What Every Credible Leader Has in Common

even on the parts of your role that you don't love, you have to get to a threshold of competence or the incompetence in the parts of your job that you don't love will cause you to lose credibility for your whole job. It's great to have you back for another episode of the Craig Rochelle Leadership Podcast. And I'm going to tell you what, you're going to enjoy this interview. Before we dive in today, I want to tell you, if you're new, we drop a brand new teaching on the first Thursday of every month. And if you go to cglp.com, you can get the leader guide. Our team goes, puts a lot of effort into creating a guide that will help you with questions and additional content that you can go over with your team. Go to cglp.com to find the information. And today's guest is a very good friend of mine. Not only is he a pastor, but he's been a significant business leader. Pastor Eric Geiger is a senior pastor of Mariner's Church in Southern California over 250 staff members, 25,000 people in attendance with 12 going on 14 different locations. Before that, Eric was the chief business officer and senior vice president of Lifeway with over $500 million a year in annual revenue. That's quite a variety of leadership experience from $500 million in a for-profit business to now running a big church.

Eric, welcome to the podcast. Man, I'm so honored to be here and that you call me a good friend, that means the most, man. Well, you are. In fact, the reason I'm excited about this interview is because when we get together, I fight for airtime to ask you questions because I always walk away every single time with significant value from our talks about leadership, church, family, the whole deal. Man, that means a ton, but I gotta tell you the truth about one of the times we first sat down. We were at this conference and you and Amy, your wife, were sitting in a different part from where Kay, my wife, and I were. I told Kay, I said, baby, I'm gonna go try to talk to Craig. She said, why is it a big deal? I said, I have always wanted to sit down and ask him. I had like five or six questions I wanted to ask him. And so she's like, go do it, go do it. I was nervous, but I went and you were so kind. We sat down. You gave me a lot more time than I thought you would. And then when I went back to being seated with Kay, I said, hold on, I need to write everything down that he said. That's so funny.

I put it on my laptop and just wrote down. And all the counsel and wisdom you gave during that time really impacted the trajectory of our church in terms of multiplication and investing in new locations and what the staff structure should be. You were so generous with your time. And I wanna say thank you on behalf of our church. You really have made an impact on us. Thank you. It's mutual, and congratulations on the book. It's not out yet. I am blessed enough to have, what do you call this, an advanced reader copy, meaning this one, the real one will look better if I don't copy hardback and stuff. I hope so. Yeah, The Rooted Leader, Seven Rhythms of Leaders Who Bear Fruit That Last. You're the perfect person to write this book because you have decades of leadership with so much fruit. And so the book comes out August the- 25th. 25th, and it is a book that I guarantee every leader will want to read. I appreciate your writing. I wanna ask more about the book as we go, but first I wanna get a little bit of your backstory because you truly do have what I would consider to be one of the best leadership minds of anybody that I've talked to.

And I'm not exaggerating when I say that. Eric, when is the first time you actually saw yourself as a leader? When I was a little kid, we had a neighborhood gang. I said gang, gang, makes it sound like it was rubber than it was. Neighborhood club. You kind of look like a gangster. Yeah. We didn't have like gang signs or anything, but we did have like a motto. We just would play in the woods. And they elected me as president. How old were you? Gosh, seven or eight years old. And we were called the Copperheads. It was a snake down South Louisiana. And that was the first time that I thought other people, it was the first time I had never thought of myself as someone that other people recognized as having leadership. That was a small thing. And then really after becoming a Christian, going off to college, my freshman year at Louisiana Tech University, a public school in North Louisiana, there were some people who really saw leadership in me. And I was asked to be the freshman president of this ministry on the college campus. And that was the first time where I thought,

wow, I could make an impact. Being the president of the Copperheads when I was eight years old, didn't really have any real fruit to it. It was fun. But that was when I thought, this is an opportunity to serve people, to provide clarity on what we're about. And that was the time that I started seeing that this is an opportunity to make an impact in other people's lives. And you also got your doctorate in leadership and church ministry as well. Yeah. Did you learn more in? in school, getting a PhD in leadership or on the job early on? It's not even close. I mean, the work does the work of developing leaders. And so the responsibilities that I was given at a young age, I'm really thankful for people who believed in me as a young leader. So I was 27 when I became an executive pastor of a church in Miami. And that was, I'm so thankful still for the pastor who believed in me at a young age to give me more than the resume said I should be given. And then Dr. Tom Rainer, who I know you know, he then gave me a huge responsibility at Lifeway when there really was no reason the resume would say

he should be given this much responsibility, but he believed in me. And I'm thankful for all my professors and the schooling that I had, but it's really, it's not even close. Being in a position where you're overwhelmed and you're forced to learn and you're forced to figure out what actually works, how to serve people well, that's what does by far the most developing. Can you, based on your experience, can you talk to that leader who is, you were 27, which was pretty young to be an executive pastor of a church. You were also chief business officer, earlier than many would be of a major for-profit organization and without like a lot of business background. So you would have been doing a big job out of what had been your experience. Talk to the leader who maybe feels younger than maybe they should be, leading people older and doing something that feels a little bit out of their comfort zone. How do you succeed when you have so many, so much headwind like that? Yeah, I had years of feeling like I was younger than I should be for the role. Just now, I crossed 50. Just now, do I feel old? You know, never do you feel just right. You feel too young and then you feel too old.

So the years of feeling too young, by God's grace, I viewed that as an opportunity. You know, the Apostle Paul told his mentee or his protege, Timothy, don't let anyone look down on you because you're young, but set an example. And he gave ways to set the example. And the ways he said to set the example weren't in what often young leaders are affirmed for. He didn't say set the example in innovation, set the example in creativity, but it was all about his character. Set the example in your life, your speech, your purity. So as a young leader, I definitely believe that my character is really what people would follow, that I would be a person worth following, not just that my vision or my ideas would be worth believing in, but that I would be someone who's being formed more into the image of Jesus. And then I also viewed the seasons of being overwhelmed as an opportunity really to grow. But we know this, I know that you work out a lot and physical fitness is a value to you. And I'm thankful for that too. If we wanna grow muscles, we have to put more weight on the bar than we think we can handle. You actually have to be overwhelmed.

You don't grow your muscles unless your muscles are overwhelmed. The art is not putting so much weight on the bar that you get crushed, but putting more weight on the bar than you had last time so that your muscles are overwhelmed and they're forced to grow. So if you're a young leader feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of your vision or the opportunity is just more than you thought it would be, then that is an opportunity for you to really grow. And so you figure out where you're deficient and you press deeply in to that. I remember when I went to LifeWay, the area that I felt so underprepared for was finance. I come from executive pastor at a local church where really financing in the church is pretty simple. Spend less than we receive, it's pretty simple. I go to a bit, it was still a ministry, LifeWay is a ministry funded by a business model. And there were all kinds of terms I had no idea, like obsolescence and scrap and product margin and gross profit margin and contribution before corporate overhead. I mean, all of these terms, I had no idea what they meant. So I spent the whole first Christmas break of my first several months there. I went to MBA websites from like the top MBA schools in the country, Booth and Wharton and Harvard.

And looked at their syllabuses for finance classes. And I ordered all of the books, all of the finance books, which this was so hard for me to read because I don't love finance. And I made myself read these books, got back to the office and I went to our CFO's office and said, okay, all of these terms, I'm trying to map them to the terms we use here. And he was blown away that I had spent so much time. I wanted to show up in the role that God had given me well. And it meant reading a bunch of books I didn't want to read but I could then be conversant in the discipline of finance and I couldn't before that. Okay, so that's super interesting to me because a lot of advice I hear nowadays is. Like, don't do something unless you love it. And you did something you didn't want to do to become better at something that you wanted to be good at. Talk to me about that. How important is it to always have a job that you love? Yeah, I think it's awesome when we love everything that we do, but the reality is there's no job I've had where I love every aspect of what I do. And even on the parts of your role that you don't love, you have to get to a threshold of competence or the incompetence in the parts of your job that you don't love will cause you to lose credibility for your whole job. So there's parts of my role that I enjoyed much more

than other parts of my role, but I have to get to a threshold of competence even in the parts that I don't enjoy or I'm not believed for my total role. Yeah, I would even say like, that's really dumb advice. If you tell someone you have to always love what you do, you're just not going to. Like, what percentage of your job right now would you say is outside of what you love to do? Currently? Yeah. 25, 30% maybe? Yeah, and that might be, you know, some people would be higher than that, some people lower, but you know, you're in your calling doing exactly what you're created to do, and 25 to 30% of what you do, you know, is not your favorite thing to do. And part of being a leader is being a servant, which means we are going to embrace things that we just do because the role, it's best for the role, it's best for the people that we serve. The role doesn't exist for us, the people don't exist for us, we as leaders exist for them, and that's going to mean taking on things that we don't love. Yes, I want you to talk more about that because a lot of times people, I genuinely think, I want to aspire to be a leader, I want to be, you know, an influencer,

I want to have a big, you know, I want to be, because it's I, I, I, I, I. Right. But you've got a little different take on that. Leadership's really, especially Christian leadership, but this is true for all leaders, it's about dying to yourself and serving others. This is from a marketplace perspective, but Robert Greenleaf wrote one of the first seminal leadership books in the 1970s called Servant Leadership. Those of us who are Christians were like, oh, he discovered something that we've believed, you know, since Jesus came here to serve us, but he identified that the most effective leaders he believed were servants first, servants first, then leaders, and that sometimes leaders will take on serving because they know it makes them look good, but he called that serving as an activity, not as an identity, and he believed that the best leaders are those who take on servanthood as an identity. This is who they really are, not just something they do, which is why Christian leaders, I think, have a distinct advantage because we really, at the core of who we are, are servants, servants of him, servants of others, but that then impacts how we view the role and how we view each season. My leadership might need to change based on the season

the organization I'm serving is in. Sometimes it's in a startup mode, it's gonna, I'm gonna have to lead differently than when you're in a sustained success mode or a turnaround mode, and so identifying the season that the organization you're leading in helps you change your leadership or adjust your posture based on what's best for the organization, and also the team that you lead, each person that you lead needs something different, and as a leader, you don't wanna tell the team, all of you adjust to me. You wanna adjust your leadership what's best for the person that you're leading. Right, so based on where culture is today, it was interesting, 2020 and kind of the COVID days disrupted everyone more than any of us had really seen, unless you're in an isolated incident. I have found that even now, six years later, I am continuing to have to change my approach to leadership and both the residue of mental health issues and attitudes about work ethic and all sorts of different things. How are you adjusting still today? What are you doing differently today in your leadership because of where culture is? Yeah, from the COVID days, which it totally impacted us too, I had to quickly pivot my approach in the organization I was leading, Mariners Church. I had followed a long-term pastor, had been there 35 years,

so I was not changing much at all. If you look at Michael Watkins' book, he's a Harvard professor, he wrote, "'Your First 90 Days,'' basically helping you map the organizational readiness or the context of the organization you're in. And he puts organizations in four places, startup, realignment, sustained success, turnaround. So I went to a sustained success. So I was not at all changing things. Well, then COVID happens and everyone, it's almost like we were a startup again, which completely had to change my posture. And there are beautiful things about being in a startup. So here we are six years later, I still have. have a desire to have that kind of edge to us as a leadership team, that we're gonna still be hunters, that we're still gonna look for opportunities and we're gonna go, but I've had to move. You can't be in startup mode forever because you mentioned the mental health, the challenges that it can be for a team if you're always in perpetual startup. So coming out of COVID, I then have had to navigate out of totality of startup mode back to, no, we are a healthy, sustaining team, not just always in startup mode. Well, what you're saying is important. I'm not sure everybody is gonna think along this way, but what you wanna be aware is organizational life cycles.

Yes. And you talked about the four, there's, you know, Deasy writes about it. Yeah, that's really matched, those four, to like the life cycle of an organization from explosive time of growth to sustaining to the, unless you have a new vision, every organization's going to one day go downward, which is why you need to have new, it's called S curves or life cycle curves. Yeah, you have to disrupt something in order to create a new kind of arch. And so that's kind of what I'm asking right now. Your mindset right now, so you're not in a startup, so you'd be more in what some might call sustained success or the flow. What are you doing to continue the flow or to create new avenues of growth? Yeah, continue the flow is constantly rearticulate what's important to us, constantly rearticulate our values. And why are you doing that? Because drift happens, drift, if we don't do it, if we don't do it, drift, drift is happening unless you do it. Just like my garage gets dirty unless I clean it and my body will deteriorate unless I work out, same thing in an organization, a ministry, a church, unless we constantly are rearticulating, here's why we do this, here's how we live around here, drift is happening. Always.

It's always happening. So rearticulating is important, constantly showing how the behaviors that we expect are aligned to our values, that's part of rearticulating. And then basing the future initiatives that we have based on who we are is important. So as not just doing new things, but showing how these actions are rooted in who we are. And where and when are you doing that? Where are you giving the why over and over again? We have a monthly all staff. I do that monthly with our team. With our directional elders, I also meet monthly with them. I'm always looking for times to reinforce, here's why we are doing these things. And then when it comes to going after a new vision or chasing a new goal, I know every team has a different rhythm. For us, in the springtime, as we move into a new ministry year or a new fiscal year, we set some overarching goals as a team. Yeah, I always try to tell myself that, I think, well, I've said this before, so I don't wanna say it again, but vision leaks and culture drifts. And if you're not saying it more than it feels comfortable, you're not saying it enough. 100%. And I always tell myself, say it more than it feels comfortable

and then double the amount of times you say it after that. I love it. Because that's actually what it needs. Yeah, what I found is until a leader gets sick of saying it, the people have not yet heard it. When you're sick of saying it, that's when it's just now starting to be heard. So if someone is astute in listening to you, what they're gonna hear is you learn outside of yourself a lot. So you've had people speak into your life. You went and bought a whole bunch of books just to learn finance terms. You're quoting other things. You read from the outside. So I always like that because when I'm with you, you've always got a something new you've learned. He's like, here's a book you need to read. Here's a whatever. I like that you think organizationally. A lot of preachers just think I'm gonna preach, but we don't just preach. We organize people into disciples. And we're dealing with volunteers. And so it's a leadership intense organization. I like the fact that you've had a great marriage. You're very, very grounded. So when you wrote the book, The Rooted Leader, I thought this is a perfect book for you. Tell me a little bit about the story behind it.

I have taught through the book in Nehemiah to our church. And it really applied it to marketplace leaders, so many marketplace leaders in the context where I shepherd, and just had such great feedback from leaders in our church. I mean, hungry for seeing how the Scripture applies to their role. And I wanna do that for our people, because it does. The Scripture, it applies to every aspect of our lives. And so The Rooted Leader really came from a deep study in Nehemiah's leadership. There's a lot written about Nehemiah. And what I love about it is he, in our terms, would not be a clergy person. I mean, he was a cupbearer to Artaxerxes in Persia, completely different role when he goes to Jerusalem. to rebuild the wall. And then another completely different role when he becomes governor in Jerusalem. So really three different roles. And he succeeds in all of them because he's a servant first, he serves our deserves as well. A lot's written about him, Craig, from the rebuilding of the wall, but there's not been a lot written about what he does after he rebuilds the wall. Rebuilding the wall was massive. I mean, no one thought it could be done. Really sticky vision. There's a lot written about his vision.

Come, let us rebuild the wall so we will not be in disgrace. 52 days later, the wall's rebuilt, even though nobody in all the surrounding nations want that wall to be rebuilt. And so it is really an unbelievable feat. But what happens next is even crazier because he repopulates a city. So people move back into Jerusalem. People commit to change their behaviors. They're gonna live differently. And so he really changed a people, not just changed the height of a wall. And so he's a great leader to look at. And he's not a preacher. He's a governor slash cupbearer slash builder. And so marketplace leaders, both men and women in our church, really resonated with his example. So when you read about him and what he did, what quality impacted your leadership personally the most? There is a chapter where he's surrounded by people and they're trying to get him to come off the wall and have meetings. And then they're threatening him physically. And then they threaten that they're gonna attack the people. And in that one chapter, you see this beautiful paradox where he tells the people, fight, fight for your lives and your families. And then later in the chapter, he says,

our God is fighting for us. So the intermingling of you as a leader fighting and also being able to rest, knowing that you have a great God who fights for you. That mix to me is where perseverance comes from as a leader. And it's an unfair advantage that us Christians have because we know deep down that we do have a Savior King, Jesus the Christ, who fought for us, who still fights for us. And so we can fight because we know that he fights for us. Yeah, that's so good. You know, the voices, I think it was Samuel and Tobiah, who basically was trying to get him to come and engage with them. And he said, I'm doing a great work and I can't come down. I can't come down. And tell me about how you deal with that. Do you ever get criticized in what you do? Oh my gosh, man. I'm baiting you, I'm kind of loud. Well, the reason that that part of the book of Nehemiah has impacted me so much is it's really what I've needed. Because there have been lots of times where I've wanted to come down off the wall. I don't know if this happens to you, but where I live, there's sometimes people on the side of the road with a sign. Like, come to this new pizza place. Basically the employee who has a sign and is twirling it.

There's been many times where I have thought, I want that job. I bet that guy in that job, I bet he goes home and he doesn't take work home with him. I don't know what it's like to not take work home with me. I try, I try to leave it in the car because I'm going in to be with the family. But the burden of leadership's always there. And criticism, it's painful. And of course, I've dealt with criticism. I have to preach to myself that what God says about me is true, and often what, often criticism's not true. You know, there's that cliche, which is so unhelpful, and it's also untrue, that there's a kernel of truth in all criticism. And if you- Sometimes they're just crazy. Sometimes, now sometimes it's true. A good, godly, wise rebuke, we should listen. We should listen to it, correct. We should listen. But it's not always true. That cliche is wrong. There's not always a kernel of truth in all criticism. When you look at the criticism that they went against Nehemiah, there was no truth in it. They lied about what, they said that God's people said they could rebuild the wall in a day. They never said they could rebuild the wall in a day.

They said God's people were feeble. They weren't feeble. These are God's people who are putting their hand to the good work. If Nehemiah listened to the cliche that, well, there's a kernel of truth in all criticism, Nehemiah, you should get off the wall. You should stop. You should consider, is there anything true you should listen to? If he listened to that cliche, he would not have kept building the wall. And so I think leaders, we have to be careful to not let that cliche enslave us. Yeah, so I just wanna say to anyone who aspires to do great things that you will be shot at all the time. And Eric, does it get easier or what coping mechanisms make it more, make you sustainable through the criticism? It hasn't gotten easier. I would probably be disappointed hearing this when I was a young leader. Hearing Eric Geiger at 50 tell Eric Geiger at 27, no man, it's still gonna hurt a lot. I'm healthy in my marriage, I'm healthy in my walk with Jesus. Those have, for sure, been encouragements to me. The Spirit of God within me has held me. Kay, my wife, is amazing.

My daughters, they love me for being dad. They don't really care that I'm leader. They just care that I'm dad. Those relationships, for sure, sustain me. But I can't say, Craig, that they cause all of the pain to go away. They help remind me what's most important, but they haven't made the pain go away. So if someone wants to do even more, the burden, you said that earlier, sometimes you'd rather be the guy twirling the sign because you could turn it off. The burden and the weight of it is real and significant. And with more impact, influence, it generally becomes more of a burden. Yes. So tell me about, from your perspective, and the book, The Rooted Leader, what do you do personally that maybe some people don't see or know about that helps you carry the burden when other people would be crushed by it? Yeah. Some of it is just being sure that my faith is sustaining me. I- What does that mean? I mean, I view a day off, spend time in the Scripture. I view a day off as really receiving from the Lord and really resting.

It's not only time in Scripture. The old school theologians would say that there's special revelation, that's the Scripture, and general revelation, that's creation. I mean, I live in Southern California, so I live in an amazing place for general revelation, paddleboarding, mountain biking. So at least once a week, I am on a trail or on the back bay on a paddleboard. And God uses that to, I mean, just the fresh air, the adrenaline, the endorphins from exercising, he does use that to repair me internally. I'm not trying to, you know, work out and be on the cover of a magazine, but when I work out, I'm doing it mainly for the mind, you know, for what's happening mentally when I exercise. So when you're doing physical exercises for your mind. I do, for sure. Yeah, from time in the gym to mountain biking, it is for the mind. And then time in the Scripture. And explain that, because I actually would agree with you. I think a lot of people would be surprised by that. How does work in your body help your mind? I mean, there are so many scholarly articles about what happens when you exercise, about the endorphins that are released, that it's actually, movement is medicine, you know, that it actually produces more in your mind

than often what some people will take medically, in terms of medications. I'm not against medication. I'm just saying that exercise is a form of medicine for your mind. And it's, for me, being outside helps me not only get the endorphins happening from exercise, but enjoy creation, see His handiwork. When I, there's a place on the trail that I go mountain biking where there's a succulent. It's this beautiful flower that has been there for the last seven years, like tucked away in the side of a rock on this mountain bike trail. Every time I see it, I remember, God has taken care of that succulent. How much more does He take care of me? That's good. And that's- That wouldn't happen sitting and watching Netflix. That's not happening on different Netflix. And that succulent is provided for by God, and God provides for me. But also, that succulent was here two years ago. And the problem that I was burdened with two years ago when I rode by and saw that succulent, I probably don't even remember that problem anymore, because problems come and go. But the faithfulness of God, the presence of God is real. I get that from spending time in creation. That's so true.

What's the most frustrating part of leadership to you right now? Well, we said we have to do this, the repeating. But sometimes I get frustrated that I have to repeat. Do you ever get frustrated with your repeating? I do. I feel like I almost live in an ongoing state of frustration. Because whatever's happening, I'm hoping it's gonna be more or faster. And I think a lot of leaders would not brag about that, but say, sadly, that's kind of where we are. And that's part of what helps drive things forward. It is a reality. I have not met a great leader that doesn't have a sense of restlessness. In fact, Nehemiah, the last chapter, it's my favorite chapter, is when he goes back to Persia, because he promised as much as he would, and then he goes back to Jerusalem, he finds, this is the 13th chapter of Nehemiah, that all of the promises that the people said, they broke everything. for a single one of the promises. I mean, it's crazy. The book of Nehemiah ends, it almost ends, some would say with Nehemiah being a failure, I just appreciate how raw and honest the scripture is. That's the reality of a leader. So he then, once again, he addresses every single one of the broken promises.

So he, you know, he inspects what he expects. He reclarifies. He does so many of these leadership disciplines that you just never graduate from. And to answer your question, I think I do get frustrated that we never get to graduate from those basics. But that's the reality of being a leader. You are gonna have to continually rearticulate what's important. You are gonna have to inspect. You're gonna get frustrated when this one value that you thought for sure was gonna be actualized in this one particular area. And two years later, you go back and look and like, oh my gosh, we've drifted here. Welcome to being a leader. But what made Nehemiah awesome is that he did not only have restlessness, he was able to rest. So in that rhythm in Nehemiah 13, you do see him praying to God every time. And the book ends with him asking God to remember his leadership. He's just ultimately resting in his God. So my restlessness would crush me if I didn't combine it with rest. And I don't mean a day off rest. I mean, ultimately resting in, God's the one who does the work.

The God who watches over us doesn't sleep or slumber. I can go to bed tonight, because even when I'm sleeping, he's still working. So if that's the most frustrating thing is you have to say it over and over again, what is the easiest thing right now that you're doing that you're seeing the most results from? I am so passionate about the young adults in our church. We started a Thursday night service and it's my favorite service to teach at. It's a young adult gathering. And for perspective, your auditorium seats 3,500-ish? 3,000, and then we have an outdoor worship center. That seats could go up to 1,200. Yeah, and based on what I'm hearing, it's like you're turning people away. You had to go to more than one site because there's so many young adults. Yeah, we're at four different locations now for Thursday nights. So help me understand this, because when I look at you, you're 50. Come on, man. Are you saying I look 50? Yeah, I'm 58. So you're not 28, you're not 32. And I'm not cool. I am not cool. No one's ever accused me of being cool. I didn't say that. No one's ever accused me of being cool.

I did not say that. I've never been accused of it. Someone might've thought it, but I didn't say it. That's all right. And they're packing in to hear you. Why? I think the spirit of God is moving, but if you humanly looked at it, I have taken on the posture of kind of being dad. And there's a lot of young men who are looking for a father, looking for someone who will talk to them about life, give them godly perspective. And I know I can't be an individual dad to everyone, but if I can give you some godly fatherly wisdom, I'd be so honored to do that. I love you so much. I do. I love, especially the young leaders that we're seeing come from this. It's for sure my favorite thing. So I agree with you. I think that the spirit of God is doing something special in that generation that we could not create. 100%. And then secondly, I think that they are not looking for cool, they're looking for value content, mentorship in someone like you. You said you're like a father to them. I wanna bait you and I wanna give you freedom to chase this.

I'm gonna give you a long setup. I always say the hat you wear determines the emotion they feel. The hat you wear determines the emotion you feel. So when I'm working with communicators, I'll say, sometimes you're wearing a friend hat. Sometimes you're wearing a pastor hat. Sometimes you're wearing a boss hat. Sometimes you're wearing a fellow struggler hat. The hat you wear determines the emotion they feel. To be great in leadership, you have to have multiple different hats. Not only do you have different hats, sometimes I'm coming in as your friend. Sometimes I'm coming in as your coach. Sometimes I'm coming in as someone who's just, I'm here, I'm gonna correct you, you know, because you need it. They also change through the seasons. Early on, you know, I was the young kind of communicator. Then I'm the, you know, now I am the father or grandfather figure. So the hats change. Talk to me a little bit about that. What are some of the different hats that you will strategically wear to create value for the people that you love? Man, that is so wise. I'm just processing what you shared. That's what the Lord did.

That's what the Lord did in my heart to prepare us for the Thursday night young adult gathering. But you have to see yourself differently in order to have a different impact. So that's kind of what I wanna pull out of you. Tell me about that. I'll go broader, but I just wanna go specific on the Thursday night, the young adult gathering, because that was a several year process for me. It wasn't a switch. It wasn't as if someone said, okay, Eric, for Thursdays to work. You had to grow into who you were. Yes. Yes, you had to see yourself as who you were becoming. So I wanna be cautious because it wasn't like we whiteboarded and said, hey, if this is gonna be effective, Eric, you're gonna need to put on the dad hat. It was several years of really seeing God. God changed me into that. I went on a trip to Israel several years ago and we had an experience where my predecessor actually led this experience, couldn't be sure, where at Gideon Springs, where Gideon really heard from the Lord, like, what is a name that God's gonna give you for this new season in your life? And the name that I really believed the Lord was giving me was Wise Shepherd.

And I had some around me like, oh, you need to be world changer, that's not big enough. And I was like, no, I really feel I'm moving into like a fatherly role. And that was different for me because I was like the fellow traveler. Like what you just said was exactly what I went through. And I remember thinking, will I be effective in that? I've been like, hey, I'm on the journey with you, but the Lord really moved me into that internally first. So I think that's one of the reasons that our Young Adults Gathering has, it's just the Lord did that. It wasn't like I said, I'm gonna put on this hat to make it effective. There was years of struggle beneath the surface and of obeying Him and of becoming who He was making me to be. Now, to answer the question on a broad perspective, I have thought about there's, I wear a leader hat or a strategist hat. I've thought in my role, we have such amazing players on our team. What are the things that I do that really, because of the role I'm in, not only because of the gifting, but because of the role and the gifting that I should provide for our team and our church because of the role I'm in.

And really it's been teacher. So when I'm preparing messages and teaching services on the weekend, I have the teacher hat. And that's me being a wise shepherd teacher. And then there's the leader and the strategist hat. We have great leaders, but because of my experiences in the past and because of the perspective that God gives you when you're in the role, you told me one time before, Eric, you have to just embrace it. You're gonna see stuff that other people don't see because of the role that you're in. And so I've embraced that. So there's times where I'm showing up and I'm strategist leader, and there's times I'm showing up and I'm teacher. And then I really spend time as much as I can with people, learning pains of people, struggles of people, hopes of people. And that's the shepherd who smells like sheep. Yeah, yeah. I wanna stay there for a moment because I want our community just to hear this and feel this. I want you to think about what are the different hats that you would wear. It might be into a meeting. It might be into a boardroom.

It might be as a parent or a friend. And literally think about, like Eric said, he might be a strategist. You might be a vision caster. You might be a people developer. You might be a talent finder. And it's odd. Like I literally will put on different hats based on my mood. And I feel most comfortable in a hat and a T-shirt and shorts. Like I, you know, and so if I'm flying, I put on a certain hat. If I'm going to roll and jujitsu, I'm putting on a different hat. If I'm working on a different hat. If I'm gonna go hang out with friends, I'm putting on a different hat. And so if you think about the different hats that you have in your leadership, it creates a mood and a personality that can help you be more effective when you step into a room. I would ask you this. Is there a hat that you wear that you feel most uncomfortable wearing? Yes, totally. But I'm gonna answer that. I wanna ask you a follow-up question because I find this so fascinating.

Okay, fair enough. But I may not answer it because you're the guest, but fair enough. I'm still learning how to raise funds. And so being the person who sits across- The fundraising hat. Yeah, because when I was in the marketplace, we sold. I never asked people for just, hey, can you just write a check? But I know that part of my role is to ensure that we're well-resourced for the vision that God's given us. And so part of that is asking for funds, but it's probably the hat that I'm least comfortable wearing. So I'm curious, is there a limit to how many hats you can have? Like how many hats do you have? And then, and I'm also curious, you talk about when you put them on, is that just intuitive for you? Or do you, when you're walking into a meeting on Wednesday, do you then tell yourself, I'm actually wearing this hat? Yeah, it's more intuitive for me. That was more of an afterthought of like putting language around a mindset. But for example, I just did all staff last week, and we do that four times a year. We've got them all over people. And so I'll go into it.

I actually call that buckets. Like what bucket am I drawing from? But it's similar. Sometimes it's just, it's an encouragement bucket. Sometimes it's a, it's kind of like a cultural correction. Sometimes it's a vision-casting bucket. The last time I did it, it was just ministry. I'm assuming. I'm trying to minister and care for our staff. And so I will come in with a very defined purpose into a meeting I'm drawing out of different buckets. I might create a new bucket based on something new. Same with hats. I would say that there would probably be, so I'm gonna pick some number, I'm gonna say six to 10 hats that you're gonna wear most often. Then I would say there's probably gonna be one or two new ones you wanna try on a year, which is you wanna get good at something you're not great at. And I was even talking to Amy about this last night. I was talking about some of my weaknesses and how I'm just absolutely accepting them because when you have great strings, you're gonna have very big weaknesses. She's like, don't accept them. You can change. Like, actually, no, I'm going to accept those things. And her argument was, well, if it impacts other people,

then you should work on, but basically I'm giving her language. She was saying, if it's gonna impact other people, you should find a new hat. And so she was pushing me to say, yeah, you can be weak all you want unless your weaknesses are hurting other people. Then you might wanna find another hat. I agree with Amy. Yeah. I mean, I just think- I agree with her too. I was in a different category in my mind, but she was- She's so wise. She doesn't have a category that doesn't involve other people. Right. Mine can involve production or output, and so she's just always people, people, people. So you talked about the shepherd being with people. What is the driving heart behind your love for people? I don't wanna forget that I'm a regular Christian. So when I got saved, when I met Jesus coming out of my junior year high school, man, I was a messed up teenager. I mean, drugs, arrests. I mean, and he made me his own. He rescued me, and I couldn't believe a year later that he was gonna then use me to teach others or to talk to others about his grace.

And I remember getting into this, to leadership, and just being blown away that he would want to use us. I don't wanna lose that all. And so being with people while I care about it for the person, it's also really good for me to remind me of the beauty of the gospel changing lives. I led a high school guy's Bible study for four years, and part of it was for me to, I asked myself, what would I do if I was just a normal Christian at our church? If I wasn't the pastor, what would I do? And I would invest in high school guys, I said. So I took these guys and discipled them for, they're all juniors in college now, and we still are on a group thread. I hope I made an impact in their lives, but it was also just really good for me. It's interesting. Someone asked me one time, if you couldn't be the pastor, but you were still involved in the church, what would you do? And I said the same thing, I'd be involved with high school students. Because we know that the whole trajectory of a life is being impacted by those years. Yeah, I applaud you and Kay, because you're not just pastors, you're world-class leaders, and you're mentor.

You're doing what I would consider whole-life discipleship. It's not just spiritual, but spiritual is how do you have a great family? How do you raise your kids? How do you live a value-based life? The book you wrote is The Rooted Leader. I want to just read the chapter themes. You're talking about rooted mentorship. You're talking about being shaped by burden and belief. You're talking about displaying character and courage. You're talking about thinking big and acting small, super important. Fighting and trusting that God is fighting, that was what you talked about here. Growing in character and commitment, competence, chemistry, and capacity, the Cs. Changing behaviors and beliefs, and living with restlessness and resting. It's written from a Christian perspective, but who exactly should be reading The Rooted Leader? I wrote it constantly thinking about the marketplace leaders that I serve as shepherd of our church. Obviously, ministry leaders would benefit from it, but I really believe marketplace leaders will, because Nehemiah was a marketplace leader, and we're looking at his example. So from a pastor's standpoint, speaking to marketplace leaders,

what would you say? A lot of times I've talked to business leaders who feel like a second-class Christian, because they're not in what we would call full-time ministry. What would you say to that person? I mean, I talk to C-suite executives at our church all the time, and I say, I am so thankful that you are where you are. You are in full-time ministry. You for sure. And what I love about the ones I'm thinking about, they are able to articulate their faith in a way that resonates with the people that they serve alongside in their organization. They've learned how over time, kind of like Daniel in Babylon. they've learned how to speak the language of God in a context that is not Christian. And so it takes such wisdom. I think they are so wise and savvy, have such character, and they make such an impact by just being a Christian in that context, huge, huge. Absolutely. Well, the book is The Rooted Leader, and if you wanna grow in your leadership, maybe hop over to YouTube. We'll give away five of these books. You can go over to YouTube and comment in the comment section. I'm gonna grow in my leadership.

The book's coming out soon. Once the book's out, we'll draw five winners and we'll see if you can grow in your leadership. If people wanna get to know more about you or learn more, where do they go? EricGeiger.com is where I have the books that I've written listed, and I occasionally will write a blog or two. How many books have you written? 10 or 11, I can't remember. I have written several with each of, I wrote one book with each daughter, which those were the best. And was The Simple Church your best-selling book? Yes. And that's painful, correct, because that was the first one. Well. It's kind of like Milli Vanilli, like you have like a first one that comes out and. Yeah, but that was where, that was the book I read, how many years ago did that come out? 2006. 2006, yeah. That book was impactful to us in what we did here. So I appreciate you, I appreciate your leadership. I hope that you guys benefit from this book, The Rooted Leader, and I appreciate you taking time. We're gonna work really hard to bring valuable content

to you to help you get better in your leadership, because when Eric talks about how much we care about you, I hope you feel like we really are gonna work hard to bring you value, because we do care about you. You matter, your leadership matters, your impact matters. You can do even more than you can imagine, and today you got better. That's really good news, because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better.