Transcript: How Rescue Missions are Overcoming Key Leadership Issues // John Ashmen, Citygate Network

The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series

“How Rescue Missions are Overcoming Key Leadership Issues “

October 18, 2021

John Ashmen, Citygate Network

Intro: What are some of the challenges your organization is facing and how are you addressing them? Well, today we have the privilege of talking with John Ashman, the CEO of Citygate Network, representing 300 rescue missions across North America. He outlined some of the key leadership issues that they are facing as their organizations focus on life transformation.

Al Lopus: Welcome to another episode of the Flourishing Culture Podcast, where our goal is to equip and inspire Christian leaders to create a flourishing workplace. As we face today's leadership challenges, we are here to keep you from experiencing the pain of losing your best people and facing the resulting disruptions. Listen in as we help you attract and keep fantastic teams of engaged people who love one another while accomplishing great things for a higher purpose. Yes, we believe a flourishing culture is more important now than ever before. I'm Al Lopus and will be your guide today as we have a conversation about actions you can take that put you in the driver's seat on the road to flourishing.

For me, one of the groups I most admire and appreciate, especially during the pandemic, is the work of rescue missions and their employees, and today it is my distinct pleasure to have John Ashman, the president and CEO of Citygate Network, the Association of Rescue Missions across the United States and Canada, or as we call these organizations, life transforming ministries because that's what they are.

John, welcome to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.

John Ashman: Thanks, Al. Good to be with you

Al: Yeah, great, John, for our listeners. What attracted you to the role of CEO of Citygate, and tell us a bit about Citygate's purpose and scope.

John Ashman: Well, that was 14 years ago, so I have think back Al, on that. But I think that in truth, it was the opportunity to help an organization realize its potential. I was in the COO role at Christian Camp and Conference Association and was asked to come over to- as it was then known- the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, because they said We have run this organization for forever as if it were a rescue mission. We want to run it as if it's an association, which it was. And so, they asked me to step into that role and I looked at what they had the potential of doing and realized that they hadn't gotten there yet. So it was it was a great attraction and I've really enjoyed these past 14 years.

Al: Wow, that's great. In 14 years, and really, we're seeing the organization realize its potential, especially as I looked at it. Having attended your recent conference in Baltimore, I thought it was really inspiring. And from your perspective what were a couple of highlights. You know, it was certainly nice to have people get together and you had a good, good size group there. How big was it and what were a couple of highlights?

John: Well, certainly that was probably the outstanding highlight, the fact that we had nearly a thousand people together face to face in a safe environment and having meaningful conversation. You know, people who work in rescue missions and similar ministries really depend on networking as much as any ministry genre that you can think of because they always want to know what does the government mean when they say, or who else is doing, or what do we need to do about such and such that just happened? And that networking is so critical. We had a major event in 2019 in Palm Springs, and we actually had a small event in 2020 in Naples, Florida, we had about 150 people. Those were the people who were so desperate and had to get together. But this event had about nine hundred and fifty people, at least that registered, and we think most of them showed up. We had almost 100 exhibits and 70 seminars and workshops and countless opportunities for networking. As far as the highlights, that of course, being one that they got together, the second would be probably all of the people who came up and said how meaningful it was to be back with each other and just learning for one another with great speakers. For me personally, I love Crawford (Lorenz [timestamp 35:35]), who I actually went to college with, but Crawford had some great moments with the group. I love a couple of his quotes that he did in one of the general sessions. One of those was, “The deepest footprints in the sands of time are made by those wearing work boots.” You know, that really impressed me. And then I like this one because it applies so much to the people who our missions are dealing with, “When you were young, you look like your parents. When you're old, you look like your choices.”

Al: Hmm. Yeah, that's great. And John, one of the things that you've done since coming to Citygate and not just in the last three or four years you've rebranded the organization. Tell us a little bit, I know ministry leaders are always interested in hearing the rebranding story. Give us a little bit of the story and what the purpose was behind rebranding from the association to Citygate Network.

John: Well, let's wind the clock back a long ways. The organization was really started in 1906 as the National Federation of Gospel Missions. A federation that I told you was these groups that don't necessarily like one another, but they have to stick together for value or benefits, you know, and there was a lot of infighting and things like that as I read the history. Much of it was because people didn't understand the concept of a city mission back then. You had churches that you didn't have these quasi things called city missions that were basically doing church for the hungry, homeless, abused and addicted. So this group got together in the headquarters of Christian Herald up in New York City and formed this alliance. This began to morph and get better, and by 1913, they changed the name to the International Union of Gospel Missions. And the year 2000, they became the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions. That name, I mean, there's so many things that you can say about the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, one of the things being, it's kind of hard to have people who don't understand this, to appreciate the concept of where does rescue and mission and all of that come into this. So many of our places would get calls saying, “Can you help get cats out of trees or can you help rescue my brother in law who went fishing in the Chesapeake Bay and has never returned?” So we just looked at the fact that AGRM is how it was known, unless you're I.B.M. most people don't understand what initials are. So we changed to Citygate Network, and it was a year process with videos and training. If you go to our website, the very bottom of the home page on the right, you can look at all the things we did and all the videos that we did to make the change are still there. But we took gospel and rescue and mission- the name of an organization and had it for 100 years- and we really didn't lose anybody. And so that was pretty significant.

Al: Yeah, that's great. A great job of that. You know, it's been a blessing and a curse. COVID has been- changing the topic a little bit here, but you know, the everyday frontline work of rescue mission employees has really been inspirational and it's been inspirational to me, especially. But what are your impressions about their heroic frontline work during COVID? Any thoughts on that?

John: Well, certainly COVID changed all of our trajectories, and by March of 2020, in fact, the team week of March we had 160 or so CEOs in Ben Carson's next to his office, the housing and urban development building on the up on the 10th floor. He was there with us and then sat amongst us, and then the next day we sent a lot of our folks to Capitol Hill to meet their senators and congressmen and congresswomen. Lisa Miller, on our staff who handles our meetings and events, she and I were sitting in the basement of the Longworth Building in the cafeteria. People started coming by and saying, ‘we had a great meeting with Congressman so-and-so, but his whole staff is packing up. Where are they going? They're going home. They're leaving.’ But three days later, the country seemed to shut down. So we were out there right before it all changed. And its initiatives and what we ended up, what we're doing was working from our office, but providing all of the information. Now we had had some hints of this and we had put up a coronavirus toolkit on our website answering questions that people had. But all of a sudden, it just became the focus of everybody's attention. Now you have to understand our ministries, our missions, they were already very full and they started getting people coming in who had been released from prison, saying, ‘I'm out. They don't want us to have the spread of COVID in prison, and so I had no place to go.’ And then they started getting kids coming in, who would say, ‘mom said, since there's no money because there's no job and there's no food in the house, I can come down here and you’ll feed me.’ Then you had people who were sleeping rough who were decided, you know, maybe it's too rough out here. I'll go into the mission. And then on top of that, you now have missions being told they have to space out, reduce their numbers so you have more volume, less space. Then they started looking at how do we send our staff out to protect the most vulnerable? So,for much of the spring and summer rescue missions across North America, we're working with basically a skeleton staff and in many cases, around the clock serving more people. But what was the saving grace in all this was collaboration. That's something that we had addressed in our COVID 19 toolkit that we had put out, you know, basically was saying this is an opportunity to reach out to all those other ministries and those other agencies in town. And that's exactly what they did. They, for example, you had a pod where you kept people safe. Maybe that was in your mission, but you used another organization that you were partnering with to have your quarantine space. And then you had another organization where you were having your rule-outs, meaning where they go for 14 days, which was the rule back then, until they show no symptoms and could go back into the pod and things like that. And so the collaboration was just at the heart of all this.

Al: The key was that there was no shutting down. It was again, they were open. The need increased. As you said, prisoners, kids, you know, those sleeping rough, they were coming in. But then there were limitations and we had a lot of frontline workers working double shifts just to cover it. That was heroic.

John: And we had weekly meetings online, and with the CDC. I was asked to be on the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness COVID 19 Task Force with the CDC and the White House and HUD and HHS and FEMA. The Salvation Army was on that and the Red Cross was on that, and we were the only three non-government groups to be included on that. But I had fresh information that was sent out to our members on a regular basis. Where to get the PPE you need for new regulations were there. And I think this is very noteworthy now is that when COVID 19 came to be the topic we were all talking about in, let's say, March of 2020, there were people in the White House, people you've seen on TV or who were suggesting that we would see a 10,000 or more people die from COVID in the homeless community. Some projections were as high as 30 and 40 thousand people who are homeless would die. And we jumped on this, the Salvation Army, we collaborated a lot with those groups. We collaborated with Family Promise and on and on, and really made sure that all of the solutions that they needed to protect people were in place. And at the end of February of this year, 2021, the total number of deaths in the homeless community tracked by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness was not 10,000 or more, it was actually less than 300.

Al: Wow. Yeah, congratulations. That's fantastic work. And congratulations to every mission leader and manager who listening. Great work and I had a chance to do one of the workshops at your conference, and that topic was on burnout. And how do you resolve burnout as many frontline workers have experienced and emotional health issues and burnout over the past year and a half? So great work. Well, if there's a positive side, John, to COVID, it sounds to me like, as I've heard, that people have been very generous with their contributions to your members. Do I understand that right?

John: Yeah. I lost track of the number of people who said they've had the best year financially in their history. The ECFA, which stands for Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability- they looked at different ministry genres and looked at rescue missions and camps and retreats and Christian media, radio, orphan care, pregnancy centers, education, you know the whole list, and asked the questions; how did you do in 2020 as compared to 2019? And they've even done some follow up work for 2021 compared to 2020. At the top of the list for better than 2019 in 2020 were rescue missions and city missions. One of the reasons for that, I think Americans into their psyche and extended our culture, when things get really bad, they look around and say, ‘Who's worse off than I am?... We saw this in the end of 2008, beginning of 2009, when we had the recession. Rescue missions did very well in 2009 because the folks looked at their budget around the dining room table and they said, Well, we're not going to give it to the arts this year and into the youth orchestra in town, and the college is probably doing well already with their endowment. They just kind of looked at things- but there are people who need to eat tonight. And so Rescue Mission saw an increase in giving. I think we saw the same thing this year and that in 2021 and even obviously 2020.

Al: Yeah. Well, we're all thankful for that. And that was kind of the silver lining of the whole thing is that people recognize the value even more that that the homeless receives. So, John, at the recent conference, I was really impressed. You outlined several initiatives that Citygate is working on to strengthen your members across North America. You know, you're working on board development, leadership, competency, building, emergency preparedness and others. All of these are really outstanding. You know, as we come out of COVID, our research is showing and we're hearing in the news quite a bit about a couple of challenges that organizations are facing overall. And I know rescue missions are also at the heart of it. And the first is just the employees perceptions about pay. And we're seeing a lot of discussion about pay competitiveness and part of that's due to the labor market. And there are few fewer people available for these entry level jobs. And you think about Amazon and McDonald's and we're seeing escalation in pay and that's directly impacting rescue missions, sending missions as they compete for talent. When you talk with your constituency and these issues come up, what encouragement do you have for leaders on this whole topic?

John: Well, rescue missions certainly are in a position where they're looking for more folks, but they're not desperate as some of the restaurants that you’ve probably-

Al: Yeah.

John: -They're finding that when they go for the heart. In other words, appeal to somebody who wants to see a life changed as opposed to flip burgers or put books in boxes day after day, they can make that appeal and they'll get good people. And I would say that missions have been concerned about their wages in recent years. We started doing a salary survey and did comparatives, and it really put the lights on for a lot of missions and they realized they had to make changes. And you know, this money that has come in for the donations that we're talking about. I know in many cases is going to increase pay. Some people have done compassion pay. If you run into some of those folks that were talking about that, and that was another way to really show the appreciation and help people stay secure in their job as they do what they love to do.

Al: Yeah, yeah. And that really supports our research as to what we call life-giving work is way more important as the statistics way when it comes to employee engagement with what employees want, and they want the life giving work, or as you describe it, I like the way you describe it, the heart may go for the heart. You know, that's where the work they're doing is meaningful and in how it satisfies them in their heart. That's first. That's great. Yeah.

John: The other thing in that vein that I tell folks is most companies and the most ministries are accustomed to looking at the 30 and 40 year olds when they're saying, ‘Who do we want to bring in so that they will be here long term and built into the organization?’ And we all know that people don't stay around like they used to. It used to be if you stayed somewhere 12 years, you were considered stable. Now if you stay somewhere, 12 years, you're considered stagnant. And so you have to look in different places. And I'm telling folks, look for the fifty five year olds and up. I'm getting ready to hire somebody who has it all works out who was sixty four into a key leadership role. Not because, you know, this is going to be somebody who's going to be leading your organization 20 years. We don't know what's going to happen in 20 years. You know, strategic planning has, you know, come back to now just strategic intent. And let's see, we're going to mean in two years rather than 15 years. And so people today who are really well versed and have great experience, maybe kind of fading in the eyes of some boards in some places and I'll say, ‘hey, take a look at these jams because you can get people who are 55 and 65, you're going to get five or 10 years out of them.’ And that's wonderful.

Al: Yeah, no. That's great advice. Yeah, I like that very much. Yes. So not only go for the heart, but look for experienced older employees because the life spans for different. You know, people also at older ages are looking for something that's meaningful for them to do. And boy, this work is really meaningful. So, you know, we've worked with dozens of rescue missions. My experience with many of them is that core belief and experience that Christ is at the heart of a client's personal transformation out of the alcoholic mission or homelessness is a key. And what are ways that you're encouraging leaders to build in the importance of Christian discipleship, Christian character building with their managers and staff, if any? After all, you know, we know that leaders can't give what they don't have. That's a key principle that I've seen and experienced. So what are some of the practices that you've seen that positively encourage that in the development of Christian character and leadership in your members? Anything come to mind?

John: Well, certainly one thing that we've been doing in the last four years, I think we've been really bringing to the forefront something called public reading of scripture. We had that at our conference. We've had the last several years at a conference and it comes out of an organization called the Grace and Mercy Foundation in Manhattan. But it's scripture read by clear, articulate voices with background sounds, and it just brings it alive. But here's the powerful thing here is you don't have to wait to hear somebody interpret it for you. The Holy Spirit doesn't interpretation, and we use it here in our own office. When we have our staff meetings, we start with 20 minutes of public reading of scripture. Scripture is read. There is no message to follow, we sometimes talk about here's a verse that really impacted me, and I think that is something that really helps develop that Christian character as so many times we are expected to do long devotionals. And, you know, here in Colorado Springs, where there's one hundred and one hundred and thirty or forty- who knows anymore- Christian organizations headquartered, there are some of them that do chapels several times a week for their employees. And I tell the staff here, folks, this is not your church. We're not your group. This is your place of employment. Yes, we are working in the ministry world, but I've made the exception when it comes to just scripture and we read scripture together, and that really helps move us forward together in tandem. Yeah, I think mentorship is another area. We saw a flurry of books that came out on mentoring, you know, a decade ago. And, you know, duck away from most of them, I guess, and a couple of them stuck. But I think if there is the opportunity for mentoring, it really does make a difference. Then the last thing I would say in that area is reading of of good books and journals articles that that help people, not the real thick ones that you have to get in, but the ones that are quick reads. And then just talking about it, I love somebody said this. I picked it up one of our conferences years ago, ‘Readers are leaders, and if you are not reading something regularly and have your bookmark in a book that's in your den or on your desk in your office, you're probably not going to be as proficient as you could be.’

Al: Yeah, well, I love those three and shout out to Ed Morgan at Grace and Mercy Project, right with the public reading of scripture. He's the one I know that has been involved and mentorship and then reading and then, you know, having groups talk about it. Great advice. You know, the whole topic of attracting and retaining highly capable employees is also a timely challenge for many rescue missions these days, especially with our employment environment that we're in. And our data suggests that rescue mission employees see a need to being able to attract more capable employees and also to retain some of the more high-performing employees. And I know this is a topic that's growing more difficult as we come out of COVID. I recently saw a Gallup poll said forty eight percent of our employees are looking for a new job to or at least open to considering one. What encouragement do you have, John, for our listeners about this topic of attracting retaining employees, especially at this time?

John: Well, migration from job to job, is going to happen these days, it just built into our culture in this century. You know, decades and decades ago, people graduated high school and they went to work in a machine shop and stayed in front of the same lathe for 40 years until they got their gold watch. You know, the next generation, maybe they graduated high school and then maybe didn't stay in front of the same piece of equipment, but they stayed in the same department. You just had loyalty to companies. The next generation probably stayed within the same company, but they may go from shipping to manufacturing to front office or something like that. More recently, we kind of stay in the same genre. But what I'm told is the typical person graduating from college right now is going to have seven unique careers by the time they retire, seven unique careers, by the time they retire. And so they're going to do that unless you move around and people will move. But I think for employers, we have to understand what employees want.

I remember reading something that was taking some courses at a college that I didn't get a degree from, but I just happened to take some courses at the recommendation of a friend. This was decades ago when I was younger, and it talked about a survey that I think it was Stanford University did, asking both management and downline workers what they wanted from their job. And it was the same questions with the same answers. And you know, with all of these, these possibilities, management chose the top options as good pay, good benefits as number one and two and time off, I think, was the appropriate time office number three. When they looked at what the workers said their priorities were, those three weren't in the top five. Number one for workers was feeling in on things, the second was full appreciation for work done, and the third with sympathetic help. One personal problems I've tried to make. That's something that I would use in places I've been in leadership for for the last 40 years. Make sure all the staff know what you're talking about, the things you have behind closed doors, but as soon as possible, let them know what you're thinking. So it's not like a guessing game. They want to be in on it and give them assignments to do that and then show them how they're appreciated and give those incentives and then sympathetic help them personal problems. That's easy.

Al: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. As the song says ‘know the conditions of your flock’, similar to what you said, understand what employees want. And yeah, it's again, our research is showing the exact same thing that it's not pay and benefits. In fact, we often ask frontline managers, you know why people leave, and they say, “Well, it's because of pay.” And I know that that's not why people leave. It's usually because, as you're saying, that communication is an effective. They don't feel that on things, they're not being appreciated. And we asked the question in our survey, my supervisor cares about me. I mean, exactly your point about sympathetic help and understanding employees. From that perspective, that's fantastic. Well, John, I've certainly enjoyed everything that we've learned today. This has been a great conversation. Really appreciate your work with Citygate Network, for sure. It was fascinating to hear about your rebranding the transformations of the names over the years, from a federation to a union to an association, and now the citygate network. That's really very good. Also, I just love the work of your members in COVID and my thanks to some of the leadership that you've provided to help them. As you described, make sure that they were being able to do their work effectively, that they were the front line. There's no question. Also, you know, as we talk about talent, you said, you know, go for the heart, boy. That's a great way of describing the important way of attracting people to work, especially in Christian ministry and maybe even to, as you say, look at look for older employees. And then three things just to build Christian character. The idea of reading scripture, the old at least a part of lecture Davina's another old way of saying just reading scripture and letting the spirit interpret in your own heart what God is wants to say to you. The mentorship. I think every one of our leaders should be thinking about how they're mentoring others. And again, you know, great books, Christian books and leadership books and talking about it is also fantastic. Just really your point about when it comes to attracting and retaining, particularly retaining understanding what employees want. It's not the pay and benefits. It's much more about the work and the way people are appreciated, the way they're including the communication. All of this just great stuff as we go through just thinking about it. Thanks, John. Anything else that you'd like to add that we've talked about?

John: Well, I think in the transition of what we are doing in missions, we are we are moving organizations that have traditionally done what we call disaster relief on doing life transformation and that when you were introducing the disaster relief comes after a flood, a fire, a hurricane, an earthquake or a tornado or something like that. You rescue people and off the roof of their house or the roof of the car, and you take them to a gymnasium and put them on a cot and give them blankets and food and wait until Habitat for Humanity comes around and rebuilds their houses. And that's wonderful that the way that works, you know, moving people from human suffering to human flourishing, but that food, clothing, shelter over and over and over again was rescue missions used to be known as. And often they were feeding clothing and sheltering. People who didn't really want help, they just came to see the mission as their pantry or their dining room or their bedroom or their clothes closet. And what we have done in the early part of this rebranding is really take this concept called life transformation move into eight S’s. The first is Save, save someone's life, not letting them overdose or helping them escape from their camp or whatever it may be. The next is Sober, no longer controlled by stimulants or depressants. Next is Stable, that talks about mental health and physical health the next to school. That means giving someone another education to be competitive, including social skills. The next is Skilled, that means not just helping somebody find a job, but helping them identify a career. The next is Secure, that means having enough money to care for themselves and knowing how to manage it. The next is Settled, their own safe place to return every night and then Serving, giving back to the community. So that’s Save, Sober, Stable, School, Skilled, Secure, Settled, Serving is what missions are doing these days. So when you see a mission? Think of in the new term of what the what's going on these days and you'll see a difference in how people are supported.

Al: Yeah, wow. I love that. Well. And how about John with our audience? One final thought or encouragement you'd like to leave with our listeners?

John: Well, I would just say, get to know someone by name this week who's on the streets. We don't usually do that. We objectify people who are homeless or addicted. The homeless, the addicted. When you learn a name, it makes all the difference in your life and theirs. If you go to our website, we just put up today in fact, a video that we did at a farm in Tennessee with some well-known musicians that a www.citygatenetwork.org and wait till the picture school scrolls around of a group of people and a guitar on the right side left side and click on watch that the video called ‘Hidden Trace Retreat’ and you'll see exactly what I mean by the power of knowing someone's name.

Al: That speaks to me personally. I remember many years driving from my suburban home to an office downtown and seeing the poor and homeless, and I didn't know the name of one poor person that struck me and convicted me, that's for sure. Well, John Ashman, CEO of the City Gate Network. I want to thank you for your contributions today. Thanks for all you've done. Most of all, I appreciate your devotion and service to our loving God and to that the poor and the homeless, especially as you help them with life transformation. So really appreciate your participation. Thank you.

John: You bet. Glad to be with you.

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