"Healthy Churches Aren't a Pipe Dream" with A.J. Mathieu from The Malphurs Group

As our season draws to a close, I began to contemplate leadership in a wider context, beyond just Australia and parish settings, I was drawn to explore international issues of leadership in gospel work.

In this episode we are joined by A.J. Mathieu president of The Malphurs Group.
A.J. Mathieu has over 25 years of experience as a business owner, 5 years as an elected official serving local and regional constituencies in north Texas,  and joined The Malphurs Group in 2014.  He co-hosts the Church Revitalization Podcast with Vice-President Scott Ball.   A.J. leads the Strategic Envisioning process in the United States with a limited number of churches each year but spends most of his time on TMG’s international efforts to strengthen churches and build leaders worldwide. He is an international conference speaker and has worked with church leaders in Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia.

In this episode, A.J. reflects on my findings, and what he sees in the international church leadership scene.

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Podcast Disclaimer:

Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and do not represent the stance of any institution. The research discussed is based on an assignment completed for my Masters in Leadership and has not undergone peer review. This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!

Transcript

Valerie Ling: 0:01

Dear listener, welcome to another episode of the Clergy Wellbeing Down Under podcast. It's Valerie Ling. I'm a clinical psychologist and I am your host for today. The podcast is being produced under the banner of the Centre for Effective Serving, which is a leadership and workplace well-being consulting arm that I lead. I also lead a Centre for Effective Living, which is a psychology practice located in Sydney. Many of our psychologists are Christians and on any given week are supporting our ministry and mission families of here in Australia and around the world.

Valerie Ling: 0:43

We are currently recruiting for two full-time equivalent positions, that is, for psychologists to join the Centre for Effective Living to work with us in our mission to see a world without burnout. If you know someone who is a registered psychologist, a student who is soon to be a registered psychologist, someone who is planning to move to Australia and would love to be registered as a psychologist, would you send them our way? The best thing to do is to send them a link wwweffectivelivercomau, slash join-our-team. I'll put the link in the podcast description as well. I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome everybody. I am so privileged to be speaking with AJ Mathieu from the Malphurs Group. Welcome, AJ.

A.J. Mathieu: 1:49

Hi, valerie, nice to be here.

Valerie Ling: 1:51

Now you have a very successful podcast. It's very impressive. You were telling me something like 4000 downloads a month. Is that right?

A.J. Mathieu: 2:00

Yeah, I guess, depending on your scale or what you're impressed by, you could say that's successful. I don't know.

Valerie Ling: 2:08

Please introduce yourself, what you do, the work, the organization and your podcast.

A.J. Mathieu: 2:15

Yeah well, the podcast is called the Church Revitalization Podcast. We've been doing that for a little over three years now and it's weekly. You can find that wherever you get podcasts On the president of the Malfers Group. We're a ministry based here in the United States, in Texas, founded by the late Dr Aubrey Malfers, who is a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and a prolific author of leadership and strategic planning for churches, books, and so we I mean in a nutshell we just help churches do what their mandate is from Christ to do, and that is to make and mature disciples of Jesus. So we help them plan out living on mission and organizing their ministries in an effective way to disciple people and bring the gospel to the nations. So we've done that for many years in the US, and now we have the joy and pleasure of doing that globally as well, on many continents. So it's been a really fun ministry experience.

Valerie Ling: 3:18

We spoke several years ago when I was trying to figure out this thing called church leadership. So as a clinical psychologist, mainly just looking and saying you know how can I inform my clinical practice with some of the issues that were coming in through the practice and picked up a couple of books from your group and I've actually implemented one of the. We have a program called the stress management resiliency group. It's a bit of a boring name but it is. That is what we do with the Bible college students. You know six modules to prepare them for ministry and to prepare them for resiliency and what to expect, and one of them is about ministry values. So your personal values, but also looking at your ministry values and becoming more aware of that when you are starting ministry. So at that point, having read a couple of your books or, you know, books from your group reached out to you, and that was before the pandemic.

A.J. Mathieu: 4:23

Yeah.

Valerie Ling: 4:24

And you and I chatted not too long ago and you were saying that actually, since the pandemic that's even grown, the ministry that you have to be on the US to be quite international.

A.J. Mathieu: 4:36

Yeah, that's right, the catalyst really was the pandemic. You know, that was the vision of our ministry was to expand that way for many years. But it was really, when you know, the world shut down. Everybody went online and pastors were scrambling for resources and you know, like what do we do now? And so, yeah, I'm fortunate that we were prepared to receive them. You know, the first thing that we did that really developed some great relationships was we started organizing online cohorts and we had them set up like different days of the week on different time zones, so that we could just get together and sort of host small collections of pastors from different places around the world just to talk about ideas from technology to communicating with our congregations and being able to carry on some semblance of discipleship like we had been doing, you know, just days before. So that really we formed some really great relationships through those cohorts and it really just broadened our reach.

Valerie Ling: 5:46

So I'd say you'd have your pulse on what's happening around the world with regards to the church leadership space. What seems to be coming up? What are some of the issues that you hear about?

A.J. Mathieu: 5:59

Oh gosh, well, you know. So leadership is an interesting topic in the church and how it might be different, you know, from culture to culture and continent to continent. So you know there's repetitive things that I think every church experiences in the context. In those then come in what their cultures are like, you know, from guilt, innocence, culture versus honor, shame culture, and in you know these, the different worldviews that people have or the lens in which they view the world. So, but you know, I mean the repetitive things are always the sense of being all alone. You know, as, as pastors, the overwhelming majority of churches in the United States and around the world are very small. You know it's the mega churches are a very small minority of churches, or even those that have multiple staff. So most pastors out there have a have a great sense of being all alone in ministry, and so you know I think that's why you know people doing the work that you do, valerie, is really important to get to know what those struggles are and, you know, help them with with effective coping mechanisms and and things to continue to perform at the highest level that they can.

A.J. Mathieu: 7:16

So dealing with yourself in ministry certainly is a common leadership issue, but then dealing with people, because leadership in general is not something that is really taught in most seminaries. If it is, it's maybe one or two classes, kind of an overview, but most pastors are not coming out of you know, their education prepared to lead organizations and to lead people and to deal with personalities or even to understand their own personality and how they relate to others. So these are the things that are very common that we see. You know, we actually this week's episode we just did, we were just recorded today on toxic leadership in the church. So you know, taking sort of bad behavior to extremes and narcissism and similar you know personality pitfalls.

Valerie Ling: 8:10

Well, let's go there. I was hoping you and I could have a conversation about leadership in that that was one of the well, the survey that I did came out of a masters of leadership, so I had to look at leadership. I was interested in it and one of the things that I was curious about was the pathway to destructive leadership. You know, from that range of being ineffective, inappropriate, unhelpful, forceful, to abusive and toxic. What are some of the things that you're seeing?

A.J. Mathieu: 8:43

Well, you know, I think the, the.

A.J. Mathieu: 8:47

I think that one of the biggest things to that enables toxic leadership is poor structure in the church, authority structure in the church. You have to have an environment conducive to toxic leadership for it to thrive and this is by no no intentional design by, you know, church leaders over the decades and centuries. But. But a lot of churches you know today are unfortunately structured in a way where there's very little accountability for a pastor. And again, we're talking about the majority of churches being smaller. So there's it's not like there's a big staff team, but even small churches. If you don't have some sort of oversight board or council in place in which the pastor is comfortable operating, has a level of accountability, then it's just an environment in which someone that might have personality, traits that would allow them to go that way. Could, you know, kind of go deeper into that? Perhaps unintentionally, perhaps intentionally? Sin does exist in the world and in the church, but but yeah, I think the biggest issue with allowing toxic leadership to thrive is environments that allow it to thrive.

Valerie Ling: 10:03

One of my observations, having now gone into churches to, I guess, to observe and understand what happens, is I wonder whether trust in a biblical sense, when we talk about submission, it's almost like we can also surrender to a kind of unthinking trust. So just because you're the leader and we're meant to submit, I will give you trust, whereas I think in organizational context, I think trust has to be earned. You've got to be slow and careful and watchful, and before you actually fully give over your trust in an organization, what do you think?

A.J. Mathieu: 10:50

Well, yes, I mean, my personality is one that doesn't automatically allow trust. I guess I don't know I was going to say even respect. Of course I do. No one has to earn my respect for me to be pleasant to them and cordial and act in a respectful manner. But to truly respect somebody, I think that's based on their actions. You can give them a cursory level of respect or honor or trust, but I do believe that that becomes earned. But yeah, in the church we are taught to honor those that God has put in positions of authority and the nature of Christ in kindness and honor and respect. Yeah, I mean, those are positive attributes. There's nothing wrong with that.

A.J. Mathieu: 11:51

So I think the blame again is more on the leader's side for taking advantage of that and even manipulating it so that they can retain that level of power or control. So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with a new pastor comes to your church, you automatically would love to befriend him and obviously show kindness and hospitality. But also I think they would come in with somewhat of an automatic level of trust that you would give them and authority for them to present God's word to you or to counsel you. Yeah, I mean, that's why when there are hurts in the church because of toxic leadership. It's so hurtfully. I think as believers we would be hurt differently or deeper, because it's not a good thing. It's not only offensive, maybe just interpersonally, but also spiritually hurtful. So, yeah, I think pastors should be held to a higher standard than just some general organization, some CEO somewhere. We should expect more from them to be living out the word of God and the character of God.

Valerie Ling: 13:16

Yeah, and it comes to awareness as well. So, coming from a profession like mine, where we are trained from the ground about the power dynamic we are taught One of the most powerful classes I took when I was training in psychology was when we were doing child psychology and the lecturer came in and for the first class she put half of us to be on our knees and half of us would be just regular height and we had to do the entire class that way. Yeah, we couldn't sit at our tables, we had to be on our knees and we were constantly looking up and if we needed a pen or whatever, and obviously she had to debrief that because it was so powerful. I was one of the ones on my knees. I had not realized that when you look at, when you go through life in the world smaller than someone else, how helpless you feel, how dependent you are, and that was meant to teach us that, no matter what we think, there is always a power differential in the room.

Valerie Ling: 14:21

When you're a psychologist, and also when you're working with children and we learn that awareness. But I don't know whether in ministry, in leadership, whether that awareness is formed so that you don't just understand and label that there's a power differential. But you've actually worked through it. I'm not so sure.

A.J. Mathieu: 14:44

Yeah, yeah, I would agree.

A.J. Mathieu: 14:47

Again, I don't think these are the kinds of things that your average pastor is being taught, or being taught in more of an environment such as that, where you can get this tangible sense of that power differential, but it may be discussed, but not experienced.

A.J. Mathieu: 15:07

So, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of value in doing your own discovery, even the disk and things like that, just understanding your personality and how you relate to other people. I think that those are all valuable things that any leader would benefit from to best manage yourself and those around you. Of course, as a pastor, whether you've got paid staff or volunteer staff, I mean, you've got a team that you're supposed to be leading towards a shared goal, the mission of the church, and then be leading your congregation into that as well. So the greater you can grow in effectiveness as a leader again, we're talking church, we're not talking secular or world, we're talking church so the greater you can grow as an effective leader, the greater kingdom growth we have and gospel expansion. So I think these are just tools that pastors, leaders, should seek so that they can grow in that way.

Valerie Ling: 16:16

I'm curious. You've mentioned now that we're a church, we're not an organization and it strikes me that we suddenly in Australia I'm not sure what it's like in the US we organize ourselves as a commercial organization, any group of people. They get together, they're a group, but then when you're starting to need to structure and have procedures and deal with human resources, you really become an organization. Do you see that as being? It is very, very different, the church as an organization?

A.J. Mathieu: 16:48

Well, I mean, that certainly adds a huge layer of complexity. You know, yeah, if you were just a house church, you know, just really completely focused on just, you know, worship and discipleship and Bible instruction, yes, that's a simpler environment. But yeah, here in the US as well, you know, I mean, churches form as corporations and most not all you know, then go through the process of becoming federally nonprofit organizations and so, yeah, there's, you know, and then we've there's reporting requirements and HR things that you have to do with the staff team. Yes, this is an entire additional layer of complexity than simply managing the spiritual health and growth of people. So I guess you know that's a I don't know if that's an unfortunate side effect of. You know, just modern times and the way the, the way the world is now and the way churches and governments relate to one another, but you know it's become the norm. So everybody is sort of they're prepared to operate in that environment.

Valerie Ling: 18:00

Now, it's not, it's not a surprise, you know, whenever you get into ministry, and so the you know what you said initially, that you know if you were a church like a house church and you were concerned with the preaching and the teaching and the discipleship and the worship, that really just sounds to me like the core business of the church, right, Right, and you and I had a chat about you know leadership styles, servant leadership, transformation leadership, and I kind of have a hypothesis that in that what you just said, that the the simpler expression of minute of organized church, you know, flatter structures, smaller size, less connected to governmental structures, if you like, that servant leadership and it's not necessarily about being servant hearted but a cooperative where we mix and we lead from within can work and that. That that seems to me like if you're not aware of leadership, the more complex your church becomes and you don't adapt your leadership style, you might also be in trouble.

A.J. Mathieu: 19:07

Yeah, for sure, because most pastors, like on the disc, most pastors are an S.

Valerie Ling: 19:16

And to what's that? Let's define that, just in case they want to.

A.J. Mathieu: 19:21

Let's define it. Yeah, so the S on the disc. What's the official word for that? Is it steady? I think it's steady. So, yeah, I mean it's that pastoral nature, that caring nature, that relationship-driven nature, as opposed to the D. That's the dominant personality, the more driven personality, the I. A lot of pastors, though, operate in the I, which is that influencer. They're very comfortable up in front of people and then back around to the C, the conscientious, the people that are good at planning, and they can make charts and lists as your accountants.

Valerie Ling: 20:02

So yeah, most the pastors D is dominant. D is dominant.

A.J. Mathieu: 20:07

Yes, d is dominant. Yeah, so most pastors get into ministry because they care for people, they care for God's word. They want a shepherd. That would be. I guess the Christian S version of the disc was shepherding. So, yeah, it's hard for them to operate in more of an organizational leader role. It's just not the typical personality of a pastor. So what's important then is to build a team, and in larger churches a really beneficial position is like an executive pastor. That's a luxury position in the church, so you need to be larger and have a bigger budget to have that. But that becomes your key man that is maybe dealing with staff things and organizational things and all the finance aspects. Basically, it would allow a shepherding-hearted pastor to sort of remove himself a little bit from those tasks that he's not good at, doesn't enjoy, so that he can focus more on ministry of the word and caring for people. But not everybody has that luxury of doing that. A lot of pastors just have to suck it up and like, oh, I just it's part of my job. I don't like to do and deal with that organizational stuff.

A.J. Mathieu: 21:30

But you know, you maybe kind of think whenever we ended up talking about house, church and stuff. This is, I think, why small group ministry can be really effective in the church, because we get a smaller group of people away from all that stuff, in fact even away from maybe a big church building into somebody's house, where they are focused more on those things. We see these values in our ministry. We deal a lot in Acts, chapter 2, verses 41 to 47. And we see the picture of the first-century church there and we see what they valued and that those kinds of things you can do in a small group environment. You know prayer and worship and fellowship and biblical instruction and service. So yeah, I think the like small group ministry is just a really effective way of discipling people. That will kind of separate you out from modern organizational aspects of the church.

Valerie Ling: 22:30

Yeah, there is a pressure, there is a real change in what is needed of a leader once you grow to a certain size. I'm in a coaching environment right now for my business as a private practice, and one of the things they've said to us quite a lot and I think this is really true is they said look, once your team gets to, you know about the size of 11 or 12, you've got a lifestyle business.

Valerie Ling: 22:55

You know, turning over a certain revenue and you know you can have smaller clumping, like you know three sets of four, you know, and you're still quite highly relational.

Valerie Ling: 23:05

And they said but once you take in that 13th staff member, they said think about that and then think about that and maybe don't do it. You know, and they probably have said this all through the program, because much like pastors, you know, psychologists, we are also our SC. I'm not, but we are also the caring, compliant, conscientious one to many, you know, within a manageable load, you know, one psychologist can see probably about 20 people a week, but we are also that personality. And so once though you go beyond that certain number, the your practice grows. So you're now seeing hundreds to thousands of people. The communication, you know, the amount of calls we have to take in, increases. The exposure to the public grievance also increases you know from Google what you call it, the reviews, and so the leader can no longer lead from within. And I thought a lot about that because I've certainly seen the strain of when we've moved to become bigger, that I'm also more removed from the hard work to do a lot of the strategy work.

A.J. Mathieu: 24:24

And.

Valerie Ling: 24:24

I just don't know how that acts. Past is when you're moving from doing hard work to more strategy work. What do you think does? How does it impact the church and leaders? This is the midpoint break for the podcast. If you want to put a pause and walk away and come back with it, make sure you do check out the description for all the various downloads that we have for you, including my full report, research and reflections. You might also want to remember to like, share and subscribe. So stop now or keep going.

A.J. Mathieu: 24:59

It depends again on the capabilities of that pastor.

A.J. Mathieu: 25:04

You know, I mean certainly a lot of pastors have found themselves in a position where the church outgrows their capacity and that's tough to accept.

A.J. Mathieu: 25:15

Those that recognize that early maybe can remove themselves from that, get into a church environment that they're more comfortable with. Those that recognize it too late sometimes can really damage the organization itself because they just weren't prepared and they didn't have the capacity to lead at that level. So yeah, again, having a team around you that you trust is important. It can either allow maybe you know if, with humility, you could receive feedback and maybe be able to either receive coaching, training so that you can operate at a higher capacity, or again, maybe go on to something else, to a different church that is a better fit for you before any damage might get caused. Or trust your team and have good team members around you so that they can take care of that more. You know the areas that you're weaker in so that you can focus on what you do best. So you know there's a variety of ways that that could end up being handled, but being self-aware and having people around you that you trust are two important factors in that.

Valerie Ling: 26:24

Now, I know we're supposed to believe that leadership behaviors can be learned. Do you think, though, that for some of us, we will require more resources to learn how to lead a team, how to think transformationally, how to think more strategy and influence, while still remaining connected to our heart? Do you think there is a little bit of not all can do it.

A.J. Mathieu: 26:53

Well, yes, I mean, I think leadership, certainly, you know you can excel in leadership on a spectrum, you know, certainly, yeah, there are some born leaders out there. They just, they require very little input, very little training. It's just the way they're wired and you know, with no external help they can operate at, you know, 80 to 100 capacity on leadership. And there's others that you know they're in the 30, 40 group and they can be coached up to 50 to 60, you know. But again, that might be their theoretical limit. So and then, sure, there's going to be some people with they don't even have an interest in leading, you know, I mean, don't ask me to do anything. I don't want to do it, it would be terrible at it and it's best to take them at their word and not push them into that. So, yeah, I mean, I think the natural leaders, they can maybe soar higher than the marginal leader who's trained up. But I do think leadership can be taught and coached and people can improve in it and still do very well in the right environment.

Valerie Ling: 28:03

And what would that right environment be?

A.J. Mathieu: 28:06

Well, you know again something within knowing what your limits are. You know, I mean, you know somebody that can lead well, maybe with a staff of six and you know three or 400 people in their congregation. Maybe that that pastor could do very well with that. But if you put him into a church of you know 1500 with a staff of 28, and you added a lot of tasks that that he doesn't enjoy doing, doesn't, you know, isn't particularly skilled in, you know, I don't know, maybe at that point he starts to bump up against his theoretical limit on what he's capable of doing and still have any. You know life enjoyment and you know good relationship with his family. You know these. These are all additional things you know. I mean, could I kill myself and really make this work? Yeah, maybe so. But is that a good idea? Maybe not.

Valerie Ling: 29:01

And that's the pathway that comes into our practice as psychologists, right? So let me see if I can remember it, because I like to chunk things down for myself. You have at that point where you're beyond your capacity for whatever reason whether the structure has gotten too big or you've got life stress accumulating as well, maybe things aren't going so well in the family or a huge conflict in the church right, you can. You can avoid, like just go into a hole and try not to see it, and that leads to all kinds of problems we find the avoidance pathway can lead to. You know alcoholism, pornography, even we call it moral failure.

Valerie Ling: 29:41

You know pathway because when you, when you're not tapping into what you're thinking and feeling and you're avoiding, you're using stuff to help you to cope. But you can also get the attack mode. So now the attack mode is I'm out of my comfort zone, I know my tolerance is really low for things and I'm not going to react, I'm going to push and I'm going to be forceful, I'm going to be argumentative, combative. That can also happen. And so I think you know if you're not, if you're not aware and you're not being careful and you're just pushing through, the outcomes may not be fantastic either.

A.J. Mathieu: 30:23

Yeah, yeah for sure. Yeah, that's why you know it's so important to have some people around you that you trust and will speak honestly to you. And you know, I think you need to have that the character to. You know, to look for help and to delegate. And you know, yeah, all those, it's so nuanced, you know. I mean there's so many, there's so many opportunities out there, but whether people take advantage of them or recognize them in the right time, it's just there's a lot of different ways things can go.

Valerie Ling: 30:59

So the survey that I put out, it had a tiny component that was trying to look at those patterns, destructive leadership patterns, burnout.

Valerie Ling: 31:09

I don't want to major on the minor because it was a university assignment and I had to be compliant to their process, but perhaps there's room for further investigation, for a couple of things.

Valerie Ling: 31:22

One is that when you have, when you're, when you, when you, when you say, when your church goes to a certain size, you need to investigate your leadership style. You know that one type of leadership style, which is perhaps in the more cooperative, collaborative style, needs to move into one that's now moving not just hearts but minds and hands as well, so it's a more strategic leadership. Then you know, looking at the pathways of stress on effective leadership, you know whether people actually have the ability to reflect and and be effective in their leadership. But also that if we're not careful, we we can also fall into the trap then of just using forceful leadership like there's no leadership style you're using. You're just trying to hold those your way through. So, with the Malthus group, are there any particular leadership styles that you you tend to look at? You know when, when passes are trying to do leadership well.

A.J. Mathieu: 32:28

Well. So some of the structure that we help churches put in place, we do in addition to strategic planning and church health and revitalization, we do leader. We call it leadership pipeline design and that's helping churches to develop a leadership structure in the church. So what we teach as more of a best practice is well, first of all, at the top, a plurality of of leaders, and there's lots of different words for that elders, deacons, counsel. We don't get hung up on terms. Some, you know, some traditions don't like the idea of elders, others, you know, think that's great, we don't get hung up on that. But at the highest level, a plurality of authority and leadership vested in a relatively small group of people to, you know, to oversee the most important things in a church, which is its spiritual development and, you know, guarding the word of God, and, and so you know the pastor would be up at that level. And then you know stratified levels down from there. Typically this would be like a five levels of leadership in your average size church. From level one we have a.

A.J. Mathieu: 33:43

We take a very broad definition of leader. Level one leader an usher door, greeter, parking lot, greeter, it's any you know. Base level, volunteer position in the church. We consider them leaders. They're, they're participating in the ministry. They're only a level one leader is only leading himself or herself. You're not leading others in that ministry space that you're volunteering in, but we call them a level one leader. Level two and up is when you're more involved with leadership of other people. So you know, so we, we approach leadership as as a structure and a system in which there's you identify people's capacity.

A.J. Mathieu: 34:29

Well, first of all, character for each of these levels is defined. What is, what is the care, what are the character traits that we would expect from people in these various levels of leadership? And then, at what capacity do they have to operate? Based on whatever you know, the job description is that they're functioning in. And we define the turn to go from a level one to a level two. What, what you have to display to show that you're ready to move to a level two leader?

A.J. Mathieu: 34:57

Also, recognizing that not everybody wants to even move up in leadership, it's perfectly OK to say this is my sweet spot and stay there. We don't, we don't need to move you up because obviously the positions, as you go higher, become fewer and fewer. Not everybody is going to go from usher to pastor of the church that's just not how it works or to elder. So you know, in that regard, we, you know we set up the structure to divide tasks amongst you know the levels of leadership and the various capacity that's required and the level of character. So it's cooperative in the sense of everybody doing their part, for you know the whole part with proper authority in place.

A.J. Mathieu: 35:46

So you know the, the elders, at that highest level, they have, you know, a certain defined authority. If you're an elder in the church, it doesn't give you the right to go to a level three paid staff member and say I'm your boss, I'm an elder. That's not right. They're, they actually do have a boss. Your job is to be an elder and to make the proper decisions for the church within your space. So yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't just as you go up, you have more and more authority over everybody, or even over every church member and elder. You know, come up to your any church member and say move, move down a seat, I'm an elder, I need to sit here. You know that's that would be abusive power. So so yeah, you know, we find this to be a really a healthy way of organizing leadership in the church so that people perform in, perform at their highest level in the space that they're best in right now. That's. That's the main idea.

Valerie Ling: 36:47

And what's the main form to assess the criteria for the different levels? How does that happen?

A.J. Mathieu: 36:53

Yeah, so in the beginning, when it's being created, you know the, the team that we help the church assemble to do this work, and it just occurs over just a couple of days. That's where the initial pieces are defined, like what, what is the, what are the character qualities that we would assign in these, in these areas, creating job descriptions for every position in the church. But then it's also defining how evaluations will be done. I mean, we're proponents of Evaluating people's work and performance from that, from, really from level two up. You don't need to do one-on-one Job evaluations with your level one leaders. That would be more of an informal coaching environment. But evaluations, yeah, which Makes people street back sometimes to think we would evaluate a volunteer in the church.

Valerie Ling: 37:48

I was gonna ask yeah, yeah, yeah.

A.J. Mathieu: 37:53

So I think a lot of people Appreciate that, you know, because I mean, you're there, you're you want to give of your time, your talent. You want to know are my doing this right? Am I effective, am I helpful? And so, yeah, not evaluation because everybody thinks, oh my gosh, everybody's had, like their, their job evaluation and they're nervous for a week before they had it. That should never be the case in the church. We should never go into an evaluation nervous, because we should have also, we should have a relationship with the person that would be doing our evaluation. We should be, you know, basically, you know friends at that. You know we're getting. We're talking about church environment, not Microsoft. So, but yeah, I mean, everybody would love to have feedback, you know, positive, or or you know perhaps a negative coaching thing you know, to help them perform better, because when it's done in the right environment, with the right heart, it's, it's effective and helpful. Not, you know, demoralizing and alienating.

Valerie Ling: 38:59

It's not something that what I'm hearing is almost a definition and an intentional development of maturity, not oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.

A.J. Mathieu: 39:09

Yeah for sure, yeah, yeah, I mean the whole environment should help people grow, no doubt about it.

A.J. Mathieu: 39:13

Yeah, you know, I mean it would be seen somewhat separated from an intentional discipleship process in the church.

A.J. Mathieu: 39:21

But if, yeah, if you're engaged in serving in the church In a good environment, I think it absolutely is a growth opportunity. Yeah, for sure, I mean, I experienced that myself, you know. I mean I, for many, many years we attended a church that was very focused on leadership, development and discipleship and I thrived in that environment, you know, as as I became At a capacity in which I was interested with some, some leadership areas and teaching areas and receive feedback from people and was able to then exercise new skills and knowledge as a tremendous growth environment, I wouldn't I wouldn't be in the ministry I am today had I not been Brought up in that and I'm talking about I'm only done like 15 years ago. I mean I'm I'm not, I'm not somebody that you know was in church leadership since elementary school. I mean I was later in life that God called me, you know, into a vocational ministry and and it was because of a church that was really intentional With my development that created that environment for me to thrive.

Valerie Ling: 40:32

Okay, so I think I'm a level one in your structure. So I you know, in music I don't lead anybody in church, so but I am on the music team. So if I was within that structure, how would someone evaluate? Well, first of all See if I'm to be selected and then evaluate it as a level one. I mean broadly what happens.

A.J. Mathieu: 40:57

Yeah, I mean, for, for the most part, a level one leader wouldn't, depending on again on the position, there wouldn't be much Necessary to qualify, and you know, even this can be a hang-up in some churches. Some churches might say, well, you have to have been going here for so long, you might even have to be a member. You might, you might have to be a believer. I mean, there's some churches that you don't have to be a believer to open the door and smile and greet somebody you know. I mean that's, that's okay.

A.J. Mathieu: 41:28

But yeah, so I'm, if I'm not mistaken, I think somebody on like a music team, worship team, would be a. That would be a level two. You don't feel like you're leading anyone because you don't have a direct reports, but you are leading the congregation, got the exercise of your talent if you're gifting, right, so that would be a level two leader. And yeah, so that's a little bit different scenario. Well, first of all, you have to have some kind of talent. We don't want people that don't know how to play their instrument, holding an instrument and trying to play it on Sunday, or someone that you know Can't sing in key.

Valerie Ling: 42:05

So there is a very loving AJ.

A.J. Mathieu: 42:11

Just to just make a joyful noise. It doesn't matter what it sounds like. Yeah, there there was some kind of qualification. Whether you are aware of it or not, you had to be qualified to do. Whatever you do, what do you play an instrument or do you sing? What do you do, valerie?

Valerie Ling: 42:27

Yeah, I play the keyboard.

A.J. Mathieu: 42:28

Oh, okay, all right.

Valerie Ling: 42:29

Well, you know, but he auditioned me, aj, no one auditioned you Look, I'm being a bit cheeky, I get we saying I think that some of these things happen intuitively. Yeah, even if you don't spell it out intentionally, but I think it's when we, when we have different intuition about other things. So what does it mean for the character of someone? So I can get a bit hot under the collar when I play with other musicians at church because I've come from a different formation pathway. You know some very strict formation pathways when I was a young person, to be taught what it is to be humble and to you know my role is and things like that. But different people come from different pathways and have different Understandings of what it is to play music.

Valerie Ling: 43:16

So I think what I'm hearing from you is and I think you're right there's, there's an element if we can be very confused at church. There's, no, there's. There can be very little clarity and when that happens, we attach our own meaning, our own Analysis, and we're more critical and more demanding of one another as well. And then ultimately, we go to the leadership to say, well, you solve it, you fix it, you're responsible for this. Yeah, for for the way things are going or how I'm being treated at church. Would that be fair?

A.J. Mathieu: 43:48

Yeah, for sure. I mean you mentioned clarity. My our vice president, scott Ball, quotes this frequently and I don't remember who said it, but that clear is kind. So when we're clear about About people, the expectations that we have for people, or how something is supposed to be organized or operate, that is showing kindness to them. Otherwise we set them up perhaps for failure, yeah, or you know we're embarrassment or something uncomfortable. So, yeah, I think we need to, I think it it's helpful and it's kind to define expectations, to define processes and that helps people to operate at At the greatest, you know, effectiveness that they can in that environment. So, yes, but everybody does come in, you know, from different, different points of view and and with different upbringings and they they developed in different ways. But that's not an excuse. Then we can't excuse certain behavior because, well, that's just the way they were. We need to better, just define what's expected in our environment and then, you know, help them to to operate there. That's you know, that's something that you know.

A.J. Mathieu: 44:59

Getting into again into churches internationally, you know, in different cultures and contexts, is how much? How much do we allow, based on, you know, the culture, to inform what's right in the church? You know, for us to, to develop people and to operate in the space and do the things that the church is called to do, and so that can. That can create conflict, especially in churches that you know have a variety of cultures. We deal a lot with international churches, which means a church in a in a global city that has people from lots of different places around the world, all different cultures. You know, in big global cities Sydney, berlin, tokyo you know people that might be working there or just doing ministry or school or something, and and then they come together in the church and we've got all of these different cultures and worldviews and and then we're like, okay, now what do we do? You know, should we let this person what I perceive as as something offensive, but it's normal for them? Do we just let that happen? You know whose culture wins. You know what. What is, how are we going to define this environment?

A.J. Mathieu: 46:24

And these are struggles, you know that, even in more subtle circumstances, that just any particular church anywhere might experience, because even if we're all the same, you know we might everybody in our churches from Australia, but even I don't I know very little about Australia, valerie, but maybe we're. You know somebody is comes from the far West versus somebody from Brisbane, and they just have they have different ideas about the way things should work. So, yeah, I mean this is that becomes the job of the pastor or the or various leaders to to work this out. But again, regardless of where people come from, if we have something that we can say here's how this is going to work, here's how we do it here and here's what we expect of you it's then up to that individual to say, okay, I understand and I'll do my best so maybe when I'm even Getting from this, it's quite interesting, is that even being intentional about the training of lay leadership?

Valerie Ling: 47:27

So do you see that as being Separate, complementary? How does it work with the discipleship process? Because I think in most churches your lay leaders don't get trained in leadership. You know you, you might get trained how to lead a Bible study or how to even write a Bible study, but I don't think there is any development for lay leadership.

A.J. Mathieu: 47:47

Yeah, that's where we speak of leadership development as a culture, not, you know, an event or a process. Right, leaders, developing leaders should become the culture of the church, so yeah. So let's say I, I joined it. I've been going to the church for a year or so. I joined a small group and I've got this, this you know, this man or woman leading my small group Well, in in a church whose culture it is to develop leaders, that small group leader knows that it's a component of their position, not only to present the information you know, to lead a Bible study or to lead other aspects of a small group, but to understand the personalities in their group and to help cultivate that.

A.J. Mathieu: 48:33

You know, the gifting and the things that the Lord has given them To recognize. You know, I mean, if, if we're having eye out for people who might be able to serve in different capacities, then Then you know that's a great place that they could. You know, whenever the need comes up, or if there's, you know we just need more people to serve, you know we could say, well, gosh, you know this guy, mark in my group, would be fantastic for that. I've gotten to know him and I think he would be a great fit for that over there. But you know it's. It's a culture of recognizing people's traits, their characteristics, their personality and and their strengths and helping them develop. So versus, hey, we're gonna have a, we're gonna a sermon series on leadership or we're gonna start a leadership class. You know, sometimes those venues and events are okay, but better to have a church whose culture it is to develop people.

Valerie Ling: 49:32

Yeah, I mean, that is, that is the heart of transformation and leadership is you journey the. The leader journeys very closely with the other level leaders and Develops the churches, the mentors, them, is personally interested in, invested and and invest their time into that leadership and the modeling happens and then that level, you know, does the same with the next level and it goes down, isn't it? Yeah?

A.J. Mathieu: 49:59

exactly Yep. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation.

Valerie Ling: 50:04

Hey, it's been a lot of fun, so thank you so much for spending time with me, aj.

A.J. Mathieu: 50:10

Thank you. It was a lot of fun at the time flew by, so we'll have to do it again.

Valerie Ling: 50:15

Cheers.

A.J. Mathieu: 50:15

You.