Venture Unfiltered #17: The Great Resignation

A vent your church best church in the world. Just kidding, but my

favorite church in the world. Hope you are doing so well. It's Pastor

Tony here, my lovely, beautiful co host is back. Pastor Brandon,

Welcome back, peb how's vacation? Oh gosh, let's try the Raiders roll

again roll. I would love for people to comment if they their thoughts on

that button, like their genuine feelings, be brutally honest with us. For

people, some of our regular listeners frequently whenever I post anything on Instagram,

their comment will be Raiders Role, so I at least I know they're listening

and hearing it. That's very kind of them. Hey, just a couple

of quick things. We want to thank our sponsor, Logos Bible Software.

Thank you so much for hooking us up. If you are searching for software

for a deeper dive in the scriptures, we'd encourage you it download the logos.

Pastor Brandon is wearing a shirt today? Whose sponsored you? Who is

this all right? Someone keeps anonymously sending me T shirts in the mail with

the hope that I'll wear them on these podcasts, and I don't even know

what is it says something about my gray hair. Wouldn't let the grays fool

you ageless icons? Yes, I'm an ageless icon. So whoever is sending

me these free T shirts? First off, I'm shameless. I will do

anything for a free T shirt. Secondly, my wife is really getting annoyed

about all the ridiculous T shirts, so she's now started putting them in a

bag and sticking them in my office. I was also given a T shirt

that I haven't worn yet. I think it's by the same person, and

I don't know who it is yet. I'm a figured out. It says

I identify as Italian. Oh Gold, do you know what you identify?

If I'm not given a new shirt by next week, I'll wear that one

on next week's podcast. I also want to thank one of my other sponsors.

They they sponsor me on my Instagram and it is one of my favorite

apparel companies, Cowboy Cool. Yeah, you love their hats. I love

love their hats ever since I was water skiing with you and Morgan and my

Cowboy Cool hat flew off my head as I was driving the boat I have.

That was one of I would be honest, the saddest I've ever seen

it like your saddest times ever. You just were so upset. I lost

a hat and I lost a pair of ray bands that same What made up

for it was watching you try to climb into the inner tube and fall off

the enter tube into though it was COVID, we had a hard year.

It was like COVID. Wait, hey, we want to thank you guys

so much. We had two things I want to celebrate. Number one,

we have an email. Now we've been getting stopped in the lobby. We've

been getting dms by from so many people. I'd say, hey, I

have a question for the podcast. So we thought it would be really cool

to start answering some of these questions as they come in. If you have

a question for the podcast, h I can't promise we'll answer it if you

dm us, but if you email podcast at our venture dot church, we

would love and try our best to answer those on the pod in the beginning.

So podcast at our venture dot church you can ask anything and everything and

we will. This will be the first thing that we will do every single

week on the podcast is we'll respond to the questions if we have any yes.

And secondly, other than you can ask the Q and A. We

we hit a huge milestone, Pebe we hit twenty five hundred downloads downloads.

You can't eat it on, baby, come on. One of our one

of our most popular segments that we've done was the one with the famous diabials.

Yeah, man, people love that one. I know they did.

Let's give another raider role for that one. I'm not supposed to have to

tell you Raider's role always hitting them all. We have a new program director

because our our normal program director has a tummy ache. We are now sponsored

by Pepto Bismal. Okay, so can I address something with you on the

podcast. We've been getting asked about Luke Bryan. Okay, you were at

Luke Bryan. You were with the mister David Diaz. He was handed.

It was really funny, a virgin adult beverage. Let's talk about Luke Bryan.

What happened? Well, first off, I love honoring our staff and

it was David's birthday. David has been amazing all sum We had tons of

staff on vacation and sabbatical and I looked at David at the beginning of the

summer and I said, me and you bud as long as you and I

are here, We're gonna this church is gonna last with all these people being

gone all summer. And he was a champion all summer long. So when

his birthday came around, I thought, wouldn't it be fun because he's always

wanted to go to Luke Bryan And we had a date scheduled right before COVID

hit where he and Bob, Ricky and I were going to go to Vegas

to see Luke Bryan gets canceled because of COVID. The thing we do not

speak of, but we seem to always be speaking of, and we'll be

talking about a fair amount today. So I thought, I'm taking to Luke

Bryan concert. I realized that there was seats in the front row available for

a relatively reasonable price, and I thought, I'm gonna give the worship team

and I am no joke with this. Tells you how good of a leader

this guy is, because his team within five minutes gave all the money we

needed for me to take him to the Luke Brian thing. So at the

Luke Bryan concert, it starts and like his third song is that one Margarita

song, by the way, literally my least favorite Luke Bryan song is that

song. I lean over to David and I said, I hate this song,

and David was like, I kind of like it. And Luke Bryan

walks out with this gargantuan margarita, and David is acting like a like giddy

little football fan or I don't know what you want to want to call it.

He he is a total fanboy, and he is jumping up and down

right in the front and Luke Bryan walks right over and hands him a margharita.

I want to tell all of my Assembly of God friends that listened to

this that he was given a virgin margharita, so it was non alcoholic.

Can I take a moment? I had to say that, because you know,

people think this and the immediately immediately are going to think what is going

on here? I want to share some things. As an Assembly of God

minister, I am asked to abstain from alcohol. I don't personally have any

theological issue with the drinking of alcohol. So if you're listening to this,

you drink alcohol. I have zero problem with it whatsoever. I get asked

all the time, well does it does it bother you that they ask you

to not drink alcohol. I don't know. I've never drank alcohol, so

I don't I don't know. But the biggest thing that I'll say, and

this is what I quote. Yes, I don't think there's a really solid

theological argument against alcohol. I think the paper that our denomination has written,

I actually think it's a It doesn't hold much ground. I think it's easier

to argue the opposing side than it is to stand by the doctrinal statement that

they have. But it is a very small sacrifice for the privilege of leading

this church. So many of you have worked jobs and they say you can't

have a beard, you can't have long hair, we don't allow earrings on

men, and different things like that. I mean, there you have expectations

for your job, and these are normal. And I know we live in

a world where you should be able to express yourself and be who you want

to be. And that might be fine for you, but there's certain employers

that won't hire you because you refuse to cover your tattoos, or you refuse

to cut your hair, or you for the Yankees, if you don't save

your face. Yes, different different things. So it's normal for organizations that

are successful to have expectations of their employees, and a simple one is if

you're going to be an AG minister. And this is for those of you

that are in your early twenties that tell me the reason you don't want to

be AG is because you can't drink. I'm gonna tell you I lead venture.

I mean Tony, Am I correct me if I'm wrong, Like,

this is one of the greatest churches, easily on the West Coast. Am

I right, We're having fun. This is we have a killer church.

The church is huge, the church has resources, the church is missional in

our community. And the most absurd thing in the world would be for me

to say, yeah, I'm not going to lead venture because I really want

to drink a beer now, and then it seems really immature. Yeah,

as a leader, I think sometimes over time these things kind of get worked

out. So I don't know if this will be a staunch position the AG

holes in ten years from now. And I mean people will quote me all

the time with Jesus first wedding, first miracles, the wedding at Cana.

Yeah, Paul says, rub some rub some alcohol in your tongue. If

you got a tummya. He didn't say rub it, he said drink some

Oh, which that's where we're going happy are today? Hey, I agree

with you. I don't know. These things kind of work their way out

over time. Hey, I want to talk about a topic today. I

know we said we would never ever ever talk about COVID, but we aren't

talking about COVID. We're talking about the result of the lockdowns and everything that

happened after COD and not just in the church world. The title today's podcast

is the Great Resignation, but because we are ministers, we're going to talk

about the great pastor resignation. If you're listening, you probably odds. Are

you know of a pastor who transitioned during COVID or post COVID? Excuse me,

Some that unfortunately had some moral failures, some who just said I'm done,

I'm done, I'm over this. We want to hit on an article

that's been circulating in the church world and in the leadership world, but predominantly

in the church roll about the great pastor resignation. They have five main reasons

that were given after our study was done through Barna. Barna quotes that forty

two percent of pastors three years after COVID. In these last three years,

so forty two percent, So almost fifty percent of ministers have either quit or

considered quitting. This article came out four days ago and the title of the

article is why I left the church. So this is a pastor of a

large church. In fact, he describes the size of his church. It's

a Presbyterian church in Texas, over a thousand people. For all intents and

purposes, he's a very successful minister. For those of you listening, you

might not know these stats. Pastors know these stats. But the average church

in America has forty eight people in it. So when you think that venture

this first six months of the year, we've averaged over three thousand. We

are like in the top one percent of the size of churches. Most pastors

their dream is to someday pastor church of a thousand. So this guy is

legitimately he gave up what would be most people's dream job. And he shares

his reasons why, and he first off quotes the top five reasons from Barna

about why. Barna says pastors are considering resigning or are resigning, and then

he transitions and he shares his additional frustrations, and Tony and I are going

to respond to the five reasons that most pastors are in this position considering resigning.

And by the way, there's some of you. You have a job

and you've been in the same boat. It's been challenging. And I don't

think it's just pastors. I think the resignation happened everywhere, especially in tech

and whatnot. So I think even the average listener can relate to some of

these. And please know this isn't pastor. Brandon and I are saying what

was me? Look how hard our life is. No, but there are

realities about being a pastor, especially post COVID. Yeah, what we will

share is we'll use what they talk about, and I do want to hit

on like he shared the five things from Barnet and then he went into extra

details on why he resigned. Lots of pastors have been responding to this article

because we've all heard these stats and it's been a conversation. You cannot go

to a pastor's conference and have these statistics not thrown in your face. We

hear it all the time. We will address them. I'll share from our

perspective, but I want the foundation of this to be. I mean,

I love my job. I love this church, I love the rhythm that

we're in. I love what God is doing here. I love my staff,

I love our people. This has nothing to do with me. This

is not me hoping you'll say, Brandon, I love you. Don't quit

now. You don't have to worry about that. I mean, Diana,

We're here till we retire. We love our job. We are an outlier

to all of this. But I talked to my friends on a regular basis

who would represent this forty two percent. But I'm not one of them.

So let's just clear the air. This is not so you'll tell us that

you love us. I will say this. We were at Passion Conference with

the interns in twenty twenty one and there was a gal speaker name is Jeanie

Allen. She really just ride out the gate. She wanted us to all

in the middle of her sermon to stop. She stopped her sermon for each

of us to find three or four people, and she literally wanted us to

confess our deepest, darkest sin two people. And I had Brandon Greenawal and

Johnny White with me. So these two guys that are in our ministry.

I want to know what was Brandon Greenwald's deepest, darkest sin. Oh,

it's just that he's too good looking and he can't control it. But you

know, so they look at like, you know, Brandon shares his thing,

he starts crying, and Johnny shares this thing and leave it or not.

Johnny cries and they'll go, all right, what's yours? And to

be honest, you know, at that point in my life didn't I mean,

nothing was really going on, but mine was. Hey, I've considered

quitting ministry. And I remember the look on their faces. They were like

shocked that I said that. But as I look at these numbers and and

my heart's changed, God's God's really helped me. Forty two percent of us

considered quitting post COVID, so I'm not shocked. But that was my deepest

darkest sin at that moment, to confess to them now wanted to quit the

quitting ministry. That is a normal thing that ministers consider all the time.

And usually it's after a bad Wednesday night you service, or after a bad

Sunday morning, or you're in a season where there's a lot of conflict with

people like all of those things. But I talked to people that work at

Boeing, they work at Microsoft, they work at Amazon, they work at

Costco, their teachers, their doctors, attorneys, and we have all these

people in our church and they all go through the same thing. I want

to quit. Every one of us wishes we could be Rick Steves and just

get paid to travel around and get five star treatment and write a little story

or a blog about these glorious places we get to visit. Every one of

us. By the way, that's my dream job. He is Rick's visit

man. Have you ever met him. He's a very kind man. He's

from Edmonds. I know he's from Edmonds, and I wish I was his

son. If I was his son, I'd be taking over his business.

I will say to qualify everything. If Rick Steves did offer me to take

over his empire, that would make me consider resigning. But really nothing else

you should. Okay, let's dive in here. So here are the top

five reasons given as follows as to why pastors resigned during in post COVID so.

Number one was fifty six percent of the weight of this immense stress of

the job, highly stressful. Number two, well, let's let's talk to

you. Yeah, so the immense stress of the job. So obviously,

there's the stress of make sometimes feel like you have a lot of voices.

You have a lot of people. It's not that you're people pleasing, but

you have a lot of people who have an opinion. There's the financial stress

of working at a nonprofit constantly feeling like you're either fundraising or trying to keep

things afloat. The other stress I don't feel this, probably you do,

Peb is when you have pastors on staff. Pastors have kids, they have

families. This is like there's a big deal here. So there's a huge

financial weight. You have people who are opinionated it. I don't know,

why do you unpack that? How do you feel about that? I think

the stress comes in several different ways. I was always told by I only

had two bosses in ministry, Rob Carlson and Glenn Burtow, and both of

them for as uniquely different as they were, and they're both incredible leaders,

radically different leaders, and I really the older I've gotten, the more I've

appreciated them. But the one thing that they both said to me is,

Brandon, someday you're going to be sitting in our chair, and you will

never understand the weight of this role. And as a youth, guys like

I have a big youth ministry, I have lots of leaders, I have

to raise money. I get what you're going through. No, you don't

understand it. I think the first time I sat in a staff meeting around

a table of pastors and admin and directors, and I looked around and I

thought, wow, like my integrity affects their livelihood, like my relationship with

Jesus affects their ability to be able to provide for their families and pay their

mortgages. And then the weight of just the staff alone, and the larger

the church gets, the larger the staff gets, the heavier that weight comes.

There's a lot of stress from that. I think there's also additional stress

because you never understand this until you're the lead pastor, the senior pastor of

the church. When I was a senior associate at BCA, the vast majority

of the church just they love the senior associate. Everybody loves the number two

person. They don't come, they don't like, they're able to process in

their head. The things they don't like at the church are not that person's

fault. So they're the one that everybody goes to, they confide in,

they look forward to when that person speaks. But I always say that there's

always fifty percent of the church that's mad at the senior pastor every single week.

And I don't know which week it is, it is this week.

You feel like that's venture right now. No, I would say there's definitely

been times where half the church is mad at me, and then the next

week they're happy with me, and then that week that the group that was

happy with me isn't so. But again, you just come back to I

do this because God called me to this, Like I am called into ministry

and I'm asked to shepherd his sheep. The weight of understanding that so the

people that God cares deeply about, so much that he sent his son to

die on the cross to bear the burden and the weight of their sin solely

so he could be in eternal relationship with them. That's how much he loves

them, and while they're here on this earth, he is in trusting their

spiritual well being. You are held accountable us. Yeah, when you the

weight of that reality is huge. By the way, it's an enormous honor,

and we will speak an account in front of Jesus of how we stewarded

and shepherded those people. So that way comes a lot, and I think,

so there's the stress of that. I think the least like you could

do an entire book on things I wished I would have taught. When I

was in Bible College. The number one thing that they do not prepare you

for as a Bible College student or seminary student is the weight of the finances

of the church. It's immense. Fortunately for me, my dad is a

businessman. Our family we don't have like ministry legacy. I'm the first minister

in my entire family's history. We're all they're all business people. The thing

that I just innately understood was business. Now I do math. My wife

would say, Brandon's mind is like a calculator. I can do crazy math

equations off the top of my head. Most ministers don't do math. They

have no financial will, acumen whatsoever. And then you're in this role that's

all fundraising and it's all managing budgets. And you know, as a youth

pastor, I managed a one hundred thousand dollars budget. Then I remember the

day when Venture's giving surpassed a million dollars and now I'm managing a million dollar

budget, and now today our budget is five million dollars and things like that,

And the weight and the stress of the finances is huge. And there's

nothing more challenging than buildings when pastors have to raise money for buildings. You're

gonna plant this campus for us in Seattle, there's gonna come a day we're

gonna need a building. And you will then shift into the most stressful part

of any minister's job because we're trained to do everything else. We're trained to

preach and decipe, bole and pray with people and lead people to Christ.

But how in the world do you raise a million dollars? How do you

raise like we had to for this building, eight million dollars? How do

you do it? And the weight of that is huge, accusations that come

with it are huge. So when it talks about the immense stress of the

job, I would kind of conclude my segment. I know you want to

say something, but I tell my board often I honor the fact that you

guys are leaders in the industries where you work, that you have stress,

you have pressures that are equal to mine. But the pressure that a minister

of a large church has is uniquely different from anyone else. And so I

there is immense stress from the job. Yeah, having that spiritual being accountable

for people's spiritual well being, being accountable. Did I did I preach gospel?

Was I honest? Am I true? And I think the integrity part

is huge being a person of integrity. You know, right now we're knee

deep and fundraising for Seattle. I'm not stressed, but I can see how

stressful this can get. Sending out emails, cold calls, going to talking

to people asking, I mean it is, it is a lot, it

is. It is starting to or starting to feel the heat of it.

And I think too, one thing you said is you have a board.

So here we have the board of elders, and we have the trustees,

which kind of actually leads me to my second thought. So if a pastor

or to the second point, if a pastor feels like here or she is

all alone, which is the second reason why they're resigning, forty three percent

of them felt lonely and isolated. Here is a quote that I've heard that

I just think is a load of and you can push back on this if

you disagree with me. I think it's a load of crap, And people

say it's lonely at the top. You're right, some people might not understand

what you're facing, what you're going through in any organization. But if you

are lonely and isolated, I kind of feel like that's on you. Like

you are, you can have friendships, you can have people to your lefting

to right to call on, to be there to support. Yes, there

are things people might not understand, but if you feel super lonely and isolated,

and I think so too as as ministers, it's hard to make minister

friends sometimes and not everyone in at your church and minister and then people act

weird around you when they know you're a pastor. You ever had someone just

like cuss and then they go, oh, I'm so sorry, pastor,

People ever do that in front of you? This might be the first time.

And the what seventeen episodes of this podcast, you and I have fully

disagreed disagree. I think I think being the pastor of a large church is

very lonely and isolating, and it is because very few people understand your world.

They don't understand why you're not available on Sundays. They like, it's

been eighteen years of my closest friends in the church don't invite me to certain

events they have at their house because they know there's going to be a lot

of drinking there and they don't want me to feel awkward. Now, the

reality is I don't feel awkward being there. They feel awkward with me being

there, just like if somebody accidentally cusses in front of me, they quickly

apologize and qualify. Like I did a fantasy football draft, which is all

people who don't attend the church. There's money on the line, so it's

a very intense draft, and they all know that I pastor venture, and

every time they would accidentally swear, they would turn look at me and apologize.

That is a little bit lonely and isolating with it. And I say

this because what happens, and we did this when we talked about the relational

concentric circles. The farther you advance in a corporation, the more you need

to be careful what you share to people, because everything you share will get

used against you and it can feel lonely and isolating. So I do respect

that I think where I do agree with you is it is up to you

to find the relationships that you need so you don't feel that way. And

part of it is a redefining of what relationships are. And I don't want

to repeat dies podcast, which she was extraordinary, but it really when you're

leading an organization, you don't have a friend that fits every category that like,

you don't have the luxury I've got this one buddy who understands everything that

I do. You have to have, Okay, I got my pastors of

large churches. We talked to you several times a year. We get each

other. I've got my pastors that are into revival, that are charismatic.

They understand my desire for a move of God and I talk to them.

Then there are my buddies that are into sports, and then they're my cigar

smoking buddies. And then there are my I go to country concerts with.

And you just there's not one person that fits every one of Sure, yeah,

these things in circles. That's totally fair, and I agree with you

on that, and I do agree with you. There are things people might

not naturally invite you too as the leader of the church or just because you

know, they're concerned of what you would think of them or if it would

change your thought of them. Let's move on to number three. Uh,

the third one is thirty eight percent current political divisions. Oh tell me about

this one current political and we don't want to beat a dead horse. You

know, we talked about this couple podcast go. We had a couple hundred

people move away from our church during COVID because of their political stances. Whether

they're right or wrong, it's not Yeah, I found God in Seattle,

me too, I did. No. I think where the challenge comes is

we as pastors. And again, there are some loud voices in the evangelical

world nationally that are full on Christian nationalists. So I'm teaching on Jonah for

the next month, and we're gonna go into depth on Jonah next week in

this podcast. So you're gonna want to listen to next week's podcast because there's

things that I can't get to the depth of on Sunday morning that I'll talk

about. But I would say Jonah's fault as a prophet, bottom line was

he would have been the equivalent of a Christian nationalist that he had a strong

sense of his love for God, but he had this deep sense of his

love for country. And what ended up happening is we watch people that were

Christian nationalist, their love, their nationalistic thought process superseded their theology, their

love for their country, their politics way overwhelmed their love and heart for Jesus.

When we get into detail about why everything happened to the nation of Israel

at the time of Jonah, it all happened because God had judged Israel,

allowed them to be conquered by their enemies. And the issue God had and

he warned them through the prophet Amos and the prophet Josiah, was the issue

of the way they took care of the poor, the marginalized, the broken.

Those people haven't they are part of God's heart and his passion. And

the people of Israel were ignoring what God cared about. God warned them through

a miss and Joseah. They did not listen. God allowed them to be

conquered by the Assyrians, which led to the time of Jonah. And I

think sometimes what happens is our opinions nationally supersede what our opinions should be as

followers of Jesus. I think be blunt your stance on the border should not

be impacted by your country. It should be more impacted by your mission as

a follower of Jesus. If you see the issues that we have with the

border through the eyes of Jesus. I want as many people here as possible.

Like when the city of Mill Creek is going to have some expansion of

apartments and housing. I know a lot about it because you know, we're

a business owner of a large business in the community, so they fill us

in, so we know of some plans in the future, and they're ready

for the public outrage for multifamily dwellings that are going to start coming in Mill

Creek. As a pastor, bring them on. Yeah, I want thousands

of people living around this church because there's thousands of people that I can tell

about Jesus. So what ends up happening for a minister is a minister gets

put in the middle. You get the people on the right are saying you

should be every Sunday preaching against abortion, against homosexuality, against the transgender transgender

agenda, you should be preaching against all of these things. And then I

got everybody on the left saying you should love people more. We got to

care about the poor. We got to care about this and that and this,

and I come back to I believe Jesus is the hope of the world.

I believe the Gospel changes lives. That is my message. That is

what I'm going to preach on. And I've always got everybody pulling you to

the left and to the right. And by the way, it's never gonna

end. And I would say from my friends that issue, so they say

it's thirty eight percent of people, the vast majority of my friends, it

is this issue that is the most stressful for them because people demand that their

opinion politically be enforced at insure. Not only that they demand it, but

we've had people in our church in times of past vocalize we need to say

something publicly from the platform. This is our stance, when in reality,

I think you nailed it. Our stance is to make Jesus famous. That's

our stance. Yes, there are some things that we do consider really close

handed, but our stance isn't too marginalize a people growup or push them out,

but to bring them into the presence of God. There is a statement

that I've made before in this podcast that people are going to hear me say

over and over again, probably to the point where they'll be able to quote

it. And this really if you wonder fundamentally where Brandon's heart rests when it

comes to these things. I have super strong opinions politically. I have opinions

on all kinds of issues that happen socially, and you can pretty much guess

as a conservative where I land on all of these issues. It doesn't take

I am your typical minister, but I firmly sit in a position where I

believe God has not called me to change anyone's mind or habit. God has

called me to help people be in a position where Jesus can change their heart,

and then God deals with issues of their mind and of their habits as

He sees fit in the time in their spiritual journey. That is what I

want to do. Yeah, let's keep going. Number four. I am

unhappy with the effect this role has had on my family. Man, oh

man, you see, we don't have You've said this many times. We

don't have a nine to five where Friday at five pm, I shut the

laptop. I'm done. This is a ministry's a lifestyle, it's a calling.

Is the lifestyle job, which means people's worst moments happen at two in

the morning, happens Saturday night at eleven pm. Is when they call you

when someone's in the hospital or something's going on. And that takes a toll

in your family. When you come home from work at working after the church

at five thirty and your kids are excited to see you, but you know

what someone's calling right there. Yes, there are boundaries, what we're not

saying, not having boundaries whatnot. But it does take a toll on your

family. You're working Christmas, you're working Easter, you are you know,

we want to do outreaches and events, so we're trying to train our kids

to think outward, to think about the people that we love. That takes

a toll. And not only that, you know, sometimes you're gone,

but you know, just like I said, like a businessman's gone on.

People who work at Boeing are gone all the time. People are people who

work on are gone all the time. Yeah, I actually really appreciate everything

you just said. You talked and you shared a perspective that is uniquely different

from other millennials. It was probably about fifteen years ago when most millennials started

entering into ministry. They finished college and moving into ministry. The number one

thing I started hearing is that, oh, working at a church, it's

a job. It's a job like any other job. So the problem was

you had an entire generation that was trained to be ministers, and it was

the counteracting of the way that Baby Boomers led churches. So now you got

all of us gen xers that are leading churches. And to counter that,

they said, no, there's an like all these guys were losing their families.

Their kids wanted nothing to do with church and Jesus because they were neglecting

their families. And the pendulum swung totally to the extreme of this is just

a job. So we had an entire generation started working at churches thinking this

was a job, which is the reason why now there's so many churches that

need pastors, because that generation realized we're wrong. It's not a job.

This is not a normal job. You said. You hit the nail on

the head, you said, this is a lifestyle job, which I come

back to. You got to be called to do this. If you were

not called be a minister, don't do it. If you're not called,

well, just because you can make a lot more money doing something else.

There's a lot less demands on your time. But I am going to say

this for everybody that like is hearing this, that's a minister that's thinking,

oh, there, you know, I don't want to do My job is

hard. My job is hard. I'm away from my family. Do you

know how often to people in the church see you go on a sabbatical,

see you golfing with people in the church, the you know whatever, going

out to dinner with somebody, and they make a snarky comment that says,

I wished I could do that. I want to emphasize this. For as

complicated as our schedules are, because people have issues, like you said,

they have issues Friday nights, not nine to five when we're in the office.

There are benefits of our job that we we have that other people don't

get. We get that we do have in a regular work week, a

fair amount of flexibility. I mean, we're in the people business, so

we're meeting people where they're at. They want to go to lunch, they

want to get coffee. In Jesus name, they want to golf here and

there. I'm not gonna say no but they're in the we're in the people

business. And also people want to chat at nine pm and call you when

you're already in bed. Well, And then part of that is if you

prioritize the time that you have with your kids. We just did an entire

podcast. In fact, Greeney was telling me that the second most listened to

podcasts that we have done the entire time was the one with my kids.

I interviewed my adult children without knowing what they were gonna say, without telling

them there and you got unedited opinions of from pastors kids. And I will

tell you the reason that my kids loved I and I are not bidder is

simply because the time that we did have we prioritized and the special moments we

never missed. And sometimes I had an entire group of people in our church

mad at me the entire time my kids were in elementary school, junior high,

in high school. They didn't They would have a hard time admitting this

now because now they have elementary, junior high, and high school kids,

but it was some of the dudes in the church were mad that I didn't

go to every men's breakfast and I didn't go to men's breakfast because my kids

at soccer games. You pick and choose what you do. It did mean

as Elijah mentioned that I had to miss some of his soccer games that were

on Sundays because I work on Sundays. But there is a challenging effect on

the family. I will just say this, people crud on me all the

time that Saturday's Sabbath. Saturday, I Sabbath with my family. I'm with

my family, I'm with my kids. My friends who want to hang out,

they can call me. But people know not to bother me on Saturdays.

Now someone is dying or going through something. Yes, of course we're

gonna pick up. We're pastors, we know this, but we have set

up pretty good boundaries and be honest, people respect it for the most part.

And my family and I we're doing okay. My wife doesn't resent the

ministry, my kids love coming to church. I think we're doing okay so

far because we have realistic expectations too. So he gave a fifth reason that

pastors are resigning or considering resigning, and it is I am not optimistic about

the future sure of my church. So it's about a third of ministers actually

have a negative opinion of where their church is going, and that is what

is causing them to consider quitting or quitting. So here's the raw reality PB

is, Praise God, our church somehow in the summer grew a lot of

people came. We have so many churches. So many of my friends who

are discouraged because they still haven't reached pre COVID attendance numbers. They're nervous.

So yeah, it's tough for them to get excited about the future when they're

like, man, I can't even figure out how to get people in the

room right now. Which it's not just about attendance, we know this,

but also it is tough to get future or vision for something when you're in

a discouraged state, when you have issues going on with people, when you

feel the stress. I mean fifty six percent of the people are saying,

hey, I already feel the stress of the job. It's hard to get

vision when you're feeling kind of low. You can get maybe some motivation,

some excitement, but it's tough about that. And I think, Pope,

something I've always appreciated about you. In our toughest, toughest seasons where we

have to sell buildings, merch staffs, work remote work in a office space,

and meet out of a high school. We always you and I always

had vision. You guys were always excited. The best is on the horizon.

I think what pastors. Pastors are really good at preaching and believing the

messages that they preach for their people, but they sometimes have a hard time

understanding that God's words and God's promises are just the same for them. So

I have always held on to the promise in Galatians that says don't grow weary

and doing good for at the proper time, you'll reap a harvest if you

do not give up. The problem is most ministers, as soon as things

get hard, they have developed a habit of when it gets hard, their

Pavlovian response. Pavlovian response is to quit and go get another job somewhere else,

so they keep switching churches. What they don't realize is just as you

reach the peak of that hardship and overcome it tenaciously, persistence, consistency,

blessing is on the other side, and they never see it. It's the

benefit of eighteen years leading venture. I have had those moments where it has

been tough and it felt hopeless and discouraging and I and I persevered, pressed

through and on the other side was blessing. And that is because God's word

is true. Let's highlight, maybe we gotta wind this thing down. Let's

highlight a couple of this guy that wrote the article. Those were the top

five reasons that Barna said. And then we have good news at the end,

so we're not just discouraged. Yeah, he has a phenomenal solution that

he provides at the Oh, I never even read that far in the article.

Okay, that's fine. He talks about I'll just hit on one more

and I'll let you go to the positive part. He adds some other things

he talked about, it's really complicated when you're a pastor because you have a

thousand bosses. So this is again a pastor of a church of a thousand,

and he feels like he has a thousand bosses. There is a lot

of truth to that. You feel like you work for everybody. But part

of that is you're laying your life down that Jesus said he laid his life

down. The good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep. And I

always describe it this way. I preach. When I preach on a Sunday,

I preach three times, three thousand people here it live, and probably

another over the next year, five thousand people here the podcast online. So

I'm evangelistic. So I'm gonna round up. So every time I speak,

ten thousand people, ten thousand sets of ears are hearing that sermon. So

that's ten thousand critiques that you get every time you preach. That can be

a very weighty thing. If number one, you don't study appropriately. If

you study and you know your texts that you teach, you can confidently preach

the Word of God. And then number two, if you're preaching so people

give you praise. When ten thousand people hear it, at least a thousand

didn't like something you said. You're going to be a sad human being,

which is why you've got to not care. You're trying to please Jesus.

You preach to an audience of one. I'm telling you, if you have

a struggle with people pleasing, this is the wrong job, because the minute

they build you up, what are they going to do? Be not our

people? Remember who was the hero in the Seattle area for about ten years.

His name is Russell Wilson. We built him up, those same people

that idolized him and ignored his completely ridiculous social media posts. He didn't all

of a sudden become weird when he became a Denver Bronco. He was weird

while he was here. It's when he married Sierra. Something went off.

He got so weird and I would post, because I'm a Raider fan,

about his weird post, and I would have all these Seattle fans correcting me

like crazy. And now those same people think he's weird. They hate him.

My point being that if you live by the praises of men, you'll

die by their criticism. It's always the same. Give us some hope.

I got a meet him and I have to use the bathroom. Here is

the hope. There are two mindsets that this pastor addresses that we can encourage.

Who are people who are listening with There's the fixed mindset. This is

how it's always been, this is how it's always going to be. This

is what happens. Here's the numbers, here's the statistics, here's what we

know. This happened at that church. This church. Okay, there is

the fixed this is what we think. This is what we know. The

optimists, though, will lean into the growth mindset. The growth mindset says,

I see my challenges. I don't like them, but I see the

opportunities for us to grow, and I'm not afraid to fail. We have

had dozens of failures at venture. We have, but we've also learned from

those failures, and we've had a lot of successes because we swung for the

fences. A growth mindset says, try keep going. What is the line

we always use here? Everything is an experiment. A fixed mindset says,

we tried it once, it will never work again. We can't do that.

Oh, you don't know how our people are going to react. Stop

assuming what your people think and want, and start leading, listening to the

Holy Spirit being in the scriptures, and start making some spiritual decisions rather than

trying to appease a group of people. Growth mindset along with that, I'm

becoming a fisherman, so I'm gonna use a fishing metaphor. WHOA, give

me a raider's roll. We're almost done role. He hits like five buttons

at the same time. No, I think they're mashed. I think it's

a it's a long noise. Now, that that when when you fish,

you just you enjoy like you love fishing, and so it's the same thing

if you're a pastor you love people. Sometimes you catch a fish and you

keep the fish. Sometimes you release the fish, but you just love fishing.

I think one of the biggest challenges that my peers have had post COVID

is they refuse to catch and release. Like there's been people, people that

they have ministered to and shepherded that left their church and they are longing and

waiting for those people to come back. And as a minister, going back

to the Relationship series, you have people for a season and you got to

catch hold on to and then there comes a point you release, and then

you go fish in again and you open yourself up to new relationships. We

are called to be fisher of men and women. Don't be upset. There's

always more fish in the sea, Always more fish in the sea. Phoebe,

this was fun. I just want to reiterate a couple of things for

our listeners. Hey, as for me, in my house, we're excited.

We're gonna keep going. Jesus is the hope of the world. Is

all about him. We make him famous. I don't need to live for

the praises of Man. I live out of the approval of the living God,

who I know and he knows me. If you are listening to today

and maybe you are in a place of discouragement, I really want to push

you to number one, bring this in prayer to God and start thinking through

a growth mindset. What are things I can try? Swing for the fences,

go for And secondly, connect with us. Please. We got dozens

of pastors on staff who are ready and desiring to meet with you. We'd

love to chat with you. I talk to you. This was fun.

Next week we're gonna do a deep dive on the book of Jonah. I'm

so excited. I'm gonna be honest, this might be my favorite series we're

gonna do all year. Wow, I'm really excited for Jones. It's only

four weeks long. Because it's four weeks. Last series was nine months,

but we're about to do a five month one after this. But also it's

relatable to me personally in the season of planting in Seattle and thinking of Ninevah

and whatnot. So Hey, we're excited. Don't forget email us podcasts at

our venture dot Church. Thank you so much for listening, for sharing.

Guys. We love you all so much. We're excited for the future.

Let's meet Jesus Famous Jesus is the hope of the world. There it is.

I love you guys, See you later. H