← The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 710 | Craig Groeschel Breaks Down How He's Adapting His Communication and Preaching for Digital Ministry, AI, and Social Media, The Power of Extreme Habits and Behaviors, and Why People Are Bored With Cool Church
01:16:25
Craig Groeschel breaks down how he's changing and adapting his preaching and communication style for digital ministry, AI, and social media. Plus, he shares the power of extreme habits, how to motivate yourself and others during successful seasons,...
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- [00:01]
A
The Art of Leadership Network.
- [00:03]
B
I don't see the thumbnail. Someone else chooses that photo. So it's not that controlling for me. And I don't have time to care about what I look like everywhere. But what I do have time to care about is do I believe that this title is gonna be the most effective to draw clicks? Because the difference can be, you know, it can be hundreds of thousands of views.
- [00:28]
A
Welcome to the Carrie newhove Leadership Podcast. It's Carrie, so glad you joined us today. Today we have got the one and only Craig Groeschel back. I'm so excited to have him. And we go right into how he is. After 29 years adapting his communication and preaching style for digital ministry, AI and social media, we get into the weeds with this. I think you're really going to appreciate it. He's one of the best. And one of the reasons that Craig is one of the best is he never rests. I mean, yeah, he sleeps, I get it. But I mean, he's always growing, always learning. We talk about the power of extreme habits and go into a couple of extreme habits. He has a couple of extreme behaviors and why people are bored with cool church. We get into the model. What is he tweaking? What is he changing at Life Church? And a whole lot more. Hey, shout out to Dewey on Spotify. Dewey left a comment on my interview with Noah Herron and shared that they're in the midst of church planting right now themselves. Congrats on hitting 600, Dewey. That's amazing. We're cheering for you. Love it when leaders connect with us. And wherever you're listening to this on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, where I listen to my podcasts or wherever. We're really glad that you joined us today. And hey, when you leave a rating and review, when you share an episode with your friends, that allows us to get the very top guests like Craig Groeschel. So Craig Groeschel is a New York Times bestselling author, as you know, the founding and senior pastor of Life Church, an innovative multi site church that meets in physical locations across the US and globally. At Life Church Online, he's written 20 books including We Talk about that. His most recent book, the Benefit of the how confronting your deepest questions can lead to a richer faith. Also, how do you keep notes on like illustrations and examples to write 20 books and preach 36 times a year? Well, we talk about that. Craig is a leadership expert. He speaks regularly for the Global Leadership Network. I never miss an episode of his Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, one of the top podcasts in the space. And he reaches hundreds of thousands, if not millions of leaders around the world annually. And I'm so glad to have him on the podcast. And now a quick word from one of our partners. Now to today's conversation. Craig, it's always good to talk to you. Welcome back.
- [02:47]
B
Hey, Kerry, thank you, man. It's always fun. You do a great job.
- [02:52]
A
Well, likewise. And we talked about this before, but the recovery from COVID which was five years ago, which seems like yesterday and forever ago, was really difficult for a lot of churches and I kind of want to start there. You and I have talked about it on this podcast before Life Church was actually no exception. There's almost nobody who was exempt from having to rethink a lot of things over the last five years. So you mentioned to me as we were getting ready for this that things are finally working again. Like, you're back, you're feeling great about it. What was the path back like for you?
- [03:28]
B
Well, you know, it was more complicated than I expected and considerably different than I expected. I'm not sure, you know, that anybody knew what it was going to be, but post Covid, there was just a different mood, a different vibe, kind of a different mindset about so many different things. Everything from a lot of people what, what their approach would be to what's church going to look like in their own patterns. And then, you know, for employees and team members, like, you know, where are we going to work? How often are we going to work, how hard we're going to work? And so it just, there were, yeah, I thought after Covid we'd go back to leading like normal. But there were, there was a new gear I didn't realize. And one was, you know, there's kind of normal leadership and there's two, there's crisis leadership. And then there was a, you know, we'd never been in a global crisis this way. And so there was another gear I hadn't led before and that was leading out of a crisis. And so I'd say that the biggest thing is we were just way, way more hands on, way more intentional about communication. And normally, Cara, we'd work on one or two things and we'll work on em for a month or two and we'll move on. We had three things that we worked on and it was, I wanna say, like probably almost two years we where every time we'd meet we say, here's what we're going to do. And we'd name these three things over and over and over again and drive them in, drive them in, drive them in. And it took longer to kind of accomplish those things, drive them deeper into the organization. But once we did, we were able to kind of rebuild the values and the work ethic. And now here we are today, and by the grace of God and a lot of hard work for a lot of valuable people is we're seeing great results again and it's fun again. And so I'm ridiculously thankful.
- [05:17]
A
Can you remind us of what those three things that you focused on were? And then I'd love to know how you settled on those, because there's probably 30 things you could have chosen. I'd love to know the three.
- [05:28]
B
For us, these things were really, really clear. And there's, you know, every church has a unique calling, gifts, opportunities. And we were not doing the things that I felt like we were uniquely called to do. So the three things we talked about, Kerry, we said, we're gonna reach people, create margins, simplify processes, reach people, create margins, simplify processes. It doesn't sound groundbreaking, exciting for us. It was indescribably essential. And the first thing is that we are an ongoing strength 30 years in is that we have a deep abiding passion for evangelism. And on the backside of COVID I think people had a little bit more spiritual complacency and we just weren't nearly as evangelistic. So reach people, reach people, reach people. We put that number one, because that's the most important thing. And the goal is to reach people. And then kind of the byproduct is you want the church to grow again. Like we have always seen consistent growth over the 30 year period and we weren't necessarily seeing it. And so we're gonna reach people. And then that is the goal which the byproduct is growing and then creating margin. This is hard to describe, but one of the things that helps us do what we do is we create a lot of margin in one of the big areas is financial margin. So how do you launch one or two or three new locations in a year? How do you fund the youversion buy block? We have to create financial margin to do those things. And our philosophy is we're going to pay for a building before we ever break ground. That's just what we're able to do now. It wasn't always that way by any means, but we are now. So we had really big financial margin and then suddenly one day we didn't that we started spending more and we can't Grow and effectively do our ministry without financial margin. And so we went from a very high percentage to a much lower percentage, and then over the next three years, took it to the highest percentage ever. That's really, really important to us. And. And I think every church needs to understand what are the drivers that help them fulfill their mission. And for us, one of them is having the financial margin to grow, hire new staff, building campuses. And that's real important. And in simplified processes, we just got slow. And you can't be slow. You can't grow fast if you're slow. And we were bigger. And growth creates complexity. Complexity kills growth, Right? And so we worked really hard and celebrated every time. We could cut a meeting in half, Go from, you know, four meetings a month to two meetings a month or one meeting a month, not need three signatures, but need one, not needing any signatures at all. Be able to make decisions deep in the organization rather than needing approval. And so we worked really, really hard to simplify and then document those places that we were so we could celebrate it. And we talked about it over and over and over and over again until I think people. They went from almost getting tired of it to then surrendering and going, okay, well, if we're gonna talk about it, let's just do it. And they did it, and we did it. And those three things helped us to become effective again. And it just took more intentionality, more time than ever before. And part of it's because we're, you know, we're older, bigger, that kind of stuff. It's not like we're leading a team of 12 people, but, you know, hundreds and hundreds across different states. And so it just takes more work and more intentionality. But that's one of the things I'm seeing, is that in leadership today, we have to be willing to be ridiculously focused, be patient, and be consistent to really make a difference.
- [09:17]
A
I'm super encouraged, personally, that you decided to focus on evangelism, that it's like we just got to go and reach people. One of my observations over the last five years is that a lot of other churches coming out of the crisis, coming out of COVID double down on discipleship. And I'm talking a lot about that right now. I think we're five years later. I'm curious. And it's not that discipleship isn't important, but evangelism is kind of on life support in the church, in most churches right now. What made you decide that evangelism was the right focus, not something else?
- [09:53]
B
Well, I think to Me, evangelism and discipleship are much more closely related than I think a lot of spiritual leaders recognize. And we tend to pit them against each other. Like, we're more evangelistic, we're more discipleship oriented. And Jesus was really clear when he said, go into all the world. That's evangelism, and make disciples. Those things go hand in hand. And if we're discipling, well, what are we discipling? We're actually discipling people to be evangelists. And if we're evangelizing, well, we should have a heart for discipleship. So to me, those things are really not that. They should never be competing values. They should always be complimenting values. And I think it's a real mistake when we try to be good at one without the other. And in my mind, there should be no such thing as a church that doesn't care about evangelism first. You can't disciple if you don't evangelize. So you care about evangelism first. And discipleship is right there in the mix, in the conversation. As soon as we evangelize, we disciple, but we have to evangelize in order to disciple. And so we start there.
- [11:07]
A
I think that's really well said. I've always seen it. I described it to leaders because we used to get that criticism a lot because we were all about evangelism when I led. Connects us. And still today. And I'm like, look, it's an infinite loop. You can't have good evangelism without discipleship, but you can't have good discipleship without evangelism. The two inevitably lead to each other. You said that you're making small changes that made a big difference to your model. So where Life church is now, now that you're back, now that things are working again, let me back up a little bit. How did you know you were back? What is that moment? Because leadership is never done, right? It's like working out. You don't retire. You're like, all right, I've worked out enough that I'm good. I'm good for the future. How did you know? What gave you the sense that you were, quote, back?
- [11:56]
B
Well, I would say we never came in and said, oh, my gosh, we're back. What happened is, at some point, I started looking up, going, hey, this is fun again. And it was more of a sense of, now we're not spending as much time correcting problems as much as we are, or we're solving better problems. We're solving growth problems rather than complacent problems. And so it's a little bit just more like we've been planting seeds, planting seeds, and now we're seeing a little bit more of the harvest come around. And so in a healthy church, we're always planting and we're always harvesting there. For a few years, it just felt like we had to plant, plant, plant, plant, plant before. Now the harvest is coming in and we're replanting it. And so it's just there's more of kind of a multiplication of healthy ministry today. And it just seemed like for a long time, it just took a lot of work to make corrections.
- [12:59]
A
You're making changes to your model of ministry. Small tweaks, small debt differences. What are you doing to the model and approach you take to ministry or however you want to frame it that is sort of optimizing it for the moment we're in.
- [13:14]
B
So I would say this, that the message never, ever changes. We know that. But the methods have to always change. And I think a mistake, Carrie, that I see sometimes is a pastor has kind of an epiphany or an experience and comes in and blows everything up and tries to take what was a Baptist church to be a charismatic church, or what was a charismatic church to be more traditional. And I think those kind of changes are generally counterproductive, almost unfair, and bad leadership. I do think a good, faithful pastor is going to always be kind of reading what's going on, both in the church and in culture, what people are reading, how they're thinking, how they're relating and making tweaks along the way. So there'd be a billion little tweaks. None of them are important on their own. But altogether, I think they would matter. Some of them would be downline. For example, at all of our locations, when you have a lot of locations, you start to learn what works and what doesn't in this day and age, how you're making disciples. And so you get like a lot of case studies. And then so you can start dialing things in. And so there's a lot of little things that we're dialing in from how do we onboard people to small groups. How do we take people who are brand new to the church and help them get from. We just attend to. We're actually telling someone our name. We're getting in a place where we could be disciples. So there's lots of little things like that that are just technical from how do you get them to give you an email address? How do you follow up with them? Lots of Little things like that. The bigger things from my perspective would be like in communication, I'm making just tweaks to preaching the kind of things, the approach to what I would be saying a little bit, what goes on kind of behind me. So we can talk about any of that you want to. But there's just dozens of little things that most people would never know. And even if they're not making a big difference, sometimes it's just helpful to say, here's what we're working on. And if people know you're working on something, you just, you don't tend to make progress unless you're intentional. So we're going to be intentional about some things. I'll talk about anything you want to just. So ask away.
- [15:35]
A
I'd love to start with communication because that's one thing I've noticed. I've followed you for years and years and years. Probably not right back to 1996 when you started, but early 2000s. And I noticed that you're very good at evolving. You're still you. If you see a 20 year old message from you, you're like, that's recognizably Craig. But you are changing and evolving as a communicator. Do you want to talk about some of the conscious decisions you've made or tweaks or changes you've made in your approach to communication and take that from preaching or the other leadership stuff you do.
- [16:12]
B
So my dad was a coach and in sports he'd always say when you're playing, you're always working on something. And so in preaching there's always something, always. There's never not something that I'm working on thinking about and it would be, most of the time there's nobody that would even notice. But I'm working on it. So some of the little things, and I'll give you some different categories. One of the things we all know and life Church was one of the first churches to do church online and kind of pioneer that. Oddly enough, now I'm starting to realize that what I do or don't do, not just, you know, I'll look at the camera because that's, you know, then you're making eye contact. I've been doing that for a long time. But even just giving people a chance to interact and reminding them that I know that they're there by saying, hey, if you're online, type in the, you know, just acknowledging them directly is one thing. Recognizing now that for years we had more people that would watch us on church online than in A physical attendance. But now YouTube is exceeding our physical attendance. And so little things like titling work really hard on titling. Sounds silly. On creating what I call a YouTube hook, meaning that we're going to edit the sermon to start at a certain point. And at the point at which it starts, I want in the first 30 seconds to try to do something that helps keep people there. So when I'm communicating in the sermons now, I am very aware, always aware, that people have way shorter attention spans. So I am looking for ways to give them what I'd call like intellectual breaks or emotional breaks. So we're talking about content. I've got to give them a story. It used to be I wanted a story because I thought it was helpful to illustrate. Now I just got to give them a break to bring them back in. Or I'll do what I just call a visual change up. So if you're looking at the screen and I've got behind me an LED wall, we're going to change the look of that just to, like, bring someone back in. And so it's just like a mood change. I'm changing a little bit the type of stuff that I'm talking on just a little bit. And then in my messages, I'm actually coming in more prepared and less prepared at the same time. Meaning I'm really working on being precise and building more of a thorough theological case often. And I'm being unplanned in other areas, strategically unplanned, to let kind of like the Holy Spirit flow more freely. So in parts of the message, I'm way more dialed in with exact vocabulary, precise wording, and other parts, I'm intentionally not being hardly planned at all and being really, really open to what the Spirit would lead us to do. And so all those little things to me, add up to other little things, too. I'm trying to be more myself again, be a little more raw, be a little more authentic. And you have to be kind of strategically authentic. Nowadays. You can't be, you know, when everything lives forever, you can't say everything you really think or feel. But I'm trying to be more authentic, more real, and then talk about things that push the envelope just a little bit. Just a little bit. Like, can we really talk about that here? Yeah, let's go ahead and do it. And so those are just a few things.
- [19:36]
A
Okay, that's a masterclass right there. And I want to unpack a little by little. So on a very practical level, when you're composing your message, there's Kind of a couple of schools. One would be that a preacher would say, I'm just going to preach. And it's up to the video team to figure out what the hook is, what the handle is, all that stuff. You're shaking your head no. For those of you who are watching on YouTube, so you're involved in thumbnails, titling, structuring the message so it does well on video. Can you unpack that a little bit?
- [20:09]
B
Yeah. To me, everything matters in communication. And it sounds crazy and some people make fun of it. We're going to pick an outfit that's color matches the tone of the mood of the message.
- [20:24]
A
Oh, yeah, because you. Okay, you've talked about this before. Sorry to interrupt you, but you have said, what do I want people to know? What do I want people to do? What do I want them to feel? You have been big on that for, I don't know, a decade plus. So let's go there for a minute.
- [20:41]
B
So to me, everything matters. So when I'm doing a message, I am actually directing the video message as well. And I know this sounds like a lot of people are gonna go, that's dumb overkill, whatever. And it would be for a lot of places. But I do one message live and there'll be, I don't know, 200 and some odd services at campuses. They all see it on video and then church online, there'll be more people that see that than the campus. And then YouTube, there'll be more people to see that in the campus as well. So in many ways, what we're doing is, in this day and age is it is visual communication at its core. So I'm directing the message, and if I want a tight shot, I'm looking at a certain camera. If I want to show more body language and expressive, I go to a different camera and they follow me there and they take a different shot. If they're not taking me on a tight shot and I want to be tight, I slow it down, look at the camera, wait for them to find me, because I want to say certain things in a way that is impactful. Someone could criticize that and I would even take the criticism. But in my mind, I want to do everything possible to maximize the effectiveness of the communication. And in today's culture, in a TikTok era, if you're not working to give people visual communication, emotional connection, good content alone without a strategy behind it isn't typically going to stick. And so we have to work harder, be more strategic. And so I plan out a Lot more, like I said of how we're going to demonstrate it, show it, say it, help them feel it, and then other parts, if we don't let it flow and be authentic, you can overproduce something. And so there's always going to be a balance.
- [22:38]
A
So you're right down into thinking about what camera shots you want to. How are you approaching titling and thumbnails? I mean, we both preached in the day where it's just like, ah, this message is called whatever. And 90% of the people wouldn't even know what it's called.
- [22:54]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm kind of sad that we have to do this, but I kind of think you kind of do if you have a YouTube presence. So it's a. I mean, I'm telling you, like, we have the whole message done. I can't have a whole series done before even title a message. So what we wanna do is we want our titles not to be clickbait ish, where they say something that the message is not about. You actually betray your audience if you do that. But you want your titles to speak to felt needs. And so we have a group of people that study it, and I think we'll have a pretty good title, how to Whatever. And then they'll come back and say, actually how to titles don't really work. Like, they don't. Oh, okay, well, you know, and then I'll say, well, why not? And I'll try to learn it. And we will, I would say, Sometimes look at 20, 25, 30 different titles and work with a team of people that comes back and says, here's the one that we think's gonna work the best. And I'll argue back and forth and then we'll look at what's the thumbnail, what's the title on the side, and then someone else picks the shot. And again, I'm really sad that it's come to this, but if we really care about reaching people, we're not gonna criticize the mechanisms, we're gonna work with them. And if algorithms favor something and people are more likely to click on a message that has this felt knee title or hook or whatever, then I'm gonna work to give them that in order to help them get the message that I believe is gonna change their life.
- [24:26]
A
So I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but you're involved in that process. Number one, because you're learning. Number two is they're kind of like an artistic sign off so that you don't look at YouTube one day and find this great crazy Craig Groeschel pose and these words that you would never say. Is it that, like, it's like, hey, this is me. I want to make sure that.
- [24:47]
B
No, there's a lot of this, there's a lot of that stuff out there that I'd never sign off on.
- [24:50]
A
Exactly, exactly.
- [24:52]
B
Yeah. I actually don't. I don't see the. I don't see the thumbnail. Someone else chooses that photo. So it's not that controlling for me. And I don't have time to care about what I look like everywhere. But what I do have time to care about is do I believe that this title is gonna be the most effective to draw clicks? Because the difference can be, you know, it can be hundreds of thousands of views if one gets hot. And then what you do is, you know, now, you know, I'll go and visit a campus. There will be lots and lots and lots and lots of people who say, oh my gosh, I discovered you on TikTok. I found this church because of YouTube videos. And so they're just. There are different streams into the ocean of the church. And so at whatever level a church is, whatever they use, they should be prayerful, strategic. And so we both, yes, we respect and honor the power of the Holy Spirit to do what only the power of the Holy Spirit can do. And we have wisdom and we're strategic and we're prayerful. We put all these things together. And the bottom line is, as a pastor is you wanna be doing something that you believe is gonna make a difference. If it's just symbolic, if it's just. You just kind of think it might make a difference. I always wanna be driving ourselves to learn, to get better, to improve. And we're gonna be students of what's going on in the world. And then we've gotta adapt our style of communicating the life changing message of the gospel into a way that's most current and viable. And so that's what I'm working to do.
- [26:27]
A
What topics or approaches are resonating well today?
- [26:32]
B
Great question. So here's what I think, and I think we've talked about this before. We're in the older generation now. When we started Life Church years ago, it was cutting edge. Like, we weren't wearing suits and dresses and that was like crazy. I actually started, I'd wear like khaki pants and a blazer with no tie and. And that felt wild. First time we brought drums into the church, you know, we were the antichrist videos. Oh, my gosh. It was crazy. So things went from pews to chairs, from hymnals to screens. We know the story then to smaller screens. And now even traditional churches are trying to become contemporary. And so I've told pastors that contemporary is the new traditional. I just think it is.
- [27:24]
A
I agree.
- [27:25]
B
The songs feel the same, the stage looks the same, the sermon series are kind of the same. And there's nothing wrong with that inherently. But I think that some people are getting bored with what I call Christian cool or contemporary cool. Maybe I'm just getting bored with contemporary cool. So I don't think that the church is gonna like, radically shift back to the Apostles Creed and the doxology and stuff like this. But what I do think, Carrie, and I'm seeing enough evidence to believe it's worth paying attention to, I'm seeing younger Christians, 18 year old, 23 year old, carrying paper Bibles into church all the time. I'm seeing what I'd call like a hunger for kind of historic Christianity. And so I did a message series. We called it the Arrival. It was on Advent, just something that Advent started 400 years into the church and it was this. And then we talked about four different things. We lit candles and we showed technology on the wall. And so it was both. It felt like a historic observance of the Christian faith with kind of a modern presentation. And people seem really intrigued by that, drawn to it, strangely. So if I had done that five years ago, they'd be like, where's Desperate Housewives? And why are you doing Advent? And it's. That feels, to me at least, more authentic to where I am, and I think more authentic to where people are. And so I'm doing a little bit of that in January of this year instead of doing like habits or kind of New Year, new you, or year of the Breakthrough or whatever, we're doing kind of what I call a hardcore gritty spiritual formation series. And I think it's resonating well. So to me, I just want to be one step ahead. Not because we're competitive, but I don't want to be following the trend. I want to be sensitive to where God's leading us. And I promise he's not leading every church to the same place, but if we're tuned in, he's leading us all somewhere. So for us, I'm looking at how can we continue to be a little more grounded in some of the tenets of the faith and also how can we be way more authentic and not like cool authentic. I'm just talking about, like Talk about real stuff, real questions, real doubts, real fears. And so I'm trying to bring a little bit more of myself to that. And I think in 2020ish, I just got more conservative, more cautious in kind of the peak of the cancel culture. And now I'm going back to going, well, the canceling at least let cancel me for being me, not me trying to be somebody else. And so I'm trying to really keep it a little more raw, just a little bit more real and a little bit pointed. Not toward, hey, let's be a cool church, but let's be grounded in the, the truths of what's kept us christ centered for 2000 years.
- [30:40]
A
What would some examples of that move toward authenticity, transparency? What would that be? How are you more transparent and you than you might have been five, 10 years ago?
- [30:54]
B
I did a message last week on it's kind of on idolatry and the jealousy of God and about how we put things ahead of God. And I was just really, I was just really transparent in talking about how, you know, for way too long that like people pleasing has been is a form of idolatry. And that's been, you know, something that I've just given into. Just wanted to be liked and wanted to be respected. And that's impacted what I've said or hadn't said. And I just got real transparent about that. It wasn't anything that I kind of haven't said before, but I just let it be a little bit more true. There's a way we can be selectively and protectively authentic and there's a way we can let the guard down a little bit more. Let the guard down a little bit more. And then when I was praying, I like genuinely was repenting. This was the part that was a little bit unscripted is I just kind of got this sick of like, I really am sick of this in me and I am repenting. I just like genuinely was repenting before God and our church just happened to be there watching. And it was just very, very real. Just very real. And I think that's the goal of that first of all, is just to be that to be genuine. And the byproduct, I think, is that it's going to be connecting with more people.
- [32:09]
A
How do you determine the line between what is privately shareable and publicly shareable? Because I think we all know there's a line there.
- [32:19]
B
There is a line. And that's a really good question. I'm more careful in some areas than I used to be because Information lives forever and people actually read into stuff that's not always true. So if I'm talking about someone else, I'm gonna be really, really, really careful. I'm really careful now about, like, family members. We'll use our family as an illustration. And what I found is there's sometimes a kid will like it, and then five years later they won't. And so I don't just let em sign off for now. I want to say, are they going to be happy with this later on? So I'm way more careful with anything that involves other people. And I'm trying to be a little bit less careful in what directly impacts me. And so I think a lot of times as communicators, we actually want to make ourselves look good. And so you can be strategically vulnerable because that, that works. I don't want to be just strategically vulnerable because it works. I just want to be vulnerable. I'm tired of the game, right. I just want to say, okay, so I really do have hurts too, but you have to be really, really wise and you can go too far. I think I listen more to other people around me, so I'll ask a lot of people before using something. And if Amy hesitates, then it's an immediate no. If a trusted team around me says, yeah, you probably better not, you know, I just don't. In the past, I would often kind of overrule them. So I'm listening more and I'm working to be. So we have to be both careful and we have to be aggressive. So we want to be careful not to hurt others or say the wrong thing. But if we're not working to really find authentic moments, it's just going to become canned and faked and we don't have time for that is too important. Right.
- [34:12]
A
Anything else on communication, Craig.
- [34:19]
B
I think that I've heard you talk a lot about and write about AI. I think that AI is going to be both a gift and a curse to us. And so we're going to have to be real careful how we use it. I'm using it quite a bit, but I'm using it for prompts, for basically I'm asking all sorts of random questions. But man, we cannot let it replace the human encounter with God. And so I'm both optimistic and afraid of it. I'm optimistic because I think it can be helpful. But when it starts to replace our own private study, devotion, creativity, I think it's going to be very counterproductive. So I would just say use wisely.
- [35:05]
A
I worry about that too, Craig. I mean, I have a love hate relationship with AI, but it's the moment we're in and, you know, didn't surprise God, as people have said. And I find it's a really good critic. It's a really good brainstorm tool. I mean, you and I probably, we have great teams around us, but you sit in a brainstorming meeting for an hour and sometimes you're like, I think we have a half good idea. I'm not sure. I go to ChatGPT, it's like, okay, here's my rough notes. What would you call this? Give me 10 options or do that with quad. And I'm like, some of these are brilliant. Whoa. I don't know how long that would have taken us to get with humans around the table. And you vet it, you check it back with your team and that kind of thing. What are some of the more innovative uses or helpful uses that you found for AI? Today's episode is brought to you by Glu. You know, with summer winding down, it's officially back to church season. A crucial window to reconnect with your community and reignite momentum at your church. And Glue plus gives you everything you need to hit the ground running this fall. So here's what you can do. You can send texts and emails personally to invite people back and keep them engaged all through the autumn. You can create custom groups like parents, volunteers or new visitors and automate follow ups for prayer requests, first time guests or events. You can be more communicative than ever so no one and nothing falls through the cracks. You can use AI powered insights to understand your community's needs and tailor your outreach accordingly. And you can welcome new families into your area with a new mover program. So thousands of churches are seeing real impact with Glue Plus. How do you get on board? Well, join them today@glue.com plus. That's G L O O.com P L.
- [36:48]
B
U S. Well, I think you're right. You do have to check a lot because a lot of times I'll ask it a question and it'll come back. Give me an answer, be real, definitive, and I'll look at them as wrong.
- [36:59]
A
Oh, 100%.
- [37:00]
B
Yeah.
- [37:00]
A
Wrong.
- [37:01]
B
Little things I'll do. Like, I mean, I will ask it dozens of questions every day. I was talking on the jealousy of God and like, is there anything interesting about the history of the root word of jealousy? And, and so I learned, I didn't know, but the Hebrew word is qanah. Q A N A is human jealousy. When there's a second N that's a Hebrew intensifier and that takes it then the second N Q, A, N, N A means it's use of God alone and only of God and never of anybody else of God. And it takes the jealousy to the infinite degree and it's a righteous protective jealousy. It's a little thing that I just ask.
- [37:44]
A
I don't think I would've found that. I didn't know it knew Hebrew. Of course it knows Hebrew.
- [37:49]
B
Yeah, second nun at the end. And so I don't think I would have found that googling the word. And so then I double checked it and kind of did a deep dive. I will use it from everything from like give me titles to this. I'll put in something and say, I'll put in a message and say critique this. Where's it weak? And it's surprisingly good, surprisingly good at times. And so I'll ask it all sorts of ridiculous questions. I'll ask it about, tell me what people would say in their mind about this subject and I'll prompt it and say, you know, what kind of excuses would people make? And so the problem I have is I generally know what a 57 year old married white guy who's been preaching for 30 years is going to think. I don't know what a 22 year old black girl who's studying psychology who grew up in Kenya and moved to. I don't know what she's thinking. And so I'll ask what do different people think about this? And try to get inside the minds of people. I'd ask what arguments would you have against this? If you're not a Christian, how would you critique it? If you're a Christian who knows more than me, how would you critique it? And so I'm just asking all sorts of weird random questions like that. Then Carrie, sometimes I get so stuck in it I say no more, I'm done. I'm not going to look at it again today because I don't want to become over reliant on it. And so then I put it aside and force myself not to use it anymore. So it just needs to be a tool, but not something we want to rely on solely what are okay, because.
- [39:21]
A
Some people are going to comment or message us and say, okay, what are the changes you're making on guest services? We talked about that 20 minutes ago. That you're making some tweaks in assimilating people when they're new. I would love to know. And sort of under the umbrella of content used to be scarce. Now, it's everywhere. And obviously you work as hard as you can possibly work on your content. Most of the people listening work very hard on their content. But you're in a universe that's flooded with content. People are isolated, people are lonely, depression is high. What changes are you making to community? Because you and I have talked about this before, right? But I think if content is scarce, content is valuable now, content is plentiful, but community is scarce. So how are you elevating community at life church?
- [40:10]
B
So one of the things I'm trying to do in every message is to mention the value of community somewhere in there. And so I'm not going to do a message without presenting the gospel. I'm always going to talk about who Jesus is and what he did for us. And at the same time, I think in today's culture that helping people know the value of community and recognizing that real strong spiritual community never, almost never ever happens and is sustained accidentally, that there has to be some level of commitment to it. And so in every message, and it can be as little as we're going to talk about this in our life groups because we value people and it's hard to do life together. And how can you, how can you ever be effective spiritually with someone without people praying for you and people there in your life? Or we're gonna talk about this in our life groups, because if you're sick and tired of not having someone there for you and not having someone to go to, then this is your week. And so that's one thing is just me trying to model it. And then the other thing, Carrie, this is kind of weird, but we're really becoming increasingly flexible on what we would consider community. It used to be there had to be like real structure around a life. Groups meet on Tuesday night at 7 to 9 o' clock, and we go through pastor's message or we're going through a book of, you know, on end times or whatever it would be, and a lot of structure to it. And now we're kind of saying, you know, what if you get together with two couples for dinner and pray for each other? That actually if you're doing it intentionally and you're doing it consistently, that's a form of community. So we're broadening out what it means to be doing life together. And it used to have to be more structured to count. And now we're trying to do is say, hey, if you can just be intentional about it, even if we don't count it, it counts. Meaning we don't have to measure it for it to be successful. We just have to help you create the elements that make it successful for you. And so it's a little bit less of we want our numbers to work as much as we want it to work for people. And so those are just a little bit of the ways we're loosely trying to work to help people. Some people can't commit to do the same night four weeks in a row forever. So let's work with what they have and give them permission to do whatever works and helps them.
- [42:41]
A
You've told me that sometimes leading through successful periods can be more challenging than leading through crisis. So things are stable and growing and back to where you hoped they would be. You're excited about the future. How is that sometimes more challenging than leading through a crisis like we all experienced a few years ago?
- [43:02]
B
So here's what I think, Carrie. I think that the longer you lead, the more you're going to recognize there are different seasons than you seen before. There's a startup season. You're leading through, you know, startup. There's leading through periods of high momentum, there's leading through times of a dip, a decline, there's leading through crisis, there's leading out of a crisis. Now that things in most pastors I'm talking to now are saying, oh, I feel like I'm a little bit more mentally healthy than I was before. I feel like I had a little bit hope than it did before. Things are a little bit better. Things are a lot better. Whatever it is, what I am now recognizing is I think I'm seeing more of a hands off approach to leadership. Kind of like a sigh of relief. And the thing I'm trying to help people see is I go, no, no, no. When things are working well, it actually takes as much or more intentionality to really lead. Well. When things are falling apart, it's really, really clear. You know, you've got to, you gotta communicate quickly, you gotta decide quickly, you gotta conserve cash, you've gotta make hard decisions and everything's really clear and you're on point. When things are going pretty good, it's easy to take your hands off them. And if you take your hands off for too long, things are not going to be good. And so you have to work harder to find out why are things working. So to quote Andy Stanley, if you don't know why they're working when they are, you won't know how to fix them when they're not. So you have to know why are they working you have to see problems early, you have to solve them quickly. You have to take whenever things are going really, really well. It's easy for average to hide. You got an average employee and they're hiding out there. They're not coming in early, they're not staying late, they're not really engaged. And as soon as you have a higher percentage of team members not engaged, eventually you're going to lose spiritual impact. So you have to work really hard to find out more information, be really, really dialed in. And that's where I am right now with working really hard. In fact, I sent you notes I'm doing to the staff about how do you sustain spiritual success? Because sports teams rarely win back to back championships, right? Almost never in. Only eight teams in the NFL have won back to back and then nobody as of this moment have won three. By the time this comes out, we'll know, did Kansas City do it or not? We don't know yet, but we'll see.
- [45:26]
A
So yeah, and in your notes and thank you for sending them along ahead of time. But you were talking to your staff, you're challenging them against complacency. Because I think you're right. We've all been through a moment. Culture can be exhausting. It's not the world we're used to leading in. So it gets very easy just to say, oh, finally we're growing again. Exactly what you said. We can just sit back, relax, kind of enjoy the flight. Two prongs to this question. Let's start with this. How do you challenge yourself against complacency? And then how do you encourage a team not to get complacent?
- [46:03]
B
Well, whenever leaders become comfortable, they're vulnerable, right? And if things are good, we become comfortable. For myself, I'd say a few things. One of the things, and this would not be true for everybody, but for me, what I wanna do is I always wanna have about 30% more to do than what I think I can do. And so what that does is if I've always got a little bit more than what I think I can do is it keeps me very, very, very focused. If I've got less than I think I can do, then I relax and become complacent. I start goofing off. If I've got more than I think I can do, it makes me make decisions F it helps me to delegate more effectively, it helps me to say no when I should say no. And then I have to put what I call artificial deadlines on things to say. I have to get this Done by this time and artificial deadlines. It increases my efficiency and it increases my creativity. And so I'm a pressure produced. I'm prompted by pressure. And so I need to create some. I need to be in an environment that helps add pressure. Not everybody's gonna be wired that way, and so my way is not the right way, not the only way, but for me, it is that way. So I keep my. My plate a little more full than it should be, and that keeps me motivated. I do not have downtimes. Like, it's. Like it's a holiday and everybody's off because it's present, the building's closed, whatever. It's not. I'm not off. I'm not off. I'm not, you know, and nights are generally a time to work. The other thing for me is all my kids are grown and I'm in a different season. But it's just the mission is so important. I always want to have a little bit more to do. So I like to see people that are walking fast. There's a sense of urgency. And what I'm looking for is not urgency. Whenever it's needed, I'm looking for. What I call preemptive urgency is like, you know, we're praying before the battle, right? We're working hard before we have to work hard. We're making difficult decisions before we really need them. So I want to lead with preemptive urgency. And I just kind of always live there. It's not. I don't have to work it up for me. I think I'm wired that way. You ask, how do I do it for the team? And the interesting response is you do it differently for different people. There are some leaders that you don't ever need to really motivate because they woke up motivated that day. There are other leaders that if you're not challenging them, they're going to become quickly complacent. And so it's like your children. You parent children differently. You have to say, to get an outcome with a whole group of staff or volunteers, you might have to say something one way, one time, another way, another time, and coach them individually, not just corporately. Now, corporately, what we have to do always, always, always is we have to share vision nonstop, nonstop, nonstop. We have to drive the values nonstop. Why? Because vision drifts and values leak. And over time, people do not stumble toward productivity. They stumble toward what's easy. So is this hard work of here's what we stand for, here's where we're going, here's what we're doing, it's the basics. Over and over and over again. People ask like, hey, what are you working on now? What's new? What's new? What's different? Like, not a thing has been different in my life for a long period of time. It's showing up, doing the same things over and over and over again. Not getting bored with it, not trying to complicate it, just trying to keep the, keep the vision white hot and the values, putting them before people and work really hard at it. And so I'm doing a whole talk, we have the whole staff that comes in twice a year, and I'm doing a whole talk on how do you do that? How do you keep the spiritual passion hot?
- [50:06]
A
So I want to get to that. But I want to ask you too. You're working. I mean, you're. Sometimes you're up at what, 4:30, quarter to five, you're in the office early, usually before the sun rises, you're working at night. And I agree, you are, I don't want to say wound tight. That's the wrong word, but you are a coiled spring. Like you are always ready to go. And yet you got to a point of burnout almost six years ago. Like just at the edge of it. How do you maintain, like, even your Sabbath, We've talked about that before, right? Where you're like, okay, I get to work for an hour on my vacation when the rest of the family's at the beach. How do you modulate that to make sure you don't go over the edge and you're not running tired again?
- [50:54]
B
Well, and again, every leader is created by God with different strengths and weaknesses. So this is just for me. But the thing I worked on years ago is not that I'm going to not work as hard, I'm just going to work in a healthier way. And so it's little things. Like now I've learned how to be more productive in a short period of time by blocking out time. Like, nobody gets in this time. And so if you give me four hours of uninterrupted time, I could do more than I would do on an eight hour day if I've got two 15 minute meetings. And so it's little things like that. So understanding when you're. And you talk about this a lot, Carrie, in one of your books, you know, you talked about, I think, when is it green for you? When's the time zone?
- [51:41]
A
Yeah, green zone for me. Me and you are wired the same way. For me it's 7 to 11am yeah.
- [51:46]
B
When are you most productive and what rhythms make you most productive? When do you bring people in? When do you eat? So for me, it's like a science of I want to know everything, like, what am I drinking, what am I eating, what snacks do I have nearby, what kind of noise do I hear in the background? Where's my phone? What kind of resources do I have together? Who's allowed in the room? How long do I have before something comes in? And so it's just like a science of how do I create that environment that produces the maximum efficiency and effectiveness? And you're asking, how do I modulate that for me? And this is like, I talk to my counselor now. We look back and say, I can't believe it was so simple. He literally helped me to just get a couple things that disconnect my mind. And I've talked about it a million times, but one of them is doing jiu jitsu. Another one is flying airplanes, and it just disconnects my mind if I'm not doing those things. There are very few things. There's almost nothing else in life. Maybe one or two things I won't talk about here, but that will get my mind off of work and church and all that. But it just gives me a mental break, and then I find I can still continue to work really hard. It's also like with Amy is we've worked on what are the rhythms that work really well for us. And so she's now a part of helping me stay healthy. I'm a part of helping her stay healthy. And now we're able to work just as hard, maybe even a little bit harder. But do it from a place of health and for the right reasons and in the right season. With kids this age, it's dialed in and it's working. But we didn't get here without help. We had to have a community of people around us, help us see how we're wired and how to do it in a way that lasts.
- [53:36]
A
Bit of a left turn. You've said this numerous times on your podcast, and we were kind of joking about it before we started recording. You said you have extreme views on certain topics. And I would just be curious, what are some extreme views that you have that a lot of other people wouldn't have? Things that you're like, totally believe this. Not sure everybody would. Ones that you're comfortable sharing.
- [54:01]
B
I wouldn't even know. What category are you talking about?
- [54:06]
A
Well, pick a category. I don't know. We haven't had this Conversation. So I'm just curious what those extreme opinions, extreme views might be. You can talk about socially. We could talk about with work. We could talk about self leadership, team leadership, whatever you think.
- [54:24]
B
Well, here's what I found, is that sometimes my extremes have been wrong. And so I was pretty critical against people that I would call lazy. And then with the help of people around me, I've recognized that some people aren't lazy. They just value something different. And so if I value productivity and movement and production, they might genuinely value sleeping in, drinking coffee for a long period of time, sitting next, looking out the window, looking at nature. And I would have seen that as like, you're being lazy. They would say, no, I'm actually enjoying something different. So it's recognizing my extremes aren't always right. At the same time, my extremes make me unique. And so if I try to curb my extremes in many ways, I might be discounting how God made me. And so rather than trying to help everybody else, embrace my extremes, tolerate my extremes, celebrate my extremes. I really don't want to stop to even ask their opinion. I just want to be free to embrace the extremes. Greatness is born in the extremes, period. You're not going to do something great if you're not extreme. You have to have some extremes. But one of the mistakes we make as leaders is we tend to think other people need to appreciate our extremes, celebrate them. And our extremes may be wrong for most people. And so for me, it's recognizing. And I'll tell my team all the time, I do not expect you to keep up. I don't want you to work with me. I want you to go home, have a family. I've got a whole system designed around me to help me be productive. I got help in ridiculous places that, that everyone else doesn't have. And so I have a life system built to serve God in this way, in these extremes. And that's intentional. I give you permission to have different extremes, to have different standards. I'm not holding you to mine. But at the same time, I want you to let me run. Let me be who God created me to be. And I wanna help you do the same thing. So it's growing, Carrie, to recognize that even when I have extreme views about something, it doesn't necessarily mean they're right. They might just be right for me. And by that, I'm not saying there's your truth, my truth. I'm saying there's the way I'm wired and the way other people are wired, and one's not better, but yours might be better for you, and mine might be better for what I'm created to do.
- [57:05]
A
What extremes are currently really working for you, Craig, that you're like, wow, these are optimized, and they're making me feel fully alive when I wake up in the morning.
- [57:15]
B
So to me, some things are symbolic. And for years, I had one of the strictest diets that you might see. There would be people that would be bodybuilders into health that would be at a level that I'm not at. But as far as a guy on the street, my diet was pretty dialed in. Somewhere along the way, I just thought, hey, life's a little too short to be strict. And so I started cheating in very little ways. And by that, it started out with like, and now that people laugh. But a bite of a cake, you know, one bite and I could do one bite and be fine. And then it was two bites, and then it was a half a piece of cake. Then after a while, you know, every now and then it'd be one piece of cake. Then it would be a piece of bread at a restaurant, then it'd be two pieces of bread. What happened is over about a period of three years, I loosened up maybe, you know, it's still considered pretty tight compared to most, but I loosened up quite a bit. And I looked at it one day and I thought, I just don't like this. For me, the benefit of the food I enjoy is way less than the feeling I get from living up to an extreme. And so I just dial it back in. And I haven't had a bite of anything that doesn't kind of fall within my parameters in maybe two months. And I probably won't do it forever, but I'm going to do it for a long time because I'm not looking for a moment to cheat, because the benefit I get from the M&MS. Or whatever is not for me as good as the benefit I get from saying I'm dialed in in this area. I like that. If I can win in that area, then it helps me to know I can win in other areas. And so it's not a legalistic thing. It's creating a mindset in one area of my life that then goes into every other area of my life. So now my workouts are a little more intense. My prayer time's a little more intense. I'm not missing my journaling. It's a little bit like the Keystone Habits. It's just. It's something. It is an extreme for me. That leads to other extremes that I consider to be extremely effective for me. And I wouldn't hold anybody else to this and wouldn't tell anybody else to do that. But there'd be another thing, like you don't miss your Bible study time, or you don't. Or you stop, you get off TikTok because it's taking too much time or whatever it is. You know, you look for those things in your area that help you feel effective, dialed in, close to God, maximizing your potential, whatever it is.
- [59:56]
A
Can you talk a little bit more because you said you like to have 30% more on your plate than is reasonable. I'm very similar. I was just having this conversation with Katie, my ea, and she's like, you just take on so much. And I'm like, yeah, but otherwise I get bored and I don't expect you. I want you to have evenings with your girls and I want you to have the weekend off and all, all that stuff. How do you approach. I was going to say balance. That's not the right word. How do you approach the tension? That. These are the rules for me, but I'm not expecting that of you. So that people who run a different pace, people with different priorities, don't get subsumed under your capacity.
- [60:38]
B
Yeah, so that's a great question. Really? Really. Practically. For example, my assistant that I work directly with, she would work at my pace unless I almost forbid it. So what I'll do with her is I'll work in the evenings. And so if I text her, she knows that this is pretty urgent and can you reply in an evening? I probably wouldn't text her in an evening. Once a month, maybe twice a month, because I've really worked in the past. It might have been three times in a night, but now what I'll do is I'll say when I email you, I do not want a response. Please don't respond. And by nature, she's a hard worker and she wants to please. So she'll respond. So next day I'll say like, hey, don't ever do that again when I email you, I don't want you to respond. So what I'm doing is saying, I'm getting this off my mind in your inbox. It'll be there tomorrow. Do not respond. So it's not just saying you have permission not to work when I send you something, but it's telling you, don't do it, do not do it. And so she went a week away somewhere. And in the past I would have said, I Would have sent lots of emails or lots of texts in that time. I just made a pile in my office for her and just kept it there. So it was me saying, I'm actually gonna change my rhythms to help you be successful because I know where you're vulnerable. And so she's the same way for me. If she knows I'm gonna take some time off, you know, she's not going to send me something when I'm flying because it's going to trigger me to, you know, bring my mind back into it. So it's learning to value the people around you, learning how they're going to be most successful, and then helping them be successful. If we're not careful, we'll drag them into our dysfunctions and it's not fair to them.
- [62:30]
A
So here's something that I just saw in my notes that I don't want to leave because it's too good. Leaders who don't ask hard questions now will have harder questions, have to ask harder questions later. I think that was from your staff notes that you sent me. Can you extrapolate on that?
- [62:47]
B
What's not working? Well, as today as it used to, and we're still doing it, why is this working? Why is this not working? Why is this campus blowing up? This one's not. Why is this student ministry growing? That one's not. We have to ask questions nonstop, nonstop, nonstop, non stop, nonstop. And if we don't do it, then bigger problems are going to come up later. Why is this team have a lower Q12? Why does this team show up later and leave a little bit earlier? All the time, and especially when things are working, we have to be proactive in determining why something's working, why, why it's not. We have to see early on when something is losing it, losing focus, losing passion. It just takes a lot of hard work. And when things are working, we tend to answer questions, not ask them. And like for years, one of the things you told me you might ask me, hey, what do we need to do in the broader church to be effective? I don't have any idea whatsoever because I am not out there anymore. Earlier on 10 years ago, I was answering questions. Here's how you do multisite and here's how you do this. One day I realized, like, I don't actually have any business answering the questions. I just need to ask them. And so in meetings, I want to ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. I don't want to answer them. And we just, we need, we need to. And then cool Story. There's a guy one time, Carrie, I was getting my arm worked on by this really good doctor, and he asked me question after question after question about a really simple injury. It went on for, I don't know, 15 minutes. He was asking questions, and he's a friend of mine. He got down the end. I said, hey, man, when did you think that you had a diagnosis for my problem? He goes, well, pretty much. I thought I knew when you talked to me on the phone. But I'm never gonna let my assumptions take me to a bad place. He said he had a mentor who said, Ask 21 questions before you ever start to formulate any kind of opinion. And so he's sitting there asking me 21 different questions, circles around it to make sure his assumptions don't lead him to a bad place. In the church world, too many of us are making assumptions that we know why something's working, why we're good, why this is effective, why it's not. And we don't understand the power of God, and we don't understand where our people are. We have to be students, not teachers. And if we're students and asking questions consistently, then we can continue to grow personally, and then we can make a bigger difference.
- [65:23]
A
How many books have you written now? This benefit of the doubt is coming out. Is it 20 that you're at?
- [65:32]
B
20 maybe. I've got one more that's written that'll come out next year. So 20 ish. 21.
- [65:37]
A
Great. That's amazing. You're very disciplined with your time. I would love to go. I want to touch on your new book, but I'd love to get into your writing process. What does that look like? You're so disciplined, so focused with your time. What allows you to basically put out a book a year?
- [65:58]
B
Well, I'm creating other content that can become a book. So sermons can become books. That's a little bit almost unfair because you know someone else who doesn't preach every week starts from scratch. I start from scratch to create sermon series, and a lot of times that'll give you an idea and there'll be content that's usable in other ways. So that's super helpful for me. I think, to answer the question on a different level is how do you create content at all? What you have to do is you have to really understand how you're wired when you're most creative, what tools you need to be most creative, what supplemental support do you need? Do you need to work with other people? Are you an extrovert? Do you need people. When do they come in and critique and contribute to your work? What kind of snacks do you need? What time of the day? How kind of rhythms? And so everybody has to find those things. Mine are super, super dialed in, and I really understand them now, and I'm really hyper protective of them and almost like superstitious. Like, it has to be this way and someone could critique it. And I'd say you're probably right. There's a lot of things that are silly, but in my mind, they matter. And so if they matter to me, they matter.
- [67:16]
A
One of the things I'm curious about is you're preaching 40 times a year. 35. 40 times a year.
- [67:22]
B
I think 36 last time. 36.
- [67:24]
A
36. Okay, 36 times a year. You're writing a book a year. You have so many stories, so many analogies, so many examples. How do you track them? How do you keep it fresh? And you've been doing this for 29 years. I mean, I'm sure you've retold a couple of stories from time to time, but there's a lot of freshness in your work.
- [67:45]
B
I tell a lot of stories over again. There's an app our team gave me. I don't know if we created it or whatever. There's an app where I can go in and type anything in. And it pulls up from my sermon. So it's not just like doing a word search on your computer, but any kind of topic pulls up sermons. So I can go back and look at what I've said before. That's really helpful to me. And then you asked about storytelling. One of the things about storytelling is anytime anything happens that's interesting at all, I'll put it down somewhere. I pulled in to my house the other night, and there was three guys out in my yard. And I just. I instinctively ran toward them, said, who are you? What are you doing? Well, I didn't. How dumb is that? I was unarmed, and I charged three guys in my yard. They happened to be hunters who had shot a deer that wandered into my yard. But I don't know how I'll use that, but I wrote that down. That'll be a story somewhere someday. Cause it's just dumb. It'll be a story. And so what you do is you open up your eyes to say, what is happening in life that is unusual or different, and then just kind of categories and put it in a potential story file. Then how you tell it matters. It can be a decent story, and if you tell it well, it's a good story. It can be a great story. You don't tell it well. It's not a good story. And I'm looking all the time. I planted four fruit trees 20 years ago. Only one of them lived. It never produced any fruit. It sat in my yard for 20 years. I knew one day I talk about that stupid dang peach tree, and sure enough, I'm doing a series on spiritual fruit. All leaves, no fruit. And I'm gonna tell it, but it's been 20 years. I've known that was gonna be a story. And it took 20 years to find a place for it. And there it is. So it's just having your antennas up.
- [69:32]
A
Constantly looking everywhere, all the small touches.
- [69:35]
B
The other thing, Carrie, is I'm working on a message for, like a month. So every time I have a series, I've outlined the series before we get there. And it's just outlined, and it's pretty good outline, but. But then I'll spend a full two days on it once it's outlined. And so from. You know, I already know what I'm preaching on the next message series. And so basically, the buckets open longer. So if you got a bucket open, you can find things to put in a bucket. If you only have a week on it, you're only gonna have a week's worth of ideas come into your mind.
- [70:07]
A
Or two days.
- [70:08]
B
Or two days, Right. So if I've got. If I'm working on. And essentially right now I'm working on seven or eight messages at one time, I've got seven or eight files open that are. Those files attract stories because my mind is thinking in that direction. So having more time with the idea open is really, really valuable.
- [70:30]
A
Okay, so the book is called Benefit of the Doubt. What's it about?
- [70:36]
B
Well, the benefit of the doubt is exactly what it sounds like. It's about spiritual doubt. And I just woke up, number one, I have gone through genuine, real doubts. And one of them is more recent. And I've talked kind of openly about it. Is like, I just. Genuine. I believe in the power of God to answer prayers. I know God is a healing God, Carrie. When I pray for healing, people die. It's the worst thing. And it's, like, very, very disheartening to me because I've seen God do supernatural miracles over and over and over again. But I prayed so hard, so faithfully for so many people close to me that are not here today. It really kind of got into my head, like, what's. I don't get it. God, you don't like me, you don't like my prayers. Did you not really heal? So that's one of maybe four kind of big categories of doubts I've dealt with. When I started talking about that, I was just shocked at the way people resonated with it then. If you take just my personal life. Amy and I have six kids. We homeschooled our kids back before it was relatively normal to homeschool. It was really weird when we were doing it, we had this massive community of homeschool Christian kids. Just the most solid, faith filled, Jesus loving kids that grew up in my home. Most of them called me dad. And that whole generation of students, now they're grown and a decent percentage of them are not in the church today. They're not serving Jesus today. And it just broke my heart. And so I really tried to do kind of a dive into the why, like in our community. Where do we get it right? Where do we get it wrong? How do we get it wrong? And I found one of the most common places that we often get it wrong in the church is that the moment someone starts to express any kind of doubt, what we do next can help determine the direction they go. And if they feel ashamed, if they feel it's like it's unsafe to express doubts, if they feel like they can't process them and they internalize them eventually, about the only direction they have to go is away from Jesus instead of toward Jesus. So I wrote the book to help the kids that I love that have walked away from the church, and then to help someone who might be like me, like a pastor who's been serving Jesus for a long time that still wakes up and goes, okay, I believe this, I believe the Gospel, and there's some things that I just don't understand.
- [73:02]
A
I remember an existential crisis I had in faith probably 15, 20 years ago. It must have been 20 years ago. It was at the other house. And it was like one of those days I woke up and I'm like, is any of this actually true? Did I just make it all up? And you still have moments like that and days like that, but I had a look through. It's a great book. And I just so admire your contribution to the leadership community, to the church as a whole, and really value your friendship and really value your leadership. Craig.
- [73:39]
B
Sorry to interrupt you. Keep going. You were saying nice stuff and I interrupted you.
- [73:42]
A
Just on behalf of all of our listeners, I know how many hundreds of thousands, millions of leaders that you help every year, and I Just want to say thank you.
- [73:52]
B
Well, thank you. And two pastors. I just want to say that if you'd like to preach this book, we've got outlines available on it, and I think it could be helpful. Just. It's free. Take it and preach to your church. And everything we can create that we can give away, we want to do and share to help other pastors. But anyway, I feel the same to you. Your love for the church, I love. Years ago, we talked about your gifts, and you said, hey, I'm having a big impact in the business community and in the church. You know, what do you think? And you could make an argument. A lot of people say, well, you can make a lot more money in business than you can. But we talked about it, and we agreed that you could have a very unique impact in the church, and you've invested your life toward that, and I admire it.
- [74:39]
A
Craig, I gotta tell you, I still remember. My backyard's right over there. I know exactly where I was when we were on that phone call, and I was weighing like, is it a split audience, or am I going to double down on the church? And you said to me, I can take you to the spot in my yard where I was standing. You're like, nobody ever regretted giving their life to the church. And that was just like God sealing it on my heart. And just so benefited from your counsel. Privately, publicly, just thank you. So what we'll do is we'll get our teams together. We'll link to everything we talked about in the show notes, including, and if that happens to be an app that is publicly available where you can upload all your sermons and have a search basis, we'll link to that app as well. That would be one that I would enjoy. Craig, any last thing. Otherwise, I just want to say thank you.
- [75:30]
B
Well, I just want to say thank you to you. If you're listening to Cary and you're not enjoying his daily emails, get them. I read those things almost all the way through every single day, and I listen to your podcast. Your content is helping me be better. And so nobody ever regretted giving their life to the church. And I'm glad you will not regret that. It makes me emotional to know that that contributed to what you're doing today, and it genuinely is making a difference in my life and so many others.
- [76:03]
A
More than you ever know. Thank you, Craig.
- [76:05]
B
Thanks, Gary.
- [76:06]
A
Well, Craig never disappoints, and I'm sure that didn't disappoint. Hey, you can get show notes@carrienewhoff.com Episode 710. Would love to get those into your hands. Next episode wow. I'm going to give you some thoughts on the Wesley Huff, Billy Carson, Joe Rogan thing. All right, my phone blew up with this. I think it's a masterclass in apologetics. We all just got over the last couple of months as he debated Billy Carson and then he appeared as a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience. So I'm going to give you some thoughts about where apologetics is going. So a little bit of a different thing next episode. Tell me whether you like it or not. We are experimenting on the regular. Also coming up, Mark Clark, Annie F. Downs, Mark Batterson, Gabe and Rebecca Lyons, Mark Sayers, and a whole lot more. And thank you so much for listening. Hey, if this conversation with Craig was helpful, leave a review or comment wherever you're listening and let me know. And also share it with a friend. We'll catch you next time. And I hope our conversation today helped you identify and break a growth barrier you're facing. Hey, before we go, pastors, I know how hard it can be to keep your sermons fresh and relevant, especially when you are preaching week after week after week after week. So whether you're hitting writer's block or you're in a rush trying to put the finishing touches on your sermon, it can be hard. And so I want to help. I've created a 10 step preaching cheat sheet. Actually, I just totally revised it. After decades of preaching, I've simplified my sermon prep into a series of steps and reminders. Now updated, they're engaging, relevant, memorable, and ready for preaching in Today's culture. It's 10 simple prompts with examples that you can start using as early as today for next Sunday. So start transforming your preaching. Visit preachingcheatsheet. Com. Get your new copy for free. Even if you downloaded this a year ago or so, we've had 40,000 church leaders download it. It's updated. Check it out. Preachingcheatsheet.com to download your copy absolutely free.