The Strengths, Weaknesses and Moral Failures of the Mega-Church Movement: Jimmy Mellado on Healthy Growth, Scale, and Lessons from an Olympian

Carey Nieuwhof (0:01)

The Art of Leadership Network.

Jimmy Mellado (0:03)

Some of the folks that I learned and looked up to, etc. had made choices that had very damaging effects on their life, their marriages, their ministries, multiple people. But it kind of all came in one year for me.

Brian Brown (0:19)

It was like a cluster.

Jimmy Mellado (0:20)

Yeah, there was a cluster. I was very concentrated and I was a bit depressed actually in that season because I'm just now coming into compassion and I remember thinking this thought. Is this my destiny?

Carey Nieuwhof (0:40)

Welcome to The Carey Nieuhof Leadership Podcast. I'm so glad you joined us today. I really hope our time together today helps you thrive in life and leadership.

Jimmy Mellado, a name known to a lot of people in church leadership. He is currently the CEO of Compassion. He is the former CEO of the Willow Creek Association or Global Leadership Network, as it's now called. We talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the megachurch movement, healthy growth and scale, and unhealthy growth and scale, what Jimmy thinks is the best predictor of not having a moral failure or leadership collapse, and lessons from an Olympian. This is a pretty wide-ranging interview. I'm always interested in what drives a leader. So we get into his childhood, some of the influences growing up outside and inside the United States, and how he really grew a heart for the poor as a child. And then, wow, do we have a great analysis of what happened with the growing mega-church movement in the 90s, 2000s. And today, if you're a young leader, I think this is really going to provide some clarity on what's happening in the church today. So hope you enjoy this episode. If you're looking for show notes, you can find them inside my Art of Leadership Academy. You can go to theartofleadershipacademy.com, join over 23,000 leaders who are there. We have some great conversations around these topics. Santiago Jimmy Mellado, and we talk about his name, is president and CEO of Compassion International. That's a global ministry that is dedicated to holistic child development in partnership with local churches. Jimmy is passionate about Compassion's church-based approach to releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name. He earned his MBA from the Harvard Business School. He's also an accomplished athlete, competed in 1998 in the Olympics, and retains the national record for his birth country, El Salvador. With that said, my conversation with Jimmy Mellado.

Jimmy, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. Welcome to the podcast.

Jimmy Mellado (2:39)

Wow, me too, Carey. I told my team when that request came in, I said, if Carey asks for anything, it's a yes. Let's just figure it out.

Carey Nieuwhof (2:46)

Well, that's really generous of you.

I want to go way back because I love sort of understanding the making of a leader. And you've been in the public spotlight now for a long time, both through your work at Compassion and previous ministries.

But I believe you were born in El Salvador, is that right?

Jimmy Mellado (3:05)

Yeah.

Carey Nieuwhof (3:06)

And your family moved, I think I read, dozens of times when you were a kid. Can you sort of unpack some of the forming influences of your childhood?

Jimmy Mellado (3:15)

Well, to give you context, my dad's 96, still alive.

Carey Nieuwhof (3:18)

Wow.

Jimmy Mellado (3:19)

Mom's 91 and in their 67 years of marriage, they moved 41 times. We moved a lot. I think I was almost a couple of dozen different places where I live, mainly in seven countries that were formative for me all around the world, mostly in the developing setting because my dad was an engineer. He was doing water projects, electrical projects, roads, dams. I was born in the jungles of El Salvador because he was building a dam and powerhouse.

No doctor, natural births. There we go. It was an adventure.

Carey Nieuwhof (3:53)

No kidding. So he had a development bent, but from an engineering standpoint, is that it? Did he work for governments or a private company?

Jimmy Mellado (4:01)

Yeah, he grew up on the Mexico USA border, as did my mom, and at 18 enlisted into the army because he wanted to get his education through the GI Bill. What he didn't count on was the Korean War. So they shipped him off to the Korean War and he joined the Corps of Engineers. And two things happened. I actually had a conversation with him last week about this, asking him, why did you decide to be an engineer and go all around the world? The Korean War and being on the other side of the world opened his mind, opened his life to the world and the needs of the world. And he saw suffering there at significant levels during the war. And then being involved in the Corps of Engineers.