3 Hard Truths About Team Building and Ministry

Alex |

Welcome to the Worship Ministry Training Podcast, a monthly podcast for worship leaders who are serious about growing in their craft and calling. My name is Alex, fellow Worship leader, super stoked you’re here. And if you’re a new listener, I’m going to encourage you to hit that subscribe button because every single month I’m gonna give you helpful practical guidance that you can immediately implement into your ministry. Hit that subscribe button and then go back through the past nine years of episodes and binge listen your way to a healthier ministry. If you’re someone who is really serious about growing as a worship leader, I’m going to point you to the Worship Ministry Training Academy. What is the Academy? It’s an online training platform that will give you everything you need to build a thriving worship ministry. You’ll get ten indepth courses on topics like set buildings, team building, musical excellence, vocal techniques, and more. You’ll get live monthly training workshops on topics that are relevant to you. You’ll get exclusive expert interviews with some of the best worship leaders in the world. You’ll get done for you ministry admin systems and audition process, onboarding documents, team training materials, and even team discipleship materials.

 

Alex |

We will take care of you so you can focus on leading your team. If that sounds like something that would be of help to you, you can try the Worship Ministry Training Academy for just $1 by going to Worship Ministrytraining.com. Sign up today for your $1 trial and I hope to see you inside of the academy. All right, let’s get into today’s episode. Hello everybody. Welcome back. So glad you are tuning in. And I am on the line with the wonderful, the amazing Jenny McGrew. And Jenny is the founder. She has a lot of things, but she’s the founder of Worship Leader Collective, which is a huge community of worship leaders like Far Dwarfing, the Worship Ministry Training Academy and just like 40,000 worship leaders in her Facebook group. Tons of people on her Instagram, and she is I like to call her the Queen of Team because you are amazing at team building. I can just tell you I have this amazing way about you of both exhorting and challenging people and yet speaking value. So they feel like, oh my gosh, I feel like I need to do better. And I feel like I can do better.

 

Alex |

And I feel like you probably do that really well with all the teams that you lead, which you have a lot going on in your life. You’re a pastor, you are a worship leader, you’re everything. And then you run the worship leader collective. So I just want to encourage everybody who’s watching live or watching after the fact or listening to go right now and check out the Worship Leader Collective on Facebook. Just search for it and also on Instagram and follow Jenny because she will help you build team. So Jenny, how you doing? You’re up in Canada.

 

Jenni McGrew |

I’m up in Canada. Hey, and guess what? It snow today. It’s snowing right now. I’m in my office and I’m looking out my window. And this is really crazy for you because we live on the West Coast, so it hardly snows here. So it’s weird.

 

Alex |

Yeah. Usually the podcast is kind of my bigger platform. So you’re listening, but she’s wearing this awesome pink hat. And you can go to the YouTube channel Worship Mystery or Youtube.com worshipmentrytraining. You can see her awesome pink hat on the video.

 

Jenni McGrew |

I’m ready with my puppy coat. It’s a super puff coat. I’m ready.

 

Alex |

She’s ready. Yes. And for those watching live, we’ve got Jessica. I see you, Kevin. I see you, Derek. Craigo is also up in Canada. He’s watching live. Yeah, so he’s here and then a couple of other people watching. So hello, guys. We’re going to be taking your questions at the end of this interview, so you can feel free to type your questions in now if you want. But we’ll be doing the live Q and A for the Academy members at the end of the interview. So, Jenny, let’s start here. Let’s start with just maybe like 62nd summary of who you are and what you’re carrying and all that God has appointed you to.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Am I going to be that cheesy person that’s going to say servant of God? Servant of God. Servant of all. It’s true, you guys. It’s true. And you know what? If that’s the only title I ever wear, I think that’s the right title. That’s the only title I want to wear. A servant of God. Servant of all. My husband and I, we passed our church in Abbotsford, BC, British Columbia. For all of those who don’t know what Canada is all about, we have provinces. You have states? No, we don’t live in Igloo’s. No, we do not have dog sleds. No, it actually is a thing in the southern states. My husband’s American, so we know all of the stories, we’ve heard it all. But we passed through a church in Aberdeen, so it’s just outside of Vancouver. I’m also helping a church out right now closer to Vancouver, just to helping lead their teams and navigate some seasons. Doing my masters right now, that’s super fun in leadership. And I’m a mom of two amazing kids who are very bright and serving the Lord. They’re in university, and my husband and I just celebrated 25 years of marriage, so who.

 

Jenni McGrew |

That’s a feat, you guys. If you know, you know. And what else? Oh, worship leaders. Collective. Yes, let’s not forget that. This amazing community and we’re just so thankful for literally thousands of worship leaders and worship teams from around the world to help create an awesome invaluable space for worship leaders like yourselves to be connected, to help equip one another, to help encourage one another and not give up. I think that’s a huge part of the season is like we’re all cheering each other on like that great cloud of witnesses, but we’re here on earth saying don’t quit, don’t quit, don’t quit, don’t quit. That tendency where we want to quit right before the breakthrough, don’t quit. Because I really believe that the church, big C church, is just on a massive verge of breakthrough and the glory of God like we’ve never seen before. So training like this, you guys, is valuable. We need it. We need it just to help equip ourselves in moving forward.

 

Alex |

I told you guys, she’s inspiring. I’m already like, yes, there’s a breakthrough coming and we got to keep going. So you’re starting off strong.

 

Jenni McGrew |

It’s going. I believe it’s here. I really do. Yesterday I preached at church and you’ll hear that message?

 

Alex |

Cool. Yeah. I’ll put a link to your church in the show notes and the YouTube description after this. Jenny so what I want to talk with you about is team building and specifically the hard parts of team building because so many of us, we want healthy teams, but healthy teams don’t come without intentionality and hard work and effort. And so I kind of threw this out there to you where usually I send podcast questions and I’m kind of like leading us through a discussion, but I was like, you know what, jenny is going to bring some heat. I’m going to let her pick three hard truths about team building and I have three. Also, if we have time, we can go through all six or we can do a part two of this interview later. But yeah, three hard truths about team building. And so Jenny is going to kind of throw out each truth. I haven’t heard them. I don’t know what she’s going to say. So I’m excited to kind of see where this conversation goes. But let’s start with your number one hard truth about building teams.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Yes. And I think I missed the memo on team building guys, but I think you’re still going to get something through this. I think about it for the lens of worship teams. Okay. And think about this from the lens of being a servant of God and just walking forward. You’re calling because that’s in the midst of team building because without these things it’s just going to be really tough. And I did say this at worst innovators conference in one part. And my lead up to this, you might remember, Alex, I don’t know if you’re sitting in that session, was that living out? I said this. I said, you’re not going to like this guy. You’re not going to like what I have to say. But I said living out your calling will crush you. And here’s the other part and it should. So as worship pastors, as worship directors, as tech team, as worship leaders, we’re focusing on set lists. We’re focusing on how to make Sunday awesome. We’re focusing on how to improve everything. But you guys character matters so much because without this character of heart, we can try to build all the things in the world and it’s just not going to stand because that foundation isn’t laid on Jesus Christ.

 

Jenni McGrew |

So how is it going to crush us? Like we got to serve people. And this is stuff they don’t teach you in ministry school. They’re not necessarily teaching you about this. We got to love people. We got to love people. And here’s the thing. Loving people isn’t just like loving our teams. Let’s talk about team for a minute. Like we’re not always going to get along with our team. I hate to break it to you, and if you’ve been on a team for more than two minutes, you’re not always going to get along with them. But what are we going to do in those moments when we’re not getting along with our teams? We are going to draw closer and we’re going to refuse to allow ourselves to walk farther away. And it was actually something I brought up with just speaking to our church yesterday. And I was talking about the glory of God and I was talking to them about the love of God. And I said, Here church. I said, I believe that we’re in a season of glory for our church. And I said, but I believe that the glory of God is found in the love of God.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Because to gain that glory, we have to sacrifice for that. We have to surrender for that. We have to forgive for that. And that cost us something. So in building our teams, we’ve got to serve them and we got to serve them. We should be sweating. Sweating like second samuel 1224 what did David say? You know, King Aruna was going to give him all the supplies for the offering. You guys know this story, okay? And what did David say? He said I won’t sacrifice to God. That would cost me nothing. Okay. So we got to serve people. We got to love people. Loving people. Looks like forgiving them I’m going to say it again. It looks like forgiving them. Say it again. Looks like forgiving them often. Okay. Pastors leaders, we can judge ourselves by our intentions. We’re really good at that because we know ourselves. We know ourselves or we give ourselves a hard pass. But when it comes to other people, we can tend to judge other people by their actions and we need to remember that so that we are the same mercy that we give ourselves. We need to exponentially be giving it to our teams and giving it to others.

 

Jenni McGrew |

So love looks like forgiving people. And you know, in team building, it can be really easy. Especially if you’re just new at this. OK. You’re like, yeah, I’m all in, I’m all in. This is going to be awesome. Going to build this team. It’s going to be like the best thing ever. And it is the best thing ever. And it is the hardest thing ever. Okay? Like, you know that thing. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. Okay? I’m talking from someone who’s had a little bit of experience in this. But there is a massive difference between being for somebody and being with someone. I want to say that again, there is a massive difference between being for someone and with someone. And I fear because of the culture that we’re in, we pick up our phones and we send people an encouraging message or we send our team an encouraging message and what do we send? A little prayer emoji like thanks. When you’re going through a hard time and someone just sends you a prayer emoji you’re like, but I needed a little bit more than that.

 

Jenni McGrew |

I just needed a little bit more than that. And I believe one of the things that the lord is calling us with our teams, this isn’t just leader down guys, this is all of us walking. Don’t put it all on the leader. It’s just not fair. It’s not fair because we all have to take our place. We’re all helping lead this mission of the kingdom of God forward, is that we have to be committed to not just being for someone. We can be for someone from a distance and it not cost us anything. But like, remember king David said, I won’t sacrifice to God, that would cost me nothing. But walking with people, that’s going to cost you your time, that’s going to cost you your resources, that’s going to cost you some money, that might cost you some sleep, it’s going to cost you convenience. And if you look at psalm 23 and I actually just said this to one of the young adults in our church this morning, I actually sent him the message. I said I just sent him a text and I said, I don’t want to say his name, but I said, I just want to say how thankful I am for you walking with this person.

 

Jenni McGrew |

I said, you’re really anointed to walk with people. I said, in a day and age where walking with people are so rare. Then I gave him psalm 23 where it says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. It doesn’t say for you are for me. It says for you are with me. And I think in the area of team building, I think we need to get really, really good, especially if you have next gens on your team, especially if you have next generation, because they need that and there’s nothing wrong with them needing that. Let’s not hold that against them. I think that we’re learning something from the next generation that we needed and we didn’t even know that we needed it. It was a gap that we had, whereas we were just like, show up, show up, show up. Okay, I’m going to show up, show up, show up. And then we get to this age of like 40 and we’re like, oh, I actually needed some other things called this thing called relationship. You know, Psalm one eight seven says that the Lord is for me among those who are around me.

 

Jenni McGrew |

So if I can encourage you on this and I’m going to just kind of switch the narrative on this is in our team building and living out our calling. And I said, it’s going to crush you. Let’s get better at relationship because that will help build the right thing. We can try to plan to change the world, but without relationship, it’s just really going to be you. And I said this at Worship Innovators. I said, you know, you can have a lot of parts and that’s awesome. You know, like when worship pastors connect, they’re like, oh, how many people do you have in your team? Or people like, how many people go to your church? And I’m like such weird questions that we ask people sometimes. Like that’s the only thing that matters. And I said this at Worship Innovators. I said, guys, you can have a lot of parts, but if those parts don’t work together, what does that even mean? So if I could leave you with one thing on this thought is let’s get better at walking together. Let’s get better at walking with one another because that’s going to help create the foundation so that the right thing can spring forth.

 

Alex |

Yes.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Rabbit trail there, trying to pull it back.

 

Alex |

No, it’s really good. I think really what you’re saying is leading people is super hard and it’s going to cost you. And I love that you’re calling is going to crush you. And my pastor says, he says every ministry leads to a crucifixion and Jesus lay down his life and if we’re going to follow after him, we have to expect the same. And laying down your life stinks. I mean, it’s laying down your time, it’s laying down your energy, laying down your emotions and even your feelings of like, they offended me. Like you said, we need to forgive, forgive, forgive, because team members do sometimes say or act unkindly towards us and we have to forgive. And so I really appreciate that. Just kind of like groundwork truth of building a team is sacrifice. And I think you would agree, Ms. Jenny, who’s also doing a master’s degree and pastor in church and leading all these things, nothing grows without sacrifice. There is no easy exchange for something that’s healthy and beautiful. It takes intentional sacrifice, intentional time, intentional effort, intentional literally sitting and praying about it, sitting and thinking about it, sitting and improving it.

 

Alex |

So to all the worship leaders listening, think about your teams and ask yourself, how much have you been sacrificing for them? I don’t think Jenny’s saying you need to be a doormat and just not care about yourself and not rest and never take a day off. We’re not saying that. But we are saying, are you really pouring yourself into your team? Because if you want a healthy team, you have to spend the mental energy, the physical energy, the time, even the financial investment into building the team. Like buying boxes and boxes of pizzas and feeding them at your house. And all of those things are sacrificed. And so I love what you’re saying, Jenny, and I think you said something too, in there about just like, the team is not there to serve us, we’re there to serve the team. And that’s the leader’s role is to get underneath and to lift up. Right? So I love all that.

 

Jenni McGrew |

That was beautiful, you’re sharing that. It makes me think of this. I don’t know if you guys have seen The Chosen. I love the Chosen. I just have to get through the first episode because Christian stuff can be like, so good. And we actually walked our whole church through season one and two and like, tears for days. Like, honestly, Alex, tears for days. And we’re getting really excited because January we’re going to launch season three church. But there’s this amazing scene where the disciples are upset with Jesus. Of course, they’re always upset with Jesus, you know, like, I feel like we can be that way with our leaders, you know? And here Jesus has been praying for people all day. All day, pouring himself out on people. And so I’m saying that to say, of course, rest. We could talk about rest. I’m probably not going to get to that today. I am assuming that you’re good at Sabbath, I’m assuming that you’re good at resting, but it will cost us stuff. It will. So, like, Jesus pouring himself all day and then what does he do? He goes and retreats and prays. So, yes, out of all of that, fill yourself up.

 

Jenni McGrew |

But I am assuming that in the equation as I say this out today. So thank you, Alex, for bringing that up. No, of course not. We’re not allowed to preach to burnout. Please don’t burn out.

 

Alex |

Don’t you either, Jenny.

 

Jenni McGrew |

We hard cargo after that. Oh, no, I’m good. I inherited a prop that likes to give our students 30 hours of homework a week. And who could have guessed that?

 

Alex |

That’s fine, we’re good. Okay. That was your first hard truth about team building. Or just maybe your first hard truth about ministry in general. What would be your second hard truth? If it’s about building, great.

 

Jenni McGrew |

If it’s not, I’m probably going ministry. But I really think that this will help people because I think if I had to guess what the Spirit of God is talking to all us about today is relationship. And as we know, teams are built of many relationships and COVID was the great season that challenged us in our relationships and hopefully we learned a lot more about ourselves. Hopefully we learned a lot more about God. Hopefully we learned a lot more about each other and hopefully in Jesus name we did not throw in the towel and quit because I know that there’s been such a temptation for people just to quit. You know, I’ve been seeing my friends just drop like flies all around me and just breaks my heart. And you and I were talking about that. I even said that we’re going to be like, don’t quit, don’t quit. There’s going to be breakthrough on the other side of this. The reward is coming and our reward isn’t a thing. It’s the king. But I want to say this is that people will fail us. People will fail us and you need to know that.

 

Jenni McGrew |

And I’ll just try to bring this into the narrative of team, okay, people will fail us but this is part of being a team and that doesn’t sound like, oh, you’re going to leave away and you’re going to be like, yeah, that was like the best conversation ever. My heart is always to help equip people to go the distance so that perhaps they’re learning something. Perhaps you’re learning something so that you can see around the corner so you realize there’s nothing wrong, that this is normal. Someone told me years ago that were two or three are gathered. We know that the scripture says that God is there in the midst of them. He said I’m there in the midst of you. But where two or three are gathered or imperfect people, so where people will fail us, we need to have a humility of heart to know, you know what, jenny’s going to fail people too. I’m going to fail you. I’m going to fail my team, I’m going to fail my church. But that’s just part of her human nature. But we got to allow the grace of God to come into the equation to receive his grace so that we can walk together like this.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Because there can be such a tendency when people fail us. See I just said the spirit of God’s saying the same thing this morning. So I know that this is for some people. Whereas when people fail us, we tend to want to separate. But I believe that God is trying to teach his church and mature his church, mature our teams, you guys. So when our teams fail us, when we hurt one another, when we do things that we shouldn’t, but we’re quick to like in Matthew we go to that person. We don’t go to everybody else. We don’t need to go to everybody else because that causes division, it causes accusation. And who is the accuser of the brethren? Satan. Satan is the accuser of the brethren. But Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. So one of the ways that we can help create greater life on our team is knowing how to handle hurt, knowing how to handle disappointment, knowing how to handle it. When people fail us, okay, I say fail us and reject us. Whatever we can do. We can be very sensitive, especially as creatives.

 

Jenni McGrew |

It’s how God’s wired us. But we have to armor up and know where our weak spots are, you know, but just be quick to go to them because God, there can be that tendency. Like I said to you’re, just like, oh, that really hurt. I don’t know if that person was who I thought they were. And I just want to encourage you today and I just want to challenge you, draw closer. And I believe that the Lord’s maturing his church in that area is draw closer. Because if we can teach ourselves to draw closer, it’s actually going to bring a richness in those relationships. It’s going to help bring richness and value into our team that didn’t exist without this. And think about a marriage. Alex, I don’t know how long you’ve been married. You are married, right? You have children?

 

Alex |

Yes, 15 years.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Awesome.

 

Alex |

Eight months.

 

Jenni McGrew |

I’ve been married 25 years. And I can say although the relationship looks different through disappointments and hurt and forgiveness and all of the things that it has drawn my husband and I closer in a way that never would have happened. So hard truth, don’t draw further away with your team when you have misunderstandings because it will happen for two or three are gathered or imperfect people draw closer.

 

Alex |

That’s so good. And it kind of reminds me this is a weird analogy, but a muscle when you’re working out and the cells and your muscles tear, then obviously they come back together and new muscle cells are formed and it’s a stronger muscle. So when you pull apart instead of running the opposite way, like push back together and it’ll actually be stronger. I heard something about trust is formed. Like, I don’t remember the quote, but the idea was that trust is formed when someone hurts you and you reconcile. Then it’s like a stronger bond than ever before. I’m not doing the quote justice, but that idea of when there’s hurt on a team, when there’s someone on your team who offends you or who does something really uncool. First of all, I love that you pointed us to Matthew 18. Go to the person. Yeah. So huge. One of the hard truth I had on my list was that you can’t have a healthy team without crucial conversations. Like that is part of it. That is part of team building is those one on one, hey, in love but full of truth. That is crucial to team building.

 

Alex |

So great stuff.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Yeah. Okay. I’m going to talk about something that could be weird.

 

Alex |

Go for it.

 

Jenni McGrew |

But, you know, I just want to help armor people up for the kingdom of God. Okay? And I get this question a lot, you guys, and again, forgive me because somehow I missed the boat on team building, but I really think this is for someone and this is one of the most questions I get asked, okay? And I want to say this is a pastor right now is that the kingdom of God is very vulnerable right now to falling prey, to deception. To deception. And we can see this in the Bible over and over in the last days. We have to be very discerning. You have to be very discerning and you have to be very careful about the voices that you listen to. Let it pull you away from the flock. Let it pull you away from the team. Psalm 92 says, blessed are those or it says, yeah, blessed are those who are planted in the house of the Lord so that they will flourish in the courts of their God. So we got to allow our roots to go super deep. So to tie that into the polling closer together, one of the ways that we can say planet in our church, planted in our teams, planted in the house of the lord is when we have stuff that is like it’s tough to walk through, is refusing to allow it to tear you apart.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Coming closer together and be discerning about who you’re hanging around and what voices that you’re allowing in your life. You know that the voices are right when they’re drawing you closer to God. I’m going to say it again. You know the voices are right when they’re drawing you closer to God. You know the voices are right. Okay. When you know that it’s bringing peace, you know the voices are right when it’s drawing you closer together, it’s not tearing you further apart. So the most asked question I get is when am I supposed to leave my church? And I always think that’s kind of a weird thing. It’s like we’re waiting to leave our church. Were you waiting? It’s like going on vacation with your family and we’re like, okay, we have to probably get ready for the airport on this day. I’m like, we just landed. Like this happens all the time with our family. Let’s just get rid of that mindset. Don’t even think about when it’s time to leave your church. But Kate, I just want to give you some tidbits on when it’s time to leave your church. When the grace is gone.

 

Jenni McGrew |

When the grace is gone, it will feel harder. You’ll have to keep things going by the power of your own hands. It’ll just start feeling you will start feeling a lack of peace. But I don’t think this is the number one question I’m asked. So I can only imagine some of you wonder about this is asking yourself when it’s time to leave your church. I just really feel like God is calling us to say planet in our churches. Right now. Yeah, sure, the Lord could be leading you on into other things, but I just really want to caution you this season to make sure as a team you’re not falling prey or someone’s like, hey, can you come over to our church? Just be careful. Just be careful. You know, things can look good, but it’s like wolves and sheep clothing. It’s that God is calling us to stay planted in our church. They serving with our teams and helping move the mission of God forward. We can fall prey to words like toxicity, like everything is toxic. Oh, my goodness. Or like boundaries. Words like toxic and boundaries actually become red flag words to me now, because I’m like, who hurt you?

 

Jenni McGrew |

Who hurt you? And I’m talking from someone who’s been very hurt in my life. You know, I just intimated Alex a little bit, and I’m not here to share my testimony about all the years of abuse that I endured as a child. So I could preach all day about toxic. I could preach all day about boundaries and yes, the boundaries, of course. Again, I’m assuming that you know that well, but let’s not fall prey to voices trying to pull us out of our teams, voices trying to pull us out of our church, because I really believe that the Spirit of God is drawing his bodies, all the churches closer together. Yes, but individual houses within, members in the house, members on your team closer together so that we would get really good at this thing called the love of God, so that we could be the greatest expression of God and his love in these last days. It’s so vital. The world is looking for a church full of power, full of authority, full of anointing or. The world is looking for the real thing. We have an opportunity to help create the real thing, and that’s by sticking it out.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Someone said years ago, and she said, we’re going to stick together until we see Jesus in one another. And I just love that. Funny enough, she doesn’t go to our church anymore.

 

Alex |

But she meant it when she said it.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Yeah, she’s old. She’s, like, really old, so she gets a hard pass. But you guys, that’s my whole heart there. Be careful right now. Let’s get really good at this. And that’s what the Lord keeps saying in the three things that I’ve shared. Let’s get good at this.

 

Alex |

That’s good. You know, one of the academy members who’s watching and I see your questions, Kevin, we’re going to get to them. They’re really good questions, so we’ll get to those at the very end. But I know he had gone through a hard first year and a half of ministry recently, and what you’re saying is don’t give up, don’t lose hope. There are bumps in the road. There are times, like you said, where we do say, lord, you’re leading me out. But right now with the whole great resignation going on in the world because COVID really did kind of emotionally cause turmoil in people. But I think what I’ve heard said, and I would agree with this, that nothing good is built in under ten years, which is like, that’s insane. But if you think about it, how long have you been doing Worship Leaders Collective Seven, right? So you’re getting close to that ten year mark.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Not even there yet. We haven’t even built anything yet.

 

Alex |

Right. And worship ministry training has been eight years now. I mean, it was a podcast until two years ago, but still. And so it’s like ten years. And same thing with ministry is like, we’ve got to plan root and not be tempted that the grass is greener at some other church. Because I will tell you, it’s not you’re just trading problems. It’s like getting a new spouse. You’re just trading the problems for other problems, right? And you’re bringing your problems because you’re also a problem into your new situation. You know what I mean? So it’s like there is no such thing as the grass is greener on the other side. It’s the grass is greener where you water it. And so it’s like, we just have to do the hard work and do the right thing. Now, if you’re completely out of alignment with your senior pastor and like, he’s going this way and you cannot get on board, then okay, then you probably have to have that conversation and be like, you know what? But if it’s just like a hard season, I just think of the analogy of farming, like, you know, plowing is hard and like, putting the seed in the ground is hard and watering it every day is hard, but it’s like with time, in the right season, we will reap good fruit.

 

Alex |

So I think that’s a good word to everybody.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Can I add one more thing to that?

 

Alex |

Of course.

 

Jenni McGrew |

There’s another telltale sign, and I see this a lot. Are you running away from something or are you running to something?

 

Alex |

Yes.

 

Jenni McGrew |

That’s so key in that area of discernment. Alex, I think we’re the same in the area. We just want to help equip leaders just to be mature. We want to help maturity and help that maturity go the distance. Because God’s given you guys all grace and callings and anointing and gifting for such a time as this. But this is not a sprint. This is a race of endurance. And we need one another. We need one another to help equip one another walking by, walking beside one another, cheering one another on, and just also being the voice of wisdom and just saying, you know what, just be careful. And you know what? Stay planted. Just stay planted. Unless the Lord’s showing you something, stay planted and be all in while you’re there. Because the tallest trees are planted in the ground. They’re not in pots. The plants around my house. The tall trees are not in the pots, and in fact, they’re dying if they stay in there too long. We got to be planted in the ground.

 

Alex |

All right, everybody, so a couple of things. Number one, Jenny. Thank you. Number two, Jenny, tell everybody where to find Worship your collective online so they can go there and follow you today.

 

Jenni McGrew |

Yeah. Website worshipleaders collective.com. Instagram worship leaders collective facebook worshipleaders collective. We also have a ministries page. You’ll find all of it. I’m not much of a seller. I’m actually really bad at it for someone who owned her own company for 30 years. I’m really bad at it when it comes to ministry. And you know what? We just love you and if we can help you and if other people can help you, and awesome. And I really believe that with being part of it, that you guys would really have a lot to offer to help other people. So that’s what it’s about.

 

Alex |

It’s great. Okay, so here’s the thing, Danny. We’re going to move into a Q and A time. What I want to do, though, is I want to tease up the three hard truths that I had, and maybe you and I can have another conversation about these later, but let me just put them out there for everybody to get their appetite wet. So the three hard truths about team building that I wrote down was, you can’t have the team you want without hard conversations. You are a coach and you must coach people. Okay? Number two, you have to be a broken record, right? Repetition, repetition. You have to say the same things a thousand times for the culture to stay strong. Number three is you replicate who you are, so, like, your team will reflect you. And that is a hard truth, because if things are ugly, if there’s gossip, if there’s clicks, it’s because that’s who you are. So that’s the third one I know. Bonus one is you. And you already kind of mentioned this one. You have to be there for people through their yuckiness. You have to care more for them as people rather than simply what they do for the team.

 

Alex |

So maybe you and I will have a second conversation about those four in the near future. But, guys, that’s it for the Podcast Academy members. We’re going to move to your Q and A time in just a second, so hold tight. Thanks for tuning in today. I hope this episode encouraged you, helped you, and pushed you forward in your ministry. If it helped you, can you take a second and help us by sending it to just one person that you think needs to hear this? And if you’re feeling extra nice, leave us a nice, shiny five star review on Apple podcasts. Or like this video if you’re watching it on YouTube. If you want to discuss this episode or ask questions, we do have a free section in our academy where you can post comments and questions and chat with other worship leaders just like you and also sample some of our courses. And you can go to Worshipinistrytraining.com Free to join us inside the free portion of the academy. If you’re looking for more, check out the full access academy. You can get 15 days for just $1 to start and try things out again.

 

Alex |

You can try all of it for 15 days for just $1 by going to Worship Ministrytraining.com. Hope to see inside the academy or else I’ll see you next month for another helpful episode. You.