Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast
Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast
Communication That Connects: Building Trust in a Distracted Age | William Vanderbloemen
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In this episode of the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, William Vanderbloemen unpacks the rapidly changing landscape of communication, and what it means for pastors, heads of school, and nonprofit leaders. From the importance of contextualizing messages to embracing an omnichannel strategy and understanding the timeless power of emotional connection, William shares practical tips and real-world stories to help you become a more effective communicator in today's noisy world.
Whether you're crafting Sunday sermons, leading a staff meeting, or reaching your community online, you'll walk away with tools for communicating clearly, consistently, and meaningfully—across every platform and generation.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Vander Bloom and Leadership Podcast where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in. Hey, welcome in. So glad you've chosen to invest into your team, into your leadership. And one of the key aspects of leadership is communication and being a communicator specifically. My goodness, William, changing more than ever. Um, communication can be loud and preachy, soft, and maybe even uh relational would be the right word. Give me just some of your thoughts on how you've seen the landscape of communication shift in the recent years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it's faster, it's everywhere, it's scary. I mean, you can probably do an audio sermon with your own voice just using AI now.
SPEAKER_03Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00Literally.
SPEAKER_03Yes. I saw a clip of a guy who made an AI version of himself and he had a conversation and that even has this the same mannerisms, and I I hope so. Can't get along with yourself. I don't know who you're gonna get along with. Well, you'd be surprised.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, so it's it's faster, it's uh harder to keep attention than ever. I mean, used to be people didn't really I mean when you would sit and here's where I grew up, Sunday afternoon, people, not my family, we were not this was not our flow, but the vast majority of the people in our town would listen to the NASCAR race on the radio.
SPEAKER_03It's like riveting. What's gonna happen next? Another turn left. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00When does this rode in? Uh there was not as much out there. Yeah. And so if pastor wanted to preach for 30 minutes or head of school wanted to give an address for 30 or 40 minutes, I mean, it even used to be kind of cool when we would get out of class and go to an assembly and hear the if the principal wanted to speak, that was great because we weren't in class. It was a little variety. Very true. It's not a thing anymore. And uh, you know, for values-based businesses, I think that um it used to be that the leader could command the room and say, you know, here's what we're gonna do. Now there has to be uh more compelling vision coming from communication to draw people in because attention spans are just like this. Yeah. And I don't know how you do a no phones in church rule, but I'm so glad I'm not preaching now. People would be fact-checking me, like Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Don't know if they're taking notes or if they're scrolling on TikTok.
SPEAKER_00Right, right, right, right. So I you know, I I do think that all these new channels for communication have opened a really cool portal for pastors, if they're willing. Now, a couple couple things first. Um, and this is kind of pastor specific, but if you're ahead of school, it would it would apply to you too. Sure. Um, but there's a lot of we talked in a previous podcast, there's a lot of uh anxiety out there that uh my people won't listen to me preach anymore because they can go online and hear everybody that's the best in the world.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00You know what everybody that's the best in the world cannot do? Hmm. They cannot do a message about what happened in your neighborhood this week and what that means when you look at the scripture.
SPEAKER_02So true.
SPEAKER_00Billy Graham used to say when he would sit down to do his messages, he'd have the Bible on the table and the newspaper. Speak to the times. How does God's word speak to what's going on? It's the the little phrase in the Old Testament that talks about the sons of Issachar who were able to read the times. Yeah, right. What would happen if you decided in your communication to hyper contextualize your message? You know, this week there was a car wreck down on the did y'all see there's a car wreck just four blocks over and some kids got hurt and like that's not gonna be online, yeah. You know, or our community, I mean, uh probably stay away from politics, but like when you're preaching, how can you hyper contextualize? And you can, kind of like Billy Graham, you can have your UVersion app, yes, and then right next to it, Google News for your zip code. That's right. You can get Google News right down to just what's going on right here, right now, and find out what's keeping your people up at night. You know, our friends over at Glue, yes, G-L-O-O, uh big data company for church uh to try and help the church move forward. They're they're putting together some pretty cool services where they can, you know, like analyze what's going on in your neighborhood and realize you guys have way more teen suicide than other neighborhoods. What are you doing about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Your divorce rate is really actually a little lower than other parts of the so maybe don't do 15 sermon series on how to save your marriage. Maybe it's maybe it's make your marriage flourish. Like, yeah, how can you figure out what's going on in your particular part of the kingdom? Because that is what you're responsible for. Yes. You're not responsible for the whole world, you're responsible for here. And when when Jesus was sending out the disciples to launch his movement, you remember what he said? I think it's Acts 1 8. Yep. He said, Go to Jerusalem, go to Judea, go to Samaria, go to the ends of the earth. And when I read that as a kid, I'm like, oh, he's just kind of covering all the bases. No, no, no, no. He was drawing concentric circles. So the first place you go is right where you are. Really good. I mean, Jesus never really went more than about 30 miles from home. And well, I guess he went to Egypt when he was a kid, but in ministry, he hung out with Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, then the ends of the earth. I think in this day and age where people are worried that their communication has more competition than it used to, the the more you can contextualize, the more people come to come to church or listen online or whatever it is and say, my pastor's gonna speak to something that's going on in our world right here, right now.
SPEAKER_02That's really good.
SPEAKER_00So so that's one piece of communication, but I don't think that lets you off the hook from social media. True, etcetera. True.
SPEAKER_03So we want to be, I think I heard uh this term the past this past week, and I want to get your take on it, but being an omni-channel communicator and not just getting tied up into oh, we only do in-person, oh, we only do YouTube, oh we only do Instagram, but actually being okay with taking the content that you've already made, that you're already communicating on a Sunday morning and sending it to the ends of the earth, which I mean, which all those platforms can do. Give me your take on it.
SPEAKER_00I'll give you a real-time example. I've been we started this podcast in 2013.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00That's old. Yeah. That's before my good friend Kerry Newhoff was doing a podcast, it's before anybody was doing a podcast. And we've had nice steady listenership. It has gone up recently, and I think one of the reasons it's gone up is because of you and your team. Uh, because uh if you're on the socials at all, you'll see we'll take this podcast and we'll chop it up into little pieces and put it out. I don't even touch it.
SPEAKER_03You just we just go in, take the content that we're already making and make it accessible to people on other platforms.
SPEAKER_00And now I'm on the TikToks.
SPEAKER_03That's right. You've gone viral on TikTok, William. I don't know whether you know it or not, but you have.
SPEAKER_00I I think that uh one thing I've seen, and I saw it accelerate when we had, I mean, pandemics five years ago, it's kind of an old thing. But but it did uh it was the great accelerator for churches trying new things. And one search that we started hearing more and more about for churches and for schools, and not as much for values-based businesses, but for nonprofits as well, was uh kind of a very high-level communications person. Okay. Almost a chief communications officer, or or I'd say even like a White House press secretary. Okay. Like I'm gonna speak on behalf of pastor, uh, or I'm gonna take the message that pastor or headmaster or CEO of the nonprofit, uh take the message that they have, and I'm gonna spread it across channels. Yes. Yeah. And and what uh where we've seen this really take root is any organization that's truly multi-generational.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I remember we did one search for a chief communications officer, and the person needed to be good at direct mail. And social media. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Quite uh quite a range there. Right.
SPEAKER_00I would say to know there was direct mail still. But whatever. Okay. And you just think you can't just uh entrust this message to the young guy on staff that does this and this one to the old person. You as a pastor need to find a way, probably through volunteers, or you as a headmaster, or you as a CEO of a nonprofit, to get your words out, these hyper-contextualized messages, into the social media world. Very good. And it doesn't have to be you. Uh i every now and then you guys will send me one and say, I don't know if you are you okay with this going out there. And so I have I do have some awareness of what's going out, but I really don't touch it very much. It's just the content comes from here and then you guys spread it across channels. And I I think uh we've already seen that this works. When Twitter first came out, pastors of large churches had more retweets per follower than celebrities.
SPEAKER_03Fascinating.
SPEAKER_00I think it's because people really want to feel connected to their head of school, their pastor, the CEO of the nonprofit they're giving money to. And if they can hear from them, even a short little 140 character, that was when it was just 140 characters. Oh, and it and it was called Twitter. Oh way back when. Way back when. Right. It it showed me that these new mediums can be the way for your people to feel more connected to you. So communication avenue, a lot of people are not exploring, and you can say, like uh a lot of pastors, I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this, but I've seen people on social media, let's not say pastors, I say people. Okay. They hold their phone up and they're talking the camera, yeah. Or they're taking selfies of themselves and the the social media. Yeah, that is like the most self-absorbed thing ever. I I don't if you're doing it, it's working for you, fine. But as a as a CEO of a nonprofit, as a headmaster of a school, as a pastor of a church, probably doesn't mesh with like the influencers of TikTok, right? Um and uh Adrian had said, William, you can't do that. I don't care if it's the new thing. You can't, I'm not, you cannot do that. And uh our daughter was actually interning here and in the marketing department, she said, Well, what if we got someone my age to just ask dad questions? Yeah, and Adrian said, Well, I'd be okay with that. And so, not because of some great strategy, but because Adrian and I just didn't, you know, and it works.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it does.
SPEAKER_00It works a lot. Yeah, and if you're even if you're like William, give me a break. I'm 63 years old. I am not getting on TikTok. Let somebody on your team be on TikTok. It doesn't even have to be your account, it could be the church account or the school account or the nonprofit account, and ask you questions. Younger generations are far more interested in hearing from Yoda than from the young Jedi.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00Would you say that's right? Yeah, very true. Yeah, yeah. So I I think there's just a uh how do you get a consistent message across all channels? And it may mean that you need to have, if you're in a normal-sized church of a hundred people or a normal-sized school that's you know, 400 students or something like that, you don't have a huge staff, maybe it's a volunteer. Someone who's been in communications, I bet there's someone in your organization, a donor, a member that has been in communications and they're either semi-retired or retired, and they would love to say, tell me the vision and the direction, tell me the messaging, and I will make it go across all the platforms. And and I think that will provide some glue for uh you as a leader to your organization when you only see your people once a week or however often it is. So, you know, communication needs to be contextualized, it needs to be across all channels.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's really good. I would even say, too, um, there's a story of this uh guy who now owns a media company, and the first time he ever tried it was his pastor just handed him a camera and said, Hey, go figure this out. And you've told stories of how um you told, I think it was your son when Ian turned here, you told him, Hey, turn this closet into a podcast studio, go figure it out. Maybe it's even taking a risk on someone who's from that next generation who maybe understands what's going on in TikTok. And because you don't you don't have to, you don't have to put that pressure on yourself.
SPEAKER_00Well, and it's the old we've said this so many times, but my friend and client, uh but more friend, Craig Rochelle, I don't know if he came up with it or if he's just gotten quoted. If you give away tasks, you will raise up doers. If you give away authority, you will raise up leaders.
SPEAKER_02That's good.
SPEAKER_00So why high control something you don't even understand? Right? Yeah, so uh I think giving that authority away to go ahead and run things through the channels, it's if you're not already doing it, boy, you sure should be doing it. Yeah, another great communication strategy that I've heard from pastors, and uh this is again from my friend Eric Geiger at Mariners, who's a freaking genius. We we got to help with the search that put him there. Uh he has started a podcast, and I think it's called If I Had More Time.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And he sits down, and there are two or three people with him, it's kind of a round table thing, and he talks about all the stuff he had to cut out of the sermon. Oh, wow. Because of time. You know what? I'd really I'd really love to geek out on this point, but I didn't have time. And that podcast, it's easy because he's already got all the content. I mean, yes, Pastor here is my preaching professor, uh Tim Keller was one of them. Uh he used to say the sign of a good sermon is a full trash can. You should have too much, cut, cut, cut, cut. So just take the rest of the trash can, yeah, build a podcast, even if only your people listen to it, they're connected to you. They hear that you're studying. They might latch on to something that is geeky, that's you know, in a niche. But uh there are just so many ways to think omni channel for communication and hyper contextualized for communication.
SPEAKER_03So good. I would even give you a little hack too, Pastor. Use your Sunday message as part one and then tell the rest of it up part two. You could release twice a week, William.
SPEAKER_00There you go.
SPEAKER_03Boom.
SPEAKER_00And it's already researched and already done. Yeah. I I would also say um, you know, as you're thinking through your communication, this is just a kind of a third thing. So we've got contextualization, we got omnichannel, the structure of your message, okay. Um most people know this, but but I read about it and thought, oh wow, this is this is amazing. Uh Harvard Law School still teaches like how to construct a closing argument.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And arguably, if you're raising money for your nonprofit, you're giving a closing argument. If you're talking to your students at your school, you're giving some kind of persuasive closing argument. If you're pastor, you're giving a closing argument. It's an altar call. Exactly. So, how do you build a good closing argument? Harvard Law School. You would think they would have like the newest, latest, greatest. They teach Aristotelian rhetoric. Aristotle said, I actually took a class in Aristotle in Greek, and uh it's part of the philosophy degree. Um he said there were three components to a message that convinces people. Okay. Now the Greek words were logos, ethos, pathos. Yep. Okay. So uh, and that their three components are uh just a it's kind of a loose translation, but is it logical? Does it make sense? Is it telling me things that I didn't know that are making me think? Right? Ethos is is it pointing toward a higher good? Yeah, is it pointing toward how do I fix my marriage or what's the right thing to do here? Or that that's the second component. The third component is the pathos, and that's the heart.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that's where you you win the argument. Aristotle said you've got to have all three components. Yep. But if it if it just makes sense, it's no good. If it's just pointing to the good, it's no good. If it's just pointing to the heart, it's no good. But if you if you really want to win the argument, it's in the pathos. Wow. So how do you connect to people's hearts? You get close to them, like our podcast where you smell like the sheep. Yes. Right? Yes. You speak contextually about things going on right in the neighborhood that are pain points. Yeah. And if it i if you're gonna try and tell them a Bible trivia fact that they didn't know, good luck.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean AI can tell them anything they want to know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00If you're gonna just try and point towards something good, there are a lot of organizations that think they're doing good. Al Qaeda thinks they're doing good, right? So, but but winning the heart through the scriptures and through the gospel, I mean, that's a given in preaching. Winning the heart uh is more than just being up there speaking, it's being connected to people, yeah, knowing their stories, and uh and and being willing to share from your own heart.
SPEAKER_03That's good. Yeah. That's good. What would you say? And even I hear this, and I this thought came to mind. I've heard the quote when it comes to especially communicating as well on a like a Sunday uh preaching uh at a in a church context of speaking or even leading um from your scars and not your wounds. Yeah. Um give me your take on that when it even comes to communicating and uh meeting and and speaking into the needs of the community and and uh even like vulnerability in those type of moments.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Another preaching professor of mine, Tom Long, uh at Princeton, used to say preaching is truth spoken through personality. That's a good quote. Isn't that good? That's a good quote. So it's fine to be you. And and here's what I'm seeing in really competent young pastors that I didn't do when I was preaching. And that was they're they're talking about you know what I'm learning through this? Not instead of you know what you need to do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's a different tone.
SPEAKER_00You know what? Like, a younger version of me did not get this, and I'm still discovering it, I'm still figuring it out. But if you can show that you're a work in progress, that's awesome. What you don't need to be is a victim. Yeah, and uh my goodness, he's a big hot mess. Like, not that, yeah, but God, look, I'm learning this. I yes, God's teaching me this, it's making me ask these questions. The older I get, the more I'm realizing somebody told me the other day there are like 330 questions Jesus asked in the New Testament, far more than the number of commandments he gave.
SPEAKER_02That's good. And he's a pretty good preacher. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it's all right. So you know, it just makes me wonder: am I asking questions that make people think deeper about their relationship, make them want to go deeper in their relationship with Jesus? Like, am I asking the right questions? Yeah. When I look for a mentor, um, I learned this a long time ago. We were growing really, really fast, and uh I didn't know what to do with that. I've been in Presbyterian churches, we don't grow very fast. But as a business, we were doing this. So I called all of the really high growth uh senior senior pastors of very high growth churches that we'd worked with. And it was something like I think uh I think that in the US, Protestant US, and these are old numbers, but there's churches that have 4,000 or more in attendance, like they're like 400, 404 at the time, and I think like 270 of them have worked with us. So it was yeah. So I had a pretty cool list call and say, when you started growing really fast, who did you go to? And one guy's name came up uh over and over and over, and I I asked uh pastor everybody would know, well, tell me what the deal is with Sam. What did he teach you? He said he didn't teach me anything, he asked questions that expanded my thinking.
SPEAKER_02That's really good.
SPEAKER_00It's the power of the questions. And it and so let's just leave that as a question for you guys that are listening. How do you ask questions during your communication that will cause people to to drop back and reflect or to get motivated? I was listening to uh uh sermon just the other day, and I'm okay, now I'm about to get in trouble. All right, I was listening to uh Mark Driscoll, okay, who I I know he polarizes people, but one of the most gifted rhetoricians of it. Ever met and and the message started out this way. If God isn't beating you up over your past, why are you beating yourself up over your past? If Jesus has already been punished for your sins, why are you punishing yourself for something that happened a long time ago?
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00Now I'm not getting that verbatim, but it was just questions. Yeah. And really like Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's three big buckets to think through, and I'm still figuring them all out, but like I'm trying to say, how do we make this podcast something that's really contextual, right? Around what's going on in the lives of the people we're we're helping serve. Yeah. And and I'm trying to find a way to, you know, yes, give some information and yes, point to the good, but at the end of the day, really show I I I know where you're living, I know what's going on, and and hopefully that touches the heart. Yeah. And and then finally, um, you know, try to find a way to get on the TikToks, to go omnichannel. Those are the things I'm seeing that have shifted in communication. And some of it's old school. Yeah. But uh you you don't there are very few people that are as gifted as Steve Furtick, Matt Chandler, Bishop Jakes. I mean, like those are rain man kind of gifts that you can't learn. It's like me trying to go throw a fastball in the major league. It ain't happening. It doesn't matter how much I train, it's not one of war. But it doesn't, it's not that hard. Yeah. You know, if you're already getting up speaking, you you've got half the battle done. Yeah. You got the content. Well, no. Uh we we were talking before we started filming that you know, the number one fear people have is not death, uh, it's actually public speaking. True. Death is second. And Seinfeld, I think, was the comedian that said, I guess that means people would rather be the subject of a funeral than the speaker at the funeral, right? So, and and then let's just take it one level up. I'm trying to give you some encouragement here. So if you're public speaking already, you're better than most. If you're public speaking, not just about what happened today, but if you're saying, here is the word of Jesus for your life, here's what the creator of the world says you should be thinking about. That's next level tension. So if you're even doing that at all, you're already way ahead of most people. And if you just follow the Go Omnichannel, be really contextual, make sure you're hitting all the basic components of a message. I I think you're gonna see that uh no matter how much change comes, people will want to hear from you.
SPEAKER_03That's really good. That's really good. Are there any lasting tips as we kind of come to a close here today? Um that you maybe give to pastors, something that you maybe um comes to mind of. Well, what's your what's your tip? You just preached, right? I did. I I think uh Tell us what what was the occasion? It was on Mother's Day, which obviously I have uh no experience. How many kids have you given birth to? Uh zero. Okay. And I think it's gonna stay that way for uh ever. Um it was about uh trusting God um with the lives of uh the children who maybe are wandering away. And the thought that I gave was um, you know, uh anyone who's ever been away from faith who is maybe the the prodigal, right? And you say how grateful they were to have someone who is willing to wait on the porch for them. And uh I and I think that uh that was just a fun illustration. Yeah, but I I do I don't struggle with public speaking. I got my other fears, roller coasters and uh all the all the other stuff, but public speaking I don't buy. So it's good fun.
SPEAKER_00But well, I you know there's so many things we could go into as final tips. Um I'm yet worked with so many churches, I've never heard of a pastor getting in trouble for having too short a sermon. Never, ever, ever. I mean, yeah, go read the Sermon on the Mount out loud sometime and have a stopwatch and see it, it it's not real long. Yeah, it's just not. You know, I have a dream speech was seven minutes, maybe.
SPEAKER_03And it's made a lasting impression.
SPEAKER_00Like, yeah, so get that full trash can, you know, keep it, keep it short. That might be the last hack that I have is uh I I'm you know, the soul of uh what is it? Brevity is the soul of wit. Uh brevity is is a great way to communicate and often with questions and not directives.
SPEAKER_03That's really good. That's really good. Well, hey, uh if you speak to the context that you are in, your communication can level up for a greater level of not only engagement, but also for impact. Thanks again for joining us on the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're looking for more leadership resources, you can find us at Vanderblumen.com and on socials at Vanderblumen. We'll see you again next week where we continue discussing how to build, run, and keep great teams.