Lead Time
Lead Time
Is the Economy Crashing!? How Would It Affect the LCMS? Leadership Insights from Jim Sanft
Can demographic shifts and economic changes redefine the future of Concordia Plan Services? Explore this and more in our enlightening conversation with Jim Sanft. As we unpack the multifaceted challenges surrounding pension plans and rate increases, Jim illuminates how demographic declines in ordained and commissioned ministers are counterbalanced by the promising growth of lay workers and Lutheran schools. We delve into the transformed economic landscape post-2020, scrutinizing factors like government spending, inflation, and market volatility that have significantly impacted the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod's workforce.
Uncover how robust economic projections and diversified investment strategies are essential in navigating these turbulent times. With expert contributions from external advisors like Aon and NEPC, we delve into the strategies employed to ensure financial stability and sustainability. Jim emphasizes the critical values of clarity, alignment, and transparency in leadership, which are paramount for managing workforce dynamics and economic fluctuations. This insightful discussion provides a comprehensive understanding of how Concordia Plan Services is adapting to the evolving economic and demographic landscape.
Lastly, gain valuable leadership insights as Jim draws parallels between organizational management and military ethos. Drawing from his experience as a retired staff sergeant, Jim highlights the indispensable role of non-commissioned officers and the importance of every team member in achieving mission success. By likening military operations to a logistics organization engaged in combat, we underscore the significance of each role within the team, fostering a culture of excellence and collaboration. Join us for this enriching episode that bridges leadership principles from both civilian and military contexts, offering a fresh perspective on stewardship, teamwork, and the path forward for Concordia Plan Services.
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Welcome to A Lead Time, a hot topic. Today we have the privilege, in the next 30-minute conversation, to hang out with Jim Sanford. Jim has spoken with us on a number of different occasions I think he's been on American Reformation Lead Time hearing about his book, his leadership book, his leadership story, but today we're talking about Concordia Plan Services in particular. So why this is a really timely conversation. I'm going to put a timestamp on it. This is August 7th, 2024. The last couple of days in the national and international markets, we've seen some volatility that we've not seen and are causing a lot of people to kind of scratch their head and wonder what's going on. I mean, are we heading for a major recession? What does that mean for the local church and not for profits in general, and what's that mean for Concordia Plan Services? So, all that being said, the first kind of provocative question, jim people want to know what's behind the pension plan and rate increases. Brother, can't you do something about that, jim? So let's go Well, first off. How are you doing, jim?
Speaker 2:It's fun to hang out, brother, I'm doing great and thanks for the opportunity to come in and talk about this. You know we're doing some town halls at different places around the country because I just want to get out and talk about it, you know, kind of demystify it. So when your invitation to come on, you know, to the podcast and talk about it's great Love to talk about it and thank you.
Speaker 2:Anyone who wants us to come out and talk some more, we'd be happy to do it, you know, you know. So we have a pension plan and we can get a lot, spend a lot of time on that. But let's stay focused here on the changes that are coming. And really, I think, as we look at managing a pension plan, it's, you know, 4 billion plus of assets under management that are actively invested in those markets, right, that are going up and down.
Speaker 2:In the things you read in the news, there's two things that we really look at and pay attention to in terms of critical success factors for the long run, and that's demographic factors and economic factors. And so one of the things I do want to start about in the demographic realities, and particularly as we look in the LCMS and we say, okay, it's clear, documented, we have decreasing number of ordainment commission ministers, right, it's an issue. Five of 10 universities either closed, departed or I don't even know what category to put. What's going on, you know, right now, as we're still looking for some clarity there at Ann Arbor. Those are realities, but I do want to share with you the exciting news is there's an increase in lay workers in the church.
Speaker 3:And I think, even if you think about your campus and others.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it's really being driven by Lutheran schools. There's challenges in a lot of places, but the pandemic gave an opportunity for our schools to differentiate themselves. And with all the craziness going on in society, I think our schools are still a place where families come to, that they see that their kids are going to be influenced by you know, influenced by you know. Maybe they're not looking for a Lutheran, christian, biblical worldview, but they are looking for, you know, morals and ethical standing that's going to be more aligned with where they are as a family. So it's a great time for Lutheran education.
Speaker 2:And the big metric you know that we look at is overall membership in the Concordia Retirement Plan, which really is a surrogate for the full-time workforce of all of our ministries, and I'm just very happy to tell you that's very stable and in fact is growing slightly, and I can come back at any time and document that, but it's been growing slightly since the pandemic.
Speaker 2:So you know, attendance, church membership, you know number of ordained ministers, commissioners, those are still real and I'm not discounting them. But yet, at the same time, you know, this increase in lay, in the growth in Lutheran schools is there and it's real. And so, yes, we have demographic challenges, but we are in a season right now thank God for our Lutheran schools that you know we don't have that concern in terms of the demographics, not to say it's not a factor, but that's getting really down into the weeds. So then we turn our attention to the economic realities right, and what I would say is really a lot has changed since 2020, not just in society, but, you know, in our economy overall and I'm not an economist, guys, I'm an actuary, but I can dabble in a little bit of economic lingo, you know.
Speaker 2:You think about just the unprecedented governmental spending that took place and in fact, as you listen to news reports, we're still spending COVID relief dollars even though we're long past and on projects that have nothing to do with anything related to, you know, to the pandemic and that has a real impact on the economy, is driving inflation, sure inflation is down, but it's still above where you know we would look for it to be targeted in a normal economy.
Speaker 2:Interest rates you know they're rising, they're falling, but they're still, you know, higher than what a normative you know might be. They're rising, they're falling, but they're still, you know, higher than what a normative you know might be. You know you touched on that. Market volatility, the speed of information and the impact that has on the markets and how they react. I mean we've seen that just growing and that makes it more up and down all the time Political unrest, our societal unrest, global unrest, you know China, ukraine all those things impact. We look at a workforce demographics. You know people who stopped working and a lot of people haven't returned to work. So there's just a lot of things impacting our economy, to a point to just say the world is just not what it was prior to 2020. So, getting a little bit more specific then into the Concordia retirement plan it's a mature retirement plan and I'm going to throw a couple numbers that may cause a little bit of panic, but I want to assure you it's okay. So we expect contributions in 2024 to come in at about $120 million and the benefit payments going out the door are around $360 million, so we are paying out far more than we're taking in. And that's okay, that's in the map. This is the power of a defined benefit plan. You put those assets to work out in the market and they bring back a return. And here is great value of walking together as a church body, right, that we can pull these $4 billion together, actively invest them in marketplace and really let that investment income drive the majority of the retirement plan funding. So that's all expected in the actuarial mathematics, right, and we're at a point in time as we think about cash flow. Then, in a plan, benefit payments are increasing. Right, there's this thing called the baby boomers. Right, they're retiring, more of them are retiring, so benefit payments are increasing, contributions are increasing, but they're increasing at a lower rate, because, good news is, even though we have all those lay workers, right. So here's the other side of that double-edged sword even though we have those lay workers, lay workers tend to make less than ordained and commissioned, right, um and? And? So contributions are based on compensation, so, so they're going to be paying in a little bit less. So, right, there's there's there's the downside there, and whenever you bring in new employees, they tend to make less than those that they replaced. So contributions are increasing. They're just increasing at a lower rate.
Speaker 2:And what our external actuaries are showing us in the projections, we're running into about a 10-year time period where this cash flow crunch, the difference between what we pay out, what we bring in, is the greatest, and that means we put more pressure on investment income. So in this market of the volatility, let's say, we're having to sell about $20 million of assets every month to make benefit payments. So when that market drops we're selling at a loss. You're making that loss permanent, right? And so we kind of live that volatility that on the one hand, we can say, fine, we can just power through it.
Speaker 2:We do this over the long-term 20, 30, 40-year time horizon, but we still have the daily, monthly having having to liquidate, and that creates some challenges.
Speaker 2:Our economic advisors are telling us, as we look out the next 20 to 30 years, we should be expecting about 0.75 percent less in a return, right. So about 75 basis points every year of return compared to where we've been historically, every year of return compared to where we've been historically, and that means it's about $30 million less coming in an investment income a year. Okay, this is not about what the market's going to bring in 24 or even the next two years. This is looking 20, 30, 40 years out, you know, just not seeing the kinds of returns that would have in the marketplace. All these factors come together to put extreme pressure on the actual evaluation and if we don't make a corrective measure, take corrective action. Now we're seeing that the actual evaluation, you know, 10, 20, 30 years out, is slowly going to decline. And so you know, in a fiduciary role my board, in a fiduciary role when you get that kind of projection come in, you go, you have to take action.
Speaker 3:Right, it's not immediate.
Speaker 2:We have no issue in terms of making payments today, but it's a long term. So that puts the CPS board at a point, rightfully, of saying, ok, we've got to do something. So now, now we're into the in the list of okay, what can you do with a pension plan of this magnitude? Right? So one thing is, you can just wait. Let's do a wash in DC, let's kick the can down the road to whoever comes behind us, right, right. So let's take that off the table.
Speaker 2:Another thing that we could do is you invest these assets and you take risk, and the market rewards you for the risk. Well, maybe we can take more risk, right, maybe we can take more risk and get a higher return. We don't feel that that's a prudent path to pursue at this point in time. We think we have the right level of risk for this portfolio today and it would not be proper, in our opinion, to take additional risk at this time. A third lever we can cut benefits. You know sorry, retiree you know you're getting a dollar yesterday and now we're going to give you 80 cents.
Speaker 2:You know, this is just. We're not in that situation where we're going to hit people like that and impact them. You certainly have seen stories in the news where there have been pension programs who find themselves at that point that they have to take that type of action. We're nowhere near that sort of thing, and so, really, that leaves us with the fourth and final lever. We can increase contributions, and what we saw was that 3% of compensation increase, which we wanted to spread over three years because it's not an immediate challenge. We just need to be making this commitment to a little bit more cash coming in.
Speaker 2:Challenge. We just need to be, you know, making this commitment to a little bit more cash coming in. We can spread it 1% of compensation over the next three years and hopefully give you all a chance, as you're managing your budgets to, you know, to bring that in over a period of time. And the great news is that takes an actual evaluation that was trending down to an actual evaluation that trends up, and you know we can walk out the door and say, okay, you know, as fiduciaries, we've done our job and we've got this thing back on the path that it's supposed to be on.
Speaker 3:And the scope is 10 years. Is what you're looking at right, or are you looking beyond 10 years?
Speaker 2:No, we're looking beyond 10 years. Actually, it's going to get the model corrected in about 20 years. Um yeah. All right hey.
Speaker 1:Jim as a yeah, it is, and I understand I was kind of being silly.
Speaker 1:Uh, I am one of. You know thousands of folks who will, uh, benefit from what is a just a huge, huge gift in our pension plan and to have someone like you managing that very, very well, not just for Call and Ordain, but for all of our workers. You know, you certainly don't go into the ministry because, wow, I'm going to get rich doing this, that kind of thing. I mean, there's plenty of jobs where people can say, you know, I could find way more resources in the marketplace. But at the same time, to have such a plan like this that says, hey, we're going to, we're going to take care of our people while they're working and as they train we don't retire right as they transition into some, you know, opportunity I'm thinking of my dad.
Speaker 1:Right now I'm grateful for the pension plan because it allows my dad to maybe do some more creative things in the in the ministry space and work part-time at a church to serve, and there are hundreds of those types of workers. My question with less and you may have said this, but if we have fewer workers, I'm sure that's all taken into consideration the demographic downplay? That's what I wanted to ask about is how much of taken into consideration the demographic downplay.
Speaker 3:That's what I wanted to ask about is how much of this is driven by the demographic shift in our workforce and how much of that is market projection driven. It's both right.
Speaker 2:It's both. Yeah, but the majority of this is economic, not demographic. So I want to come back to the point. Our number of full-time workers is actually slightly growing.
Speaker 2:Even though pastors are down yeah, Even though pastors are down, and I really think that probably there in your campus you can look at that and say, hey, we're adding people and you're actually competing for labor and you're probably having challenges finding all the people qualified labor that you need.
Speaker 2:So I don't think I've gotten myself in big trouble with this, but I'm going to throw it out here from a workforce standpoint Okay, guys, just a workforce standpoint. I think we like to think of the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod as a collection of churches with schools attached to them. But from a workforce standpoint, we're a collection of schools with churches, you know, on them. So when you're thinking demographics of the LCMS, guys be thinking schools, and right now we're at a season that people are coming into our schools. So this is primarily and substantially, you know, economic driven, not demographic. Now, you know some people say, well, wait a minute, you know this university that has to have an impact. Certainly it has an impact, Absolutely, it's in the math and we could come up with it, but the majority of it is really being driven by the economic scenarios.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3:So you've got very intelligent people looking at the economic scenarios and what are you being told? That the future we're not expecting the same types of returns that we've had in the recent past. Is that pretty much it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let me talk a little bit about sort of our outside. And we are blessed right, we are blessed at CPS to have a great board. I've got a great team here in the CPS, but we supplement that with best of class outside advisors, right? So the actuarial consultants on the plan, we've just moved from Willis Towers Watson to Aon, so we went from one of the biggest names in the world to another one of the biggest names in the world, and they're bringing church plan experts to the engagement. They're looking not only at the actuarial side, they're looking at the investment and how the whole thing comes through.
Speaker 2:And how the whole thing comes through, we have New England NEPC formerly New England Pension Consultants helping us with our portfolio, with the asset allocation, and so what you really have to do is take every one of the asset classes that we're invested in and then they do an economic projection for each one and then you do a weighted average as you come forward. And that's where we look at what the markets are going to return to us, and we're not just in, you know, the stock market and traditional fixed income. This is a well diversified portfolio. We're in private equity, we're in real assets and it's just as they do, that weighted average across all of those asset classes. Just see that that overall return just isn't going to be what we've enjoyed in the past. So you have to build that a little bit more pessimism into the model going forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And that's a model that's informed by the demographics of the nation, the world and some of the policies related to inflation and whether current assets are overvalued or undervalued. Right, there's a lot of factors going into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely spot on, and so to your point of being surrounded by really smart people right.
Speaker 2:As I said, I'm not an economist, but we depend on these great minds who are bringing input, and it isn't just one person that says, hey, this right, I mean, it's a team, it's testing, and this is where you know the board recruitment is so important, you know, and getting people on the board who really have the chops for these kind of conversations, right. The chairman of our investment committee used to run the fixed income portfolio for Thrivent, right? So some people think, well, maybe the field rep is a good investment guy. No, no, no. We have the guy who was running a whole significant portion of their portfolio chairing the investment committee, and there's others as well, but those guys then have the chops for these kind of conversations.
Speaker 1:Hey, jim, this is awesome. I'm praying for you and grateful for your humble leadership. Second part of the conversation today, jim, I'd love to switch. Managing change is hard in an organization as complex as CPS. I mean, what are your three primary values as you look at change management? You're like I have to nail this. What do you think about?
Speaker 2:I'm going to cheat, if you don't mind, and I'm going to combine two, because I really was wrestling this as I was thinking about this question. I'm putting clarity and alignment right. So, clarity what needs to be done? You know, why is it being done? What's our desired goal, end state, how are we going to get there? Right? So, your team, you need that clarity of what's going on, the situation, and then that alignment that comes with it of what we need to do. Right, that resolution, to say, okay, this is where we're at, what we have to go after and you know, I'm thinking about things not just even in this context, but like leading the organization during the pandemic and other kinds of things. Right, you know, just providing that clarity is so important.
Speaker 2:Then I'm going to layer on top of that transparency, you know, the honesty, the integrity, over-communicate, over-communicate, over-communicate. So, when you said, hey, jim, will you come on and talk about this? Yes, I want to be open, transparent. This is what's going on, this is why it's not gloom or doom, but that transparency I think is so important and, along with it, be present, right, so I'm willing to get out, do town hall meetings, get on podcasts. Jim's going to come and talk about it. Right, I'm going to own it, I'm going to be there and take responsibility, right, because accepting this change is going to be really hard if CPS is quiet and not present, right, but. But I want to come in and have the tough conversations and let you know what we're doing, why we're doing it, because in silence people just make stuff up, right, and so I want to make sure we get out and we're transparent and understand what's going on.
Speaker 2:And then and then the third is really then excellence. You know you have to execute with excellence. Excellence is not perfection, as you know, right, it's. It's not being called to be perfect, but we got to do this. Well, we got to do it right. We have to have a great communication campaign. You know, try to be as clear and open and honest as we can and make sure we really pull whatever kind of change off. Then, with excellence, Jim, this is.
Speaker 1:You're speaking our language there, brother, because Christians let me just make this general statement get you guys' feedback Christians should be the best. Jack, you use this world-class, world-class. At leadership, world-class man At vision. When I hear clarity, I'm thinking vision where are we going?
Speaker 1:And then you use words like alignment, Alignment's, taking a team of people with varying gifts and then making sure hey, are you on board, Are you on board? Are you on board? No-transcript, but we're not all the time getting out. I want more leaders in our church, but they're getting out and talking about the hard things, Like with church worker shortage. How are we going to do it? And I just don't necessarily see that, as much as I pray we do into the future, just owning it. You know and I'm not calling out any one person in general I just don't know that we're owning some of our struggles transparently and then inviting our team. But the gifts of the church, the wider body of Christ, I love that you're overseeing how $4 billion worth of assets like Concordia Plan Services and I send you an email, Jim and this podcast is nothing big or anything, but you're like hey, Tim's my friend, we're on the same mission together. Let's get together and embrace the hard stuff. I just applaud you for doing that. You are a model leader in our church.
Speaker 3:Thank you, jim, and I just want to say we're just finishing up a budget season. Right here we run on a school year right, because Christ Greenfield is one of those ministries. It's got a massive school. So if you look at, people would be surprised. We have 141 people on our payroll system different hours. It's a lot of very part-time people. That's a ton of people. So we just went in there and we've started to incorporate some of these changes to the pension plan and to our budget model. And it's painful, but I do appreciate hearing the proactiveness that's behind that right and the realism behind that and the fact that we're not hiding away from a difficult challenge and we're actually going head into it and we're being transparent about it. So I want to thank you for that.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate that and I will say I hope that our you know your account manager from CPS has talked about what's happening on the health plan change.
Speaker 3:I don't know the specifics manager from CPS has talked about what's happening on the health plan change.
Speaker 2:I don't know the specifics. I should have looked it up before we got on here. Well, but we're also, at the same time, putting through changes through the health plan. So Kevin Herwick and his team you know Kevin's our chief operating officer you know four different initiatives that are saving $86.2 million over three years. You know, in terms of the health plan, without reducing any benefits. Right, that's, without cutting benefits.
Speaker 2:That's just finding different opportunities. And you know and this is God's hands this is not ours. But if you look at that $86.2 million savings, that's about what that increase is going to be in the retirement plan, guys, and I get that it doesn't exactly work out in the accounting statements right in that.
Speaker 2:But I mean, overall, we're going to be able to save that through all the budgets. So it's just, it's a real blessing to have these things going on. So just the same kind of proactive work is happening over on the other plans as well, besides the Concordia retirement plan.
Speaker 1:Praise God, praise God. Last question, jim, this is so fun If you could snap your fingers and give everyone in your team, and even go beyond your team all pastors, church leaders three positive behavioral characteristics. What would those three positive behavioral? We're not just talking personality, we're talking the behaviors of leaders. What would they be?
Speaker 2:We're not just talking personality, we're talking the behaviors of leaders. What would they be? Yeah, so I'm really happy, as I tee these things up, to say the team that I have at CPS, they have these behaviors and, you know, recruiting and growing that high performing team is, you know, something we as leaders all have to pay attention to. But first and foremost is that sense of accountability to pay attention to. But first and foremost is that sense of accountability. And you know, you know I spent some time in my book thanks for you know, referring to the book earlier, Tim, you know on this area of accountability and how elusive it is. And so here I'm talking about real accountability, not the finger pointing afterwards, right, when, well, wait a minute, that was Tim's fault, no, no, that was Jack's fault, right, you know, it's not that after the fact pointing fingers, but it's the proactive accountability.
Speaker 2:And I think what the world wants to do is really talk about an ownership mentality, and I like that to a source, but I think I really prefer coming at it with the perspective of a steward. I think we get lost often in stewardship, but let's focus really on the role of a steward who's acting on behalf of the master, the owner. So I don't have an ownership mentality in the organization. I have the perspective of the steward, because we know who the master is, we know who the owner is and I am just the steward for this period of the time. So I'm bringing the ownership, but understanding who the owner is as I talk about this accountability right, that sense of accountability.
Speaker 1:I think that's that attribute and again my team's got that across the board that when I hear, I don't know that I've equated accountability to humility and stewardship. Because when I hear, when I think of stewardship, I think of succession, I think of you're not that big of a deal, tim, jim. Jack, you're here. Your life is but a breath, it's a whisper here today, gone tomorrow. And will you faithfully steward the people, the resources, the ministries, et cetera? Well, in your time, there's no room for pride. When I think of accountability, I'm going to need a lot of help. Anything more to say there? Am I equating humility to accountability in a helpful way, jim? What do you think?
Speaker 2:Well, I think so. I mean, I think, as you're talking about this, ecclesiastes, right, I'm toiling under the sun, I've been asked to do something and I'm going to turn it over to someone else, and I don't know if they're going to be wise or a fool. Right, that's not of my ability.
Speaker 2:But I'm not going to be CEO of Concordia Plain Services forever. By the way, you've talked about your dad and you talked about this being your pension, I want to just throw in. By the way, it's my pension, but it's also my son's pension because he's a Lutheran school teacher.
Speaker 1:He and his wife, it's their pension and I guarantee you they're going to be collecting long after I'm gone right, so I'm only here for a period of time as a steward, god has asked me to do this at this time in this place, and I will be handing it over to someone else. All right, next two, or the next one, I guess, of those behavioral characteristics.
Speaker 2:Teamwork and Tim. You know, jack, I've told Tim I listen to you guys regularly, so I'm actually glad for the first time you're on one of these because I listen to you all the time, so I know you're a football coach and I'm not a football guy.
Speaker 2:I tend to go to other other sports, but let's just stay with football. Right Offensive linemen love being offensive linemen. They don't care if they carried a ball Right. They don't care if anybody notices. They don't want to be noticed because if they do something wrong the quarterback's been sacked and they're going to take pride that no one even knew right Because I did my job every time.
Speaker 2:And so teamwork isn't just, you know, you know five basketball players working together, but only one basketball right. So who's going to score right? It's about no understanding. And this is the body of the Christ, body of Christ, right? You know, we're not all hands, we're not all feet, but the body fits together. The offensive line, the running backs, the receivers, everybody wants to be the quarterback, right? No, not everybody does. There's many of them saying, fine, you know what, let him do it, he's much better. And I'm going to stay here and I'm going to block and I'm going to run that pattern every time, perfectly, even if you never throw me the ball. That's teamwork that understands that this is about winning.
Speaker 2:It's about winning and I'm going to do the role that you have asked me to do and I'm going to do with excellence over and over again. So real teamwork right is my number two.
Speaker 1:Hey, I got to pause. As a football coach, I just had a conversation yesterday with a lineman who says I love this and I love that so much and he just wants to bang heads. Like every single play, we try to keep their heads out of the play, right, but he doesn't care, he was built. He was built Like look at his legs Like these are not running legs, these are quick feet, legs that are just going to pound somebody. You know we need more linemen in the body of Christ and they're there. But here's the thing too. Here's the thing too. What does a good quarterback do? He gives praise to his line.
Speaker 1:He knows where his bread is buttered, he knows that there was so much work that went in behind the scenes, so much time in the weight room et cetera. So I'll just draw it to pastors. Pastors, you're a little bit more like a quarterback in many of these situations. You're out front, you get the stats, blah, blah, blah. Nothing happens. Nothing happens without so much going into, not just the Sunday, but like the running the behind the scenes Jack, you're a little bit more like a lineman. You kind of look like a lineman. You're doing a lot of the stuff behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:You're the center Jack. You know you're snapping the ball, calling the play, but it's such a helpful. Football is the greatest team sport, I would say, of all time, because of the sizes and shapes and we're all running the one play in the kingdom. We're running the Jesus play. Let's reach people with the gospel right and let's execute. Whatever it takes. Culture systems, you know stewardship structure. We got to call that one play and execute with excellence. I don't want to shy. This is what sports teach you too. I mean, I don't want to shy away. There was a season when I was like, well, I don't know if we want to take pride in excellence and that kind of thing. It's like this is a false humility. Get after it. It's not even your work anyways. It's God at work through you. God's calling the play, god's executing the play. He's the one at work in and through you. If anything good happens, all the glory goes to him, right? So hey, man, I love teamwork. I love teamwork. We can't talk about it enough.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know my background is military right and in the military same thing team building, mission oriented.
Speaker 3:And the thing is you have these different types of leaders. You have your non-commissioned officers, which we call the backbone of the army, and you have your officers and we have an ethos, a creed that says you know, cause I retired a staff sergeant out of the military and we would say you know, officers are going to have maximum time to accomplish their mission and they're not going to have to do my job period Right, and that's the, that's the. The ethos that we drill into every sergeant right, every, every NCO is that you have a responsibility to play here and nobody's going to have to come in and do your job for you. You're going to get your job done right so that other people have the ability to do their jobs and not have to be distracted by your lack of performance and then also thinking and, and you know, I I never serve, thank you, jack, for your service.
Speaker 2:I, you know, I never served, but if but family is, you know have served, you know tremendously, you know. But at any point when there is conflict, you know very small percentage is actually in battle, right?
Speaker 2:But, it's all that support and that additional ethos that have come to understand of you know you're doing the job you've been asked to do. You know, if it was carry a rifle in front, that's what you do. Or if it's caring for who's at the front line, that's what you do. Right, and you know, I think, that carries over here too. I'm not on the front line you guys are. You know I'm in the bag, making sure your resource for today and for the future.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've heard some people say the military is a logistics organization that dabbles in combat. Amen.
Speaker 1:All right, Jim, let's go.
Speaker 2:Last one Last one is courage, and I'm going to go to Joshua 1.9 here Be bold and courageous. Be bold and very courageous. Why? Because God is with you and so we don't need to shrink away from this stuff. Right? If we've done this stuff well, if we've, if we've sought godly counsel, we've sought him in prayer, you're doing the right things for the right reasons. We can be bold, um and and we can go forward with strength and with courage, knowing that that he's with us.
Speaker 2:And I think, I think too many times I see us operating from fear, not from courage.
Speaker 1:Oh man, this has been so much fun. Couldn't agree with you more. You know, if you don't get the basics I've been talking to a lot of people about this the basics of leadership is the character of Christ, who was remarkably accountable to the will of his Father, who built a team and had remarkable courage which led him to the cross. If we miss on the character of Christ and engaging, the suffering and sorrow and loss, the sabotage, the hard stuff, obviously this is the path of Jesus, this is the way of the cross. Like, lutherans should be fantastic at character development because it's the Holy Spirit at work within us and we're a confessing church body, not just confessing Article 4, but confessing our sin quickly and confessing our desperate need for forgiveness from God and forgiveness from one another and then dreaming big dreams. That reaches many people with the gospel.
Speaker 1:Your stewardship of Concordia Plan Services has a profound impact on the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod and I'm really, really grateful for the man of character that you are, jim, for being a leader in our church and for staying connected to me and all different. You are here for the whole church. That's what I love about Concordia plans and LCEF too. Like you, can't, you don't have time for a lot of the petty political side stuff that goes on on, whatever continuum you're about Like you're a Jesus guy and you're here to serve all different types of churches and workers and all different sorts of contexts, and I applaud you for that, brother. Any closing comments? Jim, this has been fun.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here. It's been an honor and a privilege and I just I can't imagine that God chose me to serve in this time in this place, and I do very much appreciate and enjoy the fact that I get to work with the entirety of the LCMS right and there's very important conversations that need to be having. That's fine, but you know we need the left, the right and everything in the middle, because this is law of large numbers. We're better together. As an actuary, I can put numbers on that kind of stuff right, and so I enjoy being in this place where the family can come together and realize the benefits of walking together, those things that we contemplate in our constitution and our objectives. I really do think we can demonstrate that in CPS and I know LCF, foundation, CPH all of them can as well but these become very tangible ways where we can say look, we are better together. We'll still have the tough conversations, but we're family and we're better together.
Speaker 1:And I just want to reiterate what I just heard there at the end, those four entities that you just mentioned, you guys are glue entities in our church body and we'll rally around the great work that you all are doing and all of the leaders and I know you guys are very close and very interconnected and thank you for serving all of the church.
Speaker 1:This is Lead Time Hot Topic. I pray you enjoyed it. This is a little different. We didn't go by the clock quite as much today, but still had a little over a 30 minute conversation with one of our one of our friends, jim Sanf. If people want to connect with you, jim, how can they do so?
Speaker 2:Jimsanfconcordiaplansorg is probably the best way to get me no-transcript.