Welcome to the, iWork4Him podcast. I'm Michael miracle producer of the, I work4Him radio program, the voice of the faith and work movement. Our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian and do a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: This episode of iWork4Him was previously recorded for the Christian leadership alliance's outcomes conference podcast, where leaders come to invest the best of what they know into other leaders.

Martha: Remember, if you have influence over just one person, you are a leader. Together let's listen to this podcast and learn more about leading God's way. Enjoy!

Jim: Martha and I are excited to host the outcomes conference podcast. Every podcast is dedicated to you, our outcomes conference podcast listener. We have an incredible conversation today coming up with Valerie Bell with a wanna, yes, that Awana. Have you memorized your versus the. Alanna.org. We'll be focusing on leadership thriving, and of course they're related outcomes.

Valerie Bell, welcome to the outcomes conference podcast. Now, before we start talking about your leadership role as CEO of Awana and a perspective of what God is doing through you to lead a thriving environment at Awana, tell us how you personally keep your faith strong and your leadership Christ centered each day.

Valerie Bell: Oh, I love that question because I have visuals that I'm going to put up here. This is how I started journaling, because I didn't want to actually have to write a lot of words. This is a one-year Bible. And so I would go through that and I think, I don't know if you can see, but I would put the year that I was hitting that page and the underlying themes and put prayer requests.

So I did that for about five years when I was a young woman and that Bible pretty much fell apart. And so I had to develop another system. So now I use this Celtic daily prayer compiled by Richard Foster. And I take all my notes from that, the scripture that he's teaching and put them in this study Bible, which is really cool.

If you don't have one of these. Let me see, what is it? It's the NIV, the journal of the word Bible. And N I V so I'm not sure even puts that out, but so then look at this, you can go back and in these margins where you've written this. You have this prayer request and it was five years ago and you were so over it, and God has so met you.

It's like, it's a history of God's story in your life. So that's what I use. If I have something that's just fabulous for that day, I send it out in the morning to my leadership team and say, this is what I had in my scripture reading today. So yeah. So that's what I use in. That helps me tremendously.

It helps me remember God's faithfulness and it helps me to trust him for what I need from him now and in the future.

Martha: And having those memory stones, those markers that you can run across that had random times and see, and remember, that's such a great visual there and a reminder for us. So that's great.

And you know, it's pretty obvious. You're meant for your job, right? She's got her, we'll get into that a little bit, but that was just, that was great. You had visuals and you're really engaged.

Valerie Bell: Now my sister is a real journaler, you know, she's got piles like this of real journals, but truthfully, I don't have time to read all of those. Even if I wrote them, you know, this is a short hand journal technique and it works for me. It might work for some other people too.

Martha: Well, that's just, it. I think a lot of times we don't journal because. We think it's too overwhelming. So you've given us a really good place to start. So let's talk about, you know, with the outcomes conference theme for this year is thriving. What does thriving mean to you personally?

Valerie Bell: I think thriving to me means that sense of being in sync with God. That, you know, that sense that you are walking right in the places that he has prepared for you and that you are doing the work he's asking you to do. To me I know that's just a sense, maybe it's not so measurable, but some of the things that we often measure, it's riding by our numbers, our finances you know, I'm old enough that I've been in places where those things have been.

And I wouldn't say that it was a thriving culture. It could have been a culture that was really toxic even. And so to me, both personally, and for the organization, are we doing the work that God has asked us to do? Forget the numbers, forget the other things that could discourage you, because if you're in that God group, And you're moving forward. You are thriving. That's my perspective.

Jim: Wow. I like that perspective. And I love when you say, forget the numbers.

Martha: Well, you know, that really even ties back to just what we said about journaling, because it's like, okay, you could compare what you're doing, which is how you are thriving with your relationship, with the Lord, to what your sister's doing in the stack of.

And they're both allowing you to thrive in your own ways. So there's so many ways we can apply that in our life.

Jim: As we learned in marriage mentoring, it's not wrong, just different. That's a great love and respect a perspective. All right. So tell us about how Awana found online Awana.Org. If you don't have Awana at your church, you should. Awana.org. Tell us how Awana enables those. You serve both as employees and volunteers and clients, how you help all of them to thrive.

Valerie Bell: So we are people of the word. We treasure God's word and we believe that when we teach it to children, we learn it ourselves. At Awana, we are memorizing Philippians 2 together.

It's killing me, my memories, what it used to be, but we believe that that word of God dwells in us richly and informed. So I had a funny conversation the other day with a woman that was sitting in a restaurant by herself at the bar where there were single people sit. I joined her, we started talking because I was by myself too.

And here she was the head, the VP of development from Michigan state university. Wow. You know, I've got someone I can really get some information from here. You know, we start talking and then she said what do you do? What do you do? And I told her about Awana and that we are in. Listen to this 129 countries with 5 million children every week, 55,000 churches.

It blows your mind. It always. And she said this to me. She said, you know, I grew up Lutheran and I memorized a lot of scripture and I don't believe any of that anymore. But every once in a while, a Bible verse will come and inform me. And I thought, and you're sitting next to the CEO of a one at lunch.

Who's going to tell you that Bible verse means more than just a thing that happened in your chest. You're going to go and have an interview with a former alumnus. Who's going to tell you how Christ has changed his or her life. You're going to sit on the planet. God is on to you. I didn't say that to her, but the, the the reason scripture is so, so very important and that kind of deep engagement people say, oh, you just make those kids memorize that.

And they don't know what it is. Maybe, but as they grow that's scripture, doesn't leave them. It dwells in us richly and it informs our adult lives. So we say that Awana is not about child discipleship. It's about lifelong discipleship. And the reason we say that, and we have just done studies that can prove that by the way, Is that, you know, this relationship with scripture.

So that's a part of why I think Awana is a thriving ministry. And then, you know, we were, we are in a deep self-examination mode because we've been around 70 years and you know, how the, the cultures that we prepare children for are not there anymore. Those cultures. We need to prepare them for the best we can for 2050, when there'll be adults and project, what the culture is, what they're going to need.

So we're doing this deep work right now, but We realized, and we learned that one of the other important aspects of discipleship besides this engagement with the Bible is the presence of a loving, caring adult in your life. Right. That mitigates. Anything that a child goes through. That's UN studies, that's Harvard studies.

That's not Awana studies. That's out there. And as we look at our child ministry and other child ministries, you know, we've got these big warehouses that are beautiful, that are full of kids. Maybe nobody really knows who this child is. We're counting the numbers. How many kids have we got after they leave?

Nobody knows where they go. Okay. But no wonder we've got a 50% drop off. When kids hit high school. So this loving, caring adult, we're saying, you know, a little less Disney world, a little more Mr. Rogers, these days, because these kids need to have that person in their life.

Jim: What a great way to end this segment of the outcomes conference podcast.

As we've talked with Valerie Bell from Awana, as you already heard, if you don't have Awana at your church, you should awana.org. We'll be right back with more on the outcomes conference pod. No, we're not trying to sell Awana, but it sounds awesome. Doesn't it? Hang on.

Martha: You know, the kind of person that always tells you about the latest trends or the special deals around town we'll lean in because here's a message from that kind of person.

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Jim: Hey, welcome back to the outcomes conference podcast today. We're talking with Valerie Bell from Awana. Yes, that Awana.org. She's talking about. I mean, I loved your last comment. We need a whole lot less Mickey mouse and a whole lot more... mr. Rogers. Is that what you said was something like that?

Valerie Bell: Yeah, a little less Disney in a whole lot more. Mr. Rogers.

Jim: Okay. But it's not fair to compare all of Disney to Mr. Rogers, but Mickey mouse to Mr. Because Mr. Rogers didn't have never, never land. And you know, that was be more, no less. Okay. Okay. I remember that.

One of the things that you said, Valerie is so true because we instill scripture in the kids and when, when they're old, it comes back. And for me, it's the songs I don't memorize scripture easily, but every piece of scripture that I learned as a child that was in a song, I know the song. And it comes and when I'm reading my Bible, I'm like, I learned that song.

I learned that song. I learned that song. That was a song too. I mean, I, I remember it.

Martha: And how many adults do we re finally remember that taught u?, you know, Sunday school teacher and Awana teacher, somebody on Wednesday night that, you know, I can remember my third grade leader because they invested in me. So I was just resonating with the things that I never thought about the theology.

Why things were done as a kid, you know, but as an adult sitting here and you're being so intentional at Awana, and I love that. So let's talk about the intentionality in your own life. This last year, it's been tough and we've had to focus on things or find things to help us personally, with our leadership. What is something that has, that you've really done to work on your leadership and help you focus on being the leader, God called you to?

Valerie Bell: You know, I we were in the middle of a transition time. We've been around 70 years and, you know, w this was natural and normal that we would need to do some transitioning.

And so I was, you know, so busy working on the nuts and bolts of turning the queen Mary around. And then you know, we had all these ideas and then COVID. And I'll tell you what COVID did. COVID accelerated all of those necessary plans. And so now, instead of just talking, you see what happened, we had this huge international growth and our sales model can no longer sustain the growth that's happening internationally.

So suddenly, you know, we had to be more than curriculum sellers. We had to be donor centered. And and I don't like to ask for money, you know, so personally for me, you know, we went to the airwaves, we went to Facebook live and we just said, here's what's happening. And I had to really believe deep in my core that this was worth asking.

This was worth begging. This was worth pleading over. And that's a very humbling experience if you've never had to do that before or to have to listen to churches who are not doing very well in their discipleship program, complain about what you are doing at Awana. You know, that's very humbling to have to be in this mix because it affected us the negativity that we talk about in the culture.

Hm, let's be honest. It's in the church. And we've all been living with people who think their opinion was written in scripture. That's a Bible memory verse in their mind. And so, you know, I think this was a year where I needed to learn humility and, and, and along with that hope and trust in God. So listen to this. 43% of our churches did not come back last fall to order product.

Jim: Wow.

Valerie Bell: That will wipe a ministry out. And do you know, we're looking at gazillion millions of dollars that we were behind. And we prayed, we went to our people, we went to Facebook live. Please don't criticize me for this because I know it's controversial.

We got PPP loans and do you know, God met us. We hit our first million dollar gift and yeah, we didn't even know to ask. It was somebody that was probably in a one, a graduate from 30, 40 years ago.

We didn't plan that we didn't program that that's God and my faith in my trust, in my hope in God is been stepped up this year. Even though it's been really, really tough. I, I have a different relationship with God than I did before all of this started.

Jim: Do you think those 43% of churches will come back?

Valerie Bell: We're starting to see the trends that they are coming back. I don't think they'll all come back, but I think we are going to be able to message resilience and kind of form a tribe of other churches that go.

We want to make sure our kids are discipled. We want to make sure that we have Put in them, what the 2050 church will need a terms of leaders and kids who have grown up, who can engage the culture.

Martha: Can we just talk for real quick? You - resilience is a word that you've written about, right? You just said the word resilience. And, you know, a couple of years ago, you, co-authored a book called resilient child discipleship and the fearless future of the church. Tell us about that and give us a little bit of insight into how we can be sure that our children are ready to be gospel leaders in the future ahead that 2050, that you're, you're looking at ahead.

Valerie Bell: So we wrote this before COVID and who knew we'd all have to be living this, you know, but it's I'm fascinated with resilient discipleship. So resilience is a quality that allows a person to bend and flex, but not break under the weight of culture. And what we usually do when we see things are getting tough out there is we protect our children and we should protect our children.

But protection doesn't give them the the power that they need to be able to bend and flex under culture. That's like protection, build a moat around your church, build a moat around your house, you know, we'll lose it. That's all we do. So resilience says let's prepare. Let's look ahead now, you know, COVID happened to us.

There's no way we could have prepared for that. Right. Who would have dreamed in a million years that COVID could hit almost every area of my life, but we can project a little bit about the deepening secular culture and it's, it's antagonism towards Christianity and figure out one, how do we relate to that culture?

How do we develop strong Christians who we can speak into. My goal is not just to have a wanna, still be here in 2050. I want that person sitting in the white house to be in a want a kid and all hope. She's fabulous. I love that. Yeah. So, so the resilient discipleship is another way of saying leadership.

And so we deeply build into these kids' lives and we call them the three BS belong. You know, you come to church, there's that loving, caring adult there. And they give you a front row seat to what faith looks like, even in a crisis. And then believe based on scripture that we believe God is who he says he is.

And that he, that Christ is the Messiah. Belong belief and become. Here I have my primary allegiance. Here's my identity. This is where I work out being a Christian in my daily life. So those three Bs, those are the legs of the stool of discipleship, resilient discipleship. And you know, we we've been working with Barna to do an assessment tool.

This is so cool. Churches think they're discipling in a lot of them. And they're doing good things, you know, but they're not really hitting the nails on the head. So with this assessment tool, they'll be able to take the assessment and say, oh, we're not hitting the nail on the head here, or we're doing.

And our dream is to certify resilient churches. So, you know, when you take your child there, that child is going to be noticed. They're going to be in deeply ingrained the God's word. They're going to be shown how to walk it. They're going to be made to be resilient christian leader disciples.

Jim: Yeah. Wow - what a great word. I love that. As we talk with Valerie Bell today, the CEO of Awana online awana.org. I got to get a comment about. The whole, really what you're talking about is creating a manufacturing mentality in our churches. We need to produce phenomenally vibrant and resilient believers. We've got more of our conversation coming up with Valerie Bell, hang on.

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Hey, welcome back to the outcomes conference podcast today, having a great conversation with Valerie Bell from Awana CEO of Awana. She said she as in Awana class is just 10 years ago, got on the board of directors, and now she's the CEO. That means you too could become the CEO of Awana. Just start memorizing your verses. Martha where you in Awana as a kid?

Martha: No, our church had a different program.

Jim: Cause I know I didn't get to, and yet we've seen our kids got to go through Awana and what an amazing impact .

Valerie, I got a, I got a question for you. All right. As the CEO, you're constantly studying and reading and learning things. And a lot of times as leaders, we read things where like everybody in my organization needs to hear this. What is it recently that you've read or studied or learned that you wanted to pass on to everyone in your organization?

Valerie Bell: Oh, glad you asked that. Cause I love this. So my leadership team, we're always passing things back and forth to each other songs, scripture books, but I want to share with you a couple of the books that have really informed us this year. This is Oz Guinness. It's called fool's talk. And let me just read one of the quotes here, here.

The world has grown far more dismissive of our faith in the world of today. We, again and again, have to face the fact that the world that earlier generations knew has gone and gone for it. So, what I'm interested in, this is how do we talk to this culture? So we can be heard we're teaching spine and heart that you engage.

If somebody says something on your Facebook page, that's radical and crazy that you say to them, I see how you could feel like that you make this bridge statement first, and then you tell the truth. And I found that it's much easier for them to hear the truth. If we built the bridge first I'm learning how to do this.

I wish every Christian who was active in social media would do the same thing. We're teaching your kids this right now. And then this is really good as Christians in the age of outrage. And one of the things that he says is let me make sure I have the right one. And who wrote that? This is ed Stetser.

He's a tremendous missiologist. He's the head of the Billy Graham association a week. But basically he says, here, it's a great study of what's happening in our culture that we used to. Can you see this? This is our Awana gain symbol. We used to be like this. The pagans were up here. The proud pagans were up here.

And then people who were born in the United States, who thought they were Christian and people who go to church every once in a while, and an Orthodox evangelical Christianity shared the same views. He says, this is all shifting. And now the views are like this. And that's why people are saying that Christians are in the minority now and will be increasingly.

So he, but he does all the facts and the stats and all of that, you know, it's not just a impression, so he's really backed up. So those would be two of the ones that we pass around. We've read together that are informing us.

Martha: That's so good. And you know, that is something us as the listeners, hearing what you're sharing, you know, something we can take and go and look up ourselves, but is there something, you know, Christian leadership Alliance is all about taking what you as a leader, the very best of what, you know, and sharing it with other leaders.

So what is the one thing right now that you'd like to invest in the listeners and share with them before we end the podcast?

Valerie Bell: First of all, don't let anybody tell you you're not a leader because your Myers Briggs isn't E S T J the natural leader. Right? I don't know what you guys are. Myers Briggs. I'm I N F P that's about as far from the natural leader, as you can get. If God asks you to do something, there's a reason he asked you and for me and I would encourage everybody to think like that maximize what your gift is.

That's the gift that others will be able to fill in the gaps for. So I'm I NFP it's the healer it's my gifts would be in this feels a little uncomfortable to talk about this, but I have a word gift. I'm an, envisioner a little bit of prophetic edge on some of the things that I share. But, you know, don't ask me to develop systems.

John asked me to be able to make all the charts work and a little bit, but you know, what I found that is I was true and faithful to that gift and maximized it, you know, I put the Energizer bunny behind it. So it wasn't just thoughts. It was, this is what we're going to do. Other gifts came. Other people came, who were so much more gifted than I was in those areas.

And they're filling in the blanks that I couldn't fill in myself. So that's what I would say to leaders is optimize your gifts. It's there for this season for a reason. And as you optimize that, don't apologize. You know, let other people come and take the lead in the areas that you need help.

Jim: And great leaders do that. They're not intimidated by surrounding themselves with the best of the best in all of the other disciplines in an organization. That's what great leaders do they become leaders worth following? Thank you so much. Valerie Bell, CEO of Awana. Thanks for joining us today on the outcomes conference podcast.

Valerie Bell: Thank you.

Jim: And to your outcomes conference podcast listener. Thank you for joining us today. We pray this podcast is inspired you and I have no doubt that it has, and we hope that it inspires you to higher thinking and deeper thinking for thriving in the culture that you oversee each and every day in your organization.

Martha: Be sure to visit Christian leadership alliance.org, where you can stay up to date by subscribing to the outcomes online newsletter and the CLA higher thinking blog.

Jim: And if you're not already a member of the Christian leadership Alliance, I have no idea what you're waiting for. Join the Alliance today. Join an organization of phenomenal Christian nonprofits, all seeking to bring excellence. Into the world, Christian leadership alliance.org.

Martha: Remember the wisdom in this podcast came to you on its way to someone else. So if you loved it, say so and share it with a friend.

Jim: I'm Jim

Martha: I'm. Martha.

Jim: We'll see you again for the next episode of the outcomes conference podcast.

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