Ministry Transitions

wouldn't it be great if the commissioning going out was very much the same as the commissioning coming in and we do that 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 they're still a child of God they're still loved and we're going to model this for you 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 Matt Davis welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast 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 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 yeah I love to 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 thank you thank you it really wasn't on our 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 got there Matt can you talk a little bit about your your faith journey and your ministry journey and tell us what your call into ministry was yeah I tell people that I was marinated in it I didn't really have a choice I grew up in a family that I already love 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 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 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 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 ten shots of Benadreel 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 wow Matt we have a lot of pastors and ministry leaders here on the faithless stories podcast and I have to say for a lot of them they hear that call and they don't 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 yeah interesting to 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 says well a lot of people want to go into ministry come to a school like this I'm all next next next school please I don't want to go in a different direction so you know the Lord really turned my heart towards serving in the church that's amazing and then you served at a church in Southern California for over 20 years and 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 yeah and 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've gotten trouble and my mom and dad would say so do you want to do this easy way and just tell us what happened or do you want to do the hard way and so I've always chose the hard way unfortunately but I did I had a moral failure and and really the 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 your audience your 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 asked this question of where did everybody go people that you had walked with you disciple you mentored you were there at weddings and funerals in hospital visits and 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 and you know there was a lot of flailing and struggle and where am I and who am I and is my marriage going to stay together what are my kids going to think of me and what is you know what does my life look like now after ministry who will I become and 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 at while flailing while trying to it just felt like trying to keep your holes in all the fingers of the damn and you were the one that put the holes in there yourself and so you know just you wrestle with shame and you wrestle with identity and and calling in the 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 you mentioned that there were some people that were that were there with you and that stuck with you were you tempted to just say like like I don't want to talk to anybody I don't want to accept any love or help 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 with 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 drive 20 miles away so that was like my immediate like let me get out of town but yeah 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 there are ripples and there are waves and things that impact and I was the one that did that with them 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 um that that was definitely a part of that season um were there any moments of of doubt in your faith like maybe I wasn't called that this or God like are you there God are you real like did you have any moments like that yeah thankfully uh that was not my story um not not in a sense of um do I believe in God um I think part of me there was a desperation of like I need you more than ever now um I've got nothing but you and at the same time wanting the deliverance of the Lord in that season of like what what is next and and feeling um silence um from God and I've talked to lots of pastors who have struggled with you know the deconstruction of their faith and it 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 uh I'm thankful like I didn't I didn't have that I would say that I certainly had seasons where I lacked faith um that my story um of who I am who I would become would have anything of meaning and that's where I said like you know sometimes you have to borrow the faith of the person sitting next to you in the pubes and um that was really more the faith of my wife and her faithfulness um towards me uh in our story and in our situation and so um I would say you know Lord I believe out my unbelief um was very familiar for me uh in that season yeah wow um so you mentioned flailing and um you know it sounds like you knew that you were not going back into pastoral ministry how did you figure out where you what you were going to do yeah there was a lot of figure out what I don't want to do between uh you know graveyard shifts at amazon um I drove for this kind of uber like company that was actually like paid for by the state and so I would take uh 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 like you know just of course this is what's going on um and so I I didn't know what I wanted to do um and really like there's even a sense of like that 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 a season of figuring identity assignment and calling and if you asked me 10 years before uh so tell me about yourself I would have said I may pastor and I was answering questions of identity and calling and really at this point realizing that my role as a pastor was an assignment um it was something that made me money um but god has has called me into something deeper and my identity was something a lot more aligned with being the beloved of of god and even though you preach all those messages it's really it it seasons like that that that sink in and so there was a number of friends that walked very closely with me and said um here's some directions and so eventually I went into messaging uh got connected with Donald Miller story brand uh and then just started helping whether they were companies or other ministries um to tell their story um what 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 um why can't I help other people in figuring that out and so that gave me a good framework and um just uh it was it was a welcomed and thankfully there was a community of lots of other ex-pastures 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 wow that's really powerful I can't um even as you're talking I can't get away from what you said about working the graveyard 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 gotta put a paycheck on the table and you gotta humble yourself to do it and um if I've learned anything it's that god can use the humble um so anyway I just wanted to call that out okay 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 yeah and it's uh I don't you make it sound a bit more valiant than it felt at the time it felt moving being humbled um he's stepping naturally into humility um you know and I 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 um and I can't believe like how hard I worked in in you know pastors don't get paid all that much anyway but I what what an amazing like and and somehow it was our loves and fishes season that somehow um we had community that stepped up um there were there were just pieces of provision that god met 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 yeah this is his thing uh so beautiful at what point did you move to Kentucky because you were in California right yeah so uh covid hit the world in march of 2020 uh and when that came we were we were 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 in this new season and at that point it felt like the rest of the world caught up to our grief and misery and it's like man I would do anything just to hunker down for a while and uh so uh during that season our landlord uh 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 these other jobs and trying to figure out what's going on um 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 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 distance and so she'd lived so many years of our life um in sacrifice to ministry in the church um I loved and I still love like I when I drive this two lane road to where my offices and I go by these horses and beautiful people and green rolling hills and every time I land back in Lexington I'm like I'm home and so we were so so thankful for this but that was kind of the impetus of um you know let's let's change how our life um is going to work and function and let's do this differently wow um well so about three years ago um you started um uh ministry transitions with Bill Tom um and that is like I mean we're so sympathetic because that's about when I started faithfully so this journey of building something I think you know we've had a lot to we've had a lot to talk about just around that but um tell me how did you and Bill meet and how did ministry transitions come about uh 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 uh 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 expasters coming to him uh 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 uh hearing this stories of the brokenness and why aren't we doing this better and he looked for solutions in 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 uh you know what do I do where where could I go I feel like I need to do something about this and he said why don't you talk to Matt uh he went through it he lived to tell about it and uh he seems like he's still alive and doing okay and so that was our initial introduction and uh 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 um 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 um and so if she says now why would you want to like 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 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 story brand is that every story has a hero but that hero needs a guide and the guide shows empathy and competency and realizing that really that that piece um I could show up as a guide for people and it's it's very interesting like here's here's something that I think is like it baffled me early on I would say for the first like a 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 uh 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 I you know what how do you make sense of that and I remember in my conversation with Bill he wanted to hear my story uh 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 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 and I somebody come up to me one time and they said you know Matt and they told me this story and the story goes um 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 but such a surprising turn in the story and the guy who's stuck in the hole says that the guy who just jumped in what did you do that for an hour 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 whole 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 I'm 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 wow that is really beautiful really powerful thank you for sharing that mat 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 the circumstance Pastor Rick says that your greatest ministry will often become so 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 science but would you mind giving the elevator pitch for what you and Bill Tom found it three years ago 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 am I say the church I'm encompassing nonprofits Christian higher education even Christian owned businesses you know missions agencies say 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 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 you 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 because a lot of times you are the 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 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 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 Megan just be at home depot or Starbucks and then we find ourselves really in the space a lot of times 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 of 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 and still honor people so really we're trying to honor people well in all seasons and and really our 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 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 sponsoring um wow well so everything that you just described I want to dig into um you know having been in algebra at my church for several years now and having had to you know make some tough decisions um it has time at times felt to me like there is no scenario where people are not hurt like there is no that's 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 um hurt seems inevitable um so um 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 two transition out fire staff I'd like to ask some questions from that perspective before we get to some of the other um questions um let's start with like what is the cost of a poor ministry transition like what is the cost of not getting it right 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 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 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 all that kind of stuff but we ignore this part and we talk to our friend Jenny Catron who who has a whole thing on culture um but we sometimes we miss this like the 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 uh and now what it does is it creates this thing for people that like in my next um and I don't really know what happened and and not that I'm saying that we need to have full disclosure there's an appropriate level of disclosure but um we can create this ripple effect so the cost is your your staff unity and team culture but that now starts to bleed out and and there's the immediate one like right the the person is being like go what's the spouse reaction um what's the impact on their kids uh there and and it's not just on the person being like 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 um 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 the people who had to let me go in that season it was incredibly hard for them so I get it uh and that impacts their family and their ministry and puts everything at a pause and standstill 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 and the cost there is well what's going on with our church um what's what's the leadership up to in this and I'll I'll never forget I had this moment um you know part of what was going on for us and our family we our 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 it's hard it was just um but I remember about two months into that process um 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 is how 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 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 gonna show kind of this like other side um or protection um right performance or protection where it's it's a quiet leaving um this place isn't safe for me I don't think these people can can hear or listen to my my sinfulness and so there's a cost and so there's a quiet leave 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 failure there were still people coming to me saying we're gonna start you on church I'm like that is the last thing that I want to do right and so uh 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 years ago we lost a hundred families and we equated that to about a half million dollars hmm 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 um 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 gonna leave uh and not that we're trying to like keep the like safe face with the institution but it what is what does Jesus want us to do in these situations 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 that 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 that's greeted up for everybody else and um that that that brings a cost to the kingdom that I don't think anybody anybody wants and so we have to do all of this better yeah yeah I agree um you know again as someone who has done it with good intention but like probably messed it up in 17 different ways um 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 um things to avoid um depending on the circumstance um 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 if you could call out one thing in communicating with a congregation to show um the love and grace that is needed in these circumstances yeah yeah oftentimes the the transition comes in terms of a cutting off and I I prefer the language of replanting um that this is not uh 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 communicate them from the community they actually had people on their team that would actually move closer to those who needed help um and so I think for for people to know and understand in the church like there is something that's that that had happened and out of respect for the family or you know whatever is going like some of that has to be talked about negotiated in that first initial conversation but um that we could be as honest as we possibly can be um but that we are in the same breath showing a massive measure of loving grace like I just think about those like if you've ever been to a church service and you're commissioning somebody into ministry um wouldn't it be great if the commissioning going out was very much the same as the commissioning coming in and and we do that we send missionaries out but what would it 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 um there's still a child of God there's still loved and we're going to model this for you and and we're gonna we're gonna be honest and we're gonna say this is both hard and difficult and we are called we of all people need to do this with loving 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 um but that that we want to be able to say um this is a transition season and and again I'm looking at there's like a moral failure type and 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 um have a meeting 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 and feel like what I contributed was for not yeah yeah that's good um so last question sort of from this perspective of like how elders and church leaders can let go of staff well um you mentioned um on your website that severance is not the only thing how else can church's support outgoing leaders yeah so we think you know we're gonna we have some kind of formula um that you're gonna get one week of severance for every two years or whatever that is so we we feel like if we're just going to um give them the paycheck and we've got them covered and I say that the kingdom goes further right we should uh be unreasonable with our hospitality and we should be unreasonable in in showing love and grace and so what does that look like uh and this is where we oftentimes come in like I I want to make sure that that person I'm sending off is is going towards something that's gonna be better I want to make sure that they're taking care of um 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 uh but what are they doing from a career perspective um 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 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 from 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 um 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 uh the other piece that I think we can do that that shows loving graces I remember we had one um you know 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 uh and so we have a 360 degree review process um where we're getting uh to dig into what are what are some of those blind spots that that person might have um if you are being let go for some reason like let's let's not just make the church out to or the your your organization to be the villain in this story um let's let's acknowledge that there's a reason that you in particular where let go and where can we grow from this and so we get to come alongside in that season and just lovingly walk alongside them and and say let's look at where we can grow it not just a self assessment where I'm filling out all the answers but let's let's 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 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 and now we're actually setting them up for their next season um 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 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. Wow so um I that is such an interesting um such an interesting gift that a church can offer to an outgoing leader a 360 degree review led by you all um that helps them to take you know what may have been blind spots into uh you know and and fix them address them right like going into the next thing um so um 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 want to help you help you like transition well into the next season I think it's brilliant I guess like the yeah it's clear too um we have a whole network of friends and partners and so we do the 360 review with our friends at integrus um and so we kind of look at ourselves as a hub of healing and so we're there's certain things that we are actually offering uh 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 yeah wow um okay so I want to switch gears now from like the sort of church leader perspective who's letting go the pastor or other staff and I want to put ourselves in the shoes of a pastor who may be experiencing burnout um 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 um but no one's really defining it or talking about like how one knows one might be in burnout so can you talk about that like maybe from um your experience like what are some of the what are some of the signals that leader should be looking for to assess whether they may be in burnout yeah yeah we we try to create systems um so that we were able to check in on some of this and we get to see um the the point where people have had it right so I remember getting an email and it literally started I'm done and maybe get out and it's it's oftentimes it's 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 and doesn't matter what they do like they cannot make the the ends meet that the people that are are trying to incorporate vision but nobody in their community is volunteering in stepping up so they feel very isolated so you know you can look at at some of this as um people are 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 um we'll talk to some of these pastors and we'll have a conversation on so what's what's the tension like what's what's what's wrong why do you want out 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 uh thankfully I was on a teaching team at our church you know so I'm I'm speaking like 20 times a year but imagine speaking 48 times a year and every week is another number one hit and 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 um you are not uh 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 um for the congregation and um you know I just came from uh Israel last week and um one of the the messages that we teach oftentimes is is this Hebrew phrase maim chiam it means living water and you get two bodies of water in Israel that really give you this um 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 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 and I think that there is something with this burnout that we uh you you can if you have it going only in or you have it only going out there's gonna be death right like if you are a believer who only like goes to church and you just live to be fed but you're never 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 and your your faith eventually will start to become stagnant and still um 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 um but they're not getting anything in and so those are some places to pay attention like in my sleeping well um right we have a Christian therapist on our team know he and it always surprises me some of the early questions he says like so are are you eating um healthy meals um 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 um 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 if you're living kind of in that space then you're gonna experience burnout and you need a 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 um and where's a safe place that you can bring this up because I think a lot of times this is the the hard part in ministry if I 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 yeah well so you've said a lot and provided this beautiful picture of these bodies of water in Israel that really are just a a great picture of what you're talking about um so let's say a pastor realizes that he he's experiencing burnout and he talks to you guys and you know he tries to resolve some of the some of the issues um 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 to 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 yeah and 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 that three months is that six months we've talked to some people that they 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 um 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 um do we have the patience to be able to restore our brother 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 uh here's what's going on and here's how we want to be able to help and so we've advocated for seasons a lot of times people have called us that that what we do is 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 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 um whether they were on the brink of divorce whether they were on the brink of suicidal tendencies like it if if you are a human it doesn't matter whether you are an executive director of a nonprofit or a pastor um your humaneness um you know you you are prey to anything after the enemy wants to take you out on and probably even more so wow and so you um you brought up some really important things here um you know especially for an elderboard 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 yeah they might need to retreat they might need somebody to talk to they they might just need a friend in that season to work some things out but yeah we're not we're not looking to that's the beauty of we all have a little bit something else financially we're 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 you know that's what I love about Bill is you know Bill's 67 years old and uh he is not 67 I just talked to Bill two weeks ago he is not 67 years old he might be 68 actually but no it's funny because Bill and I are on like a little bit of a health cake that we're doing together but um it's been fun but he's he's come to life he's awesome wow he's sunseted a couple of his companies to be able to start this one it's wow it's uh it's a 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 with when any of us are not here and so make sure that we're intentional about all of you yeah wow um okay so another question for you a lot probably last one along this vein um so something I've heard from pastors were trying to discern whether or not they should be leaving their roles is um I've heard them ask but what would I do right um and I I think there's this fear you had alluded to this earlier like am I gonna I'm not gonna be working at home depot like what 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 a former pastors do after ministry besides besides start ministry transitions yeah I wouldn't suggest 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 um sometimes they want to just go into something that they can clock in and clock out and be done for the day um I actually just talked to somebody yesterday who is now chief marketing 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 as it's so 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 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 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 um but I think that there's something to pay attention to in all of that so um you know my 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 they're 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 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 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 ten of them um so I I think with I think we need to have another conversation at some other point 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 um but maybe we could wrap up today's conversation with this I know Matt that everything you've talked about today it's it's there's gonna 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 gonna resonate with everybody how do people get in touch with you and how did they work with you um you know in the variety of circumstances that that you guys address yeah um it's pretty simple just go to ministry transitions com 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 the conversation and it's not through a chat bot or a network you'll actually talk to me um and that's where we'll start and that's how we want it to be and all of those conversations are confidential um and it's very interesting because you know everybody has their at and then their ministry dot org email 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 um don't call me let's book a meeting and you know i'm going to talk to somebody in their car at lunch yeah or you know from their backyard of their house and what so we work with like we're totally flexible with that but uh it just starts with the conversation and there's no commitment talking to me doesn't mean that like you're you're moving your changing but it might be a helpful first step um 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 um 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 um yeah our or you can get me at talk at ministry transitions.com but that's where we're at perfect and you guys are putting our content and resources um you know i just appeared on your podcast where can people find that are you on social media yeah all the things all the places uh including uh we'll be uh showing up a little bit more on your platform with faithly as well but um yeah we have a podcast called life after ministry and uh most of the time i get to do that with my wife uh when our schedules and the star is a line um which is also incredibly beautiful and redemptive to be able to do that with her um and by the way that is the the tail end of that story we're still together and god is good and we're hidden 25 years of marriage next year and so very excited about all of that but um yeah that you know anywhere you listen to a podcast um that's there but we're we're just putting out i needed a place to show people uh there's hope um because when i came out of ministry i thought is their life after ministry is their ministry after ministry like what does this even look like and so yeah there's 50 plus stories of hope on there and so that's where we get to showcase that beautiful why 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 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 front lines of ministry on the faithly podcast stay bold stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story