Andy Stanley stated at this past year’s Catalyst conference (paraphrase) “if they replaced you tomorrow, and brought in a new guy/girl to do your job. What would they do? Why not walk out the door, walk back in, and do that?”
His point was, if someone new sat down in your chair what would they immediately question? What would they ask:
- Why do they do that?
- What is this for?
- Why are they still doing this?
Then if we know the answer to these questions and detach emotionally from the programs or people involved to make rationale decisions, why not just do those things now before “they” have to replace us and bring in someone else to do them? There are some obvious reasons why we don’t. 2 being, programs and people. So let’s just start with the first portion of this scenario…
If “they” replaced you tomorrow and someone new came in, what are some of the first things you think the new person would do?
I flew a lot more than usual in the months of December and January, and discovered a sneaky airline trick. Since they are rated on number of delays, on-time flights, etc they pad the departure and arrival times to help them meet their mark.
For example, my 1 hr 9 minute wheels up to wheels down flight from Atlanta to Akron, OH allows for 1 hr and 40 minutes according to my boarding pass. That is a lot of extra time for taxi, take off and landing. Not only that but the same flight is called the 6:30pm flight, but the ATL airport recognizes it as the 6:48pm flight. There’s a few extra minutes just in case.
Why is this important?
Because the next time I see an ad for an airline with “more on time flights than our competitors” I’ll know they padded the numbers. They gave extra cushion to accomplish a percieved success.
Do I do this? Do I count correctly? Do I cushion my numbers? Do I try to appear bigger, better, or more successful than I really am?
I’ve seen this a few places around the web in recent weeks, and never got around to watching it. I did today, and ouch!!! They nail us. It’s worth your time to check out.
Last month our Student Ministry Leadership Network talked about success in ministry. It is a common conversation in the circles I run in (which really just means my family and 6 friends). To paraphrase Andy Stanley from 7 Practices of Effective Ministry, “how do you know if you’re winning? There’s no scoreboard in the sanctuary.”
In light of that, I read tonight that NBC is canceling two of its newest shows from the fall lineup. In the AP article “My Own Worst Enemy” starring Christian Slater is being cancelled even though it is averaging approximately 5 million viewers per week.
Most people would assume that 5 million viewers per show would be considered a success. For NBC it evidently was not.
In ministry, especially as staff pastors, it is important for there to be clearly defined terms of success. If your Senior Pastor or Elder’s board considers success for student ministry, small group participation and service, it won’t matter if you have 500 students show up on Wednesday nights. Likewise, if you have 80% of your students in small groups and serving twice a month, but your midweek attendance has plateaued, there may be an unexpected conversation in your future.
Just because you think you are succeeding doesn’t mean those around you do.
So:
- Define success as early as possible.
- Articulate it to everyone you can. Not just down to staff and volunteers. You have to get the message up the ladder. It can be difficult to cast vision up, but it must be done. If not, you’re going to spend enormous amounts of time chasing ministry philosophies that don’t match your core values. - Highlight examples of that success as often as possible.
For those of you who may have visited my blog in the last 36 hours, you received an error message. While updating my version of WordPress the other day, something happened. My administrator panel worked fine and I could see everything, but the site itself wouldn’t show up. I tried everything I knew to do, including reading pages and pages of code in Dreamweaver, but I couldn’t find the problem.
On the urging of my brother, a Bluehost lover, I called Bluehost to see if they could roll back my files a couple days or help in anyway. The gentleman listened to my problem, put me on hold, and came back a few minutes later to tell me the problem was fixed. He went into my code and corrected a looping URL problem. (I don’t even know what that means).
Anyways…thanks to my wonderful host. They are dirt cheap on price, but worth every penny.
The following article is written by Kirk Walters, our Missions Pastor at Mt. Paran North. Before coming to MPN he was a Sr. Pastor near Jackson, MS, a youth pastor in Mobile, AL, and was successful in business. He and his wife Laura have 2 great kids, Bradley and Lauren.
I just returned home from Scotland after visiting our missionaries with Jeremy and another guy from our church. Yes, we did play St. Andrews and it was spectacular (I make no apologies!). On the flight from Edinburgh to New York, the flight attendants were still serving snacks in a frenzied manner as we began our initial descent into NY. I asked one of them why they were in such a rush. It turns out the pilots had played a joke and told the flight attendants we would be an hour late, when we actually were almost an hour early. The flight attendants were literally running down the aisles picking up trash and securing items in order to prepare for landing (they even threw the bags of trash onto the bathroom floor!). They sat down within 30 seconds of landing. It was extremely funny to Jeremy and me because we knew what had happened, but I wonder how it was viewed by the other 200 passengers unaware of the joke. The other passengers probably thought the flight crew was extremely inefficient and unprofessional.
It got me to thinking about leadership. It’s important for leaders to relate to their employees and volunteers. This should include many moments of laughter with one another that build relationships. However, leadership involves timing. Just as leaders need to make right decisions at the right time; good leaders know when it’s time to relate and when it’s time to lead. These pilots didn’t understand the law of timing. There are moments that require leaders to lead in a transcendent way:
• When it involves mission – jokes would have been fine over lunch, but the crew should be committed to its mission (making the flight safe, enjoyable, and efficient).
• When it affects another person’s performance – the passengers unaware of the joke simply thought the flight attendants did a poor job of planning.
• When it reflects poorly on the organization – the displeased passengers will remember one thing – the airline seemed disorganized!
The real problem is that people’s potential view of the flight attendants is not accurate. These flight attendants were great! They handled some unruly passengers with professionalism and even handled a minor medical emergency (I’ll let Jeremy tell you about that) with great compassion.
It makes me wonder about my own leadership – do I lead and relate well? Am I intentional about timing my relationship and leadership moments to maximize my employees/volunteers potential for the good of the organization?
This is my personal blog. Most of what is written is my opinion, observation, original thought, or things I find interesting somewhere else. While I am employed by Mt. Paran North, the things expressed here are not endorsed or necessarily accepted by Mt. Paran North or it's leadership. So don't go sue the church because you don't agree with something I write. Just post a comment and tell me I'm an idiot. It'll just be better for all of us.
