CEP SEASON TWO EP:01- WITH GUEST STEPHEN WEBB
By Dave Mckeown and Nathan Benger
Welcome to Season 2 Episode: 01 of the Church Explained Podcast. A conversation to help grow your leadership, develop your team and build your church. Your hosts will be Dave Mckeown and Nathan Benger. We will talk about all things leadership with key team players from IKON Church and other guests during each show.
Join us as we talk with Stephen Webb, church consultant and leadership coach who spent ten years on the team at Elevation Church. His primary focus was as church expansion pastor. He was responsible for pioneering 12 new campuses beyond their home city of Charlotte. This vast experience allows Stephen to speak with confidence on church expansion and leadership growth.
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SHOW NOTES
FULL TRANSCRIPT
PLEASE NOTE THIS CONVERTED BY Ai so may not be perfect but it is useful 😀
David Mckeown 0:00
Hey, welcome to church explained podcast, a conversation to grow your leadership and build your Church. We want to welcome you today for our brand new season two of the podcast, and here in January 2022.
David Mckeown 0:21
Brilliant Hey, well, I'm Dave. I'm Nathan. And we're the hosts of the church explained podcast. And we're excited today because we've got Steven Webb, who's Church consultant and leadership coach and spent 10 years of his life as part of the team of Elevation Church. Having played various roles, his main role has been around sort of campus expansion. Helping was sort of expand 12 campuses outside the main campus in Charlotte, and unite focused on leadership coaching Church consultant, and you're married with two children. And you and I live in taxes. You have just moved, in fact, the taxes on your part of the factory City Church, so hey, Steven, welcome to the church, explained podcast. Great to have you with us.
Stephen Webb 1:10
Thank you so much. I'm very excited about this. I love that you have an accent, but then I have an accent to you. I like that we're all foreigners together.
David Mckeown 1:17
Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty confusing for people. It is.
Nathan Benger 1:21
It is it is because we've got different accents as well. Yeah. And we got a new set new show. Season two, I think we're gonna call this. So we're calling it Welcome to the Jungle.
David Mckeown 1:32
Welcome to come on. Can you get us out of here?
Nathan Benger 1:37
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Hey, Steven. You're also known as SWEP. And so why don't you just give us a little bit of information a little bit more about yourself, but also how you got that nickname?
Stephen Webb 1:51
Well, yeah, so everybody, I say everybody, most people in the last say, 11 or so years, no, Meah sweb, which is SW E, BB. There's a certain age and I don't know what that age is. But as you get older, you start to put an h in there like Schweppe. And that's not how you say it. But ultimately, when I was at, when I first got to elevation, as a matter of fact, I had my email address, because my name is Steven Webb. My email address was s Webb but elevation church.org. And so the very first day, our executive Pastor said sweb, I bet you get that all the time. And I said, I've never heard that. But somehow it stuck. Now, the funny side of that story, of course, it makes more sense. Definitely back then and on the staff at elevation, but there were five Stephens on staff. And I was technically the other Pastor Steven, but you can imagine it's underwhelming. If somebody introduces me, especially Steven, and they're expecting, you know, Steven Furtick to show up. So they just gave me a separate name, and it's stuck. Stuck ever since man. So
David Mckeown 2:44
I gotta I gotta imagine that when it comes to the preaching some word, you know, I mean, Pastor Stephens coming from elevation. You can just say, Yeah, listen, just say yes. Just planned, you send your fear ahead of time will be alright.
Nathan Benger 3:01
So you mentioned you're on staff at Elevation Church. And obviously, you were across many different things. But I wondered if you could share maybe some of the, we've termed it your non sexy, or those things that people don't see that help Elevation Church grow that people probably don't ask about?
Stephen Webb 3:21
Yeah, no, that's a great question. Let me give you a little bit of my context, too. So maybe makes some sense. But Church was started in 2000. What is it five, I showed up in 2000 2010, just before about four and a half years into the Church, I believe. And so I came in there still 1000s of people who I think we had three locations at the time. So I saw, you know, the Church was big and kind of doing its thing, and then I got there. And then I got to see kind of this. I don't know, Next, Next Level jump. So some of that, obviously, in the first four years would be stories to me, they wouldn't be things that I lived, but beyond that going from, you know, a few 1000 to I guess, 30,000, or from three campuses to 20. That's what I got to kind of be a part of and see. So that's some of my context. So, um, yeah, I love it when people ask the question of what's the secret sauce? And that kind of my answer is always the stuff that doesn't make a conference, you know, it doesn't make a podcast. So I appreciate you asking that. So, man, there's probably a few things, but the one that sticks out to me most that I appreciate most and have taken from that time and elevation into you know, other endeavours, I tried to build my kids the same ways. I just think ultimately, this is a bold statement, I just think we worked harder than most people. I really think that's it. And there's some other nuance to it. But you know, we worked really hard. One of the key elements that we didn't talk about a lot then, and I don't really say now is this idea of balance this work life balance. You hear that in times in many industries and other conversations, of course, but but if you think about balance in order to keep things balanced, you've got to keep them further apart. And once you put the metaphor in that term in that context that doesn't seem really healthy. I don't want my family over here, my Church ministry over here or out, I want them integrated. It's one of our senior leaders, he became the language of integrations that have balance, which means if you're not balancing, then you can't really say, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna kind of rest you know, I mean, there are seasons of rest, I get that. But it wasn't the idea of this balance thing. So we just worked hard. There were seasons, we just knew we were gonna, we were gonna hustle and work hard, and there wasn't a 40 hour workweek. And then there were other times where maybe maybe there was a low like, June, for example, the United States is where no one goes to Church, apparently. So we just all mail it in on some level. So but we know that we pick right back up in July, July is a growth season for us, you know, January, February, obviously, things like that. And so I, at the end of the day, I just I talked to a lot of people now that talk about being tired, or they just feel like, man, they're really running, running dry. And I think those are all related to leadership issues, maybe perspective. But I just don't find the balance theology in the Bible, I don't find the whole like, you know, like, even the weekend is kind of a modern invention. Again, I get soil health and rest and Sabbath. And I agree with all those things. But but I sometimes think our mental model, or metaphors are just a little bit off. And sometimes it's put your head down, grind, hustle, call people back, you know, show up to meetings, be on time, be early, those kinds of things that, I mean, some people just think is hard. I want to give you this one kind of example, you hear about this phrase burnout, right? We've all heard that in some way. I think, on some level, I think Christians invented that phrase. But um, but I think I think burnout is fine to talk about, but I think before we do that, we need to get the metaphor, right? A candle does not burn out, because the flame is too hot. It burns out because it ran out of fuel. Right. But we think it's the opposite. When we take that and put it into leadership context, we, we like to say that it's just really getting hard. So I'm really getting burned out. Now you just like fuel, which could be vision, could be your own internal purpose and why for being there. It could be your physical health, you know, a lot of pastors are just, frankly, unhealthy from the way they eat and drink, or don't eat and drink or sleep. You see, I'm saying so I think that's kind of just a, I don't know, maybe a picture of the type of belief I have about just working hard not to elevation, we just kind of, we just kind of ran pretty hard. And and then we rested. Good too. But we ran pretty hard.
David Mckeown 7:20
Yeah, no, that's, that's a great sort of illustration of what burnout looks like. No, this is interesting. It is we think not only of burnout, there was an article written a few years ago of what was called bore, right. In other words, people are too much time on their hands, and they're bored. So they have the same experience in life as well. So yeah, I get that idea. You have to work hard your centre, you've got to have, you know, good sleep, good. Life ethics as well to look after yourself. So that's all great stuff to have in there isn't a really, yeah. When it comes to leadership. Yeah. So we'd be thinking a little bit of this idea of, you know, expansion, obviously, you were involved in a lot of the expansion, as you say, involved in 12 campuses. It would be great just to maybe just talk into that a little bit if you could swear, just you know. Hi, hi. Did you do that? If you're going to start a campus? How did you do it? And how did you scale a campus? When you got that moving?
Stephen Webb 8:16
Yeah, great question. So again, context for me as I got hired, basically to take elevation beyond the city of Charlotte, East Coast, United States. When I say campuses, by the way, we mean physical campuses, our context of a campus to MIT, it was going to resemble the main campus, we don't use the word main, because that implies everything else is not mean. And you never want to create that division. But that's the idea, right? We have kind of that broadcast location where the main stuff comes out of, but everybody else exhibits some similar, but we don't call a campus, a group of 50 people with hopes campus would be like you walk in, and you get the same, you know, show, so to speak, the same production, the same culture, all that across the board. So that's just good context, because a lot of people would say they have a main campus of couple 1000, and then the multi site campus of 50. And that, that, that breaks down in my mind. So there's some context for and so my job was, when I got hired was to build, take it beyond that first one, we jump from Charlotte, all the way to Toronto, Canada, which doesn't make a lot of logical sense. And there's a lot of stories in there that I can tell you how and why it worked. But we'll save that for another day. But and then we just started to kind of go up and down. So that's actually how I ended up in Florida where I was for the last few years. But with that being said, that context to do that expansion, what I think to be correctly, is you got to kind of answer some simple questions like What are you trying to expand? Like, what are you trying to take with you? Or what are you trying to replicate? It's not just the name. A lot of people just take the name with the logo and then mail it to another city and say, Oh, we have a Church over here. And they'll hire a campus Pastor, maybe off the street who lives in that town because we like to think that, hey, they need to speak that language. You know, they need to know what it's like to be in Florida. And on some level, that's kind of true. But that's not any better if they don't know how to speak your internal language though either. And so, so it's answering the questions what Are we trying to replicate? What are we trying to multiply? And where the difficult thing is, in my opinion is saying no to a lot. So, you know, you have to come up with a list of what's negotiable and non negotiable. So I've seen this before you've done this some some of you've done it's just intuitively, but I think some intentionality is required here. So like, for example, when you have a Church and it's grown to a few 1000 people, you may have a robust youth ministry, let's say, you know, and you may have a robust, even groups ministering in small groups to say a couple 100 small groups. In our case, in our case, elevation is not universal, but our case elevation at the time those for example, we're not not nonnegotiable, those were negotiables. You can start a Church without a youth ministry, it's possible elevation for all practical purposes didn't really have one for the first 10 years of the Church even. So let that sink in. But But I know you'll see conferences and books that say, if you don't have youth ministry, you can't grow Church and like, well, I guess we broke that system. So. So it comes down to what's negotiable, non negotiable for you. I'm not again, it's not universal, but but that would be a hard thing to do. Because some people be like, hey, we need a youth ministry. We're like, No, we've got to build this, whatever this is, we got to build that first. So out of that, we can grow youth ministry out of that we can grow a small group ministry or out of that we can do certain outreach or missions endeavours in that particular city. And the hard work of saying no, was probably some of that like secret sauce ingredient as well to the expansion side of things. Not just from finances, some of that's obvious. You know, some things just cost more, I get that. But we want to make sure we go into something and scale it. But what are you scaling as a question? I just don't think enough people ask. And so my job was just to take what I thought were the non negotiables. And admittedly, we learned some stuff in the process. We didn't take a formula, we kind of invented it from the beginning. So we weren't borrowing from something for somebody else for there's only one of the Church that we know about doing campus expansion at that scale in the same style. We were doing it, but they hadn't done it quite as fast as we had. So we're like, we're just trying to just figure stuff out in the process. And that so some of the non negotiable negotiable conversation came out of necessity. You're like, oh, man, we can only take you know this much with us. You better figure out what's, what's required and what's not. And but I do think it's just a good exercise. Now, when I coach leaders in churches on multisite, that is literally the first thing we do is tell me what is the hill you want to die on? What is the thing you've got to take at all costs. And then I help them to find what they think is neat, what they think is cool, what they think is fun, but also help them see that's not necessarily non negotiable. And so from then, I mean, I'm jumping ahead here, but at that point, it snowballs. Pretty good. All the rest of the stuff is, is easy, very much in quotes, but it's very easy once you get that foundation of the non negotiables. upfront.
Nathan Benger 12:42
Yeah, I think that's, it's a great, it's a great answer, and probably one that we don't think about too much. Just to pry a little bit, what were some of the non negotiables, or what was a big non negotiable as you were taken elevation.
Stephen Webb 13:00
Yeah, so and again, it's customed to the Church and the mission. So for example of our non negotiable, or excuse me, one of our big non negotiables, I'll give you a few would be the obvious one is preaching is going to come Central. Now, you know, we just believed we had, you know, Steven Furtick, some of the top preachers in the world, I still think he is to this day. Well, let's not put another guy up there. And just for just for fairness, you know that I don't know that fairness is the right value in this case, so but sometimes it's like, Hey, we're gonna start a Church in two camps, you're gonna preach 30 times a year, that's fine. But in our case, that was a non negotiable. So whatever sermon was on the broadcast stage, that's what everybody else play, which allowed the campus Pastor to do more traditional pastoring have the people there locally, rather than preparing a sermon for 20 or 30 hours a week, few times a year, whatever. So that's an example. Same thing with worship now worships a good example to we would programme everything centrally, and then do an expansion version, if you will. So maybe there's an element that didn't work over there at that location, but we'd still make something custom fit for that location. But that resembles the main programming. But here's a unique one that started as a non negotiable because elevation worship is a very known thing. And so we again, didn't want to just give a guy with a guitar 500 miles away and be like, yeah, man, just do your thing, bro. That would water down the brand. And you know, people, they're like, wait a second, that's not that stuff I thought about I heard about before. But that's a good example of something that went from non negotiable to negotiable now at locations, they have some freedom and autonomy of sorts to kind of create their own experience as it matches their their particular expression. And the reason that was able to be the case is because one of the other non negotiables was all the culture stuff, which is a whole podcast in itself. But defining not just saying the word culture, which means nothing. But defining the cultural points. We were so good at that, that over time you earned a sort of freedom, you earned a sort of trust to go and do your own thing that expresses itself and maybe the Canadian way, if you will, or the Floridian way, but still resembles of course the elevation culture and heart and things like that. So those are some really big Let me give you one more. Some of the non negotiables were what we would say no to. So we were a no to women's ministry and Men's Ministry and, and food pantries and those kind of things. And we would partner with organisations in that particular city, all of our cities that are doing really good things for people in need. But, but that's also a non negotiables that that Purdue at campus Pastor a team doesn't get to say, Yeah, we want to hear we want to do this. And it came back down to defining not just saying the word but defining unity, defining what that uniformity, even to an extent looks like, and not apologising for it. And it makes it, it makes it very, very, I think, helpful and healthy long term, and it allows for that freedom afterwards.
David Mckeown 15:43
So swear Vega pick up on maybe one of the words you've said, and that's not quite where we were going to go. But if we could just to pick it up a little bit around this idea of culture. So just thinking of that, how did you protect the culture? Because obviously, taking that to somewhere else, different city? What does protection of the culture look like for you guys?
Stephen Webb 16:05
Yeah, so first of all, culture, you know, has to be your kind of your core beliefs that lead to a particular outcome, and what's in the middle is your behaviours. And most everybody forgets that part. We like, hey, we want to be this, and then on the outcome, because we're gonna be this, which is really hopeful wish, unless you have behaviours in the middle. So if you want to be generous, I'm going to check your giving records. Now, I know we're listening to different countries here. But the United States, it's a very tax beneficial thing to give to a Church number one, which means we keep records, we're legally allowed to do that, obviously. And we'll even check it from a leadership standpoint. So this is a really good hot button issue for some people. Um, so we'll say, Hey, if you want to be a leader in this Church, when are you tithing, you're trusting God in the area of your finances? Now, we don't do the math for you. We don't know how much money you make. It's not that we're not moving the decimal point and all that. But the point is, it's a behaviour, not an assumption, not an intention, it's a direction, it's a very specific behaviour of giving something right. And then when that behaviour doesn't happen to your question of how do you like, you know, protect that, well, now that that behaviour is not happening, we're going to correct that with accountability, which is also a cuss word in Church word Church world these days because of mercy and grace. And sometimes we like to use those words as a defence mechanism against having a hard conversation. But as I look through scripture, I find Jesus having a lot of hard conversations, and it's because of mercy and grace, not the other way around. And so I think you just gotta have that understanding of what you're supposed to do, what are you called to do? What's the purpose of the Church? Where's the vision? Like, where are we headed in this thing? What are the behaviours that we think everybody as best we can maybe the leaders, staff, so on, are going to do and then if those behaviours stop being a thing, or if they're not aligned with what we just said, Hey, you said you were going to give or you said you're going to be on time or you said, you're going to be in this meeting, or you said you were going to be healthy or whatever, you're not doing that. That's not picking on people. It's not throwing them under the bus. It's the I think it's the purest form of care is when you're willing to correct and that's where candour comes from. Canada doesn't mean saying mean things. candour just means real time feedback to keep us moving. And so candour was a big one is probably the short word answer to your question is just really, in the moment. And again, as long as you understand that candour is not it's not a synonym for angry, like, you know, mean feedback, you know, it's not always negative. But again, we like to think it isn't hard to roll, but I don't think it is. I think if we can just be real say, Hey, by the way, I saw that you haven't given Alaska weeks, I'm okay with that. I want to make sure are you good? Did you lose your job? Can we care for you in some way? Hey, you've been late to the meeting the last four times to desert something we can do to care for you. They're like, those are all big issues that come from a place of care, and just gotta be willing to do it.
Nathan Benger 18:38
I think that's great. Coming from that place, you know, just you reminding at the end, you know, coming from that place of care is really good. One of the things that I love about following you on Instagram sweb Is your five things or five ways or whatever it is. And, you know, just talking about kind of leading people, you've led and shaped teams. So I thought, why don't you share as like your top five ways of keeping teams energised on the mission on the vision for the podcast listeners?
Stephen Webb 19:11
Man, top five, I think I can make five. I don't know I talk a lot too. So I have to get two or three we'll see. So keeping say that again, what about keeping them energised on the mission is that we're saying? Yeah, so um, I mean, first thing is make it clear, make it plain. You know, I pick on the phrase cast vision a lot. And if you've been on Instagram, follow me a few times, and even see me make fun of it. I just think it's a funny word, it's fine. But a lot of times people just use the word, and they don't actually put the meat around it. And so you cast a fishing pole and you to fishing, you know, and you may cast food or seed, but that's only the time you use the word and then when it comes to casting vision, people think just saying the phrase casting vision is giving vision. And so I just don't think that's plain and then when they do that, they say big words. We're going to be 10,000 people in the next 10 years and there's like six people by I mean, that's it sounds good. But then that's like, there's a line in there somewhere where it goes from vision to like myth and hope and wishes and almost just like unicorn and rainbows kind of vibe, and it's not playing. And I think at first, just what are we doing? What's the wind? Show me the kind of the enlargement of the goal? What are we trying to score? Just help me with that, and then I'll fight, you know, for everything to do that. And people need that clarity. I need that clarity. I'm not speaking on behalf of everyone else. I need that clarity at any level organisation, just tell me in this seat, how can I win? What can I push for what kind of fight what Hill are we taking? So I'd make it plain. The other thing is, I want to go with them and lead with them. Sometimes it's pushing from behind, sometimes it's pulling from the front. But it can't be like sitting in a penthouse, you know, as an executive suite, and just looking at reports and saying, Hey, that number needs to get up. And so there's something powerful about going with them. I think Moses did that. And his unique expression, Joshua did it in the field. So different people did it, but they were both with them. And in that journey, Jesus did the same things on the journey with them, he didn't sit up and having just kind of point and stuff. He's like, Alright, guys, here's what we're gonna do, I'm gonna come down, we're gonna hang out for a couple years, we're gonna go together. And I think that's really helpful. If you can do that. I think if you can keep a good attitude, that sounds really simple. But the the more specific way is be grateful. Gratitude, our Pastor Steven told us this years ago, gratitude is never silent or invisible. So you can't actually just have an attitude of gratitude without an action of gratitude. And that'll move people, you'd be surprised how many doors open for a person who's grateful and shows and exhibits gratitude. You've seen this and hopefully don't have to go too much in depth on this. Especially you guys have seen this. But I know even your listeners have probably seen this workout. Well, I don't want to do that. Four thing I do personally, this, I got so much traction out of this. And I still do and I need to always get better at it. I don't think you'll arrive at this but his encouragement. Now, again, that sounds real fluffy. Sounds like something a grandfather would say. But man, it's it's really I find it to be really powerful. Now, encouragement doesn't work. If it's like, Hey, good job buckaroo. You can't do you know, buttpad like after a football game or something, it can't be that. It's got to be specific. It's got to be surgical. Like, hey, listen, man, that third song, I saw what you did to take that energy and move it this way, and adjust when that drum shields fell down on the stage, you know, like you started getting specific. That's a real example. By the way, you know, but that's real specific, because it tells people Hey, they saw me, which means I have value, which means they care about me, which means I probably want to do that better. Okay, let's do it again. Like you see how that all comes from, like surgical specificity of your encouragement, not good job. And so I see a tonne of traction for that I didn't grow up with a tonne of that my parents are great. My friends are great. But the specificity part was like not always there. And so about 10 years ago, me and a friend, we sat down at elevation, we were both relatively new and like anyone, I think that guy would need to hug. He was just always angry that the guy was and so we we eventually got to the point of just know what it was his he just didn't feel seen. And we didn't have a counselling session with him. But we got real specific encouragement. And then last but not least, man, I would say, man, you gotta cut some dead weight.
Stephen Webb 23:17
And I'm coming up with these on the fly. You know, I'm sure there's 10 of the things that add but, but it definitely makes my top five. I feel like a lot of good teams get drained. When they know that they're pulling weight and this guy's not. And there's a grace, there's mercy, we don't fire everybody. It's it's very hard, for example, to be hard to be fair to elevation. It's also very hard to get on staff at elevation or to, especially back when I was there. So like, it's just, you know, if you can kind of keep the order correct. It's good, but when it's necessary, we gotta we gotta cut dead weight, man, we gotta go. And I feel like you're going to drain a lot more people in the front end, because you take your 99 for the one scripture out of context. And I think people do that in the wrong direction. He left the 99 for the one Yeah, the 99 were cared for. They were good they were on mission. So we went to pick the guy up it was not the other way around, where we water everything down for the 99 because the one we don't want to have a hard conversation with them. And and I've been drained watching people get promoted, or or you know, get some sort of press if you will, and they haven't done anything, but that'll suck the life out of people pretty quickly and then you're having to fix a bigger issue and that goes back to the cultural thing you're asking me to go just Can you can you have a hard conversation? Can you hold people accountable? So that's a long answer, man I kept talking you got me going on.
Nathan Benger 24:38
Yeah, off the fly as well.
David Mckeown 24:42
Five out of five for that one well done. So hey, swim. Obviously your time and Elevation Church you were probably doing quite a number of different roles over time. So for you then how did you handle that that sort of change in role What was that like for you just describe that for us. little bit for people listening.
Stephen Webb 25:01
Yeah, I did, I did a lot of different roles. I'll give you a couple of them real quick got hired to do expansion. But what expansion look like was very different than I did then what now there's a team of about 18 people who do. Now it scales a little bit bigger too. But, but it's a different version of expansion. So the word expansion changed a few times throughout the course of my time. That was one I got asked to not do expansion one day I thought I was being fired. But the next their executive Pastor, he goes, No, no, no, you're good. I want to have you build a TV ministry and Steven Furtick Ministries is what that ultimately came, which included some social media stuff and a lot of his you know, personal ministry that was related to the Church, he has his all run through the Church. But that's very specific. And obviously, you know, substantial amount of weight since you're working on some like an individual's voice as it relates to the church's unique role. So that was a cool opportunity, get to build that. Now listen to a theme here as I keep going here. Then I right after that, I got tasked with going to be associate campus Pastor at our headquarters location. Now elevation headquarters offices, is the different location that broadcasts are to different buildings to different parts of the city. So headquarters is still a campus of a few 1000 people at the time, it's where all of our offices are, and all that kind of stuff. But that was also our longest term, our oldest campus and so we needed to renovate the staff was all new staff, but put a new campus Pastor in place, we had to renovate this, the culture of the team that came with that. And of course, all the leaders and volunteers after that we had to literally renovate the built the building, we did a $6 million build where we lifted the roof 12 feet and turned it 45 degrees. And so we had, this will be another podcast, we took a permanent campus and moved it to a high school. And we took a permanent campus of 2000 people who did High School, most people want to do the opposite. And we did it backwards. So that took some effort. So we had to build systems for that and renovate that. And then after that Pastor Steven in 2016, said to all of our staff, he said next year, we're watching four campuses, and me and my former boss at the time, because I'd moved to that other role. We looked at each other like, Wait, you got some campuses. So that day, I became back into the expansion Pastor role literally that day. And in 2017, we launched four campuses. And so it was definitely my busiest year. But what you what I just said, there, let me let me help bring all this together. But how it worked at transition, is everything I just said was building. So building new locations, building leaders, so some of the projects I did to like building our apprentice programme were a lot of the campus pastors that you would see now, a lot of those guys came through that programme that I got to build with one other guy. And that was a cool, you know, process, but it's building. So building leaders, of course, building campuses, and then building a multiplication process after that. So all that's building. So the way I was able to go through transitions, I think, healthy for me, and I wish I would learn this 20 years ago, instead of on the fly that on the job was man, if I can figure out the mental model, like, what is the picture like, what am I supposed to do? I'm a builder. I'm not in ministry, that's too vague. That's too broad. But for me, I'm a builder. And I build things and fix things. So at every single responsibility, even as a volunteer before I came on staff elevation, I was either building or fixing something. I mean, you could ask our executive team there, they'd be like, yeah, so if he builds things or fixes things, which sometimes means you have to break things. So So I did that. So that helps me so if I'm in a place if I'm if I'm in a role, where I'm not doing either of those things, I started getting real frustrated. I'm like, What in the world is the problem? I can't seem to get traction. I'm not happy. I'm not fulfilled. I'm not fruitful. And if that's the case, like what is it? Oh, okay, I'm managing got it. I'm not building anything. And so I went to my supervisors multiple times over the course of time is, hey, listen, you hired me to build I'm no longer building. Can I do this now? Oh, that's a good point. Yes, I've got a built in again, that's how I got to Orlando. So a couple years ago, I ended up moving from Charlotte to Orlando to build the 20th Campus of Elevation Church, because it's a building process. And when I say build, we all know, but I'm not talking about a building. But we built the campus there. So that helped me to transition. I think a lot of people are frustrated, they're transitioning, because they're looking for a role. They're looking for a paycheck, they're looking for other like circumstantial or superficial elements to a particular, you know, Endeavour or responsibility. And it's not lining up with their, I mean, maybe they're how they're created. It could be as simple as Enneagram number stuff, and Myers Briggs stuff, it could be that simple that you just need to get back in line. But I just stopped doing it for any sort of accolade. I stopped doing it for any sort of money role responsibly. I didn't want to be any certain meetings, because when you get important, now you got to go to meetings. Problem is if you're in meetings, by definition, you're pretty much not building this. So you might instigate some things that other people didn't build. And I wanted to go into building and so that really helped me when I could clarify what I was made to do.
David Mckeown 29:40
Good to be aware of that. Yeah.
Nathan Benger 29:42
And just to dive in, like as a as a young leader, and just thinking of young leaders, how did you like was the was their moment? How did you recognise that that this is, you know, like, where I feel fulfilled? This is where I feel that energy you know, like this is the energy God has me in these places to do this? How did you get to that place?
Stephen Webb 30:05
Yeah, that's a good question. And I imagine it's different for everybody. But I just started to kind of take inventory. Okay, I'm frustrated today. What are the elements around me that, like right now I'm frustrated. And then or I'm really in a good spot today, man, I worked hard, I'm tired. But you know, tired isn't sometimes the goal. A lot of times, it's the goal. It means I'm poured out I did something. So okay, but why don't energise and wait for the circumstances? Oh, today, I got to create something new that didn't exist. Today. I saw somebody else come to life. Oh, okay, well, so I like that. And so you kind of have to do this inventory. And you do it over time you build a rhythm, you're like, Oh, I'm better in a place where I can instigate something, initiate something. So. And a lot of people, it might be the opposite. They're like, Man, I really fulfilled when I know that my paycheck is now at a certain number. And I'm not saying that's bad. It just wasn't for me. Other people like to be in meetings, they want to be in a meeting where they're just feel like man, I'm at the table, the decision making table. And that's, that's valid. I'm just not that guy. I'm not a bureaucrat, I'm not a manager, I'm not good at those things. I'm good at building leaders and being a leader. But again, those are different. So again, take an inventory of the specifics, not just the feelings, and trying to find patterns. I think that was that was really helpful for me, at the end of the day, here's another way to ask this question. And you can use this on somebody else later. But what is this thing that elicits uncontrollable emotion from you? AKA what makes you cry? Because another way you could say that, but you know, when somebody is like, really excited, maybe it's a soccer game, football game. Maybe it's you know, your kid getting baptised or any of those kinds of things. Big thing. You're like, wow, it's uncontrollable, stand up. I'm like, really excited to clap my hands. Whoo. You know, what is that? And it's kind of a funny joke. It's true story, though. But it's a joke. I only cry about once a decade. And I can tell you literally last time, I cried, was at an ordination for a campus Pastor that I helped build. And he created one of our locations out of state. And it was an ordination out five or six years ago. And I remember all the specifics around it. And so to the people in the room, they go like, that's it that we saw swept cry one time. And but that's uncontrollable emotion. But what it is for me to answer that question, what it is, for me is seeing the underdog winning. So I see the underdog winning. To me, that's another one of the things that I could see in the pattern. So as I'm taking inventory of all the circumstances around me, and what's happening, the pattern I saw was man, we created a campus in a town that nobody wanted to go to, we created a campus that's bigger, in that small town of 200,000, then we could do in the town of 2 million, and the 200,000 person town, that campus is still better, in my opinion. To this day, they became the standard for the rest of the campuses in the big city, meaning underdog winning that campus Pastor he didn't even want to be on staff were like, bro, you're so good at it, you built this whole thing, what the heck, so he finally talked him into it, and you got ordained and all this kind of stuff. So again, underdog winning, that's the thing that made me cry. And so you know, help, again, identify and take an inventory. And and that's the pattern I saw. That helped me go, Okay, I'm on to something now.
David Mckeown 33:03
It's very, you're very useful. Very good. So we've got four years to wait them for your next crying session. Is that correct? I was hoping I was going to be today to on the podcast. You know, as we're going through, obviously, you know, your roles change quite a lot. Obviously, you're not with Elevation Church, the minute I'd like to just talk around a little bit about three words, if we can maybe just speak into those a little bit. So this idea of reinvention reinvention of the leader of the Church, also this idea of realignment of a leader, and also to sort of recalibrate our lives. What does that look like? So those three words, if you could just speak into those a little bit? What does that look like that sort of reinvention of a leader because maybe even in your journey, you've had to reinvent yourself a few times. Even when you've done that inven train you find out what you're like and what makes you tick. Let's maybe if you could speak into that for us, I'll be fantastic.
Stephen Webb 33:57
Yeah, that's great. I love that angle. I love the alliteration even more reinvention to me is something new. I think that's even definition. That's like making something new right recalibration is to kind of come back to the standard, whatever that particular thing is, I'd love to do a whole topic conversation on standards, because they're, they're moving. Um, and then. So I think they're two different things from the reinvention and recalibration side of things. And realignment is also to me an ongoing everyday thing. It's almost like that's almost like that kick drum, or that baseline and a song. So to me, that's the alignment thing. I mean, are we on track here? What's the rhythm? So I'm kind of viewing in those ways, those three words. But yeah, over time, I've had to you know, reinvent myself as a leader because sometimes you're leading a team of five then you're leading a team of you know, 20 In my case, elevation, I'm leading a team of one in Charlotte and then it became a lead eight campuses out of Charlotte word I've never for I think, I think it was like nine and a half or nine of my nine and a half ish years of that particular role. I was only in town for six months with my team The rest of the time my team, we're literally all in other states oversaw cams, masters in other states. Well, that's a whole different version of a leader who sits in a meeting every Tuesday at a boardroom. You sometimes have to reinvent, you know, some of the values or underlying are the same, you know, again, encouragement, vision, all the things values, culture, all the cool buzzwords, but the expression of how that works, you got to get real creative on how you're going to hold people accountable on a text message. And we got good at it, by the way, and I still to this day would claim that that was the best team that elevations ever seen. Hopefully, they see some of this. So so it does work. But it took some it took some intervention, you couldn't just do Hey, guys, we're gonna get on a zoom call for an hour and a half. No, no, no, I think everybody found that out last year that you don't do your same meeting on Zoom and call that effective, you have to change how you do it all when, when that variable changes. And so so some of that, just again, how I was able to do that, for me to help me is, you know, again, just asking the hard questions, and not dying on a hill that doesn't need to die Beat, beat the die on, you know, I think a lot of times like, well, this is what we do. And I just don't do good with that I don't do good with Well, this is what we do. Well, this is how it is. And, and so that was that was helpful from the recalibration. And once you set that standard, aka you reinvent yourself or reinvent the role or reinvent the task, whatever, then that's now the new standard. So recalibrate is just coming back, wait a second, what did we say we're going to do? Wait, how does this role work? How does this meeting flow? What are the expectations of our team? How do we know that we're winning? Like, it's just coming back to that recalibrate, coming back to that standard, and to me that's recalibrating, and most people I've seen over me, especially over me, but also under me on the org chart, have a hard time doing that. We think it's a linear thing, once it's once we hit it, then we just operate from that place like it's a springboard and I don't think it is, to me, it's something you come back to almost like your calendar every morning, you wake up and kind of go back to recalibrate, wait, what's the point today? What's the wind. And so those are really, really, really helpful. And then that kept me aligned. The whole time as I kept, you know, kind of moving, moving forward in a direction. So some things for me, that never changed. Again, my job as a builder. I mean, I think as a elementary school kid, I was a builder. And now I'm 42. I'm going to new Church and a new state 1200 miles away in a new row. I've done this role, maybe 14 years ago, and now I'm back at it again. So I'm not going back, I'm still having to reinvent. But I'm a builder. So that helps me come back to Okay, I'm going to reinvent the expression of a core kind of foundational, you know, I don't know, whatever I'm created to be whatever that definition of, you know, that personality profile or whatever. And so I'm going to reinvent the different expression, and then just keep coming back to the standards. And to me that changes. A standard shouldn't change everyday. But I'm seeing the change, often ish, in as soon as you well in all in this with this statement. Like when you change any variable, you change all variables, right? We learned that chemistry, learning math. And I think a lot of times we forget that. And so we add a new staff member, maybe to a team, or we add zoom to the mix, when it used to just be in person. Well, that changes all variables now. And to me, that's the calibration conversation. And so I'm just trying to keep my head on a swivel and keep an eye on the things that are changing and recalibrate to whatever that standard is. I don't know if I answered your question. But that was that was a fun conversation
David Mckeown 38:21
right there. Yeah, pretty good. No, I think I think you know, just picking up on what you said that realignment is for you down, just think of use where but that's you going back to I'm a builder, isn't it really? So you're able to say that you're realigning yourself to that and I suppose other leaders that may be something different for them. Their realignment may be I'm I'm a, you know, an encourager, or I'm this or I'm not, but it's having that desire to realign yourself and go back and keep checking, and keep checking in as a good term. Really, you know, keep checking in where are we at NIH is a good way to look at it as well, isn't it?
Nathan Benger 38:55
Yeah, I love what you said about the recalibration. The whole thing of it's not a you know, it's not like that one time moment of, we've said it, we're gonna do it. And that's it, then you've got to keep on it to see the change, I think I think was really powerful, and something that leaders that are listening to it, because I think we say a lot in meetings. And we say a lot, we're going to do this, or we're going to be this share. But it doesn't actually happen because we never recalibrate our whole rhythms or what we're going to do to fit that.
David Mckeown 39:28
Yes, revisiting. Isn't it gone back again and checking that out? Really? Hey, well, it's been so good to have you on the podcast for this day. You've shared a lot of stuff. We've got a we've got a couple more questions. At least one we've got the final question. The final is going to be season two.
Nathan Benger 39:44
This is new, this is new. So you're the first you're the first SWEP the final question for all guests. And so I'll do the honours for this. So you did things which is this what is the one question that no one is asking you that you wish they would and wash your hands? answer to that question.
Stephen Webb 40:01
Oh, man, um, will you help? Am I answers? Yes, I think I think this a lot. And that's not just for me, I think it's everybody I think, in being an elevation specifically was really insightful because people literally would fly around the world to come see what we do. And they didn't come to see fascistic verdict. That was part of it. Sure. But no, no, they want to know how our guest experience processes work, how we were able to do that sort of Church with half the staff of most churches our size. They wanted to know how we do all the behind the scenes stuff. And they want to hear stories. They didn't want to be helped. And now I find that and I'm in a smaller Church, I coach and consult with churches. I've done that for a decade, even before elevation. But it seems to be the pattern is like, they don't really want help. I'm sure on some level they do deep down, but it's hard to ask. And so I just wish more people to ask me or you anybody like, cool. Thanks for the story. Thanks for the insights. Thanks for the perspective. But will you help man if people can just get better at that? Good Lord, I just feel like that's the game changer. Yeah, I would love to speak into your situation specifically, not here's how we did it. Elevation. No offence. I like that. Y'all asked me that too. Right? Everybody asked that. But like, but I know we've talked offline before to help me with this. And to me, that's the game changer. And you want to do that from your parents. You want to do it from your banker, you want your investment guide to do that with with your finances. Help me Don't just tell me stories about the stock market. But help me Don't just tell me stories about what it's going to be like when I grow up. Dad helped me grow up dead. And man, will you help my answer? I know that's not true for everybody. But my answer is yes, I absolutely will. And I'm challenging myself with that helped me lose weight, helped me have a better attitude helped me not talk so long on a podcast helped me to have short answer. I mean, all of it. I'm practising what I'm preaching is help me. And man, it has been a game changer for sure.
David Mckeown 41:53
It's a great answer. That is
Nathan Benger 41:55
amazing. sweb How would people kind of find you out there as people do now?
Stephen Webb 42:04
Yeah, I mean, best place for me. And you mentioned it before his Instagram. I love Facebook and Twitter and all the other ones. But I'm an Instagram guy at Stephen P. Well, that's a Ph. D. Ph. D in Stephen P. Webb. And then Stephen P web.com. Is a website. There's not a tonne on there. It's just how to get in touch with me and talk a little bit about my coaching or whatnot. But I love conversations on Instagram. I'm not a private profile to call it profile. So during the conversation, we'll chat back and forth about it.
Nathan Benger 42:28
Great. Well, it's been amazing to have sweb with us on this podcast, and we look forward to seeing everyone again and speaking on the church explained podcast let me just mention you can get the show notes at IKON dot Church forward slash open with also a load of resources for you there as churches, but it's been great to be together on the church explained podcast and we look forward to seeing you next time in the jungle. Season Two of church explained podcast we'll see you soon.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
