SPEAKER_00: 0:06

Welcome to the Leading Conversations Podcast, sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network. On each episode, JD Pering 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.

SPEAKER_01: 0:29

Welcome to another edition of Leading Conversations, the podcast from Excel Leadership Network. Today we are very excited to have with us the great, the legendary James Grogan, East Lake Church, San Diego. The man, the myth, not really a legend yet, but he's he's the man. Thanks for being here, James.

SPEAKER_02: 0:50

Hey, good to be with you, JD. Thank you so much uh for having me. Been looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_01: 0:56

I'm guessing it's uh 75 and sunny in San Diego today.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00

Yes, short sleeves as usual. Uh and I I've been wearing all my Padres gear. I don't know when this is airing, but it's playoff baseball, so I had to go with San Diego State next. But yeah, San Diego, rough, rough living down here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16

Well, today is uh this podcast will come out later, but today's game three of uh three. It's a big it's a big deal.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26

It's a big one. Gotta be gotta beat the cubbies. We'll find out uh later.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31

Well, I'm definitely pulling for uh the Padres in this series and uh and to get to the World Series. But we'll be fun. We will see. Hey, tell us your story growing up, uh, all that, how you came to Christ and such.

SPEAKER_02: 1:46

Sure, yeah. Um I grew up in a pastor's home uh in the state of Illinois. Uh I like to say Illinois is a great place to grow up, California is a better place to live. My wife and I moved out here in 1997, two weeks after we got married, and we were like, wow, we live where people go on vacation, which is not what you say if you live in central Illinois. Um, so yeah, I just came out to San Diego, fell in love with it, fell in love specifically South County, uh Chula Vista is uh where I've lived two different times with a little gap in between, but I've been in in uh Chula Vista combined 25 years now. Um, but I grew up grew up in central Illinois, pastors home. You know, now that I'm in my early 50s and I look back at my story and I've pastored a lot of people for a long time now. Uh I started in full-time ministry when I was 21. Um, I just really see the advantage my family gave me. My dad was uh was and is just a the real deal Jesus follower. Um, you know, he he loved Jesus, loved his family, and loved the church. Uh and I would say in that order. Um so ministry was not a negative. It was something I was like, wow, look at what my family gets to do. Um and so um, yeah, I would say uh that, you know, uh a very healthy home. And again, I see that now, like, wow, what an advantage my family gave me. I think so many times people's biggest wounds uh come from family, come from fathers. And I would say my biggest uh setups positively in life came from my father and my family. Uh yeah, so I I you know, grateful, super grateful for that now. Church was fun. Uh, seeing God work in people's lives, I saw it early on. I was like, man, that's real. I mean, seeing life change, my parents' house was the open door of the church. Like every time I'd come home, there'd be other people there. Someone, someone always living in our house, like, oh, they're moving, but not for a month. They're gonna stay here. They just moved here and they need somewhere to stay. Like, so you know, like the church was super close and personal. Like it was in our home, it was like part of our life, it was positive. Uh that's that's how I that's how I grew up, and I didn't realize what a gift that was till I got older. Um I felt called into ministry probably when I was 16-ish, like around the age of 16. I was like, I I think this is what I'm supposed to do for a vocation, like a job.

SPEAKER_01: 4:40

What what prompted that?

SPEAKER_02: 4:44

I had I had always followed the Lord, you know, like I like I couldn't point to the moment I gave my life to Christ. I just remember believing and remember following. I will say when I was in high school, that's when I really was like, okay, am I gonna do this for me or am I gonna do it because I was raised in it? I think anybody raised in the church, you go through that at some age. It might be 13, it might be 16, it might be 21, you know, it might be 25. I don't know when you, but I think anybody raised in in a you know a Christian home with you know parents that are authentically and imperfectly following Jesus. Um you know, I saw it with my dad. My dad was a quick apologizer, like quick repenter. Like, so again, you just following Jesus was was uh normal and attractive. But for me, I um you know, I I would say it was uh like a prayer moment as a 16-year-old. Um where I where I just was like, I I just have this feeling that's what I'm supposed to do. Um which means then as I was choosing colleges coming out of high school, it was I I think I should choose a college where I could study towards becoming a pastor. Um I love sports. I played football in high school and and I I wanted to play it in college. I wasn't good enough to play it at uh University of Illinois, which was my dream school. Um, I wasn't even good enough to make the walk-on scout squad at a place like that. So I I thought, where can I go? Which meant I'm gonna go to a small Christian college where I can be a biblical studies major and play football. And I did that. I did that. I looked at uh Wheaton, Trinity, and then a Assemblies of God School called Evangel. Now it's Evangel University, it was Evangel College in Springfield, Missouri, and I ended up going to Evangel College. Um is where I went.

SPEAKER_01: 6:50

What was your position in football?

SPEAKER_02: 6:52

I was a slow, unathletic, not very strong offensive guard.

SPEAKER_01: 7:00

There's something about uh the offensive line room. Um you guys loved football.

SPEAKER_02: 7:11

Yeah, you have to because you you you're working hard every practice and every every play, right? Like if you're a receiver, you're not working super hard every play because not every play is coming your direction. Uh you're on the offensive line, man. It's like every practice is hard, every game is hard, every play is hard. I it was fun.

SPEAKER_01: 7:30

I couldn't do it. I was a linebacker and loved defense, uh loved hitting people and not necessarily getting hit. And uh, I just never understood the they tried to make me into a center. It's like, no, no, this is not happening.

SPEAKER_02: 7:45

But uh yeah, I wanted I wanted to play defense, and then my freshman year uh we ran the 40 time, and they looked at my time and said, You're an offensive lineman. That's what happened.

SPEAKER_01: 7:59

So uh you're at even Evangel College. Uh then what happened?

SPEAKER_02: 8:04

Yeah, um, I was uh I only played football my first two years. I started one game, uh, and I knew I wanted to be involved in ministry, and even at a small school, playing a sport like that, I mean, it dominates your life and time. Sure. And so it was a decision to go, you know, I can't really uh volunteer at a church, internship in the summer, a lot of those things would just been harder. And I and I was really itching to like move forward into ministry. So uh that's really what I did. Uh, I started traveling uh the summer after my sophomore year with another college student who was going into ministry, and we had this wild goal and said, if we could travel and preach in one youth group every week all summer, that'd be amazing. And uh we put together these uh little promotional packets. This is before internet. We mailed them out. We were asking all the kids at our Christian Christian college, who's your youth group pastor? And uh we sent them out to all these youth groups, and um probably by Easter, this was a decision over Christmas break. By Easter, we had a Wednesday where we're or we were preaching in a youth group every week. Then we thought maybe we, you know, get a couple Sunday nights back when churches had Sunday night services.

SPEAKER_01: 9:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 9:33

And uh then we had a bunch of Sunday nights booked, then we had a couple youth retreats booked. Um you just made this happen on your own. We we made it happen. We had it, we had a mentor evangelist in the denomination tribe we were a part of, and he kind of coached us up a little bit. We got recommendation letters from like, you know, the college president where we were at and a couple youth groups like we had each individually spoken in. And uh we preached over 70 times that summer um and drove all over the Midwest. It was amazing. And the I don't, you know, I uh I apologize to all those kids in the youth groups and the pastors we preach for. Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't great, but we grew and we learned and it was fun. And we we did it the and then that next year in college, anywhere I could speak or travel, I did. And then we did it the next summer as well. So two summers. And we were up, you know, we we spoke if you count. I mean, we would we'd do a junior high Sunday school class on Sunday morning, and I mean, we'd do anything anybody would let us. And we ended up preaching like over 150 times in two summers. It was wild.

SPEAKER_01: 10:56

That's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_02: 10:58

It's a great idea. Yeah, and again, I would say that was a life-shaping thing for me. That, and again, the goal was I didn't want to graduate college or you know, finish school and go, you know, well, I took a bunch of classes, but I have zero experience. Um, and that just gave it helped me see a lot of things, experience a lot of things, practice a lot of things. Um yeah, and it just set me on a trajectory of ministry that you know I've been building on for 30 years.

SPEAKER_01: 11:34

That's that's incredible. That's crazy. So you graduated to get married right away. Is that when you went to San Diego?

SPEAKER_02: 11:41

I didn't actually finish school. I was a handful, I was one of those guys that was a handful of credits away. And then uh I was on the 16-year plan. It wasn't until I started working at East Lake later that I I I went back to Zoo Pacific and did an organizational leadership program uh and and finished there. But yeah, I I went, I got my first youth pastor job uh part-time in like 1995, 99, 96. Where was that? In Illinois. Uh got married in '97, moved out to San Diego, my second job two weeks after I got married.

SPEAKER_01: 12:23

So, so how did you get to San Diego then? There was a position there?

SPEAKER_02: 12:28

When I was in college, uh, I spoke at a like a three-day youth outreach event in Springfield, Missouri, the town where I wasn't going to college. And a guy uh who worked for the denomination uh stuck his head in there, heard me speak, encouraged the heck out of me, was like, man, you're the kind of guy I'd I'd hire if I was still pastor in a local church. You know, if I can ever help you support you. Uh long story short, his buddy went, moved to San Diego, took over a church, was like, I need to hire staff. And he was like, hey, I know this kid, James Grogan, and uh gave him my name. And I was interviewing for the job while I was engaged, and my wife and I just thought, you know what? Moving to a whole new place where we don't know anyone, that could be really fun and good for our marriage, starting out rather than living in one of our hometowns and somebody's moving into somebody's life. And then we also came and visited San Diego, and we were probably that's enough right there. Yeah, they I didn't even have to like the church of the job. I probably would have taken it, but yep, so that that's how I got to San Diego and then just loved it, fell in love with uh South San Diego, the people, the diversity of people, all those things.

SPEAKER_01: 13:54

Well, how did you get to East Lake?

SPEAKER_02: 13:57

Yeah, I can't uh East Lake was not the first church I worked at in San Diego. I worked in San Diego at a church called Bonita Valley, great church. Jeff Bronner hired me. Uh really good pastor, man of integrity, took over a church in a in a really difficult season. Uh, I worked for him for almost three years, and then I took a job from a guy that was a mentor of mine, moved out to North Carolina. My wife and I were in North Carolina for about four months, and then we went, what did we do? We should have never left San Diego. And honestly made it our mission to get back here. Uh, I ended up meeting Mike Meeks, who led East Lake Church. Sure. Uh, and met Mike through a friend. I was looking to move out to Sandy back to San Diego to plant a church. Uh, that was, I had always had a heart for church planting. Felt like I was called to be, I wanted to, I don't know what the word is called, wanted uh, I wanted, I wanted to lead to lead pastor, and I wanted to lead a church that was different than the tribe I grew up in in style. Uh, most of the churches were were fairly traditional in in style. And I I really wanted to reach unchurched people and then make disciples uh who would make disciples. And and uh so that was that was what I wanted to do. Eastlake was doing that uh in the uh 90s in a booming area of San Diego. It was early 2000s. I met Mike and he was like, How about before you plant a church, you come work for me, give me three years, and I'll plant you anywhere you want in San Diego with money and whoever wants to go with you. And I and Eastlake was doing church the way I wanted to, but I had never been in it. And so again, I think that was God's grace for me to not. I I think I would have figured it out and learned, but I would have had to learn the hard way through a lot of mistakes. And because there just weren't, I mean, this is you know, early 2000s, there weren't the church planting organizations or resources. There are 20 years later, 22, 23 years later. So I joined the team at East Lake Church and super fun season of ministry, church growing like crazy. And then I just never left. I never felt like God was saying, and and we hired a bunch of my friends, we planted a lot of churches. In fact, East Lake is 33, 34 years old. We planted 56 churches in those 34 years.

SPEAKER_01: 16:46

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_02: 16:47

And I was kind of feeling like the guy left behind. I'm getting older, I'm not a lead pastor, I love serving at East Lake, I love serving Mike. I in fact love Chula Vista, it's where I wanted to move back to and raise a family and never move. But I was like, well, East Lake's already doing it. I'm gonna have to go plant somewhere else. Uh and then uh let's see, probably 13 years ago, Mike uh comes to me and he's like, Hey man, I'm not gonna do this forever. I don't want to be the Brett Favre of uh senior pastor. People are like, he's still playing, he's on Minnesota now.

SPEAKER_01: 17:25

Um and so he's retiring and coming back, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 17:29

Yeah. Right now you would say that'd be uh what's what's the other Green Bay guy that's now on the Steelers?

SPEAKER_01: 17:34

Uh uh Aaron Rodgers.

SPEAKER_02: 17:36

Yeah, it'd be the joke would be I don't want to be Aaron Rodgers, where you're like, he's still playing. Um and so he's like, I'm not gonna do this forever. He's like, I think you have the you have the gifting, the the ability. He's like, Do you have the want to? Um and so we put together with our board a succession plan, uh, completed that plan eight years ago. I've been the lead pastor now for eight years. The plan went exactly the way we planned and prayed, and super smooth uh for Mike, me, and our church.

SPEAKER_01: 18:09

Uh seriously, talk just talk about that. I mean, because that following a Mike Meeks is not, I mean, that's not for the the meek of heart to remove.

SPEAKER_02: 18:21

No, because Mike is a is a big L leader. By that I mean strong personality, risk-taking, aggressive, uh, amazing leader, funny as heck, uh, super fun. And a lot of things Mike is, I was like, ooh, I'm not. I think I learned uh a lot of the best leadership principles I know from Mike. But yeah, I'm a different person. So yeah, it was it was one of those. Uh I would say um what helped me do that is I've always been confident in who God made me to be. I think I was at an old enough age when we were doing the handoff. I was I was going into my uh like early 40s. Um, I think I was mature enough at that point. Uh, where if we would have done that earlier, it probably wouldn't have been good for me or the church, to be honest. Like uh, I probably would have been more insecure about following Mike. Um so yeah, that uh that made that I the the thing I share with people why it went so well. If I could offer one little nugget here, is here here's why our our plan went so well. First of all, we had a very clear plan. It was in writing, there was no ambiguity. There was a date on this date. Mike is no longer the the lead pastor, James is. Um, so there was just there was no ambiguity to it. I I hear stories all the time where you know someone's like, Oh, we're gonna do succession, and they say yes, and they come, and then you know, the the the outgoing leader drags their feet. Well, I know we were gonna do it here, but we're not gonna like we just had none of that. Uh and here we here's what I would say made it work. Mike was not clinging on to anything, he was such a secure leader. His entire time I worked for him, that he would let others lead, give platform and ministry away. And so, you know, Mike's identity, which as a pastor, when you pastor a long time, you our identity can get wrapped up in this, you know. Like, oh, who who is James Grogan? I'm the pastor of E slink. I'm you know, like like people, you know, I go in Costco and five people say hi. Like, like you can just you can just get wrapped up in like that. This is and and Mike was such a great secure leader. So he wasn't holding on to anything. And I would say the reverse of that was true for me. I wasn't trying to grab anything. I I never asked him about, you know, I wasn't pushing for titles or, you know, like like I gotta start that meeting, or I need like I I was fine and good and secure, and Mike was fine and good and secure. And I would I would say if you can have an outgoing leader that gives anything away freely, and you have an ingoing leader that doesn't have to have anything, they're grateful.

SPEAKER_01: 21:36

Um and a clear plan, to me, that's the little secret sauce to uh make so go into it uh as an offensive lineman is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02: 21:48

Very clear plan, yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. Maybe if I was the quarterback or the running back or receiver and actually had, you know, like you're used to scoring points and people liking you. You're an offensive lineman, you just do the work, man.

SPEAKER_01: 22:02

Well, too often the quarterback decides to retire and then come back. I mean, that's like the Aaron Rodgers, the the Bret Favre thing, that that happens all the time, where hey, come work with me for a couple years, and then they do, and it goes well. It's like, well, I'm gonna stick around, and that blows the whole thing to to uh all sorts of words that I probably shouldn't say on a podcast. Hey, talk about the uh San Diego church planting movement.

SPEAKER_02: 22:32

Sure. Um, I was a part of helping get something started a little over 10 years ago now, um called the San Diego Church Plant Movement. And it's it's essentially a uh relational uh gathering. Well, here's how here's how we like to say it. We want to be the sandbox in San Diego where everyone comes and plays together uh when it comes to church planting. So all any, you know, like gospel preaching denomination, uh like any tribe can can go, man, we want to, we want to be a part. Any local church um can jump in and be a part. And what we want to do is just encourage and foster uh collap kingdom collaboration in San Diego County. So uh getting churches to actually work together to plant more churches. Uh, you know, so we don't do assessments and coaching. We want to partner with all the great organizations that do assessment and coaching and resourcing. We want to resource local church planters. If they need those things, we'll connect them. Hey, you need to get with JD and Excel, you need to get with uh, you know, uh uh you know, Syn Network, you need to get with, you know, oh, your theology is is this, man. You should talk to Frank with SoCal Network. Uh oh, you you you should be a part of, you know, pick pick the organization. We'll help do that. But what we want to do is go, can we get four, five, six local churches around a San Diego church planter for resourcing prayer, constant encouragement where they feel like, oh man, there's people in this city for me. Because I think, I mean, you would be you would know this, JD. A parachute drop church planter without local participation, partnerships, and encouragement is probably one of the hardest things to do, and probably has a low success rate.

SPEAKER_01: 24:44

So if we we did that in the Bay Area, just kind of dropped in, and uh it went really well and it just about killed me. So yeah, I did five years, so um, and uh it was super hard and wonderful, and then we moved here to to do more of a collaborative thing.

SPEAKER_02: 25:06

So yeah, so if if we can the the goal is uh a planner in San Diego identifies himself, that I'm moving here to plant, or I work at a current church and I want to plant, and it's like, man, how can we be a local hub that connects you with uh resources and people and also churches? I I think one of the best tests of are you kingdom-minded as a leader is are you putting uh church planters on your stage at your church, even if they're just starting down the road and going, hey, I want to introduce you to you know, so and so, they're they've moved here to plant a church. We are for every church that preaches Jesus, they're not our enemies, they're our partners and friends, and we're actually giving them money and we're blessing them. And so if you if you see their church name around town, would you pray for them? Would you bless them? If God's calling you to go with them, they need a team to help reach a new church, they're gonna be out on the patio afterwards, and uh man, these are our friends and we're for them. And what's fun is I think over the last 10 years of San Diego church plant movement, we've seen more of that throughout San Diego County than at any time in the 25 years I've been around San Diego. So yeah, that that to me is one of the tests and the wins.

SPEAKER_01: 26:29

Well, I just really appreciate the whole vibe of the movement there. Any way we can be involved, um, we want to be because it's uh it's it's a great area, it's a growing area. There's such a need. Uh such a need.

SPEAKER_02: 26:44

Yeah, we could have every church filled for services on Sunday, and we need three times as many churches as we have in San Diego right now.

unknown: 26:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:52

Well, hey, give us a leadership tip. You've been at this a while. You you gave us a great tip on succession, but give us a leadership tip.

SPEAKER_02: 27:00

Sure. Uh I I would say a leadership tip that I've been just leaning into, especially since COVID. So let me set it up a little bit, then I'll give you the tip. Pastoring at a single church for 22 years, I'm in my 22nd year. Um lead pastor for eight years. I was the pastor for just a couple years before COVID happened. Starting my eighth year. Let me clarify. Uh finished seventh. Uh something that I've been leading our team and our church to do is focus on engagement over attendance. That's probably not a new thought. You've heard that. Um, I it's but I've just seen the fruit and I've doubled and tripled down. Meaning we're not trying to get people to just, you know, after COVID, it was we're not how do you get people who have been walking out their faith through online? And those of us in California, that lasted a lot longer than other places, right? Like if you're in Texas, uh COVID, you know, certain places that might have lasted three or four weeks, and then you were like, man, we're back. We didn't meet in our building for 50 weeks. We met in our parking lot uh for quite a while. Started gathering outside. Um and I know there were churches that went earlier and there's all things there, but what what do you do to get to when you've not done those things? We had to just lean into engagement and uh over attendance, and it's really worked. Um, I mean, we've had multiple years in a row where we have grown over you know the last three years, 20, 23, 26. Like, I mean, we've really grown and been growing. So right after COVID, a lot of that was combat growth. Sure. Once that's settled, we've still continue to grow. And one of the biggest reasons, I think, is focusing on engagement. And and what I mean by that is how do we get people actively involved in taking next right steps in their faith, not just attending a service or a program? Uh, that would be the difference.

SPEAKER_01: 29:21

Um what are those next right steps? What are just a couple of them that you shoot for?

SPEAKER_02: 29:25

Yeah, I uh I would say uh I'll give I'll give an example. One is a new attender. How quickly can we engage them in something beyond attending? So what what can we do to quickly get them serving, quickly get them connected in friendships through a group, quickly get them into discipleship? Like and and everyone's gonna take different steps, right? Depending on their first step. But we've made a huge effort to go how can we do this faster and better? Than we used to as a church. One of the practical ways we've done that, uh, that we kind of stumbled into uh it was actually our our uh location pastor up in uh Venice Beach in LA. Uh he was the first one to to try this. And I would say it's the best thing we've done to get people quickly from a Sunday experience to being engaged in the life of the church. We do something called five and five. Hey, meet us right outside on the patio, you'll see a big sign. We want to tell you five things about our church in less than five minutes and say hello to you before you go, if you're new. And the whole goal of that is to give them a few things that are like, hey, what makes our church us, right? Um without going into the detail. Number five on that is you can be involved as you want to be starting right now. And what we tell people is if you want to start serving and volunteering, you can do that right now. If you want to take a next right step of baptism, you can sign up for that right now. If you want to get if you need to get involved in a recovery group, you can do that right now. If you want to join a men's group, a women's group, uh, you know, yeah, you can do that right now. If so, and what we do is we basically tell people if there's what you know, take one next right step. That's next right step is part of our language, uh, for engaging in the life of the church. And you decide what that is based on what you need, what your kids need. And it has been incredible because it used to be you had to wait till, oh, we have a membership coming up. And we do those, you know, four to six times a year. But like, what if they can't go to that one? Now they've been in the church for two weeks, three weeks, and they've kind of developed some habits of just sitting in a service and not engaging until they can get to that membership. Or if you only you're only launching small groups two, three times a year. Well, they missed that launch. Now they're you know, they've they've developed a habit of we just show up and attend. And so we've tried to go how can we get people engaged quicker? You know, uh a scriptural con uh text for this I would I would I would throw out is Matthew 4, you know, Jesus' initial invitation. Jesus didn't say attend me. What did he say? Follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. Um and so it's it's this active following and making that we want to try to get people into as quick as we possibly can.

SPEAKER_01: 32:33

That's brilliant, that's wonderful. I love it. Five and five.

SPEAKER_02: 32:37

It's great. Yeah, that's just that's just one little practical sure way of how we've done that.

SPEAKER_01: 32:43

Yeah, the engagement, wonderful. Hey, let me end with this. Uh, your name is James. Have you always gone by James? My name is James, James David. I was Jimmy, I was Jim, I'm JD. Uh I not too many people go by James, so what's the deal?

SPEAKER_02: 33:01

I haven't. It's funny you ask uh those that knew me in uh college or before, I was Jimmy Grogan. Um my my I'm name my legal name is James. I'm named after uh grandfather. Uh he went by Jim. So my mom assumed that I, too, when I got older, would just go by Jim. And then I was like, Jimmy just felt like it was like, no offense to anybody older named Jimmy, but I just felt like it was like the little kid name because you know, Jim was like grandpa like name, and I just was like, ah, James, I like the sound of that. So I made the switch. I will admit some of my aunts and uncles have not made the switch. One of my best friends since second grade says he refuses to make the switch, but everyone else has made the switch just fun.

SPEAKER_01: 33:57

How old were you when you made the switch?

SPEAKER_02: 34:00

I wasn't able to do it till I was in my late 20s when I moved here because everywhere I went, I went somewhere someone knew me from the time I was a kid, and they spoiled it from the beginning. So I had I had to make it when it was a clean break. How about you?

SPEAKER_01: 34:19

Uh there was just a uh there was a number of pastors well known who ruined the name Jim. But uh I used to say, I mean, mine's kind of interesting. I used to say, uh, you know, my mom called me Jimmy David. My mom mostly called me Jim. When people say, What's your name? I said, My mom called me Jim. But my wife always called me JD. And when my mom passed away, uh, I was actually playing on a softball team. There was like 14 Jims on the team. So I was just and I just like it better. It's just a little more unique. But uh if somebody calls me James, I mean that that's the name I you know. If somebody calls and says, Hey, it's James there, I know it's a salesperson.

SPEAKER_02: 35:04

So yeah, I I used to in high school correct them, you know, because they read your name and then they'd be like James Grogan, and I'd say Jimmy. And now, yeah, no, James.

SPEAKER_01: 35:17

Our third son is a junior, and uh but we called him Jake from the beginning. If James and Jacob, it's the same name, it means trickster. So um uh yeah, not too many people go, but that's great. I'm wonderful, I'm glad that you're taking the name to the next level. I'm trying, I'm trying, yes, and it's the middle name for a bunch of our grandkids. So yes, anyway, thanks so much. Thanks for what you're doing. Thanks for the uh just the leadership on reproduction, the leadership on getting churches and organizations to collaborate together. We're it's just so it's so silly that we we fight each other. Thanks for your collaboration, for your leadership, and for your time. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02: 36:03

Yeah, hey, thank you. Great to be with you. See you soon.

SPEAKER_00: 36:10

Christian Community Credit Union is America's leader in biblical banking solutions. As a trusted ministry partner of Excel Leadership Network, they are dedicated to serving ministries in all life stages of growth. Whether you're planting a new church or expanding, Christian Community Credit Union will come alongside your ministry to help you grow so you can serve more. They offer low-rate ministry loans as well as products to maximize your ministry's money, including high interest checking, savings, and CDs. Take the next step and learn more at myccu.com slash Excel. That's myccu.com slash Excel. Membership eligibility is required. 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.