If you think there's some magic moment around the corner

where all the cogs in the universe will lock into place,

you go, "Yes, joy now!"

It's kind of like you better start finding joy in the work

because there is no moment ahead

when you will feel perfectly fulfilled,

satisfied, yes, throw the party now.

There's something intrinsically valuable in health

even if it never gets big.

When I'm making little stuff massive

and massive stuff is just invisible to me,

I'd say, dude, you're losing your perspective.

Figure out what your warning signs are

because they may be wildly different.

And I wanna applaud those people

for whom faithfulness is its own reward,

whether or not you have this moment

when you make the marquee and the highlight reel

and the contract.

This is the Made to Advance podcast.

I'm your host, Brian Aulick.

We're here to inspire and equip you for your best future.

Well, welcome everybody.

It is so good to be with you today.

And before we start our conversation,

I wanna ask you a favor.

If you have appreciated Made to Advance,

please rate and review us.

That helps get the word out about our podcast.

And it also helps us bring on more incredible guests

like the one we have today.

Today in the studio I have with me Jeff Manion,

and Jeff is the teaching pastor of Ada Bible Church

in Grand Rapids, Michigan,

where he has served for over 40 years.

Come on, somebody.

He's the author of "The Land Between,"

"Satisfied," and "Dream Big, Think Small."

Jeff has a great passion for preaching the Bible,

which has led to incredible growth at his church,

and has also led to him speaking

and coaching around the world.

I feel blessed to have Jeff on the show today

because he has been one of my longtime friends

and mentors in ministry.

Jeff, it is a privilege to have you here.

Brian, what an honor to be with you, man.

And every time someone says over 40 years,

I get tired just hearing it.

I get tired and I'm like over 24,

but I guess not 24 in ministry, not 40.

You're 40 at one church.

How many years at Enigeti though, 20?

Yeah, I'll be 20 in the fall.

Dude, congrats, man.

I'm at 19, yeah.

We're gonna throw a huge party at year 20, where the plan is bring in some special people,

do a huge deal.

I don't know what we'll do, but we're gonna make it big.

Did you guys celebrate your church birthdays in any specific way?

No, 'cause I wasn't the founder.

And so it was a failed church plan, so it was going seven years.

So I literally had to do the math this year and say, "How old are we?"

And I think it's 48.

Oh, is that right?

And so I think at 50, we'll probably need to do something.

But only three senior pastors in 50 years.

I mean, with me anchoring it for 40, and Aaron's new in that role in the last year.

Joe, the church planter that got us off the ground.

Do you stay in touch?

Are they still around, the folks who were your predecessors or not?

Yeah, one guy, and he passed sometime ago.

He was significantly older than I was.

And Aaron, of course, the third senior pastor, he and I are colleagues.

Oh, so Aaron is the third.

I thought you were saying...

Aaron is the third, no.

Okay, gosh, that's amazing.

for 40 years plus Aaron new to the post.

- Yeah, that's really cool.

Wow, well, you've got to throw a massive party for 50.

- I think so.

- That's a huge deal.

Yeah, we're gonna, 20 feels like still a pretty big deal.

We did a sweet, we do it every five years is our rhythm.

- Yeah, but 20, you guys are still like middle schoolers.

- Yeah.

- You know, you're still growing up.

- Well, once in a while I feel like, oh my goodness,

so much time has gone by and it feels like

the amount of real estate left is,

or runway left is short.

But then I think about if I have another 15 years

and we're 19 years in Engedi,

that's a decent percentage of my time

at Engedi is still left.

So I'm still praying, "Hey God, we've got a lot of time

"to do great things here together."

- Listen, and I know it's before your 20th,

but I just wanna honor you for being faithful to Engedi

and getting it off the ground those early days,

and then guiding the church through maturity,

because you've discovered what we,

you know, the church writers,

church growth writers back in the '80s, they'd say, "When your church is small and when it

grows, if you go from 200 to 700, that's not like you had a small dog and it became a bigger

dog."

It's like, no, now it's a giraffe.

It's a completely different animal.

And so I think it takes something special, not simply to stay with a ministry for a long

time, but to stay ministry that keeps becoming a new ministry for that period of time.

So dude, I just really wanna honor you and thank you for dedicating yourself to that.

Thank you.

absolute joy, and it's fun even here in year 19,

just seeing God do new things, surprising us,

and feeling as excited, as expectant,

as passionate as I ever have.

So I feel grateful for that.

But I feel so grateful, like I said in my opening comments

there a few minutes ago, we have had a lot of times

over the years, a bunch of hours,

just being able to hang out.

You and Chris have been so kind to Christina and me.

You've been there for us, and we've talked about this

many times, but right after Christina found out she had cancer and we were at your house

and you guys were just so kind.

I think you sat on our deck, we were out on our back deck.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And then even some key points of discernment for us, and just God used you to speak in

some great words of wisdom.

I remember, 'cause for a long time, and I've since really come to terms with, "Hey, God

has called us to be where we are," probably all the way through our careers, unless something

comes up that very much surprises me.

But I remember there was a season where we were like,

"Okay, Lord, are you sure you don't wanna take us

to like a big metro area?"

And we were asking that question one time.

- You sure you don't wanna move us to a major market?

- That's right, exactly.

'Cause I mean, Holland is awesome

and Grand Rapids is awesome,

but I just wondered maybe, who knows?

And I remember though, you took me back

to the Garrison Demoniac and said,

and you were preaching on that, I think that Sunday.

And you said, "Hey, the funny thing is we're all asking, 'What's the next thing?

What's the next thing?

What's the next thing?'"

And he wanted to be with Jesus, he wanted to go on the adventure.

And of course, Jesus said in that particular case, "Actually, instead of a follow me,

it's kind of still a follow me, but it's go follow me from where you've been."

And he sent him back to his hometown, and that was a good prophetic word.

See, Jesus tells Peter and their brother Andrew, James and John, "Follow me."

They leave their nets and follow him.

The demoniac, he says, "I need you to stay and just tell people in this region what you've

done for me."

See, the prayer we pray at camp is, "I'll go where you want me to go."

I think the prayer of seasoned ministry is, "I'll stay where you want me to stay."

And sometimes, "I'll stay where you want me to stay," is harder than, "I'll go where you

want me to go."

And I think our conversation today might revolve a little bit about long-term faithfulness,

But man, I'm just telling you, anytime you see a thriving organization, whether it's

a company, whether it's a school, whether it's a hospital, whether it's a church, there

was a core of people that just kept showing up.

And so your first 19 years at Engedi, that's huge.

Brian, I would rather...

And you're a phenomenal leader, but I've told people before, I think a church does better

a B-minus leader that's there for 15 years than four solid A leaders that each do three

and a half years in that same ministry.

And you're constantly trying to get traction, what's our vision now, staff turnover...

Build trust.

Build trust all over again.

And so there's something about staying power that I just think is critical for any organization.

I'm not saying, I'm a rare bird that I started preaching at Ada when I was 21.

And 61 last year, handed off the baton to Aaron that I'd worked with for 15 years.

I was his boss, now he's my boss, still full time, but no longer leading the organization.

I'm not saying that's everybody's calling, but I wish more people had the 15 to 20 year

mentality or even 30, 35.

I think some powerful things would happen there.

Why do you think that so many people bounce after a shorter stint?

I mean, what is it?

Is it that folks just go, "Hey, I want the next adventure," or is it, "This is hard,

and I think I just kinda wanna bail because I'm trying to escape pain?"

Why do you think it is that there is such a issue with turnover?

Yeah, it's probably multi-cause.

And I mean, at Ada Bible Church that I've been connected to for 40 years, it's on the

edge of Grand Rapids, which has a metropolitan area of over a million people.

So there's opportunity there.

If I was in some way out of the way place with a tiny population base, I could see getting

into my late 20s, early 30s and going like, I'm just really limited in what will ever

happen here simply because of the population opportunity.

And so that comes into play.

I think discouragement is a big thing.

I'm convinced it doesn't take a congregation

to turn on a leader for the leader to exit.

It can be three voices that just wear you down.

And you go, "I'm out of here, man.

"I'm just sick of this."

And I told myself several times over the years,

I am gonna see those same faces wherever I go.

The names will change, the faces will change.

There's never any place where I'm gonna get

100% popularity rating, 100% approval rating.

And so just kinda going, if I think I'm effective here,

I think I need to push through this discouragement

and relational disappointment.

But I think a lot of us leave out

of relational disappointment.

- Yeah, that's a great word.

Somebody, and I think it may have been Pete Scizzaro

said something to the effect of,

"Ministry is a series of ungrieved losses."

And I remember hearing that thinking,

yeah, it sounds about right.

And it's just the nature of the beast a little bit,

but you have different pains, hurts,

people who depart, different.

and you just can't process all of them.

We're in the people business,

and the nature of being in the people business

is tough things happen, and your heart takes a toll.

And sometimes it's a few, like you're talking about.

Sometimes it's, I think people can feel

the cumulative effect, and so.

- I've been, I've been too, also.

I think there is some credit that a person should receive

in sticking it out a long time.

And then there's the other stuff.

that you have no control over.

And I just really had supportive boards over the years,

for the most part, I'm not saying every board member,

I'm saying in general.

And if you get into some situations

and you simply can't lead

with the way the board is organized,

or there are three or four board members, that's hard.

It's just really hard.

But I just feel supernaturally blessed

with some great board members over time.

And it's not that this is how to form a great board.

I wasn't smart enough to pick those people

that would be with us long-term.

But I think that's, take something away from me

and take away from us and just say,

man, there are some forces at work

that sometimes are really hard to overcome

and I didn't have some of those barriers.

- Yeah, that's a great word and it's funny

because when people are starting out planting churches,

they're generally not thinking,

now how do I set up my governance

in the most life-giving fashion?

I remember there's a little book

and I hand it out to almost every church planner I talk to

called "Winning on Purpose" by John Kaiser.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And it's just a basic kind of governance book

and talking about why governance,

how effective governance functions, et cetera.

And that's been such a gift to us,

but you and I both have a mutual friend

who is a pastor of a very, very large church.

And I remember being on a phone call with him

and he was talking about his governance structure

and saying how for years,

like even though God was blessing the church,

it was so difficult to function there

because of governance and board related issues.

So good word on both of us being just blessed

for good governance, good words, that's a huge deal.

I wanna talk a little bit about a book

that you wrote a few years ago now,

"Dream Big, Think Small."

And I love the subtitle,

"Living an Extraordinary Life One Day at a Time."

And the idea of Made to Advance as a podcast

is we wanna help people take steps forward.

We wanna help them move into their best future.

And so I love your book because as we'll kind of uncover,

it's a little bit of a paradoxical approach

to still advancing, I mean, working towards those dreams,

but maybe not in the way that everybody would expect.

So maybe we could just start by you unpacking

what's the big idea of the book.

- Big idea of the book is slow and steady faithfulness,

the power of slow and steady faithfulness

over an extended period of time, and that's critical.

And when I originally dreamed up the book,

it was really, I wanted to write it as a survival manual

for people in ministry.

I was thinking the 28-year-old youth pastor,

the 30-year-old church planning couple.

Of course, you present it to your publisher,

and they wanna make it, you know,

this needs to be for counselors,

and first responders, and school teachers.

And so it broadened over time,

but I was really thinking about people in ministry.

And we're, Brian, we are addicted to immediacy,

and we are allergic to boredom,

and we're just looking for that big breakthrough

that will change everything.

And yet in reflecting back on my decades

at Ada Bible Church, we would have these breakthroughs,

right, moving to a new building or something,

or go to two services or whatever it was.

But those were always bracketed by months and years

of chipping away over time.

And I just can't get away from you just have to keep

showing up, mastering the mundane.

It's not sexy.

Faithfulness is not a sexy virtue, but it's just so needed.

And so how can you bring yourself again and again

and again and again and again to tasks that are no longer

that interesting because you've done it a hundred times,

200 times, 300 times, some of the excitement is out,

and yet it's life-giving.

And so, yeah, I just think the power of slow

and steady faithfulness, ant power,

is what I call it from the Proverbs,

answer creatures of little strength,

but they store up food for the winter back and forth

and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

I think it's inescapable in long-term effectiveness.

I don't know, do you, I forget now if in the book

you reference the kind of the turtle versus the rabbit thing

towards the hair.

You do, yeah, 'cause there's a great,

I don't know if you've seen this little--

Which is an Aesop's Fable, by the way.

So that's like over 2,000 years old.

Well, it's funny, and I think you would necessarily say,

I don't know if you would say slow,

but you definitely would say steady, just steady state.

But there's a great Instagram reel,

and my family would laugh at me if they were here

because they know I love myself some reels at times.

They make me laugh.

I'm good at disciplining myself

at not watching too long.

But there's one where, have you seen this,

where they literally line up a rabbit and a turtle?

No.

And they have two different tracks that they can run on.

We'll put it in the show notes.

And you see the rabbit,

like he takes a bunch of steps or hops real quick,

and then he pauses and then he goes sideways.

And the turtle, it literally is like you'd read the book.

He just plotting along.

Man, he, after the 40 seconds or whatever the book is,

that guy, the turtle is way beyond the rabbit.

He's still, every time the rabbit moves,

it's fast and exciting.

Oh my goodness.

But it's just a great...

I need to see that.

Great little...

How do you...

So when, we've got this tension here, I feel like.

There's the idea of, hey, I'm gonna keep doing the things

that I need to do, be steady, be faithful.

And those steps are providing life,

but how do you navigate this?

I'm also trying to stay interested.

I'm trying to stay passionate.

And so how do you do the same old same old

for year upon year and still maintain that level

of I'm excited, I'm fired up about my job?

I mean, maybe the reason why sometimes people

make transitions is they're like,

man, I've been doing the same old,

I just gotta mix something up.

- Yeah, well, I can tell you,

I can't tell someone else how to do it.

I can't prescribe, but I can describe.

The question that I had to ask myself,

Year 20, Year 30, Year 40 in the same ministry was, do I find something new and interesting

within my major gifting in this location, or do I find something new and interesting

by finding a different location and a different ministry? And so, if you're dedicated to longevity

in one place, being a cross-country coach at one school for 22 years, whatever it happens to be,

trying to find new and interesting things within that, rather than jumping ship to something that

is new and interesting. So there's a mantra that I repeat to myself, and it's, "Okay, my life is

sermon preparation." And once upon a time, I was preaching like 48 weekends a year, and then down

to... Well, I was the only staff person, and we had less than 100 people. And when I handed off

to Aaron, I was preaching about 30 weekends a year. But there's something about Tuesday, Wednesday,

Thursday study, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday study, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, write the

sermon, deliver the sermon, write the sermon, deliver the sermon. There's the chair, sit down

in it, do it again. Where I would just say to myself, this is a mantra, it doesn't have to

be interesting to be good. Is it life-giving? Yes, I'm gifted to do this, it's life-giving to

the congregation, then do it. It doesn't have to be new and interesting to me to give life to others.

And I think at the core of that is something called love, that there's within love a self-giving

nature. I mean, you ask your parents, "Preschoolers, what does a Monday look like?"

Grade school, grade school-aged kids, "What does a Monday look like?" "Well, we get them up,

we get them fed, and we send them off to school." "Really? What's a Tuesday look like?"

We get them up, we get them dressed, and we send them off to school.

Oh, really?

What does Wednesday look like?

It looks like Bill Murray and Groundhog Day, where every day is like every other day.

But within that, there's...

Now, you do interesting stuff around the edges.

There's a new museum, there's a new park, there's a new vacation spot.

So there's interesting things around the edges, but there's just this core of, we get them

up, we get them fed, we send them off to school, we pray with them as we put them to bed at

night, we read them a story, we maybe pray at mealtime, we go around the circle, what's

the best thing that happened to you today?

What's something hard that...

And you do that over and over and over and over and over.

And that's love.

It's just consistent self-giving.

And whether or not it's interesting is beside the point.

Well, that's a great point.

I think for particularly when it comes to, I think with family, we think of that more

naturally where, hey, this is what you do to care for your kids and you don't sit there

and bemoan it so much.

I think what happens probably with career stuff more is we look at it dominantly through

the lens, particularly in our culture, through the lens of self-fulfillment, self-satisfaction,

self-hyphenated anything.

And not that delighting in what you do is unimportant, but to have that greater idea

of I am here foundationally and fundamentally to serve and to love people.

And then it helps...

I mean, maybe that provides some of that fuel to say, "This isn't all about me and the big

thing and the next new exciting thing."

Would you say that's fair to say?

Well, let me backtrack a little bit and say what I'm not saying.

What I'm not saying is stay in a job you hate.

I think that there are times when you...

I'm talking about a guy that gets up and goes to the shop every day, that goes back to the

floor of the plant and goes, "Right now, I'm paying bills, man.

I'm paying bills."

And I think that honors God.

Yeah, totally.

In some cases, until something comes up that's better, that more suits your gifts, continue.

Ask God to give you the grace to bring your full self to a job that you're not particularly

in love with.

So I'm not saying stay with something you hate for a really long period of time.

I am saying that in every job,

we don't get to just do what we love.

We work out of a galaxy of motivations.

Sometimes I fill out that paperwork because I have to,

it's part of my job to fill that out once a month.

I have to fill out this annual budget report

every year this time.

Am I passionate about budget reports?

No, it's just part of my job.

There's other times where there's an urgency,

an emergency, and the Lord nudges you

a step toward a very complicated situation, and you're not there because it's a passionate area,

you're there because you think the Lord may use you in a profoundly helpful way in that person's

life. And seeing it more as a... When everything boils down to, "Do what you're passionate about,"

I just think it's a shortcut that very few people get to live out, and that is not totally real

when you look at the totality of someone's job profile and someone's description.

Yeah, I think there's a certain dignity and there are aspects of any person's job probably

where you do get a little bit of the response from people or some kind of reaction that helps,

feels good. I preach and there's a sense that feels good. There are things I do that nobody

sees, including our staff even, really, or very few of our staff, that I know by doing this in a

way that nobody sees, it's gonna make it possible for all of you to flourish in ways that you're

you're flourishing.

And there's a certain aspect of that

that's satisfying in and of itself

and in the quietness of it, I think.

So I'm curious now, we're talking about in some ways,

the long-term faithfulness helping pave the way

for a bigger dream.

Talk to me about, I was thinking about this idea

of even dream big, think small.

- Yeah.

- In our culture, there's a lot of pressure

to come up with these dreams

that would reflect certain values.

I'm not sure we always have the right

or best dreams for our lives.

Talk to me about how you discern this is the dream.

I think of that metaphor of what house

are you putting your ladder up against?

Sometimes you put your ladder up

and then you're climbing up.

- You climb to the top of the ladder

and you look around and you're--

- Oh my gosh, I've been working on this ladder

the whole time, it's the wrong house.

So I want our dreams to be the right house,

we put our ladder.

Tell me how you discern the right dream,

what are the pressures that come in

that maybe get us off track at times?

- Yeah, and I think it's a good question.

Simon Sinek, they talk about getting to the why,

first ask why.

I think it's critical.

So I think I'm maturing in this.

And so meaning I'm still learning

and I'm at 62, which does not mean totally mature,

but it means more of a tour than I was at 32.

I think I'm asking better questions.

At 32, I think there was a space where I was asking,

how can we grow a larger church?

Now, dude, we were, unlike in Getty,

my first seven years at Ada Bible Church,

we were under 100.

We went up to 100, three false starts on a building program,

dropped to 80, 70, 50, so we went up to 100

and then down to 50.

That was the net gain of seven freaking years.

All the church planners that are listening right now are going, "Okay, I'm doing okay.

I could be worse."

Well, by the way, when I get to speak to pastors, I would so much rather talk about how do you

keep your heart together and your head together when things are dropping than how do you go

to four campuses?

"Well, that doesn't interest me that much."

We can talk about that if I have to, but I'd rather talk about when we went up to 100 and

then dropped to 50 and we're waiting for that breakthrough.

But all that is to say that asking, "How can I build a large church?" is different than

the question, "How can I build a healthy church?"

And somewhere like the dream, the dream of a healthy church, I think is a better dream

than a dream of a big church, particularly if I believe that there's something intrinsically

valuable in health, even if it never gets big.

So can I lead us to be as healthy as we can be?

I would, I'm a school superintendent.

How can it be the healthiest faculty,

emotionally and relationally we can possibly be?

In a company, how can we have the healthiest company culture

we possibly can?

Often, not always, but often profitability follows that.

Not always, but often, more so, less so.

It follows that.

And so I even started asking a different question.

I have five grandkids.

Dude, Preston is 10,

and then two eight-year-old granddaughters

five-year-old granddaughters and you start asking legacy questions like

If I were to die, you know prematurely

Man, I just hope that there are people that would come up to my grandchildren and say this is what your grandpa meant to me

This is the difference he made in my life

And then I was shaken by this thought a couple years ago

No, I

Want my grandchildren?

Approaching people saying this is what my grandpa meant to me

This is how he shaped my life. So rather than some third party out there saying

Jeff was important. I want my grandkids to go so so

Is that my dream it is certainly is an ambition and you know, Arthur Brooks in his book strength to strength

He talks about I might get the words wrong here, but I hope you get the sense of it. He talks about the difference between

resume values and legacy values.

And resume values is what you see in someone's obituary.

And when I get introduced,

"Seen Pastor of Ada Bible Church for 40 years,

"he's written these three books," that's resume.

Legacy is the people we love,

the people we nurture, the people we mentor.

And so if I have a dream of resume values,

it can shape me to behave differently

than if I have a dream of legacy values,

where I want the critical people in my life

to see me as authentically engaged.

- Do you think that, to me there's no question

as one gets older, it's easier to ask

what are my legacy value, ask legacy value

kind of questions versus resume value.

Is it possible to discipline yourself

as a, let's say somebody's listening right now

in their late 20s, early 30s, late 30s,

they're in, you know, go hard in some kind

of career direction, is it possible to try to put on a hat

of thinking more legacy and get that kind of clarity

when you're still that young and it's hard to see the,

you know, see towards the latter half?

I would say the more we think in those terms,

the more faithfully we can engage with other people.

And by that, I mean if the disciplines of Sabbath, of taking a day off once a week,

one day a week where we wake up and go, "Today, there's nothing I have to do and there's no

place I have to go."

Not where we shift from our work to-do list to our home to-do list, but the day we wake

up with no to-do list.

I would say practicing Sabbath is based on a number of things, but one would be, "I wanna

healthy as I can possibly be to the people around me

and running ragged, seven days of work

followed by seven days of busyness

followed by seven days of busyness

followed by seven more days of business,

I will run down, I will run out of gas so fast.

So how can I bring my best self?

Now, when a 20 year old tries to figure that out

with a preschooler, just try to figure it out.

It's half a day.

It's a part of a day that's Sabbath rest.

I would say they're entering into this legacy question.

they begin their day by reading some scripture, quieting themselves, when they check into a

counselor and they go, "I got some stuff I gotta deal with," before my partner threatens to move

out, just 'cause I've never dealt with his stuff. I would say that that begins to build the legacy

issues because we start dealing with who we are and how we relate, not just what am I achieving,

"What am I accomplishing?

"What's on my resume?"

And so I think that the 28-year-old, 32-year-old

should be thinking about those things,

not because they're thinking about

who's gonna eulogize them at their funeral.

But Stephen Covey, way back in the day,

"Seven Habits of Highly Affected People,"

when he talked about begin with the end in mind,

he says, "Sit at your funeral.

"Who do you want to get up and talk about you?

"What do you want them to be able to honestly say?

"Okay, how can you organize your life

"around being that person?"

That's a question for someone who's 24.

- Yeah, it's funny because I had a youth pastor

who had read Covey's book,

and so here I am as a high school student,

and he would give us these exercises

where he would kind of quiet the room

and ask us to think about what are people gonna say

about you when you're dead?

And even as a high school student,

and I always had big dreams for different things,

but even as a high school student,

it didn't take much work to realize

some of the things I thought would be so amazing

are actually kinda empty and dumb,

not unimportant, not bad, just,

you just realized, man, I don't know if--

Some of those end up being leave it or take it.

I don't know if that's that big of a deal.

Yeah, take it or leave it.

Yeah, exactly, but then the relationship side,

like you're getting at, you quickly realize,

wow, that is, that's where I wanna live.

I want people to say, to be able to say,

he loved well, he was present, he was there.

Now, we're talking a lot about what it means to kind of be in those places of steady and

sometimes even hidden faithfulness.

Okay.

Well, go ahead.

You said, in describing your work earlier as a senior pastor, you used a statement.

I wanted to jump on it.

Go for it, yeah.

And you just repeated it, so this is my moment to pounce, right?

Yeah.

You said, "The stuff nobody sees."

Yeah.

"The important stuff nobody sees."

And you just said, "The hidden stuff."

In sports, there's the SportsCenter top 10 plays of the week, right?

The highlight reel.

What ends up getting on the top 10 plays of the week?

Think multiple sports here.

Yeah, big stuff.

Scores, dunks.

I mean, is that what you're getting at?

It's a soccer goal, into the upper left corner, just out of the reach of the goalie.

It's the monster slam dunk.

It's baseball.

a home run center fielder jumps up,

steals a home run from some guy,

in golf it's the ball that lands

and then spins back within six inches of the cup.

That's the highlight reel.

What never makes the highlight reel is stretching.

What never makes the highlight reel is running laps.

What never makes the highlight reel

is all the stuff you have to do to make the highlight reel.

And so I think a terrible question is,

how can I imitate that guy on the field

or that woman on the field?

And a much better question is, what are they doing?

It's the shooting free throws in an empty gym

when no one's watching and no one's cheering

and no cameras are running.

So a story that's just emerged,

'cause I mean, here in Michigan, Detroit Lions fans,

and we've got this receiver, Amon Ross St. Brown.

And it is, and I think this was part

of the Netflix series, "Receiver."

They had the quarterback series,

came out next year, "Receiver" series,

and Amon Ross St. Brown is one of the ones they follow.

But there's this machine that throws passes at you,

called the Jugs machine.

And after practice, Amon Ross St. Brown

will take 202 passes at a distance of about seven yards

from this jugs machine after practice.

After, no, that's what I mean, you know, free throws.

Dude, he's been doing this since middle school.

- No kidding.

- 'Cause his dad ran into some other dad

whose kid had just great hands.

And he said, "How do you do this?"

He said, "Well, you have bought a jugs machine

and we, you know, 200 passes a day."

And he goes, "I'm gonna do 202 passes a day."

The driven dad, the driven dad to push his kid.

But they kept that a secret.

It's just come out recently that he does that.

And so all during middle school, all during high school, all during college, 202.

I wonder when he passed 1 million, literally, do the math, 1 million passes caught again

and again, but it's the stuff that nobody sees.

That's right.

And so if we're...

Yeah, so anyway, as a man, as a dad, as a friend, for me, for us, as leaders, as pastors,

what's the quiet, slow and steady, you know,

taking the passes, the free throws in the empty gym

that doesn't get celebrated,

but absolutely critical to our leadership.

That I think, so slow and steady faithfulness,

ant power, that's the kind of stuff

that intrigues me the most,

is what people are doing behind the scenes.

- Oh, that's so good.

- So I don't know that it was close to any question

you were asking.

- No, that's so good.

I think that that's and what you're really saying here is,

hey, the magic, I mean, even thinking of that example

of the 202 Pass example, the magic or the secret recipe,

the sauce is not in whatever he did on the field.

It's in all the stuff that you can't see.

That's what we've got to figure out.

What's the, when it comes to being motivated

for a big dream, I mean, what in your view

is the place of the big dream?

I mean, the title is Dream Big, Think Small.

How important is it to have a big dream?

And is it wrong to say, "Oh, I wanna build this big thing," or "I wanna do this."

Would your premise be, "No, the big dreams just need to be relational ones."

What's the role of the big dream?

Yeah, and by the way, in the book title, Dream Big, Think Small, I wanted to call the book

Think Small because it's just so counterintuitive.

for the stars, follow your passion. I just wanna call it Think Small. And my publisher

encouraged me to call it Dream Big, Think Small, 'cause they heard me make the statement

in a talk that I gave. "No, no, no, that's your title." And so, the emphasis was really

on the slow and steady faithfulness, not the big dream. But I think we need goals that

are large enough to change our behavior. And back in the day, Jim Collins, the B-Hack,

The big hairy audacious goal.

The idea there was a goal large enough to change everything you do.

So an example would be, I want to run a 5K.

Well I can jog a couple days a week and get up to 5K distance.

So however, if you go, I want to finish a Ironman triathlon, right?

in Hawaii, Kona Ironman Triathlon,

and I want a place in my age division.

Okay, suddenly then your whole life just changed there.

So sometimes organizationally, we need a goal.

So you're calling it a big dream,

but it's basically a goal that is large enough to say,

"Oh, my behavior has to change to accomplish that."

And so in an organization, if you survey your people

on health, and we survey every year at Ada Bible Church,

our staff on how they perceive the health

of our organization.

Are we certifiably healthy?

And then we go, okay, if we wanna get to this next level,

we have to change our behavior now.

'Cause otherwise it's just status quo.

Doing the stuff you've always done,

but hoping for different results.

And so, yeah, so I think sometimes we need goals

that are big enough to change our behavior.

- Well, and I think--

- Does that make sense?

- It does, yeah.

I think that when you've got these steady practices,

I mean, ultimately the steady practices are taking you

in some sort of direction.

I can do a lot of steady things day after day,

which are the right ones that I should be doing

because I can tell you right now,

part of me getting to what I believe

is my God-intended goal has meant

some of the steady practices I was doing,

I have since removed from my life

because they're gonna just slow me down

when getting to the goal.

So I feel like for me, partially,

I 100% am on board with the idea of that steady rhythm.

But I think the way having a goal or a dream plays in

is once I know that really is from God, it's not ego,

I think those two can all... They all get co-mingled, but once I know this is my God-given

calling, then that helps me give alignment to my steadiness. It also, honestly, to me,

gives me motivation to... Back to the motivation to do the small things that are quiet.

Yeah.

I mean, part of why I get up in the morning, get after those same things over and over

and sermon prep again is because I have this bigger picture that I'm excited about and

believe God's called me to.

Let me play the other side of that.

Sure.

there are things that I do repetitively that I believe they're healthy, and they're not related

to some, "We're gonna get to the moon within 10 years, JFK," type thing. They just help day by day

to transform me into the person that I believe God created me to be. But yet, if you say, "What's

your dream?" But then I go, "Yeah, no, that's not..." Brian, you probably know this. I have a

gratitude exercise that I do, I would say every day, but probably five days a week. Three unique

that I'm grateful for.

I started that practice, I'm thinking 20 years ago,

not because I was a grateful person,

but because I detected in myself some currents

that kind of looked entitled, ungrateful, unthankful,

and I didn't want to become an ungrateful old guy.

I just didn't wanna be a complainer.

And so I began this discipline of three unique items a day

that I'm thankful to God for,

and itemizing them in my journal,

actually writing them down,

thing one, thing two, and thing three.

This morning, a couple of things were the friendships

that I awakened to.

I was at the lake with three guys

that have been friends for 30 years,

long distance friendships.

The huge wind out on Lake Michigan today,

the white caps just breaking,

it felt like a photograph in every breaking way.

just the beauty of nature.

And so,

so what dream do those add up to?

The dream of not being a cranky old guy?

Complain?

Yeah, but--

- I still think that's a goal though.

You have a picture of the kind of man you want to be.

- It's a goal, but I wouldn't say it's this

big, hairy, audacious, glow.

- No, no, yeah, not, sort of a building an entity thing.

- And by the way, you know what that does for me

after I've done that one day?

Absolutely nothing.

- It's like exercising one day.

It's the cumulative.

I tell people, if you do this gratitude exercise,

Brian, I'm telling you, it'll change your life

in only three to five years.

(laughing)

It's like any discipline.

You look at the compounding power of it.

Back to Amin Rah, St. Brown,

what did catching 202 passes from the Jugs Machine do to you?

Yeah, nothing.

Ah, do it since middle school.

He's got a 99% catch rate last season.

If it comes his way, he's probably gonna grab it.

He's dropped one in a hundred.

- You know what I love about your gratitude exercise

is you came up with, it reminds me of John Ortberg's book,

"Life You've Always Wanted."

And he talks about this idea that spiritual disciplines

are whatever we choose that helps us become the person

we need to become.

So not that everybody could not benefit

practicing gratitude in the way you just described.

But I think what's cool about that example is

you saw an area in your life that needed transformation.

- That I didn't like.

- And you said, what is basically a spiritual discipline?

A spiritual discipline is just a practice you repeat

and invite the Holy Spirit to shape you through it.

You basically custom designed a spiritual discipline

for an area you needed transformation in.

And I think it's a great example for any of us

that detect, hey, similar to Jeff,

Yeah, I probably deal with a little entitlement,

a little bit of ingratitude,

but it's also a great example for other areas of life,

other places where we see the list

of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.

- Find a system that you practice and repeat,

practice and repeat, practice and repeat,

where you don't see the benefits from day to day,

but you're likely to see the benefits after several years.

Latch, and you can't do that with 47 things,

but grab a few.

And by the way, just gratitude,

just what we're on that topic. It's not just that gratitude is good. My friend, it's what

gratitude pushes out. Because gratitude is an obsession with what is going right. Complaint

is an obsession with what's going wrong. Anxiety is an obsession with what might go wrong.

And envy is an obsession with what's going right for everybody else but me. And so when

When I sit down over a course of months and go, "My life is being bombarded by these blessings.

I just need to stop and see them as they're spinning by," it has the tendency to push

out complaint, push out anxiety, and push out envy, and actually to become a person

who sees themself as incredibly blessed.

But again, this is long discipline.

That's so good.

That's so good.

Let me ask you a question about when I think

when we think of that picture

of the slow and steady wins the race.

I think sometimes, and one of the benefits you talk about

is that steadiness can help you not burn out,

can help you with sustainability and that kind of thing.

And I think that's hands down true,

but I also know and I know you won't have any problem

with me sharing this.

I've seen you at definitely some pedal to the metal,

I need to take a breather moments.

- Yeah.

- So, and I think there's gotta be a place for times

where it is, it looks a little crazier than other times.

Help me understand when it comes to that lifetime

of steady faithfulness and generally speaking,

that helps you not burn out, but then there are these,

are there these times that we should have the pedal

to the metal?

Do you look at those and you go,

oh, every one of them was messed up?

Or do you go, no, there's a place for that.

And how do you know when is the place?

And how do you know when it's too long?

Talk to me about that.

- Yeah, and I would just say that anyone who is ambitious,

and by that I don't mean in the darkest sense,

I just mean, I just hope that this grows

under my consistency and faithfulness.

There are seasons that are wildly out of balance.

Finishing a degree, when you gotta get

that dissertation done or that senior thesis done

and finish that last course.

And I finished, one of my degrees,

I finished with three children in my home

while Ada Bible Church was growing.

And it's just gotta get it done type thing.

But even that was at power, by the way.

It took seven years.

I was always taking a course for seven years

and just kept chipping away.

But then the thesis is due and you gotta wrap this up now.

A building program.

Okay, now in addition to your job,

there are some fun development opportunities

to have a series of dinners where you cast this vision

to people who might send you forward

in paying this sucker off, you know?

Having a child.

You know, we would like to have a child.

We just wanna do it without getting tired.

Oh, good luck with that.

Just having babies in a house, you lose sleep,

it's exhausting.

And so I think I would, are those truly seasons?

this building program, this is a season

where I'm just gonna have to double down.

Or does one season lead to the next season

to lead to the next, and say, okay, now it's not a season.

Now it's just a lifestyle of a frantic pace.

And you have to circle back to that and say,

no, no, this is not a season, this is my life.

I think that good leaders think in terms of recovery.

Back in the day, I ran marathons,

I did like a dozen different marathons.

The things you need to do to recover from a marathon,

just to say, "No, no, no, this is exhausting.

This will mess up my bodily system.

I will then need to schedule time to recover from this."

And so I think that that's a great conversation for...

Well, Christmas Eve for us, you know, preachers.

Dude, six Christmas services.

What I did after Christmas in the last week of December

and the first week of January are critical

as far as recovery.

a tax preparers, I'm assuming preceding April 15

is a whirlwind and what are you doing

the fourth week of April, the first week of May?

And so just to think in terms of an annual rhythm

and building and recovery time during those crunch points

that are just camps where you run your camp director

week after week after week after week of camp,

pretty much June through late August.

okay, where are your rhythms where you can idle back,

catch your breath?

I think knowing where those are,

which is different than just project after project

after project, and that's not a frantic season,

that's a frantic life.

And a week of vacation in a warm place with an umbrella

is not gonna heal you from that.

- Do you think that, I'm guessing you've gotten better

and better at predicting and being able to look

around the corner when it comes to,

this is gonna be a push,

but I've got to schedule the time to recover afterwards

'cause I know it's gonna be a push.

Do they ever surprise you?

Like, oh my goodness, I'm really tired right now.

I didn't see this coming.

Have the surprises gotten to be fewer

as you've gotten further in your career?

Or is it like you're never surprised?

You always know.

- They're more predictable.

That doesn't always make me smarter.

- Okay. (laughs)

- So being able to--

- Best line of the podcast right there.

- Being able to predict a season of fatigue

is different than doing the smart stuff.

But coming off a travel preaching schedule right now,

I did preaching workshops in Poland and two in Finland,

and then one in Czech Republic,

got back on a Thursday night,

then preached three weekends at Ada,

and it's three services, Saturday night, two Sunday morning.

I knew, and that ended, by the way, last Sunday.

I knew that this week, try to get done nothing.

just chip away at some small things around the edges.

But I knew that go, go, go, better come to an end.

Or I was gonna be at this point,

I was gonna be sick for a month.

You know, and I've had these periods

where after Christmas, I get sick and I can't recover.

And then I'm jumping back in in January

and I still feel physically depleted.

And so I'm better at predicting

and actually I am better at and guarding my schedule

following those times as much as humanly possible.

And even going like deceleration,

okay, I'm gonna go through this period

and then I'm gonna get this vacation with my wife, Chris.

I need to spend a week decelerating

so I'm not trying to go from 90 miles an hour

down to 30 mile an hour school zone.

And so what can I do to go from 90 to 55 to 30?

- Yeah, so it's not too dramatic all at once.

- Yeah, you can't by the time you decelerate

and then you're flying back home and you're in meetings.

- Do you feel like there are common warning signs,

like for you, getting sick is a warning sign.

Hey, I've learned, I've pushed it too far, I am if I start.

For me, I would say, if I can tell that things

that ordinarily wouldn't tempt my patience.

You know, I start finding I'm just a little more irritable.

- Irritated, yeah, agitated.

- Yeah, and anything that you see in your life

or in other people, other leaders you talk to that you go,

these are some hallmarks of,

hey, maybe the pedal's been down a little too long.

- Yeah, I think my encouragement would be

figure out what your warning signs are

because they may be wildly different.

You just picked on two of mine,

the physical exhaustion leading to I'm sick

and I can't recover quickly,

which is different than a cold for a couple of days,

you need a bounce back.

And the other one is, you know,

what you put your finger on is irritability,

where you're just not giving the people around you

much margin at all in your family and friends.

You're just too easily agitated,

too fast would be one of mine.

Another one is loss of objectivity.

The major things that I should see on the horizon

that are major, I'm not seeing them,

and little things I'm making huge.

And so when I'm making little stuff massive

and massive stuff is just invisible to me,

I'd say, dude, you're losing your perspective.

- Yeah, that's good.

- And so, and sometimes, unfortunately,

it takes the people we love around us,

letting us know that we're losing our,

why are you sniping at me?

I'm not, I'm not, I'm in a good mood.

Why is everybody else?

- Well, I'm sure that's what you have to do for Chris,

but she never would have to do that for you.

Oh my. Lord help me.

I'm curious, having now the books a few years in the past, is there anything when it comes to

the message of Dream Big Think Small that you see differently than when you wrote the book,

or you would have changed having had time to reflect and potentially had conversations like

this? Or does it feel like, "No, honestly, what I put down is pretty much..."

Well, like any book, what they say is books are never finished, they're just abandoned.

And you come to a point where you go, "I've worked on this for a year," or whatever. "I

just gotta get this done." And so always little things that reading back, you're just hypercritical

and wish you had worded better or differently or something like that. So there's that. There's that

stuff. But the major current of the book, no. Other than just say, "Listen, faithfulness is

not just a way to get you to your dream. Faithfulness is its own reward." Because

'Cause there are people that work really, really hard in a disciplined way that never

reached the goal they were looking for.

Nashville is filled with musicians that worked really, really, really, really hard and never

got their big break.

And so, "So where are you playing right now?"

I'm helping with worship in our church over here,

but I'm never gonna be on, you know,

I never had my breakthrough moment.

High school, excuse me, college athletes

that never made it to the pro level.

High school athletes that gave it everything

and didn't go division one, you know?

And so we tend to gravitate toward those

who worked really, really hard and look at their payoff.

And the summary is you can accomplish anything

if you put your heart to it.

And I go, our world is filled with millions of people

that gave it everything they had

and didn't get what they were after.

And so when I say faithfulness is its own reward,

the person who went, I played college football,

had a tryout with one pro team for their practice squad,

never made it.

Okay, how did I conduct myself as a college athlete

in a way that I can look back and say, no regrets?

What life lessons did I learn from that?

They're gonna help me in this insurance agency.

and as a husband, and later as a dad.

And so while everyone who made it,

almost always there's this backlog

of discipline, boring activity,

that doesn't mean that everybody who devoted themselves

to practice and intensity

ended up with that breakthrough moment.

Churches, Brian, for every church

is like busting at the seams. There are thousands of faithful women and men out there,

plugging away, plugging away, plugging away, who will never have the podcast, the book contract,

or the fastest growing church in America list. And I wanna applaud those people for whom

faithfulness is its own reward, whether or not you have this moment when you make the marquee and the

highlight reel and the contract. How can we conduct ourselves in such a way that we can look back and

say, "I wish we'd had a breakthrough moment. We really didn't, but very few regrets. I learned

how to love people well and serve people well." That's such a great word. And even you saying that,

I just know in my soul with everybody who's listening, they're going, "Oh, that's right."

Do you think...

To me, I can't remember where I heard somebody talking about this, and I'm gonna word it

differently than they did, but they were saying, "It's really important you love the process,

not just the prize."

And I feel like there's some merit to that, that not even just the reward of faithfulness,

that the actual, whether it's passing those 202 passes

or whatever, shooting free throws or whatever,

that just the actual process, there's some joy in it for you

because if everything is only valuable in so far

as it is a means to an end and the end doesn't come,

well, that's a really tough situation.

So what I hear you saying is value the faithfulness,

in some ways, value maybe who you're becoming

through the process, but I really, I mean, the reps,

the reps part of my role, I enjoy the reps.

Do you feel like that's important to enjoy the reps

for in and of themselves, that they're sort of the process,

the transformation journey and not be totally preoccupied

with, oh, this is the goal?

- Well, in organizational leadership, there's always,

we keep saying around the next corner, then,

and I discovered after a while, and I'll tell you

it was. It was 16 years into my ministry at Ada Bible Church. And realizing that every corner,

every corner we turned just led to another corner. And I had a moment, I mean, I remember where I was

standing when this hit me. Seven years, five years we met in this house, literally, it was a house

on a dirt road, somehow managed to get up to 100,

then dropped down to 50, got out of that,

moved into school, built our next building, outgrew it.

So first seven years, 20 to 100,

next seven years, 100 to 900.

We pulled the plug on that building,

bought like 80 acres, built out in the country,

and we moved into that building.

And I had people saying at the grand opening

of this new building,

is finally we were over a thousand consistently.

You must be so pleased.

And I went,

all of my 20s, all of my 30s,

and I've got this building

that pretty much looks like a middle school,

and we're up to a thousand.

I went, I mean, this is good.

It's not that good.

And there wasn't a sense of arrival.

That's it.

There was no sense of arrival.

Here we are in this new building,

had a ribbon-cutting ceremony, still at two services. We were on a growth track, still

understaffed, still felt like there weren't enough people to do the work. I remember a point,

we're sitting, standing on this elevation. It was like a stairwell that went up to a upper level.

And I was standing there looking over people below. And I went, "This is it? This is what

I've given my 20s and 30s to?" And I remember this moment where I said, "Dude, this is your life. You

corner where all the cogs in the universe will lock into place. You go, "Yes, joy now." It's

kind of like you better start finding joy in the work because there is no moment ahead when you

will feel perfectly fulfilled, satisfying, yes, throw the party now. Every corner just leads to

another corner. And so I think that that's what you're saying. And that was my moment then,

and I've done it sort of successfully from time to time since then. 'Cause you think,

once we hire a youth pastor, once we go to two services, once we get out of this building,

once the expansion is built, once we have healthy systems in place, and an IT director, and HR

format, it's just, if you're growing, everything just leads to something else. So at some point,

you gotta say, "I better start enjoying these people." How does a pastor love the people that

are there more than the people that might be there someday?

That's good.

In Poland, and a pastor said to me, "If when someone says, 'I love the church,'

if faces don't come to their mind, they don't love the church, they love the idea of the church."

Wow.

And you could do that to any, I think, branch of occupation.

So I better find reasons to love today and not just the breakthrough that's gonna come a couple

months from now.

Yeah, well, that's so good. And I've heard so many stories outside of ministry where

the person does win, I mean, the award. Yes. The big moment, the thing that is supposed to be,

I mean, by definition in their trade or craft, it is the thing. I mean, there's no, it's

undeniable. Everybody who's in anybody who's in their deal goes for that one thing. They get there

and they throw the trophy in the trunk or the backseat on the way home. And they're like,

oh, I'm back to my normal life. That was good for the, you know, 60 minutes, that program of

of that program where I was at the top

and now it's just me.

- Listen to athletes like Michael Phelps

talk about the depression of Olympic athletes who win,

not those who didn't make it, those who did make it

and the cliff emotional after that.

And I think it gets us some clues

into what success can and can't do for us.

- Yeah, that's really good.

Well, let me ask you this, Jeff,

where can people find you

if they wanna find out more about Jeff Manion.

- Locate adabible.org.

- There we go.

- And our sermons, I think the most powerful thing I do

is still these weekly presentations of opening

the scriptures and communicating how the Bible

relates to life.

And so of all the sources that people could go to,

I would say, take the time to watch some of the stuff

we've done in 35 to 40 minute format, and I think it gives some examples of how the

Bible can come alive.

Yeah, that's great.

That's where I would point people to.

That's great.

And obviously, all your books are available.

Everywhere, so there's always...

Everywhere, fine resources are sold.

That's right.

So, and everything you've written is just fantastic.

Anything else you wanna share today?

No, just thankful for the opportunity, and I'm so grateful that leaders around our country

and beyond the country are profiting from these conversations in how to bring our healthy

selves, a more healthy self, to the task of leading and serving people.

Dude, I'm grateful for your work.

Amen and amen.

Well, Jeff, thanks for hanging out with us today.

I know many are gonna benefit from this conversation, and thank you for being, as I've said many

times, an utter hero of faith to me.

Just, to me, I so appreciate steadiness and faithfulness.

And so it is really cool to be able to rub shoulders

with somebody who's a couple of clicks ahead of me

and I can say, "That's who I wanna be like when I grow up."

So thanks for being that guy, Jeff.

Appreciate you.

- Hey, I love you, man.

Thanks so much.

- Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation

with Jeff today.

What a great encouragement just on the subject of steadiness

and the whole time Jeff was sharing,

I kept thinking of that great quote

We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, but we underestimate what God can

accomplish over a lifetime.

And I want to just encourage you today that whatever you're doing, stay steady, stay faithful,

enjoy the process, enjoy who God is helping you become through the journey.

And you might not achieve every last goal or dream that you set out for, but I know

God will do something deep and significant in and through your life.

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And we've got more incredible conversations coming your way.

So stay tuned and until next time, just know you were made to advance.