Gary Wilkerson: Great to be here on the podcast again. I'm here with a new friend, Pastor Rusty George from Valencia, California at Real Life Church. So, thanks for joining us.

Rusty George: It's an honor, thank you.

Gary Wilkerson: We met earlier today, so first time, and you spoke to our leadership team here at World Challenge. And you mentioned a little bit, being that we're in Colorado Springs, just can you tell us a little bit about your connection here to our lovely city?

Rusty George: Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, but my dad was from Colorado Springs. In fact, he's a little bit infamous around here, because when he was a teenager, he did a lot of wild and crazy things. I believe there's-- well one of his favorite stories was he actually tried to knock over the balancing rock at Garden of the Gods.

Gary Wilkerson: Oh no.

Rusty George: With a tire jack.

Gary Wilkerson: Oh, he went all out.

Rusty George: So, there's a fence around that now because of him. So anyway, that was his upbringing. He and my mom got married, and lived in Wichita, Kansas, but we'd come back to Colorado Springs often for family, and I just, I love it. It's beautiful. It's a little cold for me right now since I live in California now. 23º today was stunning.

Gary Wilkerson: Are you like him? Do we have to put up some guardrails around our office here?

Rusty George: No, no, those days are done.

Gary Wilkerson: Okay, okay, all good. Well, you've written two books, right?

Rusty George: Yeah, a few.

Gary Wilkerson: You’ve written more? Tell us about the books you've written.

Rusty George: Yeah, I started off writing when I was doing young adult ministry in Lexington, Kentucky. We just had a lot of churches asking questions about how to do that. This was during the whole postmodern age; Gen X was the buzz word. So, I wrote a book called Herding Cats, which I think my mom read, and maybe my wife, and that's about it. But it was, it got me used to writing, and I really enjoyed it. Then I wrote a book called When You, Then God about the promises in the Bible when we do X God does Y. And then I wrote Better Together, which is a book you and I talked about today. I wrote another book after that called Justice. Mercy. Humility. - A Simple Path for Following Jesus. And then I have a book coming out in October called After Amen - What to do When You're Waiting on God.

Gary Wilkerson: After Amen, wow. What to do when you're waiting on God?

Rusty George: When you're waiting on God. I have all these conversations with people after church where they come up and they tell me what's going on in their life, and in their problems, and I say, "Well tell me about talking to God about it." And they say, "I've been praying, but I'm not hearing anything." And it was that idea of what do you do after amen? Usually, we've got all these books out there about how to pray, but not a lot to do with how to wait. So, I started researching, what did Jesus tell people to do? And you know this, it's fascinating, he never really had the same answer for everybody.

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

Rusty George: There were all these different things, go show yourself to the priest, or go wash your eyes in the river, or you're healed on the way, or all these different things. So, I've been researching that, and it's been a lot of fun.

Gary Wilkerson: Okay, yeah. Take up your mat and walk.

Rusty George: That's right.

Gary Wilkerson: That one's always confused me, because it's like some paralytics sleeping on the mat for 30 years, and why would you want to take it with him? It seems like he'd just want to-

Rusty George: Walk away from it.

Gary Wilkerson: Throw it out, yeah.

Rusty George: I guess all possession were precious right?

Gary Wilkerson: I guess so, yeah. That sounds like an intriguing book.

Rusty George: Oh, thank you.

Gary Wilkerson: That would be cool. And that comes out when?

Rusty George: It'll be in October I believe.

Gary Wilkerson: October, okay, good, good. And you're also pastoring a very large church, about 7000 people, Real Life Church.

Rusty George: Yeah, we're about three campuses now, and a large online presence, and it's a lot of fun, but every day is a new challenge, because you realize I don't know what I'm doing. So, we learn as we go right?

Gary Wilkerson: Out of the things that you don't know what you're doing, which do you enjoy doing the most? You have teaching, preaching, leading, pastoral care, anything particular stand out in your…?

Rusty George: Well there's still nothing like standing on stage and sharing the gospel.

Gary Wilkerson: Isn't that great?

Rusty George: That's just the greatest moment, and you can feel in the room when people are getting it. The Christmas and Easter moments, the moment in a message when it all goes quiet, and you know that the Holy Spirit's doing greater work than you are, and you get to just speak that good news. And for me, I just realize that most of the reasons people don't believe in God, or Jesus, or the scriptures anymore is because they've seen a bad representation of it.

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

Rusty George: And if I can tell true stories about God, versus the ones we grew up with, that's really fun. And so, I think that's really freeing. So, most of that comes out in teaching, but some in the writing as well.

Gary Wilkerson: Okay, good. So that's your, and you have two daughters?

Rusty George: Two daughters, 17 and 15.

Gary Wilkerson: And one wife?

Rusty George: Yeah, my one wife. So, it's like I have three wives, because they all want to know what I'm doing, where I'm going, and can they come.

Gary Wilkerson: I'll bet. Wow, and then, so between family life, church life, writing, traveling, speaking, how do you balance all that?

Rusty George: It kind of waxes and wanes.

Gary Wilkerson: Okay.

Rusty George: We talk a lot about rhythm more than balance, because balance is--

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah, we do that too.

Rusty George: --is overrated, and I think that there's seasons that are even more intense. I always tell my wife, and she knows this now after doing this for 25 years, December's not the most wonderful time of the year for a pastor.

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

Rusty George: But it will be after Christmas, and so we'll rest then. And same thing with Easter, you pick your spots when to get away, and just as Andy Stanley says you choose to cheat. So, we cheat business sometimes so we can be home.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah, that's brilliant. Better Together, I read your book, and I fell in love with it.

Rusty George: Thank you.

Gary Wilkerson: And your style of writing, and your insight, and things God's given you I think is an important issue. You label yourself as an introvert. Is that unusual for a mega church pastor?

Rusty George: I find that it's more common than you think.

Gary Wilkerson: Okay.

Rusty George: And some people are driven towards it. I think a lot of us are kind of born that way, but in my case, it became natural to stand on stage, and talk to people because they didn't talk back. I'm horrible in a small group. If I had to lead a small group, it's awful, because I don't know how to engage dialogue. I just know how to communicate things. So that's where I'm not very good, and there's some people that are great in a small group, can't talk on stage for a sustained amount of time. So, what I'm learning is, a lot of my senior pastor friends, they're introverts as well. And sometimes they didn't start out that way, but just the knocks of ministry after a period of time, and you get so many people that want your time, you find yourself just retreating a lot.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah, so you take the introvert, and then you mentioned this morning to our team a little bit of a control, you have a desire in that perspective.

Rusty George: Yeah, other people call that control, I call it leadership.

Gary Wilkerson: That's a good.

Rusty George: We'll agree to disagree on that one. But yeah, I think that my personality style, the way I was raised, certainly my dad was this way, there's a preferred future you're looking towards. I think most leaders have this, something you want to get us towards, and you assume you know the best way to get there. So, you have to put some people around you that are brake pedal people that keep you on track.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah, yeah. Can you describe the different circles that you talk about with your staff?

Rusty George: Yeah, let me give some context to this. We had a guy come in and speak to our staff several years ago. In fact, he was kind enough to write the forward to Better Together, his name is Judd Wilhite.

Gary Wilkerson: Judd, yeah.

Rusty George: He's a pastor in Las Vegas. He's just amazing, and he kind of off the cuff said, I don't know if I've shared this before, but he shared these three circles, and it was like manna from heaven for our staff, because it really helped us understand each other. What we've discovered, even on a church staff is people are still people, and we've still got our brokenness, and we have our personality issues, and if we're not careful we vilify those things. We assume that if you are all touchy feely, then you don't care about the mission, or if you're mission oriented then you don't have a heart. So, we had to figure that out. And his concentric circles were three different things, one is family, one is organization, and one is cause. And on your staff, you have people that fall into one of those three categories.

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

Rusty George: You have the family people that are very, I wouldn't even say emotional, but they care about people. And when somebody leaves the staff it hurts them more than it hurts somebody else. They're the people that always want to have the staff picnics, and the Christmas parties, and all those kinds of things. Then there's the box, or the circle of the organization people. These people just want to know how to get stuff done. Okay, you can have the Christmas party, but let's put a team together, and let's plan it out, let's have bullet points, and spreadsheets, and all the to do lists, and there's so many apps out there for them.

Then you have the cause-oriented people, that all they care about is the mission. The mission of the organization. In our case, we would call these people the world’s going to hell, let's get back to the mission. So, forget about the Christmas parties and the white elephant gifts, and all that kind of stuff, because we've got to get back out there. And they don't really care how we do it, and they end up blowing the mission budget in January. They get so focused on all that kind of stuff that they miss it.

So, our goal is to, how do you look at the other two circles, and bring them in? Not to vilify the other two circles, and not to expect them to become like you, but value them for who they are. I just remembered this later after our staff conversation. I wish I would have said it them. The tendency for us is to get cynical about the other two circles. Family gets cynical about org, and cause. Cause is cynical about org, and family, and so on down the line.

Carey Nieuwhof in his book, Didn't See It Coming, he talks about cynicism. And he says the cure for cynicism is curiosity. So, for a family person to be curious about how an organizational person thinks will add value to them. If a cause person is curious about a family person, and says, "Who do you think needs to be in the room to make this happen?" It adds value to them. And all the way around. Curiosity really does help.

Gary Wilkerson: And the opposition, I think the opposite of that would be asking yourself, or asking the people, "Why aren't you more like me?"

Rusty George: Exactly.

Gary Wilkerson: "Why isn't this ministry more family-like?" So, the family people want it to be pretty much exclusively a family ministry.

Rusty George: Yes.

Gary Wilkerson: Or an org, "All we need is to do is get organized, and we can be a family, we can organize family, or we can organize our cause. So, all we have to do is be organized." And then the cause people--

Rusty George: Right.

Gary Wilkerson: Again, if we're not careful it can cause division, fractions, you mentioned silos.

Rusty George: Silos, exactly. Yeah, then you have all these little groups that they all huddle together. You always find someone that agrees with you. And social media helps that, because they use algorithms to figure out what you click on, and like, and so they just keep flooding you with information of people and you think, "Man all these people agree with me. I must be right."

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

Rusty George: Yeah, there's some science behind that. And the same thing happens on a staff of any kind of organization, is you end up hanging out with people that think just like you, and it only bolsters your cause.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah, and in church life staff is one thing, because you're together eight hours a day a lot of times unless you're traveling. In church life you tend to meet each other, maybe for a small group, or lunch after church, sitting together in church.

Rusty George: Right.

Gary Wilkerson: But yet you have the same dynamic there, Christian people see themselves in these silos and, "Why can't somebody be more like me?"

Rusty George: Right.

Gary Wilkerson: We even label churches like, "Oh they're just all about organization." Or, "They're just about community, and family, and stuff like that."

Rusty George: Yeah, think about how that plays out like in an elder's meeting. Even there you have family, organizational, and cause people there. And the family people, they get mad because someone's running the church like a business. And then the organizational people get mad if it's not run like a business, because you're wasting money. And the cause people, they want to spend all their time on missions, and projects like that. All these things are good, we just have to learn how to play in the same sandbox.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah, right. Do you think that happens in families as well?

Rusty George: Oh, I do, I do. I see the dynamics in my home as well. I think you can look at love languages, you can look at Enneagram, but family, org, and cause, the cause person is, even on a family vacation the goal is just to get there. Okay? I don't care how we get there, how much fun we have." And the family person just wants to stop at every tourist attraction along the way, take selfies, and all that. And the organizational person is just balancing the check book to see if we can make it. So, I think that plays out. And the quicker you begin to celebrate that, and be curious about the way other people think, I think the better off you'll be.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah, yeah. I think you've noticed this, the thing I've noticed as well, the thing in ministry you have the three circles you're talking about. If you just honed it down to two, there does seem to be a community, or relationships, loving one another, and then the cause, the kingdom, do that. So, I'm more of a cause type person. What would you-- say I'm in your church and I just come to you and say, "I'm just tired. My whole life is a cause, but I don't have friends in the community." How would you advise me? Is there anything you would say to me about how to move from that cause mentality into-- part of me is I don't know if I value relationships enough. I don't see them as-- I know they are in my mind.

Rusty George: Right.

Gary Wilkerson: And in my Christian heart. And when I read the Bible, okay relationships are vital, but they seem to distract me from the cause like, "I need to be out there on the streets."

Rusty George: Right.

Gary Wilkerson: "And there's poor people staving, and you want me to come and have lunch with you." Is there anything you can do to help me?

Rusty George: Right.

Gary Wilkerson: I want to in my heart be more relational.

Rusty George: Right.

Gary Wilkerson: And at times I feel this real strong pull, but my gravity is definitely towards the cause. Is that okay, or is there some things I need to do to?

Rusty George: Yeah, that's a great, that's a great dilemma that a lot of us face. I think there's a simple prayer we could begin to pray. And that is, "Jesus give me your heart for your cause." If that's the one you're not in, or community.

Gary Wilkerson: Okay. And when you're not-

Rusty George: And you begin praying that prayer 30 days. Okay? God begins to break your heart for these things and make you more aware of it. We tend to read the Bible through our own lens, so it justifies our own thoughts. And Jesus on a mission, seek and save the lost. That's what he's all about, but he did that in the context of community. He did gather 12, these were not the sharpest tools in the shed either these guys. You know? But he validates them, and even from the beginning the angels show up and tell the shepherds. There's all this validation of people from wherever they are, so there is a need for community. And then the people that want to live in community, you've got to recognize that God has a cause to do as well.

Think about this, we always talk about Acts 2:42–47 and how they were together, and nobody had any needs, and all that kind of thing. Well the problem was they had all left their home to come together for Pentecost, and they didn't go back home. So, we had to start selling stuff to take care of all the people living in our home, but Jesus said, "I want you to go to Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost regions." And they didn't. They stayed there. So, what did God do? He caused persecution to break out, and they scattered everywhere, and that's why we have the gospel where we are today. So obviously that's part of his heart as well. Ask for God to give you the heart you don't have, and he tends to do it.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah, yeah, it's really a growth issue isn't it? It's like, okay I'm pretty strong in the cause, but the Holy Spirit is the sanctification is process of growth. He's wanting to grow those areas. And I think that's where I get, remember the old, the very first Star Wars movie when Obi-Wan Kenobi goes up to the storm trooper, and he wants to get in through the gate, and he goes, "You will open-- you will let us in."

Rusty George: "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Gary Wilkerson: "I will let you in."

Rusty George: Yeah.

Gary Wilkerson: Whenever I read a book, I feel like I'm being sort of Jedi mind tricked. I'll read a book on community, and I'll go like, "I've got to give my life to that. That's the most powerful thing in the world." And I'll read a book about organization and leadership, and I'll go like, "Oh I've got to give myself to do that." But is it, we were talking just before we started the podcast, you mentioned the word instead of balance, harmony, or-

Rusty George: Yeah, rhythm.

Gary Wilkerson: Rhythm, yeah, I like that idea too. A great jazz pianist doesn't say like, "I've got to really make sure I balance my notes out. I don't want too many low notes, or too many high notes." But it's the rhythm, or the harmony that you put in those things joined together. And I think the idea of somebody who's built for relationships to get a little harmony, or rhythm with cause.

Rusty George: That's so good, and I love that you brought up jazz. I love jazz, and as you know jazz is a conversation between all the instruments that are there, right?

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah. Right.

Rusty George: And so, you hear the moments when the piano dies out, and the bass line kicks in, or it's the drums. And the same thing I think is true in these three circles I'm talking about; you don't have to change who you are. You just have to bring others along with you. And as you were saying, being Jedi mind tricked into being community based, you don't have to change that you're cause oriented, just do it with other people. And if you're community oriented that's fine, just now have a cause beyond yourselves, and that's thinking beyond who you are, and letting the piano die out for a moment so the bass line can kick in.

Gary Wilkerson: I like that. That makes it kind of makes it simple, it's not so that you have to dig deep into the recesses of your heart to find out what's wrong with you.

Rusty George: Right.

Gary Wilkerson: It's kind of simple, you just join some other people.

Rusty George: Yeah, exactly. I think these are the traps we get into, when you first say, "Well I'm okay, and you're not. So, you need to be more like me." Or, "I'm not okay, so I need to be more like you." But you're the only you that God's made. So be you, just recognize that God wants to do that together.