6. jethro principal pt. 2

In this episode of For the Love of Leadership, Pastors Jake and James continue unpacking “The Jethro Principle” from the life of Moses:

Leadership doesn’t carry everything. Leadership makes sure everything gets carried.

Building on last week’s conversation, they explore what it really means for a church (or any team) to grow in capacity. It’s not just about one person getting stronger or doing more; it’s about multiplying leaders. Drawing from Exodus and the advice Jethro gives Moses, they show how true kingdom leadership is less about being the hero and more about making heroes out of others.

Key themes in this episode:

• Capacity as “our,” not “my”
  Why growing capacity means embracing your personal limits instead of trying to be indispensable, and how that shift frees you from insecurity and self-focus.
• Multiplication vs. self‑importance
  How the world teaches us to become the pinnacle of success, while Scripture calls us to multiply the life of Jesus in others.
• Using the church to build people (not people to build the church)
  Why waiting until you’re drowning to “find help” reveals a faulty mindset—and how to change it.
• Developing leaders before you need them
  Practical ways to start a leadership pipeline now, including:
  • Identifying 1–3 people who aren’t yet leaders
  • Bringing them into real problems you’re solving
  • Debriefing experiences so they gain wisdom from exposure
• Crockpot, not microwave leadership
  The Cathedral mantra: leaders are formed slowly. Jake and James discuss why “air-fried” leaders don’t last, and why time, process, and repetition matter.
• How to spot emerging leaders
  Concrete signals they look for, such as:
  • Spiritual maturity and how someone actually prays
  • Follow-through on simple instructions
  • Teachable hearts proven by change, not just words
  • How they talk about the church, themselves, and others
  • What other leaders say about them
• Empowering imperfect leaders
  The internal battle every leader faces: “I can do it better myself.” They unpack why that mindset kills multiplication and share stories—like handing pre-service prayer to Sarah and watching her innovate something better than what existed before.

Throughout the episode, you’ll hear honest reflections, practical tips, and real-life examples from Cathedral’s leadership context. If you’re leading at Cathedral—or anywhere—and you’re tired, overextended, or unsure how to raise others up, this podcast will help you reframe leadership around empowerment, exposure, and shared responsibility.

Listen in to be challenged, equipped, and encouraged to stop carrying everything yourself, and start building the kind of leadership culture where everything gets carried—together.

Transcript

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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to For the Love of Leadership. I am here with one of my lifelong closest friends, Pastor James Crock. Your beautiful friend. My beautiful friend. That's a funny story, actually. One time I was uh preaching at a church down in San Diego, and Pastor James and a couple of other guys came down with me, you know, for support. And when I got up on the platform and introduced myself, I said I was here with my my friends, but I said I'm here with my beautiful friend. In your defense, I am beautiful. Right. Yeah, totally. Exactly. And we're also here with our team. Say what's up, everybody. We love for the love of leadership. We do. Uh I just want to reiterate again the purpose of this podcast is to help foster a love for leadership in cathedral, um, and hopefully to inspire many of us to uh take on um leadership responsibility and to aspire towards uh leadership roles in God's kingdom. So, Pastor James, what are we talking about today? Well, we're actually gonna continue our conversation around the Jethro principle. This is week two. So if you listened uh last time, we're gonna continue with our big idea, which If you didn't listen last time, maybe hit pause, go back to Jethro week one. Correct. And I'm also gonna give you a recap. Oh, the wow, the big the big idea that we're talking about is leadership doesn't carry everything. Leadership makes sure that everything is carried. Right. Leadership doesn't carry everything, leadership makes sure that everything gets carried. So we're talking about Moses and Jethro. Moses is stressed, if you remember. Everyone's coming to him, everyone's got problems. He's handling it for the entire nation. He thinks he needs more time. Jethro says, you need leadership structure and you need leadership empowerment. And so what we're talking about is as we grow in our as a church, as we grow in our leadership, we have to make sure that our capacity grows because we will carry more things. But leaders don't carry everything, leaders ensure that everything gets carried. Let's just pause on that. I think you just said something revelatory and important. You said as we grow, we need to make sure that our capacity grows. Yes. Now, I think when we hear um talks about growing in capacity, we tend to uh personalize that and think I need to grow my personal capacity. Yes. While that is important, I don't think that that's exactly what you're saying. When you say our capacity, say more. Yeah, well, I think Jethro says it perfectly to Moses. Jethro's not just worried about Moses burning out, he's worried about the people being affected. So he says to he says to Moses, what you're doing is not good for you or the people that you lead. And so when we lead, we have to realize that it's not about just us doing more, it's us multiplying who we are. So being a leader is not creating people who are indispensable. You're not creating a person yourself, you're indispensable. What you're doing is you're multiplying yourself. And that's different than the world. The world says make you the pinnacle of success. Right. Whereas the Bible says Jesus is the pinnacle, just multiply his him in other people, create more leaders, and that's what Jethro's trying to do through Moses here. Yeah, that's really good. Um yeah, that just makes me think about how ultimately the way you lead is is going to come back to your revelation of worship. Right. So in the world, the idolization of the self ultimately leads to insecurity. Yeah. Right. Because when when your life is built upon you, you can't help but grow insecure in yourself. But when your life is built upon Jesus, it's kind of like what Elijah was saying yesterday, right? Like God being the only truly uh self-existent and self-reliant one means I don't have to be. Yes. Um, and so we can stop faking it, we can take the masks off, and we can lean upon Christ and be okay with the fact that it's not all about me. Yes. And that that revelation in and of itself is so important because again, the whole big idea of today is that leaders leaders don't carry everything, but they do ensure that everything gets carried, which means you have to be comfortable with what you carry versus what you're able to hand off to other people for them to carry. So let me say it like this like if we're if we're talking about growing our capacity, the emphasis is on the hour, right? Yeah, very good. And I have I have to be good with the fact that growing our capacity means embracing my limits. Oftentimes when we think about growing our capacity, we think, how can I do more? How can I get better? How can I grow bigger? And of course, we're all on a journey. We all want to keep growing in Christ, we all want to keep growing in our leadership ability. But at the same time, growing the capacity of the church means embracing the fact that I have limits. And if I uh think too highly, that's like Paul says, right? Like, don't let anyone think too highly of themselves, but I'll do one another in showing honor. And so I don't want to think too highly of myself, I want to embrace my limits and go, actually, the capacity of the church is not dependent just upon me being the heroes. It's actually dependent upon making heroes out of others. Yes, that's very good. One of the things I wrote down, which I think mirrors that is the goal of leadership is not to become indispensable. The goal is to multiply yourself. And it requires um you to stay in a leadership um sorry, in a multiplication mindset. And that's one of the things that this whole story with Jethro makes me think about. And I've been asking myself, like, what are some of the pitfalls that we can fall into? And I think what to kind of build on what you're saying here is one of the things I wrote down is we need to build leaders before you desperately need them. Great. You need to build leaders before you desperately need them. My friend Greg Bosch would say that the leaders you need today are the people you should have been developing a year ago. Yes. And the leaders you'll need a year from now are the people you should be developing today. Yes. One of the biggest mistakes you can see a leader make, and I am guilty of this, I have been guilty of it, is you wait until you're drowning before you start developing the help that you needed, to your point, six months ago. One of my favorite sayings at Cathedral comes from Pastor Nicole, and it is leaders, the goat, leaders are developed not in microwaves, but in crock pots. Crock pots. Crockpot leaders. It means they take time. We don't air fry. We do not air fry. I've never used an air fryer, but I assume that air fryers are fast. Yes. Or can they be slow? Okay. No, they're fast. They're quick. So we don't air fry our leaders. We don't air fry our leaders. We crock pot them. Right. Yeah. Tender falling off the bone. That takes crock pot. Submitted, teachable, moldable. The crock pot analogy just keeps going. It's just a gift that keeps on giving. Like, what do you want? Do you want a hot pocket or do you want like a beautiful thing? No one wants a hot pot. You take one bite, you burn your mouth. Exactly. You don't want that. Um, and so exactly. Exactly. Just like, just like, okay, I'm bringing it back. We're bringing it to the bringing it back. The analogy is spent. Um so most leaders they look around and they say, uh, I need someone to sell help. What they're really saying is to Mr. Bosch's point, I needed someone six months ago to help. Right. And uh Moses didn't need relief, he needed the leadership pipeline. And a lot of that comes down to a mentality thing, right? Like if you're if you're waiting till a need arises to look for a leader, then what that reveals is that your mentality, whether you want to admit it or not, fundamentally is about using people to build the church. Yes. Right? Because you have a need and you need a person to meet that need. That and and that is that's your motive, right? Doesn't mean that you're evil, doesn't mean you're bad, just means you haven't shifted your motive yet to what we talked about um a number of weeks ago about we want to use the church to build people. Yes. So I should be developing people. This comes back to how do I have the mindset of a leader? I should be developing people whether or not I have the need. Yes. So that when the need arises, this person has been molded into the kind of person who can carry the responsibility. Yeah. I I would say to everyone who's currently leading at Cathedral, if you're waiting for the start of the D group season to identify the leaders that you want to send there, you've waited you've failed. Right. You've waited too long. Exactly. We need to start thinking now and developing now and releasing now to the people that we're expecting to become leaders in six months. Right. And so, how do we identify people, Pastor Jake? How do we identify those that we should be releasing and empowering to lead? I look for spiritual maturity as a just a foundation. One of the biggest tells to me is I listen to the way people pray. Um, and you know, not that that's everything, but I just like to listen to how do people engage with God? Yeah. Because coming back to what you were saying at the start, like at the end of the day, we're building upon Jesus. Yes. So if my prayer life reveals that I don't know very well the person I'm supposed to be, you know, building alongside and building the church upon, um, to me that's pretty revealing uh as to whether or not this person is re ready to they may be, you know, seen as ready to carry leadership in the world. That doesn't mean necessarily that they're ready to carry leadership in the kingdom of God. And so spiritual maturity is I think the foremost thing that I look for in people. Um and then along uh building upon that, I should say, uh, looking for things like how how bought into the values and the culture of our church are they? Um that doesn't mean that they are able to perfectly emulate who we are, nope, but they're like they're wearing this jersey. Yes. And that matters. Like I wanna I I know we're all one church, I get that. Um, but God has called us to build cathedral. Yes. And so I want to work alongside leaders who are who are wearing this jersey as well. I'm like, we're building this church. This is what God has called us to do here in Los Angeles. We believe that it's that it's a call from God, that it's significant. Um, and I don't want there to be like I never want to wonder, like, ah, are they with us? Yeah. I just want that question to be settled. Like, no, they're 100% they're with us. Let's build. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think another thing that we can um we can look for in in people is their is their willingness to be teachable. Like, are they a teachable person? If you have a a corrective conversation with them, a coaching conversation, an encouraging conversation, how do they respond to that? Did they hear you? Did they hear you? And do more importantly, it's one thing to hear, it's another thing to then action upon it. It's like, what's better? The the one that tells you yes and doesn't do it, or the one that tells you no and doesn't it goes and does it, yeah. You know, it's like I want to see that I want to see the fruit of the conversation. And again, to your point, I like what you said. They don't it don't have to emulate it perfectly, but I do want to see some form of a track record. Um, some of the feedback uh that we've received from uh F T L O L so far. We've got to think of a better acronym. Fatal is great. What are you talking about? And um is that what how do we practically do this? So I write down some practical things. I think identify one to two people. How do we practically do what? Execute on this idea right now of the Java principle. Yeah, well, mostly this point, each one of these points. So, how do we build leaders before you desperately need them? Number one, identify two to three people that aren't leaders already. It's pretty simple. I think bring them into conversations that you're having, expose them. One of my favorite things um to do is don't waste your problems. Really good. Every single leader is solving a problem right now. Don't waste that and solve it by yourself. Bring these potential people into it and allow them to feel and see how you problem solve. You're teaching them how to do this. You're seeing, you're exposing them to what don't waste your problems. What readership looks like. That's really good. And then simply just debrief it after. What went well? What would you do differently? What did you learn? You will be amazed at uh how you can coach somebody just simply off of what they observe. Yep. Simply off what they observe. Yeah. I love what you're saying. I think exposure is is probably the most powerful tool we have in our belts when it comes to developing leaders. If we were to all think about our own development journey, um, most of our experience we would point to, or rather, most of the fruit in our life we would point to is the result of experience. Yes. We wouldn't say it was the result of a class that we took. Right. You know, as as you know, helpful as the impartation of knowledge can be, yeah, nothing is as helpful as going through an experience. Um experience is the great greatest teacher. So as leaders, we're constantly experiencing things that we kind of just take for granted. Whether solving a problem or whatever. Yes. And this is just this is a commonplace experience for us, but it's not a commonplace experience for the people who need development under our leadership. And so bringing them into those experiences is really powerful. That's exactly right. And what we have to remember is that what a problem that is easy to us now wasn't once before. Exactly. And so uh if we're gonna be a multiplying church, one of the things I've been really challenged by God is there's gonna be people that we raise up that are gonna stand in rooms that we'll never stand in, in locations that we'll never we'll we might never stand in. Right. How do they carry the culture of the kingdom and cathedral if I solve every problem for them? If I don't show them what it looks like to respond to tension or stress or leadership or how to lead meetings, right? We have to expose people to these things. And we didn't start at the level that we're at. Yes. And so we have to expose people, even it it takes and requires self-control. You have to stop and say, am I supposed to do this on my own right now? And the reality is, is you most likely are not. Most likely you're not. You're not supposed to do it on your own. Okay. Bring people in, expose them. That's a really good practical takeaway. Exposure, bringing people into your problems. Are there any other practical takeaways you want to share today? Not in regards to that, but I do have another point. Okay, let's get to that last point. Going hand in hand with uh building leaders before you desperately need them is allowing yourself to empower perfect, imperfect leaders. Allowing yourself to empower imperfect leaders. This uh might be one of the hardest lessons, especially if you are a perfectionist or a type A type person. Not me. Um if you want to develop people to do exactly what you do the way that you do it, you probably shouldn't be a leader. Let me just see myself out here. People are gonna say things differently, people are gonna lead differently, they're gonna problem solve differently, and that's okay. I think the mindset that um is most important to make sure that you squash here is the controlling mindset of I can do this better myself. Yeah. That is not a leadership mindset. A leadership mindset says they'll get better by doing it. Right. Um, if Moses had insisted on being judge over all of Israel, then nobody else would have ever become one. Um, and growth requires us to give permission to allow imperfect people to learn because the reality is that when we have that mindset, what we forget is that we also are imperfect. And uh the kingdom is about giving people chances. And it's about um allowing them to uh step in and lead in certain ways um and do things and then be surprised that they may do it better than you ever did. I think an example of this recently is um I had empowered uh Sarah, a wonderful Sarah Escandone, uh, to lead pre-service prayer. And she switched around the way that we do uh where we celebrate, where we celebrate new members, new members and in this moment where it did it at the top, and then we went into worship, and then we went into prayer, and it was incredible. It was better. It was a hundred percent better. I would have never thought I think I went up to you and I said that was the best pre-service prayer we've ever had. In and then now she is now teaching everybody who is doing our pre-service prayer moments, and we've had Mandy, we've had Cooper, we've had Wes all be trained up to do this, and our pre-service prayer moments over the last month have been electric. Uh uh yes, uh absolutely amazing. Is it the way that I would have done it? No, right. Does she say everything that I was gonna say? Definitely not, right? Is it is it is it spirit-filled? Does it feel cathedral? Is it carrying our culture? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Does it honor God? Yes. Is Jesus glorified? Yes. It's a win for me. Yeah, and we need to be really comfortable as we grow empowering people to do things that are not within the perfect outline of how we want it to be done. You really clenched your teeth on that. Really turns it. That's how that's what you feel like when you go to empower someone and you're like, it um, so anyway. Let's get man sure you've walked walked through some many of those moments. Uh as we all have. Um, but I'm gonna call it because that is for the love of leadership today. Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back next week-ish with another episode. Unless you got we have any comments, questions from the peanut gallery over here. Sarah? When you guys were talking about what are some signals or signs that people that's like the right person to invest in developing for leadership. I know you'd mentioned spiritual maturity and prayer. I'm wondering if you could help us see what are some signs that signal to you that someone that someone's maturity isn't developed enough to be built into a leader. And maybe like one more that does outside of prayer, what are the other kind of things that you look for that would say, okay, maybe not yet. Let me give them more time in a neighborhood group or on a team. Great. The the first thing that comes to mind for me is um how how do they handle basic instruction? So, like I can think of an example of a conversation that I've had uh in the last six months, okay, with a neighborhood group leader in our church who had come up to me very enthusiastic about things that were happening in their neighborhood group and just kind of ideating, dreaming what could this become? And I had given some basic instruction about here's what your next step would be. And then just circling back two weeks, you know, whatever, three weeks after that, and just I want to know did it happen? Did they do the thing that I instructed them to do? Um, and when the answer to that question is no, then I'm like, okay, that's not a write-off. It's it's not like a oh, can't work with this person, it's an opportunity to teach, to coach. Yeah. Um, if the answer is yes, I'm like, okay, cool. This is great. This person is to Pastor James's point earlier, this is a teachable person. Teachable is not just an attitude, no, right? Teachable is proven in the fruit. Yes. Like, do they do the thing that we teach them to do? Um, and in this particular instance, the answer was yes. It's like, okay, this person, they're teachable, and they they they don't want to just build their thing. Yeah, they want to see the church flourish. Um, so I think that kind of teachability can they follow through with with uh instruction uh at a small scale to me is evident that they're gonna be able to be trust, you know, it's just like Jesus said, trustworthy with small things, trustworthy with big things. Um that's something that comes to mind for me. Um yeah. Pastor James, anything you would add? I think that's that's perfect. I think that actually kind of answers both. Oh, okay. Yeah, because if they do it, then that's one thing that you can use as a marker, and if they don't, that's another thing that you can use as a marker. Yeah, it's perfect. Yeah, yeah. Other cues? No, I'm just like thinking upon her question, and I think aside from just like the prayer thing, I think it's also just like listening to how they talk in general. Like, are they an uplifter of people or do they tend to like do the slide through the side mouth gossip? Or do you know what I mean? Like, how how do they talk about the church? Are they like uplifting her and encouraging her? Or are they always like pointing out everything that's wrong with the church? You know what I think it's just like listening to their overall, because the out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And really at the end of the day, we're after like the heart of the person and getting a hold of that. And if you can get a hold of the heart that's truly surrendered to the church and God, then you can do anything with that person. So I think listen to their speech, just get around them, hear how they talk about themselves, about others, about the church, and that's gonna be an indicator. Okay, is this in a place where we can now mold it to to start developing a leader out of them? Really good. Yeah. Yeah, this probably just reminded of even um other what's other people's, what's other leaders' opinions of them as well? Um, I think it's 2 Samuel 17, is David is described as a man of war, valor, prudent in speech by somebody else to a king. And so a person's character is actually known by the people that are around them. So you could just ask, hey, tell me about so and so. And we're not looking for perfection, but I'm looking for some key, yeah, key character indicators. Man, he's always there for me. He's always following through. I mean, he's reaching out to me all the time. Really good. Things like that, you're gonna you're gonna hear a little bit about who they are. Love that. This concludes for the love of leadership. See you next time. Next time.