When was the last time you encountered a story so inspiring that it left you reflecting on your own journey of faith and leadership? Gus Hernandez Jr., a catalyst for change in North American church planting, shares his remarkable transition from being his family's first believer to steering them, and countless others, towards ministry. As the Director of Sending Churches at the North American Mission Board and Executive Pastor at Reality Church in Miami, Gus unpacks the SEND Network's vision of fostering kingdom diversity and propelling the growth of new faith communities that aim to engage 1% of North America over the next decade.
Venture with us into the inner workings of church dynamics, where we dissect the art of nurturing a sending culture. Hear time-tested strategies for developing potential church planters within your congregation by leveraging sending labs and identifying budding leaders among your members. We also discuss the interplay between multi-site church growth and leadership development, revealing the powerful impact of recognizing and cultivating the potential within those we lead. This conversation is a goldmine for anyone with a heart for empowering the next wave of church leaders.
As we navigate the delicate balance of juggling multiple ministry roles, I share my personal strategies for managing a demanding schedule, setting healthy boundaries, and the underestimated value of rest. In the latter part of our conversation, we delve into the nuances of creating a disciple-making culture within home groups and the importance of building a feedback-rich environment. Gus's passion is infectious, and his leadership serves as a beacon of hope, demonstrating that through dedication and service, one can indeed ignite a renaissance within faith communities. Join us for this episode filled with profound insights and actionable wisdom, tailored to uplift and inspire your own mission.
Show Notes
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When was the last time you encountered a story so inspiring that it left you reflecting on your own journey of faith and leadership? Gus Hernandez Jr., a catalyst for change in North American church planting, shares his remarkable transition from being his family's first believer to steering them, and countless others, towards ministry. As the Director of Sending Churches at the North American Mission Board and Executive Pastor at Reality Church in Miami, Gus unpacks the SEND Network's vision of fostering kingdom diversity and propelling the growth of new faith communities that aim to engage 1% of North America over the next decade.
Venture with us into the inner workings of church dynamics, where we dissect the art of nurturing a sending culture. Hear time-tested strategies for developing potential church planters within your congregation by leveraging sending labs and identifying budding leaders among your members. We also discuss the interplay between multi-site church growth and leadership development, revealing the powerful impact of recognizing and cultivating the potential within those we lead. This conversation is a goldmine for anyone with a heart for empowering the next wave of church leaders.
As we navigate the delicate balance of juggling multiple ministry roles, I share my personal strategies for managing a demanding schedule, setting healthy boundaries, and the underestimated value of rest. In the latter part of our conversation, we delve into the nuances of creating a disciple-making culture within home groups and the importance of building a feedback-rich environment. Gus's passion is infectious, and his leadership serves as a beacon of hope, demonstrating that through dedication and service, one can indeed ignite a renaissance within faith communities. Join us for this episode filled with profound insights and actionable wisdom, tailored to uplift and inspire your own mission.
Show Notes
The Nonprofit Renaissance is Powered by Vers Creative. An award winning creative agency trusted by global brands and businesses.
Follow @collinhoke
Follow @heredes
Follow @vers_creative
Work with Vers
Welcome to the nonprofit Renaissance podcast, where we help nonprofits go further and grow faster. I'm one of your co-hosts my name is Colin and I'm H and we are here with a super special guest today. I think you're going to love this episode to age. Why don't you talk about who we are with?
Heredes:Yes, he is massive, mainly North America, colin. North America we just found out that, not South America, and I'm going to have to start there because I'm kind of bummed that it's not South America. And it was in the name all along, because he's a legend in the North American mission.
Collin:Honestly, that one's on you, that's honestly on you. We're laughing.
Heredes:We've been having a good time and I'm just messing. But we have today with us Gus Hernandez Jr, which we'll get into in a second, who serves as director of sending churches at the North American Mission Board and Nam, also executive pastor reality church in Miami, friends and partners of ours. And prior to that, prior to joining them, he served as mobilization pastor in Long Hollow Church, which you might have heard of, and he's under his doctorate in pastoral leadership from southeastern Baptist theological seminary. And the list goes on and on. But, ladies and gentlemen, round of applause for Gus Hernandez Jr. Welcome, Gus. How are you?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I'm doing well, man. Thank you guys so much for having me. It means a lot, absolutely.
Heredes:Now you're Jr, so that means there's a senior, is that correct?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:They will is man, and so I've had to, like, really make sure to emphasize that, because, you know, I was the first believer in my family, but over time I got to lead my mom to faith and then my dad came to faith and he was always in hotel management so he managed two properties in South Beach and then, along that journey, god called him into the nonprofit world and then he actually helped overseas for a little bit in the Dominican Republic and then, since now, has become a pastor in the States. Wow, now you know part of the sum of the circles, though they'll hear Gus Hernandez, and sometimes they're referring to dad, sometimes they're referring to me. So I'm always making sure, hey, I'm super proud of my dad and the leader that he is. He's taught me so much about leadership.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:But yeah, it's been funny because now you know, we have a lot of circles. We run it together in ministry, so it's like dad Jr. I got some experience with that age.
Heredes:My dad gave me the weirdest name, so I am not a junior. I tried to give away junior. I said let me name one of my boys Jr, my wife's, like no, don't do that to the chat. So we did it. We did it.
Collin:That's awesome. Do you ever pull the? You know like, hey, in this in the ministry world, I'm the senior, you're the junior. You let that go, you know? Remind that.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:That is the funny part. So I'm getting close to like my 19th year in ministry and so it's funny. I remember taking my parents on their first ever mission trip when I was pastoring a church in Tennessee and then over time my parents became missionaries. So I joke around now because I became an MK first and then a PK, but after I was already in ministry as a pastor I became a missionary kid kind of pastor's kid in my 30s and 40s. Yeah.
Heredes:Well, gus, tell us, for those of us and we were messing around with the North American, south American, I'm from South America and you were born in what part of North America?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I was born in Miami. Yeah, I was born in Miami.
Heredes:Florida, which is questionable if it is North America, but we'll leave it at that. It's the capital of South America, in my opinion. Tell us North American Mission Board. You've been in for some time now and successfully leading a large group of pastors and leaders and mobilizing churches. Tell us what they do and what you're doing there.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, absolutely so. Send Network is the church planting arm of the North American Mission Board, so we like to say this way that SEND Network is a family of churches that's planting churches everywhere, for everyone. One of the things that we value is kingdom diversity, and so we want to make sure that we're planting the kind of churches that everyone is welcome to, and so we currently have this vision. It's a bold vision we want to see. We want to kind of join in God's activity to see His kingdom expand in North America by 1% over the next decade. What would that look like? Man? That's approximately, if you take into account today's population, approximately reaching 2.75 million people over the next decade. In order to do that, we'd have to plant roughly around 11,000 new churches that each multiply once in their lifetime and each reach 125 new believers. And so that's kind of the epic journey that we're pursuing, that we're on. We're trying to impact North America by 1% over the next 10 years.
Collin:Man, that doesn't sound like a big number, but then when you add the actual numbers in there, that's a lofty goal. That's a lofty goal. What's the approach to that, when you really expand it and actually look at what you guys are trying to do? I mean, how do you wrap your head around it?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, so I mean, one of the things that we realize right away is you have to activate the local church. I mean, we like to say this way like networks, don't plant churches, churches plant churches. And so what we're trying to do as a family of churches is help each local church recognize that each church can play a role on this journey, and so one of the first things we did this year as a team is we unveiled a new mobilization pathway to help churches be able to see where they are on this pathway and what clear next steps they can take to move forward on this pathway of planting churches. And so it starts with becoming a cooperating church that can then move to being a supporting church. A supporting church is praying for planters, their financially supporting planters, but then we want to see them take that step to becoming a sending church. Now, this is different in that, instead of just supporting a different planter, a sending church is taking responsibility for that planter and they're ensuring that they're getting the necessary coaching, the commissioning and the care that that planter needs to go plant a church and then from there.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:We don't want that to be a one and done like man. Now that you planted a church. What would it look like for you to like develop a heart and a vision to keep planting? So we want to help sending churches become multiplying churches. These are churches that are starting to send out multiple planters and teams to plant churches. And then the last category is what we call a movement church. They're doing everything a multiplying church is doing, but they're leveraging their influence with other churches to catalyze other churches and join them on this journey of planting more churches. And so what we realize, in order to reach a goal this lofty, is it's not one network planting churches, it's a family of churches all getting involved.
Heredes:Now, that's clear. Love that, gus. Let me ask you this what has been one of the challenges in this season in mobilizing these churches? What have you found?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Sure, I think one of the big challenges is sometimes churches can be just focused on what's happening inside the walls of their church and they sometimes lose sight of God's vision for expanding his kingdom and reaching new people and new territories and taking new territory for the Lord. And so I think one of the first challenges is just helping a church to like lift their eyes from what's happening with inside the walls of the church and lift their eyes up to see what is God's heart for the nations, what's God's heart to seeing his kingdom expand. And so for us, that's a big part of what we try to do is help pastors and leaders develop that heart, to develop a sending culture and a sending vision.
Collin:Now a quick note for our listeners. Because of the nature of Gus's role, there's going to be a lot of church language, a lot of church planting language. But I show you there's principles here, that of general leadership, I mean of expansion, that will absolutely be applicable to your nonprofits. But even if you're not in that church world or that faith based world, man, there's some stuff here. Like again you heard the goal, Like you need some good leadership to get where they're trying to go, and so just an encouragement I don't want that to turn you off. This is there's going to be some good stuff.
Heredes:And, with that said, actually tell us a little about NAMP. They're in every state in the United States. It's, I think, how many employees and give us just a little bit kind of the scope of NAMP.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:The North America Mission Board has over 600 employees, different missionaries working in different areas from you know, a team that's devoted to evangelism, a team devoted to church planting, that send network. We have a robust chaplaincy division that's helping with. Chaplaincy is across all of military branches to military church planting as well, and then we also have send relief. So it's a huge relief ministry that not only is North America, that has actually gone global as well and it's been helping impact and meeting needs and changing lives all over the world.
Collin:Wow. So let's dive into your role then. What does it look like? What are you actively doing day to day? How do you interact with churches when you go and reach out?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, absolutely. So we do a couple of different things. Our team tries to provide some different workshops in different parts of the country. We call these sending labs. These are these two-day collaborative experiences to help pastors and churches kind of catch that vision and develop their first beginning steps for developing a sending culture, discovering some practical tips for how to discover, identify potential church planters and how to develop those church planters. So we're doing a lot of those labs, we're doing a lot of coaching.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:We do a lot of stuff in the resources space of providing resources for churches to develop leadership and pipelines within their church discipleship pathways, ministry, training, all sorts of different things. At the end of the day, we're trying to help these churches develop what we would call a multiplication pipeline. It has like three stages, like discover, develop and deploy, and so we're trying to get them to think through okay, how are we helping develop the people that we have within our church? You know, what are we going to then deploy them to be able to do with the gift sets that they have? And so we're trying to help them get to that spot.
Heredes:Yeah.
Collin:Go ahead H.
Heredes:No question with that. We discussed this before the episode, a little bit offline, but I think it's relevant for our listeners. Half of our listeners are pastors and leaders. Half are non-profit, c-suite business development or their growth development. When it comes to multi-site and a lot of churches we work with their strategy for sending, they're probably sending a campus pastor to just launch a campus of their own. How does that fit into this? How have you seen it work? It not work. We can joke around a little bit about it, about what it actually means, and feel free to do so, because it's not cookie cutter for everybody. Right, and God calls different churches to do different things. But with a lot of churches trying to do their own thing my own way, is that been a challenge for you and how have you overcome that?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:No, I think what we're very open and honest about is there's not a one-size-fits-all approach. There's no one way that this is the ultimate and the only way to do it. So we have several multi-site churches that are part of our strategy and that are part of our network. In fact, what we say is, in essence and this is where I poked a little bit of fun offline right, so I'll say it here in many ways, multi-siding is just slow church plans. Like, if you fast forward, some of the multi-site churches from 20, 30 years ago, they expanded and did a great job reaching new areas and then, over time, what they did is, as those campuses got super healthy and as the board just got much bigger, they just planted them as autonomous churches, and so it was just slow church planting.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:But it started with a vision and an idea right.
Heredes:You know we're gonna have to use that for the thumbnail and the teaser clip. Right, it's like just right. Multi-site is just slow church planting.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:It really is, and so we believe it's a very effective strategy. I mean, that's one of the steps for us is identifying those churches that have that heart, like a good multi-siding church. What you recognize is that they have a heart and a passion to reach and engage new people. They've developed great leadership development principles to raise up a campus pastor to give him leadership. They've had to design their system and structure to meet needs in multiple geographic areas to reach different neighborhoods. Man, they've done such great work to try to problem solve and to add value to their organization, to their community. So I believe they're definitely part of it.
Collin:So you used three words, see if I can remember them. I know develop was one of them.
Heredes:What is it?
Outro:Discover, discover, discover, develop, deploy.
Collin:So let's talk about. Can we go through that process? So, when you go to a church, what's discover all about? What are they discovering? Just this passion and desire to church plan? Are they discovering actual people? All the above.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, I think all the above one is you want them to kind of discover their vision for sending and multiplying. But then that usually starts with hey, if we're going to plan another church, where do we find this planter? And a lot of times churches feel like they're somewhere out there and what we're trying to do is, like man, the planters of tomorrow are sitting in your pews today, and so if you can just change your mindset and say, like man, I think the future church planter is actually here and it may be somebody that's already part of my church, so it's helping them kind of think through what would make for a good church planter or somebody who's going to be a leader within your church, right? So let's move, like the church planting, from the equation for a minute. It's still a great principle is like, who do you already have already connected to your organization and what traits and characteristics or skills have you already observed and noticed? And then it's about having that I see in you conversation like, hey, man, I don't know if you realize this, but I see this in you. Have you ever noticed this or thought about this or had any conversations about this? And oftentimes, like man, you know, I have thought about that. Well, you know someone has pointed that out is a man. I see this in you and I believe that you could be this.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:And it's like starting off with discovering those potential leaders in your organization. And then, once you discover them, the natural question is what are you going to do as an organization to develop this leader? Like what is it that you want them to learn, master and improve in order to reach this desired destination that you have for them? So that's that develop pieces. That's helping think through. Okay, so you have somebody who wants to step up to the plate and do this thing. What now? What's next? What are you going to do to help coach them, train them, equip them on this journey? And then, lastly, is the deployment. That's like all right, activate their skill sets, activate their gifts. I think one of the most frustrating things is to have someone identify something in you, train you up and then not give you any outlets to use your gifts and your skill sets. So, for organizations to think through, what are the avenues where I'm going to be able to deploy people, to leverage, how they're wired, how they're gifted, all those different things and put into practice.
Collin:And so I'm thinking of the nonprofit here as well. You know, to take this, you know their I mean nonprofits, just like churches, are looking for high quality leaders to go and lead and, you know, expand whatever they're doing, they a lot of times that's a big part of that is going to be that development process. What is it? So, once you've kind of you know you go into a church, you help them discover, you know, help them find people, what does that development really look like for us? Let's say I'm someone who feels called to church planning. What does that development process look like for them? And how does Nam and sending churches step in?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:there. Yeah, no, I think that's great. I think two different approaches. We have a self discovery approach. One of them this can come in later when we talk about, like some of the things that impacted the way I do ministry and just work is the importance of self discovery in adult learning and education. I think, instead of just doing like an info dump, like this is all the stuff you got to do being able to guide churches and leaders through a self discovery process to help them kind of come up with their own plan, and so we do forms of that in our training and our collaborative environments, learning environments where we're helping use a series of questions and posted tear sheet exercises to help them kind of discover.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Like, oh yeah, these are the things I find to be really important, these are the things I'm really good at and passionate about. These are the things I would love to pass on to a future leader right, identify that, figure out a system. And so what we try to do is like for four key words, the first is like we is a phrase. The first one's a phrase beginning with the end in mind like what is it that you ultimately want this person to become Like, when you have clarity in that, it's powerful, like you know what you're ultimately aligning all of your stuff to produce. So that's the first step in the process helping leaders like what is it you want people to become? Once you have that clarity, you can reverse, engineer and help people achieve that goal.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:And so then the three words we use are relational training, environments, rhythms, content. So what are the environments that I'm inviting someone into? What are the rhythms? How often are we gonna engage in that space and meet in that space? And then, when we meet in those spaces, what is the content or the skill or the craft that I want to teach you and get you to master in those spaces? And like, by helping them just kind of think through that they can look back and say like okay, so I want to meet with this person weekly or monthly in this setting and I want to cover this book, this resource, this podcast, this tool and help them produce this desired outcome. So it's all connected. Those are kind of some of the things that we do when we come alongside coaching churches.
Collin:And what is the expectation when you're working for a church, because obviously you're trying to help them build these systems. So are you guys more of just like an advisor and you know, like, what does it look like for a church? Like, what are they responsible for? Are they kind of like responsible for moving this along? How does that all?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:work. Yeah, they're responsible for kind of moving this along. We can serve as like champion, as like a consultant, as somebody to inspire you on that journey. I think when it gets into like planting through some network, we have like a robust assessment process where a church planting candidate will have to go through a two-day assessment retreat and they'll have experts and practitioners and leaders with lots of experience kind of put them through an evaluation process and they assess for like eight specific skills. And so churches then are trying to prepare a candidate to go through assessment and then on the back end of assessment, that planter will get one of three responses you know, ready to move forward, so they're ready to plant.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:They go straight into our coaching Needs, further development, like, okay, you have a lot of what we're looking for in a church planter and we think you can be a good planter. But based on the assessment, I think it'd be good for you to spend maybe six months working on these skill sets with your sending church. Or the third option is like a redirect. Based on all the different people in the room, they just felt like maybe church planting is not the thing that you should pursue and you should redirect your gifts and passions to another area of ministry, and so those are usually the three outcomes. So what the sending church is responsible for is helping first prepare a candidate for assessment and then, coming after assessment, following through with their growth development plan to help them grow and the skill sets needed to plant a healthy, thriving church.
Heredes:Gus tell me about assessment. Feels like bootcamp. Is it a little bootcamp-ish? Is it a little bit? I have to meet that mark.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:No, I think it's more like you come with your spouse and there's gonna be exercises where we get to hear your vision, like why do you want to plan a church? So you get to practice communication and vision casting. There's gonna be a communication exercise where part of leading a church is being able to communicate and preach and teach God's word faithfully. So you'll preach a message in front of a room of seasoned pastors and practitioners for going to give you feedback and evaluation. There's a counseling component to it. There's opportunities for you and your wife to have meetings with other pastors and their wives, and so they're gonna do a lot of stuff on family dynamics, relational dynamics. We use the Prepared and Rich as a marital resource through that process as well, and so they're just trying to look at some different areas. There's parts of it that's very worshipful. There's parts of it where, for sure, it is definitely exhausting, because you're going from preaching to vision casting, to a counseling session, to talking with a room. So there's different elements to it, but it is a very robust retreat.
Collin:So there's no push-ups, qualification or anything like that.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:No, that's not a bad idea, though, right.
Collin:Just to test the heart a little bit 6 am. I think We'll say no, take some CrossFit If you crossfit Fit for the cross. You gotta crossfit first, okay we're gonna end the episode right there and.
Outro:I'm gonna go rebuke H for whatever just happened.
Collin:Well, so I come from the H and I both come from the church world and church planting assessments typically can be pretty robust. It's not just like you said, it's not just a one-day thing, it's not an afternoon. Tell us your heart, okay, go have fun. You're really evaluating somebody because church planting is hard. I mean, there's its own set of challenges in church planting, but then also just leading an organization and being responsible for one is really difficult. What is the necessity for having that in church planting? Have you seen situations where maybe there isn't as robust of a process in the front end and it's gone wrong? Talk a little bit about the importance of having that.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I guess leadership vetting, if you will, yeah, I think what you realize is if you have a healthier leader who's prepared and equipped, they'll survive the journey of planting. Planting is already extremely difficult. It's one of the toughest things you can do. For me in my ministry years I think it's been the hardest thing I've ever done. I've led at churches of 10,000 people, 6,000 people, 3,000. I would say planting a church from scratch which I planted with my friend Carlos Lollet Probably the hardest thing I've ever done in 18 years of ministry, for sure. And so it's extremely difficult. And so you want well-prepared, well-assessed leaders to go through a robust process to help them on that journey. I think when you have people just kind of go out there without the right resources, right training, sure they could plant a thriving church. I'm not saying that that can't happen if you don't go through this process. I think you have a higher success rate in healthy planters and healthy churches being planted if there's a lot of intentionality on the front end.
Collin:And so again thinking of, like, say, the nonprofit leader. If they're looking at this and saying, okay, well, maybe I see a need to have something like this to help evaluate leaders, Maybe I don't need to. It doesn't need to be as robust as it is for like a church planting thing. Where can they go to kind of find that? Are there resources where and I might be putting you a little bit on the spot here but are there resources that they can go to say like this is what this looks like, this is what it takes? How do I even get started there?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, so in my previous role I served as a mobilization pastor at Long Hollow in the Middle Tennessee area, and so there was an organization called Mission Increase that I was exposed to in the Nashville area. Nashville had so many nonprofits that were started up and booming. But as you start spending time like, our church would connect with and work with several nonprofits and what I quickly realized is some had a very robust vision and a strategy and an idea and they were executing it extremely well. Some people had a vision, but they hadn't thought through their systems or process and how they were going to carry out that vision. This entity and organization called Mission Increase exists to help work alongside nonprofits at various different levels from like okay, so you have this vision, you have this ideal dream. All right, let's help you walk through how to implement that dream. And it's a it's, it's totally a ministry to them, like it doesn't even cost them anything, it will raise their support to just be coaches for nonprofits to have healthy, good system structures, leadership Like even the simple things like how do you go about establishing a board? How do you have accountability in your nonprofit? What's your leadership structure going to be? What's your funding mechanism going to be so.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Mission Increase man, they became such a great blessing and they have several outposts across North America. So I think they have their headquarters on the West Coast but they've expanded to several different states. But that'd be a great organization. If you have a Mission Increase in your city they offer free workshops all the time for nonprofits on leadership development, how to establish and maintain a board, vision casting, fundraising, like all these different things that are super helpful in the nonprofit world. But yeah, that would be one resource. I'd try to connect with a Mission Increase and see what coaching and workshops are in my city.
Heredes:Gus, you mentioned one of the hardest things church planting, your friend Carlos. And reality. Tell me how you manage the Bible vocational, co-vocational, the multi-vocational. How do you do that? Because that'll learn. How do you keep track of all?
Outro:the hats.
Heredes:How do you?
Outro:Because that's part of the challenge right, and a lot of ministers are not profiting.
Heredes:Nonprofit leaders are doing the same right.
Outro:They're supplementing.
Heredes:They're figuring out fundraising at the same time. Give us some tips and tricks or some lessons you're learning.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, no doubt I mean because I've chosen to kind of live in both of those worlds. You do know that you take on a lot and I think a couple of things that have helped me is, man, I live by my schedule and I have certain days that I have blocked off as like no meeting days, because they're my white space to be able to create, to think, to plan for the future. I think you can get caught so much in managing or wearing multiple hats that you start saying yes to everything. So it's like being able to like have structured times in my week where, like this is my time to create new content resources, this is my time to do coaching and meetings and kind of stick into that. So for me it's being kind of very structured has helped me take on more stuff. I don't have a hard time saying no to people, so that side of it has been good for me.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I know other leaders do have a hard time saying no and so I recognize that's a personality trait. That's just you being able to understand how you're wired and what's going to best work for you. I would say what's helped me? A ton calendaring, you know, stick into a good rhythm in my weeks, not to say you can't adjust it or tweak it.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I do a lot of travel, so I have to understand that some of my weeks are going to look different because I'm traveling across country to set up some meetings. But having some margin on the front end and on the back end of those trips to be able to rest well Because I think early on in my ministry I didn't rest well but like truly Sabbath thing, like taking a day to not do work and just recover, refocus on God and family Huge. I think that's so important for any leader who's running at a high pace. So I think you know being structured helps a ton Having a game plan for your week and then having some rhythms of rest built in to help you recover and move forward.
Collin:Man, that is huge. I probably am on maybe the opposite spectrum, and as far as saying no, it's naturally something that's pretty difficult for me and I had to learn through that. I spent some time in ministry as well, and there are a lot of situations where I had to learn that, and you know, one of the things that I think helped me was, regardless of where you know if that's easy for you, if it's not, you are always saying yes and no to some things, and so understanding that when you're saying yes to everybody a lot of times, that means you're going to be saying no to your family and you're going to be saying no to things that really are actually important, and so you know, just being able to develop that skill and put that in the right context is huge. I love that you said that, because it's so simple and I think it's overlooked. But, but, man, the ability to say yes to the right things.
Heredes:I'm here at this right. You're saying that you have a hard time saying no, that you say yes Because what I've received in our relationship and our engagements- when I talk to you when I ask you to hang out, when I ask you for lunch, it's you know, hasn't it's been? No, I'm busy. What's? What's talk about this?
Collin:Yeah, well, I thought that's what our weekly counseling session was for.
Outro:But we can talk about it here, you know you've got.
Collin:You've got the reformed me. Now you know you've got.
Outro:This is I've gone through a process here is what I'm trying to say.
Heredes:I see, I see, I see Just messing, just messing. I think to that.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:This kind of helped me. It started with, like, when I was having a really hard time saying no, early on, a mentor of mine pulled me aside. He was observing my patterns and unhealthy practice, which he was gracious enough to call out on me early, so it didn't affect me later on. So I'm always grateful for that. But he said this simple phrase. He says ministry never ends. So if you keep saying yes, everything, like there's never going to be a point in time we're like oh, finally, I accomplished it all. He's like it never ends.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I was like so make sure you're setting up some healthy boundaries to protect your health and your longevity and ministry, because there's always going to be more ministry. You're never going to get to me and like I finally finished it all, it's like it's, there's always more. So if you think that you have this savior complex and you got to be the solution to everyone's problem, you're going to burn out and you're going to crash. And so he just helped me just kind of identify man, there's always something else that needs to be done. But if you're going to stay in this game long term, you got to have healthy boundaries and you can't say yes to all this.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:And in essence, colin, just what you said he was saying very similar. He's like when you say yes to all these things, you're saying no to something else. And at the time I was married and I was about to have my first kid and he was like you're going to be saying no to your wife and your kids If you keep saying yes to every opportunity. And I was like man, it was just like a great like leadership moment, where this seasoned, experienced leader was just calling out something that I just was not seeing. It was like a blind spot and he was just being loving and gracious enough to let me speak some truth into your life.
Collin:So, while we're on this topic of saying no, we talked a little bit about the assessment process and you mentioned how you know there's basically three aspects, basically three outcomes that someone can have when they go to a sense of an assessment. It's either, yes, either a green light, a yellow light or a red light. You know, talk through that a little bit. How do you make those decisions? How do you communicate that? If it's a yellow light, how do you communicate that? If it's a red light, how do you communicate that in a way that doesn't cause that person to go into a spiral? You know, like, like, talk a little bit about that process.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Sure. So, man, just to be clear, that's on the planter development team, so I'm on the mobilization team.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I don't have those conversations. But I have been part of some of those meetings and so what they're doing is all the assessors from the retreat will spend a few hours processing their insights and observations from all the different exercises. They do invite the sending church rep so whoever the sending church is for that candidate is part of these meetings to listen in, to be able to chime in. That's great, and so I'm like hey, so we didn't quite get this. You spend more time with them.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Have you noticed this to be an issue in his life? Or we thought this was an issue. Maybe you think differently. Like let's hear your perspective so they're able to participate in those deliberations and like have part in that conversation. So I think that's super helpful, yeah, how they communicate it. Our field staff takes time to write up a report, pray through a thing through it and then schedule a one on one to be able to process the findings of the retreat with that candidate. So that way it's personal, it's very shepherding, it's an opportunity to coach and to help have that heart to heart conversation. So it doesn't feel like cold and rigid and distant. It's very much, very detailed, very thought out. A lot of processing goes into a lot of prayer.
Collin:Yeah, and it sounds like from what you're saying that it's never just a, it's never a yellow not right now, go figure it out or a red. We don't think this is for you. You know, deal with that on your own. It sounds like there's always some level of we're going to continue to guide you. If it's yellow, here's what we need to work on to get you to green, and if it's a red, how do we find where you need to be? I mean, and that's you know so, wherever, whatever organization you're in, talking about leadership development, that right there is huge, because I think you can easily you can damage somebody pretty significantly by just saying Nope, sorry, go figure it out on your own, as opposed to saying no, but let's try to find this other path, because I think you get a lot of times. Take that person and once they find the right thing, the right fit, then they're wildly productive and you know what I mean. So like that's huge.
Heredes:Question Gus in the leadership development formation I think part of you have a doctor in pastoral ministry which my understanding was a lot to do with discipleship groups formation. Tell us a little bit about your thesis and how you would break it down in church world in a practical and scenario today. How are you doing that a reality at the other churches you've been a part of? Tell us.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, I did my doctorate in pastoral leadership at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Loved it, great experience. One of the things that they did is it was cohort stuff, so 10 students going through this process over the course of three years together, and so you build like just an incredible friendship.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:When it came down to the writing element of that doctorate I chose to write on basically like developing a strategy for multiplying in home groups. So I'm super passionate about disciple making, super passionate about developing community in churches, and so that was something that intrigued me. So I had to read 40 books on small group ministry and kind of help do this project in two phases. Phase one was to be able to identify the healthy elements of a group. So before you can multiply something, one of the things you have to realize, like what makes it worth replicating, like what makes it healthy and good, that I would want to take this environment and see more of those environments. So the first part of the process is like man, what are the things that make for a healthy group? The second half of the project focused on what were the key components that were conducive to seeing a multiplication culture in the church kickoff. You know this kind of reproducing groups. And so, man, those things came out to be five simple things that kind of surfaced through research and interviewing different practitioners, reading a bunch of different books.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:First and foremost, it started with vision casting, and this is beautiful because a lot of what I'm sharing is not just conducive to church work. It's actually thinking through just multiple kinds, multiplication and several other things. It was vision casting, like knowing that it starts with the leaders of an organization or a church developing and then sharing that vision with the people that they're leading. The second was leadership development, like making sure that there was a process to be able to develop the leaders that you were going to be able to then discover, develop and deploy there comes those three words again, right. And then third was having strategic training in your organization, your church, if you're going to be discovering, developing, deploying leaders, you have to have some form of strategic training as part of your process to be able to develop these leaders.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:The fourth one is the thing that would be like church, unique but you can easily adapt to any organization is having some church-wide campaigns that the church was leveraging as huge on-ramps. So, like you're doing the hard work of casting vision. You're doing the work of developing leaders. You're then training these leaders throughout the year. Now you have some huge milestones in your church where you have these specific on-ramps for people to hear it from the stage air war matching the ground war, right Of your tactics for marketing, for inward and outward, you know, explanation of groups and how they're important, why they matter.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:And then the fifth this is the one that I think most churches overlook, and it has to deal with data. It's developing your systems of measurements and accountability. Like what data are you needing to gather and capture that's going to inform your leaders if this thing's working or not working or what needs to be modified and tweaked. And so for us, like, those are the five things. Like, when churches had those five things in action, they were seeing groups multiply on a very consistent pace, and so vision casting that led to leadership development, that led to strategic training, that led to churchwide campaigns and then undergirded by a good system of measurements and accountability.
Outro:Love it.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Those are the key components to multiplying groups.
Heredes:So when does the book come out Gus.
Collin:I was going to say that's that right there was for free everyone. Just let me let you know Come on.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, I've had a lot of people ask for that one. I need to. I need to get down and just do that, yeah.
Collin:Come on, I'm serious, we'll have a we'll back you, support you can sponsor the market and everything Can you commit right now to releasing the book first.
Heredes:Right, no, no, nams got this, nams got this, I know so Gus.
Collin:Age is committing to edit right now.
Heredes:He's committed to edit it for you completely.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I'll get my buddy Age is my editor. There you go.
Heredes:Done. Yeah, you're Portuguese, maybe.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Let's go, let's go the other one's doing it already. They're, they're actually doing this. Oh there, yeah, they're doing it.
Heredes:I'll tell you Question about books he said you've had 40 books on the topic.
Outro:Put you on the spot right now.
Heredes:Is there? What's what's? What's the number one? What's the top, what's the source?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:What's Q Dude? That is tough On that space, I would say, because you can rate them on so many different levels, from like practicality to like details. I would go with simplicity because I believe this is one of my mantras. I'm going to give you a secret here Simplicity is the key to reproducibility. Complex plans and systems rarely multiply, so it was something that becomes so complex. It usually doesn't go beyond first gen, second gen, but if you do the hard work to refine something and make it simple, it's easy to reproduce and internalize. So I would say Chris Surat's book Leading Small Groups was a simple, straightforward enough detail to be robust, but simple enough to like hand a leader in your church man. Read this and it's going to give you the foundations of being a great group leader and what your role is as a group leader to help launch another group out of your group. Great book. So I would say that one.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I use that in my church, so yeah, following 40 books. That's the one I'm using with my leaders.
Heredes:I love hearing that from you because I mean theologian, doctorate in ministry, got a master's in divinity. You can go on and on about and we can exegete all day here and talk about, but the simplicity, the ability to remember something to then pass it on to your right If a fifth grader can't grasp it.
Heredes:So there's levels to it, but I love hearing that from you because most times we in church world we get lost in trying to be so complex and deep in our own spaghetti of thoughts that nobody else can take it and so I love hearing that I love it.
Collin:I think sometimes we just go ahead. Guys, you're the expert.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I'm going to say that, to speak to that age, there were a few books and I'm not going to name these because of publicity that as I put it, we're going to be low on.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Some of the books I read when I wanted to go follow up and meet with the author and see their system in action at the church. As I probe deeper, it was like great in theory, but they never panned out in practice. And so some of these books that got remained like, oh dude, read this guy's book, it's amazing. I read it. I was like, yeah, it is amazing, let me go see this in action and then you go spend time like man. Actually we never implemented it here at the church. It was too complicated. So you're like, oh wow, so it's great in theory but not in practice and I think too many leaders in the church world will operate too much in that framework.
Heredes:Yeah, Well, it's like how good is a sermon in Latin if I can't understand it Right? And it's how was it tangible practice? But I love that.
Outro:I love that.
Heredes:No, I'll let you go to, but I'm going to go old school here. I grew up in the purple driven era here. My dad was a Rick Warren fanboycom, so we grew up in that assimilation groups and in some ways Rick was king of that of bringing simplicity to the complex right, and then the SBC world.
Heredes:He simplified something to the point that he got called out and, like nah, it's watered down, there's no substance, but it worked right. The baseball diamond and step one, step two, step three. Is that still? Where do you see the climate? Where do you see the state of the church in discipleship, in assimilation today? What are the trends? What are some warning signs that you would talk to leaders about?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, I think we're starting to see like a renewed sense of like the importance of having a discipleship pathway, and very similar to what Rick was trying to do. I think Rick was trying to move through groups of assimilation to get people assimilated and activated in the church, and now people are doing a very similar process but like thinking through more of like that end game, like what is it that we ultimately want to see produced? And so some churches are starting with church planter, like this is what I want to produce. And then they're backing up from their systems and thinking through like what's my discipleship process going to look like? What's my leadership development process going to look like? And then what's my residency process going to look like to produce that Others are just starting with hey, I just want to reproduce, reproduce faithful disciple, like somebody who's in love with Jesus, loves God, loves people.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Okay, that's great. How am I going to help someone go from unengaged to engaged to become that disciple? And they're thinking through their systems and their process. So I think what I'm seeing is more and more churches recognizing the need to have a consistent pathway and it's kind of moving away from, in the last probably two to three decades, I think, the church offered more of a menu instead of a roadmap. So that's kind of language that we use. We want to provide people a map, not a menu. It was like the buffet. These are all the services and goods we can offer you. You pick and choose what you want and so you get different outcomes because you're like well, I like this part of the church, I'll take this part. I don't really care about this. I'm not going to do this. Now. You're seeing churches do the hard work of, like man, what's a spiritual map with a destination that we want to point people to and then the directions to get to that destination, like what can we do to help you achieve this destination that we have for you?
Heredes:I love that language, so that's a trend that we're starting to see. Is that original? Is that yours, or is that you're borrowing that from somebody? We'll make it, it's a combination.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:There are some stuff like when I worked with Replicate, that we would do stuff like that. So we talk about like I use this and send network resources. So we talk about determining the destination and then providing the directions to reach so kind of using a GPS illustration a couple of things you need to have when you use a GPS. This goes for any organization. You got to know where you are right now. So the harsh reality is a leader to define reality Like what is the current condition of your org, like where are you right now? Then you determine the destination, where do you want to go. And then the strategy is like how do I?
Heredes:get there All right. So that's huge. I love it so much because I'm in the two right of my church and we've all lived this where, if you have the menu, I want to skip the dessert. Exactly, I just want to. You know, I'm here for the drink, so I'm just here for the salad, so I'm anemic. There's no protein, so there's this kind of scatter. And then the map. It's a beautiful thing because there's a destination. Like you said, you want to provide direction, but what's the condition of the vehicle? Right, can it get there fast? Can it not? Can I even take off? Do I have fuel to even get on the journey? So I love that analogy.
Heredes:I'm a visual person, so to me that kind of clicks right away in helping people take steps or, you know, get on the journey, go ahead, Colin.
Collin:Well, I was curious. Are there times where you know you reach out to a church or a church reaches out to you guys, brings you in, and there the organization is not at a place that's ready to send somebody out? What does that look like? What is there some type of standard that you know? It's like you know this is kind of the profile of a church that isn't quite ready and this is typically what they need to do. And how do you go through that?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Man, yeah, that does happen. In fact, last week we had just had a director's meeting with our VPs at Send Network to talk about this issue of like in our role, like as a church planting family, a network of church planting. You know, where is our role in that Like as we're working with the church and helping inspire and coach them to develop a vision for sending, maybe on that process of building that relationship with them, and you start asking questions hey, tell me about your process for discipling people, Tell me about your leadership development, and you start to recognize man, they don't have that Like. What's our, what's our role in that? And so I think we're still trying to figure out what is our role in that as an organization. I think obviously we have the posture and the heart to want to serve and help leaders as much as we can, but recognizing that we serve at the SBC right.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:So we are a family of autonomous churches. Each pastor is, you know, the leader of his church and we as a network are not dictating to you what you can and should do. We can obviously share best practices and hopefully inspire you to develop some of these systems to help you be more consistent as a church. I obviously am super passionate about that. I think that's one of the differences between where I am now at Send Network and one of my previous roles where I was a paid consultant to replicate ministries. So you were hiring me to come to your church and help you think through your systems and make changes to your systems, where now I come alongside to serve you and to help you and to see how your church can get involved with church planting not necessarily to serve as your consultant for disciple making, pathways, leadership development. So just a little bit difference in like what my role is now, but obviously something I'm super passionate about. I would love to see more leaders develop systems.
Heredes:Gus, you know we've been part of cultures that sometimes promote feedback but don't necessarily know how to provide or implement feedback, and you could say toxic cultures, depending where you're coming from, or some that are. Tell me about you and feedback, what you've learned and kind of some of the best practices you've implemented. That's great.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Man. Honestly, I would say this would be one of the most important growth opportunities that occurred in my life. However, like some of it stems from first observing, like how not to do it. Like I was part of some cultures that they leveraged the word feedback as just a way to like destroy someone and tear you down and so over, yeah, kind of control and fear, like creating a fear culture and so stifling the organization. You know, as I got to grow in my leadership and have more responsibilities, one of the things that I did is I developed a mantra for my teams that I lead and we recite this one going to feedback meetings. And here's the mantra is like feedback is meant to be helpful, not hurtful. So, if you understand, like, the reason I'm giving you this feedback is because I truly care for you and I truly, from a genuine posture, want to help you get better as a leader and advance our organization forward. So, knowing that that's going to matter, how I present the feedback, like how I deliver that feedback matters and the posture I'm taking, like I'm not looking for things to just bring you down to like let my insecurities come out, but like I truly love you, care for you, right. So we walk into those feedback meetings. We know our mantra and we know the posture that we're taking, so we're going to let our guards down. We'll receive it because the person giving it to me truly loves me and cares for me and they're not being disrespectful in the way they're dishing it out and then even challenges me as a leader.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:When I'm giving feedback to one of my coworkers, one of my teammates, or even sometimes a superior right, like how I give that feedback matters, the way I deliver it, the way I present it. I mean, I use questions like this to even incite and invite feedback for me as a leader. So one thing that I do when I'm meeting with my staff I do one on ones is like hey, how can I serve you better? That's a simple question and the meetings with that. I do it as a pastor. When I take a church member out, I even ask them that he has a pastor of this church. How can I serve you better? I do this as a parent. I do one on one dates with my daughters and at the end of the day I'm always asking my baby girls how can I be a better dad Now? Early on. At first they're like oh no, you're the best dad. As they've gotten older, they sit there and they think now I've got, Actually, you know actually that you know and so like just embodying that culture.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Like I want to receive feedback, I want to invite. I think there was a season because I saw it expressed poorly that I resented it and tried to avoid it. Now that I see the value and feedback and knowing how to give it and how to receive it, I have. Feedback to me is one of the best things that you can ever receive as a leader, as somebody who wants to grow in your profession and your skills.
Collin:So let's just really quick. There's some quick fireways that someone wants to take this and implement it. They're saying like you know what, I do need a better system of feedback from a leader and from a, you know, employee perspective or whatever. What are some? How do they do that? How can they implement that right now?
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Man, I think questioning your motives is really important on this process. Like, hey, why do I want to give this feedback? Am I trying to assert dominance? Am I trying to, like, put someone in their place? Am I trying to establish my authority? So I think that, as a person who's wanting to give the feedback, it's important to like internally process, like your motivation behind it. Is it truly because I'm trying to help this person? All right, then, really the question is how can we get better as a team? And the feedback I'm giving this person is centered around how can we get better at what we're trying to achieve? How can we do better as an organization? How can our product improve? Like now you're taking it and it's our team wins, when everyone is winning, and it just kind of changes the dynamics really, because you're no longer just like targeting just one individual. So I think that's a big part of it is the posture and the motivation behind why you're trying to give the feedback. Now, if the leader has established that culture, then as the employee receiving it, you understand that the feedback being given is within a certain context and you've established trust with your leader.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I'm a huge Patrick Lencioni fan. I love a lot of his writings, right, and I'm watching that. Trust on a team Huge, right. If you don't have the trust, it's going to be super hard to develop a good feedback culture. So I'm anticipating that we get to this stage in the conversation because we've done the hard work as a leader to establish trust on our team.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:When trust is established, man, you can have some straightforward conversations, some loving conflict, which I think conflict is good on a team. So I'm one of those guys like I believe healthy conflict is good because it's two people passionately fighting for the best future of the organization, right, so it's good, healthy conflicts, not bad conflict. That's like pride trying to overcome pride. That's bad conflict, like ego versus ego. This is like, hey, man, we want what's best for the organization, we want what's best for our nonprofit, we want what's best for our church. Okay, then let's have some robust dialogue because we've already established that we trust each other and we respect each other, right. So that's there. Now we can go pretty intense toe to toe, like I love serving with Carlos, right, the guy that I co-planted this church with here in Miami, and we'll have some fun like back and forth great conversations.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:We're able to have that straightforward dialogue because we've worked so hard at establishing a true love and respect for one another. Like we truly love and respect each other and we know that our motives are we want what's best for the church moving forward. So we understand our motivations. Like when we bring something up to invite some of that healthy conflict, we're not questioning each other's motives Like man, why do you think he brought that up? What's the ultimate end game? They're trying to no. Like we have a system of trust and relationship established. So when we know we're going into those intense conversations in the back of our mind we're not filtering it through like I wonder what their real motive is. It's more like yeah, we trust each other. We know that we're trying to fight for the best future forward for our organization and we want the best idea to win out, not just like my idea or his idea. What's the best idea?
Heredes:So I think it's helpful and I've seen that I play, because I've seen that I play between you guys and how you guys have led, so which is good. That's why you're a great XP for for him, for that team. You know, for such a time as this in the, in the not so fun, not so sexy season of growth and hard work that you know, that you guys are in.
Heredes:But hey, real quick on this one. Just asking for a friend, like just for some feedback here. How like, how would you give Colin some feedback on how you could be a better co-host? How would you do that?
Collin:It's just good. No, I'm excited to hear this because a lot of times you're talking about some of the negative ways to get feedback and I was. I was having flashbacks to conversations with age. So, yeah, I loved. Yeah, please.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah and so like. So feedback doesn't always have to be negative, right? Feedback can also be just positive.
Collin:So here's the feedback.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:I noticed at the beginning was hey, early on, I get started with my story and because of, like, what I do for a living, what I'm super passionate about, obviously going to lean heavy towards like church world, you did such a wise thing to like pause for a minute, knowing your target audience, that I don't live in this world every day. But hey, pause for a minute. We've got leaders from sorts of like all different nonprofits, and so he is all in in this church world because that's what he's called to do, but there's principles here that are going to be broadly applicable to all these. So I thought that was fantastic. That was you capturing something and being able to like make a pivot, knowing your target audience, different from the world that I live in, and you made an adjustment. So, man, I wanted to recognize that adjustment was fantastic.
Heredes:Come on Thank you, thank you so much. Appreciate that this podcast is going to get boosted and marketed. They're going to pay dad's to spread just this little clip right here.
Collin:Yeah, this is good, yeah, yeah. I'm actually auditioning for a new co-host for the podcast and I'd like you to throw your name in the hat, if you wouldn't mind.
Outro:Confidence Wow.
Heredes:Not a trust builder there, colin. Not a trust builder, just messing.
Collin:So good, so good.
Heredes:Before we wrap your column, gus, tell us how somebody listening can find you learn more about what you're doing, more about Nam, if the church, or even a paratrooper, and on profit, and how they can get involved.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Yeah, so sendnetworkcom is our website, so definitely go there. You'll find everything from mobilizing planters so someone you know is interested in wanting to start a church or is maybe sensing that calling, there's an opportunity on that website for them to find out more and connect with somebody from our network. If it's a church that wants to reach out to see how they can be activated, there's a spot on that website for churches to be able to be mobilized, so they just fill out that form. Somebody from our team reaches out and establishes contact connection and then we start that relationship there to see how we can serve that church. As far as me, I'm mostly on Instagram at Gus Hernandez Jr. I'm also on ex Twitter I don't know what to call it these days.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:But it's mostly for reading, because it became so weird and toxic over the last few years is like I got time with everything that I'm doing to engage in banter, so I mostly just use it to read what's trending and follow some of the leaders that I like and enjoy. So those are some of the spaces where I'm at. That's awesome.
Collin:Yeah, listeners, we're linking all that below. We'll retroactively link to Gus's book when that's written and you can jump on that right away, because it's going to be amazing. Gus, thanks so much for being on. H any last thoughts, any last questions or anything?
Heredes:No, he said it all. So many good takeaways so I'm going to have to review my notes here and make sure you do the same. But to Gus, thanks so much for being with us.
Collin:Thank you man.
Heredes:Thanks for all the work, the cool thing with Gus I get to see it in practice and in action. So this is not just theory, this is not just I mean. He's passionate, he's living it out and I get to see the fruit of it down in Miami, where friends and family are part of his church, and so appreciate what you do, man, your heart and your serving and how you sacrificially give and of your time and resources for the kingdom. So blessings to you and to the family.
Gus Hernandez Jr.:Thanks, guys. Honour and privilege.
Collin:Absolutely, and so our listeners. Thank you so much for listening, thanks for sticking with us, and we will see you next time on the nonprofit Renaissance.
Outro:Thanks again for listening to the nonprofit Renaissance. We hope it ignites a Renaissance in you and helps you go further and grow faster. Be sure to share, rate and subscribe, and if you'd like to recommend or be a guest on our show, send us an email at podcastatfirstcreativecom.