Leadership Podcast Episode 48 - 3-Minute Drill (Vol. 4)

thanks for checking out the vance pitman leadership podcast this is a conversation all about leadership vision and joining in god's activity wherever you are you can find the show notes links and other helpful resources at hopechurchlv.com podcast youtube or on your favorite podcast app thanks again for tuning in today we hope you enjoyed this episode well welcome to another episode of the vance pittman leadership podcast whether you are listening or if you are joining us right here on youtube this is our third or fourth youtube video that we've done of the vance pittman leadership podcast glad you guys are enjoying it um we are here we're recording this early vance because um you are on an extended sabbatical this summer and so this is actually september of 2021 we're actually recording it a couple months early um but you are actually in real time getting ready to head back here to hope church after an extended sabbatical you don't look as rested right now as you will when you come back but as always i'm here with the man the myth the legend my pastor my mentor my friend pastor vance pittman how is it going vance it's going good i am like you said a couple of weeks from uh wrapping some things up and getting out of here for a few weeks after 20 years the church has offered me the opportunity for an extended sabbatical which i'm really looking forward to so like you said i don't feel as rested as i wish i felt by the time this will play but hopefully by the time you say i'll be about a week from coming back i say a week from coming back or a week from announcing my retirement i don't know what i'll be doing but uh all the whole people just panicked and they're listening to this i'm kidding i'm kidding um but uh hopefully by the time this airs in september everybody's excited about the fall with the football season hopefully everything is uh back to as normal as we could hope things will be by then and hopefully by the time this plays the vegas golden knights have won a stanley cup so we'll see yeah and definitely the dallas cowboys will be gearing up for their super bowl run for the 2021. that's true yeah i can't even get it out of there it'll be still early enough in the year that they're not saying wait for next year yet so that's a good thing you know it's bad when i literally can't even say it without laughing that's great um man today as you saw in the title by the way before you go there i guess you saw the julio jones statement like i didn't uh shannon sharp live called him on air on fox sports and said man rumors are you're out of atlanta he said i'm out and he said well what about the cowboys he said no way am i going to dance cowboys not even not even remotely on his list because he said i want to win now hey and that ain't the dallas we don't need you julio if you're listening we don't need you bro that's right uh if you saw we gotta get we gotta get to some actual podcast content today if you saw on the on the title um i don't know every a couple times a year we do something that i actually got the idea of another podcast i listened to but it's called the three minute drill and so this is the fourth volume of our three minute drill and basically what we do is we ask you listeners questions we ask some of our staff team questions people here in las vegas people who are listeners around the country and around the world what are some things that you would like for vance to address maybe it doesn't give it's something that wouldn't be necessarily a whole episode but uh something that in three minutes or less or maybe sometimes a little more vance will answer and so we have several questions here we don't know how many we'll get through um but i have my timer right here and uh i'm going to try to keep pastor vance accountable to stay within three minutes of these questions so we got several questions from leaders um not only here in vegas but around the country around the world and so uh vance we will jump into um what we call our three-minute drill volume four here's the first question okay before you start the clock on me let me just say this that if you are listening uh to this podcast or watching it uh we would really encourage you to send us your questions obviously from today you can tell we take those very serious we love to speak to right where you're living right where you're leading so if you have a question you can send it through through scott i'm sure in the show notes we'll put where you can send those questions but we would love to hear from you and get your questions and speak directly to where you are yeah one of our listeners real quick here at hope he had sent in a question on something and and we answered it we actually named him by name and that week at church he came up to me and he was like man that was just so cool to hear so we've gotten that feedback too people are like i sent in a question and it got answered and i didn't think it would it will get answered eventually we would love to answer the questions of the leaders that are actually listening and on the ground in leadership positions so uh here's the first one other than team building activities how do you get a team's culture from where it is to where you want it to be as a leader of ants having led for over 30 years in pastoral leadership how would you answer this question appreciated the question thanks to the listener who sent it in um but and there's a lot of ways you could go in answering this question but i thought of four things or five things that i wanted to share just in response and i'm gonna get them in my three minutes uh but for starters if you're if you're where you are how do you get where you want to be from culture number one you gotta lead by example meaning as the leader um if you want a particular culture you don't get there just by talking about it you you get there by leading by example living out that value living out that that aspect of your culture i'll give you an example one of the things that we want to have at hope is we'd love to have a culture of gratitude something that i say often from the pulpit is man we want to be that that one that got healed out of the 10 that came back and said thank you so i think a culture of gratitude the scripture says in everything give thanks which means as the leader if i want to see a culture of gratitude then i should be somebody who says thank you often so i'm always looking like this morning for example i pulled up on campus got here early today about 7 15 this morning and we partner with the las vegas criminal justice system and we provide an outlet for a lot of people that are serving out their community service hours here in the city and we had several volunteers already on site you can tell on our campus they got the yellow vests on they're they're serving in projects all over campus and i crossed a path with two or three of those people that were here serving early this morning and i made it a point to go to each one of them to say hey man we really appreciate it i understand they're here serving out their community service volunteer hours they have to do that but we can still be grateful that they've chosen us to serve those out and so i went to each one of them just said thank you anytime i'm here on sunday walking by volunteers i try to say thank you i try to express gratitude and so it's leading by example it will never simply become a part of your culture because you've talked about it or ask people to do it they gotta the culture things are more caught than taught and so they gotta see you lead it by example number two you gotta lead through your vision frame i'm gonna struggle in three minutes on this one we're gonna lead through your vision frame and when we used the term on this podcast vision frame it's really borrowing from from will mancini's book uh church unique if you had never read it highly recommend it where he describes the vision frame as four aspects mission values strategy and measures mission is the what we do values is why we do it strategy is how and the measures is when we're successful and so you got to lead through that vision a lot of people have mission vision values but they stick it up on a wall and then they never do anything with it at hope church we lead through our vision frame we do an annual strategic planning process one of the four filters we use is our vision frame we're always leading through that vision frame and your vision frame really identifies the boundary of the culture that you're trying to create so if you want to get it from where it is to where you want it to be you got to lead through that vision frame number three you got to hold your team leaders accountable to leading through the vision frame it's one thing for you as the primary leader to lead through the vision frame but if you're not holding that next level of leadership accountable to doing the same thing with their teams then it'll never become a bottom-up culture in your organization number four you gotta celebrate culture-defining moments and accomplishments when you see culture being fleshed out you've gotta celebrate it whether it's a defining moment whether it's an accomplishment but what you know the old adage what gets celebrated gets done so you've got to figure out creative ways and we'll maybe talk about that with one of the questions that was sent in but think about some creative ways to celebrate culture and then number five you got to emphasize culture in regular rhythms your your normal meeting structure process whether that's one-on-ones team meetings or or monthly whole group meetings whatever that may be you've got to learn to emphasize what you value and what culture you want to see established in those regular rhythms not bad four minutes that's that's not bad four minutes when we started with the first one of five being two minutes i was a little worried but uh that hopefully if when you the person who asked that question that really helps just give some practical handles to that uh here's the second question vance and i think this one really speaks into kind of where we're living in in 2021 in today's cancel culture it's a phrase everyone listening's heard of and uh seen kind of all over a culture how should we respond when someone somebody we admire in leadership says something crazy or wrong or inflammatory and and their name is the one that's all over twitter and it's someone that we've looked up to we've respected we've quoted um i don't think the response for christians is cancel how should we respond yeah great question i wasn't expecting that one yet i thought you were gonna do number two before you went to that one you skipped one i did skip it threw me a curveball but that's right keeps me on my toes um yeah we're living in a tough day today and listen i gotta be honest it's hard for anybody to be in leadership right now at any level because everything you say is parsed everything you say is put under the microscope and one word here one word there and to be honest we're really reaping the horrific impact of years of 24-hour news cycles with all the news channels that are out there now what they'll do and you know this it doesn't matter if you're watching fox news msnbc cnn any one of them are guilty of this they take one phrase out of something somebody said out of context and they literally for an entire 24-hour news cycle sometimes 48 hours will literally beat somebody to death and so now in culture we started doing that we take something somebody says and we immediately cancel them we just simply do away with them we don't give any credence to anything at all and so how do we process that and what we're living in today and i don't have the the complete answer i don't even profess to but let me give you just a few thoughts number one remember that no person no man or woman in leadership is infallible only god's word is and i say that because if we're not careful we begin to put people on a pedestal thinking that everything they say because this happened for me in the last 12 to 15 months i have two or three leaders that i've respected for years i've quoted some of them many times in sermons and with the last political cycle the last 12 to 15 months i've watched them take really harsh and hard stances based on their opinion more than rooted and grounded in the infallibility of scripture and boy it just reminded me that none of us as human beings own the market on truth and you just have to remember that as much as you may respect that leader as much as that leader may have impacted your life there will be some things that come out of their mouth that you don't agree with it they're going to be some things that that are going to be wrong or crazy or inflammatory uh because it's just the nature of being human beings that's who we are as human beings um the second thing i would say is that it it we can correct mistruth without attacking character or personality maybe it's a better way to say it um when we hear somebody that we respect say something that we we think is crazy we think man that's out of left field or boy that's not consistent with who they are we don't have to begin to immediately attack them personally we can correct what we think is a misstatement without having to make it personal and condemning them personally or their character so you can correct mistruth without attacking character personally um and i'll just i wouldn't plan on news i'll just get i'll give a real transparent example so um i have two very good well one's a very good friend one is somebody i've admired and respected for years only met him once but but when you take john mcarthur on one side uh who's somebody that i've respected i look up to he's shaped me much spiritually and then you have my friend beth moore on the other side who have deep respect for uh and and dr macarthur and beth moore have been at odds over the last year uh dr mcarthur has said some things that i didn't particularly agree with personally directed towards beth moore um but i don't have to attack dr macarthur personally to disagree with him and speak in a way that is is is uh what i believe to be correcting uh uh uh something that i would say would be wasn't true i don't have to attack him personally and it doesn't change the fact that he's deeply impacted my life for years for decades and somebody that i can learn a lot from which leads me to another thing i want to say a life of spiritual impact is more than one defining moment if that's not true man none of the characters in the bible have a shot because every character in scripture has major moments in their life that really to be honest in today's culture we would do away with them and yet the spiritual impact and legacy of their lives lives on and so i think we have to be careful not to throw somebody out just because of one moment one and again i'm not talking about disqualifying moments in ministry even then though our hearts should be redemptive and not punitive um and then i would say lastly on this we need to be careful who we give platform to and by that if you're a leader when you quote somebody when you recommend somebody you're giving platform to them and i think we need to be very careful in this day who we're linking ourselves to because in the day that we live in that can be really dangerous let me close i know i'm way over on this one um but i think it's important for where we're living today and let me close with this note so i was named after a man named vance havner vance havner one of the most quoted preachers of the last 100 years my father knew him personally i met dr havner a couple of times i know people that knew him personally vance abner wrote over 40 books he preached on multiple continents he preached in thousands and thousands of churches speak spoke to millions of people and is quoted by pastors everywhere i'll never forget when i was a twelve-year-old boy vance having us preaching at our church in alabama my dad asked vance havner dr havner what is one thing i can pray for you and here's what dr havner said he said pray that i get home before dark and what he meant by that was he built a lifetime of ministry because at this point he was in his 70s and he's man pray that i get home before i do something that would tarnish the ministry that god's given me and man that's that's that i think all of us need to have the humility of a man like vance abner who after decades of leadership in ministry still knew that he was one decision one statement away from discrediting and i think that spirit of humility would give us the right amount of grace to demonstrate towards somebody else when they do make that mistake when they do say that wrong thing so that's what i'd say to this guy that's good this one comes this next question comes from somebody working in ministry they're kind of at an odds with something they want some insight on especially working in ministry here's the question vance where does the balance of grace and accountability come into play accountability appears to take a back seat to grace in many situations help me out here great question um you know two great tensions uh demonstrating grace and um thinking about bringing accountability to a situation and if you think about both of these in extremes grace in extreme becomes a form of liberalism where there are no boundaries no parameters it's license accountability to an extreme becomes a form of legalism where your boundaries become the boundaries for everybody jesus spoke about grace and truth which i think is the kind of tension that we're looking for so in thinking about the terms grace and accountability and be honest i've never really thought about them in this context until somebody asked the question this way let me say three things about it number one grace is my heart towards a wrong that's been repented of and obviously that's aspirational what when there's been a wrong done and they've repented of that wrong in my heart what should be there towards them that would be redemptive is god's grace so grace is my heart towards a wrong that's been repented of accountability is my help towards a right new direction so grace is is is my response to someone who's repented of a wrong but accountability are the boundaries that you bring in place to help them now move in a right direction so i think that's one way they fit together secondly grace pursues the individual grace pursues that person grace is what's redemptive in my heart grace is what god does in our lives when we fail when we we're wrong grace pursues us but accountability is designed to protect us grace pursues us when we're wrong but accountability is designed to protect us from making that wrong decision and then the third thing i would say is grace is about the past grace looks backwards and covers my past where accountability is trying to look forward and secure my future it's trying to to shape a better outcome than where i've been before so i think we need grace obviously because we are going to fail we're going to do wrongs we're going to get out of step we need grace but grace without accountability doesn't change the course of where i'm going accountability without grace can become a performance-based mentality so i think we need both of those things um as we lead others grace to look back and and and be redemptive and and accountability to to change course and look to a brighter future that's awesome moving on another question from a listener and this is back to kind of leading in current culture i think a lot of people maybe had some leadership things shook up a little bit in 2020 2021 uh what is the most challenging part vance of leading in our current culture or climate any advice for someone just starting i can imagine um maybe that would be helpful for listeners if you're just starting run go do something else uh what would you say a person just starting and we talked about cancer culture already like we are living in some in some pretty tumultuous times talk to us about leadership and what's the most challenging part yeah obviously leadership in any season has its challenges it also has its benefits and his joys but leadership has its challenges but the days that we're living in today are definitely challenging times i have been in ministry leadership for going on 31 years 20 years of that here in las vegas at hope church the prior decade plus uh in churches in the bible belt but ministry leadership for 31 years and never before last year have i ever seriously i mean yeah there are those days you want to quit but i mean last year seriously i thought okay am i done like is it time to tap out is it time to pass the baton um if you're in leadership man i just want to i want to first of all just encourage you you're not alone there's a lot of us who didn't know if we were going to make it through the last 12 months it's been incredibly challenging one of the things that made it so challenging was like i said i've been in vegas for 20 years we've had some challenging circumstances but i always knew what was right and when i know what's right i'm ready for the consequences whatever they may be i'm okay with them the problem with the challenges and the complexity of leadership today is right and wrong is not always so clear and here's what i mean by that last year with the pandemic should we close should we open should we mask should we not mask should we encourage vaccines should we not encourage a vaccine all these questions it wasn't necessa it didn't like to say the bible says close on in march and open in september like it wasn't that clear cut these were very difficult questions when you thought about the political landscape with the the racial tension that was do i say something do i not say something if i say something how do i say something and when do i say something and what's the appropriate thing to say and all of those questions make it really challenging and so i began to think about what why is that why does that why is that so unique to where we're living right now and i think one of the reasons it's so unique to where we're living right now is really i can summarize it in two statements two reasons why i think the most challenging leadership question of this day is applying biblical truth to contemporary issues because of number one the cross-cultural component that we live in in america america is a changing landscape and by 2043 demographers say there'll be no majority population in america meaning we'll be a nation of minorities and with with different cultures come different perspectives uh come different political ideologies and whereas in in much leadership in the past in america america has been historically not better it's just been more homogeneous now america i think in a beautiful way is becoming a cross-cultural expression of what humanity looks like but that does bring its own set of challenges in the application of truth because not everybody sees something from the same perspective not everybody has the same past experience not everybody has the same cultural upbringing and so the day that we're living in today of applying cult biblical truth to a in a cross-cultural context is going to be challenging it's going to be difficult i heard a pastor from new york named rich viotis say pastoring a multi-cultural church means it is also multi-political and multi-theological which means it's multi-difficult um and that that has been the if you look at the landscape of ministry leadership in america it's been the exception for a church to be multicultural not the norm most churches are white churches black churches hispanic churches korean churches but what's happening is the pendulum is swinging the multicultural church which is not a new thing by the way it's a new testament thing is becoming more normative in the church in america and it's becoming more normative in all societies in america and all subcultures in america that the application of biblical truth requires us uh dying to our cultural preferences and perspectives and coming to biblical truth uh purely for the application in a cross-cultural context the second thing i think that's changing in america that makes it challenging is that if you look back historically again not that it was always a right interpretation of it but america has held this ideal of being a judeo-christian nation and we are rapidly becoming not that as america so when you have a country that we're now living in that is not rooted and grounded in a biblical worldview it changes the way that you um have to navigate the application it doesn't mean that god's truth is still god's truth god's truth is god's truth and it does need to be taught but it does bring with it another set of complexities as you begin to navigate that i think one of the most important books of the bible for believers in the next 20 to 40 years in america is going to be the book of daniel because daniel we have enjoyed as christians in america being a spiritual majority daniel is a book where believers were a spiritual minority and a cultural majority that's what's happening in america america is becoming a spiritual majority that's non-christian and believers will be a spiritual minority and that's going to be a challenging way to lead for example i have a son who is surrendered his life to children's ministry and i've encouraged my son to get a degree in and from a secular university that he can use as a career path because i'm not sure that 10 20 30 years from now there will be career opportunities in ministry in america for men who are devoted to children's ministry not that he can't do children's ministry it just may be that churches may not be able to afford a children's pastor he may have to have a vocation that that co-vocationally allows him to do ministry and so i think the church is going to have to begin to think differently i think christian leaders in business um are going to have to to to navigate those waters in business and in the corporate world and educational domain uh in challenging ways as we bring biblical convictions to leadership in a world that is becoming more and more non-christian that's awesome we'll close with uh one more question um and this one specifically in the area of of team leaders this person wants just some some ideas to celebrate a team so here's the question what are some creative ways to celebrate team accomplishments we'll close with this one today vance this guy's wanting to know or this guy's wanting to know uh how do i celebrate in a creative way when my team does well what advice would you give them as we close today yeah i'll give you two um one is something we do here at hope church called second monday second monday every month uh the first the second monday of every month we come together for two hours and we really do five things we worship together we pray together we look at usually i bring a leadership challenge we fellowship over food and then the fifth thing we always do is we celebrate wins and so we bring the whole team together because a lot of times you don't know even what's going on in somebody else's area depending on the size of the team that you lead at hope church we've got 60 to 80 people on our staff team and so we got a larger team of individuals multiple teams working within the bigger team and so we take about 20 30 minutes and we just around the room with a microphone and we celebrate wins you say what's a win a win we define it as mission accomplishing moments so it goes back to what we talked about earlier about celebrating what gets celebrated gets done one of the ways we do that is through second mondays we pray together we worship together we do a leadership challenge we fellowship around food but then we celebrate wins together uh and that's defined those those mission accomplishing moments uh and it's always my favorite part scott of second monday because i'm hearing things around the room uh that that where god is using us to accomplish the mission that he's given us and i literally had no idea these things were taking place it's just awesome to be able to celebrate those and when people get to share and celebrate it's awesome to watch their reaction as the team reacts to what's happening there so that's one of the things we do is what we call second monday where we literally celebrate wins and different teams share those wins they shout out to each other and it's always cool when one team celebrates the win of another team and how god's using them like i know at this past one um somebody from one of our teams uh gave a shout out to our next gen team because of some really cool stuff that was happening in the next generation of ministry and the shout out the celebration of the win didn't come from a next-gen team member it came from somebody else watching another team acknowledge that win i thought was really cool another way that we celebrate uh accomplishments uh here at hope church is is we do that through uh having a culture of honor where we honor longevity and so at ministry milestones five years 10 years 15 years 20 years we always do what a lot of people do we celebrate those moments but one of the things that we add that i think is unique and creative is we personalize those moments to the individual for example if you listen to the podcast regularly you know i'm from alabama you know i'm an alabama crimson tide fan you know that i would never ever ever ever purchase anything that has anything to do with auburn because you just don't do that if you're an alabama crimson fan but i have an executive pastor who just celebrated 15 years uh who's not an auburn guy but he is a big bo jackson guy and so as a part of his celebrating this ministry milestone we bought him a um autographed jersey of bo jackson you say why would you do that because it's it's per it's not just giving them a gift card it's it's speaking their love language if you will it's celebrating the win it's honoring something we value which is longevity but it's doing it in a way that's personal to the individual that speaks into what uh they value that's awesome well i hope that was helpful for you those are kind of five or six different questions in different areas of leadership again these are things that we do once or twice a year and so if you have questions if if maybe even some of these conversations spark some questions in you you can let us know all the information is in the show notes easiest way is just to dm uh pastor vance on instagram or twitter um or hit me up on on either of those platforms as well and uh yeah we'd love to answer your question and uh man we are jumping into the fall we will catch you next month in october of 2021 hope you're doing well wherever god has you leading and we will catch you next month on the vance pittman leadership podcast thanks again for joining us today for the vance pittman leadership podcast if you enjoyed what you've heard we would love to help spread the word you can drop a comment on youtube leave a review on your favorite podcast app or share this episode on your social media thanks again for joining us you

Channel: Hope Church LV

Views: 116

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: hopechurchlv, hope church, hope church lv, church

Id: 5LlFV1eDups

Length: 35min 49sec (2149 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021