PODCAST | The Aftermath Of Succession (Feat. Sean Morgan)

Resources:

For more information or to enroll in The Ascent Leader cohorts course, go to: https://theascentleader.org/

Leaders in Living Room Podcast: https://theascentleader.org/leaders-in-living-rooms/

Follow Sean Morgan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_seanmorgan/

Follow Ascent Leader on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theascentleader/

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, manager of Marketing and Business Development here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, William Vanderbloemen talks with Sean Morgan, founder of the Ascent Leader and host of Leaders in the Living Room Podcast. His passion is to help ministries navigate obstacles and turn them into opportunities. In this conversation, Sean talks about leadership development and the benefits of trusted leadership relationships. They also share insights about what happens after a succession and how to help navigate your church through a healthy transition. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, hello everybody. I am thrilled to have Sean Morgan here on our show today. We're always getting to introduce you to some really great people. Sean does a better job of this than I do. You really ought to listen to his podcast. Sean, I don't think I've told you this, but when we started this podcast, years and years and years ago, and one of my kids who was like, I don't know, eight or nine at the time, said, "So what do you do?" I said, "Well, we interview people and introduce them to our friends and that sort of thing, and ask them questions." Said, "So you like Jimmy Fallon for the church?" "No, not really, but that's kind of funny." But Sean's show really is, oh, you get to get in the living room. You get to hear behind the scenes stuff. It's an amazing podcast. I think you should go listen to it. Sean, tell us the names so they can get right to it.

Sean Morgan:
Yeah, it's just Leaders in Living Rooms, which is the name of the podcast, but it's a metaphor for the other stuff we'll get to talk about today around our cohorts.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. And Sean, I would love it, I'm amazed at how many times I assume people know someone and then they don't. So I'd love it if you just take a minute and tell our listeners a little bit about your background. You got a flag behind you in your living room. How'd you end up doing this, and what are you doing now?

Sean Morgan:
Yeah. Well, I grew up as the son of a church architect and loved my dad's work, but I never felt a call to ministry. In fact, if you've seen architectural design committees for denominationally affiliated churches where people will almost wring each other's necks over what color a carpet they're fighting for in the lobby, you don't want to be a part of church at all, like not organized church. So I grew up seeing that and just pursuing my passion, which was military and aviation, and went that route. And it's always such a glimpse of God's grace when you see the way that he takes your choices and turns them into something beautiful for his glory and his kingdom. And the experiences I had early on in life in the Air Force, started out at the Air Force Academy and then into the Air Force ultimately led me to a part-time job in the Air Force, which is called the Reserves, the Air Force Reserve or the Air National Guard, those are part-time jobs.
And lo and behold, God used those experiences to help open up the door for me to enter ministry. Now prior to that, I had been a part of a church plant in Colorado called Woodman Valley Chapel that my family was involved in planting and getting going. That's the church I grew up in from nothing to this amazing ... And our good friend Jim Tomberlin, pass pastor there, as you know. So I was in the church plant, but I didn't know because when you're in second grade, it's just church. It's not a church plant. But when I started settling down in Northern California in the Air Force Reserve as a part-time job, my wife and I felt called to be a part of a church plant. A new expression, very, very great commission centric movement of people, and that became home church.
I'll spare you all the details, but we grew, but it wasn't healthy growth in a lot of ways. And I was called to come on staff and did a great job of helping the church go from a church plant, go from about 800 to about 400 over the first few years that I was there is the executive pastor.

William Vanderbloemen:
What do they call that, a Gideon's revival? You go from 10,000 to 30.

Sean Morgan:
Yeah, you drink water the wrong way, you're out of here. Yeah, but it was interesting because I think God was helping us figure out what was important and how to focus better on really discipling people. And it took years, but God did bless that and turned that around and the church began to grow. And we began to even, actually, it was about a 60-day period where the church tripled in size. Amazing story there. But our friend, as you and I have talked about before, a guy named Thom Rainer wrote a book called Breakout Churches. And it was a book about churches that had exponential growth. And that was one of the churches in that book, I think it was maybe 10 churches that he references in there, was New Life Church in Fairfield, California of all places, which is the greater San Francisco Bay area.
And churches wanted to come visit after they read Thom's work, wanted to come visit and learn from us. And God called me into a more big C church role, influencing other pastors in that season. And ultimately, it led to what I'm doing now, which would be getting pastors in groups of typically six to nine pastors in a very relational centric environment and focusing on leadership development through trusted relationship and deep conversation that really only comes from relationships that have trust. And that's what we do at the Ascent Leader, which is a small nonprofit that I run.

William Vanderbloemen:
I mentioned this before the show broadcast, that people hear from us all the time about a succession that we do or hiring us for succession planning, and it's kind of become a thing, and read our book or whatever. But what happens after that? My daughter, when we were doing the first version of Next, which was, golly, it'll be eight years ago now that that book came out, and we titled it Next. So that was probably nine years ago. And she said, "Are you going to write a second book?" And I said, "Yes." And she said, "You know what you should call it?" And I said, "No." She said, "And after that." So Sean is kind of like the and after that of the Kingdom. So I go in and ... So there's your book title. You can write it, I'll write the forward if you want. And after That.

Sean Morgan:
Okay, deal.

William Vanderbloemen:
So I get to keep up with the people that are doing well and some that are not doing well. And even the best churches have things that are not going well. It's just wheat and chaff grew up together. That's the way it is. So I would love to hear, I mean, first of all, give our listeners an idea of how many, I mean, you told me the other day how many hours you've put in to listening to people that have been through a succession and are the "new guy." Tell us a little bit of the scope of your work right now.

Sean Morgan:
Yeah. Well, the Ascent Leader focuses on the cohort environment. And we really launched that with leadership transitions. We do executive pastor cohorts, we do church planner cohorts. But the very beginning of that was me looking around and seeing most of my friends at the time, ages 35 to 45, let's say, that were new lead pastors. And they sort of had this feeling, one, I think there were most of them able to admit, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm taking this role as a lead pastor of this church and this thing that existed before me. And I'm prepared, but that doesn't mean that you can do everything right. And so they sort of had that feeling, but they also, I don't think anybody verbalized it, but I got it, I understood that the church at large sort of felt like the succession was over when the Baton Pass ceremony happened. But they were realizing that their leadership journey was still kind of on brick one of a long journey of bricks, a long paved road of bricks.
And so there was just that sense of, wow, I'm just getting started, and so what do I do here? And I thought, man, there's a lot of things going on in Christendom around succession. This might be an opportunity to really invest in leaders that I at the time knew. I knew their names, I knew their churches. In some cases I'd been there and met with their boards. And so I began just saying, "Hey, if you guys will show up, what if I could get us all in the living room of a leader who transitioned well?" And that very first leader ended up being a guy named Judd Wilhight who had transitioned central church from multiple styles. It was a huge church when Gene Apple stepped out of the senior leadership role there, and Judd followed him. But the church grew. And Judd's an exceptional leader, but he's also one of those people that is a very learned leader.
So he can talk in a very teaching and educated way about the dynamics of leading a church that I think a lot of people, when Gene left, they felt like, well, Gene's our pastor and well, it can only go downhill from Gene Apple, right? I mean, he's such a great man, such a great pastor, good friend. And so that's sort of the environment that Judd had stepped into there. And that can be a tough place. Well, I love Gene. I want to honor Gene, but I also believe I'm called here for now and that this church is here for what God's calling us for to tomorrow. So that really became the center part of, well, let me see if I could gather leaders around this idea of, I just got the baton passed, now what? And it started working and people started showing up and they were hungry.
And so then I did another one and people showed up for that. And then the people that showed up for the first one called me and said, "Let's keep going. I want to do another one." And so we just sort of became on a path learning together. It was not a strategic thing, I didn't think seven years later, eight years later, I'd still be focused on that with momentum and growth. Not at all. I think it was just like, there's an opportunity and a need here, and I think some people will trust me to try to help meet it. But as you alluded to now, seven years later, doing that almost full-time, there's a good 10,000 hours of work in succession transition. And I realized I'm stewarding some stuff here that I think can help other people. So I want to keep focused on it and use that.
At this point in life, second half of life kind of thing, you want leverage. You don't want one calorie that you spend to result in one calorie of benefit for somebody else. If you're going to burn a calorie, you want it to be leveraged into 10 or 50 or 100 calories for others. And that's what I found in this is that there's opportunity for leverage for making real change and difference in the lives of leaders that you care about and you want to put wind in their sails, but they're churches as well.

Christa Neidig:
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William Vanderbloemen:
That's awesome. And I guess we both, Judd was our third search ever.

Sean Morgan:
Was it?

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah.

Sean Morgan:
I didn't know that. I'm not Surprised.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, a local one, a local church that I'd been bugging and wouldn't leave alone. I think they hired us just to get me to quit bugging them. And then Willow Creek and then Judd. It was pretty crazy. Yeah, Judd and I are the same age. In fact, when he went to Central about the same time I went to First Pres Houston and we were both like 31 and in way over our heads. And I cold called him and said, "Hey, you don't know me, but I am young senior pastor in over my head and I know your church because I'd been to Gene's church before and I'm guessing you're young and in over your head. Will you be my friend, please?" It was the lamest cold call ever. But Judd so gracious that ... Long friendship and now he's helped birth two ministries. What a great thing.

Sean Morgan:
Yeah, absolutely he has.

William Vanderbloemen:
So 10,000 hours. I got a question for you. You walk in after a succession, I'm asking blanket questions knowing that every church is unique, but when does the crap hit the fan? When's the honeymoon over? When you're talking to these guys, what's the years like 'Oh, you're in year three," or you just finished year three, where is that moment in the work that you've done, seen?

Sean Morgan:
Yeah. I spent about 90 minutes this morning before breakfast on a call with a leader that you and I both know and at a church most people would probably know who was talking to me about that. And he basically said, "These are the things that aren't working for me. I'd in an ideal setting, I would wait to make these changes, but it's going to cost me personally so much that I don't know if I can do three or six more months with the systems and structure being the way they are." So the whole conversation centered around is it too soon. And you're right, every church responds differently to change. I would say this to leaders. You want to prioritize in that early season of the honeymoon where everybody is just sort of thinking beautiful, gracious thoughts about the church and your leadership and the future, uneducated, but still beautiful, gracious thoughts. You want-

William Vanderbloemen:
That's what a honeymoon is.

Sean Morgan:
Yeah, that's the honeymoon. That's the description of the honeymoon. It's an artificial concept of what the future's going to be like that we're all in love with. And then when reality sets in of, oh, the future's going to be like that, you're going to lead that, changes that are going to take place, that's when the honeymoon ends. And I would tell most leaders, the honeymoon season, you get a few chips that you can cash without ending the honeymoon, but there becomes either a sum total of change or one big change potentially could end the honeymoon as well. But a sum total of change or a big change or two, that sort of reality sets in. And people begin to see that their uneducated hopes and visions for the future of the church are different than the reality you feel you've been called to lead. And that chasm ends up causing heartburn. And that sort of ends the honeymoon there in that.
There's an old cartoon I saw that was like church search committee is what it said on the wall. And there was a consultant, it was probably meant to be you, working with the board and the church consultant's response to the board was, "So you want an iconic leader who's a great visionary to come here and change absolutely nothing."

William Vanderbloemen:
Exactly.

Sean Morgan:
And that's what everybody wants, right? I want this great preacher and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I don't want to change anything. But I want the church to have a future. And the thing about that is to give the church a future we have to reach people who aren't here today, who are community is becoming. There's U-Hauls coming in and out every day. And what's the net effect of that? There are people in this town who are unreached and they're different than the people we were reaching last year. And so that sort of stuff is what begins to end the honeymoon, usually six to 12 months, but under normal circumstances. Obviously COVID gave people a free, like we know this is our survival, we've got to make big change. And so I think people that extended honeymoons in some ways and in other ways, there was such polarity that it ended honeymoons prematurely. You didn't have to do anything. Just the fact that you didn't do something ended your honeymoon.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. The old George Clooney movie, The Perfect Storm where the three storm fronts hit together and they were done. And you throw a unprecedented pandemic on top of a racial tensions that needed to surface, but have been bubbling a long time, and then a presidential election that made my dogs fight with each other. It's not good. Yeah, with six to 12 months you've got some fast changers. My experience across the broader, and maybe just my sector is, I usually tell the church board when we do the search, you need to buckle up for somewhere in year three or the end of year three, because that's when something's going to change.

Sean Morgan:
Yes.

William Vanderbloemen:
The worm will turn either the beginning of year three or the end of year three. And I tell the incoming pastor, usually with the senior pastor search, there is a search committee of some kind. Five years from now, you'll be lucky if two of the people on your search committee are still at this church. So just get rid of it. No, these are the people that brought me here. No, no, no, no, no. And I don't know if that holds true with what you see or not, but those are two markers I throw out there.

Sean Morgan:
Yeah. Two things I'll address the three year thing. You're absolutely right. The third year is generally whatever, from 24 to 36 months-ish, is generally what I call the year of pain. Read Sam Chan's book. It's brilliant. Read it no matter where you're leading because it's just the leadership book, but it's certainly iconic in year three. So if year one's a honeymoon, what's year two? What's year three? And obviously there's a lot of dynamics that change that. The calendar isn't dictating it. It's really about milestones. But year two is typically change implementation. It's where changes are beginning to be made, but typically people have some patience like, "Oh." And it's not really until year three where the leadership pain is felt that people behave in a way and respond negatively to change. So not all responses to change are unhealthy, but the real negative and unhealthy ones, those are the ones that really set the tone for year three being this tough year where yeah, your predecessor's former elder chairman just left the church over something you did.
And that's the stuff that happens in year three. But I think it's important just to pause. We can dive into this further if you want, because I have said exactly what you said to many, many elder circles around the succession topic, is I'm usually a little lighter. I sort of fib, I say half of you won't be here in five years after the baton passed, and they're aghast. And then I tell them, actually, it's probably more like 80%. And then I say it really shines light on something that I think is an inappropriate success metric for leadership transitions. And that is all of us are happy five years from now and still here.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's right.

Sean Morgan:
If that's the only way we think succession can be scored as a win, if all the insiders are still happy five years from now, what we have just described is a country club. But we have to re-approach that and say we are all here to volunteer our time and expertise and to give our money to something that God's new visionary is here to lead us toward. And some of it we might not necessarily like, but if we believe it is part ... Because what hasn't changed in transition? That's always a great question. What hasn't changed? Well, I can tell you one thing that hasn't changed, the mission of the church, being love God and love others. Some amalgam of the great commandment and the great commission is the mission of the local church. And that didn't change. And if we're going to keep doing that three years from now, five years from now, it can't be just about us still being here and being happy.

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, that is so good. And I hope people wrote that down. Just piggyback, I tell boards, incoming, outgoing people, you know the one thing that's not going to change? The ownership of the church. This is Jesus Church. So listen to me carefully. I want you right now to declare as profanity, the term my church. Just call it profanity and hold each other accountable. If you'll get rid of that phrase, you'll get rid of a lot of headache.

Sean Morgan:
Yeah. That perspective is important.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I forget it all the time. Oh, my church, and my people, and my this, and my that. No, it's not. This isn't my company. It's not your nonprofit. Nope. I don't know, maybe I'm just getting old. But it seems like remembering ownership goes a long way. Let me ask you this. The guys that you are working with that have done well, and you said it on a podcast we did together, you said it so well, there are no easy successions. People ask me all the time, is this going to be a hard or an easy search? I'm like, if a search were easy, I wouldn't have a company. But of the ones that are going well, what do you see as maybe some common denominators that the incoming pastor do in those situations? And then the other side, what do you see the outgoing pastors do that really works?

Sean Morgan:
Yeah, it's a meeting in the middle for sure. That's the sweet spot. Teamwork, right? So I would say outgoing, I can think of two main things. One of them is that they keep the church focused on mission, not method. We kind of alluded to that a few minutes ago. Focused on mission not method. If the church embraces risk and change for the sake of being on mission, then that is probably the most important cultural aspect of the church approaching transition in a healthy way. As a incoming pastor, I would say, look for that. Look for that in the church. Is the church mission focused? Because if they're mission focused, they're going to be less method focused.
And the second thing an outgoing leader can do, and this isn't just the outgoing leader, I would say it also is bridge leaders. It's executive pastors and youth pastors and children's pastors and staff and elders that I would call bridge leaders. They're anchored on both sides of the transition. They have influence and anchoring in this whole thing. So absolutely staying focused on mission, paramount. And then the second thing is an outgoing leader specific thing, and you and I have talked about this before on my podcast, on Leaders in Living Rooms, is the identity of the lead pastor and their preparedness for ... I guess the really clear way to say it, which I will say around people that I trust, is are you comfortable with obscurity? And if the outgoing leader is comfortable-

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, gold. Say that again. Say that again.

Sean Morgan:
I asked outgoing leaders, are you comfortable with obscurity?

William Vanderbloemen:
Pure gold. Pure gold. When I was a pastor here in Houston, one of the guys in our church was Lloyd Benson. He was the senator, ran for vice president. He debated, I think Dan Quayle. And I knew Jack Kennedy, you know Jack Kennedy.

Sean Morgan:
Yeah.

William Vanderbloemen:
So he died while I was there. But before he died, I went and did the guest chaplaincy of the Senate. And he wasn't in the Senate anymore, so you have to have a host. And Tom Daschle was my host. He was a Democrat, senate majority leader from one of the Dakotas. And he was lovely and led me around and all, and introduced me to all the people that I don't think I've ever voted for. But oh, it was super, super fun. Very civil tone and everything. Well, that fall, he lost his reelection, which I'm not real sure how you do in the Dakotas. Seems like you just call everybody. But he lost. So I called Ms. Benson and I'm like, "I want to write him a note. He was so kind. What's the best way to do that?" She said, "Oh, just call him at home." And I said, and this was landline days, I said, "Well, Ms. Benson, I appreciate that, but I'm not going to ring Senator Daschle at home and bother him."
And she said this line. "William, you have no idea how little the phone rings once you are not in office." And I just thought, wow. And that's a long, convoluted way of saying are you comfortable with obscurity. Pure gold. That's good. I'd love to have you back and maybe ask some more hard questions to learn more about what you're seeing on the other side and after that, if we can do that. But I'd also love for people to-

Sean Morgan:
I'd be honored to.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. Yeah, and I'd really love for people to know exactly how to figure out whether they can get in one of the cohorts that you're doing. And maybe it's not succession, maybe it's exec pastor. What's the best way for them to do that?

Sean Morgan:
Yeah. If you're interested in a cohort in our way, there's a lot of different people doing cohorts out there, and we applaud all that because there's a lot of need, I think, for readjustment to the needs of leaders and the development of leaders. But our method and our way is at theascentleader.com, theascentleader.com. We've got information there on all the different types of cohorts we do. And there's a process where you can start a conversation with a small application to us, and that'll help us get to know you. And then we get you in touch with a coach. And when I say a coach, we have world class coaches. Coaches on our teams like Dave Stone and people like Nancy Beach that do just absolutely incredible work on the team. So you'll be connected with an A gamer who will love you, encourage you, and navigate that conversation about how to get you in a cohort environment that'll be great at serving your leadership needs.

William Vanderbloemen:
And if you're in a church that's done well through succession and you're like, "This is amazing. I didn't know this resource was available," I'll just remind you, I don't think I've ever done this on a podcast. I'll just remind you that the Ascent is a nonprofit. And you could make a donation. Don't you guys scholarship pastors that can't afford to get in a cohort?

Sean Morgan:
Yeah, we do. We have a goal. We actually don't want big donations because we want prayer. So we actually ask churches to partner with us a hundred dollars a month, and there's a donation link on our website. All that goes to scholarshipping pastors. Most of that is lower budgeted churches with big visionary pastors that want to learn and grow, but they don't have the budget for it. And the vast majority of those are church planters, actually. And we think there's no better way to see a 42% number like has reported of pastors who are considering leaving ministry. There's no better way to reverse that than starting with the end in mind with church planters and getting them in really good, grounded relational environments to grow as leaders.
It doesn't take away the need for books and podcasts and conferences. It's supplementary to those things. But I think there's five kinds of relationships out there, and most pastors don't have the top two. The bottom three are stranger, acquaintance, and friend. The top two are ally and confidant. And we really try to navigate that space of leadership confidant together and at a minimum create allies for pastors who don't really have that level of trust and relationship in the circles in their own church often.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I can tell you, having sat in the chair, there's not a better job, there's not a harder job, and there's not a lonelier job. So if you feel inspired, you could make a visible difference in the kingdom with donation to theascentleader.com. Sean, thank you so much for making time for us today. Just as my people from Western North Carolina would say, "I'm ate up with succession." I want to keep learning about it, and you're doing such good work. Thanks for making the time today.

Sean Morgan:
Thanks for having me.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen, we 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 newest episodes. Thanks for listening.