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Whether you’re leading a family, a church, or in a management role in a company, there will be something for you in today’s episode with our guest David Ashcraft, the CEO and President of the Global Leadership Network. We discuss his time as a pastor, what that has taught him about raising a family, and his new book, What Was I Thinking? How to Make Better Decisions So You Can Live and Lead with Confidence.

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:

Hello again. You've joined us for Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us David Ashcraft. David, welcome.

David Ashcraft:

Thank you, Marlin. Good to be with you guys.

Marlin Detweiler:

David was my pastor for more than a decade and I count him as a dear friend. So I'm really excited to have you join us today. But tell us a little bit about yourself from your vantage point growing up family, educational background, career, that sort of thing.

David Ashcraft:

Yeah, sounds good. So I grew up in the Dallas, Texas area, Marlin, but my parents were–

Marlin Detweiler:

For an Eagles fan and being in Eagles country that was an interesting challenge in itself, wasn’t it?

David Ashcraft:

Really, I have not yet adapted to being an Eagle fan. I have maintained my loyalties with Dallas still, even though there's been no reason to follow Dallas the last number of years. But I’m through that. So my parents were in grad school when I was born. They ended up going as missionaries to France. So first language I really learned to speak was French and my parents, my mom took me with her to take my sister to enroll her in school and didn't know how to say that I was only three years old and I shouldn't yet be enrolled in school. So I started school at three in French-speaking schools and for four years was at a French school. We came back to the United States when my younger brother was born and he had a lot of physical issues and mental disabilities when he was born. So, I came back emergency-wise, didn't speak any French when I came back, was embarrassed to speak in front of my new American friends.

So I forgot it pretty quickly. And the funny thing is probably about 15 years ago, Marlin, I took my kids and Ruth, my wife, back to France, and I was going to I was going to be the one that was going to do all the interpreting and I was going to come back to me. You always hear it's going to come back. And I didn't understand a word that was spoken. So we were in trouble the whole time we were in France.

But I lived in California for about six years, then moved back to Dallas and finished out my schooling in Dallas, went to Texas Tech University and studied business there. My intent was to be a lawyer and as I was growing up, everybody always told me – my dad was a pastor. And so everybody always told me I was going to follow in his footsteps and be a pastor. I was very determined not to be a pastor. I didn't like telling me what I was going to be. So by my senior year in college, the Lord had worked in my heart and rather than apply to law school, went to Dallas Theological Seminary, served on a church staff, actually with my dad for about ten years in the Dallas area before moving to Pennsylvania in 1991.

So that's a little bit of my background. My wife Ruth and I have been – it'll be 44, we have been married 44 years now and we have two children, both married and two grandchildren, which we love very much.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's great. So when you moved to Lancaster to become the senior pastor at LCBC, the church was Lancaster Bible Church at the time. Changes – the name was Changed by Christ under your leadership, but that was the first time that you were a senior pastor, isn't it?

David Ashcraft:

It was, yeah, probably about two years. Three years before that, I had started sensing that God was nudging me to be in a leadership role. And so we primarily looked, well, we only looked exclusively in Texas, and we thought we were being real generous with God. And we said, God will go anywhere you want us to go in Texas.

And that's just kind of the way it is. When you're born in Texas, you don't think of even moving out of the state. It's almost like it's inbred in you, and you're trained “Don't even think of leaving.” But we talked to probably, I would say, 30 different churches, and none of them were right for us. And it wasn't until we finally opened up our hands and said, “Okay, God, we will go wherever you want you to want us to go,” that we ended up in Pennsylvania, where we never thought we would end up.

Marlin Detweiler:

I would say that it was a little before we met. It was a little puzzling to me, and it was interesting to learn how that came about. For someone from Texas, it was very ingrained in Texas culture. Texans are ways to come into Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which sometimes is a difficult place to move into because it's got so much locale in its geography.

So, when you joined the church in 1991, my understanding is the church had an attendance around 200 people. Is that about right?

David Ashcraft:

Right? Yeah, we had right around 150, Marlin. Yeah, it's the first five or six years were incredibly tumultuous, just trying to figure out who we were as a church, what we were trying to accomplish as a church. The way I talk about it now is, was kind of we had to figure out what business we were in. And we decided real early we didn't want to be in just normal church business.

We wanted to be a church that really focused on introducing other people to Jesus, and not everybody agreed with that purpose or that business. And every church says they want to be in the business of introducing people to Jesus. But I don't know that most churches are. And so we had to make some decisions that were hard decisions that not everybody was on board with.

So it took us five or six years to kind of get everything figured out. And we were growing during that time. We grew probably to about 600 people during those first five or six years, but there was a lot of rockiness to the point where whenever I would come home from board meetings, Ruth would always say, “Do I need to pack up? Are we moving out of here?”

And she would put out Christmas decorations and then she'd put them away. Each year she would say, “Am I boxing these up for next year or am I boxing these up for a move?” because we weren't sure if I was going to last or not.

Marlin Detweiler:

Wow. Well, it's interesting to look at, starting at the 150-200 range in ‘91 and leaving – or resigning from your position as senior pastor effective November of 2022 with attendance on a weekend of roughly 20,000. So that is a remarkable growth path. And I know you well enough to know that there were some interesting steps along the way.

One of the things that fascinates me that I think our audience would enjoy hearing as they hear about your experience and leadership was that when you were at 200, you said we need to learn from the people that are at 400. And when you were at 400, we need to learn the people who are at, was it, 2,000 at that point or something like that? I don't remember the number exactly, but there was this incremental approach, and I'm curious from where did that sense come from to go listen to the people that were talking in that specific category.

David Ashcraft:

Yeah. So, Marlin, I wish I could tell you exactly. What I do know is I came in February, we had 150 people and we had, I think four elders at the time. And so in April I took our four elders and myself. We went to Philadelphia, and there was a conference that they were holding called Breaking the 200 Barrier.

And it was telling you as a church how you could get beyond 200 people. Interestingly, the person teaching it was John Maxwell. John was a pastor back then, and that's what he was doing. He was teaching pastors how to kind of grow their churches. So that first time I ever had exposure to John and talked about growing beyond 200.

Once we grew beyond 200, there was another conference. John wasn't leading it, but it was how to break the 400 barrier. And so what we learned is that it seems like every time you want to double, then you've got to kind of figure out where you go from there. And so what I found is one of the best ways for me to learn was to go to a church twice our size.

And so when we were 200, it was looking at a church of 400, when we were at 400 we went to one that’s at 800. And every time we were going to go to the next level, we just go to school on a church twice our size. And then what we would constantly say is, let's start acting like the church that we want to be, not the church that we are from a size perspective, meaning we need to start creating systems for a church of 800, even though we were 400.

We need to start hiring staff for a church of 800. Even though we were a church of 400, we just start acting like that so that if God were to bless us and take a state, he would be ready for it. And I think a lot of times churches and I'll speak specifically the churches, a lot of times churches don't grow because they're not prepared for it.

They didn't plan for the systems in place. The staff in place. So we constantly were saying, okay, let's get ready for the next steps. And it could have sounded presumptuous, especially as we started getting bigger, to say that, you know, what's it going to look like to be a church of 30,000 people? But we went ahead anyway, and we said, we're not we're not telling God what we need to be, but we don't want to stop what God wants to do just because we didn't prepare for it.

Marlin Detweiler:

What wisdom, that's really neat. So, was it providential that conferences just happened to be in places and times that you became aware of and attracted you? Or was there some intentionality that you can point to from you and your staff?

David Ashcraft:

You know, I would say maybe providential for that first one for sure. We started connecting very early on with a church out in Chicago, Willow Creek Community Church. It was a church at that time of about ten or 12,000 people. And so even when we were 200 people, I would bring groups of 20 or 25 people out to Willow Creek, and I wanted them just to see what could be and just to kind of break the paradigms that they had in Lancaster.

Nobody had ever seen a church of ten or 12,000 people. And so in their minds, if we were at 400, that's great. That's kind of what the average church is. And so what more could we want? And so I wanted them to see something bigger. I wanted them to see excellence and focus on excellence, and then definitely a focus on reaching lost people.

So I would constantly try to vision people that way by going different places to see what could be.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's really cool. Well, as you know, at Veritas, we're dealing with families, parents with children generally from kindergarten through 12th grade. And one of the things that I observe is in the process of parenting, we have to recognize that children require a different approach at different times. Have you ever given a thought to apply the idea of this progression that happens in the context of helping parents think about their children as they’re starting to grow older?

David Ashcraft:

You know, I think the same principle really applies. What we tend to do is focus on whatever stage we're in. And so if we've got a six-month-old and we're always around other parents that have a six-month-old, and we all sit around and moan and complain about how hard it is.

Marlin Detweiler:

You think it’s never going to end!

David Ashcraft:

Exactly. But what we typically don't do is look at somebody that's got a two-year-old or a 12-year-old or somebody that's a further step ahead that we could actually learn from and benchmark from. And say what they did do. And just to hear that, you know what? We'll get through this stage and we'll get through the terrible twos, and we'll get through the middle school years and the teens and things like that.

And we get so wrapped up in where we are right now that we miss out on a lot of great information that we could get if we would just talk to other people who are a step or two ahead of us. And so I think the same principle applies in learning what we can. And and, you know, I would just say, Marlin, for parents, the biggest thing I constantly say is just don't burn any bridges.

And the funny thing is, when your kids are really young, you think that's the hardest it's going to be, and you are real busy. But it gets harder as your kids get older because the decisions they're making or the consequences of the decisions are making it so much bigger. And parents are always saying, When do we get to stop parenting?

And, you know, with adult kids, you still parent with adult kids, but the issues are just so much bigger. And going through teens especially, that's where parents have a tendency to want to throw up their hands and tell their son or their daughter who's kind of gone astray then, you know, go ahead. If you want to go, go.

And I'm done. And, you know, I just want to wash your hands of them. And I just always say, don't burn bridges because you never know what God's going to do. And at the right time, he'll give opportunity for them to come back if we haven't burned the bridges.

Marlin Detweiler:

And so that is a really good way of looking at that. I'm curious, you mentioned as a church of 400, you would look to a church of 800 and start acting like that church, acting like you're ready or being ready to be a church of 800. So staffing for it and that sort of thing. Is there a parallel for that in parenting? Like I would be ready ourselves for the teenage years when we've got an eight-year-old, so to speak?

David Ashcraft:

Again, I think you start talking about and looking at what do I want my child to look like when they're a teenager? And so and again, we get so wrapped up in the day-to-day that we don't even think about eight years down the road. But if he's eight and you want to know what he's going to be like at 16, then start figuring that out and then start guiding him or her in the direction that you want them to be, that will get them to the place where they are at 16.

Otherwise it just happens by chance. And then when you get to 16, it's just like, Well, we got what we got, but you really don't put a whole lot of foresight or planning into that. So I think kind of sit down to write out what would you like your child to be at 16 and then start putting them in positions or treating them in such ways that will get them there when they turn 16.

Marlin Detweiler:

So that's that's really, really good. Your career at LCBC was you decided to retire or resign from being senior pastor? What's the right terminology here? I want to make sure I say the right thing.

David Ashcraft:

You know, it's funny Marlin because when I stepped away, I was after 32 years, and LCBC basically just stands for Lives Changed by Christ, and we just say that's who we are. We're a community of people whose lives have been changed by Christ, continue to be changed by Christ. And when I stepped away after 32 years, I can tell people I'm not retiring, but everybody still says, “How's retirement?” And the first couple of weeks I did that, I would get real snippy and say I’m not retired and now I just say, you know what? It's good. And I don't even bother trying to correct them.

But you ask me the process, though, and the biggest thing that happened for me, Marlin, is about ten years ago, I had the opportunity to sit in a small group of about 12 to 15 people with Jim Collins. And Jim Collins is the business writer of Good to Great. And there are other books. And in that small group meeting, he was talking about his levels of leadership and he said his highest level is level five. And he said, You're never a level five leader until you've actually left the organization that you're leading, and it's better with you gone than with you there.

And that was real convicting for me, because probably in my mind when I stepped away someday in the future, I hoped that there would be great weeping of gnashing of teeth and weeping and “Can't believe that David's not here.” But Jim Collins said, if you step away and the organization falls apart, or it falters, people tend to think, Oh, it must have been a great leader, because look, they can't survive without him.

But Jim Collins said you're a terrible leader. You should have set it up well to succeed when you're gone. So that started me on about a ten or 12-year journey to map out what I felt like needed to happen so that LCBC would be better when I'm when I'm gone than when I was there. And so it really was once all those things had been achieved. My objective is to say LCBC is poised to be better that I stepped away at that time.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, that's that's great. So everyone thinks David is backing off and gonna slow down and enjoy the beach, enjoy retirement, so to speak. And then all of a sudden, at least for me, I learn that you have become the CEO and President of Global Leadership Network, and I want to know what was he thinking?

David Ashcraft:

Well, you know, there were a couple of things, Marlin, that were happening after we stepped away from LCBC. Ruth and I did a good bit of traveling for several months, and then we kind of got that out of our system.

And then I'd been home for not even a month, and at some point Ruth looked at me and she said, “You need to lead something.” And then she very specifically said, “And it's not me.” You know, I must have been giving a little more direction at home than what she was looking for. And she was telling me I needed to go find a job.

So that opened my eyes to the possibility of something else. And it also helped me to realize and she realized I'm better when I'm busy than what I'm that I'm not busy. And so that kind of started on that journey. The other thing – the Global Leadership Network is really focused on pastors and churches and just raising their bar, their level, their capacity for leadership so that, ultimately, more people can be introduced to Jesus.

And part of what attracted me to that was probably about four years ago, reading through the Book of Acts, there's a passage in Acts Chapter 17 that describes a man named Apollos. And Appolos, you know his name probably from Scripture, but it describes him, and it talks about him being this eloquent speaker and this great defender of the faith.

And somebody that knew the scriptures well. So, as I'm reading that passage, I'm trying to think, “Am I anything like Apollos?” And I really came very close, and I'm nothing like Apollos. I'm not a great speaker. I wish I was a better defender of the faith. I wish that all these different things. But I just decided I'm not like Apollos.

But then there was one little phrase at the end of this description that I read, and I thought, okay, I can be that. And it just said that Appolos was a great benefit or advantage to every believer that he came in contact with. And I thought, okay, I could be that. And specifically, I thought I could be that for pastors.

And so I just decided at that moment I said, God, whatever days you give me, I want to spend my days being an advantage of specifically the pastors that I come in contact with and so two things. We started a small organization out of LCBC called The Advantage that works with pastors in Pennsylvania specifically. And so we reached out to the largest 80 churches in Pennsylvania, and 72 of them now are working with us to say, how can we just introduce more people to Jesus across Pennsylvania?

But then, when the Global Leadership Network began to talk to me about this role, it just fit perfectly with that as well. And I had been a part of the board of directors for five years. I've known the organization and participated with them for probably 30 years. So it was just a real natural, easy transition for me to step into that role.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, that's wonderful. So, how would you describe the ministry of GLN, Global Leadership Network, in an elevator?

David Ashcraft:

Essentially, we do two things. We've got one big event, which is the Leadership Summit. It's an annual event that will happen. Yeah, we'll have about 300,000 people participate in that across the world. And so that's the big one. But we also want to go small and work with pastors and cohorts, so get groups of 10 to 12 pastors together and just share best practices and help them grow that way. And so it's the big, it's the small; we're known more for the big. I think the impact is on the small as well. And so it's fun to be a part of that and shaping that and guiding it and affecting the culture.

Marlin Detweiler:

So you’ve answered this somewhat, but I want to give you a little bit more time on this. Why did you take this position here at the very young age of, I think right now, 68?

David Ashcraft:

66 right now.

Marlin Detweiler:

Was thinking you were a year older than me, but you’re a year younger than me.

David Ashcraft:

Me. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll be 67 in a week, actually. So we're getting close. Getting close.

Marlin Detweiler:

We’re actually very close to the same age!

David Ashcraft:

We are. Yeah. So when I stepped away from LBC, I knew I wasn't done, and Ruth kept telling me, “You're not done.” There's more you need to be doing. And so I thought the advantage what we were doing in Pennsylvania churches would be real good. I love the GLN, and it's had a huge impact on me personally and my leadership skills.

It's had a big impact on our church and just developing leaders throughout our organization as well. And so when the opportunity came, it presented itself. Some of it was that we had drifted a little bit as an organization; the GLN had and had gotten a little bit away from helping leaders grow so that more people could be introduced to Jesus. And it just drifted more towards just developing leaders. And it's fine to develop leaders, but as a board we all said we're not in this just to be a leadership training organization. It truly is leaders that raise their bar, raise the capacity of their potential as leaders so that more people can be introduced to Jesus. And so it was bringing the organization back in line that was challenging.

But I love the challenge. I'm not a good maintainer. I love helping something grow or helping something get in line. And so it was just a real natural fit for me personally.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, that's awesome. You've been in the position now for around a year?

David Ashcraft:

Actually, just a little over four months, so I am very natural.

Marlin Detweiler:

So you're really still finding your footing, I would assume?

David Ashcraft:

Yeah, very much jumping in and just learning how the organization works, what changes we need to make, what things we need to keep and just accentuate, things like that.

Marlin Detweiler:

So I know to have been around you for more than a decade, there's a lot that you get excited about when it comes to helping leaders lead better. What is it about training leaders that really motivates you? Is it the leverage, or is there more to it?

David Ashcraft:

So leverage is a good word, Marlin. I like that because the way I look at it is if I can impact a pastor, then I'm also going to impact his entire church, and whether the church is 50 people or 100 people or thousands of people, then all of a sudden what I've done behind the scenes is, is huge.

And for me, it's not about whether I am noticed. It really truly is about more people being introduced to Jesus. And so it doesn't matter if I'm the one introducing people to Jesus or if I can help somebody else be better at that. And so if I can help somebody else lead their church and lead it, well, then that's huge.

And for me, the biggest compliment right now in my life that I can have is, you know, a pastor saying, “By being around you, David, you've been a great advantage to me. You've been a real benefit to me.” Then I go, you know what? Then that's great. That's what I want, and I feel very fulfilled that way.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, that's really neat. Are there any insights that you could provide us and where your leadership might take GLM that we could get a glimpse of? I'm not that good to expose something that you're not permitted yet, but I'm always interested because I know from the many dinners that we've had together that the mind is always thinking about next.

David Ashcraft:

Yeah. So right now we're just trying to get back in line. So that's our focus this year. Make sure we're back in alignment. We had a great summit in August, the summits are always in August and this past August was one of our highest rated in the 30 years of existence. So we feel like we've got a lot of momentum moving forward.

And so as we are getting ourselves back in line, we're really gearing up again to say what can we do from the big standpoint? And we would love down the road, you know, ten years from now to have a million people instead of 300,000 people that are participating in the summit. But then the other piece is the cohorts and really building that out.

And we would love to have hundreds of pastors in cohorts with us just sharing best practices, encouraging one another. And because that's where that's what pastors need right now. Pastors are lonely coming out of COVID, coming out of all the political unrest of the last four or five years, pastors feel like they can't win. Every decision they make is wrong.

There's 50% of the people against them. And so you just feel real discouraged and defeated. And so being able to be around them and say, you know what, keep going. You're doing well, and what you're doing matters is real important.

Marlin Detweiler:

So I love to hear an emphasis on leadership training for pastors, because you're right, all leadership is lonely at some level, and pastoral leadership, I think, is uniquely more so in many respects. It's really good to hear that.

David Ashcraft:

Yeah, and I don't know if it is necessarily, but just realize if you've got a thousand people sitting in the audience, everybody thinks they know better than you how to lead the congregation. And especially over the last several years, whether it was mask or no mask, you had 50% of the room mad at you because you were not wearing a mask and 50% mad because you were. And so you just could not win. And so I think that's what made it really difficult and has made it difficult in the last number of years.

Marlin Detweiler:

Are you changing the subject to one last area: you wrote a book recently. It was called or is called What Was I Thinking? I don't have the subtitle written down, so I don't remember it. I've read that.

David Ashcraft:

That's all right. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:

Very much. But my assessment is that you went out on a limb to write that book when no one else would. And that was, I thought, a very courageous thing. The book, as I understand it, recognized that so many leaders had failed morally or sometimes otherwise, but it was primarily about moral failure, and it was your way of dealing with helping to cause more people to avoid that failure. What were you thinking when you wrote What Was I Thinking?

David Ashcraft:

You know what spurred me on. And I've never had a desire to write a book before because I always feel like there's so much content out there, and it's all been said before, so what else could I possibly say? And there was an event that happened in my life of somebody who was a real, in my mind, a strong mentor of mine that had just made some real stupid decisions.

I just remember Ruth and I talking over and over and just thinking, “What in the world was he thinking,” Whether he did what he was accused of or not, it didn't matter. He put himself in situations that were compromising. And so why in the world would he possibly do that? And so it just started me on this journey of trying to figure out why somebody would make those kind of decisions and what could be done to prevent those kind of decisions.

And so then there's a friend of mine who's a business psychologist, and he and I began to talk a lot about it. So we said, let's team up and write this book and just kind of say, okay, how can we help people make better decisions moving forward and prevent some of these mistakes?

And, you know, none of it is necessarily new. It's just we always go back to what we were talking about along, is where do you want to be long term and then what decisions are going to get you there and then what solutions are going to derail you and I know around LCBC, since I started, we constantly talk with the staff and would just say, “Let's not do anything stupid to mess up what God is doing, and God will do great things if we'll just stay out of His way.”

But we tend to just do stupid things. That stupid usually is a relational issue where you get at odds with somebody else on the staff or somebody else in the church or somebody else in your family, or it tends to be a moral failure where you just play too close to the fire and you get burned, and sadly, everybody else gets burned with you.

If you're in a leadership position, even if you're not your family, you know, your marriage is burned, your kids get burned, everybody gets burned in that process. And so just doing what we can to say, how can we help people not make those kind of mistakes? And you know what's interesting, Marlin, when we say a family even getting burned, you guys have been at enough baptism services at LCBC.

But I'm amazed in those baptism services, the way we do it is we have people share their story and to hear a 22-year-old or an 18-year-old or a 22 or 23-year-old and say the point to the time when their parents got in a divorce, you know, ten years ago and at 19, 20, 25, sometimes 30 years old, they're still wrestling through dealing with that destruction of the family. And so it is something that makes a big difference just on a family level. But again, if it's a leader, just multiplies the impact.

Marlin Detweiler:

What kind of feedback have you gotten from people who have read it and benefited from it?

David Ashcraft:

Good. We've had different organizations. We've had some businesses, churches, schools. That say, “Okay, let's go through these principles and just help our people make good decisions.” And it's the kind of thing that, you know, you can teach it to your kids. It's real simple. And so how do we how do we teach our kids just to make better decisions? And we try to keep it simple. I mean, you know, me, Marlin, I break things down. It could be complicated, but I will break it down until I can finally understand. When I teach it, it's as understandable as possible. And so it's real simple and just. It's a way to make decisions and not make mistakes.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, well, I hope and I expect that it has been a blessing to many and probably helped people who might have had some failures that would have derailed them entirely to think twice and remain faithful. So thank you for that.

David Ashcraft:

Yeah, hopefully so. Yeah. Thank you.

Marlin Detweiler:

With that, keep up the good work. I look forward to hearing more about what happens at Global Leadership Network. We will keep an eye on it. Thank you so much for what you've done and for joining me.

David Ashcraft:

Welcome, Marlin. Fun to be with you again today and catch up with you, and fun to see what you guys are doing at Veritas. It's cool.

Marlin Detweiler:

Thank you. We have we've been on a bit of a wild ride. It's been fun.

David Ashcraft:

Good. Yeah, you have. Good job.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's great. Thanks. You have joined us on Veritas Vox. Once again, we've had David Ashcraft with us. Thanks for joining us, David.

David Ashcraft:

Yeah, thank you.