Emphasizing Authentic Values in Church Leadership

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Shayla McCormick, Executive Pastor at Coastal Community Church, a thriving multisite church in South Florida known for its authentic culture and rapid growth.

How do you build and protect a thriving staff culture as your church grows? Tune in as Shayla offers practical, actionable insight on shaping culture, defining staff values, and creating systems to keep your team aligned as your ministry expands.

• Creating a culture that feels like home. // Shayla and her husband planted Coastal Community Church from scratch, starting with no connections in the area. Recognizing South Florida’s often disconnected and transient culture, they prioritized building a church that feels welcoming, relational, and like home. From day one, they wanted people to feel seen and valued. Their authenticity—sharing personal struggles, not just victories—has helped foster a genuine sense of belonging for both staff and attendees.
• The critical role of values. // As Coastal grew, Shayla saw the need to ensure staff alignment around organizational values. Many churches struggle with dysfunction not due to poor strategy, but because values are aspirational rather than actualized. To combat this, Shayla developed a practical process to define the values Coastal wants to see consistently lived out in staff. Instead of starting with abstract concepts, she asked herself what characteristics were present in people she loved working with—and used those real-life examples to shape their core values.
• From wall to hall. // Coastal has seven staff values: We Believe the Best, We Own It, We Think People, We Live From the Inside Out, We Make It Better, We Have Risk Taking Faith and We Set the Tone. Values only work if they’re acted upon, not just printed on posters. Coastal implemented a quarterly staff values evaluation tool where staff self-assess how well they’re living out each value using a plus, plus-minus, minus system. Supervisors do the same, and both compare notes to spark meaningful conversations. This regular rhythm has become more impactful than annual performance reviews and has helped create a culture of continuous growth.
• Quarterly check-ins drive accountability. // These evaluations include three key questions—Do I get it? Do I want it? Do I have the capacity to do it?—which help surface deeper issues of calling and alignment. The result is clearer communication, fewer cultural blind spots, and, when necessary, healthy offboarding of staff who aren’t aligned. Shayla notes that conversations are now regularly centered around values, and team members frequently reference them when making decisions or reflecting on behavior.
• Modeling values from the top down. // Values must be modeled by senior leaders. As Coastal grows and adds campuses, Shayla is continually asking how to transfer the heart and vision of top-tier leaders down through the layers of the organization. Her team is currently developing onboarding materials that communicate each value directly from senior leaders like herself and her husband, ensuring clarity and consistency from the start.

To learn more about Coastal Community Church visit coastalcommunity.tv and follow @coastalchurch on Instagram, or find Shayla at @shaylamccormick.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super pumped that you’ve decided to tune in today. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’ve got Shayla McCormick. She is the executive pastor at a church that you should be tracking with, Coastal Community Church. They’re a multisite church with, if if I’m counting correctly, two campuses in Florida. And they’re repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Honored to have Shayla with us today. She is the executive pastor. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Shayla McCormick — Thank you so much, Rich. It’s so exciting to get to be here and to share about one of my favorite topics in leadership in the church and investing in other leaders. So thank you.

Rich Birch — I’m honored that you’re here. Why don’t you kind of tell us a little bit about about your role? Tell us, ah because, you know, the executive pastor, that’s been my background. It looks a little different at every church.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — Tell us a little bit about your background, your kind of role and andCoastal in general. Kind of give us this, paint us the picture.

Shayla McCormick — Yes. So what’s crazy is I I had never really worked in the church world or the nonprofit world until my husband and I moved to South Florida 15 years ago to plant our church.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Shayla McCormick — We moved here like knowing no one. So starting from the ground up. it’s

Rich Birch — Wow.

Shayla McCormick — And it was crazy journey. We did a lot of things wrong, but figured it out along the way. And just, you know, I think what we were great at was consistency. You just keep showing up and keep showing up and eventually…

Rich Birch — So good. Yep.

Shayla McCormick — …it kind of it kind of worked out. And so my husband and I actually lead very much together, but he’s he’s his strength is as a visionary. And my strength is strength is really as like the implementer of that of that vision.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Shayla McCormick — And so we work really well as a team. And so I pretty much manage the day-to-day operations of the church and the staff and and just, you know, seeing the vision begin to actually have legs to it.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Shayla McCormick — And I enjoy every moment of it.

Rich Birch — So good. Well, we’re honored you’re here. Could tell us a little bit about Coastal. Give us like the flavor. If we were to come this weekend, kind of talk to us a little bit about the church, kind of help us picture your church.

Shayla McCormick — Yes, I would say, you know, one of the things that we always said here in South Florida, my husband and I come from the Bradenton, Sarasota area Florida, which is just south of Tampa.

Shayla McCormick — And over there, everybody knew everybody, right? It was like, good old boy. Everybody knows everybody. You you have a friend when you walk into church. South Florida is very different. Like people aren’t the friendliest.

Rich Birch — Yeah, okay.

Shayla McCormick — So they all you could easily walk into a store and people are just going to look the other way and not say hi to you.

Rich Birch — That’s because they’re all from New Jersey. You know, they’re…

Shayla McCormick — Exactly.

Rich Birch — I lived in New Jersey for years and that’s where they all end up. They all end up down there. That’s fun.

Shayla McCormick — Exactly. They come down 95 and they end up with us.

Rich Birch — They just keep going.

Shayla McCormick — And so we were like culture shock. This is, this is crazy.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s interesting.

Shayla McCormick — And so we were like, we are determined to have the friendliest church.

Rich Birch — Okay. That’s cool.

Shayla McCormick — That when you walk in that you feel seen, that you feel welcome. It just feels like home.

Rich Birch — So good.

Shayla McCormick — And we would say that all the time when we, when people walk through the doors, we just want them to feel like they step through the doors of, of, of home.

Rich Birch — So good.

Shayla McCormick — And consistently people that come, they’re like, they come in and they’re just like, something’s different about this. It just feels like home.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And that’s sometimes the greatest compliment, you know, that we could have. So we’re a very authentic, um, church, like what my husband and I are walking through or what our team is walking through. You’re going to hear about the mistakes and the failures and the difficulty. And I think really people connect with us a lot of times in our weakness more than they do our strength.

Rich Birch — True.

Shayla McCormick — And so we try to, to really make everything relatable and that we don’t have it all together. And so i think I think people would probably describe our church as just a safe place that they can just be themself.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Shayla McCormick — And you feel that when you walk through the doors, we have a big sign at all of our locations that says, everyone’s welcome, nobody’s perfect, and anything’s possible.

Rich Birch — So good. So good.

Shayla McCormick — And I think you really feel that in in the life of our church.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, I loved as you were, you know, there are multiple things you said there resonated with me, leading a staff team, being consistent, keeping the values aligned. You know, you’ve done things wrong. We want to learn from you, particularly on the staff leadership side. Lots of XP’s that’s a part of our puzzle. How, you know, when you think about ensuring that you’re kind of keeping staff moving in the same direction, kind of living out those values, what are some kind of obstacles that you’ve encountered or you maybe have heard other churches and encounter…

Shayla McCormick — Sure.

Rich Birch — …when it comes to trying to ah keep the team aligned around common values?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah, i think I think in any organization, right, you have you have people that are coming in from from somewhere else. You know, they haven’t always experienced your church or your leadership. And there’s going to be some things that are very unique to to how you lead and the culture of your church. And if we aren’t really focused on what those values are, you can tend to have people that come into your organization that just don’t embody or or model those values.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And so you can have a very, ah I don’t know what the, like division, I guess, in in your church and in the vision and in the culture. And so I have gone into a lot of churches and my husband and I love to invest in church plants. And one of the questions that I’ll always go in and ask because they’re having challenges, maybe with their volunteers or their teams. And it’s like, oh, this person’s complaining or this person’s doing this.

Shayla McCormick — And I’m like, but okay, well, what, what do you value? And I just start asking, you know, some of those questions. And what I’ve realized is a lot of people don’t really know a value in the organization or what they want to see actually lived out in the life of their staff members, their key leaders, and ultimately into their their volunteer teams, you know, because it it is a trickle down. And so if if you don’t like what’s happening in your church, a lot of times you got to look at your team, right?

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. That’s good. I love that. You know, there’s that pivot that happens. We go from like producing great services, doing making of the ministry, all of that. But then there is a shift that happens as we grow where we have to shift towards, we actually have to make a great organization that makes those things.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — And we’ve got to push that down. And part of that is through this values process. When you think…

Shayla McCormick — Yeah. And I, I…

Rich Birch — …I love that idea of they don’t know. And, oh, sorry… I love that idea of they don’t know. How did you come to that? How did you guys define that? What did that look like for you? How did you define your values as an organization?

Shayla McCormick — Okay. This is, this is really interesting. So I think, as leaders, I started thinking about, okay, if I could think about one person that, whether they’re in my church, one person that I’ve been on a team with, whether it be at another organization or anything like that. And I was like, man, that person, I would love to work with them again.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — I would um like, they displayed these things in their life. And I started asking myself, what are the things that I consistently see in that person that I’m like, I always want that person around me.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — I always want that person, you know, close by. And so I said, okay, I need to start looking at those might be the values of the person that I want on my team.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — So we started going, thinking of the person first, and then going, what did they display? And that’s really kind of what I valued. And then I was like, okay, what’s, what’s kind of that middle ground person…

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — …that is like, okay, they’re great. But you know, and then there was like, the third person that’s like, I don’t ever want to work with that person again, honestly. And so I’m like…I know…

Rich Birch — You’ve had those people? i don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah.

Shayla McCormick — And so I tried to like picture those three people.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — And then that kind of shaped what we wanted to see modeled in our, in our leadership. And everybody has different values that they want to display or that they want to see in the life of their church. And I think the hard work is really asking ourself, what are the things that I actually value? Because people, a lot of organizations, a lot of churches have aspirational values, right? Like we want this, but how how are you actually facilitating or or communicating what that means?

Shayla McCormick — I I heard Craig Groeschel one time say like, it doesn’t matter what’s written on your walls if it’s not happening in your halls, you know?

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

Shayla McCormick — You you might think that that’s a value, but is that actually being displayed, you know, on your team? And so, again, for us, it went back to really thinking about who are those people…

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — …and then what do they display in their life? And that helped us shape some of those things. And so I as senior leaders, executive pastors, any any of that, like, we’re really going to shape the values of that organization. So we have to ask ourselves those questions, I think.

Rich Birch — Yeah, when that idea of taking what’s, you know, internal or intrinsic and making it extra extrinsic is is a difficult process.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — That is you know because it’s there’s a lot of assumptions we have inside of ourselves that we’ve got to kind of get outside. Now you’ve defined, if I’m counting correctly, seven values. These are kind of like organizational values.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — We believe the best, we own it, we think people, (and we’ll put these on the show notes, friends), we live from the inside out, we make it better, we have risk-taking faith and we set the tone. There’s so much I’d love to talk about there. Are is there any one of those that what you would say was, as you were developing them, you’re like, ooh, this has been the kind of the tool that has shaped us the most. That’s and that could be, it’s been the hardest you know to to achieve. But has there been any one of those that really stood out as been the most formative?

Shayla McCormick — Yes. I would say the one that we talk about the most and the one that we go back to the most is the one that says we believe the best.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — And really, this doesn’t mean that we walk around with like rose-colored glasses trying to look at people and going, oh, I’m just going to ignore that because I’m going to believe the best. It actually means that we have hard conversations that allow us to eventually believe the best about that person. So it allows us to maintain unity.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — Because unity is the, probably the biggest thing. And so we tell people like we believe the best about each other. So that means we have to fight for the unity. And that means if I’m struggling to believe the best, I need to have a conversation with Rich…

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

Shayla McCormick — …and I need to go, Hey, I’m struggling to believe the best right now because of this. Can we talk through that?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And it really helps us shape that. It also eliminates a lot of gossip. Like go to the person, don’t talk about the person.

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

Shayla McCormick — And so that’s really one that we talk about quite a bit. And we have, I feel like that one has defined very much of the healthy team culture that we have.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing.

Shayla McCormick — Because if somebody comes and has a conversation, our first response is, have you talked to them?

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — Have you gone to them so that you can continue to believe the best?

Rich Birch — Maybe give us another example of that, you know, ah working that out. I can see that. Hey, ah you know, come to me.

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Is there another, can you think of another time where we believe the best has you’ve had to, it’s pushed some operational, like, ooh, we’ve had to make a change or have some conversations that are around that?

Shayla McCormick — I don’t know about about like make a change necessarily operationally…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Shayla McCormick — …but I will say like forward facing, let’s say the church to the church and somebody comes to one of our staff members and says hey I’ve got an issue with that person this person I can’t believe they did xyz, you know. Our staff, because we first of all believe the best regardless of how we feel about that, we’re gonna say, hey that really doesn’t sound like Rich’s character. You know, like I appreciate you coming to me about that. And in, you know, sharing those things, and then we’re going to go back and we’re going to conversation with that person.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — But forward facing, we’re always going to have the back of, you know, our, our teammate. And so that, that changes the, I think the dynamics and the interaction and the confidence of the people on our team, knowing that somebody is always going to have my back. They’re not just going to allow, you know, people to come and make accusations or, you know, be frustrated. But we’re going to we’re going to choose to to have each other’s backs in those moments.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And I think that has helped you know shape shape a lot of things.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So you said it, I wasn’t gonna say it, but like sometimes these values, it’s the easy part is writing them, even though it’s a lot of work and like making a great graphic, putting them up on the wall. What have you done to take it from that to actually, you know, can walk us through how you’ve then made this like work itself out? Is there any kind of repeatable system or anything you’ve added to to ensure that we come back to these time and again?

Shayla McCormick — Yes. So one of the things that I started asking myself is like, okay, we have these great values, right? We’ve we’ve worked really hard to go, what are our values and to really, you know, solidify those.

Shayla McCormick — But now how am I holding people accountable to those values, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — Because we can say something, but if there’s no accountability that allows us to have difficult conversations to make sure we’re actually embodying those things in the life of our organization, then we’re just going to kind of be aiming at nothing. And so what I started doing was going, what are some tools and ways that, that we can actually make sure people are living these out within our organization.

Shayla McCormick — So we actually came up with almost a self-evaluation tool for our team. And we listed out all of the values and, we began to say like, okay, let’s give ourself a plus or a minus on, on each of these values or a plus minus.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — And so a plus would be like, I embody this value. A minus would be like, I struggle with this. And a plus minus would be, I do this sometimes, but I’m not really consistent at it.

Shayla McCormick — And so we develop this tool with all of our values. And then what we do is quarterly, our team sits down with their direct report and they self-evaluate themselves on how they feel they’re doing on displaying those values. And then their boss basically evaluates them. And then they talk through like, hey, we’re different here. Why are we different?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Shayla McCormick — Like, here’s how I see that you could maybe embody that a little bit differently. And explain to me why you feel like you’re weak in this, because I see you as being strong in it. And so it’s a chance to like celebrate. But it’s also a chance to have some corrective behavioral conversations around maybe where we feel like we’re missing the mark on some things.

Shayla McCormick — And so there we also added a couple of questions on there that says, I get it, I want it, and I have the capacity to do it. And that’s really like their job. Like I feel like I get what I’m supposed to be doing. I get it.

Shayla McCormick — And then the I want it question is like, I still want to do this because I actually want to know, like, are you still in this and do you love what you’re doing still?

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Shayla McCormick — And then the other one is I have the capacity to do it. Because we all know in the life of the church, sometimes things outgrow our capacity.

Rich Birch — Right. Wow.

Shayla McCormick — So I want to know from that employee, like, do you feel like you still have the capacity to operate in the role or are you overwhelmed by all of this? And do we need to have a different chair kind of conversation?

Shayla McCormick — And this has really helped us carry this out and and like keep it in front of people. Cause honestly, Rich, I think there’s so many times in the church where we hire people for their gift and talent, but their like character and adherence to the to the values of that organization, they don’t really care about. And I would rather hire people based on values and teach talent and, you know, teach the skills.

Rich Birch — The stuff you need to do. Yep, for sure.

Shayla McCormick — But values are way more important to me because that’s what people are seeing displayed.

Rich Birch — That’s so true. That’s so true.

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Well, and we’re not doing rocket science. I would agree with you on that. Like it’s not, you know, what what we, what we do is not, it’s not incredibly complex. You know, we can teach a lot of it.

Rich Birch — The thing I love, I saw this on that evaluation forum. I’m so glad you brought this up. I love that: I get it. I want it. I have the capacity. I think that’s, man, that is so wise. One of the things I’ve known and growing in a, in a fast growing church, particularly, I always tried to model and have tried to model, like, hey, my role, I this thing might outgrow me.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch —And there and there may come a time where I have to step aside for the sake of the mission. And that has created a culture with my team being able to say that. But I love that you’re actually literally every quarter asking your people to reflect on that.

Rich Birch — How have these evaluations then ended up translating into like steps, actionable changes in staff development or alignment you know around this? What are some things that you’ve seen? Oh, hey, here’s some positive change that’s happened because of this.

Shayla McCormick — I think what I hear, what happens since we’ve implemented a lot of this is I hear more conversations centered around the values because…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Shayla McCormick — …so I feel like the values are really driving the decisions that they’re making. So I’ll hear people saying, Oh, okay. Our value is, you know, we own it. And so, you know, the other day there was a bunch of trash just sitting outside the door. So you know what? We own it. And so I took out the trash, you know, or whatever.

Shayla McCormick — So you just see the conversations beginning to shift.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — And then I’ll also say that as we implemented this, there were also some people that eventually exited the team because the dial was turned up on on, like, this is, this is what we’re displaying.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — And I think some people self eliminated because they’re, they were just like, I’m not going to live up to that. And so there were several people actually that, you know, exited. And that was a healthy thing and a good thing um because those things weren’t going to be modeled.

Shayla McCormick — And, you know, we we do shaping conversations even even at our staff meeting. Like I’ll i’ll give you an example. The other day at our staff meeting, we were sharing like we do wins at the beginning of our staff meeting. So stories of life change or how people are embodying the the life of our church. And one of the guys that is very new to our team, he’s been on the team for about three weeks.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yep.

Shayla McCormick — He was sharing and he was like, man, this weekend there was like this, this huge carafe of coffee that got spilled in the lobby.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — And he was like, all of these people like run over to the coffee spill and everybody’s grabbing stuff and trying to clean it up and whatever.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — And he was like, I’ve been in churches where people wrote a walk the other way. But he’s like it kind of looked like somebody threw money on the floor and people were going to grab it, but it was actually a coffee spill.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Love it.

Shayla McCormick — And I was able in that moment, because it’s a new staff member, and I said, hey, you know why you’re seeing that? It’s because the team in this room, our staff has modeled the value of “we own it” well. And they’ve seen us go first in all of those ways. And so they embody that too. So great job team owning it when there’s something that’s not even your job that you went and took care of, you know?

Rich Birch — Right. Love it. That’s…

Shayla McCormick — And so it’s kind of cool how how you can shape or, you know, facilitate conversations even around what they’re saying to highlight, this is why it’s happening and let’s celebrate that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s, that’s like 201, 301 leadership there. That’s to capture a moment like that and be able to point back and say, hey, that’s because of this value, the framework that you’ve designed and have been able to, you know, point your people towards. That’s, ah yeah, that’s, that’s amazing.

Rich Birch — How else do you, do how else, I know so in some churches, they’ll like go through these values, like once a staff meeting. They do a different one every time. Do you do anything like that? Is there teaching done around these? How, what does that, that part of it look like?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah. So we typically we typically pick one and talk about them in a staff meeting. Right now, we actually have one that is our theme for the year that we feel like God’s asked us to focus on kind of this one thing.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Shayla McCormick — And so we talk about that regularly at staff meeting. Because we do this, here’s what we’re going to do this week, you know. But we try to speak about at least one of them every staff meeting or highlight something like I just talked about, connect it back to a value.

Shayla McCormick — And then we do staff development days where where we do teachings, you know, specifically…

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — …on these on these, you know, values. But I think our biggest add value is that is the quarterly.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — But especially like as you’re onboarding new staff, I’m I’m seeing this now. We’ve we’ve had an influx of new staff. And I’m even rethinking like, okay, how am I being super intentional about connecting people to these values consistently?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Shayla McCormick — Because we all know a couple of people can disrupt your culture if, you know…

Rich Birch — Absolutely.

Shayla McCormick — …if they’re not modeling something well or they don’t understand it. And so I’m even like, okay, new season of like figuring out how am I gonna incorporate these even more…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — …into those conversations in different environments.

Rich Birch — Yeah, culture is so critically important. It is, you know, like there’s all those sayings, right? Like culture eats strategy for lunch. And, you know, we you can have all kinds of great plans, but man, if our team is not aligned around the right culture or, you know, it can become toxic, man, that’s—it can be really terrible.

Shayla McCormick — I would say we have more conversations…

Rich Birch — Talk to me about quarterly… Oh sorry. Go ahead.

Shayla McCormick — I would say we have more conversations about our values than we do job performance, you know?

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Well, because if you’re violating culture stuff, then that does start to get to like who you are as a person. It is more core to them than—yeah, like you say, I can teach you to get better at Planning Center…

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …or how to make better videos or whatever. Like there’s lots of what we do that we can train you to. But like, if you—at your core—if you really don’t want to, if you don’t believe the best in other people, or if you can’t, think about people first or, you know, live from the inside out. Like if you’re constantly guarding yourself, like that’s really hard to get under.

Rich Birch — So talk to me about quarterly. Like why so lots of churches, or I’ve heard churches, do this like on an annual basis. What led you to think about, you know, checking in quarterly?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah. So on an annual basis, we do a performance evaluation.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.

Shayla McCormick — But quarterly is when we do the values evaluation conversation.

Rich Birch — Okay. Okay. Right.

Shayla McCormick — It’s—again, it’s—you have to keep things in front of people so that they understand how important that is. We’ve all heard the term like “vision leaks,” right? If you don’t talk about those things consistently, it’s easy for people to forget about that.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — And most of the time, our corrective or harder conversations are going to be centered around these values.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — And to be honest, Rich, if we have too many of these conversations where people have like two negatives in their boxes, we’re talking about a performance improvement plan and/or an exit from the team. Because we believe in the culture that much and that it shapes our church. So really the quarterly is because we want to keep it in front of people…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — …and we want to keep them changing and growing in these areas so that we see that trickling down into the life of our church and even in our volunteers. And I think what this has done is really shaped—even though these are our staff and leadership values—it’s shaped so much of the culture of the church…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Shayla McCormick — …because you actually see our church begin to embody these things because that’s what they’re seeing the leadership do.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Love that. So, you know, I think Coastal will continue to grow. You guys will reach more people, launch more campuses.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — When you look up over to the horizon, what are your thoughts, questions you’re asking around how are you going to plan or adapt what we’re doing, evolve this thing to continue to push forward the staff culture? Any kind of questions on the horizon that you’re wondering about or thinking about for the future on this front?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Like my constant thought is, you know, as we grow, as we launch new locations, as we add staff—and the further my husband and I get—the more layers you add to your organization, the more difficult it is probably to maintain that heart, that culture, that vision. And so I’m a constant tinkerer. How can we do this better? How can we make this more available or visible? How can we continue to have these clarifying conversations? And so I think I’m asking myself in this season, how do I get the heart and vision from this top tier of leadership to be felt way down the organization?

Shayla McCormick — And so we’re even coming up with some things right now to be able to, when we’re onboarding staff, creating some little talks around those values that are coming from TJ or I, just so that they see that. And honestly, the thing that they always need to see is their pastors and their leaders modeling those things as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so true. Yep.

Shayla McCormick — So it’s this constant evaluation of—for me—even those top tier leaders that I’ve put in those positions have to be the ones that are that are modeling that.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And so I think I just keep asking myself, as we grow…

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — …what can I add or perfect or make better that allows this guy to continue to drive this organization and that we don’t lose just the authenticity of who we are as leaders, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — So…

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. And just as we come to land today’s episode, anything else you’d love to say? Any final thoughts, maybe for a leader who’s listening in and thinking, “Yeah, we got to take some steps towards this.” We’re going to link to this PDF in the show notes to show about the staff values, staff evaluation that we’ve been talking about here, friends. And the thing I love about this: it’s super clean, simple, easy to understand, but super powerful. I can see how, man, if we did this, it would make a huge difference. But, anything you’d love to share with us just as we land today’s episode?

Shayla McCormick — I would say all of this, like I just want to encourage those top-tier leaders is all of this starts at the top, right?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — We’ve heard that it’s more caught than taught. And I think as senior leaders, sometimes we underestimate what people are catching from our behavior and what we’re doing, not just what we’re saying.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yes.

Shayla McCormick — I think it’s easy to say all of these things, but what are they seeing you model? And I think that is of the utmost importance—that that happens at the top and that we never forget why we’re doing this and the value that it brings to our organizations. Especially as we grow and we get bigger and we have more demands on our time that we can’t forget the simple modeling of the things that we’ve put in place.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good.

Shayla McCormick — So, yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And that’s probably key to the core problem we talked about at the beginning—of values just staying on the wall somewhere. I think that the caught versus taught is a big piece of that. You know, at some level, I think in those organizations it’s like, “Yeah, we don’t actually believe that stuff.”

Shayla McCormick — Exactly.

Rich Birch — It looks good, but you know, we don’t believe it.

Shayla McCormick — Right.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Well, Shayla, this has been such a helpful, encouraging, super practical conversation today. I really appreciate it. If people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah. So they can follow our church on Instagram. It’s @coastalchurch – it’s probably the best way to get a window into our church. And I’m not super active on social media…

Rich Birch — Nice.

Shayla McCormick — …but it’s @shaylamccormick.

Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.

Shayla McCormick — But life is crazy. And I’m like, “Social media? I don’t know how to do it all.”

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Got to live life, not document it.

Shayla McCormick — Exactly.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Thanks so much, Shayla. Really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for being on the episode.

Shayla McCormick — Absolutely. Thanks, Rich.