Tod Bolsinger: Leadership in Times of Change and Transformation - Mission Over Comfort! #41

Adlerblick [00:00]: Today's guest is Todd Bollsinger. Todd is a senior leader at Fuller Theological

Seminary in California. He's a bestselling author and founder of his own company, A.E. Sloan

Leadership. Todd, great to have you here. And we are meeting in Dortmund, Germany, at the

Willership Leadership Conference. Your name, Bollsinger, sounds quite German to my ears. Thank

you. Thank you for having me.

Tod Bolsinger [00:26]: It is German and the last person in my family who was German about 200

years ago was the guy with the name. It shows German resilience is what I think about because

that's about how much German I am. and it looks like being from South Germany. Or might be so, I

don't even know. and you're into Dortmund soccer, how come Dortmund? Because a lot of

American players have played at Dortmund and a lot of famous players have played at Dortmund.

my family loves German football and so we have been fans. the stadium is famous. So I've always

wanted to

Adlerblick [01:06]: famous all over the place. So you wrote a book on adaptive leadership,

especially for Christians or with the Christian focus in it. What was the point that you thought it's

important, it needs a book for this? It was my own experience. So I was leading a church and our

church was doing well by most measures. All of the metrics were going up and to the right as they

say, like we were growing, but the morale was going down. The best leaders in my church, the

people that I wanted to be on my leadership team and wanted to were pulling away and I didn't

know what to do about it. I was completely lost. And we had a group come in and do some work

and some assessment and what they said was, your church is doing well. People are happy, but

everybody thinks it's about you. And I got sick to my stomach. I was like, I didn't want to make this

about me, but I had, because the model of leadership that I had been trained in was that the strong

leader sets the vision and people get committed to the person. And what I realized was, as the

world was changing, really healthy people wanted to be part of something bigger than a personality.

And I realized I had to learn how to lead differently. And that led me into this kind of leadership

called adaptive leadership, where what you really are recognizing is that some problems can be

solved by an expert, and if you do, that's good, and you build trust. But most transformation that you

need has to happen through the moments when you don't have expertise, when you don't have

best practices, when you have to learn your way forward, when you have to let go of something.

And that started my own process, and I started doing work with pastors and then some schools,

and I ended up being a senior administrator at a seminary and started writing books, and now I

have a consulting company that works on that issue.

Adlerblick [02:41]: Hmm.

Adlerblick [03:01]: Yeah, when this consultant came in and said you might be part of it. He said

you were entirely part of it. But that's a bit unusual because you're the one who pays them, So

usually they will find a lot of reasons but not the one who pays the bill. Yeah, yeah, was remarkable

and I actually ended up going to work for them. They trained me and I had a great experience with

that little consulting company because what they did is they helped me realize that it wasn't that I

was trying to be a bad person or a narcissistic person. It was this is what I was trained to do. At a

moment of crisis, you do not rise to the occasion, you default to your training. It's one of the things

they teach you in places like the military. I was trained to make leadership about me. And so that

means I needed a new way of learning.

Tod Bolsinger [04:03]: to lead. that's what adaptive leadership was. It was my learning a new way

of leading. Leading when you don't have best practices, when your old ways, when what got you

here won't take you there, when your old ways won't take you forward. And that's the entire

metaphor of canoeing the mountains. If you've gone on a river trip and you run out of water and

you're facing mountains, you don't just keep paddling harder. or you don't go back because you

want to keep paddling. You have to drop the canoes and learn your way forward into uncharted

territory. So for most I would assume it is a process where it's difficult to find the right moment. the

metaphor you're bringing in with Lewis and Clark who are on an expedition in early 1800s and need

to find a water route from the Pacific to the Atlantic and they are stuck, there is no way forward but

need to out that they need to climb the mountains, right? Right, right, exactly. If everybody for 300

years assumed there was a water route that would connect all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to

the Pacific Ocean, they just had to find it. For 300 years, there was an assumption about thegeography. What they realized at that moment was the maps that they had been given, maps that

people had drawn assuming something were wrong. And so the metaphor is that the world in front

of you is different than the world behind you and that we were trained for the world behind us, but

we're to have to let that go to keep moving forward. And we realize that's where every organization

is today, especially Christian organizations. The world is changing rapidly and we have to discern

what of our past we're going to take with us and what we might have to let go. And that's very hard.

It's very hard.

Adlerblick [06:03]: And it's also for, I can say for technology organizations, a huge problem with AI

coming in. In past we could always say put more developers on the problem and now that doesn't

work anymore. We need different ways to do things. Thank

Tod Bolsinger [06:18]: Yeah, it's interesting. The tech world is a fascinating place where I have

good conversations because the tech world has changed rapidly. Think about just how long ago,

not very long ago, we were telling all young people learn to code. You should learn to code. Yeah.

Right. Now we have apps that are doing it faster than humans ever will. So you realize it's changed.

The world is changing so fast that the capacity to adapt wisely and well. is the key to the future. And

that takes both wisdom and courage. It takes capacity and humility. And it's very hard. If we take

Lewis and Clark, they were sitting in the canoes and getting to the source of the water, so there was

no water anymore. And they had to step out of the canoe. There was no water anymore. But for

most of us, I would think it is a slow process. The water is getting... there's less and less water, it's

still possible to get, but how do we find the moment of saying, get out of the canoe? So one of the

things we when when we do consulting we have this model that we use for change that it's I do this

because it's an it's a sine curve in s The s-curve almost every organization looks like like almost like

a human life like you you start you grow you peak you fall if you do nothing a Good company a

business good business. It will do this a good church. It will do this. It will just eventually die the

Tod Bolsinger [08:00]: The person who did that work said the most important thing to recognize is

that you can't do nothing and you can't go back. Once you start declining, if you try to go back, you'll

decline even faster. The only thing you can do is start a new curve. But to start a new curve, the

best time to start a new curve is yesterday. Yeah. And almost all of us want to wait as long as we

can and try to, you have to, because the first thing that happens when you start a new curve is it

goes down. So if you're on the downward slope and you start something new and you run out of

money or energy or... It ends. So you have to start sooner. So a lot of our work, and we're sitting

here at the Willow Conference, which has been a very successful group of people, I'm so thrilled

that a conference like this filled with many creative church people who are listening to a message

like mine, because I'm saying, you've been very successful over the last 30 years in many places

where the church is not doing well. and you have to start changing now. If you wait, you'll become

like the churches that sometimes we feel like they're ancient and they're dying.

Adlerblick [09:10]: Hmm.

Adlerblick [09:16]: So that means, do we need a better reflection to understand when is the point

of getting out of the cannon? I mean for a long time it was good to be in the cannon. Yeah, it was

good. So I always say this, that one of the things, I was talking today to a church planter, so he's a

young person, young in his 30s, his church is four years old. I said the most important thing for you

to recognize is that if you want your church to be here 100 years from now. It's gonna well outlive

you. You need to build into it today the capacity for it to change and adapt as you go. That's a

capacity. We talk as our company, we say our company is we build adaptive capacity, which is the

capacity to wisely adapt your core values to a changing world so your mission can thrive. So that

capacity can start now, early. can keep the canoes as long as you need them, but you're prepared

to lose them. And that requires us to do some work. And we have a whole process that we take

organizations through where they can start thinking about that. But the earlier you start building the

capacity to adapt, the more that when the changes come, the less it bothers you. you

Adlerblick [10:40]: So that means if we had the opportunity to give some advice to Lewis and Clark

in the beginning before they started the expedition, it would be, we expect you can go with the

canoes down to the Pacific, but if not, be prepared for rethinking. Yes, so here's an interesting thing.

They get to the top of this mountain, the Lemhi Pass. They look into the future and realize there's

no water. Why didn't they go back? They were supposed to find a water route. The entireeconomics of the young United States of America was built on the fact that they would find this

water route. Why didn't they go back and tell Thomas Jefferson, there's no water route. You need a

better plan. Like, you told us to find a water route. There isn't one. So we came home. They didn't

come back because they actually had a deeper value than the value of the economics of the

country. The value was taught by Thomas Jefferson to Merriwether Lewis. It was an enlightenment

value. As Christians, we could have a great debate about whether it's the kind of value we would

build our life on. But what they believed, their deepest value was the belief that the growth of human

knowledge would lead to the growth of human happiness. So when Mary Weather Lewis saw there

was no water route, Think in that moment he thought Thomas Jefferson would tell me to keep going

The more we learn the more every step that we experiment with every thing we explore There's not

going to be a water route, but we're going to learn about a whole new world And so you realize is

you prepare people for the future by helping them get really clear on their values

Tod Bolsinger [12:25]: Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, have done some leadership work, right. Once

you're clear on what should never change, then you can be prepared to change everything else.

And I think that conversation about never changing is a very important one. Okay, but asked sitting

in the canoe, wouldn't they say what will never change is sitting in a canoe? Well, so what you

realize is that what they said was, no, what will never change is exploring, discovering. The core of

discovery was about discovering more than a water route. That wasn't their official task. Their task

was to find a water route. But they had a deeper value. And I think for many of us in, or say church

leaders, that we're with today. They had a vision to plant a church or to grow a church or to reach a

neighborhood. They had a vision for what that church would look like. It probably did well. Well, the

world changes. Sometimes our neighborhoods change, our community changes, the needs

change, or the people who started got older. Now we need a new generation that doesn't respond

to this. So what's never going to change? Preserving the building? Preserving the initials on the

door? What's the deeper value? And once you get people asking questions about the deepest

values,

Tod Bolsinger [13:54]: And by values, I mean the actual values, not our aspirations, not what it

should be, but what it actually is. Well, then you can have these conversations about this is what we

preserve, and this is what we adapt, and this is what we might have to discard. This might be a

canoe that we're gonna drop the canoe so we can keep exploring. It's a bad day for everybody who

came on this trip as expert canoers. I mean, remember, they built their own expert water navigators.

And all of a sudden they realized the very next day they were just a bunch of guys who had to carry

a bunch of luggage while they walked. It wasn't what they expected, but the deeper value of being

about discovery. you

Tod Bolsinger [14:39]: became the important thing for them. And I think that's the conversation

leaders have to have a lot, is what is our actual values? I think values are like the DNA of a person.

It's like the DNA of an organization. What's our identity? Who are we about? What matters the

most? What should never change? And then from there, go. And if you think about it, you see this a

lot in a lot of technology. IBM, International Business Machines, doesn't make machines anymore.

They're still about international business, but not about the machine. That's kind of interesting.

Didn't it need the crisis of seeing there is no water anymore to find those values? Well, I think the

crisis brought them to the surface. So we I wrote a little book called how not to waste a crisis and in

that little book what we talk about is the crisis reveals both the underlying issues the challenges that

were there all the time that we haven't wanted to pay attention to and it also brings up the questions

that we have to ask in this crisis about about thriving beyond it Most the time when people face a

crisis, they want to just get out of it. How do we go back? do we get back to where we did before?

The crisis actually gives you an opportunity to learn your way forward if you don't waste it. so that's

one. So yes, the crisis of seeing the mountains changed Lewis and Clark, but they had to have

those values deep within them as they began. And so what we say to leaders all the time is we want

to work with you on being able to get very clear on your values.

Tod Bolsinger [16:13]: A phrase we use with organizations is your charism. What is the unique gift

that you do that is your gift to the world, your gift to your neighbor? What's the unique thing about

your company, about your organization that if you didn't preserve that, it might not be done in just

the way you do it. That's who you are. That's your identity. I was very moved by an old rabbinic tale.

Says that the old rabbis used to say when God judges you he will not ask you why you weren'tMoses He already had a Moses He's gonna ask you why weren't you you? I I made you Why didn't

you be you and I think that we can ask that question about every company every leader every

organization the more we know who we are and our identity Hmm.

Tod Bolsinger [17:06]: what's the most important thing to us. And then the more we pay attention

to the way the world has changed, and particularly the pain of the world, in a little book called Invest

in Transformation, we lay out our process. Charism meets the pain point of the world, which

requires our transformation. And there's a little process there that we've used with international

organizations and small churches and... Tiny companies and big universities. It's charism, pain

point of the world, our transformation. Yeah, is I think a very difficult and very helpful case when we

find that there is a solution in the crisis. That gives us a hope. Yeah, does. Hope moving forward.

You said in the book Yeah.

Adlerblick [18:05]: that people don't resist change, but they resist loss. Yeah, yeah. That's from

Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky. They are the people behind adaptive leadership. I got to meet

Marty and I asked him, you know, what's the most important thing that if I get to talk about your

research with people? And he said, it's always about loss. And when you think about this, people

don't resist change, they resist loss. What they resist is, I want the thing that is familiar. I want the

thing that is comfortable. They famously said that leadership is disappointing people at a rate they

can absorb. yeah. And what's great about that is why is leadership disappointing? Because

leadership requires your transformation and most of us want leaders to change our organizations

so we don't have to change. And what it requires is us to change to accomplish the mission and that

change, it feels like loss. Wonderful thing.

Tod Bolsinger [19:06]: losing, for me as a young pastor, I was losing the idea that I was the expert.

I was losing the notion, the way I learned to lead, which was to cast a vision, inspire people. It had

worked. Now it wasn't working in the same way. And I could probably keep going a bit longer. I

could probably keep paddling the canoe longer. It would go fine for a while. But I knew you

Tod Bolsinger [19:35]: that the world in front of me was different and I needed a different way of

leading and that feels like loss. And there's been lots of research on this. Daniel Kahneman won a

Nobel Prize for looking at the fact that human beings are three times more likely to respond to loss

and pain than they are to something good. Like three times more, we are way more sensitive about

loss than we are about the possibilities for good. So what we have to do is learn to take people

through those losses, accompany them, help them, be with them, empathize with them. Yeah, you

literally accompany people through loss is what you're doing, which is really hard because usually

when you're the leader, So a leader is a loss expert.

Tod Bolsinger [20:26]: they're mad at you because they thought your job was to keep them from

the loss. And what you have to do is say, no, my job is to accompany us as we change and leave

behind these things we have to leave behind. We're going to keep going together. And that's very,

it's a skill set not many of us were taught how to do. Hmm.

Adlerblick [20:49]: leadership is disappointing own people at a rate they can absorb. So when I first

read it, it really surprised me. But the more I thought about it, I thought there is a lot of wisdom in it.

And usually leaders get appointed or selected because they are... I don't know, bringing some

harmony in a group. are accepted at this group and now they need to do the opposite, right? Yeah,

so think of it, it's not necessarily doing the opposite, but it's not making that the point. Like if the

point is the mission, if the point is for us to accomplish our mission and to accomplish our mission

together, then the most important thing is not our comfort. So think about how a typical experience

that I have in the United States is a church leader will come to us and say, our church is getting

older. We would like to attract more younger people, more young families. So we're going to hire a

young pastor. And they bring in the young pastor and the pastor's got little kids and they're all

excited. comes in and says, thank you, I'll be your pastor. We'll reach young families. If you want to

reach people like me, here's how we're going to have to change. And they go, no, no, no, no, no. All

we wanted to do is hire you. We want you to bring them into our church. You attract them. And what

we say is they want the pastor to be the technical solution, to be the expert who solves the problem

so they don't have to be transformed. And that's the disappointment.

Adlerblick [22:09]: Yeah.Tod Bolsinger [22:28]: The disappointment isn't that they're not capable, they're capable. It's that

it's going to require us to do something very uncomfortable. you have to lead people through that

process. It reminds me when I was hired for a specific job and they asked me to change the

organization. Even everyone in the organization said we need to change ourselves. But when

starting they all said not me personally. The other department they... Haunt them. Right. They need

to change. Yeah. It's why one of the parts that I've spent a lot of my time, at least on lot of time, is

the concept of sabotage. Sabotage comes from your own people when you start to implement the

changes. Mm-hmm.

Tod Bolsinger [23:14]: then you will get resistance. And you don't get the resistance until after you

start to implement the changes. Ed Friedman, writes about this, and I wrote a book, Tempered

Resilience, about the resilience needed to lead through sabotage, he says that you make a change,

then you survive the sabotage, and then you're successful. He says, sabotage, where your own

people turn on you, he thinks happens almost 100 % of the time. So once you know that that's the

process, that that's normal, that it's to be expected, I tell people, sabotage is not the bad things that

evil people do. It is the human things that anxious people do. We're anxious because we don't want

the loss. So we get mad and we sabotage and stop the very change we asked you to bring. And

you wonder why we get stuck. And that's what you have to learn to lead people through. In larger

organizations, most management is somehow middle management. Having people above and

people below us. And usually people above expect that there is not too much turmoil below. Do you

have some advice how to manage this? The idea is, yes, please change, but please keep also

people calm. Thanks

Tod Bolsinger [24:43]: you Yeah, so what you're asking, I think, it's the single biggest question we

get asked by the people we work with. How do you change if you're not at the top of the

organization? And the answer to that is you have to actually work both directions. So you have to

disappoint your people above you at a rate they can absorb. Which is, do you do that? By being

trustworthy. By being somebody who is trustworthy, who tells the truth, who does demonstrate your

technical competence. So we have said that every problem has either technical problem or an

adaptive challenge. Technical problems our expertise can solve. So everything the boss tells you to

do that you can do, do well. You'll earn credibility, you earn trust. But if you can't solve the big

problem with your technical expertise, then you need to start setting up the boss to have capacity to

change. So it starts by, there's a lot of leading up. you helping the management, the upper

management, recognize the reality. You're the scout telling Merriweather Lewis, I'm ahead of you

and I need you to know mountains are coming. And Merriweather Lewis in his head is thinking, I'm

really good at mountains. I know what mountains look like. He's thinking about the rolling hills of

Virginia, not big peaks that look like the Alps, right? He needs to see that for himself, but you begin

to prepare them. So you start by leading up

Adlerblick [25:50]: you

Tod Bolsinger [26:13]: You stay connected relationally and then you are really consistent with the

people below you. Like you literally empathize, help them adjust and to be honest you help deal

with casualties. There are some people who won't make the change. The great story of the Exodus,

every person who went through the Red Sea Mmm. died in the wilderness. Israel made it to the

promised land, not the individual people. The mission was for God's people, Israel to go to the

promised land. Moses didn't even make it to the promised land. And that capacity of helping is what

you're, if you're the leader, doesn't matter where you are in the organization, leadership is a

function for that moment, which is about helping people go through transformation. for the sake of

emission. In a sales where I come from it's usually measured in revenue or whatever so there is

some clearness here needs something to be changed. In Christian organizations, in churches...

Adlerblick [27:32]: it is sometimes a bit more complex because it's not, maybe it's not that easy to

just look at numbers or it is used as an excuse not to look at numbers. Yeah, I say that when we do

our adaptive consulting, we always say your metrics are going to have to change, but we should

change them last because we don't know the right metrics yet. If the number you used in the past

got you to this result and it doesn't work anymore, you don't keep trying to do this. You've got to

figure out what's going to create the future. So right now I'm working with a number of universities.

A lot of them are Christian universities. Well, the demographics of the United States where I live aregoing down. Like the birth rate has gone down. There's going to be less college students and less

seminary students. That we already know. And the church is in decline. There's less people going

to seminary, to Christian schools. We know. So if you've set a number that we need to make the

budget and that number is unrealistic, you're just paddling harder in a canoe. It has no water. You're

just exhausting yourself. But if instead you said, what is our mission? And our mission is about

giving Christian education or developing pastors or developing Christian leaders. Well, great. What

does that mission look like today in this context? Until we figure that out, we don't know what those

numbers are. So a lot of places you have to realize is what we're doing is we're using old metrics to

calm down our anxiety, even though they don't work anymore. And what we need to do is go

through the changes, learn what we can, develop this new set of strategies going forward, and then

have a new set of metrics.

Adlerblick [29:26]: And people who become pastors, usually, my experience, personal experience,

like harmony. And the idea of disappointing people is not, yeah, they, why they make it. No, no, it's

horrible. It's horrible. Yes like it's So would you say they are in the wrong shop or? No, I would say

you had the wrong expectation. Like it used to be, not too long ago, most of us could remember that

if a church was filled with peace and joyful people who loved each other and cared for each other

and cared for their neighbors, the church would grow or it be fine. It would minister to the

neighborhood. Well, today it's different than that. Almost every church is like a mission outpost. And

what you have is people who are trying to use the old metrics, harmony. We love each other. We're

a tight little family. That old metric no longer continues to sustain. That's going down the growth

curve until you die. So what we have to say is one of the things that any of us who are called into

any leadership have to grapple with is we can't lead with the way that...

Tod Bolsinger [30:49]: to be able to lead. In business it was command and control. It was built on

industrial mindset and military, right? The org chart is straight. The person at the top gives the

orders. Today we know that businesses are fluid and people have different expectations and people

come to businesses with different expectations. Generations, younger generations don't have

nearly the same sense of loyalty to a company because they have different values. That's just the

world changing. So you can either adapt or you'll die. And most of us, adaptation is very hard. And if

a pastor comes to you who is very uncomfortable with the idea of disappointing others, would you

recommend change profession or? Yeah.

Tod Bolsinger [31:40]: I had a pastor walk up to me and say, you keep calling me a leader. I was in

Scotland. You keep calling me a leader. Yeah. said, yes, I do. I think your job is to lead the people

of God in your community. He said, I'm a minister. I said, yeah, but ministry today, service, is

leading a community to do what you can't do yourself. You're not just a priest. And if you want that,

there's probably places where you can do that chaplaincy work or some others. Yeah. Hmm.

Tod Bolsinger [32:06]: But leadership is leading a community of people to their own transformation

for the sake of a mission. And so it may be that you're called to be a minister, but you may not be

called to be a church minister. And that's very painful. It's very hard. Leadership is disappointing

own people at a rate they can absorb if you find out you They couldn't absorb it. It was too much. So

you you lose trust of your organization So there was a lot of openness to change by the leader but it

was too much, the disappointment too big. What can a leader do to get them back? Yeah, so

there's two things at that moment. If you think about it this way, think trust is like a bank account. If I

want to do a big building project, as long as I have enough money in the bank, I can keep building.

But if I run out of all the money, the building stops. But having a big bank account is not enough. If a

big bank account, if you don't invest it, it doesn't create transformation. out.

Tod Bolsinger [33:22]: So if you start investing and all of sudden you realize that people are, can't

take the pain, trust has gone down, then all you can do is rebuild the trust. And if it's not a moral

thing... It's not that you squandered it. It's that it just needs to be refueled. Well, the way you refuel

trust is through your own technical competence. So you do the things that you need to do. You hit

the numbers, you preach the sermons, you care for the people. And you also build it with what we

call relational congruence, which is you tell the truth in every situation. You have a, a person of

character. So one of the things you, that we would do is say, we were not ready for change. But

now if I'm going to stay as your leader, I have to get you ready for change. Because we are going to

have to change. So I can give you an example from one of my clients. let us talk about this. One ofour big clients is the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Beautiful minister. you

Tod Bolsinger [34:29]: The CEO came to us and said, we're facing the set of mountains that's

coming in front of us and we need to change. said, what is the mountain? They said, we're gonna

finish the job. Bible translation is gonna be finished by 2028. By 2028, every language in the world

will have a Bible translation. By 2033, it'll be finished. They said, We have to ask what's next. It's a

big question, And what was amazing about it is what he said, and this is an amazing leader. He

said, we're not even prepared to have that question yet. We need you to train us to prepare for that

moment. And so as a company, we've been training their leaders three levels deep across the

world on how to develop the capacity to to... That's a big question.

Adlerblick [35:09]: Hmm.

Tod Bolsinger [35:23]: look at that changing world and ask, what's the questions we should be

asking? What's the mission that should be next? One of the answers is, we're done. We celebrate

and we close the ministry. But there's another one, which is, well, what if we've learned something

over a hundred years of doing this work? that could be of value to the church going forward. What

could be our next contribution? And that's where we're helping them right now. We're in a process

for the next 18 months helping their leadership think about the future of Wycliffe Bible Translators

when there don't need to be any more Bible translation. It's one of the most inspiring and lovely

stories going on in the church right now. Hmm.

Adlerblick [36:05]: Wow. And I guess many organizations have to ask them very fundamental

questions. Do you think this is more than 10 years ago, 20 years ago? Would your book be same

important 20 years ago? Well, Heifetz and Linsky, their work is 40 years old. So they've been

talking about change for a while. Back, you know, 40 years ago, back to last century. I think it's

sped up. I think what's happening is it's speeding up. And when I wrote Canoeing the Mountains, I

wrote it 10 years ago. And 10 years ago, I wrote it about the big change that was happening in the

world was the move from Christendom to post-Christendom, where there was two... the places

where the church was thriving is where the... Mm.

Tod Bolsinger [36:50]: culture supported Christianity. So say more in America than in Europe, for

example. Well, people argue with me about that. They argued with me about Christendom and then

COVID hit. And now nobody argues with me that the world has changed and now technology is

speeding up. And you start realizing, the things that are changing rapidly are changing very rapidly.

Today, I got asked a question about AI. I didn't know what AI you

Tod Bolsinger [37:20]: 18 months ago and now our company is having to learn how to use AI

wisely and well and people ask me what do you think I said I don't know it's early I don't know that's

moving really rapidly and that's the skill set the leaders have to have the world is going to change

rapidly so what are you clear about well never change and then how can you begin to wisely ask

what do we preserve never change what do we adapt What do we let go? What's the canoe we

drop? We're speaking in a Christian context. And for Christians, it's also important to keep some

values very high. We don't want to give up even if the zeitgeist, the current timing sees things

different. Isn't it difficult to distinguish what is a zeitgeist, what is a hype for now and what is worth

defending? always say that my background is in Christian spiritual formation. My PhD is in the

practice of the formation of the people of God to be like Christ. It's in spiritual formation. It's all built

on the doctrine of the Trinity. It's how communities create people to be born, made into the likeness

of Christ. It's formation. I say that because the part that is unique about Christianity is that it says,

deepest understanding is that humans were made in the image of God and that we have a God

who has told us what he wants for us.

Tod Bolsinger [39:02]: Now we can disagree about a lot of things, but as soon as I say there's a

God and my life is about fulfilling that God's mission for the world that he loves, now I've got to ask

what's the most important things? And it's interesting, there's some places in the scriptures where

they talk about the most important things. Jesus was asked what's the greatest commandment and

he gave two, right? you love God with all your heart, which is the Shema, the single biggest, most

important text in the Old Testament. And then he takes a little verse from Leviticus and he connects

it to it. Love your neighbor as yourself. That's a disruption of the day, but it clarified this is what's the

most important. Paul says, the only thing that matters, the only thing that matters. Mmm.Tod Bolsinger [39:56]: is faith expressing itself through love. with a lot of our churches, we'll say to

them, what's the single most important thing that if you let it go, you stopped being yourself? Are

there one, two, three? How many other things do we add? you

Tod Bolsinger [40:16]: Pretty soon, the big challenge of discernment, that's the single spiritual

practice. Discernment. What do we discern is the most important thing that's essential, and if it's not

essential, is it expendable? What do we preserve? What do we adapt? What do we discard? That's

the question every time. When you realize it, you realize every decision you make as a company,

as a team, you're asking that question all the time. You asked us this morning why churches are

afraid of the future. And that's a very interesting question. Because you said we know where the

future is going and it is going in a positive direction at the end. What is your answer to it? Why are

churches so much afraid? Yeah.

Tod Bolsinger [41:15]: Well, I think for one thing, we haven't read all of our Bibles. We haven't

studied... We don't read to the end. I'm having this conversation with you in Germany. The greatest

theologian of the future was a German theologian, Jorgen Multmann, who talked about the fact that

it is God's future calling us forward for the world that gives us hope. And I think many people in the

church don't... He's not to the end.

Tod Bolsinger [41:43]: afraid to take that seriously. What we know is the past. We know this. So

it's very hard to say, for the sake of the joy set before me, I will endure the cross laying something

down. I want to cling to what I know. I sometimes say it this way. In English, the root word for family

and familial is the same root word in English. It means that when people are asked to do something

unfamiliar, like think about the future, they don't just feel disoriented, they feel unfamilied. They feel

abandoned. They're like little kids who are afraid mom and dad have left. Like we get really anxious.

Hmm.

Tod Bolsinger [42:36]: And so partly what we have to do is create environments as leaders to help

people with their anxiety, with their losses, as we start teaching them that the future in front of us is

God's good future calling us forward. That's the question we have to keep asking is do we believe

that we have a God who is the Lord of the future, the same yesterday, today, and forever? All of

those things we claim in our... texts and in our hymns and our songs. When we've been there

10,000 years, right? We actually have to ask ourselves, do they make a difference to me today?

And that's very hard. With most of us, it's easier to talk about the past or to fret about the future.

There's a biblical passage in Isaiah where God says to the Israelites, do not remember the former

things. you All through the Bible, he's saying, remember, remember, remember, remember,

remember what I did, remember. Here he says, do not remember. In the future, he's gonna say

remember again, but here he says, do not remember. I'm doing a new thing. Do you not see it? And

the answer is no, they can't see it. because they're so stuck in the past or anxious about the present

that they can't see that God is calling them forward into a new future. They can't see it. And so

that's what we have. That's where our faith grows. That's what we have to disciple people and train

people for. My next book is on the crisis of discipleship and the fact that we haven't discipled people

for a changing world and that for organizations we don't form our people.

Tod Bolsinger [44:21]: for a future that is changing. We form them for the past. We are now

speaking in Germany. Not in German, but in Germany. Next time maybe in German. Do you think

the mountains for us in Germany, in Europe, are different mountains than in the US? Wish.

Tod Bolsinger [44:42]: Well, I should ask you to answer that question. know, like in one sense,

what do you believe are the things in front of you that is causing you to have to stop and ask your

deepest questions? What's brought you this far that you now realize, we're going to have to change

to go forward? Like, I think the mountains are different for everybody. The mountains are the way in

which my experience of the world around me, the environment around me has changed, and so I

have to change. So I'll give you one example, and you can tell me if it fits. The most diverse zip

code in the United States is a zip code in Queens, New York. I know this because I have clients in

that zip code. The second most diverse zip code is in Texas. Now if anybody, you anything about

Texas, we think Texans are all the same, but no, in Irving, Texas, by the Dallas airport, it's the

second most diverse. And one of our clients is a church there that said, our deepest value is that

we're a church that wants to share the gospel with our neighbors. And they grew. They said the

neighbors have changed. It's become a diverse neighborhood with people from all over the world.So we're gonna have to change to make our neighbors comfortable here. They are now a

multi-ethnic community church in a diverse neighborhood with 2,000 members. The problem is the

pastor when he preaches, he preaches to 500 empty seats because they used to be 5,000

members when all their neighbors looked like them. Wow.

Adlerblick [46:23]: Hmm. And so the challenge they have is there are people who say, we're

shrinking, we're losing it. What we should do is keep more people who look like us and get them to

drive in. And he said, no, our value is our neighbor. Our neighborhood has changed, so we need to

change. Well, there's people who are like, well, I don't want to be part of a church that looks like

that. And so they leave. So that's the challenge. Like the mountains for him is his neighborhood

changed. It's different in different places. My personal impression is that Americans are more open

to change than Europeans are. even if you look at people moving around from one house to

another, I have a colleague who said he bought 11 houses in his life. I think there's not one German

who ever sold and bought so often houses. I think we are... tighter there.

Tod Bolsinger [47:27]: Yeah. Well, I think at the moment in the United States, there's a fear of the

future and there's there's a harkening to go back. There's a press toward nationalism. And even

some of the things our government is doing at the moment and the Christians are supporting is

concerning to me because I think that it doesn't match up to scripture. And there's a.

Tod Bolsinger [47:51]: We're not doing a very good job of loving our neighbors and working for

justice and welcoming the immigrants. I mean, we have a lot of conversations led by Christians that

feel to me like they're more built on fear than they are on faith and upon the call of God. So maybe

that was true in the past. At the moment, I'm really worried about my... Hmm.

Adlerblick [48:14]: Yeah, maybe a chance for Europe to catch up a bit. When a church is stuck in

this process, what would you recommend them to do? Where's a good starting point of getting it

going again? Yes, maybe help teach us.

Tod Bolsinger [48:32]: Well, I mean, this may sound like a shameless plug, but I said, get help.

know, this is like where this is where our company comes in. Get help. Like, like you don't have to

do it by yourself. Yeah, we have we have planes. We fly. Yeah. I mean, we or we and we have

books and we have seminars and we have we because that's what I had to find. What I realized

was when they looked at me and said, I said, I don't know why. If why are our numbers going up,

our metrics going up and our morale going down? Do you have an apartment in Germany?

Tod Bolsinger [49:03]: didn't know what to do, so we got help. I brought someone in to coach me

and teach me, and we started doing experiments and new things. I think one of the mistakes we

make is that we have to all figure it out by ourselves. And so I would say, just acknowledge the

truth. Like we've tried everything we can. and the world has changed and we were trained as

canoers, we got good arm muscles, but we're not good at hiking, maybe we could use a guide to

take us through the mountains and then look for that. If you can tell something to your younger me,

would you change anything in your own biography on this way? that question. You know what I

would tell my younger me? I would say, you're kind of a smart guy and it's going to be a problem. It

took me a long time to be comfortable not having the answer. I feel like I had to learn it the hard

way. wish I could have told a younger me, be a learner, be curious. Thanks.

Adlerblick [50:05]: Now we're

Tod Bolsinger [50:10]: Be okay with asking a dumb question and looking smart. The sooner you

learn that, the faster you'll go and the happier you go. Today, I'm much more comfortable, but I'm in

my 60s. I wish I could tell 25-year-old me or 30-year-old me it's really okay to not have an answer,

to ask a dumb question, to be a learner. It would have been better. you

Adlerblick [50:39]: Yeah, very last question and the question I ask every time in this podcast is if

you have one wish you can wish from Christian leaders, what would you wish for? What I would

wish is that you would know in your bones that you are already profoundly loved. You have nothing

to prove. So knowing that you are securely loved by God, then take risks. Just step out, learn, go

forward. There's nothing to prove. This morning I was getting ready to speak. and York who runs

walked up to me and he literally said to me, he said, there's nothing you can do to make this bad.

Just be yourself. I'm thinking I'm 61 and I'm the keynote speaker and I needed to hear that today. Ineeded him to say, there's nothing you could do that would make this go wrong. Just go up there

and be yourself. Ah, we need to hear that over and over over again. I had to hear it this morning.

Thank you very much for being on this podcast. It was wonderful. Thank you. I enjoyed it very

much. you. That was lovely. Thank you. Thank you for all the time you put into the questions. Yeah.

Adlerblick [52:01]: It helped me a lot reading this.