Early leadership listening and clarity

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tensley Almand, President and CEO of Atlanta Mission, the largest and longest-running provider of services for people experiencing homelessness in the Atlanta metro area. Founded in 1938 as a soup kitchen during the Great Depression, Atlanta Mission now operates four campuses, serving over 800 men, women, and children nightly through programs that provide housing, recovery support, and Christ-centered transformation.

How do you lead through complexity while staying true to your calling? Tensley shares leadership lessons from his transition from church ministry to leading a $20 million nonprofit—insights that apply to every pastor or church leader navigating growth, complexity, or change.

• Moving beyond shelter to transformation. // While many think of Atlanta Mission as only an emergency shelter, over 60% of its beds are dedicated to long-term transformational programs that address root causes of homelessness. The yearlong program includes counseling, trauma recovery, life skills, and vocational training. Clients complete a four-week “Next Steps” program focused on relational, emotional, and workplace health. The results are remarkable: 70% of graduates maintain stable housing and employment a year later.
• Learning to lead by listening. // When Tensley stepped into his CEO role, he faced the challenge of succeeding a leader who had guided the organization from crisis to stability. Rather than arriving as the expert, Tensley began as what he calls the “Chief Question Officer.” He met with every employee to ask four key questions: What’s right? What’s wrong? What’s missing? What’s confusing? The responses revealed a clear need for strategic focus.
• Building clarity and focus. // Using that input, Tensley led a yearlong process to create a strategic roadmap—a seven-year plan that defines the organization’s mission, values, and measurable outcomes. When there’s clarity in an organization, saying ‘no’ becomes easy and saying ‘yes’ becomes difficult. The new strategy gave Atlanta Mission a unified framework for decision-making, with every initiative measured against the same mission.
• Measuring what matters. // Data fuels care. In order to better track client progress, the team at Atlanta Mission built dashboards, measuring not only how many people they serve but how lives are changing. When graduation rates dipped from 70% to 45%, they discovered the cause wasn’t program failure but economic change. That same approach can transform church leadership. Churches measure nickels and noses, but what if we measured progression—how many first-time guests become group members, or how many volunteers grow into leaders?
• Partnership through presence. // Atlanta Mission thrives through partnerships with churches across the city. Tensley explains that relational poverty—people lacking healthy connections—is as debilitating as material poverty. Rather than only focusing on “do for” service projects, he encourages churches to create “be with” opportunities: hosting birthday parties, sharing meals, or building relationships with families at Atlanta Mission.
• Encouragement for leaders. // Reflecting on his own journey, Tensley reminds church leaders who feel stretched or uncertain that often you’ll overestimate what you can accomplish in 90 days, but underestimate what you can do in a year or two. Take time to listen, build unity, and stay faithful in the process. Over time, that faithfulness becomes transformation—both in the people you lead and in yourself.

To learn more about Atlanta Mission, visit atlantamission.org or email to connect or schedule a visit.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. We’ve got a real honored to have an incredible guest on today’s episode. We’ve got Tensley Almand with us. He is the president and CEO of Atlanta Mission.

Rich Birch — Now, if you don’t know Atlanta Mission, I’m not sure where you’ve been. You really should know. This organization was founded in 1938 as a soup kitchen to feed men who were displaced by the Great Depression. And they just keep chugging along. They do incredible work. They now serve Metro Atlanta’s largest homeless population and bring hope in the face of homelessness, poverty, and addiction.

Rich Birch — Prior to serving at Atlanta Mission, he was in vocational ministry for 20 plus years, the last 12 of those, as we were just saying in the pre-call. He said, felt like he had the the best job in the world, was a lead pastor at Decatur City Church, one of the eight Atlanta City, Atlanta area campuses of North Point Ministries. Tensley, welcome. So glad you’re here.

Tensley Almand — Man, so good to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.

Rich Birch — No, this is going to be good. I’m excited. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit more of your background and tell us a bit more about Atlanta Mission, that kind of thing. Just help set the table.

Tensley Almand — Yeah, so I’m a native Atlantan. I grew up here, born and raised just north of the city. Yeah. Only child. Parents still live north of the city in the same town that I grew up in.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Tensley Almand — My wife and I, we have four kids. We have been married now, just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary…

Rich Birch — Congratulations. That’s great.

Tensley Almand — …which makes me feel old, but it’s it’s it’s all good. So four kids, three boys, little girl, they’re all just amazing, doing great things and in their worlds. We live over in city of Decatur. So ah for those that don’t know, just kind of just right outside of downtown Atlanta. So we feel like we’re living in the heart of the city.

Rich Birch — Cool.

Tensley Almand — Like you said, I spent 20 plus years on the church side of ministry, which you had told younger me that that was going to be my future, I probably would have laughed at you. Grew up in a family that church just frankly, wasn’t that important to us. My mom gets mad if I say I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, um, which, you know, looking back, I think is really true. I just grew up in a home that we didn’t feel like the church was for us.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so, um, after, you know, meeting Jesus in college, giving my life to him, which is a whole nother really cool story, started down the path towards ministry. And eventually several years into that kind of looked up and thought, I don’t know what I’m doing. Like I’m working at these churches that I don’t even want to attend.

Tensley Almand — Like remember this very pivotal meeting in my life where our pastor asked us, he’s like, if I didn’t pay you to go to church here, is this the church you would attend?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — And every one of us said no.

Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness.

Tensley Almand — And they were all okay with it.

Rich Birch — Oh, no.

Tensley Almand — And I just like something broke in me.

Rich Birch — Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And I remember going home and I told my wife, I was like, I can’t do this anymore.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so I started the process of just trying to find a job. But the problem is I’ve genuinely felt called by God to ministry. And so God used that to, to lead us down the path of starting Decatur City Church. And, um, our whole dream was just to create a church that people who didn’t like church would love to attend.

Tensley Almand — And so, which is really cool. Again, it’s probably a whole other episode, but really cool because we got to do that in one of the most unchurched cities in Atlanta. 70% of the people who live in Decatur ah don’t go to a church. And Decatur, for those who don’t know, small little town right outside of a big city.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — But literally, there’s over 600 churches in that town. So we used to say all the time, nobody wakes up on Sunday wondering where a church is. They just wake up wondering if church is for them.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Tensley Almand — And so that’s, that’s the thing we tried to solve. Right.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so did that for 12 years, thought I would do that with my whole life. Just an amazing season. And then God called me out of there to Atlanta Mission. And so for those who don’t know, and we can get into that story here if you want to, but, for those who don’t know, Atlanta mission, like you said, it’s the largest and longest running provider of services…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — …for men, women, and children experiencing homelessness in our city. So for perspective, what that means is on any given night, we’ll have about 800 men, women, or children who are staying with us.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. That’s a significant operation. That’s, that’s incredible.

Tensley Almand — It’s a significant operation.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — It represents that in our city, that represents about 35 to 40% of all the shelter beds in Atlanta.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Tensley Almand — So that’s, it’s a, it’s pretty remarkable opportunity that we do that across three campuses in downtown Atlanta.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Tensley Almand — One for men, two for women and children.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And then we have this really cool drug and alcohol addiction facility out near Athens, which is about an hour outside of town, on 550 acre farm that is just beautiful ah for men who are in recovery from addiction.

Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness. Huh.

Tensley Almand — So yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s, that’s incredible. i’m I’m glad you started with the kind of community size that you’re you’re serving. That’s, that’s amazing. Give me a sense of the operation from like a, you know, total number of staff, other kinds of metrics. Like I’m just trying to, I know, you know, you’re not a kind of person that’s going to brag about that kind of stuff, but just trying to help people kind of place, because this is a significant operation, friends. Atlanta Mission is it’s a world-class organization doing great work and honored to have you on this the show. But people might not be ah kind of aware of the the scale of it. Give us a bit more sense of that.

Tensley Almand — Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a good question. I appreciate you asking. Cause yeah, I definitely don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t like going there, but…

Rich Birch — Yes. And it’s even just, it’s a funny thing to, it’s a funny thing to even like, it’s like, well, we’re really good. It’s like, it’s like, well, yeah, it’s a tough thing you’re doing. So it’s like, man, it’s a weird thing to kind of try to but get ah your arms around. How, how do we talk about this? Yeah.

Tensley Almand — Yeah. So let me kind of give you scope and then let me talk a little bit about what we’re doing. So scope is ah we’re we’re about a $20 million dollars a year organization.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Tensley Almand — And so just like every church out there, that means, you know, we start July as the start of our fiscal year and we start at zero…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — …and then we go and raise $20 million dollars…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …to meet the need of our expenses. And we do that through mainly private and and corporate donations. And so…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — …we’re almost a hundred percent privately funded this year.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Tensley Almand — We, we, we took our very first government grant.

Rich Birch — Huh.

Tensley Almand — But I mean, it’s a $250,000 grant, which is not insignificant, but on the scope of 20 million. So that kind of gives everybody an idea. So you’re talking about, uh, you know, thousands of donors who come alongside of us to partner with us, which is just amazing.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Amazing. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — We serve about 800 men, women, and children, like I said,

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And we have right at about 180 staff…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — …who are who are either you know full-time equivalents basically here with us. And that’s across four different campuses. So we’re essentially like a multi-site operation. So I’m sitting here at my office today, which is basically our mission support center.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — So your accounting, HR, development team, all of your infrastructure, and we support the work that’s happening all over our city.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And then we also have three thrift stores across Northeast Georgia that’s included in that head count.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — And so a little bit of that 20 million that I was telling you about that that revenue comes from sales as well. And so, so yeah, it’s pretty broad organization. And then what we do, a lot of people think about you know Atlanta Mission, especially here in our city, and they just think emergency shelter.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Certainly what we do. But of those 800 beds, roughly only 40% of those go towards emergency shelter. And so if you…

Rich Birch — Oh, really? OK.

Tensley Almand — Yeah. And so if you show up at our door and you just need safety, security, stability, um, you’re just trying to like get off the street…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …we have a program called Find Hope…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — …and it’s a 30-day program. You can stay with us rent free 30 days. You know, bed meals, showers, really, really, really, really low expectation on those clients.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — It’s just like, hey, we’re here to meet your needs.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.

Tensley Almand — The other 60% of our beds go towards what we call our transformational model…

Rich Birch — Okay.

Tensley Almand — …where we provide complete wraparound services. It’s about a year long program.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — You show up and we’re going to try to help you get healthy relationally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, vocationally. We’ve got counselors, we’ve got advocates, we’ve got social workers. You have a whole team…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …that works with you, walks with you for a year…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — …depending on really your core traumas, what’s caused your homelessness. And our main goal, our mission is to transform through Christ the lives of those who are experiencing homelessness, poverty, and addiction.

Tensley Almand — And so what we want to do, what that means to us is over the course of that year, Um, we want to give you the tools to identify your traumas, understand those traumas and ultimately break the cycles so that you don’t ever have to come back to our doors again. We we tell our clients, we love you, but we don’t ever want to see you again. Like this is just like, like, how do we…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. This was a phase of your life, hopefully, right?

Tensley Almand — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s the goal.

Tensley Almand — How do we end that for you? And so our program goes through all the counseling, all the services, and it wraps up in a vocational training program we call Next Steps that…

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.

Tensley Almand — …that gives our clients the soft skills they need to not just get a job. Because here’s here’s what’s really cool. You you would get this. Our clients are really good at getting jobs. But like so many people out there, we’re terrible at keeping a job.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Yes.

Tensley Almand — Like people don’t know the skills needed to like keep a job. Like how do you manage conflict?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Tensley Almand — What do you do with that boss who’s just overbearing? How do you have normal workplace conversations?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — And so we have a ah four week training program that gives our clients those skills. And what we’re finding is that for the clients who go all the way through our program, 70% of those who graduate our program, they still have a house or a living situation a year later.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — And they are maintaining that job a year later.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s incredible.

Tensley Almand — And so it’s just been a remarkable, remarkable journey. And so we’ve got some transitional housing in there…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — …where you graduate our program, you stay with us, we help you save up and and we help you find an apartment. And then when you’re ready financially and you’re you’re stable, we help you move into that that apartment.

Tensley Almand — And what’s really cool, probably one of my favorite things is for alumni is that year after you graduate, you get a retention coach with us and they walk with you. And they just help you navigate life because, man, when you’ve stayed somewhere for a year and then you kind of come back in and you’re like, oooh, the pressures of the world are on me. That first year is so tough.

Rich Birch — So hard. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Well, that’s cool. I appreciate you sharing that. and And yeah, even church leaders that are listening in, um man, ah there whether if you’re in the Atlanta area, you definitely should reach out to Atlanta Mission.

Rich Birch — But even in your neighborhood, like there are, this is why you shouldn’t be trying to invent this yourself as a church. There are these are incredibly complex issues that you know when I heard all of the the different things you’re doing to surround people, try to help them, um that’s that’s inspiring. That’s amazing.

Rich Birch — Well, I’d love to pivot and talk about kind of your experience as you’ve transitioned in, like some try to extract some leadership lessons. It’s been said that one of the first things that leaders do is define reality or gain clarity for their for their organization.

Rich Birch — When you first started early on in your role, what were you listening for or look for that told you, maybe there’s some areas here that just aren’t very clear? What did you see as you were, you know, we got to bring some more clarity in the organization? Were there things you kind of saw that that made you think, oh, we maybe this is some areas we need to gain some better clarity as an organization?

Tensley Almand — Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, every leadership transition is different. One of the advantages I had is that what my predecessor was leaving me was so much different than what he inherited.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And so he inherited an organization that was in crisis. He handed me an organization that was thriving. But, that organization really was, and he was, and it’s it’s all kind of wrapped up in our story, is that it was time for him to retire. It was time for him to move on. And so the whole organization was asking what’s next. And so that’s, that’s one advantage I had is that there was this collective, like, well, like what what is next for us? That was helpful.

Tensley Almand — The other advantage I had, and I did not think this was an advantage. But, you know, I, I came out of church ministry. I didn’t know how to lead a nonprofit. I didn’t know anything about homelessness.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Tensley Almand — I didn’t know much about social services. And so, yeah I truly believe God called me into this, but I couldn’t come in like an expert.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so I literally was forced to, my I tell people my door said CEO, but I think I was really the chief question officer. I mean, my my first year…

Rich Birch — Help me understand. Help me understand.

Tensley Almand — …was, yeah, asking questions. I can I can vividly remember our clinical director coming into my office and saying, hey, we’ve got this massive clinical decision that we need to make and there’s this and this and this. And you know and then like trying to leave that way. What do you think we should do? And I’m like… you’re the clinical director. Like, what do what do you mean?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — But that was again, and this is and he would say this if he was sitting here, my predecessor had an organization that was in crisis. And so every decision had to center on him. And I needed to come in and teach our team how to have a decentralized leadership. How like, hey, look you’re the clinical director I’m going to support you, I’m to remove obstacles for you. But if I have to make clinical decisions, we’re we’ve got a really big problem because I’m not qualified to make that decision.

Tensley Almand — And so um really pushing leadership down…

Rich Birch — yeah

Tensley Almand — …asking a lot of questions, understanding what we do. And so that was that was a huge advantage that that i think a lot of people probably, they can like I did, they they think about the things that are stacked against them. To me, it’s like you don’t know anything about the space. That’s a big obstacle.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Well, maybe lean into those obstacles because it’s a really good way to to get underneath the hood. And so it forced me to ask questions, forced me to listen. And then what I did is I I truly went on a just a listening tour.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — I set up a meeting, I think, with every employee of our organization.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Tensley Almand — And I asked everybody what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s missing and what’s confusing.

Rich Birch — Huh.

Tensley Almand — And I still have that notebook.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — I mean, my assistant like cataloged answers for days.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And what was so cool to me was that without having the same language, almost everybody in the organization identified the same rights, wrongs, missings and confusions. And so I was able to then take that and really come back to our senior team and say, hey, what should we do about this? Like we all…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — We all agree this is a problem. like What should we do do? And I think a colleague of mine, I remember walking into his office and he had this drawing on his board. I’m like, what is what is that? He’s like, well, is how I feel about our organization. I remember it was ah it was a circle.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And all the arrows were pointed in every direction around the circle. And he’s like, that’s us. Like, we’ve got the right idea…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …but everybody’s pulling in a hundred directions to try to figure out how to do that idea.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — and I said, man, we need to take that circle and get all those arrows on one side. Cause if we can collectively pull… and that just kind of became our quest. And so we took all those answers and, you know, basically the the big thing was, um you know, and I don’t know where I learned this, but I feel like when there’s clarity in an organization, ‘no’ is really easy and ‘yes’ is is really difficult. It’s like really easy to say no.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And what I found at Atlanta Mission was we were just saying yes to everything. And the reason we were saying yes to everything is because there was no strategy, there was no clarity.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And so we took that first year and a half, wrote our strategic plan, identified who we want to be and why we want to be that. And then what would it look like to be that organization? And so we just kind of built it backwards. And that’s the journey we’ve been on now for the last four years since I’ve been here.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s, ah yeah, that’s incredible. I love that that feeling. In fact, i I took over a nonprofit ah kids camp and much smaller scale than what you’re running. But I remember those early days where there yeah people are looking at you and and and there is this sense of like, okay, so like you got to tell us where we’re going. What is the thing we’re doing next? Like and it’s easy to like… the easy thing is, let’s try this. Let’s try that. Let’s do a bunch of different things. And that can lead to that pulling, those hundred different, you know, it’s lots of activity, but it’s not focused.

Tensley Almand — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And trying to get everybody on a kind of a shared page of or shared picture of what the future looks like, man, that’s great through this, this process of kind of we’re going to do a strategic plan over a year. What, what would you, what would you say to a leader that is feeling the pressure of like, Hey, I want to define the future now, as opposed to that feels like a step back. We’re going to year and a half and define this stuff. What would you say to a leader? Why should we slow down? Talk us through why that, how that benefited now that you’re on the other side of all that.

Tensley Almand — Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is it’s it’s totally worth it. I mean, it it was hard. It was challenging. It it does feel like a step back. But I don’t know how to step forward without without clarity, you know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And that’s, you said at the beginning, I got to ah got to be one of the campus pastors at North Point Community Church for years. I can remember Andy always saying, The beauty of North Point wasn’t that we got to start with a blank page, just that we started on the same page.

Rich Birch — That’s good

Tensley Almand — And I just think that like that, that is always set with me. And so when I when I started here, I realized like, hey, I don’t I don’t get the luxury of a blank page. I mean, this organization has been around since 1938. You know, when I when I started Decatur City, it was so easy because I just told everybody what we were doing and why we were doing it and there was nothing else we were doing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so it was just like… But here it’s like, OK, if I can’t get to a blank page, the best thing I can do is we’ve got to get on the same page…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …or else we’re just we’re going to spin our tires. And, and you know, I think I’ll I’ll this story probably sums it up and maybe somebody can relate to this. I have a monthly breakfast with our board chair and our vice chair. And the very first breakfast I went to in this role, it was my predecessor’s last breakfast and my first. And so we’re all so it’s him, it’s me and it’s a board chair a vice chair, all of which have been around this organization 3x the amount of time I had at that point, I had been there like three days.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Couple weeks.

Tensley Almand — And and we got this email the night before the breakfast, and it was from a developer. And they were offering $14 million dollars for the piece of property that my office sits on, which is a widely underused piece of property…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …that we’ve always kind of wrestled with, like, what do we do with this thing?

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — $14 million dollars.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — That’s almost our entire year’s budget.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — And I remember showing up to this breakfast with this LOI and I asked the question, should we take it or should we not?

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And nobody could answer my question.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Tensley Almand — Nobody knew if it was a good idea to take $14 million dollars or to walk away from $14 million dollars

Rich Birch — And if that group doesn’t know, nobody else in the organization is going to know, right?

Tensley Almand — And that’s exactly what I said. I was like, if you don’t know, and I don’t know…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes, exactly.

Tensley Almand — …nobody knows.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.

Tensley Almand — And so I started with that small group and I said, hey, would you give me the freedom to to take however long it takes for us to make sure we can answer that question?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Tensley Almand — And so in our first board meeting, I raised my hand and I just said, hey guys, I know I’m new, I know I just started. But I shared the story and I said, hey, we have to be able to answer questions like this. Or we’re never going to get anywhere. We may do a lot of good things, but we are going to have no idea if we did the best thing.

Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s good. That’s good. So kind of double clicking on that, continuing to kind of focus in on this. You know, there are churches, organizations that will do the strat plan or roll. We go away for the big retreat. We come up with the new value statements. It’s got great strategy on paper. But it doesn’t end up translating into practice. What are you doing at the mission to try to make sure that we’re going from that wasn’t just a great document that’s like in a nice book somewhere, but it’s actually rolling out. Maybe give us some examples of that. And what are those kind of rhythms, cadences, all that? How how are you making that happen?

Tensley Almand — Yeah, it’s wish I could really tell you we’re crushing it in this area. It’s this is a new habit for us.

Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Good.

Tensley Almand — And so we’re I’m four years in. We just finished our first full fiscal year under our new strategy. And so I can tell you what we’ve learned.

Rich Birch — Hey, that’s good. Yeah, good.

Tensley Almand — One, once you get it built you have to start small. We, I wish I could remember the exact number, I think as a senior team we committed and told our board we were going to do 392 new initiatives or something in year one, you know.

Rich Birch — Wow. Right.

Tensley Almand — And this is a seven-year plan…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — …we’re like we got almost for it and I think we got 100 through of the 392.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And we celebrated like crazy at the end of the year because it was like, that’s 100 things that were all in alignment that we’d never done before. We learned so much. So, start small.

Tensley Almand — The other thing is we built our plan. And I was I was very intentional about this because of what you just said. I did not want another notebook that was going to sit on my shelf. And so our strategic plan is really a strategic roadmap. And what I have told our board, what I’ve told our staff is I want an organization that knows how to think.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And our our plan is really a roadmap for how we should think. It’s not overly prescriptive in necessarily what that means. Because it’s it’s designed to take us all the way through 2030.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Well, I have no idea what’s going to happen between now and 2030.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Tensley Almand — But I do know that if what we said we want to accomplish, we’re accomplishing, however that looks, by 2030, we’re on the right track. And so that would be the other thing is just like, I would build, I wouldn’t make it so prescriptive that it tells you like, Hey, next week you’re doing this. And the week after… It needs to teach the organization how to think, how to act so that the person who’s brand new on the front line, if I’m not in the room, they don’t need to spend any time going like what, what would Tensley want me to do? They just, this is who we are as an organization. It’s how we think.

Tensley Almand — And then we at a senior level and then we pushed it all the way down to our organization. We built a meeting cadence around it.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Tensley Almand — And so we have our senior team meets once a week.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — That’s my six direct reports and plus my admin.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And we, one, so we do that on Tuesday morning, one, the first Tuesday of the month is a strategy meeting. We talk all about the strategic plan. That’s like a, how how are you doing and your department doing towards what you said you were gonna do?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And we have a dashboard to measure that against. And then the next Tuesday is an operations meeting. And it’s just like, hey, what are what are we working on? We can’t live at 50,000 feet all the time.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Let’s get down to 1,000 feet or whatever it is.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And so we have that operations cadence. And then the third meeting is kind of like a catch-all, like, hey, what you know what needs to happen? And then our last meeting of the month is a monthly ministry review with the entire, not just my direct reports, but all the managers that sit under my direct reports.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool.

Tensley Almand — And they lead that meeting. I listen in that meeting. And I get to hear what’s happening at every campus, what’s going on. And I get to hear how people are implementing or not implementing the strategy.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And then the very next meeting, if you’re keeping up, is then our strategy meeting.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — So then I’m like, hey…

Rich Birch — Here’s some stuff I heard.

Tensley Almand — …tell me more about this.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Tensley Almand — Or I didn’t hear like, Hey, I thought we were working on this. Why is that not happening? And so we have dashboards.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Tensley Almand — We’ve never had those before. We have data that we can follow. We have metrics we’ve identified as a, as a team, our wins. And so it’s like, Hey, how are we tracking towards those wins and just have created a layer of accountability that didn’t exist probably three years ago.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s talk a little bit more about the data thing. I’ve, or data thing. We, I’ve, I’ve said with younger leaders, you know, spreadsheets are the language of leadership. Like you’re going to have to get used to this stuff. This is just…

Tensley Almand — Yep.

Rich Birch — …this is how we care for people at scale is, is that is what it looks like. So data can either inspire or intimidate. How do you track outcomes? How do you, how do you how have you seen, you know, data over this last year actually change behavior and move things, improve care, better outcomes, all that kind of stuff. Talk us through what, cause you know, what we measure can get, can, you know, steer us in the wrong direction or steer us in the right direction. Help, help us think through that. As we’re thinking about what numbers should we pay attention to?

Tensley Almand — Yeah. So again, when I started, that was a big question I had. So if you were to look at our numbers, you would see that we serve, you know, let’s, these are rough, but right at about 3000 people a year come through our doors.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Tensley Almand — Right. Which is huge.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — You’re like, man, that’s amazing. Well, then I, as I walk you through that, by the time you get to the end of our vocational training a year later, we may graduate like 400. And then 70% of those 400 are still doing well the the next year. And so, you know, on paper, you’re like, man, is that good?

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Tensley Almand — Like that, that there’s a lot of attrition there.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Like should, is, is, are we fail… And that was, again, when I started, that was a question nobody could answer for me is, Hey, is that good?

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so even backing up before we built our strategy, our senior team spent so much time defining our outcomes. And we had all of these statements, you know, but it was like we want somebody to be healthy vocationally.

Tensley Almand — It’s like, okay, what does that mean? Crickets in the room.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — Wait, if you don’t know what it means and I don’t know what it means, does the person who’s leading that program know what it means? Better question: does the person who’s receiving our services know if they’ve actually achieved help in that area?

Tensley Almand — And so we went through, defined all of those terms so that there was a clear outcome to it…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …so that we could then measure it. And then we built both a one-page dashboard that our senior team could look at at a high level. So I could I can open this dashboard on any Monday morning. It’s just in Tableau, so nothing super you know exciting.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Tensley Almand — And I can just see, i can see progression through our program. I can see healthy exits. We’ve defined what are healthy exits. I can see, ah you know, are people getting stuck? That was a big thing we were we were learning is like, people are just getting stuck in our program and we’re committing to somebody. You’re going to be at this phase of the program 30 days. Well, then they spend 60 days.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And what we were finding. We were, so this, this probably long winded way of saying this, but what we, we didn’t know what was happening or why it was happening and it felt good. But you know, you’re like, I don’t know.

Tensley Almand — And so what we were finding is it’s like, Hey, so that’s an example. Like, somebody gets stuck in our program. We promised them 30. It takes 60. All of a sudden, we were able to track that, hey, there’s a certain amount of fallout rate at this stage of the program. Why is that happening? Oh, people are stuck. They’ve been here too long.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — We got to fix that. And so it it enabled us to know what needed to be fixed and and not fixed.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Tensley Almand — And probably the the best real-time example of that is just recently. So I keep telling you the 70% number of graduates are successful. That’s kind of our historical data.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Tensley Almand — Well, this year, that number fell for the first time ever. It’s gotten better every year.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — This year it fell and it fell like dramatically. And this is one of those I don’t like to talk about it because it doesn’t look good.

Rich Birch — Interesting. Yes.

Tensley Almand — I mean, like it fell down to almost like 45, 50 percent.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Tensley Almand — You’re like, what’s happening?

Rich Birch — Almost inverse. Yeah, yeah. Wow.

Tensley Almand — Exactly. And so at first, you’re like, our program is no good. We got rewrite our program. Well, thankfully, we had been tracking all of the kind of whys and we understood what was happening in people’s lives. And what we have found out is no, like the economy shifted. You can’t get a job in 30 to 60 days anymore.

Rich Birch — Interesting.

Tensley Almand — And so a gate in our program is when you graduate, you have 60 days to get a job. If you don’t get a job, you can’t move into our transitional housing because if we just allow you to stay, beds back up and then more people can’t get in.

Tensley Almand — Well, our clients then would stop taking our advice and stop waiting for a good job. And at day like 50, they would just go get that job that doesn’t pay well.

Rich Birch — Ohhh.

Tensley Almand — And they knew it wasn’t going to be a career builder job. It was just going to keep them sheltered.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Tensley Almand — And so it was our our like metrics were actually driving a behavior we didn’t like.

Rich Birch — That’s interesting.

Tensley Almand — And so we’re in the process now of like, hey, we’ve got to change this. The length of time it takes to get a job now takes longer. and

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — The job market’s more you know fierce right now.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so we don’t want nothing against these types of jobs. We don’t necessarily want our client leaving to go get a job at McDonald’s

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — But for them, leaving it to go get a job at McDonald’s versus not having a place to stay, I’ll take the McDonald’s job…

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Tensley Almand — …even though I know I’m only going to be there three months.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Tensley Almand — And so it was throwing off all of our numbers and it’s because we were incorrectly driving a behavior that we don’t want to drive. So.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s cool. That’s a great, very vivid example. And there’s lots of that in the church world. I know you I know you know that. There was a church I was doing some work with last year, large church, 10,000-person church. And they were we were talking one of the numbers I obsess with my clients over is documented first-time guests, the actual number of people that come every single weekend. And I was convinced that this church was just was missing a whole bunch of first time guests. And so they were telling me about how great their, their, their assimilation numbers were. They were like, Oh, this is so great. And I was like, I just don’t believe it. I’m like, because, because if you are not capturing the number of, of documented first time guests, then yeah and you’re comparing against half of what you probably actually have coming into your church, then then every number be below that, all your integration stuff looks twice as good as it actually is.

Tensley Almand — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And you know that that happens in lots of places across our numbers. We’ve got to get real clear and benchmark against other people.

Tensley Almand — If I could go back and if I could go back, no, no, it’s just, like I’ve often thought like, what would I do different if I was a church leader now?

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good question.

Tensley Almand — And I would I would measure so much differently.

Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting.

Tensley Almand — You know, historically we’ve measured nickels and noses, right? Like how much money’s coming in and how many people are sitting in the pews. But it’s like, those are important.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — I wouldn’t stop measuring them, but I would pay attention to like this. I would try to find a way to measure progression, you know.

Rich Birch — Yes, 100%.

Tensley Almand — It’s like to your point how many first-time guests are you having okay well then of those first-time guests how many of them are actually moving to your small groups.

Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.

Tensley Almand — Of those who moved your small groups do any of them ever volunteer like and and really understand the behaviors you want. And then measure to those behaviors and i think especially in a world where just church attendance looks so much so much different, we could gauge health of our churches so much more effectively if we were

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. I’d love to I’d love to kind of pivot for a few minutes in a slightly different direction.

Tensley Almand — Okay.

Rich Birch — So we have a lot of church leaders that are listening in and I’d love to understand how Atlanta Mission partners with churches. What does that look like? How do you work together? So specifically at Atlanta misha, and then what would you, Mission, and then what would you say to churches in general? Hey, um what advice would you give now that you’re on this side of the equation of actually partnering with an organization like Atlanta Mission? How can you be kind of the best partner? How do we what are what are people on your side of the table actually looking for from a church like ours? Because I’m sure there’s all kinds of stories of like, yeah, that didn’t work well. Talk us through what that looks like, partnerships specifically, and then kind of in general, how can we be better at that?

Tensley Almand — Yeah, and partnership is one of our pillars of our strategic plan. I think I think for nonprofits, especially when you’re large and you’re self-funded, you can it’s easy to get siloed. And we we fell into that category, not just with outside partners that wanted to come in and help us, but also with other service providers across the the, you know, continuum of care in our city. is It’s just it’s easy to kind of put your head down and do your own thing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so this is a huge emphasis for us, mainly because it’s really woven into the vision of our organization. Our organization is a community that’s united to end homelessness one person at a time. Well, I mean, it’s like partnership has to be built into that.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes, baked into it. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — So what who are we to then go get siloed? Like, that’s like, wow, you can’t even accomplish what you said you wanted to do. And so um we… I’ll back into this answer by telling you one of the things we’ve discovered at Atlanta Mission is that this isn’t this, you know, this isn’t novel, but, you know, material poverty, we all know is debilitating. Relational poverty is just as debilitating as material poverty.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Tensley Almand — And what we find with our clients is that almost 100 percent obviously are struggling with some version of material poverty, but they are just relationally broken and poor. They are void of healthy relationships. And so this is this is so much where partnership comes in, because we we literally have a metric that we track of how many healthy contacts does a client have in their phone before they graduate our program. And what we were finding is I mean we were their only healthy contact.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Tensley Almand — And it’s wait this is this is not good. And this is such a great place for churches to partner with us because we have so many opportunities that we just call we call them “be with” opportunities there’s like there’s “do for” service projects but there’s also “be with” service projects. And they’re just designed for you to establish healthy community with our clients, build relationships, throw a birthday party for somebody…

Rich Birch — That’s so good. Right.

Tensley Almand — …have a Christmas party at one of our shelters. Come, you know, we’re moving into the holiday season, you know, come and build gingerbread houses together with our kids who are staying with us and just create an hour in somebody’s life that’s normal.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And I feel like churches are better at this than anybody. Our corporate partners are fantastic at the “do for” projects. They can then come in and beautify our campuses in 30 minutes in a way that none of us can.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — You know, Home Depot comes in and it’s like, we’re going to transform your landscape. Great. This is awesome.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Tensley Almand — I love it. But a church can come in and just be authentic and be real and be with our clients.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And you would be amazed at how different somebody’s life looks after just that hour. And so, and I think that’s a huge thing. And then what I would tell churches, I think even as a church leader, I I probably overlooked how vital we were to nonprofits. You just you know, you think it’s an hour, but you know, even the day of, you know, you wake up that morning and you’re like, they don’t really need me. Like, I don’t know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — This is, am I not really going to make a difference? Yes, you are.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — You are going to make a huge difference. It is worth the hour. It is worth the drive.

Tensley Almand — And we we tell people all the time, and I’ve seen this in my own life. The thing that happens at Atlanta Mission is there’s always two stories of transformation happening. There’s the story of transformation that’s happening in a client’s life. But God transforms my life every day.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Tensley Almand — And it’s that’s the part I didn’t expect, Rich, is that…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …my life is being changed as much as anybody else’s. And so I would, I would tell a church, Hey, our clients need you. But you need this as well.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — Like God’s going to do something in your life.

Tensley Almand — And then the other is just, um I think, especially for really big churches, it’s easy to think like, I bet they need my expertise. It’s like, actually, that’s not like. We need your partnership.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Tensley Almand — You know, we, we know how to do this. Come put wind in our sails.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah,

Tensley Almand — Come just serve, be a part of what we’re doing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. That’s super helpful. Love love that. Well, just as we’re coming to land, any kind of final words or encouragement you’d you’d say to church leaders that are listening in today that are, you know, wrestling with maybe clarity or wrestling with some of the stuff we’ve talked about today? This has been a really fruitful conversation. Thank you for it.

Tensley Almand — Yeah, I think the, you know, probably the biggest thing I would say, and I have to tell myself this all the time. I mean, I’m an entrepreneurial type A. I’m going to like, you know, go conquer the world in a day is that, you know, remind yourself, you know, more than likely what you can accomplish in 90 days is nowhere near what you think it is, you know. But what you can accomplish in a year or two years is probably way more than you ever imagined you could.

Rich Birch — Right. So true Yeah, that’s good.

Tensley Almand — And so just again, kind of back to the strategy thing, it takes time. It’s messy. You know, you’re going to feel like, is this worth it? It creates conflict on your team. It feels uncomfortable. We were, we were joking as a senior team the other day. There was, it was about a year where I just, every Tuesday morning, I thought I want to cancel this meeting because I just didn’t enjoy, like we were just, we were at conflict because we were…

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Tensley Almand — …hashing out who we are and why we exist and what are we going to do and why are we going to do it?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — But now it’s my favorite hour of the week. Like, I just love it. And so, you know, I would say that…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — …you know, and I think, yeah, I don’t know that I have anything, you know, much more.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — Yeah.

Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Well, I really appreciate being on the show today. Where do we want to send people if they want to connect with you or with Atlanta Mission? Where are the best places for us to send people online?

Tensley Almand — Probably the easiest place is just our website, atlantamission.org. You can find everything you want to about us. If you want to know more, you can email info@atlantamission.org. And that actually goes right to my assistant and we’ll get you connected to the right person. And you can, you know, next time you’re in town, you partner with us. You can help us. You can be happy to give you a tour, show you what we do.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Tensley. Appreciate you being here today.

Tensley Almand — Thanks.