Dan Zimbardi, Executive Pastor at Sandals Church in Riverside, California, has helped lead a church that began with eight people in a living room to fourteen locations reaching 40,000 to 50,000 people each week through in-person and digital gatherings. Eleven of those fourteen came by merger, and Dan's counsel on church combinations is less about deal structure than posture: enter the conversation kingdom-minded enough to walk away, keep your word on the far side of the vote, and send the person with the right demeanor into the room. Honor has since become a cornerstone of how Sandals approaches every church it adopts.

The conversation turns to the relationship every XP navigates, and Dan is candid that his ability to challenge his senior pastor is a function of fifteen years of accrued trust rather than title. He describes the arrangement as 51/49, names the mistake of demanding influence six months into a role, and puts the harder question back on the listener: what do you need to adjust to earn it? He calls his approach "punch and hug," the deliberate pairing of directness with encouragement, and argues the starting point is knowing your own wiring well enough to know which one you owe the room. On hiring, he's equally direct; integrity and chemistry over talent, because the messes he's inherited all trace back to overlooking a lack of authenticity in someone who brought a lot to the table.

Dan also brings a technologist's read on where churches stand with AI: adoption is nearly universal among church staff, but almost no one has a plan, and the fix starts with alignment on policy and guidelines before a roadmap. He offers a pointed comparison from his years at Google; churches are notoriously slow to respond and short on urgency, and while some of that is the genuine work of waiting on the Lord, much of it is fear or inattention. He closes on sustainability with the habit he credits most: pushing ninety percent of his inbox back out through delegation, not to lighten his own load but to position the church to keep growing after he's gone. Plus a challenge to isolated XPs everywhere, an unapologetic pickleball habit, and what he'd tell the discouraged executive pastor driving home tonight.

Ken Fisher, Executive Pastor at Church of The Mill in South Carolina, spent 25 years in financial services and healthcare (CVS) before answering a call to ministry later in life. He joins James Forrest fresh to talk about leading one of the fastest-growing churches in America — from 1,200 in weekly attendance on a single campus in 2016 to roughly 6,000 across three campuses today.

Ken walks through what it's taken to scale: growing staff from under 20 to nearly 100, building a robust Biblical counseling ministry that now serves over 100 people a month, and making a deliberate, costly pivot to over-invest in next-gen ministry even when it meant lower per-family giving. He's candid about the tension between two types of executive pastors — lifelong vocational ministers and business-background transplants like himself — and where each tends to have blind spots, along with how AI is starting to show up as both a helpful tool and a stewardship question in ministry work.

The conversation turns personal as Ken reflects on the corporate-world "grind culture" he's had to unlearn, his church's decision to intentionally slow down every July to let staff recharge, and why he considers himself an "extroverted introvert" who recharges at a cabin in the North Carolina mountains. He closes with advice for the next generation of XPs: surround yourself with smart people, resist the urge to control everything, and remember that ministry growth isn't about chasing numbers — it's about executing well and letting God do the rest.

Drew Essen, Executive Pastor at The Woodlands Church near Houston, joins James Forrest for a candid conversation about leading through rapid growth. Drew's path into ministry started with a guitar and a worship team, wound through a series of "18-month assignments" building out communications and discipleship, and eventually led to seminary and the XP role — where his gift for systems and structure finally found its home.

With Woodlands having expanded from two campuses to four and added a second-language service in just a few years, Drew talks about the real work of maintaining organizational clarity and staff culture at scale — including why his church has intentionally called this a "base camp year" to pause and acclimate before the next stage of growth. He also digs into two issues showing up across churches right now: staff compensation in a high cost-of-living market, and the fast-moving questions around how (and whether) to use AI in ministry.

Drew opens up about learning to have hard conversations with both honesty and pastoral care, why patience has been one of his hardest lessons as a naturally fast-moving leader, and how an executive coach has helped him learn to "keep his peace" instead of letting the job rob him of it. He closes with a reflection every growth-minded XP will recognize: the temptation to always chase the next initiative instead of pausing to celebrate what God is already doing — plus a surprising confession about his high school theater career.