Why Pastors Struggle with Delegating

Summary

In this episode of Church Talk, hosts Jason Allison and Rob Paterson discuss the challenges and insights related to ministry leadership, particularly focusing on the impact of technology, the importance of effective delegation, and the need for clear expectations and accountability. They share personal experiences and reflections on how to navigate the complexities of leading in a church setting, emphasizing the value of every role and the necessity of ongoing training and support for volunteers and leaders.

Takeaways

We can accomplish more with technology, but it may not be good for our souls.
Efficiency in ministry should not come at the cost of personal connection.
Delegation requires proper training and support to be effective.
People often underestimate the complexity of leading in a church setting.
Clear expectations are crucial for successful delegation.
Every role in ministry is important and should be valued.
Unconscious competency can lead to unrealistic expectations of others.
Regular check-ins can prevent burnout and improve accountability.
Training should be ongoing, not a one-time event.
Self-reflection is key to improving leadership effectiveness.

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Transcript

Jason Allison (00:01)
Welcome back to the Church Talk podcast with Rob and Jason. We are excited to have another conversation and share it with everyone here. Rob, man, it's been a full week. It's been a lot going on. I've been on the road a lot and I'm just glad I get to hang out with you for a little bit. What's going on?

Rob Paterson (00:20)
Man, you know, I'm like you. I haven't been traveling as much, but I've just been busy. But in all the all the ways you want to be busy, you know, in just even this last weekend was the first home game for our alma mater's ⁓ football team, which they didn't have a football team when we were there. But our oldest son, Christopher, is in the marching band. And so, you know, right before the weekend, Bethany's like, this is like one of two of these we're going to be able to get to this year.

Jason Allison (00:27)
Yeah.

yeah.

Rob Paterson (00:48)
What do you think? And it was our baptism weekend and all that sort of stuff. And, but we were like, let's do it. So we got up early Saturday, drove over to Indiana three and a half hours, did all that, hung out with him for a little bit afterwards, drove back, you know, uh, Sunday we had 35 people, uh, that was super cool. Sunday we had 19 sign up by the, to my knowledge, there were a few more that signed up pretty quickly. And so I'm like, yeah, we probably have, you know, 25 or something like that.

Jason Allison (01:03)
That's awesome. Yeah.

Rob Paterson (01:17)
35 people, it was just mind blowing. I didn't push, I didn't do anything. This was like legitimately God's work in people's lives. That's what we want, right? ⁓ Yeah, so.

Jason Allison (01:19)
That's awesome. That's awesome.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's awesome. So

so you've been busy. You've got a lot of irons in the fire even just in ministry. Yeah, no, that's that's good.

Rob Paterson (01:34)
Yeah, yeah.

It is good, but you know I had a I had an insight yesterday and this is going to be relatively simple, but as I was saying it, I'm like I've always known this, but I'm not sure I articulated it this way. So we had our weekly staff meeting and I was just doing what I do. You know, kind of extemporaneously speaking. I'm not so sure if my team gets inspired by those things or if they just like OK, he's going to talk for awhile, so we'll get some work done on our computers with that here.

Jason Allison (02:06)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (02:08)
But, know, I said, you know, what did we do? Cause we were accomplishing things and I'd say something that someone would like do it or look it up on their phone or their computer. And I'm like, man, what did we do before we had super computers on our desks and on our laps and in our hands and in our pockets and on our wrists even, right? Like we can just get so much stuff done. And the example I used, which, you know, if you've been in ministry for a little while, if you've just been in ministry for

Five years, this probably won't make sense to you, but back when you and I started in ministry, Jason, when I was preaching from a passage of scripture, and maybe there was like a half dozen words that were just very interesting, and I'm like, I'm gonna do a word study. It could take me half of a day to do a Bible word study on a passage, like with my Strong's Concordance and my Young's Concordance. They're sitting there flipping to the right pages and.

Jason Allison (02:52)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Rob Paterson (03:01)
reading all the possible words like that Greek word or Hebrew word had been translated as and what the range of meaning was. And a lot of times you did a lot of work for a lot of hours and maybe you found nothing. Sometimes you might have found one kind of that is thing. And so it felt like 20, 30 years ago, like, man, I'm exhausted. I did a ton of work today.

but I literally did two or three things. nowadays I flip my computer open, I open my Logos Bible software. had one of the developer guys from Logos on the podcast not that long ago, he was awesome. And I literally highlight a word, I do click and then I click Bible Word Study and it's instantly done. I can scan through it in a couple minutes.

I can do all that work in 20, 30 minutes that might've taken me a half a day to do in the past. And so here was my insight from all that. I'm like, you know, we just get so much more work done, but what do we do with that? We're like, well, now instead of doing three or four things in a day, we can all do 12 things in a day. And if we can get even more efficient and have even more technological help, maybe we could do 15 things in a day, right? Like we just, and so yesterday morning I had a meeting with a guy.

Jason Allison (04:16)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (04:20)
And then before staff meeting, I had to go out to my truck. And my assistant is sitting outside with the two girls who work in our preschool. it's because it's lunchtime, it's between the two classes, and they're sitting out in the sun at the little picnic table we have outside our main doors. And they're just enjoying each other's company. They're enjoying the beautiful weather. They're refueling a little bit. And this is what I thought. In all of our greater efficiency, and we can now get way more done than we used to,

I'm not so certain that that is a good thing for our souls. And there's a balance, right? It's not like only do two things so that you can have even more leisure in your life. That's not really the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is that we do need to, in all of our efficiency, also pause, breathe, connect with God, with others, you know, because we can sometimes just feel like we're not earning our keep and feel guilty that we only got seven things done today.

Jason Allison (04:55)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (05:18)
You know, that's I don't think at the end that's that's the important deal.

Jason Allison (05:23)
Yeah, I mean, we, you and I started ministry before the internet. That's how old we are. No, no. Well.

Rob Paterson (05:27)
⁓ Yeah, there were no cell phones. Like, wow, that's not true. If you plugged it into your

car lighter and unzipped it out of a bag and it was and then pulled out the antenna and you had to have two hands because like this is not something you put in your pocket. So I guess that was kind of a cell phone. But yeah.

Jason Allison (05:36)
Yeah, then you have to turn a crank to work up the. Yeah. ⁓

Right. Yeah,

yeah, that's yeah. I remember when, you know, a cordless phone for your home came out like, mean, that's so like, yeah, the technology has definitely, you know, up our ability to get things done quickly. And and that's good and bad. You know, I mean, like every everything you just said, right? It's nice. We can get more done, but we also can end up being so busy.

Rob Paterson (05:52)
Hmm?

Jason Allison (06:10)
that we never, yeah, we're just constantly striving and that's not a healthy place to be. mean, our friend Mitch Harrison last week was talking about how do you refuel? How do you refill the tanks? This past week I was in Manassas, Virginia and I preached about being filled up and what does that look like? we were...

Rob Paterson (06:28)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (06:30)
You know, and just the number of people who came up afterwards going like, were you reading my mail? How did you know that? You know, and that's man, that's just where everybody is right now is we're constantly trying to get more done because right now in our society, your value is based on what you produce.

Rob Paterson (06:48)
Yeah, well, and I think it's interesting, right? It's interesting how things tie together because even a couple weeks ago, our guest, you know, talked about this idea, gave that great Thomas Merton quote. We've got to cover less ground, more slowly. And, you know, and I think for ministry people, because here's what's happening right now all across the country and maybe even world, you know, people are like, well.

Jason Allison (06:59)
Yeah.

Ugh, I love that.

Rob Paterson (07:11)
Yeah, Rob, but we just did that, right? Because maybe we had a little, we had some different rhythms, a little bit more downtime. It went on a vacation this summer, but now it's the fall, people are back to school. And so we got to really get back to work and start cranking. And again, I don't disagree with any of those thoughts, but if you like relegate, like a manageable pace and a connected life with others and with God.

You if you cash out on those things to be more productive for the kingdom, you won't be running on full and you will crash and burn. Like it's just not a sustainable thing to do.

Jason Allison (07:43)
Yeah, it's a net loss. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, you know, so in that line, I thought today we take some time and just talk through some of this. I in my travels, as I'm talking to different pastors all around, I'm just hearing a common theme that people are tired and they're stressed. Now, it that doesn't it's not all negative, right? They may be like.

Hey, really good things are happening, right? You know, I spent last two or three hours with the pastor last week and man, their church is exploding with growth and it's good stuff, right? And then he's just trying to figure out what do I do? Like, you know, we had six open seats the Sunday prior at our service. That's not sustainable. they're, you know, it's good stress, but it's still stress. And so that's when you start talking about the age old question of what do I delegate?

Right. You know what, how do I delegate and in talking with pastors, they say, no, I delegate, but people keep screwing it up or they don't follow through or they don't do it well or they don't, know, and I don't know. I, the more they do that and then they get leery of delegating it because they got burned the last time they delegated. And, and I know you and I have talked to other people in our ministries over the years that we've delegated.

Stuff too, or, know, we've, we've been empowered. If you want to use the, you know, fancy your word. Yeah, exactly. And, and they just totally bombed. They just didn't do it. They didn't show it, whatever. And so it, yeah, it does get difficult, but here's what I'm noticing when a pastor says that to me, I pushed back a little just cause that's what I do. and I'm finding that the people who didn't follow through, who didn't live up to the expectations.

Rob Paterson (09:07)
Make it sound spiritual,

Jason Allison (09:29)
they weren't given a ton of instruction, upfront. didn't, they didn't really, they weren't given the, a complete picture of what was required and, or they weren't necessarily equipped to do the task at hand. Like the pastor maybe reached out to them or recruited them or, you know, ask them to do something because.

That pastor already, they thought they were already equipped to do it and they could just say here, go do this. And, so you got two problems there. You got one, you got a pastor who is waiting for the right people to show up so we can get something done. Right. We don't have enough leaders in the church. Really? Do you do anything to develop leaders? No, cause we don't have any. Well, you can have this, you know, or then we reach out to someone and ask them to lead a team or a project or whatever, but then we don't, we don't train them.

in anything, then of course that's going to happen. So I don't know. What do you think? Am I totally off base? What are you thinking?

Rob Paterson (10:19)
Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah.

No,

no, no, no. And this is true for all of us, right? Like, mean, in this is true, whether it's in a relationship or a marriage and you're like, man, we've we've just had this problem and we've had it for a long, long time. Right. And I remember when I was in my 20s and early 30s and if somebody would have said to me, hey, you ought to go talk to a counselor, they could really help you. You know, what I would have said was, whoa, I don't want anyone know my business. Right. And

No, we're smart, we're intelligent, we're educated people, we can figure this out. Well, you know what, like after five, 10, 15, 20 years, guess what? You probably need a little bit of help, not because you're dumb, not because you're unintelligent, but because for all of us, we have blind spots, right? And if we're not aware of that and we don't invite some people in who are gifted and trained that can say, hey, so like...

Jason Allison (11:09)
No.

Yes.

Rob Paterson (11:23)
When you were, I just was laughing internally when you were talking about like this whole idea of delegation or leadership development or whatever, you know, people like, whoa, you know, it's a big blind spot for a lot of people. And I mean, you and I have some friends who are always like, they've always done all the right things and it just never has ever worked out. And I tell you what though, anytime I'm around those people who say that, and just I'm thinking of this one, one instance or a couple instances, you know, it's like,

Jason Allison (11:33)
you

Rob Paterson (11:49)
You know what you cast great vision, but it's like so unrealistic in terms of some able to execute all of the demands that you have for that role, that whatever. And so yeah, like, you know, none of us, it's not sustainable for any of us to sort of stay in a role or do something that, you know, Jesus probably couldn't even pull off. but we just do those things and it's for the kingdom. And so, you know, sacrifice and it's like, you're asking me to be a volunteer leader, give.

Jason Allison (11:54)
Mm.

Rob Paterson (12:16)
You know, 62 hours a week and accomplish nine things you haven't been able to do. I don't think that's a realistic ask. And people like, I don't get it. I give things to people and then they, they peter out at the last minute. Like, it, is that really is happening or maybe you changed your perspective, your approach, maybe just maybe you would see some more traction and you could develop people into what you really wanted to start with, but that nobody begins at.

Jason Allison (12:23)
Yeah.

Yeah. Mm hmm.

Yeah, so I put together five reasons that I think and there are probably tons more, I just you five reasons that I have observed as to why delegating isn't working with pastors and leaders. And again, these are ones I've observed. There's probably more, but I wanted to share these and get your feedback, Rob, on where it is. And really, the first one starts kind of with what you were just talking about.

We've talked about the disciples journey and this has been done in multiple things about the learning curve and the dip, all the stuff where the four quadrants and it starts out that someone before they know anything, They think they're like, I watch golf on TV. My first thought is, could do that, right? And that's unconscious in competency, right? Like I think I'm...

Rob Paterson (13:30)
Hahaha!

Jason Allison (13:40)
Amazing. And then I put a golf club in my hand and no, I can't do what those guys on TV do, you know, like so, so they got to go to the next, the next little level there. And that's more of the, the conscious incompetency where I'm like, crap, I don't know what I'm doing. Right. hopefully you move through that. And that's where, know, that's where you discover real stuff. That's where you learn things once you get to that level. But then the next level is where you start to, Hey, I've got some conscious competency, meaning I,

I know what I'm doing. I still have to think it through, right? It's not, it's not just natural to me, but I do know a little bit. And then you get to that fourth box, is unconscious competency. And that's where most pastors are at. know what they they're doing things, but it's just not, they don't know why they do it the way they do it. They're just good at it.

Rob Paterson (14:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and if that

and if you're listening in that you're like, I still don't get that it's like this. If you're like, I don't know older than 30 you would get this. You know when you first started driving a car you were nervous and noticed everything and now you can be on a longer trip and go wait a minute. I think I passed that milestone. I think I drove over a bridge and you have no recollection. Cause you were just on autopilot. You weren't dangerous. You didn't create an accident, but you just can do it now because you've just done it for so long.

Jason Allison (14:58)
Yes, and I learned that when I was teaching my daughters to drive, right? I mean, I just learned all the things that I do. I didn't even realize I do it right. Turning on a blinker light at certain point, you know, just think. So what I think is a lot of pastors have an unconscious competency about them. They they just assume everyone else knows how to do the things that they're doing. They don't realize.

Rob Paterson (15:02)
Right. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Allison (15:23)
I went through a whole process of, you know, learning how to do this, lead this team, lead whatever. And so then they hand it to someone and then walk away. And the person's like, great, because they're still in that D one of unconscious competency, right? Where they are, I'm sorry, conscious anyway, you know what I mean? Unconscious and competency. Too many words there. Yeah, they think they know what they're doing and they really don't. Right. And so they start to do it and it just gets hard and they really and they

Rob Paterson (15:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Stop talking about that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Allison (15:50)
You know, they probably just go, well, screw this. nobody told me what to do now. I'm done. Right. And that's when they give in because we didn't show them how to do things. And so for me, that's like reason number one I'm finding is pastors don't realize it's going to sound weird, but people are not as smart as you think they are in some areas. Right. You know, we want to give people the benefit of that we want. But man, doing.

Rob Paterson (16:11)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (16:16)
work in a church, like leading and leading teams and volunteers, that's a very specialized niche that I don't think we realize how specialized it is.

Rob Paterson (16:23)
Mm-hmm.

Well, and even to make it like, even at the simpler end of the spectrum, you know, like, cause a pastor could be like, Hey, so and so, I know it's like Friday and Sundays in two days, but can you just come up on, up on the platform in a couple of days? And I'm going to ask you this question. I just want you to tell about your experience. And we're just like, this is like the easiest thing in the world. Why wouldn't everybody always say yes to that? Right. And sometimes people respond with,

no, I need more time or I'm just like scared to death of being in front of people. And we're like, no, just get over it. This is important. It'll help and it'll work, right? Like we want people to just do that and feel comfortable. I remember I got saved at 14 years old and my pastor, you know, got me in, I lived in, I grew up in a small church in a small community, right? So my pastor gave me opportunities. I actually, can't sing, but he let me song lead for a while. You know, I read scripture. I was.

preaching when I was a teenager. Now listen, when I was 15 years old and he started having me do some of these things, I was scared to death even in that little country church of whatever, 60, 70 people. But I kind of worked through that and got over that like at 16, 17, 18. And so by the time I was in college studying for ministry, like those things actually kind of felt comfortable for me because I had already worked through stuff.

for people that haven't had those experiences and gained those competencies, you know, and we look at that, I do too, in a very judgmental way, like, come on, like, this is important and you'll do great, trust me, right? Like, what is wrong with this person? It's like, go back and think about 15 or 16 year old you and how petrified you might've felt. And yeah, we need some of that.

Jason Allison (18:07)
Yeah, yes. Yes. So first thing, realize you probably are way better at this than you realize. And you need to help people really. You need to think in terms of training, right? Of bringing give people time to ramp up that whole column on Friday. Say I want to ask a couple of questions on Sunday. No, that's don't do that to people, you know.

Rob Paterson (18:29)
Yeah, well and Jason,

Jason, just another quick example of this and I know we have four more to hit, but man, I just, this is, this is a big one and I face this all the time, you know, when I'm like preparing to teach something or I'm preparing, you know, for a sermon and I have a thought and I'm like, no, everybody already knows that that's just saying something like the sky is blue.

Jason Allison (18:35)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rob Paterson (18:51)
And then sometimes like, makes it, it makes the cut and makes it into the message, the teaching, the whatever. And people come up to me they're like, whoa, that was so helpful. I have never heard that before. And again, the thing, some of the things we've learned, we've just learned them enough times and we've known them for long enough that it just seems like it's everybody's knowledge base and it really isn't. we, we've got to constantly remind ourselves of what we know is not what everybody else knows.

Jason Allison (19:13)
Yeah.

Well, and a lot of pastors and church leaders in general get caught in this because you see it in the way they handle it, just like the Sunday morning experience. They do not prepare as though someone who's never been there is going to show up. Right. mean, and that means they, they, just aren't, if a person walks in and, and they don't know.

what the order of services or what they're supposed to do or where they're supposed to go or where they should sit or not sit or this. Like those are all things that we know because we've been here all the time. Like I already know this. Why do I need to talk about it? But when you stand up and I did a kind of a secret shopper thing with the church a couple of weeks ago and afterwards I was meeting with their team and I said you you introduced the offering but and you said you know you can give online you can do this but the side screens

that there was no link, there was no QR code, there was no nothing. And you didn't pass anything around, but you talked about taking up the offering. you know, I was sitting there going, what am I supposed to do? And I'm a church person. mean, you know, and I said, so that's one area that just being sensitive to the fact that there are people there who are not up to speed. And the same thing goes with your leadership as you, you know, delegate, as you help people.

Rob Paterson (20:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jason Allison (20:35)
realize they're not as up to speed as you think they are. And I've never heard anyone complain because I explained something to them and they were like, I already knew that. They're like, thanks for confirming.

Rob Paterson (20:43)
Yep. Yeah. And that's,

I would say we always kind of Marvel, you know, in a village of 2300, we still, you know, 23 years in now have new people show up virtually every single Sunday. And which is just like mind boggling, right? And, and I could, this is not me trying to like, you know, make myself look good. Cause I could tell you a million holes.

million things that need work and you know all that sort of stuff so There's way more of that than there is good things But I would say you know as we're talking about this making me think So one of the things because we always used to have somebody do this in person and it always got cumbersome and whatever So I mean you've been around new hope enough now long enough to know we have like a whole bunch of different Welcome videos and every single week near the front of the welcome video plays and it kind of gives like all that basic information

Jason Allison (21:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rob Paterson (21:41)
And I'm sure some of our people are like, my gosh, like we've seen this a million times. This is not for you. This is for the new person who's here. And now, okay, okay, if I want to do this, here's how I do this. And then we also have a team of people that again, for our regulars would be completely unnecessary, but we have a team of people who like are there for safety and security and guidance and help and people know when they walk in, see a guy in an orange shirt, they will help you, they will direct you. We have signage everywhere.

there's no signage, right? Because everybody knows where to go. All the nursery is that way. And if there's one new person this month, we can just point the way and take them. It's easy. You know, if you walked in and nobody was there, you would know where to go because there's signs everywhere. And those simple things really contribute to just growth and reaching people. Because if you make it comfortable for people and easy for, I don't, you know, here's the thing, coming to Jesus is not easy. But man, when we

Jason Allison (22:36)
Mm-mm.

Rob Paterson (22:37)
is church people put 87 other barriers in the way of people even getting to the point of considering Jesus. That is a foolish thing to do. let's make it. And part of doing that is us realizing people don't know what we know, so let's be sure to clearly communicate those things.

Jason Allison (22:56)
And that applies to the way you lead leaders as well. Let you know, give them clear understanding. Okay. Second one that I've noticed is I just called the secondary importance, which basically I'm saying a pastor or a leader, they've got a ton of projects on, their plate. And so they just hand something off so that they can work on the mission critical or the more important things. I'm using my scare quotes that you can't see if you're only hearing the audio, cause I haven't released the YouTube version yet, but.

All that to say, like, it feels like, you know, there are times that, I just, if they would just do this, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, how you're basically telling them there because they're just a volunteer and I use just there and that you're going to give them a less important job so that you can do the real work of the ministry. Well, that's not real motivating to people. And I don't think we really hear.

Rob Paterson (23:48)
Mm.

Jason Allison (23:51)
what we're saying the way they are receiving it. And so I would just challenge pastors, look at what you're delegating and why, and then how are you, you know, how are you selling it, so to speak? So I just had so many experiences in watching like children's ministry, and it's always the hardest place to get volunteers. And it's the hardest place to work most of the time, because kids smell funny and do stupid things and they cry and it's hard. That's fine. But

You know, basically seeing helping a person working in children's ministry understand your job is just as crucial to the gospel being proclaimed as the person standing up front preaching and then telling stories that back that up. And you know, casting that vision. That to me is like, we got to do more of that to help people see there are no secondary jobs.

And if there are, then why are we doing them?

Rob Paterson (24:46)
Yeah, so good. The clearest example I have of this and I was kind of, you know, not a central part initially, but I saw it and then I heard it and then I got to, you know, participate in greater ways. But when I was in college, we had this college ministry at the college church on the campus. I actually...

by my second year became part of the leadership team, which was super cool. I got to help with small groups, but we had this midweek thing. And I think my first year, I mean, there might've been a hundred, 150 people that would come out for that. And it was just like a church service worship message kind of thing. By that next year, we had grown to like between three and 400 every single Wednesday night come into this thing. And in the church, this college pastor,

There was a room that we had that was kind of ours for that. And there was a team of people that would come in a couple hours early to set up all the chairs and band would practice and you know, and then we would go and we just, I mean the people that set up those chairs, we all tore down, but man, like they were, we treated them because they were like heroes because here's the thing and everybody, that was a great message from that preacher or.

Jason Allison (25:44)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Paterson (26:02)
man, the band was really good. I love that musician. mean, people see those things, but come on, would we have really grown like that? Would we have really, you know, being able to equip people, train people, reach people for the gospel if there was no place to sit? Like, so again, people might think, well, anybody could do that. And that might be true. Anybody could do that. But it is so important to every single thing that happens if it doesn't get done and it doesn't get done well.

It impacts everything. And so the team that did this, we just celebrated them. And I think it was a huge, huge key to the effectiveness of that ministry.

Jason Allison (26:39)
Yeah, anybody could do it, but not everybody was doing it. Right. Anybody could, but they actually did. And that makes a big difference. So yeah. So not treating things as secondary importance or, you know, just kind of getting it off your plate and then saying, fine, somebody else can handle that, which kind of leads to my third one, which is, ⁓ yeah. OK.

Rob Paterson (26:47)
huh.

Hang on, everybody should brace before

hearing it, because this is hard, right? Because probably in ministry, we have all done this, and in some ways, we likely all do it. so, I mean, they're normal words, but when I read them, Jason, I was like, ugh, don't use the A word, you know, because ugh, I probably did that there, you know, ugh.

Jason Allison (27:13)
Yeah.

You

I know I have. that that third reason that I've seen pastors struggle with this is we abdicate instead of delegate. And really, that's where, you know, we say we empowered or we released a person to do the work of the ministry. But but then we just walked over and started doing something else and completely left them out there to do that job on their own. And the example you just gave of the of the chairs, right? I mean, that is

That's something where you could have easily just said, well, they'll take care of it and then ignore them and move on. You know, but but instead you you circle back, you come back, you talk to them, you meet with them, you know. I don't know, there's I hear pastors way too often say, well, I I just I gave it to them and I I didn't want to get in the way. I didn't want to hold them back. So I just gave it to them and then sent them off to go do whatever that, you know, start that ministry.

lead that thing, do that, you know. And I said, yeah, but did you ever circle back to support them in the process or find out how it was going? Or is there little tweaks, know, course corrections that need to be made? Is there anything that wasn't clear? Is it? no, I just, I, I just trusted they could do it and just sent them off to do it. Well, that's setting them up to fail.

Rob Paterson (28:32)
Yeah.

It 100 % is and especially as we're thinking about like volunteers and even leaders like you know who are who have other jobs and families and you know like. I you know I can see that when you are hiring a staff person and this is their specialty. This is their area of expertise. You know where? Yeah, I'm this is yours. You have ownership of it. You run, but man when we are like taking our people and trying to get them to.

and guide and lead in these areas. And this is where it's all connected, right? Because we in our minds think, well, just do it. It's not that hard, but that's where the unconscious competency comes into play again, because those people don't know how to do it, right? So all of these are sort of connected. And to me, it sort of feels like, and I see lots of pastors do this, and when it works, man, we celebrate it and tell stories and whatever.

Jason Allison (29:13)
yeah.

Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Rob Paterson (29:26)
But it kind of feels like my aunt telling me when we were both very little that how she learned to swim was that my grandpa would just took her as like a baby, like, I don't know, one, one, one and a half and just threw into the swimming pool. He's sitting there in a lawn chair, probably drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. And it's like, I mean, if she was drowning, he would have dove in and saved her. But, she came to the surface and got over to the edge and,

And you know, even your face right now, you're like, my gosh, like we live in a totally different world now, right? Because if somebody did that nowadays, like they would literally probably go to prison, right? Like, or if you got caught, some people probably still do that. But listen, pastor, leader, when you're like, no, no, no, like I just, I really empowered, I gave it to them. It's theirs now. It's like, okay, so how are you communicating? How are you touching base?

How are you training and equipping them along the way for them to be successful? If you just gave it to them and left, and you wonder why that's not successful, and quite frankly, I know people, I have people in my sphere who do this, and I feel this like, you know, just anger, this indignation inside of me. And then oftentimes the Spirit of God says to me, wait a minute, but didn't you do that with your person?

Jason Allison (30:25)
You threw them in the deep end.

Thank

Rob Paterson (30:48)
who then you're mad that they did that with their person, maybe they're just following your example. And I'm like, God does that to me.

Jason Allison (30:55)
Yeah, yeah. Well, let's move on then. don't want to, you know, uh, and, I mean, the fourth one is, as you said, all of these overlap. All right. So, I mean, it's not like these aren't four new or five new things, but they, they do overlap. The fourth one is, uh, unclear expectations. And, and what I hear pastors say, well, I told him, I wanted, I just gave him the, you know, the broad strokes.

Rob Paterson (30:58)
That was too painful.

Jason Allison (31:20)
I give them a framework so they could build on it. And people don't, they don't like that. I mean, they want some freedom, but man, if you haven't given them a clear picture of what this needs to be and why that fits into the total vision of the church and the mission, the way everything's working together, then you're setting them up to be confused. You're setting them up to be frustrated. You're setting all these things up to where they're going to be wondering, am I doing this right?

Do I even, are we moving forward? I don't know, because I'm not 100 % sure what was supposed to happen. And okay, I'm gonna call out myself and other pastors that I've talked to. Part of the reason they do this is because they haven't thought through it either, right? I've asked a few pastors and I've had this question asked of me and I failed miserably. But you know, hey, you said you wanted this to start small groups. Great.

Rob Paterson (31:53)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (32:14)
And then you recruited someone who was excited to start small groups. So you handed it to them. Did you tell them what small groups meant, how it worked in the set, you know, in the whole discipleship journey within your church? Did you give them a picture of what success looked like? Like, are there goals? Are there expectations? You know, did you give them anything like that? So they knew where they were going. And they were like, well, no, I just said, start small groups. And I was going to celebrate them. And they're they're awesome. Mike.

that they don't know. Why are you not telling them what a win is? Because then they'll never know if they got it.

Rob Paterson (32:49)
Yeah, I have two things about this one, Jason. The first is that I mean this boils down to us knowing our people like you know, I have some people who are just like for them man. They just love creating things like you give them an idea they want to build it right. They want to figure it out like so if you have someone like that you can do some of this, but for most people you at least need to give them like.

Jason Allison (33:09)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (33:14)
kind of the clear structure. Here's what we want to do. Here's why. Here's what we think it's going to accomplish, like all that sort of stuff. And then if they're going to lead it, like let them have some ownership over it as well. But you know, yeah, you're right. And I think anyone who's been married a while knows this because I've done this up. Jason, I wonder if you've done this where, your spouse is like, hey, how come you didn't tell me this? And not necessarily in accusatory way, but it's like you knew this and I didn't know this. And you've apparently known this for like two months. And then

Jason Allison (33:25)
yeah.

Rob Paterson (33:43)
you know, we're trying to defend ourselves, so to say. And it's like, no, no, no. You know, I told you like three weeks ago on Tuesday, and we give the sentence, right, that we said. And then we realized when I said that sentence, here's all the things that I thought and felt in my mind and in my heart. And so obviously, communicated at all, but we never actually said the words out loud. I just, I am the chief of sinners at this one.

Jason Allison (34:00)
but didn't say.

Rob Paterson (34:10)
I say things assuming that everybody knows what's in my head and in my heart. And it's like, well, you, you know me, we've been together for so long, right? That's just not the case. Like, and I love this line. If it goes without saying, say it.

Jason Allison (34:25)
Yes. Yes. Yeah. And that's that is that will clear up unclear expectations every time. Right. All right. Well, let's bring it in for landing the last one because I don't want people to feel like we're beating up on them too much. And I agree, Rob. I was going to say these came out of my own self-reflection. So.

Rob Paterson (34:32)
Yeah.

I feel like you're beating up on me.

Jason Allison (34:49)
The last one, which goes along with the whole everything we're talking about, lack of continual support and accountability. And this is where, it kind of goes back to the abdicate idea, but I want to take that even further. If we send a person off with some objective, but then we never circle back and provide accountability to say, hey, are you making progress? What are the things that you're lacking? What are resources that you're lacking that might help you move forward in this?

Rob Paterson (34:56)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (35:17)
What what are some confusing areas? What are things that you know, where are you seeing progress? What can we celebrate? What like they they need to be able to do some course corrections in the midst of it and that only happens if you're scheduling time to circle back and to touch base. The examples I'm thinking of as I pastors I've worked with who said, you know our staff we meet you know about once a month and and we just talk about some things and and it's like.

What but you're complaining that they're not getting anything done. Well, yeah, I want to give them time to get it done Yeah, but you're not even checking in saying how's it going? Did you make any progress? You know like yes, that is more work for you, right? You have to actually bleed And that's hard. I get it, you know, it takes up time and but hey, I mean you started off the podcast saying

Rob Paterson (36:01)
Mmm.

Jason Allison (36:09)
Now with all the technology and everything, I should be able to do more. But this is one of those things where we just skip right over and say, well, they're high capacity people. We use that phrase a lot, right? They'll just get it done. Well, they're high capacity people because they have systems in their life that keep them accountable within their job, within whatever. What kind of things, systems are we putting in place that will hold even volunteers accountable?

for doing what they said they would do. And this isn't like we're gonna catch them and put them in stocks or something. It's not that kind of accountability, but it's like, hey, is there a touch every couple of weeks to say, update me, what's going on? Yeah.

Rob Paterson (36:50)
How's

it going? What do you love about this? What's your biggest challenge? How can I help you? Three questions, super easy, right? And then people feel cared and supported.

Jason Allison (36:56)
Yeah, yes. Yeah. And those three questions, say those

again. Say it again. Tell me those three questions again.

Rob Paterson (37:03)
yeah.

what do you love about this? what's your greatest challenge right now? And how can I help you?

Jason Allison (37:10)
Yeah, break those down pastors leaders like that. That is I mean, there's your staff meeting and there's your check in. It doesn't have to be a two hour steak. That's a five to 10 minute conversation on the phone if you want. know, like it doesn't have to be this big huge thing. Now there needs to be some. yeah. Good food. Because I've been to a couple of things where they provided food and quite honestly, I don't want another Chipotle spread that just.

Rob Paterson (37:13)
Hahaha

And if you provide food, people will come. Yes.

Jason Allison (37:38)
I mean, Chipotle's okay. That's the thing. If I get to choose, that's one thing. But if it's just the spread with the generic stuff, I'm like, eh, I don't need that again. I know it's cost effective, but still.

Rob Paterson (37:38)
Depends what it is from Chipotle.

Mm.

So, know, I'm thinking just like in my own mind, and I use this a lot just in my own thinking and even in my own teaching just because health and fitness has always been a kind of an up and down journey throughout my adult life. And so, you know, everybody knows the answer to these questions, right? Like, so if you want to be healthier eating vegetables once a month or every day, which one's better?

Jason Allison (38:13)
daily.

Rob Paterson (38:14)
Daily. Okay. So if you want to, if you want to have a higher level of fitness and strength, should you move lift, you know, workout, whatever, whatever your thing is, multiple times a week or is just a couple of times, you know, a month good enough, right? Like we know this, like just consistency really has a huge impact for, for us ministry types, right? Do we, should someone said, you know what? The Bible's confusing to me and it's just, I don't really know. I don't even love reading.

So, know, is it okay if I just read my Bible once every two weeks? Or should I really try to build in the discipline of reading it every day? You know, we would all say every single day, because that's what's gonna get this in your mind and in your heart and in your life. You know, should I talk to God, should I pray daily, or should I just do it whenever I'm sort of in trouble or really thankful? You know, every single day, do you only talk to your significant others, like occasionally? You shouldn't, you should talk to them all the time, right?

And so consistency matters. It builds in strength and it moves things forward. And that's exactly what this one is, right? Like if we just give something to somebody, the next time likely we're going to hear from them is when they're quitting because they're burned out. They've not felt empowered. They've not felt supported because we just dumped something on them and walked away. And I know we use, like you said, all these really wonderful words and make it sound great. But in essence,

Jason Allison (39:20)
Yes.

Rob Paterson (39:39)
That's what we've done if we're not continuing to support them and just ask, like check in with them and see what we can do.

Jason Allison (39:46)
Yeah. And that's why all of this, all these reasons, the antidote to these reasons is we need to develop a mindset of training rather than teaching. Right. We've got to have this mindset of we are constantly training people in righteousness, in good, you know, in all those things, but even in how to lead, how to accomplish something within the context of

an organization like a church, which is volunteer led, which has a spiritual, you know, aspect to it of, we doing anything to train them? Because if I just send them off and then, you know, don't check in, don't do any of that. Then I did just train them. I trained them to, also then abdicate rather than delegate when they it's their turn. Like, so you got to recognize everything you're doing is training. Are you being intentional and strategic about that?

Rob Paterson (40:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, and ultimately I think how I would say that is if that's all your training, you have trained them to fail and then you're going to be frustrated. Why don't I have better leaders? Why don't I have better people? Why are we always failing at these things that are really important that we're trying to establish? And again, as as most of these things are right, what do they do? Like it's like we're pointing a finger and there's a bunch of fingers pointing back at us because.

we have responsibility in this. I do, you do, we all do for our people, for our organizations, for our churches. And so instead of going, I disagree and I've done all these things, which is the typical response, right? Instead, if we can humble ourselves a little bit, which the scriptures talk a lot about and just say, okay, God, like I realize I probably have some blind spots and some deficiencies that if I could get better at, maybe my whole organization could improve. And so Lord,

Help me to see, and you know what, maybe in a leadership team meeting, a staff meeting, and this applies way beyond the church, have the courage and the vulnerability to say, hey, you know what, I realize that some of our issues are really, they come as the leader, they point at me because there's some things that maybe I'm not good at that I just don't see. If you could in a kind way help me to see the things that.

if I got better at or could figure out would help all of us and help the church or the business or the whatever, man, you know, that would, it's just like these 360 evaluations that Danny Parmley talked about when he was on, taken a couple of those recently, you know, just powerful gifts that might be painful at times, but man, if we can push through that pain and figure some things out, what a huge blessing.

Jason Allison (42:10)
Yeah, I agree. Well, if you have any questions about this or you want to process it a little more, feel free to reach out. We love to talk shop with anybody who wants to. We would love to hear from you. Maybe shoot us a text or email. Hit us up on social media, Instagram or Facebook or whatever. All the socials. I don't know what else there is.

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