How Technology is Changing the Way We Express Our Faith with Chestly Lunday

The Digital Reformation: How Technology is Changing the Way We Express Our Faith with Chestly Lunday – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9jxOKQpIjI

Transcript:
(00:00) and so the model that we have is built for pre-literate or a generation that was agrarian and so they would walk or ride a horse into town spend all day with people and an hour or two out of that day they would actually listen to the words of scripture that they could not read themselves yeah and so you’d have these these moments where they could actually like oh I gotta trap this because this information is now um you know this information is it’s the words escaping me but it’s like it’s it’s
(00:38) really heartfelt and dear and it’s valuable and we have devalued we’ve devalued information because of because of the fact that we can get it as a commodity they could not and so that model was built for that that time in history and it was beautiful and it was amazing and it was exactly what they needed for the time that they lived in the problem is the model hasn’t shifted in 1700 years and it hasn’t needed to I don’t think until digital technology really connected all of us so it was the
(01:10) internet and email and organization where now we’re commoditizing you know information so we could watch somebody’s video but what really changed was the ability to connect like you and I are doing right now that changed the game for churches hello everyone and welcome to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host Adam Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my
(01:46) guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle Challenge and most importantly despite all of it how they Rose above it to achieve incredible results so if you’re ready to rise up let’s get started hey everyone welcome to flow over fear I’m glad you made it today thanks for joining us I have a great guest today uh you know there are a lot of ways that fear can show up in our lives and communities and inclusive of that of course is certain uncertainty uh lack of understanding you know amongst each
(02:20) other and also that it kind of exists in our general generational gaps that may exist within our culture and uh that’s where my guest comes in today Chesley Lunde is a speaker a consultant on issues of generational change in churches and other organizations he’s given over 1 000 presentations in seven countries reaching over a hundred thousand people and has led a team to develop a groundbreaking new study on emerging generational Trends within our institutions at the intersection of technology and Faith as a military
(02:53) veteran entrepreneur and Pastor Chesley has been developing leaders for 15 years and his thought leadership has been featured in start Church the Christian Post and Outreach magazine Chesley is on The Cutting Edge of emerging generational Trends in churches and businesses and helps these organizations bring Vision Innovation and Clarity to Growing uncertainty in our world thanks for joining us man I appreciate you being here yeah not a problem I always get a kick when uh we talk about a thousand presentations I’m a pastor so I
(03:27) speak twice a week anyways so it’s just funny and I have so many friends that make fun of me really a thousand Keynotes buddy yeah why not hey it counts man anytime you’re able to get up there on stage right right I used to say a thousand unique because that’s harder than just saying just saying the same thing over and over and over again right right right yeah and that and that’s true I mean yeah keynote speaker develops one speech they get referred they keep going up there you have to work on that every single week something
(03:55) new something inspiring there’s something to that there’s a lot there I mean I think that needs to be celebrated so yeah we’re really good at BS what am I doing talking about this I don’t know how to raise kids right well let’s let’s kind of dig in let’s start there I think that’s a good good place to start it I I’d love to know how you how you got into that role uh of being a pastor what what brought your heart into that and and how did you get there oh geez being a pastor uh so I’m fifth
(04:31) generation pastor and I ran away from it as far as I could because um growing up as a PK was not an easy ride for me ended up um my dad was what we call bifocational meaning um you have two jobs whether you want one or not because Church doesn’t pay the bills well it was so bad at one point we ended up homeless uh for a few months in a hotel so um yeah and dad has kind of stuck with me the whole economic struggle of being a pastor um is not fun and so you know I try to make money in other different areas just
(05:09) because I don’t ever want to be homeless or broke that’s where my fear lies right and um yeah so I over that time I just fell in love with the idea of inspiring people and helping them transform their lives and I think that is deeply spiritual and trying to figure out how to innovate and help people do that in a digital age um you know so I did that I’ve been in past I’ve been a pastor for 15 years um just uh the the iterations of what pastoring looks like has changed a lot specifically with digital technology and
(05:47) realized really quickly like the church is going through the third biggest shift it’s ever had in its entire existence we’re talking 2 000 years wow so you have uh Constantine where Christianity was illegal up to Constantine um and he legalized it and they were able to come out of hiding and begin to uh really put their mark on uh the world what we call Christendom started because Constantine allowed them to not be prosecuted killed or uh or tortured for their faith and so they began to change the world by creating these towns around
(06:24) the focal point of uh their faith and and it it was amazing it for the most part and you know then it then it went and you did what everything does and it declines and it gets uh you know it gets a little corrupted or a lot corrupted and then over time uh there was this next shift which happened to coincide with with some technology uh a technological innovation called the printing press and a huge political dissenting uh sector of the population that was having a hard time with the Catholic Church um with their corruption and and I say
(07:03) corruption lightly because I know I’ve got a lot of friends that are Catholics so this is a still for whatever reason we’ve we were not around but it’s still a sticking point for all of us sure too soon too soon right yeah uh Protestants or cold Protestants because they were protesting the uh Catholic church and the way they asked uh well they asked asked in quotation marks uh you to give money so that your dead relatives could go to heaven and um and then they would use certain things called indulgences uh for you
(07:36) know the dead relatives or your own sins so that you wouldn’t get hit and go to purgatory and so there was a lot of corruption back then for uh Church power being used for state power and that sort of gain and Martin Luther there was a lot of guys that came before Martin Luther but the the difference between him and everybody else is he had the idea of using the printing press to get out his message where everybody else was talking and because they were so geographically centered uh without a way to disseminate the message to where the
(08:08) masses would understand that the Catholic church was able to pick off and shut down those voices before Martin Luther by the time Martin Luther’s voice got to the Catholic church for it to be an issue the 95 Theses that he quote unquote pounded on the wall I don’t know if that’s actually the case or not but that was disseminated in pamphlet form throughout the entire region of Germany to where they weren’t just dealing with one Martin Luther they were now dealing with an entire nation of Protestants not
(08:39) that they were trying to be anything different than the Catholic Church they were just asking the Catholic Church to change the reform itself instead they kicked Martin Luther and the rest of his guys to the curb and they had to make a compromise and said hey don’t kill us let’s all go against the Baptists oh people would hate man yeah but uh yeah so that was the second biggest shift in church history was uh and it was because of information wasn’t allowed to have access and what Martin Luther did there was uh he created in
(09:13) one page and um he disseminated it into German language up until that time everything was written mostly in Latin nobody in Europe could read it only the high Elite could and he brought down access to the common man that is what Innovation is this bringing down access to power to innovate to tools to people that normally couldn’t have it and so he did that and he used that idea to spread his idea and now we’re in what I call the third iteration which is the digital Reformation if you will well that’s
(09:52) interesting and I I think the the idea that each of those revolutions were yes brought on by or facilitated by some technological change uh obviously the first one was was an Empire you know driven but yeah but also also driven by a person too it sounds like you know okay so somebody used that tool of technology to drive that home or some kind of power on that front yeah who is today’s is so with this new technological technological Revolution who is today’s Martin Luther is there a beautiful question beautiful question
(10:26) um this is different than any other shift that we’ve had um leaders are made after the fact I always believe that they’re not usually like Martin Luther didn’t wake up one day and go I’m gonna lead this revolution right now that’s not what happened he probably even died and didn’t realize his Mark and impact on History um but this is fundamentally different than the other two shifts because it doesn’t deal with um it doesn’t deal with the struct the hierarchical structure which is what
(10:57) Constantine did and it doesn’t deal with the theological structure which is what uh Martin Luther’s did this actually um deals with the uh practical structure how we experience our faith um it was built in such a way the model of church hasn’t changed in 1700 years which is come around a building Listen to Somebody talk about scripture we get all you know up in arms about listening to somebody spout off his opinion about a book we don’t know of is actually right or not uh from a stage but the
(11:30) reality is these people lived in a pre-literate time and so the model that we have is built for pre-literate or a generation that was agrarian and so they would walk or ride a horse into town spend all day with people and an hour or two out of that day they would actually listen to the words of scripture that they could not read themselves yeah and so you’d have these these moments where they could actually like oh I gotta trap this because this information is now um you know this information is it’s
(12:05) I don’t I don’t trying to the word’s escaping me but it’s like it’s it’s really heartfelt and dear and it’s valuable and we have devalued we’ve devalued information because of because of the fact that we can get it as a commodity they could not and so that model was built for that that time in history and it was beautiful and it was amazing and it was exactly what they needed for the time that they lived in the problem is the model hasn’t shifted in 1700 years and it hasn’t needed to I
(12:38) don’t think until digital technology really connected all of us so it was the internet and email and organization where now we’re commoditizing you know information so we could watch somebody’s video but what really changed was the ability to connect like you and I are doing right now that changed the game for churches because you could get information somewhere else but you couldn’t connect to anybody else anywhere else and when social media came on on board with platforms and connections and social media in its
(13:11) first stage not in its second stage um it really changed the game for how we connect with each other you and I are able to do this why do my I can for the first time in my life I can curate my own network of relationships that’s amazing yeah yeah you know and there are some pros and cons to that with the Way digital uh reforms the brain and I I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as some people like to make it out to be I don’t think it’s nearly as good as some people like to make it out to me
(13:42) but it really changed the game about how we express our faith how we practice it on our day-to-day what the role of the building and the one hour a week event does for us and so this net this third iteration is going to change the way we experience Faith which is when I’m saying that if you are not a faith you’re you’re not somebody that follows Faith or not a church leader that doesn’t mean a lot to you what I just said to people that are religious and I just like I might as well have been Martin Luther and shoved something up
(14:14) against the door because that is unsettling the way we experience and practice our faith will change in the next 15 to 20 years because of digital technology yeah and this this touch is a very very sensual point and it kind of gets to that fear element of where we’re experiencing this fear because you mentioned something before we jumped on this call which was you know we always have this fear of change which is totally which is absolutely true and ultimately it’s our ability to embrace that change in the right way
(14:44) that that can lead to uh an abundant life or a better life I think one of the you know some of the fears that I see is I I mean that immediately pop up in my mind when you say you know that this that this digital technology is making it more accessible more available it’s exciting because certainly it makes it easier for people to accept access it but what um what would you say to the the fact that like when you look at how information is processed nowadays I mean to some extent if you have a building with a church where you’re delivering a
(15:16) message right that that there’s there you have to bring some some sort of uh credibility to it in in some way right how do we how do we assure The credibility of quote unquote the message when it’s distributed across so many different platforms and and disseminated so quickly throughout our uh Tech to throughout our uh technological infrastructure if that’s the thing yeah um I’m gonna try to answer that we’ll see if I do a good job [Laughter] um I think the message is credible in and of itself that has lasted for as
(15:52) long as it has so I don’t think the message is the issue the methods by which we use are and um what we tend to do and I say this knowing that our interpretation of scripture differs based on our world view right but at the Crux of faith is this idea that God and man can connect in a Divine relationship that can lead to transformation fulfillment and life it’s not just about an afterlife it’s about purpose for our life here and now and um whether you’re an atheist or an agnostic we’re all looking for some sort
(16:32) of purpose something that makes it feel like we’re you know today is worth getting up for we’re working as hard as I am for and uh whether that is humanism for somebody that is uh humanism becomes the place of a Divine being in any other sort of Faith tradition and so um I think everybody’s looking for that type of stuff um so credibility the message of transformation and that there’s vehicles for transformation that in and of itself is credible that’s why you and I do what we do at the end of
(17:08) the day Adam you’re basically a preacher too [Music] I’m sorry to bust your bubble you know I think I think that’s not a problem I think what ends up happening is we realize you know there are these times in history and they don’t come around all the time like I said the third biggest shift in Christianity and I think religious history you know is this moment but this is disruptive for everybody we’re right we’re grappling with the idea that AI like there’s this new list of people that Elon Musk who funded chat GPT is
(17:43) saying hey wait we should not uh we shouldn’t continue to work on uh on AI we should ban it for about six months till we figure out the ethics behind it yeah I’m like um you know what somebody’s dealing with something in the garage that’s going to change everything else I we’re living in such a disruptive time that there’s these moments in history that we have to be uh we just have to be very aware that we’re not living in a normal uh normal everyday Society this moment that we just happen
(18:13) to be put on this Earth for is uh ripe for Innovation and um we are either going to be disrupted or disruptive we really don’t get a choice in between the two maybe you can maybe you can just be uh I can’t I’m I’m ambitious so I want to move forward with progress right but the reality is for most of us we’re living in a society that’s going to force us to be Innovative whether we like it or not yeah just as somebody that had to learn how to watch TV with Blu-ray and then streaming but they
(18:44) really love their VCR you know oh yeah what is this remote thing so it forced us to be Innovative it forced us to progress and I feel like we are in a generation now with Gen Z and Alpha um that they are the first purely digital generation they process the world differently than people over 40 do um they see and experience the world differently than we do because of how they process the world and if we don’t do the jobs as As Leaders to understand and empathize with where they’re at then we’re not going to do a good job of
(19:25) leading them which requires change and it for those of us that are caught in the middle As Leaders right now it requires us to be a bridge from the old to the new without stalling progress and that’s where change comes in and everybody’s afraid of change and the leader most of all because they know what it means to be elite leading through change it’s not easy it’s definitely not yeah and that’s why this is such a a good topic to cover when it comes to fear because it doesn’t just exist in a tur in a church that happens
(19:54) to be where you’re you’re you know you’re you’re conducting these studies and and incorporating these things it’s happening there and it’s an important transformation but it’s also happening in business we have we’re sending people home we’re having these arguments or these uh these conversations about well are people productive when they’re working from home are they you know or do we need to bring them into the office I think Elon Musk the answer is yes people are productive
(20:19) when they work at home you just don’t like the lack of control that’s absolutely right now I’m 100 with you on that and uh and you know I’ll frankly say I dealt with that generation gap in my own company when we uh you know we had to send people home for coven but it worked and it ABS you know it absolutely worked and for the people who were younger who could adapt to that the people that you’re talking about in the younger Generations uh they they uh they were the more productive people and the
(20:45) people that were in the older Generations that were willing to adapt performed well in that front I think offering the options there was was great but uh and you had mentioned something with regard to AI that I think was was pretty powerful because that’s I think the next iteration of this change it feels like um we have teachers I have teacher friends that that have talked about well you know people writing essays on this stuff and wish yeah I was in high school right now man I to be the smartest kid ever it’d be amazing yeah I’m gonna be
(21:16) yeah they’re talking about like you know using catch EBT and I can understand the argument of like well we don’t want them to to use that in the same way we didn’t want to use just Wikipedia or or before the encyclopedia right but or or plagiarize but yeah but here’s your your sorry I don’t mean this is indicative of the time we live in it’s disruptive our model for education is broken it doesn’t work anymore it’s built for a world that is about accumulating knowledge we don’t
(21:45) need to accumulate knowledge we need to discern the knowledge we do have and that’s the issue so we’re looking at education as ripe for disruption we’re looking at business is right for disruption politics is right for disruption people don’t understand blockchain because all they think about is Bitcoin but blockchain gives us the ability to have Smart contracts which will end up um helping us and there there are flaws and problems with everything we choose we just choose our problems but the
(22:13) reality is what blockchain will be able to do in the future is to rid us of politicians who say one thing and do absolutely another for their own self-interest so they win the next election where smart contracts can be the new uh litmus test for uh for you know Administration and it won’t be politics anymore it’ll be it’ll be Community Administration and so we’re going to start seeing um and I’m some people are going to think this is dystopian I don’t know uh the Futures already here is just unequally
(22:44) distributed there will be a moment where somebody says you know what we don’t need this government anymore we actually can do it better with AI and blockchain well so I think governments are like that I think you look at uh education that’s like that faith is going through it business and commerce are going through it we’re all going through it right now because we created something that has massive potential that we haven’t even scratched yet well I’m already saying please and thank you to
(23:10) Alexa in advance of that Singularity so that you know just when they take over I could tell them I was polite but yeah so yeah I mean and so this is so kind of getting back to the generational Gap thing you’ve done it you’ve done an important study on this that that’s yeah and can you first kind of get into just describing the different Generations that that are out there and you know maybe what they what they value at this time would that be something you can get into yeah I think so 57 and older are
(23:40) boomers and then after that you’re looking at 76 and 77 and above are what we call the silent generation some of them around and we have still a few of the greatest Generation Um my study did not hit Boomers or above and the reason why is because Boomers we know everything we need to know about how they operate in the faith world and we already knew what their answers were going to be before because we just have a lot of study on them right what we don’t know is younger Generations so what we decided to do in our study is do
(24:13) Gen X which is 56 to 44. Millennials which are 43 to 27 and uh gen Z which we were able to go all the way down to 13 uh right now so 26 to 13 in gen Z which is not easy to do from a valid statistical uh study like we did just because 13 to 18 year olds are still in school and it’s harder to get to them because they’re minors but we really wanted to take a picture of what does the nation look like as far as faith is concerned and where is it headed and how are they going to experience so this is not a quote even
(24:51) though I’m a pastor this is not a Christian study this is a sample of the United States as a whole and it’s Jews Islam it’s uh Buddhists it’s uh it’s Christian obviously we live in a the United States so it’s predominantly Christian sure and there was people that didn’t even have a religion that said no we don’t we’re agnostic or atheist and so we looked at but you know we wanted to to hear from them what they thought was uh what was technology how is that going to play into Faith what is Faith gonna
(25:25) look like in the future and even started talking about leadership what does leadership and Faith look like we’ve had at least in the Protestant uh Evangelical realm and I use that word non-politically um the that church sector that Faith sector has been inundated with a lot of sex scandals and a lot of impropriety over the last 10 years and um we’re seeing a massive you know reconfiguration of leadership because of that and so we wanted to ask what does leadership look like in the future of Faith as well so we we did all that
(26:00) study and we’re we’re getting ready to do another one and I’m not even we’re not even going to do Gen X because when we did the study we realized Gen X look so much more like Boomers than they did like Millennials wow don’t tell Gen X that I know they didn’t like that right well that’s it that’s fascinating yeah so um so you’ve got a broad spectrum of people in this study uh as far as different Faith backgrounds and different different regions of the of the United States and obviously a good
(26:30) representation of of gender um and so what did you find what what what was yeah what were the important findings well the future of faith is Omni channel it’s less hierarchical and it’s relational mm-hmm and uh I think if you’re a business leader you’re starting to see the less hierarchical and you’re starting to see maybe a a desire to be more relational or at least be honest about the about the type of relationship you do have okay so so yeah I want to dig into each of those uh uh to kind of
(27:04) get some perspective on what they mean like what is what does omni Channel mean how do how does that show yeah so omnichannel is a technological term um that means being able to connect with you via any medium I want to at any time I want to however I want to and so what it means is every channel that for means of communication from the organization to the person so as a leader of an organization when I look at should we be doing email should we be doing social media should we be on Which social media platform
(27:42) should we be on um should we be on text should we communicate via YouTube like the answer is yes you know and the reason why is because people want to interact with you the way they want to interact with you which puts the on us on the organization to really think through well how can we do that best to serve them and not kill ourselves in the process yeah you know because there’s a lot of dilution that can happen because of so many uh areas so many platforms you can get on and our friend Roy Vaden has a really good way
(28:13) to handle that so if you want to learn how to do that brand builders group is a great place to to learn that stuff um but uh I think the church in general and in businesses we’re gonna have to learn how to interact with people the way they want to interact with us yeah so we have to come to them on the channel that they want and um and and and that that makes sense and when on the receiving end is is there how does you know does the idea of having more uh access or more more points of contact does that increase the anxiety people
(28:52) might feel over that subject or is it is I mean just the amount of stimulus speaking yeah absolutely yeah I just got done talking to a guy he he’s what we would call a neuro Theologian oh so he does brain science and Theology and mixes them together and what they’re talking about is um how it’s really affecting faith I just got off that conversation with him his name is Jim Wilder and um man he we’re so inundated with technology and so many different modes that there he was talking to some people in South
(29:28) Korea and the government what they’re realizing is that people in South Korea who has way more screen time than we have actually yeah that there’s younger people are starting to uh have signs of dementia quicker oh really oh wow yeah the reason why is because you’re getting you’re just too much information in all it like our brains can only handle so much because it’s a computer and so we have to think through intentional communication with people and then help them from my perspective as somebody
(30:01) that does receive information I begin to look at what channels do I want to receive information by which one which ones are the best for me and then those are the only ones that I do I hate social media yeah somebody that deals with digital technology I cannot stand social media media so I’ll find different ways of dealing you know communicating with people I love that that’s that’s really important to hear because I think as we’re as we’re going through this study and we’re talking about how people want to receive
(30:30) whatever message they’re they’re receiving whether it be Faith message or or from their leaders in business or or news or whatever it may be I think there’s a sense that that the younger Generations just want to get it from every direction and that’s not true yeah yeah so um yeah so I think that and coming from someone who can identify who’s right on the border of of Gen X and Millennial so I get to choose which is nice because when somebody’s picking on Millennials yeah yeah those stupid Millennials right I think
(31:02) everybody points at the Millennials and goes you’re ridiculous of course yeah and and everybody’s mind Millennials are still 20 years old yes they are yes they are even though I’m 36 the oldest of us is 43 so right um yeah it’s and even Jin’s ears now like they’re nobody thinks of gen Z they still think of millennium yeah here’s what I here was what I would say about that I um as somebody that understands we need to reach people one of the things we found in our study which was interesting is
(31:34) um when to engage on specific platforms like this is specifically but for Faith but I think it’s more of a marketing funnel if you will yeah like the type of communication platforms to use at specific moments in the marketing Journey when they’re curious YouTube is the best place to go because they’re going to look it’s a search engine it is more informational at play um social media is the next step after that it’s email and text you know so using the channels and then from there you know once you get down
(32:10) and they’re in your community then you want a asynchronous digital community that is not social media it’s a private digital Community with an LMS attached yeah you know so I think looking at the stages of buy-in for where they’re at and and the goods and services and the education that you’re providing each of those matter based off of where they’re at in their buy-in journey and where’s their product with your guys’s products so I think that’s really cool I think it’s something that people haven’t
(32:40) really seen a lot of but the data really showed like hey at this point in the journey this is the one thing we like the most uh Believe It or Not websites are still the most important digital asset you can have that’s incredible yeah and so I think and this is for again this is for the faith community but I think there’s so much more overlap as a business leader because I am a business leader I own my own company as well I’m not just a pretty face that only likes to spout off my opinion about the Bible
(33:09) um I actually have to go to work every day I uh you know we remodel kitchens so I have to understand marketing I have to understand a lot of those uh those digital tools now that you know 20 years ago you didn’t have to shoot when I was 15 years ago you didn’t even have to do it 10 years ago you really didn’t have to do it as as much as you have to today so I think those are some really cool overlapping pieces that we found that work for Faith but will also work for the business World gotcha so yeah so
(33:37) Omni channel that that that helps with that the ad context there and you’re saying less hierarchical hierarchical easy for me to say yeah that’s hierarchical yeah hierarchical Porky Pig That’s all folks yeah if you’re listening to this at two times good luck saying that three times yes um so uh you know what so how does that show up what does that look like on on um yeah I think this is uh so when we talked about leadership with the with and this is every generation this just wasn’t just gen Z this was Gen X
(34:14) Millennials gen Z 56 57 all the way down to 13 years old and the reality that we found is um what people want today is an empathetic honest and candid listening leader with compassion what they said they want at least of was strategic able to communicate a vision clearly results oriented oh wow okay if you’re a leader and you hear that you’re going what the yeah that’s what I was just saying yeah you know uh and what it is is it’s not that they don’t want that stuff yeah that’s what makes a good leader right we know that
(34:59) as Leaders you need to be able to clearly Define where you’re headed you you need to be a strategic leader you need to be somebody that is results oriented because if you’re not people don’t follow people don’t go with you what they’re saying I believe as I’m looking and trying to analyze the data as a practitioner and not just a researcher is um I’m I’m seeing this big backlash against narcissism ah and they don’t want somebody that’s a liar they don’t want somebody that’s all
(35:35) about themselves and doesn’t actually empathize with the plight of the people that are following them and this is true in politics and business and in faith they want somebody that will be honest and tell them when when things aren’t doing very well go guys things aren’t doing very well or hey you know I messed up in this area and be willing to take the Flack for what messing up I’m not saying people are wonderful people aren’t by and large in big groups wonderful they’re mobs right you know but at the same time
(36:04) um what what matters is a leader that is centered and knows who they are and not trying to put on a face and a mask for everybody else because they have to be liked at all costs or they have to win at all cost and in the process demeaning and marginalizing other groups of people to lead I think that’s what’s really happening yeah that’s what they’re doing is they’re saying hey um we need less hierarchy to separate the person at the top from the people at the bottom because and I love this as a
(36:38) consultant what I usually tell leaders as a business consultant uh that are CEOs is like the only reason you have me here is because you don’t have the humility to listen at the people at the bottom yeah if you did you would change and you wouldn’t need me because they have the answers of all the problems that you’re dealing with on the ground floor and um what I what I see is that the less hierarchy is I need to be allowed to move I need to be allowed to be creative you have a structure to help institutionalize and help us with
(37:09) economics but I as somebody low on the totem pole and down at the bottom are really the engine that makes this work and if you lose enough of us at the bottom you’re not going to have anything left at the top yeah and so there needs to be a mutual respect there and for businesses this may mean not a family you know this may mean being very honest with I know you’re not going to be here in five years we want to help you with your career while you’re here we want to have an alliance with you there may be a
(37:40) point where we don’t have any spaces above the rung of the ladder you’re on and at that point we need to be honest with you and us that you’re gonna leave and maybe if we create that sort of honesty and and Candor in our relationship then we can have a great relationship whether you work for us or not and you might want to come back and work for us in the future yeah I think the same thing is important in churches and in faith communities as well why does one guy get to have all the opinions about scripture everybody can
(38:11) read right everybody has a brain right you know why can’t we have a community of thought leaders why can’t Church staff facilitate that conversation and not let it be a monologue do we have to do things the way we did them before and I think that the less hierarchical is that really that um that desire to say let’s try new things yeah let’s not be constrained by bureaucracy let’s not have distance between me and a leader who thinks that they’re all that and a bag of chips yeah and that there’s
(38:44) a and there is a big shift there I mean you’re looking at it at Old School kind of companies and I don’t know how this operates in in churches though I’ve I’ve been in uh uh leadership roles in some Churches in the past that have been around for a while and I certainly see the hierarchy there because they were older School Boomer churches but uh but within our organization that that previous model was really an apprenticeship model which doesn’t work anymore because the time it takes to have apprenticeship is you know by that
(39:15) time somebody might move on so you really have to have that that you know jump in and dive in and put a lot of trust in there and organize and uh and level out that hierarchy I’m curious to know how how do we how do we articulate the boundaries then so if you have you know everybody kind of has that voice where do the boundaries exist as far as what what the when we’re trying to practice core values who are bringing in the organization how does that look I was going to say so I don’t call them core values I call them critical
(39:46) behaviors if you’re not clear about the critical behaviors this is how you must act for you to be rewarded or punished here right so uh I think there it’s more than core values it’s more than saying we have integrity well what the heck does integrity look like because what you might think Integrity is and what I might think Integrity is are two very different things so we need to have clear language that’s why I call them critical Behavior so it’s like here’s the critical behavior and here’s the
(40:12) definition and here’s an example of how this works so I think that’s important that’s I think the next thing is paint your vision very clearly where are you headed not this pithy one statement vision statement that tells you nothing about your business and I want to know where you’re headed in the next three years I want to know what you’re trying to create I want you to have a point of view because I don’t want to get into it and then you change directions and now I’m trying to figure out if I fit or not I
(40:42) want to know whether or not I fit now so that way for the next three years at least I’m here with you on that journey and when things shift if things shift then you and I can have a new conversation because when things shift it’s now a new agreement and I think what I think most uh and I I’m at fault for this too as an employer um we shift quickly at the top because we see things coming but when we don’t communicate downline effectively and make it very clear the agreement that they had with you changes and we take
(41:15) advantage of that we we don’t believe that they should be feeling a specific way they’re feeling because if they knew what I knew then they would be okay with it well the truth is they would know what you know if they were sitting in your seat so you’ve got to do the respectful thing of sharing this with them and then letting them make it decision it there if you do that then you’re sent you’re giving respect to these people allowing them to make a decision whether or not they’re there
(41:42) and not holding them hostage or manipulating them emotionally saying you owe it to an organization that would fire your butt and whenever they needed to if they needed to hit the bottom line numbers in a bad economy people know this you know and so I think becoming more honest and we’re seeing this in you know in uh in Facebook and meta like Instagram’s doing it Google’s doing it they they fired like all the big fan companies have fired 150 000 people right and they did it all at once they said you’re a commodity we only need you
(42:18) when we need you we don’t need you when we don’t need you and we’re not going to treat you as human beings and I think people just aren’t they’re not you’re gonna see a massive backlash to that yeah we you will always do when leaders act like they’re God’s gift to men and are narcissistic there is always a backlash to that because the people at the bottom serve the top and that’s not the way it should be it should be the people at the top serves the bottom yeah of absolutely I love that love that
(42:50) last Point um and and all of it uh the people no this is great no um yeah and and a lot of this history yeah yeah yeah yeah no I I was just saying that the that this you know that history kind of repeats itself on this front too because yeah we saw this in the audio industry when people were laid off and you know jobs were sent abroad and now we’re seeing again with massive layoffs where where now that the same jobs that we said were taking over the previous jobs you know technology jobs are are now becoming commoditized and then we’re
(43:27) moving in a different direction we’re seeing things like quiet quitting and and uh and people more people going off and doing their own being solopreneurs or entrepreneurs or or Freelancers and that that kind of thing so I think that brings it into the last uh section you know for Faith it was like the future of faith is relational yeah and the truth is I think humanity is craving relationships as we’ve had more digital technology we become more isolated and we don’t know how to build community anymore we don’t know how to relate with
(44:01) each other anymore half of us getting anxiety when we’re in a crowd more than three people you know and I think the reason why is because we don’t understand how to build the skills of relationship and yet we’re feeling like the need for it that we don’t we don’t know how to quantify it we just know we just want to be with our friends yeah and um I think when you look at when you look at the data and look at where things are headed in business and in faith what you’re seeing is this uh
(44:31) desire to say hey I want psychological safety with the people around me whether it’s at work whether it’s in my family I want to be able to have the real conversations I don’t I don’t want to sit here and say I I’m thinking this or I have this belief and then realize that the moment I say it I’m now a pariah in these places and the truth is we got to get better at not talking it out but just empathizing it out you know allowing you to have your world view and allowing me to have mine and and caring
(45:01) for each other as human beings you know at the beginning and I think I think you’re seeing a lot of a need for that without the skills to be able to pull that off I think that’s where faith when done right has a lot of opportunity to grow yeah yeah and you’re just dictating whether you believe the right thing or not that’s that’s religion that’s not Faith yeah and um when you a faith community allows everybody to have the beautiful tension of empathizing where you’re at and helping you work out your
(45:31) world view instead of debasing you because you don’t believe or think the way I do and I think just the world is looking for that they’re looking for relationship and psychological safety yeah and there’s that word again is community I mean we’ve we’re we’re I I I think we’re I mean we’ve been seeing it so much throughout especially the last few years where we’ve been disconnected there’s been such a polarization on on almost every opinion out there that has been like just life or death like so you
(45:59) know bad and good like all of this all all of that tension can be resolved through that relational empathy I feel like you know with if we can rebuild those relationships get together and talk you know and and come together and dialogue uh yeah and here’s the deal like I always say this I haven’t said this here but I I’m gonna say it right now like uh I have firm opinions loosely held why because I I have exact I know exactly what I think about everything and I also know I’m wrong I just don’t
(46:31) know where I’m wrong and I think if everybody had that mindset it’d be okay you know because I’m like yeah I’m gonna have a point of view you’re not gonna like it you’re not gonna like all of my points of view and I’m probably wrong so I’m not going to take myself too seriously I I guarantee you if you look in five years of some of the stuff that I’ve said on this podcast people are gonna like that guy’s an idiot right he knew nothing you know and I would I probably agree with them sure
(46:59) yeah well I mean and that’s true of anything I mean we’ve evolved so much in in humankinds you know there are as as a country even I mean you look at you look at our first you know presidents you look at our first leaders and people who are the most Progressive people in the world were were incredibly horrible by today’s standards yeah we can’t measure that by today’s standards we have to look at ourselves and and I love that firm opinions loosely held um because you know it gives us the
(47:28) ability to change our minds there’s a lot of freedom in that we can change our minds folks we can change your mind right more times than I’m wrong is because as I decided to change my mind when I was wrong yeah yeah I mean I will tell you selfishly from from my standpoint in the in the few months that I’ve been doing this podcast I’ve learned so much about a topic that I thought I was an expert in and yeah and it’s it’s amazing what things happen when you open your mind and it is one of
(47:55) the great superpowers of of of rising above fear is curiosity um so yeah true well that that’s a that’s any does anything else come up as far as you know from from the study what what other big um Revelations did you find there um aside from the three that you just brought up anything else well those are the three major ones I think um you know when I talk to leaders often it’s really the uh concern about younger people not wanting the uh not wanting the hard charging leader anymore and I again I I want to say as a leader that
(48:30) doesn’t understand uh I mean I do if you are a leader that is older than 40 it’s going to be harder for you to understand what younger people are working through they process we process information didactically we know how to use the logical points of our brain because we lived in a pre-digital time where we had time to be able to do that yeah it takes half a second to begin to start building a framework in our heads it take us it takes us one tenth of a second to feel and when you have information coming at
(49:05) you uh from all different sides all at once bombarding you every day all the time you don’t have the time to build a logical framework of how this is supposed to fit here in our world view yeah you have to literally emote your way through life and you as an older leader have to give space for them to do that you wonder why they’re not as productive as older generations and the truth is is because you’ve inundated them with too much information if you want them to be more productive if you want them to be more
(49:40) engaged into your culture take it hot take time out give them space and allow them to process that is the biggest I would say as a leader this is the biggest most important thing you can do is give them space to process so they can begin to put things on the right shelves in the right places in the right seats in their minds and begin to think through processes that they literally haven’t had time nor had had any guidance in how to do that because our entire education system our entire business system is built on you should
(50:16) know what to do and you should go do it well in a world where they know everything they just don’t know how it applies they need discernment and the only way to get discernment is to pull them out of the work pull them out of the muck in the mire of the everyday things of life and give them time to sit here and go let’s reflect let’s observe what lessons did we learn what things were confusing what things are uh Missing what things were good and what things should we never do again yeah you know if you’re a leader and you can do
(50:47) those things that will make you go so much further and when you want to be strategic and you want to communicate a vision clearly and you want to be results oriented you have earned the right to do that with them because you gave them the time to slow down give them space to experiment and to reflect those are the most important things for the Next Generation wow that is a mic drop moment and and I think that’s a powerful realization about how we can start to rise above fear on this front and experience greater flow is
(51:19) respecting and honoring that the differences in our generational uh you know how how we how we operate in our different generations and if we’re able to work together in that sense you know give people the freedom to work in the way that they work best you know we’re going to reduce that anxiety we’re gonna produce more you know we and we and we don’t have to rely on checking a Time Clock every day to make sure that everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to be doing it’s true just give them a
(51:46) task yeah we want this result we want it to look like this this is what failure looks like and here’s how long you have to pull it off yes absolutely well um well I think that this is so so where can people find the study can they uh can they go to website or anything like that they can uh chesleylunday.
(52:02) com forward slash future of faith for those of you that are listening online on podcast it’s c-h-e-s-t-l-y-l-u-n-d-a-y.com forward slash future of Faith future of Faith all right that’s that’s great and it’s a great study I I have it right in front of me it’s super well put together incredibly uh well articulated really really incredible results uh and I think it’s it’s gonna change the nature of how how we do things in in churches and hopefully in other organizations well and what’s next for you Chesley what
(52:39) what are you what are you where can people find you next well I’m doing that you can find me online chesleylandday.com I I talk about uh faith and Leadership and change leadership so uh every once in a while because I like Generations digital and faith I do end up in like the church world and managing because you know churches has staffs so I talk about that if you want to meet me there if you want to go there I Blog podcast is the Chesley lunday experience which is a lot of fun and uh yeah those are those are
(53:10) the best places to reach me at awesome well thank you so much for being here and yeah if anybody out there wants to uh connect with Chesley please please look them up uh check out his podcast it’s great um I’ve had the privilege of of being a guest at and um I’m excited to be there and this is yeah it it’s really great to get to know you such great conversation here I hope we can continue it uh going forward so thanks for joining us yeah yeah definitely have a good day all right thanks everybody for joining us
(53:39) and we will see you next time hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to the flow over fear podcast if you’d like to learn more about getting into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at www.adamcliffordill.com called the foundations of flow feel free to go there and download it and start your journey to Rising above fear and achieving greater flow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit
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