Conversation with Todd WIlson

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Welcome to the Leading Conversations Podcast, sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network.
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On each episode, JD Pering will have conversations with church planting pastors and leaders from around the country.
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You can learn more about how to connect with Excel at the end of this podcast.
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Let's join JD now and listen in on this leading conversation.
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Well, welcome to another edition of the Leading Conversations Podcast with Excel Leadership Network.
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And today we are very privileged to have the great, the wonderful, the mighty, the powerful Todd Wilson with us.
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Todd from uh exponential uh entrepreneur, government worker, uh international spy, author, all those things.
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So, Todd thanks for being here.
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JD, it's great to be with you.
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I'm excited to talk with you.
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And we are talking to you uh from the Nashville area.
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Is that correct?
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That's right.
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We've recently uh, I'd like to say we've recently settled, but we're still in the process after six months of trying to be settled.
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So I think we're just about there.
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What's the best thing about living there?
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Uh grandkids.
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That's the easiest question you're gonna ask me.
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Okay, what's the second best thing about living there?
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I don't have grandkids there, so uh Middle Tennessee is beautiful.
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Really?
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Okay, yeah.
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Uh yeah I'd like to say, but I might get in trouble, that uh uh all of the conservative people from California that are moving to Middle Tennessee, you know, is is kind of nice too.
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So yeah, we're we're sending them there.
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It's not helping us too much, but um hey, tell us the story, your story growing up.
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Uh uh what that was like, and then how you uh came to Jesus.
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Yeah.
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I uh when I reflect back, JD, I I was in a solid middle class family, I'd say uh a morally sound family, not a Christian family.
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You know, we were not really part of church.
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I I vaguely remember, you know, maybe every once in a while on Easter going kind of thing, but uh I did not grow up in the church, uh, but I did grow up with, you know, a fairly good set of morals and solid parents.
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Um, I'm one of the weird people who by age 12 or 13 knew what I wanted to be someday.
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I uh was sitting in the back of chemistry class.
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Uh, this is when there were only chalkboards and no whiteboards, and the chemistry teacher was drawing a picture of an atom, and uh uh I was mesmerized.
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And when I say mesmerized, I went home that day and told my parents, I want to be a nuclear physicist someday.
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I just was mesmerized by how in the world can somebody draw a picture of something that they've never seen.
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And so there was just, and that'll play into my calling later when we talk about it, but just being mesmerized as a kid that someone knew so much about something they'd never actually seen and they could draw a picture of it.
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So about a year later, again, you know, blue-collar, middle class family, I had to come home and do my chores every day before I could go play with friends.
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My dad had just put a new hedge all the way around the yard.
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And my job was to water all that hedge around the entire yard before I could go play with my friends.
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And uh the very first day I figured out and rigged up an irrigation system that I could go home and just turn on the hose, and the hedge would be watered.
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I could go play for an hour and come back, and all I had to do was turn off the water.
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And instead of getting upset, my parents said, You don't need to be a nuclear physicist, you need to be a nuclear engineer.
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And so by age 13, that was I set my sights on being a nuclear engineer, and everything else was in my way.
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I was not somebody who wanted to spend a lot of time in college, I wanted to get through college and and get out there into the working world.
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So, you know, by the time I went to college, I met my wife Anna there uh in North Carolina, and uh I'll just pause there and I can tell you nuclear nuclear, where did you go?
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North Carolina State, first college that had a research reactor, and uh so I did a four-year get my nuclear engineering degree, and and uh after during my sophomore year, uh it's really kind of astounding.
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Uh, a group called Naval Reactors, which Admiral Rickover, who was the founder of nuclear power in the Navy and the first Nautilus submarine, his organization that oversees all of the nuclear things we do out there in ships, um, they showed up at my door during college.
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And they had already, this is before big data, they had already profiled me.
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They knew what I did in high school, not just my grades, but the leadership things I did, and I I fit the mold.
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I somehow I, you know, between my grades and my background, they recruited me into uh the nuclear program for the Navy.
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And uh they probably heard that there's a 13-year-old who's bent on being a nuclear engineer, and there's I don't know how many, I don't know too many 13-year-olds uh that are there, but uh I'm sorry, go ahead.
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Well, I told you it was a bit odd.
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Uh we'll get there on calling, but I you know, fast forward 40 years, I I did a book on calling, and then I did uh stories of people, the backstories of people's calling.
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And to a person, every time I do these backstories of calling, um, you can see the inklings of a person's calling all the way, you know, it's back in age five to 12.
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It's it's there.
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So on one hand, it's surprising that it was a nuclear engineer, but on the other, um, what's fun is that my calling's not really the nuclear engineering part, but you can see my actual calling through the experiences that led me down that path.
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And we can talk about that more later, too, if you want.
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Yeah, so how how did you um go from a nuclear engineer recruit by the Navy into becoming a believer?
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Yeah, so I what what I like to say is that I I've had I'll say two spiritual conversions.
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I had uh coming out of college, my wife and I got married a week after college, we dated all the way through college.
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Um, she had grown up Catholic, I had grown up not really in church.
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Um and by the time we started thinking about kids, it's like, you know, we need some religion in our life.
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And we still weren't at church, but uh what who a person who had become my best friend at the time, Troy McMahon.
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Uh Troy and his wife Janet, uh, we were in the Washington, D.C.
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area, and Troy and I had to commute every week for six months back and forth to graduate school up in Pittsburgh.
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Our wives stayed in D.C.
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We commuted on weekends back to see him.
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And I can tell you the point on the Pennsylvania Turnpike where just about every week on the way back uh or home to DC, Troy would try to share Jesus with me.
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And uh I I finally told him, uh, Troy, I see my wife for a day and a half a week.
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Why in the world am I gonna waste half a day at church?
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Uh if if you'll stop talking about this Jesus guy, uh when we permanently move back to DC, we will go to church, we'll try church with you.
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And so it's really fun that this little church, JD, um it that at the time had probably never been more than 200.
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From my perspective as a 23-year-old, everybody's over 65, the preaching isn't that good, the music isn't that good.
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There's not a lot redeeming about the experience, and yet when we went uh on the way home, there was this wow, it's like God's talking, like you know, this is kind of weird.
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It's like through that message, God's talking to us.
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And three months later, we were baptized.
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So I like to say we were baptized uh not because of this church, but uh, well, I guess because of the church, but not because of its attractional features.
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It's it was their ability to speak the truth and you know, present the Bible, and and uh what's really fun about uh that first conversion, JD, is that little church.
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Um, what has come out of that church?
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Troy McMahon went on to be the very first campus pastor of the first campus community.
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Troy's one of the few people who's almost as smart as you.
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We were both in the naval reactors program together.
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We went in the same day, uh entered the naval reactors program the same day.
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That's how we met and became good friends and got sent off to graduate school at the same time together, and so we were doing life together.
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And Troy's a pastor's kid, he comes up, he was the opposite of me.
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I mean, he had his whole life in church, so uh, you know, Troy is Troy and Janet baptized Anna and I, and out of that little church, Troy went on to eventually go into we did exponential grew uh Brett Andrews came out of that church, planted New Life Christian Church.
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That's where I went on staff eventually out of the marketplace.
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That church is the founding church of Exponential.
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If we actually drew the multiplication chain out of, I'm not saying because of me, I'm saying that church, the things that came out of that church that was never more than 200 people that nobody would ever write an outreach magazine article about.
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It's just astounding.
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And and so I Troy went on to a career at General Mills initially.
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I went, I got sent up to oversee a shipyard in Maine with the Navy, and I experienced what you'd call an early halftime experience.
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Um, I had promoted way too quickly, I was overseeing 6,000 people at an industrial activity at an early age, and it just was crazy, crazy, crazy.
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And I started wrestling with on one hand, I wanted to stay with naval reactors the rest of my life, and on the other hand, it's like, well, I got a lot more years left in the future than I have behind me.
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What am I gonna do with the rest of my life?
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And this entrepreneurial switch started going off.
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I felt I need to go start a company, and so over the course of about two years, Bob Buford's book Halftime, came out.
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I read the book and it's like, man, this guy is speaking my language.
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I need to move on.
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Uh, my brother and I put business plans together and really through an act of God, I won't go into all the details, uh, was about to pull the string, had made the decision to do the company, start a company, and the plans abruptly changed.
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I got pulled back to Washington, D.C.
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by the admiral I was working for.
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And in that two years, my home church, New Life Christian church, Brett Andrews, just started.
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You need to not start a company, you need to come into ministry, you need to help us figure out church planting.
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You need the, you need the, you need the, you need to.
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Is what you'd take me out to lunch with all these you need the, you need the, you need to.
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And my answer was always the same.
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Brett, I'm I have no Bible college or seminary background, and I don't want to have one.
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Um I'm I'm I'm leaving the Navy because of upward mobility, and I want to go start a company.
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Why in the world would I ever want to go on staff at a church when I have no desire to ever be a lead pastor?
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So I'm gonna go into ministry with no credentials, and I'm gonna go into a position that has no upward mobility.
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This makes no sense at all.
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And Brett would just keep saying, Well, we have all kinds of stuff we want to do.
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We want to start churches and we want to be a church planning church, and uh, you need to come help us figure that out.
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And so I what I call my second conversion experience really was a bit more like a burning bush experience.
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I it's gonna sound crazy, but I can remember riding on the train to work, trying to figure out what I'm gonna do.
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And you've seen those commercials, it was like there's a little devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other shoulder, and in one ear is this you need to you, you're you need to do this, you need to do this.
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Is the right thing, you need and in the other ear is you're crazy.
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If you do this, your family's gonna get messed up and you're gonna go bankrupt, and you're gonna so I'm in this fighting match, and eventually, Troy McMahon, who had baptized us, he had taken the step out of the marketplace in the front.
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So my wife finally said, You need to just go spend a couple of days away, go back to Chicago where Troy's at now, spend a couple days with them.
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Let's just either get clarity that you should go into ministry or not do it.
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And JD, I just had, you know, I'm not a charismatic person at all, but I just had an experience in those couple of days that was really God saying very clearly, trust me, trust me, trust me, you need to do this.
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And so I stepped out and we we were convinced we would probably uh lose our house within a year or two.
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I was taking a huge pay cut.
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Um, everything on the balance sheet made no sense at all.
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I put it a hundred times, like two columns.
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One side was life as it is and where it's headed with 401ks and medical plans and good pay.
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And the other column was what's ministry look like?
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And the two never on balance sheet added up, it just never added up.
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So we went into ministry thinking we're gonna uh you know, we're gonna probably lose everything pretty quickly, which is honestly more of an impact for my wife than for me.
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Um the way God works, the very first day in full-time ministry, one of the admirals I had worked with showed up at the door with a folder, said, I got three job offers in here.
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Uh, just think about them.
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He said, I know you're a Christian and probably won't take the first one, but think about the other ones.
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Um, he offered me some part-time hourly work I could do a few hours a month that like close the gap on us financially.
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And so, here after two years of fretting the finances, God in one delivery messenger to the door on my first day in ministry kind of covered everything.
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Wow, amazing.
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Yeah, so you went on staff with this church.
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Um, and was it really to make church planting happen, or what were you doing there?
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It it so here's it's really kind of fun on the entrepreneurial side.
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So I didn't go into it thinking it would be entrepreneurial, I wanted to go start a company.
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In God's humor, I never would have been as entrepreneurial starting a company in the marketplace as I got to be in ministry.
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So, and let me explain.
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I uh stepped into ministry uh as the executive pastor at the church, but my task was to figure out the church planting thing.
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We really were started to be a church planting church, we're now a couple of years old, we haven't really planted churches yet.
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We've got to get this church planting thing going.
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And so uh in the first couple of years, JD, I because we were a portable church with no permanent facility, marketing was a big issue.
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Um, as an engineer, I looked at how we were doing marketing.
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We were wasting money on direct mail cards, on mail lists, on postage, about everything you could do with doing marketing, we were doing wrong and wasting money.
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So, just as an engineer, I looked at it and said, here's what we need to do.
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We need to become a wholesaler, a mail list.
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We need to buy our own labeling equipment, we need to get partnerships with the printers and put our cards into their empty spots.
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And what grew out of that was a new company called Church Marketing Solutions, which was a business permission to help churches do their marketing.
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And so I'm now serving as the executive pastor, but I'm the startup director of a marketing company.
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Within a year, that marketing company is doing over a million and a half year a year in marketing, and we're putting uh free marketing into church plants, and we're taking all of our profits from the marketing company.
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That's why it's a business for mission, and we were putting it into church planting.
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So we started a company that ended up with multiple staff and national influence, and and we took the profits and some of the marketing materials and put them into church plants.
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As we were doing that in the first year, I'm trying to be the executive pastor, I'm trying to be the director of this marketing company.
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And the first six church plants, I'm learning church planting, JD.
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Like, and we're planting a church and now starting a campus.
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This is 2000, when there's you know the very beginning of multi-site as we know it right now.
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And we're trying to get a multi-site started.
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We're running this marketing company.
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I'm trying to be executive pastor, and I'm now talking closely with six church planters who are getting ready to launch.
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And they all six, when we're coming up on them sending out direct mail cards for a campaign, none of them have a website name to put on their direct mail cards.
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So I'm like, I won't let you spend this money on direct mail cards if you don't have a website.
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And they're all like, Oh, we haven't had time, we're so busy.
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And so I literally in the weeks leading up to their, and these are well-funded planters, these six.
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So I did a survey of the six planters and said, right now, three weeks before your opening day, tell me the top three things you're spending time on.
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So I got 18 responses, and all 18 were all administrative.
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My you know, my articles of incorporation and my facility and my marketing.
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Nobody in their top eight, in these 18 answers, nobody said anything having to do with people.
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It was all the overload of the administration of trying to get a church started.
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And so out of that, we started a project management company for church plants called Passion for Planting.
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And its entire purpose was to come alongside those planters.
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There's about, as you know, there's about 400 things you got to do to launch a healthy church.
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So we basically help planters put those plans together and manage the plans for them.
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We give them a project manager for nine months to do anything and everything that's needed to start the church and that launch plan.
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If we can the idea is let's keep planters focused on people.
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If we can do the administrative part, let's do it.
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So I won't go any further to say, so now you got a marketing company, then you've got a project management company.
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Within the first six years of being in Ministry JD, I had either gotten to help start or re-engineer five or six national things like that.
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So now I'm a serial entrepreneur in the church, but on staff at the church.
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And at that point, those I'm carrying six business cards, counting my church business card.
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And people would not know who I was representing when I'd go to conferences and when I would do things.
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And so part of part of what Exponential gave and the starting exponential was a venture platform for me, one business card where I could do all those different things.
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And the church at that point, Brett Andrews, the lead pastor, close friend, he basically said, Todd, you're not really doing the executive pastor job.
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Let's just make you a missionary to church planting in the U.S.
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We'll put you on loan to exponential, we'll keep paying part of your salary, and we'll let you just go run exponential as a separate thing, and we'll hire another executive pastor.
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So that's that was 18 years then of my life after that was the leading exponential and getting to have it as a venture platform to work on things and do different things.
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And wow.
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They uh my mom used to my dad was an engineer.
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My mom used to say, Yeah, if you're an introvert engineer and an entrepreneur, you can write your own ticket, which you obviously have.
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So you took uh exponential, you did all these things, um, but you uh you I did you retire from that a couple years ago?
00:21:35.440 --> 00:21:36.799
Or what happened?
00:21:36.799 --> 00:21:38.960
Yeah, that's that's good.
00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:47.119
So um, you know, we were we I I like to say, if I can just talk briefly about the history of exponential.
00:21:47.119 --> 00:21:53.519
So here's the thing we're at the right place at the right time, is what I like to tell people.
00:21:53.519 --> 00:21:55.519
And I I know that's a God thing.
00:21:55.519 --> 00:22:00.880
So if you look in around 1998 to 2002.
00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:09.920
I went into full-time ministry in 2000, but 1998 to 2002, prior to 98, denominations started church.
00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:14.079
I mean, that's where the bulk of church planting was happening was in denominations.
00:22:14.079 --> 00:22:21.440
You didn't have Acts 29 and ARC and Glocalnet and City to City and Stadia and New Thing.
00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:35.599
And I'm not sure when XL leadership started, if it was before then or after, but you just didn't have the church planting industry as a support industry and networks the way we have them today.
00:22:35.599 --> 00:22:39.920
That was born out of that 98 to 2002 window.
00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:51.519
Leadership Network did what they called the Burning Bush Project, where they brought together some of the stronger residency-based churches that were running residencies for church planning.
00:22:51.519 --> 00:22:55.839
And out of that grows ARC and Acts 29.
00:22:55.839 --> 00:23:07.200
And when you look at the leaders of those groups from Billy Hornsby to Mark Driscoll and the guys, the other guys that started Acts 29, they were at those early leadership network things.
00:23:07.200 --> 00:23:20.400
So in the early 2000s, when I was going into ministry and trying to figure out church planting, I'm not seeing a world of denominations, I'm seeing a world of the emergence of all these networks.
00:23:20.400 --> 00:23:30.960
And the emergence of all these networks, again, as a futurist and an entrepreneur, I'm looking at this saying, okay, we got a marketing company, we got a project management company.
00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:35.920
How do we tap into the future of collaborative networks?
00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:49.759
So, somewhere around 2002-ish, I wrote a point paper on the future of collaborative networks and put that out to about 20 leaders, Bill Eesom and Bob Logan and a bunch of guys.
00:23:49.759 --> 00:23:52.319
And the response was overwhelming.
00:23:52.319 --> 00:23:57.039
It was, oh my goodness, this is the future, these collaborative networks.
00:23:57.039 --> 00:24:24.000
And so in 2002, we started a ministry called the Church Planting Network, a nonprofit called the Church Planting Network, that was intended to be a network of networks, meaning instead of doing the church planting, oh, Acts 29 and ARC and Stadia and New Thing, all these groups are going to need infrastructure if they're not going to become a denomination.
00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:26.000
They're going to need infrastructure help.
00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:31.839
So our thought was let's start a church planning network that could help provide infrastructure support.
00:24:31.839 --> 00:24:34.720
Well, the church planting network is exponential.
00:24:34.720 --> 00:24:39.920
Exponential is just a doing business as name to the church planting network.
00:24:39.920 --> 00:24:45.359
Um and so that's what grew out of that experience.
00:24:45.920 --> 00:24:48.319
Um go ahead, JD.
00:24:48.319 --> 00:25:00.960
No, um, I got involved with leadership network in the mid-2000s with um uh the Grat Church Planting Network leaders together.
00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:08.319
Uh I don't I don't think you were you may or may not have been there, but um I was I see I came into ministry in 2000.
00:25:08.559 --> 00:25:09.680
Here's what's fun.
00:25:09.680 --> 00:25:17.519
I'm watching those gatherings in the 98 to 2002 window, and I'm upset that we're not getting invited.
00:25:17.519 --> 00:25:26.400
So Linda Stanley was the head of the leadership network, Dave Travis, and I remember the phone call with Linda Linda Stanley in 2002.
00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:30.880
I've just started Passion for Planting, the marketing company.
00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:33.920
We're in the process of starting the church planning network.
00:25:33.920 --> 00:25:46.720
And Linda Stanley says to me appropriately, she says, Oh, your church, New Life, that's starting all this, you haven't done enough church planting yet to get a seat at the table at these gatherings.
00:25:46.720 --> 00:25:50.480
And it on one hand, it just really ticked me off.
00:25:50.480 --> 00:25:59.599
Like, oh my goodness, like we're doing all this church planning stuff, but we didn't yet have the credentials of enough church planting to get to the to the table.
00:25:59.599 --> 00:26:03.920
So um well, yeah, yeah.
00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:04.960
Keep going, keep going.
00:26:04.960 --> 00:26:12.799
Tell us uh you know, we want to get to we want to get to the story of you know what you're doing now, but uh yeah, so tell us in.
00:26:13.200 --> 00:26:17.680
Yeah, that the there's two parallel paths, and I'll try to get there succinctly.
00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:30.240
So we birthed exponential, which is a continuation of the National New Church Conference from the 1960s in the going into 2005 window is when we got the roots of it going.
00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:39.279
Um I right at that time, uh, JD, I'm in Dallas for a meeting at Leadership Network in 2005.
00:26:39.279 --> 00:26:41.279
I've never met Bob Buford.
00:26:41.279 --> 00:26:43.039
I don't know his offices are there.
00:26:43.039 --> 00:26:46.480
He's the author of the book Halftime and the founder of Leadership Network.
00:26:46.480 --> 00:26:53.200
His book, Halftime, had radically impacted me in the 95 to 96 window.
00:26:53.200 --> 00:26:56.720
So we run into one another.
00:26:56.720 --> 00:27:01.359
And I say, Bob Buford, oh, your book Halftime Done.
00:27:01.359 --> 00:27:04.720
He said, Todd Wilson, do you know Al Weiss?
00:27:04.720 --> 00:27:09.599
Al was like the second in charge at Disney, and he founded a thing called Vision 360.
00:27:09.599 --> 00:27:14.000
And one of the things I was doing was helping Vision 360 get started.
00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:16.559
And Bob said, Do you know Al Weiss?
00:27:16.559 --> 00:27:19.599
And I said, Oh, yeah, I've been helping him with his church planning thing.
00:27:19.599 --> 00:27:23.839
And Bob says, Oh my goodness, can you come to my office?
00:27:23.839 --> 00:27:32.559
I mentor Al Weiss, and he just told me that I need to hire you as a strategic advisor to what I'm doing in my next season.
00:27:32.559 --> 00:27:35.519
Now, what are the chances that I'm in Dallas, Texas?
00:27:35.519 --> 00:27:37.200
I don't even know Bob Buford's there.
00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:40.480
He's impacted me, and we're having this connection.
00:27:40.480 --> 00:27:45.839
And it turns out that I was the age of his only son that died tragically.
00:27:45.839 --> 00:27:47.839
Um, we really hit it off.
00:27:47.839 --> 00:27:55.359
And that in 2005 started a relationship that would last the rest of his life, where I was part of what he called his Bob Inc.
00:27:55.359 --> 00:28:05.759
team and was a strategic advisor to what he was doing, mostly on the marketplace side with marketplace leaders, but somewhat in the church also.
00:28:05.759 --> 00:28:09.599
And I did that in parallel with exponential.
00:28:09.599 --> 00:28:13.519
And the reason I'm telling you the Buford side is it leads to what I'm doing now.
00:28:13.519 --> 00:28:17.440
So Bob carried what he called his wallet card all the time.
00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:29.759
It was about a five by six piece of paper, and he always had somewhere between eight and twelve leaders or projects that he wanted to pour gas on with a posture of how can I help you?
00:28:29.759 --> 00:28:32.480
How can I help accelerate what you're doing?
00:28:32.480 --> 00:28:42.319
JD, if you looked over the last 30, 35 years at the names that were on his wallet card, I mean it ranges from Bill Heibels to Rick Warren.
00:28:42.319 --> 00:28:51.200
The list is unbelievable at the people that Bob just put on his wallet card and said, How can I help you by pouring gas on what you're doing?
00:28:51.200 --> 00:29:03.039
So uh I had to have a wallet card with Bob for those roughly 13 years I was with him before he died, um, and got into the rhythm of always, you know, how can I help you?
00:29:03.039 --> 00:29:05.599
That was the posture of exponential anyway.
00:29:05.599 --> 00:29:21.920
And I'm having this sort of second life in parallel with exponential, where it's you know, everything from life planning with people to strategy stuff with people of how can I help you, not as a paycheck generating thing, but just as a posture of how can I help you.
00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:27.279
So in around 2020, you still have the you still have the card?
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:28.079
I do.
00:29:28.079 --> 00:29:31.119
Uh it's in the other room, but I would, yep, yep.
00:29:31.119 --> 00:29:32.160
I keep one now.
00:29:32.160 --> 00:29:40.079
It's it's always got uh Bob called it his really it was his 10 plus two to get to 12.
00:29:40.079 --> 00:29:45.839
He, you know, it it's Jesus three, and then the other nine, like who are the closest ones?
00:29:45.839 --> 00:29:56.720
So my family are the three closest, and then I always try to have uh anywhere from eight to ten other leaders or projects that I'm just personally, how can I help you?
00:29:56.720 --> 00:29:58.160
Um great.
00:29:58.160 --> 00:30:03.920
And so in about 2020, right around COVID starting, which impacted all of us.
00:30:03.920 --> 00:30:09.200
Imagine Exponential is a itself a business permission, no donors.
00:30:09.200 --> 00:30:17.279
We're a multimillion dollar organization that completely relies on conferencing and COVID hits.
00:30:17.279 --> 00:30:26.240
And we we had had 18 years of positive cash flow, and I'm like, I can't stomach not having positive cash flow.
00:30:26.240 --> 00:30:32.480
And somehow, by the grace of God, we still manage to without donors and without our conferences that year.
00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:42.160
Um, but in the middle of that, it really caused me to start thinking about how much of what I'm doing, you know, exponentials up and to the right.
00:30:42.160 --> 00:30:46.880
We've added Europe, we've added Australia, there's other countries to come at that time.
00:30:46.880 --> 00:30:56.960
And the bigger it was getting, the more I was realizing there's so much that I'm doing that other people could do.
00:30:56.960 --> 00:31:00.400
I it's really time for me to step out of this.
00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:07.200
I don't want to be the captain of a huge cargo ship, I want to get back on a speedboat again.
00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:11.759
Um, and so now we're at what I'd call life conversion three.
00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:22.880
If conversion one was the conversion to know Jesus, conversion two was the from marketplace to ministry, and conversion three, you can put different labels on it.
00:31:22.880 --> 00:31:27.599
In some ways, it's the king, it's the warrior to king or king to sage royal.
00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:37.440
It's I really want to be positioned with the wallet card that all I'm doing is picking projects and people to say, how can I pour gas on what they're doing?
00:31:37.440 --> 00:31:43.759
So when I stepped out of exponential a couple of years ago, started a nonprofit called Multipliers.
00:31:43.759 --> 00:31:47.440
I'm basically a strategic missionary at a nonprofit.
00:31:47.440 --> 00:31:54.160
I have a missionary fund, so I have donors that want to fund the work I'm doing of this wallet card.
00:31:54.160 --> 00:31:56.480
And then I have a missionary portfolio.
00:31:56.480 --> 00:31:58.240
The portfolio is my wallet card.
00:31:58.240 --> 00:32:03.759
It's always eight to 12 leaders in projects that I'm choosing to work on.
00:32:03.759 --> 00:32:09.039
Um, so I like to tell people as a strategic missionary who's reliant on donors for a paycheck.
00:32:09.039 --> 00:32:14.880
I have the flexibility of a billionaire and live paycheck to paycheck.
00:32:14.880 --> 00:32:18.000
So there you go.
00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:19.920
So that's what you're doing now.
00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:23.119
Um yeah, uh, I want to be on the list.
00:32:23.119 --> 00:32:29.839
I might not make the top hundred, but I want to be on your uh your list as the others uh go out.
00:32:29.839 --> 00:32:34.880
You you told me um that you had uh you know several things you were doing.
00:32:34.880 --> 00:32:36.960
What are you most excited about now?
00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:49.519
Um I I'm actually trying to narrow right now, and so uh part of that's just the aging process, and part of it is I don't want to be too diluted.
00:32:49.519 --> 00:32:55.920
But um there's four things in my life right now that bring me a lot of energy.
00:32:55.920 --> 00:33:04.079
Um one is the life, I do a life planning process both with individuals and with a cohort.
00:33:04.079 --> 00:33:13.039
So the last ever since coming out of Exponential, I've always had a cohort of seven to twelve leaders who journey with me for nine months.
00:33:13.039 --> 00:33:18.319
It's a mentoring coaching relationship, but I'm taking them through a life planning process.
00:33:18.319 --> 00:33:22.640
Um, increasingly, I'm planning to do more and more of those.
00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:38.079
I have I've had one group at a time, I want to get to two groups at a time, and eventually, I'm never planning to retire unless I physically can't work, but I want more and more of my time to be on these mentoring groups with life planning being the target.
00:33:38.079 --> 00:33:41.039
Um, the second thing is related.
00:33:41.039 --> 00:33:55.599
If you go back to Passion for Planting, which was one of the first things I started back in 2001 in ministry, um, Passion for Planting is still thriving, has a virtual residency or a distance residency.
00:33:55.599 --> 00:33:58.400
Um, I've really re-engaged that now.
00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:03.359
We've done a complete overhaul on it, and it runs from September to May.
00:34:03.359 --> 00:34:08.159
Um, and I'm jumping back into doing a lot of the teaching in the residency now.
00:34:08.159 --> 00:34:18.480
So I I one of the themes you're gonna see over and over in what I do is I prefer to do things that I don't have to do a lot of work before I do the thing.
00:34:18.480 --> 00:34:23.679
And I get to walk out of the room with no assignments to do work when I'm leaving the room.
00:34:23.679 --> 00:34:31.199
So that that really, all honesty, in the middle of this, is probably part of the repositioning myself the last couple of years.
00:34:31.199 --> 00:34:40.559
Is I want to be able to do on-demand work that I choose to do that doesn't have a large footprint of sideways energy for me in it.
00:34:40.559 --> 00:34:45.119
So the life planning work is one, uh, the residency is two.
00:34:45.119 --> 00:34:50.880
Uh, the third is I'm head over heels into a as an engineer entrepreneur.
00:34:50.880 --> 00:34:58.239
I'm going crazy in the AI world right now with how to bring that into the church planting side, how to bring it into the life planning side.
00:34:58.239 --> 00:35:15.599
I want to be able to take this life planning process that I spread over nine months with eight to ten leaders, and I want to mobilize AI coaches that any Christian could just go through the life planning process with customized coaches that are helping them through the content and doing things.
00:35:15.599 --> 00:35:21.760
So, on the geeky design side, I'm spending a lot of time on the AI part of it.
00:35:21.760 --> 00:35:26.079
And then the fourth bucket would just be the miscellaneous.
00:35:26.079 --> 00:35:35.119
I still want to do strategic advising where I get to come alongside individual leaders or organizations and with the posture of how can I help you.
00:35:35.119 --> 00:35:39.679
So I've got a handful of those that fill up that fourth bucket.
00:35:39.679 --> 00:35:41.679
That there it's not an intense thing.
00:35:41.679 --> 00:35:49.760
I'm available when they want to call and whether it's talking about a hire or a priority or a thing, it's just strategic advising on demand.
00:35:49.760 --> 00:35:59.679
Um, all of these things, because I'm positioned as a missionary with a missionary fund, I'm not a transactional strategic consultant with a price tag on the head.
00:35:59.679 --> 00:36:01.679
So that's what I have to be careful about.
00:36:01.679 --> 00:36:03.840
People don't pay for service.
00:36:03.840 --> 00:36:08.719
I choose who to work with, and that posture of how can I help you?
00:36:08.719 --> 00:36:12.719
So that that's the part that's got to be regulated a little bit.
00:36:13.440 --> 00:36:14.960
Wow, well, that sounds exciting.
00:36:14.960 --> 00:36:19.360
You know, that's um, you're not just playing golf in Courtleine, Idaho, you know.
00:36:19.360 --> 00:36:21.119
That's that's good stuff.
00:36:21.119 --> 00:36:23.119
Hey, uh, a couple last questions.
00:36:23.119 --> 00:36:24.800
Recommend one of your books.
00:36:24.800 --> 00:36:29.840
Which one would you say, hey, want a little know about more about Todd?
00:36:29.840 --> 00:36:31.840
Which one would you say pick up?
00:36:32.400 --> 00:36:37.280
Yeah, I I would say uh I'm gonna tell you two and tell you why.
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:41.760
If you want to get into my heartbeat, like what am I really got the heartbeat about?
00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:50.320
Um, the book more, uh Finding Your Personal Calling and Living Life to the Fullest Measure, that's the first book I did on calling.
00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:52.719
That was inspired by Bob Buford.
00:36:52.719 --> 00:36:55.280
Um, and it's a book on personal calling.
00:36:55.280 --> 00:36:57.840
Uh, I use what's called a be-do-go framework.
00:36:57.840 --> 00:36:58.880
Who am I created to be?
00:36:58.880 --> 00:36:59.840
What am I made to do?
00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:01.119
Where should I be doing it?
00:37:01.119 --> 00:37:05.840
The intersection of those three questions gives you your sweet spot vocationally.
00:37:05.840 --> 00:37:12.480
And so that's my heartbeat passion book that goes along with the life planning work I do.
00:37:12.480 --> 00:37:20.559
Um, the most recent thing I spent two years writing is I, as a futurist, I spent two years writing a history book.
00:37:20.559 --> 00:37:25.199
So the book that just came out is called How Did We Get Here?
00:37:25.199 --> 00:37:27.119
Looking back to look forward.
00:37:27.119 --> 00:37:31.840
It examines the 75 years of the modern church growth movement.
00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:37.280
Um, it names the consumer-driven operating system that fuels our churches right now.
00:37:37.280 --> 00:37:48.480
And really um the goal of this one is simply the history of helping people name the angst that they're having in the current operating system of the church.
00:37:48.480 --> 00:38:01.199
Even people that think they're wildly successful in the church right now, they're having an angst about is it really delivering the product in the form we're uh we're doing it, and is it really capable of reproducing?
00:38:01.199 --> 00:38:03.039
And do we even want to reproduce what we have?
00:38:03.039 --> 00:38:06.159
But how did we get here looking back to look forward?
00:38:06.159 --> 00:38:13.519
That's available as a free audiobook, a free PDF, or for people that want the print version, it's on uh Amazon.
00:38:14.719 --> 00:38:16.639
Okay, I'm looking at it right now.
00:38:16.639 --> 00:38:18.239
Um well, great.
00:38:18.239 --> 00:38:20.960
Hey, last question give us a leadership tip.
00:38:20.960 --> 00:38:29.599
Just a one, I don't know, there's probably a bunch in there, but one nugget from Todd Wilson.
00:38:30.960 --> 00:38:38.480
You know, the thing I'm finding myself saying over and over these days is just how you add makes all the difference.
00:38:38.480 --> 00:38:45.760
Um and that's more about our scorecard and our paradigm of thinking about how we do what we do.
00:38:45.760 --> 00:39:01.519
Um I I'm so immersed in this what I'd call the consumer-driven operating system of the church right now that uh our growth engine is a programmatic institutional growth engine that's as far away from relational disciple making as can be.
00:39:01.519 --> 00:39:06.639
And I'm just really passionate about seeing us get back to the Jesus way of doing it.
00:39:06.639 --> 00:39:10.559
So uh, you know, this how you add makes all the difference.
00:39:10.559 --> 00:39:17.119
Our our programs uh never have the ability to reproduce, they can only consume.
00:39:17.119 --> 00:39:24.400
And we wonder why only seven percent of US churches get involved in church planting and 93% don't.
00:39:24.400 --> 00:39:31.199
Um, and so I think we've just really got to get back to the personal relational disciple making.
00:39:32.639 --> 00:39:33.599
Great word.
00:39:33.599 --> 00:39:38.239
That's um uh I've that's been messing with me too.
00:39:38.239 --> 00:39:41.280
The there's a greater game to be played than the one we're playing.
00:39:41.280 --> 00:39:42.159
So that's right.
00:39:42.159 --> 00:39:44.159
Hey, thanks so much, Todd.
00:39:44.159 --> 00:39:46.159
Thanks for all that you uh have done.
00:39:46.159 --> 00:40:01.840
Thanks for um stepping out of the the Navy and the uh starting your own uh nuclear business to blow up the world and going into uh church planting to blow up uh church planting.
00:40:01.840 --> 00:40:03.039
Appreciate you being on today.
00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:04.480
Jenny, it's great to be on.
00:40:04.480 --> 00:40:06.079
I feel like I've been on This Is Your Life.
00:40:06.079 --> 00:40:10.639
I'm usually the one that gets people in life planning talking about themselves for hours and hours.
00:40:10.639 --> 00:40:14.000
I feel like all I've done is sat here and talked about myself.
00:40:14.159 --> 00:40:18.159
So we wanna hear we wanted to hear from you.
00:40:18.159 --> 00:40:19.599
So thanks so much.
00:40:20.960 --> 00:40:23.679
Thanks for joining the Leading Conversations Podcast.
00:40:23.679 --> 00:40:26.639
We hope that you found it both helpful and encouraging.
00:40:26.639 --> 00:40:31.039
At Excel Leadership Network, our focus is on the church planter rather than the church.
00:40:31.039 --> 00:40:36.800
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00:40:36.800 --> 00:40:41.440
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