When was the last time you encountered a story so inspiring that it left you reflecting on your own journey of faith and leadership? Gus Hernandez Jr., a catalyst for change in North American church planting, shares his remarkable transition from being his family's first believer to steering them, and countless others, towards ministry. As the Director of Sending Churches at the North American Mission Board and Executive Pastor at Reality Church in Miami, Gus unpacks the SEND Network's vision of fostering kingdom diversity and propelling the growth of new faith communities that aim to engage 1% of North America over the next decade.
Venture with us into the inner workings of church dynamics, where we dissect the art of nurturing a sending culture. Hear time-tested strategies for developing potential church planters within your congregation by leveraging sending labs and identifying budding leaders among your members. We also discuss the interplay between multi-site church growth and leadership development, revealing the powerful impact of recognizing and cultivating the potential within those we lead. This conversation is a goldmine for anyone with a heart for empowering the next wave of church leaders.
As we navigate the delicate balance of juggling multiple ministry roles, I share my personal strategies for managing a demanding schedule, setting healthy boundaries, and the underestimated value of rest. In the latter part of our conversation, we delve into the nuances of creating a disciple-making culture within home groups and the importance of building a feedback-rich environment. Gus's passion is infectious, and his leadership serves as a beacon of hope, demonstrating that through dedication and service, one can indeed ignite a renaissance within faith communities. Join us for this episode filled with profound insights and actionable wisdom, tailored to uplift and inspire your own mission.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Collin (00:10):
Welcome to the nonprofit Renaissance podcast, where we
help nonprofits go further andgrow faster.
I'm one of your co-hosts myname is Colin and I'm H and we
are here with a super specialguest today.
I think you're going to lovethis episode to age.
Why don't you talk about who weare with?
Heredes (00:29):
Yes, he is massive, mainly North America, colin.
North America we just found outthat, not South America, and
I'm going to have to start therebecause I'm kind of bummed that
it's not South America.
And it was in the name allalong, because he's a legend in
the North American mission.
Collin (00:46):
Honestly, that one's on you, that's honestly on you.
We're laughing.
Heredes (00:50):
We've been having a good time and I'm just messing.
But we have today with us GusHernandez Jr, which we'll get
into in a second, who serves asdirector of sending churches at
the North American Mission Boardand Nam, also executive pastor
reality church in Miami, friendsand partners of ours.
And prior to that, prior tojoining them, he served as
mobilization pastor in LongHollow Church, which you might
(01:12):
have heard of, and he's underhis doctorate in pastoral
leadership from southeasternBaptist theological seminary.
And the list goes on and on.
But, ladies and gentlemen,round of applause for Gus
Hernandez Jr.
Welcome, Gus.
How are you?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (01:25):
I'm doing well, man.
Thank you guys so much forhaving me.
It means a lot, absolutely.
Heredes (01:31):
Now you're Jr, so that means there's a senior, is that
correct?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (01:35):
They will is man, and so I've had to, like,
really make sure to emphasizethat, because, you know, I was
the first believer in my family,but over time I got to lead my
mom to faith and then my dadcame to faith and he was always
in hotel management so hemanaged two properties in South
Beach and then, along thatjourney, god called him into the
nonprofit world and then heactually helped overseas for a
(01:58):
little bit in the DominicanRepublic and then, since now,
has become a pastor in theStates.
Wow, now you know part of thesum of the circles, though
they'll hear Gus Hernandez, andsometimes they're referring to
dad, sometimes they're referringto me.
So I'm always making sure, hey,I'm super proud of my dad and
the leader that he is.
He's taught me so much aboutleadership.
But yeah, it's been funnybecause now you know, we have a
(02:19):
lot of circles.
We run it together in ministry,so it's like dad Jr.
I got some experience with thatage.
Heredes (02:27):
My dad gave me the weirdest name, so I am not a
junior.
I tried to give away junior.
I said let me name one of myboys Jr, my wife's, like no,
don't do that to the chat.
So we did it.
We did it.
Collin (02:39):
That's awesome.
Do you ever pull the?
You know like, hey, in this inthe ministry world, I'm the
senior, you're the junior.
You let that go, you know?
Remind that.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (02:49):
That is the funny part.
So I'm getting close to like my19th year in ministry and so
it's funny.
I remember taking my parents ontheir first ever mission trip
when I was pastoring a church inTennessee and then over time my
parents became missionaries.
So I joke around now because Ibecame an MK first and then a PK
, but after I was already inministry as a pastor I became a
(03:09):
missionary kid kind of pastor'skid in my 30s and 40s.
Yeah.
Heredes (03:14):
Well, gus, tell us, for those of us and we were messing
around with the North American,south American, I'm from South
America and you were born inwhat part of North America?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (03:21):
I was born in Miami.
Yeah, I was born in Miami.
Heredes (03:24):
Florida, which is questionable if it is North
America, but we'll leave it atthat.
It's the capital of SouthAmerica, in my opinion.
Tell us North American MissionBoard.
You've been in for some timenow and successfully leading a
large group of pastors andleaders and mobilizing churches.
Tell us what they do and whatyou're doing there.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (03:44):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Send Network is the churchplanting arm of the North
American Mission Board, so welike to say this way that SEND
Network is a family of churchesthat's planting churches
everywhere, for everyone.
One of the things that we valueis kingdom diversity, and so we
want to make sure that we'replanting the kind of churches
that everyone is welcome to, andso we currently have this
(04:05):
vision.
It's a bold vision we want tosee.
We want to kind of join inGod's activity to see His
kingdom expand in North Americaby 1% over the next decade.
What would that look like?
Man?
That's approximately, if youtake into account today's
population, approximatelyreaching 2.75 million people
(04:25):
over the next decade.
In order to do that, we'd haveto plant roughly around 11,000
new churches that each multiplyonce in their lifetime and each
reach 125 new believers.
And so that's kind of the epicjourney that we're pursuing,
that we're on.
We're trying to impact NorthAmerica by 1% over the next 10
years.
Collin (04:47):
Man, that doesn't sound like a big number, but then when
you add the actual numbers inthere, that's a lofty goal.
That's a lofty goal.
What's the approach to that,when you really expand it and
actually look at what you guysare trying to do?
I mean, how do you wrap yourhead around it?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (05:05):
Yeah, so I mean, one of the things that we
realize right away is you haveto activate the local church.
I mean, we like to say this waylike networks, don't plant
churches, churches plantchurches.
And so what we're trying to doas a family of churches is help
each local church recognize thateach church can play a role on
this journey, and so one of thefirst things we did this year as
a team is we unveiled a newmobilization pathway to help
(05:29):
churches be able to see wherethey are on this pathway and
what clear next steps they cantake to move forward on this
pathway of planting churches.
And so it starts with becominga cooperating church that can
then move to being a supportingchurch.
A supporting church is prayingfor planters, their financially
supporting planters, but then wewant to see them take that step
to becoming a sending church.
(05:50):
Now, this is different in that,instead of just supporting a
different planter, a sendingchurch is taking responsibility
for that planter and they'reensuring that they're getting
the necessary coaching, thecommissioning and the care that
that planter needs to go plant achurch and then from there.
We don't want that to be a oneand done like man.
Now that you planted a church.
What would it look like for youto like develop a heart and a
(06:13):
vision to keep planting?
So we want to help sendingchurches become multiplying
churches.
These are churches that arestarting to send out multiple
planters and teams to plantchurches.
And then the last category iswhat we call a movement church.
They're doing everything amultiplying church is doing, but
they're leveraging theirinfluence with other churches to
catalyze other churches andjoin them on this journey of
(06:35):
planting more churches.
And so what we realize, inorder to reach a goal this lofty
, is it's not one networkplanting churches, it's a family
of churches all gettinginvolved.
Heredes (06:46):
Now, that's clear.
Love that, gus.
Let me ask you this what hasbeen one of the challenges in
this season in mobilizing thesechurches?
What have you found?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (06:56):
Sure, I think one of the big challenges is
sometimes churches can be justfocused on what's happening
inside the walls of their churchand they sometimes lose sight
of God's vision for expandinghis kingdom and reaching new
people and new territories andtaking new territory for the
Lord.
And so I think one of the firstchallenges is just helping a
church to like lift their eyesfrom what's happening with
(07:17):
inside the walls of the churchand lift their eyes up to see
what is God's heart for thenations, what's God's heart to
seeing his kingdom expand.
And so for us, that's a bigpart of what we try to do is
help pastors and leaders developthat heart, to develop a
sending culture and a sendingvision.
Collin (07:36):
Now a quick note for our listeners.
Because of the nature of Gus'srole, there's going to be a lot
of church language, a lot ofchurch planting language.
But I show you there'sprinciples here, that of general
leadership, I mean of expansion, that will absolutely be
applicable to your nonprofits.
But even if you're not in thatchurch world or that faith based
(07:57):
world, man, there's some stuffhere.
Like again you heard the goal,Like you need some good
leadership to get where they'retrying to go, and so just an
encouragement I don't want thatto turn you off.
This is there's going to besome good stuff.
Heredes (08:11):
And, with that said, actually tell us a little about
NAMP.
They're in every state in theUnited States.
It's, I think, how manyemployees and give us just a
little bit kind of the scope ofNAMP.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (08:22):
The North America Mission Board has over
600 employees, differentmissionaries working in
different areas from you know, ateam that's devoted to
evangelism, a team devoted tochurch planting, that send
network.
We have a robust chaplaincydivision that's helping with.
Chaplaincy is across all ofmilitary branches to military
church planting as well, andthen we also have send relief.
(08:45):
So it's a huge relief ministrythat not only is North America,
that has actually gone global aswell and it's been helping
impact and meeting needs andchanging lives all over the
world.
Collin (09:04):
Wow.
So let's dive into your rolethen.
What does it look like?
What are you actively doing dayto day?
How do you interact withchurches when you go and reach
out?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (09:13):
Yeah, absolutely.
So we do a couple of differentthings.
Our team tries to provide somedifferent workshops in different
parts of the country.
We call these sending labs.
These are these two-daycollaborative experiences to
help pastors and churches kindof catch that vision and develop
their first beginning steps fordeveloping a sending culture,
discovering some practical tipsfor how to discover, identify
(09:36):
potential church planters andhow to develop those church
planters.
So we're doing a lot of thoselabs, we're doing a lot of
coaching.
We do a lot of stuff in theresources space of providing
resources for churches todevelop leadership and pipelines
within their churchdiscipleship pathways, ministry,
training, all sorts ofdifferent things.
At the end of the day, we'retrying to help these churches
(09:56):
develop what we would call amultiplication pipeline.
It has like three stages, likediscover, develop and deploy,
and so we're trying to get themto think through okay, how are
we helping develop the peoplethat we have within our church?
You know, what are we going tothen deploy them to be able to
do with the gift sets that theyhave?
And so we're trying to helpthem get to that spot.
Heredes (10:18):
Yeah.
Collin (10:20):
Go ahead H.
Heredes (10:21):
No question with that.
We discussed this before theepisode, a little bit offline,
but I think it's relevant forour listeners.
Half of our listeners arepastors and leaders.
Half are non-profit, c-suitebusiness development or their
growth development.
When it comes to multi-site anda lot of churches we work with
(10:43):
their strategy for sending,they're probably sending a
campus pastor to just launch acampus of their own.
How does that fit into this?
How have you seen it work?
It not work.
We can joke around a little bitabout it, about what it
actually means, and feel free todo so, because it's not cookie
cutter for everybody.
Right, and God calls differentchurches to do different things.
But with a lot of churchestrying to do their own thing my
(11:06):
own way, is that been achallenge for you and how have
you overcome that?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (11:11):
No, I think what we're very open and honest
about is there's not aone-size-fits-all approach.
There's no one way that this isthe ultimate and the only way
to do it.
So we have several multi-sitechurches that are part of our
strategy and that are part ofour network.
In fact, what we say is, inessence and this is where I
poked a little bit of funoffline right, so I'll say it
(11:33):
here in many ways, multi-sidingis just slow church plans.
Like, if you fast forward, someof the multi-site churches from
20, 30 years ago, they expandedand did a great job reaching
new areas and then, over time,what they did is, as those
campuses got super healthy andas the board just got much
bigger, they just planted themas autonomous churches, and so
it was just slow church planting.
(11:54):
But it started with a vision andan idea right.
Heredes (11:57):
You know we're gonna have to use that for the
thumbnail and the teaser clip.
Right, it's like just right.
Multi-site is just slow churchplanting.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (12:07):
It really is, and so we believe it's a very
effective strategy.
I mean, that's one of the stepsfor us is identifying those
churches that have that heart,like a good multi-siding church.
What you recognize is that theyhave a heart and a passion to
reach and engage new people.
They've developed greatleadership development
principles to raise up a campuspastor to give him leadership.
They've had to design theirsystem and structure to meet
(12:29):
needs in multiple geographicareas to reach different
neighborhoods.
Man, they've done such greatwork to try to problem solve and
to add value to theirorganization, to their community
.
So I believe they're definitelypart of it.
Collin (12:44):
So you used three words, see if I can remember them.
I know develop was one of them.
Heredes (12:51):
What is it?
Outro (12:51):
Discover, discover, discover, develop, deploy.
Collin (12:55):
So let's talk about.
Can we go through that process?
So, when you go to a church,what's discover all about?
What are they discovering?
Just this passion and desire tochurch plan?
Are they discovering actualpeople?
All the above.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (13:07):
Yeah, I think all the above one is you want
them to kind of discover theirvision for sending and
multiplying.
But then that usually startswith hey, if we're going to plan
another church, where do wefind this planter?
And a lot of times churchesfeel like they're somewhere out
there and what we're trying todo is, like man, the planters of
tomorrow are sitting in yourpews today, and so if you can
just change your mindset and say, like man, I think the future
(13:29):
church planter is actually hereand it may be somebody that's
already part of my church, soit's helping them kind of think
through what would make for agood church planter or somebody
who's going to be a leaderwithin your church, right?
So let's move, like the churchplanting, from the equation for
a minute.
It's still a great principle islike, who do you already have
already connected to yourorganization and what traits and
(13:49):
characteristics or skills haveyou already observed and noticed
?
And then it's about having thatI see in you conversation like,
hey, man, I don't know if yourealize this, but I see this in
you.
Have you ever noticed this orthought about this or had any
conversations about this?
And oftentimes, like man, youknow, I have thought about that.
Well, you know someone haspointed that out is a man.
I see this in you and I believethat you could be this.
(14:12):
And it's like starting off withdiscovering those potential
leaders in your organization.
And then, once you discoverthem, the natural question is
what are you going to do as anorganization to develop this
leader?
Like what is it that you wantthem to learn, master and
improve in order to reach thisdesired destination that you
have for them?
So that's that develop pieces.
That's helping think through.
(14:32):
Okay, so you have somebody whowants to step up to the plate
and do this thing.
What now?
What's next?
What are you going to do tohelp coach them, train them,
equip them on this journey?
And then, lastly, is thedeployment.
That's like all right, activatetheir skill sets, activate
their gifts.
I think one of the mostfrustrating things is to have
someone identify something inyou, train you up and then not
(14:52):
give you any outlets to use yourgifts and your skill sets.
So, for organizations to thinkthrough, what are the avenues
where I'm going to be able todeploy people, to leverage, how
they're wired, how they'regifted, all those different
things and put into practice.
Collin (15:05):
And so I'm thinking of the nonprofit here as well.
You know, to take this, youknow their I mean nonprofits,
just like churches, are lookingfor high quality leaders to go
and lead and, you know, expandwhatever they're doing, they a
lot of times that's a big partof that is going to be that
development process.
What is it?
(15:26):
So, once you've kind of youknow you go into a church, you
help them discover, you know,help them find people, what does
that development really looklike for us?
Let's say I'm someone who feelscalled to church planning.
What does that developmentprocess look like for them?
And how does Nam and sendingchurches step in?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (15:43):
there.
Yeah, no, I think that's great.
I think two differentapproaches.
We have a self discoveryapproach.
One of them this can come inlater when we talk about, like
some of the things that impactedthe way I do ministry and just
work is the importance of selfdiscovery in adult learning and
education.
I think, instead of just doinglike an info dump, like this is
all the stuff you got to dobeing able to guide churches and
(16:06):
leaders through a selfdiscovery process to help them
kind of come up with their ownplan, and so we do forms of that
in our training and ourcollaborative environments,
learning environments wherewe're helping use a series of
questions and posted tear sheetexercises to help them kind of
discover.
Like, oh yeah, these are thethings I find to be really
important, these are the thingsI'm really good at and
passionate about.
(16:27):
These are the things I wouldlove to pass on to a future
leader right, identify that,figure out a system.
And so what we try to do islike for four key words, the
first is like we is a phrase.
The first one's a phrasebeginning with the end in mind
like what is it that youultimately want this person to
become Like, when you haveclarity in that, it's powerful,
(16:49):
like you know what you'reultimately aligning all of your
stuff to produce.
So that's the first step in theprocess helping leaders like
what is it you want people tobecome?
Once you have that clarity, youcan reverse, engineer and help
people achieve that goal.
And so then the three words weuse are relational training,
environments, rhythms, content.
(17:11):
So what are the environmentsthat I'm inviting someone into?
What are the rhythms?
How often are we gonna engagein that space and meet in that
space?
And then, when we meet in thosespaces, what is the content or
the skill or the craft that Iwant to teach you and get you to
master in those spaces?
And like, by helping them justkind of think through that they
(17:31):
can look back and say like okay,so I want to meet with this
person weekly or monthly in thissetting and I want to cover
this book, this resource, thispodcast, this tool and help them
produce this desired outcome.
So it's all connected.
Those are kind of some of thethings that we do when we come
alongside coaching churches.
Collin (17:51):
And what is the expectation when you're working
for a church, because obviouslyyou're trying to help them build
these systems.
So are you guys more of justlike an advisor and you know,
like, what does it look like fora church?
Like, what are they responsiblefor?
Are they kind of likeresponsible for moving this
along?
How does that all?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (18:09):
work.
Yeah, they're responsible forkind of moving this along.
We can serve as like champion,as like a consultant, as
somebody to inspire you on thatjourney.
I think when it gets into likeplanting through some network,
we have like a robust assessmentprocess where a church planting
candidate will have to gothrough a two-day assessment
retreat and they'll have expertsand practitioners and leaders
(18:33):
with lots of experience kind ofput them through an evaluation
process and they assess for likeeight specific skills.
And so churches then are tryingto prepare a candidate to go
through assessment and then onthe back end of assessment, that
planter will get one of threeresponses you know, ready to
move forward, so they're readyto plant.
They go straight into ourcoaching Needs, further
(18:54):
development, like, okay, youhave a lot of what we're looking
for in a church planter and wethink you can be a good planter.
But based on the assessment, Ithink it'd be good for you to
spend maybe six months workingon these skill sets with your
sending church.
Or the third option is like aredirect.
Based on all the differentpeople in the room, they just
felt like maybe church plantingis not the thing that you should
pursue and you should redirectyour gifts and passions to
(19:16):
another area of ministry, and sothose are usually the three
outcomes.
So what the sending church isresponsible for is helping first
prepare a candidate forassessment and then, coming
after assessment, followingthrough with their growth
development plan to help themgrow and the skill sets needed
to plant a healthy, thrivingchurch.
Heredes (19:33):
Gus tell me about assessment.
Feels like bootcamp.
Is it a little bootcamp-ish?
Is it a little bit?
I have to meet that mark.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (19:42):
No, I think it's more like you come with
your spouse and there's gonna beexercises where we get to hear
your vision, like why do youwant to plan a church?
So you get to practicecommunication and vision casting
.
There's gonna be acommunication exercise where
part of leading a church isbeing able to communicate and
preach and teach God's wordfaithfully.
So you'll preach a message infront of a room of seasoned
(20:02):
pastors and practitioners forgoing to give you feedback and
evaluation.
There's a counseling componentto it.
There's opportunities for youand your wife to have meetings
with other pastors and theirwives, and so they're gonna do a
lot of stuff on family dynamics, relational dynamics.
We use the Prepared and Rich asa marital resource through that
process as well, and so they'rejust trying to look at some
(20:25):
different areas.
There's parts of it that's veryworshipful.
There's parts of it where, forsure, it is definitely
exhausting, because you're goingfrom preaching to vision
casting, to a counseling session, to talking with a room.
So there's different elementsto it, but it is a very robust
retreat.
Collin (20:42):
So there's no push-ups, qualification or anything like
that.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (20:47):
No, that's not a bad idea, though, right.
Collin (20:51):
Just to test the heart a little bit 6 am.
I think We'll say no, take someCrossFit If you crossfit Fit
for the cross.
You gotta crossfit first, okaywe're gonna end the episode
right there and.
Outro (21:05):
I'm gonna go rebuke H for whatever just happened.
Collin (21:10):
Well, so I come from the H and I both come from the
church world and church plantingassessments typically can be
pretty robust.
It's not just like you said,it's not just a one-day thing,
it's not an afternoon.
Tell us your heart, okay, gohave fun.
You're really evaluatingsomebody because church planting
(21:31):
is hard.
I mean, there's its own set ofchallenges in church planting,
but then also just leading anorganization and being
responsible for one is reallydifficult.
What is the necessity forhaving that in church planting?
Have you seen situations wheremaybe there isn't as robust of a
process in the front end andit's gone wrong?
(21:53):
Talk a little bit about theimportance of having that.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (21:57):
I guess leadership vetting, if you will,
yeah, I think what you realizeis if you have a healthier
leader who's prepared andequipped, they'll survive the
journey of planting.
Planting is already extremelydifficult.
It's one of the toughest thingsyou can do.
For me in my ministry years Ithink it's been the hardest
thing I've ever done.
I've led at churches of 10,000people, 6,000 people, 3,000.
(22:20):
I would say planting a churchfrom scratch which I planted
with my friend Carlos LolletProbably the hardest thing I've
ever done in 18 years ofministry, for sure.
And so it's extremely difficult.
And so you want well-prepared,well-assessed leaders to go
through a robust process to helpthem on that journey.
I think when you have peoplejust kind of go out there
(22:42):
without the right resources,right training, sure they could
plant a thriving church.
I'm not saying that that can'thappen if you don't go through
this process.
I think you have a highersuccess rate in healthy planters
and healthy churches beingplanted if there's a lot of
intentionality on the front end.
Collin (23:01):
And so again thinking of , like, say, the nonprofit
leader.
If they're looking at this andsaying, okay, well, maybe I see
a need to have something likethis to help evaluate leaders,
Maybe I don't need to.
It doesn't need to be as robustas it is for like a church
planting thing.
Where can they go to kind offind that?
(23:23):
Are there resources where and Imight be putting you a little
bit on the spot here but arethere resources that they can go
to say like this is what thislooks like, this is what it
takes?
How do I even get started there?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (23:31):
Yeah, so in my previous role I served as a
mobilization pastor at LongHollow in the Middle Tennessee
area, and so there was anorganization called Mission
Increase that I was exposed toin the Nashville area.
Nashville had so manynonprofits that were started up
and booming.
But as you start spending timelike, our church would connect
with and work with severalnonprofits and what I quickly
(23:52):
realized is some had a veryrobust vision and a strategy and
an idea and they were executingit extremely well.
Some people had a vision, butthey hadn't thought through
their systems or process and howthey were going to carry out
that vision.
This entity and organizationcalled Mission Increase exists
to help work alongsidenonprofits at various different
levels from like okay, so youhave this vision, you have this
(24:15):
ideal dream.
All right, let's help you walkthrough how to implement that
dream.
And it's a it's, it's totally aministry to them, like it
doesn't even cost them anything,it will raise their support to
just be coaches for nonprofitsto have healthy, good system
structures, leadership Like eventhe simple things like how do
you go about establishing aboard?
How do you have accountabilityin your nonprofit?
(24:37):
What's your leadershipstructure going to be?
What's your funding mechanismgoing to be so.
Mission Increase man, theybecame such a great blessing and
they have several outpostsacross North America.
So I think they have theirheadquarters on the West Coast
but they've expanded to severaldifferent states.
But that'd be a greatorganization.
If you have a Mission Increasein your city they offer free
(24:58):
workshops all the time fornonprofits on leadership
development, how to establishand maintain a board, vision
casting, fundraising, like allthese different things that are
super helpful in the nonprofitworld.
But yeah, that would be oneresource.
I'd try to connect with aMission Increase and see what
coaching and workshops are in mycity.
Heredes (25:19):
Gus, you mentioned one of the hardest things church
planting, your friend Carlos.
And reality.
Tell me how you manage theBible vocational, co-vocational,
the multi-vocational.
How do you do that?
Because that'll learn.
How do you keep track of all?
Outro (25:33):
the hats.
Heredes (25:33):
How do you?
Outro (25:34):
Because that's part of the challenge right, and a lot
of ministers are not profiting.
Heredes (25:38):
Nonprofit leaders are doing the same right.
Outro (25:40):
They're supplementing.
Heredes (25:40):
They're figuring out fundraising at the same time.
Give us some tips and tricks orsome lessons you're learning.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (25:47):
Yeah, no doubt I mean because I've chosen
to kind of live in both ofthose worlds.
You do know that you take on alot and I think a couple of
things that have helped me is,man, I live by my schedule and I
have certain days that I haveblocked off as like no meeting
days, because they're my whitespace to be able to create, to
think, to plan for the future.
(26:07):
I think you can get caught somuch in managing or wearing
multiple hats that you startsaying yes to everything.
So it's like being able to likehave structured times in my
week where, like this is my timeto create new content resources
, this is my time to do coachingand meetings and kind of stick
into that.
So for me it's being kind ofvery structured has helped me
take on more stuff.
I don't have a hard time sayingno to people, so that side of
(26:31):
it has been good for me.
I know other leaders do have ahard time saying no and so I
recognize that's a personalitytrait.
That's just you being able tounderstand how you're wired and
what's going to best work foryou.
I would say what's helped me?
A ton calendaring, you know,stick into a good rhythm in my
weeks, not to say you can'tadjust it or tweak it.
I do a lot of travel, so I haveto understand that some of my
(26:52):
weeks are going to lookdifferent because I'm traveling
across country to set up somemeetings.
But having some margin on thefront end and on the back end of
those trips to be able to restwell Because I think early on in
my ministry I didn't rest wellbut like truly Sabbath thing,
like taking a day to not do workand just recover, refocus on
God and family Huge.
(27:13):
I think that's so important forany leader who's running at a
high pace.
So I think you know beingstructured helps a ton Having a
game plan for your week and thenhaving some rhythms of rest
built in to help you recover andmove forward.
Collin (27:28):
Man, that is huge.
I probably am on maybe theopposite spectrum, and as far as
saying no, it's naturallysomething that's pretty
difficult for me and I had tolearn through that.
I spent some time in ministryas well, and there are a lot of
situations where I had to learnthat, and you know, one of the
things that I think helped mewas, regardless of where you
(27:51):
know if that's easy for you, ifit's not, you are always saying
yes and no to some things, andso understanding that when
you're saying yes to everybody alot of times, that means you're
going to be saying no to yourfamily and you're going to be
saying no to things that reallyare actually important, and so
you know, just being able todevelop that skill and put that
in the right context is huge.
(28:13):
I love that you said that,because it's so simple and I
think it's overlooked.
But, but, man, the ability tosay yes to the right things.
Heredes (28:19):
I'm here at this right.
You're saying that you have ahard time saying no, that you
say yes Because what I'vereceived in our relationship and
our engagements- when I talk toyou when I ask you to hang out,
when I ask you for lunch, it'syou know, hasn't it's been?
No, I'm busy.
What's?
What's talk about this?
Collin (28:38):
Yeah, well, I thought that's what our weekly
counseling session was for.
Outro (28:41):
But we can talk about it here, you know you've got.
Collin (28:44):
You've got the reformed me.
Now you know you've got.
Outro (28:46):
This is I've gone through a process here is what I'm
trying to say.
Heredes (28:49):
I see, I see, I see Just messing, just messing.
I think to that.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (28:56):
This kind of helped me.
It started with, like, when Iwas having a really hard time
saying no, early on, a mentor ofmine pulled me aside.
He was observing my patternsand unhealthy practice, which he
was gracious enough to call outon me early, so it didn't
affect me later on.
So I'm always grateful for that.
But he said this simple phrase.
He says ministry never ends.
So if you keep saying yes,everything, like there's never
(29:17):
going to be a point in timewe're like oh, finally, I
accomplished it all.
He's like it never ends.
I was like so make sure you'resetting up some healthy
boundaries to protect yourhealth and your longevity and
ministry, because there's alwaysgoing to be more ministry.
You're never going to get to meand like I finally finished it
all, it's like it's, there'salways more.
So if you think that you havethis savior complex and you got
(29:37):
to be the solution to everyone'sproblem, you're going to burn
out and you're going to crash.
And so he just helped me justkind of identify man, there's
always something else that needsto be done.
But if you're going to stay inthis game long term, you got to
have healthy boundaries and youcan't say yes to all this.
And in essence, colin, just whatyou said he was saying very
similar.
He's like when you say yes toall these things, you're saying
(29:58):
no to something else.
And at the time I was marriedand I was about to have my first
kid and he was like you'regoing to be saying no to your
wife and your kids If you keepsaying yes to every opportunity.
And I was like man, it was justlike a great like leadership
moment, where this seasoned,experienced leader was just
calling out something that Ijust was not seeing.
It was like a blind spot and hewas just being loving and
(30:18):
gracious enough to let me speaksome truth into your life.
Collin (30:23):
So, while we're on this topic of saying no, we talked a
little bit about the assessmentprocess and you mentioned how
you know there's basically threeaspects, basically three
outcomes that someone can havewhen they go to a sense of an
assessment.
It's either, yes, either agreen light, a yellow light or a
red light.
You know, talk through that alittle bit.
(30:43):
How do you make those decisions?
How do you communicate that?
If it's a yellow light, how doyou communicate that?
If it's a red light, how do youcommunicate that in a way that
doesn't cause that person to gointo a spiral?
You know, like, like, talk alittle bit about that process.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (30:58):
Sure.
So, man, just to be clear,that's on the planter
development team, so I'm on themobilization team.
I don't have those conversations.
But I have been part of some ofthose meetings and so what
they're doing is all theassessors from the retreat will
spend a few hours processingtheir insights and observations
from all the different exercises.
They do invite the sendingchurch rep so whoever the
(31:20):
sending church is for thatcandidate is part of these
meetings to listen in, to beable to chime in.
That's great, and so I'm likehey, so we didn't quite get this
.
You spend more time with them.
Have you noticed this to be anissue in his life?
Or we thought this was an issue.
Maybe you think differently.
Like let's hear yourperspective so they're able to
participate in thosedeliberations and like have part
(31:40):
in that conversation.
So I think that's super helpful, yeah, how they communicate it.
Our field staff takes time towrite up a report, pray through
a thing through it and thenschedule a one on one to be able
to process the findings of theretreat with that candidate.
So that way it's personal, it'svery shepherding, it's an
opportunity to coach and to helphave that heart to heart
(32:01):
conversation.
So it doesn't feel like coldand rigid and distant.
It's very much, very detailed,very thought out.
A lot of processing goes into alot of prayer.
Collin (32:10):
Yeah, and it sounds like from what you're saying that
it's never just a, it's never ayellow not right now, go figure
it out or a red.
We don't think this is for you.
You know, deal with that onyour own.
It sounds like there's alwayssome level of we're going to
continue to guide you.
If it's yellow, here's what weneed to work on to get you to
(32:30):
green, and if it's a red, how dowe find where you need to be?
I mean, and that's you know so,wherever, whatever organization
you're in, talking aboutleadership development, that
right there is huge, because Ithink you can easily you can
damage somebody prettysignificantly by just saying
(32:51):
Nope, sorry, go figure it out onyour own, as opposed to saying
no, but let's try to find thisother path, because I think you
get a lot of times.
Take that person and once theyfind the right thing, the right
fit, then they're wildlyproductive and you know what I
mean.
So like that's huge.
Heredes (33:10):
Question Gus in the leadership development formation
I think part of you have adoctor in pastoral ministry
which my understanding was a lotto do with discipleship groups
formation.
Tell us a little bit about yourthesis and how you would break
it down in church world in apractical and scenario today.
How are you doing that areality at the other churches
you've been a part of?
(33:31):
Tell us.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (33:33):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Yeah, I did my doctorate inpastoral leadership at
Southeastern Baptist TheologicalSeminary.
Loved it, great experience.
One of the things that they didis it was cohort stuff, so 10
students going through thisprocess over the course of three
years together, and so youbuild like just an incredible
friendship.
When it came down to the writingelement of that doctorate I
(33:53):
chose to write on basically likedeveloping a strategy for
multiplying in home groups.
So I'm super passionate aboutdisciple making, super
passionate about developingcommunity in churches, and so
that was something thatintrigued me.
So I had to read 40 books onsmall group ministry and kind of
help do this project in twophases.
Phase one was to be able toidentify the healthy elements of
(34:16):
a group.
So before you can multiplysomething, one of the things you
have to realize, like whatmakes it worth replicating, like
what makes it healthy and good,that I would want to take this
environment and see more ofthose environments.
So the first part of theprocess is like man, what are
the things that make for ahealthy group?
The second half of the projectfocused on what were the key
components that were conduciveto seeing a multiplication
(34:40):
culture in the church kickoff.
You know this kind ofreproducing groups.
And so, man, those things cameout to be five simple things
that kind of surfaced throughresearch and interviewing
different practitioners, readinga bunch of different books.
First and foremost, it startedwith vision casting, and this is
beautiful because a lot of whatI'm sharing is not just
conducive to church work.
It's actually thinking throughjust multiple kinds,
(35:02):
multiplication and several otherthings.
It was vision casting, likeknowing that it starts with the
leaders of an organization or achurch developing and then
sharing that vision with thepeople that they're leading.
The second was leadershipdevelopment, like making sure
that there was a process to beable to develop the leaders that
you were going to be able tothen discover, develop and
(35:24):
deploy there comes those threewords again, right.
And then third was havingstrategic training in your
organization, your church, ifyou're going to be discovering,
developing, deploying leaders,you have to have some form of
strategic training as part ofyour process to be able to
develop these leaders.
The fourth one is the thing thatwould be like church, unique
(35:45):
but you can easily adapt to anyorganization is having some
church-wide campaigns that thechurch was leveraging as huge
on-ramps.
So, like you're doing the hardwork of casting vision.
You're doing the work ofdeveloping leaders.
You're then training theseleaders throughout the year.
Now you have some hugemilestones in your church where
you have these specific on-rampsfor people to hear it from the
(36:07):
stage air war matching theground war, right Of your
tactics for marketing, forinward and outward, you know,
explanation of groups and howthey're important, why they
matter.
And then the fifth this is theone that I think most churches
overlook, and it has to dealwith data.
It's developing your systems ofmeasurements and accountability
.
Like what data are you needingto gather and capture that's
(36:30):
going to inform your leaders ifthis thing's working or not
working or what needs to bemodified and tweaked.
And so for us, like, those arethe five things.
Like, when churches had thosefive things in action, they were
seeing groups multiply on avery consistent pace, and so
vision casting that led toleadership development, that led
to strategic training, that ledto churchwide campaigns and
(36:52):
then undergirded by a goodsystem of measurements and
accountability.
Outro (36:56):
Love it.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (36:57):
Those are the key components to multiplying
groups.
Heredes (36:59):
So when does the book come out Gus.
Collin (37:01):
I was going to say that's that right there was for
free everyone.
Just let me let you know Comeon.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (37:06):
Yeah, I've had a lot of people ask for that
one.
I need to.
I need to get down and just dothat, yeah.
Collin (37:10):
Come on, I'm serious, we'll have a we'll back you,
support you can sponsor themarket and everything Can you
commit right now to releasingthe book first.
Heredes (37:17):
Right, no, no, nams got this, nams got this, I know so
Gus.
Collin (37:23):
Age is committing to edit right now.
Heredes (37:25):
He's committed to edit it for you completely.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (37:27):
I'll get my buddy Age is my editor.
There you go.
Heredes (37:30):
Done.
Yeah, you're Portuguese, maybe.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (37:33):
Let's go, let's go the other one's doing
it already.
They're, they're actually doingthis.
Oh there, yeah, they're doingit.
Heredes (37:37):
I'll tell you Question about books he said you've had
40 books on the topic.
Outro (37:42):
Put you on the spot right now.
Heredes (37:43):
Is there?
What's what's?
What's the number one?
What's the top, what's thesource?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (37:46):
What's Q Dude ?
That is tough On that space, Iwould say, because you can rate
them on so many different levels, from like practicality to like
details.
I would go with simplicitybecause I believe this is one of
my mantras.
I'm going to give you a secrethere Simplicity is the key to
reproducibility.
Complex plans and systemsrarely multiply, so it was
(38:08):
something that becomes socomplex.
It usually doesn't go beyondfirst gen, second gen, but if
you do the hard work to refinesomething and make it simple,
it's easy to reproduce andinternalize.
So I would say Chris Surat'sbook Leading Small Groups was a
simple, straightforward enoughdetail to be robust, but simple
enough to like hand a leader inyour church man.
(38:29):
Read this and it's going togive you the foundations of
being a great group leader andwhat your role is as a group
leader to help launch anothergroup out of your group.
Great book.
So I would say that one.
I use that in my church, so yeah, following 40 books.
That's the one I'm using withmy leaders.
Heredes (38:44):
I love hearing that from you because I mean
theologian, doctorate inministry, got a master's in
divinity.
You can go on and on about andwe can exegete all day here and
talk about, but the simplicity,the ability to remember
something to then pass it on toyour right If a fifth grader
can't grasp it.
So there's levels to it, but Ilove hearing that from you
(39:05):
because most times we in churchworld we get lost in trying to
be so complex and deep in ourown spaghetti of thoughts that
nobody else can take it and so Ilove hearing that I love it.
Collin (39:17):
I think sometimes we just go ahead.
Guys, you're the expert.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (39:21):
I'm going to say that, to speak to that age,
there were a few books and I'mnot going to name these because
of publicity that as I put it,we're going to be low on.
Some of the books I read when Iwanted to go follow up and meet
with the author and see theirsystem in action at the church.
As I probe deeper, it was likegreat in theory, but they never
panned out in practice.
(39:41):
And so some of these books thatgot remained like, oh dude,
read this guy's book, it'samazing.
I read it.
I was like, yeah, it is amazing, let me go see this in action
and then you go spend time likeman.
Actually we never implementedit here at the church.
It was too complicated.
So you're like, oh wow, so it'sgreat in theory but not in
practice and I think too manyleaders in the church world will
operate too much in thatframework.
Heredes (40:03):
Yeah, Well, it's like how good is a sermon in Latin if
I can't understand it Right?
And it's how was it tangiblepractice?
But I love that.
Outro (40:11):
I love that.
Heredes (40:14):
No, I'll let you go to, but I'm going to go old school
here.
I grew up in the purple drivenera here.
My dad was a Rick Warrenfanboycom, so we grew up in that
assimilation groups and in someways Rick was king of that of
bringing simplicity to thecomplex right, and then the SBC
world.
He simplified something to thepoint that he got called out and
(40:35):
, like nah, it's watered down,there's no substance, but it
worked right.
The baseball diamond and stepone, step two, step three.
Is that still?
Where do you see the climate?
Where do you see the state ofthe church in discipleship, in
assimilation today?
What are the trends?
What are some warning signsthat you would talk to leaders
about?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (40:54):
Yeah, I think we're starting to see like a
renewed sense of like theimportance of having a
discipleship pathway, and verysimilar to what Rick was trying
to do.
I think Rick was trying to movethrough groups of assimilation
to get people assimilated andactivated in the church, and now
people are doing a very similarprocess but like thinking
through more of like that endgame, like what is it that we
ultimately want to see produced?
(41:15):
And so some churches arestarting with church planter,
like this is what I want toproduce.
And then they're backing upfrom their systems and thinking
through like what's mydiscipleship process going to
look like?
What's my leadershipdevelopment process going to
look like?
And then what's my residencyprocess going to look like to
produce that Others are juststarting with hey, I just want
to reproduce, reproduce faithfuldisciple, like somebody who's
(41:38):
in love with Jesus, loves God,loves people.
Okay, that's great.
How am I going to help someonego from unengaged to engaged to
become that disciple?
And they're thinking throughtheir systems and their process.
So I think what I'm seeing ismore and more churches
recognizing the need to have aconsistent pathway and it's kind
of moving away from, in thelast probably two to three
(42:00):
decades, I think, the churchoffered more of a menu instead
of a roadmap.
So that's kind of language thatwe use.
We want to provide people a map, not a menu.
It was like the buffet.
These are all the services andgoods we can offer you.
You pick and choose what youwant and so you get different
outcomes because you're likewell, I like this part of the
church, I'll take this part.
I don't really care about this.
I'm not going to do this.
(42:20):
Now.
You're seeing churches do thehard work of, like man, what's a
spiritual map with adestination that we want to
point people to and then thedirections to get to that
destination, like what can we doto help you achieve this
destination that we have for you?
Heredes (42:35):
I love that language, so that's a trend that we're
starting to see.
Is that original?
Is that yours, or is thatyou're borrowing that from
somebody?
We'll make it, it's acombination.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (42:43):
There are some stuff like when I worked
with Replicate, that we would dostuff like that.
So we talk about like I usethis and send network resources.
So we talk about determiningthe destination and then
providing the directions toreach so kind of using a GPS
illustration a couple of thingsyou need to have when you use a
GPS.
This goes for any organization.
You got to know where you areright now.
So the harsh reality is aleader to define reality Like
(43:05):
what is the current condition ofyour org, like where are you
right now?
Then you determine thedestination, where do you want
to go.
And then the strategy is likehow do I?
Heredes (43:14):
get there All right.
So that's huge.
I love it so much because I'min the two right of my church
and we've all lived this where,if you have the menu, I want to
skip the dessert.
Exactly, I just want to.
You know, I'm here for thedrink, so I'm just here for the
salad, so I'm anemic.
There's no protein, so there'sthis kind of scatter.
And then the map.
It's a beautiful thing becausethere's a destination.
(43:35):
Like you said, you want toprovide direction, but what's
the condition of the vehicle?
Right, can it get there fast?
Can it not?
Can I even take off?
Do I have fuel to even get onthe journey?
So I love that analogy.
I'm a visual person, so to methat kind of clicks right away
in helping people take steps or,you know, get on the journey,
go ahead, Colin.
Collin (43:54):
Well, I was curious.
Are there times where you knowyou reach out to a church or a
church reaches out to you guys,brings you in, and there the
organization is not at a placethat's ready to send somebody
out?
What does that look like?
What is there some type ofstandard that you know?
(44:17):
It's like you know this is kindof the profile of a church that
isn't quite ready and this istypically what they need to do.
And how do you go through that?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (44:26):
Man, yeah, that does happen.
In fact, last week we had justhad a director's meeting with
our VPs at Send Network to talkabout this issue of like in our
role, like as a church plantingfamily, a network of church
planting.
You know, where is our role inthat Like as we're working with
the church and helping inspireand coach them to develop a
(44:48):
vision for sending, maybe onthat process of building that
relationship with them, and youstart asking questions hey, tell
me about your process fordiscipling people, Tell me about
your leadership development,and you start to recognize man,
they don't have that Like.
What's our, what's our role inthat?
And so I think we're stilltrying to figure out what is our
role in that as an organization.
I think obviously we have theposture and the heart to want to
(45:09):
serve and help leaders as muchas we can, but recognizing that
we serve at the SBC right.
So we are a family of autonomouschurches.
Each pastor is, you know, theleader of his church and we as a
network are not dictating toyou what you can and should do.
We can obviously share bestpractices and hopefully inspire
you to develop some of thesesystems to help you be more
(45:31):
consistent as a church.
I obviously am super passionateabout that.
I think that's one of thedifferences between where I am
now at Send Network and one ofmy previous roles where I was a
paid consultant to replicateministries.
So you were hiring me to cometo your church and help you
think through your systems andmake changes to your systems,
where now I come alongside toserve you and to help you and to
(45:52):
see how your church can getinvolved with church planting
not necessarily to serve as yourconsultant for disciple making,
pathways, leadershipdevelopment.
So just a little bit differencein like what my role is now,
but obviously something I'msuper passionate about.
I would love to see moreleaders develop systems.
Heredes (46:09):
Gus, you know we've been part of cultures that
sometimes promote feedback butdon't necessarily know how to
provide or implement feedback,and you could say toxic cultures
, depending where you're comingfrom, or some that are.
Tell me about you and feedback,what you've learned and kind of
some of the best practicesyou've implemented.
That's great.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (46:28):
Man.
Honestly, I would say thiswould be one of the most
important growth opportunitiesthat occurred in my life.
However, like some of it stemsfrom first observing, like how
not to do it.
Like I was part of somecultures that they leveraged the
word feedback as just a way tolike destroy someone and tear
you down and so over, yeah, kindof control and fear, like
creating a fear culture and sostifling the organization.
(46:50):
You know, as I got to grow inmy leadership and have more
responsibilities, one of thethings that I did is I developed
a mantra for my teams that Ilead and we recite this one
going to feedback meetings.
And here's the mantra is likefeedback is meant to be helpful,
not hurtful.
So, if you understand, like,the reason I'm giving you this
feedback is because I truly carefor you and I truly, from a
(47:10):
genuine posture, want to helpyou get better as a leader and
advance our organization forward.
So, knowing that that's goingto matter, how I present the
feedback, like how I deliverthat feedback matters and the
posture I'm taking, like I'm notlooking for things to just
bring you down to like let myinsecurities come out, but like
I truly love you, care for you,right.
So we walk into those feedbackmeetings.
(47:31):
We know our mantra and we knowthe posture that we're taking,
so we're going to let our guardsdown.
We'll receive it because theperson giving it to me truly
loves me and cares for me andthey're not being disrespectful
in the way they're dishing itout and then even challenges me
as a leader.
When I'm giving feedback to oneof my coworkers, one of my
teammates, or even sometimes asuperior right, like how I give
that feedback matters, the way Ideliver it, the way I present
(47:52):
it.
I mean, I use questions likethis to even incite and invite
feedback for me as a leader.
So one thing that I do when I'mmeeting with my staff I do one
on ones is like hey, how can Iserve you better?
That's a simple question andthe meetings with that.
I do it as a pastor.
When I take a church member out, I even ask them that he has a
pastor of this church.
How can I serve you better?
(48:13):
I do this as a parent.
I do one on one dates with mydaughters and at the end of the
day I'm always asking my babygirls how can I be a better dad
Now?
Early on.
At first they're like oh no,you're the best dad.
As they've gotten older, theysit there and they think now
I've got, Actually, you knowactually that you know and so
(48:34):
like just embodying that culture.
Like I want to receive feedback,I want to invite.
I think there was a seasonbecause I saw it expressed
poorly that I resented it andtried to avoid it.
Now that I see the value andfeedback and knowing how to give
it and how to receive it, Ihave.
Feedback to me is one of thebest things that you can ever
receive as a leader, as somebodywho wants to grow in your
(48:54):
profession and your skills.
Collin (48:56):
So let's just really quick.
There's some quick firewaysthat someone wants to take this
and implement it.
They're saying like you knowwhat, I do need a better system
of feedback from a leader andfrom a, you know, employee
perspective or whatever.
What are some?
How do they do that?
How can they implement thatright now?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (49:15):
Man, I think questioning your motives is
really important on this process.
Like, hey, why do I want togive this feedback?
Am I trying to assert dominance?
Am I trying to, like, putsomeone in their place?
Am I trying to establish myauthority?
So I think that, as a personwho's wanting to give the
feedback, it's important to likeinternally process, like your
motivation behind it.
Is it truly because I'm tryingto help this person?
(49:36):
All right, then, really thequestion is how can we get
better as a team?
And the feedback I'm givingthis person is centered around
how can we get better at whatwe're trying to achieve?
How can we do better as anorganization?
How can our product improve?
Like now you're taking it andit's our team wins, when
everyone is winning, and it justkind of changes the dynamics
really, because you're no longerjust like targeting just one
(49:57):
individual.
So I think that's a big part ofit is the posture and the
motivation behind why you'retrying to give the feedback.
Now, if the leader hasestablished that culture, then
as the employee receiving it,you understand that the feedback
being given is within a certaincontext and you've established
trust with your leader.
I'm a huge Patrick Lencioni fan.
(50:18):
I love a lot of his writings,right, and I'm watching that.
Trust on a team Huge, right.
If you don't have the trust,it's going to be super hard to
develop a good feedback culture.
So I'm anticipating that we getto this stage in the
conversation because we've donethe hard work as a leader to
establish trust on our team.
When trust is established, man,you can have some
straightforward conversations,some loving conflict, which I
(50:42):
think conflict is good on a team.
So I'm one of those guys like Ibelieve healthy conflict is
good because it's two peoplepassionately fighting for the
best future of the organization,right, so it's good, healthy
conflicts, not bad conflict.
That's like pride trying toovercome pride.
That's bad conflict, like egoversus ego.
This is like, hey, man, we wantwhat's best for the
organization, we want what'sbest for our nonprofit, we want
(51:03):
what's best for our church.
Okay, then let's have somerobust dialogue because we've
already established that wetrust each other and we respect
each other, right.
So that's there.
Now we can go pretty intensetoe to toe, like I love serving
with Carlos, right, the guy thatI co-planted this church with
here in Miami, and we'll havesome fun like back and forth
great conversations.
(51:23):
We're able to have thatstraightforward dialogue because
we've worked so hard atestablishing a true love and
respect for one another.
Like we truly love and respecteach other and we know that our
motives are we want what's bestfor the church moving forward.
So we understand ourmotivations.
Like when we bring something upto invite some of that healthy
conflict, we're not questioningeach other's motives Like man,
(51:44):
why do you think he brought thatup?
What's the ultimate end game?
They're trying to no.
Like we have a system of trustand relationship established.
So when we know we're goinginto those intense conversations
in the back of our mind we'renot filtering it through like I
wonder what their real motive is.
It's more like yeah, we trusteach other.
We know that we're trying tofight for the best future
(52:04):
forward for our organization andwe want the best idea to win
out, not just like my idea orhis idea.
What's the best idea?
Heredes (52:12):
So I think it's helpful and I've seen that I play,
because I've seen that I playbetween you guys and how you
guys have led, so which is good.
That's why you're a great XPfor for him, for that team.
You know, for such a time asthis in the, in the not so fun,
not so sexy season of growth andhard work that you know, that
you guys are in.
But hey, real quick on this one.
Just asking for a friend, likejust for some feedback here.
(52:35):
How like, how would you giveColin some feedback on how you
could be a better co-host?
How would you do that?
Collin (52:40):
It's just good.
No, I'm excited to hear thisbecause a lot of times you're
talking about some of thenegative ways to get feedback
and I was.
I was having flashbacks toconversations with age.
So, yeah, I loved.
Yeah, please.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (52:51):
Yeah and so like.
So feedback doesn't always haveto be negative, right?
Feedback can also be justpositive.
Collin (52:56):
So here's the feedback.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (52:57):
I noticed at the beginning was hey, early on,
I get started with my story andbecause of, like, what I do for
a living, what I'm superpassionate about, obviously
going to lean heavy towards likechurch world, you did such a
wise thing to like pause for aminute, knowing your target
audience, that I don't live inthis world every day.
But hey, pause for a minute.
We've got leaders from sorts oflike all different nonprofits,
(53:18):
and so he is all in in thischurch world because that's what
he's called to do, but there'sprinciples here that are going
to be broadly applicable to allthese.
So I thought that was fantastic.
That was you capturingsomething and being able to like
make a pivot, knowing yourtarget audience, different from
the world that I live in, andyou made an adjustment.
So, man, I wanted to recognizethat adjustment was fantastic.
Heredes (53:40):
Come on Thank you, thank you so much.
Appreciate that this podcast isgoing to get boosted and
marketed.
They're going to pay dad's tospread just this little clip
right here.
Collin (53:50):
Yeah, this is good, yeah , yeah.
I'm actually auditioning for anew co-host for the podcast and
I'd like you to throw your namein the hat, if you wouldn't mind
.
Outro (54:04):
Confidence Wow.
Heredes (54:06):
Not a trust builder there, colin.
Not a trust builder, justmessing.
Collin (54:10):
So good, so good.
Heredes (54:13):
Before we wrap your column, gus, tell us how
somebody listening can find youlearn more about what you're
doing, more about Nam, if thechurch, or even a paratrooper,
and on profit, and how they canget involved.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (54:23):
Yeah, so sendnetworkcom is our website,
so definitely go there.
You'll find everything frommobilizing planters so someone
you know is interested inwanting to start a church or is
maybe sensing that calling,there's an opportunity on that
website for them to find outmore and connect with somebody
from our network.
If it's a church that wants toreach out to see how they can be
activated, there's a spot onthat website for churches to be
(54:46):
able to be mobilized, so theyjust fill out that form.
Somebody from our team reachesout and establishes contact
connection and then we startthat relationship there to see
how we can serve that church.
As far as me, I'm mostly onInstagram at Gus Hernandez Jr.
I'm also on ex Twitter I don'tknow what to call it these days.
But it's mostly for reading,because it became so weird and
(55:09):
toxic over the last few years islike I got time with everything
that I'm doing to engage inbanter, so I mostly just use it
to read what's trending andfollow some of the leaders that
I like and enjoy.
So those are some of the spaceswhere I'm at.
That's awesome.
Collin (55:23):
Yeah, listeners, we're linking all that below.
We'll retroactively link toGus's book when that's written
and you can jump on that rightaway, because it's going to be
amazing.
Gus, thanks so much for beingon.
H any last thoughts, any lastquestions or anything?
Heredes (55:39):
No, he said it all.
So many good takeaways so I'mgoing to have to review my notes
here and make sure you do thesame.
But to Gus, thanks so much forbeing with us.
Collin (55:46):
Thank you man.
Heredes (55:47):
Thanks for all the work , the cool thing with Gus I get
to see it in practice and inaction.
So this is not just theory,this is not just I mean.
He's passionate, he's living itout and I get to see the fruit
of it down in Miami, wherefriends and family are part of
his church, and so appreciatewhat you do, man, your heart and
your serving and how yousacrificially give and of your
(56:08):
time and resources for thekingdom.
So blessings to you and to thefamily.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (56:13):
Thanks, guys.
Honour and privilege.
Collin (56:14):
Absolutely, and so our listeners.
Thank you so much for listening, thanks for sticking with us,
and we will see you next time onthe nonprofit Renaissance.
Outro (56:24):
Thanks again for listening to the nonprofit
Renaissance.
We hope it ignites aRenaissance in you and helps you
go further and grow faster.
Be sure to share, rate andsubscribe, and if you'd like to
recommend or be a guest on ourshow, send us an email at
podcastatfirstcreativecom.
Welcome to the nonprofit Renaissance podcast, where we
help nonprofits go further andgrow faster.
I'm one of your co-hosts myname is Colin and I'm H and we
are here with a super specialguest today.
I think you're going to lovethis episode to age.
Why don't you talk about who weare with?
Heredes (00:29):
Yes, he is massive, mainly North America, colin.
North America we just found outthat, not South America, and
I'm going to have to start therebecause I'm kind of bummed that
it's not South America.
And it was in the name allalong, because he's a legend in
the North American mission.
Collin (00:46):
Honestly, that one's on you, that's honestly on you.
We're laughing.
Heredes (00:50):
We've been having a good time and I'm just messing.
But we have today with us GusHernandez Jr, which we'll get
into in a second, who serves asdirector of sending churches at
the North American Mission Boardand Nam, also executive pastor
reality church in Miami, friendsand partners of ours.
And prior to that, prior tojoining them, he served as
mobilization pastor in LongHollow Church, which you might
(01:12):
have heard of, and he's underhis doctorate in pastoral
leadership from southeasternBaptist theological seminary.
And the list goes on and on.
But, ladies and gentlemen,round of applause for Gus
Hernandez Jr.
Welcome, Gus.
How are you?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (01:25):
I'm doing well, man.
Thank you guys so much forhaving me.
It means a lot, absolutely.
Heredes (01:31):
Now you're Jr, so that means there's a senior, is that
correct?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (01:35):
They will is man, and so I've had to, like,
really make sure to emphasizethat, because, you know, I was
the first believer in my family,but over time I got to lead my
mom to faith and then my dadcame to faith and he was always
in hotel management so hemanaged two properties in South
Beach and then, along thatjourney, god called him into the
nonprofit world and then heactually helped overseas for a
(01:58):
little bit in the DominicanRepublic and then, since now,
has become a pastor in theStates.
Wow, now you know part of thesum of the circles, though
they'll hear Gus Hernandez, andsometimes they're referring to
dad, sometimes they're referringto me.
So I'm always making sure, hey,I'm super proud of my dad and
the leader that he is.
He's taught me so much aboutleadership.
But yeah, it's been funnybecause now you know, we have a
(02:19):
lot of circles.
We run it together in ministry,so it's like dad Jr.
I got some experience with thatage.
Heredes (02:27):
My dad gave me the weirdest name, so I am not a
junior.
I tried to give away junior.
I said let me name one of myboys Jr, my wife's, like no,
don't do that to the chat.
So we did it.
We did it.
Collin (02:39):
That's awesome.
Do you ever pull the?
You know like, hey, in this inthe ministry world, I'm the
senior, you're the junior.
You let that go, you know?
Remind that.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (02:49):
That is the funny part.
So I'm getting close to like my19th year in ministry and so
it's funny.
I remember taking my parents ontheir first ever mission trip
when I was pastoring a church inTennessee and then over time my
parents became missionaries.
So I joke around now because Ibecame an MK first and then a PK
, but after I was already inministry as a pastor I became a
(03:09):
missionary kid kind of pastor'skid in my 30s and 40s.
Yeah.
Heredes (03:14):
Well, gus, tell us, for those of us and we were messing
around with the North American,south American, I'm from South
America and you were born inwhat part of North America?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (03:21):
I was born in Miami.
Yeah, I was born in Miami.
Heredes (03:24):
Florida, which is questionable if it is North
America, but we'll leave it atthat.
It's the capital of SouthAmerica, in my opinion.
Tell us North American MissionBoard.
You've been in for some timenow and successfully leading a
large group of pastors andleaders and mobilizing churches.
Tell us what they do and whatyou're doing there.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (03:44):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Send Network is the churchplanting arm of the North
American Mission Board, so welike to say this way that SEND
Network is a family of churchesthat's planting churches
everywhere, for everyone.
One of the things that we valueis kingdom diversity, and so we
want to make sure that we'replanting the kind of churches
that everyone is welcome to, andso we currently have this
(04:05):
vision.
It's a bold vision we want tosee.
We want to kind of join inGod's activity to see His
kingdom expand in North Americaby 1% over the next decade.
What would that look like?
Man?
That's approximately, if youtake into account today's
population, approximatelyreaching 2.75 million people
(04:25):
over the next decade.
In order to do that, we'd haveto plant roughly around 11,000
new churches that each multiplyonce in their lifetime and each
reach 125 new believers.
And so that's kind of the epicjourney that we're pursuing,
that we're on.
We're trying to impact NorthAmerica by 1% over the next 10
years.
Collin (04:47):
Man, that doesn't sound like a big number, but then when
you add the actual numbers inthere, that's a lofty goal.
That's a lofty goal.
What's the approach to that,when you really expand it and
actually look at what you guysare trying to do?
I mean, how do you wrap yourhead around it?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (05:05):
Yeah, so I mean, one of the things that we
realize right away is you haveto activate the local church.
I mean, we like to say this waylike networks, don't plant
churches, churches plantchurches.
And so what we're trying to doas a family of churches is help
each local church recognize thateach church can play a role on
this journey, and so one of thefirst things we did this year as
a team is we unveiled a newmobilization pathway to help
(05:29):
churches be able to see wherethey are on this pathway and
what clear next steps they cantake to move forward on this
pathway of planting churches.
And so it starts with becominga cooperating church that can
then move to being a supportingchurch.
A supporting church is prayingfor planters, their financially
supporting planters, but then wewant to see them take that step
to becoming a sending church.
(05:50):
Now, this is different in that,instead of just supporting a
different planter, a sendingchurch is taking responsibility
for that planter and they'reensuring that they're getting
the necessary coaching, thecommissioning and the care that
that planter needs to go plant achurch and then from there.
We don't want that to be a oneand done like man.
Now that you planted a church.
What would it look like for youto like develop a heart and a
(06:13):
vision to keep planting?
So we want to help sendingchurches become multiplying
churches.
These are churches that arestarting to send out multiple
planters and teams to plantchurches.
And then the last category iswhat we call a movement church.
They're doing everything amultiplying church is doing, but
they're leveraging theirinfluence with other churches to
catalyze other churches andjoin them on this journey of
(06:35):
planting more churches.
And so what we realize, inorder to reach a goal this lofty
, is it's not one networkplanting churches, it's a family
of churches all gettinginvolved.
Heredes (06:46):
Now, that's clear.
Love that, gus.
Let me ask you this what hasbeen one of the challenges in
this season in mobilizing thesechurches?
What have you found?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (06:56):
Sure, I think one of the big challenges is
sometimes churches can be justfocused on what's happening
inside the walls of their churchand they sometimes lose sight
of God's vision for expandinghis kingdom and reaching new
people and new territories andtaking new territory for the
Lord.
And so I think one of the firstchallenges is just helping a
church to like lift their eyesfrom what's happening with
(07:17):
inside the walls of the churchand lift their eyes up to see
what is God's heart for thenations, what's God's heart to
seeing his kingdom expand.
And so for us, that's a bigpart of what we try to do is
help pastors and leaders developthat heart, to develop a
sending culture and a sendingvision.
Collin (07:36):
Now a quick note for our listeners.
Because of the nature of Gus'srole, there's going to be a lot
of church language, a lot ofchurch planting language.
But I show you there'sprinciples here, that of general
leadership, I mean of expansion, that will absolutely be
applicable to your nonprofits.
But even if you're not in thatchurch world or that faith based
(07:57):
world, man, there's some stuffhere.
Like again you heard the goal,Like you need some good
leadership to get where they'retrying to go, and so just an
encouragement I don't want thatto turn you off.
This is there's going to besome good stuff.
Heredes (08:11):
And, with that said, actually tell us a little about
NAMP.
They're in every state in theUnited States.
It's, I think, how manyemployees and give us just a
little bit kind of the scope ofNAMP.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (08:22):
The North America Mission Board has over
600 employees, differentmissionaries working in
different areas from you know, ateam that's devoted to
evangelism, a team devoted tochurch planting, that send
network.
We have a robust chaplaincydivision that's helping with.
Chaplaincy is across all ofmilitary branches to military
church planting as well, andthen we also have send relief.
(08:45):
So it's a huge relief ministrythat not only is North America,
that has actually gone global aswell and it's been helping
impact and meeting needs andchanging lives all over the
world.
Collin (09:04):
Wow.
So let's dive into your rolethen.
What does it look like?
What are you actively doing dayto day?
How do you interact withchurches when you go and reach
out?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (09:13):
Yeah, absolutely.
So we do a couple of differentthings.
Our team tries to provide somedifferent workshops in different
parts of the country.
We call these sending labs.
These are these two-daycollaborative experiences to
help pastors and churches kindof catch that vision and develop
their first beginning steps fordeveloping a sending culture,
discovering some practical tipsfor how to discover, identify
(09:36):
potential church planters andhow to develop those church
planters.
So we're doing a lot of thoselabs, we're doing a lot of
coaching.
We do a lot of stuff in theresources space of providing
resources for churches todevelop leadership and pipelines
within their churchdiscipleship pathways, ministry,
training, all sorts ofdifferent things.
At the end of the day, we'retrying to help these churches
(09:56):
develop what we would call amultiplication pipeline.
It has like three stages, likediscover, develop and deploy,
and so we're trying to get themto think through okay, how are
we helping develop the peoplethat we have within our church?
You know, what are we going tothen deploy them to be able to
do with the gift sets that theyhave?
And so we're trying to helpthem get to that spot.
Heredes (10:18):
Yeah.
Collin (10:20):
Go ahead H.
Heredes (10:21):
No question with that.
We discussed this before theepisode, a little bit offline,
but I think it's relevant forour listeners.
Half of our listeners arepastors and leaders.
Half are non-profit, c-suitebusiness development or their
growth development.
When it comes to multi-site anda lot of churches we work with
(10:43):
their strategy for sending,they're probably sending a
campus pastor to just launch acampus of their own.
How does that fit into this?
How have you seen it work?
It not work.
We can joke around a little bitabout it, about what it
actually means, and feel free todo so, because it's not cookie
cutter for everybody.
Right, and God calls differentchurches to do different things.
But with a lot of churchestrying to do their own thing my
(11:06):
own way, is that been achallenge for you and how have
you overcome that?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (11:11):
No, I think what we're very open and honest
about is there's not aone-size-fits-all approach.
There's no one way that this isthe ultimate and the only way
to do it.
So we have several multi-sitechurches that are part of our
strategy and that are part ofour network.
In fact, what we say is, inessence and this is where I
poked a little bit of funoffline right, so I'll say it
(11:33):
here in many ways, multi-sidingis just slow church plans.
Like, if you fast forward, someof the multi-site churches from
20, 30 years ago, they expandedand did a great job reaching
new areas and then, over time,what they did is, as those
campuses got super healthy andas the board just got much
bigger, they just planted themas autonomous churches, and so
it was just slow church planting.
(11:54):
But it started with a vision andan idea right.
Heredes (11:57):
You know we're gonna have to use that for the
thumbnail and the teaser clip.
Right, it's like just right.
Multi-site is just slow churchplanting.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (12:07):
It really is, and so we believe it's a very
effective strategy.
I mean, that's one of the stepsfor us is identifying those
churches that have that heart,like a good multi-siding church.
What you recognize is that theyhave a heart and a passion to
reach and engage new people.
They've developed greatleadership development
principles to raise up a campuspastor to give him leadership.
They've had to design theirsystem and structure to meet
(12:29):
needs in multiple geographicareas to reach different
neighborhoods.
Man, they've done such greatwork to try to problem solve and
to add value to theirorganization, to their community
.
So I believe they're definitelypart of it.
Collin (12:44):
So you used three words, see if I can remember them.
I know develop was one of them.
Heredes (12:51):
What is it?
Outro (12:51):
Discover, discover, discover, develop, deploy.
Collin (12:55):
So let's talk about.
Can we go through that process?
So, when you go to a church,what's discover all about?
What are they discovering?
Just this passion and desire tochurch plan?
Are they discovering actualpeople?
All the above.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (13:07):
Yeah, I think all the above one is you want
them to kind of discover theirvision for sending and
multiplying.
But then that usually startswith hey, if we're going to plan
another church, where do wefind this planter?
And a lot of times churchesfeel like they're somewhere out
there and what we're trying todo is, like man, the planters of
tomorrow are sitting in yourpews today, and so if you can
just change your mindset and say, like man, I think the future
(13:29):
church planter is actually hereand it may be somebody that's
already part of my church, soit's helping them kind of think
through what would make for agood church planter or somebody
who's going to be a leaderwithin your church, right?
So let's move, like the churchplanting, from the equation for
a minute.
It's still a great principle islike, who do you already have
already connected to yourorganization and what traits and
(13:49):
characteristics or skills haveyou already observed and noticed
?
And then it's about having thatI see in you conversation like,
hey, man, I don't know if yourealize this, but I see this in
you.
Have you ever noticed this orthought about this or had any
conversations about this?
And oftentimes, like man, youknow, I have thought about that.
Well, you know someone haspointed that out is a man.
I see this in you and I believethat you could be this.
(14:12):
And it's like starting off withdiscovering those potential
leaders in your organization.
And then, once you discoverthem, the natural question is
what are you going to do as anorganization to develop this
leader?
Like what is it that you wantthem to learn, master and
improve in order to reach thisdesired destination that you
have for them?
So that's that develop pieces.
That's helping think through.
(14:32):
Okay, so you have somebody whowants to step up to the plate
and do this thing.
What now?
What's next?
What are you going to do tohelp coach them, train them,
equip them on this journey?
And then, lastly, is thedeployment.
That's like all right, activatetheir skill sets, activate
their gifts.
I think one of the mostfrustrating things is to have
someone identify something inyou, train you up and then not
(14:52):
give you any outlets to use yourgifts and your skill sets.
So, for organizations to thinkthrough, what are the avenues
where I'm going to be able todeploy people, to leverage, how
they're wired, how they'regifted, all those different
things and put into practice.
Collin (15:05):
And so I'm thinking of the nonprofit here as well.
You know, to take this, youknow their I mean nonprofits,
just like churches, are lookingfor high quality leaders to go
and lead and, you know, expandwhatever they're doing, they a
lot of times that's a big partof that is going to be that
development process.
What is it?
(15:26):
So, once you've kind of youknow you go into a church, you
help them discover, you know,help them find people, what does
that development really looklike for us?
Let's say I'm someone who feelscalled to church planning.
What does that developmentprocess look like for them?
And how does Nam and sendingchurches step in?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (15:43):
there.
Yeah, no, I think that's great.
I think two differentapproaches.
We have a self discoveryapproach.
One of them this can come inlater when we talk about, like
some of the things that impactedthe way I do ministry and just
work is the importance of selfdiscovery in adult learning and
education.
I think, instead of just doinglike an info dump, like this is
all the stuff you got to dobeing able to guide churches and
(16:06):
leaders through a selfdiscovery process to help them
kind of come up with their ownplan, and so we do forms of that
in our training and ourcollaborative environments,
learning environments wherewe're helping use a series of
questions and posted tear sheetexercises to help them kind of
discover.
Like, oh yeah, these are thethings I find to be really
important, these are the thingsI'm really good at and
passionate about.
(16:27):
These are the things I wouldlove to pass on to a future
leader right, identify that,figure out a system.
And so what we try to do islike for four key words, the
first is like we is a phrase.
The first one's a phrasebeginning with the end in mind
like what is it that youultimately want this person to
become Like, when you haveclarity in that, it's powerful,
(16:49):
like you know what you'reultimately aligning all of your
stuff to produce.
So that's the first step in theprocess helping leaders like
what is it you want people tobecome?
Once you have that clarity, youcan reverse, engineer and help
people achieve that goal.
And so then the three words weuse are relational training,
environments, rhythms, content.
(17:11):
So what are the environmentsthat I'm inviting someone into?
What are the rhythms?
How often are we gonna engagein that space and meet in that
space?
And then, when we meet in thosespaces, what is the content or
the skill or the craft that Iwant to teach you and get you to
master in those spaces?
And like, by helping them justkind of think through that they
(17:31):
can look back and say like okay,so I want to meet with this
person weekly or monthly in thissetting and I want to cover
this book, this resource, thispodcast, this tool and help them
produce this desired outcome.
So it's all connected.
Those are kind of some of thethings that we do when we come
alongside coaching churches.
Collin (17:51):
And what is the expectation when you're working
for a church, because obviouslyyou're trying to help them build
these systems.
So are you guys more of justlike an advisor and you know,
like, what does it look like fora church?
Like, what are they responsiblefor?
Are they kind of likeresponsible for moving this
along?
How does that all?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (18:09):
work.
Yeah, they're responsible forkind of moving this along.
We can serve as like champion,as like a consultant, as
somebody to inspire you on thatjourney.
I think when it gets into likeplanting through some network,
we have like a robust assessmentprocess where a church planting
candidate will have to gothrough a two-day assessment
retreat and they'll have expertsand practitioners and leaders
(18:33):
with lots of experience kind ofput them through an evaluation
process and they assess for likeeight specific skills.
And so churches then are tryingto prepare a candidate to go
through assessment and then onthe back end of assessment, that
planter will get one of threeresponses you know, ready to
move forward, so they're readyto plant.
They go straight into ourcoaching Needs, further
(18:54):
development, like, okay, youhave a lot of what we're looking
for in a church planter and wethink you can be a good planter.
But based on the assessment, Ithink it'd be good for you to
spend maybe six months workingon these skill sets with your
sending church.
Or the third option is like aredirect.
Based on all the differentpeople in the room, they just
felt like maybe church plantingis not the thing that you should
pursue and you should redirectyour gifts and passions to
(19:16):
another area of ministry, and sothose are usually the three
outcomes.
So what the sending church isresponsible for is helping first
prepare a candidate forassessment and then, coming
after assessment, followingthrough with their growth
development plan to help themgrow and the skill sets needed
to plant a healthy, thrivingchurch.
Heredes (19:33):
Gus tell me about assessment.
Feels like bootcamp.
Is it a little bootcamp-ish?
Is it a little bit?
I have to meet that mark.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (19:42):
No, I think it's more like you come with
your spouse and there's gonna beexercises where we get to hear
your vision, like why do youwant to plan a church?
So you get to practicecommunication and vision casting
.
There's gonna be acommunication exercise where
part of leading a church isbeing able to communicate and
preach and teach God's wordfaithfully.
So you'll preach a message infront of a room of seasoned
(20:02):
pastors and practitioners forgoing to give you feedback and
evaluation.
There's a counseling componentto it.
There's opportunities for youand your wife to have meetings
with other pastors and theirwives, and so they're gonna do a
lot of stuff on family dynamics, relational dynamics.
We use the Prepared and Rich asa marital resource through that
process as well, and so they'rejust trying to look at some
(20:25):
different areas.
There's parts of it that's veryworshipful.
There's parts of it where, forsure, it is definitely
exhausting, because you're goingfrom preaching to vision
casting, to a counseling session, to talking with a room.
So there's different elementsto it, but it is a very robust
retreat.
Collin (20:42):
So there's no push-ups, qualification or anything like
that.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (20:47):
No, that's not a bad idea, though, right.
Collin (20:51):
Just to test the heart a little bit 6 am.
I think We'll say no, take someCrossFit If you crossfit Fit
for the cross.
You gotta crossfit first, okaywe're gonna end the episode
right there and.
Outro (21:05):
I'm gonna go rebuke H for whatever just happened.
Collin (21:10):
Well, so I come from the H and I both come from the
church world and church plantingassessments typically can be
pretty robust.
It's not just like you said,it's not just a one-day thing,
it's not an afternoon.
Tell us your heart, okay, gohave fun.
You're really evaluatingsomebody because church planting
(21:31):
is hard.
I mean, there's its own set ofchallenges in church planting,
but then also just leading anorganization and being
responsible for one is reallydifficult.
What is the necessity forhaving that in church planting?
Have you seen situations wheremaybe there isn't as robust of a
process in the front end andit's gone wrong?
(21:53):
Talk a little bit about theimportance of having that.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (21:57):
I guess leadership vetting, if you will,
yeah, I think what you realizeis if you have a healthier
leader who's prepared andequipped, they'll survive the
journey of planting.
Planting is already extremelydifficult.
It's one of the toughest thingsyou can do.
For me in my ministry years Ithink it's been the hardest
thing I've ever done.
I've led at churches of 10,000people, 6,000 people, 3,000.
(22:20):
I would say planting a churchfrom scratch which I planted
with my friend Carlos LolletProbably the hardest thing I've
ever done in 18 years ofministry, for sure.
And so it's extremely difficult.
And so you want well-prepared,well-assessed leaders to go
through a robust process to helpthem on that journey.
I think when you have peoplejust kind of go out there
(22:42):
without the right resources,right training, sure they could
plant a thriving church.
I'm not saying that that can'thappen if you don't go through
this process.
I think you have a highersuccess rate in healthy planters
and healthy churches beingplanted if there's a lot of
intentionality on the front end.
Collin (23:01):
And so again thinking of , like, say, the nonprofit
leader.
If they're looking at this andsaying, okay, well, maybe I see
a need to have something likethis to help evaluate leaders,
Maybe I don't need to.
It doesn't need to be as robustas it is for like a church
planting thing.
Where can they go to kind offind that?
(23:23):
Are there resources where and Imight be putting you a little
bit on the spot here but arethere resources that they can go
to say like this is what thislooks like, this is what it
takes?
How do I even get started there?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (23:31):
Yeah, so in my previous role I served as a
mobilization pastor at LongHollow in the Middle Tennessee
area, and so there was anorganization called Mission
Increase that I was exposed toin the Nashville area.
Nashville had so manynonprofits that were started up
and booming.
But as you start spending timelike, our church would connect
with and work with severalnonprofits and what I quickly
(23:52):
realized is some had a veryrobust vision and a strategy and
an idea and they were executingit extremely well.
Some people had a vision, butthey hadn't thought through
their systems or process and howthey were going to carry out
that vision.
This entity and organizationcalled Mission Increase exists
to help work alongsidenonprofits at various different
levels from like okay, so youhave this vision, you have this
(24:15):
ideal dream.
All right, let's help you walkthrough how to implement that
dream.
And it's a it's, it's totally aministry to them, like it
doesn't even cost them anything,it will raise their support to
just be coaches for nonprofitsto have healthy, good system
structures, leadership Like eventhe simple things like how do
you go about establishing aboard?
How do you have accountabilityin your nonprofit?
(24:37):
What's your leadershipstructure going to be?
What's your funding mechanismgoing to be so.
Mission Increase man, theybecame such a great blessing and
they have several outpostsacross North America.
So I think they have theirheadquarters on the West Coast
but they've expanded to severaldifferent states.
But that'd be a greatorganization.
If you have a Mission Increasein your city they offer free
(24:58):
workshops all the time fornonprofits on leadership
development, how to establishand maintain a board, vision
casting, fundraising, like allthese different things that are
super helpful in the nonprofitworld.
But yeah, that would be oneresource.
I'd try to connect with aMission Increase and see what
coaching and workshops are in mycity.
Heredes (25:19):
Gus, you mentioned one of the hardest things church
planting, your friend Carlos.
And reality.
Tell me how you manage theBible vocational, co-vocational,
the multi-vocational.
How do you do that?
Because that'll learn.
How do you keep track of all?
Outro (25:33):
the hats.
Heredes (25:33):
How do you?
Outro (25:34):
Because that's part of the challenge right, and a lot
of ministers are not profiting.
Heredes (25:38):
Nonprofit leaders are doing the same right.
Outro (25:40):
They're supplementing.
Heredes (25:40):
They're figuring out fundraising at the same time.
Give us some tips and tricks orsome lessons you're learning.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (25:47):
Yeah, no doubt I mean because I've chosen
to kind of live in both ofthose worlds.
You do know that you take on alot and I think a couple of
things that have helped me is,man, I live by my schedule and I
have certain days that I haveblocked off as like no meeting
days, because they're my whitespace to be able to create, to
think, to plan for the future.
(26:07):
I think you can get caught somuch in managing or wearing
multiple hats that you startsaying yes to everything.
So it's like being able to likehave structured times in my
week where, like this is my timeto create new content resources
, this is my time to do coachingand meetings and kind of stick
into that.
So for me it's being kind ofvery structured has helped me
take on more stuff.
I don't have a hard time sayingno to people, so that side of
(26:31):
it has been good for me.
I know other leaders do have ahard time saying no and so I
recognize that's a personalitytrait.
That's just you being able tounderstand how you're wired and
what's going to best work foryou.
I would say what's helped me?
A ton calendaring, you know,stick into a good rhythm in my
weeks, not to say you can'tadjust it or tweak it.
I do a lot of travel, so I haveto understand that some of my
(26:52):
weeks are going to lookdifferent because I'm traveling
across country to set up somemeetings.
But having some margin on thefront end and on the back end of
those trips to be able to restwell Because I think early on in
my ministry I didn't rest wellbut like truly Sabbath thing,
like taking a day to not do workand just recover, refocus on
God and family Huge.
(27:13):
I think that's so important forany leader who's running at a
high pace.
So I think you know beingstructured helps a ton Having a
game plan for your week and thenhaving some rhythms of rest
built in to help you recover andmove forward.
Collin (27:28):
Man, that is huge.
I probably am on maybe theopposite spectrum, and as far as
saying no, it's naturallysomething that's pretty
difficult for me and I had tolearn through that.
I spent some time in ministryas well, and there are a lot of
situations where I had to learnthat, and you know, one of the
things that I think helped mewas, regardless of where you
(27:51):
know if that's easy for you, ifit's not, you are always saying
yes and no to some things, andso understanding that when
you're saying yes to everybody alot of times, that means you're
going to be saying no to yourfamily and you're going to be
saying no to things that reallyare actually important, and so
you know, just being able todevelop that skill and put that
in the right context is huge.
(28:13):
I love that you said that,because it's so simple and I
think it's overlooked.
But, but, man, the ability tosay yes to the right things.
Heredes (28:19):
I'm here at this right.
You're saying that you have ahard time saying no, that you
say yes Because what I'vereceived in our relationship and
our engagements- when I talk toyou when I ask you to hang out,
when I ask you for lunch, it'syou know, hasn't it's been?
No, I'm busy.
What's?
What's talk about this?
Collin (28:38):
Yeah, well, I thought that's what our weekly
counseling session was for.
Outro (28:41):
But we can talk about it here, you know you've got.
Collin (28:44):
You've got the reformed me.
Now you know you've got.
Outro (28:46):
This is I've gone through a process here is what I'm
trying to say.
Heredes (28:49):
I see, I see, I see Just messing, just messing.
I think to that.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (28:56):
This kind of helped me.
It started with, like, when Iwas having a really hard time
saying no, early on, a mentor ofmine pulled me aside.
He was observing my patternsand unhealthy practice, which he
was gracious enough to call outon me early, so it didn't
affect me later on.
So I'm always grateful for that.
But he said this simple phrase.
He says ministry never ends.
So if you keep saying yes,everything, like there's never
(29:17):
going to be a point in timewe're like oh, finally, I
accomplished it all.
He's like it never ends.
I was like so make sure you'resetting up some healthy
boundaries to protect yourhealth and your longevity and
ministry, because there's alwaysgoing to be more ministry.
You're never going to get to meand like I finally finished it
all, it's like it's, there'salways more.
So if you think that you havethis savior complex and you got
(29:37):
to be the solution to everyone'sproblem, you're going to burn
out and you're going to crash.
And so he just helped me justkind of identify man, there's
always something else that needsto be done.
But if you're going to stay inthis game long term, you got to
have healthy boundaries and youcan't say yes to all this.
And in essence, colin, just whatyou said he was saying very
similar.
He's like when you say yes toall these things, you're saying
(29:58):
no to something else.
And at the time I was marriedand I was about to have my first
kid and he was like you'regoing to be saying no to your
wife and your kids If you keepsaying yes to every opportunity.
And I was like man, it was justlike a great like leadership
moment, where this seasoned,experienced leader was just
calling out something that Ijust was not seeing.
It was like a blind spot and hewas just being loving and
(30:18):
gracious enough to let me speaksome truth into your life.
Collin (30:23):
So, while we're on this topic of saying no, we talked a
little bit about the assessmentprocess and you mentioned how
you know there's basically threeaspects, basically three
outcomes that someone can havewhen they go to a sense of an
assessment.
It's either, yes, either agreen light, a yellow light or a
red light.
You know, talk through that alittle bit.
(30:43):
How do you make those decisions?
How do you communicate that?
If it's a yellow light, how doyou communicate that?
If it's a red light, how do youcommunicate that in a way that
doesn't cause that person to gointo a spiral?
You know, like, like, talk alittle bit about that process.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (30:58):
Sure.
So, man, just to be clear,that's on the planter
development team, so I'm on themobilization team.
I don't have those conversations.
But I have been part of some ofthose meetings and so what
they're doing is all theassessors from the retreat will
spend a few hours processingtheir insights and observations
from all the different exercises.
They do invite the sendingchurch rep so whoever the
(31:20):
sending church is for thatcandidate is part of these
meetings to listen in, to beable to chime in.
That's great, and so I'm likehey, so we didn't quite get this
.
You spend more time with them.
Have you noticed this to be anissue in his life?
Or we thought this was an issue.
Maybe you think differently.
Like let's hear yourperspective so they're able to
participate in thosedeliberations and like have part
(31:40):
in that conversation.
So I think that's super helpful, yeah, how they communicate it.
Our field staff takes time towrite up a report, pray through
a thing through it and thenschedule a one on one to be able
to process the findings of theretreat with that candidate.
So that way it's personal, it'svery shepherding, it's an
opportunity to coach and to helphave that heart to heart
(32:01):
conversation.
So it doesn't feel like coldand rigid and distant.
It's very much, very detailed,very thought out.
A lot of processing goes into alot of prayer.
Collin (32:10):
Yeah, and it sounds like from what you're saying that
it's never just a, it's never ayellow not right now, go figure
it out or a red.
We don't think this is for you.
You know, deal with that onyour own.
It sounds like there's alwayssome level of we're going to
continue to guide you.
If it's yellow, here's what weneed to work on to get you to
(32:30):
green, and if it's a red, how dowe find where you need to be?
I mean, and that's you know so,wherever, whatever organization
you're in, talking aboutleadership development, that
right there is huge, because Ithink you can easily you can
damage somebody prettysignificantly by just saying
(32:51):
Nope, sorry, go figure it out onyour own, as opposed to saying
no, but let's try to find thisother path, because I think you
get a lot of times.
Take that person and once theyfind the right thing, the right
fit, then they're wildlyproductive and you know what I
mean.
So like that's huge.
Heredes (33:10):
Question Gus in the leadership development formation
I think part of you have adoctor in pastoral ministry
which my understanding was a lotto do with discipleship groups
formation.
Tell us a little bit about yourthesis and how you would break
it down in church world in apractical and scenario today.
How are you doing that areality at the other churches
you've been a part of?
(33:31):
Tell us.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (33:33):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Yeah, I did my doctorate inpastoral leadership at
Southeastern Baptist TheologicalSeminary.
Loved it, great experience.
One of the things that they didis it was cohort stuff, so 10
students going through thisprocess over the course of three
years together, and so youbuild like just an incredible
friendship.
When it came down to the writingelement of that doctorate I
(33:53):
chose to write on basically likedeveloping a strategy for
multiplying in home groups.
So I'm super passionate aboutdisciple making, super
passionate about developingcommunity in churches, and so
that was something thatintrigued me.
So I had to read 40 books onsmall group ministry and kind of
help do this project in twophases.
Phase one was to be able toidentify the healthy elements of
(34:16):
a group.
So before you can multiplysomething, one of the things you
have to realize, like whatmakes it worth replicating, like
what makes it healthy and good,that I would want to take this
environment and see more ofthose environments.
So the first part of theprocess is like man, what are
the things that make for ahealthy group?
The second half of the projectfocused on what were the key
components that were conduciveto seeing a multiplication
(34:40):
culture in the church kickoff.
You know this kind ofreproducing groups.
And so, man, those things cameout to be five simple things
that kind of surfaced throughresearch and interviewing
different practitioners, readinga bunch of different books.
First and foremost, it startedwith vision casting, and this is
beautiful because a lot of whatI'm sharing is not just
conducive to church work.
It's actually thinking throughjust multiple kinds,
(35:02):
multiplication and several otherthings.
It was vision casting, likeknowing that it starts with the
leaders of an organization or achurch developing and then
sharing that vision with thepeople that they're leading.
The second was leadershipdevelopment, like making sure
that there was a process to beable to develop the leaders that
you were going to be able tothen discover, develop and
(35:24):
deploy there comes those threewords again, right.
And then third was havingstrategic training in your
organization, your church, ifyou're going to be discovering,
developing, deploying leaders,you have to have some form of
strategic training as part ofyour process to be able to
develop these leaders.
The fourth one is the thing thatwould be like church, unique
(35:45):
but you can easily adapt to anyorganization is having some
church-wide campaigns that thechurch was leveraging as huge
on-ramps.
So, like you're doing the hardwork of casting vision.
You're doing the work ofdeveloping leaders.
You're then training theseleaders throughout the year.
Now you have some hugemilestones in your church where
you have these specific on-rampsfor people to hear it from the
(36:07):
stage air war matching theground war, right Of your
tactics for marketing, forinward and outward, you know,
explanation of groups and howthey're important, why they
matter.
And then the fifth this is theone that I think most churches
overlook, and it has to dealwith data.
It's developing your systems ofmeasurements and accountability
.
Like what data are you needingto gather and capture that's
(36:30):
going to inform your leaders ifthis thing's working or not
working or what needs to bemodified and tweaked.
And so for us, like, those arethe five things.
Like, when churches had thosefive things in action, they were
seeing groups multiply on avery consistent pace, and so
vision casting that led toleadership development, that led
to strategic training, that ledto churchwide campaigns and
(36:52):
then undergirded by a goodsystem of measurements and
accountability.
Outro (36:56):
Love it.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (36:57):
Those are the key components to multiplying
groups.
Heredes (36:59):
So when does the book come out Gus.
Collin (37:01):
I was going to say that's that right there was for
free everyone.
Just let me let you know Comeon.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (37:06):
Yeah, I've had a lot of people ask for that
one.
I need to.
I need to get down and just dothat, yeah.
Collin (37:10):
Come on, I'm serious, we'll have a we'll back you,
support you can sponsor themarket and everything Can you
commit right now to releasingthe book first.
Heredes (37:17):
Right, no, no, nams got this, nams got this, I know so
Gus.
Collin (37:23):
Age is committing to edit right now.
Heredes (37:25):
He's committed to edit it for you completely.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (37:27):
I'll get my buddy Age is my editor.
There you go.
Heredes (37:30):
Done.
Yeah, you're Portuguese, maybe.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (37:33):
Let's go, let's go the other one's doing
it already.
They're, they're actually doingthis.
Oh there, yeah, they're doingit.
Heredes (37:37):
I'll tell you Question about books he said you've had
40 books on the topic.
Outro (37:42):
Put you on the spot right now.
Heredes (37:43):
Is there?
What's what's?
What's the number one?
What's the top, what's thesource?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (37:46):
What's Q Dude ?
That is tough On that space, Iwould say, because you can rate
them on so many different levels, from like practicality to like
details.
I would go with simplicitybecause I believe this is one of
my mantras.
I'm going to give you a secrethere Simplicity is the key to
reproducibility.
Complex plans and systemsrarely multiply, so it was
(38:08):
something that becomes socomplex.
It usually doesn't go beyondfirst gen, second gen, but if
you do the hard work to refinesomething and make it simple,
it's easy to reproduce andinternalize.
So I would say Chris Surat'sbook Leading Small Groups was a
simple, straightforward enoughdetail to be robust, but simple
enough to like hand a leader inyour church man.
(38:29):
Read this and it's going togive you the foundations of
being a great group leader andwhat your role is as a group
leader to help launch anothergroup out of your group.
Great book.
So I would say that one.
I use that in my church, so yeah, following 40 books.
That's the one I'm using withmy leaders.
Heredes (38:44):
I love hearing that from you because I mean
theologian, doctorate inministry, got a master's in
divinity.
You can go on and on about andwe can exegete all day here and
talk about, but the simplicity,the ability to remember
something to then pass it on toyour right If a fifth grader
can't grasp it.
So there's levels to it, but Ilove hearing that from you
(39:05):
because most times we in churchworld we get lost in trying to
be so complex and deep in ourown spaghetti of thoughts that
nobody else can take it and so Ilove hearing that I love it.
Collin (39:17):
I think sometimes we just go ahead.
Guys, you're the expert.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (39:21):
I'm going to say that, to speak to that age,
there were a few books and I'mnot going to name these because
of publicity that as I put it,we're going to be low on.
Some of the books I read when Iwanted to go follow up and meet
with the author and see theirsystem in action at the church.
As I probe deeper, it was likegreat in theory, but they never
panned out in practice.
(39:41):
And so some of these books thatgot remained like, oh dude,
read this guy's book, it'samazing.
I read it.
I was like, yeah, it is amazing, let me go see this in action
and then you go spend time likeman.
Actually we never implementedit here at the church.
It was too complicated.
So you're like, oh wow, so it'sgreat in theory but not in
practice and I think too manyleaders in the church world will
operate too much in thatframework.
Heredes (40:03):
Yeah, Well, it's like how good is a sermon in Latin if
I can't understand it Right?
And it's how was it tangiblepractice?
But I love that.
Outro (40:11):
I love that.
Heredes (40:14):
No, I'll let you go to, but I'm going to go old school
here.
I grew up in the purple drivenera here.
My dad was a Rick Warrenfanboycom, so we grew up in that
assimilation groups and in someways Rick was king of that of
bringing simplicity to thecomplex right, and then the SBC
world.
He simplified something to thepoint that he got called out and
(40:35):
, like nah, it's watered down,there's no substance, but it
worked right.
The baseball diamond and stepone, step two, step three.
Is that still?
Where do you see the climate?
Where do you see the state ofthe church in discipleship, in
assimilation today?
What are the trends?
What are some warning signsthat you would talk to leaders
about?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (40:54):
Yeah, I think we're starting to see like a
renewed sense of like theimportance of having a
discipleship pathway, and verysimilar to what Rick was trying
to do.
I think Rick was trying to movethrough groups of assimilation
to get people assimilated andactivated in the church, and now
people are doing a very similarprocess but like thinking
through more of like that endgame, like what is it that we
ultimately want to see produced?
(41:15):
And so some churches arestarting with church planter,
like this is what I want toproduce.
And then they're backing upfrom their systems and thinking
through like what's mydiscipleship process going to
look like?
What's my leadershipdevelopment process going to
look like?
And then what's my residencyprocess going to look like to
produce that Others are juststarting with hey, I just want
to reproduce, reproduce faithfuldisciple, like somebody who's
(41:38):
in love with Jesus, loves God,loves people.
Okay, that's great.
How am I going to help someonego from unengaged to engaged to
become that disciple?
And they're thinking throughtheir systems and their process.
So I think what I'm seeing ismore and more churches
recognizing the need to have aconsistent pathway and it's kind
of moving away from, in thelast probably two to three
(42:00):
decades, I think, the churchoffered more of a menu instead
of a roadmap.
So that's kind of language thatwe use.
We want to provide people a map, not a menu.
It was like the buffet.
These are all the services andgoods we can offer you.
You pick and choose what youwant and so you get different
outcomes because you're likewell, I like this part of the
church, I'll take this part.
I don't really care about this.
I'm not going to do this.
(42:20):
Now.
You're seeing churches do thehard work of, like man, what's a
spiritual map with adestination that we want to
point people to and then thedirections to get to that
destination, like what can we doto help you achieve this
destination that we have for you?
Heredes (42:35):
I love that language, so that's a trend that we're
starting to see.
Is that original?
Is that yours, or is thatyou're borrowing that from
somebody?
We'll make it, it's acombination.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (42:43):
There are some stuff like when I worked
with Replicate, that we would dostuff like that.
So we talk about like I usethis and send network resources.
So we talk about determiningthe destination and then
providing the directions toreach so kind of using a GPS
illustration a couple of thingsyou need to have when you use a
GPS.
This goes for any organization.
You got to know where you areright now.
So the harsh reality is aleader to define reality Like
(43:05):
what is the current condition ofyour org, like where are you
right now?
Then you determine thedestination, where do you want
to go.
And then the strategy is likehow do I?
Heredes (43:14):
get there All right.
So that's huge.
I love it so much because I'min the two right of my church
and we've all lived this where,if you have the menu, I want to
skip the dessert.
Exactly, I just want to.
You know, I'm here for thedrink, so I'm just here for the
salad, so I'm anemic.
There's no protein, so there'sthis kind of scatter.
And then the map.
It's a beautiful thing becausethere's a destination.
(43:35):
Like you said, you want toprovide direction, but what's
the condition of the vehicle?
Right, can it get there fast?
Can it not?
Can I even take off?
Do I have fuel to even get onthe journey?
So I love that analogy.
I'm a visual person, so to methat kind of clicks right away
in helping people take steps or,you know, get on the journey,
go ahead, Colin.
Collin (43:54):
Well, I was curious.
Are there times where you knowyou reach out to a church or a
church reaches out to you guys,brings you in, and there the
organization is not at a placethat's ready to send somebody
out?
What does that look like?
What is there some type ofstandard that you know?
(44:17):
It's like you know this is kindof the profile of a church that
isn't quite ready and this istypically what they need to do.
And how do you go through that?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (44:26):
Man, yeah, that does happen.
In fact, last week we had justhad a director's meeting with
our VPs at Send Network to talkabout this issue of like in our
role, like as a church plantingfamily, a network of church
planting.
You know, where is our role inthat Like as we're working with
the church and helping inspireand coach them to develop a
(44:48):
vision for sending, maybe onthat process of building that
relationship with them, and youstart asking questions hey, tell
me about your process fordiscipling people, Tell me about
your leadership development,and you start to recognize man,
they don't have that Like.
What's our, what's our role inthat?
And so I think we're stilltrying to figure out what is our
role in that as an organization.
I think obviously we have theposture and the heart to want to
(45:09):
serve and help leaders as muchas we can, but recognizing that
we serve at the SBC right.
So we are a family of autonomouschurches.
Each pastor is, you know, theleader of his church and we as a
network are not dictating toyou what you can and should do.
We can obviously share bestpractices and hopefully inspire
you to develop some of thesesystems to help you be more
(45:31):
consistent as a church.
I obviously am super passionateabout that.
I think that's one of thedifferences between where I am
now at Send Network and one ofmy previous roles where I was a
paid consultant to replicateministries.
So you were hiring me to cometo your church and help you
think through your systems andmake changes to your systems,
where now I come alongside toserve you and to help you and to
(45:52):
see how your church can getinvolved with church planting
not necessarily to serve as yourconsultant for disciple making,
pathways, leadershipdevelopment.
So just a little bit differencein like what my role is now,
but obviously something I'msuper passionate about.
I would love to see moreleaders develop systems.
Heredes (46:09):
Gus, you know we've been part of cultures that
sometimes promote feedback butdon't necessarily know how to
provide or implement feedback,and you could say toxic cultures
, depending where you're comingfrom, or some that are.
Tell me about you and feedback,what you've learned and kind of
some of the best practicesyou've implemented.
That's great.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (46:28):
Man.
Honestly, I would say thiswould be one of the most
important growth opportunitiesthat occurred in my life.
However, like some of it stemsfrom first observing, like how
not to do it.
Like I was part of somecultures that they leveraged the
word feedback as just a way tolike destroy someone and tear
you down and so over, yeah, kindof control and fear, like
creating a fear culture and sostifling the organization.
(46:50):
You know, as I got to grow inmy leadership and have more
responsibilities, one of thethings that I did is I developed
a mantra for my teams that Ilead and we recite this one
going to feedback meetings.
And here's the mantra is likefeedback is meant to be helpful,
not hurtful.
So, if you understand, like,the reason I'm giving you this
feedback is because I truly carefor you and I truly, from a
(47:10):
genuine posture, want to helpyou get better as a leader and
advance our organization forward.
So, knowing that that's goingto matter, how I present the
feedback, like how I deliverthat feedback matters and the
posture I'm taking, like I'm notlooking for things to just
bring you down to like let myinsecurities come out, but like
I truly love you, care for you,right.
So we walk into those feedbackmeetings.
(47:31):
We know our mantra and we knowthe posture that we're taking,
so we're going to let our guardsdown.
We'll receive it because theperson giving it to me truly
loves me and cares for me andthey're not being disrespectful
in the way they're dishing itout and then even challenges me
as a leader.
When I'm giving feedback to oneof my coworkers, one of my
teammates, or even sometimes asuperior right, like how I give
that feedback matters, the way Ideliver it, the way I present
(47:52):
it.
I mean, I use questions likethis to even incite and invite
feedback for me as a leader.
So one thing that I do when I'mmeeting with my staff I do one
on ones is like hey, how can Iserve you better?
That's a simple question andthe meetings with that.
I do it as a pastor.
When I take a church member out, I even ask them that he has a
pastor of this church.
How can I serve you better?
(48:13):
I do this as a parent.
I do one on one dates with mydaughters and at the end of the
day I'm always asking my babygirls how can I be a better dad
Now?
Early on.
At first they're like oh no,you're the best dad.
As they've gotten older, theysit there and they think now
I've got, Actually, you knowactually that you know and so
(48:34):
like just embodying that culture.
Like I want to receive feedback,I want to invite.
I think there was a seasonbecause I saw it expressed
poorly that I resented it andtried to avoid it.
Now that I see the value andfeedback and knowing how to give
it and how to receive it, Ihave.
Feedback to me is one of thebest things that you can ever
receive as a leader, as somebodywho wants to grow in your
(48:54):
profession and your skills.
Collin (48:56):
So let's just really quick.
There's some quick firewaysthat someone wants to take this
and implement it.
They're saying like you knowwhat, I do need a better system
of feedback from a leader andfrom a, you know, employee
perspective or whatever.
What are some?
How do they do that?
How can they implement thatright now?
Gus Hernandez Jr. (49:15):
Man, I think questioning your motives is
really important on this process.
Like, hey, why do I want togive this feedback?
Am I trying to assert dominance?
Am I trying to, like, putsomeone in their place?
Am I trying to establish myauthority?
So I think that, as a personwho's wanting to give the
feedback, it's important to likeinternally process, like your
motivation behind it.
Is it truly because I'm tryingto help this person?
(49:36):
All right, then, really thequestion is how can we get
better as a team?
And the feedback I'm givingthis person is centered around
how can we get better at whatwe're trying to achieve?
How can we do better as anorganization?
How can our product improve?
Like now you're taking it andit's our team wins, when
everyone is winning, and it justkind of changes the dynamics
really, because you're no longerjust like targeting just one
(49:57):
individual.
So I think that's a big part ofit is the posture and the
motivation behind why you'retrying to give the feedback.
Now, if the leader hasestablished that culture, then
as the employee receiving it,you understand that the feedback
being given is within a certaincontext and you've established
trust with your leader.
I'm a huge Patrick Lencioni fan.
(50:18):
I love a lot of his writings,right, and I'm watching that.
Trust on a team Huge, right.
If you don't have the trust,it's going to be super hard to
develop a good feedback culture.
So I'm anticipating that we getto this stage in the
conversation because we've donethe hard work as a leader to
establish trust on our team.
When trust is established, man,you can have some
straightforward conversations,some loving conflict, which I
(50:42):
think conflict is good on a team.
So I'm one of those guys like Ibelieve healthy conflict is
good because it's two peoplepassionately fighting for the
best future of the organization,right, so it's good, healthy
conflicts, not bad conflict.
That's like pride trying toovercome pride.
That's bad conflict, like egoversus ego.
This is like, hey, man, we wantwhat's best for the
organization, we want what'sbest for our nonprofit, we want
(51:03):
what's best for our church.
Okay, then let's have somerobust dialogue because we've
already established that wetrust each other and we respect
each other, right.
So that's there.
Now we can go pretty intensetoe to toe, like I love serving
with Carlos, right, the guy thatI co-planted this church with
here in Miami, and we'll havesome fun like back and forth
great conversations.
(51:23):
We're able to have thatstraightforward dialogue because
we've worked so hard atestablishing a true love and
respect for one another.
Like we truly love and respecteach other and we know that our
motives are we want what's bestfor the church moving forward.
So we understand ourmotivations.
Like when we bring something upto invite some of that healthy
conflict, we're not questioningeach other's motives Like man,
(51:44):
why do you think he brought thatup?
What's the ultimate end game?
They're trying to no.
Like we have a system of trustand relationship established.
So when we know we're goinginto those intense conversations
in the back of our mind we'renot filtering it through like I
wonder what their real motive is.
It's more like yeah, we trusteach other.
We know that we're trying tofight for the best future
(52:04):
forward for our organization andwe want the best idea to win
out, not just like my idea orhis idea.
What's the best idea?
Heredes (52:12):
So I think it's helpful and I've seen that I play,
because I've seen that I playbetween you guys and how you
guys have led, so which is good.
That's why you're a great XPfor for him, for that team.
You know, for such a time asthis in the, in the not so fun,
not so sexy season of growth andhard work that you know, that
you guys are in.
But hey, real quick on this one.
Just asking for a friend, likejust for some feedback here.
(52:35):
How like, how would you giveColin some feedback on how you
could be a better co-host?
How would you do that?
Collin (52:40):
It's just good.
No, I'm excited to hear thisbecause a lot of times you're
talking about some of thenegative ways to get feedback
and I was.
I was having flashbacks toconversations with age.
So, yeah, I loved.
Yeah, please.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (52:51):
Yeah and so like.
So feedback doesn't always haveto be negative, right?
Feedback can also be justpositive.
Collin (52:56):
So here's the feedback.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (52:57):
I noticed at the beginning was hey, early on,
I get started with my story andbecause of, like, what I do for
a living, what I'm superpassionate about, obviously
going to lean heavy towards likechurch world, you did such a
wise thing to like pause for aminute, knowing your target
audience, that I don't live inthis world every day.
But hey, pause for a minute.
We've got leaders from sorts oflike all different nonprofits,
(53:18):
and so he is all in in thischurch world because that's what
he's called to do, but there'sprinciples here that are going
to be broadly applicable to allthese.
So I thought that was fantastic.
That was you capturingsomething and being able to like
make a pivot, knowing yourtarget audience, different from
the world that I live in, andyou made an adjustment.
So, man, I wanted to recognizethat adjustment was fantastic.
Heredes (53:40):
Come on Thank you, thank you so much.
Appreciate that this podcast isgoing to get boosted and
marketed.
They're going to pay dad's tospread just this little clip
right here.
Collin (53:50):
Yeah, this is good, yeah , yeah.
I'm actually auditioning for anew co-host for the podcast and
I'd like you to throw your namein the hat, if you wouldn't mind
.
Outro (54:04):
Confidence Wow.
Heredes (54:06):
Not a trust builder there, colin.
Not a trust builder, justmessing.
Collin (54:10):
So good, so good.
Heredes (54:13):
Before we wrap your column, gus, tell us how
somebody listening can find youlearn more about what you're
doing, more about Nam, if thechurch, or even a paratrooper,
and on profit, and how they canget involved.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (54:23):
Yeah, so sendnetworkcom is our website,
so definitely go there.
You'll find everything frommobilizing planters so someone
you know is interested inwanting to start a church or is
maybe sensing that calling,there's an opportunity on that
website for them to find outmore and connect with somebody
from our network.
If it's a church that wants toreach out to see how they can be
activated, there's a spot onthat website for churches to be
(54:46):
able to be mobilized, so theyjust fill out that form.
Somebody from our team reachesout and establishes contact
connection and then we startthat relationship there to see
how we can serve that church.
As far as me, I'm mostly onInstagram at Gus Hernandez Jr.
I'm also on ex Twitter I don'tknow what to call it these days.
But it's mostly for reading,because it became so weird and
(55:09):
toxic over the last few years islike I got time with everything
that I'm doing to engage inbanter, so I mostly just use it
to read what's trending andfollow some of the leaders that
I like and enjoy.
So those are some of the spaceswhere I'm at.
That's awesome.
Collin (55:23):
Yeah, listeners, we're linking all that below.
We'll retroactively link toGus's book when that's written
and you can jump on that rightaway, because it's going to be
amazing.
Gus, thanks so much for beingon.
H any last thoughts, any lastquestions or anything?
Heredes (55:39):
No, he said it all.
So many good takeaways so I'mgoing to have to review my notes
here and make sure you do thesame.
But to Gus, thanks so much forbeing with us.
Collin (55:46):
Thank you man.
Heredes (55:47):
Thanks for all the work , the cool thing with Gus I get
to see it in practice and inaction.
So this is not just theory,this is not just I mean.
He's passionate, he's living itout and I get to see the fruit
of it down in Miami, wherefriends and family are part of
his church, and so appreciatewhat you do, man, your heart and
your serving and how yousacrificially give and of your
(56:08):
time and resources for thekingdom.
So blessings to you and to thefamily.
Gus Hernandez Jr. (56:13):
Thanks, guys.
Honour and privilege.
Collin (56:14):
Absolutely, and so our listeners.
Thank you so much for listening, thanks for sticking with us,
and we will see you next time onthe nonprofit Renaissance.
Outro (56:24):
Thanks again for listening to the nonprofit
Renaissance.
We hope it ignites aRenaissance in you and helps you
go further and grow faster.
Be sure to share, rate andsubscribe, and if you'd like to
recommend or be a guest on ourshow, send us an email at
podcastatfirstcreativecom.
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