When Ben Mandrell transitioned from a biology and chemistry background into a spiritual calling, he did not expect his journey to take him to Lifeway Christian Resources. As a pastor of many years, corporate America was not on his Bingo Card! This episode peels back the layers of Ben's experiences, revealing the complex beauty of life's transitions, the bittersweet farewells to congregations, and the exhilaration of embracing new chapters.
For more information on Ben, visit BenMandrell.com
For more information on Lifeway Christian Resources, visit Lifeway.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
When Ben Mandrell transitioned from a biology and chemistry background into a spiritual calling, he did not expect his journey to take him to Lifeway Christian Resources. As a pastor of many years, corporate America was not on his Bingo Card! This episode peels back the layers of Ben's experiences, revealing the complex beauty of life's transitions, the bittersweet farewells to congregations, and the exhilaration of embracing new chapters.
For more information on Ben, visit BenMandrell.com
For more information on Lifeway Christian Resources, visit Lifeway.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
uh, hey guys, mike, here with another episode of modern church leader. Uh, here with my new bud, ben mandrell. Um dude, great to have you on the show we're buds man.
Speaker 1:I love the immediate affection that's just you.
Speaker 2:Just go for it, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:You just pulled me right in.
Speaker 2:That felt like a hug next time I'm in nashville we'll either have a beer or a coffee I'm not sure which one is appropriate, but it'll be all good well, only guy that's got michael jordan shoes in the background is a friend of mine, so I'm loving this I can't.
Speaker 2:I would move the camera but it would be all disruptive. I'm a bit of a basketball guy, so I got. I got the Jordan Jersey, the bra, the Kobe Jersey and the LeBron Jersey up there. So you know, I loved you at first sight. The legends we can have the debate on who's the greatest, but it's another podcast. Yeah, it's a whole nother podcast. Well, where are you? You're coming to us from Nashville. Uh, are you in the we work right now, or in the, the coworking space, or so?
Speaker 1:for those of you who are listening, we just built a brand new space that's kind of like a cowork space. Uh, nobody has their own office. Everybody comes in when they want to have meetings, but it's a very flexible space. So I'm actually um on this call from home today, but I've been up to the office today and that's in Brentwood.
Speaker 2:Tennessee. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Well, man, you took over president and CEO of Lifeway. I would assume most people in the church world know about Lifeway, but maybe not.
Speaker 1:So why don't you give us that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe not, maybe not? I mean, what'd you say?
Speaker 1:It's been around for over a hundred years, yeah, so when I was a church planter in Denver and they called me to come as president of Lifeway. I announced it to my church, like, hey, I'm going to go be the president of Lifeway. I kid you not. At least 95% of the people in the room were like what's Lifeway?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Is that they had one bookstore in Denver and it closed Right. So they were like my church members were like hey, you're aware that it's closing right. So there's been a lot of confusion about that because Lifeway has had this historic direct-to-church business that's really strong for years. And then there's been the retail piece and everybody knows retail is drying up.
Speaker 2:So Lifeway had to make the shift. Well, go back so you were a pastor for a long time a local church pastor, it sounds like, out in Tennessee, but then you planted a church in Denver. So give us that journey a little bit and then we can jump into how you decided to take the job at Lifeway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my call to ministry was surprising. I didn't see myself being a pastor. I have a biology and chemistry major. It's really helping me out right now, frank.
Speaker 1:Totally Listen, one of my kids is super into science, so it probably would help me out. Because then Itime job at a church as a college pastor in Jackson Tennessee, in West Tennessee, and that pastor kind of took me under his wing and I found out through some mentoring through school that I had a gift to communicate. So I started teaching and preaching some to no one's complete surprise but mine. I did not see this coming. But they ended up asking me to follow him and be the next pastor of the church. So we took that baton. I became the pastor of this church in West Tennessee for 12 years Great experience. But then we really felt like, okay, our kids are 9, 8, 7, 6 years old. If we're going to do something missional and kind of crazy, like you only live once, now's the time. So we investigated church planning and I ended up signing on with the north american mission board to plant a church in denver colorado.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we were nam planners, uh planted a church in uh near golden arvada area and the church did really well started out as a bible study in our basement protested by the HOA, then we moved into an elementary school and a high school and then we finally moved into an old, restored Walmart building that we just redesigned. It was a beautiful space. That's cool. And we weren't there in that space like six months before. God brought this like really heavy decision about, okay, lifeways pursuing me as president. Is this something we want to consider? It's a unique once in a lifetime opportunity. But, man, we had just planted that church five years prior, like it was. It was really early.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and you're five years in. It sounds like it was growing. So you're having a lot of fun and you're you're watching it. You know flourish.
Speaker 1:No more pushing cases every morning to set up and tear down. We had our own space, we had a good staff, it was healthy man and, like in Denver, to have a healthy, growing church was an accomplishment, right, right, right. So it was really hard to answer the call of God to come back to middle Tennessee, and so my wife and I started a podcast too. It's called the glass house and in this podcast we just talk about, like, some of the very unique challenges of being in ministry and like calling is a big piece of that, right, like knowing where you're called and how to deal with transitioning calling Like those are big questions. Yeah, so that's a little bit about how I got to Lifeway.
Speaker 2:Reader's Digest. Did you enjoy moving from Tennessee to Denver Did?
Speaker 1:you enjoy moving from Tennessee to Denver? Absolutely, I did. My wife would say it took her 35 years to get home. It's such a sincere outdoor environment which are her two favorite things sincerity and outdoors and we just love the people. We loved our neighbors. We really got into neighboring and built strong relationships and even today I miss the church but I miss our street more, like we just made really great friends, like that were non-religious people, but it just became a big part of our life.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and you had those kids in those ages. So it's like totally right, the kids, if you had others in the neighborhood, man, that ties you in and if they have friendships in the neighborhood and all that kind of stuff, I totally get it. We still live out in San Diego, but our first house we were on a street like that and we were there for 10 years and I don't know why we left, but we did.
Speaker 1:Once you don't have it anymore, you realize what you have.
Speaker 2:Once you don't have it anymore, you realize what you have. Yeah, it was a great neighborhood. Yeah, so church is going well. You get the phone call one day. Someone DM'd you like hey, you ever heard of Lifeway? Yeah.
Speaker 1:I get a voicemail of like hey, give us a call, this is such and such from the search team for Lifeway Christian Resources and we have a couple of questions about a candidate. So I go up and I tell my wife I'm like who in the world do we know that's a candidate for Lifeway Christian Resources? And she was like immediately like she's like I guarantee you that's you Like no, no way.
Speaker 2:It's a clever way to get a call back.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I called back, I had in mind who it was and sure enough my wife is right there, like, hey, it's actually you, we have some questions for you. We just didn't want to raise any suspicion, like if somebody else was answering your email or your phone calls. So I ended this conversation with them. I, you know, I obviously had a lot of thoughts about local church and it wasn't a hard conversation to say, hey, here's how I see it, here's where it's going from my perspective. And one thing led to another and I was just like deeper and deeper into the process.
Speaker 1:I got asked to enter into the final three candidates. They asked me to fly to Dallas to do an interview. I'm getting on the airplane and my wife says to me now there's a 66% chance you're not getting this job Right. Like at that point we were both still like there has to be a ram in the stick. I'm not going to actually do this. And it was me and two business people, is my understanding and I was the only pastor. So I went into that interview. It kind of makes sense, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does. You know it's more. I would assume Lifeway is more business than church, but it's serving the church, but from a running it and just what all that looks like. So it makes sense that we're looking at business guys too.
Speaker 1:Totally so. You either have to have a business guy that has a great front man, that has respect and the credibility of the churches, or you have to have a pastor that trusts the business to business professionals and is engaged at whatever level he can be. Yeah, that makes sense. So I went interviewed. They told me it'd be a week. I get home, put my bag down, the phone rings and it's the chair of the search team, ben, how do you think you did today? And I said, man, I thought it went pretty well. I mean, mean, unless you tell me different. I mean right, you're like terrible, it was absolutely terrible. He goes well, we don't, we don't need any more time, like we are unanimous, felt like you're the person. And then that that was the first time that really registered with me like holy cow, like this is actually right, and so let me know I'm going to make yes yeah, my wife lindley and I then went through like a real season of like, okay, are we ready to make this decision?
Speaker 1:And we had gone back and forth on it so much and we were just like, okay, let's do it. You only live once. And it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Leaving the church was harder than I thought it would be. Starting over and learning how to be a president of a corporation was harder than I thought it'd be. It humbled me to no end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I could only imagine. I mean going through transition. Your kids were now what you had a teenager.
Speaker 1:High school, middle school.
Speaker 2:Middle schooler, yeah, and an elementary at all three stages. Going on High school and in elementary at all three stages. Going on High school, leaving high school. What was it like to process with your wife, and then with your kids, to make a move like that?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. I know every family does this different. But what we did for the second move is we set every kid down individually and she and I privately, had said if any kid opposes no question asked, we're not doing it Because we're happy where we are. I don't want to spend the rest of my life with one of my kids saying, Dad, you ruined my life. And we at that point weren't feeling like 100% direction from God either way. We kind of felt like God was saying like, make a choice. So each kid, one by one, was like Dad, we think you should do it. Like you realize, this is like moving back to a new city, starting over again. And they all felt like, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2:So we did it like and that was so key because, man, if I had had to bring them dragon and scream and that would have been awful- oh, yeah, I know guys that have done that but I don't even know your kids and I'm impressed with them because that was impressive, the fact that they were like let's do it it. Oh, that's crazy, like I couldn't, I did. Well, um, and we moved schools. Uh, well, I mean, we went to a different middle school than they were expecting and you know, their first reaction is always like no, why would you do that?
Speaker 1:Here's the hard thing for people in ministry is like when you go to a new place. It is such a bittersweet experience. I mean, for a couple of years you literally are grieving the loss of friendships, community, and no one tells you this. But, like when you leave a church, you can't talk to those people much for a while, you can't continue to engage them about what they think about the search process, what they think about the new pastor. That's not healthy, Right. So you kind of lose all sense of community for a while. You're just roaming and then you go to a new organization or a new church. It takes you a couple of years to figure out who here has even bought into your philosophy, your leadership. So it's a really transition. Ministry is particularly hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, whether you're doing like you did, going from a church into corporate, or you're just going from one church to another church or something like that, like, or you're you're in a church and you're planting a church or you know, those are all different kinds of transitions.
Speaker 1:And when you're leaving a church, if you act excited to be going to the next church or how does it make that church feel Like? It's just really it's wonky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, a lot of interesting dynamics to sort through. What was it like? So, now that you okay, you decided the kids are on board, sounds like wife was on board and you go and make the move. So what was it like to go into the, from the church world to the corporate world?
Speaker 1:Hard. Our lives were so interconnected with so many other people's lives. When you're a pastor and your ministry like and I mean it's like it's just the best thing about being in ministry is that your lives are just so interconnected. I mean seeing the same people every week. You're marrying and burying and doing life together. You're getting to know their spouses, their kids, your, your wife may not be paid on staff, but she's honored as if she were like it's, it's a big, it's a, it's a team deal. Then you go to a corporate setting and she's not invited to anything that I go into, not one room. And then you know, I don't, I work with all these great people. I've never met their spouses. Right, you know, I try to organize something. Hey, let's all get together. They're like what we already have, churches, like, why would we do that here? Like, right, yeah, it took me a couple of years to realize that they don't need a pastor, they to realize that they don't need a pastor, they need a president.
Speaker 1:And it took a while for me to make that transition. Yeah, yeah, what's the difference? Oh man, a pastor is somebody that's expected to be there when you're in your ups and downs of life, like, like, for example, when I first got here, one of the first things I did was make a list of all the employees I knew who were suffering, right, and then I just want to stay close to them. I'll make sure somebody's walking with them and that's like, believe me, that's still something we try to do, it like.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's like you're like that was into me. That's like who I am.
Speaker 1:I remember the first executive meeting I had a sheet. It was like be pastoral leaders, but some of it was also like I needed to adjust and recognize that all these people have a pastor and so just making that adjustment and honestly that's what we talk about in the Glass House is our marriage went through a really tough season because Lindley didn't have a place anymore and I was amped up with the adrenaline rush of leading a new organization and she was home every day trying to figure out what life looks like.
Speaker 2:What to do? No friends yet, no local church, community, or establishing all those things brand new.
Speaker 1:It was hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I could totally see it. And you have a mission and she's over there going like I don't have one. We used to do this together, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I didn't inherit like an organization moving up into the right, like I inherited an organization that was in a tough spot, like they just closed all these stores. There was a lot of fear in the water. So I had a lot of work to do to try to encourage people that there was a new vision for Lifeway, and it took me a lot of hours, a lot of listening, a lot of time. So I'd come home at night, man, I was spent and she hadn't had a single conversation with an adult all day. Right, right, it's just, you know we're through all that now and thankful for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like, I just brought it all the meetings. She's now co-CEOs. She just shows up, right. That doesn't work. So, um, I guess transitioning into that, like so Lifeway was in a spot sounds like a tough spot, or in a spot where some things had to, uh, be transformed and changed. What? Where was it five years ago? And kind of five years later? Where are you guys at today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean when I walked through the door there was PTSD in the building because they had just spent two years trying to reimagine stores. Let's, let's try to re merchandise, let's rebrand, let's do everything we can to try to make stores work and and and. It was working for a little bit. There was a lot of hope in the air and then Christmas season came, I mean, it just crashed. That was when Amazon was just really taking off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say, and all the while, Amazon. Literally, that was the thought in my head as you were going.
Speaker 1:I'm like, and you got Amazon over here just going bananas and traffic was way up in the stores, but purchases weren't. And that's what was happening People were going finding the book they want, ordering on Amazon, yeah, and so we just knew it wasn't sustainable.
Speaker 2:So when I came in the building, the first thought was-. Real quick. How many physical locations did you guys have at that time?
Speaker 1:174 scattered all over the country. Yeah, each of those had a unique lease with the property owner that had to be negotiated and dealt with. It was a long process, but the first thought was leaders were like, well, let's just take everything that we've had in the stores and throw it online. Let's just become an online thing. Well, that didn't work, because people who walk into a store are not shopping for the same kind of things for people who are online. And what we ultimately came to is Lifeways.
Speaker 1:Play in the future is to understand church leaders and build things that they don't have time to build, whether it's curriculum, whether it's great Bibles, whether it's fellowship cups to do communion, whether it's kids' activities, vacation, bible school, like all the stuff. Especially small and medium sized churches don't have the time to go and build themselves. We build it for them. We have a hundred thousand kids in camp every summer, because a lot of churches can't do their own camp. So we've gotten back to our original mission, which is to serve the church, and that's why Lifeway is really moving aggressively into a growth phase, I think.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So did you guys shut all those stores? Did you keep them they're?
Speaker 1:done. No, they were already actually all shutting down when I got there.
Speaker 2:Okay, got it, got it. So all stores are gone, shut down.
Speaker 1:And so everything is happening online now. Yeah, and if you're listening to this podcast, I want to save you the email. Okay, I miss the stores too. You don't have to tell me I love bookstores. It's like you've got a few of those emails Every time I speak somewhere. They're like but when are you making the stores back? I mean, it's just not part of the consumer mindset anymore. I'm thankful Barnes Noble is making a rebound. I love that.
Speaker 2:But that's like the only what's interesting right is Amazon came along, gobbled up the world and then all digital, and then they went and launched physical stores and then closed them, and did they close all of them?
Speaker 1:Like I don't. Even I paid a little bit of attention, but not I read the article on this. They gave it a short period of time and it wasn't working and they shut them all down.
Speaker 2:Interesting. So they tried to see if they could bring that back because of the emails you got. Right, like people, they probably hear the same thing, right, and they're like people want a physical place to go figure some stuff out. So, yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so you brought it all online or it was in the process of going online when you came in. I guess we can jump back to that. Through all that time, through those five years, how did you think about kind of culture creating and, through that season and the vision for the future and getting people behind it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, years ago, when I was going through church planter training, I heard the statement that I really hung on to. I don't even remember who said it, but it was culture is created by the positive behaviors we celebrate and the negative behaviors we tolerate. So, in a sense, culture making is like parenting it happens along the way, it happens as you observe. Things that are going well, things aren't going well. So we just we established the values of the company, we created a new set of values, say like let's hit reset, let's create some fresh values. And then we just started to champion the ones that we felt like were being lived out, and then we began to address the ones that weren't. And it's always a work in progress, like it's not like you have a complete culture creating.
Speaker 1:But I think if you ask the average employee, they would tell you like it's completely turned into something else, because the culture is in a really good spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you feel it more than you see it right Totally, because you see it in people's actions. But you feel the vibe, right Like you feel when people are all rowing in the same direction, excited about where you're headed, all those kinds of things. Was it when you, when you came in and I know you have to be careful, right Like you know, it's like I'm sure things weren't all terrible and things aren't all great.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I want to make sure I state that there were really good things that happened prior to my coming. I'm not, I was not, the Messiah of life way, totally.
Speaker 2:Um, but what? What have you seen as maybe some a couple of the biggest things that have um moved in the right direction in the five years?
Speaker 1:Well, I think number one.
Speaker 1:I think having stores was a blessing, but the problem with stores is that it really is kind of geared toward the individual consumer, and so you're trying to sell to that average person that's walking through the door. The problem with that, though, is the real mission of Lifeway has always been that our mission is tethered to the local church, tethered to the local church. So I think, in some ways, the stores was mission drift for us, because we moved away towards products that were really geared towards church leaders and moved more towards the individual consumer, whereas now we've really shifted back to okay, what does the person leading student ministry need for Wednesday and Sunday? So I think that question's changed and the team's rallied around that question, because, at the end of the day, we're most excited about helping the local church, because that's where Christ said the action is Right. Yeah, and hopefully, along the way, we're helping individuals as well, but I think the center of the bullseye for us is really helping the senior pastor figure out how to pull off discipleship and worship and evangelism and all those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. The church is helping the people. You're helping the church right, like you're. You're empowering the church, resourcing the church, giving them tools that they could use that they can't create on their own. Like I love how you put it like the big guys, you know the life, churches and the elevations, like they can create all their own stuff because absolutely, and they do and they share it and all the things right, which is awesome. But the average church in America a hundred people, 200 people like they're borrowing anything they can right, or or using resources, like you guys, all day long because you know they have a one or two people on staff and they can't create Absolutely. And then you know it Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And man, you know it's moving that way, Like you, and fewer churches are able to afford a lot of staff, right, so we're having to figure out how to do more with less. And a lot of times you've got a bivocational person in place or you might have a volunteer student leader. So when we say help the church leader, we're not necessarily saying help the church staff. It may be a guy who's a fireman, who also happens to be the youth guy Right Totally, and that's. That's more and more the case.
Speaker 2:How did you guys switch? I mean, you went from not not only, but like you had this physical store kind of presence. Sounds like it was a big part of you know the business now, now it's gone completely online, so all the resources are online. I'm sure you ship. It sounds like you know communion cups and envelopes and things that are print. You ship to them, but I'm sure you have digital resources too. Yes, but it's like e-commerce. So how has the business model changed?
Speaker 1:Well, we are sensitive to the fact that the world is becoming increasingly digital. You know, it still blows my mind that my daughter's in college and she didn't buy any textbooks Right. Totally All of her textbooks are online. Like I'm sorry, it still blows my mind.
Speaker 2:I remember going to the store to pick up my books, you know.
Speaker 1:Totally and spending $900.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So we know the generation coming behind prefers digital for the most part and feels comfortable with digital, prefers digital for the most part and feels comfortable with digital. So the hard thing right now about serving the church is a vast majority of the smaller, medium-sized churches, particularly those in rural areas. They're figuring out how to stream right now. Yes, so they're still saying we're not ready to leave the DVD.
Speaker 2:Like using their iPhone. That's how they're streaming right. It's like absolutely.
Speaker 1:COVID exposed, like, the number of churches that didn't even have a facebook page. Yeah, yeah, so the church is just culturally, particularly the rural grassroots church, which is the majority of churches technologically, not on the front end, on the back end, so but then you have churches like the ones you mentioned. They're like why is this not digital right? Why do we have to buy this in paper form? So, in order to do that in a sense of SKUs, how do you do that? Like, obviously we'd love to deliver everything digitally. It would save us a ton of time and money, but there's still a vast majority of churches that want it in a box and they want it in paper Right, and I understand.
Speaker 2:Yep, and some of it. I guess you do want it that way. I don't know. You're in a small group and some people like to write it down. If I had my way as a Bible study leader.
Speaker 1:I would want everybody to have a piece of paper and put their phone away, Right? So I understand why people are screened out and they just want to deal with a piece of paper.
Speaker 2:Yeah, get the distractions away. Are things headed down the right path?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's going great. Lifeway is in a good spot. I mean we made some tough decisions Like honestly just selling that headquarter building. It was such a profitable thing for us. We were able to throw all that into long-term investment and it's kicking off interest. It can help us be innovative and design new tools. We just put a new curriculum out called Hi-Fi. That's for churches and written by pastors and church leaders in California for churches who are in hard to reach places where kids walk through the door and they have no idea who Jesus is or what the church is or why these people are wearing fig leaves. It's a curriculum that's written for churches like that and it's doing really well out the gates.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. Do you guys do a lot of that? Partner with people, pastors and folks to write curriculum? Absolutely, we have.
Speaker 1:A lot of our writers are contractors, right, and so for a product that we want to resonate with the West, we want people from the West writing that. We don't want someone from Nashville writing it for a church in Seattle, right, yeah. Yeah, totally, and that's one of the cool things about going remote, like we've done it, like we're now hiring people from all over the country who don't have to move to Nashville to be editors, graphic designers, content creators, designers content creators.
Speaker 2:It's been really fun to see the diversity. Yeah, yeah, the whole. I mean it's cool. I'm sure it's also hard to go through that transition as a business where you had a headquarters and you know whether it was used every day or not by everybody. Still people are coming in the office, that culture exists of being in the office, and then that starts to sort of fade away. I'm sure COVID accelerates that for you guys and now you're like we don't even have a headquarters, we have the-.
Speaker 1:Frank, you would think so. I thought that would be true. In fact, I think I grieved the most in selling the building. I'm a pastor. I love people. Let's get everybody together. But once we sold the building, we started building a new space. The predominant air of fear was are we going to have to all come back in the office every day?
Speaker 2:Right. People are enjoying it yeah.
Speaker 1:And they like coming in for strategic meetings and meetups and whiteboarding. But they don't like just having been told you have to sit in the office for a certain amount of hours. They'd rather do that from home and hang out with their dogs. Yeah, yeah so it was an adjustment but honestly I think I had the hardest time. I think everybody else was like this is great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like come on, guys, show up in the coworking space today. We need everyone here. I need some. I need church, I need some FaceTime with all you guys. Here's a compromise.
Speaker 1:Twice a year we fly everybody in for a one lifeway conference. We do a two day event. We have worship, we have speakers. I normally give a talk about vision and we just have a lot of fun. We we do something really silly together. We went roller skating one time, Love it. So I get my fill on those the gatherings. But understand and understand that, like a lot of people enjoy working from home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. We we started the company all remote um about eight years ago. So we've been remote and COVID hit and you know, but it was kind of like we were already remote. I couldn't imagine going into an office, like you know, and then you start to attract those people, cause some people really want to be in an office and it's good for you know, whatever that kind of business or certain kinds of people. So you still need it, um, but once you're kind of remote, you start to attract the people that like to work that way too. So it keeps you know and dude.
Speaker 1:What I love about it is it's really flat in the organization. Like I don't think we realize how much pretense it creates when there's offices with some are bigger, some are smaller, some have a view, some don't. Now nobody has an office. When I go in I've got to reserve a room just like everybody else. I don't miss that at all. I thought I would, but I don't miss it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool. That's cool. What's, um, I guess maybe, as we wrap here a little bit, what, what's? You got the age of AI hitting and you know we're talking about digital transformation. You guys are going through it. Churches are getting hit with it too, right, like COVID and post COVID, like kind of going digital, and now AI is hitting. Right. There's this like the snowball that just keeps coming at us. How are you guys thinking about? How are you? How are you thinking about it as the leader of Lifeway and helping churches somehow?
Speaker 1:Don't we all have some mixed feelings about it? Like, let me, let me speak positively about it, because nobody wants to say nice things about AI right now.
Speaker 2:I love AI. I use it every day.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, in the church there's this fear we're gonna be robots. But, like I just did an address to the team and I wanted a couple of images and and it's always hard to find images like stock photos and things like that so our graphics guys just told ai to make me something. Dude, they were unbelievable. Yeah, images and I didn't have to pay for it, I didn't have to, like, give anybody credit, like it was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yep, and they did it fast, right they. They were probably you still, you still had them, they. You still employ these people, but like they have a superpower, they can go do this thing like way faster. It was cool yeah.
Speaker 1:On the negative side. I think that makes our graphic designers nervous. At what point do I get replaced by a screen? Yeah, and then I just have questions about human creativity. What happens to human creativity when we no longer are challenging ourselves to be creative? We have machines that do that for us. That makes me nervous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I try to listen to a bunch of stuff around this and you think about, like other things, other technological advancements that were made, and then, like everyone's fear of losing all the jobs and you know you do lose those jobs but a bunch of other new jobs crop up that didn't exist right and then there's more productivity going on and there's more gdp created, and so I've heard that story numerous times in different ways and I'm like is that what's going to happen here?
Speaker 2:I mean, it sounds like this is one of those moments that I've. I've not lived through one of those right in that sense, like I guess maybe like internet, mobile, some of that kind of stuff, but this one feels a bit different, right, like it's gonna yeah I think, it's lower risk for us as a christian publishing company because normally, like when we sign an author, we've heard this person speak.
Speaker 1:We've probably read some things they've written before. It's very low probability that chat gpt did that, right, right, yeah, I mean I heard for school teachers and others who are trying to decide, like who wrote this.
Speaker 2:Oh man, totally. I was reading something the other day. It was at the college level, cause there's these like AIs that can read the paper and determine if it was written by AI, but they're not. They're like decent at it, but they're not perfect. And so, literally, the colleges were like no, we're not even going to use them because there's too many like false positives, so forget it. We're not even going to try to police it because it's just not possible right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just think self-preservation is a powerful emotion and I think a lot of people in the creative space are like I don't like the feel of this Right.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and I would assume in your industry. I mean, we use it. We use it for draft writing of things, we use it for like copy and emails and blog posts and images and you know. But a lot of it is the draft work, right, and then there's humans leading, getting it done, doing the editing, making sure that it's accurate, those kinds of things. So it's kind of elevating the work in some sense, but it's not getting rid of people.
Speaker 1:Their job is just-, but it does create some interesting ethical dilemmas. Let me give you one. Recently in ministry, so somebody showed me how to do this AI summary of meetings. Do you use that feature?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's incredible.
Speaker 2:I forget what it's called, but we use one in Zoom. That's on all the time.
Speaker 1:Exactly so I told my assistant like hey, turn that on all the time. I want to be able to go back and just see the summary of what we talked about. Well then a guy asked to talk to me about a very personal issue that he was going through. Like he needed some advice and I didn't know how to turn that dang thing off. You're like so I got a full summary of all of his personal problems. Like I do think there's going to be some interesting things that happen with confidentiality and privacy as we move forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like, I didn't know how to turn it off. Now it's stored somewhere in the cloud. I don't know where it's at. This is.
Speaker 1:And this guy would be horrified to know there's a written document about some of the unique challenges he's facing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and unintentional right Like, not like. You didn't do it on purpose. You're just like I didn't know how to use this tool because it's a new feature. Yeah, no, I totally get it. Man, that's crazy. Ai is crazy.
Speaker 1:If you talk about technology, though, let me ask you this Is an online church member, a church member.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean they never come to the building, they never join any kind of real group, maybe like a virtual group. How do you feel about that?
Speaker 2:It's like how do you feel about church membership in general? Are they a member when they came once? When they came five times, did they go through next steps? Did they get baptized? Did they what? Everybody has a different like. What is a church member, right? Like, even so, it's kind of the same question. But, look, the only person suffering in some sense by just going online is that person Because, like we all know, like the local church is about, like relationships, and like human, physical, in-person relationships are very important.
Speaker 2:Now, I I also can appreciate there's cases where you know you have some kind of anxiety or you have some sort of sickness or disability or reasons why you literally cannot be there or with people or whatever. There's that kind of case which is unique and online church is a blessing for those people, like in a major way, right, um, but for people who aren't in that category or any of those categories, you know, being with people is important, like we were created for connection, you know, and I know you can use a little bit like zoom and things help you a lot, for sure, but it just can't replace, like real being with people I totally agree and I think the challenge with it is it can enable isolationism totally, and I and I think like one church I'm preaching at pretty regularly here in town long hollow church it's a great church here in nashville.
Speaker 1:They have an online pastor now that, just like, is constantly trying to engage with people who are joining online to see if you can't reel them in and get them involved in relational ministries.
Speaker 2:I think that's really cool, yeah yeah, yeah, using it to get people to connect with people, to attract people, to minister to people who can't make it, like all those kind of things are all good, but but I, you know, I think we're still gonna, you still gotta go be with people somehow, some way. So I don't know, I don't know how you count people's membership or not, but but we all need to be with people. I mean, I don't think like it's like church is meant to be in person, you know, with all the other things being in support, right, like in tools at our fingertips and just like websites and all that so well, man, this has been awesome.
Speaker 2:Where is Lifeway headed? Give us kind of where you guys are going, what's the next five years look like, and then you know where do folks go to check you guys out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our five-year vision is to empower 300,000 church leaders with research and resources to reach the nations, and the number of 300,000 is important to us. Like right now, we think, based on our best study, we're serving about 100,000 churches, yeah, or church leaders, I mean. So we're setting a goal to be more aggressive and proactively pursuing church leaders to say how can we help you? And the way we're doing that is we're now breaking down our focus according to the position in the church. So, okay, what is the senior pastor struggling with? What could we build to help him? What things do we currently offer that are effective and what things do we not offer that could be effective?
Speaker 1:So, instead of just who has a great idea for a church product, we're thinking through the eyes of a church leader. So we we hope, with that approach and adding some outside sales people who are really just out there checking in with churches, finding out like, what do you need? We can be in better touch with the church and and grow that and as we do that, obviously it'll become more profitable. So they can find us at lifewaycom that that's our online channel and, uh, would love to connect. Also, if you have any, if you want to shoot anything to me, I make myself accessible. It's just president at lifewaycom. If you have a question about today, we'd love to interact with you.
Speaker 2:I love it. That's a great email, by the way, I'm going to.
Speaker 1:I made that it's actually not my real email, but I'm tired of telling people. I'll spell my name so like president and life way Prez.
Speaker 2:It gets forwarded to me so good. Um well, this has been awesome, man. Thanks for coming on. What about checking you out Like on Twitter, on Instagram, any anywhere? Yeah, just Ben.
Speaker 1:Mandrell, b E, n, m, a, n D R E L L, or you can check me out on instagram or or facebook believe it or not, still there or twitter there. I'm not a big twitter fan. I'll just be honest with you. I've lost my love for twitter, but I haven't left. I've lost my love.
Speaker 2:We got it wrong. I asked the wrong I'm sorry x, it's x, so it's x, sorry x. Um well, ben, this has been great man. Uh guys, thanks for tuning in, join us next week, definitely, definitely. Share the love, give the episode a like, share it on the socials and we'll catch you guys next week. Thanks guys, see ya.