Navigating Emotional Zones in Church Leadership

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Devin Goins, Executive Pastor of Strategic Development at Biltmore Church in western North Carolina, one of the fastest-growing churches in the country.

Is your church growing but you’re struggling to keep your team aligned and rowing in the same direction? Tune in as Devin outlines a simple yet powerful diagnostic tool that helps churches evaluate and improve staff alignment and organizational health.

• Growth requires change. // Many churches resist change because they assume what got them here is what’s driving growth. Devin challenges this mindset, noting that growth itself creates complexity, which demands new systems, strategies, and adjustments. This means constantly reevaluating lids like parking, kids’ space, and worship environments—not just in moments of constraint but ahead of high-attendance seasons. Leaders must prepare for what’s coming, not just manage what’s current.
• Layers of organization. // To truly understand what’s happening in your church, get to the ground level by listening to volunteers, attending huddles, and sitting with small groups. By observing how messages are communicated down the chain, you gain clarity on whether your team—and especially volunteers—are aligned with your vision.
• Three care zones. // Devin introduces a framework Biltmore uses internally to assess team alignment and well-being. Based on scope of care, this tool identifies how staff are engaging with the organization through red, yellow and green zones. The more of your staff that you can help move to the green zone, the higher alignment will be in your church.
• Red zone signs. // High stress or insecurity causes staff to focus only on themselves. They may appear withdrawn, burned out, or apathetic toward church goals. This could stem from external stress, misalignment with their role, or unclear expectations. They could have burnout from being in the wrong seat. They need honest conversations and be honest about why they do what they do.
• Yellow zone signs. // The yellow zone is the most common zone in growing churches. Staff in this zone have shifted from self-focus to team-focus, but often at the expense of broader church alignment. Teams in the yellow zone may create policies that favor their own department, compete for resources, or unintentionally reinforce silos.
• Green zone signs. // In the green zone staff have high security and low stress. Their scope of care extends beyond their department to the whole church. They’re vision-aligned, collaborative, and proactive. While not every team member can be in the green zone at all times, increasing this number improves organizational alignment dramatically.
• Alignment is not passive. // Misalignment isn’t just operational—it’s spiritual. The enemy often works through disunity, and realignment requires intentionality. Leaders can support movement from red or yellow zones to green by removing resource scarcity, eliminating “zombie” processes, and clearly communicating goals and expectations. It’s also important to reward green zone behavior and affirm cross-department collaboration.
• The role of executive leadership. // Executive pastors must lead the way by modeling unity. It’s easy to roll out new initiatives too quickly, but lasting change requires alignment at the top. Sometimes, slowing down for internal clarity results in faster organizational momentum. Avoid creating policies and procedures where structure replaces honest conversation. True alignment takes time and trust.

Download Biltmore Church’s red, yellow and green zone framework, and follow along with what they are doing at @biltmorechurch and @pastorbrucefrank.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. We are really talking about how we work together, what do we do as a team to kind of keep us focused and rowing in the same direction? I know. Listen, friends, if we’re honest, all of us are wrestling with this and need help in this area.

Rich Birch — And so we’ve got a real expert on the phone today on the call the phone whatever man 1990 called and wants their podcast back. We’ve got Devin Goins with us. he’s in an incredible church, Biltmore Church, a multi-site church in western North Carolina with seven locations, if I can count correctly, maybe eight with another one, a Spanish location service online. They’ve repeatedly been on the fastest growing church list in the country. He serves as the executive pastor of strategic development. That’s a fantastic title. Devin, welcome to the show.

Devin Goins — Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. My title, I think, has been voted repeatedly, is most likely to be created by AI, is what I’ve been told. So, for sure.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. That that’s a normal – I’ve joked in, in other contexts that, you know, leading in a fast growing multi-site church. I was like, we should just stop having titles because it’s like constantly changing, you know, there’s always new things coming.

Devin Goins — They’re buzzwords.

Rich Birch — Tell me about the church. Kind of tell us a little bit about Biltmore. Give us some context. Talk talk about that.

Devin Goins — Yeah. So a regional multi-site church, we’ve got seven campuses, including the Spanish campus, but about to be number eight is under construction.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Devin Goins — Number nine is kind of in the pipeline a little bit.

Rich Birch — Fantastic.

Devin Goins — So we’re building that that as we speak. And so yeah, just a day to day kind of feel like my, my job, even though it sounds like AI what we found is that functionally, our lead pastor decides the what. And along with our executive team, I try to help with the with the how each and every week.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Devin Goins — And so it’s been growing quite a bit and very thankful to our leadership for that. And just try to steward that the best we can. Western North Carolina is very diverse in terms of some of its, you know, political leanings. You got high, high views on either side, particularly with the town that we’re in near Asheville. And so we’re just very excited to continue to be able to serve this community each and every week.

Rich Birch — So good. You know, I there’s a lot I want to dig into today, but I’m sure leading in your context, I love that you’re, you know, launching another campus, thinking about the one beyond that, you’re growing church. You’re trying to you’re leading at the—I’ve talked about this in other contexts as well—leading at the intersection of vision and execution. Hey, how do we make this stuff happen? When you think about kind of leadership challenges that you’re facing that kind of been bubbling up, what are some of the things that that you know that you see you’re kind of dealing with these days?

Devin Goins — Yeah. Well, I think with growth obviously comes complexity. We hear that a lot. And so how do you keep people aligned with that? I think oftentimes we think that we’re growing because of something. And so we don’t we sometimes to be resistant to change in that because we think, hey, this growth is happening for some reason. Why would we want to do anything to change that? And the reality is, if you’re growing, that’s when you need to be changing.

Devin Goins — And so I’m thankful to be able to serve our lead pastor, Bruce Frank – one of the hardest workers I know. He’s amazing. He is great at navigating through change with people. And so we’re just seeing that is that, you know, we aren’t content with the status quo, with, we believe that God’s called us to more. And so, you know, day to day, I think one of the things that we’re looking at is our lids. I’m sure that y’all have covered many times on the show parking, kids, and worship are lids. And so I do a lot of research of going, hey, not only where are we now, but y’all y’all know and your listeners know that there’s cadences for the week and for the year that you’re going to have. And so just because you have capacity in June doesn’t mean necessarily you’re going to have capacity in February.

Rich Birch — Right.

Devin Goins — And so I try to be proactive with that and kind of highlight both hot spots and some cold spots of where we could potentially improve.

Rich Birch — Yeah that’s cool. There’s a, man, there’s a lot there. We might come back to that, you know that lids conversation because there’s definitely something there on the physical side. But when it comes to kind of managing your people, managing the team, you know, there’s the, the big ideas of like, okay, we want to do these things, but then we’ve got to actually then get people to do that. Like we gotta move people through that. What are you learning on that front about managing your people, helping them kind of think through managing change in their in their in their work, in their lives.

Devin Goins — Yeah. Yeah. So I think you’ve got to pay attention to the layers of your organization. And I think that sometimes we forget the last layer. And that’s the staff to the volunteers. And so you have got to communicate something so clearly up at the top that your leadership tier, that your executive tier is sick of talking about it. They’re sick of hearing about it. Because that’s when it’s going to start going down into, you know, your coordinators, into your specialists that are actually doing things on staff.

Devin Goins — But then, you know, we made a decision recently that affected one of our positions and, the volunteers that they were over. And I actually sat in on one of their huddles and, and I got to hear their take and how they were explaining the decision that we made in a room on a whiteboard, how they were having to actually explain it to these volunteers, and it affected them personally. And so I’m a big fan of, you don’t want to stay down there but get as far in the ground level as you can. I, last Sunday went to a mature adults group that we have at the church, and I just said, hey, can I sit? And they, you know, were poking jokes at me the entire time, but I got to see, you know, on boots on the ground, what are things like. So obviously saturating “the why”. The bigger you get, the longer runway you have to have. But some people are successful at first at, you know, being a church that has a one-year-runway and they have success because they’re agile. But then you add locations, you add staff, and you have to be more and more intentional with that.

Devin Goins — And so now that we’re at, you know, seven about to be eight campuses, we’re really trying. We don’t want to lose the ability to move quickly, but we we need to make sure that we move effectively and that that vision drips all the way down, not just to our staff, but to our volunteers as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah. So good. I love your clear thinking on that. That’s, that’s fantastic. You’ve, I’ve seen a framework that you use internally. You call it red zones, yellow zones, green zones. Can you talk us through what these zones are first and then where where did this idea come from? Kind of give us…

Devin Goins — Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Birch — …the the germ of it. Where where did all this come from.

Devin Goins — Yeah. So these zones are based on the scope of care. and so the scope of care, if you’re in the red zone, that means you’re highly stressed or you’re highly insecure. We’re talking about staff members here. Your scope of care tends to be yourself or themselves if we’re talking about staff members.

Devin Goins — And then if they’re moderately stressed and this is what I see with a whole lot of churches, whether they’re growing or shrinking, is that they have a lot of people that are in the yellow zone. And that’s whenever they start thinking about, not just themselves, they’re beyond that, but they’re thinking primarily about, their team. If you’re a multi-site church, then you’re starting to think about your campus. Not that there’s ever any of that going on.

Devin Goins — But, and then finally, if you’re in the green zone, which means you’re low stress, high security, high vision, then you’re going to be thinking about the entire church, and that’s going to be your scope of care. And what we found is that the more people you can have, you aren’t going to have everybody in the green zone. But the more is an executive pastor or leadership team that you can move into that green zone, or at least out of the red zone, we really want them in the green zone. The more that you can have in there, you don’t have a high chance of high alignment in your church.

Devin Goins — Moderate alignment happens because of the teams and all that when it’s in the yellow zone. But then low alignment happens when you have a whole lot of people that are in that red zone. And so we have this kind of framework that we use, and it helps us be able to identify, because we don’t want our people in the red zone. That’s not beneficial to them. That’s not beneficial to the church. And so it gives us a chance to pastor them through. And there’s many reasons for that.

Devin Goins — The kind of origin of it. I’ve been on staff now for, for 12 years, and I started as the communications director. And with the communications team, we had just gone multi-site when I got here. Our lead pastor, Bruce Frank, Carl Sutherland, our creative pastor – they had managed all the, like, really tough, like modernizing the worship service. What’s this idea of multi-site? And you’re given to all those things. And they had done that great. And we were experiencing a lot of growth because of that. It was being, rewarded, I think, for their efforts.

Devin Goins — But as the comms guy, I was starting to see under the surface. If you get nothing from this podcast, talk to your comms guy, because they’re going to see the underbelly of what is working. And there’s areas that were handling the stress very well. And there’s also areas that we’re still very much in that like one site church, or the number that we were, that we’re struggling to to kind of adapt to the new reality.

Rich Birch — I, I love this. Friends, a little editorial note. The thing I love that you’ve done here—not surprising; you come from a comms background—you’ve tried to put to a a fairly simple, you know, red, yellow, green, on a complex and important topic. And that clarification, man, I can see how that would help drive internal. Because you have to get common language and understanding first before you can get that kind of alignment. So let’s talk about red zone. How do you identify that teammates, areas, departments are in the red zone. What’s does that look like to you? Give me some examples of that.

Devin Goins — Absolutely. And, you know, I think it’s important to think through. This doesn’t mean an employee is a bad employee. I’ll kind of share a story about me two years ago when I was in the red zone. But it does mean that there’s a there’s something not working right that needs to be handled. So signs that we see… Are these people afraid or nervous in meetings with their supervisor. Whenever they have that one on one, or they always kind of shrinking away? Are they afraid that something, did I do something wrong? Things like that. They generally have an apathy towards team or organizational goals. Hey, we’re doing this whole new initiative and it’s going to be great. And we’re going to see, you know, this many baptisms. Hopefully next year is fruit of it. And they’re just apathetic towards it. But really what what kind of sums it up is their first thought or your first thought may be when something is presented or implemented. Hey how does this affect me? How does this affect me? What what is my, what what is the cost that I’m going to have with this?

Devin Goins — Now again, we can easily go, hey, that means that somebody is, you know, a bad employee or in the wrong seat. Oftentimes, it’s an outside life stressor. And so, you know, for me, two years ago, my, my wife and I suffered a devastating miscarriage. It was something that I pastored some people through that before. But it wasn’t something that I thought that we were going to navigate ourselves. And so during that time, I was definitely in that red zone thinking. Hey, we got this great new, you know, project, and we’re rolling out this program, and I’m sitting there doing, man, I’m grieving. And I’ve also got a grieving wife, and we’re trying to grieve together but separate in timelines that that put us where I was thinking about myself. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it is something that we need to handle.

Devin Goins — A couple other things that can lead to that. I’ll put this on our tier and executive pastors and leadership. Sometimes it’s a lack of clear vision and strategy and people not consistently hearing the why or the how. So it’s very important that we don’t go, you’re in the red zone. You’re bad. how do we handle this? How do you fix this? We need to look in the mirror and go, hey, are we actually consistently given that that how and why?

Devin Goins — The other thing is that it could be consistent redlining and burnout, possibly due to being in the wrong seat. Burnout is interesting. You can fake it for a while. But if you’re in the wrong seat and you know it, and you’ve got that imposter syndrome for for, you know, day after day, week after week, eventually it’s going to catch up to you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true.

Devin Goins — And so we can see we can see that. So, and then we’ve got solutions just to get out of the red zone, obviously meeting with a counselor. That’s what I had to do, processing for the grief. Having honest conversations with a supervisor. I feel like supervisors know sometimes you’re in the wrong seat, but they’re waiting for you to be able to be the one. And I’m not sure that’s best, but sometimes that happens to to identify it. So everyone loses when you’re in the wrong seat and everybody wins whenever you’re in the right seat. And then finally, I know it’s cliche, but you’ve got to saturate yourself in why you do what you do and who you serve. Ministry is the best job in the world when you remember that. But when the hustle and bustle gets there and you forget why, there is a lot of stress in these roles and there is not a whole lot of credit sometimes or reward, at least on this side of heaven. It can be the best job in the world, or it can be the worst job in the world, depending on how connected you are with that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I think that you’re there’s a lot there, but your clear distinction around, the kind of core behavior or mindset of someone in the red zone is it’s very much about them.

Rich Birch — Everything – it’s… I’ve joked in other contexts, or not joked, I’ve said in other contexts there’s this idea of locus of control where it’s like, you know, external locus, internal locus of control. External locus of control people are always like: stuff happens to me. Everyone’s doing things to me. And that’s a, that’s a tough place to lead from for sure. So if, if that’s the red zone and then green zone is this idea of like, hey, I’m aligned with, like I’m thinking about the church. I’m thinking about the vision, the mission. I’m fully aligned with where we’re going. Explain the yellow zone to me. Help me understand where to… Because the two extremes I get, I get the like, oh, I’m super, you know, we all know that person where like, something happens and they’re like, oh my goodness. Or we know the person that’s strong in the line. What does the yellow zone look like?

Devin Goins — Yeah. So this one’s hidden often. But I would say that particularly in growing churches, is one of the most common areas that people are in. And the reason is, you’ve, you’ve had this growth where you’ve whether you’re shrinking or growing. It’s applying pressure. And, and usually unless you’re just in dire straits, you have friends with the people that you work with, the department that you’re in, the campus that you’re in. And so you don’t just go all the way down to thinking of me, but you also realize that their survival and kind of like this group mentality, this herd mentality that the herd is just your your area. And so one of the things that we see common and I see this all the time, is policies and procedures are often created in a vacuum that favors a team or a department. So I’ll pick on myself here a little bit again – comms guy. We started getting requests that were, you know, like 7 to 10 days out for like full fledged videos. And we’re like, hey, the only way we could do this is if I say, if I call my wife and say, hey, am I going to see you for the next, you know, 7 to 10 days, and that’s not that’s not good.

Devin Goins — So what we did, and it seems great on the surface, we said, hey, let’s create a policy and let’s create a procedure, but we’re going to create that procedure where it’s going to be a creative request form, a communications request form. And we’re going to put on there. You need to let us know this four weeks out in order for us to give you the deliverables. Now that seems great. And I’m high-fiving all of our you know, we’ve come up, we’ve had the great brainstorming ah meeting. But what we actually did there is we managed the symptom. We managed the symptom of getting things late. Well, when you actually dig into it, what was happening was we were growing at such a pace that smaller events were now big events because of their size. And so there was additional details that they needed to work through and they were waiting on their supervisors for. And so inadvertently, what I may have done is I may have put, if kids was waiting until, you know, ten days out, and they didn’t get their information, you know, ten days out.

Devin Goins — Now I’m putting them in a double bind in a no-win situation where I’ve created a policy that helps me, but it doesn’t help them. And so that that’s very easy to do. It’s very easy to go, hey, we need this tool. But this tool is really geared towards lessening my load as a department. And that’s that’s easy to do. It’s natural to do. But as the executive team, executive pastors and leadership, we have to fight against that. Another couple of signs that could help with that or show that is competition takes place with other departments for promotional awareness. So they’re trying to outcompete each other of, hey, I’ve got you know, if you’re VBS and your student camp are like at the same time, who can be louder to, you know, kind of get an awareness of those events. But the key thing that they see and you’ll see, this is the first thought when something new is presented or implemented, how will this impact my team?

Devin Goins — And so you’ll see this a little bit, something’s being revealed in an all staff meeting and there’s a text thread and it’s for, you know, that department. Hey, did you hear about this? How is this going to affect this? How is this? And you’re you’re bonding together, but you aren’t bonding together for the church. You’re you’re fighting for survival for for you. The thing that I will say, this is where the executive pastor, executive team can help with this. And so you can help look at organizational growth and scarcity of resources that can cause that. So you can look at that. Another thing that you can look at is look at inherited processes and goals. I call these, zombie processes. It’s a process that’s been there, and maybe a staff member is doing this… Oh, Rich, I, I got to tell you a story.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Devin Goins — I need to I need to tell her about this before this podcast airs. But, a couple of years ago, I was the comms guy, again, I kept going to our welcome desk throughout the week. And it was some of this great content. I think it was on like, spiritual warfare or something like that. And I think it’s like Billy Graham, good content. But the cover of it was like these angels and demons battling, and it just was not our brand. It was not anything, you know, that we would, we would want. And so I would go up and I would see it and I would take them and I would put them in the trash. I’m getting good content, but I’m like, I don’t know if this is approved. I don’t know where this is coming from. You know, all that. And then the next week I would come back to the desk and there was the same material again. And I’m like, okay, so I take it, I put it in the trash. Then it starts getting where I put it in the trash. The next day it’s back and I’m like, who is here? This is obviously a staff member. This is obviously somebody, you know, and so I go out to the lobby and I see one of one of our ladies that’s been on staff for many years, and she is so awesome and will run the play in for years upon years.

Devin Goins — And I see her with these things, with these pamphlets in her hands. And I’m like, hey, you know, are you the one that’s, you know, putting these out here? And she goes, yes, Devin, I am. And you would not believe how popular these things are. I put them down and they are gone the next day. And so I keep printing them out and doing all that. I’m like, oh, man.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing.

Devin Goins — So we had a talk and said, hey, can we modernize the cover? This is obviously, you know, went for there. But be careful, though, sometimes your most dedicated employees are doing these zombie processes. And then, you know, also just making sure that you don’t have competing goals and that you’re planning holistically with that. So…

Rich Birch — Right.

Devin Goins — …a couple of things just to get out of that: if the policy or anything primarily benefits only your team or department, you got to consider if that’s worth doing. Planning ahead and planning together, and then just aligning with a strategic plan we found has helped a lot with that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. How did how has this impacted the kind of internal conversations, this framework. What does this look like operationally kind of on the ground.? Like what is this is it does this bubble up or people like, they give you a stamp and say or a sticker and you’re like, you’re in the red zone. You know, what’s that what’s that look like?

Devin Goins — Yeah. No, we definitely try to reward like, I’ve got a production director now that’s amazing. And he’s got a video background. And so he just filmed all of our videos for our adventure week, what we call our VBS, and they are amazing. And so I try to make a point of that to complement where, where we can, any sort of thing with that, to be able to say, hey, people really just when they know they’re doing a good job, you know what gets rewarded, gets repeated. And sometimes rewarded is just, you know, calling it out and saying it. So it’s that.

Devin Goins — I think it’s also, and this is the frustrating thing, is whenever something pops up, and I have situations right now where I want to go yellow zone, so, so fast because there’s a stress point that’s there. And so I’ll have an employee say, hey, this happened and this is against, you know, our policy. Can we, you know, gate this so it has to go through another approval process. And it’s frustrating, but to sit back and go, okay, let’s put ourselves in the other department shoes. What what are some of the pressures that they’re facing, and how can we go green zone thinking of going, what’s the stress behind all this and how can we work together for it? I’m not saying that we do that perfect. It annoys some of my employees sometimes because I think they want me to just come down with the hammer. But I think ultimately, when we’re all on the same team, it’s felt and we know that we can get further, faster.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. I like particularly your your conversation around policies there because you know, and I’ve, I’ve said in other context that policies are if your policy is just trying to you have a policy to try to avoid a conversation, then we really shouldn’t have that policy. You should just have the conversation. Like so using the example of like we’ve all lived, you have a very vivid example. Hey we need this video in x number of days, weeks, you know whatever. And it’s not, how do you actually solve that then? If we don’t have a policy, if we don’t say it’s four weeks, what do you functionally do to try to drive alignment? Have more conversation? Is that the goal?

Devin Goins — Yeah, yeah. I think the conversation has got to be key. I would say that sometimes we do a policy to avoid those conversations. And the other thing, whatever the structure is, whatever that tear down in your church from the lead pastor is they have got to be on the same page, and they have got to be willing to slow roll something until they get on the same page.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Devin Goins — So I’m one of four executive pastors, and man, I’ve got some ideas that I think are just amazing. I think that they would push us forward. I think they would be great. And and to be honest, I’ve been given by our lead pastor some positional authority to be able to roll some of those out. But if I do that, and I don’t have my other three teammates on the same page…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Devin Goins — …it’s probably not going to stick. And when something doesn’t stick that that trails off that that continues on in your organization, you start having questions like, hey, is this going to be another one of X, Y, and Z? I know we’re talking about it. I know Devin’s really excited about it, but I talked to my guy and and he didn’t know about it. Or he he’s got some questions about it. So that that second layer has got to be on the same page. And sometimes you gotta you’ll actually get there faster, being slower and waiting for everybody to come along to it, refining it. But you never want to put your teams where they’re against each other, and they don’t have the authority to solve it because their executive pastors upstream are not on the same page.

Devin Goins — So a commitment to that. We meet, quite a bit, and sometimes it feels long. But I know that whenever we, we exit that room, we’re on the same page, and we’re all going to be saying the same thing, and that’s important.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. My friend Jenni Catron talks about the fact that our cultures are not as good as we think they are. You know, the we as as senior leaders, we think, man, it’s great to work here. This is fantastic. But it’s actually not the case. You got to get out and talk to people. There’s some resonance here with that. I think there’s a similar issue around alignment. We’re probably not as aligned as we think we are. Kind of dig that out a little bit more. You know, it’s it’s this is an important issue for us to really own at the senior level. Help us understand that. Talk that talk that through a little bit.

Devin Goins — Yeah. No I think with alignment what we have to think through, one, I think that we believe that we can drift towards alignment. And sometimes we do say with the gospel we have this alignment so we should naturally, if we’re all Christ followers. And and the reality is nothing is not passive. It doesn’t it doesn’t happen. So I actually think alignment is is very spiritual. And I’ll take it from, from two angles. One, think about the Scripture in general. One of the main purposes of Scripture, I believe, is to align our life based off of biblical principles that we see in God’s Word, and biblical truths and the gospel. And so I think that you think of the word sanctification. That’s really just alignment of aligning your life personally. And so I think it is a spiritual concept that can have organizational stuff. The flip side is also true, is that I believe that that the devil knows that he can, if he can misalign, if he can use misalignment for a church, he can greatly reduce its effectiveness.

Devin Goins — So it’s not just this passive thing. A well-resourced church, you may go, man, I’m not a well resourced church, you know, X, Y, and Z. If you have a church building, if you have a congregation, if you’re meeting, you’re you’re well resourced by the world’s standards. You can make a difference with your resources. And so I believe the devil goes constantly and goes, hey, a way for me to minimize their effectiveness, I can’t tackle their resources, but I can make them much more inability to be able to manage those and reduce their effectiveness, because I can get, you know, departments against each other. And if I can make the enemy Fran from kids, as opposed to the devil, I’m gonna greatly reduce that church’s effectiveness as opposed to, being able to do that.

Rich Birch — That, Dude, that is so true. You know, I’m laughing. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s so true. Like, you know, we’ve we’ve seen that. It’s like, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about how we’re talking to each other rather than working on the thing that the mission that God’s given us. That’s that’s so fantastic. Well, maybe there’s a leader that’s listening in today and they think, man, my team, the people I work with, maybe me is, you know, shifting towards yellow to red. What’s like a step or two you think we could take to try to address that?

Devin Goins — Yeah. So I think a couple of things. If you are in positional authority, use that positional authority. We sometimes think of that as being a bad thing. And we should, you know, not not lead through that, but use that for good and remove bottlenecks or resource scarcity. If there’s something sometimes we’re guilty of trying to be good stewards and we order just enough of a product or a supply. But really what we’ve done downstream is we’ve made departments compete against each other for that. And then if somebody doesn’t return it and then there’s these battles. So the, the okay with, you know, trying to reduce that resource scarcity, any bottlenecks that you see also.

Devin Goins — Also, manage the calendar holistically. Just because it’s good doesn’t mean it’s best. And particularly if you are scaling these events and these things that you need to promote, they get bigger over time. So as you scale in terms of size, you may have to look at something and go, man, that was good, but is it best for right now? And then something that we touched on before is just continually highlight and reward, Green Zone thinkers. You know, some of the signs of being in that green zone is that you’re complimenting departments five times more than you’re giving a critique. So, you know, just being able to reward that whenever you see that. And then also make sure that you’ve got some sort of church wide strategy. We can very quickly do why aren’t they doing what we want them to be doing? Why aren’t they aligning around this? Do they know it?

RicH Birch — Yes.

Devin Goins — Have we have we actually talked about it enough that they know that inside and out? Do they know the objectives? Do they know our, you know, data points that we’re actually looking at? Do they know what we feel like our vision is, and why God has put us at this spot at this time? That that has to just be saturated in that continually.

Rich Birch — Oh, it’s so true. It’s been said that, you know, there’s that saying vision leaks. But I heard someone recently add vision leaks and alignment evaporates.

Devin Goins — Ooh yeah.

Rich Birch — …like it just, you know, we we have to work at this constantly. Can I double click on the resource scarcity idea? I think that’s a particular for executive pastors. There are some XPs that can be seen as the “no” people like. And I know it’s none of the people listening to this podcast, but it’s, talk to us about that. I think you’re absolutely right. I think a part of our job is to there’s a train going down the tracks. Our job is to get far enough out and lay down tracks so that thing can keep going. But that means we got to be thinking ahead on some of these issues. What does that functionally look like for you, for your team? How do we ensure that we have enough resource so that we’re not getting people to fight over it down downstream?

Devin Goins — So really going after those sacred cows, at first, I think is is good. Sometimes when there’s a period of growth we tie everything that’s been going on at that time is the causation for that growth. And sometimes what we found is that sometimes something can grow not because of something, but in spite of something. And that can be very dangerous whenever you get those two things confused, because you might be doubling down on something…

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

Devin Goins — …that something else is working so well that’s able to overcome that. But you’ve identified that as the thing that’s your special sauce. And so to to really look at that and go, hey, let’s discern what do we think is actually moving the needle here?

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Devin Goins — And how do we make sure that we, we, sufficiently resource that and there may be items that we have to let go of as, as we scale. I call it organizational sprawl. That’s a tendency that happens is we’re really excited about this thing. And so we launched it and it’s front focused and all that. And then it is this with some resources over here, but it’s kind of dwindling. But then we have this other thing over here where excited about. So then we resource that and inadvertently we end up with a budget crunch. And so everybody’s not resourced quite to their effectiveness.

Devin Goins — And so I think being able to identify, hey, what are some key focuses right now, work that into the strategic plan. And if you’re growing and you aren’t actively cutting something, again it’s most of us don’t have ministries that are bad. Most of us don’t have items that we’re like that is completely ineffective. But it could be stifling and it could be taking some resources that you really need to get to that next level and what’s working. So obviously that goes back to communication, that goes back to buy in, that goes back to some great leadership traits that our lead pastor has of being able to simplify as we grow. But that’s, that’s just key because otherwise it’s going to be a smaller piece of the pie as you continue to grow and you’re going to face that resource scarcity.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I hope you were listening in, friends. That little nugget there is worth the price of admission. That has been my experience in leading in fast growing churches is what got us here, is not going to get us there. And we have to, I forget who said you got to shoot your darlings, you got to kill the stuff that’s working but isn’t pushing you towards, you know, the mission. And that is hard to do. That is that is difficult. It’s difficult, long work. But that’s why God’s put us in the roles we’re in. That’s a part of our job. And I just literally just recently last week, week, two weeks ago, was talking to a church leader about a program that by all expenses, they were on the outside saying, hey, this thing is working. Like it’s like if you were to judge you and say, this is working. But when you look up under the hood, it wasn’t pushing the mission forward. And they’re working with their team to say, well, this is the end of it. We’re, we’re, we’re, we’re sundowning it. And I was like, good for you. That’s what we got to do.

Rich Birch — We’ve got we’re going to link to a resource. This is a resource that you use internally. This is that working together document. Tell us a little bit about this document. We’ll make it available for folks. But this is a great resource for them.

Devin Goins — Yeah, obviously we’re audio only. and so there’s, there’s a document that’s a PDF that we use. It’s actually the slide deck, that I use with it and the diagnostic tool. It’s got the scope of care and what you’re really leading people through. And there’s several points that that we didn’t even cover a day of helping people identify which zone are they in, what’s kind of some causes that might be putting them there, and then what what are some ways that you can get out of there. And then of course, with the green zone, how how if you are there, can you stay there? Because it’s not going to happen naturally. Something got you there. And we want to keep you there. And as leaders, we won’t be able to help you, and disciple you in that way.

Devin Goins — And so hopefully it’s a blessing. It’s something that we did, you know, a 20 to 30 minute, all-staff, and then a lot of departments then went out and said, okay, let’s we’ve got our personal stuff that we’re dealing with. Where do we think we are as a department?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Devin Goins — And how can we as a department actually start to do a little bit more green zone thinking? How can we align objectives? Where are we doing passion projects that probably really don’t, it’s not that they don’t align, but they also don’t push it as far forward. So that’s been very helpful for us as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. So, so helpful. Again, I think there are listeners who are listening in who a light bulb has gone off and they’re like, you know, there’s this team member who just get under my skin because they don’t get it. They don’t get it. They’re always thinking about themselves. And they and we just have not given that person the words to lead them out of the red zone, you know, and get them into green. I think you’ve done a great task here. This is fantastic. Any kind of final words as we wrap up today’s episode?

Devin Goins — No, I think, just don’t discount your value as a as a leader of the church. You know, be encouraged. These are these are good times. Don’t be afraid to to have these things take some time. That’s that’s one of the things our lead pastor, I think one of the great benefits that we’ve had with him is just consistency and planting seeds. Often with alignment, it takes time, it takes a lot of hard conversations, but it’s worth it. And I do believe that that, the Lord will will bless it. Because we, we ultimately we aren’t just aligning to ourselves or our ideals. We’re trying to align people towards, towards the gospel and that we can share that with even more people. So keep fighting the good fight. You’re valuable. And, I hope, today helped.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s super helpful. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them? Online?

Devin Goins — Yeah. Please, please visit our, our social, for the church, @biltmorechurch, on Instagram, Facebook, all the above. I’m not in the comms team now, but I hired people that are much better than I was and so they do a fantastic job.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Devin Goins — I’ve got I’ve got an Instagram, but it’s just a whole lot of photos of the western North Carolina mountains.

Rich Birch — Hey!

Devin Goins — …that’s nice for that. So if you want that, that’s that’s good. If you want church stuff, the church channel and then our, our lead pastor, @pastorbrucefrank – you can follow him there. And he’s got great content as well.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Devin. I really appreciate you being here today and all the best as you continue to lead at Biltmore.

Devin Goins — Thank you. Thanks for having me on.