The New Skillset for Pastors (And Why It Might Surprise You) | William Vanderbloemen

In this episode of the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, William Vanderbloemen unpacks why the future of pastoral ministry isn't about better preaching, trendier content, or digital strategy, it's about returning to the roots of relational leadership.

In a time when sermons can be streamed and content is everywhere, the greatest impact comes from something far more personal.

• AI might write sermons, but it can't do pastoral care.
• Online church is helpful—but it's the echo of the echo.
• The pastors people remember are the ones who showed up.
• Deep connection over drive-by engagement. 
• H2H (human-to-human) skills are the new essential leadership trait.

Whether you're leading a church, nonprofit, or school, this conversation will help you rethink how you connect—and why the most meaningful ministry moments are still the most human.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

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.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Hey, welcome into today's episode. You know, they say innovation is always about the next thing, but sometimes, William, to move forward, you have to go back to your roots. We had a clip this past week or a little maybe a few weeks ago that went um did really well on socials, and I and it's all about how the new skill set for passers is the old school skill set. I want to hear a more in-depth take on that from you. Just give me your thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Well, it's uh you're the one running social, so that anything that went viral, I mean, you know.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Well, I didn't say it.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

There's there's like Alex Earle and then there's Jared.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

So just wait till in the Super Bowl commercial, guys.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, so it was interesting. It hit a nerve, and I actually asked some passionate about uh why that hit a nerve. And you know what I'm hearing a lot of is I'm hearing a lot of pastors that are really nervous right now. I mean, who are they? They're they can feel the ground shifting. Yeah. Like the rate of change in the world is just going faster and faster and faster. Um you know, AI can write a sermon. Why do I need to write a sermon? Uh you know, a good friend of mine who's a pastor five years ago when the lockdown from the pandemic was letting up, he was worried nobody was going to come to his church anymore. And I said, Well, why? And he said, because I can't preach as well as Steve Furtick and Matt Chandler and Bishop Jakes. And yeah, now this pandemic has taught all our people they can just go online and get better content and maybe even get a workout in. Yeah, stay in bed, yeah, whatever, you know, like uh, and so I think there is a um anxiety among pastors right now. Like, what is the future like? How do I get people engaged? And you know, it's not just churches. So um I play golf a little north of the city at a nerdy golf club. Okay. And uh on the way there, there's a Chick-fil-A.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

I don't think I've told this story. Um, and so last May uh I was driving up there and they'd fenced it all off, like with construction, like we're closing, we'll be back. Okay, and it's always busy. I stopped and get a little chick filter on the way. Yeah, some Christian chicken. I need a little, I need a little Jesus after I play golf. So I'm like, oh, what are you thinking to do? This is always busy. So I was gone all summer, came back in the fall, they'd already torn it down, they rebuilt the whole thing, and what had they done? They didn't make it bigger. I thought they were gonna expand, like bought the lot, they made it smaller. Wow, no dining room. Why? Eight drive-through lanes. Whoa. Is that not wild? So they figured out, and you know, the whole Chick-fil-A thing is about the experience of the customer. Exactly. Like it's my pleasure, and there's a playground inside that's clean, and there's and they figured out, and I talked to the people at Chick-fil-A, and they said, Yeah, this is this is kind of a new thing. We're having to actually train our people to uh deliver the same experience when everybody's ordering mobile and driving through and picking it up. How interesting. And then I was listening to a podcast, really long podcast, but really good. And and it it's called Acquired, uh, and it it studies a business, one business per show. It's about a three and a half hour thing, so it's almost like an audiobook. Yeah. And so they did one on Howard Schultz and they interviewed him through the whole thing. It's fascinating. You really ought to listen to it if you hadn't found acquired, it's and you do long runs or something like that. But uh he they asked him what he dislikes. Like he did not invent the Frappuccino, he was against it, he was against the pink drink, he was against the food stuff, but he said the number one thing that makes him crazy is the app. Wow. Because his whole vision, I have no idea whether he's a spiritual guy or this guy or anything, but his whole vision, I people probably don't remember this, it's old. He wanted to create a third space. In other words, you've got work, you've got home, and then people need a third space. Kind of like Cheers. You know, Norm just died, you do you know, no idea what I'm talking about. But oh, it like the place where everybody knows your name, the place you go and sit, the place you go and hang out. And now people are, I do this three days a week, just about order my coffee when I'm leaving the uh the house, pull in, pick it up, leave. And it makes him crazy. So now, why am I saying all this? If you, Pastor, are worried that nobody likes you because your attendance is less frequent than it used to be, Chick-fil-A is building all drive-thru restaurants. Starbucks is doing more business through their online app than not through the app. I mean, Schultz hates that app, and Starbucks has at any given moment about two billion dollars of money that's been given to them ahead of time on the app. You reload your card or a bank. It's a bank, and he hates it because it the it the community is missing. So if you as a pastor are worried that your people aren't coming as often, they're doing an online thing, they're in how do you engage them? You are not alone. This is what the whole world is dealing with right now. And and so the question then becomes well, then how do I live into this new reality? You have to provide an experience that you cannot get online.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

That's good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

And that's not gonna be your content. It's not gonna be it, it might be your music and worship, won't be if I'm singing, but oh, you know, it has to be something different. So, what is the new skill set for pastors? The old skill set. And I think the clip that went viral was something like uh the shepherds need to smell like the sheep.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Yes, that's what it was.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

And apparently everybody really liked that. And I think that's you know, when I think about the pastors that we've it might not be this year, but pretty soon we will have put our 4,000th pastor into a church. Amazing. So, and when I think about the ones, you know, we're we're filling a vacancy for a pastor that's been loved forever and ever, yep, or pastors that do really well. I can't think of one who's loved because he's such a great teacher, except Tim Keller. I can't think of one who he raises such good money, he runs such a good business. It's the he was there when mom died. He asked how the cancer treatments are going.

SPEAKER_03 6:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

He took the time, or she, for depending on your denomination and theological background, uh actually knows what's going on in my world. Yeah. I followed a guy like that in Montgomery, Bill Dudley. He was the Jedi knight of pastoral care. I think he actually could be two places at once. Yeah. And and everyone, and Bill was such a kind, wonderful guy. But if people this your five best memories of Bill as a pastor, not one of them would be, oh, this sermon he gave, or oh, this initiative we did, it would all be the person-to-person stuff.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

That's really good.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

You know, in uh all the, you know, like uh I forget the artist's name, Timberlake or whatever, that does all the Christian paintings and all this, you know. But but uh when when you look at pictures and paintings of Jesus and as a shepherd, right? Oh, yeah. And and the sheep are all in front of him and he's behind them and he's gently maybe a landscape in the background. But he's always behind them. Yeah. That is not how shepherds led. Yeah. Did you know that? They don't that's so so here's how shepherds would lead in ancient Near East in New Testament times in the morning. If you were a good shepherd, in the morning when the sheep were just starting to wake up, you'd walk around and you'd talk in their ear and you'd just let them hear your voice. And then when they were up, you'd start walking and talking, and my sheep will know my voice and they will listen to it. That's really good. And you can lead from out front through pastoral care. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And it doesn't have to be people like, well, God Liam, I can't get to the hospital every time. And with the HIPAA laws, we don't even know who like I'm old enough, we got a report from the hospital of who was in the hospital from our church. Oh wow. But but but here's the thing it doesn't have to be everyone. When I went to First Presbyterian Church to be senior pastor, I had come from a really small church in Montgomery, Alabama, where we're you have to talk for 15 minutes about each other's dogs before you can actually get down to what like it's so you know, I was so concerned about how much is the threshold for success with me going to see people. Yeah. And the chair of the committee, who's now with Jesus, his name's Tom Bellows. Tom said to me, William, we don't expect you to be at the hospital for everyone, but we expect to believe that you wish you could be. Isn't that good? Yeah. Here's how you get there. Okay, so we use uh software, uh I don't know how many listeners use it, but uh HubSpot. Yeah. And so HubSpot is basically it's inbound marketing or digital marketing where you come to our website because there's some great content, and then you're listening to this podcast, and then you're and then when the time comes that you need a new staff person, you're like, I know who I'll call. Exactly. And you go online and you fill out a form, and and HubSpot is the engine that the form anytime you filled out a form to buy something, it's some form of inbound marketing, probably HubSpot. So we were very early adopters with HubSpot. Okay, really soon. And uh I I got to know the CEO really well. We became friends. Uh I I don't know why he took a liking to me. In fact, that when they did their uh IPO, their stock offering, yeah, um, he was like, Hey William, do you mind if we use you as the case study for uh our IPO roadshow? Okay, yeah. I'm like, that's cool, absolutely. I and I was feeling like, yeah, we're doing good things. And he said, Well, I need to be honest with you. The whole title of the roadshow is HubSpot Can Work for Anybody. Well, so like, oh, he's like, no, no, you're just a weird enough business that if it could anyway, first interaction I had with him, I was at a conference that I think Inc. or Fortune or somebody was putting it on for high growth businesses with founder CEOs, and you paid money and you went and you got together and learned and all this. And so Brian Halligan was the founder, uh co-founder of HubSpot. He was the last speaker of the day. Well, I had to get home to coach one of the kids' soccer teams or softball, one of the things with all the children we have. And so I was gonna have to miss him, but I stalked for a living. So I stalked around, figured out which one he was in the room, and I found him and I went up to him and said, Hey, I'm William. Just want you to know we just signed with HubSpot like three months ago. We're still sort of figuring it out, but um, I'm really excited about it. I hate to miss you talking. He said, You know what? You should hire me to be your intern. So we had like four people on staff. I mean, we were a tiny company in a little, it was the OSHA did not want to visit that office. It was really, really bad, right? So um I'm like, well, A, we don't have interns. Yeah, B, I can't afford you. He said, No, no, no, no, no. Here's what I'm saying. Here's my card. This is how long it was card, yep, and my assistant's email is on there. Email her, tell her we've talked, and if you will commit to have your whole team sit around the phone for three hours, if you'll tell me your business, I'll tell you how to use HubSpot. Wow. And for three hours, the CEO of a super high growth tech took time with these four people in a hovel of an office. And how many times a year do you think he does that? Uh it can't be often. Not often. Yeah. How many times do you think I've told that story? Probably a lot.

unknown 12:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah. See, if the shepherd will smell like the sheep, even just a few sheep in targeted ways, that story will get told. That's really over and over and over. And people will believe that you wish you could be at every bedside. That's really good. One other big mistake I made as a younger pastor, there's a lot of them. We could do a whole series on Williams' mistakes as a pastor. But I used to think um, like Christmas season, uh every every Sunday school class is an old school church, had a Christmas party. So I'd try and drop in on everyone. That way I could see half the church in three weekends. Go and say hi, pop in. Terrible idea. Oh boy. Terrible idea. If you drop in, say hello and leave, people are just like, he just came to make an appearance. If you drop into a party and say, I'm staying at this one for two or three hours and commit to having five real conversations.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Just five. Where you're really sitting down talking to somebody for a little while. Oh my goodness, the difference it makes. Yeah. I learned this um after I'd made the mistake too many times from John Maxwell. Okay. John's been a mentor for a long, long time to me. And the first time I spent any long time with him, uh, he I was at a conference. He was there, we were having lunch with about 10 or 12 other people, and golf came up, and John loves golf, and he said, Um, you know, I've got a one-day member guest coming up. I'd love for you to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_03 14:05

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Okay, John, I'll make it work. All right. And I figured, you know, I thought, I know what this is. John's probably gonna be on a par three, like the 17th hole, and everybody will come through, and everybody gets to play a hole with John's picture and the whole thing. Because this is a big deal, John. Yeah, John's a big deal. Yeah. So I get to the golf course, pull in the parking lot in a golf cart. John shows up next to me. Hey, put your bag in here, you're hanging with me. We spent the entire day together. We went to his house afterward and saw his library of Wesley's writings, which he's down donated. It's the largest gathering of Wesleyan writings anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

How many times do you think I've told that story? Probably a lot. And he could have he could have multiplied his effect by one hole with 17 or 18 different people, but instead he said, No, I'm gonna pour into you individually. So the big mistake I used to make with trying to smell like the sheep was trying to light touch everyone.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Although that's probably not the best metaphor anymore. Probably uh light hello to everyone. No, no, no, air five. Oh that's not what wins hearts. Yeah, what wins hearts is a meaningful conversation. And if you have enough of those, I mean, this sounds awful, but think like a slot machine. Yeah, I mean, the slot machine does not give out money, but it gives it out frequently enough that people keep coming back. Yep. And that might sound a little mercenary, but where the, you know, Pastor, I don't I'm not, I'm not here to give you five points of how you do this, but I would like to ask a question. Where could you have five real conversations with people that don't expect it? Not your top donors, not your top staff, not your board members. Where could you find a way to do that every week this summer? I bet if you had five real conversations with people every week through the summer in the fall, your church is gonna be more engaged. Doesn't mean they're gonna come every week, they're still gonna go to the drive-thru for Chick-fil-A, they're still gonna do the app, or the but they'll be more engaged. Yeah. And you will be more relevant. AI cannot do that. Yes. Online church cannot do that. Yep. I'm a big fan of online church, but you know, it's it's uh I'm a huge fan of it. I think it's gonna usher in, it might even hasten Jesus' return. And I'm not being melodramatic when I say that, right? But the my favorite, favorite quote from Eric Geiger that we got to uh help find his way to Mariners. He said, you know, during the lockdowns, and I've told this story a lot, but it's really good. Uh he said, you know, online church, total lifesaver right now. We're gonna come back to church. So well, how do you know that? He said, Well, here's the thing when we are worshiping, we're not as diverse as heaven. Yeah. Uh we certainly don't sing as well as they do in heaven. No, but when we get it right, we almost get an echo of what we're gonna do forever in heaven. Yeah. So the problem with online churches, it's the echo of the echo. So it's like a little more disconnected. Yep. So if you want to, if you want to solve that, you're not gonna online church isn't going away. And there will probably be, if you're old like me, you remember Casey Caseum and the top 40 songs of the week. It was a thing. I think Ryan Secrets did it afterward. But there may the day may come when there are the top 40 online preachers and people will just listen to that for the data and content. But don't mistake that for the rare opportunity you have to reach people uh on a deep personal level and how much difference that'll make in your people's engagement in the church.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

That's so good. It's really just the value of relationships. That's right. And making the effort to create depth with the even in a in a conversation. And that's that's really what I'm hearing is in instead of going and trying to, you know, wave hi to everyone, or maybe even like I picture a pastor maybe standing on the doors as the church is exiting. Maybe instead of that, it's going and being intentional and finding those five conversations. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah. Well, if you are at the old school church, if you're at one of those where you still stand at the door where everybody walks out and tells you what a good sermon it was, they're lying to you right after they went to church. Oh, I couldn't remember what people told me when I was in Alabama. There was a sweet, wonderful saint of a lady in our church who was looking for something to volunteer. So she would stand behind me on Sunday by the door and just take little notes of, well, Jared came by and said his dog was sick, or Raina came by and they got a bad diagnosis. Or and then I could follow up. And so you can find ways to capitalize on those moments when people are trying to come. Sure. But I think the pastors, the profile we're seeing as we do searches for pastors now, the profile I'm seeing is not, man, find us a preacher who can make us cry and laugh. And like that was a thing. And well, we'll still want good preaching, but you can get that other places.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Very true.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

It's a different skill set. Now, the the new skill set is the old skill set.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

Really good.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Really good. You know, when we studied who are the best candidates we've ever placed anywhere. Yeah. The best of the best. And we were able to identify that. That's what we did during the pandemic. And then we said, do these people have anything in common? The answer was yes. And it was not, they're good preachers. It was not they're tall. You know, it was not they're six foot five, trust fund, blonde hair, blue eyes. None of that. It wasn't any of that, right? Yeah. Here's what it was human-to-human skills. Really good. Yeah. That can all be learned. Look people in the eye when you talk to them. Yep. Respond to people. I mean, it was just and it in our world, we're a B2B business, a business to business. So we help organizations. You know, if you're selling necklaces that's B2C, business to customer. I don't know if we came up with this term or not, but the best of the best right now are good at what I call H2H skills. Human to human. And that doesn't have to be just pastoral care. It's will you invest in the people around you on a human level? So it's what we've always wanted.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

I've said so many times, the first curse in the Bible is solitude. It is not good that man be left alone. We don't, as much as we like to stare at the screen and scroll and do all this, the human heart is longing for someone to look him in the eye and talk to him. Just relationship to H skills. And nobody can do that like you, Pastor, can do for your congregation. It can't happen from a distance, it can't happen online, and it won't happen from a bot. H to H skills are the ballking for the future.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Here's what I know, Pastor, is that while maybe great preaching and communication may be accessible on your phone, maybe it's not the Starbucks app, but it's on YouTube. Uh great pastoral care isn't. And valuing relationships can be the key, maybe, to making your congregation more engaged than ever.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

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 VanderBloomen.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.