Simple Faith with Rusty George

Rusty George: This episode is brought to you by Serve HQ, train your ministry, volunteers, leaders, and new members online, fast and easy with Serve HQ.

Intro/Outro: Welcome to Leading Simple with Rusty George. Our goal is to make following Jesus and leading others a bit more simple. Here's your host, Rusty George.

Rusty George: Hey, welcome to Leading Simple episode 217. I'm honored that you are here. It's a special episode today. We're taking a break from our normal interviews with people, and we're going to just talk about you, the listener. You guys have been so supportive of this podcast. Cast. I can't believe we're into the two hundreds when it comes to the number of episodes. When I listen back to the early days, I think, oh my goodness, we had no idea what we're doing and we're still figuring it out, but we are who we are because of your support and your reviews. And I wanted to take a moment and thank you for that. So we're gonna get to that here in just a second.

But first I wanna let you know about our new sponsor for this month. Serve HQ is an incredible ministry that does exactly what all of us in ministry have been hoping for for a very long time and what everybody in a church setting has been hoping for for a very long time. It used to be when you would train volunteers, you would have to ask them to come out on a Saturday morning from nine to noon, you'd serve 'em donuts and then some kind of a light lunch. And you would take three hours to download all kinds of training and inspiration on a group of volunteers, hoping they learned it all, hoping they retained it all and hoping they implemented it all the very next Sunday.

Well, we don't have to do that anymore. Thanks to ServeHQ. We can train church volunteers and disciples online and easy. They have an incredible tool that they allow us to use and will allow you to use as well with videos. They've already, pre-recorded some videos from some great churches. And even videos you can upload. Now onboarding new people to volunteer is never been easier. It's a clear and simple onboarding process to make sure new people are prepared and motivated. And to do that, they've created a reliable system. Serve HQ is a simple video training course that helps you equip volunteers and develop leaders. You can create your own training or even use their video library. You can even automate next steps to onboard new people. You can check it all out at servehq.church. What a great, great resource.

Okay. So today, we are taking some time to read some reviews. And I asked you over social media and over the podcast, if you would leave a review and I would collect all the reviews from the summer and I would randomly draw one of them and I would give them a great little gift bag for the fall. Included in the gift bag are some new apple AirPods. Uh, we did Apple because, well, we're not animals. So if you got, you know, something else, I'm sorry, but we're gonna go with Apple, uh, AirPods. And they're not even a sponsor of the show, but hey, I'm open to it. We also have a brand new Kansas City Chiefs t-shirt, which you're gonna need to wear every Sunday. Sometimes Monday. One time, Thursday. We're also are going to include a couple of packages of my favorite chili, which is Skyline Chili out of Cincinnati, Ohio. It is different than chili you've had before. It is not spicy. It is not hot. It is incredibly flavorful, a touch sweet. And it. Amazing. So if you've never had Skyline Chili, boy, you gotta check that out.

Uh, also included in this is the, the book I read this summer that I thought was my favorite read of the summer called the road less stupid. Um, I'd love to have Mr. Cunningham on the podcast. If anybody knows him, that'd be great to have that introduction. My favorite book of the summer by far such great practical wisdom with leader.

Uh, it's not a church based book, so don't feel like if you're not in church, um, leadership, you can't read it. It is practical for everybody. So make sure that you check that out. That's the road less stupid. Okay. So I'm gonna send that to a reviewer that we have pulled randomly. So as we get into this, uh, I wanna read you a couple of, uh, reviews that came in and I'm so, so grateful for.

My friend, Kevin Osborne, osbornek, wrote "Insightful, entertaining and encouraging rusty brings his unique mix of humor, concern for the church, reaching the lost and his creative leadership style and strategies every podcast. I always look forward to the broad representation of guests that he brings on to learn from. And we get to listen in. Outstanding." Kevin, you know, I love you. Thank you so much. A friend from Southland, Ngyuen said "Great topics for Jesus followers. Good conversations with very interesting guests." Uh, a friend named Alava Webb said "great conversations from one of the best pastors around." I don't know if this was my mom or not, but thank you.

Uh, biased. Yes, this is biased. "Rusty is the lead pastor of my home church, Real Life Church in Santa Clarita, California. He's also a friend and one of the kindest, most giving men. I know I've listened to many of the episodes of this podcast. They're filled with inspiring conversations that show his hard in helping others and having talks to inspire our world, give it a listen. What do you have to lose? It's free." Well, thank you so much. I am definitely not worthy of some of these compliments, but I am very, very grateful.

So, for all of you who sent in a review, thank you. I really do appreciate your words. They mean more to me than, you know, it's an odd experience to sit in a room all by yourself and it's a soundproof room, so it feels pretty isolated. And to talk to people over zoom and wonder if anybody else will listen. And when you share the episodes, when you leave reviews, when you hit me up on social, uh, it is so encouraging to me and I so appreciate it. Podcasts have been such a valuable part of my life. Uh, I have learned so much from them. Great podcasters, like Andy Stanley and Cary Nieuhof and James Emery white and, uh, James Brian Smith. Uh, Craig Groschell. I could go on and on. Annie F Downs, just great podcasters out there. And my friend and a co-leader here, Michael Hinton, his podcast, Uncommon Christian, just fantastic.

I know how valuable podcasts are to me. And when you add mine to your rotation, when. Subscribe when you share and when you review, boy, it really does mean the world to me. So thank you so so much, I'm gonna read the review of the one person who has won the prize. But before I do, I wanna share some exciting news with you and that is here in the next few weeks, going to be launching our very first ever video course. And that is a 12 episode set of videos, all about 10 to 12 minutes long, where I walk through some of the most difficult things I've faced in ministry. I've been really amazed at how well, the podcasts that I've put out called How I Broke This have gone over. We've talked about staff culture. We've talked about hiring and firing. we've talked about preaching all kinds of different things that I've done the wrong way and learned a valuable lesson and passed that on to you. And it just proves my point that we all like to learn from each other's failures. Well, it just so happens that over the course of about a 10 year period of time, our church went through some very difficult crises.

Everything from affairs. To suicides to a school shooting, uh, to arrest to people, leaving the church to rapid growth that caused a great amount of division amongst our staff. It seems like almost every crisis a church could face. We faced it. And we did some things, right. And we did some things wrong and we did some things that we do again.

And some things that we wouldn't, and we learned a lot along the way. I'm proud to say that we made it through it and we're stronger now than we were before. And personally speaking, I am healthier than I have ever been. And so I wanted to take some time and share some of those insights with you. If you are a pastor that leads a church, the reality is you are either in a crisis or you're headed towards one, all of us face life crises, but.

When you're leading a church, then you now take on the potential crises of the people in your church and your community. How do you lead through that? How do you navigate through that? How do you put a board of elders around you that can help you lead through this? How do you deal with a staff that might be frustrated or might be so energetic?

You have to, uh, calm them down or might be so calm. You have to energize. How do you deal with a community that goes through a grieving process because of something horrific that happens, uh, in your city limits, how do you lead families through difficult tragedies? We faced all that. And I'm gonna share with you the things that we learned and the things that we would do differently.

We're gonna give you all kinds of resources as well. From PDFs you can download to, uh, even diagrams you can use in staff meetings. This will be a video course. You'll wanna watch with your group of leaders or elders. And this will be something you wanna pass on. Some of you are church leaders and let's face it.

You've done pretty. You're a large church. You've got a healthy budget, but you've planted a lot of churches and those guys they're out there really slugging it out. Just trying to make it think about not only getting this course for yourself, but paying it forward as well. How do you get one of these and pass it on to them to encourage them?

I for one, wanna share this with every church that we've planted, just to say, this is my gift to you to say, thank you for what you're doing, and I wanna help you avoid some of the mistakes that we made. So it's probably the most raw and real I've ever been. As far as talking through some of these issues.

This is How I Broke This on steroids. This is simply called Leading Through Crisis Without Becoming One. And you can sign up and pre-order it right now at a reduced rate. If you go to my website, pastorrustygeorge.com. And if you wanna go there specifically to this link, you can go to pastorrustygeorge.com/crisis.

I've been through my share. As the Farmer's Insurance commercial says, we know a thing or two, because we've seen a thing or two. And I'm gonna walk you through some of the difficulties we went through, give you the behind the scenes and also tell you the things that we did right. That we did wrong. And we would do differently the next time. So. Leading Through Crisis Without Becoming One. It launches in October of 2022, but you can pre-order it. Now, pastorrustygeorge.com/crisis.

Okay. On to our winner. Our winner of the summer challenge for reviews comes from (drumroll) this incredible review that I am so grateful for. And that is CWC16Lakers. (fanfare) And no, I did not choose this because Lakers is in their handle.

This was randomly chosen, CWC16Lakers. If this is you, let me know on social and I want to give you your gift. Here's what they write. "Always a great insight and perspective. Rusty has a great way of explaining some of the hardest, most thought provoking discussions and presenting them in the most clear and concise way. Grateful for all of the things this podcast provides. Thanks Rusty." Well, thank you, CWC16Lakers. I'm not sure who that is, but I'm so grateful for the. So, let me know who you are. Hit me up on social or DM me and let me know who you are and how we can get your gift to you. I don't want you to miss any of the fall without it CWC16Lakers.

Thank you so much for your review. I wanna thank our sponsor for this month and that is ServeHQ. It's an incredible ministry where you can upload your training videos for all of your areas of ministry. And all you do with your new leaders is say, watch these videos. They get to watch 'em, they're trained, they're ready to roll.

They do it on their time. Not on yours and you don't have to bring them out on a Saturday morning and beg and scream and threaten them and coerce them with donuts. They can watch videos on their own time. servehq.church, check it out.

Well, this month we got some very exciting guests. We have the CEO president of ServeHQ up next week, Scott Magdalein. He's gonna talk about recruiting volunteers and it's gonna be amazing. We have one of my closest friends in the world named Monty Wilkinson coming up in a couple of weeks, and he's gonna talk about interns and church transitions and life wisdom. Uh, and then we've got another baseball scout joining us, Kevin Burrell from the Chicago White Sox, which I love Kevin. I don't love the White Sox because I'm a Royals fan and the White Sox usually beat us, but we're gonna talk to him about the baseball. Coming up and then we're gonna get to hear from Andrew Stanley. That's right. Not Andy Stanley, but his son, Andrew, who is a comedian, and he's gonna make comedy simple for us.

Cannot wait for you to hear this month's content. Thanks so much to everybody who participated in our review, athon over the summer. Thanks to our winner, CWC 16 Lakers. And thanks to you for listening. Can't wait to talk to you next week and as always keep it simple.

Intro/Outro: Take a moment and subscribe to the podcast so you'll get it delivered every week and subscribe to the Rusty George YouTube channel for more devotionals messages and fun videos. Thank you for listening to Leading Simple.