Video Transcript: Interview

Bruce - Welcome back to learning to lead. We've been talking about leadership and that whole definition, I'll give it to you again, because you have to know it by the time you're done with  this class. Leadership is the process of a leader encountering culture, the way we do things  here, in order to divine define of preferable future and then provide the impetus for the  planning, and the programming that is needed to be done to make the future a reality. That's  what we're about. We're in the area called leadership. But we've been talking about how you  find out you're a leader and what those leadership gifts look like, and how you knowing  yourself, will help you be a leader. We've been talking about that for the past several  sessions. And it's my privilege to introduce to you today probably my longest term friend in  history, Frank Weaver's as been a friend for over 50 years, we kind of grew up together since  middle school. And we ended up going through seminary together. And it's been a time of  connecting with each other over the years just to get to know each other to help each other.  And I've come to know him as a tremendous leader. He is a husband. He's a father, he's a  grandfather. But he's also been an incredibly effective leader. And so it's my privilege, as I'm  trying to bring some practical practicing leaders into your experience out there to introduce  Frank to you. So Frank, maybe you can tell us first of all, just how how you have grown as a  leader. I mean, growing up, what kind of experiences do you have that would say, guy, I'm  going to be a leader someday?  

Frank - Well, I was born, when my dad was a dairy farmer in Wisconsin. So he had an eighth  grade education. But he felt a call to ministry. And so when I was nine months old, so I don't  have a lot of farm blood in me. When I was nine months old, he moved off to go to college,  Calvin College, and then on to seminary. So when I was young, I just sort of grew up in a home in which my dad was going to school, my dad was preparing to be a pastor. So you know that  that was sort of my route. So I could have been a farm kid. And I ended up being the son of a  pastor. And at an early age, I began to think that God was calling me to be a pastor. And it's  kind of an interesting story. Some people have really dramatic stories of how they were called  to be a leader in church ministry. But for me, it was the fact that my parents, my mother,  especially bought me a little matching suit. When my dad went out to preach, I had a little  suit when I was probably five years old. And people would say, Oh, you look just like your dad. And my mother would say, and what do you want to be when you grow up? And I would say,  on cue, well, I'm going to be a pastor someday. And everyone would say, Oh, that's wonderful. I actually have a picture of me standing when I'm about five years old, I must have been on a  chair, I'm standing behind the pulpit with my hands raised in benediction. So at an early age, I began to pray. God helped me someday become a pastor, but don't make me be a missionary. I actually pray that for years as a kid, why not a missionary? I thought, you know, at the time,  I my concept of what a missionary was, you went to Africa, you know, when they came back,  they would show pictures of huge snakes. I wasn't a snake fan. And I thought, you know, this  would be a terrible life to be dragged off by God to some other country. So I just wanted to  sorta, I guess, be like dad. Later in life, my mother would introduce me, she was always  proud. I was a pastor, and she'd say, you know, he became a pastor, and we never even  pushed it. And I thought, did you grow up in mother, but that was my call. I was called into  ministry early on, sort of through the manipulations of a mother and God uses all kinds of  ways. But then when I was in high school in fact, you and I had a similar experience. We  signed up for a summer ministry program. And my dad had been serving large churches, in  His ministry, churches that were sort of internal. He was a great pastor, but he sort of all the  focus was internal in the church. He worked hard, all those things. But church was sort of  boring to me it was, we never penetrated our neighborhood at all. It was just sort of like a  little fortress Church. The world's a bad place. We're safe here it is Christian. So you and I  both went on our summer ministry program to Ogden, Utah. And there I met a very different  kind of Pastor leader than my dad. And that was as fiery redheaded preacher called Gary  Hart. And I stayed in a home where the family that I stayed with for weeks and weeks and  weeks they were new Christians. They were messy. The church was filled with all these variety of people were there a day or 20 drops at the corners has talked to people about Jesus. He  took us down to the toughest parts of town where there were a lot of alcoholics, people 

actually passed out in the street and he said, Tell them about Jesus. And I came home from  that changed, where I said, I want to be a pastor. But I want to be a pastor like that. A church  that's focused outward. So that was the original sort of time in my life, I think when my calling was confirmed. And I started thinking about the options of what kind of leader can a person  be when they're a pastor?  

Bruce - So I know that our training was very much to be the chaplain, taking care of people  when they're sick preaching on Sunday, maybe teaching a class here or two to high school  kids or whatever. And when did you figure out that you were called to be a leader within the  church?  

Frank - I think that was a sort of gradual process. I mean, I guess everybody knows, that's  going to become a pastor that there's going to be some leadership involved in this. But the  model I had of my dad was that leadership was sort of focused inward. You preach good  sermons, you show up when people are in need. But our leadership had nothing to do with  really moving out into the neighborhood, our church, the churches that I grew up in, really  had nothing to do with people that lived one block away from the church building. It was sort  of us. so as I entered ministry, I I sort of fell into the pattern of my father, I think in my first  church, it was a rural church. And I was run ragged, just making sermons, visiting people in  times of need. It was a small rural church that really expected the pastor was hired to do  about everything. So I was just run ragged. I would be exhausted at the end of the Sunday.  And after four years, in this wonderful church, I just had to go. So I moved from there to a  small church, in Jacksonville, Florida, sort of a missional church that hadn't gone well, there  were about 30 people there. And I learned a lot about leadership there, especially about what  not to do, because all the models of my youth just didn't work there. This was a diverse group of people. There wasn't a church of our denomination within about 100 miles. Some of the  things I thought, you know, you should just automatically do didn't make any sense there. So I began there to at least start thinking about, maybe I should lead in a different way. Maybe I  should learn some new skills. But then, the third church I went to was really the church where  I spent most of my ministry it was my life calling I spent 25 years and Holland, Michigan at a  church. And it was really there that I bumped into several people that pushed me one was a  young woman in our church who was involved in business, she was an incredible leader. And  she kept telling me, Frank, you are not just a preacher, you are a leader, you have to take us  somewhere. And so she just shoved all kinds of leadership books my way. And then also at  that time, I began attending every year, the Willow Creek Conference with Bill Hybels. And he  was a great inspiration for me, teaching me that pastors are leaders. So through just a slow  process increasing, I became aware of the fact that the church should be going somewhere.  The church is not just a maintenance kind of position, the churches is going somewhere,  there's always a new place, that God wants to bring a church. So I began to increasingly see  my role as not only a teacher, but critically as a leader. So I began to read everything I could  on leadership, I began to be mentored by some great leaders. And you know, over time, I  think I picked up some skills. But I did become aware of the fact that like it or not, I was called to lead this, this growing church.  

Bruce - So you're getting involved with a leadership process and you're interact with the  culture, they're going to change and develop a vision? What were some of the visionary  things that came out of your leadership, particularly the last church or when you're in  Jacksonville?  

Frank - Well, I think I'll comment on my last church because it was really a long process in  which the church really was transformed over those years. I learned first of all, how important  structure is and so I think I lead the church through a change in leadership structure. I really  kind of inherited the system from the denomination which I was a part in our elder board and  a deacon board and then there's some pastors are a pastor. And I quickly began to see that  this church had a very dysfunctional leadership structure, huge church, council of elders and 

deacons and elders meetings and there were deacons meetings, there was an executive team that met and it was just chaos. And they're sort of an anti pastor as a leader mentality as well. One of the lead elders told me as far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't even be able to vote  around here. So when I came there, you know, the pastor was almost the enemy when it  came to making decisions leading us somewhere. So, over a process of years, we began to  evaluate the structure as the church was growing, we came to the conclusion that wasn't bad  people in positions, that was a bad structure, not bad people, but bad structure. And we've, I  led them through a process in which we brought in other leaders from churches that had  grown. And they talked about how they had to rethink. We just, I didn't push, but I gave them  lots of information over process of about a year, we completely restructured the church,  which made it possible to get decisions made quickly, capable people were in positions with  clear lines of authority. And I can't tell you how much the Church changed. When we move  toward clear definitions of leadership, the church got rid of that big stamp pad that says no on it, no leaders go, Nope, we're not going to do that. Nope. And we were led by staff, and  governed by elders. So I think changing structure was a critical point for me as a leader in  that congregation. And I would say it is one of the two or three things that accounted for the  ability to grow as large as we did, which was about 1400 people.  

Bruce - I know too, that one of the key things you did was keep vision in front of people, at  least in later years, powerfully. And maybe you can just share some of that some of the vision  that you had, and how, how did you roll it out to people? How do you keep reminding people?  How did you keep people focused on vision, we're gonna be talking about that later. As far as  in the course we're gonna be talking about what it means to write a vision statement, how  you develop vision, but just share a little bit about your experience there.  

Frank - Well, I'll begin by saying that I believe that, in general, churches want to be led  somewhere. Church should be an adventure, right? This gathering of people who are  passionate disciples of Jesus, this should be this should be an adventure, right? This should be more than about lawn mowers, which one we're going to buy, what kind of computer we're  going to get? What about putting on an addition all those kinds of things that can be very  divisive. So I think that in general, churches, and members of churches are eager to be led in  a way in which they say God is taking us somewhere. And I think in nature, churches that I've  experienced, tended to be a cyclical. So you know, every year they would kind of go around  and round. So it's this time of year. So we do this, and then it's, you know, Advent, and we do  that. And then it's the summer and we do this, and you just every year tried to do it a little  better than you did it the year before. But there's just a sense of churches sort of spinning  round and round and round. And I became convinced that churches should at least have a  part of their experience being linear, we are going somewhere. And so what I began to do is,  each year, we would kick off our fall season with a focus banquet. And we invested lots of  resources in planning this focus banquet. And we invited all adults in the congregation  together. And so we would say this is where we believe God is leading us now to do that. with  a clear conscience, you have to be waiting on God, you have to be talking with others, you  have to have a pulse of what's happening your finger on the pulse of what's happening. So  months ahead of time, we begin praying and planning and the congregation would gather 4- 500 people with a sense of excitement. Where's God taking us in the next year? So not just go round and round? But where are we going? And we had all kinds of powerful experiences. By  doing that, you know, this year, we feel that God is calling us to be more fully a house of  prayer throughout the year. That's what we would focus on over and over again. What does it  mean what changes need to happen to become more fully a church of prayer? We have one  year in which we introduced the concept of hitting the streets. We are way too ingrown. We  have built a new facility, a lot of focus was internally as a church, we need to move out of this  building and hit the streets. So you know, we sold that kind of vision. And then throughout the year, we get all kinds of opportunities and training. How do we get out of the building and into the community that God's placed us in and perfect, perhaps the most powerful focus events  in which we we were taken in a new place was what we call the year of Jubilee. I had gotten 

away by myself. We had just paid off the debt on our new facility, and we're getting ready to  build phase two. And you know, I felt a little guilty all the money that we'd spent as a church. I know one thing we would do at the focus banquet, we would burn the mortgage. But I didn't  know what else we would do. So I got away for three or four days. And I stumbled upon that  Old Testament concept of Jubilee, you know, this radical, every 50 years, God's people were to do something radical land is redistributed. Land is given rest slaves are set free. There was a  radical generosity. So I thought, what would that look like to declare a year of Jubilee at the  church, I served Calvary Church in which we would put a pause on the building programs  second phase. And instead of a capital stewardship campaign, where we'd raise money for  our building, we would say make a one year plan. And in that year, we will put up structures  all over the world where people can't afford it, but they need a place. So 370,000 was  committed to that we built seven buildings around the world, I also encourage every family to have at least one person that would go somewhere in the world where they would see a world in need a world in poverty. And what happened in that one year of Jubilee, God sabotaged us.  When the year was done, we said, why have a year of Jubilee when we can be a church of  Jubilee. So we tore up the glossy brochures of the phase two, we decided in comparison to so  much of the world, we had great facilities. And we began to really radically commit large  amounts of our . When I left, almost 800 people have gone somewhere in the world and a  place of need, we've given away millions of dollars, we had a budget of 1.6 million we gave 6, 7, $800,000 a year away, that was a huge thing that came out of saying, we are not just  going to go round and round in a cyclical fashion. But we're going to be open to where is God  challenging us and taking us. And I think that night of the focus banquet became the most  anticipated evening in the life of the church, because Christians love to have a sense, and  God is taking them to a new place. So that to me was so important. That's a heart of  leadership. Where does God want to take this group of people? How do we challenge and call  them to it? And then in the process? How do we keep reminding them over and over why  we're doing it? And why it makes a difference? Good stuff. There was fun.  

Bruce - Tell me about some times where you thought you had the right idea. And it turned out  to be it was a failure? And how and how do you handle failure? Because that's part of  leadership, too. You don't always make the right call every single time.  

Frank - Right. I think that a lot of as I look back on ministry. I think one of the failures that I did was I had a concept that if I was a really nice guy, if I lead really well, if I explained really  clearly, if I brought all of us along together, we would be able to change as a church from  being a rather ingrown church to a very external missional church, affecting our neighborhood and many parts of the world, that I could do that in a way in which everybody would cheer.  And it was very painful for me to discover that it was not always possible to bring everybody  along. And there were there were times when I know I disappointed people, people thought  we were going in the wrong direction. There were people that felt with are pushed to be  missional engaged, we were ignoring our own people. There was once a time when about 150 people left in mass, when a staffer left, those are bitter hard times. And I learned that try as I  could, there are times in which leadership doesn't always take everybody along. And that was very painful for me. Those are the most painful memories I had when I am leaders with good  intentions that God is calling us in this direction. And then there were others that were like,  No, we're not going there. And creative problems are eventually just left. That was really  painful for me.  

Bruce - I know you, like call us within the leadership anywhere have critics occasionally would  send you an email note letter or for a tone. How did you handle the whole idea of critics?  

Frank - Well, I think a couple of things I learned over the years one is that all criticism hurts,  no matter how positive you know when you're getting criticism when you're giving criticism to a staff, no matter how nicely word criticism, all criticism wounds but there is criticism deeply  wounds unnecessarily. So I tried to keep myself open to criticism, and I'd be too deeply 

wounded by it. I tried to find where's the nugget of truth because often criticism, even if it's  something, someone who's really opposed to you, often there's a kernel of truth in this  criticism, try to find that. But I came to believe every I cannot make everybody happy. It's not  my job to make everybody happy. And criticism comes with leadership, because you may say, we're going to go right, God's calling us to go right. Our church thinks all should go, right. And there may be people who will want to go left with everything they have. So criticism was hard. It's the worst part of leadership for me was the kind of criticism right people say, My friends  call you Hitler. I mean, then if that doesn't wound you, there's something wrong with that an  elderly lady in the church had a big box in her backseat of a car, someone said, What's that  for? She said, that's a coffin for our pastor. So, and I hear I, once again, just a really nice guy,  leadership, when you say we're going this direction, and people move in that direction  together. There are times when people stay behind. And it's very painful, it's very hard for me, because I don't like conflict. I can't understand anyone that likes it does calm at times, and  you can be misunderstood. Those are the painful things. I will say that, you know, letters that  weren't signed, or people that said nasty things or groups that seemed to gather to attack  what was happening, happen mostly in the first 10 years. And as I learned more about  leadership, and as a church became more shaped by that leadership, as the church began to  move as a body and a missional direction, people either began to embrace it or left. And my  last 10 or 15 years it was, it was just a very different situation. I think you came out last often, critics, and some of your critics can become dear friends, I had a person, the person who told  me if I had my way, you wouldn't be able to vote around here, when I left, hugged me and  wept and said, I love you. So be it business being a leader. But you do the best you can learn  from your mistakes. And do not allow criticism to paralyze you. Because it is easier to say I  guess I'll just take care of everyone and forget about pushing, let's just do the round and  round. Just keep everybody happy. That's right. We keep everybody happy. But I think in the  long run, biblical leadership brings people to wonderful new places. So it's worth doing.  

Bruce - Hey, this has been a treat for me. We've talked about this stuff for a lot of years  together already. But being a leader, the themes that Frank has brought out today comes to  the cost, we're going to consider that later in the lecture. It comes to knowing yourself well,  and knowing where your strengths are, but it comes with the idea that you get to be and  choose to be a leader. And that involves finding out where God was calling you to go and  calling you to take an organization or a church, and then leading there with God's strength,  and with the corporate help of the people. And it's gonna take a while. It doesn't all happen  immediately, unless something supernatural happens. So we're going to continue talking  about leadership and begin talking about culture and the way things are done here that we'll  have to change. Frank referred to a couple of those situations as we move on in this class.