The Rusty George Podcast

Rusty (00:01.615)
Alright.

Gavin Adams (00:02.482)
All good.

Rusty (00:05.031)
Wow, Gavin Adams, thank you for being on the podcast. I've been a fan of yours for years. We've been in similar rooms. We know the same people, but now we finally get to talk face to face. No more distractions of people like Clay Scroggins and Andy Stanley. It's just exactly just mono-e-mono. Yes. Well, listen, buddy. Thank you for doing this. Just...

Gavin Adams (00:21.23)
Jeff Henderson, some of my very good friends to this day. So, yeah.

Rusty (00:31.595)
quickly update our audience as to who you are and when your resume is quite impressive. You've done a lot of different things. But tell everybody a little bit about the world that you're living in right now.

Gavin Adams (00:37.747)
Good grief, Will.

Gavin Adams (00:45.194)
Yeah, man. Well, I appreciate that. I don't know it's that impressive, but I spent a decade in the marketplace out of business school when I was younger and then just felt called into ministry, grew up around the church in a Christian home. And so I was just very involved with that as a child. And so it never really got out of my system and really felt led to get back involved. Of course, I had a business degree and was working in the marketplace, running a business. So I wasn't even sure you could work at a church with those educational backgrounds and experience.

I got involved in ministry officially as a job as a part-time, bivocational middle school pastor some 18 or so years ago at this point and did that for a couple of years. Rusty at a church that you know of, Southside Church in Peachtree City, Georgia. It's one of those original North Point Partnership churches. So I got to help Chris Patton launch that church.

A couple of years in, felt ready to do more. I had already kind of moved into that organization there. I was leading all the family ministry and our marriage stuff, but became a lead pastor 16 years ago at a place called Watermark Church. It's now called Woodstock City Church. It's a campus location of North Point Ministries. So we were an independent church for my first two years, but our proximity to North Point, we were only 40 or so minutes due west from Alpharetta, Georgia, which is their home base.

We were adopted or hostilly taken over, however you want to look at it, as a campus location. So I got to lead along with guys that you just mentioned, Andy and Clay and Jeff and Joel Thomas and all these really good friends of mine for just over a decade. And then two and a half years ago, I decided to leave on incredibly positive terms, but really just felt that season was kind of coming to an end. And

My background in the marketplace with consulting and working with leadership and organizations combined with all this ministry experience really just made me feel that maybe it was time to help, if I could, work with the broader church and the broader kingdom. And so I'm helping churches and coaching pastors primarily. I do some marketplace work as well, but primarily working with churches and helping them accelerate their mission by adding more intention to it. So I'm a strategist, rest a heart, and I love pastoral leadership and all those things,

Gavin Adams (03:03.766)
I'm a strategy guy. And so working around the intentionality of turning vision into reality is what I really kind of what gets me up in the morning. So I'm doing that full time. Been doing it for probably two and a half years at this point and really just could not be having more fun.

Rusty (03:18.155)
That's so great. Just tell me what's an average day look like for you? Because I mean, it's no longer, you know, you go to the office and, and you know, you write your message in the morning and you meet with people in the afternoon. I'm sure it's different every week based upon where you're traveling and where you're speaking. But what do they look like in your world?

Gavin Adams (03:25.266)
Yeah.

Gavin Adams (03:33.332)
Yeah.

Gavin Adams (03:37.062)
It is very much different every week. Yeah, yeah, it's very different every week. Yesterday, I came off of a trip and had a day kind of off a little bit from work so I could just spend time with my wife and play a little pickleball and, you know, rest it a little bit, wrote a little bit. I would say there is some consistency. Every day I write a little, I blog a lot, mostly because I just love ideas and it's a great way to turn those ideas into something that may be bigger than just a thought and so I'm writing all the time.

creating content a lot. Some of the primary work I do with churches is around communication and sermons. Again, I was so blessed to work with Andy for 11 years and learn everything I could from him as a communicator and as a preacher. So, and I love ideas, I love content. So I'm doing a lot of that every week. In fact, even this morning, I had meetings with two guys, other churches I'm working with, on content and series creation.

There's a little bit of that happens all the time. But like you said, every day is different because I am traveling a lot. I'm working with lots of different churches who are working on some similar, but lots of different things. And so I feel like, I'll tell you what though, it did take some time to adjust to that because you know this from being in pastoral ministry or any leadership organization, it just tends to run you. And so every Tuesday, there's a leadership meeting. Every Wednesday, there's one-on-ones. Now there is no every day anything. It's all different.

So I kind of vacillate from creating things that are coming new with my clients or just on the broader scale of church stuff or working on individual things with the churches or leaders that I'm working with. And so it does change every single day.

Rusty (05:18.023)
I'm curious about just people that collect ideas and turn them into content because every idea is not gold. But you've got to have all the bad ones to get to the good one. What has worked for you an idea collection? I mean, are you a guy that's going to write it on a whiteboard or do you ever note or three by five cards? What do you do?

Gavin Adams (05:32.758)
Yeah.

Gavin Adams (05:36.902)
Yeah, that's a great question. I agree because you're right. It takes a lot of ideation to find things that eventually turn into something that's worthwhile, right? I love Evernote is what I've been using for over a decade. It's so helpful for me. I mean, right now I think in my files in Evernote, I've got probably 80 bad ideas on sermons and series that I'm helping churches with or thinking about.

There may be a couple of there that are worth pursuing, but I've got 80 ideas. Same thing with products or working on strategy or working on discipleship pathways or how do we talk about some of the things that are fundamental in new ways, culture, organizational health, things like that. So I love Evernote for that. It allows me to store things I come across that are interesting and it allows me to quickly capture ideas.

And most of them are one line, you know, it's just a paragraph that I can just store and marinate on. But you know that most great ideas don't start great. They they and then they evolve into something that maybe it wasn't intended initially. But by starting with something, it allows that idea to marinate and fully develop. And I think Evernote for me has been a game changer for that.

Rusty (06:52.807)
This episode is sponsored by Evernote. I'm kidding. I love Evernote as well and I was a guy who liked to write stuff down before and then this actually helps out quite a bit. Okay, so here's a question I'd love to ask guys that have been in ministry and then they do something different. What do you know now, now that you're in the, you know, I guess we could call it marketplace. Now you were in it before, but

Gavin Adams (06:55.382)
So far.

Gavin Adams (06:59.531)
Yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

Gavin Adams (07:15.802)
Yeah, yeah.

Rusty (07:17.819)
I mean, every pastor that does this goes, boy, I expected way too much out of my people, or I didn't demand enough. You know, I mean, what's your faith look like now versus when you were in ministry vocationally?

Gavin Adams (07:31.382)
Yeah. I would say right now what I'm doing is a hybrid. It still feels very ministry, but it's certainly different than it was when you're a senior pastor of an organized church. Yeah. You know, I used to tell people all the time when we were interviewing them to come work for us. If you think coming to work at a church will help your faith, you need to run away because it's the worst thing you may do for your faith.

Rusty (07:55.112)
I'm sorry.

Gavin Adams (07:55.706)
Not because you're going to see behind the curtain, because I want everything behind the curtain to be as spiritually mature and positive as what you perceive on the surface, too. So it's not that, although in a lot of churches it isn't that way, right? But, you know, when you're working in the church, faith becomes a job. And so every time I would open the Bible to read, it felt like I was trying to study.

Rusty (08:22.281)
Yeah.

Gavin Adams (08:22.33)
It's just so hard to separate your spiritual life or spiritual practices from the job when the job is spiritual practices, right? It just feels impossible. So I worked really hard after I realized how challenging it was to get back on track with that. And I felt like I learned how to be successful in it, but it was really challenging for a while. I would say now being out of the church for two and a half years, well, out officially as in not leading an individual one.

It has been positive for my faith, but I'll tell you the thing that has made it better, because it still feels like it's my job. I'm still working in it all day with pastors and individual churches and leaders. But the thing that has really been rejuvenating, I guess, to a certain extent is, I feel like, and I don't know, but maybe this is just me, but I felt like when you work at a church, you get very insulated into that one church, that organization, that way of doing things, that model, whatever.

I'm working with churches around the world now. It's just, it's like you go on a mission trip and you're reminded that God's active and alive everywhere, right? That's how this has felt. It has been a wonderful reminder that God is doing amazing things everywhere and he's doing it differently everywhere. And there isn't one way to do it, that there are lots of ways to do it. And some are better than others in some contexts or some communities, certainly some are better than others. But

There isn't one model, there isn't one way. And it's been refreshing to see that maybe the only thing that we can get wrong is to not be intentional and not be strategic, to not think about how we're doing it. But it doesn't mean there's only one way to do it. There's lots of ways to be intentional about stewardship and kingdom building and things like that. So it has really helped my faith, watching it, watching God show off in different ways.

Rusty (10:16.947)
Mm hmm. Oh, that's great. Well, I appreciate you indulging me with that. We weren't even slated to talk about that. But I love hearing that perspective. It's such a good word for our non vocational pastors listening and trying to make their faith simple. Okay, so I want to dive into your book because I loved it. And I love hearing you talk about it. It's a great title. I definitely have title envy. And that is big shoes to fill. Where this come from? I mean, you've done this. But had you always been thinking I should write that write something about this?

Gavin Adams (10:20.695)
Yep.

Gavin Adams (10:24.854)
Yeah, for sure.

Gavin Adams (10:28.522)
Yeah.

Gavin Adams (10:40.278)
Yeah.

Oh boy.

Gavin Adams (10:46.054)
Not always. I, again, I love content, I love ideas, but more than anything, I love helping leaders and helping people take steps, right? I mean, that's ultimately what life is about decisions and progress moving forward, which requires steps. When I started thinking about my experiences personally, obviously stepping in to lead at Watermark Church, but you know, I was a business owner for a while too, right? And then stepping into this new role now.

The difference between stepping into a role that someone else created versus an entrepreneur who is founding an organization is drastically different. And the more I thought about it and talked to some friends and leaders, the more I realized that 99% of us as leaders are not creating the thing that we lead, we're stepping in to lead something that was created before us. And the complications with that are pretty dramatic.

That led me to think more about it, do some more research. I found out that the average person, the average leader is in a role four years before they're changing jobs, changing companies. The average millennial, it's even less, it's three years for them. So when I began thinking about how can leaders expedite the process of stepping into a role, doing it well,

Moving from positional authority to relational influence, all the things that we want to do as leaders as quickly as we can, as healthily as we can for us, the team, the organization around us. That seems like something worth pursuing, especially if we're going to be changing jobs as frequently. I mean, you know, when I stepped in to be a senior pastor, I feel like it took me a year to get my real footing before I felt comfortable.

I looked comfortable because we have to fake that until we feel it. But I wasn't comfortable the first week or two. It took me a while. And I thought if I was changing jobs every three to four years, and if it takes a year to get comfortable, well, that's 25%, 33% of my time that I'm not really leading well. So how can we expedite that? What are some strategies and some practical steps that leaders can take and teams and organizations can take on behalf of the leader? So.

Gavin Adams (13:01.098)
That was really the impetus behind it. I thought it was an idea worth pursuing. Then I began talking to some really fantastic leaders who have gone before me and done way bigger, more impressive things than me and realized how complicated it is to do this well. And so put all that together, that's kind of where the book came from.

Rusty (13:20.203)
I love the clarification you make in the book about when you step into an organization, if you follow a not so great leader, the organization is sick. But if you follow a really great leader, the organization is sad. How do you flex into what kind of a leader you need to be in those two different situations?

Gavin Adams (13:39.714)
You know, the challenge in all of these is you are replacing somebody and the person you're replacing is not you. And they may have been beloved or bemoaned or somewhere in between. Right. So when you step into these roles, you are you have to really have an accurate assessment of how the organization is doing and how they feel about the person that you're replacing.

And the reason it's important is that there are some incredible tensions you have to manage, most of them personal tensions, because when you replace a, a beloved leader, you want to gain that love yourself. And so you're trying to one up the person. You're trying to prove that you belong. You're trying to, uh, perform in a way that, that shows everybody that you can be beloved and all that as well. But it takes time to do that. Right. And so you, it can't happen immediately.

The good thing though is that when you replace a beloved leader, they typically are beloved because they've created a good team, a good organization that is, has a healthy culture, um, things of that nature. That is so much easier. You know, when you step into a role where you're replacing a poor leader, odds are that you're, uh, the best leaders have already left. So you're, uh, I hate to say it this way, but you might be inheriting a mediocre team or a team that has some

dynamic talent or raw talent, but man, the toxicity of that poor leader has really made the culture of the organization struggle. And so the tension there, though, is you're going to want to put down the previous leader to get a leg up. You're going to want to. I mean, the whole thing is about expediting the trust that you're trying to gain. And the tension is so strong to do that. Well, leaders too often do it the wrong way with the right.

hopeful outcome, but they're going about it all the wrong way and making it worse. And so what I tried to do in the book is take some time to illuminate what these tensions are going to be, regardless of the role you're stepping into and who you're following. Cause again, in fact, on my website, I had to, I created 10 kind of companion guides because, you know, if you're stepping into a pastoral, that's different than a CEO of a fortune 500 company, right?

Gavin Adams (15:53.486)
if you're being promoted from within the organization or if you're coming in from outside the organization, these are different kind of tensions you have to understand. So I couldn't address all of that. We would have a thousand page textbook. So I've got some companion guides to help with it. But again, the understanding the team, the organization, and then specifically what was that leader like? That helps you step in correctly.

and manage your own tensions as you're stepping in, manage the tensions of the people around you, the team, the organization as you're stepping in, and hopefully understand how to ask the right questions and have the right kind of patience to understand what people are feeling. That's really the big thing. It's about what they're feeling. And the leader that you're replacing is creating what they're feeling.

Rusty (16:45.419)
It's interesting in some situations that they're so glad that the old leader is gone, but now they don't know how to operate. It's kind of like living with an alcoholic or something. You're glad they're sober, but now I don't know my place in this. It used to be to protect you or the family or whatever. How do you coach organizations or even a new leader into, you're going to inherit some people that they're thrilled you're there.

Gavin Adams (16:54.957)
Right.

Gavin Adams (17:00.855)
Right.

Rusty (17:11.571)
but they don't know how to operate with anybody other than the type of leader they used to have.

Gavin Adams (17:17.25)
The funniest thing to me, or if there's a better word than funny, I don't know, but the funniest thing to me about organizational change or change of any kind is that, even, a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, right, it's like people would prefer the bad that they know than the potential great that they don't understand yet. And that is true of every version of change. In section three, I talk all about this change dynamic and the curve of change and the experience of it,

There's a, the key word here is probably loss, that every time we experience a change, we experience loss. And I don't know that we always understand that, and the way that we handle loss is through grief. But if we don't understand we're losing something, we don't know that we need to grieve something, and therefore we end up having these ungrieved losses that haunt us forever. So when you think about it in an organizational world,

Rusty, you've got a, let's say a poor leader is leaving and you're coming in to replace them. You assume everyone's going to be excited that you're there, but for all they know, you're worse than the previous person. They don't know, you know, you know you're not, at least you think you're not, but you don't know. They don't know. So what they're losing is easy for us to think they're losing a bad leader, a poor leader, whatever we want to call it, and you're going to be much better. And hopefully that's true. But they don't know that yet.

Rusty (18:24.936)
Mm-hmm.

Gavin Adams (18:42.942)
All they know is that they understand the system, the expectation, they understand what the bad leader wants, doesn't want, they know how to succeed, even if they don't like the person they're doing it for and with. So those are all losses. Losing comfort of what they even don't like is still a loss. And that's a complicated piece of this. And so as a new leader stepping in, one of the most important things we have to do is understand what are...

the team and then individually on the team, what people are losing. So we can help them process through that, which really does expedite their trust with us and with the team.

Rusty (19:20.843)
How long do you give somebody to process all that? I know it's different for everybody. That's type A people that like schedules would like to say, okay, you get 90 minutes and then we're moving on. We're kind of a sliding scale of it's going to take some people X amount of time and then the grief should be at least processed or dealt with and now we need to start dealing with results.

Gavin Adams (19:31.319)
Yeah.

Gavin Adams (19:41.362)
Yeah. I think that's a fantastic question. I, when I was working on this change dynamic, so when I did my doctorate, I kind of did it on change because that's something I love and love studying and love being a part of. I was hoping that I would find an answer to that question that would be unequivocal and it would be 90 minutes. Here's the problem. It isn't that, it isn't that simple. But what I have found that I do think we can say unequivocally

is that our job as leaders is to help people name the losses, because again, you can't change what you can't name, right? You can't fix what you can't name. So we need to help people name the losses that they're experiencing, and then we need to help them. Our next job is to process with them. So the one finding I do have that I can say is correct is that the things that people can't name, they can't process, and therefore they can't get over.

It's our job to help them name it and process it. And I can tell you that by naming and processing, it does expedite the process. However, if we don't name it and we just expect them to get through it, grief is, I like to think of it like a person who's sitting in a well. And I think as leaders, what we like to do is walk by the well and look down and go, have you heard my vision? It's so great, you should come up and then we lower a ladder, right? Well, that's not good leadership, right? A great leader

walks by and looks in the well, and instead of lowering a ladder and talking about how great it is up here, we lower the ladder and we climb down and we sit in the well with them to help them process why they're down there, and then to help them climb back up. So really our job is to name it. I learned, it took me a long time to learn this, but then, and by the way, this is true of every version of change. This isn't just leadership transitions. I mean, this is a change dynamic, but.

When we're going through personal change, organizational change, or of course leadership transition, which is change, one of the most important things we can do before we even announce there's gonna be a change is whether it's just ourselves or sitting with maybe our executive or leadership team ask the question, who is losing what? Because if we can determine even before the announcement is made that even if we can't get them all, but if we can list a handful of things that are gonna be lost because of this,

Gavin Adams (22:04.562)
It helps us get ahead of the processing and helps us start naming it for the people who need to process it. So I stumbled upon that, honestly, Rusty. I led so many changes at Woodstock City Church because, again, there was just so much dynamic of growth and going to be a campus and all the things that happen, you know, in that kind of space.

So we're constantly having to change and evolve and rethink how we are structured and our reporting structures and schedules and I mean everything, man. We had 65 staff at our peak before I left. So I mean, it's just a lot of moving parts, but and I would, we would make a change and people will resist and I'm like, there are people just resist change, you know? And that's not true. It's a fallacy. Nobody's ever come to your office and said, I want to double your salary. And you said, no, I'm change resistant, right? So.

The issue isn't change, the issue is loss. It's discomfort and loss. And so I realized, I had a great leader who was really struggling with a change and I was behind his back blaming him for resisting me and resisting the idea. And my solution was to just cast better vision and that wasn't working. And one day I got in the room with him and finally it just came to me, I'll blame God, but I just said, what do you feel like you're losing in this decision?

Rusty (23:23.452)
Mm-hmm.

Gavin Adams (23:23.646)
And all of a sudden it just opened up the floodgate of a conversation that allowed us both to make unbelievable progress through it. And once I realized that he felt like he was losing something, I was able to help him process it. Some of it, it wasn't even that really much of a loss. It was like an emotional demotion or whatever, but it still felt like a loss. Some of it was very legitimate. And I was able to understand why he was feeling that way. And now as a leader, help lead him better, because I know why he's feeling that. So...

I just, again, I could talk forever about that. I won't. But it's partially why I wrote the book though, is because we just don't understand that. We don't understand what people are feeling when it comes to this grieving experience.

Rusty (24:04.767)
Yeah, we've had Larry Osborne on the podcast before. He talks a lot about how it's the loss of either power or prestige or position that causes people to blame or get angry or in this situation grieve and they don't even know how to put words to it. Do you see that in any case?

Gavin Adams (24:07.551)
Huh?

Gavin Adams (24:13.709)
Right.

Gavin Adams (24:23.562)
Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, think about how many times we, I mean, first of all, we're just not the most emotionally healthy people, right? By nature, none of us are. And so by default, we have to do some hard work to get there. So when we, you know, we know that we're supposed to grieve loss, which is why, you know, when we experienced a death in the family as a child, maybe we're taught, you know, where our grandparent dies or whatever, but no one, no one is taught to grieve loss.

We don't associate it to the loss of a dream, the loss of an opportunity, the loss of an org chart, the loss of a boss that we didn't even like, but at least we understood. So all of these things are losses. And I mean, as Larry would say, and, you know, so many other like Cloud and Townsend are incredible, have some teaching on this that are so good that, you know, every loss is a death, and therefore every death gets buried. And if you grieve a loss, it can bury it dead, and it can rest in peace. However, if you experience a loss,

You're going to bury it because it's a death, but if you don't grieve it, you bury it alive. And if horror movies have taught us anything, anything that's buried alive comes back way grosser and meaner and angrier, right? And so, I mean, I went through this. I mean, I have a, we don't have time today probably, but I took a one month sabbatical for a while because I thought I was just burned out, but I had to work through a bunch of stuff. And...

One of them was just not understanding this concept of grief and loss. And I had to go back and consider losses from high school and college and things that I, I didn't grieve it. I just got angry and competitive, you know, and, uh, those things were haunting me. My, one of my favorite quotes about it was, um, you know, if, if your past is in your present, it's not really in your past. And I feel like a lot of the things from my past were still haunting me and my present and it was driving a lot of success and change.

progress, but there was a wake of bodies behind me, including myself at times, right? So I think for leaders, when we can understand the true emotional pieces to leadership transition or change, it positions us to actually lead people through these experiences, which is really what we're called to do.

Rusty (26:35.499)
Okay, there's a lot of people sitting out there right now thinking, Oh man, I wish I would have heard this a year ago, 10 years ago, whatever. Is there a way to do a reset? Is there a way to get a mullet and start over?

Gavin Adams (26:43.588)
Yeah.

Gavin Adams (26:48.307)
Yeah, there is a way. I had to do it. Section three of my book is dedicated to this, but not in the personal space. It's dedicated more, the principles are identical though, right? But yes, I think the way to do a reset, and by the way, it's not fun, and we don't wanna do it because we don't wanna, you know how it is, you flip over your heart and you see all the gross things squiggling, and so we just go, ugh, and we flip it back over. I don't wanna deal with that. I think the way to do it.

is to be willing to turn your heart over, look deeply introspectively at all the things that have happened and consider the fact that a lot of the things that have happened you didn't realize were losses and write them all down and then take time to actually grieve all of them. And sometimes it can be very quick, depending on our personalities and how...

I mean, just in vulnerability, I'll tell you, like, this is how stupid it can sound, but it's so life-giving. I mean, the first loss I felt like I probably didn't grieve or know how to grieve or do something with was, I was 15, and I got cut from a basketball team. And it was unfair how I got cut. At least that's what I told myself. Now, the reality, there was some weird politics behind it and all that. I changed schools, and I was at a new school in 10th grade, and nobody knew me. And

The coach said, hey, I just couldn't keep you on the team because you were new and I don't know you and I know these other guys. Now the reality is that I was the last person cut, which would have also meant I would be the last person on the bench, right? So it wasn't like I was so good that, you know. But you know, when you're 40, so this was 10 years ago when I started working through this, you're 40 and you think I got cut from the basketball at Summit 15, well, that's stupid. Why in the world, I shouldn't grieve that. That's, it's idiotic.

But guess what? If you're 40 and you're cut from something and you can't process it, yeah, that's a problem. When you're 15, it's your entire life. And I didn't grieve it. I just got really mad and averaged 28 points a game in the rec league. Every game in my 10th grade year, the opposing coach would say, why are you not playing for the school? And I would say, I don't know. You should ask the coach. And so I never grieved it, right? So you know what I did?

Gavin Adams (29:05.63)
I became unbelievably competitive. I made a commitment, my counselor would call this an internal vow, I made an internal vow that will never happen to me again. So I refused to try things that I couldn't win. I had a fear of failure because I don't fail anymore. I don't get cut, I don't get rejected. If I'm gonna take something on, there is no option other than success. So I would work harder.

than I probably needed to sacrifice more than I needed to. And by the way, often our world values and promotes that. So when I'm in the marketplace, I'm getting promotions and raises and whatever because of this internally bad motivated behavior. It took a long time. So I was actually at a Henry Cloud and John Townsend do this thing called the ultimate leadership workshop. I don't know if they call it that anymore.

But this is where all this kind of came to life for me. This whole teaching on grief and loss, I didn't even know that was a thing. And so I sat in the hotel room after that Wednesday night or Wednesday session and wrote down a whole pages of things that I had probably never grieved that were losses. I had to go back through and allow myself to dig it back up, feel what it felt like when I was 15, 18, 20, grieve it, and then be able to bury it dead.

Rusty (30:31.455)
What a healing exercise.

Gavin Adams (30:33.194)
Yeah, yeah. And you know, Rusty, you, you know, we've run in a lot of similar circles for a long time, but I mean, I'll tell you, the people who worked with me and friends of mine and all that, I think they all really respected me in those early years of leadership because I was kicking butt and taking names. I mean, we were getting a lot of stuff done, growing, all the things that on the surface looked great. Meanwhile, emotionally, it was...

being driven by something much more unhealthy than the kingdom and growth. I mean, I vividly remember the first time I got to preach at North Point, which is a big deal, right? I mean, they handed me a mic packet that had Andy Stanley's name on it, so that's kind of terrifying. So, you know, and we know whatever we think about him, you know, whatever your audience thinks about him, I mean, you know, he's an unbelievable leader and I think he gets a bad rap for a lot of stuff that's unfair. But, I,

That Sunday, I bet I preached to, I don't know, five, 6,000 adults in the room and maybe 50,000 people online. And I only cared what one of them thought. And he was already going to heaven, right? Andy, he's the only one, I was preaching for him because I wanted him to say good job and give me more opportunity, you know? What a horrible motivation. But why did I do that? Well, because I had not grieved any of those losses. So therefore I only...

I would only participate if I could win and winning meant being told, way to go, and getting a pat on the back and getting another opportunity. So after working through all this emotional stuff, man, I just finally got to a point where I got healthy enough that none of that mattered anymore. And I allowed, I mean, it's what Paul talks about constantly, freedom in Christ, right? I allowed all that to truly become a reality. And oh my goodness, I became such a better leader.

Rusty (32:22.059)
Hmm. That's so good. Wow. Well, we got more than we bargained for today. I thought we'd learn how to just, you know, transition organization, but we got crash course and soul keeping. Yeah. Okay. The book is called Big Shoes to Fill. I mean, you can get it wherever books are sold, but tell us where people can connect with you and get some of the addendums going on with this too.

Gavin Adams (32:32.584)
There's a book about that. You can read that book.

Gavin Adams (32:44.63)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I did mention that earlier. There are some companion guides for government leaders, education field, church leaders, internal or external promotes, things like that. So just go to GavinAdams.com, it's all there. And then of course I'm on all the socials and all the things there like everybody else.

Rusty (33:01.179)
Okay, well, that is awesome. Gavin, this has been very rich. Thank you for this. And thank you for, uh, as I know how difficult it is to write and especially when you got all these ideas, you got to sum them up and put them in form that people will be able to digest and remember. And it's a great book and it's very helpful for anybody regardless of whatever occupation you're in. So thanks for being a guest on the show, buddy. I appreciate it.

Gavin Adams (33:06.055)
Yeah, man.

Gavin Adams (33:24.47)
Hey, you're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

Rusty (33:29.61)
as money. Thank you.

Gavin Adams (33:31.286)
Yeah, man, I don't know if that's what you wanted, but it's what happened.

Rusty (33:34.831)
is perfect. I didn't get into this because I've shared it before on the podcast, but somebody told me years ago that to grieve because I was going through the grief of people that had left the church in that had hurt me. And they said you need to sit down and write out, you know who it is, what they did, and then write three things. I forgive you. I'm sorry. So you own, you know, as Andy says, your piece of the blame pie. And I'm proud of you.

Gavin Adams (33:45.207)
Oh yeah, yep, yep.

Gavin Adams (34:03.883)
Yeah.

Rusty (34:04.579)
something redeeming about them. And I thought, okay, so I was doing a wedding in Chicago and I'm staying in this hotel by myself and I thought I'll do that now. And I was up like all night. I had no idea how many of these I had. But man, it was freeing. It was a defining moment in my life. The pain is there but you've grieved it now. It's no longer buried alive.

Gavin Adams (34:14.591)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I know, yeah.

Yep. I mean, honestly, man, that was me sitting in a hotel in Anaheim, California, on that Wednesday night. And I was like, I came back a completely different person, you know, like a better person. I mean, it was still me, you know, tenacity and all the things, but God, you know, so much more healthy. Right. So, Hey, I couldn't hear you earlier. So we were breaking up. So are you, what are you doing now with the church and all that?

Rusty (34:39.931)
Yeah, for different reasons.

Rusty (34:48.347)
Yeah, I'm the lead pastor here at Crossroads Christian Church, which Clay and I have been working off and on, teaching for the last year and a half. And so I've moved here and settled in and we're getting going. So it's been great.

Gavin Adams (34:58.859)
Yeah.

Gavin Adams (35:05.682)
Yeah, cool. That's awesome. Well, if I can do anything to help, let me know. Or I mean, anything. I'd love to do that. I'm working with a bunch of churches. And I think seven right now are ICN churches. And they all asked me to start a group call and some of the things. So I think I'm actually, don't repeat this, but I think

Rusty (35:13.157)
Be great.

Rusty (35:22.553)
Oh cool.

Gavin Adams (35:32.818)
I'm in the early stages, but I think I'm gonna, it's actually gonna turn into its own network. And so I think I'm gonna form my own version of that network, not in competition, but just to, there's lots of churches, so we don't need to compete. There's plenty of churches that need help. But to really work on the intentionality side of church, because that's what I do. It's helping create content and systems and frameworks for discipleship pathways and generosity systems and.

Rusty (35:36.892)
Oh cool.

Gavin Adams (35:59.426)
to help us systematize the things that are important so that we can actually make progress. And I've been experimenting for two years with churches with all these ideas, but we're watching them all work. And so that's been really fun. So we'll see what happens in the next couple of months. But yeah, so anyway, if I can help with any of it or if you just wanna, I mean, I just respect what you're doing. I'd be happy to just show you some of it just to get your opinion. If nothing else, it'll help me too.

Rusty (36:14.623)
That sounds awesome. OK.

Rusty (36:29.195)
Cool. Yeah. I'd love that. We'll connect again. Thank you, Gab. Okay, buddy, I'll let you know when it comes out. Appreciate it, buddy. Bye bye.

Gavin Adams (36:29.43)
that's ever helpful, let me know.

Yeah, man. Sounds good. Hey, thanks. Talk to you soon. All right. Yeah, sounds good. Thank you. Bye.

Rusty (36:52.139)
So hit stop.