Making Church Approachable | A How I Lead Interview with Shawn Edwards
Leading Saints Podcast
Leading Saints
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2024
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Shawn Edwards has spent nearly 25 years in brand marketing, including roles at Kraft, Clorox, and Microsoft. He currently manages a marketing consulting firm he founded in 2012. His work with both small and Fortune 500 companies alike has helped him find his love for a good brand, a good logo, and a good t-shirt. Shawn currently serves as a bishop and has previously served as bishopric counselor, stake high counselor, elders quorum president, and ward mission leader, among others. He has been trying to be called as a Primary teacher for over 30 years, but that remains elusive. Shawn currently resides just outside of Denver, Colorado, with his better half, Carrie, and their three children. He loves to wakeboard, snowboard, and has never met a pint of Haagen Dazs he didn’t like.
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Highlights
2:40 Introduction to Shawn Edwards, bishop of his ward in Colorado. He grew up in Sandy, Utah, but didn’t grow up in the Church. It wasn’t till college that he got active in the Church. 6:00 Getting called as bishop right as we were getting out of the covid pandemic. Shawn decided to focus on unity during that time. 7:40 Creating unity in the ward with branding. Shawn even designed a logo and t-shirt for his ward. Shawn teaches the importance of brands and how it is about creating new thoughts and perceptions in the ward. It was about creating a mental shift with the members. 11:30 How to establish a brand in your ward. Ways to reinforce your brand. 12:50 Keeping your brand and message alive in the ward. 13:45 An initiative to help his ward focus more on Christ was creating a 90-day challenge to read the Book of Mormon together. It’s a movement to help everyone come together. 15:00 As a way to drive temple attendance they created “Faith Fridays”. 15:40 Engaging the presidencies in the ward. Shawn likes to focus on empowerment instead of dictating what they do. 16:20 The concept of WE not I. Approach a situation in order to support the ‘’we.’’ 18:50 Servant leadership is about bringing out the best performance as they do what they need to do. 20:30 Making the bishop’s office approachable. 23:45 Other ways the Shawn has made church more approachable. For example, wearing more casual clothes to activities and firesides. Keeping things lighthearted. 27:00 As a leader we bring out the best in others as they come unto Christ. Just like a good coach we have to do the same in order to help others.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Attention youth leaders. If you have recently been called to lead the rising generation, I have a next step for you. |
| 0:11.2 | Listen to an awesome presentation by Yvonne Hubert and Peter Vidmar, who are both |
| 0:15.7 | respective members of the Young Women and Young Men General Advisory Council for the Church. |
| 0:20.9 | Their presentation really helps clarify ways on how to effectively lead the youth using the children and youth program. |
| 0:27.0 | They also cover topics like youth-led groups, how to lead through personal ministry, how to meet youth where they are, identifying the youth strengths and capacities. |
| 0:37.0 | This presentation is part of the Young Saints Virtual Library |
| 0:40.0 | and you can access it at no cost by going to leading saints.org |
| 0:44.1 | slash 14. Again simply click the link in the show notes or go to leading |
| 0:49.2 | saints.org slash one for. So my name is Kurt Frankum and I am the founder and executive director of Leading Saints and obviously the host of the Leading Saints podcast. |
| 1:06.2 | Now I started Leading Saints back in 2010. |
| 1:09.9 | It was just a hobby blog and it grew from there by the time 2014 came around. |
| 1:15.7 | We started the podcast and that's really when it got some attraction and took off 2016. |
| 1:21.1 | We became a 501c3 nonprofit organization and we've been growing ever since and now I get the |
| 1:26.8 | opportunity of interviewing and talking with remarkable people all over the world. |
| 1:31.5 | Now this is a segment we do on the |
| 1:33.6 | leading Saints podcast called How I Lead and we reach out to everyday leaders. They're |
| 1:38.5 | not experts, gurus, authors, PhDs, they're just everyday leaders who've been asked to serve in a specific leadership |
| 1:45.4 | calling and we simply ask them, how is it that you lead? |
| 1:48.8 | And they go through some remarkable principles that should be in a book that should be behind a PhD. |
| 1:53.6 | They're usually that good. |
| 1:55.0 | And we just talk about sharing what the other guy is doing. |
| 1:58.4 | And I remember being a leader just simply wanting to know, |
... |
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