What Your Church Can Learn from Grocery Stores: Why Culture Matters

A.J. Mathieu [00:00:02]:

What does your church have in common with a successful grocery store? We’re going to talk about that next on the Church Revitalization podcast. Hello and welcome to the Church Revitalization podcast, brought to you by the Malfers Group team, where each week we tackle important actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now, here’s your host, Scott Ball and AJ.

Scott Ball [00:00:26]:

Matthew. Welcome to the church, revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I’m joined by my friend and co host AJ matthew. All right, my friend. Today we’re talking about grocery stores. Did I get that right? Is that.

A.J. Mathieu [00:00:45]:

Hey, the sustenance of life, right? I mean, they’ve got things that we need for living. That’s an okay comparison.

Scott Ball [00:00:54]:

We start there. Yeah, okay, fair enough. But that is not actually why we’re talking about it. So I think we should talk about the evolution of this podcast topic.

A.J. Mathieu [00:01:04]:

Briefly, you recap the conversation that we’ve had for the last 3 hours leading up to actually recording this episode.

Scott Ball [00:01:11]:

I was thinking maybe like the 1 minute recap. I was doing some grocery shopping today online at Walmart. I’m a Walmart plus subscriber. There not a sponsor of this podcast, which got us talking about grocery stores and where I live. I don’t live in an area with a lot of choices. I’ve got one local chain that has several grocery stores, or you can shop at Walmart. Like, those are your choices. But where you live, you live in the Metroplex, dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. There’s lots of so it’s prompted this discussion about a particular grocery store chain and why are they so much more successful? In fact, we started talking about how there’s another grocery store right across the street, different brand, different chain, and it’s crickets over there. Yeah, but right across the street. It’s always busy. So why don’t you give us a little bit of background on this particular chain.

A.J. Mathieu [00:02:19]:

I guess for a lot of people would be considered a small town. I don’t know. Small?

Scott Ball [00:02:24]:

Who would consider it small? Well, I mean, people who live in the city center would maybe call where you live small, but anyone who lives in an actual small town would never.

A.J. Mathieu [00:02:37]:

My house is in an actual small town next to a decent size suburb to a major city.

Scott Ball [00:02:46]:

There are a lot of qualifiers on that. I think in your own mind, it’s the same place where you’ve lived for however many years. But I’ve been where you live.

A.J. Mathieu [00:02:55]:

Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:02:55]:

And it feels very much like it’s a suburb of Fort Worth. That’s true.

A.J. Mathieu [00:03:00]:

It is. It’s all adjoined at this there’s. So Texas has a wildly successful grocery store chain called HEB. Is the initials of the founder, Howard E. Butts. Do you know that, Scott? Howard E. Butts. That’s his name.

Scott Ball [00:03:18]:

I can see why he didn’t get glad. He didn’t go for Butts grocery store.

A.J. Mathieu [00:03:24]:

He went with HEB. Hey, my name’s a good choice. My name’s alfred Joseph. AJ. My last name is Ball, so I.

Scott Ball [00:03:33]:

Got made fun of constantly with that. Butts is worse than Alfred or Ball for sure.

A.J. Mathieu [00:03:40]:

Howard E. Butts started this grocery store in Central Texas. I think San Antonio is where they’re it is. I don’t mean it is just wildly successful in Texas and they’ve been growing a lot more recently. They used to be smaller small towns mostly as you’d find these stores, they started really kind of taking off in the last 20 years and they have built large stores. And now if your city is getting one of these, it’s in the news. So people just love it. If you’re familiar if you’re in the United States, southern United States, you might be familiar with a gas station chain called Bucky’s, also another Texas company. And it’s began to expand out. HEB is still only in Texas, but Bucky’s very, very similar. They operate in different spaces. Grocery versus convenience store. Glorified convenience store, very similar. So we got an HEB in our town. I forget when that was. That was around, I don’t know, 2009, 2010, somewhere around oh, no. They just had their 10th or 11th anniversary, probably around 1213. And it was a smash hit from the beginning. They enlarged the store even just a couple of years later.

Scott Ball [00:04:57]:

Oh, wow.

A.J. Mathieu [00:05:00]:

It has a large footprint. So there you go. HEB texas store, very Texas centric. We’ll get into culture details as we go.

Scott Ball [00:05:10]:

Yeah, I think their tagline is taking care of Texans.

A.J. Mathieu [00:05:13]:

Oh, is it? I don’t even know what their main tagline is.

Scott Ball [00:05:16]:

Yeah.

A.J. Mathieu [00:05:16]:

Okay. And Texans love that. If you are not from Texas, you probably have even heard texans love that.

Scott Ball [00:05:25]:

Love mean I grew up in Dallas and AJ. Has heard me introduce myself to people. Many I always people ask, where do you live? How do I respond?

A.J. Mathieu [00:05:38]:

AJ well, you’re usually very broad. Like I live in east Tennessee or small part. You don’t even mention the city, but you’re like but I’m from Dallas. I grew up in the Dallas area.

Scott Ball [00:05:49]:

Always. Yeah, always. I’ll say, oh, I live in East Tennessee. I say east Tennessee because no one knows my town. So I’ll just say I live in Upper East Tennessee, but I’m from Dallas. And always ten out of ten, everybody knows I will never just leave it at Tennessee.

A.J. Mathieu [00:06:06]:

Yeah. Like a good Texan.

Scott Ball [00:06:08]:

I would lose my Texan card, I think, if I stopped mentioning it.

A.J. Mathieu [00:06:12]:

That’s true. You’ve got a mark against you already for leaving. But we were just talking about this me and my wife were talking about this the other day. A lot of places around the world, you could say that you’re from Texas and people would automatically know where that’s know.

Scott Ball [00:06:29]:

Yeah, totally.

A.J. Mathieu [00:06:30]:

You don’t need to necessarily qualify that’s even in the United States it would.

Scott Ball [00:06:34]:

You know, texas is unique. Not totally unique. I think New York is this way, too.

A.J. Mathieu [00:06:40]:

Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:06:42]:

Where you can a I’m a know. And it would be kind of like when you go to Europe and French culture is distinct from just culture. Like there’s things that are just generally Western European, but France is its own thing, germany its own thing, italy its own thing. They’re all Western Europe, but they have a distinct, obviously, language and culture. The United States is mostly not. Like, there’s not that we’re going to get hate mail. I know that there’s differences between Mississippi and Alabama, but as someone who lives in not there are distinctive Tennessee things, but it’s just not that different from Virginia or Western North Carolina. You know what mean? Like there’s a lot of bleed over. Certainly not to the degree that Texas is.

A.J. Mathieu [00:07:40]:

Texas is recognized by the shape of our state. It’s used as a silhouette. It’s hugely recognizable for Americans. Texas is the second largest state by area, second to Alaska. And we willingly choose to ignore that in all circumstances. So we’ll just pretend that we’re the largest. We don’t count.

Scott Ball [00:08:07]:

Mean, it’s number two in population too, but it’s got to be coming close to you got to be nipping on California’s heels.

A.J. Mathieu [00:08:14]:

Yeah, maybe so. Yeah. We don’t talk about being second best in anything. We assume that we are number one by all. Yeah, it’s a huge culture and HEB has leaned into that. HEB is like, we know you love your state. We do too. We’re going to sell products with a name on it, with the shape of it, with the colors of the flag.

Scott Ball [00:08:42]:

Which also happened to be red, white, and blue doubles as like just patriotic. Yeah.

A.J. Mathieu [00:08:49]:

So Texans have just gone all in on HEB. So across the street from HEB in my town, well, it’s on a corner. Across on one corner is a Target store. Across on the other corner is a grocery store called Kroger, which is a much larger, mostly national brand and they own a lot of other brands as well. So for all intents and purposes, it’s a national grocery store. And I’ll tell you what, there is a world of difference between these two experiences as a consumer of grocery related products. The parking lot at HEB, almost any time that they’re open, any day of the week is full and Kroger is mostly empty. When you walk in the store at HEB, it is very busy. It never feels crowded. Sometimes the checkout lines might get a little long, but they move quickly. But it’s a big enough store. It doesn’t feel crowded. You can still might have to wait a second, get around an aisle kroger, you’re going to zip in and out of there in no time flat except for when you want to check out because they don’t seem to employ people that actually work all the checkout lanes. So your bottleneck is getting out of the store because it’s self checkout only and maybe one cashier. HEB has every cash register open, and there’s 20 something of them almost all the time, also with baggers. And it’s just unbelievable. It is a fish tank at feeding time versus a terrarium with a turtle in it. It really is. No comparison. Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:10:36]:

So we got to talking about this, and we’re not just trying to kill time talking about grocery store chains, because what jumped out to us is this is so many of you, your experiences with your church.

A.J. Mathieu [00:10:51]:

There are churches like both of these.

Scott Ball [00:10:53]:

Right, where you’re like, man, one of you it may be like someone kicked over an ant pile, and it’s just like all these people. And another one of you might be listening to this, especially since this is the church revitalization podcast, and you might be going, Pennsy crickets, we’re the terrarium with a turtle in it. And you’re right across the street from the other church, and you’ve got the same kind of location. You maybe even care about some of the same things about the culture there or whatever. Why is one church making an impact and becoming a place where people want to be there and the church across the street can’t hardly pay people to show up? Why does that happen? And it’s more complex than we’re going to make it in today’s episode. But the thing we wanted to highlight today, particularly as it relates to grocery store chains, is culture. Culture is at the heart of this. There’s a difference in culture from hub to kroger. And if you’re having a hard time consuming of know you mentioned Go, why would someone pay attention to the billboards that they put up that says Bucky is 100 miles away? I don’t know if you’ve ever been if you’re traveling United States, I can.

A.J. Mathieu [00:12:24]:

Hold it another 100 miles.

Scott Ball [00:12:26]:

They were like, I can hold it. Or like, okay, I’m going to stop here and use the restroom, but I’m not going to get gas for another 90 miles. I got to get to Bucky’s. Why that? Why does Trader Joe’s have such a following? Or if you live in Europe, if you’re listening to us, what is it about Ikea that has such a hold on people? What makes the difference? And culture is a huge part of it. Strategy is a part of it. But as we’re going to talk about, strategy is an implication of it’s an artifact of the culture which runs deeper. So we want to talk about how do you build a culture? What are the aspects of that, and why are some cultures more successful than others and using this grocery store chain as maybe a metaphor for what’s happening?

A.J. Mathieu [00:13:23]:

Yeah, I mean, there’s one other comparison that I kind of want to make also. That it could happen is not the case in our grocery store talk, and it’s not the case in every church. And that’s the oh, well, the megachurch. It’s all flash. There’s no depth to it. It’s spiritual junk food. And that’s just what people so, you know, bringing that back to the grocery store. Oh, yeah. Well, kroger their prices are a little bit higher, but it’s all of the finest quality, and it will improve your health. And HEB is just junk food, and they sell it for pennies, and that’s why it’s full. And that’s not the case. I would argue better quality food at HEB at a fair price. And that’s the case with a lot of churches as bash. We’re not bashing small churches. We’re not bashing megachurches, because there are a lot of large churches that are really, you would say, maybe exciting, but they’re just good environments, and you are going to get fed well there of good substance.

Scott Ball [00:14:30]:

So that’s not you can also be a smaller church or a more normative sized church and also be really compelling. I think if we’re going to use our grocery store analogy here, AJ. You know, a good example of this would be like a Trader Joe’s. You’ve never seen a large Trader Joe’s in your life. They are not they’re always pretty moderately sized. They’re also generally not like in fancy buildings. They’re very often in just some shopping strip mall. Sometimes they’re standalone. Sometimes they’re in a strip mall somewhere. They’re not flashy looking, but they are extremely popular. The people who love Trader Joe’s love Trader Joe’s, and it has to do with their prices. Yes, but also their culture. Like, they have a culture. Trader Joe’s has a culture also has to do with some of their like, people are, like, big fans of the Trader Joe’s branded, like, frozen foods and other assorted items that they have there, too. So there’s a whole culture around those food want saying the same thing as you. I don’t want what to be heard is you have to be big and flashy in order to have a culture that’s successful. No, it’s deeper than that. Deeper than that? Yeah.

A.J. Mathieu [00:15:55]:

All right, well, let’s take us then, Scott, through some layers.

Scott Ball [00:16:02]:

Okay, so actually a great book on culture is this one by Aubrey. Look, before you lead came out, I think in maybe 2010 or so, somewhere in that neighborhood, 2013, I was close. And in the book, Aubrey uses this metaphor of the culture apple and so on. The outside layer of culture is like the skin of that apple. Then the next layer, deep, is like the flesh of that apple. And then the next layer, deep, is the core of the apple. And culture likewise, has these three distinct layers. Actually, let’s just take them one by one. I don’t want to kind of peek ahead too far. Let’s start with this first one. The first layer of the apple is that skin of the apple. The outside layer of culture is behaviors. Behaviors. It’s what we do when you go and you shop for an apple like you’re at the grocery store, no pun intended, and you’re trying to find some apples, you can’t possibly know how good it’s going to taste, how juicy it is. Is it mealy or not or whatever? You can’t really tell that until you eat it. What you’re judging it by is the outside. What does it look like? What do I see? Does it look healthy? Am I seeing wormholes in it? What is it that I see? But what you’re seeing is ultimately a reflection of what’s happening deeper. But the first thing to notice is those external behaviors Aubrey talks about. He talks about overt behaviors, actions and artifacts. Artifacts just being physical things which represent the culture. So logos, signage, all of these sort of physical things that are also embodiments of your.

A.J. Mathieu [00:18:19]:

I mean, this is another good comparison, though, in this kind of analogy that we’re using, because consider the outward appearance of a lot of churches. Now, in this case, Kroger and HEB don’t have really any significant external driving by the stores, they both look fairly new. The architecture is modern. Kroger doesn’t look rundown. But think about a lot of churches. I mean, there’s always a church. This is probably pretty good because things just stick with you. Anytime I want to or come into a thought of what is a church that doesn’t look like it has life, there’s one church in town that always comes to mind because the grass is usually overgrown, the bushes don’t look good, the sign is kind of broken looking. And then on Sunday, there’s still three cars there. I don’t know what’s going on with that, but this is the bruise on the apple. You’re not going to choose the apple with the bruise on it when there’s one right next to it that’s unbruised. It’s the thinnest layer. It’s the most obvious thing. It doesn’t exactly tell you what’s going on inside, but it’s enough to make a decision.

Scott Ball [00:19:34]:

That’s right. Yeah.

A.J. Mathieu [00:19:35]:

And it matters.

Scott Ball [00:19:37]:

Yeah. I always think about this every time I see a church that has gates on its parking lots. You see these sometimes the parking lot is gated during the week.

A.J. Mathieu [00:19:50]:

Worked with some churches in some parts of town in which they chose to gate off. Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:19:56]:

I understand. Maybe kind of I understand, I guess. No one’s going to steal your parking lot, though, like lock the doors, because what it communicates is we’re closed. All I’m saying is it communicates something to people. You drive by and we don’t want you here. The only time we want to see you is on Sunday morning or on Wednesday night or whatever. The gates are closed. Even think about the vision of heaven in Revelation is that it has walls, right? But its gates are never closed. That’s the vision of the new heaven and the new earth. The new Jerusalem is it’s a city that has walls, meaning it has boundaries. Like, there are boundary lines for it, but its gates are never closed. Wait a minute, Scott.

A.J. Mathieu [00:20:57]:

Every cartoon ever, there’s pearl or golden gates with armed guards of angels making sure that you’re supposed to be there or not.

Scott Ball [00:21:09]:

I’m just saying, in the new Jerusalem.

A.J. Mathieu [00:21:14]:

Gotcha the new heaven and an earth.

Scott Ball [00:21:16]:

The new heaven and the new heaven.

A.J. Mathieu [00:21:18]:

The new earth. Okay, then the gates are finally open.

Scott Ball [00:21:20]:

You can have quibbles with it, I guess, if you want, but you got to take it up with a guy who wrote it.

A.J. Mathieu [00:21:24]:

I’m just reporting the present. Pearly gates up in the clouds are closed yes.

Scott Ball [00:21:34]:

With porky pig holding a sitting on a cloud playing a harp. Yes. You have a very biblically accurate view of okay, sorry we got distracted. But the point is that it communicates something. Everything you do communicates something. We talk about this with churches all the time. Every wall inside your building tells a story. Is this wall communicating what you want it to communicate? But here’s the thing it communicates who you are. So going back to the grocery store, you can share some more about this, but you were telling me about some things that HEB does for kids and things like that. Chick fil a is another example. They do a lot of things that are family oriented. They don’t do those things because they have a family strategy. Like our strategy is to reach families. No, it flows from who they are. They have a value for caring for families. Therefore they do these family oriented things. Likewise, the walls in your building, whether you want them to or not, they communicate who you are right now. If they’re filled with stuff that’s outdated, if they’re ugly, if they’re chipped, that is a reflection of who you are. It might not be a reflection of who you want to be, but it is a reflection of who you are. Maybe it says you’re careless, or maybe it says that you’re not a church that pays attention to details. Or maybe it tells you that you’re a church that not a lot’s going on, so you got to leave stuff that’s outdated on the boards. Look, I’m not sure. I’m just saying, whether you like it or not, all those artifacts and all of those actions are a reflection of who you are. That’s a hard reality.

A.J. Mathieu [00:23:32]:

That’s true. It’s true. Yeah. Yeah. This weekend at HEB, we went in there, and it was bonkers over in the produce area. They had an HEB tent up inside, and there was a watermelon contest going on for kids over there. And we’re walking past the seafood towards the produce. I’m like, wow, look at this. Oh, it’s a watermelon contest. And just then, Ethan ethan wins. I’m clapping and cheering for just I don’t know who he is, but the vibe was such that, wow, this is like a party going on over here. They were painting faces and all this stuff. So it was kid day. It was burlson kid day at the HEB, and families were there like, let’s get to HEB because it’s Family Day. But it wasn’t Family Day just that day. It’s Family Day every day, and they were just celebrating something with a little bit more overtly at that time. They’ve got the He Buddy mascot, Scott. This is B-U-D-Y not buddy could have been. Buddy. Could have been.

Scott Ball [00:24:44]:

H E budy.

A.J. Mathieu [00:24:46]:

But it’s so, you know, cartoon kids thing. The kids at the cash register, they get Buddy Bucks, these little paper dollars, and you go put it into the machine and get a prize on your way out the door. You don’t find that at Kroger. So Kroger’s not painting faces of kids and having prizes over. Know it’s crickets. It’s like, all right, fine. Get in here and buy your groceries and get out because somebody else might want to come. And we can only fit one person at a time in our gigantic store.

Scott Ball [00:25:16]:

Well, you only have one register open unless you want to check yourself out.

A.J. Mathieu [00:25:22]:

Yeah. This is culture. This is the outer behavior of the store. But what’s driving HEB to want to be family centered? Why do they want families now? Again, it’s a for profit company. They want to sell stuff and make a profit. And if they can get your kids in the store, this is, like, becoming very cynical. Like, our core values are profit, and if we can sell candy to kids, then let’s make sure kids are in the store. I don’t think that’s where their values come from, and we can talk about what their values as we go. Yeah, it still works out. They’ve got families involved in wanting to come to the store. On the other hand, I don’t know, is that helpful for Moms or Dads that we need to go to the grocery store? Do we want to go to the place that our kids aren’t going to complain about and give us a hard time about while we’re shopping? Maybe. So maybe that’s helpful for parents to be in an environment that kids don’t mind going to that would align more so with the stated values of HEB.

Scott Ball [00:26:30]:

Yeah. I think this is maybe a really important point to make when you’re only thinking about these kinds of things through the lens of strategy, like, oh, we could do a family day and that will attract people to our store. Or when you’re thinking about that as a church, let’s have Fall festival, and that will attract people to our church just as a purely strategic, then you’re immediately only thinking about it through the lens of that cost benefit analysis. Right. How much is this going to cost me and what can I get from it?

A.J. Mathieu [00:27:10]:

Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:27:11]:

And when it’s flowing from who you are on a purely rational basis, I’m not sure that it makes a ton of sense to be, like, having a watermelon contest or this Buddy Bucks system where you’re having to make these buddy bucks and then you’re going to have to provide prizes for kids. I mean, just do what everyone else does and give a free cookie to the bakery section. Why does it need to be more complex? Some accountant somewhere in that company probably would really love to crunch the numbers and see whether or not what could we trim back about this and maximize the profit? I guess what I’m trying to say.

A.J. Mathieu [00:28:00]:

Is.

Scott Ball [00:28:04]:

Your culture is more than the sum of its parts. So for Kroger or some other chain to replicate what HEB is doing, they couldn’t just start hosting a more than it runs deeper than that. Does that make sense? I see churches making this mistake all the time. They’ll see some big successful looking church and go, oh, let’s just do that thing that they do and let’s copy and paste that thing. Or from some other community even, or some other state and go, oh, saddleback does that. Let’s do that. Or fill in the blank with whatever other church you kind of idolize in your mind. They do this event. Let’s copy and paste this event in our community and it will be just as successful. And even if in the moment it’s successful, AJ. It won’t have the lasting effect because HEB success is more than the sum of its family days and Budy Buck system. It’s culture wide. Does that make any sense?

A.J. Mathieu [00:29:10]:

Yeah. Well, you’re making me think about people now, too. And we mentioned Chick fil A, of course. They’re almost stereotypically known for the people that work there in their well known phrase, my pleasure. Every time you ask for something or thank them for doing something, the response is always my pleasure. For some of them, I’m sure they’re like, oh, I have to say my pleasure. And for others, they want to say my pleasure. I give them the benefit of the doubt. I think most of them want to say my pleasure.

Scott Ball [00:29:40]:

Well, I think the people that don’t want to say that probably don’t make it long.

A.J. Mathieu [00:29:45]:

Yeah. But it’s a different experience interacting with the employees of Chick fil A than it is in many other fast food restaurants. You can almost insert any other fast food chain into that sentence.

Scott Ball [00:29:58]:

I actually have a criticism it’s in line with all this of Chick fil A. The pandemic killed a lot of their family stuff. They didn’t do the family’s because because of COVID and all that. And I think they’re maybe starting to bring some of it back. But when’s the last time you went into Chick fil A and you saw that cow out?

A.J. Mathieu [00:30:17]:

Yeah. You think they’re too slow at bringing that back? No reason I do.

Scott Ball [00:30:22]:

And I think that they’re prioritizing that. They’ve learned through COVID that the drive thru makes them a ton of money.

A.J. Mathieu [00:30:32]:

Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:30:32]:

And so you’ve seen you go buy a chickfila now, that doesn’t have the extended drive through they built this on.

A.J. Mathieu [00:30:39]:

One of ours is upgrading out there.

Scott Ball [00:30:41]:

And fans out there and stuff for the employees that they’re comfortable while they’re working out there. And so all of their resources are going into optimizing the drive through. I think it’s going to hurt them.

A.J. Mathieu [00:30:52]:

Long term, it may. If you reduce the interaction deviation from.

Scott Ball [00:30:58]:

The culture of what has made them successful, I think in the short run, it’s going to be profitable for them. But I think long term, if they maintain that focus, I think it’s going to hurt them because people don’t love Chickfila. Although the Chick fil A drive thru is also a cultural phenomenon, people appreciate the efficiency of the Chick fil A drive thru. But just as a parent, I’m telling you, people love the family culture, and I think they have sabotaged that, compromised that some, and I think that will cost them eventually.

A.J. Mathieu [00:31:34]:

Yeah, you may be right. You may be right. I think this is something maybe cutting too much to the end here, but what can you do? How could you fix that if that’s your culture? Honestly, I think the people, if Kroger was like, you know what? We’re going to invest in totally changing the culture of our employees and the experience in our stores and at a loss for the next couple of years. We’re going to triple the staff in every store and put them all in matching shirts and train them to smile and be overly helpful. If you walked into Kroger next week and there was a dozen, two dozen more people than you normally see working there, and they’re greeting everybody and they’re like, hey, can I help you find anything? They’re roaming the aisles. Hey, have you tried is here’s a new product? I think that would be the fastest change to culture at Kroger would be the people that work there and how they interact with customers, the quantity and the quality of people that work there. And that’s what HEB’s got going. And I think that’s a primary driver. That’s what people experience the most and that’s the differentiator in a lot of churches. Right. Scott we talk a lot about first impressions if you get a genuine greeting from happy people. And everything that you need to find out about a church is easy to find out because people are willing to tell you and help you or show you. And it just feels like a place that people are happy to be and that they’re happy that you are there and they want you to feel comfortable. That’s a huge differentiator. And we see that across stores and we see that across churches.

Scott Ball [00:33:16]:

Yeah. Okay. I think we’re leading then to this second layer. So the first layer is these behaviors. A good way of phrasing. This is we see, we hear, we feel, we sense blank when we come to your church. So this is the external. Thing that everyone feels and experiences, but those things are rooted in something deeper, and so that next deeper level, then, are your values. So the organizational values in general, but the core values in particular. So you’ve got a lot of things that you might value, but we do what we value something. We teach churches all the time. What’s making decisions for you when you’re not paying attention? The answer is your values. Your values decide what it is that you do. So what we’re talking about with HEB, an exercise that we do with churches when we’re working with them in our training, is we show them some pictures. I don’t want to give too much away, but we show a series of pictures associated with a particular person and personal brand, and people are able to very quickly identify the person or brand that these pictures are associated with, and you can immediately tell what it is that they value just by looking at the pictures. You don’t have to read. I don’t even know if this person brand has a written core values credo that one could find online, but you don’t need it because they’re obvious based on the behaviors and actions. You can tell what the values are, and that would be true. This is what we’ve been kind of circling this. AJ. If you want to know what your church values, look at what it is that you’re doing that will tell you what your church values. If you’re not instinctually doing certain things, it tells them you don’t value that thing. But it is worth because your values can change. You can choose to adjust your values, and then you would begin to live those things out. But let’s talk a little bit briefly here about values, and we can use HEB as an example, since they’re sort of our template for today.

A.J. Mathieu [00:35:32]:

Yeah, well, we jotted down some of the HEB values on here. One of them is service, and they talk about that. It’s their pledge to always go above and beyond. That’s a good value, that you want to exceed people’s expectations in how you serve them.

Scott Ball [00:35:51]:

I like the way that they phrase this, too, AJ. They wrote, we think like the customer. We think like the customer, not about the customer. And what a great way to think about service. Like, if you want to serve someone, this would be true, like, in your marriage. I’m not going to say I’m very good at this. I’m trying to think like Allison, not think about, like, what is Allison thinking that Allison needs? Not, what do I think Allison needs? Those are two different things. You know what I mean?

A.J. Mathieu [00:36:29]:

So if I really want to serve.

Scott Ball [00:36:30]:

Her, I’ve got to think, what is Allison thinking that Allison needs? Yeah, not, what does Scott think that this is?

A.J. Mathieu [00:36:38]:

This is a good frame of mind. I think a lot of churches will, just by default, think there’s homeless people in our city or there’s poverty in our city. We need a food bank or we need a clothing bank. They’re like homeless people exist, therefore this will be our response. That pretty much every other organization or church is the response. Or are they truly thinking what is the experience like for people that are homeless in our city? What are they feeling and thinking that we could get deeper into what their needs truly are and how we serve them. It might sound like there’s not a huge distinction there, but I think the end result can be really vast. Totally. And for then those the recipients of that service, it feels different because you’ve spent more time thinking about it, you’ve analyzed the situation and you’ve probably discovered more depth than somebody else may have. And then those people are going to respond differently to you, which that’s again, HEB people respond differently to them because of they are first reaching out to people in a different way and the response from customers is different back towards them.

Scott Ball [00:38:10]:

This is a good example since we’ve been talking about the family stuff. It’s like where does the family stuff come from? The family stuff comes from thinking like the customer. What does the customer think the customer is thinking? It’s really hard to go to the grocery store with my kids. It’s miserable. The kids always are just grabbing stuff off the shelves. They’re like cranky. It’s not fun to go to the grocery store with your kids. What could make going to the grocery store, you know, more than an errand? We’ll talk about that here in a minute. But how could it be an enjoyable thing and and make that more? And so thinking like the customer being the parent also the customer being the kid ultimately as well. And so thinking what is it that kids what’s it like? What’s it like to be a kid in the grocery store and optimizing that experience for them so you can see that that value of service then leads to an action or behavior, a strategy. And so think about your church. What are the natural consequences of your values? Also look at the things that you’re doing and they will tell you something about what you value. And what you value may not actually be a healthy thing, right? So you might say, for example, let’s take Kroger. You walk into Kroger and they’ve got one checkout line open, the rest are self checkout and then closed lanes that could be staffed. What does that say about what they value? It says they value profit over people. No one wants to self check out. I mean, unless you have one thing seriously, like unless you have a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread, no one wants to go through the self checkout. If you’ve got more than two or three items, there’s not a person on the planet who wants self checkout. If you’ve got a grocery cart full of stuff, you want someone else to do it.

A.J. Mathieu [00:40:23]:

Yeah, right. Certainly for a lot of items. Yeah. If you had that choice, there’s one person in line in front of you, or there’s nobody in line in front. There’s an open cashier. You got 35 items, 50 items, and all you have to do is roll up, put it on the belt, it’s rung up, and there’s somebody there at the end. Bagging.

Scott Ball [00:40:45]:

Bagging.

A.J. Mathieu [00:40:46]:

It like old school grocery. You’re choosing that. Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:40:50]:

Right. And so the point is, Walmart does the same thing. Kroger’s doing the same thing where they’re wow it’s. We save a lot of money by having people run their own. Like, they probably wouldn’t put in a value statement on their website. We value profits over people, but their actions tell you what they value.

A.J. Mathieu [00:41:12]:

Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:41:13]:

And so I’m asking you to look at your church and go, all right, you may not say we value tradition over reaching, over evangelism, but what are your behaviors telling me? Your behaviors may be telling me something.

A.J. Mathieu [00:41:33]:

Couple of since while we’re on values, there’s a couple of other ones of HeBS that I really like, Scott, that I think are really good. The church should really consider these things. Now, HEB says they value innovation. That’s cool. I mean, that’s not necessarily one that in a limited list of church core values. I wouldn’t put innovation in one, but the way they phrase this, I think, is excellent. Relentlessly dissatisfied with the present. That’s not the entire statement, but that’s how they sum it up. Relentlessly dissatisfied with the present. And so many churches that we work with are stuck in the past or satisfied with the present. Regardless of how well the present is going, they’re still satisfied with it. They might say they’re not, but their actions say they are. And I just think this is another one that it’s driven this organization in question, HEB, to make really interesting choices and to always be innovating. They say it’s a value and they live it out. But just to be straight up, churches should be dissatisfied with the present. I don’t care how successful, quote, unquote, you think your church might be right now. You should remain dissatisfied with the present and be seeking always a greater impact, making Jesus known to one more person, welcoming one more person, always getting better at everything, and then the other one.

Scott Ball [00:43:06]:

Sorry, hold on. I want to interject here. I would maybe say that my thinking on this has evolved a little bit. Innovation definitely a value. It’s stated in its actual, but also not on this list would be some element even if they wouldn’t use this word, some element of tradition as well, in that we care about, know we care for Texans, or infusing everything with Texas colors, texas shaped things. Texas, that’s very much.

A.J. Mathieu [00:43:37]:

There is tradition.

Scott Ball [00:43:39]:

There’s a tradition there. And so I guess what I’m wondering is maybe a lot of people hear traditions bad and then go, well, then you’ve got to torpedo some of this. And I think that that’s not necessarily true. There are elements of tradition that are grounding, that are helpful and create an environment where people feel at home and feel as it should that the church isn’t the same as the world. You should walk into church and it feels just like as if you walked into a concert or hall or a movie theater or a shopping mall. Like it should feel holy and different and distinct.

A.J. Mathieu [00:44:23]:

Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:44:23]:

And yet that doesn’t have to be held in at the exclusion of this idea of being dissatisfied with the present. Is it paradoxical to be able to hold both those things as a value? I think that you kind of can.

A.J. Mathieu [00:44:38]:

You can. Yeah. Here, let me throw a really scary thing out there. 50, 60 years from now, so many Californians have moved to Texas that the culture has changed and that pride of Texas has been lost. People don’t care anymore. And HEB is kicking and screaming, holding on with every last effort to still be Texas centric. People don’t shop there as much anymore. And they finally come to the realization while we’ve had this tradition of Texas for a long time, but the culture has changed and people don’t value Texas like they used to. We’re just another state. And they would finally go, it’s maybe time for us to let go of this tradition. It’s holding us back now and we need to let that go. I think there’s comparisons that could be made in churches, maybe. Okay, all right, maybe bad.

Scott Ball [00:45:41]:

Let me push you on this. Are there not certain things, though, that should be countercultural and sustaining even if and when the broader culture has moved on from that tradition? Well, and where do you draw that line?

A.J. Mathieu [00:46:04]:

I think you draw that line in this case, in this hypothetical scenario that sounds like hell on earth to me that Texans would lose.

Scott Ball [00:46:12]:

It’ll be a cold day in Texas when Texans stop caring about Texas. But okay, that’s right.

A.J. Mathieu [00:46:20]:

But the, you know, Texas themed things might be up there on the level of maybe even worship music, something that it’s a preference, it’s a style, but it’s not on par with our commitment to God’s word or evangelism or things that should not change no matter what happens with the culture. Worship style does change with the culture. We don’t worship the same today as we did 50 years ago or 1000 years ago. That could be tradition that is okay to change without losing other things that are more solid and should be unchanging. So that might be the way to compare this as a value that over time might need to adjust to the culture without losing core convictions.

Scott Ball [00:47:13]:

Okay, yeah, fine.

A.J. Mathieu [00:47:16]:

But you could hang on to it too long.

Scott Ball [00:47:19]:

I’m going to keep pushing. I’m going to keep pushing. Are there things that are uniquely church? Honestly, AJ, I’m trying to think of a really good example of this.

A.J. Mathieu [00:47:30]:

Another comparison besides what I just presented as far as worship style.

Scott Ball [00:47:36]:

Yeah. Okay. Because what I see churches doing sometimes is abandoning things they shouldn’t be so quick to abandon because they deem it’s not culturally relevant anymore. And we got to become culturally relevant. And even when they’re technically still staying in the wheelhouse of good theology, they are so on the borderline of that in their pursuit of trying to become relevant and innovative. Does that make sense? Well, I’m not talking about churches that have gone way off the deep end on the left where you’re like, that isn’t even a church anymore. I’m talking about churches that are maybe on the attractional spectrum and you’re like, what are you doing? What is this? This isn’t even church anymore, whatever this is, okay? All of the pieces are there for maybe what you would technically call an evangelical church, but it’s almost like uncanny value. Like, what are you doing? Does that make sense?

A.J. Mathieu [00:48:34]:

I guess a lot of people would say that about mean it’s not.

Scott Ball [00:48:39]:

I would exactly say that about Joel Osteen.

A.J. Mathieu [00:48:41]:

They’re not universalists. They kind of still make you think they’re Christian. But if you’re a mature believer, you would spend a little time there and go, what are you doing?

Scott Ball [00:48:53]:

I’d even go a layer above that. I’d even go a layer above that. And I’d look at some megachurches. I’m not anti megachurch. I know you go to one and I’ve attended them and worked at them. I’m not anti megachurch, but sometimes I’m like, what are we doing? What are we doing with flying the guy from the trapeze?

A.J. Mathieu [00:49:12]:

Sure. Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:49:13]:

I’m like, what is this? And you go into their theology and you’re like, I guess they’re solid. Whatever this is, this isn’t church. And then they could go, hey, we’re relentlessly dissatisfied with the present. And I’m like, maybe you should have been, like, a little bit satisfied with the past.

A.J. Mathieu [00:49:31]:

I got you hear what I’m saying?

Scott Ball [00:49:33]:

I know.

A.J. Mathieu [00:49:33]:

It was a long journey to get back. Okay. That was a long journey to get back to your discomfort with discomfort.

Scott Ball [00:49:41]:

I may have to shorten this in.

A.J. Mathieu [00:49:42]:

The edit to the journey there gotcha, yes, for sure. I don’t think every church needs to embrace relentlessly dissatisfied with the present. And then that means, like, you never know what you’re going to get on any particular Sunday. That’s not what I’m saying. That’s not how HEB expresses it. And I think healthy churches, you know, Aubrey had used that phrase, something like that, relentlessly dissatisfied with the status quo or something to that.

Scott Ball [00:50:12]:

Guess what I’m getting at, AJ, is there’s nothing in HEB’s values list. And I know we haven’t read the whole thing, but you can just take my word for it that’s a limiting principle on the stated value of innovation, which is why I don’t really ever like innovation as a value, because innovation should have a limiting principle. You shouldn’t innovate yourself to a place where people don’t recognize you anymore.

A.J. Mathieu [00:50:41]:

Yeah. It should not be in conflict with good tradition. Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:50:47]:

Does that make sense?

A.J. Mathieu [00:50:48]:

Yeah, totally. Yeah. I would say the same thing. The second one that I wanted to highlight was their value of commitment, and they say you don’t need permission to do the right thing. So I think that we can make a similar argument here. Having permission to do the right thing is not a blank check to say yes to anything every single time. But I think when you’re speaking about leadership in the church, people should feel empowered to do the right thing, obviously within some boundaries. But I think that’s a really good value is you don’t need permission to do the right thing. That’s a cultural thing that we well, of course you have to back up and define what is the right thing. Our beliefs should inform what right wrong is.

Scott Ball [00:51:36]:

All right, now you’re getting on our last point. Let’s go there.

A.J. Mathieu [00:51:39]:

Well, then we can finally segue then to .3.

Scott Ball [00:51:41]:

Yes, finally. So level one, the outside layer of culture is behaviors, actions. The second layer sort of the core I’m sorry, the flesh layer. Flesh is such a gross word, like the flesh of the apple. I know, but that’s what’s called is meat. But you’re eating a fruit. Like, it’s not meat. Not flesh either. Well, anyways, that part of the apple is the values. The core of the apple is beliefs.

A.J. Mathieu [00:52:17]:

Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:52:18]:

Now, I want to be clear on this idea of beliefs, as Aubrey sort of defines it in this book. It certainly overlaps with your doctrinal beliefs. Definitely it does. Like, it includes your doctrinal beliefs, but it’s bigger than is he calls them unquestioned assumptions. What are the unquestioned assumptions? So maybe this goes after a little bit of what I was saying, AJ. When I see a church that has people flying in on a wire playing a snare drum, I just look at that and go, whatever this is, this isn’t church anymore. Like, we’ve lost the thread. Mean, I’m sorry. There was a viral clip of a very well known church lately where the pastor was dressed up like Woody and his wife dressed up like Little Bo Peep. And to me, I’m like, I’m not a legalist I’m not saying you got to be up there in a suit and tie, but whatever that is, that not church.

A.J. Mathieu [00:53:29]:

We’ve stepped outside the box.

Scott Ball [00:53:31]:

And so I guess what I’m uncovering is I have some unquestioned assumptions about what is and is not church. And as churches, I guess, are on the bleeding edge, I’m going, oh, whatever that is, that’s not church. Yeah. I think we all have these sort of unquestioned assumptions, and those things then motivate our values and our actions.

A.J. Mathieu [00:53:56]:

Yeah, there you go. So to kind of restate what I said into that segue a value of not needing permission to do the right thing. Our core beliefs have to have defined what the right thing is first before we can give an open permission, an accepted open permission to always make sure that we are doing the right thing in alignment with what our beliefs are. So I think that’s a great example of our beliefs informing what our actions are allowed to be and then establishing permission, whatever the boundaries are, for those actions. So I think that’s a good one.

Scott Ball [00:54:41]:

Yes. Okay. All right, so let’s land this airplane. HEB is creaming Kroger, at least in the one example of Burleson, Texas. They’re right across the street from each other. Kroger, I think, is obviously doing fine. They build stores all over the country. So they’re profitable, I assume. Maybe they’re not. I don’t know. I don’t know how Kroger is doing financially.

A.J. Mathieu [00:55:10]:

Yeah, I don’t know.

Scott Ball [00:55:11]:

But at least in your one example, they’re losing to HEB. And the reason for that is the culture is different. The culture is different.

A.J. Mathieu [00:55:26]:

Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:55:26]:

And for your church, you might be right across the street from some church that seems to be doing pretty well. And if you’re going, man, we’re not doing so well. There are a lot of factors, and there’s a lot of things going on. But one of the questions you should be asking yourself is, what is our culture? What is our culture? And how is that culture impacting our impact on our on our community? And so, again, to recap, we have these three layers. We have this outside layer that is behavior. The actions, the things that we do, what we do. Then the next level down, the flesh of that culture apple is the values we do what we value. So what is it that we value? And then the third layer down is the beliefs. What are those unquestioned assumptions that we have that are you have lots of beliefs is something that Aubrey says. You have a lot of beliefs, but the ones that you act on, those core beliefs that you act on, those are the things that you really value. And then those things then motivate your behaviors.

A.J. Mathieu [00:56:37]:

Yeah, well, I think a point of application, especially if you’re the Kroger Church, I ask often, and I posed this this morning, it’s kind of kicked off this discussion that we had. Scott, has anyone from Kroger gone over to HEB and just looked around and see what is different about them? If you haven’t left your church in a long time, and I’m not saying go find a church and copy them. You did not hear AJ say that. But have you experienced what’s happening outside of your church? Because it does become very easy to get locked in. And maybe you’re the solo pastor. You’re like, I’m preaching every sunday. I’m not going anywhere. There’s a whole other plenty of other episodes that you could refer back to about how to maybe get you out of the pulpit every now and then, but other leaders in the church yeah. Have we investigated what’s different about us versus others? And again, not for the intent of becoming somebody else, but for finding your own, quote, unquote, success, which for us is kingdom growth and people committing to Christ. Have we investigated what we could do differently? And there might be things to learn from other churches or from grocery stores that would allow us to be introspective and prayerful and seeking God in his word that would help us to change our actions. And maybe we need to change our values and maybe we need to change our beliefs so that we can change the outcome of our church. So I would encourage you to do that. That might be a challenge for you to take some time and work through that, and I would pull together a team and do that.

Scott Ball [00:58:26]:

I think the first step, if you were like, what is a first step that I could take? I would go back to what I was saying earlier on the episode where whether you like it or not, the current actions of your church are a manifestation of what you value.

A.J. Mathieu [00:58:46]:

Yes. You should accept isn’t worse.

Scott Ball [00:58:50]:

Right. That’s the truth. You can’t say, well, we actually value this other thing, and I know that I’m doing this, and that’s not really what I value. No, it is really what you value. You may wish you valued something different, but what you really value are the things that you are actually doing. And so start there and go, what is that we’re doing? Look around the building. What does it look like? Look at how do you plan a service? How do you put it together? How are we recruiting volunteers? How are we training up volunteers and go, oh, we really value leadership here, but you’re not actually training any new leaders. Your volunteer recruitment is garbage. You don’t really value that. If you valued it, you’d be doing more of it. Right?

A.J. Mathieu [00:59:38]:

Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:59:39]:

And so that’s a hard thing, but it’s the reality.

A.J. Mathieu [00:59:44]:

Yeah. We can help you with a first impressions evaluation if you want to look at that. Our church ministry analysis is also really good. We could do conduct an assessment with your church to probably uncover some things that might be a little beneath the waterline, so might consider that too. That’s a super inexpensive thing that you could do with your church. More information@malfursgroup.com about the church ministry, so all right, Scott.

Scott Ball [01:00:09]:

Wow.

A.J. Mathieu [01:00:09]:

Long episode. Great culture discussion. Thanks to HEB for being awesome. Had groceries.

Scott Ball [01:00:21]:

Maybe I’ll make a trip to HEB sometime. I’ll be in Dallas here in a couple of weeks. Maybe I’ll swing in HEB.

A.J. Mathieu [01:00:27]:

Y’all. Come on. You can come visit. I don’t know. We may not want you to stay.

Scott Ball [01:00:34]:

But you can come visit. All right. Thanks, everybody. You can read today’s show notes malphursgroup.com/202. Did you already say that?

A.J. Mathieu [01:00:43]:

No.

Scott Ball [01:00:44]:

All right, Malphursgroup.com/202. And while you’re over there on the website, send us a tip. Monetarily malphursgroup.com donate. We’re like the podcast version of turning that cash register around.

A.J. Mathieu [01:01:02]:

We just spun the screen around.

Scott Ball [01:01:04]:

We spun the screen around.

A.J. Mathieu [01:01:05]:

If this great episode click, there’s a.

Scott Ball [01:01:07]:

Question for you to answer. After you answer that, you can swipe your card. That’s terrible. Don’t you love how they say that? There’s just a question for you. Answer real quick. It’s just a question. Malfurstgroup.com Donate is where you can answer that question. And we’ll be back with you next week. See you.