Transcript: Important Insights for Employee Retention, Communication, and Innovation // Ted Esler, Missio Nexus

The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series

“Important Insights for Employee Retention, Communication, and Innovation“

October 25, 2021

Ted Esler

Intro: Are you experiencing greater-than-usual turnover of your staff? Well, listen in, as today's guest has great insights on the importance of employee retention, keys to effective remote communication, and innovation for Christian-led organizations.

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.

As a healthy leader, how do you inspire your team, care for your people, and practice healthy communication? And how can you unleash an atmosphere of innovation in your organization? Well, today we'll address these leadership topics and help your organization flourish over the long term.

I'm delighted to welcome Ted Esler, the president of Missio Nexus, and the author of Innovation Crisis: Creating Disruptive Influence in the Ministry You Lead. Ted, you're a leader of Missio Nexus, a membership organization of Great Commission mission organizations and churches. Help our listeners understand the vision and mission of Misso Nexus.

Ted Esler: Sure. Thanks for having me on, Al. I appreciate it.

You know, every industry has a trade association. You have the real-estate association or tire manufacturers, whatever they may be. In the Great Commission community, we have Missio Nexus. And the biggest difference between us and a commercial trade association is instead of being about competition and competing with each other and protecting the interests of the industry, we're all about cooperating and collaborating and really trying to promote and foster the completion of the Great Commission.

And our mission at Missio Nexus is to catalyze relationships, ideas, and collaboration within the Great Commission community. We have about 320-plus mission agency members, and we have quite a few churches that are globally focused as well, represents about 60,000 globally dispersed workers, all focused on the fulfillment of the Great Commission. And so we do that through a number of channels, whether that's shared and collaborative learning, digital tools, trainings, resources, all of that kind of thing. And of course, we like to get people solving the same problems in the room together at the same time and try to collaborate with each other.

Al: Yeah. Well, you talk about collaboration and not competition. Peter Greer, I know, spoke at your conference just recently about that, and he's a good friend. But I also didn't realize 60,000 global workers that are represented in your 320 members, that's amazing.

Ted: We’ve been saying for years it's 30,000. And so this year we actually did a survey, and it was double the number we thought it was.

Al: Wow.

Ted: Now, a lot of those people are not necessarily overseas.

Al: Mm-hmm.

Ted: It could be in the U.S. But the Great Commission now is not just overseas.

Al: Yeah. No, that’s right.

Ted: So there’s a lot of activity in the U.S. as well as cross-cultural.

Al: Yeah. Well, thanks for helping us understand. That is really interesting.

You've been leading Missio Nexus since 2015. And prior to that, you were at Pioneers and with the mission to the unreached. Personally, or curious, what drew you to the president role here at Missio Nexus?

Ted: Well, yes. I was a field worker with Pioneers during the ’90s and then got into various leadership roles with Pioneers. Ended up at Pioneers USA as, essentially, a second-in-command or executive-VP type of role and absolutely loved what I was doing at Pioneers. One day, an email came into my inbox, and they were advertising for this president of Missio Nexus role. And it came in, and I just dropped it over in the trash, and I didn't really even spend much time looking at it. And then one of my coworkers came over and said, “Hey, Ted. Did you read that job description? Because when I read that, I realized it was describing you.” Well, that got my curiosity piqued, and I went back and I looked through it. And as I did that, I just, I almost felt this physical sense that God wanted me to pay attention to it.

Al: Wow.

Ted: So I made a few contacts with people that I knew that were in the Missio Nexus community. Of course, Pioneers is a member, and I was very aware of Missio Nexus. And one thing led to another, and six years ago, I was appointed the president of Missio Nexus.

And for me, a personal passion really is that together we can be doing a lot more than we can do separately. And so, you know, I really have enjoyed the role and the opportunities it's given me.

Al: Well, isn't it funny how other people are God's messengers for us? So you threw the ad in the trash, but a friend came to you.

Ted: Yeah.

Al: That's a nice story, Ted. Yeah. Well, thanks for your insight.

Our research has shown that there are eight keys that directly impact engagement of missionaries, and the most important is what we call inspirational leadership, and you've already begun to talk about inspirational leadership, in a way. We find that within inspirational leadership, Christian character is a big part of our definition. And when we think of Christian character, we include, for example, high levels of trust between leaders and staff, leaders demonstrating compassion, even leaders demonstrating the fruit of the Holy Spirit, as well as being open and honest. What are ways that organizations can develop these competencies? I know this is a key for Christian organizations overall. What tips do you have for us to help leaders develop these things in their organization?

Ted: Well, for me personally, I would say open communications is a high value.

Al: Mm-hmm.

Ted: And when there are successes, it’s easy for everybody to talk about those successes. And at the same time, when there are failures, and I've experienced a few of those myself even recently, those types of things are harder to discuss. Yet it's funny. It's when you talk about that latter category that you seem to, as a leader, develop tighter bonds with your followers than when you just focus on the successes. And I think, you know, we all face difficulties, we all face failures, and so I would say one key is to make sure that it's easy in your organization to talk about both the successes and the failures and not just cheerlead on one side of that, which, as people, I think we just kind of gravitate toward the celebration side more than we do debriefing the failure side. Those are just golden opportunities for good communication to flow.

And obviously, that brings up the whole importance of relationship and leadership. And my favorite book of the Bible that focuses on leadership and relationships is that odd, funny little book of Philemon, that's sandwiched in there among all of the epistles. And what's great about that book is here you see Paul basically saying, I got the authority to tell you what to do, but for love's sake, for the sake of the relationship, I am not going to do that to you. I'm going to let you make a decision on your own. Now, he gives them all the reasons on what the good decision looks like, but he, at the same time, really focuses on just making sure that the relationship is the core thing.

Another thing that's great about that book is in the business world when they talk about partnership, they talk about, Hey, we want to build a partnership based on a win-win. And I see that in some Christian writing, too. You know, we want you to get something out of it, we're going to get something out of it, and then it’s a good partnership. And what you find in the book of Philemon is actually a different model of partnership. And that happened—and basically, what's happening there is Paul invites Philemon to partner with him so that Onesimus is the one that benefits. In a sense, Philemon and Paul both give up something, but Onesimus is the long-term recipient of blessing from their partnership.

And so that concept that you and I partner together to bless somebody else makes for, I think, a really great picture of Christian partnership. As a leader, I would just say partnering with your staff to bless others is a powerful component.

Al: Yeah. Well, Ted, I love that. And 1 Peter 5:2 is a verse that I often refer to, where it says, “Leaders, shepherd the flock that God has entrusted to you.” And this is exactly what you're saying.

I also like your other point about even failures and how leaders are really reticent to acknowledge that maybe they made a mistake. And yet, what I find is when the leader humbly admits that they made a mistake, it actually draws people to them and builds trust, as you said, versus causes people to turn away.

Ted: You know, I think that whole concept of strength and weakness—

Al: Mm-hmm.

Ted: —I think that's where it's coming from. When people are able to be transparent—

Al: Mm-hmm.

Ted: —the glue that gets poured on that relationship just exponentially increases. So, yeah.

Al: Yeah, yeah. The glue that gets poured on the relationship, binding you together, that's a great way of saying it. Thanks.

Well, let's focus now on missionaries in the field—you know quite a bit about this—and the effort and the time involved in selecting people, training, equipping, and even launching them is enormous and can take years. And oftentimes, in Christian ministries, we put people in their office and put them in a desk and give them a computer, and that's about as much onboarding as some get. But sending a missionary to the field—there's language issues, there's cultural issues—can take quite a while. So what are some of the best practices that you see among mission agencies, especially, leadership practices, where they’re making a difference in setting people and teams up for thriving?

Ted: Well, I'd say this is an area that's under great flux right now. It's similar in our culture at large.

Al: Mm-hmm.

Ted: You know, it used to be—I mean, you could go back to the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, the growth of the Bible Institute movement, and many of those Bible institutes prepared and sent people. Many of those institutes grew up and became schools, Bible colleges, and universities. And I'd say there was a period of time there when that missionary-preparation world didn't have the same opportunities that it's had. In the last 10 to 15 years, there's been an entire—I'd call it almost a niche or a sub industry of the missions world, which are residential preparation programs.

For example, you can go to New York City, you can minister to almost any people group there that you can find in the world, and at the same time, you can be learning about cross-cultural communication, and you can be focusing on all sorts of missionary skills before you actually try to do that in the target culture that you're going to be working in, potentially overseas or wherever. So that's an example of a change that's occurring right now in the missionary world when it comes to missionary preparation.

I would also say that with the embrace of business’s mission and also the need to get people into creative-access countries, there is probably less emphasis now on formal Bible education than there has been in the past. And people are picking up secular degrees, and a lot of times those degrees and that kind of preparation are door openers for people to get into places. So that's all created a big shift in terms of how that selection and recruitment process is happening.

Al: Wow, that is a big shift, from even my perceptions of the way it's been in the past. Well, that's fascinating. I mean, I love the business's mission. The growth of that has been tremendous. Well, that's really interesting.

And of course, many of these leadership practices are important for other types of organizations, even if you're not sending people overseas, and that would be a discussion to reflect on. But I want to talk about retention of people as an important area for a thriving organization, and this is particularly something that is true here in the U.S. We're seeing high numbers of people actually changing jobs. You know, some are calling it the great resignation, as millions of people are changing jobs here in the U.S. and we're seeing it, quite frankly, in Christian ministries, where there's a lot of turnover. What are you finding is happening in the missionary world with missionary turnover? Are you seeing the same thing these days as we're seeing in the U.S.?

Ted: Well, I do think, you know, when you're talking about this, the great resignation, I've been reading about that, and I've been seeing a couple of instances of it personally as well anecdotally. So I don't think we have good data on whether or not it's happening with field staff, particularly, at this particular point. You know, I would say, Al, that there is a feeling out there, and there has been for quite a while, that the missionary-deployment window has been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. But you know, the truth is, when you analyze the data, that's not really been happening. Now that said, because travel is much more accessible now, people are coming home more often and going back more often. They're coming home for shorter periods of time. The old traditional four years, the year of furlough, I mean, it happens, but it's almost nonexistent. So there have been changes in how missionaries are deploying.

But I'm thinking about one organization in particular. They recently did—this is a large missionary-sending agency. In the last few months, they did what's called a FIFO study to show a first in, first out, tracking people's career. I think they did it over a 20-year window. In over 20 years, the length of deployment was almost exactly the same.

Al: Wow.

Ted: I think what really has happened is we think the deployment window, by the way, is around seven years on average. And I think that 20 years ago, it was seven years on average, but we thought it was 15 years.

The other thing, there's kind of a funny dynamic with the way statistics work. When I say average, listeners should unpack average because in that average are some very long-term missionaries that accumulate in larger organizations. And so when you look at how statistics work, a median number might be a better number, and that median number might be shortening a little bit at this time.

Al: Well, that’s revealing because I've certainly had the impression, just from the outside, that the amount of time people are spending, missionaries are on the field, is shrinking quite a bit. But seven years, so there we have it. That's fascinating.

Well, considering the cost of turnover, Ted, and the value of retention, what are some specific ways that leaders can care for their people and help them grow and make sure that stay engaged and stay on the field in an effective way?

Ted: Well, so, I would say this is particularly true for mission agencies, but this applies more and more every day to organizations everywhere, and that just has to do with this issue of how much autonomy you're giving staff. I think that this is probably one of the things in the COVID era that has been reset somewhat. Because of working from home, I think the autonomy that people feel and people want has—they want more of it. You know, I tend to be a leader, personally, that gravitates toward that anyway, so it's easy for me to give my staff lots of autonomy, probably too much. I know that over time, you know, leaders tend to attract the kind of people that do well following them, which is good, and it's also very bad at the same time. And as I look at my staff, I realize that I've accumulated those type of staff members. I probably need to be careful in our organizational culture to monitor that because not all people are going to thrive in that environment. You know, there are leaders that led very well, that did not grant a lot of autonomy. You know, Steve Jobs is the famous business example, where he was extremely directive with people. He was a better leader than I ever was. So I don't know if that—there's a one model fits all here.

You know, I think another area that's really important is the whole encouragement piece, which is not something that I'm personally gifted in. Fortunately, I have a couple of close coworkers that are, and they know my weakness in this area. And this is where as a leader, being open and transparent about things you don't do well is a real blessing to you because others, then, can step in and easily take up those types of things.

I can give you one example. We had one staff member that was struggling a bit. This person was recruited into a role that was perhaps a step or two above their experience level. I could sense some bit of, I’d call it, almost drowning, with what was happening in terms of the work responsibilities. So we took a step back, and we invited in a mentor and paid for a professional mentoring program for this person, that went over a nine-month period. Let me tell you that’s some of the best money I’ve ever spent on staff development, because today this person’s performing at a very different and much higher level than they were even hired in on. I do believe in developmental opportunities, and I think sometimes you've got to spend money to make that happen, and not to think that you, as the leader, are the one that's going to provide the best input for those staff members, because in this case, I mean, I was hiring this person to do something I couldn't do. So I'm not the best one to mentor and lead them in that development process.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: And now, back to today’s special guest.

Well, those are three great examples of how to retain your top talent: autonomy, encouragement, and development. And I really like your idea about mentoring and how important mentoring is, particularly in this autonomous market that we're in, environment that we're in, where people really can develop and grow with good mentorship. And it's oftentimes better when it's not the supervisor or manager, for sure. Yeah. Wow.

So, we talked about inspirational leadership and retaining people, and we've also seen that healthy communication is an important driver of a flourishing culture and oftentimes very related to leadership. Many organizations have had to learn how to communicate with remote staff over the last 18 months. And if there's any group that's figured out how to do this, it would be people that are working globally. What can we learn about healthy communication, especially communicating over distance and cultural divides, from the best practices that you see in mission agencies? And I guess one of the things I'd also reflect on is that the first people I've ever heard of using Skype way back, when it was just coming out, were missionaries. And so what can we learn when it comes to remote communication?

Ted: Al, you're really right about that. I can remember speaking at a conference via Skype in 1996.

Al: Mm-hmm.

Ted: I was sitting in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and the conference was in Melbourne, Australia.

Al: Wow.

Ted: So this is something that missionaries have been doing for a long time. And I would say that probably one of the key principles that I've seen at play, both when it's been broken and when it’s been upheld, is just to keep in mind that there's some conversations that are not well suited for remote communication. Now, a lot of us depend on email, and email used to be about the only way, and I think it's easier for people to conceive of this in an email world. But it's also true, I'd say, in a Skype world. And an example of a conversation that's better held face to face are deep, kind of high-level, strategic-planning sessions. I'm very digital, okay? I have a background in computers. I don't mind using the digital tools. But nothing beats having a couple of people in a room with the ability to just go very deep on strategic topics. Also, of course, are confrontational conversations, things dealing with difficult personnel issues. That's easy to see that those are going to be better in person. But I would evaluate the types of conversations you're having and just make sure that you're making enough space for when you actually do have to physically be together.

You know, our team, we have no office. Everybody works from home, and we've been doing that for four or five years, well before there was COVID. And so for that reason, we have had to purposefully schedule face-to-face times to make sure we're having the right conversations.

And the other thing I would just mention on this one is that we're all very different on how we handle remote communication. Some love it, some prefer it, and some don't. Some have natural skills in this area. Some extroverts, they actually like being online more than they like being face to face. Some introverts, the same thing. I've got somebody on my staff that was struggling with the fact that we never worked together, and they wanted office chatter. And so in that case, we have decided to rent space inside another mission-agency's office, and that person is able to go into the office, be around other people, and yet they participate fully on our team, but they're getting that social need met that we were not meeting as a team because of how we are. So evaluate each person and really think through how they'll do in a remote setting.

Al: Yeah, we're all different, isn't it? That's fascinating. And I hear a lot of people saying, “I'm just done with Zoom. I can't do Zoom anymore.” And you know, there’s other people are saying, “Hey, Zoom is the greatest thing since sliced bread,” or whatever the vehicle is. And, yeah, everybody has different reactions to it. But your point is an interesting one. For strategic-planning conversations, it's really better to be in the same room, or certainly we understand confrontational conversations.

Ted: Those two things are related, Al. The reason why strategic planning is good face to face is that good decisions come when there's positive disagreement. People are wrestling over issues and sharing competing or opposing ideas and are able to work those out. So in one sense, these are both kind of conflict-oriented types of discussions. But I'm talking about positive conflict, obviously. But that's why they're both better face to face.

Al: Moving on, Ted, thinking about the next generation of leadership is also something I know that's on your mind, and releasing the next generation to lead also relates to the topic of innovation. And I know that's a pet topic of yours. You've written a book, The Innovation Crisis: Creating Disruptive Influence in the Ministry You Lead, and as you described the need for the book, you say, if you're leading a ministry organization, your job isn't just to see the change that's coming, but to get your people ahead of the curve and to stay there. And you say Jesus Himself was an innovator, and I don't think anybody’d disagree with that. So tell us more about why innovation is so important for all of us to embrace it going forward.

Ted: Innovation, for ministry leaders, is different than it is for business leaders. And I think—let's dial back first and talk a little bit about Jesus. So when Jesus communicated, He did something that's very hard to do but very important for innovators. He did two opposing things at the same time. His message felt Jewish. It was highly contextualized to the hearers, to those that were listening. At the same time, the message was countercultural, and it actually confronted things in the culture.

Now that's, in a sense, what innovators do. They take something new—so I like to define innovation is the creation of something new or the recombination of existing elements into something new. Jesus took some new ideas, He made them feel very Jewish and very non-Jewish at the same time, and that caused people to think deeply about what He was presenting. Now, think about all the new things Jesus talked about: the new Kingdom, the new covenant, new wine skins, even born-again language. It's all about renewal. And Jesus did not just take the tradition or the status quo as it was there, but He challenged all of us. And as ministry leaders, we are, you know, we're supposed to be Christ like. So we should similarly be trying to innovate in a way that really speaks to culture so that it feels homing culture and is highly contextualized, while simultaneously very confrontive of culture and shows how the new Kingdom is a much better way forward than the status quo.

Al: Yeah, great. I love that. So, that we really are looking innovation as something new. It could be a recombination of things or just something new, but to really see innovation effective, you have to kind of look at where we are and then paint a vision, I think you're saying, of something that's different. Is that…?

Ted: Yeah.

Al: Yeah, yeah.

Well, prior to your mission work, you were in the computer industry. And why do you think that innovation is harder for ministry leaders than it is for business leaders? You say it's different.

Ted: It is different, yeah. So I mentioned the trade associations before and how they're competing with each other, and competition is an incredible force for innovation, and it's what the marketplace uses to drive innovation. Now, ministries, unlike businesses, do not compete with each other. Rather, they're competing with the world as it's expressed in culture. And that's a more ambiguous and a less identifiable form of competition. And it's those ministry leaders who understand best how the culture is competing for the hearts and minds of people that are able to do what Jesus did in crafting the message in this kind of two-part way I mentioned earlier.

Now, the reason why it's particularly important right now is that we're just in this severe culture shift, where culture is changing so rapidly right now, we as ministry leaders, are taxed like never before to try to keep up with all that change that's going on. And so, yeah, I would say ministry innovation is actually harder because it's a little bit more ambiguous in terms of highlighting what needs to be done, and also because it's about understanding your competition in terms of culture. And that's a tough thing, and we're not all gifted in that area.

Al: Yeah. And culture is hard. We look at organizational culture, and it's hard to even, because you can't see it, you know, I mean, it's invisible. You know, you hear what people, how they describe it, but it is ambiguous.

Ted: So, Al, on that topic of organizational culture, some of my Ph.D. work was in that area. And a guy named Edgar Schein was one of the primary original authors there.

Al: Yeah.

Ted: And if you read his material, he talks a lot about what's called occupational culture. And what I have found with ministry organizations is we have extremely strong occupational cultures, and those drive how we see the world, and they inhibit innovation. The best way that—I mean, the way Edgar Schein talks about this, he says, you know, engineers tend to see the world the same way, as a set of discrete problems that can be solved through engineering. Well, pastors, they tend to see ministry through the lens of teaching. And missionaries, they've got their own set of cultural attributes through which they see the world. And these things are helpful in terms of enculturating us into organizational culture, but they actually can inhibit us from seeing the world in fresh and new, exciting, and dynamic ways.

And a key to innovation is to get outside of your culture and to invite in ideas that are far removed from the culture that you're working in. There's a hospital system here in Florida. They have an innovation lab, and they often invite in leaders from completely different industries because they say the best innovation in the medical marketplace is not going to come from within the medical marketplace. And similarly, we in ministry leadership, we should be inviting in and hunting down innovation ideas that come from outside of this segment that we're working in if we want to see innovation happen. I just think it's a really helpful idea that I learned from innovation in the marketplace.

Al: I like that, Ted. Yeah. And health care is a good example, as they’ve really tried to reduce the number of deaths that families experience in hospitals, which are supposed to be the place where people are healed. And yeah, I was on a board of an innovative healthcare organization up here in Seattle for 14 years, and I know. That's really interesting, to invite outsiders to use innovation to help with innovation. I think of it as, like, when you travel, and you go into a different culture, then you understand your culture even more—

Ted: Yeah.

Al: —because you're seeing a different culture, and that brings fresh insight and innovation, yeah.

So, in the book, you write about the importance of fulfilling a relevant mission. Why is that important for innovation?

Ted: Well, I want to do things that matter. So do you. Everybody wants to do things that matter. It gives us meaning as humans, and it helps us to feel like we're contributing in significant ways. We all want that. And relevance and innovation, they pretty much walk hand in hand because people are not going to adapt or adopt your innovation if it's not relevant to who they are. Now, that seems so obvious to us when I state it like that, but in reality, it's very elusive for us to come up with relevant innovation in ministry leadership.

One of the reasons for that is organizations over time, they develop kind of a weird self-awareness. It's almost like they become human in the sense that they care about themselves. And we as participants in those organizations, we begin to become focused on the organization instead of the organization's mission. Now, I've never read a mission statement that said, you know, the mission here at ABC Church is to get more people in the pews. Yet, if you ask a pastor, “Tell me about your church,” one of the first things they’ll talk about is how many people they've got coming to their church. It's almost unavoidable. And, you know, growing the size of your ministry by counting people or budget or something like that, that gets nowhere at what the mission of the church is. That's only about the scope and size of your ministry organization. But it's really hard for us as leaders not to think about the growth and sustainability of the entities that we lead of our ministries. But sustainability is not a mission. Sustainability is outcome of the pursuit of mission, of the healthy pursuit of mission over time.

And so, you know, I would just suggest that we work on becoming very self-aware of the things that we use to evaluate ourselves in our ministries and to avoid letting the ministry we lead become the yardstick. The ministry is a tool designed to go after a goal or an objective, and we should be seeing that tool as no more than that. There is no guarantee that your church or your mission agency or whatever your nonprofit does, there's no guarantee that it's going to live forever, nor there should be that kind of guarantee.

Al: Right.

Ted: If it's not fulfilling a relevant mission, it should probably die a death and not be extended into the future. But it's hard for us as leaders to do that. I know I feel that pressure myself. We want to be good stewards. We want to make sure that this thing we're leading continues on into the future. But it's really about relevant-mission fulfillment.

Al: Yeah. I love that, yeah. Avoid having the ministry be the yardstick, and so many times, because it's so hard to measure otherwise, you just look internally and stop looking externally or to other sources.

Well, Ted, this has really been a great conversation. I've learned so much. And I just go back to some of your initial comments about inspirational leadership and how open communication not only of successes, but to your point about also communicating failures and how that does bring the team closer together and more trustworthy and building trust as an organization, particularly. Also, your three retention strategies. I love that. Again, autonomy—that's very important considering where we are from working from home and so on. But also encouragement, which is a real link even when you're working autonomously; and development. We can't overlook development, and even mentoring is an important part of that. So, you know, we've talked about remote communication. We've talked about innovation, and that's really been a very invigorating conversation about innovation as something new, whether we're repositioning or changing what we already have into something new or just creating something new altogether, and how looking at other cultures helps us to get a better picture of how we can innovate. And then the relevance conversation, just really great.

So, for listeners who are interested in learning more about the innovation crisis, can they go to the website? What is the website? Theinnovationcrisis.com? Is that right?

Ted: That’s right. Yeah, they can go there. Actually, I have a little self-evaluation tool they can use to see what their natural innovation abilities are, and it's kind of fun. And there's information on the book there.

Al: Yeah, great. Okay. Self-evaluation. Let’s see how innovative we are. Okay. Theinnovationcrisis—all one word—.com.

And thank you. Ted Esler, the president of Missio Nexus, and author of The Innovation Crisis, thank you so much for your contributions today. I know our listeners are going to walk away feeling great about the time they spent here. Really appreciate all you've done for Missio Nexus and the mission community, and appreciate your devotion and service to our loving God and the fulfillment of the Great Commission. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners.

Ted: Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Al: All right, Ted. Thanks.

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