EP243: Surviving the Creative Christmas Church Service

When you are able to lead up and pitch that vision to your lead pastor, this is not just for execution but it's for the journey and how we're treating each other along the way. And hopefully that unlocks their heart and gets them to sign up on a concept. So I've always found that to be super helpful. If you're leading up to a lead pastor, lead with that. Or if a lead pastor just realize you are going to put your staff in a much healthier position by giving them a concept much earlier.

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciplemaking possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? And where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church or a startup church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. Our heart is that churches like yours would discover a newfound focus on disciplemaking that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, hey, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. This is a Thanksgiving week here with the podcast, so right up front let's take a moment here, pause, and say Happy Thanksgiving if you are in the US. And if you're like our guest from Canada, well, Happy Monday, because it's not a thing. Thanksgiving may be a thing, but it's not a Thanksgiving thing.

Ben Staple, you tell me. Is it a Thanksgiving thing in Canada? And Jeff Reed, you Americans are so thankless. You wait all the way to November to celebrate. Us Canadians, we are so thankful we celebrate in October because we just can't wait that long in the year. Plus our harvest season is earlier because it's colder. But we're also a more thankful people. So burn on you.

So what you're telling me is you believe that you are more thankful than Americans because you celebrate like less than thirty days sooner in the year? I'm not even going to get into this. You know what? As an American, we're a twelfth more thankful than you are. I'll put it there in terms. You're a twelfth more thankful.

Maybe. Listen, I don't know. We can get into a political thing in America. What we're feeling about that, I don't want to go there. Nobody wants to go there. But right now, hey, Happy Thanksgiving at least. And Ben, Happy Thursday coming up this week. Well, he's in. You're in right now, so maybe you'll enjoy something for Thanksgiving. You recognize the holiday, you Canadian, right? Like you're not so biased that you don't. Okay, so what is your listen? As we're totally going off here, which is awesome, what does Thanksgiving look like for a Canadian that lives in America? What do you do?

Not much. I just connect with my Canadian friends and text them, say Happy Thanksgiving, and then I wait for the American one to gorge myself. So that's about it. I'm, you know, my mother's not mailing me a frozen turkey. It's just, you know, now that, yeah, it's barely lonely.

So you're totally a hypocrite because you think you're twelve percent better than an American, but you don't acknowledge the actual Canadian holiday. Instead you wait for the American one to come around.

It's true.

Okay, I just wanted to get that one out of the way. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. This is what this episode's going to be like. Ben Stapley is a very good friend of mine and has been inspirational in my life, honestly, before I met the guy. And when I met the guy, he was true to his form and excited to have him on the podcast.

Before we get to that though, I launched a book. We published the book, The Church in VR in the Metaverse: How God is Moving in This Virtual Yet Quite Real Reality. And so that is out there right now. It is a free download. Thank you very much to Leadership Network for providing this resource free to churches and to people like you. You can buy it on Amazon as a paperback book. You can buy the Kindle if you want that, but the PDF is available for you right now. Go swing over to thechurch.digital/slvrbook. That'll get you to the right page. The church.digital/slvrbook. We've had hundreds of downloads already on the book and very excited about the trajectory of it. Some great feedback, telling stories of people that are launching and running churches and doing ministry and evangelism in virtual reality. And so it's some really interesting perspectives in there. And so go check that out.

Now, commercial over. Let's go and pivot back to the hypocrite Canadian in the room, Ben Stapley. It's great to have you on the show here, my friend. Ben is currently executive pastor for a church up in New Jersey, the Life Christian Church. He was down here for a season in Miami, Florida, where I am, working at the church that I formerly worked at. So we developed a relationship through that. And now he's back up closer to his motherland, closer to some family up there in Canada as well.

So Ben, thanks for jumping on the show here with us.

It's great to be here. Most people, Jeff, when they leave New Jersey, they don't come back. I'm one of the few that's come back to the state. And a quick plug for your book, I got a chance to skim through it, but I did dive into the theological ramifications of virtual ministry, and I really enjoyed that. So that's my quick plug for the book as well.

I love how you're not only practical with your approach but theological, which generally speaking, I haven't seen as much ink spilled on that topic recently. So I love that.

Yeah, there is plenty of room to explore the theology of that. And it's funny, in the book itself I say this is not going to be the in-depth theological work. Like there could be books just written on that one topic, but we're going to scratch the surface of it and start some of those conversations. So thank you for that.

Ben Stapley read my book. Like, that's awesome. But hey, so we're not talking VR. If you're listening, that's not where we're going with this conversation today. It's Thanksgiving week, which means Christmas is around the corner. And as I'm going to put on my ministry hat, when I was production director, when I was creative director, when I was communications director, when I was weekend experience director at physical churches, to be honest, bluntly here, I hate this time of year.

This time of year was always difficult for me because everybody ramps up ministry. Everybody ramps up their desires and expectations, and there was just a lot of tension and frustration centered around, you know, the worship team wanting specific things for some of these major events and holidays, production had their desires, communications wanted their own thing, the video department, the creative guys wanted to do something crazy, the online guys trying to figure out what to do with this. And like, everybody ramps up. Do I get any resources? Yeah, exactly. The online guys, like you, you want me to do what with the ball of twine? Like, and so there's just all this tension centered around this. And what do we do with this? How do we operate? How do we work together as a team? How do we align? What does that even mean if you're the leader in this situation? How do you lead in this?

And I know I'm always the guy that's like, let me bring in people smarter than me, people that have been more successful in the space than me, and let's learn from them. Thus, enter Ben Stapley into the conversation, because I've seen Ben navigate this time and time again. And I would love to have a conversation centered around that.

So Ben, thanks for jumping on it.

It's great to be here, Jeff. Just to give some context for myself, I've been doing Christmases now for seventeen years in ministry. It was in television prior to that, so I have some years of experience of what has worked and what hasn't. I've paid the dumb tax a number of times, and hopefully this conversation helps your listeners avoid some of the hurdles that I had to jump through or break through in finding a good work relationship with the teams that are on peer levels and then also up and down the organization to make sure that they're not just executing the experience but they're enjoying the experience as well.

So I'm excited for this conversation because I'm going to pass on what I've learned to help other people not have to experience some of the pain that I have in learning some of this stuff over the years.

So right off the bat, you know, some of the tension that I felt in many ways is a lot. And this is not healthy, but this is what I've observed in my own ministry as well as what I've seen from others in the space. Often times a lot of these ministries operate in silos. They're operating in separation from each other, doing whatever they want. And in seasons like Christmas and Easter, really these siloed ministries are forced to work together almost. They're shoved into the same room where they have to operate in the same space, whereas they're usually able to call their own shots outside of that.

What does that look like? How have you seen that? Or how would you maybe address some of that siloed approach here?

Often times we work independently in terms of some of the teams that you've listed, be it your communications, your creative, your worship, your production, your guest services, and we're off doing our own things. And then we have to throw ourselves together quickly.

I always like to start with the why behind it. And so like, why are we trying to do this? Why are we trying to be unified? So I, as a believer, I look towards the model of our Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who's a Triune God, different but equal and unified. And that's what Jesus's prayer was, right? His high priestly prayer with his disciples in John 17. You know, I want you to be unified and to have unity just as me and the Father are united.

And so when I start with it, I always start with the why. Why are we trying to be united? Because when we do that, we reflect the nature of God first and foremost. So let's be united. And then second of all, in terms of the how do we do it, I've been in work situations. You know, call out, when I was at Christ Fellowship, we were physically divided. Our worship department was in one building. Our creative department was in another floor of another building. Our production was all over the place. They weren't even naturally rubbing shoulders with each other.

So in terms of if you're looking to get practical right away, the how is get your people in closer proximity with each other, not just when you're planning your big holidays, but throughout the year. That proximity will build an affinity between those team members and those departments. So if you're already siloed physically, you're going to be siloed when it comes philosophically, when it comes relationally.

So first of all, get your people closer to each other. That will help right away dissolve some of these tensions that you're bringing up right now, because you just, you're not naturally rubbing shoulders with each other. It's hard to despise or think negatively of somebody that you interact with on a regular basis.

Describing here when you have relational equity, when you're friends, when you have a relationship with a person, you're more likely to see that. And often times in church space, I mean let's be honest, especially in these creative departments and communication, it's 24/7, 365. You're stretching every resource you have that you can get there, but it's hard to kind of take time to do that.

Now, one of the things that I've heard, and this is something I have felt this tension where I was the guy. When I was the communications director, weekend experience director, setting the stuff up, like I would want to talk Christmas like in September. I would want to get everything done and lined up so there's time to develop on that. And also I know what it is to look to the senior leader, to the lead communicator, and say, "Hey, what are you preaching Christmas?" And you know, sometime around the beginning of school, Labor Day, and that often doesn't go over well. That conversation's not received often times.

How do you deal with the tension of trying to, when do you suggest that we do talk about Christmas? Should we already have the plan going into Thanksgiving? And how do we get everybody on board with maybe that mindset?

Yeah, you've brought up two points that are helpful. The first is time, and then the second is where is the concept originating from. So when it comes to time, a lot of these tensions that you're going to have will be mitigated with a gift of time. The more time you have, the easier it is to resolve these issues. If you have a truncated workflow, we're going to all lean to our worst tendencies, and the bad tendencies of our systems are going to come out. So give yourself a gift of time.

To get really practical, I like to start planning Christmas no later than September because things get rolling really quickly. But the tension, you know, and I think most churches do this fairly well. I don't see this tension. The bigger tension I see is everyone forgets about Easter. So I'm already calling that out now. It's you know, in December you should be starting about Easter because you're going to take the break over the Christmas holiday, you're going to come back in your big January series, and then you look at the calendar and Easter is two months away.

So generally speaking, I like to start planning Christmas in September and start planning Easter in December, because if not, you're behind the ball. So that's the first thing in terms of timeline.

The second thing you talked about going to your lead pastor early and saying, "Hey, what's your idea? Can you give it to me?" If they don't have something, that's fine. Then you need to start pitching things because you can't, you know, it's okay for them to pull out the baby Jesus story and their message that they've used probably year after year after year. They can pull that out the week before. That doesn't work for everybody else.

And so you need to gracefully light a little fire underneath them and say, "We need a concept. You don't need a concept because you can do it last minute. We need a concept now."

And when it comes to that, I always encourage teams to say, "Where is the concept coming from?" It can come two directions. It can come top down, so the lead pastor is saying, "You know, for this Christmas, for ourselves, we're doing an evergreen theme. You know, here in the Northeast, it's fall season. We're losing our leaves, but evergreen trees stay green all year long, and we're using that as a metaphor for God's love. That the seasons are going to change, but God's love towards us is consistent. It stays green, it stays vibrant, stays fresh. Other things are dying around, but his love does not. It's evergreen. So we're going with that theme."

Our lead pastor didn't have that theme, and we had to pitch it to him. So either the concept goes top down, the lead pastor towards the team, or the team pitches a couple ideas. I always say two to three because if you're pitching more ideas than that, then you're kind of wasting your time. You don't really have solid ideas. You just have a couple of guesses. Pitch two or three solid ideas.

And then beyond that, like in terms of a regular rhythm of work, figure out which works for you and stick to it. So I've been a part of some organizations where the lead pastor is really the creative director as well. They have tons of concepts, and they want to, okay, great. We know it's coming top down. Be a part of other organizations or helped other churches where the lead pastor is not creative at all, and they need the creative department to pitch ideas.

So figure out which model you are and stick with it. That'll bring a lot of peace to a lot of members of the team, just understanding which model that you're working with.

So if somebody hasn't, let's do worst case scenario. And if this is you right now, I'm praying for you. It's Thanksgiving week, and somebody out there hasn't put one thought into this. Man, I don't even know how to start there.

Well, if you have not started this process, then I would set up a meeting with your lead pastor tomorrow and say, "Christmas is around the corner. We don't have anything up on the whiteboard yet. You know, here are two or three ideas that I think will work. Will you sign off on one now or end of day or end of week so that we can start ideating?"

So if you don't have a concept yet, ideate on a concept and then pitch it to your lead pastor and give them a timeline that you need them to sign off on. And I'll tell you, you know, sometimes lead pastors don't understand all the work that's needed and the domino effects that need to fall. And the first domino that needs to fall is the concept. What are we doing? What's the big idea we're trying to wrap this around? No other dominoes can keep falling down after that until that first one topples over.

And I always tell them like, "Hey, the sooner you get that concept, the better the experience is going to be." And more importantly, we're talking about team health, organizational health, relational health, not just the experience is going to be better at the end of the day, but the journey is going to be better.

And this is probably where I'd camp out with you, Jeff. Here is for probably the first half of my career, I didn't solely focus on the destination, but it was the big thing. How is the show gonna go? What is the end result? And I paid little attention to the journey. It was all destination, no journey. And because of that, I compromised what God wanted to do in our midst leading up to the show.

I treated the show as like some big crown achievement instead of realizing the way I interact with team members during the process is hallowed ground. The way that I'm able to treat them with grace and respect and dignity and receive that back from them, that makes God pleased as much as, "Wow, we hit the note on that song and that vocal run was well produced or that video was dope."

And I would say, you know, probably at this point in my career, I even say the journey is more important than the destination. But often times we compromise it. We compromise it for the show.

And so for my lead pastor, especially if you know lead pastors are different, wired differently, but a lot of them, you know, kind of prophet, priest, king, a lot of them have that pastoral heart. That's why they're a lead pastor. And if you're having tension trying to get concept from them, let them know, "The sooner I get a concept with you, the more Christ, the more we'll be able to be Christlike to each other during this process because we have time to do that instead of it's like, 'Give me this final product.'"

When you are able to lead up and pitch that vision to your lead pastor, this is not just for execution, but it's for the journey and how we're treating each other along the way. And hopefully that unlocks their heart and gets them to sign up on a concept.

So I've always found that to be super helpful. If you're leading up to a lead pastor, lead with that. Or if a lead pastor, just realize you are going to put your staff in a much healthier position by giving them a concept much earlier.

Yeah, I love this idea of the journey, you know, in my own career it was, you know, with the challenge of people, process, products. You know, and I'm sure you've wrestled with that where in my life there were seasons where I valued the product far more than the people in the process. And then I would value the process, and then process and product, but I was still beating up the people. And juggling that tension between the three. But definitely, you know, and I appreciate honestly just the honesty of, "Hey, you know what, there are seasons where it's been more about the destination and we really missed what God was offering through that."

So I'm going to ask a controversial, maybe controversial is not the right word, but you can take this many different ways. This question. One of the things that I've always valued about you, Ben, is you know, and you're the guy who's like from the streets to the stage to the screen. Like you're always reinforcing digital. You're a, you were an online pastor at Liquid, right? At some point, like you were. That was that. So a digital pastor has been part of your career path. And so you've always leaned digital, even as much involved as you are in physical church ministry.

When you're looking at Christmas, are we broadcasting live? Are we doing something different? Like what, when you're looking and reading the average church in America, what are you suggesting we do? Where does digital fit into Christmas 2022?

Well, I'd say it fits in high, high, high. Christmas and New Year's, if you haven't planned this out or if you haven't looked at the calendar, folks, let me give you a quick, you know, we're recording here in November, but it's currently 37 days left till Christmas. But again, if you haven't looked at the calendar, Christmas the 25th falls on a Sunday, and then beyond that, New Year's falls on a Sunday as well. So you probably, if you haven't figured out, I just want to call out, I think it's incredible that you knew to the day how many days were left. 37 days. Like, do you have that written down on your phone where it's an internal clock? Can't turn it off?

I can't turn it off. The worst thing is I'll text my team that, you know, and like, they're like, "Stop it. This is not giving me the peace that you're proclaiming you want during the season. Jesus is a peace. You texting me, you know, how many minutes we have left is that?"

So because both those services fall on holidays, you need to be planning what you're doing now. Hope if you haven't done it yet, you need to definitely be planning it now. And I would encourage you to lean towards exclusively online services during those dates.

Let's be honest. Christmas morning on the 25th, I am not going to church. My kids want to open presents on my bed with us and gather around the tree and pull out the stockings. That's what they want to do. And I'm speaking as a family man. But other people, you know, singles, couples, wherever you are in your stage of empty nesters, wherever you are in your stage of life, you probably already have your Christmas traditions locked in for the 25th, and part of those are not going to a church service.

So don't compete against that. Don't.

compete against what people already have ingrained in their traditions. But provide something that is helpful. For us, it's creating a truncated experience. It's for Christmas, a 20-minute experience that we feel is going to hit most families by and large. A little something for the kids, a little something for the adults. But you know, it's a busy morning. You're going to do your own thing as a family. You may go to extended family that night. But hey, we just want you to take 20 minutes. And this, you know, this isn't live. It's on demand because again, some people, we're not saying everyone gather at 10:00. It's going to be hard to do that, to be honest. Everyone's got a different schedule in the morning. But it's on demand, available first thing Christmas morning. We encourage you to take a pause and maybe even before you go to the presents and you unwrap the presents under the tree, watch this 15 to 20 minute experience that helps us remember that Jesus is the ultimate present. And in a sense, spiritually unwrap that and enjoy him, enjoy his birth, enjoy the fact that he was sent to earth for you first. Remember that. And then as you enter into this gift unwrapping, recall that as well. So that is, if you're looking to do digital, well, I'd encourage that. And then beyond that, on the first, we're encouraging, we're doing that as well. We're doing exclusively online. I encourage other churches to do that as well for the first. That's two Sundays back to back, exclusively online. I know that might be controversial for some churches. But you're going to have a hard draw for people coming out on both those mornings.

Yeah, we're the church that I'm at. We're doing, we're actually filming our New Year's Day service. We're going to be filming that December 10th. And so actually the worship is December 10th. We're doing, and actually I've never seen this before, but evidently it's a thing. And so we're doing NPR music style. If you've ever Googled NPR music, it's really interesting where the NPR radio stations, they create these videos of like different musical groups singing. And when they do like the artists, the concerts for the radio through NPR, like they'll film in. So it's a really unique style. And so that's what we're filming for it. And then we'll film a message, I think the week after the 17th, kind of create that. So you guys are exclusive online for the 21st, 25th, and the 1st.

We are doing a Christmas. I'm at a church plant. And so like, to be honest, there's a couple hundred people. It's very small, growing. It's been around a little over a year. So we're doing a Christmas Eve thing, which in Miami is questionable because, you know, the Cubans, Hispanic, Christmas Eve is a big deal. But we're doing a Christmas Eve service and then nothing Christmas Day. And then we're all completely online for New Year's Day. And so that'll be the big push for that.

Yeah, so we're excited about digital. And I think the ideas of planning that is digital. You know, there are churches that will stream a service online. There are churches that will do a special recording or a studio recording or something like that. You know, at this point, if you're not doing, if you haven't started talking about doing something different, I wouldn't do anything different. Like I would just stick to what your normal rhythm is because I know how difficult it is to set up a studio setup, especially if you don't have the culture set up for that and you don't have the experience of that yet. It takes a lot of time and coordination to get some of that going.

We mentioned it as an aside in terms of getting resources that people are kind of looking for resources. And you mentioned like, you know, your online pastor is looking for resources. And we made a quick aside, a quick joke on that. In terms of collaborative work, like one of the things I've seen to be successful over the years is equally valuing the people who are performing on the stage and the people who are performing behind the screens. So when I say on the stage, you know, your hosts, your worship leaders, your drama team, and you know, on the stage, behind the screen, you know, your sound engineer, your technical director, people, videographers, photographers, people who are, you know, kind of like what we're doing right now, working behind screens. And the reason I say that is I've seen in my own context and other church contexts a slight evaluation and a slight improvement for those who are on the stage. We hold them a little higher in our esteem. And because of that, you know, I've, when you hear about people being a diva, it's not usually your sound engineer. It's probably somebody on the drama team. Or if you treat, so you know, who gets to be in the green room? It's, you know, just the worship team in some contexts. And because of that, we give higher preference to those who perform on a stage than those who are behind the screens. And that becomes really toxic if left unchecked.

I've been part of some cultures where I saw the worship leader during a rehearsal, you know, asking, "Hey, sound guy, can I get such and such more in my ears?" And I just like had to talk to them afterwards. It's like, they have a name. You know, it's not "sound guy." And he's like, "Oh, it's hard to see who's there in the booth in the back." And so, you know, I just said, "Then stop by the tech booth before. Introduce yourself. Find out who's back there and call them by name. Because you are not more important than them just because you're on a stage and not behind a screen. It doesn't elevate you to some higher level." And teams feel that. They sense that. They see that. They know when they're peer level or they know when someone's getting special treatment. So if you have special treatment, you need to cut that out right away or your teams will never get to a healthy place.

And I can go on on this, but I just, I've seen it again and again. And that'd be one that would be my one challenge when you're talking about how service planning teams work well. We're all on a peer level here. And talking even about that level, like draw that same value. We're all at the same level. What does brainstorming look like? How do you start to curate and capture some of these ideas and bring others in? Talk to me a little bit about your experience with that.

Yeah, you have ideation and you have execution. Ideation is, generally speaking, it's the fun stuff where you get to spitball. You get to dream. You get to throw stuff up on the whiteboard. And then the hard work is the actual execution, getting those ideas done. Sometimes we only invite the creative types—I'm putting air quotes around this—to the ideation. And so it's your, yeah, it's those people. It's your, maybe it's your worship leader, maybe it's your graphic designer, maybe it's your videographer. But we don't invite the technical people towards it. We don't invite the tech producer or the sound engineer because they're technical people and they don't have creative ideas.

Well, first of all, I found that to be a misnomer. I found some of my most creative people in the past have been in my production departments. And they're skilled technically, but they also are great ideators. So don't fool yourself and think that they're not going to. And even if they don't, bring them into that process because that's a fun environment to be on. And if you're only allowing the creative types to have the fun and it's all the technical types who are executing it, then again you're setting up a divide. And beyond like having the fun, it's the camaraderie. We were all in this together. We all are part of coming up with the ideas, and now we're all a part of executing the ideas. If you make camps, it's going to be felt. And then there's going to be divides and there's going to be tensions between the two.

So invite both to the brainstorming process. You know, I've heard somebody, I forget who this was, but I literally just had this conversation this week where somebody was like, "Yeah, the first 20 minutes of every brainstorming meeting is just trash. It's just people talking and getting comfortable with each other, like throwing out the stupid idea." And I was guilty of this. Like I was the "no" guy. And in some of those meetings, it's like, "No, that's stupid. No, we can't do that. No." And to call myself out, having that approach in those brainstorming sessions destroys the meeting. It shuts it down. And so it's 20 minutes of thinking crazy, of just talking, and almost building a relational trust with this to really get to the point where the ideas start to get good and you can build something off that.

And so it was funny in my life. It was J.R. Lovens, J.R. Lovens was the communications director. And if you know J.R., that just really dated me because this was a long time ago. But he looked at me. He's like, "Readed, you're actually," he said a word I'm not allowed to say on the radio on the podcast here. He said, "Readed, you got to stop. You got, you're, you're killing these meetings. You don't even know you're doing it, but you're doing it." And so, you know, for maybe some of you, you've been excluding some people from these meetings because they're, you know, the word that I'm allowed to say on the podcast. Well, guess what? Maybe it's time for you to have a gentle conversation with them, show some grace, and point out some of these errors and flaws so that they can be included in it.

Yeah, the same premise that applies, the same two golden rules that apply for improv, apply to ideation. So someone says an idea and you're leading that meeting. Yes. Maybe it seems a little crazy, but like, "Thank you for sharing that. Yes. And can someone build on that? Is there, you know?" And what's the, and they mention idea, how do we build upon that? So we could rabbit trail here, how to foster a great creative meeting and how to ideate well with the team. But those two principles right there, yes and, will help not shut down the conversation but foster it and let it flourish. And often times you have to entertain a lot of those bad ideas before you get to the good one. But if you say, "That's stupid, that's stupid," then the person who's got the good idea is never going to speak up.

So yes, yes, great idea. Great idea. Ideate. Even though it might stink, you know, and what else do you have to add that fosters it, unlocks the good ideas?

Okay, so we've got a plan. We've worked together. Everybody's united. We're all hanging around holding hands, singing Kumbaya. It's a beautiful time. And then December 22nd, the Holy Spirit has spoken to the lead communicator, and there's a whole new plan. What's the tension of following the lead, fighting for what's established? How do you navigate those types of seasons? We've all had those types of seasons. Let's not sugarcoat this. We've all been there. How do you navigate that?

I stumped them. People, no. It's just, it's different based upon your leader. And I guess I would say, hopefully before this point has come up, you've gone through the trenches with him a couple times and you have some relational equity that you've built up. But if not, then maybe it's after. If you have, you know, at the end of the day, you almost have to fight a battle a little bit before there's that mutual respect and you come out on the other side of it. But it might be a situation where you may need to execute it. But on the back end, you have to gracefully say.

That um, that can't happen again because if we do, if it does, we're going to lose our staff. And like, we, we, we, we can do what you want us to do, um, but I need to articulate the consequences if we do that. And so I, I think that's probably the most helpful thing that I've come into those conversations.

Yes, we, we can throw at the whole thing right now and do that different game plan. I'm telling you right now we're going to have, you know, a couple of our staff members, a couple of our volunteers, a couple of our performers, um, say that's it. I'm not a part of the Crazy Train anymore and I want off. Choo choo. I'm, I'm, I'm dis, uh, I'm, um, I'm getting off this train. And so I try to gracefully, um, present those outcomes. And at the end of the day, where it's, and when you're able to do that and say, really, is your idea so great and so blessed and so God-inspired that it's worth losing these staff members or these performers or these people who've invested weeks and months and efforts? And if so, then we'll move forward with it. But if not, just realize that, uh, and maybe we should stick with what's going on. And, um, you know, something's happened here where inspiration is coming to you last minute. What can I do differently next time so that I'm able to check in with you? We're able to set aside time praying so that you're able to receive inspiration sooner and we don't get to this position again down the road?

So lay out the consequences, or maybe, um, repercussions or domino effects. Consequences might sound a little negative, um, and, uh, and then after that, also, how do we change our workflow so this doesn't happen again? And we're not in this difficult moment where the lead pastor has to make a decision. Do I move forward with my idea, um, or do I stick to what's already happening? I don't, you know, as someone is reporting to you, I don't want to put you in that position again. So how can I, how can we change that down the road?

That's that's so good. Uh, being open and honest, understanding the consequences, I, I think is is a great way to to look at that. And maybe it is worth, um, playing the card, solving the, doing what what the lead communicator wishes. But there's there has to be, you know, use the phrase, uh, relational equity. There has to be a relationship, uh, between whoever is leading the group. Hopefully someone's leading out in that, and it's not all five of those departments answering to a lead communicator or an executive. Hopefully there's clear leader in that, uh, and have that person that's capable of of leading and building that relationship with the executive team, the lead communicator, whatever the org chart. And, and, you know, it's we're talking all the way one way, like up in this relationship. There's also down.

Yeah, and I'm a firm believer that if God was able to, um, develop his plan of his salvation, an eternity past, and he knew before the foundations of the world what he was going to do with you and I in our lives, if God is that much of a planner, then his Spirit can talk to us in advance and it doesn't have to be last minute. So I'm a firm believer in that. But I, I am also, even in the midst of that, I am also realizing that the Spirit does, um, prompt us, provide us, give us. Even with our best planning, still may speak to us last minute. So how do we hold both of those intentions?

And so with the teams that I oversee, is we're going to plan. The lead pastor's involved. But you know what? There's going to be a couple of times a year, and it's different in different contexts. Some people are, it's, you know, it's all kind of last minute. Some people, none of it's last minute. I think both of those are unhealthy on the ends of the spectrum. So the teams that I tell, in terms the executing, is we're going to plan. But there will be sometimes, even with our best planning, that the Spirit speaks to us last minute and we're going to follow the Spirit's direction. And what we've invested, we're going to, we're going to turn the corner and do something differently because at the end of the day, I don't want to feel handcuffed to my plan either and not give any room to the Spirit to speak last minute.

Now, from my philosophy, it's a philosophy. My philosophy is that's the exception to the rule. But that exception should be made as well.

So beautiful, with that two-way communication of realizing the Holy Spirit can speak on a Tuesday, it's okay, um, maybe exception to the rule. Navigating that tension, all of this, all of this, there's this, this not a, there's not a solution to this. It's a tension to be managed, uh, so let me ask this. Uh, it's, it's, uh, I don't know, January 10th, like, are we, or January 2nd, we come back from the online expression, we walk in that Monday. Uh, is it full steam ahead towards Easter? Are we doing a postmortem and discussing how Christmas went? Uh, what does, what does a review, uh, look like, uh, in a, in a healthy creative environment?

If it's good enough to do it, it's good enough to review. So yes, your big days, your big events, definitely review those. But beyond that, I would say you need a review system for even your weekly services, um, you know, just a simple, what worked, what didn't. Um, hopefully you spend a little more time on what worked because people want to be corrected, they want to be coached, but they also want to be celebrated. So celebrate your team members, um, and then, um, for myself, this is interesting as well. So not, you know, not just do big days, your Easter, your Christmases, but do weekly services. A review process for your weekly services might be just a fifteen-minute check-in, um, but what I've found myself needing to give my teams is a sabbatical for that. And so what I would tell them is that, you know, every about four, you know, once a month, we're not going to review the service because I just want to give you, I just want to give that time off. Because if we do it again and again and again and never have a break from it, first of all, we don't have fresh eyes when we come, you know, because we're just doing it continually. And at some sometimes it could feel like it's just like a, uh, here's the review again, and my volunteer dropped the ball again. And like, yeah, like this is a consistent problem and it just, it feels like a drain because it gets brought up frequently.

Um, giving ourselves a Sabbath from that, saying we're going to give ourselves grace and not review the service, I think is helpful as well for the sake of the health of your team.

That is great. That that's solid. I've never thought of that, never had that perspective. Take a break, give yourself grace every once in a while, once a month. And, um, had the conversation with the volunteer. But there's only so often you can beat up that volunteer. So, um, love, love that. In the church world, we're not beating up volunteers. Don't read too much into that comment, you know what I mean? But be beautiful with that.

Hey, Ben, man, thanks for jumping on and doing this podcast with us. Like, I, man, it's always, I love hanging out with my Canadian, or formerly known as Canadian. Maybe one day once again being a Canadian, like, is is the goal to move back to the motherland? Do you like, do you want to?

I still have my citizenship. So, and I, I do not have the privilege of participating in the insanity that happens every four years down here in the states when it comes to voting season. And I, um, I'm glad not to participate in that madness.

I was about to say you willingly live in the United States, uh, during an election year. That is, I think, even, even Ed Stetzer, Ed Stetzer, friend of the show, he's been living over in England. He's been six months doing, um, uh, some stuff over with the seminary over there. I think he tweeted the other day he's considering staying in England because the US is just that crazy. So congratulations. I'm sorry, Ben. Uh, that's that's tells me a lot of your credibility, your credibility. Living in America, even then, we don't have to. We're joking. But, uh, I enjoy. I've enjoyed living here for the past seventeen years. It's it's been good for me and my family.

Very cool. As we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts?

The last one would just be, um, I think as we're, you know, we've been talking about how to unite these teams, these different teams that your guest services, your production, your worship, your creative, um, the one thing that we didn't say is whoever is, two things. There should be one person overseeing all these teams so they have like a holistic view of what's going on and help provide synergy for them to work with each other. And the other thing is that person should be sitting on the executive level because it's such an important role overseeing so much of what the church's ministry goes towards, so much of the resources of the church. If they are, you know, and a mid-manager, they're just not going to have a, they need that seat at the table to move things forward, to have the ear of the lead pastor, and to be able to champion those things. So that'd be my encouragement for churches to consider restructuring things if you aren't currently in that position.

Yeah, so much of the church's voice, uh, because so much of the weekend experience is where a lot of that, uh, drives from, comes from these departments when they're operating in together in sync. And so, you know, spot on there with that feedback. As as I've spent a lot of my life as the mid-manager, uh, of of these departments operating that way, and uh, I can personally testify it is a struggle, um, if only to make sure that the decision makers actually understand what is being decided on. So great wisdom there from Ben Stapley, Canadian American.

So hey, Ben, thanks for, uh, for jumping on the show here, talking, uh, about Christmas on Thanksgiving week. Hope you all survive, um, the upcoming month or so and definitely looking forward to an incredible 2023. So we're going to land the plane here with the podcast. This is for Ben, uh, this is Jeff with the Church Digital and Digital Church Network. Thanks for jumping on the pod here. We'll see you next time on the show. You all have a good day.