The pastoral succession crisis

Around the world there is a growing phenomenon where the current generation of pastors are getting older and yet the next generation doesn't seem too interested in replacing them.

I believe this is an important sign for us to take note of and ask the question, why don't the next generation want to lead? It's easy to put it down to lack of work ethic or surrender to Christ but perhaps it's simply because they're smart enough to know what they're signing up for.

The next generation doesn't want to lead... in the way that is being offered to them. If we can make our church culture of leadership healthier then I believe we'll see a huge upswing in rising leaders. I explain what this looks like in the podcast.

I'd love to recommend THE CHURCH CO who are by far the best website provider for churches. If you want to be findable not just on Google but also ChatGPT then I encourage you to explore their affordable plans using the discount code SATS for 10% off. Just head to https://thechurchco.com.

If you're still reading, my name is Sats Solanki aka Digital Rabbi. I lead Reflect Church in London, UK. If you'd like to connect then head over to Insta @satsolanki or head to https://digitalrabbi.co. To find out more about Reflect Church head to https://reflect.church

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Well, hello, and welcome to the Leadership Horticulture Podcast. My name is Sans Solanke, otherwise known as the Digital Rabbi, and uh it's good to be hanging out wherever you are in the world. Today, I'm based in the UK, here in London, involved in leading a church called Reflect Church. And in this podcast, we're talking about all things theology and leadership and culture in the church and just trying to create things that are healthy. And so some of you will know my story already, but five or six years ago, the multi-side church that I've been a part of pretty much pretty much my whole adult life imploded. Uh, the senior pastors sort of ban the ship, went back to their home country, uh, took very little responsibility for what happened, and the whole thing was just crazy. At that point, we were so we were super involved in this church and uh were leading a location of it. And um, anyway, so everything kind of collided. It was the pandemic and all sorts of drama happening and out of the ashes. Let's start a church. Then myself, my wife, uh few of our friends uh who are on our leadership team now. We we started this church, and I think what's been interesting has been rebuilding, you know, because at first you're reactive, you're thinking, well, I don't want to do it like that, so uh let me just go the opposite way. But as time goes on and you're maturing in uh, you know, your emotional response and you're processing everything that's happening, um you're really trying to understand like what went wrong and what was wrong theologically, and and what is the right way to build a church, right? Because the last thing I want to do is for that also to be my story. You know, like I'm 38 years old. I don't want to spend the next 20 years building something cool, only to realize that the foundations that I've built it upon are wrong. And as I've started to lift my eyes and look around, I'm realizing that the the things that happen to us in in our church context, um, they seem to be happening in lots of other places. So this is not just a few people do some bad things. Do you know what I mean? Like that happens, right? But this is more trying to understand um what are the cultures that facilitate bad things to happen, that means that the churches don't become healthy, life-giving communities, but they become unhealthy or controlling or manipulated or whatever uh other stuff is happening. So that's where this podcast is coming from. That's what we're trying to talk about. And today we're gonna be talking about um uh pastoral succession, uh leadership transition. It's a big topic that I've seen a lot of sort of podcasters and Christian voices talking about how we have a bit of a crisis right now. How we have a whole bunch of leaders who have started churches and pioneered something. Uh, in the UK, in the States in particular, there's a lot of talk about it. Also in Australia, I know it's true. We're connected to a lot of Australian churches. And um, it's like here's here's the issue that the the the older leader who started the church is trying to retire or coming to the point where they're like, okay, I want to hand this on, but they can't actually find anybody who is willing to take it on. Isn't isn't that crazy? And so we've we've got a whole bunch of stats, and you you can Google these. Um, I think Barner have done a bunch of research on this, and uh, you know, showing that basically, you know, pastors are getting older, and uh there's just not this desire to lead anymore. And you think, what is going on here? What is going on? Because the the kind of pitch it feels a little bit from at least the older generation is like, well, you know, we just can't get the staff these days. The younger generation aren't interested. And it's kind of almost like a reflection, a negative reflection given to the next generation. And I want to question that today because I wonder if the reason we can't get the next generation of leaders to be engaged. This is a general statement, of course, there are lots of next generation leaders as well. But I wonder if the reason that we're collectively struggling is because what we're inviting them into is not something that they want. What if the culture of the churches that we've built and the way that we do leadership is something that is actually not good and the next generation is actually a little bit smarter? You know, as much as they're criticized for being much more emotionally connected, um, maybe they're also actually just a little bit more emotionally aware. And uh, and back in the day, you know, if you, you know, you you just had to get on with it. You just had to suffer. It's like, well, I don't have a choice, I've just gotta press on. But if you actually think about what that is psychologically, um, that's just like repressing your emotions, which isn't good. Like it might produce like a high-level bleeder, it might produce someone who's very functional, very productive, and very resilient, but it also produces someone who is emotionally numb. And so what we have in the next generation is that of course every generation reacts to the generation before. And so I'm kind of, well, I'm 38, as I said, so I kind of still feel like I'm part of the younger generation, but I think maybe not entirely, uh kind of transitioning upwards uh into midlife, let's say. Imagine if you're 21 years old listening, you're thinking, wow, you are so old. Uh but in my mind, I'm still fresh as a daisy. But anyway, that's a side, side, side topic. So, so uh, you know, uh there's this feeling that the younger generation are emotionally all over the place. But my feeling is that they're actually just a little bit more emotionally intelligent and they're seeing some things that are wrong. And that's what I want to talk about in today's podcast episode. What have we got wrong? Not so that we can just bash people or just, but so that we can actually build something healthy. Like if you can't diagnose what's wrong, you you can't actually build the new thing. And that's been my exact journey of just being like, God, I really want to build something healthy. I really want to build something good. I don't want to mess this up. So let's get back to the Bible, let's get back to good thinking, and let's challenge our assumptions and our traditions that don't serve us. Traditions can be helpful, but they they should not um you know be prized than the Bible, but than the scripture, than the Holy Spirit. So just before we dive into that topic, I'm just want to shout out a friend of mine who runs a company called The Church Co. My friend Paul, uh bit of a legend, lives in a different part of the world, but we meet up from coffee from time uh for coffee from from time to time. And he runs a fantastic company helping churches, um, building websites for them. And uh there are a lot of these sort of companies, let me just say that. Um, people serving churches, doing various comms, uh digital things for them. But um, I I want to just say this is that um we often what when it comes to getting something like a website, we we tend to think about certain things, right? So we think about okay, what does it look like? You know, it needs to look amazing. That's probably actually our primary, you know. Just is it gonna have all of our information on it? You know, is it gonna be able to do what we want it to do? We think about functionality and we think about you know visuals. But I think there are often things we should think about that nobody's thinking about. So, for example, with things like uh site load speed, like how quickly does the website load? Because did you know that if your site is slow to load, because maybe you've got like too many images on there, or the way that it's built, it looks good, but it may not function well. And so the load speed goes down, therefore you rank lower on Google, and uh and also people just get frustrated like navigating your site. So things like that are things that proper website development teams are thinking about. And I just want to let you know, I don't know about everybody else, but I just want to let you know that these guys in particular, that's what they are. Paul is a developer in background and he's founded this company, and they're very successful, very good in what they do, and it's just top bloke. So uh if you need a website or your website is old as, and you just think we need to have some a good digital presence. I want to just encourage you to connect with Paul. You can go to thechurchco.com and uh you can actually use my name as a discount code. Um, so uh that's SATS S A T S. You can put that in and you you'll get a 10% discount or something cool like that um from your your starting. So uh that's cool. Go check them out and let's let's you know let's make church websites beautiful. Let's like is there's just no need in 2026 to have an ugly website. I'm just not sure. I'm not sure why we can't do it properly. We can that the there are people out there who want to do it uh for you. So go check that out. So um let's come back to pastoral succession, let's come back to the culture of the church that we're um building. Um I I think just one of the big things that I notice is that we've really built leadership, the idea of leadership to be this really big thing, like a big thing. And I think there's this kind of um what would be the word for it? That there's this something comes with when you elevate something. When you elevate something comes, something comes with it. And I think what comes with it is pressure. So let me just say very clearly, I think leadership is important. I myself am a church leader, I think it's a very important role. I think we should do it, and we need good people doing it. I also think it's true that generally speaking, um, leadership is over-emphasized, it is over-celebrated, it is over-honored, and the more we do that, the more pressure actually comes with leadership. Now, I I just personally I've experienced this. I've experienced um, you know, telling people what I do, and then the dynamic in the conversation changing as honor comes in, like almost like an unhealthy, just it's just a weird feeling. It feels like being a celebrity or feels like being famous or something. And people just treat you differently when they find out that you're a pastor because often they've been taught to honor. And again, honor is good. But the more we honor something, the more we elevate something, the more we actually create pressure attached to that role. Do you know why? Because you're more visible. And if you're seen as the pastor or the senior pastor of the church as being the sort of life of the church, if we see leadership as being this sort of official formal position that is God anointed and representing God to the people, then of course that is going to come with pressure. Now, there are so many things I could say about this. First of all, every reference to the office of leadership, you know, the office of elder, for example, that we see in, you know, Timothy and so on, that that phrase doesn't exist. It's not there in the original language. So the formal office is not really something like you can have a formal position, but the primary is the function of leadership. And the function of leading is to love people, to build them up, is to set the culture, is to teach, all those kind of things, right? So, so those functions are fantastic. And I think we should do those things really well. But what we don't need to do is almost sort of like, you know, we don't need to over-emphasize the title, for example. You know, when we call people pastor sats or pastor so-and-so, like we don't really need to do that. What we're doing is we're leaning into a culture of honor, but then it comes with pressure. You know, when we celebrate the pastor's birthday, like again, you think it does it really matter? It's like, well, not really, but just that we we think of the pastor as being quite this old testament figure, uh, representing like Moses did, you know, interceding on behalf of the people. But the New Testament is different, it's changed, guys. We are now all in the kingdom. We are a kingdom of priests, right? And there is no clergy class, there is just a community of believers, a community of saints, from which there are those who have giftings that are there to serve within the body, right? So when we think of leadership like that, it totally changes the pressure. And I have experienced that pressure, the pressure of leading and the amount of pastors, and this is one of the things they they put in, I think, the Barnett article, is they talk about how many pastors are considering quitting or are burning out. And you may know people, I know people as well who've been on that journey because of the pressure of ministry, the pressure of leading. And so if we can see that it cre the the culture that we create around church is creating this sort of pressure, we we have to ask ourselves, is that what's supposed to happen? That's a really important question, right? Is leadership supposed to be hard? Somebody said, George, we had a sort of connect group um a couple of weeks ago, and someone literally said to me, says, Well, how do you how do you handle the pressure of leading? And you know, they were like, I must be such a heavy burden. And I just looked to them and I said, It's not. It's not a big pressure, it's not a burden. Now you might be thinking right now, Sats, you you obviously haven't led anything. I can promise you right now that I have. I promise you right now that if you looked on paper what I carry, you would be like, Well, you guys does quite a lot. But the thing is, is that Jesus makes a promise to us in Matthew chapter 11, he invites us to come to him, and he says, Everybody who's heavy laden, come to me. And then he uses these four words that kind of pop up in the passage. You can read it. Matthew chapter 11, verse 28 to 30. And he talks about, you know, coming to me, and he says, Rest, uses the word gentleness. This is him describing what it's like to follow him rest, gentleness, lightness, and ease. So we have to ask ourselves a question. If that is the description of what it means to follow Jesus, surely that means as a church leader, one, I have to have my own personal followership of Jesus, right? I'm a disciple of him. But secondly, I'm trying to help other people also follow Jesus. So if I don't have that experience where there is gentleness and ease in my life, then how on earth am I gonna perform the task of leading people? I don't think that's possible if we're gonna lead people into what Jesus promised them. We can lead them somewhere, we can lead them into the wrong thing, we can lead them into the church, we can lead them into leadership. But can we lead them to the place Jesus wants to lead them to? I am not sure because if we say that leadership is a pressured thing where you carry something and there's an anointing and a responsibility, and look, all of these words are good words, but I think we've misused how we apply them to make leadership into something that is heavy when Jesus says it's gonna be a light burden. So if you want to disagree with me, talk to Jesus, talk to Jesus about that. Like, why is Jesus describing it as that? Now we know there's problems in life, we know there's difficulty in life. He also says, you know, uh this there's gonna be trouble in this world. But then he says, take heart, for I have overcome the world. And he says, I'm leaving you my peace. So things are gonna go wrong, uh, you know, it's gonna be difficulty, etc., etc., responsibility, but your internal emotional state is gonna be one of peace. That's the promise right there. And I believe that the reason the next generation is not interested in taking on the churches that the people are trying to retire from is because they don't see that. When they look in, they see somebody who's tired. And I'm gonna generalize here, right? But we often see people who are a bit cynical, people whose hearts have got a little bit hard. Like there's not always that sense of love and warmth still there. There's a bit of like harshness because of that, again, that that whole just like, I'm just gonna get on with it. I'm just gonna keep pioneering, I'm gonna keep building, you know, I'm serious about this. And so what we do is we sort of chip away at some of our empathy because it's impossible to stay soft-hearted when you when you're trying to lead in that way. So I think the next generation is looking and thinking, I I'm I'm good, I'm I'm okay. I you know, maybe someone else will do it. That they're not thinking, I want to lead in this way. So, how can we how can we create a church culture where people actually want to lead in? That's the question. I think if we fix the church culture and the health of the church, we're gonna create a great environment where people um you know are have a healthy relationship with leadership and they see the importance of it, and therefore the right people who are gifted and called are gonna actually emerge um and come through. So the first thing is this is that we need to stop over-emphasizing leadership. Uh, we've already talked about this. This is how we honor, this is how we talk, this is how we use titles. Um, there's a lot of small things that for me are unnecessary. And what the Bible talks about with honoring, where it does say, you know, honor your leaders, if you look at the context, um, the primary context is about paying them. You know, it talks about, you know, don't muzzle the ox. Let's say, look, you know, as people are working amongst you, using their gift to serve you, let's take care of their needs so that they can keep doing it, right? So for me, the primary context there is financial. Like, let's pay these people well. So that's gonna help. That's gonna help get the next generation of leaders, right? And I know we have, you know, horror stories of what people get paid in, you know, all sorts of silly mega church type environments, uh, but you know, for the majority of churches, um, you know, that's not the case, right? Uh let's pay our pastors and our leaders well, so that they can do the job um that they're called to do. But let's not also make the mistake of thinking that we need to sort of wait on them, you know, that the moment that they finish preaching that someone should have a Starbucks or a latte or something, you know, with some nice uh artwork in the frothy mill, like ready for them. You know, let's not make the mistake of thinking that means we need a green room full of snacks. Again, you can have a room, maybe you just want to have some time just to collect your thoughts before you start, but it shouldn't be a sort of exclusive space that only the key people get invited to, and it becomes a bit of a status thing. Like, did you get to go to the green room? That is a thing, guys. Like it's a thing. And why is it a thing? It's because we have over-honored. So I think whenever we go like that, we we have to look at the scriptures where Jesus says, Hey, you know, you've seen how the Gentiles do it, they lord their power over people. And I think Christian leaders need to actively work against that, right? Like, yes, there are privileges and perks of being a leader, like it just it you're visible, etc. But I think we should actively go the opposite way. We should humble ourselves, following the example of Jesus in Philippians chapter 2, who humbled himself to the point of death on the cross, right? So we understand that we're here to serve, but it just seems to be the honor sneaks in and we we just accept a bit of glory. We just accept a bit of and and the problem with that, you see, the problem with that is not is not like the problem is actually for the leader. If I just let people treat me a little bit like a king, let me just tell you, people want to treat you like a king as a leader. Like when you're doing a good job and you love people and you're preaching, people they they want to honor you. Don't have to try and get create a culture of honor. I feel very well respected in my community, but I spend so much time undoing the over-honouring. Uh largely got people come from many different cultures. Uh, some African cultures are very big on honor. So I'm working really hard to go the opposite way. And I've not yet got to a point where I feel like nobody appreciates what I do. Like, no, no, it's like the opposite. People do appreciate what you do, and the more we lay down our lives, the more people honor us. So it's like, do the opposite. Don't, don't uh, you know, create an honor culture. Don't overemphasize um leadership. Instead, um, you know, use your power to celebrate and elevate others. The more we elevate leadership, um, the more people think that looks pressured. So it comes with pressure. And that pressure is the exact opposite of what Jesus describes in Matthew chapter 11. So if we stop emphasizing leadership, we'll actually ironically attract more people into leadership. How wild is that? It's like the opposite of what you'd expect, but that's how it works. Uh, the second thing is this is you want to make sure that you celebrate kingdom activity, not just church activity. So this comes from the over-emphasis of leadership because some churches have worked out, hey, if we tell everybody that they're a leader and we create like a leadership development pipeline and we say, hey, you you want to follow Jesus, right? Well, to follow Jesus means to build the church. And to love God means to give money, it means to serve your time, etc. etc. Now, none of those things are false, right? Like you should do those things as Christians. But the over-emphasis of leadership means that people kind of get forced into that pathway and they think this is the thing that is celebrated and valued from all the people older and wiser around me, from my community. They're all trying to get me to um take responsibility and lead a team or do some unpaid hours here. Everyone's trying to so that must be what it means to be a Christian. Now, the problem with this, of course, is the more we over-emphasize the church and the leading within the church, the more we actually take people's energy away from the whole kingdom. Because don't forget, God is not just trying to fill the church, God is not just trying to build the church, God is actually very interested in the whole world. The whole earth is the Lord's and everything in it, right? Uh, if we go back to Genesis chapter one, we have an instruction for the earth. It's like fill it, multiply it, take dominion of it. So when Jesus comes and he says, I've given, I've got all authority, and I'm sending you to make disciples to uh everything that I've commanded you, I want you to go and do it. He's still referring back to Genesis chapter one. He's like, let's take over the world, let's influence the world, let's fill it with beauty and creativity, um, let's work hard, let's organize, let's create great systems for our cities, and so on and so on. So when we reduce the kingdom to the church, we we basically just create a really narrow emphasis. And in the short term, it looks really good because the church is growing. Because, of course, if you tell everybody that we need to grow the church and that's your primary mission, then that's what people will do. But the reality is it just becomes insular and it also then creates a sort of hierarchy where you're trying to get up the pyramids. And if you just work a bit harder, if you take more responsibility, then you might get an opportunity to get into the green room or go on a trip or whatever it is. Now, a non-car um mis, you know, not every church is thinking of it like that, but I think implicitly, if we don't celebrate the kingdom activity, um, what you celebrate is what you get. So, what do we do? We pull people up on the platform who gave a large amount of money to the church, right? And we we get them, we talk about how much they gave, right? Or or we look at somebody who did something you know, who stayed up late to serve the church. We rarely seem to take people who did something great in their community and celebrate what they did. We rarely seem to get like, you know, like like parents uh and just celebrate them just for being a parent. You know, friends, I've realized that if the only thing I did in my life, I got four kids, if the only thing I did was just successfully love these kids and uh be present with them and build them up and encourage them and send them in the right direction and provide for them. If that's the only thing I did, that would be a very successful life. But I'm telling you right now, the way that we're preaching in the modern church, most people don't think that. They think that the fulfillment of their Christian witness is to be, if I was a leader, I'd be I'd be more spiritual. So there's an overemphasis, but it actually robs us of the fullness of what God wants to do on the earth. And again, people have dreams, right? So if it if being a leader means I don't get to be a musician, or being a leader means I can't be an artist, or I can't work in finance, or I can't start a company or whatever else, it it becomes binary for people because we've made it binary and we haven't emphasized and shown people it is great to have a great job and to show up and be a great witness in your world, not by uh telling everyone about Jesus necessarily, but by the way that you work is infused with Christ, the quality, how you respond to people, uh the conversations, the way you lead meetings, like all of these things. That's the kingdom of God. And so we've got to give people the fullness of it, otherwise, they're just gonna think, oh, the church is everything. And uh it's not, guys. Heaven is it's not gonna be just the church. Heaven is gonna be very practical, very physical. Heaven is coming to earth. Heaven is coming to earth. That's NT Wright has a fantastic book in this called God's Homecoming, where he talks about how the idea of you know the goal of the Christian life is to sort of get saved and forgiven, and then you get to go to heaven and be with Jesus forever. He's like, No, no, no, that is not how it works. That's not what um anyone in the Bible has ever believed, including the early church. Instead, it was this idea that heaven would come to earth and God would renew and restore um the world and his kingdom would reign here. So, so intrinsic in the salvation message is like the fullness of the earth that belongs to God. Um, okay, the third thing I mean is this is gonna help us is uh to embrace plurality of leadership. Okay, so we're gonna stop emphasizing leadership by making it the thing. We're gonna we're gonna celebrate wider than just the activity in the church, and then we're actually gonna create a leadership structure that is plural in nature. Now, I've done uh whole episodes on this. Um, you can go check them out if you want a bit more of a deep dive. But honestly, if you look in the Bible, look at the New Testament, tell me what senior pastors you can find. Tell me what lead pastors you can find. What are their names? And people will say things like, oh, Timothy was a senior pastor. Incorrect. You know how we know Timothy wasn't a senior pastor, is because senior pastors tend to stay in one place for a long time, right? You would expect if Timothy was a senior pastor, he'd put in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. But Timothy goes to Ephesus and he stays there, maybe tops a couple of years. Same with Titus in Crete, doesn't stay there very long at all. So these guys are not going to be the one man on the ground. They are going as part of Paul's apostolic team to help establish churches and appoint, guess what? Elders. Now that's the word that comes up the whole way through Acts. If you actually look, um, you'll see the elders, the elders of the church coming together. So the early church was always plural in nature. You got 12 apostles. There they are. Jesus did not leave behind a senior pastor, he leaves behind a team of apostles, and it's just there. Um sometimes people say James was the lead pastor in Jerusalem and the church there. And yet Paul refers to three, he refers to, I think, Peter, John, and James as pillars in the church. He doesn't single out James as the leader. Now, maybe he was more prominent. There's there's definitely an argument for that. Maybe he had a more visible role. Like, I don't think plural leadership means everybody has to do the same things, um, everybody has to be equally visible. That's not what we're talking about. In in our church, um, I am the primary preacher, the communicator. Um, that's me. I'm paid full-time to work for our church. Not everybody else is. So there's a gifting, and there's also just a practical sense of, well, Sats is available. Um, we've chosen him to do this work. But I'm still operating in a plurality of leadership. I do not have the final say. All of our um high-level decisions, like we're gonna end our lease, we're gonna move into a new venue. That's something we've literally been walking through as a church. A big, big decision, finishing a three-year lease, that is something we've walked through um as a team. So, what happens here is when you have a plural uh leadership set up, it it really becomes obvious that pastoral succession kind of disappears as a problem because uh, you know, you're just constantly rolling on and off different elders. So we have a team of five, and you know, oh, as time goes on, maybe some of them will leave, or maybe we'll leave, or you know, like just in the right season, we'll add someone else in and keep adding from the next generation. So then what happens is by the time I'm at retirement age and I'm like, you know what, I'm a bit done. Well, there's a whole pool of people who are already running the church, who people are already connected with, who people already understand, oh, these guys are in charge, you know. Like, so what it means is that there's not this big pressure because if I try and get somebody to um replace me, let me just say, you can't replace me. You can't replace me, guys, because I have a specific gift that cannot be replaced. I am me. And so you can never replace just one leader because it's true for every single person. Everybody is unique, they have something that they're carrying and that the church generally loves. That's why they go to the church, right? And so when we build church in this way, um, what it means is is that uh it's just really hard to ever do a leadership transition. But if you have plurality of leadership, you have multiple elders on your team, then what happens is as the years go on, we just keep adding more people and the church keeps growing. And yes, uh there's transition involved in that, but largely it solves the pastoral um crisis. There's less pressure because it's shared, decisions are made together. We get rid of the false idea that there's this man of God at the top who carries everything and you know God is appointed. It's like I just I'm struggling to find that in the New Testament, guys. I really am. So uh if you can find it, let me know. But as far as I can see, there's just a huge change in how leadership works in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and the New Testament produces what Jesus describes: gentleness, rest, ease, lightness. I am living this. This is my story, friends. I have experienced both sides of what it's like. I have done the Pentecostal thing, I've done the sit under the anointing thing, I've done the hard grind, and I've been busy, and I can tell you it was not good for my soul. In the long term, it was it was it was eroding something from me, and it was eventually would have been quite unhealthy. But thank God um that he interrupted my trajectory and forced me to consider a different way, and now I feel the opposite. I can see that every single year I'm getting healthier, every single year there's more fruit, there's more joy, there's more peace, I'm having more fun. So, how do you explain that? It's almost like what Jesus promised is true because that's what I'm experiencing. So, anyway, friends, I hope you found that helpful. Um, how we think about the pastoral succession and crisis. So, I want to encourage you if you are a pastor, particularly if you're like a lead pastor or a couple pastoring, I want you to really um think um about and consider um how could you lean into plurality and how can you not over-emphasize leadership? How can you celebrate kingdom activity? I think it's gonna really help you create a great culture that is not just gonna last, you know, for the next 20 years as you're involved, but also, you know, the years to come, the next 50 years, the next hundred years. Why? Because you've set someone in motion um that comes from the right culture, the kingdom um culture. So bless you guys. Thanks so much for listening today. Can I just ask you if you have enjoyed this, if it's been helpful? Um, I just put out this because I feel like it's on my heart, and um that's it. What would be really helpful is to have um a rating, to have a review, and also if you can share it. Um, because yeah, it's it's a tough gig putting this stuff out there, and sometimes you get some criticism and people don't understand what you're trying to say. And I'm just like, look, I'm not here to be liked, I'm here just to do what I feel like God is asking me to do. I want to do it really well, and so your encouragement and your support by sharing this can just help me um keep going. So thank you so much. Bless you guys. We'll see you in the next episode.