The Rusty George Podcast

0:00:00 - Rusty George
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Following Jesus isn't always easy, but it's not complicated. Join us each week as we work to make faith simple. This is simple faith. Your kid's baseball team has coaches. Your spiritual life needs a coach, but what about your leadership life? Is it possible to find somebody to coach you up in a way that makes you a better leader? Well, that's what we're going to discuss today on this episode of Simple Faith. I'm your host, Rusty George, and, as we say all the time, following Jesus isn't easy, but it's not complicated, and we always work on this podcast to make faith a bit more simple.

Today, we get to meet a new friend. His name is Matt Piland and he works with a group of courageous pastors to help other people be courageous, under the umbrella of courage to lead and Sean Lovejoy's organization. Matt is an incredible pastor and leader, father and husband, and he's going to join us today to break down what is a leadership coach, how do you find one, how do you know you need one and how could you even become one, and we're going to get some great stuff out of Matt today. I know you're going to be blessed by listening to him. I want to thank our friends over at Subsplash for their partnership with the show and for their sponsorship of it, and I want to thank them for all they do for so many churches. We've been a big fan and subscriber to Subsplash for years and they continue to do great work for us. So make sure that you check them out for all of your technology needs, especially thinking about building an app, thinking about updating your website, thinking about changing your giving platform.

Check out Subsplash. Well, I know you're going to be blessed by what our new friend, Matt, has to say to us. So here we go, my conversation with Matt Piland. Matt, great to have you on the podcast for our listeners. Let's start with how do you pronounce your last name? Is it Pilon, Pyland Tell me about it

0:02:50 - Matt Piland
Piland, Piland. Exactly, it's Piland.

0:02:53 - Rusty George
Okay.

0:02:54 - Matt Piland
Pylon. If there was a Y there, it'd be way easier. Yes, so it's Pylon.

0:02:58 - Rusty George
Okay, well, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know that you're from the South and you have traveled around a little bit. Give us kind of the heritage, the lineage, the life of Matt Pyland.

0:03:11 - Matt Piland
Yeah, so my early years I was raised in Louisiana. As Rusty as you know, I'm an LSU fan, so I grew up in Louisiana on a bayou a red shoot bayou and there were some really incredible times just kind of growing up fishing and being on the bayou and that was kind of a dream place for a kid who enjoys the outdoors to kind of grow up so loved it. Still have so many good relationships there and friendships, deep friendships that I still have today. My dad was a pastor, so he was a senior pastor much of my life. He was also in the military. He retired a Lieutenant Colonel and did nine years of active duty and then came off of active duty and became a pastor full time. So we kind of lived in both of those worlds and so I really identify kind of in those areas. I love the military, have just a huge amount of respect for the men and women that serve our country. It's something that that's really every time I go into a base with my dad. There's just something nostalgic about it. So but we moved.

My freshman year of high school my dad took a church kind of where they grew up in the tidewater area of Virginia and was introduced to basketball there. I thought I was a really good basketball player until I got to Virginia and realized what basketball actually was. But just love sports, love the outdoors. And my dad, my mom, still married. Incredible story they moved here after retirement.

So my dad works in the nursery at one of our campuses, which is crazy. So he was at one time he was the president of the Virginia Baptist Convention. He's serving in the nursery and he always tells me he said, son, I mean, don't you have any pool, can't you get me out of here? But the truth is he does such a good job they won't let him go. So but I thought how cool. You know, someone who served 35 years as a as a senior pastor now is in his. You know, the fourth quarter of his years in ministry is serving and volunteering. So the joke around my house, my wife and I is we want to get to the place where I'm literally handing out bulletins and nobody has a clue what I did in the past. So we just want to serve the church and be just great volunteers. That that is our goal in life.

0:05:38 - Rusty George
That is amazing. Now I gotta ask you about this, because sometimes when your dad's in the military, you grow up resenting the military. It made you move so much it took your dad away that kind of thing. Sometimes when your dad's a pastor, people grow up resenting that. They resent the church. But here you are with deep love for the military and the church and you work as a pastor. What does your dad do that allowed you to look favorably upon his job rather than resenting it?

0:06:08 - Matt Piland
Yeah, you know, I think there's a difference between presence and proximity. You know, sometimes, especially in military and also in the life of a senior pastor, especially as it used to be right, I mean there was Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, visitation. I mean if you did, you did church back in the day. I mean there was a lot going on, I was very, a lot of activity. And so you know, I mean truthfully, my dad missed a lot of my games. I mean there were times he even talks about resentment today of like, you know, if I could do it all over again, I would have been more at more of your games. He never misses my kids games there at all of them, which is really cool in this season.

But my dad, my dad was always present so in my life. So, even if maybe sometimes not in proximity, he was present. And I think you know, sometimes good leadership for us as husbands and you know wives for with our kids is like so some of us are have close proximity but we're not present right around our phone, and so my dad didn't, wasn't always there all the time, although he was there a lot, there was still a presence there, that he was very involved in my life and we had deep conversations. So he just, he just always modeled that and I haven't forgotten that and hopefully I do that with my own kids.

0:07:31 - Rusty George
How many kids do you have?

0:07:33 - Matt Piland
Oh my gosh, it seems like 15, but it's four. So I mean they are so busy. So we have, we have. We have a daughter who just turned 13 yesterday. So I'm officially the dad of a teenager and she is in seventh grade and she is amazing. She is an overachiever, she loves Jesus, she is in a great friend group at her, at her school, and we, we even she invites so many people to to student ministry. We call it church bus, so our van, like we call it church bus. We pick up so many kids and take them to church, but she, she's really special. So she turned 13 yesterday. And then we have an 11 year old, that we have a nine year old, a six year old.

They're all boys, so there's 14 months difference between my first two kids. Wow. So they're all about to have birthdays, but they're all like, I mean they're. They're pretty close together. Wow, what is we bought a new minivan the end of November and we were joking last night, my wife and I. We put almost 14,000. Miles on that van since since the end of November. Oh, my goodness. And that's just taken the sports and everything else that they're involved in, and we love it, we love it, so it's great.

0:08:51 - Rusty George
That's so fun. All right, well, that's a fun season. Definitely Tell us about the role that you play at your church. Tell our listeners a little bit about what church you're at, where it's at and what your job is.

0:09:03 - Matt Piland
Yeah, so a really cool season at Bethlehem Church. Just a little bit of the history, just real quick. Bethlehem is a church that 12 years ago was had been declining for a decade. It was running about 250, 300 people. It was a church that hadn't seen any wins, very few baptisms over the over that decade. And so our lead pastor, pastor Jason, who was also a friend of mine, we worked together at a church called 12 stone church and we were there together and he came to be the to the senior pastor. I told him he was crazy because like they're going to eat your lunch, you don't stand a chance. And now I work for him. So you know it's kind of funny we joke around about that. But so Bethlehem is a church very much of just an unbelievable amount of growth in the past decade. So it's a church that runs close to 6,000 a weekend.

Now we're in the process of building a new central campus and it is just explosive growth. We just started a Thursday night service I think, Rusty, you and I talked about that and it is. You know, it's just everything that we are doing right now. I mean, momentum is on our side. So we have multiple campuses. We've had opportunities to have a couple other campuses and we might do that in the future, but it is a multi-site church and God's just God's blessing, so we always say right time, right place, right leader. So that's the convergence of those three things, or, I think, the reason why we're seeing the type of explosive growth that we've seen over the past few years here.

So my job is executive pastor. I'm over ministries and leadership, and then I'm also serve as a teaching pastor, so I teach about 15, 18 times a year. We are a central model, so our campuses are centralized when it comes to teaching, so they watch us on a screen, and so my primary responsibility is leadership development and our staff in ministry. I'm also over our campus pastors, so I get a chance to lead them and invest in them, and I'll tell you, it's really a dream job.

I joke around because six years ago, when Jason asked me to be his executive pastor, I started laughing. My wife and I actually still laugh that I'm executive pastor. But he said here's what I want from you. I want someone who I trust, someone who can preach and someone who can lead, and we just began to pray about that, and all three of those things were things that we identified with. We trusted Jason, knew him, his wife Nan. They're precious to us and we love serving with them and love to teach God's word. It's honestly, it's one of my primary gifts and I love leadership. So I love to lead people, love to coach people, love to see people win and I get to do all three of those things. So it's really special season of ministry for us.

0:12:13 - Rusty George
Yeah, that is a sweet spot for you and a lot of unique things going on right there. What's the toughest thing about working with a close friend? Because everybody thinks, boy, if I could hire my best friend, this would be awesome. And I've noticed because I've done it there are pluses and minuses to it. What have you discovered?

0:12:33 - Matt Piland
For sure. I mean, you've got to know which hat to wear when. So we always say, hey, I'm taking my friend hat on and I'm putting my boss hat on or my senior pastor hat on. And so I mean I think if you can understand that and you can separate those two things, then it can be an incredible, incredible gift. It really can be.

But one of the things that we learned we actually we work out together Monday, wednesday and Friday in the mornings we got a trainer friend that shows up and he helps us, tells us what to do, and we've just learned that there are certain areas of life that we have to draw boundaries and draw lines. So we don't talk about church when we're at the gym. I don't bring up staffing things. When he brings something up, I change the subject, or he'll change the subject if I slip and say something about the church. And so what we try to do is just create compartments of like, hey, we're friends here, we're doing life here, working out, playing golf, whatever it is, and then these are the areas that we're like OK, now I'm putting the work hat on, I'm putting the ministry hat on, and then when you can learn to separate those two worlds. It can be really a beautiful thing Because there's a level of trust that you have with people that you've done life with for years that is so valuable, especially when you get into trenches and ministry.

So if you can hold on to those things and you can not allow the enemy to get a foothold and try to divide that friendship and that relationship, it can be an incredible, incredible gift to not only you but also the church as well. So Jason never has to worry about Matt's going to go into a room and he's going to change the culture of the organization. We were actually it's funny enough we were talking about that today. I lead our senior staff. He's not in there. He can be, but he's not in there. He can show up any time he wants to, but what he knows is that I don't just lead the church the way I would lead it, I lead it the way he would lead it, and so I don't create culture, I steward culture. That's kind of some of the verbiage that we use around here.

0:14:55 - Rusty George
That's such a good line With your model. You have campuses, their video teaching. That requires a certain skill set for the campus pastor. They're not necessarily a lead communicator, they're more of a host or an MC or a coordinator of sorts. They don't cast the vision, they carry the vision. What are you looking for in a campus pastor, and tell us some of the traits of a really good campus pastor.

0:15:27 - Matt Piland
Yeah, funny enough for us to say. I was talking to David Thompson, who is the executive pastor at Summit Church, with JD Greer, and we were with each other a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about campus pastors and I said, interestingly enough, none of our campus pastors want to preach. And so he started joking. He said that's so rare In fact we might trade you. Can we make a trade? We'll trade you a few Because, honestly, we asked them to preach two or three times a year and there's always to some degree a hesitance or a resistance, so that can be a blessing in our model.

A lot of times it's not that way. I was a campus pastor at Twelstone. I mean it was a church that was running almost 20,000 at the time. I mean our campus alone had 1,500 plus and five services and I very rarely ever preached. But I learned the art of. There's a difference between leading on the stage and leading from the back of the room, and what I learned is the art of leading from the back of the room. And so one of the things that I hope that our campus pastors realize that just because somebody's put a microphone in your hand and you are communicating, that that is not the ultimate form of leadership. So they can leave from the back of the room and their influence can be great. So it is.

I go on their campuses. Quite frankly, it's fascinating to me, like even after services, sometimes they'll come up to the campus pastor and say man, what a great sermon, man, thank you so much for that. As if they were up there delivering it and what it is. It's just this. Literally they don't think about Jason or Matt. They think about Bethlehem Church and what it's doing for their family, what it's doing for their marriages, and so their pastor is Pastor Drew or Pastor Jeremy, like that is their pastor. It's not Matt. Matt's the guy that communicates or Jason's the guy that communicates God's work, but their pastor, the one who's involved in their life, doing life with them, from pastoral care to ministry, and serving alongside of them, is their campus pastor.

So I just think that you can have a tremendous amount of influence on a campus as a campus pastor. I just believe in the model. I think some people are gifted to teach and there's probably a wrestle if you don't get to do that, but if you don't have to do that every week, you can. Actually it sounds crazy. I think in some ways you can even have more influence Because you have more time in the week to devote to pastoring your people and not spending 20 hours writing a message and memorizing it and preaching it over and over before you deliver it on a Sunday or a Thursday or a Saturday or whenever.

0:18:25 - Rusty George
Oh, I totally agree. Yeah, the weeks that I don't have to teach, not only is the weight lifted, but the ability to have more coffees with people and lunch and hang out with people and have conversations it goes through the roof. It's amazing what you're able to accomplish, for sure. Ok, so you're an executive pastor. That is one of the top questions I get from people is hey, what do I look for in a good XP? And sometimes they already have an XP. They're looking for somebody else, right? So what have you learned, as you used to be at a church where you saw a great XP in Dan Rylan, definitely, and you saw just leadership, leadership, savant. But what have you learned as, ok, this is what I can do and this is what my gifts are, and this is what a good XP needs to do?

0:19:16 - Matt Piland
That's a great question, Rusty, because really, I mean, when we say XP, it looks different at every church and the reality is, how best can I serve the lead pastor? So, you know, one of the things that I did really early on when I got to Bethlehem Church is I had to have the DTR. Okay, so the DTR is the define, the relationship, and you remember that from the old days of dating. It's like okay, where are we going with this? What does this look like? I mean, how you know. And so I had to sit down with Jason and go ask him you know, what do you want from me, what is helpful? And quite frankly, it took two years to fully figure that out where I could make decisions, not just the way again, the way I would make decisions, but the way Jason would make decisions. So here's what I arrived at he's dad and I'm mom. Now I don't know if that's perfect, but he's dad, you know, and I'm mom.

So I care for the staff. I'm involved with the staff on a regular basis. You know he comes in and he gets to be the hero, quite frankly, in a lot of different rooms, and when he steps in the room I step back, when he steps out, I step forward. So that's how our leadership works really well. Jason knows, when he walks into the room, he's the leader. I don't fight him for that. I'm not jealous of his leadership, you know, I'm not envious of his leadership. So when he steps in the room, I take a step back. I take a step back in the way I communicate, the way I address him, the way I address our staff, and I think, again, that's out of honor for him, because I do think that authority is a moral issue.

So, Rusty, you and I may have like opinions and we may have convictions. Well, opinions are I like chocolate, you like vanilla, you know who cares Like. I like rock and roll, you like country meat, whatever it is Like. Those are opinions, but convictions are worth taking a stance on. Convictions are worth leaving over, and I think many times we have opinions and that we think are convictions and they're really not. We just want to be right.

We want someone else to see the world or see this leadership situation the same way we do. Well, I have to be honest with myself and go okay, is this a conviction or is this an opinion? And where it's an opinion, I just step back and it doesn't Matter. If it's a conviction, then I have a hard conversation with Jason, not in front of anybody else, but in private. Hey, let me ask you a question about the reason, the reason or the decision that you made in this area, and so we'll have hard conversations about it. But when we leave that room, we're on the same page. That's good. And if I can't leave that room and be on the same page with him, then I need to go. I need to because, again, authority is a moral issue. If I cannot be under his authority and I'm trying to subvert his authority, you know, in some other way, then that's not just between Jason and I, that's between God and I. God establishes authority. We see that throughout scripture. So I think a good executive pastor and I got a list of things, by the way, but a good executive pastor in many ways is a good soldier. It really is.

I do what is necessary of me in situations that benefit the organization and benefit Jason's leadership. So there's some times where I have to have the hard conversation with somebody so that he can. He doesn't have to, and that's not always easy with my personality. In fact, I just did a 360 evaluation of myself two days ago. So 360 evaluation, this is where I see myself. The six people I sent this survey to this is where they see me. And when I was sitting down with a leadership coach, he goes. I'm going to give you one word for you conflict. And he's like I don't mean external, I mean internal, like your job requires you doing things that are not natural to you as a as in your personality and wiring. So, but it's demanded of me and my organization. So what does that mean? If you do that too long, you're going to suffer and you're going to. You know you're going to drown or you're going to get in a position where you get. Bitterness starts rising up because you're just, you're not being. You're pouring out but you're not, you're not being poured into.

One of the things that's beautiful about Jason and I and the relationship here at Bethlehem Church is he fills my cup too. At my core I'm a Bible teacher, like I love to teach people respond to it. So he gives me I mean, there are opportunities that I am preaching and he's sitting in the seats, so he's even gone to other campuses when I'm on a screen and sat in a seat and watched. Well, what does that say to everybody else? Hey, I am both, am an authority and I can also be under authority. And I think when you can, when, when that relationship is that way, then I think it can thrive, because Jason and I and we say this over and over we are not in competition, competition with each other. And if you are, I promise you your staff feels it. Yeah.

They sense it. That's good. You're undercutting your senior pastors, leadership and meetings and little you know statements you're making here and there, and so your staff starts picking up on it and so I have to watch out. I got to pay attention to myself and go, hey, I never want to do that because I never want people to think it's Jason and Maddie, you know, against each other, because we're not. We're for each other.

0:25:45 - Rusty George
That's so good. Hey, let me interrupt for just a second. If you're a church leader and your church does not have an app or your app seems to be a little bit limited, check out subsplashcom as a great resource to really give your app all the horsepower that it needs. You can connect people, you can help them get access to messages and you can help them set up recurring giving, which is a game changer when it comes to resourcing your ministry Subsplashcom Okay, back to our episode. Part of being an XP is to you have to put, you have to play bad cop sometimes and, as you said, deal with conflict, and I know a lot of stuff ends up on your desk that never makes it to the lead guys desk. How do you know what to take to him? Or how do you know what? Just to clean up yourself, you know is this personal Rusty?

0:26:35 - Matt Piland
Is this something Pain file?

0:26:38 - Rusty George
I just I just, uh, I know that my XP, uh, you know, covers up a lot of stuff as far as stuff I'll never know, and I appreciate that, but it is a. It's a bit of a of a dance. You know what? It is a dance. What do I take in there?

0:26:51 - Matt Piland
It is. It is an art and it's not a science.

0:26:53 - Rusty George
Right.

0:26:54 - Matt Piland
And I think the more, the longer the relationship, the more you know of a person, the more you can probably make better decisions in these areas. So, uh, jason and I, quite frankly, we've struggled through this because Jason likes to know. Jason will call me. He'll call me today. He's not here, he's on the road. He'll say how was the day? What you know? What have I missed? What's going on?

Well, I have to use wisdom and discretion on what I tell him. You know, hey, I had a conversation with this staff member and it went a long time and we're trying to make some progress. Well, if I bring him into that too early, his anxiety and his desire to fix it, you know, like I can solve this, I'm the guy Like I can get in, I can solve this. But that actually does damage to the situation. It's not helpful.

So, obviously, anything that is a threat to the organization, that is a threat to whether it morally, legally, you know, a threat to his leadership or something like and maybe it's a, maybe it's a person of influence that's kind of raising their hand, then obviously I would bring him in the loop on that. But you know, we're at a place right now where he walked into room the other day and was like, who are these three people? I don't even know their name. I was like, well, we hired them. He's like, well, okay, so we're at that place, but that that took years of trust, right, right, and he's okay with that.

So I think at times I tell him more than I should and when I do that and all of a sudden I hear his voice begin to raise or I feel that anxiety is carrying and the weight he's carrying, then I go, okay, I should not have, I should not have shared that with him. So I don't know if I have a like a one, two, three step process to it, but what I would say is kind of how I filter that is through. Hey, in the end of the day, is this going to be a helpful conversation? Is this going to be a fruitful conversation at this stage with him, and most of that time that's just personally how I filter through that.

0:29:07 - Rusty George
That's really good, really good. You mentioned the church grew from 250 people to 6,000. Now how come? I mean obviously God, but you know we look at church growth and we think you know, like Larry Osborne says, you need four things. You need parking spaces, kids space, adult space and good leadership structure. Others would say you need a good, clear engagement pathway. You know a good, a good funnel for growth, or maybe you just need a fresh sense of vision, or whatever. What was the secret sauce there at Bethlehem?

0:29:43 - Matt Piland
Yeah, you know, I think it's always the convergence of three things. So it's right time, right place. This, you know, brass tacks. This area is going to grow about 250,000 people in the next, you know, 10 years. Well, we're positioned for growth. If we're, you know, if we're doing a halfway decent job, we should grow. And then right leadership. So I think the conversion at right time, right place, right leadership is kind of what leads, fuels that crazy growth season.

You know, there's not a lot of churches out here that are doing things the right way. Unfortunately, there's a lot of churches that are struggling, a lot of churches that are going to close their door the next 10 years or the next five years. Around here, A lot of people who pastors, who say I want to change, but they don't really want to change, and so there's a, there's a growing demographic in this area, so Atlanta is spreading right. So this is still kind of a metro, this is metro Atlanta, and so I think that's part of it. And then, honestly, it is literally the authenticity of our Sunday morning expression of worship and teaching. I think is really some of the secret sauce, yeah, Of who we are.

I think we live in a day and age and time, where it used to be that clergy and pastors were trusted. When you tell somebody, what do you do for a living, I'm a pastor like, oh, that's awesome, you know. Now, when you tell somebody your pastor, it's like, oh, you're, you know. There's immediate, there's like you know they're looking at you, like you know, almost like your Judas, right, I mean like are you stealing from the offering plate? Or you know right.

And I think the authenticity of the way Jason leads, the way we are our expression of worship. We are a Baptist church. Most people don't even know that. So we always say we're a little Baptist gospel, baptist gospel, you know. So that's, that's kind of a word that people have made up around here.

0:31:45 - Rusty George
I've heard that.

0:31:46 - Matt Piland
And so our, our worship is very expressive, it's, it's uplifting, and you know, I mean, I think when we teach the word, it's we teach it to. Oftentimes, we, in our, in our context, we are teaching the word and thinking through the context of a blue collar male who is, you know, between you know, 30 and 40 years old, like I want to speak to that. I want to speak to that person.

0:32:17 - Rusty George
So you know your audience.

0:32:19 - Matt Piland
So you know your audience and it's man, it's just worked. I think we're trustworthy. I think Jason has a really good reputation in this, in this community. A lot of what if you, if you would, a lot of what we do is in the community. So we we are a church who invests a tremendous amount of resources, time, finances and staff into our community. So we have three full time staff just in the area of community and that's all they do is serve our community, and so we're involved in many, many different organizations. We actually started a 501c3 called New Pat 1010. And we you know they. They serve in this community as well, and so I just think we have a good reputation in that area.

0:33:10 - Rusty George
That's great. That's really great, cause it is it's kind of unique for everybody and you're right, right person, right time, right place has so much to do with it. At some point along your journey, you got a leadership coach. I heard you mentioned this. Tell us what that looked like. How did you know it was time for a coach? How'd you find a coach?

0:33:33 - Matt Piland
Yeah Well, you know, there, I always say there, there, there are things you know, there's, there's things you don't know, and then there's things you don't know, you don't know, and the the things I don't know, I don't know, are the things that scare me the most, those are the things that can actually take you out Right.

So you know, when I seek out a coach, I'm seeking out somebody who is further along in the process than I am. Like they're down the road they have been, they are past currently where I am, because they can speak with with a a measurable amount of wisdom to the specific season I'm in. And you know, for many years I call him a coach. He still coaches me now and we meet together. Dan Rylan he was my boss at 12 stone, but he was also my coach and I learned so much about organizational leadership from him.

I mean just a tremendous amount of organizational leadership. If I learned spiritual leadership from my dad, who was a pastor and just poured into me, I learned organizational leadership from Dan Rylan. So I, I was. My story was I was at a church that was fast growing, but I was there was no, there wasn't any leadership that was being poured into me specifically. So, you know, god began to move us and, quite frankly, I was doing it in ministry, speaking full time before I landed at 12 stone, didn't think I would be a 12 stone very long, thought I'd go be a senior pastor and the Lord just kept us there for seven years and the rest of you like that. Seven years, I bet. I preached three times in seven years, wow, at, you know, at at Twelvestone and I remember, I remember this is actually kind of a, a marking moment for me.

I had been invited to do Clemson's FCA and so I went and preached and spoke it on. It was a. It was a, you know, Wednesday night or Tuesday night and I went and did Clemson's FCA. There were, there were literally like 6,000 people. I think Clemson at the time they may still have the largest FCA in the country. I mean 6,000 people. There were people everywhere. There are people outside. They had set up screens not because I was there, just because you know. They just had a good thing going.

And I remember the next day I was at Twelvestone and nobody knew that, nobody even cared. And I was sitting in a meeting and we were talking about Discover Twelvestone and and the question was asked like Matt, do you feel comfortable enough? Standing in front of you know which would have been like 30 people and doing the opening for Discover Twelvestone, and everything in me wanted to raise my hand and go guys. Last night I literally preached to 6,000 people like and y'all, y'all, y'all don't have a clue, but what God was teaching me during that time was he was teaching me to be under authority, he was teaching me to leave from the back of the room and he was teaching me organizational leadership. So I could not do what I do now.

If I did not pay the price for seven years of learning and growing and being under a coach like Dan Reiland and Kevin Myers, who's the was the senior pastor there, I wouldn't. I wouldn't do what I do now, and I do think that there's some men and women in leadership like. What they want to do is they want to microwave the process and honestly, quite frankly, not all the time. But sometimes church planners are people who are like kind of rogue and don't want to be under authority, don't want to learn, don't want to pay the price. You know a lot of times I say you know a lot of times people want the platform without paying the price. Right, and if I would have done that, I would not be in the position I am now Right, being on a staff under authority, not getting to teach, setting those things aside for a, for a, for a season, which was actually many years to learn these other things. Now God's using all of those things in my 40s, you know, as an executive pastor of Fast-Growing Church.

0:37:56 - Rusty George
Mm-hmm, I love that you mentioned Dan Reiland. He is a friend of the show. Episode 215 for our listeners, if you want to I'm sorry, 216,. If you want to go back and listen to Dan, he was awesome and his latest devotional yeah, I'm forgetting the name out of it. Right now, all it takes is a leader or something like that.

0:38:19 - Matt Piland
It's, it's phenomenal, and I'm butchering the title of Dan's book and I can tell by the look on your face. I went through it. Dan is amazing, so I told you it was amazing.

0:38:26 - Rusty George
Yeah, yeah. So can you remember the title of the book?

0:38:29 - Matt Piland
I can't. That's why I say it's amazing.

0:38:33 - Rusty George
Sorry, Dan, we love it though.

0:38:35 - Matt Piland
It's really good. Oh no, it was great devotional.

0:38:36 - Rusty George
Yeah, the, the, the contents are more memorable than the actual title, so, anyway. So a lot of people get these titles confused or these terms confused. Some people they go get a coach, but what they really need is a counselor. They need someone to help them unpack the pain of their past or whatever they're going through. And some people go get a coach and what they really need is a consultant. They need someone to give them some fresh ideas and to kind of walk them through this new strategy. But a coach is different. How would you define that?

0:39:07 - Matt Piland
Yeah, so it may be going back to what we talked about earlier with my father presence.

So, one of the things that coaches coaches coaches very much walking with you through the process. So if I see a consultant, almost like an itinerant preacher, they're coming in to say some really hard things, some things that need to be said, right, that nobody else maybe can say, and then they're leaving and they're involved in the process to agree. But a coach is different. You have access to a coach. So when you're part of the coaching process, I know a courageous pastors Like one of the things I did, a couple of coaching calls this way I'll do one tomorrow and zooms. But I always say to them afterwards I'm like, hey, you've got my number. Like if you need me, you call me. So there's a lifeline, if you would there. Where it's like okay, real time, I'm going through this, can you help me with this, or can I run this past you? I think it's part of the beauty of a coach. Like there are guys that in the rest of the year, the same way, there are guys like Dan Rylan and others that if I'm stuck, I can pick up the phone or I can send a text and go, hey, can we talk, and within 24 hours, I mean we're going to have a conversation and those people are going to help me walk through those things. That's what a coach does A lot of times too. I mean, coaches are deeply in the process, so they're looking at the game film, right? So I mean watching Sundays going hey, I watched your Sundays online. Let me tell you a couple of things that I saw that I think you could work on Like that's very much of a coach as well. So you know, I think everybody needs a coach. I'm convinced everybody needs a coach. Part of the reason why we need a coach is because emotions cloud clarity, and this is true for counseling as well. When we are in the emotions of the moment, we do not see things clearly. So what we need is we need someone on the outside who's not emotionally connected, to look with clarity into our situation. Here's what you need to do.

I remember a very specific time as a campus pastor. There was a situation where I needed to release a staff member and I went to Dan Reiland. I mean we would have our meetings and I had it all laid out. If you have meetings with Dan, you're prepared, by the way which is also good for coaching sessions, and I would have it all laid out and I'd done my homework and he would just sit there in his leather chair and even listen. And I remember him saying after about the third conversation about the staff member, he said Matt, it would seem to me that you have all the information you need to make the decision. You just need the courage to make the decision.

And what he was saying to me is are you done all the evaluation? You've looked at it from a million different ways. You're just going to have to make a decision. Are you going to let them go or not? And I needed to hear that. That's a good coach. He didn't make the decision for me. He didn't say let me make this easy for you. He probably knew a long time ago, cause he's that smart. But he let me walk through the process of it and you know, it's one of those things that's stuck. I'll never forget it.

0:42:34 - Rusty George
Hmm, Well, this just in. We have the title of the book. It is leadership alone is not enough.

0:42:41 - Matt Piland
That is the name of the book. There it is. It's more like a devotional. Leadership alone is not enough. It's awesome.

0:42:46 - Rusty George
Okay, so you've had a coach and at some point you became a coach. You're working with Sean Lovejoy and his team. Courage to lead, courageous pastors. How did you decide it was time for you to offer your services, to be a coach and not just be coached?

0:43:04 - Matt Piland
Yeah, you know, obviously I had a relationship with Sean, but he extended the invitation to me to have a conversation about it. It was something that I was very interested in, and so we began a process and you know, I had actually been praying that God would open up some doors, even outside of Bethlehem Church for me to be able to pour into other leaders, and I didn't know what that would look like, and so I began to pray about it and then, lo and behold, sean called me. So I think there was a spiritual aspect and orchestration that happened, you know, behind the scenes there. But you know, I love Sean, love what he's doing, believing, courageous pastors, and Sean is a phenomenal coach. He's somebody that I pick up the phone and call when I have questions and just, I mean, he's one of those guys who's been there and done that.

And you know, in this stage of my life I'm moving into the sage years, okay, so if you're, you know, you know this, Rusty, I mean your first 18 years or maybe 21 years, it's all heart, right, I mean it's all emotions and heart.

And then, in your kind of your 20s and 30s, it kind of your warrior years, right, like you're fighting, you're slaying dragons, you're fighting battles, you're doing the hard stuff, you're in the battles. When you move into your 40s, you know, and you know you're kind of in those king and queen years, you're sending people off to battle, right, you're, that's what you're doing. And then when you move into those sage years, you're speaking in the lives of kings and queens, like you were doing. So I'm not saying I'm pushing 50, I'm not there yet, but I start feeling like, at least at this stage, that I want to be speaking into some kings and queens. And so you know, god just allowed me to do that, and so there are currently four different lead pastors in XPs that I have an opportunity and privilege. I really see it as a privilege to coach. So it's. I find it sharpens my leadership as well, helping them solve problems, especially the ones on our minds.

0:45:19 - Rusty George
Yeah, you have a clarity to it. There's a you're kind of you can see the forest and not just the trees, and when you're in it, you know this all you can see are the people impacted by it. If I fire this person, that means we're gonna lose 50 people because of their spirit of influence and I got six weeks of clean up coming because of it and you can't really see kind of the bigger picture, which coaching definitely does. Sean has been a guest on the show before. He's a friend. He is my coach. I find him to be incredibly valuable in my leadership and for anybody interested in checking out what this could look like, I encourage you to go to courageous pastorscom. They are not a sponsor of the show, they're just a friend of the show and we're excited about what they're doing. So, Matt, this has been tremendous wisdom, from parenting to leadership, to being an executive pastor, lsu football, everything down the line. Thank you for being a part of the show. Any final words you'd give to our listeners about leading in difficult seasons?

0:46:27 - Matt Piland
Yeah, leaders are learners and never stop learning. I said that to our senior staff this morning. We live in a day and age, from a technological standpoint, that is changing incredibly rapidly and, if you know, just as doctors or in ongoing education, often we better be, because the people we're leading and the generations that we are leading see the world very different than we do, very different than we do. And so if we're not on the cutting edge of this, if we're not growing as leaders, then we're gonna be empty. We're gonna be empty leaders, we're gonna have nothing to pour out. And I would just say the greatest leadership you know that exists outside of your own leading yourself is your family. So, in a world where people are sacrificing their families for businesses and ministry and all this, it's just not worth it. It's not worth it. Don't sacrifice your family. So your kids are your greatest legacy. Love your wife, love your husband. Make them the most important thing in your life outside of your relationship with Christ. Lead them well. Everything else will fall in place.

0:47:45 - Rusty George
That's a drop in life moment. Right there Comes back to we talked about earlier about your dad presence proximity. Thank you, this has been great, Matt.

0:47:54 - Matt Piland
Thank you, Rusty.

0:47:56 - Rusty George
Well, it's great stuff, Matt. I'm so, so grateful for your partnership on the show and encourage all of our listeners to share this with somebody else. Reach out to Matt on social media and thank him for being on the show. Next week we have a returning guest. His name is Rich Birch. He's an expert in church growth. How in the world do we define growth Now? Post pandemic numbers are tracking back up to what they were before pandemic. How do we evaluate everything? More people watching online. What does that look like for us? We're trying to lead a church. We're gonna dive into that next week. So make sure you join us next week on Simple Faith and make sure you share this with a friend and, as always, keep it simple.