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
Welcome to Leading Simple. I'm your host, Rusty George. I'm so excited to have this guest on. When I recorded this conversation with this incredible individual, I had no idea that he would soon become a very trusted friend and a very gifted coach in my life. His name is Sean Lovejoy. He was a megachurch pastor. He's been a real estate developer.

00;00;49;09 - 00;01;16;07
Rusty George
And now he leads a coaching network where he coaches pastors and executives all around the country. He's written many great books. My favorite is Being Mean About the Vision. His most recent book is Killer Teams, and he leads the courage to Lead Coaching Network. And he and his band of coaches help thousands of leaders every single year. He's just an incredible individual and he's got a great Southern accent.

00;01;16;07 - 00;01;38;05
Rusty George
So you're going to love that big Alabama fan. And as he would say, roll tide. So I can't wait for you to hear from Sean. Hey, as has been going on the past couple of months, sort of, HQ is our sponsor and they are amazing. They have provided all the training material you need to be able to train your leaders without them even having to come to your church for a three hour training on a Saturday morning.

00;01;38;14 - 00;01;56;19
Rusty George
You can get them prepared, ready to roll all through videos. Either you create or you can use videos that are already out there about how to be a great small group leader, how to be a great usher, how to host people at a welcome center. All those kind of things are available. Serve HQ to Dot Church, so make sure you check that out.

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Rusty George
Well, I'm really excited for you to hear from Sean. Love, Joy, and I'd love for you to connect with him and find out more about how he can help coach you. Here we go. Sean Lovejoy, thank you so much for being on the podcast. The last name, Lovejoy. What's the heritage of that? What's the background?

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Shawn Lovejoy
Maybe London. They tell me. No one knows for certain.

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Rusty George
I am a fan of the Kansas City Royals because I grew up in Kansas. Nobody ever chooses that. But they had a pitcher whose last name was Lovelady, and I thought, that is an unfortunate last name.

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Shawn Lovejoy
I've been called Love Lady, Killjoy, Lover Boy, everything and everything under the sun.

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Rusty George
Okay, so for our listeners that aren't familiar with you, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you live, what it is you do.

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Shawn Lovejoy
Sure. Well, I was a real estate developer crushing at my twenties. Okay. And God brought revival to the whole church to a Sunday school class. I was teaching and ruined my wife and I in the very best way and walked off and left the family business and went off to seminary, served on staff at a couple of churches.

00;03;08;27 - 00;03;29;05
Shawn Lovejoy
Then we started a church in metro Atlanta in 1999 in our living room, and it grew to be a megachurch. But I tell guys, it was despite my preaching, you know, not because of it. I always felt like a business guy trapped in a pastor's body or maybe an executive pastor trapped in a senior pastor's body. You know, you got some of that in you, you know.

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Shawn Lovejoy
And so we started coaching churches like How to Get Better between Sundays 20 years ago. And so then it made the second scariest decision I've ever made eight years ago to hand it off and, and, and to coach full time. And it's been a wild ride since. So we've got courage to leave where we coach marketplace leaders now.

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Shawn Lovejoy
We got courageous pastors where we coach pastors and churches now.

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Rusty George
That's so great. Well, I came to know you because of your book, Be Mean about the vision. We'll get to that in a second. Which, by the way I total title envy on that that is a great title because it's a command and it's eye catching and all of that. Let's go back to real estate development. I'm fascinated by this.

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Rusty George
Seems like it. Like you said, it's a family business. What did you learn there that you still use today or maybe more like you used while you were leading a church?

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Shawn Lovejoy
It's funny you should ask that because it was a real motivation that drove me and drives my coaching even today. My dad. So real estate developer in our hometown, they call him the Land Man. They call him the mayor of our county, which there's no such thing. They just call him that because he's so connected, you know, he had a bunch of bad dealings with would be preachers and pastors who did bad business deals for him, took advantage of him, moved off owning money.

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Shawn Lovejoy
So when I told him I was going to become a pastor, like that was like the worst thing I could tell him. Hmm. He had. He had no worse thought than preachers. So when I. When I became a pastor, like, one of the things I wanted to do is, like, I wanted to change the way people think about pastors.

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Shawn Lovejoy
One of the things my dad said to me is he said, I know I've never had a pastor offer to buy my lunch.

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Rusty George
Wow.

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Shawn Lovejoy
So for 20 years of vocational ministry, I would never allow a business guy in our church to buy me lunch. I always bought their lunch. Uh huh.

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Rusty George
Absolutely.

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Shawn Lovejoy
So that's one, too. We don't know how to we don't know how to approach business leaders. You know, we're a little bit intimidated by, you know, a lot of us pastors. We we don't feel like we amassed a lot of a lot of wealth, you know? And so we don't really know how to approach these elite businessmen in our church and engage them.

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Shawn Lovejoy
They're probably not going to serve a cup of coffee or park a car, but they have a lot of capacity and a lot of ways. We just don't know how to utilize their gift, you know? And so having been one and sat on that side, you know, I kind of got it a little bit and and really set out to try to, you know, engage business guys, you know, in our leadership, informed them in our leadership making process.

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Shawn Lovejoy
And and, you know, we had a strong ministry outside the church and inside the church to business people just because what I experienced before I became a pastor. Mm hmm.

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Rusty George
That's really good. Yeah. I've often found that the guys that come out of the marketplace kind of have a leg up on those of us coming out of seminary. They've got some of that relational hurts bar or whatever you want to call it that that a lot of us don't, that they don't really teach and they can't teach in Bible College.

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Rusty George
So what are you finding as the negative if you're a business person going into the church world, what do you not know that it takes you a while to get your mind around?

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Shawn Lovejoy
I think most business people like it's all about crushing the deal, you know, and it's not always to me, it's not always easy or easy to measure life change, you know? You know? And it's not always about doing the right thing. I tell leaders all the time, knowing what you need to do is only about 20% of the solution in the church doing it in a wise way that doesn't blow everyone and everything up is 80% of the work.

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Shawn Lovejoy
Yeah. So sometimes marketplace people coming out to church staffs, they know the right thing to do in 5 seconds, a lot faster than the average seminary trained person. But teaching them the IQ part of it all and the Q part of it, as Joe Maxwell said years ago, I think he probably stole it from someone else. He said he didn't think of the leader.

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Shawn Lovejoy
The No. One follow up is only taking a walk. You know, it's a teaching. These guys like we have to take as many people as we can with us, but they're not all going to get right. But there's a way to do this that takes the lion's share of leaders with us.

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Rusty George
Right.

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Shawn Lovejoy
And and pastors can help marketplace people that join your teams by kind of softening up that when you come in, you know. And so they don't they're not a bull in a china shop, so to speak.

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Rusty George
Boy, isn't that the case? We've hired people from our board before or just marketplace guys and they come in and they think I'm man, I'll whip this place in the shape in about three weeks. Yeah. And they just do so much damage.

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Shawn Lovejoy
It's easy when your pay, you know, you pay and everybody to think you can get away with it. Yes. And to some extent you can. But I talk a lot about that in the book. But in my latest book. But in the church, you just can't write. You can't do it.

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Rusty George
That's right. Okay. So you said an interesting phrase. You said helping churches succeed between Sundays. Tell me about that.

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Shawn Lovejoy
Well, seminary trains us to be good on Sundays and everything from harmony edicts, you know, to pastoral care, you know, in general. I started a church when I was 28. I had I had never hired or fired anybody. I had never had a staff meeting. Rusty I was 28, okay. We had four and a half hour staff meetings on Monday.

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Shawn Lovejoy
Okay. I confess that to God and my old team, you know, it was terrible. It was terrible. You know, I just made all the mistakes. I realized, God, you know, like there's just got to be better ways to do this, you know? And so there's so much that we were not trained to do. And in the age of the megachurch, you know, a lot of those principles that are organizational management principles, they work well in the Westernized form of church.

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Shawn Lovejoy
You know, they're not secular. They're very biblical. They're wise principles that a lot of us were just never exposed to, you know, in our biblical training. Mm hmm.

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Rusty George
What are some of those principles you normally have to talk about with pastors?

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Shawn Lovejoy
Well, one, you need a better hiring process. I mean, most pastors go to take a guy to coffee and say, I like you, want to come work for me, here's your here's what I do. Like you can make I'll starve to death, but it's for Jesus, you know, come on, my team. And that's usually a really bad hire, you know.

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Shawn Lovejoy
So it starts there. It starts like doing a better service, a better systematic approach to objectively assessing people that are potential teammates and then current teammates and, you know, performance and development reviews. I mean, they talk about that in your seminary classes, you.

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Rusty George
Know.

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Shawn Lovejoy
You know how how to create an action oriented team. And, you know, where what we talk about in meetings like actually gets done, you know, all that like over time with some really good coaches, you know, I was able to put some of those processes into place. Some of it came natural for me. You know, once I got just announce, I could like write the sequence out, you know, and we begin to live it and breathe it, you know, along the way.

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Shawn Lovejoy
But then, you know, just discipline and work ethic and, you know, how to shut it off at the end of the day and all those things I had to kind of learn, you know, that we talk about a lot with leaders today.

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Rusty George
You know, Maxwell talks a lot about the law of the lid and how you reach his lid or the ceiling of your leadership. And you have to work beyond that. And you and I both seen guys that get in over their skis a little bit where the church grows faster than their capacity. Unfortunately, sometimes that leads to moral failure, but sometimes it's just I don't know what to do next.

00;11;18;07 - 00;11;31;22
Rusty George
Coaching is such a big part of what you do. Are there ever times that you've encountered people that you think, You know what? Be comfortable with who you are. This is as good as it gets. Or can you always get better?

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Shawn Lovejoy
Yeah, good question. I think I tell guys, you know, gosh, I'm from Alabama. We're 48th on every national list. You know, thank God for Mississippi and Louisiana. I don't know what that said.

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Rusty George
No.

00;11;43;04 - 00;12;06;09
Shawn Lovejoy
One, I've never claimed to have the highest IQ, you know, and they they say your IQ, like, if you're dumb, you're just dumb. You can't ever get better at that. You know, your IQ does not increase over time, but your IQ, your emotional intelligence. Absolutely. You can learn your Aki, your relational quotient. You absolutely can get better at that.

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Shawn Lovejoy
Your leadership quotient, you can get better. So three out of four, which are more important than IQ.

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Rusty George
Right.

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Shawn Lovejoy
By the way. So the average billionaire today doesn't even have a college degree, you know, and we're deemed failures coming out of high school, you know, but they're really good at the other three, you know, and going after it. And building a team and and crushing it, you know, so that you can get better at all of that.

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Shawn Lovejoy
And that's some of the best news if you're like me and you realize you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, like I can still get better in a lot of ways. And I have I mean, I've shown a propensity to do that over time through coaching myself over time, knocked those rough edges off and get better at those areas that you can grow in.

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Shawn Lovejoy
To me, it's one of the most encouraging, liberating choice I could share.

00;12;51;27 - 00;13;24;25
Rusty George
I want to talk about coaching for just a minute and I need you to help me with this. The idea of getting a leadership coach, management coach, whatever the term is, somebody wants to use it always sounds great. But what I've discovered is it is what you put into it. When you coach somebody tell me the for instance, if I were to say there's three types of people that you work with, you know, what would that be and what are the best people do that get the most out of coaching versus those that don't?

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Shawn Lovejoy
Yeah, unfortunately, it's just like, you know, like overcoming images about the church they're in. You know, there are unfair and fair images and people think about coaching or consulting and out there today, what a lot of people are calling coaching is really content delivery. Yeah. Or it's content consumption or it's training, which I'm for all of those things.

00;13;45;08 - 00;14;12;11
Shawn Lovejoy
But coaching requires a relationship and it happens best one on one. Hmm. You know, so that's why we've scaled 18 coaches and that's why we the our bread and butter is putting a coach with a leader and their team for a year or more because we can make the biggest difference, you know, so the ones the ones that that we know are going to be most successful are the ones who have the highest rate of courage.

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Shawn Lovejoy
Hmm. I always ask guys, I know you want to grow, but how badly do you want to grow? To me, the reason why churches stop growing is very, very, very simple. Okay? They refuse not to have the courageous conversations they need to have, and they refuse not to have the courageous decisions they need to make. Hmm. You know, so it's courage.

00;14;35;10 - 00;14;52;10
Shawn Lovejoy
It's courage to lead it. I believe in it. I hang my hat on it. It's in my blood, in my bones. You know, secondly, guys who have a real estate perspective, you know, we're not going to fix everything in 90 days, you know, so we like to be most of my guys have been I was just telling my wife this.

00;14;52;10 - 00;15;08;16
Shawn Lovejoy
We were on the way back home from a speaking engagement. I told her, I said, most of my guys have been moved for three years or more and the longer I walk with them, I'm better coach, you know. But we tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period of time and overestimate what we can do in a long period of time.

00;15;08;16 - 00;15;27;01
Shawn Lovejoy
And of course, Simon Sinek talks a lot about this, about focusing on the long game. Yeah, but a lot of pastors want the silver bullet today in the program and the package is, you know, and they run down to my church. I love my church church. The Highlands is where at the end of Birmingham they will run to here to get the growth track they can that's going to fix your church.

00;15;27;09 - 00;15;46;04
Shawn Lovejoy
And it's a great system. But if you don't have the right team and you don't have the right culture built to support that system, you're not you're not going to it's not the. So there is no such thing as a silver bullet. It takes a lot of work and it takes time. And overnight success is generally take years in the making.

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Shawn Lovejoy
So yeah guys, they are willing to be courageous. I'm willing to push through the pain and are willing to take a little bit longer term approach, you know, to this thing are the ones we see have the greatest return on investment.

00;15;59;23 - 00;16;02;23
Rusty George
Is patience, the greatest pain that most of us have to face?

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Shawn Lovejoy
Oh, man, for us. Hard charging. Yeah, type-A for me, Enneagram eight, you know, leaders. It's it's it's everything, you know. But I'm 51, you know, I'm getting more patient every day, you know, just just and realistic and and enjoying the journey and, you know, all of that. And I tell guys, first of all, the two biggest lies from hell I ever believed as a pastor is one.

00;16;28;10 - 00;17;00;05
Shawn Lovejoy
It'll be easier when we get to hear. Hmm. Yeah, that's a mirage, is it not rusty? Right. And then when we hire this person, it'll solve our problems. No, no, no, no, no. It's more complex. There's more personalities to manage. So you got to. You got to, like, knuckle down and decide you're going to enjoy the journey, not just this, you know, destination that's really just a mirage because you're not you're not happier when you get to there.

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Shawn Lovejoy
And that size and that many staff, it's it's it joys. Afraid of the spirit not afraid of the circumstance that you're that you're in.

00;17;08;04 - 00;17;40;27
Rusty George
Yes. Yeah. Joy always seems to be in the rearview mirror. Yeah. Oh the good days. Yeah. Or what somebody else has and you can't get to. So when you talk about courageous conversations, I know exactly what you mean. And there the conversations with the people that got you to here but can't get you to their their the conversations with leaders that you love but you can no longer spend time with or you have to disengage from or whatever it is when there's a leader.

00;17;40;27 - 00;18;00;27
Rusty George
No, it's time to part with this person. Let's talk specifically about personnel. You've got a person on your staff. You love, but they cannot go to the next level. You know it. They know it. But you're scared to have that conversation for two reasons. One, I go back to the business leader guy that comes into the church. You know, sometimes you got a dance with the devil.

00;18;00;27 - 00;18;17;24
Rusty George
You know, there's there's not somebody else out there that could do the job even half as good, even though that person's not doing it well. So sometimes you have to wait it out. But then the other fear is, is they got a lot of influence, people like that person. And you're not just firing, you know, a guy.

00;18;17;24 - 00;18;18;27
Shawn Lovejoy
Makes it tougher in the church.

00;18;18;27 - 00;18;27;18
Rusty George
Exactly. Because they bring with them their sphere of influence. Okay. So that's a long set up for the question. You know, I'm asking when is it time?

00;18;27;18 - 00;18;39;04
Shawn Lovejoy
Well, want just aggressing? One moment. I don't think courageous conversations just happen when you think they're not going to make it. I think they start way back before that.

00;18;39;08 - 00;18;39;25
Rusty George
That's good.

00;18;40;02 - 00;19;06;25
Shawn Lovejoy
I had a courageous conversation with my executive assistant today and I plan on keeping her as long as she's coachable and teachable. Okay. So I have pastors call me all the time and they're complaining. They're frustrated about somebody on their team, Rusty and I'll say, have you told them what you just told me? And 99 out of 100 times that pastoral say, well, no, I mean, not exactly.

00;19;06;25 - 00;19;28;18
Shawn Lovejoy
You know, so like years ago, I made the promise to my team. I'm never going to go home and say something to my spouse about you that I'm not willing to say to you. That's what I mean by courageous conversation. If I'm frustrated with you, if you're not meeting my expectations, I'm I'm going to tell you, not somebody else.

00;19;28;28 - 00;19;47;06
Shawn Lovejoy
And guess what I need from you? Don't go home and turn your spouse against my preaching. You know, come talk to me. If not, if I hurt your feelings, it's when and how often I'm going to frustrate you and hurt your feelings. So and I won't know it because I'm an eight. So I need you to tell me and I'm not going to be defensive when you approach me.

00;19;47;06 - 00;20;07;09
Shawn Lovejoy
So that's what I mean by courageous conversations. And I tell guys, if you're thinking about moving them or replacing them and they would be surprised by that conversation, then you haven't been honest with them along the way. So there's all of that that that if you haven't done that, you have to check yourself, man. I haven't. I've been honest enough for them.

00;20;07;09 - 00;20;24;28
Shawn Lovejoy
Say you're not cutting the muster. Yeah, you're not doing it. You're not keeping up. You're not doing what you say you're going to do. So there's there's that normal ization of that process of building that last 10% culture, we call it. But then when they don't, I tell guys you, Jesus was full of grace and truth. See, I'm grace, you're honesty.

00;20;24;28 - 00;20;46;28
Shawn Lovejoy
You're the proper placement, which is important. It's a gift you give them to be properly place within the body. And that's part of our role, is to help them as their authority find that place, not just them, decide it and then pray for them. But after you've worked through that list and they're still not doing what they're supposed to do after numerous conversations, you got to make the call.

00;20;47;19 - 00;21;10;14
Shawn Lovejoy
And that's where the old adage, Ha, slow fire, fast, rusty. In 20 years of coaching pastors, I've never had a pastor say to me, I had that conversation too. So I just think about that not one time. Do you know how many hundreds and thousands of times I've had a pastor tell me in confidence, shown up, waited too long and waited too long to have that conversation.

00;21;10;18 - 00;21;39;17
Shawn Lovejoy
It gets more strained. It gets more ugly, you know, all that. So you got to let it. You got to let people go. They don't belong to you. They belong to God, and you got to release them. In my latest book, Killer Team, I do a whole chapter on, like, how to release people the right way do it and all of that, by the way, I mean, 100% of those with me over the years have ended with hugs and prayer and, you know, as redemptive as possible.

00;21;39;17 - 00;22;07;10
Shawn Lovejoy
I tell guys, if that's an easy conversation for you, because I don't have a problem via people. Well, you need counseling for, you know, check your spirit. But if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, they're robbing God, robbing the church. They're not walking in integrity. And you owe it to them, you know, and especially if it's a capacity issue, you know, they can tell they're not winning.

00;22;09;01 - 00;22;27;11
Shawn Lovejoy
You know, they get in the car, they're angry and agitated because you've been pushing on them so hard and kicking them in the rear. You know, that's why they're called preacher's kids, you know, because then there's this tension that exists or, you know, so it's just better to have the conversation and say, Hey, here's what I need. Here's the path to win.

00;22;27;11 - 00;22;46;28
Shawn Lovejoy
I want you to win. I said before you, life and death, blessing and cursing. But you got to be able to do this, to be honest. And if you can't, I love you. But you don't belong to me. You belong to God. And I need to release you. And I need to help you find another place. Mean that's just powerful to normalize that kind of dialog, right?

00;22;47;05 - 00;23;05;16
Rusty George
That should be normalized. 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. What if there was a resource that made it easier?

00;23;05;29 - 00;23;33;27
Rusty George
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 Serve HQ Dot Church. Now back to our conversation. Okay. Which leads to create just decisions now, courageous decisions look differently post-pandemic than they looked before.

00;23;33;27 - 00;23;55;02
Rusty George
I mean, some are always the same, but there seem to be some courageous decisions that pastors, leaders in churches need to make post-pandemic. Maybe it's style of ministry, maybe it's online campus, maybe it's restructuring. What are you coaching guys with right now? What are the big decisions people are making in the post-COVID world?

00;23;55;14 - 00;24;19;17
Shawn Lovejoy
Well, Eddie Staley, you know, years ago and Reggie Joyner at North Point were the ones who, for I first heard, say that life change happens in circles, not rows, you know. And I really think change in general is best expressed in circles, not rows. And I see a lot of pastors getting up and saying, we're changing everything in a sermon, you know, on Sunday or walking into a staff meeting and announcing, you know, change.

00;24;19;17 - 00;24;47;00
Shawn Lovejoy
And I tell a lot of pastors, all your staff is afraid you're going to go to the to a conference because you come home and change everything, you know. But so so it's best to, like, begin to do this in small, small, small leadership circles. This is a discipleship conversation first before it's a sermon series. And there is way to take the lion's share of people with you more than you think will go with you if you'll slow down long enough to explain.

00;24;47;15 - 00;25;20;21
Shawn Lovejoy
We walk through this 18 month internal, spiritual, emotional process to make a decision, and then we expect everybody else to adopt in 18 minutes. You know, at best, 18 days, right? At best, 18 days when it took us a year and a half to get there, you know. So that's where that patience comes back in. And, you know, doing it, I'm we're coaching a huge megachurch pastor, a 200 year old traditional church, and they're about to move the seniors out of the 3000 seat auditorium and move the young service in there.

00;25;21;18 - 00;25;49;12
Shawn Lovejoy
Okay, this this is going on. So guess what he's do. And I've coached him. He's got 30 deserts, you know, with about 30 in the room every single time. Mm. Two. Hey talk out loud room for questioning, you know, months before it goes public to get, to get buy in from these key leaders. Before we start just announcing what we're doing on Sunday morning.

00;25;49;12 - 00;26;08;24
Shawn Lovejoy
So if you'll be patient and you'll think strategically and intentionally and build up a process out, man, you can do a lot more than you think. You know, in 18, 24 months. Right. If if you'll think that way and take most people and not blow everyone and everything up, but you can change a lot in 18 to 24 months.

00;26;09;06 - 00;26;09;24
Shawn Lovejoy
It's amazing.

00;26;10;18 - 00;26;18;07
Rusty George
That's so good. And you nailed it. I can tell you, you've been a pastor because you go to a conference, you hear the next big thing because we're all looking for the silver bullet and we.

00;26;18;07 - 00;26;37;19
Shawn Lovejoy
Think a vision, schizophrenia, you know I labeled it that and be mean about the vision and it's it's better to one of my coaches Dan Rowland, who was John Maxwell's executive pastor for years and went on to 12 Stone Church. He said, Shawn, he told me that as a 30 years old, he said, Shawn, no plan is perfect work your plan, work your plan.

00;26;38;01 - 00;27;00;24
Shawn Lovejoy
And we do our plans a little different. Everybody else is. But we learned a little bit from everybody, but we worked our plan. You know, over the years. We were very, very consistent in our plan. And it is that snowball effect, compounding effect over time of just consistency, intentionality to getting better at what you do. And I'm convinced there's no perfect way to disciple people.

00;27;01;25 - 00;27;06;10
Rusty George
You know, I agree. We keep thinking there is, though. We keep thinking there is this.

00;27;06;21 - 00;27;19;14
Shawn Lovejoy
It's messy, man. It's people, you know. So pick a plan, pick up, pick a good plan and then get better at it, tweak it, make it your own, and then work it with ruthless consistency. That's where the wind comes.

00;27;19;15 - 00;27;29;16
Rusty George
That's so good. All right. So at some point you start writing books. Was that after you left local ministry or was that before know?

00;27;29;16 - 00;27;52;22
Shawn Lovejoy
Good question. I think it was like probably the seventh pastor in America, maybe better than that, you know, that started blogging in 2003 is like me, Mark Batson, Perry Noble and I don't know, a couple others, you know, back in the good old yeah you know, when the Internet was new, you know. And so I blogged every day for four years, Christmas and Easter without a break.

00;27;53;16 - 00;27;55;03
Rusty George
Wow.

00;27;55;03 - 00;28;16;16
Shawn Lovejoy
So I wrote content every day for 30, about 30, 45 minutes. Minimum 30, maximum 45 was built in for four years without missing a day. Mm. That's did it, it was like part of my spiritual journey and one guy kind of built my influence. But two, I had just two or three books in there. Yeah. You know, along the way, you know.

00;28;16;16 - 00;28;36;29
Shawn Lovejoy
So when I got ready to write Measuring Success, it was all there, you know? And then the rest of the all of our stuff has kind of boiled up out of our coaching and putting a book and a table of contents together as challenges to kind of build it into a better framework and sequence. You which then makes us better coaches again, you know, on the back side.

00;28;36;29 - 00;28;37;09
Shawn Lovejoy
So.

00;28;37;25 - 00;28;51;16
Rusty George
So tell me about your business model, your platform, what's the wide end of the funnel is that blogs and books? And then we move down to coaching, speaking events. How's that look for you?

00;28;52;11 - 00;29;15;26
Shawn Lovejoy
Yeah, I think in part your mom, I get in trouble for quoting him. But Gary Vaynerchuk is pretty smart. You know, he uses bad language sometimes out there. He's secular marketing guy, but he talks about he's a brilliant marketing guy. He says you need a you need a pillar of content. Like what? What is your lane? You can do a little bit of everything, but you have, what, one main pillar?

00;29;16;07 - 00;29;46;10
Shawn Lovejoy
I would say that I built my influence through live events, you know, primarily. And then the podcast would be, you know, probably number two. And then everything kind of comes out of that kind of flows out of that, you know, into, into what we do. You slice up all that content and use it 27 different ways, of course, you know, so but you have to, you know, everybody wants to write a book, but it takes a lot of discipline, you know, to sit down and write a book.

00;29;46;10 - 00;29;51;02
Shawn Lovejoy
I can't believe I've written, you know, as many books as I have, so. Mm.

00;29;51;18 - 00;30;01;03
Rusty George
Okay. So tell me about the book. Be Mean about the vision. I've read it. I loved it. Where did that come from? And just a little bit about the book itself for our listeners.

00;30;01;26 - 00;30;18;10
Shawn Lovejoy
I wrote it for a talk, you know, at our annual pastors conference when I was a pastor. And it's this idea that, you know, the word in the book, I say, I'm not giving you permission to be a main pastor. I know too many of those is. It is, you know, the word be mean. The second definition is to be intentional.

00;30;18;15 - 00;30;46;23
Shawn Lovejoy
I meant that as a compliment. I didn't mean it that way. Has to do with intention. So we have to be much more intentional than we think we have to be with the vision. Hmm. Having a vision statement is shallow, has no life other than what the leader gives it. A lot of organizations, churches have core values, but they're not being instilled and police, you know, and people held accountable for living out those values.

00;30;47;00 - 00;31;05;19
Shawn Lovejoy
So it's really about how to take that vision that you believe God's given you and drill it down into every layer of the organization. And I wrote it for ministry and marketplace leaders. So I had a I had a lawyer today, has a large law office to say that his whole team had been through. They mean about the vision in it.

00;31;05;21 - 00;31;07;15
Shawn Lovejoy
So it's interesting to their God use that.

00;31;07;27 - 00;31;09;29
Rusty George
So you use this stuff in marketplaces to.

00;31;10;23 - 00;31;13;21
Shawn Lovejoy
It works, man. God's principles work everywhere.

00;31;13;22 - 00;31;20;10
Rusty George
What do church leaders know that business leaders don't? Is that the IQ side of things is the relational side of things.

00;31;20;10 - 00;31;35;21
Shawn Lovejoy
I think we're better communicators in general. You know, we've communicated more often. Yeah. You know, we got more reps, so and we've been scrutinized and coached and debriefed around that. So I think in general or better communicators, which means we can better read a room.

00;31;36;05 - 00;31;36;16
Rusty George
Yeah.

00;31;36;25 - 00;31;56;03
Shawn Lovejoy
That's true than the average market. But there is some IQ that comes with that. You got to know how to read your audience. You know, when you communicate a lot, you know what what ministry leaders don't understand about marketplace leaders is that they don't like to be thought less of. Hmm, like, I'm not easily offended, Rusty, but I'll have pastors ask me, Do you miss the ministry?

00;31;57;04 - 00;32;09;27
Shawn Lovejoy
And while I just shake it up, I'm like, What are you talking about? Like, I have a ministry. It's just I don't get paid by church for it anymore, you know? And so we this word ministry gets thrown around.

00;32;09;28 - 00;32;11;21
Rusty George
Yeah, like, like it's a vocation.

00;32;11;25 - 00;32;38;14
Shawn Lovejoy
As if you don't have a ministry and our for our for our our expression in marketplace. I called shepherds on Sundays, pastors and shepherds between Sundays. I'll tell you something about these ten years. Like they feel a stewardship, a responsibility to their flock. Mm hmm. These Christians. Yes, they get it. They're like, I know I'm responsible for these people and God coming to save me more people if I can't be good stewards of what we have now.

00;32;38;14 - 00;32;45;28
Shawn Lovejoy
And so it's the conversations are so eerily similar. It's crazy, you know, in today's world.

00;32;46;15 - 00;33;04;02
Rusty George
Okay. So I'd love for you to drill down on that a little bit because we have business leaders that listen and they think, Oh, yeah, I'm not in ministry. You are. And if I say to them, no, you're a minister where you are, they would say, Oh, yeah, yeah, I should be sharing my faith. But there's other things too.

00;33;04;02 - 00;33;22;04
Shawn Lovejoy
And Oh my gosh, there's so much more that's such a narrow definition. Yes, I could share your faith. I think in general, you know, if we want to get on another rant, one of the biggest mistakes we've made in evangelicalism is trying to pull the trigger too quick and make it all about share your faith. Yeah. You know, I mean, when I was a pastor, I was involved in the business community.

00;33;22;13 - 00;33;38;08
Shawn Lovejoy
In the civic community, I mean, a lot. And I rarely shared my faith in terms of like trying to convert somebody. I rarely invited anybody to the church, but I live my life around the right kind of people in the right kind of way. I was in the world, not of the world. And guess what? They did to me?

00;33;38;08 - 00;33;56;01
Shawn Lovejoy
They approached me, Hey, we're thinking about what we're saying about going to your church, you know, this Sunday, whatever. I didn't know. They've been thinking about spiritual things, much less thinking about, you know, so there's just so much opportunity. And then you got real people who are struggling in their marriages and struggling with significance and their teenage daughters cutting themselves.

00;33;56;01 - 00;34;22;04
Shawn Lovejoy
And they work for you CEO. Mhm. They're in your company. Mm. And they'll tell you things they won't tell a pastor. Right. If you, if you get in the right environment with them, there's so much opportunity for ministry and pastoral care and you know and, and then when you have the opportunity, you know, last and least to share your faith with them, you have to earn that permission in a relationship.

00;34;22;18 - 00;34;43;14
Shawn Lovejoy
You know, they have so much opportunity to make a difference, maybe more than the average pastor. Right. You know, I feel like I mean, I very much relate to John Maxwell days. I have more faith conversations with average people today than I ever got to have as a pastor because you know when it when you're a pastor there's a little bit of this when you walk up to the conversation you know especially in business right you know, circles.

00;34;44;29 - 00;34;48;12
Shawn Lovejoy
But when that when you're not you just can walk right into that.

00;34;48;18 - 00;34;48;28
Rusty George
Yeah.

00;34;49;08 - 00;34;55;15
Shawn Lovejoy
And and the doors open for you to make a big difference. So there's so much opportunity for those guys.

00;34;56;05 - 00;35;00;09
Rusty George
Tell me about your latest book, Killer Team. Where'd that come from? What's this about?

00;35;01;16 - 00;35;20;29
Shawn Lovejoy
Well, you know, we've been coaching for years around what we call the gears of Growth Culture Team and Systems. And this was really an effort to sort of build out the team gear in greater depth than we had ever done before and sequence it really kind of build it into a job description for the leaders and their teams.

00;35;21;15 - 00;35;45;21
Shawn Lovejoy
And so once again, it's, you know, we wrote it so that it would be a applicable to Christian marketplace leaders as well as church leaders, you know, to build a team. There's a reason why the average church doesn't get over a hundred or 200. And it's not because that pastor doesn't love God. It's like he's he's never been taught how to build a team or held accountable to never felt a mandate.

00;35;46;14 - 00;35;50;11
Rusty George
What are the number one mistakes people make when they try to build a team.

00;35;51;13 - 00;36;13;04
Shawn Lovejoy
Over emphasizing one of those forces that we talk about it, the neglect of the others, you know, so you've probably heard some assemblies. So these are I call them forces, character chemistry, capacity calling. Yeah. You know what we'll do is we'll all tend to overemphasize one at the neglect of the others. We'll say, But he's so gifted musically, so now what am I saying?

00;36;13;04 - 00;36;17;10
Shawn Lovejoy
What, what? I'll say it like that, you know, like he can't get along with people.

00;36;17;12 - 00;36;20;13
Rusty George
No one likes him, but, man, he likes him.

00;36;20;19 - 00;36;31;15
Shawn Lovejoy
Yeah. So. So character, you know, the character matters, you know? Yeah. Or will say. But she has a heart of gold. Hmm. She can't sing, you, you know.

00;36;32;06 - 00;36;33;25
Rusty George
But bless her heart.

00;36;34;08 - 00;37;00;14
Shawn Lovejoy
Bless her heart, you know. So we tend to, like, overemphasize it. So we talk about we literally have charts you can download out of the book. They like allow you to objectively assess people, character chemistry, capacity calling so that you can be more objective and not so subjective when you're assessing either your current team or potential candidates, you know, for your team and not make that big mistake.

00;37;00;14 - 00;37;16;17
Rusty George
That's so good. You know, any time a coach, a consultant, a pastor starts talking a lot about systems, there's a portion of the Capital C Church that kind of gets nervous because they think you're you're taking the Holy Spirit out of this.

00;37;16;18 - 00;37;17;00
Shawn Lovejoy
You bet.

00;37;18;00 - 00;37;19;17
Rusty George
Yeah. How does that tie together?

00;37;20;11 - 00;37;44;19
Shawn Lovejoy
I'm so glad you brought it up. Okay. So the probably the most offensive thing I say today, but you can they can argue with me if they want to on email later. But the whole people talk about the spontaneity of the spirit. Okay. It ain't even in that phrase and in the Bible. No. Okay. The Holy Spirit is way more strategic and intentional than he is spontaneous and preach.

00;37;45;20 - 00;37;55;21
Shawn Lovejoy
And our this idea of the spontaneity of the Spirit has become an excuse for laziness and lack of preparation.

00;37;55;24 - 00;37;56;06
Rusty George
And.

00;37;56;06 - 00;38;27;23
Shawn Lovejoy
Then lack of diligence, lack of intentional quality. You know, and most of the guys who pull the spontaneity of the spirit car, their churches get stuck and they preach too long, serves as too long, can have multiple services lost. People don't look and think like that, you know, it's just it all goes together, my friend. And so I believe the Holy Spirit wants to speak to us on the front end strategically and intentionally.

00;38;27;23 - 00;38;36;23
Shawn Lovejoy
And the beautiful thing about preparation, the more prepared I am, like when I step into the pulpit, the more prepared I am actually, the more room he has to speak.

00;38;36;23 - 00;38;38;03
Rusty George
Yes, it's so crazy.

00;38;38;03 - 00;39;10;02
Shawn Lovejoy
Yes. There's a lack of preparation. God's, I don't care how much I prepare. Isn't it true he still gives you your best stuff when you step onto the stage that is the Holy Spirit because you got room, right? You know, like in the margins of preparation for him to work. And same with the worship service, the worship leaders with events, you know, all of that and intentionality and preparation gives room for spontaneity is its opposite than the way a lot of us have thought and heard preached.

00;39;10;15 - 00;39;15;22
Shawn Lovejoy
You know, some men and women of the cloth.

00;39;15;22 - 00;39;31;08
Rusty George
I would imagine, and we haven't talked about this, but I would imagine you are well read and love leadership resources, whether it's books or blogs or. We'll even throw podcasts in there. Give me three or four of your favorites that are kind of must reads, are must listens.

00;39;32;08 - 00;39;48;07
Shawn Lovejoy
Yeah, of course. I really you know, in the in the marketplace you know, there's a great book that's helped me scale late in coach is called scaling up yeah you know and it just yeah when I started Courage to Lead I wanted to hit my my coach said, Shawn, I want you to build this so you can sell it.

00;39;49;01 - 00;40;05;26
Shawn Lovejoy
And I was like offended when he said it and he said, No, no, no. I said, I don't want to sell it like I'm leaving this great thing. I want to do this rest of my life. He's like, No, if you'll build it as if you're leaving, as if you're exiting it all be built on you. Look, you'll build around a process and a framework and system.

00;40;06;09 - 00;40;07;19
Rusty George
Yeah, that's so good.

00;40;08;01 - 00;40;28;10
Shawn Lovejoy
I got it. And I thought, what? What does that every pastor think? Like that, like, yeah, you're going to leave. So why not think from the beginning, like, I'm going to leave, so I want to build it as if I makes any. Wow. I revolutionized the succession crisis we have right now in our nation with all these famous churches, some we were talking about offline.

00;40;28;11 - 00;41;05;17
Shawn Lovejoy
Right. You know, so that's one the best book I read of 2019 was called It's the Manager by the Gallup Organization. And it basically teaches that nine times out of ten, like when you're frustrated with everybody else is you is the manager. I probably have not been as clear as I think I've been. I probably have held people as accountable as I think I have them, you know, and I got and I've got to get better you know to the leader is the lead yeah basically you know is the book and then interestingly enough the one I'm giving to a lot of leaders right now, Ministry and Marketplace is a book called Profit First.

00;41;06;00 - 00;41;24;15
Shawn Lovejoy
Okay, Profit First. And it's this idea that we're seeing work out there with as of this recording, most just about Twitter. Yeah. You know, he put 26 billion down. Yeah. This is a down payment like I get.

00;41;25;03 - 00;41;28;15
Rusty George
What what was it. Total was a 44,000,000,044.

00;41;28;15 - 00;42;03;29
Shawn Lovejoy
Yeah. You still are. You still borrowed some money, which is also interesting. Okay, there's nothing wrong with debt, but cash is king, my friend, for churches telling you. Yeah, you number one thing keep you awake at lot is people number two thing keep you away it is is money. Yeah you know what a lot of churches call stepping out on faith is really not faith is foolishness, you know, and we we need to have more margin in our churches in general so that we don't feel the pressure of the weekly, monthly offerings to pay our bills and pay our staff and pay our debt.

00;42;03;29 - 00;42;31;14
Shawn Lovejoy
You know, we need to have a way of taking right off the top some money we put back to the savings, you know, and the Great Recession happened, pandemic happened. Jesus said, in this world, you will have trouble. It's been good for about a year, months now we're going to have another dip, you know, and churches that are kind of have some cash reserves or if you have if you have reserves, the churches that have come out of the pandemic, great.

00;42;31;26 - 00;42;50;12
Shawn Lovejoy
Had margin. So they had time. You know, others had to panic because they were living week to week to week to week to week. And frankly, it made some of them victims. And so, believe it or not, those are three nonreligious books that have tremendous implications, I think, for the church.

00;42;50;22 - 00;42;54;26
Rusty George
Yeah. Have you read the book, The Beautiful Constraint?

00;42;55;24 - 00;42;57;25
Shawn Lovejoy
Oh, it sounds familiar, but I don't think I have no.

00;42;58;01 - 00;43;00;06
Rusty George
Okay, that's my gift to you.

00;43;00;06 - 00;43;08;29
Shawn Lovejoy
Okay. It's this idea that. Yeah, that a restraint is not a limiting factor. It actually breeds innovation in creative. Exactly. But I've not read it.

00;43;08;29 - 00;43;26;07
Rusty George
Eric Geiger was on the podcast and told me about it, and since then I've read it and bought it for everybody I know because it is brilliant, because we all start brainstorming with what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail now? What would you do if you had two weeks and $10 or whatever? That that breeds the best.

00;43;26;17 - 00;43;27;13
Rusty George
We did it. I mean.

00;43;27;13 - 00;43;32;07
Shawn Lovejoy
Churches innovated more during the pandemic. Yes. Than they had the last 30 years.

00;43;32;09 - 00;43;35;15
Rusty George
Or they got angry and one of the old days to come back.

00;43;35;22 - 00;43;36;03
Shawn Lovejoy
Right.

00;43;36;22 - 00;43;41;24
Rusty George
Right. And we all saw that happen. Right. And then they spiritualized it and said everybody else should do the same.

00;43;42;09 - 00;43;42;20
Shawn Lovejoy
Yeah.

00;43;44;05 - 00;44;00;19
Rusty George
Well, this has been amazing. Tell us a little bit about where people can find you, because I'm sure those people are going to want to access books and resources that you have. I get the emails from you guys. It's great content. So where can people find out what it is you're doing?

00;44;01;15 - 00;44;24;19
Shawn Lovejoy
Well, I just released my fourth book, Killer Teen Book Dawg. I self-published this one so I can basically give it away for the price of printing and shipping. So I've made that available there. Amazon doesn't have it yet and I don't care if they ever get it, but it so that's that's there. And then if you're a pastor, courageous pastor, WSJ.com is the source for all of our content that we house there.

00;44;24;19 - 00;44;28;25
Shawn Lovejoy
And on the marketplace side, it's still encouraged to lead e-comm. Hmm.

00;44;29;09 - 00;44;45;13
Rusty George
That's fantastic, Shawn. This is awesome. I so appreciate what you're doing for the kingdom. Appreciate what you've done for our listeners today. Thank you so much and look forward to talking to you again. I just got to ask, are you a roll tide guy or you hail from Georgia or something?

00;44;45;23 - 00;44;48;16
Shawn Lovejoy
I cried when Bear Bryant died. I was 11.

00;44;48;22 - 00;44;55;09
Rusty George
Oh, you're that died in. Okay, so you were not happy when Georgia won and beat Alabama? No, I'm not a hater.

00;44;55;15 - 00;45;01;10
Shawn Lovejoy
Okay. That's the difference between us Alabama fans and versus Georgia, not haters. We're okay here. We got beat this time.

00;45;01;20 - 00;45;03;06
Rusty George
You win so much. That's a lot.

00;45;03;23 - 00;45;04;03
Shawn Lovejoy
Right?

00;45;04;09 - 00;45;06;03
Rusty George
All right, brother. Thank you so much.

00;45;06;03 - 00;45;07;10
Shawn Lovejoy
Thank you, man. Great being with you.

00;45;08;13 - 00;45;24;14
Rusty George
Well, thank you so much for listening. I hope that really helped you reach out to Shawn and he can help find you a coach for all of our pastors out there especially, I think this is a much needed thing that you should go to your elders and beg for them to assist with because it would be very, very beneficial for you.

00;45;25;02 - 00;45;46;25
Rusty George
Also, if you're a church leader, we have a new resource out through Pastor Rusty George XCOM called Leading Through Crisis Without Becoming One. We take some of our darkest days and give you the behind the scenes of what was going on here. Real life during some of the most difficult seasons we walked through, and we'll just tell you what we learned and what we encourage you to walk through in the future.

00;45;46;25 - 00;46;07;07
Rusty George
When these crises happen to you, it will save you a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache. So make sure you check out Leading Through Crisis without becoming one pastor Rusty George dot com. Next week, we'll be back with one of my favorite church planners of all time. This guy is just hilarious and he's also a great church planner up in the Bay Area.

00;46;07;08 - 00;46;19;28
Rusty George
You're going to love to hear from Clint Dubin as he makes a church planting. Can I say it simple. Anyway, he's going to be with us next. So make sure you share this with a friend. Leave us a review. And as always, keep it simple.

00;46;20;09 - 00;46;43;10
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.