Ministry Transitions

00:01 - Speaker 1 Wouldn't it be great if the commissioning going out was very much the same as the commissioning coming in, and we do that when we send missionaries out. What would it look like if we could actually like even though it's hard, can we still show honor and say like, hey, there's a transition here, but we want to lay hands and we want to pray for and we want to bless this person. To lay hands and we want to pray for and we want to bless this person. They're still a child of God, they're still loved and we're going to model this for you. 00:36 - Speaker 2 Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys, through their ministry work and everyday life Brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders. Learn more at faithly.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired on the Faithly Stories podcast. 00:59 - Speaker 3 Matt Davis welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast. It's good to be here with you. 01:03 - Speaker 1 Davis, welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast. 01:06 - Speaker 3 It's good to be here with you. Well, this is the first time that we're turning the mic around, so, for the Faithly audience, I just appeared on Matt's podcast, on the Ministry Transitions podcast, and now we're turning things around for me to ask him the questions. It's our first time doing it this way at Faithly Stories and I'm really excited because there's a lot to talk about here. 01:29 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I loved it and when your podcast comes out on our channel, can't wait to have people hear what you're up to. There's some really good things. 01:37 - Speaker 3 Thank you. Thank you, it really was an honor. So, Matt, you are the president of Ministry Transitions, but you weren't always. It's a new venture and what led up to it was your own ministry transition, which I want to get to. But before we get there, Matt, can you talk a little bit about your faith journey and your ministry journey and tell us what your call into ministry was? 02:05 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I tell people that I was marinated in it. I didn't really have a choice. I grew up in a family that already loved Jesus. My background, my heritage, is I'm Jewish, so I'm a Jewish believer, which gets very complicated for not only the Christians but the Jews. But I grew up really going to a Messianic Jewish congregation that met on Saturdays and so you go through a bar mitzvah and all the other fun stuff. But it really wasn't until high school that I started dating a girl who was a pastor's daughter and that I started attending like a Wednesday night youth group and started really loving that part of it as well and ended up going to a Christian camp. 02:46 I was invited to this Christian camp my first time ever is in California, called Hume Lake Really big, awesome camp and I ended up in the infirmary the entire week. 02:57 I, as a really not so smart high schooler, used a bar of soap in the shower that was there for who knows how long and I broke out in a rash and I was in with the nurse on a first name basis the entire week and I didn't make it to any of the chapels at camp that week except for the very last one on Friday night and I say that that's really all the Lord needed. He spoke to me in that chapel as I was sitting in the back still recovering from my rash and 10 shots of Benadryl throughout the week. But the Lord spoke to me and he called me into ministry and said this is what I have for you. And so that was really that call into ministry. Ended up going to Biola University and Talbot Theological Seminary out in California and then really became a pastor, went right in from one thing to the next and served for 22 years in the church in Southern California. 03:52 - Speaker 3 Wow, Matt, we have a lot of pastors and ministry leaders here on the Faithly Stories podcast and I have to say for a lot of them they hear that call and they don't answer it right away, like they do this and they do that and they find their way back into ministry. But you, just you knew it was for you and you went straight into it. 04:14 - Speaker 1 Yeah, interesting too. The year before all of that happened at the camp, my dad actually brought me to Biola University we're checking schools out. And I said so what do they do here at this school? And he says, well, a lot of people who want to go into ministry come to a school like this. I'm all next, next, next school, please. I don't not going a different direction. And so you know the Lord really turned my heart towards serving in the church. 04:38 - Speaker 3 Wow, that's amazing. And then you served at a church in Southern California for over 20 years in a number of different ministry roles. I think you were a children's pastor, a family pastor, a teaching pastor, I think an executive pastor too for a short period, and you have very openly talked about stepping away from the ministry after a moral failure. Can you share about the aftermath with us, what that season was like for you? 05:04 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and really I didn't step away as much as I really earned my way out of ministry. I did it the hard way. I remember, even as a little kid, I'd get in trouble and my mom and dad would say so do you want to do this the easy way and just tell us what happened, or do you want to do it the hard way? And so I've always chosen the hard way, unfortunately. But I did have a moral failure and really the goal in that season was to really remind myself that I am not a moral failure. I had a moral failure and to not let that define me for the rest of my life. And, believe it or not, the person that reminded me of that the most was my wife and so, thankfully, incredible support. You know your audience, your community around you. Being at a large church, it went from really, really big and very, very public to my life got really, really small. And you start to look around and you start to. You know you ask this question of where did everybody go, people that you had walked with, you discipled, you mentored, you were there at weddings and funerals and hospital visits, and now, in this season, when you can really use somebody yourself. That crowd got really small, but thankfully there were really good people, and still really good people who have walked with us in that journey. 06:28 And, uh, you know, there was a lot of flailing and, uh, struggle, and where am I and who am I? And, um, is my marriage going to stay together? What are my kids going to think of me? Um, and what does you know, what does my life look like now after ministry? Uh, who will I become? And staying in the ministry, going into another church or another pastor role was not an option at that point, nor did I want that. And so there was a lot of figuring out while flailing, while trying. It just felt like trying to keep your holes in all the fingers of the dam, and you were the one that put the holes in there yourself. And so, um, you know, just, you wrestle with shame and you wrestle with, um, identity and and calling and assignment, and how do you make sense of all of that? And so, not an easy, not an easy scenario, but I was the one that got myself there um, were you tempted to push everybody away? 07:27 - Speaker 3 You mentioned that there were some people that were there with you and that stuck with you. Were you tempted to just say like I don't want to talk to anybody, I don't want to accept any love or help. 07:38 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so you know, you can imagine I was in Orange County, california. You know three million people in that community and still couldn't go anywhere without you know people recognizing and knowing you and that's just kind of the byproduct of your face on a 20 foot screen every once in a while. But walking into your local grocery store, your Trader Joe's and people coming up to you and saying, hey, pastor Matt, oh, you're not a pastor anymore. Like it's that awkwardness, like so that even like for that first initial season, like realizing like I'm not going to go to stores around here, like I'll drive 20 miles away. Um, so that was like my immediate, like let me get out of town. But yeah. 08:17 I would have gone anywhere, done anything just to get out of that and, at the same time, um, I had kids and my kids still had a community, they still had friends. And so how do you? I didn't want my decisions and my own sense of wanting to escape suffering to also now have this like there are ripples and there are waves and things that impact, and I was the one that did that with them and to them, and so I didn't want to create more issues and more problems. But, yes, I would have taken any cave, any hole, any place. Give me a cabin in the middle of the woods and let me heal and figure this out. That was definitely a part of that season. 09:00 - Speaker 3 Were there any moments of doubt in your faith, like maybe I wasn't called to this or God? Like are you there, God? Are you real? Like did you have any moments like that? 09:11 - Speaker 1 You know, thankfully that was not my story, not in a sense of do I believe in God? 09:23 I think part of me there was a desperation of like I need you more than ever now. I've got nothing but you and at the same time wanting the deliverance of the Lord. In that season of like what is next? And feeling silence from God and I've talked to lots of pastors who have struggled with you know the deconstruction of their faith and really realizing a lot of times it's not necessarily God who they are doubting or hurt by, but it's their community that's surrounding them. And so I'm thankful, like I didn't have that. I would say that I certainly had seasons where I lacked faith that my story of who I am, who I would become, would have anything of meaning. And that's where I said, like sometimes you have to borrow the faith of the person sitting next to you in the pews, and that was really more the faith of my wife and her faithfulness towards me in our story and in our situation. And so I would say you know, lord, I believe my unbelief was very familiar for me in that season. 10:34 - Speaker 3 Yeah, Wow, so you mentioned flailing and you know. It sounds like you knew that you were not going back into pastoral ministry. How did you figure out what you were going to do? 10:50 - Speaker 1 Yeah, there was a lot of figuring out what I don't want to do. Between graveyard shifts at Amazon, I drove for this kind of Uber-like company that was actually paid for by the state, and so I would take homeless people to their methadone clinics and many times they would have a bathroom incident in the backseat of my car and it just felt like apropos for the season of life. Like you know, just of course, this is what's going on, and so I didn't know what I wanted to do going on, and so I didn't know what I wanted to do and really, like there's even a sense of like just punishment, right, like I need to punish myself and I don't deserve to do anything I want to do anymore, and so that that struggle and figuring out and I just said it but like I had to get really clear. It was a season of figuring out identity, assignment and calling. And if you asked me 10 years before, so tell me about yourself I would have said I'm a pastor and I was answering the questions of identity and calling and really, at this point, realizing that my role as a pastor was an assignment, really, at this point, realizing that my role as a pastor was an assignment, it was something that made me money, but God has called me into something deeper and my identity was something a lot more aligned with being the beloved of God. 12:17 And even though you preach all those messages, it's really it's seasons like that that sink in. And so there was a number of friends that walked very closely with me and said here's some directions. And so eventually I went into messaging, got connected with Donald Miller at StoryBrand and then just started helping whether they were companies or other ministries to tell their story, and sometimes it's hard to be able to see the story that you're living when you're inside of that story. You need some outside perspective to be able to do that. And so I figured I've always told the greatest story of all, the story of God and his people. Why can't I help other people in figuring that out? And so that gave me a good framework and just it was a welcomed and thankfully there was a community of lots of other ex-pastors who had found this place as well and so built out a community of friends in that circle as well, and so that that's really the road that God put me on. 13:18 - Speaker 3 Wow, that's really powerful. I can't, even as you're talking, I can't get away from what you said about working the graveyard shift at Amazon and driving for a state-sponsored Uber. I know you characterize those things as punishing yourself, but, like for what it's worth, I also see like deep humility in that moment of like. You got to put a paycheck on the table and you got to humble yourself to do it, and if I've learned anything, it's that God can use the humble. So, anyway, I just wanted to call that out. Like I just think what you did was so unique. I can't imagine a lot of other people who would humble themselves to do that. 13:59 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and it's. I don't you make it sound a bit more valiant than it felt at the time. It felt more like being humbled and me stepping naturally into humility. You know, and I worked hard during that season and that first year out of ministry I made a net total of $22,000 below the poverty line even here in Kentucky and I can't believe like how hard I worked in. You know, pastors don't get paid all that much anyway, but I what? What an amazing like. And somehow it was our loaves and fishes season that somehow we had community that stepped up. There were, there were just pieces of provision that God us, even in $22,000 for a year. It was, you know, and that will always be there and I'll always like I'm saving those tax records because it's a testament Like God can sustain me there and he can sustain me anywhere and really this is his thing. 15:00 - Speaker 3 Wow, so beautiful. At what point did you move to Kentucky? Because you were in California, right? 15:06 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so COVID hit the world in March of 2020. And when that came, we were already struggling in life. We were about six months into our transition, maybe nine months into our transition of what is this new life and this new season, and at that point it felt like the rest of the world caught up to our grief and misery, and it was like, man, I would do anything just to hunker down for a while. And so, during that season, our landlord decided, if we were going to re-up with him, that we were going to have to increase our rent by $650 a month, and it was already expensive. And you know, working these other jobs and trying to figure out what's going on, we just said, like can't afford Southern California anymore. And so we decided to go to the promised land, and that was Lexington, Kentucky. Not necessarily of milk and honey, but we say horses and bourbon. 16:05 My wife has always loved horses since she was a little girl and it was always one of those delayed like maybe one day when I retire, you know if, but I thought I was going to be at the church forever, you know. So that was a distant, and so she'd lived so many years of our life, um, in sacrifice to ministry and the church church I loved and I still love, Like when I drive this two lane road to where my office is and I go by these horses and beautiful people in green rolling hills and every time I land back in Lexington I'm like I'm home and so we're so, so thankful for this. But that was kind of the impetus of you know, let's change how our life is going to work and function and let's do this differently. 16:53 - Speaker 3 Wow. Well, so about three years ago you started Ministry Transitions with Build Tom and that is like I mean we're so simpatico because that's about when I started, faithly so, this journey of building something. I think you know we've had a lot to talk about just around that. But tell me, how did you and Bill meet and how did ministry transitions come about? 17:20 - Speaker 1 We had a friend in common, so I never knew Bill before this moment, but, um, actually our friend in common was the chairman of the elder board who oversaw my transition season. And uh, bill is this amazing guy who, uh, he's been in Silicon Valley for a good portion of his life up, uh, in the Bay area in California, of his life up in the Bay Area in California, and he had run a lot of executive search firms and executive coaching, ceo coaching, and really successful with that. But he kept getting a lot of ex-pastors coming to him because they knew he was a person of faith. And so everyone said you should go talk to Bill. And he kept listening to these stories of pastors coming out of ministry and he would just say that he would just weep hearing the stories of the brokenness and why aren't we doing this better? And he looked for solutions and places he could send these leaders and couldn't find anything. And so he talked to his friend who's the chairman of the elder board and said you know what do I do? Where could I go? I feel like I need to do something about this and he said why don't you talk to Matt? He went through it, he lived to tell about it and he seems like he's still alive and doing OK. And so that was our initial introduction. 18:38 And we had a phone call and he kind of threw out this idea and I said I don't know if I want to be part of something like this, I'd rather just kind of hide and help people with their messaging and websites. And I had a conversation with my wife and she wasn't against it, which was you know, she's my like, she, she knows like right away. And so if she says no, why would you want it like that, I would, I would just walk away. And she, she did not give me that. And so we just kept taking very slow steps and starting to piece together like what would this look like if we could help people in this transition season, everything that we had to as a couple and as a family, kind of piecemeal, and triage our way through? What would it be like if we kind of had this hub where we had all of the resources to be able to help and walk with people in transition? And one of the things that we talk about in StoryBrand is that every story has a hero, but that hero needs a guide, and a guide shows empathy and competency and realizing that really that that piece I could show up as a guide for people and it's it's very interesting. 19:53 Like here's something I think is like it baffled me early on, I would say for the first like couple of years, as I was like interviewing for jobs and things like it was always this question of how do I tell my story of why I came out of ministry, especially to somebody in the marketplace, like how do you capture that story? So it's not like do I tell people like hey, I had a moral failure, like I'm kind of a risk, how do you make sense of that? And I remember in my conversation with Bill he wanted to hear my story and he wanted to hear everything and at the end of it my story was actually something that was redemptive. It was actually like I it wasn't this part that I had to dismiss and put to the side or hope that nobody finds out. It was actually my story was the reason why Bill wanted to work with me and that like I remember coming back and talking to my wife like could it be and could God be that good that this thing that had brought pain and shame could I actually be used in this place to walk with other people and I had somebody come up to me one time and they said you know, Matt? And they told me this story. 21:13 And the story goes that there's a guy who's stuck in a deep, dark hole. He can't get out on his own. He's yelling and screaming for help and all day long people are walking by this hole. They hear the man yelling and screaming for help and they don't know what to do. They can't help him, so they keep walking until one day there's a guy who walks by and he hears that man in the hole and he does the unthinkable. He does what nobody else is willing to do. He jumps into that hole with that man and I just you know, I love that, that picture. 21:45 But such a surprising turn in the story. And the guy who's stuck in the hole says to the guy who just jumped in what did you do that for? Now we're both stuck here and the guy who jumped in said I've been in this hole before and I know how to get out. And like that story, like just captured, like God. I think this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. I want to be a hole jumper. I want to be able to walk with people in these seasons and sit in the mess and the mire and say I know this hurts, this is hard, and going to love you right where you're at, but I'm also not going to leave you here and let me show you the way out. And so that really became the sense of purpose and calling and the goodness of God in my story Very, incredibly redemptive. 22:34 - Speaker 3 Wow, that is really beautiful, really powerful. Thank you for sharing that, Matt. I have brought up this quote from Pastor Rick Warren on the podcast before, but I have to say it again because it is so spot on, especially in this circumstance. Pastor Rick says that your greatest ministry will often become sorry. Your greatest pain will often become your greatest ministry, and you know, we obviously see that that's what the Lord has done in your life. Now we've talked a lot about ministry transitions without telling anyone what ministry transitions is. I think folks should have a sense, but would you mind giving the elevator pitch for what you and Bill Tom founded three years ago? 23:15 - Speaker 1 Yeah, the church is really good at saying hello and we're not really good at saying goodbye. How do we actually do that? Well, and when I say the church, I'm encompassing nonprofits, christian higher education, even Christian-owned businesses, you know, missions agencies. So anywhere where the kingdom, the church, can mess it up, we want to be able to help make that better. So if you are a decision maker in one of those organizations and you have to make a staff transition, you love these people, you care about them, but you have to have a hard conversation and say this is not a fit. How do you do that and preserve unity and dignity of the people? Is there a way to break up? Essentially, is there a way to fire somebody, transition them off your team, coach them off? There's so many like euphemisms for that but essentially you're firing somebody. Is there a way to do that and still show love and grace? Right Cause a lot of times you are as the leader in your ministry, like you run the business side of things, but you're also there's a friendship and you're the brother, and so oftentimes we don't know which hat we're supposed to wear in these situations. It doesn't feel like there's enough space in the room to be able to maintain all of those relationships, and so we've created a pathway to be able to help those decision makers and leaders to do it in a way that really honors the Lord and honors the person and their family. And so we are very conscientious, we want to pay attention to this process of how do we do this well in the areas of career coaching and counseling, and so we're working that through. 24:59 But there's a lot of different kinds of transitions. Right, that's a transition where it's a blind transition. The person doesn't know it's coming, or they don't see it coming, which is probably one of the things that we would say like it should never, ever be a surprise. Like, if you can like cut off, like any hurt, church hurt, potential, hurt off at its knees is make sure that you're never surprising somebody with hey, we have to have a conversation. Like that should be a conversation going for six months, you know, before you actually have to make that decision. But sometimes there's there we talked to a lot of leaders who are burned out. They're done and they're trying to find a way out, and they are trying to imagine what life would look like, what kind of job or position I could have, with 20 years behind the pulpit and a seminary degree, like what is that good for? You know what do I do? Am I going to just be at Home Depot or Starbucks? And then we find ourselves really in the space a lot of times. 25:54 Right now is succession planning, where you have leaders of organizations, even founders of organizations, and they've done an incredible job for 30 years and they want to be able to leave a legacy. But oftentimes those transition points, those succession plans, don't go as planned. And so how do we do that? Well, if you're a board and you're trying to have a conversation with your kind of founding member, because it's starting to become time, how do you do that well and still honor people? 26:25 So, really, we're trying to honor people well in all seasons and really our mission statement is multiply, not divide, because really the great commission is go and make disciples, like Jesus left us to grow the kingdom, and we keep seeing that there are lots of points. There's lots of points of division, and we're not solving everything in the church, but we have one small slice of the pie. How we say goodbye matters, and so let's do this well. There is a good way to do it, and if we can have all parties with the level of maturity and we can show love and grace even in a transition, then we think that we can still grow the church instead of splintering. 27:06 - Speaker 3 Wow. Well, so everything that you just described I want to dig into. You know, having been an elder at my church for several years now and having had to, you know, make some tough decisions, it has at times felt to me like there is no scenario where people are not hurt. Like there is. That's what it's felt like to me. Even with all good intentions, right, Even with no one having any kind of personal agenda, hurt seems inevitable. So perhaps we can start with some questions from, like, the organization's perspective. Like if you're an elder or you're a church leader who's having to transition out fire staff, I'd like to ask some questions from that perspective. Before we get to some of the other questions, let's start with like what is the cost of a poor ministry transition? Like, what is the cost of not getting it right? 28:05 - Speaker 1 There's a kingdom cost. Right, there is the reputation, the name of Jesus in the church. So when we do that poorly and what we say is, there's ripple effects and I think that we sometimes are even blindsided or surprised. But we shouldn't be at what all is happening right, so you can do it poorly. What all is happening right, so you can. You can do it poorly. You can have a poor transition where you blind somebody, blindside somebody and they don't see it coming. And now the rest of your team. 28:33 We spend a lot of time and there's so much out there about building a good, healthy staff culture. Right, we do these fun days and lunches and barbecues and all that kind of stuff. But we we ignore this part and we talked to our friend, jenny Catron, who has a whole thing on culture, but we sometimes we miss this, like what happens to our culture when we let somebody go poorly. So what's the staff impact? Because if you do it poorly and we say, hey, it's open door policy here at our church and you know you can always come in and ask questions, we're very open, except for when we let somebody go and now there's a lot more questions than answers and we don't really know what happened. And now what it does is it creates this thing for people that, like, am I next? And I don't really know what happened. And not that I'm saying that we need to have full disclosure there's an appropriate level of disclosure but we can create this ripple effect. So the cost is your staff unity and team culture. But that now starts to bleed out. And there's the immediate one, like the person who's being let go. What's the spouse reaction, what's the impact on their kids? And it's not just on the person being let go. Like I also want to advocate and realize we want to be able to speak this it's hard for the person letting that person go as an executive pastor, as somebody who has let people go and done it as good as I could and really messed it up many times or knowing like there's a cost, there's a toll. It's not easy. 30:01 The people who had to let me go in that season, it was incredibly hard for them, so I get it and that impacts their family and their ministry and puts everything at a pause and stand still. And now we're not doing the work of the kingdom because we have to now figure out how we're going to communicate this thing. That's going on Right, but now it starts to go to our congregation and the cost there is. Well, what's going on with our church? What's the leadership up to in this? And I'll never forget I had this moment. You know part of what was going on for us and our family. Our kids were at the private Christian school attached to our church and part of what the leadership wanted was they wanted healing within the community and so they wanted my wife and I to continue to go to the church, which was hard, it was difficult. 30:49 But I remember about two months into that process one of the guys who goes to the church comes up to me right afterwards as I'm trying to sneak out early. He says Pastor, I don't know what you did, but I'm sure as hell glad that the elders don't know what I've done, because they would have kicked me out a long time ago. But I'm sure as hell glad that the elders don't know what I've done because they would have kicked me out a long time ago. And I just realized at that moment, like the cost for the church body, the people who are coming in with moral failures, people who have problems, have issues. I remember pastoring and talking to somebody and I'm thinking to myself you look drunk and I can smell alcohol on your breath from the night before, like so what do we do with that? And so how we respond and how we deal with some of these transitions and and issues in the church, um, we either send people into performance, where I have to be really good all the time I'm never going to show kind of this like other side um. Or protection, um, right, performance or protection where it's a quiet leaving. This place isn't safe for me. I don't think these people can hear or listen to my sinfulness, and so there's a cost and so there's a quiet leaving. 31:57 If you do it poorly, you are going to potentially lose people in your church. Right, people pick up their torches. Even though I was done, I was the one who had the moral favor, there were still people coming to me saying are you going to start your own church? I'm like that is the last thing that I want to do, right and so. But but I had. I was at a conference last year and there was an executive pastor that came up to me and said we did this really poorly A couple of years ago. We lost a hundred families, and we equated that to about a half a million dollars. 32:29 So there's an actual, like financial cost to doing this poorly, because people pick up their torches and they say I don't like how you did that, and even though that person may have done something wrong, even though that person may have just been poor in their position bad performance, whatever that looks like, that's likely somebody that was there at the hospital with their family or married them or whatever that is, and so we have to be able to show loving grace there, because people just get upset and they're going to leave, and not that we're trying to like, keep the like, save face with the institution is what does Jesus want us to do in these situations? 33:07 And then the last cost, I think, is once it breaks beyond this wall of the church and now goes into the community. And now you see, you know, there's news articles and the media shows up and we've seen them, we've been there in the midst of some of those situations and the cost is the gospel right, like it's just another pastor that screwed it up for everybody else, and that brings a cost to the kingdom that I don't think anybody wants. And so we have to do all of this better. 33:43 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, I agree, we have to do all of this better. Yeah, yeah, I agree, you know, again, as someone who has done it with good intention but, like, probably messed it up in 17 different ways. So you talked about you know there are mistakes you can avoid when it comes to letting go pastors and church staff, and I'm sure you have a laundry list of things to avoid, depending on the circumstance. But you kind of called out one main thing. You said don't let it be a surprise, that's kind of the killer, right. When it comes to communicating with a congregation, again, I'm sure there's lots of different things you would tell church leaders to avoid or to do, but like, what's the one thing? And if you could call out one thing in communicating with a congregation to show the love and grace that is needed in these circumstances, yeah, you know, oftentimes the transition comes in terms of a cutting off, and I prefer the language of replanting that this is not. 34:48 - Speaker 1 You know, I remember being at a camp and how they handled discipline with kids that were, you know, pulling smoke alarms or something like that. Like they didn't like excommunicate them from the community. They actually had people on their team that would actually move closer to those who needed help, had people on their team that would actually move closer to those who needed help. And so I think for people to know and understand in the church, like hey, there is something that had happened and, out of respect for the family or whatever is going on, like some of that has to be talked about and negotiated in that first initial conversation, but that we can be as honest as we possibly can be, but that we are, in the same breath, showing a massive measure of love and grace, like I just think about those like, if you've ever been to a church service and you're commissioning somebody into ministry, wouldn't it be great if the commissioning going out was very much the same as the commissioning coming in? 35:47 And we do that when we send missionaries out, but what would it look like if we could actually like, even though it's hard, can we still show honor and say like, hey, there's a transition here, but we want to lay hands and we want to pray for and we want to bless this person. 36:04 They're still a child of God, they're still loved, and we're going to model this for you and we're going to be honest and we're going to say this is both hard and difficult, and we are called, we of all people need to do this with love and grace, and so we get to model that for them Doesn't mean that we tolerate sin, doesn't mean that we're cool with it, but that we want to be able to say this is a transition season. 36:31 And again I'm looking at there's like a moral failure type of thing. There's all kinds of transitions though right, so we want to be able to show honor and say like, let's celebrate. You know over the last 10 years that this person was here with our organization. Here's some of the projects they've been involved in. Here are the things Like give the congregation an opportunity to write notes of thanksgiving, have a party at the very end and say, hey, we're gonna honor you on the way out, we're gonna celebrate what God did through you in this ministry to build up the kingdom, so that you don't ever have to walk away and feel like what I contributed was for naught. 37:06 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, that's good. So last question, sort of from this perspective of like, how elders and church leaders can let go of staff. Well, you mentioned on your website that severance is not the only thing. How else can churches support outgoing leaders? 37:25 - Speaker 1 Yeah. So we think you, we think we have some kind of formula that you're going to get one week of severance for every two years, or whatever that is. So we feel like if we're just going to give them the paycheck, we've got them covered. And I say that the kingdom goes further. Right, we should be unreasonable with our hospitality and we should be unreasonable in our hospitality and we should be unreasonable in showing love and grace. And so what does that look like? And this is where we oftentimes come in, like I want to make sure that that person I'm sending off is going towards something that's going to be better. I want to make sure that they're taken care of. I want to communicate with their family and let them know that they're loved in the process. So this is far more than a financial piece. But what are they doing from a career perspective? Sometimes they need counseling just to like can we sit down for a few sessions and make sense of this season that you've just come through and let's bring closure to this season and then let's take a new step in towards what God is calling you to? And sometimes it's just a process of discerning what that looks like. So an extra grace of what we get to offer and what we walk through with pastors and leaders is taking them through an assessment and saying let's see how God has wired you and let's pay attention to some of this and see this is an opportunity for you to pivot in a direction that maybe you didn't expect. But you know our podcast we have our podcast Life After Ministry is full of testimonies of people who thought that this was the end and really it was only the beginning. 39:00 The other piece that I think we can do that shows love and grace is I remember we had one agreement that we were working with a church and one of the elders said hey, you know, obviously we're letting this person go because they have some blind spots and we were not able to fix those and, honestly, we probably didn't do a good job of even surfacing that and helping that person grow through that. But we also don't want to kick the can down the road and just send all of these problems to the next church or workplace, whatever they're doing. And so we have a 360 degree review process where we're getting to dig into what are some of those blind spots that that person might have If you are being let go for some reason. Let's not just make the church out to or your organization to be the villain in this story. Let's acknowledge that there's a reason that you in particular were let go and where can we grow from this? 40:01 And so we get to come alongside in that season and just lovingly walk alongside them and say let's look at where we can grow and not just a self-assessment where I'm filling out all the answers, but let's query and let's ask six to eight people who worked around you and get some anonymous feedback from them and if you have the humility to receive that, you might be a growing person and what all of that does. 40:26 That process sets them up well so that when they go into interview for whatever that next thing is, that they can go and say I'm going through a process of growth right now and I'm taking some assessments and I'm learning where I've had weaknesses and where I might really be suited to help an organization. And now we're actually setting them up for their next season so that they might succeed, because we want as much of a thriving next season for that organization as we do with that person, and oftentimes we feel like the departing member of that organization is often like the VH1, like where are they now? Type of scenario, and we want to make sure that, wherever they are, that they felt loved and cared for, and the immediate cost of making all of that happen in the long term is a really great investment in not only that person but your community. 41:19 - Speaker 3 Wow. So that is such an interesting gift that a church can offer to an outgoing leader a 360-degree review led by you all that helps them to take you know what may have been blind spots into you know and fix them, address them right, like going into the next thing, them right, like going into the next thing. So, having been a part of a large organization, a bank, for a very long time, we did 360 reviews every single year and they start to become very tedious. No one really says what they think and certain people have agendas. You know you have this like sort of ongoing relationship. But what strikes me is that this is a really unique opportunity to do a review where, like you're getting some really honest feedback from people who, um, like you, know they're they, they want to help you, help you like transition well into the next season. I, I think it's brilliant. I guess like yeah, just, to be clear too. 42:20 - Speaker 1 Um, we have a whole network of friends and partners, and so we do the 360 review with our friends at Integris, and so we kind of look at ourselves as a hub of healing. And so, where there are certain things that we are actually offering and that we're working through that process, there are some things that, like you know, we have a network of counselors or Christian therapists throughout the country, and so there are people that we're partnering with, but they've been an incredible partner, especially in that process. 42:48 - Speaker 3 Yeah, wow, okay. So I want to switch gears now from, like, the sort of church leader perspective who's letting go of a pastor or other staff, and I want to put ourselves in the shoes of a pastor who may be experiencing burnout. There's a lot of talk about burnout these days. I feel like I can't listen to a podcast or read a blog article without that word being thrown around, but no one's really defining it or talking about like how one knows one might be in burnout. So can you talk about, Matt, like maybe from your experience, like what are some of the, what are some of the signals that leaders should be looking for to assess whether they may be in burnout? 43:29 - Speaker 1 Yeah, we try to create systems so that we're able to check in on some of this and we get to see the point where people have had it Right. So I remember getting an email and it literally started I'm done, I need to get out. And it's oftentimes it's been surprising to be on this end of it because I would have thought the person who's done is the pastor or leader who's running an organization that financially, is struggling. It doesn't matter what they do do like they cannot make the ends meet, that the people that are trying to incorporate vision but nobody in their community is volunteering and stepping up, so they feel very isolated. So you know, you can look at some of this as people are struggling, but what we've also seen that surprised me in the last couple of years is that it's also the people who are incredibly successful. We'll talk to some of these pastors and we'll have a conversation on it. 44:34 So what's the tension? Like? What's wrong? Why do you want out? 44:40 And I'll never forget there's a pastor that just said my success is killing me, it's killing my marriage and it's killing my family, like our church is growing and healthy like never before and I feel like I'm shriveling and dying, I feel like you know. So there's this measure of success that demands more, and now you have to. I can't. Thankfully, I was on a teaching team at our church, you know. So I'm speaking like 20 times a year, but imagine speaking 48 times a year, and every week is another number one hit, and so that burnout starts to show up. Where you start to have contempt for your people, you have a short fuse for your family. You have a short fuse for your family, you are not having joy in your own relationship with Jesus, but that everything spiritual that you're going through is so that you can output, output, output for the congregation. 45:38 And you know, I just came from Israel last week, and one of the messages that we teach oftentimes is this Hebrew phrase mayim chayim. It means living water, and you get two bodies of water in Israel that really give you this picture, and one is the Sea of Galilee, and in the very north of the Sea of Galilee you have the Jordan River that is flowing into it. And then on the south end of the Sea of Galilee and in the very north of the Sea of Galilee, you have the Jordan River that is flowing into it, and then on the south end of the Sea of Galilee, you have the water that's flowing out of it, which then becomes the Jordan River. Again, we kind of joke that the Sea of Galilee is the wide part of the Jordan, but what's interesting is that that Jordan River then flows all the way into this other body of water to the south called the Dead Sea. And the Dead Sea has a lot going in and there's no outlet. 46:32 And I think that there is something with this burnout that if you have it going only in or you have it only going out, there's going to be death, right, like if you are a believer who only goes to church and you just live to be fed, but you're putting this out, you're never serving, you're never part of the kingdom, you're just going there so that you can consume, then you're not healthy and your faith eventually will start to become stagnant and still. But we also see on the other end a lot of leaders who are doing nothing but putting out, they're just emptying and pouring themselves out, but they're not getting anything in. And so those are some places to pay attention. Like am I sleeping? Well, right, we have a Christian therapist on our team. 47:21 Noe, and it always surprises me some of the early questions he says like so, are you eating healthy meals? 47:30 Are you doing a lot of time on your screen? Are you getting a good night of sleep? Are you finding yourself having excessive cups of coffee? And you know so there's Christian appropriate, like you can have lots of caffeine and then you can have like sleep aids to help get you down. So if you're living kind of in that space, then you're going to experience burnout and you need a safe place to be able to say I don't feel healthy right now. And so a lot of times we're having those conversations and sometimes we're talking people out of it and saying let's actually just get you a resource that you need and where's a safe place that you can bring this up? If I say that I'm burning out, then it's going to create this series of things that I might not be able to. I might lose my job as a result of it, and I don't want to do that to my family, and so we continue to silently suffer. And so those are some of the checkpoints that I would check in with myself on the burnout piece. 48:31 - Speaker 3 Yeah, wow. So you've said a lot and provided this beautiful picture of these bodies of water in Israel that really are just a great picture of what you're talking about. So let's say, a pastor realizes that he's experiencing burnout and he talks to you guys and you know he tries to resolve some of the issues and maybe goes through a period of discernment, like if he feels like, yeah, I'm in burnout and I need to take some steps here. Like what do you do from there? Do you go to the elder board? Do you start looking for another job? Like, what are the healthy and appropriate next steps for someone who realizes that he's in burnout and wants to leave his role? 49:14 - Speaker 1 next steps for someone who realizes that he's in burnout and wants to leave his role. Yeah, and that's the beauty of us having a therapist on our team is to assess some of that Is what's needed. A sabbatical season, is that three months? Is that six months? We've talked to some people that they went on a sabbatical and they came back and it didn't really help and they found that they were depressed and they needed more help than that. And so sometimes we can advocate for and I've spoken to many boards and said here's the situation and here's some really good options for you as a community to be able to support this person. 49:48 Do we have the patience to be able to restore our brother or sister back to health so that they might serve, or do we just or sister back to health so that they might serve, or do we just restore them back to health so that they might do whatever the Lord's calling them into next? We don't necessarily need to figure that out for them. The Spirit will help us with that, but let's give this every opportunity to heal. And so sometimes we just need an advocate to be able to say here's what's going on and here's how we want to be able to help. And so we've advocated for seasons. 50:16 A lot of times people have called us that what we do as we're walking through with leaders on the back end, is they'd say, like this has been like the sabbatical that I always needed, and maybe if I had this earlier on I would be in a different place, and so you know, oftentimes we're doing sabbaticals after the fact. But we've seen people restored, whether they were on the brink of divorce, whether they were on the brink of suicidal tendencies, like if you are a human, it doesn't matter whether you are an executive director of a nonprofit or a pastor your humanness, you are prey to anything out there that the enemy wants to take you out on, and probably even more so. 50:59 - Speaker 3 Wow, and so you brought up some really important things here. You know, especially for an elder board that may think that they need to bring you into a particular situation. You're not always advocating for people to leave ministry, like you're looking to help people in ministry and sometimes it's to leave and it sounds like sometimes it's to stay, with some solutions for burnout like sabbatical or other things. 51:27 - Speaker 1 Yeah, they might need a retreat, they might need somebody to talk to, they might just need a friend in that season to work some things out. But yeah, we're not looking to. That's the beauty of. We all have a little bit something else financially where we're able to support ourselves, and so we're not here to try to like blow this thing up so we can all make a lot of money. We want to help the church and serve the church, and so you know, that's what I love about Bill is, you know, bill's 67 years old and he is not 67. 51:56 - Speaker 3 I just talked to Bill two weeks ago. He is not 67 years old. 52:05 - Speaker 1 He might be 68, actually it's funny because Bill and I are on like a little bit of a health kick that we're doing together. But it's been fun. But he's come to life. He's awesome. He's sunsetted a couple of his companies to be able to start this one. It's a ministry of love and we're talking already about we've had to have the succession plan conversation of like well, what happens when any of us are not here, and so make sure that we're intentional about all of that. 52:27 - Speaker 3 Yeah, wow, okay. So another question for you, probably last one along this vein. Another question for you, probably last one along this vein. So something I've heard from pastors who are trying to discern whether or not they should be leaving their roles is I've heard them ask but what would I do? Right, and I think there is this fear you had alluded to this earlier like, am I going to be working at Home Depot? Like, what do I do with a seminary degree? What do I do with, like, the set of experiences that I have? What have you seen former pastors do after ministry Besides start ministry transitions? 53:04 - Speaker 1 I wouldn't suggest doing that. Really it runs the gamut. I know some guys who've gone into carpentry and woodworking. I know some people have gone into more research and study or they've worked in nonprofits. Sometimes they want to just go into something that they can clock in and clock out and be done for the day officer for a marketing agency that helps car washes. And he told the story of seven years ago. God was calling him out of ministry as he knew it into something more. And I asked him I said so. 53:46 Seven years later, would you say that being a CMO of an agency that helps car washes, is that the something more that you would have ever imagined? And what I love about hearing these stories and talking to these leaders is none of this is what any of us thought it would be. That like somehow. If you asked him seven years ago, that probably would have felt like a failure. I'm marketing for car washes Like. That definitely does not feel very kingdom oriented. But he said it is like it's. It's how you're positioned. 54:22 And now you have and I remember as a pastor, you don't talk to a lot of non-Christians. You're equipping Christians to go talk to non-Christians and they don't really do that All that. There's a very small percentage of people who are actually doing that, but I think that there's something to pay attention to in all of that. So you know my nine to five, which is not nine to five like I get to work with different brands and companies to help them tell their story, their messaging, and so what does their messaging look like on their website and in their email copy and all of that other fun stuff that sometimes it's great, and I'm working with these ministries that are reaching the masses in the world, and sometimes I'm working with the Energy Code Compliance Commission for the state of California and it crushes my soul, right. But in all of that, like how I'm relating and getting to interact with people, God is up to something really amazing in all of that wow, um. 55:20 - Speaker 3 Well, Matt, we're coming up on the hour and um. So when I was on your podcast, one of the things I talked about was like what did I learn from Wall Street and what am I bringing in to faithfully? One of the things I learned was preparation. So I have prepared a list of 25 questions to ask you, Matt, and we have got through maybe 10 of them. So I think we need to have another conversation at some other point. 55:43 There's just so many things that you're doing, like the Jewish Road podcast, like the other ventures that you've started since you left pastoral ministry, that I would love to dive into at some point, but maybe we could wrap up today's conversation with this. I know, Matt, that everything you've talked about today, there's going to be a piece of it that resonates with every single person who's listening. Either, you know, they're struggling in their role, they're trying to figure out how to discern, or maybe they're a leader who's trying to figure out what to do with a staff member. Something's going to resonate with everybody. How do people get in touch with you and how do they work with you? You know, in the variety of circumstances that you guys address, yeah, it's pretty simple. 56:27 - Speaker 1 Just go to ministrytransitionscom. There's buttons all over the place that say book a meeting or schedule a meeting and all of those conversations. It really just starts out with a conversation and it's not through a chat bot or a network. You'll actually talk to me and that's where we'll start and that's how we want it to be. And all of those conversations are confidential and it's very interesting because you know everybody has their at and then their ministryorg email. 56:56 Every person who comes to us is at their personal, like Gmail account, right, which is great, like I want this to be and so you can say don't call me, let's book a meeting, and you know I'm going to talk to somebody in their car at lunch or, you know, from the backyard of their house, and so we work with like we're totally flexible with that. But it just starts with a conversation. There's no commitment. Talking to me doesn't mean that, like you're, you're moving or changing, but it might be a helpful first step to be able to say what, what do you need help with or how can we come alongside you in that season. Whether you're the decision maker in that, whether you are, you know on the board and you need to have a conversation with your legacy founding leader, or you're somebody who needs to get on your way out, but yeah, or you can get me at talk at ministrytransitionscom, but that's where we're at. 57:44 - Speaker 3 Perfect and you guys are putting your content and resources. You know I just appeared on your podcast. Where can people find that? Are you on social media? 57:53 - Speaker 1 Yeah, all the things, all the places including we'll be showing up a little bit more on your platform with Faithly as well. But yeah, we have a podcast called Life After Ministry and most of the time I get to do that with my wife when our schedules and the stars align, which is also incredibly beautiful and redemptive to be able to do that with her. And, by the way, that is the tail end of that story. We're still together and God is good, and we're hitting 25 years of marriage next year and so very excited about all of that. But yeah, that you know anywhere you listen to a podcast, that's there, but we're just putting out. I needed a place to show people there's hope, Because when I came out of ministry, I thought is there life after ministry? Is there ministry after ministry? Like, what does this even look like? And so there's 50 plus stories of hope on there, and so that's where we get to showcase that. 58:48 - Speaker 3 Beautiful. Well, I love to leave it at hope. Matt, Thank you so much for talking to us today. Really appreciate it and I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you. 58:57 - Speaker 2 Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. The Faithly Digital Platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the frontlines of ministry on the Faithly Podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.