Episode 012: Insights from a Business Owner with Pastoral Training

Key Takeaways:

• Humility is crucial for being a good leader in any organization because it helps you realize you don’t have all the answers and you need to listen to and learn from others.

• A good leader looks for people who are better than they are; they aren’t intimidated by others’ success.

• Success in ministry is often defined by how well you work with people you don’t get along with rather than with people you do get along with.

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Introduction

Hi, church leaders! Welcome to the CEO Pastor podcast. My name is Cindy and I am your host for today's episode. My goal is to provide the management expertise every church leader needs to produce the ministry experience every church leader wants. We'll skip the jargon and cliches and focus on ideas that will help you accomplish the church's mission in your unique ministry context. Ready? Let's go!

Our guest on today's episode is my father, Russell. He started his university education at Atlantic Baptist College in Moncton, New Brunswick, now known as Crandall University. He spent two years there and, because it wasn't a degree-granting university at that time, he transferred to Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and majored in history and minored in English. After he graduated from Acadia, he went to Toronto and studied his Master of Divinity at Ontario Theological Seminary, which is now known as Tyndale University.

Even though he had his M.Div., he was never ordained. He came back to Prince Edward Island to help his father start a new venture in cultivating mussels and, together, they pioneered a viable industry on Prince Edward Island. Dad founded the oyster company that my brother and I now own and operate in 1996 and he gave it over to us in 2017.

So in this interview, I'm going to ask him how his pastoral training helped him when he was running a business organization and the things that he found that he was missing that his pastoral training did not teach him about and he had to learn from experience.

Interview

Cindy Dockendorff

How do you think your pastoral training helped you lead an organization?

Russell Dockendorff

Well, the pastoral training that I had was heavy in communication skill. And also, we did a lot of scriptural interpretation and... and also, we did some sermons and so on. So there was a lot of study and reasoning and analysis, and you determined your opinion or your doctrine at that particular time as well. And you found out the basis of your... of your doctrine. So it gave a confidence level in not only your communication skills but also your reasoning skills,and also in your opinion. So in leading an organization, those are things that are very important... is to have a confidence level in your abilities.

One thing that I did find when I was in the workplace, as far as running an organization, sometimes that level of education is... is a detriment in the sense that you don't communicate well to your people. You can talk over their education level. I remember one guy says, "I hear you talking but I don't understand a word that you're saying." So that was the time that I learned that communication is one thing, understanding as another. So that basically is... is the way that the training, the pastoral training helped in the structure of the... my approach to business.

Cindy Dockendorff

So what management knowledge were you missing when you started to lead an organization?

Russell Dockendorff

The thing about the pastoral training is that it teaches you your... your scripture knowledge, preaching. It gives you the tools that are... it makes you well versed in the tools that you're going to be using in order to develop sermons, in order to lead people as far as their spiritual health is concerned. But it doesn't teach you how to communicate the values, necessarily. Sometimes we make assumptions. People's knowledge aren't necessarily where we assume that they... their knowledge is and sometimes it's away above and beyond where we may have been trained as well. So we've got to be careful about that, as far as making assumptions are concerned.

But I think the primary... primary lack in the pastoral training for... for the management knowledge for leading an organization is the people skill and almost, in a sense, the pastor's people skill level is assumed and they... the idea that the pastor is going to... when a person is trained to be a pastor, it's assumed that they have the ability to... to talk to people and communicate with people, but also get along with people. So while we understand the value of people as a result, from our pastoral training, and that is transferable into any structure, any organization, whether it be a church or whether it be a business, we value the person because of the strength... because of the position that they have in... in God and the value that God gives them as an individual, but sometimes what we really also need as well is the ability to show value to the person or to bring the value of that person out. And so you will meet people in the workplace, for example, that are very, very difficult to get along with. And how do you deal with that person?

My pastoral background, pastoral studies didn't teach me how to deal with a difficult person. It didn't teach me how to deal with the person that didn't agree with me, didn't teach me how to necessarily bring people into the same mindset that I had so... as far as a goal is concerned. So that would be one of the things, I think... one of the major, major things that would be missing: is how to value the person. We know why we should value the person, but how do we value the person?

Another one is, as far as leading an organization, whether it be a church or whether it be a business, pastoral training doesn't teach you how to read a financial statement, for example, and that's a really significant part of, not only a business, but also of a church because finances will determine whether the church has the ability to perform the function of the church, whether it has the money for the programs or for the pastor or for the dreams and ambitions of the church.

So that, I think, is something that was missing in the training that... that I got as a pastor and was significant lack when I... when I had a business that I ran. How do you read the financial statements? How do you understand a balance sheet versus an income statement? How do you develop a budget? How do you stick to the budget? What areas of the budget are flexible and what area... areas of the budgets are inflexible? So the... the... all that economic part of running an organization, having a structure, whether it be church, as I said, or whether it be a company.

Then the other thing is... another thing is how do you analyze the potential of the business? Sometimes, in business, you take a look at how... how the company is running, and you say, "I think we've reached our peak", but the reality of it is that somebody else might come along behind you and, as in my case, when I gave the building... the business over to you and Jacob, Cindy and Jacob, you increased the business triple to what I had. And that was simply because of the fact that you could see potentials where I couldn't see the potential. And it... as a pastor, you've got to be able to bring people in and bring them into a position where... into a situation where they share your vision but they see the potential maybe that you've missed, and then you can all capitalize on that potential.

So those are some of the things that were missing... mostly, in pastoral training, is that practical side, the side that will hit you hardest in ministry and can determine whether your ministry is.. is a failure or success, which is how do you get along with people? How do you read people? How do you bring people into a cohesive unit so that they can push towards a common goal? How do you deal with things that... that take you off track? Maybe it's money that takes you off track. Maybe it's a lack of personnel that takes you off track. Maybe it's... it's your own self as a leader, that somebody else has a better potential.

And yet, we've been trained as pastors to think that we have the answers. And sometimes we don't have the answers. And we have to recognize that there's somebody on our team that has a better way of promoting or accomplishing the goal, which is, in a church, to win souls for Christ -- in other words, to bring people to the knowledge of God, the saving knowledge of God -- and to give them that future that God has intended. Yes, God intended them to have a certain future so how do you... how do you accomplish that goal with the resources that you've... that you've got at hand? I don't think that, in my pastoral training, that that was emphasized enough. So that would be... on the theme of what... what was lacking or missing in the management knowledge that I received as a pastor, whether it be leading a business or a church, it was that practical side that comes through hard experience. And sometimes it is hard.

Cindy Dockendorff

So how does management knowledge make leading an organization easier?

Russell Dockendorff

Management knowledge, as far as making the leading of a business or a church easier, is like how does water relate to swimming? How important is water in relation to swimming? I believe, with the experience that I have now over the years, that you need to constantly be developing your management knowledge and your management skills if you're going to be able to... to succeed. If you don't have the skill, look to somebody else that has the skill or constantly study and hone your own skills. Don't be afraid of a book, don't be afraid of somebody else's success, whether it's another pastor's success, or whether it's a business success. Businesspeople are applying principles all the day to make themselves successful that we can take from the... from the world and put into the spiritual realm.

So constantly be looking for these management skills and honing your own management skills to... to apply to your organization or to your church in this case. It just means... it makes all the difference in the world if you have management experience, number one, knowledge, number two, but if you can have the management resources as well. Your church will succeed or fail according to the management knowledge that you do or do not have.

Cindy Dockendorff

So when we were talking earlier, you had mentioned about the importance of pastors resourcing their people. And that would be one of those management skills that you don't necessarily get taught in your pastoral training -- like, how to provide the resources that your people need in order to have them pull in the same direction and accomplish the goals of the church. So could you expand on that a little bit?

Russell Dockendorff

Well, if the people come... when you come to a church, you've got a certain set of people. It's going to be complete in that God has complete divine authority over every situation. So it's not that God is unaware of who you are and who you're going to be with as a pastor. But what you do need to do is... is develop the resources or help people develop resources. If you, for example, are going to do some kind of outreach and the reason why you're doing outreach, of course, is to bring other people into the church so that they can meet God face to face, then you've got to give the people who are already in the church the ability or the tools to go out and reach those people that are outside and give them ideas and demonstrate ideas to them.

For example, it could be as simple as, "Have we ever thought of having a barbecue and bringing, not just the friends that you get together with all the time, but open it up to the... to the non-Christian friend, the person that doesn't go to the church or to a church that you know? Bring them to that barbecue." So demonstrate through your own life and through your own experience what it takes to... to apply the principles of soul winning, of church planting, church expanding, and then give the people the tools because they might say... they might need to say more than, "Do you want some more mustard or ketchup? They might also say... might need to say, "Oh, I'm sorry about that problem. I didn't realize that... that your your children were giving you this or that issue or that your marriage... you're confiding in me that your marriage is... is not as solid as... as it seems." So you have to give them some tools to be able to respond to those issues and not be afraid of them. Because the reality of it is that all of us have areas of weaknesses in our own life that we have to deal with. And we just need to be able to meet the need of the people outside of the church and bring them into... into a safe environment so that they can find security there and then find God as well.

Cindy Dockendorff

So did you find in your pastoral training that you receive specific guidance on how to deal with conflicts within the church or conflicts with people who might confront you from outside the church and not agree with the things that you're doing?

Russell Dockendorff

I think that we received more training and more... more of a heads up on the fact that you would have conflict or some type of opposition from outside of the church, that you would meet people that didn't agree with with the message that you were preaching or the doctrine that you might have as a... as a pastor, as a person that believes in the Scripture and wants to teach it faithfully. But the idea that there would be conflict within the church wasn't as strongly promoted, wasn't as strongly told to us as young pastors going into a church, taking church for the first time.

So to go into a church and suddenly find that there's opposition from within -- and it can be simple. It can be over your style of worship and a style of worship that is historic, in a sense, something that they're familiar with. It can be a small point in Scripture, an interpretation that... that they have that you don't necessarily have. But there's... if you don't deal with the opposition in management of a company... if you have an employee that's disgruntled, you can't ignore the disgruntled employees. Twenty percent of the total workforce will give you eighty percent of the problems. So, in a church, you need to deal with that twenty percent of the people that you find to be an irritant, you just don't necessarily want to be around them all the time, but those are the ones that you need to deal with.

From a pastoral training standpoint, no, there wasn't enough conflict management. Simple, worldly term: conflict management. You can get a textbook or a course on conflict management in most of the secular universities. But, when it comes to pastoral training, it seems that we're supposed to go into a utopia.

But in my own experience, being in the church and being a congregant, somebody that's sitting in the pew, I know that I have experienced and have given the poor pastor enough conflict that he's well-trained by now. So the conflict is there. You've got to recognize it and you've got to deal with it and you've got to have the skills and the kindness and the patience to be able to deal with it.

Humility is one of the big... I think as... as... as we get our education, as we get our training, we get the idea that we have the answers, but that'll lead to your downfall as quick as anything -- if you aren't teachable after you're taught and if you're not humble so that you see the other person as being equally as right, valid opinion, and diffusing the situation as much as you can all the time.

Cindy Dockendorff

Yeah, I've mentioned on this podcast before that if people aren't complaining...

Russell Dockendorff

Yes.

Cindy Dockendorff

...then you have a problem because that means they don't care anymore.

Russell Dockendorff

That's right.

Cindy Dockendorff

And sometimes... nobody really likes to deal with conflict, right? It's not a fun thing to deal with. But if you deal with it poorly, then, all of a sudden, you have an apathetic crew that you're working with.

Russell Dockendorff

Yes.

Cindy Dockendorff

They don't care anymore and they're not willing to give you any ideas or give you any feedback that may be negative or positive….

Russell Dockendorff

Yeah.

Cindy Dockendorff

...because they've just kind of checked out. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Russell Dockendorff

Well, I think it's completely correct that if you have a... have a church and there's some type of irritant in it and people are complaining and then suddenly drop off and disappear and don't complain... one of the things that I've heard lately in the past number of years is that, "Well, if you don't want to be here, then feel free to go to another church." Sometimes that's required. Sometimes, as a business owner, you've got to say, that employee has to be taken out of the picture because they just absolutely will never conform, as far as whether it be to the work required or whether to be the goal of the business and they're actually doing more harm to the business or not.

In the church, you have the opportunity to ask God and... and ask God to take care of your situation. You're... you're in a... in a spiritual battle which, fortunately, in business, we're not. We're not in a spiritual battle. We've got economy, climate. We've got workforce. We've got all... politics but we, for the most part, don't have Satan working against us, but in the church... and we do have the opportunity to ask God to bless us and give us guidance. In the church, it's immensely more important to ask constantly for God's guidance and his direction. And God will work in people's hearts in a way that you'll never, ever believe, whether it be changing the obstinate employee or whether it's changing the heart of the difficult parishioner.

So you've got to deal with... with the... you can't put your head in the sand and back away from the problems. You've got to deal with them quietly, according to the Scripture -- one on one, then with a witness, and then escalating it to wherever you need to escalate it to. But generally, people are willing to talk to you if you talk to them and give them the true idea that you're interested in their complaints and interested in their ideas. They're not usually out to destroy you. They're out to... to have a hurt. We have to understand that people that complain mostly... most often they complain because they've been hurt. We need to deal with the hurt. We need to find out how they hurt and how we can help them get over the hurt.

Cindy Dockendorff

Yeah, because if you don't do that, then it turns out that they may, in fact, be able to destroy you.

Russell Dockendorff

Yes, because pastors sometimes are gauged by the calendar. Year one, year two, year three, year... oh, year five is up. You're gone because pastors can be replaced. Parishioners have a lot more skin in the game than the pastor does. They usually have work in the area. They have a house. They've had children in the local school or they've gone to university someplace. So they don't really have the option of moving out of the church. They may be able to move out of one or two churches, but they finally have to come to a place....

You're the expendable person. You've got to have understanding that the person has a lot on the line. It's not likely that they're trying to have a dialogue or discussion with the pastor, which may be harsh, it's not likely that they take that action. They need to defend themselves, and they have to defend their turf in a sense. Unfortunately, a lot of pastors don't have that understanding. They don't see that they're from outside, they need to be part of the community, but they are the expendable one. It's a hard lesson to learn. But it's also one that would do well to learn: that the pastor's the one that's expendable.

It's a little different in a business because the employee is the expendable one. I own the business, I'll determine who the employees are. The pastor is more of the employee than the employer. They don't own the church. They can't make the fiat, they can't make the law and have it enacted. And they have to understand that... I mean, Jesus came to serve and the pastor is supposed to be like Jesus. Take the basin, wash their feet, and serve the people. Don't be the master.

Cindy Dockendorff

Usually, if the people see the leader doing that, eventually they'll take that as an example and, in turn, start washing other people's feet in the congregation, washing people's feet in the community, and even washing the pastor's feet. Because if they can see that the pastor does, in fact, care...

Russell Dockendorff

Yes.

Cindy Dockendorff

...that they're not just laying down the law and saying, "This is the way it's going to be and, if you don't like it, then too bad, so sad for you" or whatever...

Russell Dockendorff

Yeah.

Cindy Dockendorff

…then eventually, some of those harder people to deal with might say, "You know what...?" Because you don't know. They might have had a bad experience with a pastor before so they're just testing you to see if you're going to be the same jerk as the last guy, right? Maybe the last guy wasn't a jerk... but you know what I mean?

Russell Dockendorff

Yeah.

Cindy Dockendorff

Like, that's their interpretation. So if you can serve the people the same way that Jesus did and kind of overcome those objections, then you might win over, like, a big-time supporter, somebody who will be totally in the same direction that you're going in.

Russell Dockendorff

Yes. I don't think that success in business or success in the pastorate.... Success isn't measured by how well you get along with people that you like. I think it's probably better measured by how long... how well do you get along with the people that you don't like or that don't like you? If you have a customer, for example, in business that is giving you a difficult time, can you win that person's trust and can you have more sales to that person? Can you become their go-to person as far as a supplier is concerned? And really, the pastor needs to become the go-to person for that disgruntled parishioner because their needs are the same. They need to be looked after. They need to know that the pastor loves them.

Sometimes I think the pastors just don't express enough, "Hey, congregation. Have I told you that I loved you lately?" Because people need to... I need that. I need to know that the pastor that is in the pulpit is going to be available to me some time that I need that person, that he loves me... loves me enough to be able to come and deal with my... my hurts as well as me trying to deal with my own hurts.

So you've got this success ratio, I think, that is skewed a little bit and shouldn't be "How well do you get along with the people that like you?" but "How well do you get along for people that don't like you and have you been able to impact the people's lives in a positive way that... that has some kinds... some kind of a qualm with you for whatever reason? We don't want to lose any customers because, in the church's case, if we... if you lose a customer and they turned off... they're turned off from God, the consequences of that is heaven or hell. That's very, very high stake. In business, success or failure is nothing compared to the consequences of failure in the church, in the ministry -- losing a person from the influence that God can have in their lives, the future that they can have as a result of salvation in Christ.

Cindy Dockendorff

So what is the best advice you can give to someone leading an organization?

Russell Dockendorff

That's a very, very good question. If you're leading an organization -- and I've been in business now for about 40 years -- but I've learned... I think I look back on those years and I say I've constantly learned something different, something new every... every year that... every month that I've been in business, and so you never want to be complacent. So don't ever become complacent. Don't think that you have all the answers because no one person has all the answers. So there's a humility that a person should have no... no matter whether they're leading a church or whether they're leading a business. You need humility, you need to recognize that you're not perfect, you're always in a position of learning.

Look for people that are smarter than yourself. Years ago, somebody told me that a successful business owner is somebody that looks for somebody smarter than themselves. The difference between the successful business owner and the unsuccessful business owner is the person that doesn't look for the person smarter than themselves and always is getting rid of the employee that has a better idea. They're threatened. So you don't want to be threatened. And humility is one of those ways that you can quell that sense of being threatened. Because you're valuing the other person, you're humble enough to know that you don't have all the answers, that you still have things to learn and you're looking for people that can strengthen your weaknesses.

And the age-old bit of advice as well is bathe everything in prayer. You're not God. God is God. Ultimately, we answer to God. We are his servant. We're not church's servant, and the parishioner is not the pastor's servant, but we are God's servant. So bathe everything in prayer and ask for his leading and his guidance and wisdom to be able to take the advice that comes along the way. A lot of it comes down to humility.

Cindy Dockendorff

Yeah, and you had mentioned, too, about... sometimes the good ideas come from places and people that you're not thinking are going to come up with a good idea. The same as the disciples, right?

Russell Dockendorff

Yes.

Cindy Dockendorff

When you think about the makeup of the disciples, they're tax collectors and fishers and Zealots and all kinds of people that, you know, weren't important people.

Russell Dockendorff

Yeah.

Cindy Dockendorff

But those are the people that Jesus chose and that Jesus walked with and taught and, you know, listened to, and they were the ones that he entrusted with the Church.

Russell Dockendorff

And... and your quiver is just as full as... as a pastor because the people that are in your church are there because God wants them to be in that church. They want... he brought you into a... into a specific situation with a specific set of people and you can either develop them or you can hinder them. So you can't take a look at the situation that you're in and say, "Well, I'm not in a megachurch so I can't do a lot. I'm just in a little church so my hands are tied." Well, God put you there and, if you have the humility and wisdom to be able to take look at your position in that church as a servant of God and of the people, then you're going to have an eternal impact on those people's lives. And they, in turn, will have an eternal impact in people's lives that they deal with.

James and John, I believe it was, were called the Sons of Thunder, which doesn't sound as if they were really good people to have as ambassadors of the Gospel or intermediaries in a conflict situation if you were called the Sons of Thunder, but they were mightily used by God. They had the characteristics that God chose and that's the... that's the way to approach things. God put me here. He's given me my tools. There are people in the congregation have other tools.

So your advice, the best advice, is to look around you in dependence upon God and stay out of your own way in a lot of cases, which comes back to humility. Recognize that the weaknesses that you're pointing out that you might see in other people's lives, you've got them, too. May not look the same but I firmly believe that every person has an Achilles heel. Every person has a weakness and some of them are hidden, some of them are more exposed. You can't condemn the person that's been caught out in a sin that they can't hide and, at the same time, ignore the sin in other people's lives, maybe including your own, which is hidden. You've got to be humble about this whole thing and approach ministry with the idea that you're just going to do your best according to God's ability, his power, and trust God for the... for the outcome.

Thanks for Joining Us!

Thank-you for joining me on today's episode of CEO Pastor podcast. I hope you discovered an idea that you can apply in your unique ministry context. Head over to ceopastor.com for more resources and meet up with me and other church leaders on social media for further discussion. Any questions or suggestions? Email me at podcast(at)ceopastor.com. And don't forget to share, rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast to help spread the word that managing ministry better makes ministry better.

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