Introduction to the Podcast

Host 0:06

Welcome to the Leading Conversations podcast sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network . On each episode , jd Paring will have conversations with church planting pastors and leaders from around the country . You can learn more about how to connect with Excel at the end of this podcast . Let's join JD now and listen in on this leading conversation .

J.D. Pearring 0:29

Well , welcome to another edition of the Leading Conversations podcast with Excel Leadership Network , and today we are thrilled to have with us the great Dan Kimball from Santa Cruz , California . Dan , thanks so much for being here .

Dan Kimball 0:44

Yeah , and from Sacramento to Santa Cruz . How is Santa Cruz today ? What's the ? It is somewhat sunny , a little bit cloudy , but the weather here is usually nice . So today's a nice day and the sun is out . But people , when they're over here in California , especially if you're not from california , we're not , as you know this , we're not los angeles , so we do have cold winters up here . So that is uh , but santa cruz is a beach town . The 1988 movie lost boys about vampires was filmed here and uh , that's my first hearing of s of Santa Cruz was through the lost boys movie .

J.D. Pearring 1:26

When we moved from SoCal up to the Bay Area . I mean , Santa Cruz is the beach you go to .

Dan Kimball 1:34

Yeah , yeah .

J.D. Pearring 1:36

Great beach Water is freezing , so , hey , can I start ? This is terrible . Can I start asking you about the hair ?

Dan Kimball 1:46

Yeah .

J.D. Pearring 1:47

Every guy I know from Santa Cruz .

Dan Kimball 1:49

Yeah .

J.D. Pearring 1:51

Uh , has a bunch of product in their hair . What is that about ? Is that like a part of um being from that particular zip code ? Or is it surfing stuff ? Or is it just a cool vibe ?

Dan Kimball 2:03

I mean , I tried surfing when I moved out here and , as you said , the water is very , very cold again , unlike southern California , um , and I was afraid of sharks , just like I , so I I tried it for about six months . But , um , my personal hair for those that can't see it it's kind of like , straight up on the top it's got what's what's known as a pompadour um , and it was basically from being in a , a rockabilly band in college , and I was into punk music and we had my hair used to be about three times higher . I could pull it down past my chin , but I've had this since college in one form or the other , very much like this . So I wasn't Santa Cruz affiliated at all . It was .

Dan Kimball 2:50

Yeah , it was the music background that I kept my hair like this .

J.D. Pearring 2:54

Well , I wish I could do that , but my wavy hair is waving goodbye and I used to have the long you know SoCal ultimate Frisbee at UCLA hair , but not anymore .

Dan Kimball 3:06

Did you grow up down in Southern California ?

J.D. Pearring 3:10

Yes , I grew up there , moved to the Bay Area when I was in high school , but I went to UCLA . That's where I came to Christ . So tell us how you came to Christ . How did that happen ?

Dan Kimball 3:20

Yeah , mine was at Colorado State University actually . Actually it was at two places . It was introduced to faith more at Colorado State University .

Dan Kimball 3:30

I grew up in New Jersey , in Paramus , New Jersey , a city or town , a suburb of New York City . I didn't think about faith growing up too much . My parents they probably would have said they were Christian , and I grew up in a very fortunate home , loving mom and dad , had a great scenario growing up , but there wasn't really any Christian , you know , forced on me or anything . Both my mom and dad came to know Jesus later in life . But I think this is actually important , for if anyone's a church planter or just evangelizing in general , you know , little things along the way make a big difference . And when I was a teenager I can remember in Paramus Park Mall a guy came up to me and my buddy Ralph , and he was trying to witness to us . Now I look back on it , you know , and he shared a little bit about do I know Jesus ? And it was kind of like I didn't know you could know him , because I saw Jesus more like a historical figure like George Washington or somebody I didn't really know , but a couple of

Dan's Journey to Faith

Dan Kimball 4:45

minutes with him left an impression with me , uh . And then when I went to Colorado State University and it was one of these , um , and I was very much into music , I got my degree in landscape architecture and urban planning and I ended up , um , while I was in college , I picked up a little tract , uh , at a table that was left out you know when they do this beginning of the year , uh , all the christian clubs and it was a tract that said something of the sort about jesus being the only way , and I never thought about that before . It was very , like , very vivid to me , because I remember looking at it and just thinking I didn't realize Christians believe that Jesus is the only way . I was just thinking is that American version of faith ? Is it like what ? For whatever reason , I had nobody asking me to come to any campus group . I had no one saying you should be Christian , my friends weren't Christians that I got in a circle of friendships there and it ended up being that through , that little tract was so fascinating that I ended up going to a bookstore and looking at books about Christianity and I had a pretty . Again , I think it had to be God , because I'm like is . There's a young guy like is this real ? And I then started wondering and started reading and reading and slowly becoming more convinced .

Dan Kimball 6:19

I tried a campus ministry and I was in a punk band and I can tell you it was like the absolute opposite , culturally , of what I would have fit in and like I don't fit here . And I was in a punk band and I can tell you it was like the absolute opposite culturally , of what I would have fit in and like I don't fit here . And I didn't . You know they're . They're a great campus ministry , but coming in if you've never been in one , the music especially , I just remember like I gotta get out of here . I didn't even stay for the whole thing , but I could not relate and it wasn't their fault , they , they were just doing what was right and weren't doing a lot of punk worship . No , correct , yes . And then I tried , when I look back , and it was a Lutheran church , I walked across the street from the doorman and that was like the opposite Could not relate to the formality and the fellow wearing a robe and didn't understand the terminology and that's what kind of kept me going into reading .

Dan Kimball 7:08

I guess just reading , and whenever you study gift mix . You find that there's some people that gravitate towards learning and that was me . And a big moment which actually impacted me for the rest of my life was I had my friends saw me like buying books and I got a bible . And one time I came home to the house that we're all sharing and they there's a group sitting in the living room and I could tell they were talking about me . I'm like what's going on ? And they just started sharing . We're concerned about you . Uh , we see that you have a Bible . You're reading a Bible and reading these other books . They saw it in my room and they're like you know , christians . You know , they think they're waiting for the end of the world to happen . And I'm like huh , and they started saying we're worried what they're going to do to you , what you would become like the girl I was dating at the time . She's like you're going to do to , what you would become like , uh , the girl I was dating at the time . She's like you're going to lose all your creativity if you're a christian . And I'm like you know .

Dan Kimball 8:08

And then the word cult came up . Um , yeah , like you know , somehow they believe in this dead man that came back to life . You know , if you're looking at it from the outside , it does seem really bizarre . Like you know , we believe in a dead man that died and two thousand years ago . We've never seen him physically , but we believe in him and one day we're going to spend like you start pulling yourself out and looking at it that way . But they were worried about me from a caring perspective and I really remember , like how do I know they're not right ? Is Christianity a cult ? People that are in cults don't realize they're in cults right . So it forced me to want to learn even more . That kind of compelled me . I'm like I don't want to be in a cult .

Dan Kimball 8:54

And to make this story shorter was that when we all graduated from Colorado State University , we moved to London , england , to keep playing in this band that we had and like might as well go now . And during a year that I was in london I I was searching for a church . Actually I take that back . I wasn't searching for a church , I was . When I moved to california I was walking by a church and they had had a little sign that said you know , bible study inside , and it was a handwritten sign . I remember that and I went in and it was about four elderly people and I remember if I saw the group and I'm like oops , I would have said oops , sorry , wrong room . And the guy I have his picture on the wall next to me here he was 82 years old and he looked up and he said here for the study , like , and if he didn't say that with kindness I probably would have said I'm leaving , but the way he talked we just um , he gave me a cup of ovaltine . I remember I'm like this is odd , like christian's , like ovaltine , I didn't know like .

Dan Kimball 10:02

And then it was , and they took me under their wing and I started being part of this little tiny elderly community in London , England , and I was able to ask questions . He would take an hour . It took him to come into London from where he lived . He started meeting with me at another day during the week I became the volunteer custodian for the little tiny church building there's probably about 20 , 25 people that went to the and during that time I started understanding the gospel more and grace and that's when I say I became a Christian was

From London to California

Dan Kimball 10:40

in London due to an elderly church being faithful and me walking in and they didn't judge me for my haircut or what I was wearing , and they were loving and kind , and that's where I would say I then understood the gospel enough to make a firm decision I now believe . So that's how I became a believer , and then that's fascinating .

Dan Kimball 11:04

It's amazing In England Wow .

J.D. Pearring 11:08

So how did you get to California then ?

Dan Kimball 11:11

After England because , being a learner after England , the band was ending .

Dan Kimball 11:16

We had work permits for a year , student work permits that were able to stay there .

Dan Kimball 11:20

And then I'm like I'm going to go to Israel and I heard about kibbutzes and went to Israel for for almost five months and kept reading and reading and learning .

Dan Kimball 11:32

And being in Israel was a great experience for me and , just like you know , I was reading through the Bible for the first time there and then I traveled through Egypt and Greece and kept reading the whole Bible and by the time I was done traveling after all of that , the bass player got a job in California , in San Jose , like let's all move to California . So my brother and his wife and myself and another friend , we moved to California , ended up in Santa Cruz and by that time I knew that we're supposed to be in local churches and I looked up in the phone book pre-internet and saw a church , santa Cruz Bible Church , and the name was easy to understand and I went there , got a job in San Jose and working for a as an architect , urban planning , and they did landscape architecture , a lot of the housing developments in the Bay Area and I started volunteering at Santa Cruz Bible Church , and that's how I ended up here .

J.D. Pearring 12:37

Wow , that is interesting . What was your instrument in the band ?

Dan Kimball 12:44

Drums .

J.D. Pearring 12:45

I got sticks right next to me .

Dan Kimball 12:47

Yeah . Drums and I still drum . You still have a punk band .

J.D. Pearring 12:52

You still have a punk band on the side .

Dan Kimball 12:53

No , but I have a drum set at home that I'll play punk music to in the headsets . So I do have . My wonderful wife allows me to keep a full drum set in our living room . So I do have it and I have to stay all neat and everything , but I do have a drum set , yep what's the best punk band or the the closest to what you were doing ?

Dan Kimball 13:15

that we should all check out , oh it probably would have been like the Clash and many people don't know who the Clash is today , but to me they were like the best kind of punk band there was . And you take the Clash , the Ramones , and you mix them with Johnny Cash and Early Elvis and that's what we were , that's what you were .

J.D. Pearring 13:38

Wow , that makes a lot of sense . Everything is just nice and neat , neat . You have such a typical testimony , so you're in santa cruz bible church . Was there a call for you to go into ministry ? You're this landscape architect . I mean , how did that happen ?

Dan Kimball 13:54

no , I mean , I always hear these , you know , especially in denomination . You know what's your calling . Did you get called ? I'm like I don't think I was ever called . Uh , I think for me it was everybody's called . I mean , like we're all . If you put faith in jesus , you are then called to serve him in mission in this life , no matter what you're doing . And so for me , um , I and if and division of paid clergy hierarchy interesting , because I see that every single person that puts faith in Jesus is called into serving on mission in this world . Now we're using our time differently and we're using our skills , and then some are freed up from working another job to serve in a local church , but we're all called . So I never see calling as this distinct thing from the church perspective versus the person that's working as an architect somewhere . They're called too . So back to the question .

Dan Kimball 15:01

When I was at santa cruz bible I think god knew it and the very first sunday , the person that got up front , his name was phil comer and he said we need a drummer for the choir and I'm like , huh , I guess . Uh , I'll talk to him and I have phil's . I , I have Phil's picture , I'll show you . I keep right next to me . I know I'm on a podcast , you can't see it visually , but I keep these guys that were influential in my life . Wow , that's the fellow from England , that's my father-in-law , that's Phil Comer , and that was the president of Multnomah University that I had the fortunate time to meet with when I went to school up there . But Phil was a drummer , came to faith in his 20s and he took me under his wing and Phil is the dad of John Mark Comer and Phil is the dad of John Mark Comer . So if you know John Mark Comer , who was the pastor of a church in Portland , that he started actually with his dad and now he writes and he's doing a ministry about a lot of spiritual disciplines and faith formation . Thanks for John Mark . But he was a little boy I forget nine or something when I met him but knew the dad and he took me under his wing and he started getting me more and more involved in just serving as a volunteer and I was commuting back and forth to San Jose in the architect office over there and then eventually , um , you know , I was once asked like would you like to work one day a week at the church ? And I'm like , ah , so I ended up taking one day and I started being the youth director of I'd never been in youth ministry before in my life became the youth director and then , over time , god was using the structure and the people . We got involved and it was growing and so then they asked me to come on full time and then I went to seminary Western Seminary , which I'm now a part of and then stayed at Santa Cruz Bible Church for 21 years . A young adult started a young adult ministry called Graceland . That was probably 800 , 1,000 young adults for several years , and then we planted Vintage Faith Church 21 years ago out of Santa Cruz Bible Church and that's

Church Planting and Ministry Calling

Dan Kimball 17:30

what I'm still part of .

Dan Kimball 17:31

But I guess , going back to calling , I mean it's a big topic . Here's what I know and this is really fascinating today , and I know if you want to get into this at all , I think every human being is called to serve Jesus , whether you are a stay-at-home mom , if you are a architect , if you are a or if you're freed up from time to go into local church ministry . The early church had designated people , because leadership is needed , and even a hierarchy , so to speak , when things get more . But my calling was people need to know who Jesus is . I didn't know . I didn't know if it was a cult . My friends were questioning if it was a cult . I didn't know if it was a cult . My friends were questioning if it was a cult . I didn't know how to respond to some of their questions that they were having about Christianity .

Dan Kimball 18:26

And then , as I had the opportunity to read on my own , and then that little tiny elderly church in London , and then I'm like I believe in Jesus and now I understand the gospel more .

Dan Kimball 18:39

And then I'm like we got to tell people like how this is such amazing news and so many people don't understand this and and there's so many misunderstandings about Christianity . We got to do anything possible to share about Jesus to people . That's my calling , whether it was when I'm serving at the Lance the architect office , while I'm one day a week on a church staff , whether I'm young adult ministry , youth ministry , or now I'm serving in seminary . That's my calling . We must do anything possible to have Jesus known in the gospel and answer the questions that are the misperceptions about faith , and whether it's whether you're again a janitor like and so and um , and then we're freed up if you're on church staff , you're then freed up to use your time in local church ministry rather than working in another job . I don't even like . I don't even like saying the word job about church . We're serving him . It's not a job , right , all right .

J.D. Pearring 19:45

Talk to us a little bit . How did the plant happen ? What was the catalyst for that ?

Dan Kimball 19:53

The catalyst for the church plant was we were at Santa Cruz Bible Church and I was there when the church was 400 people and it grew to about 3,500 people with the 800 to 1,000 young adults that I was part of , and it got to a point to where , you know , I think we were wanting to what's the best word ? We were wanting to have more . I guess it's almost like we didn't plant the young adult ministry . So it wasn't that we ended up planting a new church , but the lead pastor at the time and I were talking and it was how does this 800 plus young adult thing fit in the whole church ? And lots of questions about it . And then he actually asked me would you be open to planting our first church , a plant out of Santa Cruz Bible ?

Dan Kimball 20:48

And I wasn't called to plant a church , I wasn't called . I'm just like can we see more people come to know Jesus ? How do we do that ? Is church planting a way to do that ? Um , and respond , and wanted to be up on the other side of town , uh , up near university . So I'm like , all right , if we want to have people do that . And the senior pastor , uh , told me he's like we'll back you up and we'll do everything possible . And and I trusted him , so we we planted this church and we were the first Santa Cruz Bible Church plant back in 2004 .

J.D. Pearring 21:26

Wow , that's amazing , that's great . That's . If more churches were doing that , if we could grow from I think we're trying to get to 16% of churches reproducing . I think right now we're about seven , and half of those are not on purpose , so that's a really good story . Let me ask you how did you get into writing ? Because you were writing books even before that . Obviously , I went to the bookstore , so I'm sure it's part of who you are . Well , it was actually .

Dan Kimball 21:59

I mean , you're old enough to remember the Generation X like Gen X and what are we doing for Gen X ? And you had the baby boomers and the saddlebacks and the willow creeks of the time . And then you had reaching Gen X and what we were doing at Santa Cruz Bible Church with Graceland , it was reaching Gen X . And so just through relationships , kind of like , all of a sudden , leadership Network actually heard about what we were doing , I think through the lead pastor , and then I was invited to come into some meetings with other Gen X leaders way back . Mark Driscoll was one of them . There was a bunch of them that were kind of in that segment , and so it was Leadership Network that actually got us together . And then they were putting on events and the whole thing is you have a large Gen X ministry that got attention .

Dan Kimball 23:04

And so then I was asked by Zondervan Publishing to write . So I wasn't seeking out writing . I had Zondervan come up to me at a event that I was speaking at and they said would you be ennobled in writing about this ? And so what am I thinking ? Will this help people hear about Jesus ? Will this be a way of breaking stereotypes and negative things or misperceptions about Christians . Will writing be a way to do that ? And so I said yes , and that's why I started writing . I'm not a writer . It's a very difficult process for me . Zondervan has to hire a editor to read my writing and clean it up before it even goes to the first normal editor , because I'm such a terrible person with grammar and all of that stuff . But I never was called to be a writer . I'm called to keep that message going , and writing is another way of it happening , and God has used the

Writing Books and Church Misconceptions

Dan Kimball 24:10

writing and keep using it . So that's why I've done that .

J.D. Pearring 24:15

Yeah , well you're quite prolific . What's your favorite book that you've written ?

Dan Kimball 24:21

The favorite one that I've written . Yeah , oh , you're quite prolific . What's your favorite ?

J.D. Pearring 24:22

book that you've written , the favorite one that I've written .

Dan Kimball 24:24

Yeah , oh boy , I mean , I think right now I'm writing one now called how Not to Go to Church , which is an apologetic for the local church not to read the Bible , making sense of the pro-slavery , pro-violence , anti-women , anti-science sounding scriptures . Because what am I trying to do there ? Break down the misperceptions of the Bible that there are blocking people from faith . And the next one is how not to go to church faith . And the next one is how not to go to church , which is , yes , there's a lot of understandable criticism of church today . So let's look at those criticisms and see which are valid , which aren't .

Dan Kimball 25:08

What is the local church ? Even even the word church , we use it so wrong . We use the word worship so wrong . We use the word church so wrong . We're part of , we're part of the guilty of it . Like you know , you don't go to the new testament and say I , I'm going to go to church . And everybody knows we all say this . We are the church , be the church , don't go to church .

Dan Kimball 25:27

But what do we do every single Sunday ? Welcome to church . Are you going to church ? We set up and always project it's this thing that you go to right , and we all know like no , we're the church , the people . Then why do we keep reinforcing it so like I can do my own thing during the week ? And then I go to this thing called church where the religious activity happens and people do things for me , the pastors like . Again , we fight about the word pastor . Nobody was called formally a pastor in the New Testament . And then there's all this very strange things that we do in churches where you have directors and pastors and they're really doing the same thing but for some reason you have different titles and I know there's reasons , but it's just so fascinating that we've allowed certain things to get in the way of that can get in the way , and then younger people get disillusioned by some of this stuff . So you know , worship same thing . Worship is Romans 12 , 1 and 2 . I'm writing about this .

J.D. Pearring 26:24

You're asking no it's great I'm getting off topic .

Dan Kimball 26:28

I'm getting off topic , but you know it's actually what I'm doing . In the church book is broken down to what is church , when to define it and then go into some criticisms . But even we've . What do we do on Sunday ? If you're on a Sunday , we have music band preaching . It's pretty normal , so I'm not against that at all . However , what are we doing with ? We say worship today and it's you know , if I have this correct , it's like 98.8% of the times .

Dan Kimball 26:57

The word worship , as translated into English in the Bible , has nothing to do with music . It's about sacrificial life and decisions that we make as an act of worship towards God . Romans , chapter 12 and 1 , defines worship about don't being conformed to the world , you know , but be transformed by the renewing of your mind because we're offering our bodies as a living sacrifice , not conforming to things . We're worshiping God by actions and decisions that we make . Sitting in a chair , listening to songs and having some dopamine make us feel excited , and I'm all . I love music and what it does to us emotionally . I just think we're teaching worship incorrectly and then we're teaching a , so it's a whole other topic but no , it's great .

J.D. Pearring 27:42

Yeah , it's a book coming out .

Dan Kimball 27:44

Oh , I'm gonna try to finish it when I'm taking it . I'm not taking sabbatical really ever , so I'm taking one this summer and I'm gonna work on it second half of the sabbatical , so probably 2026 time good .

J.D. Pearring 27:59

Well , you can get how Not to Read the Bible , making sense of all the anti-stuff here on Amazon or wherever books are sold , christian books are sold , or in that bookstore in . Was that in ?

Dan Kimball 28:14

Fort Collins , colorado , yeah , fort .

J.D. Pearring 28:16

Collins , colorado . Yeah , I was the same guy . There was a logos bookstore in westwood where we'd all go down and just find something and devour it . Hey , you're a mustang guy , so I need to ask you , how did you get into mustangs ? Um , because , uh , all godly , really godly people drive ford mustangs .

Dan Kimball 28:37

So well in high school , a buddy of mine he was a year older than me , bill Krupp he had a Mustang and he was he ends up , he's still a mechanic he was working on it and I would just go over his house and I really looked up to him and he had a Mustang and then I instantly was like this is such a cool car . And so when I got a car , my first one was a 69 Mustang New Jersey , and then when I moved to California because it was starting to fall apart , I got a 66 Mustang and that's what I still have today , which we talked about is right now in Costa Mesa getting restored . That I'll have back in August after it gets fully restored well , cool .

J.D. Pearring 29:22

Well , if you guys want to buy anybody want to buy a 66 mustang convertible , let me know . I have one that might be for sale . They're so nice , I mean they're overpriced .

Dan Kimball 29:31

They really are . They're so I don't know they're . So I mean the reading this , reading the origins of the mustangs , really fascinating how they were . You know , ford um was trying to come up with a way of coming up with a model that was sporty but cheaper , and you know everything from housewives , as they called them at the time , to you know having like a $2,000 sports car , and how they designed it . I actually have the artist who rendered the first drawing . I actually have the artist who rendered the first drawing . I have a signed Mustang panel I'm sorry , glove compartment panel up there on my shelf where I keep it . Yeah , so I loved learning about how they were even designed and what went into the original reasons why they did one . They showed it at the World's Fair in New York City in 1965 .

J.D. Pearring 30:29

Maybe you can write a book on how not to drive a Mustang That'll be after this .

Dan Kimball 30:34

How not to drive a Mustang .

J.D. Pearring 30:37

Hey , talk about what you're doing now , because you're making some adjustments . What are you doing now ?

Dan Kimball 30:43

Yeah , I'm going to keep going back to like how I was saved and I want to make people aware of who Jesus is and sort through the confusion about who he is and what Christians believe . And then this led me to look . You know all the things we shared and now it's like how do we do it for church leaders ? And I was fortunate to go to Western Seminary 20 something years ago when it was cheaper and it was a different world back then , and so I ended up shifting . I'm shifting my role to three quarters time .

Seminary Work and Leadership Advice

Dan Kimball 31:20

It'll start in September .

Dan Kimball 31:21

I'll be a quarter time at the church , three quarters time with Western Seminary , and Western is committed to redesigning , like in cohort models in the Bay Area through J Kim and Westgate Church and the rent very minimal rent we're able to lower the tuition by almost 50 percent and the cohort model and I'm right now passionate about seeing leaders who normally aren't able to afford training or too much of a commute and don't want to do the online stuff but in person . So we meet once a month all day in San Jose and then on Zoom and I curate them and so we have about . We have two cohorts running now , one already graduated . We're launching a third one in the fall and they have about 20 students in them , and so I'm focusing now on helping leaders get theologically trained , who normally couldn't , and music leaders , children's directors there's a lead pastor , associate pastor , there's some , there's some folks that work in the tech industry and they just want to study at that level .

Dan Kimball 32:26

So a couple of non-church staff , but mainly church staff . Same motivation . How do we get people trained and know how to respond to the difficult questions of our day and explaining the true Jesus to people and the true gospel ? Because there's so much there , there I mean you , we're a little younger than you , but around the same age where , like , where , uh , um , there's so there's more confusion about christianity than ever like , and it's compelling to say we gotta make jesus known and then make sure we're knowing the things that we have to address , which are the misunderstandings of what Christianity and church and that are even blocks , blocks them , and a lot of people abandon faith today , and the reasons are said . Why are they even abandoning faith ?

J.D. Pearring 33:17

Don't really have anything to do with God .

Dan Kimball 33:20

No , and it's relevance and understanding . There are some people that don't . In fact , I'm talking about this Sunday in our church here , that don't want to yield to God's authoritative will and what he's revealed in Scripture to us , and that's a decision that you have to make . I don't , I believe in the authority of the Scriptures and I'm choosing in my life . I don't agree with that . Then that's between you and God and that's a reason of not belief . But so many people don't even know a lot of the truths and they're rejecting God out of disappointments that he never promised or , you know , misperceptions or seeing things on all the media , all the bad stuff that happens , or think every church is a rock and roll giant church and there's , and a lot of people just don't know . But I have hope because when they do know the truth , there's more openness today . So I think in many ways there's , hopefully people are sort of time ahead , yeah .

J.D. Pearring 34:18

Yeah , hey , let me get you out of here on this . What's the ? What's the leadership tip ? You've already given us a few , but what's the leadership tip that's on the tip of your tongue right now that you want to say to the leaders that are listening ?

Dan Kimball 34:33

I would say this applies to local church leadership . I think this applies now that I'm in seminary world . I'm going to VP and you learn all the insides of how seminary works . Uh , I'm going to vp and it's you learn all the insides of how seminary works . Um , uh , in marriage , everything's like really is , you know .

Dan Kimball 34:51

It's the question of always making sure , um , that people know the why of why you're making changes or why you're doing something . You know it's the Simon Sinek's why . Start with why you know it's really that , and I think , especially if you're a church leader or a church planner type , you'll probably want to move forward with things . But we really need to make sure everyone understands the whys behind anything you're doing and never assume they automatically know . People hate change . We all hate change , but we need them to know why there's change happening or we can get scared , defensive , start disagreeing with something that they don't know the whys about what's going on . And so that's probably the biggest thing I keep thinking about is don't assume people know the whys of what you're doing and why .

J.D. Pearring 35:57

That is brilliant . We are recording this right before Palm Sunday and I'm speaking on Palm Sunday . We are recording this right before Palm Sunday and I'm speaking on Palm Sunday and I'm just fascinated by what Jesus tells his two of the guys , two of the apostles hey , go get that donkey . And if somebody asks you why are you doing that , and tell them the Lord needs it . And then they go and they do it . And somebody says why are you doing that ? And they say the Lord needs it . And I think one of the big questions we have to ask ourselves too is why am I doing that ? Is it security ? Is it tradition ? Is it confusion ? Am I fear ? But I just love that ? And if you're leading , I think I know I assume too much . I assume you know why I'm doing this , you trust me , and they're like , no , we don't trust you .

Dan Kimball 36:59

And we don't .

J.D. Pearring 37:00

So that's a great , great lesson . I really appreciate it yeah .

Dan Kimball 37:03

I mean I don't necessarily trust myself . That's maybe the wrong way to really appreciate it . Yeah , I mean I don't necessarily trust myself . That's maybe the wrong way to look at it . I might have certain things that I want to jump on or think is the right way , and I have my reason why . But I also need to make sure I'm correct in my reasons why . And that's why working with other people I guess that's another one Never think you're , don't be a solo leader ever . Always make sure that you have others that are with you so you're not thinking of something that's not discernibly correct . If are you familiar with the uh , patrick lencioni's working genius , yes , you know , like that d piece you can have the I , the inventions , invention , I think it is , or ideation , you know . But then you need a discernment . That's the D , w-i-d , and the D is discerning that these ideas are important . So the D kind of brings in a lot of the Y , I think . Are you a D ? I'm an I-D . Okay , yep , are you a D ? I'm an .

J.D. Pearring 38:07

ID . Okay , I'm more of an I invention and galvanizer , yeah , I'm assuming the Y . So yeah , that's been very helpful . Wonder , invention , discernment , galvanizing , galvanizing D is empowering . And tenacity , yeah , tenacity , yep . Good stuff . Well , you can get let's See , oni's Working Genius on Amazon too . But make sure , when you do , you pick up one of the books by the great Dan Kimball . Hey , thanks for your time today . I really appreciate it .

Dan Kimball 38:46

Yeah , hope I didn't talk too much . I was like talking a lot about some of this stuff but again , no , that's why we have you on .

J.D. Pearring 38:52

We want to hear you . Thanks so much All right .

Dan Kimball 38:54

Okay , all right , thank you .

Podcast Closing

Host 38:57

Thanks for joining the Leading Conversations podcast . We hope that you found it both helpful and encouraging . At Excel Leadership Network , our focus is on the church planter rather than the church . If you'd like to find out more about us , visit our webpage at excelnetwork . org . Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes . See you next time with another leading conversation .