The Rusty George Podcast

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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.

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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.

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Rusty George
Hey, thanks for listening to Leading Simple. So grateful to have you with us today. We've got a special guest that's going to walk us through an incredible tool that helps all of our churches, train leaders and volunteers. In fact, they are our sponsor this month. Serve HQ dot Church is available for you to get resources uploaded that you can share with your potential leaders and train them right there on the privacy of their home, in their car, watching from their phone.

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Rusty George
This is a great, great resource. Every church leader knows that having trained and engage, volunteer is essential. But it's so difficult to get them trained. Well, now you don't have to beg them to come out to the church between nine and 12 on a Saturday morning. Now you can send them to a website where you have already uploaded the training videos.

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Rusty George
They can watch this on their own time and show up prepared and ready to go. Go to ServeHQ.Church for more. Well, today our guest is the founder of Serve HQ. He is an incredible leader, a guy by the name of Scott Magdalein. And he's going to help us make recruiting volunteers. Simple. So grateful to have you with us on the podcast.

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Rusty George
Here we go. Well, we have a chance to have a lot of stars on the podcast, from film to TV to the pastor world today. We have a descendant of Mary Magdalene, Scott Magdalein, and thank you for joining the podcast. What a family tree you must have. And obviously, all kidding aside. But hey, buddy, it's great to finally meet you.

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Rusty George
I've heard about you for years and heard about what you're doing for years and excited to finally to see you and talk to you. So thanks for being on the podcast.

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Scott Magdalein

Yeah, my pleasure. And it's a blessing to be here. Happy to see if I can share anything that's I've gleaned over the years with you guys.

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Rusty George
Yeah, well, help our listeners know a little bit about who you are, a little bit of your life journey and why you choose to live in Jacksonville, Florida.

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Scott Magdalein

I don't know. I think Jacksonville chose me, but.

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Rusty George
Okay.

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Scott Magdalein

But I love Jacksonville. I went to went away to school to Bible college, and then came back to Jacksonville because it's it's a nice place to live. But I went to Bible College and then after Bible College, I went to Liberty for some more Bible because I guess I wasn't done with the Bible and went into some part time ministry and mostly like worship ministry and administrative stuff.

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Scott Magdalein

Hmm. And also around that same time in the early 2000s, got pulled into or fascinated by technology and programing software, that kind of stuff. I spent some time building my own stuff, worked at Life Church in Oklahoma, building the YouVersion Bible app and church online and church metrics and the stuff that Life Church does through digital missions work and then left there and start started.

00;03;31;01 - 00;03;36;09
Scott Magdalein

The company that I run now, which is ServeHQ, which is still church centric, providing software to churches.

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Rusty George
So wow, that is fantastic. And so many different rabbit trails we could go down right there. I'd love to know. Worship ministry. Okay. So were you leading worship? Were you on a in a band? Had that had that look for you? Was this early 2000?

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Scott Magdalein

Yeah, it was early 2000. So I well, I put myself through college. I got a scholarship for vocals, for voice in college, and that's how I was able to pay for college. Okay. And then after that, I stayed in worship ministry leading worship for probably ten years after college until until I just got pulled full time into ServeHQ stuff.

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Rusty George
But okay.

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Scott Magdalein

It was, it was on the leadership side. But I mean I played in bands and other stuff like that as like ad hoc stuff.

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Rusty George
Yeah, well that was an exciting time. That was kind of like post worship wars.

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Scott Magdalein

It was.

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Rusty George
The the kids from Passion had won the war and we were. Yeah, Chris Tomlin led the charge and we were able to sing songs with verses. So very exciting time and typically, you know, a worship leader and ad man, they don't really go together. So is that just kind of how you're wired? Do you like some of the details stuff as well as the creative stuff?

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Scott Magdalein

Well, to be honest, I'm less creative. I'm musically inclined. I'm able to carry a tune and play the guitar. But I am much more oriented toward details and administrative things, which meant that my worship team were very smooth running, very efficient worship teams. Wow. But I mean, like the churches I served in were not looking for and didn't want from the worship leader like deep creativity.

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Scott Magdalein

They wanted an engaging worship experience that was, you know, like on time. That's also the pastor wanted that.

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Rusty George
So as speaking as a lead pastor, that's all we really care about. You know, just just get done at the right time so I can get up there.

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Scott Magdalein

Right? No, don't make the pastor crunched for time, because actually the verse a bunch more times.

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Rusty George
Exactly, yeah. Because you felt the spirit lead. So what if you don't do it?

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Scott Magdalein

That's for sure.

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Rusty George
That's right. Because he led me on Tuesday when I wrote the message.

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Scott Magdalein

Exactly. Yeah.

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Rusty George
Yeah. Well, that's that's great. So you get into the administrative stuff, you start to see a little bit of the technology, you know, wave. That's coming, which is fully overtaken. It's by now and then you start doing this ServeHQ. So tell our listeners a little bit about this and we're talking a lot about that this month and we're so grateful for you being a sponsor on the podcast, but also a guest.

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Rusty George
So tell us a little bit about Serve HQ and and just kind of how you came to that idea.

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Scott Magdalein

Yeah. So the idea came from kind of a mixture of my experiences before I started it. Well, first of all, what ServeHQ is, is a it's a a training platform and library to help train volunteers, leaders and disciples in your church online. The idea coalesced or came together after my years at Life Church and working with remote teams and remote remote ministry through church, online.

00;06;47;01 - 00;07;11;21
Scott Magdalein

My a couple of experiences after life church where I was working at a as a programmer software programmer at an online training company that trained other programmers. So like programmers training programmers. And then while I was in around 2014, 2015, I was also a part time associate pastor and I needed to train my own church. And in Jacksonville, if you don't familiar with you're not familiar with Jacksonville is a very big city, very spread out.

00;07;11;21 - 00;07;36;07
Scott Magdalein

And so our church people were spread out and it was hard to get people to come to training meetings or just kind of like volunteer meetings in general. Hard to onboard people really well to volunteer teams, hard to upgrade people from volunteer team members to leaders. So I built the first version was a very simple thing, just so that my church people could get the training they needed in order to serve well without having to burden them with more and more meetings throughout the week.

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Rusty George
Boy, that is the that is the number one question people are having right now is it is so hard to get people to come to church post COVID, let alone come back for meetings. And that the classic three hour Saturday morning training. Yeah. Yes. Seems to be a thing of the past that used to be a that didn't sound so bad.

00;07;56;06 - 00;08;06;22
Rusty George
And now it's oh, I'd rather have, you know, a root canal than show up for that. So this I mean, this concept is brilliant. Did this happen before after you worked on the YouVersion Bible app?

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Scott Magdalein

This definitely happened after the YouVersion Bible App. And mainly my church experience with church online is what informed service?

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Rusty George
Q Yeah, and I mean, the Life Church has always been ahead of the curve. They're already in the metaverse and, you know, baptize and people that are avatars right now. But you know, you guys were were cutting edge when it came to creating this this Bible app and then the online platform, which so many of us have used and then just took off, obviously, during COVID.

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Rusty George
I'd love to ask you just for a second. You know, yeah, I meet pastors all the time that tell me I'm trying to get people back to church, so I'm going to shut off the online feed. I feel like the genie is out of the bottle. You know, we're not we're not getting that back. So now what are you seeing as the church moves ahead?

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Rusty George
Because, I mean, you're already pretty forward thinking, working on YouVersion, but also ServeHQ. Where do you see this all going?

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Scott Magdalein

Honestly, I see it going hybrid church just in the future is and I don't know what it looks like 50 years from now, but for the next 10 to 15 years, probably hybrid church where people connect in-person, they want to be able to have access to a church in-person with their friends. They get that in-person experience. But sometimes life carries you away from being able to attend in-person and having access to that same body of believers, the same values, the same mission remotely, whether it's online through like a video thing or even like on demand recorded like really good access to good quality, prerecorded stuff from your own church.

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Scott Magdalein

That is the future. Now, honestly, that's the present for you. That's the present. And I think it's more a matter of like our pastors, right, keeping up with with the here and now, not just what's what's coming next.

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Rusty George
You know, I love that you categorize that not 50 years, but 50, because, you know, the way my mind works is, okay, what's the next thing that will last forever? Let's get that figured out. And there is no there is no next thing that lasts forever. Right. So we've got to just kind of gradually, one out, gradually we're in it, but we've got to figure out just how to live in it, knowing that it's not forever, but it is for now.

00;10;16;18 - 00;10;44;03
Rusty George
So let's let's crush it as much as we possibly can. I think that's a that's a really helpful clarification for us. So the next 10 to 15 years, especially, I mean, before we're all, you know, living in ready player one we really do have this idea of, you know, doing this hybrid life of we're in church for online, we're training online, survey HQ is going to help us with a lot of that.

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Rusty George
Let's talk a little bit about volunteerism because I think what a lot of pastors are seeing right now is, boy, it is not what it used to be. Like we just said, it's hard to get people to show up for training. It's hard to get people to show up to serve this idea of, you know, sit in one service and serve at the next.

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Rusty George
That's really tough. You know, I was talking to the guys at North Point and they were saying they're seeing a trend where people will come in and do their due diligence of serving and then go home and watch church online because they don't like that gap. A lot of churches have nine and 11 and they've got that gap of time or it's just too busy.

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Rusty George
They don't want to mess with the crowd. What are you seeing post you know, the the pandemic that is the problem with volunteerism? Why is it such a difficult thing for churches right now?

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Scott Magdalein

Well, I mean, the the the one of the many things happened with the pandemic. But one of the things that happened you mentioned earlier, the genie is out of the bottle, right? So it sort of interrupted in a long and in a long term way, interrupted people's rhythms and and habits. And once habits are interrupted, they get replaced by new habits.

00;11;50;24 - 00;12;09;09
Scott Magdalein

And then those habits are hard to break. And so and there may be some, like, deep, deeper spiritual thing to it. I don't really know that I do not have the gift of discernment when that comes, when it comes to that kind of thing. But it is pretty practical, easily noticeable to say a habit was interrupted. It was replaced by a new habit.

00;12;09;09 - 00;12;28;26
Scott Magdalein

And now the job of pastors, or at least maybe the burden of pastors, maybe not the job of the burden of pastors is to recognize that new habit and to work to help people to to develop new habits that are that are healthy, spiritually, not just to solve the problem of butts in seats, but to help your church people to be healthy spiritually.

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Scott Magdalein

And if that means a hybrid model, that means providing more access, diverse ways of accessing the life of your church. Then, you know they should be doing that. Not every church should be moving to a hybrid model, in my opinion. Every church needs to be evaluating what's best for their community, not just for their church community, but also their immediate community around their particular campus.

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Scott Magdalein

Whether it's they have one campus like my church or like your church that probably has, you know, a lot of other people that have, you know, lots of campuses. But like the the assessment of what my church needs to reengage my people and build really new, healthy spiritual habits is, I think, the challenge of past. One of the challenges of pastoring right now.

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Rusty George
That's really good. I love what you just said. Their habits were interrupted. They were replaced by new habits. And I think the the knee jerk reaction for somebody like myself, that's, you know, I'm in my fifties, still early fifties, and I want people to come back to the physical building. But rather than just yelling at them to get back and, you know, go back to the old habit, I've got to find the healthy habit that's next.

00;13;36;07 - 00;13;57;13
Rusty George
That replaces possibly a bad habit, which is not to go to church at all. Right. So when you're talking about, you know, engaging volunteers again, what are you seeing out there that's working that is creating a new habit? How are people in churches that are engaging volunteers, finding success right now?

00;13;57;13 - 00;14;19;12
Scott Magdalein

Honestly, the same way that that really that you always found success with volunteer teams and that's community. So that in the past it wasn't necessarily identified as community, right. It was identified as maybe Sunday school like long enough ago. If you go further back into the year started with 19, that's what it was, Sunday school or maybe small groups if you had a different name for it or whatever.

00;14;19;12 - 00;14;35;13
Scott Magdalein

But they were on campus. They were they were there together on Sunday morning. And those are the people you served with. So I went to my group and we prayed together. We did a little Bible study together. We had some donuts maybe. And then those are awesome people. Some of those people we served in the next hour together or in the in-between hour.

00;14;35;13 - 00;14;57;27
Scott Magdalein

And then we've also maybe we went to church together in the first hour. So these are the people that my kind of moved with on Sunday mornings. You know, most churches have have replaced Sunday school with at home Bible studies or at home small groups or even remote like video based small groups. And so that's more difficult on Sunday mornings to develop that that camaraderie, that community around serving.

00;14;58;17 - 00;15;19;02
Scott Magdalein

But there's still other ways to do that. So there's still churches that are having a lot of success with Breakfast on Sunday. More just from a tactical perspective, we can talk about tactics, developing that community through breakfast together on Sunday mornings before they serve a lot of people like free food. They'll show up a few minutes early to eat some food and to pray together and to get kind of a focus on like, why did we come early to serve today?

00;15;19;27 - 00;15;35;09
Scott Magdalein

And then giving people opportunity to connect outside with their serve teams outside of just the door opening or the teaching? You know, the felt the felt boards one Sunday morning, that kind of stuff with the kids, whatever that might be that they're doing together or way to connect outside of serving.

00;15;36;01 - 00;15;59;04
Rusty George
You know, you mentioned tactical. I think that that is our knee jerk reaction is just to, okay, let's put a Band-Aid on this. What's the bigger question? Churches should be asking when they see volunteerism down? You know, when we're in the in the the conference room with the whiteboard rather than just, you know, what's what food do we serve them to get them here, or what incentive do we give them?

00;15;59;23 - 00;16;05;27
Rusty George
What's the bigger question we should be asking when we see that our volunteer numbers are not what they should be?

00;16;05;27 - 00;16;28;04
Scott Magdalein

Oh, goodness. There's there's some some core questions you want to ask about how are your volunteers connecting to mission? How are they understanding their role in connecting to the mission, to the to the to the values of the volunteer team, the serving teams, like the why of showing up? Are we doing a good job of connecting those people to that deeper mission and also connecting those people to one another?

00;16;28;14 - 00;16;51;19
Scott Magdalein

So like from what what kind of as a pastor, what can I do to to to to help people to understand the value or help people to find value in showing up, to serve, to give instead of to to just receive and kind of absorb it. Am I helping them connect to the mission? Well, which means a lot of repetitive, repetitive things, saying a lot of the same things over and over again.

00;16;51;19 - 00;17;19;00
Scott Magdalein

Right. You know, repeating constantly repeating your values, constantly not reshaping, but recasting your values. So, you know, taking the same exact thing and saying a slightly different way just like and nausea. Right. And until you're like, what? At the point where you're tired of it, other people are just starting to pick it up right. And so and then also continuing to connect people to one another in community through or related to serving.

00;17;19;00 - 00;17;39;08
Scott Magdalein

And those are the things that are going to make people want to show up, make people feel like there's a value in showing up beyond just I felt good about, you know, opening doors this morning. I felt good about hanging out with the kids this morning. There's only so far that that will go that like the good feeling, that warm feeling inside from serving this got to be connected to something bigger than them, which is community and mission values, purpose, that sort of thing.

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Rusty George
Yeah. It seems like you know, we, we read the stories of the churches that are crushing it and they've got a fancy name, they've got really cool t-shirts, there's a lot of energy and maybe even a pep rally before people go out and serve. I think all those things are great, but like you said, it kind of has a short shelf life.

00;17;58;16 - 00;18;17;11
Rusty George
The times that I saw our church just do really well with with serving was when we were meeting in a movie theater. And it was very obvious if we don't do this is this ain't happened today, right? We got to show up and set up. And we started having the small groups show up together to set up together.

00;18;17;11 - 00;18;38;21
Rusty George
So there was a community aspect, you know, coupled with the serving. I feel like once we got in the building, then it became kind of plugging holes in the dam. You know, you go stand here and do this and show up at this time. How are how are churches kind of recultivating that sense of community and the value of doing this together?

00;18;38;21 - 00;18;58;13
Rusty George
Do you see a lot of small groups serving together or do you see serving turning into small groups? Hey, let me interrupt this podcast for just a second. Every church leader knows that having trained and engaged volunteers is essential to successfully accomplishing your mission. But if you're like most leaders, you also know how tricky it can be to onboard and equip people for your team.

00;18;58;27 - 00;19;20;15
Rusty George
What if there was a resource that made it easier? Let me recommend Serve HQ to you. Serve HQ is simple video training courses that help you equip volunteers and develop leaders. You can create your own training or use their video library. You can even automate next steps to onboard new people. Check it out at ServeHQ.Church.

00;19;20;22 - 00;19;25;23
Rusty George
Now back to our conversation. Where do you see serving turning into small groups.

00;19;26;09 - 00;19;41;27
Scott Magdalein

You know that's a you ask the second part of that and I was going to say the second part of that so the first thing was like carried over from Sunday school world where you show up and you you go to your Senate school and then you serve together or maybe not don't serve as an entire group, but you serve with people from your group up in different areas of the of the ministry.

00;19;42;22 - 00;20;05;10
Scott Magdalein

But the other piece of that is creating community from those teams. And so some consistency in the teams that you serve with. So as far as ministry leaders, we're doing your best to not just kind of like fill holes every Sunday with random people that are serving with people they don't know every Sunday, but every time that person shows up, they show up and they're serving with the same people they showed up at last week or week before, so that there's some consistency.

00;20;05;10 - 00;20;18;06
Scott Magdalein

That's how you build friends. Like, I know Suzanne is going to be here this Sunday and she's really funny. So like, I'm like, it's good. It's going to be a fun time because she always makes me laugh or, you know, or John, he's going to show up and he's always, always concerned. He's always going to pray for me.

00;20;18;06 - 00;20;35;24
Scott Magdalein

He's always going to like, give me a good, solid hug. And I could probably use a good hug this week from John. You know, those are the kind of things that start to build some stickiness to your serve teams and whether that comes as a result of like these are the people I'm in a group with. And so I show up on Sunday morning and I serve with people from my group or I show up and serve with these people.

00;20;35;24 - 00;20;50;29
Scott Magdalein

And so that those people I serve with become sort of my group. I mean, honestly, it doesn't really matter. It's the people that are sticky, not the not the shirts or the rallies or even the breakfast, even though I'm personally motivated by breakfast. But not everybody else.

00;20;51;29 - 00;21;04;08
Rusty George
Yeah, but you're down in Jacksonville. That's where the Waffle House is came. And you know, Crystal's even has breakfast. You know, it's the really good stuff. We don't, man. We're all into the overnight oats and the gorilla bar, so.

00;21;04;11 - 00;21;05;20
Scott Magdalein

No biscuits and gravy here.

00;21;05;21 - 00;21;28;22
Rusty George
Oh, now you're talking, but now you're talking. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about, you know, the element of training volunteers because there's a lot of pastors out there that think if you're going to serve in any area ministry, you need to know our entire history as a church, all of our values, our mission statement, our doctrine.

00;21;28;29 - 00;21;48;23
Rusty George
You need to be a disciple to the level that you could compete with the Apostle Paul. You know what? What do you think are the the essentials before somebody really serves? And because we don't want to just overwhelm people with information thinking that's going to prepare them to be a great part of our service team.

00;21;49;05 - 00;22;09;02
Scott Magdalein

Yeah. Well, I mean, in the past you have limited number of opportunities to get people prepared to serve. Ready to serve, right. And then that's because you had a training meeting and then you had a shadowing Sunday morning, like say, hey, just show up. I know you don't know at all what's going on, but you'll be you know, you'll be working with John and you're going to shadow John four for the Sunday and then you'll know what's going on.

00;22;09;29 - 00;22;27;24
Scott Magdalein

And so that was really your opportunity to train people, get them ready for to serve. And then from that point on, it's like, hey, just ask questions when you don't know what to do, just ask me. And anybody going into a job like an actual paid job would feel like that's an inadequate amount of training to be able to do a job.

00;22;28;00 - 00;22;54;06
Scott Magdalein

And our volunteers are working in jobs. You know, it's an hour a week or 2 hours a week, but it's a specific task that we expect them to do and they need to be prepared for it. But so the mindset shift from maybe they come to a training meeting possibly, probably not if it's just a new person, but they really that really the main training is they show up and they shadow somebody that's already doing that job is is not going to be is is never was really and is not going to be good enough.

00;22;55;01 - 00;23;17;08
Scott Magdalein

So it wasn't good enough for me in 2015 either. So like I was, I was where every other ministry leader was. This this tool that we created ServeHQ training to train up on line allows you to be able to onboard people. So if we're talking about new volunteers onboard people in a way that is easily accessible, so it's not going to take a ton of time out of their schedule.

00;23;17;08 - 00;23;32;06
Scott Magdalein

You don't have to call a new meeting. You don't have to have you don't have to like make it every once every quarter kind of thing. So people have to wait to start serving because they have to wait for the next meeting to start to happen. And people can get their training. They can they can learn the basics, the very beginning of what they need to know to get started.

00;23;32;07 - 00;23;49;22
Scott Magdalein

Now, that's not going to make them a fantastic small group leader. It's not going to make them the most engaging, you know, kindergarten, Sunday school teacher kind of thing. But it's going to get them ready to serve, which is sort of our marker, our baseline for going from I would love to serve and I'm interested in being joining a serve team too.

00;23;49;22 - 00;24;08;28
Scott Magdalein

I could start and I can know what I'm doing and train. That helps make that really easy. I'm going to pitch a little bit here. Train That makes it really easy because it's just some simple videos, prerecorded watch a video, answer, a few follow up questions and then like string those videos together. So there's four or five videos and once they've watched all videos, it took them 15 or 20 minutes.

00;24;08;28 - 00;24;27;03
Scott Magdalein

They've answered some questions so that you as the leader know that they understood what they were watching and they're ready to serve. You know about that next Sunday. So instead of a a multi week process or having to shadow and then the shadowing is different every time somebody joins the team, it's a really consistent quick way to onboard people to a team.

00;24;27;29 - 00;24;39;11
Rusty George
Okay, so walk me through this. If I'm a church leader and I want to use survey HQ, am I creating videos to put on there? Do you already have some stock videos on there? Walk me through this process.

00;24;39;20 - 00;25;07;11
Scott Magdalein

We do. We have a library of about a thousand videos or there are pre created modules. So it's videos with follow up questions that you can use right off the bat, right out of the gate. They are pretty generic. Been applied to most churches for high level kind of best practices things. But every church is different. So our system also has a really simple tool to create your own videos so you can mix match hour videos that are kind of generic, high level best practices with your own very specific training for your own ministry.

00;25;07;11 - 00;25;28;06
Scott Magdalein

So things like in our training would meet if you're a greeter training kind of thing or first impressions, things like chew some gum before you start so that you're not like knocking people on the face, you know, open a door before they show up to the door. Don't wait for them to get the door and open it, you know, open it while they're still walking toward you, you know, smile on a Sunday morning, like act like you're happy to be there.

00;25;28;07 - 00;25;55;14
Scott Magdalein

So that's like the high level generic best practice stuff for greeters, but you do have specific doors that need to be opened for specific people. You have specific things that your greeters should be saying on a Sunday morning. So you can record your own videos, express and train the specifics to your specific ministry area in your church, your language, your vision, your values, and mix that with best practice is stuff that every church wants to be able to explain pops some gum in your mouth.

00;25;55;29 - 00;25;59;01
Scott Magdalein

But you know, we've already said it for you.

00;25;59;01 - 00;26;12;16
Rusty George
Does it address the the problem that there's a craze going on that everybody feels like they need to be taking a garlic pill? You know what I mean? You just know who they are.

00;26;12;17 - 00;26;12;26
Scott Magdalein

I mean.

00;26;13;29 - 00;26;31;08
Rusty George
No one had, you know, pesto this early in the morning. And that is clearly a garlic pill that they've claimed to be odorless. And it ain't odorless. It's never is it strong? And then you got the coffee breath, too. I yeah, I think I always have that so I'm always scared of it. So I've always got Altoids and I don't know if that actually helps.

00;26;31;08 - 00;26;47;23
Rusty George
So okay, so you can create some of your own, you have some stock videos that is that's fantastic stuff. If I if I put videos on there, are they going to be used by other churches? Are they are they part of this library now that other people use? So I could be using Craig Groeschel's and he could be using mine.

00;26;47;23 - 00;27;03;13
Scott Magdalein

We do have some videos from other churches, but that's because we they made some really great stuff when we requested to put those in our library. But everybody's videos are private to their own account, so there's not going to be any like any other churches that are seeing your stuff and using your stuff without your permission. It's all private to your own account.

00;27;03;21 - 00;27;07;21
Rusty George
What's the funniest video somebody put up?

00;27;07;21 - 00;27;30;05
Scott Magdalein

Oh, well, there's this one children's ministry training that was I mean, it was private to their account, so I didn't do anything with it, but it was pretty off the rails with the antics like the the production though, like acting over the top to get there, like to convey what how to how to have energy on a Sunday morning with kids, it was like the ministry leader.

00;27;30;05 - 00;27;38;26
Scott Magdalein

Was it like a clown, like a clown outfit? Oh, we're not. You don't have to work around. But we want the energy like they're for the kids to have a good time.

00;27;39;00 - 00;27;50;21
Rusty George
So off of topic, have you seen the video of the church and hopefully this is in your church that did a passion play. But all the characters were the Avengers?

00;27;51;29 - 00;27;52;17
Scott Magdalein

No.

00;27;53;27 - 00;27;56;04
Rusty George
So Iron Man was dying for our sins and.

00;27;56;27 - 00;27;57;18
Scott Magdalein

No, I didn't.

00;27;58;13 - 00;28;37;02
Rusty George
He was singing, I get knocked down, but I get up again. I mean, it's just unbelievable, you know, it's out there. Well, hopefully we can create a video for you that you'll it'll go viral. So this is this is great for helping training leaders. And I just want to echo this for all of our listeners. If you are a leader in a church, suggest this to the powers that be and if you lead a church, check this out, because it is a really simple way to train your volunteers without having to have the nine to noon service or training service there at your church.

00;28;37;24 - 00;29;05;05
Rusty George
So I want to ask you about this, Scott. It's it's one thing to get up as a as a communicator and bang the drum, for we need more people serving on the weekends. But I got this group of people that are slowly taking over the church called Gen Z's and Millennials that think, Well, how would I serve in here when I can go out there and serve the homeless or the hurting or develop a nonprofit or those kind of things?

00;29;05;05 - 00;29;08;10
Rusty George
Has the idea of serving in a church just seem too selfish?

00;29;08;21 - 00;29;41;02
Scott Magdalein

That's a great question. I mean that for me, it's difficult to answer that because I'm an older millennial, like I'm barely squeaking at the upper end of millennials. And so I have a difficult time sometimes understanding my own generation and certainly Gen Z is a bit of a mystery to me. But I mean, I think you should make I think I would I would estimate that you make the case that it's a both and not an either or thing, that a life where you where you box the way that you serve people into like this task that I do.

00;29;41;18 - 00;30;06;10
Scott Magdalein

And like that's how I give to other people is a misunderstanding of how we give our lives away for the good of others. So but that's like something that you lace into sermons and you lace into Bible studies and you lace into the worship like the lead ups to worship, like what the worship leader says that when we're giving our way, our lives for the good of others, it's not an hour on Sunday and then the soup kitchen on Saturday.

00;30;07;10 - 00;30;26;17
Scott Magdalein

It's a completely different perspective on how we serve others. And I think that's the kind of thing that resonates honestly with any generation. But it's not an either or thing. If I if I'm going to have an hour a week where I give it to somebody else, is going to be in a soup kitchen. That's just a completely misunderstanding, a complete misunderstanding of Jesus all to us.

00;30;27;17 - 00;30;32;03
Rusty George
That's a really good word. We have compartmentalized everything, haven't we?

00;30;32;03 - 00;30;44;18
Scott Magdalein

Yeah. I mean, even even me, I mean, like I do the same thing when it comes to, you know, other things that are valuable, right? My health and fitness or my time with my kids, I think, oh, I'm going to play with them for this hour. And that's going to be my parenting. Like, that's not at all how parenting works.

00;30;44;29 - 00;30;55;00
Scott Magdalein

But we like, I got that parenting and I got my workout and it's like, that's my health and that's my parenting, right? And that's how we approach our, our faith like, well, that's just not going to work. It's going to be disappointing. It's going to be empty soon.

00;30;55;21 - 00;31;20;23
Rusty George
Right. And I think it'd be good for us as leaders to allow our people to have certain rhythms of serving rather than feeling like they need to do it. Until Jesus returns. It's okay for people to come in and serve, you know, just for a season and then move on to something else, because that's that's their niche. And we probably shouldn't think that every teacher that does it professionally Monday through Friday wants to be a teacher on Sunday as well.

00;31;21;07 - 00;31;23;06
Rusty George
They might like to do something else.

00;31;23;21 - 00;31;28;09
Scott Magdalein

Yes. In fact, maybe they specifically don't want to be around kids on a Sunday morning.

00;31;28;11 - 00;31;36;17
Rusty George
An exact like. Okay, well, I want to give you one last shot at our audience: tell them why they should sign up for ServeHQ.

00;31;37;08 - 00;31;55;06
Scott Magdalein

I simply just give your give yourself and your church members a break from the the endless meetings, the endless training meetings and the show ups. Early for you show up early this day for another training, make it really easy on yourself. You can say at one time, Do the training one more time, but record it and then put it on.

00;31;55;06 - 00;32;10;28
Scott Magdalein

Trained up in a series of of shorten and break it into small videos three or 4 minutes long each as a follow up questions. And then you're done with the saying of those those that that information transfer that way in the future when you're in person with your people you can just vision cast, you can connect with them on a more personal level.

00;32;10;28 - 00;32;30;13
Scott Magdalein

And it's not just training, getting them up to speed on things. And then for your church people give them a break. They do their best. They they they believe in the mission. They want to be there. But the more that you ask them to show up early or to show up after or to show up on a different day, it's going to make it harder and harder for them to really stay in love with and stick, you know, stick to your ministry team.

00;32;30;13 - 00;32;49;14
Scott Magdalein

And so make it online just like everything else is online and let them watch the videos and get up to speed and ready to serve on their own time. That way they show up, ready, happy, engaged, ready to go rather than showing up. Kind of like, oh, we got to listen to, you know, the the bullet list that we of of the new curriculum or the new policy or whatever.

00;32;50;00 - 00;32;53;28
Scott Magdalein

So give yourself and your church people a break. Sign up for ServeHQ and make training really easy for yourself.

00;32;54;12 - 00;33;04;10
Rusty George
That's great. Okay, so as a guy who's done some online courses, am I able to watch this on three times speed and then skip the questions or act like I've been there and I haven't?

00;33;05;13 - 00;33;18;10
Scott Magdalein

You can watch it on extra smart speed. I listen to my podcast on Extra fast, but you can't skip the questions. The questions are mandatory. Okay, so that's how, you know, did they understand it? Not just did they watch it, but did they understand the information that you gave them?

00;33;18;10 - 00;33;18;27
Rusty George
Exactly.

00;33;19;01 - 00;33;26;01
Scott Magdalein

So you can't skip the questions, but you can watch it full screen, small screen, fast, slow. Scroll back and watch it again if you missed it. All that kind of stuff.

00;33;26;01 - 00;33;40;02
Rusty George
Awesome. Okay. Well, man, you've been a great guest. Thank you so much, Scott. And I really appreciate what you're doing. It's plus in a lot of churches, I hope you have a great, great fall. And you're a Florida Gators. Have a good year. So thanks so much.

00;33;40;21 - 00;33;41;06
Scott Magdalein

Thank you.

00;33;42;20 - 00;34;00;17
Rusty George
Well, thank you to Scott for being a participant on the podcast and a thank you to him for sponsoring our podcast this month. Go to serveHQ.Church for more information. Hey, next week we'll be back with just one of my closest friends in the world. He's been a mentor to me. He's the first guy that hired me.

00;34;00;23 - 00;34;21;21
Rusty George
His name is Monte Wilkinson. He pastors a church out in Kentucky. Monty and I worked together for nine years and two summers previous as I was his intern. He's got some fun dirt on me, but we talk a lot about influence. We talk about interns. We talk about church transitions. And Monty is just one of the wisest guys I know.

00;34;21;21 - 00;34;42;17
Rusty George
And he is going to give life wisdom for us and teach us how to make it simple. So make sure you join us next week. For that, I want to thank everybody who has shared these episodes and has written a review. Please continue to do that. It helps us get the word out. And thank you to Scott Magdalein for being a guest today and a sponsor through ServeHQ.Church.

00;34;42;27 - 00;34;45;24
Rusty George
Well, you guys have a great week and as always, keep it simple.

00;34;46;09 - 00;35;10;02
Intro/Outro
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