Classic Episode Welcome

Announcer 0:01

Welcome to a Leading Conversations Classic Podcast. We've searched through our early episodes to find some of the best just for you. If you've been with us from the beginning, you may have heard some of these. If you haven't, enjoy this classic episode. 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.

Meet Stu Streeter

J.D. Pearring 0:46

We are delighted to have Stu Streeter with us on our Excel Leadership podcast. I have known Stu for a long time. We go way back. He's uh always just been an amazing, energetic, highly effective leader. He has several ministry jobs, a bunch of kids, does a ton of stuff, and I'm so excited to have Stu with us here. So, Stu, welcome in.

Stu Streeter 1:14

Hey, it's good to be here. Thanks, JD. And uh likewise, you are one of my heroes, and I admire you greatly. Increasingly so with each passing year, in fact.

From Angry Teen To Jesus

J.D. Pearring 1:25

Well, that's uh that's mutual. Hey, Stu, I know a lot about um your church planning journey, but I don't know how did you come to Christ and even think about getting involved in ministry in the first place?

Stu Streeter 1:37

Yeah, I grew up in a in a pretty um evangelical church environment in the midst of the church growth movement of the 80s, uh big church. Um, kind of one of those kids that was always at church, um, didn't ever really think anything of it, uh, went through some pretty tumultuous teenage years. Parents went through a pretty um ugly divorce, um, which is sort of a redundant statement. Um, and uh questioned a lot of things about God's goodness and life of the church. But it was a youth pastor who cornered me at one point, I'll never forget, on the shores of Whiskey Town Lake in Reading, California, uh, while I was waiting to go out on a ski boat and he interrupted my ski session and he cornered me and said, Man, you're an angry kid. I imagine what your life would be like if Jesus got a hold of you. Uh, would you like to hang out and shoot pool on Fridays? And so he and I would meet every Friday from there on for years and years. And Friday, 3 p.m., we would meet at the local pool hall and we would shoot pool and we would listen to music and talk about life and Jesus. And that flipped the script and really ignited me for a desire to follow Jesus and ultimately to get engaged in church ministry.

Launching A Church On Father’s Day

J.D. Pearring 3:04

Wow. Uh, I got to know you not terribly long after that. You came to our brand new church plant as a college student. It was obvious there was incredible leadership gifts in you. And then you went and were a youth pastor, and the youth group got bigger than the church, and I had hounded you about planting a church. And then you did something that I think may not be true anymore, but you started on uh what was for many years the worst possible day to launch a church.

Stu Streeter 3:35

But it probably still is if you launch in that, you know, in that sort of way. But yeah, we we had our first public gathering on Father's Day 2009, June 21st. I'll never forget. Uh Father's Day 2009 in a little uh theater building, not a movie theater, but like a little theater uh where they do plays uh on Sutter Street in Folsom, California, a tiny little space. And uh yeah, the rest is kind of history from there. We've helped a bunch of planters and um helped plant uh 10 churches so far. We've got a church planter in residence with us now who will plant Montrose, Colorado, uh later this year. So that'll be number 11. And it's just it's been a great journey. Um I I I steal one of your lines, JD, all the time. I I usually give you credit for it. Um, that we uh we've gotten enough things right uh that we can be uh helpful to people, and we've gotten enough things wrong uh that they might actually listen to us. So I that's some version of your quote uh because we've made a lot of mistakes.

J.D. Pearring 4:41

But you've been you've had your hand in a uh a lot of church plants, and then taking, I know it wasn't a strategic move to plant on that day. It was just kind of what was dropped in your lap at the time, but you survived that. And I was wondering, there was a there's a friend of mine down in San Diego who was ready to launch, I think it was last March 29, the Sunday, right when everything got closed down, and he had thousands and thousands of dollars worth of flyers and stuff that really just became uh you know, recycling. But um I I I want to talk just a little bit about your sabbatical uh well, let's let's back up and talk about not only were you doing the church planting thing, but you were working with your um denomination leading the church planting

Two Full-Time Ministry Roles

J.D. Pearring 5:33

thing. So you're bivocational, two ministry jobs, both full-time. How did you manage that?

Stu Streeter 5:42

Well, uh you know, there's two sides of the coin. There's um there's the side that goes out on a podcast, uh, and then there's the side, you know, that we talk about later in the night. Um both are true, by the way. One's not uh untrue. Um, you know, some of it is I I'm I'm just a guy who runs pretty fast. And uh I do have a wiring to have a number of plates spinning at one time. Um that that has its benefits, but it also has its dark side. So I don't say that um I hope it doesn't feel braggadocious. Um, it's just some of it just is the wiring. Um, you know, some of it is two ministry jobs probably lend themselves a bit more seamlessly uh than running an insurance agency and planting a church. Um that has it, that's its own bag of cats, I suspect. And I that world, I I don't know. Um so uh yeah, I lead church planting for North American Baptist Conference of Churches. Um we've got um about 200 churches in the US and 200 churches in Canada, and um, then obviously mission work around the world, and um I lead the church planting leg of that

Planning Sabbatical Before You Crash

Stu Streeter 6:55

journey.

J.D. Pearring 6:55

So well, back to that sabbatical, as somebody who um runs pretty fast, has high energy, you're doing both of these jobs for jobs for a number of years, doing them really well, two full-time jobs. Uh what made you think about sabbatical uh slowing down? And my two questions are how did you pull that off? How'd you make it happen? And how did it go? Those are my two questions. Yeah.

Stu Streeter 7:23

Um, well, you know, I I think um there has been a fairly traditional plan uh among evangelical churches for decades uh that we don't talk much about in church planeting circles anymore, which was essentially try and get a three-month sabbatical every seven years. You know, we we've got Bible verses for about half of that, and the other half is just kind of this arbitrary three-month thing. Um and, you know, I think anywhere you start is probably a good thing. Uh, I would say for most of us in ministry, uh, it never really occurs to us to take a sabbatical until we're either absolutely fried or we do something so foolish, um, a sabbatical is forced. Um, and then sabbatical is the nice term we give to you know being benched or you know, being out of the game.

J.D. Pearring 8:16

Um, interrupt you there. Uh, so would you suggest to church planters that this is something they ought to think about? Because as you were talking, I just realized that's not something, you know, it's something that's happens in the church world and sometimes on church staffs or denominations, but we don't we don't talk about it in the church planting world.

Start With Weekly Sabbath Rest

Stu Streeter 8:40

Yeah, I think there should be a regular rhythm of sabbatical. Just, I mean, we're we're wired for this. Just like we have a regular rhythm for sabbath, we ought to have a regular rhythm for retreat, and we ought to have a regular rhythm for sabbatical. Now, I I often tell guys, uh, don't mess around with sabbatical until you've gotten the discipline of sabbath. Um, they come from the same word, by the way. I don't want to get all Greek and Hebrew on us, but if you can't on a regular basis take every week to have a regular Sabbath rest and practice that, you're probably not going to behave real well in sabbatical, and it may end up not being worth its while. So, you know, the best way to get to a sabbatical is to learn to practice Sabbath regularly. But I, yes, 100%. I think we should get a sabbatical on our calendar regularly. Work with your leadership team, you'll figure out the rhythm that works best for you. Maybe it's one month every three years, maybe it's three months every five or every seven, or you know, like I say, we kind of, you know, we we find Bible verses uh to support some of that. Um, and I think some of that can be helpful. But I think the most important thing there is getting a regular rhythm of it because you will always, as a planter, have a reason to not take a break.

J.D. Pearring 9:55

So, how did you do that? I I know that uh you have protected Fridays. If I text or call you on Friday, I'm never gonna get an answer until I don't know Saturday or Monday. How did you put that into your life? The day off.

Stu Streeter 10:12

I, you know, I think for me it was probably more out of necessity and less out of you know, some deep uh spiritual discipline. Um, because I run hard and fast and have lots of plates spinning all the time, the crash was probably more imminent for me if I didn't build that in. Uh, because I never run out of stuff to do, like like the rest of us never run out of stuff to do. But you're right, you know, Fridays, I just like I turn my phone off. I don't open the lid of a laptop. Um, I take a break from the normal work. Um, and I play and I rest and um I enjoy yard work at my house. So I do some yard work, I have lunch with my wife. It's just it's Sabbath. Um, and so when we began to talk about the sabbatical, um, that felt like a fairly natural discussion. And the way we did that is we just we got to work as a leadership team saying, okay, what what things are gonna get dropped and need a staff or a leader or a volunteer to pick up? And you know, it required for us almost a year of planning to make that happen. That might not be the case everywhere. Um, but what I will say is you're not gonna decide today to do a sabbatical and be able to get the thing pulled off in a month from now, probably, and come back and uh be welcomed with a hug. It's gonna require quite a bit of work on the front end to get that ready. And we've got all kinds of documents we created for that and a and a big planning document that we wrote. I'm happy to share that with any of you guys. So um, anybody here with us live or those on the podcast, you can send me an email, and I'm assuming that'll be in the show notes. Otherwise, it's just stew at disciples.church. Stu at disciples.church S T-U. I can send you all that stuff. Happy to do that.

J.D. Pearring 11:59

Well, thank you. And you're just coming back from sabbatical now, so how did it go?

Stu Streeter 12:05

It was good. I yeah, I've been back about two weeks now. Uh, it was an excellent time away. It was a time of really good soul searching and quietness before the Lord. It was uh a time uh more than anything of forced intentional obscurity. And that that is part of the rhythm of the gift of Sabbath, and that is part of the rhythm and gift of sabbatical that we don't talk about as often. Rest was very important, absolutely. Rejuvenation was great, time of God was incredible. Uh, but one of the the amazing things that happened in there was just this intentional obscurity that we don't we don't do too much with.

J.D. Pearring 12:51

I want to press into the obscurity, but before I do that, what did you do for three months? Um what did Stu Streeter do for three months without 17 uh plates spinning? Just like what was your daily thing?

What Three Months Off Looked Like

Stu Streeter 13:09

What I slept um every day I slept at least nine hours. Uh, there were a lot of days I slept 10 hours. And uh there was a time in my life when I was a four-hour a night guy, um, somewhat proudly, which is shameful now to know I used to do that. Um these days I sleep six to seven hours a night usually, but on sabbatical, I slept nine or ten hours every single day. Um I uh I didn't set an alarm for three months. I want the rest of you to imagine a world where you don't have an alarm waking you up. Uh that was amazing. Um I'm a cyclist, and so I rode my bike every single day and just enjoyed that. If I felt like riding a long way, I rode a long way. And if I felt like riding a short distance, I rode down to the local coffee shop and I sat at the coffee shop and I drank coffee for a couple hours and read and then leisurely rode home and I cooked dinner for my family. I mean, it was just, it was really, really wonderful. Um, I'm not much of a journaler, but I I worked um probably the the one thing I worked hard, uh, two things I worked really hard at uh was I tried to journal every day something, just kind of get down on paper what was stirring inside of me, what was bubbling up, what what was where my thoughts were racing off to. Uh and then I I left social media altogether as part of my intentional stepping into obscurity. Um, worked really hard to say I have no public voice for the next three months, and there is nobody out there clamoring to hear what Stu has to say. Um, and that was a really important thing for me to do. Um, but yeah, that was and three months went like that. I mean, it went really, really fast.

Obscurity Versus Isolation In Leadership

J.D. Pearring 15:00

Wow. Talk about uh the dichotomy there of uh obscurity and isolation.

Stu Streeter 15:09

Yeah, this one uh is huge. And let me say from the outset, um, I've got notes on this. If you want the notes on this, I'll I'll send those to Alan. Um so you'll see those in the show notes below. And those of you live can certainly email me and I'll send you um all of the notes on this. But uh 2020 had a pretty isolating effect on a lot of us, if not all of us. And as church leaders, the ground that we either lost in 2020 or the opportunities that came to us as a result of what happened in 2020, I think can really stir up some ambition in all of us as pioneering leaders. And ambition uh and uh isolation have a really symbiotic relationship with each other, in my experience. Um I'm pretty convinced that feeding that ambition that is in us now in early 2021 to either gain back the ground we lost or capitalize on opportunities can actually lead us into greater depths of isolation than we already felt in 2020. So let me say this uh from the outset uh something really obvious. You have a soul and your soul matters. And Jesus uh famously said, What good is it to gain the whole world but to lose your soul? And the truth is uh most of ministry life rewards the neglect of the leader's soul. Sometimes, in fact, ministry requires that you neglect or isolate your soul. There are so many traumas coming at us on a daily basis as ministry leaders that if we were to slow down and attend to each of those traumas, uh, we'd never get anything done. And so the ministry life at times actually requires that we put those traumas in a cute little box and wrap it up and set it aside because we're walking out of one meeting into another meeting, and we can't bring that trauma with us. Um, you know, like a bank robber walking out of a bank robbery with a suitcase full of cash in broad daylight and getting into a getaway car calmly and driving away like nothing ever happened. Uh, this is kind of how we live in ministry, and uh we're robbing our souls, and the church actually becomes the getaway car. Uh there's actually no better place to hide sometimes, a shrinking soul, than in the middle of church, in all the frenetic activity that the church provides and requires of us. Uh and then you get burned, or you get betrayed, or you get ignored, or you get gossiped about a few times as the pastor. And this tendency is to become a ghost outside the pulpit or the staff meeting. And you kind of carefully insulate your life and you create friends outside of the church. Um you show up to meetings and you're kind of not really fully present because you can't give yourself away. And yet obscurity is really different from that isolation. Obscurity rests in the security of who I am in Christ and who I am not in some pecking order. Obscurity is to be authentically known, if even only by a few, uh, rather than being falsely known by a big mass of people. Uh obscurity provides us with the opportunity to see the other in a room rather than trying to maneuver around a room to be known by the right person. Uh, and finally, obscurity is typically marked by a total lack of hurry. Whereas isolation, and when we're in isolation, we find ourselves rushing around either to be seen or rushing around to remain hidden. Um fact, there's a book written called Embracing Obscurity in Light of God's Everything. And in there, uh, the author writes, The trouble with you and me and the rest of humanity is not that we lack self-confidence as we are told by the world, uh, but the trouble is that we have far too much self-importance. The thought of being just another of the roughly 100 billion people to have ever graced this planet uh actually offends us, whether we like whether we realize it or not. We have such a high opinion of ourselves that to live and die unnoticed seems a grave injustice. So a couple of things here. Um that I I found in sabbatical to really help me lean into obscurity and yet be known and resist isolation, which is my temptation. Um a couple of things here. Um isolation feels great in the short run. You isolate and you're safe and you can't be hurt, but it is deadly to our souls in the long run. Um obscurity, uh conversely, is really scary in the short run, uh, but it actually gives our soul life. I actually think that obscurity is a leader's secret sauce to longevity. Um and here's why you know all this is true is Israel had the wilderness, David had his time of running from Saul, and Jesus had the desert. And in Matthew chapter four, we see Jesus wrestling with the enemy of our souls over power, fame, and security. And at the root of all this was his desire to lean into obscurity and not be isolated. Um so a

A Daily Practice To Stay Present

Stu Streeter 20:58

couple practicals. Um, let me give you uh just two little practical steps here um on this. Um practical step one is this focus on being aware more, being more aware, and think less about your own internal ambition. Because I really believe that ambition is the driver to isolation. Ambition will always lead us to greater isolation. Uh I think we would all agree that God's kingdom is alive and well, and that COVID can't kill it, and that racial unrest can't stop it, and political division can't slow it down, or anything else 2021 throws at our churches. We serve a God who lives in perfect community Father, Son, and Spirit. And just as the Father sent the Son, and the Son sends the Spirit, the Spirit is sending you and I, the church, made in his image to announce that he is redeeming all of Of creation. To put it uh in a in a shorter phrase, C.S. Lewis writes in The Lion of the Witch in the Wardrobe, something to the effect of as Land is on the move. You know, this idea that God's kingdom is on the move and we can't stop it. So we don't have to drive with ambition to make it happen. We just have to be aware. God, what are you up to? What are you doing today, God? Uh, what what what's happening? Um, and then be aware of our own self in that um as well. Let me skip ahead to number two. There's lots more on number one. I can send you the notes.

J.D. Pearring 22:34

Um, and and we'll end with this. This is great stuff, but we'll end with this one, okay?

Stu Streeter 22:38

Yeah, great. Dallas Willard um says, uh, the main thing that you bring the church, the main thing you bring the church is the person that you are becoming. That's what everybody will see, that's what will get reproduced, and that's what people believe. Arrange your life so that you're experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God. So, this is that invitation to be aware and not be driven by ambition. So the second one in that is that's practical step number two. And this is really, really simple. Um, take a minute at the end of each day and write down as many interactions as you can remember you had with people and imagine how those people experienced you. Was I present? Was I patient? Were the fruits of the spirit in me? Was I listening? Was I aware in the moment of how they were experiencing me? Uh, and and I'll just um be really vulnerable with you. I sat down as I've been trying to practice this myself at the end of yesterday, and I wrote down my day. And here's what I wrote down. I woke up early this morning before my alarm even went off, which was already set really early, and immediately I felt the pressure of all the deliverables I had to get out today. I raced from meeting to meeting. I realized at 3 p.m. for the first time all day, how over caffeinated I was, and that I had not eaten anything all day long. Also, uh, I realized that I had double booked myself at several points this week and I had to eat crow and own that when I was rescheduling a whole bunch of stuff. I raced home edgy, sent off a couple of emails that had to be rewritten twice before I could send them because I was so aggressive in the first draft. I argued with a repairman at my house who was fixing something that he had already come to fix and was charging me for twice. And then I sent a snotty text to my family. I went for a bike ride and I posted my fastest time of my entire life up a nearby hill that I ride twice a week. This is no coincidence. All of that angst went right to the pedals. I came home, I ate dinner quickly, and then I went back to work until 9 p.m. until it hit me out of the blue, all that I had reverted to in one single day after sabbatical. Like this gravitational pull for me to feed my personal ambition was terribly isolating in my day. But conversely, when I carefully attend and I catch myself in and I lean into personal obscurity, I think I find a second set of questions. I change from the question of what can I get done today and how can I make a name for myself? And instead, I start looking over my calendar and asking, God, what are you doing in that person's life today, whom I'm about to meet with? Or God, where are you inviting me to join you on your mission today? Or how can I breathe life into this meeting today? And I really think that that will change everything as Christ increases and we decrease. But I really believe ambition will remain the driver of isolation in 2021 if we're not careful and attend to it.

J.D. Pearring 26:03

Wow, that's really uh insightful, um, thoughtful, and helpful, Stu. Uh, thanks for sharing all that stuff. Thanks for being who you are. I've experienced you in a good way today. You can put that in your journal tonight. Thanks for being here.

Stu Streeter 26:22

Thanks,

Final Takeaways And Next Steps

Stu Streeter 26:23

JD.

Announcer 26:23

Great to be with you. 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.