Well, hey, everybody, so glad to uh have you meet me here this summer while I'm away, but uh working as well. And while I'm working away, the magic of Zoom is letting me do a podcast with my good friend John Chastine. Uh past John's been a friend for several years now. Uh and got introduced by this other pastor in Oklahoma named Craig. And um, you know, Craig knows good people. So uh, John, thanks for being a friend and thanks for taking time today to join us.
SPEAKER_01I'm honored to be both, man. Uh honored to be your friend and honored that you'd have me on on your podcast.
SPEAKER_02I I I've tried before doing this podcast to come up with the 140-character descriptor of your journey and what you do. And I can't do it. I've never, I mean, you have more job descriptions than I it's pretty amazing. Would you I we have so many different listeners? I'd love it if you just kind of walk us through a quick here's John and yeah, what I've been doing, and and uh let us see how God's been working in your life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it'd be hard to do 140 characters, it'd just be like by surprise, you know, whatever God's next. To to do a really quick, fast-forward version. I my life started in higher education. I was a vice president in higher ed, advancement fundraising, all of my degrees were headed that direction, doctorate degree and university administration. I wanted to be a president of a college and university. And then uh in 2011, God is a long story that I just won't go into. God just dragged me kicking and screaming into the ministry. Um, never wanted to be a pastor, never wanted to be in the ministry, became a campus pastor of the church that we were just attending, that Michelle and I were attending in 2011, called Victory Church in Oklahoma City. Uh, three years later, the the lead pastor, great guy, had just made a mistake, had a moral failure. And six months later, I found myself in that seat. So I'd been a pastor for three years. I'd uh, you know, what would be deemed a megachurch in our in our definition of that with multiple campuses, uh, had only preached a handful of times and found myself in the lead pastor seat in November of 2014. Did that for four years, some of the hardest four years of my life. And then uh higher edworld called me, uh, the King's University, founded by Jack Hayford, is in Dallas, Texas, kind of under the covering of Gateway Church. And they called me saying, Hey, we want you to be the president of our university. And I said, You're crazy, you know. I I can't leave this church. Uh, thanks, but no thanks. And they said, No, we we we're okay if you do both. So for the last five years, I've been the lead pastor of the church in Oklahoma City and the president of the King's University and Seminary. Um, that window, that door closed just a few short months ago here at the end of June. Actually, I uh served five years doing that. So now I'm back to just being a pastor. My wife is happy, I have one job. Um that's that's kind of my life is a is a combo of higher education uh in the administrative sense as a president and local ministry, local church ministry.
SPEAKER_02Well, I I you know I think uh the way God's used you has a very distinct signature. Um it seems that you've gone into things that were already in place and had become a bit of a mess. And God used you to say, Hey, you're cleanup crew, let's get this thing restarted. I remember we were sitting in a coffee shop, gosh, what was it? Not not a year ago, but not long, not much different than a year ago. Yeah, talking about how how can you use that to help others? Because I mean you can read a lot of different studies, but I think it's safe guess is 80% of all congregations in North America are in some form of uh stagnation or decline. And they they need a uh a boost, a re uh you know, a new chapter to break the S curve, however you want to say it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02You know, tell tell us about uh re-leader.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so so it happened about um a little over a year ago, it was last summer, um, around June. I was with our friend Craig, and and we were talking about the idea of how how can we help pastors and how can we, you know, train up new pastors, lead pastors. And he had this idea of doing some church planting stuff, church growth stuff. And and I said, Man, honestly, Pastor Craig, I don't know how to plant churches. Like, I I don't my church has done well, but I wouldn't say we've had explosive growth. I'm not even sure I'm the right pastor to mentor pastors on how to grow churches. And and he just said, Well, then what is it that you have done that you can help pastors do? And I kind of was like, had this moment, we were just working out together, and I kind of had this moment of, yeah, what do I do? And I just said, you know, without even thinking, I don't know if you ever talked without thinking before, and without thinking, I said, I fix broke stuff. I'll ever forget he looked right back at me and he said, Then that's what you need to help leaders do. And so I, you know, I was the lead pastor of a church, president of a university and seminary, and for the first time in my life, I realized what I'm called to do.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01So he helped me kind of come up with this term, re-leader. And because what I experienced in my leadership journey is most leadership content is is shaped or crafted towards the entrepreneurial start, grow, build, you know, excel. Yes, yes. But there are very few Chris Hodges, there are very few Craig Grochelles. There, there, those are the ones we all look up to as some of the most amazing leaders in the world. But what I realized is, and even as I begin to look in scripture, there's tons of re-leaders in scripture. Elisha was a re-leader, he took over Elijah's mantle. Uh, Joshua was a re-leader. Uh, God said, Moses, my servant, is dead. Joshua, take up the mantle and take them into the promised land. And so I what I begin to realize is it is a very, it is a very distinct um call it a call it a gift, call it an anointing, call it a whatever your denomination word uses, is it it's a it's a distinction that I believe is there for leadership, that there are those who are called to plant, grow, build, start something. And then there are those of us like myself who we are, I believe divinely called and anointed to fix broke stuff, fix stuff that we didn't break. Because what I'm aware of when I go into the organizations from whether it be the Kings University, Victory Church, a sales job that I had right out of college, I didn't build the building, I didn't hire the staff, I didn't set the values, I I didn't, I didn't do anything. I I inherited all of it. And so, how do I take culture? How do I inherit a culture and shift it to something that's healthy? How do I inherit a staff that I didn't hire and lead them in a way? You know, how do I turn that ship around without throwing everybody off the ship? So that's that's what Re-Leader became, and and it's something that I'm extremely passionate about.
SPEAKER_02Well, I know you you're a great writer, and I knew you were working on a book a year ago, but you've got other ideas here, right? So uh I don't want to sound like an infomercial, but I think people would be interested to know, all right, so how do you help me learn how to fix broke stuff?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think a lot of it is relational, a lot of it is content, a lot of it is mentorship, and I hope that I can provide that in in various different formats for people. But there's a lot going to be a lot of different avenues. Right now, uh we're launching a podcast in August, and the title of the podcast is simply Releader. Um, the I've got a I've got a a website where I where you can subscribe, a free subscription for content, for articles, for videos, content like that. And that's that could be very easily found at just releader.co. Uh that's the website, readleader.co. I did write a book that'll release probably around January of 24. And it's just going to be titled ReLeader, and the subtitle is How to Fix What You Didn't Break. Um channels right now. And you know, honestly, William, I'm just I'm just jumping into this. I am I am, I feel like I'm being obedient to something the Lord's asking me to do, but I don't know that I have it all figured out yet. Um this is the irony of all this, okay. So everything I've ever done, I've re-led. And so now I'm starting re-leader and I'm having to scratch. So I'm like, I don't know how to do this. I need you to mentor how to start things.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome.
SPEAKER_02Well, I did the same thing. Every, you know, coming out of the Presbyterian church, everything I went into was somebody else's. I mean, and and not just somebody else that was the founding pastor, but like when I went to First Press Houston, it was the oldest church in the city, and they hired the youngest senior pastor in the city, they were so dumb they should have used the search room. But it it's a it's a completely different ball game. I think it requires a completely different spiritual gift mix, frankly. I agree. Um, I think if uh as smart and godly and wise as our friend Craig Rochelle is, if he walked into a church like that, I don't know how well it would do. He's wired differently. And that's not a good or bad statement. It's just it's a different deal. So, what are what are some of the marks that you've noticed that great people fixing broken stuff? What are some of the markers that they have? What are some of the lessons they've learned? And and and then I'll take it one more step after that. But what are what are some of those key markers you see?
SPEAKER_01This is this will be fun for us to kind of dive into this because I would love to hear what you have to say too. Some of the things that I've noticed between uh, say, like an entrepreneurial leader uh versus someone that's more of a releader. Um, while I'm a very fast-paced, quick, quick move leader, when I'm when I'm stepping into a season of releading, what I have, what I realize first and foremost is the number one thing I have to gain is trust. And I think the temptation, most entrepreneurial leaders are very fast-paced, make decisions, move fast. We got to do it now, we got to do it now. And when you come into a re a re-leader situation, there's blood in the water, people have been wounded, people have been hurt, um, people have had their feelings hurt, people have been uh uh fired. There's there's all kinds of wounds there. And so there's a real pastoral heart to that, but there's also a real patience. You know, what I've noticed readers have a lot of patience. This is a marathon, it's not a sprint. And the the biggest challenge for me, one of the biggest gift sets is that that a releader has is the ability to see what needs to be done, but the patience to do it well.
SPEAKER_02Um again, that's a that's a tweetable right there.
SPEAKER_01It's like then it's it's it's anybody, any leader worth their salt can see what the problem is. I mean, that's the easy part. Seeing the problem is the easy part. The how do I fix it is what separates great re-leaders from from not great re-leaders. Because to do something quickly, and the analogy I use uh is let's say you become the new captain of a cruise ship, right? There's 4,000 souls on board, and you're the new captain, and you get to the helm, you look at the compass, you look at the trajectory, and you realize this ship is heading in the wrong direction. We were supposed to be going to Cancun and we're heading to Europe. We're going the wrong direction. Well, you see the problem, but if you take the wheel and spin it right as hard as you possibly can, you're gonna throw people off the ship. People are gonna get sick, things are gonna get all the furniture is gonna get thrown off the ship. Yeah, absolutely. If you've ever been on a cruise, you don't even know the captain's turning. Like uh you don't even realize the boat is turning. It's based because the captain is doing it in a way that is healthy for everyone on board. He's gonna get you to the right destination. But he or she is not gonna do it in a way that makes everybody on the ship sick, you know.
SPEAKER_04So good.
SPEAKER_01So good. I think that's one of the the big distinctive distinctions between a really strong leader and a really strong re-leader is the the ability to have a loaded gun that you can't fire yet. You got to know the right time to fire it, the right time to do it, and there's a lot of strategy involved there.
SPEAKER_02I'd say that's I wish I'd have heard that at 31 right before I started at first press Houston. I went to so so give you some context that you may not know, and listeners may not, before First Press Houston, I was uh I was an associate pastor right out of seminary, started my doctoral work, started earlier than I was supposed to, and uh got recruited by Reform Seminary to come in and start the program. And the only class that was available was church revitalization. Um at I by a young pastor at the time named Harry Reeder. Um Harry ended up leading the largest church in the PCA, Briarwood. In fact, died in a car wreck uh just earlier this year. But great, great man of God. I didn't want to go to the class though. I was so uninterested in it, and I you know I took other things to do, and but then God grabbed my heart and said, Wow, look what look what can happen if you can revitalize. And he he used uh in Revelation, which church was it that had lost their first love? Is it Ephesus, maybe is it Ephesus or C one of those?
SPEAKER_01I can't remember.
SPEAKER_02One of the ones that's not there anymore. I shouldn't know anyway.
SPEAKER_01I'm a current lead pastor, I should know that.
SPEAKER_02So yes, yes. Anyway, I ended up going to this as so I start praying, Lord, send me to a church that needs to be turned around. I'm more careful how I pray now.
SPEAKER_01A dangerous prayer.
SPEAKER_02Man, it was a great church, but they were so upside down, and and it was a very different situation than First Press Houston because they'd gone through two splits in the last six years. Wow, they'd sold their building with no idea where they were gonna move. They didn't own they were homeless. And uh I walk in and they knew it was really bad. And because they knew how dire their situation was, I could get away with some speed that I couldn't get away with at first place. I could make decisions fast. I remember one elder called me one time, he was so mad, and it was on into the evening, and I think he had let's say he'd loosened up a little bit for the evening, and uh he called me about some decision I'd made, and he said, You know what makes me so damn mad? I said, No, Stuart was that and he said, if we fire you, we're done.
SPEAKER_01That's what liquid liquid curves will do that to you.
SPEAKER_02So that's right. So, anyway, you know, that's a whole different situation. If you're really going into dire straits, you can get if people know there's urgency, and that's that uh well and to know and to know there's some things you can move fast on and some things you can't.
SPEAKER_01So, for example, when I became the lead pastor of Victory Church, there was a starvation for vision, they were starving for vision. So I became the lead pastor in November, February of 2014. By February of 15, I changed the vision of the church. I changed the core values, I changed the vision. That's quick, that's a fast shift to change. That is fast, but then there's other areas that I had to go really, really slow with certain staff, with certain cultural things. Sure. So part of that is knowing what areas need to be moved fast, what areas need to move fast, and what areas do I need. Okay, this is a marathon, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Well, I go ahead. Well, just going into that, John Cotter wrote a book called Leading Change. He actually was gonna let me use it for my dissertation, leading change in the established church. And uh, you know, his first rule of the seven or eight steps to leading change is uh create urgency. So when I was in Montgomery in this church that'd been through such a hard time, they they knew the urgency was there. When I walked into first press Houston, I followed a very successful guy. He went to the only other church that was bigger than us in our denomination, but fabulous guy. I mean, really one of the legends. And if you follow success, yeah, it's hard, you really better be able to discern what is it? Was it the Sons of Issachar that could discern the times?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, you and that's a whole nother realm of re-leader, right? So so my book is going to be called How to Fix What You Didn't Break. There's a whole nother realm of leader. How do I follow a successor that was a hero?
SPEAKER_02And that's well, one mistake I made. I think I think I probably made more mistakes than I realized, but I was 31, so I knew everything, you know. Uh so uh one thing you hit on it, and I want leaders to hear this because you said it and it reminded me of my big error. I was trying to do so many new good things and going too fast. Yeah, and what I didn't realize was people who are used to being in an established environment who maybe have some trauma see someone moving fast as someone they cannot trust.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and someone that doesn't care about their needs or their feelings.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, why is he talking so fast? He must be hiding something. Why do we keep, you know, there must be I'm getting taken for a ride, and I didn't realize speed can erode trust. Yes, and and I learned that the hard way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and uh there's one I think trust is the most important thing, not just re-leaders, but but leaders. But when you come in as the re-leader, a lot of times trust has been broken. So trust has either been broken or your predecessor, they trusted him, but they don't trust you. That's right. So either way, that's one of the very first things. One of the articles I wrote on the re-leader.co is all about this. The very number one thing you have to establish, no matter how long it takes, is trust. It's trust. So the very first day I took the stage at Victory Church to be the lead pastor. I think I I think I was young and dumb. I don't know that I did this strategically, but it just came out of me and it I'm glad I said it. I said, You don't know me, you don't trust me. What I'm asking you to do is credit me trust in the same way that God credited Abraham righteousness. It'd be that he hadn't earned righteousness, he had did nothing to earn it. God gave credit to him, and so I'm asking you if you will credit me trust and let me pay it pay it back to you over the course of the next five years, right? Because trust, trust is the number one thing.
SPEAKER_02Number one, and you know what I found helped build trust. I want to hear more, but that this is such a important thing. And of course, trust is it takes forever to build and just a minute to lose. But um one of the best lessons I got while I was at Princeton in seminary was one of the practical theology classes. The pastor was saying what to do in your first year. He said, Most of y'all are going to established churches, they've been around a while, right? You're gonna come out young. And I think that when you don't have enough to do yet, you get to a new job, you don't know what to do right away, right? Everybody's had that first couple weeks, like now what do I do? So take that time and go read every set of board minutes all the way back to day one of the church, right? And I didn't quite understand what he was saying, but what I've come to find is the people who follow, who walk into established places and do well are the people who become the preeminent historian on the church they're serving.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I think you can find some some pretty cool things, like First Presbyterian Hendersonville, where I was an associate pastor, I'm reading their board minutes, they moved their church, okay? It was in the dead center of town, and they moved it to the outskirts of town, and which is now the dead center of town. And that meant like moving the cemetery. I mean, this is a big deal, right? So, like, well, why did they do that? Okay, because this is Western North Carolina, this is 1830s, this is Trail of Tears. This is this is not good relations between the invading white men or whatever you want to say, and the people who are here from the beginning. Yeah, and they said in the board minutes we voted, uh, the motion was made to move the church outside the town limits to be close. Now, these are their words, so don't don't go knocking me to be closer to the south. Savages to try and help spread the hope of the gospel among them. They literally risked their lives to try and spread the gospel. Man, you preach that. That's what our church started doing. Wow. Yes, we can add one more service. It's not gonna kill us. Whatever the butt, I no one that I met ever started a church with the vision of saying, Let's start a ho-hum group of people that never want to change. They're really boring and stagnant and decline. Usually there's a white hot vision, and if I think leaders who do really well go figure out what that white hot vision was and start talking to the oldest people in the congregation about it, and just become that a story. I think it builds trust and leverages the ability to make some change. But yeah, there's this supposed to be your QA. Sorry.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no, it's so good. I want I want it to be a conversation. You're a re-leader. So I I think the temptation of every releader when you come in is one, all eyes are on you. So everyone's looking to you to fix whatever's broken.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_01And you feel this pressure to get moving quickly. And one of the chapters in in the book that'll release um later on is the idea to before you move, stop and remember. So, so which is exactly what you're saying. You know, I come in, I'm the new guy for three to six months. I just need to be a sponge. I need to learn the context of what got us to this point, good and bad. And really, I go into really this book is a formation from something that I feel like the Lord showed me on how to be a releader that's right in scripture that I just pull out of the scriptures when they came back to rebuild the temple. God called rubbable and Jeshua to come back and rebuild what they did not break. And then Nehemiah came back and rebuilt the wall to pick up the rubble of what was and put it back in place. And there's this passage, you know, that story is all through Ezra and Haggai and Zachariah. Sure. And I can't remember which book it is, but there's one part where the Lord says, Who remembers the former glory of this house? So there's this idea, let's stop and remember the goodness of what was. We know that King Nebuchadnezzar came and tore it all down, something devastating happened, but let's pause to remember how great it was. And I don't care how horrific your department or your business that you've taken over or the church you've taken over, how how the rubble, I don't care how much rubble is piled up. If you will go back far enough, there is something really beautiful about the organization. And there is something that God birthed in someone's heart to build that. And we go back to that because as re-leaders, and this is important, we don't get the we don't get the right to redefine the why. And here's what I mean by why so when they rebuilt the temple, okay, it's been destroyed, it's all gone. The first thing they built was the altar. They the very first thing they built was the altar. So with before there was even a building to put it in, they built the altar, and everything was built around that, right? So that's the why. That's the why. You re-leaders have to discover what's our why, what was the first vision that God gave the founder of this organization? And so, and it says that they they went on to build the foundation, they did, they built the foundation, but this real thing that a lot of people miss is it says the Bible says they put the altar on its foundation. So, and then they built the foundation, which is weird. But what it is, is it's the rock. It's if you've ever been to Jerusalem, the dome of the rock, the the gold dome, the rock that's under there, that's the rock where where where David uh built an altar. It's the place where Abraham raised his his hand to strike his son. It is the original rock, the place where the altar in the first temple was built. And what I'm what I'm trying to say is God was telling them there's some things you re need, there's some things you have to rebuild. There are some things that were already there, and you don't get to change the foundation that the altar sets on. That's good. That's Jesus, that's you know, whatever, whatever, whatever that was in your organization. And so our job as re-leaders is to do the hard work of remembering, going back, which is exactly what you did. Why, why was this place here? Let's learn something before we go off running in a direction that we don't know. So it's such an important part of releading is to to know I'm here to steward something. I'm not I'm not here forever. Uh, I'm the pastor of of Victory Church, but really I'm not the I'm not the lead pastor, I'm the interim lead pastor. Because somebody's gonna come after me, whether it's five years from now, a hundred years from now. So it's my job to steward it for a season, you know.
SPEAKER_02That's right. That's right. Every pastor is an interim pastor. Yep. That's good. That's good. Well, so they're gonna be coaching circles, there's gonna be content, there's gonna be a book, and and as this thing grows and sprouts, how can people keep up with re-leader as it as it starts from scratch?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, yeah. You know, first off, y'all, all you listeners, pray for me. Like I'm trying to figure out how to start something. Uh, but no, they can the the easiest way is to get on re-leader.co. It's uh r-e-le-e-a-d-e-r, just re-leader.co. Um, there you'll find the main page there, and all the communication will come through there. You can follow me on Instagram if you want, John Chesting, no H and John. Um, and just you know, come along for the ride. If you're a re-leader, which by the way, chances are you are very the most of us are re-leaders. Most of us are re-leaders. So what you don't have to be a pastor. This content is gonna be very broad for businessmen and women, for whether it's a department or whatever the case may be. So just go on the journey with us. You're you're you're a part of a tribe called the Re-leader Tribe, and uh we're gonna learn from each other. So if you're interested in that, just go to releader.co and and subscribe and join the journey.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Well, John, thanks for taking time. I'm glad for your time at uh at Kings University, but I'm also glad that God's released you from that now to be able to open a whole new door. I think you're gonna help a lot of people. And uh yeah, thank and thanks to you all for tuning in this week. Um, please do keep up with John. We'll send you all the show notes with domain names and that sort of thing. If you don't get those show notes, go to Vandercast.com and we won't you know hit you with a bunch of emails. We'll just send you the show notes and let you know what's coming down the pike. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining uh me during the summer while I'm away. And hope to have you on the show again soon, John, and hope that everyone listen will tune back in next week.
SPEAKER_01That'd be great. Thanks, sir.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening.