PODCAST | Wade Joye: From Elevation To A New Season

In today’s podcast, William speaks with Wade Joye, who has served over 10 years as a worship pastor at Elevation Church and is now stepping into a new season. In this conversation, he shares about his recent transition off that team in order to pursue a new form of ministry that the Lord has put on his heart.

Wade’s story is an encouragement to anyone considering a transition in ministry. We are excited for the ways the Lord will use him in coaching and developing other leaders and for his willingness to share ways to navigate and discern the Lord's calling.

If we can help you with a staffing transition, contact us to get started.

Transcript:

Christa Reinhardt:
Welcome to The Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Reinhard, senior marketing coordinator here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, William speaks with Wade Joye, who has served over 10 years as a worship pastor at Elevation Church, and is now stepping into a new season. In his conversation, he shares about his recent transition off that team in order to pursue a new form of ministry that the Lord has put on his heart.

Christa Reinhardt:
Wade's story is an encouragement to anyone considering a transition in ministry. We're excited for the ways that the Lord will continue to use him in coaching and developing other leaders, and for his willingness to share ways to navigate and discern the Lord's calling through this conversation. If we can help you with a staffing transition, be sure to contact us. We hope you en this conversation.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, hey, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us today. My daughter said to me not too long ago, "So what's this podcast thing you do?" And I told her, and friends and people. She said, "Are you like Jimmy Fallon for the church?" I'm like, "No, really, no. But thank you, I think," so I just have the best time meeting people and then getting to introduce them to you all as an audience. So today, what a fun day. We got my friend, Wade Joye. Wade and I have known each other not very long. We've known of each other a long time. And Wade has had an amazing run in ministry. You'll know about him as soon as he starts to tell us your story sort of thing.

William Vanderbloemen:
But then you're going to hear some exciting things on the other side of lessons learned and what that means for his future, and what it might mean to help your future. I think if I'm not mistaken, if you're in ministry leadership right now, you have probably come close to burnout in the last 24 months. And how do you balance a world that no one's ever lived in before? How do you know when to work and when to say no? And Wade's got some really good insights on that. But before we get started, thanks, Wade for joining us. Really appreciate you making time to be on the show.

Wade Joye:
Thank you so much for having me, William. I'm honored to be here. And this is the closest I'll ever get to talking to Jimmy Fallon too, so I'm excited.

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, that's funny. Well, I would love for you to tell people who you are and a little bit of your story, kind of your journey in ministry up until now. This is pretty special. It's my home state, so I get a little excited about what you've been doing for where I grew up.

Wade Joye:
Well, yeah. I am currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I've been for the last 15 years with my lovely wife, Ferris. And I have three beautiful girls, twins, Adleigh and Liana, they're 13, and Sydney is nine. But we live in Charlotte because I've been a part of Elevation Church for about 15 years until recently when I transitioned off of staff. But I started as the worship pastor there, and came on staff about a year into the church when we were meeting in one high school, Providence High School. And Pastor Steven cast a vision for what the worship culture would look like one day, and the songs we would write, and what Elevation worship would look like. And I have the incredible honor of helping to lead that and steward that for 15 years. So it's been a crazy, special journey and I'm really blessed that I got to do that.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, the songs you all are putting into the hearts and minds of people, I doubt we'll know the impact of that this side of the river. It's pretty special.

Wade Joye:
It's pretty surreal thinking about when ... Because for the first year of the church, Pastor Steven led worship and preached. And when he asked myself and a guy named Chris Brown, who's still on staff as probably the main person you'd recognize from Elevation Worship, and then a guy named Mack Brock, who was on staff for about 10 years, all three of us were going to do different things. I was going to plant a church. Chris was going to move to Nashville. Mack was going to move to LA. We had all said no to our initial job offers at Elevation.

Wade Joye:
Then I remember Pastor Steven called us into this Italian restaurant, the back room, it felt real mafia style. And he looked at me and he said, "Hey, if you go plant that church, I'm sure I'll be great. But you'll miss out on God's will for your life. Come be a part of this church that's going to impact thousands of church plants." And granted, Elevation was nothing like it is now. He looked at Chris and said, "Don't go to Nashville and write songs. Write songs for the local church and make Nashville come to you." And so we all ended up changing our plans, come up to Charlotte. And we had no idea how to write worship music at all.

Wade Joye:
And thankfully, I tried to get most of the early albums off of Spotify and iTunes because you can tell we didn't know what we were doing. But the church was very patient with us, and yeah, it's just been really special how God was able to take some songs that meant a lot to our church, and take them further. And Pastor Steven got involved in the songwriting, which took it up exponentially. And the songs have meant a lot to me and my family, and I'm really grateful to have been a part of it.

William Vanderbloemen:
I mean, I have 1000 questions now. It wasn't because y'all had the best system set up. If I remember right, the guy Pastor Steven was using to say, "Okay, be the strategy and get things done," was a physical therapist. Right?

Wade Joye:
Chunks Corbett.

William Vanderbloemen:
Not world expert on church strategy. But no, he's my physical therapist. And yeah, that's got to work. Right?

Wade Joye:
Well, it's one of those things that people would always ask, because then Chunks, I mean he's an incredible leader and served as the executive pastor and CFO of the church, and was my boss until I transitioned off staff. He's a great friend. But people would all the time ask, "Pastor, how do we get a Chunks?" And he was like, "Well, you don't know what Chunks was like when he first came on staff." We had to build Chunks and form Chunks. And it's just a great testament to how all of us have room to grow in leadership, and you never know what's in somebody sometimes until you challenge them to step higher.

William Vanderbloemen:
So another question, I don't want to spend the whole time talking about past stuff. But I know there's some listeners out there who are like, so there are probably lead pastors out there right now who are like, "I'm listening to this podcast, it's 8:00 AM. My worship leader isn't getting out of bed for at least three more hours." Sorry, worship leaders. Hey, different strokes, different folks. Right? But how do you bring three creatives together? And more importantly, how do you work for a guy who was the worship leader? I mean, how does that ... I know only God and all that. But what did y'all have to learn so you didn't bump up against each other? Too many creatives in the kitchen, right?

Wade Joye:
Yeah. We had the blessing early on of the three of us knew each other. And we each had very distinct lanes where we were gifted. So Mack was extremely gifted in musical production. Chris was an incredible vocalist. And then I was kind of the leader pastoral presence that helped execute the vision and make sure everybody was talking to each other and on the same page. But we still had to learn to trust each other, especially and you would see that in the songwriting process and in the creative process.

Wade Joye:
For the first couple years, it was each of us trying to figure out not only each other's strength, but to be open with our weaknesses and not feel like our spot was being threatened. But there was something that Pastor Steven always told me that meant a lot to me, and that's mature ministry is being more excited about what God does through others than what he does through yourself. And so embracing that mindset that actual mature, healthy ministry comes when I'm not fighting for the spotlight, but I can actually help push other people into the spotlight, which is an easy thing to say. It's a hard thing to do because I, like everybody else, has an ego. And no matter how humble I thought I was, every time I had to release something or give something up, God would reveal. Hey, there's this pride in your heart you didn't realize was there.

Wade Joye:
So all those opportunities, sometimes of butting heads, were actually good healthy tensions and frustrations to work through because it maybe unpacked a layer of my heart that I needed to surrender to Jesus. So yeah, it wasn't always an easy or smooth ride, but it was a really good one and fulfilling one where we grew a lot.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, if I'm hearing that right, you get through the bumpy parts because there was some relational equity. Is that fair?

Wade Joye:
Yeah, exactly. You build trust. And trust comes sometimes not just through everyone getting along, but through healthy disagreements too.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. And humility, I still got to learn. I have this lifelong wrestling match with pride, and I think I'm losing.

Wade Joye:
Same here.

William Vanderbloemen:
Man, I think I've said this on this show before, but I think one of my favorite Ted Turner quotes, and there's some pretty good ones, he said, "If I had a little more humility, I'd be perfect." And I'm afraid I know about that, so yeah.

Wade Joye:
I would always, I was just going to say, I would always struggle with insecurity. And it took me a while to realize that's just another form of pride, it's just keeping your focus on yourself too.

William Vanderbloemen:
Wow. Insecurity is just another form of pride.

Wade Joye:
I would say pride is thinking too much of yourself. Insecurity is thinking too less of yourself. But in both instances, you're just thinking about yourself. And your focus isn't on the Lord or on other people. And so yeah, that was always ... I didn't realize pride was in my life being masked as insecurity.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, we'll get off the rabbit trail. But in Dante's Purgatory, the pilgrims climbing Mount Purgatory and the base of the mountain, it's as big as all the other six layers of the mountain, is pride. It's the hardest one to get over.

Wade Joye:
Yeah.

William Vanderbloemen:
Hey, I wonder since you are a creative, you've worked with a creative pastor. You've had great relational equity. You probably also have butted heads. You can't be in that high growth a thing without having some high tension moments. What would be some insights that you would offer both senior pastors listening right now who are saying, "I've got to build relational equity with my creative, and the other way around"? Are there things that come to mind, top?

Wade Joye:
Yeah. I would say that clarity is king in that, especially around your expectations. So the thing that Pastor Steven did so well right from the beginning was give us very clear expectations about what Elevation worship, what the worship culture should look like, and gave us some very broad strokes, specific. And within that, he also gave us some room to run, but it took a while for us to show that we weren't just about our agenda, but about implementing his agenda, and the agenda for the church. That opened up more room to run and more of a wider lane.

Wade Joye:
And so I would say senior pastors, be as clear as you can be about what you expect. What are the nonnegotiables? And where is there room for your creative pastor, your worship pastor, to try different things? And where can they push? And where can they create? And where do they just need to say, "This is the way it's going to be"? It's important to know, be really clear about those expectations. And then worship leaders, I would say do everything in your power to show that your first priority is to serve the mission of your church and not just your personal agenda. And so be vocal about what you think, be vocal about your ideas. Come with solutions. Come with ideas. But when a decision's made, don't walk away and grumble about it. Don't walk away and sow division. Bring it to life you decided in whatever that closed room or that meeting was.

Wade Joye:
And then the next time, make your case a different way, and come with a stronger argument and a different way to present your ideas. But make sure that you're vocal when you should be vocal in the right settings. And then after that, you're unified and not trying to build your own little kingdom, or show how your preference was better. And I think that over time builds trust. Because I think honestly, a lot of times what should be the healthiest relationship in the church between the pastor and the worship leader, which are the two usually most visible presences in a church, it should be the most unified. But often, it's the most divided because of competing agendas. And worship leaders either not submitting to the overall vision of the house, or not knowing how to communicate upwards. And then sometimes it's senior pastors not knowing how to be clear about their expectations and expecting a worship leader to read their mind.

William Vanderbloemen:
As a recovering senior pastor, I can tell you I was bad at expectations. Then when things didn't happen, I'd just get mad. I remember I was reading One Year Bible one year. It's old Testament, New Testament, psalm, proverb every day. Right?

Wade Joye:
Yep.

William Vanderbloemen:
So I get one of those psalms that's like David's just on a tear. God, kill them all. Wipe them all out. I want them dead. I want their babies dead. I want their families dead. It was like Robert De Niro. I want them dead, and smash them against rocks and all this. I'm like, "Wow." And so I just thought, "I wonder what all these have in common." So I went and looked at all the, I'm just mad as can be and kill them all, wipe them out. And nearly every one of those starts out the ascription for the choir director.

Wade Joye:
Oh, no.

William Vanderbloemen:
I'm like, "Yes. This is my prayer for the choir director." It was actually me that needed the correcting, not the choir director.

Wade Joye:
That's funny.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, hey, listen. So fast forward. You guys are reaching a bajillion people now. You've got 9000 campuses or whatever. And you step away and you're stepping into a bit of an unknown. So before we talk about what you're doing now, I would love to hear your discernment process. I think a lot of leaders out there are in situations that aren't going anywhere, and they're thinking, "I need to leave." You were in the middle of ... I mean, Elevation's going up and to the right, and God's hands all over Pastor Steven and the whole team. So how did you discern this is what Jesus wants me to do? And not just either I want to get off the rocket, or I want to ... What's that process like?

Wade Joye:
Yeah. It's one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make because I love our church. I mean, we still attend. Right now, we live in Charlotte. And I always pictured myself kind of doing this and riding off into the ministry sunset at Elevation. But I would say at the beginning of last year, the Lord began to stir just some feelings that my wife and I hadn't felt, not that we hadn't felt them before, but that they lasted a long time. It wasn't a fleeting feeling.

Wade Joye:
And so we just began to say, "God, are you calling us to trust you in an area that we thought was kind of locked in for the rest of our life? We thought this was settled. Are you calling us to actually be open handed about what the next season could look like?" And so we began to pray over the course of a year. And we really committed to spending that year praying about it, and not trying to make a decision for 10 to 12 more months because we wanted to make sure that it wasn't a phase, it wasn't a fluke. And I think some of my mentors have told me that it's very helpful to set a time limit further out than you think, just to really make sure your heart isn't making a decision out of, maybe you just aren't sleeping well right then, or you're stressed, or whatever it could be.

Wade Joye:
But that started to sustain that feeling. And also, I was going through a change that had started around June of 2020, where I believe the Lord really changed my interior world a lot. I mean, this was the summer of COVID, which I don't think anybody was in a great mental place at that point. But I felt like what God showed me in that season for my life is, I'd been in ministry for 14 years at Elevation, five years, more than five years before that. So over 20 years in ministry, and I just felt like my heart didn't feel the abundant life in Christ that I felt like I'd always preached about and talked about. And I don't know if it was burnout, or everything going on in the world. I have a daughter with cystic fibrosis, and so the pandemic was stressful for our family because she was at high risk.

Wade Joye:
So all these things were going through my mind, and I was praying, June 2020. And I felt like the Lord said, "You are not pursuing any healthy rhythms in your life, spiritually, physically, emotionally. So how can you expect me to come in and change your heart when you're not creating the space to do so?"

William Vanderbloemen:
Wow.

Wade Joye:
And so that started me on a journey of making a lot of small, tangible changes in my prayer rhythms, in the way I ate. I ate like a five year old eating donuts all the time for most of my life. Finally, my metabolism caught up with me, and God caught up with me on that. So I tried to steward that better, and my energy and my exercise and sleep, and all these things started coming together. And I began to spend more time in the word of God. I started to cut out TV so I could spend more time just in reading at night and just filling my soul with different things. So all that to say, I'd been on this journey where I felt like God was stirring up some new vision in my heart. And I'd been able to teach several times at Elevation on the main stage for Pastor Steven. And I loved that, I loved to teach.

Wade Joye:
I started writing a book. I love that. And so as God is stirring this in the heart of my wife and I about a possible change, I feel like he's also stirring up new gifts and passions and desires in me. And so I would say around the fall of 2021, we were on the Elevation Nights tour, and I just looked around and just saw people singing these songs that we'd been a part of releasing to the world, and just felt a sense of the Lord saying, "You've completed your assignment here. Now I've got something else for you to do." And also, it wasn't just about me. I honestly felt like the Lord said, "And I need to put somebody else in the leadership seat at the church to take it someplace where you're not going to be able to take it."

William Vanderbloemen:
Wow.

Wade Joye:
I think sometimes as leaders, we're afraid to let go, not just because of the fear of the unknown for us, but sometimes it's hard on your ego to think of somebody else stepping into your shoes, and maybe being a better fit for where things are now than you are.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yes.

Wade Joye:
And I've had to wrestle with that even now. I still have my moments of insecurity there. But I would say a couple weeks after that, I came in and I was able to talk to Pastor Steven and Chunks and Chris. And everyone was really supportive of the change. It was sad all the way around because that's family. But I felt very blessed and sent off, and really trying to model that can be a healthy shift to actually step into something new.

William Vanderbloemen:
This is worth the whole podcast if you're listening right now because the job churn, whether you want to call it the great resignation, or whatever, it's real. People are trauma, or a change in habit, causes people to look up and reassess. And you just heard, if you're listening, a model of how to handle that. I heard several things that I see, I've made mistakes, down to thinking, "Oh, I'm going to let them down if I leave." I was a 31 year old pastoring a church in Montgomery, Alabama. Then I got the call to come here to First Presbyterian, Houston. That by the way is how scarce the talent is in the Presbyterian Church, a 31 year old gets the call to come.

William Vanderbloemen:
And I went, I didn't know how to tell people I was leaving because we had done ... I mean, we'd sweat blood to build that place. And I went to my best friend, and younger guy, elder in the church. And I said, "John, I feel like I'm letting you down, and I'm sorry." And he said, "Well, William, here's the thing. If you're God's man for Houston, then you're no longer God's man for us." I was like, "I don't think I needed that much truth." It's all interim work. This isn't a pitch to make you go quit your job. But if you're feeling these feelings, first of all, another great point that I heard in Wade's journey, if you're feeling these feelings, don't act on them on impulse. Right?

William Vanderbloemen:
First, hey, never act on them on Monday. Our phone rings twice as much on Monday than all the other days combined. And that is not a lie. Monday, the devil is after you. And I don't want to get all hyper spiritual, but you lay everything out there on Sunday. You are a vulnerable soul on Monday morning. And you're going to get all kind of ... So time, and set that time. That's so good. And wait for a sense of completion. It's not always true. Sometimes you're in a toxic situation where you've got to get out for your own health. But I really rarely see a great transition where somebody doesn't feel a completion or release from where they're from, so that they can step into the thing that's coming.

William Vanderbloemen:
Sorry to go there, but that was handled beautifully. And by the way, you didn't bother your pastor with it for eight months. That's not helpful. Also, not smart. Not all pastors will put up with that. But just props to you, man, for handling that in textbook fashion. That's awesome. And now we're to the now, so now you're speaking, you're consulting. But what I'm hearing in the times we've talked is a real fire in the belly for talking to people about rhythm, about balance, and spiritual formation around those things. Is that fair?

Wade Joye:
Yeah, it is. And what was really great, and even just to backtrack just a hair, in that transition, even once I felt the sense of completion and felt, knew I needed to have the conversations, I still felt all the fear and all the, oh, I'm letting them down. But I had to trust enough that God was going to work through all that too. But the really great part of the story is in June 2020 when I started that journey towards really opening my heart and my life up to God in the new way, I feel like for my last year at Elevation, it was probably some of the healthiest I've ever been in life and in ministry. So sometimes people think, "Oh, you've got to leave your church job to get healthy."

Wade Joye:
I feel like what I really got to see is, no, you can be healthy within an active growing church because every job is demanding in some respect. It's not just ministry. So we have to figure out. How do we prioritize our life in the middle of the dynamics that we can't control? And it really came down to: Did I believe that following Jesus is the most important thing to me? And if I did believe that, I had to reorient my life and my rhythms around that. Because I used to think discipline was the same thing as legalism. And growing up in the Baptist Church, my granddad was a pastor, I kind of rebelled against anything that I thought was legalistic.

Wade Joye:
I was like, "I don't have to read my Bible every day for God to love me," which is true. I don't have to do that to get God to love me. But I do need to do that if I expect my heart to change and for my heart to line up with the things of God. And so my rhythms throughout life had been so inconsistent. And I just determined that I was going to go on a journey of experiencing prayer in a new way, letting the word of God read me, not just me reading the word of God in a new way, through counseling, so all these things to try to get myself in as healthy a position as I could in every aspect, mind, body, and soul.

Wade Joye:
And so I have a passion now for helping people see that growing in Christ is not just church attendance. It's not just volunteering, although both of those things are amazing. But those things and the work we do for God has to flow out of our being with God in intimate communion and prioritizing our lives around that. And what does that look like for real people? I think sometimes we think you've got to go from doing a token quiet time, saying a quick prayer, to spending two hours in prayer at 5:00 in the morning all at once. That's not the way it works. There has to be a journey of stacking disciplines and rhythms, and finding out what works for you and your personality in your season of life.

Wade Joye:
But all I can say is, this journey has transformed me. And I feel more fulfillment and life in Jesus, even if my life is still crazy and hectic and very different. But there's a centeredness that I feel like God is developing in me as I practice these rhythms that I want for other people. And I think it's just getting back to what Jesus teaches about in scripture. Dallas Willard says that we want the things that Jesus teaches about in the gospels, but we don't want to live the life Jesus lived to access that power. And that's the journey I've been on, and that's the journey I want to help other people go on.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's great. And so tangibly, what does that look like? You're traveling, you're speaking for churches that need speaking. Right?

Wade Joye:
Yep.

William Vanderbloemen:
You've got coaching cohorts that are happening. Is that right?

Wade Joye:
That's right. So I love to travel and to preach. I also enjoy going and speaking for church staffs and worship teams. But then I'm doing individual coaching on a three month basis with pastors and worship leaders, and then also launching this summer, a group cohort as well. That'll be a slightly different format that'll be accessible to more people.

William Vanderbloemen:
And the website is?

Wade Joye:
Wadejoye.com, Joye with an E.

William Vanderbloemen:
Joye with an E. Okay.

Wade Joye:
Yes.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's like Vanderbloemen with an E.

Wade Joye:
There you go.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yours is a little easier.

Wade Joye:
Just a little bit.

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, that's awesome. This is so rich with how to assess God's will, with how to leave well. And for those of you wondering. What do they talk about before and after the show, and what's the real scoop, and all that? There is no real scoop. I've heard nothing but honor. I've heard nothing but thankfulness and gratitude for the role that Elevation and Pastor Steven's played in Wade's life. And it's a real model for how if you're really serious about a change, this is a way to go about it. And then the deeper change is not where you draw your paycheck. It's how you're orienting your life. And Wade, when the book comes out, we want to have you back on.

Wade Joye:
Thank you.

William Vanderbloemen:
You've been learning. And it's just a pleasure to let my friends get to meet you. I'm pretty sure it's not Jimmy Fallon, but it is a chance to meet some of my friends. And hopefully if you're a creative and you're looking for some coaching, to go wadejoye.com, with an E. If you're just looking for general life balance, spiritual development coaching, you go there as well. And obviously, if you're one of our friends that's right now looking for a pastor who puts you in the middle and you need somebody to speak from time to time, I bet you could probably go to wadejoye.com and find a really cool solution there too. So Wade, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a pleasure for me, and just a real blessing.

Wade Joye:
Thank you so much, William. I've loved it.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. And thank you for listening. Hey, if you missed the links, if you want to know more, we'll put links to everything, and even all the music and wonderful things in the show notes. How do I get the show notes? Vandercast.com. It's a segmented email list, which means I'm not going to try and sell you Ginsu knives. I'm not going to get you in a multilevel marketing things. I'm just going to send you the show notes. So go to vandercast.com and put your email in there, and we'll get you everything you need to catch up on the day, and to see what's coming in the next few episodes. So thanks for joining us and God bless you this week.

Christa Reinhardt:
Thanks for listening to The Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. We at Vanderbloemen help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our website, vanderbloemen.com, to learn more. And subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our latest episodes. Thanks for listening.