then just really unpack that characteristic or character trait in the life of Christ and and love being a so chapter by chapter introduction Jeff talks and then you unpack just

0:09:48 the biblical foundation for all of that and I love that. I'd love for you to just share a little bit about the tension because so many times I feel like I hear about you know church leaders say like business principles are for business like we're a church and there's there's often attention in leadership

0:10:05 books and and leadership conversations in the church world. Can you just share maybe a little bit about maybe that misunderstanding or just attention?

0:10:14 Like is there relevance there? Is there weight there? What are some of the things that people are most afraid of when we're having that conversation?

0:10:22 Yeah, Andrew, let me take a broader view of your question because this applies not only to business, it applies to the arts and we've been to reaching artists.

0:10:33 It also applies to psychology. We've been terrible at reaching out to psychologists in the church. It's like, oh, well, they're doing a secular thing.

0:10:42 And I remember a conversation that I had, I just drew a blank. He wrote, the song, our God is an author, Rich Mullins.

0:10:51 And I'm talking a rich and he goes, there is no secular music. It's all sacred music. Now, it can be sacred in a negative way.

0:11:01 It can dishonor God. But music itself is a gift from God and I got to thinking about that and this is again We talk about it a little bit in this book But I've unpacked it elsewhere in Mago day that I made in the image of God that he took his characteristics and put it in me But what does that mean?

0:11:22 If you look at the characteristics that define humans as differentiated from animals that some of them are the same we eat, we sleep, we defecate, we procreate, but there are some characteristics that animals do not do.

0:11:37 Language, music, art, organization, those are the most mundane attributes of our day, like our time orientation. You got it this morning, you looked at your clock.

0:11:50 First thing, everybody does. Why? We think it's a very human thing to do. It's actually part of the divine nature in us to be concerned about time and future and events.

0:12:01 So having said that, leadership in itself, the desire to organize for the betterment of a group is a divine nature in us.

0:12:15 There is no secular leadership, period. Now there's leadership that dishonors God, but leadership itself is a divine bent in us and there's some practices that secular leaders because they focus on that have actually developed their spiritual gift better than pastors have.

0:12:38 I want to be careful as I say that because pastoral leadership is powerful and influential. It is culture forming but often because the church has run away from society, we have led in these silos of religiosity rather than in the throes of where people are actually living.

0:12:58 And I think that's a huge mistake. Yeah, that's good, that's good. That's always just like an interesting conversation, interesting topic.

0:13:06 And I was just curious as to how you respond to that as you're doing now. Because I know obviously having a 18 campus, this 48,000 person church requires a significant amount of business savvy or leadership savvy and going through some of that.

0:13:22 Let me put an adendum on that as well, Andrew, because when I did my PhD dissertation, it was on the politics of Jesus.

0:13:30 And people lost Jesus as a political, really? Then why is he crucified? Because that is a political statement. Why did he do a triumphal entry?

0:13:39 As all governors did when they entered into a city, he was political to the core, but the reason we don't think of him as political is because of the use of power.

0:13:49 The deep dive I did on this and it's reflected slightly in the book is leadership in the world's eyes is using power for two things either self-promotion or self-protection, self-promotion, self-protection.

0:14:07 And Jesus said that's illegitimate. The only legitimate use for power is for service and sacrifice. He has power. He has an identifiable group of followers.

0:14:19 He has an agenda. He has a platform. All of that is the core definition of political. So he was a political leader, but the reason he feels so different to us.

0:14:31 And here's where the tension is. I'm now answering the question. The tension is we think of power as using it to make money, which is self-promotion, or for self-protection, self-preservation.

0:14:44 And Jesus said, nope, that's illegitimate, power is only to be used for the powerless. That is the definition of servant leadership.

0:14:52 And in every industry now, servant leadership is the ticket to success. and there is, and I can say this authentically because this is what I dug into my dissertation, there was no leader prior to Jesus that practiced servant leadership, zero none.

0:15:14 And so we have titles like Civil Servant that come straight from Jesus. Or when we talk about serving others or servant leadership, of even the, what do they call the great Britain, the prime minister?

0:15:34 That's a term from servant leadership. Yeah, that's good. You open your book talking about just integrity and identity as well.

0:15:44 So Jesus' identity and his relationship with the father, love to unpack, just a little bit further, because sometimes leaders just get stuck in the ability to delegate authority or delegate responsibilities or raise other leaders up and probably tied to just their self-consciousness or lack of confidence

0:16:07 in their identity in Christ. Can you talk about a little bit about that of what keeps leaders from helping to promote other people?

0:16:17 Using your power, your position, just to stay self-promoting, to maintain that I can do it better than everybody else, but being able to leverage the opportunity to release authority and to raise other leaders up and tying that to our identity in Christ.

0:16:32 Yeah. The first two chapters, I'm going to pull those together because it deals with the identity of Jesus. And it really comes out of Mark chapter 1, verse 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Christ Son of God.

0:16:48 So there's Those are both political titles of Jesus, one for the Jews, one for the Romans. You have this title, Son of God, which is quite exalted.

0:16:59 It's still true. I mean, very true. It then Jesus called himself Son of Man. And he was the only one to call himself Son of Man.

0:17:06 That's a title of diminuation or humility. So that's the biblical side. Let me talk about from my personal side. When I was teaching at Ozark, as a former student, you probably heard this, my greatest criticism, when you got those class evaluations was, I mean, they liked the class good content.

0:17:28 He's a hard grader, but the criticism was, he's arrogant. And I have never been arrogant. I've been insecure. And when I present myself as arrogant, the using big words or these exaggerated stories or this larger than life personality, it comes out of a deep sense of insecurity in myself where I'm not

0:17:56 sure I'm worthy to be on the stage that I'm on. When you have that insecurity, you will compensate with bravado.

0:18:06 So I've tested this with hundreds of leaders, and we have leaders, I just had lunch with the Navy Admiral yesterday, phenomenal leader.

0:18:20 In this current environment, I'm bumping against all these leaders, feel testing this idea and to a man, to a woman that should, yes, our, when we come across as with bravado is because of an insecurity.

0:18:32 That's why this dual side of having absolute confidence in who you are as a child of God, an absolute commitment to the purposes of God to call yourself Son of Man.

0:18:47 I'm going to take this role, but only so that I can serve you and protect you. That identity is theologically based in the fatherhood of God.

0:18:59 Now, in our cultural setting, our identities come from our earthly fathers. Now, there are other people who feed into it.

0:19:07 And a lot of people don't have a dad and still have great identities because of a father-like figure. But the father that God gave us on earth is only a stepping stone to get us to him easier.

0:19:21 Now, if you don't have a father, you can still get to the heavenly father. But it is the identity that we derive from God the Father that empowers us to serve humbly the people that God has put in our stewardship.

0:19:35 If you miss that, then you will wind up leaning into the Son of God or, you know, I'm like a semi-divine figure in my organization rather than Son of Man.

0:19:47 You have to have the confidence to stand on the platform and the authority as a son of God but without the son of man that is your title for yourself, you will never be able to achieve servant leadership.

0:20:01 That's a pretty good summary of the first two chapters of the book. Yeah, that's awesome. If I can, how old are you now, Mark?

0:20:12 61. 61. So, I mean, it was 13 years ago, you know, teaching those argon things of that nature and just kind of getting those reviews and just that self-awareness of the insecurity and things of that, how did that come about of just the awareness of, like, I present like this because I'm insecure?

0:20:33 And how can we encourage leaders to be more self-aware in that ability to be less self-promoting and more on the proactive approach of being able to raise up other leaders and encourage and empower them to do what God's called them to do.

0:20:49 Yeah, let me give a couple of answers if I could. I would say short answer. I became wise in my early to mid 40s.

0:21:00 It just takes time. A young man is a young woman is going to want to be aggressive and build your career.

0:21:10 After that, you need to attend to building your character. The problem is if you don't build your character before you build your career, you can build a career and destroy the relationships that are all around you.

0:21:22 That didn't happen to me because I had some self-awareness, but it is, how did it come about? Some of it is just time.

0:21:32 The other part of it is, when I would get those reviews, I would take it to different men in my life that I expected to say, well, that's stupid because they're dumb.

0:21:43 The pivotal moment was with D*** Gibson. I said, a C.I.Y. conference, a woman in her mid 60s critiqued one of my messages.

0:21:53 I had given some humor that was, it wasn't inappropriate, but it was unnecessary. I talked about this woman dressed in leather pants and I'm driving by in an airport and she's bent over and I said, you know, I was just talking about, you know, the temptations that are before us.

0:22:10 And this woman very kindly said to me, you know, you're a good enough communicator. You don't need any off-color humor.

0:22:19 I said, well, you'll, Betty, you don't even have a right, like you seem to be at the conference. You're too old.

0:22:25 So I go to D*** and I said, hey, here's what this woman said. He was the first person to call me out.

0:22:33 And he didn't really criticize me, said, Mark, if it's true, then change. change. If it's not true, then let it go.

0:22:41 And I thought, I need someone in my life who will tell me the truth. And so I ask them to be an accountability partner.

0:22:49 And that led to not only years of accountability partners, which I still have, but also years of discipling young men to help them.

0:22:59 So I took it at twofold approach. One is I need to be able to, I need to surround myself with men who will tell me the truth about me.

0:23:07 And I need to surround myself with young men that I can speak truth into. Recently, as in the last four years, I did something Andrew and it's in the book.

0:23:17 It's one of the exercises in the book. Probably the most painful thing I've ever done. I did a blind spot survey where I put a three by five card, three different questions, and I gave it to 12 different staff members from different levels of organization, different place in the organization.

0:23:40 And I invited them to speak into me what I might not be seeing. Question number one, something like, what do I do that helps you do your job better, that I may not even be aware of.

0:23:55 What do I do that is a hindrance to me, or what is, what do I do that is either shooting myself on the floor or as a hindrance to you doing your job better.

0:24:04 Third question was, if you were my supervisor, what advice would you give me about my character development? I don't do it if you don't want honesty, but I got honest feedback that was both reassuring but also devastating.

0:24:25 The devastation is what you need to destroy those character flaws in you that look you already know what your character flaws are but you think it for me you think you're hiding them from other people because you're clever enough and you're just not and when you realize you're not fooling anybody you

0:24:45 can stop fooling yourselves about your deficiencies and then really go address them yeah that's that's great yeah being able to to hear that feedback or want to hear that feedback is definitely a huge piece.

0:24:57 Can I say one more thing, Andrew, because this is probably what made the biggest difference to my public reputation. Starting in about 2014, I started in every message giving some kind of public confession of weakness.

0:25:16 Prior to that, I was pretty much the hero of all my own stories. And I remember hearing Kyle item and preach with self-deprecation and I would say, I just don't have those kind of stories.

0:25:30 No, I was deceiving myself deliberately because I wasn't willing to do that. And what I discovered is when I do speech coaching, I try to offload this wisdom every time that you criticize yourself in public, people will praise you in private.

0:25:52 Every time you praise yourself in public, people will criticize you in private. That's not just for preachers, that's for every leader.

0:26:00 And I think our current president is really struggling with that. If he would just come out and say, yeah, you know what, I was probably pretty tough on people or yeah, You know, I but he doesn't have the ability for any kind of public humility If he did I think it would be a game changer for his reputation

0:26:22 publicly Yeah, yeah, that's interesting you are one of the chapters in your book is a titled consistency And I love this this quote from that chapter.

0:26:32 You say that there is no magic wand to wave no secret sauce character comes through the monotony of small decisions stacked on top of each other.

0:26:43 A leader's habit in the shadows ultimately evolve into character in the limelight. As the old adage says, your competency will take you only as far as your character will sustain you.

0:26:54 And competency is seldom the leader's lid character is. Now what are what are some of the habits that you currently have now that these habits and the shadows that because because even like the conversation that we're having now there's just like things that you're doing now a little bit older in life

0:27:12 that you probably should have been doing in your thirties like what are what are some of those things that you could encourage leaders to to do a little bit younger like the receiving of feedback but really just even personally just your relationship maybe even with the Lord what are what are just some

0:27:27 of the consistent habits for you in the shadows. Yeah, thank you for asking that because these are, these are not stunning.

0:27:37 I'm going to mention three eye floss twice a day. I didn't until probably I was 30 years old. And a friend of mine said, bro, you need to floss.

0:27:51 And it was like, nobody likes to floss. house. I will do it twice a day, more after breakfast than before I go to bed, not because of dental health, but because precisely because I don't want to do it, but it only takes like a minute.

0:28:07 And if you can do something for a minute that you don't want to do, but you do it twice a day, then there are other things you don't want to do that it will leach into.

0:28:16 I make the bed every day. I make the bed. It takes me about a minute and a half. It is when you can do something that you don't want to do for a minute and a half, I've also started this some Get some of you are doing the same thing.

0:28:33 I live in Arizona In fact, I almost just moved right now because the shade of a palm tree is cooling me down That's how weak I am.

0:28:45 I hate being cold So after every workout, I do a cold lunge I'm not convinced that it helps. I don't see any benefit.

0:28:54 The benefit is, and I just, like, I'm in there and I'm just cringing and I just keep telling myself, I can do hard things, I can do hard things, I can do hard things.

0:29:04 I go from the cold plunge then to a meeting with someone I don't want to meet. I give a critique or a conversation that's difficult that I don't want to have.

0:29:14 I reach out to someone that I don't want to reach out to. If you can do simple things that are hard, that builds your muscle memory of doing hard things.

0:29:27 Okay, so here are two things that I do have done for a long time that I think would be some of the best investment of your time.

0:29:37 every day I have a to-do list, which a lot of people do. Who cares? But in my to-do list, every day I rate them A, B, C, or D.

0:29:49 A's are things that these are items that will deliberately influence my character and competency further on.

0:30:01 I decided what was my A when I was about 20 years old. I want to be a scholar that helps get deep thoughts accessible to the masses.

0:30:11 That's who I want to be. I did that in the Academy, and now I'm doing that in the church. I'm like the theological Yoda of CCB.

0:30:19 Why? Because every day I did my A's. Part of those A's are reading Greek and Hebrew. No one has ever asked me if I read Greek or Hebrew today.

0:30:29 No one ever. But because I do it every day, I can do it naturally, and when one of our executive pastors, he pulled me in yesterday and said, Hey, could we do this, this thing on people living together?

0:30:41 And I go, actually, I've already written it. Why? Because I'm doing my A's every day. So do your A's every day.

0:30:49 Make it to do list every day. And I don't care if you get your BCs or D's done, the challenge is your C's are usually your urgent events.

0:30:58 So, if you can begin to master the important over the urgent and do that every day, here's another thing that I've done.

0:31:07 I write a letter of gratitude to every staff member handwritten note every year. We have this year 500. It takes about an hour or a week to do that.

0:31:21 I hate doing it, but there's nothing fun about it. But what I recognize is if I can take two minutes to write it to write a card to someone and I don't just I do just say thank you I try to get specific.

0:31:39 I even look up the personality profile. I look up their job description. I look up their their hiring date I look up their family members and their kids and I'll just I I usually write about 10 of those notes a day.

0:31:53 Gratitude, a habit of gratitude, is more powerful than the time you invested in it. It has outsized advantage to the investment.

0:32:04 So for me, the habits that you want to develop are those that have an outsized impact for the investment that you have to put in it.

0:32:15 Yeah, those are some great tips to appreciate that we talk a lot about being nimble in church planting world. It's just kind of the nature of the job when everything is brand new, everything's up in the air.

0:32:28 You have a chapter in your book titled nimbleness and again one of the quotes that you say is leaders we need to recognize that the power that nimbleness brings to an organization is the difference between success and failure.

0:32:39 Rarely, do we ever win with our original strategy? So you talk about humility that is required to be nimble. Can you share a little bit about that?

0:32:52 Yeah, I wish Jeff were here because he's the one that has mastered that. For me, as I think through it, Andrew, I think the key to being nimble is humility.

0:33:06 There's a couple of keys. One is humility because if you hold onto an idea so tightly that you don't let go of it, you're never going to be flexible enough to try something else.

0:33:19 Humility also, and this is the second part of humility for nimbleness, is to ask other people questions. Don Wilson, the founder of CCB, he taught me this like nobody else.

0:33:31 He interrogated everybody, well what do you have to look at this? We think about this. He always ask other people like, what are your ideas?

0:33:39 One time he went to the residence and said, I think it was like a hundred dollars. I mean, he gave you a hundred dollars for anyone who gives me the best idea of how to improve CCB.

0:33:48 And there was this one young lady that we haven't done it. But it was just the creativity of it that got her the award.

0:33:57 She said, if we could scan every part that comes into the parking lot, But then we could measure attendance records based upon the license plate.

0:34:09 Now, we can measure that if they check in a child. We can measure that if they volunteer. We register everything.

0:34:19 But if someone just comes in, we don't have their picture, we don't have the phone number, we don't have the contact, we don't know who they are.

0:34:25 And so, asking questions of multiple people will help you think outside your own box. But you have to be humble enough to say, as a leader, my job is not to have the best ideas.

0:34:43 My job is to pull the best ideas out of the people around me. So humility is a key to nimble this.

0:34:54 Here's the other key is margin. Sabbath is essential. And I'll just be honest. Andrew, I didn't take a Sabbath when I was at Ozark.

0:35:06 I just figured, well, you know, we don't have classes on Monday. And I still worked on Monday, but and then I preached on the weekend, I didn't even know about holidays.

0:35:15 Like, President's Day, those days, oh, I'm still going into work. such a mistake. I have been far more effective here at CCB because it's a high value.

0:35:27 Friday is a sacred day to me and I'm going to be making sawdust in my wood shop on Friday. I'm not going to be looking to determine even if I'm preaching, I'm not going to be doing email.

0:35:37 In fact, I don't look at email from Thursday afternoon when I leave the office until Monday morning. And nobody's died yet.

0:35:46 Like, I just, I don't have scars on my wrists. I can't save the world. But if I don't have margin in my life, margin is where the best things happen.

0:35:58 Like, I know I'm preaching to the choir here. But every miracle of Jesus was an interruption. Like, there was nothing, I think there was none of them that were planned.

0:36:09 And if you don't have the emotional, financial, time, or intellectual margin, then you will not take advantage of the opportunities that come your way.

0:36:22 And so there's part of nimbleness that is adjusting when you hit a brick wall. There's another part of nimbleness when you jump through an open window.

0:36:34 Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. I appreciate a lot of that because we talk a lot about in church planting world just the tension of inviting people in to speak into the vision and really believing that vision should be a team sport and all of that but at the same time, we also have this conversation of

0:36:51 not wanting to abdicate our leadership as a leader of an organization, right? And so there's a tension there of maybe even the self promotion a little bit but also just the humility of being open to other ideas or changing when somebody else has a better idea than you do, but it's just an interesting

0:37:10 tension in all of them. Yeah, if I could, Andrew, I want to speak straight to you church planners that Andrew's help to support every leader isolates, because it's your responsibility to take on the burden of the congregation.

0:37:33 And Ashley was our senior pastor. He is a dear, dear, dear friend of mine. I would take a bullet for him.

0:37:42 He isolates. I mean, part of that's necessary, obviously. But on several occasions, I said, bro, do not rob me of the opportunity to stand as your shield.

0:37:57 Do not rob me of an opportunity to hold up your arm in the battle. Do not rob me of an opportunity to take a shot that you have to take.

0:38:07 Let me be your rear guard. There are people all around you that would jump off a cliff for your vision.

0:38:17 Do not rob them by holding your emotional vulnerability to yourself, your pain to yourself, your challenges to yourself, to not delegate, delegating tasks is one thing.

0:38:31 But delegating emotional pain is far more rare in leaders. You will never be nimble if you if you are holding the mantle alone and not sharing your burdens, your pains your joys and your fears.

0:38:48 Yeah, that's a good word. So we talk a lot about in the first half of your book, just a lot of the character is just the foundation of leadership and then more in the second half, you kind of get into just very practical tangible things of how to do XYZ cast vision, develop strategy, things of that nature

0:39:06 . And I love your vision or your chapter on vision because I do a lot of work with church leaders in this area and I recently spoke to a pastor who was wrestling with the idea of trying to, like, do we need, like, some bigger kind of a vision, more than just making disciple makers, and to his credit,

0:39:26 like, they had a well thought out, like, discipleship strategy that they were running, but he was struggling with the tension of a need to have a bigger call, something deeper than just making disciples.

0:39:38 And I'm curious within the casting of vision or the purpose of why we need a vision or why should we have a vision or is he right in his assessment of maybe it's just about making disciples.

0:39:51 I'm curious as to how you would have maybe gone on to that conversation and what you would have said to him.

0:39:58 Yeah, as you articulated that, the making disciples, it's too generic to be a clear vision. I mean, it's the command of Jesus.

0:40:11 Obviously, it's the last thing you ever said is to go into world and make disciples. So that simple non, that is our mission, but the mission of the vision are not the same.

0:40:22 Your vision is of a preferred future. So, let me share ours, and then I'll unpack why I think a specific big grand vision matters.

0:40:33 Our vision is to reach the entire valley for Jesus Christ. We do that with our mission by winning people to Christ, training believers to become disciples and sending disciples to impact the world.

0:40:45 So that's vision, the preferred future, and then the mission is the specifics to accomplish that. The Phoenix Metro Valley is the fifth largest metro area in the United States has over five million people in it.

0:41:03 As of this month, we have an average in-house attendance on our campuses of 50,000 and people go 50,000, that's bigger than our city.

0:41:16 We do not think we're a big church because we don't measure the people who come, we measure the people who don't.

0:41:24 We are reaching 1% of the Phoenix metro area. That should never be sufficient for anyone. Now, other churches, well, we've got a lot of other great churches, okay?

0:41:39 Together, we are reaching all the churches in the Phoenix metro area. We are reaching approximately 17% of the valley. 17% that means 73% or 83% are going to a Christless eternity or at least to say they don't have a local body of Christ that they're involved with which vastly increases your chance of

0:42:05 a Christless eternity. So how in the world can we be complacent with 50,000? It is not the strategies that are going to get us there.

0:42:14 It's the vision that will get us there. So I'll just tell you a couple of things that have happened in recent years at CCV that really showed us why most visions are insufficient.

0:42:32 Most visions for churches are internal oriented, it, rather than external oriented. It's more of a portrait than a vision. A vision is out there.

0:42:44 A portrait is in here. We decided to help at one Christmas, we decided to take up an offering to help other churches.

0:42:53 So we said to our church, that we're going to take up this offering, we're going to call it more than us.

0:42:58 And every penny you give, it's going to go to another church. And we're going to vet them. But churches can apply to us for funds that you were going to give.

0:43:07 We expected a, probably a $2 million offering. It was a seven and a half million dollar offering. Our people affirmed a vision that was external more than internal.

0:43:22 And it just took our breath away that they were proud to be able to help other churches. They're loyal to CCV, but they recognize that when you have your eyes up and eyes out when your vision is most discipleship ministries as they as their development church are how do we build our own people up and

0:43:44 pardon me if I'm skeptical but so many discipleship ministries are Bible study oriented that is Bible study is not discipleship and look no one's going to criticize me if not knowing loving and and chasing after the Bible the word of God is my life but that's not discipleship.

0:44:05 Discipleship is hands and feet more than head and ears. And so simply teaching more people the Bible, the reason that's so attracted to pastors is because that's what we do best and that's what we know best and that's what affirms us best.

0:44:20 If your insecurity going back to chapter 1, if you are insecure in your role, you're going to primarily define discipleship as what makes you the expert that other people have to come to you until our vision is outward focus is not going to impact the city and probably won't grow our church fast forward

0:44:40 . That was by the way three months before COVID and this seven and a half million dollars. Many of the projects that we've fetted they said it doesn't matter now because we can't build the building because no it's coming to the building.

0:44:55 Could we divert the funds to online video presentation of the gospel, which of course absolutely yes, let's help you do that.

0:45:04 Our video crew and production team went to dozens of churches to help them master this. So what happened the seven and a half million dollars actually was way more influential because of COVID post COVID.

0:45:19 What do we struggle with mental health issues. So we took up another offering and we said we're going to take up an offering and we're going to pay for 80 percent of the mental health resources that anyone needs.

0:45:33 You don't have to be a CCB member. Like if you live in the Phoenix Metro area, you are part of our vision.

0:45:39 So we paid, I believe it was three and a half million dollars to mental health care where people, many were members of our church, many were not.

0:45:47 But when your vision exceeds the boundaries of your organization, that's when you really begin to get traction and see the strategies that will take you beyond where you are now.

0:46:02 Dude, that's so good. We talk a lot about just intentional disciple making and just moving beyond just the head knowledge into the hands and feet.

0:46:11 I feel like we could just pause and unpack that for another couple of hours. But I really love that you that you kind of brought that up and yeah, just the the art and Intentionality behind having a a big compelling vision that really just captures the heart of your people to want to be on board I you

0:46:31 know kind of kind of struggle because I'm currently attending a church where we have a lack of some of that right now And it's just like man if you could just get up and I've talked to the pastor if you could just get up and share a big dream Like, you would unlock so much sacrifice financially, time

0:46:47 wise and resources that the people have to be able to want to see that vision just to be bigger, part of something bigger than themselves.

0:46:56 And I love that we have an opportunity to kind of share some of that, but you also talk in the intentionality of vision earing.

0:47:05 And you say like, if you in the book, like if you can't create space for vision earing, and you will sentence yourself to management as a substitute for leadership.

0:47:17 And then you kind of go on as like, visioneering like takes intentional amounts of time, like a couple of days a year, a couple of days a month, like all of these different things that you kind of lay out.

0:47:28 But what would you say to a young pastor, or maybe a leadership team who is just, quote unquote, too busy to take time to really invest in the vision of the church?

0:47:38 and maybe like that ABC list or that sea level list of just the urgent becomes way more important than it needs to be.

0:47:46 How would you kind of talk with, talk somebody through just the need to invest in the time that it takes to create vision?

0:47:52 Yeah, let me give you just some practical talk right now. So if your church leader, if I could, I would forbid you from ever saying I'm too busy because is that's a lie, and you know it's a lie.

0:48:07 I have 24 hours a day. You have 24, and like, everybody has 24 hours a day. Your problem is not time.

0:48:14 Your problem is priorities. That's the number one. Number two, God wants you to Sabbath. He wants you to Sabbath daily with eight hours of sleep.

0:48:28 And if you're not getting that, like you are shooting yourself in the foot. If you don't have time for physical exercise, for prayer, for Sabbath, and for eight hours of sleep a day, then you are doing something that someone else wants you to do, not God.

0:48:48 To just be honest about that, every time you say, I'm too busy, you are admitting a bit of idolatry because you have raised someone else's vision or someone else's purpose or someone else's values above gods for you.

0:49:04 So let's get really honest and just say, I'm a coward. I'm too afraid to say no to an elder. I'm too afraid to say no to a friend.

0:49:14 I'm too afraid to say no to a family member. Let's just be really honest. If you're saying I'm too busy, you are saying someone else is usurping the priorities of God in my life and that's because I'm coward, I can't say no.

0:49:29 That could help us get started, right? Right. So now you need to ask and I think we do a helpful job with this on the book about what are you doing that you don't need to be doing?

0:49:41 What are you doing that someone else could be doing? The primary thing that all of us should be doing is what only you can do.

0:49:52 And I don't think I got into the book with this, but I'm assuming I'm talking to some younger guys here and I've kind of developed a template as I coach young guys in the professional path of how to think through their how much of their job they're going to love and how much they're going to hate, okay

0:50:11 ? You should never take a job where you hate more than 50 percent of it, but every job has the crap in it.

0:50:18 My first job was at McDonald's. It was a lot of crap, but I should never have taken that job if I didn't enjoy 50%.

0:50:25 That's in your 20s. In your 30s, it should probably be, I don't know, 40-60. I don't like 40% love 60.

0:50:37 In your 40s, it should go to 30, 70, 30, 50, 80, 20 and 60s, 90, 10. You should earn the right to do what only you can do.

0:50:49 Now, here's another, I stole this in Craig Groschelle, who stole it from someone else. Earlier in your career, you grow through your yeses.

0:50:59 Later in your career, you advanced through your nose. So the younger you are, the more you click, you can have to say yes to speak at a camp if you want to be nationally known speaker.

0:51:09 You're going to have to say yes to a leadership meeting if you want to be a key leader. But the older you are, and not just chronologically, but the older you are in the organization, the less you should be doing that other people expect you to do, and the more you should be doing only what only you

0:51:26 can do. And if you're the point leader, there's fewer those than you think. There are other people who can create an agenda for the meeting.

0:51:35 Okay, there's other people who can do primary recruitment calls. Yeah, that's good. One of my favorite chapters was towards the end of the book called Take Action, and in that section on the Great Commission, really, you just talk about how making disciples is the mission of every church and every Christian

0:51:57 , but you also talk a lot about the contextualization of living out that mission personally and, as well as corporately, even in the business world.

0:52:08 You go on to say, and I love to this quote, and I'd love to hear you just unpack it a little bit more.

0:52:12 You say, perhaps, the single most important role of a pastor is to apprentice non-pastoral professionals to use their vocation as a ministry and to turn their home into a church.

0:52:30 Talk a little bit about just the unique nature of just seeing your vocation as just the mission field that we're kind of going into, but specifically to the job of the pastor to equip people to be that missionary or to be that person.

0:52:49 There's a lot there that I just would love to hear you just kind of just talk a little bit more about.

0:52:53 Yeah, so so you church planners, you are in a unique location and there are at least three, maybe more, but these three in particular where you are always the expert a pastor, a policeman, a physician and a Bible college professor or a college professor like you're always the expert so everyone's telling

0:53:15 you yes Yeah, and you think you're the smartest person in the room when you go into hospital people say well, should I get this cancer treatment?

0:53:22 You don't know. You're a pastor. You're not a physician. Quit acting like you're a physician, a lawyer, a scholar, a life coach.

0:53:31 You're not. You do what only you can do. And that is to help people think spiritually about their vocations. So let me, after that exhortation, let me give you an example, Ryan went with me to Nepal.

0:53:48 We have created a mission trip that I think is the perfect mission trip. One of our CPAs, he's a finance guy, made so much money, he told God, tie this not enough.

0:54:02 So God, where do you want me to serve in the world? I want you to show me that some some of the poorest people in the world and what their physical need is and They have least access to the gospel.

0:54:14 He ran across Nepal has more water per capita than any country in the world and none of it is Pottable to dig a well in Africa is $4,500 to dig a well in Nepal is $1,500 So he just went over there and started digging wells every well creates a church So he has another guy that after that the church is

0:54:34 established and it's not an official church It's it's illegal to preach the gospel in Nepal So this guy's willing He's a bivocational pastor willing to sacrifice and maybe persecuted to present the gospel Okay, so that's the setting and and so Matt and that comes to me and goes how do I how do I like

0:54:53 get more How do we get more people to know about this? I said are you kidding me? You're in the Himalayas You invite it, invite a group of guys to come, each of them pay for a well, each of them do leadership training for pastors that are preaching to those wells, and then we'll take a three-day hike

0:55:12 in the Himalayas. It is, like even as I'm saying this, you're going, well, I want to go, I want to be a part of that, to spend three days hiking the Himalayas, oh, we end, by the way, at Mount Everest View hotel, 14,000 feet.

0:55:27 And in order to get back to Kathmandu on time, we have to take a helicopter and fly over base camp.

0:55:37 Sorry. So this is like a manology. And what I do, I am interested in helping people in Nepal, but that's not my primary goal.

0:55:49 My interest is in seducing high-influenced men in their careers, and this happens to be a men-only trip, to then come back and make a difference.

0:56:03 Ryan works for Ping-Golf Company. He's the head engineer. He's scary smart, pretty quiet. It was funny. We were in Saudi Arabia on a layover going to Kathmandu.

0:56:20 And some guy in line in front of me is like bragging good. Yeah, I'm I'm coming over here to play golf.

0:56:26 I said, Oh, what clubs do you do you swing? And he goes paying and I go, that guy designed him.

0:56:30 It was like it was one of those mic drop moments where yeah, you're not that important. Anyway, Ryan goes, how's a great trip and comes back and says, I need to devote my life, my engineering mind to helping organize other trips.

0:56:45 He is leading that trip this spring. Without me without the head of the organization. That is one example of what we can and should do.

0:56:57 We've had F-35 pilots, we've had major business leaders. They have expertise in their area and you don't have to take them to Nepal to do that but you do have to be deliberate in investing in them because what they don't know is how to spiritually lead their families.

0:57:18 Most business leaders cannot pray with their wife at home. But you know how to show them how to do that?

0:57:25 I'm like, my gosh, you do that in your sleep. Most men, I met a guy in the gym three days ago, like this dude is ripped and he's he's a trainer and he's a professional athletic coach.

0:57:41 And he said, man, could I could I get some time with you because I don't know how to read the Bible on my own.

0:57:47 Dude, in one hour I can I can help change your life with that. Let's take the top tier leaders and get the expertise that they have in our ministry, but also take our expertise for reading the Bible for praying for like, what is it?

0:58:05 What are the important habits that you have to develop a spiritual life? You know that. So don't, don't be insecure about what you know and don't be overly secure about what you don't know.

0:58:19 One last thing I'll say, CCV is a unique church and that most churches spend about 60 percent of their budget for salaries and benefits.

0:58:32 We are under 40 percent in salaries and benefits. We're actually about 38 percent. We want to get down to 35.

0:58:39 Why? Because we don't hire pastors to do ministry. We hire managers to help people do ministry with their skill sets.

0:58:49 You have public school teachers in your congregation that would be phenomenal at organizing curriculum and room development. You have carpenters and lawyers and engineers.

0:59:02 Why do we think we have to do the ministry rather than facilitate the ministry for the body? Discipleship, if you want to get practical with it, it should be apprenticeship, not Bible study.

0:59:17 Yeah, that's good. Well, Mark, I'm so grateful for just the opportunity to unpack your book, the master leader. Again, the 12 ways to lead like Jesus that's available on Amazon or wherever else you want to buy that.

0:59:31 Mark has a website markmore.org, a ton of resources and video resources and other books and thanks for sale on there.

0:59:38 But Mark, I'd just love to have you close by any, Any last call to church planters, to church leaders, anything final to kind of encourage them.

0:59:49 I know that you close your book and talking a lot about mentoring and things of that nature. So just having a little mentoring moment to close our webinar together.

0:59:58 Yeah, well, I would invite any of you if you want to learn what we're doing at CCV. We will ask you how to make it better because we think that you have something to offer us.

1:00:10 But if we have something to offer you come down for a weekend, we'll roll out the red carpet and show you what we've got.

1:00:16 I will say this, especially to church planners, the majority of the growth in the church is from new churches. The majority of growth in groups in our church is from new groups.

1:00:28 So what you're doing is bold and brave, I never did it. I've always envy those of you who did and so thank you for Going and making Jesus famous all over the world.

1:00:39 Could I could I pray for you? Oh, please Holy Father Would you infuse in these men and women a passion for a greater vision for a deeper humility help them to trust what you've said about them that they are your children that your hand is on them and And just as Jesus held the seven candlesticks in his

1:01:02 right hand, the seven stars of the seven churches in his right hand, those are the angels of those seven churches.

1:01:11 Not the angels of heaven, the angels on earth, the men and women who are leading those churches in Asia Minor, would you put your fingerprints all over these men and women?

1:01:21 so that today they would sent your presence in a unique and extraordinary way and put on their mind other men and women that they could mentor to be the hands and feet of Jesus where they live.

1:01:34 We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Mark. Thank you, Andrew.