Episode 205: Lasting Leadership for Large Organizations: Purpose, Passion & Pressure | Jim Piper & Jonathan Moore

—————————–

Today Counts Show Episode 205

Preview

Jonathan: In the Gospel of John, which this speaks to insecurity probably more than anything, but him talking about how he ran faster than Peter to get to–

Jim: That’s right. To determine–

Jonathan: Literally writing about himself. That he ran faster. He pointed that out more than once. Who got to the tomb first? So there’s something to that that I don’t think is all bad. But because of that, because I’m such a competitor, I can fall into the trap of watching what other people are doing.

Appreciation of our Supporters

Winston: Hey, before we jump into the podcast, we want to thank all our donors and supporters who make the Today Count Show possible. It’s through your generosity that we’re able to shape leaders through this content and this podcast. And be sure to like, subscribe, and follow wherever you find yourself coming across this content. All right, let’s get to the podcast.

Why Leadership Matters

Jim: So I love the word leadership. And of course, I just used a weird word that we all use: love. It needs to be defined, so forget I even said that. Leadership has always been intriguing to me. Even when I was a teenager, I always wondered why some coaches could win seemingly no matter where they were. Where they were, right?

I worked for bosses that I thought were winners, absolute winners. So when I look back at my life, I think about—forget the teenage years, although I learned a lot in sports. I learned a lot there, so I can’t poo-poo that. But just to move past this quickly—as a business banker, I learned a ton about leadership, mostly through a lot of mistakes that I was making working with them.

Leadership Lessons Across Seasons

I did a lot of entrepreneur stuff. My family kind of leans that way, and I learned a lot about leadership there. But nowhere have I learned more about leadership than in what the world might call the nonprofit space. But to be very specific, the church space—the church, the Christian church, the ministry. And I have found some of the best leaders that I’ve ever met in the ministry.

Now, I can say some other things too that wouldn’t be very nice in the same way, but today I have with me as my guest a pastor. In fact, he’s my pastor. He is the pastor of, I think the definition would be—even though some of us may not like this term—a megachurch in San Antonio, Texas by the name of NorthRock Church. That pastor is none other than Jonathan Moore.

And we’re going to talk about leadership. We’re going to talk about leadership from leading ourselves—our person—to leading people, to leading in our place, our mission, our season, frankly, whatever we find ourselves in. So, Jonathan, welcome.

Jonathan: I’m so glad to be here.

Jim: Yeah, we’ve been trying to schedule this for a while.

Jonathan: Yeah, we started at least six months ago. So I’m really, really thrilled to be here. I love you and everything that you’re doing. I love the organization that you lead, and I wholeheartedly believe in you and who you are and your mission in life. And you have blessed NorthRock. You’ve blessed myself. You’ve blessed our team in ways that are almost immeasurable. So just honored to be here with you.

Jim: Wow, that’s awful nice. Thank you for that.

Mission, Calling, and Personal Foundations

Jim: So it’s funny—you mentioned mission. So let me just state what my personal mission in life is. It is to know Christ, follow Him, become more like Him, and reproduce His life in others. My place mission, my business mission, my ministry mission is to encourage leaders toward health and effectiveness. But that first mission is my foundation. If everything else falls apart, that is the foundation I’m trying to build my life on.

What I did not say in the beginning is that this church that you are leading, you also started. And we’re going to get into a lot of leadership stuff. But before we do, let’s talk about this.

So you are pastoring a megachurch in Texas. You’ve got two grown boys who are also leading in their own right. And of course, your wife Alicia is your partner in ministry at NorthRock. And you’re not a young buck anymore, right? I mean, you’re a seasoned leader. How have you kept yourself healthy? Are you healthy? And how have you done that?

Leading Yourself First

Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, I guess that’s relative. I think I’m healthy.

Jim: You look healthy.

Jonathan: Across the board, I have tried to holistically lead myself first. And that begins, of course, with the obvious stuff—with my relationship with God and starting my day resourcing my spirit every day. We could talk a lot about that and the need for resourcing. If you’re going to pour out, you’ve got to fill. And whatever we’re doing, we are called to be pouring out into lives and hearts. And certainly that is a responsibility of mine. So I have to resource spiritually.

Spiritual and Physical Health

Physically, I’m pretty adamant about taking care of myself. I’m in the gym four or five, sometimes six days a week. I do not like it when I miss those days. I don’t want to miss out on the purpose that God has for my life because I have failed to take care of my temple. It’s physical. The Holy Spirit is here. This is the vessel that God has chosen, for whatever reason, to collaborate with—to use to reach the world. In my case, to reach San Antonio, Texas.

The scripture says David, when he had served God’s purpose in his generation, gave up the ghost. He died. He served God’s purpose before he died. I want to make sure that is said of me. I don’t want to go too soon.

So I want to do everything in my power. Of course, my life is in God’s hands, but I’m going to take care of myself physically. I’ve learned the power of rest, and I’ve had to learn that the hard way. I have peers who went off the cliff before they recognized the need for rest. I can’t say that of myself, but I’ve definitely learned the power of rest.

Sabbath, Rest, and Rhythms

Sabbath—shutting down a day a week where we just don’t do much. That’s frustrated you in the past about me. I know that. I want to have a meeting that day. Can’t do it that day, Pastor Jim. We’ll do it another day, but not that day. But I’m pretty adamant about that.

And not just weekly. That’s healthy, the weekly rhythm of rest because sometimes that’s just what we need. Remember when Elijah was just saying, “Take me, God. Kill me.” The angel came and woke him up.

Jim: Sometimes you need a reset.

Jonathan: Gave him food. Then said, “Go back to bed.” And then, “I’m going to give you some more food.” It’s food, rest, food. It’s food, sleep, food. Sometimes we all get there.

But I’ve really learned—this is something I had to learn over the course of the church—seasons. Healthy rhythms during certain seasons and recognizing that there’s a season coming that I need to be prepared for. I don’t need to be trying to chop wood in the middle of the blizzard. I have to chop it beforehand.

Jim: You better have already had it.

Jonathan: I’ve got to have the wood already.

Preparing for Heavy Seasons

So that’s how I see my personal health and preparing. For instance, Easter’s coming. I’ve got two short seasons where I’m going to be away alone. My wife will join me for some of it, but I will be away alone, retooling and preparing myself for that season that is Easter, where I will preach a lot of times over the course of three days. And I need to be ready for that spiritually.

So I’ve learned how to manage exhaustion on the backside of heavy seasons, making sure I plan time away—maybe a vacation with Alicia or something that I enjoy—on the backside of busy seasons like fall, the whole back-to-school season. We push, push, push, push, and then I take a break after that—before and after.

Some of that I just had to learn as I go, because I didn’t know going in what a season like January or an Easter season or a back-to-school season, I really didn’t know how draining that would be. So that’s definitely part of me taking care of me and being the best that I can be. Spiritual, physical, and emotional.

You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have

Jim: That aligns with so many things that we try to encourage at Lead Today. One of our phrases is, “You can’t give what you don’t have.”

I remember my first big aha. I think I was in my early 30s, and I was honestly leading a church, an organization. And I was over my head. I just was. Because I’m a sprinter. That’s who I am. So I didn’t really understand seasons. I would run really hard, collapse, get up, and run hard again. I never really thought about that.

I’m forgetting the pastor’s name, but he was at a leadership conference, and he’s the one that hit me right between the eyes. He talked about burnout, and he talked about the trail to burnout being taking shortcuts. One of the things he talked about—and it was just like it was him and me, like he was talking to me, Jim—he said once you’ve learned how to preach, sometimes you forget how important the altruistic process is versus taking a shortcut to just provide the content.

Burnout, Shortcuts, and Quadrant Two

I know that when the ministry grew and I took on an executive posture as well as the shepherding posture and all these kinds of things, I was just overwhelmed. So sometimes I would go through seasons where I’d slam out these messages, but they never really flowed through me. They were just content that I gave. And he stood up there on the platform and talked about what he did, and it was almost like he had been living with me for the last six months where I was taking shortcuts.

If you’re listening to this podcast—and maybe you’ve wondered this, maybe you haven’t—but who listens to this podcast? A lot of people in ministry listen to this podcast. A lot of people in business listen to this podcast. But one of the folks that I really welcome who are listening is if you’re a believer, or at least you’re trying to be a believer, and you’re trying to figure out how you integrate your religious ideas with your work. You’re trying to figure out how to integrate your work.

If you’ve had me at your location, you know how much I have preached to you what we call quadrant two—what Stephen Covey introduced to us decades ago. That’s what you’ve been talking about. You’ve been talking about that quadrant of time that is super important but not urgent. Like going to the gym. Some would say that’s important but not urgent. Therefore, it becomes the easiest thing to push aside because it’s not urgent.

What Drains You and What Refills You

And I think you did a really good job explaining that you make it a priority. I want to touch on one other thing about draining. When did you figure out what activities drained you? Because, again, going back to when I was younger, I just did who I was. I ran, died, got up, and ran again.

Then as I grew older, I began to realize, okay, I’m going to do this over these next three days. I love doing it, but I also know that it drains me. So the next two days I’m doing something completely different to refill.

When did you consciously realize that you were going to enter into an activity that’s going to drain you, and therefore you had to plan on the other side of that activity?

Jonathan: Ah, that’s a good question. I probably started picking up on that honestly in my 20s, even before we launched the church. I hate to use the word, but it is a real word. But I am technically an introvert. I prefer small crowds of people that I know really well rather than large crowds of people that I don’t know.

Introversion, Awareness, and Energy

I think I picked up on that even in my late 20s into my early 30s. So by the time I got to plant the church, and it was time to plant the church, I pretty much already knew that about myself and in some ways had already accepted it about myself.

To be honest with you, in those days, a lot of the assessments that said what made a successful church planter was not my personality. It was the type of person that’s an extrovert. They’re the party in the whole room.

Jim: They’re full of it, though, because I know exactly what you’re talking about. Most successful church planters I know—and no offense to all you extroverts—are introverts.

Jonathan: Well, I came to realize that. What’s so interesting to me is why all these assessments—when I would read them—I thought, I should not be planting a church. Then I started studying some other great leaders who are leading specifically great churches, and they’re more introverted than I am. So I realized, okay, I can do this.

I just had to learn to manage it and learn to notice. In most cases, being around people– I was at an event last night where there was a large number of NorthRock volunteers.

Jim: Hundreds.

Jonathan: And going into it, I’m hyping myself up for it.

People Can Drain You and Fuel You

But once I’m there, I’m loving it. I love the conversations, I love the energy, I love the stories. And one of the things that helps keep anyone on mission—but me on mission and focused on the main thing, keeping the main thing the main thing—is hearing stories.

I have to be around people. People that I don’t know, people that I’m meeting for the first time. It happens in the foyer every weekend as I, in between services, try to go and connect with people as best I can. I have to manage that because we do five services. But there’s nothing like hearing that story that fuels you. And there’s this shot of adrenaline—the why behind the what.

So I think I started picking up on it before I planted the church. I kind of already knew some things by the time, because we didn’t plant until I was 36 years old. We don’t have to say how old the church is. I don’t want people adding.

Jim: Yeah. Well, last night, the event you’re talking about—the two people that shared—if that doesn’t mess you up in a positive way, then you’re just dead. That’s all there is to it.

Controlling Thoughts and Managing Emotion

Jim: Positive people have negative thoughts. They just don’t dwell on them. When you sense that your attitude is going sideways or your emotions are going sideways, do you recognize it? How do you recognize it, and what do you do about it?

Jonathan: Now more than ever, I recognize it. I did not used to recognize it. I literally didn’t understand, even after pastoring for some time—as silly as it sounds—that I actually have control over my thoughts. That’s why Paul says, “Whatsoever is pure, just, right, think on these things.”

Jim: Right.

Jonathan: Because Paul, if anyone knew, if anyone had to wrestle with that, it could have been the thorn in his flesh. I don’t know. But if anyone had to wrestle with negative thoughts, it was him. He knows what he did to believers before he had that Damascus moment. So if anybody probably had some struggle and guilt and shame that he had to constantly push away, it was Paul. So it’s no wonder he’s writing about, “You’ve got to control your thoughts.”

Weak Seasons and Mental Warfare

This has happened recently, even in the last two weeks, because it never ends. Never ends. If it was Paul’s thorn in the flesh, then it just—I wish this would go away—and yet it never did. I don’t know. It never ends.

During weak seasons, during tired seasons, the enemy is going to drop negativity in your heart and your mind. And if you’ll allow yourself, we magnify things. We take things from here to here just by dwelling on them. So I’ve had to tell myself, “You’re not going to think about that. You’re not going to speak those words.”

One of the things I have in my daily declarations—which I speak over myself every morning—one of them is: speak life. Speak only positive words today. We’re only going to be positive. Because I have to tell myself that, and I have to remind myself I’m not going to dwell on the negative.

Gratitude, Competition, and Learning from Loss

Gratitude—focusing on the good that is happening, the good that God has done. I’m so stinking competitive by nature, and I want to win every day. I never want to lose. And part of building any organization is losing and having to learn to lose. Because when you lose, you win. You learn so many things. Sometimes things happen that wake you up to things you were missing, things you didn’t know needed to change. But it took a loss for you to say, “What’s going on here?”

And you recognize, “Oh, that needs to change.” That’s happened recently for us. Losses happen that teach us, “Well, that didn’t work, so we’re going to try something else.” Losses happen, and that’s what drives innovation. That’s what drives creativity.

So I’ve had to—what I’ve been calling recently—is kind of guerrilla warfare. Sometimes you just have to get in the trenches and figure out that didn’t work. We’re going to figure this out. It might be unusual, but we’re going to make this happen. And that wouldn’t happen if it was just one easy win after another.

So I’ve had to learn, during seasons where I feel like we’ve lost, not to dwell and frustrate and wake up in the middle of the night angry—because that’s what I’ll have a propensity to do—but to tell myself, “What are we learning? What are we learning from this?”

The Tension of Leading and Shepherding

Jim: Well, I’m around you a lot, and I’ve been impressed by how you deal with the ups and downs. I know that you are a winner. That’s pretty obvious. When you’re a leader of a large organization, it’s not supposed to be about you, but it is about you. It’s about you, and it’s not about you.

You know, at least subliminally—if I got that out right—your world is looking to you. That is your seat, and that never stops. As we’ve talked about before privately, when you take your foot off the gas, then those that are even in your inner circle will have a tendency to take their foot off the gas even more than what you are doing.

Every leader that’s listening to this right now, they identify with that, because they get frustrated. “I thought we agreed to do this,” and then you fact-check and it’s not happening.

How do you deal with that idea that you are both leader and shepherd? On one hand, you’re to love these people, to be patient with them, to guide them. But on the other hand, we’re supposed to be going somewhere. We’re supposed to be doing something. We’re supposed to be on mission.

Responsibility Without Control

So how do you deal with that tension of it’s not about you, Pastor, but you feel like it’s your responsibility? Do you not?

Jonathan: I do.

Jim: And it must frustrate you when you don’t think someone is taking a step when they need to take a step, right? I don’t want to bring out the darkness.

Jonathan: In times where I just think, “You know to do this. You should just be doing this. You shouldn’t force me to push you.” And yet that is part of what we do. I say push—I probably shouldn’t say that. Encourage, challenge, point, or lead—whatever the situation would call for. But that is one of the frustrating parts of leadership.

But that is exactly what it is. It’s the ability to lead people into a God-inspired future. You have to take people somewhere they’ve not been before.

Jim: They don’t even know that they want to go there.

Jonathan: You have to convince them that they want to go there.

And in many cases, I don’t even know where we’re going. I just know—it’s like Abraham—we’re going somewhere. God said, “Let’s go.” So come on, Sarah. Let’s go.”

“Well, where are we going?”

“Well, I don’t know but we’re going.”

So that’s why I always say faith has an “I don’t know” component attached to it. I know, but I don’t know.

Volunteers, Vision, and Purpose

Jim: A lot of leaders who are in the marketplace can make the mistake of thinking that the people on their payroll are not volunteers, when in reality they are volunteers.

Jonathan: That’s right. That’s good.

Jim: In your situation, the vast majority of the human terms—muscle, intellect, energy, time—comes from volunteers. Meaning they serve with their time, but many of them also give of their financial resources. How is that? That has to be massive. Why do people choose to participate in that?

Jonathan: Well, that question is actually easy for me, because this is what I do and what I believe. People respond to, they respond to vision. They respond to purpose.

And it really doesn’t matter if you’re paying them or not. Especially now, younger generations—it started with the millennial generation, but certainly in Gen Z, and I assume it would be the same with Gen A and the Alphas. If there’s not purpose attached to it, I don’t care what you’re paying me.

People are driven and motivated more by purpose now than they ever have been before.

The Great Commission and the On-Ramp to Purpose

Well, we’ve got the greatest purpose on the planet. That is the Great Commission. Go and make disciples. So it’s up to us to help people find that on-ramp and get on that purpose highway. Once they get on it, we’ve already experienced it—they don’t want to get off of it.

Different things happen, people go through seasons in their life, but our organization is driven by volunteers, 100%. We could not do what we do without volunteers. That is everyone from people helping park cars, to finding seats, to checking kids in, to teaching children about Jesus, to running the words on a screen.

Every single piece matters so much. So we work hard to point people to purpose, to make sure they have a place—a field, if you will—that they can get out of the bleachers and get on. You can play. We have a role for you.

You might be offensive lineman, you might be free safety. you might be the running back, you might be the quarterback. But I promise you, not only do we have a spot—we need you on the field. People need to be needed and known. So we want to make sure people sense the fact that the kingdom of God needs them.

Stories That Reinforce Mission

This event last night, just to go back to it, it was one for our volunteers. We do a gathering to celebrate them every year, and it’s so rewarding. When you hear the stories like we heard last night, it reminds them of how significant their role is. They’re motivated by purpose, by vision.

So all I have to do is point to a mountain and say, “We’re going there. We need all of you to help us get to this mountain.” And it’s not about trying to build a personal kingdom or anything like that. It’s about building God’s kingdom, which is reaching one person at a time.

When people recall how their life was changed by someone who served—the story last night was a woman who came in with anxiety, and a lady usher with a flashlight. Incredible. Just this beautiful story of how she went and got her Kleenex, found her seat, and comforted her. That instance changed her life.

And now she’s serving. Now she’s an usher holding a flashlight because she wants to do the same thing for people that was done for her.

Vision and purpose is what people respond to now more than ever, whether there’s a paycheck or not.

Identity, Role, and Team Contribution

Jim: Yeah. You provide what I would call both a uniform or a jersey and a position that people can play. So they have identity by being part of, and then they have purpose in the sense of their position and how they can play that role.

I remember playing football in high school. When my number was called, it was awesome wearing my jersey on Friday at school because I was part of the team. And though I wasn’t a starter, when my number was called, adrenaline would just kick in. You’d go in there and want to hit somebody.

Jonathan: I figured you’d be the starting offensive line, starting center. No?

Jim: What you might be surprised about is I did play quite a bit of nose guard.

Jonathan: Oh my goodness. Mugged up the middle, did you?

Jim: Yeah. I would do it differently if I had to do it over again. I got too many injuries that came along with that.

Alignment, Core Strength, and Loyalty

So I want to talk about leading people a little bit more. I think we established by looking at the metrics and the things we use in church work that NorthRock is a church well beyond 6,000 people.

What’s interesting, though, I forgot why I wrote this down but a thought occurred to me the other day about winning. When I look back at the years that I would say were seasons of winning, the winning came from an aligned and committed core. It did not come from the community or even the larger group of people that one might call the congregation.

It came from the inside out. Not that the congregation wasn’t important, but the energy, the vision, the belief, the faith, the love came from the inside and radiated out toward everything else. Meaning we were not people who were simply checking the weather to make decisions that we thought, “Should we check with San Antonio and see what San Antonio thinks about church anymore or God anymore?”

No. We had a different source. So our job was to start with that committed group, that core, move out to the congregation, and beyond.

Loyalty, Betrayal, and the Inner Circle

Before we were hitting the record button, we didn’t use the word, but we were talking about loyalty a little bit because we mentioned Judas. Even those who don’t attend church probably know the slang about Judas being a betrayer.

What I’m trying to say is you have to build loyalty. Anything that wins—people have to be loyal to the brand, loyal to the team, loyal to the mission, wanting to do their best. When your number is called and you go out there and fumble the ball, the amount of emotions you go through is horrendous because you own it. You own the whole thing.

You have deal with humanoids and trying to build this mission and vision. What does loyalty look like to you? What’s healthy about loyalty, and when can loyalty be unhealthy?

I think it’s a fair question today because I’m going to say this, leaders sometimes don’t recognize it, but they draw people to themselves because they are going somewhere. Sometimes they don’t recognize that they’re not always wooing the most helpful, most healthy people to that place.

I’m kind of dancing around a topic: how do you choose your inner circle?

Loyalty in Public, Honesty in Private

Jonathan: From the beginning when we launched the church, the inner circle was whoever would come and help.

Jim: Yeah. So true.

Jonathan: If you are warm body, you will move a chair.

Jim: You’re qualified.

Jonathan: You’re qualified. You can be in my inner circle. We can have dinners together, play golf together.

Then that does tend to weed itself out. The thing that I’ve always thought and we’ve said about loyalty is that I need you to be loyal in public. If you’ll be loyal in public, it gives you great power in private.

So defend and stand up for me. Have my back in public. Then you can come and challenge me all you want to in private, because it’s not healthy for the organization for you to challenge me in public unless there’s some great situation. There are obviously outliers. But I want people around me who I’m going to defend publicly.

Toxicity, Trust, and Team Culture

If someone were to say, “Why did they say this?” or “Why did she say that? She shouldn’t have,” I’m going to say, “Well, I’m sure there was a perfectly logical reason.”

Jim: Publicly doesn’t necessarily mean a big stage or hundreds of people. It’s at the water cooler.

Jonathan: I’m thinking conversational, in the foyer, because that’s where toxicity can get passed. The disease goes from one to another.

Jim: Let’s be clear as you continue. When you’re upset with your superior, if you can call it that, your boss, and you’re chatting about your boss behind their back, this is what we’re talking about. That’s toxic.

Jonathan: That would be toxic. That’s right. That’s poison.

Jim: Yeah. In fact, you’re revealing yourself as somebody nobody wants on their team. Keep going.

Jonathan: Whoever you’re talking to, if they were honest, they’d be like, “I don’t want to ever get on this person’s bad side.”

So if you’ll be loyal in public, it gives you power in private. You’re welcome to challenge.

Challenge, Feedback, and Broken Culture Windows

One of the things you said we might talk about is who has the ability to challenge you. I would say anyone on my team has the ability to challenge.

Some of the younger ones, specifically interns, probably don’t feel like they do, but they actually do. I would welcome it if you have a question or say, “I’m not sure about this. Why aren’t we doing this?” I love those types of questions. I love inquiring minds. I love people that want to know and who have ideas.

Anyone can challenge, but everyone in the public sphere has to be loyal. We can talk behind closed doors about anything. We can work things out. But that toxic conversation is not something–

Our team is wired to recognize toxicity. We call it broken culture windows. One of the broken culture windows is this kind of stuff happening behind the scenes: “I don’t know why we’re doing this. I can’t believe we have to.” All of these things. We watch out for that. If we hear it, we deal with it. We have a conversation about it. Why do you feel this way?

Story Ad

Winston: Great leaders don’t ignore their past. They learn from it. Every decision you’ve made, every mistake, every win, every failure is shaping the leader you’re becoming.

In Story: The Art of Learning From Your Past, you’ll discover how to turn experience into wisdom, setbacks into strategy, and pain into purpose. This isn’t just a book about reflection. It’s a playbook for growth.

If you want to lead with clarity, humility, and confidence, your story matters. Learn from it. Grab your copy of Story: The Art of Learning From Your Past where books are sold.

Connection, Collaboration, and Courage

Jim: Yeah, there are three C’s at Lead Today that we use in regards to this people circle. Let’s see if I can remember them off the top of my head.

The first is connection. It’s important that leaders learn how to connect with the people on their team.

The second is collaboration, which is usually the next step. It’s hard to collaborate with someone if you haven’t connected with them as a person.

Then the third is courage, which is what you’re talking about. The way we summarize that is: when you connect, you’re saying you matter. When you collaborate, you’re saying we matter. And when you have the courage to address the things that need to be addressed, you say the truth matters.

Jonathan: Right.

Jim: Right? So it’s all three of those in this people dimension, and it’s hard work.

Jonathan: When you really love someone, you’re going to challenge them. It’s the old analogy of loving my kids. I would challenge them when they were doing things that were harmful. I’m not going to let them run into the street after a ball. I’m going to tell them, “You don’t do that,” even if they want to.

Love Looks Like Challenge

You can’t climb that. You can’t touch that. Because I love them, not because I’m trying to be a killjoy and keep them from having fun. It’s because I love them. So love looks like challenge.

Jim: A leader’s job, even if somebody doesn’t see themselves as a leader but they’re on a team and don’t understand certain things or have a funny feeling inside, is to get that cleared up. Ask about it in the appropriate place with the appropriate people.

Ultimately, the job of a leader is to align themselves with the organization. If they can’t do that, then the right thing to do is move on. But most of the time it’s misunderstanding. It’s language. It’s perspective. That’s the work there.

That’s really good.

Scaling from 300 to 3,000 and Beyond

I’ve been dying to ask you this question because I’m kind of stepping into this place now myself, and I’ve got so many stories of my own. I’ve just picked these numbers. They may not be the right numbers for you.

What is something that was working for you when you were at 300, and I say you guys because I wasn’t around then, that absolutely broke at 3,000? Are you able to remember some specific things? Because scaling is always an issue for every leader.

Jonathan: Yeah, it is. In some ways, strangely enough, it’s hard to even remember some of it, even though it wasn’t that long ago.

The thing that jumps out at me when you ask that is how much easier taking next steps were.

There are certain wholesale changes across the board. We are looking at tweaking right now– I don’t want to reveal too much, but we’re tweaking one of our big things—how we do it, the process, the system. It’s daunting because there are so many volunteers.

Complexity Increases with Growth

When we had 300 people coming to church and we needed to change locations, back then we did. We were in one school, then another school, then we were in our space that we are in now. How easy it was to move 200 people from here to here, 250 people from here to here.

Now we’re facing this mountain where we need to move 4,000 people somewhere. It’s a big step.

It’s like they say when your kids get older. The kids’ problems they had when they were twelve are so much bigger when they were six, the problems they have when they’re nineteen are much bigger than when they were twelve.

As churches grow, the numbers and just– Real estate, parking spaces— in a new facility to seat the number of people we need to seat to take us to the next level, it’s significant.

We’ve been able to take small steps up to where we are as an organization, and now we’re at a place where the step is a massive steps. Obviously, any wholesale changes that we’re going to make. When I say wholesale, it’s about methods, not the message.

Jim: Right.

Details Matter More as You Grow

It seems to me, just in the time that we’ve been working together, is I have noticed as we have grown, this might be counterintuitive, but we actually pay more attention to detail than we did two years ago, four years ago, or five years ago. You already gave a good example.

When you’re meeting at the elementary school, you’re hoping there are enough cars in the parking lot to look like something is going on.

Jonathan: Yes, right.

Jim: Maybe what you’re doing is you’re saying, “Let’s park out by the street so everybody can see there are cars and it’s safe. Something’s happening here.”

Jonathan: Now we don’t have parking spaces. We have to park on the streets, we have to park next door at the hotel, and across the office park next door. When I’m looking for somewhere else to have church, I need 800 or 1,000 parking spaces.

Jim: There is no way where I parked at 11:30 on Sunday wasn’t illegal, but thank goodness I had a Land Cruiser to get me there.

Jonathan: Oh, you did. That’s awesome.

Jim: I think it goes back to the phrase that the larger you get, the smaller you have to get. You just have to know where you have to get smaller.

Small Groups, Leadership Layers, and Training

Before we hit the record button, we were chatting about small groups in the church context. From my strategic mind and the way my mind works, because small groups are at the center of who your church is. NorthRock Church.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Jim: Scaling that, to me, is the next mountain of exponential growth, particularly as you said before we hit the record button, was that this ministry is built on the back of what we call rock stars, our volunteers.

When you are creating layers of responsibility, that’s leadership stuff. That’s a lot of people skill work, and a lot of people don’t have that naturally. They have to learn that.

Communicating Hard Truths Well

Back to the courage, that third C we were talking about with people. It’s not just courage; it’s skill in knowing how to say something that is hard but in a positive, life-giving, forward-moving way. Some people only know how to say “don’t,” “can’t,” “no,” or “we don’t do it that way.”

What I do with friends and clients is when I hear them say one of those phrases, I write it down on an index card and slide it to them. I say, “What I want you to do is to take that phrase and rewrite it on the other side of the card that says the same thing but makes me want to listen and believe that you’re for me, believe that we’re moving in the right direction.”

That’s the kind of training that is small but helps us become bigger.

The Vision for NorthRock in a Noisy World

Let’s do this. You have this massive vision. Talk about it a little bit and describe to the listeners what makes it hard but why it’s doable.

I’m going to throw some mud in here first. Both you and I know the two folks that spoke last night at Party Like a Rockstar, Chris and Tanya. They were completely different stories, but they were both extremely moving.

One their stories was laced with family difficulties and it led to substance abuse. The other was another soul that was searching for truth that didn’t come from a home that provided that and yet had to navigate some other waters. It was amazing hearing those stories.

Today we are promoting a message about God, and in our world with social media, we have folks just like the two that we heard yesterday. As Christians, we would say God drew them. God is drawing them. God is always working. Those listening right now; God is working in their hearts and minds. God is wooing them, and our job is to be ready to receive.

Practical and Spiritual Headwinds

Because of social media and because of maybe some bad examples out there, there are some folks that are just flat-out against the church. Then here you are saying, “Let’s take the hill. We want to reach San Antonio.”

It’s a noisy world. What is the vision for NorthRock in this noisy world, and how do we get this message out so people can say, “That makes sense, what this vision”? Does that make sense, what I’m asking?

Jonathan: I just think God’s, as I’ve said many times, and I’m sure many of your listeners have heard, that God’s plan to reach the world is through the local church. I don’t know why this is what He chose, but this is the vehicle that He chose to reach the world. And so we are passionate about reaching the local church. I’m sorry, passionate about reaching our region through the medium of the local church and building the local church.

We believe we are the body of Christ, the hands and the feet, the mouthpiece of Jesus. And so I’m here to, as we say, plunder hell and populate heaven, to make it hard for someone to be lost from San Antonio, Texas. We want to have locations within 15 to 20 minutes of everybody who calls the NorthRock region home. So that’s a big vision.

A Church Within Reach of the Region

So we want to have 10 plus locations around the region, which is daunting in 2026. It would have always been daunting, but real estate is much more challenging than it was a decade ago, than it was six years ago.

So there are some post-COVID realities that we are navigating and wrestling with, but we still have the vision in place. We will keep the vision in place to have a NorthRock location within 15 to 20 minutes of everybody in the San Antonio region. What was the other part of your question? Because I had something else to say.

Jim: Some of the headwinds are practical, but many of them are also spiritual. Right.

Jonathan: And so one of the things that we feel tasked to do, obviously we don’t save. We water. We plant. God brings increase. But our responsibility, again, is to provide a safe place for people to hear the gospel, to clear the path for Jesus to do work. We have all sorts of sayings around NorthRock. One is that we create a distraction-free environment so people can focus on hearing from Jesus.

Digging Ditches and Preparing the Way

And distraction-free is all sorts of things. You feeling safe to drop your child off in KidsRock so that you can come and sit in a service and not be distracted about what might be happening with your child. You’ve been able to find a parking place and hopefully not park illegally. That’s why we need another building. You’ve been able to find a seat. You’ve been able to get in, see signs, know where the restrooms are, know where to check my child in. All of these things are distraction-free.

We make it as easy as possible for you to come into contact with the God that is going to change your life for all of eternity.

And one of the things that I’ve talked about recently is in 2 Kings chapter 3, when the armies of Israel were in a battle and they were out of water. They called for the prophet, and they knew if they didn’t have any water, their livestock weren’t going to make it. They weren’t going to make it, and they were certainly going to lose the war. So, it was a twofold problem there.

God Visits Prepared Places

The prophet said, “Well, God said dig ditches.” And they said, “What? What do you mean dig a ditch?”

“No, we just need some water.”

God said dig ditches. So they dug ditches, and the next morning they didn’t see the water. They don’t know where it came from, but the valley was full of water. And so our role is to dig ditches. And the truth is God visits prepared places.

So when we prepare, that is everything we do. Preparing a healthy small group strategy, a healthy on-ramp, which we call Discover Now, which is our on-ramp for people to get connected to the church, to prepare our services.

Jim: Being prepared ourselves, healthy ourselves.

Jonathan: One hundred percent, that’s right, personal preparation. And that’s every leader, and that starts with resourcing your spirit every morning, as we talked about at the beginning. When we prepare, I believe God will show up. When we dig ditches, God will fill them. And so the digging of the ditches is a bit of a challenge sometimes, but we still take the shovel and we put it in the ground.

Expanding Capacity for God to Fill

So, in what we’re doing with this vision, we’re just digging ditches and providing spaces. When we have five services on the broadcast location, that’s five ditches that God can fill with water, with His presence every single weekend.

We have three locations. Those other two locations have two services each. So what is it? Five, six, seven, eight, nine. That’s nine opportunities that people can come and God can fill. We’re just digging ditches. And when we build a new building and when we add another location, that’s another ditch. So we see it as preparing for God to fill.

Leadership Perspective and the Power of Grit

Jim: One of the hobbies that I have is when I meet leaders and know leaders, I take little private notes about those leaders. I know that I’ve shared some of that with you in the past, and one of the words that I added to your list of attributes is, and I think it’s one of your strongest, frankly, is perspective. I think that it comes out in your teaching on Sundays, it comes out in your leadership, it comes out in just the way I see you live your personal life.

And I didn’t prepare you for this question, but I think you’ll be fine with it. Just where you’re at in life right now, if you were to coach leaders in general about your leadership lessons that you’ve learned or the perspectives that you have, what would you– I’m just going to let you go. You just go. You coach leaders right now. Just take the next few minutes. What are some things that come off the top of your head about leadership perspective?

Jonathan: Oh man, we’ve learned so much through the years. One of the answers that I give when people say, “How?” Of course, I always say we’re just getting started, and I feel like there’s so much left to do. There is. But when I look back and I see where we have come from to where we are now, people say, “What’s the secret sauce?” Most of the time, I can’t really give one. The Holy Spirit, that’s obvious. But it comes down to a phrase, a word that I say all the time. It’s just grit. Just grit, just not stopping, just unwilling to quit.

Jim: Keep coming.

There Is Never a Time to Quit

Jonathan: So much of what we do, in the passage in Ecclesiastes where there’s a time—there’s a time for this, time for that. There’s time for so many things. Nowhere does it say there’s time to quit. You just don’t quit. You don’t walk away. The two on the road to Emmaus, they were quitting on the third day, and it was the wrong day to quit because there was a stirring going on in the tomb. So there’s never a time to quit. We just don’t stop.

In those early days—and Lord, I still feel like this sometimes now. I felt like this recently a time or two—we’re going to do better. I get up on Monday morning and say, “All right, we’re going to do better. We’re going to do better this week than we did last week, and we’re not going to stop.”

Jim: That’s the perspective I’m talking about.

Jonathan: It’s just, we’re not going to stop. We’re going to get better. We’re going to get better at this. We identify the things that need to get better.

That’s where that whole thing we were talking about earlier comes in. You have to take losses and say, “All right, I don’t like that at all, but where can we learn from that?” That’s a big part of who we are and what we do. We just don’t stop.

What Hard Seasons Build Into You

When you live, man, when you get through a portable location and then to another portable location, you finally get a permanent space. You kind of ride the river a little bit. You walk through some valleys. We walked through some dark valleys a couple of times in the history of our church. When you come out on the other side of that, it’s amazing. You think we had grit before. Now we made it through that.

It’s like when COVID came along. While we were all bothered by it and we all had our days where we were like, “What in the world?” But I had been through something before that. It’s like, “If that didn’t take me out, this is not going to take me out.”

Jim: Right. That prepared you.

Jonathan: Right. That’s what God does. That’s what building strength is.

Jim: In wrestling, we call it stay square because sometimes you’re in a position where it hurts. The first guy that gives in to the hurt is the guy that loses points and usually loses the match because it sets a precedent, for sure.

We’re encouraged in the New Testament to stand. Sometimes we don’t realize the power of just not caving in and just–

Jonathan: Having done all to stand. I’ve done it. I’ve done everything I know to do, but I’ll still stand.

Jim: Stand, yeah.

Resourcing Versus Offloading

Jonathan: I was thinking again about the question you asked. One of the things that I would always want to tell church planters, young leaders across the board, believers in general, whatever field you are in, is the power of resourcing.

As I mentioned at the beginning, resourcing myself, starting my day. A lot of modern culture wants to offload weight if they’re feeling stressed. We’re an offloading culture. “Need to get this off my plate. This off my plate.” While there certainly may be seasons in all of our lives where we might need to offload something, a lot of times that’s not what needs to happen. We actually need to resource ourselves better.

Instead of thinking of it as offloading, I need to resource better so I can handle it. One of the things that I’ve told our young leaders so many times is, “You’re stressed right now, and okay, I can appreciate that you’re stressed. I’ve been there too. But I don’t think you want me to take things off your plate.”

Learning to Carry More Weight

The truth is, as we grow, the weight is not going to get lighter. It’s actually going to get heavier on you. You’re 25, and I think you and I both are hoping that by the time you’re 30, you’re going to be able to carry a lot more weight. That’s not going to happen by me taking weight off of you. Actually, you need more weight.

Jim: That’s exactly right.

Jonathan: But you just need to resource yourself better.

A lot of our problems are lack of resources. That goes all the way back to what we talked about at the very beginning—resourcing, which is spiritual resourcing. God told Samuel, “Fill your horn with oil because you’re about to anoint the next king of Israel. I’m going to send you to Jesse’s house.” I have to fill up. Before I can pour out and anoint, I’ve got to fill up.

Rhythms, Rest, and Seasonal Preparation

Also taking care of yourself—your body, your strength, understanding rhythms and rest. Knowing when to chop the wood and when not to chop the wood. I don’t need to be chopping in the blizzard.

Young leaders specifically have trouble knowing, especially early on. We have to help them see you need to watch for these seasons. You need to chop wood before the blizzard, you need to rest before Easter. You need to rest during the summer before we get back to school, the August and September push. Chop wood then so you can be ready, so that you can be resourced and ready for the weight instead of wanting to offload the weight.

Jim: I think I hear you saying that offloading might be reacting versus, it might be a worn-out cliche now, but taking a step back, evaluating, prioritizing, and working on your life—working on your work, not just in it—so that way you can reenter it.

It goes back to what you were saying. Resource yourself. Sometimes resourcing yourself is stepping outside of yourself. You have the ability to do that.

Human Reflection and Meeting with God

A deer that walks through my yard all the time, I’m pretty sure he never stops and says, “Tomorrow I’m going to be a better deer.” He doesn’t say to himself, “How can I go about tomorrow better than I did today?” He doesn’t have that ability.

But we as humans do. We have the ability to step out of ourselves, think about ourselves, and think about how we can do this differently and better. I think that’s what I hear you saying.

Jonathan: Fantastic.

Jim: Yeah, we can be better. I think the deer—their control center is basically fight or flight. We have that, but we have so much more than that.

I love what you said too about our spirit. Even though we bring it into the marketplace and it might feel like a Sunday school lesson for some, we do talk about if there’s a place to meet with God, it’s going to be in that deep place of your spirit. It is a powerful place to meet.

Really good. That was really good.

What Jonathan Still Wants to Do Better

I’m going to cut you open here just a little bit. We’re getting towards the end but, what are some things that you think you can do better?

Jonathan: Oh, there’s so many. Good Lord. It depends on the day. My challenge is recently I’ve felt God– I’ve always been an impatient person by nature, and I felt God teaching me that I’m not in control of the timetable, that I have to trust that he is. If I trust that his will is perfect, then I have to trust that His timing is perfect.

Even though I’ve preached that over and over and over, it’s so hard. It’s so hard. We try to control.

Jim: It’s still true.

Timing, Control, and Trust

Jonathan: It’s challenging for me to realize just how little I control and how much influence I have, but how little control I really have. That’s something I’m still learning, and God is continuing to work on me.

I have to be very careful. The comparison game is a deadly game. Paul said in Galatians, don’t compare. You lose when you compare. You either are filled with pride or shame, and it’s a losing game.

Jim: You victimize yourself.

Jonathan: The whole social media world—I understand that a lot of people need it and we use it, obviously—but I’m luckily not a brand trying to build a brand on myself. I’ve limited my use of it. In 2026, I’m pretty much shut down about 90% of it, and I’m so much better for it because of the comparison game.

Social Media, Comparison, and Competition

You’re not meaning to, but you see everyone else’s highlight reel. We do the same thing. People say that about us: “Man, your building looks so full.” They just know how to take the pictures right.

Jim: We are good at that.

Jonathan: People come to our building like, “I thought it was bigger than this.” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s because we know how to take the pictures.” It’s so funny.

We show our highlight reels. We’re not going to show anything less. But that creates– especially with competitive people like me, so I have to manage that. I think competition is good, by the way. I think a competitive spirit is good. God can take a competitive spirit, channel it, and use it.

In fact, gentleness, remember I preached about this last summer, is not weakness. It’s not soft and fluffy. It’s actually strength. It is power under submission.

Jim: Yes, under control.

Jonathan: It’s the idea, the picture is a massive stallion that’s bridled—crazy power but under submission.

Confidence, Arrogance, and Directed Strength

A competitive spirit that wants to win—God loves it. I love to hire people like that. I love people on our team like that. We talked about this yesterday. There’s a fine line between arrogance and confidence. It’s what came to me at the meeting yesterday. I’m like, “Is it arrogance? Or is it confidence?” If it’s confidence, we want people that are confident.

In fact, I probably shouldn’t say this, you can have a little bit of arrogance as long as you’re moving the ball down the field for Jesus and people. We don’t want a toxic version of it, obviously. We wouldn’t have that in our organization but I want confident people who believe in themselves and want to win and love it when they win. That channeled in the right direction, I think God loves and God wants.

I mean, I was thinking about you in the Gospel of John. Of course, this speaks to insecurity probably more than anything, but him talking about how he ran faster than Peter to get to the tomb.

Jim: That’s right.

Jonathan: Yeah. Literally writing about himself that he ran faster. He pointed that out more than once. Who got to the tomb first?

So there’s something to that that I don’t think is all bad.

Run Your Own Race

But because of that, because I’m such a competitor, I can fall into the trap of watching what other people are doing. And I have my race to run. I need to run the race marked out for me in Hebrews 12:1. I’m not running your race. I’m not running a pastor across town’s race. I am not running someone in another part of the country. I’m not running their race.

So I have to continue learning, even at my age, that I don’t need to play the comparison game and to be the best Jonathan Moore that I can be.

Years ago, whenever I worked for a beautiful church in Austin for a man who’s still my pastor, Pastor Rex Johnson, he’s one of those gregarious, bright, massive personalities.

Jim: He fills the room.

Jonathan: Whatever room he’s in. From a restaurant, he still does it. He’s going to be talking. He is going to introduce you to everybody. He’s just wanting to talk to everybody. That’s just how he is. And I’m sitting over here like, “Let’s not talk to people.”

Be Who God Made You to Be

But I remember wrestling in my first year there with trying to be him and knowing I was never going to beat him.

Jim: That’s good.

Jonathan: I just couldn’t. There’s no way I was going to do it. And he has been crazy successful. He’s also a major competitor. He likes to win whatever he’s doing. He beat me once, and I thought I was pretty good at ping pong. And he beat me. He took his shoe off. He had not been playing, and I had been playing, and he beat me. I was not happy about it, but anyway, that’s a different story.

But I remember having a God moment in the story of Jacob and Esau, where Jacob wrestled and wrestled and wrestled, and the angel said, “What’s your name?”

And he had to say, “I am Jacob.”

He said, “Good. You’re not going to be Jacob anymore.” He changed his name.

Jacob, Esau, and Identity

But before that, you find Jacob again and again pretending to be Esau.

Jim: Instead of Israel.

Jonathan: Right, trying to dress like Esau, trying to do all of these things. He came out a heel grabber. He was always trying to be the older brother that he was not, he was meant to be Jacob.

And until he got to that moment where finally he said, “I am Jacob.” Okay, now I can do with you what I want to do with you. I’m going to change your name to Israel.

So I had that realization, and it was this huge load off my shoulders. You be Jacob. You be Jonathan.

So I have to remind myself of that because we all want to ask, “Should I be doing more of that? Should I be preaching that? Should I be preaching more exposition?”

Jim: You can drive yourself nuts.

Jonathan: You lose your mind.

Your Life as a Gift Back to God

Jim: We say that our life is a gift from God, and what we do with it is our gift back to God. I truly believe that. Notice the key word: my life is a gift from God, and what I do with it is my gift back to Him.

The concrete way I’ve been able to experience that is through being a grandfather. As I look at my seven grandkids, they’re all so different. Rarely, if ever, as a grandfather, I’m not sure I can say this as a father. As a grandfather, I don’t know that I’ve ever really compared one to the other. What I’ve noticed is who they are. And when they do what they do, when they show up and be who they are, they make me laugh.

Jonathan: How special it is.

Jim: I get joy out of it. I think about when Reagan plays soccer. She’s so small, but she just takes on the biggest kids out there. She uses her butt to create space, and I just laugh. I just love it.

Jonathan: She’s seen her grandpa rebound. She’s learned how to box out.

Jim: That’s true.

Jonathan: From her grandpa.

Jim: And the reason why I mention Reagan is because today’s her 11th birthday.

Jonathan: That’s awesome.

Jim: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Final Leadership Reflections

Well, is there anything else that you’d like to share with others about leadership? I’d like to have you on again in the future and check in and see where we’re at.

I know, as usual, you have prepared, and I just think that perspective is something that you offer the world of leadership that is probably in that top 1%. I think that is a huge gift, and hopefully those who have listened have picked that up.

Jonathan: Well, I think we’ve covered a lot of territory, and I don’t know that I really have anything else to add. I’m just thrilled to be here with you, and I have learned so much from you, again as I said at the beginning, through the years.

You said earlier you were talking about how you deliver difficult information, but you can do it in a very palatable way. That is definitely something that you are gifted at, knowing how to say hard things. And they don’t even feel hard at all. That’s a beautiful gift.

Listening Before Speaking

The other thing that I’ve learned about you, Jim, is that you are a storyteller. You do have lots of stories to tell.

Jim: I do.

Jonathan: But I’ve been in so many contexts with you where you would sit quietly and listen and listen and listen. And when you did speak up, it was gold. I’m like, “I’m so glad you said that. We all needed to hear that.”

So all of us as leaders need to learn more of that. We sit and listen. It’s like doctors who won’t listen to their patients. They jump in, and as soon as the patient starts talking, “Just listen to me talk, please.”

We’re the same way. We have a propensity to do that.

So again, I love that about you and just love who you are. Glad to be connected.

Jim: Well, thanks. As one of my mentors told me, the best thing that all of us who are listening now, who consider ourselves leaders, can do is keep leading. Keep leading.

Jonathan: That’s right. It’s good.

Jim: Awesome. Thanks.

Jonathan: You got it. Thank you, Jim.

Outro

Winston: Thanks for spending part of your day with us on the Today Count Show. If today’s conversation encouraged you, challenged you, or helped you grow, share it with someone in your circle, because we’re better when we grow together.

And be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected with us on Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

And remember, real change doesn’t happen someday. It happens today.

Until next time, keep showing up, keep building, and keep making today count.

If you want, I can also turn this into a clean Google Docs-ready version with proper heading hierarchy preserved.
—————————–