The Resilience Factor: Insights from Léonce B. Crump Jr. & Warren Bird on Unbreakable Teams

Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Léonce B. Crump Jr. and Warren Bird. Léonce is an author plus the co-founder and senior pastor of Renovation Church in Atlanta. Warren is a repeat guest on unSeminary. He works for the Evangelical Council for Financial Ability (ECFA) and is also the author of several books.

Together, Léonce and Warren have coauthored a book with Ryan Hartwig called The Resilience Factor: A Step-by-Step Guide to Catalyze an Unbreakable Team. They’re here to talk about what it looks like to be resilient in the face of disruption, and practical steps you can take to build great teams.

* How do we lead through disruption? // As leaders the great lesson we have to learn is that disruption is normal. For several decades we have enjoyed relative stability, but the reality is we will always encounter disruption. Building a strong, high performance team is essential to getting through these difficult times, but it also is a great challenge in churches today.

* Learn to adapt. // If disruption is normal, then education, management techniques, tenure, natural skills and abilities won’t necessarily help you navigate through it. What you need is the ability to take the hard times and keep going. Become healthy, strong, and successful after a difficult challenge. Resilience isn’t just about surviving. Rather after you absorb the blows life gives you, you’re adapting and becoming something different in order to navigate the new reality before you.

* Ask God for help. // The Resilience Factor is broken into eight blocks to help you build an unbreakable team, and the first step is to pray and assess your situation. Ask God to give you insight into the new reality you are in. We can have the best research and resources available to us, but unless God’s at work and you’re doing what he wants, it’s all for nothing.

* Lead through others. // The strength of our mission and ministry can’t rest on one gift or set of skills. Preaching alone doesn’t build a great church, rather it’s the ability to lead through others. Letting others lead you in their area of expertise helps catalyze unbreakable teams. Léonce shares that one way he does this is by making space for others to speak first in team meetings. Allow others to share their ideas, thoughts and opinions before you add your own to the conversation.

* Building trust. // The book includes team and individual exercises which help to increase resilience, such as an exercise on defining the team’s purpose in light of the church’s mission statement and comparing it with other team members’ answers. These exercises help with trust-building and create little wins for the team which build confidence to go for a bigger win together.

You can find out more about the book at www.resiliencefactor.info as well as order them in bulk. Keep up with the surveys Warren talks about at the ECFA website, www.ecfa.org/surveys, and connect with him on LinkedIn. You can find Léonce under the name @leoncecrump on most social media sites and learn more about his church at www.renovationchurch.com.

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