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

In this episode, you'll learn:

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

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

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

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

In this episode, you'll learn:

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

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

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

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

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

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

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

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:

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

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

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

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

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

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

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

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

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:

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

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

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

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

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

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

What We Cover in This Episode:

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

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

Key Quotes from This Episode:

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

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

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

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📚 Grab The Emotionally Healthy Leader and read along with us

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

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

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

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

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

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

🔗 Connect & Subscribe:
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📚 Grab The Emotionally Healthy Leader and read along with us

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

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

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

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

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

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:

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

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

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📚 Grab The Emotionally Healthy Leader and read along with us

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

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

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

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

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

💬 Key Quotes from This Episode:

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

"Listening is leadership."

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

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

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

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

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode:

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

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

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

🔗 Connect & Subscribe:
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📚 Grab The Emotionally Healthy Leader and read along with us