The Ministry MBA: Bridging the Gap Between Theology and Management

Aaron Santmyire: 00:00:07

Hey there.

Gavin Adams: 00:00:07

Welcome back to the Clarity Podcast. This podcast is all about providing clarity, insight and encouragement for life and mission. My name is Aaron Santmyire and I get to be your host.

Today we have the phenomenal opportunity to have with us on the podcast Gavin Adams. Gavin was a pastor, now he's a consultant and specialist and we get to sit down and look at his new resource, new book, the Ministry MBA.

This this is designed for pastors who maybe want to improve how they lead organizationally. A lot of times we go to Bible school, go to seminary and learn about how to exegete text. We maybe learn theology, missiology, eschatology.

At the same time, the practicalities of finance, of management, economics, human resources, it, change management, research and development. Not necessarily something that we learned in Bible school or in seminary.

And so Gavin unpacks those in a really neat concept and he unpacks those, gives some take home points, gives some great starters and things to begin to get the wheels turning and just enjoyed learning from Gavin. Gavin's an innovator. He's insightful. He's an early adopter probably. Well, he's an innovator, he's not an early adopter.

And he will challenge us and encourage us and give us great resources. We want to move forward. Do want to ask you to continue to subscribe to the podcast. I know the podcasts I subscribe to are the ones I love.

Listen to show up on my feed Monday or Tuesday and know what I'm going to be listening to throughout the week. And please continue to send in your questions for Back Channel with Foeth. That's where we get to sit down with Dick Foth and get to learn from him.

It's always a joy to have Dick on the podcast for sessions of Backchannel with Foth. I do want to share my book Caring Family is out. It launched in December and it's the book that I wish that I would have read 20 years ago.

And as Gavin will have a conversation today about life and ministry and a ministry mba, sometimes we can in ministry we can get involved in so many other things and miss those opportunities for our family to know us and love us. And so it's my clarion call back to being a Carrie family. Well, there's no time better than now to get started. So here we go.

Greetings and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast. So excited to be here again today with a friend of the podcast, Gavin Adams. Gavin, welcome back to the podcast.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:02:28

Hey, thanks so much. Always fun to be with you.

Gavin Adams: 00:02:31

Hey, yeah, for sure Gavin and I haven't gotten to spend a good bit of time together. He's my coach, so he's been helping me in many ways. But today we're kind of flipping the mic a little bit and getting to talk about his new book.

So, Gavin, for those who don't know you as well as I've gotten to know you over the past months, could you share a little bit about yourself before I start peppering you with questions?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:02:51

Yeah, sure. I live in Atlanta, Georgia. Love it here. Born and raised in the south here. Married and four kids.

Went to school to study business because all I wanted to do was make money. Money and got an MBA afterwards. Got an MBA after I realized that an undergrad in marketing was not that special.

I thought it was and quickly realized it was not that special.

And after about a decade of that in the marketplace, mostly in consulting and marketing kind of space, really just felt called and compelled to get into ministry full time.

I grew up in the church, became a believer at 7, and I didn't even, in fact, I was pretty sure I was not even allowed to work at a church with business backgrounds and degrees. But I found out that I could in some. Somebody took a chance on me. So for the last 18 years, I've been working in the ministry space.

I was a lead pastor for 13 years and now I'm as you mentioned, but I'm coaching and consulting pastors and nonprofit ministry leaders and working with lots and lots of churches around the world to help them add more intention to their mission.

Gavin Adams: 00:03:52

Yeah, good stuff, good stuff. And I have appreciated and profited from your wisdom and insight. So it's good, it's good.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:04:00

Very kind. I've enjoyed hanging out with you.

Gavin Adams: 00:04:02

Yeah, for sure. Gavin. So you the reason I asked you to be on the podcast, because this is, this is unique. I do a lot of reading and you've written a valuable book.

And I think as I was praying before we hit record, a lot of us have been to, you know, Bible school and we've went to ministry school and different things, but we didn't necessarily get the necessities we need to be leading an organization as you talk to church and other areas. So how have you.

Can you share how you've mended the knowledge you have from making disciples and then also from the business world, your MBA and all those different spheres.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:04:37

Yeah, you know, I, again, I didn't, I didn't feel like or even had a clue I would be in ministry. In fact, I didn't really like pastors growing up. So kind of ironic.

So I, when I had my opportunity to leave the marketplace and go to ministry, I got to help plant a church. And I was basically a family ministry director, so overseeing birth through high school.

But all my volunteer experience in the church and even my kind of elder time was in student ministry. So I was, was very familiar with, you know, family ministry and student ministry. So got to do that three years later, became a lead pastor.

And it was a bit intimidating to walk into that space because I felt ill equipped without the theology degrees. I had not been to seminary at the time.

And so that again, it's weird, isn't it, that anybody can start a church without training at all and they just let you do it. So I, I got to become a lead pastor of what we now call revitalization.

It was a struggling church and so walking in, and I mean this with all sincerity and with an understanding now with theology degrees, how unbelievably helpful it is.

But I could have had all the theological training in the world and it would not have helped at all in that first six months because it was a dying church that needed really just strong organizational leadership.

And I again had no idea when I was getting that undergrad in business and then MBA and working in the marketplace, how God was going to use that in this revitalization context.

And of course, as we began to grow and as we began to scale and our organizational needs changed, having all of that background and all of the understanding of economics and finance and marketing and R and D and change management. Right. Management leadership strategy, it just was, it was so, so helpful in running the organization side of the business.

I talk about this in book a lot. But you know, the church is an organism and that's, that's fair. I love that terminology.

But I've also never seen an organism that was healthy without great organization. And that's true of our bodies, right? It's true of every organism. And so the church is no different.

A healthy church can't just be theologically healthy. For it to grow and scale and so forth, there has to be strong organizational leadership in place.

And that's what I, I found without knowing it, that the business background was just so helpful in running the church.

Gavin Adams: 00:07:10

Sure. And so Gavin, how did you learn to balance, you know, you're spiritual leading, leading a church, a large, a large church.

And at the same time you had this MBA with all the practicalities that come with that. Was there ever attention you walked in and how did that impact you and how did you navigate that?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:07:28

It was constant tension because I was told I kind of wore it as a badge of honor, which is probably prideful at first, but I was always told when I was a lead pastor, especially in the beginning, you're, you're not like any other lead pastor I've ever had. That's what people would say.

And I would go, well, good, you know, and part of that's because I didn't like pastors, but I, I, I wasn't like any of the other ones or a lot of them. There are a lot, plenty like me, but I, the majority aren't. And it was attention.

I, I got, I don't want to say blamed, but I think a lot of people saw me, our staff, I mean, you mentioned I did get to lead a large church. So we, we were upwards of about 8,000 a week with 65 staff and, you know, 20 interns and so forth.

So there's a lot of opinions and a lot of expectations. I was blamed a lot for being too business minded, too strategic behind the scenes. I don't think I was, but.

And I prayed constantly and invited the spirit into this. And we tried to do it through the lens of God. And so, you know, we're not running a business, we're running a church.

Gavin Adams: 00:08:38

Right.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:08:39

At the same time, I worked really hard on our HR systems, on our culture, on strategy, on all these things, because our mission matters too much to not be strategic. Right? Our mission, however we restate the Great Commission, it's so critical to know how to do it and not just pray that it will happen.

But, you know, we want to work as if it depends on us and pray as if it depends on God. Right. Somebody smarter than me said that. So there was a constant tension.

And I just learned that if I resolved the tension, I would lose one of the two sides of this. And I think we needed both to be, to be great. And so I learned just to live in the tension.

Gavin Adams: 00:09:22

No, and I think what it brings too, is, Gavin. It brings that we talk about being live stewards, right? We're stewarding people, but we're also stewarding resources. And I think that is the reality.

Sometimes I think we talk about stewardship, but we don't necessarily put structures and systems in place to see that play out for the long term and to make it scalable. And I think that's what you've provided for us in this book.

You've given us some structure, you've given us good questions, and you've given a process to think about as we move forward. So in the book you talk about four functions of management.

So what are, what are those four function and is it common for maybe different people to struggle with different one of those functions or.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:10:07

Yeah, yeah, like anything. Right. So let me, before I answer that, just kind of back to what you said about the book. You know what I realized?

Even when I was leading, I realized that this you're not like every other pastor thing was true because of my background and experience in education and so so forth. But it also made me realize how critical those skills were for probably these other pastors.

And if other pastors aren't like me, not that that's better, but if they're not like me, it could be that what they're really not is they just don't have that business background or the understanding or. And that bothered me. So when I started thinking about this book, I thought about it forever ago and I just finally got around to making it a reality.

But. So it's called the Ministry mba.

What I tried to do is take the concepts of 10 MBA courses and reduce it down to its simplest kind of irrefutable minimum so that it's accessible and understandable that you could read this book, understand 10 different principles of an MBA program of a business and apply it. I use tons of church examples and so forth. Really the majority of each course is church stuff, but to help people understand that.

So for instance, management Management's the third course in the book and there are, there are four different funct that really encapsulate what management is. So planning, organizing, leading, organizational leadership, and then controlling. Those four things are kind of the synopsis of what management is.

Now to your question, are some people more adept? Yeah, we're all probably better at controlling, but we are certainly better at some of these than others.

Planning is really about from this is all from a management perspective. So planning is about your ability as a manager to set goals and determine action against the stated strategy, the tactics.

It's all about operational stuff. So again, leadership is about setting the innovation, the direction, the vision. Management is about orchestrating to what has been set.

So this is all about orchestration. So planning is how do we orchestrate the task, the day to day, all that stuff to make it happen.

Organizing is about putting all of the resources, the people, the financials, everything we have, the systems, everything that we have to put it in the most efficient, aligned way so that everyone knows exactly what they're doing, the responsibilities are clear and we're well aligned to accomplish it. Leadership in a managerial setting is about really motivating and directing and influencing people to do what we have already decided to do.

Now in a, a pure leadership way, we would say that rises above managerial leadership where we are setting direction and deciding on innovation and what needs to change in a managerial context, it's already been set. Now we're just inspiring people to do what we've already decided to do.

And of course controlling is the last one that's really about monitoring performance, comparing against goals or budgets or previous projects and work. So again, it's really about being able to analyze where we are and then take corrective action so that we can always improve.

Gavin Adams: 00:13:28

Sure.

So Gavin, what is there one of those that you think that you're best at or maybe naturally you have a natural talent or acquired ability towards that and then how do you walk along? Somebody say, Aaron, who's not good in that, in that area and so how do you help them? How do you help them walk alongside and not get frustrated?

That wow, Aaron, he, this, this planning thing, he just, he can't seem to get it. But maybe you're natur gifted in that area and it comes, it just comes easy for you.

So how do you, how do you maybe which ones you feel like you're most inclined towards? Or maybe there's multiple ones. And then how do you help other people that are maybe struggling in those areas?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:14:06

In those four specific areas, I think we all are going to be a little bit more adept at one than the other. It's just the reality of our personalities and our shape. Right. That God has given to us. So I mean, for me, I am a more natural leader by default.

I've always been that way. So when it comes to managerial leading, it's different.

We're not setting and ideating and setting the vision and the trajectory and all that, but we are managing to what's been set. And because I'm a natural leader, that comes more naturally to me. Controlling is probably the one that I don't naturally bend to as quickly.

Although taking corrective action to fix things I do very well because I'm a leader by nature.

However, I can easily get bogged down if I were to make that my full time job developing all the controls and monitoring performance, things like that. I'm not really made to do that. But your question is so important because it's a much bigger question than even just these four things, Right.

Every one of us is gifted at something, but none of us is gifted at everything. And one of the most important things we can do, Aaron, I mean, you're in an important leadership spot.

So if we expected you to be great at everything and then we realized, realize what you weren't great at, and we decided, you and I, okay, we're going to make you great at your things, at your weaknesses, well, we would just struggle the whole time because, you know, this is a John Maxwell idiom. But if you, it's like the law of the lid, right? If you are a four at controlling and we need a nine in this role.

Well, I mean, no matter how much we worked, we may get you to a six, but we're not going to go from a four to a nine. Right? So here's what I think great leaders do.

They don't, they don't try to overcome the weaknesses, but what they realize is that they can complement the weaknesses by bringing in people who compliment them. I mean, you know, if you're a solopreneur, this becomes harder. But most of us have a team we're working with and around.

So at, you know, Wissac City Church where I was lead pastor, I quickly realized through some help, people didn't mind telling me what my weaknesses were, my areas for opportunity were. So, you know, but I'm a leader, right? I'm not as much of a feeling oriented person.

I like progress and pace and sometimes that's great, but not always. So. I brought a good friend in though, who was on our team, Andy Jones.

He was a staff member, elevated him into a director role and put him on my executive team because he is unbelievable as a feeler. I learned quickly that when we were going to announce a change to the team, I didn't need to just announce it.

I would ask Andy Jones how, how would you say this? And then he would tell me and I would go, nah, that's crazy. And then he would be right every time.

So again, I could try to become the most, you know, soft and feeling. I'm never going to be great at that. I can go from a 4 to a 6. Andy was already a 10.

So I just complimented myself by surrounding myself with people who complimented me. Right. That's what really great managers would do. But in these four things, we find the things that we're not great at and we compliment ourselves.

Gavin Adams: 00:17:18

Good, good, good word.

And I think a good reminder for us all, sometimes I think we try to, as you said, as you shared, sometimes we try to overcompensate and try to do things we're not rather than trusting people, bringing alongside, partnering with people that already have that gifting and laying some of those insecurities down to think that we have to be all and be all do everything.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:17:39

So for sure, well, if we care, if we care more about the mission and the success or the mission coming to fruition that we do about how we look or our performance along the way, this becomes pretty easy.

When we are concerned about our image and we're trying to move ourself into a position of authority or we're trying to be noticed or whatever, then this is where it gets really nasty pretty quick, right?

And we're not going to delegate at the same time, by not delegating and not allowing other people to compliment us, we actually end up probably doing a worse job, which works against what we're trying to do in the unhealthy motivation.

Gavin Adams: 00:18:13

But yeah, for sure. And that spreads. That's contagious, the unhealthiness in that.

So Gavin, you shared, you, you led Woodstock Church, you were a leader in that phase, but then you also were part of a network of churches, right?

So for somebody that's navigating, hey, I'm a leader in this realm and cat doing everything that a leader would do in this realm, but in maybe in another seat, I'm actually playing more of a manager managerial role. How, how do you, Matt, navigate those tensions and any wisdom for them?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:18:45

That's tough because if you're more leader oriented when you're sitting in a non leader moment, it's really hard not to lead and take over when you are, if you're not that, if you're more management oriented or something else. But there are moments where you need to step up that can be challenging. Right.

If you're strong in both, recognizing what seat you're in becomes really important. I got to do this all the time. And I was not great at it for a while, but I realized that if it was. Let's just use meetings for an example.

If, if we're in a meeting and it's my meeting, then I'm leading it. I'm setting the agenda, I'm running the meeting.

If it's not my meeting, even though I might be the senior pastor in the organization, if I'm not the one tasked with leading the meeting, I need to shut up and let the person lead it who's supposed to lead it. I think of it not literally, but metaphorically, putting on different hats.

When I'm in a meeting that I'm the leader, I'm going to wear the leadership hat. When I'm in the meeting that I'm not The leader.

I'm going to wear the participant hat that in fact in a meeting I literally would sit at the head of the meeting.

If I'm leading it, I would not sit in that chair when I wasn't leading the meeting because it was a visual reminder to me and everyone around me that the person at the head of the table is the one in charge today. Right. So I was in a multi campus setting with Woodstock City Church.

And so there's plenty of moments where we're making Woodstock City Church decisions and I'm sitting at the head of the table. Right. Making the decision. There were lots of times though, I'm sitting in multi campus meetings and trying to make organizational wide decision.

So you're constantly just swapping the hat off.

I think what's important though is knowing which hat you're wearing so that you can check yourself along the way, which takes some, you know, introspection, a little bit of eq, but it's pretty, pretty critical to do that.

Gavin Adams: 00:20:38

Well, yeah. And so Gavin, you said in the beginning you weren't necessarily great at it.

Is that something you intentionally worked on or is that something you just. It came naturally. You, you, you're just trying to fit what hat to wear or. Any more on that?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:20:52

No. Yeah. Did not come natural. Very few things like that do come naturally.

And the more complex the organization or the more complex your role, the harder it's going to be to get it right the first time.

And so I, I'm a little bit addicted to progress and growth, which is not healthy, but it can be, get a lot of good stuff done, but not always healthy. So I, I'm, I'm a glutton for feedback because of that. And so I was constantly asking the people around me what I could do to be a better leader.

And one of the things that got brought up a lot in my earlier leadership tenure was thinking globally, not just locally in these meetings, at times fighting for my church in the multi campus setting when it made sense to, recognizing when it did not make sense to.

That was a really interesting thing to have to figure out because when you're the lead pastor of one church and within a multi campus setting, everything you're, every meeting you're in, you're thinking about the implications for your church. Right. But you know this, the higher up you get in an organization, the more holistically we have to think about the organization.

So I mean, you're leading something now that's a part of and you're leading a big part of it.

But It's a part of a larger organization, and it'd be easy for you to just make decisions every day that are in the best interest of your team, but that might not be in the best interest of the organization overall. And that's a difficult tension. But again, it's under. Understanding the hats that you're wearing. And we're often wearing more than one.

Gavin Adams: 00:22:23

Yeah.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:22:24

How do you.

Gavin Adams: 00:22:25

How did you navigate where your biggest loyalties lie? Sorry, Gavin, I'm going digging deeper on this one, but go ahead. How did you decide where your loyalties lie?

Was it just dependent on what meeting you were in or how did you know? Is that a fair question?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:22:39

It is a fair question. My. My loyalty lies to the mission. And whatever elevated the mission best is what I would fight for.

Sometimes I wasn't right because what I was seeing wasn't accurate. But if. And that's my point about, you know, thinking more globally. If.

If I'm in a meeting and we're making decisions about something that I feel like might have a negative impact on my location, but I also understand that for the greater good of the mission across the organization, it's what's best. I've got to be okay with that. In fact, I've got to not even be okay with it. I've got to champion it.

Gavin Adams: 00:23:17

Yeah.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:23:17

Like, I can't tolerate it because then you're abdicating leadership. Right. What we never want to do as a leader is come back to our team and go, well, you know, they said so.

You know, I got a lot of practice coming back to my team saying, we made the decision, too, and this is what we are going to do. And now internally, I'm going, dad gum it.

I don't want to do this, but I'm going to be a part of the they, and I'm going to own it, and I'm going to, you know, lead it as well as I can.

It really feels like the Jeff Bezos article he wrote forever ago with Amazon shareholders about being able to disagree and commit, that there are moments along the way that we may not agree with everything, but we may need to disagree and be fully committed, and the mission is what determines that for me.

Gavin Adams: 00:24:02

No, I love that. I love that. Loyalty to the mission. That's gold. That's gold, Gavin.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:24:07

Well, think about really quick. Think about that, though. If we have loyal loyalty to a person.

I have yet to see an organization thrive when we're loyal to the person over the mission because the person is broken, and the person's going to do something at some point that is going to disrupt the loyalty or, I mean, hopefully not, but odds are right there will be a bad leadership moment. I mean, I have those. If we're loyal to the mission, we can still be honoring to the people and so forth.

But I don't want to be blindly loyal to an individual outside of my heavenly father. I.

I want to be loyal to the mission, and that helps me hold the leader accountable to the mission, and it helps people hold me accountable to what we're actually here to do.

Gavin Adams: 00:24:50

Yeah. And it probably gives, it helps you have a pure heart as you do it.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:24:53

Right.

Gavin Adams: 00:24:54

Because.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:24:54

Absolutely.

Gavin Adams: 00:24:55

The mission's in focus.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:24:56

Absolutely.

Gavin Adams: 00:24:57

Good word. Good word. Gavin, I'm going to shift a little bit here onto the economic challenges that people in ministry face.

And so I think that's something you don't. You know, I've done a lot of podcasts, not necessarily the, a lot of focus on the economic realities of it.

So I got some questions here for you, and that's what your book highlights, and it brings into focus just some of the practical realities that we face.

So as you've navigated ministry, what are some of those big bucket things that you face, the economics of ministry, and if you're not prepared for those, how have you seen those challenges maybe impact some the ministry that's going on?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:25:32

Yeah. So when we say economics, that could be a couple of things. Right.

In an MBA program, we're talking micro and macroeconomics, and then finance is a separate entity in that. Right. So we can talk about both for a minute. Economics is primarily the art of decision making. That's basically what economics is all about.

It's about using data and information to make informed decisions about scarcity, opportunity cost, things like that.

On the finance side, where economics plays into it, obviously, but on the finance side, we're looking in nonprofit space, church space, what have you on growing revenue, in my case as a church leader, growing discipleship as a part of that, budgeting, expense management, all of those things that play into stewarding resource as well.

Gavin Adams: 00:26:22

One of the other things you share in the book was this idea that there, if there's a demand, doesn't necessarily mean we should create a supply. How have you seen that in ministry? And it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a business principle. But how did that impact.

And how did you make decisions when it came to ministry?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:26:40

Yeah, it's a microeconomics conversation. Right.

So supply and demand and things like that, it's mostly around Pricing models and inventory and how much product should we make and blah blah, blah.

When ministry, what I found pretty quickly, this is actually my second week at Woodstock City Church when I was in this revitalization stage, I had a guy come up and want to start a motorcycle ministry. It really was like an interest based small group, but he wanted to start it and he said, you know, there's great interest, there's demand for it.

And then he said, in which every pastor has heard, hey, and don't you have to do anything? I'll lead it, I'll advertise it, you know, whatever.

And I think a lot of times we hear that and we think, oh good, I don't have to deal with it, okay, cool, do what you want.

But that's terrible leadership in a way, because do what you want means basically who cares if it's on mission, who cares if it's aligned, who cares if it conflicts? Know, and this is challenging. Who cares even if it's good, if it's competing with something that's better and more important? Right?

So, you know, just because somebody wants something doesn't mean that we should do it. We say this a lot, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And so then that's an economic. Again, economics is about decision making.

So just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it. So deciding about opportunity costs with scarcity, again, you know, if somebody wants to start a ministry, great.

But you're going to give time to it, you're going to give stage time to it. Promotion, email, social time, all these things are going to happen.

And saying yes to that is going to require you to say no to something else at some point.

So ensuring that we're aligning everything and that we have a broader picture for what we're trying to accomplish allows us to evaluate in a microeconomic way what we do say yes to versus what we don't.

Gavin Adams: 00:28:25

Wow, it's good. So, so Gavin, how can, how can we align you? Shared. Shared. We can bring it into alignment.

What are some steps we can take to align our values and our economics? Does that make sense? So that should be decision makings and finance and micro macro and then the values that we have on the wall.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:28:44

So it's a little bit of what comes first. Right. So and in this case it's not a chicken or an egg. I mean what comes first is the values.

You know, when we think about the organization is like I said earlier about being loyal to the mission, but it's mission Vision, values, strategy, in that order. And when we have our mission and our vision set, it allows us to then determine our strategy and our values.

Those four things together really dictate the target.

You know, one of them, the mission is the primary target, but our values really discern or define how we're going to go about doing it along with our strategy. That's our plan, our tactical plan to get it done. So that's where we start. Everything else falls in behind that. It has to align to it.

So even go back into your previous, you know, the previous question with the motorcycle guy, it's like, hey, man, great idea. Does that move our mission forward? Is it a part of our vision? Is it a part of our values? And is it a part of our ministry model, our strategy?

So in a church, the discipleship path way, we can argue anything is. But let's be honest, does it really fit? Does it really fit? Does it make something else that's more important become secondary?

Does it compete with something more important? Does it stretch our resources thinner than we're willing to stretch? All of those are alignment questions, right?

Gavin Adams: 00:30:09

Okay.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:30:09

I think of this, whether for better or worse, like a moving sidewalk, Aaron, we get on the moving sidewalk, we start moving forward.

Anything that gets in the way of that sidewalk, we got to get rid of it, you know, so if our mission, vision, strategy, value is at the end of the sidewalk, we want to be able to put anybody on it, no matter where they are, in their faith journey, step onto it and begin moving towards the mission, vision, value, strategy.

Gavin Adams: 00:30:34

And so how did you have that conversation with that person? He came, said, hey, I got this great idea. Not like you said, it's not a bad idea and we can justify anything.

But as the leader, how did you navigate that conversation to say you, you know, as we look at this, we're trying to. Yeah. How do you navigate that conversation?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:30:51

It's really a conversation. How do you disappoint people? Well, right. So, I mean. But seriously, right.

Gavin Adams: 00:30:56

Like at a rate they can support.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:30:58

Or something, a rate they can tolerate, nobody is disappointed. We're probably not leading much. And if you're not bleeding a little, you're probably not leading much. So it's a little bit of both.

You know, when I remember this conversation, but I mean, it was 18 years ago now, I guess, but 16 years ago. But I have had to have that conversation a lot. And so here's what I always would do.

I never reacted in the moment, no matter how bad an idea it was, because I feel like Listening is important, and I think giving people the honor of actually thinking is important.

Gavin Adams: 00:31:33

Okay.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:31:34

Sometimes our gut feel is probably clear, but in almost every case, I think it's smart to say, you know what, Let me think about that before, you know, we. We come to a conclusion. Even if you know what the conclusion is going to be.

Yeah, because I think it's honoring to the person to actually think not and not fake think. I would often follow up a day or two later, and I would tell them, hey, give me a day or two, I'll follow back up. And then you have to do that.

If you say that, follow back up. And then I would always say kind of what we've talked about. You know, my. My goal here at this organization is to move the mission forward.

Everything we do is going to come back to the mission. So as I've thought about what you. I actually, I can see how you. I can see how it. It's a fun idea.

I can see how we could probably argue that it fits within our. Our mission overall. But here's my fear. And then I would have to unpack why it is not a good idea in this case.

It's because we believe sitting in a circle of small groups where authenticity, belonging, and care can happen is the most important thing that we can do for people. People. And I'm afraid that if someone is in a motorcycle group, they're not going to get into a small group.

And I cannot have someone missing small group because they decided to do something else instead. Small group's too important. So I'm afraid this would compete with the thing that matters most.

Gavin Adams: 00:32:59

Yeah, that's good. There you go. And that's. That's it. That's in. In a nutshell. I think it's valuable.

I think it's valuable, Gavin, for us to learn to have those conversations and say, and as you just did, you aligned it with the mission and you, you gave a reason why I. He did it in a respectful way. And. But it's very clear, you know, there was no, there was no doubt, there was no ambiguity into the reason why.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:33:22

And, well, the other thing, too, Aaron, I would always say to people, and I got more and more comfortable saying this as I got a little older in my leadership.

But I would also say with all of those conversations and almost any conversation, I also might not be right about this, but as far as I can tell right now, with the people I've talked to and all the praying and research I've done, this is what I believe is right. So I'M going to ask you, you just show me some grace and disagree and commit if you don't believe I'm right. But I will tell you this.

If I find out that I'm wrong, you'll be the first person I apologize to. But for now, I don't think it's the right thing to do.

Gavin Adams: 00:33:59

No, that's good. Good. Gavin, somebody listening in one of the class, one of the courses in the book talks about financial reports.

And so somebody that's not used to, not accustomed to reading financial reports. What do you like? What do they begin focusing on? Because I think it can kind of be overwhelming. Right. So I'm. I say I'm a doctor, I'm a doctor.

I can go in, you give me a chart, I can know. There's a lot of information on those pages. But there's key things that I focus on.

You know, my eyes go to this, this, and this to help me get know where I need to go when it comes to finances. What are some beginning steps somebody can take so they're not overwhelmed with all the numbers and all that's on the pages? Yeah, that makes sense.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:34:40

Yep, it does. If you are high in the organization, you need to know a lot more about it, Right?

Because you're probably betting, you're probably setting budgets, you have more control over expenses, things like that. Anywhere from, you know, middle below in the org chart. The two key things I think are the P and L profit and loss statement, simple statement.

That's just showing us what we have brought in against what we have spent, typically by category, so we can do some analysis.

If, you know, in my church world, if our preschool department is spending exorbitantly more money than they're supposed to, but our student ministry is kind of not doing that. And they're the inverse, actually, I should reverse that because the students always spend more and the preschool doesn't.

But, you know, it's good to know. And so we're looking at a profit loss. And then in conjunction with that, our budget to actuals.

So every year, every fiscal year, we have a budget we set, and it's a monthly budget. Typically it's annualized, but what's happening monthly by department, we divide it up. Here's the.

Here's the budget for the organization overall, the expenses by department or by team or by event.

So knowing what you are supposed to spend each month against what's expected and then knowing what you're supposed to bring in versus what's expected is critical to understand because you can make Adjustments along the way. If you're paying attention to it, right.

We can change our expenses, we can pull back on some things or we can fund some things that we have extra revenue that we weren't planning for. So by paying attention to that, we can, I mean again that that allows us to make actionable decisions.

But I tell people all the time, whether it's metrics, financials, you know, attendance, all the things that we measure, all these dashboards, it's great. But data that isn't actionable isn't helpful.

So what can we, what can we activate date a budget to actuals is very actionable because now we, we can make adjustments. A P and L. It shows if we have P profit or L loss. Very important to know we can make some adjustments because of that, you know, balance sheet.

Interesting. You're not going to do a lot of changing with that, right? Don't study it if you don't have to.

Gavin Adams: 00:36:55

That's good. I love that. What, you know, what you can take action on. And I think that's, and I think that's back to my original medical thing. Right.

There's a lot of information on the, on the chart or whatever. You're not going to take action on that.

It's there, but you're looking for the things like you said, the things you'll be able to take action and help move you forward and not get lost in all the numbers and the categories and the things that go with it. So one of the other things you share about is the idea that when we taking our expense management and having how does that build trust?

When we have expense management built in, how does that build trust with the people around us and within the organization?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:37:32

Organization, you know, every non profit is, not every. Most non profits churches for sure, are all revenue driven by donation.

Gavin Adams: 00:37:42

Yeah.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:37:43

And nobody will say this out loud, but everybody who donates wants their donation to be used appropriately, to be managed well, to be stewarded. Well, I would remind our staff all the time that, that every dollar you spend was given to us by somebody.

Gavin Adams: 00:38:02

That's good.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:38:03

And if you are going to spend their money, I want you to feel comfortable sitting down with them and explaining how you spent it. Now we won't overkill that because there's things we're going to spend money on that other people won't understand.

I mean, you know, in a, in a production environment, for instance, you know, nobody would understand that how much a microphone cost. Right. So, you know, let's not be, be silly with it, but the reality is I wanted our staff to feel the weight of that stewardship.

So again, we never, you know, we, we, we didn't, you know, hand out P and Ls and stuff every Sunday morning. Right.

But I wanted our, our, our church, our congregation, our attender to, at any point they wanted to ask us about our, our financial space, have no problem sharing it with them and showing it to them because that kind of integrity gains confidence and leads to more revenue. Yeah.

And I think it's critical that, I mean, we don't have newspapers anymore, but I used to say we want to operate fiscally like our P and L is going to be printed on the front page of the USA Today. Right. So you look at it and there's nothing in there that you would raise their hand and go, I have a problem with this. I have a question.

In fact, one of the fallacies, I think a lot of leaders think is that people give to vision.

And the reality is that you can fool somebody once with a really well crafted vision statement, but you can't keep coming, coming back to it if you're not doing it right. You're going to be fooling people more than once.

So you can't, you know, say we're gonna, with this great vision and then maybe people will give once to it. But if you can't prove the vision's coming to fruition, they're not going to keep giving.

Which is why that transparency piece becomes really important.

Gavin Adams: 00:39:45

And I think that's once again, the value of what you're, what you've, you've delivered is the reality. Some people, the reason they don't share is they don't feel comfortable with it. Right.

And so it's not because they're nefarious, it's not because they're stealing or, you know, stealing money.

They just don't feel comfortable when somebody asked them on how not to become defensive in the conversation, you know, I mean, because I would imagine real comfortable with it.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:40:07

I mean, you're the one spending the money.

Gavin Adams: 00:40:08

Yeah.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:40:09

So you should be real comfortable and you should be able to. And you know, we could debate the value sometimes of an expense.

You know, you may see it differently than me, but I want to know that there's value in it.

So that when, if I'm ever asked, which, you know, the church, our size, I was asked constantly about this stuff to be able to, in a very kind of heartfelt, burdened way, go, oh yeah, let me show you what we spend your money on, because ministry is happening. And here's why? And here's how your contributions are helping ministry happen. Right.

So I love those conversations because I was pretty passionate about how we were using their resources to move the, you know, the kingdom forward.

Gavin Adams: 00:40:46

Yeah. But for, you know, I'm a guy that I, I mean, that's what I went back and got my mba.

And the reason I went, went to do it was because I, as I moved, had more opportunities to lead. I was entrusted with more and more financial decisions and responsibility. You know, I mean, and the people that you know around, I trusted them.

At the same time, it was my name on it.

And when you're signing off on it, I didn't want to sign off on things that I didn't really have any understanding on what I was signing other than I trusted the people that were working with the vintage finances. And so it helped me gain a broader, you know, broader understanding so that I could with integrity.

And I'm not saying everybody has to get an MBA because you've written a book that will help them not necessarily have to get an mba, but it did help me be able to answer those questions and not become. Because I felt myself, I've become defensive when people would ask questions. And it wasn't because they were being critical.

They just, you know, some people are numbers, numbers. And that's gifting. Right. And they like to see the numbers and they have ideas.

But I would find myself becoming and defensive just because I wasn't necessarily comfortable with the numbers and.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:41:49

Right.

Gavin Adams: 00:41:49

So I could respond in every way.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:41:52

Every leader, we'll say every good leader, wants their team to be able to contribute to conversation and contribute to solutions.

Gavin Adams: 00:42:02

Yeah.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:42:02

And if you are, if you are unable to understand some of these things like a financial report, if you can't understand where we are financially against our budget and actuals, or where we are in the P and L, it's challenging for you to bring anything of value to that conversation. So at a minimum, knowing the fundamental basics. Right. Which is what I've tried to do in the book.

I mean, listen, it's the same reason that I went back, you know, you went and got an mba. I went back and got two theology degrees because I also preach all the time and I don't want to.

I want to make sure that when I'm leading, you know, people and delivering the word of God and truth to people, that I'm doing it from a place, place where of confidence that I feel like I really do have an understanding. And I've dug deep and spent a lot of time learning this Right. So it's the same thing just in reverse.

Gavin Adams: 00:42:49

Good deal. I got, I'm going to ask two one questions on giver givers and then one question like an HR question and then I'm going to ask you to pray for us.

So the question, the question on motivation, you talk about some motivation for people to give.

A lot of people listening to this podcast or are missionaries or ministry workers and as you said, the majority of what we, we there are things that people give to us.

So this resonated with me when you kind of broke it down to different categories of non givers, emotional tippers, I think ministry givers, missional investors, and kingdom stewards. So can you share a little bit about those and yeah, how the, how that should guide us?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:43:25

This is 100% a business philosophy I brought this out of both of my business degrees have a marketing specialty. And so we talked a lot about segmentation back in my marketing time.

And what I realized is that companies, the best companies understand how to segment their customers into not just, you know, non customer customer, but they understand usually through using CRMs and things like that, but how their customers shop, what they typically like.

I mean and you know, now if you go to like target.com, they know everything about you, you know, and I don't know that we have to go that far as a church, but when we understand that our like I'll use the church. But any nonprofit fits this.

We have categories of people and the more that we can understand the category or the segment, the better we can articulate and create conversation, verbiage, language that speaks directly to where they are and can then hopefully entice them, inspire them to move forward to the next best step for them. So in a church setting, trying to talk to someone who is a non giver and convince them to be a tither either is a ridiculous conversation. Okay.

Trying to get somebody though who's a non giver to emotionally tip. That's the second segment that's possible. In fact, it's very likely.

And so the path to eventually becoming a kingdom steward, which is the fifth category, this is the person who understands everything is God's. That, that, that God. It's amazing. God has only said, can I have 10% of what I given you? You know that we get to spend 90 and use 90. That's crazy.

How generous is God? That's a steward. That's a kingdom steward. So, but, but you don't get there without going through some of the other segments.

So what we want to do is help people who are non givers become an emotional tipper. Emotional tippers become a ministry giver. They're, they're given to the ministry, but they're not really, it's still selfish.

They'll give to the church because they like the church and their kid likes it, you know, but it's okay. They're starting and if they don't have a plan, plan, they're tipping, but they're doing it to the church at least.

The next, the fourth category, missional investor. That's a person who's now thinking roi and they're realized this is about the mission. It's bigger than me, it's bigger than my family.

Kingdom steward being the last one.

So when we understand the five categories, we can speak specifically to each category and inspire them to move forward along this kind of spiritual, sequential journey.

Gavin Adams: 00:45:59

Yeah, it's good. It's good.

So once again you're saying it's, it's irrational or illogical to think someone's going to go from a non giving, give her to kingdom steward and jump over the ones in the middle?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:46:10

Yes. I mean, it's like, I mean, there's a reason that when Peter walked on water, 11 other dudes stood in the boat and thought he was nuts. Right?

Because most people are not willing to take a leap of faith. I mean, I love the term, I love how it feels, I love what it does in her heart. Most people aren't there. And so how do we get them there?

Well, discipleship is nothing more than a journey. Any version of discipleship, it's a journey. Go back to my moving sidewalk.

What we're trying to do is create an on ramp for people to get on the sidewalk so they can start moving forward in the direction of their heavenly father. And if they've never been generous to anything that God is up to, well, what should we ask him to do?

You know, maybe we should ask them to tip towards one thing. Give one time for one thing. That is very practical, it's very clear. And if we can attach some emotion to it, even better. Right?

Gavin Adams: 00:47:03

Yeah.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:47:03

But then after they do that, we're smart, we follow up well with email nurture sequences. We help them connect the dots between that one time tip and what is happening in our ministry because of it.

And then eventually we can have a conversation of, hey, what if you began to tip a little bit more frequently? You know, let's not be crazy, you know, but you know, what if, what if we, what if we did this once a month? You know, Instead of just that one time.

So, again, we're moving people along a sequential, incremental journey that's also a spiritual journey.

Gavin Adams: 00:47:36

Yeah, that's true. And as you said, it's. It's part of discipleship.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:47:40

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and that's the big part of this. Like, everything we're doing is about discipleship. It's not. We're not.

Our mission is not to fully fund the church. Our mission is to grow disciples.

Gavin Adams: 00:47:49

Yeah.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:47:49

And the reality, though, is that the more disciples we grow, the more fully funded the church is going to be.

Gavin Adams: 00:47:53

Yeah, that's good.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:47:54

So our keeping our. Keeping our focus on the right thing.

Gavin Adams: 00:47:56

Becomes pretty critical and momentum towards the mission. As you said earlier on in the broadcasting. Good deal. All right, last question. This is an HR question. What do you think of the statement you.

You can often not correct in training what you missed in recruiting or interviewing?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:48:11

Yeah. Reminds me of the. Like, how do you know when you made a hiring mistake? Right. Yeah. You know, I think that there are things that.

My dad told me this when I was a kid playing sports. He was a coach, my baseball coach for all these years. He would say all the time, we can coach hustle, but we can't coach speed.

You know, you either have speed or you don't. But we can. We can. We can inspire you to hustle more. But if you're not fast, you're just not fast.

Gavin Adams: 00:48:39

Yeah.

Aaron Santmyire: 00:48:39

And that's true. I think that's true of everything. Every organization has a culture.

Every organization has certain kinds of personality types that are just going to function better in it than others. Right. Not. That's not good or bad. It's just the reality of it.

So when we're interviewing and when we're trying to kind of build a team, I think one of the most important things that we can do is hire the kinds of people that we are going to work best with and who are going to work best the way that we work and then train them on the skills. You can train skill in the same way you can train hustle, but you can't train personality. You can't change culture. You can't train culture. You can't.

You know, at Wiss City Church, we, You know, I unfortunately, was there a lot longer, long enough, and had a big enough team that had to lay people off or let people go. Sorry, not lay them off. Let people. People go. You know, maybe 10 times or maybe a little more. I don't know. But it's never easy.

But about 90% of them were not Job description issues. It was culture issues. They were getting the job done. It was just how they were getting the job done that wasn't meshing with how we do things.

And I realized that part of the problem is that we didn't have a sufficient interview process for that. We were interviewing their skill, not interview their culture.

And so we created a really robust culture document that went alongside the job description. This is what you do. The culture document is how we do it so that we could interview for that. And it really improved our selection process.

And we didn't find ourselves in the position as much as we used to where we had a person who had the right skill set but they didn't have the right way of doing doing it. So it wasn't meshing well with our team.

Gavin Adams: 00:50:26

Yeah, good word, good word. Gavin, it's been a joy to spend some more time with you. Would you pray for us?

Aaron Santmyire: 00:50:31

I would love to do that. Father. God, thank you so much for. Thanks for Aaron, thanks for what he's doing.

Thanks for all these local churches around the world that you have planted. It is incredible the things that you are doing all over the world.

I think sometimes we have such a narrow mind, narrow minded view of you and your sovereignty, just the massiveness of your heart and your grace and your love. And so God, thank you that we have an opportunity to be a part of what you're doing. You don't need us, but you want us and you've invited us into it.

So just thank you that we get to be a part of that. And Father, I just pray that in every area of our leadership, wherever we are, that you will help us see things the way that you do.

Give us courage to do the hard things, to make hard decisions and give us wisdom, though, to lead it really well as we do that, keeping the mission as the main thing and doing everything we can to move that forward. Father, we love you, Jesus. We pray every bit of this in your name. Amen.

Gavin Adams: 00:51:26

Amen.