Pastor, This Is Keeping Your Vision from Becoming Reality | Ep 36

If you want to stop white-knuckling your way through every vision cycle and start navigating the messy middle with a repeatable system, learn more about the Ready Set Grow Mastermind: https://www.readysetgrowchurch.com/mastermind

You cast the vision.
The team was fired up.
And then... it got messy.

The momentum slowed. People started asking the same questions. Frustration crept in. You weren't sure if the team was confused or just not bought in.

This is the messy middle — and every pastor hits it.

Here's the hard truth: most leaders only plan for the start and the finish. They know how to cast vision, and they know how to measure results. But no one teaches you what to do in mile 12 when you roll your ankle.

This episode breaks down the Middle Method — a proven framework built to help your team navigate the messy middle and come out stronger every single cycle.

Inside:
- Why visionary leaders almost always plan in 2D but lead in 3D — and what goes wrong because of it
- The three reactions most teams have when they hit the messy middle (and why none of them actually work)
- What cycles and cool downs are — and how they map to the natural rhythms of your church calendar
- The exact tools your team needs during a cycle: CycleRock Dashboard, 365, Weekly 3 / Daily 3, Effective Meetings, and the Ideas List
- How the cool down phase works: Heartbeats, one-on-ones, Mission Metrics audit, Growth Planning Workshop, and 365 audit
- Why cycles without cool downs lead to burnout — and cool downs without cycles lead to stagnation

The messy middle isn't something you can avoid. But it is something you can learn to lead through.

Transcript

Introduction: The Messy Middle Is Real

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friends, today's episode is going to be a little bit different. What you're about to listen to comes from our middle method curriculum, which is a core pillar of our ready set growth framework that helps pastors and church leaders navigate the messy middle. Now, you might be asking yourself, what do you mean by the messy middle? The messy middle is that frustrating space between casting a vision and then actually seeing it happen. Because here's the truth, dude. Vision is exciting, but the messy middle, that's where the real work begins. Now, we originally created this training for leaders inside of the ReadySat Grow Mastermind, but dude, we just love the way that some of these turned out so much that we wanted to share a few of these conversations with you here on the podcast as well. So if you want to go deeper on any of this stuff, you can find the link to our mastermind in the description below. But for now, let's dive into today's episode.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Welcome, my friends, and we are now gonna hit

Why Leaders Always Plan in a Straight Line

SPEAKER_02 1:00

the messy middle.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah, the messy middle. It's huge. You know, we've worked with over a hundred hundreds and hundreds of pastors over the years, and I find that there's these two traits that are deep within the bones of every visionary leader. There's vision and there's evaluation. There's vision, like I know where we need to go next. Like I feel it, I can see it, you know, I can picture it inside my head. And evaluation is I know all the handful of

What Actually Happens in the Middle

SPEAKER_00 1:26

things that are just like in my head all the time. We just need what fixes today. Yeah. It's it's the vision, I know where we need to go. An evaluation of I know what stinks today, and I know what we need to fix. And you know what's interesting is every time a visionary leader casts a new vision, they always cast it as if it's so simple. Like it's a straight line. Like I think of this drawing right here. Like, okay, this is where we're at at the start, right? And this is where we need to go. This is the end. And all we got to do is this, this, this, and this, and then we'll get there. It's so easy.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

It is so easy. In fact, that easy word is often used. Guys, it's gonna be so simple. Oh, it's so easy. This is gonna be so easy.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

It's so easy. I can't believe we haven't thought of this before. All we gotta do is this, this, and this. We're gonna get there. It's gonna be the best thing we've ever done in our whole life. And then there's the frustration that happens when it doesn't go according to plan because it's never a straight line, it's never as simple as it sounds like. It looks a lot more like this.

Planning in 2D but Leading in 3D

SPEAKER_00 2:24

We uh find this territory of confusion and frustration and reaction. And in this spot right here, we call it the messy middle. Yep. The messy middle. It's a maze. It's this frustration of like, dude, why are you frustrated with me? I'm frustrated with you. We're on the same team here. It's filled with confusion of like, okay, I thought I was very, very clear that this is where we're heading. And then a week later, people are asking me the same questions over and over again. Like, what is happening here? I think what happens is that most of us are really set up and have clear parameters and clear frameworks inside of our heads for the beginning of a journey, and we understand what the end of the journey is gonna look like. I can picture myself at the start of a marathon, and I can picture myself, you know, running through the ribbon of getting first place, but no one imagines the middle.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Well, it's hard,

The Three Reactions Pastors Have When Things Get Hard

SPEAKER_02 3:23

I think, too, what you're saying, Hunter, is that when we plan, we're planning on a piece of paper or a whiteboard and it's two dimensions. Yes. But we live in three dimensions and four dimensions and tens. So it's like once you get it out of that uh two dimensions and into reality, it gets really messy.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Well, think about like your illustration you just did on the marathon. Nobody's thinking about, well, somebody got in your way and you you hurt your ankle, or there's some, hey man, I I didn't have water, I didn't have dip, whatever it is. Yeah, how are you planning for that?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

No one is planning for rolling your ankle in mile 12. You know, and inside of this, what I found is that most people understand at the beginning, I get what I have to do. As a leader, I have to cast the vision. Yep. Right? And at the end, I'm gonna measure results. I'm gonna see how good this really was, and gosh, it's gonna be amazing, but no one plans for the messy middle. It's like, what are you really gonna do here?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah, so the the thing, Pastor, everybody who's listening to this right now, I want to ask you this. When you hit the messy middle, what system do you have? Yeah. You got a system, you got a plan. How are you doing that? How are you gonna keep the momentum? Like, how do you keep the team moving forward? Because everybody's kind of freaking out in that moment. And how are you gonna stay aligned? I mean, these are the things

You Can't Avoid It — Only Navigate It

SPEAKER_01 4:42

that I'm thinking, see, most leaders they plan how to start and they got a thought in their mind how to end. But the best leaders, they design and plan for the middle. Right. That's where you really are going to win. But here's the problem. When most people hit the middle, the messy middle, that they listen, here's the problem. You don't just slow down like the progress, you kind of react to it and panic. And it's like the emotions go crazy. So you do usually react in one of three ways. Number one, you call a whole bunch of emergency meetings. Everybody, get in here. Man, we got some problems now. We didn't know. And that doesn't really work.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Yeah, it's not like the meeting made it better. It's just that's the only thing we know how to do it. We gotta get together. We gotta get together and talk about this.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Or you start brainstorming what's something new we could do. And because you just want to get some kind of wind. You want to get some kind of progress because you feel like you hit a wall. You start chasing new stuff. Or thirdly, you just throw up your hands and go, Well, I don't know. This works out.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

I don't know. I never saw this coming. Yeah, and this isn't a doom and gloom episode. I mean, it is if you don't have a way to navigate through it. And you know what I found, guys, is that there is no way to avoid the messy middle. You can't go around it, you can't avoid it. I think the only way I've ever thought of, and the only time I've ever seen a church not have to trek through the messy middle is with churches that are okay with staying the same, exactly as they are today. Somehow you have made it through the messy middle and gotten to where you are today. You have survived and you've made it to the other side. But maybe you just got lucky and luck doesn't scale. And inside of this, you can't predictably go, oh, I got it. I know how we made it through the messy middle last time. And we can do it again when God gives us a new vision for where we need to go next. Because every time you reset the vision, you go from the ending start ending line to the starting line all over again. And you have to trek through it again. So you got to have a process, you got to have predictability. You have to know I am a Sherpa that knows how to make it through this maze, and I can lead a team through this maze uh every single time. And if God gives us a vision, I'm not gonna be a coward and coward away from the boldness that God's calling me to because I don't want to go through that messy middle again because it's hard and it's confusing and it makes our team feel like there's frustration on the team. I just want to keep the peace. I want to keep it the same. Dude, if you keep it the same, you're dwindling and you're fading. Like if God's calling you to something, you got to make sure that you take the step and make it through. And so for us, what we wanted to do because man, we wanted to do whatever God's calling us to, is we wanted to have a middle method to make it through the messy middle. And so what we did is we found uh the frameworks the hard way. Yep. We did uh kind of like a Frankenstein model, Mark, is like we got a little bit from here, we got a little bit from there, and we found what worked for us.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Well, and eventually we made it our own. Yeah. Something that was working for us. And so we're not positing something uh that is just you know a piece out of a book

The Middle Method: Cycles and Cool Downs

SPEAKER_02 7:46

or we read this somewhere. This has uh been tried and tested over and over with experience.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

It's not something we have found after, like you said, we've worked with hundreds of pastors that it didn't just work for us. It began to be a system that actually is a method that helps anybody who wants to use it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

And it's so good so that when people are presented vision, when the lead pastor or the leader is presenting vision, people can respond uh instead with, hey, we know how to navigate the messy middle, we have a framework, we have a system, instead of responding with overwhelm or fear, which happens a lot of times uh if they've been used to hitting the messy middle and just throwing them, you know, throwing their hands up and chasing things.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

And so for me, what I want to do is I want to enhance your toolkit that you already have. Yeah. I want you to think of this as Home Depot as you can do it, we can help. Uh you know how to cast a vision at the beginning, you know how to measure results at the end. Let me give you the toolkit for the middle. Yep. Yep. Let me give you the toolkit for mile 12 when you roll your ankle, right? So inside of this, here's the middle method. You can see it on the screen here. Now, the middle method is broken into two different phases. There's cycles and there's cooldowns. There's cycles and there's cooldowns. So cycles

The Cycle Toolkit: CycleRock, 365, Weekly 3 / Daily 3

SPEAKER_00 8:58

are our 90-day period of execution. It's where we know what work needs to get done and we're heads down focused on getting it accomplished. Okay. So cycles are broken down into two different things, two different questions that you need to answer. Number one is what needs to get done. Number two is how will it get done? Yeah. So we got to understand what is the work that is most important for us to work on during this time period of a cycle. Again, 90 days, right? And then how are we setting ourselves up to get that work done? Now, inside of these each each of these questions, we're not just gonna leave you hanging on like, okay, that's what you need to do. We're gonna give you the tools to help you. So when you're trying to figure out what needs to get done, I want you to think about what tools do I have in my toolbox. Okay. So these three tools are really gonna help you here. What needs to get done? What needs to get done? Okay, so what needs to get done? Um, we're we break that down into three different tools. Number one is a cycle rock dashboard. This is a central source of truth for all of the projects that we are working on that we said were most important for us to get done over the next 90 days. 365 takes that to the individual level. So if cycle rock dashboard are the top things that we need to get done as a team this upcoming 90 days, 365 is a job description for the individual of saying, here's my three goals, six responsibilities, and five team values that I am going to perform three and six. I'm gonna do these duties, right? And the five is is a behavioral, how I'm gonna approach the work and the individual level. Lastly is the weekly three, daily three. So big goals are accomplished through small steps over and over and over again. You eat the elephant one bite at a time. So we're gonna show you all three of these individual, uh, but this is how you understand what work needs to get done. Psycho walk dashboard, 365, weekly three, and daily three. Then you got to ask yourself, how is it gonna get done? Right? So we're gonna teach you how we have learned to love the meetings that we have. You wanna have seven essentials to have effective meetings, not boring meetings, not marathon meetings that last forever. And it's like, oh my gosh, not another meeting.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

So we're gonna dive into each one of these right now. Uh as you're watching this, we're gonna hit each of these and show you how to unpack and unfold each of these.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

So don't freak out right now, like you're listening to it and going, what? I don't even know what these things are. That's what this is.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

This is an overview. So we got effective meetings, how will it get done? Effective meetings and then project manager.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Yeah, most people only know how to get on the same page by being

Cool Downs Explained: Review + Preview

SPEAKER_00 11:35

in the same room. And we want to show you how to empty your brain of all the knowledge that you have and put it into a system so where we can all collaborate together. This is people that work on staff nine to five, 40 hours a week. This is people that are volunteer teams that are a part of your core team that you can't hire yet, uh, but are a big contributor. Right. If they're working in real estate and they're also on your team, how do you make sure that you're staying on the same page? This is a big unlock for teams, especially hybrid type teams that you're explaining. The last thing here is we're gonna keep an ideas list during the cycle. So any idea that's amazing that we want to do, we don't want to blow up our cycle and have whiplash by changing course midway through the plan. We want to keep the plan that we had, and then we're gonna capture all of the ideas that were amazing but aren't the right season yet, and we're gonna keep that for next cycle.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

So those are the key tools in a cycle, but then we've also got the cooldown, and it's got its own set of key tools.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

All right, so now let's go into the cooldown. Again, two questions uh and two little parts here is we're gonna review the past cycle. So, what do we need to do to review the past cycle? And then we're gonna preview the next cycle. So cooldowns are a 30-day time period between the cycles. So 90 days on, execute, heads down, focus. Cooldowns are kind of like heads up. It doesn't mean that we're going to Sonic for happy hour and no one's really doing anything. It's not a re uh uh reflection vacation time. It's a time where we are uh doing working on the business while cycles are working in the business. Right. Does that make sense? So we're doing the work that we said we were gonna do. The cooldowns are where we're reviewing how that past cycle goes and then okay, based off of what we learned, getting better every cycle. Yep. What do we need to do in the next cycle? Right. Exactly. 100%. So again, a toolkit here. Let me help you. Here's the hammer and the screwdriver and the drill, like we talked about. Reviewing the past cycle. First up, we're gonna do heartbeats. Most churches are terrible at celebrating and terrible at learning from the experiences that they had. They just check off the box, and it's just like in a normal software tech task manager, as soon as you check the box, it disappears. That's what happened in most churches. We get the work done and it disappears and we act like it never happened. We got to learn from what happened, uh, dominate and double down on the things that are working and learn from the things that aren't working. Yeah, we do that through the heartbeats. We're also gonna take it down to the individual level and do one-on-one evaluations. This isn't once a year. This is once every cooldown. This is every 90 days, we're answering the question that is the top question that every single person on your team is asking. Does my boss think I'm doing a good job? That's three times a year.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

So it makes it really difficult to uh get misaligned and stay misaligned because of the frequency of evaluating and reviewing that. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

And then we're gonna do a mission metrics audit. Mission metrics is basically saying, uh, what is the mission we're pursuing? How do we break that down into a certain set of metrics? And then we're gonna audit it, basically saying, are we moving closer to the mission by looking at these metrics? Yep. Right. Then we're gonna preview the next cycle. So after we reviewed, we're gonna preview. So we do that through our growth planning workshop, which is a full day of us guiding you through uh your whole team learning what is it that we need to do for the upcoming cycle. Out of everything that we're pursuing this year, we announced a vision Sunday, all of our annual goals. What's the most important work that we need to get done over the next 90 days? So, usually that's found in creating the cycle rocks, like we talked about, and the 365 adjustments there. So the individual level and the team level gets adjusted to where we're at today. 365 audit. So inside of this, uh, this is like, wait, I thought you just talked about that in the evaluation. Yes, but inside of the 365, our job descriptions work and because they are always adapting to the season that we're in. So everybody's 365 is going to be looked at every 90 days, every cooldown. Right. And we're gonna say, does this still match what's most important for our church in the season?

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Yeah, and in a lot of ways, you're right sizing it. Yes. So you're going, does this 365 is it right sized according to the work that we've decided God is asking us to do in this cycle?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

I think job

Cycles Without Cool Downs = Burnout

SPEAKER_00 16:05

descriptions are brilliant. It's just they have a few pieces missing that are really keeping them from being. We're gonna talk about that, right? We're gonna talk about that. But really in the 365, I would want to look at every single person and have it written on paper. If you just did these three goals, six responsibilities and did the behavioral, the team values, I would be freaking out doing a backflip. I'd be so happy if you did that.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Makes it really simple for the key leader, the visionary leader, to get uh a representation of what is being done in this organization in just a couple of minutes, man.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Okay. And the last thing here is the meetings audit. Again, for some reason, meetings become like this tradition. Like we can't eliminate this, it's the way we've always done it. Right. Meetings are a tool, it's a means to an end, right? So meetings should only exist if they're helping you get the work done that you're trying to get done. So we audit all of our meetings that are happening on a recurring basis and asking ourselves, does this still need to exist or what changes do we need to adjust?

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Yeah, this is this is very different, Scott, than the way we worked in our younger days. We were actually, we did the cycle thing, but it was like the endless cycle. It was like the zombie cycle that never ended.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

That's what I was gonna say. If you're listening right now, you need to be listening to this fact. You can't go cycle, cycle, cycle. You've got to have cycle and cooldown. You've got to have both. Listen, if you just have cycles without cooldowns, burnout is inevitable. Oh, 100%. That's where people are going, like, man, I can't keep up with all this. It just goes on and on and on. But if you have cooldowns, so that's the other side of this man, we just keep evaluating, evaluating cooldowns without cycles, stagnation. You're not gonna go anywhere. That's inevitable.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Yeah, I think the body is always a great example of how things can and should probably work in organizations. And when you think about a world-class athlete, every world-class athlete has seasons of intense execution where they are getting after the work and performing, and then they have a season of intentional rest, reflection, and redeployment of the new plan, you know, heading into the the next cycle. That's exactly what cycles and cooldowns do for us and for our organizations. And what happens is our rhythms align often with how most churches function. Most churches are going to have what I would call a fall run from you know the beginning of school leading up to Christmas. And then you're gonna have a New Year's run. It's New Year's leading up to Easter, and then you're gonna have a summer run. What are we gonna do this summer? And so what we've done is positioned in between each of these runs, we call them cycles. In between each, we've got a cooldown where we're gonna reflect and we're gonna reset leading into that next cycle.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Yeah, so in this, what you're gonna see in this calendar is cycle one is January, February, March. Then during Easter, during April, around that time, we're gonna do a cooldown. Cycle two is May, June, July. August, we're gonna have a cooldown. September, October, November is the next run, cycle three, and then we're gonna have a cooldown. When you have this rhythm of cycles and cooldowns, this is the best chance you have of navigating through the messy middle. So now what we want to do is break down every single tool in the toolkit to help you to be fully equipped to navigate the messy middle.