Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Church Staff Book Club

In this first episode, we dive into our own book The Come Back Effect and explore why how people feel at church is just as important as what gets done. From parking lots to greeters to follow-up teams, we discuss how emotional intelligence, hospitality, and intentional leadership create environments where guests feel seen, valued, and want to return.

You’ll hear:

• Why great systems alone don’t create great experiences
• How to help volunteers lead with empathy, not just efficiency
• Why church leaders sometimes feel like cogs and how to fix that
• What it means to be an “emotional bodyguard” for your guests

Whether you’re a solo pastor or on a big team, this episode will help you reframe how your church welcomes people and why that feeling matters more than you think.

📚 Book: The Come Back Effect by Jason Young & Jonathan Malm

💬 Let us know what stood out. Tag us on social or send us a message!

In this episode of Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dive into Chapter 5 of The Come Back Effect: “Think Scene by Scene.” You’ll learn why it’s not just about the stage or sermon, but every transition point guests experience at your church: parking, check-in, kids drop-off, seating, and even how they exit. These in-between moments are often where people feel the most confusion and where churches lose trust without realizing it.

Whether you’re a church staff member, guest services leader, or volunteer, this conversation will help you:

• Understand how guests emotionally experience your church “scene by scene”
• Map the guest journey to improve hospitality and clarity
• Train your volunteers to guide, not just greet, people
• Eliminate confusion and frustration from first-time experiences
• Become a helper in someone’s story, not a hindrance

📘 Get the book: [The Come Back Effect by Jason Young & Jonathan Malm]

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

💬 Drop a comment or DM us with your biggest church hospitality question!

The guest doesn’t need you to be perfect. They need you to be present.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, we break down Chapter 4 of The Come Back Effect and explore why presence beats performance in church hospitality. From the parking lot to the pulpit, your guests can tell when you’re distracted, rushed, or multitasking... and it matters. Whether you’re a pastor, volunteer leader, or on the greeting team, this conversation will help you lead with empathy, margin, and emotional awareness.

🎙️ In this episode, we cover:

• Why multitasking is the enemy of hospitality
• How body language (even your feet) tells people if you’re really listening
• The 4 biggest distractions that prevent us from being fully present:

  → Pressure, Pace, Performance, and People

• What to say when you do need to exit a conversation gracefully
• Why Sunday morning presence starts with weekday connection
• The difference between service and true hospitality
• How to train your team to slow down and show up for guests

📚 Book featured: The Come Back Effect by Jason Young & Jonathan Malm

👥 Who it’s for: Guest services teams, church staff, pastors, volunteer leaders, and anyone shaping the Sunday experience.

🛠️ Practical + relatable content for churches of all sizes. No book reading required.

💬 Question for you:

Have you ever felt like someone wasn’t really listening? How can we make sure our guests never feel that way?

👍 Like | 🔔 Subscribe | 📣 Share with your team

How well do you really know the people showing up at your church?

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, we unpack Chapter 3 of The Come Back Effect and dive into the challenge of creating welcoming church experiences. Not just for the crowd you already have, but for the guests God is sending your way.

🎯 Whether you’re a guest services leader, pastor, or volunteer, this episode will challenge how you think about hospitality, spiritual assumptions, church culture, and guest comfort.

🎙️ We discuss:

• Why some “welcoming” experiences actually make guests uncomfortable
• The difference between demographics and psychographics (and why both matter)
• How churches accidentally create experiences for staff instead of visitors
• What foot-washing and awkward song lyrics can teach us about cultural assumptions
• How to spot your real “target” guest and why specificity increases impact
• Why signage, language, margin, and pace make or break the guest experience
• The difference between hospitality and service (and why your church needs both)

👥 Who this episode is for:

Church staff, guest services teams, worship leaders, communications directors, hospitality teams, volunteer coordinators, and pastors who want to build a culture that makes people feel seen, known, and comfortable from the parking lot to the pew.

📚 Book featured: The Come Back Effect by Jason Young & Jonathan Malm

🎧 Subscribe for a new chapter each week as we walk through powerful leadership books so you never have to learn to lead alone.

💬 Question for you:

What’s one moment in your church that might accidentally make a guest uncomfortable? How could you tweak it to show care?

👍 Like | 🔔 Subscribe | 📣 Share with your team

What makes a guest feel welcome at church? Is hospitality a job description or a culture everyone shares?

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, we dive into Chapter 2 of The Come Back Effect to unpack why church culture isn’t built by greeters... it’s built by everyone. From volunteers and tech teams to senior pastors and worship leaders, your guest experience reflects what people feel before they hear the sermon.

🎙️ In this episode, we cover:

• Why “culture is what people whisper in the lobby”
• A powerful story about hospitality in rural Guatemala
• How unspoken behavior builds or breaks your church culture
• Practical ways to help people linger after church (and why it matters)
• Why the “production mindset” may be killing your margin for meaningful connections
• How to reinforce culture through stories, not just slogans

🛠️ Plus: We explore real, tactical solutions to shift a church culture—from service speed to bounce houses.

📚 Book featured: The Come Back Effect by Jason Young & Jonathan Malm

👥 Great for: Guest Services teams, volunteer leaders, church staff, pastors, and anyone shaping the Sunday experience.

💬 Leave a comment below:

What’s one small shift you could make to help your church feel more welcoming?

👍 Like | 🔔 Subscribe | 📣 Share with your church team

🎯 Mistakes will happen. What matters is how your church recovers.

In this episode of Church Staff Book Club, we explore Chapter 6 of The Come Back Effect and talk about one of the most overlooked aspects of hospitality: how you respond when something goes wrong. From check-in meltdowns to crying babies in service, coffee spills, seating issues, and missed expectations, the question isn’t if mistakes will happen, it’s how prepared your team is to respond with empathy and warmth.

🎙️ You’ll learn:

• Why recovery is an emotional skill, not just a logistical fix
• How to empower volunteers to act without always needing a manager
• The difference between solving a problem and addressing a feeling
• Why silence or inaction ruins trust faster than the mistake itself
• How celebrating “off-script” hero moments builds a recovery culture
• What to say when a guest is frustrated and how to still win them back

🙌 Whether you’re a pastor, team leader, or volunteer, this episode is packed with real-life stories, actionable ideas, and powerful reframes that will help you create wow moments even when things go sideways.

📚 Book featured: The Come Back Effect by Jason Young & Jonathan Malm

🔧 Sponsored by: First Impressions — helping churches welcome guests from first visit to lifelong discipleship.

👉 What do your church’s small details communicate to first-time guests?

In this episode of Church Staff Book Club, we unpack Chapter 7 of The Come Back Effect and explore why everything communicates, from signage and cleanliness to sound levels, scent, and even the paper towels in the bathroom. Guests notice details that insiders overlook, and those details shape whether people feel welcome, safe, and like they belong.

🎯 In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why guests interpret details differently than regular attenders
• How small details communicate care, preparation, and belonging
• The five senses framework for evaluating your church experience
• How signage, sound, and cleanliness influence guest comfort
• Why insiders stop seeing what outsiders feel
• A simple weekly strategy to improve your church experience over time

🧠 Key Insight:

Hospitality isn’t about big moments. It’s about doing the small things well, consistently.

🙌 Whether you’re a pastor, volunteer leader, or guest services team member, this conversation will help you see your church through fresh eyes and create an environment where people feel at home.

📥 Download the Detail Walk Checklist: churchstaffbookclub.com

📚 Book featured: The Come Back Effect by Jason Young & Jonathan Malm

🤝 Sponsored by: First Impressions... helping churches create meaningful guest experiences.

Most church leaders are quick to focus on growth metrics but neglect the vital, secret ingredient: cultivating loving union with God. What if the key to sustained, healthy leadership isn’t just doing more for God but actually being with Him in deeper intimacy? Jason Young and Jonathan Malm unravel the vital mistakes pastors often make—speed, busyness, and a focus on performance—that drown out the whisper of God’s presence and lead to burnout and moral failure. In this episode, discover why the most driven leaders are often the most spiritually disconnected. We break down how speed and ambition shield us from self-awareness and intimacy with Jesus, showing how neglecting the elementary practices of slowing down, solitude, and Sabbath can quietly sabotage your leadership and personal health. You’ll hear stories of spiritual failures that happen behind the scenes, despite outward success—and why that disconnect is more common than we think. We explore practical tools like finding your desert, forming a rule of life, and creating rhythms of silence that rebuild your heart’s connection with God.We challenge the myth that productivity equals spiritual health, emphasizing that true leadership flows from loving union—an intentional, slower pace that invites God’s reorganization of priorities. If you’re overwhelmed, craving deeper connection, or worried about burnout, this episode will empower you to slow down and rediscover Jesus in the quiet. Perfect for pastors, ministry leaders, and anyone feeling the weight of relentless speed—this episode reveals how to lead from a place of love, not just action, and how to safeguard your soul in the chaos of ministry.Join us as we unpack the radical idea that to truly thrive, you must first stop and be with God. Your next level of emotional health and leadership begins here—because the best leaders are those who are loved well by Jesus first.

Explore the intersection of leadership, singleness, and marriage in this insightful episode of our podcast, as we dive into chapter three of The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero. Discover how personal relationships can enhance ministry impact and why integrating them is crucial for authentic leadership.

• Leadership formation through marriage and singleness
• Integrating personal relationships with ministry
• The role of relational intimacy in leadership
• Historical perspectives on single leaders in church history
• Practical tips for nurturing meaningful relationships in ministry

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:28 Purpose of the podcast
• 1:07 Leadership development through marriage and singleness
• 4:24 Navigating traditional views of marriage and ministry
• 10:03 Building intentional time with friends and spouse
• 16:21 Historical prominence of single leaders
• 21:46 Authentic intimacy and community in leadership

• The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero
• LobbyLabs.co - Church Leaders Community & Coaching
• Follow Jonathan on Instagram
• Follow Jason on Instagram

Subscribe for more insights on aligning personal health with ministry impact!

Every leader has a shadow — the hidden wounds, unconscious patterns, and untamed emotions formed long before you ever stepped into a leadership role. The question isn't whether your shadow exists. It's whether you'll face it before it starts leading for you.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 2 of The Emotionally Healthy Leader, unpacking one of the most uncomfortable (and most necessary) conversations in church leadership: the parts of yourself you'd rather not look at — and why those are exactly the parts that matter most.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What "the shadow" actually is — and how it quietly shapes every decision you make as a leader
• Why the cave you fear to enter might hold the breakthrough your leadership needs
• How your family system growing up is still running in the background of how you lead today
• Why the shadow shows up differently under stress than in everyday leadership moments
• Common ways the shadow surfaces in church leaders — from conflict avoidance to perfectionism to shutting down contrary opinions
• Practical tools to start facing your shadow, including naming your emotions, using a genogram, and seeking trustworthy feedback
• Why shadow work isn't optional if you want sustainable fruit in your ministry

Jonathan gets personal about his "not yet" defense mechanism, Jason shares how a strength can quietly become a shadow, and both of them make the case that what you refuse to see will eventually lead you.

🔗 Want a community of trusted leaders around you? Check out LobbyLabs.co — the coaching community for guest services and connections leaders.

Season 2 is here — and we're diving into one of the most important (and most overlooked) conversations in church ministry: your emotional health as a leader.

Jonathan Malm and Jason Young kick off their discussion of Peter Scazzero's The Emotionally Healthy Leader by unpacking the four telltale signs that a church leader is running on empty — and why most of us don't even realize it's happening.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why 95% of leaders think they're self-aware — but only 10–15% actually are
• The difference between holding binoculars and holding a mirror — and why it changes everything about how you lead
• Why prioritizing ministry over marriage (or key relationships) is a losing strategy for everyone — including your church
• How "doing too much for God" can actually be a sign you're running from something
• What Sabbath really means — and why a day off isn't the same thing
• How to tell the difference between an issue worth addressing and unnecessary chaos you're creating yourself

Plus, Jonathan gets honest about reading Scripture just to find content for SundaySocial, and Jason shares the sobering research on what's actually driving burnout in church staff.

Whether you're a pastor, a church staff member, or a volunteer leader, this episode will challenge you to stop pointing the binoculars outward and take an honest look in the mirror.

📖 Reading along? Pick up The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero wherever books are sold.

What if the secret to an unforgettable guest experience started before anyone walks through the door and had everything to do with how your volunteers feel about themselves?

In this final episode of Season 1, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young wrap up The Come Back Effect by diving into one of the most overlooked principles in church hospitality: volunteer significance. It's not enough to build smooth systems and polished experiences. If the people delivering that experience don't feel meaningful in what they're doing, guests will feel it too.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why treating volunteers as tools to get things done quietly destroys your team culture
• How one volunteer turned down a higher-paying job because his volunteer role meant that much to him
• What it looks like when a volunteer truly owns their role and how that transforms guest interactions
• Practical ways to help your team see that even small moments of hospitality carry eternal weight
• Why accountability is actually an act of care — and how to have those hard conversations with volunteers
• How to build a culture where significance is celebrated, not just results

Whether you lead a guest services team, a small group, a kids' ministry, or a choir... this episode will challenge and encourage you to pastor your volunteers, not just manage them.

📥 Download the free The Come Back Effect Toolkit at churchstaffbookclub.com

📖 Next season: The Emotionally Healthy Leader starting next week!

What matters more in your church: policies or values?

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club Podcast, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young unpack Chapter 9 of The Come Back Effect and explore a crucial leadership question:

👉 Are you leading your church with policies that control… or values that create trust?

While policies protect systems, values protect people. And when it comes to church hospitality, volunteer culture, and guest experience, that difference changes everything.

• The difference between values vs. policies in church leadership
• Why policies often default to “no” and values allow more “yes”
• How Disney prioritizes values (and what churches can learn from it)
• Why volunteers freeze under policy-heavy environments
• How values empower volunteers to make better real-time decisions
• Signs your church may be leading with policy instead of care
• How to create clear, practical ministry values your team can actually live out
• Why values humanize rules without creating chaos

✔ Policies create consistency

✔ Values create trust

✔ Policies protect systems

✔ Values protect people

When your volunteers understand what matters most, they won’t need a rulebook for every scenario. They’ll respond with wisdom, care, and clarity.

And in church ministry, response matters.

If you lead volunteers, oversee guest services, or want to improve your church’s first impressions, this episode will help you build a culture that’s aligned, empowered, and intentional.

📘 Book: The Come Back Effect

🎧 Podcast: Church Staff Book Club

🤝 Sponsor: First Impressions – Helping churches create meaningful guest experiences (firstimpressions.church)

Welcome back to Church Staff Book Club with Jonathan Malm and Jason Young! In Episode 8, we’re walking through Chapter 8 of The Come Back Effect – our book on church hospitality and guest experience – where we challenge a mindset that quietly keeps people from returning:

Most churches don’t have bad hospitality… they have forgettable hospitality. And “good enough” doesn’t usually offend anyone—

it just silently convinces guests not to come back.

In this episode, we talk about the difference between excellence and perfection, why churches unintentionally settle, and how to make small upgrades that build trust and help people feel seen, safe, and truly welcomed.

• Why average experiences rarely inspire return
• The difference between excellence vs. perfectionism in church hospitality
• 5 common reasons churches settle for “good enough”
• Why hospitality is about the welcome, not the production value
• Small, practical upgrades that make church feel intentional (without a bigger budget)
• How volunteer presence, warmth, and consistency create memorable moments
• Why guests decide to return based on trust, not polish

✅ Excellence isn’t fancy.

✅ Excellence isn’t expensive.

✅ Excellence is care.

People don’t return because everything was flawless—

they return because something felt intentional.

First Impressions helps churches create meaningful connections with guests—from first-time visits to lifelong discipleship.

Conferences, Academy training, coaching, systems, and proven follow-up strategies: firstimpressions.church

📘 We’re nearing the end of The Come Back Effect. Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 are next, then we’ll move to a new book.

Have a recommendation for what we should read next? Drop it in the comments or message us on social media.

👍 If this episode helped you, like, subscribe, and share with your staff or volunteer team.

💬 Questions about hospitality, guest experience, or volunteer leadership? Leave a comment—we’d love to interact.

See you next week!

Every church says they have a vision. Very few have one their team can actually act on. And when vision is vague, people don't just drift... they fill in the gaps with their own.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 4 of Likable Leader, unpacking what makes a vision compelling enough that people actually want to give their lives to it, not just show up and do their jobs. From ego-driven vision that quietly uses people to build a platform, to fake work that simulates progress without actually moving anything forward, this episode gets honest about why so many church leaders struggle to cast vision that sticks.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why vague mission statements like "love God, love people" leave your team filling in the gaps with their own vision and why that's a leadership problem, not a people problem
• The subtle but destructive difference between a vision for the church and a vision about the leader
• Why staff don't resent a leader's success... they resent feeling used to create it
• How uncertainty around vision is one of the most overlooked accelerators of church staff burnout
• What "fake work" is, why it's everywhere in church world, and how to stop creating it
• Why you don't have to pioneer the church's overall vision but you do have to be a participant in it
• The case for margin: why giving your team white space isn't laziness, it's one of the greatest gifts a leader can give

Plus Jonathan reflects on what it looks like when a church's support staff and senior pastor are clearly operating from two completely different visions, and Jason makes the case that vision leaks... and so does meaning.

Most leaders think they're good listeners. Most of them are wrong. And the gap between what you intend to communicate and what your team actually hears might be quietly costing you more followership than you realize.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 3 of Likable Leader, unpacking why the most likable leaders aren't necessarily the best speakers... they're the best listeners. From the airport PA system trick to the noise that's already drowning out your message, this one gets refreshingly practical about what great communication actually looks like in a church context.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why leaders often have a communication problem, not a people problem and how to tell the difference
• The listening statistics that should humble every church leader (only 8% of mid-level leaders are rated as good listeners by their teams)
• Six practical ways to actively listen that go way beyond just being quiet while someone else talks
• How "noise" – organizational chaos, staff transitions, conflict, emotional departures – distorts everything you say and how to navigate it
• Why your casual comments and facial expressions communicate just as loudly as your words
• The three-announcement rule from airport PA systems and why it applies directly to how you lead change
• Why slow leaders can actually calm an anxious team and how to know when to adjust your speed limit

Plus Jonathan gets honest about how he's had to learn to repeat back what his wife says just to realize he misunderstood her, and Jason reflects on what changed in his leadership when he stopped rushing to judgment and started assuming people are doing the best they can with what they're carrying.

We talk a lot about learning from failure. But what about success? It might be quietly doing more damage than you think.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 2 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell. The big idea: success and failure don't belong in isolation, and when we treat them that way, both become dangerous.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why success can deceive you just as much as failure can discourage you
• The danger of "I am a success" vs. "I am a failure" and why both are wrong
• Why the most successful people are sometimes the worst ones to write the book
• How repeated success quietly causes you to misalign your values and your why
• Why churches struggle to define success and how failure helps realign it
• The importance of doing an autopsy on your wins, not just your losses
• Jonathan's story: the tuxedo skit that nobody learned anything from
• Jason's honest confession: falling into the identity trap with book reviews
• Two practical tools to evaluate success and failure: Five Whys and Kaizen
• The quarterly journal idea for tracking your team's progress like a scoreboard

📖 We're Reading: How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell Follow along chapter by chapter with us!

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:
"I am a success is just as dangerous as I am a failure."
"Success can inflate your ego. Failure attacks it. How do you live inside both?"
A bad day doesn't make you a bad leader."

🛠 Free Tools Coming: Jonathan and Jason are building individual and team debriefing tools based on this conversation. Download them at churchstaffbookclub.com

🔗 Connect & Subscribe:

Follow us on social media and join the conversation
Subscribe so you never miss a chapter
Grab How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell and read along with us

Every leader fails. The question isn't whether it'll happen... it's what you do with it when it does.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young kick off their third book: How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell. Chapter 1 reframes the way leaders think about failure. From something to avoid at all costs to something that, when handled well, actually pays you back.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why most people treat failure as final and why that's costing them
• The difference between you failing and being a failure
• Why avoiding failure has a cost too (and we rarely count it)
• Small risks vs. big risks: the fencing approach to leadership
• Jason's story: 210 volunteers quit in one day and what happened next
• Why school is actually the safest place to fail (and we've made it terrifying)
• Planning for failure: anti-faith or just smart leadership?
• What your first reaction to failure reveals vs. what you do next
• The Moses principle: why God rarely gives you the full picture up front

📖 We're Reading: How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell.

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:

"You are not a failure. That thing you did might have failed, but that's not your identity."

"Your first reaction to failure is the human part of you. What you do next is the leadership part."

"If we don't take risks, things naturally decline."

🔗 Connect & Subscribe:

Follow us on social media and join the conversation

Subscribe so you never miss a chapter

Grab How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell and read along with us

Most ministry leaders are great at launching new things. But what about ending them? That's where things get messy — and where so much unnecessary pain in churches actually comes from.

In this season finale of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young wrap up The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero with Chapter 9: "Endings and Beginnings." If you're holding onto something that needs to die — a program, a role, a relationship, a season — this conversation is for you.

What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why leaders are wired to add things and terrified to end them
• How "keeping the peace" often just delays pain and elongates it
• The subtle drain of holding onto something past its season
• Why endings feel like failure — and how to reframe them as release, obedience, or completion
• Jonathan's exercise for SundaySocial: "What would we build if we started today?"
• Why endings are actually a vital part of your spiritual formation
• How to love people through an ending... before, during, and after
• Why messy endings are normal, and what to do when you're in one
• Don't bypass the grief... what it means and why it matters

We Finished Reading: The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero Tune in next week to find out what book we're reading next!

Key Quotes from This Episode:

"Every new beginning starts from some other beginning's end."

"Endings feel like loss, even when they're right."

"It's less about quitting and more about releasing. Less about defeat and more about obedience."

Connect & Subscribe:

📱 Follow us on social media and join the conversation

🔔 Subscribe so you never miss a chapter

📚 Grab The Emotionally Healthy Leader and read along with us

Nobody in ministry wants to talk about power. We talk about humility instead. But ignoring your power doesn't make it go away. It just makes it dangerous.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 8 of The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero: "Acknowledging Power and Boundaries." Jonathan calls it his favorite chapter in the book and possibly the one that explains more of what goes wrong in churches than any other.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why "unexamined power becomes harmful power" and what to do about it
• The 6 sources of power every church leader carries (whether they know it or not)
• Why the Me Too movement is really a story about unacknowledged power
• How megachurch pastoral abuse happens and why it's not just a megachurch problem
• The blurry lines between pastor, friend, boss, and discipler and why they matter
• Why pastors are so lonely (and why it's actually structural)
• What healthy boundaries actually look like in church staff relationships
• Why "no" is a complete sentence and why ministry leaders can't seem to say it

📖 We're Reading: The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero Follow along chapter by chapter with us each week!

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:
"We don't talk about power because it feels dirty. We talk about humility because it feels clean."
"Unexamined power becomes harmful power."
"Every yes and no has a cost."

🔗 Connect & Subscribe:
📱 Follow us on social media and join the conversation
🔔 Subscribe so you never miss a chapter
📚 Grab The Emotionally Healthy Leader and read along with us

The culture your team lives in isn't something that just happens... It's something you create. And if it's unhealthy, the first place to look is in the mirror.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 7 of The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero: "How to Build an Emotionally Healthy Team." This is the chapter where everything gets practical, not just for you as a leader, but for the people you lead every single day.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why you're a thermostat, not a thermometer, and what that means for your team
• The "cage the tiger" principle and why we avoid it (and shouldn't)
• Why values on the wall mean nothing without a leader who lives them
• The difference between ignoring someone's faults and making allowance for them
• How to address the elephant in the room without blowing up the team
• Why healthy conflict actually strengthens culture, not weakens it
• What a genuinely healthy church staff culture looks like in practice
• Jonathan's take: should churches under 1,000 stop hiring specialists?

📖 We're Reading: The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero Follow along chapter by chapter with us each week!

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:

"Culture is what people experience, not what you announce."

"Who you are becomes the culture."
"When you avoid conflict, you actually weaken the culture."

🔗 Connect & Subscribe:

📱 Follow us on social media and join the conversation

🔔 Subscribe so you never miss a chapter

📚 Grab The Emotionally Healthy Leader and read along with us

Most ministry leaders make decisions the same way they do everything else: fast. But speed might be costing you more than you think.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 6 of The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero: "Planning and Decision Making." This is where all that inner work finally meets real life... how you actually lead, plan, and make calls that shape your church and your team.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why fast decisions often bypass the deep discernment your ministry actually needs
• What gets lost when church leaders make decisions in isolation
• The difference between doing things for God vs. doing things with God
• Why community slows you down and why that's exactly the point
• How to approach decisions with indifference (and why that's a superpower)
• Why emotions are data, not directives and how that changes everything
• The danger of mistaking a good idea for a God idea

📖 We're Reading: The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero Follow along chapter by chapter with us each week!

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:

"Just because it's good doesn't mean it's from God."

"Listening is leadership."

"God's guidance is often in line with peace, not pressure."

🔗 Sponsor: Lobby Labs A community and coaching group built for guest services, first impressions, and connections leaders. Learn from high-level churches, solve problems faster, and find margin to actually hear from God. lobbylabs.co

🔗 Connect & Subscribe:

📱 Follow us on social media and join the conversation

🔔 Subscribe so you never miss a chapter

📚 Grab The Emotionally Healthy Leader and read along with us

There's a big difference between a day off and a Sabbath, and most church leaders are only getting one of them.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 5 of The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero: "Practice Sabbath Delight." If you've ever felt guilty for resting, struggled to stop working, or wondered why rest never actually restores you... this conversation is for you.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why Sabbath is more than a day off and what actually restores your soul
• How our addiction to productivity is quietly destroying our leadership
• The lies church leaders believe about rest (and why we keep believing them)
• Why identity tied to work is a red flag and how Sabbath exposes it
• What happens to your team when you lead from depletion vs. replenishment
• How to start small: a practical 2-hour Sabbath practice anyone can try this week
• Why practicing Sabbath is actually an act of rebellion against hustle culture

📖 We're Reading: The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero Follow along chapter by chapter with us each week!

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:
"If we do not choose rest, exhaustion will choose us."
"Sabbath is God's weekly rescue plan... a declaration that God runs the world, not me."
You're not being unique by being a hustling leader. What if you rebelled against that?"

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Your team isn't afraid of your feedback. They're afraid of not knowing which version of you is going to show up today.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 2 of Likable Leader and reframe what integrity actually means for leaders. Forget the moral definition for a moment. The kind of integrity that builds followership is about consistency. Predictability. Being the same person on a hard Tuesday as you are on a great Sunday. And it turns out, that kind of integrity might be the greatest gift you can give your team.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "predictable" is actually one of the highest compliments a leader can receive
• How unpredictability, not workload, is one of the biggest hidden accelerators of team burnout
• The difference between being predictably likable and predictably unlikable and the false beliefs that drive each
• Why larger organizations and growing churches are especially vulnerable to leaders becoming callous without realizing it
• How your values create a filter for every decision you make and why the hierarchy matters more than the list
• Four questions to ask yourself before making any leadership decision
• Why your employees, not your mentor or spouse, are actually the least likely to tell you who you really are

Plus Jason gets candid about some of the most arrogant leaders he's encountered in 28 years of church work, Jonathan reflects on what it looks like when churches use "their reward is in heaven" as an excuse not to show appreciation, and both of them make the case that the closer you get to the center of a church, the kinder it should feel... not the opposite.

Nobody wants to admit they want to be liked. But what if likability isn't about feeding your ego... What if it's about whether people actually want to follow you?

Welcome to Season 4 of the Church Staff Book Club. Jonathan Malm and Jason Young are diving into their own book, Likable Leader, and right out of the gate they're wrestling with the title itself. Because "likable" sounds like something a people-pleaser cares about, not a serious leader. Except the research says otherwise. And so does every volunteer who ever quietly stopped showing up.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why likability has nothing to do with personality type and everything to do with consistent behavior
• The critical difference between being nice and being kind as well as why confusing them is quietly killing your team culture
• How the strongest leaders use kindness while holding people accountable
• Why the banking metaphor is the most honest picture of how trust actually works in leadership
• What "honor culture" gets wrong and why you shouldn't have to manufacture what should happen naturally
• Why people stay with leaders not because of competence but because of how they're consistently treated
• 7 simple questions to take inventory of your own likability right now

Plus Jonathan shares what it was like watching his brother lead a worship team with zero sugarcoating and total loyalty from everyone on it, why the sandwich feedback method is eroding trust faster than you think, and why being a chameleon leader is the fastest way to lose your kids.

After seven chapters on personal failure, John Maxwell finally turns the lens outward, and the implications for church leaders are significant. Because here's the thing: your team members probably aren't afraid of failing. They're afraid of you when they do.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 8 of How to Get a Return on Failure, exploring what it actually looks like to lead a team through failure, not just survive it yourself. Jonathan opens up about teaching his five-year-old to lose at chess, a team member who nervously brought him honest feedback, and why the phrase "they need to pay their dues" is one of the most insecurity-revealing things a leader can say. Jason reflects on what it was like to work for leaders who only ever talked about their wins and what that quietly communicated to everyone around them.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why higher-level leaders are often more okay with failure than lower-level ones
• How to create psychological safety before a failure happens, not after
• Why sharing only your wins quietly tells your team they're the only ones struggling
• The power of sharing the messy middle, not just the transformation story
• Why failure is an event, not a person and how to lead your team to actually believe that
• How closing the learning curve gap for others is one of the most powerful things a leader can do
• Why the relay race metaphor exposes what's wrong with most generational leadership in churches

Plus an honest conversation about why churches preach "no perfect people allowed" but rarely show anyone mid-struggle, and what that does to the people on your staff.

📥 Download the free Failure Debrief Tool at churchstaffbookclub.com

Not all failures are created equal. The question isn't just did it fail, it's whether it was a good miss or a bad miss. And knowing the difference might be the most important leadership skill you're not practicing.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 7 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell, unpacking how to evaluate whether a failure was worth attempting in the first place and what to do about it either way. From Saturday night services that never quite took off, to putting the wrong people in the wrong roles, to the tension between cutting your losses and staying faithful to a long-term vision... this one gets practical fast.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The 7 criteria Maxwell uses to determine if a failure was a good miss or a bad miss
• Why evaluating only the outcome of a failure misses the most important part of the picture
• The hole-in-the-street story and what it reveals about leaders who keep failing the same way
• Why good doers don't automatically make good leaders (and how misplacing people quietly kills ministries)
• How to know when to cut your losses versus when to stay the course and why there's no magic dividing line
• The danger of building a codependent ministry where "if they're okay, I'm okay"
• Why trying to do everything for everyone is quietly eclipsing the things your church actually does well

Plus Jonathan makes a sharp observation about churches holding on to people out of competition rather than calling, and Jason unpacks why the decisions you make before you launch something matter just as much as what happens after.

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young unpack Chapter 6 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell, walking through Maxwell's practical "cycle of improvement" and making the case that it's not failure itself that makes you better, it's what you do with it. Jonathan opens up about his current season of experimenting with AI coding (including building a video game with Claude Code and a live display system for his coworking space). Jason gets honest about the temptation to make too many improvements all at once and why small, compounding tweaks almost always beat sweeping overhauls.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The 6-step cycle of improvement: test, fail, evaluate, learn, improve, and re-enter and where most leaders get stuck
• Why "evaluated experience" is a better teacher than experience alone
• The dangerous gap between learning a lesson and actually incorporating it
• How to know if you're operating with a fixed mindset or a growth mindset and why it determines everything
• Why the best churches don't chase growth. They pursue excellence until growth is demanded
• What Chick-fil-A's Truett Cathy has to say to every church obsessed with getting bigger
• Why re-entering after failure takes more courage than the original attempt and why it's non-negotiable

Plus Jonathan reflects on what it means to unlearn the wrong lessons from failure, and Jason drops a free tool (the Failure Debrief Loop) you can use with yourself and your team.

Download the free Failure Debrief Loop at churchstaffbookclub.com

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 5 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell and get surprisingly personal doing it. Jason opens up about navigating a genuinely heavy season in real time. Jonathan reflects on what getting fired, building a business, and supporting his wife through her darkest season all happening simultaneously actually produced in him. And both of them wrestle with the question every church leader eventually has to answer: are you running from God, or running to Him?

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why your brain is literally wired to avoid difficult, and how to work against that instinct
• The dangerous trap of praying for growth while avoiding the very process that produces it
• How playing it safe as a leader doesn't just limit you, it limits everyone on your team
• Why the leader who pursues hard builds capacity that comfort simply cannot produce
• What Netflix, Blockbuster, and COVID all have to say about ministry resilience
• How to lead from underneath a difficult boss in a way that pays dividends for years
• The difference between being Job and being Jonah

Plus, Jonathan and Jason make the case that the hard season you're tempted to escape right now might be the one that defines your leadership forever.

Every leader fails. The question isn't whether it'll happen. It's what you do in the moments after. Do you get bitter, or do you get better?

In this episode, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 4 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell, unpacking how failure can become one of the most powerful tools in your leadership development... if you know how to use it. Jason gets refreshingly honest about a leadership experience that went sideways just days before recording, and Jonathan reflects on why the pressure to perform actually grows the more successful you become.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why your response to failure says more about you than the failure itself
• How to ask the right questions after a setback so you actually grow from it
• Why the same failure that hardens some leaders softens others and how to make sure you're in the right camp
• The trap of posturing at conferences (and why the most desperate people in the room often learn the most)
• How building resilience through failure actually makes you irreplaceable over time
• Why pain and failure by themselves don't produce growth and what actually does
• How to shift from being the person doing the cool things to being the person equipping the people doing the cool things

Plus a surprisingly rich detour through Pharaoh's hardened heart, Erasmus, and what clay and wax have to do with your next leadership setback.

Failure is hard enough on its own. But when ego gets involved, it can take a setback and turn it into a full identity crisis. This chapter is about getting out of your own way.

In this episode of the Church Staff Book Club, Jonathan Malm and Jason Young dig into Chapter 3 of How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell: "Get Over Failure by Getting Over Yourself." Because sometimes the hardest thing to recover from isn't the failure itself. It's the story you tell yourself about it.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

• Why ego makes failure more damaging than it needs to be
• The subtle difference between "I failed" and "I am a failure" and why it matters
• Jonathan's simple prayer before speaking that changed everything
• Five filtering questions for deciding whose criticism is actually worth listening to
• Why defensiveness is where growth ends
• How to become comfortable with rejection (even if you hate it)
• Why most "rejections" aren't actually about you at all
• The role of humor in recovering from mistakes and what it reveals about security
• Why ministry leaders are exhausted from protecting an image that may not even exist
• Progress over perfection: why your 40s, 50s, and 60s may be your best years yet

📖 We're Reading: How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell Follow along chapter by chapter with us!

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:

"When you're 20, you care about what everyone thinks. When you're 60, you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place."

"The sooner you stop fearing rejection, the sooner you can become unstoppable."

"You can't be a leader and focus on yourself."

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