Shepherding the next generation of church leaders has never been more crucial.
In this episode of Modern Church Leader, a seasoned leader and former director of Catalyst, Brad Lomenick, shares his experience in cultivating and equipping young, healthy leaders.
Brad's insights will leave you with valuable lessons about our impact on others and the importance of creating cultures that add value to people's lives.
For more information on Brad, visit bradlomenick.com
You can purchase Brad's book, H3 Leadership, on Amazon
For more resources on how to grow your church, visit tithely.com
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Tithely provides the tools you need to engage with your church online, stay connected, increase generosity, and simplify the lives of your staff.
With tools like text and email messaging, custom church apps and websites, church management software, digital giving, and so much more… it’s no wonder over 37,000 churches in 50 countries trust Tithely to help run their church.
Learn more at tithely.com
Shepherding the next generation of church leaders has never been more crucial.
In this episode of Modern Church Leader, a seasoned leader and former director of Catalyst, Brad Lomenick, shares his experience in cultivating and equipping young, healthy leaders.
Brad's insights will leave you with valuable lessons about our impact on others and the importance of creating cultures that add value to people's lives.
For more information on Brad, visit bradlomenick.com
You can purchase Brad's book, H3 Leadership, on Amazon
For more resources on how to grow your church, visit tithely.com
--
Tithely provides the tools you need to engage with your church online, stay connected, increase generosity, and simplify the lives of your staff.
With tools like text and email messaging, custom church apps and websites, church management software, digital giving, and so much more… it’s no wonder over 37,000 churches in 50 countries trust Tithely to help run their church.
Learn more at tithely.com
Hey everybody, frank here with another episode of Modern Church Leader, joined by the Brad Lomonik. Brad, it's great to have you on the show today.
Speaker 1:Good to be here, man. I get the the in front of my name, that's cool the Ohio State and the Brad Lomonik.
Speaker 2:We got both of them. I think I'm the. It would be great if you went to Ohio State. Did you go to Ohio?
Speaker 1:State. I didn't, but I think I am the only oh, I'm the only Brad Lomonik in the world, so I can be the I mean have you done the like, Ancestrycom or any of?
Speaker 2:those things ever. No, I should. Okay, I haven't either. We were having a chat in the car with my kids the other day. They were asking us, you know, because a buddy had done it and I don't know. We just haven't done it Maybe one day.
Speaker 1:I do know that Lomonik Mavis is Scottish, so I do have that reference from the arc. You know the long five generation, six or seven generations, however long we've been around, which I'm proud of that. I'm very proud of my Scottish heritage. I love it. At one point there was rumors that we were French and I didn't want to be French. I mean, I love all. I love French fries, offended all the French people watching the show.
Speaker 1:They're all offended right now All three of them. So I like the French people, I like that they gave us French fries, but I feel like Braveheart is more the movie that I want to be compared to.
Speaker 2:That's kind of like yeah compared to.
Speaker 1:I don't know Paris in Love or whatever other movies there are that are French, so oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get it. You want the fight story more than the love story.
Speaker 1:So there you go.
Speaker 2:There you go. Well, tell us for this you know our audience of three that you referenced like. Tell us how you got into what you're doing. If you ran Catalyst for a long time, I'm sure there'd be a lot of people that know Catalyst. You've written a great book. We're going to talk a little bit about that. It's brand new, just hits the shelves, exactly. So we're going to have fun Exactly About that. But how did you get into? You know, serving the church? Let's generically that book, sure.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean John Maxwell. Really for me, frank was like the Catalyst, truly. I mean we all have those who's in our 20s who give us a chance. You know that we're knuckleheads and we're young and dumb and then we get connected to someone and they really change our trajectory. So for me it was John Maxwell. I mean I got connected to his organization and many would, many would probably. You know, when I referenced that the old, when John would send out like cassette tapes of his leadership content, that was the you know, enjoy, that was the name of the organization and there was a bunch of us who were young and got around him and I was one of those, and so that's, that was 20 plus years ago, and so all the things with Catalyst and other big conferences and events and being connected to churches and pastors and leaders in general, it was because of my, of just truly like one person, changed trajectory for me.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, so I sat in. This is with a buddy who passed through the church for a long time, got into like coaching for pastors and senior leaders, and it was last year he did. He does this kind of smaller gathering, maybe 50 churches, something like that. You know there'll be 50, 75 people, but it's with John Maxwell. So it's in Florida, it's at a hotel out there. He gets them together and Maxwell speaks for a day.
Speaker 2:Right, it's kind of a day, you know, I don't know if it's a, it's not, it's not like eight hours of teaching, but it's a lot of Maxwell, right, and I got to sit in it and just hang out and the first time I've ever heard Maxwell like in person. I've read his books and heard him online and whatnot. Dude, I couldn't stop writing notes. Like he's just amazing, Like, and he was. He was like riffing on something he was gonna write, Like hadn't written the book yet but was kind of just sharing his notes of something that he was one day going to publish, right, and it was incredible. So I can fully understand how he could have a massive impact on an individual and change the whole course of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he truly does, and that I mean that's the lesson for me now, and the lesson for me the last 20 years is well, I want to have the same impact on on people, on my team or people that I'm around, or even the people you, indirectly, are impacting or influencing. And I mean, I got to travel with John a little bit, but we weren't like best buddies, um, and that's the thing, like so many of us, we have the ability to to impact people that are close or even far away from us. And so this idea that you know you're, you're a value adder to people, um, that you actually like give people courage, you know you, you you come alongside and and you they walk away from an interaction with you and they're better because you've invested something in them. And all that is that's just the, that's just the osmosis and being around somebody where they create a culture, that that that is now like the norm. And so it wasn't just leadership, but it was more like life and um, life.
Speaker 1:You know, if you looked at the coaching tree, for example, of John Maxwell and so many young leaders who at some point worked around John and then now they've gone on to do other stuff. I mean, it's a pretty significant coaching tree of pastors, of marketplace leaders, of of authors, of movement leaders, you know. So, again, that's the lesson that I think everybody not everybody's going to be, john Maxwell, but we all have the ability to to have our own coaching tree of people who who've worked around us, even if it's like for a year or two, and they go, man, when I was at Tidely and I worked on Frank's team, I was only there for two years, but those are the two best years perhaps of my entire career. That's.
Speaker 2:Oh man, wouldn't that be awesome.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and this is true like. I'm only a tire to have something like that set and it's, it's it's going to be true more and more because the average the average like young leader going forward is going to have a lot of different job assignments. Uh, I hope they all stay for 30 years at Tidely, but the reality is is now they're all like free agents. So I've got to bounce it around more.
Speaker 1:I've got to change my mindset and think I might. I'm not only have a year or two with them, and if, how can I release them when they leave here after 18 months or two years or five years, and that this was one of the best season for them?
Speaker 2:Mm. Hmm, yeah, no, I hear that. I mean, I think like there was the day of people right Like loyalty and longevity of a company was like a real quality right Like people praised that kind of thing. But and this is, I don't think this is necessarily like a selfish thing or but I feel like the marketplace shifted right. It's like you kind of have to move around, not in every situation, but you know a large, like in a very general high level sense, like you kind of have to move around to progress in a career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, you can move around. That's the other thing.
Speaker 2:Like you actually, and it is easier to move around. Yeah, there's way more opportunity.
Speaker 1:And it's, it's, it's not required, but it you know this, the whole premise that you're now creating a career based on 25 projects compared to 50 years in one company, right, that's a whole new mindset that for us and for our, you know, for those before us like that would have been seen as oh, you're totally disloyal, you can't keep a job, nobody wants to hire you, and I think now it's like oh, that's just normal, right Now we can like in my day, that still would have been a thing Right.
Speaker 2:Like I'm, I just turned 45. So you know earlier, you know early on in my career, like that kind of like long jet, like you look at a resume, how long were you at job a and job B? Like you still, that was a way of things getting processed right. You would, you would screen out the people that like bounced a bunch Right, whereas like now, like today, people entering the workforce, that's going to look to my kids. It's going to look totally different, like they might all be projects, stuff, Like who knows right.
Speaker 1:Um project, the object generation man free agent economy, I mean the gig generation like this, and it doesn't make it right or wrong, it just is because there's more options than ever, which which actually creates a lot of a lot of freezing of 20 somethings today, because they have so many options. Now they're, they're getting the paralysis analysis and so they go because they're watching Instagram.
Speaker 2:They're all on Instagram or Snapchat, tik Tok or whatever one they're on and they're watching a zillion options and being like.
Speaker 1:Now I don't know I can do that or I can do that or I can do that, which is true. But I mean, let's all be clear. This is why being really being really dotted in on purpose and the way God's wired you, the things you're really good at, the things that you're passionate about, like all that is even more important today than ever, because otherwise we're just jumping from thing to thing based on like five minutes ago, and that's going to create a schizophrenic generation, which it is like. Purpose anxiety is real. There's a real thing out there right now, with 20 and some things in early 30 somethings, like they feel purpose anxiety because they're.
Speaker 1:It's comparison, it's imposter syndrome, it's the ability to do anything I want to do in life. And if we don't help young leaders dial in and know like the riverbanks are supposed to be, like trafficking in, then we're just going to have a bunch of jumpers and you know, this is this is what's happened in the church the last three years. You've watched a lot of people, I think, arguably, who looked around and thought, okay, actually working for a church was probably something my parents wanted me to do. I'm not even sure I'm like this is in my wiring to have a full time role, right, I mean we're all, we're all supposed to be part of a?
Speaker 1:yes, we're all part of the church. So you know just the reshuffling of talent. It's a massive, massive, massive issue in culture, in the church, in the marketplace, nonprofit space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I was.
Speaker 2:You know we're three years in to kind of I guess the just the crazy COVID politics, cultural things, social things, like there's all the stuff that has happened in these last three years and, like you know, anecdotally, I've heard plenty of pastors, senior leaders go man, the young talent, the young leaders are leaving because they don't know, they didn't sign up for this, like they're not, not, not that hard, like I don't want it to come, I don't want to be framed that way, but like I'm not, I wasn't prepared for this, I didn't know, like I'm not trained for this, I'm not ready for this, I don't have the experience of the life behind me to deal with this.
Speaker 2:Like, so I'm out. And then I guess, if you layer on all these opportunities and like the sort of like I don't know what I want to do, because I could do that, could be a YouTuber, I could go into real estate, I could do, I could be an influencer, like there's all these things right, and they're just watching social media and being kind of ripped around, I mean, yeah, it's the new reality.
Speaker 1:Think about that. So the question always with that kind like what you just, what you just framed, is well, how do I, how do I find them and how do I keep them? If I find them, I kind of actually keep them around. And there there actually are churches that are really good examples, and I think what you see with the churches where you walk in and there's there's a lot of like young 20 something, high capacity talent or early 30 something, and they're not in charge yet. But but when you walk in, what's the what are the ingredients of that kind of culture? I think a couple of things. One, they feel like there's movement internally, not just externally, meaning they don't, they don't sit around and go. Well, I guess I'm just going to have to wait until somebody dies or somebody retires, which is which?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they can see it, like they can see it clearly, like they can see a path and the path has actually been talked about, so that they're on a path.
Speaker 1:They can not just see it, they're actually on one, and that path might be again five years and they go somewhere else. But there's enough room for them to maneuver internally. And there's also a sense that the general consensus in those kind of environments is that they're being given opportunities to lead on stuff that they shouldn't be leading on at their age. So you look around and go wait, you're in charge of that and you're 22. That's the kind of culture we have to think about. Is and are they gonna make mistakes? Absolutely, but we have to give them opportunities way earlier than ever we were given. And this is hard for a lot of us because we have a hazing mentality. Even in the church world we're like I'm gonna make you wait as long as I waited, and man, that is just dangerous.
Speaker 2:Right, I also and this is not scientifically proven, this is just my own experience and anecdotal. But you get leaders that maybe were young when they did their thing and they rose up and they've got to use them to do something great. But then all of a sudden you turn around and they're the old guys, but they're not letting go, they're still in their day and that's not I get it. Like I mean, I'm middle of all of that in life at 45. Like I get it, because I'm 45, thinking I'm 25. Right.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're still cool, man, you're still cool.
Speaker 2:I can still play ball the way I used to, and I know, but no, it's not true, but it's hard, but then. So then these great leaders age, but they didn't let. I don't know, maybe it's probably not on purpose, but letting the young leaders kind of raise up doesn't happen, because they're kind of held down under the senior folks.
Speaker 1:Yes, and here's the irony, because we can think of so many places I won't name names, but we can think of places where there was nothing there before and all of a sudden, a very high capacity young leader started a church Young, yeah, and then it got big. And what happened when it got big is now, without even trying to make this the reality, they created an environment that was built around the genius with the thousand helpers mindset, which is Jim Collins. That's Jim Collins language, from good to great. And it happens in companies, it happens in nonprofits, it happens in churches.
Speaker 1:So then you have a situation where, again, you create a culture that you didn't even realize you created and you actually force young, up and coming, high capacity people to self regulate, based on their sense of ambition to go somewhere else, right, without even realizing it. And this is, you know, that's just the normal default. So our thinking has to be counter cultural to everything we built, and I just watched John Maxwell do this for me. I mean, I'm not that smart, frank, like you know, cause I would do the same thing, but when you've been in an environment where it was modeled to you, yeah, you see it.
Speaker 2:You see it, it like helps you have clarity around it. So important it's thought, happening and probably talked about, probably like overtly brought out, so then you're aware of it.
Speaker 1:I mean when I stepped out of leading catalyst at 40, for a number of reasons, but one of the main ones was because I was now becoming that leader that when we started it we were sort of making fun of in a very honest and honoring and respectful way. But you know, I was but listen, man, I was at my pinnacle but I wanted to. I wanted to Barry Sanders the situation way more than like, I guess, brett Favre. You know, brett Favre, it Barry.
Speaker 2:Sanders, just I mean, just as a tangent. Barry Sanders was absolutely amazing, but I feel like he just fell off the face of the earth. He left early and I was probably young yeah, I was probably young and not paying all that that much attention, but that guy was amazing and then he was just gone. Where'd Barry Sanders?
Speaker 1:He left before anybody had to force him to leave. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Like I think he was still in his prime, he totally was compared to Brett Favre, and I love Brett Favre, brett Favre, they were like hey, brett, you're 47. I mean Tom Brady, again the goat, but it's. You know, those are, those are fun, those are like. Those don't parallel as examples. But I think the mindset of a great leader who has a lot of young leaders hanging around them is that they've already moved out of the way even though they're still in charge. They've, they're moving out of the way constantly to let other leaders like step in, and that's a it's a hard to do. Once you build something that that now you feel like you got a steward.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, yeah, it's hard. I mean this is a little bit your world, right. Like leadership, helping the younger folks Like you dabble in all these areas, like who do you see doing it well? Or maybe what you know for the people doing it well, what are they doing that really fosters that environment and helps young leaders thrive?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I said it earlier, they're giving them opportunities way early before. Anybody probably probably would have given them an opportunity when they were that age. They're allowing them to sit at the table, and that that's I mean. Like that, I mean that literally and figuratively, because the old days again for you and I, we might have gotten invited into the room where the decision was being made but we didn't get to speak up. We had to set like four rows back and it just the fact we were in the room we felt honored. You know like, I got to be in the meeting and the average 20 something today in General I'm stereotyping, but the average younger leader, they expect to be at the table. Now again, they've got to. They got to show up and put their big boy or big girl pants on and Play, play at that level and not get offended or get hurt when we say, hey, that idea stinks, you don't stink, right, they've got to be able to to to add value, but we do have to. We have to invite them to that table.
Speaker 2:And you know, I find it even in my own role, right, sometimes you just got to let the young folks it's weird, young folks it sounds so dumb.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the young kids the young people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just you know like they throw stuff out and you're like I don't even know why you're talking right now, because whatever, whatever, whatever's coming out is like either like Not good, or yes, of course, or what, whatever right. But that's how you grow exactly, like like people need those chances, they need those opportunities because they're not you right, they got 20 more years to get there and it took you 20 years to figure that. Those things out that now are just you kind of know and understand via like experience and intuition, right, yes, so, and you know you got to give them those opportunities and just let it fly and for all the young leaders.
Speaker 1:This works both ways. I mean young leaders again. If, if your expectation is oh, brad or Frank, please invite me to that meeting where we're making the decision, great, okay, you're invited. Now again, I need you to show up prepared. I need you to show up, you're out. You're now at being asked to out kick your coverage as it relates to your level of authority and responsibility in the organization. So you better be like acting and dressing and praying and speaking and Thinking like you're. You're in my seat. Don't show up and all shucks it and and just and not have a good idea or or bring something that's not valuable. Now, I'm not talking about like we're gonna, like failure is is needed, like you said. But but again, when you, when you say, when we say to that young leader, hey, hey, ted, what do you think? And they throw out something that's awful, it's the rules of engagement are that we will throw you under the bus based on your idea and you can't take offense to that or you'll at least know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'll at least know that idea like that's.
Speaker 1:But that has to be, that has to be understood, because that would be true for anybody sitting at the table, right. And this is where, like the really great, like, for example, tech companies you know, think of any great tech company Apple, amazon, google, just throw them all in there. But they have this. They have this premise of psychological safety. Regardless of whether you're 20 or 70, you're gonna show up in an environment and add value and there's gonna be psychological safety, knowing that the fact that you're on the team, you already are a high capacity player, right. So that's what we have to create in the church is we have to create like this this idea of best idea wins a standard of excellence. We're not gonna be nice, we're gonna be, we're gonna be kind, kindness is clarity, right. But you know, we get stuck in the nice factor and and nice just creates more gossip on the on the backside of a conversation.
Speaker 1:Right so all that has to be part of the culture again that we're creating, that. That that is, that is allowing for young leaders today to, to, to stick around. And here's the other thing. Just I'll finish on this one, on this question, all of us who, who are their leaders or bosses or managers of a 25 year old let's just take that as an example they probably have like four or five job offers right now. They probably are on LinkedIn or they're on you know some Christian Placement website. My job is now to coach them With all those opportunities, not to judge them and say I can't believe you're even looking around the fact that I now found out you're fired. Different world man, yeah, totally. Who's doing it?
Speaker 2:Well, give me, give me some examples that you've seen, that if somebody's watching, listening and they want to kind of go man, like, how do I get better at this? Or I'm a young leader and I want to see what this looks like like, you have any like Leaders? I mean, maxwell Is great, you know, are there any other? Whether it's church leader, business leader, any guys you know, or whatever they're like, they do this really well.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you know this, one of the real standards for me is Chick-fil-A yeah, you know, in terms of the way they attract talent, but both, both at the local operator level, like the Chick-fil-A in your, you know, in your neighborhood or your city, but also at the corporate level.
Speaker 2:Every time I want Chick-fil-A. It's a Sunday, oh man.
Speaker 1:It's tough. Oh, there's a great. You've seen the song that what's his name?
Speaker 2:did, like the I think I have, oh yeah, like any name thing, that's all, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, they're, they're really good at At building a culture that is attractive to a young leader. And you go to their, you go to their headquarters in Atlanta and it's like all 20 somethings, it's crazy, like there's hundreds of them. Just I'm not sure what they all do, to be honest, but you know it's, it's, it's a there's a strong culture of, of leadership development, so but they, they'd look at it and they say we, we may not, we may not have them for 20 years, but we might have them for five years and we're going to develop these leaders and it's a leadership development factory, whether they stay or not. I mean, you know, churches churches, I think the usual suspects would probably, would would probably be the ones that everybody would turn to in terms of examples, meaning that the probably the largest churches in America are the ones that are doing this. Well, you know, I think I think one of the things that is also changing the game is that everybody's starting to think about apprenticeship. So, just as an example, church of the Highlands in Birmingham, alabama, you know, big church, 30, 40,000. But one of the things they're they're really they they've done intentionally is they they created Highlands College. Yeah, highlands College has now got a thousand students in it.
Speaker 1:They, when you, when, when you have a conversation with their team about, about recruitment of new talent, they look at you and go we're, we're good, they have, they have, they have such a bench now because of this college that they've created, that they have inflow. They have constant inflow of great talent. So, when you talk about talent recruitment, talent retention, they're, they're, they're good, I mean they, they have a whole model of apprenticeship, of residency, of internship, so they, they're just they're, they're solving their own problem, which is we're trying to go out and find the next generation of talent and they're just saying we're already developing them right here with and this is, this is a massive opportunity for the church and I'm talking about churches of five hundred or a thousand or ten thousand or fifty thousand is your ability to like, actually raise up talent, starting in middle school. That now becomes a feeder for, for your ability to find staff and right, that's, that's the future, because that's a big deal.
Speaker 1:I mean and think of, think of everybody right now. I mean anybody who's got an 18 year old or 17 year old that's thinking about college. It's not the same thoughts that we had. There's a lot of them going. Why would I go to college? I'm going to have tons of student debt, and so this idea of, oh, I could go, like you know, be a resident at a local church, probably get paid, get some kind of accreditation for it, that's a, that's a new opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's big, and just the YouTube generation. I mean you learn so much online, exactly as compared to even even when I went to college and certainly you know before me. I mean, there's so much that's free. If you are resourceful and curious and motivated, you can learn a lot all by yourself.
Speaker 1:You can curate your. You can curate your own degree, basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, man, I know you got a jam. This has been awesome. You wrote a great book. It's it just hit the shelves, so I want to make sure people know seven years ago. It didn't just hit the shelves but it is a great book, so I want to make sure people know about it. Eight three leadership where, where should people go? Is it just Amazon search for eight three leadership.
Speaker 1:Yes, anywhere, anywhere, that and, by the way, it's everywhere. The one thing I would say for everybody to do, if you were going to ask me, like, how do they connect with me, is that my podcast like it's free, ok, eight, three, eight, three leadership podcast, and the reason I think it's on valuable is that I do links and recommendations and resources on every episode.
Speaker 1:So I'm like I'm trying to figure out what are the other podcasts people need to listen to? What are books they need to read? What are what are articles they need to be paying attention to. So I'm trying to be a curator of of the best, like sort of the best of these different categories that people don't have to do the hard work then they can just like listen to me.
Speaker 2:I love it. Eight three leadership podcasts Go to Apple Spotify. Wherever you listen to your, you publish it everywhere. Can they find it anywhere? Is there one where you know it's everywhere?
Speaker 1:Yep. So wherever you listen, wherever you listen to this one, I can guarantee it's. It's available there too, and it's free. Listen this is the whole new world of, like you said, curate your own, curate your own learning experience.
Speaker 2:Here's my last question. So everyone needs to go eight, three leadership podcasts. Go check that out. Another podcast that's not yours and that's not this one, because I know you would pick this one, naturally. So I'm going to put this one out. What? What is a podcast that you absolutely love listening to, like, what are you listening to right now that you're just obsessed with?
Speaker 1:I'll give you. I'll give you four. Oh, because I'm all. Listen, I'm a nerd, I'm a podcast. Yeah, I'm a podcast nerd. So how leaders lead, with David Novak, who's the former CEO of Yum, which is Yum's like Taco Bell KFC. How leaders lead, I love, love, love. A podcast that is called the Ed Mylet show. So Ed Mylet's like a thought leader, voice speaker. That was really good. I'm a big fan of of all the stuff that that Dave Ramsey's organization does. So contrary leadership would probably be my favorite of all of like the Ramsey world, so it's called the Entree Leadership Podcast. And then the last one is when I could. I could put a bunch of of of podcasts in this last fourth spot, but I will say a diary of a CEO.
Speaker 2:It's. I hadn't heard of that one. Yeah, what's?
Speaker 1:that. Who's that by? It's a guy out of London named Stephen Bartlett, and OK, and you know it's not. It's not a Christian podcast, so just be aware but he interviews like thought leaders, soccer superstars, coaches, and he's yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I love that, so you just get to hear a lot of different perspectives from different things. Yes, brad, this has been awesome man. Go check out the H3 Leadership Podcasts. Enjoy the show. Brad, thanks for coming on and thanks for listening everyone. We'll catch you next week on another episode of Modern Church Leader, see you.