How The Early Church Solved A Growth Crisis And What Leaders Can Learn Today

A little Christmas cheer, a few groan-worthy dad jokes, and a surprisingly practical deep dive into Acts—this one brings warmth and wisdom in equal measure. We start with a laugh and then move straight into Acts 6 to ask a hard question every leader faces: how do you protect your core mission without doing everything yourself?

We unpack how the apostles solved a real growth crisis by empowering seven trusted leaders instead of centralizing control. That choice becomes a modern playbook: delegate to develop people, not just to dump tasks; give meaningful responsibility; show everyone how their role fits the mission. From there, we trace Stephen’s courage and Philip’s initiative, drawing a direct line to teams that advocate boldly for the work they believe in. If your team only executes, they don’t own the vision yet—and that’s a leadership problem you can fix.

The conversation shifts to Saul’s conversion and Paul’s far-reaching journeys, where partnership and accountability keep the mission moving under pressure. Alongside the inspiration, we get honest about burnout, boundaries, and the “invisible war” inside every leader: procrastination, excuses, self-doubt, distractions, and the comfort zone. You’ll hear practical frameworks you can use today—time blocking, batching communication, and delegating outcomes with real authority—so you can scale without losing focus or your life outside of work.

If you lead a team, guide a community, or simply want to work with more clarity and less stress, this episode gives you a field-tested blueprint from the early church to now. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a review to help others find the show. What’s the invisible battle you’re facing this week? Tell us—we’re listening.

Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:28

All righty. Welcome. Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Ho ho ho ho Merry Christmas. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Merry Christmas to all our listeners. Telling you. Thank you so much for supporting us. Today's coming to Christmas. Yes, oh my goodness. Episode 102 today. Wow. That's exciting. That is very exciting.

SPEAKER_01: 0:55

But yeah, we're rolling in towards the end of the year here. We've got uh this is the last official show that actually we talk about some biblical stuff on, and then we uh then we roll into total chaos and dad jokes for a week, and then we're back to uh throwing in some biblical stuff on there.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15

Correct. Correct. I'm looking forward to the New Year's Eve show. Well, it's actually on the 30th, but it is on the 30th. But uh it is our New Year's Eve show, and it's just uh you know 99% dad jokes. So please send us some.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30

We might throw a couple biblical jokes. We might maybe we can throw some Bible jokes in there to just like throw some biblical in there. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. But yeah, we're excited to be here. If you've joined us last week, you know we uh we finally made it through John and we've transitioned to Acts, and uh we're gonna go through that today. But what we do at the top of the show and at the bottom of the show is Dr. Posey has like 700, I think he's up to about 700, 800 dad jokes in front of him. He's got stacks of papers and books and calendars and and cards and all kinds of stuff over there that I'm looking across the table and seeing stuff. Uh so yeah, so he we're gonna throw out some Christmas jokes, I think, right?

SPEAKER_00: 2:17

We're gonna have some uh winter jokes. Winter and Christmas jokes. Yeah. So here's a here's the first one. What um what is a weatherman's favorite food in the winter? You know this one. You've probably weatherman's favorite food in the winter.

SPEAKER_01: 2:40

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 2:41

A burrito.

SPEAKER_01: 2:43

Uh I was gonna go barbecue. Oh, well, that'd be good. That'd be good. That sounds good right now.

SPEAKER_00: 2:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:50

Sounds real good right now. BBQ. Oh, I like it.

SPEAKER_00: 2:56

Okay, so um, you know, there's a lot of Christmas music on the radio now. Oh, there is just about every station, doesn't matter what uh genre, they're gonna play Christmas music, you know, for the next 24-48 hours. They just are, okay. So, what do you call a group of sweet potatoes playing music?

SPEAKER_01: 3:15

I didn't, I've never heard this. You've never heard this one? I have never heard this one.

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

So I'm gonna repeat it. What do you call a group of sweet potatoes playing music?

SPEAKER_01: 3:24

Hmm. Hmm.

SPEAKER_00: 3:26

A yam session.

SPEAKER_01: 3:32

Oh, that made me laugh. The delivery was just perfect on that one. I'd never heard that one about the so that made me that made me smile.

SPEAKER_00: 3:39

Okay, this is probably, but you can remember this in the spring, okay? Maybe remember this in the spring. Um, did you hear about the guy who wore two jackets when he painted his house?

SPEAKER_01: 3:54

No.

SPEAKER_00: 3:55

Because the instructions on the can said put on two coats.

SPEAKER_01: 4:00

I'll give you some applause on that one. I like that one. I like that one. I have to remember that one.

SPEAKER_00: 4:07

Okay, so so you know, I don't know what people's drink of choice will be over the holidays, uh, you know, Christmas dinner, whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 4:13

We all have different drinks.

SPEAKER_00: 4:14

We all do. Uh what state in the United States has the smallest soft drinks.

SPEAKER_01: 4:26

Thinking, processing.

SPEAKER_00: 4:30

How about mini soda? All right, I'll give you that one. We're gonna get to the Bible in just a minute, okay, people? Give me one more. Okay, here we go. How did the octopus beat the shark in a fight?

SPEAKER_01: 4:48

This has nothing to do with Christmas, but it's a great deal.

SPEAKER_00: 4:53

How did the octopus beat the shark in a fight? He was well armed. There you go. There we go. Okay. You got me for us, or we're gonna give it away.

SPEAKER_01: 5:06

You're gonna spare so we can get through act. We got to get through the book of Acts. We really do. So you have 750, I have like 45. So if I give them now, we'll it'll just be a Dr. Posey dad joke, you know, a show next week. So you know I gotta I gotta save a few. So yes.

SPEAKER_00: 5:22

Okay, that sounds good. So last week we uh really got through chapter one and two of the book of Acts. Um and so the we see the main person in those particular, actually up through uh chapter five, really, is Peter. Yes, um, in chapter six, we see a significant um event happen that has some incredible leadership principles. So we're gonna focus on that, and then we'll just kind of go through the rest of the book. But um so if you're not familiar with what happened in Acts chapter six, uh the church, the early church was growing quite rapidly. You had the apostles, uh, the twelve apostles that were doing everything. They were teaching, they were praying, they were distributing the food, and evidently, unfortunately, some people got neglected in the daily food distribution. So this was brought to the attention of the apostles. And just let's just stop right there. If there's an issue going on in your organization, do your people have uh the confidence? And do you have is there a trust level up there so they can bring you the issues? Or if they bring in the issues, you just say, yep, uh-huh, and then just forget about them. So what we see here in Acts chapter six is that not only did they bring an issue up, but the apostles took it seriously, and what they did was they gathered the disciples, it said, and they allowed the disciples to pick seven men.

SPEAKER_01: 7:03

Um Acts six, two, yeah, three. It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word. Choose seven men.

SPEAKER_00: 7:11

Yeah, choose seven men. So he let them be a part of the solution. So it's like, okay, here we have this issue in our organization, whatever it may be, it could be a good issue, it could be a bad issue. Instead of the the twelve disciples just deciding, they said, Hey, we want you to be a part of the solution. What do you see are the options for this? And what a great leadership principle. And so they allowed the disciples to pick seven men to carry on that work of the food distribution. Now, um I just think that's a great, great uh principle, right there.

SPEAKER_01: 7:50

Yeah, one of the principles I put in is just don't do everything yourself, right? Equip others to lead. And it's sort of one of the principles I pulled out of that.

SPEAKER_00: 7:59

I think that is so important. And we see that um uh in the mindset uh of businesses, we see in the mindset of churches, uh sometimes the um the uh people have the expectation that pastor's gonna do everything. Okay. Um and there's a certain point. Dr. Posey did.

SPEAKER_01: 8:21

I'm just kidding. He had great staff.

SPEAKER_00: 8:23

Yeah, I did. Um, but at the beginning, and my and I had a small church in South Fort Worth, great people, great people. But they had learned that that the pastor wasn't doing everything, you know. And and I so I was really blessed uh to have that opportunity to learn to realize, no. Um and and one of the lessons we can get from this, and we see it throughout the letters of Paul, is that every person is important in the kingdom of God. Every person, if a person in your organization is not important, if not valuable, then why are they there? Are they just taking up a seat on the bus? So um they need to know how they fit into the big picture of um of the whole organization. Right. Um story is told years ago of uh two bricklayers building a cathedral. Um this was uh way, way hundreds of years ago. And one person asked one of the bricklayers, What are you doing? I'm just laying brick. The other person said, I'm build helping build a cathedral. And because you just see he saw how his piece of was fitting into the big puzzle. And I think that's how good leaders help their people. Every person on the staff, whether it's a custodian, whether it's a mail carrier, whether it's a you know uh salesperson, accountant, they help them see how all of it fits together and how valuable they are and important they are to the whole organization.

SPEAKER_01: 9:56

Right. And then I'll go with mine, just you know, when you're delegating and you know, you don't have to do everything is you know, delegate to develop others, not just offload. So, in other words, think of how you can help them grow, not just make your job easier. So don't give them just all the easy tasks that nobody wants to do. Give them some of those, right? It's gonna free up your time to do the most important things, but also give them some tasks that have meaning that they can they can take it to the you know, the next step. And uh uh we want them to uh be developed and to grow in their position. It's sort of like what we talked about last week on succession planning. You gotta have those people lined up and delegation's part of it, you know, and and what you're talking about, it's it's this all sort of comes together in leadership.

SPEAKER_00: 10:48

Yeah, and you want to be sure you just don't delegate the busy work, right? Um because every organization, no matter how big small, has busy work. And everybody's got to do some of that. Um, but you if you just delegate the busy work and and and not uh empower them, equip them, train them to do something that they feel, oh my gosh, this has got to get done. This I have to do excellent in this. Um, then you're really what are you saying to your people? You don't trust them, right? Uh you don't feel you're competent. There's all kinds of messages that you might be sending that you don't want to send um by just offloading busy work. So um so F chapter six is a great thing here. They just they chose them, they they equip them, they empower them to do the work. Um, we see right after that uh two significant stories, one about Stephen, who was a first Christian martyr, and one about Philip, who was um had a significant encounter with an EP Ethiopian.

SPEAKER_01: 11:52

So Stephen was one of the seven that were chosen, right? One of the deacons that was chosen, right?

SPEAKER_00: 11:57

He was one of the seven, and so was Philip. And but Stephen um uh, you know, he was evidently incredibly brilliant, um, but he was also very bold. Um people then like that, and so we see his story. He he shares uh the message um and the mission and those kind of things, and people then like it. And he was the first Christian martyr. In other words, he was stoned to death for what he believed in. And and right at the end of that story, um, in chapter eight, we see the mention of a man by the name of Saul. And uh he he becomes a very important figure in the rest of the book of Acts. Um, there is a story about uh Peter and Cornelius, which is which is powerful. Um in um in Acts chapter eight, we also see a man by the name of Philip, who is one of the seven. Um and so those two um uh particular stories um significant um uh share uh with us the fact that those men were bold in their witnessing. Uh they were huge advocates for the cause of Jesus. And um, and so the question would be um what about your people? What about the CEO? What about are you are you bold in your in your declaration of your of your work? Are are you an advocate for your product? Um or is it just a job? You're just punching a clock. And um and so that to me is a huge thing that uh you can look at. Um uh and then we get to basically from about chapter nine, we see Paul and his conversion story. Um, and that is very, very significant. And Anias there anoints him and scales fall off his eyes. He's he's he's baptized, um, he becomes uh he he totally changes his opinion about Christianity. Um and and then we just kind of he's out of the scene for a while, and then in chapter 13, really from chapter 13 all the way to the end of chapter the book, chapter 28, uh really focuses on Paul's missionary journey. Uh he has uh Paul and Barnabas, then Paul and Silas. Um, and uh they are just just like Stephen, they're bold witnesses for the faith. Now, Stephen never got out of Jerusalem. Paul traveled all over the Middle Eastern part of the world at that particular time. I mean, he went into present-day Turkey, uh, he went into uh Greece, he finally ended up in Rome. Um, there are some uh scholars who believe that he had another missionary journey and he was all the way over to Spain. Um and and so, but he was tirelessly committed to the cause and uh gave his life for the cause. Um and so one of the things we have to be careful about, okay, uh as leaders, is that we could commit ourselves so much to the cause, whatever that is, that we literally can wear ourselves out. And I am guilty of that. Um, you know, uh, you know, when you're working 60, 70, 80 hours a week consistently for a long time, um, it can it can wear on your body. And I've experienced that. Um I, you know, I uh didn't know how to burn out. Yeah, burnout. I did I didn't know how to put boundaries on it. Um, you know, and I learned the hard lesson. Um and it's uh if you see a lot it get done, and you know, in a church work, there's always more to do. There's always people to go visit, there's always hospitals to go see, there's always something to to research, to write, uh, you know, there's always something to do. But that's true for any business. You know, there's always something to do that you can think of. You can always have a reason to be in the office. And and so that balance between work and family, personal life is is so, so crucial.

SPEAKER_01: 16:11

Yeah, we have to have a balance and you have to set up borders and and you know, and you know, one of the things that that adds to it is sort of what you showed me on your phone, right? Is sometimes uh, you know, perfectionism, you know, you get out there and you're doing a lot of extra stuff that maybe you don't need to do, right? You know, and and a lot of planning that's taking up crucial time that you could be home with your family. Yeah, so what are my thoughts? And yeah, so share with the people.

SPEAKER_00: 16:42

Yeah, so I got this uh from Lance Bachman, and um and this was his um his comment, which I think is so powerful.

SPEAKER_01: 16:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 16:52

Um he said, most people think their competition is other people. It's not your real opponents are your procrastination, your excuses, your self-doubt, your distractions, and your comfort zone. That's the real battlefield. So I'm gonna repeat that again. Your real opponent is your procrastination, your excuses, your self-doubt, your distractions, your comfort zone. That's the real battlefield. And um and so the the question would be um, I think one of the things that Paul did that was so brilliant is he didn't travel alone. He always had a companion, whether it was Barnabas. Now they had some disagreements about Mark, um, but he didn't set out again. He set out with Silas. And so so there was always someone there to hold him accountable, to s you know, to to encourage him, to spur him on, to keep going. And um, and so you know, there's uh sometimes when Paul faced some very difficult situations in different cities. Um but as we read the story, um, yeah, he was the main guy, but they were he had a cheering squad, he had some traveling companions, he had some people that were behind him a hundred percent. And um, and that uh helped him focus. Uh I'm I'm sure there was a lot of self-doubt, but they kept him focused. They kept encouraging him.

SPEAKER_01: 18:24

Invisible war. Invisible war.

SPEAKER_00: 18:26

The invisible war. Yeah, I like those words.

SPEAKER_01: 18:28

The battlefields the mind, right? You know, and and a lot of times we get that distraction, that perfection, that overwhelming. We have to people please or that self-doubt, sort of what you're talking about, you know?

SPEAKER_00: 18:40

Yeah. And so I learned uh years ago from a pastor, just a great guy from uh Oklahoma City. He said that his he um uh and this is how he did it, and it was very effective for him. He said he would have his assistant take all of his phone calls, um, and he would return phone calls from 1115 to noon. Yeah. Okay. And then he would return phone calls from like four to four forty-five uh in the afternoon. And that way he wasn't distracted every time the phone would ring. He knew he had a great assistant that would take the call, take great messages, answer lots of the questions that people wanted him to ask, answer. Um, but if there was something that he needed to do, he could focus on that particular time. That way he could focus his attention on other matters and not be distracted by answering the phone every five minutes. And and um I tried to put that into practice. Sometimes I was successful, sometimes I wasn't. But it's like, you know, you don't need to be on your computer 24 7 answering your emails. There might be some time and say, okay, I'm gonna devote this amount of time right now to answering my emails, or I'm gonna devote this amount of time to doing research. Um, and I remember when I was in the ministry, um, I I knew that I did. Sermon planning. I planned, I took a week off and and planned my whole sermon series out for a whole year. But then on Wednesdays, that's when I would write um my sermon. But I did it for 10 days in advance. So I was always a week ahead. And then I would hand all that stuff out on Monday for the following Sunday to my staff. And but it took me a long time to learn that. But I had to keep my Wednesdays really focused. Wednesdays and basically Wednesday afternoon and Thursdays was the thing that I was like, no, I've got to focus on writing. And so once I learned that habit, it just, you know, I had empowered my people. I'm not going to be in the office. I'm going to focus. I'm going to write at home. You know those kind of things. And I trusted my staff to do the work. And uh they were great. And uh I just kept doing that for a long, long time. And I thought I was getting more productive. The more I kept to that schedule, uh, the more productive I I became.

SPEAKER_01: 21:03

Yeah, 100%. I think you're right on that. I think that's a invisible war that a lot of us battle with, right?

SPEAKER_00: 21:09

I think everybody battles with that. What no matter what your job is, you might be working from home. Um you you could, you know, maybe uh taking care of people, your caretaker. It's still the still thing is you can get distracted from your mission real easy. And with social media and our phones, everything's in our pocket on our phone. It's so easy to get distracted by those kind of things.

SPEAKER_01: 21:36

The um Australian um schools are going back. They're they're recommending that all the kids get flip phones because they can't even have the smartphone in their locker or at school, even there. And if you want to communicate with your kids, you need to have flip phones. So there's gonna be a whole new market for flip phones coming out. That's old school, right? You know, a lot of these people are going where there's no phones, no smartphones and stuff, no checking email and you know, talking and texting and all that. Uh, it's sort of funny, you know. We we go so far advanced, and then oh, we're gonna start easing back a little bit on some of these things for for our youth. I think it goes up to 16-year-olds and stuff. But it's it's pretty weird that you know that everybody's going back to uh you know recommending uh flip phones, right? Back in the day. We need to find the floor.

SPEAKER_00: 22:23

Well, if you know those people that make flip phones.

SPEAKER_01: 22:26

Oh, I know. I mean, invest in the flip phone market, right? Might be the new thing, right? Might be a new thing. A lot of kids in the the world, right?

SPEAKER_00: 22:33

What do you want for Christmas, Johnny? I want a flip phone.

SPEAKER_01: 22:36

That would be like something you never hear, right?

SPEAKER_00: 22:40

Okay, so here we go. Um we I think we pretty much finished uh Book of Acts. You know, we we just have a few minutes, so let's get us some dad jokes. What about that? Well, yeah, not a problem. Okay, so don't give up too many, right?

SPEAKER_01: 22:53

No, not too many. But these are down under uh 750, 725, right?

SPEAKER_00: 22:58

So Okay, so so um you know, we got Christmas two days away. So we gotta have some Santa jokes, okay?

SPEAKER_01: 23:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 23:05

Okay. Um why did Santa get a parking ticket on Christmas Eve? Uh I don't know. Because he left his sleigh in a snow parking zone. Gotta do that one, right? So we've heard this one a thousand times. Okay. How much did Santa pay for his sleigh? Uh yes. Nothing. It was on the house. Yes. We've heard that one so many times. Still funny. Um, okay. What what do you got for me for Santa Joe's?

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

Oh man, let's see. I I want to keep some of them, but uh uh let's see. I've got um no. I'll save that one for that one. Um I I just pulled up a whole bunch and then I scrolled. So uh uh. Yeah, I got I got off my uh my page. So oh gosh. Yeah. Our audience is like just waiting. Oh yeah, they're they're just I mean, I've I don't have any of the good ones that you do, so uh let's see. What's uh every parent's favorite Christmas song? I don't know. Silent night. Silent night.

SPEAKER_00: 24:32

That's a good one. Yeah, that's a really good one.

SPEAKER_01: 24:36

Oh, let's see. Uh what did Adam say on the day before Christmas?

SPEAKER_00: 24:45

I don't know. You don't know that one? I I've heard it, but I don't remember anything. It's Christmas Eve. Eve. Christmas Eve. That's a good one. That's a good one. Right. That's my two. That's your two. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01: 25:00

I go one more. What's your what do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire? This is simple.

SPEAKER_00: 25:06

When you cross a snowman with a vampire. Yeah.

unknown: 25:11

You know it.

SPEAKER_00: 25:12

I know, but I can't think of it right now. Frostbite. Frostbite. Okay, so here's a totally not this is I probably should say this for a New Year's Eve, but I'm gonna say it now. What do you get when you cross a police officer with a skunk?

SPEAKER_01: 25:33

I don't know. Law and odor. I was trying to think of something with like the pepper spray, you know, smart, you know, skunk spray or something.

SPEAKER_00: 25:45

Yeah, something like that. Uh all right.

SPEAKER_01: 25:48

One more. We'll let the people off till next week. I think uh oh my gosh, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 25:54

I know it's crazy. Uh it is crazy. So I'll I'll be better prepared. No, next week it's all dad jokes. It's all dad jokes.

SPEAKER_01: 26:03

Yeah, you're you're prepared for that one for sure. What did the sheep say? Merry Christmas. White, how did the sheep say Merry Christmas to each other? Uh fleece Navidad.

SPEAKER_00: 26:15

Fleece Navidad. We'll leave that. We won't sing it, but we will say goodbye with that joke right there.

SPEAKER_01: 26:21

Hey guys, have a Merry Christmas. I know we're we're sort of having fun here because we're rolling down towards the end of the year. And and uh this is this is our Christmas show. Have a happy, you know, Merry Christmas to you, Dr. P. And I'm seeing something in your hand. You're looking at me with that look.

SPEAKER_00: 26:39

So last Christmas, my kids gave me a dad joke calendar. Yes, one dad joke for every day of the year. Yes. Well, I've just looked at it and I've used the dad jokes up through September the 12th. No, the 11th. So I've got about a hundred dad jokes to go for next week.

SPEAKER_01: 27:00

So um and you don't even know what you might get at Christmas, too. So you might get the 2026 calendar. It's great. You might have 400 and some more to add to the people are gonna say please in some of the good ones. Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 27:16

So anyway, we're gonna be well prepared. It's always a lot of fun to do the uh Christmas. I mean, it is for us at least. It is, you know. It is. So have a great Christmas. Yes, Tim, we'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_01: 27:30

Yeah, Merry Christmas to you and yours, and Merry Christmas to all our listeners out there.

SPEAKER_00: 27:35

And thank you so much for sticking with us. You know, this is uh episode 102, and we're just excited to start another, you know, hundred episodes. It's just a lot of fun. Absolutely. We're having fun with it. We are having a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01: 27:48

Hopefully, you guys are having fun. You learn a little bit about the biblical, about the leadership, and and uh yeah, join us then for the uh the dad joke show for our New Year's Eve show. And if you don't like dad jokes, well, we'll see you in January next year. So anyway, other than that, guys, uh have a Merry Christmas. Uh hope uh your family's well blessed. May you be well blessed on the holidays. And other than that, Dr. P, they make it a great day. Make it a great day.