Welcome to the Banner Woman Leadership Podcast, where our team talks with top leaders about how to better serve and lead your team. Our goal is for you to gain tangible tips on topics such as culture, leadership, succession, and navigating people problems. We hope you enjoyed today's show.
SPEAKER_02Well, hey friends, thanks so much for joining us today for a bonus content podcast from Vanderblemen. As you know, we were fortunate enough to have a book come out last year Be the Unicorn. It's the 12 traits that we've been able to identify through a lot of research. Here are the 12 things that make the best leaders in the world stand out among the rest. It's been super helpful for a lot of people with their personal development. It's also helpful to people who are trying to hire. It's like, well, is this one really good or not? And as a bonus to you all, we're we're taking 12 mini episodes and highlighting each one of those 12 traits and finding one of our friends that's really good at each one. And while our guest today is good at all 12, Mark Batterson has shown an enormous ability to turn on a dime, to shift when the spirit moves, to find a way to for a yes when everyone around him is telling them no. And uh, Mark, thank you so much for making time for us.
SPEAKER_01Hey, William, what a joy and uh love the book. And I got a sneak peek, so I felt kind of fortunate and uh love the title too.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. And and uh you you speaking of titles, you have a new title now, right? Just in the last month.
SPEAKER_01Um, well, uh Please Sorry Thanks came out last year, and then we're we're pointing forwards to uh A Million Little Miracles is the next one coming out.
SPEAKER_02That's great. No, I'm at a new title, like I don't know if it's grandpa or oh show us.
SPEAKER_01Show us oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah. I I uh I may I may have I may have a new uh home screen. So we we are grandparents, which is a new chapter of life, um and absolutely loving it over the moon, and we we got married pretty young, and our our kids uh got married pretty young, and so I can't believe that we're grandparents, but here we are.
SPEAKER_02Here we are. Yeah, you know, Father Times kind of I think un yeah, undefeated. So uh no doubt. Yeah. Well, hey, listen, uh a lot of people don't know the whole, you know, a bunch of they know you're an author, they know that you've been, you know, you've at least seen a pit with some snow, and you know, there's some lot of things we know about your writing, but your church is one of the great stories, I think, of church planting in the U.S. Can you give us like a quick origin story of how that all came to be?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we started with the core group of 19 people, and when you pastor something or lead something for 28 years, you you're leading at least seven or eight different churches, you're seven or eight different leaders along the way. Uh you you never arrive. There is no finish line. And so we we for many, many years were known as theaterchurch.com, meeting in seven movie theaters around the DC area. And then we get our hands on a city block, a $29 million piece of property, and we put about 20 million into that redevelopment. And so we've we've become a totally different church about two decades in. And uh, you know, we there are probably easier places, William, to do uh church than the nation's capital, uh, especially in an election year. But what it what it means is you got to stay on your toes. And I'll just I'll just throw this out there. R. T. Kendall said sometimes the greatest opposition, what God wants to do next, comes from those who are on the cutting edge of what God did last. And so it it's this idea that don't get too comfortable, don't get too settled because it's always rediscovering, reimagining who we are and and how God wants to work and move in our lives.
SPEAKER_02Say that quote one more time. That's a tweetable thing, right there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It it's every leader needs about five quotes in their back pocket. This is one of mine. Archie Kendall, sometimes the greatest opposition to what God wants to do next comes from those who are on the cutting edge of what God did last. And so we we have a core conviction that there are ways of doing church no it's not of yet. That there are new wineskins, there are new songs, God wants to do a new thing. And and so um we're we're orthodox in our theology, but we're we're a little unorthodox in our uh orthopraxy, I guess you would say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, so as you think through the theater church days, can you remember a time where you feel like, oh, we've arrived. Okay, finally, and then you had to change again. And like what went on in you that that alerted you to that? And how'd you how'd you practice agility in a time when you thought finally we get to rest?
SPEAKER_01Well, we we had this domain, theaterchurch.com. Very few people called us National Community Church. We we were known as the church uh in the movie theaters at Union Station. That's where we met for 13 years. And and then uh that door closed, and we had to do a really quick uh pivot. And we never thought we would own property because it goes for about 23 million an acre. If you can find an acre on Capitol Hill, so we we realized uh, hey, we need to change our domain name, we need to change even our identity. We kind of prided ourselves meeting in rented facilities, kind of like a tabernacle church. But but when you're 50 million into a piece of property, uh in fact, John Tyson, who pastors a church in New York City, he was with us uh two years ago, and he said, God didn't just give you a piece of property, he gave you a new philosophy of ministry that we had to we had to totally uh change the way that we did church. And so um, you know, that was a big, big shift. And uh it even involved a total re-org, which is which is not easy, uh, and I might add more fun, uh, but is is necessary. You know, you you're gonna have to make pretty significant changes over time unless you unless you're content to just be stagnant and and maintain status quo.
SPEAKER_02Well, and the book that I the one I see everywhere, Circle Maker, and then there's lots of wonderful um things that have grown out of that, different forms of circle maker thing. I mean, the origin for that, if I remember right, we were walking in BC one day, and you were telling me like the book wasn't a book, the book was a prayer, like it was real.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, it's uh, you know, it's a true story. Uh first century BC, uh a famine, uh a drought in Israel, and a guy named Honey, who became Honey the Circle Maker, uh, drew a circle in the sand, knelt in that circle, and prayed a pretty bold prayer. He said, Sovereign Lord, I swear before your great name that if you don't, I will not leave this circle until you have mercy upon your children, which he's gonna look pretty foolish in that in that prayer circle uh if it does not rain. But it did rain and it became known as the uh the prayer that saved a generation. So, you know, William, I'm I'm a pretty simple guy that just believes in the power of prayer. Prayer is the difference between the best we can do and the best God can do, and that's a pretty big difference. So, and and I do think uh the purpose of prayer is not just outlining our agenda to God, it's about God, what's your agenda for me? Prayer is how we discern the way that the Spirit is moving and working, and and I think that is part of agility. Like when I pray, uh the more I pray, the bigger I dream, and the bigger I dream, the more I have to pray. And so there's something about praying and dreaming that they really are uh one and the same thing, or two sides of the same coin. And and did you how did that work?
SPEAKER_02I mean, how'd you acquire that property? I mean, and then the property has developed into this thing. I mean, it kind of goes into the same story, right? It it does.
SPEAKER_01Uh it was August of 96. I was reading Joshua 1.3, where it says, I'll give you everywhere you set your foot. And I just felt prompted. Uh, we we, by the way, we had like 13 people the Sunday before, so I was pretty discouraged. And uh, and I I felt like I'm just gonna pray a circle around Capitol Hill, turned into a 4.7-mile prayer walk. And I wasn't praying for property, was just praying for people. Lord, let your kingdom come, let your will be done in DC as it is in heaven. And uh, here we are a couple decades later, and we own six properties on that prayer circle. So you you can't make that stuff up. Uh, I feel like it was God's way of going before us, and uh and really putting some contracts and some incredible pieces of property. Uh one of them a crack house that we turned into Ebenezer's coffee house. That's kind of one corner of the circle, and then the other corner is this city block. Uh, about a hundred thousand square foot uh building, uh 1891 Navy Yard Car Barn, uh right on the corner of Capitol Hill that we have been now uh developing as a place where we come and and worship and where we reach out and uh love on our community.
SPEAKER_02That's so good. So as you're moving toward this new title of uh I'm hoping I'm granddad. Oh, you know, I don't know, there's lots of names whenever it happens, but but you know, one thing I've noticed about agility is it actually atrophies. The older I get, the less flexible I am. That's true of our physical bodies. I think it's true of my mind, unless I like actively do something to stay agile, or I'll turn into one of those we've never done it that way before kind of people. How do what do you do to practice stretching yourself and to keep yourself open to new ways God's moving?
SPEAKER_01Man, I love that so much. Uh the the law of requisite variety, every leader needs to know it. That if you go to the gym and work out on the same exercises, the same sequence, same reps every time, it will lose effectiveness because your body adapts. So, what a good trainer will do is confuse your muscles. And and I think good leaders confuse people on purpose. Uh and and and so Jesus didn't do an orientation with his disciples. He did a disorientation six times. He said, You have heard that it was said, but I tell you that's true. And and so um there's this disorientation that good leaders they have a good curveball, don't they, William? They they can throw a change up, not just a fastball. And so what well, what is that what does that look like? Well, the the key to spiritual growth is routine, but once a routine becomes routine, you have to change the routine. So I'll give a simple example. Uh every year I try to read through uh the scripture, but I but I change translations. Yeah, and why I do that is because the KJV and the NIV and the NLT, uh they make the synapses in my brain fire a little differently because the wording is different. So uh I I think good leaders are always um finding ways to mix it up. So literally this morning we just did a field trip to the Museum of the Bible with our team. Well, why why would we take two hours and go a few blocks over to the museum of the Bible? Because change of pace plus change of place equals change of perspective. So uh what what we need to do as leaders is continually just find ways to uh communicate it a little differently or come at it a little differently. Um this is so random, but in the national championship game, the football game uh that Michigan won, uh I I remember hearing the the the uh broadcaster say that JJ McCarthy, the quarterback, brushed his teeth with his weak hand. Like why why would that even make uh a television broadcast? And and uh because when you do that, you you are you're rewiring neurons in your brain. They that great leaders find ways of kind of mixing it up, changing it up, and uh and so that that's kind of my spitfire answer.
SPEAKER_02Reminds me of uh you know the old uh Christian theologian philosopher Simone Vay. Uh somebody asked one time, what's your favorite spiritual practice? And the answer was uh writing the Lord's Prayer with my opposite hand. Wow. Okay.
SPEAKER_01That is kind of awesome.
SPEAKER_02Same idea, right? Like you really have to pay attention to it when I because my I don't know about you, but my writing with my left hand is pretty sinister actually.
SPEAKER_01Oh it's it's illegible, right? But that that can I can I um can I share one fun little personal story? It captures it. So uh the the daughter that just recently gave us a a grandson, uh, at her wedding just a couple of years ago, uh, my mom was there. She was in her late 70s at the time, and William, she dominated the dance floor. I'm like, mom, what is going on? Like all the all the kids are like exhausted, and you're still uh you're still out on the dance floor. And without without skipping a beat, just she literally said to me, Mark, I say, and she meant it literally, that she stretches every single day. And that's how you maintain flexibility or agility into old age. There's no other way to do it. You have to keep stretching. And and I think what's true physically is true uh intellectually and spiritually. And so what one of my favorite words is neotony. It's the retention of youthful qualities into adulthood. It's a zoological term, but I I love people who are are they made more trips around the sun, but they're still young at heart and young in mind. I think it was Ashley Montague who said, I want to die young at a ripe old age. That that's kind of that's kind of the heart behind agility, I think.
SPEAKER_02I think you're absolutely right. And it, you know, the the reality is every day we're alive, we do naturally get less flexible. So I I would encourage everybody to study Mark's church and what he's done, go read his books. I mean, it's unbelievable. Uh, you know, you know, one thing you've done that is pretty special. I remember our mutual friend uh Rick Warren, who actually taught me the very first time he said, What's what's the leader's job in a uh living organization? He said, eh, to judiciously inject chaos. Uh because he's saying, What do you mean? And he said, Well, you know, I've said this to a lot of people, but when we moved around from Lord knows how many high schools they moved around to, they were the you know Israel is Israelites in the wilderness, he said, I realized when we didn't have a building, people would walk in and say, What can I do for you? They wanted to help. And the minute we moved into a building, it changed to what can you do for me? And you guys have somehow reversed that trend. And I don't know if you've got a parting thought for pastors out there, like, my people are calcifying, what can I do to kind of get them to stretch a little bit? What what would be one last parting leadership thought?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I would say that my job as a pastor is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That uh you tell me the last time you were comfortable uh uh just uncomfortable, and I'll tell you the last time you grew. And so it is our job to continually not let people get too settled. One of our core values is if you stay humble and stay hungry, there's nothing that God can't do in you or through you. And uh, and maybe kind of my closing little uh it's one of the quotes that I quote all the time. Albert Einstein said, never lose a holy curiosity. I think that would be my prayer for leaders. Um, like don't you you never arrive and don't be overwhelmed by that. Just enjoy the journey and approach things with this non-anxious curiosity that uh, well, that's a throwback to not just Edwin Friedman and and failure of nerve, but Dr. Murray Bowen and Family Systems. It's this idea of just cultivate a non-anxious curiosity. But I kind of like Einstein, he called it a holy curiosity that you just keep inventing, reinventing, and uh you you uh enjoy the journey of leadership that way.
SPEAKER_02That's fantastic. Mark, thank you so much for making time for us. And uh thank you all for listening to a little bonus content. There'll be 11 others that you can choose from. We'll probably drop the whole thing as a library at the end. But uh, for today, uh go get a new perspective, go get a new and you do that by getting in a new place. And uh you just introducing yourself to new things. Mark, good luck with the new title. I bet you're gonna be great in whatever that grandkid calls you.
SPEAKER_01Hey, thanks so much, William. And I feel like we ought to just issue a closing challenge, be a unicorn, right? Like, go for it.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you're kind. Listen, if you're listening today and you're like, where do I find out about this? I heard about like four or five good book titles. We're gonna put in the show notes all the links to get to Mark. And uh if you can't find him or need help, just contact me directly. I'll get you to him. So uh thanks for joining us today. And Mark, have a blessed day. God bless.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderblumen, we help organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, culture, compensation, and diversity solutions. Visit our website, Vanderblumen.com to learn more and subscribe to our Vader Bloomen Leadership Podcast, or every listeners podcast, to keep up with our latest episode. Thanks for listening.