Staying Aligned as a Staff Team in a Growing Church: Insights from Andy Hill

Summary

UnSeminary Podcast Summary

Episode: Staying Aligned as a Staff Team in a Growing Church: Insights from Andy Hill
Host: Rich Birch
Guest: Andy Hill (Executive Director, Mobberly Baptist Church, Texas)
Date: November 28, 2024

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Overview

This episode of the UnSeminary Podcast dives into the practical challenges and strategies of maintaining staff alignment within a rapidly growing, multisite church. Andy Hill from Mobberly Baptist Church shares their real-world experiences—touching on intentional culture-building, communication, and personal soul care for staff.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Creating a Connected Culture in a Large Church

[01:39–03:24]

• Mobberly Baptist Church, though physically large and serving diverse populations (including Hispanic and Vietnamese communities), intentionally cultivates an environment that feels personal and connected.
• Andy: “A lot of people come to a larger church to try to disappear... We want to help them grow in their relationship with Christ... when they’re seen, when they’re known and when they know someone else.”

2. Unique Challenges of a Large Staff

[05:17–08:11]

• Practical issues: Staff cannot all be housed in one building due to the size (over 140-acre campus, five different buildings).
• Importance of intentional practices to mitigate disconnect.
• Weekly in-person gathering of the “ministry leadership team” (20–25 people) to worship, read together, pray, share vulnerably, and connect.

3. Weekly Ministry Leadership Team Meeting Structure

[08:37–10:45]

• Meets every Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. (two-hour meeting).
  • First hour: Focus on personal connection (worship, book study, shared devotionals, the “hot seat”).
  • Second hour: Practical, tactical ministry updates, led by Andy as Executive Pastor.
• Andy: “The time goes really fast, I’ll be honest... The first half is personal stuff... The second half is where we get a little more granular and practical about ministry.”

4. Book Studies for Team Alignment & Soul Care

[11:01–12:53]

• Book discussions foster shared language and development.
  • Notable reads:
    • “Servants and Fools” by Eugene Peterson
    • “Emotionally Healthy Leadership” by Pete Scazzero
    • “Five Essential Things Every Leader Must Get Right” by Richard Ross & Banjo
• Focus on personal growth and “soul care,” not just professional advancement.
  • Andy: “We’re not just human doings, we are human beings… think about your own walk.”

5. The "Hot Seat": Building Personal Relationships

[13:08–15:58]

• A weekly rotating feature where a staff member answers rapid-fire, personal questions from a set of 150 (“How did you get your first name? Favorite movie? A quirk you have?”).
• Intention is to see staff as more than their roles and to form genuine friendships.
  • Andy: “We can do ministry together, but we ought to not just work together, we ought to do life together… They need to matter, they need to be seen.”

6. Strategic, Multigenerational Communication

[16:45–19:50]

• Recognizing the generational diversity on staff: some prefer email, others texting, few face-to-face or calls.
• Leaders must tailor communication channels to individual staff preferences to ensure clarity and connection.
  • Andy: “I have to try to find out the ways that our staff communicate... It’s not the way that maybe I best communicate; it’s the way, you know, how do they communicate?”

7. Rolling Out Major Initiatives: Order and Empowerment

[20:26–23:22]

• The sequence and medium of announcing changes matter deeply: people interpret when and how they hear news as a message of their value.
• Use of staff-wide videos, tailored emails, direct leader communication, and staged rollouts to different groups.
  • Andy: “Our lack of communication… communicates value to somebody… they do matter, but they don’t feel like that.”

8. Spotting & Addressing Staff Drift

[23:40–28:14]

• Regular review of data (events, attendance, websites), combined with informal conversations, helps identify when ministries start to drift off mission.
• Gentle, supportive correction is key: “not here to be over them... I’m here to support, to help steer, to shepherd.”
  • Includes talking through budget reallocations and keeping stakeholders informed well in advance.
  • Andy: “A big mistake a lot of churches make is they don’t communicate early enough, far enough ahead of time... If you really do want them to stay rowing in the same direction.”

9. The Centrality of Personal Devotion (Self/Soul Care)

[28:30–30:39]

• Preserving capacity for ministry requires staff to invest in their own spiritual lives—daily time in prayer and Scripture outside of ministry prep.
• Recent all-staff sessions on “soul care” reinforce this point.
  • Andy: “People’s capacity to engage in life is directly related to some of these self care type things. Your emotional quotient, your intellectual quotient, your physical quotient, and a relational quotient, a spiritual quotient... If they’re not spending time caring for those... their capacity is diminished for life and for ministry.”

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “A lot of people come to a larger church to try to disappear... we want to help them grow in their relationship with Christ... when they’re seen, when they’re known and when they know someone else.” — Andy Hill [01:56]
• “We intentionally pull that [leadership] group together... that meeting is led by both our lead pastor and me.” — Andy Hill [07:27]
• “We can do ministry together, but we ought to not just work together, we ought to do life together... they need to matter, they need to be seen.” — Andy Hill [13:47]
• “I have to try to find out the ways that our staff communicate... It’s not the way that maybe I best communicate; it’s the way they communicate.” — Andy Hill [18:19]
• “A big mistake a lot of churches make is they don’t communicate early enough, far enough ahead of time...” — Andy Hill [27:58]
• “One of the first things pastors stopped doing when they got called to a church was having their quiet time... Just personal time in the Word...” — Andy Hill [29:08]
• “People’s capacity to engage in life is directly related to some of these self care type things... If they’re not spending time caring for those... their capacity is diminished for life and for ministry.” — Andy Hill [30:10]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Andy describes Mobberly’s culture: [01:39–03:24]
• Challenges of organizing a large staff: [05:17–08:11]
• Structure of Tuesday leadership meetings: [08:37–10:45]
• Book recommendations & soul care focus: [11:01–12:53]
• The “hot seat” explained and insights: [13:08–15:58]
• Communicating across generations: [16:45–19:50]
• Rolling out major changes/staff empowerment: [20:26–23:22]
• Identifying and remedying mission drift: [23:40–28:14]
• The importance of quiet time/self-care: [28:30–30:39]

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Memorable Moments

• A minister admitted he needed a do-over in the “hot seat” after a tough meeting, making this activity a beloved, humanizing tradition for staff. [15:25]
• Andy’s honest reflections that alignment “ebbs and flows”: it’s never perfect, and requires ongoing intentionality. [16:45]
• Staff-wide engagement with guest speakers on self-care — “not just our ministerial staff, our whole staff, 65 people in the room.” [28:40]

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Final Thoughts

Andy’s insights reflect both humility and intentionality in leading a large, diverse church staff—emphasizing consistent personal connections, adaptive communication, and prioritizing the spiritual health of team members as indispensable for true alignment and organizational mission.

For more on Mobberly Baptist Church: moberly.org/follow
Explore more resources from UnSeminary: unseminary.com

Transcript

[A]

Are you looking for practical ministry help to inform and inspire your leadership? Do you have a sinking feeling that your ministry training didn't prepare you for the real world? Hey, you're not alone. Join thousands of other leaders in pursuit of stuff you wish they taught in seminary. Welcome to the Unseminary Podcast presented by CDF Capital Helping churches grow. Visit them at CDF Capital, Unseen Seminary.

[B]

Hey friends, welcome to the Unseminary podcast. Man, I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. You got lots of things you can do, but the fact that you're listening for this next half an hour, you're going to be rewarded. Today's conversation I know is going to be the thing, one of those things that we all think about kind of regardless of our church side, what's going on, how do we. It's one of these problems that we often are all thinking about. And so excited to have Andy Hill with us. He is the executive director at a fantastic church, multi site church in from Texas, Moberly Baptist Church. It was founded in 1938. It's one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And on top of having, you know, the in person services and online, they also serve the local Hispanic and Vietnamese population. This is a fantastic church. If you're not tracking with them, you should. Andy, welcome to the show. So glad you're here.

[C]

Thanks for having me, Rich. Excited to be with you this morning.

[B]

Yeah, this is going to be great. Why don't you tell us a bit more, kind of fill out the picture about the church. If people were to arrive this weekend, what would they experience? Kind of give us the flavor of the church, help us kind of place us there a little bit more.

[C]

Yeah. So we sit nestled in the piney woods of East Texas. We're kind of deep into East Texas and the church itself is a pretty large campus. We actually have a lot of property, a lot of facility and so we have a lot of people who, when they first see it, they say, man, this is big. But they tell us all the time that once they kind of get in the doors and they step into a service or start interacting, engaging with people, that it doesn't feel big, it feels still like a, a little smaller church. And we're pretty intentional about that. We, we definitely try to do things to continue to help people feel connected, engaged, seen. Right. We want people to feel seen because a lot of people come to a larger church to try to disappear. Right. And we, we want to help them grow in their relationship with Christ. And so we Believe that happens. Life on life. We believe that happens when, when they're seen, when they're known and when they know someone else. And so when someone steps in the door, they're going to be greeted by someone. There's going to be multiple ministers and pastors standing there who are going to talk to them and try to connect them to one of our small groups, try to help their kids if they have them get connected to, whether it's youth or kids ministry or some of the different things we've got going on. So we're just very intentional about trying to keep a little bit of that smaller, more personal feel towards what happens here. And I think it's making a difference. I think it's having an impact.

[B]

Yeah, that's cool. I know in the coaching I do with churches, you know, a lot of churches that are say above a thousand trying to push 2,000, you know, I'll often say that our real quote unquote competition, although we don't have any competition but our, you know, that when, if people were to leave our church and go somewhere else, oftentimes if you were to do exit interview type conversations trying to learn from those experiences, they will typically leave. People will typically, you see a trend there. They'll leave a large church and not go to the other large church. They typically go to a very small church. They'll go to like, you know, there's a church around the corner and it's, it's 72 people and I feel known there. And so I love that you identified right up front. Hey, we're trying to help people get connected. We want them to be known to be seen. That's, that's a huge deal we got. And we got to think about that strategically and we got to work on that, you know, an intentional way. Well, I got to be honest, so I went on your website and we were, you know, learning a little bit about you. You're one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And so we wanted to learn. And I went on staff page and I had a bit of an experience. I was like, wow, there are a lot of people on the staff at, you know, Mobberly Baptist. One of these experiences of like, yeah, I think your staff size is the size of the average church in the country. That which I. There's people that are listening in that are like, that's amazing. That's. Isn't that all good news? It's like, that's just, it's just, you know, sunshine and unicorns all day long. But there's like real challenges with that. That's, that's got some real kind of tension. And so we'd love to talk today about keeping your team aligned. You know, what does that look like? Maybe first for people who help us understand maybe some of the struggles with that, having a large staff team, trying, you know, what is. Why would we even say, like, hey, there's a problem here that we should be thinking about when, you know, when we have so many team. And again, maybe it's purely theoretical because there's never a problem with your team. Obviously, everything's always amazing. But what would be some of the challenges of leading a large staff team?

[C]

Yeah, it's not theoretical. It is very real and practical. So there really are. When you have such a large team. I mean, there's both just some practical challenges that we face practically. Like just we can't have all of our staff housed in office in one single kind of location, which practically, if we could have them all kind of in the same building during the week, Monday through Sunday, you know, it would be a whole lot easier to keep ourselves aligned. Well, we can't do that. I mean, we didn't get to this size overnight. You know, the church has grown over a long period of time. So, you know, we kind of have people in offices scattered throughout our property. And our property we have, we actually have 140 acres right here. And so over the 40 that house the heart of our campus and facilities, you know, we've got about five different buildings and we've got staff in three of those. So. So we're, we're not together day to day as we just go throughout the week. And so that's just a practical challenge. And practically to address that. There's things that we have to be intentional to do. So one of the things that we do is we gather together the leaders of those ministries. We call it a ministry leadership team. And we gather them together once a week and there's 20, 25 people that get in a room and we talk about some key things that are coming up. We worship together, we pray for each other. We read a book together. So we're going through a book just as a team. We talk about it. Someone in that team is going to lead a devotional that day. So everyone in the group is going to do that. We also do something, we like to call it kind of it's the hot seat. And we do hot seat questions, which is kind of a rapid fire thing. And so we'll put a staff on the hot seat and we ask them quick questions. First thing that comes to your mind, just so we can continue to get to know each other. And. And then we get vulnerable with each other too. And so we'll share hurts, struggles, things that we're facing in our life and pray for each other. So, so we, we intentionally pull that group together. That meeting is led by both our. Our lead pastor and then me. We each have different pieces of the meeting that we lead after some of our other staff have had their roles. So.

[B]

Right.

[C]

We do that every week.

[B]

Yeah, let's dig into that. I'd love to hear about that. That's a, you know, what a fun kind of practical tactic to kind of talk through. So that was one of the questions I was going to ask is who leads this? So you co. Lead it. Talk to me about, like, when is it every week? You know, why do you have it at that particular time? You know, talk us through, you know, even just that practicality to start.

[C]

Yeah. So we, we meet on Tuesday mornings, so we don't do Mondays, you know, coming off Sundays. We want to give everyone an opportunity to try to one kind of rest, recoup a little bit. But also they get a chance to kind of plan their week. They get a chance to, you know, get some things done while we come together as a team. Yep, yep.

[B]

So, yeah, that's great.

[C]

We come together in the morning at 9:30 and then we will go. That meeting goes for about two hours.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Wow. Yeah, so it's. It's a longer meeting. A lot of people you know, say, man, that's a long meeting. You know, how do you do that? Well, the time goes really fast, I'll be honest, and I don't know that this is ideal for every church. I know it's working for us, but, you know, the first half is where we do a lot of that personal stuff, where we worship, read the book, devotional prayer, hot seat, all of that kind of stuff. The second half of the meeting is where we get a little more granular and practical about ministry and all. Yeah. The tactical stuff. So. So the second half of that meeting is that. So the pastor leads. The lead pastor leads the first part. He does those things and then he punts to me and I handle the second part as the executive pastor. So those are the kind of two. Two components of. And then oftentimes different groups will meet after that or go to lunch together, do different things. Right. It just kind of creates opportunity for the team to be together, get together. But. So that's Kind of the breakdown and when we do it, how we structure it, and we do send out an agenda for that meeting. So every Monday at the end of the day, the lead pastor and I meet and we make sure we've got all of our things in a row, and we will send out that agenda so everyone knows exactly what's going to be covered that next day.

[B]

Yeah, that's great.

[C]

So that's kind of the idea behind it.

[B]

Yeah, that's great. Are there the books that you guys have read? Are there a couple that jumped to mind that were particularly helpful for you as you were, you know, leading your team, keeping them aligned as you think about. Because I think we're always, you know, we're always looking for that kind of thing. Hey, what's been a great resource on that front?

[C]

Yeah, man. The first one we went through, and I'm trying to think, it's. It has the word fools in the title. It was a good one. Servants. Like servants and fools, man. It's been so. That's been two years ago. It was a good one speech. Pete Cesaro did one on healthy leadership. We went through that book. Those were two really good books that we've gone through.

[B]

Servants and Fools, the Servants, Eugene Peterson and. Yeah, that book was the first one. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.

[C]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

That's great.

[C]

So those. Those are two that really stand out. That we're going through one right now that I can say. I think it's good. But I'll be honest, a lot of our staff don't really like it. And it's kind of Things that Leaders Get Right. That's. That's kind of the gist of the title. We're still in it. And I think it's 10 things that good Leaders Get Right. I'm not getting that title exactly right.

[B]

That's fine.

[C]

Yeah. So that is just one piece that those first two in particular have were good books. It challenged people's thinking and a lot. I will say one of the emphasis in those books that has really hit home with our staff really is the idea for the individual to self care. Soul care. Not. You know, we're not just human. Human doings. We are human beings. Think about who you are. Think about your own walk. And so those are things out of those two books that have really resonated with the staff, continuing to turn them to. To take care of themselves.

[B]

Is the. Is it Five Essential Things Every Leader Must Get Right by Richard Oss and Banjo. Yeah. Great.

[C]

Perfect. You got it? Yep. Perfect.

[B]

Yeah. But, yeah, all great books. So just to give that to listeners if they're looking. That's.

[C]

That's great. Those are three. Three good resources.

[B]

Yeah, that's perfect. The hot seat questions. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. That's an interesting kind of unique thing. What would, what would you say? How do you frame that part of the discussion so that it's helpful and, you know, it's encouraging? What's like, after a good hot seat session, you're like, oh, that was good, because, you know, this happened. What, what would be some, you know, example and to make that great.

[C]

Yeah. So, you know, that one really, it's intended to help us just get to know someone, not at a ministry level, but at a personal level.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Okay. And so, you know, we. Because we can do ministry together, but we ought to not just work together, we ought to do life together. We ought to be friends. We ought to enjoy the people that we work with. Right. We ought to have great relationships and friendships. So, you know, we don't always have to see eye to eye. We don't always have to get along. We. But we need to know something more about these people because we need to care about them. They need to matter. They need to be seen, you know, just, just like we do. So, so really the way we frame that is we call them up. We literally put them on a. A stool, we sit them up on a seat in the middle of kind of the room and, and we just tell them. I, I've got a list of about 150 questions. I'm always gathering more. They're quick questions, you know, things like, you know, how did you get your first name? What's something that people don't know about you? You know, what is, you know, a quirk that you have? What is favorite movie, favorite food? Do you, you know, do you tie your. Untie your shoes when you take them off when you walk in the door? Right. They could be real low level and they could be. Some of them are, Are a little more serious at times. Could be. Favorite superhero type of movie.

[B]

Oh, that's cool.

[C]

You know, it's just all different kinds of simple questions, quick questions, and I will say, you know, we. We've had some that have been really good. We've had one with one of our staff. He came from. We didn't know this, but he had just come from, like, a really stressful meeting and his mind was really tapped out. And we put him on the hot seat. And the next time he Came back, he was like, man, I feel like I was a dud on the hot seat. I need to do it again. But you know, my mind rained and so he said, give me another chance. So it's kind of cool. Become a fun thing. Yeah. So we, we try to make it not just all light hearted, but it's a lot of light hearted. It's a lot of just to try to have fun with each other and, and the idea is really get to know them.

[B]

So yeah, that's great. I love that when I love the intentionality of like, hey, we're, we're going to try to, you know, we're trying to expose. You didn't say it this way, but what got me thinking of, when you think of those questions, it's like I want to try to open up new information about this person that we might not know. Right. That it's like this is, this person is more than just the kids ministry director or more than just whatever their role is. How do we see them as a human? That's. I love that, that what a real practical. This kind of Tuesday morning couple hour meeting, you know, keeps things rolling. That's fantastic. Are there other things that you feel like have been really helpful to keep your team aligned, keep kind of people, you know, focused in this in the same direction as a church as you're growing, reaching people, trying to make an impact in your community?

[C]

Yeah, there certainly have been. I will say that, you know, the last thing I'd want anyone to think is like, we have this down pat and we're just always crushing it at this. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Because there are times when we're better at it. This is an ebb and a flow. There are times when we can sense that, man, we've started to drift a little. Right. And so we can see that. I would say that. And you know, this gets said a lot and I know some people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it just is true. Communication is key. You have to communicate and you can communicate in a lot of different ways. Now I'm having to learn, right. That some of the. I have to try to find out the ways that our staff communicate. Right. It's not the way that maybe I best communicate, it's the way, you know, how do they communicate? So I. We've got staff here. I mean we're across all generations. You know, we've got staff that are young and then we go all the way up to, you know, senior adults. I mean we've got Gen Z's, we've Got millennials, we've got Gen X's, we've got boomers. You know, we just have a wide variety of the generations. Well, some of them like email, man, email is what they do. They're not a phone person. They don't use mobile devices. They're not on social media, they're not texting. They're, you know, that's not their thing. But then other staff, man, texting is it, right? You know, you want, you want to get a response, give them a text. Now, if you shoot them an email, they're probably not going to read it all, and. And they may not see it for 24 hours or 48 hours. So I have to learn and be specific with the different staff. How do they communicate? What's the way?

[B]

That's good.

[C]

So certain staff, I'm going to shoot a text to certain staff, I'm going to send an email to certain staff. You know, now I'm an executive pastor, so, you know, I got to be careful. I can get real frustrated with some of our staff pretty quick at times. You know, I can pick up a phone and try to call some of our staff, and they're never at their desk. I always have to remember, though, you know, ministry doesn't always happen at their desk. But, but, you know, some of our staff, it's better to call because there are certain things that you don't hear tone in a text, you don't get. Things can easily be misread. So you have, you know, you have to be intentional, you have to be mindful, you have to be thoughtful with your staff when it comes to all those kinds of things, and then you communicate. And so, you know, we do some all staff kind of communications, but we try to do some intentional communications with different groups, different people, and communicate in a way that works for them.

[B]

Yeah, that's good. If you were, if you were going to communicate something, maybe like a major initiative or like there's like an important change coming. What does that look like for you? How does that. How does that. Hey, we got to make sure everybody hears about this. What have been some things you've learned? Because I do think that is a key thing you've hit on that. You know, there's the whole. The problem of, like, man staff, the first time they heard about it or the team, first time they heard about it was somebody got up on a Sunday and talked about it in an announcement. Yeah, that's very disempowering. You feel. People feel very isolated. So how do we avoid that? How do you avoid that?

[C]

Right. That is a great question and a great point. Because we do often we don't realize that how we communicate and when we communicate or our lack of communication, it communicates value to somebody. Now we, we don't see it. We're just trying at times to inseminate information. But if, if we don't share it with our different staff in the right order, in the right way, some of them will say, well, I guess I don't matter. I guess right now we're not trying to say that they do matter, but they don't feel like that. So whether it's our administrative assistance, which. And the frustration that they have, right? So if you have a support team that is broad or big or small, you know, if they don't hear something, oftentimes they're the front line. They're the ones who's going to get that first phone call. And when someone says, hey, what's the deal with this thing? Right? And they say, I don't know what you're talking about.

[B]

No idea. Yeah, exactly, man.

[C]

You talk about. That's very exactly what you said. It does not empower them. In fact, it deflates. They feel like they're not a part of a team. They feel like they're just someone out there grunt doing some work. That's the last thing here in ministry, we want anyone to feel. So we are very intentional to say, okay, who are the groups? So whether it's lay people, whether it's our pastoral team, our ministerial team, our support staff, our maintenance staff, those who do all of our setups and tear downs, you know, we, we do it in different ways. We, we will shoot little quick videos, man, with, with phones. Today, the pastor just pulling out his phone and shooting a quick video. Hey, I want to share a quick update, important update. When they hear it from him and it's sent to them now, they know, they feel empowered. It's like, okay, just information there is just so important to them. So we do it that way. We do it through emails. We do it on Sunday mornings, We make announcements. And a lot of times we do all of the above. And we do, we sit down and we plan that out. We schedule that out. And we say, on Monday, we're doing this, On Tuesday, we're doing this. On Wednesday, we're doing this. And it could be.

[B]

That's good.

[C]

Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon, our communications department is involved in that process. Our pastors get involved in that process. Because we also, whoever leads a team, right? Well, they should hear it before their team does.

[B]

Right? Yes.

[C]

You know, so we just. There just really needs to be an intentionality to make sure the people. And it's probably a little different for every church. Who are the people that need to hear it, in what order? So that's good. Everyone hears it before it just goes out to everybody.

[B]

Yeah, that's good. That's so good. You had mentioned there, kind of while we were getting into that, something caught my eye where you said, like, yeah, there's times where we feel like we might do drift a little bit. Like, hey, there's a bit of drifting away from the mission, from what God's called us to do. Can you give me an example of, you know, how you notice that? What was it? That's like, oh, here's. Here's a, you know, you know, we don't need to out somebody on the podcast, but like an example of the kind of thing the category of thing would say, like, oh, this is maybe a little bit off because we know it's not the person or it's not the department that's 90 degrees against them, the mission. Like, that's obvious. Like, we see those things because typically the, like, people that are five degrees off, you know, man, that's. Those are the hard ones because over time, and that just ends up being this huge gap between us and. Or them and the mission. So how do you. How are you identifying that? What are some things you've done as an XP to. To address that, to pull, you know, pull people back in line, get. Get people back, you know, rowing in the same direction.

[C]

Yeah. So, you know, as an xp, I kind of have some processes that I regularly work through. So I regularly. I collect data. I just go out and I am regularly looking at our website, talking with our different ministries about whether it's an event, whether it's Sunday morning, whether it's something that happens through the week. Just give me data, give me information, what's actually happening, and I track those things. Right. I love Excel. I'm an Excel junkie. And so I put everything in worksheets and workbooks and over the years have built out what my kind of workbooks and structures look like and the things that are important for me. But I also. Data is just one piece. There's just information, too. So I, I talk to people and I. I will gather that information. You know, hey, tell me, what was your intent with this? What was the purpose behind it? What were you guys trying to accomplish? Do you feel like you accomplished it? Right? That's Good. Just challenge them to evaluate things, but share that with me and then finally make some assessments, right? Just to sit down and say, okay, based on the data, based on the information, here's kind of some thoughts, here's some assessments. And, you know, part of the challenge with staff and being the executive pastor at times is oftentimes if they get a call from me or if they're called to my office, right? It's like, hey, am I getting called principal calls? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's like, hey, no. You know, they need to know that I'm here not to just be over them. That's not it. I'm here to support them. I'm here to help steer. I'm. I'm here to shepherd. I'm here to. You know, so at times they do need kind of the. The staff needs to give them just a gentle nudge, not because they're doing anything horribly wrong, but just because, hey, we've just noticed, you know, some of these things you're doing doesn't really align with kind of where we're going. Right. Sometimes that's practical, too, around budgets. Right. That's good. You know, any. Anytime you're in the budgeting process and you tell people, hey, we have a new vision emphasis coming in the next year, and so we're going to shift some budget dollars. Well, if an area's budget is cut, they're like, man, why am I getting punished?

[B]

Right?

[C]

We're not punishing you. Right? This isn't punishment. This is all of us trying to steer in the same direction, row the boat and go so that. So that we're headed towards the same goal, the same vision, the same mission. And so we just have to really spend a lot of time communicating those things. If you don't ever tell them, hey, the vision is going to change or shift or we're refocusing a little bit or, hey, we finished this aspect of it, and so now we're into phase two of something. So if we're not communicating those things far, far ahead of time, you know, I think a big mistake a lot of churches make is they don't communicate early enough, far enough, ahead of time. They try to communicate short, quick things. Well, you got to start internally a whole lot earlier and communicate, communicate, communicate before you start rolling things out, if you really do want them to stay rowing in the same direction.

[B]

Yeah, that's good. That's good. So, so good. That's. This has been great, great conversation for sure. Just as we're kind of coming to, to the end. Anything else you'd like to share? Just as you're thinking, hey, this is something that God's using these days in our church to help us stay focused and aligned.

[C]

Yeah, actually, so I'll kind of go back to one of the things I mentioned and it's not. It is directly related, but necessarily sound directly related. And that is truly challenge your staff. And your staff need to, they need to take care of themselves. They need to be. Staff need to have a daily quiet time. Right? Daily time in the Word, daily time in prayer. And not time where they're studying for or preparing for a Bible study, to teach something, to lead something, just time where they are taking time for themselves, for their own growth, for their own development. You know, I heard it said just this last week, on Tuesday, we had a guest speaker who came just to talk to our staff, just for this very purpose, self care. And not just our ministerial staff, our whole staff, 65 people in the room, just on the church side, we had all these people in a room. And he said, you know, one of the things he learned as he goes and travels and speaks to pastors, one of the first things pastors stopped doing when they got called to a church was having their quiet time. He would ask them, do you have a time? Do you have a quiet time? And many of them would say, well, you know, I'm always in the Word studying for my next sermon series or this or that. He's like, no, I'm not talking about that. Just personal time in the Word. And so I would just say that one thing, people's capacity to engage in life is directly related to some of these self care type things. Your emotional quotient, your intellectual quotient, your physical quotient, and a relational quotient, a spiritual quotient. All these things make up who someone is. And if they're not spending time caring for those different pieces on a regular basis, they lose. Their capacity is diminished for life and for ministry.

[B]

Dude, that's so good. What a great way to, to focus us at the end. You know, I think our heart, I love that you, you ended there. But our heart and our ability to keep our teams, their relationship with Jesus fresh and their. Who they are as an individual and growing and developing, that is directly tied to what God wants to do in our church for sure. You know, and we can't, if we just, if we're just producing all kinds of great stuff and other people and it's not impacting the folks that we're leading with, man, that's I think, where we get into a dangerous zone.

[C]

So.

[B]

And Andy, this has been so good. I really appreciate your time today. Taking time out of a busy schedule to be with us. I really appreciate that. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?

[C]

If you go to moberly.org m o b b e r l y dot org and that's our website. If you do slash follow, it goes to our social media. And so whether it's YouTube, whether it's podcasts, whether it's different things that we do, you can go there, connect with us, connect with me. And, and I thank you for having me, man. I've enjoyed the conversation and it's just great to know that there's a lot of XPs and ministers and people out there who want to continue to grow and develop.

[B]

That's great. Thanks so much, Andy. Appreciate you being here today.

[C]

Thank you very much.

[A]

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