Pastor, This Is Why Your Team Can’t Keep Up | Ep 33

If you want to grow your church with a team that trusts the vision, stays aligned, and can execute at a high level without constant chaos or confusion, learn more about the Ready Set Grow Mastermind:
https://www.readysetgrowchurch.com

Your team probably isn’t resisting vision.
They’re resisting confusion.

In this episode, Scott, Hunter, and Mark unpack the hidden leadership pattern they call “visionary whiplash” — when pastors constantly introduce new ideas, shift priorities too quickly, and unintentionally create instability for the people trying to execute the vision.
The issue usually isn’t that your staff lacks passion, gifting, or work ethic.
It’s that they don’t know which ideas are actually becoming priorities.

This conversation covers:
- Why visionary leaders overwhelm teams
- The difference between ideas and actual vision
- How healthy churches create execution seasons
- Why timing matters more than innovation
- The power of a shared ideas list
- How to build team trust around vision

If your church feels reactive, stretched thin, or stuck in constant priority shifts, this episode will help you create clarity, alignment, and healthier execution.

Transcript

The leadership problem most pastors create

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Hello my friends and welcome to the ReadySec Grow Podcast. I've got Scott Wilson here. I've got Hunter Wilson and I'm Mark Brewer, your host. By the way, if you haven't already, please subscribe, like, and share this with your friends, family, and people that are on this ministry journey with you. We recently had a question come in from one of the pastors that we work with is hey, how do I handle the fact that my staff actually can't keep up with the pace that I'm setting? Have you ever had that happen?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yeah, but I think I think you gotta, first of all, that pastor asking that, you gotta sit down and we we we talk to him about, okay, which is this? Is this a a situation where your team needs to level up, where they can actually pull off what you're saying? Or is it a case of maybe like it was with me and my dad and us when we were having that? I remember asking my dad one time, I said, Dad, this is like the tenth thing you've asked us to do. Is this what we're doing now? And he said, Son, this is what we're doing. I say it, this is it, do it. And I said he said, But wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I do reserve the right to change my mind. Yeah, you know what? So, like it's the difference of can

What “visionary whiplash” does to your team

SPEAKER_01 1:21

my team keep up with it? Is it a level up or is it that you need to focus in?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

I think that let's go with that angle on it because I think this is what I call like the visionary whiplash. Okay. The visionary whiplash. And and what I mean by that is as a visionary leader, when ideas come to you, it is very, very inspiring, and you want to tell as many people as possible. And the whiplash comes in because it's kind of like, no, no, no, no, everybody focus here. No, no, no, everybody, focus there. And and it's this whiplash of like, hey, we could like on this angle, we're going with we could pull off probably anything that you want to do. It's just when you try to do everything, that's becomes a problem. And and the staff going too slow, I'm not even sure if it is a slowness thing as much as it is a hesitation. It's a hesitation of like, are we really gonna do this one? This is today's truth, but I I'm not sure if we're actually gonna do this or if I'm gonna be wasting my time for the stuff.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Well, I think one of the struggles too for us was discerning

The difference between ideas and vision

SPEAKER_02 2:24

discerning really the difference between not every idea is a vision and not every vision needs to be implemented now. That's the struggle for us to do that.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

The problem that you remember with me is I just kind of teased about my dad and complained about that. But the issue y'all had with me is I would have an idea and then I would go down the hall and I would just whoever was there, youth pastor, kids, pastor, anybody, and I'd just say, Hey man, I just had this idea with can I just share with let me just tell you what do you think about this? And I would say it, and I'm just sharing an idea. I thought I'm not even necessarily telling them we're doing it, but they're walking away going like, uh uh, are we doing that now? Am I supposed to start doing that? And so you guys talk to me about, hey, let's get a process where I share with y'all first.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

And I I want to talk about that, but I think there is actually an emotional side of this that's causing uh uh that the frustration of the whiplash can cause a fear of uh a disorientation or a disconnect between the lead

Why staff stop trusting shifting priorities

SPEAKER_00 3:22

pastor and the team. Let me show you this, Mark. How many people came up to you as almost like, hey, you have Pastor Scott's ear? And are we really doing this? Are we and it's almost creating like going to you and you are there's a tendency as like a buffer between you and the lead pastor. And inside of this, how many people were trying to come to you as basically like, can you talk to him? Because he just came to my office. Talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Yeah, so a lot of times people would come and say, Hey, pastor just dropped by and he said these things. Does he is does that mean we're doing this? Or hey, can you tell him, dude, I don't know if we can do this? So we had to be careful on that because I didn't want to be the surrogate leader. Yes, you're the leader. I always wanted to make sure that people understood that any skill, any any uh capacity that I had was an extension of your heart. Right. So I'm not here to protect the organization from the lead pastor. The lead pastor is the one leading this thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

So show them the phrase difference between because it's very easy for you to have gone to that and just gone like this. Don't worry, I got this. Yeah. That would have become the surrogate. Yeah. It's like, don't worry, I'll talk to him. And you could have dismissed it and then be like, wow, Mark, you're the hero. You're gonna go talk and represent us. What's the difference of basically saying, like, hey, hold up a second, hold up a second. I'm not the leader, he can do whatever he wants.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

That's right. Go ahead. Yeah, I think the main emphasis here is for people to understand you have a heart that has now been connected to people who have roles and giftings that uh extend your heart throughout the organization. So I always wanted to make sure that the pastoral staff or anybody that was nervous about, hey man, is Scott asking us to do too much or is he visioning too many things, too many ideas? Anything that I did to create buffers or help uh solve problems was an extension of your heart. You put me on that role to do that. And so I never wanted people to try to look to me to protect the organization from you because how can you protect the organization from the lead pastor? The lead pastor's called to lead the organization, and so we just always had to have those conversations to make sure that that was. So we had a different way of operating to tell me that you're not gonna recognize that.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Yeah, I basically had to tell everybody, hey, the Bible says that as a pastor, I'm a gift to you. So remember, I'm a gift, but how are we going to unrelate?

SPEAKER_02 5:54

And you always say that with a smirk, but it truly is, it really is true. Lead pastor, you are a gift to the organization. If you're a staff pastor watching this, your lead pastor is a gift. Because the lead pastor can be in the role that they are in, all of the rest of us on the team have the ability to be in the roles that we're in and not try to take the lead pastor role.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Okay, let's talk about operationally what you can do about this to make this better for not only you, but for your team. Okay, I need to workshop this one-liner, so maybe we can try to figure it out right now. This is gonna be a good one. This is a writer-downer, but I don't know if this is like very tight and concise

The system that prevents organizational chaos

SPEAKER_00 6:31

yet. It's like a comedian workshop and their stuff, all right?

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

If every day is available for you to start a new project, then you're gonna start a new project whenever you feel like it. However, if you create seasons and windows to where this is the time when we kickstart projects, and these are the times where we're executing the projects that we kick started, you have fixed the problem. So let me explain. We run on cycles and cooldowns. Cycles are 90-day execution periods, cooldowns are the 30-day windows between cycles that we review the past cycle and say, How did the last cycle go? And then what are we doing for the next cycle? Right. Okay. So what that means is we never start and kick start a project during a cycle. I like it. And if you don't do that, the only windows to start a project are during the cooldowns, which is the appropriate time that we committed to ourselves, where we're gonna talk about what are all the ideas that we've had to do it. So most churches don't operate like that. They do it, they're gonna start a project on a Tuesday at 3 p.m. whenever they feel like it, and they're gonna drop by an office and just say, hey, we're doing this thing now.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

And I think even from a world standpoint and just what we see out there in nature, it would be the stupidest thing for you to think every time you had a seed, you plant it immediately. That's dumb. Nobody thinks that way. There's not even a reality of existence that points to that. And yet, sometimes in our churches, that's how we're operating. If every day is a day that you can start a new idea, you probably will whenever you feel like it.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, but it's even more like you'll probably start one every day then. Yeah. Yeah. You're just gonna do it. I'm fine with all this that we're talking about as a lead pastor, if two things. Number one, I still can share the ideas I have, even if we're not gonna implement them right now. I gotta have a way to get that out of my head and out of my heart. So good. I'm gonna be sitting over here exploding because I have an idea. Okay. Number two is I'm okay as long as you're actually gonna pull this off. I don't like saying, hey, you know, yeah, can you give us some time on this? And then nobody ever does it. Yeah. Like when you know what I'm saying? Let's play the opposite side.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Um, most of the time as a visionary leader is your idea that you love so much that you're exploding about, you don't even like it two weeks later. Well, that's true, but I still need to say it.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Yeah, inside of it, well, especially your kind of leader, and there are leaders that were that are watching this that you actually, when you have something that somehow is connected to your heart and mind, you need to verbalize

Visionaries need systems, not more conversations

SPEAKER_02 9:09

it pretty quickly. You need to get it in a space.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

What I found with most lead pastors is the reason they have an internal desire to, and you use the word explode, the reason they're exploding is most lead pastors are disorganized. And so they use people instead of a system to keep track of their ideas.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

That's so great. I had a pastor one time, uh, I was telling him, dude, you gotta get an administrator. This is gonna change your life. He goes, What I need an administrator for, everybody's my administrator, and that's what you're talking about. Yeah, they don't have an organized uh organized system, so everybody's their administrator.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

So the reason I have to tell this person, because they're the right person that this idea is gonna be pulled off by, yeah, I need them to keep track of this idea because I'm afraid if I let this go 24 hours more, I'm gonna forget it. And so they need what I would want to make the transition to is you don't need a person, you need a system to keep track of your ideas. And we call that an ideas list. So the ideas list is incredibly, incredibly important for visionary leaders or anybody on your team that is an idea-rich person.

The power of a shared ideas list

SPEAKER_00 10:19

It's not even complex, it's not complex, it's a very simple fix. It is a shared document, a shared document. So that could be a Google Doc, that could be a Notion doc. It could be anything that is a shared document where people can, when they have their ideas, extract it from their minds and put it onto the page. Yeah. So some people like to have like the lead pastor has like a secret, their personal ideas list, and that's fine. If you have like confidential things that you don't want people to see, I think that's fine. What I encourage is that you have a team-wide shared ideas list that anybody on the team is uh allowed to input their ideas into the shared list, and then we pull it back up inside of our cooldown when we're planning for the next cycle.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

So as a lead passer, I'd probably want two lists. This is just my preference that I'd want one that would be kind of the executive level list, like my executive team, that list where I can share my ideas because sometimes I don't want other people going like, well, what happened to your idea? You had this idea. Well, I don't want to be held accountable to my idea. I just want to share my idea here. And then over here, it could be everybody on the staff can put their ideas on the city.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

In preparation for the next cycle. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

And even inside of this, um, I'm forgetting the term right now, but in software like Notion or Obsidian or Evernote, they have like their feature log that's coming and they're like promising, like, hey, in the fall, we're launching a blah, blah, blah. And people hold them accountable to the features that they're coming up with in the future. They have it on like a public site. The ideas list is not that. The ideas list is a capture log of all of our best thinking in the moment. And then when the time is relevant, we're comparing and contrasting all of the ideas and weighing them against each other compared to return on investment. Out of everything that's possible that we could work on, what is gonna give us the highest return on an investment? Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

So what you're talking about doing is you have a place where every time somebody has a vision seed, we can go put that. Then when it comes uh time for growth planning, we sift the seeds and decide what we're gonna plant.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Yeah, so what are we gonna work on for the next cycle? Well, let's look at all of the seeds that we could plant inside of it, and we're weighing it against what is our vision for the year? What are our goals that we're aspiring to, and what gives us the best shot of if we do this, we'll get that result and we're gonna plant the seeds accordingly.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

So let's just say, like, even, and this happened as a pastor all the time too, but even for us, like yesterday we had our planning meeting, yeah, and when we did it, I had something that I thought for sure this is gonna probably be the number one thing we're gonna do. Yeah. It ended up after I heard everything, I go, hmm, maybe it's a second. Because I like this one more. I think what and it wasn't my idea. That's okay. Because what but I get to make a decision as a lead pastor when I was a lead pastor to to say what we're gonna do, but it may not need to be my idea. I'm not holding so tightly to my idea. Yes. I'm just saying, here's I'm putting it in there, but if somebody else has something, I'm oh my word, that's what we're gonna do. Can you talk a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Can you talk a little bit about how over the years we've gotten even better at curating our ideas list around uh unpacking ideas and going deeper.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

So I think the beginning of it is, well, first of all, I think we need to make it a cultural. Here's how I would start with this, and then I'm gonna talk about the pro tip there, because I think that's a good call out. One is we make an ideas list. That could be a Google Doc. You could do it right after this episode. Make a Google Doc and say, hey guys, we have this thing now called an ideas list. And when it becomes time for the season, even if you have like on the 31st of May, we will decide our summer projects. It's like, great, that's great. Yep. And until then, curate all your ideas on the ideas list. Anything you have, anything you think we should be working on, add it there. Great, cool. Now, if anybody brings up an idea, what I find is that a lot of times pastors approve systems and then forget about the systems as well. So you call it out. Uh, everybody has to call each other out on it. So if we're in the middle of a meeting and it's just like, okay, that reminds me. Actually, we should be doing this, and I think we should be like, and it's like, okay, pastor, that was awesome. I'm gonna add that. That's so good. I'm gonna add that to the ideas list. It's not saying, wrong, you can't do that. Remember our rule. It's not that. It is that's so good. I'll write it down for you and I'll add it to the ideas list for you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So you just keep pointing back to the point back to the I want to be validated in my idea.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yep. It's

Why great ideas need time to mature

SPEAKER_01 15:01

important that we validate. Okay, that's a great idea. Let me write that down.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yep. And for visionary leaders with their ideas, there is a magic that happens with when you sleep on it. When you sleep on it, it's either gonna grow in intensity of like, no, no, no, this idea, this is like, this is big. This is big, it's only gonna grow in relevance and intensity and awesomeness, or it's gonna rapidly diminish when you sleep on it. It's like, oh God, that's actually stupid.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

So it's actually a safeguard, not only to script the not script the team, but it's also a safeguard to me. How many times have I thought I had a great idea? And y'all even maybe thought, and we we might have broken the rule, and then we go, like, why do we do that? We didn't think that all the way through, and then we stopped. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

You know, okay, first step is create a list, share it with the team that this is the new thing. Number three is call each other out in the middle of uh a cycle. If you're in a cycle, if we're in the execution time, we're not in a planning time.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Okay. And then phase two within that, so once you've got the document set up, you guys are setting up this cult cultural norm that ooh, that's we're gonna add that to the list.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

And the thing that's important on the call out in this is if a visionary leader doesn't know when it's time to talk about their idea, they're not gonna be if it's an indefinite period, if you haven't decided May 31st, May 31st, May 31st, that's when we're doing it. May 31st, May 31st. And it's like, okay, I can hold it for two weeks. Yeah. If it's just indefinite, it's like, let's write that on the ideas list and we'll come back to it later. Later doesn't mean anything, so I'm gonna do it now. Yeah. So later, if if later doesn't actually have a date on it, it doesn't feel real.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

And then today's that day because I feel like we've also created, and this may be downstream, but we've also created categories on our ideas list if if need be.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Yeah. So if if you have 50 ideas, you're an idea-rich culture, I would separate it of like building topics, next gen topics, uh Sunday services topics. But here's the thing, and this is where it goes into the pro to what you're talking about. Most uh visionaries have the raw idea at the beginning. Raw as in like unfiltered, unedited, like scratch, beginning thoughts, napkin thought. Does that make sense? You capture that in its first state. That's fine. Uh, I would want to write it down as in I mean six weeks ago is gonna remember what I was thinking uh in that moment. Yeah, not just like do that one idea about the services that I learned from that one place. It's like, what is it?

SPEAKER_02 17:33

So it can be a bullet, but it needs to be informative and specific enough that if I look at that or somebody else picks this list up, they know what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

If you saw something on Pinterest or Instagram, screenshot it, add that as a part of the idea. So it's like, oh yeah, I remember that call out. Or that's in reference of that, right? Then what I always try to help pastors with is just because you captured the idea, if it's growing in intensity, you have now like have like a bucket and it's like you're filling up that bucket in the meantime. So as you have more ideas, add more details to that idea in preparation for the planning meeting. So start shaping the idea. Uh, and and shaping really looks like what problem are we really trying to solve here? What is the outcome of what we're gonna do in this next cycle? Maybe it's like a six-month project and we're gonna break it down to phase one and phase two of this project. What does phase one really look like? Yeah, right. Um, who should be on this? What are like the five major moves of this project to get from here to there, right? You can start shaping it to where when you delegate this thing, you're delegating something that's fully shaped. When we're considering it.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Yeah. So, because I think what you're saying there is it's helping me to say, I want us to talk about this. I think there's really good. Well, instead of getting everybody to talk about it, that's for May 31st. Yes. Right now, I can do work on it and give energy to it if I'm feeling it's alive and this is gonna be great. Is I can be going, okay,

Stop sharing ideas… start shaping them

SPEAKER_01 18:58

how do I really feel about this? How do I see it?

SPEAKER_00 19:00

That's what I advise pastors to do when you that energy that you're feeling around it of intensity needs to go somewhere. Yeah, a lot of times their release or the output of that is sharing it. That's not what you do. With the energy that you have, instead of sharing it, you should be shaping it.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

Yeah. Okay, so let me let me go back through this. So, first thing we want to do is start. Start an ideas list. Um, then you want to share the ideas list. Uh, then you want to section the ideas list if you've got a long list, then you want to shape the ideas list. The idea. Yeah, and then you bring that to whatever growth planning. Anything else?

SPEAKER_00 19:39

That doesn't mean you do a 30-minute presentation on it. It just means like here's the idea. And kind of like a lot of times, too, is your raw idea sounds amazing, but once you start fleshing it out and shaping it, you're like, it's either gonna grow in intensity or it's gonna diminish and be like, actually, this idea is stupid. Uh, and you can do that before you waste everybody's time because you're doing the pre-work during the execution phase, especially if as a pastor you're really moving to what we teach pastors to be more and more and more in your sweet spot and doing things that only you can do. I would say part of it as a visionary leader is you are shaping your big ideas and you're bringing to the table, like when when our team comes together for a growth plan, there are everybody's coming with their perspective. And it depends on where you're at in the organization, a lot of people bring 30 pebbles ideas, which is great. And usually the higher up you are in the organization, you bring like maybe like a couple big boulders to the thing. I think visionary leaders bring these massive, big initiatives, yeah. Um, and and they don't really figure out the details. The details are figured out by the experts and their positional roles. Uh, but the pastor needs to shape that big idea, not just launch a, hey, I think we should add another campus. And it's just like, oh my gosh, that's big. And you haven't really thought this through yet. I I think something like that needs to be shaped.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

I think it's very important too. We just did this yesterday, so it's really in my mind. So I had something, I had worked, I had an idea, I worked on it, I had a presentation on it. So in the idea time, mine was a time, okay, Pastor Scott or Scott, share this. And so I shared it. So at that point, I'm sharing the idea. Yeah, I'm pitching the idea. That's my role in that point. Then I went back to my seat as a decision maker of what ideas we're gonna do. You have to hold your idea, at least me as the lead uh as a as the leader. If I have an idea, I don't want to be this is what we're doing. Thank y'all for y'all silly little ideas, but this is what we're doing. I've already decided. No, I need to come in and say, and I've done my very best on this. And as far as I'm seeing it right now, this is a really big deal.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

What's about to happen is people. People are bringing their perspective for you to consider as a leader. We're not going to a vote. No. We're not going into a vote of saying, who likes Scott's idea? Raise your hand. No. It is basically, okay, thank you for sharing that. Whoever it is. Yeah. Now everybody's invited to that table. If you're invited to that growth planning table of planning out the next cycle, you're invited to share your full perspective. Right. I might I might say thank you for that. Totally see that of the four reasons why you don't think we should do that. But based off of these other people's opinions and my opinion of the six reasons why we should do that, we are going to go with it. It doesn't mean I'm going to listen to it.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

You're talking about as a lead pastor. As a lead pastor, I'm making the decision what we're doing. But I also want to talk to the lead pastor right now that you understand I get to, you're getting to make the decision, but I also am not saying that was my idea, so we're doing my idea. I'm sitting there going, no, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's not one to one. My idea didn't even what we did yesterday is my idea wasn't the whole of it. It was just no, it needs to be this part. And I said, You're right. Okay, totally makes sense. This is the biggest part we need to take on that. And what you shared, that's what we need to do on here.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Especially as you're starting to cultivate a team of experts and not just being the idea guy, like the capital T, like I'm the idea guy. And you're starting to build a team of idea guys. Yeah, right. Uh, you're gonna start wanting to get the perspective of if we implemented this, what are the repercussions? And because of those repercussions, I don't think it's worth the cost to do that initiative. Uh, it doesn't mean it's invalidated as it's a bad idea. It's a good idea, but it comes with costs that we're not willing to take on in this next cycle. So we're gonna diminish the idea down. That's actually what we did yesterday is let's take the root of the idea

Why teams love innovation with good timing

SPEAKER_00 23:48

and you go execute that, but we're not gonna make it a team-wide thing because of these repercussions. It's gonna be a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Okay, so let's let's land this uh with our original premise is hey, I'm a pastor and I'm kind of worried that my staff cannot keep up with the pace uh vision and ideas that that I'm bringing to the table. How do I handle that? We've talked about the ideas list. Closing thoughts on this.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yeah, I would say I'm not sure if it's they're slow in executing as much as you're facing a hesitancy to commit. And their hesitancy to commit is because probably you launch an initiative whenever you feel like it instead of having seasons of this is an execution time and this is a planning time. If you make that shift of here's the date when we're gonna plan the next season's work, and everything else is gathering up the best ideas, that's when people are gonna love your ideas. Everybody wants to be a part of an innovative organization. They just don't like your innovation and bad timing.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

I like it. He just talked to the uh lead pastor on that side. Now I'll talk to the driver or the people who are doing that. So as long as my ideas have a place to go that is valued, as long as I have a timing that I understand we're all playing by the same system, that it is going to have a chance to be here, and we're gonna all work together to see it executed well. As long as I can trust, I have you guys are validating what I'm saying, I have a place to put it. We are gonna consider it and and I can know we're gonna execute, and I get to make the decision in the end. I like it.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Love it. All right, thank you for joining us here today on the Ray Set Grow Podcast, and we'll see you in the next episode.