Moving Beyond Busy w/ Pastor Boyd, the Pastor of 10,000 Members Shares Practical Steps to Become a Proactive Leader

Audio Transcription

We now live in a culture where nearly every day buddy is now addicted to being busy. According to psychology today, the average American is interrupted by their smartphone, a minimum of 85 times per day on average. So if you’re perpetually distracted, how can you lead a staff of 300 people? And how could you lead a church congregation of more than 10,000 people? The answer is simple. You can’t. That is why on today’s show, I am super honored to be interviewed Pastor Brady boy, the senior pastor of the 10,000 plus member church called new life church based in Colorado. On today’s show, he teaches how to hold your people accountable, how to scale organizational leadership, and how to move beyond mindless busy this in order to achieve your goals,

some shows don’t need a celebrity and the writer to introduce the show. This show to math eight kids, Koch created by two different women, 13 mode time million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive time show.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Welcome back to another exciting edition

time show on your radio and podcast downloads and Dr. Z on today’s show, we’re interviewing a pastor who leads a congregation of more than 10,000 people. How is that possible? Since becoming the senior pastor of new life church in 2007, pastor Brady has written five books and has sent out six church plants while helping to grow new life church into one church with multiple locations. Pastor Brady Boyd is a kind of a big deal, but a humble guy. It’s kind of a. it’s a. it’s a unique blend, z. it’s kind of a big deal and super humble. Pastor Brady, welcome on to the thrive time show. How are you sir?

I’m doing well. I appreciate you calling me humble. I’ve got plenty of things to keep me humble around here, so hey, it’s good to be with you today and excited to talk about anything you want to talk about.

Well, this is. This is where I would like to start. I think I’m. I’m, I’m sort of a church nerd. I like to look up some of the, the fastest growing churches and I want to ask. I want to ask why, how, what’s going on? Maybe it’s growing fast. I’m always curious up Pastor Brady Boyd, for the listeners out there who are not as familiar with the church that you pastor in Colorado Springs, I love for you to share a little bit about the history of new life church and your involvement in growing this. This, uh, this church.

Well, I’m the second pastor in 33 years at the church and the founding pastor was Ted Haggard and at Ted Haggard did an amazing job of starting a church growing the church, but then as a, as many of your listeners may know, in 2006, it had a, it was an epic moral failure that was on their front page of every newspaper, the lead story of every national newscast for three days. And so that was a dark time and the history of the church at that time, I was at Gateway Church in Dallas, Fort Worth. And in, uh, August of 2007, I became the second pastor in the church. So I’ve been here 11 years. The church has really had remarkable times and dark times. I mean, it’s a lot like any family that’s listening to this show. We had times when our family was really thriving and there was probably times where your family had secrets and had a pain, but you didn’t really want to talk about, but you’ve seen, you know, people walk through those pains and come out on the other side.

And that’s really the story of new life. This is a church that should have folded a. We had a scandal and violence on our campus in 13 months, in December of 2007. We had a gunman come on our campus and open fire kill two of my teenage girls and the parking lot. So think about this. In 13 months we had a scandal from its founding pastor and a shooting on the campus that claim to laws and injured five other people. And still today, the church is thriving and prospering. It’s really new life church in my opinion. And I know I’m biased, uh, is one of the miracle stories in American church history because we should be a big used car lot right now. Uh, this place should be shut down and instead, by God’s grace, honestly, we are thriving and prospering, but it’s a real miracle story,

a powerful teaching moment for all the leaders out there that I did several. Did you just share it? I would like to unpack the z. One is when you ever have a leader of a company or a leader of anything that gets removed because of a moral law or you have a violence or death and that these are like the worst scenarios. Correct. Pastor Brady, how did you get up in front of your congregation and, uh, you know, share it, deal with it, own it and move on. How did you just deal with it and not act like there’s nothing wrong, but how did you own it? Deal with it, move on. Because I think a lot of people just lament about it for years and years. You, you, you, uh, how did you deal with it?

Well, and in my opinion, um, and I didn’t coin this phrase. A lot of people have used this phrase, but I believe it. I believe trust is the currency of leadership. And you can only spend it if you have it. And I, I, the thing that I did well, I didn’t do everything well, but the thing that I did well as a leader and those weeks and days and months after the scandal and the shooting was I stood up in front of my congregation and I told the truth and I was sincere and I was human and I said what I meant and I meant what I said and I had to return trust. And you know, you’ve heard this phrase, that trust is earned in drops, but it’s lost in falls. And I, we lost a bucket full of trust with our people. And really there were a couple of years where I didn’t know if the church would survive because church, unlike a business, uh, I have a church of over 10,000 people, but I only have a staff of about 130, which is a big step.

But so most of the church is run by volunteers. We have 3,500 active volunteers at the church. So those people show up because they want to be there. And the church can exist unless people show up to serve and to give their lives away, serving the work of the church. And so there were a lot of days and weeks and months that if, if, if people had walked away from new life church because of this trust or because of the pain that was not healed, that our church would have no longer existed. So let me just say some. When you have faithful people surrounding you, you have a chance of making it. When you have people around you that trust you, who are faithful, who are committed, then you can make your organization. Your company can walk through almost anything. If they’re faithful and committed and they are godly and they are, have good character.

But when you have people that walk away because of pain or hurt and listen, most of the volunteers in our church had a good excuse to walk away. I mean they, they, no one would have blamed him for leaving the church or are going to another church. But I, I found that new life church had the most faithful group of people ever. I’ve ever been around in my life and because of their faithfulness and because of the trust that I was able to regain with them. That’s why the church thrive and a whole lot of prayer, I mean thousands of hours of prayer meetings where we gathered and pray together. That’s what saved the church.

I don’t want to take your what you’re doing in the face and, and, and kind of make a completely secular in remove the Christ aspect of your, of your church. But I do want to get into the tactics and I want to. Because I think a lot of our listeners out there and testimony, I’m sure you’ve never run into people like this. We have a lot of Christian listeners. Listen to the show. Csi a plumber, let’s say Christian dentist, Christian plumber, Christian doctor and their business is not growing and they are. Say they’ll come to a conference, we’ll meet them and I’ll say, what’s your strategy? And they say, I’m just praying now. And uh, getting it there is a you, you do need to pray, right? We need to pray. You need to do. You need to pray for the supernatural, but you also have to do in the natural. What you can do is I want to get into the first four hours of your typical day and how you organize that day and if on a very tactical way, but I also want to get into the spiritual aspects of the first four hours of your day. How do you plan and balanced those first four hours of every day?

Well, this may surprise you, but I tried to sleep and I think, let me tell you, I think one of the. One of the analyst sleep the first four hours of the day, but I try to wake up rested and I think a lot of leaders are get in trouble because they don’t know how to manage their energies. And I’m 51 years old, which I’m at. That’s young. It’s not. I’m not old

27, but I’m 51 and I think one of the. One of the key things for leaders as learning to manage your energies and learning to give your best things to the best purposes and to give the best part of your day to the things that are the most important part of your, of your, of your business. And I know a lot of leaders, they wake up, they wake up tired because they did not go to bed early enough. They’re not eating right. They’re not working out and so they have a. They have small amounts of energy and then they tend to waste those energies on things that are not that important. So my first four hours of the day I try to wake up rested and I tried to spend. For me my most creative, my most beneficial, my most of my strongest time is between 8:00 AM and lunch, noon time, eight to noon or those were my four best hours.

And so for me, I preach every week, so I create new content for a 30 minute sermon, a speech, a sermon that I had to stand in front of thousands of people every week and give a brand new 30 minute speech. Uh, that has to be good. Now the good news is that I have the scriptures that have, you know, 2000, 3000 year old set of scriptures to guide me. So that helps with content. But I have to prepare content for my church. So I have to give my best time, the best energy that I have to the most important thing that I do. So I’m around a lot of business leaders as well. In fact, I was with one today. He ate lunch today with a guy who owns multiple car dealerships. I had lunch with him today and he, he’s 48 years old. He said to me, I am. I am trying to use my best energies to do the most important things. And so I know exactly how that feels. If I got up on every morning and wasted those first full hours on things that were really not that important, what would suffer would be my sermons on Sunday, which are some of the most important things that I do and so my first four hours I try to be laser focused,

laser being focused on and studying and doing the best thing. You get to work at eight. What time do you start working? I normally start working around 7:30 or eight in the morning. Yeah. And then your person?

Yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m active. I’m gone. I’m in. I’m engaged with the work of the Church by 7:30 or 8:00 every morning because I just, I just liked the early morning hours. I just liked those and that’s not super early, but I am up early and add it pretty, pretty quick.

When you say your focus is your phone off your smartphone, off you undistracted this first four hours, how do you stay laser focused?

Well, I have two teenagers who are driving, so I’ll always have my cell on, you know, because, um, I want to be in constant contact with my two teenagers and my wife of course is my wife of almost 30 years, but because I have two teenagers who are driving and then at school I try to stay, always have a, you know, let them have accessibility to me. But I do hit a, I do hit the red button more than the green button and I make sure that I don’t take phone calls that are going to be distracting. I try to make sure that, that I am focused on the main thing with very minimal intrusions. And so I have, I do a, I do have an office at the church and I have a unbelievably good assistant who is a really, uh, a gatekeeper for me.

And I was talking to my friend today, uh, the car dealer and I told him most small business owners do not know how to put gatekeepers around them. And uh, and I’m not talking about being a, you know, aloof. And I’m not talking about being separated from your customer base, I’m just talking about do you have to have help to minimize the distractions in your life. You have to have someone who is on your side who knows what to say yes to and what to say no to. And I think one of the best things as small business owners can invest in is a really highly qualified administrative assistant who knows how to filter emails and filter phone calls and filter conversations on your behalf. I just think it’s a lost art in the business world where we don’t have, we don’t, we don’t, uh, don’t have people around us that are helping us succeed, uh, and, and stay focused on those first four or five hours of the day

reading your website and looking at your, your information had been kind of studying a little bit and you are a radio announcer. That’s why you sound so awesome.

I love podcasts and radio.

You did. You called professional baseball and basketball games.

Play by play announcer for the AA baseball team, the shreveport captains, which are the AA team for the San Francisco giants, Major League team for three summers. I would sit in a booth for three to three and a half hours by myself with no color guy and just call professional baseball by myself for three and a half hours

on a radio and that’s really what I tell the story. I can tell stories now. I want to ask you this. You prepare sermons. I watched, I tried to go on Youtube and just look at sermons and you know, kind of really invest in getting to know your delivery style. Can you explain to listeners out there your process for writing sermons?

Well, thank you. I love it. It’s a joy and it’s a sacred privilege first of all, to share the scriptures with people and so I see it as a sacred privilege. I see it as an honor and I think the thing that I would tell pastors who are trying to prepare sermons or anybody trying to prepare a speech have any time is to know who you’re talking to. A No know your audience. In fact, before we came on this podcast, I asked you who’s listening to this? Who’s going to be listening? I asked you that question on purpose because I think a lot of people get up and they share content, really good content, but they missed the mark because they don’t know who they’re talking to. They don’t, they don’t know that you have to have an idea of who’s listening. You have to get into their emotions.

You have to tell stories that opened their hearts. Uh, you have to know who’s audiences and for sermons, I, I, first of all, I pray and I really want to hear what God is saying to my congregation, that that’s the first part. But the second part is I want to know what was happening in the lives of my congregation. Where are they in their spiritual journey and how can I help them? How can I strengthen them? How can I encourage them? And so I know a lot of pastors, when their church starts getting bigger, they start actually getting separated more and more from the very congregation that their lead that they’re called to lead. And for me, I’ve had to be super intellect today. Okay. I had lunch with a car dealer, not because he’s a car dealer because he’s my friend. He goes to my church.

He asked me to go to lunch with him and all we talked about with his family, his struggles in business, what’s going on in his life. That’s what we talked about and me tell you what, how that helps me. On Sunday when he sitting out there in front of me, he’ll be one of several thousand people sitting in that congregation. But I have a sense now of what’s happening in the lives of my people. I have a sense now, the struggles they’re facing with their teenagers and with their kids. I can now use that as a. I can use that to my benefit to connect with him now in the sermon. So No, you know God and know your audience in that order.

Successfully grown your church since you took over there or since you took the lead and you’ve successfully plants, I believe six churches, six church plants. Can you explain to us about the art of a church plant or what that looks like?

Well, first of all, I mean we, uh, yes, we, we believe that the best churches are pregnant churches, churches that plant others, and I believe that the church, if you look in the Bible, was always meant to multiply itself to birth other churches that we are not to remain focused on ourselves and our own ministry, that we’re always supposed to be looking at opportunities to expand and to plant and to grow by expansion. And so that’s one of the primary calls on the church and that’s how that’s been true now for 2000 years. We believe the great commission go into all the world and preach the Gospel is still the mandate that the church has today and so part of, as part of that mandate, we believe that when we see opportunities in other communities to plant churches, that we should be faithful to do that.

What that means though is that I have to send out some of my best leaders, my best leaders. In fact, over the last 11 years, some of my best leaders, most talented, gifted, have left to go do good things, but in response to that, let me, and this is something for business owners, I’m going to really listening to me right now. Do not fear sending out and releasing your best staff. Treat them well on their way out. Let me tell you what happens. Word gets around that you treat people well and guess what happened? Good people will want to come work for you, but if you treat people that leave your company or treated poorly, guess what? Those people are telling you, other young friends, they’re telling their other young friends that you’re not a good person to work far and you’ll find it more and more difficult to hire really young, talented staff.

So for me, at our church, when a young man or young woman wants to leave our church for good reason, they want to go do good thing. God’s calling them out. I tried to lay my hands on and try to pray over them. I’d want to bless them. I try to get the money and support because when they leave with the blessing of my church, I don’t have any trouble now finding young men and women who want to come and serve with me because they know it’s not hotel California. Right. You can check in, but you can’t check.

Yeah. That’s what a lot of them.

A lot of churches and a lot of businesses feel like Hotel California and all the people over 50 know what the song from the eagles. Right? That you can check in, but you can’t leave and I think that is an awful way to run a business and I think it’s an awful way to lead your church. When young talented leaders are brought into your church, nurture them well, trained them, love them, support them and send them out. With your blessing and what it does, it literally opens up a floodgate of young leaders that want to come work for you.

Yeah. We have a term here, we call it the tour of duty, and that the idea that you think that anybody is going to come on and work for you and be there forever is really your kid yourself and that is. That is a great word and, and you know so many people out there are, you know, come to us and say it’s so hard to find good people. It’s so hard to find people that want to come work for me and that may be one of the reasons why, because you have to treat them well on the way in. You’ve got to hug them on the way in. You got to hug them on the way out so that, that is a powerful word. Thank you for sharing that with us.

A Reid Hoffman, by the way, the CEO, the founder of Linkedin, he would also agree with you and one of the original founders of the paypal, they come to the paypal mafia with Elon Musk and peter thiel and Reid Hoffman. He talks about the tour of duty and the whole point is you want to get people, gather them to help them discover the, the intersection of the two cycles. Is he the best that could Pisces intersection of your goals and their goals and then help them get to where they want to go and then move on. I want to ask you though, Pastor Brady Boyd, what are the hardest aspects of running a church your size?

Well, this may surprise you, but I am human and I don’t like to be criticized and I think I think anybody that’s doing anything significant is being criticized right now. And, uh, we, you know, can look across the political landscape. You can look across the church landscape and you see more and more leaders who, uh, don’t handle criticisms very well, but that’s just, that’s the nature of the territory. And in fact, if you’re going to run a business of any size and deal with the public, you’re going to have criticism in the I think. Here’s what I have found. There is an ounce of truth in every pound of criticism. And I actually read Google reviews about not church. I actually read negative emails. I actually just did a church wide survey where I asked people for their opinion and I got back about 1500 responses and some of them were negative and I read every single one of them I read, I, I learned to not be so thin skinned because if you, if we’re in this for the approval of people than the approval of people is what we will live for.

And that’s a dangerous place to be. If we’re really in our churches and in our businesses for the sake of God’s kingdom, then his approval will be what we ultimately live far. But the reality is, uh, we are also dealing with a broken humanity. And because of social media, the criticisms are instant and unfiltered. We know, I tell people that facebook and instagram and twitter, that used to be what we called journaling now as public domain. Like you would write these things down, frustrated at night, go to bed, fill up and feel better the next day. And what you wrote down in your journal the night before. Would it have never been publicized, but that’s different today. People immediately emote on social media unfiltered. They don’t sleep on it. They have, they, I call it, a lot of them are keyboard calvert’s and they get on, they get on their keyboard and they attack.

They are, they’re going to be difficult. Uh, they’re going to say things personally about you. And if you can handle that in today’s culture, then you won’t lead with any kind of significant influence. Most leaders can’t handle criticism. And I find it difficult. I find it terribly painful. Some of the most painful moments I’ve had as a pastor is when people leave my church for stupid reasons, for foolish reasons, not, don’t mind if people leave the church for good reasons, but I try not to provide good reasons. Most of the time when people leave my churches for silly reasons. And that’s hurtful. It’s painful. A lot of people stopped being customers of your business for silly reasons. Uh, and if you can’t handle that, then you probably don’t have longevity as a leader.

I understand that new life now has multiple congregations. Can you, can you share with us what this looks like and why you decided to organize your church this way?

Well, we do. We have multiple congregations that all are under one umbrella of new life church and we. What we have found is that because our number one, our city is about 600,000 people and so not everyone in our city will come to one building and and more and more people are looking for smaller, more intimate places of worship and unfortunately for new life, our main building, a new life north has 5,000 seat auditorium. So it’s like a college basketball auditorium. When you come to our building and while we worked really hard to make that big space so warm and welcoming and make it feel intimate still. It’s a 5,000 seat arena. And so what we’ve realized is that a lot of people, especially in today’s postmodern post evangelical culture, that they want to go to the smaller building, smaller spaces where they can be known where it feels more intimate and feels a bit safer for them.

And so we have launched these congregations all over our city downtown. We have a Spanish speaking congregation, we have a congregation in Manitou Springs, which is a tiny community right outside of Colorado. Uh, we have a congregation that meets on Friday night in a smaller room at our main building. So, and all of these are led by live preachers, features the people that are standing on the stage. So it’s not video, it’s all live preaching with a, uh, with a shared leadership. I lead that group. We all kind of preached from the same tech. So whatever congregation you go to add new life, you’re going to hear somebody is going to be standing on that stage. That is your pastor preaching a live sermon face to face, eye to eye, person to person, to you. And it has worked really well for us. I mean, we have found that when we can start these smaller congregations with real intentional ministry, with people who preaching and teaching the people that they know that our church will grow and thrive.

And I think there’s something to be learned in the business world that when you expand your business, make sure that the people that are leading those expansion or carrying your heart and your values, that they know you know them and they are not just multiplying your business. I think that’s the easiest thing to do is to multiply your business. The hardest thing to do is to multiply your values. And so what we’ve done here is work really hard at making sure that when these pastors leave our church to go plant or to start these congregations, that we have shared convictions and shared values. And that’s why these, these, these congregations have worked for us.

How do I know to open up a second location? You know, how do I know it’s time to grow my business? You know, a lot of guys have the year, they have one location and they, they’re in there physically and they’re, they’re kind of little like, well, if I opened a second location, I can’t be in two places at one time. And they’re a little fearful there. What’s going to happen? And how do I know it’s the right thing to do and how do I do it? So can you kind of speak into that, the businessmen out there listening right now going, you know, I’ve got a business that’s rock and doing really well and might want to dip my toe in the pool of opening up a second location. And you’ve done what, six or seven as you said?

Yeah. And there are some principles that are the same. Obviously we’re a church, we’re nonprofit. And so there are some leadership dynamics that are a bit different, but I will tell you this, it always rises and falls with leaders. So when you, uh, I think one of the reasons that some people’s businesses are not growing is because they’re not allowing the really qualified leaders that they have in their business right now. You’re not giving them any opportunities. And um, I, I think when there is a possibility of expansion in your business, you will attract those entrepreneurial young leaders. And so I tell people all the time, I’ll tell you when it’s right to expand. When you have the right leader and you have enough capital to invest, so the number, there’s two reasons why businesses fail in expansion mode because they didn’t put the right leader in place or they ran out of money and I think for us as a church, we will never start a congregation where I, if I, if I’m not convinced that I have the right leader, a qualified leader who shares my values and I have not raised enough resources for them to be successful, and I think it’d be if those, if either one of those two things are not in order, then you can expand your.

Just it’s suicidal to expand at that point, but when you have the right leader and you have the capital, I think it’s. There’s a lot of people that are listening to the podcast that you’re afraid to take a risk and that’s not the time to be afraid to listen. Expansion is not for the meek. Expansion is for the brave, that’s for sure. So there’s always inherent risk when you expand, but the benefit of expanding far outweighs the risk when you start and especially when you have the right leader with the right capital in place. Uh, I think it is. You have to do it.

I believe that you and I know a few of the same people you nearly 18 years ago, my fiance now, my wife, we went to premarital counseling with a man by the name of pastor David growthy and then Vanessa and I were married at the beautiful glass chapel in broken Arrow, Oklahoma by pastor David growthy. Do you know this man?

I do notice man. In fact, David and Becky, his wife Becky, have both, are both working for me and their son, Daniel growthy is actually one of our teaching pastors, senior pastors and their daughter Christine, who is one of their twin daughters also works for me. So the entire growthy family minus, except for two of their kids. I think the whole family works for me,

a very ethical guy and he’s a pastor. Could you promise to give them a big shout out from Clay Clark in Tulsa, Oklahoma? And Dr C,

he’ll be glad to hear from me. He’s a good guy.

I’m serious. That guy, my wife and I went into premarital counseling and you know, uh, I thought it would be like, oh, we’ll do is we’ll just talk in generalities and vagaries and hand you certificate. That guy went deep. He wanted to make sure he asked us all these weird awkward questions and we walked out of there with 100 percent clarity on what we wanted as a couple. And it was the best pre marital counseling we could have possibly had. How, how did pastor David [inaudible] and the growth growthy family enter the world of the new life church?

Well, they, they, uh, they, you know, they have a strong connection with university. And some of my, when I came to new life 11 years ago, a lot of my staff came from Oru. They had graduated from there. And so they knew the growth, the family. And then when I had a, uh, a pastoral opening that fit their skills, I reached out to them and they were willing to move to Colorado. And so it was the Lru connection that helped me find that entire family so that that’s. It was, it was a great move.

Z. I’m now going to take the gloves off and ask Pastor Brady Boyd the rude and offensive question as only I really. Okay, so here we go. Here we go. You delegate, you cast the vision, right? You hire capable people or volunteers. You delegate and then you hold people accountable. I repeat. You cast the vision. You have capable people. You delegate, you hold people accountable. I’d like for you to share about what happens when you delegate something and somebody does not do something, but they knew what they were supposed to do. They definitely knew what to do and they just chose not to do it. How do you as a pastor of a church of 10,000 plus great humans, how do you deal? How do you, how do you deal with it?

Well, what you just described, behavior that was a bad behavior. That is intentional behavior. I don’t have very much tolerance for. Especially if their assignment was clear. They had enough resources and time to get it done. And then they didn’t get it done, so if it was bad, if it was as intentional as you just described, then the leashes, I put them on and off we went. We have a formal warning process that we take them through. We put them on probation. If it’s. If it’s a matter of, hey, I worked really hard. I didn’t know exactly what to do. I didn’t have proper resources. I didn’t have proper training within then it’s a matter of discipleship and training, but I didn’t. Then I take ownership of that. If I tell, if I give someone authority and responsibility, but don’t give them the resources and the time to do it, that’s my fault.

If I give them responsibilities and I gave them a enough resources and time to accomplish it and they simply don’t do it, then it’s either a matter of chemistry or a matter of competency and either one of those I can. I can fix ’em. I mean if, if, if they, if they simply are not competent, then I think I owe them an honest conversation. And this is where I think a lot of leaders of breakdown and their leadership, I owe it to someone to tell them when they are not capable because that’s for their benefit and for my benefit, I tell, I tell him all, all the people on my staff that both of us need to be happy with this arrangement. In other words, I am not going to be perpetually miserable. Uh, justice, keep them on staff and likewise, I don’t want them to be miserable working for me. So the arrangement up between employer and employee needs to be open when arrangement. Right? I need to be happy and they need it.

You just said just so willing to be perpetually miserable to accommodate. So is that what you just said?

Yeah, I know a lot of, I know a lot of bosses and owners,

right? Yeah. They’re willing to be perpetually miserable and dealing with the problem. And I think I’m a guy that, uh, I think one of the strengths I have as a leader is I, I’m honest and uh, and they, people know that when I talked to them, I’m going to be honest with them. I care about them, I love them, I really do care about them and I really do am concerned about them, but I’m going to be honest with them. And I think I think that that creates a healthy working environment for me and for them.

Z in businesses to size of yours, a pastor and a church the size of yours. There’s countless details. Let me think about this. We’ve got to stay on top of the parking logistics, stocking the coffee bar, providing safe child care, managing the audio, managing the video, the print pieces, a pasture boy. What kind of systems and checklists do you have in place to make sure that no balls are getting dropped? And NCLR, what’d you ask some more systems questions for? Pastor Brady Boyd? Boy Will. Good at systems and checklists. Do you have in place to make sure the ball is not getting dropped?

Well, we try to identify the wind, number one, what are we trying to accomplish, and we try to make sure that the goal line is very, very clear. I know these are common business phrases, but it’s really is true if you don’t know what the win is, if you don’t know what the finish line looks like, you will never get there. And so we try to make sure that we have a clear set of expectations for every person. You know what I’m surprised about, I’m surprised at how many people are working for a company and they don’t know what their job is. I find this all the time. I say, what is your job? They’ll say, well, I’m a salesman. I’m this. So no, I. I said, no, really? How do you know if you’re doing a good job? And very few people can tell me.

They can tell me their job title, but very few people can tell me if they’re doing a good job or not. And the reason that that’s the case, it’s because most employers have not clearly identified a finish line, a goal line for them. And I think we work hard at that at new life. What is it that is your job? How do we know if you’re doing a good job, what are the measurables that we can use to identify whether or not you’re doing a good job? And I think, I just think if you’re not doing that, then you’re going to frustrate your employees. And so we have a clear checklist of what we expect from people we evaluated often in a relational way. So it’s not a corporate top down heavy handed leadership style. It’s super relational. It’s very personal, but it’s also very intentional

for you, pastor. You’ve got, I think you said 35. 100 volunteers. So those would be for a guy that owns a business. So it would be like interns that are working for nothing, um, if you will. And then you have about 130 employees. How many of all of that?

Okay. So now we’ve got 330. One hundred and 30 of them are full time.

She have an army of people. How many people, how many of those people who have direct seriously have direct access to, you know, like Jesus had

both of my full time and part time employees, which is about 300. I would know almost all of their names out of that. And by the way I just wrote a book and I just did some research on that. It has, it has been proven with clear scientific proof that most human beings can only manage about 150 relationships and out of that hundred and 50 relationships you can only have about 15 really close friendships. Now, in my case, I’m married to my best friend and I have two teenagers. Will I have an 18 and a 20 year old? So three of those 15 spots are taken by people that live in my house and, and that should be true for all of this. By the way, the other 12 spots are, are primarily my elders. I have a group of elders that help me lead the church and my senior team.

Outside of that, I have one or two or three really close friends like guy friends that are really like brothers to me and that’s the 15 people, I mean, and so outside of that I can know you, I can have conversations with you, I can care about you and I can help you, but I can’t be super close to about more than 12 or 15 people. And that’s true for every, every human being pretty much. That’s actually the, that’s actually a pretty extravagant, if you have 15 really close personal relationships, you are a wealthy person relationally. And uh, I think it but a lot of times leaders how to be everything to every person and I can’t, I just know I can, it will, it will, it will wear me out, it will wear me out and wear them out. But because I will never be able to meet their expectations that they have for me and I know that. And so I have about 12 or 15 people that are really close to me and then I try to maintain as many relationships outside of that as I can up to about 150 people

of. Do you on average have to fire

real quick? I have a sound effect. More people

a year for people. I mean, that’s because about the organization I lead is pretty big. And so, uh, I think that’s actually a pretty small number. I don’t personally have to fire them. I mean, I have to, uh, I, I’m trying to remember the last time I personally fired someone. I called them in and say you’re fired. I think there’s probably been a couple of years, but two years ago, I think it was the last time I had to do that. But, um, but I’m in my organization. I mean, there are times when people are simply not good performers and being fired by the way, it doesn’t mean that the person being fired as a bad human being, uh, I think that works. Fired sometimes means that you’re getting rid of evil people. That’s not true. Being sometimes being fired as a blessing, I mean almost every, every person of worth and value and are in human history has been fired from a job. Um, I’ve never been fired. I’ve been laid off, but I felt like being fired. But I think I think, uh, you know, two to four people, you know, you’re in my organization, which is a pretty low number.

This is Marshall and I wanted to circle back to something that you’d said about expansion because I’m working with a lot of business owners that are expanding their business right now. They’re either looking at a second location or hiring more people and what they’re finding is they’re having to add more layers of leadership and management to their organization. And so just in the same way that you guys have what you said, it’s just been resonating with me. You said it’s easy to scale your business, but it’s much more difficult to scale your values. And so how are you inspiring those values within people? What does that actually look like? Are Those meetings? Is that trainings? Because what I’ve found is nobody’s going to be more passionate about a business than the business owner themselves, so how do you, how do you inspire and catalyze that, that get up and go and the those, those core values that you want to uphold within the organization when you scale?

That’s a great question and I agree with you. That is probably the most difficult thing that I have to do as a leader because values are can’t just be taught. They have to be caught, and what I mean by that is you can teach. You can stand in front of your employee group and teach your values all day long, but until they see and witness you living them out in front of them, until they see the cost that you’ve paid for those values to be instilled in you until they have experienced those values alongside who is just a teaching, it’s just bullet points. It’s just a powerpoint presentation. So you have to live alongside your team. If your team has to see those values lived out in your own life. And that’s what I mean by being caught. So certainly you need to make it clear we have four values at new life church and I talk about them all the time, but until my team sees me lived on out, then it’s just information.

It’s not transformation, it’s not revelation to them until they watch it until they. And it’s really the leadership model of Jesus. Think about this. Jesus did things in front of them and then he asked his disciples to do those things with him and then he sent them out to go do those things on their own. So I think that’s a great leadership model for us. So you have to. First of all, if I asked my staff to make a sacrifice or do something, I have to go first. I’m at the front of the line. I go it as leaders go first, leaders eat last, but they serve first and I believe that to be true. I go first, then I asked them to do those things with me. Hey, I’ve done these things in front of you. Now, come do these things with me. And then only then after those two steps, can you ask your team to go expand out and go do those things without you, but if they have not seen you live out your values, if you’ve not lived out your values alongside them, then they’re never going to go out from you and replicate those values.

You are a pastor of 10,000 plus member church, but you also are an author and you recently have written a book called addicted to busy. Could explain what? What inspired you to first write this book?

Well, I, yes, I, I realized that most people are living lives of a controlled chaos and it’s probably not healthy for our human soul. And it certainly wasn’t healthy from my soul. I realized that I was going too fast for too long and it was costing me more than I needed it to cost. And I believe Jesus gave us a rhythm of living that requires us to work hard, but also to rest well and our American culture, we have the working hard part down. I mean, most people who are successful are working hard. You don’t, you’re not successful. If you don’t work hard, and that’s true, we all know that, are very few people have stumbled upon success. Most people have worked their way into some kind of success. What makes that success sustainable is our ability not to work harder, but to know when to rest, when to work hard and rest well.

And so I tell people that, that I do not, uh, I don’t rest. Uh, I, I, I rest for the sake of my responsibilities. In other words, the reason I rest is because I have a lot of responsibilities and if I don’t stop and rest and take care of my own soul, then those responsibilities that I have will suffer. And so I think the airline industry has it, right? Put Your own oxygen mask on first before you assist the kid with the biggest potential, right? So as I think we have to put oxygen in our own system, we have to make sure that we are cared for, that we are resting well, so that when the time comes for us to work hard and to give out on a tremendous amount of energy, we had that energy, uh, from our rest that we can give out. And so I wrote the book addicted to busy because I was addicted to busy, uh, and I needed to learn how to slow down and care for my soul so that I could take care of the responsibilities that God was giving me. That’s why I wrote the book and it is the best book I’ve written and the most difficult book that I’ve ever had to follow.

Pastor Brady Boyd, I have one more question for you. I know, I know he’s going to one up me with a question that is more profound that makes more sense. One of the more articulate one that really the people are gonna like more pressure on lead off question here for you. A lot of power side of the Bible, which I recommend. And, uh, you obviously recognized as the irrefutable word of God. Is there a specific book that you would recommend for all of our aspiring and current entrepreneurs out there? All the leaders out there, you say, yes, I recommend the Bible. And I also, like this particular book benefited you or a couple of books.

Yeah. Well, a couple of books. One is may surprise you, but it’s called the pastor by Eugene Peterson and Peterson just passed away. I think he is a pillar of the faith. I think we lost treasure in the body of Christ when he passed away a few weeks ago and he was so influential in my life. I got to spend some time with him at his lakeside home and Kalispell, Montana. I have a picture of that meeting in my office, but the, the pastor by Eugene Peterson is a beautiful book on finding these good rhythms. He led a large shirt. He wrote books. He was a seminary professor. He had children. He was married, and yet he found this beautiful spiritual rhythm, the way of living it looked like Jesus. And he talks about that in the book called the pastor. Uh, and I, I just, I just find it really fascinating.

I think it’s a super good book. I’ve read it many times. I’ve given it away many, many times. Um, I, I think, I think there’s a ton of books out there that I’ve been reading lately. I’m, I’m, I’m in the middle of several books right now. I’m reading, I’m really reading a lot of Eugene Peterson right now. The cars. Uh, he just passed away and I’m kind of refreshing myself with his works. Um, so those are books I would totally recommend. Um, I love, I love stuff by Maxwell. I love all his stuff. I love all the leadership. Okay.

Read them all. We’re going to be. We’re interviewing him tomorrow.

Yeah. Tell him I said hello. A powerfully powerful. I think it’s an exciting. Um, I think he’s got a lot to say. It seems like as he’s gotten older he is really just more and more has more to say to leaders. I’m looking, I’m terrible about. Sometimes I read books and I n I forget details about themselves looking for one right now that I’m right in the middle of, but it’s aren’t obscurity and hiddenness and I think that’s a lost art in our culture of how to remain hidden, remain obscure to not constantly seek out the spotlight. Uh, so I’m reading a lot of books on that right now and those particular topics, I think that’s good for my soul to read those kinds of books. Um, so those are kind of books I would recommend.

Z, my favorite bad recommendation or listeners out there, he just went to google. Brady Boyd right there. Pastor Brady Boyd, if he’s going to do a google search for Pastor Brady Boyd real quick. It’s like modern art really. I mean it’s, it’s beautiful Pastor Brady Boyd right there to be able to download the picture frame. Whatever you gotta do everybody that’s going to do it right now. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. With that kind of a book team, your latest book called speak life. I love the name of that book life that is just. I would. I’m, I’m fat. I got to read this book.

Tell us about love it.

No Sir.

I read that because I saw so many people farming with words. I mean, I, I know the power. We’re on a podcast because we believe in the power of words, but those words can also be death if not used properly. And as a pastor, I’m just, I’m so troubled right now by our political climate, by what’s going on in our world. And um, I wrote that book as a way to help people understand and harness the power of our words by the way, the book I was trying to look for and I, and I just had a moment there, but it’s called anonymous. The book is called anonymous by Alicia Coley and it is powerful. I’ve been reading it now for just one of those books that I’ve been reading for a long time for several weeks, but it’s called anonymous. And I was this a good leadership book and I can’t get enough of it right now, but thank you for speaking about speak life are listening to our words. Have the ability to bring life or death into every situation, and I, I believe that if, when we harnessed the power of our words that we can see life pop up in every part of our, of our world.

See, and this is divisive political climate, I’m not going to be divisive. No, of course. No, I’m not going to, but I can’t say that some have suggested that we should say some. Some not us, not us people we don’t even know who are these people have suggested that we should go to a believer. I believe it’s new life church.org. Is that correct? Faster.

Yeah.

Do you want to go and people are going to be. People have said you should really pressure the listeners to go there or else I said, no, no, no. I’m not sure where we’re going with that, but we’re going to saying if you, if you do what you need to do, but be judged by others. If you don’t go to new life, church dinner at least once, at least once a beautiful website, a beautiful man. Great Pastor, Pastor Brady. Boy, I appreciate you for taking time out of your schedule. Make sure you say hello to the growth piece for me, and we like to end each and every show with the boom, which essentially Marsha, can we role play real quick here? Yeah, let’s write to one. Boom is an acronym. It stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. So Z. Are you ready? I am ready. Pastor Boyd from Colorado. Are you ready sir?

I’m ready.

Marshall Morrissey rating from this room. Here we go. My friend at Thomas Edison once wrote, vision without execution is hallucination. Napoleon hill once said, action is the real measure of intelligence. Again, action is the real measure of intelligence, so I know he will discuss some great things today. We had a once in a lifetime opportunity to interview a pastor of a massive church, but my question for you is what are you going to do as a result of what you’ve learned today? And so this is what I would encourage you to do better. These are just a few action steps I would encourage you to take. I would encourage you to day while it’s still fresh on your mind, to sit down into design your calendar for your week. Design your weekly calendar, couldn’t even put the blocks of time in there. Put the blocks of time in there for your, for your group interview.

Put the blocks of time in there for your staff meeting. Put the blocks of time in there for your accounting. Put the blocks of time and therefore your your your training. Put the time, design your schedule to be what you want it to be put to the time blocks in your schedule for your faith, but the time blocks in your schedule for your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendships, and your fun. Because to quote Lee Cockerell, the former executive vice president of Walt Disney world resorts who wants managed over 40,000 people and think about this for a second and a million customers per week. Again, he managed 40,000 employees in a million customers per week. As the former executive vice president of Walt Disney world resorts and he wants said to me, he said to me, he said, what gets scheduled? Clay gets done. What gets scheduled gets done. So I would just encourage you to make the time for what matters with your life and if you get a chance to share this show with a friend. I know you know somebody in your life who’s struggling to manage their calendar and their their day as a, as a business leader or entrepreneur. And I would encourage you just to share this podcast with them via spotify, itunes, Iheartradio, or streaming right there on the thrive time show.com website. And I’ll see you tomorrow.