The Rusty George Podcast

0:00:00 - Rusty George
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Leadership doesn't have to be hard and leadership can be for everybody. On this podcast, we want to help you make leading simple. I'm your host. Rusty George.
Ever wanted to talk with the leader of a church of 40,000 people? Well, today you're going to get to hear from one. Ashley Wooldridge took over for legendary pastor and planter Don Wilson, Christ Church of the Valley in the Phoenix area. He's one of the smartest leaders I know and I think you'll love what he has to say. I want to say a special thanks to Subsplash for making this podcast a reality today. Make sure you check them out. And here's my conversation with pastor Ashley Wooldridge. Ashley Wooldridge, thank you so much for being on Leading Simple. For our listeners that don't know who you are, tell us a little bit about yourself.

0:01:47 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah, it's good to be with you, Rusty. You've always been a good friend and I know this is making a big impact. So I am the senior pastor of Christ Church of the Valley, CCV in the Phoenix area and I'm pretty honored to be able to do that and just to speak to leaders today. I love leadership.

0:02:06 - Rusty George
Well, so you've been in Arizona for a few years. Did you grow up there? Where are you from originally?

0:02:13 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah, so I grew up in a very small town in Arizona. You know we're in Phoenix, you know one of the largest cities in the country right now, but I grew up a small-town kid. I grew up in a town of about a thousand people, church of about 50. Dad was a teacher, mom stayed home for kids. So you know, super humble, you know we didn't have much and we're not exposed to like a lot either, to be honest. So, so those are. Those are kind of the roots I had and you know, went off to Bible College in California and then have been back in Phoenix ever since, so pretty much Arizona native, with a small stint in your neck of the woods in California.

0:02:54 - Rusty George
So you've never had to live through snow or winters like that or anything like those of us from the Midwest ever dealt with.

0:03:02 - Ashley Wooldridge
Man I talked to, you know my pastor friends, and come January, february, you know they're getting snow days and stuff like that and we're out golfing, so yeah, so you went to Hope International.

0:03:16 - Rusty George
Was it Pacific Christian College at the time, or was it Hope International? By then it was.

0:03:20 - Ashley Wooldridge
It was Pacific Christian College. I think I was student body president the year it changed. The name changed and all the students you know hated it, uh huh, but we've come to love it now, so, but yeah, yeah, so I was right in that transition actually.

0:03:35 - Rusty George
Wow, Well, I remember our basketball team playing you guys in the national tournament and that's the only way I knew about Pacific Christian College. But had I known what I know now, man, I would have gone there. So you know. So much more scenic than Joplin, Missouri, oh, what a great place you went to good school. Man we, yeah. Well. So you come out of Bible College. You decide to go into ministry was your first job at CCV.

0:04:02 - Ashley Wooldridge
It wasn't. And actually when I, when I left Bible College, I did not decide to go into ministry. I actually didn't feel like God was calling me into ministry. So I left Bible College and actually went into the business world. Um, so I spent I spent almost 10 years in the business world actually. So I most of that time at the Intel corporation in, uh, in- in the Phoenix area. They have a really large presence.

So Intel, um, you know, large semiconductor manufacturer, uh, in the computer world and that's, um, yeah, ministry was not on my, on my radar. It was, um, I thought in the back of my mind, with this great training I got at- at Bible College, I thought, well, maybe when I retire one day, like I'll, I'll go do something with the church. And it was about halfway through my time at Intel that, um, I felt this distinct. You know one of those those rare times where God is crystal, crystal clear with you that you're going to go spend the rest of your life serving the local church. And when I felt that calling, I had no idea, zero idea what I was supposed to do in the church. I just knew I was supposed to serve the church and part of my burden. You know it's cause a lot of us have this burden that God puts inside of us. My, my burden became I just began to what what I observed at the time of what I was experiencing at Intel this very high, deep leadership culture and then what I was experiencing in the church.

I was kind of like man, I want to go help the church be the most like, the best-led organization in the world. You know, I don't think the world should be looking to apples and Google's or Intel's or others for, like you know, leadership advice. I think they should be doing like what you're doing on this podcast right now, going, hey, let's lean in. Like the church is so well led, let's lean into that. And that became just this vision for my, for my life. I felt like God gave me. So when I left I had zero thoughts of ever being a senior pastor. I just wanted to help the church be be well led, and that that became my, my battle cry.

0:06:13 - Rusty George
So what was your first job in ministry? I mean cause we have listeners on here that are thinking I work in the corporate world, I'd love to help out a church, I'd love to be on a staff of a church. So how did you make that move? Did you initiate that? Did somebody kind of tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, I think you could do this? What'd your journey look like?

0:06:35 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah, it's a great question and I would say to anybody out there that has even thinking about or feels a call into ministry I really believe God continues to take people that he's launched in the business world and do a transition into ministry. And one of the reasons and this is just my story is I felt like God took me to Bible college and learned the Bible and I felt like he took me to Intel to learn leadership and I wasn't sure I would have got the leadership training I got at the time. There's more churches now that are much more leadership-intensive than it was back in the day. But when I felt that call, we were really involved at a church we were going to and I just started to begin sharing hey, I think this call in my life and people started tapping on the shoulder like, hey, what do you think about this, what do you think about that? And one of those churches that we had just been really connected with was CCV. My wife had grown up there. We were not attending there at the time. We lived about an hour away from CCV, so we were attending another church we were really engaged in.

But pastor CCV at the time, Don, pulled me aside and he's like man, I think you should come work here, I think he should be an executive pastor for us, and the church was running about 10,000 at the time and they had never had an executive pastor, which is just mind boggling. It says a couple of things. It says one it says that there's the leadership competency of Don, but it also says, like man, they probably waited a little too long, and so when he asked me that, I was like gosh, I don't think I'd do that. If I was in your shoes, I wouldn't hire me to come be your executive pastor, a guy that hasn't been at your church and hasn't even worked in a church before. Like I don't think I'd hire me. And so I told him no. And if you know Don's personality, he's kind of like well, I think you need to pray about it. And I was like. So I went home, I told Jamie, I said I'll pray about it, but I was like this is still a no.

0:08:34 - Rusty George
And it's the weirdest thing is, as I began praying about it, god just began to draw my heart there for some reason, and I said yes, I love that you went there, because this is something that's so confusing for a lot of leaders that are kind of either bivocational or in the marketplace and thinking about going into the church. How did God begin to draw your heart towards that? Because we hear these stories of people having this. You know Damascus Road burning bush kind of moment. God spoke to me. You know my Cheerios spelled out church, whatever it was. What did it look like for you? Because I don't know about you, but I've never heard an audible voice. Maybe you have, but what did that look like in your case?

0:09:16 - Ashley Wooldridge
It's just a good question, Rusty, and I didn't hear an audible voice either, and I'm not discounting the stories of people that did. You know you hear those stories of like I was on a park bench and God spoke to me and he mapped out you're doing these three things for the rest of your life. That is not my story and actually, I've taught a lot about just discerning the voice of God and the will of God because it came out of that passion, came out of this experience, because my calling literally just became this burning desire that in my gut I could not shake. I could not shake that I was supposed to serve the church and where I would say it got crystallized for me and I think this is really key, you know, for somebody listening if they're wondering is I began to feel that call on my own life and I knew it was clear and I was so afraid to share with my wife because we were both working in Intel, we were both making, I mean, just as you can imagine, life was good. Okay, like we are making great money, we have stock options that are just, you know, you got the spreadsheet. That's like man, if we stay here, like you are pretty much set, and so I was a little bit afraid to go to my wife and tell her hey, I think God's calling me to go spend the rest of my life serving the church. And so I'll never forget we were in a van driving home from small group and I said babe, I think God's calling me to go spend the rest of my life on the local church. And she said that's funny because I've been sensing the same thing.

Wow, and that was my moment, you know because I think you know we need to be careful that you know we're not the only ones sensing something. But especially if you're married, I think God will speak through a godly spouse more than anybody else. So you know, when I started just thinking about calling, I came up with this very simple thing of hey, if you're feeling called to something, obviously you'll feel it from God, your spouse should confirm it and you should have some other godly people around you confirm it as well. So I began sharing that. You know, I had some really close friends that said man, I sense that too, and you know, I think, when those three things line up, what you're sensing from God, what you're with your spouse and with some godly, you know men or women around you that became the crystallization of like okay, I'm gonna make this leap, I'm gonna do it.

But one more thing on this and you didn't ask this, but one more thing on this, this is really key is when I got that distinct call, I was ready to jump. I was like let's go. And God made me wait three and a half years before it happened. Wow.

Yeah. So, and it was one of the most frustrating seasons of my entire life, cause I just thought, god, you called me to this, let's go. I was like so ready and it's like God sat me and with no movement for three and a half years, and it wasn't that there wasn't like some job offer, some other opportunities, but I just knew they weren't right. Okay, and looking back now, here's just the, here's the book in Mark on this.

Looking back now, when you study scripture, it is so clear that often God calls men or women to something and then makes them wait, and it's the waiting season that becomes the preparation season for what God has for you. And so many of us hate waiting. And yet, if we look back on our life, it's those seasons of waiting. And you look at David right, he's anointed king, he's anointed, and God makes him wait, right. You look at Nehemiah it feels this calling God makes him wait. And you look at Daniel's life I mean gosh, look at all that God made him go through before he raises them up. So I think we see this throughout scripture. I just think we hate experiencing it personally.

0:13:06 - Rusty George
Oh, you're so right. Oh, my goodness, Even Jesus, you think about Paul, I mean all these guys. Even Paul has its Damascus road experience and it's 12 years before he gets a knock on the door from Barnabas and he waits, and he just waits. Yeah, and he waits right.

0:13:23 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah, exactly I wonder if it was easier to wait back then. It might have been. I think Moses has to wait 40 years, so I'm thinking, hey, my three and a half years seems pretty short compared to what some people in scripture had to wait. So it may have been, I don't know. I think we are so microwave Christians nowadays that we don't like the slow simmer that God likes to do with us to begin to shape and form our hearts for what he wants. And the most dangerous thing you can do is circumvent that waiting season, I think. And it feels like something's wrong when you know that God called you to something and it doesn't happen immediately. That feels wrong to us, but biblically that is the model.

0:14:21 - Rusty George
Right, that's so good and I don't want to throw shade on anybody, but you think about some of the moral failures we've seen or the collapses of character we've seen in ministry over the years. Oftentimes there was not a period of waiting, there was a I got this call, I'm going for it, and we applaud them for their tenacity. We call it faith, we call it this great level of courage, but oftentimes it really is on the waiting that we get forged for the preparation for what God's going to do in us, don't you think?

0:14:55 - Ashley Wooldridge
I think we could spend a lot of time talking about that, because I think there's a link between our feeling like we're competent but not allowing that waiting season for God to forge our character and to forge some skill sets.

So when I look at my waiting season, I could tell you multiple things God did. I developed as a leader more intensely in that three and a half year period than almost any other period of my life outside of COVID. What God began to form character-wise in my heart to strip some things in me, even some sin I was dealing with, even some other things that I had to deal with. And then what God did in our lives financially, as we developed a deeper heart for generosity and a deeper level of contentment, which is very much needed in ministry. I mean, I think if I would have skipped that season, I would tell you this I would not be doing what I'm doing today. If I tried to circumvent that waiting season, I wouldn't. I think something would have happened along the way that I wouldn't be who I am today. So yeah, I think there's a lot there.

0:16:09 - Rusty George
Yeah, I think you and I should drill down on that on another conversation, because I think there's a lot we can learn.

I felt the same way. I mean I was in young adult ministry for most a decade before I came a lead pastor and, goodness, the things I learned there prepared me for what I'm doing now. So you get into ministry and your first stop is not you're a senior pastor, you're an executive leader on this high-octane team, but your passion was you wanted to take the leadership you'd learn in the marketplace and translate that to the church world. So I'm curious you've got this high-level leader and really focused and there really is no gray area with the leader you're following, who's an incredible leader. How did you bring anything that you thought you had to offer to the table? Because I think there's some leaders out there thinking, well, what do I have to add to this? Or they might be a frustrated leader thinking I got a lot to add and this guy's not listening to me and I don't sense you have that situation. But how do you lead from the second chair in a way that does help the organization get better without cutting your leader out of the legs?

0:17:23 - Ashley Wooldridge
And what a great question. I was very fortunate. Don was very open to wanting help and leadership, so I think that helps. He is very strong in his views and everything else. So I think how you lead from the second chair really well is you come with heavy doses of humility.

I think the moment you are in a second chair and you think your way is the highway and you know how to do it, that just wasn't my posture coming in. I knew there were some leadership principles that I thought we could apply and I was not trying to turn the church into a business. I don't believe that. I think there are just leadership principles that are leadership principles and I think they apply to business or church. Every great leadership principles is a spiritual principle that comes from scripture, because Jesus is the greatest leader that's ever existed on this earth. So I think you have to come with high doses of humility and also a great sense of patience that you need to bring people along and allow yourself to be shaped in the process, because you might especially be new to an organization or be new to ministry. You might think you know what needs to happen, but you may be way off base. You got to get some experience and legs underneath you to really understand the organization and the culture and what really is going to work there.

0:18:57 - Rusty George
Yeah, that's a great point, because a lot of the things that the church is doing, they've done as a reaction to something, and a lot of us that roll in there we don't know what that reaction was and maybe it's a good idea and maybe it's a bad idea, but here again, wisdom allows you that chance to learn that wisdom. Yep, yep, Okay, so you follow this. You're working for this legend, Don Wilson, amazing, amazing leader, focused, just such a great, great guy, and you get to work for him. You love him and then you get the call to be his successor. How do you follow a legend? Because, obviously, as your leader, there's things you do different, but you want to honor the past and there's a good transition process in play there. So suddenly you walk in one day and you're on the other side of the desk. What are some things you learned that you think, boy, I wish I would have done this differently. Or a few things. You think I think I did that okay and I would do that again. Yeah, great.

0:20:04 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah, good question. And Don is a legend. I mean, he is just an incredible leader that did so many things, so many things well, and I think that the benefit I had was twofold stepping into this role. And one is I never wanted it, I never saw on my radar to be a senior pastor. That was not my path. When I stepped in, I really felt like leadership was my gift and I just wanted to help the organization be everything that it could be. I never once asked to preach or teach and Don began tapping me on the shoulder saying I think you should teach a little more. And I was kind of hesitant at the beginning and started teaching a little bit more, and so, as I did, I think he just saw more in me that he said I think this could be you. So when he asked me to do it, I was like gosh, don, that's just none of my radar, and we had a few other people that we thought were going to be that, and so I told him I got to really pray about this and so I flew to Israel, spent about a week in Israel just praying, but my first prayer when he asked me to start thinking about being a senior pastor.

My first prayer was not, should I be the senior pastor at CCB? My first prayer is God, do you want me to be a senior pastor anywhere? That's good, because I needed to answer that question first. Then I needed to answer the question okay, could that be here at CCB? And when I was in Israel, just praying, I mean, and just seeking God, yeah, I was all by myself, you know, walking around Jerusalem. It was just this really deep spiritual experience. I felt like the answer God gave me was you could be. You know, do you want me to be a senior pastor? He's like you could be.

And again that and I didn't mind that answer because at this point in my life I had my the word for my life, and my wife and I's word if you cut us, was the word stewardship, and we just felt like we were just here not to own anything or be in control. We just want to steward whatever God places in our hands. I felt that God was like, yeah, I could place this in your hands and you could steward it, but I might place something else in your, in your hands at some point. You should be just as open to stepping into this, to just as open to stepping out of it. And that's kind of the posture I've had to is like, hey God, if you want me to be a senior pastor, that's awesome, I'll do it, but if you ever want me to do something else, I want to be just as open to doing that.

Because this isn't, as you know, being in this role. It's not a. This isn't a hill you climb, this isn't like a destination that you go to. This is a. This is a real battlefield war that you're stepping into. So then I started asking okay, should it be a CCV?

And Don and I had a lot of things to work through, succession wise, to see if that would be the right thing. And, man, it did work, it did work out. But you know, when you follow someone like Don, you asked about how do you, how do you do that? How do you do that? Well, you know you, I had a benefit of working in the organization for a long, long time before I stepped into the role. So I think that helps some because I've actually been in a leadership role where I'm helping kind of shape our organizational culture. Already A lot of people on our team I I've hired, I've worked with them for a long time. So I didn't feel like there was anything massive. I needed to go change cultural, culturally because, yeah, I was a part of shaping the culture, so that that helped me tremendously.

What's hard is like when you follow someone like Don, who's a legend. You know you're, you're like man. How do you do that? And I just realized I can't fill his shoes. I can only step into my own shoes and I've learned so much from him that I've benefited from. But I'm not going to be just like him because I'm not him and if I try to be something, I'm not. I think that's a recipe for failure. So I learned a ton, but I just tried to step into my own shoes and be true to myself. Yeah, you know, I think Craig Groschell has that great line. You know, be yourself if you will rather follow someone real than someone who's always always right. I really resonate with that. I'm like man. I just want to be my authentic self. I'm not trying to pretend like I am somebody else because I'm not Don, I'm not.

0:24:38 - Rusty George
Did it take a while for I'm sure people were kind and I'm sure there were people that said, Well, Don always. Did it take a while for you, even yourself, to stop thinking Well, Don would have, or Don used to and to think about what do I want to do?

0:24:58 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yes, yes, you know, we the good news. We thought a lot along the same pages in a lot of things. You know, we just worked together so long and we just had this good relationship. But it did take me a while to really just say, okay, what, what, what do I think we should do on this? Not not what would Don do on this?

And one of the benefits to our transition is Don handed over all the leadership of the church a year before we even announced the transition. Wow, so that that became a great. That became a great gift for me because I got a little more used to okay, I got to make the call on this, not Don, he actually, he actually like I mean, it was, it was incredible what he did. He actually moved out of his office, like literally moved out of his office, a year before you know the transition year, kind of like gosh, you know who who does that. But it became this great gift for me because I got to begin to wrestle with some of that before it actually happened. So I think that helped me a little bit afterwards of going, okay, I need to make sure that I'm I'm doing what. What I think is the best thing here, not what someone else would do.

0:26:13 - Rusty George
Right, you know, one of the things I've always admired about you is you're so team oriented. We all speak that game, but at the end of the day, a lot of us really like to be the guy you know pushing the button, but you really do share the load with your team. What are some strategies that you use to kind of keep that a reality in your culture? 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.

0:27:06 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah, that's really a leadership principle I learned at Intel. I mean, they were such a team oriented environment, and part of the reason why is because in larger organizations it is much more apparent that there is no way one person has the capabilities to lead everything that needs to get done, and sometimes in smaller organizations we fall into the trap. That and it, in my opinion, is the greatest leadership lie that exists today that one individual can develop all the leadership giftings that they need to do, and it, in my opinion, is the greatest leadership lie that exists today that one individual can develop all the leadership giftings to lead anything that God's put under their care. That's good. I'm not even talking about senior pastor. I'm talking about you. Take any role on a staff. That it is a lie to think. I can just listen to enough podcast with Rusty George, read enough books, get enough mentors and I will develop all the gifts I need to lead what's under my care right now, and I'm of the opinion that is 100% not true.

If Jesus, the only perfect leader that's ever walked this earth, decided to surround himself with 12 guys and give them authority and send them out, and did, and he worked with a team, you have 12 and had an inner circle of three. What makes me think that I could, I could ever get to the place where I could do it on my own. So that that's kind of the core conviction that I think a lot of should be like yeah, I want that, but then how does that play out practically? Yeah, it means number one you have to surround yourself with amazing leaders that are better than you Better than you in a bunch of areas and then you have to be very open and transparent about your weaknesses and point out where they're stronger. That creates a great team environment, so that everybody's not sitting around a team going like they're just looking to one person. No, you're looking for a team, and so that's. That's a practical thing is you got to surround yourself with the right people, and you know, john Maxwell said the size of the team around you will determine the size of God's dreams for you, and I I believe that wholeheartedly that a lot of us are faltering because the media team around us is not really good. Right, and the reason they're not really good is because we want all the credit, we want all the decision making where we're kind of this ultra dominant, like point leader. So starting us up with a great team, I think the other you know.

I'll just add one more practical thing. Then, when you're making decisions, you are rarely, if ever, making a decision without the input, and really being open to the input, of that team. I couldn't even tell you one Moses moment where I've walked down from the mountain and been like this is what we're doing and I didn't get input or advice or let the team shape it or make it better or kill it all together. And I think I think that's the power of a team and I think if you'll, if you can make the team the, you know, the important part of your leadership, you'll make better decisions and your decisions will be driven further in the organization and they'll be taken further. So that's the power, that's the power of a team, and the church is a tough environment for that, because we think just because the guy on stage can preach well means that he can make every single decision really well. And gosh, how many times have we seen that jacked up?

0:30:53 - Rusty George
right, right, right. Okay. So you brought up Groshel earlier. Groshel talks about the further down you can push decisions to be made, the better off your organization will be. So if they don't have to run everything up the food chain and get your you know signing off on everything, they get to move quicker. What are the decisions that you think okay, my top level leadership team whether you call that an executive team or whatever we make these decisions. Other decisions departments, ministries, campuses they can make, but we make these. Do you have like three or four? Maybe it's more than that, but you think we're going to make these calls, yeah.

0:31:35 - Ashley Wooldridge
I think you know, depending on the organizational size, you have to decide. You know what those are, what those are for you. Sure, for us, you know, we've got you know based on the size of our staff. You know we have almost 500 staff, we have a 15 campuses. You know a church this year is going to, you know, is right around 37,000. So I've got to think, okay, with that organizational scope, like what decisions have to boil all the way up to me, and I would say there's only a few.

If we were going to change the vision completely on something with our church, I feel like my job as a senior pastor is to make sure that I'm casting good vision and that you know the direction we're heading for that year is really, really clear.

I would say if something in our culture, like one of our core values, was going to change, that would have to boil up and be in my boat.

And then there's only a certain few hires that I would even weigh into. Last year we hired 110 people. I was involved in two of those and only if there was a campus pastor we were hiring do I even weigh in on that, and I'm not even sure I need to weigh in on all those in the future. So I think there's just a few critical things, like if it's a vision changing, if there's something culturally that someone's like hey, we want to change this, I would boil up to my table. And you know something theologically that there's a question on. You know, as we talk about some of the nuances of some of the things going on in our world today, like those are big decisions that have to boil up to that executive table, and then you know really really key, really key hires but I mean the critical few there with our sizes are just a few that I think boil up to us.

0:33:37 - Rusty George
Okay, so what does a typical leadership meeting look like for your team Does meet weekly, is it biweekly? And then, what's kind of the template agenda there, because you're not wading through the weeds of all these little decisions you have to make. But what are the ones, or at least the dashboards, that you look at every time you get together?

0:33:59 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah. So I mean I have an executive team of three other guys, so there's four of us total and we meet weekly, but two of those weeks we cut our meeting short and bring in a larger leadership team because we want them to make more decisions, even decisions we're making. So our typical agenda and we have a set agenda that we use we use an open agenda. Our typical agenda is we're going to open in prayer, really want to make sure we're asking God for wisdom, discernment. We talk about one of our core values, or fundamentals, every single meeting. Actually, we ask that all of our teams open, so we have this like fundamental of the week. That's just kind of one of our core values we're trying to drive in the organization.

We talk about those every week as a way of driving culture a little bit deeper, because the deeper you drive culture, the less decision making you have to make. Does that make sense? Oh, that's so good. Yeah, that's so true.

So a lot of times, decisions are boiling up to your table because your culture is not clear. So that so you know that the deeper you can drive your culture and be really clear on who you are as a culture, the deeper you can drive decision making, because those become the guardrails your values become the guardrails to your decision making. Without those, everyone's left to their own preferences, and that's why we get in all these, you know. That's why people have a hard time making decisions at lower levels. It's always boiling up because you're you're basically talking about preferences all the time, versus like no, this is who we are, this is, these are our values, this is really what we value. So we talk about one of those every week. Even our executive team or any table at CCB that's going to meet, that has a meeting that week, they'll be talking about that. And then I ask our three executive pastors to bring to the table any decision that needs the four of us to weigh in. And those are, those are the big things we we talk about.

0:36:11 - Rusty George
That's so good. Okay, so one of your core values, or staff values, I should say. I noticed this on the wall last time I was there was we pick up trash. Yeah, I love that and I think there's a servanthood mentality behind it. But how'd you come to that, what's behind that and how have you seen that kind of materialized over the years?

0:36:37 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah, so we have the six core values. One of them is we really want to have a servant attitude, and we have a couple catchphrases under each of those core values. So, under the servant, having a servant attitude is we pick up trash. We refuse to say that's not my job, so that's the value is we want to be like servant leaders, and one of the things that and this is really goes all the way back to Don it.

When Don was here, he would not walk past a piece of trash without picking it up, and it just became this thing that we've kind of carried on going hey, when you see something that needs to be done, it'd be easy, when you see a piece of trash somewhere, to be like, hey, let's call up somebody that's responsible for that and tell them to like to do it. Now, why couldn't we just do that? Right then? Right, we're all a part of this team, right, we all want to be servants. So that's just one of the values, and we try to have some behaviors that we put in place in the organization that help reinforce what these values actually mean, because it's one thing to say we want to have a servant attitude, but I think you need some fundamental behaviors that show the organization. What do you actually mean by that? What do you mean by that? And so those are the things where we've really tried to drive a little bit deeper.

0:38:10 - Rusty George
Okay, let's talk about message prep. Everybody does it a little bit differently. Some of us love it, some of us hate it. But what has been your rhythm of putting together a message? Is that a you in the study, by yourself, and you come out with the two stone tablets and pass that out to the campuses and everybody who needs to know it? Or is it a collaborative effort? At what point do you bring in collaboration? Do you have a research assistant? Just what's the message prep look like and when does that begin for you?

0:38:42 - Ashley Wooldridge
I would go back to what we talked about team. So the message prep, it has team intersected in it from the beginning to the very, very end. So I'll give you a very high level. I would back up one year. One year out, there's about four of us that get in the room and all bring great ideas for series. So it's not just me and as a team, collectively, as a team, we decide what series we're gonna do. Now I would have the largest vote in that process because I have to preach the majority of them, but it is very much a team effort. I mean, I would tell you there's so many series we're doing this year, not my idea, someone else brought it to the table. I loved it, let's do it. But that's a collective team effort.

One year out, we map out our whole entire year, six weeks out from when a series is gonna start. Each of us that are teaching and we have a teaching team again the team model we have. Anybody who's teaching in that series would come with a very rough outline and we have a creative team and others around the table that are weighing in on that initial outline some creative ideas where we're headed with the message. So we get some initial feedback there. And then we have creative teams running on for doing a life story. We have a creative idea or graphics, all that kind of stuff, so they're in front of it.

And then the week of when we really start like writing the message I already have that kind of that rough outline. I've already been thinking about it for a while, which I think is important. It's already kind of been brewing in me. And then Monday I do a full day of study by myself, just taking all that input, all the things we thought about, and I start writing. I'll start writing a little bit towards the end of the day, but a lot of study that day.

Tuesday, by the end of the day I'll have a rough draft of the message and I'll send it to a team of six and say, okay, here's where I've landed, give me some feedback and I get all. I don't do anything on Wednesday. That's a full leadership day. Thursday I walk in, I get all that feedback and I change the message based on the feedback and there's never been one time that that message has not gotten better because of that feedback. It's like one of the most valuable things I do. Thursday I'll have a final draft that I'll send out. Friday is my Sabbath, and then Saturday I'll come in and I'll start running through it to preach it that night.

0:41:08 - Rusty George
And you guys still do Saturday night and Sunday morning, correct? We do, yep.

0:41:13 - Ashley Wooldridge
So we do Saturday night services and Sunday morning and then we have a Monday night at one of our campuses. But and then I would say, after I preach the first service, there's about six of us that sit in a room and critique it, and we do that every single time we preach. So the amount of feedback, the amount of feedback or like team, that's weighing into the message, is just, it's so. I just value it so much. There's always input on the front end. There's always input the week of and then after I've preached it, there's input then, and I will always change something between the first and second service that I preach. There'll always be something that I said or shouldn't say, or cut something out. I mean, it's just, it's been really good, like I just I love that, I love that team.

0:42:03 - Rusty George
I heard you recently talk about the element of if your church is plateaued, isn't growing, as stuck in somewhere at some point, there's one of these five things that is kind of stopped having attention given to it. And you gave us these five things that cause a church to either grow or stop growing depending on how much maintenance you give it. Can you just tell for our listeners these five things and give us kind of a bullet point description of what those were? I thought that was so helpful.

0:42:36 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah, and these are just for us. I think every church should figure out what they are for themselves. But every church has a vision. Most people have a mission statement, but I think where we get stuck sometimes is we don't really have like, what is the strategy, what are the key things that are gonna help us reach our vision, our mission? And for us, those five things are we need to continue to expand our reach and footprint, so we need to continue to have, if we wanna grow and reach, more people. We need more chairs, more buildings, more space. We need to build a strong team and culture, so it really matters who we have on our team and the culture that we're creating and making sure we reinforce. We need to guide people in their next steps.

That's the third one. So this is all about our discipleship strategy. What are our next steps and how are we encouraging people to take those and are people growing in their faith and their discipleship? Third is we have to focus on our financial health. And five is we have to improve our systems and processes, and what we talk about is that if you're not seeing growth as a church, you're not reaching your vision or mission you've put out normally and I'm just speaking personally for us it's because one of these five areas is off, and I think typically one of them is off. It's a very rare occasion that you're hitting on every single cylinder. So when we go into a year, what we're doing is we're looking at those five things going like where do we need to put more energy into one of these Cause?

I'll just give you a couple examples. It's awesome if you have a great culture. You have great people on your team. You're really pleased with that and people are growing spiritually like crazy, like people are taking their next steps and you're seeing people baptized and getting into groups and people are really getting discipleship. But if you don't have the building space to continue to grow, you'll hit a barrier. You'll hit a growth barrier and you could what's another scenario? You could add new space and you could actually like hire the staff, but if you don't have the financial health to be able to actually pay that staff or pay for those new buildings, you're gonna stifle your growth. So all of these matter and you just have to determine where we out of balance. Where do we need to put some more energy and effort towards one of these? And yeah, so that's the way we look at our strategy and our growth barriers a lot as a team.

0:45:17 - Rusty George
Those are so good and I can't think of a situation where you don't have to evaluate all five of those things, and it's been a really good template for us. Out of that, you have decided your word for the year, which I love. That concept for your staff is focus, and you've used the example before of Chick-fil-A versus Jack in the Box and just zeroing in on what matters most and doing it really really well. How have you cause we're a few months in now to this word of the year? What are the times that you feel like you? It's so tempting to drift out of focus? Or let's add a few things that may be ancillary or adjacent to what it is we're trying to do. How have you maintained focus in what it is you guys are trying to accomplish? Hmm?

0:46:09 - Ashley Wooldridge
man. We could talk a lot on this topic, cause I get passionate about it. And again, I won't say this is for every church or for everybody, just for us. We just believe that churches don't drift towards simplicity or focus. You're always drifting towards complexity and being out of focus. And the reality is the way God has designed us and the way God has designed our churches is. We cannot, we really we have limitations as leaders. So we have to decide where are we gonna focus our energy? Because our energy is limited, our time is limited. That's good. So where are you gonna focus to have the highest eternal return? And you have In-N-Out in California. You like In-N-Out, I love In-N-Out.

Our kids if you asked them where they wanted to go tonight, they would say we wanna go to In-N-Out. So we go to In-N-Out a lot. We also go to Chili's. There's a Chili's right next to our house. We also go there. It's not bad. I've just never walked out of Chili's and been like dude. I cannot wait to go back there. That was unbelievable. But every time we get done eating In-N-Out I'm like I cannot. That was so good and I just wonder what people experience in our churches when they come. I wonder if people are just dying to come back there, like that was. I just experienced Jesus. I mean, that was so good.

And sometimes I think our menu is so broad that we're doing so many things at like a C minus. Like maybe it'd be beneficial for us to narrow our focus and do more things at an A plus, and I think it's hard to do things at an A plus if you are so broad that you're moving in a thousand different directions. So we're a couple months in. This is our word for the year. We've always been a pretty focused church, but we just feel like, coming out of COVID yeah, we are throwing a lot of mud on the wall. During COVID, like, a lot of us were like man, what are we gonna do? Let's try some new things, and all that was really really good. But we just felt like, okay, this is a season where we need to get back to our focus and make sure that our whole staff is moving in the right direction. So we see a lot of benefits from it and we have a phrase if this helps anybody else, we have this phrase. We say that. We say we believe narrowing our focus broadens our impact.

0:48:49 - Rusty George
That's so good. Yeah, there's this temptation for all pastors especially to think I have to reach everyone, and even Peter and Paul. They narrowed down their focus and had maximum impact. Jesus certainly never traveled very far from home. I mean, there's so many examples we can see over and over again. But the temptation is to take that phrase from Paul I do all things, or I can do all things for all people. That kind of mentality and try to do it is really dangerous. Ashley, I wanna respect your time so I'm gonna let you go, but this is such great stuff. I've written down two or three things that we could do a whole another podcast on. I'd love to have you back. I just really appreciate your voice in the church world. You are a and that's what makes you great, as you would never acknowledge this but you're a very servant oriented, humble guy that serves anybody in need in the church world, regardless of their influence or the size of their church, and I just wanna say thank you for that.

0:49:56 - Ashley Wooldridge
Well, thanks for what you're doing and investing in this leadership community, and I love what God's doing through you, so it's an honor to be with you.

0:50:03 - Rusty George
Okay, so I gotta ask you one last question. I've never said this to you before, but I always felt like you looked so much like the former head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, cliff Kingsbury. Did you ever get confused for him? Anybody ever asked for an autograph? Or, now that he's been fired and is out of town, is it easier for you to roll around town?

0:50:26 - Ashley Wooldridge
Yeah, people would tell me all the time you look just like the coach of the Arizona Cardinals and I think two years for Halloween, I think I dressed up like him, which is like it was like an easy outfit, as through a Cardinals shirt on. Oh, that's so good. But yeah, he's no longer here, so I don't get that as much, which is probably good, but I don't know, maybe there's some resemblance there and I don't know, I wouldn't mind get down there on the field sometime. Yeah, that's my messed up thinking. I'm like I could probably go down there and coach a little bit.

0:51:00 - Rusty George
I think all of us think that we could coach the team better than the coach of our favorite team.

0:51:05 - Ashley Wooldridge
For sure, yeah, armchair, cork me back yeah.

0:51:08 - Rusty George
Okay, well, brother, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thanks, Rusty. Hey, next week we'll be joined by a former worship leader of one of the largest worship ministries in the world. Elevation Worship has produced such songs as Come to the Altar and Resurrection King, and one of the authors of those songs and many of our beloved songs from Elevation Worship has written a new book entitled This Dream is Not for You. It's an incredible read. I really loved it and I know you will too, and I really love my conversation with him. So he'll be joining us next week. So make sure you subscribe and share, leave a review, and, as always, keep it simple. I'll see you next week.